"Stand by Me" Calgary Drop In

This is a fabulous video of homeless musicians. These guys need a recording contract!

A Class Example

Frankie Valli is the ultimate professional. I went to his concert in Edmonton at the Coliseum some time in the early 1980s. There were 1,000 people in a 16,000-seat arena. He called everyone to come and sit up close, then performed as if he had a full house and everyone raved about his concert and class. When he rebooked Edmonton a year later, he had a full house at the Jubilee Auditorium. If I’m ever conducting a workshop, keynote, or even a blog – if just one person shows up, I always use him as the example. There has been discussion on a speaker newsletter about what to do if organizers say to expect an audience of 400 people and less than fifty show up. If you perform like Frankie Valli, the ones who did show up will become your biggest disciples.

On the flip side, I used to sell tickets for a box office and in the case of two concerts: Aretha Franklin and Gladys Knight and the Pips, they each had half a room filled – Aretha at the Jubilee and Knight at the Coliseum. Both of them walked off the stage after maybe two songs and the box office had to refund the tickets. They never returned to the city and I’ve never thought much of them since.

Here’s some clips of Frankie Valli I found on YouTube:

Medley for those unfamiliar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UZKoUppu-Q

Oh What a Night
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQO9LNELIKQ

Grease
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol8gCOA0iP8

Let’s Hang On (His closing song)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ04NiiFy2U

What NOT to do when soliciting a publisher

If you don't edit and proofread your correspondence, check out what a publisher actually publishes, check out their websites and submission guidelines, what do you think your chances are? Here are just two examples of real emails that say more than I could preach.

(Group email listing every email in the Association of Canadian Publishers' directory in the "TO" box.)

Friday, October 27,200612:23 PM
Looking_for _a _publ isher.pdf
Looking for a publicher


Estimable Sir
I wrote two books in informatics. I think that these are good and I send to you the cover, the contents
- and a paragraph from everyone. If you are interested, please answer to me for sending the entire fist form for every book. Everyone has a CD with the application programs, whose design was performed in the books. I trust in you, for helping me. See attachments. No viruses.

the authOr.


Thursday, October
16, 2008 3:22 AM

Subject:Good Book

Attachment: The Master's Stick.doc (908 KB)

Dear Literary Agent, Dear Publisher,

(His picture was inserted here)

My name is ___, and I am an Italian writer. It is an honour for me to send you a piece of my work entitled: "The Master's Stick". It consists of a collection of short stories and aphorisms, based on the zen style, and it has already been published in Italy, obtaining a good number of sales.

If you are interested in my work, as I hope you are, you might like to know that a second volume of such work is already available and has not been published in Italy yet. It would be a pleasure for me to collaborate with you for our mutual economic and moral satisfaction.

Yours faithfully,

Copyright

I get a lot of questions about copyright and when it begins. Copyright begins when an idea is put into physical form. Ideas, no matter how great they are, are not copyright. They are when they are written down on physical paper, audio, video, or in your computer. Every person in this group could write a piece on the same idea, but not one of those pieces would be written the same. Each of us would own the copyright on what we personally wrote as soon as we write it.

So you want to be an editor

If you have some other editing experience, you can hook up with the American Copy Editors Association (www.copydesk.org). or the Editors Association of Canada (www.editors.ca) and look at some of the links on their sites.

There are two sites that list journalism jobs in Canada: www.jeffgaulin.com and http://www.mediajobsearchcanada.com/. Jeff Gaulin's site is really good. The Media Job Search site is also good for grunt work in connecting with various associations and media. It pretty much lists every magazine, newspaper, and radio station in the country, with a link to their websites. For US sites, use Google to find specific directories related to the industry you wish to work in.

Depending on how serious you take your editing, like whether or not you study guide books and continually look for areas to improve your craft, will determine where you fit on the professional scale.

One of my book clients, who wrote a sales book, says when he meets potential salespeople, he asks them what's the latest sales book they bought. He says that tells him if they're serious about sales. The same can be true for writing and editing. I can tell you I have three dictionaries (the double set of Oxford, Websters, and Canadian), two thesauruses, Chicago Manual of Style, AP Stylebook, and probably another 50 or so more other writing reference books. We're not all perfect, but we can look it up. But at the very least, you should know the basics of grammar and punctuation, that the quotation mark comes after the comma and period, that there is only one space after the period, and that using a serial comma makes life much easier for the reader.

Book layouts are equally as important as what's written on the pages

I'm just appalled at the lack of thought that has gone into most books in the mainstream marketplace. Royalty published books are starting to look like Print On Demand publishing. Books are fraught with:

1. Hyphenation where it doesn't need to be, which makes it annoying to the reader when every other word is hyphenated (designers can make one click to turn this off in their layout programs)

2. Widows and orphans -- dangling sentences at the top and bottom of a page that belong to a paragraph on the next page. I've even seen a five-letter word hyphenated, as a widow, where you had to turn the page to see the end of the word!

3. Times New Roman. Good grief! It is NOT the only font on the planet.


4. Indented paragraphs squished together. Makes it harder to find your place when you put the book down and it's the same layout in every single book in the universe, it seems. Not to mention being in Times New Roman. I just started reading a book where two of those indented paragraphs don't even line up!

5. Lazy editing -- I've seen spelling errors, missed words, and more. In one of those Readers Digest condensed four-in-one books, one of the stories -- in the first chapter -- talked about a kid during the same period of time (the same day) and he was three different ages.

6. Cheap production -- it may be cheaper to print in China and to use newsprint instead of 50 or 60 lb offset, but books are starting to look like they won't last through the year, let alone stand up to time, like my 1897 copy of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

When you put this altogether, these "lazy" layouts actually take away from enjoying a good read. In the case of the indented paragraphs that don't line up -- that was on page two. So as I ventured through the rest of the book, I was conscious of anticipating more layout errors more than what is said on the pages.

I'll stand many of the self published books I've worked on and seen against a lot of the books I'm seeing on the shelves today.

The Copyright Page

What are the issues that I should consider as to whether I copyright my book under my name or under my business name? What do you write on the copyright page?

1. Who is the publisher? Me or my business?
If you are self publishing, you choose what you want the publisher name to be. Think of your branding, if you plan on doing more than one book.

2. ISBN number?
You always include the ISBN number.

3. EAN versus UPC bar code?
The barcode goes on the back cover of the book.

4. "Printed in Canada" -- what does it mean?)
You must have "Printed in Canada, U.S., China..." in the copyright page and the back cover, mainly if you intend to move books in or out of the country.

5. Format and layout of the page
The format and layout of the page is somewhat standard. The best thing to do is pick a book off your shelf that has the layout that resonates with you and copy that format.

6. CIP data (Which comes first? Copyright, ISBN, bar codes, CIP data)
First comes the publisher number (Canada: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/isn/041011-1030-e.html;
U.S.: http://www.isbn.org/standards/home/isbn/us/secureapp.asp), then the ISBN. You can't apply for a cataloguing in print number without the ISBN and you can't generate a barcode without the ISBN.

The copyright page is always on the left-hand side.

The copyright of the written manuscript belongs to the author, however, if a publisher (other than the author) publishes the book, you lend the rights to publish to that firm for a period of time (usually two years -- but make sure the contract says the rights revert back to you, or you may not get back the rights to publish your own book).

Are Traditional Publishers Following the Footsteps of Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors?

The Big Three automakers seemingly woke up last week and got it. Unless one works on a construction or oil well site, and with the price of gas going sky high, V-8 and V-10 SUVs and monster trucks are no longer attractive. When Honda and Toyota kept raising their market share, Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors didn’t investigate to find out why.

Can the same be said for the traditional publishing industry? Here are some facts to sink your teeth into:

• Media General, Inc. reported a 9.8 percent decline in revenues from June 2007 to June 2008, mostly from its Publishing Division revenues, which declined overall by 15.3 percent. (Fox Translator, July 17, 2008)

• The Bowmark Entrepreneurs’ Index said an Optimism Index revealed small- and medium-sized media and publishing firms have the lowest levels of optimism among United Kingdom businesses. Almost 75 percent blame government intervention and legislation as impacting their growth. (Brandrepublic, Emma Barnett, Media Week, July 14, 2008)

• The overall Canadian book publishing industry is down 1.2 percent from 2005 to 2006 re Statistics Canada (The Survey of Book Publishers). Ontario and Quebec factored into 91 percent of the industry’s operating revenues and 95 percent of the profits in 2006. Publishers outside of these provinces continue to rely on grants, subsidies, and tax credits. (Josh Kerbel, Publishers Weekly, July 24, 2008) However, the industry is still seen as being fairly stable and not losing as much as magazines and newspapers (to which the decline in profits correlate to free digital information). (Tobin Dalrymple, National Post, July 11, 2008)

What are some of the reasons for a declining industry? First, let’s start with the publishers. Traditional publishers still tend to take the conservative, safe approach to finding topic matter. It’s as if they think readers do not want to buy anything risqué, fresh and new, or controversial. Jason Quirk (Guardian.co.uk, Why publishing has gone to the dogs, June 27, 2008) says publishers are “dumbing down content and aiming for the lowest common denominator” and that “people will happily pay a lot more money for a slightly better product.”

We know that most of the major publishers, whether they print 10 or 200 titles a year, only choose a handful (not even 10 percent) to put their marketing dollars behind. The rest of the books sit in a catalogue and the hope is that the top titles will support the money spent on the latter.

Mark Thwaite of Guardian.co.uk adds that most publishers are not using the Internet to their fullest potential. In fact, most have substandard Websites. If publisher Websites had great search engines, up-to-date catalogues with detailed pages and graphics, author information, links to fan sites, blogs, and even social networking sites, they just might survive.

An online presence in today’s marketing environment is everything. Without it, you’re invisible. If people Google an author or book title and nothing shows up, you don’t exist.

Now let’s look at the booksellers. Chris Holifield (www.writersservices.com/mag) says booksellers are more focused on bestsellers than stocking a range of books. That attitude ultimately puts more pressure on the other stock, makes it tougher for new authors to get on the shelf, and for publishers to keep books in print. According to some booksellers, the average shelf life of a book in a bookstore is three months.

And then there is the return factor. In an article series by Angela Hoy of WritersWeekly.com, September 2005 (go to the article archive section on www.writersweekly.com to read them in full), she points one of the reason for high returns is bookstores order too many books and then return them for a credit at the expense of the publisher. Many times, the books they return are damaged – or they are outright destroyed. So in other words, if the bookseller can’t sell books, the publisher is the one who suffers.

There is a quote in Hoy’s article from Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg of the Wall Street Journal who says, since the Depression, publishers told struggling booksellers they could return unwanted titles as long as they ordered new titles. The Depression happened in the 1930s. This is 2008 and publishers still use the same business model. As a result, the return ratio, while its average is slated to be 35 to 40 percent, in most cases, it’s much higher.

These are some of the contributing factors on why it’s easier to get an audience with the Pope than a publisher. Like the car industry, some time down the road, other firms – independent self-publishers – will reach a significant market share of the readership, if they haven’t already. We may never know officially because even the statistics gatherers only focus on the traditional bookselling market.