An Open Letter to Politicians of All Parties:

It has recently come to my attention that you all are having difficulty with the concept of fiction, so I thought Iâ€d help you out.

Fiction is not real. Fake. You know, like some of that stuff you make up about your opponent. Like the figures you give the public when you want them to believe a certain way about a new program youâ€ve proposed. Fiction is also related to story-telling, a skill which I know all of you have.

Letâ€s say it together: Fiction is not real.

When someone pens a piece of fiction, the characters do not necessarily reflect the values and opinions of the writer. I know thatâ€s hard to wrap your little brains around. But itâ€s true. Often when a writer is working, the characters do and say things that the writer never would. Thatâ€s why we call it FICTION, and once again, fiction is not real. Iâ€m getting tired of you slinging mud at your opponents whoâ€ve written fiction by pointing to some act (generally sexual in nature) committed by one of the characters, and labeling it as a real moral flaw in the writer. Itâ€s interesting that none of you have pointed to a serial killer/thrillerâ€s author as having a warped and twisted mind.

We (fiction writers) are NOT our characters. Often our characters are not even based on a particular person. Theyâ€re made-up. Created. Fake. They have their own opinions and values, their own sets of behaviors. The things they do are also made up. (FICTION!) This is why, although Tom Clancy wrote a book about crashing a plane into Congress, he didnâ€t act on it. Iâ€m sure he didnâ€t endorse the concept as a real behavior.

We donâ€t arrest people based on a story they wrote. (Yet. You all do have me worried, though. The exception to this is if you happen to be a high school writer. Kids have, unfortunately, been arrested based on nothing more than a story they wrote. This is why we really do need to enlighten you all about FICTION. )

What happens on the fiction page should stay on the page.

To recap, because I know youâ€re really struggling with these concepts:

Fiction is not real.
Characters in fiction do and say things that their writers never would.

We fiction writers may lie for a living, but at least we admit it. Hey, better yet, we know the difference between fake (fiction!) and real.

If youâ€d like to read some fiction, might I suggest you begin with 1984 and Fahrenheit 451? Oh, wait. Those books might confuse you even more.

Susan Gable, Novelist, Reader, and Fed-Up Voter

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I’ve also heard things like this: “I can’t believe they closed that line. I loved that line. I read those books every month at my library.”

Before I go any farther with this discussion, I have to offer up a disclaimer. I love libraries. Especially as a child with a voracious appetite for story, I borrowed armloads of books from my local library. I love bargains, too. I shop like men hunt or play sports. It’s a victory when I score a bargain. (New black cocktail dress, originally $79, marked down to only $16. SCORE!) Used books are great bargains. Swapping books, another great bargain. The new websites on-line, where you can “rent” a book, in a system similar to NetFlix, are also an interesting bargain. Good grief, even the airports these days have a program where you can buy a book, read it, then sell it back to them. What a bargain!

But did you realize that those bargains could be putting your favorite line or your favorite author out of business?

It’s a difficult, touchy subject for authors to discuss. We don’t want to appear anti-used books (’cause we’re not — not entirely, anyway), or make readers think we’re money-grubbers, always harping on them to buy our books. We all know (believe me, we KNOW – most writers don’t make anywhere close to as much money as people think we do.) how tight money can be sometimes, especially with the rising costs of gas and heating fuel, and food, and taxes, and…well, you know. Everything.

Weâ€ve been known ourselves to sometimes borrow and trade books, or buy used. Or go to the library. So I’m not saying you should never do these things. There are valid reasons for all of these fantastic book bargains. (Out of print books and test-driving a new author being only a couple to go along with MONEY.)

But publishing these days is a strictly-by-the-numbers business, which means if the numbers don’t live up to the publisher’s expectations, a writer can kiss her slot/line/future contracts good-bye.

“Where’s SoAndSo’s latest book? How come she hasn’t published another story in that series that I love so much?” If you find yourself asking that question, it could be that your favorite, SoAndSo, got cut loose because the numbers of that last book in the series didn’t do as well as the one before that. How did you get your hands on that last book? Did you buy it new, contributing to the continuation of the series, or did you bargain read it? Bargain reads don’t count towards our numbers.

Writers, especially those of us at the “lower echelons” of the publishing world, need our readers more than ever. Without you, there would be no point in what we do. (Well, okay, there’s a certain satisfaction in telling yourself a story, but it’s the audience that makes it truly special. It’s a shared dream.) But now, because of the numbers, we need your support even more.

Our careers, our lines, even our publishers, live and die by the numbers.

So please, where and when you can, save a writer. Buy a new book. We’ll all thank you for it. And that way, you’ll have more choices of books in the future.

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So for those of you who love to read romance but want bigger print, these books are available. I know you can find them on-line.

And again, I’ve been reasurred that the Supers are okay as they’ve been turned in, we’re just switching over to computer word count and the editor wanted to make sure no one ended up turning in a ms that was 85k by computer word count. (Now THAT would be a mess. Much slashing and trimming in that case.)

Perhaps now would be a good time to ask Santa for clear communication from all the publishers as a Christmas present. And actually, that sounds like a topic for another post.

The post HQ Larger Print Program appeared first on Booksquare.

A follow-up on my last post about Harlequin cutting words from their longer lines — I received information from the Senior Editor of my line (Superromance) that basically what’s going on is a change in HOW we count words. Instead of using the old standard of ms formating for the 250 words per page method, we are now moving to the new computer word count method. That means that my last Super, which was 340 formatted ms pages or 85K on the dot for the old method (I’m one of the long-winded writers who pushed to the edge of the alloted space, big surprise (g)) and is 71K-ish by the word count function in Word, is exactly on target for the new range of word count. (Actually, that means I could have written a couple of other scenes I wanted to include. No, that wouldn’t have been good, because the font was small enough as it was.)

They encourage writers to write tight, avoid cliches, etc. — in other words, to carry on pretty much as we have been.

Interestingly enough, in the new issue of the RWR (Romance Writers Report from Romance Writers of America) there was a letter to the editor requesting an article on which publishers count words by the old method, and which ones are now asking for computer word count. Because as you can see, which one you want makes a BIG difference. If you’re looking for a 70K ms, and you’re using computer word count, but I query you and give you the old 250 wpp method, then you’re going to dismiss my ms for being far too long — when it may not be so, given the example I used above.

Believe me, I understand all the reasons for the 250 wpp method — how a single word line of dialogue counts in the book the same as if you’d written a full line of dialogue there. So I don’t need to know the why.

But what do you think? Which method do you prefer and why? Do you think it would be helpful to have some consistancy among publishers, that they’re all using the same method so we know which number to give them when offering word count? Or do query letters now need to include a line like this:

This is a completed 85,000 word ms (250 wpp – or 71,400 words using computer count) that…

In other words, do writers need to be offering both counts now when they query? That would be one way of assuring you don’t trip yourself if you don’t know which method the publisher uses.

So, I’m still a little confused about Harlequin’s cutting word count, but then, what else is new? Confusion seems to be par for the course in this biz.

The post How to Count appeared first on Booksquare.

For example, the Superromance line, which Iâ€ve been writing for, used to have guidelines of 80-85K. That gave the writer room to create a more complex story, with more subplots and secondary characters. The line will now be 70-75K.

Harlequin says this is in response to the readers†complaints that the font is too small and the margins too small, making the books too hard to read. So their solution is not to add pages to the printed books to allow for bigger fonts & margins (which we know would cost more money) but instead to make the stories shorter so they can keep the same number of pages but give the readers bigger fonts and margins.

Iâ€m curious to know what happened with the Larger Print books “experiment.” My July Superromance was available in Larger Print – 80 pages longer, only .25 higher cover price, and the font was wonderful on the eyes.

But the bookstores didnâ€t know these books were available. I had to let my local Waldens know that they could order my book in this Larger Print edition for their readers who preferred the Large Print. Was the reader response so fantastic to these editions that they decided to figure out a way to make ALL their books like that? Without raising the cost to produce or sell them?

So, here are my questions to the Booksquare readers. Thereâ€s been debate among H/S authors as to whether or not the readers will notice that theyâ€re getting “less story” in the lines. Debate about whether or not itâ€s possible to write as complex a story at 70-75K as it is at 80-85K. Some say itâ€s all up the writers, and that we could still write just as strong & complex a story at the shorter length as the longer. What do you think?

Will the readers be okay with giving up “more story” for ease of reading? Will they even notice theyâ€re getting “less story?” (Remember, the printed books will still have about the same number of pages, so they wonâ€t appear to be shorter.) Have attention spans gotten shorter? (In response to that argument, I toss out Harry Potter – and those are supposed to be childrenâ€s books!)

Is this just following along the trends started by other product lines, like the ice cream that’s no longer quite a half gallon, or the bar of soap that’s just an ounce or so smaller, but still the same price?

If you’re a writer targeting one of the Harlequin lines, better get to their website and check out the new word counts.

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