Mars Needs Writers

…and, how silly, of course you can’t. But the times, they are a’changin’.

Maybe. But let's start from the beginning:

A couple of weeks ago, we heard from an excited writer friend. Her self-published thriller was getting made into an audio book! She’d already heard a chunk of the thing, the narrator was doing a great job and –

Hold on, we interrupted. We like Nan, we like her a lot, but we know the woman isn't exactly rolling in the dough. She doesn’t have the extra scratch to pay for studio time or a sound engineer, much less the use of a professional narrator. (Unless, of course, things had changed and she’d won the Powerball. If Nan had won the Powerball, this was a good time to remind her of our longstanding friendship and the time we bought her that Grande DeCaf and she said she’d pay us back someday.)

Sadly for all of us, she hadn’t won the lottery. What she’d done was discover the Audiobook Creation Exchange. At ACX, authors and narrators are encouraged to find one another, link up, and make an audio book. Authors can either pay the standard rate – $200-300 per hour seems to be the going price – or they can ask the voice talent if they’d like to split royalties 50/50.
 
ACX is apparently owned and operated by the folks at Amazon, by the way. Although we like Amazon for providing us an outlet for our writing, not everyone feels the same way. Fair warning.

Nan likes Amazon, she liked ACX, and she decided to throw her hat in the ring. She created an account, provided an audition script, made it know on site that her project was available to would-be voice actors, and waited for her inbox to fill up.

*crickets*

When a week passed without a single response, she decided to be a bit more proactive. The site makes it easy for narrators to find new projects but it also makes it easy for writers to contact vocal talent. Audio samples are provided, broken down by genre, accent, sex, whether this is for cash or royalty, etc. etc., and Nan listened until she found a few potential audio partners. She contacted five would-be actors, asking them to consider her audition script, and three of ‘em agreed to give the story a try.

And why not? Her book is the first of a four book series, it’s action-packed and exciting, but it isn't a particularly challenging novel to record. (Nan agrees with us.) The hero is a manly man, the story is told in first person, and the hero’s primary interactions are with other, often evil, manly men. Find someone with a deep voice and a little verbal swagger, you’ve got a potential narrator. Nan’s audition script ran about five minutes, give or take some vocal inflections, and it wasn’t long before she had three different takes to consider. She liked all three. Of the three, there was one narrator she loved.
 
“He did the character perfectly,” she told us. She immediately emailed the guy. He (almost) immediately emailed back. He wanted the job. He also wanted $700.

Which is when Nan discovered that many of the ACX narrators would prefer cash in hand to a cut of the royalties.  It’s understandable. Less than ten percent of all novels become audio books – some people in the industry place the percentage as low as five percent -- and, of that number, several struggle to find an audience. Add the challenge of finding buyers for an unknown audio book by an unknown writer and you can see why some people might wonder if prospects are a little iffy.

Iffy isn’t the same as nonexistent, though, and Nan charmed her actor with the possibilities to follow. Since then, he's accepted the assignment, provided a 15-minute reading of the book’s opening for Nan to review, and the project is in full flight. The narrator has a commitment to finish the thing in the next three weeks, and our friend is pleased.

After haunting the ACX site for a few hours, here’s what we thought: Maybe we should try it, too.
So, a few days ago, we jumped into the pool, too.
 
Our experience?  More than a little different than Nan's account. But this post has already run on and on. Let’s talk next week.

…or so we’ve heard. Frankly, it’s not been a problem in our neck o’ the woods but other people, they talk.

Joel Murray, for example. The younger brother of actor Bill Murray (who knew Bill had a younger brother?), Joel said this about his sibling’s success:  “I have a famous brother” — he told the L.A. Times a couple of days ago — “and I see what his life’s like. He can stay places 15 minutes and then he’s got to leave. So I’ve seen what it’s like to be famous.”

Joel said he liked being largely unknown. As much as we like Bill Murray – well, one of us likes him: once upon a time, back before he was merely kinda famous instead of super famous, he planted a smooch upon Renee’s cheek -- offering no such love to Harrell, by the way…but we’d hate to be so popular that we couldn’t stop at IHOP without a crowd gathering. We like to linger over our chocolate chip pancakes. 

This comes to mind today because we’ve just returned from Las Vegas. We were in town for the Big Writers Convention – either that, or we were just hanging out at the buffets and losing money at the nickel slots – and we decided to go see the Penn & Teller show at the Rio. We’d seen their act years and years ago, we’d loved it, and we wondered if anything at changed in the almost eleven years since we last dropped by.

Yep, there were changes.

The tickets were more expensive than before but we found a deal (take ten minutes and you’ll find a deal, too), and off we went.  In the showroom’s outside lobby, there was a bar and a souvenir stand, loaded with P & T-oriented goodies. The showroom, by the way, was now the Penn & Teller Theater. It was gorgeous and much bigger than their first Rio showroom.  The seats were plush and the back of each chair was branded with a partial ampersand, the P & T trademark. A jazz pianist played as the crowd filled in – and a very big crowd, it was.

The show ran about 90 minutes. It was great and the magicians rocked. We loved it. After their performance, P & T hurried to the outside lobby. We thought they might, since they did the same thing a decade ago: They met their audience at the door, shook hands, signed autographs, posed for photos.  At the turn of the millennium, we’d chatted with them both and thought they were delightful.

But Penn & Teller are much more famous now.

As a result, the crowd waiting to meet them was much bigger. There were souvenirs to be signed; many, many souvenirs to be signed. Hundreds of pictures to be taken, since everyone seems to have a camera-capable cell phone. Lines of people waiting to press the flesh. Everyone wanted a piece of their time.

It showed in our celebrities’ faces. They smiled for photos, signed everything offered, tried to be pleasant.  But Teller said very few words. (We know he’s supposed to be the silent partner but he verbalized happily the last time we saw him.) Penn called everyone, ‘Boss.’ As in, ‘Thanks, Boss,”, “Appreciated, Boss,” “You’re welcome, Boss.”  He doesn’t have the time to learn each audience member's name – no one could – and he appeared so terribly, terribly bored by the process. So, naturally, Renee decided she needed to thank him for a great show.

When she made it through the line, offering her hand and her thanks, Penn seemed lost. This woman didn’t want an autograph, didn’t need a photo, so why the heck was she there? Finally, he understood. He blinked a few times, shook her hand, then responded warmly, “That’s what it’s all about. Boss.”

Seconds later, the autograph/photo/go thing resumed. Penn's eyes went dead. Honestly, we felt sorry for him.

Too often, fame and success distances the fortunate from the world around them. Which sucks. So, the next time you check our novels sales figures, don’t think, Poor bastards, think, Way to go, Turners! You score!

Absolutely. Don't for a second think about making us successful.

…we assumed one of two things were at play here: (1) ‘free’ wasn’t exactly free, if you know what we mean; or (2) suckiest book cover ever.
 
Our suspicions arose when we saw a posting on a writers’ board: Free Custom Cover with Original Digital Painting, read the post. The offer came from Gale Haut and we’d seen his name on the boards before. Months earlier, a writer, Meira Pentermann, had raved about the cover she’d received for her novel, Nine-Tenths. Her cover artist: Gale Haut. So we knew GH had some pretty decent chops but we remained suspicious about his offer. The last time we’d received something ‘free’, we had to sit through a two hour sales pitch. In Las Vegas. During the summer.
 
Apparently we weren’t the only suspicious people in the house. After the offer was made, exactly ONE person responded. (When we asked him about this, he told us, “I assume some people have seen what I’ve done in the past and probably decided my work wasn’t what they’re looking for.” Poor, sweet, innocent artist.) So, imagine our surprise when the customer cover turned out to be (1) entirely free; and (2) worlds beyond all levels of suck. So we contacted GH, just to see what was happening here.

The first thing we learned? 'Gale Haut' is a pseudonym for Elliot Turner. Immediately, we wanted to like the guy. After all, we use a pseudonym, too. And our last name is really Turner. If Elliot were rich, we'd insist we were related.
 
(We asked author Merri Hiatt what she thought about the cover: "I loved the cover art he created," she told us. "Elliot created a cover that was not only beautiful, but hauntingly so. He has a gift and a honed talent. I'd work with him again in a heartbeat.")

But Elliot's not rich and unlikely to become so if he keeps giving his work away. So we started at that point: where’s the profit in FREE?  “I don’t mean to sound pithy or anything,” he told us, “but I really love the dynamic of working with an author. I thought it would be fun.”
 
Which is almost stunning in and of itself. Do something just for the fun of it? The last thing we did for fun was Frankenstein, P.I. – and you know how well that worked out. With a little further prodding, we learned that Elliot is a professional graphic designer, with a degree in English Literature. “The thing about graphic design is, no one will take you seriously until you’ve had professional work experience or you have a fancy degree in art or design. I had neither, so I took a nontraditional route. I’m a little proud that I’ve made it this far because of how competitive the field is.”
 
So this is one for the portfolio, is it? It's such a striking piece  – “Honestly, my cover work isn’t exceptional when compared to other professional artists who are established in the field,” Elliot interrupts. “Maybe it’s better than the standard self-published cover or small press cover but I have a ways to go before I’m as polished as I’d like to be.”
 
Okay, we get it, the Society of Illustrators isn’t quite ready to inscribe your plaque, but you’re almost there. Verrrrrry close. Right?
 
You know what? He won’t even give us that much. “I don’t know the definition of a professional cover artist but I’m willing to bet it’s not me,” Elliot insists. “The cover art industry is incredibly competitive, and I don’t feel that I’m entitled to succeed in it. But I’ll certainly do my best if the opportunity arises.”
 
We asked a few more questions, received some lovely answers, and quickly grew tired of the guy. Talented, modest, probably movie star handsome (but refusing to admit it, even to himself), Elliot Turner is just a little too good to be true. After all, we’re NOT movie star handsome and, yet, we refuse to be modest.
 
So what happened after his latest cover was posted for all to see? Well, as you might expect, a number of writers lined up, hoping to get his next cover. We think his talent is obvious, his design philosophy is solid – “Simplicity works. Just as you don’t want to over flower your prose when you write, avoid overworking an image. Keep it clean and get to the point before you lose your way and your audience” – and we’re positive he’ll be charging big bucks for his work in the future.
 
In the meantime, we're waiting for him to fill his ego tank and decide that, maybe, he really is too good to hang out at the Blog-O-Rama…and then we’ll invite him back. He’ll refuse to answer our increasingly strident emails and we’ll know, at last, he’s one of us.
 
Fingers crossed, Gale. Fingers crossed.

…when she asked our stripper names. Until that very moment, we didn’t even know we needed stripper names. Imagine our surprise.
 
Y’see, we’d agreed to do an interview swap in an effort to spur sales for Aly’s Luck. Luck is our latest opus and a new release. It's time to get some people sampling the thing.  (If you have a Kindle or a Nook or...whatever, then you know that e-reader fans frequently sample a story before buying it. We like it when people sample our work. Sales for After Things Went Bad climbed after the number of samples started to rise.) Until folks discover the story, they’ll never know if they want to try a sample, much less pick up a copy.
 
So, the interview swap. It works like this: We do an interview with an author, the author does an interview with us, we both hype our work, maybe a few dozen samples are downloaded.  That's the theory, anyway. So we zapped out five or six of the our basic getting-to-know-an-author interview questions to our cohort’s gmail addy, and receive a set of interview questions in return.
 
The return questions-- the questions being asked to us -- weren’t the standard questions at all. These were questions about music and heroes villains and life slogans. Also, if we stripped for a living, what would our professional names be?
 
Caught off-guard, we went with Frenchie and Mighty Joe. Shortly thereafter, when we recounted the story, a relative told us we’d gotten our stripper names all wrong. Apparently, there's a protocol for this kind of thing. You don't just pick a stripper name. Life has to have created a stripper name for you – or you can go upscale and use a fancy-dancy Random Generator.
 
Harrell went the traditional route (the name of your first pet; the street name of your first house). Next time you tuck a dollar into his tightie-whities, refer to him as Captain Comstock.
 
Renée wanted to spin the wheel, so to speak, so she went to a Random Generator. There’s more than one but she chose the win at the GoToQuiz. The GoToQuiz people put you through a dozen questions before providing your scientifically-proven stripper name. After jumping through GoTo's hoops, Renée was given the dazzling stage name of…Bambi Turburble.

After providing the stripper name, the GoTo crew also offered this helpful bit of info about Bambi:  You have a strange smell coming from your crotch, but those breasts distract most of your customers. You’re frail like a fawn but weird, like the name Turburble.

Next time, Renée uses the traditional method.

…but not for us. Not this past weekend, anyway.
 
Every year, our mountain town features a two day Chalk Art exhibition. A local bank donates the use of its parking lot and a handful of volunteers tape off various squares of space for people to use as a drawing space. The artists can do a small drawing, x-inches by x-inches, or go big – and we mean BIG, several feet high by several feet across. Just by filling out a fairly generic application form (name, mailing address), anyone can participate. Sponsors have been lined up, and they provide the money for free boxes of chalk, a few cash prizes, and lots and lots of popcorn. Gotta love free bags of popcorn.
 
This year, like last year, hundreds of people came onto the asphalt, playing with chalk. We talked with a few of the artists; when you see someone drawing the Little Mermaid on a parking lot, the person seems very approachable.  We enjoyed a brief conversation with a pleasant stranger but realized, later, that we'd be mentioning him in the B-O-Rama.
 
(The guy above? Not the Pleasant Stranger. We have pictures of the stranger, we know his name, we even know where he lives -- but, since we didn't ask if we could tell all in the blog, we're keeping some of those details to ourselves.)
 
Pleasant Stranger had dreams of being a fine artist, once upon a time. As he made his way through life, finding the girl of his dreams, his priorities shifted. Two children later and a mortgage to pay, PS realized he wasn't meeting the bills with the use of his oil paints. Putting away his brushes, he found a regular job…but he still had an itch to do art. He discovered chalk art festivals and street art. So, when time and opportunity permits, he packs his supplies, jumps in the car, and heads for the next available asphalt easel.
 
 When we met him, he’d already put eleven hours into his drawing – he was doing one of the BIG squares – and believed he had another eight to ten hours of work before he’d finish.  There was a chance he’d win a little money (the People’s Choice award was a tempting prize but far from guaranteed) but a greater chance that he’d go home out-of-pocket.
 
“If this was about the money,” he said, “I’d make more pulling the day shift at Burger King.”  We knew it wasn’t about making a ‘name’, either, because the maintenance crew would be out in the parking lot tomorrow, washing away everyone’s work. So why does PS do what he does?
 
“To have fun, to be artistic. To connect with other people, I guess.“ Then he paused. “For the joy,” he said. "Not everyone understands that. Not for the money, for the joy."
 
We understood, we said. We’re writers. And he nodded.

...we're a lot less impressed than we used to be.
 
Okay, so maybe we were a little too innocent -- or, worse, just plain ignorant -- but we always thought that a 5-star review on Amazon.com was a pretty impressive feat. (Well, for a book. Not so much for a waffle iron.) Hey, we've received some 5-star reviews and we were impressed! After all, five happy yellow stars means the reader thought a particular story was great.
 
Yesterday, we learned differently.

Y'see, one of us had dropped $2.99 on a short e-read for his Kindle. There weren't very many reviews for the three-set of stories; in fact, only three people had bothered to say anything about the collection. But each and every reviewer loved the stories. They were a "fun read", two of the reviewers insisted; the collection was "amazingly sexy"; it was a "great value" for so little money.
 
So we were surprised when the stories Harrell downloaded turned out to be badly written, boring, and about as sexy as seeing Grandma rinse her dentures. He enjoyed it so little that he abandoned the read in the middle of its second story.
 
"The writer uses stilted, awkward language," he said. "English isn't their native language, I can tell. Even though the main characters are 'talking', there's paragraph after paragraph without any dialogue -- and no contractions in the little dialogue we get. Besides, I just can't take another run-on sentence."
 
So exactly how did this chunk of not-great literature get some real-great reviews? We asked around and we found out, there's all kinds of ways. Most writers can count on family members to put up a 5-star salute, no matter how lousy . We say, 'MOST writers' because our particular family members refuse to read our stuff.  They still believe that electronic reading is the Devil's work. Some writers will trade 5-star reviews with their colleagues...and we received just such an offer, when we started to look into this. We had to turn it down, on principal, and because, sorry, N., we wouldn't feel good about ourselves in the morning.
 
One of our buddies shook her head at our ignorance. "People can buy 5-star reviews," she said. After she read the first few pages of Harrell's e-purchase, she was positive: "Bought and paid for reviews. No doubt about it."
 
Within minutes, we discovered she was right. Our internet search found dozens of "reviewers", ready and willing to purchase an e-book and write whatever the author wants to hear...and for cheap, too. We're talkin' pennies per star.

*grumble*

...and, as we've discovered, not all of it should be free, either.

Last week, we mentioned that iLibrarian was providing several links to free ebooks, no money down, no money ever, and we were intrigued. We hadn't actually visited any of the sites but their offer of 5 e-Book collections which contain over 100,000 free e-Books was enough to get our little readers' hearts racing.
 
Enticed by the promise of $0.00 books, we wandered over to the first of the sites, ManyBooks.net -- which offers, in ManyBooks' own words, the best ebooks at the best price: free! The ManyBooks crew has more than 29,000 tomes available for all kinds of e-readers. As you've probably noticed yourself by now, their front page promotes several Books of the Week. This week's B.O.T.W. are Madame Bovary, The Wizard of Oz, Crime and Punishment and The Phantom of the Opera.
 
Yep, you've got it: Their most recent Book of the Week was first published over 100 years ago. We're betting it was hot stuff, 'way back when. All of the titles are great, and as confirmed Oz-ians, we're not sorry we stopped by. Still, nobody is all that excited about public domain stuff, including us.
 
Which is one reason we didn't bother to knock at another of the iLibrarian hot spots, Project Gutenberg.
 
Instead, we went to a site called BookRix. BRix (the nickname we've just-this-second decided all the cool kids use) says it has over 115,000 books on-line and available. Not all of them are free but many are and we wanted to see what was what. Checking the BookRix Most widely read books, we were surprised to find "free" novels from Stephanie Meyer (under the pseudonym, 'S.M.'), Suzanne Collins and Jeff Kinney.
 
Even though we're not experts on copyright law, we still wonder if it's legal to give away royalty-free copies of BREAKING DAWN, CATCHING FIRE, and WIMPY KID 4. If it is, our mistake, and BookRix is more than worth a stop. If it isn't...then, boo! on you, BookRix. You might have some wonderful authors in your mix and some terrific books available but we'll never know.
 
When we saw the Meyer/Collins/Kinney stuff, we left.