Books are such simple creatures

I’m currently going through the galley proof for The Return, A Steve Dancy Tale. In my supposedly perfect manuscript, I've already found over twenty revisions, errors, and typos. After these changes are incorporated into the text, the final step will be proofreading. Getting close.

The publishing process made me think that books appear deceptively simple. Mental_floss recently published “10 Terms to Describe the Anatomy of a Book.” All of these words describe myriad parts of a book. Not such simple creatures after all.

Leaves

Endpapers

Edges

Wire lines and chain lines

Signatures

Manuscript

Head-piece

Half-title

Foxing

Diaper

Physical books are being shoved to the side by eBooks, so these terms will become increasingly important as books are collected for their aesthetic value. If you interested in the meaning of these terms, you can follow this link to mental_floss.

Touchy, Touchy, Touchy

Snobs come in every variety

At Booktrust, Matt Haig started a cross-pond rhubarb with a post belittling literary snobs. Haig's article was less interesting than the responses. Dozens of people who wouldn't think twice about disparaging writers of popular fiction took umbrage that someone might criticize them. To prove elitism is not restricted to the U.K., Andrew E.M. Baumann in Georgia responded to Haig’s post with a 7,446 word diatribe of his own.

Personally, I define a book snob as someone who dismisses a work merely because it's popular. My definition would put Andrew E.M. Baumann in the snob camp because he wrote, “The demonstrated truth is that “popular” equals mediocre, or worse.” Mark Twain, Jane Austen, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Ben Franklin, Owen Wister, and others would disagree that popular equals mediocre. Raymond Chandler wrote, “It might reasonably be said that all art at some time and in some manner becomes mass entertainment, and that if it does not it dies and is forgotten.” Every book that is popular is not literature, but it’s snobbery to assume that anything popular is unworthy of admiration.

So what qualifies as literature? Again, Chandler’s definition. “When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance it becomes literature. That intensity may be a matter of style, situation, character, emotional tone, or idea, or half a dozen other things. It may also be a perfection of control over the movement of a story similar to the control a great pitcher has over a ball.” That pretty much does it for me.

If this debate interests you, here are the links to the two referenced postings.

30 things to tell a book snob

"30 things to tell a book snob" -- A Literary Elitist's Response

Junior Bonner—A Classic Western

I recently watched Junior Bonner again and it is an exceptional film. Great script, superb acting, and as they say in the commentary, "not just good editing, perfect editing." Like many contemporary Westerns, the script laments a lost era, but more important to the genre, Bonner reflects the ethos of the pioneering West.

Peckinpah was a great director. My favorite Peckinpah films were Junior Bonner and The Ballad of Cable Hogue. Both are great character studies. The films showed that Peckinpah didn't need slow motion violence to tell a good story.

It occurred to me that Junior Bonner shares similarities with Downhill Racer, which starred Robert Redford. The films show how a good story can sometimes present a more realistic picture than a documentary. Both films revealed the nature of lone athletes compelled to compete against themselves. There are many great team-sport movies, but these films captured the primal culture of individual sports. Redford and McQueen also have never acted with more subtlety.  Even if you don't care about rodeo or skiing, these movies bring you into a fascinating world very unlike the way most of us live.

One last note: The Junior Bonner DVD also has an excellent commentary that ought to be listened to by every film student or film enthusiast.

Mistakes Aplenty

Hi, I'm looking for a Bible for my mother but I'm not quite sure who the author is

Here are three sites that allow us to laugh at other people's mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. I know I've made a few. Although it's great therapy to be reminded that there are other witless people, I fear I'll open one of these articles to find one of my own mistakes broadcast to amuse the world. So far, I've escaped this humiliation but it still remains one of my most fearsome nightmares.

Witless Questions Customers Ask in Bookshops 
(The comments outdo the article examples)

Query Letters From Hell

What NOT to Do When Beginning Your Novel

Off to Omaha

In the morning, I'll catch a flight to Omaha. Some of you may have read that I am moving from Arizona to Omaha. Not this trip. I'm going to Nebraska to close on our new house, but unfortunately our home in Arizona has not yet sold. Soon ... we hope.

We have gotten ready to move. The Salvation Army truck driver knows our address by heart, the trash barrel is jam packed every pick-up, and our stuff has never been so neat. All we need is a solid offer and we are gone.

There is one thing I need to take care of before we can go. In a prior life, I ran corporate data centers. For novelty, I had an IBM 083 Card Sorter in my office. It worked perfectly and everyone who came in felt compelled to run a deck of cards through this ancient machine.

It still works. And it is in my garage. When I moved on to another career, my staff gave it to me as a going-away present. That was kinda cool. Except movers charge by the pound, and this baby weights a ton. It is 1950s construction and appears to be solid steel. Anyway, I threw it up on Graig's List. No bites yet, but sooner or later someone will spot it and say, hell, I always wanted one of those. I've got a Fortan program on a stack of cards around here some place. It'd be fun to watch those cards fly through that sorter. Yep, someone will lust after this miracle of early computing technology ... or maybe not.

I wonder how much it would bring at a Goodwill store.

Judging a Movie by Its Opening Credits

They tell us to never judge a book by its cover ... but we do. Likewise, we probably shouldn't judge a movie by the title design. The Film Before a Film is a short Vimeo documentary on movie credits. I like filming family movies and editing them with Final Cut. It's a great break from writing. Besides I have exceptionally cute grandchildren. At least, I think so. Anyway, film credits have always been an interest of mine. Television credits, as well. Two of my favorite TV credits are CSI to "Who are You" and Modern Family.

I found this short entertaining, as well as instructional. Someone should do a similar documentary on book cover design. (Here are a few pulp fiction covers I like.)

THE FILM before THE FILM from ntsdpz on Vimeo.

Book Cover ... by Design

Book cover design is an art ...and I am not an artist. At least, not a visual artist. Previously, I posted a mock-up of the book cover for The Return, A Steve Dancy Tale. The cover I chose was one of twenty-two different mock-ups. Here are a few of these rough prototypes.

The prototype we choose is on the left below, with the final cover to the right.

The cropping, typeface, and coloration were refined. This is a famous 1887 New York City photograph by Jacob Riis, titled Bandits Roost. I especially like the shadow.

Here are the four Steve Dancy Tales covers. As with any series, there is a consistency in the design. Among other things, all of them use vintage photographs from the period. I'm a little disappointed in the size of my name, but I've been advised that when the author's name becomes larger than the book title, it's a signal that the writing is on a downward slide. We'll keep the name small for the time being. 

Wandering the Internet During a Writing Hiatus

With The Return at the publishers for book design and proofreading, I have a rare chance to wander around the internet for no purpose other than entertainment. When writing, my online time is consumed with email, research, fact checking, and social networking. One of my favorite sites is The Atlantic. This online repository has all kinds of interesting archival material.

(In previous posts, I have referenced Atlantic articles written by Raymond Chandler. You can find his “Oscar Night Ramblings” and “Writers in Hollywood” by following this link.)

This morning I ran across this 1947 Coronet Educational Film. Coronet was a division of Esquire, a precursor of Playboy Magazine. This short really makes you think about the cultural changes in the last sixty years.

As a retired computer guy, I also liked an IBM short titled, The World's Tiniest Movie. Looks like we're in for more change.

This should be fun for a slow Saturday!

There is no life east of Pacific Coast Highway

A few posts ago, I described meeting an old high school friend at his mountain retreat in the Sierras.

Mountain Sanctuary

When we were freshmen and sophomores, we rode bikes to the beach towing our surfboards behind us using jerry-rigged trailers we had cobbled together out of two-by-fours, carpet pieces, and old wagon wheels. It was a great time of life. The good news is that we knew it. We had lots of fun and many friends. We really did believe that no life existed east of Pacific Coast Highway (PCH).

Best of the batch of yours truly

On rare occasions, my friend would bring a twin-reflex camera to the beach and try to capture moments of surfing prowess. He had a darkroom in his garage and I can remember spending hours trying to finesse a recognizable image. No such luck. Without a telephoto, we only got  grainy pictures of neophyte surfers riding tiny waves. In other words, nothing we could pass around the school cafeteria to secure a date or a couple moments of fame.

On my visit last month, my friend gave me an envelope of black and white negatives. His idea was that in the big city, I might find a lab that could still process two-inch, fifty year old negatives. With a few phone calls, I succeeded. However, modern technology still can’t out-perform an enlarger in a garage. In fact, back in those days, we may have had the edge in technology for this ancient medium. Despite not finding Surfer Magazine-worthy material, we did have fun seeing these photographs once again. They brought back pleasant memories of long-ago summers. Unfortunately, they also reminded us how much time had gone by. Darn. Nostalgia just isn't what it used to be.

My Pinterest board on surfing

Me and an impolite friend

Get a Spine!

The spine is the most undervalued aspect of book design. This is especially true today, when so many indie-books only publish electronically. Writers who write good books are doing themselves a disservice by restricting the market for their books. Granted, the majority of my sales are eBooks, but I still sell a respectable number of printed books through online booksellers. I also do very well with libraries and despite not pursuing bookstores, I've found my novels carried in the big chains and independent stores. Additionally, some readers who prefer electronic books still look to see if there is a print version to strengthen their purchase decision.

My recommendation is that authors should always insist on a printed version. If a print format is produced, then the book becomes a three-dimensional object and must have a back cover and spine. The spine is the most important.

Unless you’re a bestselling author, your books will not be stacked on tables at the front of the store, and only the spine is seen when your book is on a shelf. The same is true for a library. If you want to sell your next book to a library, people must find and check-out your previous books. So pay attention to the spine. Getting sales is tough enough without your book disappearing in a maze of other books screaming for attention.

Judging a Book by Its Cover

February, 27, 1860

The Shut Mouth Society is a contemporary thriller about a conspiracy that goes back to Abraham Lincoln. The novel was published in 2008, which happened to be the Lincoln Bicentennial. The book opens with Lincoln's Copper Union address on February 27, 1860, prior to his nomination for president. On the same day as his speech, he had a photograph taken by Mathew Brady. (Lincoln claimed the Copper Union address and Brady photograph made him president.) A book cover that used this photograph would tie into both the novel's introduction and the Bicentennial. My designer came up with a unique close-up cropping that really showed Lincoln’s intelligence and determination. I thought it couldn’t miss.

It was a big miss. Sales were lackluster and customer reviews on Amazon and Goodreads were mediocre to scathing. Sales were hurt by an avalanche of nonfiction books released to take advantage of the bicentennial, and early buyers of The Shut Mouth Society assumed it was a book about Lincoln. A few thought it was nonfiction. Although the book included extensive history about Lincoln, the novel was a modern-day chase thriller in which the protagonists desperately try to unravel a one hundred and fifty year old conspiracy.

I could have given up on the book, but The Shut Mouth Society was a finalist for Best Novel in the Glyph Awards, and it had received excellent reviews from professional reviewers. We decided to try another cover design. You can see both of them side by side below. 

The new cover worked miracles. Sales increased dramatically and customer reviews were effusive. At the time of this writing, the book has 84 Amazon reviews for 4.3 stars, and 191 ratings on Goodreads for 3.53 stars. I’m especially thrilled with the Goodreads numbers because the newer rankings had to overcome dismal early returns. Nothing changed but the book cover.

Why am I bringing this up now? Because we’re in the final throe of designing a book cover for The Return, A Steve Dancy Tale. We had many concept mock-ups, but I rejected many of them because despite being great graphically, they didn’t fit the story. I learned my lesson. Covers build reader expectations. This is why genre covers look alike. They’re designed to appeal to an audience that will appreciate the book. So don't believe the cliché that people should never judge a book by its cover. People do. Insist on a good cover that fits your storyline.

You might want to look at Flavorwire’s “20 Embarrassingly Bad Book Covers for Classic Novels.” Many of these are a hoot.