Did McDonald's invent fast food?

I recently watched The Founder with Michael Keaton. I enjoyed the film. It’s an interesting character study and does a good job of telling the McDonald’s story. (I personally think McDonald’s has lost its way, but no worries, In and Out Burger picked up the business model and did it one better by delivering great burgers.) The story, of course, is about the invention of fast food, the bane of the calorie conscious the world over.

However, the concept of fast food reminded me of something I ran across in my research for The Shopkeeper. I wanted to make my western series different from the norm, so I focused on miners instead of cowboys and other traditional icons of the frontier. Mine workers start early in the morning, and I discovered they frequently ate biscuits standing up in a saloon.  This may be the real start of fast food. (McDonalds just slapped egg, sausage, and cheese inside the biscuit.)

Here’s how I used that tidbit of research in The Shopkeeper.

Other meals I eat for fuel, but I dawdle over breakfast—and Mary cooks a hell of a breakfast. Mary ran the restaurant across the street from my ragtag hotel. It was not a restaurant in a New York sense, but nonetheless it was the best place to eat in Pickhandle Gulch. Her small building, plank floors, and long tables were all made from unfinished lumber, but a few touches like lace curtains had softened the rough appearance. Breakfast for miners usually consisted of biscuits eaten standing up in some stale-smelling saloon. Not fancy, but quick. They needed to get to work. Mary catered to the mine owners, town merchants, and people like myself, who had the time and money to eat a slow, hearty breakfast.

As I entered her tidy café, the aroma pulled the trigger on my appetite. I took my usual seat at a table by the window, and Mary sauntered over with a cup of black coffee that suspended its own little cloud of steam above the rim.

“What’ll ya have today, Mr. Dancy?”

“Everything.”

“Everything it is—over easy, crispy, and soaked in grease.”

“You got it,” I said.

Risk taker, Rule Breaker, Game Changer

Story arcs drive the popularity of TV series. Can it do the same for a book series?

In novels, a story arc usually refers to rhythm of a story from introduction, to big trouble, to resolution. Basically, the rise and fall of tension and emotion in a story. In most novels, this story arc is self-contained in a single book. Not so, for television.

How does a story arc work different for television? Dictionary.com defines it as "a continuing storyline in a television series that gradually unfolds over several episodes." I would add "or seasons." Think about the hunt for Red John in the Mentalist, or the quest for the throne in Game of Thrones, or the feud between Deputy Raylan Givens and Boyd Crowder in Justified. In television, a good story arc threads it's way through multiple episodes that tell self-contained stories with a beginning, middle, and end. 

Despite the pervasiveness of the term, everything carried along from one episode to another is not a story arc. "Space: the final frontier" from Star Trek is setting, not story arc. The solution of the crime in Bosch takes an entire season, but this television program is more akin to what we used to call a mini-series. Same for the old television program 24. These are dramatizations of a novel or single story over many episodes. A true story arc involves an embedded, larger mystery in a series of smaller stories. Without closure to this grand mystery, the series is hard to put aside. It's also important that a story arc can be resolved. In fact, it is the promise of resolution that draws in the audience week after week. They want the answer to this puzzle. 

So, can the television style of a story arc help pull along readers of a book series? I'm not an expert, but J. K. Rowling is. Each Harry Potter included a self-contained story, along with the gradual reveal of the Lord Voldemort mystery. Handled deftly, a long running story arc can pull readers through the entire series. The problem is you can't string along readers forever. Readers feel they are owed resolution. The trick is to present this resolution in a manner that is not the death knell of the story.

Crossing the Animas resolves the series-long story arc of the Steve Dancy Tales. It's yet to be seen if I did it in a manner that allows me to reboot the series with a wholly new story arc.

I bet I did. Just wait. See where the story goes next.

The Evolution of a Big Diehl Book Cover

Book covers are a big deal. People really do judge a book by its cover. The Steve Dancy Tales always use black and white photos with only my name in color. For those who follow this blog, you already know my son designs my covers. (I joke that I'm getting his pricy art school tuition back one book cover at a time. In truth, his billing rate to real clients makes me embarrassed to ask him to do yet another cover.)

For Crossing the Animas we picked a great photo by William Diehl. Admittedly, this is a modern photograph, but the subject matter is vintage. Here is the original photo and resulting cover side by side. It may look simple, but there's craft in the cropping and lettering.

We didn't just select this photo on a whim. Here are some of the concepts covers we considered.

The construction of Denver & Rio Grande line between Durango & Silverton plays a key role in the story, and Diehl's iconic photograph fit the plot perfectly.

If you like trains, the Old West, or just great photography, visit the William Diehl website. Here are a couple more samples of his art.

Happy New Year!

The first eight days of 2017 have already slipped away. I've been distracted by family and fun. It seems the only way to slow down time is to stayed bored. That's not going to happen.

After Christmas, we have made our winter trek to San Diego to avoid the worst of an Omaha winter. Ran right into Southern California cold, rain, and tiny surf. (Yesterday was perfect weather, but it lasted exactly 24-hours.) The small waves didn't bother me because as I grow older, waist-high surf has become my friend.

Today, Crossing The Animas achieved another milestone. My editor broke free of her backlog and starts work this week on my already perfect manuscript. (I always believe that until my book comes back bleeding red ink from every pore.) Prior to sending a manuscript to my editor, I have the book read by a few trusted readers. Thank you all for your sound advise and for saving me untold embarrassment.

Last year I agreed to participate in a short story anthology. I had never written a Steve Dancy short story and I didn't know how I would like the abbreviated format. I loved it. I deviated from my standard form and wrote "Snake in the Grass" from Joseph McAllen's point of view. It put my characters in a different light and gave me a fresh perspective on their motivations. Fun project. Wanted: A Western Story Selection has also been successful, so we have agreed to put together another set of short stories with the creative title of Wanted II. Look for it later this year.

I have again agreed to write essays for Constituting America's annual 90-Day Studies. This year's project will be about important Supreme Court cases. Nothing controversial there, I'm sure. I'll let you know when each of mine is published, but don't wait for me. Cathy Gillespie and Janine Turner do an exceptional job of pulling together bright minds to illuminate the Constitution, especially for the young people in our country.

Anyway, going to be a busy year. Guess I'll have to wait to slow down time.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park Talk About Storytelling

NYU teaches a class in storytelling the Tisch School of the Arts. On the first day of class, Professor Liotti invited Trey Parker and Matt Stone to discuss their take on storytelling. In this short video, there are a couple of nuggets of great advice, which helps explain the 20 year success of the animated television series. I found it interesting that they basically said writer's block is not an option. If they can't come up with a show idea, seventy people are idled. This reminded me of William Shakespeare, who had forty people depending on him to come up with a new play that would draw a large enough paying audience to feed themselves and their families. Nothing drives creativity like hunger.

Get More:
www.mtvu.com

By the way, kudos to NYU for teaching storytelling. Many universities think creative writing is solely about crafting wonderful sentences. Not true. Storytelling is at the heart of anything still read or viewed that was written over twenty years ago.

Storytelling is the art, good writing is the craft that brings it to life.

The Magnificent Seven Ride Again

I was never a fan of signing cowboys. Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and lesser lights were too goody two-shoes for me. I categorize heroes as wholesome, flawed, and anti-heroes. In my mind, this is not three distinct categories, but a continuum, with Roy Rogers at one end and Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men on the other.

I’m not an enthusiast for either extreme. As a youngster, I preferred Wanted Dead or Alive and Paladin to the Lone Ranger. (I admit I watched Rin Tin Tin. You can’t get more wholesome than a boy and his dog.) Steve McQueen’s Josh Randall and Richard Boone’s Paladin engaged in gray professions and rejected many societal norms. Both characters were portrayed as generally good, but conflicted people who did the right thing in the end.

In the fifties, western films mostly pitted a good guy (and frequently a sidekick) against bad guys. In 1960, The Magnificent Seven broke this mold to start a trend toward far more complex protagonists.  There were not only seven “good guys,” they were flawed to the point of tipping into the anti-hero class. The Magnificent Seven was not the first western with anti-hero protagonists, but its enormous success triggered the Hollywood trait to copy what worked in the past. One of my favorites was the 1962 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The complex, dark Tom Doniphon was one of John Wayne’s best roles, and James Stewart’s Ransom Stoddard certainly had reason for remorse. The Wild Bunch (1969), Silverado (1985), Young Guns (1988), and others employed crews of anti-heroes who seek redemption by righting wrongs.

The Magnificent Seven, directed by John Sturges led the pack. In its original theatrical release, the box office exceeded more than double the cost of the film and it has been considered a genre classic ever since. Anchored by movie star Yul Brynner, the cast included television stars and solid character actors.  Many emerged from the film as bankable Hollywood properties. The taut script moved the story capably forward with character-driven dialogue and memorable scenes. A great director, a seminal cast, and an exceptional script. That’s all you need to make a Hollywood classic.

Antoine Fuqua directed the remake. Hit or miss? Remaking a box office success seems safe, but taking another turn at a classic carries its own set of risks. Most remakes fall short because the audience already has a preset image of the story and deviations can be jarring. Why would a studio invest 9 figures on a risky venture? Who cares about a new Magnificent Seven? Evidently a lot of people. The teaser below has over 7.5 million views. That number fills a lot of multiplexes.

Some have expressed concerns about this version's adherence to the politically correct. That’s not my concern. I’m disappointed in the overreliance on pyrotechnics. The current Hollywood disease is mind-numbing computer-generated imagery that overwhelms the story. Fuqua's take on this classic didn't avoid this pitfall.

By the way, my favorite piece of trivia from the original film has to do with a little tension on the set between Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen. McQueen kept upstaging Brynner, so Brynner supposedly told McQueen that if he did it one more time, he would remove his hat. It must have worked because Brynner is never seen without his black hat firmly snugged down on his bald head.

Steve Dancy Wants to be Pals with Jack Reacher

There have been some memorable fictional characters. Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Hercule Poirot, and Harry Potter to name a few. (I’d like Steve Dancy to climb into this group, but I need a few million more sales. A little help, please.) The above names are make-believe people, but known the world over. How does a branded character come about? They must be difficult to create because there are so few of them. Strong characters are not rare. Think of Elizabeth Bennet, Tom Sawyer, Captain Ahab, Rhett Butler, or Hannibal Lecter. But for the most part, these were one-offs, while a branded character returns time and again, frequently leaping from the printed page to screen and stage.

The inventors of Holmes, Bond, Poirot, and Potter didn’t want for material things. Sherlock Holmes has been portrayed on screen more than any other character, and that excludes the House television series. Spanning 54 years, James Bond is the longest running film series with a human protagonist. (Godzilla is the longest and most prolific film series.) Agatha Christie used Poirot to propel herself to the #1 Bestselling author of all time, while Harry Potter is the #1 bestselling book series.

These are worldwide icons. Yet they’re fictional. They sprang from the imagination of authors. How in the world do you do that? One author has told us.

I recently reread Killing Floor by Lee Child. In a new introduction, Child describes how he developed the Jack Reacher character, who was introduced in this novel back in 1997.

“I liked some things, and disliked other things. I had always been drawn to outlaws. I liked cleverness and ingenuity. I liked the promise of intriguing revelations. I disliked a hero who was generally smart but did something stupid three-quarters of the way through the book, merely to set up the last part of the action.  Detectives on the trail who walked into rooms and got hit over the head from behind didn’t do it for me. And I liked winners. I was vaguely uneasy with the normal story arc that has a guy lose, lose before he wins in the end. I liked to see something done spectacularly well. In sports, I liked crushing victories rather than ninth-inning nail-biters. 

To me, entertainment was a transaction. You do it, they watch it, then it exists … for me the audience mattered from the start.

G. K. Chesterton once said of Charles Dickens, 'Dickens didn’t write what people wanted. Dickens wanted what people wanted.'"

Child sat down and came up with three specific conclusions.

"First: Character is king. There are probably fewer than six books every century remembered specifically for their plots. People remember characters … so my main character had to carry the whole weight.

Second conclusion: If you can see a bandwagon, it’s too late to get on … it’s a crowded field. Why do what everyone else is doing? … The series that were well under way … lead characters were primus inter pares in a repertory cast, locations were fixed and significant employment was fixed and significant. I was going to have to avoid all that stuff.

But the third conclusion, and the most confounding conclusion: You can’t design a character too specifically … a laundry list of imagined qualities and virtues would result in a flat, boring, cardboard character … I decided to relax and see what would come along. Jack Reacher came along.”

Child goes on to explain that Reacher has the following characteristics:

• Fish-out-of-water because he had previously only known military life
• He’s huge, utterly sure of himself, with intimidating presence (opposite of flawed protagonist)
• Old-fashioned hero: no problems, no navel-gazing
• Owns nothing but the clothes on his back—literally
• No ties to family, friends or location
• Ex-military cop to give him plausibility with investigative techniques
• Rootless and alienated in a giant country (Child is British)
• Reacher as Medieval knight-errant
• First name is simple, ordinary, blunt, and straightforward
• Certain nobility based on rank of major in military

Child wrote: “I wanted the kind of vicarious satisfaction that comes from seeing bad guys getting their heads handed to them by a wrong-righter even bigger and harder than them … so Reacher always wins.”

I started by asking, “How does a branded character come about?” It appears by creating a character unlike all the other series protagonists. Not a unique trait, but opposite in every detail. At least it worked for Reacher. A Forbes study discovered that Jack Reacher is the strongest branded character in fiction, and Lee Child has the strongest reader loyalty of any bestselling author.

Clint Eastwood Saves a Genre for a Mere $12,000

The Wholesome and the Good

Hollywood overdoes things. If something works, they just keep doing it until it doesn’t. There were 26 Western series on television in 1959, and most daytime programming used old Western B movies to fill airtime. A good thing taken to saturation. By 1964, the Western genre was waning due to overexposure in pulp, movies, and television. In case you believe Hollywood learned its lesson, think about the permutations of CSI and reality shows.

One of the remaining Western television series in 1964 was Rawhide, an endless cattle drive under the watchful eye of Rowdy Yates, played by a young Clint Eastwood. Despite the prominence of Eastwood’s image on the covers of newly released DVDs, the series starred Eric Fleming as Gil Favor, with Yates as the trusty sidekick.

By 1964, Eastwood saw that Rawhide was winding down. What to do? His Rawhide contract would not allow him to film any other movie or television shows in the United States. Then he heard about an Italian director named Sergio Leone who wanted to make a Western. Leone's low budget project had already been turned down by Henry Fonda, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, and probably others. Eastwood accepted the role for $12,000, which even in 1964 represented a pittance in tinseltown. Eastwood didn’t have an inkling of the upcoming significance of this odd film shot in Almería, Spain.

After the six-week filming of The Magnificent Stranger, Eastwood returned to Southern California to make two more years of Rawhide episodes. He seldom thought about his European sojourn and heard nothing further about the film.

Due to legal hassles, the movie didn’t debut in the U.S. until almost three years after filming. Eastwood didn’t initially recognize the renamed A Fist Full of Dollars as the Western he had made with Sergio Leone. It was a hit. A huge hit. Made for a paltry $200,000, the film grossed over $134,000,000 worldwide. The Leone/Eastwood partnership would continue with For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Eastwood persona and Leone’s idiosyncratic cinematography created huge appeal worldwide. (It wasn’t sound or film editing, as any quick perusal of IMDb Goofs will show.) After the success of the Dollar Trilogy, Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson succumbed to Leone’s entreaties and agreed to star in Once Upon a Time in the West, a box office dud, but a classic nonetheless.

From this $12,000 gig, Eastwood went on to become a Hollywood icon with a reported net worth of $375 million. (A bit more than a fistful of dollars.) This kind of puts into perspective the manufactured row over the disparity in pay between Harrison Ford and Daisy Ridley in The Force Awakens. IMDb reports, “Daisy Jazz Isobel Ridley is an English actress. She is best known for her breakthrough role as Rey in the 2015 film, Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” I hope this low paid role in a groundbreaking film works as well for Ridley as it did for Eastwood.

Tip of the hat, Ridley

And now for something completely different ...

How to make a cowboy hat

Looking the Part

I'm not a hat person. Although I own dozens of hats, I seldom wear one. I don't even like helmets. I grew up in a generation where you just wheeled your bike out of the garage and went riding without a helmet or spandex regalia. When we pulled our long boards to the beach behind our bikes, we wore flip flops, board shorts, and little else. I ski with soft head gear and when I surf, so far I can still rely on my hair to keep the sun from burning the top of my head.

That said, I like cowboy hats. I own one but seldom wear it because after all these years, it still looks new. I bought it at Wall Drug, and it immediately blew off my head and rolled down the center of the street for a quarter mile and still looked brand spankin' new*. I envy tattered, sweat-stained cowboy hats that scream authenticity. Mine says tenderfoot in neon. I know, I know, if I wore it more, it would eventually look like the genuine article. I'm just not a hat person.

For western head gear, I prefer Resistol, but here's a video from Stetson about making cowboy hats. Betcha thought it was a lot simpler.

* I'm a bit obsessed with phrases. This is an interesting article about the origins of brand spanking new.

Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling

Scripts guidelines help storytelling. First Loony Tunes, now Pixar. The animated world has rules. Perhaps it's related to Walt Disney's comment that he liked animated features because he could control everything. He didn't need to deal with unruly actors.

Here  are Pixar's 22 Rules. Way more than Roadrunner's 9 or Bonanza's 7. 

#1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.
#2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.
#3: Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
#5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
#6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?
#7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
#8: Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
#9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
#10: Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.
#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
#12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
#13: Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.
#14: Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
#15: If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.
#16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
#17: No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.
#18: You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.
#19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
#20: Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?
#21: You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?
#22: What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

Click to see Pixar's 23 Years 

People Love That Story

Kurt Vonnegut

I'm collecting writing tips from famous author's. You can read them here. In this post, I'm adding Kurt Vonnegut’s writing tips. Good advice from an expert storyteller. 

Although I posted it before, I also wanted to share his amusing description of story forms. Behind the entertaining presentation, Kurt presents some solid analysis of the art of storytelling. So if you want to hear it from the horses mouth, watch the video below. 

Here are Kurt Vonnegut’s "8 Tips on How to Write a Great Story."

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Cover Up!

We finally decided on a cover for Jenny’s Revenge, A Steve Dancy Tale. During the course of our selection, I found an interesting article titled: What Makes for a Brilliant Book Cover? A Master Explains. The master is Peter Mendelsund, who designed the book cover for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo among many other titles. (You can see some of the rejected Girl covers by following the link.)

Here are quotes I like from the article:

Spine Most Important

“On one level, dust jackets are billboards. They’re meant to lure in potential readers.”

“A truly great jacket is one that captures the book inside it in some fundamental and perhaps unforeseen way.”

“If this author got a big advance, then you’re going to have to jump through some flaming hoops.”

“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo: It had to have what designers refer to as ‘the Big Book Look.’ In other words: really, really big text … Mendelsund did what he describes as the ‘dumbass thing’ of echoing the title visually on the cover itself, putting the text on top of an image of… a dragon tattoo. It was the rare case in which a novel had so much momentum that the best thing a designer could do was stay out of the way … The design featured at least one small victory against the obvious: the bright yellow backdrop … ‘Up until that point, I would defy you to find a dark gothic thriller with a day-glow cover,’ he says.”

I’ve written a number of articles about book cover because they're important. People really do judge a book by its cover. Something to keep in mind, however, is that until an author breaks into the NYT Bestseller List, the spine is the most important part of the design because that's all anyone will see on the shelf of a brick and mortar bookstore.

Honest Westerns ...
filled with dishonest characters

When we selected the cover for the first Steve Dancy Tale, we used an L. A. Huffman Montana Territory portrait from around 1880. Most genre Westerns displayed an illustrated action cover in eye-catching colors. We went with black and white photography to signal that The Shopkeeper was a different kind of Western. We've stuck with black and white period photography ever since.

The designer is my son by the way. I’m getting back his tuition from that pricey art school one book cover at a time.  When we did the cover for The Return, the fourth book in the series, I asked if my name could be larger. He informed me that when my name became bigger than the title, I’d be toast.

Will Rogers Rope Tricks

I never learned how to rope, but here's an expert from yesteryear that really knew how to make a length of hemp do magic.

Interview with Author’s Academy

The Author’s Academy is a subscription website dedicated to teaching “authors how to write, produce, and market their books successfully.” On Wednesday, Grael Norton interviewed me in a teleconference titled "How to Sell 1,000Books this Holiday Season." The title of the talk comes from a few seasons ago when I sold over 1,000 print copies in December. Today, this is not a large number for me, but my holiday sales are now heavily weighted toward e-books.

You can also read a summary of the interview at Writ3r Addiction.

Despite the popularity of e-books, print books still make outstanding gifts. You can choose a fiction or nonfiction book that precisely targets the interests of the recipient. A book in their favorite genre or about their hobby can make them happy, plus it shows you cared enough to pick a gift just for them. For a reasonable price, a book gives hours upon hours of enjoyment and can even be revisited in years to come, and unlike a Christmas card that gets discarded or thrown in a box, a personal inscription on the flyleaf of your gift book lasts forever.

This holiday season, give a book to someone you love … preferably one of these, of course.

Word of Mouth Revisited

I’ve contended that word of mouth is the greatest marketing tool available to authors. Word of mouth includes book clubs, online recommendations at sites like Goodreads and LibraryThing, reader reviews, and good ol’ fashioned face-to-face conversation. Word of mouth does not include anything the author says, including social media leavings that come from gallivanting around cyberspace. Potent word of mouth comes unexpectedly from a trusted source. Every author’s marketing strategy must focus on generating positive word of mouth.

Recently, I had confirmation of this axiom. In the first of August, I ran a discount promotion for a couple of days for the e-book version of The Shopkeeper. I don’t believe in offering free e-books because there is no lasting effect beyond a couple days. Many people gather up free books and never bother to read them. I’ve discovered that there is an entirely different dynamic for 99¢ e-books. Evidently this tiny fee motivates people to read the book.

 I decided to use a brief 99¢ price for the first novel in the Steve Dancy Tales to give a boost to the entire series. It worked far better than I expected. Not only did The Shopkeeper sell almost two thousand copies, all the other books in the series showed accelerated sales. Actually, it has been over a month since the promotion and all five books in the series still sell at more than double the pace of sales prior to the promotion. Free e-books have no legs, but 99¢ e-books seem to have a long tail.

None of this was news to me. But I did make an observation about this promotion that had previously eluded me. If a promotion goes well and readers like the book, then word of mouth accelerates sales in other formats and for other books by the same author. I never track audio sales because they’re small compared to other formats. I kept an eye on them this time, and I noticed a major surge in sales about a week or so after the promotion. Print sales also surprisingly increased, and sales of my other books grew significantly. The additional sales could only come from word of mouth because none of these other books or formats were discounted or promoted beyond my normal feeble efforts. People who liked The Shopkeeper told other people about my books. Some marketing gurus tell you to make fans out of your readers. Good advice, but if you really want to sell lots of books, turn your readers into your own personal sales force.

How? Write an engaging story that never jerks your reader out of the story. This means you need to keep the story moving forward, avoid unnecessary plot detours, and have it all professionally packaged. If you enthrall your readers, they’ll tell their friends, family, and neighbors about this great new author they found. After you have a large and growing sales force, you can concentrate on what you really love to do—write.

Book Titles that Grab Attention

Coming up with a good book title is difficult, at least for me. Ideally, you want the title that will grab a buyer’s attention in three or so words. The title is actually only half of a selling partnership. The cover and title work together to entice a purchase. People do judge a book by its cover and the cover entails an image with a few words. If either appears incongruent, buyers move on to the next offering.

My favorite is Tempest at Dawn. Since the book is a dramatization of the Constitutional Convention, I wanted the title to sound like a novel, not a nonfiction history book. The cover design put the title in context: a stormy sky over the Pennsylvania State House flying a thirteen star flag. For me, the title evokes a troubled nation at its founding, but some, who otherwise raved about the book, criticized the title as unrelated to the story. I still like it.

In my Western series, I wanted the sub-title prominent to remind readers there were more Steve Dancy Tales, so I chose simple titles that include: The Shopkeeper, Leadville, Murder at Thumb Butte, The Return, and Jenny's Revenge. I’m currently working on Crossing the Animas. 

The covers are black and white because I wanted a design that indicated that these were a different type of Western: different from books with loud and colorful cover illustrations showing action or looming violence. The series has been very successful, so hopefully this is partly due to the covers and titles because I intend to continue the pattern for the remaining books in the series.

My approach will not work for everyone, but viewing the cover design and title together as a selling unit will garner sales. For a confirming case study, read about my blunder with The Shut Mouth Society.

By the way, The Meta Picture has a fun article titled “These Books Actually Exist,” which lists 20 outrageous titles and covers. Wonder how some of these sold.

Apropos of nothing—Harry Potter vs. Star Wars

This short video was posted on YouTube and has nearly 24 million hits. Well deserved, I might add. I posted it on my blog because I enjoyed it, plus it is good short story telling with terrific production values.

My sojourn in direct marketing

I semi-retired early and went into consulting to forestall boredom and to help make ends meet.* I ended up consulting for a Boston direct marketing travel company. I expected to consult with them for a few weeks, but ended up working for them for over a decade.

Direct marketers are a different breed of retailers. This travel company never advertised and you could not buy their trips through a travel agent, yet they were the largest tour operator in the country. All of their sales came through their call center. How did they get customers? Like Land’s End, L.L. Bean, Crazy Shirts, and other direct marketers, this company promoted its products primarily through paper and online catalogs … and then depended heavily on repeat business.

Direct marketing is a specialized segment of the retail business and it is far more data-driven than store-front retailing. Because everything is ordered directly, they know each customer and how they behave. They know what they buy, how often they buy, their price sensitivity, and their product satisfaction level. They are fixated on customer data because their business models are based on what they call lifetime value. Once a customer is acquired, they know statistically how much business that customer will generate in future years. Since they focus on lifetime value, direct marketers are obsessed with customer satisfaction. They are constantly measuring every aspect of their business, analyzing the data, and adjusting their practices.

What brought this to mind was a New Yorker article by George Packer: “Cheap Words: Amazon is good for customers. But is it good for books?” Amazon is arguably the best direct marketer in the world. The following alleged comments by Bezos may or may not have been made in 1995, but they fit perfectly with the direct marketing business model.

“Bezos said that Amazon intended to sell books as a way of gathering data on affluent, educated shoppers. The books would be priced close to cost, in order to increase sales volume. After collecting data on millions of customers, Amazon could figure out how to sell everything else dirt cheap on the Internet … Bezos had realized that the greatest value of an online company lay in the consumer data it collected. Two decades later, Amazon sells a bewildering array of products: lawnmowers, iPods, art work, toys, diapers, dildos, shoes, bike racks, gun safes, 3-D printers.”

I believe Amazon has been good for books. The Kindle—and other e-readers—have revitalized reading. Amazon has, however, been bad for bookstores. But whenever I start to feel bad for Borders, Barnes and Noble, et al., I just download a streaming copy of You’ve Got Mail from Amazon.

*  I’m interested in etymology of phrases.  “Where it (this phrase) comes from is hard to be sure about. It’s often said that it’s from bookkeeping, in which the total at the bottom (“end”) of the column of income must at least match that at the bottom of the expenditure column if one is not to be living beyond one’s income”—worldwidewords.org

Open or Closed—John Cleese on Creativity

Although recently posted on Youtube, this John Cleese speech on creativity was given before his hair turned gray and thin. Like everything Cleese does, humor abounds, but between the jokes is some good advice. There is some especially good advice for writers.

Here’s a Snippet of him blending humor with wisdom:

“The only thing from the research I can tell you about how to be creative is the sort of childhood you should have had, which is of limited help to you at this point in your life.”

He actually goes on to give some great tips on being creative in adulthood. Writers should listen carefully.

Building a Franchise

Platforms, branding, franchise, fans, discoverability. There are many words bandied about that all represent the same thing: how does an author build a base of loyal readers. Forbes recently published an article by David Vinjamuri  titled: The Strongest Brand In Publishing Is ... The premise of the article is that brand is more important than platform. He argues that if platform was key, celebrity books would all be successful. One of his interesting observations is that consumers are willing to pay a 66% premium for a book by a favorite author over an unknown author. This means favorite authors sell more books at a higher price. It does seem that brand loyalty is more important than a social media platform.

So, how do you build a literary brand? Although not called out specifically by Vinjamuri , it appears that characterization is the most crucial element. Granted, authors need to know how to write and tell a good story, but readers develop the greatest loyalty to a character. A good character draws readers back to an author faster than fame, storytelling, or exceptional writing skill.

The strongest brand in the most recent Codex survey is Jack Reacher, who is a character created by Lee Child. Reacher is completely different from the stereotypical thriller hero. Jack Reacher novels have sold over 70 million copies, making Child comfortable enough to buy a Boeing product. Vinjamuri writes, “Child carries a higher percentage of his readers with him to each successive book than any other bestselling author.”

If you’re interested in finding out how Child accomplished this, get it from the horse’s mouth. In Vinjamuri’s article, Child gives three perceptive reasons why Reacher has strong brand loyalty.

Now, if I can just get Steve Dancy an introduction to Jack Reacher, all will be right in the world.