I'm Making Art with Potatoes, How Are You Doing?

It's been a rough few weeks,
 but this gives me joy

There's not much I can say about (waves arms around) ALL THIS that hasn't already been said. Like so many of us, I was heartbroken over the death of George Floyd and inspired by the protests that are already bringing about much-needed change all over the country. (I marched a little, at a great distance, with a mask on, and I made a lot of donations to worthy causes.)

Here is a small thing that made me happy: this truly delightful story of an Instagram account designed to encourage white people give plants to black people. It's funny and uplifting and wonderful. If you just want to feel happy for a little while, go check out your state's post in the Underground Plant Trade Instagram account and enjoy all the community-building and friendship-making happening over people passing plants around. 

This is a Dollhouse-Sized Bookstore You Can Make Yourself

I just thought some of you might need to know about this miniature bookstore kit from Bas Bleu. Bas Bleu is an absolutely wonderful book and bookish gift catalog that sells all kinds of amazing things, but this is the most amazing yet. According to their catalog, it takes 20 hours to assemble, which sounds just about perfect.

This art class is ridiculously fun and free

Do you have some watercolors? What about a potato and a toilet paper roll? Then you are ready for Este MacLeod's amazing, delightful, joyful, FREE Colour Play class. I took this class last month and made all this crazy vibrant art and honestly had the most fun I've had in ages. She's generously kept the class free all summer, and I'm going to take it again and make more of this stuff. You could do this class with children, or you could just lock yourself in a room and paint like a child. It's truly brilliant and fabulous and joyful.

Everything I Know About Writing...

It's been a project of mine during the shutdown to create a series of classes on the writing process. Basically, I just made a list of all the questions I'm asked most often and I made classes about those things. I posted the most recent--and possibly final--class a few days ago, on the editing process. Honestly, this is pretty much everything I know about writing, summed up 7 30-minute classes. You would be right to ask why it is, after 20 years, that I don't know more about this thing I do all day!

But anyway, this is it. This is what I have to offer. I hope it's of use to someone. Take a look at everything I'm teaching here--and this link will all give you 2 months free on Skillshare, which gives you plenty of time to explore everything they have on offer, including writing classes from the likes of Roxanne Gay and Susan Orlean.

I'm making some Kopp-themed collages

For a long time, I wasn’t at all interested in making any kind of art that had anything to do with the books I write. I just didn’t have any ideas along those lines. Sometimes my publicist would want me to make some art that could be used in some way for marketing purposes, and I absolutely hated that idea. The last thing I want is for art to become a thing that has deadlines and emails attached to it.I have always wanted art to be the one thing that I do purely for myself.

So that is still very much the case-I did make this because I wanted to-but I still have this weird trepidation about mixing work with pleasure, so to speak.

Anyway, what happened is that I took a collage class that involved painting a little portrait on top of a book page. It occurred to me that most artists who do this are using other peoples’ books, but I can actually use my own book, and bits and pieces from my own research, which I have always found so visually compelling. That makes it really personal. It’s truly a piece of art that no one else could make.

And it was interesting to paint Constance for the first time, especially since I don’t really do a lot of portraits. I have written seven books about her, but it was still a totally different experience to bring her to life in paint.

(You can always come find me on Instagram for more art talk! And I do sell paintings online, but these are not for sale right now.)

Asked and Answered...

Ask me a question and win the book of your choice! This month's winner is Caryn from Lexington, KY

Caryn asks: How do pre-orders of an upcoming book affect you as an author? Do they help you get more signings, PR, or a better location in a store?

Short answer: Please buy books early and often. Anything you do in the realm of book-buying, book-giving, event-attending, book-clubbing, etc. is a vote of support for authors and publishers and bookstores, and we are endlessly grateful for all of that.

Long-winded answer: I'm not so crazy about this new-fangled emphasis on pre-orders, and I think that almost everyone in the book world would happily vote to get rid of pre-orders (and blurbs, but that's another story) if we could.

Once upon a time, before Amazon, people did not generally pre-order books. For one thing, in the dark ages before social media, we didn't really know what books were coming out months in advance. You'd read about a new book the week it published.

Enter Amazon, and the invention of the pre-order button. 

Next thing you know, Amazon is saying to publishers, "Hey, we're getting a lot of pre-orders for this book. We'll take another truckload!" Or the dreaded opposite: "Sorry, we're just not seeing much pre-order action. We'll take twelve."

Publishers base their print runs in part on orders from bookstores. Small orders, small print run. Small print run, and maybe you run out of books just when your author lands that big spot on NPR you worked so hard to get.

So publishers said to themselves (and their poor beleaguered authors), "Hey, if we can gin up some pre-orders, Amazon will take more books, and we can do a larger print run."

Imagine how great this was for Amazon! For a retail store owner, there is nothing better than pre-sold merchandise. First you collect the money, and THEN you buy the merchandise? Brilliant. Guaranteed sales. 

Even better:  Amazon got publishers to do all the work! Now publishers and authors are running around frantically trying to get people to pre-order, so Amazon will make a bigger initial order, so they can justify a bigger initial print run.

(You might be wondering if pre-orders that are generated from a "please pre-order my book" campaign might not be a true measure of demand and maybe not such a great number to base a print run on. I've thought that, too.)

And remember that a significant chunk--sometimes half or more--of all new books are returned by bookstores that couldn't sell them, and either pulped or sold off at a steep discount, with significant waste in terms of environmental impact, shipping, warehousing, etc. Big print runs, big returns, loads of unwanted books to dispose of...it's an absurd system.

BUT THEN WHAT HAPPENED is that some independent booksellers said, "Hey, authors and publishers are out there pushing pre-orders, but we're not getting any of those sales. If pre-orders are a market trend, we need to be in on it." (Narrator: "Pre-orders are not a market trend.")

So the indie booksellers, bless their hearts, made this huge effort to start doing pre-order campaigns, which has resulted in modest early sales of a few titles. But here's the kicker: there is no way for them to transmit data to the publishers to tell them how many pre-orders they've taken, BEFORE the print run is determined. Publishers don't know how many pre-orders were taken by the indies until the pub date, and even then it's only a guess because the pre-orders are mixed in with all the other first-week sales. Amazon gives publishers real-time access to pre-order numbers, but indies don't have a way to do that.

You might be thinking: "Yes, but if the indies get a lot of pre-orders, they'll put in a bigger initial order too, right? And that will help boost the print run." 

And now we get to the final fallacy of pre-orders. The fact is, popular authors with huge, blockbuster books coming out will get a lot of pre-orders even if they do nothing at all. And their print run would be huge even if pre-orders magically disappeared.

And smaller or midlist authors, and the publishers who are committed to them? They will gamely try to do a pre-order campaign. Authors will go online and beg their friends to pre-order a book. A few dozen or a few hundred people or hey, maybe even a thousand people will pre-order, and that will move the needle a bit or at least cheer everyone up, but probably doesn't result in another ten thousand copies being printed.

So is it worth all the effort we're all putting into every single book? The swag, the contests, the giveaways, the websites, the pleading on social media?

No. I say no.

Now, you will hear authors and publishers say that pre-orders can help pop a book onto a bestseller list in its first week. But I bet only one in a hundred bestsellers are made or even helped by pre-orders. Most of those books with huge pre-order numbers would have been bestsellers either way.

Also, most books (like, almost all of them) will not hit the bestseller list no matter what you do. There's only 15 slots on those lists. So does it really make sense for everybody to do these campaigns for every book?

(here's a whole other rant: If publishers really wanted to help new releases pop onto a bestseller list in the first week, they would publish new books on Sunday rather than Tuesday, so they'd have a full week's worth of sales to compete against other new books already parked on that bestseller list. You can sell more books in seven days than five. Just saying.)

You'll hear that pre-orders "generate buzz."  I don't know if you're aware of this, but once you turn fifty, you're allowed to just roll your eyes at terms like "generate buzz," so that's what I'm doing right now.

Marketing people will say that "every little bit helps." Yes. That's always true about everything. You could say "every little bit helps" about any and every marketing effort undertaken since the dawn of time.

But marketing people will also say, "our budgets are limited" and "we just don't have the staff for that." 

So we do have to pick and choose, right? And are pre-order campaigns really the place to put our efforts? I am unconvinced.

END OF RANT. Hope you enjoyed it. Please pre-order my next book.

Ask a Question & Win a Book!

 Please go here to ask me a question and pick your prize. Even if you've entered before, please feel free to enter again and ask the same question or a different one. Only 17 people entered last month. You have a very good chance of winning!  Maybe I won't rant so much next time.

No tour dates at the moment, but I'm always up for a Skype or Zoom or whatever.

Right now all my events are on hold. But please know that if you'd like to do an online chat, we can make that happen! You don't have to be part of an official book club--just get a group of friends together. Hit reply to this email if you want to set something up.

 

What Are You Reading?

I love these Vera Kelly novels, about a smart, somewhat troubled lady spy-turned-detective, set in the 1960s. SO GOOD! This is the second one and you can find it right here.

Also, I have a drink recommendation to reward those of you who have read this far: Vera Kelly drinks gimlets, which are just gin and lime juice. Here's a lighter, fizzier version: Trader Joe's Sparkling Limeade, over ice, sprig of mint, then splash in some gin, vodka, or rum. There's your summer drink. Cheers!