This vid speaks truth about writing conferences. Unpubbed writers go there with dreams of easing the path to publication by picking the author's brain and not so much about honing their craft. They feel that if they could just get the name of an established writer's agent, the path will be cleared for them and this is often not the case. You have to know your stuff and then some before even being considered by an agent, let alone a publisher. This reality is why there has been a flux in print-on-demand services in the last decade. Too many wannabe writers attempt to circumvent the hard work of writing a good book and just decide to go for "publishing" glory (which is in fact just a ruse). The result is a lot of badly edited, badly plotted "books" out there in the market which actually harms the industry overall.
I chuckled through some of the verbiage in the vid because it was so on point, especially about the wannabe with the "idea" who wants the established writer to do the ghost work while the "idealist" gets the money and glory.
Sharon Cullars Coffee Talk at 7/02/2011 08:35:00 AMPermanent Link |
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Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Busy writing
In addition to the web articles I've been writing regularly for the past weeks, I've tentatively entered a deal to write a novella for Loose-ID in recognition of Black History Month. The guidelines requested historical novellas featuring Af-Am characters. So I've set this story in 19th century Sacramento, California where the last few miles of the Transcontinental Railroad are being built (circa 1865 or 1866). Leah is a black woman who's settled in Sacramento along with her friend and business partner Clara to make their fortune. Although the gold rush first occurred nearly twenty years before in 1849, many settlers still make their way west, pulled by the fever of easy treasure. Both Leah and Clara are now entrepreneurs running a laundry/restaurant, providing services in exchange for gold and other currency. One day, a young (and of course, handsome) Asian man walks into their establishment seeking to have his shirt cleaned. Quiang is a worker on the railroad, a job that is hard, thankless and dangerous. When he and Leah meet, there is a barrier of language and culture, but eventually they will overcome these and begin to communicate in a way that is universal...
As I've done with my previous novels and stories, I Googled pics searching for physical prototypes to better "flesh out" the characters in my mind. Actors Daniel Heene (Three Rivers) and Freema Agyeman (Dr. Who) provide the inspiration this round.
Sharon Cullars Coffee Talk at 10/27/2009 10:53:00 AMPermanent Link |
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Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Octavia Butler's Kindred - Graphic novel
I don't know how I missed this, but I found a post at Racialicious announcing that Beacon Press has plans to turn Octavia Butler's Kindred into a graphic novel. That would be awesome. I would love to see more Af-Am works in graphic form as this will bring in a whole new generation of readers.
Sharon Cullars Coffee Talk at 10/06/2009 10:47:00 AMPermanent Link |
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Monday, September 28, 2009
Kate Duffy
I'm shocked and saddened to hear that Kensington editor Kate Duffy passed from cancer this morning. She and Hilary Sares were so instrumental in getting my novels Again and Object of Love published and were wonderful to work with. Although I never met her personally, Kate was a personal cheerleader for Again, and I truly appreciated her support. When her uncle, actor Peter Boyle, died in 2006, I sent condolences and she recounted how fun he was and how privileged she was to have been his niece. And now she's gone, too. Just a reminder how fleeting and precious life is.
Sharon Cullars Coffee Talk at 9/28/2009 12:53:00 PMPermanent Link |
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Thursday, December 07, 2006
Jennifer Weiner comments on race in publishing
Author Jennifer Weiner, whose books include GOOD IN BED, and IN HER SHOES (which was adapted into a movie starring Cameron Diaz), comments on the Wall Street Journal article on race in publishing (see prior post). Weiner who is quoted in the article, states that if her books "were marketed as Jewish-American fiction and plopped into the Jewish section of your local bookstore they might not sell as well as they have." This is the same observation that many black authors who decry the ghettoization have made in their own blogs.
As interesting as Weiner's post are the responses, some of which bolster the argument that the race categorization works against black authors. One poster in particular states: "I have probably never been to the "african american" section of the bookstore...I guess the NOT FOR YOU section has kept me away. Now, I'm thinking I might peruse the section, as I am probably missing out on fabulous books." I think that comment sums up the gist of the controversy. Non-black potential buyers see the African-American section as off-limits, as though it is exclusively for black readers. And because of that, a black authored book may be losing a potential reader, a black author a potential autobuy fan. Sales are limited, and dreams of making the NY Times or USA bestseller lists, of movie deal options, of a self-sustaining career as a writer, remain just that, emphemeral little wisps of hope that dissolve almost before they are fully formed.
I give Weiner kudos for even blogging about the matter. For too many nonblack writers and readers, racial marketing in publishing will remain a non-issue.
As an African American writer, if you have a work that is published by Strebor Books or Triple Crown Publications or a similar imprint, for better or worse you have already limited your audience to an urban (read African American) market. I cannot say if it is the intention of these publishing houses to market exclusively to African Americans, but it seems to be. (Zane at Strebor Books seems to be attempting to address that with current calls for submissions out for erotica anthologies featuring Asian and even homosexual characters, which at least shows she’s looking for a wide minority audience, not necessarily just an African American one). Even if you don’t write the books that tend to end up in the AA section of bookstores (like urban fiction), that is exactly where your book is going to go because that is where those books go, and more often than not those books end up being limited to the African American audience.
And honestly, if you’re talking about a publisher that puts out a preponderance of those types of books, which often aren’t of the highest quality in terms of their writing and editing, you can find the reputation for your work suffering before it even gets out there, even if it isn’t of that nature. People will assume that if you’re being published through an organization that is known for urban fiction you can’t really write and it’s not really a good book anyway. Yeah I said it because I’ve seen it in the publishing industry a lot. They are perfectly content to let your ‘little black book’ make all the money it can in the ‘little black book section’ with the ‘little black book readers’, but that is where you’ll always be. Should it be that way? No, it shouldn’t. Does that mean you should pass on being published through this type of house? Not necessarily. But what it does mean is that you have to work that much harder on your own to find the wider audiences that might appreciate your work. But if you’re African-American, you can make it work to your advantage if you can promote and network as a black author and within your genre. But if you write in the urban fiction genre, you can’t do that as easily because race is part of what makes your genre what it is. You have to think of the publishing house as the equivalent of a distribution deal in the record business – they make sure your books get printed and get out there, and you have to make enough noise on your own so that you can reach whoever wants to read your story.
As far at the bookstores go, I can certainly understand that they want to make it as easy as possible for their customers to locate the books they are looking for. But it takes a very finely tuned book retailer to understand the distinct difference between a black writer who writes black fiction with a primarily black audience in mind and a black writer who writes with a different mindset, and it may be asking too much for booksellers to make those distinctions. I personally would like bookstores to shelve books by genre, then by the author’s name. My current book is erotic fiction, but isn’t urban erotic fiction. I would hope my book would be shelved next to writers like Susie Bright and books like The Story of O.
Sharon Cullars Coffee Talk at 12/07/2006 05:42:00 PMPermanent Link |
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Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Publishing in Black and White
This morning I happened to look down at the stack of Wall Street Journals lying near the bank of elevators in my office building. I saw the pic of a young black man on the cover and wondered to myself why the face looked so familiar. Then I saw Brandon Massey's name and I whooped. I didn't even give myself time to read what the article was about, but I immediately assumed it was Brandon's story of going from a self-published writer to a successful NY-published writer with thousands of readers. Brandon is a guru at self-marketing and had been mentioned before in a magazine. I've known Brandon for several years now and he even contributed articles to my now-defunct ezine, ELAN. When I read the title of the article, Dividing Lines: Why Book Industry Sees the World Split by Race, I whooped again. Finally, finally, the travails of the black author have made the front page. Seeing the article, I immediately checked out Monica Jackson's blog and saw that she had beaten me to the punch. Monica, along with several other authors, have been blogging for some time about book market segregation and how it adversely affects black writers.
The article quotes not only Brandon, but Terry McMillan, Gwynne Forster, Tananarive Due, Millenia Black (whose real name is Nadine Aldred), Marva Allen (one of the owners of Hue-Man Bookstore in Harlem), and Leticia Peoples. Ms. Peoples talked about her frustration in trying to get published in the late 80's. "I called a couple of romance companies to find out why they weren't accepting black manuscripts and I heard things like, 'We don't have to do it because black women will read what's on the market' or 'black women can't write, so where would be get our writers." Refusing to be deterred, Ms. Peoples launched her own book line, Odyssey Books, in 1989.
The article also mentions Millenia's law suit against Penguin Books, the publisher of her second novel, THE GREAT BETRAYAL. As has been posted before in this blog and many others, Millenia turned in a book that her publishers loved except for one little matter: she had written all white characters and they weren't having it. After all, black folks can't write about white folks - or as they believe, white folks won't read any romance written by a black person no matter the color of the characters. Better to be safe and revise the characters to an all-black cast. Millenia told them to fuck off and has filed suit, for which I give her a hearty hurrah. If Suzanne Brockmann can write black romance characters and James Patterson and P. J. ___ can feature black men as protagonists in mysteries, why the double standard when it comes to blacks writing white protagonists? Now I remember a black author from a few years ago who did what Millenia is attempting to do and it was published. And there was the same hoopla from both whites and blacks: why are you writing white characters when you are black?
A few bookstore spokespeople were quoted, some defending the practice of segregating books by race and not specifically genre as a matter of convenience for black buyers. Some may see it as a practical matter. Bennett J. Johnson, vice president of Chicago's Third World Press, sees it differently. He says its the same ole thing: the reinforcement of the idea that the U.S. is a nation of "two separate societies." At least one retailer though, Barnes & Noble, have ceased the practice of categorizing by race, except in key locations where there is a predominantly African-American populace.
What seems to be the underlying statement in the segregating for only a black audience is that no one but blacks will want to read a black-authored book unless it has been deemed "acceptable" by white reviewers and the great Oprah herself. Where would Walter Mosely's sales be today if Clinton hadn't lauded him as a fav author? He'd probably be languishing with the rest of the mystery writers in the African American section of Borders.
Now, at least one black author, Tananarive Due (a favorite author of mine), doesn't see anything wrong with how her books are marketed. Most of her book tours have been exclusively among black-owned bookstores. "The African-American readership has been my rock and given me the opportunity to expand."
The quandary remains for authors who want to expand beyond the publisher-set boundaries. As the article notes, it is almost impossible for black authors to make the best-seller lists without white readers.
It's ironic that this article came out today because I had already planned to blog about race and publishing based on another one of Monica's posts. She recounted something she learned recently during a chat: that publishers are almost forced to tag black books with black covers because the return rate of race-neutral covers by black authors is extraordinarily high (I'm assuming this refers to romance books). In other words, white folks do not want to read about black folks doing it. Or for those readers who need to identify with either the hero or heroine, whites moreso than any other race, seem to have a problem stepping into the "other's" shoes. Suspense writer Tess Gerritsen writes white protagonists because her agent informed her an Asian protagonist wouldn't go over well with a white readership and would limit her sales. Ain't that some shit? Not that the agent said it, but that the statement is unfortunately true.
I can point to my own personal experience. I know for a fact that even though Brava took a chance in marketing AGAIN to a mainstream audience, my basic audience have been black women and I'm grateful to that because sales would be next to nil. Now here's the quandary: my second book THE OBJECT OF LOVE features a very hunky white guy on the cover. It's an interracial story and my heroine is black and much older than said hunky white guy. Will this become a wallbanger because of this? Who know. And when did the race of a character become a reason for wallbanging or returning the book? I have read books where the race of the protagonist or romantic interest was different than I first supposed. All I did was blink. No hurling books, no demanding my money back.
Things are going to have to change in societal as a whole before we see a change in publishing. Because as Mr. Johnson noted, "publishing is merely a reflection of how the world works.
