Writers in the Storm

Writers In The Storm is honored to welcome Steven Zacharius, President and Chief Executive Officer of Kensington Publishing Corp. Steven has graciously offered to give us the inside scoop on the publishing world from his unique perspective as a New York Publisher. Be sure to find the link below to a YouTube video where Walter Zacharius explains how Kensington started their African American Line. It's truly fascinating.

By Steven Zacharius

I’d like to begin by thanking Sharla Rae to invite me to be a guest blogger.  Usually it’s only my co-workers who have to listen to me blab on and on, so this is a treat.  Shar has submitted to me a list of suggested topics and I’m going to try and address all of them.  If anyone has any questions, you can always email me directly from our website at www.szacharius@kensingtonbooks.com

Just for a little background information, Kensington Publishing Corp. (KPC), is probably the largest privately owned book publisher left in this country that publishes hardcover, trade and mass market books.  Next year will mark the 40^th anniversary since my father, Walter, founded the company.  I’m pleased to say that there’s a third generation Zacharius involved in the company and that is my son, Adam Zacharius.  Even though we are a relatively small company in comparison to the other firms we compete against, we do it every day.  All the firms that are bigger than us are billion dollar conglomerates and most of them are foreign owned.

Now to the questions:

 Independent or Self-publishing Versus Traditional Publishing:

 In my opinion this is still an area of great hype by the media and by the digital e-book retailers themselves.  We’ve all heard of the enormous success of a handful of authors that have sold 1,000,000 copies of a book they self-published, generally on Kindle, Apple or the Nook platforms.  What you very rarely hear is about the other 1,000,000 books that were self-published where the author sold only 25 copies to their families and friends.  And believe me, I’m not criticizing this.  To be able to put down your story into words is a miraculous feat; I couldn’t do it myself.  Self-publishing offers the advantage of giving the author great control over the book and cover design and of course the big allure of earning a huge percentage of the net receipts.

In reality, very few authors make any money doing this because the sales are so low.  The key in publishing, whether it be in digital or print, is to get your book noticed.  If the publisher can’t get your print book into the stores, nobody is ever going to see it and even know it exists.  Sure you can post it on your website or blog about it yourself, but that’s still a relatively small number of people that are going to see anything about your story.  The publisher’s relationships with digital and print retailers is critical.  Publishers develop these relationships over decades with the retailers, wholesalers and buyers.  We see all of the major accounts on a monthly basis to let them know about the new books coming out and how we’re going to promote them.  It’s hard if not impossible for a self-published author to do this, especially in the print world.

Digital is obviously a growing piece of the business, in our case, over 30% of our revenues; but the rapid growth has slowed down and the decrease in print sales has thankfully also slowed down as well.  With e-books the publisher sends the book files to all of the major e-book retailers and then tries to arrange for promotions with these e-book retailers.  Sometimes we’re successful and sometimes we’re not.  It’s just like being in a retail store.  There are only so many places that the consumer can easily see the book.  The home page, weekly or daily email blasts from the retailers, discounted promotions, etc…  But keep in mind how many digitally self-published books there now are and how crowded the space is becoming.  The self-published author is competing with the larger publishing houses for that valuable promotional space.

I personally don’t think that publishers are going to have any problems attracting and keeping writers in the future.  Publishers can sell a far greater number of copies than a self-published author can.  We have more promotional vehicles open to us which are very expensive, such a front of store displays.  Also, publishers spend money on advertising, whether it’s print ads, Facebook ads and or even just doing social media to stimulate talking about the book.  The publisher also gets reviews for books and quotes from other established authors and reviewers.

The biggest reason that a self-published author will always come to a publishing house is to get the book distributed in print.  This is something that you really can’t do on your own other than via print on demand, which is a very small distribution and still quite expensive.  Let’s also not forget that publishers provide tremendous services for writers.  We work with the writer on the storyline, edit the book, do cover design, typeset and proofread the book, market the book and distribute and collect the billing.  In addition, we attend numerous trade shows, library shows, Book Expo America, and writer’s conferences to promote the books.  We also sell foreign rights and other subsidiary rights, such as bookclub, large print and audio, which the self-published author would have a much harder time doing on their own, if they even had access to these markets.

Author’s Rights in the New Publishing Paradigm:

 Of course I can only speak on behalf of Kensington, but we would not publish a new book without controlling the e-book rights as well as the print rights.  As mentioned previously, 30% of our revenue is now coming from digital sales.  Today the industry standard is 25% of net receipts and I don’t see that changing quickly.

Depending on if the author is being published in a digital only imprint or a traditional imprint is the determining factor as to the structure of the deal.  Most digital only imprints don’t pay an author advance, or if they do, it’s relatively small.  In this case the royalties can be higher than the standard terms because the publishing house is not laying out money for that advance, which can often be the largest expense of the entire publishing process.  Each contract is different and it’s always a negotiation as to how the specific deal is going to be finalized, but there are general guidelines and legal boilerplate that publishers will not change.

The industry is obviously still in a state of flux but the balance between digital and print seems to have reached a balancing point for the moment.  Retailers have decreased shelf space for books, there are less large chains but independent bookstores are making a comeback.  Online retailers are of course still growing and this is a challenge that all of us in the industry have to deal with on a daily basis.  An online retailer can have over a million titles on their website while any one bookstore, even the biggest, would have a fraction of that.

How do we market and promote titles to catch the consumer? 

Social media is the fastest growing way but even this can get overcrowded.  There are only about a dozen large book accounts that remain in this country.  These include the large book chains, wholesalers and book jobbers who distribute to libraries and independents.  The industry has consolidated over 750 wholesaler accounts and a couple of thousand independent bookstores a little over 20 years ago to a handful of major accounts today.  This makes the business easier in many cases but harder to deal with in other ways.

Most of the bigger publishers now are putting new authors in their digital first imprints.  It’s a less expensive risk for the publisher because of the limited print distribution outlets that are now available.  If we see that the book has real potential and has good strong e-book sales, we would of course consider publishing it in print.

Kensington’s strength is in women’s fiction.  It probably represents about 75% of the number of titles we publish.  But we also publish non-fiction, Westerns, thrillers, mysteries and books geared towards the African-American reader.  Women’s fiction trends tend to come full circle eventually.  One year historical romances are in vogue and then you see a shift towards contemporary or paranormal.  I wish we could be fortune-tellers and be able to predict this with any kind of certainty but it’s impossible.  Digital publishing allows us a little more flexibility in getting books to market faster and trying to catch and ride these trends.

 Social Media and Websites:

 Authors must have a website and more importantly it has to be updated on a regular basis.  It’s not enough to just put your book covers up there and have it be a static sight.  Get someone to help you design it if you can’t do it yourself.  Include personal things about yourself.  Pictures, videos, anything like that.  Readers want to get to know their favorite writers.  We don’t know how much this really helps sells books, it’s impossible to tell.  But the most successful authors have huge mailing lists, are constantly tweeting and have Facebook Fan Pages that are all constantly being updated.

Sending out an email blast to people who visit your website is vital, whether you do it yourself or the publisher controls the process and just uses your names.

When it comes to marketing always start in your local bookstore; hopefully you have one.  Then start spreading out like the spokes of a wheel, in all directions.  Get to know the store manager and go in to sign your books if you have a printed book available.  Autographed books don’t get returned very often.  Try to get local coverage at your bookstore or library and have an event to let people know who you are and why you wrote the book.  You won’t draw a big crowd but it will start a little buzz and every little bit helps.  Hopefully you have a local paper and they’ll cover the speaking engagement.

 If you’re self-publishing spend the money to do some copies by Print On Demand and give them away to key people or give away digital copies of your books to influential people.  If  you’re a member of a writer’s group, which I definitely recommend; have the most successful author in the group read your book and try to get a cover quote from them that would boost  your recognition and make a publisher take notice of how good your books is.

I hope this information helps.  I’m always available to answer questions.

Visit me at: Facebook at Steven Zacharius and on Twitter @szacharius

For Kennington Submission Guildlines 

Meet the late founder Walter Zacharius at this YouTube site and learn how their wonderful African American line got started.

I don't remember where I first found reference to this writers challenge, but I was intrigued. Writing a horror story in two sentences? How could someone DO that?

Well, it’s not only possible, the results are amazing!

Go read these twelve, and come back. We’ll wait . . .

http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/12-absolutely-terrifying-two-sentence-horror-stories

After reading those, who could resist taking up the challenge?

Not the WITS Bloggers!

Here are our two sentence horror stories. Our gift to you, for Halloween.

Laura Drake:

She loved Don, but Fear Factor? She’d thought she could power through, but love died when the first hairy leg touched her face.

Jenny Hansen (from my contemporary single title, A Bit of Intrigue):

Simon missed the personal contact of gutter-variety larceny; he missed the smell of fear that oozed off a person as he beat them.  Most of all, he missed that effervescent moment, when their pain-crazed minds finally understood: their fate belonged to him and depended on his mercy.

Orly Konig Lopez:

It was a closed casket funeral, there wasn't enough left of the body to piece it together into anything recognizable. I was the last one in the room saying good-bye, except for the person scratching at the inside of the casket.

Sharla Rae:

It was an old creaking house so every night I ignored the thumping footfalls coming up the stairs to my bedroom. And every night I’d sigh in relief when they abruptly stopped at the top; until they didn’t.

Fae Rowen:

For some inexplicable reason, every morning when she pulled back the curtains she gave thanks that the green gardens outside her bedroom window looked exactly the same as the day before. But as the heavy drapes slid aside today, large smoking holes in the dead landscape didn't slow the mutant army marching toward the thin glass wall separating her from them.

We know WITS readers are always up for a challenge, so now it’s your turn. Post your two sentence story in the comments! 

Come on, scare us . . . we dare ya!

photo credit: Stephanie Massaro via photopin cc

By Sharla Rae

I’m sharing not one list today, but two. The first one covers shades of the basic color spectrum. The second deals with adjectives describing color and the possible “conditions” of color, that is, how it’s used. But Writing in living color is more than just knowing and choosing color descriptions. It’s showing the reader the story in living color even when “no” colors are mentioned.

Here’s how Laura Drake did it in her book, The Sweet Spot.  In this excerpt, the focus is not on the color but the “entire” picture the character Belle presents. Only three basic colors are used. Remove the color terms and the reader would still see this scene in living color.

At the end stood a woman perusing a dog-eared catalog – a woman Char had never met, but recognized from the gossip. This was that new Yankee that moved in a few months back.  Just where do you go to get an outfit like that? Red shortie cowgirl boots, a lacy black square-dance miniskirt puffed with petticoats, a white bustier cut down to there, and a black lace bolero jacket. Char swallowed, attempting to focus on the woman’s features. A nimbus of black curls overwhelmed her deathly pale, sharp-boned foxy face. Huge dream-catcher earrings bobbedwith her every move. She looks like Dolly Parton gone Goth. 

If we watched this scene on an old black and white TV, we’d still see that Belle’s getup is extraordinary. But in this written scene we have an added advantage: She looks like Dolly Parton gone Goth. This is a descriptor that is immediately familiar to the reader. Who needs color names with this statement? Dolly Parton “is” the color.

Using color terms however, can be very useful. Color contributes texture and perspective by showing without telling.

Here’s an exaggerated example:

Black & white Movie: The scene opens inside a bedroom. It appears to be just a garden-variety bedroom.
Color Movie: Red velvet drapes at the windows, and bright purple upholstered furniture decorates the room. This is no ordinary bedroom and the person who decorated is probably out of the norm too.

Black and White Movie: A woman dressed in an ordinary business suit walks into the room. Again, nothing appears out of the ordinary.
Color Movie: The woman’s cheeks are too red, her suit is gaudy purple (not black) with flaming red trim.

Color gives a different perspective, showing a peek into the character’s personality by using the colors.

Colors aid with scene setting by adding tone and drama, whether it’s the gloom and doom of a storm, a cheerful summer day, a bustling city, or an old Victorian parlor.

This excerpt is from Lyn Horner’s novella, White Witch – on the night of the Great Chicago Fire

Bright sheets of fire flapped in the air, frighteningly beautiful in hues of orange, gold and angry red. Flung out by the murderous blaze, burning debris scattered hither and yon, a threat Jessie constantly fought, using a blanket to smother cinders that fell on the wagon.

In the Lyn’s excerpt, I especially like her verb choices of sheets “flapping” in the air and debris being “flung” and “scattered.” Adding the color here gives a bigger than life living color scene but even without the names of the colors, this scene is very colorful. And you can't argue the drama!

Colors might also reflect drastic contrasts. It’s the old “appearances can be deceiving” rule.

We could use the above excerpt from Laura’s book as a contrast. The heroine, Char spies the woman named Bella in this scene and is shocked by her appearance. But what Char doesn’t know yet, is that the woman on the outside is very different from the woman on the inside.  Contrast.

A generic example:

Jennifer closed up Corrine’s dusty little antique shop, and rode a rickety elevator to the old woman’s apartment. The elevator jolted to banging halt at the second floor. The door clanked open into a tiny vestibule hosting wide, bright white double doors with shiny brass handles.
Using the key Corrine had given her, Jennifer opened it, stepped over the threshold and stopped dead.  Vaulted ceilings and a variegated Berber carpet of white and black transformed the warehouse space into a grand open-spaced condo. A huge abstract painting in scarlet, neon blue and jungle green splashed one of the stark white walls where it hung over a licorice-black sectional.
     Good Lord, where were the antiques?  The dollies? The dust?

There are many ways to convey color and it’s not necessary to tell readers what they already know.  We know grass is green or that the sky is blue.

Of course, there are times when a familiar normal isn’t normal. It’s often just as affective to use character actions and one of the other five senses to show colors.    

Example: The following is perfectly correct: Dry brown grass crunched beneath her feet.
But we could also write: Dry grass crunched under her feet.

We are “familiar” with the fact that healthy green grass doesn’t crunch. We know if the grass is dry and crunchy, it’s dead and familiarity tells us it’s most likely brown. There’s no need to tell the reader the grass is brown. For that matter, we might dispense with the word dry. Only dry grass would crunch.

In Margie Lawson’s blog, Ax Your Clichés: Why and How, we learned to put a twist on cliché descriptions and use more powerful constructions to show character emotions and story tone. The same rules apply with color.

Cliché terms like lobster red, strawberry blond, sky blue, and grass green are boring.  These descriptions don’t really add texture, tone, contrast or drama. They just are.  Sometimes simple is better.The hair is blond; the day is gray etc.  But whenever possible, make colors work harder by showing.

Find new ways of expressing color but don’t make the mistake of using color terms readers have to research. Some examples: Brunswick (a green), Gamboge (tree known for yellow brown resin), Falu Red (a deep red) Ferruginous (rusty iron color) At The Phrontistery you’ll find a few more of these obscure color terms.

As long as clichés are avoided, using common objects, foods, places, animals or even people [Dolly Parton] to describe color is effective.

Below are a few examples but don’t be afraid to make up your own. Mention any of the terms in the list below and a reader automatically knows what color you’re talking about.

Writers can create color names that by themselves don’t sound like colors at all.  Let’s take an imaginary trip to any cosmetic counter. We’ll spy color names that have nothing to do with the actual shades of blush, eye shadow or lipstick. What these color names attempt to do instead, is evoke an emotion that appeals to the female buyer– because after all the buyer is buying dreams of beauty, looking sexy, professional or looking like the-girl-next-door.

Any of the colors listed below could prefix almost any cosmetic color or even the color of attire, and we’d totally understand the emotion or mindset the color represented.

Bella Bamba
Crazy For Chic
Dove’s wing
Dusky Nights
First Blush
Glam Girl
Midnight Rendezvous
Naked
Party Girl
Passion’s Kiss
Radiant Kiss
Ra-ra Blue
Riviera Rose Satin
Shy blush
Trend Setter
Virgin Pink
Viva Las Vegas
You Jealous?

Can you make up some names for colors that evoke an emotion? I played around with a few ideas below. Keep in mind that it’s often the “connotation” of the descriptive that counts. What emotions do you associate with some of the following color descriptors?

Pepto-Bismol - Sickening, distasteful.
Jonquil - cheerful, perky
The color of sin – Probably black, meaning sexy or evil
Cocoa - warm & comfortable
Marshmallow – cheery, easygoing person
Moldy (black or green) – the blek factor
Morning mauve – promising, cheerful, relaxing, soft
Pearl – might project wealth, purity
Rabid … - this could prefix almost any color and give it distasteful connotation.
Quaker gray – prim and proper
Rosy  – health, beauty
Stone – cold and hard to read
Sterile – cold, chrome and steel

Below is a list of color names/descriptors. The list is long so I tried to eliminate over used terms and obvious clichés. The second list of terms describes the conditions or state of color.

ORANGES

YELLOWS

Adjectives Describing the State of Any Color