Once I sent my manuscript off and was waiting for proofs, I started thinking about how I was going to let people know what I'd done. I asked myself, how I would discover my book, if I were the reader. I’d bought privately published local histories in Borders in Michigan. If it wasn’t in the local history section of a book store, then I might find it in that section in a library.
When I was reading detective fiction, I tried finding new authors by reading annotated catalogs from specialty bookstores and looking for fan magazines that discussed new authors. As I remember, it was tough to find anything useful
The problem for readers and writers alike is how to get bookstores, libraries and fanzines to take notice.
Reviews are the obvious, most desirable way to promote books with an aura of legitimacy. My publisher offers five bound reviewer’s galleys for $299, but doesn’t offer to send them to the right people, or even suggest who they might be. Five finished paperbacks, at the author discount, is a third that price. Other publishers are more generous with free review copies in their packages.
Critics reside everywhere from the New York Times and Publisher’s Weekly to an author lurking behind an alias puffing his or her own book on Amazon. One publisher even offers favorable reviews by Ellen Tanner Marsh for $399, and another sends books to Kirkus Discoveries, a paid review service, for $360.
I thought about various publications that might influence me, but wondered how many would actually consider a book from an essentially anonymous source. I narrowed my list to those that might be read by people I thought would buy my book and were most likely to publish something favorable. I saw no point in donating copies to the snobbish or potentially hostile. There’s a lag time of at least six months before you see any results.
The alternative is advertising. Unless you want to treat marketing as an expensive hobby, you may want to apply some sort of cost-benefit analysis. Mine was simple: I divided the price of a service by the average royalty I might receive. I then pondered the likelihood of selling more than 25 books for every $100 of outlay.
Almost every on demand publisher offers mass distribution programs, either through faxed press releases, internet links or email campaigns. Pat Holt asked Xlibris for details on their program, and could find the only benefit was a professional wrote the press releases. They did no follow-up, offered no way to distinguish their releases from the hundreds of others arriving daily at every media outlet in the country.
A number of publishers offer postcards with your cover on the front, and ordering information on part of the reverse. Apparently, these are designed to exploit the lower rates offered by the post office.
This leaves two problems. How often have you paid attention to a postcard that resembled an ad, and who are you going to mail them to?
I don’t think I’ve ever even gotten an announcement through the mail for a novel or literary work. However, I used to get them about non-fiction when I was teaching and actually did read some of them.
I asked the post office about bulk mailing, and my postmaster told me I couldn’t afford it, because I wasn’t going to send enough to specific zip codes to justify the $150 start-up cost. He suggested I find a private company to do the stamping under its permit. For them to keep their prices down, they barcode items for automatic sorting.
My purpose in sending anything by mail would be to fool someone long enough that he or she started to read about the book before realizing it was a promo. It wouldn’t do me any good to send something cheaper if it was more likely to be thrown away unread.
I thought an envelope would be more effective than a postcard or folded cardstock, if I could find something that looked classy. Really good envelopes were not available in quantity in the big-box stores that replaced stationers in my area. Decent ones averaged a little over 1 ½ cents. I rounded to 2 cents to cover the cost of addressing ink.
I designed a two-sided flyer using those graphic skills I developed that weekend I was trying to answer the publisher’s contract questions about the cover, then called some printers for general cost information. One was basically a photocopy operation that would reproduce what I brought it. Another did offset work and would take my digitized pictures and mockup and recreate it with more professional software.
When it came time to do the work, I called again, and prices were higher. I tried printing them on my own machine, and found I could produce about 75 two-sided copies with a single cartridge. The cost of ink and paper came to 22 cents each. One company wanted 14 cents, the other 30.
Both wanted me to send them the pictures and text and pay them a setup fee to recreate my flyer. The alternative was to create a PDF file. When I tried saving my file with Adobe on a friend’s computer, the software changed the page breaks and distorted the borders on pictures. I became less concerned with the cost of setup, than with potential battles with another designer.
When I considered including copies of the cover proof with some letters, it was obvious it was cheaper to pay someone 50 cents a page than try to make copies with large blocks of solid color. My printer sucked up ink and left damp paper.
Altogether the cost of a single flyer mailed first class in an envelope was 63 cents. A personalized letter added a penny. A copy of the cover another 50 cents, for a total of $1.14 per item. That’s less than my publisher wanted for a press release, unless I sent out 500 at $499, but still meant I needed to sell one book for every four of the more expensive package.
To do any mass mailing, I needed a list of people to contact. Last spring, I started to compile addresses of local history societies, then remembered professional groups sell their mailing lists. That was tantalizing, until I saw their prices. Fanzines and small bookstores may be less rapacious, if they make their databases available.
I returned to the internet to compile my own list and discovered many had email addresses. That seemed the affordable option, and I could send my flier as an attachment. Unfortunately, the increase in spam means it’s even harder to get people’s attention on their computers, than it is in their mailboxes. Also, unsolicited email tends to make people angrier than junk mail.
Amazon offers another way to use the internet. You create a list of books or other products you think are similar to yours. When anyone brings up one of the itemized books, your list appears. Of course, you place your book first, with a brief description. It’s more effective if Amazon has an image of your cover to display.
The device is called Listmania. You first need to set up an Amazon account. When you do the first list, it asks you to set up a "real name" and starts making noises about confidential information. Go down to where you can use a "pen name" instead. This is a free service because you market their books for them. Amazon tracks how many times your list is viewed.
If you decide the ideal reader for your novel is already reading Stephen King or Tony Hillerman, your list may not appear on Amazon because the screen only displays three. However, I discovered some of mine appear with other booksellers when I do subject matter searches on Google, Yahoo and MSN. So, even if a popular book gets you no exposure with Amazon, it may still publicize your book where it matters.
One final thing to remember when you’re sending out information - most people have never heard of print-on-demand or self-publishing, but probably have negative views of vanity presses. Don’t try to educate them. Let them think your book is like every other book they’ve ever bought.
If you used iUniverse, say it’s an affiliate of Barnes and Noble; if you used Xlibris, say it’s a strategic partner of Random House Ventures. They used the corporate association to build credibility with you; you can use their carefully crafted legal language to market to others. It may be the only unadvertised benefit of the package you purchased.
Sources:
Goldstein, Bonnie. "Raves For Sale," 19 January 2007 at Slate.com.
Holt, Pat. "Outsourcing at Xlibris," 22 September 2004, at Holt Uncensored #389.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Self Publishing - Part 4 - Infrastructure
Every on-demand publisher offers you the world - the world of e-commerce and internet sales.
What they deliver is less than you expect, although technically what they advertise. Most use Ingram’s Lightning Source to print and distribute books. Ingram, in turn, feeds book information to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Borders and receives orders from them. The problem is the flow of information is slow and often needs prodding.
Six weeks after my book officially was released, Borders had a complete listing on its website, Barnes and Noble listed the book but said it was not available, and Amazon had nothing. When I wrote to ask if there were problems, my publisher answered it took 60 to 90 days to get books fully listed. I was also warned the listing could be variable when it first appeared while a retailer’s software stabilized.
No publisher mentions that lead time when it touts the speed to self-publish, and mine certainly didn’t advise me to wait three months before I started promoting my book.
Two weeks after my complaint, which may have led to some expediting with Ingram, Barnes and Noble had the book fully listed and available, and it was beginning to appear in Amazon. It took another week before both the hardcover and paperback were available, but there was no image of the cover.
My publisher prefers people buy books through its agencies, and offers price and royalty incentives to customers and authors. The reason is obvious. It needn’t split profits with a bookseller or wholesaler. It expends its efforts on creating book and author web pages, and leaves the other outlets to Ingram and the author.
However, even when it is in the publisher’s interest to have useful internet pages, I discovered more gaps between expectations and deliverables. When my book was officially released, my customer rep sent me an email telling me my web addresses, along with instructions for maintaining my pages.
The book site, which is used for ordering, was functional. Only, no one had bothered to enter a book description. That was my task. The rationale was that I could change it quickly, perhaps post a review when I received it. That’s certainly a valid reason for giving me control, especially when its web designers charge $65 an hour to maintain pages, with a $16.25 minimum charge.
The author web site was another matter. My biographical information had been dumped with no formatting. I was expected to enter HTML tags to restore basic paragraphing. While I was there, I tested the email link. Other writers said they had problems with that with their publishers.
You have a choice - bite the bullet and learn some HTML, or find a teenager who works for video games. Since all you really need do is identify paragraph breaks and bold or italicize words, you can do it yourself. You add codes before and after the words to be emphasized, and enclose the codes in angle brackets <>. The code for bold is "b" and for italics is "i". In addition, at the end, you include a slash / between the opening bracket and the code letter.
Paragraphs may be more complicated. For scientific style like this column, you only need the code "p" with brackets and not all websites expect the end code. For indented paragraphs, you type an ampersand (&) and "nbsp;" as many times as you want spaces, with no brackets.
Once you have professionalized your publisher’s websites and have complete listings in the commercial sites, you can let your friends know where to find your book. Be aware, however, that internet outlets are separate corporate entities from the physical stores, and the appearance of a book on a company’s website does not mean a store will order it. Your friends will have to enter the twenty-first century,.
Also be aware that your entries on rival outlets contain only the minimum necessary information to order. If you want to reach strangers you probably want the same kind of promotional materials found on your publisher’s site. For non-fiction, the most important are the book description and author biography. For fiction, the excerpt is your most powerful tool.
For non-fiction, you want to keep the entry short. Remember the person you are trying to attract is probably not going to read more than a paragraph. You want to let them know why they should buy the book, and provide evidence that you are the expert they should listen to.
Fiction readers may be more leisurely and are going to want to read your style. You should provide an excerpt short enough to read, but long enough to leave them wanting more. Your biography may not help, since many will be more interested in your characters than in you.
Each of the major on-line retailers has unpublicized tools to accept this information. However, you will have to add the HTML codes if you have more than one paragraph in your excerpt. Amazon provides a short list of key words that are essentially what you learned to improve your publisher’s website. Whenever asked, list yourself as the publisher’s contact.
I wrote each section in Word and added the codes, so I could cut-and-paste text that had been verified by my spell checker. I entered the information into an Amazon on-line form on Sunday. On Tuesday, the missing cover image suddenly showed up. Thursday, my text appeared. They warned it could take a week, and it took less.
Borders and Barnes and Noble use email. Include the same identifying information you use for Amazon, your ISBN number, the author’s name and complete title, then identify the text you want added like "excerpt" or "author bio."
I sent them messages the same Sunday I entered data into Amazon. When I checked the following weekend, Barnes and Noble had used the excerpt and table of contents, while Borders had used the description from my publisher’s website. Unfortunately, it ran it all into a single paragraph, so it read poorly and looks worse.
Professional websites are not enough. Potential readers must discover your web page. The webmaster I wrote to at my publisher said it does not do anything to make it’s site available to the major search engines; it simply waits for them to be found, which can take months.
I’m told you can register your sites yourself. Yahoo requires you first set up an account. I entered my information in Google, but three month’s later the publishers’ websites do not appear when I search on my name. I sent nothing to Yahoo or MSN. and my websites do show up on the first page of results. Unfortunately, more shoppers use Google.
Some of what you do to build the infrastructure to market your book is fun, and a lot of it is tedious. However, if you’ve gotten this far, have actually completed a book and managed it through the publishing process, you know you can do anything. And everything I’ve mentioned is free because it benefits the corporations as much as it does you - or that hungry teenager you’re bribing.
Websites where your book is offered
* Amazon.com
* Barnesandnoble.com
* Bordersstores.com
Addresses to post additional information
* Amazon on-line form at http://www.amazon.com/publishers
* Barnes and Noble, email to titles@bn.com
* Borders, email to Corrections@Borders.com
Addresses to register your websites
* Google at http://www.google.com/addurl.html
* Yahoo at http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/
* AltaVista at http://www.altavista,com/sites.search/addurl/
Useful introductions to the mechanics of on-line listings
Brown, Rebecca. "How to Get Your Book up on Amazon.com" at RebeccaReads.com.
Nassise, Joseph M. "How to Add Your Book to Online Bookstores" (2001) at authorsden.com.
Sipos, Thomas M. "Marketing through Amazon" (2001) at GreenTentacles.com.
What they deliver is less than you expect, although technically what they advertise. Most use Ingram’s Lightning Source to print and distribute books. Ingram, in turn, feeds book information to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Borders and receives orders from them. The problem is the flow of information is slow and often needs prodding.
Six weeks after my book officially was released, Borders had a complete listing on its website, Barnes and Noble listed the book but said it was not available, and Amazon had nothing. When I wrote to ask if there were problems, my publisher answered it took 60 to 90 days to get books fully listed. I was also warned the listing could be variable when it first appeared while a retailer’s software stabilized.
No publisher mentions that lead time when it touts the speed to self-publish, and mine certainly didn’t advise me to wait three months before I started promoting my book.
Two weeks after my complaint, which may have led to some expediting with Ingram, Barnes and Noble had the book fully listed and available, and it was beginning to appear in Amazon. It took another week before both the hardcover and paperback were available, but there was no image of the cover.
My publisher prefers people buy books through its agencies, and offers price and royalty incentives to customers and authors. The reason is obvious. It needn’t split profits with a bookseller or wholesaler. It expends its efforts on creating book and author web pages, and leaves the other outlets to Ingram and the author.
However, even when it is in the publisher’s interest to have useful internet pages, I discovered more gaps between expectations and deliverables. When my book was officially released, my customer rep sent me an email telling me my web addresses, along with instructions for maintaining my pages.
The book site, which is used for ordering, was functional. Only, no one had bothered to enter a book description. That was my task. The rationale was that I could change it quickly, perhaps post a review when I received it. That’s certainly a valid reason for giving me control, especially when its web designers charge $65 an hour to maintain pages, with a $16.25 minimum charge.
The author web site was another matter. My biographical information had been dumped with no formatting. I was expected to enter HTML tags to restore basic paragraphing. While I was there, I tested the email link. Other writers said they had problems with that with their publishers.
You have a choice - bite the bullet and learn some HTML, or find a teenager who works for video games. Since all you really need do is identify paragraph breaks and bold or italicize words, you can do it yourself. You add codes before and after the words to be emphasized, and enclose the codes in angle brackets <>. The code for bold is "b" and for italics is "i". In addition, at the end, you include a slash / between the opening bracket and the code letter.
Paragraphs may be more complicated. For scientific style like this column, you only need the code "p" with brackets and not all websites expect the end code. For indented paragraphs, you type an ampersand (&) and "nbsp;" as many times as you want spaces, with no brackets.
Once you have professionalized your publisher’s websites and have complete listings in the commercial sites, you can let your friends know where to find your book. Be aware, however, that internet outlets are separate corporate entities from the physical stores, and the appearance of a book on a company’s website does not mean a store will order it. Your friends will have to enter the twenty-first century,.
Also be aware that your entries on rival outlets contain only the minimum necessary information to order. If you want to reach strangers you probably want the same kind of promotional materials found on your publisher’s site. For non-fiction, the most important are the book description and author biography. For fiction, the excerpt is your most powerful tool.
For non-fiction, you want to keep the entry short. Remember the person you are trying to attract is probably not going to read more than a paragraph. You want to let them know why they should buy the book, and provide evidence that you are the expert they should listen to.
Fiction readers may be more leisurely and are going to want to read your style. You should provide an excerpt short enough to read, but long enough to leave them wanting more. Your biography may not help, since many will be more interested in your characters than in you.
Each of the major on-line retailers has unpublicized tools to accept this information. However, you will have to add the HTML codes if you have more than one paragraph in your excerpt. Amazon provides a short list of key words that are essentially what you learned to improve your publisher’s website. Whenever asked, list yourself as the publisher’s contact.
I wrote each section in Word and added the codes, so I could cut-and-paste text that had been verified by my spell checker. I entered the information into an Amazon on-line form on Sunday. On Tuesday, the missing cover image suddenly showed up. Thursday, my text appeared. They warned it could take a week, and it took less.
Borders and Barnes and Noble use email. Include the same identifying information you use for Amazon, your ISBN number, the author’s name and complete title, then identify the text you want added like "excerpt" or "author bio."
I sent them messages the same Sunday I entered data into Amazon. When I checked the following weekend, Barnes and Noble had used the excerpt and table of contents, while Borders had used the description from my publisher’s website. Unfortunately, it ran it all into a single paragraph, so it read poorly and looks worse.
Professional websites are not enough. Potential readers must discover your web page. The webmaster I wrote to at my publisher said it does not do anything to make it’s site available to the major search engines; it simply waits for them to be found, which can take months.
I’m told you can register your sites yourself. Yahoo requires you first set up an account. I entered my information in Google, but three month’s later the publishers’ websites do not appear when I search on my name. I sent nothing to Yahoo or MSN. and my websites do show up on the first page of results. Unfortunately, more shoppers use Google.
Some of what you do to build the infrastructure to market your book is fun, and a lot of it is tedious. However, if you’ve gotten this far, have actually completed a book and managed it through the publishing process, you know you can do anything. And everything I’ve mentioned is free because it benefits the corporations as much as it does you - or that hungry teenager you’re bribing.
Websites where your book is offered
* Amazon.com
* Barnesandnoble.com
* Bordersstores.com
Addresses to post additional information
* Amazon on-line form at http://www.amazon.com/publishers
* Barnes and Noble, email to titles@bn.com
* Borders, email to Corrections@Borders.com
Addresses to register your websites
* Google at http://www.google.com/addurl.html
* Yahoo at http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/
* AltaVista at http://www.altavista,com/sites.search/addurl/
Useful introductions to the mechanics of on-line listings
Brown, Rebecca. "How to Get Your Book up on Amazon.com" at RebeccaReads.com.
Nassise, Joseph M. "How to Add Your Book to Online Bookstores" (2001) at authorsden.com.
Sipos, Thomas M. "Marketing through Amazon" (2001) at GreenTentacles.com.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Self Publishing - Part 3 - The Cover
I’m a writer, not an artist. I have some aesthetic sense, but no manual skills.
The cover turned out to be the most difficult part of the original submission for me. I hadn’t thought much about it, and felt suddenly asked to provide art, cover copy, and aesthetic decisions about color and font. I had no image of the book, and knew no artists to help. I also couldn’t find examples of the various fonts, and no publisher provided recognizable examples.
I was writing local history, so went through photographs I had available to find something I thought might work that had no problems with permissions or privacy. I didn’t know the legal guidelines, but I limited myself to photographs taken by me or my father. I’ve since heard some commercial publishers require signed waivers from anyone whose face appears on a cover. Most on demand publishers don’t provide this legal information. Instead, they put a number of clauses in their contracts that protect them from your ignorance.
Next I found someone in the yellow pages who could digitize 50-year-old slides. I told him what I was using the pictures for, but had not yet received the specification that defined the file type and minimum pixel density. He was a professional and gave me what I needed (TIF files). I later learned it was the wrong color convention, but could be converted. I don’t remember that being in any specification.
I don’t have professional photography layout software, but I did mockups for my high school newspaper. I found my best method for refining the cover text was to insert a book-sized box in a WordPerfect document, then allot space for pictures, a company logo and bar-code. You may have been on the yearbook staff and might get similar results by cutting blocks of paper.
I typed my cover text in a font size I thought would work, and discovered it didn’t fit, even though it was less than the prescribed number of words. Because physical appearance was more important than content, the rewrite became an exercise in poetry. Working with the graphic representation stimulated a different part of my imagination.
Publishers offer to write the back cover text for a price, but I was skeptical anyone was going to think about my book in the same way I discovered I could. At best, it would be worth it if they would start from my concept and polish it. Thinking anyone is going to understand your work as well as you is as naive as thinking any of them are going to pluck your manuscript from the mire and promote it into a best seller. Even writers published by major commercial publishers complain about the transformations that occur when designers only follow the conventions of the market.
Some publishers offer to design your cover for a price; others offer basic templates that have predetermined blocks where their designer inserts the picture and text. The latter changes the design process into something analogous to looking at group picture mats in the hobby store and picking the one that will work best with your family photographs and wall decor.
One publisher specified the pictures you sent had to already be the exact size of the template block. This requires you have the necessary software and experience. If you don’t, then the cost of paying a professional, yours or theirs, is required. Photoshop, the best known of the layout packages, lists at about $600. I used the software that came with my camera; it may have been free, but the camera wasn’t. My biggest problem was the manual had long disappeared and it took hours of trial and error to learn it well enough to use.
I cropped and enlarged the pictures to create objects (JPG files) I could insert into my word processor mockup. I played with WordPerfect’s color wheel, which is available under the "more" option of the highlight button. I tried one color after another for the background in the text box until I found the one that worked with my pictures. I then changed the font colors until I found something that looked OK.
I sent my mockups along with the original TIF files created by the professional and the formulas for the colors with my submission package. The pictures in the mockups weren’t usable because, in my ignorance, I destroyed the reproduction quality of the images, but their intent had always been a means to communicate vision.
My mockups didn’t fit any one template, and the company offered a service upgrade. I realized the cover is another of those potential vanity snares. You need to know how you’re going to distribute your book. If it’s going to be sold at a community booth a simple cover will work. If you’re going to sell it with a seminar you offer you may need more.
I looked at the ads in the New York Review of Books and discovered covers didn’t attract my attention and that most large publishers have fairly simple ones that still look good when they’re shrunk for promotions. Indeed, many don’t use pictures, but sophisticated freeform fonts. The only time a book jacket might be important is if you place it in a bookstore or souvenir shop where you need to catch someone’s eye before you can sell to him or her.
I decided I could live with a template, so long as they reproduced my colors and croppings.
I was surprised at how happy I was when I finally beheld a copy of the finished book, and the flat proof page was changed into three-dimensions with a glossy surface. I discovered I cared very much that the book look like a book and feel like a book.
My satisfaction with the book as an object comes from those choices I made that panicky weekend when I prepared my submission. I realize now it had become a matter of stepping up to the challenges of new software tools, and mine were primitive, or live with the work of others who wouldn’t be able to devote the hours I did to my project. Choosing the options that provided the most control within the skills I could develop was the root of my pleasure.
The cover turned out to be the most difficult part of the original submission for me. I hadn’t thought much about it, and felt suddenly asked to provide art, cover copy, and aesthetic decisions about color and font. I had no image of the book, and knew no artists to help. I also couldn’t find examples of the various fonts, and no publisher provided recognizable examples.
I was writing local history, so went through photographs I had available to find something I thought might work that had no problems with permissions or privacy. I didn’t know the legal guidelines, but I limited myself to photographs taken by me or my father. I’ve since heard some commercial publishers require signed waivers from anyone whose face appears on a cover. Most on demand publishers don’t provide this legal information. Instead, they put a number of clauses in their contracts that protect them from your ignorance.
Next I found someone in the yellow pages who could digitize 50-year-old slides. I told him what I was using the pictures for, but had not yet received the specification that defined the file type and minimum pixel density. He was a professional and gave me what I needed (TIF files). I later learned it was the wrong color convention, but could be converted. I don’t remember that being in any specification.
I don’t have professional photography layout software, but I did mockups for my high school newspaper. I found my best method for refining the cover text was to insert a book-sized box in a WordPerfect document, then allot space for pictures, a company logo and bar-code. You may have been on the yearbook staff and might get similar results by cutting blocks of paper.
I typed my cover text in a font size I thought would work, and discovered it didn’t fit, even though it was less than the prescribed number of words. Because physical appearance was more important than content, the rewrite became an exercise in poetry. Working with the graphic representation stimulated a different part of my imagination.
Publishers offer to write the back cover text for a price, but I was skeptical anyone was going to think about my book in the same way I discovered I could. At best, it would be worth it if they would start from my concept and polish it. Thinking anyone is going to understand your work as well as you is as naive as thinking any of them are going to pluck your manuscript from the mire and promote it into a best seller. Even writers published by major commercial publishers complain about the transformations that occur when designers only follow the conventions of the market.
Some publishers offer to design your cover for a price; others offer basic templates that have predetermined blocks where their designer inserts the picture and text. The latter changes the design process into something analogous to looking at group picture mats in the hobby store and picking the one that will work best with your family photographs and wall decor.
One publisher specified the pictures you sent had to already be the exact size of the template block. This requires you have the necessary software and experience. If you don’t, then the cost of paying a professional, yours or theirs, is required. Photoshop, the best known of the layout packages, lists at about $600. I used the software that came with my camera; it may have been free, but the camera wasn’t. My biggest problem was the manual had long disappeared and it took hours of trial and error to learn it well enough to use.
I cropped and enlarged the pictures to create objects (JPG files) I could insert into my word processor mockup. I played with WordPerfect’s color wheel, which is available under the "more" option of the highlight button. I tried one color after another for the background in the text box until I found the one that worked with my pictures. I then changed the font colors until I found something that looked OK.
I sent my mockups along with the original TIF files created by the professional and the formulas for the colors with my submission package. The pictures in the mockups weren’t usable because, in my ignorance, I destroyed the reproduction quality of the images, but their intent had always been a means to communicate vision.
My mockups didn’t fit any one template, and the company offered a service upgrade. I realized the cover is another of those potential vanity snares. You need to know how you’re going to distribute your book. If it’s going to be sold at a community booth a simple cover will work. If you’re going to sell it with a seminar you offer you may need more.
I looked at the ads in the New York Review of Books and discovered covers didn’t attract my attention and that most large publishers have fairly simple ones that still look good when they’re shrunk for promotions. Indeed, many don’t use pictures, but sophisticated freeform fonts. The only time a book jacket might be important is if you place it in a bookstore or souvenir shop where you need to catch someone’s eye before you can sell to him or her.
I decided I could live with a template, so long as they reproduced my colors and croppings.
I was surprised at how happy I was when I finally beheld a copy of the finished book, and the flat proof page was changed into three-dimensions with a glossy surface. I discovered I cared very much that the book look like a book and feel like a book.
My satisfaction with the book as an object comes from those choices I made that panicky weekend when I prepared my submission. I realize now it had become a matter of stepping up to the challenges of new software tools, and mine were primitive, or live with the work of others who wouldn’t be able to devote the hours I did to my project. Choosing the options that provided the most control within the skills I could develop was the root of my pleasure.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Self Publishing - Part 2 - Text
Commercial publishers provide services, at least to their more famous authors, that handle every step from editing to marketing. Some even suspect the writing. They often use outside printers. On demand publishers, essentially, take over the functions of the job shop, and leave the rest to you.
The tasks you assume require some knowledge and some computer software, most likely Microsoft Word and Adobe Reader. Before you dismiss services as so many high-priced automotive accessories, consider what it would cost to do something yourself, and how important it is to be done well. Remember, even your nearest and dearest will resent buying a sloppy product.
The first step is the editorial work. To writers this should be the easiest. I had a manuscript I was comfortable with, so didn’t care about editorial services. Actually, I wouldn’t have minded a skilled editor, but I thought my chances of getting one were slim. I’ve rarely found someone who could do critical reading as well as I needed, but then I’ve worked as a technical editor and taught English composition and can do the basic work myself.
If it’s been years since you worried about grammar and punctuation, the surcharge may be worth it. One thing many don’t advertise is the cost of errors. Many publishers invoice you for every correction they make, once the manuscript is accepted. I discovered my space bar had stuck and my spell checker hadn’t caught problems when words merged with dates. The bill for putting back the spaces was $2.00 a space, plus baseline fees.
Other skills in the editorial process that are not disclosed are the techniques used for revisions. My publisher sent the proof in an Adobe file. For the first galleys, I read 500 pages aloud from my small screen. For the second iteration, I printed it and read the typescript. For the final, I only ready the pages where I expected corrections. It doesn’t take long to learn how to "go to" specific pages in a PDF document, or to print them out.
The method for requesting corrections was another matter. My publisher expected me to enter them into a Word table. It took me a while to figure out how to manipulate the table features, then I had the usual problems with Word converting initial letters into capitals. If I didn’t catch the inadvertent changes then the publisher’s literal minded clerk put unwanted capitals into the manuscript, and I had to pay to have my text restored.
A hard copy option for corrections exists, for a price.
Once you consider the tariff for mistakes, professional help may be a good investment. Mine finally ran to about $300. If you live near a college, there’s always a pool of talented, conscientious people who need money who post their names in the copy shops. Alas, there’s also a pool of the untalented or avaricious. If you discover this is what you’ve got, remember it’s probably easier to break a contract with a local than with your publisher, and you have less to lose in the battle.
The proffered levels of help range from simple proofreading and grammar checking to something more. One offered referrals to ghostwriters, and some will type your manuscript.
The second step is preparing the submission package. Most companies ask for the same things: a manuscript, cover art, and cover text. Essays for a web site are required if that is part of the marketing service they provide, not just for you, but for themselves. I learned the last could be changed later without penalty.
Most companies take your manuscript and prepare it for the text publishing software. That is, they do the aesthetic work - change the fonts, add page numbers and page headers, chapter breaks. However, the fine print for one company required the writer send a print ready manuscript. The usual service was an option for every price level.
What "print ready" appears to mean is that you take your manuscript and convert the paragraph structure to the standard indented first line you see in most novels, not the blank space and flush first line used in scientific writing and this column. Then, I assume you do all those formatting changes that make a page look like a book, and finally save the results in a PDF format.
The current list price for Adobe software that will produce, not just read, a PDF file is $450, about the price you’d pay for the base package from a number of publishers. If you already own the software or have a future need for it, then you can weigh various costs. Otherwise, select a publisher that only requires a Word or text file.
However, beware there are still potential problems. My publisher claimed all I needed to submit was an electronic document and it would do the rest. I had problems when it transformed my scientific style paragraphs and there were block quotations in the paragraphs. The software assumed the sentence following the quotation was a new paragraph and that every quotation ended a paragraph. I could not get my publisher to correct problems when the quotation was, in fact, embedded in a continuing paragraph, and I had to refuse accepting the final proofs until some paragraphs were corrected.
My second problem came with my word processor. I use WordPerfect. I had Word translate the text which introduced more errors than if I had let WordPerfect do the conversion. Special characters were not interpreted correctly, including double and single quotation marks, dashes, cent signs, British pound signs, and some special letters in foreign languages. The usual French and Spanish letters like ç and ñ presented no problems.
During the production process, my publisher allowed me to separate my errors from its, and only pay for the former. What I discovered was that it was much easier to get my errors corrected than its. I was still trying to get some special characters corrected when I refused to accept the final proof. The most egregious were Riga and Kyoto, with a club in the Latvian word and an omega in the Japanese. In the end, Riga appeared without a line over the i, while Kyoto had the proper line over the first o. As happened at several critical stages, I ended up having to accept less than I wanted to get the book out.
Most of my serious problems could have been avoided if my publisher had assumed an author was capable of doing some of the preparation. It needed to provide two levels of customer support, one for people whose computer literacy was limited to email, typing a manuscript and shopping on-line, and another for people like me with some experience with computers.
The best defense is to try to get technical specifications from as many publishers as you can, and assume the rules for one apply to all. Then, reformat the manuscript into the standard paragraph form, making sure you use what are called curly single and double quotation marks. If you have special characters, make a list and include it with the submission as a warning.
Don’t go any farther. Formatting directions are part of the information you send with the manuscript, not embed in it. It’s a good idea to play with the various formats and fonts available with your word processor, but only so you understand the questions asked by your publisher.
Remember, at this point, your only audience is a computer program manipulated by a technician who is not paid to read your book. It is always easier for everyone if you send a simple manuscript with accompanying notes, rather than introduce problems by trying to do formatting that may look beautiful, but is not what the computer expects.
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Self Publishing - Part 1 - Selection
Like some 30,000 other people a year, I recently decided it was time to do more than write a book. It was time to be published.
Since I’m no longer affiliated with an academic institution and its hierarchy of snobberies that pass for tenure requirements, I didn’t care if it was an act of vanity. I soon discovered there’s a more dignified name these days: publishing on demand.
I noticed in a recent issue of The New York Review of Books that several of the major electronic publishers listed books in the small press advertisement. The books they selected, or, more likely the ones whose authors paid for marketing services, tended to be books I would actually want to read.
Something is obviously wrong with the publishing industry if the independents are more interesting than the commercial and the academic. We can all make educated guesses about the influence of conglomerate ownerships and books treated as cost centers. The internet, or more specifically computers, have reintroduced the diversity that existed in the past.
When I began, I wanted to know which company to use, and, more particularly, if any, or the industry as a whole, were a scam. I didn’t find much useful information on the internet. Since there were no reports from states’ attorneys general, I assumed the industry was legitimate. A friend gave me a writer’s magazine, but its article was promotion. It would never name names lest it offend potential advertisers.
I later realized these bastions of consumer protection couldn’t work. When I got angry at my publisher for its multiple near breaches of contract, I realized the cost to sue would be greater than the cost of the book. One appeal of the publishers on demand is their affordability, which means they attract customers who don’t have resources to fight back. The absence of legal actions means nothing.
When I was looking, I couldn’t find any comparisons on the web. I’ve since heard Mark Levine has published one that’s available for a small price. His focus is the legal contract and rights the author retains to his or her manuscript. Many web commentators made the same point: avoid any publisher who makes any proprietary claims to your work. You want to be able to change publishers quickly if you happen to be successful.
A year ago, only Morris Rosenthal made any recommendations for free. He lumped all the companies together, and said it didn’t matter which you selected because they all used the same technology. They made their profit from bogus services, and the main criteria should be price. He suggested their biggest snare was your Cinderella dream that someone would do what a commercial publisher had not, discover you were the next best seller or Nobel prize winner.
He is technically correct. But, it is a service you are buying, not a generic object in a plain brown wrapper. And there are very real differences in what you get.
The way to begin, at least for me, is to define what you need and what you expect. One publisher required a copy of the manuscript before it accepted it. While it suggested it was reading it, its main concern was eliminating pornography, libel and books that didn’t have enough sales potential. These included children’s picture books, religious testimonials, and some kinds of fiction. Some publishers don’t do poetry or cookbooks because of difficulties with formatting.
Even though I had jettisoned prejudices against vanity presses, I found I still cared about the company I kept, and thought I would be more comfortable with a publisher that was a little discriminating in what it accepted. I didn’t much want to show up next to a porn sight in an alphabetical list of authors, although it might increase my sales.
Other writers are interested in royalties and selling prices. There are differences between companies, but with a typical company, you need to sell at least 100 books to break even on a $500 investment in a 250 page book sold through the publisher’s website. It’s 200 books if you sell through other outlets, like bookstores.
Lest that sound easy, Lee Goldberg quotes some Publisher’s Weekly numbers that less than half a percent of the books put out by the largest self-publisher sells 500 copies in a year. My initial investment translated into 300 books sold through both kinds of outlets. Add-on costs took that to 450 books before I even had something to hawk.
I didn’t expect to break even on the project, and so did not worry about who had the best or most efficient royalty effort. I simply assumed picking a larger company might be a guarantee against the rapaciousness found in the music industry.
I wanted the book to have enough respectability to be acceptable to town librarians, a group I considered to be discerning about quality. That meant it had to have the attributes of a commercial book., an ISBN number, a copyright, and Library of Congress citation.
Everyone offers the ISBN, along with on-line availability through Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Borders in a modestly priced package. They profit on your sales, and so they want to make sure it can be purchased. Cheaper options exist and are ideal for family, club or community projects.
The other items I valued were options, and not offered by everyone. One publisher said it didn’t bother with the copyright office or Library of Congress because you could do it yourself and gave web site addresses.
It’s true you can do the copyright yourself. The copyright office tells you the basic cost is two copies of your book plus a fee. I figured that came to about $100 for my book, if I did it myself. Anything in the option price above that was overhead and profit. If it was not exorbitant, I was willing to pay for the convenience.
The Library of Congress web site refers only to submissions by a publisher. Further it says that while it will provide a pre-publication control number for any submitted book, it will not consider it for inclusion in the collection and catalog card unless it’s a hardcover. That requirement narrowed my options to publishers who offered both the LC registration and a hardcover option.
My next decision was based on what was required to submit a book. I called or wrote to different publishers for specific information about formats. Some refused to send information without repeated requests; some sent advertising and not technical specifications. I decided how they responded to my questions was probably a useful indicator of the service I would receive and eliminated some more companies from my list.
I subsequently realized this is the single most important element in satisfaction with the publisher. I did not have a single customer service rep who answered email, and when I coerced them to answer, found none could implement my sanctioned requests with the production department.
If you don’t like the response from the sales person who handles your inquiries, do not expect things to improve, and don’t be surprised it things deteriorate once the company has your money, which most demand at the time you sign the contract.
Once I had my list of potential publishers winnowed to those who offered what I wanted at a reasonable price, I compared the available methods for submitting the manuscript. I live in a rural area with poor internet service and a manuscript that was potentially too big to transfer without corruption. Some companies would allow me to mail them the manuscript on a disc, some refused, and some wanted to charge a hefty fee for what is ultimately five minutes work transferring files from one media to another. That became my final criteria, and effectively narrowed my choice to one.
Sources:
Copyright registration, see copyright.gov.
Goldberg, Lee. Quoted by Morris Rosenthal.
Levine, Mark. The Fine Print of Self-Publishing, available at book-publishers-compared.com.
Library of Congress registration, see pen.loc.gov.
Rosenthal, Morris. 2005. Several columns at fonerbooks.com.
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Dance - Part 1 - The Nutcracker
It’s that time of year again - pumpkins are replaced with sugarplums, and we get our annual dose of culture with the obligatory Nutcracker. For several years now, I’ve respond by choreographing a version in my head that abandons pandering to children and rescues it from the implicit association that art must be sweetened for the obese masses.
My premise is quite simple. Instead of one company, use a different troop for each dance. Eliminate the boredom of a single choreographer who can only identify different styles of dance with props like fans and chopsticks; replace it with the real thing. Every person on stage must be able to dance. No more cameos for patrons and their brats
It’s easy to see act two. Imagine, a flamenco company doing the Spanish dance, a group of belly dancers doing the Arab, a Ukranian folk troop doing the Russian dance. For the Chinese, I’d recruit one of those dragon dance groups I associate with New Year’s celebrations.
The snow scene is easy to visualize - a genuine full classical corps de ballet, with soloists, pas de deux, pas de trois, and other combinations, all in white tutus, all women. When the choral part begins, the singers enter in the rear. Of course the music is live. The women are in full length tutus and ballet shoes, the men in white pants, white turtlenecks, silver tunics and jazz shoes. The men are the ones who pull the ice sleigh at the end of the scene.
Staging the rest of the ballet requires thinking about the narrative. I would set it in contemporary times, and have four children. The curtain would open on a living room with Clara in jeans combing the hair of her younger sister Cora. Her older sister, Carla, would be on the sofa at stage left rear with her hair in huge curlers, talking on a phone with a long cord using moves reminiscent of those from 1950s Broadway shows. Fritz is dressed and playing with his truck.
The Drosselmeyer catering firm is finishing its set up to the right. The company sent two black dancers. The male rushes over to add finishing touches to a theater arch downstage left; the maid fusses over the small table with a punch bowl downstage right. Please, no complaints about racial stereotypes: this is a snobbish, upperclass home that hires the underclasses.
The mother comes in, shoos off Carla and Clara, sends the caterers to their places behind the table, then takes her position with Cora and Fritz. Guests arrive. The men gravitate to the drink table and demonstrate golf swings, the older boys upstage left feint basketball moves, the young boys downstage take turns showing off to each other, perhaps a clogger, a shoeplotten, a Michael Jackson imitation. Her husband joins the men, the daughters drift in when they’ve changed costumes. The women’s ritual of air kissing is exaggerated when each new woman and female child joins the reception line.
The guests would include one couple with two teen-age children, one a boy for Carla, the other Carla’s confidant. A second couple would have two boys, one for Carla’s confidant, one for Fritz. The third would have two young children, one for Fritz, one for Cora. No one for Clara.
The adults are professional ballroom dancers. After the initial formal circle dance, each would get a solo spin doing a different style. Some might not fit the music as well as waltzes, but I’m sure salsa or tango dancers know how to adapt. The teenagers could demonstrate what ever is the current teenage jazzy dance.
It’s while the teenagers are dancing that Fritz begins fighting with his two friends, and the male caterer rushes over to start the entertainment - the dancing dolls. The first is a native American for Fritz, maybe a Hoop Dancer. The second is a statuesque Martha Graham dancer for Carla, who uses Carla and her friend as assistants, all dressed in the flowing Greek gowns we associate with that style. The last is a Black tap dancer who does a Bojangles routine to Cora and her friend’s Shirley Temples.
Nothing for Clara. The caterer realizes the problem, and pulls the nutcracker from under the drink table. Fritz gets petulant, and breaks it. The guests realize it’s time to leave. While the caterers are removing the table, the mother walks off with Cora and Fritz making faces at each other behind her back. The father gives his arm to Carla and they do a high strutting cake walk off stage.
No one notices the child in the middle, Clara, who settles down on the sofa to repair her nutcracker.
When the stage is empty, the caterers do their mock minuet followed by jitterbug dancing of the kind seen in pictures of Negro dance troops from the 1930s and 1940s. Clara applauds; he gives her a huge hush sign and they exit. Stage lights come down, then blink on and off as the tree in the center rear grows.
When the lights come back on, there are two dolls in fluffy tutus by the tree, one on each arm of the nutcracker. The three dolls from the party scene are posed outside the arch. A troop of soldiers stands or kneels in rows to the right.
The mice begin sneaking in while the dolls do their mechanical toy pas de trois. They are acrobats who have all the best parts as they gambol, form pyramids and leap around the soldiers. When they get too near the doll arch, those dancers protect themselves with karate style moves; the mice roll around, play leapfrog. The toy soldiers start to move, but fall like dominos when the mice tease them. It’s the comedy of insouciance against rigid authority.
The mouse king enters to great bows by his subjects, strides over to the nutcracker, picks him up and starts to toss him about. At this time, the part is danced by a teenage boy. Clara fells the mouse king, the nutcracker rolls over, and the toy soldiers right themselves. They are male dancers recruited from Broadway. They use a high kick line to push off the mice, then get a full chorus line turn.
Clara repairs the nutcracker again, and the two young dancers get a short pas de deux before the exit for the snow scene. Clara must be old enough to wear pointe shoes.
The opening of the second act is always difficult. It’s now set in the tropics with a backdrop of jungle vegetation. Oil or candles burn on tall columns. The curtain opens with a troop of southeast Asian dancers in ornate golden, jeweled costumes. Everything is meant to contrast with the cold north of the first act. Clara and the nutcracker, now adult dancers, enter in a sleigh that’s been transformed into a golden gondola pulled by black panthers.
After the ritual four dances, a troop of Afro-Cuban or African dancers enter. No more Mother Goose. Towards the end, the candles burn out, and the sky begins to lighten for dawn. The dancers leave the pair alone on stage.
Then, the jungle comes alive. The waltz of the flowers is given to a mixed company that can do Balanchine romantic ensemble work. The women are jungle flowers, the men in greens. Then the sugar plum fairy’s danced by a jungle queen, and the pas de deux by the adult Clara and her nutcracker prince. Towards the end, the cats return, and the flowers retreat. The panthers are male dancers, modern or classical, who do the male corps work we haven’t seen before.
For the finale, the couple returns to the gondola which is moved to the far right, and selected members of each group return for the farewells. There’s no reason people from the first act can’t also join this scene. Indeed, a few mice tumble across and land at the feet of the panthers, look up, quickly assume a passive position on the floor. The caterer and maid appear last to let us know Drosselmeyer has brought us this entertainment. He brings back young Clara and her nutcracker for a final turn before the curtain closes.
This kind of dance extravaganza is only possible in a few places like New York where there are so many kinds of dancers or Washington where embassies send their best. They’re probably also the only places with enough wealthy patrons to pay the price of admission.
Realistically, the stage manager would need to be saint. The producer’s legal firm would have gargantuan headaches getting so many prima donas to come together for such small parts and accept a Les Trocs clause, no bows during the performance. Don’t think about dressing rooms. And, as I’ve said, many of the dancers would have problems fitting their work to the Tchaikovsky score. But that union of talents is part of the fantasy that makes this a celebration of the spirit of dance.
My premise is quite simple. Instead of one company, use a different troop for each dance. Eliminate the boredom of a single choreographer who can only identify different styles of dance with props like fans and chopsticks; replace it with the real thing. Every person on stage must be able to dance. No more cameos for patrons and their brats
It’s easy to see act two. Imagine, a flamenco company doing the Spanish dance, a group of belly dancers doing the Arab, a Ukranian folk troop doing the Russian dance. For the Chinese, I’d recruit one of those dragon dance groups I associate with New Year’s celebrations.
The snow scene is easy to visualize - a genuine full classical corps de ballet, with soloists, pas de deux, pas de trois, and other combinations, all in white tutus, all women. When the choral part begins, the singers enter in the rear. Of course the music is live. The women are in full length tutus and ballet shoes, the men in white pants, white turtlenecks, silver tunics and jazz shoes. The men are the ones who pull the ice sleigh at the end of the scene.
Staging the rest of the ballet requires thinking about the narrative. I would set it in contemporary times, and have four children. The curtain would open on a living room with Clara in jeans combing the hair of her younger sister Cora. Her older sister, Carla, would be on the sofa at stage left rear with her hair in huge curlers, talking on a phone with a long cord using moves reminiscent of those from 1950s Broadway shows. Fritz is dressed and playing with his truck.
The Drosselmeyer catering firm is finishing its set up to the right. The company sent two black dancers. The male rushes over to add finishing touches to a theater arch downstage left; the maid fusses over the small table with a punch bowl downstage right. Please, no complaints about racial stereotypes: this is a snobbish, upperclass home that hires the underclasses.
The mother comes in, shoos off Carla and Clara, sends the caterers to their places behind the table, then takes her position with Cora and Fritz. Guests arrive. The men gravitate to the drink table and demonstrate golf swings, the older boys upstage left feint basketball moves, the young boys downstage take turns showing off to each other, perhaps a clogger, a shoeplotten, a Michael Jackson imitation. Her husband joins the men, the daughters drift in when they’ve changed costumes. The women’s ritual of air kissing is exaggerated when each new woman and female child joins the reception line.
The guests would include one couple with two teen-age children, one a boy for Carla, the other Carla’s confidant. A second couple would have two boys, one for Carla’s confidant, one for Fritz. The third would have two young children, one for Fritz, one for Cora. No one for Clara.
The adults are professional ballroom dancers. After the initial formal circle dance, each would get a solo spin doing a different style. Some might not fit the music as well as waltzes, but I’m sure salsa or tango dancers know how to adapt. The teenagers could demonstrate what ever is the current teenage jazzy dance.
It’s while the teenagers are dancing that Fritz begins fighting with his two friends, and the male caterer rushes over to start the entertainment - the dancing dolls. The first is a native American for Fritz, maybe a Hoop Dancer. The second is a statuesque Martha Graham dancer for Carla, who uses Carla and her friend as assistants, all dressed in the flowing Greek gowns we associate with that style. The last is a Black tap dancer who does a Bojangles routine to Cora and her friend’s Shirley Temples.
Nothing for Clara. The caterer realizes the problem, and pulls the nutcracker from under the drink table. Fritz gets petulant, and breaks it. The guests realize it’s time to leave. While the caterers are removing the table, the mother walks off with Cora and Fritz making faces at each other behind her back. The father gives his arm to Carla and they do a high strutting cake walk off stage.
No one notices the child in the middle, Clara, who settles down on the sofa to repair her nutcracker.
When the stage is empty, the caterers do their mock minuet followed by jitterbug dancing of the kind seen in pictures of Negro dance troops from the 1930s and 1940s. Clara applauds; he gives her a huge hush sign and they exit. Stage lights come down, then blink on and off as the tree in the center rear grows.
When the lights come back on, there are two dolls in fluffy tutus by the tree, one on each arm of the nutcracker. The three dolls from the party scene are posed outside the arch. A troop of soldiers stands or kneels in rows to the right.
The mice begin sneaking in while the dolls do their mechanical toy pas de trois. They are acrobats who have all the best parts as they gambol, form pyramids and leap around the soldiers. When they get too near the doll arch, those dancers protect themselves with karate style moves; the mice roll around, play leapfrog. The toy soldiers start to move, but fall like dominos when the mice tease them. It’s the comedy of insouciance against rigid authority.
The mouse king enters to great bows by his subjects, strides over to the nutcracker, picks him up and starts to toss him about. At this time, the part is danced by a teenage boy. Clara fells the mouse king, the nutcracker rolls over, and the toy soldiers right themselves. They are male dancers recruited from Broadway. They use a high kick line to push off the mice, then get a full chorus line turn.
Clara repairs the nutcracker again, and the two young dancers get a short pas de deux before the exit for the snow scene. Clara must be old enough to wear pointe shoes.
The opening of the second act is always difficult. It’s now set in the tropics with a backdrop of jungle vegetation. Oil or candles burn on tall columns. The curtain opens with a troop of southeast Asian dancers in ornate golden, jeweled costumes. Everything is meant to contrast with the cold north of the first act. Clara and the nutcracker, now adult dancers, enter in a sleigh that’s been transformed into a golden gondola pulled by black panthers.
After the ritual four dances, a troop of Afro-Cuban or African dancers enter. No more Mother Goose. Towards the end, the candles burn out, and the sky begins to lighten for dawn. The dancers leave the pair alone on stage.
Then, the jungle comes alive. The waltz of the flowers is given to a mixed company that can do Balanchine romantic ensemble work. The women are jungle flowers, the men in greens. Then the sugar plum fairy’s danced by a jungle queen, and the pas de deux by the adult Clara and her nutcracker prince. Towards the end, the cats return, and the flowers retreat. The panthers are male dancers, modern or classical, who do the male corps work we haven’t seen before.
For the finale, the couple returns to the gondola which is moved to the far right, and selected members of each group return for the farewells. There’s no reason people from the first act can’t also join this scene. Indeed, a few mice tumble across and land at the feet of the panthers, look up, quickly assume a passive position on the floor. The caterer and maid appear last to let us know Drosselmeyer has brought us this entertainment. He brings back young Clara and her nutcracker for a final turn before the curtain closes.
This kind of dance extravaganza is only possible in a few places like New York where there are so many kinds of dancers or Washington where embassies send their best. They’re probably also the only places with enough wealthy patrons to pay the price of admission.
Realistically, the stage manager would need to be saint. The producer’s legal firm would have gargantuan headaches getting so many prima donas to come together for such small parts and accept a Les Trocs clause, no bows during the performance. Don’t think about dressing rooms. And, as I’ve said, many of the dancers would have problems fitting their work to the Tchaikovsky score. But that union of talents is part of the fantasy that makes this a celebration of the spirit of dance.
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Language - Part 3 - Politics
Political discourse is all but extinct. This year, it has gone through three phases in election advertising in my area.
In the summer, commercials ran reminding voters that one of the candidates had given money to candidates in other parties to weaken the opposition. The political tricks had been well documented at the time. Still, people complained to the station who aired the commercials forcing it to explain it was required to carry any valid political announcement. It is not clear if the complaints actually came from offended listeners, or were orchestrated by the accused politician, as an attack on anyone who dared recall hard facts.
About a week ago, the political ads aired by that radio station descended to parody with outrageous accusations against candidates from an unknown environmental group, followed by a disclaimer by a better-known group. Since no reputable political group would accuse a politician of selling horsemeat to the French or playing tapes of wounded wolves, I suspect a Machiavellian stealth campaign to build sympathy for the attacked candidate and antipathy for environmentalists.
Now we’re in the final stage of campaigning, and the commercials never mention the party affiliation of the candidates and are produced by unknown organizations, identified only by web addresses. As I head for the poll Tuesday, my head is filled with names disassociated with any useful information.
When the public arena is filled with noise signifying nothing, disquieted voters are left in a state of ennui. Since I left the academic world, I have rarely heard a political comment from any but those who repeat their daily doses of blogs. No doubt, it’s a matter of politeness, an internalized belief that one does not discuss politics or religion in public.
This year it’s different. Several friends have brought up politics, not so much to promote a candidate, but to indicate they’re uncomfortable with what’s going on and really don’t know what to do. I even had a customer begin to express anxiety about the election, until she remembered her manners and apologized.
So far the conversations have gone no farther than initial expressions of anxiety, perhaps because I haven’t made encouraging noises. I suspect I would need to act as a therapist, encouraging them to talk, like the friend who listens to the abused wife or alcoholic grope for her or his first public confession. I’m not that patient about something I care about, and I know, if I said anything, I’d more likely lapse into a diatribe which would harm the friendship.
The destruction of political discourse has gone beyond the public arena to inhibit the private one. When language is neutered so people do not understand what is going on, when any attempt to speak the truth is brutally attacked, they fall back on pre-linguistic verbal tools that express their mood without putting anything directly into words. Unconscious concerns bubble up through the reserves of articulate people and what is alluded to is more potent than words would be.
But language is our means of understanding, and without it we’re incapable of rational acts.
In the summer, commercials ran reminding voters that one of the candidates had given money to candidates in other parties to weaken the opposition. The political tricks had been well documented at the time. Still, people complained to the station who aired the commercials forcing it to explain it was required to carry any valid political announcement. It is not clear if the complaints actually came from offended listeners, or were orchestrated by the accused politician, as an attack on anyone who dared recall hard facts.
About a week ago, the political ads aired by that radio station descended to parody with outrageous accusations against candidates from an unknown environmental group, followed by a disclaimer by a better-known group. Since no reputable political group would accuse a politician of selling horsemeat to the French or playing tapes of wounded wolves, I suspect a Machiavellian stealth campaign to build sympathy for the attacked candidate and antipathy for environmentalists.
Now we’re in the final stage of campaigning, and the commercials never mention the party affiliation of the candidates and are produced by unknown organizations, identified only by web addresses. As I head for the poll Tuesday, my head is filled with names disassociated with any useful information.
When the public arena is filled with noise signifying nothing, disquieted voters are left in a state of ennui. Since I left the academic world, I have rarely heard a political comment from any but those who repeat their daily doses of blogs. No doubt, it’s a matter of politeness, an internalized belief that one does not discuss politics or religion in public.
This year it’s different. Several friends have brought up politics, not so much to promote a candidate, but to indicate they’re uncomfortable with what’s going on and really don’t know what to do. I even had a customer begin to express anxiety about the election, until she remembered her manners and apologized.
So far the conversations have gone no farther than initial expressions of anxiety, perhaps because I haven’t made encouraging noises. I suspect I would need to act as a therapist, encouraging them to talk, like the friend who listens to the abused wife or alcoholic grope for her or his first public confession. I’m not that patient about something I care about, and I know, if I said anything, I’d more likely lapse into a diatribe which would harm the friendship.
The destruction of political discourse has gone beyond the public arena to inhibit the private one. When language is neutered so people do not understand what is going on, when any attempt to speak the truth is brutally attacked, they fall back on pre-linguistic verbal tools that express their mood without putting anything directly into words. Unconscious concerns bubble up through the reserves of articulate people and what is alluded to is more potent than words would be.
But language is our means of understanding, and without it we’re incapable of rational acts.
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