Maggie's Newsletter

August 1 , 2010

Happy August, dear Readers!

If you're new to this site, click here to read a little intro about me and my work and all the fun stuff you'll find here at maggieshayne.com.

Otherwise, read on for the latest news.

I'm just back from the Romance Writers Annual Convention at DisneyWorld, in Orlando. I was gone for an entire week, and I returned home exhausted. It was quite the experience. During the course of the event, I gave away nearly 1500 copies of KILLING ME SOFTLY, a lot of which were autographed first, so my brain and my wrists got a heck of a workout. Fortunately, I took my daughter Lisa with me this year, and she wisely made herself so indispensable that I have no idea how I ever managed to get through a convention without her.

The talk of the conference was electronic publishing, which is changing my industry right before my eyes. Although there are many (indeed most) of you out there still very attached to ink and paper books, there are increasing numbers who are falling in love with the newer formats. And I can see why. It's for the same reason I no longer have a few hundred music CDs stacked in my house, office, and car. Instead, I have an iPod, with every song I could ever want on it. When I want a new one, I click a button, and in a few seconds, it's been added to my collection. I can take ALL my music with me everywhere I go, on a belt clip. Even when I'm going for a jog.

So now the same transformation is happening with books. At the moment, you can have that new book you just realized you wanted, about 30 seconds after realizing you wanted it. And you can carry your entire library with you in your purse. You can have your little device (Nook, or iPad or Kindle or Sony Reader or whatever else you choose) read the book aloud to you if you wish. Imagine the space you'll have in your home if you get rid of all those bookshelves. I currently have every closet filled to capacity, and every shelf overflowing, and more books stacked in boxes in the middle of rooms, because there's nowhere else to put them!)

And yet, books, unlike CDs, are sacred. Books have been around in the same format since the dawn of the written word. They're special, and those who love them have a powerful emotional attachment to the smell of them, the feel of them, the sound of the pages turning. I do not think they'll ever go away. I do think you should hold on to your early print editions, because they're going to be worth money someday. The closest similar thing is vinyl record albums, I think, and even those lack the same since of antiquity. Still, now with the advent of the MP3, vinyl albums are making a comeback, especially among young people, who find the imperfection and scratchiness of that medium add to the richness and character of the song. (I hope readers someday feel the same about typos, at least one of which seems to make it through into every book. With the new electronic editions, we'll likely be able to go in and fix those the instant they're pointed out to us, and they'll be gone forever. Each book will be perfect. Is that a good thing? Stepford Books?)

Anyway, for ink & paper fans, I don't think there's a reason to panic. Books will be around forever. You create the demand for them, so as long as you keep buying them, they'll be around.

For authors, I think we'll be fine. I mean, the world will still need the stories, regardless of the format they end up taking. So the world needs writers to create them. Computers can't quite do that (yet.) And yet, as the hackers figure out ways to outwit the security of the Ebooks, and give away copies hither and yon, our incomes are going to suffer. Musicians had the same problem with file sharing and illegal downloads. But for them, they make a large portion of their money from concert tours, so they were able to weather it. For authors, we don't do concert tours. We do booksignings, and we don't generally charge for that. I think we're going to have to rethink our public speaking schedules and fees to try to make up for the income we lose due to illegal copying of our books.

One real positive I'm seeing--my readers, especially newer ones, who are constantly asking where they can find my early 90's, out of print titles, including the earliest of the Wings in the Night (Twilight) books, will never have that problem again. Already, most if not all are available in at least some of the electronic formats, and soon will be easily available in all of them, at the touch of a button. There will be no such thing as a book going “out of print.”

For publishers, I'm a bit concerned, but not overly. I think the innovators are going to reinvent themselves in ways that ensure they are still the essential middleman on the road to the Ebook Store. It's going to take some imagination though.

For brick & mortar bookstores, I'm actually a far more concerned. To keep an actual bookstore open, the bookseller needs to make enough money to pay the overhead, the space rental costs, the utility bills. They need enough income to buy inventory for the shelves. Customers already go in for a book and find, more often than not, a bookseller saying, “We don't have that, but we can order it.” To which most customers reply (at least inwardly) “If I wanted to order it and wait for shipping, I'd have stayed home and gone to an online store.” This is just the sort of customer ebooks, with their instant downloads, can lure away from the stores.

And yet, I hope bookstores will find ways to remain relevant and lucrative. They could still host readings and appearances by authors, who will have to find something else to sign besides books, (‘cause how do you sign a computer file?) will draw crowds in. Crowds who might very well all be sitting in the audience with their e-readers up and running, and who will, if they like what the author is saying or the excerpt she's reading, will click a button and buy the book immediately. Maybe from that very store, which might be offering a discount that day only. That could work.

As our industry changes, with Barnes & Noble about to go on the auction block, with Dorchester publishing going E-only, with Harlequin Enterprises launching an E-only line, with authors choosing to skip publishers entirely, and just put their works up on Amazon for sale directly to the consumer, and keeping 75% of the cover price, rather then the 8% they've been getting up to now, with everyone I know suddenly discussing which e-reader they have and why theirs is the best one--well, it's a frightening, fascinating, exciting, nerve-wracking time.

I can't stop looking at it, reading about it, discussing it, and watching the changes unfold as I wonder and speculate and guess at where it's all going to end up. Then again, it will never really end up anywhere. Change is the one thing that's constant in this and every other part of life. It's the nature of being human.

Okay, so enough about the industry, let's talk about me.

RWA was busy and exhausting and exciting. Disney was hot and crowded with rude, pushy, grumpy people. Most of the time I was there, I just wanted to come home. Yes, that's a far cry from my usual positive pollyanna attitude, isn't it? I think though, in hindsight, that I have the perfect life here at Serenity with my partner and my dogs, and my work, and when I go away for more than a day or two, I feel disconnected and lost. Like I've been unplugged from my power source, and my battery is slowly running down. Yes, that's it exactly. So I saw some wonderful things, had some fun experiences, caught up with old friends, but I was oh so glad to get back home again.

On the work front, I have to say that one thing from RWA has changed my life. Alexandra Sokoloff's workshop, “Screenwriting Tricks for Authors” based on her book by the same name, which I downloaded immediately. (One of my first ever electronic books on my new iPad.) Now I know I ought to know what I'm doing after 51 books, and I do, and I've been doing the stuff she talked about, but I've been doing it without realizing I was doing it. Yes, all this time. She showed me how to take a few index cards (I use a dry erase board) and with a simple understanding of how blockbuster movies are made, outline my entire book by connecting 8 major scenes. I came home and did so in about 30 minutes. Granted that was for the book I've been working on, so I already knew alot of the scenes. But still, this is going to increase my speed, make synopsis-writing a breeze, and ensure that my books keep getting better and better--everyone better than the one before. That's essential, and harder to achieve the more books I write. So I welcome a powerful new tool to use, and I recommend this book to every writer out there. (And it may or may not work for you. This is very subjective, but it really resonated for me. So try it and see. And no, I'm not getting a commission on her sales!)

So I'm working on TWILIGHT PROPHECY, due on the shelves in May 2011, and I'm thrilling myself with every single page. I can barely drag myself away from the office a lot of the time, and I go around with my head still in the story all day. I just finished a scene that involved corpses in a dusty basement, raising the dead, and heroic character's gut wrenching story arc, and I am in love with this book. I am in love with it. And that's a good thing, as I'm only 100 pages in and it's due in September. But I don't think it's going to be a problem at the rate I'm going. The second it's finished, I intend to dive right into the companion book, TWILIGHT FULFILLMENT which will be released in October 2011.

Suffice to say, work is going well. Better than it has in a very long time. (It hasn't been going badly, mind you, but this experience of being swept away in a haze of creative fire and writing in a delicious, juicy frenzy, is rare and wonderful. It's only happened a handful of times in my career, and I relish it. I wish every book felt like this. Hey, maybe from now on they will. Maybe I've just reached that level in my evolution as a writer! Wouldn't that be great?)

Meanwhile, we're getting fabulous reviews and delightfully brisk sales from the Secrets of Shadow Falls summer trilogy. KILLING ME SOFTLY, has been out since July 1, and KILL ME AGAIN just hit the stands at the beginning of August. Sales are building and word of mouth is buzzing. Thank you, readers, reviewers and bloggers for spreading the word--it's the best way to increase sales and it's more appreciated than you know. KISS ME, KILL ME, the final book of this trilogy will hit the shelves on September 1st, or a few days sooner, and I'm bouncing in anticipation for my 51st novel.

After that, we'll have the spectacular reissue of three of my bestselling Twilight vampire novels, TWILIGHT HUNGER (October,) EDGE OF TWILIGHT (November,) and BLUE TWILIGHT (December) with their delicious new cover art. They, too, will be available in every e-book format, within a few days of their print release dates. Check with your bookstores, and take a look at EHarlequin.com as well.

So all is well. Summer has been hot and gorgeous, busy and fun. Even now, though, I feel it winding down. Despite that it's still in the mid-eighties here in upstate NY, I can smell the barest hint of autumn in the air, and feel it in the early evenings, right around twilight time. And this is the first time I've looked at our seven-day forecast and not seen an endless string of 90's. None, in fact. I love Fall. It's my favorite season, though it tends to be far too short, so I'm going to begin relishing it now, and get a jump on things.

Enjoy the books, my friends. And I'll see you back here in a couple of weeks for the next update, and in the meantime, over at Shayne's Shenanigans (my solo blog, where I just posted a meditation/vision about the meaning of reality that even has me scratching my head) and on Thursdays at Storybroads.com (my group blog) and on Facebook, as always.

And remember, one can never do too much basking. =)

Maggie