Theme-Plot Integration Part 5 - A Great Steampunk Example

We did weeks of Theme-Worldbuilding discussions ranging all over how philosophy shapes our real world, and how whatever philosophical issues (themes) are driving your customer's real world have to be incorporated in the foundation of your fictional world in an "off the nose" way.  And this is the 5th in the Theme-Plot Integration series. 

Theme-Worldbuilding-Plot -- it all has to end up being "of one  piece, a single unified whole when you get done writing.

That is, the issues have to be there, but a direct and forthright discussion of the day's hot topics just isn't amusing when you have to live amid a morass.  You read fiction to get a birds-eye-view of your life, not to relive it! 

Getting that mix right is an artform, a performing artform.

Here are the previous 5 parts of this series: 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-1-never-let.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-2-fallacy.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/12/theme-plot-integration-part-3-fallacy.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/01/theme-plot-integration-part-4-fallacies.html

Now, in November I posted a report on Chicon7 -- the World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago in September 2012.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/11/chicon7-con-report.html

At that convention, I was touring the Dealer's Room and happened to be drawn into a discussion with a fellow who was minding a table -- upon which was the following novel:



As a reviewer, I became interested, and I really liked the pitch for this novel.  It just sounded so very promising that I accepted a review copy.  I'm glad I did.

The Thunderbolt Affair is a "steampunk" novel with a twist -- the technology is more SF than Fantasy, and the History is alternate universe but with a strong logic behind it.  Both the History and the Science "work" in this novel's "worldbuilding."  This sets it apart from other things published under the Steampunk genre label. 

As with all good Steampunk, you get more out of it the more "real" history you know.  Steampunk and other alternate history exercises are a playground for historians as galactic science fiction is a playground for inventive scientists.

So all in all The Thunderbolt Affair is a very worthwhile read, a lot of fun, and a pleasure to return to when you have to put it aside. 

Here's the official back cover copy that so intrigued me, copied from Amazon:
------------QUOTE----------------
“What you will be working on is underhanded, unfair, and damned un-English.”

1887
The British Empire is in danger of collapse and teeters on the brink of war with the Kaiser Reich. Spies and saboteurs play at deadly games in the British shipyards as each side seeks naval superiority.
Ian Rollins is collateral damage in their shadow war. The “accident” and his grievous injuries are about to bring his naval career to an ignominious end. But with the aid of a former Pinkerton detective, a clandestine agent for the Admiralty, a brace of Serbian savants, and one, mostly sober valet, he might survive. If he can master the skills necessary to command the world’s first fully operational combat submarine, the HMS Holland Ram, and protect the secrets of the Thunderbolt.

Historical Note. The Fenian Ram, fictionalized for this novel, does exist and is currently on display at the Paterson Museum in Paterson, NJ.
-----------END QUOTE------------

I don't just rave about novels I discuss in this blog.  I dissect them and look for ways they could be improved.  I look for reasons why a book went to a small publisher rather than a larger house, or vice-versa.  I look for things that enlarge the potential market and things that restrict it to a smaller market.  I look for characteristics of the piece that identifies who will enjoy it -- and who won't. 

I started to read The Thunderbolt Affair -- mostly just because I was given a copy.  I kept on reading because I got caught up in -- ok, yes, I admit it -- the love story. 

I'm a sucker for a good Romance, and the glaring anachronism in this novel of portraying a female mechanic against this Steampunk background just tickles me no end.  Or she may be a technologist -- an implementor who MAKES things, rather than a theorist or researcher who nails the basic science, or an inventor who comes up with new applications of basic science.  She fabricates models and prototypes, and by the way, improves the design as she goes.  A man who loves that woman, loves me! 

I always enjoy the SF novels featuring inventors who just cobble together stuff and get it to work, -- um, sort of work anyway.  Then they improve it.  I love the thinking behind "improving" inventions -- even though I think the worst swearword in the English language today is "Upgrade." 

But then I loved The Thunderbolt Affair for the rich detail of inventing crazy stuff out of nothing much.  I am also a sucker for stories of the improbable accomplished by clever people, sometimes from cleverness, sometimes by accident, sometimes by sheer cussed determination. 

Reading The Thunderbolt Affair was, though, more like reading a great fanfic than like reading a Mass Market Paperback.  I could easily see the structural problems, and even see how the editor should have fixed those problems, but because it was a roaring good story, I didn't care.

Toward the 3/4 point, I realized I had to point you at this novel because it's a vivid example of how to limit your possible readership to a very small group.  You can get this in ebook - and it is worth the ebook price.

The author admits editors told him he had too much technical detail about the things they build (these things include a couple of submarines and some artificial mechanical limbs, even a mechanical eye that eventually should be able to let the wearer "see"). 

The point of the novel, the thing that drove the writer to complete the project, was his love of Steampunk technology, and he wanted to show off what can be done with the basic capabilities and materials of the 1800's and a lot of imagination. 

But beta readers and editors prompted him to trim, cut, condense the technical explanations -- which he said he did.  I think he did, from the way the tech stuff reads.  It's expository lump after expository lump.

But his editors gave bad advice. 

Now, if you're serious about learning to do what I've been describing in this blog since 2006 when I started posting here every Tuesday, go get a copy of The Thunderbolt Affair, read it and take notes, figure out what went wrong inside this writer's mind, and then come back here and finish reading this post.

START FINISHING READING THIS POST HERE AFTER READING THE NOVEL.

OK, now that you've read the novel, and probably some of the reader commentary on Amazon, let's think about what the editor of this novel should have said.

When you are handed a manuscript that has "too much" of something (say for example, too many sex scenes in a Romance -- which is, believe it or not, possible!), do you tell the writer to cut some of those scenes? 

When you are handed a manuscript that has expository lumps, do you tell the writer to trim, reduce, condense or break up the expository lumps?  Is that the cure for expository lumps (and sex scenes are usually expository lumps technically speaking). 

Think about The Thunderbolt Affair -- consider what the full blown technical dissertations on the machinery and ship building must have been like, and why the author wrote them out in full.

I'm betting (though I don't know for a fact) that this kind of expository lump over-kill happens for the same reason that 'too many sex scenes' happens --- it's INTERESTING.

The author is fascinated, interested, engaged, enamored, transported, and somehow fulfilled by these scenes and just massages them over and over and over because it feels good to the author.  The assumption is that if it feels good to the author, it will feel good to ALL READERS.

Nope.  Not the way entertainment works. 

Marion Zimmer Bradley taught an old quotation, so old and oft quoted you have to consider it an adage:  "The book the writer wrote is not the book the reader reads." 

Readers make up their own characters, emotions, even background images, room decorations, clothing, etc. -- they "see" the main characters in their minds, and it doesn't look the way the writer sees it!

How can you convince yourself of this?  Find a graphic artist, show your manuscript and ask the artist (without further input from you) to draw the scene. 

You won't recognize it! 

When you do get anything even a little bit recognizable, it's because you talked to the artist, watched them draw and pointed out changes as they went. 

Here are three examples from my own work:

All 3 of these novels (plus 9 more in the Sime~Gen Universe) are now available in e-book, paper, and 2 in audiobook with 4 more in production at audible.com

Now here's the ONE cover that all the inveterate fans of Sime~Gen agree is most representative of the series. 

This is the omnibus edition (in hardcover and paper) containing House of Zeor, Ambrov Keon, and Zelerod's Doom.

It's also available as a poster from the artist who is the incredibly famous (justifiably so) Todd Lockwood.

http://www.toddlockwood.com/galleries/books/02/sime_gen.shtml

In the poster print, there's no overprinting -- the title and author names, just the gorgeous art.

I got to talk to the artist for a long time, to explain what this character looks like -- and it's close, seriously close, and very much as the fans see it, and the way all the visual artists see it, but not what I see. Still, it's so gorgeous!

In the course of working with the professional editors for these novels, and interacting with the growing fandom surrounding them, I learned much of what I'm showing you how to do here.

Here's the trick that's so important to master. 

When the editor or beta reader tells you there's too much of something, and the cure for that is to CUT THAT SOMETHING -- to reduce the amount of words devoted to it -- that may not be the way to fix the problem the editor or beta reader is having with your material.

Readers, even professional editors, don't necessarily know what's bothering them, though they can point to WHERE it bothered them.

The business of being a professional writer is the business of reverse engineering reader responses to find the cause the reader does not know is there.

Some people learn to do this by having the process explained to them.  Others need concrete examples.  And others have to have it DONE TO their own work by other hands.  Marion Zimmer Bradley did this kind of thing to my own prose -- just took my words and re-did them so they'd work right in a scene. 

Bradley was a talented writer.  I don't think she really knew how she'd learned to do what she did -- she may have been born with this talent.  But I learned from her rewriting of my prose.

So, what do I notice first about The Thunderbolt Affair?

At the half-way point, I looked up and said to myself, "There are three novels here, loosely packed between two covers.  Shaken not stirred.  They just aren't blended properly, but I don't know why."

By the 3/4 point, I realized the author apparently had no clue he had fallen off the conflict line.  Which he had, but by the time I got to the end, I realized where the issue really was.  Theme-Worldbuilding integration, the subject of this series.

Now this is an advanced series.  We've been at this writing craft discussion for 6 years or so, and only if you've been digging back into those posts, or have been following for 6 years, do you see instantly what I mean by "falling off the conflict line" or what I call "the because line." 

However, even if you've mastered your conflict line and how to stay on that because-line, you probably won't know how to "fix" this novel we're discussing.

It's got three distinct because-lines --- and virtually no theme of enough moment to support three plot-lines.

So fixing this because-line issue won't fix this novel and make it salable to the huge market for Steampunk in general, or for Romantic Steampunk! 

Here's what I see after finishing the novel.

We have a sub-strata of the technical because-line -- the British navy stole a submarine, reverse engineered, improved on the design using an outside consultant (Tesla by the way is justly famous in our real world), and built a larger submarine that it then used to avert a war by displaying what a threat that ship could be. 

On top of that (very solid and interesting) foundation, we have a Love Story (main Navy character falls for female mechanic-genius).  Nothing much ever comes of that infatuation on any because line. 

And, disconnected from everything, just puttering along in counterpoint, we have a saboteur and an espionage threat (complete with kidnapping the girl but nothing ever comes of that) and ultimately the theft of the big ship, but NOTHING COMES OF THAT THEFT because the Hero gets the ship back through heroic efforts which are well foreshadowed.

These three separate novels have a few laborious cross-linkages, some "because" connections, but nothing strong enough to drive the three plots together. 

The real author-love is lavished on the technology (which I adore!) and the rest is tossed in on top of that just to make a book -- the whole thing just doesn't crystallize as a single unified entity, a NOVEL.  It's 2 novels and a non-fiction book.

Why?  This author worked so hard, he tried so hard, he's so proud of his work, why doesn't it make a novel?

The three main elements are not INTEGRATED -- they haven't become one thing. 

We know whose story it is, the Captain of the submarine.  We see his career unfold as he becomes the Captain and trains a crew in this new technology.  He falls in love and gets his girl, his promotions, and saves his country while he's at it.  Any writer would be proud of that story! 

The worldbuilding is as sound as it could possibly be -- Steampunk has lacked this dimension of technological plausibility, so what is preventing this thing from solidifying?

You might conclude, from the "because-line" problem, that the novel won't crystallize because while the story is solidly constructed, the plot is not of the same caliber. 

I think that's true.  The plot is not as strong as the story, but why is that?

We have a dynamite action-scene opening with the theft of the little submarine.  Then we follow the little submarine as it is worked on by an outside consultant-genius, concurrently with building another larger submarine.  We have the Captain losing a hand and an eye, and the technologist consultants concurrently working on an artificial limb of the Captain's design.  And we have sporadic attacks by "someone" for "some purpose." 

There's nothing lacking for plot material, so how could it have failed to crystalize?

Go back over those three PLOTs carefully. 

1) Stolen technology improved and employed by a government using foreign national to do improvements.

2) Hero falls in love with fascinating genius-woman mechanic and wins her heart

3) Foreign government spies infiltrate and attempt to steal technology and fail because of Hero and genius-woman

What THEME do these 3 plots have in common? 

If you've got 3 plots, you need 4 themes, but they must be RELATED IN A VERY SPECIFIC STRUCTURAL MANNER.

You need a master theme, and 3 sub-themes or versions of that theme, all leading to a single STATEMENT at the end of the Master Theme in a moment the reader will experience as a REVELATION, boosting the reader to a new level of understanding of "Life, The Universe, And Everything."

The Thunderbolt Affair lacks this commonality of structure created by THEME.

It is as if the author had this IDEA -- "write a steampunk that could actually have happened" -- and then said, well I need a love affair and the Hero has to get his girl, and there's no action after the opening on the theft of the submarine so I'll toss in some spies.  Well, how should this thing end?  The Hero has to do something GRAND (it is steampunk after all; he's got to have some punk in him, break some rules?)  So the author cooked up the spies and a grand plot to steal the submarine again so the hero could save the country from a war.

It's very common to see this kind of thing done by new writers.  Here's "my book" but it's not good enough yet, so "grab this from this other book and throw it in," then grab something else from some other book and toss that in just to keep the plot moving.  And the parts just do not go together because they did not arise organically from a single, central, theme.

Very talented writers do this "theme integration" thing that we've been discussing at such length by innate instinct, never consciously considering theme at all.  Others (like me) have to sort out the threads of ideas, and focus and re-focus on the particular theme I really want to talk about.

So what's the theme in The Thunderbolt Affair?  Don't steal because it'll always come to naught?  Or maybe "If you really need to win, steal first and often?"  Or "Hire the best genius inventor around?"  Or "Genius inventors are all very fine, but you'll lose crown and country if you don't have a daring-do-Hero on tap?" 

Frankly, after reading this book closely, I have no clue what the theme is or what the author wanted it to be.  It says contradictory things all at once, and ends up saying nothing. 

Why do the 3 plots not crystallize, forming a single articulated work of art?  Why is the theme (which I believe the author knows, but doesn't know he hasn't stated) so invisible?

This book has 3 plots -- and not 1 conflict.

The STORY is that of the Captain who succeeds in a) getting a promotion to the new Submariner Service b) getting the girl and c) saving crown and country.  BUT WHO IS TRYING TO PREVENT HIM FROM DOING ANY OF THAT? 

No preventing force, no plot.  There's a great story and no CONFLICT -- without conflict there's no plot.

The author tried to disguise the lack of conflict by tossing in 2 extra plots that shouldn't be there, but those 2 extra plots (whichever 2 of the 3 are the extras) won't mix in properly because they explicate different themes destroying the "composition" of this book.

I can't tell which plots are "extra" because all 3 have equal weight.  In a well constructed work of art, one element dominates all others, each of the other elements supports and explicates the details of the main one, illuminating it from all angles.  The subordinate elements must have lesser "weight" (fewer words) than the unifying and dominating element.

Yes, the spies are trying to prevent launch of the new submarine, and/or to steal it or the new technology (their goal is never made clear), but that's not preventing our Hero the Captain from attaining his goal -- which goal is never made clear.  The Captain doesn't know he has a goal regarding the woman he falls for until way into the book, and nobody is trying to thwart him from "getting the girl."  When she is kidnapped, it's by the spies who want her for her expertise, not to thwart The Captain. 

And so it goes throughout the entire book -- every place there should be a conflict, there is a complication substituted for it.  That's why the thing wanders into loving description of technology during which all progress on all the story lines just stops.  There's no development of an urgent necessity to know how the technology works, and the technology is presented in indigestible lumps of exposition.  Cutting that down won't help.  It would be fascinating reading if we needed to know it -- if there were any suspense causing us to barrel through those explanations determined not to miss the essential clue to the mystery and not let The Hero solve the mystery before The Reader! 

You will find this thematic structure I've been describing above in every great novel that's lasted for generations -- though the older ones are much harder to discern because this structural trick was just being invented when they were propagated.  Reading from Ancient Greece onwards through the Middle Ages, you can see how the rules of this structure were developed stepwise. 

Here are some previous posts with links to other previous posts to study if you haven't followed this.  Also you may, in the course of analyzing The Thunderbolt Affair, discover that you have found an even better way to get your novel to "crystallize" -- to create a unified matrix of artistic statements that move your reader to the core.  If you do, be sure to teach your method.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/10/theme-worldbuilding-integration-part-5.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-use-theme-in-writing-romance.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/05/theme-element-giving-and-receiving.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/08/plot-vs-story.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-to-learn-to-use-theme-as-art.html

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/10/believing-in-happily-ever-after-part-4.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Marketing Fiction In A Changing World Part 2

Part 1 of this series was posted May 26, 2009. 

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/marketing-fiction-in-changing-world.html

Since then, Google invented Google+ which I was sucked into via the hostess of a twitter chat #litchat (which I adore).  That connected me on Google+ with a huge number of writers, and that number has grown to thousands now.

On Google+ a post flew by me (and I didn't snag the name of the poster) which pointed to this website:

http://www.21streeturbanediting.com/

This is an online business staffed by people who will, for a fee, edit your manuscript.  I don't know them, and I have no idea what exactly they do for how much of a fee, or what the value of that might be.  I hope they'll turn up and comment on this post. 

I know a number of freelance editors who do good work with copyediting detail, and with finding continuity errors, factual errors, and even pacing and structural errors (getting a climax in the wrong spot in the word-count). 

But they don't work for publishing houses.  And getting an edit from such a freelance editor doesn't lead to publication.

Last week I introduced you to Azure Boone who had a lot to say about rejection letters:

http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2012/03/dreaded-rejection-letter.html

So after that exchange, Azure and I got to talking about how writers 'break into print' -- and what the real role of an editor is.  She read my 7 part series on "What Is An Editor" and re-evaluated and sharpened her business model for marketing her fiction.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-exactly-is-editing-part-vii-how-do.html   -- has links to previous 6 parts.

So when I saw the post about this business offering editing for a fee -- not entirely a new concept at all -- I thought about the things we've discussed here in previous posts on the changing business model for writers.

It's the entire fiction delivery system that's shifting and changing under the impact of three factors:

a) the Supreme Court decision discussed here: (which I've pointed you to previously)
http://www.sfwa.org/bulletin/articles/thor.htm

b) E-books and mostly the screen technology that makes e-readers like Kindle and Nook - iPhone, iPad, etc - feasible.

c) Accessibility of software that allows individual writers to become publishers, and the hosting of their efforts at websites like smashwords and amazon.com

I keep seeing older people -- often in ophthalmologist's offices and other waiting rooms -- reading Kindle with print set to extra-large, and happily "swiping" to turn the page.  This is very significant - especially when you factor in that you can plug in an earphone and LISTEN to the book being read to you, or buy an audiobook with the book performed by an actor.

In fact, two of my own novels, MOLT BROTHER (the sequel, CITY OF A MILLION LEGENDS is being recorded) and HOUSE OF ZEOR, SIME~GEN #1 (the sequel, UNTO ZEOR, FOREVER, SIME~GEN #2) is being recorded:

So the world changed -- and is still changing.  There's an even bigger impact brewing from internet-delivered TV style video programs, as most young people getting their own apartments are not subscribing to cable at all. 

That's a change in the structure of the delivery system that's been visible to many for 10 years at least. 

What's new between 2009 and today is the way WRITERS are changing to adapt to this new world's fiction delivery system.

Maybe it's the turning of a generation, but I haven't seen that.  I am seeing many writers in their 40's and 50's adapting and changing their business model as fast (sometimes faster) than the world is changing.

And many are just getting into publishing for the first time.

That is remarkable, but because the world has changed so fast, it's possible for someone who is barely 40 to trip over their assumptions about publishing that are obsolete.

There are two separate issues to address: story-craft itself, and marketing. 

These two issues intersect on the editor's desk. 

At that point, the imaginative ramblings of a fertile mind have to be targeted toward a specific market, a readership, a group with something in common.

All the readers who've gotten a Kindle and madly downloaded "free" books over Christmas or some other holiday promotion have learned that self-publishing has two kinds of writers -- those the reader wants to invest their scarce reading time in, and those the reader does not want to pay for, even at FREE as the price.

And it isn't just spelling, punctuation, grammar, and story-continuity errors that repel potential readers. 

All of those corrections go in at the level of the copyediting -- which takes place after EDITING itself.

I just finished editing an anthology titled VAMPIRE'S DILEMMA (doesn't have any story by me in it).  So I have this experience fresh in mind.

I recently read a blog on screenwriting about "coverage" -- a screenwriting term for what novel publishers call editing.

The screenwriting blog said what new self-publishing writers who have decided to self-publish because of the "dreaded rejection letters" they have gotten need to know.

"Coverage" you pay for, even from someone who has worked doing "coverage" for a major production company, isn't necessarily worth what you must pay for it.

"Coverage" differs from 'editing' in that it consists mostly of a form that the script-reader fills out, identifying how well certain mechanical parts of the script are done (such as dialogue, climax placement, A story characters face-time, B story, etc).  "Coverage" doesn't tell the writer what to do to fix the problems, it simply categorizes the problems.  An Editor at a major publishing house will say how to fix the problems to suit the publishing house.

What many beginning writers don't know is that Editors aren't Writing Teachers.

"Coverage" isn't for the writer, either.  "Coverage" is designed to inform a producer if this script is within X number of rewrites of the specific property the producer needs to create the film his backers (putting up money in a gamble to make money) expect.

"Coverage" is designed to sift the slush pile for a particular property that fits exacting -- pre-set -- requirements. 

So, in effect, there is no such thing as "freelance" coverage.  You can pay someone who knows basically what producers they have worked for need, and they can tell you if your script meets such needs -- and finger the points that would have to be rewritten to fit such needs.  They can't assess whether your script CONCEPT will sell.

And it's the same with freelance EDITORS.  They can copyedit -- and if you find you have a lot of copyediting errors, you should use a copyeditor before you send your manuscript for editing.  But the freelance editor can't conform your manuscript to SELL.

The freelance editor works for the writer, not a publisher.

If you can tell the freelance editor that this property is to be submitted to a particular line at a particular publishing house, and that editor has read, studied (or worked for) that line -- they can conform your work to the publisher's requirements.

If you are self-publishing, creating a "line" -- you may be able to give an accomplished and skilled freelance editor a list of your requirements and have them conform your product to your own requirements.

If you know your market and can create a set of requirements, you may find yourself founding a publishing company.

Or, as a freelance writer, you may write, then hire a company like

http://www.21streeturbanediting.com/

to do the editing, possibly another freelance editor to do the copyediting, then pay a techie to conform the manuscript to the requirements at smashwords (pretty simple these days, but still a technical challenge if you're including artwork, charts, graphs, colors, etc), and pay someone to make a cover that will look right at Kindle's thumbnail size, AND pay a publicist who will try to get your product reviewed while you write the next item.

What's happened today, though, is that the sales breakpoint above "free" is 99Cents.  People are buying books that have been through professional editors at the big publishing houses, and are "clean" of most errors for a dollar!  How will they view your product against that quality assurance item? 

Yes, 99cents is the hot-sales price for a reprint.  You'll find a lot of such books on
http://backlistebooks.com  -- along with some higher priced ones like $2.99 for longer works.


I'm a member of Backlist e-Books, but have no idea who these people at the editing shop are.

How many copies of your novel do you have to sell to make back all those costs before you make a single cent?

How many dollars per your work-hour are you going to make from your book after you've paid all these costs and fees? 

Trust me, you'd make more packing grocery bags at the supermarket or collecting grocery carts from the parking lott.

Envision this carefully, then think it all through.

The bottom line is that publishers, agents, editors, etc are worth what you pay them. 

But to pay them, to make your business model function at a profit (albeit a thin margin) you must perfect the writing craft to the point where you do not have to do much rewriting.

To achieve that, you must learn to lay out the piece (story, novel, article) in your mind before you begin to create the words.  The functional components of the story must lock into place (i.e. follow a trope of some sort, even if it's one you invented) before you start typing words.

When you're finished, you have Microsoft's spellcheck and grammar check to find most of your typos, and then a copyediting run for which you need experienced professional input, maybe two or three of those, with no more work required than to tweak some words. 

If you can write 4 books a year -- say 80,000 to 100,000 words apiece -- and make them all appeal to the same readership who will keep coming back for more, after 5 years of sustained effort, you might gross $30,000/year in a good year.

But this world isn't up to supporting that yet.

We are generating the freelance self-publishing writers, and the mechanism for distributing books via smashwords, amazon.com, createspace.com etc.  We're getting the companies that provide just editing (such as the one I'm featuring here which could be gone tomorrow, or be successful and get bought up).

And we're getting the freelance cover art creators, such as Penny Ash, who did the cover for VAMPIRE'S DILEMMA.

We've had freelance publicists working by email for a while -- but as a professional reviewer, I have to say that there are very few of them that I accept books from because of discovering discrepancies between the "pitch" for the book and the book itself.

We have a growing industry of freelance bloggers who do reviews, and many readerships have flocked to them for help in sorting the avalanche of novels pouring out of the e-publishing business. 

What are we missing to make this re-construction of the publishing industry around a new business model actually work?

We're missing the agents.

A writer needs to be able to put her head into her stories and just write -- to produce those 4 books a year (which is a common workload for working writers).  To focus like that, the writer needs an agent to manage this entire circus of other skilled professionals that waft the writer's product to the reader.

And the other thing that exists but isn't yet notched into place in the mechanism in text storytelling is the professional level writing school, or writing teacher.

From the website, I do not see how http://www.21streeturbanediting.com/  distinguishes itself from a writing school.

In my experience, beginning writers think they need an editor's attention when in fact they need a writing teacher.

That's where the bewilderment over the "The Dreaded Rejection Letter" we talked about last week comes from.  The beginner in this industry expects the editor to say what's wrong with the manuscript, not just reject it.

The screenwriting industry seems to have generated a school that is successfully doing this polish coat on the craft of screenwriters.  In fact, I know of three such --
http://www.screenwritingu.com/rewrite_conference4.html

And the Supermentors round table project of
http://www.zicree.com/ 

And blakesnyder.com and the SAVE THE CAT! seminars and books.

These are the serious, and very expensive, entrees to screenwriting (there are others of this type using similar business models).

In screenwriting, though, because there are more ambitious people trying to get into what amounts to a necessarily limited number of working slots, there are a number of very predatory organizations that purport to teach screenwriting or to provide entree to the industry, but who use a business model based on fleecing the innocent by soothing their egos rather than whipping them into shape.

On another front, we have YouTube growing us a generation of skilled videographers and storytellers exhibiting worldclass skills.  Watch the top-hit producers on YouTube and study what you're looking at.  THERE is the generation of a new industry. 

But all these writers create more than any one person could read in a lifetime. 

The next functional component of this business model has to be a replacement for what many call "the gatekeepers" -- the people who decide what will be bought, what will be invested in with the expectation of making a profit, and what will not be invested in.

These "gatekeepers" are the folks who the reader, the person who lays down their money and invests their time, depends on to narrow the choices, and spot the one item that the reader actually wants to spend their evening with.

There is, perhaps, a misconception on the part of the marketers when it comes to marketing fiction. 

If you look at the shifts in the TV cable industry, and how internet delivered TV and video are chopping up the TV market, you will see it.

There are those who market a delivery service (such as Netflix or Amazon Prime, Apple TV) by boasting "we have X hundred thousand films and TV episodes."

They are marketing to people who have free time to kill and just want a distraction.

But most of the readers I know don't read just to fill up time that's heavy on their hands.

People go after a particular product to read because of the payload they expect that specific thing to deliver.

People imbibe fiction for a personal reward -- not to waste away time.

The pace of life has picked up today to the point where people don't have time to read, or watch TV regularly.  We're just too busy and too frantic.  Movies are too expensive (Christmas weekend boxoffice was off this year).

So we see advertisements on TV for the big expensive movies (like WARHORSE), and we go "I want to see that." 

What we see advertised, what comes to us, we "want" and go after.

But what about all the rest of the stuff that we might actually like better -- but don't know exists?

Google is working on tailoring the advertising that appears beside the website you're on or beside your gmail mailbox to have some relevance to what else has captured your interest.  They haven't nailed it yet, but they're making progress.

This political season may see more progress.  I've noticed how political polls have gotten better at predicting winners -- or at least losers.

What we're seeing with advertising and polling is a technical application that may allow self-publishing or small-publishers to target readerships accurately enough to make a real living with the fiction delivery system.

Yes, I know political ads are odious in the extreme, but hold your nose and study them.

They are "romancing" the voter!  It's very aggressive stuff.  But if you penetrate that surface, you will find the "gatekeeper" model behind it all -- the very thing that new writers get so resentful of. 

There is a mathematics behind all this, predicting the behavior of large numbers of people.  It's called Public Relations now, but that's a euphemism.  The mathematics is based on games theory.  (Google "The Overton Window").

There are two sides to this.  A) doing what large numbers of people want from you B) making large numbers of people do what you want from them.

Sound familiar?  Change "large numbers" to "one person" and you could write that sex scene from a pickup in a bar to the morning after.

That's the marketing business, and it's product independent.  It doesn't matter if it's a novel or a politician, marketing works the same.

And they use social networking now -- a tool that's accessible to writers (if only they had time).

What the mathematicians doing "game theory" and the tech companies like Google are trying to figure out is how to be an agent. 

Google apparently wants to be the Agent between product producers (such as writers) and product marketers -- such as the fiction delivery system components I've been discussing here.

But there are some missing pieces to this puzzle of Marketing fiction in a changing world. 

Two things I see missing (that may turn up in 2012 or 2013) are:
A) Ultra-cheap ways of "routing" (or agenting) the right story to the right reader
B) Ultra-accurate ways of determining what will give you want you want or need  so it can be routed to you.

Right now the fiction delivery system is in chaos and thrashing around delivering product at random, trying this, trying that.

The high-budget risk takers are sticking to the old tried-and-true "remakes" and sequels to films that have been hits.  I've already heard folks on twitter complaining about that lack of originality.

Watch YouTube -- there is a new arbiter of taste emerging from the applications of "hit counters" and that Google +1 button -- by counting the responses of people at random, "they" are going to try to replicate what the author's agent has traditionally done.

If you want an image of that task in your mind -- think of what your household "router" does for your computer connection to the internet -- putting several householding devices onto the internet from your single account.

If you don't know how that works, you should learn because I suspect it will be the dominent piece of the puzzle for the next "build" of the fiction delivery system. 

Google is not fooling around here.  It's making money from a) predicting behavior and b) creating behavior  -- and interacting these two processes to "correct" behavior.  (check out Google Chrome and its battle against Windows Explorer)

The highest level tech applications and the smartest people are participating in this remake of the world. 

Every move Google makes changes the Writer's Business Model, and how you market your fiction depends on how "they" change the world. 

If you think that publishing's "gatekeepers" have been an onerous burden, you need to think about the drummers hammering out the beat that the "gatekeepers" dance to. 

Figure out what dance (fictional tropes are just like dances) comes next on the playlist, and get the right shoes (editor) for that dance.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com