Social Networking Is A Learning Tool

Way below I'm including the image of the back cover of an ARC which tells reviewers how the book will be promoted. If you've never seen one, try to load the full size scan.

Last week I showed you some of the connections I had stumbled into via "social networking" and recommended you read some of my previous posts on the Web 2.0 phenomenon.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/04/social-networking-is-not-advertising.html
The impact on society of the Internet and social networking -- and whatever comes next -- is far bigger than anyone now realizes.

We have a violent debate going on worldwide between philosophies. 

The level of violence is exemplified by how Bin Laden was taken out, and the dancing on his grave by those he wronged while others plot revenge for his murder.  In Chess or War, the side that takes out the other side's leadership wins, and violence stops, healing begins.  Not happening this time.

Note that at the time of the take-down of Bin Laden, Mars and Jupiter were conjunct in the sky -- see below for more astrological connection.

Also note how twitter broke the news first because someone in the town where Bin Laden was tweeted about US helicopters overhead, then followed developments until a local news service picked it up.  Only then did US media pick it up.  This is a new world, but humans still do violence the same way for the same reasons.

To have "violence" you have to "polarize" -- or state the topic of debate as two polar opposites.  You have to factor the issues down to just 2 things, and only 2 things, or the majority of people won't understand what you're yelling about and won't care enough to "take sides."

I.Q. 100 is the "norm" because it's the "norm" -- but maybe I.Q. is a totally incorrect way to sort human ability????

That's an issue with so many shades of gray you would not believe what it means unless you study it back to the origins, then follow the developments through the decades.

But it's been shown again and again, that the most powerful "messages" -- such as used in commercials -- are "simple" (sound bytes.)

In film entertainment, often the title and starring actor are forgotten as the "one-liner" ("Make My Day") becomes a household cant.

Remember we're talking ART here not POLITICS; the artist's task is to "see" deeper into matters than most people will at a casual glance, and thus "reveal" hidden truth.

So one of the polarizations I see might be stated thusly using Astrology:

See my posts on Astrology Just For Writers
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/01/astrology-just-for-writers-part-9-high.html

That post has 8 previous posts linked in it.

So using what we learned there, think about the Headlines and think thusly of dichotomies--

We're exploring the anatomy of constructing a Theme in such a way that the plot will sort out into a natural conflict that will come to a natural resolution creating a saleable story you can describe on a social network in such a way that people will know what it is and want to read it.. You can learn best how to do this by examining "reality" and looking to current events to see how people interpret them.

So let's find the natural dichotomies people (even those who don't know Astrology) use to parse the pea-soup of "reality" into a conflict they can understand and take sides about. 

a) 1st House vs. 7th House -- Self vs. Public responsibility

b) 2nd House vs. 8th House -- Personal Values and finances vs. Public, family or collective fiances

c) 4th House vs. 10th House; Safety of "Home and family" stability vs. Vocation, Purpose of Life, Public Reputation

These are dichotomies that are inherent in the structure of human life, whether you "believe in" Astrology or not.  Most other systems of psychology will show you these dichotomies, and those systems work just fine for story-construction.

Remember we're talking ART here not POLITICS; the artist's task is to "see" deeper into matters than most people will at a casual glance, and thus "reveal" hidden truth.

So the futurologist (which the Science Fiction Romance writer needs to be) looks at the impact of social networking, now accused of fomenting riots and government-destruction worldwide, and wonders how to write a story that will still read well 25 years from now.  How do you write a "classic" when the world is spinning like this?

Is it enough to delineate the conflict as this vs. that?  Is this capitalism vs. socialism  -- is the democracy vs. republic?  Is this "the individual can and must govern himself" vs. "the majority has the right and obligation to govern the individual."

What is government for?  Is it for making everyone "safe" especially from themselves? Is it for determining the collective values?  Is it for insuring everyone has enough money for everything? Is it for forcing individuals and especially corporations to live up to their responsibility to the whole society?

Each of those questions can generate a plot-conflict that can tumble to a nice, neat "resolution" -- and in the process reveal many more questions for the reader to think about.

Presenting a reader with a moral dilemma makes the reader memorize your byline (I was asked about that on #bookmarket chat on Twitter and couldn't answer in 140 characters or less.)

That's the trick that both Gene Doucette and Carol Buchanan (both of whom I met on twitter) pulled off with me.

Gene's book, Immortal and Carol's book Gold Under Ice, each left me curious about what more they might say about the moral dilemma their characters were struggling with.  No sooner is one solved, than the solution creates yet another dilemma very relevant to this whole tumbling world we're living in.

I discussed Gene's Immortal here:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/01/constructing-opening-of-action-romance.html

Gene commented on that here:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/01/gene-doucette-discusses-his-novel.html

And I revisited Gene's points in
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2011/04/gene-doucettes-immortal-revisited.html

And here we are again discussing this novel.  I told you then that you needed to read Immortal because it illustrates a decision every writer must make from the heart and from the gut, maybe more than from the mind.

Go quick and read the commentary on "constructing opening of action romance" post linked above.

That commentary raises a social networking issue, the Web 2.0 issue, the issue of the "Indie Publisher" where you find a property like Immortal being right at home, and of the "self publisher" where you mysteriously find books that should have a wider audience, such as Gold Under Ice.

In my post, I pointed out why Immortal is a perfectly turned out novel, solidly executed, and fine just as is. But I could see why this novel could not be accepted by the large, mass market or hardcover publishers, why it would not get big publicity bucks pushing it into your perception with advertising.

The one thing that I personally disliked about Immortal was the use of Point of View -- it used the present progressive for current action and the usual past-tense voice for flashbacks, alternating.  This is what I consider a fancy literary affectation that has no effect other than pure irritation and distraction from the story.

But Gene executed the trick of it perfectly, flawlessly.  I judged it inappropriate artistically, but he made it work artistically, which earned my undying admiration.

Then I went on to completely turn Immortal inside out, rewriting the very structure by changing the point of view, and ignored the literary device gimmick.

I wasn't "reviewing" Immortal, I was dissecting its mechanism to make that writing technique more accessible to the practicing writers who are aiming for a career writing Science Fiction Romance.

That's why the piece was not titled "A Review of Immortal by Gene Doucette."  It was titled Constructing The Opening of Action Romance.

Immortal is not (and was never intended to be) Romance, but it has a sizzling hot love-story in it.

That love story lies there, all potential and very little realization.

The piece I wrote was intended to show you how to create action Romance out of such a story idea simply by changing the point of view to the woman, leaving the man as The Immortal.

I contended that this shift would widen the potential readership into the Mass Market breadth.

People who had read and really loved Immortal just the way it was written (which I never said wasn't great) jumped into the discussion defending book with the feeling that as written it should be a huge best selling success because it's GOOD.

My contention was not that it wasn't good, but that the publishing industry doesn't care that it's good -- only that the main character is incorrectly chosen for a mass market exposure.

To hit mass market, you must have a "sympathetic" and "likeable" (better yet, lovable) main point of view character.

Gene's readers felt that was unfair, wrong, and just plain hostile to his artform, and I was not being reasonable but authoritarian and autocratic.  Nobody used those terms, but I'm bringing them in here because of the "social networking" angle I'm discussing.

I pointed out that I used Immortal for this writing lesson because it is so very, VERY well written that it can be studied, re-engineered, learned from, deconstructed etc -- it's an invaluable resource for the writing student. An example this good is extremely rare.

Now, in July 2011, a book will be published that is almost exactly the novel that I twisted and inverted Immortal into during that writing lesson.

It's super-duper-promoted Mass-Mass marketed by Hyperion.

It's called Original Sin, A Sally Sin Adventure -- Wife, Mother, Spy by Beth McMullen (go pre-order it).

To learn this lesson well, seat it in your subconscious where it can become usable by your artistic processes, do a detailed contrast-compare between Immortal and Original Sin.

The decision you have to make as you write your own novel is what market it is to entertain - and how it is to reach that market.

If you do not have a Best Selling big name byline, you won't get this kind of big promotion from a big publisher for an unsympathetic main character (unless you have some other sort of connection to the decision maker at a publisher. It does pay to go to the right cocktail parties, if that's your objective).

I got Original Sin free from the Amazon Vine program, just because I liked the 1 parag description -- sounded like one of my favorite TV shows, Scarecrow And Mrs. King.  It isn't quite, but it's good.

You should find my review in the stack gathering at Amazon. I gave it 4 stars.

Original Sin: A Sally Sin Adventure

As you read Original Sin (no it's not about Religion, but that's the association the promoters wanted with that title; maybe it was the author's choice) just think of the guy who kidnaps Sally Sin repeatedly as "The Immortal" and think about my twisted rewrite of Immortal.

Instead of writing from the point of view of the unlikeable, nasty, wasted male, write from the reluctantly enamored, fascinated (no, I AM not fascinated by you) female.

Sally Sin is married (not to the kidnapper) and has a 3 year old she adores, and loves her new retired-from-spying life.  But she knows she has enemies. They lurk.  She's paranoid?

Original Sin is written with the same tricky, literary gimmick as Immortal - different verb tenses for flashback and present tense, and it uses the present-progressive that (for me) ruins the narrative.  But it's done exceptionally well, just as with Immortal, so the story, the book, is excellent and it shows.

Original Sin is almost (except it has no fantasy element) the exact same novel as Immortal, but it sold to a top publisher and is getting top-drawer promotion.

This ARC (Advance Reading Copy) for review, is bound like a regular trade paperback, with the cover that will appear on the book, but with printing along the bottom saying ADVANCE READING EDITION - NOT FOR RESALE -- and that warning is there because the text hasn't been copyedited (there are a few typos) nor has it been edited (for continuity and glitches).  But we're trained to read-over the rough spots and ignore them in judging the book - just assume they'll be fixed.

The BACK of the ARC though is always very different from the published book.  The back of an ARC reveals the publisher's plans for promoting the book, a secret from readers.

The idea is that reviewers at newspapers with the widest circulation choose only widely publicized books to review (by decree of the editor or owner of the newspaper - no "obscure" books are allowed in certain papers, or certain columns.)

So the publisher is pitching this novel at the biggest circulation venues for review.

Here is the back cover of the ARC of Original Sin.

Click the image, then when it loads full size, use the + tool to magnify the Marketing Campaign, and you may be able to read it.

The only conspicuous difference between Original Sin and Immortal is the point of view character's likability - the absence of drunkenness in characters that are supposed to be admired, and the upbeat, determined, goal-directed heroic spirit of the point of view character (the exact opposite of Immortal).

In both books, torture, murder, drug dealing, unarmed and armed combat are frequent elements.  Ugly dark stuff happens and is confronted frankly, no punches pulled.

Sally Sin admits she has killed, and even takes us through her memories of being willing to off the bad guys. The only difference between books is her attitude and opinion, and the language she uses in her head when she thinks about these things, which bespeaks her likable personality.

Every mother can identify with her (and most fathers resonate).  Many others can wish to be her because the threats their children face are as formidable as Sally Sin's own enemies, and we all wish we could do what she does to protect our children.

Not so with Immortal.  There's no point of contact offered in Immortal -- and Doucette explains carefully why he chose to do that, and his readers explain vociferously why they enjoy that book so very much.

Again the only difference between these two books is very simply and very clearly - the likability of the main character via the eyes of publishers wanting to hit with a very wide audience.

Certain fans of Immortal will find Sally Sin revolting.  But that's not the point.

Immortal doesn't have this publicity muscle behind it.  Sally Sin does.

When you frame your own novel, think about how the choice of point of view and characterization determine the amount of publicity money that will be devoted to it.

The change that social networking has made in "The Arts" and will continue to make is all about this "publicity money" issue - the business model of publishing that I've been discussing repeatedly the last few years.

The business model of Hyperion requires sympathetic main POV character in order to be worth big bucks publicity.

The business model of Indie Publishing does NOT require the same "lowest common denominator" structure for a novel to hit big time with the readers that can be accessed via social networking.

The self-published has a bigger dilemma.  You must promote with your own money.  I've seen statistics on self-published authors who are selling 1,000 copies a month with only social networking, blogging, etc -- but that kind of sales statistic comes at the price of writing in a "popular genre."  The only successes like that which I know of are in Romance mixed-genre, such as Paranormal Romance.

So, blogging is social networking, and you're reading this blog.  Are you learning?

Immortal might be seen as an example of the conflict dichotomy a) above -- Original Sin might be seen as an example of c).  What do you think? 

Writing exercise: Parse the Bin Laden events into dichotomy b) above. 


Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com (for current novel availability)

Astrology Just For Writers Pt 6 - Targeting A Readership Pt 2

The topic here overlaps and synthesizes two threads I've been developing in the search for means to change the image of SF/Paranormal/Futuristic Romance

Heather did a fabulous summary post of where we are now and how to get where we're going with Romance at
http://www.thegalaxyexpress.net/2009/10/does-science-fiction-romance-need-gene.html?showComment=1255723748380#c6797085517666242508

And I do agree that the prevailing market wisdom indicates we need a new label or BRAND logo for SFR. I think it will be derived from the seminal work that changes the landscape, what she calls the ground zero. (Rock-n-Roll; Punk Rock; Steam Punk, Urban Fantasy, New Wave, etc) That seminal work must have a visual element with an evocative label.

But in whom must it evoke what? Let's step back and take a longer perspective look at our market.

This look is founded in two of my previous posts here (plus all the others -- this is the phase of INSIDE THE WRITER'S MIND where bits and pieces get synthesized.)

Look again at:

1) Astrology Just For Writers Part 5
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/12/astrology-just-for-writers-part-5-high.html

2) Targeting a Readership Part One
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/09/targeting-readership-part-one.html

Now let's explore the use of Astrology over long, sweeping generations to look at what becomes popular among a given age group and why. Remember this post:
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/choosing-age-of-your-protagonist-to-win.html

To synthesize all this into something a writer can use, we have to consider the Essence of Amusement, which is actually a separate topic -- what clicks your pleasure button and why. This is very mystical stuff with a practical application.

Rowena Cherry tickled the edges of "Essence of Amusement" in her musings about what a heroic-devil could and could not do in a novel and retain reader sympathy.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/for-gods-sake-im-kitchen-witch-i-cant.html

There are several discussions going on in the Amazon Communities boards for Romance about which hugely popular authors you just mysteriously don't like, and another about which authors you've stopped reading lately -- very illuminating.

Those Amazon Community Boards readers (you have to have an amazon account I think to get there, but here's the link)
http://www.amazon.com/communities/directory/ref=sv__1
are not reviewing so much as recommending books to each other. For example, there's a thread about "If I loved TWILIGHT, what should I read next?"

Lots of action in the Romance communities there, but I think there's more in the Romance community at Goodreads.com where there are a lot of authors involved.

The Amazon discussions are mostly by readers for readers, which being a reader, I find fascinating and useful.

But they're discussing their personal reaction to this or that novel series (and series are actually as hot right now as publishers seem to think. Readers don't want "the end" -- they want "ongoing adventures of," which makes the HEA ending concept worth re-thinking.)
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/03/beauty-and-beast-constructing-hea.html

If they like some characters or a fictional world, readers want more and more of the same, but they drop the series once it becomes more and more of the same. Just like TV viewers!

Being readers they don't know or care WHY they like or dislike, or gobble or drop, a story or even a writer's entire output. They just want their money's worth of amusement. That seems fair to me. And wise.

Harking back to Rowena's post on dialog snippets:

"Give me a good read!"
"What do you want?"
"How should I know? You're the writer. That's your job."

OK, roll up your sleeves and let's get to the dirty work.

The Essence of Amusement

Why are we amused?

What is amusement?

Why does a writer have to know?

Caution here -- some writers shouldn't know consciously what amuses their readers.

Other writers can't produce good amusement without knowing consciously.

Yet others need a little of this and a little of that to get it right.

Neurolinguistic programming is a scientific discipline trying to find the interface between brain cells and responses. Scientists long ago found a "pleasure center" which can be directly stimulated, even with addictive consequences.

Reading (fiction or non-fiction) either stimulates that pleasure center in some peripheral, possibly intellectual way -- or it turns off some pain center responses. It may do both on occasion to produce the books we "love."

That effect on engaging the imagination to stimulate or overcome some brain circuit signal would likely have remained the same since caveman days. Or maybe before that. 4.4 million years ago, at least, twice as long ago as previously assumed. I need to find out how long ago Pluto was "captured" by our sun, if that's in fact what Pluto is - a Capture.

THIS FROM THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ON HUMAN FOSSIL DISCOVERY - Oct 1, 2009
-------------
The fossil puts to rest the notion, popular since Darwin's time, that a chimpanzee-like missing link—resembling something between humans and today's apes—would eventually be found at the root of the human family tree. Indeed, the new evidence suggests that the study of chimpanzee anatomy and behavior—long used to infer the nature of the earliest human ancestors—is largely irrelevant to understanding our beginnings.
....
The Ardipithecus ramidus fossils were discovered in Ethiopia's harsh Afar desert at a site called Aramis in the Middle Awash region, just 46 miles (74 kilometers) from where Lucy's species, Australopithecus afarensis, was found in 1974. Radiometric dating of two layers of volcanic ash that tightly sandwiched the fossil deposits revealed that Ardi lived 4.4 million years ago.
------------
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091001-oldest-human-skeleton-ardi-missing-link-chimps-ardipithecus-ramidus.html

We are now learning how species shift and evolve abruptly and why -- two reasons: supervolcanos and magnetic polar reversals.

There's a lot of research on evolution of humans that traces a huge genetic shift to the eruption of a supervolcano 70,000 years ago from now. It's a genetic process called a genetic bottleneck, and I did a really short blog post on that at
http://editingcircle.blogspot.com/2009/10/toba-supervolcano-caused-genetic.html

This stuff about evolution and our ability to be amused is seriously primal, as Blake Snyder says (Save The Cat!)all screenplays that "open everywhere" just have to be PRIMAL.

PRIMAL is the key, and nothing is more PRIMAL than sex or violence (or both). Rowena Cherry just dropped a note on her own post
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/10/for-gods-sake-im-kitchen-witch-i-cant.html

Saying:
----------
Recently (as I mentioned on Heather's blog) a study was published that suggested more than 50% of romance readers want more sex in the novels they read.

Also, from my own observations and email exchanges with my Dorchester editor, marketability standards are changing. Some of the traditional "No-nos" are now acceptable.
-----------

If it's PRIMAL it sells -- provided it doesn't totally shatter a taboo. If you don't know about taboos and human culture, study some anthropology.

"Politically Incorrect" is another term for taboo.

In the film world, the term "edgy" means getting up close to the edge of a taboo but just not quite crossing that edge, so the almost-pain of anticipation is titillating, exciting, subconsciously disturbing, but not "run for the exits" pain. Laughter is the response to almost-pain. And laughter is a pleasure in itself. It's the ultimate goal of "amusement." Who doesn't LAUGH at unexpectedly terrific sex?

Done right, an "edgy" film about some social issue or political commentary can titilate the same nerve that gets a tweak from sexuality. "Playing" an audience with symbolism is just like "playing" a sexual partner to a maximized experience.

Well written fiction is configured just like good sex, which is why the ending of a story is called a CLIMAX.

Since films have to have the largest audiences because they are the most expensive to produce and distribute, "primal" has to be the watchword -- so essential an amusement even a caveman could understand.

And with the increasing emphasis on for-profit fiction, writers face a situation where the "edges" of "edgy" are shifting.

What is publicly acceptable has changed for whatever reason: possibly the audience is jaded; possibly a generation drilled in political correctness and sexual openness of the 1960's; possibly other factors such as Astrology may be involved; possibly all of the above.

So as Rowena correctly points out, editors are very aware (via twitter, facebook, myspace, goodreads.com amazon communities boards etc) that half the readers find the amount of raw sexuality in novels does not satisfy their need for amusement. They want more. But half the readers want the same or less!

If you look at the current political polls on approval for some government initiatives, we're right back where we were before 2008; the USA is about equally divided pro and con any issue, with about 15% in the middle apt to lean either way.

That political divide oddly mirrors the "acceptability" for sex in novels. I don't know if it correlates at all -- if the same people who want this political policy want more sex and the people who are against this political policy want less sex, while 15% in the middle are basically satisfied. I doubt anyone has done a study on that question. (who knows what may turn up on the web tomorrow!)

People with a taste for cerebral fiction (like SF or Mystery) don't necessarily also have a distaste for sexuality in fiction.

Cerebral thrills are only going to be sought out by the top 10 percentile rank of human beings, maybe 15 percentile ranks. Movies have to get 100 times cheaper to make in order to turn a profit off the top 15% of humans. The current tech innovations are bringing that target within range but it's not there yet.

Meanwhile, you'll always make more money off a bigger audience, so a writer should ponder how to frame their artistic output to reach the largest possible number of people with whatever the writer has to give.

Remember my post here on Winning a big film prize by choosing the age of your protagonist which I cited above?

Choosing protag's age to win an Oscar
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/06/choosing-age-of-your-protagonist-to-win.html

Audiences are grabbed by a protag they can understand and identify with.

Young people don't understand or identify with old people, and don't want to but old people were once young and understand, identify with, and yearn to BE young people. Old people have their own unique life-issues (remember the film COCOON? And it's precious sequel?) but the life issues of the young are not alien or irrelevant to the older consumer.

At the same time, YOUNG consumers can be swayed by advertising and peer pressure. Older people can not (waste of advertising dollars to target over 40 consumers.)

And that could be a problem we're having with SFR and author-advertising. SFR really targets OLDER people -- a ship's captain, for example, should be over 30 to be plausible, over 40 to be believable however sexy. The age of the protag determines the age of the core readership. You waste your money advertising to the over-40 crowd, but that's the target audience for most SFR. Now what do you do?

Alas, older people are not as easily swayed by peer pressure, either. The older reader doesn't read books because "everybody" is reading them - they read what they like. (odd factoid derived from reading Amazon Community).

In a post inside LINKEDIN I saw a publishing professional explaining to a beginning writer pondering self-publishing that publishing is not a "meritocracy" -- and books that deserve to be published don't necessarily get chosen to be published by the big houses.

That's a very good way to think about it because many working writers today were children reading voraciously when publishing WAS INDEED A MERITOCRACY!!! That's the model we've internalized - if my book OUGHT to be published, it will be. What a shock when it's not.

We've all read older books that became true lifetime favorites, cherished and re-read. Those books were published back when publishing was a meritocracy -- and publishing houses were the tax write-off wing of a larger enterprise. (really, that was the business model; publishing was supposed to lose money and if it didn't, the publishing house would get sold at a loss.)

Owning a publishing house was fashionable and an entre into the literati and higher social circles than mere CEO's could aspire to.

Yeah, snob appeal.

Editors were hired not for their commercial sense but for choosing books that "ought" to be published.

That was a different world. Today publishing has become a "for profit" business, cut-throat and thrashing in what seem to be death-throes (at least in paper publishing).

E-publishing and self-publishing have lowered the standards of the finished e-product so that you don't get that prestige factor just for "being an author."

"Authors" used to be in the top 1st percentile rank of the top 15 percentile ranks of all human beings.

Really, that's true. Way back in the early days of the Web, I took a "poll" thing about where I stand in the prestige ranks. As a writer, I hit the top. Professors weren't top. CEO's were top, writers just under.

Today it's different. With self-publishing, authors are maybe somewhere in the top 15 percentile ranks. Since that basically includes most all readers, readers don't flock to "authors" as they once did. Everyone knows a published author. It's not special or inaccessible. (working producers are still inaccessible but that's changing too)

Meeting an author is not the opportunity of a lifetime today.

The world has changed so we have a big opportunity to establish something new that could shape the world of the future.

But to achieve that, we have to get a grip on what is really going on as opposed to what all the financial decision makers assume is going on. That's the real work of a writer, a futurologist, an amusement vendor, knowing what nobody else suspects and using it to advantage.

There's a puzzle of the marketplace that has never been solved, and I can't say I have "the" solution. But by using a futurologist's thinking tools and worldbuilder's imagination, we might stumble upon a real clue specifically useful to Romance sub-genre writers, with this problem about spending personal advertising dollars to sway over-40 year old readerships.

The puzzle that bewilders editors and producers is simple.

"Why is this a hit, while that better thing isn't?"

Maybe it's not all entirely marketing?

The people who get rich are the ones who notice the first of the trend-setting leaders and flood in behind with imitations before the general public has heard of the trend.

Those trend-setting leaders are usually "accidents" -- mistakes editors made trying to pick a big winner, or little indie films that make it big at a festival.

Sometimes the trend setting author is a visionary, but sometimes the author is as bewildered by commercial success as the editor (Rowling comes to mind).

So successful editors and producers watch the fringes for something that has tweaked the pleasure-centers, clicked the Amusement Button and produced Amusement in a DEMOGRAPHIC SWATCH of the population -- a demographic with disposable income and the immaturity to be swayed by advertising.

In 2008, I did a series of columns (the first 6 columns of 2008) on Blake Snyder's approach to film structure using primal issues structured in a primal way.

http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2008/

And I followed that with a series of columns on the astrological effect of PLUTO being dramatic and "larger than life."

Pluto: Melodrama Unleashed is the series title of those columns.

Under Pluto, I discussed Noel Tyl's Signature of Fame, an astrological meta-pattern you can find in natal charts of the absurdly rich and famous.

That Signature of Fame pattern pivots on Pluto in the natal chart and requires a fairly experienced astrologer to sift out of the background noise. But Tyl's Signature hypothesis explains graphically why it is so many who are rocketed to stardom crash and burn on drugs, sexual dissipation, bad judgment, trusting the wrong people, or dying of some dramatic disease.

Pluto is a magnifier of drama (among many other things). Pluto is just power, raw power, sexual power, financial power, political power, power over OTHERS (as in the power to sell snow to the Eskimos).

Pluto is not the drama itself. Pluto mixes in to an ordinary life event and magnifies it, blows it up, exaggerates, makes melodrama. You don't just drive your car into a ditch, you rocket off the Golden Gate Bridge leaving shattered traffic barriers behind.

Some handy current examples of Pluto in action.

When the economy crashed and burned at the end of 2008, it was after a long, slow shuddering buildup showing symptom after symptom that the "experts" ignored, which is typical of Pluto.

"I knew that would happen! Why didn't I pay attention?" And the answer is that Pluto represents what is underground, hidden, what is infrastructure. Plumbing, bridges, highways, electrical grid. You never notice it until it collapses.

So finally (it wasn't the beginning; it was FINALLY) Lehman Brothers melted down.

That coincided with the contact of Pluto to the 8th House cusp of (one of) the USA natal chart guesses. (astrologers argue about which chart is the real birthchart of the USA and all the candidates have different degrees for the 8th House cusp).

Pluto rules the Natural 8th House which is Scorpio, so when Pluto in current real-time comes to a degree that is a natal 8th House, Pluto's normally exaggerated effect is exaggerated more than 100%.

So we didn't just have a recession, we had a financial foundation infrastructure melt-down which magnified the recession we were due for.

8th House and Pluto and Scorpio symbolize the resources of others, (for a country, that's taxes and borrowing from foreign governments)

Obama was elected President with Pluto transiting opposition his Natal Venus, which is just about conjunct the USA Venus. (Venus rules Taurus-finances and Libra-Relationships).

Obama also had Neptune transiting his Ascendant casting a huge, magnified (Pluto) glamor (Neptune) over all his relationships (Venus).

His ability to speak was also at a lifetime best (Venus rules the voice box) etc. The whole country resonated to his way of handling relationships, and will for a while yet.

Pluto magnifies. It's about POWER.

Put a raw electric feed from the grid directly into your house circuitry and your house will just about EXPLODE with sparks and gouts of flame. No step-down transformers between you and the power plant, and E-GAD! The rest of your natal chart is the step-down transformer network through which POWER from Pluto (yes and your Sun) gets configured to be usable for daily living.

In "The Celebrity" that step-down-transformer network does not bring the voltage down to usability all the time -- and the result is extreme fame followed by a melodramatic personal meltdown (marriages-divorces; drugs; drinking; diving a plane into the ocean; spectacular rare diseases that make headlines)

8th House is Scorpio, one of the water signs, and thus participates in psychic attributes. People with a lot of water sign points in their natal chart are psychically open on some level, often without knowing it. That can help a Celebrity read an audience.

The first 6 columns I've done for 2010 which will be posted starting in January 2010 are all about The Group Mind (the psychic bond among us all at the Scorpio/Pluto/8th House level). In those columns I examine the interactive effects of the Group Mind and the Media -- analyzing popularity at its source.

http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2010/ shows you the novels analyzed to reveal connections.

Hidden connections are Scorpio, Pluto, 8th House.

Pluto power can also manifest as a ruthlessness, obsessiveness devoid of conscience -- the perfect raw material for any arch-villain a writer might need. Secretive is a keynote of Pluto. 8th House, other's resources, plus secretiveness equals conspiracy. Wow, dynamite material for any writer.

Pluto is the upper octave of Mars that rules War (Aries, the First House, the supremacy of Ego). Mars is a cat fight, a squabble, a grab for some country's fertile fields. Mars is not violence but ego-energy, and if thwarted can use FORCE to impose the personal Will.

Pluto is war to total annihilation -- war exaggerated, with nothing personal in it. This is not war to possess the resources of another, but war to obliterate the other.

Pluto is capable of VIOLENCE with an iron clad will, an implacable purpose. But Pluto is not the violence itself, it's the magnifier that takes the violence erupting elsewhere in the chart and makes it implacable.

Pluto is the sexual "fun" derived from violence, especially the kind of violence perpetrated to control another (S&M) - games of sexual dominance played out on an international stage. (think THE GODFATHER). 8th House is also inheritance, the resources that are rightfully yours by inherent worth. Thwart that "rightful" possession and you get the explosive manifestation of Pluto. Pluto doesn't take what belongs to others. Pluto takes back what belongs to him. And everything belongs to him, by right of inheritance. Even if he has to kill to inherit. (fabulous villain material)

So why are we talking about Pluto while analyzing amusement?

We need a new theory of what amuses people for our New Electronic Age, and here's one I would like to explore.

Pluto is now making its last station on 0 degrees of Capricorn, just a bit past the USA 8th House cusp, and headed for a series of oppositions to the USA natal chart's most sensitive points.

We're in for a roller coaster ride, but if we can understand what makes Drama as Blake Snyder formulated it (2008 columns), and how the Group Mind interacts with Media (2010 columns), we can see what Pluto is magnifying.

If we then put all that together with the various other posts linked above, connect the dots and figure out what the NEXT most popular thing will be, we may trump Rowena's Dorchester editor (a great publishing imprint, BTW) and produce that Ground Zero work Heather's post on Galaxy Express talks about.

How can a writer come to understand their audience's "amusement" buttons?

The natural 5th House, Leo, ruled by the Sun, is usually considered the home of AMUSEMENT, the keynote of FUN. 5th House is where we play and recreate, procreate, speculate and gamble . 5th House is siblings and children and grandchildren, and all our love given to others. (it's opposite, 11th House is the love and appreciation we get back in return, the groups that accept us and appreciate our fun loving sense of humor.)

You'd think that to find out how to amuse people, to find out what amuses people in general, you should examine the 5th House.

But if you look at the explosive popularity of video games (based almost exclusively on violence, on KILLING opponents as a way of WINNING, of prevailing, of asserting dominance) and correlate with the demographic of the consumers of video games (teens at the threshold of sexual maturity) and then look at where Pluto was transiting during the years those teens were born, you might learn something startling about the nature of Amusement that can be sold in packages (8th House; other people's money).

In assessing any astrology problem, the hierarchy of planets is OUTER to INNER. First you look at the eclipse points, then PLUTO -- and everything else is commentary.

Most astrologers are taught to start with the Sun ruler of the Natural 5th. For our purposes, that won't work because it won't yield generational profiles.

What do generations have in common? The signs in which the outer planets Pluto, Neptune, and Uranus, are placed. The Sun goes around once a year. Those outer planets keynote generations by their slow movement. The Sun position binds generations together (each generation has an equal number of Leos, Aries, etc.). The Outer Planets separate generations.

Since advertising dollar effectiveness depends on generational age-groups, we need to look beyond the Sun for the key to the puzzle, "What Amusement Can Be Packaged And Sold For Money?"

Individual natal charts have the planets and signs in different houses, all aspected differently by faster moving points such as the Sun, Moon, Mercury and Venus. Really, when it comes down to it, astrology almost shows us why we seem to have nothing at all in common! No two of us are alike!

But as marketers have discovered, generations do have something in common with regard to taste.

What each generation wants (thank you Rowena for the "What do you want?" line) is a mystery until one of those obscure products (like hula hoops) suddenly explodes onto the scene.

There is a theme to each generation born, something that will amuse them all their lives long, in various different forms and formats.

How long Pluto stays in a given sign changes because Pluto's orbit is very elliptical, and it even cuts inside Neptune's orbit. That odd orbit, out of the plane of the ecliptic and slanting across another planet's orbit is what got Pluto demoted from planet status -- it's considered to be a captive from outer space rather than a planet formed from the plasma of our star. (BTW that is an old story, done to death in SF -- that Pluto is really a generation-ship, maybe with only dead or stasis passengers; the remains of a dead civilization out there somewhere).

So Pluto is an obsessively fascinating planet, but empirically you can see that as it changes signs, the world changes usually explosively or abruptly -- social mores change; civilizations rise and fall to the beat of Pluto (and maybe super-volcanoes and magnetic pole flips).

But on a very subconscious level, (and Pluto rules the subconscious values while the 2nd House ruler Venus rules conscious values) the Amusement Button for each generation may actually be best described by Pluto's sign in their natal charts.

What fascinates, obsesses, causes unbridled aggression -- what is it that marketers can use to get a handle on each generation?

It isn't what makes people laugh. It's what people of that generation simply can NOT take their attention away from. People will pay big bucks for what they obsess over subconsciously, bucks they won't pay for a quick laugh gone in an instant.

People would not pay $9/pack for cigarettes without nicotine (or a substitute that works as well.)

Consider these blocks of years and what topped the charts in music subjects, favorite actors, great political trends, shifting taboo lines, great-huge-magnified tsunamis of trends during these blocks of years.

Pluto takes 250 years to circle the sun, but it's in each sign (or 30 degree swatch of the zodiac) for different lengths of time.

Remember to add say 15-20 years to see when these folks would have an impact on amusement markets because they have disposable income.

PLUTO IN LEO 1939 - 1957 (Became The Flower Children of 1960's and '70's)

PLUTO IN VIRGO generation 1958 - 1972 (Gen X)

PLUTO IN LIBRA generation (assimilating out of justice?) Late 1971 - 1984 (Gen Y? sort of)

PLUTO IN SCORPIO generation 1985-1995 or so (video game generation?)

PLUTO IN SAGITTARIUS generation 1995-2008

PLUTO IN CAPRICORN (now - 2023)

Neptune Takes 165 years to circle the sun.

NEPTUNE IN LIBRA Oct 1942 - 1957

NEPTUNE IN SCORPIO 1957 - 1970

NEPTUNE IN SAGITTARIUS 1970 - 1984

NEPTUNE IN CAPRICORN 1984 - 1998

NEPTUNE IN AQUARIUS 1998 - 2011

NEPTUNE IN PISCES 2011 - 2026


Uranus 84.3 years, a lifetime.

The popular press uses the 20 year swatch for a "generation" usually, or a demographic bulge of kids all born within 10 years to define a "generation." But think about the list above and see if it doesn't make better sense than the popular press definitions.

LEO is the natural 5th House of Amusement, but also of sovereignty --

Pluto in Leo produced the Flower Children, fun on drugs, altered consciousness and "doing my own thing."

Pluto in Virgo produced Generation X, craving White Wine and monied elegance. The detail oriented upwardly mobile fashionistes. There weren't many of them because the Baby Boomers (1947-1960) and Flower Children didn't have their kids until later in life.

Pluto in Libra produced Gen Y.

Wikipedia says there's no set borders for Gen Y but they're the Boomer Echo generation, the Boomer's kids. You see The Boomers fit inside Pluto in Leo but don't take up all of it.

Gen Y was coming of age in a "liberated" world where political correctness is everything, intermarriage is the norm, and women have their children only in the last minute panic of the biological clock. Many Gen Y kids have older parents.

The last of Gen Y turned 20 in 2004, coming out of school into a crashed economy, desperately in search of social justice (Libra is Justice) in a world they believed they didn't owe anything to (unlike the Boomers who flocked to President Kennedy's Peace Corps). Gen Y is the first generation to have computers in HIGH SCHOOL classrooms, and pioneered video games.

The following is from Brookhaven History
http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/history/higinbotham.asp

----------QUOTE---------
In 1982, Creative Computing magazine picked up on the idea that Tennis for Two might be the first video game ever and it published a story on the game ...
----------END QUOTE------

Gen Y came of age just as the possibility of video games emerged, and the home computer became financially feasible.

PLUTO IN SCORPIO kids -- only 10 years worth of kids -- grew up with computers in GRAMMAR SCHOOL classrooms and at home and became the market for the most violent video games. Pluto rules Scorpio, the Natural 8th House - when Pluto was in Scorpio it was its most POWERFUL. For the 1/12th of those kids born with Pluto in Scorpio in their own 8th House, Pluto issues are likely to rule the whole life.

There was a huge baby boom in the 1990's. Though it's only a 10 year span, 1985-1995 saw an unusual increase in the demographic significance of that generation who are now entering college and the lesser educated workforce.

That Pluto in Scorpio generation turned out the most young voters ever in this previous Presidential election, and you've all seen their vehemence (power) in political rallies (both sides of the issues!)

The generation reared on the most violent video games is determined to assert their right to their inheritance, their rightful possession by dint of the fact that they exist.

Employers have already noted that the current 18-20 year olds they hire are mortally offended by any workplace rule that prohibits texting during work hours. Employers have no right to restrict behavior or communication during work hours. (I saw a study about that posted online, and saw several interviews about it on TV, but didn't save any references, sorry. I may have referred to it in a previous post here.)

The Pluto in Scorpio generation (only 10 years long) has passed on their taste for video games to the Pluto in Sagittarius generation.

PLUTO IN SAGITTARIUS, 1995 - 2008, are still just babies, and their buying power is still mostly controlled by Gen Y parents.

But for us, it's interesting to note the success of TWILIGHT with the Pluto in Sagittarius teens.

Gen X acquired a real taste for the teen-vampire novel. The sex appeal of Vampires with the edgy connotations of risking death is soooo PLUTO!

YA shelves filled with vampires in the 1980's, which naturally gave rise to BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER a little later, and all sorts of vampire spinoffs for older people.

TWILIGHT and the urban-fantasy vision of reality as a thin film over a seething cauldron of evil is intensely popular with Pluto in Scorpio AND Pluto in Sagittarius.

Noel Tyl, an astrologer's astrologer, has identified the axis in the natal chart that describes one's deepest anxieties, fears, nightmares, repressed fears -- the kind of deep, inarticulate fears that rule our behavior and which we rationalize.

That axis is the 3rd House/ 9th House axis.

The Natural 3rd House is Gemini, ruled by Mercury (thought, communication, short trips, fast moves, and also indecisiveness and restlessness).

The Natural 9th House is Sagittarius, ruled by Jupiter, and all about Philosophy, Courts, Social Justice, the generous and magnanimous King, the kindness of the world, success by expansion, growth. Sagittarius is all about open-honesty as the adjacent sign of Scorpio is all about hidden realities. Sag is long trips, foreign countries, PUBLISHING!!!

Kids with Pluto in Sagittarius are the teens who gobbled up Harry Potter (foreignly published) when they were 9 years old, TWILIGHT etc, in their teens. TWILIGHT treats the darker (Pluto is "dark") aspects of the vampire as "out there" and mostly ignorable, while the vampires that are "in here" are trustworthy and above all that dark stuff - probably. In TWILIGHT the nasty part is "hidden" (Pluto).

Marketers have noted a leveling off of the growth of computer games sales (not shrinking, just not growing as fast as there are no more Pluto in Scorpio kids coming to buying age)

The trend in films toward ever more exaggerated violence and destruction, spectacle for its own sake, (TRANSFORMERS?) pleasures and amuses Pluto in Scorpio folks in some way that mystifies the Pluto in Leo folks. And I don't think it's just because the Pluto in Leo folks are older. I think it's because the Pluto in Leo folks have an Amusement Button that's configured differently.

When the Pluto in Sagittarius kids are 18-25, what films will they be taking their girlfriends to? What games will they spend their money on? What will amuse them life-long? What songs will they popularize? (already, I see lyrics changing)

The dark, ugly subject matter of the first wave of popularized rap is giving way to something else, but it's gradual.

If the Pluto in Scorpio generation pushed the violence in video games beyond all previous taboos, what taboo will the Pluto in Sagittarius generation (the obese kid generation -- Jupiter, ruler of Sagittarius is famous for obesity, the JOLLY FAT WOMAN image is usually Jupiter on the Ascendant) what taboo will this new generation expand out of all sense and reason? What will obsess them as violence and destruction obsesses Pluto in Scorpio?

I also noted in the above list of transits how the position of Neptune correlates to the position of Pluto in the generational charts.

Neptune is all about illusion; Neptune, ruler of the Natural 12th House, Self Undoing, rules all things having to do with imagination, with glamor (Hollywood), charisma and also Religion and Idealism, and oddly today with technology and engineering (Pisces folks make marvelous Engineers. Engineers blend science and mechanics into technology using IMAGINATION.)

Neptune dissolves and blends.

Neptune is very hard to get ahold of conceptually.

Neptune, as I've discussed in various blog posts, is the key influence in any Romance situation. Your very personality dissolves during that key Neptune transit where you fall in love. Your bullshit filters dissolve. Your critical faculties shimmer away.

Neptune transits put you (whoever and whatever you are) into your own most receptive (Scorpio is a water sign) state such as you've never experienced before. Neptune transits allow that soul-mate bond to form.

What forms and solidifies under Neptune can never be destroyed -- that's the odd paradox of Neptune. It dissolves everything concrete but solidifies the vision. Neptune is all about hope.

It's about Magic and fantasy, hopes, dreams and imagination and everything you wish were real but isn't -- and everything you hope to God isn't real.

The generation born with Pluto in Sagittarius mostly have Neptune in Aquarius. Aquarius is the natural 11th House, as we noted above, Love Received, appreciation lavished upon you. The Pluto in Sagittarius (Justice; different from Libra's brand of Justice) generation must, as a Group Mind, be dreaming of being loved, adored, appreciated, elevated.

Tom Baker, the actor who played The Doctor in Doctor Who for about 20 years, was himself a multiple Aquarius (yeah, I found his chart).

The way he portrayed The Doctor exemplified the footloose, fancy free innovator who formed only temporary but intense ties with people who passed through his life. He cared about humanity -- not actually so much about individual humans except as they represented humanity. It's a tough distinction to make without making the character seem like a villain. But it's there if you look..

Aquarius males have a very easy time getting married, and a very very hard time staying married. They exemplify the utmost in loyalty but can't see why that should tie them down. Freedom. It's all about personal freedom.

So synthesize Pluto in Sagittarius with Neptune in Aquarius and see if you can determine the configuration of Amusement Button for the whole generation now just beginning to turn 14.

There are a lot of them and they will have buying power.

Marketers know that teens have more discretionary spending money than their parents.

When they're in college, what habit will they have become addicted to? (Pluto is that sort of energy; addiction, habit, subconscious).

Here are a couple of addendum notes to mull over while trying to nail the Amusement Button for the current teens.

-----------------------
Article on why it is that Science Fiction authors just can't win in this world (not sure I agree with definition of "win" but this is good advice in the making.

http://editingcircle.blogspot.com/2009/10/why-science-fiction-authors-just-cant.html

Is a very short post with the following link
http://sffmedia.com/books/science-fiction-books/417-why-science-fiction-authors-just-cant-win.html

So the core of the advice is that if you want a "genre" to gain respect, you have to drop the genre label and invent a new one.

Sylvia Louise Engdahl gives us a really explicit example of how this is being done today with her FLAME novels,
Stewards of the Flame and
Promise of the Flame,
stories of all-human societies but not on Earth, on Earth-derived colonies out there somewhere.

The setting demands the genre label SF, but the characters demand the label futuristic romance, and the plot (and huge, long, lazy expository lumps with the flavor of mainstream literary novels) demands the label philosophical fiction. Reading the FLAME novels is like reading early Heinlein but for modern readers.

So Engdahl has dropped both the YA label in which she became famous and the SF label.

------------------------------
Article on Women Horror Fans and film makers
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/movies/06oran.html?_r=2&hpw

“Jennifer’s Body” was designed with both feminists and 15-year-old boys in mind, a seemingly eccentric blueprint that, as Ms. Kusama points out, is in line with the best movies of the slasher tradition. “It may be one of the best ways for a young male audience to experience a female story without feeling like they have been limited by a female perspective,” she said.

"It was an effort that often bedeviled Ms. Cody and Ms. Kusama, who tried to balance brute violence and lesbian kisses with the film’s more substantial metaphors. “The tricky thing is if you’re going to subvert those tropes, they have to be there,” said Ms. Cody, whose script is a self-described “crazy, chaotic homage” to the horror films of her youth. “We were constantly bobbing and weaving. Karyn and I talk about the film as a kind of Trojan horse. We wanted to package our beliefs in a way that’s appealing to a mainstream audience.”"

"Horror films have adapted with Darwinian fortitude over the years, allegorizing everything from cold war paranoia and eco-anxiety to the breakdown of families. And yet the success of slasher movies, which exploded with films like “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” in 1974 and came to dominate what we now think of as scary movies, might have stalled cinema’s most resilient genre. "

The director Rob Zombie, whose recent release, “Halloween II,” revamps another 1970s proto-slasher (and one of the original “final girls,” the character Laurie Strode), says the genre’s indulgence has been its undoing.

“The ’80s are the decade that ruined everything for everybody,” he said. “The soul went away, and it became gore for the sake of gore, and kids were cheering at killings and yelling and screaming. It became a roller coaster ride. And of course once something becomes a roller coaster, all you can do is build a bigger, more extreme roller coaster. That’s where I think horror movies really got perverted.”

----------------------

There's a lot more to say on this topic of generational taste in amusement.

TAKE AWAY:
The important point is that people will pay more than they can afford for amusement that obsesses them, but not for amusement that merely entertains.

Those over 40 can't be enticed or attracted by advertising that costs money. Those currently over 40 were born with Pluto in Libra, Neptune in Sagitarrius. Go for it!

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Romantic Times Award Winning Dushau Trilogy
NOW ON KINDLE

Marketing Fiction in a Changing World

The mantra that has leaped out at me from every corner of my little world is, "The Business Model must change." It comes in variations: The Business Model has failed. The Business Model is obsolete. The Business Model is outdated.

The way to make a profit marketing anything is to have the right business model.

I wish they'd taught me about marketing in grammar school instead of harping on penmanship and drawing maps -- even the hours spent mastering spelling turned out to be a waste since now spellcheck does it for you as you type. And arithmetic? Even my phone has a calculator!

A fiction writer is the sole proprietor of a BUSINESS and thus needs a business model, and that business model must be correct or the writer won't turn a profit.

What does a writer do with profits? Buy bread, milk, cheese, DVDs, books, and pay the utility bills, rent and lowest on the list is usually clothes.

So a writer needs to know not only how to craft a terrific idea into a story, but must craft that story to a business model. If the end product does not fit the correct business model, the end product (the novel) can't be well marketed, and there will be no profit.

The artist side of our creativity listens to the bean counters and screams SELLOUT! But it's not really. It's opportunism.

What good is great art that molders away in the artist's basement? To do its job, art must connect with an art consumer.

The artist or writer in this case (writing is a performing art, as I learned from Alma Hill) has three choices.

1)Write anything you want and let it molder away unread by anyone but yourself.

2) Write what you want and build a mechanism for delivering what you want to the people who want it. That is build a delivery chute for your art.

3) Or be an oppotuntist and write what you want, what fires your creative furies, but first shape it so you can PACKAGE IT to fit down existing delivery chutes.

If you try to build your own delivery chutes and conveyor belts, (which is what startup ebook publishers are doing using new tools) you incur an additional overhead and take time and energy away from writing.

If you use existing delivery chutes, you may squash your art with the shrinkwrap, but most of your art will reach consumers hungry for that product.

What's happening today that has publishing melting down (and reforming), that has the very definitions of genre changing faster than publishers can invent logos, that has profits dwindling and copyright becoming an archaic term nobody understands -- what's happening today is THE BUSINESS MODELS OF THE WORLD ARE MELTING DOWN.

That's right. It's not just publishing that has foundations crumbling, it's every kind of business there is from autos to construction, and even Old Time Religion revivals.

Politically, we're all blaming it on the financial industry and its business model that collapsed in 2008 (the whole idea of distributing risk via derivative securities; mortgages that were securitized and sold abroad -- that's a business model of how to make money off of selling to people who can't afford to buy what you're selling).

But we, as writers, have to look at a much bigger picture here. The reason the financial industry was able to grow the securitization business model so explosively lies way outside the financial industry. Their brilliant idea for a business model was possible because of the computerization of the whole world. They did it all by computer! (and didn't spend the extra money necessary to figure out how to de-construct those securities when parts of the mortgages failed or needed refinancing.)

The people in the finance industry who know they operate on a business model, and are artistically creative enough to create new business models created one -- and it didn't work well at its first big test.

But it was a brilliant piece of creative work, inventing a CHUTE to deliver their PRODUCT to a hungry MARKET. They built a new mechanism to deliver product, and they built it out of the newest high-tech computerized materials.

Take GM and Chrysler as an example of the opposite phenomenon. They didn't change their bussiness model to a computerized high tech model fast enough -- by the time they put any real effort into tech, they were so far behind the times that at the first titanic blow from outside their industry, they collapsed.

Publishing is in the same situation. The biggest publishers still insist on doing business on paper, and even demand printed manuscripts. Hollywood script submissions are also still somewhat skewed toward paper copies!

The EPIC list ( http://www.epicauthors.com/links.html ) is always abuzz with the issues of e-book reading devices and e-publishing, new publishing companies, specific genre requirements, and advice to authors on how to promote your latest book from a small, independent e-publisher.

As a reviewer, I can say that some (maybe a lot) of these e-books are easily as well crafted as anything Manhattan is publishing in Mass Market. But they're usually aimed at a much narrower, smaller market.

But this is changing too, and changing fast. Soon, the e-book will be the mass market "chute" to put your product down, and paper books will be for narrow, specialty markets.

Today, however, the Mass Market paperback sells more copies of any given title than e-books do.

If you want your art to reach a broad market, you have to understand what it means "Mass Market" -- and how that relates to "High Concept" in screenwriting.

Notice the word MARKET in the title of the pocket sized paperback printed on cheap paper that yellows and crumbles in a couple decades or less. (some do have quality paper; you can tell because they cost more and feel heavy in your hand. Those pages will out-last the glue.)

What does it mean, "mass" market? It means HUGE. The Mass Market paperback is designed to be delivered down a CHUTE that has a wide bore and is very long, with many branches.

When you think Market, think of a huge factory making many copies of a thing, trucks and boxcars waiting outside, loading up and chugging off to deliver some of those things to various destinations where they'll be sold.

Think of Henry Ford inventing the assembly line to create cars the mass-market people could afford. He wasn't the first to hit on this concept, but he was the first to apply it to a product people wanted and make it work, the Model T Ford.

The entire innovation of the industrial revolution is based on UNIFORMITY. It's based on ARBITRARY CONVENTIONS. It's based on STANDARDIZATION.

Prior to the industrial revolution, everything was made by hand -- embroidered seat cushions, shoes made by a cobbler to match your own feet, patchwork quilts, rugs on a loom. No two looms or weavers were alike, no two die lots matched even almost, and no two copies of the same item were ever the same!

The business model of the master mason who built buildings, the farrier who shoed horses, the blacksmith who made plough blades and rifles, was based on the individual, specialized, made-to-fit, customized, and truly excellent item. The mastercraftsman sold his items on his reputation for excellence, not uniformity.

There was no such thing as "quality control" and "planned obsolescence" (where the factory puts out a certain percentage of lemons set just below the complaint-tolerance level of the consumer, and designs the object to fail after a certain amount of usage so the customer will buy another one).

The business model was UNIQUENESS + EXCELLENCE.

It became UNIFORMITY + BARELY-GOOD-ENOUGH.

Alvin Toffler wrote a (HC + Mass Market Paperback) non-fiction book in the 1970's called FUTURE SHOCK which also had some sequels that rode on the success of the first one but added little to his message. His message was that the business model was about to shift again, a paradigm shift prompted by the computer age, that would change things nobody at that time was even thinking ever could change.

He was right! He predicted what he called a return to the cottage industry of the customized item -- as opposed to the factory produced uniform item. He predicted that commuting to work in a centralized office would be replaced by telecommuting. He didn't predict the internet, but because of the internet, his predictions have come true.

The E-book publisher is essentially a cottage industry. They employ editors, writers, POD printers, website builders, and billing system such as Paypal, scattered all over the world. And they deliver a customized product, a Niche Product, rather than the Mass Market product.

The film industry has seen the rise of the Indie company producing niche films with craftsmanship worthy of awards. And you all know YouTube! Everyone with a cell phone can make a video to post on YouTube -- though they all don't grab as big an audience.

Toffler's theory was that technology would free us from having to conform ourselves to the median, to accept what the average person wants because the mass market product is cheaper. He predicted that the customized product would be cheaper than the mass market product.

So far, that prediction hasn't happened.

The e-book is not reaching the huge, MASS of the mass market yet.

The BUSSINESS MODEL of "mass" is being chisled away, but it hasn't collapsed yet.

Still, look at the Neilsen numbers on cable news shows --
http://www.nielsenmedia.com/nc/portal/site/Public/menuitem.43afce2fac27e890311ba0a347a062a0/?vgnextoid=9e4df9669fa14010VgnVCM100000880a260aRCRD

Keep in mind that there are about 310 MILLION people in the USA and the typical TV show only draws 23 million or so. Maybe 30-40 million for a big news event.

30 Million out of 300 million is not a MASS MARKET.

We seem to be a fragmented and fragmenting nation, but maybe not. See the article on Facebook and Twitter I've sited near the end of this blog entry.

Toffler's vision is coming true -- technology (900 TV channels, thousands more online sources of entertainment, thousands more e-books per day published than paper books) has shattered the Mass part of the Mass Market. Mass Market paperbacks don't sell nearly what they once did to a much smaller nation (60 Million -- and a product had to reach a third of those to be successful.)

We have more choices and less knowledge of how to make wise choices.

Another of Toffler's predictions is coming to pass. His book was called FUTURE SHOCK because it predicted that the rate of change in the fundamental rules of living, working productively, and making wise choices among products would change faster than the basic human brain can adjust.

Toffler predicted that humans would go into a state of "shock" (being unable to think) because of the pace of change. He based this on the ability to adapt with age. In Medieval times, the methods and wisdom you learned from your father would last you all your life, and still be true when you died of old age.

A cobbler, for example, who knew the best method of dying shoe leather would end his career using that same method and it would still be state-of-the-art, though his grandson might encounter an improvement, but it would only be a slight improvement and it wouldn't shatter the cobbler business model.

Human beings need that kind of stability over their lifetimes. But technology has lengthened lifetimes and it looks like it will lengthen career-lifetimes. Meanwhile, whole industries have come and gone, and our methods of doing everything have been shifted on their foundations by (as Toffler predicted) the computerization of the world.

(and computerization has hardly BEGUN to penetrate all the way through this world)

Those who lived through the industrial revolution "came in off the farm" -- you can't keep 'em down on the farm was the song and slogan. Young people abandoned life on the land for the cities, and went to work in factories where they could make a fortune doing the same thing all day over and over.

And those factories turned out masses of identical objects.

That business model now co-exists (think Neanderthal and Homo sapiens) with the computer driven E-business model.

The E-business model is dissolving the foundation of the Mass Production business model faster than humans can adapt, so some older people still cling to the older model (and that's what collapsed GM) while some younger people grab for any crazy thing that's possible to do with the new tools (which caused the collapse of the financial system).

OK, now what's this image of the world got to teach writers about marketing?

One of the foundation cornerstones of the Mass Market Paperback business model is that authors are never EVER allowed to do their own marketing. In the 1970's, that began to fall away, and today, it's shifted entirely to the other end -- most authors, especially in e-books -- are required to do their own marketing (finance or make YouTube videos, online banner ads, virtual blog tours, and anything they can think of).

Meanwhile, authors aren't paid more to cover the expense of self-marketing.

The mass market business model is tilting dangerously askew because of this. The Mass Market model only works with a market that's massive in size. And with those markets, the publicists hired by the publisher (usually working in-house) do manage to reach reviewers and get buzz started about a book.

Note what Colby Hodge said in her blog entry here
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/when-story-doesnt-work.html

Colby has swerved into a LARGER mass market because it's open to her, Historicals. Mysteries are still big. Westerns are gone. Romance is big, but (Toffler again) Romance is fragmenting. Mysteries are fragmenting too. Customization is slowly replacing Standardization which replaced customization even more slowly!

Since the cost per item is lowered by mass production, more people can afford to buy the item, and thus the item reaches more people in total. 10% hard-core fans made is 10,000 from a book that sells 100,000 copies, and 40,000 from a book that sells 400,000 copies.

How can an artist do this and keep their integrity?

By understanding the concept MARKETING from the inside and then applying that understanding to art.

The writer is essentially a creative person. The solution to every problem in life is to create something new that has never existed before and can't be copied because it is unique.

That is what storytelling is all about -- being unique. Being the only one telling this story. Being the single source for this customized product.

Your story, your characters, your plot, your theme are fresh, new, different, and therefore exciting. You know your story will ignite ravenous hunger for more in your fans, if only they knew you exist and could find your novel.

Writers entering the marketplace today have a unique problem.

"The Marketplace" is standing on a crumbling foundation, tilting worse that the Leaning Tower of Pizza.

New writers today have a career decision to make that no writer has ever had to make before.

You can write for the market that will, I'm sure, replace this one as the high-profit-margin business model, the e-book that is tailored and customized.

You can write for the old, traditional Mass Market that's still reaching a much wider (but diminishing) audience than the e-book and work at a fair but diminishing profit.

In other words, you can try to use the delivery chutes that e-book publishers are beginning to learn to build, or you can try to use the delivery chutes that Mass Market publishers are using.

In either case, before you "have an idea" for a story, you need to study the size and shape of the chute that will deliver it to your market, and you need to study that market, and train your subconscious to "have" ideas that fit the delivery chute you have chosen.

Business people create chutes. Writers fill them.

Some writers have both skill sets, and I've found lately that the currently most successful writers come out of the business community, with a background in commercial art, advertising art, advertising writing, and every aspect of managing a business.

But to be able to do your own, personalized, individualized creative art with its unique aspects intact, your integrity unblemished, and still reach a Mass Market customer base, you must create an idea that is already formulated to fit a commercial market.

Over the last 5 years, I've seen e-book publishers reinventing that uniformity of product. Profit lies in creating large numbers of identical things, so the unit price comes down.

That principle has been eroded but not replaced.

So writers need to learn how to apply wild, unbridled creativity to one part of the product they produce, and uniformity, conformity, and standardization to the other part.

The part of the story that has to "fit down the chute" -- has to be uniform. It has to be exactly like every other story that the chute was designed to deliver to a particular audience.

Imagine, if you swung through the Mall shopping 'till you dropped, and hit up the vending machine for a coke. You feed your bill into the slot and poke the button. Down comes the red can. Pop! Take a swig. IT'S 7-UP!!! Some people would spew it out on passers-by in shock, and scream for their money back. You might be more restrained, but still irked.

Our whole society and all our expectations are configured by standardization, uniformity, conformity.

We buy a coke; we want coke in the can.

It's the same way with novels. Buy a Romance, you want an HEA ending. Buy an Alien Romance, or a Paranormal, you want plenty of complications but satisfaction in the end, anyway.

Buy a Horror Novel, you want to be creeped out big time, right?

Romance, and Horror are two "chutes" that conduct a product from your mind to your reader's mind.

These chutes have been built by businesses with business models, and they depend on the standardization aspect of the product to make it fit down the chute and arrive at the correct audience. The genre formulas are the packaging, the standard aspect of the art. Plots, characterization, story, theme all are standardized so that marketers know what to market your art "as."

If they guess wrong, and package and market 7-Up as Coke, the market will evaporate.

Meanwhile, another part of the fiction market has been thriving on the return to customization. Board games such as Dungeons & Dragons which became all the rage in create-it-yourself fiction rely on a standardization of story and elements, put together in a creative way by a "dungeon master" who marshalls the playing group. The fun is in the group activity, and the push-pull among the players for command of the customization of their stories.

Board games still exist and are enjoyed, but the BUSINESS MODEL now still growing despite the recession is VIDEO-GAMES. The battle of the game-console technology is heating up, and online gaming is huge and growing (World of Warcraft; Second Life etc etc.)

The video and online gaming is an example of the new business model Toffler predicted, which discards standardization. But even in these games, uniform "rules" and standard ways of deploying resources (rolling dice for "powers" for your character) are what make the game go.

If you market a game that doesn't generate its rules via the standard formula, players won't flock to it. They don't want to learn everything from scratch in order to create their own fiction with your game no more than readers want to learn to read all over again just to read your book.
Today more young people play video games than read books.

What's going on there?

Maybe it's not what everyone thinks it is. Maybe it's not that young people don't want to READ. Or can't read.

Maybe it's what Toffler predicted. Customization replacing Standardization. Younger people growing up in the electronic age are embracing the new world their elders can't stretch to accomodate. They are willing to work to customize their tools (phones) and entertainment. They don't want to let someone else do it for them and make it like everyone else wants it to be. They want to make it their own way -- just like us creative artists want to write our own stories our own ways, not to fit the delivery chutes the marketers have built to suit their business model.

The basic human being can accept only so many paradigm shifts in one lifetime, and there have been several huge, basic "throw every skill you have out the window and start from scratch" paradigm shifts in the last 30 years. Everyone today who is over 50 is suffering some kind of FUTURE SHOCK.

Several times in a lifetime is just way too fast for humans.

Those who reject customization (some people have trouble programming their ring tones!) say things like "I prefer the feel of real books" despite the fact that a good e-book reader can customize the font to be more readable to old eyes. But of course, the "quality" (i.e. standardization) of the fiction available in the format can be an issue, too. Amazon's Kindle program is trying to break down that barrier by presenting the same Mass Market fiction as Kindle downloads.

The biggest innovation with Kindle that may reshape our landscape is that they deliver newspapers and magazines via Kindle download that is supposed to be hassle free for the computer-averse. That may save the business model of newspapers and magazines.

One day, the kids born in the 1990's will cling to their video consoles, e-book readers or handheld device despite the availability of something new that their children feel is "better."

How do you market fiction into this changing world?

Do you customize or standardize? Where, in the structure of fiction, does the creative writer get to create?

If you decide you'll have to build your own delivery chute between yourself and your consumer, here is a story about a person Jean Lorrah ran into at MediaWest Convention.

---------FROM JEAN LORRAH via email -------------------------

One of the reasons we do conventions: I just did a podcast with Mark Eller, who became a podcaster to publicize his own books. Here is the information for finding the interview online, though he doesn't know exactly when he will post it:

Bookmark http://www.podfeed.net/podcast/Chronicles+with+Mark+Eller/17298 . Then watch for an episode featuring me. In five minutes I managed to plug simegen.com, lochness-monster.com , tipsonwriting, jeanlorrah.com , the Sime~Gen books, the Nessie books, and the Savage Empire books.

Mark, at age 50, has suddenly fallen into a bunch of connections that have brought about the sale of seven of his books to small presses and his being chosen as a judge for a "reality" TV show on the CW network called The Write Stuff. http://www.thewritestufftv.com/ . The CW is a small network, but it is on most cable systems.

The premise of the show is that writers today have to do a heck of a lot more than writing for their books to succeed, and on the show they will have to demonstrate their abilities to do everything. What they win is a small press single-book contract and a marketing campaign, but who knows? If they get the 30 million viewers that they hope for, and one-thirtieth of them buy the book, it will be a huge best-seller.

It is VERY clear that the winner will not be the best writer, but the cleverest marketer among the contestants. But unfortunately that's what book publishing is today.

---------------END FROM JEAN LORRAH via email -----------------

Now that's an example of a man who is building a new fiction-delivery-chute.

And it's going in the right direction -- MEDIA. Via the podcast which is internet radio, usually voice only but sometimes with video now, niche audiences are being configured for each of thousands of special interests.

The total population of the world is growing fast, and the cost-per-unit of customized product is dropping fast. Where the two trends meet, niche marketing will explode.

Thus we have the call-in talk show done with online radio! And online radio advertising customized for novelists to promote their own work.

---------------FROM A PROMOTIONAL EMAIL ---------------

PIVTR has another new program in its line-up. It's called "Crazy Tuesday" (c) 07.

What's that? What is "Crazy Tuesday?" I'm delighted you asked.

"Crazy Tuesday" (c) 07 takes place on the first Tuesday of each month. Between the hours of 10 to 2 p.m. eastern standard time for $100, an author, playwright, screenwriter, actor/actress, free-lance, independent, publishing company, publicist, agent, the world can promote, market, brand, sell, advertise (whatever is clean and wholesome. PIVTR is a family station!) to get the word out about you and your product.

Contact Lillian for all of the details.

Don't delay. The first Tuesday of July and September are already booked!!

LCauldwell @ internetvoicesradio.com

Let the WORLD know about you!

Check out the website and look around: http://internetvoicesradio.com

----------------END PROMOTIONAL EMAIL---------------------

Web radio is another whole new business-model-busting tech application fragmenting the mass market and the underlying concept of standardization. It's a result of a huge paradigm shift, and many people are just shrugging off web radio as unimportant. It is, however, a harbinger of what is yet to come. (we've barely started on computerizing the world)

The production cost is way down because there's no broadcast antenna, huge airwave license fee, and electric bill. Some simple equipment that's easily available, some software specializing in recordings that can be webcast, a short but steep learning curve, and the talented and determined are in business, building a niche audience for a customized product.

The audiences on web radio are large and growing. Like e-books, the audience size doesn't rival Mass Market media like Cable and Broadcast TV, but like e-books this entertainment delivery system is chiselling away at the foundations of the mass market business model.

That foundation is Standardization. Standardization was developed to reduce unit costs to where the vast majority of people could afford the product if they wanted it.

Cost reduction via technology is making standardization obsolete in certain aspects of product design -- the aspects that the consumer can customize themselves.

Microsoft rose to dominance on standardizing the platform (Windows) and letting developers create applications all of which run on the same command sets and design look.

Their success changed the business model of the computing world that Toffler was familiar with. And yet his predictions are coming true, one by one.

The lesson writers can take away from all this is that success in this churning market depends on standardizing the invisible and the user interface -- letting the consumer customize everything else.

See my post on Web 2.0. The Web concept failed, and it's being patched with customizing tools like RSS feeds, news and social networking aggregators, twitter aggregators, etc.
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2008/11/i-love-web-20.html

For a writer, that means standardize your plot structure then use your creative art to induce the reader to IMAGINE THEIR OWN STORY using your story as a springboard into their own story.

Your product is no longer your own story. In this changing world, your product is fuel for your readers' imagination in ways it never could be before.

And it's all about marketing, not writing talent. The best marketer will win.

Check out this recent news story on Yahoo Tech news

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/20090522/tc_nm/us_summit_social_2
----------quote-----------
And analysts and investors, in search of the next Google-like hit, are paying close attention to the breakneck speed at which Facebook and Twitter are adding new users.

While the popularity of the two social media firms has yet to translate into the kind of revenue-generating machine that Google Inc developed with its search advertising business, some say Facebook and Twitter have become so central to the Internet experience that they are inherently valuable.
...
Facebook grew to 200 million active users in April, less than a year after hitting 100 million users.

----------end-quote--------

Note that 200 million. Check the sizes of the average TV shows in viewers. Small wonder advertisers are abandoning TV -- which can be seen as each hour carries more and more minutes of ads instead of show. They're desperately trying to get enough advertising bucks to keep the shows on the air.

Read that exerpt. Listen to how they think and how they talk. "monetize" "adding new users" "inherently valuable" -- and "internet experience" !!! --

Amusement and Entertainment (which is what novels are) has become an "experience."
Interactive, and most of all customized, experience.

The whole social networking phenomenon is an example of customized entertainment. And it's being made into a mass market product. But the current business model can't figure how to monetize it, and that figuring is indeed being done by people so young they probably never read Alvin Toffler's brilliant bit of futurology, Future Shock.



Toffler was right about so much, chances are the answers are in there.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.simegen.com/jl/