April, 2012 | Warren Adler

Month: April, 2012

Don’t Believe the E-Book Monopoly Ploy

Posted on: April 27th, 2012 by Warren Adler No Comments

Don’t believe all that hype about government interference that is designed to foster an Amazon monopoly of the ebook business. What the six major publishers were alleged to have done was collude in fixing prices that, if true, was a desperate act that they must have known would fall afoul of anti-trust laws.

The new ploy by book publishers is to characterize Amazon as a monopoly poised to take over and dictate terms and run rampant over those who create ebook content. That is like saying Starbucks is a monopoly because it currently dominates the coffee retail business.

An Experiment in Self-Publishing for the Non-Genre Novelist: Part One

Posted on: April 24th, 2012 by Warren Adler 6 Comments

A decade’s worth of experience in pioneering e-books and non-traditional methods of publishing novels.

The Sunset Gang: A Journey from Page to PBS to Musical

Posted on: April 19th, 2012 by Warren Adler 1 Comment

A number of years ago, Larry Russell Brown and I met at the Donna Reed Festival in Denison, Iowa. Larry is a songwriter whose credits include such perennial favorites as “Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree,” “C’mon Marianne,” “Knock Three Times,” and many others. We were each invited to speak to high school students as part of the festival.

We had time on our hands, since there was little to do once our talks were over, and would sit around discussing our careers and how we saw our future projects. I told him about the eleven stories that Viking had just published titled “The Sunset Gang.” The president of Viking at the time, Tom Guinzburg, had given the manuscript to his mother to read and he reported that she was so taken with the stories that he just had to publish them.

The E-Book Dilemma

Posted on: April 17th, 2012 by Warren Adler 2 Comments

So now that the pricing structure of e-books has been resolved once and for all, where does that leave the authors, without whom the publishers, their employees, and agents might be on food stamps?

Once the gatekeepers of the printed word, the power of the publishing community has been severely diminished by the indifferent scythe of technology. The e-book intrusion on their vaunted system of cultural filtration has been breached and they are now forced to compete with anyone who believes they have something to say that will add to our knowledge, entertainment and cultural advancement, once the exclusive purview of the publisher-chosen printed book.

Voting Maybe

Posted on: April 13th, 2012 by Warren Adler No Comments

I no longer take anything at face value. Like Freud asking, “What do women want?” I find myself asking this question without regard to gender, embellishing it further with yet other questions like: “What does he or she really mean?” or “What is he or she thinking?” or “What does he or she want me to believe?”

Perhaps, being steeped in the irony of my profession as a novelist, I am getting paranoid. I have discovered that I am developing a kind of shell, an armor, that is trying to protect me from manipulation. My level of distrust has expanded exponentially as I grow older. I find I am resisting all manner of attempts to persuade me about anything. As a result, I have discovered that I am subliminally blocking out all forms of commercial or political attempts at manipulating me to act in the manner that serves other people’s agendas.

Let’s Hear it for the Self-Published Author

Posted on: April 9th, 2012 by Warren Adler 5 Comments

It is no small thing to write a book. It takes dedication, concentration, discipline, singleness of purpose, long hours of isolation and, above all, ideas. Years ago, before the rise of the Internet and the ease of digitization and the proliferation of e-readers, those who self-published were considered the bottom of the publishing barrel, rejected by mainline and established publishers, ignored by agents and dismissed as ego-centric wannabes.

For many who had hopes and dreams of obtaining authorial credentials by being taken on by the publishers who controlled the marketplace and the distribution chain, the prospects were grim to nil. Publishers and agents relegated their manuscripts to what the industry referred to as the “slush pile” and most, if not all manuscripts, were returned unread by clerks who inserted printed rejection slips and returned the manuscripts in self-postage ready envelopes.

What Is a Literary Novel?

Posted on: April 2nd, 2012 by Warren Adler 1 Comment

I have been baffled for years over what constitutes the definition of a “literary” novel. Over the course of my career, I have heard numerous definitions, but none quite resonate for me as the one gold standard, definitive answer.

In search of this definition, I am tempted to discount all of the various genre novels, many of which are well written and exemplary, but they do suggest formula and have been slotted by common publishing practice to fit a category that does not suggest “literary.”