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Showing posts with label Boomers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Boomers. Show all posts

Why Your Grandma Wants an E-Reader for the Holidays (Even Though She Doesn't Know It)

Posted by Unknown On Sunday, December 1, 2013 0 comments


If you're reading this blog, you're probably relatively tech-savvy. But now that we're in the midst of holiday season, most of us are running into the inevitable friends and relations who are threatened by new technology and maybe even hostile to the whole idea of e-books and e-readers. Some of them are probably your grandparents.

Full disclosure here: I'm not a grandparent. I could be, if I hadn't neglected that interim step of having actual children. What I am is a Baby Boomer: a person born between 1946 and 1964—the demographic known in unenlightened circles as "old."

I'm also not naturally drawn to technology. My relationship to most machines is the same as your cat's relationship to the vacuum cleaner: Danger! MAKE IT STOP!   

I've got some Boomer friends who think the e-reader is the spawn of the devil. They say ebooks and self-publishing are robbing us of our cultural heritage. I understand their fears. I worked in bookstores for much of my life. Every time a bookstore goes out of business I feel a sense of personal loss.

Plus I love being surrounded by tangible, hard-copy reading material. My house looks like a library. Books are my best friends. (My mother tells me that when I learned to read, I said, "now I'll never have to be lonely again.") I don't think I'll ever stop buying paper books. When I adore something I've read on my Kindle, I sometimes buy it in paper too—so I can really "have" it.

Electronics can die and get glitchy—and nothing's more infuriating when you're engrossed in a novel than to get that "low battery" message plastered across the page.

Paper feels "real". You can touch it and hold it and yes, sniff it. (Much fun is made of "book-sniffers" but scientists say the smell of old books is related to the smell of vanilla, and stimulates a comfort zone in your brain.) You can also keep a new paper book waiting on your night stand and study the cover art, read the blurbs, and anticipate it in a way you can't with a list of titles on your e-reader. Plus you can loan a beloved paper book to as many friends as you like.

But I urge even my book-sniffing Boomer friends to welcome the age of the e-book.

Why?

1) Learning new technology keeps us young.


I have lots of Boomer friends who avoid technology. They may use a computer for email and shopping, and they might even have a smart phone—but they're mostly annoyed by all of it. Especially if they learned a bunch of tech stuff in the early '90s and now it's all different and their hard-earned knowledge is useless. Everything keeps changing too fast and they don't like it.

Yes, change can be terrifying, but it's what keeps us alive. As Dylan said, "he not busy being born is busy dying." 

There's scientific data to back this up. Doctors tell us that embracing the new keeps our brains active and healthy.

And let's face it, nothing says "geezer" like complaining about "newfangled gadgets" and waxing nostalgic about the good old days. All the hair dye, yoga, and kale smoothies in the world won't make you seem vibrant and healthy if you have a negative attitude and a sour expression on your face.

Besides, if you're a Boomer, you belong to a generation that has always embraced change.

As Mark Penn said in his 2007 book Microtrends, "Boomers reinvented youth in the 1960s and economic success in the 1980s; they are not about to do their senior years by someone else’s formula. According to a 2005 survey by Merrill Lynch, more than 3 in 4 boomers say they have no intention of seeking traditional retirement."  

2) The e-book revolution is ending age discrimination against older authors.


Traditional publishing has always dictated that young authors are the most desirable. Even when I was in my forties, I was advised to keep my age secret when querying, because publishers don't want to invest money building a "brand name" for an author who doesn't have a potential forty-year trajectory for churning out product.  

But this attitude eliminates a huge number of writers—especially writers with wisdom and life experience to share. As social media guru Kristen Lamb says. "A large percentage of writers have waited until the kids are out of the home and out of college to begin pursuing their dreams of being authors."

But ebooks and social media are changing all that.  We now live in an age when there is infinite "shelf" space, and "long tail" niche marketing reigns.

New genres like Boomer Lit can appeal to specific demographics now that every book published doesn’t have to be a potential blockbuster of one-size-fits-all scope.  And authors don't have to self-publish if they write for a niche. The Big Five probably won't be interested in a BoomerLit book unless it's written by Cher, but you can still go the traditional route with a small or digital-only press.

3) Older readers get to read books about their own issues.


For the past fifty years or so, traditional publishing has dictated that female protagonists in popular fiction must be under thirty-five. Men can be a little older, but the main characters have to be young people with young problems. (Literary fiction can be about old guys with prostate issues, but usually only if the author writes for the New Yorker.)

None of this is surprising, since the "gatekeepers" of traditional publishing are mostly 22-year-old interns at New York literary agencies.

(And I can't help wondering if some editors weren't scarred by being forced to read Silas Marnerin high school. George Eliot's aged curmudgeon has a lot to answer for.)

Thing is: older people have more time to read. And most of us are hungry for books that address our own life situations, not just who goes to the prom with the hunky vampire.

As Kristen Lamb says, older authors are "writing books they’d like to read: romance novels with a sixty-year-old protagonist finding love, not a twenty-two-year-old….Now there are options. Seventy is getting younger every day and the emerging e-commerce marketplace doesn’t care how old we are or how many books we write."

4) E-readers offer physical advantages to the older reader.


  •  Adjustable fonts. I'm getting to the stage where I can't read books with tiny fonts, and I'd be much more comfortable with large-print books, if I weren't too embarrassed to be seen reading them. With an e-reader, all it takes is the click of a button to adjust the font to our own vision requirements.
  •  Lighter Weight. A friend told me she stopped enjoying reading hard-cover books a few years ago because of arthritis in her hands. But she loves that e-readers are easy to hold and getting lighter all the time. The new Nook GlowLight weighs only  6.2 ounces.
  • Immediate new books. When I finish a book I love, I get an empty feeling. I often want to read another book by that author immediately, especially if it's the next in a series. But as we age, getting out to a bookstore can be more of a hassle. (And I stopped night driving when I realized it felt like driving by Braille on dark winter nights.) With an e-reader, you can have the new book in minutes.

5) E-books have got more people reading now than ever before. 


People who might not go into a bookstore to procure entertainment are now reading books on their phones, iPads and tablets. Ebooks are cool.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, "the average reader of e-books read an average of 24 books in the past 12 months compared to 15 books for non e-book consumers."

And as Alex C. Madrigal wrote in the Atlantic last year "Our collective memory of past is astoundingly inaccurate. Not only has the number of people reading not declined precipitously, it's actually gone up since the perceived golden age of American letters. "

6) Because of the new paradigm, independent bookstores are making a comeback.  


E-books are not killing indie bookstores. Big-box bookstores and their cozy deals with Big Publishing did that in the 1990s. Indies that survived are now having an increase in sales, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

Here are some ways e-books are actually helping independently-owned bookstores:
  • Amazon is now selling devices and ebooks through indie bookstores with "Amazon Source".
  • Kobo has been selling its e-readers through independent bookstores for at least a year (If you listen to NPR in the US, you've heard their ads.) 
  • Now that the marketplace isn't a monopoly of the Big Five and their cozy relationship with Big Box bookstores that sell advantageous shelf space to the highest bidder, the small independent bookshop has a more level playing field.
  • Newsletters like E-Book Bargains UK that advertise bargain e-books to global markets also carry ads for indie bookstores.

7) Paper books aren't going anywhere.


It's not a question of either/or. You can have your Kindle and paper too.

Only about 30% of book sales are e-books, and that percentage seems to be leveling off as an October report from the Book Industry Study Group reported.

Here are some of their findings: 
  • Four years of consumer data shows clearly that e-book consumption has reached mainstream readers and has expanded well beyond early adopter 'power readers,' but that physical books remain a popular format for many consumers, especially in certain categories.
  • Consumers are very interested in "bundling" print and digital versions of a book, with 48% of survey respondents willing to pay more for bundles. 
  • Consumers do not distinguish between e-books published by traditional houses and independently published options when making buying decisions.

The E-Age may seem scary to those of us who remember when the most tech-heavy thing a writer had to do was change a typewriter ribbon, but it's one of the best times in history to be a writer—or a reader—so we need to learn to embrace the new technology.

What about you, Scriveners? Did you have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the digital age? What advantages are you finding to reading electronic books? Do you have friends and family who don't "get" e-books?


Note: If you enjoy this blog, we'd love for you to nominate us for the Top 10 Writing Blogs at Write to Done.



Book Bargain of the Week


And when you buy Grandma that e-reader, here's the perfect book to load on it. Only 99c on Amazon for the holidays. Roxanna Britton, a biographical novel, is the story of my own great, great grandmother, written by my 92-year-old mom, Dr. Shirley S. Allen.
My mom is in hospice now, and I'm here at her bedside. It makes her happy that her well-reviewed book will live on after she's gone.

Update: Shirley Seifried Allen died at 8:45 PM on Sunday evening, December 1st. As fierce and practical as her great-grandmother, my mom donated her body to the University of San Francisco Medical School and left large donations to the San Francisco Public Library and the Food Bank as well as many other charities. You can sign her Facebook page here.
I can't begin to say how very much I will miss her....Anne




"If you love historical novels about women "making it" in the mid-1800's, you will NOT want to miss this one! I loved EVERY minute of reading about "Sanny's" life and making her own way and place in a time when women were considered having less than the status of "slaves." I also loved this book because it shows how the status, influences, opinions and upbringings can make or break a family and its heritage...and just how influential the women are who guide each. 
HIGHLY RECOMMEND!"...Shawna Newton

***

"This has become one of my all time favorite stories of "real" people. Ms. Allen's adept use of dialogue and her clear eye for drama and suspense kept me compulsively turning the pages. Her evocation of a bygone era, rich with descriptive details--the historical Chicago fire is one vivid example--is absolutely brilliant. I will never forget Sanny and her family, especially her struggle and her daughters' struggle to become individuals in a male dominated world. But it is family that triumphs in the end; and the need for it to survive resonates most deeply in my mind and heart. An excellent novel that I highly recommend to anyone who enjoys reading true stories about people who not only overcome adversity with grace and integrity but through strength of character also prevail. Well done, Ms. Shirley Allen!"...Ann Carbine Best

Opportunity Alerts


The Lascaux Prize for Short Fiction: Stories may be previously published or unpublished. Length up to 10,000 words. Entry fee is $5, and authors may enter more than once.The editors will select a winner and nineteen additional finalists. The winner will receive $500 and publication in The Lascaux Review. Both winner and finalists will earn the privilege of displaying a virtual medallion on blogs and websites. Deadline December 31, 2013.

Boomers: The Huffington Post's Huffpo50 is publishing short fiction! The rules: You must be 50 or older to enter. Writers can submit only one story per year, and all pieces must be 5,000 words or less. Send your original submissions, as well as your contact details, to 50fiction@huffingtonpost.com

CRAZYHORSE PRIZES IN FICTION, NONFICTION, POETRY $20 fee (includes subscription). This is a biggie, well worth the fee. This venerable literary magazine has published the likes of John Updike, Raymond Carver and Billy Collins. Winners in each category receive $2,000 and publication. Submit up to 25 pages of prose or three poems. All entries considered for publication. Submissions accepted in the month of January 2014 only.

The Ladies Home Journal essay contest. Theme: The Best Decision You Ever Made. First Prize is $3,000 and the chance to have your essay published in the Journal. You're free to interpret the topic in whatever way you like. Essays will be judged on their emotional power, originality, and the quality of their prose. They should be no more than 2,000 words. More info and submission form on the website.

DRIFTLESS REVIEW ANNUAL FLASH FICTION CONTEST $15 ENTRY FEE for up to three stories. Each short-short story limited to 500 words. $500 prize. Deadline December 31

Dark Continents Publishing's Guns and Romances anthology. They're looking for previously unpublished short fiction from 3500-9000 words. Any genre as long as there's a tough protagonist, weapons, and... at least one reference to music. Sounds interesting. Payment rate is a one-off of $20 per story plus a percentage of the ebook royalties. Publication estimated in late-2014. More info on the website. Closing date for submissions is February 28, 2014.

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Has Publishing Become a Kinky Game? Ruth Harris Talks about Writer Masochism and How to Cure It

Posted by Unknown On Sunday, April 29, 2012 0 comments


I have to admit that when Ruth Harris first talked to me about “writer masochism,” I cringed.

Ruth's new boxed set:  20th Century Women!
I realized she was describing me.

Not so long ago, I fell so deeply into the writer-masochism pit, I couldn’t see a way out.  I gave exclusives, signed onerous contracts, accepted puerile assessments of my work as gospel truth, and spent years feeling powerless and unworthy, begging for any publishing professional to let me lick his/her kinky boots.

And I’m not alone. The story of most writers’ forays into the dark world of publishing can read like a metaphorical Story of O. 

Worst of all, a lot of writers tend to shame and bully each other into playing the assigned submissive role. I realize now the BDSM rule-enforcers were partly responsible for the nasty attacks I got when I tried to tell my fellow Boomers not to be afraid of writing Amazon reviews  (More on Boomers’ fear of tech in a great post by Jane Friedman this week.) 

After I wrote that, the self-appointed Writing Inquisition let loose the full force of its self-righteous fury, trashing my Amazon buy pages, vilifying me on forums, telling me I'd never sell a book in this Internet again--even emailing me death threats (Seriously. Some of these people had major mental health issues.) All because I told authors’ fans that Amazon reviews empower readers so they no longer have to play a submissive role to the publishing establishment. Heresy!!

Here are some quotes from the diatribes I got from the Writer-Masochists:

  • “Authors should never pay attention to reviews or book rankings. They should write for the pleasure of writing.”
  • “Once I release a book, I truly release it. I cannot control if it's read, how it's reviewed, if it's reviewed, etc. and that's fine by me.”
  • “Why would you read your own reviews? It’s none of your business if anybody likes your book.”
  • “Authors who track their sales are narcissistic.”
  •  “It is unethical in all cases for friends or family members to review your book.”
  • “I would never write to make money. You disgust me.”
Can you imagine those things being said to members of any other profession?

  • “How dare you talk about billable hours, Ms. Lawyer! You should be practicing law for the pleasure of it!”  
  • “Once I finish a painting, I throw it out in the street. When it comes to selling my work, I am ignorant and powerless, and that’s fine with me.”
  • “Why would a teacher read his class evaluations? It’s none of your business if your students are satisfied.”
  •  “Performers who pay attention to ticket sales are narcissistic.” 
  •  “It is unethical for Real Estate/Insurance agents/stockbrokers/Avon ladies to sell to family and friends.”
  • “I would never practice medicine for money. Doctors who expect to be paid disgust me.”

The sad thing is most of these quotes were from WRITERS. (I didn’t include the obscene and violent ones, because I deleted them right away. Sometimes I wish I’d kept them for proof of the extremes of writerly loonitude.)

Most of the above dogma is intended for published authors. But the rules for the Great Unpublished are just as bad. Maybe it’s not entirely a coincidence that our communications with the industry are called “submissions.” 

How many times have you been told—

  • Don’t call us; we’ll call you.
  • Learn patience: Expect us sit on your manuscript for several years with a 99% chance we’ll reject it.
  • But it has to be an exclusive, so you can’t submit to anybody else during those years.
  • I’ll only consider this if you remove all your gay/abused/racially-diverse characters and spend a year rewriting it as a Christian-thriller/vampire-werewolf-romance/post-apocalyptic-zombiefest—with no guarantee of representation.
  • If you don’t hear from us in the next 6 months, it’s probably a no. But we won’t bother to tell you, even though we require paper submissions with an SASE. (What do they do with all those SASE’s, do you suppose?)
  • You didn’t/did use italics/Oxford commas/Courier font, so it’s an automatic no.
  • My 13-year-old unpaid intern says the plot/characters are too complex. (Speaking of abuse—what’s this with the unpaid-intern child-labor stuff?)
Yes, last week I did say the query process is the best way to learn about the publishing business, and I still think it is. Not all agents and publishers are sadistic bullies. But when you go through it—remember you have choices. Don’t let the Inquisitors tell you it’s your duty to submit to abuse.

NOTE: This post is NOT telling everybody to run out and self-publish immediately in order to avoid masochistic behavior.

Ruth is saying the self-publishing revolution is turning the tables. Because of the massive changes brought about by the e-book, writers now have choices we’ve never had before. Because we now have the choice to walk away, publishers are going to have to learn respect or lose out.

Ruth has been on both sides of the publishing game: a NYT bestselling author and a Big Six editor. She knows what she’s talking about.

So any time you’re told it’s your duty to fall on your knees and obey your publishing masters, answer back: “NOT ANY MORE! 

WRITER MASOCHISM: THE ROOTS, THE CAUSES, THE CURE

by Ruth Harris


I’ve seen it in myself, in other writers (even mega bestselling writers), in writers trying to get established—a learned masochism. In publishing the inevitable vulnerabilities and insecurities every human being is born with become the leverage by which publishers for several decades have ruled with an iron-fisted upper hand.
WM is the reason publishers have been able to get away with screwing writers for so long: the shabby treatment, the unfair contracts, the declining advances, the pathetic royalty rates, and incomprehensible royalty statements.
The writer-publisher relationship used to be much more equal. Paperbacks were sold in every drugstore, grocery store, supermarket, even in gas stations. To fill those almost-omnipresent racks, publishers needed writers & the work they created. There were lots of markets, lots of genres were routinely published, and editors & writers were colleagues who worked together coming up with new ideas or new twists on old ideas.
More contracts were signed, more books were published and sold, more writers  were able to make a living. When that massive distribution went away, publishers no longer needed to fill the racks and were no longer so dependent on writers.
A complete power switch occurred in which the writer lost and became the beggar shaking his/her alms cup hoping for a crumb, a penny, a kind word.
Over time, the writer was placed in the position of the relentlessly abused, rejected, criticized and undermined child—even though the parent (the publisher) would aver how much they “loved” you. Out of that unequal relationship a demon’s brew of writer masochism flowered.
No matter what happened, every book that didn’t sell up to expectations—basically just about every book published—was ALWAYS the writer's fault.
Never mind that the ad/promo/pub budget ranged from miniscule to non-existent.
·        Or that the one meager ad (that’s if you were lucky enough to get an ad) buried Allah-knows-where was, shall we say?, massively inadequate to the results expected.
·        Or that the cover had nothing to do with book.
·        Or that books weren't in bookstores even as the writer (me & plenty of others) was damn near killing herself/himself touring.
·        Or that no one bothered to use rave reviews to stir up excitement and interest. Those raves were just filed away to languish in oblivion, never to see the light of day.
·        Or that suggestions a writer (who you’d think might know a thing or two about her/his own book) made about how to sell her/his book were ignored.
·        Or that books—even books for which publishers competed & willingly paid large advances—were regularly published in secret, spine out somewhere in the back of the store on a bottom shelf next to the men’s room.
Nope. Blame the writer
The book didn't sell so it must have sucked—even if the publisher willingly, eagerly paid a lot of money to acquire it.
Even if the reviews were spectacular.
Even if book clubs, paperback publishers, foreign publishers, and movie companies spent beaucoup to acquire the rights.
In fact, by selling off sub rights and thus recouping the amount of the advance, publishers had even less motivation to aggressively sell the book in question.
The publisher’s solution to the lackluster sales: Move on to the next book, the next writer. Then blame that one, too.
And what did writers take away from the downbeat response, the blaming, the phone calls that weren’t returned, the memos containing suggestions or requesting information that were never answered?
They became prisoners of the Stockholm Syndrome.
Writers began to feel that the criticism was deserved, the disappointment was their fault, and that the way to a more rewarding outcome was to write a better book next time. Except, of course, that no one knew exactly what a “better book” was.
I have never once heard a publisher of mine (or anyone else’s) ask what they could have done differently or admit in any way that their publishing effort had been lacking.
When several of my books hit the New York Times bestseller list, the response was not pride or pleasure. It was a pout: “But it didn’t sell as much as we thought.”
THE CURE: take control—and responsibility.
With the advent of e-publishing, a second huge switch has taken place, this time, with the power going back to the writer.
Now it’s publishers who are feeling threatened and being undermined.
We hear the howls, we see how much they like it (NOT!) and how desperate they feel—just the way writers used to feel (because, back then, back in the bad old days, writers were the ones with no power and no choice).
********
What about you, scriveners? Have you ever been urged to practice masochistic behavior by publishing professionals or fellow writers? Have you ever got to the point where you believed writers deserve to be abused? Have you ever fought back?


Update: Family Therapist Sandy Nathan has written a companion piece to this post on her blog, Your Shelf Life--explaining why the lack of balance in the publisher/author relationship can be hazardous to your mental health. 


Ruth has more book news! She has two new boxed sets:  A three-book set of the 20th Century Woman  and a five book set that includes two more of her NYT bestsellers  (and hit the top five in the recent history Kindle bestseller list this week.) 
 And remember that ZURI is coming soon….

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