I Won a book!

Wow! I won something. I haven’t won anything in a random draw since that peanut butter brittle when I was 15. Yes! The peanut butter brittle was good, but guess what’s even better? A brand new book! That’s right… a book. And even better, it is SIGNED by the author. WOO! Signed books always feel so much more special.

Here’s the scoop of chocolate: Kay Elam, over on her blog, had a contest where one could win a brand new copy of the just released book THE IMMORTALS by J.T. Ellison. I’m scared though. She says her books are scary. As in nightmare worthy… I’m going to be reading this thing through the cracks in my fingers as I hold my hand over my eyes! I love it!

Want to check it out? Here’s a linky for you:

Smack Down?

Okay, I know I promised to blog about ereaders some more. And I will. But right now, if you are a writer, there is something you should check out.

First, go to the blog “Pimp My Novel” and read yesterday’s blog which asked “What would you change about Publishing?” Wow. Some opinions. Some people have some great ideas, like the royalty rate for authors shifting to a higher percentage after the book has hit a certain number of sales and the cost of the book’s production has been covered. I like that idea. And then there are some folks where you can just tell that they have been burned by the industry and their blood has turned to boiling acid. Yikes!

Have you read the blog’s comments? You don’t have to read them all, just enough to get the gist of where things are heading. Now, pop over to a literary agent, Michelle Wolfson of Wolfson Literary. Read her take on the blog by popping over to her page on Twitter. (You are looking for the posts with the hashtag like so: #annoying. They were posted around noon today, Eastern time.) There are parts Wolfson agrees with (like the book return policy) and there are parts that she doesn’t. These days it’s got to be tough being an agent. Not only are authors being starved out by publishers and their new tighten-our-belts royalties scheme, but agents are as well. And publishers need agents and they need authors, so what the heck? (That’s a whole ‘nother kettle of fish though!)

Lap of Luxury and eBooks

I’ve been promising myself for about three months now that I’d talk about eReaders. And I will. But first, I have a really cool idea to share with you on using eBooks and eReaders to hook new readers. It’s brilliant!
First, read this article in the Washington Post so you know what I am discussing.

Yeah, that’s right. You sign into your hotel and get an ebook on a loaded reader for you to use during your stay. I like it, I like it a lot. Unfortunately, I never pay nearly enough for a hotel to actually be in the leagues of this kind of pampering, but still.

Putting aside the discussion about the exclusivity that takes place with the hotel’s choice of eReader and the partnership between Random House and Fairmont hotels (bloody brilliant marketing, I say!), here’s what I like about the idea:

Access. I love that they are literally putting books into people’s hands. (Some hotels put real books in hand.) Think of it this way, you are staying in a hotel and you start reading a book that they have loaned you. You have to check out, you can’t finish the book… what do you do? At some point, you are probably (but not always, of course) going to find that book, buy it, and finish it. Especially if you liked it. If nothing else, you are probably going to talk about it with your friend.

Two things just happened here. The publisher got a book into someone’s hands while they are relaxed and kicking back. That’s huge. Two, the person either read it fully or partially and are likely to talk it up in some form. (Not a guarantee though.) That author just got access to what could possibly be a new reader. And a possible third thing happened which is a possible sale.

The other thing I like about the access of getting these books into people’s hands is that it opens the doors for word of mouth. I’ve seen a good book sell, sell, sell, by having one person read it. Here’s the scenario. Our book club decided to read “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” based on one member’s recommendation. About half of our group (7 of 14) always buy the books that we read. Right there, 7 sales. I liked the book so much, I went out and bought a copy for myself. Then I recommended it to my mother and her friend while in the bookstore as well as purchased a copy for a friend as a gift. The friend liked it so much she recommended it to her whole family. And she’s got a big family. So how many sales came from that one person recommending the book to our book club? I don’t know because, months later, the chain reaction is still going.

So what would you think if that member had read this book while staying in a hotel? (She didn’t, but the very idea of it is inspiring.)

Pen Names

Why do some authors take on a pen name? We’ve been talking about this over on the AQ discussion boards again. There are so many reasons to take on a pen name (privacy, hiding out from family, hate your name, current name is hard to spell and pronounce, want to write several genres without confusing your audience, etc).

While eating lunch, I opened up Chatelaine–which insists on coming instead of Writer’s Digest which is the magazine I actually renewed through the magazine service, but oh well–and what do I see? An article on why authors take a pen name. Here are a few they listed and their reasons along with a couple others:

Sophie Kinsella wrote a book under the Madelaine Wickham (real name) and then decided to change to writing the Shopaholic books. She figured she needed a new name to represent the change.

Stephen King (Richard Bachman) created a pen name so he could put out more than one book a year

Anne Perry (Juliet Hulme) killed someone as a teenager, did time, then decided to write. She (wisely) decided to keep her past under wraps.

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) wrote under a man’s name as she felt she would be taken more seriously, and it would also serve to protect her from the scandal of being known as a novelist.

JK Rowling (Joanne Rowling) grabbed another initial (from her Grandmother’s name–Kathleen) to make her name more gender non-specific as her publisher wasn’t sure that boys would want to read about a boy wizard written by a woman.
Carolyn Keene (never was one) was created by a book packager Edward Stratemeyer who also whipped up the series idea “The Hardy Boys” and “The Bobbsey Twins” a well as “Nancy Drew.”

Anne Rice (Howard Allen O’Brien) took the name ‘Anne’ in school (probably the teasing was too much to bear having a name like ‘Howard’ and then took her husband’s last name to finish off the pen name. (Also wrote erotica under the name A.N. Roquelaure.)

Meg Cabot (Meggin Cabot) has written under Patricia Cabot for her romance books, and Jenny Carrol for her teen mystery series, but now uses ‘Meg’ for pretty much everything. My understanding for ‘Jenny Carrol’ was that Meggin was very prolific, yet wasn’t bringing in much money with what her publisher was taking and she wanted to publish more. And hence the secret names began…

AgentQuery Connect Moves

If you haven’t heard the news, the ‘connect’ part of AgentQuery has moved to a new location! (The connect part is where all the aspiring writers hang out and talk writing. It’s also where we have online chats with agents and authors from time to time.)

Here’s the new link: www.agentqueryconnect.com

The old site www.agentquery.com with that wonderful literary agent database is still there at its old address, it’s just the discussion boards that have moved.

If you have been thinking of joining us, but haven’t, now’s the time!