Can You Judge A Reader By Their Book?

So as I mentioned in my blog a few days ago, I am now easing my way back into the dating scene. This last week I met a date at a local restaurant. I arrived prepared, wearing my smile, heels and invisible bullshit detector. I was sure that the combination would enable me to catch and lob back any curve balls he might throw my way. As is always the case on my dates with new men the conversation turned to books (oddly enough I’m never the one to bring this topic up).  After asking me a little about my own work and then admitting that he read nonfiction almost exclusively, the man I was dining with explained his theory that you could tell a lot about a person based on what kind of books they read.  “For instance,” he said, “what book is on your nightstand right now?”

Uh-oh.

It’s not that I didn’t have a book on my nightstand and I certainly hadn’t forgotten the title or the author. I am currently reading Jennifer Weiner’s Fly Away Home. I’m really enjoying the book and I’m finding it hard to put down...but do I want to be defined by it? That doesn’t seem fair at all!  As much as I love Weiner why does she get to define me? If any book is going to define me shouldn’t it be one of my own?!

Of course that was part of the problem.  All Mr. Nonfiction knew about my relationship with the literary world was that I wrote novels with titles like Vows, Vendettas & A Little Black Dress and now he would know that I was spending my late evenings and early mornings reading a book that he would inevitably dismiss as fluffy chick-lit. Of course Weiner’s books, while fun and highly humorous, aren’t exactly fluffy. They deal with relationships, women’s roles in society and finding one's place in the world without bending to the force of others' unrealistic expectations.  But how on earth could I say all that without sounding absurdly defensive. It was, after all, possible, even probable that he didn’t think the question: “What are you reading?” was incredibly loaded and it was definitely probable that he would think I was crazy for thinking that it was! And it was very, very probable that his conclusions about the state of my sanity would be completely on target!

But then I realized that the question and the entire premise of his theory would be more sound if you were going draw conclusions about a person based on the last FIVE books they’ve read. If that had been his question I could have said, “I’m currently reading Jennifer Weiner’s Fly Away Home. Before that I read James Gleick’s Chaos (a nonfiction book about the development of Chaos theory), Toby Barlow’s Sharp Teeth (gritty and poetic novel about werewolves), Alison Weir’s The Lady In The Tower (a nonfiction account of the fall of Anne Boleyn), and re-read David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day (because Sedaris’ essays, while frequently poignant, always make me laugh out loud).

Weiner, Gleick, Barlow, Weir and Sedaris with my own books sprinkled in like little punctuation marks. Yes, you probably could at least partially define me by that combination. Fantasy, humor, feminine introspection, a small dose of neurosis, a bit of scandalous history, a little fluff and a little intellectualism (or, you could combine the last two qualities and say I’m into fluffy intellectualism).  Unlike my date, it would never occur to me to only read nonfiction anymore than it would occur to me to only read fiction and certainly not one genre of fiction. Perhaps that’s why certain...well for lack of a better word, book snobs are so dismissive and derisive of books like mine or Weiner’s.  Could it be that they don’t know how to mix it up? Are they like the wine connoisseurs who wax poetic about the $200 bottle of reserve Cabernet they consumed with last night’s dinner without ever being able to appreciate the truly refreshing quality of a $3 beer on a hot summer day?

Maybe.

Anyway, I decided to give my date the name of the last five books I had read even though that’s not what he asked for.  If you’re going to draw a conclusion about a person it seems to me that you should be able to consider as much evidence as possible.

In other words, you can’t judge me by the book on my nightstand UNLESS you add it to everything else on my bookshelf.

Kyra Davis

Bestselling Author of:

The Sophie Katz Mystery Series
and
So Much For My Happy Ending
Order Vows, Vendettas & A Little Black Dress today!

Self Publishing...Could It Be Better Than The Alternative?

I spent the bulk of last week researching; not a novel but my new entrepreneurial adventure: self-publishing the sequel to Vows, Vendettas & A Little Black Dress.  I'm hardly the only published author who has looked into self-publishing.  Currently Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez is in the process of publishing her chick-lit novel, The Clubhouse Diaries.  Alisa has a New York Times Bestseller under her belt and yet if you read her blog it's not hard to pick up on her frustration with the publishing industry. J.A Konrth has six published books but will be publishing his seventh book with Amazon. No traditional publishing house will be involved.  Another New York Times bestselling author (who wishes to remain unnamed until closer to launch date) is also turning her back on the publishing houses in order to publish ebooks for the romance genre.

It sort of feels like the beginning of a revolution.

Maybe I'm overstating things.  Maybe self-published novels will never be the money makers that books which are published by New York publishing houses are.  Maybe readers won't embrace ebooks and print-on-demand novels the way they embrace various HarperCollins novels.  But it certainly seems to be going that way, particularly with e-books.  The key with ebooks is that authors keep a HUGE percentage of their profits if they self-publish them.  For instance, right now I get less than 10% of every book I sell and my agent gets 15% of that.  If I self-publish a book for an e-reader like Kindle I get to keep 70% of the profits and no agent is needed to broker the deal.  Of course the bestselling books on Kindle are VERY cheap.  Many of them are free stories uploaded by authors who hope a free read will drive people to buy their for-profit books.  But a lot of ebooks are selling for $1.99, $2.99, $3.99 and so on.  Right now if you look at Kindle's top 10 bestselling books you will see only one is currently on the NY Times Bestsellers list: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo That book is a HUGELY popular right now but why aren't ANY of the other hugely popular books making it on that list? Could it be because Random House decided to sell the e-book of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo for $5.50 rather than the standard $9.99? Probably.  The truth is people are hurting right now.  I know that we are theoretically coming out of this recession but in my state's unemployment is still at 13% and since California is the most populous state in the country...well that's a lot of people who would like to save $5.49 on their next book purchase. 

More and more midlist authors are reporting making more money by self-publishing ebooks than they are publishing with a New York publishing house.  I think it's fair to assume that their ebook success was facilitated by the fact that their traditional publishers already helped them build a name and a fan-base.    But still, it seems to me that there's something wrong with these figures.  It's not that I'm questioning the legitimacy of the claims authors are making about the amount of money they're bringing in but I am wondering how a book published in ANY format can earn an author more money when he/she is getting no marketing support than that same author was making when they had the weight of an entire professional marketing team behind them.  That's a little messed up.

Of course that's the thing, there IS no marketing for mid-list authors.  All those marketing and publicity dollars go to big named authors and books that the publisher thinks have a big enough concept to become an instant blockbuster.  For every book that gets a marketing/publicity budget of even twenty thousand dollars there are about a thousand books that never see a cent of support.  Those books are just sort of thrown out there in the hope that someone strolling through the bookstore will be attracted by the pretty font on the books spine (because you know those midlist books don't usually get faced out). Amazon on the other hand has told J.A. Konrath that, come launch time they will target market to every single person who has ever bought one of his books through their site. 

It feels like Amazon is trying to lure authors over to them with high royalty percentages the same way they lured readers over to Kindle books with cheap prices.  Right now the vast majority of published authors are sticking with their publishing houses but if Amazon, or any self-published author, produces a blockbuster there might be a bit of an exodus. 

Maybe it won't go down like that.  But it's something to watch.


Kyra Davis
Bestselling Author of:
The Sophie Katz Mystery Series
and
So Much For My Happy Ending
Order Vows, Vendettas & A Little Black Dress today!

Recommend-A-Book-Wednesday

I've spent the last few blogs emphasizing how important it is for readers to recommend books they like to friends. Now the time has come for me to practice what I preach. I'm always talking to my family and personal friends about books I like but I think I'm going to spend more time talking to you about it. I'm making Wednesdays Recommend-A-Book Day. I'll try to focus on authors who you may not have heard of since I don't think Dan Brown really needs a plug. Once I've posted my recommendation here I'll go over to Amazon and other bookseller websites and write a review. To be honest, I don't do that enough but if I'm going to ask it of you...well, I refuse to be a hypocrite.

So let's start with Marla Martenson's Diary Of A Beverly Hills Matchmaker. It's nonfiction and it's kinda shocking. The book details Marla's experiences when she was a matchmaker for some of the richest men in the world. The cost of her services ranged between $20,000 and $50,000. The agency's price was dependent on how unreasonable the man's demands were. To quote Marla: "If a guy looks like Danny DeVito and he wants to date someone who looks like Heidi Klum that's going to cost him a little extra." And you will not believe how many Danny DeVito types expect to date Heidi Klum lookalikes! In fact the demands of some of her clients are so unreasonable I actually had to email Marla just to check to make sure all this stuff was true. Men who want a super-model-gorgeous woman (they call them 10-pluses) who are 20 years younger than them, ivy league educated and want to play the role of a 1950s housewife. How many ivy league educated women do you know who want to play that role? Or how about the guy who decided to ditch on of his matches because although she was beautiful and perfect in almost every way he didn't like the way her nipples looked. Apparently her areolas were too big. And then there's the female client who appears to be willing to sleep with any man who buys her a $1000+ handbag. Not all of the clients at the dating service are this dysfunctional but almost all of them are...shall we say, eccentric? Marla on the other hand is this totally normal, likable and perhaps most importantly, relatable person and watching her navigate her way through a sea of egos and excessive materialism is sort of surreal. And lets not forget the decent people who happen into her matchmaking service. Reading their emails (and this book is filled with the real emails of her clients) as they delicately try to tell Marla that the man or woman they went on their last date with was insane is more than a little amusing. Considering how specific some of these people's checklists are it's amazing that Marla is able to make any matches at all. But she does. Again and again she finds a way to bring people who were clearly made for one another together.

It's sort of the Nanny Diaries of the dating world. And the weird thing is that shortly after I read this book a guy who could easily have been one of her clients asked me out. I sat across from him listening to him talk to me about his plans to broker this or that deal or start up some multi-billion dollar hedge fund and I found myself CONSTANTLY comparing him to the men I had just read about. I thought about what Marla would tell me I should expect and what I should see as a warning sign. In a pretty short period of time I realized that this was not a man I could ever trust and he wasn't treating me with the respect or consideration that Marla's male clients treated the purse-hooker. I think I should at least be treated as well as a purse-hooker. So I suppose the book was educational too.

Anyway, I definitely recommend Diary Of A Beverly Hills Matchmaker. You can order it through Amazon or Barnes & Noble. You're sure to find it entertaining and you just might learn something.


Kyra Davis
Bestselling Author of:
The Sophie Katz Murder Mystery Series,
and
SO MUCH FOR MY HAPPY ENDING
Order Vows, Vendettas & A Little Black Dress today!