Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
You'd need a ready supply of 18th century malapropisms and bad puns
though, be warned~!
  

    
Always the danger that the research is so much fun that the writing
never happens.
  

    


>77

That's always a risk for me.

Since you offered, <sumac>, I own four Heyer books in my Kindle. They are


The Unknown Ajax
The Grand Sophy
The Black Moth
Friday's Child

Do you particularly recommend any of these for me to try next?
  

    
Mmm, The Grand Sophy, then The Unknown Ajax.
  

    
Drifting over to the promotional side of your book project, are you
doing any readings, signings, or other in-person or online events
for readers and potential readers?  

Any other strategies?
  

    
Well, she snagged a monumental "get" by being featured in
world-wide-readable Inkwell.vue.  That's one.
  

    
How many continents are represented in her audience here?
  

    
At least two.
  

    
Kind of a silly question. It's still a weird time for travel and
in-person events, after all. 
  

    

>80

hi Gail!

In JAFFworld one of the big things you can do is a blog tour. As a
newbie, I got a late start, but I have appeared on one Austenesque
blog and have an invitation to appear on another. This involves
posting an excerpt and a brief self-introduction, and offering a
Kindle book giveaway to readers who leave comments. 

Here's what that looked like:

https://austenesquereviews.com/2021/09/excerpt-giveaway-with-author-stephanie-
vale.html
  

    
Vard,
the book description in that blog tour example is pretty solidly
grounded in plot. It sets the table for what will happen.

So here's a more English Majorly question: is there a grand theme or
mission underlying the action and which drives it, which drove you
in the writing? We can only imagine what this was for Jane and P&P
(though legions of English majors have had their opinions). Now we
have you, actually alive and etherized on.... no, ahem...
cooperating freely with us. In putting these people in motion
through the story, what was your mission in doing so?
  

    

>87

great question, Paul!

I have been thinking about this lately and also just reread SEASONS
OF WAITING, after recommending it here and having some dialogue
about it with <sumac>. And I observed something in my rereading of
SOW (ouch, had acronym) that struck a chord with me.

Darcy is revealed to us by Austen, eventually, as a mensch. We find
out about him as Elizabeth does, as he treats her with kindness even
after her harsh rejection of his first proposal, welcomes her to his
home when she arrives as a tourist, makes a point of introducing her
to his sister, and then rescues her own sister from ruin, before
offering her marriage a second time.

But that first proposal of his? That was bad. Really, really bad.

Jane doesn't tell us his exact words. Here's what we get:

//...“In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not
      be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I
admire
      and love you.”

      Elizabeth’s astonishment was beyond expression. She stared,
      coloured, doubted, and was silent. This he considered
sufficient
      encouragement; and the avowal of all that he felt, and had
long
      felt for her, immediately followed. He spoke well; but there
were
      feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed; and he was
      not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of pride.
His
      sense of her inferiority—of its being a degradation—of the
family
      obstacles which had always opposed to inclination, were dwelt
on
      with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he was
      wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit.

      In spite of her deeply-rooted dislike, she could not be
      insensible to the compliment of such a man’s affection, and
      though her intentions did not vary for an instant, she was at
      first sorry for the pain he was to receive; till, roused to
      resentment by his subsequent language, she lost all compassion
in
      anger. She tried, however, to compose herself to answer him
with
      patience, when he should have done. He concluded with
      representing to her the strength of that attachment which, in
      spite of all his endeavours, he had found impossible to
conquer;
      and with expressing his hope that it would now be rewarded by
her
      acceptance of his hand. As he said this, she could easily see
      that he had no doubt of a favourable answer. He _spoke_ of
      apprehension and anxiety, but his countenance expressed real
      security. Such a circumstance could only exasperate
farther...//

She says no, of course. OF COURSE. And he responds:

//... “And this,” cried Darcy, as he walked with quick steps across
the
      room, “is your opinion of me! This is the estimation in which
you
      hold me! I thank you for explaining it so fully. My faults,
      according to this calculation, are heavy indeed! But perhaps,”
      added he, stopping in his walk, and turning towards her,
“these
      offenses might have been overlooked, had not your pride been
hurt
      by my honest confession of the scruples that had long
prevented
      my forming any serious design. These bitter accusations might
      have been suppressed, had I, with greater policy, concealed my
      struggles, and flattered you into the belief of my being
impelled
      by unqualified, unalloyed inclination; by reason, by
reflection,
      by everything. But disguise of every sort is my abhorrence.
Nor
      am I ashamed of the feelings I related. They were natural and
      just. Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of
your
      connections?—to congratulate myself on the hope of relations,
      whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?”...//


This is SO BAD. Fucking awful.

Darcy is a very famous fictional character, and one of the things he
is most famous for is making a terrible proposal.

I didn't realize till recently that I seem to have been on a mission
(as are many other JAFF authors) to redeem him by making his second
proposal (or in the case of TCB, his alternative proposal) as good
as possible, heartfelt and full of love. I don't put a lot of
flowery words into his mouth, just a sincere expression of love,
combined with a little more confession about some of the things he
did in the past, and a solid dose of humility (a major missing
ingredient from Jane's version of his first proposal). In SOW, all
the circumstances are very different, but the theme (or whatever it
is) is not so different: humble, rueful, and wry.

He's a good man, not a perfect one. But he learns from his mistakes.
JAFF fans and authors, as a group, are eager to participate in his
redemption.
  

    
But, but, but WHY? 

What is it about Darcy, and Jane's treatment of Darcy, that makes
authors want to bend over backwards to redeem him?  You say he's a
mensch, but the proposal isn't very menschy. How do we apprehend his
menchness?
  

    
Hi Vard, I have one last technical question about the publishing if
I may. 

I’ve checked out Kindle Direct Publishing and it looks like a great
way to kick-start a writing career (smileyface). I read their terms
and conditions which seem reasonable but I was hoping for a clause
that made it clear that the work remains mine and that if,
miraculously, Netflix wanted to serialize it then Amazon would have
no piece of that action and I’m free to do as I please. As you are a
lawyer, what was your take on their terms and conditions?

Secondly, I see the pricing and royalty structure is, in simple
terms; if the price of the book is $9.99 or below you get high
royalty, if the price is above that you get half the royalty. Seems
to me the first option is a no-brainer unless you’re writing
something people would be happy to pay at least $20 for but did you
do any research on this before making your own decision on pricing?
Are there, for example, JAFF authors that price above $9.99?
  

    
I've self-published a few things myself and been part of that
community of authors. IANAL but I've read the Kindle contract (and
others, like Kobo, Google, and Smashwords).

None of these companies will claim subsidiary rights just because
you publish with them. Kindle has managed to put a pretty firm cap
at 9.99 with their royalty scheme (I seem to recall that Apple and
others fell in line with this too, but it's been a while since I
scanned their terms). Most of the publishers also reserve the right
to change your price to match any lower price you set at another
publisher.

One thing I see <vard> has done, and which is purely the decision of
the author, is join the Kindle Unlimited program, which pays not
only for purchases but for pages read through the KU lending
program. In order to join KU, you have to keep your book exclusive
to Amazon. Many authors have found this to be well worthwhile, but
others not so much.

I assume Sweet Jane Books is a DBA or other form of a single
proprietor business? That's what I use here in Colorado (Clary
Books). Do you plan more books under that imprint, vard?

Happy to discuss self-pub more over in <indie.ind.>, a conference
for independent writers, musicians, and artists, if folks get bored
with it here.
  

    
Thanks Jennifer. I’ll check out <indie.ind>
  

    
>88

We apprehend his menschness, to use your turn of phrase, in several
ways.

One is that after he proposes, and Elizabeth tells him she despises
him and he is the last man in the world she would ever marry, he
reacts with a measure of grace, exits, and writes her a letter in
which he explains himself and completely derails everything she
believed about him that caused her to hate him. She hardly knows
what to think at first, but over time she rereads his letter
semi-obsessively and figures out that he is basically a good man.

Then she goes on holiday with her uncle and aunt (the latter,
fortuitously, having grown up in Lambton, the little market town
just five miles from Darcy's estate, Pemberley). While in Lambton,
her aunt and uncle say they want to tour Pemberley. Elizabeth
resists but agrees to go after inquiring and learning that the
Darcys are not at home. First she hears the housekeeper going on
about what a kind, sweet-tempered person Darcy has been his whole
life (she has worked at Pemberley since he was four years old).
Then, while walking the grounds, Elizabeth encounters Darcy, who has
returned home ahead of schedule. She is mortified, but he is kind
and welcoming. He asks if she is willing to be introduced to his
sister. He makes a point of requesting an introduction to her aunt
and uncle, although he knows that her uncle is a businessman ("in
trade") and therefore that they are of a lower social class than he
is. She is stunned by his warmth. The Darcys invite them to dinner
at Pemberley, and Darcy invites her uncle to fish in Pemberley's
trout stream. 

One day Darcy rides over to Lambton to call on Elizabeth at the inn
where she is staying. Jane doesn't say so but I believe he was
intending to propose to her again. But when he arrives she is
distraught over a letter she has received from home. Her youngest
sister, Lydia, has run off with the villainous George Wickham, whose
father was the steward at Pemberley when George and Darcy were boys,
and whose lies about Darcy had contributed to Elizabeth's former
dislike of him. She tells Darcy about Lydia and he leaves. She
realizes that he would have been the best husband she could ever
hope for, and assumes that she will never see him again. It turns
out he is making a plan to depart for London immediately, find
Wickham and Lydia, and purchase Wickham's consent to marry Lydia, to
save her from ruin.

He does not want Elizabeth to know about any of this.

Because he does not want gratitude to muddy her feelings about him.

He wants her to love him. He thinks she might be ready to love him.
But he does not want his generosity toward her sister to put a thumb
on the scale.

That's why he's a mensch.
  

    
Ah.
  

    
>89

I did read through all of the KDP materials before deciding what to
do, and I have also been observing the decisions made by other JAFF
authors over the years. It seemed clear to me that I was not going
to sell a gazillion books, and that the best way to get my book in
front of more people was to put it into KU.

This has proven correct. 

I think KU is best for genre fiction (mystery, sci-fi, romance,
thrillers) where readers tend to go through a lot of titles in a
month.

As for rights, I certainly have not been under the impression that I
was signing away my copyright or any subsidiary rights just by
publishing via KDP. If that had happened to anyone I think we would
have all heard about it by now.
  

    
>90

hi <jnfr>!

For me, Kindle Unlimited has been my principal source of royalties.
Right now 78% of my royalties are coming from KU. As I said above, I
think KU is best for genre fiction, where the devotees tend to go
through a lot of titles in a month.

Yes, Sweet Jane Books is a dba. I do plan to publish more JAFF under
that imprint. I'm also working on a piece of speculative fiction
that takes place in the near future, and I hope to get an agent for
that one and have it professionally published. I will use my real
name for that one.

I will come check out <indie.ind>!
  

    
Thanks for the update. I know a lot of indie writers who work
hybrid, sometimes with major presses or sometimes with smaller ones,
while also self-publishing some of their own work.

I think you're right about genre works and KU as a useful mix.
Although I do know some genre writers who just prefer to keep their
works available widely just because of distrusting or disliking
Amazon.
  

    

I can't say I have strong *love* for Amazon.

But I think they know that they have constructed a very profitable
ecosystem here, with KDP and especially KDP combined with KU, and so
I hope they are reluctant to fuck around with it. I trust big
companies only to do what they perceive to be in their
self-interest.

I have found them to be fairly transparent re: sales, pages read,
and royalties. They generate a lot of data and share it.
  

    
Vard, when you say you're hoping to get an agent, and a publisher,
for your nascent speculative fiction book, is that coming from a
sense that there is perhaps a larger market for such a book? 

Kindle Direct Publishing being better for niche things? and JAFF
being nichey?
  

    
Yes, I’m also interested in this answer.
  

    

>98

I have been workshopping this particular piece for years, just
chipping away at it, then letting it sit for awhile, then
workshopping it again. In 2021 I did two different writing workshops
(online of course) with it, and in both cases the instructors told
me that they felt I had something that could be quite commercial. 

The first workshop was with the Attic Institute here in Portland.
First I workshopped a very short story that everyone seemed to
enjoy, and then I brought in a couple of scenes from this other
manuscript, and got some good feedback on it, including the
instructor telling me that he thought it was potentially very
commercial.

The second of the two workshops was with the "Save the Cat!"
organization. They are all about commercially successful writing,
and I signed up for their program because I knew the weaknesses in
my work had to do with structure, organization, and narrative flow.
I'm good at writing scenes and dialogue; it's the structural part of
the story that has been harder for me. STC preaches that almost
every good story flows through 15 specific plot points/pivot
points/tentpoles, which occur at predictable intervals in the story.
So working through that with an instructor was very helpful to me in
figuring out what to do with the scenes I'd already written, and
what kinds of additional scenes/narrative were needed to create a
structurally sound novel. The STC instructor, also, told me he
thought I had something that was saleable.

So, based on the feedback I've recently received from two
professional writing teachers, and some feedback going back to 2016
when I first workshopped a chunk of it at the Yale Writers'
Workshop, I have reason to think that I do have the kind of book
that a commercial publisher might be interested in. If it's good.

It's my job to finish writing it now, and to make it good. 

I do believe that the 30,000 words or so I have already written
*are* good. 

But I have a ways to go before I have constructed a coherent
narrative that has the kind of flow a commercially successful novel
needs to have.

I refer to it as speculative fiction, which it is, because there's
some vaguely futurey-sciencey stuff in it, but that's something of a
MacGuffin. I think the book is ultimately more literary than sci-fi.
And similar to JAFF, there is an existing population of readers whom
I would expect to be interested in it. That, too, makes it more
commercially interesting to a publisher, I think.

Yes, KDP (and especially KU) are ideal for genre fiction, anything
where there are a lot of titles coming out all the time. You can get
your book read without having to convince potential readers to shell
out money for your book specifically, and Amazon will pay you based
on pages read. JAFF is definitely genre/nichey fiction.