If you can listen to Country Music without your ears bleeding, listen to this song by Toby Keith. (It's a Youtube video that opens in a separate window)
Good song, yes? It always makes me sit back in my chair for a while. It often makes my eyes leak a little.
I've mentioned before on this blog that, to get myself fired up to write all day, I like to listen to Eminem's Lose Yourself. That's a good "fire me up" kind of song, expressing as it does a tale of sacrifice, of drive, of true gritty desire. Then, at the end of a day of work, Toby Keith's My List does the opposite. I can't listen to it, honestly, without thinking of all the time I've spent on things that weren't all that important, how much time we haven't really got left on the planet, and all the priorities I should be worried about.
Life's all about balance, isn't it? If you're going to be successful, you have to desire it. You have to strive for it. You have to sacrifice, and I suspect the truth is that the greater the success, the greater the sacrifice required. The problem is that if that's all you do, then you're missing out on the life you're trying to live, aren't you?
Life, after all, isn't really about what we achieve. It's not about how much money we make. It's not about how many bestseller books we've written. It's about quality, about relationships, about people.
Then again, what we achieve, how much money we make, and how many bestsellers we've written all impact the quality of life we can afford to live, don't they? One of the most-cited issues leading to ending relationships is financial problems.
It truly is a balance.
I won't break my back for a million bucks I can't take to my grave
So why put off for tomorrow what I could get done today....
Like go for a walk, say a little prayer, take a deep breath of the mountain air,
Put on my glove and play some catch. It's time that I make time for that.
Wade the shore, cast a line, look up an old lost friend of mine,
Sit on the porch and give my girl a kiss.
Start livin'. That's the next thing on my list.
(lyrics by Toby Keith)
- TOSK
Friday, March 22, 2013
How Long Does It Take To Write A Book?
Yesterday a friend of mine, on behalf of her younger brother, asked me how long it takes to write a book. Now, you know me by now, and so you probably already guessed that my snarky side immediately started typing "forty-two." Hey, it's the ultimate answer to everything, right?
Still, I restrained my snark. She's a friend, and a good friend's daughter, and had asked a sincere question that actually does have a real answer.
The only problem is that I don't know the answer.
The short version of the best approximation to a response that I know would be: "as long as it takes."
What is a book? More specifically, how long is a book? If you go by "industry guidelines," whatever the hell those are, a fiction book for a new author should be around 80,000 to 120,000 words. Because, you know, we new authors can't possibly, successfully, spin a complex tale.
(The real reason I've heard is that publishers aren't willing to risk more pages than what's required to hold120K words on an unknown author. It makes sense; publishers charge by the page no matter how many squiggly marks you want them to put on each. And standards, once set, are hard to change--a key measure of web site type size is based upon a several-hundred-year-old typographic standard in which there were a dozen dozen of them per French foot, and I've heard that our roads are the width they are based on the distance between Roman chariot wheels. Not that I'm suggesting books are going the way of the Roman chariot, but....)
Anyway, I aimed for this range in the three novels I have out now, Cataclysm, Ascension, and Deception, thinking that if I played the game according to "industry guidelines" I'd nab a lush publishing contract and launch myself toward my first million dollars in the bankie-pooh. Obviously it didn't work out that way, but it did result in three pretty good novels for sale on Amazon.
Thing is, you don't have room for much plot twisting in 80,000 words. At least, I didn't think so. I'm thinking I probably can do more now, and I am aiming for more in the first book of the Elf Queen series, which will still be in that word count range. My sci fi work in progress, meanwhile, is going to give a great big moist and loud raspberry to the "industry guideline" and present many more words, and a helluva twisted plot, for your reading pleasure.
So now that I've not-answered the question about length in word count of a book, the other significant variable is how many words you can bleed into a word processing program every day. Stephen King, in On Writing, says 2,000 is what you should go for, and I kind of agree with that. It's a significant chunk of writing, but it's attainable. At that pace, he says, you can finish a 180,000-word novel (more than the 120K max for newbs, but remember, he's not what anybody would call a newbie author) in ninety days, which is, give or take a holiday, three months.
So three months! There, you have it. It takes three months to write a book. More specifically, it takes three months to write a 180,000-word novel (a term which implies fiction as the genre category) at the pace of 2,000 words per day. It's just simple mathematics.
It took me just under two months to write Cataclysm.
It took me three months to write Ascension.
It took me nine months to write Deception.
Mathematics--you suck. I guess it just takes as long as it takes.
Keep in mind that another, hidden, variable is the revision time. If you're going to write a draft and send it out, expect a lot of negative feedback (then again, if you're going to revise the hell out of it and send it out, you should still expect a lot of negative feedback--ahh, the joys of authoring). But this hidden variable is the reason Karl Marlantes told us (at the 2011 James River Writers Conference) that it took him 25 years to write Matterhorn. Yes, there are a lot of words in that book, words that I still haven't entirely read through yet, but hopefully nobody is thinking it took him 25 years of just writing to create it. At 2.000 words per day, that's somewhere north of 18 million words. That's somewhere around 23.5 Bible-lengths.
That's a lot of words.
No, what his 25 years consisted of was writing the book and setting it into a drawer for a while, and then rewriting it. He said that at one point he had to revise out three entire pages talking about dirty socks--a vital topic to an Infantryman, but not so much to a novel reader.
Revise, revise, revise. How long does that take? Well, it takes as long as it takes. Cataclysm is on its eleventh major revision, and I'm thinking it's pretty darn good and done. Ascension required nine revisions to get where it is. Deception took seven.
See the trend? I'm excited; somewhere around my seventh novel they're going to start coming out better than the revisions can be.
*ahem* Once again I must say: mathematics--you suck.
Regardless, it really does get easier to write well the more you do it, an assertion I've made many times. The number of revisions you'll need to make will, in fact, decrease, though never quite to the point of being negative.
But back to the original question--let's assume you're talking about your first novel. Let's assume you can put out 2,000 words per day, and that your writing skill is approximately similar in level to mine when I began. Let's assume you're writing an "industry standard" length novel, rather than 23.5 Bibles.
All those assumptions made, then, it'll take a couple of months to complete the first draft, and another three to twelve to polish it up to where you like reading it.
Or in other words--it takes as long as it takes.
- TOSK
Still, I restrained my snark. She's a friend, and a good friend's daughter, and had asked a sincere question that actually does have a real answer.
The only problem is that I don't know the answer.
The short version of the best approximation to a response that I know would be: "as long as it takes."
What is a book? More specifically, how long is a book? If you go by "industry guidelines," whatever the hell those are, a fiction book for a new author should be around 80,000 to 120,000 words. Because, you know, we new authors can't possibly, successfully, spin a complex tale.
(The real reason I've heard is that publishers aren't willing to risk more pages than what's required to hold120K words on an unknown author. It makes sense; publishers charge by the page no matter how many squiggly marks you want them to put on each. And standards, once set, are hard to change--a key measure of web site type size is based upon a several-hundred-year-old typographic standard in which there were a dozen dozen of them per French foot, and I've heard that our roads are the width they are based on the distance between Roman chariot wheels. Not that I'm suggesting books are going the way of the Roman chariot, but....)
Anyway, I aimed for this range in the three novels I have out now, Cataclysm, Ascension, and Deception, thinking that if I played the game according to "industry guidelines" I'd nab a lush publishing contract and launch myself toward my first million dollars in the bankie-pooh. Obviously it didn't work out that way, but it did result in three pretty good novels for sale on Amazon.
Thing is, you don't have room for much plot twisting in 80,000 words. At least, I didn't think so. I'm thinking I probably can do more now, and I am aiming for more in the first book of the Elf Queen series, which will still be in that word count range. My sci fi work in progress, meanwhile, is going to give a great big moist and loud raspberry to the "industry guideline" and present many more words, and a helluva twisted plot, for your reading pleasure.
So now that I've not-answered the question about length in word count of a book, the other significant variable is how many words you can bleed into a word processing program every day. Stephen King, in On Writing, says 2,000 is what you should go for, and I kind of agree with that. It's a significant chunk of writing, but it's attainable. At that pace, he says, you can finish a 180,000-word novel (more than the 120K max for newbs, but remember, he's not what anybody would call a newbie author) in ninety days, which is, give or take a holiday, three months.
So three months! There, you have it. It takes three months to write a book. More specifically, it takes three months to write a 180,000-word novel (a term which implies fiction as the genre category) at the pace of 2,000 words per day. It's just simple mathematics.
It took me just under two months to write Cataclysm.
It took me three months to write Ascension.
It took me nine months to write Deception.
Mathematics--you suck. I guess it just takes as long as it takes.
Keep in mind that another, hidden, variable is the revision time. If you're going to write a draft and send it out, expect a lot of negative feedback (then again, if you're going to revise the hell out of it and send it out, you should still expect a lot of negative feedback--ahh, the joys of authoring). But this hidden variable is the reason Karl Marlantes told us (at the 2011 James River Writers Conference) that it took him 25 years to write Matterhorn. Yes, there are a lot of words in that book, words that I still haven't entirely read through yet, but hopefully nobody is thinking it took him 25 years of just writing to create it. At 2.000 words per day, that's somewhere north of 18 million words. That's somewhere around 23.5 Bible-lengths.
That's a lot of words.
No, what his 25 years consisted of was writing the book and setting it into a drawer for a while, and then rewriting it. He said that at one point he had to revise out three entire pages talking about dirty socks--a vital topic to an Infantryman, but not so much to a novel reader.
Revise, revise, revise. How long does that take? Well, it takes as long as it takes. Cataclysm is on its eleventh major revision, and I'm thinking it's pretty darn good and done. Ascension required nine revisions to get where it is. Deception took seven.
See the trend? I'm excited; somewhere around my seventh novel they're going to start coming out better than the revisions can be.
*ahem* Once again I must say: mathematics--you suck.
Regardless, it really does get easier to write well the more you do it, an assertion I've made many times. The number of revisions you'll need to make will, in fact, decrease, though never quite to the point of being negative.
But back to the original question--let's assume you're talking about your first novel. Let's assume you can put out 2,000 words per day, and that your writing skill is approximately similar in level to mine when I began. Let's assume you're writing an "industry standard" length novel, rather than 23.5 Bibles.
All those assumptions made, then, it'll take a couple of months to complete the first draft, and another three to twelve to polish it up to where you like reading it.
Or in other words--it takes as long as it takes.
- TOSK
Thursday, March 21, 2013
The Five Worst Interview Questions
My friends, I apologize for my extended absence. Over the past several days I've had a rather interesting series of misadventures, and some day (if I'm not careful) I'm likely to tell you all about them.
Meanwhile, now that I'm back to my regularly-scheduled--um, schedule--I'm teaching a class called Career Development. Of course, it has as a primary topic a lesson or two on doing resumes, but too many people look at it as just a resume course. It's so much more than that. There are lessons on networking, lessons on researching, lessons on what to do after you accept your dream job to build it into a career, and so on. And there are many lessons, too, on everyone's anti-favorite topic: interviewing.
Yes, I know how much everyone hates to interview. Hate it, hate it, hate it. But like doing basic math, and like eating spinach, it's a basic requirement of life. If you're going to be successful, you will have to face down the dragon of the interview process and learn to come through it relatively unburnt.
I know, I know, I hear the contrary voice already: but what if you work for yourself? Working for yourself creates your own employment opportunity, poorly-paying though it may be at first, and so there's no interviewing required, right?
Wrong.
Someone who's self-employed may not have to interview with a potential boss, but at the same time he isn't going to make any money at all unless he's selling either a product or a service. After all, the only place you can open your doors and have people walk in and give you money is a church. If you're selling a good or a service, you're making sales pitches. Maybe you're making them in person, maybe not. Maybe the pitch is in front of a board of directors, and maybe it's in the form of a query letter to an agent or a publisher. Doesn't matter, it's a pitch. And a pitch is just, I must add, like an interview.
That said, saying that a sales pitch is just another interview is backward. I should be saying that an interview is just another sales pitch. In a job interview, you're selling the most precious thing you have in the world: your future time. Your job is to convince the buyer--the interviewer--that your future efforts will provide more benefit to the company than they cost. The buyer, meanwhile, is trying to determine whether your future efforts will benefit the company more than others' future efforts.
It's a complicated game. It is, however, quite do-able, and actually kind of enjoyable once you get the idea behind the process and learn to relax.
Interviews take many forms, incidentally. To enter West Point I had to endure a grueling panel interview in the Congressman's office to win his nomination. To get my first job after the Army, I had to show up and prove I could say the world "computer" without messing it up. My second job after the Army was even simpler: I don't even recall being asked any questions other than "when can you start?"
The first two jobs after the Army, however, were for fairly low-wage positions, one a retail clerk and one a bench electronics tech. The employer in neither case was betting much on the outcome. For my first teacher position, a job directly impacting the organization's customers, I endured a screening interview, followed by a panel interview, followed by a "test teach" in which I had to present a lesson (on Windows 3.1, which will give you an idea how long ago that was). For other interviews I've had psychological and even math/logic tests. For my dean positions I've handled series interviews in which they march the candidate (me!) from office to office for an hour-long question and answer session in each location. Some interviewers have been the program directors who will work for me, and they often all ask the same questions as each other, while others are corporate heads who ask questions directed from different areas of the business.
It's--well, it's tough.
So with that in mind, let me talk about the five hardest questions I've had to face:
Tell me about yourself.
The interviewer doesn't want to hear about where you grew up, nor does he want a rambling discourse on every job you've had. This is a prompt for what's known in sales as the elevator pitch. It's named such because it's what every good salesman has on the tip of his tongue in the event of meeting somebody somewhere--like an elevator--and not having a lot of time to explain what he's selling. Have you ever seen anybody remain on an elevator after their floor is reached? I haven't either. An elevator pitch has to be quick, it has to be engaging, and it has to be powerful.
Thirty seconds is what we teach in class; you have thirty seconds to impress the interviewer with your education, your experience, and your character before he starts thinking about finishing the interview and going to lunch. This is the key part of any interview, and it's the answer you should spend the most time rehearsing. Rehearse it till you can't stand it any more. Rehearse it till your dog starts walking away from you when you start in on it. Rehearse it till you sound like you're not just rehearsing it.
So I understand you met ______ (another interviewer). What did you think?
To quote the robot on the classic Lost In Space: "Danger, Will Robinson, danger!" This one's a steaming pit of fanged vipers waiting to swallow you. Remember, you don't know the office politics. You don't know what the two people think of each other. You should, however, know this: speaking poorly about the other interviewer, no matter what the guy did during your time together, is always a wrong answer. So, incidentally, is speaking glowingly of him--best case, it'll come off as sycophantic, and worst case you're heaping praise on a guy the current interviewer despises.
Words you should consider using: professional, articulate, qualified. Interesting is a good word to use if your impression wasn't all that great. Think of something positive to say. And don't under any circumstances let the interviewer lead you down a negative path, no matter what negative comments he may make. Remember, he might be employing the stress interview technique of baiting. Just. Don't. Take. The. Bait.
What are your greatest strengths? What are your greatest weaknesses?
Yes, I bundled the two questions, because they're two sides of the same hazing technique. Hey, look, if they wanted a perfect person they would start by asking you to walk across the office pond. They also don't want someone who's perfectly without strengths, of course. But think about what you're going to say (hopefully before the interview). If you're asked about strengths, keep in mind that they don't care about your strong musical ability--that is, unless you're applying to be a rock star or some such. Pick strengths that are directly applicable to the job at hand.
The weaknesses part always messes people up. I know, 'cause I always ask that question when I'm the interviewer. "I don't have any significant weaknesses" sounds to the interviewer like "I'm a dirty rotten liar who's only interested in getting a job so I can pay for my crack habit till I'm fired." You have weaknesses. I have weaknesses. Everybody has weaknesses. But here's the thing--be smart about the ones you tell him about. Make them job-related, and make sure they're weaknesses that can be turned into strengths. For example: "I am not good at keeping up with filing in the midst of a normal day of management" (which is something nearly any honest manager would cop to) "BUT I've learned to compensate for that by coming in while my kids are at baseball/soccer/music events to catch up on the mundane crap of office life."
Okay, leave off the kids part, and the mundane crap part. But do you see where I went with that? I showed that I acknowledge I'm not good at something, and that I know how to work around it, and while I was sailing that tack I managed to zip in the conversation that I'm a hard worker. Win, win. And win.
Tell me specifics about a time you demonstrated _______.
Now, this question is more complex than it appears at face value. It's a part of what is called behavioral interviewing, a technique founded on the philosophy that your past behavior is the best indicator of your future performance. What the interviewer is looking for is a specific example from your past that will show him that you're more likely to respond appropriately in the future.
I love asking this type of question, by the way. When we interview faculty candidates, I'm the meanie who comes in after the program director and zings behavioral question after behavioral question at the teacher to be. "Tell me about a teacher you thought did a great job. Mm hmm, and so what was it that Mr. Smith did that earned him that? Tell me about a time you dealt with a difficult student. Tell me about a time you worked with a student of a racial or ethnic background different from yours. Tell me about the time you most embarrassed yourself in front of a class."
That last one is nearly out of bounds, so I seldom actually ask it. I think it, though. If you've been in a classroom for any significant length of time, you've done something embarrassing, trust me.
What can go wrong with your answer? Well, a few things, actually. One mistake that many interviewees make is to completely ignore the request for something specific and give generalities: "when dealing with difficult students, you should...." No, I don't need to know what you should do. I need to know what you did do. That's why I'm asking a behavioral question. Another is that they give examples that aren't really relevant.
The worst mistake interviewees make, though, is sitting there looking like a fish out of water, bequeathing me with an ultra-intelligent sounding series of "um, um, um, um, um...." Hey, lookit, I don't expect you to remember everything you've ever done. But certain key things should stand out, like the first time you broke up a fight in a classroom. Unfortunately nerves can play a big factor in our ability to dredge stuff up out of our memory banks, but that's why preparation is so important. I have a series of the most likely behavioral questions interviewers will ask me written down, and I have notes about the answer I can give. If I am going into an interview, I'll review them quickly. I've pre-selected certain events in my past that make the best answers to those questions and several others, and I know those cold.
Practice, practice, practice.
Why shouldn't I hire you?
What the hell do you mean, why shouldn't you hire me? I'm perfect for this job. There's nobody in the entire world who can do this crap like I can. Hire me, or you'll regret it till your dying day--hell, till your grandson's grandson's dying day.
*ahem*
I can tell you from experience that this is probably the toughest question to answer in an interview. You've primed yourself up to spend an hour telling the guy why he should hire you, and wouldn't you know that he pulls this crap on you. Why shouldn't he hire you? Why? I don't know--I think he should, right? I mean, does he not like me? Am I the wrong person for the job and didn't realize it? Am I worthless, weak?
*ahem*
Ease up a bit, pardner. The answer to this one is related closely to the "greatest weakness" question. It's just--well, bigger in scope. Greatest weaknesses can be little stuff, but this one's your chance to prove that you know the overarching picture. The best answer to it will be completely specific to the job for which you're applying, too.
Find the thing that most people would look for in the position that least describes you--that you can turn into a positive. It's tough, but I'll give you a personal example. A lot of career colleges are heavy in allied health programs (like medical assistant, dental assistant, and so on). I have zero background in those fields; I'm an old grumpy IT guy at heart. What in the hell would an old grumpy IT guy be doing running an allied health school?
Good question, right?
The answer is fairly simple: I'm an expert not in any AH field, but rather in both business (by virtue of my MBA and background) and education (by virtue of my PhD and background). That makes me qualified to be a dean, but the cherry on top of that sundae is that I won't ever be accused of playing the Favorite Program game at an all-AH school. Most deans come from one program or another, which means that that particular program is either the most fully-resourced, or the most picked-on, or both. If I'm applying to an AH school dean position, though, I don't have that potential problem, right?
So--my answer to that question: well, you might be more interested at first in someone who comes from a background in one of the disciplines you teach. In my case, though, you'll find what I think you need more: an education expert who's impartial, who's going to be fair across the board in his treatment of all the program directors and their faculty and students.
See how that works? Turn a frown, upside down!
Gawd, I hate that phrase. I hate it even more when I type it.
On that note, go forth and interview!
- TOSK
Meanwhile, now that I'm back to my regularly-scheduled--um, schedule--I'm teaching a class called Career Development. Of course, it has as a primary topic a lesson or two on doing resumes, but too many people look at it as just a resume course. It's so much more than that. There are lessons on networking, lessons on researching, lessons on what to do after you accept your dream job to build it into a career, and so on. And there are many lessons, too, on everyone's anti-favorite topic: interviewing.
Yes, I know how much everyone hates to interview. Hate it, hate it, hate it. But like doing basic math, and like eating spinach, it's a basic requirement of life. If you're going to be successful, you will have to face down the dragon of the interview process and learn to come through it relatively unburnt.
I know, I know, I hear the contrary voice already: but what if you work for yourself? Working for yourself creates your own employment opportunity, poorly-paying though it may be at first, and so there's no interviewing required, right?
Wrong.
Someone who's self-employed may not have to interview with a potential boss, but at the same time he isn't going to make any money at all unless he's selling either a product or a service. After all, the only place you can open your doors and have people walk in and give you money is a church. If you're selling a good or a service, you're making sales pitches. Maybe you're making them in person, maybe not. Maybe the pitch is in front of a board of directors, and maybe it's in the form of a query letter to an agent or a publisher. Doesn't matter, it's a pitch. And a pitch is just, I must add, like an interview.
That said, saying that a sales pitch is just another interview is backward. I should be saying that an interview is just another sales pitch. In a job interview, you're selling the most precious thing you have in the world: your future time. Your job is to convince the buyer--the interviewer--that your future efforts will provide more benefit to the company than they cost. The buyer, meanwhile, is trying to determine whether your future efforts will benefit the company more than others' future efforts.
It's a complicated game. It is, however, quite do-able, and actually kind of enjoyable once you get the idea behind the process and learn to relax.
Interviews take many forms, incidentally. To enter West Point I had to endure a grueling panel interview in the Congressman's office to win his nomination. To get my first job after the Army, I had to show up and prove I could say the world "computer" without messing it up. My second job after the Army was even simpler: I don't even recall being asked any questions other than "when can you start?"
The first two jobs after the Army, however, were for fairly low-wage positions, one a retail clerk and one a bench electronics tech. The employer in neither case was betting much on the outcome. For my first teacher position, a job directly impacting the organization's customers, I endured a screening interview, followed by a panel interview, followed by a "test teach" in which I had to present a lesson (on Windows 3.1, which will give you an idea how long ago that was). For other interviews I've had psychological and even math/logic tests. For my dean positions I've handled series interviews in which they march the candidate (me!) from office to office for an hour-long question and answer session in each location. Some interviewers have been the program directors who will work for me, and they often all ask the same questions as each other, while others are corporate heads who ask questions directed from different areas of the business.
It's--well, it's tough.
So with that in mind, let me talk about the five hardest questions I've had to face:
Tell me about yourself.
The interviewer doesn't want to hear about where you grew up, nor does he want a rambling discourse on every job you've had. This is a prompt for what's known in sales as the elevator pitch. It's named such because it's what every good salesman has on the tip of his tongue in the event of meeting somebody somewhere--like an elevator--and not having a lot of time to explain what he's selling. Have you ever seen anybody remain on an elevator after their floor is reached? I haven't either. An elevator pitch has to be quick, it has to be engaging, and it has to be powerful.
Thirty seconds is what we teach in class; you have thirty seconds to impress the interviewer with your education, your experience, and your character before he starts thinking about finishing the interview and going to lunch. This is the key part of any interview, and it's the answer you should spend the most time rehearsing. Rehearse it till you can't stand it any more. Rehearse it till your dog starts walking away from you when you start in on it. Rehearse it till you sound like you're not just rehearsing it.
So I understand you met ______ (another interviewer). What did you think?
To quote the robot on the classic Lost In Space: "Danger, Will Robinson, danger!" This one's a steaming pit of fanged vipers waiting to swallow you. Remember, you don't know the office politics. You don't know what the two people think of each other. You should, however, know this: speaking poorly about the other interviewer, no matter what the guy did during your time together, is always a wrong answer. So, incidentally, is speaking glowingly of him--best case, it'll come off as sycophantic, and worst case you're heaping praise on a guy the current interviewer despises.
Words you should consider using: professional, articulate, qualified. Interesting is a good word to use if your impression wasn't all that great. Think of something positive to say. And don't under any circumstances let the interviewer lead you down a negative path, no matter what negative comments he may make. Remember, he might be employing the stress interview technique of baiting. Just. Don't. Take. The. Bait.
What are your greatest strengths? What are your greatest weaknesses?
Yes, I bundled the two questions, because they're two sides of the same hazing technique. Hey, look, if they wanted a perfect person they would start by asking you to walk across the office pond. They also don't want someone who's perfectly without strengths, of course. But think about what you're going to say (hopefully before the interview). If you're asked about strengths, keep in mind that they don't care about your strong musical ability--that is, unless you're applying to be a rock star or some such. Pick strengths that are directly applicable to the job at hand.
The weaknesses part always messes people up. I know, 'cause I always ask that question when I'm the interviewer. "I don't have any significant weaknesses" sounds to the interviewer like "I'm a dirty rotten liar who's only interested in getting a job so I can pay for my crack habit till I'm fired." You have weaknesses. I have weaknesses. Everybody has weaknesses. But here's the thing--be smart about the ones you tell him about. Make them job-related, and make sure they're weaknesses that can be turned into strengths. For example: "I am not good at keeping up with filing in the midst of a normal day of management" (which is something nearly any honest manager would cop to) "BUT I've learned to compensate for that by coming in while my kids are at baseball/soccer/music events to catch up on the mundane crap of office life."
Okay, leave off the kids part, and the mundane crap part. But do you see where I went with that? I showed that I acknowledge I'm not good at something, and that I know how to work around it, and while I was sailing that tack I managed to zip in the conversation that I'm a hard worker. Win, win. And win.
Tell me specifics about a time you demonstrated _______.
Now, this question is more complex than it appears at face value. It's a part of what is called behavioral interviewing, a technique founded on the philosophy that your past behavior is the best indicator of your future performance. What the interviewer is looking for is a specific example from your past that will show him that you're more likely to respond appropriately in the future.
I love asking this type of question, by the way. When we interview faculty candidates, I'm the meanie who comes in after the program director and zings behavioral question after behavioral question at the teacher to be. "Tell me about a teacher you thought did a great job. Mm hmm, and so what was it that Mr. Smith did that earned him that? Tell me about a time you dealt with a difficult student. Tell me about a time you worked with a student of a racial or ethnic background different from yours. Tell me about the time you most embarrassed yourself in front of a class."
That last one is nearly out of bounds, so I seldom actually ask it. I think it, though. If you've been in a classroom for any significant length of time, you've done something embarrassing, trust me.
What can go wrong with your answer? Well, a few things, actually. One mistake that many interviewees make is to completely ignore the request for something specific and give generalities: "when dealing with difficult students, you should...." No, I don't need to know what you should do. I need to know what you did do. That's why I'm asking a behavioral question. Another is that they give examples that aren't really relevant.
The worst mistake interviewees make, though, is sitting there looking like a fish out of water, bequeathing me with an ultra-intelligent sounding series of "um, um, um, um, um...." Hey, lookit, I don't expect you to remember everything you've ever done. But certain key things should stand out, like the first time you broke up a fight in a classroom. Unfortunately nerves can play a big factor in our ability to dredge stuff up out of our memory banks, but that's why preparation is so important. I have a series of the most likely behavioral questions interviewers will ask me written down, and I have notes about the answer I can give. If I am going into an interview, I'll review them quickly. I've pre-selected certain events in my past that make the best answers to those questions and several others, and I know those cold.
Practice, practice, practice.
Why shouldn't I hire you?
What the hell do you mean, why shouldn't you hire me? I'm perfect for this job. There's nobody in the entire world who can do this crap like I can. Hire me, or you'll regret it till your dying day--hell, till your grandson's grandson's dying day.
*ahem*
I can tell you from experience that this is probably the toughest question to answer in an interview. You've primed yourself up to spend an hour telling the guy why he should hire you, and wouldn't you know that he pulls this crap on you. Why shouldn't he hire you? Why? I don't know--I think he should, right? I mean, does he not like me? Am I the wrong person for the job and didn't realize it? Am I worthless, weak?
*ahem*
Ease up a bit, pardner. The answer to this one is related closely to the "greatest weakness" question. It's just--well, bigger in scope. Greatest weaknesses can be little stuff, but this one's your chance to prove that you know the overarching picture. The best answer to it will be completely specific to the job for which you're applying, too.
Find the thing that most people would look for in the position that least describes you--that you can turn into a positive. It's tough, but I'll give you a personal example. A lot of career colleges are heavy in allied health programs (like medical assistant, dental assistant, and so on). I have zero background in those fields; I'm an old grumpy IT guy at heart. What in the hell would an old grumpy IT guy be doing running an allied health school?
Good question, right?
The answer is fairly simple: I'm an expert not in any AH field, but rather in both business (by virtue of my MBA and background) and education (by virtue of my PhD and background). That makes me qualified to be a dean, but the cherry on top of that sundae is that I won't ever be accused of playing the Favorite Program game at an all-AH school. Most deans come from one program or another, which means that that particular program is either the most fully-resourced, or the most picked-on, or both. If I'm applying to an AH school dean position, though, I don't have that potential problem, right?
So--my answer to that question: well, you might be more interested at first in someone who comes from a background in one of the disciplines you teach. In my case, though, you'll find what I think you need more: an education expert who's impartial, who's going to be fair across the board in his treatment of all the program directors and their faculty and students.
See how that works? Turn a frown, upside down!
Gawd, I hate that phrase. I hate it even more when I type it.
On that note, go forth and interview!
- TOSK
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Happy Saturday!
Hope you're all having a great Saturday!
I'm out of the office this week, having fun celebrating with my brother. I'm being brave and going without my laptop for the first time in a long, long while. Enjoy your weekend, and I hope you're looking forward to my return and further writing.
- TOSK
I'm out of the office this week, having fun celebrating with my brother. I'm being brave and going without my laptop for the first time in a long, long while. Enjoy your weekend, and I hope you're looking forward to my return and further writing.
- TOSK
Friday, March 15, 2013
The Myths Behind Friday
"If you must have motivation, think of your paycheck on Friday." - Noel Coward
Well, I'm not sure where that dark mood I was sporting around yesterday came from, but it's gone now. It's Friday!
Friday is usually an awesome day of awesomeness, but this one is especially so. Today we're planning to leave town a little bit early, drive up to Pennsylvania, and spend the weekend with family. And if that isn't exciting enough, this weekend is both St. Patrick's Day and my li'l baby brother's 40th birthday. A pub crawl, then, is definitely called for. Two, even.
Speaking of Friday, it surprised me to learn in a gathering yesterday that over half of the people at the table didn't know where the names of the days come from. "Friday" comes from the name of the Norse goddess Frigg, sort of. Several sources, including the online etymology dictionary, suggest that it also sort of comes from the name of the Norse goddess Freyja.
Now, don't confuse the two--Frigg was the wife of Odin, queen of Asgard, female half of the leadership of the Aesir, and, being a good Norse woman, wasn't really known for much else. Freyja was the leader of the Vanir (the other faction of deities, who fought the Aesir long, long ago and--well, they kinda lost, sort of). Some legends also have her as the commander of the Valkyrie, and anybody who can hold that post is da'schnizzle in my book. Frigg is seen as the queenly, wifely icon of eternal love, while Freyja is the shamanistic goddess of love, beauty, and fertility--and, as I just noted, bad-assness.
Meanwhile there are scholars who suggest that Freyja and Frigg are actually two avatars of the same goddess.
Confused yet? Me too. Keep in mind that much of what we "know" of Norse mythology was handed to us in the writings of a 13th Century Icelandic politician/lawyer/historian named Snorri Sturluson. No, I wasn't making that up when I mentioned him a couple of times in Return of the Gods--he really existed, and he was the author of the Prose Edda, which basically serves as the hitchhiker's guide to Norse mythology, and a few other works. Of course there are other source documents, including the Poetic Edda, and there's also the ongoing stream of folklore, but keep in mind that folklore changes over the years and sometimes poetry is written more to sound good than to carry truth. Just--sometimes.
So yeah, I don't really know either.
Incidentally, that sorta funny, sorta heinous thing that Venus accuses Mars of doing in Deception: Return of the Gods is exactly what I'd do if I were immortal, but you probably already knew that about me. Specifically, I'd find the most naive historian-ish person around, get him drunk, listen to his stories, and then feed him lines of crap like "hey, that's really good stuff, man. You should totally write that. Write it, write it! And have you heard the story about the great big vat that Thor couldn't retrieve for himself but had to get Tyr's help? Oh, sure, of course, you have. ...hey, did you hear about when Heracles captured the guardian of the underworld? Yessir, the hero went right down there and faced the, um, three--yes, three!--three-headed, um, dog. No, it was a dog, and a great big one at that! ...of course there was a burning bush. You think an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing, all-everything God couldn't light a bush on fire? No, really, I read seven eye-witness accounts of the bush-burning, way back when I passed through the Middle East. Certainly, I wish you could read them too, but they were destroyed in the Great Flood of, um, Obeewankenobee, about ten years ago. I'm not surprised at all that a famous historian like you hasn't heard of a little regional flood, as busy as you must be answering all of your fan scrolls and working on your next exciting work of greatness. No, no, see, he only thought he was alone in the wilderness; surely a well-traveled man of the world like you has seen those wildernesses down there, right? Of course you have. They're nothing like the wildernesses up here, so crowded it's amazing anybody can even think. Horrible places, those...."
Yeah, I'd so do that. I can't imagine any more fun way to screw with an entire civilization than to craft some really strange stuff into the myths that form the foundation of their religion.
Back to topic, though, my friends at the OED suggest that since the Greeks and Romans were fond of identifying this particular day of the week with Venus/Aphrodite, and since Freyja is (roughly speaking) the Norse equivalent to Venus, there's some validity to saying that today is Freyja's Day. Apparently that version is documented in some early Icelandic writings with a day name that I probably can't pronounce but sounds a little bit like somebody bringing up phlegm while saying "Thank Odin it's Friday."
...not with a Scottish accent, I must add. Norse adults, as you know, only speak with Scottish accents in blockbuster cartoon movies.
The British, meanwhile, apparently just took the Germanic name "Frigg's Day" and shortened the guhs out of it.
Whatever. Either way, you get Friday, and Friday is a grand day, indeed.
Some day soon I'll go over the other days. They're less confusing individually, but the strange mix of Pagan, Germanic, and Roman influence is--well, strange. We're talking four Norse gods, two pagan icons, and a Roman god strange. Strange at a level that suggests an immortal sitting in a bar saying, "Hey, your suggestion that we name this day after Saturn.... You remember making that suggestion, don't you? I do, and it was great. Saturn is one cool god, I don't care where he's from."
Have a great Friday!
- TOSK
Well, I'm not sure where that dark mood I was sporting around yesterday came from, but it's gone now. It's Friday!
Friday is usually an awesome day of awesomeness, but this one is especially so. Today we're planning to leave town a little bit early, drive up to Pennsylvania, and spend the weekend with family. And if that isn't exciting enough, this weekend is both St. Patrick's Day and my li'l baby brother's 40th birthday. A pub crawl, then, is definitely called for. Two, even.
Speaking of Friday, it surprised me to learn in a gathering yesterday that over half of the people at the table didn't know where the names of the days come from. "Friday" comes from the name of the Norse goddess Frigg, sort of. Several sources, including the online etymology dictionary, suggest that it also sort of comes from the name of the Norse goddess Freyja.
Now, don't confuse the two--Frigg was the wife of Odin, queen of Asgard, female half of the leadership of the Aesir, and, being a good Norse woman, wasn't really known for much else. Freyja was the leader of the Vanir (the other faction of deities, who fought the Aesir long, long ago and--well, they kinda lost, sort of). Some legends also have her as the commander of the Valkyrie, and anybody who can hold that post is da'schnizzle in my book. Frigg is seen as the queenly, wifely icon of eternal love, while Freyja is the shamanistic goddess of love, beauty, and fertility--and, as I just noted, bad-assness.
Meanwhile there are scholars who suggest that Freyja and Frigg are actually two avatars of the same goddess.
Confused yet? Me too. Keep in mind that much of what we "know" of Norse mythology was handed to us in the writings of a 13th Century Icelandic politician/lawyer/historian named Snorri Sturluson. No, I wasn't making that up when I mentioned him a couple of times in Return of the Gods--he really existed, and he was the author of the Prose Edda, which basically serves as the hitchhiker's guide to Norse mythology, and a few other works. Of course there are other source documents, including the Poetic Edda, and there's also the ongoing stream of folklore, but keep in mind that folklore changes over the years and sometimes poetry is written more to sound good than to carry truth. Just--sometimes.
So yeah, I don't really know either.
Incidentally, that sorta funny, sorta heinous thing that Venus accuses Mars of doing in Deception: Return of the Gods is exactly what I'd do if I were immortal, but you probably already knew that about me. Specifically, I'd find the most naive historian-ish person around, get him drunk, listen to his stories, and then feed him lines of crap like "hey, that's really good stuff, man. You should totally write that. Write it, write it! And have you heard the story about the great big vat that Thor couldn't retrieve for himself but had to get Tyr's help? Oh, sure, of course, you have. ...hey, did you hear about when Heracles captured the guardian of the underworld? Yessir, the hero went right down there and faced the, um, three--yes, three!--three-headed, um, dog. No, it was a dog, and a great big one at that! ...of course there was a burning bush. You think an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing, all-everything God couldn't light a bush on fire? No, really, I read seven eye-witness accounts of the bush-burning, way back when I passed through the Middle East. Certainly, I wish you could read them too, but they were destroyed in the Great Flood of, um, Obeewankenobee, about ten years ago. I'm not surprised at all that a famous historian like you hasn't heard of a little regional flood, as busy as you must be answering all of your fan scrolls and working on your next exciting work of greatness. No, no, see, he only thought he was alone in the wilderness; surely a well-traveled man of the world like you has seen those wildernesses down there, right? Of course you have. They're nothing like the wildernesses up here, so crowded it's amazing anybody can even think. Horrible places, those...."
Yeah, I'd so do that. I can't imagine any more fun way to screw with an entire civilization than to craft some really strange stuff into the myths that form the foundation of their religion.
Back to topic, though, my friends at the OED suggest that since the Greeks and Romans were fond of identifying this particular day of the week with Venus/Aphrodite, and since Freyja is (roughly speaking) the Norse equivalent to Venus, there's some validity to saying that today is Freyja's Day. Apparently that version is documented in some early Icelandic writings with a day name that I probably can't pronounce but sounds a little bit like somebody bringing up phlegm while saying "Thank Odin it's Friday."
...not with a Scottish accent, I must add. Norse adults, as you know, only speak with Scottish accents in blockbuster cartoon movies.
The British, meanwhile, apparently just took the Germanic name "Frigg's Day" and shortened the guhs out of it.
Whatever. Either way, you get Friday, and Friday is a grand day, indeed.
Some day soon I'll go over the other days. They're less confusing individually, but the strange mix of Pagan, Germanic, and Roman influence is--well, strange. We're talking four Norse gods, two pagan icons, and a Roman god strange. Strange at a level that suggests an immortal sitting in a bar saying, "Hey, your suggestion that we name this day after Saturn.... You remember making that suggestion, don't you? I do, and it was great. Saturn is one cool god, I don't care where he's from."
Have a great Friday!
- TOSK
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Outrage!
One of my greatest challenges as a teacher was always that I assumed people learned as I did. For example, the first time I taught the DOS class (yes, we really did teach that operating system back then) I taught it pretty much straight out of the book--here's a command, here's what it does, and here's how you can modify what it does. It was a good class, taken by the IT students in their very first terms. I enjoyed it, and they seemed to as well.
Then, over time, my own curiosity with the exercises drew me to learn a great deal more than what even a long-term normal user would have cause to know. Of course, I incorporated those lessons into the class; who wouldn't want to learn all sorts of cool and fancy new tricks?
Unfortunately, the students didn't want to learn all sorts of cool and fancy new tricks, at least not till they'd mastered the less cool, less fancy, and less new ones. I was assuming they were in the same learning phase I was, which is a dangerous assumption for any teacher to make. They weren't, and I eventually had to go back to the more straightforward approach to teaching the class.
Writing, both as a craft and as a business, is much the same thing. I've been at it for a couple of years, now, and I've learned quite a bit along the way. Why, then, can't everybody else know all that too?
I got that sensation this morning when reading an article a friend of mine linked in Facebook:
Self-published authors hit by Amazon online royalties cut
G'head--go read it, and also spin through the comments underneath it. I'll wait.
What an outrage! Amazon is stiffing us! That horrible huge company that now owns a majority of the e-book business--they're big, so they must be evil! And they're trying to control e-book prices!
*ahem*
I was going to reply to the article on the Telegraph's site, but two things kept me from it: 1) I couldn't come up with anything nice to say that hadn't already been said, and 2) one of the posters had already started the ad hominem that anybody who posted anything favorable to Amazon had to be just an Amazon employee. You're here, though, and you know I don't work for Amazon, and I also don't feel the need to be nice over here on my own e-turf. So here, then, I go....
So the chief argument is that Amazon is being a big fat meanie by setting the royalties at 35% for books priced over $9.99. It's also that amount, incidentally, for books priced under $2.99. It's looked at by the article's author as a penalty you as an ebook author incur for the crime of wanting to sell your work of wisdom at a high price.
Now, 35% is still more than twice what you'd make for the book going through traditional publishing, but apparently it's unfair, the reasoning goes, to be limited to that when you'd get 70% of the proceeds of every sale at $9.99 and under.
Okay, I'll admit that I think it's kind of silly for Amazon to try to manipulate pricing that way, if that is in fact the reason they set the price range where they did. Their pricing pages don't say; they just say that you're only eligible for 70% of the selling price under certain conditions, and price is one of those.
While we're getting outraged, how about the evil requirement that the book be enrolled in KDP Select (giving Amazon exclusivity to the title's sales) in order to qualify for 70% royalties in Brazil, hmm? I've never sold a book in Brazil, but if I did, I sure would want to make 70% instead of 35% of the R$ that the sale generates, right? How dare they put requirements in the way of that? Granted, it's their site, their system, their marketing, and so on--and yes, this is the company that went without a profit for five years while pumping all revenues back into development of the engine they are driving to market dominance today. Still, we authors oughtta be able to dictate the terms.
*sigh* Yes, that previous paragraph was written with my tongue squarely lodged in my cheek.
See, there's this thing called math. There's also a less-scientific topic that starts similarly, from a spelling standpoint, called marketing. Marketing says your product is only as valuable as your customers agree it is. Math says it's better to sell 1000 copies at $2.99 (total earnings: $2070, roughly) than to sell 1 or even 100 copies at $19.99, no matter how much Amazon takes out of your sales at the higher price.
I've said it before, and I'll repeat it here: it does not matter how valuable you think your book is.
$2.99 and $3.99 are prices right in a sweet spot for e-books, it seems. How do I know? Well, some people who sell a lot more copies than I have said so based on their own sales experiments. The truth of the statement is also borne out in my own sales. For example, I was thrilled a few weeks ago to offer the "boxed set" of Return of the Gods. I'm offering it for the low, low cost of two of the three books, which is low indeed but still well over $3.99.
Hey, three for the price of two--who wouldn't want that?
Most people, apparently, wouldn't want that, at least as far as the sales are indicating. Granted, I think I'm doing other stuff wrong on it, and I'll get around to fixing things once this experiment has run its course. Still, there's a pretty resounding chorus of "no" going on, while the individual books are still selling well.
And then there's the other argument that grates on my ears: "My book took seven years to research.... If you want the benefit of the research you'll have to pay more than $10." Well, if it's technical non-fiction, then sure, people are used to paying more than $10 a book--often, much more. But people are also used to relying on technical non-fictions to have gone through the review process of an academic publisher. For other non-fics--if your brilliant book of brilliance contains Yet Another Story of the Wright Brothers, for example--then you may want to reconsider your pricing if you think you're going to sell a lot of copies at over $10 each.
For fiction, though--and yes, I've heard the argument in that bookstore section as well--nobody gives a crap how long you researched the book. You're expected to have done some, sure, but the amount of time you spend researching adds no value to the story contained. If it did, that would be the blurb on the back flap or in the e-book description: "The author researched this book for 98 years before writing it" rather than "Come on, cozy up and read this amazing story about...." A book that was researched for six years is not necessarily any better, much less twice as good, as a book that was researched for only three. So put away that soapbox, okay? Nobody gives a crap how long you researched your story; they only care how engaging/entertaining it is.
Something else about business that some authors miss: the idea of sunk costs. Some things we shell out bucks for really do add value to the story; paying for quality editing is one. Problem is, once you pay for it, that's a sunk cost. It's done and gone. You either recoup it or you don't. All costs, in fact, other than advertising, that are involved in self-publishing are sunk costs. There are no marginal costs. Once your e-book is on the market, it costs you nothing to distribute an additional copy. Too many authors get wound up around how much time they invested, how much it cost to have their baby edited, how much the cover designer charged them, and so on, and they want to see dollar signs in the black right away. They'll use all those things to justify a high price on the book. Now you can see the folly in that, yes? You'll recoup the book's sunk costs much faster selling a thousand copies at $2.99 than a dozen copies at $9.99, yes?
New authors, take heed: it doesn't matter how much you believe your book is worth. It only matters how much you can sell it for.
Another "take heed": every minute you spend worrying about Amazon's evil practices of evil evilness is a minute you didn't spend writing your next masterpiece.
Now, off my own soapbox and back to work I go....
- TOSK
Then, over time, my own curiosity with the exercises drew me to learn a great deal more than what even a long-term normal user would have cause to know. Of course, I incorporated those lessons into the class; who wouldn't want to learn all sorts of cool and fancy new tricks?
Unfortunately, the students didn't want to learn all sorts of cool and fancy new tricks, at least not till they'd mastered the less cool, less fancy, and less new ones. I was assuming they were in the same learning phase I was, which is a dangerous assumption for any teacher to make. They weren't, and I eventually had to go back to the more straightforward approach to teaching the class.
Writing, both as a craft and as a business, is much the same thing. I've been at it for a couple of years, now, and I've learned quite a bit along the way. Why, then, can't everybody else know all that too?
I got that sensation this morning when reading an article a friend of mine linked in Facebook:
Self-published authors hit by Amazon online royalties cut
G'head--go read it, and also spin through the comments underneath it. I'll wait.
What an outrage! Amazon is stiffing us! That horrible huge company that now owns a majority of the e-book business--they're big, so they must be evil! And they're trying to control e-book prices!
*ahem*
I was going to reply to the article on the Telegraph's site, but two things kept me from it: 1) I couldn't come up with anything nice to say that hadn't already been said, and 2) one of the posters had already started the ad hominem that anybody who posted anything favorable to Amazon had to be just an Amazon employee. You're here, though, and you know I don't work for Amazon, and I also don't feel the need to be nice over here on my own e-turf. So here, then, I go....
So the chief argument is that Amazon is being a big fat meanie by setting the royalties at 35% for books priced over $9.99. It's also that amount, incidentally, for books priced under $2.99. It's looked at by the article's author as a penalty you as an ebook author incur for the crime of wanting to sell your work of wisdom at a high price.
Now, 35% is still more than twice what you'd make for the book going through traditional publishing, but apparently it's unfair, the reasoning goes, to be limited to that when you'd get 70% of the proceeds of every sale at $9.99 and under.
Okay, I'll admit that I think it's kind of silly for Amazon to try to manipulate pricing that way, if that is in fact the reason they set the price range where they did. Their pricing pages don't say; they just say that you're only eligible for 70% of the selling price under certain conditions, and price is one of those.
While we're getting outraged, how about the evil requirement that the book be enrolled in KDP Select (giving Amazon exclusivity to the title's sales) in order to qualify for 70% royalties in Brazil, hmm? I've never sold a book in Brazil, but if I did, I sure would want to make 70% instead of 35% of the R$ that the sale generates, right? How dare they put requirements in the way of that? Granted, it's their site, their system, their marketing, and so on--and yes, this is the company that went without a profit for five years while pumping all revenues back into development of the engine they are driving to market dominance today. Still, we authors oughtta be able to dictate the terms.
*sigh* Yes, that previous paragraph was written with my tongue squarely lodged in my cheek.
See, there's this thing called math. There's also a less-scientific topic that starts similarly, from a spelling standpoint, called marketing. Marketing says your product is only as valuable as your customers agree it is. Math says it's better to sell 1000 copies at $2.99 (total earnings: $2070, roughly) than to sell 1 or even 100 copies at $19.99, no matter how much Amazon takes out of your sales at the higher price.
I've said it before, and I'll repeat it here: it does not matter how valuable you think your book is.
$2.99 and $3.99 are prices right in a sweet spot for e-books, it seems. How do I know? Well, some people who sell a lot more copies than I have said so based on their own sales experiments. The truth of the statement is also borne out in my own sales. For example, I was thrilled a few weeks ago to offer the "boxed set" of Return of the Gods. I'm offering it for the low, low cost of two of the three books, which is low indeed but still well over $3.99.
Hey, three for the price of two--who wouldn't want that?
Most people, apparently, wouldn't want that, at least as far as the sales are indicating. Granted, I think I'm doing other stuff wrong on it, and I'll get around to fixing things once this experiment has run its course. Still, there's a pretty resounding chorus of "no" going on, while the individual books are still selling well.
And then there's the other argument that grates on my ears: "My book took seven years to research.... If you want the benefit of the research you'll have to pay more than $10." Well, if it's technical non-fiction, then sure, people are used to paying more than $10 a book--often, much more. But people are also used to relying on technical non-fictions to have gone through the review process of an academic publisher. For other non-fics--if your brilliant book of brilliance contains Yet Another Story of the Wright Brothers, for example--then you may want to reconsider your pricing if you think you're going to sell a lot of copies at over $10 each.
For fiction, though--and yes, I've heard the argument in that bookstore section as well--nobody gives a crap how long you researched the book. You're expected to have done some, sure, but the amount of time you spend researching adds no value to the story contained. If it did, that would be the blurb on the back flap or in the e-book description: "The author researched this book for 98 years before writing it" rather than "Come on, cozy up and read this amazing story about...." A book that was researched for six years is not necessarily any better, much less twice as good, as a book that was researched for only three. So put away that soapbox, okay? Nobody gives a crap how long you researched your story; they only care how engaging/entertaining it is.
Something else about business that some authors miss: the idea of sunk costs. Some things we shell out bucks for really do add value to the story; paying for quality editing is one. Problem is, once you pay for it, that's a sunk cost. It's done and gone. You either recoup it or you don't. All costs, in fact, other than advertising, that are involved in self-publishing are sunk costs. There are no marginal costs. Once your e-book is on the market, it costs you nothing to distribute an additional copy. Too many authors get wound up around how much time they invested, how much it cost to have their baby edited, how much the cover designer charged them, and so on, and they want to see dollar signs in the black right away. They'll use all those things to justify a high price on the book. Now you can see the folly in that, yes? You'll recoup the book's sunk costs much faster selling a thousand copies at $2.99 than a dozen copies at $9.99, yes?
New authors, take heed: it doesn't matter how much you believe your book is worth. It only matters how much you can sell it for.
Another "take heed": every minute you spend worrying about Amazon's evil practices of evil evilness is a minute you didn't spend writing your next masterpiece.
Now, off my own soapbox and back to work I go....
- TOSK
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Interview with Sean E. Thomas
INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR Sean E.
Thomas
Today
I’m interviewing Sean E. Thomas, a long-time friend of mine from Alaska. He and I met through his son, Bob, who was one of my I.T. students. At Bob's graduation, SE and I became good friends. Sean's
latest work, Deadly Rites, is a Mystery and was released in on November 1, 2012.
Please tell us a little bit about
your book. Deadly
Rites is the ninth novel in the Alaska State Trooper Robert Sable Mysteries. In
DR, Priests are being crucified on inverted crosses in Alaskan churches. On the surface, it appears priests are
killing priests. As Sergeant Robert
Sable starts his investigation, he finds a similar trend across the lower 48
states. It seems that Alaska
now has another serial killer. Sable
must sort out the suspects and clues to find the killer.
What is the book’s genre? Mystery.
Is this the only genre in which you
write? Now, yes. In the past, I have written articles on
Copy Machine Management, published in Association of Records Managers and
Administrators International Quarterly circa 1992.
What is it about this genre that
interests you? It
holds many avenues for new plots and ideas.
It allows me to use my extensive background in the military, chemistry,
analysis and deductive reasoning.
How did you come up with this latest
plot? From the front
pages of newspapers. Some like Lost
Legion and Dark Shaman came from my nightmares/myths and legends. Roman Legions made it as far as China (Qin)—Why not Alaska? Dark
Shaman came from the myth that one could gain a shaman’s power by drinking
from his skull. Dark Gold came from the myth that an Army Quarter Master aircraft carrying
tons of gold crashed on an Alaskan glacier. Stalker and Silent Killer
covered factious serial killers (similar to Ted Bundy and Robert Hansen). And Alaska
Dutchman is a story of a mine of myth and legend. In June 2013, Frozen Treasure merges fiction with history on the Spanish
exploration of Alaska.
What is your writing routine like? Usually, I write every
day, sometimes all day.
What is the most rewarding thing
about having finished this latest book? It
feels great. Yet, I can’t get really
excited because the work isn’t over. Then
novel has to be edited, reworked and after it’s sent to the publisher, they
make changes. Then the galleys need to
be edited. But when the novel is in hard
copy and in my hands, I feel pride. I
love to feel the cover, the paper and enjoy leafing through the pages. That
pride is short lived. The work has only
begun—promoting the novel and working on the next one.
What’s next in the writing queue? Blood
on the Moon (tentative title/my eleventh novel). It’s about murder/money and the Iditarod sled
dog race. Next, Priestess will be Wicca and murder.
Recently, I have had to set them aside. I needed to revise/edit my first four novels
for conversion to e-formats. My current
publisher is picking them up. When I
first started I had new author-itis—lots of descriptive prose and long
dialog. I’ve punched up the dialog and
made the prose concise. So far Dark Shaman and Dark Gold have been accepted.
Dark Project and Dark Project have been revised and are
awaiting a final edit before going to my publisher.
BOOK BLURB
Deadly Rites
(November 2012). Priests are being
crucified on inverted crosses in Alaskan churches. On the surface, it appears priests are
killing priests. As Sergeant Robert
Sable starts his investigation, he finds a similar trend across the lower 48
states. It seems that Alaska
now has another serial killer. Sable
must sort out the suspects and clues to find the killer.
Alaskan
Dutchman (September
2012). A prospector’s body is found near the railroad tracks south of Fairbanks. At the miner’s cabin, Alaska State Trooper
Sergeant Robert Sable finds two bodies slumped over a table in pools of
blood. While investigating the crime
scene, he finds several hundred thousand dollars in gold nuggets hidden under
the base of the prospector’s fireplace.
Rumors fly that the prospector had found the Dutchman, a mine of myth,
legend and a curse. Over the last
hundred years, many men had died trying to find the mine. Those who did find it ended up dead, and the
mine would be lost again. The killers
close in on the mine’s location, and as Sable follows the clues, they lead him
closer to the killers and mortal danger.
Stalker
(May 2012). More dangerous than Theodore
Bundy and Robert Hansen combined, a serial killer calling himself Anubis stalks
the cities and highways of Alaska.
This killer leaves no fingerprints, fibers or DNA. He hides behind numerous stolen
identities. Now, the stalker has
murdered a Seattle
police detective. Alaska State Trooper
Robert Sable and his team must find the killer before he strikes again.
Silent Killer
(October 2011). Alaska State Trooper
Robert Sable investigates a serial killer who uses stealth and carbon monoxide
to kill alumni from the Chugach
High School class of 2000
and their families. So far, all the
deaths have been ruled accidental. It
appears the killer is exacting revenge for bullying and abuse in high
school. The killer leaves minimal
evidence, only a tiny smiley face with the number 2000. Since Sable’s wife is a 2000 graduate, she may
be next on the killer’s list. Sable and
his team must catch the killer before he strikes again.
Lost Legion-
(August 2011). Pulled from his
honeymoon, Alaska State Trooper Robert Sable investigates the murders of the
governor’s brother and the brother’s friends.
Clutched in the dead men’s hands are gold coins imprinted with the
likeness of Augustus Caesar. As Sable
follows the clues, he realizes a myth that Roman soldiers settled in Alaska more than 2,000
years ago may be true. Closing in, he
comes face to face with the architect of the murders, a village chieftain who
is a descendent of the Romans. The
descendents have set into motion a plot to take over the halls of power in Washington, D.C. Even the current Alaskan governor unknowingly
is being used as a pawn to achieve this aim.
It is up to Sable to foil the plot and put the chief and his fellow
conspirators behind bars.
AUTHOR BIO
A
longtime Alaska resident with a Native
American-Finnish heritage, Sean E. Thomas graduated in 1970 from Alaska Methodist
University with a
bachelor of arts in chemistry. He
attended graduate school at the University
of Idaho for two years
studying organic chemistry, then served eight years as an Army officer, working
with missiles and laser weapon systems.
He later went into federal service, working in different endeavors, and
retired in 2006. He is married to his
college sweetheart Doris and has one son Robert. He published four novels between 2002 and
2003. They are now being converted to
electronic formats. He had a five year
break in writing because of congestive heart failure and ablation therapy to
correct some of it. After recovering, he
started writing again. His five newest
novels were published fall 2011 through fall 2012. A sixth new novel, Frozen Treasure, will be out in June 2013. Other novels are in the works. An avid boater, he has been a Coast Guard
Auxiliary volunteer for more than 36 years, teaching boating safety and
supporting search and rescue programs. Member: Sisters in Crime (SinC), Pacific Northwest
Writers Assoc., Alaska Professional Communicators, National Federation of Press
Women (NFPW), Alaska 49 Writers, Association of Alaskan Writers and Alaska
Writers Guild.
How can we buy your book? All my novels are available on Amazon,
Barnes and Noble and Whiskey Creek Press.
Amazon Authors Central: http://www.amazon.com/Sean-E.-Thomas/e/B0055FFD3E/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1342324133&sr=1-2-ent
Robert Sable Mystery Novels with WCP:
Lost
Legion Aug 2011 E-ISBN:
978-1-61160-038-4
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-61160-271-5
Silent
Killer Oct 2011 E-ISBN: 978-1-61160-044-5
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-61160-292-0
Stalker May 2012 E-ISBN: 978-1-61160-242-5
Paperback ISBN:978-1-61160-358-3
Alaskan
Dutchman Sept 2012 E-ISBN: 978-1-61160-318-7
Paperback ISBN:
978-1-61160-532-7
Deadly
Rites Nov 2012 E-ISBN: 978-1-61160-330-9
Paperback
ISBN:ISBN-13: 978-1611605440
Frozen Treasure June, 2013 E-ISBN: 978-1-61160-603-4
Paperback ISBN:
Dark
Project 2002 ISBN-13: 978-0741410825
Dark
Soul 2002 ISBN-13: 978-0741410078
Dark Shaman 2004 ISBN-13: 978-1553957874 (WCP Spring 2014)
Dark
Gold 2003 ISBN-13: 978-0741409119 (WCP Dec 2013)
And
now, some fun questions:
1)
Favorite author? Robert Parker. His
novels are straight forward and no nonsense--noir. I used to like Dean R. Koontz—his earlier
works but then he started using lots of prose with little substance—he became
too wordy. Stephen King has a similar
problem.
2)
Favorite character in a book you’ve
read? Spenser and Jessie Stone. These
characters are thinking men. They plan
their traps and they use teams to back them up.
Yjey neve walk in to traps alone.
3)
Favorite vacation? Hawaii. When the temperatures are at 30 below zero is
always great to get away from cabin fever, thaw out and enjoy the warm
weather. Also it means not wearing lots
of clothes.
4)
Coffee or tea? Coffee. I love coffee in all its forms. I like to have a pot or two of coffee while I
write. I also like flavored
creamers—coconut, cinnamon, and pumpkin spice.
5)
Favorite color? Blue.
Though I like wearing all black like my son and Johnny Cash.
6)
Favorite dessert? Bread Pudding. My mother and grandmother made it and I guess
I haven’t outgrown it. Every time I go
to Golden Corral after dinner, I head to the desert table for bread pudding. There’s just something about the creamy
vanilla and raisins.
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