Gareth’s Blog

I left BellSouth eighteen months ago, and after six months playing games and thinking about my future, decided it was time to work again. I had had decided to give consulting a go and built a website for my company, finanSight, a clever corruption (I thought) of ‘finance’ and ‘insight’ that characterized what I wanted to do. I realized a website wasn’t sufficient to make me rich, so began to develop a marketing plan.

I never got very far with the plan: within weeks the good folk at AlphaResults, introduced by a friend, needed some help, and nervously and clumsily I stumbled into a relationship with my first client. But it worked, and I am still working for them. Less than a month later I was having lunch with a former colleague, and he suggested that he could use my help with his business, DCSHealth. He became my second client, and I am still working for him nine months later. And then an old boss called me up to introduce me to a business acquisition team who he was thinking of backing, and I had my third client and was fully engaged.

Along the way I have been writing and wondering why it is so terribly hard to use my network to crack into publishing. Given that I haven’t hit the mother lode yet, I recently decided I needed to turn up the heat on my advisory business. I have done no marketing to speak of, so was just thinking again of how to play that game, when out of the blue the phone rang: it was an old colleague with a nice chunk of work, a client made to order!

The point, of course, is that my name is a brand that carries reliable, recognizable attributes among my business colleagues, and it almost sells itself, but it means squat in the writing world. My wife, also an author, just told me that Michael Connelly should call in his next book. He has a brand and no longer has to try.

It took me twenty years to build my current brand, and while I hope it won’t take that long in this new world, I am certainly in for a long slog. And this time it’s not enough to make the brand work with a few hundred senior folk, it will have to be thousands, then tens of thousands.

I’d better not quit that day job just yet!

I have just experienced the most wonderful affair at the Backspace Writer’s Conference in New York. It was small enough to be intimate, but large enough to have a meaningful number of agents and substantial program. I was particularly impressed with the two keynote speakers, thriller writer David Morrell and the nearest thing the industry has to a futurist, Publishers Marketplace founder Michael Cader. Of course the organizer, soon to be published Karen Dionne is an absolute delight.

The keynotes were inspirational, and the whole illuminating and encouraging. I came home inspired, ready to work on my query letter, and once more convinced of the importance of trying to work within the traditional industry if the intent is to make money: ultimately selling a book is all about marketing, and it is far easier to work with an army of experts on your side. I also joined the Backspace Forum, which at $30 per year is extremely good value for anyone seriously interested in interacting with aspiring writers, published authors, and agents, all of whom will pitch in to help.

And I was wrong in an earlier post: the most important document you’ll ever write is not the first chapter, but the query letter.

I was so depressed by the proliferation of spam that I gave up on my blog for the longest time. But it’s time to return, so with this brief note I commit that I will once again write about writing, my efforts to publish, and my general thoughts on life, the universe, and everything

Hey! Nice site, thanks.  Take a look at this:

http://www.porn_and_gambling.com/
http://www.maybe_a_little_viagra_link.com/

I have been resisting moderating my comments, and at the same time ignoring my commitment to write regularly, since I have seen so much spam coming in. It is horrible!

But more interesting by far than my emotional reaction is what this says about - and offers for - the online world.

I like application of the word “virus” to the online world; it is quite apt, and properly characterizes a relatively simple, automatic piece of software. But as the online world grows, so too does its abundance. The plastering of spam blogging is akin to leeaches when you step in a swamp, or flies when you go outdoors in the summer; seemingly endless in number, they keep coming. We can apply repelants, but they keep coming.

To me this points at a highly controvertial point, which is consciousness. The point is best made, I think, by considering Deep Blue beating Kasparov at chess. Deep Bue, we are told, has only a programmed response, making millions of calculations and rejecting those that don’t meet preset parameters, and acting automatically. But why do we believe that is different from Kasparov? He is conditioned by his previous games, the recent books he’s read, even the annoying comment form a reporter that morning, and the cofee he had with his breakfast. He expereinces freewill, we sayy - but why do we assume that Deep Blue does not also “expereince” freewill. It will certainly be a very different, and much more limited sense of freewill than Kasparov, but why do we reject this possibility?

 A generation of movies - the Matrix, Terminator - has sprung up that speculate there will be a major change in computer awareness and that at some point it will suddenly become conscious. I wonder if, instead, this is a gradual process that began a long time ago. As for self-aware, what is so special here? Is a dog not self aware when it tries to catch its tail, or a spider with a missing leg when it hobbles along on seven?

I think that we are living in the visible manifestation of the creation of online intelligence. And we, the people are seeding it with information, processing power, and interactio nwith the world, can be seen as its sense organs and its environment.

The prolific Leo Stableford intrigued me with a recent post in which he quoted GOB . The topic: whether to publish a book atall. GOB concludes, based on years of experience, that to pursue writing with a view to making money (or fame) publishing is a fools errand.

I agree, but do not think that is the end of the story.

What should you do if you trip over a beautiful artifact on the street, the like of which has never been seen before. Should you grunt and walk by, or pick it up? And if, when you get home, you see that there is a market for novelties, would it be unreasonable to try to sell it?

This is the position I find myself in - and suspect I am not alone. I have three completed novels on the shelf and am simply trying to figure out what to do with them. Whether any of my books is a unique treasure is for others to decide, but I like them. More importantly, at this point the economic calculation of payoff against input does not include the sunk cost of writing, only the future cost of packaging and marketing. In this context I think it quite prudent, if one believes in the truth of the book and in one’s marketing ability, to make a modest investment in trying to sell it, first to the high return/low probablity traditional channels, but if that fails to the low return/higher cost (in terms of editing, designing covers, etc.) POD market, probably supported by online marketing to help drive up the return.

Thanks to GOB and Leo for makingme apply a sound economic analysis to my situation. It actually tells me I’m pursuing the correct course - for now!

I came across the name Susan Kelly, looked her up, and found what looks like her abandoned blog. On 3/17/05 Ms. Kelly listed her five favorite reasons for rejection. Her second was: “Susan Kelly is not sufficiently well-known for us to market this book successfully.”

This dovetails with advice I’m receiving from a wonderful person who has become a great fan and supporter, Brownell Landrum… who is pushing me to appear on Oprah! The common point is theme is that if you want to get your book pubished, you need to become famous first. How does one break out of this tautology?

I am continuing with my previous approaches: I still believe in the importance of the first chapter, and have started using this methodology to introduce Church of the Epistles through my network, and plan to place future books on lulu.com.

But once I finish fooling around with last minute edits, web design, and drafting letters for my book, I’m going to get down to the serious business of driving fame.

My premise is that, just as the death of old information channels holds the future potential of lulu, so it also offers great new opportunities to do online marketing. Blog marketing is now an industry in itself, and its one that I am going to try to use to my advantage. I suspect that fame is a misnomor here, but driving awareness, curiosity, and plain controversy must briung opportunity.

By the way, Susan Kelly’s favorite rejection was: “This book is too well-written to be commercially viable.” As she said, “Keep the faith, babies.”

I came across a post on Miss Snark that resolved a nagging question about something I haven’t done. She was asked, “Do I need to hire an editor?” and in her ever-entertaining voice, replied,

“You don’t need to hire an editor.
I’m pretty sure (I haven’t asked) that none of my novelists hired an editor. They worked at their craft, and wrote attention grabbing novels.

“Freelance editors are valuable if you are not a writer. Several of my non-fiction clients have used editors. The clients had great ideas, great stories, great platform, but knew they were not writers and so brought in someeone to do the writing or editing.”

So I don’t think I’ll be worrying about an editor right now.

I was once again reading GOB’s most excellent blog and was fascinated by a debate he links to about the viability of independent publishers (Clark.)It makes fascinating reading, but there was one place in the thread (1/7/2007 2:51:59 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00) where a little bell went off. The multilayered selling process is exposed. This, surely, is the Achiles heel of the industry, and where the issues raised by some of my previous blogs come to the fore. The stacking of businesses to which Tim Coats alludes, which forces the slection criteria that are the bane of the aspiring novelist, also leads to margin stacking and both cost and market response inefficiencies. Surely, in the long run, the massive, ever-available “long-tail” inventory of e.g. lulu.com, the wonderful democracy it offers, and its lower cost structure will lead to the growth of this sector at the expense of traditional book retailing - particularly when exerpts and eventually whole books (all of them, not just current handful) are available electronically, and in a format accepted for common usage).

So I am being sold. I’m already wound up to try the traditioonal publishing route with Church of the Epistles, and for now success in that channel makes it worth the effort, but my almost-ready second book will almost certainly debut at lulu. And we’ll see what happens from there.

My friend Mr. Bob J. in Nashville was one of the first people to pester me with his blog postings, and after while I came to look forward to his intermittent rambling and philosophizing. An articulate and provocative soul, he brings spice to the Zen view of life.He is one of the forces that started me blogging, and now that I am setting down roots in this world, I have been amazed to find who else is out there. Shokai is a fellow disciple at ASZC and has an archive of Zen blogs going back to May 2004. I never knew Steve to be cutting edge, but I guess that’s part of the point - you never do know.

And I certainly can’t write this without plugging Kate Morrissey, member of our affiliate Zen center and frequent visitor to Atlanta (sorry I missed your January trip, Kate). She is a very talented musician with a new album out; a sample of her music plays when you load her blog (at least at the time of writing). So have a listen.

(Heaves a sigh…) And who else have I just not yet stumbled on!

So my thanks to Steve and Bob for enriching the world of blogging, and my life. Take a look sometime.

I was reminded by Doug Bulleit today of one of my recurring reflections that is perennially unpopular (but with which Doug largely agrees): I believe that inheritence tax should be set at 100%.

OK, perhaps there should be a few carve outs, such as the ability for surviving spouse and pre-majority offspring to be looked after, but as a general matter of principal I feel the case is clear. How can a society that espouses equality permit a child born into inner city squallor and a terrible school system to grow up with no alternative but welfare, or drugs (and jail), whereas another child sent to expensive schools but who never passes an exam, inherits a huge sum of money and never has to work a day in his/her life?

Not only is this grossly “unfair”, but arguments that “I worked hard for my money; I should be able to leave it to my children,” carry about as much weight as “I worked hard for my money; I should be allowed to spend it on cocaine, or pay to have my spouse killed.” You see, to me the social harm done by the silver spoon - children of the entitled growing up into entitlement through the simple act of inheritence - does greater social harm than many other non-permissible activities would. Combined with ever-more-sophisticated tax planning, the modern feudalism of inheritence is creating a growing divide between the haves and the have nots, and this is clearly visible to the disenfranchised “have-nots”, which will become a huge problem in this country.

It is unfortunate that so much attention is paid to income taxes rates - though this happens for precisely the same reason that it is understandable: the vast middle doesn’t have insufficient assets to care much about capital gains or inheritence tax, and are wholly dependent on their earned income. This distraction allows specious arguments of “right to pass on wealth” to go unnoticed, and permits feudalism to thrive, unnoticed. The great modern examples include families such as Kennedy, Bush, and Walton, but there are thousands more.

Doug pointed out to me a corollary for which I thank him. The spoilt children who never have to work are often raised in an environment of unusually high learning, decisiveness, and intelligence, and are frequently genetically graced with high intelligence themselves. I know many who are the children of the system who support his argument: while most are not complete wasters, the majority underperform against their potential. That a system should actively discourage the more talented and well positioned children of the elite to give of their best to society seems particularly short-sighted.

But, I am afraid to say, this is an inevitable consequence of feudalism.