The Initiation of Janine

After a long wait (both by me and by some readers), this series is properly launched.  The novella The Initiaion of Janine is, if not the first ever, the first of the ‘A Tale of Two Paradises’ tales to be offered in both e-book and printed-book form.  It’s set in the fanciful world of the British Paradise Islands, a ‘long-forgotten arm of the British Empire’, somewhere in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean (west of the Galapagos, north of Easter Island, east of Tahiti, south of Hawaii.  You figure it out).

Janine is a sweet little girl, indubitably cute and rather ordinary except for a few standout attributes which she will tell you about in her narration.  She is young– only second form, at the start– but is appreciably intellectual and tends to be a little more mature than most of her friends, who really are the embodiment of ‘normal’ girls in the BPI at this time.  They giggle and tease each other, play on swings (though they are ‘too big’), visit the beach, shop, and look at or dream about boys.  They are also sweetly affectionate with each other, and– at least to (too) many Western minds– extraordinarily ladylike, even prudish.

Janine’s story is about how, by degrees, she gradually comes to balance her own native prudishness with the desires and needs of the mature young lady she is, perhaps too rapidly, becoming.  It’s worth noting that part of the magic of the Paradise Islands is that the standards for maturity are younger and more comprehensive than they are in England or in the ’States.  As it says in the Foreword:

As a vestige of the formerly indigenous Polynesian culture, the age of majority for most milestones is young; at fifteen a Paradisian citizen may marry, enter into labour or tenant contracts, leave school, or engage in consensual sexual relations.  Though precocious, this right of young people to initiate and conduct their natural lives on their own is inextricably conjoined to the unwavering sense of propriety as established and regulated by the British– for example, education and job training are comprehensive, there is little public-assistance for the able-bodied, and judicial penalties for abuse of decency statutes tend to be harsh and an adequate deterrent to transgression.  Therefore it is vital to not judge too quickly on appearances; or, if one does, he had best assume all is much saner, safer, more modest and more dignified than it seems at first glance.

For those who have read more of my work, the theme of the eager ingenue embarking, not entirely by choice, on a course of social enlightenment will seem familiar.  It’s a favourite because it reminds us of the sad inevitability that all innocence is fleeting; that, once lost, some degree of innocence is lost forever; that it is true that you can’t un-ring a bell so we'd better appreciate what we were like before we knew what it sounded like.  But there is also a great opportunity, even for the one undergoing such profound and irrevocable change, to consciously retain the most important elements of virtue.  Growing older does not mean losing all goodness; it merely means one must develop an independent sense of what’s wrong and what’s right and to conduct oneself with a responsibility to one’s self and to those who matter.  Janine’s story is the story of one who, having realised she may have flung herself ahead rather earlier than she may have liked, regains her self-control and self-respect and learns to conduct her own behaviour on her own (eminently respectable) terms.

I wrote in The Absolutist: ‘Absence of commission or experience is not equal to virtue, which is the responsible and deliberate exercise and restraint of free will. ’  (http://jonniecometsabsolutist.blogspot.com/p/the-tenets-precepts-belonging-to-neo.html)

I always seem to come back to virtue as a principal theme in all my work.

For the curious, a preview is available.  This excerpt represents the first chapter of a ten-chapter work, somewhere about 11% of the total.  This should be sufficient to give an idea of the novel’s pacing, plot and character development, style and substance, as well as to introduce the unique story setting.  The paperback version of the book contains an addenda, edited by Colin and me, including footnotes for local ‘lingo’ and specific terms that won’t be familiar to people who don’t live in the BPI (which, if you think about it, is everyone in the real world!).

This is from someone else's book but it's funny.

A preview is available here– https://www.createspace.com/Preview/1175206

The paperback will be available shortly (mid-August-?).  The novella edition contains the glossed terms and the manga-styled artwork.

A ‘deluxe compilation’ is coming out as well; this contains The Initiation of Janine and also the next three episodes in Janine’s story, with addenda including glossed terms, maps, other documents and the artwork.  This shall be the model for further stories within the JOP and other ‘T2P’ story arcs: about 250-270 pages, amounting to four, five, maybe six separate but sequential episodes, with interesting add-ons such as maps, diagrams, lingo terms and cool (almost-saucy) artwork.

The Kindle e-text is available now–  http://www.amazon.com/Initiation-Janine-Paradise-Form-20010107-ebook/dp/B002JCT1NE/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8  This contains endnotes (not glossed in the body of the text; you have to scroll back and forth, the only way Kindle allows one to publish it) but no maps and no artwork.

  

As ever I appreciate all relevant and considerate comments and look forward to seeing this get popular.  Now it’s all up to you! 

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On back-cover blurbs

In the writers' circle to which I belong I have often mentioned that the 100-word blurb (the one on Amazon and on the back of the cover) is one of the most important parts of book marketing. It is painfully ironic that the people who publish and distribute books don't like to take a lot of time to read much about them. They are as lazy as many other readers.  So as an author or book promoter you have to be quick, interesting and unique.  You have to interest someone as early as possible, even to get him to read till the end of your 100 words.  And you need to make him want to pay $19.00 for the book (or $6.95 plus $79.00 for the Kindle).

I actually enjoy writing an introductory blurb.  It's an exercise in brevity (something I could always use) and it's fun to try to depict the book accurately and as efficiently as possible.  Andy Warhol once suggested that each of us will be famous for 15 minutes.  (I don't know if I've got to my 15 minutes yet.  Maybe I am just an optimist.)  Imagine, now, that you were granted one minute of your fame to depict your book to people who, if they liked how it sounded, would buy it, read it and rave about it till you became a millionaire from the book sales.  This might be your one chance at stardom.  What would you say to such an opportunity?

At the risk of appearing self-important here, I shall pose my opening chapter to Deirdre, the Oyster's Pearl as a pretty good example:

http://www.amazon.com/Deirdre-Oysters-Pearl-Jonnie-Comet/dp/1448635799/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_11
Please don't count the words; it won't flatter either of us!

Here is the one for the forthcoming Sylvia:

http://authorjonniecomet.blogspot.com/2012/01/sylvia-or-revenge-of-slave.html

This is longer, intentionally so; but it sets up enough of the story itself that you have an idea of what to expect.  This blurb may be edited later as the book nears completion.  As yet I have not wholly addressed some of the plot elements this blurb hints at and so I maintain this blurb as a kind of guide to what has to be covered by the text proper.

I won't claim that my blurbs are anything terrific; I view them as mere tools to accomplish what I need for them to do, no differently than I view the clever little tools I have made to facilitate the restoration of the boat.  The tools are not the boat; they are the means for me to benefit from the boat and for the boat to earn its keep.

And so goes for the blurbs we have to write for our books.  For my part I believe that these blurbs are adequate to introduce the book in such a way that the book itself appears interesting.  To do this I prefer to pose questions or to leave cliffhangers that can only be satisfied by reading more than the first third of the actual book.  And I do aggrandise or exaggerate certain plot elements in order to make them seem more like the core of the story-- the same as the preview does for the feature film.  Watch the 'trailer' feature on some DVD film you have to see how often it distorts or even misrepresents the film you know so well.  This is part of salesmanship; and, though we are all much more artists in our writing, we must learn some degree of marketing in order to survive-- and, perhaps more importantly, ensure that our work survives our efforts in promoting it during our lifetimes.  So don't be afraid to really pump up your work in those 100 words.  Make it seem like the greatest thing there ever was-- so long as it's really representing the story you really wrote and not the one you only should have done!

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Jonnie Comet on nontraditional publishing

from a PR flyer-- 12 September 2011

In your opinion what is the effect of established methods of publishing?

  The current model of publishing, espoused by all the major publishers, retailers and, unfortunately, most authors is to have an expensive, premier agent in Manhattan approve your book, send it to a large, famous and well-established publisher as well as to his friends at the New York Times, have Ingrams distribute it to Barnes and Noble, and then sit back and wait for the Today show to schedule your TV interviews and the filmmakers to call.

  Though a precious few do find success this way, what I call the ‘B&N model’ is inherently flawed in numerous ways.  Conspicuously, it gives voice to only a very elite few.  If the agent has never heard of you, he will regard your voice as unimportant to the market and unlikely to earn him any money, since if you were any good he would have heard of you.  Notice that, besides being circular logic, this attitude cements the agent(s) as the chief arbiter between what gets said by whom to whom, the gatekeeper of free speech in a free market.

  And just because something is not out in the market now doesn’t mean it wouldn’t do well in the market if some industrious marketer got off his bottom and set to work.  The job of the agent and publishing marketer is to sell what’s not already there.  To me, the very fact that it’s not there suggests an opportunity.  A marketer should want to be the first and only one to discover new talent and to reap the benefits.  But to the average publisher or agent, the fact that it’s not there, for whatever reason, suggests that it has no right to be.  He’d rather take an easy 15% from a sure thing.

  Notice that this model relies heavily on the author’s either being a name already known to the media world (such as Tina Fey or Anne Coulter, both of whom worked hard in other areas of media to gain their reputations) or knowing someone who can do you a favour and read your otherwise unsolicited manuscript.  If you maintain that this is the only or even the most desirable way to get published, answer this: how famous are you already; or how many agents do you regularly golf, bowl, drink craft beer or attend university reunions with?

  This model of publishing has existed since at least the 1920s and remains the default which most retailers, publishers, distributors and agents (as well as authors) think is the only sensible way to publish and market books.  It’s flawed ethically and economically.  I’ve tried for years to figure out why it persists; and I can only imagine that it’s centred in ego or establishmentism, something more having to do with the personalities in question than with logic, common sense or marketing savvy.

In your opinion what are the benefits of nontraditional publishing?

  A small book-by-book publisher, whether selling through small shops or online, operates by nature and by necessity on a much more efficient scale.  The biggest benefit comes from adopting a Print-On-Demand (POD) scheme rather than relying on a huge and expensive inventory.  Under POD a stocking distributor has only to carry as many books as will sell before more can be printed.  This number can be as low as 1.  Compare that to a 25,000-per-title run by the average big publisher’s big printing contractor-- who pretty much dictate to the whole industry as it stands now-- with whom a lower-quantity run actually increases the price per copy.  This is a system based on waste.

  POD is more space-efficient as well, which results in less real estate needed for inventory, since the reorder point can be so low and the restocking time can be so fast.  It’s less shop to heat and cool, less taxes to pay, and more space that can be devoted to a greater variety of books.  In fact a ‘virtual’ bookstore, along the lines of an eBay trader, can be set up in anyone’s garage or basement, carrying only a few favourite titles and marketing to a very specific market-- though I always prefer a physical establishment where I can meet people and touch and open books myself; and I suspect most novel readers are of my mind here.

  And then, ethically, the POD model is purer and more sensitive.  Few, if any, books get returned unsold; so there is no paper waste.  I don’t have a problem cutting down trees to promptly produce a really nice copy of a book that has been requested and will be kept and cherished for generations; but I don’t want to chop down whole forests in Idaho and Oregon to produce hundreds of thousands of books when we don’t know if anyone even wants them yet.

  Despite these obvious and very real benefits, many people look down on POD titles as something less than being ‘really published’.  This is a snobbism that can only be bred of belonging to the ‘B&N model’.

  Why aren’t more publishers, even big ones, doing POD?  I think you should ask the print shops, who by virtue of their ‘requirements’ that they do only massive runs, thus binding the publishers to an inefficient relationship, rather dictate to the entire industry what may be done with what for whom.

What do you believe is the biggest drawback of nontraditionally-published novels?

  Most of them are not edited well.  It’s not the story that makes them seem amateurish, or any triteness about characterisation and dialogue.  Any of that can be overlooked when it’s got into an appropriate market.  It’s sad but true that most people with a computer word-processing program in front of them don’t have a sufficient grasp of English to be able to write mechanically well.  As a literature teacher I used to ask my students to ask of their own compositions, ‘Does this look like what I’ve read in this class?’  Are the conventions of writing dialogue observed?  Is the grammar similar?  Are there verb-tense or -agreement problems?  Did you use whom and who correctly?  Did you even check the spelling?

  I have come to suspect that one great reason for the inadequacy of amateur writers’ publications is their utter dependence on the functionally inferior MS Word spell-checker and grammar-checker.  They are absolutely atrocious and their suggestions should be regarded with scepticism or just completely ignored.  Get a real-life hardcover dictionary (I use the Collins, believe it or not, not the OED) and get into the practice of looking up every word before you select one of the spellchecker’s options.  You will produce a quality manuscript and learn English better besides.  And your attention to the actual mechanics of the language will elevate your story above those of the punters that didn’t bother and will ensure that those who read it can appreciate it on its more literary merits.

  It’s like racing a car-- if you think you’re a good driver worth notice, don’t let your car break down on the third lap in.  Failing because of mechanical problems is the worst way to go-- and most easily avoided!

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On nontraditional publishing

http://wredhead.blogspot.com/2012/01/tip-oday-269-traditional-publishing.html

Some comments I made for an independent authors' forum about the new face of publishing wound up on Dixon Rice's blog.  Worth a look-- definitely worth consideration-- for anyone in or entering the writing scene.

Trust me!