Mar 29 2011

Creating a Cover – Part I – The Killer Title

Momma Said ‘Knock You Out!’ – Creating a Cover Part I – The Killer Title

When it comes to books, unlike the well-known clichéd saying, they really are judged by their cover.  If you want a cover that shouts “Pick me! Pick me!” then you are going to have to be extremely creative with not only the cover design itself, but the title of the book as well.

Part One of “Creating a Cover” deals with coming up with a fantastic book title.  Often times this step can be as hard as writing the novel itself.  There are several things that writers need to keep in mind when it comes to creating that perfect book title.

1.  Perhaps one of the most important parts of picking out a title is to make sure the title you have chosen has not been Trademarked or otherwise forbidden by law.  According to Lloyd Jassin, “Trademark and unfair competition law protects against confusingly similar usage of source identifying words and designs (including book jacket design) by another. If you wish to publish a book, or launch a series of books, you run the risk that someone may have already obtained rights to a confusingly similar title.”1  In other words, while you cannot copyright a title of a book, Trademark law will prohibit an author from using a previously trademarked phrase or word if people seeing your title will be confused about the sponsorship or source of the book.  It is very important, as an author, to search out your chosen book title to make certain it will not infringe upon any type of held Trademark. (props to Michael C. Laney for reminding me of this crucial step)

Jassin states, “In any trademark infringement case, the key issues are “Who used it first?” and “Was it used on confusingly similar goods or services?”…  Merely descriptive marks are not entitled to exclusive protection without establishing secondary meaning. By secondary meaning, I mean well-known marks that call to mind a particular publisher, producer or manufacturer… Generally, titles of works that are part of an ongoing series are protected under trademark and unfair competition law….Unlike series titles, titles of a single work, whether a book, periodical, song, movie, or television program, normally, will not be protected under either trademark or unfair competition law. This is one of the quirks of trademark law. To quote the USPTO, “Regardless of the actual relation of the title to the book,” courts treat all single title works as “inherently descriptive” at best and “inherently generic” at worst – unless the single title has had “wide promotion and great success.”1

This is to say that a single book that is not part of a series, under normal circumstances, would not infringe upon any type of Trademark or fair competition law.  There will always be exceptions.  As an author, it is always better to be safe than sorry as having to recall a novel after its publication can be costly if done through mainstream channels or if self-published.  Likewise, it can cause a lot of professional embarrassment.  Series titles, however, are normally protected under fair competition laws and Trademark laws.  If you plan to market a series of novels, it is a very good idea to file an “intent to use” or Trademark the series title to ensure that no other author uses the same title for a series of novels.

If you have the resources, it is always best to have a professional do a search on the title you intend to use to make certain that you are not infringing upon any known Trademark.  An extensive internet search, however, can do in a pinch.  If you think you have a particularly clever title or one that possibly has long-term marketability, then you may want to invest in filing for a Trademark to ensure that you not only have full usage rights to that title, but also to ensure that no one tries to take that title and use it to divert sales away from your own novels or other publications.  Trademark not only protects your title, but it also protects the goodwill that has become attached to the title.  Having a filed Trademark keeps other from trying to cash in on that goodwill and not only making profits from the goodwill, but by possibly ruining the goodwill that people have come to associate with a particular author or title.

You can do your own search for Trademarks by going to The United States Patent & Trademark Website

2.  Title Length – Some novels will have long titles, others short.  Generally speaking, a short title is often better than a long one for the simple fact that people can remember a two or three word title better than a title that consists of seven or eight words.  Think of such modern-day classic titles as Stephanie Meyer’s series Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn.  The titles are short and relatively easy to remember.  Other modern classics such as Ulysses by James Joyce, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Dune by Frank Herbert all have short, easy to remember titles.  Other titles such as To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee and The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien are longer, but they are catchy and descriptive.

3.  Description – Titles need to be descriptive so that they are easier to remember, such as the examples in the last sentence.  A catchy, descriptive title is easier to remember than a title that either consists of non-descriptive words or does not describe or “hint at” the storyline of the book.  Some titles are named after a key character of the book, such as Anne Rice’s Lestat and Laurell K. Hamilton’s Micah.  In the case of my own novel The Red Fang, the novel gets its title from a nightclub that is never actually mentioned in the book itself. 

If you plan to create a series of novels, you may choose to base the titles on a central theme, such as what happened with Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series.  Be careful to not choose titles that are so common place that a dozen different novels have been written with the same title.  You also do not want to choose a title that has absolutely nothing to do with the book.  In the case of Laurell K. Hamilton’s Cerulean Sins, the title had absolutely no connection with anything in the book that I, as a general reader, could understand.  Also be careful in using titles that are “inside jokes” or allude to something extremely vague in the storyline that most casual readers will not understand.  ‘Play on words’ can also make or break a title, depending upon whether or not the reader picks up on it. 

However, picking such titles that allude to vague instances in a storyline can work to your advantage.  For instance, the final novel in the BEFORE THE SUN RISES trilogy eludes to a very little known fact surrounding the name of the main character in the first novel, The Red Fang.  Most readers will not make the connection between the main character’s name and the title of the last novel.  However, I plan to use this tidbit of information to my advantage and include an afterword in the final novel that will help bring all three novels into focus and clear up some loose ends that may or may not be plaguing the minds of my readers.

Whatever your title of choice, the title is often the first impression your readers will have of the novel.  Like it or not, that title will either draw the reader in and make them want to find out more about the novel, or it can turn them off to the point that they pass by your novel without so much as giving it a second glance.  You will want to pick something catchy and memorable, something descriptive that will either hint at the storyline or at least give the reader pause to stop to contemplate on what the title could mean.  As a writer, your ultimate goal is to have your novels read.  That first introduction starts with the title.  If you can grab your readers’ attention with a good title, then you will have won the first battle in getting them to read the rest of the story.  Remember, when it comes to novels, you really do only have one chance to make a good first impression.

  1 “Trademark Law and Book Title” by Lloyd J. Jassin

http://www.copylaw.com/new_articles/titles.html

Mar 27 2011

Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery – Or So I Am Told

As a mentor to budding writers, the most important thing that I wish for them to learn is to find their own unique writing style and run with it.  The last thing you want to do is end up sounding like a poor imitation of a great writer.  But what if you are the writer who is being imitated?  Would you be flattered?  Quite possibly.  Now what if the person who was imitating your style is the one getting all the rave reviews, the reads, and the huge following while you, the originator of the style, are left standing in the dust.  Would you be flattered, or angry?

I have not only seen this happen to many great writers, I am one of the greats that has had my style ripped off by people who do not even consider themselves ‘writers’ or take the craft very seriously.  I’ve had people imitate my style, slap together a piece of crap onto paper that took them less than an hour to write, and then see hundreds of readers fawn all over them, telling them that they are a great writer.  I’ve seen the same people who told me that my work was “too hard” to understand because of my complex writing style fall all over themselves to praise another “writer” on how their complex sentence structure really added to the flow of the story.  Qualities that readers hate about my work ( the complex sentence structure, informal writing style and feel of retelling a story rather than it being written on paper) are the same qualities that these same readers gush about to other ‘writers’ who have either never written anything before in their lives or who do not take the art of writing very seriously, or who just do it ‘for fun’ or ‘a hobby’ or, heaven forbid, those who did it ‘just to see if they could’ or, perhaps the worst excuse of them all, ‘just because.’  And, perhaps the situation that ruffles my feathers the most, is the long-winded novel/story/etc that has been written by a half-dozen different people who then decided to promote the piece under a single pseudonym, giving the very distinct impression that one person sat down and came up with the whole storyline and wrote, proofread, and edited the entire five billion word piece when, in fact, it took the combined efforts of a small army a few years to come up with the end product.

For some of these so-called writers, plunking down a short story during their lunch hour to post on a porn site to raise their popularity status is their way of feeling important.  Needless to say, if you are the one pouring your blood, sweat, tears, and heart into a piece only to have the writing style that you spent decades developing blatantly ripped off by someone else is a hard pill to swallow.  Having that person getting all the great reviews and fan base is adding insult to injury.  Add on the fact that someone who had the help of numerous people is getting wondrous reviews while pretending that the work in question was written by a single individual is like having someone spit in your face. 

Where does that leave writers who have had their writing style imitated?  With about 2 million writers in the United States alone, it is really hard to come up with a unique idea, much less a unique writing style.  So how can you even prove you are being imitated.  If you post stories on blogs, websites, or open forums and have any type of following then someone coming along and imitating your style to gain their own following is quite easy.  Having something in publication that reaches thousands or more makes it even more probable that you could become the next author to be “flattered” by an imitator. 

The cold, hard truth of the writing world is that no matter how good you are, writing is more of a popularity contest than anything.  You are guaranteed to have at least one person out there who will love your work and read everything they can get their hands on that is written by you.  You might even luck up and get a small following of fans.  For those whose writing inspires a nation, they may find themselves an overnight sensation, but that doesn’t mean that they are a good writer.  Many, many writers will tell anyone who will listen that Stephanie Meyer isn’t “all that” when it comes to being a good writer.  It actually boggles our mind on how such an elementary form of writing could have gained so much attention while really great artists such as Anne Rice have not received 1/3 of the recognition.  The difference is that Stephanie Meyer, for whatever reason, won a very picky popularity contest.

One thing that writers have learned is that fans are fickle.  While someone like Stephanie Meyer may be enjoying an overnight success such as it were, tomorrow the reading public could very well toss her out on her butt in favor of someone with less talent than even she possesses.   In the end, it won’t matter how great of a tale you can weave or that the latest craze sounds just like you.  Unless you can somehow figure out how to gain the upper-hand in the popularity gig, you may very well be doomed to sit in the shadows while a poor imitation of you shares the limelight with a dozen other imitators.

The only good news?  Those who imitate an author can never write as good as the originator of the style.  While they may enjoy a few moments in the sun, those of us who have been writing for years, with talent to spare, and enough ideas to keep writing for decades to come, we shall enjoy many more moments in the bright glow of success than any pale imitator.  While the imitators may write, at most, a few million words because they decided to ‘see if they could’ write that great novel, what happens once they have squeezed all the reads possible out of that piece of work?  Chances are, they are not going to write anything else simply because they never had the talent to compete with writers who have decades of experience on them.  Once their fifteen minutes of fame are up, they will be gone forever, fading into the background from which they came.  They are, after all, mere imitations, and while imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, it cannot replace an original.

Mar 18 2011

Would You Rather Be Plagiarized or Not Known?

A post by a member of a story forum I frequent had me pondering this question:  Which would be worse to you as a writer, being plagiarized but having your work read all over the internet, or having it sit inside your computer never to be read by anyone?

Personally, I would rather have my work sit inside my computer and never see the light of day before I would ever want someone to post it and take credit for my hard work.  I don’t care how many people read it, what kind of rave reviews it got, or even if it meant passing up a great book deal, I would absolutely not want my work plagiarized.

The poster had said he would rather have his work read, even if it meant being plagiarized, because it would be known by so many people and would make it easier to become a bestseller of some sort.  And if, in the event it was made into a bestseller of some sort, it would be easy enough to find the original author.  I completely disagree with this.  There are no telling how many bestselling books have been written, how many blockbuster movies, and how many number one songs have been blatantly ripped off and the original author was never the wiser. 

Ponder this, if you would, for a moment.  Someone repeatedly posts your work all over the internet, taking credit for your hard work, blood, sweat, tears, and imagination.  It gets read by millions.  You don’t say anything.  Then one day you realize your story was made into a bestselling novel.  Unless you filed copyrights on your work, you are going to be hard put to prove that you actually wrote the original one, especially if you never bothered to confront the original plagiarizer.  And IF it did become a bestseller, who do you think the publisher is going to contact, the person claiming the work as their own, or the one who actually wrote it…the one who hasn’t bothered to say, “Hey!  I wrote that!  That’s mine!  You plagiarized!”  And if you wait until everyone knows the work in question, then the fans of the one claiming the work as his/her own is going to say that you are merely trying to hitch a free ride on someone else’s hard work.

Personally, in my honest opinion, anyone who would be okay with having their work plagiarized is not a true writer at heart.  It takes a LOT of hard work to create a literary work.  Some writers get so attached to their characters, like they have almost become real, tangible people.  The thought of anyone going through that much trouble, thought, and hard work and not be totally infuriated by the thought of having that work stolen makes absolutely no sense to me.  If you don’t care about what you have created, then what was the point?  Why did you bother to commit it to paper if you are just going to hand it over to thieves with a smile?  Writers may write to be read, but NOT if it means that someone else will get the credit.

So fellow writers, which would you prefer, and why?

Mar 15 2011

Happy Birthday, Bret!

Of course I can’t let this day go by without wishing Bret a wonderfully happy birthday!  You are my mentor, my hero, my inspiration and shining light.  Rock on, my dear, rock on!

Mar 15 2011

Utterly Useless Writing Rules

When I was in high school and college, I absolutely hated having the English professors telling me that I had to write a certain way, had to follow certain rules.  After spending twenty-eight years writing, I have come to learn that the only rule that a writer has to be concerned with is keeping their readers’ attention…by any means necessary.  Needless to say, I have come across a few rules that I rarely use, even though some of them were the cornerstone of what I was taught for 16 years of English composition classes.  I have decided to share with my readers and budding authors the rules that I have found to be utterly useless when it comes to writing fiction and other types of written entertainment.  These are not all-inclusive, so there very well could be a follow-up blog regarding even more utterly useless writing rules.

1.  Write what you know:  Anyone who has ever written any type of fiction knows that this is one rule that should have never been written down when it comes to the creation of mythical lands, creatures, characters, the really bizarre, and the really hideous.  The whole point behind skill as a writer is to write in such a way as to make the reader think all this is possible, even though they know there is no such things as goblins and werewolves and zombies.  Readers should question the sanity of the writer, wonder how on earth they know so much about murder and crimes (it’s called imagination and research, in case you didn’t already know), but not actually think that the writer is a serial killer.  If one must write only what they know, then it would mean Stephen King had to become a mass murderer, a psychic, and a traveler of time and space to create the fruits of his imagination.  Likewise, Anne Rice not only met Lestat, but somehow managed to follow him around all the decades of his life.  Of course, this didn’t really happen, but the fact that they didn’t know any of this through firsthand knowledge but had the readers so convinced that these people and events really happened is just a testament to their talent with a pen.

2.  Never write in first person perspective:  I don’t know who came up with this rule, but it’s about as useless on some stories as udders on a bull.  Writing in third person is the better choice if you have a lot of characters and want to explore several points of view and emotions of those characters.  However, there are a lot of stories that sound better and are better told from the first person perspective.  For example, romance stories and erotica are almost exclusively written in the first person perspective because it helps to pull the reader in and put them directly into the thick of the story.  If the story is well written, the reader may even feel as if they have been put center-stage in the storyline and are experiencing everything for themselves.  It is a very personal and oftentimes emotional ride for the reader, something that is very hard to pull off when writing in third person.

3.  If it is possible to cut a word out, then cut it:  This goes back to not BSing your way through a story.  This rule holds true to 99% of writers.  However, sometimes BSing is a good thing, if, and only if, you are talented enough to keep your readers interested. Interest is the key phrase to this rule.  The only thing that matters is to keep your readers reading your every word.  If they are skipping through parts of it, then you are failing as a writer.  Cutting unnecessary words may be necessary at times, and at other times it can be a big no-no.  If it helps the flow of the story, or keeps readers interested, then keep it in the storyline.  If it is just fluff that has nothing to do with the storyline, is not intended to break up the monotony of a storyline, or is just not that interesting to read, then cut it from the work.

4.  Pick a writer you really admire and immolate his/her writing style:  I have no idea if professors still adhere to this rule from days gone by, but this is the first rule I tell authors to avoid.  You do not want to be known as the writer who writes like ‘insert-famous-author’s-name-here.’  Fans of that writer will run out to purchase your work, and, when they discover you do not write exactly like their favorite author, they will never read another piece of your writings.  To make matters worse, with the information age, they can have turned a huge chunk of possible readers against you before anyone even gives you chance, thanks to the power of internet, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, and weblogs.  If you want to be known as a great author, then find your own writing style, your own voice, and be known for being perfectly you.

5.  Everything must be perfect and follow all the writing rules:  Good grammar, well structured sentences, proper spelling and punctuation is extremely important.  However, a writer shouldn’t be afraid to break a rule every now and again.  A fragmented sentence here and there isn’t going to hurt, so long as it appears in the proper place, like when a character is having an inner monologue.  Putting it in an improper place.  Like here.  Makes little sense.  But if I do this just right.  Like add it here – Wait.  What was I doing? Tina thought to herself.  Well, you get the idea.  Some rules can be broken, if done in such a way that it helps the flow of the storyline and does not hinder it.  Other rules, such as proper spelling, subject/verb agreement, and double negatives should be, for the most part, followed to the letter.

 At the end of the day, the -ONLY- thing that matters, the only goal of a writer, is to be read.  You must keep your readers’ attention regardless, so writing rules be damned.  If that means writing fluffy and flowing words or cutting it down to a little bit of nothing or even taking a hundred mile trip around the point to get to that point, then that’s what you do.  Following any type of rule should only be done if it is helping the storyline and if it is going to keep the readers’ attention.  Because even if your work is only a single page long and written perfectly, if readers skip through any part of it, then you have failed as a writer.