Social Media and the Herd Mentality

By Martha Reed

Last night I watched the movie Social Media, about the advent of Facebook and the business chaos it inspired, and as I sat there watching it I kept thinking: This has a lot of application to what it happening in the publishing business today, too. I’ve repeatedly heard at conferences and workshops that what’s happening to authors today is very similar to what happened to musicians with Napster five years ago.

We’re experiencing the concept of direct content (via eBooks), we’re questioning the old business model structure and pay breakout, ie., author/agent/editor/Publishing house. I’ve seen concerns over copyright. And these are all good discussions to have, in any situation.

The question, as I gaze into my murky crystal ball, is what is an author to do?

For example: I have a completed manuscript in the pipeline. I’m following the traditional publication route, querying agents, etc. but I’m also reading everything I can get my hands on about the publishing marketplace. I get discouraged to see that agents, desperate now because of the inflow of out of work former editors who are morphing into agents seem to be following a herd mentality by only looking for YA supernatural because they think that’s where the money is post-Twilight. Maybe it is. But Sisters in Crime paid for a survey that indicated a majority of readers were women between 50-70 years old who lived in the southern states. I’m sure some of them are reading Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse, but there must be room in there for other trend lines that are not YA paranormal.

What are your thoughts on the current marketplace? What publishing strategies are you choosing to follow? Inquiring Mind wants to know.

You Get What You Play For

By Martha Reed

I’ve been working steadily on the new novel and something has come out of it that is new to my process – I’m using background music to help me develop my characters. For instance, my new femme fatale is a character named Sally Poldridge who is known among her enemies as The Witch of Wauwinet.

Wauwinet is a small village on Nantucket and it was also the working title of my manuscript until about a year ago when I decided to go with an alternate title because of the difficulty most folks would have in asking for a book with the word Wauwinet in it – a word compounded of a stutter and a bite. That is asking a bit much from the paying public.

I’m not going to reveal the new title until the day the manuscript gets sold. Of course, cut me a check and you can call it anything you want.


Anyway, today, I am going to show you just a little bit of what I’m holding in my hand. It’s a tease, just like Sally is, and as I’m writing her character into the story I listen to the following song on a continuous looping track and do my best to imagine Sally working her evil magic behind the scenes.

I invite you to close your eyes and listen:



This amazing voice belongs to Canadian jazz stylist Diana Krall who happens to be married to Elvis Costello. For someone who managed to survive the ‘80’s, that combo is pretty cool. Someday I’d love to be in a position where this song gets incorporated into a movie based on my book – and isn’t that a lovely dream to work on? Something this good does make it easier to get up every morning at 5:30 to work feverishly on the manuscript before I head out for my day job. Actually, the writing part is so sweet right now I can’t wait to go to bed so I can get up and write even more.

And my dream isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds. A couple of weeks ago Charlaine Harris turned up on the red carpet at an HBO premier of her original story TRUE BLOOD. Of course, scoring an HBO series based on your story, produced by Alan Ball (American Beauty, Six Feet Under) is a bit of a stretch, but if we’re dreaming, why not dream big? You get what you play for.

PS. HBO’s TRUE BLOOD has just been signed to a second season and it’s the focus of an immense viral marketing campaign that includes the development of an ARG (Alternate Reality Game), a wiki collaborative Web page and what I am sure was an extremely expensive print/mail campaign that targeted high profile members of social Internetworks. I’m glad I didn’t have to pay for that mailing list!

This is what targeted subjects found waiting in their mailboxes:



Hey! Why aren’t we seeing anything this creative coming from the publishing houses? Actually, let’s be honest. When was the last time you saw anything sent out from a publishing house? Bookmarks, anyone?