I haven’t yet seen the new Muppet movie, but I want to. I’ve been hearing good things about it from almost everyone, except for one or two people who HAVE NO SOULS. (::Waves to Charlie Finlay::)

So while I bide my time until I can get out and pay $10 to recapture my childhood for a few hours, here are some Muppet-related questions to ponder…

1. Are Muppets immortal? Some Muppets appear older than others: Statler and Waldorf, for example. Muppet Babies and the baby sequence in The Muppets Take Manhattan show that Muppets do start out as children. But why do some grow elderly while others seem frozen at a younger age, and do Muppets ever die? More importantly, can this biological quirk be extracted and harnessed for our own use? Do these seemingly-innocent creatures hold the key to eternal life? (This question was inspired in part by my comment that someone needs to make a Highlander/Muppets mash-up so that we can get Animal shouting “On-ly one! On-ly one!”)

2. Muppet sex. Kermit and Miss Piggy prove that you’ve got Muppet romance, but how do they make baby Muppets? Do Muppets have internal genitalia hidden within a flap of felt? Or do Muppets build their own young from scraps of foam and cloth and old ping pong balls? And what about Muppet/human relationships? Muppets are clearly attracted to other species. When a Muppet has sex with a human, does “protection” mean Scotchgard?

3. What are the religious implications? How are our organized religions different in a world with two intelligent species, a world where felt-based life evolved (or was intelligently designed) alongside carbon-based life? Is there a Muppet God? Many Muppets don’t seem to care about clothes, and they often seem to have an aura of innocence … could Muppets have avoided the taint of Original Sin? How many  Muppet-worshipping cults exist in that world? Do people go door-to-door asking if you’ve been saved by Kermit? (If not, they should!)

4. Criminal law. My son and I were watching old Muppet show episodes the other night, and Sweetums ate Candice Bergen’s camera. Kermit said, “That’s nothing. Last week he ate the guest!” To the best of my knowledge, no charges were ever filed. Of course, guests have also been known to go on a killing rampage against innocent Muppets (seriously, WTF???!!!) Are Muppets legal nonentities, immune from both prosecution or legal recourse for crimes committed against them? Did they negotiate some sort of diplomatic immunity, or are they considered a sovereign people with their own laws? Given the number of cannibalistic Muppets, this seems like a potentially terrifying culture to live in. (Though that could be my own humanist prejudices.) I’ll tell you one thing, though. If I ever had to live among Muppetkind, I’d be packing a good pair of craft scissors, sharp enough to pierce any Muppet gullet.

5. What about Muppets from Space? I reject your reality, and substitute my own. In my reality, NO SUCH MOVIE WAS EVER MADE! Moving on…

6. Who owns the patents from Muppet Labs? They invented a teleporter! Shrinking pills. Weaponized bananas! How do Muppets not own the whole damn world? They need a freaking Muppet patent lawyer. Or maybe they’re using their superior technology to keep humanity in line. Could these Muppet masterminds secretly be controlling the fate of the technologically inferior humans? Do they represent the beginning of what will eventually become the Eloi to our primitive Morlocks?

7. Why would anyone think about these things? What’s wrong with you? Eh. I’m a writer. It’s what we do…

apricot_tree sent me a link to Anne Allen’s 12 Things Everybody and His Grandmother Needs to Know about Amazon Reader Reviews, asking if I had Opinions.

As is often the case, the question isn’t whether I have Opinions. The question is whether you’ll be able to get me to shut up about them. My first Opinion is that sometimes it’s okay to use “They/Their” as gender-neutral pronouns. (Which, knowing my readership, should be enough to spawn a passionate 200-comment grammar-war all by itself…)

As for the blog post, it opens by describing Jeff Bezos (King of Amazon) as “author-friendly,” and claims that most authors are dependent on Amazon.com for 90% of our income. (This claim apparently comes from The Writer’s Guide to E-Publishing, but no direct link is provided, and I couldn’t find it on the site.) Color me skeptical.

That said, Allen provides some good basic information on Amazon feedback, explaining reviews and tags and “Likes.” I agree with some of her points, such as telling reviewers to review the content of the book. (As opposed to giving a book you’ve never read one star because you don’t like the price, or you’re boycotting the publisher, or whatever.)

But a few lines in her post jumped out at me, like:

“Don’t get your … snark on if you want to stay friends with the author.”

Raise your hand if you see the implicit assumption in that line. It’s an assumption that returns a short time later. 

“Positively reviewing an author’s book pays back in tons of good will. Review a friend’s book now, and when yours comes out, she’s a lot more likely to review yours. And even if you don’t write, writing positive reviews is the nicest thing you can do for your favorite authors.”

So, reasons to review books include:

1. You’re friends with the author.
2. You hope maybe they’ll review your books!
3. You want to be nice.

Huh. I always thought you should review books because you wanted to share your thoughts about the books…

Most writers recognize that word-of-mouth is one of the most important factors in a book’s success, and Amazon has worked hard to allow customers to share opinions online. So I understand an author’s desire to increase Amazon reader activity.

Heck, I’d love it if you all ran out to review and tag my books. And hey, by encouraging you to do that, I can increase word-of-mouth about my stuff, which will increase sales, meaning I FINALLY HAVE DIRECT, IMMEDIATE CONTROL OF HOW WELL MY BOOK SELLS!

Or not. But I think that’s the underlying drive for a lot of what I’m seeing. I’m on one author e-mail list that spent several weeks on a “Like & Tag Drive,” encouraging authors to tag and like each other’s stuff. Had they actually read everyone’s stuff? Of course not, but who cares, right?

Maybe this actually sells books, but mostly what I see are incestuous circles of authors buying and reviewing each other. Meanwhile, popular and bestselling books continue to generate far more reviews and tags … because people genuinely like those books. Not because the authors are out spamming for reviews.

So here are a few of my thoughts on Amazon reviewing.

1. Tagging, liking, reviewing, blogging, and telling others about a book is very much appreciated. However, the reader is under no obligation to do any of those things.

2. I’m not aware of any solid data showing that the number of reviews/tags on Amazon has a significant impact on sales. (If such data exists, please let me know.)

3. Asking your fans to promote your work can become obnoxious. Like any other form of advertising, I suspect you’re going to annoy fans if you push too hard.

4. Negative reviews aren’t the end of the world. Allen says, “Giving 1 or 2 stars to a book that doesn’t have many reviews is taking money out of the author’s pocket.” Hello, little guilt trip. Even if this was true, so what? A reviewer’s job is not to support the author; a reviewer’s job is to review the damn book. Please don’t lose your shit because someone gave you two stars. And please don’t be the guy who says “I need people to post reviews of my book. Remember, five stars only!” (I wish I was making this up.)

5. Don’t review your own stuff. It’s tacky. Just don’t.

6, Finally, a review should be written for readers, not for the author. Your job as a reader isn’t to REVIEW ALL THE BOOKS because we guilted you into it and my children will starve if you don’t give me five stars. My job as the author is to write a KICK-ASS BOOK that makes you want to run out and tell all those other readers how awesome it was.

A friend pointed me to Dean Wesley Smith’s blog post about the state of publishing, titled The New World of Publishing: There Are Suckers Born Every Minute and They Are Writers.

As one of the suckers, I will say that Smith makes some points I agree with. For example, when talking about indie vs. traditional publishing, he says “Adopt this phrase: BE SMART. DO BOTH.” I absolutely agree that writers should be exploring both paths, and in general, it looks to me like writers who dip into both streams are having the most success. And he ends the post by stressing the importance of story, another point I strongly support:

“Keep focusing on writing better and better stories. If you aren’t spending more time learning how to tell a better story than marketing or mailing, then none of this will matter.”

But Smith also warns writers to “Avoid agents at all costs,” saying:

“If you have one, fire them now unless your agent is also an attorney. No reason needed. A writer in this new world needs a good IP attorney on board. And not an agent who has other clients with the same publishing house that you sell to. That agent will NEVER fight for you. Ever. An attorney will fight for you and cost you a ton less money.  (I do not have an agent and can see no reason now to ever bring one back into the picture.)”

There are two things going on here. In part, he’s talking about agents who act as publishers and the conflict of interest there, which is an ongoing and important discussion. But he’s not saying “Fire your agent if they’re also a publisher.” He’s saying “If you have one, fire them now,” and that he “can see no reason to ever bring [an agent] back into the picture.”

Here’s a reason — I’ve earned a pretty good five-figure income this year from my writing, almost matching what I make in my day job. Close to half of that comes from foreign sales my agent made via the contacts he’s built up over the past few decades. Sure, he takes a commission (25% on foreign sales), but he then doubles my income.

I might be a sucker, but I think the math works out in my favor here.

My agent also reviews my contracts, challenging clauses and explaining things I simply don’t have the knowledge to fully understand. Smith is right that a good publishing lawyer could do the same thing, of course. But a lawyer works for an hourly rate, whereas my agent works on commission. Based purely on money-as-motivation, I prefer working with someone who’s motivated to get the best deal as opposed to someone who’s motivated to take as long as possible to do the work.

There are bad agents out there, and a bad agent is worse than none at all. I also know several authors who do quite well for themselves without an agent, and that’s great.

I’m not one of them. I’m not in a position to represent myself as well as my agent does.

Smith several times refers to the stupidity of writers. In my case, walking away from someone who has had a strong and demonstrably positive influence on my career seems like a stupid move. I could probably negotiate my own deals with DAW (my U.S. publisher) at this point, though even now my agent has talked about several long-term issues with my contracts that I never would have considered. But I don’t have the overseas contacts my agent does.

This is getting long, so maybe I’ll wait until later to respond to the oft-repeated assertion that writers are stupid for taking 15% or 25% from a major publisher when, in Smith’s words, they could “simply indie publish and get 70% of Gross Income instead.” Here’s a preview of my response: 15% of 10,000 books sold is generally still a better deal than 70% of 1000…

I just wish writers on their soapboxes (and most of us climb up there from time to time) would recognize that people’s careers are different. What works for one writer might not be the best path for another. I’m glad Smith is doing so well with self-publishing and going agentless, but suggesting that we should all follow that same route is misguided at best.

Disclaimer: I’m writing this from the perspective of a professional author.

Disclaimer #2: I’m still not entirely sure what “professional” means in this context, but oh well.

As a general rule, I believe anyone asking you to write “for the exposure” should be shunned and shunned hard. Roughly half of my annual income comes from writing. I love being an author, but this is a job, and a significant part of how I make my living.

This came up several times in conversations at WindyCon. Mike Resnick talked about the importance of showing that you won’t be taken advantage of. Mike Williamson and I were chatting about some of his consultant jobs for TV, and he stressed how difficult it could be to get paid fairly for your work.

Writing is work, and I strongly believe that writers deserve to be paid for that work. And yet…

I can’t help thinking that if the Discovery Channel asked me to come in and write or consult for Mythbusters, I’d do it regardless of whether or not I got paid. Because it would be FREAKING AWESOME! Same thing about doing a guest episode of Phineas & Ferb, or doing script work for The Muppets. (Not that any of these things are likely to happen, but still…)

I don’t believe writers have to be paid for every single word they write. Heck, I wrote Baby Got Books for free, and that took several nights of poring through rhyming dictionaries and tweaking various lines. I did that for two reasons: 1) Because it was too much fun not to write, and 2) For the exposure.

Yeah, that’s right. I wrote for exposure. “Come and see the contradictions inherent in the blog post!” The thing is, I can expose myself effectively here, whereas the exposure I’d get from most “for the love” publications is pretty much zero. And by publishing it here, I retain all rights, meaning when someone contacted me about doing T-shirts, I was able to sign a contract for that.

I’ve written free (or very low-paying) pieces for friends, too. Not often, but there are people who, if they ask me for a story or an article, I’ll happily put something together for them. The majority of editors do not fall into this category, however.

So it’s not that I think you should never write for exposure, or that you always have to earn at least SFWA pro rates (5 cents/word) or better. But it’s important to value your work, and to recognize that you deserve to be paid. It’s important to not let others take advantage of you, no matter how eager you might be to get published.

I walked away from a novel deal a year or so back. It was one of the hardest things I’ve done as a writer. I wanted to write that book, and it would have been awesome. But the advance would have been about 1/4 of what I’m making for my other books, with a much more intense schedule for turning the thing in.

What about you? What terms are you willing to accept for your work? What projects would be so awesome you’d be willing to do it for no compensation? At what point does valuing your own work go too far and become arrogant or damaging?

Before I get into this, I want to say up front that I truly appreciate the people who volunteer their time and energy putting conventions together. A con takes a tremendous amount of work, pretty much all of which is done entirely for the love. While I sometimes gripe about disorganization or other issues, I want to recognize and thank everyone who commits huge chunks of their lives to making these events happen.

And now, on to Jim’s random thoughts…

Authors have egos. Big egos. I mean, we expect people to pay money for the privilege of reading our awesome words! Now, some authors are better at managing the ego than others. In a perfect world, we would be able to measure this and create ego-balanced panels. (“Please place your hand on the pad, Mister Hines. Hm … looks like you have an ego score of 108 milli-Sheens.”)

In the real world, you’re going to get the occasional ego clash. While these can be exciting in a “Look at the shiny exploding train wreck” kind of way, it’s not a lot of fun for those on the train. So if the experienced con staff says not to put Person A on a panel with Person B, please listen.

8 people is too many. 7 people is also too many. In general, so is 6, if you’re talking about a one-hour panel. Personally, I think 5 should be the limit in most cases. Anything more and someone ends up getting shut out, or everyone’s competing to try to be heard, and it just becomes a lot less fun for the panelists. Probably for the audience too.

Pay attention to balance. Look, if I do three panels in a weekend, I will notice that you only put a single female panelists on two of my panels, and none on the third. Sure, maybe this was yet another statistical fluke, but maybe not. (Also, the first person to cry “Quotas!” gets a goblin kick to the giblets.)

Don’t be sexist. On a related note, if there’s only one woman on a panel, then maybe you shouldn’t be constantly interrupting or talking over her. Especially when she’s better qualified than you are to talk about the topic at hand. I’m sure this is rarely a deliberate or conscious attempt to silence women, but it still comes off as dickish. (And yes, interrupting and talking over people in general is also rather dickish. Only doing it to women? Sexist and dickish.)

Moderators are important. Please designate them beforehand.

If you’re moderating a panel:

• Please make sure everyone on the panel gets the chance to speak. Authors have egos, but many of us are also rather introverted and hesitant to jump in.
• Please do not check in with your two friends, then ignore the other panelists.
• Please be willing to shut down the audience member who spends five minutes telling stories about the story he’s writing about a steampunk elf/puma warrior that was rejected by Publisher X after three years, thus proving that all publishers are corrupt thieves.

A quick self-promotional bit is fine at the start of the panel and maybe at the end. But unless the name of the panel is “[YOUR NAME] And His/Her Awesome Book of Awesomeness!” please don’t spend the entire time talking about your book. Also, hold on a sec … I have to go send a panel suggestion in to ConFusion.

But I want to SELL ALL THE BOOKS! As opposed to the rest of the panelists, who are only doing this for the groupies? Well, in my experience, being interesting, being funny, and contributing to the discussion results in far more audience members remembering your name and seeking out your work than obnoxiously working your stuff into every single thing you say during the panel.

Watch the time. If you’re on a panel, please try to finish on time. Better yet, wrap up a few minutes early so there’s time to chat with folks afterward and the next panel can move in and set up.

Guests of Honor should generally have more than one panel. I’m just saying…

There’s a reliable pattern whenever one of the big publishers signs a deal for a celebrity book. When Simon & Schuster gave Snooki a contract, for example, numerous authors stood up to proclaim that when Snooki can get a huge advance while real authors struggle to get by, this is PROOF that publishing is broken! It’s OUTRAGEOUS!

Therefore traditional publishing is a misguided/helmed by dinosaurs/deserves to die/etc. Long live the self-published indie revolutionaries!

Yeah, about that … the thing is, publishing is a business, and the publisher’s job is to sell books. I might have zero interest in reading Snooki’s stuff, but you know what? She sells better than I do. Her books have better rankings, and a heck of a lot more reviews than mine. And I’m pretty sure anyone with a full Bookscan account will confirm that her book is moving off the shelf far better than any of mine.

Are my books better than hers? Maybe … like I said, I haven’t read her stuff, so I couldn’t say. Is it unfair that a celebrity will get bigger advances and often sell more books, purely by virtue of being a celebrity? Maybe … but life isn’t always fair, and the fact is, a lot of people do rush out to buy celebrity-written stuff.

So I don’t get the point of attacking or blaming the publisher for the fact that the market is celebrity-hungry. Likewise, trying to use this as proof that indie/self publishing is superior to commercial publishing? I’m having a hard time following the logic there.

Let’s break it down. Commercial publisher releases Snooki’s book, which sells better than my commercially published book. I sigh, because like 99.9% of all authors, I’d love to be selling better.

So say I buy into the idea that self-publishing is the way to go and release my own books from now on. Go me, right?

But you know what? If Snooki self-publishes her book, she’s still going to outsell my self-published title. Heck, I’m willing to bet it will still sell better than almost all of the self-published books by non-celebrities. Because it’s not about the publisher; it’s about the market and readers’ hunger for all things celebrititiuos.

So can we please call a moratorium on using celebrity book deals to “prove” the superiority of indie publishing over traditional?

This has been your cranky midweek blog post. Thanks for reading, and enjoy the rest of the week!