Relic Worlds - Lancaster James and the Search for the Promised World trailer

I released the trailer for my book Lancaster James and the Search for the Promised World this weekend, and I have never had so many problems with Youtube.  First, when I uploaded it, Youtube gave only three options for gray screens as thumbnails.  This was never corrected.  Of course, they have no call in customer service, so writing to them takes weeks to get an answer, and it's always more questions at first, followed by answers which you've already tried.  Any time I've dealt with Google customer service it's taken months to solve what would have taken ten minutes on the phone.

After several more problems on Youtube, I have tried to post it here on Blogger, and for some reason it won't recognize this specific video.  It's really bizarre.  It's almost as though this video is cursed.  So the best I can do to show it off is to place a link here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcDFJT5RPQ8

A Big Decision to Make

After a couple weeks of not posting, this week I’m going to post something similar to what I wrote a while ago.  The reason for this is less laziness, (though I am a bit lazy right now,) and more because it’s a very serious decision I need to make.

After approaching more than 50 agents to try to get an upcoming book published through a traditional publisher, I had finally given up and was willing to accept that this book would be published independently as well.  I had been wanting to do this one traditionally so that I could connect with a lot of places that I couldn’t connect with on my own.  But now it was looking like it would be added to my collection of independently published books, and was making plans.

Then one single agent wrote to me and showed some interest.  I’m not sure how interested they are, as their emails have seemed pretty indifferent, but they’ve at least been wanting to take a look at more and more of the book.  So I’ve been sending it to them bit by bit.  I have meanwhile been making plans to independently publish it, so now I’m left with a dilemma.  If they say they want to represent me, should I accept it and go with them, or should I go independently anyway.  Here are the pluses and minuses of each.

Traditional Publishing:

Positives – There are two basic positives to publishing traditionally.  First, the publishers provide promotions.  Second, they get your book into places you can’t get them; namely bookstores.  They have connections at all of these places and send out regular catalogues from which materials are ordered.  These are too numerous for us to do on our own, and when we do contact them, they usually turns us down because we’re not traditional publishers.  This is true both of bookstores and promotional places, such as television and radio stations.

Negatives – To get to a publisher, you have to first sign with an agent.  While you do research on an agent and try to get one you can trust, it’s difficult to know for certain until you’ve already signed with them whether they’re going to do right by you, and by that time it’s too late to turn around and do it yourself.  There’s also no guarantee they’ll actually send it to publishers.  They could just sit on your book because it competed with one of their other books, and they didn’t want it out there in the market, or they might change their mind and not do anything with it for whatever reason.  Then there’s the possibility that even though they do pitch it to publishers, the publishers decide they don’t want it, and then you’re completely stuck, because the agent still has exclusive rights of the book, but it’s not getting published.  And in the end, either the agent or the publisher could decide that you need to revise it in ways you don’t want to revise it, and if you don’t, they still have the rights to it, and you’re not getting published.  And then, even if it is published, it could take two years or more to actually get onto the shelves.

Independent Publishing:

                Positives – Full control.  This is especially important with this piece because it’s about a family that really wants to make sure their ancestor is well represented.  Also, there are multiple places that might want to make this into a movie, and if I get it published soon, they might be serious about that.  If I wait too long, they might lose interest.

                Negatives – A lot of people close their doors to independent publishing.  It’s not right, but they do it.  Many bookstores won’t carry it; even independent bookstores, (go figure.)  As for promotions, many, many radio and TV stations won’t cover you.  Even many blogs, which are independently published themselves, won’t cover your book.  And even those radio and TV stations that criticize corporations and claim to support independent artists, (like the Colbert Report,) won’t even consider independently published books.

So there you go.  That’s my dilemma.  I don’t know which direction I’m going to go.

Learning Hashtags

I have to admit something.  I hate hashtags.  I find them incredibly annoying.  First, it’s the fact that the person has finished what they’re saying, yet they’re still repeating words from their statement, which I find a bit odd.  Then there’s the motivation behind it.  It’s a blatant call to “look at me!”  I’ve been really enjoying Jimmy Fallon’s parodies of hashtags on Late Night, and I have several times placed up parody hashtags as a way to make fun of them.

However, in the world of promoting your work, and by extension yourself, you have to do it.  I have a wonderful social media person helping me out with Relic Worlds right now named Tricia.  She has been showing me the value of these hashtags.  By posting my images and various activities, she’s shown me how to get attention to my projects.  The most important aspect of these posts has been the hashtags.  The reason is because it connects the post to other people who have used hashtags on their posts.  So when someone clicks on their hashtag, they see my post, and vice versa.

One problem with this is that, with so many people marketing themselves, or just going “look at me!” there are a lot of hashtags that do not relate to what they’re saying.  For instance, you’ll have a picture of a tank and put #scifi, then when you click on it you’ll see someone at the beach with that hashtag; someone who’s just trying to get people to look at her.  It has nothing to do with science fiction.

Posts like this have really devalued the hashtag, and it makes me wonder how much longer this craze will last.  I feel as though it’s a fad, but I also felt that way about Twitter, so what do I know?  For now, I guess I’ll be doing it myself, but I feel quite dirty.

#writing #author #selfpublishing #Jimmyfallon #scifi #beachbum #hashtags #sellout #Ifeelsodirty

The American Game is Released After 18 Years

I have finally finished and released my book The American Game after 18 years of working on it.  I first began this journey back in 1996 pitching the concept to a production company that made TV movies.  At first I only wanted to pitch the concept and move on to other things, but I slowly got sucked into it until I found myself the writer and producer of it championing it in draft after draft after draft; bouncing between studios and production companies.  There were hundreds of actors, (many of them well-known actors,) who saw it, many of whom said they wanted to be part of it.  But I couldn't get it funded.  It was at one point even listed as one of the best movies never made, a list in Hollywood of scripts that are really good, but can't find their funding.

A few years ago, I finally gave up when the production company who made Crash basically scammed me into spending a bunch of money and time to put together a proposal that they didn't intend to consider.  I was so devastated from that blow that I dropped out of the game, and finally decided to do it as a movie.

It was odd the way this story affected people in Hollywood.  It was very much like the ring in Lord of the Rings.  They got obsessed with it and their evil sides came out.  I, too, am not proud of everything I did when trying to get this movie made.  Yet, despite everyone's efforts, it never got made.

The story is about a series of base ball games that take place between enemy soldiers during the American Civil War.  I often pitched this story along with several others, and everyone always picked this one, even if it didn't fit what they did, or were capable of doing.  They always told me it was perfect as it was, then had me rewrite the script to their desires over and over and over.  Most of the time these changes were based on egos and power trips, making alterations that didn't improve it, but worked out some issue they were dealing with.  In the end, I wrote 119 drafts.

In the book, I shed everything everyone else said and wrote the story I wanted to write.  What has emerged is what I hope is a powerful and moving story, but that will be for the readers to judge.  It is, at times, a bit hard to get through, I'll admit, as I did not want to hold back on some of the realities of the time.

In particular, racism and slavery is approached in a very blunt fashion, as is the culture of the South.  I'm concerned that people may interpret the narrative as being harsh, or even racist, when, in fact, it's meant to just not gloss over what existed at the time.  I make an attempt to be clear, particularly in the end, that slavery and the racism it was a part of, (and still is,) are some of the greatest evils of this nation's history; but I didn't want to do it from a 21st century politically correct point of view.  I wanted the culture to be played realistically for its time, and that might read very tough in today's world.

On the flip side of that coin, I hope people don't see this as a reprimand on the South either.  My own personal view is that, while there is very clearly a culture gap between the north and south even to this day, (and I feel the country should split,) the way they rebelled at the time was, in my view, a mistake.  But I try to show this through the eyes of the soldiers who were there and believed in the cause, not of slavery, as they don't own any,but of having their own country.  However, because the story takes place near the end of the war, when the South was clearly beaten, I have a tendency of portraying it as a truly lost cause, so desperate they'll send their troops out at gunpoint.  This did happen, actually, but it doesn't represent the whole war, as many southerners fought fiercely and willingly for what they believed in.

I almost wrote essays at the end of the book explaining these two points at the end of the book, but I was afraid it might look too apologetic.  It may look that way here, but there aren't many people reading these blogs, so I guess it's okay.  In short, I hope people understand the intention of the book, which is not intended to be either racist nor a slam on the South, but a realistic portrayal of an ugly time that was brightened a bit by base ball.  (And yes, I'm saying it correctly.  Back then, baseball was separated into two words.)

http://www.amazon.com/American-Game-Jeff-McArthur-ebook/dp/B00LJII7GG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404688416&sr=8-1&keywords=The+American+Game+Jeff+McArthur

Independent Game Publishing

Even though I usually write about book publishing, I also creates and publish games, so it seems a good time to talk a little bit about that.  Also, sometimes it's good to have ancillary products that go with your books, which is the point behind some games coming out for Relic Worlds, including The Lost Worlds, which is due out later this year.  (Probably October.)

I first tried to go with Victory Point Games, which is a group of people I admire and enjoy.  They also asked me to work with them, so I did.  After more than a hundred hours of working with them, developing three games and testing others of theirs with them, they flaked out on me, even acted like I hadn't been working with them for a while, and it all fell apart.

So I'm developing it myself and am producing it through an independent printing site, and will be distributing it through Dice Game Depot.

Here are the sites I'm deciding between:

Superior POD

http://www.superiorpod.com/category#.U6dHG_ldUpo

The Game Crafter

https://www.thegamecrafter.com/

The Game Crafter is more expensive, but they also distribute it on their site.  Superior POD is less expensive, but do not distribute, although they are working on something for that.

I'm going with Superior POD because my pieces make the game too expensive with The Game Crafter.  However, their distribution center makes it attractive for future games.

An Open Letter to The Colbert Report

I've always been a very large fan of The Colbert Report.  I typically watch the previous night's episode each morning while I eat breakfast.  (I make breakfast while watching The Daily Show.)  I always think Colbert has fantastic insights into things, but last week, I feel he got it wrong.  I explain why in this open letter to his show.  I doubt they'll ever read it; that's part of the hypocrisy I'm talking about, but I hope others will, and eventually this will change.

An Open Letter to The Colbert Report:

I never thought it would be possible for me to be angry with Colbert and his staff until I saw this episode.  I am normally a HUGE fan of Colbert.  I literally watch it every morning on the internet while I eat my breakfast, and I repost a lot of videos for others to see.  But this is one time I have to cry both “bullshit” and “hypocrisy” to the Colbert Report.

I am an author who has been using Amazon to independently publish my books.  I chose to do this because the agents and publishers I approached were typically interested in the bottom line; how much money they could make, and they barely considered the quality of the material.  They acted like the very idea of integrity was a naïve and childish ideal, and were only looking to maximize their profits.

For example, I have a book right now that I pitched to publishers, and they told me I couldn’t submit to them, I had to go through an agent.  When I went to the agents, I was told by many of them that they didn’t want it because it’s the true story of an Italian American who was a hero on the side of the law, and only stories about Italian Americans as criminals will sell in large numbers.  They even admitted that this story would sell, just not enough to make them the profits they wanted.  These agents offered me the chance to write about criminal Italian Americans, but I refused.  One non-fiction book of mine actually was with a publisher and the editor asked me to change the facts to make it more exciting and dynamic.  When I refused, I was dropped from the company.  The excuse in all of these cases is that it’s strictly a business concerned only with making money.

As such, I’ve been independently publishing so as to make better books, and they have been reviewed almost entirely with 4 and 5 stars.  They are also about subjects that are interesting to readers, such as the largest bank robbery in history, and the story which caused Stephen King to become a horror writer.  However, despite all this, shows such as The Colbert Report will not even consider having me on as a guest.  Their reason is because they have a policy against bringing guests who are “self-published.”  This is very disappointing, as it would help me, and many other first time and independent authors greatly.  But business is business, I suppose.

Now Stephen and his staff are experiencing something similar as their book is being blocked on Amazon.  Welcome to our world, Stephen.  It sucks when you’re trying real hard and a company that could help you out a great deal creates a policy that blocks you out, doesn’t it?  He, the staff, and his publisher want us to feel sorry for them, and get mad at Amazon for singling them out.  I might have some sympathy for them if they didn’t have similar policies in place that block independent authors from getting out their messages.  Amazon is trying to maximize their profits, just like the publishers, just like the agents, just like The Colbert Report.  Business is business.  If they want to criticize Amazon for that, then they need to stop doing exactly the same thing.

What really made me mad here is when he tried to pretend it wasn’t for best sellers like him and JK Rowling, but rather for the little guy, the authors just starting out with their first books.  It’s one thing to say you’re angry that you’re blocked by Amazon, Stephen and company, but don’t invoke the names of us struggling authors.  If you want to help us, remove the policy that blocks independent authors from coming on your show and make decisions based on quality rather than just who we know, and how much we’re willing to sell out.

I realize that this opens a sort of flood gate to a huge number of authors, probably more than your staff could handle; so what I would recommend is that you allow authors to send in a one paragraph, or even perhaps one sentence description of their books from which to make a list, then have an employee go through that list to find appropriate guests.

As it currently stands, your criticism of Amazon, while partially valid, is extremely hypocritical.  And it’s wrong to say it’s for us when it’s really for you.  Even if I support you on this crusade of yours, tomorrow my books will still be sold on Amazon, (who has been supportive of me and other independent authors all along,) and you still won’t even consider me as a guest on your show.

It’s very clear who’s really supporting independent authors, and those who are just getting started.

I want to close by reiterating that I love The Colbert Report, even knowing they refuse to consider having me or any independent author on the show.  I will continue to watch, and I will follow when he goes to CBS.  I hope his staff will go, too.  Even though I resent their policy of blocking independent authors, they create some of the best content on television and the web, and the show is one of the best sounding boards for reason and sanity in our country.  I hope that they will reconsider their policies on who can and cannot be considered to be guests, but in the meantime, I will continue to be a fan.

I’m just not going to take part in this very hypocritical stand they’re currently making.

The Fault in Our Stars & How Hank and John Green Changed the World of Media

With the ongoing success of The Fault in Our Stars this weekend, I think it would be a good idea to analyze how John Green and his brother Hank built an empire of entertainment and a vast community through independent means.  It was, after all, this built up community that is to thank for the success of the book and the movie, so it’s something to be studied by anyone who wants to see success in the growing world.

The first thing that’s important to note, even before I go into the history of the Vlog Brothers videos, is that they grew this big not by blatantly trying to grow big, or by shamelessly marketing; and most importantly, not by seeing what had been done before and following some sort of formula.  They honestly and earnestly set out to do something that interested them, and that they thought would be good for the world.  People latched onto that and respected it, and their community grew around them.

So on to their history, which I think will one day be studied in classes around the world.  It began on January 1^st, 2007 when Hank Green posted a video for his brother John Green on the relatively new site Youtube.  Neither brother was well known, had any experience in film or television, and did not live in big cities generally deemed “important.”  They were just two young brothers who decided to speak to each other solely through video.  Hank started it with this upload:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtyXbTHKhI0

He dared John to communicate every day, and if either faltered, the other would be able to decide on a punishment.  John responded, and the two began a dialogue every day with rules that included a short length, they had to talk about something they found interesting, and not much else.  They just had to do it on a regular basis.

They called it Brotherhood 2.0, recognizing this as a sort of 21^st century type of family relationship of the high tech era.  They also began calling themselves and their fans “Nerdfighters,” not after people fighting against nerds, but nerds who are fighting against problems in the world.  Their numbers were a trickle at first, though they had a few more than someone starting today as the competition was nowhere near as fierce in those early days of Youtube.

John was the first to miss a day, and Hank sent it out to the few viewers to determine his punishment.  It would not involve any sort of physical pain, except to eat something that would be very unappetizing, and he had to do it on video.  When he posted it, the views climbed, as humor and childish pranks have a tendency to get more hits.  People continued to watch because their conversations were so interesting.  Hank and John are very curious people, and each video was them trying something new out.  They’re also very creative, and many of their videos involved some trick of cinematography or editing that would make any film school professor proud.

In fact, over the year they continued to grow due to a perfect mixture of policies.  I don’t believe they knew at the time this was the perfect formula for getting views, they just did it and turned out to be right.  They are:

Consistency:  By coming out with a video every day, people could rely on them and knew to tune in to see what they were doing.  This led to the number two biggest reason for their growth…

Quantity:  By having so many videos, they littered the internet, and people couldn’t help but run into them, especially when going on Youtube.  They were able to make so many videos because they kept them:

Low Budget and Easy to Produce:  By keeping the videos as blogs where they simply spoke to the camera, they were able to do one each day.  This lent itself to speed and quantity, and that large quantity also meant they had…

Many Key Words:  Each video had to be titled something, and they always titled it after the subject of their video.  They also put whatever they were mentioning in the metadata, and the description.  Fans also said things in the comments that drew key word searches to them.  The key words were also about…

Things People Wanted to See and Hear:  The brothers talked about things that were famous and big at the time, and also things that people wanted to learn about.  So, if you put in a search about Harry Potter because you were going to see the movie, you saw their video on the Google search.  If you wanted to learn how to stack cards, you’d find their video on stacking cards in the Google search.  They did this through their…

Charm and Charisma:  This is a trait they are naturally good at, but if anyone wanted to do the same, they would need to make sure they have the same sort of friendliness and likeability that gains viewers.  Speaking of which, they…

Involved the Viewers:  They asked questions of the viewers and sparked conversations among them.  This made people feel part of the conversation, and they even referred to things people were saying, which made them feel special.  Viewers could also get through a lot of the videos because they were…

Short and to the Point:  Making one of the rules that videos had to be under four minutes made it easy to go through lots of their videos, and made it less daunting to put them on in the first place.  Plus, it made them get right to the point, which made people stay on the video once they clicked on it.  No fancy graphics or credit sequences, just the video itself.

Most importantly, they have been positive, informative, and funny, the three most important things on the internet.

After the first year was done, they had enough viewers and enough fun doing it that they continued, despite the fact that it didn’t really bring in any money.  They just enjoyed it, and it was getting a following for John’s writing career and Hank’s musical career, so why not?  Plus, they were getting a lot of good friends out of it.  So they went on to the next year.

During that second year, Hank wrote a song about Harry Potter just before the movie Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out.  The subject was, of course, on everyone’s mind because it was a hit movie based on a hit book.  The song was short, fun, and catchy, so when people found it on Google searches when they were intending to find information about the movie, they watched him.  To make matters even better, Youtube featured the song because of the movie’s popularity.  As such, the song became a hit, and people began flooding to Hank’s videos.  This made them automatically also flood to John’s videos, even if that wasn’t their interest.

This is where fate worked perfectly in their favor.  Many of the people who had come to Hank through Harry Potter were young book fans.  John wrote books for young fans.  These people immediately became drawn to John’s books, and became curious about his latest book, which was coming out soon.  This was The Fault in Our Stars.

John not only let the community in on his writing process, but he also made them a part of it.  Comments on the book at that time were read, and he commented back.  Fans found themselves becoming a part of the process, and felt validated by it.  Most importantly, they felt invested in it.

In fact, the book itself was inspired by one of the “Nerdfighters” who herself had cancer, Esther Grace, and who died from it.  John was so moved by her life and plight that he essentially made the lead character a fictitious version of her, and even made an Esther Grace day, which is now commemorated everywhere.  In doing this, he added to the formula the most important ingredient:

Helping Others and Sharing the Spotlight:  If we’re entertainers, we want the spotlight on us.  But ironically, the best way to do that in today’s world is to shine the spotlight on someone else.  Today’s technology works on Karma, and I mean that quite literally.  It’s not just a matter of what goes around comes around, there are two basic elements that go into supporting others comes around to supporting you:

                First of all the people you support will usually support you back, or they’ll find themselves supported by no one.  The more people you support, the more people will send their viewers to you, and your numbers will grow.

                Second, part of the formula of the Google search engine is to see how many links there are to your site.  So the more you link to other sites, the more Google notices you, and the more people will come to you.

Plus, it’s just the right thing to do.

I recently learned of someone who refused to place links to other people on his site because, in his words, “I don’t want people leaving my page.”  That man’s page is very lonely.

You see links in the Vlog Brothers videos and posts ALL the time.  This is one of the key elements that has kept them popular.

But most of all, there’s the honesty and integrity.  Hollywood and New York television stations, which have controlled entertainment for more than a century, is based on lies and deceit.  They have done this because it’s worked for them in the past, but what Hollywood producers and New York executives didn’t realize is that it worked because no one had any choice.  Once piracy came along on the internet, people were very willing to do it because they felt no pity for these millionaires who had ripped them off without caring about them, and who truly felt they were more important than the general public.

Anyone wanting into the film industry, myself included, I’m afraid, flocked to these studios and many conformed to their ways to be let in past the velvet rope.  A historic moment happened in John Green’s video Hitler & Sex in 2013 when John Green actually turned down a major television network to instead focus on Youtube.  Up to that time, people used Youtube as a means to an end, placing videos up there to get the attention of studios and networks.  But with this video he said that he only wanted to do things on Youtube, and he had no interest in the exploitive networks.  Here is the video:

What the producers at studios and networks have failed to realize is that people are huge fans of the Vlog Brothers specifically because of their integrity; the very thing these Hollywood and New York producers have shed in their constant pursuit of viewers.  They don’t realize that the very thing they’ve gotten rid of is the very thing that would bring them viewers, not turn them away.  As the Vlog Brothers started more shows with higher production values, such as Crash Course and Sci Show, their viewership has increased.  Instead of going after short gains by doing ridiculous episodes on aliens and the Nazi party that catch viewers initially, they produce videos that give real information.  This does not get viewers immediately, but it keeps them over time, and slowly grows.

As such, their types of productions will continue to grow.  As they do, these same producers and executives in Hollywood and New York who were consistently short sighted in the past will scratch their heads and wonder how they lost power to these young upstarts.  They’ll blame video piracy and lack of star power, as they always do, but, like an alcoholic who refuses to admit he’s got a problem, they’ll never recognize their own faults, and will lag behind until they disappear.

Thank you, Vlog Brothers, Hank and John Green, for helping to shape entertainment into a new golden age.