My Take on the Whole DOJ Debacle

If you have even a passing interest in the publishing industry, you’ve no doubt heard of the lawsuit the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed against Apple and the Big Six, less Random House, earlier this week. When I noticed that every industry professional I followed was taking the publishers' side (especially since most of those industry professionals were agents and thus not directly affiliated with any of the major players), I suspected something was fishy. And now, after reading Nathan Bransford’s excellent post on the topic, I know it is.

The background is complicated, but here’s the basic idea insofar as I understand it: E-books used to be--and in many cases, still are--priced according to the wholesale model of distribution, in which e-sellers pay a publisher’s wholesale price for e-books, then turn around and sell them at whatever end price they choose. In 2010, Apple convinced five of the six major publishers to switch to the agency model, in which the publishers set the end price for their titles, then split the revenue with the e-seller according to a predetermined percentage.

The DOJ’s claiming that Apple and those five major publishers colluded--that is, got together in some secret lair (read: upscale New York restaurant) and decided as a group--to set artificially high prices. Which is illegal. Which has been illegal ever since they first put the antitrust laws on the books back in the days of big oil and railroad barons.

But here’s the thing: The government implemented antitrust laws to PROTECT CONSUMERS FROM MONOPOLISTS. And even if Apple and Company got together in their upscale New York restaurant and agreed to fix prices--which is a big "if," one that Macmillan, Penguin, and Apple have already decided to challenge in court--you could argue that they were colluding to PROTECT CONSUMERS FROM A MONOPOLIST.

Which monopolist? Well, that would be Amazon, of course.

See, if you want to understand why publishers switched to the agency model--which, as Mr. Bransford pointed out, actually cost them revenue (and continues to do so)--you have to understand what, or who, they were facing. Amazon sets their prices so as to be the lowest-priced seller of every good on the planet, and I daresay they are. In fact, they price many e-books below cost, which means they actually lose money every time one of those e-books sells. And why would they do that? To drive every other e-seller out of the market, thus leaving them free to do whatever they want (which, according to this article, they kind of already are).

It’s called predatory pricing, and it’s also illegal under the government’s current antitrust laws.

I guess what I’m saying is that, like always, the government is a little late to the party and not quite up to speed on what’s actually happening. Even if they can prove that the major players colluded, how are they going to explain why they never came after Amazon, who, arguably, threw the first punch? And how are they going to handle a group of sellers who, even if they are found liable, were only acting to insulate themselves--and consumers--from the market effects of a monopolist?

It’s not often that the best interests of buyers and sellers align, but in this case, I can’t help but wonder if that’s precisely what happened…

LDS Writer Blogfest: How Grace Works

If you’ve been around the blog for a while, you know that once a year I participate in the LDS Writer Blogfest with my fellow LDS writer-bloggers. As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we share a few thoughts about our faith and how it impacts our lives and our writing.

But I must admit, this year, I was feeling a little uninspired. Last year, I blogged about my favorite General Conference talk, but this year, none of the talks really stood out to me. Then I read this article from David A. Bednar, “The Atonement and the Journey of Mortality.” He tackled a topic I felt I knew very little about--grace--and the light bulb turned on.

Since this blog is all about light-bulb moments, I thought I’d share what I learned.

Latter-day Saints, also called Mormons, are often disparaged in the wider Christian community for discounting the importance of grace. We place too much emphasis on works, critics say, and while it’s true that we think people need to receive certain ordinances, such as baptism, to make it back to heaven, we also firmly believe that “there shall be no other name given nor any other way nor means whereby salvation can come unto the children of men, only in and through the name of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent” (Mosiah 3:17). That said, I don’t think Latter-day Saints in general--and I in particular--truly appreciate just how vital grace is not only in putting off bad but in becoming good.

David A. Bednar put it this way: “It is one thing to know that Jesus Christ came to earth to die for us--that is fundamental and foundational to the doctrine of Christ. But we also need to appreciate that the Lord desires, through His Atonement and by the power of the Holy Ghost, to live in us--not only to direct us but also to empower us.”

That’s what grace is: the Savior’s empowering force for good in our lives. And He wants to empower us every step of the way. I guess I always kind of thought of it in very set, concrete terms. If the gap between me and heaven was this big and I could make it this far on my own (by taking my neighbors this many casseroles, or whatever), then the grace of Jesus Christ was the bridge that got me the rest of the way. But according to David A. Bednar, grace is less of a bridge and more of a guardrail. It’s something to lean on when the going gets tough, something to push me forward when my fear or human frailty make me want to turn back. And it’s right there beside me at all times, in all places.

That was the light-bulb moment I had a few days ago. I only wish I’d figured this out a lot sooner.

If you’d like more information about the Church, feel free to check out lds.org, which is where I found the online version of the wonderful article I mentioned, or mormon.org, which has a lot of more general information. Also, don’t miss the other posts in the LDS Writer Blogfest:

Amanda Sowards
Angie Lofthouse
Ben Spendlove
Britanny Larsen
Cami Checketts
Charity Bradford
Danyelle Ferguson
Giselle Abreu
Julia Keanini
Julie Coulter Bellon
Kasey Tross
Kayeleen Hamblin
Kelly Bryson
Laura Johnston
Melanie Stanford
Rachelle Christensen
Rebecca Belliston
Sierra Gardner
Stephanie Worlton

Finally, if you have any questions that you think I might be able to answer, feel free to leave them in the comments below or e-mail them to me at kvandolzer(at)gmail(dot)com. If I don’t know the answer--and there’s a pretty good chance that I won’t--I’ll do some research and try to figure it out.

Happy Tuesday!

Winners!

First off, a big thank-you to everyone who entered the contest and/or shared my good news. The online writing community is and always has been wonderfully supportive, and it’s humbling to be the beneficiary of that.

And now for the winners! As I mentioned before, I selected these randomly and only considered those comments that included a link to a blog post, tweet, or status update (or, if you’re as un-Twitter-savvy as I am, just a general link to your Twitter feed).

Ryann, who wins the query critique from Kate
Llehn
Sharon Bayliss

Congratulations, all! Please e-mail me at kvandolzer(at)gmail(dot)com for information on how to submit your materials. I look forward to reading your work (and I know Kate does, too, Ryann)!

But this isn't the only contest I'm going to be hosting in the next little while. We have another round of “An Agent’s Inbox” coming up later this month, and then we’re kicking May off with a brand new multi-blog, multi-agent contest. It’s called “The Writer’s Voice”--think The Voice for writers--and it’s going to be epic. I can’t wait!

How I Got My Agent: Part Two

All right, so I left off at the e-mail. (Here’s the first half of the story, in case you missed it yesterday.) As I mentioned before, the e-mail went something like this:

“I’m leaving for Bologna in a few hours, but I don’t want to do this long distance, and I don’t want to wait.”

The Call There was more, of course, but that was about as much as I got on the first read-through:) I ran into the living room and did a little boogie, with much screaming and fanfare, at which point my two-year-old panicked and dissolved into horrified tears. (I guess I’m not very good at emoting excitement over terror.) Then I e-mailed Kate back and let her know I could talk whenever. (Happily, I’d just fed the baby, but even if I hadn’t, I probably would have said the same thing.) She called me not long afterward, and I did my best to act casual again.

At the end of our conversation, Kate assured me that the offer wasn’t going anywhere and that I could take whatever time I needed to make my decision. (Loved that.) We agreed to talk again the Monday after she got back from Bologna.

The Other Offer After I hung up (and after I fed I-gots and Lady, lest you think I’m a delinquent parent), I e-mailed the other agents who had outstanding manuscripts or queries. I’d gone on a query binge the week before, so there were a few more of these than there would have been. A lot of them e-mailed me back within a couple of hours to wish me well and step aside. But the next morning, another agent, who was also on her way to Bologna, got in touch. She was very interested in the manuscript and wanted to talk when she got back.

Frankly, I was shocked. I’d spent the last few weeks telling myself that Steve wasn’t going to be the One, either, so I had a hard time processing the idea that not one but two amazing agents were interested enough to offer. It definitely fell under the category of Too Good to Be True.

But it wasn’t. I talked to Agent Amazing the following Friday, and we had a lovely chat. To be honest, I hadn’t expected to like Agent Amazing as much as I did. And for about twenty-four hours, I was a basket case. I reviewed my notes from both conversations. I went back over the e-mails Kate’s and Agent Amazing’s clients had sent. (I firmly believe that every writer should get in touch with one or two of an offering agent’s clients. You need to know how the agent operates behind the scenes so you go in with your eyes wide open (or so you don’t go in at all).) Then I talked the whole thing over with Honey Bear. And in the end, I went with my gut.

I signed with Kate.

Things I Love About My Agent

1. She’s familiar with my other projects and likes the kinds of stories I write.

2. She sees this manuscript sitting in the same place on the shelf that I do.

3. She caught the FRANKENSTEIN allusions and connected with Ella Mae as a reader as much as I did as a writer.

4. She wanted Steve enough to forgo packing another pair of shoes and pick up the phone instead:)

If you’d told me a year ago it would take another year for me to finally land an agent, I probably would have screamed and thrown the keyboard across the room. But if you’d told me that agent would be Kate Schafer Testerman, I would have put the keyboard down and slowly backed away. Some things are worth the wait.

How I Got My Agent: Part One

I’ve written this post a hundred times over the last few years, but unfortunately for you, I never wrote anything down any of those other ninety-nine times, so if my inner content editor calls it quits and I ramble a lot, you’ll have to forgive me. (Holy run-on sentence, Batman!) I’ll do my best to stick to the most important details, but I make no promises.

As many of you know, I started querying Steve in mid-November, and my first query went to Kate. She’d been at the top of my to-query list for a long time--literally, in the top spot--since she’d requested so many of my previous manuscripts and I’d enjoyed working with her on blog stuff.

The Partial Request A week later, she requested the first five chapters. I sent them off and promptly forgot about it. I knew she generally took around two months to respond, so I wasn’t holding my breath.

I sent more queries, got more requests. Inevitably, those requests turned into rejections. (Once you’ve queried as many manuscripts as I have, you kind of expect it.) But the rejections were different this time. The feedback was all over the place. Some agents loved the character but not the concept. Some loved the concept but not the character. But they all said something like, “Your writing is spectacular” (that’s actually a direct quote from one of Steve's rejections), and with the exception of one or two of them, they all wanted to see my next project.

The Full Request Fast-forward to the end of January. It had now been a little more than two months since Kate had requested a partial, and since I knew that’s usually her self-imposed deadline for responding to requested manuscripts, I decided to check in. I didn’t hear from her for a few days, but then I did. She said she was loving Steve so far--well, she didn’t call him Steve, but I’m sure she would have if she’d known his nickname--and asked to read the rest.

This was epic. This was enormous. Kate had requested two partials from me in the past (well, three, if you count Bob’s original and his revision as separate partials), but they’d never turned into fulls. I sent it off and tried to forget about it. This time, it didn’t work so well.

The Follow Fast-forward to mid-March. I logged on to Twitter late one morning and noticed I had a new follower. It was Daphne Unfeasible. I almost fell out of my chair. Then I noticed she’d tweeted me about the manuscript. She’d just picked up on the FRANKENSTEIN allusions and thought they were pretty cool. I tweeted her back and tried to act casual, but on the inside, I was freaking out.

I was a bundle of nerves for the rest of the week. I knew she was getting ready for the book fair in Bologna, but during another Twitter exchange, she mentioned she’d have something to me before she left on Friday. I assumed she meant a kind rejection or maybe a revise-and-resubmit. That’s what I told myself over and over: “Kate’s not going to offer. She’s just going to tell you your writing’s good. Kate’s not going to offer. She’s just going to tell you your writing’s good.”

The E-mail First thing Friday morning, I checked my e-mail. Nothing. I decided to leave my inbox open so I could glance at it every time I wandered past (read: stalked by) the computer. Still nothing. Then, a little before noon, I noticed I had a new e-mail. It was from Kate.

I sat down in front of the computer. I repeated my mantra a few more times: “Kate’s not going to offer. She’s just going to tell you your writing’s good.” Then I opened the e-mail. It went something like this:

“I’m leaving for Bologna in a few hours, but I don’t want to do this long distance, and I don’t want to wait.”

But I guess I’m going to make you wait, because this post is already way too long:) Look for part two tomorrow! (And if you haven’t already entered my celebratory contest, don’t forget to check that out!)

I'm Back! With an Agent! And a Contest!

Well, it’s April, and I’m back! (You really didn’t expect me to stay away for long, did you?) And I come bearing news! A few weeks ago, I received an offer of representation, and now I’m thrilled to announce I’m represented by Kate Schafer Testerman of kt literary!

More on that later this week, but for now, a contest! To celebrate my news (and my overuse of exclamation points), I’m giving away a query critique from my new agent via the “Ask Daphne! About My Query” series on her blog as well as two query-and-first-ten-page critiques from me.

To enter, all you have to do is SHARE MY GOOD NEWS somehow, either by blog, Twitter, or Facebook, then hop back over here and TELL ME WHAT YOU DID* in the comments of this post. I’ll leave the contest open until noon EDT (or 9:00 a.m. PDT) on Monday, April 9, at which point I’ll pick three random winners and announce them on the blog.

Good luck!

*To be clear, your blog post, tweet, or status update must include a link back to this post, and your comment on this post must include a link back to your blog post, tweet, or status update. But I’m sure you already knew that… :)

Why I Won't Be Blogging for the Foreseeable Future

I don’t post a lot of pictures, especially of my kids, but in this particular case, a picture really is worth a thousand words:) (Besides, newborns all kind of look the same, don’t they?) I’m pleased to introduce you to Baby Number Three, whom I will affectionately call Monster around the Internet. (He has a real name, honest, but you know how much I like nicknames. And Monster is the name our four-year-old suggested when we asked him what he thought we should name the baby.)

The delivery was uneventful--or at least it was after the anesthesia finally worked. (For some unknown reason, the spinal took five extra minutes to kick in. (I didn’t particularly care for those five extra minutes.)) Monster was born just after daybreak on Wednesday, January 11. He was a whopping eight pounds, seven ounces, which is almost a full pound heavier than Lady was when she was born, and he was twenty-one inches long.

Ironically enough, Monster has been the least monster-ish of all our kids. He actually sleeps sometimes, and he hardly ever cries. Still, I don’t plan to blog for the next couple of months. I need time to adapt to my new normal.

I’ll be back later this spring, probably sometime around April, and as I mentioned once before, I already have some interviews and additional rounds of “An Agent’s Inbox” in the works. Until then, I hope you all have a great first-few-months-of-2012. I’m sure we will.

Book Recommendation: ICEFALL by Matthew J. Kirby

Before I take my blogging break, I wanted to share one last book recommendation with you. I first heard about ICEFALL after reading Jenilyn’s review, and even though I hadn’t been too crazy about Mr. Kirby’s debut, she spoke so highly of ICEFALL that I decided to give it a try. That turned out to be a good decision on my part.

ICEFALL features young Solveig, a Viking princess with a penchant for storytelling. When a neighboring tribe attacks her father’s kingdom, Solveig and her two siblings--her younger brother, the kingdom’s heir, and their older sister--wind up at their father’s stronghold with a handful of servants and soldiers, all of them handpicked from among the court’s most trusted inner circle. With the fjord frozen over until the spring, the winter appears to be a long and boring one--until they discover they have a traitor in their midst.

That was my favorite element of ICEFALL--how the story morphed into an Agatha-Christie-style mystery. The cast of characters was fairly limited, and none of them seemed to have a motive for betraying the royal family, so the questions flew on ravens’ wings. I also loved the novel’s world building. Solveig’s world and time were lush with all kinds of little details that made me believe Mr. Kirby knew what he was talking about. In fact, reading ICEFALL made me want to write a Viking story of my own:)

If you love MG mysteries set against richly layered backdrops, definitely give ICEFALL a read. And if you have any other MG titles to recommend, feel free to leave them in the comments!