NEBULA EXPRESS
Science-Horror

"Nothing Seems Right/Near The Speed of Light."

Article: (Special to Publishing Industry News.) Copyright @ 2011 by John T. Cullen. All Rights Reserved.

Post-Pub: It All Starts Here. You've published your book. You did it all. Now it's out there, waiting to be bought. You check the ratings eagerly, then anxiously. No sale yet. No sale. Then… one sale. Only one sale the first three weeks? (The Spark is not happening.) You made two dollars? Then two more weeks with no sale. And then a rating: Two Stars. "The writer has not yet learned to write. The best you can do is use this so-called 'book' as a log to burn in a camp fire." Oh my God! Argh!. After a while, you start being eaten by those dark midnights of the soul…Well hold on there. Whether you are a first-timer or a seasoned author, surprisingly, the same rules apply. They are really not arcana or gnostic know-how known only to a divinely appointed few. They are, in fact, the laws of the business market place, wrapped in some fairly common sense marketing bows and ribbons. Anyone can learn them.

Kung Foo and You. But wait—there is the true story of a man I met, once, who told me conversationally that he had an MBA degree. I asked him if that helped him get rich, knowing so much about economics and business stuff and all. He laughed enigmatically. I didn't know what he meant until, years later, I earned my own Master's in Business Administration. Guess what? I'm not rich either, and now I know why. Understanding how something works doesn't mean you can do it well. You can watch all the Kung Fu movies you want, but you'll never execute a Hop Sing Reap with speed and accuracy to save your life in a street fight. You may sleep last night in a Crazy 8 Motel, but that won't make you a successful brain surgeon (if you remember the commercial).

Anaconda vs. Purple Potato. Let's compare Anaconda Publishing Corporation of Manhattan with Purple Potato Press in your garage at home. At first blush, you'd think they have nothing in common. {Take ten minutes to roll on the floor, laughing wildly.} But the truth is, they have everything in common. Regardless of Anaconda's money, experience, and owned pipeline, at the end of the day they have nothing over Purple Potato. The reason? Because book buyers (print, digital, brown paper bag, or whatever) have absolutely no publisher loyalty. Most book buyers never, or hardly ever, glance at the publisher's name or colophon. As long as Purple Potato overcomes the normal tendency to put a book out that screams 'Amateur!'—with typos inside, and with a cover featuring a plastic-looking Poser doll impossibly hyper-flexed at the waist—Anaconda and Purple Potato are on the same footing. Here's why.

The Raspberry Center of the Jelly Donut. Readers are usually non-writers who think differently than writers and publishing professionals do (meaning the aspiring business persons of both Anaconda and Purple Potato, a.k.a. 'You'). Book readers, by definition, are generally in the top 10% of the public because they read. Most people don't read. Those who read books may be shut-ins, kids, troops stationed far from home; in short, all sorts of intelligent folks. What most of them have in common is that they are very busy, and they make holes in their little spare time to fill with reading. A small number read classic texts (e.g., Dr. Zhivago, War and Peace, To Kill A Mockingbird). Readers typically browse for their next good read, seeking for pleasure, information, and escape. What they look at is not publisher names (show me a bookstore or library where the books are sorted by publishers). What they look at are titles, covers, blurbs, and first pages. The sneaky ones may also look at the ending, which are the same people who eat the jelly donut from the raspberry center outward, or bite all the chocolates so nobody else can eat one. But that's okay. They will buy and read your book, if luck and skill are with you, and they will react with all the honesty and sometimes naivete of their raspberry and powder-sugar lips. Their only axe to grind is what they like and don't like, something that science can never master or put in a bottle or spray can. It's the great intangible and equalizer of mice and elephants.

All Publishers Are Born Equal. So here's the deal. It's true that the print publishers, thus far, dominate the industry, and they know how to create buzz. Already, they no longer control the industry, because their hold was as tenuous as a house of sand. But if you look at their track record, they are just flipping coins. Every book they publish is a crap shoot. Every book represents a financial investment, especially with the inefficiencies and extra costs of the print industry (paper, ink, union labor setup, operations, then boxing, shipping, inventory, etc.). They lose money or break even on most of their books, and earn all their money on the tiny (less than 5%) of their titles that turn into bestsellers. In the New Publishing, you, the author of My Fair Novel, and publisher of Purple Potato Press, are now able to appear in the same lineup with Anaconda, publishers of Waldo Gassoff's McNovel. Increasing numbers of small author/publishers (e.g., Christopher Paolini, Amanda Hocking) have proven that you can ignite that spark that leads to critical mass and makes My Fair Novel a bestseller. In the issues of this magazine, I am running a series on famous self-published authors—and it turns out to be a long, long list, dating to before the Big Six of Manhattan. It has next to nothing to do with incidental and fleeting factors, like New Publishing is new and therefore temporarily alluring. It has everything to do with presenting a package that appeals to readers, and a marketing strategy that builds on that initial, undefinable reader spark.

The Spark and the Best-Seller. It's the rocket without the science, the nuclear without the scientist. Something unpredictable and unknowable happens once in a while, when the moon is in a certain phase, the runes have been cast just so in the swamp outside MacBeth's castle, and the owl has shown itself over the Volcanal in the Roman Forum. Take Dan Brown. Here is a vigorous self-promoter (virtually all best-selling authors in the past several centuries have been) who wrote several novels that went, basically, nowhere, including Angels and Demons. Then he published ('was published') The Da Vinci Code, and readers went nuts. Here's the math: most books appear and soon vanish in the print scene, with nary a whimper; even the dutiful drudgery of uniplaster quotes from notable hacks and endorsements from dubious experts fail to rouse the faintest reader spark, the thing we're talking about. A small number of books raise a lot of sizzle and a little steak, and sell well before sinking into the quicksand of history, buried by next month's crop of 'the best novel ever written,' which in turn will vanish in an ocean of agnominy (that's ignominy, or ill repute, without either ill or repute, just zero). Finally, every few years, a book comes along that hits all the right notes simultaneously, and a juggernaut is born. The normal 'buzz' that publishers hope for turns into an atomic chain reaction or nuclear fusion. A kind of mass hysteria explodes around the world. People line up around the block to buy a copy when the store opens at midnight. All that stuff. Sometimes this can be manufactured, as with markets much larger than books, say specialized children's markets for movie tie-ins, when the little darlings scream incessantly until you go out, at peril of life, limb, and sanity, and find them that one Ugly-Patch Kid or whatever to sate their Madison Avenued libidoes. But always remember the key point: in books, nobody can predict this. It could be an Anaconda book or a Purple Potato book. You do stand a chance…

But Wait, There's More. One of the key, driving delusions of the publishing industry—traditionally wrapped in hype and promo, an emperor without end jacketsѿis that you are either a 'best-seller' or you are 'no good, a wannabe.' This spirit has been especially fostered by the conglomerated print industry of the past half century. The evidence is right there. They discovered that 95% of their revenue comes from those few enormous bestsellers. In my article last week, I mentioned how to value a publishing house, and I described how the rights closet contains a publisher's entire net worth in the form of contracts. Because it's all a crapshoot, publishers like to grab or steal as many rights as they can from authors large and small, and never release the rights even on out of print books.

Play Fish. By this method, in other words by purse-seining with twenty-mile nets, they know they will capture dolphins, sharks, whales, least terns, and even runaway giant clams, but they will also capture the prize they seek—that occasional blue tuna with the glistening belly and high Tokyo price tag. That's print publishing today, in a nutshell. Again: they honestly have no idea. They largely stab in the dark. When they see a book starting to take off, they pay close attention. This is a crucial differrence between Anaconda and Purple. When Anaconda's editors see a book taking off, they hop on its bones. They capture a Dan Brown or a Stieg Larssen, they glom on to the author. They shower their advertising dollars on that writer, send them on promo tours with crisply efficient city guides, and sell their python jewels to get on the talk show circuit. The talk shows, just as mercenary, are like vampires starved for the blood of big name hype, and gladly suck the new celebrity into their prime time lime light. From a business perspective, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. From the writer's perspective, it's a slash and burn system that destroys 20,000 or so lives for every 'published' author, even if most of the 'published' authors end up in the midlist, with their rights forever frozen in the rights locker, and their book 'vanished' (as famous nonfiction columnist Art Spikol once described his only, 25,000-word, foray into fiction publishing). So again, if you play it right, Purple Potato can make some money and achieve some fame. Very few people ever become front-list best sellers. But…

What's Different Now. …in today's New Publishing—digital or print on demand (POD) to a much lesser extent—the dubious, crap-shooting gate keepers of the Old (print) Publishing are no longer able to keep the James Joyces and D. H. Lawrences locked out and barred from ever reaching an audience. You, the author of My Fair Novel, published either digitally or POD, preferably both, by Purple Potato Press, can reach an audience. Statistically, while you should keep an open mind, be positive, and hope for the best, you may sell anywhere from a handful to truckloads of copies. Chances are you won't become rich or famous, but you could conceivably earn a small living, supplement your Social Security slightly, or become a celebrity on your block, maybe even the next street over and the park down the street as well. Unlike the bad old days, you can now reach an audience. Now what?

Half the Battle. Getting your book out there is half the battle. I say half because if you do it right, your package will be planned and strategically assembled for maximum effect. By doing it right, you start with talent and persistence. You write a rousing story, being true to yourself but keenly aware of readers. You can nowadays test your mettle with a series of short stories to see what sells. You then edit this book so there are no typos or gaffes, and you make (or get someone to make) a compelling cover. That's your package. Notice I said package, not book. You should think package from as early in the process as possible. That is the depressing part for most of us, who are not genetically wired marketing maniacs, and happy news once we begin to grasp that it's there for us to do. We'll talk about that next week.

Sator Enigma: Ancient Roman Mystery Solved

The so-called Sator Square (also Sator Rebus, Puzzle) refers to a mysterious ancient text found on walls throughout ruins of the Roman Empire. Archeologists have found exemplars in such diverse ancient Roman locations as a government hall (aula) in Cirencester, Britannia; twice in Pompeii, pre-dating the city's volcanic destruction by Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE; and in the distant frontier fortress of Dura Europos on Rome's Mesopotamian border with Parthia. Something about this strange, cryptic writing must have been so important that the Romans would post it in their government halls, public squares, and top military headquarters.

It is one of the most perfect palindromes ever created. A simple palindrome is a text that reads the same, backwards or forwards; e.g., "Madam I'm Adam" and ".madA m'I madaM". The Sator Square is a perfect four-way palindrome that reads the same left-right, right-left, up-down, and down-up. Nobody had a clue how to translate it, despite thousands of hours of research, hundreds of learned books and articles, and at least one Ph.D. thesis in Classics at Yale University.

John T. Cullen solved the puzzle in the summer of 2007, almost coincidentally, while continuing eight years of scholarly research for his nonfiction/Ancient History virtual tour guide A Walk in Ancient Rome, Revised 2nd Edition (Clocktower Books, Summer 2011). He had been aware of this baffling cryptogram from long ago, which has since become an object of superstitious reverence in certain Christian and Neo-Pagan settings. Suddenly, while taking a break from his Rome research, he looked at the Sator Square in a new way—and was able, within a few weeks, to both translate it and explain it plausibly. A production company for the History Channel has flown him to Yale University, from his home in San Diego, for an interview next to the exemplar from Dura Europos in modern Syria. The episode, in which he is capstone speaker, is to be aired across the USA and Canada by the History Channel.

Ironically, at the annual convention of International Thriller Writers, of which he is an Active Member, in New York City in July 2009, he was the only author present who had actually deciphered and explained a cryptic, ancient epigram of world importance—and lived to tell about it.