The man, the mystery, the magazine!

Jon Jordan: Crimespree Magazine

KLS: Tell us a little bit about you:

JJ: I'm from Milwaukee Wisconsin, born and raised. My Dad was a machinist working in the family business, and I also still work some hours doing the same at Jordan Machinery. I love to cook, I do go outside, but much prefer to be inside.

I also much prefer nighttime. My ideal schedule would be going to bed around 4:40 am and getting up around 10:00 am.

KLS: How did Crimespree Magazine come to be?

JJ: Ruth and I were doing some things for websites about mystery and we wanted more control. We didn't want another website that would get lost in the hundreds of mystery websites out there. We talked to a few friends and the agreed to help out so we just kind of rolled the dice and ran with it. It helps an awful lot that a good buddy from high school is a master printer. Rick at Digital Graphics really enabled us (and still does) to live this kind of dream.

KLS: What do you consider to be your greatest success at Crimespree so far?

JJ: I love that we are helping people to discover authors we love. We give someone we really enjoy reading attention in the magazine and other people start to catch on and buy the books and spread the word more. Helping authors find a bigger audience really rocks.

I love hearing from readers who tell me they went and bought an author's whole backlist because of something we've done.

KLS: Your biggest regret (mistake)?

JJ: So far, I don't think there are any. I can't think of anything that makes me say " I wish I had done that, or I wish I hadn't."

KLS: What part of the business brings you the most satisfaction?

JJ: Hearing from new authors when they see reviews or something we've written about them. The excitement when they realize someone out there gets what they are doing.

KLS: The most headaches?

JJ: Trying to grow the readership is something that always seems to be the hardest. It goes in spurts and is always a little bigger each issue, but we never really thought about that before we started.

KLS: Did you have any mentors who helped you along the way?

JJ: Lots of people have been there with support and encouragement. Kate Stine (Mystery Scene Magazine) has been wonderful. A lot of bookstores have been great, Once Upon a Crime in Minneapolis in particular. Pat and Gary are amazing. And almost every single author we've met has been wonderful with only one or two exceptions.

KLS: Your magazine is extremely popular with both readers and writers. How do you determine the split in what you offer your subscribers and fans?

JJ: It's not really a decision as much as a lucky accident. We don't really consciously try for the balance we magically achieve. We really just look for stuff that we find interesting.

KLS: As a key genre magazine you certainly deal with a lot of authors. What advice would you give them for achieving longevity in the industry?

JJ: Be patient, be aggressive, but not too aggressive. And get out there and meet the readers.

KLS: You are a huge advocate for the mystery genre, are there any authors who play a key role in instilling that love of the genre in you personally?

JJ: Meeting Ian Rankin and Val McDermid and discovering how wonderful they were was a big step. Max Allan Collins talking to me like an equal when I was just another reader/fan was also huge.

KLS: What do you think will be your greatest challenge in the coming years?

JJ: Keeping the magazine fresh while taking on other projects, like Ruth's doing Bouchercon this year with Judy Bobolik. We keep adding more to our plate. We are going to more and more conferences each year and we are now also helping to run Murder and Mayhem in Muskego each November.

So I guess the biggest challenge will be to keep finding time to sit on my rear and watch movies!

KLS: Is there anything you wish you would have done differently starting out?

JJ: I should have switched from dial up a long time ago!!!!

Misc. thoughts, good quotes, etc.:

JJ: The mystery community is one of the most giving and generous I know. Almost everyone gets along with everyone else, and seems willing to help each other. The fans are loyal, and the authors respectful. It's a really happy place!

Subscribe to Crimespree Magazine

CLICK HERE

©Karen L. Syed

The Heat of the Moment

We hope you will take a moment to watch this video and then purchase a copy of the book. This project comes from the heart and the only people making any money on the sale of this book, are the residents of San Diego County who lost their homes in the 2007 wildfires.

Please open your hearts to them.

* * *

Echelon Press would like to offer our special thanks to
the exceptional musical artist
Alex Woodard
for allowing us to showcase his new tune
PHOTOGRAPH
in the following video!

Buy Heat of the Moment from

Check out Alex Woodard on MySpace.

Or visit his website at www.alexwoodard.com.

Priorities and the Published Author

For the last couple of weeks there have been a flurry of raging e-mails regarding the Amazon decision to promote their BookSurge division and the HarperCollins decision to open a new imprint that will pay little to no advance and make books no-returnable.

I’m not here to talk about that. Of course there have been so many notes on this that many authors have forgotten about selling books, and that is good for me. Our sales (at Amazon) are up at the moment and I’d like to think it is because I have encouraged Echelon authors not to get caught up in the frenzy and to swoop in and nab all the readers who are seeing the nagging posts from authors who are complaining and not promoting.

What I am here to talk about is priorities. What should the priorities of a published author be? I can’t say this is definitive for every single author, but it is a pretty good model for what I would like my authors to be. If you are not an Echelon author you might find some praise and support from your publisher if you consider what I am about to say.

Life’s priorities: (religious beliefs go where you choose them to be, I choose not to include them out of respect for your beliefs)

1. Self
2. Family
3. Career

Now, I won’t touch on the first two as they are up to you and not my business. But let’s skip right ahead to number 3. Your career.

We’ll talk specifically about writing. If you are published or working toward being published you should have 2 goals. To write the best book ever. Not, the best book YOU can write, but the best book, period. We all have different levels of talent, some authors are better than others, some are luckier than others. If your book is not better than every other book, then you better be luckier than everyone else, or willing to put a lot more effort into your other goal.

Sales! I know, it is a dreaded word among writers, but it is also a necessary evil. I recently had someone tell me that it was unfair for a publisher to expect a shy, obese, ugly, etc, writer to go out and sell their books themselves. Huh? I did not respond to them directly, but I kept thinking about it. If you are going to put yourself into a public forum (asking millions of people to read your work) then you have to be willing to make the sacrifice.

It is much like being an actor or a singer. You cannot expect people to support you if they don’t know who you are. There are ugly and obese actors and singers and they have been wildly successful…Mick Jagger and Cass Elliott come to mind as well as Chris Farley and Vincent Schiavelli. These people made a commitment to their vocation and became successful in spite of everything. Writers are no different.

Hiding behind insecurity might have worked twenty or thirty years ago, but the market is too tight in our current society and the almighty dollar is worth too little to expect the consumer to spend it on someone they know nothing about.

I guess what I am trying to say is, don’t let what you see as your shortcomings get in the way of what could be great success. If you are shy, consider crafts as your vocation. If you are obese (and I know what I am talking about here) focus the attention on your good quality. Get yourself out there, but don’t let people focus on you, steer their attention to your book.

But whatever you do, don’t let anyone tell you that you can be successful as an author without selling your book. You shouldn’t be doing it alone, but you better be doing it or those authors who are selling their books will be far more successful than you.

Amazon, POD, and Misinformation?

There is a whole new can of worms wiggling around in the industry and I step up on my soapbox to play devil's advocate. Word on the street is that Amazon is trying to strong arm certain publishers and authors into using their Print on Demand company for their printing needs with regard to selling on Amazon.com. This is infuriating many. Why? It takes away the freedom to choose. Yes, it does. But on the other side of the coin, it is Amazon's freedom of choice to make this decision. Obviously they have weighed the pros and cons in this radical move. And obviously they think it is in their best interest to move ahead with it. So be it! They are a business of course and they have to do what they think is best for THEIR bottom line.

I received an e-mail today that I will not post in its entirety, but I would like to point out a few things that I think people do not understand.

The source is WritersReaders.com (their comments are in bold/italics)

POD Publishers Told to Sell Directly Through Amazon, They Have to Use Booksurge

Amazon has tried a number of tactics to push the print-on-demand services of their Booksurge subsidiary and now the company is using its leverage in the marketplace to drive that business. For the past month the e-tailer has been explaining their new policy to publishers who use print-on-demand: To have a direct 'buy' button that lets customers purchase POD books from Amazon rather than from third-party sellers featured on the site, those books must be printed and fulfilled by Booksurge.

This is not accurate. Everyone is generalizing and assuming that this is true. First of all, it seems to me, and this is speculation on my part, as I have not talked to every single publisher out their and am not familiar with many who have spoken up. It seems to me that the publishers being contacted fall into one of three categories:

1. Vanity of Subsidy (they make money to do the work for the author).
2. Non-Advantage customers (small pubs who do not distribute directly to Amazon).
3. Self-Published Authors.

I am an independent (small) publisher and I have not heard anything from Amazon. I do use Lightning Source as one of my printers, but I also have an Advantage account. I think one of the keys here is how many books do you sell? My authors make an effort to drive consumers to Amazon to buy our books because they are a reliable retail outlet and we have had no difficulties with them in over 5 years.

I have stated very strongly, repeatedly, that one of the problems in our industry is that some people don't get the language. POD is NOT a type of publishing; it is a type of printing. There are three types of publishing (basically)

1. Traditional (someone pays you).
2. Vanity (You pay someone).
3. Self (You pay yourself).

PRINT on demand…not PUBLISH on demand. Get it right people!

Why haven’t the same demands been made of traditional publishers?

Because they all subsidize Amazon through a variety of fees and discounts, completely outside the ability of the small publishers and authors, it’s about money.

OF COURSE! Why would this surprise anyone? This is BUSINESS. Amazon is in it to make money, not to make life easier for all of us. Bezos owns that ship and he can sail it however he likes. To think that Amazon should bow down and do everything to make it easier for us is simply juvenile. Of course I don't like that they are going about this in a backhanded and someone gangster-like manner, but it is their call and if you don't like it, then don't play in their yard. Go to BN.com or Borders.com, you know the chain bookstores that treat us with even less respect.

The reason "traditional" publishers aren't being zapped is because they sell books. They pay for promotion; they do all the things Amazon needs them to do to stay in business. Shame on them for being responsible business people.

I find the lackluster response by the Chairman of one of the largest print-on-demand facilities puzzling and at the same time alarming.

Why do you find the response alarming?
I worked in New York with big publishers long enough to know that John Ingram’s reaction to Amazon’s move is entirely too nonchalant and basically it was a non-reaction. That smells of collusion to me and you can bet, Ingram isn’t budging an inch when it comes to the demands of Amazon. They need each other!

Perhaps he just doesn't feel the need to publicly burn a bridge that may not even be smoking. This new decision has not reached enough publishers to warrant this kind of alarm and anger. This is a growing company doing business the way it has the right to do business, and I applaud Ingram's decision not to jump on the witch-hunt.

I'm not saying Amazon is right, but they are also not wrong. They made a decision, and it is what they think is best. Whatever the outcome, they will have to deal will the outcome and ultimate backlash. There are plenty of other online retailers to do business with if you don't like Amazon. You can't change what you don't control. So I would suggest finding new venues to promote and sell books, rather than wasting energy on a situation you cannot control.

Call it what it is…a near death experience!

Well, it has been a while since I posted to my blog and I have a very good reason for not being around. I'm not sure how many of you know, but a week ago Monday I went to the doctor for an Echocardiogram. Those of you who know me, know that I deal with exertive asthma. Back in February I went to Love is Murder, as I always do. I arrived after driving for 17 hours into a snowstorm…why do I keep going back? At any rate, I arrived in a state of extreme distress, two of the most wonderful people in the world came to my rescue (Luisa Buehler, author of the Grace Marsden Mystery series, and Mary Welk, author of A Rhodes to Murder Mystery series). They nursed and coddled me to the point that I could function again, and the weekend went on.

The next morning in woke up with a cold and a bit more stress. So anyway…I went on with my life and running Echelon Press. I left Chicago (driving home after being notified that my mother was in the hospital with congestive heart failure and likely would not pull through-she did-must run in the genes-survival, that is). The following weekend I flew to San Diego for the Southern California Writers' Conference where I was a speaker and did editor interviews, and then the following weekend I drove to Columbia, SC for the SC Book Festival. It was a full month of events and I guess maybe (even though I knew I was having problems) I did not take them seriously enough. It seems now, even though it cannot be confirmed, that I probably threw a clot in Chicago and am more than a little fortunate to be alive. At the same time I contracted a viral infection that wreaked havoc on my heart.

So a week ago Monday I go for the Echo, and the doctor tells me I am going to be admitted to the hospital. Well, how can that be? I have a company to run, I have e-mails to answer, books to read, submissions to consider, I don't have time to go to the hospital. So on Tuesday I go. He had compelling arguments. I had retained a dangerous amount of fluids (those in SC can vouch for my cantaloupe feet) and my heart has grown to three times its normal size and was only pumping at 20%. Yup, I went.

On Thursday I had a heart catheterization that indicated some other issues (I know way more about the heart than I did a week ago) and on Monday I was jacked up with a brand spanking new ICD - defibrillator and pacemaker. What is my point, you ask?

I feel like a dolt! Yup, I am a relatively bright woman, run my own company, teach others what I have learned, yadda yadda yadda, but did not have a clue about what was going on in my own chest. Don't make the same mistake! I am even a supporter of the Red Dress Campaign, but still didn't know how badly I was destroying my own body and darn near killing myself. Bottom line...Cardio Myopathy SUCKS!

I beg you to pay attention to what is happening with your body and especially your heart. Did you know that more than 322,000 women die of heart disease each year? Heart disease is the single highest killer of women now. It's not just about men anymore. The after effects? I can only stay awake for a couple hours at a time, I have this big-ass honking foreign object in my boob (and doesn't even play music or movies), and it took me over two hours to write this post. So what are you going to do?

Millenia Black vs. Penguin [Lawsuits and other sad author tales]

This is aposting to a thread being discussed on Tess Gerritson's Blog. I was unable to post my response over there, so I encourage you to click HERE to read the original notes before taking everything I say out of context.

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First let me start by arguing one thing:

>>I was so surprised to see how publishers just do what they want with no regard to the author.<<

This is not the case for all publishers. It is mostly true for the large NY houses that are ONLY looking at the bottom line. There are those of us who firmly hold to the notion that the integrity of the story can only be attained by leaving it as the author has created it, and that this integrity is of value to the readers.

That said. I have not followed this story [Millenia Black vs Penguin] very carefully, but it interests me in a variety of regards. One, I am biracial and this topic is a not one for me. Most people don't even recognize my mixed race unless they can use it against me in some negative manner.

Two, I am a publisher and I don't want anyone out there thinking this is standard practice among publishers. I assure you it is not!

Three, I am an author (see #1). Nuff said.

Do I think that Penguin went at this from a racial standpoint? Of course they did.

Side note: I was "reminded" the other day by an aspiring author that AA fiction is "Urban Fiction." What does that mean? Where does this garbage come from? Beverly Jenkins? Gwynne Forrester? What a load of hooey! This is how stuff like this happens.

There is a group of AA authors out there, and you know who you are, who demand to be "recognized" as AA authors. This makes it difficult for everyone, and it makes it even more difficult for the (take this next one tongue in cheek) Yuppie white pencil pushing marketing departments in NY to see anything else. They hear a catch phrase, and immediately they see $$ in their eyes and jump on the "money train" to ride that trend. Those of you making every effort to achieve success on your talent and not your skin color get caught in the backlash.

Do I think they went at this from a "Racist" view? No. Just the bottom line view. They can't see past the potential $$ and that is sad for them.

My experience as a consumer and as a former bookseller is that the marketing departments have no real clue as to what is going on in the actual market.

Take our local Wal-Marts for example. I live in Laurel, MD just outside of Baltimore. When I go into Wally world and look at their bookshelves I am disturbed to see the following. AA Books take up at least 85% of the shelf space, everything else shares the other 15% and this includes bestsellers and Harlequins. We don't even get a full Top Ten showing. When going to one of the store managers to ask why, he indicated that the corporate office regulates what they get and that is determined by the "demographic." He also indicated that he is concerned because his books sales are down. Well, duh! The majority of people I see in our Wally Worlds are white and Hispanic, they have little to nothing to choose from for their "demographic" and therefore don't buy books at Wal-Mart. What about the AA demo, you ask? They are supporting our local Indy AA stores and shopping online to get better discounts.

Unfortunately, until the insecure members of the various races stop demanding to be recognized as "different" the rest of us will pay the price. We need to come together as one people and let all the other crap go.

I respect Millenia for what she did, and I feel for her in the fact that she has become and will probably long remain an outcast in the industry she so dearly loves. Shame on the industry! I think she has the strength to overcome it, but it will be so very hard.

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Other blog sites have also been discussing it. See what Monica Jackson and Author of Color have to say about it.

Self-Mutilation…er…Self-Editing

You've got that blessed first draft completed and now it is time to jump from the frying pan into the fire. You've got to clean it up and get it ready for submission. The first thing you need to do is to set it aside and give your mind some space from it so you can go back to it with fresh eyes. Don't go back to it with the mistaken idea that it will just need a little tweaking. You are going to need to do some serious overhauling on that baby and the more comfortable you are with the idea, the more productive your edits and revisions will be.

Okay, you've taken some time and now you are ready to rip that mother up! Make sure you have all the tools you need.

A back-up ink cartridge or toner.

A fresh ream of paper for printing out your chapters.

A highlighter or two.

A notepad.

A dictionary.

A Thesaurus.

A Tape recorder with a couple blank tapes.

Now that you are prepared, make sure that you have a couple of hours each day where you can go off alone with no interruptions. Build yourself a comfortable little nook and settle in.

Step one: Use your search and replace function to highlight the weak verbs. Use a different color for each word (was, were, knew, felt, seemed). Generally, these words are overused and can be replaced with stronger and more active verbs to make your work flow with ease.

Step two: Print out your first chapter. You want to work one chapter at a time. Take out your tape recorder and read your first chapter aloud. Follow along on your hard copy.

Step three: Once you have it recorded, play it back. Listen to your voice and the flow and cadence. Use your highlighter to accent anything that you stumbled over in your reading.

Step four: Get out your notepad now. Rewind your tape and listen again. This time, make notes of any words that sound awkward or out of place. If anything stands out or might make the average reader stumble, make a note of it. Listen for any words that you might use repeatedly in a short amount of space.

Step five: Set your recorder aside and focus on your hard copy now. Using your Word Grammar Check is fine, but do NOT rely on it for total accuracy. If you are unsure of the validity of a comma or the proper usage of a dash, ellipsis, semi-colon, etc. Check the spelling of those words commonly misspelled (their, there, they're, piqued, peeked, peaked, etc.) Take nothing for granted.

Step six: Go back to step one and repeat until the chapter is perfect. Once you cannot find any additional errors or necessary (learn the difference between needed and wanted) edits, move onto the next chapter.