Here’s the full call for submissions:

Imagine your favorite holiday stories. Chances are good the protagonists are a man and a woman, possibly even with children. But where are the stories that feature men together, or women together, that will also warm our hearts at this special season? Are there no gay Christmas tales?

That’s where you come in. We’re collecting holiday stories for two anthologies, one featuring male protagonists/couples/families, the other featuring female protagonists/couples/families, and we’d like to hear from you!

Your story should run between 2,000 and 4,000 words, contain no erotica, and be in a winter holiday setting. The only requirement is that it be historical fiction. We’re looking for tomorrow’s classics in time for next year’s holiday season!

Pay will depend on securing a publisher and will be negotiated at that time for accepted stories. Deadline is June 15, 2012, but the earlier, the better. Send Word docs to Jeannine Allard at jeannine@jeannineallard.com.

So there it is. If you’re gay, you know that the community needs more of these stories. If you’re not gay, then see how you can stretch your imagination … being able to put oneself in someone else’s experience is at the core of great fiction!

Try it out today, and you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

The problem, of course, is that up until very recently, much of that resolution is/has been out of your hands. You may get the book into a literary agent’s slush pile; you may even get an offer to represent the book from the literary agent. But even that’s no guarantee of publication, this year——or any year.

The ebook revolution has made self-publishing a more viable option for many, though it carries with it a lot of caveats. Self-publishing is really for those who plan to behave like a publisher, and that includes spending money on outside professionals to edit, format, design, and create a cover for the book. So it’s not necessarily the easy way out, though it does offer the opportunity to be in charge of the process rather than sit and wait for the miracle to happen.

I’d like to suggest a different approach in 2012. You’ve probably heard of the SMART acronym for goal-setting: smart goals are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-based. And they are, at the end of the day, the only goals over which you’re going to have any control.

So how about breaking down that first resolution, that of getting your book published? If it’s really what you want to see happen, there are some components that will get you closer to it:

• Join a critique group (deadline: January 20)
• Have book critiqued in group; make changes/edits as needed (deadline: March 30)
• Study book proposals (deadline: February 15)
• Create book proposal (deadline: April 10)
• Have book proposal critiqued (deadline: April 20)
• Create query letter (deadline: May 5)
• Have query letter critiqued (deadline: May 15)
• Research literary agents/publishers (ongoing)
• Select 10 agents/publishers (deadline: May 15)
• Send query letter to selected agents/publishers (deadline: May 20)

And so on. You see the difference. Your resolution might be more along the lines of interesting an agent or publisher in your book; but with a set of achievable, measurable goals like the ones above, you won’t be simply sitting around waiting for publication to fall from heaven in a Glad bag.

What are your writing goals for 2012? Can you fit them into the S.M.A.R.T. formet? I’d love to hear about them. Let me know, and you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Two years ago, I had a conversation with bestselling author Jodi Picoult (I adapted one of her novels for the stage and she’d come to see it performed). She said that it used to be her best sales were in bookstores, but not anymore. “It’s Walmart and CostCo now that are selling the most books.”

Really.

“The book trade” is defined quite clearly. That trade consists of retail stores that exist primarily to sell books (or at least, were founded with that purpose——nobody cared if sideline product revenues happened to eclipse actual book sales).

K-Mart and Target sell lots of books, but they are not classified as “bookstores” by anyone in the retail world. Kroger sells lots of books, but they’re in the grocery trade. Costco sells lots of books (and groceries), but they are in the “wholesale club” trade. Your books may happen to do well at office supply stores and on websites, but that doesn’t put them in the book trade category.

These distinctions exist, among other reasons, to help define sales turf among sales reps of all sorts. They might be in-house sales reps, contract reps, distributor’s reps, etc. When one signs an exclusive contract with a sales representative (whether it’s an independent commissioned sales rep or a book distributor with a staff of sales reps), the contract defines the boundaries of that exclusive territory. “Book trade” distributors have exclusivity within the book trade, but do not have exclusivity outside the book trade. Whether that sales rep can sell to other territories (wholesale clubs, gift shops, grocery stores, sporting goods stores, office supply stores, hardware and home improvement stores, etc.) is also determined contractually, as those territories may already be assigned to other sales reps.

This may seem archaic, but it’s very real. If you’ve ever worked in a business with a sales staff (whether they are assigned to a department in a department store, sell radio ads, cars, whatever), you know that the issue of turf for these very competitive people is very important. Further, the people on the receiving end of those sales calls also like the notion of exclusive territory, since it keeps the number of sales calls down to a minimum (you don’t want five different sales reps pitching the same product to show up on your doorstep!).

How many books do the book aisles at K-Mart and Target have to sell before they are considered part of “the trade”? Already they’re pushing more than a lot of the independent bookstores some of you are trying to get your books into. Granted this market caters to beach reading and dictionaries for the back-to-school crowd, but it’s still a large market.

As I already mentioned, K-Mart and Target are general merchandise discounters. It doesn’t suit their needs to be reclassified as a bookstore, grocery store, auto parts store, furniture store, clothing store, even though they sell all those things. Businesses that manufacture/sell products in particular categories report on those stores as a distinct component of their business. “We sell X percent of our products to hardware and home improvement stores, X percent to big-box retailers, X percent at our website…” and so on. Each category has its own specialized realities, so it’s not lumped in with categories that operate differently. There are different customer profiles, different sales terms, different procedures for pitching products, different definitions of “standard industry practices,” and sometimes even different labeling requirements.

A businessperson (and as an author, you are a businessperson, whether you like it or not) who ignores a potentially lucrative market is not a particularly good businessperson. At the very least, the businessperson ought to research that market and decide if it’s suitable for his/her product. It’s safe to say, however, that each particular category in retailing has to be considered on its own terms.

What is beach reading? In the case of K-Mart, Walmart, and Target, you’re really talking about specific types of books that can be sold in large numbers to the kind of customer that buys books in those stores. Bibles, parenting books, dictionaries, and road atlases may not qualify as “beach reading,” but they happen to sell well in those stores. You probably wouldn’t try to sell paté de foie gras in K-Mart or Target, either, even though some people might buy it: too few are likely to buy it to justify offering it for sale.

Consumers are pretty smart. They know that if they want specialty items, they’re most likely to find exactly what they desire at a specialty store. If they want mass-market items, they’ll usually find the best price at a general merchandise discounter. Harry Potter? Anywhere and everywhere, just find the best price. Balzac? Hie thee to a bookseller!

Let me turn the question around. How many espressos, large coffees, bagels, muffins, mints, music CDs and movie DVDs do the large bookstore chains sell before they are classified as a Starbucks that sells books instead of being part of “the trade”?

As far as the retail world is concerned, until they take down the Barnes & Noble sign and replace it with a Starbuck’s sign, it’s a bookstore. Among other things, reclassifying a store means reassigning a valued client to a different sales rep. As that rep might put it, “that’s taking food out of my children’s mouths.” A sales rep scorned can be a very dangerous person indeed.

Reclassifying a store also has to do with consumer perceptions. In the public’s mind, what is one’s purpose for visiting a particular store? If the primary purpose for the vast majority of customers is to drink a latté, and they can optionally buy a book to read while they sip, then it’s best to classify it as a café, advertise it as a café, list it in the Yellow Pages as a café, etc. At one time, A&P was a tea merchant. Eventually, the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company became a grocer. That sort of thing doesn’t happen frequently, but it does happen.

Count up the number of K-Mart or Target stores. Simply getting two copies of your book on the shelves in one of those chains would consume nearly an entire print run for most authors. People buying books in those stores aren’t in the same mindset as people spending an afternoon drinking coffee products and playing chess in a “trade” store. They are in there buying other things, and simply make a pass down the isle to pick up a book to read at the beach.

If a book is suitable to sell in K-mart or Target, and the publisher can afford to produce the book in the quantities required and accept the typical high level of returns that come from those accounts, that’s just super! Just remember that it doesn’t really matter where your books are sold—just that they are. It doesn’t make you better or worse than an author who sells books elsewhere. If I could sell my books effectively at office supply stores, I’d do it!

One important trait for survival in this world is to match your own perceptions of——and responses to——the world to the way the world seems to work. Some people are able to succeed despite some glaring mismatches between their perception and that of those around them.

So sell your book where you can, and then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

So here’s the scoop on who you should pay, when, and why.

“Literary agents” (quotation marks deliberate) who ask for a fee for editing, or who recommend an editing service, are likely scam artists who have no interest in placing manuscripts with publishers. Run, do not walk, away from this sort of interest in your book. Yeah, it’s exciting to hear their enthusiasm. You’ll be a lot less enthusiastic once you’ve spent time with them.

Legitimate literary agents comply with ethical standards that prohibit them from charging authors a fee (beyond minimal office expenses for postage and copying——many do not even charge for those, and most charge only against advances received).

Agents make their money only on manuscripts sold. Agents pay money to authors; they do not collect money from authors. When your book is sold to a publishing house, your agent will collect an agreed-upon percentage of whatever it is that you make from the book. You should never write a check to your agent.

Now … on to editing.

Authors who are preparing manuscripts for submission to literary agents may wish to take full responsibility for the editing of their submissions. They often belong to peer-editing writing groups, writing workshops, critique groups, etc., and I strongly advise you, if you’re writing a book, to send it through this review process.

While a pass by a professional editor may be a worthwhile investment for the submission package of a few chapters, it is not absolutely necessary.

However, a self-publishing author is a publisher and, like all publishers, is responsible for having the book professionally edited before publication. This is when you write the check, folks. Editing (which may include both developmental editing and copyediting) is a normal part of the publishing process and is best done by skilled professionals, who do not work for free.

So … clearer? Let me know if you have any other questions. Recognizing the various roles in the publishing industry and moving efficiently through them is the best way to be seen as a professional; and it will put you … beyond the elements of style!

“Book publishers,” writes Todd Sattersten, “launch more new products each year than any other industry on the planet and the number is growing. As an industry, we introduced over three million unique products to the marketplace in 2010 and each one of those books started in the same place: with no awareness, no audience, and no sales.”

It’s an interesting subject, don’t you think? I’m amazed by how much my attempts to reach potential clients for my freelance writing company, Customline Wordware, are mirrored by my attempts to gain readers for my novels.

And we’re seeing more and more that writers must also be businesspeople. We all resent it, of course: novelists are right-brained people, we want to create art and then have the grubby business part taken care of by others: just deposit the royalties in my account, thank you very much. But that’s simply not reality: we have a name for people who continue to think that they don’t need to know about the business end of things—we call them “unpublished writers.” Now, as I’ve been at pains to tell you, a contract is preceded by a book proposal that clearly calls out what the author’s platform is, what marketing he or she intends to do, what audience the book is likely to reach.

“Entrepreneurs believe they are always adjusting their startups to move closer to a maxima, a business model high point that can support their fledgeling enterprise. Writing book proposals involves this sort of knob turning, but then we stop. We take on risk, large amounts of risk, as we create in stealth mode outside of the purview of the customers who would most benefit from our work.”

So how does an entrepreneurial approach work for publishing? Sattersten discusses his own model in the article: his publisher put two chapters of his new book online and tested the waters, inviting the literary equivalent of focus groups to comment … and then he tweaked. It seems to have worked, as said book is now selling well. And I expect that it could work very well for nonfiction in general.

Novels are another thing altogether. What novelist wants popular opinion to dictate her plot, his characters, the dramatic arc of the story? No one that I know about.

And yet … and yet. While I am indeed a published author, my favorite and best book to date remains unpublished. I love it. My agent loves it. Publishers hate it.

So who’s to say which approach is correct? Let me know what you think, and then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!