Author Bio
Dr Bob Rich is an Australian writer, mudsmith, psychologist. He is cursed with a sense of humour that gets him in trouble all the time, and the same amount of creativity as everyone was born with. Only, in his case somehow the Education System failed to squash it out of him. Bob believes that a major change in focus keeps a person young. His trouble is that the old activities refuse to be discarded, and therefore he is currently seeking several head transplants so he can wear all his hats. He is terribly obsessive, and this affects everything including his writing: he revises his work all the time. This makes him a good editor, as several other writers have attested. Visit him at bobswriting.com.
Interview
You won an EPPIE for your science fiction novel, Sleeper, Awake, has the award increased your sales?
Actually, I have just been notified of another honor: my short story collection Through Other Eyes is a Dream Realm Finalist.
In answer to your question, sadly, no. This book is published by Clock Tower Books in electronic and POD formats. So far, royalties from total sales have failed to pay for the money I invested in publicity.
The reason is that it is a HUGE world out there. My book has got lost among the many tens of thousands of titles. Marketing is all. In comparison, quality of writing, value as entertainment, depth of ideas, even the winning of prizes and awards count for nothing.
And I have a dual disadvantage: no publicity machine pushing my books, and geographical distance. The market is the United States, and I live in Australia. Other authors can at least do booksignings, attend events and the like. This is why I have offered to sign paperback copies of my book by sending a book plate, individually inscribed. But first people need to buy the book...
Did you know that 99.9% of blowflies die of starvation? The poor blundering things buzz around, and most of them never find any yummy rotten meat or a delicious cowpat. So, they depart this existence without ever having eaten, without reproducing. The lucky few feed, and drop their eggs, and give rise to the next generation of maggots.
The same is true of writers, only the odds are even poorer.
What are your feelings about book contests?
Complete enthusiasm. Contests are a way to self-improvement. I have been involved in competitive sport for much of my life, and it's the same there. When I was running in a 5-mile race, I was not trying to beat the others, or even the clock, but myself. The other competitors were there as an external frame of reference.
Writing with a contest in mind forces you towards excellence, and gives you a measure of how well you are doing.
Do you recommend entering them?
They are an investment in writing skills. A positive result can be validation, all too necessary in the lonely life of writing. And think of this: you may have had to pay an entry fee, but at least SOMEBODY is reading your work!
What do you see as the future of ebooks?
The PRESENT of ebooks is doleful. Sales are approximately nonexistent. The reason is that the technology is not with us yet. Ebooks will take off when a convenient, versatile, easy to use reading device can be bought for about the same price as a mobile phone or walkman or even a digital watch: somewhere between $5 and $50.
These readers are coming. Recently I attended a conference on the book industry where one speaker gave a detailed report on 'electronic paper', being developed by Xerox, and 'electronic ink', which has just been taken up by Philips. Philips hope to have a cheap, small device out by 2002. I think devices that can read ebooks (possibly as part of other functions) will be as common by maybe 2005 as mobile phones are now. In fact, they may be the mobile phones of the future. They will allow the reading of an A4 sized display that will have better visual qualities than black print on white paper, and will possibly be available free as part of renting a service, as many mobile phones are now.
In time, ebooks may have as much impact on society as the printing press or the automobile did. Imagine a road map that can be read by your car, a telephone directory that looks up and dials a number anywhere in the world if you just specify the name and location, a text book that is individually assembled from a dozen sources, exactly for your unique needs, a library you carry around in your handbag -- that's the promise of ebooks.
My reason for staying with ebooks is that I want to be in at the dawn of this new age.
In any case, society has little choice. We are now struggling towards efficient, pollution-free cars because the cost of petroleum has skyrocketed, and people are being poisoned by exhaust fumes. In the same way, the cost of paper has risen in bounds as the source materials are being mined out, and the rise in the Greenhouse Effect threatens climate changes that could kill billions. World War III might not be the battle of one group of people against another, but all of humanity against the legacy of technology. Ebooks are one way of saving forests, and therefore fighting this war.
What about print-on-demand?
POD is a great transitional idea. Once the new readers have become part of the way of things, books on paper will seem to be incredibly awkward. How many people of your acquaintance use a wind-up watch?
But in the meantime, POD makes a lot of sense. You print the number of copies needed: no warehousing, no backlists, no remaindering.
Currently, there are three problems: unit cost of production, ignorance in the book retailing industry and sabotage from vested interests.
One volume produced by POD is perhaps four times as expensive as one that is part of an offset printing run. This puts the retail price up, or eats up the profit by publisher and writer.
The second problem is that bookshops and other retail outlets are organized around books that are stored in a warehouse somewhere. Go into a bookshop and give the ISBN of 'Sleeper, Awake'. The sales clerk will enter it in a computer and will get a message indicating that the book is out of stock. Of course it is: there IS NO STOCK. That's the whole point of POD. But if you can be persuasive and get the book ordered, you will find that it arrives as fast as if it had come from the warehouse.
The third problem is that the distributors and in many cases even the printers are owned by companies involved in the book trade. They will cooperate with small publishers and individual authors using POD only as long as this doesn't provide competition. I have heard of instances where a big distributor offered books from small publishers to Barnes and Noble at 40% discount, but only 20% -- or even list price -- to small independent bookshops. Barnes and Noble have reversed policy a number of times concerning titles from small companies. And Amazon is known for being extremely late with payments.
How do you promote and market your novels?
Not very effectively, or they'd be best-sellers :).
You have a newsletter, has it helped you market your novels?
That was a major reason for starting a newsletter. I currently have 370 subscribers. So far I've only had two issues, but have started to think about number 3.
It has pleased me that a number of other writers have used my newsletter, 'Bobbing Around', to make announcements, express their ideas or publish short pieces. I hope the newsletter will grow, and think of it as a worthwhile project in its own right. You can find past issues at http://mudsmith.net/bobbing.html
And the more people know of me, the more might consider my books for Christmas presents.
How did you get into editing?
When 'Sleeper, Awake' was accepted by Clock Tower Books, Ariana Overton was the Acquisitions Editor. All the editing was being done by those authors who had tertiary qualifications in writing, or a lot of experience. I didn't feel I qualified on either criterion. But then I reviewed a book of historical fiction. As well as doing the public review, I also sent the author a detailed, but friendly and respectful critique showing how his writing could be improved.
The author was Max Overton, Ariana's husband. Obviously, they both liked my comments, because Ariana immediately invited me to join the editing team.
As part of my work for Clock Tower, I edited a great little book for Linda Campbell and Bobbye Terry, who write in partnership. They ended up canceling their contract and taking the book elsewhere, but insisted on paying me for my work. And Linda in particular has advertised my worth as an editor all over the internet. Since then, I have edited several more books for them, together and individually, and they have both become friends.
Do you feel that all authors should have their manuscripts edited before submission?
As a writer, I am too close to my work to be able to pick the weak points. Especially, cuts are hell to make. The book may be improved if I delete a chapter, get rid of a character, make major changes in the plot. And that's like a surgeon operating on her child.
Look at a counterexample: Jean Auel's Earth's Children series. Clan of the Cave Bear was great, though there were a number of points I would have loved to change. The Valley of the Horses and The Mammoth Hunters were wonderful in concept, storyline, description and characterization, but... sloppy. And The Plains of Passage was terrible. It was unedited, and had so many faults that I almost cried. It NEEDED a good edit. I don't know why it wasn't edited, but the evidence is there.
Does the counseling you do influence your writing?
It didn't at first. But as my counseling skills and experience improve, they are permeating more and more of my life. And my life is my writing.
Counseling depends on empathy: the ability to see the world from someone else's viewpoint. And that is the most important writing skill as well. I think any good writer must also be a psychologist. The reverse is not true, for a writer must be a master of the craft of writing as well. Being able to see the beauty of a scene doesn't enable me to paint it.
'Sleeper, Awake' has a lot of psychology in it; philosophy and theory of religion too. Not that I let such aspects interfere with fun! Two of my newest books are right at the intersection of psychology and entertainment. My Dream Realm finalist Through Other Eyes is twenty-six short stories where I take you into the world of other people, though look out, some of those people are VERY strange. And Personally Speaking: Single session email therapy with Dr Bob Rich in effect allows you to look over my shoulder as I do therapy. Dorothy Dix revisited, only my answers have a basis in scientifically validated techniques. You don't have to be crazy to enjoy this book.
Was there any particular event that prompted your abandonment of television?
I had young children. I was an academic psychologist at the time, aware of the research on topics such as the effects of witnessed violence (remember Clockwork Orange?), the damage consumerism was doing to the world and its inhabitants, and also a lesser known fact about the passivity of watching.
Let's look at the last one for a moment. When you read a story, you receive information from the author, and you translate this information into an imagined experience. This is a creative exercise. In effect, the author is the producer and stage setter of a play. The reader creates the performance for an audience of one. If the writer has done the job well enough, the reader will be IN the story, suspending reality for the moment.
When you watch a movie or a TV soapie, someone else has done the creative act. You are a passive recipient. As proof of this, look at a movie after you have read the book. No matter how well the story has been portrayed, you will be disappointed: the director's interpretation will be different from yours.
TV is a passiviser, a killer of creativity.
Also, I hate the values implicit in the content. Mind you, this goes for many books too. Our society is poisoned by a number of myths. One is that the aim of life is to chase happiness. I won't discuss what's wrong with this. You can read my views at http://bobswriting.com/essay.html. But a second myth is that happiness is bought. 'Unhappy? Go on our holiday package and get away from it all. If only you had this car, managed to look like this model, lost a couple of stone with our program, you would be happy, happy, happy.'
Suppose that these claims were true, and after you have invested in this gimmick or that device, you became happy and stayed that way. What would happen?
You would stop spending money, that's what. Then you wouldn't need to earn as much as you do now, and being happy, you wouldn't be driven to earn for its own sake. So, what would the poor multinationals do without the fruits of your labor, without being able to sell you their products?
You would be sabotaging the economy. So, you mustn't actually be allowed to be happy. As soon as you have bought something, it must lose its shine, and you must yearn for something else and be a good little wage slave and consumer.
TV is the most powerful and pervasive vehicle for perpetuating the myths of society. My children and I were better off without it. It is a tool for potential good, but not the way it has developed.
How did you become a mudsmith?
When I started to build my adobe house, I approached the skills and problems of building in the way I do everything: by researching first and trying to understand the basics. The result was that long before I was good at doing it, I was able to teach others. Translating concepts into words has always been a strength of mine. So, I started writing about building your own, and ran courses. I invented the term 'mudsmith' one day when I was tapping away at a wall with a rubber mallet. This was to correct a fault I had committed. Every beginning bricklayer produces a wall that bulges in the middle. I was no exception. So, I pulled down a large area of wall. What had taken me a month the first time was rebuilt in a week. But some other parts were too inconvenient to pull down. So, I reinforced them by plastering up the convex side. I put in three or four layers, and sculpted brick courses into the last layer. Let me tell you, that piece of wall looks like the best laid brickwork in my house. The point is, as the mud plaster started to dry, I had to hammer over it to get rid of little cracks and make it bond to the surface. So, I was smithing mud.
There are also parts of my house that have been sewn: some doorways have curtains instead of doors. These are much easier to walk through, and prevent the movement of temperature between neighboring areas equally well. There is no question about which way the door should be swung, and I've never had a squeaky curtain, even though I never oil them.