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Nathan Bransford

Author

You Tell Me

Are people persuadable?

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One of the things I’ve found fascinating throughout the election and beyond, is the extent to which people are, or aren’t persuadable.

  • Is there really such a thing as a swing voter? 
  • What makes people change their minds?
  • What are the lines in the sand that trigger reversals of opinion?
  • When we sit around talking about politics with people who disagree with us, are we just wasting our time?

In the aftermath of the election, few things have felt more urgent to liberals than to understand why people voted as they did and the need to try to persuade the persuadable.

But is this a lost cause?

Quartz recently published an article on the scientific! proven! way to have conversations across party lines. And then an article in The Atlantic posited that instead of being all conversational maybe you really should just call people racist.

Color me a bit skeptical that there’s a formula to persuasion. When people are confronted with information that runs counter to their pre-conceived ideas, don’t most people tend to double-down? Don’t most people decide first with their gut and then back into the evidence?

But people do change their mind, don’t they? What happens when they do?

What is your favorite bookstore?

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Photo by me in Aardvark Books, San Francisco

Amid the very sad news that beloved Cobble Hill bookstore BookCourt is closing, where I had my launch party  Jacob Wonderbar and the Interstellar Time Warp, the New York Times recently asked seven authors about their favorite bookstores.

We can do better than seven can’t we? What is your favorite bookstore and why? 

While I’m on record as an e-book aficionado, when I do want to buy a paper book for myself or as a gift, I go out of my way to shop at local bookstores. And I have plenty of love and nostalgia for bookstores. I still think they’re going to persist in the e-book era.

Favorite bookstore is a tough choice for me. As an author, I’m so thankful for BookCourt and Books Inc Opera Plaza for hosting me for some memorable events. I loved my pilgrimages to storied bookstores like Shakespeare & Co in Paris and Powell’s in Portland.

But for sheer influence I’d have to go with Bloomsbury Books in Ashland, Oregon. My family used to go to the Shakespeare Festival every summer and we’d make multiple trips to Bloomsbury, where the staff introduced me to David Eddings and all kinds of other authors.

What about you?

How should authors navigate politics on social media?

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When I started blogging and doing The Social Media around 2007 (grandpa alert!), the conventional wisdom was that authors should steer clear of politics.

You don’t want to alienate half of your audience! Those are potential readers out there! Let’s all get along!

It’s interesting in a way that authors were ever cautious around politics, given the role that artists and writers have played throughout history in protest, satire, and thought leadership. But whatever caution existed in the early days has eroded.

Around five years ago, I began noticing a slow but steady change in the direction of open season for politics. Now there’s almost an expectation that authors will openly engage in advocacy.

I’ve been slow to go political on social media, but this election has shaken me up and loosened whatever restraints I was feeling. What’s happening, and what could happen if we’re not vigilant, is just too important.

I’ve also already noticed a steady stream of unfollowers on Twitter as I post more openly political thoughts. That’s obviously a tiny price to pay to stand up for what I believe is right, but it does speak to the potential for divisiveness.

How have you navigated this landscape? What do you think is the right approach? Have you unfollowed or given up reading an author because you didn’t like their politics?

Art: Painting of Battle at Soufflot barricades by Horace Vernet

What’s on your literary bucket list?

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Inspired by BookEnds’ recent posts on bucket lists, I got to thinking: what’s on your literary bucket list? What are you hoping to do by the time you kick the ole’ bucket and write query letters in the sky? (Just kidding, there are no query letter in heaven. That’s why it’s heaven.)

Here’s my stab:

1. Finish that novel I’ve been trying to write in various forms since college.

2. See someone reading one of my books on the subway.

3. Re-read Moby-Dick on the way to whale watching in New Zealand.

4. I will have many leather bound books and my apartment will smell of rich mahogany.

That’s all I can think of for now. I’m sure I’ll add more.

What about you?

What’s your biggest challenge as a writer?

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Publicity.

Marketing.

Reviews.

Writing the damn thing in the first place.

Lord knows the road to a completed and successful project isn’t an easy one.

What’s the biggest challenge you face?

Footnote: I’m available for manuscript edits, query critiques, and consultations! More info here.

Art: The Storm on the Sea of Galilee by Rembrandt

Moneyball for book publishers

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Way back in 2007, I wrote about what I called the “holy grail” of book publishing: the blockbuster detector. Inspired by both The Wisdom of Crowds and Moneyball, I wondered about the possibility of a tool that could identify undervalued markets and help predict future sales.

2007, mind you, was the era before the Kindle and iPad even existed. These, of course, opened up a world of possibility, where you could assess on a granular level where people stop reading, and distinguish between books that people buy and books that people actually read.

So naturally, now that it’s 2016, there’s a company dedicated to helping publishers detect which books might be hits or duds based on the reading habits of beta readers.

This is probably just the tip of the iceberg. Readers and writers, are you alarmed at the idea that your publisher could scale back your marketing budget if people stop reading past page 60 of your novel? Are you excited by the idea you could gain access to this type of data and help you revise?

What do you think?