Business End

Articles about the business aspects of publishing and self-publishing.

Setting Up A Book Tour

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This post by Trish Nicholson originally appeared on The Writer’s ABC Checklist on 4/16/15.

A book tour is an excellent way for you to increase the exposure of your book, to meet potential readers, and to make many useful contacts for the future. It can also be fun. Even if you have a publisher, they rarely offer their authors book tours these days, so here are some tips from my own recent experience to help you create your own book tour whether you write fiction or non-fiction.

Where to tour: it’s not necessary to jet around the world – with a little imagination a successful tour can be arranged within your own region. It’s a good idea to boost your confidence by beginning the tour locally where you are already known, and then extend your reach to new opportunities beyond your comfort zone.

When to start: a book tour is not something you can do entirely alone. You need co-operation from others to host events, or provide venues and local publicity. So begin planning well in advance: eight to twelve months beforehand is not too soon to start looking for potential hosts and ‘partners’. Many bookshops, festivals and interest groups set their programmes a year ahead.

 

Read the full post on The Writer’s ABC Checklist.

 

The 10 Commandments Of Authorial Self-Promotion

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This post by Chuck Wendig originally appeared on his terribleminds site on 4/15/15. Note that it contains strong language.

*wheezes while stumbling down a mountain carrying ten stone tablets*

*dumps stone tablets on the ground and most of them break*

*coughs for like, 40 minutes*

OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE. WHY DO PEOPLE WRITE COMMANDMENTS ON STONE TABLETS. IF GOD’S SUPPOSED TO BE ALL POWERFUL WHY DIDN’T HE JUST HAND ME AN IPAD. DOES HE HAVE A THING AGAINST APPLE? GOD’S ONE OF THOSE STRIDENT ANTI-MAC PEOPLE ISN’T HE. SO HEAVY. IT HURTS. IT HURTS SO BAD.

Ahem. Okay. Yeah. Yes. Hi!

It is time to speak about the sticky subject of self-promotion. You’re a writer. You’ve written a book and somebody — you, a big publisher, a small publisher, some spider-eating alley hobo — has published it. And now you want to know how you promote the book so that the world can fling money at your face in order to greedily consume your unrefined genius. But it’s not easy. You don’t know what works. What makes sense. You don’t want to just stand on a street corner barking at passersby and hitting children with your book. But you also recognize that you’re just one little person, not some massive beast of marketing and advertising, hissing gouts of pixelated steam and vacuuming up potential buyers into the hypno-chamber that is your belly.

What do you do? How far can you go? What should you say?

Thus, I bring you these ten tablets.

Ten commandments about self-promotion for authors. In a later post I’ll get into the larger practicalities of self-promotion — what seems to work for me, what seems to do poop-squat for me — but for now, we’re going to cover the overall basics.

Let us begin.

 

Thou Shalt Throw Pebbles

The self-promotional reach of a single author is not very far.

Big publishers and companies have giant cannons.

You, however, have a satchel of pebbles.

A publisher will ideally dp outreach that puts your book in front of various folks within the distribution process — book buyers, librarians, the secret tastemaker cabal that operates out of a warehouse in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood. You, as lone author, do not have that effect.

The best you can do is pick up one of your pebbles and throw it.

 

Read the full post on terribleminds.

 

Top 105 Blogs and Websites for Writers and Authors

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This post by Hiten Vyas originally appeared on e-Books India on 4/13/15.

Are you a creative writer looking to improve your skills? Maybe you’re a beginner novelist looking to pen your first book. You might be a blogger wondering how to make more money from your blog. Whatever type of writer you are, the Internet has some wonderful blogs and websites that provide advice, tips and inspiration to help you. This article takes a look at 105 of the top blogs and websites for writers and authors.

The blogs and websites have been categorized using the following headings: (1) Writing, Publishing, Sales and Marketing, (2) Freelancing, (3) News, Industry Analysis and Advice, (4) Blogging and (5) Writing Platforms and Communities.

There are of course more blogs and websites relevant to writers and authors. If you think you’re blog or website should also be included in this list, please do comment in the comments box at the end of the article and let us know about you, your blog, what it is about and how it helps writers and authors.

Without any further delay, let’s move onto the 105 blogs and websites!

Writing, Publishing, Sales and Marketing

1. Sameer Kamat

Sameer Kamat is a bestselling author of two books; namely Business Doctors, and Beyond the MBA Hype. He also has a website, which has a list of great articles that Sameer has written based upon his own experiences of writing books and ebooks. You can find advice on both self-publishing and on the traditional route. Many of the articles Sameer has written are geared to helping writers get published in India. These in particular, are great reads.

2. InstaScribe Blog

InstaScribe is an online app designed to help authors create professional looking ebooks. There is also the InstaScribe blog, which provides articles about ebook publishing, writing in different languages, and latest news from across the world in the areas of books and publishing. The InstaScribe blog also has some eye catching visuals in the form of inspiring quotes, and infographics in the areas of writing, and publishing ebooks. You can also read an interview with the founder of InstaScribe, Jaya Jha here.

3. Writers Helping Writers

The Writers Helping Writers blog is run by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. The blog is packed with great articles that help you to improve your fiction writing. In particular, articles at the blog about how to create different types of characters and how to give them various personalities, traits and skills are extremely useful. Interested authors can also submit guest posts to Writers Helping Writers.

4. Nathan Bransford

Nathan Bransford is a former literary agent and author. He also runs an extremely popular blog. He writes articles giving authors advice on how to improve their writing craft, on editing, formatting and get published; both through self-publishing and traditional publishing (and its associated requirements, writing query letters, synopses, finding literary agents etc.).

5. Write to Done

Mary Jaksch is Editor-in-Chief of Write to Done (WTD), which is a huge resource for writers whose archives date back to 2008. The website is updated regularly and contains expert opinions and actionable advice on all aspects of writing including blog writing, writing sales copy, freelancing, writing novels and non-fiction. If you happen to be new to WTD, the blog is well worth a visit.

6. The Procrastiwriter

The Procrastiwriter provides articles that share writing tips to help you to improve your writing, on motivation to inspire you to write, and on how to deal with self-doubt of your ability to be a successful writer. The blog is run by Shanan Haislip.

 

Read the full post on e-Books India.

 

Joss Whedon, Lionsgate Hit With Copyright Lawsuit Over 'The Cabin in the Woods'

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This article by Austin Siegemund-Broka originally appeared on The Hollywood Reporter on 4/14/15. The plaintiff in the case is a self-published author.

The author of a 2006 novel has accused the ‘Avengers’ director and ‘Cabin’ director Drew Goddard of stealing his idea.

With just weeks until his box-office victory lap for Avengers: Age of Ultron, Joss Whedon is now facing a lawsuit accusing him of stealing the idea for the 2012 meta-horror movie The Cabin in the Woods.

Whedon produced and co-wrote the script for Cabin with director Drew Goddard, a writer on Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a fanboy favorite in his own right, with credits that include Netflix’s Daredevil (and reportedly may soon include Sony’s upcoming Spider-Man projects). Whedon and Goddard are named as defendants, along with Lionsgate and Whedon’s Mutant Enemy production company, in the complaint filed Monday in California federal court.

In the complaint, Peter Gallagher (no, not that Peter Gallagher) claims Whedon and Goddard took the idea for The Cabin in the Woods from his 2006 novel The Little White Trip: A Night In the Pines. He’s suing for copyright infringement and wants $10 million in damages.

 

Read the full article, which includes a link to the full legal filing, on The Hollywood Reporter.

 

My Haters, Myself: Mastering The Art Of The Haterbrag.

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This post by Amanda Hess originally appeared on Slate on 4/13/15.

Jennifer Weiner has sold millions of books, spent a combined five years on the New York Times best-seller list, and amassed 109,000 followers on Twitter. Last week, she descended into the basement of New York City’s Ace Hotel to share a handful of her self-promotional secrets. The talk, sponsored by the PEN American Center, was titled “How to Be Authentic on Social Media,” but its true subject was how to promote your book on the Internet without making everyone hate you. Weiner advised authors to tweet about the things they love (for Weiner, it’s the reality TV romance competition The Bachelor); to tweet about the authors they love (Roxane Gay and Gary Shteyngart are two of her favorites); and to tweet about their own projects “sparingly, carefully, modestly, thoughtfully, and absolutely as little as possible”—and let their now-loyal crew of social media followers spread the word. The talk was a handy primer, charmingly delivered. But it referred only obliquely to Weiner’s true social-media innovation: Co-opting her haters into her personal brand.

 

Read the full post on Slate.

 

Making the Leap Into Freelance Copy Editing

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This article by Jessica Eggert originally appeared on American Journalism Review on 4/9/15.

When Jim Thomsen found out he was going to lose his position as a copy editor at the Kitsap Sun, a daily newspaper in Bremerton, Washington, he said that it was the blackest period of his life. “I couldn’t figure out what else I could do,” he said. He spent about a year looking for another job in the newspaper industry. Nothing.

That’s when he decided to start freelance editing manuscripts. Thomsen had been editing manuscripts on the side but never considered it as self-sustaining. Now, he said he’s making more money than he ever did at a newspaper and doesn’t regret the transition at all.

“I had to get past my psychological dependence on my identity as a newspaper person,” he said. “I had to shed myself of my tribal identity and find out what is forward thinking and lucrative, and I found that.”

Thomsen is hardly alone. He’s one of many editors who have opted to become freelancers after leaving a full-time job in the newspaper industry.

 

Read the full post on American Journalism Review.

 

How to Deal With Writing Distractions

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This post by Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen originally appeared on The Adventurous Writer.

These tips for dealing with distractions as a writer are inspired by a parable about James Joyce, and will help you develop the productivity of a writer like Stephen King. Learning how to deal with writing distractions isn’t just about turning off the internet or writing in pomodoros.

In Writing Habit Mastery: How to Write 2,000 Words a Day and Forever Cure Writer’s Block, S.J. Scott describes how to establish a productive writing routine and environment and find time to write – even if you have a full-time job. You may not have the natural discipline it takes to write every day; you need to learn how to minimize distractions and interruptions, create a mental mindset that inspires you to write, and deal with lack of motivation that distracts you from writing.

The following tips on dealing with writing distractions are inspired by a story about James Joyce, told by Stephen King in his famous memoir On Writing. I featured his book in 7 Writing Tips From Stephen King – but I neglected to mention his parable about the late great James Joyce.

 

Read the full post on The Adventurous Writer.

 

5 Ways to Get Your Flaky Freelance Client to Pay Up

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This post by Carol Tice originally appeared on Make A Living Writing.

Has this happened to you? You slave away meeting a freelance client’s deadline, send in your invoice, and then…nothing.

Your client is smelling like a deadbeat.

What can you do about it? Plenty.

As it happens, I’ve had my share of clients who drag their heels on payment. Over the years, I’ve developed a system for making sure those checks arrive…more on that below.

First, here are my five best tips for rounding up those stray checks:

1. Friendly email reminder

I like to begin on the assumption that my lack of a payment is a simple oversight or mistake. The day after the payment was due, I send a friendly email:

“Hi, I’m just checking in because my final payment on this project was due yesterday. I know you got my final draft a couple weeks ago — are we all set? Please let me know if you need anything from me, and do let me know when I can expect payment. Let me know if you need another copy of the invoice.”

Sometimes, that’s all it takes. The invoice was mislaid, or the accountant was out sick a couple days, and your nudge will send the check your way.

 

Read the full post on Make A Living Writing.

 

How to Have a Successful Book Launch

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This post originally appeared on ChatEbooks on 4/7/15.

Finishing your book, from writing to editing, is not the end of your journey.  Holding a book launch is one great way to promote your book. Here are some tips on how to organize a successful book launch.

After spending countless hours writing, editing, and creating a book, it can be a rewarding experience for an author to celebrate their hard work, and can also be beneficial to have a book launch event to market and promote their book. As an author, this event gives you an opportunity to celebrate all the weeks, months, or even years that led to the publication of your book. If not organized and managed properly, however, book launch events can end up being extremely expensive and a waste of time. If done right, these events can provide crucial momentum. There are many tips for you to take into consideration to ensure a successful book launch.

One tip for you to take into consideration to ensure a successful book event is to research potential venues. It can be beneficial to actually visit these venues in person. Potential venues should be based on who you wish to invite to the event and what goals you desire to accomplish by hosting the event. It can be helpful to host a book event at a retail location. Bookstores and other retailers will be content if you can bring in a lot of people to their store, and they are also usually willing to handle the sales. Another beneficial strategy is to locate a retailer that has connections to the book. For instance, if your book is about outdoor activities, a local recreational equipment store is an excellent venue to host the event.

 

Read the full post on ChatEbooks.

 

How The 'Sad Puppies' Internet Campaign Gamed The Hugo Awards

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This post by Gavia Baker-Whitelaw originally appeared on The Daily Dot on 4/5/15.

Everyone loves to say that awards ceremonies are rigged, meaningless, or just blatant popularity contests. In the case of the most prestigious honor in the sci-fi/fantasy community, this kind of accusation now feels worryingly true.

Each year, the Hugo Awards are voted on by paid members of Worldcon, the World Science Fiction Convention. Fans nominate their favorite books, movies, and commentators, and the most popular choices make it onto a shortlist of five nominees per category. People then vote for the eventual winners, which are revealed at Worldcon in August.

This year’s nominees were announced on Saturday, and most of them came directly from a Gamergate-affiliated campaign known as Sad Puppies. By bloc-voting for a specific slate of anti-progressive authors, editors, and fans, the Sad Puppies managed to game the selection process in every major category. And yes, they did choose that name for themselves.

 

Read the full post on The Daily Dot.

 

Ebooks For Libraries

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This post by JA Konrath originally appeared on his A Newbie’s Guide To Publishing site on 3/31/15.

TL;DR

I want to help authors get their ebooks into libraries.

I want to help libraries acquire indie ebooks.

To do this, I started a business called EAF – EbooksAreForever.com.

I want to sell your ebooks to libraries.

 

What’s going on with libraries and ebooks?

There are 120,000 libraries in the US. These libraries, and their patrons, are eager for popular ebooks. Many libraries have a budget they must spend, or they risk having that budget cut.

Currently, libraries have no allies in the ebook market. They aren’t happy with the restrictions and costs of the current leader in supplying libraries with ebook content, Overdrive. Through Overdrive, many publishers charge high prices for ebooks, some higher than $80 a title. They also require yearly license renewals, and may force libraries to re-buy licenses after a certain arbitrary number of borrows.

Just one example of the perils of this approach for America’s libraries is that a library must pay for extensions of time-limited licenses of old ebooks and purchases of licenses for new ones. All kinds of sustainability and predictability issues arise. And that’s true even if the budget remains the same, rather than declining, as many have in recent years. It will be harder than ever for libraries to grow their collection, whether the licenses are time-limited or come with limits on the number of times a library can loan a book.

So libraries are spending a fortune and don’t even own the content they’re spending that fortune on. In many cases, if they stop paying the fees, they lose the content they bought. This has been dubbed “digital decay”, and it’s a money grab, pure and simple.

What’s going on with indie authors and ebooks?

Some indies are on Overdrive and 3M. I’ve been on Overdrive for a few years. My last quarterly check was about $60, and I have a large catalog. This is small money, not just for me, but for any writer. And I was fortunate enough to have been invited into Overdrive. Many authors are not.

The vast majority of libraries don’t have access to many of the ebooks that readers are seeking. The latest AuthorEarnings.com report showed that 33% of all ebooks sold on Amazon are from indie authors. Libraries are missing out on 1/3 of available titles, because they have no way easy way to acquire them.

 

Read the full post on A Newbie’s Guide To Publishing.

 

Writing With A Day Job

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This post by Nathan Bransford originally appeared on his blog on 2/18/14.

On last week’s episode of Girls, Hannah got a temporary day job in GQ’s advertorial department, where she had a taste of success (as well as free snacks).

Her fellow co-workers were fellow aspiring writers, and during a slightly fraught break room chat, they revealed that all of their writing successes came before they had a day job. Hannah quits, not wanting to wake up in ten years having failed to pursue her real writing, but later decides to try to have it both ways and vows to write three hours every night.

I’m sure this episode rang true for many a writer. Barring some sort of independent wealth or a generous benefactor, there are really only two choices:

– Quit/scale back your day job to have more time to write, plunging yourself into financial uncertainty.

– Keep your day job and carve out time for writing in the margins, plunging yourself into creative uncertainty.

 

Read the full post on Nathan Bransford’s blog.

 

Keys to Writing Books for Very Young Readers

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This post by Olivia Snaije originally appeared on Publishing Perspectives on 3/25/15.

PARIS: Within a program of events celebrating French publisher l’école des loisirs’ 50th birthday, the cherished children’s book author, Grégoire Solotareff, gave a talk on Monday about how to transform an idea for a book into reality. In the tradition of Maurice Sendak or Leo Lionni (both of whom are published in translation by l’école des loisirs), Solotareff’s 200+ books for children, which he has been writing and illustrating for 30 years, continue to dwell in a magical and quirky universe. For the past 20 years he has also been the editor of an imprint called Loulou & Cie for children ages 0-4 where he has overseen the production of 400 books. It was in his capacity as both author and editor that he gave the following talk, loosely translated and edited here:

In 1985 I started publishing my books. It was lots of work at the beginning. I wanted very quickly to be published by l’école des loisirs because of its reputation. I presented my books to [co-founder] Arthur Hubschmid, and since then there have been lots of books.

One shouldn’t create books just to make them. You need to be passionate about it. At first you are shy and afraid of rejection. You’re not always confident. But you do need to be convinced about your work, you need to like it and want to do it. This is the first quality you need when you present a book to a publisher and say “This is what I do and what do you think?”

 

Read the full post on Publishing Perspectives.

 

How You Can Create Your Own Lucky Breaks as a Writer

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This post by Holly Robinson originally appeared on her site on 3/30/15.

I was walking with my kids on the beach when my father-in-law leaned over the balcony to shout, “Your agent’s on the phone! He has a book deal!”

Was that my lucky break as a novelist? Not exactly. Remember Hillary Clinton’s concession speech after losing her presidential bid? She said that, although she hadn’t broken through the glass ceiling, “it’s got about 18 million cracks in it.” Crossing the threshold from unpublished to published author was a similar journey for me: I had to keep pounding on that door until, one crack at a time, it gave way. There was no one lucky break. It was more like a hundred of them.

You, too, can publish your work, if you’re willing to make your own lucky breaks as a writer:

 

1. Write. Rewrite. Repeat.
Whether you’re intent on traditional or indie publishing, that manuscript had better be polished until it gleams.

 

2. Find contests to keep you writing—and on deadline.
My first lucky break was a local area arts festival that was running a writing contest. I had just read an essay by Joyce Maynard in Redbook magazine, something about dating after divorce, and I was inspired to write an essay about my own divorce called “My Two Husbands,” revealing how important it was to me that my first husband was still part of my life even after I’d remarried. I entered the essay in that local literary contest and, when it won Honorable Mention, I had the nerve to send it to Ladies’ Home Journal magazine. They bought it, and my career as a magazine writer was launched. My experience as a nonfiction writer allowed me to develop discipline, hone my writing skills and begin building a platform as a writer. And guess what? By the time my first novel was published, my editor at Ladies’ Home Journal had become the books editor. She reviewed the novel in their pages as a “great summer read” and helped boost my book sales—which helped me land a contract for my next novel.

 

Read the full post on Holly Robinson’s site.

 

The Author Platform – You Definitely Need One and It Should Have Been Started Yesterday

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This post by Karen Cioffi originally appeared on The Working Writer’s Club on 3/28/15.

Did you ever hear the expression, “a stitch in time saves nine?”

Whether you’re an author or freelance writer, that’s how you need to think of your writing platform. Get it started first, as the foundation of your business. It’s much more effective than trying to play catch-up.

If you’re an author, your platform needs to be in place before you hit the submissions road (if you’re going the traditional route). And, it certainly needs to be in place before you self-publish.

If you’re a freelance writer, you need to have an effective website and marketing strategies in place before you offer your services online.

To reinforce this thought, let me tell you about my father. He was in construction – he built homes. The first thing that gets done, after the blueprints are drawn, is digging for the foundation. Then the foundation is created. Then the house is built on top of the foundation.

It’s the same when building an online platform. Getting a website is the digging part; the added content and optimization of the website is the foundation of your platform.

 

Read the full post on The Working Writer’s Club.