Publshed but NEW here!

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Here I am at this wonderfully interesting site! I’m not only new but practically computer illiterate but what I lack in expertise I try to make up for with perseverance (ie – stubborn-failure is not an option – LOL). At the moment it’s practically impossible to get away from me if you’re a reader since I’ve got something in every formant (currently) known to man on the NET or on Amazon.com. My favorite things to write are souhern cozy mysteries and like life, my characters and plot twists are full of adventure; reality; humor; romance; relationships; and colorful characters. An example is this thumbnail of a recent novel : "(title left out) is about BLOODY red murder; COLORFUL characters and clues scattred from New York to a small town in Tennessee; and has enough paranormal scenes in it to make the television paranormal shows GREEN with envy – enjoy!" Now – if you like a mystery – go to my list of works on Amazon and see if you can figure out which of my novels this describes. CLUE: It’s part of the Maryvale series.

Good luck and good reading to all of us,

Jackie Griffey 

A Plea to Book Trailer Producers and Authors, too…

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In one of my past lives – still actually overflowing into this one – I spent more than twenty-five years as an Adman of sorts. I worked as a graphic designer/art director and also copywriter for a variety of agencies and eventually my own design studio. My learning curve was a rugged one and while I learned from many of the very best professionals, I also learned from some hacks. As a result, my experience ranged really widely, but touched on just about every area of marketing from Mom n’Pop to Corporate. When I sold my design business and became a full time writer and Indian Trader (really, no kidding…), I had to keep up my design skills so I could work up websites and promotions as the technology of marketing shifted, for our new business.

All that said, I have now added cover design as a sideline, and as a result, I get a lot of inquiries to review covers, make suggestions for improvement and even re-design them, create advertising for launches, posters, collateral mailing pieces and now, it seems, book trailers. A few days ago, I received a request from a fiction author I know and respect, to do a review of the trailer for his upcoming launch.  OK – I’m always glad to give my opinion, as you probably have already figured out.

The trailer was alright. It did a passable job of conveying the nature of the book, the period, the mood and a little tickle about the characters. But the end?  Really, really problematic.  The producer had chosen to end the trailer with an ultra-fast scroll down of the Title, the author’s name, and the sales availability/retail locations for the book. Much too fast to read, but following the scroll down, the viewer had to look at a still self-promotion frame for the video producer/artist for a full three seconds, and if I tell you that the images in this frame had nothing to do with the style or content of the video, it is a huge oversimplification. It was awful and I had to stare at it and the artist’s contact info/cred until the trailer was finished. Since it was U-Tube, I was left with the still frame of this artist’s promo, long after the trailer ended.

Let me be perfectly clear here. No professional marketing artist/designer/producer would ever so compromise a client’s message. Ever. Not only did this smack of hobbyist level production, it completely killed the trailer message. I told the author what I thought he should do to improve the trailer, and a day later, he sent in the revision, which corrected some redundancy in the copy, added a credit to an outside reference he’d missed, and slowed the scroll down at the end. IN addition, at my suggestion, following the scroll down, was a last image (or so I thought…) of the book cover. But then, scrolling up from the bottom was a copy blurb promoting the trailer producer/artist and when the trailer actually ended, I was still looking at the promotional page of thumbnails of this artist’s work.  I was aghast, but replied to the author’s request by saying that the video was much improved, but effectively hobbled by the unprofessional addition of the producer’s promo. He indicated it had been a friend or something like that. I assume I won’t hear from him again on this matter.

Here’s the thing. If you launch a book with an unprofessional trailer, it is never going to go away, unless you only release it on television broadcast – then it has a relatively short life, and I’ve seen bad commercials forgotten and the product resurrected to sell well. Online, though, it will never die. It will live on and on and on long after its useful  lifespan, to haunt you, your book and maybe your future work as well. Don’t make this mistake.

Here’s the thinking: a book trailer is a “commercial”, if you will, for your product. A published book is a product, like any other, that is sold to consumers. When you market your product to consumers, you must work hard to set is aside from all the marketing clutter they will read/view. In the case of a book trailer, at least you know some viewers will see it that are readers within the genre, so some of your work has been done for you already. Still, in the most tangible, personally connecting way you can, you need to do the elevator conversation.  In three minutes, you must tell a total stranger what your book is about and motivate them to buy it. A trailer is much shorter, but it uses images which can be more useful than words as they enter a different part of the brain. The imaging cortex stores images along with associations. Words are just stored words, but the two: images and associations, are retained, intact. This is something you can actually control and direct. Amazing stuff!

If your pockets are not deep, you may have to rely upon the services of a friend or acquaintance to produce a trailer for you: mix and stream the music and voice over if you use one, etc., plus find stock footage, shoot new footage and stills and edit it all down to make your pitch with as much impact as possible. It’s not an easy job, and to do it right takes a great deal of skill. But the lasting impression a viewer will retain may well be that last frame. Don’t ever negotiate a trailer deal where the last frame is a promo for the trailer’s producer. EVER. If mutual promotion is the deal breaker, then offer live links on your blog, do a guest blog, tweet out the producers site, etc., etc., but don’t be such a wuss that you let them destroy the efficacy of your promotional trailer by plastering their name on it.  As I’ve said, an unprofessional launch can hobble your book.

And those of you, who want to be trailer producers, read this again: Your client’s trailer is not a place to promote yourself. Do it on your own time, anywhere but in their trailer. It makes you look like a dilettante, or worse…  It might be tempting to see your name up there, but don’t do it. You will be hurting your client as well as yourself. Consider this a fair warning.

 

This is a reprint from Richard Sutton‘s site.

Why DIY Publishing is Not a Dead End

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This morning I read a post by Anderson Porter about a four-piece article written a few weeks in the Boston Phoenix by Eugenia Williamson, entitled The dead end of DIY publishing. I had read the Williams piece earlier, and the more than fifty comments, which in my opinion had done a more than adequate job of pointing out its problems. But when Anderson seemed to accept much of her analysis, and labeled the comments as “the usual pitchfork-waving, spittoon-dinging dismissals, I found myself spending the rest of the morning writing a reply. When I finished, I thought I ought to expand abit, and post what I had to say as a blog, thereby at least justifying a morning lost to writing on my next book. So here goes:

I am a DIY self-published author, who found Williamson’s piece upsetting because it did what so many other pieces have done, alternated between describing self-published authors as a group in dismissive terms and using some of the most unrepresentative examples to prove its points. I am not going to argue that traditional publishing is dead, or that self-publishing is the best or only route for every author to take, but what I am going to do is give you my reasons why I don’t believe that self-publishing is a dead end.

Williams is making 3 points: That publishing is not profitable, that when it is, it is not because of merit, and that it can not provide “the equivalent of research and development: the nurturing of young writers with a first book of short stories as well as critically worthy mid-list authors provide the equivalent of research and best sellers paid for.”

For example, in Williamson’s article she has as a heading the statement: SELF-PUBLISHING ISN’T PROFITABLE, OR MERITOCRATIC. I don’t know how you would interpret this, but I read it to mean that if you self-publish you won’t make money, and if you are successful it isn’t because of the value of the work you produce. As a self-published author who is successful (in this my 3rd year as an author the income I am making per month in sales is well over what I made as a full time history professor), I naturally found the first part of the statement inaccurate and the second point insulting.

Her proof of the first statement is that for every Konrath there are thousands who don’t make any money. This is a meaningless statement since, while I am sure it is true, it is equally true that for every Steven King there are perhaps hundreds of thousands of traditionally published authors who make no money. Writing, at least until now, is not profitable for the vast majority of the people who engage in this activity. If she really wanted to make a statement that added to the discussion, she should have said that self-publishing was less profitable than traditional publishing for the majority of authors. But she can’t say this, not just because the systematic data comparing the two doesn’t exist, but because the increased number of traditional authors who are choosing to self-publish would argue that the statement was untrue.

Since she can’t prove her statement that self-publishing is unprofitable, she instead feels the need to insult those people who do it by suggesting that the authors don’t care if they make money because they “wouldn’t make a dime because no publisher would take them,” or that if they make money, it was only because they had the money to invest in the process because the “truth is self-publishing costs money.”

Then she picks one of the least representative examples of a self-published author she could find–De La Pava to prove this point. Here is an author who published a book and “forgot about it.” How unrepresentative is that! And she mentions that he spent thousands of dollars, which sounds like he used an “authors services” package. If she had either done her research or wanted to paint a balanced view of self-publishing surely she would have taken the time to interview one of the hundreds of self-published authors she could find on the internet (we blog incessantly about our experiences), and mentioned that Smashwords, Amazon’s KDP, and Barnes and Noble’s PubIt, and Amazon’s CreateSpace and Lightening Source have made it possible for authors to publish without that large initial investment.

But no, she doesn’t do that, instead she tries to use this author to make the point that there is no meritocracy in self-publishing because this particular author was successful because he had good luck. The implication is that success has nothing to do with the work an author puts into the writing of the book, or the marketing of the book, or the judgment of the readers, hence the idea that those who are successful don’t “merit” the success. If Williamson had spent just a few hours reading the blogs of self-published authors she would see how much time is being spent on the craft of writing, on learning how to design better book, inside and out, on how to most effectively promote, on actual promotion, and she might have been able to see how little luck has to do with it.

Finally there is her third point that self-publishing lacks the nurturing of young authors through that advances provide or the research and development possibilities of traditional publishing. Porter (and many of the authors who commented on the article) pointed out the problem with her assumption that traditional publishing uses its bestseller profits to nurture their midlist authors, so I won’t belabor this point. What I will argue is, that if we are discussing fiction, which Williamson seemed to be doing, the nurturing that authors need the most is a steady predictable income so that they don’t have to work full time at something else, and the research and development they need is marketing data that they can then use to develop new strategies for getting their work to the reader and getting that reader to buy their work.

If you compare the traditional to the self-publishing model, the self-publishing model is anything but a dead end. For the traditionally published author, small advances, spread over 3 or 4 payments, and royalties, that only come 2-4 times a year, mean that most authors have a very insecure and spotty income. It is hard to take the leap to leave your “day job” when your money comes in dribs and drabs and you don’t know from year to year what you are going to make.

In contrast, as a self-published author I see my sales daily, I get my checks monthly, I have sales data for 2 1/2 years and can tell you which months I will make the most money, and which months the sales dip, so I can make my fiscal plans accordingly. Within a year of publishing my first novel, I was making enough money monthly to replace my part-time teaching salary (I was semi-retired), and I retired completely to write full time. As with most small businesses, it may take authors who self-publish years to grow their business to the point of making a living, but I am hearing many more stories of authors finding this sort of sustainable income than I ever heard from mid-list authors in traditional publishing. And with more income coming from ebooks, which don’t have the short life span of print books, this income has a much longer impact on an author’s financial security.

I have every reason to expect that the two books I have published will continue to sell, and that as I publish more books, my income will go up. My traditionally published friends know that in most cases they will never make any money after the advance, and they have no guarantee that the next book they write will ever be published. Which vision of the future would you find more nurturing?

Williams says that if traditional publishing disappeared the only books published would be by those with “the money and the time to publish and promote it.” But if she had done adequate research she would have seen that the initial investments in self-publishing are generally small (mine was $250 for a cover) and can be recouped quickly, and only a small percentage of future profits need to be plowed back into the business on a yearly basis (upgrade websites, professional editing, etc.), and you don’t need to even do that to get out another book, which can then double your earnings.

And for fiction, research and development should mean researching the market and developing good promotional strategies. But again, traditional publishing doesn’t do a very good job of this for most authors. Traditional publishers are just starting to talk about shifting their marketing focus from book sellers to book readers, and most authors are still expected to come up with their own marketing campaigns based on extremely limited data and often years-out-of-date information about where and how their books are selling. Even if they get direct feedback from their fans, they have little control over covers, interior formatting, pricing or promotions. So even if they did their own research, they don’t have authority or mechanisms to use that information to improve the product.

In contrast, because I know every day how many books sold, in what venue, I can mount a promotion, change a price, upload a book into a new book store, and know instantly what the effect of these actions are. I can change a book cover, go in and correct formatting errors instantly, not wait until another edition is printed (if ever). And, as I write my next book, I can take into consideration what 100s of my readers have said in their reviews, not what an editor says based on limited marketing analysis of my mid-list genre.

Just three years ago when I started, it was very difficult to get any information on how other authors were doing with their sales. (Which is why Konrath’s willingness to publish his sales data was so revolutionary!) While there might have been a top down mentoring system among agents, editors and successful authors, there wasn’t the vibrant community that now exists among authors that is open to all. Self-published authors share information readily about what promotions worked and what didn’t. We share information about sales data, how to over come formatting difficulties, what covers work, what fonts to use, and promotional strategies. We open up our blogs to guest reviewers, form cooperatives for cross-promotional purposes. Self-publishing welcomes writers of any age, any background, who write about every subject in every form. Any time spent online looking in Barnes and Noble or Amazon’s stores, or reading writers’ blogs demonstrates that authors are experimenting more than ever before. Short stories, novellas, graphic novels are being published and read that would never have made it through the narrow gates of traditional publishing, which tended to strain out anything that deviated from the recent bestseller trend.

Will some authors fail, or be disappointed? Of course. Will some of these experiments prove unsuccessful, certainly. But, without self-publishing these authors wouldn’t have gotten the chance to fail, and many others, like myself, a former academic in her sixties, wouldn’t have ever gotten the chance to succeed.

I would love to hear from those of you who have had experience with both traditional and self-publishing and examples of nurturing you found in both.

 

This is a reprint from M. Louisa Locke‘s blog.

Indie Authors: Stop Promoting To Other Indie Authors

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The majority of indie authors have day jobs, family responsibilities, the burden of developing, writing and publishing their books, and the burden of establishing and maintaining an author platform on top of all of it. It’s not surprising that when it comes time to promote a new book, indie authors very frequently begin by reaching out to their fellow indie authors. After all, who can better understand the struggle and sacrifice that went into the achievement of bringing a book to market independently, and who could possibly be more supportive of an indie author’s efforts than another indie author?

Even though that rationale seems sound, authors promoting to other authors has got to stop, NOW, for two very good reasons.

The first is that unless you’re writing nonfiction books on craft or book production, other authors are not your target demographic and every bit of money, time and effort you spend promoting to them is money, time and effort that isn’t going toward courting your real intended audience. The second is that it’s simply too much to ask of your fellow authors.

You may think the fact that you’re spending more time promoting to fellow authors than the general public doesn’t matter, since increased sales and positive reviews will inevitably raise your book’s visibility among members of your target demographic and the general public, leading to more sales, but you’re wrong. Book lovers have gotten pretty savvy to the indie world, and they automatically discount reviews written for indie authors by indie authors. If the majority of your book’s positive reviews are from fellow indies — especially those who take posting a review as an opportunity to cross-promote their own books by including their own book title in their username or signature line — it’s actually a mark against your book in the eyes of the general public. They think, "How good could this book be, if the only people who read it and posted positive reviews are friends of the author?"

You may also think that since writers are readers too, it’s totally legitimate to promote to them the same as you would any other member of the public. But the thing is, most indie authors don’t promote to one another the way they would to the general public, they often think nothing of spamming and haranguing their fellows in ways they would never even consider doing to the general public. For example, they may think it’s totally fine to post a promotional message and link to their book’s product page on the Facebook wall, page or timeline of an indie author ‘friend’, but would never dream of doing so on other Facebook members’ walls, pages or timelines. They would never send out a "please buy my new book, I really need your support" email to their PTA or church email list, but don’t hesitate to do it to their own email list of indie authors.

Spam is spam is spam, regardless of whether or not the person on the receiving end is a fellow indie author. If anything, indie authors should be even more hesitant to bombard their fellows with promotional messages and pleas than they would be in dealing with the general public, because they should know very well what those fellows are up against every day.

Several times a week (or more) I’ll receive pleas from indie authors to buy, review and recommend their books, attend their events (virtual or IRL), locate and tag their books on Amazon, cross-post announcements of their book release events, share links to their blogs on my own blog, "Like" their Facebook pages, follow them on Twitter, allow them to post their promotional messages on my sites, et cetera. They don’t seem to realize it, but what their requests really mean to the person on the receiving end is this:

"Hey, I know you have a job, and a family, and your own works in progress, and your own published books that you need to promote, and a website, blog, FB page, Twitter stream and Goodreads account to keep updated, and a To Read pile a mile high containing many works from favorite authors of yours that you’ve spent the last year wanting to read for pleasure and for your continuing education in craft, and that on top of all this you’re trying to squeeze a half hour or so of free time or exercise into your day (and failing in that endeavor more often than not), but can you just drop one or more of those things to do me a favor, even though we’re only nominally acquainted and your own siblings would think twice before making this request? P.S. – Since we’re only nominally acquainted you don’t really know me, and it’s possible that I’m hypersensitive or just plain off my nut. If you don’t grant me this favor I may go totally ballistic and badmouth you all over the internet as being non-supportive of your fellow indie authors. ‘Kay? THANKS!!!"

If the request is to read a book and post a review for it, this wrinkle is added:

"I know you value your online reputation and integrity and stuff, but can you read my book and post a positive review of it? And if you don’t like it, can you just write off all that time you spent reading it and pretend you never read it at all? P.S. – If you do post a review and it’s anything less than a glowing 5-starrer, I may go totally ballistic and badmouth you all over the internet as being non-supportive of your fellow indie authors. I may even be one of those mean and bitter types who will go so far as to post negative reviews on all your books on every site where they’re listed. ‘Kay? THANKS!!!"

If the request is to buy a book, that request really means this:

"Hey, I know you’re only earning something like twenty bucks a month in royalties off your own books but can you take some of that hard-earned cash this month and hand it over to me? Of course, I’ll only be getting a small percentage of the profit, you’ll actually be giving most of your money to a publisher or reseller. I know you’re acquainted with hundreds of other indie authors who may be making this same request, and of course I realize you can’t afford to buy everyone’s books, and you don’t really know me any better than you know any of the rest of them, but can you just blow the rest of them off this one time and buy my book, because I really really really really need the help so much more than they do, and you know what it’s like being a struggling indie author so I’m pretty sure your guilt alone is already making you lean toward ‘yes’? P.S. – Again, since you don’t really know me it’s possible that I’m a selfish jerk. If you don’t buy my book and I find out about that, I may go totally ballistic and badmouth you all over the internet as being a greedy, tight-fisted hypocrite. ‘Kay? THANKS!!!"

What about lesser requests than these? You may assume that because it only takes a second to ‘Like’ a Facebook page or re-tweet a message, there’s no reason why anyone should turn you down or be annoyed by the request when you make it. But many people take their ‘Likes’ and re-tweets seriously, and believe there’s an implied endorsement and recommendation in every one of their ‘Likes’ and re-tweets. I don’t personally think there’s anything wrong with asking for a ‘Like’ or re-tweet, the problem is that most people who make the request attach an expectation to it and get angry or disappointed when their expectation isn’t met. Asking isn’t the problem, it’s the wave of resentment or even retribution that too often follows.

Identifying your target demographic, locating its members and crafting a promotional strategy that’s tailor-made to appeal to that demographic is hard work, but it’s the only kind of promotion and marketing that truly builds a dedicated and enthusiastic readership from the ground up. An appreciative readership becomes both a fan base and a cheering section, filled with people who are very happy to recommend a book they’ve discovered and enjoyed. That kind of fan base grows organically, so long as the author or publisher doesn’t screw up the relationship by subjecting the fans to spam or trampling on their boundaries.

If you still insist on viewing your fellow indie authors as a kind of training wheels community to which you can turn for support in promoting your book and goosing your sales, really think about what you’re asking before you ask. And no matter what, never ask your fellow authors for something, or promote to them, in a way you would think is inappropriate to do to your neighbors, the other parents involved with your kid’s soccer team, your co-workers, or the general public.

Being an indie author is a demanding and draining privilege; we need to treat it, and one another, with respect.

 

This is a cross-posting from Publetariat founder and Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton‘s Indie Author Blog.

Monthly Mash-ups: 7 Encouraging Posts For Writers

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Being a writer is often lonely and thankless. If we’re fortunate, we can make a living by our words, but that can take years before it happens.

Here are 7 encouraging posts to keep you going  when it feels like you’re getting nowhere.

  1. Turning a Stall into a Start by Barbara McDowell — Sometimes life gets in the way of our writing. Barbara gives us a pep talk and suggests joining the ROW80 crew to keep us on track.
  2. Keep Money in Its Place by Rachelle Gardner — In this post, Rachelle reminds us that when we focus on the money instead of the joy of writing, we can lose that joy. Her suggestion is to “keep your writing life separate from your financial anxiety.”
  3. What are “Hidden Sales?” by Mary DeMuth — Most published authors, trad and self, have heard someone say they loved their book so much they just had to lend it to a friend. Mary gives us a way to look at those lost sales that puts it all in perspective.
  4. Why Fiction is Good for Your Heart by Colin Falconer — We’ve all heard how reading is good for our brains, but did you know reading fiction is good for your moral character? Colin leads us through how reading fiction is good for us.
  5. How Fiction Shapes Worldview by Mike Duran — If “all truth is God’s truth”, then we can use general truths to move our readers to specific Christian truths without needing to use specific scripture or dogma, according to Mike.
  6. Making God Your Partner — Fulfilling our visions, be it in writing a great book or anything else, means making connections. In this post I break down Cheryl Ricker’s 5 connections we must make to achieve our goals.
  7. Blog Better by Slowing Down by Timo Kiander — In this post, Timo takes us through his thoughts on why we should re-consider blogging multiple times per week, including avoiding burnout and broken relationships.

What other tips, tricks and posts do you know of that encourage you to keep writing?

This is a reprint from Virginia Ripple‘s blog.

Are You Published?

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This is such a loaded question. Whenever somebody asks me this, I don’t really know how to respond because I’m not sure what they are really asking or what it is they really want to know. Are they just making idle chit chat and don’t care one way or the other what the answer is? Are they asking if I’m making a living–i.e. is this my job instead of a hobby? Are they asking if some authority figure (i.e. a big NY publisher) deemed me “worthy enough” to have my words see the light of day? i.e. are they asking about prestige? Are they trying to figure out if I’m a “big deal”?

[Publetariat Editor’s note: strong language after the jump]

I have no idea. Because a lot of non-publishing/non-author people have a lot of serious misconceptions about the publishing world. And even many of us IN the publishing world, have some pretty big misconceptions at times, so how can the general public be blamed, when the ignorance spreads so far and wide? (And by ignorance I mean a simple lack of knowing something, not an insult.)

It’s also impossible to know what assumptions somebody is starting out with. In the general public there seem to be two very opposite views about authors in reference to making money. Either they think it’s nearly “impossible” to make a living doing this and that only a lucky handful of authors ever can or do. Or they think just being published period means you’re raking in the big bucks. Neither situation is really true.

Those that assume “having a publisher” means you are “making the big bucks”, don’t grasp the economics of publishing. For many published authors only doing a book a year and living somewhere on the midlist, you’re talking maybe a $5,000 to $10,000 book advance. A lot of books don’t make the author more money than the advance. Some do. But a lot don’t. There are foreign and audio and other rights that might also make an author more money, so it’s not “just” the advance. But in general, few authors, unless they are bestsellers are making a living writing one book a year.

And yet… a vast majority of writers have been trained into this mode of thinking where 1 book a year is a lot of pressure and oh my God it’s just SO much work… and so anybody stuck at that level who doesn’t really “break out”, is unlikely to be making a living.

It’s hard to make a living as an indie at that publishing rate as well, but the money, for most authors isn’t “great” in traditional publishing. And that was one of the big motivators for me going indie. When I found out that most NY pubbed authors aren’t making a living from their fiction, I decided I wasn’t interested in going that route. The only reason for me to fight and claw for something like that is if it would end in a career making career-level money just doing that. If I wasn’t going to make a living, I wasn’t letting anybody else control any aspect of my work, period.

Which is what a lot of “regular people” (meaning people not in this business), don’t understand. If they didn’t understand publishing before, they don’t understand the new shift in publishing now, for the most part. (There are, of course, exceptions. Some people read author blogs for their favorite authors and know a bit more about it than the average man on the street.)

Given the very slow publishing schedules in mainstream publishing and the fact that there is a limit to how many books a publisher wants from any given midlist author in a year, the money odds for “most” of us who are not famous or breakout bestsellers… is in the indie side of things, because we can publish on a faster timetable, while still keeping the quality up. Remember, a lot of us aren’t buying into these myths that were sold for so many years inside the mainstream system of publishing.

Also, those of us labeled “prolific”, don’t necessarily have shorter creative cycles, we just have more of them going on at once. At any given time I have several books in various stages of production… one in planning, one in rough draft, one in editing/with betas, one with the copyeditor. I don’t always have irons in all those fires at once, but just about, which is why sometimes my publishing schedule is like boom. boom. boom.

We also can make a lot more per book sold, which means fewer copies needed to make decent money. So making a living becomes somewhat more probable, depending on work ethic and of course on how your audience responds to the work you give them and if it’s compelling enough for word of mouth to go to work. Every author, depending on popularity, needs a different number of titles to make and maintain a living doing this, whether they are trad pubbed or indie.

They say the best way to market your work is to write another book. The reason is that word of mouth is king in book publishing. Sometimes other forms of marketing and promo can get the ball rolling or help to get a book back in people’s minds again, but it’s got to grip people enough that they talk about it or all the advertising in the world won’t do any good. (A lot of people complain about how their publishers won’t market them, and they are expected to do all that themselves, but given that it’s nearly impossible to know what the public will “go for” in a big way, most advertising on any author who isn’t already a proven quantity is a big financial risk. It might not seem fair, but it’s just business.)

So that brings me back to “Are You Published?” and how to answer that question. I usually just say yes because frankly any other answer is going to lead into a long boring conversation (like this one) that they probably don’t care about anyway. Then I’ve gone from “mystique” to making their eyes glaze over. Why have a conversation that’s going to make me less cool by the end of it?

It’s akin to the other question that drives me batshit: “How’s your book coming?” WHICH ONE? Often this is a question some ask me every time they see me. If I don’t see them for 6 months I wonder if they think I’m still working on the same book. In 6 months a LOT has happened in my publishing world and the book they’re talking about is probably in my rear view by that point.

So when someone asks: Are you Published? I say yes. I have books out. I’m making a living. This is my job/career. If they care about prestige and authority figures over actual results, then I honestly don’t care if they think I’m a liar.

And when someone asks: “How’s your book coming?” I just say fine.

I assume both questions are just small talk and the questioner probably doesn’t really care anyway. I can tell there are times when the person IS really genuinely interested in my job, and when that happens I give them more than a flip monosyllabic answer, but most times Yes, and Fine, suffice and it saves me a lot of explaining and frustration.

 

This is a reprint from The Weblog of Zoe Winters.

10 Quick Tips to Get Your Manuscript Ready for Publication

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One of the first decisions you have to make when you decide to publish your own book is: Who’s going to turn your manuscript into the book you want it to become?

Lots of people decide they can do it themselves, and I’m sure some of them are happy they did. For others, the whole process of learning about book design, pagination, fonts and the rest of it just isn’t the way they want to spend their time.

 

As an author you can decide to hire a book designer, either on their own or through a company that provides access to contractors.

But that’s not the end of the story. You still have to prepare your manuscript for publishing. Let me tell you, as someone who has worked on hundreds of authors’ manuscripts, it makes a big difference to your book designer how clean the file is when it hits her hard drive.

A messy manuscript takes longer to tidy up so it doesn’t cause problems when you get it into your layout software.

How can you help? Here are ten tips on how to get your manuscript ready for production. Keep in mind you only want to start doing this once you’re sure—no, I mean really sure—that your manuscript is final, ready for print.

Okay, now that you’re ready, let’s dive in.

  1. Get rid of extra spaces. Whether you’ve used them for spacing or between sentences, your file should contain no double spaces at all.
     
  2. Get rid of extra paragraph returns. We space things out so they look nice on the screen, but we don’t need or want them for typesetting. Your file should have no double paragraph returns in it.
     
  3. Style, don’t format. When you highlight and format a piece of text, it may not survive the transition to the layout software. But if you learn to use styles your document will be more consistent and all the styles will translate just fine.
     
  4. Account for unusual characters. If your manuscript uses unusual accents or other diacritical marks, make sure your designer knows in advance. They’ll be able to tell you the best way to ensure they are accurately translated.
     
  5. Eliminate underlines. In book typography, we use italic fonts for emphasis, and almost never use underlines, not even for URLs.
     
  6. Eliminate bold in your text. See #5, above. Although bold is often used for headings and subheadings, it doesn’t belong in the body of your text, use italic instead.
     
  7. Resolve markups. Sometimes manuscripts arrive with unresolved issues in the markup, perhaps from an early reader or an editor. Your designer won’t know how to resolve them before the file is stripped of its code and ported to layout software.
     
  8. Check for completeness. It’s very common for some parts of your book to arrive later than other parts. For instance, you might be waiting for a Library of Congress number or a CIP block, or there might be permissions late to arrive, or an index that will be dropped in after everything else is done. But don’t send a manuscript off to production if it’s missing major elements, whole chapters, some dialogue you’ll “be finished with in the morning,” or the rest of the quotes you want at the chapter openings, but haven’t picked yet. All of this makes the production of your book less efficient and more prone to errors.
     
  9. Find and eliminate errant spaces. This is a tricky one, but will be caught in a close reading. You are proofreading before you go to press, right? What happens here, especially in books that are heavy with dialogue, is that a space will creep into the wrong place. You can’t catch these by searching for two spaces in a row. For instance, a space before a closing quote might turn it into an open quote when it gets to typesetting.
     
  10. Proofread a monospaced copy. Every one of the errors I’ve talked about here is easier to spot if you do this last one. Save a copy of your book manuscript and change it to a monospaced font like Courier. You can use 10 point or 11 point and set your line spacing to 1.5 lines or double spacing and print it out or make a PDF. Then proofread that one, you’ll be amazed at the things that pop out that you completely missed when you read it in Garamond or Times New Roman.

Here are 2 reasons to spend some time prepping your files:

  • To help keep your book on schedule
  • To avoid errors that can migrate into your final print or e-book files

Following this list is going to make your file prep tasks that much easier. Are there any special things you do when getting a manuscript ready for publication?

 

 

This is a reprint from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer.

George Orwell On His Own Writing

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I think we should file this one under ‘B’ for Bitter old Bastard. George Orwell had this to say, about his own writing:

All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.

One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a POLITICAL purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.

 

I can’t say I agree with all of that, not by a long way. But it does provide some interesting food for thought. I came across the quote on Cat Sparks’ Facebook wall and I think Margo Lanagan summed it up best in her comment:

Second half is halfway sensible; first half—well, wasn’t HE a drama queen.

Yes. Yes, he really was. Writing a book really is hard work, and you often question your sanity in the process. But it’s bloody brilliant too. Nothing horrible about it. Of course, our real underlying prime motivators for writing are obscure. Most of us may never really know exactly why we do it, other than that we simply can’t not do it.

Anyway, as I said, an interesting quote and it’s given me pause for thought. If nothing else, there’s one line in there that’s absolute gold:

Good prose is like a windowpane.

Meditate on that one, Grasshopper.

 

This is a reprint from Alan Baxter‘s The Word.

How I Got A Big Advance From A Big Publisher And Self-Published Anyway

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This post, by Penelope Trunk, originally appeared on her blog on 7/9/12.

I have a new book out today. It’s called The New American Dream: A Blueprint for a New Path to Success. You will notice that the link goes to Hyperink. They are an independent publisher.

I sold this same book, two years ago, to a mainstream publisher.

I have been reporting on research about on how to be happy for almost a decade. It’s important to me that everyone learn what I learned, which is if you want to have a good life, you shouldn’t focus on happiness, but rather, on making your life interesting. That’s what makes us feel fulfilled. Searching for happiness is making us crazy. And creating an interesting life is actually intuitive to most of us, it’s just that we feel like somehow we are doing something wrong. This book explains why you are probably on the right track, and all that stuff you hear about the pursuit of happiness is from another time. A time of ignorance, when we knew a lot less about what makes us human.

So I sold my book to a mainstream publisher and they sucked. I am going to go into extreme detail about how much they sucked, so I’m not going to tell you the name of the publisher because I got a lot of money from them. I’m just going to tell you that the mainstream publisher is huge, and if you have any respect left for print publishing, you respect this publisher.  But you will not at the end of this post.

To be clear, I wrote my book, and they paid me my advance, in full. Three months before the publication date, the PR department called me up to “coordinate our efforts.” But really, their call was just about giving me a list of what I was going to do to publicize the book. I asked them what they were going to do. They had no idea. Seriously. They did not have a written plan, or any list, and when I pushed one of the people on this first call to give me examples of what the publishers would do to promote my book, she said “newsgroups.”

I assumed I was misunderstanding. I said, “You mean like newsgroups from the early 90s? Those newsgroups? USENET?”

“Yes.”

“Who is part of newsgroups anymore?”

“We actually have really good lists because we have been working with them for so long.”

“People in newsgroups buy books? You are marketing my book through newsgroups?”

I’m not going to go through the whole conversation, okay? Because the person was taken off my book before the next phone call.

At the next phone call, I asked again about how they were going to publicize my book. I told them that I’m happy to do it on my blog, but I already know I can sell tons of books by writing about my book on my blog. So they need to tell me how they are going to sell tons of books.

“LinkedIn.”

“What? Where are you selling books on LinkedIn?”

“One of the things we do is build buzz on our fan page.”

I went ballistic. There is no publishing industry fan page that is good enough to sell books. No one goes to fan pages for publishers because publishers are not household brand names. The authors are. That’s how publishing works.

“You know what your problem is?” I said, “Marketing online requires that you have a brand name and a following, and the book industry doesn’t build it’s own brand. But I have my own brand. So I’m better at marketing books than you are. I have a voice online and you don’t.”

I scheduled a phone call with my editor’s boss’s boss to tell him that. I told him his business is online marketing and his team has no idea how to do it, and he should hire me.

He told me, “With all due respect [which, I find, is always a euphemism for I hate your guts] we have been profitable every year that I’ve run this division and I don’t think we have a problem.”

Then he told me he really needs me to work well together with the marketing and publicity team, so they flew me to their office to have a meeting. There were five people in the meeting.

Here’s what I learned at the marketing meeting, where I sat through an interminable set of PowerPoint slides on the book industry.


Read the rest of the post on Penelope Trunk’s blog.

How Much Does Self-Publishing Cost?

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For real-life stories from indie authors on how much they spent to self-publish their work, check out our discussion: How Much Does It Cost to Self-Publish a Book?

Stepping into Wal-Mart is kind of like falling into a black hole (only without the stretching/exploding).

Seriously, though, think about it. You walk in, ready to purchase your few needed items and walk out. Hours later, you emerge into the garish sunlight, staring at your recipt and thinking, “how did I spend $100 on socks and Pop-Tarts?!”

For first-time indie authors, the process is much the same. You start out intending only to purchase editing and a cover but end up spending WAY more than anticipated.

As any money-saving guru will tell you, the way to avoid this black hole syndrome is by going in with a plan, a specific list of items to purchase and blinders to costs not essential to your task.

While I can’t help you turn a blind eye to those tempting purchases, I can lay out the possible costs associated with self-publishing so you can create that all-important shopping list!

NOTE: The below is simply a list of *possible* costs. Don’t let your eyes glaze over as you try to figure out how to raid your child’s college fund to raise enough money! Every author’s needs and goals are different — what’s essential to you may not be essential to your fellow author. Self-Publishing can cost tens of thousands or nothing at all, depending on the route you take. 

The Costs of Writing

Organizational Materials: $25

You know, all those idea notebooks, sticky notes, calendars, and smartphone apps to capture your thoughts and keep you on track.

Coaching: $250+

If you need a bit of a kick in the butt to keep your fingers to the keys (or would benefit from a consistent sounding board as you write), professional writing coaches will do their best to help you finish your book — at a price. Writing coaching packages start at around $250, but I’ve seen them go for $1000+!

Books and Courses: $25+

Be your *own* writing coach! Books like Roz Morris’ Nail Your Novel and courses like Kristen Lamb’s We Are Not Alone teach you the skills to finish your novel. PS: Shannon created a great ecourse, How NOT to Write a Novel, exclusively for our Indie Ninjas!

Software: FREE-$125

Follow the free route and choose something like OpenOffice or Storybook  to write your novel or go a bit fancier with Microsoft Office or Scrivener.

The Costs of Editing/Revision

Beta Readers: FREE+

The easiest way to recruit beta readers is from your already crazy-dedicated fanbase. Ask your tribe nicely and you’re bound to get a few volunteers! To show your gratitude, however, consider throwing in a $5-10 Amazon or iTunes gift card.

Proofreader: $250+

Proofreaders check for typos and are generally more thorough than beta readers, but much less so than professional editing service. Be sure to check out proofreaders in our Self-Publishing Resource Directory.

Professional Editor: $500+

Hiring a professional editor is one of the true *musts* for any indie author. Don’t skimp here! For a list of editors who work with indie authors, check out our Resource Directory.

The Costs of Professional Design/Layout

Cover Design: $250+

If you’re going to go pro in one design arena, your cover is the place to spend the bucks. Be sure to visit our Self-Publishing Resource Directory for designers who work with self-publishing authors.

Layout Design: FREE – $150+

Many indies stick to Word for the interior layout of their book, but (especially for your paperback) we highly recommend going pro. Again, check out the Self-Publishing Resource Directory for self-pub approved layout designers!

The Costs of DIY Design/Layout

Software: FREE-$1000+

Design your book cover for free using included templates with publishers like CreateSpace or go the true DIY route with something free like GIMP or (for the true pro) Adobe Photoshop. As for the layout, you can stick with your word processing program (covered in the Costs of Writing section above) or use Adobe InDesign like the pros.

Stock Images/Photography: FREE-$20+

Free stock images can be found on sites like sxc.hu, but Fotolia or iStock offer a bigger selection of quality high-resolution images, which will run you $20 or more.

Fonts: FREE-$200

You can choose to use free fonts (already hanging out on your computer) such as Times New Roman or Garamond for your interior layout. If you want your book to look like others in your local Barnes and Noble, however, use a true professional font such as Minion Pro (which comes with Adobe Creative Suite) or Caslon.

When it comes to your cover, you can get a bit more creative with fonts — check out the selection at DaFont or MyFont.

The Costs of Publishing

ISBN: $125+ (total control) or $10+ (certain restrictions)

Purchasing a single ISBN from Bowker will run you $125. If you’re planning to write more than one book or are publishing your book in multiple formats (print, eBook, etc), you’ll save a ton by purchasing a block of 10 for $250.

Some publishers (like CreateSpace or Smashwords) provide much cheaper ISBN options if you’re willing to meet certain requirements, such as listing them as your publisher.

Setup Fees: $75

Certain POD publishers, such as Lightning Source, charge you a certain amount to setup your files for printing. LSI charges $37.50 for cover setup and $37.50 for interior setup for a total of $75.

Distribution: $12+

Lightning Source charges $12 a year to be distributed through Ingram, the largest book wholesaler. The fee also includes distribution through Baker & Taylor (who you could register with separately for $300 — ouch).

Proof: $30

When printing through Lightning Source, a proof copy of your book costs $30, including expedited shipping. This is an essential step because there are many issues you don’t notice until you actually hold your printed book (side note: it also feels *really* awesome).

Review Copies: FREE-$5+

After approving your proof, consider personally ordering copies to give away for review. You’ll pay the wholesale price, usually around $5 for a 300-page book.

Alternately, you could provide electronic review copies of your book by converting your interior file into a PDF.

The Costs of Promotion/Marketing

Author Website

  • Design: FREE – $350+
    If you choose custom design for your website, make sure you will easily be able to make updates as your career progresses. Just getting started? Consider a free website hosted on wordpress.com to get your feet wet! Note: we offer quality custom WordPress designs for our indie friends :-)  
  • Domain Name: FREE – $15/yr
    This is sometimes included in your hosting package (see below), but if you want to register multiple domains through a provider such as GoDaddy, they generally run around $15 apiece.
  • Hosting: FREE-$5/mo+
    A place for your website to live. Personally, we use InMotion Hosting (awesome, so far)!
  • Theme: FREE-$20+
    If you can’t afford a custom design but want something a little more spiffy than the default WordPress theme, purchase a premium theme from WooThemes  or ElegantThemes.
  • Mailing List: FREE-$20+
    A mailing list is the best way for you to keep in touch with readers you know are crazy-dedicated to you and your work. We use MailChimp, but have heard amazing things about AWeber. Most are priced by the number of subscribers you have (and MailChimp also offers an awesome ‘Forever Free‘ plan, perfect for getting started).

Book Trailer: FREE-$799+

To DIY your book trailer, check out Shannon’s post ’4 Steps to Making Your Own Book Trailer.’ If you’d rather leave it to the pros, a 90-second trailer goes for $500+.

The Biggest Self-Publishing Cost

As any indie author will attest, the biggest cost of self-publishing is your own time. Unless you have a hefty sum saved up to outsource everything, you’ll spend at least 50-100 hours on this endeavor!

Put Away That Calculator!

Again, remember, the above are simply the possible self-publishing costs. Some authors have spent thousands and others invested nothing but time. The route you choose is up to you!

Did I leave any costs out? Let me know in the comments!

 

This is a reprint from the Duolit blog.

The Top 100 Creative Writing Blogs (Updated)

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This post originally appeared on bestcollegesonline.

Whether a creative writer’s heart sits with prose, poetry, or both, there likely exists an author or aspirant author out there with something to offer his or her work. And that, friends, is why the Internet stands as one of the best possible tools for today’s emerging literati. Thanks to the online input of industry pros and fledgling dreamers, today’s writers enjoy some incredible opportunities to finely-tune their craft and seek personalized advice from those who came before.

We have updated our previous list to include some pretty nifty new reads since then, and we hope you’ll find them as advantageous and informative as we do! Please keep in mind that entries are not to be read as ranked in any particular order.

General

These reads cover a broad range of subjects concerning both novice and old-timer authors alike, making them particularly well-rounded starts to exploring the writerly corner of the blogosphere.

  1. Writer Unboxed:

    Authors and aspiring authors alike post their thoughts and ideas regarding the craft of writing as well as other related critical fields.

  2. Write Anything:

    eMergent Publishing’s cross-genre, international community of writers offers up prompts, advice, and pretty much everything else an up-and-coming author could possibly need.

  3. Inkygirl:

    Debbie Redpath Ohi rounds out her highly informative postings about writing (mostly for younger readers) with some fun, quirky illustrations and comics.

  4. WOW! Women on Writing Blog:

    This highly useful e-zine also hosts classes, workshops, contests, job postings, a writer’s market, and plenty more resources ardent wordsmiths need.

  5. Write to Done:

    Write to Done features some of the web’s most accessible, informative articles about the writing process to help readers tighten their abilities and learn more about the industry.

  6. The Urban Muse:

    Copy editor and freelance writer Susan Johnston dishes out advice and teaches classes on blogging and general authoring, posting much of what she’s learned right here.

  7. Writing Forward:

    No matter one’s creative writing passion, chances are Writing Forward has already covered it, so stop on over for delicious tips and tricks.

  8. Writer’s Blog:

    Hit up this one-stop digital shop when seeking out info about the publishing industry and expert advice on how to make it – and make it with an excellent body of work.

  9. Writerly Life:

    Check Writerly Life often, as novelist Blair Hurley enjoys challenging her readers with prompts, advice snippets, and other resources meant to bolster their craft.

  10. Creative Writing Contests:

    It should be pretty obvious what this blog is all about, but for those who never quite got the grasp of reading comprehension 101, it posts creative writing contests.

  11. Strictly Writing:

    Multiple authors from across different creative writing mediums blog about anything and everything related to their respective paths, from valuable techniques to getting published, and everything in between.

  12. Morgen Bailey’s Writing Blog:

    And podcast, too! Give ol’ Morgan Bailey a visit and hear what authors across genres have to say about the craft of creative writing, recommended events, reviews, and plenty more.

  13. WEbook Blog:

    One of the largest online communities for writers keeps a wonderful blog packed with a wide variety of posts about improving, inspiration, and all components of the publishing process.

  14. Writers In The Storm Blog:

    Another great group blog encompassing a wide range of genres and creative mediums for an in-depth look at anything and everything the writerly world entails.

Aspiring and Emergent Authors

Follow the careers of — and, of course, network with! — writers hoping to publish their very first works as well as their counterparts with a little more experience to their names.

  1. Emerging Writers Network:

    The Emerging Writers Network focuses on bringing together novices into a supportive online community to trade resources, tips and tricks, and even reviews.

  2. Ficticity:

    Tim Bennett shares his short stories as well as experiences and advice culled from trying to break into the writing world.

  3. Plotmonkeys:

    Read up on what four different aspiring authors have to say about the art of literature and what they’ve been learning along their journeys.

  4. Emerging Writer:

    Author of the “dinky book” Some Poems Kate Dempsey chronicles all of the triumphs and tragedies behind getting published as a newbie to the industry these days.

  5. Macmillan New Writers:

    Macmillan hosts this nice little blog to help its emerging authors without a web presence promote their books and learn how to navigate Internet promotions.

  6. WriteWords Members’ Blogs:

    Wannabe writers gather at this wildly popular community and job listing service to share their philosophies, strategies, and sample pieces with the hopes of helping one another achieve their literary goals.

  7. The Aspiring TV Writer and Screenwriter Blog:

    This blogger chronicles her journey after college and before she manages to land her dream job in a specific creative writing industry.

  8. The WriteGirl Blog:

    WriteGirl encourages young women to take up the literary arts in order to voice their hopes, anxieties, and ideas to the world.

  9. The New Author…:

    Promoter and author SB Knight hopes this blog will serve as an informative reference to his contemporaries hoping to get their names out there.

 

Read the rest of the list on bestcollegesonline.

The Book Buyer’s Decision-Making Process: A Guide For Self-Publishers

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As a self-publisher you must understand how a potential customer will determine if your book is worth buying. Let’s assume the buyer has already found your book on Amazon because they were looking for information about a subject that your book covers. They are getting ready to buy a book that they believe will help them learn something new and is worth their time and money. What must your book do to convince this person to ignore the other books and buy your book? I have outlined some crucial questions that you must deal with as a self-publisher if you want the buyer to choose your book over another. By dealing with these questions you will help the buyer become more confident in their decision to choose your book over the many other books.

Not all buyers will go through every step. Buying or downloading a book is not usually a complicated and drawn-out decision-making process. But some of the steps to making the decision to buy a particular book will be more important to certain buyers. And some steps will be less important, or not considered at all. But you, as a self-publisher that needs to sell books, must understand what your reader’s decision-making process is going through. The better you understand that thought process, and the better you provide the answers for your buyer’s questions, the more books you will sell.

Here are some of the most obvious and most essential questions that you as the author and publisher of your book must provide answers to. I am sure, that with a little thoughtful effort, you should be able to develop additional questions that the audience for your particular book will need answered before they decide to buy your book.

1. Can the book shopper download a sample of your publication, from Amazon, Scribd, and your own website?

2. Does your book have a website to support your book?

3. Are reviews of your book on Amazon for the buyer to read?

4. Is there any discussion of your publication on social reading websites?

5. Who is the publisher? Does this publisher specialize in your book’s topic?

6. Are you the publisher, but with many years of experience in this book’s exact topic?

7. Do you the author/publisher have other related titles?

8. Does your book have a great foreword by an industry guru/expert/insider/famous author?

9. Does your book’s introduction properly explain what the book is about?

10. Does the design and formatting of your book look professional; and is it easy to follow?

11. Is your book’s cover well designed and look professional?


12. Does your book’s back cover provide all the essential information about your book?

13. Is there an editor referenced on the cover or in the credits?

14. Have you, the author, written other related books? And are they available on Amazon?

15. Besides the ebook edition, is there a print edition?

16. Does your book appear on any best-seller lists, or must-read lists?

17. Does your book’s website answer all of these questions, and many more?

As you can see, most of these questions should be answered when you develop and build your marketing plan around your book. Most of the answers to these questions should be easily and quickly available to the buyer. Much of it should be available to the buyer from within your book’s Amazon page. All of it must be available at your book’s own website. Remember, today’s consumer is very sophisticated and very careful with their money. And with amazing companies like Amazon, their choices are almost limitless.

Therefore, you must put yourself into the shoes of your buyer. Think about what information you, as a consumer, would need in order to be confident that your book is the best one to buy. It is not a difficult process, but it is an essential one, especially if you have any hope of developing a financially successful book.

This article was written by Joseph C. Kunz, Jr. and originally posted on KunzOnPublishing.com

How to Have a Career: Advice to Young Writers

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This post, by Sarah Manguso, originally appeared on Work In Progress in June of 2012.

Work.

Be relentless. All over the world, people are working harder than you. Don’t go to events; go to the receptions after the events. If possible, skip the receptions and go to the afterparties, where you can have a real conversation with someone.

Money.

Learn to live on air. Buy the best health insurance you can afford. If you have roommates, work in the library. Run and do calisthenics instead of paying for a gym membership. Invest in ear plugs, good sneakers, and a coffee machine. Buy oatmeal in bulk. Learn to cook simple, nutritious meals. Save and eat leftovers. Cafes are a waste of money, calories, and time; leave them to the tourists. Buy books used, perform periodic culls, and resell them. Wasting money on clothes is the stupidest habit of all. You will only ever need two good outfits.

Health.

Stay healthy; sickness is a waste of time and money. Smoking or overeating will eventually make you sick. Drinking and drugs interfere with clear perception, which you will need in order to make good work. It may be worth paying for psychotherapy sessions now instead of paying for inpatient treatment next year; see someone in-network.

Friends.

Avoid all messy and needy people including family; they threaten your work. You may believe your messy life supplies material, but it in fact distracts you from understanding that material, and until you understand it, it is useless to you. Don’t confuse users, hangers-on, or idols with friends. If a former friend asks you why you don’t have time to see him or her anymore, say your existing responsibilities have made it impossible to socialize as much as you used to. Cutting someone out with no explanation is an insult that will come around.

 

Read the rest of the post on Work in Progress.

Writing About Yourself

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There comes a time in our lives when some of us get the urge to leave a legacy. Who would like to read about our lives? Will our writings pass the Who Gives A SH– test? Perhaps just our families would be interested in our stories. Maybe our friends, or perhaps many people would have an interest in us. What should we write about and how should we write it?

Perhaps you could break your life up into time lines or you could write about topical areas such as my outline of my life below:

Mea Culpa (appology for tricks of memory or lack thereof)
Family Roots
Down on the Farm
Vagabond Years
Move to Lafayette
Middle School
High School
Indiana University
Army Years
Marriages
Civil Service Years
Music
Martial Arts
Writing, Publishing, and Reviewing
Patriot
Teaching
Book Barn and Other Businesses
Spirituality
Health
Kids and Grandkids

You can try to create dialog or just tell what went on. You can include pictures and captions to add clarity and interest.

Software

You can use a word processing program such as Microsoft Word or more ideally, a layout program such as Adobe InDesign, Quark, or Publish. Journal programs such as MacJournal can prove helpful as well. You can make it as simple or as complex as you want.

Suggestions

Be positive. Provide lessons learned. Don’t write an expose of your life. Remember, kids may read this, so keep it reasonably clean. Include interactions with others. Mention awards and honors and what they meant to you. Mention what you did not get a chance to do as well as your accomplishments. Talk about who helped you along the way and pay it forward. If you did something worthwhile, did it make a difference in someone else’s life? Write this in such a manner that readers will be proud to have known you. Don’t focus too much on those who have done you dirty. Do explain how you overcame adversity. 

 

This is a reprint from Bob Spear‘s Book Trends blog.

What Are You Saying?

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This post, by Jenny Hilborne, originally appeared on the Crime Fiction Collective blog on 7/4/12 and is reprinted here in its entirety with that site’s permission.

“What is the main theme or message of the book?”

I heard this question quite a bit on a booth I shared with 5 other authors at the LA Festival of Books this past April. I’ll admit it had me a bit stumped and I had to scramble for an answer. Madness and Murder has a theme of second chances woven through it, although I wasn’t actually aware of this until a reader pointed it out in a review. 


When I start writing a new novel, I have a main plot in mind and a possible working title, and that’s it. I definitely don’t have any kind of message or theme on my mind. If I’m honest, I don’t intend to convey any kind of message in my novels. I write to entertain rather than to educate. One reason for this is that I can’t be sure my message, should I decide to send one, would be interpreted in the way I intended.

I’d like to pose a question to readers: how important is it for a novel, a work of fiction, to carry a message? Does it need to be moralistic? 

I read fiction (thrillers) because I like to be entertained and I enjoy trying to solve the mystery. I’ve never thought much about whether there was a message in the books I read, and it doesn’t spoil my enjoyment if there isn’t one. Having just read (and loved) To Kill A Mockingbird, I’m not so sure anymore. I believe books with a message are more memorable and stay with the reader for longer. These are the books that generate conversation, which creates interest and spreads the word among the reading community.  Without a message, does the book stand a chance of breaking out from the ever-growing crowd? 
 
I’ve read books by authors who use their work to express themselves and their personal opinions, be it politics, religion, whatever. I tend to shy away from those. As a reader of fiction, I don’t want to know the author’s opinion on a subject and have it slant the outcome of the novel, or have it shoved down my throat. I just want a good story. After a little thought on the subject, I’d say I’m of the opinion a message is fine, good even, as long as it’s not too intense, but I don’t care if there isn’t one. How do you feel about it? Do you feel let down if there is no underlying message?

 

Read the rest of the post on the Crime Fiction Collective blog.