Is the Stigma of Self-Publishing Finally Gone?

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This post, by Ben Galley, originally appeared on C.S. Lakin‘s Live Write Thrive.

It’s a sad truth, and one that is almost immediately apparent to most, that self-published works can be immediately dismissed due to their origins. From readers, to blogs, to bookshops, the word self-published is often greeted with a grimace and a groan. Some of you may not have experienced this yet, but I guarantee you will in time. But why is this reputation such a notorious one? And, more importantly, what can we do to escape it?

 Cheap and Quick Doesn’t Mean Lousy

There are two main foundations to this reputation. The first comes from the very roots of why there has been such an “Indie Boom”over the last few years. Self-publishing is cheap and quick, and in any industry, this doesn’t often mean quality. This has had a deleterious effect on the rest of us.

In a nutshell, one of the reasons for this stigma is the high volume of low quality, rushed self-published works available. The large majority of readers will be unforgiving of books with no proper editing or a cover made in Word. It’s painted a poor initial view of us. Notoriety results. A bad reputation is a hard one to shrug. For readers who may have simply tried a few indie books in the past and been consistently disappointed, they are unlikely to try again. The same goes for reviewers.

 No Quality Controllers

The second reason is due to the publishers, though not directly. One of the big issues surrounding self-publishing is the idea of curating. This is the idea that within the book industry publishers are the curators of quality. Ideally, they decide what is good enough to go to print, and discard what isn’t. Whether or not this works in reality, some readers simply trust publishers to be stamps of high quality. Self-publishing has no such process, and because of that we’ve been dubbed the new slush pile. Because we lack this “quality stamp,” readers unfortunately view us as a risk, and not worth spending the money on. Combine this with the misconception that self-publishing is simply Vanity Publishing: a last resort to rejected authors, authors that therefore must not be very good at what they do, and we’ve got a community that thinks all self-published books are substandard. Who would want to buy a book by a rubbish author? This, combined with an already shaky reputation, has caused many readers, reviewers, press, and bookshops to close their doors. Many for good.

This is simply untrue. So what do we do about this? Do we campaign? Do we street march? Speak out? No, the simple answer is this: We attain quality.

 A Turn for the Best

The good thing is the tide is already turning. We are seeing Indies encroaching on the best-seller lists. We are seeing reviewers amending their policies. We are seeing dedicated blogs and sites curated by voracious readers of Indies. People are beginning to see that the lack of so called publisher-curating can actually allow fresh and new writing. The opinions are beginning to change. How? Because we are now working to avoid these stereotypes. And we are working HARD. Here’s how:

 

Read the rest of the post on Live Write Thrive.

Publetariat Observes Independence Day

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Publetariat staff will be off from the evening of July 4 through the evening of July 5 in observance of the United States’ Independence Day, also known as The Fourth of July. No new content will be posted, no site registrations will be processed, and no email will be answered during this time. The site will still be up, and registered users will still have access to post to their blogs if desired.

To our American readers, we wish you a happy and safe Fourth of July, filled with the requisite grilling and fireworks. To all of our readers, we’ll see you back here on July 5th at 6pm PST. (No need to click through – this is the end of the post!)

Will Obamacare Create More Full-Time Authors?

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This post, by Jim Kukral, originally appeared on The Huffington Post on 7/3/12.

Sarah Woodbury writes books and sells them online. A big part of her family income comes from the sales of those books; in fact, her family can live off of her income alone. Yet, because of the rising costs of health care, her husband is forced to work a full-time job to ensure they keep their coverage.

Sarah is indicative of a group of authors who have been meaning to make the jump to full-time, but can’t do it because of fear of losing their health care coverage.

"We can live on my income now, but health insurance?" said Mrs. Woodbury. "Yeah — the lack of it if he quits his job is one of the two things keeping my husband at his job. We have four kids — going without health insurance isn’t an option."

The Supreme Court ruling that the Obama health care legislation is in fact constitutional has created quite a stir with authors all around the country. Many now feel like they can finally make their writing into a full-time career now that they can’t lose their health coverage.

Kate Delaney, author of 5:00 Breakout, says, "The biggest thing keeping me at my day job is healthcare. Depending on the cost of premiums after the Act goes into full effect, I will definitely be examining the options."

An anonymous message board poster only known as "Gutman" had this to say:

I am close to retirement (I’m 58.) I’m only working the day job full time because of health insurance. I can honestly say that if the bill survives the election cycle, and all its parts kick in by 2014, going to half time and buying health insurance through the pool becomes a real possibility for me, and makes it possible to transition to writing full time in retirement by writing half time until I’m 65.

But others aren’t so sure.

Victoria J says it’s a wait and see decision. "I have no plans to. I would like to see how things look after 2014 before I ever made such a decision."

 

Read the rest of the post on The Huffington Post.

The Thirteen Trickiest Grammar Hang-Ups

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This post, by Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty, originally appeared on the Writer’s Digest site on 6/26/12.

I trust that you all know the difference between who and whom, and I trust that typos are the only reason you use the wrong it’s. It happens to the best of us. For most writers, if you can just maintain your focus (perhaps with caffeine and frequent breaks), you’ll get the basics right. The following problems, however, may have you scrambling for a refresher.

1. Half can be both singular and plural.

Typically, subjects and verbs agree: If the subject is singular, the verb is singular. If the subject is plural, the verb is plural. Easy peasy. However, sentences that start with half don’t follow this rule.

Half alone is singular: My half of the pizza is pepperoni. Yet although half is the subject in a sentence such as Half of the pizzas are missing, we use a plural verb because of something called notional agreement. It simply means that although half is singular, half of the pizzas has a notion of being plural, so you use a plural verb. Follow this rule when half is the subject of a sentence: If half is followed by a singular noun, use a singular verb. If half is followed by a plural noun, use a plural verb. Half of the pepperoni is ruined, but half of the tomatoes are missing.

Compound words that start with half are quirky too. They can be open, closed or hyphenated (e.g., half note, halfhearted, half-baked). There’s no rule that applies across the board, so you’ll have to check a dictionary.

2. Companies are not exactly people.

Companies are entities, but they are run by men and women, so you could make an argument for referring to a company as who, particularly since U.S. courts have ruled that companies are people in most legal senses. Nevertheless, the standard style is to refer to a company as an entity and use the pronouns it and that: We want to buy stock in a company that makes hot air balloons.

If you want to highlight that people in the company are behind some action or decision, name them and use who: Floating Baskets was driven to bankruptcy by its senior directors, who took too many expensive Alaskan joyrides.

3. American is a flawed term.

American is the only single word we have to refer to citizens of the United States of America (U.S.-icans?), but technically, an American is anyone who lives in North America, Central America or South America.

In the U.S. we, the people, have been calling ourselves Americans since before our country was even founded (as have our detractors). Although all people of the American continents are actually Americans, most readers in the U.S. and Europe assume that an American is a U.S. citizen, since that is how the word is most commonly used.

Despite its failings, use American to refer to a citizen of the United States of America. No better term exists. Feel free to feel guilty.

4. The word dilemma can be, well, a dilemma.

The di- prefix in dilemma means “two” or “double,” which lends support to the idea that dilemma should be used only to describe a choice between two alternatives. The Associated Press Stylebook and Garner’s Modern American Usage not only support that limitation, but go further, saying that dilemma should be used only for a choice between two unpleasant options.

Nevertheless, Garner also notes that other uses are “ubiquitous.” Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage and The Columbia Guide to Standard American English say it’s fine to use dilemma to describe any serious predicament, and The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style takes an intermediate position. What’s a writer to do? (Is it a dilemma?)

Unless you’re writing for a publication that requires you to follow a style guide that limits dilemma to a choice between two bad options, it’s not absolutely wrong to use dilemma to describe a difficult problem, even when alternatives aren’t involved, or to use dilemma to describe a difficult choice between pleasant options. Still, you’ll seem most clever when you use dilemma to describe a choice between two bad options. In other instances, before using dilemma, ask yourself if another word, such as problem, would work better.

Also, a cursory search of the Internet reveals that lots of people are confounded by the spelling of dilemma. Many were taught to spell it wrong. In fact, I was taught to spell it dilemna in school, and when I got older and checked a dictionary, I was shocked to find that the word is spelled dilemma. Further, the only correct spelling is dilemma. It’s not as if dilemna is a substandard variant or regional spelling. Dictionaries often note alternative spellings and sometimes even nonstandard spellings, but dilemna doesn’t even show up that way. As far as I can tell, nobody knows why so many teachers got it wrong. Perhaps a textbook typo is to blame.

 

Read the rest of the post on Writer’s Digest.

Let's Talk About Sex

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This post, by R.J. Keller, originally appeared on the New Wave Authors blog on 7/2/12.

I’ve been reading a lot lately about Fifty Shades Of Gray (aka The Book Everyone Is Probably Tired Of Everyone Talking About By Now…sorry), and there seem to be two general conclusions being drawn about its popularity: 1) It’s now "okay" to write about sex; 2) Sex sells.
 
Regarding conclusion 2, all I can say is: DUH. Seriously, everybody knows this. Everybody. Probably the cavemen knew this.

 
Regarding conclusion 1, I have to say it: Ha! I was waaaaay ahead of you! A casual perusal of reviews of Waiting For Spring (originally published in 2008) is enough to alert potential readers to its sexual content. It was even tagged as vulgar on Amazon. (I’d like to take a moment to thank the reader who did that for me, by the way; see conclusion 2.) So there.
 
But seriously, folks, it’s not suddenly okay to write sex. It’s always been okay. And FSoG’s insane popularity probably isn’t going to change the way most of us write. But it does seem like a good time, since everybody really is talking about it, to explore the unscience behind writing a good sex scene. And since I’m vulgar and stuff, I’ll volunteer to be the tour guide. Not to the actual writing, of course–that part is up to you, sport–but rather with the, uh, preparations.
 
* Nervous? Open up a bottle o’ wine. Or Jack Daniels or Smirnoff or beer. Or do some yoga. Whatever will help you to relax a little, that’s what you should do.
 
* Think about sex scenes you’ve read. What was it about them that worked? What didn’t? Was it the emotion? An unconventional setting? The words the author used to describe the characters’ pieces and parts? It’s not a sexy thing to analyze what makes something hot, but it is a necessary thing.
 
* Don’t think about potential readers. What I mean by this is don’t imagine them reading your sex scene as you’re writing it. Especially don’t imagine your best friend or grandmother or second-grade teacher reading your sex scene. Thinking about those dear loved ones while you’re in the throes of real-life passion is a certain way to kill a mood; so it goes with your fictional impassioned throes. This is between you and your characters, period, and if you do it right it’s really just between them. Go into a room where you’re all by yourself. At this moment, nobody else in the world exists.

 

Read the rest of the post on New Wave Authors.

Can Amazon Save Your Life?

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This post, by Brandon G. Withrow, originally appeared on The Huffington Post on 6/27/12.

This last week I went to Amazon to look for a book. Did you know they sell those too?

Their home page directed me to an IndieReader.com article (also published here at The Huffington Post) by Jessica Park ("How Amazon Saved My Life"), author of several books, but whose book Flat-Out Love is her first Amazon book. Needless to say, Park is exuberant about her work with Amazon and for Amazon the feeling appears mutual.

Most of Park’s books were traditionally published under a standard contract with all its usual difficulties and blessings. Her article is an interesting look at the pros of self-publishing with a big force like Amazon and includes the benefits from choosing your own cover to the potential to make big money.

I admit that I was intrigued by the money side first. After all, as a traditionally published author, I (like so many others) hope to at least earn as much from the book as I spent in buying coffee while I wrote it.

Up until now, and outside of blogging, I’ve not given self-publishing too much thought. Part of the reason for that is the reputation that the self-publishing world has — whether it is deserved or not — for being average or even subpar. I am also a professor, meaning that promotion and tenure are things that require a certain publication history not generally associated with the self-publishing book world at this point.

Park pulled no punches in her opinion of traditional publishing, and her belief in the superiority of self-publishing was far from reserved. Declaring anything one’s savior is usually a bravado reserved for religious tracts. Should it be followed-up with "Amazon has a wonderful plan for your life?"

Despite the usual criticism of self-published books, I had an experience recently that reduced some of my skepticism of that industry.

I received an email a little while back from Nick Frieseler, a debut author. He asked me to look over his manuscript for his forthcoming book, Imago Dei: The Evolution of Man in the Image of God (WinePress Publishing). In this, Frieseler suggests a theological solution for discussions of evolution and Christianity. Reading my articles here at the Huffington Post on religion and evolution, he thought I could offer suggestions.

 

Read the rest of the post on The Huffington Post.

On Writing Strong (Female) Characters

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This post, by Daniel Swensen, originally appeared on The Surly Muse.

Every once in a while, the question makes its way around the writing circles: how to write strong female characters?

Well, I’m a guy, so I probably shouldn’t be the first person you ask. In fact, definitely not. But, because I’m a guy, here comes my opinion anyway. (Right away with the gender stereotypes — buckle up!)

Often, some wiseacre will reference the acidic, sexist crack from Jack Nicholson’s character from the movie As Good As It Gets: “I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability.” This is best used ironically, or not at all, as it’s not really constructive. It’s also wildly sexist. So there’s your example of What Not to Do, I guess.

Also on the list of smartass responses is this comic strip by Kate Beaton, which takes a swing at the tropes some writers seem to think make female characters strong, but actually really don’t. (I particularly like the lengthy justification of the boob armor, which I’ve seen in many an online argument about revealing superhero costumes.)

If you look at your typical urban fantasy cover, the answer seems to be “crop top, big knife, and tattoos.” This is a pretty hoary complaint by this time, and I feel a little self-conscious even making it, but seriously, show me a bad-ass vampire hunter with her midriff covered, and, well… I’ll be mildly surprised. Not that this is a bad thing in itself, beyond being something of a cliché at this point. But it does seem to reinforce the idea that “violence = strength.” Not that I mind ass-kicking characters, but groin-punching is a behavior, not a personality trait. The most iconic modern-fantasy female of them all, Buffy Summers, much more going for her than just beating monsters senseless.

The question’s also been kicking around the blogosphere recently. Oh, I just said blogosphere. I’m sorry. Anyway, for example, “The Fantasy Feminist” by Fantasy Faction (say that five times fast), points out some of the most common gaffes in writing female characters: 

These issues are, at their core, character issues. The problem isn’t the warrior or promiscuous personality in itself; rather, it’s the idea that to be a strong character, a woman must act like a man or shun feminine things or use her body to manipulate people or some other misconception. And even then, it’s really only a problem if the writer believes that the character must act that way to be strong. If the character believes it, then the writer has taken a first step toward creating a multi-layered person.

Michel Vaillancourt, author of The Sauder Diaries: By Any Other Name, relates how he carefully researched and constructed his female characters. Vaillancourt sums up the problem neatly: “Within our North American pop culture, we have built a mystic divide between the principle genders.” What’s most interesting about this post is the mixed reaction Vaillancourt got from female readers  – proving that there is no One True Way when it comes to writing characters, nor should there be.

My favorite answer to this question, however, came from a recent Google+ thread in which a writer asked, “how do you write female characters?” and someone answered:

1) I think of a character.
2) I make them female.

I love this answer, because I think it gets to the heart of the issue: gender plays very little part in what makes a good or strong character. So why start with gender at all?

What It Takes

So what does it take to make a (female) character tick?

 

Read the rest of the post on The Surly Muse.

Five Things About Bad Guys that Make Me Want to Punch Their Creators in the Face

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This post, by Benjamin Leroy, originally appeared on the Hey, There’s A Dead Guy in the Living Room blog on 6/28/12.

Last week’s attempt at a slightly inflammatory title and opening line seemed to go over well enough, so I’m back again this week, desperately clinging to the same formula. Even though this is all about bad guys and violence, I’m certainly not advocating socking somebody in your writers’ group because their writing doesn’t live up to the subjective literary code outlined below.

Quick digression using professional wrestling as a reference point.

In the parlance of the professional wrestling industry the phrase “to get heat” means that a bad guy gets booed. There are two kinds of heat relevant to this discussion. The first is the kind you want—you want the audience to “hate” the bad guy, salivating to see him get his comeuppance. The second kind is when the marketing department has shoved some wrestler down the audience’s collective throat, the wrestler’s personality doesn’t click with the audience, and when the crowd boos, it can be translated to something like, “Get the hell off my tv. You’re annoying and I’m going to turn the channel because you suck.”

We’re going to be talking about how to avoid the “Get the Hell off my TV” kind of heat.

As you’d probably guess, I read a lot of query letters, sample pages, and every now and again, full novels. I also have the good fortune of meeting writers at conferences all across the country. And, because I deal primarily in crime fiction, I see a lot of bad guys. If I were in a different field, the antagonist might be nature or something more abstract, but mine is the domain of black hatted, curly mustachioed, slightly accented villains. Here are some things I see too often that make me hate your villain.

Let’s go!

(1)    Evil Because He’s Crazy Because He’s Evil – Sometimes I’ll be sitting at a conference rapping with Author X and the conversation will turn to the novel he’s working on tentatively called Extreme Absolute Justice or something like that. Here’s a sample of how the conversation goes:

Author X: My protagonist, Everchance Purity, is an FBI agent trailing notorious serial killer, The Waxahachie Ax Hacker, when…

Me: The who?

Author X: The Waxahachie Ax Hacker.

Me: Why is he a serial killer?

Author X: Because he’s craaaazy!

Me: Why is he crazy?

Author X: Because he’s a serial killer…

This circular logic and the subsequent chase around the tree is much less thrilling to the audience than Author X thinks. I’m going to need a little bit more from the “what’s my motivation?” department. Also, I’ve met a bunch of straight up criminals in my life, but I’ve never met one yet that didn’t have some upside somewhere. Funny. Good storytellers. Artists. Can pluck a guitar some. Obviously these traits don’t excuse crimes, but they also indicate a little more depth. I want to see that in all bad guys.

 

Read the rest of the post on Hey, There’s A Dead Guy in the Living Room.

Suw Charman-Anderson Offers Three Articles of Interest to Indie Authors on Forbes

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Suw Charman-Anderson is an author and contributor to Forbes whose articles there are about self-publishing and crowdfunding.

She’s written three excellent and informative pieces this month: Valuable Lessons From Self-Publishing Survey, Book Promotion For Self-Publishers: A Waste of Time? and Self-Publishing and Ebook Sharing: The Industry’s New Bellwethers.

In Valuable Lessons From Self-Publishing Survey, she lists five inportant findings from the recent Taleist survey of self-publishers. Among them:

1. Get help

The first lesson for self-publishers is that if you get help with things like cover design, story editing and proofreading, you will likely earn more. The report found that getting help, paid or unpaid, with editing, copy editing and proofreading provided a 13 per cent bump in earnings. Those who added cover design to that list saw a 34 per cent increase over the average. Interestingly, ebook formatting help added only an extra 1 per cent.

— and —

3. It is possible to earn a living

It’s not without reason that much of the coverage of Taleist’s survey has focused on respondents’ income. The average income from self-published books was just over US$10,000, plus a bit less than half of that from traditionally published books. But, as is so common in creative fields, a minority of authors were responsible for the majority of income.

 

The median income, a more useful figure denoting the point at which half the respondents earn more and half earn less, was $500. This is typical of a power curve distribution and is exactly what we’d expect.

Read the full Valuable Lessons From Self-Publishing Survey article.

In Book Promotion For Self-Publishers: A Waste of Time?, Charman-Anderson writes:

Rusch has a very strong point that one of the best things that an author can do is carry on writing and get more books finished and put up for sale. Authors cannot put all their eggs in one book-shaped basket. Having a selection of books available gives the reader choice, and readers who like one book may well go on to buy a second and third, naturally bumping sales. 

She is also right, as she says in a comment, that it can be impossible to predict how a book will sell, when it will take off, and in which territories. There is undoubtedly an element of chance involved. Maybe your book starts to get passed around a community of readers all interested in similar things, or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe the subject matter hits the zeitgeist, or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe another author writing similar stuff to you has a massive hit and that exposes your book, via the ‘Customers who bought X also bought Y’ recommendation, to a much larger volume of people, or maybe they don’t. There is simply no telling.

Read the full Book Promotion For Self-Publishers: A Waste of Time? article.

In Self-Publishing And Ebook Sharing: The Industry’s New Bellwethers, Charman-Anderson notes:

Most of those sharing ebooks are women, says Marwick. This may reflect the fact that women have less disposable income than men. They may find current prices prohibitive, particularly if they are having to choose between buying a book and buying their children new shoes.

Does this then point to a large, under-served corner of the romance market? And is there an opportunity to craft an offering that meets those needs with more affordable books? Clearly it would have to be a volume sales proposition, but equally clearly the demand is already there.

— and —

The tempting reaction for publishers is to gnash their teeth, search for stronger DRM and bewail the evil grasping nature of those who would dare crack it. But that would be to quite spectacularly miss the point. There’s clearly a market for erotical written by women for women, but this market is, as per romance, not wealthy and potentially under-served.

Read the full Self-Publishing And Ebook Sharing: The Industry’s New Bellwethers article.

 

The Curious Case of Ebook Sharing Sites

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This article, by Alice Marwick, originally appeared on the Social Media Collective Research Blog on 6/5/12.

The popularity of ebooks has skyrocketed in the last few years. The Association of American Publishers reports that eBook sales by US publishers were up 300% in 2011:

Total eBook net sales revenue for 2011 was $21.5 million, a gain of 332.6% over 2010; this represents 3.4 million eBook units sold in 2011, up 303.3 %. As comparison, print formats (Hardcover, Paperback and Mass Market Paperback) increased 2.3% to $335.9 million in 2011. (Source)

With this increase has come the usual hand-wringing over the end of print, the effects on book stores, access to books for people who can’t afford e-readers, the problems caused by DRM and the demise of the First-sale Doctrine (which says you can sell second-hand books, DVDs, videos, etc.), and so forth.

These are all worth investigation, but I’ve become interested in two specific effects of this shift.

First, the enormous rise in erotica sales and the ability of unknown authors without agents or publishers to publish ebooks cheaply and easily.

Second, the ebook sharing underground: a loose network of sites that let people swap ebooks without DRM. Because the files are so small, they’re much easier to disseminate than movies or television shows. They can be easily emailed, DropBoxed, or placed on a DDL (direct download) file-sharing server like 4Shared or Rapidshare. (There are also ebooks on BitTorrent, but it seems that most ebook sharers bypass the torrent infrastructure entirely, probably due to usability concerns or lack of comfort with the protocol.) The popular freeware program Calibre allows ebook users to convert any format (pdf, epub, mobi) to any other format; there’s a popular Calibre plugin that cracks DRM. Most ebook sharing sites contain a tutorial or two on using Calibre.

While all sorts of books are shared online, many of the ebook sharing sites I’ve come across are largely comprised of romance novels. Romance novels are an enormous industry, comprising 13% of the US market and generating more revenue than any other category:

Romance fiction: $1.358 billion in estimated revenue for 2010
Religion/inspirational: $759 million
Mystery: $682 million
Science fiction/fantasy: $559 million
Classic literary fiction: $455 million
[Source: Romance Writers of America]

From my highly unscientific perusing of ebook sharing websites, the majority of participants are women, and most of them are voracious consumers of particular subgenres, such as paranormal or Western. They’re aware of release dates — romances are published on a strict schedule– and so there’s a constant stream of new content being made available. Romances have become so popular on ebook sharing sites that one disgruntled participant wrote:

 

Read the rest of the post on the Social Media Collective Research Blog.

15 Grammatical Errors That Make You Look Silly

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The following infographic, by BlueGlass, originally appeared on Copyblogger. The introductory text is by Brian Clark, and the infographic is shared here with Copyblogger’s permission.

We’re big advocates of conversational writing that’s engaging, persuasive, and fun. So that means it’s perfectly fine to fracture the occasional stuffy grammatical rule (and many times it’s preferable).

On the other hand, making some grammatical errors just makes you look bad, and hurts your effectiveness. Sometimes we even misuse words simply because we hear others use them incorrectly.

 

So, we’ve assembled the 15 most egregious grammar goofs into one helpful infographic. With this handy reference, you’ll never look silly again.

Thanks once again to our friends at BlueGlass for the infographic design that makes my silly little words look cool. Enjoy!

15 Grammar Goofs That Make You Look Silly
Like this infographic? Get more content marketing tips from Copyblogger.

How To Become A Full Time Indie Author

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This post, by Karen Woodward, originally appeared on her blog on 6/25/12.

I can’t believe I’ve never heard of Lindsay Buroker before. Even now I don’t know much about her, but I do know three things:

1) She’s an indie author
2) She sells enough books as an indie that she’s able to write full time
3) She gives awesome advice about how to become a full time indie author

I’d go so far as to say that anyone who follows the advice Lindsay has given is guaranteed to sell more books. Of course, milage will vary. You might not be able to quit your day-job, but her advice to indie authors is along the lines of, "look both ways before you cross the street". You could ignore it, but I wouldn’t advise it.

Here is Lindsay’s advice:

1. Don’t just write novel length stories, write shorter ones too
This allows you to publish more in the same amount of time, and the more you get your name out in front of readers, the better. Especially in the beginning. Lindsay writes:

… I’ve never been in the Amazon Top 100 (or in the Top 1000 for more than a couple of days), and I’m not particularly visible even in my sub-categories (epic fantasy/historical fantasy) in the Kindle Store. You don’t have to be an uber seller to make a living, though you have to, of course, have characters and/or plots that capture people’s imaginations and turn them into fans (not everyone has to like your books but enough people do so that you get good reviews and you word-of-mouth “advertising” from readers). If you have ten books priced at $4.99, and they sell 200 copies a month, you’re earning over $6,000 a month.

I don’t mean to make it sound like it’s easy to write ten books or sell 200 copies a month of a title (I would have rolled my eyes at such a comment 16 months ago), but, right now, the numbers tell us that making a living as an indie author is a lot more doable than making a living as a traditionally published author (where the per-book cut is a lot smaller). If you’re mid-list as an indie, and you have a stable of books that are doing moderately well, you’ve got it made in the short-term. If… you’re building your tribe along the way, you ought to have it made in the long-term too (more on that below).

 2. Use the power of free to promote your books

Lindsay writes:

I’ve tried a lot when it comes to online promotion, everything from guest posts to book blog tours to contests to paid advertising, and nothing compares with having a free ebook in the major stores. Not only will people simply find it on their own, but it’s so much easier to promote something that’s free. If you do buy advertising (and I do from time to time), it’ll be the difference between selling 25 copies and getting 5,000 downloads (i.e. 5,000 new people exposed to your work), because people live in hope that they’ll find something good amongst the free offerings.

 

Read the rest of the post on Karen Woodward’s blog.

Hello

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 I’m never sure what I should be doing or not doing. What I don’t want to do is post a link, so I’m not. I’m Author Madison Johns. I have published a short story collections of the horror genre on Amazon entitled Coffin Tales Season of Death. It contains two short stories that I’d say would appeal more to the YA audience, but hey they are creepy.

In May 2012 I published my first novel Armed and Outrageous, which is a cozy mystery featuring a senior citizen sleuth Agnes Barton. Well I must admit writing about characters this age is challenging. It’s laugh out loud funny and with enough realism to make most people identify with one or more of the situations they get themselves into.

I’m happy to be here and look forward to interacting here. I’m also active on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Goodreads. 

Hello

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 I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself. 

Bio

 

As a child, Madison Johns preferred to distance herself from other children her age, and had been described as a dreamer. Even as a small child, she remembers staying awake many a night fighting dragons, whisked away to foreign lands, or meeting the man of her dreams.

At the age of 44, Madison pounded out a book a year for the next three years and published her first novel May 1, 2012.

 

Books

Horror

Coffin Tales Season of Death published November 2011 on Amazon. It’s a collection of two short stories Jack-o’-lantern and Hell Crow. 

Mystery

Armed and Outrageous published May 2012 and currently available on Amazon in both ebook and print editions, also available on Barnes and Noble.

 

What was San Francisco like in 1880? The Economy

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Publetariat Editor’s Note: in this post, historical fiction author M. Louisa Locke shares some of the wealth of information she found while doing research for her novels. It’s worth a close read for anyone working in the historical fiction genre, as it reveals the levels of depth and detail required when doing this type of research.

This is the first in a multi-part series describing San Francisco in 1880. For those of you who have read either Maids of Misfortune or Uneasy Spirits, or my short stories, this will provide you with some deeper understanding of the city where my main characters, Annie Fuller and Nate Dawson, lived as children in the 1860s and returned to as adults in the 1870s. If you are not familiar with my Victorian San Francisco mystery series, I hope these historical pieces will pique your interest––although I promise my fiction is much livelier reading. All the material quoted below is from my thesis, “Like a Machine or an Animal: Working Women of the Far West in the Late Nineteenth Century,” University of California: San Diego dissertation, 1982 pp. 60-69.”  I must say, it is much more entertaining to convey historical information through fiction than heavily footnoted fact!

Part One: The San Francisco Economy

“In 1880 San Francisco, with a population of 233,959 residents, was the ninth largest city in the United States. Located at the end of the peninsula that separates the Bay of San Francisco from the Pacific Ocean, this city of hills, sand dunes, fogs, and mild temperatures had been only a small village called Yerba Buena less than forty years earlier.  This small village was one of the chief beneficiaries of the incredible influx of people into the region after the discovery of gold to the north in the winter of 1847-48.”

[For those of you who have read Maids of Misfortune and Uneasy Spirits––Annie Fuller, her parents, her Aunt and Uncle, and her housekeeper, Beatrice O’Rourke, were among those who traveled west and settled in San Francisco in those first years.]

“Commerce dominated San Francisco’s economic structure through out the nineteenth century. Its fine natural harbor and its location near both ocean shipping lanes and interior river routes stimulated much of the city’s early economic growth. The city served as the port of entry for the massive flow of people and goods into the region during the Gold Rush, and once agriculture developed in the interior in the 1860′s San Francisco also became the major port to handle goods shipped out of the region. The disruption in trade resulting from the Civil War further promoted the development of agriculture in the Far West, and San Francisco merchants worked hard in the 1850s and 1860s to ensure that all goods entering or leaving the region passed through their hands. By and large they were successful, and their control of the region’s trade remained firm until the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869. As late as 1875, San Francisco still handled at least ninety percent of all the goods leaving the state and a major share of the trade leaving the Northwest.”

“As a commercial port city, San Francisco first developed manufacturing that centered around supplying shipping needs and processing the raw materials that constituted the bulk of the city’s trade. By the late 1850s a few firms also began to manufacture a significant amount of the heavy equipment used in hydraulic mining.  In the 1860s…the Civil War and the completion of the transcontinental railroad fostered the development of a new kind of industry within San Francisco––the manufacturing of light consumer items for regional markets. The dislocation of Eastern trade during the Civil War not only aided the development of agricultural lands in the Far West but also encouraged San Francisco’s manufacturing sector by diverting capital investment from the cities of the East to the Far west and by forcing the latter region to look to San Francisco to supply its consumer needs.”

“The high shipping rates of the Central Pacific Railroad acted as a protective tariff for the city, and the railroad gave San Francisco easier access to raw materials and to regional markets for its manufactured goods. The construction of the railroad also attracted great numbers of Chinese and European immigrants who flocked to San Francisco once their job with the railroad ended. This new abundance of labor, in turn, drove down wages in the city and encouraged the creation of the first large-scale manufacturing establishments in the city. As a result, by 1880 San Francisco had a mature, broadly based manufacturing sector that completely dominated the Far West. San Francisco ranked ninth among cities in the nation in value of products…most important industries in 1880 were meat packing and processing, sugar refining, boot and shoe making, heavy metal and machine making, men’s clothing, and tobacco and cigar making. San Francisco’s continued vitality as a commercial center and its growing manufacturing capabilities also insured that the city acted as the financial capital of the region. The headquarters of almost all of the California banking institutions were located in San Francisco, and banks in other cities were often dependent on San Francisco capital.”

“Despite this relatively favorable working climate, San Francisco was not in any way protected from the economic cycles that affected the rest of the nation, nor were the laboring classes immune form exploitation by their employers. In fact, the high wages of the 1850s and 1860s and the popular myth that fortunes were easily made in the Far West promoted unrealistic expectations that were dealt a particularly harsh blow when hard times hit the city in the 1870s. With the completion of the railroad in 1869, the chronic labor shortage that had kept wages high vanished, and for the first time there was severe unemployment throughout the state. The national depression sparked by the Panic of 1873 reinforced the local downturn in business, and in 1875 the collapse of the Bank of California and the decline in the output of the Comstock Lode (in which much of the city’s capital had been invested) added to the city’s difficulties.”

“Even though a visitor to the city in 1880′…was much struck by the depressed air of the tradesmen,’ and a Norwegian pastor implored his countrymen living in the Midwest not to come to San Francisco expecting to find jobs easily, by 1880 San Francisco’s economy shared in the recovery that was sweeping the nation. The development of manufacturing in the city, which had in part been fostered by the very economic difficulties of the 1870s (because it lowered wages), meant that the city entered the new decade with an economy that was more diverse and stronger than ever.”

[It was the Panic of 1873 and the subsequent national depression that had played a key role in Annie Fuller’s late husband’s financial ruin back east and it is the improvement in San Francisco’s economy that Annie takes advantage of as the clairvoyant, Madam Sibyl, when she offers business advice to local businessmen like Mr. Matthew Voss in Maids of Misfortune.]

 

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