5 Ways to Have Your eBook Done By Next Friday

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This post, by Kim Letendre, originally appeared on the Book Marketing Alliance site.

A proven expert at writing and publishing eBooks, Jim Edwards just outlined his suggested methods for bringing your idea for an eBook to fruition very quickly.   I had to laugh when I heard him in an interview say that his mother thought he was selling porn on the internet – using his computer to make money just wasn’t the norm back in 1997.

OK, so he’s the expert!

 

He brings the possibility of making money to reality by creating salable content in a very short amount of time from ideas in your head.  People will buy your ideas if they can:  make money, save time, save money or be successful.  These are just a few of the reasons people will buy eBooks, and if you can combine a couple of those core hot buttons, you will have a target audience.

The steps Jim discussed in the first session of the Digital Publishing Summit were:

  1. Convert your existing material into an eBook.  Chances are, if you consider yourself knowledgeable on a subject, you may already have content written, in the form of articles, special reports, or simply notes that you have made for yourself.  When reworking or re-writing this content, keep in mind the audience you are targeting and the promise you have offered to fulfill.  If you keep those two pieces visible while you are rewriting your existing content, you will be writing from the subconscious.  Keeping the message visible in the title, the tagline and the overview will attract the person who needs to buy your book.
     
  2. Complete a written interview with an expert.  Have a list of questions available to ask a few experts.  These can be in the form of an email where you write the questions out to the experts you want to interview and then you assemble them into content.  One suggestion is to be sure you are the first “expert” that you are interviewing.  You have to be of the same caliber as the guests you are interviewing so you can be the person the reader turns to for answers.   Be sure you interview several experts, giving you varying as well as abundant content to be able to offer value.  Adding personal stories or comments throughout the book will give more substance and will give you credibility.

 

Read the rest of the post on Book Marketing Alliance.

If You Think Amazon Is Gouging You On Delivery Costs, It's Only Because You Didn't Do The Math Up Front

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I’m seeing some online noise lately from authors who are outraged at the "delivery costs" being deducted from their KDP book royalties. These authors are posting angry diatribes against Amazon on their sites, blogs and social media accounts, railing against Big Bad Amazon and their sneaky, author-cheating, money-grabbing tactics.

Here’s the problem: it’s those authors’ own fault if Amazon is retaining so much in delivery costs that their books aren’t earning a respectable royalty, because those authors OPTED IN for a royalty percentage that includes a deduction for delivery costs in the first place.

When you publish a Kindle book through KDP Select, you must decide whether to choose the 70% royalty or the 35% royalty option. Many non-detail-oriented authors just click that 70% option without considering, or even knowing, the repercussions of that choice.

Two such repercussions are delivery costs and royalty as a percentage of sales price. These are important, because they impact the amount of money you ultimately earn per copy sold.

If you go with the 35% option, your royalty per copy sold is 35% of the retail price you set, period. Even if Amazon elects to discount your book for some reason, you get 35% of the original price you set on every copy sold.

If you go with the 70% option, your royalty per copy sold is 70% of the retail price you set, minus delivery costs, with some caveats. Delivery costs are as follows, per Amazon’s current pricing page on the KDP site:

Amazon.com: $0.15/MB
Amazon.co.uk: £0.10/MB
Amazon.de: €0.12/MB
Amazon.fr: €0.12/MB
Amazon.es: €0.12/MB
Amazon.it: €0.12/MB

Obviously, the larger your file size, the higher your delivery cost, and the lower your net royalty per copy sold. In every one of the angry posts I’ve seen, the book in question was heavily illustrated or formatted, resulting in a huge file size. It would’ve been a simple thing for these authors to do the math ahead of time based on their books’ file size, and if they had done so, they likely would’ve concluded the 35% option was the smarter way to go for these particular books.

There’s a KDP FAQ that explains these details right here, and per another section of the FAQ, the average delivery cost per KDP book is six cents. For a book containing only text and maybe a handful of decorative embellishments, that’s a totally reasonable and believable figure. Straight text novels I’ve published or formatted generally come out somewhere between 240 – 350 KB, so on such a book, the delivery costs are negligible.

Note that you can choose different royalty options for different KDP books, it’s not like you must choose one or the other and then it applies to your entire KDP catalog.

Now, back to those caveats. There are other factors to consider before choosing the 70% option, and these are fully disclosed and explained in the KDP royalty FAQ section about the 70% royalty option.

First, if you’re selling your book on other sites (even if in other formats) and any of those sites decide to discount your book for any reason, Amazon will immediately discount your book to match the lowest price its ‘bots find on the web and base your royalty calculation on that price—NOT the list price you originally set. This is why I generally advise authors who are selling through multiple outlets to go with the 35% option, because they have no control over vendor pricing, and with the 70% option their royalties will be entirely unpredictable because the book’s ultimate sales price on Amazon will be unpredictable.

Second, you must set a retail list price between $2.99 – $9.99 for your book. Some authors will balk at the low end, since it excludes 99 cent and $1.99 pricing, others will balk at the upper level because for some books, especially textbooks or technical books, it may be legitimate to charge more than $9.99.

I won’t detail everything else one needs to consider before making the choice between the 35% and 70% royalty options, because frankly, if you’re the author-publisher, that’s your job. And if you don’t take the time to research the consequences of your publishing choices, that’s nobody’s fault but your own.

 

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

Non-US Self-Publisher? Tax Issues Don’t Need to be Taxing

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This post, by Catherine Ryan Howard, originally appeared on her Catherine, Caffeinated blog on 2/24/12.

OH FOR THE LOVE OF FUDGE.

That’s what this whole tax-withholding-for-non-US-residents makes me want to scream. Out loud, and repeatedly. But as I’ve said before, self-publishing your e-book on the biggest online retailer in the world is so easy, there had to be something like this to balance it out.

If you haven’t been keeping up with this ongoing saga, here’s a quick recap. I spent eight months, give or take, trying to get my own Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN).

I relied on the experiences of two other self-publishers, Sally Clements and Roz Morris, to help me out; the information the IRS provides wouldn’t help you find your way out of a small paper bag, let alone anywhere near an ITIN. Luckily once I had the damn thing, getting my full royalty payments and the money withheld from me in the year to date was easy and quick. But then, in the last few weeks, people started telling me that I didn’t need an ITIN at all—an Employee Identification Number (EIN) would’ve done the job, and an EIN was much easier to get. I posted about this possibility, and fellow Irish self-publisher David Gaughran volunteered to be the guinea pig—and got his EIN within minutes, and over the phone. This was extremely useful information, especially since another commenter (thanks, Janet!) told us that new IRS rules mean that starting this year, monies withheld will only be available for refund through the IRS—and not refunded automatically by KDP and CreateSpace, as they have been up until now.

I feared that most people wouldn’t read through all the comments on the original post, so I asked David to write a guest post for us here about how he got his EIN. Take it away, David…

“As many of you will know, Amazon and Smashwords are required by law to withhold 30% of the royalties earned by non-US authors until they settle their tax status. The commonly accepted method of doing so was going through the laborious process of getting an International Tax Identification Number (ITIN), which necessitates arcane form-filling, notarized copies of passports, embassy trips, fees, and inexplicable rejection (writers should at least be used to the last part). And indeed, this was the path I was on myself, up until yesterday.

In the last few weeks, I had heard some mutterings that there was an easier, quicker way, but hadn’t had time to look into it. After Catherine’s post on Monday, suggesting that self-publishers might be able to get an Employer Identification Number (EIN) instead, which will also do the trick, I decided to give it a shot.

First things first: I’m no tax expert. In fact, the entire subject turns my brain to soup. And I know as much about the law as this guy. All I can explain is how I got my EIN in ten minutes and how you should be able to do the same.

One final caveat: this only applies to self-published authors who are publishing through their own company (and that company must be set up outside the US). While the IRS doesn’t appear to ask for proof that you have actually established your own publishing company, I’m sure there are all sorts of reasons why you shouldn’t commence this process until you actually have.

 

Read the rest of the post on Catherine, Caffeinated.

Grow Your Crazy-Dedicated Fanbase through Reader-Centered Book Marketing

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Publetariat Editor’s Note: Today we’re pleased to welcome Toni and Shannon, the self-publishing experts over at Duolit, to our roster of regular Contributors with this reprint from their site.

What are some of the biggest books in publishing today? Twilight, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games.

What do they have in common?

Well, yeah, the YA genre. And the fanbases transcending any one target market. Also the multi-billion dollar movie franchises. But what else?

Crazy, rabid fans.

These folks will fake engagements to try on Bella’s wedding gown, get a full back tattoo featuring Dumbledore and spend hours creating elaborate signs declaring their love for Peeta.

How would you like to have fans like that going nuts over your book?

 

Okay, maybe you could do without quite that level of craziness. Still, wouldn’t it be nice to have readers spreading the word far and wide about you and your book?

That’s what I thought.

Guess what: fans like that? You can have them.

Sure, without the backing of Scholastic or Bloomsbury it won’t happen overnight. You’ll have to dig in for the long haul and get your hands dirty.

But, you’re an indie author — you’re not scared of a little hard work, right?

Suffering from Book Marketing Apathy?

Much of what I’ve seen out there in indie-land, however, seems to indicate otherwise. What’s up with that?

I call it “book marketing apathy.”

Some indie authors think that readers will appear out of thin air, throwing dollars at them mere seconds after their book is published. Others see marketing as an afterthought, as some sort of unnecessary burden. And yet others appear to have given up altogether, sadly begging for book purchases on Facebook or Twitter.

Don’t let that be you.

The 4 Truths of Indie Book Marketing

  1. It takes time.
  2. It takes effort.
  3. It takes dedication.
  4. It is totally worth it.

Your readers ARE out there, but they’re not going to find you by accident.

For the next few weeks, we’ll teach you how to stand out above the crowd and earn those crazy-dedicated readers through reader-centered book marketing.

It sounds silly and obvious, but it’s actually quite rare to see — authors focused on not only promoting themselves, but also providing value to their readers.

Are you following the Golden Rule?

Honestly, it all boils down to this — let’s call it the Golden Rule of Reader-Centered Book Marketing – treat your readers as you’d like to be treated.

To implement this “Golden Rule” you must:

1. Have the Right Attitude

If you’re not enthusiastic, confident and passionate about your work, how can you expect to jazz up readers?

Remember, just a few years ago, authors’ publishing fates were solely in traditional publishers’ hands. Take pride in your indie author status  and the fact that you have self-published your book!

Although you’ve likely experienced doubts about your writing, if you’ve taken the time to write, edit, design and publish a book that you know is your best work, act like it!

Blog tour and guest post to get your name out there, then eagerly engage each commenter and new reader — provoke discussion, answer their questions and value their perspective.

2. Give More than You Take

A common mistake many authors make (most likely out of sales desperation) is to make their only “message” one of pressure; one focused on selling their work.

This is a *huge* turnoff to potential readers!

A better method to earn readers is to share something of value (instead of strictly selling). Once they experience your generosity (and get a taste of your crazy talent in the process), they’ll gladly become faithful readers.

Some ways for you to provide value to potential readers include:

  • Writing guest posts on blogs your readers frequent
  • Recommending other books you’ve enjoyed
  • Providing free excerpts of your work
  • Giving away free copies or other goodies

Give, share and give some more and finally, when the time is right, ask your readers to give a little something back.

3. Think The Avengers, not Survivor

If you’re a reality TV geek (like, sadly, I am), you’re familiar with the motto of Survivor: outwit, outplay, outlast. Players constantly backstab, use and abuse each other in an effort to win $1 million.

That go-it-alone mindset may work for the last Survivor standing, but it won’t help you and your book!

A better method is that of The Avengers: work together.

Establish relationships with other indie authors, but don’t go about it willy-nilly. Be genuine; only reach out if you actually like and respect the author and their work.

Once you’ve teamed up, leverage the power of your combined readerships by:

  • Cross-promoting each other’s work through social media
  • Introducing each other to blogger friends for guest posts and interviews
  • Brainstorming ideas for giveaways and promotions
  • Supporting and motivating each other with things get tough

4. Don’t Let Your Readers Down

Once the new readers start flowing in, you must continually work to keep them by:

  • Encouraging them to subscribe to your mailing list and send out an update at least once a month
  • Keeping a schedule for updating your blog
  • Providing value through exclusive rewards and promotions

Whatever you do, don’t forget about them!

Ensure, however, that you’re only passing along valuable information to your fans (never spamming or pressuring). Don’t let your new fans down!

Call it the Wild Wild West rule: how many successful July 4th Will Smith movies did we get after that flop (which, for the record, I enjoyed)?

Remember: without a fanbase, you’re just writing for yourself, your mom and the Twitter spammers. 

Go Forth and Earn Some Youphiles!

Ready for more reader-centered book marketing goodness?

Next week we’ll discuss how to uncover the identity of those crazy-dedicated readers (and show you a targeting tool even more specific than your target market), but the concepts above give you something to work on in the meantime.

At the conclusion of our series, we’re unveiling a super-special book marketing workshop exclusively for indie authors who receive (totally free) updates from us. So, if you’re not on that list, hop to it!

You’ll also receive Self-Publishing Basic Training, a rockin’ 35-page guide to the basics of self-publishing, as an added bonus.

Talk Back

I’m curious: how do you take care of your readers? Do you find reader-centered marketing practices work better than pressuring and groveling? Am I totally wrong about everything I said above? Let me know in the comments!

 

This is a reprint from Duolit.

 

The Business Rusch: Hurry Up. Wait.

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This post, by Kathryn Rusch, originally appeared on her site on 6/13/12.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the differences between traditional publishing and indie publishing this week. Almost every day, some writer writes to me and asks if they should go traditional or indie on some new project.

Sometimes the writer has just finished his first novel, and wants to know what to do with it—go the traditional route or publish it himself.

Sometimes the writer is a long-time professional who has noticed indie publishing and wants to give it a go.

And sometimes the writer has done a little indie publishing and a lot of traditional publishing, and wants to know which is best for the current project.

Usually I can’t help them. It truly is a personal choice. For the most part, contract terms and confusing royalty statements make long-term earnings in traditional publishing dicey at best. But indie publishing has its own drawbacks, including a bit of financial outlay up front to make certain the book is the best it can be.

(Hire a copy editor, folks. Really. And a line editor. Or two truly anal friends who care nothing about plot and everything about commas and repetition. An editor or super reader would be nice to help you on the plot side. It would be nice if you managed a professional cover and interior design. And as a reader, I’d really like it if you have a print-on-demand version.)

I have no idea what another writer’s circumstances are. I don’t know if she has the time to upload her works on Kindle or if she barely scratches out enough time to write 1,000 words per day. All of those things matter.

But, for a minute, let’s forget the contract terms, the financial realities, the business decisions, and pretend all books are equal.

If we do that, if we get rid of the individual decisions, and look only at the way the two publishing systems work, we can see the differences in very stark terms.

Here’s what you’re choosing between:

Hurry up and wait

Or

Wait and hurry up

Seriously.

The industry has bifurcated. The two parts of book publishing are so drastically different in their approaches that they can barely talk to each other. Mostly, they fail to realize that they don’t even use the same language. As a result, they measure success differently because they measure everything differently. I’ve talked about this before, primarily in a post called “Bestseller Lists and Other Thoughts.”

First, let’s look at what the different attitudes are, and then let’s examine what those attitudes mean for writers.

 

Read the rest of the post on Kathryn Rusch’s site.

How to Speak Publisher: E is for Earning Out

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This post, by Stroppy Author, originally appeared on the Stroppy Author’s Guide to Publishing blog on 5/24/12.

‘Earning out’ is what you hope your book will do. Remember the advance? It’s what the publisher paid you a very long time ago when you started/sold your book. We talked about the advance at the start of How to speak publisher.

Your book earns out if/when it has earned enough in royalties to cover the advance the publisher paid you. Here’s a bit of simple maths. Simple, I said. Don’t hide behind the sofa, there. Maths is your friend – don’t leave it to the publisher or your agent.

Stroppy Author gets an advance of £5,000 – hurray!

This means that to earn out the advance, the book needs to earn £5,000 in royalties

Stroppy Author’s book sells for £10 a copy.

Stroppy Author gets a royalty of 10% – hurray!

This means that the royalty on each copy is 10% of £10 = £1

So to earn £5,000, the book would need to sell 5,000 copies at its cover price.

These are not real figures; this never happens – but that’s the principle.

While we’re on maths, let’s do a spot of counting.
The press likes to shout about six-figure advances. This is to confuse people, who usually assume that a six-figure advance is a million pounds/dollars/euros. It isn’t – a six-figure advance is one represented by a number that has six digits, so it is £100,000 (or $100,000) or more. Count the figures: a 1 and five 0s, that’s six. Don’t count the comma. So if you hear that an author has a five-figure advance, that means they have £/$10,000 or more, which is not necessarily very much. Obviously £99,000 is quite a lot; but $10,000 is not.

Some books never earn out their advance and are not even really expected to. If a publisher pays an advance of £300,000, this is largely to grab a lot of publicity. The book might earn out, but no one will be hugely surprised if it doesn’t because a lot of these gambles don’t pay off. To the author, the big advance seems to be a sign that the publisher is certain their book will be a bestseller. In fact, it’s a sign that the publisher hopes their book will be a bestseller and thinks there’s a pretty good chance it will be. But it’s cheaper to pay an advance of £300,000 and get lots of free press coverage than to invest in posters all over the underground and buses. The publisher can still make a huge profit even if this book doesn’t earn out.

How quickly your book earns out depends on the following factors:

  • how large the advance was in the first place
  • the royalty rate
  • the price the books sell for.

There is a lot of room for wild variation here. Advances range from zero to £/$1,000,000. Royalty rates range from less than 1% to 10% (sometimes even higher after some massive number of sales – but very rarely). Books sell for anything from cover price to 90% discount. At some levels of discount, the royalty might disappear completely. This is generally to cover the publisher shifting the remaining copies for next-to-nothing when they’ve decided to give up on it.

 

Read the rest of the post on the Stroppy Author’s Guide to Publishing blog.

Class Action Law Suit Filed in Maryland Against PublishAmerica

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This post, by Mick Rooney, originally appeared on The Independent Publishing Magazine on 6/13/12.

The breaking news this evening, via Victoria Strauss, is that a class action law suit has been filed against PublishAmerica in the state of Maryland. The action was filed yesterday by Darla Yoos, Edwin McCall and Kerri Levine and "others similarly situated" in a 55 page document.
 
From the opening pages of the law suit:

 
 

Defendant PublishAmerica is a book publisher that  portrays itself as "a traditional, royalty paying publisher." But unlike traditional publishers, which profit from the sale of books, defendant profits from its own clients, i.e., the authors who submit works for publication by defendant. Defendant lures these authors in by promising to publish their book at no cost, and it makes false and misleading representations that it will promote their books and support the authors’ efforts to sell their own books. But this is not the case. Instead, once the authors sign the contract, which gives defendant the rights to their book for seven to ten years, defendant does nothing constructive to promote their books, but instead offers various promotion packages on a fee-for-service basis….These services, which are either misrepresented or never carried out, are not reasonably designed to promote class members’ books…. Defendant provides very poor editing services, is slow to respond to book orders, and it routinely overprices the books it publishes. This is no accident. Defendant will only lower the price of its clients’ books to a competitive rate for a $399 fee. These practices make it difficult for even the most enterprising authors to promote their own books. Defendant is not responsive to inquiries from its clients, or worse it is dismissive or belligerent. Like plaintiffs, thousands of other aspiring authors who signed up with PublishAmerica have become demoralized because the publishing contract appears to be little more than a pretext for selling dubious services…These authors also feel trapped because PublishAmerica owns the rights to their books for seven to ten years. This presents a Hobson’s choice for the authors: either throw good money after bad for suspect promotional services or abandon the book that was a labor of love.


25 Ways To Fight Your Story's Mushy Middle

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This post, by Chuck Wendig, originally appeared on his terribleminds site.

For me, the middle is the hardest part of writing. It’s easy to get the stallions moving in the beginning — a stun gun up their asses gets them stampeding right quick. I don’t have much of a problem with endings, either; you get to a certain point and the horses are worked up into a mighty lather and run wildly and ineluctably toward the cliff’s edge.

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

But the middle, man, the motherfucking middle. It’s like being lost in a fog, wandering the wasteland tracts. And I can’t be the only person with this problem: I’ve read far too many books that seem to lose all steam in the middle. Narrative boots stuck in sucking mud.

Seems like it’s time for another “list of 25″ to the rescue, then.

Hiyaa! Giddyup, you sumbitches! BZZT.

1. The Solomonic Split Of The Second Act

Fuck the three-act structure right in its crusty corn-cave. See, right there’s your problem — first act is small, third act is small, and the second act is the size of those two combined. Go for a four-act structure, instead. Take the second act and chop it clean in half. Whack. Each act is its own entity — though it connects to the rest and still has its own rise and fall. Allow each its own shape, its own distinct feel. And don’t forget that when one act moves to another it is a time of transformation and escalation.

2. Fake A Climax

Hey, when you fake an orgasm, you gotta commit. You can’t just do a few eye-rolls and go “oooh, ahh, mmm, yes,” and then sit up and flip on CSPAN. You’ve got to sell it. Make ‘em think it’s the real deal. Scream so loud the dog starts howling. Break a lamp with a flailing limb. Release the fluids. And that’s what you gotta do in the middle of your story. The “false climax” is a powerful trick — you make it seem like things are coming to a head, that the pot is boiling over, that the fluid-release cannot be contained. You want the audience to be all like, “Whoa, this feels like the end but I’ve still got 200 pages left in the book. SHIT JUST GOT REAL.” (Of course, do make sure the actual climax is even bigger, yes?)

3. Fewer Curves, More Angles

The shape of a story — especially the shape of a story’s middle — is a lot of soft rises and doughy plateaus and zoftig falls. Each hill giving way to a bigger knoll. But sometimes, a story needs fewer hills and more mountains. Angles instead of curves. Fangs instead of molars. Think of inserting a few jagged peaks and dangerous ditches — take the story and the characters on a harder journey. Let things change swiftly, accelerate the plot, go left, feint right, don’t let the audience feel complacent and comfortable. Rough ground can be a good thing in the middle of a story. Some stories need more turbulence.

4. Opening Presents On Christmas Eve

When I was a kid, Christmas Eve was the most interminable time because, y’know, Christmas morning is everything. All else is chaff and dust and ash in your greedy little mouth. If setting fire to the tree would make Santa come earlier, shit, you’d do it. So, what do some parents do? They let a child open one gift on Christmas Eve. Adopt this strategy as a storyteller. All this time you’re introducing mysteries and conflicts and character arcs that you promise will be resolved by the conclusion of the story. Take one, conclude it early. Give the audience some payoff. (I’d argue if Lost gave viewers a few early Christmas presents the show wouldn’t have dragged its itchy doggy ass across the carpet for the middle seasons.)

5. Introduce A Character

Sometimes, a story needs a bit of new blood in the form of a new character — someone interesting. Not, y’know, “Dave the Constipated Cab Driver,” or “Paula the Saggy-Boobed Waitress,” but rather characters with an arc, characters who will have an impact on the story. You don’t need to replace your protagonist (and probably shouldn’t), but a new strong supporting character may grant the story new energy.

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes 20 more ideas for fixing your mushy middle, on terribleminds.

14 Ways To Ask For A Favour

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This post, by Jean Oram, originally appeared on her site on 6/8/12.

Have you ever been asked a favour by another writer? Chances are (if you are online), you have. It might have been critiquing a query or chapter, or helping them with heir marketing and publicity. Lately it seems that writers and authors are flooding social media with lots of favour requests that are unintentionally turning folks off.

I’m sure I’ve done it… how about you?

There is an art in “the ask” and many of us get it wrong. Dreadfully, horribly wrong.

But we can fix it! We writers are awesome at getting into the heads of others, being creative, and being general, all ’round nice people.

Two key things to keep in mind so you don’t abuse other writers. First of all, writers are busy people. Heck, all people are. But writers usually have a lot going on all the time–especially when we are trying to get our career off the ground, or heck, even pushed away from the terminal! Second, we are a very generous sort and love to help out other writers because one day (hopefully soon) we will be in their shoes looking for some friend lovin’ as well. It’s super easy to abuse that unintentionally. (We say yes because we fear we may never be given an opportunity again if we don’t.

A Good Ask

I love this ask that I got via a direct message on Twitter from the lovely and talented author Claire Cook (Must Love Dogs). After a few tweets and mutual follow on Twitter she said in a DM: “Please like my FB author page if you have an extra minute. And let me know if I can like yours! facebook.com/ClaireCookauth….” That is a good ask. I believe I liked her page. I did not ask her to like my pages back even though they are in need of some “like” love. Why? I believed that it wouldn’t fit her brand and it didn’t feel right. But liking her did.

By the way, I get a lot of DM’s asking for FB likes and her’s is the first that has received action. And, at first glance I thought her DM was unlike the others because it felt as though it was meant just for me. Later I realized that it could have been an autosend. But it didn’t feel like it. It felt personal.

KaBOOM!, a playground action group, contacted me via my It’s All Kid’s Play (.ca) website as we had done some tweeting back and forth. They contacted me to ask if I could help spread the word about an upcoming summer challenge. They provided all the information I needed about their challenge as well as a fantastically easy to follow through upon ask that included this tidbit I could copy and paste into Twitter: “My friends at @Kaboom want you to take their #playgroundchallenge! Visit playgrounds for a chance to win a trip to DC. http://bit.ly/K5GfQw”

Which I did. I also gave it a personal spin and off it went. Easy. Even though I believe 100% in their challenge, I may not have sent off this tweet if they hadn’t have made it so easy for me to do so. (In the end I also ended up being a beta tester for their Android app (it maps Playgrounds–is awesome and is available on the iPhone already) and next week will be posting an interview with them about their challenge on my It’s All Kid’s Play blog. Wow. They got a lot from a simple, well-done email, didn’t they?

So, how do we get favours granted?

Ask for a Favour? 14 Tips That Lead to a “Yes”:

  1. Be clear.
    What do you want me to do? Is it to buy your book? Share your coupon? Like your page? Follow you?
     
  2. Be specific and to the point.
    I don’t need the story of your life. Remember: You are taking up someone’s precious time.
     
  3. Why should I?
    What’s in it for me? Why should I help? If you make your ask about the giver, they are more likely to help out. Think of it this way. I tell you to buy my book because it is a bestseller and everyone thinks it’s funny. Uh, great? But what if I told you that this book will change the way you think about your neighbourhood, the way kids play, and give you more time to spend playing with your kids. Hmmm. Suddenly that feels a little more personal and intriguing. There might be some personal value in this.

 

Read the rest of the post on Jean Oram’s site.

Writernese

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This post, by Tina Pinson, originally appeared on her Write Where I Want To Be blog on 6/7/12.

You have mastered the English language, well, sort of… and you are fluent in three different languages, like me… okay not really. I have a hard enough time with English as a first language. Took four years of German and one of Turkish and remember barely enough to get by.

Then, just when I thought school was over, I had to learn Writernese. What is that you may ask? Simply put… it the language of writers. Writerspeak.

Writernese.

And if you’re a writer, you know that writerspeak is often times hard to grasp. Kind of like cyberspeak. IMHO BTW LOL

I thought it would be prudent to take a look at Writernese and see if we can decipher some the meanings behind the words and acronyms to help us speak the language.

Common Writernese Terms and Acronyms. Trying to understand these few aspects of Writernese could be a brief exercise in madness, but it’s a start.

EC: External Conflict (oppositions or physical threats to heroine or hero reaching their goals–i.e.: villain, journey, opponent)

IC: Internal Conflict (character’s emotional struggles and growth)

GMC: Goals, Motivation, Conflict

Goals– your character has a goal that he or she needs to reach.
Motivation– what sends them out to accomplish the goal?
Conflict — all the trials and thorns thrown in the path of your character to keep him/her from reaching goal. (when established, these set up the premise of a book, the overriding theme)

Climax — a moment of great intensity that usually brings events to a head and moving toward the conclusion.

Foreshadowing — adding hints and important information earlier on in the story that tip the reader off to what may come.

Resolution — can be done on varying levels, like resolving problems in the story. Or resolving the main conflict.

Genre — the kind of story being written; Gothic, Mystery, Romance, Inspirational, Sci Fi, Women’s Fiction, Speculative… etc.

HEA: Happily Ever After (the resolution/ type of ending expected in a Romance novel) Think Fairy Tales. Hello, Prince Charming.

H/H: Hero and Heroine
Protagonist — the main character
Antagonist — opposition to protagonist… enemy

MS: Manuscript

WIP: work in progress. Unfinished Manuscript

POV: Point Of View — What a character can see or hear. (If it’s dark he or she probably can’t tell you someone’s eye color. If it’s behind them they can’t give detail.)

1st person POV — Spoken and told by one character in their viewpoint alone throughout the story. Uses I to lead sentences and so forth.

3rd person POV — Storytelling told using third person pronouns like he/she. This POV can be Limited or Omniscient.

Limited — The writer sticks closely to one character’s feelings, thoughts and viewpoint, while other characters are added externally.

Omniscient — The storyteller knows all the views and can bring in several character’s point of views for the story. POV purists prefer that one POV is used in one scene to avoid head hopping.

 

Read the rest of the post —and maybe even bookmark it for future reference— on Write Where I Want To Be.

Dare to be an Indie Author?

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This post, by Laxmi Hariharan, originally appeared on The UK Huffington Post. It includes a handy quiz you can use to figure out if you’re built for the indie author life.

I am just back from The Literary Consultancy’s (TLC) http://www.literaryconsultancy.co.uk/ revolutionary Writing in a Digital Age conference. Organised by the inimitable Rebecca Swift–the speakers included leading authors and industry figures such as @harikunzru @lindasgrant, @nicolamorgan, @zubaanbooks (Urvashi Butalia), @simontrewin, @caroleagent (Carole Blake), @gavinjamesbower, @saqibooks (Rukhsana Yasmin), @karolinasutton and many more–#TLC12 brought together the traditional and the Indie on the same stage, a first of firsts.

The person who stood out was Rob Kroese, author of the self published, bestselling, humorous, apocalyptic novel Mercury Falls and its sequel, Mercury Rises. He is the creator of Mercury (the title character in Mercury Falls)–an acerbic, anti-establishment angel who is well-meaning but not particularly well-behaved. Rob @robkroese is funny, genuine and as one of my fellow delegates commented, "he is one of us". He likens the league of published authors to an elite night club, with gatekeepers, who decide who gets in and who does not. It struck a chord with me, and I suspect with many of the other ‘waiting to be discovered’ wannabes.

One of the most hotly discussed topics was whether to self publish or not? If Indie movies are accepted, why not Indie books? So taking a cue from Rob’s talk (thanks Rob!) I have put together my own quiz, to help you find out. Here are the questions

1. Do you want to be discovered or somewhere along the way have you discovered yourself?

2. Do you write to be published or do you write to be read?

3. Are you an entrepreneur, at heart? Do you normally jump in and think of the consequences later. Are you pragmatic about failure–enough to pick yourself up and move on swiftly to the next?

4.Do you like to experiment, and cannot resist a challenge? Do you thrive under pressure, and when the odds are stacked against you?

 

Read the rest of the post on The UK Huffington Post.

Indie Authors Can Succeed: What Terri Did And How You Can Do It, Too – Part 1

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This post, by Novel Publicity President Emlyn Chand and author Terri Giuliano Long, originally appeared on Novel Publicity on 8/24/11.

What does it take to be successful as an author? How can one go from simply dreaming a dream to living its reality? Is there any hope for all of the starving wordsmiths of the world?

Why, yes. There most assuredly is.
 
Terri Giuliano Long: A Case Study

To prove this point to all of the starry-eyed optimists and cynical nay-sayers, allow me to present a case study. It’s no secret that Novel Publicity has been working with literary fiction author Terri Giuliano Long almost since we opened our web portal to business back in March 2011.

Terri published her first novel, In Leah’s Wake, in October 2010. She put in a lot of hard work and hard-earned cash to promote it, and by July 26th, 2011, she had sold her 1,000th copy. A milestone few authors ever reach, indie or not.

1,000 copies—that’s really exciting. But what’s even more exciting is what happened next. It took nine months to sell those 1,000 copies, and only another twenty-nine days to sell 1,000 more. Now Terri’s sales are above 100 per day and show no signs of sinking. Is it fair to say she’s made it?

I think so.

Now that we’ve laid the framework to show that, yes, an indie author can achieve at least a modicum of commercial success, let’s move forward and answer the more pertinent question and get to the real reason you’re reading this blog post anyway: how did she do it?

Perhaps more accurately phrased as: how can you do it?

Let’s explore this question chronologically. Along the way, we’ll discuss what Terri did that was right-on and what she could have done better to give you the chance to learn from both her mistakes and her triumphs.
Write the best book you can.

Not the best book in the entire history of humanity. Just the best one you can possibly write. Give it the time to take root and really grow. Don’t rush to meet a deadline. Don’t try to conform to what’s popular or what somebody else expects. Respect your artistic vision and respect the English language. That’s step one.

What Terri did…

I wrote the first draft as my graduate thesis – the entire first draft in three months. It was terrible, of course – awful writing, a lot of summary, lacking story development. I then spent about four years – while teaching and doing other writing- revising. I started from scratch, meaning I didn’t cut and paste; I started from a blank page and retyped the entire manuscript. This is important because it helps you see the novel with new eyes. I replaced summary with scene, created new scenes, developed characters. There is a lot of drug-related information in the novel. To get it right, I had to research. I also researched protocol on runaway teens, and I looked up information on construction practices, economics and so on. I then looked at thematic issues – this is a story about community and connection. Once I realized this, I worked to develop and pull the themes forward. I always read my work aloud, so tend to edit for style (vocabulary, syntax, etc.) as I write; while I did polish, I didn’t feel a need to style-edit the entire novel.

Package the book in a way that will appeal to readers.

This means, for the love of all that is holy, please PLEASE hire a professional editor. Yes, it’s expensive. Yes, readers will notice if your formatting or your punctuation is off. You can’t cut corners if you want to be taken seriously. And this goes beyond the editing.

You also need to present an attractive exterior—I’m talking about your book cover. Saying this goes against that cliché moral code of not judging a book by its cover, but people can and will judge your beloved novel in this way. Don’t give anyone the chance to discount your book for such a superficial reason. Cover your bases.

What Terri did…

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes four more strategies, on Novel Publicity. Also see Part 2, on the same site.

How Amazon Saved My Life

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This post, by Jessica Park, originally appeared on indiereader on 6/6/12.

I am an author.

I still can’t get used to that title, but I suppose after having written seven books–five of them traditionally published–that’s what you’d call me.  The funny thing is that I feel more like a real author now that I self-publish than when I had the (supposed) support of a publisher behind me.

How did I end up on my own?  It began when I couldn’t get my first YA book, Relatively Famous, published, despite getting stellar feedback from editors and nearly selling the film rights to a teen pop star. I was at a loss for what to do. I couldn’t keep writing books without selling them. What if the next thing I wrote flopped? I took a risk, in many ways, and wrote Flat-Out Love. It was the first book that completely came from my heart, and it was a book that ignored all the industry rules. I knew in the back of my head that I could self-publish it, but at the time it seemed like that would have been an admission of defeat.

I spent months thinking that I needed a big publisher in order to be a writer, to legitimately carry that “author” title. To validate me, and to validate Flat-Out Love. I needed a publisher to print my books and stick a silly publishing house emblem on the side of a hard copy. They were the only way to give my books mass distribution, and having them back me would mean that readers would know my book was good.

I also, apparently, thought that I needed to be taken advantage of, paid inexcusably poorly, and chained to idiotic pricing and covers that I had no control over.

I was, it seems, deluded.

It turns out that I was entirely wrong. I was missing what I really wanted. One of the major reasons that I write is to connect with readers, not publishers. The truth is that I couldn’t care less whether New York editors and publishers like me. I don’t want to write for them. I want to write for you. The other undeniable truth is that readers could care less that my books aren’t put out by a big publisher. They read for the content, not the publishing house emblem.

I have a lovely, smart, powerhouse agent, who tried to sell my next book, Flat-Out Love, to every major publishing house. She adored the story and thought it would sell. Fourteen editors turned it down, although each one said how strong the book was. But, editors seemingly didn’t give a crap about whether or not they liked the book. What they did pay attention to were their totally misguided ideas about what would and wouldn’t sell. I heard two things over and over again about my book. The first was that my story starred an eighteen-year-old college freshman, and that age was “categorically” too old for YA books and too young for adult books. It seems that one is not allowed to write about characters between the ages of eighteen and…what? Twenty-five? Because… because… Well, I’m not sure. The second thing I heard was that because my simultaneously-too-young-and-too-old heroine was not involved with anything slightly paranormal, the book wouldn’t sell.

Did I cry over some of these rejections? Absolutely. Did I feel inadequate, untalented, hurt? Yes. Did I doubt my ability to craft a story that readers could fall in love with? You bet.

And then one day I got yet another rejection letter and instead of blaming myself and my clear lack of creativity, I got angry. Really, really furious. It clicked for me that I was not the idiot here. Publishing houses were. The silly reasons that they gave me for why my book was useless made me see very clearly how completely out of touch these houses were with readers. I knew, I just knew, that I’d written a book with humor, heart, and meaning. I’d written something that had potential to connect with an audience. As much as I despise having to run around announcing how brilliant I supposedly am and whatnot, I also deeply believed in Flat-Out Love. I knew that editors were wrong.

And I finally understood that I wanted nothing to do with these people.

I snatched the book back from my agent and self-published it. With great relief, I should note. I could finally admit to myself that the only thing I had really wanted was to be told, “You’re good enough.” You know who gives me that? My readers. My generous, loving, wild readers.

Publishers pay terribly and infrequently. They are shockingly dumb when it comes to pricing, and if I see one more friend’s NY-pubbed ebook priced at $12.99, I’m going to scream. They do minimal marketing and leave the vast majority of work up to the author. Unless, of course, you are already a big name author. Then they fly you around the country for signings and treat you like the precious moneymaking gem that you are. The rest of us get next to nothing in terms of promotion. If your book takes off, they get the credit. If it tanks, you get the blame.

No, thank you. I’m all set with that.

 

Read the rest of the post on indiereader.

DOJ, Authors Guild, BEA, and Hypocritical Authors Backing Up Words With Action

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This post, by Bob Mayer, originally appeared on Write It Forward on 6/7/12.

I recently read the email where the Authors Guild is asking members to send to the DOJ to stop the legal action regarding the Agency Model.  I found it quite strange.  It felt as if the Authors Guild was defending bookstores, publishers, agents and others in the mistaken belief that in doing so they were helping authors.  I can’t ever remember the Authors Guild taking such strong action defending authors against bookstores, publishers and agents.  Demanding higher eBook royalty rates.

And even in the letter, the Guild admits publishers made a “mistake” in allowing Amazon to dominate the eBook market.  I’m not sure it was a mistake as much as it was arrogance.  I keep going back to one fact:  Amazon didn’t exist except in Bezos’ mind in 1994.  How much has publishing changed since then?

And then there are the authors.  Scott Turow and Richard Russo and Malcolm Gladwell key among them.  I love Richard Russo’s books, but I find his business stance quite hypocritical.  Ditto with Turow and Gladwell.  If Amazon is the evil empire as they quite clearly say, then why are their books still for sale on Amazon?  Hey guys, if you hate it so much, immediately demand your publishers pull your books from Amazon.  NOW!  You don’t get to have your sales and sneer at them too.  I’m sick of the top 5% of authors who get coddled by publishers defend[ing] a business that treats its other 95% of authors as replaceable parts that they can easily toss on the garbage pile and replace.  You show me a traditional author defending legacy publishing whose contract doesn’t get renewed, and I’ll show you an author whose tune changes very fast.

Publishers, agents, editors, bookstores, here’s something you basically need to wrap your brain around:  the physical book you hold so dear is NOT the product you are selling.  The story that writers create is the product.  That story can be bought by the consumer in the physical form of a book, but it can also be bought digitally to be read or listened to.  And the latter is going to become dominant sooner, rather than later.

I spent a day this week at BEA.  I did my first BEA about 10 years ago.  This one wasn’t much different.  I was walking the aisles with my business partner at Cool Gus, Jen Talty, and I told her:  “Half these people are going to be looking for jobs in three years.”  I’m not being mean, I’m being realistic.  It’s pretty much business as usual, like the band playing on the Titanic and the passengers swapping deck chairs to listen to them.  The ship is still going down people.  I saw nary a computer screen at any of the booths displaying digital books.  I saw not a single publisher giving away digital arcs (and wouldn’t it be so much cheaper and environmentally friendly to do so?).

 

Read the rest of the post on Write It Forward.

Remembering Ray Bradbury with 11 Timeless Quotes on Joy, Failure, Writing, Creativity, and Purpose

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This post, by Maria Popova, originally appeared on brain pickings on 6/7/12.

The literary hero in his own words.

What a tragic season it’s been for literary heroes who defined generations of readers and creators. Last month, we lost Maurice Sendak, and this week, Ray Bradbury — beloved author, champion of curiosity, relentless advocate of libraries — passed way at the age of 91. To celebrate his life and legacy, here are eleven of his most timeless insights on writing, culture, creativity, failure, happiness, and more.

On doing what you love, in this wonderful 2008 video interview from the National Endowment for the Arts:

Love what you do and do what you love. Don’t listen to anyone else who tells you not to do it. You do what you want, what you love. Imagination should be the center of your life.

On art, in Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You:

We have our Arts so we won’t die of Truth.

On reading as a prerequisite for democracy, from the same 2008 NEA interview:

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don’t know how to read, you don’t know how to decide. That’s the great thing about our country — we’re a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

On creativity and the myth of the muse, in Zen in the Art of Writing:

That’s the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.

On creative purpose and perseverance in the face of rejection, in Snoopy’s Guide to the Writing Life:

[S]tarting when I was fifteen I began to send short stories to magazines like Esquire, and they, very promptly, sent them back two days before they got them! I have several walls in several rooms of my house covered with the snowstorm of rejections, but they didn’t realize what a strong person I was; I persevered and wrote a thousand more dreadful short stories, which were rejected in turn. Then, during the late forties, I actually began to sell short stories and accomplished some sort of deliverance from snowstorms in my fourth decade. But even today, my latest books of short stories contain at least seven stories that were rejected by every magazine in the United States and also in Sweden! So … take heart from this. The blizzard doesn’t last forever; it just seems so.


Read the rest of the post, which includes 6 more quotes from Ray Bradbury, on brain pickings.