This post, by Kimberly Hitchens, founder of Booknook.biz, originally appeared on the Crime Fiction Collective site on 10/4/11, and is reprinted here in its entirety with that site’s permission.
For those of you who’ve missed the latest, Amazon initially yanked and wirelessly replaced, and then removed entirely from sale, a book (Neal Stephenson’s Reamde) after a reader posted a scathing, virulent review of the errors she found in the book. Her review, calling for a 75% price refund, said in part:
“This level of carelessness is inexcusable on economic grounds. I’d expect to find format errors and mangled content in a pirated ebook, not in a $17 Kindle edition. When I purchase an ebook at a price point so close to the print version, the publisher rakes in far more profit than from a print title. To then turn around and offer shoddy, incomplete text in that pricey Kindle title shows an arrogant disregard for economics, the reader, and the distribution channel.”
Click here to read the entire review, which is worth reading, in my opinion. The Awl reports that Amazon had, as of Thursday morning, gone so far as to remove the title, which was #36 in books overall, #6 in SciFi on Kindle and #4 in print/audio. Clearly, a significant financial decision by HarperCollins.
Now, normally, I’d just report this as an odd bit of news, and not dwell on it; but two other things have happened this month that are related to this. Which makes me think that this shan’t be an isolated incident, and we in the biz need to pay closer attention to what we write, publish and produce. The two events are:
First, one of our top authors received a letter from Amazon, informing him/her that "During a quality assurance review of your title, we have found the following issue(s): Typo/formatting issues exist that may have been caused by an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) problem. An example is mentioned below:
"Don’t forger that" should be "Don’t forget that"
Whereupon Amazon then advised him or her to: "Please look for the same kind of errors throughout and make the necessary corrections to the title before republishing it." (Italic emphasis added). The interesting part is that this book wasn’t scanned, nor OCR’d; and it was professionally edited more than once. Amazon only provided the one instance of an “error.”
Another client, having crafted some rather unique content, had deliberately written scenes that were incoherent, to represent a protagonist in a comatose state. Amazon flatly yanked the title after customer complaints about the unreadability of the text.
What this tells me is that Amazon, having purged innumerable over-represented PD (Public Domain) titles, and every PLR (so-called, "Private Label Rights") book they could find, have decided that they are going to tackle the issue that everyone’s been talking about:
Curation
Which means one thing: Real Editing. Not Word’s built-in spellchecker; not your Mom; real editors with real experience. Here at Booknook, we like the Twin Lizzies; Elisabeth Hallett and Elizabeth Lyon. Elisabeth Hallett, (Email here) specializes in line editing, as well as proofing and copyediting; Elizabeth Lyon (website here) is a freelance editor with more than 60 books under her belt, and can assist you with revisions and developmental editing, in addition to line editing services.
I know that this has been a long (and NOT funny!) first column for me (originally appearing on September 30th, 2011, in our Booknook.biz newsletter), but the import of these events should not be overlooked. Lastly: learn to use Track Changes (if you use Word), or its equivalent in WordPerfect or Open Office. I am really surprised at how many authors don’t know how to use it, or mistake tracked changes for Word’s built-in spellchecker, but it’s a simple tool, and one that can help you work competently with an Editor. A good editor can work faster in track changes than without it; if you know how to use it, it will save you money, not only in editing hours and in the number of revisions you’ll end up paying for, post-production, in ebooks that you create, but also in keeping your book from being nuked by Amazon and badly reviewed, which will cost you sales.
Many Publetarians may be familiar with Sean Platt as the Writer Dad, Ghostwriter Dad, or through the Collective Inkwell site. In addition to those endeavors, Sean is also an author. In this interview, I talk to Sean about his many irons in the fire and his latest experiment: a serialized novel entitled Yesterday’s Gone.
First off, April thanks for having me. It’s great to be here!
And that’s a great first question. In three years online, I don’t think anyone’s ever asked it before!
Writer dad was my original home on the web, the site I started before I had any clue what I was doing. It was an outlet, a conduit, a way for me to nurture my online voice and connect with an audience.
I’d only recently started writing when I bought the domain. But even three years ago it was clear to see what was happening with the publishing industry. I didn’t want a traditional contract, but that meant I had a lot of work to do as far as building a base. So Writer Dad was born from a desire to establish my own audience.
Attention was easy enough to get, but it was impossible to make any money with a site where I mostly talked about life and family. I had no advertising, and wasn’t willing to, despite my traffic. It seemed too incongruent with what I was trying to do. But I had to something since I was bleeding badly, having closed a successful business to follow my dream of becoming a writer.
Ghostwriter Dad was the solution to the problem, the site I started to capitalize on the name brand I had established for myself with Writer Dad, but with a built-in mechanism to make it easy to trade my time for money. I figured it would be simple enough to slip ghost in front of writer and trade a reasonable fee to keep my name off the byline, product, sales page, or whatever I was producing.
David Wright and I started Collective Inkwell around the same time as Ghostwriter Dad. Originally the site was designed to draw design and copy business, but we ended up mostly writing about creativity and the creative writing process. This was a BIG mistake, though we didn’t realize it at the time. Turns out you can’t really market your services as a writer when writers are your target audience. Seems super obvious when staring in the rearview, but it’s a common mistake a ton of writers make, ourselves included.
Collective Inkwell is now our publishing imprint, and home for all the work Dave and I do together. We’ll be re-launching the site soon as a a hub for self-publishing news and interviews, along with behind the scenes peeks at everything we’re going through ourselves during our own publishing process.
Should be a ton of fun. So far this year our teeny-tiny imprint has published six titles, including the full our horror novel, Available Darkness, and the full season of Yesterday’s Gone.
Your career in writing started out with copywriting and ghostwriting, but this year you’ve ventured into publishing your own full-length fiction and nonfiction as well. What prompted you to start publishing your own full-length works?
My intent was always to be an author and publisher, long before I ever registered my first domain. Copywriting and ghostwriting were a means to an end, a way to pay the bills until the sea change that would eliminate the gatekeepers and help authors like me and you get easily heard was complete.
I didn’t really see that happening until 2013 of the earliest, 2014 more likely, and was totally blown away last January when I saw numbers pouring in from writers like Konrath, Hocking, and Locke, doing exactly what I wanted to do (and was doing for others already!).
From that moment forward, it was game over. David and I completely shifted our business, and I started to break free from the work-for-hire hamster wheel.
I love my experience ghostwriting and copywriting. I’ve written everything. Sales letters, auto responders, blog posts, wedding vows, speeches, fiction. You name it, I’ve written it. I love knowing my fluency is strong enough to write pretty much anything that lands on my desk, but the articulate strength born from copywriting and persuasion techniques have helped Dave and I to design Yesterday’s Gone more like scripted serialized television, filled with open loops and awesome cliffhangers that make the viewer, or in this case the reader, salivate over what may happen next, more than a traditional novel.
I enjoy writing copy, and ghostwriting for others, but it reached a saturation point where I was fatigued by seeing other people reap success for words that came from inside me. You only want to be Cyrano for so long.
Your most recent writing project is a serialized novel entitled Yesterday’s Gone. Why have you and your writing partner elected to release this work in installments?
Dave and I love serialized TV. LOST, Dexter, Walking Dead, etc. But beyond that, we were tired of the slog of writing a single title at a time, then surrendering to the “hope and pray model.”
When we looked to others in self-publishing who were moving the units we’re looking to move, they’ve all published multiple titles. Konrath has his entire back catalog, Hocking is cranking hers out, and Locke had 5 Donavan Creed books before he even started his marketing!
We wanted to establish a heavy presence on Kindle by Christmas, but knew there was no way we could publish multiple titles with the quality we expect from ourselves, and that our readers have come to expect from us. Serializing a large story by writing it all out at once, then breaking it apart, exactly like they do with television, was what made most sense to us.
Have you found any particular creative challenges in working with the serialized approach?
In many ways, this is much, much easier than writing a regular book. A regular book, begins and ends, and if done well has a “hero’s journey” and solid story structure sprinkled through the pages in between. Our fiction, like the television it’s modeled after, takes a “season” approach. That means every episode leads into the next, and the finale leads into the first episode of our followup season.
People love watching television this way, but we believe the market will love buying and enjoying their e-content this way, too.
How about in more practical terms: what kinds of business considerations have gone into this book?
The business of the book follows a simple, classic model. Dave and I want to give the first episode away for free, or as close to it as we can get. We’ll publish the “pilot” for $.99 on Amazon, then make it available for free on Smashwords and hope Amazon price matches. People will buy the first episode, or download it for free, then if they love it they’ll want the next in the series.
This should also help us get a more qualified buyer for the entire season, meaning our reviews will be better and our links are more likely to get spread around. Of course, this is all contingent on creating something of quality that people really, really love. You can’t expect to throw anything on Kindle and have it do well. That doesn’t work now and it never ever will.
Our model is simple: the pilot is free or $.99, episodes 2-6 are $1.99, and the full season is $4.99.
We’re happy with our work getting read regardless, but were happiest when people download the full season, not only because they’ll get to enjoy the complete work as it was written and intended to be read, but because it’s where all the profit is ($3.50 versus $.30) for us as writers and publishers.
You are co-authoring the book with another author, David Wright. How does your collaborative process work, in terms of the actual writing?
I can’t imagine doing creative writing with anyone else and having it turn out nearly as fluid as it is when writing with David. We’ve been writing partners for three years, and have exchanged countless pages between us. Just as I’ve been a ghostwriter for many people, Dave’s been a ghostwriter for me, making my copy cleaner, and always helping to me to sound smarter than I actually am!
Specifically, with Yesterday’s Gone, it’s been a tremendously fun process. We started with the premise, agreeing that there would be six different POV’s and that we would each start by writing three. I wrote mine for the first episode and he wrote his, then we blended them together in a single narrative. This worked extremely well, both creatively and for overall efficiency, so it was how we divided the writing duties for the remainder of the project as well.
Admittedly, I’ve had a much easier time. My job was to write my chapters, and go over his. But Dave had to go over mine, assemble everything so it had the best possible flow, edit everything together, insert dates and times, then make sure we don’t have any snafus, like the one we had in the pilot where a guy in handcuffs tries to take off his shirt!
Yesterday’s Gone is being published exclusively as an ebook at this point. Do you think the rising popularity of ebooks could lead more authors to explore the serialization option?
Absolutely. It just seems smart. Honestly, I’m surprised it’s not being done more already, but I’m also thankful we’re early, before the market is flooded. Having said that, I believe there is and always will be plenty of room. As long as you publish a quality product that puts your reader first, and you take the time required to do it right, rather than seeing Kindle as a gold rush, and you work furiously to develop an engaged audience, even if that means falling down 341 times and standing up 342, you will eventually succeed.
Do you have any plans to publish the book as a single volume after the last installment has been released?
The entire season will be available as a print book, but that’s more of a marketing decision than one motivated by profit. If readers want to enjoy a print version, we want them to have it, yet so few of our sales are coming from print, across all our titles, it’s not enough to justify a print run on single episodes.
How are you approaching marketing for the book?
I spent the last couple of years as a ghostwriter, helping others market their finished products, but it’s always been within established networks. This round I have no list to lean on, so we’re going grassroots, trying to hit around 100 or so blogs in the next three months, and hoping influencers notice us.
After a while, I’ll start my round of emails. But I’m trying to avoid any cold emailing. I’d like people to find Yesterday’s Gone on their own, because I feel as though the growth will be more organic. Beyond that, I wrestle around 300 emails a day myself, and understand the deluge. I don’t want to be a yappy puppy adding to anyone else’s inbox triage.
Most authors and writers are familiar with the challenge of finding the time, energy and quiet focus they need to write. With all you have going on, the sites, the books, and being a family man to boot, how do find enough hours in the day to get everything done?
I can’t take credit for that. I have an amazing support team, an absolutely wonderful and impossibly patient wife, who handles all the household heavy lifting so I can make all this happen, and a remarkable team. Not just my partner Dave, but my other partners Tracy O’Connor, Danny Cooper, and my wife, Cindy, who have helped me with everything I’ve needed to get this project off the ground. Of course, it helps that I write fast, but it’s definitely not enough!
But fair warning: if you don’t like serials like LOST and writers like Stephen King, you probably won’t like reading Yesterday’s Gone. But if you like stuff that starts awesome, and then is awesome on every page until the WTF? cliffhanger ending, you’ll totally dig Yesterday’s Gone!
We also have a special insider’s club where we’ll be sending readers exclusive content and behind the scenes stuff. It’s a great place to be if you’re a writer interested in the publishing process and would like to tag along and get free sneak peaks at how it’s all going.
Click here if you want to be a “goner” and get the exclusive episode with the shocking ending.
Thanks so much for having me, April. It’s been fun!
This post, by Dean Wesley Smith, originally appeared on his site on 10/3/11.
A beginning note: This post came about because lately I’ve been getting the writer-as-center-of-the-universe questions a great deal. Writers believe that when they send in a manuscript to an editor, it is the only manuscript on the desk. Writers believe that when they take on an agent, they are the agent’s only client. Writers believe that their advance is the only money publishers will spend on their book. That sort of silliness, which drove the writing of this post. Keep that in mind when reading this. Thanks!
Traditional Publishers Caused Agents to Become Publishers.
Let me simply say that traditional publishers deserve what they are getting.
And my question is this to traditional publishers:
WHY WOULD YOU DEAL WITH AN AGENT WHO IS YOUR COMPETITOR?
Why not just cut off those agencies and go direct to the writers?
Too simple, right? Too logical. Too much of a logical, good-business solution for publishing, I know. Sigh.
But even with traditional publishers being continually stupid, agents as publishers just won’t work. And today, in Publisher’s Marketplace, we saw that clearly once again.
Let me explain this as best as I can.
The History
Over a decade ago traditional publishers, in a cost-cutting measure, decided that slush piles did not serve them well. So someone, somewhere (more than likely in Pocket Books, since this sort of started in the Star Trek department) decided that publishers could outsource the slush pile to agents.
In other words, give up control of the pipeline to the original product that they depended on. Yeah, that was smart business.
The publishers did this by simply putting in their guidelines that instead of no unsolicited manuscripts, they wouldn’t accept unagented manuscripts. One simple word changed the job of agents.
This post, by Mike Shatzkin, originally appeared on his The Shatzkin Files blog on The Idea Logical Company site on 10/2/11.
Almost two years ago, I wrote a post which continues to be one of the most-read in the history of this blog, the point of which was that the business model disruption (called “agency”) prompted by the iPad would have more impact on the ebook ecosystem than the device itself. I’m happy to repeat that statement today because I think events have proven that hunch to be correct.
This week Amazon announced their new tablet, the Kindle Fire. (Mine’s on order. I gave the original Kindle I had to my wife, who still uses it. I also own an iPad but never read books on it. As everybody who reads this blog regularly knows, my ebook consumption is all iPhone, largely purchased through the Kindle store, sometimes through Nook, Kobo, or Google, but never through iBookstore.)
The Kindle Fire announcement has unleashed a spate of stories in the tech press about the battle between Apple and Amazon. Who knows what Apple’s rejoinder will be, but it would seem that Fire offers much more than half of what an iPad delivers to a media consumer for much less than half the price and about two-thirds the weight. It appears it will fit in the hip pocket of a man’s suit jacket. That sounds like a competitive formula. It already was for Nook Color, and Amazon seems, at least for the moment, to have done them one better.
Books are not the central focus of this Amazon-Apple battle even from Amazon’s point of view and they are certainly are not from Apple’s. Apple is a device company and their content offerings, and their control of their content offerings, are intended to reinforce the unique experience their devices deliver. Amazon certainly knows from their Kindle experience that offering the right device can propel content sales and secure the content customers’ business (a lesson B&N has both learned and demonstrated quite successfully with Nook as well). The Fire is as much about video content as it is about books.
Amazon wants to acquire its book content with the ability to control the selling price so they can continue to burnish their reputation as the lowest-cost provider and exploit other advantages that their huge customer base and extraordinarily deep pockets provide them. Apple wants a margin-guaranteed commercial model that also assures them that they won’t be embarrassed by having their customers see the same content for a lower price elsewhere.
Apple assumed they’d be able to move the most devices and, with price neutrality, create enough advantages to their device owners to shop in the device’s “home” store to satisfy their competitive requirements. That is, Apple’s content-selling strategy was to maximize their market share among their own device owners. They do nothing to move the content onto other companies’ devices.
But in the book business, we look at these two titans in a different way because they force publishing into managing two completely different commercial models simultaneously. That’s not something most of the tech community has paid any attention to in the prolific “Amazon versus Apple” commentary following the Kindle Fire announcement. But it reinforces the point made in the post from two years ago: the fact that Amazon and Apple have different approaches to acquiring and pricing content offerngs is the most important aspect of the battle between them to the book publishing community. Who “wins”, as in “who sells the most devices?” (or even “who sells the most ebooks?”), is really quite secondary since both are significant and neither is going away.
This post, by Michael D. Britton, originally appeared on his site on 10/3/11.
DRIVE – you won’t get far without it
There are lots of essential ingredients to achieving success in a fiction writing career.
Talent (or skill) is certainly key – but a gift for writing, alone, will not get you there.
Some may say “it’s not what you know, but who you know.” Sure, connections are important – and part of building your career involves doing the work to build those connections and personal networks. But again, knowing the right people is not enough.
Others say you just need to have luck. Leaving your career up to chance is not a plan for success. I know of one successful writer who has been known to say, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”
In other words, you need to have determination. Persistence. Patience. Faith.
In a word – DRIVE.
That drive is what motivates you to write every day. To finish every short story or novel you start. To submit every work for sale to a publisher who can buy it. To keep it submitted until it sells. (If that list looks familiar, see my previous post on Heinlein’s Rules).
Or, you can opt for the non-traditional route, and take the leap to publishing it yourself using tools like Kindle Direct Publishing and Smashwords. All of these things require drive. (More on becoming a publisher in a future post.)
Drive also pushes a writer to improve his craft through learning and practice, and through accepting valid constructive criticism from trusted sources (your First Readers, and mentors who are further along in their careers than you are).
That takes humility.
How is my DRIVE translated to the written page? By setting goals and meeting them.
For example, two years ago, my goals involved maintaining a writing “streak.” It consisted of the following:
I’m supposed to be on holiday for the rest of this week, but I just wanted to post a quick report on Conflux 7, which happened this past long weekend. Conflux is the Canberra-based annual Fantasy and Science Fiction convention, and it holds a special place in my heart. I love the vibe of this particular con, always friendly and open. It lived up to that rep once again.
There were many highlights for me. The Angry Robot launch was excellent and well attended. Kaaron Warren and Joanne Anderton were there to launch their books, Mistification and Debris. Trent Jamieson was there in spirit, though not in person, as his new book, Roil, was also included in the launch. Kaaron’s daughter made angry robot cupcakes for the event, which looked great and tasted better:
The official opening ceremony followed that, MCd by the incomparable Jack Dann. There’s no one quite like Jack Dann, for which we should probably all be thankful, but he’s a great guy and loads of fun. He’s one of the good guys and opened the con with great enthusiasm.
Following the opening ceremony was the official launch of the new CSFG Publishing anthology, Winds Of Change. That book includes my story, Dream Shadow. There were a staggering fifteen contributing authors and artists at the convention, so a mass signing table was set up and we all sat down to sign for people buying the book. It sold really well – my signing hand was fully a-cramped by the end. Here’s a shot of the mass signing – you can spot me by my terrible posture:
Quite a night, involving lots of beer, and that was only the first evening.
Other personal highlights for me included the Evil Overlord panel, on the subject of the Best Getaway Vehicle for an Evil Overlord. I was moderating that panel, with Laura E Goodin, Kathleen Jennings and Phil Berrie. We started by discussing some of our ideas, then I opened the floor to the audience. Lots of suggestions were made and discussed, a long list was whittled to a short list and a final vote decided that the ideal getaway vehicle was a Monkey-style flying cloud. I’m pleased to say that was my original suggestion. Not only that, the incredibly talented Kathleen Jennings illustrated the winner. Here’s me with The Duck Lord:
I’m honoured to have that very drawing hanging on the wall of my study right now.
I enjoyed the Paths To Publishing panel I was on, along with Cat Sparks, Nicole Murphy and Natalie Costa-Bir. That was one of those panels where I got to share my own experience and learn a lot at the same time – always the best kind in my mind.
Right after that panel, due to a bit of a SNAFU, the Guests Of Honour gathered for their Q&A panel, but there was no MC present. I stepped up and got to wrangle the audience for questions for four very cool people – awesome author Kim Westwood, editor extraordinaire Natalie Costa-Bir, and artists Lewis Morley and Marilyn Pride. Hearing them talk about their processes and projects, and where they’re headed next was very interesting. Here’s a pic of that panel:
L to R: Lewis Morley, Marilyn Pride, Natalie Costa-Bir, Kim Westwood and me (last minute ring-in MC)
From that panel I went directly to one about the influence of heavy metal music on SF, and SF’s influence on it. The panel consisted of myself, Tracey O’Hara and Joanne Anderton. We also talked about the influence of extreme music on us and our writing. It was a great panel, very interesting and vibrant, and I think everyone there, including the three of us, left with a list of new bands to check out. Here’s that panel:
L to R: Tracey O’Hara, me, Joanne Anderton
I attended several other items as an audience member too. Probably the highlights for me were Kim Westwood’s Guest Of Honour speech, the panel on short story writing (with Kim Westwood, Jack Dann, Kaaron Warren, Helen Stubbs and Cat Sparks), the panel on why we love the dark and macabre in our art (with Andrew J McKiernan, Kaaron Warren and Kyla Ward), and a reading by Kaaron Warren of a new short story, which resulted in a very interesting discussion afterwards, talking about the themes of the story. I’d love to see more of that at cons, and I’d love the opportunity to read one of my short stories to a group and have a discussion about it afterwards. I also really enjoyed the Historical Banquet on Saturday night, a 1929 Zeppelin themed dinner. Well done Gillian Polack for that one. Of course, I did loads more stuff, but it’s all swirling in the misty pseudo-memory that is my post-con brain right now.
Just reading over that, I look like a right Kaaron Warren fanboi. And you know what? I am. Not only that, Kaaron was kind enough to put me up over the weekend and make me coffee and bacon sandwiches. She’s absolutely lovely in every way and an incredible talent. I’m honoured to call her my friend. In fact, here’s a pic of three of my favourite SF ladies and me:
L to R: Jodi Cleghorn, Kaaron Warren, me, Joanne Anderton
It was also great to hang out with Cat Sparks and Rob Hood for the weekend, who were also staying at Kaaron’s. And that’s a fine example of the kind of SF community we have in Australia, and around the world. The F&SF community takes care of each other and every con is just an excuse to catch up with good friends and hopefully make some new ones.
The only downside to the con was that on Sunday night some junkie fuckknuckle smashed out the window of my car, bled all over it and stole a bunch of my stuff. He also smashed windows and stole stuff from at least seven other cars in the street. So that sucks the big one, but it’s not enough to spoil a good con.
Conflux was great, as it always is, and I can’t wait for the next one.
I’ve only posted a handful of pics, as those are all I’ve managed to pilfer thus far. I’ll post links to other photos from the con when I find some. If you have any, please drop a link in the comments. Also, if you were there, share your favourite moments in the comments too.
Oh, and one last thing. There was a person there who asked me a few times to have a chat about short story markets. I kept telling her that I would find five minutes for a chat about it, yet I never did! I’m sorry – if you’re reading, drop me an email.
Protecting your computer’s data files is something every self-publisher must know about and deal with before it is too late. It is not a complicated or expensive process. It can be as simple as having an external hard drive and using cloud storage. No special knowledge or fancy equipment is needed. And, the process is very easy to automate. It is essential that you keep the back-up process simple and automatic. It is also essential to create multiple copies, on-site, and off-site. Here is a run-down of how we do this in our office.
Using An External Drive For Data Backup
We started out using one external hard drive in our office. This is the most basic and easiest way to protect your data that is located on your internal hard drive. A brand-name 3TB hard drive is now $120. Make sure that you purchase a hard drive larger than you currently need. But don’t overbuy. Right now this 3TB has a good price. As time goes on, the larger hard drives will drop in price too. Another reason not to over-buy is that hard drives don’t last forever. Purchase only what you need now, and then upgrade with a newer and larger unit when you need it. We purchased an external USB hard drive that is only 5 inches x 7 inches x 1.5 inches. This small size gives you an easy way to put the hard drive into your safe, or safety deposit box, or take it with you on your working vacation.
Using Multiple External Drives For Data Backup
We now use multiple external hard drives. They are installed together and they work as one unit within a storage array box. This way we can store a large amount of data on multiple drives that are all stored within one small, desk-top box. Even if one or two drives fail, we would still have several more still working. Again, only purchase a big-name storage array box and big-name external hard drive to put into it.
Using Cloud Storage For Data Backup
Storing your data online is called "cloud storage". You should consider using cloud storage because it is a safe and simple way to store your files away from your office – where they can’t be stolen from your office, lost, or burned up in a fire. There are many cloud storage companies, and all are easy to find on the internet. Many offer 2GB or 5GB of free storage. There are also many reviews and comparisons of the different services on the internet. Some companies will even automatically backup your data to an external hard drive and, at the same time, also to the cloud. Play it safe and pick one of the big-name cloud storage companies to deal with for your business.
How Do I Find A Cloud Storage Company?
There are many cloud storage companies, and all are easy to find on the internet. There are many reviews and comparisons of the different services on the internet. Some will even automatically backup your data to an external hard drive and also to the cloud. Play it safe and pick one of the big-name companies to deal with.
Isn’t Backing Up To The Cloud Risky?
Your data will be stored in an encrypted format when it is backed up to the cloud at the storage company, which should prevent a hacker from easily accessing your information. If you require a greater level of security, you can use your own private encryption key to further reduce possible exposure to data intrusion. The likelihood of a server like Apple’s, or Amazon’s, or Google’s going down is far less than the possibility that your own hard drive or local backup will fail.
Working Away From Home/Office
If you are away from your home/business computer, and using your laptop, email yourself the document that you are working on. Also save it to your laptop’s internal hard drive, and to your flash drive. A good general rule is that you should never keep extremely sensitive data on your laptop. Keep it on your flash drive and on the cloud. We keep several flash drives with us when on vacation – and keep them in our pockets for safe-keeping. Flash drives are very inexpensive – so buy and use several. We purchased 3 brand-name 8GB flash dives for under $20.
Should I Encrypt My Hard Drives?
For most purposes, encryption of your computer or hard drive is not necessary. Encryption is only necessary for extremely sensitive data – like your patients’ medical records. If you encrypt a backup, you will add unneeded complexity to a process that is designed to simplify and preserve fast access to your information. With this added complexity comes the increased probability of a problem. Therefore, the chance that you lose access to your backed-up data goes up. Do yourself a favor and make sure that you understand when and why you might need to encrypt your backups and think about how you’ll guarantee that will you have access to your encryption password when it counts. Data encryption will cost you too much time, money, and aggravation.
What Computer Data Should I Backup?
At the very least, you need to back up everything except software applications. Any data that is necessary for the operation of your business must be copied. Most software is easy to replace, and generally not too expensive.
What About Our Websites, Blogs, Mailing Lists, and Online Publications?
All of these are absolutely essential to keep your self-publishing business going and thriving. Fortunately, every one of them already has a built-in backup. We keep multiple backup copies on multiple hard drives here in our office, and also on the cloud. All of our websites and blogs are also backed-up by the hosting company. Our hosting company also sends us a backup copy by email. Our mailing lists are kept at an online mailing list company. The list can easily be downloaded from the mailing list company. We also keep a copy of it on our computers and hard drives. All of our online publications (ebooks and edocuments) also have full copies with the companies that sell our publications.
Conclusion
By having a simple backup plan that utilizes both online data backup and multiple external hard drives, you’re providing yourself with foolproof security for when your computer’s hard drive crashes, or your system is ruined in a fire or flood. Don’t risk losing your important files forever when you can quickly and inexpensively avoid that mess with a tripled-up data backup plan. And never forget: do not put all of your trust in one method over the other. Internal hard drives, external hard drives, and flash drives can fail. Even your cloud storage company can fail – go out of business, be hacked, or their software on your computer can fail.
This article was written by Joseph C. Kunz, Jr. and originally posted on KunzOnPublishing.com
The book! It seems obvious, right? But you’d be amazed at how hard it is to find information about the author’s book on some sites.
It’s fine to have other content on your author website or blog, but make sure that it’s really easy to find a description of your book and a link directly to a place where customers can buy the book.
Recently I visited the website of an author who had written a book on a topic that I have an interest in, but I could find no description of the book. I clicked on the link that said the book was available on Amazon and landed on Amazon’s home page. No, I did not make the effort to search out the book on Amazon, having already gotten a poor impression.
It’s helpful to look at your site through the eyes of a visitor who has never been there before.
* What’s the first thing you see when you land on the site?
* Is there a book cover visible on the home page and other pages? If your website is a blog, it’s easy to display your book cover in the sidebar, along with a link to the book description or purchase page. You can see a book cover and links to my books in the sidebar of this site under the heading "Book Marketing Guides".
* Is there an obvious link to somewhere people can learn more about the book? From your main navigation menu, you could place a link that says something like "About the Book," "My Books" or "Buy the Book". On this site, the link says "Resources".
* Is the book description compelling enough to motivate buyers?
* Have you listed quotes from book reviews in the book description, to demonstrate that others find your book valuable or entertaining?
* Is there a direct link to your book’s page on Amazon or some other place the book can be purchased? Check the links and make sure they work properly.
Don’t make it difficult for visitors to your website to learn about your book and buy it! Make sure your website does a good job of selling your book.
Oh, and you can find descriptions of all of my books here.
This post, by Mark Williams, originally appeared on The Writer’s Guide to E-Publishing on 10/2/11.
D.D. was here yesterday talking about the new Kindle Fire and the other e-reader devices Amazon have coincidentally brought out just in time for Christmas and the launch of Pottermore. Those guys at Amazon are just so lucky with their timing!
Come to that, they’ve been pretty lucky all round. What an incredible coincidence Amazon launched their Kindle just when ebooks started to take off.
What an incredible coincidence Amazon opened a Kindle store just to sell ebooks.
What an incredible coincidence Amazon invested in the digital future and took a risk on letting indies sell their own work.
What an incredible coincidence Amazon is now a publisher as well as a distributor of books and ebooks.
Of course, none of it is coincidental. Amazon have a clear strategy. That’s not to say Amazon planned in advance every last nut and bolt. What they do is respond proactively to changing conditions. That’s why they are a huge successful business.
As writers we can learn a lot from Amazon. Because in the new publishing world successful writers are also successful business men and women. Like it or not, it’s a fact. We produce goods, package them, and go out and sell them.
Some of us do better than others, obviously. In part that’s down to product. The writers with best-sellers on their hands obviously have something people want to buy. But the most successful writers are those that sell outside their personal blogosphere.
That is, they reach a readership that doesn’t just consist of friends, family, fellow writers and the odd passerby.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. These are your core supporters that get you through the bad times. But the good times only come when you reach the wider market – complete strangers.
I’ve recently published my first blog to help get the word out about my memoir, ROOFMAN: A True Story of Cold war Espionage.
http://roofmanthespy.wordpress.com/
It’s so hard to get the word out there as an independent publisher, but I’m on the right track. So far I have three prestigious book reviews and will soon be adding a forth.
Any feedback about my blog will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance,
Whether you are about to self-publish your first book, or start a micro-niche publishing company, you need to have business plan in place. A business plan will give you a basic road map for your new business. An easy and quick way to do this is to create a one-page business plan. This will let you quickly clarify your own thinking about your new business. This short, one-page plan can also be used as an outline for a longer more in-depth plan. With some research, you should be able to complete this one-page plan in under one week. Here is a list of five questions that you must include in your simplified, one-page business plan.
1. WHY do you want to self-publish?
Your answer cannot be only about the money. It needs something more than that. It also needs to be short, very specific, and very personal.
Examples: a. “I want to write a book that will help new nurses be more productive, more effective, and more marketable in today’s tight job market.”
b. “I want to write small-business management books so that I can share my knowledge and expertise with others that would like to start their own small-business. I gained this knowledge and experience over the last 35 years while starting and managing my own successful small-business.”
c. “I want to write and self-publish a book to give myself more credibility in the eyes of my peers.”
2. WHAT will you write about?
Explain it in one sentence, in very specific detail. You must understand what you writing niche, or specialty, will be.
Examples:
a. “I will write and publish books about all aspects of self-publishing for people who have not written a book before.”
b. “I will write a how-to book for experienced nurses who want to advance to become part of nursing management in a hospital.”
c. “I will write a how-to guide for new parents who are raising a deaf child.”
3. WHO is your market?
You must narrow this down to a very specific group of people. Your answer cannot be “everybody and anybody”. You must know exactly who buys your type of book. You only have a limited amount of time and money for marketing and promotion. You must target your best efforts at those who are most likely to buy your book. Keep your answer down to a few tight sentences.
a. “The market for my book is American nursing students that are in nursing school, or have just graduated as RN’s with an AS or BS degree in nursing and are searching for their first job. They are generally females between 20 and 26 years of age. Half of them like to read a hard-copy of a book; the other half like to read the ebook version. They are very worried about getting a job after graduation, because the nursing shortage has ended.”
4. HOW do you define success?
You might spend the next twelve months writing your first book. And then a year later you are selling less than 8 copies a month on Amazon. Therefore, you must come to terms with what success means to you. Does success mean seeing your name on the cover of a book? Does it mean being able to give each of your customers a copy of your book so that they will have more admiration and respect for you? Does success mean getting letters and emails from people who read your book – telling you that your book has helped them in some positive way? We all can agree that making a lot of money is great – and is possible as a self-publisher – but it cannot be your only motivation for writing a book. Therefore, you should write a paragraph here about how you define success for your book.
5. HOW hard are you willing to work at it?
How much time and hard work are you willing to put into your self-publishing venture? This is probably the step that you must put the most honest thinking and most thought into. Are you willing to spend most of your time marketing and selling your book? Your book might take 6 to 12 months to write. But you will spend the next several years marketing and promoting it. Are you willing to put yourself out there and market and promote yourself, your name, and your book, the for next several years? Are you willing to keep writing and building your next book? The more time and effort that you put into your self-publishing venture, the more success you will have. It will be much easier to go the distance if you love your subject matter. And the more you love your subject matter, the more successful you will be at self-publishing. It is as simple as that.
This article was written by Joseph C. Kunz, Jr. and originally posted on KunzOnPublishing.com
I ran across an excerpt of this interesting post entitled “My Book Ate my Blog” by Sophie Perinot on the Passive Voice blog (which if you haven’t discovered the Passive Guy yet, run right over and check him out!), about the difficulties of balancing the demands of maintaining a blog while trying to write. The comments on her site, and on the Passive Voice, were filled by people who agreed that blogging was taking them away from writing or how hard it was to maintain a balance.
As I thought about my own history of blogging, I found an interesting pattern had emerged. First of all, I am not a prolific blogger. For the whole time I have been blogging (21 months) I have produced only 40 blog posts-counting this one (which means an average of 1.9 posts a month). My blog posts tend to be long, detailed, and they often take me 1-2 days to write. According to perceived wisdom on the subject of social media and marketing, this infrequent blogging pace, and my hopeless inability to use Twitter effectively, probably explains my small number of subscribers (40), and my low number of views (7000 views total in the 21 months I have been blogging–an average 333 a month).
Nevertheless, I have been very fortunate that most of my posts have been cross-posted in Publetariat, providing with me a much larger readership than these statistics suggest, and generally my statistics have shown growth, with 2011 showing 5 times the number of hits than 2010-and the ratio of growth should be even higher by the end of the year.
However, when I examined it, my pattern of blogging did not seem to suggest that my blogging had any negative effects on my writing. I started blogging in December of 2009 (the same month I self-published my first historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune. Between Dec 2009 and the end of Dec 2010, I published on average 1.7 posts per month. I was marketing, not writing, during those 13 months—so there was no conflict at all.
I started working on my sequel, Uneasy Spirits, in January 2011 and completed the first draft at the end of June 2011. In that 6 months period I averaged 2.3 blog posts per month. Obviously writing did not interfere with my blogging, nor vice versa, since in that 6 months I produced a draft that was over 140,000 words long.
However, as I rushed to complete the draft in June and then began the process of getting feedback, rewriting, getting more feedback, editing, and then proof-reading the manuscript to get it ready for publication by October 15 (my self-imposed deadline), my blogging rate went down considerably. I not only didn’t post anything in Jun, but I only produced one post for July, August, and by the skin of my teeth (since this post is coming out Sept 28th) one in September.
One could conclude that blogging had not interfered with my writing (since I was more productive as a blogger when I was writing full-time.) However, once the book was a real entity, and I moved into high gear to get it published, it completely consumed me. In other words, it was my book that ate my blog.
My conclusion? When I was marketing my first book, blogging was a natural extension of that process, no conflict. When writing the book, blogging was actually a nice break from the fiction, and my blogging benefited. But when the first draft was done, and I knew I had a book, and I created a deadline for myself (I was committed to getting the book out in October, in time to garner reviews by the Christmas holidays), then doing everything that was necessary to get that book out there to readers began to consume me. Everything became secondary.
But today I am currently waiting for the print proofs, I am confident I am not only going to meet my deadline, but the book may actually be out there a week earlier, so watch out world, this blogger’s back!
So has your blog eaten your book, or has your book eaten your blog?
Congratulations! You’ve finally finished the first draft of your novel! Give yourself a huge pat on the back and go out and celebrate! Then put it away for at least two weeks while you concentrate on other things, before going back and starting on revisions.
—Yes, revisions — starting with big-picture issues, like plot, characters, point of view and pacing. It’s highly unlikely that your first draft is ready for proofreading, or even line editing yet — save that for the last step of the revision process, after any large issues are detected and dealt with. If you’re unable to hire a freelance developmental editor and/or a copy editor, this is where your critique group (online or in-person) or acquaintances who read a lot of fiction come in.
Based on my own experience and advice from writing gurus, I’ve compiled a recommended approach to the revision process:
1.After you’ve finished your first draft, put your story away and concentrate on other things for a few weeks or even a month. Let the story percolate in your subconscious for a while.
2.Meanwhile send/give the manuscript to “beta readers” — savvy people who read a lot of fiction, in your genre. For suggestions and a list of possible questions, see my blog post, "Questions for Your Beta Readers" on Crime Fiction Collective (and here). Get at least two volunteer readers, but no more than five, as too many contradictory opinions could get overwhelming. Stress to your reades that at this point you’re looking for big issues only — parts where they felt excited, curious, delighted, scared, worried, confused, bored, etc.
3.After your break of a few weeks or so, collect the reactions of your volunteer readers or critique group. Go through them and note any that you really like; perhaps ask for clarification of suggestions, or more details.
4.Change the font of your manuscript to one you really like and print it up to read, rather than on the screen. (A different medium to help you look at it with fresh eyes. Or you can save this step until you’ve incorporated some changes.)
5.Reread your manuscript from start to finish, making separate notes only on big-picture changes you’d like to make, such as plot, characterization, point of view, pacing, etc. Cross out, delete or condense any boring scenes. Don’t get bogged down on wording or punctuation, etc. at this point.
6.Update your story outline and “to-do list” or plan of action to take into account advice from your beta readers, and/or critique group, as well as your own new ideas.
8.Now would be a good time to send your revised story to a freelance editor or to a few more volunteer readers — ones who haven’t read an earlier version.
9.Incorporate any new suggestions you like, and resave each new version as you go along, using the current date in the file name.
10.Go back to the beginning and start editing for voice, style, and flow. Slash excess wording and repetitions, or overexplaining. Streamline your sentences. Take out whole sentences and paragraphs — even scenes or chapters — if they don’t add anything new or drive the story forward. Take out unneeded adverbs and adjectives, eliminate clichés, and pump up your verbs to bring the action to life. See my blog post on fixing common style gaffes, “Style Blunders in Fiction” at The Thrill Begins BlogSpot.
11.Read just the dialogue out loud, maybe role-playing with a buddy or two. Do the conversations sound natural? Or stilted or even boring in parts. Amp up the tension and cut down on those empty phrases, overly wordy monologues, complete sentences, too-perfect grammar, etc. See my blog post called “Writing Effective Dialogue.”
12.Go through and do a basic line edit for grammar, spelling, and punctuation — or better yet, hire a freelance fiction editor to do it.
13. Change the font to one you like, and print up the manuscript, double-spaced. Sit down with it and read it through out loud, crossing out excess words and sentences, and noting changes and suggestions between the lines, in the margins, or on the back.
14. Open up the screen version and type these new changes into your document; resave with today’s date.
15.Go over the whole thing again, on screen or on paper, looking for any new issues that crop up. Changes very often create new errors, so watch for those.
16.Repeat above steps as needed, until your manuscript is compelling and polished, before sending it off to a literary agent or acquiring editor, or self-publishing. This whole revision process could easily take several months. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot by publishing it or sending it off too soon.
17.Better yet, at some point along this process, send it to a reputable freelance fiction editor so you can get a professional, unbiased look at it, from someone familiar with both the genre and industry standards.
It’s almost a year since I started hashtagstories – microstories written with current Twitter hashtags.
Sorry? Stories written with what? A year ago this was weird even to me. But it was just so inspiring to combine the world of hashtags into a piece of a literary fiction that I gave it a try. I also wanted to use it as a way to enter English writing. It was looking like a pretty easy job to do – just collect meaningful, emotional hashtags and scrabble them into a story.
After a year I can tell you – hashtagstories are not easy. They are a hard work. I had to go through many Twitter-based services to find the best source of hashtag info. Previously I was using Hashtags.org, now it’s What the Trend.
There are spam hashtags. There are misleading hashtags. There are secret abbreviations. I always have to be very careful to avoid using a wrong word. And the wrong word with a tag is a way worse than the wrong word alone.
Like many unusual projects, hashtagstories had big chances to fail. As the primary way to build meaning is the order of words, there is a danger a story can be misinterpreted. It’s hard to decode a story when it’s told with nouns only. I managed to write only few stories, which read as a sentence. One of the best ones is:
#iwish #iseeyou #inmyhood #beforethestorm
I have a warm feeling that I’ll stay with #hashtagstory for a long time. It’ll not be a day-to-day love. It’ll happen in bursts. But it’s good to write them. When I was publishing a book at Feedbooks, Hashtagstories Vol. 1, I’ve worked out a good, decent description of what the stories are: a literary memoir of social media trends.
Yes, this is what they are. It’ll take some time to find in them the emotions of the past. It’s not gonna take too much time, though. Social media life is changing so fast.
Last thing, I’m happy to share with you, that Hashtagstories Vol. 1, has crossed 1,000 downloads. Thank you all for showing interest and sharing #hashtagstory with your Twitter friends.
It took me a while to fall in love with Google Chrome. I was a die hard Firefox user for many years, and felt I owed FF my loyalty for saving me from the wretched Internet Explorer. But now I can’t live without Google Chrome. It’s minimal design paired with its ease-of-use makes it a worthy browser.
But what I love most about Google Chrome are the apps/extensions. They make browsing the internet a much more satisfying activity. But Google Chrome apps and extensions don’t just enhance browsing, they also help improve productivity, make certain tasks easier to perform, and can even help curb procrastination when you need it.
As a writer, I need all the help I can get being more productive and limiting procrastination. Google Chrome doesn’t just help me surf the web, it also makes me a better writer. By utilizing Google Chrome apps and extensions, you can also become more productive as a writer (and hopefully less distracted). Some of my favorite Google Chrome apps and extensions are below.
Ten Google Chrome apps or extensions that will make you a better writer:
Send to Kindle – The description on the app page says: “Send to Kindle is a Browser extension for Kindle owners who prefer reading web content on their devices. It’s designed to offer a quick way for pushing web content to Kindle, so you can read articles or news on your device.” It’s also available for Safari, Firefox, Opera, and IE9.
ScribeFire – If you’re a blogger, or have a website hosted on one of the well-known blogging platforms, then ScribeFire will be a very useful tool. “You can post to blogs from WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Windows Live Spaces, Tumblr, Posterous, Xanga, LiveJournal, or any other blog that supports the MetaWeblog or MovableType APIs.” Also available for Firefox.
Lazarus: Form Recovery – I’ve been using Lazarus for several years now and I can honestly say it has saved my butt quite a few times. Lazarus autosaves everything you type so you can easily recover from form-killing timeouts, crashes and network errors. All those blog posts that disappear when your computer crashes, or when you try to post and get an error can now be saved. If only I had known about this during the Myspace blogging days. Also available for Firefox.
StayFocused – One of my favorite apps, and one of the best. This is a godsend during NaNoWriMo. “StayFocusd is a productivity extension for Google Chrome that helps you stay focused on work by restricting the amount of time you can spend on time-wasting websites. Once your allotted time has been used up, the sites you have blocked will be inaccessible for the rest of the day.” Definitely helps cut out the distractions and curbs the procrastination.
White Noise – This one isn’t for everyone. “Some people find that a white noise source improves their ability to concentrate by covering over irritating or distracting sounds like an annoying neighbor’s stereo or the loud traffic outside.” If you aren’t one of those people who finds white noise soothing, go ahead and skip to the next app, but if you’re like me, you’ll love this app!
Vyew – This one also isn’t for everyone. This is best utilized between two or more people collaborating on a project. (Great for writers working on projects such as anthologies or for illustrators and writers working on graphic novels). “Vyew is a tool that allows you to meet and share information both in real-time and continuously. Upload images, files, videos and more into Vyew, and Vyew will store the information in one room that anyone can access and contribute to at anytime.”
Write Space – I just recently started using this one. I like it. It’s not extravagant, but that’s part of its appeal. I do have other apps and software similar to this that I use often, but I find this also does the trick in a pinch. According to the webstore page, “Write Space is a customizable full-screen text-editor that lives in your web-browser. It is designed to minimize the distractions that come between you and your writing.”
Dark Scroll – Similar to Write Space. “Dark Scroll is a distraction-free writing environment for Google Chrome. This application is similar to WriteRoom, Write Monkey and Pyroom.” I’m looking forward to the features that will be introduced in the future, especially more font options and the ability to sync with Google Docs.
Dictionary.com – I don’t know what I would do without my dictionary and thesaurus. I use them more in a day than I can imagine. “Dictionary Instant instantly returns word definition as you type, plus a quick link to Dictionary.com if you ever need further detail.” Functional and necessary.
Kindle Cloud Reader – I think it’s safe to say that a good many people now have a Kindle (or other e-reader) and that this isn’t a gadget that will fizzle out and die anytime soon. It took me a long time to want a Kindle, and even longer to finally get one. Now that I have it, I don’t think I can live without it. Or this extension. “Kindle Cloud Reader is a web app from Amazon that lets you read your Kindle books, instantly.” So even if you don’t have a Kindle, you should certainly have a Kindle app. I promise you won’t be disappointed.
There you have it, ten Google Chrome apps and extensions to make your writing life easier and more productive. You can find all of these Google Chrome apps and more at the Google Chrome Web Store. Just search for an app by category, or if you know it, by the name of the app.
Q: Do you use Google Chrome? If not, what’s your favorite browser? And of course, what are your favorite apps and extensions for your browser?
Kemari Howell is a freelance book editor and Literary Seamstress. She is a thirty-something mother of twins, whom she calls Thing 1 and Thing 2, and currently lives in Florida. A self-proclaimed belletrist, Kemari has been writing since she learned the fine art of cursive writing. She’s had several short pieces published, including a poem when she was fifteen, and is currently working on an as-yet-titled YA novel. She has been editing informally for well over seven years, only recently making the migration to full-time freelancer. She is the founder and managing content editor of Easily Mused, a concept borne from a desire to support and inspire the creative community.
