Writing Full Time: What Does It Look Like To You?

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I haven’t written a post in some time, because I was working furiously to finish the first draft of Uneasy Spirits, the sequel to Maids of Misfortune, my historical mystery set in 1879 San Francisco. The manuscript is now out to my first set of beta readers, I have just finished a week of family visits and entertaining my grandchildren, and, to keep from obsessing over whether my beta readers will like the new novel, I thought I would try to take stock of my writing process. I was particularly interested in looking at my own speed after the lively discussion on blogs this past month over this topic prompted by Dean Wesley Smith’s post on writing four novels a year.

Last fall I made the decision to retire completely from teaching (see this post) and start to work on my writing full-time, as the number of sales I was making of Maids of Misfortune began to increase enough to compensate for that loss of income. In December 2010, after my last set of finals were graded and turned in, I went off to visit my daughter and family for Christmas, and when I got back I took out the outline I had written over for Uneasy Spirits and started to write, January 3, 2011. I finished the first draft, June 28, 2011, almost exactly 6 months later.

During this six-month period I kept a log where I recorded the number of words I accomplished for each day that I worked on the novel. I was very surprised when I added up the number of days I wrote and discovered that over that period (181 days) I only wrote on 90 of them (50%). Suddenly my full-time writing looked part-time. So where did all the days go?

First of all, I wasn’t always in town, because I am definitely part of that generation who is sandwiched between family responsibilities. With a father with worsening Alzheimer’s, and a daughter who had a second baby in sixteen months, I was away from home on four visits that totaled 23 days. So, I really had 168 possible days to write. This got me up to working 55 % of the available days.

Then, there is the question of weekends, because the 181 days figure included all the days of the week. Now, while I have found myself working seven days a week on some aspect of my writing and publishing, to be fair to myself, subtracting the days I was out of town, and the weekends of the days I was in town, left me with 127 writing days in that six month period. Given that figure, I wrote on 71% of the days available for writing.

Suddenly I don’t feel like such a slouch, particularly when you figure in the amount of time I spend as an indie author in the other aspects of the business of publishing, and that as an officially retired senior, I could be just living a life of leisure. (Smile)

No longer feeling like such a slacker, I considered the issue of actual writing speed. Smith says he can write 750-1000 words an hour. This of course has caused a great deal of discussion among the author community, and, I can only say, more power to him. Personally, I find my writing speed is much slower. I always start a writing day rereading what I have written the day before and making at least minor corrections. This gets me back into the story, but it certainly eats into my average words per hour. Writing a historical novel means that I often spend a great deal of time looking things up, often on the internet. For example, I frequently check to make sure a word I have used was in common usage in 1879, or the correct name for the architectural detail of San Francisco houses of the period, the name for a piece of women’s clothing. Former president Grant was in and out of San Francisco during the time period my novel was set, so I had to keep checking to see if he was in town on particular day to weave that into the narrative. While I sometimes make a note to look something up later, I have found that most of the time if I don’t do the research right then, I have trouble moving on.

As a professional historian, this part of the writing is a lot of fun, and I don’t want to deny myself that fun for the sake of speed.

As a result, given those detours, figuring out the number of words per hour didn’t make sense (I started out trying to keep a record of this and gave up very quickly.) So the most I could come up with was average words a day. In the six months, I wrote around 140,000 words (yea, I know, that’s a long novel, but my first book was 117,000 words and nobody complained, and I expect I will be cutting when I get into the revision period of this one.) This turns out to be an average of approximately 1500 words a day. The least number of words I wrote in one day was 360, the greatest number of words was 3376. I was really on fire that day!

What does this mean? Well, I figure that it will take at least two months to get feedback and rewrite. During that time I will be getting the cover designed, reworking my website, planning my launch, and putting out a new edition of my first book Maids of Misfortune, with a preview of the sequel, and probably a 99 cent price for promotional period. Then there is the formatting and uploading of Uneasy Spirits which I don’t anticipate taking more than about a month, including time to ship the POD proofs. Then during the following two months, I expect to spend time marketing, including writing and publishing some more short stories, and I will begin to outline the next novel. In short, six months to write the first draft, six months to get that draft rewritten and the book well launched. If all goes as planned, I will be starting all over again next January on the third book in my series.

Turns out, instead of being a four book a year writer, as Smith proposes, I am a one book a year writer. Yet if I was thirty years younger, and needed less than eight hours sleep, and wasn’t taking a trip to visit family every fifty days, and was willing to write shorter books, I could certainly produce at least two a year. And, if in addition, I was at the start of my life as a writer and could reasonably expect that at the end of four years I could have six to eight books out there producing, potentially forever, as ebooks, this would be a very economically sustainable career.

I’m not any of those things, but nevertheless, one book a year makes for a very satisfying retirement career. That is, if my beta readers don’t hate the new manuscript!

So, what does writing full-time look like for those of you out there fortunate enough to have made writing your day job?

 

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

Why I Read And Write Crime Fiction

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After spending months writing about a bleak future, I found myself feeling depressed and negative. I even considered giving up writing gritty crime novels—if that’s what it took to stay positive. Then while working on a nonfiction book, I came across my notes for a talk I gave at the library called Why I Read and Write Crime Fiction. It reminded me of the genre’s value and why I should continue to write it and why it’s good for readers too, including the president. Here’s a shortened version of my talk.

Crime fiction confronts the realities of life across various cultures more often and more honestly than mainstream/literary fiction does. Crime novels are suited to exploring provocative social issues and showing how those hot-button subjects affect various people’s lives, often from diverse perspectives.

Crime fiction can be surprisingly poignant and analytical about problems such as illegal immigration, human trafficking, and drug use. These novels highlight deep-rooted cultural ills such as racism, sexism, bigotry, and the dangers of stereotypes. Sometimes a mystery will show a stereotype in all its glory, reminding us of why stereotypes exist and how we all fit into one … at least a little bit. The crime genre often forces us to see the world from perspectives that make us think outside our comfort zone.

As crime writers and readers, we get to make sense of things that would otherwise haunt us. We learn why the family next door disappeared one day or what’s really going on in the creepy warehouse across the street. Sometimes that knowledge helps us sleep better and sometimes it doesn’t, but at least we learn one version of the truth.

Police procedurals and thrillers give us a medium through which we can experience the triumph of good over evil. For short while with each story, we get to be the good guy, the hero who rescues the kidnapped child or saves the president’s life. We get to drag the bad guys off to jail or shoot them dead if “they need killing”— fantasies we can’t act out in our everyday lives. The real-world events around us can be unjust and inexplicable. It’s important to our collective mental health to experience justice, order, and revelation through fiction.

Novels with well-written protagonists and antagonists bring us to terms with the duality within ourselves. Humans are all deeply flawed, with the capacity for great goodness as well as for deceit, jealousy, schadenfreude, addiction, selfishness, and often worse. When crime fiction heroes—detectives, FBI agents, and prosecutors—possess such flaws, we not only relate to those characters, we forgive ourselves for the same shortcomings. When a killer calls his mother or pets a stray dog, we hate him a little less and remember to look for good qualities in everyone.

Crime novels explore relationships in a way that few other genres can. What better mechanism to test a bond between husband and wife, parent and child, or lifelong friends than to embroil the relationship in a crime, either as victims, suspects, or perpetrators. Similar to natural disasters, the aftermath of a crime can bring out the best—or worst—in humans.

The genre is also rich with possibilities for exploring the complexity of the human condition. Victims become predators; predators become victims. A person is guilty, but not in the way we’ve been led to believe. Most of all, crime fiction is full of surprises, and we readers love the unexpected. When was the last time a reviewer used the word twist when discussing a literary novel?

Why do you read and/or write crime fiction? Does it ever get you down?
 

This post, by L.J. Sellers, originally appeared on Crime Fiction Collective.

Enhanced Ebook — Audio in Chapters

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This is a post from my blog, http://roofmanthespy.wordpress.com/ . The excerpt is from my ebook, ROOFMAN: A True Story of Cold War Espionage. It illustrates how audio can be integrated into actual narrative:

 

This post shows a major conflict between me and my FBI case officer, Mike Berns, in particular and, by extension, the entire Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Bureau wants a list I have in my possession, but I don’t want to give it to them. Mike uses all the power of his agency to try to "convince" — read that "intimidate" — me  turning over to the FBI a list of innocent Americans.

Chapter 11: A House of Sand and Fog

On Friday, April 4th, I attended a conference sponsored by The Library Association of the City University of New York (LACUNY). The theme of the conference was the free flow of information across national boundaries — something I had more than a passing interest in.

The conference supplied all those who attended with a list of names and affiliations of other attendees. One of the names on the list, Anatoly Sidorenko of the United Nations library, drew my special attention.

On Monday, April 14th, I called Mike Berns, my FBI case officer, and told him about the LACUNY conference. He asked me to send him a copy that list. Ego spoke for me: "Sure."

Two days later, I smartened up when Conscience reminded me: "You’ll be turning over a list of innocents to the American intelligence community. That’s not how it works in this country, asshole!"

Go to the following website and click on “11-3” to listen to the phone conversation associated with this post:
http://roofmanpansini.com/

Please remember this content is © 2011

 

10,000 Books Sold: Sales Figures For Pentecost, A Thriller Novel

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I’m not (yet) a Kindle millionaire but sales of Pentecost have now gone over the 10,000 mark which for me is significant, so I am sharing the figures and also what they mean for the next in the series, Prophecy. Hopefully you will find this interesting as it changes my personal publishing strategy considerably.

  • I did the figures on 19 August 2011 and total ebook and print sales through Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk = 10,025
  • I sold so few through other ebook platforms that I am not even counting the sales. Because I am not a US citizen I cannot use PubIt for the Nook so everything is through Smashwords. I have just realized that the price was set to $2.99 though, so I have now changed this to 99 cents. Perhaps it will make a difference to the next batch of sales but I have sold very few through other channels.
  • Some people will ask about the money – you can work it out from the 99c price point, but as I have written before, this book is about getting readers involved with my series, not about income. Read about my 99c price point decision here.
  • Over 98% of these sales were ebook sales on the Kindle. This is huge for me because there is more cost and hassle to a print book than an ebook. I also priced the print books as low as possible to maximize those sales so I made more money on the ebooks. These sales figures make print books a vanity option for me i.e. I would only do a print book again if I wanted to have something to give my Mum or as a keepsake. I love print books but buy 99% on my Kindle now so I am also happy to target those kind of readers. I found the print book option difficult because it’s harder to fix typos and problems which I fixed on the Kindle immediately. In conclusion, I will move to Kindle only for the next book, and potentially look at print books much later on.
  • This experience also makes me more interested in a print book deal. I enjoy every part of the process except the print side which I would gladly give to someone else. But I would like to keep the digital rights – and I’m not sure that would happen in this current publishing market! I have also been told that 10,000 sales is a good point to approach publishers as it demonstrates there is a market, but I’m not ready for that yet. I need one or two more books in the series and then I might consider other options.
  • 87% of sales were from Amazon.com which is predominantly a US market (with some from other countries) but the sales on .co.uk are growing. I think this is based on the fact that the UK is still a print market, where there is no VAT on print books but there is on ebooks, and ebooks are about 18 months behind the US. I discuss the differences for ebooks between countries here. But the sales in the UK have been growing every month so I see that as a source of more sales in the future.
  • Sales were low during launch month. This is fascinating to me as so much focus is put on the launch itself but actually those sales are pretty small. The sales grew over time which must be related to the number of reviews and the Amazon algorithms kicking in. I am currently putting together a mini-course on How to Launch Your Book Online which will include everything to do with the launch but also the longer term things that have an effect like reviews and your Amazon sales page. I’ll let you know when it’s available.
  • Sales are bigger than my ‘platform’. I have spent years growing my online platform and brand but I absolutely realize that many of the readers of this blog are not interested in my fiction. That is the nature of having a writer’s blog. We don’t like to read the same books, which is absolutely fine. We can still talk about the aspects of writing, publishing and book marketing that are common to us all, but we just don’t like the same books. In light of this, and also what I have learned from John Locke, I am starting a new blog for me as a fiction author that will hopefully appeal to my readers. Again, I’ll let you know when that launches.
  • It is possible to make a full-time living as an indie author. I drank the Kool-Aid a while back but this is the first time I can actually see a future reality for my own writing life. Locke, Konrath, Hocking et al inspire us with stories of success, but I can now see that having multiple books selling thousands per month does add up. So I will be stepping up the book writing and production process. I’m still aiming to have Prophecy out by Christmas and there are currently 7 books planned in the ARKANE series. I also have an idea for a stand-alone novel that will not leave me alone so I will have to start writing that too. As we know, it’s not about the ideas which are two a penny, it’s about the execution… and that starts now!

I know 10,000 sales are nothing to more developed authors, but what have you learned from your own book sales? Have your publishing goals changed?

 

 

This is a reprint from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.

Promo and Other Tips for New Authors

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This post, by Jenna Anderson, originally appeared on her One Mystake At A Tyme blog on 12/5/10.

Often I hear new authors say, “I had no idea….” or "I’m new to all of this." There are so many facets to this adventure it’s impossible to know them all the first time out the gate. Each of these facets is broken out and discussed at length around the web or water cooler.

Here is a list of topics new authors may want to investigate. They are in no particular order of importance. I suggest you look through this list then do further research. You will find LOTS of information and varying opinions. Even this LIST is long…. Wow.

Note: when I say books I am referring to books and ebooks unless otherwise noted. Second note: when I reread this it sounds pissy and bossy. Sorry, I didn’t mean it to. It’s all just food for thought. Take what you find helpful, ignore the rest. Also – sorry about all the typos and puncutation errors. I love my copy editor and pay him well for my fiction work. My blog stuff… eeek… I’ve got issues.

1. Have you read any self-help books regarding publishing and marketing? There are many choices out there including these by successful indie authors: The Newbies Guide to Publishing by JA Konrath, Jack Kilborn and Barry Eisler, Write Good or Die by Scott Nicholson,  Smart Self-Publishing: Becoming An Indie Author by Zoe Winters, and Are You Still Submitting Your Work to a Traditional Publisher by Edward C. Patterson

I am not going to add any technical tips for formatting, uploading, POD, etc. in this blog post. The books above have information on those topics.

2. If you load your books on Amazon, Smashwords, etc. do not expect many sales the first few months. If this is your first book don’t be surprised to see ten or less sales per month.

3. Consider publishing your book in e format first. Putting your work out there as an ebook will give you the opportunity to get feedback, hear about typos, change the cover, tagline, description, etc… Once you commit to the expense of a print version you are stuck with that run for a while. Making changes is expensive in print. Making changes to an ebook is painless, almost free and very fast.

4. Create tags for your titles posted on Amazon. You can add up to thirteen yourself. Tags will help readers find you. (If you don’t know what this is, go to your Amazon product page and look around. You’ll find it.)

5. Research pricing. Play with your price. There are a lot of discussions on this topic.

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes 20 more tips for new authors, on One Mystake At A Tyme.

Mining the Literary Middle Ground: Byliner and The Atavist

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This article, by Hernán Iglesias Illa, originally appeared on the Publishing Perspectives site on 8/5/11.

Online start-ups Byliner and The Atavist have established a market for stories too long for magazines and too short for books.

NEW YORK: How long should a book be? For more than a century, publishers and authors have understood that most commercial books, to be profitable and viable, should come in around 250 pages, give or take a hundred or two. With the popularization of e-books, though, the restraints of the paper-based industry no longer apply, but new standards are still evolving. How long should an e-book be?

Two American startups, Byliner and The Atavist, are looking for an answer to this question in the middle ground between 5,000 word magazine articles and 100,000 words books. Earlier this year, both started publishing creative non-fiction titles that are too long to fit into a magazine or too short to fill a book.

They don’t call them “e-books” (Byliner refers to them as “originals”) and they don’t price them like regular e-books, either. While most digital versions of print books retail for around $10 in stores like Amazon or iBooks, Byliner’s ($0.99 to $5.99) and The Atavist’s ($1.99 or $2.99) pieces are much cheaper. And both share the revenue with the authors, who get 50% of what the editors receive.

They also had a promising start. Byliner’s first two articles hit the New York Times’ bestseller list for digital products, and The Atavist’s app for the iPad and the iPhone has been downloaded more than 40,000 times, according to the company.

John Tayman, CEO and co-founder of Byliner, started thinking about these issues a few years ago, after emerging from the three years he devoted to writing The Colony (Scribner), a book about an infamous leprosy colony in Hawaii. Tayman, who had been a magazine writer and editor for most of his career, found himself realizing that the stories he really wanted to write and read were longer than traditional magazine articles, but shorter than books. “I wanted stories that, as a reader, I could deal with in two or three hours,” says Tayman from his office in San Francisco. “And, as a writer, I wanted stories that I could get off my desk in one month or two, instead of a year or two.”


Read the rest of the article on Publishing Perspectives.

 

Publishing Innovation Awards Gets QED ‘Seal’

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This podcast and accompanying transcript from Beyond The Book, which originally appeared on that site on 8/21/11, are provided in their entirety by the Copyright Clearance Center.

Recognizing innovation, usability, user experience and quality design, the Publishing Innovation Awards identify excellence in 21st century digital publishing including e-books, enhanced e-books, and book apps. For the 2012 PIAs, entrants are eligible to receive the new QED seal. Based on a 13-point inspection checklist, awarding of the QED (for Quality, Excellence, and Design) signals an e-book reader that the title will render well in whatever their preferred reading format.

“We’re at a really interesting stage in e-book development. We have a proliferation of kinds of books, and kinds of devices, and kinds of publishers, and it’s just the Wild West,” Anne Kostick, a PIA advisory council member, tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally. “The QED is intended to create something of a benchmark for quality in a field that really is still all over the place, still very mysterious for purchasers of books.”

“The mission of Digital Book World has always been for practical, optimistic book publishing, both in digital and in print,” explains Matt Mullin, community relations manager at Digital Book World, the awards’ sponsors. “We are very interested in the new things that are being done to create products that are truly digitally native, but also work for the mission of book publishing in general.”

Category winners for the Publishing Innovation Awards will be announced during the Digital Book World Conference and Expo in New York in January, 2012.

 Publishing Innovation Awards Gets QED Seal [19:25m]: Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download


Here’s the transcript of the podcast.

 

Moonrat's Rundown Of Publishing Options

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This post, by Moonrat, originally appeared on Editorial Ass on 8/4/10. Though it’s over a year old, it’s still pretty on-point.

The other day, I received a sad email from a reader who has decided to go the route of self-publishing. This person wanted to know why I–and others in New York publishing–had so little respect for people who chose to self-publish.

When I got this note, I realized we had some clearing up to do. I haven’t talked about self-publishing much here lately, so perhaps that is the origin of the confusion, but I personally have nothing against people who self-publish, nor against the self-pub industry. In fact–if you can keep a secret–I freelanced for a large self-pub company for a long time, helping authors polish their books, etc. I know a lot about who chooses to self-publish, why, and what advantages and disadvantages they have. I also know the huge amount of work they undertake. But certainly I respect their choice, and respect the people who make that choice.

But publication is a choice–if you’re in the throes of the submission process, this is sometimes hard to remember, but do remember you always, always have a choice whether or not you publish. You also have a choice how you’re going to publish, and what kind of publication to pursue.

So I’ve compiled this list of the pros and cons of each of several publishing options (and trust me, each has pros AND cons). I have worked, as you now know, at big companies, small companies, and self-pub companies, and thusly declare myself a creature without bias (or pretty darn close). Of course, every publication experience is different. These are just generalizations culled from the best and the worst of my observations.

I have, rather snobbishly, lined up these options in the order of what (mostly) everyone starts out hoping for, then what they hope to settle for, etc. But I hope this pro/con list illuminates that all such distinctions are relative.

BIG HOUSE PUBLICATION
pros:
*Huge, powerful sales force. I put this first because it’s perhaps the most important quality of a big house, whether consumers realize it or not. The reason most bestsellers come from big houses is because big houses have the most comprehensive and powerful sales teams, which have the best marketing sponsorship and thereby the biggest laydowns (first printings) and sell-ins (stocking numbers in national chains). So by default, they also have the best track records for numbers of copies sold–book buyers tend to buy what they see in stores. So chicken-egg-chicken etc. If you want your book to be a bestseller, your best bet is the big house route.

*Money, money, money. The big houses are giant corporate cash cows, often with private company or bajillionaire overlords (::cough Rupert Murdoch cough cough::). This means a lot of things:

*The possibility of a substantial advance (although these aren’t universal, so don’t get your hopes too far up).

*More personnel, so more people working on publicity, marketing, production, etc, with all the benefits that come from crack specialist teams.

*These personnel are usually paid more than their indie counterparts, which means (in theory) they may be the top of their game.

*Bigger possibilities for publicity and marketing budgets.

cons:

 

Read the rest of the post on Editorial Ass.

What’s the Difference Between an IP Lawyer and a Contracts Lawyer? Why Does an Author Care?

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This post, by Passive Guy, originally appeared on his The Passive Voice on 8/23/11.

Passive Guy thanks all who wished him well in his new endeavor both in comments and in emails. This encouragement is very much appreciated.

One emailer requested that PG describe the difference between an IP Lawyer and a Contracts Lawyer. PG has described himself as an attorney who works with contracts or a contract counsel.

IP is short for Intellectual Property. In the United States, there are four broad classes of intellectual property:

  1. Patents
  2. Trademarks
  3. Trade Secrets
  4. Copyrights

Patents involve the majority of IP lawyers. A patent attorney is not only licensed by his/her state bar, but is also licensed to practice before the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO).

With a few exceptions, only attorneys who have an undergraduate degree in a scientific or technology discipline – engineering, chemistry, pharmacology, physics, etc., etc. – are permitted to become patent attorneys. In addition to having the requisite educational background, a patent attorney must also take and pass a separate patent bar exam.

Being licensed to practice before the USPTO allows an attorney to file and prosecute patent applications for inventors. An attorney without this qualification may not represent an inventor in USPTO proceedings.

Patent litigation is another story. No special patent bar admission is required to litigate the validity of patents in federal court. Some patent litigation attorneys are patent lawyers and others are not. The expertise necessary to prosecute a patent application is much different than the expertise necessary to try a case before a jury.

The owner of a patent has the right to prevent others from making, selling, etc., anything that is described in the claims of the patent.

The reason patent law involves the most IP attorneys is that it’s a lucrative specialty. Recently, Google announced an agreement to acquire Motorola for $12.5 billion. It was reported that Google’s principal reason for making the purchase was to gain ownership of Motorola’s portfolio of approximately 17,500 patents.

The other three broad areas of IP law involve much smaller groups of specialized attorneys. Neither Trademark nor Copyright law require any special educational credentials or separate bar admission.

A trademark is a symbol, word, or words legally registered or established by use as representing a company or product. Trademarks are everywhere. When you see a ® or a ™ next to a company or product name, you’re looking at a trademark. When you see a ℠, you’re looking at a service mark, which is a type of trademark that applies to services, not products.

Read the rest of the post on The Passive Voice.

The Collapse Of Complex Narratives

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This post, by Luke Bergeron, originally appeared on his mispeled site on 11/2/10.

Clay Shirky turned me on to “The Collapse of Complex Societies” by Joseph Tainter. I’ve been reading it for a number of weeks, whenever I feel in the mood to mentally tackle the subject matter.

In a nutshell, the book’s thesis is basically this: In order to solve problems, societies must add complexity. Complexity is a valid method for solving problems, but increasing complexity comes with increasing energy needs.

Once a society is no longer able to sustain the energy costs of its level of complexity (i.e. when it reaches the unsustainable end of an unsustainable model) the society collapses. Tainter provides many examples of this model in previous societies including the Roman Empire. Specifically, he claims Rome collapsed because the level of energy and capital needed to maintain the empire was solved by the continual conquering of external societies. Once there was nothing close to conquer to acquire easy resources, the society became unsustainable and collapsed.

The idea the book presents fascinates me for several reasons, because the idea seems to easily extend itself into all complexities that could aptly named societies: personalities, gadgets, markets, businesses, and even our own current struggle with oil and energy in America. But the aspect that fascinates me most, as a writer, is narrative.

In this post I’d like to talk about the narrative as a society and see if it’s possible to apply Tainter’s ideas to building a functional narrative. I’d like to examine the idea of writerly resources, and also see if there are any lessons we can glean.

Why You Should Bother Reading This

But first, I’d like to get the “why” out of the way. (Feel free to skip to the next heading if the overzealous “why” doesn’t interest you.) Why apply Tainter’s ideas to an aspect of human creation that he did not intend? I absolutely loathe the tendency in literary theory to apply, with seeming random chance, the ideas of one thinker to a system of ideas for which those ideas were not intended.

There are so many dreadful examples of this type of thing in literary theory that I can’t even begin to address them all, but, in case you don’t know what I mean, the most egregious have titles like “A Marxist Application of Capital in Examination of Dr. Suess’ The Snetches” and “Horton Hears a Who: An Neo-ecological Critique in Seventeen Parts” and “The Lorax Versus Gwendolyn Brooks: A Jungian Microbattle” and so on. Obviously, these are all fictitious examples, but you surely understand the concept.

The problem with these types of analyses is twofold:  one – these types of articles are based on the understood premise that one must publish to gain and retain university tenure and one of the easiest ways to do this is by applying whatever thinker’s ideas happen to be in vogue at the moment to whatever fiction or nonfiction also happens to be in vogue at the moment, with the understanding that the combination of the two must not have been broached before. Of course, since the spread of the vogue is tumultuous, one is never short of topics. Whether this is a valid juxtaposition (aside from its use to build a career out of gibberish) is never considered.

Two, as an extension of one: these types of articles do nothing to extend human understanding of epistemology, literature, or anything else useful – they only do what they are intended to do, which it is to create a vortex of verbose verbiage so devastatingly complex so as to shame university colleagues to admit they had neither the time, interest, or capacity to delve into its dark, demonic depths to attempt to understand it, and will be happy thus far, to extend tenure if only, please, would the Professor kindly leave the room and never speak of the broken artifice of the system again. Or, at the very least, if it must be spoken of, maintain that the system is both a healthy and valid method for determining suitability for a teaching position at a place of higher learning and the apt self-aggrandizing pat on the backside in front of lesser-published colleagues.

So, why, then, knowing all that, must I persist in this seemingly random application of Tainter’s ideas to narrative structure if I’m not pursuing tenure and know that this post will be overlooked by 99.7% of the reader’s of this site because it also seems a dark, demonic vortex of verbose verbiage? To that I answer, with a bipartite bellow: “Screw you, you dissenting curmudgeons!” and “Well, I’m interested – please feel free to regard this as a type of mental masturbation in the worst possible way.”

But in all seriousness, I’m writing this because I believe there is actual gold to be mined here. There are lessons to learn and time to be stolen from writing fiction. And I am no one if I am not a writer who enjoys analysis, lesson learning, patronizing talk, and procrastination. So onward and upwards!

Narrative as a Society

 

Read the rest of the post on Luke Bergeron‘s mispeled.

Why Your Blog's "About" Page Matters

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It’s amazing how often this happens: I visit an author blog and, finding something interesting, I go looking for the “About” page. And when I get there, it’s a total disappointment.

Typically there will be a couple of paragraphs of copy and a photo, but often there’s not even that. For some reason the Blogger.com platform seems particularly guilty in providing little in the way of an “About” page.

But even when authors have an about page, it falls victim to one of two problems:

  • Boring. Do you want to read about where I went to college? No, I didn’t think so, since there’s no benefit in it to you, one way or another.
  • Written like a press release. Writing about yourself in the third person can be awkward, and it’s easy to slip into “corporate-speak” when we try.

The Goal of the “About” Page

I think if you look at your analytics you’ll find that your “About” page is one of the more popular sites on your blog.

All of us want to connect to the person behind the words, that’s just a natural human desire. It pays to recognize this because it’s an important signal.

When I visit an “About” page I’m open to more engagement with the author. I’m saying with my clicks and my time that I’m interested in you. Since a lot of what we’re trying to do with our blogs is build reader engagement, you can see why your “About” page is actually a crucial and uniquely powerful asset in that effort.

Understanding this makes it more clear how to fashion your own “About” page.

Your aim is to humanize yourself, step out from behind the author’s viewpoint and engage with readers directly.

It makes no sense to waste this precious communication time with information that has no interest to anyone outside your immediate family.

“They want to see the face behind the blog. People use your About page to decide if they’ll subscribe or not. Ideally, you’ll want to let them know that you know what you’re talking about. Readers also like to be assured you’re human. Assure them.”—Martyn Chamberlin, Copyblogger

 

Statistics Tell the Story

A look at Google Analytics tells the story of why we need to pay attention to the “About” Page. On this blog, over the last 30 days there were 370 visits to my main “About” page. When I was working through a course in blogging I put a fair amount of work into getting this page to work.

I have a secondary “About” page, my “Hire Me” page that performs a similar function. It got 523 visits over the same period.

Multiplied out for the year, it looks like this:

“About Joel” page = 370 x 12 = 4,440 visits
“Hire Me” page = 523 x 12 = 6,276 visits

That’s over 10,000 people who will click over to my “About” pages in the next year. I want to use that opportunity to my advantage, and that’s something you can do, too.

Check your “About” page to see if it:

  • Communicates in a personal way to readers
  • Contains information readers of your site would fine relevant or interesting
  • Shows more sides of you than you usually show in your articles
  • Uses photographs or videos to make the information more personal
  • Links to other assets of yours or to contact information.

Some Examples

Chris Brogan has an excellent “About” page which speaks in a very personal voice but still manages to list lots of impressive achievements.

Colleen Wainwright shows another way to connect with readers while providing lots of background at the same time.

Joanna Penn does a great job of personalizing her “About” page while reinforcing the mission of her blog.

Paul Stamatiou shows how you can make an “About” page both interesting and informative.

I hope this encourages you to take a fresh look at your “About” page as another way to build reader engagement. Your readers will thank you if you do.

 

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

Self-Publishing: How You Can Learn And Improve

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Those who say that self-publishing is a vast world of bad quality writing, are right… still right. They do not take into account the fact that self-publishers learn and improve.

Self-published authors, those who think seriously about their writing, are highly motivated to find answers to their failures or successes, are willing to analyze and receive feedback. All that to write, publish and promote a better next book.

The beauty of the Internet is that they can find almost everything here. They have the same access to knowledge, resources and tools as big publishers.

Many of the tools were already mentioned in this series. Let’s say, the author is using Bite-Size Edits. He can observe, bite by bite, how his text is being edited and improved. Or after testing a couple of self-publishing platforms he decided to focus on two of them. Or he learns that the best way to communicate with readers is podcasting.

Internet is the biggest self-improving system on earth. Users are learning from each other – from comments, number of likes or favorites, number of retweets, you name it. Every such micro-fact can be, and usually is, analysed. And self-publishers have tools to make the analysis more accurate.

Let’s start from book statistics functionality. The biggest and most advanced platforms offer different ways and levels of analyzing how the book is doing. You can then match it with your online activity and locate the effort which gave best results.

One of the best analytics is provided by Feedbooks. It shows not only a number of downloads and favorites. What is tremendously useful is the split into different file formats, clients (apps, browsers) and countries. You can see how many of your readers are using mobile devices with Android operating system or how many of them are downloading your book directly to a computer. This can help you intensify your communication to the most promising group of readers.

Feedbooks stats

Analytics dashboard at Feedbooks

If you promote your book heavily on social media, you can use tools to measure the effectiveness of your activity. The most common and advanced one is Bit.ly. It’s a URL shortening tool with an extended statistics functionality. You can check the influence of every link you share: the number of clicks, tweets, Facebook shares, likes and comments.

The basic way to use Bit.ly is to check the impact of the message associating the link. Send two tweets to your book page – each time with a different text. You’ll see which one is more convincing.

Another great tool to consider is Hootsuite. It’s a Twitter client with many powerful features. Among many options, you can compare traffic to your blog (Google Analytics) with your Twitter activity. Other Twitter based analytics tools are Klout, TweetReach, BackTweets and TweetStats.

If you liked this article, please share it with your friends. Get free updates by e-mail or RSS, powered by FeedBurner. Let’s meet on Twitter and Facebook. Check also my geek fiction stories: Password Incorrect and Failure Confirmed.


This is a reprint from Piotr Kowalczyk‘s Password Incorrect.

Selling Ebooks – How Indie Booksellers Can Compete

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As a Smashwords ebook author and publisher and an independent bookstore owner, I have been concerned about the direction ebooks are taking us. At times I have been feeling like I was running a buggy whip  business while folks down the street had started to sell gasoline. How could I compete?

That has been the quandary for many independent bookstores. If they didn’t have a very expensive website with the American Booksellers Association on their IndieBound.com system, they had no access to sell ebooks to their customers. That has changed with the advent of book distributor Baker & Taylor’s new service for independent bookstores who use them as their primary first-choice for book orders.

If you go to https://thebookbarn.mybooksandmore.com/MBM/screens/products/general/general.jsp you will find a landing page similar to what you would find at Amazon, but easier to navigate. Halfway down the page you will find:

This will take you to an information page and also allow you to download an e-reader app onto your computer. When looking for books on the site’s search engine, if there is an ebook version available, it will show up along with the hardback version, the various audio versions, the reinforced library version, the trade paperback, and the mass market paperback. If you want the ebook, click on it to go into the shopping cart. It will give you a choice of formats. The rest is business as usual. Notice that we have built automatic discounts into what we offer through our site on Baker & Taylor. Oh, BTW, if you need to rent textbooks, click on that tab and perform your search. Once found, that goes into either the shopping cart or the rental cart, depending.

In addition to the ebooks for fees selections, you can also peruse GoogleBooks for their thousands of free open-source materials. I’ve downloaded eight free ebooks about Buffalo Bill Cody and Leavenworth’s history that I can use for research material in support of my historical performer gigs. These were written in the late 1800s and early 1900s and are no longer protected by copyright.

In all, this really levels the playing field for us. Anything bought through this site goes toward our bookstore’s account. In other words, we get our share. Now we have the ability to sell in two markets we’ve always wanted and didn’t have the ability to do so. This may prove the salvation of mom & pop stores like ours. We’re really grateful Baker & Taylor recognized the need and came up with a solution in which everybody wins.

 

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

The Day Digital Died

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This post, by Evan Schnittman, originally appeared on his Black Plastic Glasses blog on 8/1/11.

It was a seemingly innocuous situation… I was sitting in a room filled with publishing types: book publishers, librarians, agents, industry press, metadata specialists, and consultants of varying shapes and sizes. We were there in an advisory role to one of the digital publishing conferences.

Things started innocently enough – the usual suspects began to chime in (I am shamelessly unable NOT to talk in a group). As I spoke I began to feel a strong sense of familiarity. And that feeling grew and grew as the conversation rolled forward until I felt I was having a deja vu on steroids moment. It dawned on me that I was in the exact same discussion about the exact same conference in the exact same room as I was last year. And you know what – it wasn’t déjà vu, it was reality.

We were having the same discussion because we were talking about digital as if it were a new way of thinking, publishing, selling, etc. We were circling the carcass of a topic that had been discussed ad infinitum – because it was all speculation and postulation. And nothing is better fodder for discursive debate than speculation and postulation!

At that moment I realized the world of publishing is now so thoroughly changed by digital, that digital is no longer a discrete topic/subtopic/theme/raison d’etre. Digital has ceased to be an independent, stand-alone, separate entity; digital is now blended into the very fabric of the entire publishing business.

And so, as we sat and attempted to determine the topics of a conference that would be presented to hundreds of participants and thousands more via broadcast and Twitter, we became stuck on what was possible and practical to discuss.


Read the rest of the post on Evan Schnittman‘s Black Plastic Glasses.

The Joy Of Giving Away Ebooks

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Four years ago this month we moved into our current house, and I was gearing up to launch my first novel. I had never heard of Kindle, and e-books were only a vague concept. My biggest concern was getting print copies in the mail to three major reviewers three months before the release date.

Today I’ll upload my eighth novel to Kindle, and my biggest concern is getting ebook copies to hundreds of reviewers. For me, in this new world of publishing, one of the best things about being an independent author is the ability to give away as many copies of my novels as I want, with no financial cost and very little time. One of the concomitant changes is the willingness of reviewers to read e-books.(Not Publishers Weekly, of course, but they aren’t going to review me anyway.)

For an upcoming author, this is a game changer. Giving my new novel to readers and reviewers who haven’t tried my work is the best promotion I can do. If they like it, they’ll blog about the novel, post reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, and hopefully tell their friends or book club members. I have the potential to reach thousands of new readers in the most effective way possible: word of mouth recommendations.

Not being able to give away ebooks was one of my biggest frustrations when I was with a small publisher. The owner simply didn’t understand the value and importance of giving away books to reach a wider audience. But this time around, I have a giveaway posted on LibraryThing and will soon post one on Goodreads and International Thriller Writers. I’ll send copies to at least another hundred bloggers and fans too. Why not? Very few of these people were waiting to buy the book the moment it was released, so there’s nothing to lose. My fans who are waiting to buy the book will do so anyway. Some will accept a free copy from me, then buy another copy as a gift for a friend to be supportive.

Of course, I’m also planning a blog book tour in early September (with print giveaways too), and I’ve purchased some promotional spots to reach readers who will pay for the book. But the word-of-mouth recommendations I’ll get from the giveaways is not something I can buy. Ebooks and social networking sites have bridged the gap between readers and new authors, and in many ways leveled the playing field. It’s a beautiful thing.

If you’d like a digital review copy of The Arranger: A Futuristic Thriller post a comment and email me to let me know if you want mobi (Kindle) or epub.

Here’s the back cover copy.
The year is 2023 and ex-detective Lara Evans is working as a freelance paramedic in a bleak new world. She responds to an emergency call and is nearly killed when a shooter flees the home. Inside she finds the federal employment commissioner wounded, but she’s able to save his life.

The next day Lara leaves for the Gauntlet—a national competition of intense physical and mental challenges with high stakes for her home state. She spots the assailant lurking at the arena and soon after, she lands in deep trouble. Who is the mysterious killer and what is motivating him? Can Lara stop him, stay alive, and win the Gauntlet?

Readers: Are you reading new authors because of an ebook giveaway?
Writers: Do you think I’m crazy for giving away my books?
 

This is a reprint from the Crime Fiction Collective site, by LJ Sellers, author of the bestselling Detective Jackson series.