How Honest Should We Be With Each Other?

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This post, by Jody Hedlund, originally appeared on her blog on 6/6/11.

In the writing community, most of us want to support each other. One way to generously show support is to buy each other’s books. We can’t discount fellow writers as a segment of our readership. (See this post: The New Growing Segment of the Reading Population: Writers)

But in buying and reading each other’s books, we’ll inevitably come across books we don’t like. That’s just a fact of life. We won’t like all books all the time.

We might not like the subject, the writing style, the plot, the development of the story, the typos, the characters. There could be a hundred and one reasons why we don’t like a book. And that’s okay.

But what should we do about the negative reaction we have to a book? Particularly when the book was written by an author who happens to be an acquaintance or friend? What should we do when that particular author knows we read his or her book (and is perhaps waiting for word on how we liked it)?

Let’s face it, as more of us publish our books (either traditionally or self-pub), we’ll continually have more writer friends’ books to read. How are we going to handle the books that don’t resonate for one reason or another? How can we offer our support to our fellow writers when we don’t like the book? How do we tell them our true feelings without hurting their feelings and/or our relationship?

When we read a book we don’t like, here are several possible scenarios:

  • We lie totally and completely. We tell our friend we liked her book and think she’s a good writer, when in reality we couldn’t finish the book.
     
  • We tell a half-lie (if that’s possible!) We fudge just slightly. We think of the positive aspects we liked about the story and tell the author those things (like how well they used commas), but refrain from telling her how much we disliked the rest.
     
  • We’re politely honest. We give truthful but tactful feedback. We figure from one writer to another, our friend will want to know her weaknesses so she can improve. However, we make sure to point out the positives too.
     

Read the rest of the post on Jody Hedlund‘s blog.

12 Do's And Don'ts For Introducing Your Protagonist

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This post, by Anne R. Allen, originally appeared on her blog on 9/19/10.

The wonderful Sierra Godfrey mentioned this post in her round up of round-ups last week as one of her favorite posts ever, so I figured it would be a good one to post again.

One note of caution: these are rules for the final draft. When you’re first diving into a novel, you’re not introducing your characters to a reader; you’re introducing them to yourself. All kinds of information about your MC will come up, like she eats cold pizza for breakfast, grew up next to an adult book store, and feels a deep hatred for Smurfs. This stuff will spill out in your first chapters. Let it. That’s the fun part. But be aware you’ll want to cut most of the information or move it to another part of the book when you edit.

When you’re doing that editing, here are some dos and don’ts:

DON’T start with a Robinson Crusoe opening. That’s when your character is alone and musing. Robinson Crusoe is boring until Friday shows up. So don’t snoozify the reader with a character driving alone in the car, sitting on an airplane, waking up and going to work, or looking in the mirror.

DO open with the protagonist in a scene with other characters—showing how he interacts with the world. Two or three is ideal: not too many or the reader will be overwhelmed.

DON’T give a lot of physical description, especially of the "police report" variety. All we know about Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice is that she has “fine eyes.” We don’t have to be told the color of Sam Spade’s hair, or Inspector Morse’s weight. The reader’s imagination fills in the blanks.

DO give us some physical markers that indicate personality. Unusual characteristics like Nero Wolfe’s size, Hercule Poirot’s mustache, and Miss Marple’s age show who these characters are and make them memorable.

Read the rest of the post on Anne R. Allen‘s blog.

5 Ways To Edit With Fresh Eyes

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This post originally appeared on the Writers Anonymous blog.

As writers, we all struggle with editing our own work. We know what we intended to say, so often our eyes see our intentions in place of what is actually there.

Is all lost? Are we completely unable to edit our own work? Are we forever reliant on the assistance of others?

At some point, we are reliant on others to edit our work. Besides reading our work with fresh eyes, others also bring a world of experience that is different than ours. Others also read our work with (perhaps) different goals in mind–for example, perhaps I intend a piece to be entertaining, and a reader believes the same piece (at least at first) to be educational.  These different perspectives change how our work is interpreted, so we may not get our intended message to the reader.

However, there are several techniques we can use to look at our own writing through fresh eyes.  I have used each of these techniques with varying degrees of success, and have found them to be successful at finding different types of errors.

1. Change your work’s appearance

By changing the size, color, or font of your work, you force yourself out of the familiar feel of your favorite font.  Suddenly, words that fit poorly with the flow of the rest of your article, story, or other work pop out due to the changed appearance.  The best font to use is one that changes which words are on the edge of a page–so, as an example, you might use a fixed-width font like Courier instead of your typical variable-width font like Times New Roman.

This method is best used for looking at the general flow of your article and making sure that it makes sense.  You may also find that this method helps find double word errors, such as “the the” or “of of”.

2. Give yourself some time

The worst time to edit is immediately after you’ve finished writing a piece.  At this point, everything is still clear in your mind, so you’re more likely to fill in holes with what you intended to say.

Instead, go out for a walk, a cup of coffee, read a book, or just about anything to get your mind off what you just wrote.  For best results, you should stay away from what you wrote for at least an hour, and preferably as long as a day.

Once you get back, use this in combination with one of the other strategies to make sure that you are looking at your work in a different mindset than when you wrote it.
 

Read the rest of the post on the Writers Anonymous blog.

Technology, Curation And Why The Era Of Big Bookstores Is Coming To An End

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This post, by Mike Shatzkin, originally appeared on his The Shatzkin Files blog on the Idea Logical Company site on 6/7/11.

I stumbled across a Sarah Weinman post from a few months ago that posits the notion that the chain bookstore (by which it would appear she means the superstores of the past 20 years, not the chain bookstores in malls that grew up in the prior 20 years) perhaps had a natural life cycle which is now coming to an end. She points out that the investment by Wall Street in the concept of massive destination bookstores enabled their creation, but ultimately resulted in great excess: too many stores with too many square feet to fill and too many books in them that don’t sell.

This is a really good and thoughtful post and I think the observation that the availability of capital built the excess which is now partly responsible for dragging down the structure is correct. But it triggered some additional thoughts that make me want to again trace the history (which I believe has called for smaller bookstores for several years) from before the 1990s when Sarah’s post picks it up and to look at bookstore history through the lens of tech development, which I think both enabled the massive bookstores and is now bringing about their demise.

The core challenge of bookselling — in the past, present, and future, online and in stores, for printed books or digital ones — is curation. How does the bookseller help the reader sort through all of the possible reading choices, of which there are, literally, millions, to find the reader’s next purchase?

In a shop, that curation begins with with what the store management puts on the shop shelves. The overwheming majority of customers in a brick bookstore who buy something choose from what is in the store.

The second line of curation in a shop is in the details of the shelving itself. Is the book face out or spined? Is it at eye-level or ankle-level? Is it on a front table in a stack? Is it displayed in more than one section of the store, which would increase the likelihood it will be seen?

And the third line of curation in a brick bookstore is what the sales personnel know and tell the customers.

In the period right after World War II, there was virtually no technology to help booksellers with curation at all. Sales reps would call (or not) and show catalogs of forthcoming books from which the bookseller would order. There were hundreds of publishers any full-line bookstore would have to do business with. But there weren’t very many full-line bookstores then. Departments stores and small regional chains (Burrows Brothers in Cleveland, Kroch’s & Brentano’s in Chicago) were the principal accounts.

Frankly, what was stocked in most stores then had a huge randomness component. This was the world my father, Leonard Shazkin, encountered when he became Director of Research at Doubleday in 1954 and, a few years later, created the Doubleday Merchandising Plan. By offering the service of tracking the sales in stores, using reps to take physical inventories in the days before computers could track it, Doubleday took the order book out of the bookstore’s hands for the reordering of Doubleday backlist titles. That solved the problem of breaching the first line of curation. And the reps, now freed of the enormously time-consuming task of selling the buyer on backlist reorders title by title, had more time to affect the second and third lines of curation: the display of the books in the stores and the knowledge the store personnel had about Doubleday books. Sales of Doubleday books exploded, approximately quadrupling for the backlist.
 

Read the rest of the post on Mike Shatzkin‘s The Shatzkin Files blog. Related: see April L. Hamilton’s post, Big Chain Bookstore Deathwatch, in which she predicted the eventual failure of most big, chain bookstores back in June of 2008.

Define Your Publishing Objective

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This post, by Bill Walker, originally appeared on his blog on 1/4/11.

Many aspiring novelists, begin the writing process without really thinking about what his/her publishing objectives are. They don’t think about questions such as: Why do I want to write a book in the first place? How will this book be published? For whom am I writing this book? Who is my target market? Do I want to make money from the sales of this book? How am I going to market my book?

These are questions that should be answered prior to writing your book. Here are a few things to consider:

What are your goals and objectives?

  • Why do you want to publish a book? (What is your Big “Why”?)
     
  • Is this a hobby or do you want to earn a living as a writer?
     
  • Are you going to print just a few copies for friends and family or do you want worldwide distribution?
     
  • Do you want to become a household name?
     
  • Who is your target market?
     
  • Are you passionate about your writing?

How do you envision your writing career?

  • Hobby – A favorite leisure time activity or occupation.
     
  • Job – A paid or unpaid position of employment.
     
  • Career – A life’s work or journey.

 

Read the rest of the post on Bill Walker‘s site.

ARROW Hits the Bullseye

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This Beyond the Book podcast and accompanying transcript are being provided in their entirety by the Copyright Clearance Center.

Developed by a European consortium coordinated by the Italian Publishers Association (AIE), ARROW — Accessible Registries of Rights Information and Orphan Works — is a system to help libraries with the identification of rights status and rightsholders in digital library programs. ARROW is based on a pro-active search of rightsholders for works eligible for inclusion in any digitization program, and indirectly is a tool for the identification of so-called “orphan works.”

ARROW’s coordinator is Piero Attanasio, Head of International Projects, the Italian Publishers Association (AIE). He explained to CCC’s Chris Kenneally how the project meets one objective while approaching a solution for another. “ARROW was considered since the beginning to save the parents, not to identify the orphans,” he said. “That means to reconnect the works to the parents, that are the authors and the publishers.”

The dilemma of orphan works haunts rightsholders and users worldwide, particularly at this moment of mass digitization by libraries and others. “Whether the motivation was pure preservation of materials that were going to decline in quality over a period of time, or whether the motivation was simply to make wider and wider access over a network environment,” Michael Healy, Executive Director, The Book Rights Registry, noted, “you immediately encounter the constraints of the existing legislative and legal regimes. And those two things are not working in harmony anywhere right now.”

The Arrow System: Rights Management In Mass Digitization: A European Approach was presented at the 2011 Global Market Forum (featuring Publishing in Italy) as part of BookExpo America 2011.

 ARROW Hits the Bullseye [39:03m]: Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download

Click here for the accompanying transcript.

 

MWA(BNSP) – Mystery Writers of America (But Not for the Self-Published)

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This post, by JA Konrath, originally appeared on his A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing blog on 6/10/11.

When I was offered a contract for my first novel back in 2002, one of the first things I did was join the Mystery Writers of America.

As a lifelong mystery fan, I was thrilled to be part of an organization that counted many of my heroes (living and dead) among its members. I wanted to mingle with my fellow crime writers. I wanted to attend the banquets. I wanted to sit at the MWA table at Bouchercon and sign alongside major bestsellers. I wanted to go to the Edgar Awards. I wanted to be included in their many high-profile anthologies.

In short, I wanted to be validated.

The need for validation is often rooted in insecurity–something writers have truckloads of. Insecurity is a wicked thing, and can foster an "us vs. them" mentality. More on that in a moment.

During my first year as a member, I attended a banquet, and had to pay through the nose for it. Sitting at the MWA table at a conference was a job, not an honor. While Whiskey Sour was nominated for just about every mystery award out there, the Edgar wasn’t among them. I tried to submit to several MWA anthologies, only to discover the slots had already been filled before I had a chance. As for mingling with my peers, I did that just fine at conferences without needing the MWA.

The only time the MWA got in touch with me was when they needed something–I lost count of the times I was called upon to volunteer for some task or another–or when they wanted me to pay my dues. The dues notices (both email and in person) became so frequent, not only for me but for many of my peers, that it is now a long-running joke in the mystery community. (A friend of mine was even approached during his signing slot at Bouchercon to pay dues, in front of several fans.)

The MWA, an organization that was supposed to exist to help writers, seemed to exist only to sustain itself.

After a few years of getting nothing back (and yes, I aired my many grievances often to board members) I simply stopped renewing. While MWA no doubt does some good things (they rightly fought the Harlequin Horizon vanity imprint, and do various workshops and community events), I felt like I was giving more than I was getting. I was helping MWA, but they weren’t helping me.

The annoyance at MWA wasn’t only felt by me. The International Thriller Writers came into being at around the same time I quit MWA, and while I would never go on the record to say it was created because MWA was ignoring a large percentage of its members, I can say that ITW quickly figured out how to do things correctly.

While the MWA didn’t seem to care I existed (except when they wanted something from me), the ITW actually helped my career. Their first few conferences were terrific. I was involved in two anthologies. I made connections that have served me well over the years. And best of all, the ITW does not have dues. They run such a smart organization, it actually earns money.

Both the MWA and ITW have membership requirements, and these are based around signing contracts with traditional publishers. I understood why this was necessary years ago. By allowing publishers to vet members, the organization would be populated by professionals.

The fact remains that most self-pubbed work isn’t very good, and would never have been traditionally published.

But the times have changed. Now it is possible for authors to circumvent the legacy gatekeepers by choice (rather than because they had no choice.) Self-pubbed authors can sell a lot of books and make some real money. Full time salary money.

In my mind, that equates with being a professional.

The ITW maintains a progressive approach to accepting members. They review applications on a case-by-case basis. So even if you don’t have a legacy publishing contract, you aren’t automatically dismissed. This is because they understand that an organization for writers isn’t an "us vs. them" venture. Exclusion doesn’t make an organization better. It makes an organization self-important.

So when MWA recently changed its submission guidelines and issued a press release, I was intrigued. Had they finally gotten the hint? Were they looking at this untapped resource of self-published writers and realizing the potential to make their organization relevant again?

Alas, no.

 

Read the rest of the post on JA Konrath’s A Newbie’s Guide To Publishing.

40 Years Of Ebooks (Infographic)

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When I finished the infographic and showed it to my wife, she said: “Forty years? No way. Four, maybe.”

“Four, maybe” – it’s what most people think. Most people are still convinced that e-books are a fad. That’s why I was looking for a convenient, all-in-one way to challenge this myth. I hope it works. Every year shows not only the information about e-books, but also other facts and achievements. This builds a good, thought-provoking time reference.

Share this infographic if you think it deserves it. I wanted to put it on the web before this year’s edition of Read an E-Book Week. 40 years of history are asking for a week of attention – this should work.

I dedicate this little piece of work to a true visionary Michael S. Hart. When he was typing the text of the US Declaration of Independence, the only word I was speaking was “ma-ma”.

via ebookfriend.ly

 

 

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

The Completely Backwards Way To Amazing Self-Publishing Success

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I had a daydream the other day. I was working on a mindmap. (Do you know what a mindmap is? Until quite recently I was woefully ignorant of this incredible organizing tool. More to come.)

The title I had given the mindmap was “Simple Steps to Self-Publishing Success.” The title had come from an exercise in which I set a timer for 15 minutes and spent the time writing what I call “Imaginary Blog Articles.”

The idea of this exercise is to imagine great blog articles that don’t exist, but that everyone would instantly want to read. I only write the headlines. This is the second time I’ve tried this exercise and both times I’ve come away shocked at the ideas that came out.

Anyway, when I finished putting together the mindmap for this topic, I realized I had created a flow diagram of how self-published books usually come together, but in reverse.

Not only that, the longer I studied this progression, the more I realized that self-publishers can learn a lot from traditional publishing. Here’s why.

The Difference Between Self-Publishing and Traditional Publishing, Said Another Way

Most self-publishers are producing their first book ever. This adds a considerable amount of baggage to the creation of the book because when an an author writes, produces, publishes and markets a book themselves, the book invariably becomes an expression of that author, an extension of them.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But books are consumer products. Marketing and selling these products is made easier by using the tools of product development. If you’re totally identified with your book project, it’s a little hard to see it as product development. It’s too personal, you have too much invested in it.

Savvy editors and experienced authors know how to gauge a book’s market appeal before the book is written. While self-publishers usually write the book first and then try to figure out how to market it, publishing professionals are more likely to have access to a market and know what that market wants and needs. At that point it becomes a matter of creating the products that will fill those wants and needs.

 

Here’s the mindmap (This is from the wonderful iThoughts for iPad):

Backwards Book Construction mindmap

Think about this:

  1. Research the market: Wouldn’t you want to know what people in your market want first of all?
     
  2. Write the back cover copy: This is the basic offer of the book, and it ought to be crystal clear.
     
  3. Design the cover: This shows how you will position the book.
     
  4. Write a sample chapter and outline: Establish both the tone and the scope of the book.
     
  5. Design the book: Now’s the time to decide how to deliver the content.
     
  6. Test the concept: With a cover, an offer and a sample, see how people react.
     
  7. Announce the book: This is a product rollout, right?
     
  8. Write the book: At this point there’s no guesswork involved.
     
  9. Launch the book: Everything should now be in place for success.

At the end of this process, you ought to have a book that’s in demand, has a compelling offer, is properly positioned in its genre, and which people are avidly awaiting.

Why can’t self-publishers do this too? I’ve written often about the second book, and how authors multiply their chances for success by going on to write and publish more (related) books.

The Business of Being in Business

Traditional publishers are in business, and must show a profit to survive. At its best this brings a discipline to the creation of new products that helps to ensure that they will succeed. We all know that this is an ideal, and is not always practiced by most publishers.

However, self-published authors who decide to keep growing in their publishing career and go on to write more books will inevitably begin to view what they are doing as a business. We often encourage people going into self-publishing to take it as seriously as any other business, and that’s good advice.

It’s from that point of view that what seems like a completely backwards approach to book creation starts to make a lot of sense. If you followed this sequence, I think we would have a lot fewer books that no one besides the author is interested in. Fewer garages full of books, and fewer disappointed authors.

Learn from the pros, and be more successful for it. Use the completely backwards way to achieve self-publishing success.

 

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

Kindle Sales And Pricing With Kindle Nation Daily's Stephen Windwalker

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Stephen Windwalker’s Kindle Nation Daily blog connects authors to readers and is an invaluable resource for the indie community. I used the sponsorship for Pentecost in early Feb and made it to #4 in Religious Fiction, #1 on movers and shakers, #93 in thrillers.

Stephen Windwalker is the author of 27 fiction and non-fiction books as well as running the Kindle Nation Daily blog and he’s an expert in all things Kindle related.

Podcast: Download (Duration: 36:57 — 21.8MB)

  • How Stephen’s career progressed from being an undergraduate with Vonnegut, to community organization and then running a bookstore for a long time. Then into running the book, video and software for Inc Magazine which got taken over by Random House, so he ran a small publishing imprint for a large media organisation. He self-published some of his own books with Harvard Perspectives Press. Stephen saw Jeff Bezos on the TV in 2007 when the Kindle was launched and he realized that it had the potential to remove the intermediaries in the process. It would empower readers and authors. Immediately, he wrote a book on how to use the Kindle for the Kindle and it remained #1 on the Kindle store for along time. After selling the book so well, Stephen realized he had a platform. So it became a mailing list, then a newsletter, then a blog – which has turned into Kindle Nation Daily blog.
  • Stephen saw the Kindle coming and embraced it on launch, unlike many in the publishing industry. He talks about how the last 6 months have been very exciting with the huge sales some authors have made. But many others are making a living, they may not be spectacular sales or press-worthy but authors are doing well with this. Authors can connect with more readers and sell more books for lower prices and still make more money than they did with traditional publishing. The stars in the firmament are currently reorganizing, the industry is changing and the relationships between them all are changing. The most important thing is that readers are empowered – they can decide what price they want to pay, they can demand an ebook and not buy hardback so the publishers are being affected by this change in behavior.
  • On ebook pricing and the 99c discussion. Stephen has been proven wrong as he had previously said that with the 70% royalties at $2.99 and above, no one would go any lower. But clearly authors are making money at 99c and selling at least 6x as many books at the lower price. Authors who have changed their price to 99c have leaped up the charts, so it’s hard to decide. The people who are doing the best are authors who have a brand and a lot of books to sell, many at different price points. The first in the series at 99cents hooks people in for the rest of the books which can be priced at $2.99 or more. On “the race to the bottom” – pricing a book at 99c and making thousands of dollars on it is not a race to the bottom. The price is NOT 99c – it’s 99c x the number of books you sell.
  • In the Kindle world, there is no scarcity in terms of books or readers. The market is growing. You won’t over-penetrate the market.
     
  • There’s a mindset for authors which is understandable when you work on a book for a long time. You want a publishing contract, you want it to be sold for a decent price. You don’t want to be diminished in value. But the importance of something and it’s value is Price x No. of people who buy it. What will validate authors is connecting with as many readers as possible. If they can sell 10 x the amount at 99c as they can at $2.99, then why not?
  • Reviews are important so the quality of the book is critical – the wisdom of the crowd. But also important is a high impact cover, good quality formatting, linked table of contents and a good title. Genre is also important. Some are clearly more saleable and some genres are easier to stand out in (enough vampires already!)
  • Kindle Nation Daily is available for authors to connect with readers. There are posts about books, bargain books, free excerpts etc as well as posts on how to use the Kindle. Authors can use one of the several sponsorship models available. (I used it for Pentecost and was really happy with the results!)
  • We talk about where else readers hang out and Stephen recommends BookLending.com

You can find Stephen at KindleNationDaily.com and on Facebook/KindleNationDaily where there are lots of promotions.

 

 

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

Do Authors Need to Build Brands? (You Don’t LOOK Like a Box of TIDE)

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This post, from Blue Horizon Communications, originally appeared on that site on 12/8/10.

Brands are those vague but persuasive associations we conjure up whenever we think of any well-known product. Mac computers. TIDE laundry detergent. Nike running shoes. 

Brands are also the far more complex associations that come to mind whenever we think of well-known authors. Often, they’re a flash of images mixed with a dominant feeling, or a scene from a particular book montaged with memory fragments.

Here’s a small demonstration:  Does the name Stephen King conjure something different for you than the name J.K. Rowling?  What about Dan Brown, Elizabeth Gilbert, Jodi Picoult? Or Malcolm Gladwell, Joan Didion, Seth Godin?  What association appears for a second or so when you first see each name? 

People Brands Aren’t Product Brands

Whatever that instant of recognition is composed of, it’s there because that author’s brand put it there. Each association is complex and meaningful —  unlike the association you’d experience for a brand of laundry detergent.

In fact, it’s that much-ado-about-nothingness which characterizes many product brands that makes it easy to imagine authors rejecting the B word as too schlocky, too commercial, too huckster-esque. So let’s substitute the word “story” instead – the “author-identifier” story, if you will.

Brand:  Author-Identifier Story

The author-identifier story (aka brand) refers to the complex messages authors put out into the world about themselves and their books — which we then absorb and retain in a highly individual way.

 

Read the rest of the post on Blue Horizon Communcations.

If You Love A Writer

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This post, by Eileen Flanagan, originally appeared on her blog on 7/24/09, but is just as relevant today.

After ten years of writing around my children’s schedules, I have a book coming out soon, and friends have been asking what they can do to support me. I’ve been touched by their offers and yet reticent to ask too much, especially of busy people in a tough economy. At the same time, the online writers groups I belong to are a buzz day and night with authors trying to figure out how to publicize their work before the entire publishing industry goes bankrupt. So, as a community service, I’ve decided to write up ten suggestions for all the people who love a book author who’s been fighting the publicity odds (Fellow writers, feel free to forward this link or add your own suggestions in the comment section.):

1.   Buy your friend’s book. If you can afford it, buy it for everyone in your extended family. If you can’t afford it, ask your local librarian to order a copy. In fact, you can suggest it to your librarian whether you buy a copy yourself or not.
 
2.   Don’t wait until Christmas or Hanukkah to pick up a copy. How it does in its first weeks determines whether a book will stay on the bookstore shelves or be sent back to the warehouse to be shredded (along with your friend’s ego). Try to buy it as soon as it’s published, or better yet pre-order a copy, which makes your friend look good and gets your friend’s publisher excited about the book’s prospects. An excited publisher will invest more in publicity, while a bookstore that is getting advanced orders is more likely to stock the book on its shelves.

3.   Friends often ask where they should get the book, which is a tricky question. In the long-term, it is in every writer’s best interest to support independent booksellers (reader’s too, actually). If you don’t have a favorite one yourself, you can go to IndieBound to find one near you. When a book is newly released, however, it may help your writer friend more to buy it through a big chain, so they keep it stocked where the most people can find it. Likewise, a high sales rate on Amazon can get people’s attention, and if your friend’s website links directly to Amazon, she may be part of a program where she makes extra money when someone enters Amazon through the link on her website and then makes a purchase. I personally have links toseveral booksellers,  on the theory that it’s good to spread the love around.
 
4.   If you genuinely like your friend’s book, write a review on Amazon or Goodreads, mention it on Facebook and Twitter, and recommend it to your book group.

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes six more tips, on Eileen Flanagan’s blog.

11 Resources To Make Editing Your Novel Easier

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As if learning the craft of writing a novel isn’t difficult enough, after it’s finished you’ll need to edit it. If you’re going to be traditionally published, you’ll probably work with an editing staff to make your work marketable.

But before it gets to that point, you have to get it past the slush pile – that means doing a lot of self-editing first.

Of course, you may choose to go the indie author route and self-publish. No need to rise out of a slush pile, just a need to catch a reader’s eye out there in the big world. Sounds pretty simple.

But before you catch a reader’s eye (and you want to make a good impression, yes?), you need to have a great story – that means doing a lot of self-editing and perhaps hiring a professional as well.

No matter what you do, if you want to be read and have those readers give you great reviews, spread the word and buy your other books, you have to face the red pen. You must edit your manuscript.

Thankfully there are many resources available to help from blogs to books to videos. Here are 11 resources that will make editing just a little easier on you.

  1. Editing Your Novel: High Level Story Read Through by Joanna Penn – In this video, with transcript, Joanna explains some of the process she went through editing her first draft of Pentecost from weaving in back story to checking for consistency.
  1. A Perfectionist’s Guide to Editing: 4 Stages by Jami Gold – In this blog post Jami narrows our focus from revising the big picture to nailing down those pesky words that need to be just a little stronger.
  1. Proofreading & Editing Tips: A compilation of advice from experienced proofreaders and editors – This article is just what it says, a list of tips from general proofing to content editing.
  1. Copy-Editing And Beta Readers by Joanna Penn – In this blog post Joanna shares how she worked with beta readers and what benefits she found from their feedback.
  1. No Really: Kill Your Clichés by Leslie Wilson – This blog post takes a humorous look at how clichés can hurt your writing.
  1. Do You Copy? Tips on Copy Editing Your Own Work by Janice Hardy – In this blog post Janice shares several concrete examples of common problems such as tense issues, parallel series difficulties and ambiguous pronouns.
  1. Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing by Mignon Fogarty – In this book Mignon helps writers understand complex grammar concepts by using simple examples and memory devices.
  1. 10 Actions You Can Take to Improve Your Proofreading by Randall Davidson – This blog post is rather on the nose with simple tips that include slowing down, reading out loud and asking for help.
  1. 10 Grammar Rules You Can (and Should!) Ignore! By Tracy O’Connor – In this blog post Tracy gives us permission to break those “hard and fast rules” like split infinitives and ending a sentence with a preposition… only when it makes the writing sound natural, of course.
  1. A Good Edit Would’ve Fixed That by April Hamilton – In this blog post April gives several concrete examples of how to fix problems such as using internal monologue for omniscient exposition.
  1. 5 Essential Tips on Self-Editing by Catherine Ryan Hyde – In this blog post Catherine reminds writers to use spell check, but don’t rely on it, as well as four other very useful tips.

Editing is unavoidable and can be painful, but it doesn’t need to be impossible. These are only a few of the resources I’ve found. What about you? What resources and tips have you picked up as you’ve gone through the editing process?

 

This is a reprint from Virginia Ripple‘s The Road to Writing.

What's In A Name? The Pink Floyd Effect

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The Pink Floyd Effect – The process of a name becoming perfect for its subject through familiarity with that subject and/or its actions.

Names. Very powerful things. Anyone with even a passing acquaintance with demonology or the occult will tell you what a powerful thing a name can be. If you know something’s true name, you have great power over it. Maybe that’s why Prince changed his name to a symbol, which is very hard to pronounce in spells – could he be a demon, hunted by occult adventurers? But I digress.

[Editor’s Note: strong language after the jump, and political opinions expressed in this piece are those of the author]

 

I’ve been thinking about this lately because we rescued a tiny stray kitten last week and he appears to live here now. He has a strangely large chin and I said, “He’s like Stan from American Dad.” Henceforth, the kitten’s name is Stanley. He’s very cute, really. Look:

stanley Whats in a name? The Pink Floyd Effect.

When I mentioned this on Facebook and Twitter, people were universally besotted with him, but the reaction to his name was interesting. A lot of people thought it was a great name and many people complimented me on giving him a “proper” name. I presume they meant as opposed to Tiddles or Mr Snookums. Other people were very confused and made comments like, “Stanley? Really!?” A couple of people even pointed out that he looks like a Stanley. Which he does, of course, because that’s his name. Chicken and egg.

The name and the named grow into each other and become inseperable. I guarantee that within a few weeks, our new kitten and the name Stanley will be completely normal, at least to us. It happens in every walk of life. For example, my favourite band of all time is Pink Floyd. Stop and have a look at that name. When you hear it, you think of the band and all the amazing work they’ve done. But really? Pink Floyd? The etymology is interesting. They started out called The Tea Set, then one day found themselves on a bill with another band called The Tea Set. So Syd Barrett suggested a name he’d been keen on for a while, based on his two favourite blues musicians, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. So they played as The Pink Floyd Sound. After a few gigs they dropped Sound, but remained known as The Pink Floyd. Usually known simply as Pink Floyd since the early seventies, the definite article is still used occasionally even now. But really, when you think about it, Pink Floyd is a bloody silly name. However, it’s also awesome as it contains and references everything about one of the most seminal bands of all time.

So of course, I relate this name situation to fiction. Names become incredibly important when we’re writing. I agonise over names – it’s probably the thing that gives me the most grief when I write. I want to get names just right. I want them to fit. But the truth is, whatever name I give a character will fit if I tell the story well and write the character convincingly, because the character and the name will grow together and seem like it was always the perfect match. I call this ‘The Pink Floyd Effect‘.

Drizzt Whats in a name? The Pink Floyd Effect.I think the important thing is to not try too hard when coming up with names for your fiction, especially if you write fantasy. Remember, the apostrophied name is so overused now that it’s become something of a joke. Characters like Drizzt Do’Urden owned the concept back in the day, but now it’s seen as overly try-hard, or extreme wankery, to include crazy apostrophied names in your fantasy fiction.

In Brent Weeks’ Night Angel Trilogy, I was initially really annoyed at the name Durzo Blint. It annoyed me because it seemed uneccessarily “fantasy”, and it still does annoy me a bit. But the name also now conjures for me everything about that character, and he’s a character I really like.

Let’s look at it from another real world example. I’ll write a name, you be aware of your immediate reaction. Ready?

Rodney King.

That’s a pretty ordinary sounding name in and of itself, but I bet you had a pretty visceral reaction to it. The man, the name and the events for which he’s known have become ingrained in our culture and the name carries a lot of power because of it.

Let’s try another one:

Errol Flynn

Calm down, ladies. Take a deep breath. Errol Flynn is actually a pretty funny name, and you might feel a bit sorry for anyone with a name like that these days. Although I do quite like the name Errol myself. But there’s no denying that it has power.

Okay, one more:

Sarah Palin.

Did you feel yourself get a bit dumber just then? Just reading or hearing the name actively destroys brain cells and enhances right wing idiocy and religious insanity. And that’s a name that could become much more powerful if the American people don’t take a moment to get their shit together. But in itself, Sarah Palin is a pretty ordinary name.

So, my point is this: Don’t over-stress the names you use, be it for your pets or the characters in your fiction. The Pink Floyd Effect will kick in with time and the name and the named will become one and the same thing. And potentially attach themselves to events people are aware of around the world.

When you’re writing your fiction, spend some time to think about the names, make sure they have a good ring to them, are easily read off the page and stuff like that. Then put your effort into writing the characters and the story as well as you possibly can. By the time you’re finished, the names you’ve chosen will be perfect.

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Agree or disagree? Please feel free to share your thoughts and examples in the comments.

 

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

Kindle for the Web – How It Can Be Used by Authors?

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Kindle for the Web widget

In September last year Amazon introduced a new tool, Kindle for the Web, which allows users to read and share first chapters of books without leaving a web browser.

In addition to a good-looking preview interface, there are two useful features: sharing and embedding. The latter one is a very good, yet underestimated tool which can be used in many ways by authors who publish their books at Amazon.

Before I’ll list benefits and explain how to embed the preview in a blog, I’d like to point out to one very important fact. Despite the name, Kindle for the Web is not available on a page with a Kindle edition of a book. Just the opposite – you’ll see the green widget with a Read first chapter FREE button (picture 1) on a page with a print version of a book… and linking to Kindle edition.

This is misleading many people, who look for previews where they are not available. As a result they stop searching for books at all.

Why Amazon decided to profile the tool this way? A simple explanation is that by giving a chance to read a sample of a print book they want to convince people to try Kindle editions – and buy Kindles.

What’s related, and essential for authors, is that Kindle for the Web is available only for books with both print and Kindle editions.

Why it’s good to use it?

I was extremely interested in this tool since the very beginning as it opens a couple of new opportunities for authors. Let me list the most important ones.

1. It helps differentiate your social media activity

Instead of tweeting “buy my book” all the time, you can write “read first chapter of my book for free”. Remember, we never know what is the current mood of our followers on Twitter or friends on Facebook. Some of them are willing to buy, some – to test before buying (but don’t feel like downloading a free sample to their Kindle or tablet).

2. It makes your blog more attractive

If you embed a book in a blog post and stick this post to a home page, you’ve got a very inviting entry, what’s more: saying right at the beginning that this is a blog from a published author.

3. It changes the reader’s attitude

Let’s say you want to share a first chapter of your published book. The difference is that when you make a regular blog post with it, it’s just a regular blog post. When you embed Kindle preview in a post, well, that’s a different story – you are showing a first chapter of the book.

4. It helps focus on reading

This is one of my favorite topics: reading in times of distraction. If you use Kindle preview in your blog, there are bigger chances that the reader will read it, as it removes all the distractions (like banners and sidebars) after a full screen option is clicked.

5. It helps you manage your author’s profile

Some authors, including me, published a book some time ago, started a blog to support it and drifted into areas where they can be more useful – sharing experience or writing tips and advice.

You were a mystery romance writer and now you are a writing expert. Sometimes it’s hard to fight with this strong new profile. Using Kindle for the Web will make your readers more willing to accept your other face.

6. It allows to earn more money

Finally, but most importantly, you can earn extra money, if you are an Amazon associate. When you are getting a code to embed, you can also provide your associate tag. Thanks to that any book sold via link from a Kindle preview on your blog will bring you money not only from a royalty (author) but also from a referral fee (associate).

If you haven’t joined Amazon affiliate system, it’s a good moment to try. There is nothing to be ashamed of. What’s really interesting is that Kindle for the Web with a pattern to switch to Kindle ecosystem can be also a natural opportunity to sell on your blog Kindle e-readers.

How to embed a preview in a blog?

The minimum size of the embedded window is 500(width) by 325(height) pixels. Therefore the places to consider are either a page or a post.

1. Go to a print version of your book, find the green widget entitled Kindle Edition and click on a Read first chapter FREE button. A Kindle for the Web window will pop up.

Kindle for the Web window

2. Find Embed button in the upper right corner and click on it. When you expand it with a Customize option, you’ll see a window like this.

Kindle for the Web - embed box

3. Type the size of a window. Ideally the width could be exactly the same as your blog’s page/post. In the Associate Tag field, type your tag.

4. Copy the code and paste it into your blog’s new page/post (in HTML preview). Done. Now you can share it with your readers.

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Although adding Kindle for the Web to a blog is a relatively easy task, there are a couple of conditions when you may not be able to do it:

– your blogging platform does not support html scripts (WordPress.com or Posterous)
– you are not familiar with html and/or don’t want to bother with it
– your blog has a very narrow page/post area – if it’s less than 500 pixels you won’t be able to do it

You can always take advantage from a feature I added to Ebook Friendly, my site designed to make browsing for e-books a more friendly experience. There is a special section called Read Online, where Kindle for the Web previews are perfectly tailored to e-reading application design. What’s important, authors can provide their associate tags and earn money as they would do it on their blogs.

If you’re interested, read more details in this post.

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Kindle for the Web is a great, easy to implement and very engaging tool. Until now I’ve seen it used mainly on book review sites. I think it’s not the reviewers, but authors, who should benefit the most.