Of Readers And Gatekeepers: A Call To Arms

by

Are you reading this? Then I’m talking to you. You’re a reader and you have a new responsibility. I’m including myself in this. I’m a writer, but I’m a reader too. Any writer worth his or her salt should be a voracious reader, and we’ve got a new responsibility as well. We’re all the New Gatekeepers. No, not extras in a Doctor Who episode, don’t get over-excited.

There’s so much talk about the changing face of publishing, and justifiably so. It’s an exciting time and writing and publishing is going through a renaissance brought about by new technologies. That means there are options out there for pretty much everyone to get their writing out into the world, and a lot of people are taking up the opportunity. Some people are doing seriously well out of it, like Amanda Hocking. Others are doing rather less well, like the poor woman that immolated her career with one online review – you know who I mean. But one of the net results of this revolution in publishing is that readers have been saddled with a massive new responsibility.

Gatekeeping is important. In the good old days of the late 90s and early 2000s, and since forever before that, the gatekeepers were the publishers. Writers would approach publishers, either directly or through agents, and publishers would decide what was published and what wasn’t. They essentially filtered what everyone got to read. The upside of this was, largely, the stuff that made it into print was generally well written and worth reading. Generally. We all know publishers are quite capable of turning out reams of utter shite too. But on the whole they ensured a general level of quality control. The downside, apart from the afore-mentioned shite, is that they also ensured that anything risky or unusual, something strangely cross-genre, something not immediately saleable, was unlikely to see the light of day. There were self-publishing and small press success stories, where the unlikely became massive, but those hits were very, very rare.

Now, with the advent of Print On Demand and ebook technology, publishers have found those gatekeeping responsibilities ripped away. Writers are still keen to be published by the big guys – there’s a definite advantage to it, both in terms of credibility and distribution, hence readership. But literally millions of people are circumventing the publishers and self-publishing. Millions more are scoring smaller deals with small press. The volume of stuff out there is staggering. And a lot of it is complete shit.

Remember, the publishers themselves have turned out many stinkers over the years, but the strike rate for quality – in editing, formatting, production and so on, as well as writing ability – has generally been kept high even if the stories were rubbish. Not always, but often. Nowadays people think it’s easy to write and be “published” and there’s loads of stuff out there that really shouldn’t see the light of day. Poorly written, poorly edited, poorly formatted – just poor. And that’s where we as readers come in. This is why we are the New Gatekeepers.

Success in writing has always relied on word of mouth. When a big publisher puts the might of the marketing machine behind a new release that word of mouth gets a massive head start, but it’s still the reviews and recommendations of critics and readers that determine whether a book is truly successful or not. That’s still the case, but the mainstream reviewers can’t keep up with the tsunami of words constantly bearing down on them. Along with all the newly published writers, a whole bunch of new reviewers have cropped up, and many book review blogs are developing considerable power. This is a very good thing, as it helps to strim out the crap and let the quality stuff rise to the top.

But you don’t need a review blog to wield power in this new world. You’re a reader – you have enormous power. If only you’d use it. By the Power of Yourskull! Or, more accruately, the brain within it. If you read something you like, tell people all about it. Recommend it to your friends, buy it and gift it to people. You can gift ebooks now as well as print books. There is no better result for a writer than a reader enjoying the book and recommending it. But don’t stop there – there’s so much more you can do, very easily.

You don’t need to be a talented reviewer to review books. Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Goodreads, Smashwords – all these places and more make it very easy for you to leave a review and rate a book. Or just rate it. Your review doesn’t have to be anything lengthy to have an impact. For example, look at this review of my second novel, MageSign, that a reader called Joefredwheels left on Amazon.com (Yes, I’m going to use my own work as reference. Sue me.):

excellent follow up – great story continuing adventure of first book protaganist. hoping for more stories in this world. Baxter is an excellent writer of a fast past exciting plot. THIS IS WORTH THE MONEY. BUY THE BOOK

He also rated it five stars. Brilliant. It’s very short, it’s not worrying about being good writing in itself, it’s simply conveying the person’s enjoyment of the book. Sure, it’s cool when readers take the time to write a few paragraphs of carefully thought out critique when they review, but the review above is just as valuable.

Here’s another example, this time a review of RealmShift, left on Amazon by Cathy Russell “Ganymeder”:

a well thought out tale – I liked that this story had believable characters and explored faith (or lack of), it’s origins, etc. It had a lot of deep themes. The characters were well thought out. The plot was engaging, and I liked the whole idea of a superhuman who could kick the devil’s ass. While reading this, I kept thinking it would make a great action movie or comic book too. I’d recommend this. 4 stars.

That wouldn’t have taken long to write, but in a single paragraph she recommends the book and gives some basic reasons why. Again, brilliant.

I can’t express how grateful I am when people take the time to do this. And it’s something we can all do, for any publication, anywhere on the web.

I tend to review books I enjoy here on my blog, but I’m a regular blogger anyway. I always rate them on Goodreads. I’m also planning to copy my reviews over onto Amazon and Goodreads – I wish I’d done it as I wrote them, as now it’s going to take a while and a concerted effort. But I’ll do it, because I plan to put my reviews where my mouth is.

So we, as readers, are the new gatekeepers. It’s our responsibility to help spread the word about the good stuff we read, and the bad. You don’t have to leave negative reviews on anything – just don’t review them. But it’s an act of true benevolence to leave good reviews of stuff you enjoy, or drop by websites and leave a star rating. You can write a single line or single paragraph review and copy that to all the sites you visit or shop at. If you do blog, then reviewing a book on your site is fantastic. But whatever you do, do something. Help spread the word. As writers, nothing is more valuable to us than the recommendations of readers. It’s always been that way, and now it’s more true than ever. Readers can make sure the good stuff out there gets noticed and more writers get themselves a well-earned career. Power to the people!

 

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

On "Being Indie": Lorena Bathey

by

This post, by Lorena Bathey, originally appeared on TNBBC’s The Next Best Book Blog on 4/13/11.

On "Being Indie" is a new monthly feature that will be hosted …on TNBBC. We will meet a wide variety of independent authors, publishers, and booksellers as they discuss what being indie means to them.

 
 

Meet Lorena Bathey. In 2005, she self-published her first book Happy Beginnings: How I Became My Own Fairy Godmother. Unwilling to buckle under the pressures agented/published authors were having, she went on to develop her own publishing company and calls it Lorena B Books. In celebration of her new novel Beatrice Munson, Lorena shares what being indie means to her.

 
 
 
 
 
 
What is an Indie Author?

 

I = Independent: Is a nice way to say self published or balking the conventional publisher/agent route to do everything yourself. I like the moniker Indie author because it fits the definition more than simply self-published. As an Indie author you must be writer, editor, printer, sales, marketing, publicity, and promoter all rolled into one. A tough but satisfying job.

N= Nervous: Being an Indie author can be nerve wracking. Success is happening for Indie authors, especially with eReaders, but it’s still a gamble. Being an Indie gives you control over the things that make you nervous like publicity and promotion. You then can get more involved with wonder.

D = Dedication: To win in the Indie genre you have to be dedicated. You must know your work, the promotion, and the Indie publishing industry. But mostly you must dedicate yourself to writing. Wearing all the hats means dedicating time for all aspects that aid your success as an Indie author. Stay the course; don’t give up if you don’t make a million dollars with your first book. You need to build a platform of fans.

 

Read the rest of the post on TNBBC’s The Next Best Book Blog.

Books For Charity: Helping A Family In Joplin

by

As I watched families pick through the rubble of their homes, looking for shoes for their kids, I felt sickened and helpless. As helpless as they must have felt to see the tornado coming and not be able to do anything but hide and hope for the best. I tried to imagine what it would feel to have lost everything and not have enough money to rent a motel room for the week.

So rather than feel helpless, I decided to do what I could. Together with my blogger partners, we’re raising money to help a family in Joplin, Missouri. Drew and I have pledged 100% our Amazon book royalties (print and digital) for the next four days to this charitable cause, and Judith has pledged 25% of her e-book royalties through Memorial day.

The amount of money we raise will be up to readers. We hope you’ll take advantage of this opportunity to buy some great books and donate to a good cause at the same time. Here’s a list of the participating novels with links to Amazon.

Drew’s bestselling title: While the Savage Sleeps

L.J.’s bestselling Detective Jackson mysteries:
The Sex Club
Secrets to Die For
Thrilled to Death
Passions of the Dead
Dying for Justice
And standalone thrillers:
The Baby Thief
The Suicide Effect

Judith’s guilty pleasure Skeeter Hughes mysteries:
Where’s Billy?
Whose Hand?

Another way to help out is to spread the word. Use Facebook, Twitter, or any of your online accounts to let other readers know about this charitable cause.

 

This is a cross-post from The Crime Fiction Collective.

A New Freedom of the Press: How Does Publishing Underwrite Revolutions?

by

This is a guest post from Thomas Doane.

The Arab Spring continues, and this month we celebrate the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible’s publication. 

The question I’d like to briefly reflect on here is: What do the Reformation and the Arab Spring have in common?
The answer that I’d like to advance is that—among other things— what these two historical epiphenomena have in common is that they were both catalyzed by evolutionary leaps between publishing platforms. 

The fortunes of the parties involved in the conflict in the Arab world sway this way and that. Plucking more or less randomly from meta descriptions below the Google News results this morning we read that “NATO is considering intensifying bombings in Libya… Israel is very nervous about how Palestinians are spinning the Arab Spring…The ICC seeks to prosecute Gaddafi…  Syria denies mass grave allegations…” Etc. etc.  Another headline from the Gulf News this morning, May 18th, 2011: “Social Media played a role in facilitating the Arab Spring.” The first line of this article reads: Whether social media led to the Arab Spring or facilitated it, it played a major role in mobilizing Arab streets as they rose against their ruling regimes, said panelists at an Arab Media Forum session on the role of social media.
This has been a mantra since January, when—after Mohamed Bouazizi immolated himself on the streets of Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia in December—a cascading domino effect of uprisings started to roll across North Africa and into the Middle East. In a now classic article in the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell wrote, “The world, we are told, is in the midst of a revolution. The new tools of social media have reinvented social activism. With Facebook and Twitter, and the like, the traditional relationship between political authority and popular will has been upended, making it easier for the powerless to collaborate, coordinate, and give voice to their concerns.” Obviously, there is a difference between correlation and causation, and much digital ink has been spilled to assign social media’s role in the Arab Spring to one category or another.
Meanwhile, this month Harper’s cover story is the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. While nothing about the KJV seems subversive to most of us today (quite the opposite for most of us), historically it can be seen as one of the literary climaxes of a sequence of revolutions that rocked the geopolitical make-up of the Western world in the 16th and 17th centuries—namely, ‘The Reformation.’ 
About 90 years before the KJV first ‘hit the stands in bookstalls’ all over England, becoming ‘the bestseller of all time’ over the next 400 years, a man named Martin Luther sat down and translated the Bible out of Latin and into German. While this sounds rather innocuous from our 21st century point of view, it could be argued that this act—amplified and disseminated across Europe by means of the recently invented printing press—ignited the 16th century’s version of a World War, completely and permanently transforming the global geopolitical landscape for all succeeding centuries.
What changed is that the ‘information’ contained in scripture—the actual words written in the Bible—became widely accessible to the public for the first time ever. There was a massive explosion of literacy. But a streamlining of the publication and dissemination of the printing press was a pre-condition for creating this kind of change. As the European masses (rather than just the priesthood) got hold of this information for the first time, they developed counter-narratives that diverged from the Church’s reading. The King James evolved out of one of these counter-narratives. 
Arguably, the epic shift from print to digital, and from AP journalism to crowd sourced social media communication is the biggest evolutionary leap between publishing platforms that we’ve seen since the invention of the printing press. And while the Arab Spring may not have been caused by social media, I think most people would argue that the social media revolution was a necessary pre-condition to launching the revolutions in North Africa and the Middle-East at the level of well-documented, contagious efficiency that we’ve seen this spring. And it was almost certainly a pre-condition to keeping the body count as low as it has been. 
So I propose a toast to two strange bedfellows: Johannes Gutenberg & Mark Zuckerberg.
Hail old fellows, well met!

And to each, thanks for the merry old  messaging platform they did invent!

Self-Publishing: How You Can Reduce Costs

by

The price of a book is what really matters to readers. It’s where self-published authors can compete with traditional publishers, as the examples of Amanda Hocking or J.A. Konrath show.

Many Kindle Store writers choose $0.99 price tag. They can afford it, as the cost of publishing an e-book is close to zero. E-bookstores equip the authors with the online tool – the dashboard – where they can publish a book in a few steps, and it usually takes a couple of minutes.

I’ve been testing many e-book platforms and their publishing dashboards. My favorite ones are Amazon (Kindle Direct Publishing), Smashwords, Feedbooks and Narcissus.

At a basic level the only thing you’ll need to prepare is a perfectly edited and formatted text of a book, in a proper file format (mostly required are doc, rtf, txt, html and epub). You don’t even need a cover of the book. Some platforms, like Feedbooks, display a default book cover with a title and author, if the cover file was not uploaded by the author.

Most authors do want book covers, though – and they are perfectly right. But if you can’t afford to hire a professional cover artist, you can always check what technology has to offer. One thing to remember: if you are not planning to print a book, the size of a cover doesn’t have to be high and it will have a screen resolution anyway. It’s where possibilities are.

First, you can download and use Gimp, a free and simple to use image editing program. But what if you’re not very much into design? There are still some solutions. You can, for example, use one of data visualization tools – they can do a design work for you. Some time ago I described how to use Wordle, a tag cloud generator, to prepare a book cover. A good thing about such a cover is that it’s at the same time a tag description of your book (see example, below right).

Another idea for a cover design – use photo applications on your smartphone. You can make a picture and apply one of cool filters, which will bring a tonality and feel you want. Applications I recommend for iPhone and iPod Touch are PictureShow, Camera+, PhotoStudio and Hipstamatic. PictureShow has also an option to insert a text, so you can in fact design a cover completely on your cellphone. 

And here comes the technology again. Formats like epub or mobi allow text to be adjusted by the user of a specific device or application. That means that if you read in a Kindle application on your Android tablet, every book will look the same – according to preferences you selected.

In other words: you don’t need a specific page layout design, unless you really want it.

Next thing, most important one – editing. The most popular way is to ask for help a fellow writer, but there are also very interesting tools, which can help you go through this process for free.

The most known and successful one is Bite-Size Edits. It’s a crowdsourcing platform where other writers can edit the text you submit, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph. This service is both fun and useful and what’s even more important – it’s a smart way to connect writers and readers.

Bite-Size Edits

Edit box at Bite-Size Edits

 

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

Smartphone e-Reader App Reviews: Stanza by Lexcycle

by

As e-books become more popular, they are inevitably merging with the largest platform for e-book readers, the smartphone. Google’s Android operating system is now powering more phones than Apple’s iOs, but both continue to surge ahead in terms of market penetration and new users.

All told, the top 5 smartphone manufacturers sold 140 million phones in 2010. That’s a lot more than all the iPads, Kindles, Nooks, Sony Readers and Kobo tablets put together.

It makes sense to think about whether your book are suitable for the smallest screen. Will the story still make sense on those little pages? Will the formatting of your nonfiction book survive the reader’s desire to see the type at the largest available size?

Time to find out.

I decided to take the top e-Book reader apps for smartphones out for a virtual test drive. Although I don’t claim to be encyclopedic in these reviews, I’m looking at them both from the point of view of someone who doesn’t mind reading on the phone, as well as a publisher looking to find readers where they want to be reading. If that’s for a few minutes while standing waiting for the bus, so be it. That’s up to the reader.

StanzaI decided to start with Stanza, a free e-reader originally developed by Lexcycle, a company that was later acquired by Amazon. It’s unclear at this point whether Amazon intends to keep the program alive or not, since the website seems to have gone dormant some months ago.

However, Stanza, which was the most popular e-Reader at one time, and one of the top free apps in Apple’s app store, is such an unusual e-book reader, it’s well worth a look.

For Readers, You Need Books

One of the things that distinguishes Stanza is the sources for its e-books. Unlike Kindle, iBooks, Google and Nook, the app is not linked to one store for its purchases. Instead, Stanza has access to a lot of diverse libraries of e-books. This is both a strength and a weakness, since you may not find the same coverage or quantity in the different collections as you might with the Kindle app, for example.

But Stanza has other tricks up its sleeve. Let’s look at the main components. Compared to most e-book readers, Stanza has a vast control system that allows you to customize your reading experience in ways no other e-reader can match.

Here are the main elements of the app, with some notes.

  • Reading screen—Stanza gives you unparalleled control over the display, far surpassing what other e-book readers allow. Here the reading screen is shown in Georgia with a beige background, and with the type fully justified and hyphenated, something that’s simply impossible on other e-readers.
    Stanza reading screen

    Click to enlarge

Control screen—This is the screen you get when you tap once, and it gives you access to a huge variety of tools to control the app. From here you can navigate using the buttons along the bottom of the screen, to:

 

 

Stanza control screen

Click to enlarge

Stanza settings

Click to enlarge

Note that in the settings screen there’s a sample at the top showing you instantly the effect of the changes you’re making.

 

 

  • Table of Contents, bookmarks and annotations
  • Settings screens with controls for general items, layout, appearance, and app control.
  • Layout tools like Justify, Left, right or center,
  • Hyphenation with dictionaries in many languages
  • Margins, Line spacing, Paragraph spacing and Paragraph indent. These controls use adjustment sliders.
  • Appearance tools like switching to the Night Theme
  • Choice of 42 fonts, and font size selection with sliders
  • Background and text colors
  • Background image and opacity
  • Even more software controls like lock rotation, use page turn effects and more.
     
  • Library screen—Here is where you store your books, and you can sort on Books, Authors, or Groups.
  • Bookstore screen—You can see right away the difference between Stanza and the proprietary apps that only allow you to shop in one store. The app includes access to these retailers:

     

    And these free and sample e-book sources:

    Stanza bookstores

    Click to enlarge

    You’ll notice even more control icons at the bottom of the screen, including an invert button to switch between black on white or white on black, a search tool and access to yet another screen of controls, this one called Actions, which includes

    • Books on Board eBook Shop
    • O’Reilly Ebooks
    • All Romance eBooks
    • SmashWords
    • Fictionwise
    • Feedbooks
    • Project Gutenberg
    • Random House Free Library
    • Try Harlequin
    • Books from Munseys
    • Books from BookGlutton
    • Pan Macmillan Tasters
    • the command to delete a book
    • a dictionary
    • access to your downloads
    • another set of font size controls
    • and a sharing menu for Facebook, Twitter or via email

Just for fun, I changed a lot of the display parameters and loaded a more heavily formatted nonfiction book. Here it is with a white background, no hyphenation or justification, and typeset in American Typewriter:

Stanza

Click to enlarge

Overall, Stanza is easy to use and gives you terrific control of the reading experience in far more detail than any other e-reader. Although the choice of new trade books may not be as wide as other, proprietary apps, the ability of Stanza to also handle PDFs and other formats is even more reason to add this app to your smartphone.

Next up: Apple’s iBooks app.

Stanza in the iTunes App Store
Also available as an app for Macintosh, for iPad and for Windows.

 

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

Students Write Novels—In 30 Days

by

This post, by Art Peterson, originally appeared on The National Writing Project site on 5/12/11.

Summary: The National Novel Writing Month’s Young Writers Program makes writing fun for students because of, not despite, its audacious goal: kids must pen a novel in a month.  

Most teachers assign novels for students to read not write. But many teachers nationwide are not only asking students to read novels but also giving them a month to write them.

Yes, you read that right: one month.

Instead of complaining about being absurdly overworked, students participating in November’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) have been known to ask, "Can we work on our novels today?"

That’s because, above all, NaNoWriMo is meant to be fun. An exercise in "seat-of-your-pants" novel writing, it has almost no rules.

The Office of Letters and Light, the nonprofit behind the event, believes this carefree approach encourages writers to take imaginative risks and truly enjoy their work. Founded in 1999, the adult version of the event requires only that you commit yourself to taking a stab at novel writing—and submitting a novel of 50,000 words, no matter how good or bad they are, by the end of November.

Since 2005, NaNoWriMo has entered many classrooms, including those of National Writing Project teachers, through its Young Writers Program. In addition to curriculum and support, teachers receive a classroom kit featuring a progress chart, stickers to mark word counts, and buttons for writers who cross the finish line.

Approximately 1,800 classrooms and 45,000 kids and teens participated in 2010. The rules for under-18 writers are the same as those for adults, with one important exception: young writers can pick their own "reasonable yet challenging" word length.

If a student elects to write, say, 18,000 words and achieves this goal in a month, he or she is a winner. Awards include a "handsome winner’s certificate," a Web badge, and a promotional code to receive a free bound proof copy of the finished novel.

The Young Writers Program also facilitates Script Frenzy, a similar scriptwriting event that happens each April and challenges participants to write a 100-page script in 30 days.

While young writers work primarily as individuals, teachers are also encouraged to write along with them—an approach at the heart of NWP’s philosophy.

Common Core Curriculum Provided


Read the rest of the post on The National Writing Project site.

Looking For Logic? Not In Book Sales

by

Watching your digital book sales climb is exhilarating. Seeing them fall is heartbreaking and confusing. “What changed?” you ask yourself, feeling panicked. Did I slack off too much on blogging? Or forget to post in the forums? Did I take this success for granted for 24 hours? Frantically, you try to recreate the right combination of effort and luck that made it happen. Then you realize you don’t really know why the run-up occurred.

Sometimes, changes in books sales are obvious and logical. During weeks when I have three guest blogs posted and I’m active in the forums, the numbers go up a little and it makes sense. Other times, the sales shoot up for no reason. This month, they dropped for no reason.

I tried not to panic, telling myself it was temporary. But still, I kicked into high gear, posting in the forums, writing blogs, and sending out press releases. None of it seemed to make a difference. I even bought some ads, something I rarely do because it’s so hard to measure their effectiveness. But self-publishing is a small business, so reinvesting a little profit into advertising seems logical.

I crave logic, and these inexplicable fluctuations can make an author crazy. Particularly people like me: control freaks who want things to make sense. I want to know the cause and effect of everything. I want to depend on my efforts to produce predictable results. (Are you laughing?) So for months, I checked my Amazon sales daily. Because if I did something that worked, I wanted to know. How else do you learn and improve?

Yet sales often fluctuate for no rhyme or reason, so watching the daily numbers is a good way to give yourself an anxiety disorder—and not get much written on a new novel. But you have to keep writing new stories, because releasing a new book is the best thing you can do for sales of all your books. Proven!

So what’s an author to do? I’ve given up looking at daily sales. I still check my rankings on Amazon’s police procedural list every once in a while to see where my books are. If my titles are slipping off the first page, I ramp up my efforts for a while or maybe buy a small online ad.

But I’m trying not to obsess and to accept that I have little control over sales. I remind myself that making a living as a novelist was and is my dream, and that so as long as the bills get paid, I’m happy.

P.S. They’re climbing again, but who knows why?

Authors: What are your experiences with digital sales? Can you shed some light on the ups and downs?

 

This is a reprint from LJ Sellers‘ blog.

10 Actions You Can Take To Improve Your Proofreading

by

This guest post, by Randall Davidson, originally appeared on Nick Daws’ Writing Blog on 5/19/11.

Today I’m pleased to bring you another guest post from writer, proofreader and entrepreneur Randall Davidson. 

Randall has ten top tips for writers on how they can improve their proofreading skills to create better, more professional-looking documents.

* * *

Correct and efficient proofreading is one of the most crucial elements in producing quality advertisements, business documents and academic papers. Misspellings, poor grammar and/or improper word usage can create a negative impression that may overshadow your desired message. Additionally, these mistakes can reflect poorly on the individual or company responsible for the errors. Here are ten proofreading tips that can produce more professional results.

  1. Divide and conquer. By looking at the document in sections, proofreaders can often catch mistakes that might otherwise go unnoticed when reading a longer paper. Smaller sections can reduce fatigue and allow the proofreader to process the material more effectively while minimizing the chance that an error will be overlooked.
     
  2. Slow down. Many proofreading errors occur due to haste during the process. No list of proofreading tips would be complete without a recommendation to slow down and read carefully as you proofread.
     
  3. Sound it out. Reading the document out loud is one of the most beneficial proofreading tips and can help to identify mistakes in word usage and grammar that may not be apparent in the printed form. Additionally, any repeated or missing words are easily identified when the document is read aloud.

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes seven more proofreading tips, on Nick Daws’ Writing Blog.

10 Grammar Rules You Can And Should Ignore

by

This post, by Tracy O’Connor, originally appeared on Ghostwriter Dad on 1/7/11.

Some people are pedantic twits when it comes to the squishy rules of grammar.

Truth is, grammar is a powerful tool that lends clear meaning to quality copy, but it’s also far more flexible than most people realize. And a lot of what people claim as hard, fast rules can be completely ignored.

It is important to ensure your writing is easy to understand and that you set the proper tone for your audience. Outside of that, the page is your canvas to paint. Despite conventional wisdom, here are some rules you can safely ignore:

1. Never end a sentence with a preposition. Bow down to this rule without question and you’ll end up with unnatural sentences that are more difficult to understand. If the meaning of your sentence is clear and it sounds natural, go ahead and end it with a preposition.

Consider “What are you waiting for?” versus “For what are you waiting?”

Both are correct, but the second sounds like part of an 18th Century soliloquy.

2. Don’t start a sentence with “and,” “but” or other conjunctions. Starting too many sentences with “and” or “but” will make your writing sound like a second grader’s. But use it in moderation and you will have the voice of the everyman.

This can be particularly useful when you are trying to add emphasis or give your writing a conversational tone.

3. Don’t use double negatives. While you’ll probably want to avoid sentences like “I don’t got none,” there is a place for double negatives, particularly if you enjoy being snarky. “Twilight is a not unpopular series of books,” or “I’m not unfamiliar with your blog.”

Be sure to use it sparingly unless you want your readers to become not unwilling to kick you in places you’d rather be licked.

 

Read the rest of the post for seven more grammar rules you can sometimes ignore on Ghostwriter Dad.

Looking for Logic? Not in Book Sales

by

Watching your digital book sales climb is exhilarating. Seeing them decline  is heartbreaking and confusing. “What changed?” you ask yourself, feeling panicked. Did I slack off too much on blogging? Or forget to post in the forums? Did I take this success for granted for 24 hours? Frantically, you try to recreate the right combination of effort and luck that made it happen. Then you realize you don’t really know why the run-up occurred.

Sometimes, changes in books sales are obvious and logical. During weeks when I have three guest blogs posted and I’m active in the forums, the numbers go up a little and it makes sense. Other times, the sales shoot up for no reason. This month, they dropped for no reason.

I tried not to panic, telling myself it was temporary. But still, I kicked into high gear, posting in the forums, writing blogs, and sending out press releases. None of it seemed to make a difference. I even bought some ads, something I rarely do because it’s so hard to measure their effectiveness. But self-publishing is a small business, so reinvesting a little profit into advertising seems logical.

I crave logic, and these inexplicable fluctuations can make an author crazy. Particularly people like me: control freaks who want things to make sense. I want to know the cause and effect of everything. I want to depend on my efforts to produce predictable results. (Are you laughing?) So for months, I checked my Amazon sales daily. Because if I did something that worked, I wanted to know. How else do you learn and improve?

Yet sales often fluctuate for no rhyme or reason, so watching the daily numbers is a good way to give yourself an anxiety disorder—and not get much written on a new novel. But you have to keep writing new stories, because releasing a new book is the best thing you can do for sales of all your books. Proven!

So what’s an author to do? I’ve given up looking at daily sales. I still check my rankings on Amazon’s police procedural list every once in a while to see where my books are. If my titles are slipping off the first page, I ramp up my efforts for a while or maybe buy a small online ad.

But I’m trying not to obsess and to accept that I have little control over sales. I remind myself that making a living as a novelist was and is my dream, and that so as long as the bills get paid, I’m happy.

P.S. They’re climbing again, but who knows why?

Authors: What are your experiences with digital sales? Can you shed some light on the ups and downs?

L.J. Sellers is the author of the bestselling Detective Jackson mysteries and standalone thrillers.

My Reasons For Self-Publishing (Again)

by

This post, by Melissa Conway, originally appeared on her Whimsilly blog on 5/15/11.

Back in 1999, after a decade of starts and stops, I finished my first novel, Uncommon Sense. To say I was naïve about what came next, about the way the publishing industry worked, would be a vast, echoing understatement. I began searching for information, and was appalled when I learned how long the process took. Months waiting on agent query responses, partial responses, full responses. Assuming you snag an agent, you wait several more months on editor submissions. Assuming the book is eventually accepted, you then wait up to two years for the publisher to release it. Yikes! I wasn’t getting any younger. How long was I willing to languish in pre-publication purgatory before I saw the fruits (recognition, if not outright acclaim) of my labor?

My search yielded an alternative: self-publishing. Because I was clueless to any repercussions, the concept appealed to me. I had no one to advise me against it. As a working mom, I didn’t have time to attend writer’s group meetings, and back then, if online groups existed, I didn’t know about them. The information I’d gotten on traditional publishing was highly discouraging. The odds alone gave me serious pause; there are millions of writers out there competing for a select few spots on the bookstore shelves. Getting published is akin to winning multiple lotteries—first you win an agent, then you win a publisher, then you win fans…or not.

So I hope it’s not too hard for you to understand how I was swayed by the promises of my first self-publisher, iUniverse. They had a (paid) program where one of their reviewers would read my manuscript and if it was good enough, it would get a ‘special’ designation as an Editor’s Choice novel. When Uncommon Sense passed muster, I was over the moon. They like me! They really like me! The reviewer had wonderful things to say about the novel.

It felt like a tremendous victory, but I realize now the thing that made me happiest was that someone other than my family and friends read it and approved. I gratefully bought a ticket and boarded the iUniverse train, despite the fact that I had to accept whatever lame cover their amateurish artists threw together. In no time my baby was in print – with a $12.95 cover price, a cost much higher than the average paperback. Marketing, as a basic concept, never occurred to me.

It was before ebooks hit the scene, so of course sales were less than dismal. I can only fall back on the excuse that I really do suffer from a pervasive naivete. This explains why I chose to self-publish my next two novels, The Dragon Diary and Dessert Island. I simply hadn’t learned my lesson. The truth is that I was still caught in the gravity pull of planet Instant Gratification. The gratification in my case had more to do with putting my manuscripts in motion, launching them as it were, rather than jumping through agent submission hoops before inevitably abandoning my books to languish on my hard drive. Certainly I wasn’t gratified by my royalties!

My rude awakening occurred at the first writer’s conference I attended. At the Southern California Writer’s Conference in San Diego in the early 2000’s, I went to lectures and workshops and generally enjoyed myself…until a small-press editor got behind the pulpit and smashed my confidence to smithereens. She had palpable contempt for those who self-published and even went so far as to say that anyone who did would ruin their chances of getting accepted by a “real” publisher because their debut status would be forever gone.

I slunk away, ashamed of myself and my three books. It didn’t take long for me to come up with a plan: I would start over using my married name and hope that no one discovered what I had done.

Thank goodness the stigma of self-publishing is fading!
 

Read the rest of the post on Melissa Conway‘s Whimsilly.

Publishers Be Crazy…Or Desperate

by

I just read this article about Bookish.com, a new joint venture being launched later this summer by Hachette Book Group, Penguin USA and Simon & Schuster. Per the article:

The site intends to provide information for all things literary: suggestions on what books to buy, reviews of books, excerpts from books and news about authors. Visitors will also be able to buy books directly from the site or from other retailers and write recommendations and reviews for other readers.

The publishers — Simon & Schuster, Penguin Group USA and Hachette Book Group — hope the site will become a catch-all destination for readers in the way that music lovers visit Pitchfork.com for reviews and information.  

A couple of sentences further down, you’ll read:

“There’s a frustration with book consumers that there’s no one-stop shopping when it comes to information about books and authors,” said Carolyn Reidy, the president and chief executive of Simon & Schuster. “We need to try to recreate the discovery of new books that currently happens in the physical environment, but which we don’t believe is currently happening online.”

There are three problems with Ms. Reidy’s statements.

First, there is NOT "a frustration with book consumers that there’s no one-stop shopping when it comes to information about books and authors," because in fact, there are several sites that offer one-stop shopping for author/book information. Perhaps Ms. Reidy just hasn’t heard of such obscure, underground sites as Amazon.com, Goodreads.com, Shelfari.com, and LibraryThing.com.

Second, nobody needs to "recreate the discovery of new books that currently happens in the physical environment," because for the average consumer, discovery of new books NO LONGER HAPPENS IN THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT. Once again, it’s Amazon, Goodreads, Shelfari and LibraryThing to the rescue here, not to mention genre-specific online communities like Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and format- and device- specific online communities like Kindle Nation Daily.

Third, Ms. Reidy and her compatriots don’t "believe [this is] currently happening online." Why not?! How is it possible that publishers are THAT FAR out of touch with book buyers? I’ll tell you how: traditionally, publishers have viewed booksellers as their customers, and book-buyers as the customers of booksellers. They have little to no idea what’s bouncing around in the head and life of the typical consumer, because they haven’t had to know those things to run their business at any time in the past—past being the operative word there.

So these three major publishers are sinking massive amounts of time, effort and money into a huge new initiative that I think just about any typical book-buying consumer on the street could tell you today is destined to fail. And how do you suppose they’ll be financing this new initiative? Certainly not by reducing the prices of their books, or signing more new, unproven authors, or keeping books on physical shelves longer to give them a better chance of catching on, or giving individual authors more marketing money.

I’m sure the publishers would say this initiative is all about supporting their authors and marketing books in a cost-effective way, so kudos to them for good intentions. But while they may know book and author marketing today is all about author platform, they clearly don’t understand that author platform is all about community, and community is about making personal connections and feeling like you’re part of a movement. Which do you think a fan of Stephen King would rather visit: Stephen King’s personal site and online community of fans, or the obviously corporate umbrella site, Bookish.com?

Bookish.com content will necessarily be vetted and vanilla, so as not to hurt the corporate images and reputations of its backers and to avoid offending any site visitors. Anyone who wants the raw, unfiltered version of musings from their favorite authors and opinions of others in those authors’ communities won’t bother with Bookish.com when they can get the straight scoop right from the horses’ mouths elsewhere.

I hate to sound so negative and dump all over publishers like this, because it’s a good thing that they’re finally willing to try something new. But at this point, they face the same problem Microsoft did with its Zune MP3 player: Apple got there first with the iPod, and they did it very well. If you’re going to enter the marketplace with a new product for which the demand has already been fulfilled by someone else (or several someone elses), then your product has to be so incredibly, amazingly compelling that consumers will feel they’re missing out by not switching to it. Microsoft tried it with the Zune; I think by now we can all agree they failed to capture enough of the MP3 player market to even make Apple break a sweat. And Microsoft has decades of experience with technology and marketing direct to consumers.

So Bookish.com gets an A for effort, but a goose egg for vision and sustainability.

Publishers: maybe you’re looking at this all wrong. Maybe instead of trying to supplant the Amazons, Goodreads and Shelfaris of the world, you should be looking for ways to leverage what those sites and communities are already doing, and doing very well: crowdsourcing.

Let them tell you what the readers want to see in print and ebook forms. Listen to consumer complaints about ebook release windows and pricing, and respond accordingly. Switch to POD book production so you can offer a much wider variety of titles at a much lower cost; grousing about the lack of variety and fresh, new voices from mainstream pub is so common as to be a pastime in reader communities. Stop chasing after blockbusters and start tuning into the pre-existing discovery network to locate your new literary stars. Keep your ears to the ground for breakout indie authors, and sign them, knowing they’re already proven commodities. Get and keep a bead on technologies consumers are excited about (color ebooks, interactive book apps, etc.) and invest in those technologies.

Your role as arbiters of taste and gatekeepers is a thing of the past, and the position of Reader Community Leader has already been filled. Own it. Restructure your businesses and legacy thought patterns to embrace this new reality. Now, your role is to find out what consumers want in print books, ebooks and emerging media technologies, and give it to them. Period.
 

This is a cross-posting from April L. Hamilton‘s Indie Author Blog.

My Self-Publishing Journey

by

This post, by Erin Kern, originally appeared on her blog on 5/16/11.

My first release, Looking for Trouble, is currently #70 in the Kindle store. It’s #2 on the Kindle bargain books list, #5 on the kindle store contemporary romance list and #6 on the general fiction contemporary romance list. I’m selling an average of 300 books a day. If I can stay on that pace I’ll be shy of 10,000 copies sold for the month of May.

A year ago, I was reading one form rejection letter after another from every agent and publishing house in the country. So how did I go from being rejected to being a Kindle top seller? I’m so glad you asked. Let me tell you about it…

It started last summer when I’d been having a dialogue with an editor at a smaller publishing house. She’d requested the first five chapters, loved them and loved my writing style. However, she did have a few things she thought needed to be changed with the book. In addition to that, she informed me she wasn’t in a position to take on any new clients, then she wished me luck. So did I throw my book on Kindle the next day? No. I shut down my computer and sulked for a week. I cried, I was depressed and seriously thought about giving up writing (at that point I’d received close to 40 rejections from agents and publishers). Needless to say, I was feeling pretty kicked in the gut.

After a big, "you need to get your shit together" pep talk from my husband, I pulled up the word doc on my computer and started reworking the book again. I rewrote the first four chapters three different times. I deleted scenes because the book was way too long and reworked the ending. Then I did some more research on more publishing houses. I’d completely given up on agents. At least the editors took time to give me feedback/suggestions. Most agents didn’t even bother responding to me.

I still hadn’t considered self-publishing. I wanted a book deal. I wanted to see my book in print. I wanted to be able to smell the ink and flip the pages back and forth. I was unwilling to accept anything less than that.

Then after a few uneventful weeks, I started hearing whispers about authors who were self-publishing their rejected books onto the Kindle. So did I throw my book out there the next day? Not yet.

Shortly after that, Amazon announced it’s 70% royalty program. If you price your book at $2.99 or higher they give you 70% of the sales. I thought, okay even if I only sell 20 copies a month, that’s $40. Not bad considering it costs nothing to upload to Kindle. Even after that little incentive I was still a bit hesitant. I’d have to come up with my own cover, write my own blurb and do all my own marketing (which is a TON of work). That didn’t really sound appealing. But, then again, reading a rejection letter 6 months after the initial query isn’t that great either.

After a lot of pondering, research, praying and weighing the pros and cons, I took the leap of faith. I got my cover designed by a friend of mine, so not cost there. I had a ton of help with my blurb so that was pretty easy too. I priced the book at $2.99 because I wanted the 70% royalty and uploaded it to Kindle last October. I also uploaded the book to Barnes & Noble and Smashwords.

Read the rest of the post on Erin Kern‘s blog to learn how she got her sales into the thousands.

100 Stories For Queensland: Please Buy It [To Aid The Relief Effort]

by

When something drops out of the news cycle it’s easy to forget about it. But just because the purveyors of sensationalised pictures have got bored with an event, it doesn’t mean people aren’t still suffering. The devastating floods in Queensland might seem like a long time ago to most of us, but they’re still very real to lots of people. People that have lost everything and are suffering. eMergent Publishing put the call out to collect 100 stories, donated from writers around the world, and publish them in an anthology to raise money to directly help those people. Jodi Cleghorn, editor and owner of eMergent, has done an incredible job with her team getting this book together and I’m really proud to be one of the 100 authors included. Now it’s time to buy the book.

In order to raise awareness about the book’s existence, therefore sell more copies and therefore get more money to the people in need, the paperback edition is being promoted with a Chart Rush. What is a chart rush? Readers are invited to purchase a book on Amazon, in a nominated 24-hour period, with the intent to capitalise on the volume of sales to move the book up the Amazon best seller list. The higher up the chart it is (we’re aiming for a spot in the top 100) the more visible it becomes to other readers who may go on to purchase it. It’s all about exposure and the more people who come across 100 Stories for Queensland, the more books we sell and the more money we raise. If you can’t buy on the day, you can add it to your wishlist. Every little bit counts.

100 Stories for Queensland is listed at Amazon and Amazon UK.

You can join the Amazon Chart Rush Facebook event or official fan page for updates on our progress up the charts. Also tweets at @100stories4qld and 100 Stories for Queensland is listed at Goodreads.

This is a fantastic book, full of stories from some great authors, that will directly help the survivors of the floods, with all proceeds going to the Queensland Premier’s Flood Appeal. Please buy the book tomorrow, Tuesday 17th May (but late if you’re in Australia to stay tight to the 24 hour window), and do your bit to help. You’ll get a sweet book out of it.

 

This is a cross-posting from Alan Baxter‘s The Word.