Think

Opinion pieces offering commentary on various aspects of book culture, publishing and self-publishing.

Evaluating Your Editor

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This post originally appeared on Popular Soda on 10/3/13.

All editors are not created equal.

It is virtually impossible to find professional-level editing for bargain-basement prices. This handy checklist will help you determine if you’re looking at an experienced editor or a green freelancer. You may not have the funds, desire, or need to hire a top-notch editor, but this checklist will help you avoid untrained and unqualified individuals.

These guidelines are for editors who work on a sentence-by-sentence basis. They may call themselves line editors, copy-editors, or even proofreaders.

 

Experience

Look for experience specific to editing. Degrees in English and published books are nice, but they do not constitute copy-editing training.

Writing and editing are related skills, but not interchangeable, kind of like being good at running and being good at soccer. If you are a fast runner, that will help you in playing soccer. However, you can’t simply run around the field and expect to spontaneously learn the rules of the game. Editing is the same.

Check to make sure that your potential editor has training or formal experience in editing and he’s not just running around the field. An English degree is not enough. Look for education directly related to editing as well as in-the-field experience, such as editing for a book publisher or newspaper.

 

Rates

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Popular Soda.

 

Making Money As A Writer

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This post by Alexander M. Zoltai originally appeared on his Notes From An Alien site on 5/13/14.

I’ve written many posts about writers and money.

Some folks think that only the journalist-type or the non-fiction writer should think about making money…

Some folks think that fiction writers shouldn’t consider money and only write for the love of the art…

Some folks think the new self-publishing juggernaut can slam them into the mega-sales bracket…

Thing is, there’s a bit of truth in all those ways of thinking—a bit…

The full truth about any individual’s chance of making money with their writing involves, at least, the following factors:

* How strong their desire is to make money

* How much money they can spare to help them make money

* How much time they have to spend working toward making money

* The choice of venues in which they’re willing to try to make money

From my experience, I’d recommend a writer soberly consider those factors; then, based on their deliberations, make a sound judgement about one more factor:

 

Click here to read the full post on Notes From An Alien.

 

Literary Criticism in the Era of the Clickbait Headline

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This post by Jason Diamond originally appeared on Flavorwire on 5/15/14.

This probably says more about the type of conversations I have when I’m not sitting behind a computer than anything, but I’ve spent plenty of time in bars debating whether book reviews are of any value to anybody, from the reading public to the author who might look to critics for notes on what to improve. (If you are that special kind of literary masochist, then good on you. Go on doing what you’re doing). As someone who writes about books, as well as the type of person who enjoys reading criticism — to the point where I’ll read books full of book reviews from decades ago — I’m always going to stick up for book reviews. I’m always going to want to read them, and I wouldn’t mind always writing them. Reviews are important. Without them, the literary balance is thrown off, and the bar can be lowered to astonishing levels.

The thing is, people really don’t talk about reviews all that much. They might read them, but for the most part, unless it’s some intense Michiko Kakutani takedown over at the Times, discussing reviews doesn’t really compare to talking about which Stark was killed on the latest episode of Game of Thrones in terms of culturally relevant conversation topics. I wish that wasn’t the case, but in this tweet-a-second world, book reviews have had to fight really hard to stay in the conversation, especially on the Internet, where an Amazon review can make any casual reader feel like they’re John Leonard.

 

Click here to read the full post on Flavorwire.

 

In Fiction, Nothing Is Forbidden, Everything Is Permitted

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This post by Chuck Wendig originally appeared on his terribleminds site on 5/12/14. Note: this piece contains strong language.

In other words: “Fuck the rules.”

WHOA, JEEZ, ME. SLOW YOUR ROLL, WENDIG.

Okay, so, at cons and conferences — or via e-mail — someone inevitably mentions in a question something that writer is “not supposed to do.” This person has been reliably and repeatedly informed at some point that This Particular Thing is Fucking Anathema, a Dealbreaker Of Epic Narrative Proportions, and to Do This Shitty Thing is Tantamount To Kicking A Baby Down A Flight Of Steps Into A Pile Of Burning Books. (No, I don’t know why I capitalized a bunch of those words, but it felt good at the time. This is probably appropriate given the post I am about to write.)

This can be anything, really.

Don’t open on weather.

Don’t open with a character looking in a mirror.

Don’t open on a character just waking up.

Never ever use an adverb ever.

(Related: “In Writing, There Are Rules, And Then There Are Rules.”)

And for all that’s fucking holy, writing a prologue is a major biggum no-no, on par with and as pleasant as prolapsing one’s anus. You may in fact be told that a Prologue killed Jesus in the Gospel According To… I don’t remember. Dave, maybe. Dan? Eh.

 

Click here to read the full post on terribleminds.

You’re Not Gonna Spend a Lot Marketing This Book

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This post by Saundra Mitchell originally appeared on her Making Stuff Up For A Living blog on 1/13/14.

So, I’m reading this absurd article on all the things you need to spend money on to market your own book. Oh noz, you have to pay a zillion dollars for a website, for a mailing list, for copy and editing for your website, wtf? I’m not even going to link to article because, seriously, WTF?

Here’s the deal. If you’re willing to put the time in yourself, you can do almost all of your book marketing for free. It may be worth it to you to pay for someone else to do everything- and if you’re in a position to do that, awesome! Go for it! But if you’re not, or if you’d prefer to have strict control over everything, here’s a brief guide to doing it yourself.

 

Blog/Website: More and more people are using Blog software to host their entire websites. WordPress is fantastically flexible, free and your URL can be an easily memorable yourname.wordpress.com. WordPress has about a zillion free themes so you can customize like whoa, and because it’s an integrated service, it shares your links on other blogs like yours to drive traffic. FOR FREE.

Blogger is another free host and software package that’s easy to use and customize for your needs. And you know what drives even more traffic to websites? Twitter. ALSO FREE.

 

Graphics: Graphics for your website, your bookmarks, your postcards whatnot- you can create them yourself for free, from the bottom up. Download a copy of GIMP image manipulation software, and play with it.

 

Click here to read the full article on Making Stuff Up For A Living.

 

Read, Kids, Read

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This editorial by Frank Bruni originally appeared on The New York Times site on 5/12/14.

As an uncle I’m inconsistent about too many things.

Birthdays, for example. My nephew Mark had one on Sunday, and I didn’t remember — and send a text — until 10 p.m., by which point he was asleep.

School productions, too. I saw my niece Bella in “Seussical: The Musical” but missed “The Wiz.” She played Toto, a feat of trans-species transmogrification that not even Meryl, with all of her accents, has pulled off.

But about books, I’m steady. Relentless. I’m incessantly asking my nephews and nieces what they’re reading and why they’re not reading more. I’m reliably hurling novels at them, and also at friends’ kids. I may well be responsible for 10 percent of all sales of “The Fault in Our Stars,” a teenage love story to be released as a movie next month. Never have I spent money with fewer regrets, because I believe in reading — not just in its power to transport but in its power to transform.

So I was crestfallen on Monday, when a new report by Common Sense Media came out. It showed that 30 years ago, only 8 percent of 13-year-olds and 9 percent of 17-year-olds said that they “hardly ever” or never read for pleasure. Today, 22 percent of 13-year-olds and 27 percent of 17-year-olds say that. Fewer than 20 percent of 17-year-olds now read for pleasure “almost every day.” Back in 1984, 31 percent did. What a marked and depressing change.

 

Click here to read the full editorial on The New York Times.

 

The Art and Business of Reader Engagement and Author Platform

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This post by Jane Friedman originally appeared on her site on 12/13/13.

In the nonprofit world, you’ll frequently hear about “audience development,” which concerns itself with outreach to people interested in what you do, and customizing that outreach based on a person’s level of interest.

Audience development is difficult to strictly define because it involves not just pure marketing, but one-on-one relationships. It’s not about selling (although the result is often sales); it’s about creating an experience or community that engages with you over the long term. And that requires that you communicate with your readers meaningfully and consistently.

One of the best summaries of audience development I’ve read is from Shoshana Fanizza, who has spent more than a decade in arts development:

Audience Development, in a nutshell, is all about relationship building to achieve the “power of people” to support your art form. Consider it as building positive energy, people energy, to attract more support for you. Audience development does take time to see results. It is a building process. … You want to get to know your audience and connect with them. If they feel connected and cared for, they will want to become more involved. It will take effort and persistence, but you will see the relationships you build start to form a positive community around your art. This community is the key to succeeding!

So, audience development is a fancy business word for directly communicating with your readership, and engaging with them in a way that’s mutually beneficial and respectful. What follows is a starting framework and strategy for doing just that, and much of it overlaps with developing your platform. (If you don’t know what platform is, read my definition here.)

 

Why is this important?

 

Click here to read the full article on Jane Friedman’s site.

 

Kurt Vonnegut’s Rules for Reading Fiction

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This post originally appeared on Slate on 11/30/12.

Suzanne McConnell, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s students in his “Form of Fiction” course at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, saved this assignment, explaining that Vonnegut “wrote his course assignments in the form of letters, as a way of speaking personally to each member of the class.” The result is part assignment, part letter, part guide to writing and life.

This assignment is reprinted from Kurt Vonnegut: Letters, edited by Dan Wakefield, out now from Delacorte Press.

FORM OF FICTION TERM PAPER ASSIGNMENT

November 30, 1965

Beloved:

This course began as Form and Theory of Fiction, became Form of Fiction, then Form and Texture of Fiction, then Surface Criticism, or How to Talk out of the Corner of Your Mouth Like a Real Tough Pro. It will probably be Animal Husbandry 108 by the time Black February rolls around. As was said to me years ago by a dear, dear friend, “Keep your hat on. We may end up miles from here.”

As for your term papers, I should like them to be both cynical and religious. I want you to adore the Universe, to be easily delighted, but to be prompt as well with impatience with those artists who offend your own deep notions of what the Universe is or should be. “This above all …”

 

Click here to read the full excerpt on Slate.

 

Memoir and Voice and Why You Need to Sharpen Up

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This post by Jane Mauret originally appeared on her About A Book blog on 5/10/14.

Whilst Frank McCourt [Angela’s Ashes] and Augusten Burroughs [Running With Scissors; A Wolf at the Table] survived accusations of inaccuracies in their memoirs, James Frey’s highly successful A Million Little Pieces, 2002 [featured on Oprah’s Book Club] did not help the genre when it was later revealed he made up 70 per cent.

However, the truly worst case was Sybil [1973], about a woman’s dissociative identity disorder and the most harrowing book I have ever read [aside from Dave Pelzer’s A Boy Called It, 1995]. In 2012 Debbie Nathan’s Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case demonstrated that Sybil was a money-making venture cooked up by the author, Flora Rheta Schreiber, Sybil [Shirley Mason] and her therapist, Dr Cornelia Wilbur.

So this history may have contributed to the sense right now that dysfunctional childhood memoir has had its day. However, some books have overcome this due to the voice the authors utilise. This was achieved as far back as 1985 with Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges are not the Only Fruit and more latterly by Haven Kimmel’s A Girl Named Zippy [2002] and Jeanette Walls’ The Glass Castle [2005].

The message is – even a total unknown can make headway with agents and publishers if they write with a captivating voice.

 

Click here to read the full post on About A Book.

 

Penguin's Author Solutions Still A Poor Self-Publishing Choice

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This post by Orna Ross originally appeared on the ALLi blog on 5/9/14.

Yes, it’s that time of  year again, when the Watchdog desk here at ALLi Towers (otherwise known as Jim Giammatteo and Mick Rooney) scan the self-publishing scene and analyse the good, the bad and the definitely-to-be-avoided.

Authors still have to make their self-publishing choices in an unregulated environment where the same service can cost $500 against $15,000, for pretty much the same thing, depending on where you shop; where services that are absolutely useless are sold at inflated prices; and where one large operation with many imprints dominates the information stream, including Google Ads/search.

Prior to launching our guide to services at Book Expo America at the end of May, we wanted to alert you to that company, the world’s largest self-publishing service, Author Solutions (ASI), acquired by Penguin-Random House in 2012, and trading under a number of brand names including Trafford, XLibris and iUniverse.

The Watchdog Warning issued last year about this company is still in place.

Our hope that Penguin would clean up ASI’s practices, notorious in self-publishing circles for over-promising and under-delivering has not, as yet, materialised — and ASI imprints score a very poor rating in our guide again this year.

 

Click here to read the full post on the ALLi blog.

 

3 Myths About Social Media For Authors

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This post by Tim Grahl originally appeared on Out:think on 12/13/13.

More advice about social media is swirling around out there than ever before. I read the posts. I watch the videos. I’m constantly looking for that secret that I’m missing and each time I’m reminded of the same thing.

When it comes to selling books, spending a huge amount of time building a social media following is a waste of time.

In this post, I’m going to debunk many of the myths about social media and how it can be used to sell books and then I’m going to share a couple of things you can do to actually take advantage of these platforms.
2 Ideas About Social Media

Tools and Tool Boxes
All of the things we use to build our online platform – blogs, email lists, social media, podcasts, guest posts, etc – are all just tools in a tool box. The focus should never be on the tool. The focus is on what we are trying to build – in this case an author platform.

However, with tools like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn and others, we often lose site of that. We decide we need to use them to sell books then run around trying to figure out the best way to do it. This is the same thing as picking up a hammer from your toolbox and then running around trying to figure out what to build with it.

You should never start with the tools. You start with a plan, then reach in your toolbox and pull out the right tool for the job.

 

Click here to read the full post on Out:think.

 

Focus on Writing A Great Book

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This post by Rachelle Gardner originally appeared on her blog on 1/12/14.

It seems in the last few years, dialogue about all-things-publishing has been focused on platform, marketing, increasing output, distribution platforms, technology, and self-publishing. (This blog is no exception.) But as I noted in this post at Author Media , I think it’s important to call our attention back to the work. 

It may be easier to get published these days because of self-pub and the proliferation of indie publishing options. But it’s not any easier to write a good book. 

In fact, it may be even harder to write a good book than it was in days past, because both you and your reader have more distractions. You’re tempted by the Internet, your ability to concentrate for long periods of time has been compromised, and deep focus is more challenging. Meanwhile, your reader has infinite sources of information and entertainment. So a book has to be darn good to to keep both your attention and your reader’s. Now is the time to make sure we’re not minimizing the importance of mastering the craft.

 

Click here to read the full post on Rachelle Gardner’s blog.

 

Barnes & Noble's Last-Ditch Effort To Save Itself: Going Back To College

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This article by Phil Wahba originally appeared on The Huffington Post on 5/8/14.

NEW BRUNSWICK, New Jersey (Reuters) – Barnes & Noble Inc is turning to its college roots to boost its top line.

The U.S. bookseller, which opened in 1965 as a university bookstore in New York, wants a much bigger presence on college campuses, where students last year spent an average of $1,200 on textbooks and supplies, according to the College Board.

Barnes & Noble, now the second largest operator of college bookstores with 696 shops, plans to have about 1,000 locations within five years, Max Roberts, chief executive of the company’s college business, said in an exclusive interview at Rutgers University’s bookstore in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

It intends to do that by getting more schools to outsource their bookstore operations with the lure of nicer, higher-grossing stores and by poaching accounts from larger rival Follett Corp, which runs 940 stores.

Success isn’t a slam dunk: About 45 percent of U.S. colleges still run their own stores. And overall college store sales have stagnated in recent years at about $10 billion, according to the National Association of College Stores.

 

Click here to read the full article on The Huffington Post.

How to Write

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This post by Heather Havrilesky originally appeared on The Awl on 5/5/14.

I teach a Popular Criticism class to MFA students. I don’t actually have an MFA, but I am a professional, full-time writer who has been in this business for almost two decades, and I’ve written for a wide range of impressive print and online publications, the names of which you will hear and think, “Oh fuck, she’s the real deal.” Because I am the real deal. I tell my students that a lot, like when they interrupt me or roll their eyes at something I say because they’re young and only listen when old hippies are digressing about Gilles Deleuze’s notions of high capitalism’s infantilizing commodifications or some such horse shit.

Anyway, since Friday is our last class, and since I’m one of the only writers my students know who earns actual legal tender from her writing—instead of say, free copies of Ploughshares—they’re all dying to know how I do it. In fact, one of my students just sent me an email to that effect: “For the last class, I was wondering if you could give us a breakdown of your day-to-day schedule. How do you juggle all of your contracted assignments with your freelance stuff and everything else you do?”

Now, I’m not going to lie. It’s annoying, to have to take time out of my incredibly busy writing schedule in order to spell it all out for young people, just because they spend most of their daylight hours being urged by hoary old theorists in threadbare sweaters to write experimental fiction that will never sell. But I care deeply about the young—all of them, the world’s young—so of course I am humbled and honored to share the trade secrets embedded in my rigorous daily work schedule. Here we go:

 

Click here to read the full post on The Awl.

 

15 Things a Writer Should Never Do

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This post by Zachary Petit originally appeared on Writer’s Digest on 5/10/13.

Based on interviews with authors over the years, conferences, editing dozens of issues of Writer’s Digest, and my own occasional literary forays and flails, here are some points of consensus and observations: 15 of them, things anyone who lives by the pen (or seeks to) might consider. It is, like most things in the writing world, a list in progress—and if you’ve got your own Dos or Don’ts to add, I’d love to hear them in the Comments.

1. Don’t assume there is any single path or playbook writers need to follow. (Or, for that matter, a definitive superlative list of Dos and Don’ts …) Simply put: You have to do what works best for you. Listen to the voices in your head, and learn to train and trust them. More often than not, they’ll let you know if you’re on the right path. People often bemoan the surplus of contradictory advice in the writing world—but it’s there because there really is no yellow-brick road, and a diversity of perspectives allows you to cherry-pick what uniquely suits you and your abilities.

2. Don’t try to write like your idols. Be yourself. Yeah, it sounds a bit cheesy, but it’s true: The one thing you’ve got that no one else does is your own voice, your own style, your own approach. Use it. (If you try to pretend to write like anyone else, your readers will know.) Perhaps author Allegra Goodman said it best: “Know your literary tradition, savor it, steal from it, but when you sit down to write, forget about worshiping greatness and fetishizing masterpieces.”

3. Don’t get too swept up in debates about outlining/not outlining, whether or not you should write what you know, whether or not you should edit as you go along or at the end—again, just experiment and do what works best for you. The freedom that comes with embracing this approach is downright cathartic.

 

Click here to read the full post, which includes 12 more tips, on Writer’s Digest.