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Random House, Penguin Agree to Merge

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This story originally appeared on Publishers Weekly on 10/29/12. 

In a deal that had been months in the making, Pearson and Bertelsmann announced Monday morning that they have signed an agreement to form a joint venture that will combine the businesses of Random House and Penguin. The deal, which is expected to close in the second half of 2013, will make Penguin Group chairman John Makinson chairman of the newly named Penguin Random House company, while Random House chairman and CEO Markus Dohle will be CEO. 

Under the terms of the agreement, Bertelsmann will own 53% of the joint venture and Pearson will own 47%. The joint venture will exclude Bertelsmann’s trade publishing business in Germany, and Pearson will retain rights to use the Penguin brand in education markets worldwide. Bertelsmann will nominate five directors to the board of Penguin Random House, and Pearson will nominate four.

The announcement came after word leaked Sunday that News Corp. was considering making an offer for Penguin, but Makinson said the Pearson board is committed to the Bertelsmann deal. And Pearson and Bertelsmann executives made it sound like they were proceeding as they expect the merger to move forward.

“This combination with Random House – a company with an almost perfect match of Penguin’s culture, standards and commitment to publishing excellence – will greatly enhance its fortunes and its opportunities. Together, the two publishers will be able to share a large part of their costs, to invest more for their author and reader constituencies and to be more adventurous in trying new models in this exciting, fast-moving world of digital books and digital readers,” said Pearson CEO Marjorie Scardino.

Thomas Rabe, chairman and CEO of Bertelsmann, said: “With this planned combination, Bertelsmann and Pearson create the best course for new growth for our world-renowned trade-book publishers, to enable them to publish even more effectively across traditional and emerging formats and distribution channels. It will build on our publishing tradition, offering an extraordinary diversity of publishing opportunities for authors, agents, booksellers, and readers, together with unequalled support and resources.” 

 

Read the rest of the story on Publishers Weekly.

Should Charity Be Profitable?

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 A news story this week asked “Is ABC Going to Far in Covering Robin Roberts Illness?” The journalist was speculating about whether the network’s “concern” had crossed the line into exploitation in an attempt to boost ratings.

It’s a very fine line and a subject I’ve been thinking about a lot lately because it applies to authors, charity, and book sales. Many authors have donated the profit, or part of the profit, of a new book to charity, typically a charity or medical cause that corresponds with a theme in the story. And in doing so, they boost their sales and visibility.

On the surface, this seems noble, and we did it on the Crime Fiction Collective blog when the tornado tore apart Joplin Missouri. We all donated all of our profits during a certain time period to a Joplin family, who was very grateful for the help. I even think it was my idea.

But the more I ponder this trend, the more I believe that for myself, charity needs to be separate from commerce. Any donation I make should be done out of compassion and goodwill alone—without profiting from it directly through increased sales.

But why not accomplish both things at once, when it seems so expedient? I’m not sure I can articulate why I’ve come to feel this way. Except that rooting for your book to sell is a completely different emotion and experience than sending money to help others in need—perhaps even a contradictory one.

I understand why authors do this. Their hearts are in the right place. And the readers who buy those books are even more commendable. They’re figure they’re going to spend money on books anyway, so why not make a donation to charity at the same time?

Many businesses also run these campaigns. A pizza parlor down the street often donates part of its one-day profits to a charity, school, or foundation. Everybody wins.

And I understand what ABC is trying to accomplish: educate viewers, raise money for medical research, and boost its ratings. But has it gone too far? Probably. Charities are by definition nonprofit, and raising money for, or donating to, a cause without directly profiting from the effort seems more noble. Yet goodwill results naturally from generosity, so indirect benefits are inevitable, but they’re not the same as direct profit.

I’m not saying it’s wrong for authors to connect their books to a charity. It’s just not something I’m comfortable doing myself. But I’m probably in the minority here. What do you think?

 

This is a reprint from L.J. Sellers’ blog.

6 Predictable Romance Novel Heroes

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This post, by Susan Whelan, originally appeared on her Reading Upside Down site.

The Doctor

Still grieving for the loss of his wife/child, this gifted medical practitioner puts all of his emotional energy into healing his patients. Somehow he manages to maintain a buff physique despite his 16 hour working days.

The Cowboy 

Practical, tough and sexy as all-get-out, this hardworking rancher doesn’t have time for anything except for his property and his horses.

Funnily enough for a man who only seems to leave his property to visit the rodeo, feed store or local honky tonk, he can be amazingly suave when the right woman comes along (see Hugh Jackman in Baz Luhrman’s Australia for the Aussie equivalent, The Drover).

The Billionaire Tycoon

From dirt poor beginnings, probably with one alcoholic parent and one absent parent either through death or desertion, this man has abandoned all emotion in his single-minded quest to accrue wealth and power.

He is most inclined to fall in love with a) his plain-jane secretary who’s really stunningly beautiful and incredibly nice and has secretly loved him for years, b) a sassy woman who cares nothing for wealth or monetary success and is not impressed by him in any way or c) a random woman that he asks to marry him to fulfil some business ultimatum from a managing director or to avoid some money-hungry socialite trying to trick him into marriage.

 

Read the rest of the post, which covers three more stereotypical romance  on Reading Upside Down.

What Is Speculative Fiction?

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This post, by N.E. Lilly, originally appeared on GreenTentacles.com.

 

Well? What is it? You don’t really know do you? Well that’s OK, because then there would be little point in writing this article.

Speculative fiction is a term, attributed to Robert Heinlein in 1941, that has come to be used to collectively describe works in the genres of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror.

But if we already have science fiction, fantasy, and horror, then why do we need to muddy the water with yet another genre description? Because speculative fiction addresses fiction that includes Weird Tales, Amazing Stories, and Fantastic Fiction. It also may include other genres, such as Mysteries, Alternate Histories, and Historical Fiction. Speculative fiction can be a collective term to describe works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror and also addresses works that are not science fiction, fantasy, or horror, yet don’t rightly belong to the other genres.

 

 

Speculative fiction is also more than the collective title for works of horror, science fiction, and fantasy. The term also embraces works that don’t fit neatly into the separate genres. Tarzan. Television’s Early Edition. Stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Tales that span the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres. Stranger in a Strange Land. The Twilight Zone. Stories by Edgar Allen Poe. Tales that have been labelled simply as ‘weird’ or ‘adventure’ or ‘amazing’ because there was no proper place to put them. Stories on the fringe.

When you’ve come across a story or movie or game that both is and isn’t science fiction, fantasy, and/or horror, then you’ve discovered speculative fiction.

Examples of speculative fiction may run the gamut from the outright weird, such as in the short stories ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ by H.P. Lovecraft or ‘The Metamorphoses’ by Kafka, to the frighteningly possible, such as in the movie ‘Jaws’ directed by Steven Spielberg.

Speculative Fiction is Everywhere

Nearly every major industry has some little niche that produces content for or about speculative fiction. From an obvious industry such as cinema or toys, to industries that are not quite so obvious such as the manufacture of clothing and jewelry (costuming).

Nearly all content and media created for children contains some aspect of speculative fiction, such as talking animals, magic, or monsters. When speaking of children’s literature it’s almost impossible not to find speculative fiction in the form of fantasy or science fiction.

The majority of computer game titles produced, whether for personal computer or gaming consoles, also contain some element of speculative fiction. Whether it be a science fiction strategy game like Sid Meyer’s Alpha Centauri or a fantasy based first person role-playing game like Everquest.

And I defy you to find a single pen and paper role-playing game that doesn’t draw on some element of speculative fiction. There may be one, but I wouldn’t hold my breath looking for it.

Speculative Fiction is everywhere. It has invaded our lives… but what is it? We’ve contacted various people in the specultive fiction industry to profess their knowledge of the question… What is Speculative Fiction?

 

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes definitions and remarks from five more contributors, on GreenTentacles.com.

NaNoWriMo Cometh: A Terribleminds Primer

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This post, by Chuck Wendig, originally appeared on his Terribleminds site.

This past weekend, I spoke at the Crossroads Writers Conference in Macon, Georgia. I’ll presumably get to a full recap eventually (wherein I explain a weekend where I encountered people like: my first nervous fan, a former dominatrix, Delilah Dawson with her 1989 cell phone, Nathan “Baby Goose” Edmondson, Robert “Not-An-Accessory-To-Murder” Venditti, and various other awesome humans).

I also met Chris Baty, who is of course the big brain behind NaNoWriMo.

Now, I have my reservations about NaNoWriMo (which I pronounce “wree-mo,” as in, “NaNoWriMo Williams, The Adventure Begins”, even though it is, I’m told, technically “wry-mo”). I think like with all “get-thee-to-the-writery” initiatives, it’s a perfect fit for some and for others an anchor around their ankles, so you just gotta know what’s right for you and what works and not blame yourself when what’s really going on is you’re just adhering to a process that isn’t really your process.

Square peg, circle hole, and all that.

So, that being said, I also know that National Novel Writing Month gets a helluva lot of you up off your leafy, moldering bed of sadness and shame — and anything that forces you to shake off the barnacles and get your ass out to sea is good by me. (Actually, Baty had a good Grace Hopper quote comparing writers to seafaring vessels: “A ship in port is safe… but that’s not what ships are built for.”)

Anyway.

So, first up, I figure I’ll ask: who’s doing NaNoWriMo?

Have you done it before? What was your experience?

What are your hopes and reservations for doing it again?

Also — here’s a list of ten posts here at terribleminds that maybe, just maybe, will help you start to prep for the coming tide of furious frenzied cram-a-holic novel-writing come the month of November. 

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes many helpful links to Chuck Wendig’s helpful writing how-to posts, on Terribleminds.

Wasted Words

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As writers we are told to avoid clichés, to come up with a new and better way to describe and characterize.

Here are some of my pet peeves:

 

  • Irregardless. It’s just plain regardless.
     
  • We’ll meet at 9 a.m. in the morning. As opposed to 9 a.m. in the evening?
     
  • The good doctor. Maybe he’s a bad doctor.
     
  • Very unique. Unique is a word unto itself. It doesn’t need any qualifiers. What is fairly unique? Uniquely unique?
     
  • At this point in time. Where else would it be?
     
  • At the end of the day. Probably a good phrase the first 5 times it was used, but now…sick of it!
     
  • Think outside the box. Again a good one the first 10 times, but…
     
  • I personally believe. As opposed to I impersonally believe?
     
  • It is what it is. Huh?
     
  • To be honest. That makes me think you might NOT be!

BBC’s Magazine has posted a funny list of its readers’ most hated cliché phrases.

To be honest and fair, going forward, this is basically something that, at the end of the day, we’re likely to touch base about again.

Let’s face it, the fact of the matter is that literally all of us succumb to the use of these stock phrases — even when bringing our A game and giving 110%.

What are your most hated clichés — and how do you avoid them? 

 

 

This is a reprint from author and editor Heidi M. Thomas‘s blog.

MFA Monday: Conflicting Critiques

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This post, by Heidi Willis, originally appeared on her And Also… blog on 11/15/10.

The first assignment due this week includes a submission of writing to be critiqued by a group of fellow writers. I’d like to say this is no big deal to me. I’ve been in a critique group for over three years, and we do this all the time. I’m used to having my work shredded and put back together with bleeding red pens (figuratively, of course, since it comes back in a Word document with Track Changes that can be red, blue, green, or, my favorite, purple, depending on the critiquer).

I wasn’t worried. Which should have been my first warning sign.

 

The MFA workshop consists of students in all levels of the program, meaning I will likely be in a group that is not only first semester students, but second, third, fourth and possibly graduating students as well. Because of this, there isn’t the demand to send in just the first pages of what you’re working on. A fifth semester student who’s been doing this two years probably isn’t going to keep sending in the first pages of their novel over and over again. The only requirement is that the piece you submit be better than a rough draft that doesn’t know where it’s going, but is also something you want to keep working on (as opposed to something you’ve already published).

So I contacted my trusty critique group (my 4Corners gals) and asked: Do I send the first pages, which is what I’ll eventually submit to an agent, and work on making that the best, or do I send in what I consider my very best (or favorite) chapter in order to put my best foot forward? If this submission is what an advisor will read to judge whether or not they want to work with me, I want to send the best, right?

My gals said yes, without a doubt, send the best you have.

So then I sent those pages to them to make sure they were polished enough to submit. (I know, they’ve been saints about this whole process with me, and put up with my endless questions and submissions in my panic that I’m going to humiliate myself in January when I begin the residency).

You know what? About half said they LOVED the submission and DEFINITELY send it in, and they CRIED through it and it was so POWERFUL!!!!!! And the other half…. said, eh. This is a bit confusing. And overwritten. And detached. And not the best thing I’ve seen from you. Maybe send in the first pages instead.

Yeah.

My guess is that if you are a writer and you have a writing group, this has probably happened to you too. Different opinions about the same piece of writing…. some love. Some loathe. Some want you to keep it, others think it needs an overhaul. What one person thinks is brilliant and genius, another thinks is confusing and obscure.

And this is the nature of writing. Because this happens even in published works. Look at Stephanie Meyers and the Twilight series, just as an example. Big name authors have come out criticizing the quality of the writing, and yet it’s spawned a world-wide fan base of people that absolutely love it. Cormac McCarthy won the Pulitzer for The Road, which is widely acclaimed, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. That is one book not up my alley, so to speak.

So what do you do when you place your writing in the hands of people you trust to tell you the truth, and then you get such widely differing opinions?

 

Read the rest of the post on And Also….

What Is Theme In Writing?

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This post, by Harvey Chapman, originally appeared on Novel-Writing-Help.com.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition, theme is "the subject of a piece of writing." Now, that might be factually correct (who am I to argue with the dictionary people?), but I still don’t believe it is helpful to anyone just starting out in novel writing who is trying to work out what theme actually is.

 

The "subject of a piece of writing" suggests "subject matter" – and, for me, a novel’s subject matter is something concrete and definite. So the subject matter of a horror novel, for example, might be vampires and spooky castles.

A literary theme, on the other hand, is not concrete at all. It can usually be summed up by a phrase like "grief" or "unrequited love" or "blind faith" – something intangible like that.

So let’s start again…

What is theme? According to my own definition, the theme of a novel is simply what a novel "means."

I think I have stated elsewhere on this site that a novel’s theme is what it is "about." Thinking about it, though, that sounds dangerously like "subject matter" again, which is why I am defining theme here as what the events of a novel "mean."

A love story, for example, is "about" two people meeting and falling in love. In other words, it is about…

  • The characters
  • The plot (or what the characters do)
  • The setting (or where they do it)

…and these things are all on the novel’s surface. In fact, they are the novel’s subject matter.

The theme of a novel, however – or the meaning of a novel – happens beneath the surface, and it is essentially the lesson that the surface story teaches us, or the conclusion that can be drawn from the events.

If all of this is sounding kind of vague, that’s because theme in writing is kind of vague. But we are slowly edging closer to a more concrete definition…

The theme of a novel is the deeper layer of meaning running beneath the story’s surface.

 

 

Read the rest of the post on Novel-Writing-Help.com.

The Secret To Writing Humor

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This post, by Brent Diggs, originally appeared on Humor Blogging.

DO YOU KNOW THE SECRET?

 

High in the mountains of upper Bolivia, guarded for centuries by ancient Norwegian fish herders lies the secret.

Not the mystical law of attraction that promises to manifest wealth and satisfaction into your life for a small fee, but rather the secret to unleashing smiles and even audible laughter with your written humor.

This secret, which I am about to reveal in the next five words, is none other than editing.

I will pause for the inevitable groaning.

Once you retrieve the mouse you threw against the wall in bitter disappointment, we will continue.* Yes, there are some definite challenges when it comes to writing humor. The first of which is that it is painfully difficult to do. At least if you want to do it well.

Of course this really shouldn’t come as a surprise if you think about it, considering that nearly every tool of comedy is denied to the writer.

In stand up, live comedy, comedy films, and even in conversation much of the humorous effect of any exchange is delivered by facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, and sounds; all of which team up for an interlocking assault on the audience’s collective funny bone.

But as a humble writer of prose, your humor rests almost exclusively on the power of your words. Which is why you must pick them with care and arrange them for maximum impact.

PICKING YOUR WORDS

William Zinsser, in his well respected reference manual, On Writing Well, which has been in existence longer than many of the people reading this article, states that humor is the one type of writing where using a thesaurus is actually beneficial.

Although none of my work is available in a thirtieth anniversary edition, I too have found that there is a huge advantage to exploring the range of connotations and shades of meaning accessible through careful word selection.

It allows you to assume many different voices or tones in your writing and use them to sneak up on your readers while carefully concealing your punchline until the last possible minute.

 

Read the rest of the post on Humor Blogging. 

Short Film Story Structure

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This post originally appeared on the Short Films blog. While it’s a blog aimed at filmmakers, this particular post has a lot of great tips and advice about writing.

Short story structure demands that you abandon all ideas of forming your own brand of storytelling. The rules are very simple: comply to the form that sells, or you don’t sell.

Short story structure has been around since the beginning of time. You can read short stories in the Bible and on cave walls. They all have the same structure; so don’t try to reinvent the wheel.

 

Every short story has a theme – that invisible thread that runs from beginning to end, delivering a silent message to the reader. For example, Moby Dick wasn’t about hunting whales. It was about revenge. Gone With the Wind wasn’t about love. It was about Scarlet O’Hara’s manipulation and control and how it led to her devastation.

So – what is your story aboutc When you know the overall theme, think of the middle scene – the plot. What will be the one scene that will turn the whole storyc Get that firmly in your mind, take notes on it, and then head your whole story toward that objective.

Every story must have conflict, and without it, you are dead in the water. What is your conflict. There are five kinds:

· Man vs. man – any kind of man, woman, or child conflicting with anyone else

· Man vs. nature – any kind of conflict where man battles nature, whether it be a storm or wild animal

· Man vs. self – I advise new writers to stay away from this one. It deals with a man, woman or child battling with themselves. It is difficult to bring this kind of story to a good resolution.

· Man vs. society – man, woman or child battling with peers, groups, society, organizations, authority, etc.

· Man vs. machine – fantasy stories with aliens or machines

 

Where to Begin:

Don’t begin at the beginning. For example, opening a story with a normal scene no longer works. Today’s readers are an action-oriented group that bases their entertainment on electronic toys, fast-paced movies, and faster paced stories, so start your first paragraph with gripping action. It can be part of a flashback, or even the middle of a scene. 

 

Read the rest of the post, including the extensive Q&A section at the end, on the Short Films blog.

10 Signs That You Are Not Ready to Self-Publish

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Are you really ready – not just your manuscript, but you – to self-publish? Here is a list of the most important things you must consider before getting into self-publishing. So, before you ignore the traditional publishing process, make sure you have the stamina for becoming your own publisher. Self-publishing is not a short cut to seeing yourself in print, or to success. If anything, it’s more arduous and time-consuming than writing the book itself.

1. You Believe That “If I Write It They Will Come”

Get serious. This thinking might work for a big-time author like Stephen King, but not for you and me. The rest of us need to work really long hours to make our books sell. We need to become experts in marketing, sales, SEO, blogging, and in all social media. We need to spend every minute possible sitting at our desk and writing. And the writing better be good.

2. You Haven’t Researched Your Market

You better know everything there is to know about your market and your audience. Who will be reading and buying your books? What are the hottest topics and trends in your market? What books are actually selling in your industry (on Amazon)? By writing and publishing you are putting yourself out there as an expert in your niche. Your audience expects you to sound and act like an expert. If they get the slightest hint that you are not the expert that you are telling them that you are, you will lose your audience and they won’t come back to read or buy your books.

3. You Don’t Understand What Actually Goes Into A Salable Book

This one might seem too obvious, but to some of us it isn’t. Too many books are getting published that barely look like a finished book. I have seen one too many books missing the table of contents, page numbers, index, isbn, etc., and even the author’s name! If you want to be taken seriously as a publisher and author, and gain your audience’s respect, you must create a professional-looking product. Complete in every way that a reader expects a book to be.

4. You Haven’t Researched Your Niche

Read everything that you can get your hands on about your niche. You should know who the big experts are, and have read their books. Read the publications and blogs of those writers and groups within your niche. It is important to remember that in today’s terms, niche now means “micro-niche”. As a self-publisher you will most likely find the biggest success by narrowly defining your market niche. It is much easier to become an expert in a very specific market where it is much less crowded with big well-established writers and publishers.

5. You Hope To Get Famous From Self-Publishing

This is possible, but not likely. Fame comes with a lot of hard work and lots of luck. Therefore, it cannot be your only motive for self-publishing your books. Instead, concentrate on building and improving your reputation within your market. Earning the respect of your peers and your audience is a very achievable and respectable goal – and will help improve your book sales.

6. You Believe That Book Sales And Financial Profits Are What Self-Publishing Is All About

There is no guarantee that you will have financial success by publishing your books. The majority of authors make little or no money from their books. But if you really understand your market, and become an expert in your niche, build a great book, and devote your life to marketing yourself and your books, you will have book sales. Those books will then help bring you new customers, and build your reputation within your industry.

7. You Haven’t Started Marketing Your Book

You must start marketing well in advance of releasing your book. Probably the easiest way to get started is to build your own blog where you write about your niche. In addition, blogging is a great way to prove to yourself, and to your audience, that you are serious about your niche.

8. You Have No Marketing Plan

If you haven’t figured this out already, publishing is 90% marketing, 10% writing. If you love the subject you write about, and love to share the information with others, then this will not worry you. If you expect to make your book a critical and financial success, you will look at marketing your book as a welcomed challenge. Marketing is all about understanding your audience – the very people that you want to share information with and help them improve their situation. Therefore, you must develop a guideline, or plan, of what you are going to do to market your book.

9. You’re Impatient

Publishing is not for the impatient. Everything in book publishing takes a while to complete. And when you are self-publishing, you are the one that needs to do all of the work – and also maintain your blog, job, family, and home. So it might take you twelve to twenty-four months before you see your book in print. And then it might take another two years to show any financial return on that book. So you better choose your niche very carefully.

10. You Jump In Before Understanding The Business Side Of Self-Publishing

Yes, self-publishing is a business. It will force you to become a true capitalist, whether you like it or not. This is a business that will take up a lot of your time and money, with no guarantee of a financial return. You will need to force yourself to learn all aspects of building and managing a company. But the more effort you put into it, the more you will get out of it.

 

This article was written by Joseph C. Kunz, Jr. and originally posted on KunzOnPublishing.com

 

New Publishing Companies Are Starting That Are Much Leaner Than Their Established Competitors

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This post, by Mike Shatzkin, originally appeared on his The Shatzkin Files on 9/24/12.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

“It’s become very, very clear to me that digital trumps print, and that pure digital, without any legacy costs, massively trumps print.” — David G. Bradley, owner of Atlantic Media, quoted in The New York Times on September 24, 2012.

The magazine business isn’t the book business, but…

For the better part of two decades, many people have seen the potential quandary the digital transition posed to big successful full-service publishing organizations. If distribution no longer requires scale, what does that mean to the companies that not only succeeded by creating distribution at scale, but which also are largely locked in to their high-cost, high-maintenence infrastructures?

This was one of my concerns when I delivered my “End of General Trade Publishing Houses” speech at BookExpo in 2007. When bookstores go away, I figured, it would become absolutely necessary but would be very hard for publishers working across audiences to adjust to being multi-niche. And it seemed to me that the big organizations built to deal with thousands of dispersed retail outlets at scale would be far too expensive to maintain when the outlets weren’t there. And stepping down the overhead level wouldn’t be easy.

There’s no shortage of understanding of this challenge. All big publishers are looking for new ways to apply scale to gathering names, analyzing data, improving discovery, social marketing, and creating partnerships with others that can provide audience reach.

Several companies have built business strategies around the expectation that traditional publishing organizations are going to have to get smaller and change the way they staff their print value chain. Among the biggest players, Donnelley, Ingram, Perseus, and even Random House fit that description: offering a variety of ways for publishers to offload everything except the functions that are absolutely core to publishing: editorial selection and development, rights management, and marketing.

The companies that offer the print value chain solutions also have digital services, of course, but they have competitors in that space that specialize in providing what demands scale for digital publishing. The competitors tend to start their service offerings further up the workflow than those that started by focusing on scalable distribution. Two new partnerships announced last week suggest the emergence of new commercial models for publishing.

The big eye-catching announcement was that Barry Diller and Scott Rudin, both with Hollywood roots, are putting substantial investment — announced as $10 million, but they could certainly add more when and if they want to — behind a new commercial trade house called Brightline to be led by publishing veteran Frances Coady. Brightline will partner and build its books with The Atavist.

Perhaps less noticed, but pointing in a similar direction, is that agent and entrepreneur Jason Allen Ashlock has set up a new niche publishing imprint to do crime and suspense books, working on the PressBooks platform created by Hugh McGuire.

The publishing ambitions here are quite different, but the point they make about the direction of publishing’s future are very much the same.

 

 

Read the rest of the post on The Shatzkin Files.

How To Get Book Reviews

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This post originally appeared on the Alliance of Independent Authors site on 9/19/12.

Trying to get readers to write a review is like getting your two-year-old child to take a horrible-tasting medicine, says ALLi member and regular contributor, Giacomo (Jim) Giammatteo. But it is possible and it is worth it.  In the first of a three-part series on reviews, he explains how he gets more than twenty reviews a month.

The Process of Getting Reviews

I launched my book in mid April 2012. Since then I have managed to get seven editorial reviews, 77 reviews on Amazon, and another 44 reviews on Goodreads. No matter how you look at it, that’s a lot of reviews (more than 20 per month) so how do you get that many reviews?

I can tell you it’s not by having a big family. I didn’t have my wife write one (mostly for fear of what she’d say) and I didn’t have either of my sons write a review. A few family members did write reviews—the ones who read the kind of books I write. And guess what, one of those reviews was not a five star. (Yeah, I know. Tough family)

For what it’s worth, here’s the secret—work your butt off and put in a lot of time. Here are my suggestions.

  • Your Book—In the back of your book put a statement about how important reviews are, and ask the readers to please leave a review. Don’t ask for a good review, just an honest one.
     
  • Internet—Spend time scouring the internet for sites that review books, and then send out emails asking them to consider your book for a review. There are a lot more sites than you might think. (I am in the process of putting together a comprehensive list of reputable review sites, so check with me in a few weeks if you’re interested.)
     
  • Bloggers—This one is perhaps the most important. Do your research. Find the bloggers who read and review in your genre. Follow their instructions and guidelines. Most of them have their policies posted on the site. Read them. Did I mention, Read the Review Policies?

  • Make sure you send your book to reviewers who are interested in your kind of book. I made this mistake, resulting in three of my worst reviews. These reviewers were appalled at the violence and use of language in my book. I don’t blame them; it was my fault. I should have done more checking.

  • Giveaways—

 

 

Read the rest of the post on  the Alliance of Indepedent Authors site.

The Truth About Finding Time To Write

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This post, by Jennifer Blanchard, originally appeared on Better Writing Habits.

Writers are always complaining they don’t have enough time to write.  In fact, that’s the main complaint writers have and one of their biggest barriers to getting writing done, as well.

Finding time to write when you’re already busy as hell may seem like a huge challenge. It may even feel impossible at times. But here’s a little secret that may help put things into perspective: It’s not about finding time to write; it’s about making time to write.

Writing is a choice.  Just like cooking at home instead of eating out is. Or like watching a re-run of your favorite TV show instead of doing something more productive is.

Life is all about choices. You get to choose. You get to decide how you spend your free time.

But many writers forget that writing is a choice.

They’ve been trying to find time to write for so long they forget that they don’t have to write. Writing is an option.

Making Time Vs. Finding Time

Once you’ve made the choice to be a writer; once you’ve committed yourself to the act of writing; then there’s really only one thing you can do: Make time to write.

Finding time means you’re trying to squeeze in writing between other activities. And based onhow packed your schedule is you may or may not ever actually find that time to get writing done.

But making time to write, that has a whole other connotation. Making time means you’re being proactive. It means you’re building your schedule around your desire to write, rather than building writing into your schedule.

See the difference?

Making time is based on you choosing writing. It’s based on you saying that writing is more important to you then other activities you could be pursuing in your free time. And it’s based on writing being a priority for you.

How To Make Time To Write

Making time to write isn’t as hard as it sounds. It really only requires three steps: 

 

Read the rest of the post on Better Writing Habits.