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Articles about craft.

Indie Author Branding: How to Figure Out How to Brand Yourself

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This post, by Elizabeth Barone, originally appeared on her site on 3/24/13.

It took me about a year to figure out how to brand myself as an author. This was after I decided to be a professional novelist. Before I figured it out, I worried about it almost all the time. After all, I used to work with non-profits and small businesses to create their web presence—a form of branding.

I couldn’t figure out how to translate those principles to my own company. It just didn’t work. For example, a company has a mission statement and a logo. While I have a few reasons for writing and morals when it comes to being a writer selling a product, I couldn’t convince myself to put an official mission statement on my website. That just seemed silly! In the same vein, it seemed weird to develop a logo for myself.

Meanwhile, I read articles about choosing a genre and establishing yourself as an author of a niche. “How can I pick one genre when they’re all so fun?” I would wonder, staring at the screen. Picking one seemed more committal than a manwhore getting married. What if I wanted to write romance down the road? What if I decided horror was really my thing? I couldn’t very well keep changing genres.

The only thing I had going for me was a website: elizabethbarone.net. While I really would have preferred the .com, I made this place my home base for my books, news, and blog not long after deciding to work toward being a full-time author. I did very little to brand it, other than experiment with WordPress themes, and play with headers in Photoshop.

Then I stumbled upon an interview Joanna Penn did with CJ Lyons, who calls her books “thrillers with heart.” I liked the term immediately because it not only perfectly described her books, but gave her room to write in all genres. If she wanted to, she could even write horror under that term, as long as there was some heart in it. That got my wheels turning and then branding made sense to me. I didn’t have to pick a genre. I could write “drama with grit”:

stories powered by strong, intricate characters who are plagued by realistic problems and situations.

 

Read the rest of the post on Elizabeth Barone’s site.

10 Winning Marketing Strategies for Your Self-Published Book

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This post, by Robert Bidinotto, originally appeared on his site. on 3/17/13.

Some time ago, I published a piece telling aspiring authors “Ten Reasons You Should Skip Traditional Publishers and Self-Publish Ebooks Instead.” Yet despite the clear advantages of “indie” over “traditional” publishing, the prospect of “DIY” publishing still scares the hell out of many writers. Their most common worry?

“But…how would I market my book on my own?”

That fear is the main reason why so many hold out forever for a traditional contract, then accept lousy ones. They want a publisher to take the burden of marketing off their backs.

Well, let me share a dirty little secret that publishers don’t want newbie authors to know. Despite all their advance promises to give you lots of promotional support, they mostly will leave the marketing of your book up to you.

That’s right: They save their promotional budgets for King, Evanovich, and Grisham—not for struggling beginners or “mid-listers.” So, if you’ll have to promote your book all by yourself anyway, then why surrender most of your royalties and rights to a publisher?

Still, the question remains: How do you market a self-published book?

I spent a long time studying the promotional methods of successful self-published authors before I released my debut thriller, HUNTER. And, as I have described here, their tips helped HUNTER to become a big bestseller in December 2011.

I learned that becoming a successful “indie” author requires two basic things. First, you must craft a book that appeals to an identified target audience. Second, you must make your book “discoverable” to that target audience.

Let me explain what that means, in ten steps:

1. Write the best book you can—then, write your next one.

Crafting an appealing book is 90% of the marketing battle. No amount of marketing ingenuity will help an unappealing book succeed. On the other hand, I’ve seen great books succeed with little or no marketing push. (Hugh Howey’s Wool is an outstanding example.)

Bottom line: Good “word-of-mouth” is the best advertising.

In addition to writing a good book, the next best marketing tactic is to write more good books. Each new title will broaden your name recognition and generate more sales for all your previous ones. That’s because many readers are “binge readers.” They find an author they like, and they then seek out and scoop up every single title that the author has written previously.

Even better, write a series. Books linked together by some connecting theme (think of John Gray’s “Mars and Venus” books), or by some appealing character (think: Harry Potter, Jack Reacher, Stephanie Plum, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, Mitch Rapp, Mike Hammer, Scot Harvath, Sean Dillon, Spenser, Elvis Cole, Joe Pike, etc., etc.), will foster a virtual addiction in your fans, who will then eagerly await the publication date for every new installment in the series. Better yet, each new book released will attract new fans, prompting them to go back and buy all the prior books in the series. That’s how bestselling authors expand their audience over time, often geometrically.

 

Read the rest of the post on Robert Bidinotto’s site.

Readin’ o’ the Green: the Anatomy of a Free Book Promotion

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This post, by Elle Lothlorien, originally appeared on Digital Book World on 3/14/13.

Welcome! This is an informal blog that will chronicle a book promotion for my novel The Frog Prince taking place March 14 and 15, 2013. If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to read my blog “THING 3. Prostitute Your Book: The Art and Science of a Becoming a Successful Free Book Pimp on Amazon.” A lot of this will make more sense if you do.

Feel free to post questions, make comments, or just poke around to see if you can find anything useful. I will be reporting numbers and rankings and commenting on the other various aspects of the free promotion as it is ongoing.

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE.

Beginning Saturday, March 16, 2013, I will provide a post-promo analysis to let you know how things look once the book is moved back into the Kindle Paid Store. Let’s get started. First a few entries of backstory…

February 28, 2013: Contacted Bookbub via email:

Can you tell me what availability you have for March for The Frog Prince?

Settled on March 14th ad placement and a promo to run two day through midnight, Friday the 15th.

Filled out and submitted online forms for both Pixel of Ink and eReader News Today, asking if they’d be willing to feature The Frog Prince on March 14th. Received a verification of receipt email from Pixel of Ink:

Thanks for telling us about your upcoming promotion! Please note: Due to the high volume of submissions, we may or may not be able to feature your book during the time it is free.

March 1, 2013: Received Bookbub invoice in the amount of $190 for 190,000 subscribers. Paid it.

March 13 8 PM: Designed logo and tagline for promotion Since it is so close to St. Patrick’s Day and the Frog on the cover is green, I decided to superimpose the frog lying across a shamrock. Named promo “Readin’ o’ the Green.”

Author FB screenshot9:45 PM: Posted first notice of promotion on both personal-ish” Facebook page and official Author Facebook pages. Noticed Author Facebook post immediately going viral (see red circled portion of graphic on the right).

March 14

1:30 AM: Total books downloaded: 2. Whoo-hoo! Going to bed. See you tomorrow!

8:45 AM: Reposted promotion information on Facebook. Received notification from Twitter that BookBub had tweeted about the promotion as well.

 

 

Read the rest of the post on Digital Book World.

15 Websites To Help You With Rhyming Words

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This post, by Ken Meyers, originally appeared on his site on 3/10/13.

Rhyming words are fun, but some words will leave you tongue-tied trying to find a suitable partner. Anyone who has ever dabbled in poetry will tell you that meter is a refined art that requires the poet to have a comprehensive understanding of how the rhythmic structure of words, sentences and verses ebb and flow. A rookie mistake when dealing with rhyming words is assuming that every word has to be an exact match. A close match is often sufficient to convince the ear that it rhymes without breaking the rhythm of the verse of rhyme. These 15 websites are designed specifically to help you find rhyming words, synonyms and other forms of creative word play.

Rhyme Zone – It’s very frustrating to discover that a word does not have an exact rhyme. However, with Rhyme Zone, you may just find the next best thing. The website’s search engine will look for an exact match, but if it doesn’t find one it will return a list of similar sounding words. You can define your search in a number of ways, including near rhymes, similar sounding words or related words. For more relevant listings, you can also organize the search results by both number of syllables and letters.

Rhymer – As well as providing a powerful rhyming search engine, Rhymer is full of great tips and instructions on constructing rhymes. The website returns results based on rhyming syllables. This is particularly useful if you are a poet, as it allows you to construct verses that flow naturally without stretching to make the words match the meter.

Rhyme Brain – This is a multi-lingual rhyming site that includes French, German, English and Spanish, among other languages. The interface couldn’t be simpler to use; you type the word you wish to rhyme into the search bar and the results are posted in tables on the same page. Rhyme Brain also has an extensive blog on rhyming words and alliteration that you can spend hours browsing through.

Enchanted Learning – Finding rhymes the easy way is one thing; learning to use them on your own is quite another. Enchanted Learning provides endless hours of fun with rhyming games and activities. There is a $20 per year subscription charge, which gives you full access to all the downloadable content from the site. However, there is also a large amount of content that is free of charge and doesn’t require a subscription.

Reggie Loves to Rhyme – This site from Scholastic is a fully interactive site for children, with games and activities that use colors, pictures and sounds to help build rhyming knowledge and skills. Scholastic is an international company that delivers educational material to children in over 150 countries.

Read the rest of the post, which includes ten more rhyming word resource sites, on Ken Meyers’ site.

Happenings in the World of the Warrior Scribe

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Halfway through March already? Seriously, what the shit, time? It’s been a strange and hectic year so far, for many reasons, but through it all I’m steadfastly, some would say stubbornly, persisting with being a writer. Some might even suggest I was bull-headedly persisting and yes, bull-headedly is most definitely a word.

I’ve been working on several short fiction projects, and I’m cautiously proud of the stories I’ve been turning out. There’s horror, straight fantasy, science fiction and cross-bred mutants of all three happening at the moment. Today I’ll be working on a horror story about a priest facing a small child’s demons. Cliche, you’re thinking? Well, fuck you. Wait till you read it, then you can call it a cliche. Personally, I think I’m playing very cleverly with old tropes. Of course, we always think we’re clever, or we would have given up this fool’s game a long time ago.

Sometimes, though, we get some positive feedback. Take the novella that I’m collaborating on with David Wood. It’s called Dark Rite, it’s a kind of horror/thriller mashup and we’re really quite proud of it. It’s around 40,000 words, which is right at the top end of the novella range, almost into short novel territory, so it’s a meaty read. We’re pretty close to a final draft and are currently waiting on some feedback from some very generous early readers. And we’re lucky, because those early readers are some luminary figures in the world of thrillers and horror. I’ll reveal more when we get all the feedback and make the final tweaks before putting the book up for publication. But so far, the feedback has been very encouraging. It’s been called “fantastic” and “very Stephen King” by one person whose opinion I really respect. You can imagine the little happy dance I did when I read that. As a horror writer, is there much higher praise than being compared to Stephen King?

So while we continually pound our aching head against the wall of literary recognition, trying to get better, trying to get published, it’s nice to get that kind of feedback from time to time. It helps to ease the self-inflicted wounds. Balm for the weeping gashes of self-doubt that stripe our soul. And all that bollocks.

I’m also still working on the next two novels. One is out in the world looking for a home, the next is finished in early drafts. Once this last short story is polished up, redrafting that book will be my primary focus. Never any rest here at the Warrior Scribe Word Mills. And that’s the only way to succeed – keep doing it, keep getting better.

 

This is a reprint from Alan Baxter‘s Warrior Scribe.

The 7 Deadly Sins of Self-Editing

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This post, by Janice Gable Bashman & Kathryn Craft, originally appeared on Writer’s Digest on 3/12/13.

We’re most likely to sin when we’re at our most vulnerable—and for creative writers, there may be no more vulnerable time than the delicate (and often excruciating) process of editing our own work. Sidestep these too-common traps, and keep your story’s soul pure.

1. Greed

Many authors damn their efforts from the start with a premature focus on snagging a lucrative book deal. They submit to agents or self-publish before their work is truly ready. But building a career requires that you lay a strong foundation of only your best work—and nobody’s first draft is the best it can be. Careful editing is the mortar that holds the story bricks together.

Penance: Resist the temptation to convince yourself your first draft is “good enough”. If you find yourself rushing your editing process just to leap ahead to pursuing publication, look for deeper motivation to sustain you. Remember that the revision process doesn’t have to be any less enjoyable than the writing itself: You’ll be setting out to find the magic in each word, sentence, paragraph. You’ll be tapping your creative soul for ways to add tension to every page, to find clever solutions to tough story problems. Greed looks toward the uncertain rewards of tomorrow. The joys of writing are available to you today.

2. Lust

Just as dangerous as the temptation to call your first draft “finished” can be the tendency to jump into a revision right away. Words and ideas flood your mind; emotions pump through your heart. But that mad creative rush can become excessive, harming your ability to clearly assess your writing.

Penance: Step away from your current project as long as you can bear it — then wait an additional week. You’ll need that emotional distance before you revisit your work.

3. Gluttony

A great novel is like a gourmet meal. It must be prepared carefully, and to specification, with complementary flavors and courses.

Getting carried away and stuffing in all the good ideas and beautiful word pairings you’ve got in your pantry can lead to overindulgence.

Penance:

Read the rest of the post on Writer’s Digest.

If You Struggle With Plot, Here’s How to Think About It Differently

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This post, from Stuart Horwitz, originally appeared as a guest post on Jane Friedman’s blog.

One thing I hear from writers a lot is, “My work has always been more character-driven, which I think is why I struggle with plot.”

I’m not sure what character-driven means in this context. Does it mean that their work is more about what people think and feel than about the things that happen? Maybe. But it may also simply mean, “I like to write really messy first drafts, and the only way I can find my way through the material at all is by identifying with a character or two.”

But guess what: First drafts are supposed to be a mess! And the notion of “plot” is a misconception that leads too many writers to get confused and focus on all the wrong things. In fact, the best way to produce a first draft is to produce a large pile of pages and avoid trying to organize anything at all. At first.

Upon hearing this, writers may ask, “How do I know when I’ve finished my first draft?” In a sense, first drafts are never finished; where you stopped writing is the end of the first draft. Then it’s time to step back and see what you’ve got. And the way I recommend doing this is by using the unfamiliar, plot-free concept of series.

What is this series I speak of?

A series is the repetition and variation of a narrative element within a story, the process of improvement or deterioration which creates the narrative arc.

The repetitions and variations of an object, for example, is what creates a symbol. A series can also be seen in the repetitions and variations of a person (or if you prefer, their identity and change), which is what creates a character.

 
Read the rest of the post on Jane Friedman’s blog.

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Stuart Horwitz is the author of Blueprint Your Bestseller. Find him on Twitter at @Book _Arch.

Secondary School Children 'Shunning Difficult Books'

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This article, by Graeme Paton, originally appeared on The Telegraph UK site on 3/7/13.

Research shows that rising numbers of 13 and 14-year-olds – including the brightest pupils – are opting for simple texts aimed at children towards the end of primary school.

Academics from Dundee University analysed children’s reading habits throughout primary and secondary education and found the relative difficulty of books “declined steadily” as pupils got older. Boys were also more likely to shun problematic books than girls.

It emerged that The Twits by Roald Dahl was among the most popular books for pupils aged 13 to 16 despite also featuring among the top titles for seven and eight-year-olds.

The study suggested that primary school teachers were more likely to push children towards challenging books because of awareness of the importance of developing literacy skills at a young age.

But the study warned that there was “something seriously amiss” in secondary schools, suggesting that a failure to promote reading may cause pupils to effectively go backwards between the age of 11 and 16.

It follows the publication of official school-by-school league tables earlier this year that showed one-in-six bright pupils performed relatively worse in English exams sat at 16 compared with tests taken at the end of primary education.

Read the The Telegraph UK site.

The Importance Of Keywords For MetaData And The Discoverability Of Your Book

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Keywords and search engine optimization have been considered important for a long time in the online world, particularly for ranking in the search engines on the first few pages so people can actually find you.

But these principles and tools are also important for your book page on the retail stores. They make up a critical part of the meta-data which is crucial in the discoverability of your book. I also realize this might sound like gobble-de-gook so I will explain further using the example of my non-fiction book, and also my novels, because keywords can also be important for fiction authors.

Although I am wary of anecdotes, because they have no statistical value at all, I do want to share the sales figures for my non-fiction book. Written as a labor of love, it has never sold very well (like many first books) and now I focus on fiction, so I barely mention it. As my worst selling title, it is a good example to use. Here’s the background.

I spent 13 years as a miserable IT consultant, unhappy with my work for many reasons and so I embarked on a journey to find work I could be passionate about. The journey of how I found it (and how you can too) is encapsulated in my book: Career Change: Stop hating your job, discover what you really want to do with your life and start doing it! That’s the title that I adopted in Dec 2012 after I rewrote the book and also updated the cover. The previous title was How to enjoy your job … or get a new one, and was first published in 2008.

At a purely gut level, I hope you can see which title is better :) but as we go through, you will also note the keyword shift.

What is a keyword anyway?

A keyword is a word or phrase that is associated with your book.

It’s based on the words that people actually use to search online and this is a crucial aspect, because often the language you use online is not the language customers might use. For example, many of us have claimed ‘indie author’ or ‘indie publishing’ but to a new author who is not yet in the tribe, they would only recognize ‘publishing’ or ‘self-publishing’.

Importantly a keyword is not just one word and that is critical to remember as you go through the following process. For example, my thriller novel Exodus is associated with the keyword “ark of the covenant” and my non-fiction book with “career change”.

(1) Brainstorm words and phrases

First, make a list of all the words and phrases that are associated with your book. For fiction that will include themes, places, things and anything concrete you can hang your book off.

career changeFor Exodus, I might consider keywords: thriller, action adventure, exodus, ark of the covenant, israel, freemasons – as those are the themes of the book and people searching for those things will be interested in it.

For my non-fiction book Career Change, I tried: career change, what should I do with my life, career help, hate my job, career match, career books, choosing a career

(2) Check the usage of keywords in the search engines

Google has a Keyword Search Tool that you can use to discover what search terms people are using and what is most popular. It is primarily used for people wanting to bid on advertising terms, but we can use it as an indication of interest, as well as a verification of the kind of language people use when searching.

As related to my book on Career Change, I tried the following: * How to enjoy your job – 5400 global monthly searches * Changing careers – 27,100 global monthly searches * I need a career – 60,500 global monthly searches * Choosing a career – 40,500 global monthly searches * career change – 165,000 global monthly searches

For each search term, Google will recommend a whole load more options. Look through that list and write down anything else with a high number of searches. (Don’t worry about the Competition column as that is aimed at the advertising crowd.)

(3) Check the usage of keywords on Amazon

Amazon doesn’t have a specific tool to check keywords but it does have an auto-populate tool that enables you to see a drop-down of specific words or phrases. Just start typing something in and you’ll get a drop-down. Make sure you’re in the Books/Kindle store if you want to narrow the search down. Go into Amazon and start typing in the word/phrase you want to check.

careerchangedropdown
My example with career change is shown [above].

You can see that I typed in ‘career c’ and it came up with everything that fitted with that. This can help you with deciding on topics or titles, particularly again with non-fiction.

But the principle is the same with fiction. You want the most commonly used keywords in your meta-data.

You should find that some of your keywords from Google don’t even show up in the Amazon listing, so discard those and focus on those which appear in both lists.

[I’d like to acknowledge Michael Alvear who featured this technique in ‘Make a Killing on Kindle’ which is a book I can only recommend with a caution as I definitely don’t advocate fake/bought reviews which he also includes in the book.

With any kind of marketing tactic, please be authentic, honest and consider the value to your customer.

Feel free to read his advice, but as with my own advice, please weigh it up against your own situation and don’t assume the same things will work. This is a constantly shifting environment.]

(4) Add the keywords into your metadata

careerchangecopiesFor non-fiction authors, you can use this technique to decide on your book title, and indeed, I changed mine based on the keyword search. This can make a huge difference to appearing in search results and significantly impact your success.

Although I don’t have a full year for each title, you can see the difference between January 2012 and 2013 (a huge month for career change books). I changed the title mid Dec. I also changed the cover but not the price. Remember, this is basically a ‘write-off’ book for me and not something I market in any other way at all, so any sale is a good sale!

My book sales rank rose within days after the key word changes and now the book ranks on the first page of Amazon.com for the keyword ‘career change’.

Changing a fiction title to include keywords is far more unlikely, but there are two more places to include keywords.

Description: You need a description any time you enter information about your book, so make sure it includes some of your keywords, BUT as a primary rule, ensure that it is people-friendly and not just a list of keywords. More on creating a book description that rocks in this interview with Mark Edwards on secrets of Amazon metadata.

Keywords: On every publishing site there is also a place to enter keywords. This is usually 5-7 keywords/phrases that are associated with your book. Just type in the ones you want to use based on your research.

NOTE: if you don’t have control of the publishing process you won’t be able to access these keywords, but you can do the research and advise your publisher of what you think is the most appropriate.

The most effective usage will be if the keywords resonate between the title, description and keywords box, ticking all three boxes of metadata.

You can also use these keywords for marketing purposes as well, for example, use them in a guest blog post title, or as part of your website.

OK, I know things like meta-data, keywords, search engine optimization, algorithms and stuff can blow people’s minds, but it is an important part of being an indie author!

Please do leave any comments or questions [in the comments section on the original post]. Have you done keyword research? Has it made a difference to your book?

 

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

350 Words

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I’m always trying to tweak my process to become more productive. On the one hand, I don’t like to work on edits and rough draft of something else at the same time on the same day because it feels like multi-tasking. Why not finish the most close-to-being-ready thing and then move on to the next thing to take your full focus?

At the same time, when I do that, what tends to happen is I will get out of the “writing groove”. So while it can take a lot of time and energy to switch between tasks as one does with multi-tasking, it can sometimes take longer to get into a new groove after it’s gone, particularly with writing.

[Publetariat Editor’s note: strong language after the jump]

Chuck Wendig wrote a post that I found inspiring toward this end: How To Push Past The Bullshit And Write that Goddamn Novel: A Very Simple No-Fuckery Writing Plan To Get Shit Done

From the very beginning I knew that this was going to be great because anybody who says No-Fuckery is someone I feel I ought to listen to just on principle.

I had previously tried a 250 words a day writing goal. The idea was to JUST START and even if you JUST do the 250, you’ve got some word count down and you started and if you write more awesome, and it adds up over time. It’s like stealing your novel through fifteen minutes here or there. And while it can take that long to even get into a groove, period, if you do it every day, the time it takes to get into the groove is much shorter.

So, I figure… even while I’m editing, there is a burnout point. There is a point at which I’m not going to edit any more that day. I’m going to do a certain amount generally and then the rest of my time for that day is my time. So, in THAT OTHER TIME, the non-editing time… I can’t carve out 15 minutes to work on my WIP? REALLY???

One of my excuses is that I have to outline/plan a book and that’s hard to do while also editing a book. But I have a WIP in progress right now that I can chip away at. Yes, in the long run it’s going to need to percolate some because I’m a little burnt out on that pen name and I need to get back to Zoe and write Hadrian and Angeline’s book but still… chipping away at it while I work on edits for the other book and then planning for Hadrian and Angeline is forward momentum. And that’s what I need. Forward momentum.

So 350 words a day. Anybody can do that.

 

This is a reprint from Zoe Winters’ weblog.

Sagging Scenes: How to Know When You Are Killing Your Scenes

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This post, by Jean Oram, originally appeared on her The Helpful Writer blog.

Do your scenes suffer from TMI? Are they sagging? Boring? Repeating themselves? In other words, are they slower than molasses in January?

Last week I talked about coming in late and leaving early (scene writing tips & how to write a killer scene) in order to keep your reader hooked and turning those pages from one chapter or scene to the next. But what happens when you have scenes with sagging, drooping middles? How can you identify them and how can you fix them?

How to Know When Your Scene is Sagging

This is tough. As writers we sometimes feel as though every word counts. But often it doesn’t. Often we can pare 100 words out of 1000 without the reader noticing–other than it reading much better. :)

But how can you tell if things are dragging for the reader and your scenes are sagging?

Check for these things in every one of your scenes:

1. Repetition.

You have already said it before. Readers have fairly decent memories. If you’ve explained why your character feels hope whenever she is in a hospital, you don’t need to explain it again. One or two words to remind the reader is sufficient, they will pick up the rest.

2. Description.

This is the easiest way to bog down a scene. For example, say you want to describe a room for your reader and you want them to feel how awful it is. The room feels as though a hoarder lives there and it reeks.

Do you need five paragraphs? No.

Do you need two? I’m going to go with no, again.

One paragraph–no more than 4-5 sentences–should be more than sufficient. You want to highlight the biggest, most impacting aspects of the room to give the reader enough big things that they can fill in the spaces. Why? Because when they fill in the blanks they become invested in the story. It begins to feel as though it belongs to them. They are putting a piece of themselves into it and identifying with it. If you describe every detail, it doesn’t leave them room to go: OMG, that smell–I know that smell! That’s Uncle Eddy–and boom! Suddenly they’ve made that room Uncle Eddy and associate all these memories, and feelings associated with Uncle Eddy into that room. It’s theirs.

3. You’ve already made the point.

Sometimes we really, really, really want to hammer a point home. We want to jab our point right into the reader and then some. Problem is… once the reader has it, the rest becomes something that is only taking away from the story.

In other words, if you have sufficiently shown that the character is angry through their actions, words, and/or narrative… stop. Don’t continue on. Delete the rest. Believe in the power of your words.

Pare it down for the biggest impact. Allow the point to be made on several different levels and with a subtly that will truly resonate with the reader.

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes four more signs of sagging and tips for dealing with all of these problems, on Jean Oram’s The Helpful Writer.

The Slippery Slope of E-Originals, Part 1

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This post, by Richard Curtis, originally appeared on Digital Book World on 10/14/12.

In the last year a number of major publishers have begun offering authors contracts for “e-originals” – books released originally – and exclusively – in e-book format. Though this is a logical step in the evolution of traditional publishing houses from tangible to virtual formats, the deflationary nature of its business model poses a serious threat to author earning power. Less obvious but ultimately more dangerous is the implosive effect the shift may have on the publishing companies themselves and the people who work for them.

What’s Wrong with Paperback Originals?

The first and obvious question is, what’s wrong with paperbacks books, that publishers are abandoning them in favor of digital originals? The fact is that in the past fifteen or twenty years, mass market paperback books have transformed from a breeding ground for fresh talent to an exclusive club for bestselling authors.

The reasons for this metamorphosis are complex (you can read about them in The Rise and Fall of the Mass Market Paperback: Part 1, Part 2), but in essence the ruthless math of an industry based on the returnability of books has made it almost impossible for fresh talent to develop over time in the nursery of original paperbacks. Though many promising genre authors, especially romance writers, continue to be introduced in mass market paperback, the sales thresholds they must achieve in order to make a profit for their publishers have risen to almost unattainable heights.

Cue e-book originals.

At first blush, e-originals appear to be the perfect way for publishers to pull authors out of this death spiral, for many of the costs of manufacturing and distribution are lower or negligible. You would think that the savings would be passed along to authors in the form of higher advances and royalties. So far, that has proven far from true. Why?

Read the rest of the post on Digital Book World, and also see Part 2.

Story Writing 101

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This post, by Ali Hale, originally appeared on the Daily Writing Tips site.

Since prehistoric times, when tales were told around fires and painted on cave walls, stories have been an essential part of our human experience. But what exactly is a story – and how can you write a great one?

A story is simply a tale of events that are linked by cause and effect. It can be true or it can be a work of fiction. We expect stories to have a beginning, middle and end; they involve at least two characters, and some events take place.

In this article, I’ll take you through three major contemporary types of written story:
• The short story
• The novel
• The life story (biography or autobiography)

For each, I’ll explain what it is, and how to write it successfully. I’ll end with tips about story writing which will help you improve your writing, whether you’re a beginner or a published author.

Three Types of Story

1. Short Stories

A short story is a piece of fiction under 20,000 words. More typically, a short story will be 1,000 – 5,000 words. (Pieces under 1,000 words are “short short stories” or “flash fiction”, over 20,000 and they’re novellas.)

Short stories are published in magazines, newspapers and book anthologies. Short stories need:
• A small cast of characters, with one main character
• A compact time frame, with the story taking place over the course of a few days or weeks
• A single plot without subplots, though longer short stories may have a subplot

The majority of writing competitions are for complete short stories, rather than novels or novel excerpts. If you do enter competitions, don’t be put off writing if you don’t win – judges have different likes and dislikes.

How to Write a Great Short Story

Like any story, your short story needs to have a beginning, middle and end:

  • The beginning is where we’re introduced to the characters, especially the main character and his/her problem
  • The middle is where the action and plot develops. The main character will face difficulties such as opposition from other people or a challenging environment.
  • The end is where the main character triumphs over his/her biggest challenge (or fails, in the case of a tragedy). The resolution should be satisfying and conclusive for the reader.

Even in literary and experimental short stories, it’s important that something should happen. Much of the action might take place inside the characters’ heads, but there should be a real change as a result.

By the end of your short story, your main character should have experienced an internal change.

 

Read the rest of the post, which also offers definitions and tips for writing novels and life stories, on Daily Writing Tips.

There's No Such Thing As A Real Pantser, Or A Real Planner

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I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s no such thing as a pantser when it comes to writing. And I say this as a self-confessed pantser. I’ve stood up and defended the position of writing from the hip against those pesky planners. I’ve defended the greater creative purity of the unplanned writing session. But it’s all bollocks. And you know what? There are no real planners either. This is a bell-curve, so there will be those outliers, but I’ll get to them later.

Firstly, in case you’re the one person who doesn’t know what a pantser or a planner is, let me explain. When it comes to writing fiction, there are two primary camps – people who plan everything and decide on each detail of the plot before they start writing, who are called planners, and people who plan nothing and just let the story all pour out au naturel, called pantsers. These people have also been referred to as architects and gardeners, and in that post I talk about being a bit of one and a bit of the other. But here I intend to make the bolder statement that we’re all a bit of both.

I’ve always identified mostly as a pantser. I don’t like to know everything that’s going to happen in a story before I start to write. What’s the point in writing it then? It’d be like writing it twice – once in note form, then again in detail. But I do make some notes. I have a good idea where things are going and what major events are going to occur in a story. I sometimes don’t know exactly how a book or story is going to end, but I have a good idea where I’m going with it and the ideas I’m playing with. The process of discovery that accompanies the writing then, as my subconscious tells the story through my characters, is the thing I love most about writing. So I do write a lot by the seat of my pants. But I plan too.

It’s the same for planners. Any great writer, no matter how strictly they might plan a book, will gladly let a new idea or an unexpected turn take the story somewhere else. That may mean that they stop and re-plan, based on the unexpected revelation. Or they may just roll with it. The bits and details in between their carefully planned markers will still need filling in, and they will have to cover those transitions and interstices with writing from the hip.

So no pantser never plans, and no planner never pants. Like I said above, it’s a bell-curve. I think it’s more a case of where on the curve you sit. Not whether you’re a pantser or a planner, but to what degree you plan. We’re all plantsers – we all sit down with a story idea and we work on it. We have to. There needs to be some ideas in mind of what we’re writing about, who our characters are (at least in their most superficial incarnation to begin with) and where we’re going with it. That’s planning. But the degree to which we plan that, or how much we leave open, is the only thing that separates our writing styles.

Kim Wilkins is a writer with something like 24 published novels and she is quite vocal about being a very detailed planner. Whenever you raise the subject with her, she will simply cry, “Two million words in print! I rest my case!” and she does kinda have a point. But really, all she’s saying is that she plans a lot, not only a little bit. There’s a case in her argument that everyone should plan a lot. I disagree. I don’t plan in anything like the detail Kim does, but I do plan to a certain extent. We all do. And no matter how much Kim plans, no matter how much of an outlier she is on one side of the bell curve, I bet there’s some pantsing in there too. Just like the person who pretty much pants the whole way will still have a small amount of planning, somewhere in the back of their mind. And even when someone pretty much pants the thing entirely, there comes a point when they need to pull it all together at the end and that requires a bit of planning.

There’s no such thing as a pantser or a planner. There’s just the degree to which we plan.

 

This is a cross-posting from Alan Baxter‘s Warrior Scribe site.

Why Only Some Grammar Rules Are Breakable

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This post, by Dr. Joel Hoffman, originally appeared on The Huffington Post Books blog.

A misguided debate is raging over English grammar. It began when authors Patricia O’Conner and Steward Kellerman claimed in the Smithsonian that “most of what you know about grammar is wrong.” Then The Huffington Post picked it up, and after that The Guardian.

The controversy is illustrated by a disagreement over “split infinitives”: is it, or is it not, okay to say “to boldly go…,” using the word “boldly” to split the infinitive “to go”?

Having written a column on (Hebrew) grammar for the International Jerusalem Post and with a Ph.D in linguistics to my name, I feel like I have a horse in this race. And as someone who likes talking to my friends, I have another horse in the race. As an author and lover of words, I have a third horse with my name on it.

And this is my point: There are three distinct ways to look at grammar.

Who Died And Made You King?

The first, and most traditional way, is what we linguists call “prescriptive grammar,” or, more snarkily, the “who died and made you king” approach. And it’s essentially a social policy, not unlike wearing white only after Labor Day. (Or before. Or Memorial Day. You know what I mean.) People in power make up rules and expect other people to follow them: Don’t end a sentence with a preposition. Don’t split an infinitive. And so on.

But Ms. O’Conner and Mr. Kellerman are misleading when they say that these are “phony rules.” They’re just like spelling: arbitrary agreements enforced by arbitrary language monarchs. There’s no good reason that the possessive “Michael’s” should have an apostrophe when the equally possessive “its” does not, for instance, but that’s the way it goes. The kings told us so. And the same is true of properly positioning prepositions and not inserting items into infinitives.

(Incidentally, the “with” in “put up with” is a particle, not a preposition, in spite of Churchill’s probably apocryphal stance that “ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I shall not put.” And Ms. O’Conner and Mr. Kellerman are simply wrong when they say that “to” isn’t part of the infinitive in English.)

But Everyone’s Doing It!

 

Read the rest of the post on The Huffington Post Books blog.