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Articles about craft.

Do I Need To Outline My Plot?

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This post, from Robert Gregory Browne, originally appeared on his Casting the Bones website.

One question I always hear from aspiring writers is, “Do you outline your plots?”

I remember asking this question myself quite a few times, back in the Stone Age when I was typing scripts and stories on my IBM Selectric. If, by some weird stroke of fate, I happened to stumble across an honest to god real published writer (I didn’t do conferences in those days, didn’t know they existed, and there was no Internet), the subject of outlining came up pretty quickly.

Why?

Because, like all aspiring writers, I was always searching for what works. A lot of us look at someone else’s success and think, maybe I should do what they’re doing. Human beings seem to have this unending desire to emulate others in hope that some of the magic dust will rub off on us.

That would explain the thirty billion Star Wars clones that came out in the 1970’s, and the gazillion comic book movies put into production after the Batman and Iron Man franchises took off.

So when Bestselling Author X says he writes using an outline, it’s only natural for aspiring writers to think that they need to outline, too.

I can guarantee you without a moment’s hesitation that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of writing workshops going on in the world at this very moment where the workshop leader is telling his or her students to pull out the index cards and start mapping out their story. And this is NOT BAD advice.

The bad part is when they insist that this is the only way to properly construct a novel or screenplay.

The truth is, there is no one way to do anything in writing.

I was reminded of this in one of the comments from the How to Beat Writer’s Block post. And when I teach classes or do presentations or podcasts with my friend Brett Battles, I always try to remember to tell the audience that.

There is no single way to approach writing.

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Robert Gregory Browne is an AMPAS Nicholl Award-winning screenwriter and novelist, currently under contract to St. Martin’s Press, Droemer Knaur, and Macmillan UK. He’s also published in Russia, Bulgaria and Denmark, and has a story in Lee Child’s crime fiction anthology, KILLER YEAR. He’s a member of MWA, ITW, RWA and is a regular columnist for the Anthony Award nominated writer’s blog, Murderati.

Read the rest of the post on Casting the Bones.

 

Read the rest of the post on Casting the Bones.

Amazon Kindle Numbers

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This post, from bestselling mainstream author J.A. Konrath, originally appeared on his A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing blog on 6/11/09.

Elsewhere on the Internets, people have been referring to my previous posts about the Amazon Kindle (here and here) and one of the things they were interested in is numbers.

So here they are. Thoughts, explanations, and predictions to follow.


AFRAID by Jack Kilborn, a horror novel, was released on the Kindle on April 1. During the first month of its release, it was available for $1.99 on Kindle. During that month, it sold over 10,400 copies.

SERIAL by Jack Kilborn and Blake Crouch was released for free on the Kindle May 20th. It’s a horror novella. As of June 10, it has been downloaded on Kindle more than 34,000 times. SERIAL also appears on www.blakecrouch.com, and has had 12,000 downloads, along with 7000 downloads from the Sony Reader website.

Both AFRAID and SERIAL were released by my publisher, Grand Central. They promoted both titles on Amazon using sidebars on Amazon.com, and on the Amazon Kindle blog.

On April 8th, I began to upload my own books to Kindle. As of today, June 11, at 11:40am, here is how many copies I’ve sold, and how much they’ve earned.

THE LIST, a technothriller/police procedural novel, is my biggest seller to date, with 1612 copies sold. Since April this has earned $1081.75. I originally priced it at $1.49, and then raised it to $1.89 this month to see if the sales would slow down. The sales sped up instead.

ORIGIN, a technothriller/horror occult adventure novel, is in second place, with 1096 copies sold and $690.18. As with The List and my other Kindle novels, I upped the price to $1.89.

SUCKERS is a thriller/comedy/horror novella I wrote with Jeff Strand. It also includes some Konrath and Strand short stories. 449 copies, $306.60.

DISTURB is a medical thriller. 371 copies, $234.21.

SHOT OF TEQUILA is a crime novel featuring Jack Daniels. 342 copies, $164.02.

55 PROOF is a collection of 55 short stories. 217 copies, $138.99.

PLANTER’S PUNCH is a Jack Daniels novella I co-wrote with Tom Schreck. 154 copies, $107.10.

DIRTY JOKES & VULGAR POEMS is a collection of over 1000 of my Twitters, one-liners, and funny poems. 37 copies sold, $18.57.

So far on Kindle I’ve earned $2781.35 in 64 days.

PRICING: I’ve kept my collaborations priced at $1.59, and upped my other books to $1.89. Also, I reduced the price of my poetry collection to 80 cents.

What I’ve learned about pricing: Not much. I went on some Kindle forums and asked what the magic price point is, and got answers ranging between free and five bucks.

I’ve kept my books under two bucks for several reasons. First, because my intent is to use these books to hook readers and get them to buy my other, in-print titles. I give these same books away on my website for free, so charging Kindle users more than a few bucks doesn’t seem fair.

That said, raising the price from $1.59 to $1.89 didn’t cause any drop in sales or Amazon ranking. In fact, my Kindle numbers have been steadily going up.

I don’t know what the perfect combination of price/profit is… yet. Authors make 35% of their suggested retail price (Amazon then discounts this.) So I can raise the price, sell fewer books, but still make a greater profit.

For me, however, this isn’t all about profit. It’s about units sold. Which also gets confusing.
 

Read the rest of the post on A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing.

Creating Believable Middle Grade and Young Adult Characters

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This article, by Laura Backes, is a cross-posting of a piece which appeared on The CBI Clubhouse on 5/19/09.

How to reach older readers with characters that are believable, bold and memorable.

When you search for a novel to read, do you hope to find a story about someone exactly like yourself? That first glimmer of recognition might be intriguing, but after several pages you’d probably get bored. Adults read for entertainment, escape, and to get glimpses of lives different from their own. If the main character is too ordinary or familiar, the story won’t hold any surprises. You already know how it ends.

Middle grade and young adult readers are no different. They want to identify strongly with the characters in their books, and understand those characters’ problems. But they also need the characters to be a bit bigger, braver, or smarter than themselves. The problems must be more dramatic than the readers’ own, the stakes higher. Tension builds when protagonists act more impulsively, foolhardy or selfishly than the reader would ever do. Novels for older readers portray a magnified version of real life.

Even though the characters and their situations might be drawn more sharply in fiction than in reality, they still have to be believable. The reader must be certain that these people could actually exist. The protagonist, however troubled, must be sympathetic enough for the reader to care about his or her problems. Including underlying universal themes of adolescence connects the reader on an emotional level.

Consider Lucy the Giant, a young adult novel by Sherri L. Smith. At over six feet tall, Lucy is literally bigger than her peers. Her size is in sharp contrast to the small Alaskan town where she lives. Lucy’s greatest desire is to fit in, a yearning familiar to most readers. One day, tired of dragging her alcoholic father home from the bars at night and enduring the taunts of her classmates and pitying glances from adults in town, Lucy runs away to Kodiak Island. Mistaken for an adult, she gets a job on a crabbing boat, where Lucy finds adventure, a family of sorts, and even has a near-death experience that teaches her running away from problems is never the answer.

It’s unusual for an adventure story to feature a female protagonist, but virtually every teen will recognize part of him or herself in Lucy. Lucy’s mother abandoned her at age seven, and Lucy spends much of the book blaming her parents for her problems. This is understandable, but what makes Lucy more resilient than an average teen is that she decides to take responsibility for her own life. At age 15, Lucy–already incredibly brave, physically strong, and carrying heavy emotional baggage–grows up.

It’s this “growing up” that marks a young adult character. They enter the story from the world of adolescence, and emerge with tools they’ll carry into adulthood. Though the reader might not make that journey as quickly or completely, he or she need examples of teens who did. If 13-year-old Brian Robeson from Hatchet by Gary Paulsen can survive by himself for 54 days on a remote island in the Canadian wilderness, then surely the reader can hope to survive junior high.

Middle grade readers also love characters who face situations that are more dramatic than their own. These characters learn lessons about life or how the world works, but in the end are still content to remain adolescents for a few more years. In middle grade books, the characters who often unwittingly provide the drama simply by being themselves.

Polly Horvath is a master at creating quirky, complex, funny characters who spin the plot in a new direction simply by entering a scene. Horvath pays special attention to the adults who inhabit the worlds of her child characters (The Trolls and Everything on a Waffle are my two favorites). Richard Peck does the same thing in his award-winning historical novels A Long Way from Chicago and A Year Down Yonder. Both authors have created child viewpoint characters who are dealing with everything from surviving a summer visit with Grandma to waiting for Mom and Dad to show up after their boats were lost at sea. But the stories get their sparks from larger-than-life adult characters. The humor, and the deeper meanings of these books, comes from the children gaining deeper understanding of the eccentric adults in their lives.

When you’re developing characters for your middle grade or young adult novel, start with qualities readers will see in themselves. Then raise the stakes and see how your character reacts. Make her six feet tall. Strand a boy with no wilderness experience on an island with nothing but a hatchet. Send some city kids to spend two weeks in a small town with a crotchety grandmother. Shake up an ordinary family by dropping in an aunt from another country who spins tall tales that just might be true. Go just beyond your own experience, and that of your readers, and think big.

 

 

CBI Publisher Laura Backes has experience as an editor and literary agent, and has been published herself by Random House, Writer’s Digest and The Writer, among many others. She was Technical Editor of Writing Children’s Books for Dummies and is the co-founder of the acclaimed Children’s Author’s Bootcamp workshops.

 The CBI Clubhouse is the online home for Children’s Book Insider readers and the ultimate learning & sharing spot for children’s writers, packed with articles, audio, video and fellowship with writers worldwide.

An Author's Field Guide To Internet Trolls

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This is a cross-posting of an entry from my Indie Author blog, dated 6/8/09.

‘Author Platform’ is the buzzphrase of the moment. If you’re doing a good job of creating and maintaining that all-important communication channel between yourself and the public, it’s only a matter of time before the web trolls descend upon you to ruin things for everyone.

Herewith, I present a relevant excerpt from Ms. Gertrude Strumpf-Hollingsworth’s “Encyclopedia of Annoyances, Bothers and Frustrations”, which provides a valuable natural history lesson in the identification and management of the species most likely to darken an author’s virtual doorstep. 

Introduction

The Internet Troll (webicus infuriatum) is a hardy, highly adaptable family of parasites with established populations all over the web. Most leading Techno-Naturalists classify it as a viral organism due the fact that it reproduces by infecting members of targeted populations. Once exposed to webicus, susceptible individuals soon display the aggression, vitriol and boorishness which are the identifying hallmarks of all Trolls.

Hiding behind a pseudonym, webicus will quickly become the dominant element in any online ecosystem which provides it with a steady supply of attention and argument. In fact, webicus is so skilled in monopolizing these resources that it frequently drives off larger, but more peaceable, local populations. While all Trolls are destructive, there are perhaps none so pernicious as the subspecies which target author websites and online writer communities. Armed with a voluble nature and much larger vocabularies than other Trolls, these are particularly troublesome. 

The Queen Bee/King Drone (lordicus cliqueium)

Behavior: Lordicus begins by befriending charter members and site owner/administrators alike with its initial friendliness and offers of assistance. With favors banked and loyalties established, lordicus reveals its true nature when another community member voices a dissenting view, or becomes as well-liked as lordicus. In either case, lordicus and its followers close ranks to attack or freeze out the other member, claiming to speak on behalf of the entire community.

Control: The only effective method of lordicus control is a strongly-worded email from the site owner or administrator. Lordicus’ response is invariably a dramatic, martyred leave-taking from the site, after which it will continue to lurk and foment dissention among other members via off-site communications.

Identifying Call: A shrill, “Who do you think you are?”, sometimes followed by a low-pitched, “Nobody cares what you think, anyway.” 

The Puffed Pedant (self-importantia verbosia)

Behavior: Self-importantia is known for its lengthy, patronizing deconstructions of other members’ writing, in which it takes great pleasure in pointing out every broken rule of grammar, plotting, characterization and the like, regardless of whether or not said rules were broken intentionally, as a stylistic choice. Given that s.i. is never a published author in its own right, one might expect other community members to routinely disregard its remarks. However, s.i. posts with such smug conviction that it effects a sort of Jedi Mind Trick on the least experienced and most gullible members of the community.

Control: Since s.i. doesn’t technically overstep a site’s Terms of Service, there’s little the site owner/admin can do to put a stop to its antics. It was once thought that exposing the Pedant to the works of Kurt Vonnegut or Anthony Burgess would humble and silence the creature, but field studies have proven it will merely label such works “the exception that proves the rule” and emerge both unscathed and uneducated by the experience. Depriving s.i. of the attention, argument, and writing samples it craves usually proves more effective.

Identifying Call: A repetitive, clucking, “Do your homework.”  

The Prickly Recluse (hypersensitivium rex)

Behavior: This species is known for its uncanny ability to incorrectly interpret the tone or meaning of any other member posts, regardless of how innocuous those posts may be, invariably choosing the most negative or insulting meaning possible and taking that meaning entirely personally. From there, hypersensitivium will repeat and repost its incorrect interpretation in an effort to rally support and sympathy for itself.

Control: First-time victims generally interpret the Recluse’s behavior as innocent misunderstanding, and will usually attempt to resolve the matter with an apologetic, clarifying post. However, since hypersensitivium will misinterpret the palliative post as well, such efforts are destined to fail. A warning post or email from the site administrator will generate one last, self-pitying post from the Recluse, followed by several weeks of absence from the site. It is from this latter behavior that the Recluse gets its name. 

Identifying Call: A sharp, striking, "How dare you!" 

The PubPro Mimic (wannabeum knowitallia)

Behavior: This type of Troll masquerades as a publishing industry professional with many years of relevant experience, yet never offers any proof of its claims and simply ignores all requests for such. Nevertheless, using its supposed trove of expertise as bait, wannabeum easily attracts a cadre of insecure writers looking for a “secret handshake” or other insider knowledge that might give them an edge in getting published.

Since wannabeum lacks the expertise to which it lays claim, its haughty assertions about writing, getting an agent, publishing and bookselling are largely false. Even so, any attempt to correct the Mimic directly, or even to merely post an alternative viewpoint, will backfire in a firestorm of belittling recriminations from the Mimic, which will rely on its claimed expertise as all the support or proof its posts require.

Control: Catching wannabeum in a resumé lie will cause it to immediately vacate a site, but this is nearly impossible since wannabeum never posts under its real name and is careful to keep the identifying details of its claimed career experience vague.

Identifying Call: “If you’d worked in the publishing business for as many years as I have, you’d know how ridiculous you sound.”

The Equalizer (evenus stevenus)

Behavior: Evenus is the self-appointed score keeper and referee of any community it inhabits. Evenus keeps constant track of who has shared good or bad news, who has posted congratulations or sympathy, and whether or not such congratulations or sympathies are adequately effusive and timely. Anyone failing to pass the Equalizer’s test is subjected to the same kind of freeze-out favored by the Queen Bee / King Drone, but unlike that species, the Equalizer keeps the impetus behind its attack secret for as long as possible. Often, Evenus deprives its victims of this information for so long that another member of Evenus’ circle is ultimately the one to reveal it.

Control: As with the Puffed Pedant, since Evenus doesn’t technically break any site’s Terms of Service, little can be done to discourage it. One can either ignore Evenus or strive to steer clear of it.

Identifying Call: frosty silence.
 

The Sock Puppet Master (bittera duplicator)

Behavior: Perhaps the most pathetic of all the Troll species which favor author communities and websites, bittera creates its own support network by setting up multiple user accounts. It uses these accounts to create negative or attacking posts about others and their work, then uses its other accounts to second its own opinions in a masturbatory fashion.

Control: No specific action is necessary. Bittera will eventually reveal itself as a fraud by losing track of its various aliases, posting in the tone or style of one persona while logged in as another. Once exposed, this Troll will immediately delete all of its past posts, close its many accounts and move on to a new site. It may reappear months later to set up a new collection of accounts and aliases, but only when it’s sure its past activities have been forgotten.

Identifying Call: mockingbird-like repetition of, and agreement with, anything posted under any of its many aliases.

The Fake Friendly (condescendiosa passive-aggressivium)

Behavior: This Troll openly attacks and insults authors and their work, and when called to account for its unacceptable behavior, claims its remarks have been misinterpreted and it meant no offense.

For example, in a thread about the merits of giving away free ebook copies as a promotional gambit, following the post of a member extolling the virtues of free ebook copies, it may post, “If your book was any good, you wouldn’t have to give it away.” When the other member responds with understandable anger and offense, the Fake Friendly will defend itself by retreating behind a response along the lines of, “I didn’t say your book actually is no good, I’m just saying that you deserve to be paid for quality work.”

Condescendiosa can keep this back-and-forth dance of insults and re-interpretation going indefinitely, but its most maddening behavior is its penchant for claiming the moral high ground by recasting its abuse as simple, well-meaning honesty, which it says others can’t tolerate on account of being overly sensitive.

Control: Much like the Sock Puppet Master, this type of Troll is always the cause of its own undoing. As it slashes and burns its way through the community, systematically training its disingenuous focus on member after member, condescendiosa eventually finds it has more enemies than cohorts and vacates the premises.

Identifying Call: “You’ll never make it as a writer if you don’t develop a thicker skin,” and “I don’t know what you’re so upset about.”
 

April L. Hamilton is an author and the founder of Publetariat.

John Sayles, Novelist, Seeks A Binding Contract

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This article, by Josh Getlin, originally appeared on The Los Angeles Times on 5/26/09.

The writer-filmmaker is shopping a sprawling work of historical fiction, but no big publishers are buying. Such is the cautious state of publishing today.

Reporting from New York — For 40 minutes last month he held them spellbound, reading about America in 1898. John Sayles didn’t just give the crowd a taste of his new novel, "Some Time in the Sun" — he performed a comedy about tabloid newsboys in New York, playing 26 characters with thick, period accents.

"WAR!" Sayles boomed in the voice of a 13-year-old newsie thrilled ("Trilled!") that the Spanish-American War had boosted his daily street sales: "Remember the . . . Maine! Jeez, the way they played it out — Day 1, the ship blows up. Day 2, who blew the ship up? Day 3, we think we know. Day 4, we sent down our experts!"

When it was over, the audience at City University of New York’s Gotham Center gave Sayles an ovation. But then he was humbled by a question from a woman in the front row: When would the book be out?

"I’ve been done with it for six or seven months, and it’s out to five or six publishers," he said quietly. "But we haven’t had any bites yet."

John Sayles, Oscar-nominated creator of "Return of the Secaucus 7," "Lone Star," "Matewan" and other movies, is having trouble getting a book deal.

The situation is almost entirely traceable to the publishing industry’s economic woes, and it’s raising eyebrows, because Sayles was an accomplished fiction writer long before he made his first film. Weighing in at a whopping 1,000 typed pages, "Some Time in the Sun" is his first novel since 1990’s "Los Gusanos."

"This is really astonishing," says Ron Hogan, senior editor of Galleycat.com, a website devoted to publishing news. "I mean, this is John Sayles! You’d think there would be some editor who’d be proud to say, ‘I brought the new John Sayles novel to this house.’ "

Anthony Arnove, Sayles’ literary agent, sent the novel out on a first round of submissions last fall, and recently sent it to another group of editors. His goal is to land a deal with a deep-pockets publisher who can promote the sprawling, epic tale about racism and the dawn of U.S. imperialism.

Sayles’ 1977 novel, "Union Dues," was nominated for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. "The Anarchists’ Convention," his comic short story about aging Jewish lefties, has become an American classic.

But that’s ancient history in the publishing world, where an industry-wide deep freeze is getting colder by the day. The kind of deal Sayles might have landed several years ago — when publishers might have taken on his new book for the prestige factor, or a sense that the economic gamble could be worth it — is more difficult now.

It’s a jittery moment for writers and publishers, as sales plunge (down 4.2% in the first quarter of 2009) and the big houses lay off swarms of veteran editors. As the economic collapse continues, a novel like "Some Time in the Sun" becomes an increasingly harder sell.
 

Read the rest of the article on The Los Angeles Times site, and this companion piece, Life’s Too Short For Thousand-Page Novels, on The Guardian UK Books Blog.

Would you rather be a Best-Selling Author or a Best Writing Author?

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Dan Brown’s new book “The Lost Symbol” will be out in September and the publishing industry is looking forward to blockbuster sales. Last week at the Sydney Writers Festival, it was pointed out that literary fiction doesn’t sell and one of the panel asked authors to ‘please write more books that sell’. After all, it will help you as an author as well as the suffering publishing industry!

So what do we aim for as authors?

One the one hand we want to win prizes, be literary geniuses and praised for our glorious ability with words. On the other hand, we want to make money! (after all, most literary prizes are very small! )

Here are some examples of best-selling authors that cannot be considered “literature”, but are definitely books that are popular and have touched the hearts of millions (and made a lot of money for their authors and publishing houses). 

  • Dan Brown “The Da Vinci Code” has sold more than 80 million copies. The movie made more than $700 million at the box office. I have read “The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail”, the non-fiction book that the ideas came from, as well as perhaps the literary equivalent Umberto Eco’s “Foucault’s Pendulum”. I enjoyed both other books, but Dan’s comes out tops in terms of popular appeal! 
     
  • Robert Kiyosaki with The Rich Dad series of books, which have sold over 27 million copies in 109 countries. Robert is a multi-millionaire, and says himself “I am a bestselling author, not a best writing author”. 
     
  • JK Rowling of Harry Potter fame is constantly criticised by literature fans especially for her use of adverbs. But that hasn’t stopped her from becoming the first ever billionaire author and loved by millions around the world. 
     
  • The Chicken Soup for the Soul series by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen is just a bunch of stories told by real people in simple language. Those simple stories have touched hearts in 40 countries and sold over 112 million copies, as well as developing into aself-development franchise model. 
     
  • Stephenie Meyer with the Twilight series. Stephenie is even criticised by Stephen King on her writing ability, but that hasn’t stopped her books selling over 30 million copies, as well as the movie rights and associated merchandise. 

There are many literature prizes – the Man Booker is just one of them that I follow. I found this excerpt on the impact of winning the Booker Prize on Yann Martel, author of “The Life of Pi” (which is a great book!). 

“…after the announcement of the Booker win, Life of Pi sold 7,150 copies in the UK, making it the bestselling hardback fiction that week…. D.B.C Pierre “Vernon God Little” went from a sale of 373 copies to 7,977 in the week after” 

Clearly, literary fiction sells less than mass market popular fiction. 

 

Some of my groaning bookshelves

Some of my groaning bookshelves

Now, I love books of all kinds. I have a lot of literary fiction, stacks of non fiction and many popular fiction novels (although those often get recycled through second-hand bookshops!) 

I go to Writers Festivals, I have taken writing courses. I write journals and poetry and have 3 non-fiction books to my name. I have always wanted to win the Booker Prize because of the prestige! 

But I have decided that I want to be a best-selling author, NOT a best-writing author lauded by lit fic critics! I want to write well, but not be classed as literature. I want to be popular, not literary. 

How about you? Would you rather be a best-selling author or a best writing author?

This post appeared on The Creative Penn: Writing, self-publishing, print-on-demand, internet sales and promotion…for your book.   

I'm Sorry, My Book Isn't Right For You

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This post, from Zoe Winters, originally appeared on Publishing Renaissance on 5/21/09.

Every book has a specific audience. As an indie, I want to find that audience. Along the way I know I’ll run into people who are not a part of my audience, who will read my work, not like it, and feel compelled to share exactly why.

I’d like to talk about editing and how it relates to the indie author.

There are different kinds of editing:

1. copyediting: typos/grammatical/punctuation errors
2. fact checking
3. issues of story continuity
4. issues of style/polishing

The first three are fairly empirical. Either it’s a typo or it isn’t. There are a few grammar and punctuation rules where the rule is unclear and you can go either way as long as you apply it across the boards, but grammar and punctuation are pretty straightforward as well, as is fact checking and story continuity. (i.e. you wrote something in chapter 1 that doesn’t mesh logic-wise with what happens in chapter 30.)

Then we get to the “controversial” type of editing. Matters of style and polishing. There are some rules in this category that are pretty universal, like removing repetitive words and phrasing or “extra words” you don’t need in order to tighten up the prose. But beyond that point, the editing of style issues gets pretty damn subjective.

One thing that I love about being indie is that at the end of the day what I want my work to be, is what it is. I don’t have to write to any given editor’s tastes on any given part of my work. I can and will take suggestions and criticism under advisement, but in the end, if that goes against what *I* want my work to be, then I will continue on my path. Because the work is mine, and I get final say. That is both the price and benefit of taking all the risk for your own work.

How a writer writes sex, dialogue, characters, even their entire story arc is highly personal. But upon traditional publication, many authors have to set aside their personal wants and needs for the stylistic tastes of the editor put in charge of their work. Normally what results is a compromise, in which the author’s style is retained as much as possible, but some changes are made in order to accommodate what the editor feels will sell.

There is no question that editorial input improves a piece of writing to a huge degree, but there are many perceived flaws in books that are matters of editorial opinion. The saying “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” is never more true than in fiction.

So while changing the book to go along with that opinion will improve the work for a certain subset of people, it won’t improve it for others. And for some it will make the work worse, because fiction is subjective and the reading experience is different for each person. We aren’t mass producing widgets here.

Read the rest of the post at Publishing Renaissance.

Editing services Fiction/Non-Fiction

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Editing has been part of my "day job" for more than 20 years and I understand all the usual standards — Chicago Manual of Style and AP. I do recognize style as opposed to rigidly adhering to the rules, too.

Please let me know if you’re interested in a copyedit (spelling, grammar, syntax) for a self-publishing effort. I can make more in-depth recommendations or critique, too, if you wish. 

And I’m always respectful of how much work an author has put into their manuscript… only look for ways to improve, not destroy or control.

Reasonable rates!!

Interview With Lulu Book Review Founder Shannon Yarbrough

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Shannon Yarbrough is the founder and lead reviewer of The Lulu Book Review website. The Lulu Book Review site is dedicated to reviews of self-published books published via Lulu, but as Shannon reveals in this interview, changes are in the works to allow titles from Wordclay and CreateSpace as well.

P: When did you first become interested in self-publishing, and why?

SY: In 2000, I became an assistant manager for a bookstore.  My love of books spanned back to my childhood, but this was when I first began to formally learn about the book industry itself. 

A local author came in one day to introduce himself and to promote his book. I also had a love of writing and dreamed of being an author myself, so I spoke to him and asked if he’d be interested in doing a book signing. Since I was also in charge of a book club at the store, we ended up reading his book and having a nice long discussion between him and the group. He signed a copy of his book to me as follows: “This is the best feeling in the world and I owe it all to you.  I can’t wait till you’re signing copies of your own book one day and I’m eagerly standing in line for my copy.”

I asked the author more about the publishing process after the event, and he told me he self-published his book. He used Xlibris. I knew nothing about the world of self-publishing then, but I quickly learned. Three years later in 2003, I self-published my own first book with Xlibris. So, my knowledge of self-publishing grew from there.

P: You currently have three books in print with Lulu; what would you say are the pros and cons of publishing through Lulu?

SY: There are many pros to Lulu. I first discovered Lulu in 2006 and was immediately impressed with their speed and pricing. In one night, within a few hours, I had a 2nd edition of my Xlibris book for sale on Lulu with a new cover and at half the price of the original. I fell in love with their community forums where I connected with other authors like myself, and I spent hours perusing the online book store and reading new authors.

The first book I published originally with Lulu was a collection of my poetry which I put together with images as a gift to some family members. I thought the printing quality and time it took to print and ship was great. I also liked the ability to publish both a hardcover and paperback edition cheaply. The ability to make changes quickly with no financial investment was nice too. In 2008, I purchased an ISBN for my third book with Lulu for just $99.00. This was a big savings compared to the Xlibris investment I made in 2003, even though I had to do all the work myself when publishing with Lulu.

I think the cons vary by project and by author. Some that I have experienced were printing problems. Two orders of my 2008 book arrived with the same damages months apart, tears to the spine and glue smudges on the cover. Although Lulu sent replacements to me, I had problems getting a response from their customer service department the second time because by then, they had discontinued their online chat support. I’ve heard from other authors that response time via email has taken as long as 25 days. Cuts in their staff are probably the issue here. When they had chat support, it was hit or miss for me. Sometimes, they were very helpful and sometimes they were no help at all. The rise of shipping expenses has been a huge issue lately with many Lulu authors, especially international ones. 

I, myself, have also not been impressed with the “Published by Lulu” feature. This was free for a while and gave you an ISBN and listed Lulu as the publisher. It took months to get the book loaded to Amazon, only to have it listed as out of print. I think a lot of this had to do with the whole Booksurge ordeal that took place last year, and Lulu has not been completely forthright with information about how they were affected and how it affects these books.

The recent purchase of poetry.com has given them some bad press because of the stigma attached to the business that was running it before.  Lulu is also now offering expensive publishing packages like the other subsidy publishers, so they’ve lost a bit of their DIY appeal for me. 

P: You are the founder and administrator of The Lulu Book Review. Can you explain what the site is all about, and why you decided to launch it?

SY: The LLBR was created in Spring 2008 as a book review blog strictly for Lulu authors.  I had been querying agents and small publishing companies with my most recent book and casually documenting my experiences (and rejections) on my personal blog. 

In March, I decided to use Lulu to publish the book myself and wanted to document that experience as well. In searching the Lulu forums for information one day, I kept coming across pleas for reviews. When I clicked on those authors’ books though, no reviews had been posted on their pages. I thought that was so depressing that Lulu authors couldn’t even get their own peers to read their books. And so out of that thought, the Lulu Book Review was formed along with my POD Diary where I documented my own publishing experience as a reference for other authors.

Since then, three other reviewers have joined me.  The blog has been solely devoted to Lulu authors and to reviewing Lulu books, but has become a great reference for self-published authors in general.  We also cross-post our reviews to both Lulu.com and to Amazon.com for the author. 

P: Conventional wisdom states that the majority of self-published books are badly written and poorly formatted. Has this been your experience as a reviewer?

SY: I would honestly say it’s about 50/50. In the beginning, for the most part, books we chose to review were based solely on the opinion of what the reviewer wanted to read and if the preview on Lulu sparked their interest. Then, we started seeing recurring problems that kept turning us off as well. So last November, we posted a list of common mistakes that we often found in Lulu books and sort of adopted that as a set of rules for books we are considering for review.

Formatting and spelling are the usual mistakes we see. Those things don’t necessarily mean the story itself is bad, but it’s hard to devote time to a book when the author hasn’t done their homework when it comes to presentation. Typically, we might give something a chance from the start if we like the preview, despite the basic problems we see, but we usually take into consideration that if we’d give the book anything less than three out of five stars on an Amazon.com review, then we bow out and choose not to review it at all. After all, we want the feel of our reviews to be a positive experience for not just the author, but for our readers as well. Self-publishing gets enough bad reviews on its own as an industry so we don’t want to add to that. 

P: Some authors, indie and mainstream alike, are reluctant to post negative book reviews, either out of professional courtesy or fear of retaliation. As an indie author yourself and a booster of the movement, when wearing your "reviewer’s hat," do you ever feel compelled to soften your criticisms when reviewing other indie authors’ work? Have you ever opted not to post a negative review?

SY: We never soften the blows because we don’t really have to. Like I said, when reviewing our policy is that if we start reading a book that has too many grammatical or spelling errors, or is poorly formatted, or we feel that we’d rate it three stars or less out of five, then we don’t review it at all.  This is not because we fear retaliation or are worried about the response we might get.  It’s simply because, like most indie reviewers on the web, our goal is to promote reading and to promote authors who have put serious effort into making their book the best possible.

So, we always opt not to post a negative review because we don’t write them, and we are honest with the author when we tell them why we’re choosing not to review them.  Our reviewers have also been willing to give some helpful tips and suggestions to the author when time allows.

P: The Lulu Book Review offers reviews of Lulu-published books only; do you have any plans to launch any similar sites to review other self-published books?

SY: There are no plans to launch additional sites, but as of June 1st we are branching out to include CreateSpace and WordClay authors. The site, domain, and our name will also be getting a face lift. This was a group decision because all of our reviewers share the same opinions and philosophies about self-publishing. We like what we are doing and we want to reach out to more indie authors.

P: How can authors of Lulu-published books submit their works to you for review?

SY: Authors should visit the blog and post a query on our Pick Me! Tab. They should link to their book and tell us a little about it and tell us why we should review it. We also accept email queries currently at lulubookreview@gmail.com. 

Shannon Yarbrough is the author of two self-published books, The Other Side of What published with Xlibris in 2003, and Stealing Wishes published with Lulu in 2008. He is also the creator and lead reviewer of The Lulu Book Review.

 

What Is Literary Value?

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This article, from Henry Baum, originally appeared on the Self-Publishing Review site on 5/9/09.

The post about the ways that people criticize self-publishing brings up the idea that a traditionally published book has a stamp of approval and so traditionally published books are more reliable.  This is true.  Some amount of vetting does count for something, but in an age when it’s more difficult to get published, it is not the only measure of a book’s worth.

What’s also problematic is that writers may take this one step further and consider that their writing is indeed better because it has been accepted by an editor.  I don’t want to limit the idea that getting accepted by an editor and receiving a paycheck is enormously validating.  Of course it is.  I’ve been traditionally published as well with Soft Skull Press in the U.S., Canongate in the U.K., and Hachette Litteratures in France.  I come to self-publishing with a sense of both sides of the aisle.

But just because a book has been accepted by an editor does not mean it is automatically better – and dispelling this idea could help self-published books gain more clout, and reduce the amount of prejudice.

Let’s look at a writer like Jack Kerouac.  Most people think of Kerouac as a fifties writer.  Actually, Kerouac was going on the road in the late forties, after the war.  On the Road was written in 1951 – but it was not published until 1957, towards the end of the decade.  Jack Kerouac did most of the writing that’s part of his legacy before On the Road was ever published.  Is On the Road a better book in 1957 than it was when it was initially written in 1951?  I think most people would say no: publication doesn’t determine worth.  The book is the book.

Take other writers like Herman Melville and F. Scott Fitzgerald.  They both died unheralded and Moby Dick and Gatsby become a part of the literary canon only posthumously.  The same goes with a writer like Philip K. Dick.  Read to some degree while he was alive, but not nearly as regarded as he is today, with editions being put out by the Library of America.  Crime writer Jim Thompson is another one, who had a renaissance in the nineties.

Obviously, not all self-publishers are geniuses like the writers mentioned above.  They don’t have to be.  This is just to point out that a book’s success or lack of success does not determine if a book is worthwhile.  It can take decades for a writer to be discovered and reexamined.

Read the rest of the article on the Self-Publishing Review site.

#Authorfail: Hubris, Not Bad Writing Or Design, Sinks Most Self-Published Nonfiction

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I recently completed a stint of judging nonfiction, indie books for The Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Popular lore holds that most self-published books are of poor quality, both in terms of layout/design and writing, but that was not my experience with these books.

Most of the books had very attractive and professional-looking covers, and many of them had excellent illustrations and interior layout details (i.e., sidebars, recurring graphic elements) as well. While a quarter of the books could’ve done with a thorough edit to ‘trim the fat’, none of the books were so flawed in terms of mechanics as to make them difficult, or even just unpleasant, to read—and I’m somewhat of a stickler for spelling and grammar.

Nevertheless, fewer than half of the books in my allotment seemed worthy of publication and sale to the public, and some clear patterns emerged. In this series of blog posts, I’ll discuss my findings.

Because I am not allowed to disclose the titles of the books I judged, nor the specific category(ies), I’ve changed identifying details of the books in the following examples. (All book titles given below are fabricated, and are not meant to reference any real books)

Experience Doesn’t Always Equal Expertise

A tax attorney who’s struggled with her weight for years finds she’s somehow managed to lose fifteen pounds in one month. On reflection she realizes she’s been eating a lot of hazelnuts lately. Her internet research shows nuts are often encouraged as part of a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet, and she finds some studies that report hazelnuts have antioxidant properties. BOOM! The Hazelnut Crash Diet book is born.

A computer programmer’s YouTube parody of a celebrity is brought to the attention of the celebrity, who mentions it on a late-night talk show. The clip goes viral in a matter of hours. In the morning, the man learns what happened and finds he has several interview requests from the media…BOOM! How YouTube Can Make You Famous is born.

A caregiver in a nursing home notices the elderly in her care seem more responsive and alert when she plays music over the facility’s public address system. BOOM! Using Music To Beat Alzheimer’s Disease is born.  

The tendency of so many authors to base an entire book or belief system on false correlations, or even mere coincidence, was astonishing to me, as was their complete lack of awareness that their ability to formulate a possible cause-and-effect relationship does not make that relationship valid, nor make them experts in either the cause or the effect.

There are many possible explanations for the first woman’s weight loss, but based on little more than intuition she’s concluded that hazelnuts were the key to her success. She’s not remotely qualified to design a safe and effective diet plan, yet here she is, promoting her hazelnut diet as a surefire, safe solution for anyone wishing to lose weight quickly.

If the YouTube guy had come up with a successful strategy to get the celebrity’s attention or the late-night talk show mention, that would be worthy of sharing with the world. In this case, he simply had an incredible stroke of luck that occurred entirely outside his control or even immediate awareness. Yet here he is, claiming he can show anyone how to recreate the same outcome.

The fact that the nursing home residents perked up when they heard music is no indication of music’s efficacy in staving off Alzheimer’s, and the caregiver’s only knowledge of Alzheimer’s comes from a continuing education class she once took and her observations of the elderly in her care. Yet here she is, claiming to have found a cure for a disease that whole armies of researchers and billions of dollars have yet to crack.

Books like the diet book and the Alzheimer’s book were particularly worrying to me because they can affect the health of others. Where very challenging ailments like Alzheimer’s are concerned, sufferers and those who care about them are often desperate enough to try anything that could possibly work. While exposing Alzheimer’s sufferers to music certainly won’t harm them, sufferers or caregivers might choose “music therapy” over other, better treatment options.

One of the books actually encouraged readers to use spoken mantras to treat a common physical ailment for which numerous safe, proven treatments already exist. Furthermore, the ailment was one of those things that’s not usually serious, but can develop into something serious if it’s not watched closely. By the time a caregiver employing the mantra method realizes the mantra isn’t working, the ailment may have progressed to the point that aggressive and risky medical treatments are required. I was dumbfounded by the author’s irresponsibility.

I understand there’s such a thing as alternative medicine, and I can also believe that laypeople and amateurs sometimes make discoveries that have evaded professionals and academics. However, I’m not going to take one person’s word for it that she’s discovered a new avenue in healthcare or nutrition based on her personal experiences alone—especially when she has no significant background or training in the subject of her book. Background and training are the things that allow a person to tell the difference between a genuine result or discovery and a wrong conclusion.

Many of the authors seemed to think their own, untrained, non-professional interpretations of others’ academic and scientific studies constitutes “independent confirmation”. It doesn’t. I am an animal lover and even spent a number of years studying Veterinary Science and working as a Veterinary Technician while in college. Even so, that past experience and bit of education doesn’t give me all the knowledge and background I’d need to accurately interpret the statistics reported in veterinary studies conducted by actual veterinarians and scientists. 

There are very good reasons why doctors, lawyers, physical therapists, nutritionists, accountants, etc. are required to complete years of education and training before being licensed to practice. Judging by the lengthy disclaimers I saw at the front of several books, the authors knew this, yet still deemed themselves capable of going toe-to-toe with the professionals. The disclaimers variously advised readers that nothing in the book should be construed as professional advice, that the reader shouldn’t rely on the information provided in the book when making medical, legal or financial decisions, and in one case, went so far as to say the reader shouldn’t rely on the book’s content as a reliable source of information on the subject matter of the book.

A book that needs a disclaimer like that is a book that never should’ve been written, and should definitely not be offered for sale to the public.

 

This is a cross-posting of an entry that originally appeared on my Indie Author blog on 4/17/09. Follow these links to read parts two, three and four in the series.

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April L. Hamilton is an author and the founder of Publetariat.

Focus On Editing

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Whether you need help with grammar, spelling or usage, there are plenty of free, online resources available.

Five Common Grammar Errors as Illustrated by Zombies from Fictionmatters is just what it sounds like. Dangling participles, subject-verb disagreements, separating subjects and verbs with commas and more are illustrated with examples drawn from the zombie oeuvre. Bonus: cute picture of a Lego zombie.

In keeping with the "five" theme, Copyblogger offers Five Easy Steps to Editing Your Own Work. This article isn’t about the specifics of grammar or spelling rules, it’s about more general strategies for helping you see the errors that you’d normally miss.

Common Errors In English is an exhaustive online glossary of frequently misused words. Based on Paul Brians’ book, Common Errors In English Usage, the glossary is presented alphabetically, with clickable links to jump to each section of the glossary.

Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty is no slouch herself when it comes to clarifying word misuse problems, but that’s just the beginning. She can also explain the differences between Abbreviations, Acronyms and Initialisms, tell you when to use Dashes Versus Colons, and much more. Bonus: most of Grammar Girl’s site content is available in podcast form. 

If spelling is your problem area, try Look Way Up. This online dictionary/thesaurus doesn’t require you to spell the word you’re searching for correctly—it will suggest options—, and it will return not only the correct spelling of your word and the word’s definition, but synonyms, antonyms and related terms as well. Bonus: French, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Dutch translations offered too!

The Spelling Center, a sub-site of The Free Dictionary, is another great stop for the spelling-challenged. The front page features a constantly updated list of the most frequently misspelled words as reported by users of TheFreeDictionary.com. Bonuses: free hangman and spelling bee games on the front page of TheFreeDictionary.com!

On his My Writing Life blog, Todd D. Severin provides his Ten Point Revision Strategy series of posts, beginning with Resist the Urge to Explain. Bonus: two additional points (Kill the Clunkers and The Final Readthrough)!

Are overused words and cliches your achilles heels? Check out Precise Edit’s list of 10 Overused Words in Writing, and Cliche Web. Bonus: Cliche Web’s huge database of cliches is searchable by simple lookup or by category (i.e., animal cliches, food and drink cliches, etc.)!

Confusing Words is the site to visit when you’re not sure which of two or three words is correct for your sentence (i.e., affect vs. effect, there vs. their vs. they’re). Bonus: when you look up a confusing word, you’re given the correct spelling and definition of the word you looked up, plus related words that are commonly substituted for your word, plus usage examples to clarify which word is best for your purposes!

Finally, Jeff Chapman’s Self-Editing Checklist is a keeper. Print it out and refer to it frequently as you review your drafts.

How to Squeeze Writing Inspiration from Every Experience

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This article, by Mary Jaksch, originally appeared on Write To Done on 3/9/09.

Do you have days where you sit in front of  an empty page  – and find nothing, absolutely nothing you could write about? I used to. But now I’ve learned to squeeze inspiration from every experience.

What, every experience? Yes, I know it sounds a tall order. Read on to see how it works.

The secret of creativity

First of all we need to determine what triggers creativity. It’s quite simple:

Creative innovation happens through communication between regions of the brain that are not usually connected. (You can read more about that here).

Let’s imagine that you want to write an article about social media. Your page is empty and your brain is on slow-go. Then you start making a list of points you want to cover:

Twitter
connections
viral news
Stumbleupon

Does this list inspire you? Does is trigger ideas in your brain? Well, not in my brain! At this point I still can’t find any theme connected to social media that I might want to write about.

Now let’s take a different tack in order to kick-start creativity: we’ll choose an unrelated idea and hold it up against our theme ‘social media’. What we’re doing at that moment is to connect two different areas in the brain.

Let’s say that the word we choose to connect with ‘social media’ is ‘potato’. Wacky, eh?

Just pause for a moment and see what your brain comes up with when you connect ‘social media’ and ‘potato’.

Here is what happens in my brain when I connect the two concepts:

  • Potatoes grow underground and you can’t see them from above / You can’t understand social media by looking in from the outside.
     
  • You only get to see the size of the  harvest when you dig up your potatoes/ It takes a time to see the result of ongoing social media cultivation
     
  • Potatoes are a staple diet/ Your communication on social media allows people to get to know the ‘ordinary’ you.
     
  • There are endless recipes to cook potatoes/ Each social media has its own style and you need to adapt to it

Ok – that was just a five minute harvest of ideas to illustrate how creativity works. Even though I didn’t come up with any brilliant mind flashes, what I did get was four different themes for an article. So, if you were to connect ‘social media’ with twenty different unrelated things, such as door handles, cats, rain, hunger, rainforest, or … you name it, you would end up with 100 ideas for articles about social media. That’s better than none, isn’t it?

Read the rest of the article on Write To Done.

Researching Your Book

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This post, from BubbleCow, originally appeared on the BubbleCow blog on 5/8/09.

The key to effective research is to know what it is that you need to know!

The first step is to recognise that there are two types of research: general and specific.
General Research
This is all about gathering a wider knowledge of the subject of your novel or book.
  • Read general books: Start with outlines and histories of the period (topic) under study. Get a feel for the key events of the time. Read books at all levels. Children’s history books are often a good place to start since they will give you a nice overview. 
     
  • Read ‘real’ history books: The next stage is to read some serious history books. Find out who the key historians are in the area of your research and read a couple of their books. Good history books will have loads of references to the books that the historians used in their research. You can use these references to find more history books. 
     
  • Beware of the Internet: At this stage you are still probably gathering a deeper knowledge of the subject area. You may find that the Internet is not the most helpful tool at this stage. Wikipedia can be very useful to clarify details but use with caution. [Publetariat Editor’s note: this is because Wikipedia entries are created and edited by members of the general public, and are therefore not always 100% reliable]
      
  • Make notes: This is very important. As you read make notes of the key points and, most importantly, write down questions. 
     

Specific Research

 
Having gathered a general knowledge you will now be ready for specific research. This is all about answering the questions that will help with your writing. However, the key is to be specific.
 
Let’s say you are writing a scene set in London in 1867. You have a young couple walking down a street at night.
 
You could ask:
 
‘In Victorian Britain what did a London street look like at night?’
This would be fine but it is very hard to answer. Where would you begin? You would be very lucky to find a website or book that would give you the description you needed.
 
OK – let’s change the question to:
 
‘In 1867 what did a London street look like at night?’
 
This is a more specific question and therefore easier to research. You might do a google search on ‘London streets 1867’. This might pull up some useful information. An image search did produce this: 

See the image, and read the rest of the post, on the Bubble Cow blog.

Ten Fingers Pointing

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This post, from Jason Weaver, originally appeared on his Paperback Jack site on 3/11/09.

Ten technological resources for writers. I hope you find them useful:

1. The BBC’s writersroom is that rare thing, an advice site and forum that also has the power to commission the work it helps with. They are, as they state, ‘always on the lookout for fresh, new, talented writers for a changing Britain. When we find them, we do everything we can to get their voice heard and their work produced’. All unsolicited material is considered and plenty of examples are offered for comparison. Worth the licence fee alone?

2. Similarly, the Scottish Book Trust is full of useful material. There is a virtual writer in residence, podcasts, interviews and information on funding. Like the BBC site, there is a depth of material here not immediately apparent from the home page. Take time and dig deep.

3. The Scottish Book Trust also has a short series of entertaining videos on YouTube. Keith Gray offers advice, based on his own experience, on taking work from basics through to final draft.

 

4. Universities have recently been opening up their lectures to the general public. Warwick’s acclaimed writing course offers a lively set of podcasts, entitled Writing Challenges, including the sparky ‘Murdering Your Darlings’.

Read the rest of the post on Paperback Jack.