The Editor Unleashed Guide To Good Blogging

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This post, from Maria Schneider, originally appeared on her Editor Unleashed site on 5/28/09.

The “should I start a blog” topic popped up on the forum yesterday, and I want to offer my answer to this question once and for all: Yes, of course you should start a blog!

Why wouldn’t you take advantage of this fabulous, free opportunity to not only practice your craft, but also start actively building your readership.

Every writer circa 2009 should have a blog. It’s free and the technology is accessible to all. Don’t worry yourself over things like SEO and RSS or HTML. You don’t need to know any of that to start a blog, although your knowledge of these things will naturally grow as you become more comfortable with blogging.

I’ve written many posts on website building and blogging. I highly recommend starting out with a simple WordPress.com account for the most user-friendly, free service. Then, when you’re ready to expand into a full-fledged multi-page website, it’s easy to transfer those files onto WordPress.org, which is a more flexible and powerful platform.

The most important thing is to start and stick with it. That puts you ahead of the pack in more ways than you realize.

Here, I’ve assembled a number of the posts I’ve written on blogging/website building in one handy post. If you’re just starting a blog, this will be more information than you need, so you may want to skim the information and come back to specific topics when you’re ready. 

Choosing a Domain
Since I’m a writer and no techno-wiz, I’ve just gotten past a steep learning curve to build my website from scratch, and I wanted to share what I learned in a weeklong series here on Editor Unleashed.

I’m going to start from the very beginning, because I wished several weeks ago for one reliable resource to take me through all of the steps in a very basic way. Read more…

Website Software and Hosting
OK, so you’ve got your domain registered and you’re ready for the next big step in building your website. Now it’s time to figure out software options and hook up with a Web Host (aka server).

Read the rest of the post on Editor Unleashed.

Phantom Editors and Writing 'Mistakes'

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This post, from Marsha Durham, originally appeared on her Writing Companion blog on 3/6/09.

Do you mark errors you find when you read books? If you do correct text, be sure that what you’ve done is . . . well, correct.

I occasionally correct errors in Wikipedia and books, such as dates and people’s names. Sometimes I correct typos, although I’m not really into joining the super-vigilant typo-police. I usually correct a typo only if it’s in a library book and may mislead other readers. For example, a Colleen McCullough novel had a scene set in a royal court. A whipping there was described as a ‘kindly act’ when the story’s context suggested that ‘kingly act’ was probably what was meant.

Recently I borrowed a library copy of a novel called The Writing Class, by US writer Jincy Willett. I enjoyed the book—it covers writing issues but is also a whodunit—but I was also interested to see that a previous reader had inserted three ‘corrections’.

What do you think about what the book’s Phantom Editor corrected?

Interestingly, Jincy responded, and I’ve now  incorporated her comments.

Akimbo: Correct–or not?

. . .[S]ince all they had to tell the police was that some unidentified joker had claimed that another unidentified man was dead, the police wouldn’t be inclined to race to the beach, blue lights and sirens akimbo.

The origins of akimbo were words meaning ’sharply bent’ and ‘crooked’, and anything akimbo should be able to be bent. It usually refers to human limbs: arms akimbo, legs akimbo.

Can blue lights be akimbo? Maybe, as a figurative description of flashes of blue light breaking over the scene. But a sound—the sirens—can’t be. So yes, I agree with Phantom Editor on this one.

JINCY: “Akimbo” was used in a deliberately off way. We’re in Amy’s p.o.v. throughout (that is, 3rd person, single p.o.v., with the exception of the Sniper material), and this is the sort of deliberate odd word choice that she would make (I hope); it was intended to be droll, because Amy is.

Between you and I: Correct or not?

Carla, a member of the writing class, tells Amy, her writing teacher: ‘Everybody understood that piece but me! Between you and I,’ she had whispered, ‘I was just winging it.’

Phantom Editor had a pencilled-in a correction about it: ‘between you and me’.

The correction makes the phrase grammatically correct. But for dialogue, editors should investigate further. Not every character uses grammatically correct speech. Maybe Carla is someone who always uses the phrase ‘between you and I’. Many people do. A good editor would check with the author and examine how characters talk throughout the book.

JINCY:  Carla uses the wrong pronoun case in dialogue, and again this was deliberate on my part, although I can’t remember why, except that I always notice when people do this.

Careen: Correct or not?

At first all she could make out was a small car entering the far end of the lot at an unsafe speed, at least for speech bumps, and sure enough it hit three of them, bottoming out each time . . . with an attendant rattle that sounded like a dislodged oil pan, and still it careened forward, coming straight for Amy.

Phantom Editor changed careened to careered. Which is right? This one is tricky: It depends on the culture the story is set in, the writer’s cultural background, and the editor’s decision to stick to old or changed rules of usage.

Read the rest of the post on the Writing Companion blog.

13 Twitter Tips and Tutorials For Beginners

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This post, from Darren Rowse, originally appeared on his TwiTip site on 4/18/09.

Just starting out on Twitter? Looking for some Twitter Tips to get you started?

Twitter is bound to have a load of new users today as it is being featured on Oprah – so I thought it might be a good day to share some tips for the beginner Twitter user who is just getting going with the medium.

1. What’s in it for Your Followers? – How to be Useful on Twitter

2. 10 Easy Steps for Twitter Beginners – good sound advice and tips on getting going on Twitter  

3. 8 Sure-Fire Ways to Tick off the Twitterverse – a few things to avoid on Twitter 

4. 5 Ways I Benefit from Twitter – this outlines why I love Twitter in my business of building blogs 

5. Defining Your Twitter Goals – this one is more for those who want to use Twitter for other purposes than just letting their family know when they’ll be home. 

6. How to Set up a Twitter Account – most of your are probably past this one but it could be useful if you’re a ‘Pre-Twitter’ user.

7. 5 Steps to Model Successful Twitter Users – an exploration of a few ways that Twitter is being used 

Read the rest of the post on the TwiTip site.

How Does A Bestseller Happen? A Case Study In Reaching #1 On The New York Times

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This post, from Tim Ferriss, originally appeared on his blog on 8/6/07.

Last Friday, the impossible happened and a lifelong dream came true: The 4-Hour Workweekhit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list! Thank you all for your incredible encouragement and support. More unbelievable, this week 4HWW is simultaneously #1 on the NY Times and #1 on the Wall Street Journal business bestseller lists.

How is this possible? How could a book from a first-time author — with no offline advertising or PR — hit both of these lists and stick for three months and counting?

The book was turned down by 13 of 14 editors, and the president of one large book wholesaler even sent me PDFs on historical stats to “reset my expectations”–it could never be a bestseller. The odds seem impossible: there are more than 200,000 books published each year in the US, and less than 5% ever sell more than 5,000 copies. On a given bestseller list, more than 5 spots could be occupied by unbeatable bestsellers like Good to Great or The Tipping Point, which have been on the lists for years.

On a related note, how could a blog that didn’t exist six months ago now be #2,835 on Technorati with 874 incoming links and an Alexa ranking of 9,615?

Is it all luck? I don’t think so. Luck and timing play a (sometimes big) part, but it seems to me that one can still analyze the game and tilt the odds in their favor. I don’t claim to have all of the answers–I still know very little about publishing–but I’ve done enough micro-testing in the last year to fill a lifetime.

The conclusion, in retrospect, is simple… It all came down to learning how to spread a “ meme“, an idea virus that captures imaginations and takes on a life of its own.

First, let’s looks at how the bestseller status unfolded. Here are the stats and timing for all of the bestseller lists the 4HWW has hit since release date on April 24, 2007. [Publetariat Editor’s Note: the stats are lengthy, and can be viewed on Tim Ferriss’ blog via the ‘read the rest’ link below]

Those of you who have been here for a while know that I’m fanatical about analytics and imitating good models (in the business sense, not the Naomi Campbell sense).

Before I began writing 4HWW (I sold it before I wrote it, which I explain here), I cold-contacted and interviewed close to a dozen best-writing authors about their writing processes, followed by close to a dozen best-selling authors about their marketing and PR campaigns.

I asked several questions of the latter group, but one of the assumption-busting homeruns was:

“What were the 1-3 biggest wastes of time and money?”

This led me to create a “not-to-do” list. Number one was no book touring or bookstore signings whatsoever. Not a one. All of the best-selling authors warned against this author rite of passage. I instead focused on the most efficient word-of-mouth networks in the world at the time–blogs. The path to seeding the ideas of 4HWW was then straight-forward:

* Go where bloggers go
* Be there with a message and a story that will appeal to their interests, not yours
* Build and maintain those relationships through your own blog too

These three observations are from PR pundit Steve Rubel’s excellent summary of the 4HWW launch on Micro-Persuasion, titled “The 4-Hour Workweek – Behind the Meme.” Interested to know which events I chose and what the Amazon and Technorati numbers looked like at each step? Check it all out here.

For a good take on my blogging approaches, both as a book author and blog writer, see my multi-part interviews with Darren Rowse over at Problogger.net:
Part 1 – from the day prior to the official publication date (good for seeing how I prepped the market)
Part 2 – from about one weeks ago, after hitting the big lists (good for learning how I’ve built traffic)

4HWW created enough noise online that it was then picked up by offline media ranging from Wired and Outside magazines to Martha Stewart radio and The Today Show. To create a fast-acting meme, I’ve come to believe that you need to do a few things well. Here are the highlights, ordered to recreate the familiar acronym  PPC with a certain Don King-esque flavor:

Read the rest of the post on Tim Ferriss’ blog.

My Life In Publishing

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This post, by Henry Baum, originally appeared on the Backword Books blog on 6/18/09.

I’ve been thinking about how I’ve gotten to this point and why I’ve become such a zealot for self-publishing.  I have to say that self-publishing was an absolutely last resort for me.  I was trying and trying to make it in the world of traditional publishing.  And I’ve had some luck.  I mean some people can’t even get an agent, and I’ve had four of them, each representing different novels.  I’ve been translated into French, had a book put out in the U.K. Random House, et al, though, have not come knocking.

My first novel, “Camera Shy” (a lead character and title I used for a story put out in an anthology), was me trying to rip-off my favorite writer, Richard Yates.  Namely: The Easter Parade, which is about two sisters, so was mine.  It was a failure of a novel, but at least I wrote 200 pages in a row, and enjoyed it.

Second novel was called “Dishwasher,” my attempt at writing a first-person Bukowski/Kerouac-inspired novel, with the slacker generation replacing the Beat generation.  It was better and I got an agent for it.  She wanted to call it “Dishboy” because it was “funkier.” She sent it out and it had a nice reaction, but no takers.  “Boy can this guy write,” I remember, which is nice, but no book deal.

Wrote my first novel that was published next: first titled Oscar Caliber Gun (now titled The Golden Calf).  My agent hated it, and reluctantly sent it out. An editor said, “I cannot see a market for a novel that is slight and lacking in any meaningful message.”  I’ve memorized that.  The agent sent it to me sort of gleefully (I thought) as vindication for her distaste for the novel.  Ultimately we had a falling out because I made the mistake of asking her assistant if I could see the cover letter she was sending out with the novel.  Jay McInerney said he liked the book and I wanted to know if she was mentioning that in the letter.  I couldn’t reach her on the phone, so I just asked the assistant to send the letter.  The agent went ballistic.  Said I was doubting her skills as an agent.  Really, she just wouldn’t return my phone calls.  But I think she was looking for a way out because she didn’t like the novel.

And so I went to St. Mark’s Books in NYC looking for small presses to submit the novel to myself.  Got a bite from Soho Books.  Not much else.  And then I discovered a VERY small press, Soft Skull, that had these little handmade books printed at Kinko’s.  I sent in my novel along with a demo tape of a band I was playing drums in called Montag.  The editor, Sander Hicks, accepted the book, and was especially taken with the tape and that I’d begun my query letter with, “Dear Freakshow.”

So, finally, I was published.  I remember walking up First Avenue and my girlfriend at the time calling down to me, “Hey, published writer!”  Such a nice moment.

 

Read the rest of the post on the Backword Books blog.

The Publetariat Vault Is Go!

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The Publetariat Vault will officially open to all authors on Monday, 6/29/09, but it’s actually already open for any early birds reading this who want to get in on the ground floor. To get the ball rolling, the Vault is offering a special promotion: the first 300 published listings will be free of charge for 90 days from the day the Vault opens for publishing pro and producer searches. And beginning with the 301st published listing, all listings will have the first 30 days’ listing fee waived as well, to provide a free trial period. Read all about it here.

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.

Authors: 5 Ways You Can Be Your Own Alchemist

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This post is from The Creative Penn.com: Writing, self-publishing, print-on-demand, internet sales and marketing…for your book.  

Alchemy is the science and art of turning what is base into something precious. It means transformation and renewal, death and rebirth. There are many myths, legends and secrets around alchemy and it has been a creative muse for many people throughout the centuries. 

Here are 5 ways you can be your own alchemist for your writing:

 

  1. Take your darkest and hidden secrets and turn them into nuggets of gold. We all have our dark and dirty memories, but you can turn them into the basis for brilliant writing. It is not about baring your soul, but using what is down there and transforming it. Fictionalise it. Use the lessons to share your wisdom. Your story is original and people want to hear it. You are unique and you can shape that into brilliance.
  2. Edit your work dramatically. Turn your worst writing into something great. Sometimes our writing itself is base and dirty. It needs refining, sometimes drastically. The alchemist used fire to destroy and refine. You may need to be as brutal with your writing to make it into something beautiful.
  3. Transform yourself. Learn, grow and change to develop your self and your writing. “The book you write will change your life” Seth Godin. I truly believe this. The experience of writing a book, whether it is for you alone or for many readers, can transform you into a new person.
  4. Test and refine your methods and works. The alchemists were always looking for new ways to reach The Philosopher’s Stone. To be the one to finally turn lead into gold. They were chemists, scientists always experimenting. You also need to experiment as an author. Learn from failure and continue to move on. Try different techniques and methods. Include new ways of writing as well as book promotion and sales options. This is a lifetime of work, so you have time to make the changes.
  5. Include both spirituality and practicality into your writing. Alchemists have been linked with both the science of chemistry and also esoteric spirituality. Combining both creates a powerful writing career. Authors need to stay in touch with their soul and spirit in order to create and give their energy to the work. But equally, authors need a practical sensibility in order to deal with business, publishing and book promotion. To be entirely focussed on one without the other is useless.

How To Link Your Blog To Your Facebook Profile With Notes

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EDITOR’S NOTE: 7/26/11 – THE "NOTES" APP TO WHICH THIS POST REFERS HAS BEEN HIJACKED BY PORN SPAMMERS. WE THEREFORE NO LONGER RECOMMEND FOLLOWING THE INSTRUCTIONS IN THIS POST TO LINK YOUR BLOG TO YOUR FACEBOOK PROFILE.

This post, from Coree Silvera, originally appeared on her Market Like A Chick site on 6/7/09. It contains a great how-to for integrating your blog into your Facebook profile, so your blog posts will automatically appear on your Facebook profile page.

Using your blog as your hub is part of a smart and strategic social media marketing plan. I have found that Facebook offers the greatest linking capabilities so far.  Not only can you link your blog in via the Notes Application, but I also use the Facebook Networked Blogs, that gives added exposure.

I know there are female ‘tech geeks” out there, but I am not one of them!  It takes me a little longer to understand how to do these things than most so I’d like to make it easier for other women if at all possible.

I’ve tried to take the steps to add Notes and link your blog in simple language that my female powered brain needs to understand.  Hopefully, other women marketers will be able to understand how simple it is to link your blog to your Facebook profile using the Notes application from these easy steps:

1.You will need to log in to your Facebook account, then go the Notes application page. You’ll see all your friends that use the app listed there.  Click on “Go To Application” button on the left side of the page. 

2.After adding the Notes Application to your profile, click on “Import a blog” under “Notes Settings”.

notes11

If you don’t already know your blog’s RSS feed URL, you will have it memorized soon!  It usually looks something like: “http://www.yourdomain.com/feed”, depending on what type of feed or service you use.   If you don’t know it, just click on the RSS button on your blog and it will take you to the URL that you can then copy. If you use Feedburner you would paste the feed URL they provided you here.

Read the rest of the post on Market Like A Chick. 

Should You Talk About Your Article Or Book Ideas?

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This post, from Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen, originally appeared on her Quips and Tips for Successful Writers site on 6/16/09.

Successful writers create new article or book ideas all the time – but do they talk about them before they’re written? Not according to Mario Puzo, Sidney Sheldon, or Ernest Hemingway…

“Never talk about what you are going to do until after you have written it,” said Mario Puzo.

Oops. I’m not only talking about my latest book idea, I’ve actually written about it on my blog (The Adventurous Writer), in Seeking Successful Published Authors. But, the good news is John Steinbeck talked about his book ideas before they were written, too!  Here’s a few quips from published authors about talking about writing – plus some tips. For more in-depth info on getting your ideas published, click on Putting Your Passion Into Print: Get Your Book Published Successfully! by Arielle Eckstut and David Sterry.

Should You Talk About Your Article or Book Ideas?

The quip: “I don’t like to talk about works-in-progress because if I do then it’s on TV 10 weeks later, and it takes me two to three years to write a novel because I do so much rewriting.” – Sidney Sheldon

  • The tip: Okay, we may be successful writers, but most of us aren’t in Sheldon’s league! Even so, many writers fear the possibility that their book or article ideas will show up in a magazine, another writer’s blog, or a book. I believe the chances that someone deliberately steals ideas are slim (plus, you can’t legally fight it because ideas can’t be copyrighted). I also believe in a cosmic karma/common sense flow that leads people to similar ideas at the same time. That is, leads for ideas are floating around in the news, on Twitter, etc – our world is so small, writers are bound to come up with the same ideas at the same time. (To figure out if your idea is valuable, read Tips for Recognizing Great Article Ideas)

The quip: “You lose it if you talk about it.” – Ernest Hemingway

  • The tip: If you talk about your ideas, be selective. Don’t spread your ideas around writers’ forums or on Twitter (oops, I goofed again). Rather, share your ideas with inspiring fellow writers, your writing group, or people you trust. Talking your way through problems with finding sources for articles or plot dilemmas for novels is a great way to find solutions! But, I encourage you to pull a “Hemingway”, and do what works for you.

Read the rest of the post on Quips and Tips for Successful Writers.

Marketing Expectations And The Small Press

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This post, from Jason Sizemore, originally appeared on the Apex Books Blog on 6/10/09.

Even in the best of times, making a small press successful is a tough maneuver that few have accomplished. The current economy exacerbates the difficulty level, as well. All the small presses are hungry for your dwindling spare change. That’s why I find the common notion of many authors to believe that once they sell a book to you, their obligation to the publisher is done, to be confusing and irrational.

From my perspective, this almost feels like the author is saying “Okay, buddy, you’re lucky none of the big publishers grabbed my collection/novel/novella/anthology and paid me the five-figure advance I deserve, so you are granted the right and privilege of publishing my work. Have at it.”

I’m not sure why authors feel this way. Why wouldn’t you want to promote your work? Everybody knows that most small presses pay little to no advance. Apex pays an advance, but it’s about 1/4th professional rates. Any noticeable amount of money you’ll earn will come through royalties. To earn royalties, the book has to sell.

Many small presses have little to no budget for advertising. We advertise in Cemetery Dance, Weird Tales, Albedo1, Fangoria, Rue Morgue, Space and Time, Electric Velocipede, Shimmer, on the ProjectWonderful banner system, on SFScope.com, and on any surface that we can slap our beloved Apex alien head on. Many publishers never get out and run the convention circuit to promote their authors. Not so for us on both accounts. We actively travel to promote our books. We have dealer booths in the halls of at least a half-dozen conventions a year, almost always done at a loss because you (the publisher) have to sell a lot of books to compensate for the costs of the tables, food, gas, lodging, etc.

Read the rest of the post on the Apex Books Blog.

Networking – Not A Dirty Word (it just feels that way sometimes)

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This post, from Angela Slatter, originally appeared on her The Bones Remember Everything blog on 6/10/09.

I once had to present a faux writers festival presentation as part of an assessment piece. As someone who doesn’t like speaking in public, interacting with strangers, or even being seen, I was quite happy pitching that writers should be read and not seen. That the golden days were when we didn’t have to be performing monkeys.

I was wrong.

I was wrong because there never was a time when we didn’t have to sing for our supper. From the troubadours and travelling storytellers to Chaucer, from Oscar Wilde to Mark Twain, we’ve always had to perform in public if we wanted attention. Hell, even Bram Stoker schlepped across the US giving readings. If we don’t perform, we don’t eat; and most of us like eating.

A lot of writers (myself included) can be described as ‘anti-socialist’ – we’d refer to be at home, on our own, just writing and spending time with people who don’t actually exist outside of our own heads. It’s like a game of Extreme Imaginary Friends. We don’t like to talk to anyone (except the furry familiars and the pretend people), and we just put the pretty words on the page.

You can get the words in the right order, you can get them to shine and dance on the page, but this doesn’t prepare you for the other part of your career: the talking to people part. If indeed you do want to be published, you will need to interact with other human beings: agents, publishers, publicists, booksellers, the marketing and sales departments, and most terrifyingly of all, readers. These are all categories staffed by humans. A writer needs to know how to talk with them, interact with them, in short, network with them.

Read the rest of the post on The Bones Remember Everything.

The Fiction Writing Workshop: Plot (Keep Your Eye On The Ball)

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This post, from Kristin Bair O’Keeffe, originally appeared on the Writers on the Rise blog on 6/15/09.

Growing up, our family played a lot of backyard baseball. My mom was usually the pitcher. “Keep your eye on the ball,” she’d say before unleashing a pitch. When I followed her instruction, I usually hit a line drive or on a good day, a homerun (sending my sisters into a wild scramble in the outfield); when I didn’t, I either missed the ball completely or hit an embarrassingly lame foul tip.
 
Throughout the years, I’ve discovered that in this particular way, writing fiction is not so different from hitting a baseball. If I follow my mom’s instruction when writing-keep your eye on the ball-I am able to create a compelling plot in a story.

 
Kristin Bair O'KeeffeTake, for example, Audrey Niffenegger’s novel The Time Traveler’s Wife. In it, the plot (the ball on which you must keep your eye) is “time-traveling man falls in love and wants to stay put in the present with his woman.”
 
In the book, all action and events speak to this plot in some way. As the story moves forward, Niffenegger keeps her eye on the ball. If she didn’t, the story would wander, and readers would get frustrated, give up, and move on to another book.
 
As you can see, plot is not a list of events in a story. Plot is the purest description of a story.
 
Another good example is Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Of Love and Other Demons. Here the plot (ball) is “rabid dog bites girl; girl may have rabies.”
 
And again, throughout the book, Marquez keeps his eye on the ball. Never do you, the reader, lose sight of “rabid dog bites girl; girl may have rabies.”
 

Read the rest of the post on Writers on the Rise.

Publetariat Vault Update: Nearly There!

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Development work is complete on the Publetariat Vault, the FAQ and Terms of Use are up, and we’re now in the testing phase and on track for launch at the end of June. Whether you’re an indie author seeking mainstream attention or a publishing pro or producer seeking proven literary material for low-risk acquisitions, you’ll want to check out the Vault.

From the Vault’s welcome page:

Publishers and Producers:
The Publetariat Vault is a searchable database of independent literary works for which the authors own all rights free and clear and are interested in selling those rights, with accompanying sales data and reader reviews to take the guesswork out of determining commercial potential in the mass market—and it’s FREE for you to use.
 
 Find independent literary material that is already proven in the marketplace
See actual sales data, and know if the work already has traction
See reader reviews from bookseller sites, reader communities like Goodreads, blogs and elsewhere 
 Search by genre, topic, keyword, recommended reading level and more to find the kind of content you want to acquire
 See author platform pieces, buzz, publicity and more, and know if the author will be an active partner in promotion
 

Indie (Self-Published) Authors:
The Publetariat Vault also provides a groundbreaking service to you: the opportunity to get your indie book in front of the publishers and producers who are seeking proven books for low-risk acquisitions. If you’ve ever thought that if publishers or producers only knew how well your book is selling, how great its reviews are, and what a great job you’re doing to promote both it and yourself, they’d snap up the rights in an instant, then the Vault was made for you. 

 

 – The Vault will initially open only to authors who wish to create listings

 

– The Vault won’t open for pro searches until the 300th listing has been published – ensuring lots of listings for pros to search      
– The first 300 listings to be published will be listed for free for 90 days, beginning on the day the Vault opens for pro searches 

The Publetariat Vault is currently under construction, with a planned launch at the end of June, 2009. Note that member registrations for the Vault will not be processed until the site go-live date, which will be announced on Publetariat, on this site and elsewhere.

See this Publetariat article for more information, or click the links above to check out our FAQ and Terms of Use. Click here to view a blank listing form, here to view a sample published listing, and here to view the search form publishing pros and content producers will use.

 

 

 

 

Free Books And Ebooks And Promos, Oh My!

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This piece, from Alan Baxter, originally appeared on Publishing Renaissance on 6/14/09.

When I first started self producing my novels as POD trade paperbacks I was against ebooks. This is back in the dark ages, around 2006. My thinking was, “I want people to buy my books, therefore I’m only going to produce actual books!” If I could go back in time I’d give myself a solid slap upside the ear.

The simple truth is that POD trade paperbacks, even bloody good ones like mine, are still more expensive than their mass produced counterparts. You can buy my book on Amazon for around $15 or you can buy something by Neil Gaiman for $8, or that awful Twilight rubbish at around $5 or $6. Obviously, these low prices are for paperbacks, smaller and of lighter paperstock than POD trades, but that’s beside the point. The consumer is usually happy to buy books in a variety of formats if the price is right and if they’re really keen to read the them.

Therein lies the rub. Convincing people that my books are really worth reading is the hardest part of indie publishing, especially when they cost around $15. I currently have two novels out – RealmShift and MageSign. Neither of them have yet received a bad review – a few negative or lukewarm comments in otherwise positive reviews is as bad as it gets. I don’t think they’ve ever been reviewed at less than 3 out of 5. I’m ecstatic about that and it proves to me that people think my books are as good as I do. But it’s still hard to convince the buying public to give them a go. As indie publishers we’re always going to be hard up against three primary walls of resistance:

1. The recognised author name
2. The trusted publisher brand
3. The low price of light stock paperbacks

The price is something that we’re always going to struggle with. The recognised author is something we hope to become, but in the meantime have to struggle against. The trusted publisher is something that is becoming less and less of an issue. In all honesty, how many people check up on the publisher before buying a book? How many people would decide against a purchase on the grounds of not knowing the publisher? But whether that affects a buyer’s decision or not, that publisher will always have the massive marketing department and distribution reach that we can only dream of. So what to do?

Well, we have to embrace the new. Big trad houses are just starting to get on board with the idea that ebooks are becoming more popular. The Kindle 2 from Amazon has recently been released, the Sony Reader is very popular outside the US, the iPhone has a Kindle app. My novels are now selling better in Kindle editions than any other format. The trouble with the big houses is that they’re still charging at least $10 for an ebook. Talk about missing the point! My books are $3.19 on Kindle and $3.50 at Smashwords and I thought THAT might be a bit overpriced. But they’re selling and that means people are reading my books, hopefully enjoying them and, also hopefully, telling friends and colleagues all about them. So my writing and my name are being disseminated among a larger audience.

Read the rest of the post on Publishing Renaissance.