Month: September 2009

Introducing a Weekly Diatribe and Toolbox Roundup for Publetarians …

by

Labor Day Weekend has come and gone!  I’m so thoroughly re-created that I’m exhausted and rarin’ to get back to work!  Those of you who have been Publetarians for some time now may recognize my writing – cantankerous though it may be.  This serves as fair warning to those of you who don’t need one more online curmudgeon filling your browser page with annoying, endless, self-important opinion.  On the other hand, I’ll be minimizing outright opinion, over the coming weeks to concentrate upon throwing some useful information out there to the hungry masses of Indie Authors and Publishers. 

This column won’t tell you how to write the perfect pitch, or how to hone your books and stories down to where they shine in every agent’s glistening eyes. There’s plenty of good information provided by other Publetarians that covers improving your writing skills.  My aim with this weekly column will be to provide some “nuts and bolts” information regarding how to promote, advertise and sell your work.  The trick, as I see it, is to learn to attack the problem from many different directions at once and to stay “on your feet”, adapting your message to your market as it shifts before your eyes.  A kind of sleight of hand helps keep your audience waiting for the next dove to fly out.

It’s not really magic.  I speak from over 30 years in the trenches of small business management (it’s not pretty in there) and over 20 of them in advertising design, promotional collateral material design and copy writing as well as media placement for the rest of us.  We all should compete upon as level a playing field as possible.  If the rest of us need to roll up our sleeves and get out the shovels, I’m on it. Then watch the dirt fly!

The rest of us are small business owners who can’t afford to hire full time publicists and/or advertising agencies to position and spin our writing into gold.  As I’ve learned, being an Indie-Author or publisher is a full-time, small business – whether you keep your day job, or not! Once we set our goals we have to do our own spinning, and I’m hoping to help other Indies get it right — or at least as good as we can make it.  My clients over the years have ranged from international aerospace corporations to Mom & Pop retail businesses and a lot of ‘in-betweens’. 

The two considerations common to all of them was: make it great, and keep the cost down. Gratifyingly, there were only two primary considerations.  That’s a joke.

From my years as Studio Director in a wide variety of graphics Bull-pens, I’ve learned one rule in the ad business that has never failed when considering a project (see image below)… cut it out, print it, then fill it out and post it where you can see it every day.
 

Advertising and Publicity Checklist...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, if good and cheap (implication: inexpensive, not poor quality) sound like a good course of action, I’ll give you a breakdown of tools that you need, how to use them, and what to expect from your efforts.  Of course, I can’t always get it 100 percent spot-on for your needs, but I hope that you’ll all let me know where an idea has failed as well as when it has worked for you. 

In addition, within the above loosely-organized subject definition, if you’d like to get my take upon something specific, let me know and I’ll work with your idea, see what I can come up with or find some foggy memory in the recesses of my brain. Oh, and I’ll let you know what I think about it, too.  Maybe more than once, but that comes with the white patent loafers and flower print Dacron shirt.

I wouldn’t be a curmudgeon if I didn’t throw around my opinion.  Just bear in mind that after 35 years of writing (2 complete novels, 2 more WIPs), with book sales that always need improving  and a roomful of encouraging, even complimentary rejection letters, my opinions can be pretty unvarnished. Lots of ragged edges. If you don’t mind occasional ragged, come on in.

Next Time: One electronic thing Indies can’t do without…

The Indie Curmudgeon is an Indie Novelist, graphic designer, marketing consultant, guitar picker, Indian Trader and online retail merchant since 1995.

 

 

A Salebarn Visit

by

Fog was dense in spots as we pulled our stock trailer to Kalona, Iowa early Thursday morning. The white sun ghosted in and out of the haze on our way to the salebarn. We needed to sell this spring’s crop of lambs and goats so we were up before daylight, loaded and ready to go. I hadn’t realized just how many creeks are between my house and Kalona until we hit those areas of hidden highway. Good thing I had something to look forward to which took the nervous edge off the ride.

It’s always fun for me to go to this salebarn. On one end of the parking lot is a line of Amish horse and buggies, giving the area a back in time feel. Amish men work in back, penning up stock, and Amish women run the restaurant. In earlier times, I’d seen more people crowded into the seats. Yesterday most of the few spectators were either buyers or sellers like us.

We took a tour on the catwalks above the stock pens. Not many barns have catwalks. It seems to me to be a good idea. If buyers are interested in the stock, walking above the action keeps them from getting in the handlers way as they pen up the stock that’s unloaded.

Inside the selling arena, seating was a horseshoe shaped area. We sat in the top row of wooden seats which just happened to have thin padding on them. Believe me, after a couple hours that padding was appreciated. Some of the spectators were Amish men and one small boy, learning the ins and outs of a salebarn already. One Amish man bought two large white buck sheep. I wonder how he got those sheep back to his farm. They wouldn’t have fit in his buggy.

We used to go to salebarns a lot to sell animals and to buy sometimes. Regulars came all the time. We knew quite a few people we enjoyed sitting and talking about everything under the sun between bids. But times have changed. Not all salebarns handle sheep and goats in my area nor hogs for that matter with the large confinement buildings in use now. Large farmers are only crop growers now. Kalona is one of the few that still sells all livestock. With the Amish being diversified and the rest of us coming from miles around, the salebarn is still in business. My thought is that I should have my Amish farmer in my next book go to a salebarn. Give readers a sample of what happens there.

A little after eleven, my husband suggested we make a dash for the restaurant before the sheep and goats finished selling. The U shaped counter has swivel seats around it that doesn’t hold a large number of people. There was three young Amish women working. They looked to be in late teens or around twenty. The waitress was so personable. I could tell she had been meeting the public for awhile. She called a lot of the men by first names and was teased by some. She even told one man he was a mess, and she laughed all the way to the kitchen.

The restaurant was lent a bit of Amish wisdom by the sayings posted on the menu board, the ice cream cooler and the wall. "Life is for living, not waiting around." "You are only as happy as you allow yourself to be." "Jesus loves you" and The Lord is my shepherd."

I love that first saying on the bottom of the menu board where every customer had to see it. "Life is for living, not for waiting around". The Amish may look plain in dress and manner. They may prefer life to be simple, but are living life to the fullest and their way. I wonder if the Amish philosopher who came up with that saying ever read David Thoreau, poet, author and philosopher. He said just about the same thing when he said, "When it’s time to die, let’s not discover we never lived."

.

Of course, the meal was delicious and large portions of meatloaf, mash potatoes, gravy and peas with a large slice of homemade bread warming on top the peas. Even after scarfing down that much food, we still couldn’t leave until we had a piece of Coconut Cream Pie. It was delicious but not quite the pie we used to buy there. Years ago, the pies were capped with an inch of meringue. Now the pies have an inch of cool whip. Looks like a little of our English influences might be rubbing off on the Amish after all.

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

by

This post, from Zoe Westhof, originally appeared on her Essential Prose site on 4/29/09.

I’ve been thinking a lot about education lately. It all started when I watched this TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson, “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” Robinson asserts that creativity in education is as important as literacy, and the current school system does not treat it as such. In fact, he says, the current school system stifles creativity.


What these things have in common you see is that kids will take a chance. If they don’t know, they‘ll have a go. Am I right? They’re not frightened of being wrong. Now I don’t mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative. But what we do know is, if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original. If you’re not prepared to be wrong.

And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong. And we run our companies like this, by the way — we stigmatize mistakes. And we are now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. And the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities. Picasso once said this. He said, that all children are born artists, the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up. I believe this passionately; that we don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it, or rather that we get educated out of it. So why is this?

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

When I heard this, I of course started thinking about my own schooling. I was fortunate enough to go to some pretty unconventional schools throughout my childhood. My elementary school, for example, encouraged “inventive spelling.” If you didn’t know how to spell a word for the story you were writing, you made it up — you wrote it the way you thought it should be. Now, I can’t prove any cause and effect here, but I now happen to be a top-notch speller. I’m sure that’s more due to my childhood consumption of every book I laid my hands on, but inventive spelling was great nonetheless. We actually had a class called “Rhythm” that, as far as I remember, entailed a lot of jumping and dancing around a big empty room. I also didn’t have grades until I was 10 years old, and the school I went to resided inside half the public library building.

So my schooling experience wasn’t exactly conventional, but it began to fit into certain molds as I grew older. After all, I had to get into college, didn’t I?

Robinson suggests that our schooling system would look to aliens like an entire process devoted to creating university professors. If you look at the path from high school to university and beyond, schooling and academia have become insulated, self-perpetuating ecosystems that are often irrelevant to the world outside. Luckily, there are many teachers who reach beyond that — but it is a hard system to crack.

Read the rest of the post (which includes the TED talk video referenced in the opening paragraph above) on Essential Prose.

A Hazing Ritual: The Bad Review

by

This post, from author Allison Winn Scotch, originally appeared on Writer Unboxed on 9/10/09.

There comes a time in every author’s life when he or she will receive the inevitable: the terrible, horrible, so-bad review that you want to jump inside of your computer and rip it off the web so no one who ever knows you, much less anyone who has never met you, will read you and judge you by it.

Welcome to the life of a public figure. It’s almost a hazing ritual, it’s so common.

I remember receiving my first truly terrible, TERRIBLE review, even almost three years later. My debut book was coming out that week, I was admittedly a bundle of frayed nerves, upset intestines and barely-coherent brain waves. But – until that point – all of my reviews had been positive, and frankly, let’s be honest, I thought my book was pretty damn good. So there I was, on a lazy Sunday morning, surfing the web, when my google alert came on. “Ooh, I’m in the Washington Post!,” I thought. I scrambled to check it out.

O.M.G.

Blood rushed to my cheeks, time stood still, I probably screamed.

Not only did this reviewer not like my book, she EVISCERATED it. Just gutted it inside and out. It was so bad that my agent called me to see if I knew said reviewer and had personally wronged her at some point in our lives. (I’m serious. And I didn’t and I hadn’t.) Once my pulse returned to semi-normal, I tried to put it out of my mind. I deleted my google alert email, vowed never to pull up the review in my browser again, and may or may not have also wished a few terrible things on the reviewer, all the while contemplating a voodoo doll or something similar.

Read the rest of the post on Writer Unboxed.

Allison Winn Scotch is the author of The Department of Lost and Found: A Novel and Time of My Life.

Leveling The Field With The Indie Curmudgeon

by

 

Join RL Sutton for a weekly dose of advice and wisdom borne of his 30+ years of professional experience in small business management, over 20 of which were spent in advertising and design. When it comes to promotion, advertising and selling on a budget, RL knows what works, what doesn’t, how the pros do it, and how you can do it, too.

Should You Self-Publish?

by

This post, from Henry Baum, originally appeared on Self-Publishing Review on 9/9/09.

That title sounds like a pretty rudimentary question from a site going into its tenth month, but that’s not the question that’s been asked most often here.  The question has been: is self-publishing legitimate?  This comes in response to people who say things like “Self-published books are crap,” which is sort of like saying, “All dogs bite,” after being bitten by two.  Plainly put, they’re wrong, overgeneralizing, and aren’t worth too much more ink.

Now that self-publishing is a legitimate way to go, is it something you should consider?  The “About” page for this site says,

The aim of this site is to legitimize self-publishing – not just as a fallback plan, but as an avenue that’s increasingly necessary and useful in a competitive publishing industry.

This may need to be revised because more often than not self-publishing should be a fall back plan.  Given the fact that distribution is better with a traditional press – especially mainstream publishing – it is preferable to self-publishing.  Yes, there are arguments for building a readership outside the walls of the gatekeeper, but you can’t deny that widespread brick and mortar distribution and an expanded outlet for reviews is helpful.  As I’ve written here before: mixing together the will of the self-publisher with the distribution network of a traditional publisher and whatever marketing muscle they put behind a book is preferable to totally going it alone.

I don’t totally buy the profit angle (self-publishers make more money) because it’s so much harder to sell books. Retaining rights is a better argument: your book will never go out print, as is the idea that you have complete creative control.  But: it’s possible to have the latter with a traditional press.  And what’s more important: selling 20,000 books or retaining rights?  These are the questions you should be asking.  Of course, selling 20,000 books isn’t a given with a trad publisher, but it is more likely.

In a long thread on Publishers Weekly, which started with a criticism of an interview I gave to a Sacramento paper, the blogger of the piece, Rose Fox, commented:

Henry: Given the willingness of major genre publishers to publish books by authors who combine and switch among genres–Iain (M.) Banks, Catherynne M. Valente, Michael Chabon, Maureen McHugh, Sharon Shinn, Richard Morgan, Terry Pratchett, Mary Robinette Kowal, Jay Lake, Scott Westerfeld, China Miéville, Jim Butcher, Cherie Priest, Alaya Dawn Johnson, and Daniel Abraham/MLN Hanover come to mind, just off the top of my head–I remain baffled by your assertion that traditional publishers would be reluctant to buy a good book from such an author. Every traditional publisher I’m aware of also publishes debut novels…

She’s right, the publishing industry doesn’t totally suck.  Good books are traditionally published all the time.  Some of my best friends are traditionally published books! At the same time, how many submissions are enough before a writer takes it into his or her own hands?  One of the oft-mentioned criticisms of self-publishers is, “If it’s not good enough to be traditionally published, it’s not good enough.”  Wrong.  There are any number of reasons that a book might be rejected and they’re not all based on the merits of the book – it may just have to do with the financial status of the publisher, which right now is not particularly positive for many publishers.

Read the rest of the post on Self-Publishing Review.

The wind-up…and…The Pitch!

by

Every writer needs to be able to write a gripping, attractive "pitch".  After laboring over parsing my current 200 word pitch into something with more "voice", I rewrote it completely. It’s quite a bit longer than 200 words, but it will still fit on a query letter, if I pare down the bio…

I’d like to post it here, and seek comment, just as I hope others will post theirs and do the same.

A Revised Pitch for The Red Gate

Above the windy, wet coastline of County Mayo, shepherd Finn O’Deirg sits against a mossy rock outcropping and begins to brew his morning tea. He has been quietly bemoaning his tiresome lot, when with no warning, the ground beneath him swallows him up! He’s fallen into a sinkhole, and for hours, worries if he’ll slip into the yawning darkness below.  As night falls, his father, returning from another pasture, pulls him bodily, from the ooze and Finn finds he’s brought up something in his shirt besides all the mud.  An ornately marked bronze ornament of some antiquity lies in his shivering palm.  The bead is covered with oddly scribed markings, or letters completely unintelligible to the sheep farmers, but it prods them to find out what it means.

Finn and his father seek help in determining the value of Finn’s “charm” only to open themselves up to a distressing group of devious archaeologists – academics, who see much more in the farmers’ find than just another curious antiquity.  One professor from Dublin’s Trinity College, thinks it may well secure his future, and will stop at nothing to acquire it, and use it to his advantage. His devious associates are pressed into action and soon, a plot emerges that will eventually reach up into the Office of the Irish Governor General himself and further. Maybe even across the Irish Sea to Parliament and possibly on to a certain, very honorable address in London.

The O’Deirg’s soon find that for them, what the odd writing means is a terrible threat, and not only to their very land and livelihood. This initial discovery leads to a much larger one revealing an ancient secret hiding beneath them for many thousands of years. The secret is what really holds them to this speck of rocky Western Irish coast. Protecting it from all outsiders, it turns out, has always been their family’s primary work.  How can they withstand the gathering power of the Dublin Professor’s connections? Whom can they turn to? What about their sheep?

The Red Gate weaves the academics’ tales of deceit and nefarious dealings, even murder, with the story of family trust and tradition that springs from the very land under the feet of their grazing sheep.  The O’Deirg’s with the help of loving friends and allies unseen, find their resources are much more substantial than they imagined and Finn, at last, discovers what he is meant to do with his life and with whom he is to share it.

#####

Soon to be a weekly thing….LEVELING THE FIELD with the Indie Curmudgeon…

by

I’ve been tapped to join the honored ranks of those Publetarians who write regular columns for the Publetariat Masses.  I’m feeling just a bit surprised that there might be some out there who need the additional cranky commentary from one more opinion-head. If, you look in this coming Saturday, September 12th and each week thereafter, I’ll throw up some tips and tools from more than 30 years of experience in small business management and advertising/graphic design. It won’t be pretty, but it might be useful..to some of you Indies out there!  Feel free to look in, and leave a comment or two, even a suggestion.  I look forward to many long years associating with the likes of you!

Cloud-publishing, Again

by

Book Oven pal Mark Bertils writes about Cloud Publishing on indexmb, focusing mostly on the reader-side, with services like Shortcovers and the more forwardlooking expectation of booky-APIs, Kindle’s or big cloud-based catalog initiatives. The stuff that’s happening and going to happen on the finished product/reader side is exciting, but it pales, I think, in comparison to the changes that will come on the creation side. I posted the following comment on Mark’s site: For obvious reasons, I think the cloud looks most promising as a publishing enabler, rather than as a reading enabler. Cloud-publishing for me means: a) a text can be instantaneously published at zero-cost to the world b) a text can be worked on by an editorial team distributed across the globe, yet the text will still be in “one place” in the cloud The implications are huge for the structures of the publishing business (or at least, we at Book Oven are betting they are). The two things that have given shape to the “modern” publishing industry are: a) the cost of distribution of books b) the need for centralization of workers-on-books But a) goes to zero, and, as you suggest, b) has been going towards decentralization for some time now. But b) is going to fragment massively now. So really the two main forces that have shaped the book business have essentially disappeared – or at least, should disappear within the next 5 years. The changes on the production side will, I think, be far more significant than the changes for readers.

Publishers Must Change The Way Authors Get Paid

by

This editorial, from novelist M.J. Rose, originally appeared on Publishing Perspectives on 8/28/09. While the piece deals with mainstream author compensation schemes (advances and royalties), it points up the fact that the line between mainstream and indie authors continues to blur day by day now that mainstream authors are expected to act much like indie authors when it comes to promoting their books.

Shout it from the rooftops, or better yet, hashtag it on Twitter. It’s time to turn the page on how authors get paid.

Times have changed, and with them, every aspect of the publishing landscape is morphing. And from my vantage point, nowhere is it changing more than in marketing. Authors aren’t waiting and watching to see what publishers aren’t doing for their books — they are jumping in feet first and months ahead of their houses to make sure there’s a serious marketing and publicity effort.

And publishers aren’t gnashing their teeth over the author’s involvement anymore — they are encouraging it. Co-op is more costly than ever and eating up marketing dollars. In almost all cases, publishers are making it clear that they expect authors to supplement their marketing/PR effort in various ways and, in some cases, even soliciting the author’s help with both time and yes, money.

As a result, today the author’s marketing/PR effort is often equal to or even greater than what the house is doing.

The good news is it works. No wonder really — people do buy more of something when they know it exists, and in general, book marketing is so low-key that people don’t know what books are even out there. I have dozens of case histories of authors who have pushed their sales into reprints when none were expected, created enough velocity to generate free co-op when none was anticipated, and achieve bestseller listings when none were dreamed of.

But whenever there’s good news…

We now have a situation where publishers are financially benefiting from the author’s efforts but the author is still getting paid the old way, without regard to how much we personally invest.

There’s just no consideration for the checks we’re writing out of our own pockets for marketing or PR services.

Accordingly, it’s blatantly and patently unfair for us to invest in our own books and then wait for our advances to earn out based on the same royalties rates we’ve always gotten.

Be it $2,000 or $20,000, the money we invest should be discounted from the advances we’re paid, allowing us to earn royalties faster based on an honest up-front expenditure by the publisher.

And, it goes without saying, we should be be getting a higher royalty rate. After all, we’re doing more than writing our books, we’re business partners as well.

Read the rest of the article on Publishing Perspectives.

People's Reactions When You Say, "I'm Writing A Book"

by

When you say “I’m writing a book” or “I’m an author”, people have a number of different reactions. You can get support and enthusiasm or you can get negativity…and anything in between!

Sometimes it hurts, as this may be a lifetime goal and something you feel vulnerable talking about.

You expect your partner or your family to be infinitely supportive but sometimes they just don’t get it. You may also surprise them by what you write. My Dad and my brother found it “surprising” that I wrote a self-help book. They were expecting fiction. But why – when I have never written any?

“Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it.”

William Zinsser, “On Writing Well”

You will put a great deal of yourself into your book. Even if it is non-fiction, you will find it an expression of who you are. After all, what you choose to write about reflects on the person you are. People will judge you by the material (but then they judge you anyway!).

The problem is worse when you only have one book, as this is your only child. Your sole expression of yourself in book form. It then becomes the only thing for people to judge you on and the main thing for people to attack. Once you have some more books, you can start to relax as there are different facets of you on show. Your confidence will also grow – you are now an author!

Everyone will have an opinion about you writing a book. At the beginning you might not tell anyone you are writing for fear of what they think, or might say – after all, lots of people talk about writing a book, but few actually finish one. When you tell people you are writing a book, the comments are a mixed bag. In my experience it went like the following graph of criticism and praise.

Initially, there was criticism, negativity and judgement – or at least that is what it felt like. This is also directly related to the editing process. The criticism I got at the beginning of the project was justified based on the quality of the writing. However, the criticism started to die off as the editing process continued and as I showed I was actually going to achieve this. As I then started to tell more people, the praise started to come in. The criticism also dies away (unless you have a controversial book!)

Criticism and praise cycles

This is also related to your confidence as you may often start out sounding apologetic about writing a book, but this changes over time and you become proud of what you have done.

SOME PEOPLE WILL NOT LIKE YOUR BOOK.

This is inevitable and something you have to face. This will be difficult especially when you are still a new author and emotionally involved with your book. I remember bawling my eyes out when challenged on why people would buy it. I felt that a rejection of my book was a rejection of me.

I have learnt that this isn’t so – perhaps the message was not for them at that time.

How can you deal with this difficult time?

  • Understand that how you feel is not unusual. You are out of your comfort zone. You are not an expert in writing books, so you need to get used to it. Be gentle on yourself, and accepting that you have some lessons to learn before you make it.
  • When someone says something that you consider hurtful, take a deep breath and reassess their comment. It is useful feedback that you can try to incorporate to improve your book? If yes, note it down and use it. Is it jealousy, or a comment that does not help? If yes, try not to think about it again and don’t share your book plans with that person again.
  • Talk yourself up and say positive affirmations. You have permission to write your book. Your opinion is valid. You can be an author. You are creative. These phrases are affirmations that you might need to repeat and say over to yourself. Fake it until you make it!
  • You can achieve this goal. Writing and publishing a book is an achievable goal. It does, however, take some persistence. Think of it as a longer term experience and enjoy the ride!

So when people comment on your book, or on your dream of writing a book, just take a deep breath, note the comments and move on. You are fulfilling your own dream.

This is a cross-posting of an article that originally appeared on The Creative Penn site on 12/29/08. 

My Children Are More Precious Than Gold

by

My children’s book "My Children Are More Precious Than Gold"  ISBN 1438240953  sold on amazon and buy sell community or by me.

This was my inspiration.

I had a grandmother that I grew up respecting and loving. Though Veder Bright had to be prompted to talk about her early years, she did tell me as much as she wanted me to know. While in school, had an assignment to do a family tree. I’ll always be grateful that I talked to Grandma and got all the information she knew. Now communication with second and third cousins on the Internet has helped me fill in more of that family tree. I’m proud that younger relatives ask me for a copy of our tree for their homework. Backgrounds are very important. Trouble is, most people don’t start questioning who was related to who until the elders in their family has passed away. You can find most of the names and dates on the internet, but that’s not nearly as interesting to me as my grandmother’s stories that went along with those names and dates.

My grandmother, my mother’s mother, died in the late seventies about three years after my grandfather. When many of her nine children cleaned out their parents last home in Belle Plaine, they found the family bible. Under the names and dates of all her children, including the two infants that died, was the sentence in Grandma’s scrawling hand, " My children are more precious than gold".

My grandparents struggled to keep food on the table for their large family during the twenties and thirties. Through all the tough times, those children knew they were loved. They did their best to look after each other. My mother and an uncle have passed away, but to this day though the siblings are scattered between Missouri where they were born and Iowa, they are very close, because family is still important to them.

In the late eighties after the writers workshop in the library, I was thinking at trying my hand to write a book. Hadn’t clue what the story would be. Once day, my mother was looking for something in the antique sideboard in the kitchen. The Great Depression had trained my mother, the eldest of that large family, to never throw anything away. That day, she was rifling through the tablecloths and napkins when a legal size paper slipped out from the pile. She glanced at the paper and handed it to me, wondering if I might be interested in some family history her mother had given her a decade before.

One of Grandma’s sisters had been interviewed by a granddaughter as a 4 H project about their early life and submitted the story to a newspaper. My grandmother and her 11 siblings were born in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Riner, Virginia. At the turn of the twentieth century in that area conditions were rough, and families were poor. I found it interesting to read how the Bishop family lived and what they had to do to survive. That was the start of my book project, but I needed to know more so I went to the Keystone Library and checked out a book on Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains and the customs of the people. I made extensive notes from that book.

By then I had bought a word processor which had some memory. I don’t remember how long it took me to write the book but at least a year. The title is "My Children Are More Precious Than Gold". Befitting I thought since I assumed my grandmother got her mothering instincts from her mother. Finally, I took a copy in a notebook to my retired teacher mentor. She read and edited the story. Her review was – This book is good reading for anyone and especially a good story for junior readers – sad, funny and dramatic.

I sent out queries and chapters to several publishers but the era the story was written in wasn’t what has been popular with children was my reasoning. That being my first book, down deep I was pretty sure I needed more experience to write a book worth publishing. After months of waiting, I got the rejections slips, gave up and hid the notebook away for over a decade.

My next attempt at writing a book didn’t happen for ten years – 1999

Punk Rock Ethos & Self-Publishing

by

This post, from Daniel "Dust" Werneck (aka Daniel Poeira), originally appeared on his Empire of Dust site on 9/4/09. The majority of it is reprinted here with his permission.

“If you want something done right, do it yourself.”

– Old proverb

I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to cover this subject for a while. Now, thanks to April Hamilton – a.k.a. @indieauthor – and a link she just posted on Twitter, I think it’s the right time to talk about punk rock and self-publishing.

Since I halted my career as an independent animator and started to focus on my writing, I’ve been reading everything I can find about the current state of affairs in the world of book publishing. One of the ugliest feuds right now is between the publishing companies and professionals, and the self-publishing companies like lulu.com that print and sell books without editing.

The link Mrs. Hamilton twitted pointed to an article by Rose Fox, a professional reader and book analyst, criticizing people who self-published books. Her article, entitled “I Don’t Want To Hate Self-Publishers”, starts with two quotes; phrases she hears all the time coming from people who publish their own books. One of the sentences read:

“I’d love to see self-publishing have a similar vibe to it as punk rock – anyone can do it.”

And then she adds her view of that statement:

I know next to nothing about punk rock and I’m still pretty sure that that “anyone can do it” line is not only wrong but offensively wrong to people who do know anything about punk rock.

I also can’t see how it promotes self-publishing in any way at all, as the idea of “anyone” attempting to play punk rock only makes me want to cringe and cover my ears, much like the idea of “anyone” attempting to publish a book.

There’s plenty to criticize in both the recording industry and the publishing industry, but there’s also a lot of value in putting your raw creative endeavors in the hands of people who do things like produce albums and edit books for a living.

I am glad that she started her comment by confirming she knows ‘next to nothing’ about punk rock. Being born and raised in punk rock, I feel in the position to enlighten her shadowy views on that remark about ‘anyone’ being able to do it.

This assertion is not by any means offensive to punk rockers. Quite au contraire, it is one of the pillars of the entire punk rock experience.

Black Flag always did everything by themselves. After leaving the band, Henry Rollins became a writer and... book editor!

When punk rock first appeared with this name, in mid-1970s New York city, it was basically a bunch of amateur unsigned rock bands who wanted to make music. Back then, Disco music was the norm, and studio execs didn’t care much about rock, unless it was something gigantic and popular like Peter Frampton, or elaborate and complex like progressive rock. If you were just an average lower-middle-class bored kid with close-to-none access to musical education, making music was not a realistic option for you.

But even so, punk rock was born. It didn’t start like an organized movement, but more like a philosophy of how to do things. Bands like the Ramones, the Dead Boys and the Talking Heads had to play in an almost abandoned music venue called CBGB (an acronym for Country, Blue Grass and Blues) simply because no other place would accept them. But they did, anyway, and a lot of people loved them.

After the Ramones toured the USA and the UK in 1977, hordes of bored kids who wanted to rock bought or stole whatever instruments they could grab and started making their own rock music. They had no musical education, no media training and no producing values–but they sure had a lot of fun, and ended up creating timeless and enduring pieces of music.

The trick behind the success of punk rock back in the late 1970s and 1980s was simple: besides it being fun, thought-provoking and stimulating, you didn’t have to spend a lot of money or a lot of time to become a punk rocker. Clubs, tapes, instruments, magazines, records–everything was cheap, and felt very true to the soul. And also, at least in the beginning, on those long lost days of punk rock Alcion, you didn’t have to follow any rulebooks, or please the masses. It was a raw and free art form, and no matter what you were looking for (artistic expression, free beer, making new friends) you could get it out of punk rock.

*.*.*

Self-published punk zinesWhat does all this has to do with self-publishing books? Well, first of all, the very name of this thing called ‘punk rock’ came out of a self-published magazine. “Punk” was created by a cartoonist, a publisher and a journalist in 1975. All of them were independent, self-employed, eager and curious. Their fanzine went on to become one of the most important artistic statements of the late XX century, and is still imitated, revered and plagiarized.

Fanzines in general have also become a staple (no pun intended!) of the punk rock subculture, and thousands of them have been printed since then. I have been personally involved in many a punk zine, and my entire career as an artist [was] spawned from my amateur experiments with self-publishing those little pieces of folded A4 paper I gave out for free or sold cheaply at concerts, clubs and gatherings. I am not an exception, and have met dozens of people who [followed] the same path as I did, not to mention the literally hundreds of visual artists I’ve heard or read about who first became interested in graphic design and printing through punk or geek fanzines.

The thrill of it all? Exactly the same as with the punk rock bands. We did everything by ourselves, for ourselves, with no restraints other than the financial and technological. This led to extremely experimental solutions that became part of modern design language, xerox art, etc.

Read the rest of the post at Empire of Dust.

7 Tips For Starting A Writer's Group

by

This post, from Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen, originally appeared on her Quips and Tips for Successful Writers site on 5/14/09.

Starting your own writer’s group will be a breeze with these tips from my own experience! Whether you’re a freelance writer, aspiring novelist, or published poet – a writer’s group can keep you motivated, disciplined, productive…and published!

I mentioned my writing group on Twitter, and received several “I wish I belonged to a writer’s group, but there’s none in my area” or “My writing group disbanded – and I really miss it!” responses. So, here are my tips for starting a writer’s group.

Before the tips, a quip:

“If you don’t feel that you are possibly on the edge of humiliating yourself, of losing control of the whole thing, then probably what you are doing isn’t very vital.” – John Irving.

Fellow scribes, a writer’s group will help you stay grounded as you teeter on the edge of losing control and possibly humiliating yourself! For more info about writer’s groups, click on Writing Alone, Writing Together: A Guide for Writers and Writing Groups by Judy Reeves. And, here are my tips for starting your own writer’s group…

But first – the benefits of a writer’s group:

  • Information-sharing, which leads to growth
  • Inspiration from successful experiences
  • Support for rejections and feelings of failure
  • Encouragement to keep going
  • Feelings of solidarity and connectedness
  • Feedback for your writing, article ideas, or plans
  • Accountability for your writing goals

7 Tips for Starting a Writer’s Group

1. Decide on the best place to meet. My writer’s group started in a classroom at our local elementary school and moved to our homes (we rotate through the members’ houses). We’ve also met in the pub, which wasn’t as comfortable as a home. Other great places for writer’s groups to meet include the library, an uncrowded coffee shop, or a spare room in your local community center.

2. Be clear from the beginning about the structure of your meetings. Will you read your writing out loud, and will everyone give feedback? Will you email your story, article pitch, or book proposal before the meeting? Will you write during your meetings (that wouldn’t work for me – but it may be appealing to writers who struggle with motivation or time to write)? Will you brainstorm story ideas or wrestle with plot problems?

Read the rest of the post, including tips #3 -7, on Quips and Tips for Successful Writers.

What Are Your Goals For Writing?

by

Goals are important. They sustain you through the difficult times when you feel like you can’t write another word. They will also show you what you have achieved when you get there. Life flies by – what goals will you achieve in your lifetime?

 

Path to achieving your goals

You need a huge dream-sized goal to aim for with lots of mini-goals on the way.  Maybe your main dream goal is to speak about your book on Oprah, or to become a full-time writer.

Write down what your big goals are for writing, and then write down the mini goals you need to achieve along the way. For example,

–          Publish an article in a certain magazine

–          Complete a book

–          Make a new stream of income by publishing an e-book

–          See your book on Amazon.com

–          Change career and become a full-time writer

–          Build an author website

Make sure you are congruent with your goals and that your behavior is also consistent with them. So if you set a goal to write 2500 words per week, then make sure you try to write 500 per day rather than leaving it to the last minute. If you want to write a book, set the goal and start moving towards it.

Your energy must go in the same direction as your goals. If you focus on what you want to achieve, you will get there.

“People with clear written goals accomplish far more in a shorter period of time than people without them could ever imagine”
Brian Tracy

 

This piece originally appeared on The Creative Penn site on 12/5/08.