Month: September 2010

What About Book Reviews?

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You may find this post to be a little controversial because I’m going to gore a sacred cow, book reviews.

Book Reviews of the Past

There was a time that new books lived or died as the result of their reviews. If one could garner an excellent review from a major reviewer/review journal, your success was almost guaranteed. Even a bad review wasn’t all bad because it would guarantee sales to curiosity seekers. Not many folks were in the reviewing business.

They got paid for their work by newspapers and journals who sold subscriptions and advertising to pay for their content. One large review operation that uses between 80-100 volunteers has been funded by grants. In other words, there was a variety of structures that allowed for a paid professional/semiprofessional reviewer corps. Getting the blessings of one of these was considered a real coup and almost essential to obtain bestseller status.

The Modern Review Scene

The old, established scene is still here, but it has been greatly degraded by journals and newspapers going out of business. Still, there are far more reviewers today than ever before because of two things–the internet and online retailers such as Amazon who encourage people to write about what they read. The numbers of the traditional professional reviewers are less, but there are many more who have come to prominance  via blogs. The business side of book reviewing has been changing as well. As I mentioned, professional reviewers got paid by who they worked for. These organizations never charged for their reviews and the idea of having to pay for a review was abhorrent to many. That has definitely changed. Such reviewing giants as Kirkus, Bowkers, and Foreword Magazine now have pay-for-review programs for self-publishers and small presses.

After reading and writing reviews on over 2,000 books for free, without any compensation for my time and talents, I decided to charge $247 for normal books and $47 for children’s picture books’ reviews. I still use sets of rubrics or evaluation guidelines to base my scores, which make my reviews far more objective than many in the industry. That has surprised and upset a few clients, even though my website at http://www.heartlandreviews.com is very clear as to my approach. They thought that by paying, they would be given a fluff review. Sorry, but I just don’t do that. I’m an honest, straight from the shoulder type of guy. My scoring system provides details on a number of different areas which helps writers/publishers understand what may need improvement.

What Do You Do With Reviews

Although reviews in the major journals can be helpful with the library and major chain bookstore markets, there are other ways that any reviews can be useful. They are an important tool for marketing. I have seen excerpts of my reviews on book jackets and covers, inside books, websites, and in display ads in many newspapers and journals, to include the New York Times. They can be used in your current books and in future books, advertising flyers, brochures, and even on brochures. Instead of leaving blank pages at the end of a book to load up a signature, fill them with reviews and marketing information.

The day of the review is not over, although the rules have been changing. You are limited in how you use them only by your imagination.

 

This is a cross-posting from Bob Spear‘s Book Trends blog.

Happy Labor Day!

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Publetariat staff are taking Friday, 9/3 through Monday, 9/6 off in observance of the U.S. Labor Day holiday.

And by the way, did you know Labor Day was made a U.S. national holiday in order to quell social unrest following the deaths of some striking workers at the hands of the U.S. military and U.S. Marshals in 1894—essentially out of government fear of retaliation from the labor movement? Yeah, neither did we till we looked it up on Wikipedia.

[No need to click through, there’s no more text in this post]

Does Your Novel Suffer From Flat Writing?

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One bane of the writer’s existence is flat writing that comes off to your reader as dull or lacking impact. It slips into writers’ work with little notice and will destroy a wonderful novel in no time at all. How do you determine if your writing is flat? Allow people you don’t know to read your work. They’ll inform you in a hurry. However, the best way is to keep your eye open for how you respond to your reading. If it doesn’t "wow" you, it’s flat.

 
[Listen to a PODCAST of this article.]
 
 
Here are some tips to overcome flat writing.
     1. Cut, Cut, Cut

     2. Choose Your Nouns and Verbs with Care

     3. Eliminate Passive Voice

     4. Play with Your Words

     5. Trust Your Muse

Let’s now look at each of these in more detail.

 
Cut, Cut, Cut: If your writing sounds flat, it’s often due to excessive words that don’t add to the plot or even the meaning of your scene. To overcome this, review each word as to its necessity in your novel. Let’s consider the following example.
 
     "Jason went to the store to pick up his weekly groceries."
 
If we review this sentence, we see much of it is unimportant. Right away, we can drop the phrase, "went to the store," as this action is obvious by the word, "groceries." We might also be able to cut "weekly," unless this time period is needed for the plot. Your final sentence might be:
 
 
     "Jason picked up his groceries."
 
Better, but still pretty dull, don’t you think?
 
Choose Your Nouns and Verbs with Care: Let’s consider the corrected sentence above for this example. If we just read the words, there’s little interest even in our corrected sentence. After all, grocery shopping is about as mundane as life gets. So, let’s pay attention to the NOUNS AND VERBS to see if we can’t spice this puppy up. What if we rewrote that sentence as follows:
 
     "Jason raced to grab his groceries."
 
You can see by choosing more specific verbs, this sentence came alive. With the word, "raced," all of a sudden we’ve instilled the sense of speed or pace, and thus, more interest. The secret, of course, is to choose the correct verbs and nouns to fit the scene.
 
Eliminate Passive Voice: We’ve all heard about the inherent weakness of Passive Voice in fiction. It’s sin is the way it makes it more difficult for a reader to tell who’s doing what. And a slow read, is a boring read. There’s more on PASSIVE VOICE here.
 
Play with Your Words: Sometimes writers get so caught up in the minutia of the craft of writing, we forget to write out of the box, so to speak. Go ahead and try something new and unusual. Write that simile the way it popped out of your head. Go on and use that odd description or that risky scene.
 
After you do this, set it aside for a while then review it to see if it still works for you. If it does, leave it in. If it doesn’t, well, reread suggestion number one of this article.
 
Trust Your Muse: As with recommendation number four, set things aside then go back and reread your work. This allows you to forget the subtle nuisances of your thought process when you first wrote out whatever comes off as flat.
As you return to your work, if you’re not sure if the words you’ve chosen enhance your novel, listen to that nagging voice from deep within you. That’s your Muse and she’s rarely wrong. Don’t try to outthink her or rationalize away your rejection of her coaxing. Just trust the woman. She’s your best friend in life, let alone in your writing.
 
If your writing is flat, disinteresting, dull, lifeless or any of those other synonyms, readers will put your book down. Worse than that, they’ll create a negative buzz about your novel. Focus on the most compelling writing you can produce and things will fall in line for you.
 
Has your work ever suffered from flat writing? What did you do to overcome it?
 
Until we meet again, know I wish for you only best-sellers.
 

This is a reprint from C. Patrick Schulze‘s Author of Born to be Brothers blog.
 

Freelance Writer Mistakes And Blunders

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It’s bound to happen sometime.

When you become a freelance writer, you take on a lot of responsibility.  Each project has its own share.  The extent may change all the time, but it is still there.  A moment will arrive (or may be it already has) when you make a mistake that seriously complicates or even compromises your writing assignment.  

The danger for you as the freelancer is three-fold.  There the possibility that this occurrence is just the latest one in a line of blunders that have marked your freelancing career – and it may be symptomatic of an unprofessional attitude.  Next, you might lose out on future opportunities for work because of the delays and problems that characterized your project relationship with the client.  The third one is the biggest: you receive a request for a cancellation and/or refund from the client.  This third one really hits you where it counts – in your wallet.

Now What?

You have a few options you can take.  You can either shrug it off and move on, perhaps making a future mistake or blunder inevitable, or take this opportunity afforded by the end of the project to reassess what it is you are doing.  (I will admit, that I’m a culprit in this scenario.  Thus, I’m having examine my working process and decide what I can do to improve it and to ensure that nothing like what just happened, ever happens again.)  For those of you, my fellow freelancers, this may be true as well.  You might be wondering which road you will take.

It’s easy to tuck your tail between your legs and keep going down that path, bumbling along until you get right back where you started.  Who wants to be under the unnecessary press, being crushed under a furious writing pace, just get everything fixed and up to speed?  Folks, I just don’t want to do this anymore.

A New Course Ahead

Those of you who may be reading this might have also caught some of my earlier posts on freelance writing.  I’ve said it many times that there is a right way to do this.  Now, sometimes, even when you know better, you end up falling into the same sort of traps you’ve harped on to others.  I’ll admit I’ve done just that.

The challenge, though, is to step up, take responsibility, but then move on.  We writers can just write on to a new page – a new chapter – in our writing careers.  Yet, this requires that all of us take the proper steps.  For me, it is not burdening myself with work that I cannot possibly finish on time, when considering my peculiar stay-at-home dad/freelance writer juggling act.  I have to be more creative that that and so do you!

It doesn’t have to be some big epiphany where you decide to skip out of freelancing and become a novelist.  No, it may be just a series of small decisions that help refocus your path.  You may be ready to take another step into uncharged writing opportunities.  That’s great.  It will be a way for you to grow more a writer while also getting paid for your time.

Then again, the hope of securing better pay through new writing directions may be in your immediate future.  Who isn’t looking for better pay these days?  (The economy is making it tough for everybody out there, writers included.)

Whatever you decide, now is the time.  You cannot afford to mess around.  Your future career as a freelance writer may be at stake.

Get On With It

That’s what it’s about isn’t it?  You can’t be in front of the computer screen sitting on your hands, folks.  Get on with it and go find new ways to be a writer.  Go be the kind of professional that you are despite the blunders and mistakes you’ve made lately.  The main point is to believe that you have what it takes to be a freelance writer – and keep writing, for the love of Shakespeare, keep writing!

 

This is a reprint from Shaun C. Kilgore‘s blog.

On Beyond Ebooks

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This post, by JA Konrath, originally appeared on his A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing blog on 8/27/10.

I’m loving the ebook revolution.

Obviously, I enjoy the money I’m making (close to $500 a day).

But it’s more than that. I’m able to do things I never could have done in the traditional publishing world.

Not only can I release ebooks when they’re finished (rather than waiting a year), and have much greater control over the content, cover, and title, but I can also play with the format and do new, interesting things.

With TRAPPED, I released two different versions of the novel in the same ebook download. The author’s version and the uncut version. It’s pretty cool to show fans all the stuff that was cut, added, and changed, and let them decide for themselves which one they prefer.

With SHAKEN, coming out in October, Amazon is also releasing a dual ebook. SHAKEN takes place during 1989, 2007, and 2010, and jumps around in time. I had a ball writing it, and showing Jack at various stages in her career while she chases the same bad guy over the course of twenty years. But along with the author’s preferred version, the SHAKEN ebook will also come with a linear version. If people want to read the book chronologically, rather than go back and forth in time, they can. And even cooler, it reads well in both versions.

Eager to romp in this new digital playground, I have two more projects that will be released in September.

One is secret, and I’m not going to mention the title or the subject yet. But I will say it is a horror novel. And I will say I’m writing it with three of my peers. Those peers are F. Paul Wilson, Jeff Strand, and Blake Crouch.

When I was working on TRAPPED and ENDURANCE, I followed the same formula as AFRAID. In nutshell, I took a handful of characters and dropped them into a terrifying situation, then followed each of their journeys as they fought an insurmountable evil. No chapter breaks–just direct cuts from POV to POV.

It occurred to me that I could write a book in this style with other authors, and it would be a snap. Instead of me writing every character on my own, each of us could control a character, and the book will follow each storyline until they all converge. It’s the exact same formula as AFRAID, TRAPPED, and ENDURANCE, except we can write it in 1/4 of the time, and it will benefit from four unique inputs.
 

Read the rest of the post on JA Konrath‘s A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing blog.

Ebook Revolution Well Underway

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Exactly a year ago, I wrote about how ebooks are the future. Today I read that the Oxford English Dictionary, the mighty volumes that record our very language itself, will only be available online. You can read a bit about that here.

Now, I’m a speculative fiction writer. I love science fiction. I’ve said this before – my iPhone does way more than Captain Kirk’s communicator could ever do. The iPad is suspiciously like Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s PADD (Personal Access Display Device). Incidentally, check out the gibberish on the PADD screen in the picture below. Are we really surprised that things like a multi-volume behemoth are crumbling under the weight of online use? We can’t have the future and the past together. That’d be some weird time twister where everyone’s confused.

As a writer, I often use a dictionary to check words. You know which one I use most? www.dictionary.com. I have a beautiful printed dictionary, in fact I have a few, but I rarely use them. If I’m not at my computer, I use the dictionary.com app on my iPhone. It’s easy and it’s good for the planet. You can hear the trees breathing a sigh of relief.

But you may also remember me gushing about how much I love Angela Slatter’s new book. Not just because it’s awesome storytelling, but because the physical book is just a beautiful thing to hold and behold. It was limited to 300 copies. Here’s a relevant quote from my previous post a year ago, that I linked at the start of this one:

But here’s my prediction – 99% of the books of the future will be either electronic or Print-On-Demand. Within twenty years or so traditional off-set print runs will be used exclusively for high-end collectors edition books.

I know – quoting myself. What a wanker. But you get my point. We have to accept that these things are happening and we have to accept that it’s not a bad development. I heard a statistic on the radio today that by the end of next year, one in ten books bought will be ebooks. Ten per cent of market share. That’s a lot for a new technology. It’s already around the three to five per cent mark. But literacy rates are expected to go up as well, as more people will have access to more reading options more often.

That 20 year estimate in my quote above could be grossly inaccurate. It might all happen far quicker than that. It’s the future people. Embrace it. Real books aren’t going anywhere, because too many of us love them. But the face of reading is changing just like the nature of book buying and book publishing is changing. Don’t be scared – it’s all really quite exciting.

EDIT – There’s been a fair amount of chatter about this post on Twitter and other places and one of the things that keeps getting mentioned again and again is, more or less, “I just hate reading from a screen, simple as that.”

Well, it’s worth noting that ebook readers are evolving rapidly too. Already the Kindle and other e-ink devices are replicating the printed page very well. Screens will soon be so advanced that they’re just like a printed page. And isn’t that deliciously ironic. Accept it – we already live in a digital future. The Schwarzschild radius has long since passed.

 

This is a cross-posting from Alan Baxter‘s The Word.