Publetariat

"I Guess We Should Get A Thousand Printed"

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This post, by Vic Barkin, originally appeared on The Digital Nirvana on 9/13/10.

It was a dark and stormy night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets. No. It was a bright and windy afternoon in the City of Big Shoulders. I had just landed at O’Hare and was waiting for my hotel shuttle.

The fifty-ish business woman to my left had no secrets. She was engrossed in a discussion on her i-Berrydroidpod oblivious to the world around her and with whom she was sharing her conversation, namely me.

Now I’m not a habitual eavesdropper, but this was so blatant I couldn’t help but absorb her end of the dialogue. I’m sure you’ve all been there.

She started out with instructions to her subordinate– edits pertaining to some document: “Move this paragraph here; add the sub-head for Obstetrics there; start a new chapter on page 87; be sure and link the footnotes” & so on. By now it was obvious this had something to do with the medical profession and was some type of publication, to what purpose I could not discern. Then came the kicker—“I guess we should get a thousand printed”, she said matter-of-factly.

At that moment, my old printer instincts kicked in and my ears perked up. Although I muffled the impulse to be a good-printing samaritan and come to her rescue, calculations started rolling through my brain bucket. Let’s see, this publication whatever its purpose is most likely a minimum of one-hundred pages; times one-thousand copies is one-hundred thousand digital 8 ½ x 11 clicks at the very least. A decent job for any short-run facility.

Did she have a use for that many, or was it simply a Pavlovian response to cost-per-piece-effectiveness training she received in an earlier life?

Read the rest of the post on The Digital Nirvana.

Number Of Twitter Followers Is The Most Overrated Metric In Social Media

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This post, by Mack Collier, originally appeared on his site on 6/23/10.

Seriously, it’s total bunk.  I know because I spend WAY too much time tracking my referral traffic from Twitter, and the people that send that traffic here via tweets and RTs.

Two examples of how # of followers can be deceptive:

1 – Several months ago a member of Twitter with 70K followers tweeted a link to one of my posts.  I got a grand total of 3 visitors from that tweet.  I checked, and the guy was following 80K people.  When you try to follow everyone, you usually end up following no one.

2 – Last year, @ShannonPaul RTed a link to one of my posts.  Shannon had around 10K followers at the time.  Her RT led to an additional 600 visitors to my blog that day.  After Shannon’s tweet, a ripple affect started, as people within her network started RTing her tweet, which led to more RTs in their networks.  But the chain reaction started because Shannon was well-connected to her network.  They trusted her and the content she linked to (like my post). So even though Shannon’s network was 14% the size of the guy with 70K followers, her network sent 600 referral visitors, while the guy with 70K followers only sent 3.

This is why I think there is WAY too much emphasis placed on number of Twitter followers that a person has.  Especially when attempting to determine that person’s level of influence.  From what I’ve seen, it’s far more important to see how closely connected a person is with their Twitter network.  If you have a Twitter network of 150 close friends, your effective reach is likely much larger than a person that has 10,000 strangers following her.  I know that when certain people, like Shannon or @BethHarte RT a link to my blog, that I am about to get a flood of traffic.  Because Shannon and Beth are both highly connected to the people they follow.  Roughly 66% of their tweets are replies, so they are constantly interacting with the people that follow them.  That leads to stronger bonds and connections.

So if # of followers doesn’t count, how do you define influence and authority?

Read the rest of the post on Mack Collier’s site.

Getting Ready For NaNoWriMo

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This article, by Steve Shepard, Storyist developer and avid NaNoWriMo participant, originally appeared in the How To section of Storyist. NaNoWriMo is a scant month and a half away, so if you’re planning on participating, it’s time to start planning.

"What are you writing this year?"

It’s the question on everyone’s lips at the regional NaNoWriMo kickoff parties. The answer, even among seasoned NaNoWriMo veterans, is often "I don’t know."

So if you don’t know either, relax—you’re in good company. Heck, even Chris Baty, the NaNoWriMo program director and cheerleader in chief, claims he doesn’t know what he’s writing yet.

If you’re looking for ideas, there are pleny of resources available to you: The NaNoWriMo forums, and Chris’s book No Plot? No Problem! are two of the best.

As this is my fourth year participating in NaNoWriMo, I thought I’d add to the mix by writing a quick how-to on the techniques that have worked for me.

Play "What If?"

So what should you write?

Conventional wisdom says that you should write what you know. If you’re a teacher, write about a teacher facing one of the many struggles teachers face. If you’re an accountant, write about an accountant facing accountant stuff.

Or not.

I disagree with this "conventional" wisdom. For many writers, part of the joy of writing is in learning about something new, and in living in a world of your making. The trick is finding a story idea that captures your imagination.

One of the more effective ways to do this is to play a game of "What If?" Look around you and ask what would happen if something you cared deeply about changed in a significant way. For example:

  • "What if I finally found my true love only to discover that she was in love with someone else?"
  • "What if my daughter were kidnapped?"
  • "What if my high-school-age self ran for class president and didn’t get a single vote?"

If you are uncomfortable putting yourself at the center of your story, look around you. Family, friends, and co-workers are great sources for "What Ifs."

  • "What if my mom discovered my that dad was cheating on her?"
  • "What if my kid brother finally decided to retaliate against that bully Jimmy Porter?"
  • "What if my boss were a zombie?"

     

Be forewarned though; friends and family can be very prickly if you put them in your novel. And while you could use this to your advantage, you’re probably better off disguising their situations so they won’t know it’s them.

If that doesn’t work for you, you can always turn to the Web. Current news stories make great starting points.

  • "What if Obama was secretly planning to kill my grandmother?"
  • "What if Dave Letterman was sleeping with my girlfriend?"
  • "What if Glen Beck developed amnesia?"

Take fifteen minutes or so and write down as many "What Ifs" as you can. Try to fill a couple of pages.

Tip: Play with a friend. This exercise can be uproariously funny if you give it half a chance.

Tip 2: Be as specific as possible. Use "my boss" instead of "management," and "Obama" instead of "the government." Even a vast conspiracy needs a point person through whom the reader can experience the evil.

Then, sift through the list and find the "What If" that grabs you. If you can’t pick one, take some time to cull the top three, and flip a three-sided coin to identify the winner.

Identify the Story Line

 

Read the rest of the article on Storyist.

Questioning The Brave New World

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A lot of people say it’s a brave new world with publishing. I’ve said similar things before myself, but I’m not so sure about it anymore. Unlike some, I don’t believe that most traditionally published authors with big publishers are somehow “set” and indie authors are screwed. I kind of think for the most part that we’re all screwed.

While I’m against the gatekeeping system on principle… do you have any idea how many books out there were being shut out by that system… books that were good? Why is this a bad thing? Because it makes it harder for everyone. This industry has always been insanely competitive and hard to make a living at. The problem is that there has always been way more supply than demand. Writing isn’t exactly the smartest career move for people who want to make money. But it’s the only thing I can do. My other options are some kind of internet business, which is just as competitive these days.

I gotta say, I’m starting to wonder why I’m so rah rah indie. On some level it’s totally selfish. I know people are going to talk about going indie and they’re going to help other people go indie. Whether I help or not… SOMEONE will. And if I help, then you know my name and MAYBE you will help me when I need it. i.e. tell people about my books.

So no, I’m not all that magnanimously altruistic and have never claimed to be. I’ve never laid out all my motivations, nor have I ever said I help people JUST because I like helping people. I do it because if I don’t someone else will anyway. So I might as well rack up some decent karma and hope to God it comes back to me when I need it.

I think it’s going to be harder for EVERYONE to sell books now. Not just indie authors, but trad authors. There are already too many books. Too many good books.

I always wonder why people worry about the crap. Forget the crap. The crap is no threat to you. It’s not your competition. Few people will ever even see it. Worry about the good stuff. Worry about not only the good traditionally published stuff, where at least with bookstores and such there was a funnel and most of the reading public only ever saw what came through that funnel, worry about the good indie stuff. Worry about every single good book out there… because all this whining about the crap seems to me to be a cover for the real thing we should fear…

Too many good books, not enough readers, and not enough time among those readers to devote to your book.

I believe most authors trad or indie in the next ten years will be negatively affected by not an overload of crap but an overload of books, period. More books will see the light of day and be read and that’s great, and more authors will get a piece of the pie. But those pie pieces will be increasingly smaller.

I feel like it’s already starting to happen. And I feel the pressure and the squeeze, and the fear that if I don’t get where I want to go, very soon, I’ll never get there because there will just be too much competition to gain the kind of visibility I need to really succeed.

That’s another reason I’m trying to withdraw some from all of this… because every second I spend arguing with a tard over something pointless on the internet, is a second I lose of what I feel could be my only shot to get what I want… which is to make a living writing fiction.

 

This is a reprint from the Weblog of Zoe Winters.

Self Publishing or Indie – What's in a name

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 The playing field of publishing has tilted, but it hasn’t leveled by any means. The vast majority of books sold still involve the cutting down of a tree and the passing through of some very tiny gates. But it is has tilted, and if you step back, and make a little director’s square with your hands, you’ll see that it is skewed in favor of those who understand the digital world.

There is no doubt that some of the Big Six (BS) will alter course to swing their mammoth tankers towards the unchartered waters of the social consumer. Others will order the champagne to flow and tell the orchestra on the poop deck to play louder. What shape the industry will take is anybody’s guess, but if you’re looking for direction, Mike Shatzkin’s blog is a good place to go. He has a very good piece with Random House CEO, on transitioning from B2B to B2C.

But this post isn’t about the calamity,or not, that BS are facing. Rather it hopes to delve into something of a different nature. An insecure, abused orphan, lacking in confidence, and reaching its adolescent years suffering from an identity crisis; Self Publishing.

It’s a well-known fact that the label, self publishing, carries with it a stigma. The stigma that once you’ve self-published you’re finished as a writer. A stigma born of the past,  and carefully nurtured by those with a vested interest in the present. The BIG argument from the BS train is that the slush pile is being put on-line. For a near hysterical diatribe from an extremely arrogant and myopic viewpoint, from a lady who’s clearly suffering her own identity crisis ("I’m the man") go here, feel free to flame comment. Guess what, they’re right. The slush pile is being put on-line. So what. I can reject something just as quick as you can, however unlike you, I don’t think that I am the sole arbiter of taste, nor do I believe that I am unique.

We’re reliably informed by many Agent blogs that the vast majority of "real books" by "real authors" (i.e. pure BS), never earn out their advances and end up being returned. OK, so an agent chose those books and BS editors squabbled over them, the marketers marketed and the sales people sold; and then the public didn’t buy them. I can do that :-).

There is a lot of crap out there from both Trad and Indie publishing. Both parties are aware of this and neither has a solution. BS say the slush is going on-line, Self Publishers (SP) are saying we need to change our name from SP to Indie Publishers (IP) to help distinguish between good Indie and bad Indie. Why? Because self publishing has that stigma and it isn’t bleeding palms. How do you change the perception that something published by an individual is at least the equal of something published by a corporation. For a quick and sad (in my opinion) look at how decisions are made about books have a read over here.

You don’t. The market will decide. What has changed is that the market is now a lot bigger and this is a good thing.

The good stuff will float to the top. Amazon‘s way of doing this is via reviews – user driven reviews. Goodreads and LibraryThing are two other sites where readers write reviews on books. And it works. Yes there are the "release reviews" which are impossible to avoid or to police, (hey publishers print "his latest bestseller" on the front of books which haven’t been released yet), but if the author hasn’t done their work in marketing then that’s all the reviews that author is going to get.

If the author has done their work and spread the message that their new book is available, then some people will sample, some will buy, and the reviews will add up. Some will be mean-spirited, I haven’t had my coffee yet, 1 star for you type reviews, with the reviewer not even having read the book (hey, that happens at agencies too); other reviews will be well thought out by passionate readers who have read past work by the author and didn’t like or liked the work for reasons which they point out in the review.

There are two broad assumptions in the BS world. One – Self publishing is OK for niche non-fiction (thanks for that, I’ll rush to print with my in-depth study of the impact of pet rocks upon the modern American Psyche); and Two; that self publishers are a lazy lot who have no idea about editing, cover design, and (here’s the cruncher) what sells. I’ve read enough blogs and seen enough evidence to know that the first assumption is simply BS, and the second is just plain rude.

Excluding my time (in my day job I’m charged out at US$3,000 a day), I’ve spent about USD6,000 on getting my book, TAG, to where it is. The cover and copy editing remain to be finished, and when they’re done I’ll have spent a total of about USD8,000 on the book. Then I’ll put it up for sale on Amazon and Smashwords. I consider every penny that I’ve invested to be money well spent. The vast proportion went on developmental editing; which for me was a crash course in writing. I don’t have the time to take an MFA, and whilst books about how to write, help, there is nothing like having a professional critique of your own work to advance.

My publishing goal is simple: put out a great product. That means an attractive cover, no typo’s, and a well written, hopefully, entertaining story. How hard is that? Dam hard, but it can be done. Will the market like the book? Who knows? But if they don’t, it won’t be because of errors in the text or a crappy cover, ergo laziness. Maybe the writing isn’t ready for prime-time, but I can get feedback on that from an audience. As opposed to trying to decipher months of silence interspersed with snippets of "I didn’t fall in love with it."

What happens if it doesn’t sell? I’ll write another one. I’ve already started, quite some time ago, about a month after the first one. If that doesn’t sell? OK, I’ll write another one. My writing goal is to have what I write read by people, lots of them, and I’d like those people to pay what I write. That is verification. Each time I write I get better. Each time I publish I’ll get better. Each time I read reviews and see feedback I’ll get better. The difference is that I’ll use the market to tell me what they like and what they don’t.

From my perspective the business model offered by BS, and the model offered by IP (note: the acronym for Indie Publishing is also commonly used for Intellectual Property; whereas the acronym of Big Six… well I’m sure you get it) boils down to one significant difference and one thing only. No, it isn’t money, (if it does sell) you stand to make much more with IP.

The only reason that you should consider going with BS is because, for now, they still have the reach. They can put your book on a shelf. All the rest you can do as well, if not better, than Trad. Why? Because BS is firing a whole bunch of talented people and those people are going to want to eat. The shingles will be hung and in some instances they’ll say, I know you can’t afford me so I’ll take a cut, let’s say 20% of that 70% you get from Amazon – deal? Deal.

People don’t buy books from publishers. They buy them from authors. In the past this meant that you had to get on a bookshelf and the bookshelf was a monopoly. Now a portion of that bookshelf is electronic. Your average, serious, Indie author knows their customers better than any of the BS. How many of the BS actually know who is behind the Bookscan numbers. How many email addresses, blogs and facebook pages are tucked away in their CRM databases? I suspect, given that one CEO of a BS recently claimed that the high cost of ebooks was justified due to the high cost of digital warehousing (I’m not making this up), that the answer is, "More champagne Harper, and do get the orchestra to play a Waltz."

 

The Promise of Fall: How to Achieve a Balanced Writing Life

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Labor Day has come and gone, marking the end of a summer that went by so fast it gave me whiplash and the beginning of fall, which has always been my favorite season, even here in Southern California where September is often the hottest month of the year.

I was one of those odd kids who loved the return of school days, as the nights grew cooler in my Pennsylvania home town, my blood ran faster, washing away the sluggish dreaminess that a summer spent reading had produced. Adulthood, and a teaching career that mimicked the rhythms of my youth, meant fall continued to represent a time of increased activity.

This summer I was supposed to make serious progress on my second historical mystery, Uneasy Spirits. I was supposed to make so much progress that when fall came, and I went back to teaching (albeit a reduced load since I am now semi-retired), I would not falter, but continue to write with the goal of finishing a first draft by winter break. But this did not happen.

I did get 8,000 words written, at the very beginning of the summer, but then nothing. I can blame the two trips out of town and the two weeks on jury duty, which ate away over nearly half of the summer, then there were my husband’s two business trips and the increased responsibilities that this created, but none of these life distractions can explain why I didn’t write at least an hour every day.

So what did happen?

What happened was I sank into my life-long summer pattern-I slowed down. I read, I chatted with friends, I read some more, I upped my rate of exercise, I read, and in between I worked on marketing the book, Maids of Misfortune, which I published last December. I spent hours reading through the various blogs I now subscribed to, reading the threads of comments, writing comments when I thought I had something to add. Off and on during the day I wandered through the chat sites and forums I now belonged to, looking for places to put in my 2 cents. I worked on my own blog, updated my author web-page, and obsessively checked to see how many books I had sold each day. And by August I was now selling, on average, 10.8 books a day.

I had created a nice, healthy, balanced life–and my marketing strategies seemed to be working, but writing–the main point of all this activity–just wasn’t happening.

So, it is fall again. I can feel myself speeding up. And I have decided to experiment with cutting back on the time I spend marketing my first book in order to spend more time writing my second.

This is my promise to myself. I will not work on marketing after 7:30 am or before 6 pm.  The only exception is that I can spend up to 4 hours on Sundays working on a blog post and/or my next marketing initiative, which is to reach out to San Francisco books stores in preparation to my attendance at the mystery convention, Bouchercon, in October.
I will be curious to see if these limitations will harm my sales numbers, and I certainly hope they will help me progress on the second book.

I am also curious, what do you all do to ensure your marketing doesn’t interfere your writing? I would love to know.
 

This is a reprint from M. Louisa Locke‘s The Front Parlor.

7 Reasons You Need A Facebook Fan Page

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Facebook Pages (also known as Fan Pages) look similar to personal Profiles, but they are designed for business use and they are a terrific way to promote yourself and your business. You can create a Page for your business, book, or even a character in a book. People join your Page by clicking the "like" button at the top of the page. (That button used to say "become a fan.")

Facebook Pages have several advantages over personal Profiles:

1.  You’re limited to 5,000 friends on your Profile, but there’s no limit on the number of people who can "like" your Page.

2.  Pages are designed for business use, so it’s more acceptable to be promotional on a Page than on a Profile.

3.  You can create multiple Pages to promote different products or businesses.

4.  You can send a message to everyone who has joined your page. Your message will show up in the Update section of each fan’s Inbox.

5.  You can create customized "tabs" or screens on your Page. For example, you can create a tab to promote your book and include your cover image, book video trailer and other content on that tab.

6.  After people join your Page, they will be directed to the Wall tab each time they visit the Page. But you can create a customized welcome screen for new visitors to land on. And each of the "tabs" or screens on your Page has its own URL that you can link to directly from outside of Facebook.
 

7.  You can use your Page to increase your email subscriber list, by adding an opt-in form and free bonus to one of the tabs. In the screenshot below you can see the Free Ebook tab that I added to my own Page.

FreeEbook

Learn how to create custom content like this on your own Facebook page in the August issue of The Savvy Book Marketer Newsletter. If you’re not already a subscriber, sign up now and you’ll receive exclusive access to the newsletter archives, including my tutorial, How to Create Custom Content on Your Facebook Page. You’ll also get a free copy of my ebook, Top Book Marketing Tips.

To learn more about how to use Facebook to promote yourself and your book, read Facebook Guide for Authors or The Savvy Book Marketer’s Guide to Successful Social Marketing.

Have you already created a Facebook Page? Please share the link using the comment section below.
 

 

 

This is a reprint from Dana Lynn Smith‘s The Savvy Book Marketer.

Just joining the group

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I write on my own and with my husband (no easy feat). We have a number of books to our credit (check out www.deadlyduomysteries.com) and this summer I learned I could self-publish a Kindle version of Hemlock Lake. So, with a little help from a cover designer and a lot of help from a text conversion expert, I did.

It’s a mainstream mystery set in the Catskill Mountains and deals with betrayal, revenge, love, loss, and redemption set against the search for an arsonist turned killer in a remote community.

I live in Vancouver, Washington, where I teach classes in novel-writing, edit manuscripts for other writers, and work as a substitute teacher to feed my writing habit.

Book Marketing: Use Your Email Signature Effectively

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You have probably heard this advice before, but have you done anything about it? What does your email signature say right now?

I get emails every day from people commenting on the blog, asking questions or telling me about their books which I love to receive and happily reply to. However, over 50% of those emails do not have any links in their email signature, and many have no email signature at all. Some have an image of a business card with no clickable links to their website or book for sale which is not very useful either.

How many emails do you send a day? To friends, your accountant, business colleagues, potential clients, potential readers and more. If your email signature is set up, you are constantly sending people your information and doing ‘passive’ marketing, spreading the word about you, your brand and your books. Use your email signature wisely and those people might click through and read more about your book/join your email list or contact you for business.

So, today’s book marketing advice is to sort out your email signature right now!

What information should an email signature contain?

To make sure people know who you are and can buy your books, you should include some of the following aspects:

  • Your full name, your business name and tagline if you have one, or an explanation of what you do. Don’t assume people know what you are about.
     
  • Your website and blog URL prefixed by http:// which makes it directly clickable (you should always use that prefix on the web for clickable links)
     
  • Your book titles and where people can buy them or find out more information e.g. Amazon.com links or specific pages of your website
     
  • A hook or offer for the reader that catches their eye if it is a topic they are interested in e.g. I mention my Author 2.0 Blueprint
     
  • Social media links including Twitter, Facebook and any other main site that is relevant (you don’t have to use them all!)
     
  • Address and phone details if they are relevant to how you run your business
     
  • Logo or picture of you or your books if you want to include them. This is not mandatory, but if you do include them, make sure you also include plain text links as well.

My basic email signature is shown above. It is an image here but as an email signature all the links are clickable.

I don’t use any fancy formatting or images right now but there are plugins and code you can use to make it look prettier. That is great but just get something basic up for starters and worry about formatting later. If people want to know more about you, they want the information right in front of them. They don’t want to search for it.

If you’re having problems with your email, try Gmail

Some people have problems with their email accounts and providers. It seems some of them make it very difficult to set up email signatures. If you’re struggling with email, I highly recommend using http://www.gmail.com which is Google’s own free online email service. You can set up a signature through the Settings page, and then the General area. There are also a host more benefits including easily searchable text, contacts and tasks integration and much more.

What do you include on your email signature now? Do you have any favorite tools for making it attractive?

 

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

For Most Book Lovers, The Future Is Here

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Every morning I check one of my favorite book business newsletters, Shelf Awareness, and one of my favorite features there is a "quotation of the day" that is often provocative. This morning’s quotation is an interesting one from William Gibson, whose latest novel, Zero History, was released yesterday:

"My dream scenario would be that you could go into a bookshop, examine copies of every book in print that they’re able to offer, then for a fee have them produce in a minute or two a beautiful finished copy in a dust jacket that you would pay for and take home. Book making machines exist and they’re remarkably sophisticated. You’d eliminate the waste and you’d get your book–and it would be a real book. You might even have the option of buying a deluxe edition. You could have it printed with an extra nice binding, low acid paper."    
–William Gibson

I love the idea too, and I am certainly a fan of the imaginative energy behind various print-on-demand technologies including the Espresso Book Machine, which is popping up in a growing number of well-capitalized bookstores but remains a pretty expensive technology for many others.     

But here’s what’s a little funny about the quotation: it’s not a "futuristic dream scenario" at all. Amazon has been doing this with tens of thousands of "real books" for over three years. I know they are real books because they have sold thousands of copies of my books. The print quality and production values are better than copies that I used to have printed at a reputable printing company an hour from where I live, and the production costs are lower, and the price for customers is as low as on any comparable trade paperbacks.

It’s true that I can’t "go into" Amazon’s "bookshop," which means that I have the convenience of buying such books in seconds and waiting 24 to 48 hours for their delivery. It is also true that I can’t get a deluxe hardcover edition, which of course eliminates less than 1/10th of 1 percent of all book transactions.

If I don’t want to wait 24 to 48 hours, of course, I can download many of these books instantly and directly to my Kindle, BlackBerry, iPad, iPod Touch, Android, PC, or Mac.

Either way, I think that the future is probably here for most of us, Mr. Gibson. And I am liking it.

I love bookstores, too. And I loved the grand old publishing companies of the mid-20th century. And my collection of great 45 RPM records and LPs. And horses, too.

Related post: William Gibson’s Futuristic ‘Dream Scenario’: Enhanced POD


This is a reprint from Stephen Windwalker’s Kindle Nation Daily.

Save The Little Darlings

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Hello. My name is Virginia and I’m a back story addict.

I admit it. I have a problem with giving my readers too much information. After reading not one but two posts by two different individuals on the topic of “killing the little darlings” (an idea taken from Stephen King’s On Writing) and too much back story I’ve finally come to terms with my addiction. So how do you go about ridding yourself of those scenes and characterizations you’ve grown so fond of?

You could do as Kristen Lamb suggests and ruthlessly delete them. That certainly “kills the little darlings.” Of course, if you’re like me, you probably have a hard copy or two hidden away you could resurrect them with. If you really want to get of rid of them for good, then you’ll also need to shred those documents. Better yet, give them a right good send off into the netherworld — burn them.

Okay, so I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time letting go. (I’m an addict, remember?) I have a secret stash of dialog and scenes that are nothing but “little darlings” and back story. I keep them and revisit them from time to time as a reminder of who my characters are, what past events shaped them, which silent characters still greatly influence them. Keeping them doesn’t mean they’ll make it back into the story. They may, however, find their way into another, provided it moves the story forward. In the mean time they get to live their own quiet life in a document far removed from the one they originated in.

It’s a risky move. Those pieces of characterization could easily sneak off their island and invade my work in progress. Yet I think it’s worth it because hidden in the “dirt”, as Joe Konrath calls it, are some gems that could be useful later.

It’s important to remove all the “little darlings” and back story information that weighs your WIP down, but perhaps instead of killing them it is better to house them in a secret document located far, far away from The Road to Writing.

What do you think? Is it better to eradicate the “little darlings” or isolate them?

 

This is a reprint from Virginia Ripple‘s The Road to Writing blog.

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.

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.
 

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.

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.