Publetariat

How to Create an Audiobook with ACX

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This post by JD Smith originally appeared on Words With Jam on 9/23/14.

ACX is a service provided by Amazon where authors can hook up with narrators and turn their book into an audio book for distribution through Audible, Amazon and iTunes. Up until this year the service was only available in the US, but now it’s available in the UK. Over the last few months I’ve been working with narrator Paul Hodgson on by book The Rise of Zenobia. You can listen to a sample here.

 

What does ACX actually do?

ACX is basically the interface you use to meet narrators, and deal with all the contractual information once you’ve found a narrator you want to work with. They check the recording quality of audio submitted before it’s put through for distribution. And they also provide a dashboard to keep track of sales and payments.

 

How do I start?

You log in using your Amazon account and the set up is fairly minimal. ACX pulls most of the information of your book from Amazon and you then add a bit more information, to make your book enticing, such as review quotes and possibly sales figures.

 

Read the full post on Words With Jam.

 

Blindness Basics For Authors

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This post by Melinda Primrose originally appeared on her Primrose Path site.

Writing a blind character seems to be much harder than everyone thinks. There are many mistakes being made that I think a little research would go a long way to fixing. Most of the blind characters I’ve seen, either in books or in film media, fit one of two stereotypes. Either the blind character has superhuman abilities because of their blindness or they are completely helpless. Most blind people, in fact, fall somewhere between the two. How do I know this? you ask. I am blind myself.

I was given the label “legally blind” when I was 25. In my younger days, I had 20/20 vision with my glasses. The short version of the long story, which I may go into some day, is that many different diseases attacked my eyes and caused vision loss. Since my initial diagnosis, I’ve had over a dozen surgeries to try and keep what vision I have.

WAIT!

You said you were blind, you say.

I think that is the first thing most people get wrong about blindness. It’s not an either you have vision or you don’t Kind of thing. In the United States, legally blind is defined as:

 

Read the full post on Primrose Path.

 

Single Quotes or Double Quotes? It’s Really Quite Simple.

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This post by Andrew Heisel originally appeared on Slate on 10/21/14.

If you are an American, using quotation marks could hardly be simpler: Use double quotation marks at all times unless quoting something within a quotation, when you use single. It’s different in the greater Anglosphere, where they generally use singles in books and doubles in newspapers. It’s still pretty simple, but nothing so straightforward as here.

Yet some of us don’t seem happy with what we’ve got. For several years now in teaching writing classes to college freshmen, I’ve noticed some students adopt another rule: double quotes for long quotations, single quotes for single words or short phrases. They’ll quote a long passage from Measure for Measure accurately, but when they want to quote one of Shakespeare’s words, a cliché, or some dubious concept like “virtue,” they’ll go with single quotes.

It took me a while to understand what was going on, but after thoroughly studying it I developed a rigorous explanation for this staggering decline in standards: kids today.

But then I looked up from their papers to find this usage in the manuscript of a friend’s novel. Then I saw them in another friend’s manuscript—this time, of an academic book. Then I turned to the Internet and they were everywhere—in a local news story, in a paper by a college professor, in a blog on social marketing, in a blog on the education system, on the website of the Children’s Literacy Foundation. In each case, the same short/single, long/double quote rule was followed.

 

Read the full post on Slate.

 

How to Write an Author Bio When You Don't Feel Like an Author…Yet

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This post by Anne R. Allen originally appeared on her blog on 9/9/12.

Maybe you’ve got a novel finished and you’ve been sending out queries. Lots. And you’re getting rejections. Lots. Or worse, that slow disappointment of no response at all.

Or maybe you write short fiction and poetry and you’ve got a bunch of pieces you’ve been sending out to contests and literary journals. You’ve won a few local contests, but so far you haven’t had much luck getting into print.

You may still be afraid to tell more than a handful of people you’re a writer. You’d feel pretentious calling yourself an “author.”

But it might be time to start—at least privately.

Because one day, in the not too distant future, you’ll open your email and there it will be:

The response from an editor: “You’re the winner of our October ‘Bad Witch’ short story contest. We’d like to publish your story, Glinda: Heartbreaker of Oz in our next issue. Please send us your Author Bio.”
Or just when you were giving up hope, you get that reply from your dream agent: “I’m intrigued by your novel Down and Out on the Yellow Brick Road. Please send the first fifty pages, and an Author Bio.”

You’re so excited you’re jumping out of your skin, so you dash something off in five minutes and hit “send.” Wow. You’re going to be in print! Or maybe get an agent. Let’s get this career on the road!

Whoa. You do NOT want to dash off an author bio in five minutes. Every word you send out there is a writing sample, not just those well-honed pages or stories.

 

Read the full post, which includes a 10-step guide to writing an author bio, on Anne R. Allen’s blog.

 

Let's NOT Start At The Very Beginning

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This post by Lorraine Mace originally appeared on The Writer’s ABC Checklist on 1/29/13.

This is going to be a novel approach to talking about writing a novel (excuse the pun). I’m calling in my alter ego, Frances di Plino, to guest post over the next few weeks on the subject. The reason I’m not making the posts as Lorraine Mace is that I haven’t yet had a novel published under my own name. Frances, on the other hand, is not only a published author of a crime/thriller (Bad Moon Rising published last year by Crooked Cat Publishing), but she is also in the throes of finishing off the next in the Paolo Storey series, Someday Never Comes. All of which means that Frances, rather than Lorraine, is the person best placed to give tips and advice on the long, hard slog to your first published novel.

So, bye bye, Lorraine, for now, and hello to Frances.

Let’s not start at the very beginning (even though it’s usually a very good place to start, as Maria sang in The Sound of Music).

This week’s question is: have you started your novel in the right place? Some good advice, given to me more years ago than I care to recall, was to start your opening chapter as close to the action as you possibly can.

You want to get your readers instantly involved in the plot and in the lives of the characters. You need the readers to be invested emotionally and intellectually in what happens next. Open with dialogue, action, or both, but make sure you hook your readers from the first paragraph.

 

Read the full post on The Writer’s ABC Checklist.

 

Things You Should Know When Writing About Guns

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This post by Chuck Wendig originally appeared on his terribleminds site on 10/14/14. Note that it contains strong language.

[NOTE: The below post is not meant to be an endorsement for or a prohibition against guns in the real world in which we all live. It is a discussion of firearms in fiction. Keep comments civil… or I’ll boot you out the airlock into the silent void.]

Guns, man. Guns.

*flexes biceps*

*biceps which turn into shotguns that blow encroaching ninjas to treacly gobbets*

CH-CHAK.

Ahem.

If you’re a writer in a genre space — particularly crime, urban fantasy, some modes of sci-fi — you are likely to write about some character using some gun at some point.

And when you write about the use of a gun in your story, you’re going to get something wrong. When you do, you will get a wordy email by some reader correcting you about this, because if there’s one thing nobody can abide you getting wrong in your writing, then by gosh and by golly, it’s motherfucking guns. Like how in that scene in The Wheel Of Game of Ringdragons when Tyrion the Imp uses the Heckler & Koch MP7 to shoot the horse out from under Raistlin and Frodo, the author, Sergei R. R. Tolkeen, gets the cartridge wrong. What an asshole, am I right?

You can get lots of things wrong, but you get guns wrong?

You’ll get emails.

As such, you should endeavor to get this stuff right. If only to spare yourself the time.

 

Read the full post on terribleminds.

 

10 Things Every Writer Should Do

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This post by Karen Ball originally appeared on the Steve Laube Agency site on 4/16/14.

I’m a list person. In part, that’s because said lists serve to bump my memory when it gets…um…lost. But I also just love lists—especially lists of things you should (or shouldn’t) do. So here, for your perusal, are my top ten things every writer should do every day:

1. Stretch your word muscles. Learn a new word. Read a new writer. Do a crossword puzzle. Flip through the dictionary. Do the Reader’s Digest Word Power test. Something to test and strengthen your word skills.

2. Spend at least 15 minutes in silence. No words, no music. Just…be still. It’s hard to hear the Master’s voice in all the chaos that fills our days. Purpose to spend at least a little bit of time—other than when you’re asleep—in silence.

3. Read Scripture. Now, I’m not talking about your devotions. I’m talking reading them as a writer. See how the stories are told. Savor the beauty of the songs. Study the heroes and villains. There’s a wealth of gold to be gleaned in them thar pages.

 

Read the full post on the Steve Laube Agency site.

 

Time Travel and the Problem of Paradoxes

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This post by Graham Storrs originally appeared on momentum on 10/21/14.

Graham Storrs joins us on the blog to discuss all things TIME TRAVEL.

“Paradox is the poisonous flower of quietism, the iridescent surface of the rotting mind, the greatest depravity of all.” – Thomas Mann

What, you’re not a quietist? Never mind, we’ll come back to that.

As a writer of time travel novels, I spend a lot of time with paradox. It has become a friend. A shabby, disagreeable friend, I have to say, but one for whom I have an inordinate fondness. There are two ways of looking at paradox. Either it is a hideous monster of purest logic that prevents all possibility of time travel, or it is a sly creature of silken charm that whispers in the writer’s ear, urging creative trickery to make that story possible.

To be clear where I stand on the physics, let me just say that time doesn’t really work the way story-writers want it to. We don’t really travel in time. We travel in spacetime. Yes, you can describe space as a dimension something like the spatial dimensions to get a geometrical description of spacetime and, yes, it does seem as if you can move (in one direction) along that dimension at different rates. But consider this, if time is slowed in the vicinity of massive objects (which it is – ask Einstein), why does the Earth (a much smaller mass) not race ahead of the Sun in time, eventually leaving it far behind?

 

Read the full post on momentum.

 

No Author Is Too Good for Her Amazon Critics

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This post by Jennifer Weiner originally appeared on New Republic on 10/19/14.

Dear readers, the commoners have reviewed Margo Howard’s book … and Ms. Howard is not pleased.

A bit of background: long-time advice columnist Howard wrote a memoir called Eat, Drink, and Remarry: Confessions of a Serial Wife. Publisher’s Weekly called it a “touching” memoir by a “pampered princess” that relied heavily on name-dropping for its draw.

Amazon’s critics were less impressed—specifically, Amazon’s “most trusted” reviewers who, Howard says, are given “freebies…cold cream, sneakers, pots and pans, and…books!” and allowed to review them in advance of their publication date. She is not a fan. These reviewers—“the freebie people,” Howard calls them—are “dim bulbs,” they are “evangelical, unworldly,” “barely literate, and “deluded.”

The irony, of course, is that in trying to show that she’s not, as the “freebie people” say, a coddled, name-dropping, well-connected rich lady, Howard comes across as a well-connected rich lady. Everything from her name-dropping (both a MacArthur genius and a long-time Vanity Fair staff writer loved her book!) to her solution to the problem (it turns out that Howard knows two members of Amazon’s board of directors!) smacks of barely-examined privilege.

Still, I can feel Howard’s pain. Show me a writer who hasn’t felt savaged, misunderstood, unfairly attacked, or completely misread by an Amazon reviewer, and I’ll show you a writer whose books live in shoeboxes under her bed. I suspect that there are, indeed, reviewers who skim books looking for references of stuff they don’t have—a nanny here, a remodeled kitchen there—so their review can scream RICH LADY PROBLEMS in all caps.

 

Read the full post on New Republic.

 

Writer’s Block – Getting Unstuck

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This post by Kemari Howell originally appeared on Kbuuk on 10/13/14.

As a writer, there’s nothing worse than getting stuck, or dealing with writer’s block. Yes, rejection and the like is awful, but at least at that point on the writing timeline, you’ve accomplished what you set out to do.

There probably isn’t a writer that hasn’t suffered the unpleasant ailment of writer’s block—whether it is as small as figuring out the POV for your story, or as big as hitting the middle-of-the-novel slump. And getting unstuck can be incredibly difficult.

Imagine that you can’t even get to the finish line…that someone has glued your feet to the ground just before you reach your goal. You can see it—the end—you know it’s there, but you are unable to move, paralyzed by some unseen force (often it’s your own self-doubt). You’re stuck and you don’t know how to go about getting unstuck.

The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. – Sylvia Plath

 

Read the full post on Kbuuk.

 

'Am I being catfished?' An Author Confronts Her Number One Online Critic

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This post by Kathleen Hale originally appeared on The Guardian on 10/17/14. Note that it contains strong language.

When a bad review of her first novel appeared online, Kathleen Hale was warned not to respond. But she soon found herself wading in

In the months before my first novel came out, I was a charmless lunatic – the type that other lunatics cross the street to avoid. I fidgeted and talked to myself, rewriting passages of a book that had already gone to print. I remember when my editor handed me the final copy: I held the book in my hands for a millisecond before grabbing a pen and scribbling edits in the margins.

“No,” she said firmly, taking the pen away. “Kathleen, you understand we can’t make any more changes, right?”

“I was just kidding,” I lied. Eventually she had to physically prise the book from my hands.

A lot of authors call this “the post-partum stage”, as if the book is a baby they struggle to feel happy about. But for me, it felt more like one of my body parts was about to be showcased.

“Are you excited about your novel?” my mom asked, repeatedly, often in singsong.

“I’m scared,” I said. Anxious and inexperienced, I began checking goodreads.com, a social reviewing site owned by Amazon. My publisher HarperTeen had sent advance copies of my book to bloggers and I wanted to see what they thought. Other authors warned me not to do this, but I didn’t listen. Soon, my daily visits tallied somewhere between “slightly-more-than-is-attractive-to-admit-here” and “infinity”.

For the most part, I found Goodreaders were awarding my novel one star or five stars, with nothing in between. “Well, it’s a weird book,” I reminded myself. “It’s about a girl with PTSD teaming up with a veteran to fight crime.” Mostly I was relieved they weren’t all one-star reviews.

One day, while deleting and rewriting the same tweet over and over (my editors had urged me to build a “web presence”), a tiny avatar popped up on my screen. She was young, tanned and attractive, with dark hair and a bright smile. Her Twitter profile said she was a book blogger who tweeted nonstop between 6pm and midnight, usually about the TV show Gossip Girl. According to her blogger profile, she was a 10th-grade teacher, wife and mother of two. Her name was Blythe Harris. She had tweeted me saying she had some ideas for my next book.

“Cool, Blythe, thanks!” I replied. In an attempt to connect with readers, I’d been asking Twitter for ideas – “The weirdest thing you can think of!” – promising to try to incorporate them in the sequel.

Curious to see if Blythe had read my book, I clicked from her Twitter through her blog and her Goodreads page. She had given it one star. “Meh,” I thought. I scrolled down her review.

“Fuck this,” it said. “I think this book is awfully written and offensive; its execution in regards to all aspects is horrible and honestly, nonexistent.”

 

Read the full, lengthy post on The Guardian.

 

The Do's And Don'ts Of Writing A Blurb For Your Novel

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This post by Milena originally appeared on blurb on 10/9/14.

When writing a novel, there are few selling tools as important as writing a solidly written blurb. Sure, the cover design creates intrigue, but, if you have caught a potential reader’s attention, the blurb is what will sell your book—and convert readers. A “blurb” can refer to both a “description blurb” that you write for the back cover of your book and a “review blurb.” For the purposes of this post, we’ll be focusing on the former, and how you, the writer, can craft the best possible blurb.

 

Dos
-Reference the genre and central theme
-Create intrigue around the main conflict
-Dive right in and introduce your protagonist
-Keep it short and punchy
-Reference your book-writing or professional status, if it relates to your book.

 

Read the full post on blurb.

 

So You're Going To Pitch Your Book – A Guide

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This post by Alan Baxter originally appeared on his Warrior Scribe site on 9/19/14.

It seems that lately there have been more opportunities than ever before for writers to pitch their as-yet-unpublished manuscript to industry professionals. At writers conventions, festivals and so on, more agents, editors and publishers are making themselves available to hear about your magnum opus. It really is a superb opportunity and these things usually get booked out. But man, I’ve heard some horror stories! It’s a hell of a thing, trying to sell yourself and your work with nerves making your guts into an ice storm. So I thought I’d ask a few key people in the industry for some tips to help you formulate your pitch should you get the chance.

Firstly, I’ll throw a tip or two of my own at you, then we’re going to hear from a small press publisher, a literary agent and a big press editor.

My tips are simple: Know what your book is about so you can formulate a killer elevator pitch. This is so named because it’s based on the premise that you meet a publisher in an elevator and have a few seconds before they reach their floor to sell them on the idea of your book. Here’s the elevator pitch for BOUND, as an example:

Underground cage fighter, Alex Caine, is drawn into a world he didn’t know existed – a world he wishes he’d never found. The harder he tries to get out, the deeper he’s dragged in. It’s magic, monsters, mayhem and martial arts in a fast-paced dark urban fantasy thriller.

 

Read the full post on Warrior Scribe.

 

What We Talk About When We Talk About Grammar

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This post by John E. McIntyre originally appeared on The Baltimore Sun on 10/3/14.

Online, discussions of grammar tend to display confusion about what the subject is, and the usual admixture of rubbish and emotion does not help.

There is, of course, the confusion between grammar as grammarians and linguists discuss it technically, and spelling and punctuation. But other, unstated meanings are often involved.

A post by Lucy Ferriss at Lingua Franca, “Grammar: The Movie,” identifies some of the additional meanings that surface in a new documentary.

 

Spelling errors: If you write it’s for its in your cover letter or resume, or confuse there/their/they’re, you’re probably not going to get the job. But these are merely spelling errors, as likely the result of carelessness as ignorance. Of course, they’re obvious, so easy to spot that even a manager can see them, but they are still trivial.

 

Bad writing: Lord knows there is plenty of slack, inexpert, and impenetrable writing to be found, but that is not a problem for grammarians to address. Academic writing, for example, is notoriously wordy and opaque, but it is usually grammatical.

 

Read the full post on The Baltimore Sun.

 

Amazon and Booktrope Announce New Business Relationship

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This post by Rachel Thompson originally appeared on San Francisco Book Review on 10/9/14.

Booktrope announces a new business relationship beginning with a mutual licensing deal that deepens ties with Amazon.com to a much more significant degree.

Booktrope is a Seattle startup that says it’s reinventing publishing by providing efficient, online services to creative teams – authors, editors, designers and others involved in producing books — in order to produce high quality titles for readers at reasonable prices. By all outward appearances, Amazon and Booktrope share a strong commitment to keeping ebook prices substantially lower than print, allowing consumers to benefit from new technology, while still affording authors deserved compensation.

The relationship kicks off with a licensing agreement which includes fifteen titles to be reissued under Amazon Publishing as e-books and audio books. Booktrope will continue to publish print versions of these titles and to manage development and publication of future books by the authors.

I sat down (virtually) with Katherine Sears, CMO and co-founder of Booktrope to get the nitty-gritty on the deal.

 

Rachel Thompson: Help me understand this, did Amazon just take over Booktrope’s digital book business?

Katherine Sears: No – not at all! Initially this agreement covers ebooks and some audio books for only fifteen of our nearly 300 titles. However, this is the beginning of what is intended to be a longer term business arrangement, so we hope to announce many more titles being licensed in this same way over the coming months. And, of course, we are always exploring other ways for our two companies to work together.

 

RT: What led you to this relationship with Amazon?

 

Read the full post on San Francisco Book Review.