Publetariat

On Idiot Reviews

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I’ve said many, many times here that reviews are the lifeblood of an author’s career. And reviews can mean literal reviews, posted at places like Amazon, Goodreads and so on, as well as reviews in newspapers and on dedicated reader blogs. But reviews can also refer to readers simply talking about a book they enjoyed with friends, family and colleagues. That may lead to those people buying the book, so it works just like reviews are supposed to. But not all reviews are created equal.

In essence, any review is valuable. Even if you didn’t like a book and you give it a bad review and a low star rating, it’s still useful to potential readers and it may lead a different reader to think, “Well, the problems that person had with the book don’t sound like problems to me, so I’ll give it a go.” And besides, you can’t please all the people all the time, so a good spread of reviews and ratings shows honesty and means we don’t start to suspect that Auntie Mabel and the Sockpuppets are the only people reviewing the book.

For example, American Gods by Neil Gaiman is a book universally recognised by readers and awards alike as being quite excellent. But not everyone likes it. On Amazon it has a 4-star average rating, but that includes 92 1-star reviews. (I’d be ecstatic with 92 reviews of any kind, but that book has over a thousand in total!) Anyway, my point is that not all reviews are going to be good ones and giving a one or two star review is fine. If you’re reviewing the book.

Wondering what I’m talking about? Look at this fucking idiot:

sea horse 1 star On idiot reviews

In case you can’t read that, it says:

Taming a Seahorse was good. However, Monday I purchased another Spencer book, and it took sooooooooooooo long to get to my Kindle, I was 20 pages into another book………………..

And the idiot gives the book a 1-star review. I’ve deliberately blurred the name, as I’m not here to witch hunt. It’s just one of many reviews I’ve seen that are like this. This “reviewer” is directly damaging the author’s career by reducing their rating average for reasons that are nothing to do with the author or the book and for things over which the author has no control. The “reviewer” even says they thought the book was good, but they’re giving it a one star review because the Whispernet service was slow delivering a completely different novel by the same author. The degree of stupid here is staggering. What the fuck did the author do to deserve this one star review, exactly?

It’s just petty hollering because the person wanted to have a moan about something publicly and arbitrarily tacked that whinge onto one of Parker’s books. If anything, they should have simply complained to Amazon directly (which, admittedly, is like trying to water a garden bed by pissing on the roof).

This is not an isolated, or even uncommon, incident. These fuckknuckles are everywhere. There are even blogs set up to collect all the reviews that are small nuggets of human idiocy distilled into illiterate paragraphs. This is one of my favourite examples of blogs like that, but I can never get past a few entries before the red mist of rage descends: http://leasthelpful.com/ Seriously, it starts off quite funny for the first one or two, then I begin to despair at the stupid, then, after half a dozen or so, I just want to go out and block the blow hole of a dolphin until it drowns. Then hit stupid people with the dead dolphin.

Reviews are awesome and anyone who takes time to review a book is a fantastic person who will be rewarded with cookies and whisky. But only people who review the book. If you’re using a review and slamming an author’s work in order to whinge about postage times, delivery networks, the fact that your dog shat in your bed (which you deserved, by the way) or anything else, then you’re a broken, stupid person and you should have your internet privileges revoked. Please, won’t someone think of the authors?

 

This is a reprint from Alan Baxter‘s Warrior Scribe.

How Long Should You Keep Trying to Get Published?

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This post, by Jane Friedman, originally appeared on her blog on 12/29/12.

Note: I wrote the following article for Writer’s Digest magazine last year (July/August 2011) about how to get published; I’ve lightly updated it for distribution here. If you’re interested in more advice about how to get traditionally published, consider my online class with Writer’s Digest on Jan. 3, or read my comprehensive post on the topic.

Don’t you wish someone could tell you how close you are to getting traditionally published? Don’t you wish someone could say, “If you just keep at it for three more years, you’re certain to make it!”

Or, even if it would be heartbreaking, wouldn’t it be nice to be told that you’re wasting your time, so that you can move on, try another tack (like self-publishing), or perhaps even change course entirely to produce some other creative work?

I’ve counseled thousands of writers over the years, and even if it’s not possible for me to read their work, I can usually say something definitive about what their next steps should be. I often see when they’re wasting their time. No matter where you are in your own publishing path, you should periodically take stock of where you’re headed, and revise as necessary.

Recognizing Steps That Don’t Help You Get Published

Let’s start with four common time-wasting behaviors. You may be guilty of one or more. Most writers have been guilty of the first.

1. Submitting manuscripts that aren’t your best work

Let’s be honest. We all secretly hope that some editor or agent will read our work, drop everything, and call us to say: This is a work of genius! YOU are a genius!

Few writers give up on this dream entirely, but to increase the chances of this happening, you have to give each manuscript everything you’ve got, with nothing held back. Too many writers save their best effort for some future work, as if they were going to run out of good material.

You can’t operate like that.

Every single piece of greatness must go into your current project. Be confident that your well is going to be refilled. Make your book better than you ever thought possible—that’s what it needs to compete. It can’t be good.

“Good” gets rejected. Your work has to be the best. How do you know when it’s ready, when it’s your best? I like how Writer’s Digest editor and author Chuck Sambuchino answers this question at writing conferences: “If you think the story has a problem, it does—and any story with a problem is not ready.”

It’s common for a new writer who doesn’t know any better to send off his manuscript without realizing how much work is left to do. But experienced writers are usually most guilty of sending out work that is not ready. Stop wasting your time.

2. Self-publishing when no one is listening

 
There are many reasons writers choose to self-publish, but the most common one is the inability to land an agent or a traditional publisher.

Fortunately, it’s more viable than ever for a writer to be successful without a traditional publisher or agent. However, when writers chase self-publishing as an alternative to traditional publishing, they often have a nasty surprise in store:

No one is listening. They don’t have an audience.

Bowker reports that in 2011, more than 148,000 new print books were self-published, and more than 87,000 e-books were self-published. (See more about the report here.) Since Bowker only counts books that have ISBNs, that means thousands more titles go uncounted, since Amazon doesn’t require an ISBN for authors to publish through the Kindle Direct Publishing program.

If your goal is to bring your work successfully to the marketplace, it’s a waste of time to self-publish that work, regardless of format, if you haven’t yet cultivated an audience for it, or can’t market and promote it effectively through your network. Doing so will not likely harm your career in the long run, but it won’t move it forward, either.

3. Looking for major publication of regional or niche work

 

Read the rest of the post on Jane Friedman’s blog.

Writing Groups: A Field Guide

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This post, by Jane Lebak, originally appeared on the Querytracker blog.

If your New Year’s resolution will be to join a writing group, you’ll want to learn from my horrible (and sometimes hilarious) experiences. I’ve belonged to writing groups since age twelve, but I didn’t start classifying their subspecies until I became the only member of a once-thriving group.

If you’re thinking of joining or starting a writing group, it’s best to have your focus in mind right from the beginning. The basic commonality is that writing groups in general consist of writers.

(Don’t you already feel enlightened? Well read on!)

Because that’s pretty much where the commonality ends. Let’s check out three distinct species of writing groups.

The first species is what I’d consider a support group. The focus is social: the writers gather to gripe about writing. They will perhaps come up with an organized topic of the day, but for the most part this group is about the snacks, the sharing, the complaining, and some exchange of advice. Its function is primarily to meet other writers and to get out of the house.

Some of the topics you’ll see covered here are how much rejection sucks, how hard it is to get things published, why is that particular crap in the bookstore when yours isn’t, what you think of the recent election, and whether there’s really a problem with that genetically-altered corn. You may also hear about places to search for markets.

If this group is online, then expect to read dozens of posts about everything under the sun, and whenever someone complains that the group is too cluttered, someone is sure to respond, “But we’re writers — this is what we do!” My first online group was of this variety, and I loved it. I learned a metric crapton about everything you can imagine, including some tidbits about writing.

My once-thriving group was also a social/support group type. Sixty local writers would gather, always with coffee and muffins, and sometimes they’d share a paragraph or two, maybe a poem or a letter to the editor, and everyone would tell them how lovely it was and suggest changing a comma in the second line. Someone might give a brief talk, at about the depth of an article in a writing magazine. There was a break in the middle so we could chat.

 

Read the rest of the post on the Querytracker blog.

How To Run A Blog Tour

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This post, by Beth Barany, originally appeared on her Writer’s Fun Zone blog.

Many authors wonder how to get more visibility for their books. One way to do this is to run a blog tour. If you discover that you like blogging, and would like to build excitement about a new release or re-release, running a blog tour can help you build visibility to a new audience and make more sales.

What is a blog tour?

Instead of going from bookstore to bookstore and town to town, you go from blog to blog, ideally within a concentrated period. Keep in mind there are no rules. I’ve run tours that involve one stop a week for 12 weeks, and 30 stops within a month, or 10 stops in two weeks. The trick to designing a blog tour is what kinds of time do you want to invest. If you have lots of time, do a 30-day tour. If you don’t have much time or are busy during the week, you can organize a tour of 1 stop per week, like I did last summer when I launched my YA fantasy, Henrietta The Dragon Slayer. You can see the schedule for that tour here: http://www.writersfunzone.com/blog/beth-barany-novelist/blog-tour/

Benefits of a Blog Tour

  • Get known to more readers
  • Get reviews
  • Show off your expertise
  • Sell books

Other Important Elements of a Blog Tour

It’s true that like anything you do in marketing your book you need to make decisions about your blog tour. In my experience of running blog tours for novelists, here are the things to decide before you run your tour:
Time Period:
Decide how many days, what days of the week (weekends or not; holidays or not) you want to run the tour. Also, know that it take 6-8 weeks to prepare an extensive tour, though only 1-2 weeks for a short tour.

Blogger Types:
There are many kinds of bloggers who love, love, love to read and review books, and host writers on their sites. A special breed of bloggers exist and call themselves “book bloggers.” they each have favorite kinds of genre to review, with their own rules about what they will feature or not. In addition to book bloggers, search out experts in your field and subject matter expertise, including bloggers who focus on such topics as writing, freelancing, mommy-entrepreneur sites, independent publishing, etc. Also, it’s important to pick bloggers that have a big reach to your audience. One way to see if the blogger has a big reach is to use www.alexa.com, provider of free, global web metrics.To find book bloggers and other appropriate bloggers, Twitter is a great resource. I’ve compiled many book bloggers in this list here: http://twitter.com/Beth_Barany/book-reviewers.

Giveaways:
I think it builds buzz and excitement to offer a grand prize giveaway that relates to your book. For example, my client YA fantasy author Wendy D. Walter is offering a hand-painted gnome and signed copy of her novel as a grand prize for her blog tour that started the beginning of December 2012. Her YA fantasy features gnomes, among other fantastical creatures, and Wendy is an artist. I’ve noticed that when you offer a prize not associated with your book you attract lots of prize hounds. While nice for increasing your numbers on social media and mailing lists, these people are probably not potential fans or readers.To manage your Grand Prize giveaway, use Rafflecopter.com: A cool tool for having people enter into your giveaway and to randomly pick your grand prize. Hats off to those savvy software developers for creating this free tool.I also recommend giving away an ebook or physical book at every blog stop. Ask people to comment or answer a question relevant to the blog topic. This helps weed out those prize hounds who just want anything free, and helps focus on those people who want something free AND are your potential readers and fans.

Writing:

Read the rest of the post on Writer’s Fun Zone.

Republicans Are People Too

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This year Loretta and I had just about the entirety of both families over for Christmas.

It was fun greeting them all as they came up the driveway. Everyone was waving and smiling, and as they got out hugs and kisses abounded. While most were carrying wrapped packages – I noticed that what Mom had in her hands was a large, brown paper bag.

I knew immediately what it contained.

For as long as I can remember my neighbor from the house next to the one I grew up in has been giving me a bag of persimmons this time of year – every year. That fact is more amazing when you understand that, not only do I not live next to him anymore, neither does anyone in my family.

My parents sold that house years ago.

And yet my old neighbor, remembering that I love persimmons, picks a bag for me every year and sees that it gets to my mom – who then sees that it gets to me. And every year I mean to sit down and write him and his wife a nice thank you note.

You know, I don’t think I’ve written one yet.

I mean I deeply appreciate what he does – I really enjoy those persimmons – but I cannot seem to write the man a letter of gratitude. It’s not like I don’t know his street number (I read it on his garage most days between 1973 and 1982). And it’s not like I don’t have the time (especially since he has the time to fill a bag for me every year).

I think the reason is this: I’ve become a little complacent about the whole deal. Not terribly so, mind you. I do still swing by my old neighborhood every now and again – and when I do I stop in to say hello, chat him up, and thank him for sending persimmons. But I think I’m taking the old boy just a little bit for granted. Isn’t it weird how we can do that? Take something that was once new and come to see it as normal – even commonplace.

Sort of like that whole voting deal from a while back.

You remember the election about a month and a half ago? You recall what happened, right? The Republican candidate – this fellow from Massachusetts – got run out of town pretty handily by the sitting sheriff. It wasn’t predicted to go down that way, but now that it has it seems like that was normal – but at the time it was kind of exceptional.

Stunning defeat might be slightly overstating the thing, but not my much.

What that defeat capped was sort of a disavowal of the course that some more vocal factions within the Republican Party had taken over the last few years – most notably the Tea Party.

You know, the Tea Party has been more than a little assailed over the past year (trust me, I was among the assailers) and as strongly as I disagreed with them on most points, I also feel their pain.

I know where these people come from – I have an idea what caused them to adopt the beliefs they came to hold. Our country has weathered some very hard times recently – very hard. The housing market crashed, which led the economy to crash. Many of these people owned houses that became worth nothing near what was paid for them. At the same time lots of these folks lost their jobs as the economy stayed sour. That left a whole lot of people in the position of owing more on a house than it was worth, with no real way to pay for it.

That is a deeply frustrating place to be.

So what do you do if you find yourself in that position? Change the housing market? No, you don’t possess the power to do that. Grow the economy so that you can find work? You don’t have the power to do that either. And when people are not in control of their situations – when they feel powerless – well, that’s about the best recipe for frustration and anger.

So what do they do with their anger? They vent it – because anger has to be vented. To not vent it is to invite more frustration and anger. And where can it be vented, I mean in a way that could eventually affect its underlying causes?

In the voting booth, that’s where.
We had – still have – some angry people who were deeply frustrated. People who were raised on the American Dream. Who were told get the job, buy the house, follow the rules, and everything would turn out OK. But it didn’t turn out OK. They lost their jobs, and their health care, and their houses. And, sometimes, their self-respect.

And when you get people in that mindset they want answers – and they want change – and they want those things now. So when some blowhard politico rides into town and tells you that he or she can change things so they’re back like they were before they went to hell in a hand basket, you’re tempted to believe them. At the very least you kind of want them to be right, right?

Didn’t it seem like just about everybody in the Republican Primaries was leading at some point or other? I take that to mean that people were frustrated – and though they may not have known which way to turn, they still knew they wanted to turn. It was almost like watching Karl Rove implode on Fox News during election night coverage – everything was going wrong, all at once, and there didn’t seem like a way to make things right.
But we’re through the election now – the reach of the Tea Party seems to be lessening as people start to see a brighter future. The economy is starting to come back – housing is beginning to show signs of a recovery – and people are letting go of the panic that had them feeling they had nowhere to turn.

You know, it’s tempting to vilify certain factions of the Republican Party now that it appears their influence is dissipating. I don’t mean those politicos who took advantage of a nation when it was down, I mean people – good, everyday people – who were trying to follow the rules and do the right things and make a good life for themselves and their families.

I would tell you that, based on what I know of my old neighbor (he’s a former police officer and small business owner) his politics are probably decidedly right of mine.
But you want to know how important that is at this moment?

Far less important than me writing him a nice note to tell him how much I’ve appreciated him all these years.

Free Books: Just Give It Away?

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This post, by James Moushon, originally appeared on The Self-Publishing Review.

I have a Free Book Promotion coming up and I keep hearing the George Strait song ‘Give it Away’ playing in my ears. (Now you know where I get some of the inspirations for my posts). It was time for me to do some research and talk to several successful authors on how to do this and what their experiences were in giving their books away.

Free books have been a custom in traditional paper books for as long as book reviews have been written. They came with the territory. They were sent directly to a person or an agent. The reader/customer rarely got their hands on a freebie unless they went to the Library.

The Internet has changed all that. The ebook has altered the way we read, distribute and market books. It has increased the competition between authors and retailers and publishers, all at the speed of light. Now one of the most important things for an author is to create an interest in his book with friends and followers online.

One of the methods of choice is a Free Book Promotion.

10 Easy Planning Steps

I’ll start off with ten steps we all should write down and follow if we are going to give our books away.

1. Start several weeks in advance. First, select the dates and the period of time you want to run your promotion. There is some wisdom used here. The experts say do the promotion for 2 or 3 days in the middle of the week but not at the start of the month. Give yourself enough lead time so you can get everything together.

2. Get your book and site information together in an easy place to work with. I use a Word document to manage mine.

That includes your book description, the ASIN and ISBN numbers, your cover, the Amazon buy link and any other link that relates to your book. This should include links to reviews and blogs.

3. Made sure all your support group’s information is updated with the latest book information plus all your author profiles are up to date.

4. Next, go to the Amazon promotion manager and schedule your Free Book Promotion.

Review the Amazon Free Promotion Rules before you start. If this blog had more space, I would recommend this step before I published the book but that is a whole different topic.

Basically, you need to be enrolled in the KDP Select program. You have 5 days to offer your book free every 3 months and you must have exclusive rights for the primary content of the book and Amazon has the exclusive rights to the sales. If you got all of the above, you’re good to go.

5. I recommend you set up a day to day schedule (at least a 2 week schedule) and decide what you are going to offer free and when? Your book? Giveaway product? A Bonus book? Remember not all things can be done at once and you well run out of time if you’re not careful.

6. Start drafting your tweets and your Facebook communications. This is something you can start way ahead of time. Your are going to post them often. Variety is a good thing here. If you just keep sending the same tweet at your followers, they will start skipping over them like some of the other noise out there.

Here is a sample of two that I created for my upcoming Free promotion. This will give some idea anyway of what I am talking about. Notice I have put the number of characters in brackets after the post. When I get down to tweet time, I know right where I’m at with Twitter.

**********

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

A Writer's Night Before Christmas

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Publetariat staff are off this week in observation of Christmas. We will resume our regular posting schedule the evening of Sunday, 12/28/14. In the meantime, in what has become a holiday tradition here at Publetariat, we again reprint this contribution from Publetariat founder and Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton.

 

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through my draft
Were examples of my inattention to craft
My characters all hung about without care,
In hopes that a plot point soon would be there.

My family were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of red herrings danced in my head.
The dog on its blanket, and the cat in my lap
Had just settled themselves for a long winter’s nap.

When on my computer there showed a blue screen!
(And if you use a PC, then you know what that means.)
Away to the cell phone I flew like a flash;
I dialed tech support and broke out in a rash.

The sales pitch that played while on hold I waited
Ensured my tech guy would be roundly berated.
That is, if he ever should come on the line.
And for this, per minute, it’s one-ninety-nine!

“Good evening,” he said, in a Punjab accent,
“I am happy to help you, and my name is Kent.”
More rapid than the Concorde was his troubleshoot,
I was back up and running, after one last reboot!

“Now Gaiman! Now, Atwood! Now, Cheever and Austen!
Salinger! O’Connor! Shakespeare and Augusten (Burroughs)!
Don’t withhold your wisdom! Upon me, bestow it!
Inspire me! Show me how best not to blow it!”

To their books I turned for some worthy advice;
I was pumped to return to my work in a trice.
So across clacking keyboard my fingers they flew,
With a speed and a passion—and no typos, too.

Hour after hour, the prose kept on flowing,
Though I had no idea where my story was going.
“But write it, I must!” I decided right then.
I resolved to see this project through to the end.

At one a.m. the second act came together,
At two I knew this book was better than ever!
My hero had purpose, my plot had no slack.
I cut my “B” story and never looked back!

I got up to make coffee at quarter to three;
Curses! My spouse left no Starbucks for me!
With instant crystals I’d have to make do.
Cripes! He used all of the half and half, too!

“I could add some Kahlua,” I told myself.
“There’s a big, honking bottle right there on the shelf.”
So I added a splash. And then a splash more.
At five, I finally came to on the floor.

With more Kahlua than coffee in the cup nearby,
An idea for the third act I wanted to try.
Werewolves! In high school! And vampires, as well!
It worked for that Meyer chick, my book’s a sure sell!

I tied up the plot in a neat little a bow,
With the arrival of aliens, and giant worms from below.
Defeated were foes of the Earth and the sky,
And thousands of townsfolk did not have to die.

With the Kahlua bottle all but drained,
I turned to do the last bit of work that remained.
To this one tradition, I was happy to bend.
Two carriage returns, all in caps: THE END.

To Facebook I sprang, to announce I was through.
From thence, on to Twitter, and MySpace too.
But lo, I exclaimed as my face met the sun,
“Twenty-four days late, my NaNoWriMo is done!”

 

For Authors Who Want Success: The Secrets I Promised Are HERE!

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NOTE: The first draft of The Weekend Book Marketing Makeover is HERE! Check it out.

So, the other day we asked if you would take a minute to fill out our quick survey, hoping we would get a few responses to help guide the direction of a free product we’re creating just for our indie friends.

Almost 70 responses later (and I promise, we read every single one!) we’re completely blown away and totally humbled. Thank you!

The time has come.

I’ve made you wait (patiently) for my secrets long enough.

Here are the two keys you need to unlock your potential as an indie author:

  1. Motivation
  2. Focus

Now, those two secrets might seem obvious (and even a bit unsatisfying) on the surface, but trust me when I tell you that these two keys have turned around my entire writing career.

Just like you, I was terrified that this whole self-publishing experience would turn out to be a waste of time that would yield zero sales and heaps of embarrassment.

Worse, I feared my only chance at success was to march through every website and social media outlet tooting my own horn like a one-man-band (a task that introverts such as myself would consider less desirable than death by firing squad).

But then I learned that it doesn’t have to be that way.

With a focus for my marketing plan, the pieces began to fall into place. With each guest blog published, new mailing list sign-up and book sold, my reservoir of motivation grew.

Once I was motivated to keep making incremental improvements in my book marketing, I found it much easier to make time in my schedule to work on it.

Not a lot of time — just 20 or 30 minute segments here and there, much like the small chunks of time I find to go to the gym two or three times a week or watch my favorite TV show (New Girl, for the record).

Yeah, I still had to make sacrifices to come up with that time, but that was okay because I knew it wouldn’t be a pointless exercise. As long as it yielded a positive result (even if that result was just a valuable lesson for fine tuning my overall plan) it was worth the time spent.

Of course, that’s just one slice of the whole pie.

To make back your financial investment in self-publishing (and make a profit), experience steady growth with each new book released, and eventually crack Amazon’s Top 100 in your genre, you need a plan.

Success doesn’t happen by accident.

When we asked you to tell us what book marketing tool we could create to help you, we got a variety of responses (two of my favorites: an author scrapbook for cataloging your inspirations and a dating guide for authors), including:

  • “Something along the lines of a checklist/to-do list.”
  • “The equivalent of ‘Marketing for Dummies’.”
  • “How to find a marketing strategy that’s a good fit for me.”
  • “A plan — a template plan — that I can research to fill in blanks relevant to my book and market.”
  • “I’m a big fan of step by step books and timeline books. So anything that would walk me, step-by-step through 90 days of publishing success would rock! Can you do it in 30?”

How about we do it in a single weekend?

We’re going to satisfy all those wishes with a (totally free, but very valuable) makeover guide that will get you excited about marketing your book, eliminate that sleazy feeling, and debunk the marketing myths that are holding you back.

We will reform your book marketing attitude and direction, helping you gain those all-important traits of motivation and focus…in just one weekend!

The Weekend Book Marketing Makeover will include:

  • A step-by-step guide for creating your own marketing plan from scratch.
  • Sample schedules with suggestions for how best to spend your marketing time.
  • Tips to simplify (and demystify) social media.
  • Promotional advice for introverts and other quiet types.
  • Other secret goodies (we have to keep some stuff under wraps!)

But, there’s a small catch (isn’t there always?)

We’re putting the guide together, but it’s soaking up a lot of time.

I don’t mind doing this for our author friends — you absolutely deserve it! — but I want to be sure this will really help you; that The Weekend Book Marketing Makeover is something you definitely want.

So, will you do something for me?

If you want a free copy of the Weekend Book Marketing Makeover, let me know by leaving a comment [on the original post].

If I can get 100 comments* by Monday, Toni and I will kick into high gear and release the guide next week.

Holy Cannoli, you guys are amazing! Less than 24 hours later, we’ve already surpassed our goal. We still want to hear from you, though: why do you want this book? How can Toni and I make the makeover truly beneficial and valuable?

If not, no worries — there’s still tons of gifts to wrap and blog posts to write. We won’t bring it up again!

Tell me, even if it’s a simple “YES!”…are you all in?

* This would be the most comments we’ve ever gotten on a post, meaning…if you know someone else who could be helped by this guide, please spread the word!

This is a reprint from the Duolit blog.

The Anatomy of Fan-Fiction (And How it Can Help Us Write Better)

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This post, by Karen Rought, originally appeared on her The Midnight Novelist blog.

I recently admitted to some of my online friends that my exposure to fan-fiction was fairly limited. Once they learned that I hadn’t read some of the “classics,” and after some stunned silence and a lot of “omg omg omg,” they gently nudged me down the right path, with the promise to take me under their wings.

The first one they had me read was called The Shoebox Project. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s a novel-length Harry Potter fic about the Marauders – James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter. The fic basically shows us what kind of relationship those four friends had with each other, how they got mixed up in the Order of the Phoenix, and what happened that made Peter betray his best friends to the Dark Lord.

If you’re interested, you can go to this website and read the fic for yourself. It’s extremely well written, and the characters pop out of the page at you, fully-formed and in color. It’s also an easy read, but be warned that, although it falls in line with Rowling’s books, you may be surprised by what happens in the story. Many fans consider this to be something of the official un-official backstory to the Marauders.

All that aside, it really got me thinking. Why does fan-fiction work so well? Why do people spend hundreds of hours writing it? Why do hundreds of thousands of people read it? Why is fan-fiction becoming more and more popular amongst those who enjoy reading books and watching television/movies?

And, most importantly, what can we learn from it as writers?

ONE. Fan-fiction isn’t afraid to break the rules

One of the drawbacks to immersing yourself in fan-fiction is that it’s not always well-written. That’s certainly a problem, but I’ve found plenty of fan-fiction that was poorly written that I couldn’t put down. And I’ve read plenty of published works without a single typo that put me to sleep each time I cracked them open.

The thing with fic is this: it isn’t afraid to break the rules. It doesn’t have to worry about critique partners and editors and agents and publishing houses. The authors of the fic aren’t always aware of the rules, of when to use a semi-colon or even what “syntax” means. And they don’t care. And sometimes this works really well.

The best example I can give is the dialogue in Shoebox. An editor probably would’ve thrown the entire MS in the trash if he took a single look at it. But it works so well for the story. So well. There are whole paragraphs full of run-on or half-formed sentences. And the entire book is written like that. But it’s used to convey the nervousness and doubt and excitement of the characters. And it’s so realistic. Most of the time if you read dialogue out from a book, it’s a little too perfect. It doesn’t sound natural. And although this dialogue is chopped up and crazy, it sounds exactly how a 17 year old boy would talk. It’s perfect.

TWO. Fan-fiction doesn’t do anything more than simply write a good story.

The previous point logically leads into this second one. The writers aren’t worried about making everything perfect. They’re not worried about pitches and query letters and trying to land an agent. They just want to write a good story.

There’s a lot of freedom in fan-fiction. Sometimes that’s a bad thing. Sometimes people get carried away. But sometimes, when the planets align and the wind blows in just the right direction, sometimes this is a very, very good thing.

When you’re not worrying about anything other than the story, your story comes alive. It’s not weighed down with doubt. There’s no worry about it needing to impress someone. Whenever we write and edit knowing that we’re eventually going to pitch this story to an agent, there’s that nagging feeling of did I do everything in my power to make this as perfect as possible? And sometimes that’s what makes it so imperfect. Readers can often tell when the writer places every word carefully, rather than just letting the story develop on its own.

I liken it to those Hollywood stars with the perfect hair, the perfect clothes, the perfect makeup, the perfect smile. It’s nice, they’re pretty to look at it, and you do kind of envy it. But it’s not natural. You know they’re putting on a show, and at the end of the day you’d much rather surround yourself with real people.

THREE. Fan-fiction gives us what we want.

Read the rest of the post on The Midnight Novelist.

Rewire

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This post, by Andrew E. Kaufman, originally appeared on the Crime Fiction Collective Blog and is reprinted here in its entirety with that site’s permission.

I’ve been thinking about doing some rewiring lately. Not in my house, but in my brain: my writer’s brain. It seems to have gone a bit wonky.

Because I’ve realized that being a good writer isn’t just about grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Plot arcs are crucial, but they don’t mean a damned thing if your own story is out-of-whack. Writing is about being in the right place emotionally, not just on paper, but in your head.

So in doing my rewiring, I’ve identified some short-circuit issues—places where I seem to be getting in my own way, where a fuse or two got tripped. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

Comparing Myself to Other Authors

I don’t do this as often as I once did (not really), but occasionally, I find myself slipping down that slope. It’s a bad one. Here’s me reading a book. It goes something like this:

Me: (First chapter) “Damn, what an awesome passage.”
Me: (Fifth chapter) “Damn, the dude can write.”
Me: (Tenth chapter) “Oh, Damn….”
Me: (Midbook) “Oh Sh#*… I’ll never be this good,”
Me: (End of book) “Ohgoodlord. I seriously suck.”

Coveting thy author: bad move. It’s a prescription for failure. It’s a trap, a self-imposed esteem ambush. Even worse, it’s the fastest way to kill inspiration and creativity. I can’t compare myself to other writers because quite simply, I am not That Writer.

Worrying About Numbers

I’ve decided to decide that numbers don’t matter—not in the overall scheme of things; or at least in the little one, that worrying about them doesn’t do a damned bit of good. Worry all you want, but whether you do or not, numbers are still going to happen. They’re a unit of measure, not a way of life. Sales rankings, book units, word count, my age, my checking account balance: all unhealthy obsessions. Life matters. Numbers don’t.

Forgetting Why I Write

I still do this. Sometimes (he said, grudgingly) . I get so caught up in deadlines, book deals, sales, and everything else that writing isn’t about, that I forget why I do it in the first place. And then I remember the times when none of those things existed, when it was just me and the written word, and the more I do, the more I realize, those were the best days of my life. It’s so easy to get caught up in the business of writing instead of the passion that drives it.

Not Trusting My Process

The moment I’m about to give up–when I’m chewing the ends off pencils, throwing things, and doing the primal scream–is always the exact moment before I make my biggest breakthrough, when the most amazing things happen. I’ve come to accept that this is part of my process. It’s how I roll. I can’t change it, so I’m going to learn to live with it and accept that I have to go There before I can get Here (even if it sort of sucks sometimes).

All Work and No Play:

That’s me.

I’m the first to admit it. All do is write. I don’t mind that all I do is write, because I love being a writer—but still, it feels like all I ever do is write. And it feels unbalanced. And unhealthy. And it feels like I have no life outside of writing. So my goal this year is to make time away from writing (After my deadline, of course–just in case Thomas & Mercer is reading this). To take Caleb to the beach more often and to simply enjoy. To live more. Writing is my passion, but my passion can’t thrive in a vacuum; I have to feed it with living.

Fear of Failure

‘Nuff said.

How about you? Got any bad wires that need fixing? Here’s the place to come clean. Promise, I won’t tell 😉

Kindle Nation Daily Offers Discounts On Author / Publisher Sponsorships

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We here at Publetariat don’t often post about author services, but we can endorse Kindle Nation Daily with confidence so we are sharing this news from the site.

Holiday Greetings from Kindle Nation.

Back in October we had a lot of fun with a special offer on sponsorships that we ran for just five days, and rather than try to reinvent the wheel we thought it would be just the thing to repeat as we were casting around for a way to express our gratitude for the authors and publishers who have stepped up to connect with our readers by sponsoring Kindle Nation over the past year.

So, we’ll make this easy:

If you book sponsorships on our site anytime between today and December 23, we’ll offer you the same 7.7% “Baker’s Dozen” discount that we usually reserve for our highest-volume sponsors. (This discount will come in the form of a 7.7% rebate that will be processed as a refund to your PayPal account between December 27 and December 31, on top of any package discounts to which you are already entitled!)

JUST CLICK HERE TO GET STARTED!

2013 is going to be the biggest year ever for Kindle readers and for Kindle Nation, and we hope you’ll make it a point to let us help you stay connected with our readers all through the year.

Holiday Blessings and Best Wishes for a Glorious 2013!
Steve Windwalker and the team at Kindle Nation 

 

 

Writing A Book: What Happens After The First Draft?

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Many new writers are confused about what happens after you have managed to get the first draft out of your head and onto the page.

I joined NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) this year and ended up with 27,774 words on a crime novel, the first in a new series. It’s not an entire first draft but it’s a step in the right direction and the plotting time was sorely needed.

Maybe you ‘won’ NaNo or maybe you have the first draft of another book in your drawer, but we all need to take the next step in the process in order to end up with a finished product.

 

Here’s my process, and I believe it’s relevant whether you are writing fiction or non-fiction.

(1) Rewriting and redrafting. Repeat until satisfied.

For many writers, the first draft is just the bare bones of the finished work and often no one will ever see that version of the manuscript. Remember the wise words of Anne Lamott in ‘Bird by Bird’ “Write shitty first drafts.” You can’t edit a blank page but once those words are down, you can improve on them.

editing arkane

My rewrites and edits for Pentecost

I love the rewriting and redrafting process. Once I have a first draft I print the whole thing out and do the first pass with handwritten notes. I write all kinds of notes in the margins and scribble and cross things out. I note down new scenes that need writing, continuity issues, problems with characters and much more. That first pass usually takes a while. Then I go back and start a major rewrite based on those notes.

After that’s done, I will print again and repeat the process, but that usually results in fewer changes. Then I edit on the Kindle for word choice. I add all the changes back into Scrivener which is my #1 writing and publishing tool.

(2) Structural edit/ Editorial review

I absolutely recommend a structural edit if this is your first book, or the first book in a series. A structural edit is usually given to you as a separate document, broken down into sections based on what is being evaluated.

I had a structural edit for Pentecost in 2010 and reported back on that experience here. As the other ARKANE novels follow a similar formula, I didn’t get structural edits for Prophecy and Exodus. However, I will be getting one for the new crime novel when it is ready because it is a different type of book for me.

Here’s how to vet an independent editor if you are considering one.

(3) Revisions

When you get a structural edit back, there are usually lots of revisions to do, possibly even a complete rewrite. This may take a while …

(4) Beta readers

Beta readers are a trusted group of people who evaluate your book from a reader’s perspective. You should only give them the book if you are happy with it yourself because otherwise it is disrespectful of their time.

This could be a critique group, although I prefer a hand-picked group of 5 or 6 who bring different perspectives. I definitely have a couple of people who love the genre I am writing in as they will spot issues within the boundaries of what is expected, and then some people who consider other things.

My main rule with beta readers is to make changes if more than one person says the same thing. Click here for more on beta readers.

(5) Line edits

Editors Notes Exodus

Line editor’s notes for Exodus

The result of line editing is the classic manuscript covered in red ink as an editor slashes your work to pieces!

You can get one of these edits before or after the beta readers, or even at the same time. I prefer afterwards as I make broader changes of the book based on their opinions so I want the line editor to get the almost final version.

Line edits are more about word choice, grammar and sentence structure. There may also be comments about the narrative itself but this is a more a comment on the reading experience by someone who is skilled at being critical around words.

The first time you get such a line edit, it hurts. You think you’re a writer and then someone changes practically every sentence. Ouch.

But editing makes your book stronger, and the reader will thank you for it.

(6) Revisions

You’ll need to make more changes based on the feedback of the beta readers and line editor. This can sometimes feel like a complete rewrite and takes a lot of detailed time as you have to check every sentence.

I usually make around 75% of the changes suggested by the line editor, as they are usually sensible, even though I am resistant at first. It is important to remember that you don’t have to change what they ask for though, so evaluate each suggestion but with a critical eye.

(7) Proof-reading

By this point, you cannot even see any mistakes you might have made. Inevitably, your corrections for line editing have exposed more issues, albeit minor ones.

So before I publish now, I get a final read-through from a proof-reader. (Thanks Liz at LibroEditing!) After Prophecy was published, I even got an email from a reader saying congratulations because they had failed to find a single typo. Some readers really do care, for which I am grateful and that extra investment at the end can definitely pay off in terms of polishing the final product.

(8) Publication

Once I have corrected anything minor the proof-reading has brought to light, I will Compile the various file formats on Scrivener for the ebook publishing platforms. I will then back the files up a number of times, as I have done throughout the whole process.

(9) Post-publication

This may be anathema to some, but the beauty of ebook publishing is that you can update your files later. If someone finds a typo, no problem. If you want to update the back matter with your author website and mailing list details, no worries. If you want to rewrite the whole book, you can do that too (although some sites have stricter rules than Amazon around what is considered a new version.)

Budget: Time and money

Every writer is different, and there are no rules.

But in terms of time, your revision process will likely take at least as long as the first draft and probably longer (unless you’re Lee Child who just writes one draft!). For my latest book, Exodus, the first draft took about 3 months and the rewriting process took about 6 months.

In terms of money, I would budget between $500 – $2000 depending on what level of editing you’re looking for, and how many rounds. You can find some editors I have interviewed as well as their prices here.

I believe editing at all these different stages is important, because it is our responsibility to make sure our books are the best they can be. But if you can’t afford professional editing, then consider using a critique group locally or online. The more eyes on the book before it goes out into the world, the better.

What’s your editing process?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments [on the original post]. Do you have a similar approach or something completely different? 

 

 

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

Finding Free Fonts for Your Self-Published Book

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You’ve been working on your book, getting it ready for publication.

Maybe you’ve hired a designer to create an eye-catching and sophisticated cover, and that’s usually a good idea. But let’s say you’ve decided to do the interior layout by yourself. After all, there are lots of places you can get information about how to create a good-looking book interior. It doesn’t seem quite as difficult to most people, although that might depend on exactly what kind of book you’re publishing.

First Things First

Inevitably, the first decision you’ll make about laying out your book is what size it will be. Vendors like CreateSpace and Lightning Source offer a great selection of sizes for almost any kind of book you might imagine.

For instance, if I was designing a novel for print on-demand, I’d probably pick either 5.5″ x 8.5″ or 5.25″ x 8″, both standard sizes that are easy to hold and feel good in the hand.

The next decision you’ll have to make is what font to use for the main body text of your book. Now, most people have long lists of fonts on their computers, since many programs come with fonts and they often get installed along with the programs. You might be able to find something in these free fonts that will work for you, but many of these fonts won’t be appropriate for lots of kinds of books.

But you – as a wily internet user – know that there are lots of free fonts available online. Why not just surf over to one of those sites and download a font for your book?

Font Warnings

But not all fonts are created equal, and not every font you find online will work for your book. What should you be aware of when you’re searching for free fonts? Here are some things to watch out for:

  • Fonts that won’t embed—When it comes time to upload your book files, you’ll need to create a PDF with the fonts embedded in the file. The problem is that some of the fonts you download from free font sites simply won’t embed due to technical or legal restrictions. You don’t want to get to the end of your layout process with hundreds of pages that are now perfect just to find out you’re going to have to replace the main font and potentially re-paginate the whole book.

    How can you tell whether the font you just downloaded will work? The only real way to tell is to set a chapter or a few pages with the font and then try to create the a PDF file for just those pages. You can easily find out if the fonts are embedded by opening the file in Adobe Acrobat and checking under the File/Properties on the Fonts tab. Every font in the list needs to show “Embedded” or “Embedded Subset” for your file to work when it gets to your printer.

    If the font didn’t embed, stop now and save yourself the work of redoing your whole book. 

  • Fonts that are illegal—I know, it’s amazing that people post links to property that they don’t actually own, isn’t it? But hey, it’s the internet, and these things happen all the time. If you’re downloading a font from a third-party site, you need to know this. For instance, if you can download a font created by Adobe that you found at “Freddy’s Free Fonts,” you should question whether Freddy bothered to get the rights to distribute it.

    Font foundries often offer free fonts, so you can always go to the foundry’s own website to see what they have available. That way you’ll know the font you have is totally legal, since it came from the manufacturer. You’ll find my recommendation about free font sites at the end of this article.

  • Low-quality fonts—Some fonts are enticing when you see them as a sample on a font site, but they might cause you trouble when you try to use them. What kinds of trouble? You might run into fonts that are:

    • Incomplete. Fonts that were created for a specific function, like a headline in an advertising campaign, are frequently incomplete. They might not have all the glyphs and symbols standard fonts have, or they might lack an italic version to go along with the roman. You don’t want that.
       
    • Badly drawn. A sample might look good, but what’s going to happen when you pour your 100,000-word manuscript file into your layout and have thousands of lines of type? Book pages will show off any eccentricity in the typeface, often with nasty consequences. A cute-looking flourish on a lower case “g” for instance, can make your page look “blotchy” or like it has little “flags” popping up everywhere.
       
    • Misaligned. In a sample, you might not notice that the font doesn’t sit properly on the baseline, but in your book this will show up right away. Same for “set width” errors, where the amount of space each letter takes up has not been calculated properly, causing some letter combinations to have too much or too little space to typeset properly.

A Solution for Free Fonts

Because I’ve been typesetting books for many years, I’m pretty careful about the fonts I use. I have no hesitation about downloading free fonts from foundries like the ones in the resource section at the end of this post, and you should be confident about fonts you acquire this way.

The best site I’ve found for third-party free fonts is fontsquirrel.com. This site aggregates fonts from lots of sources and guarantees the fonts are free for commercial use. Fontsquirrel.com also links to foundries and to myfonts.com, the huge site that sells fonts from most font foundries, in case you decide to buy a font instead.

So go out and explore, now that you know what to look for. There’s a whole world of free, high-quality fonts to discover for your next book project.

Resources

Free Font Collections:
fontsquirrel.com
Font Shop’s Free Fonts
Smashing Magazine’s free fonts
Creative Bloq’s 50 Best Free Fonts for Designers

Foundries with free fonts:
Exljbris Foundry
The League of Movable Type
Chank Fonts
Cape Arcona Type Foundry

Roundup of 30 of the best font foundries

Paid Fonts:
Myfonts.com

If you’ve got a favorite free font resource I’ve missed, let me know in the comments [on the original post] and I’ll update [the]  post.  

 

This is a reprint from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer.

What's the Best Way to Promote Children's Books?

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Publetariat Editor’s Note: be sure to click through on the link at the bottom of this post (after the jump) and read the comments section, where readers have shared some additional helpful tips for marketing children’s books.

The first step in promoting any type of book is to understand your target audiences and develop a written book marketing plan. For tips, download my free report, Create a Book Marketing Plan That Sells Books. 

Books for younger children are usually purchased by adults, including parents, grandparents, other relatives and friends, teachers, and librarians. Teens often choose their own reading material, but keep in mind that a large percentage of the readers for young adult books are adults, many of them parents.

When promoting books for young children, interaction with kids and parents can be very effective. Look into school visits, library reading programs, book fairs and other events where families congregate. Also check out the Mom’s Choice awards program.

For more information and ideas, see my children’s book marketing resource page.

Authors, what are your favorite ways to promote children’s books? Please share in the comments area [on the original post]. 

 

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

What I Learned Writing Dreamlander: Why Non-Writers Give the Best Critiques

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This post, by K.M. Weiland, originally appeared on Wordplay in November of 2012.

What qualifies someone as a beta reader?

The term itself tells us this person is someone who reads an early draft of a story. But they’re so much more than just that. I like to think of beta readers as sort of junior grade editors. They’re not full-fledged, bona-fide, paid-and-professional types with half-glasses pushed down their noses and red pens behind their ears. But that doesn’t mean they’re any less savvy—or any less important.

Something that was reinforced to me over and over again during my years-long journey with my fantasy novel Dreamlander (coming December 2) was the importance of beta readers. I was blessed to have the input of nearly twenty editors, critique partners, and beta readers. They educated, encouraged, occasionally humbled, and always helped me. Without them, the book would never have made it past the pile-of-pages stage.

Two Types of Beta Readers

Most of my beta readers are writers in their own right. Their knowledge of the craft augments and reinforces my own. When we start talking about POVs, voice, dangling participles, and plot points, we’re all speaking the same language. They’re riding right alongside me in their own sometimes bumpy writing journeys. They know what it’s like to be a writer, and our shared experiences and knowledge create a solid foundation of trust in our relationships as givers and receivers of literary criticism.

But there’s another category of beta reader that is just as valuable as my fellow writer. And that, of course, is the non-writer.

Why Are Non-Writing Beta Readers So Valuable?

Non-writers can’t bring technical knowledge of the craft to the table, but they bring something else: their objective experience as readers.

Most readers aren’t writers. They’re not gonna know the technicalities of the craft. They may not even recognize or care about some of the gaffes that would have our fellow writers gasping in horror. But they know what they like, and they know what they don’t like. The very fact that they aren’t writers keeps their opinions from getting tangled up in the technicalities.

 

Read the rest of the post on Wordplay.