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This post, by Mark Coker, originally appeared on the Smashwords blog on 11/3/12.
The Apple iBookstore, which last week expanded its global reach to 50 countries, has always been kind to Smashwords authors. Numerous Smashwords authors have graced Apple’s bestseller lists over the last two years, and this week is no different.
Four days ago, R.L. Mathewson uploaded Checkmate to Smashwords. In under 24 hours, we distributed it to Apple and it went live worldwide in 50 stores. Yesterday, this contemporary romance hit #1 in Apple’s US, Australia, U.K. and Canada stores. As I write this, it remains #1 at these same stores.
Three days ago, Kirsty Moseley uploaded Always You to Smashwords. The next day, we distributed it to Apple and it went live worldwide in 50 stores. Today, Always You is the #7 bestseller in Australia, #20 in the U.S. and #20 in the U.K.
Last week, the US Apple iBookstore ran a special promotion of romance titles priced $1.99 and below. We suggested they consider Mia Dymond’s Playing with Fire, and they included it.
Last week, in conjunction with Apple’s iBookstore launch in New Zealand, they named Shayne Parkinson’s Sentence of Marriage their "Book of the Week" for both their New Zealand and Australian stores.
Sentence of Marriage is a free series starter. Shayne’s next book in the series, Mud and Gold, priced at $3.99 (NZ dollars), is today the #8 bestseller in the New Zealand store, and #54 in Australia (after the U.S. store, Australia is the next highest earner for Smashwords authors, just edging out the U.K., which is also big for us). I suggested they consider promoting Shayne because she’s one of our bestselling authors at Barnes & Noble. She’s also one of the few authors we distribute to Amazon, where she sells well. I suspected that since she was performing well at our other retailers but hadn’t yet broken out at Apple, a dose of pixie dust merchandising love could help launch her to a new audience. That’s what’s happening.
The Smashwords authors above aren’t the only ones doing well at Apple. Other notable standouts now in the top 10 store-wide bestsellers include Jillian Holmes, author of Temporary Kiss (#7 in the U.K. iBookstore), Isabelle Rae, author of When Summer Ends (#8 U.K.), S.H. Kolee, author of Love Left Behind (#5 Australia, #10 Canada), and Marie Kelly, author of Billionaire’s Revenge (#2 Australia, #8 Canada).
Apple is today the largest retailer for Smashwords authors. The chart here shows the growth in monthly dollar sales for Smashwords books at Apple. I omitted the dollar figures, but you get the idea how Apple has grown. For all its incredible growth in ebooks, Apple is conspicuously mum when it comes to talking about their accomplishments. Did they do a press release or a press conference on their launch of 18 new stores last week? I don’t think so. Most authors I meet have no idea Apple is distributing to 50 countries.
I think their low key approach has led many in the industry to underestimate their progress. My advice to authors: don’t underestimate Apple. If you’re not there, you’re missing out. Every new country they launch represents a new micro-market, an opportunity for you to become a big fish in a small but growing pond. The authors who get out there first and establish footholds today will become the bestsellers of tomorrow.
All the authors mentioned above? Keep an eye on them. They’re all headed toward the New York Times bestseller list in the months and years to come if they keep up their great work.
Our relationship with Apple started prior to launch of the iPad in early 2010. I, like the rest of the world, had heard rumors that Apple was preparing to launch a bookstore, so I got on the phone and called their main switchboard. Within about a week, I met with a senior executive at our office in Los Gatos.
Read the rest of the post on the Smashwords blog.
This post, by Gayle Carline, originally appeared on the Crime Fiction Collective blog on 12/6/12 and is reprinted here in its entirety with that site’s permission.
The first piece of advice given to any writer is to write what you know. Actually, the first piece of advice is don’t quit your day job, but that makes a depressing post and tis is the season to be jolly.
When I decided I wanted to write a novel, I took that write what you know business to heart. I wrote about a Midwestern girl who jumps in her car and travels to the West Coast, something that I had done. The problem was I didn’t know how to write a novel. To my great surprise, the characters all revolted, and the girl’s car broke down in Amarillo.
What the hell did I know about Amarillo? I’ve been there once, long enough to visit the American Quarter Horse Museum, and eat at Cracker Barrel. That (really sucky) novel sleeps peacefully on my external hard drive, where I use it for spare parts.
After writing what I knew turned out so abysmally, I threw caution to the wind and tried writing what I wanted to know: a mystery. Much like Amarillo, what the hell did I know about writing a mystery story?
Not much. But I knew how to read and enjoy them. I knew what to expect when I watched them on TV. I had to have a crime, and a plucky character who would poke around in all of the corners, looking for the solution.
As far as writing what I knew, I used a few familiar things to help me. For example, I made my private investigator, Peri, a former housecleaner. I like a clean house, and know how to do it. Having that little background story gave me a bond to her. I like dirty martinis, so I made that her signature drink.
I also know my hometown of Placentia, California. It’s a small town squished between other towns. I know its streets, its neighborhoods, and its feel. I know how it tastes and smells. Setting a mystery there meant I didn’t have to create someplace else.
I now had a protagonist and a location that I knew.
As for the mystery part, well… how does a bland little Midwestern gal inject suspense and thrills that she’s never experienced?
In the end, I used two of my own hobbies: puzzle solving and communicating with my husband. Mysteries are a lot like puzzles. There are pieces that you must gather, data you must analyze and slip into the correct slot. This translates to clues, alibis, and information that is collected by the protagonist and the reader in order to come to the “AHA” moment.
As far as my husband is concerned, I am married to possibly the most laconic man on the planet. He also possesses a soft, deep voice, which is sometimes inaudible to me due to some hearing loss at the lower registers (yes, too many concerts in my youth). If I want to know anything, I can either chase him down and hound him until he speaks clearly, or just follow the clues he leaves behind.
I remember one day, when we were supposed to meet friends for lunch. It was in the days before cell phones and there was a mix-up at the restaurants, and we were trying to figure out whether Dale would be able to find us. I mentioned that he had taken clean clothes with him that morning, so he was probably changing at the tennis club, making it useless to leave a message on the home phone.
One of the women looked at me, agog. “Don’t you two ever talk?”
Well, not that much. I make assumptions about where he’s gone, what he’s doing, and what my next move should be, if any. Maybe I am a private investigator. A very private one.
I’ve now written three Peri mysteries (and one short), and a lot of times I feel like I’m in the weeds and don’t know why I’m not writing what I know. That’s when I remember my horrible first novel, and I go do a little research until I can move forward.
I hope this gives other writers the encouragement to take what you do know, write it into what you don’t, and stop stressing about the rest. It’s fiction, people. You don’t have to get it right. You just have to get it believable.
And if readers think that I make writing sound like it’s as unknown as most of life in general, well, it’s true. We don’t just want to tell you a story. We want to lead you through an experience.
If we knew where we were going, it wouldn’t be half as much fun.
This post, by James Moushon, originally appeared on The Self-Publishing Review on 11/26/12.
Because book trailers are becoming a popular online marketing tool, I thought it was time I did a study of what was going on in this phase of book promotion. First, a trailer has to be a part of the total book package. You must keep that in mind as we proceed.
I reviewed 50 trailers, some from the HBS Author’s Spotlight group and some from high-profile authors. That should give us a good cross-section of the development of this relatively new process.
Are they worth the time and money? What did I see and hear that made a good book trailer? It must be noted at this point, the following are my opinions and hopefully some helpful observations.
Plan your Trip
Before you go down this trail, you must plan where you want to end. As you’ll find out, it is more detailed than you would image.
The first major decision to make is how I am going to produce the trailer? Am I going to do it myself or outsource it to a professional? Cost is the primary question in this decision I would guess. As you’ll see in this blog, there are some real good trailers created at a very reasonable cost.
Start of the trailer
Most start with a storyboard in which they create a scene list and match script text alongside each picture or slide. For example, the majority of trailers in my review start with the book cover or a slide with the Title and Author displayed. You may think that is elementary but there were several that didn’t give you that information until well into the video.
How does it sound?
This is important to the effectiveness of the trailer. The music and sound should fit your vision of your book. The sound includes music, voice, singing and special effects. Here are some observations.
Some trailers had great mood music which fit right into the story line. Some had singing in the background. A couple started off with strong music right up front which was a great attention getter.
There was one that was streaming along at a steady pace then out of the blue there was a loud gun shot. That got your attention. Several had cry outs, screams, eerie sounds and even the sound of arrows whizzing through the air.
Two observations: if you are going to use voice over for your slides, use a professional or not at all.
Read the rest of the post on The Self-Publishing Review.
This post originally appeared on BookMarketing.net on 7/10/12.
Like it or not, people do judge books by the covers. And poor cover design is one of the areas where self-published authors are most often panned by critics. Self-published authors know this risk, and they know one of the keys to a good cover is a good designer. According to a survey from Taleist, 41% of self-published authors pay for cover design. The survey also shows that authors who get help with editing and design of their books make 34% [more money]—so the investment pays off.
Below is a list of graphic designers who have experience designing book covers. Each has unique strengths and styles, and they range from independent artists to members of larger design groups and publishing organizations. Each shares their advice for authors and a bit about their work in their own words—and they almost unanimously bristled at the “favorite cover” questions. They’re listed alphabetically by first name.
There are many other ways to find a book cover designer. Start with referrals from other writers or by tracking down the designers who created covers you love. The Graphic Artists Guild also has listings of designers to help you find the right fit. You can also find designers familiar with book cover design on LinkedIn, or you can post an ad on Craigslist or Elance. If you’re on a tight budget you can hire students at a local design school.
So how much can you expect to pay? It varies—of course. Some of the factors include who owns the rights to the art, how many sketches and revisions the designer will do, the complexity of the project, whether it’s a paperback or hardcover or ebook, and more. The designers below have a wide range of services from an ebook cover for $395 to original art for $3500. On average (a rough average) an author can expect to pay around $800 to $1000 for a cover by one of these designers. Some are higher, some are lower—but a good price doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a good fit for your book.
Betsy A. Riley
DO find someone who’s familiar with your genre. There are some genres I don’t do—like romance. My style just doesn’t work for that genre.
DON’T forget that you hired the designer because they have some knowledge or skill that you need—give consideration to their advice.
Favorite book cover: Anne McCaffrey’s Dragon Song and The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt.
Favorite cover you’ve designed: That One Left Shoe, edited by me, and Furred & Feathered Friends: Katrina Castaways by Nancy Clark Townsend.
Website: http://brws.com/; http://bluedragonpress.com/
Claudean Wheeler
Read the rest of the post on Bookmarketing.net.
As if it wasn’t difficult enough for us to keep up with our social media accounts, emails and writing — the authors’ life also calls for us to stay on top of ever-changing technology.
We were just getting the hang of Smashwords when Amazon rolled out their new pride and joy (and their charming mea culpa for withholding a huge chunk of author’s eBook profits for so long), Kindle Direct Publishing.
KDP and its more devout sibling, KDP Select, offer a bevy of new options and promises for the modern day author — higher royalties, exclusive promotional opportunities and access to the Kindle Lending Library, among them.
But these bonuses come with one pretty heavy stipulation. Authors participating in the KDP Select program cannot sell their eBooks through any other website (Barnes & Noble, Apple, Smashwords, etc.) during their 90 day sign-up with Amazon.
So the question becomes: Is it worth it?
I decided to take the plunge and submit my debut novel to KDP Select during the holiday season.
After removing my title from Smashwords (and waiting a full month for B&N and Apple to catch up and remove it from their catalogs — make a note if you plan to do the same, it takes a while) I upgraded my book from Amazon’s regular KDP program to the shiny, new KDP Select.
Aside from the 70% royalties (which are contingent upon the length and price of your book) the biggest benefit of KDP Select is the option to offer promotional days (5 per 90 day period).
Promotional days allow authors to give their book away for free on Amazon, which not only puts the book into a different promotional list on Amazon itself, but gives you a chance to promote the book on a plethora of available websites, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts that all exist exclusively to alert readers of free Kindle books.
So I dove in, November 9th – 11th, with my first promotional KDP Select experience.
I learned a lot in a short time, and thought it would be valuable to my Duolit author friends to know more of what the experience is about so you can decide for yourselves if it’s worth it.
1. Planning is EVERYTHING.
Full disclosure: I screwed up.
I did the one thing we tell you guys never to do — I jumped in headfirst, with no planning or prep-work for my promotion prior to the first of my three promotional days.
In my defense…nope, there’s not really a valid excuse here, I just let a killer combination of procrastination and laziness get to me.
I didn’t realize I was in trouble until I started going through a lot of the available websites for free and paid promotions of Kindle books. Most of them required a minimum of 48 hours’ notice to add your book to their promotional lists/blogs for a specific date.
Oops.
If I’d planned ahead, I could have gotten my book onto a lot more websites during the start of my promotion, plus I could have built up the free days as more of an event for my fans.
I should have had events on Facebook and GoodReads and built anticipation the week before. I should have given my mailing list a heads up and shared the details on Twitter as well.
The only thing that saved me from suffering complete embarassment was having my promotion for three days instead of one or two. If it had been any shorter, I would have had no time at all to get the word out.
So lesson learned: Plan ahead!
2. Choose your days wisely.
I picked the weekend of November 9th – 11th for two reasons:
These were not flawed ideas in and of themselves, but when I actually did *research* about using KDP (afterwards, of course) nearly everything I read advised against using your promotional days on the weekend (especially Saturday) because people are typically away from their computers and spending time with their families on the weekend.
Valid point.
Worse yet, I chose a *holiday* weekend in the U.S. when a lot of folks take short vacations or just generally veg out watching football and relaxing.
So for future reference, weekdays are generally better and if you can have at least two days back-to-back you’ll have more time to build momentum for your promotion.
3. Push for more reviews before your promotion.
I discovered that a lot of the popular free eBook promotions blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter(ers?) require a certain number of reviews for your book to be included in their promotions.
If I’d known that beforehand, I would have done a push with my mailing list to try and beef up my Amazon reviews before the promotion days (which I really should have done anyway, but you know how that goes).
4. Add action steps to your eBook.
This is the one thing I actually DID do right for my promotion (Yay!).
Before your promotional days, make sure your eBook file is updated to include a page asking readers to leave a review for you on Amazon (you can include a link as well).
You should also have a page in your eBook with a link to your website and advertising any other books you have as well.
This is especially critical for your KDP promotion days. One of the biggest complaints I’ve heard from people who’ve used KDP Select is that the high numbers of downloads on promotion days don’t often lead to long-term growth.
While you can’t expect every person who downloads a free copy to become a fan or leave a review, if you can get even a third to make the effort, you’ll come out way of the game. So use opportunity you have to encourage readers to take action after they read the book.
5. Be prepared to spend a lot of time on social media.
The best, most effective way to get the word out during your free promotion days is to advertise via social media.
You have to toe a very dangerous line here by not spamming your friends (especially on Twitter) while still making sure your free book is shared with as many people as possible.
Try to notify all the free eBook promoters at once with your mentions on Twitter so you can get that big blast out of the way.From there, plan to tweet a link or announcement every couple of hours.
Don’t use the same tweet every time — mix it up offering different quotes, loglines and other reasons why people would love to read your book for free. Also be sure to hashtag like a Boss on Twitter.
On Facebook, share a link on your fan page first, and then you can also promote your link on several other Facebook pages (just make sure they allow that kind of self-promotion, some don’t and they get very ornery about that, which is fair).
Scheduling these posts can put you at a disadvantage because services like HootSuite sometimes don’t get shared as much through Facebook’s algorithm and on Twitter you’ll probably find (as I did) that you get a lot of interactions from others that you should really respond to right away.
So be prepared to really spend your promotion days glued to your computer or smartphone milking your social media accounts.
6. Manage your expectations.
I came away from my KDP experience feeling really good.
In three days, my book was downloaded almost 400 times. My Facebook and Twitter following grew by several likes/followers, I got five new sign-ups for my newsletter and I reached as high as #991 on Kindle’s overall list of free eBooks (not bad given my lack of planning).
Whatever your opinion of KDP Select might be, there is absolutely NO other medium that would allow you to get your book into the hands of almost 400 people in three days without costing you one red cent.
Is it a great tool for making money? In the short term, no of course not. You’re giving your book away for free and other than maybe a few peripheral sales right after your promotion ends, you’re probably not going to make any dough.
But in terms of fan building, I think KDP Select delivers in spades.
Even with my egregious lack of planning, I felt like I took a giant step forward with my promotions, so I can’t imagine how someone who actually planned and executed their free days like a major events could benefit from KDP Select.
And it’s especially fantastic for us indies, because it’s so cost effective as well.
If you’ve participated in KDP Select, do you have any additional takeaways for other authors from your experience? Do you think it’s worthwhile?
For the folks who haven’t worked with KDP Select yet, if you have more questions, let us know in the comments and we’ll get you some answers!
This is a reprint from the Duolit blog, by Shannon O’Neil, the author half of the Duolit team.
This post, by Timmi Duchamp, originally appeared on the Ambling Along the Aqueduct blog on 11/30/12.
A couple of days ago, Jonathan McCalmont posted Annoyed with the History of Science Fiction to his blog. "Annoyed" notifies us, from the top, that it’s to be read as a rant rather than a sampling of his thoughts on the subject of the history of science fiction. Fair enough. The title also– unintentionally, perhaps– conflates some hypostasized notion of all the existing histories of science fiction distilled into a single "history" with what non-academics usually mean by the word "history" (viz., the past, which inevitably becomes singularly dicey when treated as a conceptual entity). By "history," McCalmont, I believe, means the former. Rants can be interesting and useful, though, and "Annoyed" is both.
It seems a piece by Gary Westfahl provoked McCalmont by making the sort of generalization that seems always to be with us in the sf/f sphere: "the works of Robert A. Heinlein are still occupying a considerable amount of shelf space, and the evidence of his broad impact on the genre is undeniable." McCalmont explains his annoyance thus: "The reason I am singling out Westfahl’s essay is that it illustrates the field’s lamentable tendency to allow these types of broad historical claims to go completely unchallenged and unsupported." So far so good. But when he says
I believe that the historical approach to science fiction lacks the critical apparatus required to support the sweeping claims made by people who use this approach. Far from being a rigorous analysis of historical fact, the historical approach to genre writing is all too often little more than a hotbed of empty phrases, unexamined assumptions and received wisdom.
Here, I have a bit of trouble with McCalmont’s own generalization. Yes, I see what he calls "the historical approach" used by some academics and many non-academics in the field all the time, but unlike McCalmont, I assume they’re doing so because they’ve chosen to ignore the variety of attempts quite a few smart academic critics have lately made (and continue to make) to grapple with the ungainly, difficult-to-grasp subject without falling into pitfalls Samuel R. Delany has often and effectively excoriated (and which McCalmont duly alludes to). A science fiction work’s closeness to the culture and politics of its time means that any history necessarily has to take shifts in culture and politics (and scientific practice as well as science!) into account. There are scholars in the field attempting to do that– taking a variety of approaches that try their damnedest to eschew generalizations like the one McCalmont cites about Heinlein’s influence.
Now let me get on to the interesting and useful parts of McCalmont’s post. He takes John Berger’s excellent Ways of Seeing and David Bordwell’s On the History of Film Style as examples of approaches to an aesthetic field’s history (art history and film history, respectively) that is illuminating rather than stultifying. Bordwell, McCalmont tells us, pays special attention to the impact certain film techniques (particularly "deep focus," "long take" and "dynamic editing") had on film-making and how we watch films. I think McCalmont gets to something important when he writes:
Read the rest of the post on Ambling Along the Aqueduct.
[Publetariat Editor’s Note: strong language]
You’ve heard it before, I’m sure – you have to keep swimming. That’s true for the actual act of writing in the first place. No matter how hard it is, you just keep going. To quote the erstwhile Chuck Wendig, “I will finish the shit I start.” And then, to explain why, we’ll quote the incomparable Angela Slatter: “You can edit shit, but you can’t edit nothing.”
Notice how shit features in both those quotes? Subconscious, I’m sure, but it helps to make the point. Nothing is shiny first time around. In writing, you really can polish a turd, if you keep at it, make the necessary changes, listen to critique and so on. But you have to have a turd to start with, and that means working hard, writing, writing, writing, essentially, keep pushing until you’ve squeezed one out. And then start polishing.
But I think it’s time we moved away from the crappy analogies. Sorry, it seems I can’t help myself.
Let’s assume you did get the thing finished, be it novel or short story or whatever. Then you started polishing. You edited, tweaked and buffed till it was perfect. Then you sent it out to your critiquing friends and beta readers, and those bastards pointed out all the imperfections. So you listened, because you’re smart like that. And you polished again and again. Eventually, it really was about as good as you could make it. So you submitted it to your favourite market.
And it got rejected.
“Fuck ‘em!” you cry, and send it somewhere else. Their loss if they can’t recognise your genius, right?
Yes, to a degree. Because no matter how good a story is, it might not be right for that publisher’s catalogue, that editor’s taste, that publication’s readership and so on. You have to have a good story – that, above and beyond everything else, is a pre-requisite – but you also have to find the right home. And that’s as much luck and determination as it is smart planning and skill. Of course, if you send your werewolf story to a soft porn magazine it’s not going to sell. Are you laughing? Cos that happened to me.
To be fair, it wasn’t really my fault. When I was moving to Australia permanently, I asked an Australian friend what magazines out here might be good for fiction. I thought I’d start submitting, see if I could get a bit of Aussie publication going before I got here permanently. He said to me, “Picture Magazine publishes fiction, give them a go.” And he sent me the submission address. Old-school post back in those days. Of course, he was winding me up, but I didn’t know that Picture Magazine was a soft-core porn publication. I sent them a story about a werewolf detective. I got a letter back. It said, “This is a beaut yarn, mate, but really not the sort of thing we publish. Thanks anyway.” That’s because the fiction they usually publish is a reader’s-wives/confessions-of-a-randy-plumber type of thing. I didn’t know this before I submitted or when I got the rejection.
When I got to Australia I looked into it. I laughed. Then I went and kicked my mate in the nards for being such a douchebag. Then we both laughed about it. True story. Anyway, write good shit and know your market, is the core of what I’m saying here.
After that, it becomes all about determination. I write this post now because I was recently reminded of the importance of determination by a friend of mine. Ian McHugh is a bloody brilliant short fiction writer. He’s sold stories to such pro markets as Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Asimov’s and many more. He’s a Writers Of The Future winner and his first collection is coming from Ticonderoga Publications in 2014. Yes, he is one accomplished bastard.
Why am I citing Ian as an example of determination? Well, even with a record like his, he still gets a lot of rejection. He recently made a pro sale with a story that has taken a long time to find a home. How long? I’ll let Ian explain:
This was actually the 19th time I’d submitted this particular story, so it’s my new record holder for number-of-rejections-before-selling. Previous best was 14. My general rule has been to trunk a story after 15 rejections. I broke it for this one because I got some lightning-to-the-brain feedback with the 14th rejection and rewrote the ending.
That means that not only was it rejection 14 times before he had a sudden realisation about how to improve the story, but it was subsequently rejected another four times withthe new ending before it found its home.
As Ian said, “Take whatever lessons you will from my Obsessive Compulsive Bloody-Mindedness Disorder (OCBMD).”
The lesson I take from it? Trust in yourself and keep looking for a home. My personal record of rejections before a sale is the same as Ian’s previous best: 14. What really surprised me was the people on our email list expressing amazement at Ian’s tenacity, saying things like, “I couldn’t handle that much rejection” or “I give up after two or three rejections.”
What!?
Let me share some of my own numbers. My recent short fiction sales are all stories that didn’t find a home right away. In fact, my stories hardly ever do. Only a handful of things I’ve written have sold to the first place I sent them, and those are usually things written for a specific themed anthology, or stories written by request/commission. Of the 3 recent stories that I wrote simply because they were in my brain-juice, and then tried to sell, I got 11 rejections, 2 rejections and 6 rejections before they sold to the 12th, 3rd and 7th market respectively. That’s actually a fair cross-section of submission numbers. (And I was bloody happy with the one that sold on the third attempt!)
So, don’t give up on writing something – finish that motherfucker. Then, when it’s finished and polished to its highest possible sheen, start submitting and do not give up. Stay open to the possibility of change, like Ian’s sudden inspiration. I recently did that and changed a story’s structure entirely after something like 10 or 11 rejections, but it’s still essentially the same story and it’s still out there looking for a home.
Finish it, polish it, submit it, repeat.
Off you go.
Caveat: It gets to a point when you have to admit that your story might not be a polished gem at all, but actually just a stinking turd. Sometimes you do have to trunk a story. Ian’s method is give up after 15 rejections. Mine is probably about the same. But when I give up, I never really give up. I rewrite the story, use the ideas in a different way, make it into something else and then send it out there again. Never. Give. Up.
This is a reprint from Alan Baxter‘s The Word.
This post, by Vincent Zandri, originally appeared on the New Wave Authors blog on 9/21/12.
I’ve finally gone and done it.
Come December I will have thirteen books in print with the publication of Murder By Moonlight. So why is this number so significant? What’s the big deal?
Thirteen years ago, almost to the day, I published my first "big" novel with a Random House imprint. They gave me tons of money, wined and dined me. I even played drums in my editor’s band and ummm, dated my publicist. If you want to call it that. I was fresh out of writing school. Young. Pretty good looking (Not Barry Eisler good looking, but passable). Newly divorced and living the life of the rock star.
I remember tossing twenties around to the hotel clerks asking them to bring bottles of booze up to the room so that there would be plenty on hand when the guests came. The guests usually consisted of literary agents, writers, artists, musicians. The room was so full of cigarette and pot smoke you could hardly see. The booze flowed like a river and it just happened to snow during the warm weather, if you catch my drift. I found myself living the dream, and living it hard. It was everything I always wanted. Bright lights, big city, big ego, big books, big future…
All I had to do to maintain the life of the rock star was write one book per year. My hot shot agent would take care of the rest. My lifestyle wouldn’t be supported by sales…Sales?…What the fuck are sales? It would be supported by big advances. Sales weren’t sexy in the eyes of my then agent. It was measured in the amount of advance money he could demand. Six and seven figure advances were what made him hard. Not sales figures typed out on spread sheets. Advances caused headlines in Publishers Weekly. Sales trickled in and never made up for the big advance. Well, almost never, anyway.
Somehow I wrote the second book. But something happened along the way. My imprint got sucked into another. The new imprint editor looked at the advance money owed me and compared it to real sales and nearly puked. The firm honored their contractual committment and paid me, but as soon as the second book was published, I was shown the door. Goodbye publisher. Goodbye parties. Goodbye rock-star status. Goodbye New York City. Goodbye ego. Goodbye hot shot agent.
Read the rest of the post on the New Wave Authors blog.
This post originally appeared on the George Mason University English Writing Guide site. While it’s intended for use by students of that University who are following a specific essay-writing curriculum, the common errors it lists will be helpful for anyone who’s doing a self-editing pass.
Introduction
By this point you’re done composing your essay. You’ve written an introduction and conclusion, incorporated transitions, and you’ve made use of textual evidence to support your argument. But you’re not done with your first draft yet—you still need to comb through what you’ve written to make sure that you don’t have any grammar mistakes.
Common grammar mistakes not only get in the way of your reader’s ability to understand your argument, but they can also undermine your credibility in the reader’s eyes. We’ve compiled here a list of common grammar mistakes that came up most often for professors in the English Department.
Common Pet Peeves for Teachers
Read the rest of the post on the George Mason University English Writing Guide.
This post, by Susan Bearman, originally appeared on Write It Sideways on 4/20/12.
I started my writing life as a business writer, compelled to try to improve the tortured, often incomprehensible language I found in operating manuals, annual reports, memoranda, and other formats that some bad writers tried to pass off as business “communication”. There seems to be a great misconception that passive voice, undefined acronyms and abbreviations, and loads of jargon make for good business writing.
Not true. All writers—whether writing for business, science, or academia, or those writing fiction and creative nonfiction—should strive for clarity.
But does that mean jargon, slang, and idioms are always taboo? Not if you do your job to make them serve your writing, rather confuse or bore your readers.
Jargon
jargon (noun) — specialized technical terminology characteristic of a particular subject; a characteristic language of a particular group.
To use jargon effectively, you must know your audience. Almost all industries use jargon to some extent, and that’s OK, because most practitioners of a particular profession have a basic understanding of the material and its associated jargon. Business and sports writers are notorious jargon users, as those in medicine and education.
For most writers, the goal is clarity. Unless you have a specific reason to use jargon, it’s best to avoid it. If you must include jargon, be sure to define it or make it understandable within the context of your story.
Bad writing is often the result of too much jargon. While jargon can be helpful when communicating within a specific group, too much jargon, or jargon that is not clearly defined can lead to muddy, confusing writing. If you find yourself having to reread a sentence over and over again, it is often because it contains confusing jargon.
Well-placed jargon in a piece of fiction can lend the voice of authority or the face of authenticity to a particular character. If one of your characters is a pompous Wall Street trader, using some insider jargon will help readers hear his voice on your page. Genre fiction, such as crime fiction, often relies heavily on the use of jargon. Here again, know your audience.
One way to help define jargon in your writing is to spell out acronyms or abbreviations the first time you use them:
Fuzzy: SCBWI announced on June 19 both the winner and runner up of the Don Freeman Memorial Grant-in-Aid.
Better: On June 19, the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) announced this year’s recipients of the Don Freeman Memorial Grants for picture book illustrators.
See if you can translate the following jargon into language that could be understood by a general audience (note, I did not make these up). You may need your search engine to help you. How many clicks around the Internet did it take you to understand the original jargon?
Read the rest of the post on Write It Sideways.
This post, by Kevin Dangoor, originally appeared on his site on 10/26/12.
Last night, I spoke at Ignite Ann Arbor 7. As always, the Ignite talks covered quite a range of topics and the speakers gave us a great time!
My own talk was one about self-publishing, which is something I’ve had some experience with this year. Back in 2006, I co-wrote a technical book (Rapid Web Applications with TurboGears) for Prentice Hall. That year, I also self-published a DVD (the TurboGears Ultimate DVD). But, my focus in this talk was my experience this year self-publishing the first three books in my 11 Quests children’s fantasy series.
Publishing companies have their place, and I’m not actually against using their services. My view is that we, as authors, should recognize how much more powerful self-publishing is today than it was even a few years ago. The Internet and modern technology and services are making life increasingly difficult for middlemen of all sorts.
After that bit of background, I dove into things that I found useful in my publishing adventure. First, I started with the writing. I wrote the first 11 Quests stories during National Novel Writing Month 2011 (NaNoWriMo, as it’s more succinctly called). I did all of my writing in Scrivener, which is a fantastic program that is available for Mac and Windows. Scrivener helps organize your writing. And, as an added bonus, Scrivener did a good job of producing my ebooks and the interiors of my print books!
MacHeist, which has been extended for 3 days (through Monday, October 29, I’m assuming), currently offers Scrivener along with a bunch of other apps for just $29. It’s a really, really good deal. And, with NaNoWriMo starting up again on Thursday, the timing is wonderful.
Next, I got into cover design. 99Designs, CrowdSpring, and DesignCrowd all allow you to post a price you’re willing to pay for a design and have a bunch of different designers produce artwork from which you pick the winner. These sites are controversial because only one designer gets chosen, but a bunch of designers are doing the work to try to get selected. Only you can decide how you feel about that issue.
Less controversial would be to find a local artist or someone at a site like DeviantArt or Elance. It’s a much more traditional relationship where you agree upon a price and the work gets done.
The approach I took to cover design was “do-it-yourselfish”. I started with DAZ3D which is free 3D software (Mac and Windows). I’ve also used Poser a bit, but I settled into DAZ Studio for my work. What makes these programs great is that you can buy, for not a lot of money, 3D models and then pose them and otherwise customize them to get the image you’re looking for. These programs have a learning curve, and there’s a lot of work required just finding the right models to match what you’ve written. But, I was happy with the results that I got.
Read the rest of the post on Kevin Dangoor’s site.
Whether you have made the 50,000 or not, it doesn’t matter, as long as there has been some focused writing this month! And, there’s still time.
For anybody else wanting to write fiction, this might help you with the dreaded first draft (which for me, is definitely the hardest part).
Trying something new …
I have made life difficult for myself, because I decided as my NaNo project to write a story that has been on my mind for a while, or at least some of the settings, characters and themes have.
But I only had one day, Oct 31st to do some rough plotting and to be honest, I didn’t get too far. I had an opening scene and that was about it. No character sketches, no plot layout. [Note: This is NOT the best way to do NaNoWriMo!]
I also decided to write a crime novel with thriller elements, rather than a straight thriller, so it’s a new genre with new rules. (Whatever you think about rules, readers in a genre expect certain things and we have to deliver on that promise).
What’s the difference between thrillers and crime, I hear you ask!
The main difference for me is that in thrillers you know who the bad guy is and the good guys have to stop him/her destroying the world in a race against time, or something along those lines. But basically, you know who the antagonist is and you write scenes with them in and even from their POV throughout the book. Lots of mini-crimes go on during the book but the big explosive threat is what must be stopped.
In a crime novel, you open with the body and then you have to work out who the killer is, so the crime has been committed and it’s a hunt for the killer. The skill is to keep the audience from guessing ‘whodunit’, but not to make it so obscure you annoy them at the end. So they are quite different, although the genres are put together on Amazon as a macro-category.
I’m trying to blend the two with the classic crime structure but I also want a bigger thriller plot behind it, and definitely thriller pacing. I also need to keep the promise to my reader with my brand “Ancient mystery, modern thrill” and include detailed history and setting which my readers enjoy.
So on about Day 5 of NaNoWriMo I wrote this to guide me …
Draft back blurb
When the body of a young heiress is found dissected at the Hunterian Museum within the Royal College of Surgeons, London, Detective Inspector Jamie Brooke is in a race against time to find the killer. An ancient ivory figurine found inside the body is the only lead and she enlists Blake Daniel, a reluctant clairvoyant, to help her discover the meaning behind the figurine and the message it holds.
As Jamie and Blake delve into an increasingly macabre world of body snatching, dissection and the genetic engineering of monsters, they must fight to keep their sanity, and their lives.
What are the questions this raises in your mind?
From the back blurb, a whole load of questions are raised, and since I hadn’t written much of the book at the time of writing, answering the questions is a good place to start.
From those questions, a whole lot more emerge and you can start writing the answers in scenes. For example, in deciding on the other characters/suspects, I can then write scenes with the Detective interviewing them and as I free-write on those, more questions will come to light.
This great episode on plotting from the SelfPublishingPodcast guys also talks about the questions you can use as the basis to plotting.
So this is something you can try if you’re struggling with your NaNo book.
Deconstructing and modeling
I find the above is enough to get to about 20,000 words (if you’re mostly a pantser at least), but especially with a new genre, you need to work out how the plot is supposed to work. I love intricate and clever plotting, so this is important to me. Those of you who prefer character driven plots might not be so interested in this!
When I learned to write a thriller, I deconstructed bestselling books, working out the structure by which they worked in terms of scene length, pacing, setting, character development POV etc.
I read a lot of modern crime, but to go back to basics I started re-reading some Agatha Christie novels, but quickly realized that although the books are great, today’s audiences expect fast moving crime, like the TV shows.
So I watched a couple of episodes of popular crime shows Castle and Bones, both open with a body, then spend the episode trying to solve the crime. I particularly like Castle as it is less police procedural and forensics based. Invariably, you can’t guess the murderer until near the end, regardless of whether you know the ‘formula’ because they drip feed the clues. Both shows have a male and female relationship at the center as primary characters.
Deconstructing those shows was brilliant, as I learned how each clue set up a different suspect and then new information led onto someone else. Once I knew how it worked, it was much easier to do with my own book.
At that point, I was able to really plot out the novel and get the hang of how the scenes should be structured, and whose POV I should use. These tips enabled me to at least get a good chunk of the novel sorted in my head, and a lot of it onto the page.
What other recommendations do you have in terms of techniques for writing the first draft?
Image: Crime scene from BigStockPhoto.com
This is a reprint from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.
This post originally appeared on Publishr on 4/27/2010. It’s fascinating to see how visionary the post is now, two years later, and to consider how little the industry has heeded its advice.
Forget the words “print” and “digital” even exist. Now, what is the transition in publishing really about?
Publishing is, and has been for many years, a B-to-B business. In fact, the walls of the publishing house have traditionally been closed off to anyone without an in. On one end, we have agents who work as buffers to the outside world, so we are not required to interact with anyone who does not have any official business. On the other end, book buyers shield us from having to interact with readers.
Almost everything about our industry is set up in a way that lessens contact with the outside world. The whole mystique of this industry is based on its inaccessibility to the outsider.
Some examples, to name a few:
Agents: Most publishers do not accepts direct submissions. This, in itself, limits front-end interactions with both published and aspiring authors. In fact, agents serve an important purpose, they act as buffers to the world-at-large, to all the people who think they can write a book. They are the first line of defense, as it were, to prevent contact from the (unsavory) outside world. For scouting works, for performing triage, for acting as a buffer, agents are compensated in percentages based on performance of those things they bring in from the outside.
Review pubs: Industry review publications seem to go beyond just buffering publishers from the outside world, by performing the task of marketing our products to ourselves. This is something that works perfectly in a B-to-B system; different houses vying for space in industry publications to look better than others, our books over your books, our authors have more name recognition than yours, angling for buyers’ attention always with the thought that they will order more copies. Are these publications relevant to the average person on the street who is going to visit a retail location or eCommerce site to purchase a book? No. Not at all.
Industry Conferences: Like review publications, many if not all of our industry conferences consist of self-referential presentations with little to no interest given to the outside world. While this is the case throughout many industries, we seem make a heightened effort to market and promote our latest titles at these conferences. Think about the amount of money spent on galleys, booths, travel, and accommodations for BEA. Take note of the amount, and remember it. It’s going to come back to haunt you.
Read the rest of the post on Publishr.
This post, by Mike Shatzkin, originally appeared on The Shatzkin Files blog on 11/26/12.
So now in addition to the Random House and Penguin merger that is being reviewed by governments far and wide, we have the news that HarperCollins is exploring a tie-up with Simon & Schuster in a deal that hasn’t been made yet. That leaves Hachette and Macmillan, among the so-called Big Six, still on the outside as the general trade publishing behemoths rearrange themselves for whatever is the next stage of book publishing’s existence.
I am not sure we really need an “explanation” for what is the resumption of a perfectly natural phenomenon. Big publishers have been merging with each other for several decades in a process that suddenly stopped after Bertelsmann acquired Random House (to add to its holding of Bantam Doubleday Dell) in 1998. We didn’t know it at the time, but that concluded a long string of mergers that had recently included Penguin’s acquisition of Putnam-Berkley, but which stretched back to the 1970s when pursuit of the paperback-hardover synergy had driven Viking and Penguin; Doubleday and Dell; and Random House-Ballantine and Fawcett into each other’s arms.
(Perhaps HarperCollins should get credit for the resumption of the era of consolidation. Their acquisition of Christian publisher Thomas Nelson, combined with their holding of Zondervan, created a powerful position in one of publishing’s biggest vertical markets shortly before Penguin and Random House announced their plans.)
But consequential events always get an explanation, whether they deserve one or not, and this merger appears to many to be driven by consolidation among the retail intermediaries and the rational concern — amply documented by recent experience — that the retailers would use their leverage to press for more and more margin. This is complicated by the fact that both of the dominant retailers — Amazon in the online world and Barnes & Noble in the brick-and-mortar space — have small publishing operations of their own that are always available to put additional pressure on publishers at the originating end of the value chain.
There is an important asymmetry to take note of here. The retailers publish and are always a threat to acquire manuscripts directly and cut the publishers out but the publishers, particularly the biggest ones, don’t do retail and there is no obvious path for them to enter retailing in any significant way. (That last sentence was written with full cognizance that we await the debut of Bookish, which is an attempt by three of the Big Six to enter retailing in a significant way. Maybe when concrete plans for it are announced there will be some reasons provided to amend that thought.)
In my opinion, the dominant position that Amazon holds in online retailing and that B&N owns in shops are impregnable on their own terms in ways that the positions of each of the big publishers are not.
The threat to Barnes & Noble is that bookstores will become unsustainable: that a retailer trying to exist at scale with books as its primary product offering will, because of ebooks and online purchasing of print, simply become unviable. The threat to Amazon is more nuanced and more distant. One can imagine a world developing where content retailing evolves into niches by subject or tastemaker. But that world is not around the corner (an environment toxic to bookstore chains appears to be much closer) and it would be far easier to imagine how Amazon could adapt to niche online retailing than to see B&N adapting to deliver retail book selections that are only viable at a fraction of their current size.
(I consulted to them a decade ago and suggested that to no interest. They were shutting down their mall stores at the time and the idea seemed totally counterintuitive. I’ve also written about it.)
Read the rest of the post on The Shatzkin Files.