The Copyright Naughty List

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This post by Susan Spann originally appeared on the Writers in the Storm blog on 12/10/14.

Happy Holidays!

‘Tis the season to stay off the copyright “naughty list,” so I’m here to share a few #PubLaw tips for avoiding copyright infringement in your holiday blogging and social media celebrations!

When celebrating online this holiday season, keep these helpful rules in mind:

SONGS (AND LYRICS) ARE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

At the holidays, it’s tempting to re-post the lyrics to favorite carols or celebratory songs, either on Facebook, on a blog, or on other social media sites. Unfortunately, lyric-sharing often violates the copyright of the lyricist or songwriter, because lyrics are protected by copyright, as are novels, short stories and poems.

Posting an excerpt (no more than 2-3 lines) is often permitted as “fair use,” especially when the quoted work runs at least 30 lines. However, there is no absolute test for fair use, and no definitive test for when you’ve used too much of a copyrighted work. The legal test is “facts and circumstances,” based on several factors (so anyone who tells you “X lines is ok, but more is not” isn’t telling you the absolute legal truth.

 

Read the full post on Writers in the Storm.

 

13 Female Nobel Laureates In Literature

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This infographic from Fresh Essays is reproduced here in its entirety with that site’s permission.

13 Female Nobel Laureates In Literature

Courtesy of: http://www.freshessays.com

 

NaNoWriMo Doesn’t Matter

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This post by Chuck Wendig originally appeared on his terribleminds blog on 12/1/14. Warning: strong language.

On November 1st, NaNoWriMo matters.

On November 8th, it still matters.

On November 13th, 18th, 24th, mmm, yep, it matters.

(Thanksgiving? Only pie matters. Do not argue this.)

On November 30th? Still matters!

December 1st?

*the quiet sound of crickets fucking*

Today, it doesn’t matter.

This isn’t a dismissal of National Novel Writing Month. Not at all. I’ve come around to love the spirit around that month — a 30 day descent into the lunacy of being a novelist, equal parts fun and frustration (“funstration!”). A hard dive into creative waters. Let it fill your lungs. Drown in it.

Rock the fuck on.

But right now? It doesn’t matter. NaNoWriMo is just the wrapping, the trapping, the springboard, the diving board. It’s what got you going, but it isn’t what matters.

What matters is you. What matters is the work.

And right now, you’ve got something.

I don’t know if it’s finished or not. Did you win or lose?

Forget winning and losing.

You left those words behind when NaNoWriMo ended. What matters now is what happens next.

Don’t know what happens next? Here. I’m going to tell you. Or, at least, I’m going to give you a general idea of what happens next — a menu of permutations and possibilities.

If you didn’t finish what you started, you’re going to finish it. (Why? I told you that last week.)

And if you did finish it?

 

Read the full post on Chuck Wendig’s terribleminds blog.

 

Start Here: How to Get Your Book Published

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This post by Jane Friedman originally appeared on her site on 1/28/12.

Publetariat Editor’s Note: We mostly focus on the indie and small press routes to publication here at Publetariat, but since the hybrid publishing model (a mix of indie and mainstream releases) can be very effective it’s never a bad idea to share information on how things work in traditonal publishing, too.

It’s the most frequently asked question I receive: How do I get my book published?

Unfortunately, when I hear this question, I know I’m dealing with someone who is at such a beginning stage that it’s difficult to know where to begin.

With this post, I hope to offer the most critical information and address the most pressing questions, as well as provide a starting point for more fully exploring what it means for you to try and get meaningfully published. I’ve also created an Amazon list of the best resources on this topic.

If you’d like an in-depth guide on how to get your book published, consider my book on the topic: Publishing 101: A First-Time Author’s Guide.

 

First: The Difference Between Fiction and Nonfiction

Novelists (fiction writers) follow a different path to publication than nonfiction authors.

Novels and memoirs: You must have a finished and polished manuscript before you look for a publisher or an agent. While you may have heard of some novels or memoirs being sold based on an idea or proposal, this is rare for first-time authors without a strong publishing track record.

For most nonfiction: Rather than completing a manuscript, you should write a book proposal—basically like a business plan for your book—that will convince a publisher to contract and pay you to write the book. For more information on book proposals and what they entail, click here.

 

Read the full post on Jane Friedman’s site.

 

6 Tips For Becoming A Better Writer

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This post by Eric Barker originally appeared on Business Insider on 11/11/14.

U want 2B a better writer?

Good writing is often looked at as an art and, frankly, that can be intimidating. No need to worry. There are rules — even science —  behind writing well.

Our brain works a particular way; so what rules do we need to know to write the way the brain best understands?

To find out the answer I gave Steven Pinker a call.

Steven is a cognitive scientist and linguist at Harvard. He’s also on the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary.

Steven was recently ranked as one of the top 100 most eminent psychologists of the modern era.

His latest book is “The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century“. And it’s great.

Below you’ll learn:

  1. The two key elements that will improve your writing.
  2. The biggest mistake we all make — and how to fix it.
  3. The science behind what makes writing work.
  4. The most pleasant way to improve your knowledge of grammar.

And a lot more. Let’s get to work.

 

Read the full post on Business Insider.

 

The Making Of A Boxed Set

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This post originally appeared on SFR Brigade on 11/13/14.

Boxed sets are a popular commodity at the moment. You see them everywhere, collections of stories by a variety of authors, grouped under some unifying label. But there’s a lot of work involved in putting a set like this together. That’s why we thought we’d share our experiences and lessons learned.

Earlier in the year, one of the members of the SFR Brigade asked for volunteers for an SFR boxed set. Eleven of us promptly banded together, and our Nebula Nights collection appeared in e-bookstores in record time. Since its release at the beginning of August, the set reached #1 on Kobo and All Romance, and charted as high as #3 on Amazon in science fiction romance. The book maintained an Amazon ranking above 10,000 for most of those three months. So you could say it did well. At the end of October, our contract with the publisher expired, so we decided to go it alone, since the set is still selling quite strongly. This article is a combination of what we did, and what we learned from our experience with the publisher.

Ready to go?

What’s your goal?
There’s no point in embarking on a project like this if you don’t know what you’re intending to achieve. In creating Nebula Nights, we wanted to showcase our genre, and encourage readers to purchase more of each author’s work. In quantifiable terms, we aimed at reaching one of the major lists, like the NYT or USA Today. It’s good to dream big!

 

Read the full post on SFR Brigade.

 

Year-End Tax Help for Authors

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This post by attorney and tax expert Julian Block originally appeared on Indies Unlimited on 12/7/14.

The only time most of us think of doing something about our federal income taxes is once a year — the hours we spend actually grappling with Form 1040 or when gathering records to deliver them to a paid preparer. What we should do is make tax planning a year-round concern and position ourselves to take full advantage of the many opportunities that are available to lessen the amount that is siphoned off each year by the IRS. The savings can amount to many thousands of dollars. What follows are some tactics that not only can save taxes for 2014, but even provide a head start on 2015 as well.

Timing receipt of income pays off for freelance writers. The IRS requires most freelance writers and other self-employed individuals to use the cash method of accounting, under which income isn’t counted until cash, a check, or an e-payment is received and expenses aren’t counted until they’re paid.

How does the IRS apply that requirement to a hypothetical freelancer we’ll call Phyllis Neff? Like most other writers, Phyllis has a good deal of flexibility on whether to report income or deduct expenses in 2014 or 2015. As part of her end-of-year financial planning, therefore, she should review perfectly legal tax-trimming tactics that must be taken by Dec. 31 if they aren’t to be lost forever.

 

Read the full post on Indies Unlimited.

 

Is “Likeability” Only an Issue if the Character is Female?

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This post by Kirsten Reach originally appeared on the Melville House site on 11/18/14.

Asked whether she’d want to be friends with the protagonist in her latest novel, Claire Messud famously quipped in an interview with Publishers Weekly last year, “Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert?” Nora, the main character in The Woman Upstairs, might be described as an “art monster,” a term Jenny Offill coined in Dept. of Speculation.

Nora devotes herself to her work with fervor, but she also behaves in a way the reviewer disliked, which changed her experience with the book. How much should that be discussed in a formal or informal review? Moreover, how deep does likeability go? Are readers at fault for not taking time to get further in the characters’ heads, or are authors supposed to be held responsible for the questionable behavior of their characters?

Messud’s interview seemed to kick off more than a year of authors reflecting on the way the women in their novels were received, especially if the reviewer assumed some traits in their characters were drawn from the authors’ own lives. Edan Lepucki wrote a piece for The Millions this week on the reception of her characters, especially the female protagonist, in her novel California:

 

Read the full post on the Melville House site.

 

Should I Be Writing This Genre?

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This post by Tamela Hancock Murray originally appeared on the Steve Laube Agency blog on 12/4/14.

Often I talk with new authors writing in lots of genres. This is fine if it’s part of your personal writing journey and learning process. I want my authors to enjoy what they’re writing. But when you get serious about publication, know when to choose and what to choose.

One mistake is to write strictly to market when you don’t like the genre. I love to tell the story of a friend who said she knew someone who decided that vampires were popular. This story is timeless, isn’t it, since vampires seem to occupy some place in literature at any time. Anyhow, supposedly he went home to work on a book about vampires. simply because he thought vampires could make him money. I haven’t seen his name on any book, and he started writing about vampires two decades ago. I speculate that he never saw success because he was writing about a topic he saw only as dollar signs. I believe readers will feel this from you whether you know it or not. So choose a topic or genre you have a genuine interest in and love for.

Here are a few questions to think about when choosing your genre.

 

Read the full post on the Steve Laube Agency blog.

 

Ebooks Can Tell Which Novels You Didn't Finish

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This article by Alison Flood originally appeared on The Guardian on 12/10/14.

Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch put down prematurely by 55% of ebook readers, with self-published star Casey Kelleher holding most attention

The Goldfinch may have won Donna Tartt the Pulitzer, praised by judges as a novel which “stimulates the mind and touches the heart”, but the acclaimed title’s 800-odd pages appear to have intimidated British readers, with less than half of those who downloaded it from e-bookseller Kobo making it to the end.

New data from Kobo shows that, although The Goldfinch was the 37th bestselling ebook of the year for the retailer, it was completed by just 44.4% of Kobo’s British readers. Kobo speculated that it “likely proved daunting for some due to the length of the novel”.

Twelve Years a Slave, Solomon Northup’s account from 1853 of how he was kidnapped and sold into slavery – “I sighed for liberty; but the bondsman’s chain was round me, and could not be shaken off” – was, according to Kobo, similarly overwhelming. Ninth on their British bestseller list, following the hugely successful film adaptation, the book was completed by just 28.2% of British readers.

 

Read the full post on The Guardian.

 

Tips on Creating Reader-Friendly Books for Today’s Busy Readers

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This post by Jodie Renner originally appeared on the Independent Book Publishers Association site in October 2014.

Today’s readers are much busier and more distractible than ever before. Their time is precious and fragmented, and they’re constantly bombarded with other demands on their attention. To grab nonfiction readers and keep them turning the pages of books you write and/or publish, it’s critical to make sure the writing is clear, concise, and vivid.

Here are some quick tips for you to relay to your authors or use yourself in revising the style and presentation of nonfiction to entice and engage readers. (Similar tips work for fiction, as you may be glad to know.)

 

STYLE
Use a clear, chatty, reader-friendly writing style

Use casual language and everyday words for immediate comprehension and inclusion. Don’t be pedantic or preachy, and avoid pretentious, show-offy words and flowery phrases. You’re writing to inform and engage, not to impress. Your goal should be clear communication of your ideas and immediate comprehension of your points. And of course, never talk down to your readers.

 

Read the full post on the Independent Book Publishers Association site.

 

Build Relationships With Reviewers Well Before Your Book Launch

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This post by Jennifer Mattern originally appeared on AllIndieWriters on 10/21/14.

When you try to land reviews for your new book, the last thing you want is to be just another random new author reviewers have never heard of. Yet it’s not uncommon for authors, and especially indie authors, to wait until the last minute to think about book reviews.

So for this week’s quick tip, let’s make sure you don’t fall into that group. Rather than waiting until your book is about to launch (or already has), build relationships with key book reviewers early. Put yourself in a position where, when you do contact them to request a book review, they already know your name and are already at least somewhat familiar with you.

Here are three ways you can start building relationships with potential reviewers even before your book is released.

1. Comment on their existing reviews.

 

Read the full post on AllIndieWriters.

 

Facebook's Like Affair With Brands Is Over

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This post by Will Oremus originally appeared on Slate on 3/24/14.

Facebook is ending the free ride, wrote Valleywag’s Sam Biddle in a post that has been greeted with widespread alarm. No, it’s not forcing ordinary users to pay for its service or to share pictures of their babies. Rather, the claim is that it’s deliberately bringing an end to the era of free advertising for businesses via their Facebook pages.

Citing an anonymous source, Biddle reports that Facebook is in the process of slashing brands’ “organic page reach” to just 1 or 2 percent. That means only a tiny fraction of the people who have liked a business on Facebook will see each of its posts in their news feed, unless that company pays Facebook for wider promotion. The organic-reach squeeze would affect “all brands,” Biddle writes, from corporate behemoths like Nike to local merchants like New York’s Pies ‘n’ Thighs restaurant. He casts this as a cruel bait-and-switch on Facebook’s part:

Facebook pulled the best practical joke of the Internet age: the company convinced countless celebrities, bands, and “brands” that its service was the best way to reach people with eyeballs and money. Maybe it is! But now that companies have taken the bait, Facebook is holding the whole operation hostage.

That’s one way of looking at it.

Here’s another one: People don’t really like seeing a bunch of ads in their news feed.

 

Read the full post on Slate.

 

YouTube Megastar Zoella’s Record-Breaking Debut Novel Was Ghostwritten, But Fans Don’t Care

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This post by Jonathon Sturgeon originally appeared on Flavorwire on 12/9/14.

In the beginning, there was YouTube. Then, a little later, there was Zoë Sugg, a young woman with a dream. When those two things merged, they formed Zoella, vlogger extraordinaire, lover of all things “Beauty, Fashion, & Life.” Next came fame and fortune and millions of YouTube subscribers and Twitter followers. Finally, last month, Zoella’s new novel arrived. It is titled Girl Online, and now it’s the fastest-selling debut novel of all time.

But!

Last weekend, Sugg’s publisher, Penguin Random House, admitted that the novel was “factually” not written by Sugg. “To be factually accurate you would need to say Zoe Sugg did not write the book Girl Online on her own,” they said. Then, on Twitter, Sugg, admitted that the novel was ghostwritten by committee. And not just a little bit ghostwritten. The entire thing, as it turns out, was ghostwritten, except for the ideas for the characters and the story. Here is Sugg’s “confession”:

 

Read the full post on Flavorwire.

 

Never Say Never: Taking a Closer Look at Writing “Rules”

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This post by Amy Knupp originally appeared on The How To Write Shop on 10/2/13.

Don’t kill a puppy. Never use an –ly adverb. Exclamation points are the mark of an amateur.

I’ve heard these writing “rules” and dozens of others from the time I started pursuing publication. And I’m ashamed to say, when I was new, I even believed some of them.

The fact is, writing is an art, and in art forms, there are no absolutes. But when we’re new and hungry for success and validation, it’s amazing the things we take to heart.

Mention the mere word “rules” in any group of writers, and you’re bound to start an animated, opinionated conversation. And the thing is, there are reasons most of these “rules” have been circulated for so long. Usually pretty valid reasons.

As the cliché goes, you need to know what the “rules” are and understand why they’ve been perpetuated. Then…then you can break them.

 

Read the full post on The How To Write Shop.