publishing

Writer’s Block: Help Is a Penstroke Away

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he letter began with a simple statement.

“If you’re reading this,” it said, “I’m probably dead.“

A sick feeling ran from the pit of my stomach to the back of my throat as I read that sentence. I wanted to put the letter down, bury it under a stack of papers, burn it, but you don’t just stop reading something like that and pretend you never got it. I kept reading.

You think you know everything that happened—all those days, months, weeks that went by—but you don’t. You don’t have a crystal ball. You aren’t psychic. You can’t know all the reasons I had for doing what I did. And since you’re the one that killed me, it’s only fair that I set you straight.

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Being There: Write Where You Know

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Seven-thirty a.m. in Georgetown, Penang and breakfast was an iced chai and a vegetable dosa hot enough to melt the paint off a car. I sat outside under an awning, wondering if the tiny vinyl chair, wilting in the tropical heat, would hold my weight until I was done. A dozen feet away, a Chinese man in a stained apron stood at a butcher’s block, lopping the feet off of dead ducks with a cleaver and dropping them into a white bucket. Every fifteen minutes, a young boy would arrive, put the feet in plastic bags, and take them to the market across the street. Exhaust from scooters put a gasoline tang in the air, but then a breeze from the ocean–never far away–would clear it away. Three-wheeled bike rickshaws pedaled by, flicking their bell every block, trying to attract custom. I watched the butcher wipe the cleaver on his apron as the sweat trickled down my spine and the small Malaysian neighborhood woke around me.

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Micro-reading: Experiments with Wattpad and Scribd

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Today marks the one week anniversary of a little experiment of mine: posting my fantasy short story Sword of Kings for free with two different mobile reading services, Wattpad (http://www.wattpad.com/3237579-sword-of-kings-part-i) and Scribd (http://www.scribd.com/doc/79242254/Sword-of-Kings).

If you haven’t heard of either service, don’t feel bad. I’d vaguely heard of Scribd before but only came across the possible sales and promotional potential of both it and Wattpad after reading David Gaughran’s attempts with both his own short stories and serially posting his novel A Storm Hits Valparaiso.

In essence, both services offer a variation on the same theme: they facilitate the process of writers finding readers. Writers post their work (though Wattpad is almost exclusively fiction and poetry) without charge; readers can download those works for free. The reasons why writers might want to offer their work for free are many: to find beta readers, to “field test” an odd-ball idea, to stimulate interest in your writing so that it leads to sales of other works, to simply spread your ideas.

While Wattpad and Scribd may seem like just another internet fad, consider that Wattpad claims 1 million users, 3 million comments/votes per month, and the average user spends 30 minutes twice a day on the site. The top stories in each genre of the “What’s Hot” category routinely register over 1-2 million reads. That’s exposure.

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Which Ducks? The Author’s Promotional Toolbox: Part II

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(This blog post is the second in a two-part series. Read Part I here!)

In the first part of this post, I discussed the important of having blurbs or varying lengths for your book and a set of cover images ready for any occasion. You might also find the following handy to have around when you’re neck deep in promoting your newest title.

You
Almost every online opportunity to display a book also includes a chance to show off the author. Don’t miss this chance to sell yourself!

  • Short bio
    I haven’t seen any particular requirements here, but think of it like your book: having a one-sentence description of yourself as a writer can never hurt. If you come up against a “describe yourself in twenty words or less” request on a site, you’ll be ready. Bits like this can be useful for Tweets and Facebook posts, as well.
  • A medium bio
    This is handy for the Amazon “About the Author” section. Mine is 99 words long, is chunked into two paragraphs for easy reading, and mentions two of my novels (though both are currently unpublished. I would recommend having a “generic” bio that doesn’t assume your book title(s) are nearby, as mine are in my Amazon bio). You’ll find you’ll need this description for author bio sections on Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, Librarything, ScribD, and many more sites.
  • A long bio
    Your medium bio will probably be your workhorse. However, I’ve seen interesting one-two punches on authors’ personal sites where they have both a short and long form. The more interesting the author, the more likely–and useful–a long bio might be. Use your best judgment: if you write spy novels and have twenty years of experience as a CIA operative, you can get away with 400 words on yourself. But probably not if you write cookbooks.
  • Awards and  testimonials
    Have your testimonials and award nominations ready. Check spelling, dates, and facts. If you are lucky enough to have multiple awards or testimonials, arrange them according to impact or length; you may not have the luxury of using them all.

Your Records
This is a little nerdy, but I have a .txt file of all the URLs that matter to my career or to my books. There are many occasions when you may want to include in an email or blog post not just the URLs where readers can buy your books but also your Goodreads profile, a positive reader review, or a place readers can review/rate your book directly.

Here’s an excerpt:

AMAZON/KINDLE
[Author page]        http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00642SZQO
[Three Shorts]       http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0062OM416
[Hard Way]           http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0062OMHD6
[Match]              http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0062OMGBY
[Kind]               http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0062OMW9A

The primary objectives here are convenience and accuracy: you don’t want to have to Google your own Amazon page or try to type these things from memory with the chance that you’ll screw it up and send valuable readers to a “404 Not Found”.

(Again, I use a text file to avoid unnecessary errors; since you’ll often be using this text file to copy and paste links into websites, don’t take a chance that hidden word processor formatting will mess up your links.)

(Also, make sure you keep the “http://” in the URL.: many sites do not add it for you, with the result that if you copy and paste just the “www.” part of the URL into an input box, for instance, it will error.)

Your Sites
As a former IT professional, I can tell you that this next piece of advice is normally a security no-no: keeping your usernames and passwords written out. But let’s face it: you’re going to have a half-dozen or more (maybe many more) accounts related to your writing career and its promotion that have nothing to do with your “regular” online life.

I didn’t have any of these accounts before I started epublishing:

  • WordPress
  • Web host and (separate) email address
  • Amazon KDP/Author Central/Amazon Affiliate
  • Smashwords
  • B&N
  • Wattpad
  • Scribd
  • Goodreads
  • Librarything
  • Twitter (separate from personal)
  • MeetUp
  • Bit.ly
  • Bing Webmaster Tools
  • Kindleboards
  • MailChimp/Constant Contact/TinyLetter (mail programs)
  • A half-dozen writer-centric accounts that existed before the epublishing jazz began (Sisters In Crime, Mystery Writers of America, Virginia Writers Club, etc.)

Many of them can use the same user/password combo, but others have different requirements. With this kind of madness, I ignore my inner IT Manager and keep accounts listed in a document* on a secure site with one strongpassword (a capital letter, a number, a symbol, and a minimum of eight characters,). As a backup, the passwords in the document are also just strong hints for myself, not fully written out.

This saves me immense time when I’m trying to do promotion: I don’t want to waste time and energy trying to find or remember my Twitter, Facebook, and website password to promote a simple blog post.

 *I treat sites that deal with my financials [Amazon KDP, where you have payment info] differently. I do not list these in the master document I describe above.

Your Results
This section is entirely up to you, but I find it handy to have a spreadsheet of any part of the promotion process that is iterative. For instance, I have a spreadsheet of all the book bloggers/reviewers I’ve discovered and keep running tabs on: Name, Date Contacted, Date Submitted, Queue (i.e., wait time), email, blog URL, Affiliations (do they blog for a group or just themselves), and Notes.

For my blog posts, I keep a running tally of the Title, Date Posted, and whether it was a Guest Blogpost or not. You get the picture. Anything you might likely lose track of is often best kept in a worksheet.

Summary
With promotion being a large chunk (some might say the larger chunk) of an epublished author’s job, keeping well-written, carefully constructed information about yourself and your books accurate, up-to-date, and accessible saves time…time better spent writing the next book.

Agents: Needle, meet haystack. Haystack, needle. Part Two

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(This is Part Two of a blog post about the basics of finding an agent. Read Part One here.)

Casting the Net
If you want to start gathering agent names for that magical day when you start your submissions, I would suggest reading every page of www.agentquery.com and subscribing to Publisher’s Marketplace (http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/) to learn the etiquette, understand the markets, and find lists of active agents. Bear in mind that you only want to query agents in your genre; blitzing agents in all fields is seen as poor form and word does get around.

While querying is the traditional method for finding an agent, I found that meeting agents and getting requests for my manuscript was much easier by attending conferences. Agents are there to scout for talent and can get a feel for your work just through conversation.

Be aware that these agents might (I stress might) be young, inexperienced, or on a loosing streak. Super-successful agents are busy making deals, you might assume, not attending conferences. But this certainly isn’t always the case…do your homework on the sites mentioned above, find the agents that sound right for you, and go to the conferences they do. There are plenty of agents that simply like discovering new talent and you might be the next one (though see my suggestions for conduct, #3, below).

Acting the Part

  1. You need to be exacting, courteous, and above all, professional in your contact with agents. You will read agent horror stories of opening submissions with glitter in them, or written in blood (for a horror novel) or with pages turned upside down to see if the return rejection was read. Trawl through agents websites for their submission requirements. Understand that their wish is your command, down to type face, font size, margin width, email and attachment style. You do not have a say in the matter. You are, let’s face it, a supplicant at this stage. You’ll have to act like one.

  2. You must work on your query letter like you worked on the first chapter of your novel. There are whole books out there dedicated to the query letter. While you don’t have to drive yourself nuts over it, due diligence is required. Borrow those books from the library and study.

  3. If you meet an agent in person at a conference or otherwise in a setting conducive to writing (and I’m not talking about stalking the agent of your dreams and waylaying them at the gas station), do everything in your power to be normal. Real difficult, huh? Well, spend some time at writers’ conferences and you’ll see just how hard this is for a lot of people.

    It can’t be stressed enough that meeting an agent face to face benefits both of you immensely (you don’t want to work with a jerk, they don’t want to represent a lunatic), but only if you are courteous, professional, and amenable. Don’t shove your credentials in their face, don’t mention the title of your manuscript every second breath, don’t laugh at everything they say. If you’re at a conference or seminar, understand that they aren’t there by accident, they’re there because they are looking for talent. If you interest them–even marginally–as a person, they are incredibly likely to ask you for your manuscript. Three hours spent at the bar at Bouchercon is worth 100 unsolicited submissions.

    But it will only happen if you don’t act like an idiot or a used-car salesman.

Red flags
There are a ton of scammers out there. Protect yourself from the get-go by educating yourself and being aware of what an agent does, how they make their money, and what they owe you in return. Supplicant you might be, but you become a client once that contract is signed.

There are good sites out there to help the author just starting out:

When speaking with a prospective agent, beware of:

  1. Agents asking for a reading fee – no reputable agent charges to read work
  2. Referrals – don’t listen to anyone who thinks your work is great but thinks it could benefit from a “book doctor” or editor whose name, number, and email address they just happen to have handy.
  3. Fees or payment that are higher (or radically different) than the generally universal 15% of royalty
  4. Wants to represent anything other than your domestic print rights (unless they have demonstrable experience in film, TV, overseas rights)
  5. Not always bad, but no wins or sales in the last year (or ever). If they’re young and are just starting out, they won’t have a track record and that’s understandable (even desirable, as they’ll be hungry), but they should be honest and forthcoming about that. If they’ve been in the business for 12 years and haven’t sold anything for a while, not good.

And that sums up my aggregate knowledge on finding an agent. If there’s one message here, it’s that this knowledge was gained over time by looking for it. It might be incomplete, wrong, or not for you. Continue the hunt yourself, be educated, draw your own conclusions, and share with the community.