02/18/2011 • 5:00 AM 2
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I love my AlphaSmart Neo! Here are a few other things for writers to love, thanks to Conjuring My Muse. Enjoy her list. I did.
Filed under: book reviews, Books, links, publishing, Writers, writing tips, AlphaSmart, Arts, things writers love, Writers Resources
02/17/2011 • 5:15 AM 1
@RChazzChute
The other day I was feeling feisty and I said something about DIY on Twitter (full of bravado):
Burned bridges with a blog I wrote tonight. Fuck the bridge. I’ll swim. Go indie. Live free or die hard.
Someone shot back with a sarcastic:
Proudly alienate those who are not your fans. Awesome.
Well…yeah. People who don’t get me are not my fans. Why should I chase people who don’t like me for me? I have a particular voice and point of view, in my fiction and non-fiction and my blog, that will appeal to you or it won’t. If it doesn’t, no hard feelings and I hope you find something you do enjoy. However, when I dilute my voice, I lose the little tribe I have and any hope of real fans in the future. I’ve heard the quote attributed to a couple of celebrities, but basically it goes like this:
Which brings us to my personal icon for all things indie, director Kevin Smith. For years, he argued with people who didn’t love him. If you look at his old tweets, he had a serious anger (and sometimes still does) for media, critics and haters. He would do battle with them and, despite all his success and wealth, would still end up arguing with some loser living in his parents’ basement. People who complained about what he did in his career—sometimes about everything he attempted—really bothered him. (Think on that a second: Some people wouldn’t even give him credit for getting something right once in a while even by accident!) Mr. Smith engaged in flame wars while his lovely wife looked on perplexed saying, “You have a wonderful life and live in a mansion! Why do you care?”
Mr. Smith is more relaxed now. Part of his new attitude is the prodigious amount of weed he smokes, but it’s not just that. He’s been successful for so long that he recognizes the pattern: People who are haters don’t do much else. People who don’t write will tell you how to write. People who can’t do, don’t teach. They snipe and snark.
You don’t find your audience so much as your audience finds you. As you try to build your platform and reach out to express your art, you’re going to dredge up some people who are pissed you aren’t what they’re looking for. We don’t do this with things other than art. You don’t go to the pharmacy and get pissed off because they don’t have coconuts in stock. You go to the grocery store for coconuts instead.
Do what you do. Write what you write. Define your voice through your expression and remember that it is your voice. I think harsh critics think they own your art (even if they haven’t paid a dime for it) because, unlike those coconuts, they take what you write into themselves. That doesn’t mean they own it, though. And they certainly don’t own you. They can react to it. They can criticize it. They can argue with it. They can move on (which makes the most sense.)
What does matter is your core audience. Now if you write and write and produce and put your stuff out there and very few people are feeling any love for it, that’s a different problem. However, if your core audience can be built big enough, that’s all you need. You don’t have to go chasing after the people who are running away from you. No one gets universal acceptance. Don’t even try for it. Expect obstacles and naysayers and pay little or no attention to them if you can. For everything you love, for everything you think is the best, there are millions of people who sneer and call it shit.
Check the comments on any book you love on Amazon.com. See all those nasty reviews? Now, do you really love that book any less because some guy you don’t know thinks it’s the worst thing on earth since the rise of Hitler and Pottery Barn?
Now is the time for all good indies to stand up. You now have the technology in your hands to let your unique voice be heard. You can be read when, just a short time ago, gatekeepers could hold you back. There are no gatekeepers anymore. You don’t have to approach publishing or film or any other art as if you’re going to The Man for a job! You can employ yourself and deploy yourself. You can Crowd Source your financing or convince a fan of your blogged fiction to spend a few bucks for an e-book that costs nothing to distribute. You can grow your fan base without old media’s distribution system and middle man percentages. You can be the boss if you want to be. Your art doesn’t have to wait and you don’t have to ask permission. Make your art and see who shows up. Whoever shows up and stays is your audience.
Remember Chili Palmer in Get Shorty? Some guy tells him how easy it is to write a screenplay. “We can do this…we can do that…” Chili lights a smoke and says, “It’s really that easy? Then I got one question. What do I need you for?”
Not sure how to proceed? Resolve to ask questions, learn and try.
When you mess up, resolve to begin again.
Oh, and the person who felt alienated by my Twitter post? I saved her some trouble. I agreed with her.
Then, in honor of Kevin Smith’s fine example, I didn’t just block that bitch. I KA-blocked her.
Filed under: publishing, self-publishing, Twitter, Writers, writing tips, Art, books, building your platform, Do it yourself, fan base, fanboy, Film, finding your audience, finding your voice, haters, inspiration, inspire, inspire others, Kevin Smith, Social Networking, Twitter
02/16/2011 • 11:45 AM 1
Yesterday I blogged about The Writers’ Union of Canada and that particular post wasn’t altogether complimentary. In fact, I proposed that if they didn’t open up their membership criteria to self-published authors, an indie union could be formed.
I hope that isn’t necessary since it could duplicate effort across platforms and dilute the voice of the writing profession. (However, if the self-published aren’t represented at all…hm. I won’t get sucked into a rehash. If you missed it, read, cogitate, plot and plan.)
But I’m all about the balance. For instance, I complained in a long ago post that TWUC’s judging of one year’s short story competition…well, it sucked. I’ve also been very complimentary with regard to their most recent symposium in Toronto (that also went on tour across Canada.)
This video on Canada’s proposed copyright law is an example of one of the good things unions can do to deal with The Man. The education provision does appear too broad and is a detriment to writers who are, as the legislation is written, voluntold to give up recompense for their work.
Chazz Definition: To have your services, product and/or time volunteered by someone other than you who has no business telling you what to do with your services, product and/or time.
(e.g. “I can’t order you on a suicide mission but I need five volunteers to storm that machine gun nest. You, you, you, you and you, go! You’ve been voluntold. A grateful nation honors your blah, blah, blah…”)
Filed under: authors, Books, Cool Word of the Day, publishing, Rant, self-publishing, Writers, Writing Conferences, Arts, authors, Copyright, Publish, self-publish, Writers Resources, Writers' Union of Canada
02/16/2011 • 5:11 AM 5
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Editing is often intuitive. I could tell you, for instance, which usage is correct, but I couldn’t tell you why. It came up with a project and I got curious. Then I went to the Chicago Manual of Style. Here’s why for this one:
When two people are involved, the best way to write it is, “They looked at each other.” When it’s more than two people (or things, for that matter) use “one another.”
The distinction becomes clearer with things: “His eyesight was so poor that when he looked to the bowling pins standing at the end of the lane, they were just a soft white mass. Dave couldn’t distinguish one from another.” (That’s right.)
“Each other” in a group hits the reader’s eyes and ears wrong and they may not know why. (This is one reason reading aloud as you edit can be such a powerful trick of the trade.)
It’s not a big deal unless you’re a word nerd or getting paid to edit something. However, usually, if you write a passage that hits the reader wrong or makes them go back, there’s something quirky there that needs another look.
Filed under: Books, Editing, Editors, manuscript evaluation, publishing, rules of writing, Writers, writing tips, Chicago Manual of Style, Copy editing, each other versus one another, edit, editing, language usage, Style guide
02/16/2011 • 5:00 AM 1
I’ve spoken with several publishers on this topic. They knew they shouldn’t do what the music industry did (i.e. sue their own customers) but that’s typically where the thought process ended. At a writing conference I recently attended, there were a lot of worried writers. They worried that someone would steal their stuff.
Don’t worry about it.
It’s either:
1. pretty rare (maybe it’s not good enough to bother stealing—uh-oh!),
OR
2. the people who steal it are power users and curators who are going to read more of your stuff and pay for it and the related products and services you sell (so be prolific and imaginative),
OR
3. the pirates are scum who never pay for anything anyway so the sale isn’t really lost. If they weren’t stealing your stuff, they’d be stealing someone else’s stuff instead. (Don’t waste time or base your business model on the lowest common denominator douche.)
Maybe that’s counter-intuitive, but I’d rather concern myself with factors I can control rather than worry about things I cannot control.
Free not only can work, giving to get often does work. You can hide your light under a bushel or put it out there so more people can find it. Scott Sigler built a bestselling franchise, for instance. So did Cory Doctorow, and the list of authors who embrace free and easy access is growing.
Repurpose what you write so more people can find you (and find you interesting.) The churning of information raises sales.
There are some instances of publishers stealing work, but it’s a rare anecdote, especially in an era where, with Google, stolen material is so easy to find. I’ve found a few things stolen from my features and columns in magazines. Usually it’s a case of someone on the other end who is clueless rather than malicious. We just ask that they attribute the material so I get credit and make sure a link back to the source is included. That’s the basis of the Creative Commons model. It’s not really a big deal.
What people forget is, though e-books and web bits are easy to snatch, so is a regular old paper book. When I worked at Harlequin, foreign knockoffs happened often in the Chinese and French romance markets.) The text was stolen and lousy covers were slapped on the books. All they needed was a photocopier. Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy.
Consider this: put some or all of your book up on your website (using whatever model you choose: a taste, weekly podcast-a-chapter meal or the whole feast at once) and you’ve got proof of ownership in every time stamp.
Filed under: authors, Books, Publicity & Promotion, publishing, Writers, American Gods, book, books, Cory Doctorow, Creative Commons, e-books, Neil Gaiman, piracy, Scott Sigler
02/15/2011 • 5:30 AM 8
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We started off The Writer’s Union of Canada symposium with the presenter announcing, “Self-publishing is mainstream!” Dead on and right on, brother! Come to Jesus! Most of the day was dedicated to authors taking hold of their careers, navigating through the logistics of self-publishing and going indie. As I’ve mentioned in several posts since, it was a great event filled with exciting information that went deep. The kick in the nuts didn’t come until the end of the day.
As we wrapped things up with questions to the presenters, someone asked if she qualified to join The Writers’ Union of Canada. Nope. It looked by the show of hands that about half of the attendees (at least) were not TWUC members, but they couldn’t join to lend their voice to Canadian professional writers. Publishers decide who is traditionally published and only if you are traditionally published does TWUC recognize you as a candidate for the union. (Yes, there’s an appeals process in which a committee could decide your worthiness on a case-by-case basis, but I didn’t get the feeling that opened a lot of doors for the great unwashed.*)
There are people within the union who want to change this, but there is resistance. Despite all the DIY enthusiasm and knowledge of self-publishing displayed at the symposium, so far it seems the only writers the union recognizes are — and will be for the foreseeable future — the traditionally published. The concern, they say, is about quality. I’ll grant you many self-published books suck. They often are not edited or are not edited well. (In fact, I wrote a blog post not long ago entitled Why self-publishing sucks (and what you can do about it.)
However, the larger point is, you don’t professionalize a group by shutting them out. You raise the standard by bringing them in. Amateurs often become professionals by mentoring and community interaction. Self-publishers can also bring a lot to the table. Many DIY authors will have a lot of information and support to share when many trad authors switch to independent publishing. (Gasp! We talk and share and know things, too! Imagine that!)
Here’s a secret: quality is a myth. You don’t use traditional publishers as gatekeepers. Not anymore. You already refuse to read much of what they publish. You have your unique tastes. You use curators you trust to let you know about a great book to read. Anyone reading this post could name several books traditionally published that, according to their lights, do not constitute “quality.” It’s all, trad or indie, subjective. Do I have to remind anyone that The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis was rejected by trad publishing? That book only saw the light of day (and won the Stephen Leacock Award and CBC’s Canada Reads contest) because Fallis self-published first.
The presenters were not necessarily against letting self-published writers in. They seemed to say that it was the system that was slow on the uptake. “It’s an evolution,” said one.
Yeah? Since we spent the day talking about the publishing revolution, maybe we should splice some DNA and catch up!
“Apply anyway,” another presenter advised. “If they (meaning the admissions committee) get enough applications, maybe they’ll be moved.”
Bewildered, one participant asked, “Why wouldn’t you be proactive and lead” by going ahead and accepting self-published authors? Good question. I asked him if he wanted to be president of a new self-published writers union. He grinned and said, “Sure!” The presenter looked at me with…was that disdain?
Opening up the TWUC membership means a larger, more powerful and better-financed union. Look at the Romance Writers of America. If you’re interested and actively pursuing a writing career, you’re in. That is a big tent that’s open to anyone interested in romance books. They’re big enough they could stand up to their biggest sponsor (Harlequin) when necessary.
A powerful union filled with fresh blood and entrepreneurial, proactive people makes a small union into a big (and relevant) union.
But why should you care? What’s the alternative? Well…I’m not trying to start anything here, but since TWUC isn’t being especially proactive, there is a huge opportunity to start up a union for self-published writers. If you’re DIY, you could join, hold events, help with disputes, etc.,… Oh, and get some fucking respect.
I’m not saying we should. I’m saying we could if TWUC continues at a glacial pace while the old media models implode around them. The crazy part is there are forces within TWUC that agree. Apparently there aren’t enough of those like-minded individuals on the admissions committee. We could unionize. Should we? There are benefits, though if TWUC loosens up we wouldn’t have to invent that wheel.
Maybe they better move before you take the idea of a Self-published Writers of Canada and run with it. (SWOC? Nah, that’s the Steel Workers.) Shutting out the self-published is a major tactical error considering the self-published are a determined group of people who don’t take kindly asking permission to do things. We are all about git ‘er done, DIY ASAP.
Brain food, comrade. If they aren’t as forward-thinking as their own symposium, they could go from The Writers’ Union of Canada to A Writers’ Union of Canada.
*Alternatives? Where you live, there’s some kind of association of varying applicability to your writing career, amiability and varying strength.
Here’s a list of links which is by no means comprehensive: The Canadian Authors Association, the Editors Association of Canada and the Periodical Writers Association of Canada, the Horror Writers Association, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, SF Canada, Crime Writers Association (UK), Crime Writers of Canada, Mystery Writers of America and the aforementioned Romance Writers of America . Check each association’s membership criteria and see if their goals match your own. Another aspect to consider is how active each organization is in your area.
Tomorrow’s posts: If you’re up early, a style ruling on when to use “each other” instead of “one another” (well, never ‘use’ another human being) and at 11:45 EST, one of the good things The Writers’ Union of Canada is trying to do. You know me, I’m all about the yin/yang balance of the universe.
Filed under: authors, Books, DIY, ebooks, getting it done, publishing, Rant, Rejection, self-publishing, Writers, Writing Conferences, Arts, Canada, Do it yourself, Publish, Romance Writers of America, self-publish, self-publisher union, self-publishing, unionize?, Writers' Union of Canada
02/14/2011 • 7:02 AM 12
Whether you write fiction or non-fiction, a mistake-free manuscript looks professional. It gives the reader confidence that they are in good hands. This is so important that publishers employ people specifically to worm out embarrassing errors so that the reader trusts what is on the page. I used to be one of them. But as we increasingly do it all ourselves, some howlers are getting through.
And not just typos. In self-published books, on blog posts, newsletters – and indeed query letters – there are four mistakes I see often that can seriously undermine the writer’s credibility:
The other day I came across a post on a blog I respect that referred to the heroine of the Tomb Raider game as ‘Lora Croft’. In editing circles, it’s a golden rule that if you use a name, you check it is spelled correctly. Then you check that when you typed it your fingers did what your brain wanted. ‘Lora Croft’ may have been an innocent typo but it makes the writer look like a twit.
Its means ‘belonging to it’.
It’s is short for ‘it is’.
If you’re still confused, ask yourself if you mean ‘it is’. If you don’t, it’s probably the other one. See how easy it’s?
If what you mean is ‘where’, the word you want is ‘there’. You may also use it without any meaning of its own in a sentence such as ‘if I see this mistake again there will be blood’. If you mean ‘belonging to them’, you need ‘their’. So there.
A horse has reins. A monarch reigns. You can have a reign of terror, but daily I see: ‘so-and-so took over the reigns of power’. This is wrong. They are speaking figuratively of leather straps that steer – and so the correct word is ‘reins’. I also see ‘we had to reign in our spending’. That refers to an act of braking – which is done with a rein. Nay, nay, nay.
Roz Morris
Roz Morris is an editor, book doctor, bestselling ghostwriter. Now she’s coming out from under the sheet with novels of her own. She blogs, slightly less bossily, at http://www.nailyournovel.com, tweets as @dirtywhitecandy and is the author of Nail Your Novel – Why Writers Abandon Books and How You Can Draft, Fix and Finish With Confidence.
Find her book on Amazon.com http://ht.ly/3MWBC, outside the US from Lulu http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/nail-your-novel/5301103 and on the Kindle http://www.amazon.com/Nail-Your-Novel-Confidence-ebook/dp/B004LROOEQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&m=A7B2F8DUJ88VZ&s=books&qid=1296691437&sr=1-2
Filed under: authors, Editing, Editors, getting it done, Writers, writing tips, Nail Your Novel, Publish, Roz morris, Typographical error, writer, Writers Resources
02/11/2011 • 3:52 PM 8
Patricia Benesh writes in the Huffington Post about the five questions you should ask yourself before going the self-publishing route.
At Self-publishing Central there’s a blog post about the journey to publication and finding peer support along the way.
Eoin Purcell‘s blog writes about the state of the traditional publishing industry and how it’s not all bad news. In fact, libraries are trending up.
And Jeff Bennington over at The Writing Bomb writes a compelling post evaluating Lightning Source versus Create Space. Do check that out!
Related Articles
Filed under: authors, blogs & blogging, Books, DIY, ebooks, self-publishing, Useful writing links, web reviews, Writers, writing tips, Business, Create Space, Create Space versus Lightning Source, Do it yourself, E-book, Huffington Post, Lightning Source, Publish, publishing, Publishing and Printing, self-publishing, writer, writing
02/11/2011 • 5:24 AM 4
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Firstly, thanks to Robert for allowing me to do a guest post on his blog. This is my very first guest post and I’m thrilled to “be” here!
This is an exciting time to be a writer, full of opportunity and scary possibilities. It’s easy to become paralyzed. I know I felt like that for some time over the past year as I watched the e-book market explode. I knew I wanted to start putting up my back list of pre-published short stories but I wasn’t sure how to go about doing it. I decided to jump right in.
One of the sites I decided to post my work on was Smashwords. According to their website, they claim over one billion words published. That’s a lot of typing!
Of course, the very first step is to create a free account at Smashwords. Make sure to print out and read their publishing agreement. This is true for any site you wish to publish on. When you load up your work, you are effectively acting as your own publisher and need to know what kind of agreement you are making with the site that is acting as a distributor. Take the time to print and read the contract before putting anything up. Remember to take responsibility for your own writing career.
Next I downloaded their free style guide. This guide, written by Smashwords founder Mark Coker, provides a step-by-step manual for formatting your book to meet Smashwords’s requirements.
Once you’ve completed the proper formatting, Smashwords takes your single format file, processes it through their Meatgrinder software and outputs it into approximately 10 separate ebook formats, including ePub, PDF, Mobi (Kindle) and RTF among others. There’s no trying to figure out how to do it yourself. Smashwords’ Meatgrinder does it for you!
I created my cover page and formatted my first short story according to the style guide and I was ready. From the top menu, I choose Publish. This took me to the upload area.
Section 1 “Title & Synopsis” included Title, Short Description (400 characters allowed), Long Description (4,000 characters allowed) and Language of Book with a part for adult content.
Section 2 is Price and Sampling. Unlike Amazon, Smashwords allows for free content, readers set the price (with a note that Barnes & Noble no longer accepts books with this option), or with a price set from a minimum of 0.99 cents or up.
Sampling allowed me to choose the amount of my work available for a reader to download to review before buying. I chose 40% as an option, to give readers a good chance to read my work. I have downloaded e-book samples that don’t even go past the table of contents page before the sample is done. I never got a chance to even taste the author’s writing. That’s not a book I would buy. Sampling is the equivalent of being able to pick up a book and crack it open to take a look at the writing. It’s a good idea to give readers a real opportunity to see if they like your work and also to get hooked on your story. Give them enough to really get into it and they’ll want to buy to find out what happened at the end.
Section 3 is Categories which open up to the right, from general categories to more specific subjects.
Section 4 is Tags that I used to tag my e-books.
Section 5 is eBook Formats and the default is set for all of them. I left all the defaults in place. My thinking is that the more formats, the better for a reader to find one that works for her.
Finally, Section 6 Covers and Section 7 Select File of Book to Publish are where I was able to upload my cover and my e-book file. Section 8 is the Publish button. Once I pressed this, my file was uploaded for processing.
My first e-book took about twenty minutes to upload. Others have taken as long as four to five hours. It seems to depend on how many other books are being uploaded at the same time as yours.
After uploading my first ebook, I created my Smashwords author page under My Smashwords tab. Here I uploaded a photo, a small bio and was able to link to my website, blog, Twitter account, Facebook and LinkedIn. On this page, all of my uploaded e-books are listed with a tag cloud at the bottom of the page.
Smashwords includes a Dashboard tab where you can obsessively track your sales or sample downloads. As one writer suggested online, the best thing to do with e-books is to publish and forget it. It’s very tempting to check on the Dashboard every day or every few hours and become disappointed when you aren’t rivaling Amanda Hocking’s sales. The best cure is to keep writing and keep publishing. The more e-books you have available, the more chance you give the readers to find you and like your work. When that happens, they’ll look for more.
That’s my plan as I continue to move forward into this new world of publishing. And I’m sticking to it!
Rebecca M. Senese is a writer of Horror, Science Fiction & Mystery. Now that you’ve read about how she uploaded to Smashwords, complete your research and go by her stuff!
Website: http://www.RebeccaSenese.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/RebeccaSenese
LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/RebeccaSenese
Blog: http://RebeccaSenese.wordpress.com
Filed under: authors, DIY, ebooks, publishing, self-publishing, Useful writing links, Writers, writing tips, DIY, E-book, Mark Coker, publishing, Rebecca Senese, self-publishing, Smashwords
02/10/2011 • 8:47 PM 1
Cover of The Best Laid Plans
You know what’s really great about this story, right? Mr. Fallis submitted his manuscript to agents and publishers everywhere and was turned down flat.
Next, he podcasted his book.
Then he self-published his book.
That would have been the end of it, but when he won the Stephen Leacock award, finally McClelland & Stewart paid attention.
Now Best Laid Plans is celebrated.
(I wonder, are any of the publishers who passed up on the opportunity to publish the book questioning their judgment today? Of course not. That’s a rhetorical question.)
Shrill British paint guru Debbie Travis defended The Birth House (poorly). She might have fared better if she understood that (a) she should have read all of Best Laid Plans instead of dismissing it with such disdain, and (b) she might even have won if she wasn’t so damn cranky. When she dismissed other contestants’ objections as “ridiculous” I knew she already lost.
The Birth House might be a good book, but after Debbie Travis’s poor representation, I’m sure I’ll never give that one a chance. It’s kind of important to be likeable, even in debate. No, it’s not fair to the author, Ami McKay, (sorry Ms. McKay!) but it’s clear it’s more diatribe than novel.
Note to CBC Radio‘s Q host Jian Ghomeshi: Maybe she’s good for ratings but she’s no good for books. A judge who doesn’t read all of the books, and then has the temerity to condemn it without reading it all, shouldn’t be back on air.
Filed under: authors, Books, Contest announcement, podcasts, Publicity & Promotion, publishing, Rant, self-publishing, writing contests, Ami McKay, Best Laid Plans, Canada Reads, CBC, Debbie Travis, Jian, McClelland & Stewart, Terry Fallis, The Birth House
Winner of Writer's Digest's 2014 Honorable Mention in Self-published Ebook Awards in Genre
The first 81 lessons to get your Buffy on
More lessons to help you survive Armageddon
"You will laugh your ass off!" ~ Maxwell Cynn, author of Cybergrrl
Fast-paced terror, new threats, more twists.
An autistic boy versus our world in free fall
Suspense to melt your face and play with your brain.
Action like a Guy Ritchie film. Funny like Woody Allen when he was funny.
Jesus: Sexier and even more addicted to love.
You can pick this ebook up for free today at this link: http://bit.ly/TheNightMan
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