C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

See all my books at AllThatChazz.com.

07/17/2010 • 1:56 PM 1

Why You Need an Editor

I recently attended a publishing conference where someone spoke at length about how bookstore staff identify self-published books by ISBN quirks. I can tell you with certainty, when there is prejudice against self-published books, it’s not because anybody’s eyeing the ISBN. It’s because many—okay, I’ll say it—most self-published books look unprofessional. (And by unprofessional, I mean they look like crap.)

The common complaint about self-published books and ebooks is that they are poorly edited. Characters change names. Spelling and grammar go awry. Narrative threads get lost permanently. Every manuscript has its problems. These problems bother readers. Errors take the reader out of the story and hurt your professional credibility.

But hiring your own editor is not just mandatory for self-published authors burning to get their ebook out. When the economy went crazy, publishing houses fired much of their editing staff. For instance, I worked for a publisher with several lines of defence: acquiring editors, line editors, copy editors, and three walls of proofreaders. Now? Publishers still have acquiring editors, but they’ve cut back on the rest of the staff drastically. Yes, traditional houses still have editors, but they have far fewer of them. How much time and attention do you think your book will really get? There’s a math question easily solved.

Every publishing outlet, from newspapers to books, has less defence against typos and errors in execution. You see it every day. That’s why more authors—both traditional and non, ebook and pbook, published and non—are hiring editors to help with the heavy lifting. Editors make any book or manuscript better.

Whether yours is a manuscript or any finished book, it needs editing or no one will take you seriously. Consider hiring an editor for your project. A freelance editor’s work will enhance your chances of becoming published and reduce errors in the final product. Once your manuscript is out there to be submitted (or once the book is on the shelves) you can’t pull those errors out.

Your Aunt Betsy will delight in pointing out your every error. And she’ll be pretty damn smug about it.

Filed under: Editors, publishing, self-publishing, writing tips, editing, hiring an editor

07/17/2010 • 1:00 PM 0

Who Should Self-Publish?

I recently had a discussion with a client who looked down on self-publishing. He saw it as an exercise in vanity. That was true for a long time, but not anymore. In fact, Google has made instant ebooks a reality, and not just for frustrated writers who can’t get published through traditional publishing houses. If you can get an agent and an editor with a traditional house, the common wisdom is that from now until the clock runs out in about five years, that’s still the best way to go for most projects.*

However, self-publishing is right for a lot of people. There is one group for whom it is essential. If you’re a professional speaker, you need to be talking at the front of the room and sell your books at the back of the room. If you leverage the marketing platform you already have, you keep more of the profit and cut out a middle man. Also, the middle man has committees and hoops for you and your brilliant idea to jump through. The client was shocked to find the book project could take one to two years to make it to publication (if it were accepted immediately.) Even if a project is identified as a winner, each publisher has budgetary restraints that can hold up publication. They can’t publish every book they’ve identified as saleable in one year.

The client wants to speak professionally, but still wants to go the traditional route. Fortunately, he has a solid contact with a publishing house. Had he not, I would have pushed harder for him to self-publish. As it is, I’ll be helping him put together a killer book proposal so he’ll have a book to sell as he works the room and works his magic.

If you already have a platform (or stage) from which to sell, DIY is the best way to go. Publishers are offering authors less and less. They offer tinier advances than ever, unambitious promotion, and less editing than ever. Traditional publishers have diminished themselves to distribution networks. Once the distribution becomes less relevent, what credibility they add will be largely be forgotten as well.

The publishing people I know all say, “We have to learn from the mistakes the music industry made.” That’s true. But that’s where that conversation ends. Either they don’t know what mistakes the music industry made, or the analogy doesn’t bear up across the two industries.

*Self-publishing is also the ideal route for a memoir that’s meant for a small audience (e.g. your family) or for some projects that are distinctly regional if you have a platform.

YOUR NEXT QUESTION:

How do I build a platform?

A BRIEF ANSWER (AND MORE LINKS)

Filed under: publishing, self-publishing, Speeches, platforms, publishing, self-publishing

07/17/2010 • 12:08 AM 0

How to Hire a Speechwriter (and how Power Point fails you)

A well-crafted speech can sell you, your company, a new strategy, your book or your message. As you make the speech your own, practicing and practicing, you’ll make small adjustments along the way. Ideally, your speechwriter will have enough interaction with you that the speech will sound much the way you talk, but better.

speechwriting

Speechwriting is a specific skill tying marketing to information and persuasion (and usually entertainment.)

The speechwriter may do some research related to your project, but generally, you or your company will be providing the core information. And you’ll need to provide lots of it. I’ve written half-hour to hour speeches. For one coherent message, I had to read through dozens of documents and interview one or more people to arrive at the content to be delivered.

Before you pick up the phone to call a speechwriter, the most important question to answer will be this: what is your core purpose for this speech? Every speech must communicate value, but who is your audience and why are you talking to them? Is this a membership drive for your organization? Is this a review of the deliverables you’ve provided to stockholders and stakeholders? Are you asking for money? Are you demonstrating how the money you were given was wisely spent? Are you proposing a new project or a new direction for your organization? Who are you trying to persuade and what do you want the audience’s take away to be?*

Shocker 1: Don’t depend on Power Point templates. They lock you into an outline that won’t suit your presentation.

Shocker 2: Don’t depend on Power Point to do all the work. The speech and how well you deliver it comes first. Power Point is not your speech. It is an accessory.

Shocker 3: They call it death by bullet point. Your Power Point slides should be mostly cartoons and pictures that accessorize your brilliant speech.

Shocker 4: Many good speakers do well without bothering with Power Point. Many poor speakers read their Power Point deck to the audience, turning their backs to the group. They lose their audience because the people in the chairs can read faster than you can speak.

What about fees? My fee for an hour presentation is $4,000 (not including Power Point.) Typically, one speech is delivered repeatedly and once I deliver the final product, it’s yours forever. Speechwriting is heady stuff. It’s the most exciting corporate work I do. Unlike unread pages at the back of an annual report, speeches can change things (laws, membership numbers, policy, income, and even minds.) If you have a speech you want crafted contact me about your project here.)

How to help your speechwriter:

A. Provide the fodder for the content. Your company or association has research. Make it all available to your writer and when he calls to ask a silly question, make time to answer that question. Remember, your writer is in the business of making you look great in front of a room of important people (whether you’re brilliant or not.)

B. For a great speech, give lots of warning to your writer. Long deadlines make for better speeches.

C. Whoever is to deliver the speech should probably be the contact person for the speechwriter. There are exceptions to this guideline, but please keep in mind a speech edited by a committee is like a horse put together by committee. You get a camel.

*The take away is the one core message the audience will be talking about when they get into the parking lot. They won’t remember much. Whatever the take away is, you want that part to be especially memorable. The most amazing speeches will only have two or three things that stick (and one of those things will be your best joke.)

Filed under: Speeches, speechwriting, hiring a speechwriter, speechwriting

07/16/2010 • 12:44 PM 0

Book Events in Non-Traditional Venues

If you have a book to promote–or plan to have a book to promote–you need to read this article from Huffington Post on holding book events in non-traditional venues.

Filed under: Publicity & Promotion, publishing, book promotion, book signings

07/16/2010 • 12:27 PM 0

How to Blog on Vacation (and what does evergreen mean?)

blogging on vacation

Don’t blog on vacation. That’s why it’s called vacation. Here are some blogging options.

I just had the longest vacation since I was 12, a five-province tour of eastern Canada in which the blog missed not one beat. I updated my Twitter feed on the blog daily so there was always fresh content and useful links. (Twitter is fun and takes so little time, I don’t count it against vacation time. In fact, finding a place to steal WiFi was especially fun.)

The easiest thing to do is write your blog posts before your vacation begins and schedule them ahead of time. You don’t have to publish all your posts immediately. Stretch them out into the future so while you’re lying on a towel on a beach, the blog is updating itself according to your schedule. Seem like too much? It’s not really. Some days you’ll be struck with inspiration and will want to write more than one post. Bank the evergreen* articles.

Next option, get a ghost. Lots of writers are glad to write an article for you, either as a gust blogger or as a paid writer. Company blogs employ professional writers all the time (though this isn’t technically ghosting. It falls into the category of corporate communications, no matter how breezy a company may want a blog to sound.) If you have a following, a guest blog entry is a nice way for new bloggers to have their voice heard, with links back to their own blog, of course.

There are several options. Don’t blog on vacation. You never want your blog to feel like work. That’s why I can say, “Glad to be back!”

*An evergreen article is a post that is not time-sensitive. The latest drop in a particular stock on the Nasdaq is not evergreen. A timeless post on your feelings about your grandmother’s Holocaust experience is evergreen.

Filed under: blogs & blogging, Twitter, blog scheduling, blogging, vacation

07/16/2010 • 3:30 AM 0

Hemingway’s Shortest Story

For Sale. Baby shoes. Never used.

Filed under: Writers

07/16/2010 • 2:44 AM 0

Disturbing Poetry

The following is not for the easily offended. Or the sane. But you? Yeah, sicko, you might groove on this. Now take your medication.

Behind you

I focus on the space between people,

never seeing eye-to eye.

My position is always peripheral.

People say I’m way too shy.

But I am watching

especially when you think I’m not.

I’m stealing smiles and taking names

and trying not to get caught.

I’m surfing the net and hacking your man.

I stay to the shadows, surveilling things,

watching you undress and making plans.

It’s like dead to alive, the rush that brings.

You should leave him

or you’ll wish you had.

I’ll treat you right, hardly ever bad.

I’ll help you get there and make you see.

That man is doing very bad deeds,

worse even than me.

He disgusts me, knelt behind you,

sweating and gritting and looking grim.

Lucky for you, I’m just behind him.

I know you’ll understand my sweet thoughts

and why he really had to be stopped.

He only wanted you for your body

and doing things real ladies know are naughty.

Please don’t scream and stop the cursing

or my transgressions shall certainly worsen.

What do you mean you don’t know who I am?

I’ve rung up your filthy purchases again and again.

Pepsi and condoms and personal lubricant.

Don’t say you didn’t flirt with the drugstore man!

You looked me in the eyes

and didn’t look away.

You gave me a smile and said thank you.

What else was there to say?

You sent me coded messages in sheer blouse fashion.

Now we’re together forever in crimes of passion.

You have bound me in irredeemable love.

I proved it by the sticky blood on my gloves.

And I have bound you in duct tape and leather

one garroted boyfriend on the floor

and a four-poster awaits our mutual pleasure.

Too much has been done

for any more to be said.

Now lick your lips, darling, red and wet.

I’ve come for your head.

Filed under: Poetry, poetry

07/15/2010 • 9:19 AM 2

Your Favorite Books

On being well-read…that’s all subjective but I recently saw a list of 100 books–classics we should have read by now according to…someone. I read two or three books a week and have done so for years, but apparently not so much from the list designated as most worthwhile by Central Command.

I have read a lot of “classics” (whatever that’s supposed to mean to you) I suppose and there were a bunch from the Top 100 List I was really glad I had read. I loved The Great Gatsby and Crime and Punishment and Lolita, for instance. But I won’t be making a point of reading some of what someone else has decided is a must. I tried Middlemarch and it’s not my cup of pee. It’s just not happening. It was a ghastly foray among some bookstore shelves.

Besides, many of the Must Reads for me wouldn’t be old enough for The List. I love Fight Club and most of Kurt Vonnegut’s work and Bright Lights, Big City. You won’t find The Color of Light on anybody’s top 100 probably, but for my reading time, William Goldman is The Shit, man. (Princess Bride, too.) The Color of Light is about an aspiring writer so, you know, that makes sense, plus it hit me at just the right time.

So…top 100 is a bit impractical,but what’s on your top ten must-read, God-I-loved-that-book list? What’s on your desert island list? Please do share.

Filed under: book reviews, Books, favorite books

07/15/2010 • 9:12 AM 0

Conflicting Writing Advice

I’m reading Thanks But This Isn’t for Us, a development editor’s (AKA The Angel of Death*) take on why your manuscript sucks. Her suggestions on openings to avoid are very useful.

When I was evaluating the slush pile, there were an inordinate number of manuscripts–all rejected–that began with somebody getting up in the morning, describing themselves in the mirror and making coffee. Second most common thing? Boarding an airplane for The Big Trip. It could work but I never saw it play well in those submissions.

Wrinkle: Now the fiction market is so tight, publishers aren’t just rejecting bad manuscripts. Now they’re turning down a lot of good stuff. There’s only so much money to publish so many books in any one budget year.

Back to Thanks…she advocates “beautiful language.” I wonder if she’s focussing on so-called literary fiction there. I just read two translations from European authors that were definitely literary, but the language was very plain and cut down, even minimalist. I don’t think there were more than two adjectives in either book. Meanwhile, I’ve read about two MFA programs, one eschewing “beautiful language” and the other praising only fiction that employs poetic language. (Maya Angelou thinks it’s not good writing unless it’s hard to read. I disagree.)

This is why you must write for yourself and find someone who appreciates it after the deed is done.

*Angel of Death…you know…maybe we need to ease back on the throttle on hyperbolic language around writing. Sure, you want it to be good, but it’s also just writing. Too often people talk about it like it’s a secret language that only a few geniuses can learn. Successful authors are very very persistent and very very lucky. Nobody talks about the luck involved in getting through the razor wire and fine mesh of some underpaid, otherwise unemployable editorial assistant’s capricious sensibilities. I think I can say that because I was that otherwise unemployable douche who turned your masterpiece down.

Filed under: book reviews, writing tips, book reviews, writing advice

07/14/2010 • 9:01 AM 0

How I Became a Famous Novelist

Not me. The book. The book is How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely. It is the novel you MUST buy–and yes I know capital letters in a post are obnoxious and mean I’m screaming at you. But it’s that funny and that pointed. It’s that good. You need to own it and suck it down.

Publishers, overly earnest and sentimental writers (published and non), Hollyweird, MFA programs, lit journals, bestsellerdumb! It’s all here and you will laugh and then you’ll think. There’s enough truth behind the jokes to make you feel like you’re not sure you should laugh, like the author is making you giggle so you’ll let down your guard as he slips a shiv between your ribs and gives it a half twist.

There is a lot of great criticism of the way things are in this novel–so much in fact that when you finally close the book at four in the morning you’ll be puzzled at how much is satire. There is a slight pullback and redemption after all the hijinks, and I’m not sure I believe the transcendence. Maybe the author really means what he says for most of the book. His criticisms of publishing are hard to fault. If it’s a test of reader cynicism, I failed.

Please do read it and you’ll see what I mean. PLEASE!