Tag Archives: writing

Do You Have a Publishing Plan?

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Sometimes it’s difficult to plan what you’re going to cook for dinner much less where you want your writing career to be in five years. But whether you are writing for fun and only plan to write one book a year, if that, or you are planning to write and publish maybe as many as ten books a year, (It can be done. But should it? That’s a different blog post.) a publishing plan can help.

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Setting deadlines is a wonderful way, and sometimes a necessary way, to force yourself to write regularly. Talking about writing is easy. “If I write 1,000 words a day, I can write a book in three months.” That sounds like a piece of cake, but if it were, everyone would do it. When you are a writer, you are your own boss. No one is going to make you get to work. You need the willpower to do that yourself. So when you say you want to write 1,000 words a day, stick with it. But don’t set impossible goals for yourself—you’ll just feel rejected and depressed when you can’t meet them.

A publishing plan can help you with a marketing plan. Are you writing a series? How are you going to publish them? All at once? Three months in between? What websites will you use to promote your books? How will you find reviews? A deadline can help so you can plan to give ARCs to readers who will hopefully review it. Will you contact bloggers to organize a blog tour? All these choices will be made more easily if you have a publishing plan.

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Do you want to add more to your writing resume? Maybe start some freelance work? Or maybe you would like to start an editing service? Maybe that requires taking some editing courses and taking on some pro bono work to gather testimonials of what a great job you would do. If you want to branch out and not sacrifice time for your own work, fitting in extras like these would be easier if you had a plan.

For me, I know what books I want to write for the next little while. I have a lot of ideas for plots that should keep me going for the next couple of years. I beta/edit for people and I’m always researching something about the publishing industry. Right now I’m waiting for a book I want to read about how to effectively use Facebook ads, and I just finished a book about using Amazon ads.

I build time into my schedule to blog, and every day I work a little on my writer’s platform.

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I stumbled upon Kindle Scout, and I’m trying to work into my publishing schedule when I would want to enter the contest and what book I would write to try that with. I also haven’t completely ruled out querying.

I do know that now that I am a better writer (goodbye head hopping and garbage filler) I can write faster. I aim to publish about three books a year.

I like having a plan in place. It keeps me on track and accountable. It’s much too easy to waste time online and be waylaid by low productivity.

Maybe you feel you don’t need a publishing plan. That’s okay. Always write to have fun. I love writing, and a publishing plan isn’t to force me to write and make me feel guilty if I don’t, but it does allow me to look ahead to where my writing will bring me. Because I eventually want to quit my day job.

Where do you want your writing to bring you?

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Where will you be in five years?

Let me know!

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Point of View vs. Head Hopping

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When I hosted my editing #smutchat on Twitter a few weeks ago, I was surprised to learn people were confused between POV and head hopping. I thought I would write a quick refresher on the topic. This will just be an overview because complete books have been written on the subject, and I’ll list my favorite resources at the end of the post.

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When you look up the definition of POV, this is what you’ll find. Essentially, when you talk about characters and writing, point of view is the character’s view and thoughts of the story. When you write in 1st person, you only have one point of view—that of the person who is “I.” Many writers like to write in this way because it’s easier to keep track of characters and plot. You don’t have to worry about who is doing what when because there are the thoughts and actions of only one character. The worry about head hopping is nonexistent because you only have the thoughts of the “I” character.

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Writing in 3rd person is different. That is when you can write in the POV of several characters if you want. A popular example of this is Game of Thrones. Each chapter is written in the POV of a different character, and Game of Thrones has a lot of characters. Some writers do this with their 1st person characters—each “I” has their own chapter, and in this way, the author is allowed to move among characters. I think this is lazy, and be mad at me if you want, but ultimately, if you want the POV of more than one character, you might as well just write in 3rd person. It’s cleaner and reads better.

Anyway, I write romances. Most romances are written in 3rd person, and the point of view alternates between the hero and the heroine. (Some longer romance sub-genres like Chick Lit and Romantic Mysteries will add other POVs, say that of the best friend, or the villain.) Switching between the hero and heroine is fun because we like to know if the characters have different thoughts and feelings about a situation they are both involved in. Like a kiss: He’s swept away by the moment, but she’s grossed out because of his breath.

But switching points of view in this way also means changing scenes or chapters and making sure each character and their thoughts are confined to their specific scene or chapter.

Head hopping occurs when an author starts a scene or chapter with the POV of one character, but then the author slips in thoughts of different characters who are not the owner of the point of view.

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Let’s take a look at a clean POV scene:

Amy pushed her food around her plate. She didn’t understand why her boyfriend’s mother hated her so much. She could feel the woman glaring at her across the table. Her boyfriend, Zach, rubbed her back. She appreciated his support, but sometimes she wished he would just tell his mother to chill out. If the woman didn’t stop being so mean to her, Amy would stop eating Sunday dinner at their house. It wouldn’t make Zach very happy, but he would deserve it if he didn’t start sticking up for her.

This is a quick paragraph in Amy’s point of view. We only know her thoughts. She’s uncomfortable with the situation, she’s resentful Zach doesn’t defend her against his mother. There isn’t any head hopping because we don’t know what the other characters are thinking. If this is a romance between Zach and Amy, and we want to know Zach’s thoughts about dinner, we would need to make a scene or chapter break and begin the new scene or chapter in Zach’s point of view.

Zach wished Amy would be nicer to his mother. He was going to have to break up with her if things continued this way. He’d always thought Amy was a sweet girl, and he’d been happy when he asked her out and she said yes. But things went downhill the day he introduced her to his mother. They hadn’t clicked from day one, and it was Amy’s fault. She caused so many problems acting so pretentious. Disgusted with how dinner was going, he guzzled his beer hoping to take the edge off. Breaking up with her was the last thing he wanted to do, but he couldn’t marry a woman who didn’t get along with his mother.

This is why I like 3rd person POV so much. You can surprise your readers with character reveals. Were you surprised Zach was taking his mother’s side? Maybe you were because in Amy’s POV Zach patted Amy’s back and she took that for support when in actuality, Zach was thinking thoughts that were anything but.

This is a classic staple of romances—misunderstandings and conclusions being assumed up the tension and create conflict.

Let’s take a look at head hopping. Head hopping is when the author tries to cram thoughts of more than one character into a scene. You can still start the scene or chapter in the POV of one character, but then you start slipping in thoughts of your other characters. You aren’t necessarily changing POV, but you are revealing thoughts from characters who aren’t having their “turn.”

Amy pushed her food around her plate. She didn’t understand why her boyfriend’s mother hated her so much. She could feel the woman glaring at her across the table. Why is she so mousey? Lydia thought, stabbing at the pork roast she’d made for dinner. Her boyfriend, Zach, rubbed her back. You need to be nicer to my mother, Zach fumed to himself. If the woman didn’t stop being so mean to her, Amy would stop eating Sunday dinner at their house. It wouldn’t make Zach very happy, but he would deserve it if he didn’t start sticking up for her.

This is a short example of having three people’s thoughts in one paragraph. We still have Amy’s point of view—she can think to herself without the italics because the scene is hers, and we’re in her head. But then I added in the thoughts of Zach and his mother. I put those in italics because the scene does not belong to them but we are given a glimpse at what they are thinking.

The question during #smutchat was: how important is avoiding head hopping when you can still find it in today’s books?

There is still head hopping in today’s traditionally published books, even though us indies are told over and over again not to do it. Nora Roberts head hops, and I just abandoned a book that head hopped between the male and female main characters.

So is it important not to head hop?

Agents and editors will tell you not to do it. Readers will tell you they don’t like to read it because it’s jarring and takes them out of the moment.

In my opinion, head hopping is lazy and an author can learn to write well and avoid it.

As a reader what do you like?

As a writer?

Tell me what you think!

Other links:

A great post by Bryn Donovan can be found here.

Fight head hopping by learning how to write in deep POV. Take a look at Marcy Kennedy’s book here.

Also another book by Rayne Hall: here.

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Anchoring Your Characters in Their Scene

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I’ve shared some of my work lately, and I’ve received a lot of feedback in return (don’t worry, it was all good). But the best compliment I received was that I knew how to effectively set a scene.

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After I thought about it, I realized that is probably the number one thing I comment on when I edit or beta read for someone (besides making notes on grammar and punctuation). I like knowing where the scene is taking place. I think describing the scene, letting the reader know where your characters are, is important. If your characters are in a restaurant, but you don’t write that they are, your characters could be eating their dinner anywhere: on a bridge, at the park, on the moon. This might not seem like a big deal until all of a sudden where they are is part of the plot. Maybe your male main character moves in for a kiss, and your female main character balks. Why would she do that? Because they are in the middle of a grocery store and she doesn’t want a foot of tongue down her throat in the meat department. This makes him angry (why is she such a prude) so they fight. You’ve written that they are grocery shopping. Everyone can picture a grocery store, so problem solved.

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What happens though is, if you don’t write where the scene is taking place close to the beginning of the scene, your readers have already guessed where your characters are, and if they can’t, your reader is going to feel disorientated because she can’t picture the scene in her head. You haven’t given her anything to work with.

This is why when you read editing how-to books, they recommend describing a character right off the bat—this way your reader doesn’t have a chance to make up her own mind as to what a character looks like. If you allow your reader to do that but then go on to describe how your characters actually look and it differs from what your reader thinks, your reader feels cheated. You don’t want to give a reader an excuse to put your book down. Ever.

But you don’t have to anchor every single scene. If your scenes take place one after the next, say you’re just flipping POV to another character, or you’re starting a new chapter and your character hasn’t moved, repeating where your character is–standing by the fireplace or sitting at the kitchen table or peering out the window, is redundant. Your readers will remember where your characters are fighting, eating, making love, whatever they’re doing. But if in one scene they’re having sex, then in the next you fast forward and they’re having date night at the movies, ah, yeah, you want to tell your readers they’re at the movies now because your readers don’t want to read about your characters having sex during “The Hitman’s Bodyguard.” (Well, maybe they do, who am I to judge?)

I’m going to also assume that unless your characters are traveling across the country, or across the world, or into space, that you won’t have many settings in your novel/novella/story. And that’s fine. You don’t need to set your story in all of America to make it interesting. The story I’m writing now, for example, has three or four settings at best, and I’m half way through it.

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Here’s a quick list of when you should set a scene:

  1. When your characters are moving. If they are in the car, describe the car (the owner is a slob and has tons of fast food garbage in the back seat and the car stinks like grease). Describe what she sees out the window. How does the engine sound? Maybe the radio is on. The window is rolled down, and the character’s hair is flying in her face. If they’re taking a walk, describe the trees, are they changing colors because it’s fall? Describe the sidewalk. Cracks? Garbage along the path? You can work these details into the dialogue and narrative.
  2. When your characters are in a place they’ve never been before. This seems like a crazy thing to mention, but it’s true. If your characters are visiting a place they haven’t been to three-quarters of the way through your book, you may forget to mention where they are. Especially if the dialogue is more important than where the scene is taking place.
  3. When your characters are in a place they have been before, but things have changed. A teenage girl is mad because her mom cleaned her room. A room feels different because someone has been there when they shouldn’t have been and things are slightly out of place.
  4. When your characters are flashing back. It is really important that you describe where they are so your readers know that this is a flashback. I did this in book one of my trilogy. My characters were on a plane flying home, but I used a flashback while they thought about their vacation. I had to set the scene for each of them as they were daydreaming about different memories. I wanted to let my readers know they were thinking about their vacation while they were on the plane.
  5. When it’s important to the plot. It might not be so easy to forget to describe where your characters are if you depend on it for part of the plot. (The sun is shining in your character’s eyes while she’s driving so she hits a kid jaywalking.) But it’s best to pace your descriptions so they are already in place when you need them. (Having the sun conveniently show up to blind your character is a cop out. Have your character admire the sunny day before she climbs into her car.)

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I can explain more on how to set a scene next time. For now, my 1,000-word limit is almost up. Did I miss a time when you should set a scene? Let me know!

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#SmutChat Dialogue Giveaway

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Seems like Thursdays come and go pretty fast, right? Thanks for taking the time to participate in chat tonight. I hope you had a good time. The giveaways are Dialogue for Writers: Create Powerful Dialogue in Fiction and Nonfiction by Sammie Justesen and The Cougarette by Eliza David.

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The next time on #smutchat we’re going to mix it up a little bit. We’ll have guest hosts Nadia Diament (@nadiadiament ) and Avi Ross answer your questions about writing believable law in your books.  The giveaways for that chat are super-amazing, so you’ll want to tune in on Sept 21st.  Happy fall!

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Making Time to Beta Read and/or Edit

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I beta read and I edit for my friends. When I beta read, sometimes that turns into light editing—I’ll point out typos, etc., if/when I find them, and I think the authors appreciate that. Sometimes I get asked to do a full edit, and sometimes the author isn’t clear, and I end up doing a full edit, anyway. Doing an edit is almost easier than only beta reading because my eyes immediately start searching for mistakes.

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This is true when I read anything. Reading for pleasure is almost non-existent because I automatically start editing and revising. “I would have written it this way. . .” While this can be good practice, trying to turn it off to enjoy a book is almost impossible. It doesn’t help when I feel justified when I do find something wrong.

But I like to beta read and edit because it sharpens my own skills as a writer. If I see repetition, telling instead of showing, words being used in the incorrect context, head hopping, it makes me more sensitive to it and I spot it more easily in my own work.

Stephen King says you don’t have time to be a writer if you don’t have time to be a reader, and this is true. You learn by reading other people, and you also expand your vocabulary. You improve your grammar and punctuation when you see it used correctly and if you think it isn’t being used correctly, you can look it up. Fact-checking helps you and the person you’re editing/beta reading for.

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It isn’t easy to make time to beta read—we have so little time as it is, writers like to use that time to write.

I’ve often likened writing to other occupations: you don’t have a business without product to sell, you wouldn’t want your child to go to school with a teacher who wasn’t always updating her skills, you wouldn’t go to a doctor who wasn’t constantly going to workshops, seminars, and publishing in medical journals.

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You can’t write books without reading other people’s work or fine-tune your voice without reading editing books and how-to books about the craft of writing. No organization is making you do those things; a company isn’t going to give you tuition reimbursement. You are your own boss and it’s up to you to keep learning for yourself.

Beta reading is fun, and it’s helpful, and someday you’ll need a beta reader. What goes around comes around, so try to make time when you can.

Tips on how to beta read:

  1. Sometimes you’ll start beta reading a book that doesn’t suit you. Figure out why it doesn’t before you say anything. If it’s not your preferred genre, speak up before you agree.
  2. If it is your genre, make notes as you read. What feels off? Is the beginning slow, are the characters flat? This is why you’re beta reading—to give useful feedback. Don’t be vague—the beginning lacked pizzazz. How was it boring? Maybe the action picked up in chapter two.  Did the author start the book in the wrong place?
  3. As you read to the middle look at the characters. Are they still interesting? Are they battling an inner conflict? Are they struggling? A saggy middle is something many authors, including myself, have an issue with.
  4. Look for inconsistencies. Are the characters’ physical attributes the same throughout the book? If they have a pet, do they disappear half way through the book because the author forgot to include it?
  5. How is the dialogue? Does it flow? Do what the characters talk about further the story?
  6. Do any scenes seem to bog the story down?
  7. When you reach the end, think of the story as a whole. Are there any plot holes? Any minor characters that could have been developed or any of their storylines that don’t make sense? (Ask if there is a sequel in the works if this is the case, sometimes the foreshadowing won’t make sense. But foreshadowing should only make the reader curious to read the next book, not make the reader wonder if the author dropped the ball.) Does the ending give you a satisfied feeling? Does it feel rushed? Do the characters complete their internal journey, face their fears,  finally get what they want?

Ideally, the author you’re beta reading for will give you ample time to read the book before publishing and tell you a reasonable deadline. Sometimes, if they’ve finished editing it and the piece is ready to be published, the author won’t wait.

This can put you in a bad position if you’re finding typos—you won’t get a chance to give your feedback to your author. If you’re given a deadline try to stick to it. But the urges to hit “publish” are strong, and if your author goes ahead and publishes without waiting for you, try not to feel hurt or resentful. You can still finish beta reading and forward on the mistakes you found. Perhaps s/he fixed them without telling you.

Sometimes you might be expected to leave a review. Ask first to be sure—especially if you didn’t care for the book. You may want to skip leaving a review rather than leave a poor one because this book is will be new and no review will be better than a bad one.

Anyway, beta reading or editing for people is win-win. It helps you become a better writer, and it helps the person you’re reading for.

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We need to help each other be better writers, one chapter at a time.

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Staying Positive Online

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Every day we do a little something to build our platform: send a Tweet, write a blog post, post an update on a Facebook Author Page. As authors, we need to stay relevant; we need to produce content to stay visible. We want people to find us and our books, and that won’t happen if you neglect a blog or don’t update your social media. The more you post, the more visible you are—that’s how it goes.

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But it’s difficult to produce content, and it’s just as difficult to remain upbeat and cheerful all the time. Sometimes you need to let out a little negativity, a little frustration. The chapter you just wrote is shitty—let’s tweet that out there for some sympathy. You tell your fans on FB that you’re having a bad day. You dropped a jar of pickles on your foot and you post your black and blue toe on Instagram. Sometimes those things aren’t bad, but your fans, the people who read your books, don’t want to hear it all the time. Twitter is a great place to pout because misery loves company; when I’ve had a bad day, there’s always someone there who can relate. But I don’t want to be known as Twitter’s Debbie Downer and neither do you.

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This goes for other things on the internet as well. There’s a lot of controversy about whether or not to leave “honest” reviews on places like Amazon and Goodreads. This isn’t controversy as a whole—a reader who reads a ton of books every year and reviews them can say whatever s/he wants. They are readers and consume books as readers only.

But.

We are writers as well as readers, and that can be a problem because every review you leave is added to the foundation of your author platform. This question comes up a lot: Do you post honest reviews? Most authors will tell you that no, they don’t leave poor reviews—it’s not their place. Especially if the book they’ve read is an indie book. Some authors will say no because they don’t want people to do the same to their books. Some don’t just because they don’t want to post any negativity online. I tend to agree with the authors who say this simply because I try to keep my online presence as positive and as cheerful as I possibly can. I’m a contemporary romance writer. I’m supposed to be in love with life, right?

When I first was introduced to the indie world, I read a lot of indie—and I quickly became discouraged.  Poorly formatted books, books that needed an editor, books that were boring—I discovered why indie publishing has a bad reputation. I read some good ones too, don’t get me wrong, but the books that weren’t that great—I didn’t review.  Because let’s be honest, I was new the game, (still feel like I am most days) and who in the hell was I to criticize a book? It’s not like I’m selling a hundred books a day (though I aim to change that sooner rather than later.) But even then, while my success may justify a negative review, do I want to throw that kind of negativity out there?

Unless part of your platform building is being known as a reviewer who will give an honest review no matter whose toes you step on, then I would suggest not giving unsolicited advice in the form of a review. I’ve given advice to my friends who ask in private messages. I’ve beta read for friends. I’ve edited for free. Doing that, one on one, can do more for your platform than giving a book a bad review. Throw good karma into the online universe, and good karma will come back to you.

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But I believe that advice is good for every situation, not just book reviews. One night at Olive Garden the waiter forgot to put our order in. My sister and I were going to a movie, so we didn’t have time to wait for him to fix his mistake. We had to make due with our drinks and the salad and appetizer we ordered. Did I bash Olive Garden online? Did I tweet to them to get better service in their restaurants?  No. Well, I posted on my personal Facebook profile that if you wanted to actually eat the food you ordered, eat elsewhere, but I made it into a joke and I did not post any harsh words related to the event. That night we were kind to the waiter, and we left. (The chocolate martini I drank probably helped.)

When the movie theater gave us stale popcorn, did I post about it? No. (Luckily that occured on separate evenings, otherwise that would have been a bummer of a night.)

Sometimes I get down just like everyone else, and I do tweet to ask for advice or a cheerful word, but I do not make those posts the mainstay of my platform, just like I don’t use my blog to bitch about the publishing industry or my lack of sales.

I share my frustration with and about the indie community: I want our reputation to turn around. I want people to think quality when they think of an indie book. I want people to want to buy indie over a traditionally-published book. So I will post advice, I will write about things I wish indie authors would do (take the 8 point space between paragraphs out of your manuscripts please, and can you full-justify your file even if Mark Coker tells you not to?). But I would never post a book review and say this author needed an editor, or the formatting was so screwed up I couldn’t read it and too bad I wasted 13.99, you shouldn’t either.

Stay positive online, put a smile on someone’s face, be a friend, be a contributing, productive writer in the indie world, help where you can, offer advice when asked.

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In the words of my oh-so-wise mother-in-law, “Don’t crap where you eat.”

What do you think? Let me know!  Vania Blog Signature

 

(Thank you to pixabay.com and unsplash.com for the photos.)

 

You’ve Written Your Book. Now What?

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There’s a lot of talk in the publishing/writing community about what to write. Ask anyone, and the unanimous answer will be, “Write what you love and worry about the rest later.” And that’s okay; definitely write what you love because if you’re not, it will show in your writing. If you don’t love it, no one else will, either.

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But after you’ve written your book, what then? If you want to query, what you’ve written will decide almost 100% if you’ll get picked up. Agents sign books they know will sell, and they know what books will sell because they are in close contact with editors in publishing houses and know what books the editors will buy.  But what are those books?

There are books that will never go out of style because they encompass the bigger genres: romance, mystery/suspense (combine the two and you’re golden), a little science fiction, some fantasy, maybe. When you choose one of those, you’re choosing a subject or topic that will never stop selling.

But indie authors rarely go generic, and that’s a lot of the problem. Say I’ve written this wonderful story about a fairy princess set in modern times who is a pediatrician and she’s in love with the warlock neuro surgeon down the hall. Her father demands she go home to the fairy world to claim the throne and she’s torn away from her warlock lover. After she’s home and takes up her duties as royalty, she finds out she’s pregnant with her warlock lover’s baby. Now what?

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This story is near and dear to my heart, maybe. It’s all written out, all 99,000 words of magical goodness. I have plans to turn this into a trilogy.

Excitedly, I shop it around.

Agents pass, editors at publishing houses pass. A kind agent takes the time to email me and says, “This is great, the writing is solid. But fairies in adult fiction aren’t selling right now, and I don’t know when they will. I can sell it if you turn the fairy and warlock into humans.”

What she did was make my story generic. She turned it into a simple romance she’d probably sell to Avon.

But that’s not what I want, so she offers me, “I’ll sign you and keep it in my drawer. When fairies come around again, I’ll try to sell it.” This isn’t exactly what I want, either, and I wonder if I want to take her offer because how long do I want to wait, exactly? Selling my book could take years, or she could never do it. It doesn’t mean my book or writing is bad, it just means the publishing industry isn’t selling that kind of book right now.

We can all think of books that have had their day: vampires/werewolves (Twilight), dystopian societies (The Hunger Games), mommy porn (Fifty Shades of Grey).

But look on the NYT Bestseller list and we can see what’s hot right now: mysteries, The Woman in Cabin 10 (Ruth Ware), The Couple Next Door (Shari Lapena), Seeing Red (Sandra Brown), The Store (James Patterson). Simple romance, Two by Two (Nicholas Sparks). General Fiction, Before We Were Yours (Lisa Wingate), Exposed (Lisa Scottoline).

 

There isn’t a fairy, vampire, or elf on the whole list. Even Young Adult has is having a grown up moment: The Hate U Give (Angie Thomas), One of Us is Lying (Karen M. McManus). Third on the list is about faeries, but it’s part of a series by Cassandra Clare. She has her name and history behind that book, something you wouldn’t have. (Just sayin’.)

The reason I’m writing this blog post isn’t to tell you to write boring—write what you want to write. But I am saying that there may not be room for your book when you’re done with it depending on the climate of the industry.

#PitchWars just ended on Twitter. It’s a program (for lack of a better term) created by agent Brenda Drake. A writer submits their manuscript and hopes a “mentor” will take them on and help make their manuscript queryable.

The problem is, these mentors know what is selling and will choose manuscripts that have the best chance at being picked up. If that happens, everyone looks good; that’s the goal.

There have been a lot of hurt feelings because manuscripts haven’t been picked up by mentors, and I’m willing to bet it’s not the writing but the genre and plot that made a mentor decline a book. Vampires, out. A teen learning what her true gifts are just in time to save the world, out. Clumsy girls who fall in love with billionaires, out.

The stars have to align for a book to be published these days. Your book has to be on target with the plot, the characters, and the trends at the time. It has to resonate with an agent, who has to find the perfect editor who wants to take it on.

I would never feel bad if my book didn’t get picked up. There are so many things that have to go right for that to happen; I would never take it personally.

But lots of people do.

Let me know what you’re writing. Do you think your book would get picked up after seeing what’s being published right now?

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(Book and Fairy taken from pixabay.com. Thanks to Amazon for the book cover pics.)

Have You Heard of Kindle Scout? I Haven’t Either

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I was going to write a blog post on a very important question–when you are published by an Amazon imprint are you considered Traditionally Published? Because these imprints won’t take just anyone–you have to submit just like you would an agent or a publishing house. But is that the only difference between being published by an Amazon imprint or hitting publish on KDP?

That’s a great question but one we’re not going to explore here. I found something else during my research: Kindle Scout.

kindle scout

What is that, you ask? Good question because I didn’t know what it was either. Chris McMullen’s blog post about Amazon Imprints popped up when I was doing some research on imprints and I came upon another publishing option Amazon offers.

Kindle Scout is a book competition open to writers in qualifying countries. The book must be 50,000+ words and never been published anywhere before. It’s similar to self-publishing in that you have to submit your own cover, (I’m assuming you can hire someone) do your own editing (again maybe hire someone), blurb, and formatting. It is then vetted by Amazon staff and if it is chosen, it is entered into the competition.

What happens after that is up to you, as it’s called a competition for a reason. You’re supposed to drive all your friends, family, and fans to the Kindle Scout website where they are to vote for your book. After the nomination process, once again your book is vetted by Amazon staff. Which is a sneaky way of saying, even if your book received a million votes, Amazon Scout still may not choose it. I guess that’s a safety loophole for them.

If your book is chosen, Amazon will pay you a $1500.00 advance and 50% royalties after you earn out.

The whole process takes 45 days.

I summarized the whole process, so anyone who is considering this should look at their submission guidelines carefully.

Here are a couple other blog posts about it:

Jane Friedman had a guest blogger on her website who used it as a book launch. (If your book isn’t chosen Amazon gives your book back to you after the 45 day period is over and you do with it what you want.)  I think that is a great idea, and her blog post is here.  (Thanks to Gareth S. Young, you can find him here, for the heads up on that article.)

Another great blog article, courtesy of Gareth, is by Victoria Strauss, who is a Watch Dog contributor on Alli, (Alliance of Independent Authors) and she gave it a tentative stamp of approval, and you can read it here.

Overall, it doesn’t sound like a bad program. You can go on the website and browse the books that are entered and see for yourself what kind of competition you would have.

Good luck!

 

#SmutChat Traditional Publishing Giveaway

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Today’s give away is Green-Light Your Book by Brooke Warner. Thank you for participating in chat tonight! I hope you had a great time!

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When Should You Redo a Book?

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I was listening to a podcast today–I know, shocker. I listen to them all the time, and it sure makes scooping the kitty litter a little more tolerable.

Anyway, so the two hosts went through their usual, what are you working on, what are you working on?  And the male host (I won’t say who it was or what podcast this was) said, I’m going to redo my first book. New cover, new title, redo some of the plot, the whole thing. And the other host was like, oh, that’s great, blah blah blah.

I don’t know what I was doing then. Cleaning my bathroom? Sweeping the kitchen? But I was like, wait, what?

Rereleasing a book isn’t a new concept to anyone. Traditionally published authors (or their houses) do it all the time, especially for old books. You know it when you’re reading and someone lights up in a restaurant. You think, I just bought this book at Walmart yesterday. Smoking in a public place hasn’t been legal in years. How the *bleep* old really is this book? Oh, the first copyright was 1982. That explains some things, right? Maybe you keep reading it because the story is good, maybe you don’t because you like your characters to have cell phones and access to the internet, but if you keep going, maybe, just maybe, by the time you read to the end, you realize you already read it–30 years ago.

 

This is Linda Howard’s Almost Forever.  Kinda different huh? There are more covers between these two. The original was released in 1986.

 

Again, pretty different.  It doesn’t make the inside change–but would you feel cheated if you bought this book today then found it it was published in 1989? There are other covers between these, too.

 

Unfortunately, this is the same book. I never would have known had I not gone on Goodreads and looked for the old cover of Breathless Innocence and found He’s Just a Cowboy. The descriptions are slightly different as well.

 

I realize there’s a difference between submitting a new file to CreateSpace to fix typos or if you’ve redone the cover and completely redoing a whole book. We’ve all done it. I did it for 1700. I fixed typos, redid the cover, fixed some formatting issues. It was my first book. Mistakes were made.

But where do you draw the line? Where do you draw the line between fixing the mistakes that you should have caught the first time, but were too damn excited to see or care about, to revamping an entire book?

See, I think of it this way. Your readers bought your crap version. Let’s just call it the way it is, okay?  People shelled out their hard-earned money to buy your mistake-riddled book. Should you have released better, yes. But you didn’t. I didn’t. So people bought it and maybe they didn’t care about the mistakes, maybe you ended up on their author shit-list. That’s on you, and that’s on me.

But say you have some time on your hands and you decide, you know, this book was great, but it’s got a crap-rep now (and maybe the reviews to prove it). I don’t want it to go to waste so I’m going to fix it up. A new title, new ISBN number, let’s fix those plot holes, give the MC a few extra demons, maybe real ones! Yank the old one and let’s watch the sales come in.

Is that fair? Is that fair to the people who bought the first version of your book?

What if you have a decent fan base? Maybe you don’t write as fast as you’d like so when you release a book, people buy it. That’s great. And how are they going to feel when they read a quarter of the way through it and realize that they’ve read this story before?  Yes, it sounds better, no there’s no typos this time around. The cover looks amazing because you learned some things. But . . .

People will think it’s very unfair if they pay twice for the same book. Only authors who have written for longer than you’ve been alive are allowed to do this. You know, authors who have 50+ books in their backlist. Then, only then, are the chances of the same person reading the same book slim. And when publishing houses do this, they are releasing the same book. Authors are too busy writing new material to rework a plot. Their houses are re-releasing books with a new up-to-date cover, and while I may not be too big a fan of that either, it’s a lot better than what we’re talking about here.

I’m not suggesting you don’t fix mistakes. But what I am suggesting is maybe you *don’t* revamp the entire book. Maybe you fix the mistakes, redo the cover, but leave the story and title alone. Leave the ISBN alone. Write a better book next time.

To me, writing is continually moving forward, not back.

What do you think?

Vania Blog Signature

 

You can read another opinion about this here.

(Book pictures were taken from http://harlequinblog.com/2017/05/8-wonderful-contemporary-romance-re-releases-we-love/ and http://www.goodreads.com)