It seems that everyone is publishing their own book these days. It is a golden opportunity for authors to make money and become the master of their own material. Something just taking space on your laptop can help introduce people to your work. You don't need to be validated by an agent or a publisher, you can write your own ticket. Sure, that sounds wonderful...perhaps...too wonderful. There is a reason we need agents.
If you're already a published novelist, publishing your own eBook is fairly risk free. And many great authors are doing it right now with great success. They already know what it takes to get a book ready for the public. But those of us looking to jump into the fray and not unravel, had better be careful. So far most of the books and excerpts I've read from those who are self publishing their first novel...well...not good. In almost every case the writing was either poor, or the story was confusing and incomprehensible at times. It was almost shocking how bad some of the writing was. It was not even "blog worthy" writing.
If you are going to self publish, make sure the writing is not filled with mistakes that Microsoft Word would strike. You need a great story of course, but more important than that, you need to eliminate basic mistakes. Here are a few of the big things I've noticed in the few works I've read.
Passive Voice
Go through your work and weed out all the passive voice. Once in a while sure, but you cannot have every sentence filled with passive voice. If you have it more than ten times in the entire novel, it's probably too much. Passive voice does not drive the story and can lead to choppy writing.
Watch your POV
If the reader cannot follow your point of view, it's a problem. Don't get me wrong, I love to head-hop. I get bored writing from the POV of the same character all the time, so I will often head-hop right in scene. But you have to be aware you are doing it, and you have to give the reader the tools to follow along. You have to distinguish that you are now writing from another character's head. If you can't do it well (and it can be tricky) don't do it at all, stick to one POV per scene.
When in doubt, take it out
You have to be brutal, you have to chop words and scenes. You have to ask yourself, "does this advance the story?" and if the answer is "no" you need to dump it. There is nothing worse than a story filled with useless details that neither develop character nor push the story along. These are things an agent, publisher or professional editor would catch. But I've noticed that self publishers leave a lot of it in. Probably because they like it, and hey, I understand. But you since you are acting as writer, agent, editor, and publisher, you need to put on those other hats and be brutally honest with your work. Don't keep things you like, just because you like them. If the story does not need it, cut it out.
Edit - Edit - Edit
You have to edit your work really strictly. Turn on every rule in MS_Word and listen to them. They are not the be-all-end-all and there are times you have to override. But the reality is that you are not going to catch everything yourself, it's hard to catch everything among 60,000 or 80,000 words. But the extended rules in most word processing software will get you more than 80% of the way there. I was shocked to see such basic grammar mistakes in the self published eBooks I read. Poor spelling and incomplete sentences, no commas where one should etc... Those things will turn off the reader quickly. A good story and developed characters are essential yes, but amateur mistakes will kill all of that. It's too easy to delete an eBook. There is no recycling involved.
The story has to make sense. The stakes have to make sense, even if you stretch reality. Some of the things I've read seem to be tossed together just to try and sell something on Amazon. If you are serious about being a writer, don't treat your work like something you are putting up on Facebook or You Tube. Treat it like something that you would want to see on a book shelf in printed form. Just because it's an eBook does not mean people will forgive mistakes.
That takes time, a lot of time and effort. Writing is hard work, it's not meant to be easy. We writers are at a disadvantage compared to other creative endeavors. As a musician, I know what it takes to make good music, and that's hard work too. The difference is that you can throw up a "rough" version of a song on You Tube and have people fall in love with it. They call it "raw" or "earthy" and they forgive small mistakes because the energy of a live performance can carry through. But you cannot put a "rough" version of your manuscript for sale on Amazon or Smashwords, and hope people are going to fall in love with it because it's "raw"... they are going to delete it from their Kindle and never tell anyone about it.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Saturday, March 5, 2011
The Final Rejection?
Yesterday THE SWEET SIXTEENTH took its final hit of rejection from another agent. It was the final query that was out there with any hope left. It would seem that this final nail is going to lock down the lid on the coffin of TSS, but it's not.
In this modern age of media sharing, the word "dead" when it comes to works of fiction never really applies anymore. In the old days of writing, a trunk novel was just that... a book that would be put in a trunk to never see the light of day again. Trust me, I have four of them. But those four books were really nothing but practice, along with the countless short stories I have in the two dozen or so notebooks stuffed into the closet of my music room. None of those stories are worth time or effort. That is not the case with TSS. I believe this novel should be read by those who are so inclined. Those few that have already read it liked it enough to make me not trunk it.
Exactly what I'm going to do with it, I'm still in the process of deciding, but I'm leaning towards publishing it as an eBook for the Kindle with Amazon. I have been communicating with other authors who've done this, and for the most part the process is painless. Some of the writers I've spoken to have had really good luck with sales, others have said it ends up like a vanity press effort where only their friends and families bothered to buy.
My only concern, is that if I put it for sale on Amazon, in a way it does kill the book. That is the irony in all this. Most publishers seem to indicate that they will never be interested in a self-published eBook for future publication. So you take a risk in doing an eBook if you feel a publisher might take a chance in the future. But that's the thing with novels. Just because an agent rejects it, does not mean that he or she would reject it every time. Most of the rejections I got for TSS were positive, and indicated that they were just not in the market for that story, at that time. But I've heard many stories of writers selling books two years later that were rejected by everyone the first time around. So it's not impossible to imagine that some agent down the road might be interested... then again maybe not... but either way I don't have to decide now.
In this modern age of media sharing, the word "dead" when it comes to works of fiction never really applies anymore. In the old days of writing, a trunk novel was just that... a book that would be put in a trunk to never see the light of day again. Trust me, I have four of them. But those four books were really nothing but practice, along with the countless short stories I have in the two dozen or so notebooks stuffed into the closet of my music room. None of those stories are worth time or effort. That is not the case with TSS. I believe this novel should be read by those who are so inclined. Those few that have already read it liked it enough to make me not trunk it.
Exactly what I'm going to do with it, I'm still in the process of deciding, but I'm leaning towards publishing it as an eBook for the Kindle with Amazon. I have been communicating with other authors who've done this, and for the most part the process is painless. Some of the writers I've spoken to have had really good luck with sales, others have said it ends up like a vanity press effort where only their friends and families bothered to buy.
My only concern, is that if I put it for sale on Amazon, in a way it does kill the book. That is the irony in all this. Most publishers seem to indicate that they will never be interested in a self-published eBook for future publication. So you take a risk in doing an eBook if you feel a publisher might take a chance in the future. But that's the thing with novels. Just because an agent rejects it, does not mean that he or she would reject it every time. Most of the rejections I got for TSS were positive, and indicated that they were just not in the market for that story, at that time. But I've heard many stories of writers selling books two years later that were rejected by everyone the first time around. So it's not impossible to imagine that some agent down the road might be interested... then again maybe not... but either way I don't have to decide now.
Friday, February 25, 2011
The Dreary Query
The hardest thing about getting published so far for me has been hooking an agent. Now there is a common belief among the Un-Published that you don't need an agent, that you just write your book and submit it to a publisher and yadda-yadda-yadda a big fat check shows up at your door.
Sure that might happen on occasion, but you have a better chance of winning the lottery. I don't have that kind of luck. So I've been going the agent route. It took me a year of sending query letters to agents for THE SWEET SIXTEENTH to learn anything about querying. No matter how much I read about the subject, I was still making mistakes.
Since I started to send out queries for HUMBLE WALKER, I was pretty confident that I had gotten it right. But sadly I was still making the same mistakes. I had a great query (or so I thought) that conveyed the tone of the book and the overall story. A few agents passed right off the hop which I expected. But then something hit me while reading The Query Shark's blog. The "voice" of the query was all wrong, it was too dark. It was as if an announcer was reading the query, and not the voice of any character from the novel. Lucky for me I only burned about five agents with this query.
Once I got the voice right (I hope) I sent the query to two agents. Shockingly, I got two rejections, on the same day they were sent. That was a strange thing, and it made me think there was something wrong with the query right off the bat. So I started doing more research, and it hit me. In an effort to show some color in the character's personality, I used the word "bitch" to describe another character. Dumb move. I could not believe I did it. It was something I read before and must have forgotten.
We will see how the new query works. I've sent it out to five more agents but have not heard back from any yet. Meanwhile I've continued to refine it for the next five agent burst.
Sure that might happen on occasion, but you have a better chance of winning the lottery. I don't have that kind of luck. So I've been going the agent route. It took me a year of sending query letters to agents for THE SWEET SIXTEENTH to learn anything about querying. No matter how much I read about the subject, I was still making mistakes.
Since I started to send out queries for HUMBLE WALKER, I was pretty confident that I had gotten it right. But sadly I was still making the same mistakes. I had a great query (or so I thought) that conveyed the tone of the book and the overall story. A few agents passed right off the hop which I expected. But then something hit me while reading The Query Shark's blog. The "voice" of the query was all wrong, it was too dark. It was as if an announcer was reading the query, and not the voice of any character from the novel. Lucky for me I only burned about five agents with this query.
Once I got the voice right (I hope) I sent the query to two agents. Shockingly, I got two rejections, on the same day they were sent. That was a strange thing, and it made me think there was something wrong with the query right off the bat. So I started doing more research, and it hit me. In an effort to show some color in the character's personality, I used the word "bitch" to describe another character. Dumb move. I could not believe I did it. It was something I read before and must have forgotten.
We will see how the new query works. I've sent it out to five more agents but have not heard back from any yet. Meanwhile I've continued to refine it for the next five agent burst.
New Year Sleeve
As of 2011, I am going to start documenting some of my adventures in publishing, or rather, un-publishing... I thought it might serve someone else well. Maybe I could pass an experience along that could help someone else even farther below me on the ladder. Because usually when I tell someone I've written books, they tell me they always wanted to write a book. I always say, you should. The only thing stopping you, is you. As mobile as laptops are these days you can write anywhere. People have written books in the slips of time we used to waste in passing, because now they have a medium in their hands.
The hard thing is not writing the book, the hard thing is writing the book, knowing it might never see the world. You're basically telling stories to yourself. This is fine; because that's the way it should be. If you go to your computer and assume you're writing a book for the masses, saying that you're going to write a masterwork of commercial fiction that will be a movie in three years… well… frankly your book is going to suck.
You need to write what you would want to read. I will not write about vampires because I don't read about them. I would have no idea how to appeal to people who want to live in that world of the bloodless neck chewers, and sensual lips peeling back to reveal dangerous fangs... If you want that stuff you go to a professional like Maggie Shayne. Because you would spot me as a fraud right away.
What I like are impossible stories, things that could happen to anyone but might be just slightly askew. I like action and fast-paced danger where life and death are struggling against each other. I like books that twist and threaten to take an unexpected turn. I like endearing characters that you'd want to hang out with, and characters that you want to feed to a hungry wood chipper. I don't like books that bog down in detail. I write books that I would like to read. Not everyone is going to like them, but I like them. And you should do the same thing. If you like paranormal, write that. Don't write something that is "in demand" or hot just to try and get in on a trend. That is a sure fire path to a bad novel. If you would not buy it yourself, don't write it.
Write for yourself, because at some point you're going to have to "keep writing" … That was something that published authors always said to me, and it took me a long time to fully understand. What they said was keep writing, but that sounds obvious to anyone who want to write. But what they were really saying was keep writing after you've been rejected. Keep writing more stories, new stories, just keep writing and cultivating ideas.
I'm currently writing my seventh full length novel between 60,000 and 111,000 words. The first four were practice and they will never see the light of day, nor should they, because they suck. I don't even want to read them so I don't expect anyone else would. But when number five was shopped to agents and rejected across the board, it was a slap to the face. It took me a while to admit the story was just too "run of the mill" on the surface. Although it has some unexpected twists and great characters, that is hard to sell in a query. So I've moved on to the query stage of the next novel, and I've moved on to writing another story. I've kept writing and cultivating ideas, I will keep writing because that is the only way I can get better, and maybe get lucky.
After you've written the book, that's when the work starts. That will be your next lesson. You will read thousands of words telling you how to write that great query. All over the Internet, you will find tons of pages covering this topic. You will even get bad advice from people. My only advice here is to read, read...and read some more. Read what agents are looking for in their submission process, and read everything you can. The query is no easy task and for me (and most other writers I've talked to) it does not come natural like writing the story. It is a learning process in and of itself.
Imagine trying to catch a fish. You put some bait on the hook and your toss out your line. But now imagine that the fish are so over fed that they cannot eat any more food. Even if they really like the bait, the fish are just too damn full to take another bite. Your food will have to be so good that the fish will be willing to risk vomit after eating your bait. And even if you find a hungry fish, your query had better be good. What makes the query so hard, is drilling down into your novel to find that hook.You have to find the hook before you can bait the hook. That is not as easy as it sounds. It's hard to crunch 80,000 words into a 250 word description that really captures what it is you're trying to say in the story.
The hard thing is not writing the book, the hard thing is writing the book, knowing it might never see the world. You're basically telling stories to yourself. This is fine; because that's the way it should be. If you go to your computer and assume you're writing a book for the masses, saying that you're going to write a masterwork of commercial fiction that will be a movie in three years… well… frankly your book is going to suck.
You need to write what you would want to read. I will not write about vampires because I don't read about them. I would have no idea how to appeal to people who want to live in that world of the bloodless neck chewers, and sensual lips peeling back to reveal dangerous fangs... If you want that stuff you go to a professional like Maggie Shayne. Because you would spot me as a fraud right away.
What I like are impossible stories, things that could happen to anyone but might be just slightly askew. I like action and fast-paced danger where life and death are struggling against each other. I like books that twist and threaten to take an unexpected turn. I like endearing characters that you'd want to hang out with, and characters that you want to feed to a hungry wood chipper. I don't like books that bog down in detail. I write books that I would like to read. Not everyone is going to like them, but I like them. And you should do the same thing. If you like paranormal, write that. Don't write something that is "in demand" or hot just to try and get in on a trend. That is a sure fire path to a bad novel. If you would not buy it yourself, don't write it.
Write for yourself, because at some point you're going to have to "keep writing" … That was something that published authors always said to me, and it took me a long time to fully understand. What they said was keep writing, but that sounds obvious to anyone who want to write. But what they were really saying was keep writing after you've been rejected. Keep writing more stories, new stories, just keep writing and cultivating ideas.
I'm currently writing my seventh full length novel between 60,000 and 111,000 words. The first four were practice and they will never see the light of day, nor should they, because they suck. I don't even want to read them so I don't expect anyone else would. But when number five was shopped to agents and rejected across the board, it was a slap to the face. It took me a while to admit the story was just too "run of the mill" on the surface. Although it has some unexpected twists and great characters, that is hard to sell in a query. So I've moved on to the query stage of the next novel, and I've moved on to writing another story. I've kept writing and cultivating ideas, I will keep writing because that is the only way I can get better, and maybe get lucky.
After you've written the book, that's when the work starts. That will be your next lesson. You will read thousands of words telling you how to write that great query. All over the Internet, you will find tons of pages covering this topic. You will even get bad advice from people. My only advice here is to read, read...and read some more. Read what agents are looking for in their submission process, and read everything you can. The query is no easy task and for me (and most other writers I've talked to) it does not come natural like writing the story. It is a learning process in and of itself.
Imagine trying to catch a fish. You put some bait on the hook and your toss out your line. But now imagine that the fish are so over fed that they cannot eat any more food. Even if they really like the bait, the fish are just too damn full to take another bite. Your food will have to be so good that the fish will be willing to risk vomit after eating your bait. And even if you find a hungry fish, your query had better be good. What makes the query so hard, is drilling down into your novel to find that hook.You have to find the hook before you can bait the hook. That is not as easy as it sounds. It's hard to crunch 80,000 words into a 250 word description that really captures what it is you're trying to say in the story.
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