Tag Archives: publishing

The Curious Phenomenon of Smashwords

Posted on May 22, 2012 | 12 Comments

I love Smashwords.  I think it’s a brilliant tool for self-published writers.  The Smashwords Guide to Style held my hand through the process of formatting my novels for publication.  The site’s “meat grinder” is the most awesome tool I’ve seen for converting a formatted Word document to every eBook format out there.  It’s my first stop whenever I have a book that’s ready to roll out.

Other than that?  I don’t understand Smashwords at all.

Don’t get me wrong, I love it without understanding it.  The other day it gave me the best surprise I’ve had in a long time….

You see, like any other Indie Author, I tend to judge my book sales based on Amazon numbers alone.  I check in with KDP a few times a week to see how things are moving.  This month hasn’t been as fantastic as last month (and I haven’t had a fraction of the time to promote that I usually do).  I was all ready to shrug and move on … when I checked Smashwords.

Holy heck!  How did I sell that many copies of The Faithful Heart (not even the first book in the series) in such a short time on … iBooks?  Seriously.  iBooks.  Who would have thought?

At first I was all please with myself and thought “well of course this is all a result of the two free days I had around Easter”.  I mean, back then I offered The Loyal Heart for free, so it’s only natural that I would then sell so many copies of The Faithful Heart, right?  Yeah, you’d think.  Only from what I can see those free copies were “sold” through Sony, not Apple.

Still scratching my head, I popped on iTunes and went to their book section to see if my books appear there.  Sure enough they do! … And The Loyal Heart has 19 ratings.  NINETEEN.  That may sound like small potatoes to some of you, but to put it in perspective, I have just 12 reviews for that book on Amazon and only 9 ratings on Goodreads.  I might also add, just to brag, that the overall rating of The Loyal Heart on iBooks is a happy 4.5 stars.  Woo hoo!

Side-note:  I rather like the fact that on iBooks you can rate something without leaving a review.  Goodreads works that way too.  Amazon should get with the program.

But back to my complete bafflement.

WTF?  How am I suddenly so popular on iBooks and Sony?

It has to be those two free days.

But I digress.

When I decided to give The Loyal Heart away for free through Smashwords I thought that maybe I’d find a few takers out there.  I was secretly hoping that Amazon would drop the price to free for a while so that I could take advantage of that whole hoopla, but it didn’t happen.  Eh.  I considered the whole thing an experiment anyhow.  And really, in the grander scheme of things, I didn’t end up giving away that many books.  Just under a hundred.  I shrugged and moved on with my life.

But if all of these sales that surprised me the other day are related to those two free days, then I may have stumbled on something.  While the raw numbers weren’t all that impressive, the percentages were.

The Loyal Heart was free on April 9th and 10th.  According to Smashwords reporting, The Faithful Heart sold 50% of the number of free copies I had given away a month later.

Maybe it’s just me, but selling 50% of the freebies within a month of the promotion is pretty cool.  Imagine if that had been Amazon?  Imagine if it had been ten times the number of freebies?

So what am I getting at here?

When I did my free days I asked some of my writer friends for their opinion.  Someone mentioned that Amazon doesn’t really consider Smashwords a competitor.  True.  It’s a fish of a different color.  I routinely cringe when I look at the main page and see sleazy erotica titles flaunting their assets (or lack thereof).  But the fact that the Smashwords premium library distributes books to all sorts of different eReader formats kind of makes me happy.  Sure, they take a cut, but that cut is worth the labor that I DON’T have to do to have my books on so many platforms.

So is Smashwords not really a serious competitor to Amazon?  I’m not so sure about that.  I can count the number of books I’ve sold on the Smashwords site without running out of fingers and toes, but I’m beginning to think the fact that they distribute it so widely may be the best kept secret of the whole self-publishing world.

What do you think?  Anyone else had any experience with this?

 

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Working Title

Posted on May 15, 2012 | 14 Comments

I happen to think I’m a very good writer.  I’ve been spinning stories since I was 10 years old, probably even younger.  But as proficient as I am at creating characters and telling stories, I can’t come up with a decent title to save my life.

Yes, I suck at titles.  And as far as I’m concerned this is a real problem.

The title of a book is your first introduction to everything that comes afterwards.  People judge books by their covers, and the title is the centerpiece of the cover.  A good title can inform the reader of what the story is about, i.e. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone or The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.  It can hold volumes of meaning with just a few words, i.e. The Help or Little Women.  It can elicit an instant laugh, like this Romance novel I have on my shelf called Talk Nerdy To Me.  It can conjure memories of high school English class, like To Kill A Mockingbird or Catcher in the Rye.

Titles hold a lot of weight.  A bad title can send someone screaming in the opposite direction.  I’m sorry, but I’m just not going to read Fatal Kidnapping.  Although there are other reasons behind that.

The thing is, I’m terrible at coming up with titles.  I cringe whenever I come to the point where I have to give my hard work a name.  How do you come up with just a few words that befit what you’ve spent so much time and energy writing about?

In theory, a title should capture the intent of the novel with just a handful of words.  It should be the hook that draws your readers into the heart of your story before they even read the back cover blurb.  Along those lines, it should come out of the central theme and action of the work.  It should be catchy enough to make people want to read more but not a literal description of what the reader is about to feast on.

I fail at titles.

But you wouldn’t know it to look at the works that I’ve published so far.  The only titles I’ve ever come up with that I have been really happy with are the titles in my Medieval Romance trilogy, The Noble Hearts.  Each of the three books in this series, The Loyal Heart, The Faithful Heart, and The Courageous Heart, describe the single most important trait that the hero of the story has.  But it’s not as simple as it sounds.  The loyalty portrayed in The Loyal Heart runs deeper than just homage to a person.  The fidelity of The Faithful Heart covers so much more than remaining true to love.  And the courage displayed in The Courageous Heart cuts so much deeper than just bravery.  Yes, those are the titles that I’m really proud of.

Not so much for some of my other works.  One of the reasons I haven’t pushed myself to polish my sci-fi series enough to publish it, in spite of having the first two books completely finished, is that I can’t stand the title of the first book in the series, Grace’s Moon.  Ugh!  At one point I had named that book New Moon.  Damn you Stephanie Meyers!  Not that I liked that title much more.  I’ve run through half a dozen titles for that book at least and I can’t stand a single one of them.  However, I am satisfied with the title of the second book in the series, Fallen From Grace.  Why?  Because Fallen From Grace describes the heart of the book so well, especially when you understand whose point of view the story is told from and what has transpired to bring the action to the point that it’s at in that book.

This, of course, tells me something vital about naming books:  You can’t name a book until you are sure you know what it’s about.

Okay, that sounds a little obvious, but I’m sure many other writers out there besides me have drafted tens of thousands of words, letting the characters take us on their journey, and then when we get to the end, to the moment of truth, we look back and aren’t exactly sure what we’ve got.  Grace’s Moon is like that.  I can tell you what it’s about (a ship carrying colonists from Earth to its first planetary colony, Terra, explodes and when the survivors crash on a habitable moon they must find the saboteur and figure out how to build a civilization while preventing warring factions from killing each other and diminishing their already small gene pool) but I have a hard time encapsulating its essence in just a few words.  Even that one-sentence synopsis feels inadequate to everything going on in the story.

For me the lesson to be learned in this is that Grace’s Moon needs a lot more editing before it’s ready to go.  This is also true of about a dozen other stories I’ve started but don’t have titles for.  I’m sure you recognize the feeling.  It’s that squishy center, half-baked feeling.

The easy answer would be to slap any old title on it and let it go.  That’s why I have so many titles I can’t stand.  But as with Hollywood, I’m okay with giving my novels working titles until I come up with the real thing.  I still believe, based on my past experience, that the right title will come along when the prose is ready for it.

So what about you?  How do you come up with titles for your books?  Do they just come to you or do you have to work at them?  Any tips on how to find better titles for things?  I’d love some advice here.

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How to Be Critiqued

Posted on April 24, 2012 | 7 Comments

Discussion and controversy abounded on the Novel Publicity Facebook page last week over a blog post written by Anne R. Allen, “Amazon Reader Reviews: 12 Things Everybody and His Grandmother Needs to Know”.  Without going into too much detail about the original blog post, the NP folks seemed to agree that authors should not demand readers leave only 4 and 5 star reviews and never anything lower.  They also seemed to agree that readers and reviewers had a right to leave negative reviews if the book in question truly warrants it.

Glowing reviews are a wonderful thing, don’t get me wrong.  Nothing makes me smile wider than when I am praised by someone who has read my book.  But at the end of the day I am in the school of thought that says that the occasional negative review is one of the most powerful learning tools an author has.

Negative reviews, provided they are honest and not just someone with a bone to pick, are a fantastic way to diagnose the problems with your stories that you as an author might not be able to see.  They have the potential to set you on the right track and give you an honest look at areas where you need improvement.  They usually don’t come from people with a vested interest in keeping you happy, so you can trust them even more than you can the reviews your mom gives you.

Most of the time, someone who puts in the work to write a review is going to be a serious reader with a vested interest in seeing stories of the highest quality on the market.  People who are easily pleased or who aren’t as passionate about books probably won’t take the time to write a critique.  So chances are that if you’ve been reviewed it is by someone who knows what they’re talking about.

The things these people say should be taken very seriously!  It’s not going to do you any good as an author intent on improving your craft to get angry or dismiss the reviewer’s opinion or to lash out at them in any way.  In fact, please don’t lash out at a reviewer!  The best response to a negative review that you can give is no response at all.

And now for an example of what we can learn from a negative review….

I was extremely lucky a couple of weeks ago to get a 3-star review for my novel The Loyal Heart on Amazon.  This review exemplifies several different points about how to read, accept, and learn from a negative review.  Here it is:

“ *** Engaging

I enjoyed reading this book.  It was fun and engaging.

If I was going to offer the author some pointers I’d say:

a) Add a little more description to set the scene.  I kind of know what medieval England might look like but not everyone would.  It would also add to the atmosphere.  

b) All the characters need a little more depth, back history, motivation and detail.  Why and how is Aubrey so good with a sword?  What did Crispin do that was so awful in the past?  Why don’t the people of Ethan’s estates want him back?

c) Find another word for smirk!

OK, so that last one was a bit pedantic but it was used enough that I started to notice it.

In spite of these points and a few other minor quibbles it was a pleasure to read and I should say that the sex scenes are really well written.  It moves along at a good pace.  I liked it enough that I’ll be reading the sequel.”

So that is my 3-star review.  It’s actually pretty flattering.  But the meat of the lesson is in the pointers.  Each of the reviewer’s three points brings up a different issue in how to accept a critique.

The first point is about setting and description.  This is a Style Critique.  The reviewer would have liked more description.  My personal style is not to spent too much time on description.  I would rather create the setting through dialog and action.  But what this point tells me is that there are readers out there who would like to have more of a picture painted in their mind.  I can be mindful of this in my future books and look for ways to set the scene better going forward.

The second point is about character.  This is more of a Content Critique.  Of all of the points this reviewer raises this one goes the farthest to put my nose out of joint.  Why?  Because the answers to all of the questions the reviewer poses are, in fact, answered in the book.  The reviewer just missed them.  The critique makes it look as though the story is missing something that is not missing at all.  But that also tells me something.  Maybe I was too subtle in delivering my characters’ back stories.  Maybe the way in which I presented my characters drew emphasis to the wrong things.  The important aspect of this comment is to remember that while I know everything there is to know about these characters, the reader must figure it out as they go along.  Next time I need to make sure that I communicate everything the reader needs to know.

The third pint cracks me up.  It is a Technical Critique.  Yes, I absolutely had WAY too many “smirks” in the first edition of this book.  It was ridiculous.  I mean, completely silly.  And this reviewer wasn’t the first person to notice.  I have since gone back and removed 85% of the smirks and republished the book.

So there you go.  I’m sure I’ll get worse critiques at some point.  I like this one though because it covers a lot of bases and makes a great example.  I disagree with some of it, I agree whole-heartedly with some of it, and some of it makes me wish I could sit down and explain a few things to the reviewer.  I’m glad I received this review though.

Embrace those negative reviews.  They can teach you more than effusions of love can.

 

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Developmental Editing and Copy Editing: What’s the Difference?

Posted on April 17, 2012 | 5 Comments

There are so many writers out there these days.  Now that the world of publishing has been blown wide open and anyone can publish a book a heck of a lot more people than ever before are calling themselves writers.  And that’s great!  But I’ve been lurking around the Kindle boards and other reader hang-outs lately and let me tell you, it’s not so great to them.  Because there is a lot of half-baked material being served up as if it’s a feast.

What’s the problem?  Editing.

Oh my gosh, I can’t tell you how important editing is.  If writing a book is like throwing all the ingredients together and mixing then editing is like checking the recipe to make sure you’ve put the right ingredients in at the right amount.

I’ve heard a very large number of self-published writers out there say that they can make due without an editor.

Well you can’t.

*ducks*

At least I’m in the school of thought that says you absolutely must have your work edited by a professional before you can let it see the light of day.  There are more things that need looking at in a novel than most writers setting out on the journey realize.  And based on the comments I’ve seen here and there, there is also a misunderstanding about just what it is that an editor does.  So let’s take a look at that, shall we?

First, there are two kinds of editors.  You can’t do without either of them.

When a lot of people think “editor” they think of the person who reads through your manuscript looking for bad grammar, misspelled words, and typos.  This is a Copy Editor.  Copy editing is like making sure you don’t have broccoli in your teeth.  I, for example, am terrible at punctuating dialog.  I can’t keep it straight in my head which bits of dialog should end with a comma and which should end with a period, which bit after the dialog should be capitalized as a new sentence and which is a dialog tag.  It’s obvious when you point it out to me, but when I’m just reading through I write it all wrong.

A good copy editor knows the rules of grammar and uses them mercilessly against your manuscript.  I should have had someone copy edit The Loyal Heart a little more intensely before I published it because I had a serious ‘smirk’ problem.  Copy editors are also there to catch overuse of words.  Thankfully, self-publishing allows you to discreetly swap out a more thoroughly edited version of a novel without anyone being the wiser.  *shifty look*

Yes, copy editing is obvious and oh-so necessary.

But even more essential, in my humble opinion, is developmental editing.

A Developmental Editor is a writer’s best friend, but I bet most writers are terrified of the prospect.  I know I was before I had my first manuscript developmentally edited.  A Developmental Editor reads your manuscript and asks questions.  They peel away the layers to figure out what makes your story tick.  Or more importantly, what stops your story from ticking.  A Developmental Editor not only points out the broccoli in your teeth but asks you why you needed to have broccoli in the first place.  Maybe kale would work better?

Like I said, I was terrified when I sent my first manuscript to a Developmental Editor.  I loved that story.  I was passionate about it.  The very last thing in the world that I wanted was for someone to pick it apart and tell me everything that was wrong about it.  I chewed my nails for weeks, wondering what my editor, Alison, would say about the story.  I was terrified that she would tell me I was a horrible writer and should stick to my day job.

Well, she didn’t.  Why?  Because Alison is an excellent editor!

A good Developmental Editor, like Alison, is there to work with you.  Because there are all sorts of things that you, as a writer, can’t see when you’re so close to your work.  Think of a Developmental Editor as the sharpest reader your story is ever going to have.  If something doesn’t make sense, they will tell you.  If they think you didn’t lift a character or situation to its fullest potential, they will tell you.  If they have an idea for a different direction your story or backstory could go in, they will tell you.

LISTEN TO THEM!

Case in point:  I’m working on a western Romance, Our Little Secrets, right now.  I wrote it, and rewrote it, and revised that.  But something still wasn’t right.  I knew something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was … or wasn’t.  The time came and I sent it off to Alison.  And I waited in dread because I knew something wasn’t right.  I knew a serious critique was in the mail.

And then came my edit letter.  And yep, the story has some problems.  But guess what?  I may have known that there were issues, but Alison had a much clearer idea of what the issues were.  Her long, long, long letter of critiques read like the pieces of a complex puzzle fitting into place.  Oh!  Of course my heroine seems a little too perfect and a little too capable of handling things.  I didn’t really define what she was afraid of well enough.  And of course that potentially awesome scene fell flat.  I only depicted my hero’s shock over the turn of events, not all of the other emotions he would be feeling.  Oh!  That’s what was missing!

I don’t care how good of a writer you are, if you don’t have someone else, someone professional working with you to process your story it’s not going to be as good as it could be.  Do you know which of the Harry Potter books is J.K. Rowling’s least favorite?  The Goblet of Fire.  Why?  Because she felt as though her publishers rushed her and she didn’t have a chance to edit it as much as she wanted to.  Yes folks, even the master herself doesn’t get it right on the first draft and needs the help of editors to bring a story to its full potential.

So please, please, please do yourself and your readers a favor.  Bite the bullet, hold a bake sale, wash cars, break the piggy-bank, max out your credit cards and hire an editor.  A Developmental Editor and a Copy Editor.  You need them.  Everybody needs them.  If J.K. Rowling can do it, you can too.

Next week:  How to listen to your editor, critiques, and reviews without whining or losing your temper and becoming a better writer for it.

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Quantity vs. Quality

Posted on April 10, 2012 | 8 Comments

Folks, I am experiencing an existential crisis.  I want to make writing my full-time job.  I want to be able to support myself with my pen (or keyboard) alone.  But….

Right now I do okay with the two books I have self-published.  (Ooo!  Look over there to your right!  There they are!)  I have another one that is more or less ready to publish but that I’m going to use to test some trad pub waters, and I have at least started the third book in my Medieval trilogy and have a goal to publish before September.  But this is not enough to support a life as a homeless vagrant, let alone my comfy middle-class life in suburban Philadelphia.

Recently I read this interesting article from Derek J. Canyon’s blog “Adventures in ePublishing” with statistics from self-published authors who sell over 50,000 copies a year.  And while it didn’t include a lot of the information I wanted to know (what promotional tools were used, what reviews said about these books, whether they were professionally edited, and how much they spent on editing and cover design) one of the big, noticeable stats was that many of these authors had published over 11 book.  Some within a year or two.

Why does that statistic make me so angry?  I’ll tell you why.  Because I have this niggling feeling that somewhere along the line someone told self-publishing authors that they key to success is QUANTITY.

This is what Quanitity looks like

Now, I have no problem with writing lots of books.  I’m a pretty fast writer myself.  But I have this other thing called a full-time bill-paying job that for various reasons this year has been sucking up a way larger portion of my brain and energy than a job ever has before.  And while I have about a zillion story ideas and a file full of ideas that have been outlined and expanded on, everything needs work.

Herein lies the crux of my argument.

I believe it was Ernest Hemingway who said “The first draft of anything is shit.”  Preach old man!

It’s so true.  I am very, very proud of my two novels, The Loyal Heart and The Faithful Heart, but I’ll let you in on a little secret.  The draft that of TLH that is published is draft 8.  It’s draft 7 for TFH.  And the novel I’m currently slaving over to try out traditionally, Our Little Secrets, is on draft 5 right now … and I still have kinks to work out.

Sure, I could slap something together, spell-check it, save many hundreds of dollars by having a friend or two read it and then throwing it up on Smashwords.  … On second thought, no I couldn’t.  My head would explode.  I need to knead my novels like bread dough.  I need a professional opinion.  And like bread dough, I have to let things sit and rise to get the best results.

Frankly (and I’m sure someone will take offense to this, so sorry in advance) when I see your average self-published author smacking together book after book after book and proudly proclaiming that they have fifty-leven titles for sale on Amazon and that they’ve never had to drop a penny on professional editing (because they have great beta-readers), I just want to laugh and say “Oh really?  I’d like to see you get just one request for a full manuscript from an agent or publisher.”

This is what Quality looks like. Ooo, pretty! And hundreds of years in the making!

Because I believe it’s quality that counts.  Yes, we could all write penny dreadfuls until the cows come home.  That article proves that there are some successful self-published authors selling 50,000+ books a year.  But how many self-published authors sell 50 books a year?  I suspect those numbers are higher.  Much higher.

Okay, so let’s get realistic for a second.  Good realistic, mind you.  Your average traditionally published author in my genre of Romance publishes one, maybe two books a year.  It takes about a year from the time the publisher says go to the time when you see the book in stores, maybe even longer.  Why?  Editing, cover design, copy-editing, care, attention.  Quality.  The publisher is staking their reputation and a lot of money on that book.

Yes, a lot of traditionally published authors working on this model have more than eleven books published.  One of my personal favorite authors, Elizabeth Hoyt, has 13 books and a novella published.  But she didn’t publish them all in the last two years.

My point is: Quantity is good.  Quality is better.  Quantity can happen over time.  Publishing is a long game.  The beauty of eBooks is that they don’t go out of print.  They’re going to be there for a while.  The best course of action in working towards quantity is to take your time now and boost your quality.

I strongly dislike the message being sent to self-publishing dreamers that quantity is the key to sales.  Sure, it’s true, but I think that the way the message is being sent right now is ultimately damaging to the reputation of self-publishers everywhere.  The message is being received as “Get as much as you can out there as fast as you can.  Substitute beta-readers for professional editors if you have to.  Never mind minor grammatical mistakes.  Publish, publish, publish!”

Also Quantity ... and a reminder that I should tidy up.

No, people!  Stop the insanity!  Slow down and make sure that what you’re publishing is worthy of the imaginary ink you’re publishing it with!  And definitely get the idea out of your head that you’re going to be one of the VERY FEW authors selling more than 50,000 copies of books a year!  It’s nice when it happens, but to expect it?  That way lies madness.

So what do you all think?  Is there a message to publish quantity rather than quality out there or am I just imagining things?  Do you think self-published authors need to adjust their thinking about this game?

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