So…you sell editing services, but you don’t proofread? You are “a traditional publisher that let’s the crowd select our books.”? (Cold contact letter, Thad, 7/11/14) Not that traditional publishers don’t have a few mistakes slip through, but they generally do employ editors, copy editors, proofreaders—and authors are expected to pitch in and proofread as well. You only get one chance to make a great first impression! Your mail client? Your stubby fingers? General paucity of sleep? Which will be your answer if the typo is on the title page of my book, 1,000 copies crowdfunded and printed?

   So…you sell marketing services? But you cold-contacted me without researching me or the book you referenced, The Ring of Allaire. (Ballantine Del Rey Books, paperback original 1981.) You are a start-up. I am not. I have a background in advertising and extensive experience with a major publisher, having published 7 Mass Market paperbacks with Del Rey Books. What can you do that they could not? That KDP and Createspace are not better platforms for? (FYI—I get a 70% royalty from both. Without Inkshares.) And if you still aren’t sleeping after launching in January…but wait, was the letter written in January, and sent to me in July? Is it by some chance a form letter? Are you marketing your start-up with a badly edited form letter?

   One marketing strategy traditional publishers employ is the Cover Quote. It’s like a product endorsement. M.R. Brazear is a many times self-published author with respectable sales. You might have wanted a cover quote from her, for one of your projects. But if there ever was a bridge possible there, you burned it when you replied to her post on the KDP Voice of the Author forum and addressed her as “Margie”. In fact, napalm comes to mind. (Her given name is Margaret.)

   I made it a point to read your online information, first the FAQs and then the contract. I know you say it only takes five minutes to read, but I like to read for comprehension, so I took a bit longer. I’m not sure why you suggest reading a legal document so quickly—unless it’s so no one notices the typos. (Bejeweled is a word, bedecked, is a word, benighted is a word, bedazzled is a word—but “bedeemed” (Page 13) is not, at least not in English. You surely meant “be deemed”—two words.) Your contract also states that it is “non-exclusive” (Pages 2, 11) Your usage suggests that you meant to write “exclusive”.  (…irrevocable, and transferable right to print, publish and sell your work worldwide, in both electronic and print format. Page 2.) I submit that if I can’t sell a work anywhere else in the world, that contract is exclusive. A non-exclusive contract would have both parties able to release, say, a Kindle edition of a work. Does the wording of the contract present legal difficulties? I’d only care if I’d been dumb enough to sign it. If it makes difficulties for you….well, you wrote it.

   The bottom of your contact email reads “No thanks—Unsubscribe. Thad. Jeremy. You contacted me. When did I subscribe? What did I subscribe to? Please take me off your list—though I suspect you already have.

   Do Indie-Authors suffer from inferiority complexes? I’ve been following forums on KDP Voice of the Author and Goodreads for a bit now, and I’ve noticed some common “threads” if you can bear the play on words. Schemes to get your self-published book noticed. Begging for reviews. Moaning about one-star reviews. Sites to promote your self-published book. Ways to trade reviews or move books up on “lists”. Do I need a new cover/book description/agent/blog? Requests for recommendations of overlooked self-published works. Cheek by jowl: I need reviews to become a bestseller/someone is rating my books unfairly, how can I make them stop?

   Here’s my question: If you present your work professionally (and that means well-edited and properly formatted) when exactly does the customer in the Kindle Store tumble to the fact that your book is self-published? You have to scroll down really far, well below the book description to find the publisher data. Do readers do that? Or do they just go to the Look Inside, then make their choice about purchasing? I looked at a couple of pages of an Amazon Search for “Epic Fantasy”, as a test, and I really couldn’t tell unless I clicked on an individual book and looked inside it. There’s no cover blurb that screams “Self-Published”.

   If we can remember that we are Indie Authors and Indie Publishers, and do all aspects of both jobs with equal attention, if we make our writing the best it can be, and don’t rush a project into print too soon, we are more likely to have a decent product to promote—and no reason to apologetically refer to our books as anything other than…books!

   And then the readers, the sales, the reviews will come. But the writing comes first! 

Your book title won’t fit on your cover.

You have 20 pages of thank-yous, author notes and a prologue at the front of your book.

Your text isn’t justified.

You don’t know what “justified” means.

You double space between paragraphs.

Your indents are two inches wide.

You back cover copy has to be set in 8 point italic condensed type to fit on the page.

   Want to look like a pro? Look at other books. There are millions out there, in stores, libraries, and if you’re me, all over the house. If you create in an unnecessary vacuum, resign yourself to reinventing the wheel.

And an afterward about book titles: this is part of marketing, and major publishers have never had any trouble changing an author’s working title to something they feel works better for their line. When I did my experiment to see if I could tell whether books were self-published, it was the titles that gave them away, not the covers.

   Titles are not copyrightable, but you’d still be nuts to call your novel Gone With the Wind unless you’re a meteorologist and it’s your autobiography. Do a search to see if there are other books with similar titles—you don’t want your work to get lost, or be confused with another book. I went back to the original title for Moonshine, because there were lots of books called Moonlight besides mine, but no other fiction with Moonshine in the title.

   That title/subtitle that won’t fit on your cover? Folks, this is a bit like registering a baby thoroughbred with the Jockey Club. Which sounds like a quality horse? Secretariat, or Suzy Q’s Fuzzy Princess? Unbridled or Makemesomebigbucks5starreviews? Naming your book is an art, like naming your characters. It’s worth your time and consideration, and it’s not entirely the author’s preference—it’s part of your marketing, your book’s identity, your branding.

   Once, children, long ago—so long ago that the earth was formless and void, and Amazon had only been heard of by Greek mythologists, there were gatekeepers of publishing known as Editors.

   Part of the editorial domain was the Slush Pile, the unsolicited manuscripts waiting to be read and chosen for publication. (Many an editorial assistant lost life or limb to a toppling Slush Pile, and the fire hazard can barely be imagined!) There was a formula for conquering the Slush Pile, a spell which, when executed correctly, would allow your book to rise up from the pile, and to an Editor’s attention. This spell would get you sales the only place you could in those far-off days—from a book publisher. (If you had not performed the ritual correctly, you would receive the dreaded missive “…does not meet our needs at the present time. We wish you luck placing it elsewhere…) This missive would generally be in the form of a post card, mailed out by surviving editorial assistants. And sometimes you got it even if you did perform the ritual correctly, because publishing is a capricious art, and it’s easier to mail a post card than it is to read a manuscript by an unknown author all the way through.

   The incantation was called Manuscript Format. It was simple of purpose—a manuscript must be easy for an editor to read. There was one standard for all, with special rules for those works which required footnotes, and newspapers, where work was cut to length from the bottom up, so best keep anything important in the first paragraph.

White paper. 8 ½ x 11 inches. One side only. (Easy to photocopy.)

12 point type, same as a typewriter. Double Spaced. (Easy to read.)

Wide margins top, bottom, sides. (Plenty of room for editing. Or re-writing.)

Indent your paragraphs obviously, so the typesetter could see what you were doing.

No double spacing between paragraphs.  #  indicates a break in the text.

No pink paper. No fancy fonts or script. No longhand. (All too hard to read. Editors lived by their eyes. And the typesetters deserved a break too.)

   Doesn’t matter today, you say? You are your own editor, your own typesetter, your own publisher, and you will do as you please! And when you do, reflect on this story, which I heard from the author’s own lips at a World Fantasy Convention many years ago:

   Steven R. Donaldson had submitted his manuscript for the first of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever to every US publisher. (There were more of them in those days.) After wallpapering the bathroom, he decided to submit to European publishers. And while he waited to gather addresses, he thought he might as well start over again in the US. At the beginning of the alphabet. Ballantine Books. The manuscript landed in the slush pile of Lester del Rey, founding editor of Ballantine Del Rey Books. One Friday, Lester wanted a book to take home for weekend reading. He visited the pile, and chose the first book he came to that was easy to read. Can you guess whose book he chose? Fortune favors the prepared!

   Learn how to present your work professionally. Basic formatting of your book is very…basic. It’s meant to be! You want your work to shine, which means putting as little between your story and your reader as you can. No weird type, no double spaces between paragraphs, no improper verb tenses, no misspelled words, functional punctuation,no odd word-pictures, no excuses! You are the Writer, you are the Editor, you are the Publisher—and you can never go wrong by being professional at every task, at all times.

This is my writer's group, at Peaberry's Coffee, Canfield Ohio.  This post came about because I couldn't get Voice of the Author on KDP to upload my congrats to the thread of a new author who'd just finished her first book, and I was sick of typing my response over and over. So, Word, then Blog!

   First, congratulations! Job well done. Job not finished—and that’s good news for the author, because you get to do these celebrations repeatedly as you craft your book. Good books are not so much Written as Re-Written!

   I had several books under my belt when I watched Romancing the Stone, sitting in the theater next to my mother. Great opening—dramatization of book’s romantic ending, then the author typing “The End”. She sits back, sighs, opens a bottle of wine and a can of cat food. Author and author’s cat celebrate, each in their own fashion. Then the wine glass and the cat dish are flung into the fireplace, Russian toasting-fashion. And my mother turns to me and says…”Do you do that?” My reply? “No, I usually just turn off the typewriter and go to bed, because it’s two in the morning.”

   So that’s the grand finish to a novel, if you will. Because writing is a process, you may celebrate the completion of your first draft—and you should—but you should know there is still more process to come. Now you edit.

   Content Edit, Copy Edit, Proofread. Perform these essential steps repeatedly. Get some distance, allow some time. Question everything. Develop fresh eyes, as if you were reading someone else’s book. Because although you should love your creation with all your heart and all your soul as you write that first draft, afterwards you must have eyes and heart of steel—because your work is to ensure that the book in your head becomes the one your reader eventually sees, and shares with you. You can celebrate at every step, because this necessary work is an achievement. Your cat’s not going to complain—she’s going to accept that extra can of food as her due.

       As you maybe can tell, I enjoy editing. I look at it as an opportunity to spend quality time with my characters. I won’t pretend it’s always a breeze—in fact, if you do it too long at a stretch and find you’re enjoying yourself, you might just be reading in an uncritical way, and it’s time to take a break! Come back when you have fresh eyes. If that means you throw your book in a box and shove it under the bed for a month, so be it! Bet you find all sorts of illogic, inconsistency, areas to expand and overdone description that you skimmed over on an earlier read. That’s why editing is best accomplished over time, with breaks. There’s no publisher breathing down your neck. Take the time you need. Do the job right. Don’t see it as drudgery—it’s just one more important part of the process of writing!

Fun Quiz: What is the job of the book  cover?

1. Keep the book clean. (Dust Jacket, duh!)
2. Make your book a best-seller. (Sell a gazillion copies.)
3. Attract attention. (Pick me up! Pick me, pick meeee!)
4.  Help you find a book on your shelf. (Identify.)

   If you chose #3—give yourself a gold star. If you chose #2—you may just be a typical indie author-publisher.

   The job of a book cover—and this is Commercial Art training and 19 years in retail advertising sharing with you—the job of a book cover is to make a potential purchaser pick up the book. (Studies show that touch is an important part of a sale. Customers who pick up an item are much more likely to buy it. (“Odds are if you touch it, you’ll probably buy it”) Farm & Dairy Auction Guide, March 26, 2009.) (What, you think I make these things up?) Book covers are how your book gets noticed.

   But does the cover of an e-book still matter? After all, many e-book readers say they couldn’t tell you what a given cover looks like—once they buy the book, they never see its cover again. Yes! All the marketing, sales-inducing features of traditional publishing still apply, thus:

1. Cover (Cover Image) gets your attention in a crowded marketplace.
2. Back Cover Copy (Product Description) tells you what sort of book you’re looking at. Romance. Science Fiction. Self Help. Vampire Mystery.
3. Inside Cover Copy/Random Read (Look Inside) informs your decision on whether or not to purchase. Do I like the writer’s style, or does the obvious lack of well-drawn, engaging characters drive me nuts? Does the first chapter draw me in? Hook me?  What about the second chapter? Is there a 40-page list of characters to wade through before I get to the story?

   In fact, an e-book enjoys an advantage over a physical book in a real book store. Every book is displayed face-out. (In stores, this is a costly (to the publisher) piece of product placement. Aw, you thought that happened by accident, didn’t you? On-line, you see every cover, not just a shelf of spines.

   The best cover in the universe will not make your book a best-seller. The cover is a marketing tool. Myself, if I know the book or the author, an e-book cover only matters a little to me. Who sees it once they’ve bought and read that book? But a physical cover…that matters enormously. It’s a crucial part of the book’s identity, the author’s branding. Many covers are rightly classics, with award-winning art good enough to hang on the wall. Those transcend mere marketing.

   A great cover might sell your book. A 5-star review might sell your book. But reviews and ratings only influence me up to a point. The only way I’ll know if a book is for me is to read some of it. When I skip the “Look Inside” feature on an unknown book or author, I risk disappointment. No one’s fault if I don’t look. Not the fault of the reviews, either. Only I know what I like—or what drives me crazy in a book.

   It all starts with the cover. That eye-candy image, that siren song in pixels. If I notice it, take a closer look, spiral in—that cover has done its job, whether I buy the book or not!

Moonshine came to be because a well-known children’s publisher told my agent they’d consider a mid-grade book, preferably with a unicorn in it. They had liked Thistledown rather well, but felt it was “too old” for their readers.

I won’t pretend I studied up on just what a mid-grade book was, or set out to write one. I chose to tell an early adventure of Tristan’s, of the time when he and Thomas first met. And the well-known publisher decided the time wasn’t right to add a hardcover fantasy to their line. So Moonlight became an early Print On Demand book from Wildside Press in 2001.

I hope you will agree that it’s a tale readers of all ages will enjoy!
Kindle edition launched April 3, with a cover by Teddi Black. Wildside Press will be doing a new paperback edition, before this year's World Fantasy Convention.

Sidebar: if you bought any of my e-books right after they came out, are maybe just now getting around to reading them  and are disappointed in the covers or the formatting--please know that those issues have been addressed, and all the books have new covers. Download the updated version.

   A fellow writer has told me I write good reviews. (Actually, she was more complimentary than that, but I blush easily.) I’ll take the praise, but I attribute the quality to writing serious reviews in a Word file first, to be considered, revised and finally uploaded to Amazon or GoodReads. Both of these sites do a fine job of encouraging reviews to be done in the polar opposite way: “on the fly”. “Rate” a book, then immediately “Review” that book. Not at all the same thing.

   Years back—pre-Amazon—I attended a panel on book reviewing at World Fantasy. (I remember it was in the same room where I heard George R.R. Martin read from Game of Thrones, pre-publication.) As a published author, used to 2-3 line reviews in Locus Magazine, I wanted to know why some books aren’t reviewed. I learned that in those days, most books didn’t merit a review, and surely not a national review. Too many books, too little space. The cover blurbs helped fill that marketing gap—and maybe got you the attention of reviewers. But in genre fiction, if you got reviewed at all, you were darn lucky! And if you got reviewed on a national level, you’d be astonished.

   Comes the digital revolution, and every reader/purchaser is invited to be a reviewer.

   I’ve read the reviews of my own books: online, on my Amazon Author Page, on my Good Reads Author page. I’ve learned a lot from all of them. Wise authors read all reviews, and look for consensus. What one reader hates, the next one will love. Same book, same character. Some readers don’t know the name of the character they’re discussing, so maybe they are “reviewing” a book they read years ago. They’re really rating the book, and I love to try to guess which edition, version or cover they’re referencing. Sometimes even the actual name of the book eludes them. They click on its picture, and rate the book. And memory is inexact, especially if you read a lot.

   So, what is a book review? A real book review? Well, it isn’t a lengthy synopsis or summary of the book. That’s the Product Description. Reviews go deeper.

   Why the story works for the reader. Or why it doesn’t. Why you liked the villain better than the hero. Why another reader would like—or should avoid—the book. That you liked a book is a compliment. Why you liked it is useful to the author and other readers.

   My humble opinion? Sure, but online research backs me up. A critical review summarizes (Just don’t give away the ending for fiction!), analyzes/assesses, and recommends. A review is a reaction to the story told, not a retelling of that story. There’s no wrong way to review, and there’s no right length, but the longest reviews would be those for literary journals

Take Your Own Good Hand

   That quote is from a poem which appeared in an Irving Stone Book, The Agony and the Ecstasy. Or else it’s from The Passions of the Mind, but I think not.)

   Writers Anonymous had an Indie-Publishing seminar the other night. Well attended by some earnest writers who wanted to Indie publish. Oh, the hope that shone in their eyes—that the panel would take their manuscripts and read them, edit them, publish them!

   We were asked about markets and promotion.(But in some cases, the writer “didn’t do computers.”) We were physically in a building filled with reference materials. A Public Library. A library where most of the attendees meet regularly. (They told us so.) A library which has an excellent section on writing in all its aspects. (I know—I’ve used this library for years.) No one appeared inspired to pick up a copy of The Writer’s Handbook and read it. Not even to learn about markets. Well, you can lead a horse to water, but…you know the saying.

   Folks, that’s how this writer learned to write, and to sell. (At that very library.) There’s no magic formula—there are dozens of them, often disclosed in articles in writing magazines and books. Be willing to read them. Learn at every opportunity, from the sources available to you. There are many, and most are free, while at the same time priceless.

   Take your own good hand. Dare. You do not have to wait for a professional to tell you what to do. Because we will one and all tell you, freely and happily, but you must do the work of telling your tale and presenting it to your audience.

   You. Not an agent. Not an editor. Not another writer who wrote something and published it. We all did what I’m recommending to you now. We wrote, we learned from one another, and we did our work as writers. (Writing is a trade without tricks.)

   Be brave. Be joyful. Take your own good hand, and your own good brain, and write! You can learn how to present your work professionally, publish it, and promote it. Knowledge is Power! You need no one’s permission to learn—but no one can learn for you. That’s your work as a writer, and as a human being too!

 

   I believe writers should write, without self-censoring. And then they should edit what they have written. Rigorously. Relentlessly. Repeatedly.

   I learned to write by reading well-written books. And badly written books, but later. I absorb what I read on a gut level. It’s not intentional learning all the time, and never in the beginning. So, anyone who wants to write, needs to read. Store up plot, style, character, till it is all second nature.

   I learned to edit by reading books on writing. It wasn’t necessary to find a class, a degree, an editor/agent, a writer’s group, someone to read my unpublished work—though all of those can surely help any writer at any time.

   Used to be, if a writer didn’t learn the craft—how to edit, plot, create characters and setting, hook a reader—it didn’t see print. Watercolorists say you should paint freely—and throw the first 100 watercolors away. Writers should write that first book—and maybe then the file cabinet or the box under the bed is the next and final step. It was a learning experience. Learn. Publish only when you have something you truly, objectively believe other people will want to read.

   Because, it’s the writing that makes a book. Not the format, not a great title, not the most professional cover that “looks like a best-seller”. A good book reads like a book.

   Yes, this rant began as a review of a couple of indie-published works. It grew. It needs to be said. Names will not be named.