publishing fantasy – The Fantasy Nook

Thursday Technicalities: Traditional Publishing

Introduction

This will be the final section in the publishing series I’ve been doing. Next week, we’ll be moving on to another topic. Last week was on indie publishing, and this week, we’re going to discuss traditional publishing. This will be a slightly shorter post since the application process and package is often not all that different from indie publishing packages. But the rules for submitting that same material are a little different, usually. So let’s get into it!

Rules for Submitting Manuscripts

For most traditional publishers, they won’t accept unsolicited manuscripts. This just means that, unless they’re running a special period for you to send in your manuscript directly, you’ll need an agent. Some indie presses may also want you to go through an agent, but they’re not as particular about this all the time, which makes it important to read through their website and find out if they actually accept manuscripts unsolicited.

But with a traditional publisher, expect to need an agent unless there’s a note that they’ll accept unsolicited manuscripts. If you don’t do this, your manuscript will be consigned to the trash pile. They’ve got too many manuscripts as it is without spending time on people who won’t follow guidelines. If their website doesn’t say either way and you really, really want to take a shot with them, your best bet is to look to see if there’s a way to contact them and ask what they expect for submissions. Politely inquire if there is a way you can submit your manuscript or if you need an agent to do so. Some of the smaller publishing companies might be open to it. Bigger ones like Tor or Random House? Probably not. But those bigger companies are usually clearer on what they expect.

Don’t Be Cute or Fancy

Rule two? Don’t try to be cute or fancy. This is like applying for a job in some respects. Sending your cover letter or other documents on hand-designed stationary or any of the other weird things people have done with cover letters or other application papers is a no. Just don’t do it. It does not make you look good, it will make them laugh (but not in a nice way), and you will most likely be rejected. Tasteful and professional is the way to go. Let your manuscript speak for itself and don’t give them a bad impression before they even read the piece.

Reasons to Choose Traditional Publishing

There’s no doubt about it that traditional publishing, if you can establish yourself, goes a long way. You get editors, cover designers, and marketing plus royalties (or an advance, depending on how they pay). Plus, even though indie and self-publishing are perfectly valid ways of publishing, people still give traditionally published authors more weight. That last reason to choose this route has gradually been shifting with the success authors have had going it alone with self-publishing, but there’s still a bit of a stigma among those who don’t know much or anything about publishing or the writing industry, so there’s a chance the readers you want to reach are more likely to pick a book up if it’s in Barnes and Noble, not just Amazon. While there are ways to achieve that if you’re a self-published or indie author, being traditionally published is definitely easier.

Reasons Traditional Publishing Might Not Be Your Best Option

One trend in traditional publishing that tends to be a bit of an issue at times is the lack of proper editing. The quality of editors has gone drastically downhill, partially because the demand for them has been higher than the number of editors who learned from other seasoned editors. When it comes to editing, you learn by doing and by working with editors who know the craft well, whether through self-paced classes or books from those editors or by actually working side-by-side with them. Unfortunately, when you don’t have enough editors who do that, then you have an issue with quality of edits performed on books.

The other problem that I’ve heard traditionally published authors complain about is that editors don’t really give their book the attention it needs for one reason or another. Many end up getting a freelance editor to go through it before they even submit to a publisher because they want it to be ready for print before the publisher even works on it.

Why? Because while some authors get really great editors, a trend that has become an issue in traditional publishing is looking to see if the manuscript can be published as is. If it can, they put it to print with minimal editing or with sub-par edits. If it can’t, it often gets tossed unless the author is already established. This isn’t true of every publisher that’s traditional, but it’s a disturbing trend, and more disturbing when you start reading that even some established authors are finding this happening in their work.

Issues with Control and Involvement in the Process

So be aware of that issue. The other reason it might not be for you is that you have very little control over the process with a publisher. With indie and small publishers, you may find you have some control over things or that they’re more open to your suggestions. Not so much with big publishers and traditional publishing in general. You’ll get paid royalties or an advance, but until you’re well established, you won’t get paid big sums of money for the book, typically, because the publisher won’t invest if they’re not sure it can sell. This may also mean that marketing for your book isn’t as strong as it could be.

Conclusion

As with anything, traditional publishing has its pros and cons. Nothing is ever completely perfect, so you have to evaluate which options available will work best for you. Once you find that option, go for it! Expect to be rejected a lot with traditional publishing, but don’t give up on it. If they give you any feedback in their rejection letter, then use it to improve. Otherwise, keep your chin up and keep trying. In the meantime, don’t stop writing while you wait! Writing is one of those skills where you can only improve by doing, so keep learning and practicing no matter how many rejection letters you get.

If you really want to make a career out of it, it is possible, but you’re going to have to really work to stand out head and shoulders above every other hopeful, author wanabee. While the odds aren’t as low as people sometimes act like they are, they still aren’t high for you making it. So never stop learning and improving and honing your craft. That’s your best shot at making this work.

Thursday Technicalities: Indie Publishing

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Introduction

Indie publishing is the next topic in the discussion of the final step in publishing. Last time, we discussed publishing with Amazon and focused mainly on self-publishing. Indie publishing is a little bit different. It’s often used to refer to both publishing with a small independent press and publishing yourself with Amazon. But for our purposes, we’re only talking about publishing with a small independent press here. There are some important things to consider if you want to go this route, so let’s go over the key points.

Indie Publishing – The Query

With indie publishing, you now start getting into dealing with gatekeepers. Gatekeepers are the ones who will read through your query package and, usually only if they find that promising, your manuscript to decide if your work is good enough and fits well with what they’re looking for at that company. Both traditional and indie publishers do this, and it makes your query very important.

Generally, queries will include some sort of query letter, which has the hook (why they would want your story specifically as opposed to any of the thousands of others vying for the same place in their catalog) and information regarding the book. I may get into writing a query letter and other querying steps at a later date, but a lot of information is available regarding this process. The key things you need to remember are to research and make sure you submit to the people who would be most likely to want your book, to remain professional while also providing unique content that will make them take notice, and to be genuine.

Agents and publishers have far more query letters and manuscripts than they can possibly go through, so you want to avoid giving them an excuse to chuck yours in the trash. Putting it on flashy stationary or doing similarly unprofessional things will not help your cause. Think of it like you would a resume and a cover letter. You don’t use flashy, ornate paper. You focus on the content and give them a good reason to want to talk to you. This is the exact same idea. The only thing that changes is the content and the precise way you choose to present it in your letter.

Indie Publishing – Precautionary Tales

One major thing you need to understand about indie publishing is how easy it is to accidentally get stuck with the wrong kind of publisher. By this, I mean that it’s easy for newbies and even established authors who are newer to indie publishers to accidentally end up with a vanity press.

At best, a vanity press will publish your work for you, but they charge you hefty up front fees and do very little to help you with the book or sales. My recommendation? If a publishing company is asking you for money up front, you should be running the other way. That said, there are a few reasons why it would be acceptable for a company you’re working with to ask you to pay them for a book that will go into their catalog.

One major reason is that they’re not technically going to publish the book. For example, I’m currently part of a group of authors who are writing for the Children of Chaos series hosted by Indie/pendent Book Services. They aren’t technically a publishing company, but the books, though published by the individual who wrote them, are all in their website’s catalog of books for the CoC series. This means that I as an author get extra exposure from both the company’s promotion of their hosted series on the website and from the marketing efforts of other authors in the series. They required us to pay a $20 upfront fee for each book publishing slot we claimed for paying the cover designer to do the covers for each book. This was reasonable not only because that’s an extremely low price for a well-designed cover but also because they’re not making any money off the royalties on each individual book and have no rights to the book beyond the right to have the author keep it published indefinitely.

Anthologies are another one where I’ve seen small indie presses ask authors to contribute some small amount toward the costs of the book. It all depends on the press. But if they’re asking you for anything more than $100, I would be questioning why, particularly if they’re going to end up with rights or money from the sales the book makes. Essentially, be extremely wary of any publisher that asks you for money.

As I said earlier, best case scenario? They charge you a lot and produce the book but don’t do much to help you get it out there. Worst case scenario? They charge you and never deliver at all. Either way, it’s a scam, and it’s going to cost you a lot for no reason at all. Just don’t do it no matter how excited you are that someone accepted you and your manuscript. Con artists and scammers are more than happy to prey on your desire to be a successful, published author.

Indie Publishing Advantages

The advantages to indie publishing, of course, are fairly obvious. You get an editor, a cover designer, and help with the marketing. Depending on the company, you’ll get more or less of this, but it’s nice to have someone else on your team. Why go it alone if you can get a team to help?

But besides the obvious, another advantage of indie publishing is that you may have more reach than you would alone and you also get practice pitching your work to editors and agents. That will prove invaluable if you want to later take another series or book to a traditional publisher. Learning here is a good place to do it.

The other major advantage is that, if you find the right fit for you, it can come to feel more like a support network than just a publisher. I know authors working with small publishers and indie presses who have said their group feels more like family than just agents, editors, and publishing staff. Your book also may get more focus and attention from your editors and publishing staff than it would at a bigger company. This isn’t guaranteed, and the quality of the editors still has to be factored in, but the likelihood of getting closer attention to detail and polishing is still higher.

Indie Publishing Disadvantages

Besides the possibility of cons, the most prominent disadvantage with indie publishing or traditional publishing is the control you give up. Of course, chances are, if you’re looking for a publisher after going it alone with self-publishing you’re more than happy to give up control of every little detail in order to gain the advantages a publisher can offer. But if you’re new to the process of publishing, know that you will give up a lot of the control you have over it.

The publisher will dictate how you can use the book outside the publishing contract, they can typically make pricing changes without asking first (though some will ask anyway), and your royalties will be negotiated differently than they would if you did things directly through Amazon. What that looks like really depends on the publisher, though. Furthermore, they are the ones who do the cover design, often control marketing efforts (though most will expect you to pitch in on the promotion of the book), and handle many other areas of the publishing process. What your publisher decides to do depends strongly on the contract that the two of you negotiated.

Bottom line? Read your contract very, very carefully. Pay attention to what rights you’re giving them and make an informed decision before signing with any given indie publisher. You don’t want to regret the decision later after all the work you’ll put into the book.

Conclusion

In the end, what you choose to do with your book is your decision. There are advantages and disadvantages regardless of which you choose to go with, and you need to know what those are before you decide. Read the contract, make an informed decision, and go for it. Expect to be rejected as the norm, not the exception, because smaller presses only have a set number of people they can publish within their budget, just as big name publishers do, and their selection is typically smaller. But if indie publishing is the direction you want to head, don’t give up! Keep submitting and use the feedback you get from one publisher (if any) to improve for the next one you choose to query.

Thursday Technicalities: Publishing with Amazon

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Introduction

Moving on from our discussions on marketing, we’re going to start looking at the last step in the publishing process. And that is publishing itself! Today, we’re going to focus on publishing with Amazon, but I’ll also talk about traditional publishing and some of the things I’ve experienced while working with an independent publisher, which is a third option that is slightly different from traditional publishing while still not being quite the same as self-publishing.

Amazon is probably the biggest platform authors use for self-publishing. Other sites like Kobo and paperback distributors like Lulu follow closely in Amazon’s footsteps, but when it comes to publishing both paperbacks and ebooks? Amazon is the best known platform for that. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the pickiest platforms I’ve worked with, and there a many little tips and tricks that most don’t know. Knowing how to get the most out of the system (extort it, if you will) usually makes the difference, at the very least, between making it onto the top 100 in any given category and dying in obscurity.

Lovely, right? Well, no matter how annoying Amazon can be, it has the largest reach out of the online retailers selling and publishing ebooks and paperbacks. So, we can’t ignore it even if we don’t much appreciate how ridiculous things can be. But, not ignoring it means that we have to learn the system if we want to be successful. By the end of this article, I hope to give you the major tools you need to do exactly that.

Publishing with Amazon’s Manuscript Requirements

To start, you’re not going to do very well if you can’t even get your ebook or paperback off the ground and onto the platform. Amazon has some seriously strict requirements for formatting. It’s quite frustrating at times. The time investment to get a nice looking ebook or paperback can be daunting.

If you’re going to do self-publish consistently and have a Mac, I highly recommend getting Vellum. It isn’t available for Windows users, so sadly, we’re all stuck spending a good eight to ten hours trying to get the formatting to look nice on Kindle. (I know because I go through it every time I have a new book to prep.) Vellum takes you twenty minutes once you’re accustomed to using it.

If you’re doing the work on Word, there’s a plugin Amazon created for Kindle that can be downloaded and installed for free. They also have a version for desktop that’s its own program for after you finish working in Word. That’s what I linked to above.

Whichever format you prefer, don’t waste this tool. Use it. It doesn’t make everything better, and you won’t get highly complex formatting. Images still won’t work so well, but if you keep things streamlined and simple, the tool is going to make your life way easier. You’ll have fewer revisions to make to your document before it’ll work right on Amazon’s platform and e-readers. If you need some guidance on handling ebook formatting, I go into that here. I won’t rehash that now since the post would get too long if I did.

A Word on Paperbacks

When it comes to paperback formatting, you can get a lot more fancy, but make sure that when you’re done, you “print” it as a pdf with fonts embedded and the paper manually set to the size your finished paperback will be on Amazon. For most fiction books, I’ve found that using a 5.25″ x 8″ size works very nicely. If you have a program that lets you print pdfs with special settings already, then that should allow you to embed fonts and change to custom paper sizes. But if not, I use Bullzip Pdf Printer for mine. I invested in the fully-featured version, which has been well worth paying a one-time fee to access the settings I needed.

Make sure you get a proof copy to check cover, page numbers, table of contents, and sizing of any images you included before you hit publish on the paperback. Ebook issues are easy to fix. Paperback ones are not! Fixing spelling errors on paperbacks or glaring errors that I somehow missed when formatting has been nothing short of a nightmare in the past. It is worth noting that Amazon allows you to reupload the manuscript and the cover after you publish, something I couldn’t do when I had to make changes to Bane of Ashkarith. So that’s a definite improvement. But some of the information you’ll enter for the book page can’t be altered, so it pays to make sure you’ve double checked everything to save yourself time and headaches later.

Pre-Orders When Publishing with Amazon

For ebooks, you have the option of offering a pre-order period to readers. This gives you time to build hype and to gain reviewers for when the book comes out (something we discussed in the ARC readers post). But it also gives you time to get your categories and other issues ironed out before the book is actually delivered to buyers. I recommend using a three to four month period for your pre-order, so plan your other activities to prepare in accordance with that if you’re going to stick with that pre-order time frame.

Once the book is off pre-order, the manuscript you uploaded is automatically delivered to the reader, though. Because of that, you want to be sure you upload the finalized manuscript before the deadline Amazon gives you in the book’s content section. Don’t miss uploading because it’ll create all kinds of issues! Be sure that what you’re uploading is also the version you want readers to get.

Publishing Paperbacks

Paperbacks don’t have a pre-order period, sadly. I suppose it makes sense as Amazon probably doesn’t want to or may not have a way to keep track of all the orders they’re going to have to print at some random date in the future. This means, however, that you have to plan more for publishing the paperback. You don’t get extra time to get Amazon to iron out the issues with your categories or other things. Once it’s up, you have to hurry to get it all done.

I recommend putting your paperback out around two weeks before the actual release date for your ebook. Rather, announce its release two weeks before the ebook’s. Publish it a few days before your announcement of its release and either email or call Amazon about switching the categories, something we’ll go over in a moment.

It’s important that you have those categories switched before you do a big marketing push using the new book’s purchase link. If you don’t, none of your sales will help your ranking in the new categories because they’ll have gone toward the old, generic categories you chose in the initial setup of the book. Just one more way publishing with Amazon gets tricky. But once they’ve confirmed that they switched the categories over or updated them, then you can start sharing the link and using it in the marketing avenues we discussed in previous posts.

The other reason you should release the paperback two weeks before the ebook’s release is because it allows you to give your ARC readers two weeks to post their reviews before the ebook comes out. Having reviews out of the gate on your ebook can make a big difference, particularly if you were able to hit the 50 review threshold that gets Amazon’s algorithms to kick in to help sell the book.

Categories and Publishing with Amazon

And now we get to categories, something I keep mentioning but haven’t yet explained. If you’ve already published a book or two with Amazon, you know what they are. But did you know that you can have Amazon change them to less competitive categories or that the ones Amazon gives you to choose from at the beginning represent only 20% of the possible categories (the most competitive ones, by the way)? Most don’t.

For the newbies in my audience, you’ve come to the right place to learn about this! I’ve gone through three or four books now with this process, so I know the potential pitfalls, the difficulties, and the best methods for getting this ironed out. To begin with, let me explain what the categories are so you’re not lost. If you already know, feel free to skip the explanation.

Categories are the various classifications Amazon gives to their books. That’s the simplest explanation. But to put it in terms that you’d understand as an ebook or paperback reader with Amazon… Categories are all those options in the sidebar that let you narrow down a search. You know. You can choose to look under paranormal romance or teen fiction in the ebook store or under everything. Or, you could go to the nonfiction header and select autobiographies from the list. Those are the categories, and authors choose them. Sometimes, based on keywords chosen, Amazon may place you into certain categories automatically, but they’re not foolproof, and often, this doesn’t happen properly.

Notes on Categories when Publishing with Amazon

You can have up to ten categories on a book you’re publishing with Amazon, and there is no reason to leave it up to chance. As I said, the two categories you’re allowed to choose when first setting up the book are only 20% of the possible categories and are the most competitive 20%, likely because most don’t know they can add more or change their categories. You know your book far better than Amazon does, and so, as long as the categories seem relevant based on the description, they’re not going to fuss about it, usually.

However, when you call or email them under your author central’s help tab/contact us, you should know a few things to make the process smoother. I’ve made these errors both at the beginning and even now when I’m moving too fast and not checking the email before I send. Let’s go over them.

Age group matters! You can’t select Teen and Young Adult categories and also ask Amazon support to apply Children’s categories. They don’t like it, and they will tell you no. I know, I know… Your age range is set for 12 and up. They don’t care. Your choosing children’s as a category doesn’t mean the same thing to them as it does to you. To them, children’s means little kids, juvenile means anyone from about 9 – 12. Teen is 13 – 18, which makes sense. And adult, obviously, is 18+. But in some ways, the method makes sense. Wouldn’t want you to be able to categorize a book for adults as a teen or children’s book just to get better rankings.
Ebook and Book categories are not the same. If you’re asking them to change the ebook categories, make sure it says Kindle Ebooks or something to that effect, not books. And vice versa with books. If it says ebook instead of book, Amazon will reply back telling you they can’t change the categories and to resubmit, which is a pain.
ASIN or ISBN is a must. If you provide the ISBN, just know that you’ll need to only give book categories since the ISBN doesn’t go with ebooks on their platform. ASIN can be provided for both types so long as you specify that you want to change the categories for the ebook, list them, then specify you want to change the categories for the print book, and list those separate categories.

This should go without saying, but make sure the categories are relevant to your book. If they aren’t, readers and other authors tend to get annoyed because you’re taking up space in a category that has nothing to do with your work. It’s a great way to get bad reviews from your audience. Don’t do it even if the category is less competitive than the ones relating to your book. If you absolutely must take advantage of the category, write a new book. But under no circumstances should you apply it to the old one that doesn’t fit it.

Finally, make sure you send Amazon the entire pathway for the category. This means you need to not just tell them Paranormal Romance, for example, but you should instead be telling them you want Kindle ebooks > Teen and Young Adult > Paranormal Romance. This is just an example, and this probably isn’t the actual category path, but the idea is, everything you have to click on to get to that exact category must be provided or they won’t change anything.

Tools for Category Research

Personally, I prefer to use Publisher Rocket to do my category research. It’s going to be the easiest route because it gives you the info on number of books sold to reach both #1 and #10 in a category along with the seller ranking of each book’s publisher (individual or publishing company). It keeps the information in one neat, tidy place and provides you with the exact path, which you have to provide to Amazon if you want categories changed.

However, if you’re not able or inclined to spend the money for it, you can do it manually. Search in Amazon’s search bar for something related to your book, select a category that fits well, and note down the Amazon seller ranking for the top 10 books. Then, take those numbers and plug them into KindlePreneur’s Kindle Best Seller Calculator. This will tell you how many copies a day each book must sell to remain at their current rank. You would need to sell at least one more copy than they are in a day to beat them and take their spot. You can also use BkLnk to see all the categories books similar to yours rank under to get ideas for categories that might fit your book.

Conclusion

We already went over covers, so I won’t go into a huge amount of detail about that. Just make sure that your cover artist has the appropriate dimensions for the paperback cover you want them to create. They should know to create a Kindle cover using Kindle dimensions, but if you have issues with getting it to load, it’s acceptable to politely let them know what the problem is and ask them to address it if you specified that you wanted the cover for Amazon’s Kindle platform.

At the end of the day, publishing with Amazon is more effort than people think, if you want to do it well, at least. It isn’t as simple as throwing up a cover and calling it done. You have to work at it and perfect it if you want to deliver a product that stands out to readers in a good way. And that is what you want to do, particularly since so many others are also publishing on Amazon. You need to differentiate yourself from them in a positive way! Hopefully this proved useful for you. If you have questions or further comments, please feel free to add to the discussion in the comments!

Thursday Technicalities: Marketing #1

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Introduction

Marketing is a really broad topic. If any of you have ever done a Google search on tips and tricks regarding this topic, then you know the results seem to be endless. Everyone has a different opinion. My goal here, as it usual, is not to give you my opinion, primarily, but to offer you the options and give both the upsides and the downsides of both.

But because the topic of marketing is so vast, I’m going to break it down, and we’ll have a few posts on the issue. Today’s is going to center around the issue of building your email list and fan base. We’ll have some discussions about social media in a later post, and you can also see what I have to say about Pinterest now if you’re interested in starting in on that right away.

An Indisputable Fact About marketing

Here’s the one thing that will always be true about marketing. It will go hand-in-hand with publishing no matter what you choose to do. I don’t care if you’re indie-publishing with Amazon or going through a small publisher or even going with a big brand publishing company. Marketing is a must. Now, depending on what route you take, you may not need to do a lot of your own marketing. But as an author, you are always going to be interacting with fans, old and new, and striving to increase the visibility your book has.

If you rely on a company to do it all for you, you’re not going to do as well as you would pitching in. After all, you’re the writer, and people who are fans of your work want to talk to you, not your publisher. So you have to know about marketing, which is why we’re talking about it in regards to publishing.

A Launching Point

Everyone needs a launching point as an author. If you’ve been doing this for a while, you’ve already found and used yours. You’re moving on to finding new and better ways to do things. But if you’re new… Well, chances are you’re feeling overwhelmed and have no idea where to start. Even if you’re not new, there’s a chance you’ve overlooked this crucial launching point for authors in marketing.

To those who are new, let me just say… Take a deep breath. You’re going to be fine. You’ll make mistakes along the way, but that’s fine. We all have and still do. You’ll have to if you want to figure out what works. The good news is, in this day and age, there are lots of people who have done it before you and have figured out what works. And those people have an easy avenue to share about it online. You wouldn’t be reading this if we didn’t.

So, what is the starting point? In marketing, your starting point should be an email list. Social media is fine and all, but you don’t control that. If you’re locked out of the account for some reason and can’t get in, you’re not going to be able to engage with your audience there. The same is not the case for an email list. You own that, and you can send content to subscribers at any time. As long as you’re not doing anything sketchy or illegal, you won’t have to worry about being shut down.

As such, this is your starting point.

How Does Marketing Work With An Email List?

Glad you asked! For authors, there are lots of choices for marketing to an email list and for marketing to potential subscribers. The thing that seems to work the best for me is to offer free content of some sort or to give away a coupon that discounts one of your books (if you have your own website and a connected store).

Attracting New Subscribers

This is the concept of having a lead magnet. You have to give something to get something. In this case, no one wants to give up their email address if they’re not getting anything useful in return. The possibilities for a lead magnet are endless. I’ve offered coupons (as I mentioned earlier), completed short stories that are only available free to new subscribers, and free previews (the first few chapters) of books. Sometimes, I’ll offer both the free preview of a book and a coupon to go with that book, but it all depends on how I’m doing things at any given time.

If you haven’t started an email list yet, your lead magnet and choosing a platform to use for the mailing list is your first priority. You don’t have any subscribers yet, so you’re not going to be too worried about what content to send. But, once you start getting subscribers, content is a concern. So, let’s chat about that next.

Marketing to Current Subscribers

This one’s a little more work. A lead magnet is done once you have it up. You do the work up front to make it the absolute best it can be regardless of what you’re going to offer. But once the work is done, it’s done, and you don’t have to repeat it.

Marketing to the subscribers you have is harder. The goal you have is to make sure that you know your audience. Who are you trying to talk to?

Let me give you an example. I’ve talked before about who this blog is aimed towards, but for those who weren’t with me for that post, I’ll review. My goal is to provide writers with content that is professional and coming from a position of expertise. If I don’t know something, I go research it before I decide to talk about it. I make sure I know what I’m talking about.

But, I also target readers. I’m an author and a freelance editor, so my goal is to not only establish my credibility as an expert in my field but to also give the readers in the crowd something they can enjoy. That’s why I do book reviews. It’s my way of sharing books I love with other readers. At the end of the day, I’m an author and editor, yes, but I was a reader first, and so I like connecting with my readers and with others who just enjoy a good book like I do.

I take that same approach when dealing with my newsletter. The content targets both my readers and my writers. You, if you figure out who your target audience is, can do the same thing. And your goal with your lead magnet is to make sure that free or discounted content attracts people who will actually want to look at your emails.

Why Does Target Audience Matter?

Okay, story time. When I first started my newsletter and got my lead magnet set up on StoryOrigin to start attracting newsletter subscribers, I offered a short story for free. And I got a lot of subscribers. But here’s the problem… I was losing five or six every time I sent out a newsletter.

My newsletter only goes out once a month right now because, a) that’s all I can manage and b) if my audience is anything like me, once a month is fine but more than that is a nuisance in an already full inbox. I tend to unsubscribe if I’m getting emails every day or every week, and I’m less likely to buy anything from someone I feel is spamming me with content. So, I just don’t do that.

But, apparently, for the people I was attracting to my audience, one email was too much. Now, there will always be people who sign up just to get the content you’re giving away and then unsubscribe, which is why I prefer to offer coupons or discounts instead. And there will always be people who sign up and, despite your best efforts, seem to expect something from the newsletter that you never advertised. It’s good for those people to go so your list isn’t cluttered with people who have zero interest in your content.

Avoiding Freeloaders and Zero Interest Subscribers

If you’re filling your list with people who just want free stuff and have zero interest in what you have to offer, then the moment you send a newsletter that talks about a new release or markets any of your products to them, you’ll lose them. I’ve watched this happen with my newsletter before, and it’s not only frustrating, it’s disheartening. You can’t stop it from happening entirely, but gear your reader magnet or lead magnet toward those who have an interest in what you have to say.

That’s why it’s crucial you take the time to figure out your target audience and how you want to approach marketing. Your marketing strategy will be very different if you’re trying to establish expertise in your field versus trying to entertain your audience.

Now What?

So now you know why you should be building an email list and some strategies for making the process smoother. But now what? Where do you go? What email providers are best? Can you do it for free?

No one platform ever fits every person. As a result, I can’t tell you which platform you’ll like best. Usually, you can start a free account and have what you need to get started. Therefore, as long as there’s an option to export your list of emails if you choose, you can try something else and find what works.

I’ve chosen to go with MailChimp. It integrates with my website’s store and other platforms well, and I don’t have to pay to get that feature. Since I don’t pay, I can say that it’s a little limited on what it can do at times. I can automate welcome emails and organize the email list as I wish, but I can’t schedule emails for future dates. Instead, I write the email, save it, and manually send later. A little inconvenient, but it gives a lot of features that other platforms don’t always give, so no complaints here.

Options for Integrating Your Email Subscription Provider with Lead Magnet Sites

On this one, I also found that MailChimp is easier to find integration info for. However, the two sites I use for lead magnets do support other email list sites. I’ve liked working with StoryOrigin best for gaining new subscribers with lead magnets. They seem to have more options for joining promotions with those lead magnets than BookFunnel. However, BookFunnel also has options and has more ways to control the delivery of ARC copies than StoryOrigin does. However, you do have to pay a monthly (or annual) subscription fee. So if you’re looking for free, StoryOrigin offers quite a lot for being free software.

Conclusion

Well, that’s all on marketing for this week. Next week, we’ll go into some other areas of marketing that you’ll need to give your book its best shot at publication. I look forward to having you all join me!

Thursday Technicalities: Editing and Formatting

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Last week, I put up a post on publishing tips and tricks. It was an overview of the most important things to do before your publication date along with some tips on them. Well, now we’re going to go through them one at a time and talk about them in more detail. Today, we’re talking about editing and formatting!

Editing and formatting are two of my favorite parts of the publishing prep process. I know they’re probably not most people’s, but they are mine. And as a freelance editor and editorial designer (interior book designers/editorial designers make the actual book pages between the cover pages look pretty), I’d be pretty miserable if I didn’t! So this is one of my favorite subjects to talk about besides actual writing topics. I’m sure it shows as this is a bit long. However, there’s a lot to cover. I’ve done my best to ensure it’s all useful.

This week, we’re going to do something a little different format wise. Depending on what you guys think, maybe I’ll do these a little more often. But for today, I decided to record the discussion about this instead of writing it out! It’s on YouTube, but I’m embedding it here to make it easy for you guys to view it. If for some reason it won’t load, you can also access it here.

Let me know in the comments if you prefer this format, the usual blog post, or both! If you guys have any questions for me regarding editing and formatting or even about other areas of writing and publishing, feel free to ask! I’m happy to answer the questions or to save them for my next video/post if I’m going to be discussing the topic soon anyway.

Thursday Technicalities – Publishing Preparation

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Introduction to Publishing

Switching gears, we’re going to talk about publishing. Today, we’ll go over the things you need to take care of in order to get your book and its launch prepared for your publication date. There’s a lot to consider and a lot to do, so getting started roughly six months in advance is generally a good idea, especially if you don’t have a lot of extra time to work on things. Let’s dive in.

Publishing Checklist

Item #1: Editing, Formatting, and Proofreading

So, you have your book written, but now what? Before you can publish it, assuming you want it to have its best chance at getting into the hands of your intended audience and doing well, you need to have it edited professionally.

Yes, professionally. Sure, you can self-edit, but here’s the thing. You’re not going to as good a job as someone else (assuming that person knows what they’re doing or is at the same level as you are). Why? Because while you can (and should) take the time to edit your own work, you will always have a certain level of blindness on your own work. As an editor myself, I can attest to this. Editing other people’s work not only takes less time but also goes better. I catch more because, even if I’m enjoying the story, I see all the problems too. The characters aren’t my characters, and the story isn’t my story. So I’m able to keep perspective. We’ll talk more about what you should expect to pay an editor and why you should be willing to pay those rates.

Second, in conjunction with professional editing, you want to either do the formatting yourself or pay someone to do it. If you’re not design oriented, you’ll want to hire someone to do it for the paperback at the very least. Ebook is stricter on what it does and doesn’t allow due to what the ereaders and their programs are able to read. I have an entire post dedicated to ebook formatting if you’re interested in doing it yourself. You can read it here.

Finally, do a last proofread, even if you had a professional editor go over it. This will help you ensure you caught as much as possible. If there were typos, spelling errors, or grammar mistakes, then this would be the time to catch them.

Checklist Item #2: Book Cover

Really, you can have this done whenever, but do know that in order to have the paperback cover copy done, you need to know your page count using the proper page size (based on the trim size you chose through your publishing platform). Hire a designer that has examples of work in your genre. Just because a designer can do a cover doesn’t mean you’ll get an eye-catching one. If they don’t do covers in your genre, then hiring them may not be the best option.

To have one made, make sure that you’ve done a few things.

First and foremost to know with this part of publishing. You need to make sure you have or make sure your designer uses images you have the license for. So no Unsplash, Pixabay, Pexels, or any other free and “creative commons zero” license sites. Yes, they’re free. But you’re highly likely to end up infringing on copyright because these sites do not vet their artists well.

People can post anything and claim it as theirs. There have been issues on these sites with stolen artwork. If the individual doesn’t own it, they don’t have a license. Ergo, neither do you. Even if they have a license, they can’t confer that on you if they’re not the original owner. The same thing goes for fonts, though those ones can be trickier because free for commercial use might not mean free for ebook and print covers (dumb, I know, but it is how it is).

If you insist on using sites that offer free fonts, images, and so on, then mitigate some of your risk by getting in touch with the artist and asking them to confirm ownership (on the image sites) and the rights you have to use it. That way, at least, you can say you did do your due diligence. With fonts, get in touch with the font creator and ask them what you’re allowed to use it for. Tell them what you want to use it for and ask if the license covers it. If not, sometimes they’re willing to negotiate a price for a license if you ask nicely.

Point is, never ever assume that sites with no fees and free images are actually okay to use. If you don’t want any risks, Envato Elements is a good option. It’s a year’s subscription for around 160-200 USD, and you can download as many images, fonts, and other things on their site as you need to. The only thing is, you need to license each download to a specific project, and you can’t keep any unused (or used) images after the subscription expires. Read the instructions for licensing the images carefully though. They’ve got some rules you need to follow to make sure they’re properly licensed for your use.

Checklist Item #3: ARC Team

Next up, you want to gather your ARC (Advanced Review Copy) team. These people, ideally, should be ones who are interested in your genre and have some or all of the characteristics of your ideal reader. When asking for ARC readers, you should make sure you provide the blurb of the book, links for them to go look at the book (if it’s available), and any information on who the intended audience is and what they can expect. Then ask those interested to get in touch if they’ve got questions or want to participate.

Be clear on when the review is due. Give readers enough time to go through the book (I’d give about a month if possible), but tell them the review needs to be in by the deadline agreed on. You can’t force them to review, but if you agree on a date that will work for each individual, you’ll get the reviews by that time most of the time. Even if not, you know when you should be following up with them if you need to. Sometimes this will be necessary. People forget or get behind, and they fail to communicate. So it’s best if you both agree on when you should follow up if there’s no review.

Checklist Item #4: Marketing

This one is one of the trickier parts of publishing, and I could discuss a lot of different options. But I’ll go over some marketing strategies and techniques in more detail in later posts. For now, you should know that you should be utilizing the various outlets available to you.

Social media and Pinterest are free exposure and should be used. It’s not an instant thing though. You need to be active on your social media and Pinterest accounts long before pushing your work . If you aren’t, you won’t have the connections you need with readers and other writers to really make marketing work.

When it comes to publishing, your connections with other writers and reviewers is key. Those you connect with are valuable resources at launch point. It’s a long road to launch, and it would be sad if the book failed from lacking exposure. Your connections give you people to go to when you need people to review the book, share it, and help you out with blog tours should you choose to do that.

Another area of marketing for your upcoming publication is to share it with your newsletter subscribers and on your own blog. Again, however, this only works well if you have an established readership on your blog and with your newsletter.

It does no good if it goes out to people who only subscribed for free stuff and then ditch as soon as you try to “sell” them anything. No matter how nicely you put it, if you’re trying to get them to consider buying something, they’re going to jump ship. However, if your readership is interested in your work, free or otherwise, then you’ll find more success here.

Checklist Item #5: Publishing

Finally, we’re to publishing. If you’re using Amazon, know that you will need to change your browse categories after it’s live (pre-order or actually live) on the site. The options in Amazon’s KDP setup for ebooks and paperbacks represent only 25% of the available categories. However, they’re the most competitive categories available. You’ll need to do research to figure out what categories are less competitive that your book can fit into.

To illustrate how important this is, your categories will make the difference between needing to sell thousands of copies a day to reach bestseller status and needing to sell somewhere between 30 and 40 a day to reach that. For doing this research, I recommend using Publisher Rocket’s free tool for calculating how many copies a day you need to make it into #1 Bestseller category as well as the article they have on changing categories.

Once you’ve gotten your browse categories fixed, it’s time to let people know that your book is available for sale and that your ARC readers can provide reviews any time they’re ready (as long as it’s before the agreed upon deadlines).

Make sure people know not to buy the book until you’ve gotten those categories updated. Any sales you make before go to the generic categories you chose and don’t help your rankings at all. So, make sure you let people know to wait on buying or reviewing until you have those updated if you want the reviews and sales to count.

Conclusion

That’s it for this post! I know it’s been quite long, but I hope it’s been useful. Feel free to ask questions if you have them. I’ll go more detail on some of these topics in the upcoming weeks. Thanks for reading!

Bane of Ashkarith Blog Tour Kickoff

July 15, 2019 Ariel Paiement

This is a bit of a special post, but I wanted to let all of you know more about the launch for Bane of Ashkarith. As the title of this post indicates, I’m doing a blog tour! I’ve got lots of great authors who have graciously allowed me to do author and character interviews, Q&A’s, and other guest posts. The tour starts today and will go through to the 30th, the day right before the book launches.

I’ll be sharing the guest posts throughout the tour via my Facebook author’s page. Additionally, beginning the 29th and running through the 31st, I have a launch party going on through Facebook. There’s a great line up of authors on the schedule to share about themselves and their books, and we’re going to be having fun games with prizes at the end. So if you like reading, particularly fantasy, then head over to the event and check it out!

There will be more information about Bane of Ashkarith and the characters in upcoming posts, so keep an eye out for those during the blog tour. With that said, tomorrow I’ll be interviewing with Katie Jenkins. Be on the look out for that link and the info about it on my Facebook page and on my other writing sites. I’ll also post the link and information up here on the Fantasy Nook.

Bane of Ashkarith – July 31, 2019 Release

July 9, 2019 Ariel Paiement

Bane of Ashkarith released on July 31st, and lots of people have been asking me about the book. Most of the time, people are curious about the blurb and what genre the book is. So, for everyone wondering what the book is all about and where to find it, this post is for you!

Blurb

Kaidan Tadegan is working on a new site trying to prove the myth that two armies of the gods clashed there. While on the dig site, he discovers the evidence he’s looking for, but he gets more than he bargained for when he discovers a woman’s bones in a section of the dig site where no other remains have been found.

As he digs the bones out, he discovers a journal with the woman’s body, which tells a story that, if true, will turn the myths of the old world and the established concepts of good and evil on their heads. Startled by the find, Kaidan sets out to discover whether the diary’s claims have any validity.

But when the diary leads to a city that’s supposedly long gone, Kaidan’s journey becomes more difficult than expected. Things become even more tangled when he discovers that the city isn’t gone, but it’s no place for the living.

Unable to give up on his quest, he forges ahead. What lies ahead is uncertain, and even more uncertain is whether Kaidan will survive this quest. He has only two questions in his mind. Will he find the truth in this city of the dead? And will the world accept the truth?

Excerpt

Chapter One: Dubarin Hill

KAIDAN Tadegan straightened for a moment, pausing in his work. He wiped the sweat from his brow and craned his neck to see over the hill’s rise. The rest of the dig crew was still working on the opposite side of the hill. Stretching, he picked his shovel back up and returned to digging into the side of Dubarin Hill.

He worked with fervor but also with care, not wanting to damage anything. The sun glared down on him, roasting him alive, and he wiped the back of his neck with a cloth. Nothing had rewarded him for his labor yet, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t. Perhaps he might find something on this side of the hill to answer the questions they’d come here to answer.

He took a deep breath, the musty scent of freshly turned soil filling his senses. Well, even if they never determined whether those who had clashed here were the old gods, they’d at least proven that there had been a battle. That was something. They could hold their heads high when they spoke to the king of Argos about the dig, and when they returned to the Society of the Learned, they’d have something to report.

The hole he was digging had turned into an open-roofed tunnel that sloped gradually downward as he went. Perhaps he’d gone a bit overboard. But he had a good feeling about this area. He could just sense it in his bones. There was something here. He just had to find it.

At around seven feet down into the side of the hill, his shovel struck something with a dull thud. He tested the soil with the tip of the shovel, trying to determine what it was. When he shifted some more dirt, he saw a flash of white under the sun. More bones?

Kaidan knelt in the hole and brushed the loose layer of dirt away. The yellow-white bones of a corpse glared up at him in the harsh rays of the sun, dirt still packed around the majority of the remains. He hadn’t found any bones on this side of the hill, and he’d begun to think the battle hadn’t raged this far. Perhaps they just hadn’t dug in the right places. It seemed they’d given up too soon.

Kneeling, he brushed the dirt away and grabbed a trowel, gently clearing packed clods of dirt and loose soil away from the corpse. When he had, he backed further up the slope and sat on his heels, staring down at it.

Inside the tunnel, the bones rested. Time and worms had rotted through the clothing of the deceased individual. The slender facial structure of the skull and the tiny stature indicated it was a woman. He frowned. Who is this? They hadn’t found any women’s corpses in the battlefield. What was this one doing all by herself out here?

A book lay locked against the corpse’s chest, her skeletal hands clutching it to her even in the rigor of death. He leaned down, seeking to pry it from the hands of the skeleton. The hands wouldn’t budge. Strange. The tendons were long gone. Nothing should be stopping him from moving the bones. Kaidan put his hands on his hips. Well, destroying the corpse wouldn’t do. Too disrespectful to the dead. He’d have to try a different angle. Jumping down into the hole again, he tried to slide the book out of the corpse’s grasp.

This time, the hands relinquished their prize, and he stared down at the book’s unmarked leather cover, which was worn with age and crusted in dirt. A quiver ran through him, and he grinned. What treasures of knowledge did this find contain? He took a closer look at it, rubbing at the dirt on the corners before pausing in his attempts to clean the item. The leather binding was in remarkable condition for the age of the corpse.

He glanced back at the bones. Far too old for the condition of the book. So how had the skeleton come to be clutching the book in the tight grip of death? He clambered back up to the mouth of his open-roofed tunnel and sat down, dropping the book beside him. What secrets did the skeleton hold that she would never share now? His mind whirred through the possibilities, and he glanced down at the book. Perhaps it held the answers.

With his pulse racing, he flipped open the cover and began fingering through the book, which seemed to be a diary of some sort. The book’s pages were stuck together with time and a dark brown substance, though they yielded with some gentle prying. Upon closer examination, he realized it looked much like dried blood. What had he stumbled across? Hopefully, nothing accompanied by a curse. He never knew with old artifacts, and he’d run into some strange things before.

“Kaidan? Kaidan, what are you doing over here?”

Kaidan looked up to find Zerua strolling down the hill toward him. Unable to contain the excitement, he jumped to his feet and waved to his wife, a grin spreading across his face. “Zer, look what I found!” He pointed to the grave site and waved the book.

She rushed to see, a smile lighting up her gray eyes. “What is it?”

“I think it’s some sort of burial site.” He crouched down on the edge of the pit he’d ended at and set the book down between them. “It’s the first woman we’ve found buried here.”

“Any clues as to why she was buried here?” She knelt beside him and stared at the bones.

He shook his head and sat back on his heels. His attention returned to the book. “Not yet. Let’s take a look at this book though. She was holding it.”

Zerua reached out to touch the book lying on the grassy hillside, brushing her fingers over the ancient leather. “This is in awfully fair condition for being buried thousands of years ago.”

“Outside maybe. I opened it briefly a moment ago, and it looks like there’s dried blood caked to it. It’ll be a wonder if we can get pages apart to read any of it.” He settled cross-legged on the ground beside his wife and pulled the book into his lap. “Let’s see what we have here…”

He eased the cover open, minding the brittle crackling of the paper as he did. The scent of iron still lingered on the pages, and he frowned, flipping past the first empty page to look at the next. “There’s writing on this one.”

His wife leaned over his shoulder, pointing to the flaking black-brown substance. “Seems strange that this substance on the pages didn’t render it illegible.”

“It’s strange that the book is still intact at all.” He stared at the first words on the page. “These are in an old form of Wyrdhan.”

“Can you read it?” She rested her chin on his shoulder.

He bit his lip and stared at the words for a moment longer before reading what he felt was the best translation. “Sedra cannot be trusted. She has lied to them all, but they do not know the extent to which she has deceived them.” His gaze lifted to meet his wife’s wide-eyed stare. “What have we found?”

Pre-order the e-book at Kobo

Order the Kindle version on Amazon. The paperback will release on July 31st.