Thursday Technicalities – Page 2

Thursday Technicalities: Acting out of Character

Introduction

First off, I apologize this wasn’t out last Thursday! I was having a bit of a hectic week, and I wasn’t able to get around to the post. Hopefully that won’t become a regular thing. Now, last time on Thursday Technicalities, we talked about the idea of internal conflict in a character. Today, we’re going to discuss what Donald Maas calls “character dimensions” and what I’d simply call aspects of a character that make them feel real. Maas used less words than I did, obviously, but initially, when reading through the exercise on this, I struggled with his terminology because I didn’t quite grasp what a “dimension” was. But this is a very important piece of developing your character, so let’s go ahead and dive into it!

What are character dimensions?

Character dimensions, simply put, are the various aspects of your character that make them who they are. For example, if your character is characterized by kindness and warmth, then those are character aspects or dimensions. Dimensions of your character make them multi-faceted and more realistic to the reader. They give us as readers some baseline for what a character will do or not do.

Why it’s important to establish these in your novel

Aside from just making a character feel well-rounded, character dimensions actually give you opportunities for growth, character arcs, and conflict. For example, say I have a character who’s generally non-violent. Let’s just say that they’re a healer and can’t stand the idea of harming another person. If I throw that character into a situation where they have no choice but to fight or die, that’s going to create a whole lot of internal conflict. We need these dimensions or aspects in our characters, regardless of who they are or what they stand for, because without them, we lose the richness our writing can have. But it’s also going to force them to act out of character, and this goes into the next important discussion point.

Acting out of character

Now we get to the portion of this discussion that I pulled the title from. If your character always acts exactly in accordance with their usual dimensions/aspects, they’re going to get boring fast, and they won’t seem like real people. All of us, when pushed to a certain point, will do things that would ordinarily go against the our grain. Sometimes that’s good. Sometimes it’s not, and it creates more trouble for us.

Your characters should be no different. While they may have some aspects that they’ll never compromise on (for example, someone who has an aspect to them where they will die for what they believe probably isn’t going to suddenly wake up one day and realize they no longer believe that thing or are no longer willing to die for it), they’re always going to have something that will push them out of their comfort zone in a way that results in doing something that isn’t in line with their usual character aspects.

This doesn’t have to be anything highly important all the time either. I have a character I’m working with in my current WIP that is used to being good at everything and avoids anything he knows he’s not good at unless it’s necessary to do those things. There’s a scene where he sits down to paint with the girl he’s protecting. That’s extremely unusual for him. He’s bad at it, and he goes further by admitting he’s no good at it even though he’s not fond of admitting weakness or ineptitude. But his decision to do it anyway, even when he doesn’t need to, leads to a bonding moment between the two. In and of itself, the decision to sit down and paint seems like no big deal, but it’s what’s behind the action that goes against his grain that makes it a big deal.

Adding points to your novel that force your character to do something that’s opposite of their usual defining traits brings this kind of life and realism to even the most fantastical of stories. This is why people are able to say of some fantasy books that they’re more realistic than some realistic fiction out there. It’s because the characters feel like real people experiencing real world struggles even though they’re on some other planet, have green skin, and use a lot of strange expressions. There’s an element of humanity and depth to them that resonates with us as readers, and an author who does the work to incorporate this will have a book that can do that.

Conclusion

Hopefully you’ve already got a few ideas going for areas to utilize this tool in your toolbox. If not, I encourage you to sit down and really start thinking about this. Jot down some defining traits or characteristics of at least your main character(s), and then find the opposite of that and see if you can’t come up with some points in your novel where that character might have to act in accordance with the opposite trait, not their defining ones.

Thursday Technicalities: Internal Conflict

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Introduction

With our discussions regarding publishing concluded for now, we’ll turn now to discussing some of the key elements of crafting fiction that you can use to improve your writing, both with a completed manuscript and with one you’re still writing. I’ve recently been working through Donald Maas’s Writing the Breakout Novel, and I’ve found that these areas are ones that can prove challenging but are going to really take your work to the next level.

So, I’m going to go through some of the sections I found to be most useful and important with my own take on them based on things I’ve seen work out well in fiction. Today’s topic is going to deal with conflict within the character, otherwise known as internal conflict. This is an important part of fiction and really brings characters to life, so it’s not something we can overlook as writers. Let’s get started!

What Is Internal Conflict?

Internal conflict is when the character is conflicted within themselves regarding any given situation or decision. This differs from the major conflict that drives your plot (at least in many cases) in that the conflict driving the plot is usually some sort of external conflict that puts pressure on the character and may even exacerbate their internal conflict. In some cases, the internal conflict may be the driving conflict in the story and may create the external conflict due to a character’s actions in response to the conflict internally.

On a more basic level, internal conflict is when a character wants two opposing things at the same time. This simpler definition usually makes it a little easier for us to think about what our characters’ internal conflicts might be. Regardless of what the internal conflict is and whether or not it is the result of external pressures or the leading cause of those external issues, this is a tool in writing that cannot be ignored if you want a character that feels real and alive.

Keys for Internal Conflict

First and foremost, an internal conflict for a character must include two fundamentally opposed desires. This sounds really straightforward, but here’s the thing… You have to figure out how and why your characters could or would want those opposing things. We as people have issues with this in our own lives all the time. For example, consider someone who wants to eventually have a family but also doesn’t want their freedom to hop from partner to partner taken away. Those are two opposing desires. They can’t have both, and they’re eventually going to have to decide which one matters more. We all run into these kinds of ultimatums, and we all eventually go with one or the other when it becomes apparent we can’t have both.

The second key is to make the two options mutually exclusive. We all feel conflicted about things from time to time, but if we can find a way to make both work, then we often do. Furthermore, the options facing a character need to be ones they strongly care about. For example, in my book Bane of Ashkarith, the male lead has a strong desire to uncover the truth and to share that truth–whatever it may be–with the world. But he also has a strong desire to stay alive, and the truth is likely to get him killed if he goes ahead with telling it. He can’t have it both ways. He either tells the truth or he doesn’t. And he has strong reasons and motivations to choose either option, so it isn’t a situation where he can simply decide one choice doesn’t matter that much and just go with the other. No, he has to fight through the internal conflict to make a decision on what to do.

What if my character is too black and white to really struggle in the obvious ways?

You want to ensure that you set your characters up with a similarly stark set of options that lead to internal conflict. Sometimes, however, you find a character that is simply too morally upright and black and white to struggle with some of the more common issues. I’ve run into this recently with my male lead in a novel I’m working on. S is a trainer for an intergalactic organization whose sole goal is to sow dissent, chaos, and evil throughout the galaxy. They are directly opposed to God and anything that could be considered good, though they don’t really care what form evil and darkness takes so long as it does in fact drown out what is good and right. S doesn’t agree with them or their standards, but his situation is such that he must play along.

At first glance, it doesn’t seem like S necessarily is conflicted between two choices. At the beginning of the novel, he’s offered a way out. In order to get out, he has to play the long game and be patient, but there’s no question in his mind or that of the individual who offered him an out that he’s going to take it. He isn’t conflicted about it, and he isn’t conflicted about waiting it out so he can get himself and the girl who offered her help out safely.

So at this point, I’m faced with an issue. S is the protector, the dominant/alpha male who makes sure everyone under his care is safe even if it costs him everything to achieve that. He doesn’t dither over whether he’s willing to make the sacrifice to protect Gwen or others directly under his care. He already knows he will. He also doesn’t question the choice to leave because he refuses to be a part of the organization’s wickedness any longer than absolutely necessary.

“Growing” the internal conflict

In this case, S is a character that starts out with no internal conflict in his mind and must end up “growing” one. The way I chose to handle this? As Gwen begins to change his outlook on the situation and his approach to those around him, he begins to feel responsible for helping and protecting not just Gwen, who is directly under his protection, but also the other trainees whose trainers hurt or even kill them. He comes to a point where he is no longer certain that he can in good conscience abandon it all to run and never look back. Instead, he has a turning point that leads to his internal conflict: leave or find a way to fight back for the freedom of those who, like him, never had the chance to speak up and walk away from the horrors inflicted on them.

Gwen herself is put into a similar position, but she comes to it much sooner and sees it far quicker than S does. Her nature is not the protector so much as it is the outspoken voice for what’s right. That gets her and S into plenty of trouble in a culture that despises the truth and anyone who stands for it, but she stands firm anyway. Her internal conflict then, takes on a slightly different flavor than S’s, but the nature of the two is still similar in that the conflict is not in-built but must instead develop as their viewpoints and goals gradually begin to shift.

What if I just can’t think of anything?

Sometimes, characters make it very difficult to figure out what their internal conflict is or to determine how to push them into one. This might happen because the character doesn’t know what they want or is generally a somewhat weak type of person. I ran into this with Sebastian, a character from an allegorical sci-fi novella I’m working on revising. He falls into the category of “I don’t really know what I want or what I believe”. His problem was that he didn’t believe the popular narrative and was suspicious of the government’s claims, but he didn’t know what he believed if not that. He develops through the book, but I still have the issue that he doesn’t seem to really have much of an internal conflict at the start.

The solution to this? Start thinking about what they really want. If push came to shove, what is it that they’d fight for? Maybe the push might have to be really extreme, but what is the one thing that they couldn’t bear to lose, not accomplish, or fail at? Now take that thing and figure out what the opposite of it is.

For example, with Sebastian, the one thing he really can’t stand to lose is Vivian, the female lead. The opposite of that, to my mind, would be to lose her or let go of her. That gives me an internal conflict right there if I can find a way to set it up through the story such that he wants (or at least has to seriously consider) both paths.

Something else that I also found for Sebastian is that he is fiercely loyal to those he cares about. He can’t stand to lose the people he cares about or to walk away from them. So another conflict I can give him is having to decide between fighting for the people he cares about or walking away. With this character, however, there is no question in his mind, at least in the first novella, on which one he will choose for either of these. So in order to create any kind of internal conflict with him, I have to force him into situations where he can’t choose what he wants to choose. I have to make it so that he does have to walk away from his loved ones or so that he has to give up Vivian.

Sometimes, characters are like this. There should be conflict, but it might not always be clearly caused by the character wanting two different things. Sometimes it might be caused by a character wanting one thing but knowing the opposite is best and choosing the one thing they don’t want to do. This is a trickier one to pull off, and I would recommend you make sure you have at least one main character whose conflict is driven by two opposing options that they want to pursue.

Conclusion

That’s it for this discussion, everyone! I hope this was helpful for you. Next week, we’ll be talking about points of decision. We’ll go over why you need them, how to build up to them, and how they play into your character’s arc as well as the story itself. Until next time, happy writing!

Thursday Technicalities: Dealing With Rejection

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Introduction

I said I was done with my publishing series here, but what discussion on publishing would be complete without a discussion of rejections? While it isn’t on my publishing checklist because it isn’t something you actively need to do, it is something we need to cover. So while it isn’t technically part of the publishing series I finished up last week, it still is in that it deals with publishers, agents, and your work.

Personal Experience Dealing with Rejection

Hi Ariel, I am put in the horrible position of having to write you a rejection for the bootcamp program. You were a strong contender for me, but ultimately there were people more suitable for where I wanted to go. Your work is strong, and I think you know that. You’ve got some great social media presence, and amazon sales and everything, so you are definitely on the path to make a great career out of it. Where I think I might be able to inject some constructive criticism is in the vibrancy and excitement of your writing. There’s something about it that’s a little slow, and for something like a Watty, you need to really blast forward with your stuff; slim down overly descriptive passages and really lean on dialogue to fire the story. If ultimately I had chosen you on the program, that would have been my initial drive; to get you to speed things up – grab your reader and don’t let them go. I read the first few chapters of your book, and could really see a lot of great stuff in it, but it just didn’t grab me. I was able to put it down and look at something else, and, as an author, you never want that to be the case. Honestly, I think you’re going to do well as an author and I think self-publishing on Amazon could well lead you to relative riches, but I don’t think this book in its current state is going to win a Watty. Fantasy is REALLY hard to convince people to pick up for awards like this, and epic fantasy even more so. You need to find something that hooks in the reader and just doesn’t let go, and what you have is a descriptive book that is very good and nice but works better in paper form, where the reader is more invested and has the time to sit in their chair and dedicate an hour or more to it.
I’d love to speak more with you generally. I think your work is promising and genuinely believe you are going to go far. You have the drive and passion (and the words) for success and I can see myself in the future saying to someone ‘oh yeah, I passed her up once for a mentorship program’ and them going ‘what?!?’! 🙂 Good luck with it all!
Crispin O’Toole-Bateman, Author of A Very English Necromancer and 2020 Wattys Bootcamp Mentor

Hi! I just wanted to drop by and say that I really enjoyed Pathway of the Moon, and I’m sorry I wasn’t able to take you on as a mentee. I’m honored you chose to submit to me though. Your first chapter started off great. I was swooning over Leo from the get go. I hope to be able to send you feedback on the chapter that you sent me. If this is something you are interested in, please let me know.
Mikaela Bender, Author of Expiration Date and 2020 Wattys Bootcamp Mentor

I received these from two out of three of the mentors I applied to be mentored by for a writing bootcamp on Wattpad. For those who don’t use Wattpad, it’s a writing platform I frequently use to interact with writers and readers, and I have some of my stuff up for free. I am looking to enter the major contest that Wattpad HQ–the people actually running the organization and website–do, called the Wattys. It’s a big deal on Wattpad and can lead to publishing deals or other connections for winners. These two have already succeeded as Wattpad Stars and/or former Wattys winners, so they’re strong writers and know a thing or two about what it takes to succeed in those areas. These two were really helpful and kind in their rejection letters, and the point of including them is to show you that rejections aren’t really all that scary even if they’re disappointing to us as recipients.

The writing/mentoring bootcamp is separate from the contest and is run by former winners or individuals who are part of paid Wattpad programs, which requires some serious talent and skill to achieve. The quotes above? My rejection “letters” sent via PM from two of the three mentors I applied to. Ultimately, I wasn’t accepted into the program, so I’ll be revising without the help of a mentor.

But this is a good lead in for what we’re talking about. How did I handle this? How should we all as authors deal with rejection, and what’s the best method for dealing with this tough area? People deal with it in lots of ways, some better than others, and that’s why we’re going to discuss it.

Dealing With Rejection is Tough

Let’s just be honest. None of us enjoy being rejected! Whether we get that dreaded rejection letter from the agent we were hoping would take our work on or just waited and waited but never heard back from a publisher, rejection leaves us feeling a bit dejected and very disappointed. I mean, sometimes it stings so bad we want to sit there and cry or down a tub of ice cream.

Now, both rejection letters I got from the mentors I applied to were very kindly worded. Neither said my work was complete trash or even hinted as much. And for the most part, you’re not going to run into that when dealing with rejection. I’ve heard a few stories about things publishers or agents have told authors, but on the whole, usually it’s a very polite no if you get any response at all. However, both of mine were special because they took the time to actually offer feedback! This was my first experience with rejection letters since I’ve done mostly self-publishing or worked with groups I was already established with, but having read a lot from various authors, agents, and others in publishing, this doesn’t happen all that often. You may get a polite letter telling you they aren’t able to take on your work or aren’t interested in it at this time, but feedback is rare and extremely valuable. While the two mentors who responded back with friendly rejections via private messaging aren’t publishers, they’re busy too, and they didn’t have to take the time to offer any constructive feedback. I very much appreciate their doing so.

While I’m obviously disappointed that I didn’t get into the program because I know it would’ve been an awesome learning experience for me and would’ve been very good for the book, I got some direction on where I might want to focus my editing efforts, and I know how to fix the problems pointed out because I’ve got the practical knowledge to do so and have fixed this very problem for other authors. (Funny how we can fix things for other people and be blind to the same issues in our own work!)

What If I Don’t Know How To Fix It?

If you’re not an experienced author dealing with rejection letters, you’re very likely to run into this issue. Either you were given feedback and don’t know what to do with it or you have no feedback and still don’t know why it was rejected. Even experienced authors may run into this as they may not see the problems others do. There are a few ways to deal with this. First of all, quitting is not one of those ways, okay? Quitting means you actually failed. So keep writing, but really put your focus and attention on learning how to improve. One book I very highly recommend that I’ve used to improve my current WIP is Donald Maas’s Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (there’s a companion book too that I haven’t started, but if it’s anything like the workbook, it’s going to be gold).

How is this work book going to help?

Why do I recommend this? Because Donald Maas was a literary agent for a very long time before he moved to independently publishing his own writing guides. He’s seen thousands of manuscripts in his years as a literary agent, and he knows exactly what the common issues are that result in the rejection of a manuscript. Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could fix those issues before an agent or publisher ever sees your book?

Now, I promise what he offers will help. But it’s also a ton of work! Anyone can do and understand the exercises, but they’re hard. Some of them really force you to think, and many of the exercises have not only changed my perspective on my manuscript and my own characters but have also changed the story’s arc. Expect to make a lot of revisions, add a lot, and maybe remove just as much. But expect that if you do the work, you’ll have a book you can be proud of putting into readers’ hands.

Other Appropriate Responses

Second way of dealing with it? Take it to an avid reader friend. If you don’t have one, try asking some other writers who are more experienced than you. You should already have a connection with whoever you choose to ask, just to clarify, but ask. They might not have time, but you never know! They’ll probably see things you didn’t and might be able to pinpoint the reasons your manuscript is getting rejected.

Final recommendation for dealing with rejection is this… Get an editor if you haven’t already. Seriously. This might sound like a plug for myself and other editors since I’m a freelance editor myself, but we’re not recommending this because we get paid for it. We’re recommending it because it’s indispensable. Authors who have their own personal editors are often first in line to corroborate this. It’s important, so don’t ignore it. If you don’t have the money for it, see if you can at least get a critique partner who’s got strong skills in areas of writing where you know you struggle.

What if I’m Still Rejected After All That?

But Ariel, you might say, I’ve done the work and even had an editor take a look, but the book’s still being rejected. Well, there are of course any number of reasons this might happen, but if you’ve got a really strong, well-crafted story, chances are high you’re just not a good fit for that individual or that publisher. It’s still tough to take the rejection, but don’t give up. Someone out there will want the story, and if they don’t, self-publishing is always an option. Plenty of big name authors started out that way and ended up with publishing deals later, so don’t lose heart. Accept the situation with grace and keep working at it.

Conclusion

My hope here is that you’ve realized that rejection isn’t as scary as it seems. Yes, it’s disappointing and sometimes hurts a bit. But it only means you have more work to do or that your piece wasn’t a good fit for that individual or publisher. We’re not all well-matched with every person we meet, and we shouldn’t expect our stories to be any different. What one publisher thinks is trash and rejects could end up being a best seller with another publisher.

Keep a positive attitude, use the feedback you get if you’re lucky enough to receive that from whoever you submitted work to, and keep working at it. No one promised this would be easy or that you wouldn’t fail. No one promised your work would be ready for publication as soon as you thought it was ready to go and mailed it out. No one promised everyone would want it. But I can promise you this. If you respond to it properly and with a good attitude, your work and you yourself will be better for it.

So when you get those rejection letters, put a smile on your face, keep that letter to remind you of where you’ve been, and turn your face to the future where you will be better than you were the day you got that letter. That makes the difference between a successful learning experience and a failure, not whether or not the publisher or agent accepted you.

Thursday Technicalities: Traditional Publishing

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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 and Networking

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Introduction

Now we come to a part of marketing that, for some reason, a lot of authors I’ve seen in my various Facebook groups seem to neglect. I have to say that authors on Twitter that I’ve dealt with seem to do well with networking as a part of their marketing. Authors on Facebook though? Anytime someone hosts a networking style event for readers and writers, I see the same faces and rarely anyone new. If you’re in the camp that, for whatever reason, avoids networking… Well, networking is essential, and connections are vital, so don’t keep avoiding it if you want to be successful. A lot of you may be avoiding because you don’t know how simple networking can be or where to start. Hopefully, by the end of this article, there won’t be an excuse left or a feeling of not knowing where to start.

Why Networking?

The simple answer? No business owner or business ever succeeded without connections, and networking is where it starts. Know anyone who got a new job because they knew someone who knew so-and-so, who knew the person in charge of hiring? Assuming you aren’t that person yourself, you probably do because it’s not uncommon for connections to give you a foot in the door and start the ball rolling. They might not hire you predominantly because of who you knew, but it sure doesn’t hurt anything.

Word of mouth and connections are powerful things. It starts with those in your network liking you and what you have to offer then telling someone else. And guess what? That’s exactly what your ARC readers are meant to do. But you find them through your network of other writers and readers most often, so if you don’t build that network, you’re at more of a disadvantage than you already were with Amazon’s strict review policies.

Simply put, you cannot operate in a vacuum. No one can. Not if they want to succeed. You need other authors on your team, and you absolutely need readers you’ve connected with to share their unique experience or take on your work.

Does Networking Work?

Those of you who’ve been reading the blog for a while know I like examples of the things I recommend or discourage. In the case of what I recommend, examples of success are preferable. This one is no different. I found every one of my ARC readers and most of my reviewers via my network. How? First, I let those I’d already connected with via social media or email know I was looking for help with reviews. Then, some offered to help, but many of my author acquaintances or friends just shared it. They didn’t have time to help me with a review, but some of their connections did.

Another way I’ve used networking is through groups on Facebook or threads on Twitter. It’s relatively easy to strike up a conversation or join in on one already started, and often, it leads to further connections. It might not yield a sale or a review right away, but my sphere still grows, and if I took the time to connect and then to keep the connection fresh, then it may convert to sales or reviews later–if not from them, then from their audiences if they share your content.

In the end, yes, networking works. But it’s not a get-rich-quick method. You won’t see results if you treat it that way. If you’re in it for the long haul to build your platform, though, then you must network, even if it leaves you a little less writing time.

Connections sell better than cold, hard pitches, especially in a virtual market where people expect you to do more to give them that sense of a real, genuine connection with you before they’ll buy what you want to sell them. They can easily ignore your cold, hard sell or get bored and move on. A connection lasts longer.

Handling Networking

Hopefully now you’re convinced you need to network, if you weren’t before. We don’t work in a void, so people are part of the process, particularly with marketing.

But now you may wonder… How do I network? It sounds hard. I don’t do well talking to people, and I hate selling people on my work. I don’t know what to say… The objections go on and on.

Let’s address a few of the more usual issues.

First, it’s not hard. Depending on what you do, it’ll take you more time than some thing, but in and of itself, the task isn’t hard. If you’re totally new to networking, start small. Join group on Facebook or participate in ones you’ve already joined. Or go search for different threads on Twitter under various writing hashtags and start interacting on there. Get yourself out there and start building those connections.

Second, if you don’t do well talking to other people… Well… Online does make it a little easier because you can think through what you send prior to sending. But in all honesty, you’re going to have to talk to others at some point. There’s no avoiding it. Just be yourself. If personal conversations make you uncomfortable, not to worry! Networking isn’t about being extremely personal or deep. You just have to be genuine, warm, and professional.

In fact, I generally advise you avoid deeply personal conversations online unless you know the person fairly well already or have good reason to believe they are telling the truth about who they are. It’s just basic online safety. Don’t share things like your address, your phone number, or any details that could give a clue as to where you live. (Obviously, if you’re using some newsletter softwares or other things, your personal information surrounding mailing address and the like may get out. So if you’re uncomfortable with that, I’d advise a PO box.)

Not everyone online is a creep, but there are enough of them out there to warrant being a little bit paranoid. Just be smart and avoid giving personal info unless there’s a very, very good reason to give it. The guy who’s been messaging for a week who just asked for your number? There’s no good reason to give it. Shouldn’t need to clarify this part on networking, but lots of authors and new business owners don’t seem to understand basic online safety or how to handle professional interactions.

We’ve all heard stories, but for some reason, despite hearing the stories, some people still make unwise decisions. Anyway, the point is be professional, stick to business-related topics or harmless conversations that don’t provide any private information, and use common sense. But don’t let talking to people or the chance of a bad egg in the lot ruin your attempts to network.

Third, you don’t know where to go or how to start… Social media. That’s what I’d start with. Like I said before, join some groups related to your business and your books. Talk with other readers and writers, and don’t be shy.

Fourth, you hate feeling like you’re selling something to people. On this one, the blunt truth is…you are. You’re going to have to accept that and move on. But, you can alleviate some of the feelings of being sold to and the frustration that can bring. It’s simple, really.

Unless they’ve asked you to tell them about your book or product and to sell them on it, don’t start off with it. Let it come up in the conversation naturally. Develop the connection so that when they see a post on a product you want reviews, buyers, or whatever else for, they’ll be more inclines to say yes. And, down the road, nothing wrong with selling to them–if you do it in a way similar to how you’d sell to a friend or a good acquaintance. Whatever you do, if you get the sense they wouldn’t like or find your product useful, don’t try to pitch it. That only frustrates everyone involved.

Conclusion

I’m hoping that answers the basic questions and issues regarding marketing. It’s really not as difficult as you may think. It can be as simple as getting on Twitter and replying to or posting a few Tweets. I try to do that regular, and I get a fair amount of interaction from people either in the replies or via a new follower. Building that connection is essential though, so if you’ve been avoiding it, stop now and work out how you can include it in your marketing plan.

Lots of like-minded authors looking to succeed are throwing release parties or author takeovers (where authors get time slots to post about their work) on Facebook or even on Twitter. They’re doing live videos on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. They’re involving each person who comes on board with their audience. You can too. You’ll have to show initiative and do the work for it, but while it might take time, it isn’t rocket science. So give it a chance and don’t discard this important piece of marketing just because it might be new or uncomfortable. And if you’ve been doing it for a while? Keep working at it. Find new ways to interact and engage with others to build your network.

That’s it for this week, everyone! I hope this has proved useful. Feel free to leave questions in the comments below if you have them!

Thursday Technicalities: Marketing #2

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Introduction

On to the next topic in this set of marketing discussions. Social media. Most of us have it, though I know there are some who really can’t stand it and would rather avoid it. But, if you’re a business, you can’t afford to ignore social media since that’s where most of your potential customers and clients congregate. However, figuring out how to appropriately utilize social media for your business as an author can get confusing. We see how all the bloggers with other types of businesses utilize it for marketing their business, and we think: I can’t do that because it doesn’t fit my business.

And, you’d probably be right. As an author and a freelance editor, I’ve used multiple social media platforms and gone to a lot of different master classes via webinars or in person to learn more about marketing and social media. Problem is, a lot of the action steps given are hard to apply to authors. So, I’m going to share with you my perspective on it and what I’ve found seems to work for me.

What Types of Social Media Work Best?

If you’re like me, you’d rather not worry about every social media platform on the planet. Instead, you’d prefer to figure out what works and scrap whatever doesn’t. After all, unless you’re paying someone to do it for you, how much time do you realistically have to manage this? If you don’t do anything besides writing for your day job and you don’t have kids, maybe you have the time to learn and figure it out on your own while managing five different social media accounts. It takes time away from writing, but if you have time to spare, fine.

But most of us don’t have that kind of time. I work a 8-5 job, and while I may have lapses where I have nothing to do and can, therefore, check my social media or work on handwriting my next blog post, I don’t have a bunch of free time during the day. So, I come home, already tired, and I only have so much time to write and manage my social media pages before I need to make sure I go to bed so I’m not too tired to do it all over again the next day. Sound familiar? Throw in needing some time to go read a book for a review or just get away from work, and I don’t have the time to manage things that don’t work.

So, what does work? For me, I’ve found that I have the most success with Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. I rarely touch Instagram, though other authors have told me it works well, and I’ve not gone anywhere near SnapChat because I don’t have time for more platforms.

What Kind of Marketing Works Best with Each?

I find that Twitter works best for letting friends, fans, and prospective readers know what I’m up to throughout the day or for posting content I think will be helpful. I’ve had more success, on the whole, with finding ARC readers on Twitter and getting people to engage with me than I have on Facebook. People generally seem more engaged on Facebook, and I don’t have to go to random groups that will allow me to post my book link in order to hopefully gain some new readers. Lots of Twitter users will actually post things like #ShamelessSelfPromotionSaturday or #SupportIndieAuthors to ask for book links and new reads.

While you might not get any new readers from it, if you share it with your following and others are doing the same, there’s a better chance of your work being seen by someone than there is posting it in a group on Facebook where it’s going to be buried under thirty other similar posts within the next twenty-four hours (more if you’re unlucky).

What Facebook has on Twitter is the room to have a group to engage with your fans through playing games, doing author takeovers where other authors and yourself have scheduled time slots to post about your books and yourself as an author, sharing what you’re up to, and taking questions for Q&A type stuff. They make it far easier to do events where authors team up to bring readers new books, content, and even giveaways. Twitter isn’t set up for that because they impose a strict character limit on the tweets sent out and don’t have any way to easily organize everyone.

The Odd One In The Bunch

As for Pinterest? Well, Pinterest is the unique one out of the bunch. It isn’t technically social media, though you can use it similarly. Instead, Pinterest is a search engine. I like it most out of the three I use because it requires the least amount of activity. I can Pin one or two blog posts or writing prompts of my own and drive traffic to my blog, generate interest in my services, or guide people toward my books or others’ books that they might enjoy reading. But I don’t have to constantly post, try to run ads, or bother people asking them to share the content around.

It’s also nice that once you start to gain traction, Pinterest works with you. If your Pin is doing well in the related categories for search results, then they’ll put it higher up in the search so more people will see it. They don’t bury it, and those following the board or you will be notified of the newest Pin you created. Unlike Facebook, they’re not going to pick and choose whether or not to show it to the people who already said they were interested, and that alone makes it better.

If you’re looking for an easy platform to help drive traffic to your blog and to your products by extension, Pinterest is the way to go. Facebook and Twitter are far more time-costly than Pinterest to manage, and I’ve seen way less traffic to my blog from either as opposed to Pinterest. It’s worth learning the new platform. If you haven’t used it before, I’ve got some tips and will walk you through it in this post.

What Kinds of Marketing Content Work?

Obviously, this will be a little different for everyone depending on what sort of book you have and who you’re trying to reach. The starting point for everyone, however, is to know your audience. There are few directions you can go with social media to really build your brand: informative/expert in industry, humorous/light-hearted, a combination.

For Example… My Approach:

I’m not generally a very funny or light-hearted person. Unless sarcasm counts as funny… But most people would argue that poking fun at others isn’t the best way to build your brand unless satire is your brand. It’s not mine, so I went with informative/expert in industry. You can tell I have pretty easily because my blog and a lot of what I post on social media that isn’t related to my own books has to do with writing and editing. The content is geared toward educating and establishing the fact that I do know a thing or two about editing, writing, and publishing.

This was a choice I made before I even began the blog because I knew I wanted to appeal to both writers and readers of speculative fiction and, specifically, fantasy. As a freelance editor and an author, it can be hard to find an approach that will gain me new clients as well as new readers. This was my approach. It lets people know up front that if they come to me for editing or for advice of any sort on writing, I’m going to have an answer or I’ll find one that’s based on research and fact. Having this approach also has the added bonus of gaining me opportunities to guest post for things unrelated to my published books specifically. My article on Burning Embers Publications regarding editing and the other one regarding Pinterest are two good examples of that.

What Difference Does That Make?

To put it succinctly, a huge difference. My choice of approach affects the kind of marketing content I use. Granted, if I’m marketing my books, I’m probably going to market them about the same way anyone does (or wants to): with strong copy and information on how to get the book. But if I’m trying to market myself as an author, which is really what you’re doing whether you’re actively trying to sell a book or not, then my choice of direction changes what I’ll post about.

Sure, I post stuff that I just find amusing or interesting. But usually, those are shares or retweets of other people’s stuff, not my own marketing content. I strive to make my content reflect my goal: providing expertise on the industry and helping others to learn from what I know. Your content should do the same.

But Really… What Types of Marketing Content do I post?

For authors, it’s all about readers liking your writing and, ideally, liking you. It’s not just about them buying the book. It’s about whether or not they want to support the message you’re sharing. If they don’t buy into the message you’re trying to share, they’re not going to be very eager to share the work with others. But if they really like the book or series and your style and message, they’re going to be much more happy to tell all of their friends about you.

We all want to support businesses and brands that align with what we care about and the values we feel are important. If the content we’re reading, whether it’s on social media or in the book itself, doesn’t align with what we believe in and the core values we hold to, we’re not going to pass it along to others. Why would we? As a business, it’s our job to know what our message is and how the audience we’re targeting will perceive it. Then, we have to take that information and find a way to package it so that it’s interesting, palatable, and engaging for our target audience.

It’s like I said at the beginning. I can’t tell you exactly what kind of content will work for you because every individual brand and author will be different. But I can tell you that if you know your goals and the approach you want to take, you’ll be able to discern what content will fit that and post only what does. It’s not easy, but it is pretty simple.

Final Notes

Navigating social media is difficult. It poses all kinds of nuances, potential trip ups, and points of stress. Some people find it easier than others, but at the end of the day, none of us can avoid it if we want to utilize all the marketing tools available to us. If you know the angle you want to take and have goals to accomplish, it’ll make your journey easier.

In the end, my best advice regarding social media and marketing is this: be professional. That’s the number one thing you can do for your brand, no matter what direction you take. No matter what you’re posting, be professional. Act in a manner that is courteous, treat people with respect even if they’re not giving you that same courtesy, and make it about your reader and your audience, not you. It’s fine to talk about yourself and let them know you need help, but make sure that more of your content is focused on what they’re wanting and needing than it is on what you want and need from them.

This will go further than just about anything else in any area of your life. Treating others in a manner that’s kind and professional puts out a lot of fires. I’ve watched what happens when someone’s upset and the business or individual treated them with disrespect, condescension, and lack of compassion. It’s not pretty, and it doesn’t achieve anything except giving your business a bad reputation. It isn’t worth it. If you need to, scream about it away from the computer, phone, or person. But don’t let your frustration or anger out on them. Be polite and kind to a fault even if they’re not.

Conclusion

Professionalism and courtesy should be obvious parts of your marketing and branding strategy, but I’ve seen so, so many people screw this up, and it can make the difference between failure and success. Don’t let it be the reason you fail in your marketing and business goals! Use the tips I gave for platforms and content, and then add professionalism to it. You’re going to get much better responses from people that way, I guarantee. Best of luck to you in your marketing endeavors! Next week, we’ll talk some about your blurb, Amazon sales pages, and attracting readers.

Thursday Technicalities: Finding ARC Readers

Featured Ariel Paiement

Introduction

The third stop on our discussion of preparing for publication is finding ARC readers. To start off with, for those who don’t know what ARC readers are, they are advanced review copy readers. They are not beta readers and shouldn’t be considered such. Instead, they are readers who read the book before it’s out for the public and review it on release date. So let’s talk about how you get them and where.

Where to Find ARC Readers

The first step is finding your ARC readers. There are many places and ways to do this. First, you can use sites like StoryOrigin and Bookfunnel to join promotional events for reviews run by other users. On sites like these, people sign up for your ARC copy, and you approve them. Recommendation here for these platforms… Pay attention to the stats. I know you want reviews, but don’t just accept anyone. Look at the stats if they’re provided and approve reviewers who have decent stats and reputations for following through with reviews. I learned the hard way that if you approve people with no stats or bad ones, your risk is very high that you’re just giving away free copies of your hard work in exchange for nothing at all.

The other possible places to find reviewers are social media sites, writing forums that allow you to post about that kind of stuff, and through family connections. A word to the wise on family connections, though. Family members and close friends can review the book, but not on Amazon. If they do and Amazon catches the connection, you could lose all your reviews and both of you could be banned from reviewing. Not good news, so don’t mess around with this. If family members or friends want to review, have them do so on platforms like Goodreads and Bookbub.

One other avenue is by reaching out to the readers on your newsletter. If you’ve done a good job building your list, then there should be at least some who will be happy to help out in exchange for a free copy of the book.

Dealing with ARC Reader Deadlines

The next thing to consider is your deadline for ARC readers. Some people read faster than others, and you want to make sure you leave enough time for even slower readers to make it through the book before your release day. I recommend giving them roughly a month to read it. The best scenario is that everyone is able to finish and reviews on time.

Of course, we all know the best scenario is rarely what occurs in every case. You’ll have readers that don’t do it on time and need to be followed up with. If you acquired your ARC readers via social media or your newsletter/email list, you should know how to get in touch. The problem that I run into all the time with getting ARC readers through StoryOrigin and similar sites is that people’s emails and contact info aren’t given to you until the reader has actually submitted reviews (showing interest, therefore, in your work). This means you have no way to get in touch, and while the sites remind them to submit their review links and review, they can ignore that. If they do, there’s nothing you can do, and you can’t even contact them yourself.

What to Do If They Don’t Review

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot you can do. If you have contact info, you can get in touch and try to find out what’s going on. You can encourage them to leave the review and kindly remind them about the deadline for the review. But if they still don’t review, you can’t force them to do so. You want to keep relationships good and stay as professional as possible, so don’t be abrasive or too pushy about it.

If you don’t have contact information, there’s nothing at all you can do. You just have to wait and hope that the site your reviewer applied through will succeed when they try to remind them to review. Without contact information, there aren’t any options open to you if they don’t fulfill their end of the deal. That’s the risk you take. This is why you should look at the stats on how often they reviewed in the past to try to find reasonable assurance that they’ll review.

Bottom Line on ARC Readers?

The bottom line is that your new release needs reviews. Amazon’s algorithms won’t kick in to help you sell the book until you have at least fifty 4-or-5-star reviews. The only way to get a good start on that is to have reviews when the book comes out, and you can’t get those without ARC reviewers. Do your best to screen the people you’re giving the ARC copies to, and if you can, try to have contact info for the majority of reviewers promising a review on release date. I can’t promise you’ll have 100% participation, even though you should if you swapped a free copy of your book for the review promise, but at least if you can follow up, you’ll have a better chance of getting the reviews you were promised.

Thursday Technicalities – Cover Designers and Your Cover

Featured Ariel Paiement

Okay, this won’t be a terribly long post since the only covers I tend to do are the artistic, silhouette-style covers you see on some of the re-covered classics. You know, the ones with the flowy, decorative fonts and more of a focus on shapes and color than fancy Photoshop skills. So I’m not really the person to talk to if you want to a lot about cover design like you see on most books. And that’s not the focus of this blog anyway.

But, if you’re an author, you do have to know how to handle your cover. It’s the very first thing a reader sees, and readers do, unfortunately, judge a book by the cover. This can be turned to your advantage, but only if you’ve gotten a designer who designs or have yourself learned to design cover art that’s a match with the genre and the feel of the book. If you haven’t… Well, your cover may send the wrong message.

The main things you need to know about cover art are as follows:

Designers are not one-size fits all.
You must own the image rights.
You want the cover to fit the genre: the goal is not to necessarily stand out but to fit in while giving readers a general idea of what your story is about.

Designers Are Not One Size Fits All

This is pretty straightforward. Not every designer will be a match for your project. Make sure you do your research. Look at what they design and the artwork they’ve done for other covers. If you can, talk to people that have purchased for them or read reviews left on their work. Ask for samples.

Most designers have a style they stick to. Their covers are going to feel somewhat similar just as paintings from a particular artist will feel similar when you look at them. A Van Gogh, for example, looks far different than a Leonardo Da Vinci. We can pick up on those styles of each artist and differentiate between the two. It’s similar for a designer. You can tell if someone’s being honest about the work they’ve done by looking for those similarities in the designs. If their work is all over or has some designs that are way, way different than anything else in their portfolio, be careful about it. They may be using other people’s art. Just be smart, basically. Do your research and take your time because your cover can really do a lot for the book.

You Must Own Image Rights

I don’t care what images your designer uses, you need image rights. If they create the piece entirely from scratch, which some do, then you get the rights when the artist is paid and gives you permission to use the art they created for the cover as they created it. But this means you need a piece that, from font to background image, needs to be entirely 100% owned by the artist. Otherwise, things get trickier.

If your artist didn’t create the image and the font 100% on their own, you need to own rights to images for use in that way. Places like Unsplash, Pixabay, and Pexels that offer free stock photos with Creative Commons zero licenses (use them basically for anything with no attribution) aren’t reliable. There have been issues I’ve seen occur in groups where artists used their images only to discover that the image was originally not the poster’s image and, as a result, the artist was in trouble for copyright infringement. It’s serious, guys. Don’t use these sites. Invest in a subscription for a year to a place like Envato Elements or buy individual stock photos from places like Shutterstock or Adobe Photoshop if you’re not going to require your artist to do the work to get images that you’ll have rights to using in your cover. Same deal for the fonts. If you’re in doubt on the fonts on what you can use it for, ask the designer. Free for commercial use may not always extend to ebooks or covers (As dumb as it is), so make sure you check with the person who’s listed as the creator. At least that way, with a written paper trail, you can say you did your due diligence to make sure you weren’t infringing on copyright.

A Cover That Fits the Genre

Lastly, make sure your cover will fit the genre. Make sure your designer does good work within your genre too before hiring them. You aren’t looking for something that will be super unique. Only something that draws the reader’s eye and gets them to click on the blurb. And, ideally, you want those people drawn in to be your type of reader. If you write dark romance, you probably aren’t too focused on drawing in fantasy readers unless your dark romance is set on another planet with elves and dwarves. Same goes for the reverse. I, as a speculative fiction writer, am trying to draw in speculative fiction readers with my cover not readers looking for a light, feel-good romance or some other genre.

So it’s important that your cover fits the genre and then, if you can, try to incorporate some aspect of the book. It can be a vague representation, but having a little bit of something to give your readers a general idea of what the book will be about helps with marketing, so don’t ignore the boost it can give your book.

Conclusion

That’s all for today, everyone! I hope this has been helpful to you. See you next week on Thursday Technicalities to discuss more topics from our current discussion on publishing preparation. Stay safe with all of the craziness currently going on with this pandemic. Until next time!