Writing Success

When I read things like this piece at Writesex.net (great new blog btw), I get a little depressed for my work.

That means there are many times more ebook reading devices and people reading them than ever before, and ebooks have a growing market that should continue expanding for years to come.

Again, that market is still tiny compared to print books. 3000 to 5000 copies is a big initial sale for an $8.99 ebook (unless by Dan Brown or some other giant of the print bestseller lists) while the initial sale of, say, an $8.99 paperback is more like 60,000 to 100,000 copies.

Okay the first paragraph is hopeful for me. The second is sad for my little books. A few hundred have looked at my books. No one has sad anything- good or bad. I take that as good. I think.

Today I’m feeling like this (quote comes from Chasing Amy, Kevin Smith’s best film)

ALYSSA

Nope. I’m happy my stuff gets read at  all. There’s very little market for  hearts and flowers in this spandex-  clad, big pecs, big tits, big guns  field. If I sell two issues, I feel  like John Grisham.

I’ve also realized that I’m just coming into publishable fiction writing. I’ve been writing since I was 13. I never really finished a novel until my first NaNoWriMo. ANd three before I wrote something I felt worth editing.

I read the other day that fiction has a 10 year apprenticeship. 10 years of serious writing, which I don’t think I had as a teenager. So I have a few years left before I really get there.

Personal Vs Professional

I’m on Twitter. Actually I was on Twitter right after its start when no one knew how to use and thus stopped using it until I released Second Chance Romance.

By then Twitter was popular and tons of people were using it for self-promotion. Bloggers and writers and marketers, well everyone, was saying: You need to be on Twitter.

Mostly I retweet interesting articles. Something someone on my friend list linked to. Or something in my blog feed.

What I haven’t figured out is if it’s okay to write personal anecdotes. Is twitting about my pregnancy connecting with people or alienating them? Do they care? Do they want to read about it?

Some people I follow write mundane things. Some people I follow only post things relating to their “expertise”.

I’m not sure who I should be on Twitter. After spending some time writing this I’m not sure I even care.

Nerves

Well, I laud self-publishing, I do believe that more traditional publishing still leads to more sales. I was looking at Erotic e-publishers/print publishers and saw a call out for an anthology. 20,000-25,000 words on a certain topic.

I had an idea in that topic for some time and grabbed the chance to write about it.

I’ve written about 19,000 words, edited the crap out of them. I need to add a little more. I realized I neglected to describe any physical characteristics for my heroine. And it needs another sex scene. Not sure where I am going to add that, but it’s missing one.

I am trying to write my query letter and 2-5 page synopsis based on free information I’ve found, including Bubble Cow’s 5 day email tutorial on writing queries and synopsis. You can sign up for it free on BubbleCow’s website.

I’m plagued my self-doubt. I don’t know if my book is good enough. Is there enough sex? Too much? Bad flow? Too short a word count to do the story justice? My scenes aren’t symmetrical, does that matter?

So many … questions.

I like the book. I just don’t know if the publisher will like it. And I’ve never written a query and synopsis before, so I have no idea how to go about it. I found a website showing good and bad synopses, supposedly, but I couldn’t figure out which were which unless I read the comments and found people razing them. It makes editors come off as NOT nice people and I wonder at people who submit anything. I don’t want my letter to become blog fodder for others to make fun of.

I’m going to give it my best go. I know if it doesn’t work out I have other forums to pitch my idea. I read that this “genre” is quite hot.

I understand that editors don’t care that I always wanted to be a writer. They don’t care if I like my story. They want something that can sell.

Is my story that one for this company? I don’t know. I can hope. If not, well you all will get to read it for free or cheap.

Update: I wrote the missing character description and scenes before hitting publish. I have to finish my synopsis but my mom’s birthday party took precedence today and tomorrow I have my blood glucose test for most of my afternoon off. There’s always my hour at Karate practice however.

Wish me luck.

Related articles by Zemanta

• How Good is it? Good enough? (rejecter.blogspot.com)

Review: Crouton A Love Story

Crouton: A love story by T. Alex Miller is a free short on Smashwords. It is a hilarious little story with a likeable main character, Ted. There is just enough description to get Ted’s story mixed with the present.

Poor Ted, the likeable, if fastidious, hero comes home one day to find a crouton perfectly centered on his white sofa. Since he lives alone, he equates this to being ransacked. As he checks his apartment for intruders, he reasons why he doesn’t eat croutons. He also shows us his anxious past.

He can’t call his mother or the police over a crouton. He double checks his own pantry for a box of forgotten croutons- anything to explain how it got there. Eventually he removes it with a pair of tongs. But it- or rather another crouton, appears the following day.

It gets worse for poor Ted. And, as a reader you aren’t sure whether to sympathize with him or laugh your ass off.

Why independent publishing is working for yourself

Ditchwalk wrote about the new money flow.  I wrote about independent authors being the little sister to traditional publishing, still in it’s infancy but will surpass her big sister someday.

A second analogy: traditional publishing is to independent authors as being a paid employee is to entrepreneurship.

What are most people striving for?

Working for themselves.

Why are authors so keen to let a publishing house have most of their profits? Because they make their books pretty?

Thanks to the internet, stock photography and creative commons licences, you can have your pick of images and create your own cover. It takes a few hours work, but I think that might worth a few percentages of income.

Formatting takes a little more work, but well worth the effort.

Editing isn’t so hard. A few hundred dollars to the right people can get your book edited now days. Actually, if you are willing to put in the time, you can get your book edited for free, so long as you are willing to do the same for someone else. Editing is little more than basic spelling and grammar knowledge and a fresh set of eyes looking at the text. Bite sized edits is proving to be a valuable tool.

There is marketing. And traditional publishers have a bit of advantage on this. They can get a book into every book store in the US and Canada (or the UK- depending on where you publish).

Getting them into bookstores is only a piece of the challenge. Most books end up being sold less than cost or eventually sent back to the publisher and destroyed.

There are many advantages to self-publishing.

Right now I have to edit my book some more.

Bite Size Edits

I am a horrible editor. I hate reading my work because I’m plagued by self-doubt. I sit there staring at my words thinking, THIS is the WORST thing anyone has EVER written. No one will want to read it.

More or less.

I’ve learned that part of my past hatred of editing was that my work really wasn’t worth editing. Then I wrote Second Chance Romance. And I loved it. I loved Mandy. I loved Kip and Colton and Corey.  I loved it all.

So I edited the story. But I didn’t really do a good grammar and language edit. It’s hard to edit a story because one gets bogged down with the story. I don’t notice an errant comma or run on sentence or too many ‘ands’. I use way too many ‘ands’.

I’ve thought about submitting Second Chance to some epubs for sometime. I put it off because it really did need a grammar and punctuation edit. And I’m horrible with that.

I don’t know Where I came across Bookoven. but I started following the site on Twitter. Then Bookoven started a new project site called Bite Size Edits.

I put the first chapter of Second Chance Romance up there and started editing. I post the link a few times and a few people did some edits. Mostly I did them.

It’s amazing. The first Chapter is beautiful. I’ve got a new project up there.

How it works is you copy and paste a text and submit it. You can optionally invite people to edit your text. Copyright on all edits you do is free to the original author.

As you or other’s edit the text it’s shown to you in random bite sized pieces. You type in what you believe the text should say and click “submit changes”. If you think the text is good as is, click “No Changes”.

You can also attach notes to the author. I use this often for myself because the lines are offered more or less out of context and I can’t recall what I was trying to say or if this piece of information was explained before or after.

After all the lines are seen by someone twice, the edits are offered to the author. The author reads each one and rejects, accepts or changes each edit.

It’s an easy way to edit where I don’t get mired in the story line. I can see check each line individually.

If you follow my link to my current project and do some edits, please let me know here or on twitter. If you put up any text that need editing, I’d gladly lend my hand.

Independent Success

Why is it in the book/publishing business that if you are independent than you aren’t professional?

Independent movies are made all the time. No one frowns on them. They’ve launched many a successful film career.

There are people saying that big house publishers will soon be looking to see if authors have had any independent publishing success before signing them.

That makes sense. So many other places do that.

Independent publishing is not unequal to traditional publishing options ie. signing with a big name publisher and hoping your book sells a few thousand. At least so you can get a little more than your advance.

Independent publishing is better likened to the little sister of traditional publishing. The little sister has to work a little harder to get out of big sister’s shadow. She has to be different. Edgier and more aggressive. She has to try things that big sister wouldn’t have dared. She has to embrace the new wave.

She isn’t her big sister. People make the mistake of calling them the same name. People make the mistake of comparing them. Both of those are wrong.

Independent publishing, especially electronically, is still in it’s infancny. We are the early adopters. We are the pioneers. We are on the forefront of the new success. Traditional success isn’t there yet. Few are making thousands of dollars, almost no one is making a living yet.

As technology moves forward and catches up, little sister will equal or surpass her big sister. Independent publishers and authors will be successful.

No Harm in Fantasies

I decided to start reviewing free books available on Smashwords. Because I love romance I searched those out first. I got a good starting place- mostly short stories. Then I searched for titles done by Excessia- an erotic publisher.

And I found something out about myself and other people.

No matter what you fantasize about. Someone else does too.

No matter what.

I’ve had all these fantasies for myself. And, I’ve started writing them but got embarrassed by it and deleted the files. I was going to with Beauty and the Beast file I started. Then I decided I should share it.

I’m glad I kept it. I haven’t shared it yet.

Will I write these things down? Some of them, yes. Somethings I would prefer not to share.

Recently I read about a man who was convicted of child abuse for chatting with an adult pretending to be a teen. They chatted on line and on the phone- talking about a variety of topics from the mundane to the very sexually graphic. He made no attempt to try to meet the young girl and the article didn’t say if he knew if the woman was actually a teenager. But he was convicted of child abuse, because he likely would have tried to meet up, eventually.

There are many people who enjoy age play. Age play is where adults pretend to be a different age than they actually are, ranging anywhere from babies to barely eighteen. All participants are of legal age, but imagination is a strong thing.

Should we be punished for what we fantasize about?

Everyday people turn on their television and watch murders occur. They take part in murders and other crimes on video games.

Not much more legal than pretending to have sex with a minor. Whether in text or on the phone or even in pictures.

As long as these things stay fantasies is just fine. Few people engaging in these fantasy behaviours actually cross over to the real thing. Those that do, obviously, should be punished. Harshly. But …

No harm in fantasy.

Review: Counterpane

Counterpane by bob chartain is written in screenplay style which is a different read than novel. There are few inner thoughts of the characters given and there is a bit of head jumping where juxtaposing viewpoints, occurring in different locations, in the same scene.

The story is of David Carson, a spy and Sherry, the woman he loves, but won’t leave his job for. She becomes pregnant and doesn’t tell him until the last month, when it’s too late to do anything about. He returns home to her and becomes involved. She has a pregnancy “mask” which is common among pregnant women, except hers is extreme and ends up being the side effect of something much worse. She dies shortly after giving birth to a boy, Tommy.

David hires a live in caregiver and continues with his job, returning periodically to see his son. Years pass and Tommy turns out to be a genius, who only really wants his father’s love. He goes into his father’s briefcase and finds plans for a nuclear device and attempts to build it. Until his father’s partner, Manny, finds out and stops the boy, saying David will be in big trouble.

Except, David is missing. The exact details of his return are fuzzy, but he does return home. To find his son is dying. Tommy links the illness with his mother’s due to a drug she took before she pregnant. David realizes it’s a “youth” drug he smuggled in for her.

I can see how this would be a good movie if done well. There is a good story. I can’t say anything about the writing style since it’s not comparable to a novel. But there is a good story.

Get Counterpane for Free at Smashwords.com

Annoying Me With Stereotypes

I thought about entitling this post: why my husband is not solely responsible for the success of our family.

Here’s the story. While our daughter was young, he worked full-time, I worked part-time and went to school. Now, I’m done my course, have a part-time job in the field I trained in and am 6 months pregnant. My husband was laid off in September with 100,000 other Canadians. He recently put a resume on a stack of resumes an inch thick- we weren’t surprised when he didn’t get a call back. I don’t know how many jobs he’s applied for- a hundred at least, anything that makes more than EI (Employment Insurance). He’d like to go back to school, except our local college doesn’t have any courses he’s interested in as a career. SO we’d have to move for a couple years, then move again to wherever his job is. A thought we don’t relish because we are moving our 7 year old from place to place.

Truth be told, I should be looking for full-time work, so he can go to school. Except that in 3 months I’m having our second (very unexpected) child, so it’s hard to find a full-time job in those circumstances.

So I have a part-time job now. I work .7 of 35 hours with a commute of about 50 km. He’s getting enough to get us by and if he does get a job it has to be enough to justify paying childcare for our daughter before and after school, which is $200-300.

We have all the necessities and a few fun things like internet, satellite tv, phones, ability to have Christmas, while we pay off our existing debts we aren’t making anymore.

But it’s stressful. And I tried to confide to someone about how stressful it is and how jobs are scarce and going to school is difficult. We always make it work out. We had a lot more bills at one point with a lot less money. A LOT LESS.

But anyway, the person I confided (a relative) was upset with what she felt was lack of initiative from him for finding a job. She said “He’s got a family to take care of.”

The responsibility of caring for the family financially does not solely rest upon him. I am a grown. I am capable of working. There are issues making things more difficult. It’s half my responsiblity. I’ve been feeling quite guilty of late for not having a full-time job at this point in my life. (And I’ve tried to find a part-time job as well but there are few of those to be had as well).

It annoys me that someone would think like that. He’s always worked full-time. He supported me when I went to school. I would love to move somewhere so he can go to school and I’d support him.

I’ve been trying to be more aggressive with marketing my book, in hopes that writing will someday turn into a decent income for me. That’s my dream. I think if I edit Second Chance once more I can submit it to publishers.

Related articles by Zemanta

• How To Maintain a Good Relationship When Your Partner Is Unemployed (howcast.com)