Time to Write

Self-publishers, beware!

If you’re thinking of self-publishing, beware! You are the new target of a lot of scamsters and people offering overpriced or unnecessary services. Over the past six months I’ve seen these people come out of the woodwork. They’ll milk writers until there’s not much left and then they’ll ride some other trend to make more money from unsuspecting folks.

The excellent Writer Beware Blog pointed to e-Publishing Revo, which promises 100% royalties (which actually is 70% for books you price between $2.99 and $9.99, and 45% of list price for books costing more or less than that range. How is that 100%?).

The company behind e-Publishing is Bookwhirl, which Writer Beware describes as a “notorious Internet spammer.” WB also points out that are various inconsistencies in the description of what you get for the sums e-Pubishinging Revo asks for helping you self-publish, and in the fine print it mentions that if you buy their package you’re also agreeing to be contacted by email, mail, and telephone about other products and services they want to sell you.

 Sounds like one to stay away from.

Although you can do all of the tasks that go with self-publishing, some people don't have time or don't like dealing with technology, so I'm not saying all companies that offer to provide these services for you are bad. However, before you hand over any money do a Google search, see what others are saying, and be sure that the terms and conditions are absolutly clear before you sign anything.

 

52 Tips to Writing Success - 6: phone a friend!

This is the sixth in a series of weekly tips regarding small changes you can make, one per week, to write better, write faster, and have more confidence about your writing.

Do the members of your family and your friends respect how seriously you take your writing? Do you have somebody who knows about writing with whom to talk about challenges that come up or celebrate your victories?

If not, it's time you found some support.

This is easier than it used to be. If there isn't a writing group around, you can turn to the internet and the many writing-related sites that have forums and other ways for members to connect.

I recommend joining the people who have signed up for an annual subscription to my MADs--Massive Action Days. Annual members have access to our chatroom 24/7 and there's a small group in the chatroom every day, working on their own projects and also ready to help or just chat with others working on writing projects. And ten times a year you can focus on your writing on our Massive Action Days and get the surpport of 100 or more of your peers. You can get more information here: 

http://massiveactionday.com/new-annual-mad-sign-up-page/

Wherever you find your new friends, stay in touch and make sure you don't contact them only on days you are feeling discouraged. Celebrating victories together is important, too, and not just the big ones like publishing a book. You can also congratulate each other on hittting the smaller milestones that go with every big project. 

(You can also get friendly support in print form, from having the idea right through to publication, via my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from all good booksellers and a few bad ones as well.)

The increasing need for stories you can write (zombie edition)

If you want to write for money these days you need to expand your vision of how stories can be used. Award-winning novelist Naomi Alderman ("The Lessons") turned her story-telling talent to use in helping create "Zombies Run!" 

It's a phone fitness app that motivates runners by telling them that zombies are chasing them. If you go too slow, you'll hear the moans of your brains-eating pursuers. You take on the role of "Runner 5," who has to collect crucial supplies to help save non-zombie civilisation.

You'll also hear messages from fellow survivors and there is a kind of storyline, presumably featuring the gruesome deaths of a few runners who gave up too soon. 

The first "season" consists of 24 episodes as well as plot-free sessions and season two is in progress. It works on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android, through headphones. You set the speed based on your level of fitness and how far you want to run, and you can add your own custom music playlist. 

The project was funded via Kickstarter, the crowdfunding site. You can find out more at http://www.zombiesrungame.com. 

(I've heard that zombies are especially drawn to people who haven't yet bought my latest book, "Your Creative Writing Masterclass," so if I were you I'd get it right away from Amazon or your other favourite bookseller.)

 

Why non-fiction writers should beat the cannibals to the meal

I've just listened to a marketing guy who is selling people a program on how to make money by writing a summary of a successful book and publishing it as an ebook.

His advice is to pick books that are longer than three hundred pages, for which the publisher sets the price. Also not to use too many actual excerpts to avoid violating copyright, and keep your summary under 50 pages.

Is it legal? Seems to be. Is it ethical? Hmmm...yes, maybe reading a summary might drive a few people to buy the full book, but probably it will cannabilize sales more than it increases it.Frankly, I'd feel sleazy using this tactic. 

In fact, I wonder how the marketing guy would feel if I bought his course and then published my summary of it for $49 instead of his price of $97?

My suggestion: if you think your book might be a target, beat them to the punch. Create your own digest version; if people have the chance to buy a summary from the original author or from a stranger, they'll go for the author every time.

(For more respectable approaches to creating and marketing your work, see my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other book sellers.)

 

Warning: Before you spend money on a self-publishing course, read this!

Ebooks are hot, which means it didn't take long for people to come out of the woodwork to extract money from writers who want to self-publish but aren't sure how. Of course it's perfectly legitimate for someone to charge for a course on that and there are lgood ones around. What bothers me is the way some of them are being marketed.

Several marketers whose pitches I've heard or read are telling people it's easy to make a lot of money publishing your own ebook. As examples they mention John Locke and Amanda Hocking, both of whom have sold more than a million copies of their ebooks.

One marketer said that Hocking had this result "without lifting a finger." If you've read Hocking's account, you'll know that she worked exceedingly hard to get people to read her books. John Locke also admits that his true talent isn't writing, it's marketing. 

To imply that these two are typical is equivalent to telling somebody he should take tennis lessons because, afte all, that Nadal and Federer make a fortune.

Can you make a profit from ebooks? Of course.

Will there be others who sell more than a million? Yes, naturally.

But is it easy? Can you just format your book and get it on the Amazon Kindle site and wait for the money to roll in without lifting a finger? No way. 

I do think self-publishing is a great opportunity for writers and I would never dissuade anybody from doing it. Nor is it a bad idea to take a course or buy a program to learn how to do it. In fact, I'm working (slolwy) on a course that will help you establish your "author's platform," which is essential whether you are published traditionally or self-publish.

But if the people who are hoping to sell you a course or a book tell you it's simple and riches are practically guaranteed, hold on to your wallet or purse and run a mile in the other direction.

Could you use the Agile Publishing Model to self-publish your ebook?

At Digital Book World Dominique Raccah, chief executive and publisher of Sourcebooks announced that they will be using that they call the Agile Publishing Model. It involves building audience participation before the writing and publication of a new book, a system O'Reilly Media has employed already.

What does this look like in practice? This is my interpretation of how you could use it when self-publishing an ebook:

1. Start a website that relates to the book. If it's a non-fiction book it's easy to decide on the topic. If it's a novel, what aspect do you think people would find most interesting and likely to make them buy the book?

This is not always obvious. For instance, a mystery set in a ski resort will not necessarily appeal more to skiers than others. In fact, sometimes people who know a lot about a topic don't read fiction about it because they know so many authors get things wrong. And people who will eagerly read non-fiction may not read fiction at all. 

Here's a tip: find a successful book similar to yours in a significant way. Look at the author's website, the comments and reviews people have left on Amazon and YouTube, and use Google to track down articles about them, fan sites, etc. You'll get lots of clues about where this author's fans hang out. Go there. Be unobtrusive at first, and then start posting but not about your book. Without spamming or forcing it, let people know you have a blog or site they might find of interest (and make sure it is interesting, of course).

The sooner you do this, the better. This model works only if you start early. 

2. Involve your followers in the writing of the book. For instance, invite their questions. If a lot of people have the same question, that's a great indicator that you should be answering it in your book or featuring the topic in some way. 

3. Let your followers read chapters as you go along. Be clear that these are early drafts and you welcome input. Pay attention to what makes sense, ignore what doesn't. But start with an open mind. If you find that the book you want to write isn't the same one people want to read, adjust accordingly.

In works of fiction, pay attention to feedback like "I got mixed up between Brian and Bruce," or "It' wasn't clear to me whether Samantha knew about John's previous marriage or not." If the reader is supposed to know that, maybe you need to state it more clearly.

4. Let followers vote. Ask them to help you pick the best title, the best cover image, the best copy for the back cover. You can get a lot of useful information. Again, it helps if you are able to put aside your ego. If 80 of a hundred people voting clearly prefer one cover over the other you'd be silly not to listen, even if you like the other one better.

5.Tell about the steps of the publishing process, including a bit of gossip here and there (naturally, nothing that will upset your publisher). Your followers will feel like insiders and at the same time will know when the expect the book.

6. In the book, acknowledge by name any followers whose comments have been helpful. It's a nice thing to do, plus people buy more copies of a book when their name is in it.

7. Have an online launch party. Invite your followers and ask them to invite their friends as well. Do something special, maybe a live video feed from an actual party, or set up a webinar in which people can ask you questions. Give away prizes including copies of your book. 

8. Keep your followers involved after the book is published. Blog about your experiences--did you have a signing and 100 people turned up? Great, tell us about it. Did you have a signing and nobody turned up? Not so great for you, but possibliy a more entertaining story. Put reviews on the site and invite your followers to do their own reviews on YouTube and post links to those (or embed them) on your site. Give a prize for the best review every month (not the most fawning but the most entetaining). 

9. Get their input on what you should write next--hook them early so they'll stay with you.

10. If your book has timely content, update it as often as necessary. With e-books this is simple and costs nothing or very little. Let your followers know that you're keeping up to date and ask them for input on what changes you should make. 

Have I done all these? Nope. But writing this has given me some good ideas...

(You can also get loads of good ideas for inexpensive and innovative ways to market yourself or your work, in my book, "Do Something Different," published by Virgin Books.)

Why the best-seller list is dead and what you can do about it

In his newsletter, Seth Godin points out that the advent of the internet and especially social media have killed the importance of the New York Times best-seller and similar lists. He writes:

"...the reason we care if something is a bestseller is because we want to know if our friends are reading it. We want to know this so we can stay in sync with them, not appear stupid, or, perhaps, because we trust their judgment. That’s why you don’t care a bit about what the bestsellers in New Zealand are.

The digital world opens a new window, something that was unknowable just five years ago. Tell me what other TED attendees are reading, please. Tell me what readers of Mother Jones or Newsmax are reading. Or what my Facebook friends bought last week. Or highlight for me what people who read what I read are finishing on their Kindles…"

This is why the Amazon "people who buy this also buy this" feature works, although it's imperfect. If you buy your aunt three books on how to crochet, suddenly you're getting lots of other crocheting books on your recommended list. I know you can remove specific books from being considered, but most people can't be bothered. 

So far, Godin says, "No one has built this list yet, it is sort of showing up around the edges of a variety of sites and services and industries. A great opportunity if you can figure out the best way to source the data and then distribute it."

If you belong to forums or groups on Facebook, Yahoo, or even if you have a reasonable size list of people to whom you send a newsletter or a blog with lots of followers, you can do a mini-version of this.

What are you reading?

Why and how is it useful to you?

What is there about it that might be useful to people who follow you? 

Hey, Jurgen, you may be saying, if that's such a great idea, why aren't you doing it consistently? After all, if people see that you're reading books that appeal to them, doesn't that make it more likely they'll buy your books as well?

Good questions, even if I had to make them up myself. Watch out for Saturday Reviews, starting next Saturday, right here on this blog. And as a little preview, here's one I made earlier...

 (Confused about how to market your product or service? Get a copy of "Marketing for Entrepreneurs," written in plain language and giving you all the steps to creating a practical marketing plan. It's written by me, published by Pearson, and available from Amazon and other book sellers.)

 

The bully that tried to blackmail writers is down for the count

You may have heard about a company called Righthaven, that sued 275 bloggers and small for supposedly infringing on copyrighted material to which Righthaven had the rights. In fact, Righthaven made deals with newspapers, notably the Las Vegas Review-Journal, to give them the rights to old articles and photos once they saw that bloggers had copied or excerpted them. They threated to sue the bloggers and demanded ridiculously high out-of-court settlement fees. Presumably the newspapers either were paid a fee or were cut in on the proceeds.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal is published by Stephens Media. An affiliate of Stephens Media owns half of Righthaven. Court papers showed that Stephens Media was in for half of the proceeds of these cases, after expenses. 

Other papers, including the Denver Post, came on board and Righthaven got very busy. Bloggers who were its target said the company used intimidation tactics to get them to pay. 

The Daily Online Examiner reports that "the defendants included a 20-year-old autistic blogger and a political site that excerpted five sentences of a 50-sentence news article..." They "generously" offered to let the chronically ill blogger, Brian Hill, off the hook for $6000. Hill and his mother both live on disability. 

Many bloggers didn't have the funds to pay to fight the cases in court and were too frightened not to pay. Fortunately eventually a number of lawyers and public interest groups stepped up and helped defend some of the cases. 

Last summer, judges took a closer look at the contracts Righthaven had with newspapers and found that Righthaven lacked standing to sue because it didn't obtain all of the rights to the newspapers' articles, including the right to license them. It also ruled that one of the cases was fair use and ordered Righthaven to pay the blogger's $64,000 legal bill. 

The court attached the company's bank account--which was found to contain less than $1000. The court ordered Righthaven representatives Steven A. Gibson and his wife Raisha "Drizzle" Y. Gibson to appear before the court on Jan. 5 to testify under oath about the location of the company's assets.

A judge ordered the auctioning-off of the company's domain name (will anybody really want it?) and Righthaven has also been ordered to sign over "any and all" copyrights they own. They've refused, saying since the courts found they didn't really own the copyrights there's nothing to sign over. They've also filed an appeal. 

Once in a while the good guys do win. 

Why your book will never be finished

It used to be that when your novel or non-fiction book was published you wouldn't have a chance to change anything unless the publisher decided to issue another edition. Of course they don't really like to do that until the first edition is close to selling out, so usually this is a matter of at least a couple of years.

That's all changing with the advent of ebooks. Nicholas Carr recently wrote about this on the Wall Street Journal Books site. He published a book of essays using the Kindle Direct Publishing service.

He writes, "Then I got the urge to tweak a couple of sentences in one of the essays. I made the edits on my computer and sent the revised file back to Amazon. The company quickly swapped out the old version for the new one."

He points out, "The endless malleability of digital writing promises to overturn a whole lot of our assumptions about publishing."

It's good for updating books about things that change rapidly, and in fiction for correcting the mistakes that sharp-eyed readers are wont to notice and point out to you, often gleefully. 

It's hard to tell the effect it will have on perfectionists who previously avoided finishing their books. Will they now finish them but make changes every ten mintutes, or will the knowledge that they COULD make changes if necessary reduce their need to actually do it?  It could go either way.

At any rate, it's one many changes we're going to adjust to as the nature of publishing continue to change at rapid pace. 

 

How's this for the latest tech innovation in writing?

A story in the New York Daily News reports that some writers are taking advantage of a new-fangled tech device called...a typewriter.

OK, an old-fangled tech device.

The article quotes Matt Cidoni, 17: “I loved the instantaneousness of it, and immediately seeing the words on the page.” The high school senior now owns ten typewriters (his favorite is the Royal 10), writes a blog about typewriters and hand-types his school assignments. “The teachers love it. They think it’s neat.”

Some are returning to typewriters to escape the distractions that come with the computer: "Jack Tassia, 55, of Elmhurst, bought himself a Smith Corona last week, hoping it would help him focus. “If I’m on the computer, which I’ve also used to write, I feel like a lot of times I get distracted, either by emails or any stuff that comes up online,” he said."

Colleen Ferraioli, who owns Brooklyn shops Brownstone Treasures and Yesterday’s News, said,“It’s become very popular with young writers. They’ll actually bring a typewriter around rather than a laptop and they’ll work that way.” (Hmm, my guess is they're trying to look cool.)

One of the happiest days of my early life was when my parents presented me with a typewriter--I've forgotten the model, but it was one of those ancient uprights, like the one in the illustration, that my father picked up at a garage sale. Years later the appearance of the IBM Selectric, with its sphere of keys and its correction tape, seemed like an amazing advance.

So, yes, I like the romantic image of the old typewriter. I wouldn't mind having one sitting somewhere in my office. 

But go back to writing on one? Lugging it around to the local coffee shop? Stopping to roll up the paper, erase an error and find you've made a little hole in the paper? 

Not likely. 

PS: Here's an interesting feature on 12 writers who still refuse to use computers--at least for all their creative writing. For instance, apparenlty J. K. Rowling still prefers to do first drafts by hand and edits as she transfers it to computer. Link: http://www.accreditedonlinecolleges.org/blog/2012/12-writers-who-still-refuse-to-use-computers/

(Whatever you use to write, you'll find a great deal of helpful information in my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available as a traditional printed book or as a Kindle e-book.)