Time to Write

How to win writing contests

The best way to win writing contests is to write better than everybody else, but there are a few additional tips I can offer.

First, look for contests with narrow qualifying criteria. These can be geographic--for example, in the U.S. there are quite a few contests open only to the residents of individual states. Sometimes there are age limits as well. Here's an example:

The Next Chapter Award
will support an emerging Scottish writer aged over 40 who is yet to publish a full-length work. The selected writer will be offered nine months of mentoring to be arranged by Scottish Book Trust, four weeks on retreat at Moniack Mhor and a £1000 bursary. Applications close 16 May.

and another:

The Rhys Davies Short Story Competition
features a brand new Under 21 Prize, and an increased total prize fund of £5000 now on offer.  Both competitions are open to all writers born in or currently living in Wales. Entries close 16 May.

By way of contrast, here's one with almost no limits :

The Raymond Carver Short Story Contest is open to writers from around the world and is known to award top prizes to virtual unknowns and never-been-published writers.There's a first prize of $1500 for stories under 6000 words. The deadline for entries is May 15.

This may well be worth entering, but as they take entries from around the world and there are no age or other restrictions, most likely you'd be up against a large number of competitors.

2. Ask how many entries they usually have. Not many contests list this in their promotional material but some of them will tell you if you ask. 

3. Take the entry fee into account. A high fee limits the number of entries especially if the money prize is low. Normally that's a good reason to avoid entering, but if there is another benefit (e.g. a residency, meetings with agents, etc.) and you feel you have a strong entry it may be worth going for it. 

4. Read and follow the rules carefully. This sounds obvious but you would be surprised how many people don't adhere to the required word count, for example.  

5. Consider contests which require entries on a particular theme or mentioning a location, etc., like this:

Tell It Strange Essay & Story Contest
is for entries up to 1000 words written in response to one of three selected Annie Proulx quotes. First prize is US$1000, publication in The Writer magazine and a creative writing workshop in New York City or online by Gotham Writers Workshop. Entries close 31 May.

For more generic contests, people will dig up something they've already written. Responding to a more specific topic or style usually means sitting down and writing something new, and fewer people will put in that effort. 

Good luck!

 

 

How many copies do you have to sell to be an Amazon best-seller?

Amazon doesn't release sales figures in the kind of detail that would be required to have a definite answer to the question of how many copies you have to sell daily in order to be in their top 5, but Pubiisher's Weekly took a shot at doing the math. 

Their educated guess is about 300 per day. That would vary depending on time of year--in the run-up to Christmas, for instance, you'd have to sell quite a few more because that's the most competitive period.

This is for the "all print books" category. For a while online marketers were offering to sell you a plan to be an Amazon best-seller in a category, like Reference, or a sub-category, like Cookbooks, or Asian Cookbooks. If you go far down enough the line of subtopics, it doesn't take many sales t be number one for a day or part of a day. However, I think just about everybody has caught on that getting all your friends to order your book on one day so that your book is a best-seller in that sometimes very narrow niche for an hour or two isn't all that impressive.

At the moment, the marketing hustlers are offering to tell you how to make a fortune from ebooks. Needless to say, it's wise to regard their hype as highly suspect. Some of them have huge marketing lists in place that they can use to sell many copies of one of their own publications, but that doesn't mean you're going to be able to do it.

The other big hype right now is about webinars. The gurus are offering to teach you how to hold online webinars in order to sell your book or other information product.

Again, they are masters at this themselves and have huge mailing lists and affiliates who push their products, but without that online marketing infrastructure in place, you're not likely to match their results.

Also, often they show you their impressive gross income from selling a particular information product but neglect to mention how much of that gross income went to affiliates (who usually get 50%), how much they spent on building their huge lists, and how many refunds they had to give out. By the time you subtract all those, the numbers may not be so impressive.

Naming your characters (or yourself)

 

A recent study shows that when people read something by a (made-up, not famous) writer who has a middle initial or two or three of them, they rate the author as being more intellectual than when it is represented as having been written by the same name minus the middle initials.

Here is part of the study's abstract: 

Middle name initials often appear in formal contexts, especially when people refer to intellectual achievements.

On the basis of this common link, the display of middle initials increases positive evaluations of people's intellectual capacities and achievements.

We document this effect in seven studies: Middle initials in authors' names increased the evaluation of their writing performance (Study 1), and middle initials increased perceptions of status (Studies 2 and 4).

Moreover, the middle initials effect was specific to intellectual performance (Studies 3 and 6), and it was mediated by perceived status (Studies 5–7). Besides supporting our hypotheses, the results of these studies yield important implication for everyday life. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Authors with two middle initials are rated even more highly, and those with three middle initials even more. 

If you are writing a work of fiction and want your reader to assume that a character is intelligent, give him or her a middle initial or two or three.

If you are writing a work of non-fiction it might be worth using your middle initial(s) if you have any, or inventing some if you don't. 

That's my advice - yours truly, Jurgen S. O. B. Wolff--wait, I think we might have to be careful which middle initials we choose...How about J. K. Wolff? Actually, I'm thinking of using a pen name on a children's book I'm writing, but I'm inclined to change my last name to one that starts with a letter in the middle of the alphabet. When your last name begins with W, your books tend to end up on the harder-to-see bottom shelf.

Writers' (and others') success factors: 1 - take responsibility

I was impressed by a blog post at Lifehack.org called 13 Reasons Why You Will Not be Successful.

I understand that it was phrased that way to capture attention but I prefer to turn them around to the positive and to relate them specifically to writing or other creative endeavors. 

1. YOU ACCEPT RESPONSIBLITY

I don't think I'm a whiner but when I pay attention to what I say I do hear myself complaining more than I want to. Recently an online venture went wrong. It's easy and not entirely incorrect to blame it on my partner on that project, but it's not the most productive thing to do. There's a great saying I forgot:

"Don't expect. Inspect."

In other words, don't assume that others will do what they are supposed to do or even what they have said they will do.

In this instance when I ask myself what I could have done that would have prevented the problem, I can't honestly say 'nothing.' I could have confirmed and checked and insisted, and I didn't. 

Looking at this in the context of writing, if we are not successful it's easy to blame the economy, agents or publishers, the poor taste of readers, and on and on. But ultimately it's up to us to find a way to write that gets people excited, without giving up our integrity. If we can't do that we are lacking an essential skill and we have to take responsibility for acquiring it...or finding something else to do with our creative drive.

When I take a hard look at various aspects of my life I can find a number of things for which I haven't accepted full responsibility...how about you?

ps: Maybe "You are willing to take a hard look at your life," should actually be the first reason that you will succeed. 

Related articles

How long does it take to be a successful writer? (2nd in a series)

To give up or not to give up on a project?

The problem is that sometimes apparent failure and discouragement is followed by actual failure.

Often there's no way to know whether you're heading for a fall or for a bonanza.

The thing is, that doubt usually comes when you've already invested a lot of time and effort in the project and you might as well keep going and see how it all comes out.

That's hard to do when you've had a lot of rejection. I've had this experience with a novel I wrote a few years ago. It was rejected by several publishers for being too controversial and I decided to put it aside for a while. That while has stretched out to much longer than I planned, probably because my inner critic (whom I fired but who sometimes shows up for work anyway) whispers in my ear that sending it out again would just result in more rejection. 

These inner critics do their work so sneakily that we don't even notice it. Now that I've noticed it I'm going to put that manuscript out into the marketplace again and hope that it'll be Florence Scovel Shinn, and not my inner critic, whose quote applies. 

Related articles

If you're discouraged about your writing (or your year)

Have two solutions for every writers' obstacle

The truth about free-lancing, freedom, and overnight succes
s

Should you create something revolutionary--or evolutionary?

Are most successes something totally different...or something a bit better than what existed already?

Marketing guru Michael Masterson says his experience shows that the real successes tend to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary. As a mentor in the publishing industry he was directly involved in the development of at least 50 publications. He says, "In the beginning, I made an effort to create something new - something the market didn't have. In every case, I failed."

Instead he suggests a new application of the 80/20 principle:"Give them 80 percent of what they are already buying and only 20 percent of something new. The 20 percent matters. But the 80 percent keeps you in business."

If you already have a winning product or service, what's the 20% you can change or add to make it more exciting to clients or customers and stay ahead of the competition? If you don't, what's out there now that you can improve by 20% to come up with a winner?

For writers, what would make your novel or screenplay 20% different in a good way?

The same applies to marketing what you've written--how can you use existing marketing channels like Twitter and Facebook and Youtube in a somewhat different way?

(For inspiration for marketing your work in a creative and inexpensive way, see the 100 case studies of innovative marketing in my book, Do Something Different, published by Virgin Books. The examples come from people with all kinds of products and services, your task is to adapt them to what you are offering. The result is that yours will stand out.)

Promote your book with selfies

Whether you self-publish your book or get published traditionally, one of the hardest challenges you will face is getting your work to the attention of potential customers. The "selfies' phenomenon--people taking their own pictures and posting them everywhere online--has been much in the news lately. Here's a way you can take advantage of it.

WHAT’S THE IDEA? 

People’s desire to take selfies isn’t going away any time soon. Invite your followers to take a picture of themselves with your book and email it to you. 

Award prizes for most unusual facial expression, most unusual location, best selfie with pet and book. The more categories you come up with, the more winners. The more winners the better!

Make the prizes downloadable so it doesn’t cost you anything to send them. For instance, each person could get a pdf of a certificate of their win, plus wallpaper for their computer, a mini-poster for them to print out, or an exclusive short-short story featuring some of the characters in your book (maybe a couple of the minor characters). 

Of course cash always motivates people, so consider also having money awards for the top three. It doesn’t have to be a lot—£10, £25 and £50 or $25, $50 and $75 would be sufficient to drive entries.

WHY IT WORKS

The thing people find most interesting is…themselves. This contest capitalizes on that.

WHERE TO PUBLICIZE IT:

Publicize your contests on your web site and blog, social media, your YouTube channel and via free press releases. Also send information to websites that cater to amateur photographers.

BONUS IDEA 

Get a local coffee shop to let you put all the winners on a wall for a few days and get your local newspaper to write about it.

For inspiration on how else to market your book cheaply and creatively, get a copy of my book, Do Something Different, published by Virgin Books and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.

The danger of misteaks, and the question you don't want readers to ask

Will little mistakes in your book turn people off? Is proofreading really that important?

I hesitated to write this post because I know there are typos in my blog posts. I do proofread them but I post just about every day, sometimes under time pressure, and things slip through. For that reason, when I read blogs I cut them some slack regarding typos and little errors. 

When I’m reading books, not so much. I’m sure many readers feel the same.

This came to mind earlier today when I was reading the “look inside” preview of a book about research into psychic phenomena. It said that many famous people followed this research, including "Rod Sterling".

The late Rod Serling happens to be one of my heroes. I grew up loving the Twilight Zone series and later read a number of his plays. When I was a teen-ager I wrote him a letter and he was kind enough to reply. I guess that’s why seeing his name misspelled bothered me. More importantly, though, it provoked this question: 

“If the author got that wrong, what else did she get wrong?”

That’s the question you don’t want your readers to ask. It undermines their confidence in you and it may even make them put the book aside (or not buy it if they spot the error while browsing).

Here are some tips for proofreading a manuscript:

* Get at least one other person to proofread it

* Use a ruler or piece of paper and move it down one line at a time. That stops your eyes from moving ahead too far. Even better: in a piece of paper or light cardboard cut a horizontal slot the length of your lines, so anything above and below the line you are looking at is covered.

* Read backward. That makes you isolate each word and you’ll notice misspellings much more easily.

PS: I bought the book anyway…but I’ll be on the lookout for any other mistakes.

-----For friendly help with writing your book, get a copy of Your Writing Coach, published by Nicholas Brealey and avaialable from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.

How to get free and discounted ebooks

If you’re interested in getting free and discounted ebooks, you can sign up for a daily email offering those, at http://www.bookbub.com.

I signed up a month or so ago. A lot of the books are not in a genre I like, but I’ve downloaded three free ones so far.

There’s no catch—some authors feel that giving away their ebook is a good strategy because if you like the writing you’ll see what else they’ve written and pay for their other books. 

More book trailers should be like this

A lot of book trailers are boring: The author looking slightly uncomfortable describing his or her book in superlatives, or else telling what inspired them, or trying to give a summary of the plot without giving too much away. I doubt that they prompt many sales and some I've seen probably dissuade anyone from buying the book.

Below is a book trailer that's fun to watch. Will it prompt you to buy the book? Well, I haven't but if I spot it in a bookshop or think of it the next time I'm roaming around Amazon, I might. 

Yes, the author has the benefit of professional actors, and what looks like professional camerawork and editing, and I'm not suggesting that everybody could match these. The point is that it's fun as well as revealing something about the nature of the book. I think that kind of relevant fun is possible to do without professional actors.

Having said that, if you happen to live in a city I'm confident there are a lot of professional, semi-professional, and skilled amateur actors there who would be happy to be in a well-written book trailer in exchange for nothing more than a credit, a pizza lunch, and an autographed copy of your book.

There are also quite a few camera operators around who do corporate work and would love to have a chance to do something more creative, especially a project that wouldn't take long to shoot.

For directing and editing you may be able to find talented students at a local college or university. Many are eager to take on a real-world project.

Here's a fun example--it reminds me of a mini-version of a early-to-mid-period Woody Allen film; it's promoting the book, One More Thing by B. J. Novak:

 

 

 

Do you have a creative name? Should you?

People judge how creative your work is partly by how unusual your name is. That's the result of a study done by researchers Izabela Lebuda and Maciej Karwowski. They had five groups of people judge four different types of creative projects: art, science, poetry, music. In each case the projects were the same but the names of their supposed creators were different. They were one unusual male name, one unusual female name, one common male name, and one unusual male name. A fifth group judged the projects without seeing any name attached. 

Here are the results, as reported in Psychology Today: 

"The highest creativity score was earned by a painting signed with a unique female name, while the lowest went to that same painting with a common female name. For the science-related products, works signed by any male name scored much higher than the same products signed by women. In fact, the science product signed by a common female name scored even lower than the anonymous control group. In the area of music, any piece signed by a unique male name was rated highest. Poems, on the other hand, got the best scores when signed by a unique female name and the lowest from a common male name."

It would be interesting to know how that would work with novels; my guess is that it would depend on the genre. I'm sure a thriller written by Blake Carson would rank higher than the same one written by Petunia Abercrombie; but for romantic fiction the reverse might be true.

Does that mean we should use pen names that fit the public perception? Or should we follow in the footsteps of authors whose sheer talent overcame any bias against their names?

 

Five Productivity Rules Writers Should Ignore

Entrepreneur.com recently featured an infographic showing 35 productivity guidelines, most of which make sense for everybody. But there are a few that I think writers might want to leave out:

"Tune out the news. Nothing important happens, most of the time."

Yes, spending too much time reading or watching the news can be counterproductive, and I suggest skipping speculative stories (e.g., what might or might not happen at an upcoming negotiating session, or which films will win Oscars).

But I do think writers (and everybody else) need to pay some attention to what's going on in the world and at times to take action to try to influence it.

Also, writers need to feed their heads and often in-depth feature stories are good for exposing us to people and settings we may not experience first-hand.

"Decide the outcome before even starting."

If you define the outcome as, "write x number of pages" that's fine, but often stories are not as good as they could be because writers lock them in too soon, rather than continuing to explore alternatives.

"Focus on the important, supress the urgent."

Focus is great, but I'm not sure what they mean by "suppress the urgent." I've supressed the (boring) urgent too often and the consequences aren't good. My advice, even though I don't always follow it myself: Set apart a bit of time every day for the routine so it never turns into the urgent.

"Do the easiest thing first."

I was surprised to see this one; usually the advice is to tackle the hardest thing first. Maybe if the easiest thing is something you can do quickly this would be OK, just to get you to your desk. However, I know from experience that doing the easiest thing first often leads to the more difficult one being carried over to the next day's to-do list (sometimes more than once).

"Assume you are right, when in doubt. Decisive is productive."

I think the world is too full of people who assume they are right. Of course the time comes when we need to take action despite not having enough information (we never have enough information for certainty) but I'd restate this one as, "Take action and be open to the possibility that you're wrong and will need to change course." Decisiveness is productive, but often it produces the wrong things. If you doubt it, consider the political system.

AND THREE OF THE BEST OF THE REST:

"Treat time as your money."

"Start an 'Idea Dump' book for genius ideas that you can't work on now." I'd add, write down all the ideas, decide later whether they're genius.

"If you have a mind block, make a mind map."

(You'll find lots of practical right-brain time management methods in my book, Focus: Use the power of targeted thinking to get more done." It's published by Pearson and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

What top performers don't do

One of a series of quotes for writers and others that you might find helpful in thinking ahead to the New Year: "Top performers do not generate fame and fortune--or fervent happiness, for that matter--by following the conventional wisdom or struggling to be 'normal'." - John Eliot

If you show your unconventional nature by wearing a beret or having a few tattoos, that's accepted and in some quarters even admired. Try going much farther afield and it won't be long before you'll see why this is a road not travelled by many. We have been brought up to care what others think and to behave in a way that won't call too much attention to ourselves.

The late Albert Ellis, founder of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy, used to get people to go into public and do embarrassing things like asking strangers for a pickle, to demonstrate that being embarrassed isn't the end of the world. If other people think you're an idiot, so what? 

I heard Ellis, who passed away in 2007, give a talk once and I think his ideas make a great deal of sense. The core of REBT is that it's not what happens but our beliefs about it that are the greatest source of unhappiness.

It has a lot in common with Stoicism, which unfortunately is misrepresented as suffering in silence. In fact, it's more about not getting attached to possessions, relationships and outcomes. I highly recommend reading the sayings of Epictetus for a fuller view of Stoicism. 

REBT also recognizes that people are not always rational and we have to deal with the world is it is not as we would like it to be. "He shouldn't do that!" someone says, and spends a lot of energy on resenting whatever the other person does or doesn't do.

REBT says obviously in that person's worldview his behaviour IS acceptable; if you can't accept it, and he's not willing to change, move on. 

Easier said than done, but well worth the effort!

 

Is your book unique? Oh oh!

Is your book unique? That may not be such a great thing.

If we stick to the strict definition of unique, a book can't be "somewhat unique" or "very unique". Unique means one of a kind. 

Of course there are very few things that are unique. Most are variations of what already exists. However, from time to time I meet an author who says their book or screenplay really is unique--nothing like it has ever been done. 

If that's true of what you are writing, prepare for an uphill battle. 

One of the first things a publisher asks is "what are some comparable books?"

It may surprise you that if you say there aren't any, that's a negative as far as the publisher goes. They know that something really new will require too much work to explain to an audience. They prefer saying "This is just like (name of best-seller) but even better."

If you want to attract a publisher, put some comparables in your query letter or proposal and explain why yours is similar and also how it's (a bit) different. Naturally, choose books that have sold well. 

If you self-publish you'll have to make the same thing clear to readers.

If you do have something unique, congratulations. The odds are  it will be a huge success...or a huge flop. It's possilbe that there hasn't been anything like it because nobody actually wants anything like it...or because they didn't know they wanted something like it but now that it exists they can't wait.    

(Want to be even more creative? Get a copy of the colorful, fun to read, and highly useful book, CREATIVITY NOW, published by Pearson and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

Related articles

If you're discouraged about your writing (or your year)

Have two solutions for every writers' obstacle

Your Query Letter: 10 thing that will make them throw it in the trash

Have two solutions for every writers' obstacle

Writers can use this good bit of advice from Craig Ballantyne: Plan ahead. Always have two solutions for every obstacle.

• Whenever you send out a manuscript, already know the next place you'll send it if the first is foolish enough to reject it.
  
  
• Do the same when you approach an agent--have another one waiting in the wings.
  
  
• If you can't find a traditional publisher, be ready to consider self-publishing.
  
  
• When you're working on one project, have another in mind as the next one. If you have any thoughts about it, jot them down and put them into a folder.

Having a back-up plan reduces the anxiety inherent in this line of work and makes it easier to keep going.

(Another thing that helps is having a writing coach in a book--and that's what you'll get in my book, called, not too surprisingly, Your Writing Coach. It's published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller. This holiday season consider supporting your local independent book store by doing your Christmas book buying there.)