Christopher D. Schmitz's Blog, page 36

State of Writing

[image error]

I hope for two chapters in my TKR3 revisions–I actually got 3 of them done and I’m very optimistic that I’ll be done on time (before Oct) so I can get it to Betas asap. On top of that I also got the Indie Author’s Bible proof into editing, scheduled some new events (which are always posted to my Amazon Author’s Profile under the events calendar), and got my main website redesigned. If you haven’t seen it, go take a look!

Hopefully I can get another two chapters completed this week and stay on course or even get ahead of schedule!

Don’t get scammed by companies like Reader’s Magnet

[image error]

As I’ve mentioned previously, everyone wants to rip you off as an author by taking advantage of your hopes and dreams. Scammers make me sick. I’ve had a few calls from them lately pretending to be huge media companies that offer promotion for authors. These scammers do their homework, and so I assume they work on commission. They reference your book by name and will give it praise when they call and might mention that it was found by a Literary Talent Scout (as if those exist—agents and publishers get so many queries every day that they don’t need to go looking for talent! Talent goes to them. It’s a system that has been long established.)

I listened to the first guy’s spiel so I was familiar with it; they wanted between hundreds and thousands of dollars to do worldwide promotion on a book of mine that was far from my best one (so zero quality control) and when pressed, the agent knew nothing about it. (It is fun to toy with these guys, “oh yeah? What did you like about my book specifically?”) Just like any scamming vanity press, these sorts of things are easy to spot, and with a phone component, poor English skills are often a giveaway (hence the “international interest” I suppose.)

Straight up scam. I told them to put me on their do not call list. I got called again today by a man from Reader’s Magnet. I know the drill and rattled off my request so that the caller could not get in a word edgewise—I want as little of my time wasted as possible. “I’m familiar with your company. I do not want to buy or sell anything through you and do not want your services; please put me on your do not call list. Thank you, goodbye.” I hung up with the guy trying to talk over me on the other end. He actually called me back and started yelling at me about being rude and unprofessional. I responded, “I am familiar with you. You guys are rip-off artists and a predatory company trying to sell me something I don’t want or need.” I shouted him down and when he said he’d put me on their DNC (while chastising me about being unprofessional—even though he interrupted me with an unsolicited phone call to my personal cell) I said “good” and hung up on him again. He was pushy and rude. I wouldn’t buy something that I wanted from someone like that. Don’t let a bully manipulate you into buying something… especially when that something is a giant, squishy turd.

Thanks to the internet we can check out companies like this one (you might be familiar with my report many months ago from the scamming email services that promised contact info for thousands of bookstores—the folks I tracked down as operating out of the back of a taco joint.) Reader’s Magnet has a good looking website and social media. They do their best to represent themselves as a legit company and seem to have followed the same online platform building guides that Indie authors do—I guess they know their audience/prey well enough to look the part.

I found a response to the company’s cold calling on Ripoffreport.

“Being a book author is no easy task and marketing your book once published, mostly self-published these days–is near impossible so these kinds of scammers prey on authors who usually have huge egos and desperately want their words read.”

Here’s a second statement, also from Ripoffreport

“urged me to pay the registration fee of $650 to get my book in their catalog.  He claimed 200,000 people would attend the Book Fair in Frankfort Germany in October.  Those attending include librarians, owners of bookstores, teachers, students, parents.  I was reluctant to pay such a steep fee, so he quickly re-calculated and said $550 would be acceptable.  He claimed this Book Fair is the biggest display of books in the world, with people coming from every nation on earth.  He estimated 200,000 would attend, and perhaps 1% of them would buy my book. That would be 2,000 books sold then and there.  However, he only asked me to send him one book, so whoever wants to buy my book would need to contract me and buy directly from. The more we talked, the more skeptical I became.  He spoke with an accent…”

People across Goodreads have gotten the same phone call. Apparently cold calling must be their primary MO. https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/18715656-anyone-here-ever-contacted-by-readersmagnet

Really, the company uses temptation to try and part author’s with their hard earned cash, like this Reddit user noted.

“I looked them up while I was on the phone with them and a lot of people have listed them as a scam. I know no one is really interested in my books which is what tipped me off, but also was tempted to listen to more because hey, we all want to have our work read by people!”

Nobody is looking out for you except for you and those other Indies in your network who have become like your family. You certainly aren’t going to be cold-called by top-shelf talent recruiters as an unknown. You can even be a faith-based offer and believe that your book success is the high-and-perfect plan of God Almighty and a divine call on your life—still, this isn’t how God would operate. If you’re walking out the plan and following the steps properly the regular doors will open. Query an agent, don’t drop hundreds of dollars on a poorly executed scam.

#readersmagnetreview #readersmagnetscam #readersmagnet

What Do Those Stars Mean on Amazon?

[image error]

If you take anything away from my blogging about reviews, it should be to review books and leave them high marks. Granted, not every book is the best—and some truly deserve low reviews, but there’s a lot of room in between.

One of the primary problems with the Amazon 1-5 star rating/review system is that it’s highly subjective—but not just as a matter of opinions about writing and stories… but also about the review system itself. If you read a perfectly average book with no major problems, and you enjoyed the story line, but it’s not changing cracking your all-time top ten novel list, it should be a three star rating, right?

Wrong. It should be five stars.

People tend to set up their reviews based on a system of product comparison, but a 5 star review does not have to be the best book you ever read; neither does it have to be perfect (lots of books have the occasional error in the minutia). A 5-star book doesn’t even have to be better than the last book  you read. Three is not the middle, and in fact a three star review shows up as a “critical review” under the Amazon system… i.e. you thought the book was bad.

Here is what each of those star ratings mean:

5: you enjoyed this book in the way that it was meant (has the expected tropes, themes, etc.)

4: you generally liked the book but you have at least one major issue with the book and it detracted from your enjoyment (lots of repetition in the writing, a major plot hole, far too many typos, etc.)

3: a novel you neither liked nor disliked—you didn’t care if you finished it or not. You might read it if you were stuck on a desert island and this was all you had… then again, you might use it for TP instead.  Because some advertisers and listing services don’t allow 3-star books, consider leaving no review out of apathy and sympathy. This review hurts an author’s rating.

2: the novel is plagued by multiple, serious issues and you want to prevent others from suffering in an attempt to read this book. There are typos on practically each page (lack of editing,) serious inconsistencies, or a glaring lack of research. There was a plot, characters, and setting, but you didn’t really enjoy it.

1: a colossal failure. You hate this book so much that it keeps you up at night—there was no plot. Don’t leave a 1 star review unless you truly feel the author should never write again—this is not the appropriate review to leave if you bought a romance that you thought was a “Clean Christian romance” from the cover/title but it actually turned out to be an Amish bodice ripper.

Perhaps the best blog I’ve read on this topic (which I obviously borrowed some thoughts from) come from https://teylarachelbranton.com/reviews-what-those-stars-mean-to-authors/ (her list of Dos and Don’ts for reviewing is highly recommended).

Teyla Branton frames it in the context of a school report card: 5 stars is a B+ to A, 4 stars is a C+ to B, 3 stars is a C or C-, 2 stars is a D or D-, and 1 is an F.

On that report card theme, imagine you believe in a literal divine creation narrative from the Judeo Christian perspective (that God created the earth and everything on it in six days and that evolution doesn’t exist.) You’re also in high school and take a chapter test on Darwinian evolution. You can score 100% on the test despite having vastly different beliefs than those in a textbook. That’s kind of how this system is supposed to work: you can give 5 stars even if the book wasn’t your cup of tea. However, if the book was presented as a fantasy novel but turns out to be a literary novel about a man who thinks he is a wizard dealing with life in a mental institution, it would be a 4 star novel unless it clearly states it’s about a man with mental illness. “Does the book share the story it sets out to tell?”

Because Amazon runs with an average and because 3 star reviews actually translate as negative, this is how to interpret the 1-5 star rating system:

5 Stars: probably only has 1 review, otherwise excellent

4 1/2 Stars: excellent

4 Stars: okay

3 1/2 Stars: crap

3 Stars: crap

2 1/2 Stars: crap

2 Stars: crap

1 1/2 Stars: crap

1 Star: crap

Remember—this might be the most important thing for any given author! Handing out low reviews is perhaps the biggest kind of insult you can give any author. Remember that movie you saw in the theater—the one that you didn’t hate and kinda liked, but the details and plot were a little fuzzy in your memory by day two? It’s not much different than what Hollywood churns out on a daily basis to the tune of millions of dollars. Make an author feel like a million bucks today: leave a 5 star review… they probably deserve it more than you’ve ever even realized.

New Release Today: John in the John

[image error]Hey everyone!

I wanted to let you know that my humor book, John in the John, was published today via eLectio Publishing. Please go check it out and consider buying a copy! Below is a sample of the content and I want to urge you to consider sending me similar stories/devo pieces that you may have written for a second volume!

The next installment will be Gospels in the John and is an anthology style devo kind of like Chicken Soup for the Soul but with greater humor and depth! Check out my submissions website by clicking here!

 

Fairweather Fans

Meanwhile a large crowd of Jews found out that Jesus was there and came, not only because of him but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. The next day the great crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the king of Israel!” John 9, 12-13 NIV

I live in the frigid, purple tundra of Minnesota. We don’t get real excited about things very often; we are pretty solid examples of the “frozen chosen,” as my old pastor used to say when he thought people ought to act more excited about their faith. Especially up Germanic/Scandihoovian north (MN is actually the furthest north state in the continental 48, in case you didn’t know that,) we find it difficult to get super motivated—but when we do get excited, we’re all in.

In January 2016 our NFL team, the Vikings, played the third coldest game in NFL history with our playoff hopes on the line. In fact, it was so cold that the Gjallarhorn (a giant ram’s horn-like battle trumpet the size of a small bus) shattered in the frigid air. There I was, in the coldest seat in the house: top row of the outdoor stadium, in the shade of the announcer booth, and facing directly into the wind. A guy a few seats away went the entire game shirtless while my beard frosted white and froze solid (and my children abandoned their seats for the shelter of the stairwell).

We all get excited about things we value and we are willing to pay a price for those things. I’m not just talking about paying the price of tickets. We want to be involved and help our team; there’s something called “the twelfth man on the field.” Crowds participate in the game; their enthusiastic screams can change the dynamic of the game and even cause confusion and errors by the opposing team. Real fans are willing to sacrifice their comfort and stand for hours in the sub-zero air in order to be a part of that experience.

There’s another sports term called “fair-weather fans.” These are the people who say they are fans, but usually only when things go well and it’s easy and exciting to watch from comfortable seats. They wear a team jersey if the team’s been winning: their support is subjective to feelings (like if the team is on a winning streak.) A perfect example is the crowd who cheered for Jesus’s triumphal entry and disappeared once he was arrested and Barabbas was freed instead of Jesus. Their excitement was fickle.

The Vikings lost that game when Blair Walsh missed a short kick that he should have made under any normal circumstances. There I was: coldest seat in the house… wearing a #3 Blair Walsh jersey. It’s a good thing my love of my home-team isn’t based on whether or not we’re winning.

Today’s a good day to check your heart. Are you really excited about your faith, or are you a fair-weather fan for team Jesus? Do more than just wear the jersey; today is your chance to get in the game.

[image error]

State of Writing

[image error]

I’m coming off a con and into a holiday weekend, so I’m hoping I can use that energy to do two chapters in my edits for TKR3 this coming week. I’m also dithering about with some Smashwords stuff (keep giving my comic errors and delaying release cuz they don’t like my bleed margins–they do comics, but they aren’t really optimally set up for them.)

I’ve also got revisions going on for my Indie Author Bible by the end of the week when my proof copy arrives–and in between those two spots John in the John releases–that’s actually tommorrow!

Getting and Using Author Central

[image error]

Amazon.com is big. Reeeeaallly big—and they account for more than 60% of all other sales combined, for most Indie authors. That said, they want you to succeed (albeit, just so they can make a profit off of you, but that’s how business works.) Amazon wants you to do well (so long as they get their cut—which is why they have virtually zero interest in making your Createspace store a convenient place to shop for customers who will simply order via the regular Amazon system instead, but more on that in a different article.) Amazon has equipped authors with this nifty little tool called Author Central. You can log in or sign up for it here: http://www.authorcentral.com/

If you’ve read my Indie Roadmap, you will see that the list has a special entry for getting into Author Central. You can use this in lieu of a personal website, but it should probably have the same kind of content if you have both.

Author Central allows you to connect with readers because this profile will be crossloaded into all of your books’ sales pages. It’s a good place to put a succinct, strong bio, some catchy images, and even video. Perhaps one good feature that is often overlooked is the Events option where you can list upcoming appearances such as conventions, fairs, festivals, and signings. Another feature, if you have a regular blog, is something called RSS feeds. I specifically chose hosting with WordPress because of the RSS feature. I’m no tech guru, and you may need to turn over a few more stones to properly utilize this option, but it takes the content from my blog and reposts it on my Author Central profile so that it is automatically mirrored with new content every time I post (several times per week)… I do this for my Goodreads account as well. You can also link your social media accounts to your Author Central so make sure to do that—it is always a good idea to be connected to your readers—moreso now than ever before readers want more than a good story: they want relationships with good storytellers!

According to Amazon, getting an account is this easy:

https://authorcentral.amazon.com/ and click Join Now.
Enter your e-mail address and password and click Sign in using our secure server.

If you have an Amazon.com account, sign in with the e-mail address and password you use on that account.
If you do not have an existing Amazon.com account, select No, I am a new customer. You will be prompted to enter the necessary information.


Read the Author Central’s Terms and Conditions, and then click Agree to accept them.
Enter the name your books are written under. A list of possible book matches appears.
Select any one of your books. If your book is not in the list, you can search for it by title or ISBN. The book you select must be available for purchase on the Amazon.com website…
When you receive the confirmation e-mail we send, confirm your e-mail address and identity.

That really is about the gist of it. It’s streamlined and easy to use, and is a convenient way to put your greater work in front of shoppers who might want to learn more about an author or check out his or her backlist.

Once you are able to fill out the biography (after step 6) you should remember a few things: write in the third person; use your writing style to show readers your personality; use the bio to establish your credibility; keep it clean, appealing, and readable—you only have a couple paragraphs to “sell yourself,” so be neither boring, nor too short. Also of note is that you can’t use any html or even bold or italic fonts in this bio—words only… but you’re a writer, right? So write.

Something I recently learned was that authors should be sure to sign up for Author Central accounts in both the US market and the UK market. They don’t necessarily mirror each other, but a little copy and pasting can fix that. You can find the UK version at https://authorcentral.amazon.co.uk

Review: Trust in Axion

I wasn’t sure what to find in between the covers of Trust in Axion, by Bruce Meyer. I desperately want to design a new cover for him because the subpar MS Paint cover does not match the tight and focused writing that leaps off the first page and I found the opening sentence to be a good hook.

The story is a mad dash to try and fix the initial science problem gone awry. The cast is interesting and personalities read as distinct and unique, each working his or her own angles.

I don’t know how much of the science is accurate, but much of it felt very high-tech and much of it was entirely else (scenery ranged somewhere in between Walter’s lab on fringe and starfleet’s Academy with vivid scenery.) It’s not an overly long read and so it’s a perfect read for an afternoon.

I picked up a copy for free. You can get yours on Amazon

State of Writing

I’m back in the swing of things this week for work. I kept on good pace with my edits as I wrote last week. The Indie Author’s Bible should be done with revisions at the end of the week and then onto final edits by reviewers in the coming future.

The part that excites me most about it (besides the fact that I will get back into the revisions for the Kakos Realm 3 that have been on hold for two weeks) is that I have a few upcoming speaking engagements on the topic of writing. The first one is at a series of panels I’ll be talking at during LionCon. If you’re in the MN area, come out to the even in St. Cloud MN. It’s a relatively new comicon that could use your support and attendance!

Author Interview: J.M. Lee

[image error]Me horsing around with Joey Lee at comic con.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a Random Friday, so I wanted to make sure I got to something fun this summer… and if you read my review of the first Dark Crystal prequel, Shadows of the Dark Crystal then you know the funny story of how I became acquainted with J.M. Lee. We both attended the #MNFanFest event last weekend and got a chance to catch up after his book signing hosted by The Source Comics (one of my fav gaming and comics stores in the metro area) where I was able to get an autographed copy of the newly released second book in the trilogy, Song of the Dark Crystal.

What drew you to the fantasy genre, and specifically to the Dark Crystal story?

I can’t specifically say what drew me to fantasy, since it’s been an attraction that started before I can really remember. I’ve been reading fantasy since I could read, though I suppose before that I was watching fantastical cartoons. I loved everything from the Land Before Time to Fantasia to the Addams Family. Growing up in the 80s and 90s, I also was a prime age to absorb all the classic fantasy films that came out around then — including The Dark Crystal. For me, The Dark Crystal was extra special because there were no human characters; something about the complete alienness of the world really drew me in.

Tell me a little about how you landed the Dark Crystal gig?

In 2013, the Jim Henson Company and Grosset & Dunlap launched the Author Quest, a contest to hire an author to write the official Dark Crystal prequel novel. The team worked so well and the Henson group seemed pleased with how the first novel went, so before the first was even approved, we were already making plans to make it into a series.

As an 80s child with a love of all that nostalgia I often visit sites devoted to certain shows (especially Masters of the Universe and Thundercats—both of which got a post-2000 cartoon remake) Where did you go to get source material for the worldbuilding you did in Shadows of the Dark Crystal? Did you get any special access to resources not made public?

When I was writing the first book, my primary source was darkcrystal.com – which had been prepared for Author Quest. I also read the extended universe publications, including Brian Froud’s World of the Dark Crystal and the Archaia graphic novels. Once I had signed on to complete the novel, I was also given access to some really cool archive stuff – Brian Froud sketches and concept artwork. Cheryl Henson also arranged for me and my wife to visit the Frouds in England in 2014, which was after the first novel came out. But it was still an unparalleled look into the landscape that inspired Thra and the world we see in the film. Even more than the geographical experience, having a chance to meet with and talk to Brian and Wendy was a childhood dream come true.

How important will the storyline of Shadows of the Dark Crystal and Song of the Dark Crystal be to the upcoming Netflix series and where do your stories fall in the timeline?

The books and Age of Resistance, as well as the rest of the extended universe publications, all exist in a fluid and well-developed timeline. Everyone from the Netflix show team to Archaia and at Penguin have been fully committed to keeping everything sensical. As for the actual timeline, both the books and the Netflix series take place in the years leading up to the film. More details about this will unfold!

I’m assuming that your hero, Naia from the Swamp of Sog, is drawn on a few life experiences—being a fellow Minnesotan, I’m going to also assume that Sog, the swamplands, are based on my hometown of Verndale Minnesota. You can’t really change my mind about that, but feel free to tell me about your characters and world… Is there anything else you’d like to say, especially to young writers?

Ha! Everyone from Sog is also obsessed with going out on the lake and up to the cabin, in case that part didn’t make it into the final draft…!

In a nutshell, Shadows of the Dark Crystal tells the story of a self-sufficient girl from far away learning that she is part of something much bigger and that both she and the world are in the middle of a great change. The second book, Song of the Dark Crystal, expands on that sentiment — in particular, in finding a place when you’re not what someone might think of as a typical rough-and-tough hero. I mean, we’re looking at likely and unlikely heroes, but I would prefer to think of it as telling the story of people realizing that change is inevitable, but we have a choice in deciding who we change into and how that impacts the world around us.

Also, a fizzgig fart joke. So there’s that.

It’s been lots of fun and hopefully I’ll get to do some more stuff with J.M. Lee in the future! Here’s a little bit about him:

Born and raised in the great Minnesota north, Joe spent his formative years searching for talking animals and believing he could control the weather. After pursuing nerdy interests in comparative film studies, screenwriting, and Shakespeare, he graduated from the University of Minnesota with a much nerdier degree in linguistics with a focus in Japanese phonology.

In addition to writing novels, Joe is an English tutor and writing mentor for teens and young adults of all levels and abilities. He enjoys teaching his dog new vocabulary words and updating his snooty coffee blog. He lives with his wife in Minneapolis.

You can find him at his website, here!

How To Start Writing

[image error]

A lady stood at my convention table and said, “I’ve always wanted to write a book. Let me ask you, how do you even start?”

I confess, I didn’t know how to answer her right away. I probably said something nice to encourage her, but likely bumbled my way through it. Once something comes naturally to you, you tend to forget all of the little steps that brought you there. Can you remember what it was like before you knew how to read, or ride a bicycle, or transfer public transportation lines? It can be intimidating and scary the first few times and then you forget what even that was like.

Busses scare me. I see little kids in the city hop from bus to bus. It takes me twenty minutes of reading brochures to hesitantly hop onto my connecting stop—not because I am unable, but because I have no idea what I’m doing. I grew up in the country where everyone had a car—public transit wasn’t even a thought for us. I didn’t know where to begin. Writing is like that for some people, and everyone’s process is somewhat different. Some people are meticulous outliners, some people use notecards (yes, like in high school), and some people are “pantsers” (people who sit and right by the “seat of their pants.”)

Since there is no hard and fast rule, what I can tell you is how I used to write and how I write now.

I used to be a pantser. As I got better at writing—and thus more meticulous in my editing, I became an outliner. It happened organically. My old process was that I would write my thoughts, collecting each general chapter’s worth of thoughts in a page(s) in a notebook: what the major events of the plot were and things that needed to happen and then I’d jot subplot info in the margins. After the story was complete I would actually go back and write an outline off of that—mainly for editing purpose as I would sometimes check for continuity errors or just need to know where to go in order to make a change. Now, that’s how I write. I do the same thing, only digitally instead of on paper. I also keep pages and pages of other thoughts, character notes, etc. I usually consult it several times per edit and high light things that I’ve missed or need to pay attention to during the next draft.

Because I start with an outline (that I update as I write) editing has become easier for me. But that still doesn’t say how I start. I just do.

When I look at my outline, I don’t see tiny parts, I see the story as a whole—it’s good to mentally revisit what you want to accomplish with the story regularly. Then I zero in on what I want to write today. I look at that part on my outline and then I sit down to write it (it helps to have a regular space, make sure your calendar isn’t crammed with other stuff, turn off social media, have something to drink nearby, and allow yourself to engage in the story. Once you are in the swing of things, you may find you want to use all your scraps of free time to write, like me. I hate to put things down once I’ve begun on them and I began saving things in the cloud so I could take a story with to work on it in the five or ten minutes before a meeting. Even if I only write two sentences, it’s progress. Just be sure to set aside some of that time to dedicate to writing.

It may come slow at first. It might read like trash—that’s okay. Just get it on paper. Sometimes you just need to start in order to prime the pump and get something more inspired to flow. I would also recommend that you set goals and find a way to make yourself accountable to them—the quantity of your writing will increase and you’ll be happier for it!

Ernest Hemingway said “Write drunk, edit sober.” I’m telling you to get hammered, but what he’s saying is that the first draft can be a mess. Everything works out in the editing… in fact, editing isn’t complete until it’s polished. Another piece of advice I’ve often heard said is to “write for you—edit for your reader.” Find what works for you—find your inspiration and method because at the end of the day, you are writing for you.