Beth Greenslade's Blog, page 57

Publishing Insights To Help You Sell Your Book

If you want to sell your book, finding out as much as possible about the publishing industry is a no brainer. The more you know about the complexities and intricacies of the publishing world, the better you can tailor yourself and your book to fulfill certain expectations.

While you can’t tailor your novel entirely to suit the trends of the publishing world, keeping abreast of them, and in the know about this industry, in general, can influence the way you write, and help you feel more confident that you are indeed creating something that people want to read.

So just what are some helpful publishing insights that can help you sell your book?

Romance and Crime thrillers are still topping the charts

Crime thrillers and romance novels are still the most popular genres to write in. If you have an idea for a book that perhaps is a cross-genre novel, you could consider how to tailor it so it fits into either of these categories. If you want to sell you need to compete with big names, but it seems that people’s taste remains the same and they are looking for fast-paced crime fiction that gets the blood pumping and heart racing, or a romance novel that does the same - though perhaps for entirely different reasons!

If you write fantasy, stick to the rules

Fantasy novels are still popular reads, though they are often the most complicated to write. Most epic fantasy adventures tend to stick loosely to the same tried and tested formulas, and if you want to be successful in this area, it’s important to study the genre, and learn the rules so you can match reader expectations.

Writing a children's book can be an incredibly lucrative option

Children’s books are massive sellers, and if you can write the next big thing you could be laughing all the way to the bank. The reason why children’s authors do so well is that they could potentially make lots of money from merchandising options too. So if you’ve got an idea for a unique kids book, get it on paper pronto!

Food and science books are poplar non-fiction sellers

Have you ever thought about putting your hobbies and interests down on paper? If you’ve got a good knowledge of a topic you might want to consider writing a non-fiction book. Books to do with food and science sell well, so put that lifetime's interest in astronomy to good use and write a book about what you know.

To be bestseller you need to shift around 140,000 copies

Becoming a bestselling writer sure isn’t easy. To do so you have to sell a lot of books. Still, it’s good to know what it takes, and if that’s your goal, now is the time to make an awesome sales plan to get shifting those books!

These are just some of the insights that could help influence what you write and how you write it. by staying informed you can tailor and tweak your stories to help fit in with the reader’s desires. So make sure you stay in the know and look forward to selling more books in the new year!

Bethany Cadman - bethanycadman.co.uk

The post Publishing Insights To Help You Sell Your Book appeared first on Writer's Life.org.

7 Things That Will Ruin Your Novel

Want to know what not to do when writing a novel? These seven things are those that all writers should be aware of to ensure that they don't ruin their book before they've even really begun!

Force your writing

If you aren't feeling inspired, or don't have an idea for your story that fills you with excitement and joy, don't force it.

While it's important to keep trying to find inspiration and keep writing to practice and ensure you don't lose motivation, you shouldn't start your novel until you are confident that you have an idea that has legs, and that it's a story you are excited to write. If you don't have that flutter in your stomach, and that passion that will fuel your commitment to get to the end, don't even bother to start. 

Let your inner critic get a word in

It's all too easy to worry about how badly your novel is going to turn out, and spend your time looking over your shoulder thinking that someone is going to to tell you that it's no good and you'd be better spending your time on other things. Letting your inner critic take over will gobble up your motivation, slow you down, and probably ruin the whole experience for you too. 

Think you don't need to learn

Writing is a craft, and you need to be willing to learn the practice of writing and be prepared to dedicate yourself to improving. If you think you can write, without studying, without learning, without being willing to take advice and criticism, you'll never be as good a writer as you could be, and you'll never see the results you want to see. 

Have a chip on your shoulder

No writer automatically deserves to be successful. Just as you shouldn't let your inner critic eat away at you, you also need to keep check of your arrogance too. When you inevitably have your manuscript rejected, it's important to understand and accept this is part of every writer's journey. If you feel too angry and hurt to try again, you are just cutting off your nose to spite your face. 

Write just to sell

While it's good advice to learn about your reader and what they want as well as general trends in the writing industry, if you get too bogged down or overwhelmed by this, it could be to your detriment. You need to tell your story in your unique way. If you are too formulaic or write only for the market, you will end up producing a mediocre book or something that feels like it had been done a million times before. 

Think you can get away with taking shortcuts

The writing process is long and arduous. You can't take shortcuts at any stage - no one can. You might think you can not bother editing, design your own cover, and publish without a marketing plan in place, but if you do these things, it's almost certain your book will fail. It can be frustrating, but it is only by giving your all at every stage of the process that you will provide your book with the best chance of success.

Give up

If at first, you don't succeed, try, and try again! Quitters will ruin their writing careers and will never know what might have been. The most successful writers all have one massive glaringly obvious thing in common - they didn't give up, and so neither should you!

Bethany Cadman - bethanycadman.co.uk

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How To Hit Your Target Word Count

Most writers will agree that setting target word counts can be a helpful way to ensure that they make progress. For both freelance writers, fiction writers, and content writers, setting word counts (be that daily, weekly, or even monthly) will ensure that you move forward, that you are taking on the right amount of work, and that you have a good work/life balance.

By setting a word count, you can ensure that you are making the best use of your time, and you will have a clear, simple goal that will keep you motivated to work hard to ensure you reach it. You can also use word count setting to help better manage your time, so you know that if you write x amount of words a day, for example, that you’ll be finished your novel by the end of the year.

However, hitting your word count can sometimes be tricky, and if you continue to fail at reaching your target words, your bigger goals can move further and further out of reach. This can have a severe effect on your confidence and motivation and, in the worst-case scenario, mean that you end up missing deadlines or never finishing the novel that you were so passionate about, to begin with.

So what are some helpful tips to ensure that you stay on track and keep hitting those word count targets? 

Don’t involve too many other people

Bouncing your ideas off others can be useful, but do it too much, and it could start to become a case of ‘too many cooks spoil the broth.’ Trust in yourself and your intuition and don’t let other people’s opinions sidetrack you too much otherwise, they might weaken your idea and leave you feeling confused, which will make it challenging to start, let alone hit your word count goal.

Keep initial research to a minimum

While it’s good to research articles and seek out relevant information to help make your story more believable, you can do too much research initially and find that a lot of it goes to waste. You might also find that you feel you have to include your discoveries in your writing, which could make it difficult to follow through with your original idea, or make your writing too complex. Figuring out how to overcome these obstacles takes up time and energy that could be better spent just writing!

Be realistic about your goals

If you keep failing at reaching your word count goals, perhaps you need to reassess whether you are stretching yourself too thin. Of course, you need good self-discipline and should be up for challenging and pushing yourself. Still, if your goals are unrealistic, perhaps you need to sit down and work out how much time you can dedicate to your writing as well as how fast you can write, and adjust your targets accordingly. 

Get organized before you start

The better organized you are at the beginning, the easier it will be to hit your word count. In novel writing, this is achieved through careful plotting and outlining before you start to write. In article or blog writing, it’s by crafting outlines, working through your main points, and dividing the piece into sections to help make it easier and ensure you don’t get stuck or run out of ideas when you are only halfway.

Write first, edit later

If you get too bogged down in the editing process, it can be challenging to stick to your writing goals. Instead, make sure you hit your word count first, and then carve out some time afterward to edit. You’ll feel like you are making much better progress than if you try to perfect your writing as you go.

By using the above as a guide, you can become better a hitting your word count goals and will see yourself making much better and more satisfying progress too!

Bethany Cadman - bethanycadman.co.uk

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Why You’re Failing At Freelance Writing

When you first decide to embark on a freelance writing career, it can be an exciting time. You may start full of motivation and determination to succeed, but without a proper plan in place, you may quickly discover that it's harder than it looks. You might think you are doing all the right things and making all the right moves, but you still don't seem to be getting anywhere. If that sounds like you, perhaps you aren't as honest with yourself as you should be. 

Here are some reasons why you might be failing at freelance writing:

You lack self-discipline

If you want to become a successful freelance writer, you must have serious self-discipline. The good news is that this is something that you can learn. If you are the kind of writer that finds it tough to concentrate, that finds that the goals and deadlines that seemed to important fly by and become rather arbitrary and that never quite achieves as much as they'd hoped then you might need to start practicing self-discipline before you take on any new work. If you don't have self-discipline, you won't have the motivation to seek out new tasks, you won't hit your deadlines, and you won't make any money. This can then become a vicious cycle leaving you lacking in motivation to continue.

Freelance writers need to rely on their motivation, and their self-discipline to get things done. You need to send out queries, pitch ideas, apply for jobs, and, well, actually write. You need to be organized and good at scheduling and making sure that you have the time to write, and when you do so, you do so productively to ensure you are making the most of your time and making the most money possible too.

You can't take criticism

Freelance writers have to have thick skins. If you can't take feedback or criticism, you'll find it tough to make a good living. Being professional and putting your clients first, and making sure that they are delighted is how you'll build up an excellent reputation and be able to start picking and choosing the work you do. That same is true if you are too much of a sensitive soul. If you don't have self-confidence or are too self-deprecating, it will be hard to find success in this role. Freelance writers need to be confident that they can write well, and not be afraid to say so if you don't believe in your writing ability, it will be hard to convince others to hire you. 

You don't pitch well

If you want to land good jobs, you need to learn how to pitch your ideas to the publications you want to work with and do so in a way that captures their attention. Don't cut corners. Learn about the industry, the different publications that interest you, and read the kinds of articles they include. This way, you'll be able to come up with a relevant idea and write it in the style that fits their tone. This will make your pitch seem much more appealing, and you're more likely to not only receive the go-ahead but negotiate a better fee too. 

Freelance writing isn't easy, and if you are finding your motivation waning and you are not doing as well as you can, perhaps the above might apply to you. The good news is, you can take steps to change, and become the successful, productive, and prolific freelance writer you've always wanted to be. 

Bethany Cadman - bethanycadman.co.uk

The post Why You’re Failing At Freelance Writing appeared first on Writer's Life.org.

How To Create The Right Atmosphere In Your Story

Setting the right atmosphere for each of the different scenes in your story is crucial if you hope to engage your readers in the right way. However, it’s not always that easy. You might wish to evoke a certain mood, but it’s through a combination of several different parts of crafting the story that this will happen most effectively. A writer must pay attention to the setting, the pacing, the language, and the dialogue and use all of these elements to create the right mood. 

If you are writing a novel, you are likely to want to create several different moods throughout the story, which will change as the plot unfolds. Even if your book, by definition, is a tense thriller, or even a horror story, without lighter, easier passages, it will be challenging to increase tension and unease effectively. The relentlessness of a single atmosphere throughout with no relief could be hard going for any reader.

So what are the things you can do to strengthen the atmospheric quality of your stories?

Work on your setting

Your setting is a fantastic place to start when it comes to evoking a particular mood. You can use the weather, the colors, the objects a character observes, how crowded or isolated the place is, the noises, the smells, and so on to create a particular mood. The location could be bleak and lonely, or bright and full of laughter, or crowded and intense, and so on. The setting and the way your character reacts to their surrounds will create a particular mood. 

Pay attention to your language

You can include specific words to help build a particular atmosphere. Your word choice can be beneficial; for example, a character ambling creates a different sense of atmosphere to one who is tiptoeing. You could create a list of words that help to give off a particular mood. If you are trying to create a sense that a house is creepy, words such as creaking, thumping, moaning, cackling, whistling, humming, and so on are good choices. Work out the mood that you are hoping to convey and then make a list before you start to write those passages to help you.

Use dialogue and character reaction cleverly

Exchanges between characters and the way they react to what’s being said, as well as the situation they find themselves in is another great way to strengthen the atmosphere in a story. Conversations between characters can be fraught with tension, can be angry, full of hurt, love, laughter, and so on. Use your dialogue carefully to help convey to the reader the atmosphere in any particular scene. The way that characters act and react around one another and in their surrounds can also help to demonstrate a specific mood. In a bustling party, one character may feel energetic and excited; another may feel anxious and claustrophobic, and how you choose to describe their reaction will help build a particular mood and build anticipation for what might happen next.

Check your pacing

Pacing is crucial when it comes to the atmosphere. If a scene is particularly tense or suspenseful, action tends to unfold more quickly, and the use of shorter sentences will support this. Try to consider how complex your sentence construction could be when trying to give a particular sense of something - this can affect your pacing too.

If you are trying to get the mood right in your novel, the above tips can help ensure that you do so successfully. Do you have any suggestions or techniques for setting the right atmosphere in your stories? Share them with us here!

Bethany Cadman - bethanycadman.co.uk

The post How To Create The Right Atmosphere In Your Story appeared first on Writer's Life.org.

How To Become A Full-Time Writer

Making the transition from someone who dabbles in writing to becoming a full-time writer can be a challenging one! It can feel a little daunting to finally pack in whatever else it is you have been doing and focusing on your writing once and for all. Putting all your eggs in one basket, particularly into a career that has no guarantees, can feel a little daunting. However, luckily, there are lots of ways to can prepare to do so to make sure that it goes as smoothly as possible. 

So what are the steps that you need to take to become a writer full time? 

Carefully build a network of allies, friends, and associates.

Spend some time building up a robust network of people who you can rely on for support, for advice, for certain services that you’ll need to employ. It’s also worth investing time building relationships with people in the industry who might be good prospects for doing business with or getting you work in the future. However, these relationships cannot be forced, so take your time to genuinely, authentically nurture them and you are sure to get a payoff further down the line. 

Practice good time management

All full-time writers will have many demands, deadlines, and other essential tasks to meet throughout the day. Making sure that you have effective organizational systems in place is key to success. You need to be confident that you have the discipline to set up and meet your goals as well as the ability to solve problems and overcome obstacles. By practicing this as much as possible before you take the plunge to go full time, you can feel confident in your ability to make things work, even when the chips are down. 

Gather the right tools together

Having the right tools to get you started is also advisable. Find a good piece of editing software, make sure your computer system is up to date, learn as much as you can about design, and writing different types of copy and creative content too. 

Don’t just rely on one income stream

While you might hope to make lots of money selling your books, for most writers, even if they do manage to sell their work consistently, this isn’t the only way they make their money. Think about putting many different fingers into many different pies to ensure that you can make a decent living and can feel assured that if one income stream dries up, it won’t be the end of the world.

Set up a schedule and be prepared to give it your all

Finally, it’s essential to ensure that you have a good working schedule set up, one that you are sure you can stick to. Think about all the practical stuff like how much you aim to earn, how many hours you plan to work, whether you’ll give yourself holiday and so on - the more you treat yourself and your writing like a business, the more successful and driven you’ll be.

By following the above steps, you can hope to transition to being a full-time writer smoothly and efficiently. Of course, it will take a lot of hard work, and being ready to face any challenges and obstacles is also wise, as no writer’s journey is ever an entirely smooth one. However, by being organized and taking the time to prepare appropriately, you can hope to make it as straightforward as possible and will soon start to flourish and find success as a full-time writer in no time at all! 

Bethany Cadman - bethanycadman.co.uk

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Top Tips For Budding Travel Writers

If you are a freelance writer, finding topics to specialize in can set you apart from the crowd. Becoming a travel writer has serious appeal for many for pretty obvious reasons. Because of that, however, it is a hard job to break into.

So what are the steps you can take to land the job of your dreams and earn your living while traveling to exotic and far-flung destinations? Here are some useful tips to get you started:

Start a travel blog

Find out if you do have a passion for travel writing by starting your own travel blog. It might become successful in its own right, but even if it doesn’t, it is a great way to discover whether you really enjoy this kind of writing and get some practice in too.

Word hard to build up your online presence

If you can start to network now and build up a following online, you’ll thank yourself later. Your followers are ready-made fans to like, comment on, and share all your travel pieces, and if an editor can see you already have a following, they’ll be more likely to commission your work. 

Travel to exciting places (they don’t have to be too far from home)

If you want to be a travel writer, you need to travel! While your hope would naturally be to have someone pay for you to go and explore new places, at first, you might need to take on the organization and expense yourself. You don’t have to go to exotic locations to become a travel writer, so don’t worry about having to have a massive budget. Just research places that are near you that sound interesting, plan a trip, and get writing!

Keep your eyes open for interesting stories

There are interesting and unusual stories all around us, both in our hometowns and the furthest corners of the world. Wherever you go, do you research and keep your eyes and ears open, be flexible and open-minded and try new things and you could end up having an adventure that’s well worth writing about.

Learn how to write well

If you want to be any kind of writer, you must learn how to write well. This takes time and practice, so prepare yourself to take on the challenge of learning this new skill, and the more you do it, the better you’ll become. 

Be patient and persevere!

It’s not easy to become a successful travel writer, but it is possible if you are willing to put your energy into doing so. Just keep persevering, and you’ll get there.

By following the above tips, you can give yourself the best chance of success as a travel writer! Good luck!

Bethany Cadman - bethanycadman.co.uk

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Current Book Cover Design Trends For Inspiration

As writers, we all know how important it is to have a great book cover. As much as we’d like to believe the old saying ‘don’t judge a book by its cover,’ unfortunately, most people do. That’s why, when it comes to finding the perfect cover design for your story, it’s essential to know what’s trending and likely to catch a person’s eye. 

So what are some of the most on-trend and fashionable designs this year? Let’s take a look at some of them:

Typography that stands out

When it comes to choosing your typography, you need to find something that is bold, impactful, and allows readers to understand quickly and easily what kind of book yours is. You can say a lot with the type of lettering that you choose, and in 2019 there is a significant shift towards selecting the boldest typography possible as doing so immediately creates drama and demands attention. 

Minimalism

Another great way to ensure that your book cover looks fresh, exciting, and contemporary is to go for a completely minimalist look. Doing so really makes a statement and insists that the readers pick up the book to find out more about what’s inside. The minimalist book cover design is a bold choice, but one that can work well for brave authors. By reducing fuss and complication, you block out noise, and the reader can focus on the title and a simple singular image (or even no image at all). When so many book covers are so cluttered, this really can make a difference. 

Arty, hand-drawn styles

Another book cover style that’s becoming increasingly popular is the inclusion of lots of handwritten and hand-drawn elements giving the cover an arty, creative vibe. Lots of books use photographic images on their covers. However, the artistic look is taking over and is an excellent way of making your book stand out from the crowd. 

A retro vibe

Want to demonstrate that you are in the know with the latest book cover trends? Well, then you might need to look to the past for inspiration. Giving your book cover a retro feel could be just what’s needed to make yours be the one that reader’s notice. Vintage designs are making a comeback, and those book covers that embrace more muted tones, and simpler designs are ones that are making a massive impact.

Remember, you can always relaunch your book with a new cover if sales aren’t high, so don’t think that it’s too late if you aren’t happy with your design. So if you want to get on board with some of the most impactful and current designs this year, use the above list as a handy guide to ensure that your book cover is one that reader’s notice!

Bethany Cadman - bethanycadman.co.uk

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How To Write A Brilliant Book Blurb

Your book blurb is an incredibly important piece of marketing that you need to perfect if you want to ensure that you are attracting the right readers and showcasing your work in its very best light.

It’s a short piece of writing that acts as a sales pitch, telling potential readers why they should buy your book. You only have one shot to introduce what your story is about, and so you’ve got to make sure you’ve captured the essence of the story while simultaneously making it as exciting as possible to persuade them to find out more. 

The truth is, however, that many writers don’t spend nearly as much time and effort as they should carefully crafting their book blurb, and this can be an essential reason why they don’t see as many sales as they’d like. 

So what can you do to ensure that yours is as good as it can be? Here are some helpful tips:

Do your research

Amazon is a great place to start your research. Look at the most popular books in your genre and read what other writers have done. What do they include and, perhaps more importantly, exclude to get noticed? Analyze the way they’ve structured their blurb, the critical details, and the enticing language they’ve used. You can also go to your local library and do the same. 

Break it down

Break the blurb down into sections so you can start to see patterns emerging. If you do, you’ll probably notice that there is something of a formula for writing a book blurb. The first section is an introduction to the protagonist and where they are currently at in their life, the next explains the big event that changes the course of events and takes them out of their ordinary world. After that, there is usually a comment that sums up why the reader should read it. 

Look at this example of Paula Hawkins’ best selling novel, The Girl on The Train to see how this would work:

“ Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes, and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple breakfasting on their deck. She’s even started to feel like she knows them. “Jess and Jason,” she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.

 And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough. Now everything’s changed. Unable to keep it to herself, Rachel offers what she knows to the police, and becomes inextricably entwined in what happens next, as well as in the lives of everyone involved. (c) Has she done more harm than good?

Compulsively readable, The Girl on the Train is an emotionally immersive, Hitchcockian thriller and an electrifying debut.”

By the end, your readers should know who your main character is, want to know more about them, be drawn in by revealing just enough of a cliffhanger to make them desperate to find out what happens and feel encouraged and persuaded through the language you’ve chosen.

Keep it short and sweet

Try not to make your blurb more than 150-200 words. This is where the real challenge comes in. Use short sentences and make every word count. If you can get your blurb down to nearer 100 words, you are more likely to make the most significant impact as your reader will be able to read the entire thing without having to click on the ‘read more’ link in Amazon.

Write different versions and ask for advice

Don’t just write one version of your book blurb, write many, ask for outside opinions, test them out with potential readers, and keep tweaking until you feel fully confident. The more versions you write, and the more you test them out, the better the final piece will be.

By bearing the above in mind, doing your research and taking your time, you can hope to craft a smart, compelling book blurb that will attract readers and boost your sales - good luck!

Bethany Cadman - bethanycadman.co.uk

The post How To Write A Brilliant Book Blurb appeared first on Writer's Life.org.

How To Get Inside Your Characters Heads

To write compelling, three-dimensional characters, you need to know them, to get inside their heads and understand precisely the way they would think, act, and react, in order to make them consistent, engaging and exciting to your readers.

So what are the ways to can hope to achieve this? Let's take a look.

Use your own emotions

Whatever your characters are going through, you need to use your own experiences and emotions to be able to write with authenticity and better engage your readers because of it. The emotional situations you put your characters in may not be exactly like your own. Still, by thinking of similar experiences or times where you felt the emotion you are trying to convey, you'll be able to understand better how your characters are feeling.

Understand their place in the world

Your characters will have both a physical and a social place in the world, and you should strive to understand them both better. If your character lives in isolation in the woods, for example, you should set up camp for a few days doing the same. If your character experiences bullying or racism, you need to put yourself in their shoes in these instances too.

Go shopping on their behalf

Take yourself on a day out as your character, think about where they would go, how they would get there, and what they would do. Going shopping on your character's behalf can work particularly well as you can not only think about what they would buy and why but how they would interact with other people they come into contact with along the way.

Take up their hobbies

If your character has particular interests or hobbies, you need to take them up yourself to get a sincere feel for what they are like. So it's time to branch out and try new things to understand life from your character's point of view. 

Research their background

Wherever they've come from, whatever they do for a living, whatever their backstory is, research is critical. You can't have a character that's a world-class surgeon unless you can understand what life as a world-class surgeon would be like. Proper research is invaluable for this. It should be undertaken extensively and with great attention to detail as it's the detail that will make your characters seem so much more believable, and what will make your readers engage with them as your story unfolds.

Sometimes the best way to get inside your character's head is to experience life the way they do. So the next time you are having trouble understanding your characters, give these tips a try to get to know them better and be able to write them more naturally and easily!

Bethany Cadman - bethanycadman.co.uk

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