Eldon Farrell's Blog: The Writer's Craft, page 3

It's getting to be that time...

As I write this, I have give or take one week until my next two books go live for purchase on Amazon. Both Taken and Realm of Shadows are targeted for a September 1 release but will they hit the ground running or just hit the ground?

As any author will tell you the difference between the former and the latter is marketing. Visibility is key. But what strategies work? Wouldn't we all like to know the answer to that!

Personally my strategy has been...grassroots I suppose you could call it. My goal has never been to top best seller lists or make a living from writing; in that respect I might be different from my fellow authors. I'm not all over social media and I haven't purchased advertising leading up to the release. So what have I done?

I'm currently running giveaways for both books here on Goodreads in America and my home country of Canada. As these are a continuation of the story begun in Stillness, I have entered Stillness into a few review pools. The idea being to hook the reader and make them want to read what comes next.

I've also been given the honour of having Stillness be the Book of the Month in the Good Thriller group here come November. Another chance to win over readers when Stillness goes free for the end of October.

In a lot of ways, my strategy relies on readers. My hope is that when someone reads any of my books that they will enjoy them enough to rate them, review them, and hopefully recommend them to their friends. It's not an in-your-face approach and it certainly is not quick. But over the long haul I think it works better for me.

Consumers today are so bombarded with information that often times they just don't know what to do with it all. Rather than throw myself into that cacophony of noise, I'm going to take the road less travelled. I'm going to let the words I've written speak for me. I'm going to let the stories market themselves.

For those who read my books, my sincere hope is that you enjoy them; that they take you away to a place of wonder for a few hours. And if they do, then do what comes naturally to all of us...talk about them. Tell your friends about them. Tell me about them, I love hearing from you.

Will this strategy catapult me to fame and fortune? No. Will it get my books on a number of to-read shelves? I think it just might.

Will it qualify as a successful marketing strategy? It's getting to be that time to find out.

Cheers!

Do you remember when...

So I had the opportunity to find myself in my local Chapters (a large bookstore chain in Canada) not too long ago and couldn't help being a little disappointed.

Allow me to explain this. As I looked around I realized that at least half of the space in the store was not even for books!! Am I the only one who remembers when a bookstore sold books exclusively? Now I understand why they've branched out; every company needs to turn a profit to survive and books just aren't selling like they once did. But still...I mean do we need to buy toys, home décor, trinkets, and god knows what else at the bookstore?

It's all just disappointing for me because I think about all the authors whose work could occupy that space. There are so many talented authors out there whose work goes undiscovered because book stores don't stock them. They'll say that they can't afford to shelf unproven talent but the flipside of that is how does one prove themselves if they're never given a chance?

Maybe, and this might just be me, but could the bookstore not dedicate a small section to those up and coming authors who given half a chance might one day make the best seller list? Is this not an investment in their own future profitability? Like any business, do they not need to think about the future and where sales will come from down the line?

Or is that what they're doing with the clocks, picture frames, and baby items? Will I one day be asking the question do you remember when the bookstore sold books?

Previews

Hi all, just a quick blurb here to direct your attention to the previews I've posted for my upcoming releases Taken and Realm of Shadows.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...

Feel free to leave your thoughts on them in the comments section here.

Enjoy!!

Should Indies be regulated?

This week's topic promises to be, I'm certain, a little controversial. Let me state right off the top that I don't have an answer to the question. It's just one that came up on a discussion thread a few weeks back and I found interesting. So let's get into it shall we?

If we can remember just 20 years ago there was really only one way to be published and that was with the Big Four Publishing Companies. You'd write your book, get an agent interested enough to take you on, and then they'd sell it to the publisher on your behalf.

Now if you were lucky enough to get that far, then your book would go through an editing process to clean up minor and major errors and generally make it more suitable to what the Big Four felt readers wanted to read.

Of course I don't want to discount independent publishing back then; it did exist, just not in any form we'd recognize today. Back then to publish independently meant you as the author, had to front the costs of printing your book and if it didn't sell...well it didn't matter to the publisher. Because the costs of entry were so high, many authors stuck to the road travelled by the Big Four and had their masterpieces end up in mountainous slush piles.

Fast forward to today and it's all different. The arrival of the ebook meant that those barriers to entry vanished. Now, it costs next to nothing to publish your book online. Amazon, maybe the largest online publisher, charges nothing to the author to get their book published. And unlike years ago, if it doesn't sell, the author is not out a small fortune.

Print on demand models have also removed the barriers to getting your words physically in a reader's hands. All of this sounds like great news to every Indie author out there, including myself.

The question though becomes...is it great news?

If you'll allow me a parallel for a moment. When regulations (or standards of quality) were removed from our financial systems everything was great for a time but calamity eventually came home to roost in 2008. By removing the barriers to entry into the publishing world, did we not create a similar calamity?

While it was exceedingly frustrating for an author to have their book wither away on a slush pile, such piles did protect the reader from poor quality writing. Once removed, and an author could just publish their own book, that aforementioned step regarding an editing process, was also removed.

The market was wide open and flooded with books of varying quality. Many of which, to be honest, represented very poor writing.

As an Indie myself, I believe indie books can be of the same caliber as the Big Four puts out; no question. Unfortunately though, without a formal editing process in place, they can also be suspect. And this hurts us all.

Over the past 20 years a stigma has arisen in the mind of many readers; if the independent novel was really good it wouldn't need to be independently published. Every Indie has heard that at least once in their career.

As much as I would like to say this viewpoint is unfair; it's not without some merit. Indie's flooded the market themselves with books that readers took a chance on and were burned by.

So back to the original point; should we as Indie authors succumb to a regulated editing process? I've no doubt the capitalist system would provide us with companies to fill this need. Perhaps it could be a seal of approval that we could place on our covers; stating they've been professionally edited. In that way, we might regain some faith from the wary reader.

Now, this would mean cost to us of course. These companies are not likely to provide their services for free and nor should they. Some barriers to entry could help us all.

But then again, the rating agencies seal of approval on wall street stocks didn't exactly help that calamity so who knows if regulated editing would help us.

I've enjoyed the freedom that's come from this independent revolution but at the end of the day, publishing is only half the story. You still gotta sell the books. Perceived higher standards may or may not help with that. As I said at the start, I don't know the answer.

Do you?

Realm of Shadows

And of course my faithful followers I couldn't write the last post all about my new blurb without actually sharing it with you all. So with that in mind...enjoy!

Hope is lost.

On a small island off the coast of North Carolina the unthinkable has happened; 400 people have vanished without a trace. So far every government investigation has been stymied in their attempts to explain the sudden mass disappearance. Now as the public clamor for answers the very people tasked with finding them start to disappear as well, leaving many to wonder if what caused the vanishing is still lurking on the island?

Consumed by darkness.

Caleb Fine is a changed man. The events of Toronto have left him wracked by guilt and filled with a barely constrained rage. The search for the Toymaker is no longer about justice for him—the killer has made it deeply personal. Now nothing and no one—including the FBI—will stand in his way.

In the realm of shadows…

Following a trail of obscure riddles and scant clues, Caleb finally discovers where the Toymaker has gone to ground. With the aid of his partner, Li Ling Tran, he heads into the unknown to find that in the shadows of his soul, a promise softly spoken has become tragically true.

Nothing will ever be the same again.

Lost in Sublurbia

As any author can tell you a book's blurb is vital to it's success. Aside from the cover, that little blurb is all an author has to draw the reader's attention and get them to actually start reading. Problem is, they're deceptively tricky to write.

I mean if you will, imagine spending an indeterminate amount of time writing between 100,000 and 120,000 words and then being faced with the task of summing that up in a few hundred! A few hundred that can't, by the way, give away the story but have to somehow pique curiousity. It's daunting, for this author at least.

This past week I found myself with a bit of a conundrum surrounding the blurb for Realm of Shadows, my third book to be released concurrently with Taken. I realized that the blurb for Realm gave away major plot points of Taken.

Were they not being released together, this might not be such a huge problem but given that they are something had to be done. As such I found myself faced with the dreaded rewrite and it got me to thinking.

Readers love blurbs. It allows them to pick up a book and at a glance decide whether they want to read it or not. That in itself is amazing to me; a few hundred words or less is all a reader needs.

Writers on the other hand hate blurbs, maybe for the exact reason stated above. We spend so much time and effort writing the book and if that one little paragraph doesn't work...all of our work is for naught. It's, in a word, frustrating. More than that, as I said, it's hard to do. It's hard to condense a story into a single paragraph. Especially if it's a complex story.

And yet it's what we must do. And while the writer in me loathes it, the reader in me has to admit that a well written blurb can give you chills and make you excited to read the rest.

So take heed fellow scribes, don't neglect that most important step on the road to publication. Spend quality time on your blurbs and make sure they represent your absolute best effort.

Before I sign off, I'd like to offer special thanks to the rowdy bunch of great authors over in Wealth, Writing, World for helping me find my way through sublurbia this week. Their sage advice and many helpful suggestions made all the difference.

Excelsior!

Parlor Games

As promised, to celebrate surpassing 25 followers (thanks to each and every one of them!) I present to you this week an old short story that I wrote but never published waaay back in the fall of 2001. Enjoy!!!

Parlor Games


I’ve spent the better part of my life wondering about just one night. Sad but true. I remember it like it was yesterday. We were just freshman out looking for a good time. It was supposed to be a laugh. It was supposed to be only a game. It was never supposed to work like it did.

Enough cryptic description I suppose, if you’re here then you’ve paid your two bits to hear a good yarn. I shan’t disappoint. Just be advised, in the tradition of great stories, only the most unbelievable parts are true.

Before I get to my tale though, you need to know a little history. Please don’t gloss your eyes over like that, if it makes you feel any better you can consider it backdrop for the story and I promise to be as brief as possible.

The year was 1970 and our town was preparing for the sweeping changes that autumn would bring. For the first time hundreds of matriculating college students were set to descend upon us. With the construction finished, Geffen University was going to be opening its doors to students for the first time.

And with the university and the students came the fraternities, following like a tail on a dog. As the leaves turned Sigma Ki took up residence on Brown’s Hill in the retrofitted old courthouse. This will be the setting of my story. But in 1970 it was the setting of another story. In early November of that first year, police descended upon Sigma Ki in a raid that is still remembered by many around these parts.

A frat boy flipped his lid—too much LSD the police alleged—and went on a killing spree inside the building. He wiped out a third of the fraternity’s members, about 12, before police subdued him with a hail of gunfire.

Thirteen were killed that day. Are you superstitious? The fraternity was closed, the building abandoned, and life went on. Over the years the building decayed but was never torn down because it was declared a landmark.

But after what happened in 1970 it wasn’t a landmark that people visited anymore. The police chief of our town closed the investigation by reporting that no drugs were found in the boy’s blood. He was at a loss as too why he flipped out and killed so many of his friends.

The whispers must’ve begun about that time that the building itself—the place—was evil. Ten years after the incident, when enrollment at Geffen was just recovering, the revelation came out that the boy wasn’t a fraternity member.

People were outraged by the fact that the now retired police chief hadn’t discovered this fact in 1970. He maintained that it wasn’t important if he was a member or not. But people began talking, concocting their own stories about this lost boy.

I’m going to assume that it was about this time that fact and fiction got too intertwined with each other, making it impossible to separate them. Stories of him being the devil incarnate, or a townie that was rejected for admission, or a nerd taking revenge upon his tormenters ran rampant around the town.

For their part, anyone who was there in 1970 and survived refused to talk about the incident. They gave their accounts to the police once and never spoke about it again. And so imaginations ran wild much like yours must be right about now.

You’re probably wondering why I’m telling you all this and what it has to do with my story, am I right? Well, imagine for a minute growing up amidst all this. What do you think it would do to you as a child if you were told the house on the hill was a place of evil and off-limits to you?

Curiosity grows over time until you can do something to satisfy it. I’d have been better off to just forget the whole thing, but I couldn’t and in the end I didn’t. This is where my story begins.

There were five of us in the autumn of 1995 when we decided to venture up on the hill. Five went up and without ruining my story I’ll just say that five didn’t come down. It was Halloween and the streets were full of kids in devil masks, vampire teeth, Spice Girl costumes, and only God knows what else.

The air had a bite to it that night. It was chilly in town but it was downright freezing on the hill. I’ll spare you the cliché and tell you right now that it may have been dark but it was not a stormy night.

As I said before, the five of us were freshman at Geffen. Greg Hansen, Tommy Bartello, and Melissa Jackman grew up in our town. Randy Schur and Jessica Wright came from other parts of the country. As to who I am, you’ll find out in due time.

Tommy suggested we spend Halloween on the hill, said it would be creepy cool. Tommy could talk you into jumping off a cliff. Randy brought the game. Greg and Jessica protested bringing it into the courthouse but were vetoed by group pressure.

We should’ve listened to them.

Once inside we were all afraid. Not of ghosts or stories but of faulty construction. Let’s face it, twenty-five years of neglect can turn a building into a deathtrap. Unfortunately we put aside our good sense and climbed the rod iron staircase.

We went one at a time, worried that anymore weight would collapse the flimsy structure. On the third floor we did some exploration. Curiosity again can be so persuasive. I’m ashamed to say that I was the one who found the perfect spot to play the game.

In its time the room must’ve been a bedroom, but not much of that remained. Huge holes stared at us from the walls; holes we imagined were put there by the lost boy’s rampage but more likely were put there by time.

We broke out the candles but all we had were scented ones and to this day the smell of jasmine turns me off. With flickering light we sat in a circle and Randy brought out the Ouija board. The game we were going to play was raising spirits. Creepy cool as Tommy said. A laugh Randy joked before we got down to serious business.

Ten fingers were placed on the glass, two from each of us. Greg, being a spiritual guy, recited our incantation to the spirit of the lost boy. The hardwood floor creaked under us as he chanted. Only from our weight we told ourselves.

His voice echoed in the room while the candlelight flickered on his face casting a menacing shadow upon him. Convinced that he had made contact he asked the first question. Nothing heavy really, just are you here?

Slowly—as I recall the glass always moved slowly under our fingers—the glass slid down from the middle of the board to point to YES.

The air became electric for us. I can’t speak for the rest but I know at this point I believed we were just pulling our collective chain; that nothing was with us in that room. We were young and it was Halloween, who doesn’t like to be scared?

With the YES staring us in the face, creepy cool Tommy asked the next question, a sort of confirming the spirit type of question. Did you kill twelve students here?

The glass didn’t move from the YES. At this point the skeptic could easily dismiss the answer by saying it was already on YES and no movement can hardly be considered as proof of contact. I’d like to say we were skeptics and that’s why we continued, but I can’t.

I know some of us believed it was all a joke but some of us by their faces said that they believed we’d made contact. Jessica asked the next question, a tougher one to fake. What is your name?

Slowly the glass moved from the YES to the B to the R to the A to the D to the Y. The glass gave us a name of Brady, harder to fake because if it was being pushed what are the odds of all five of us spelling the same name?

Skepticism began to run out at this point. I asked the next question of Brady, why did you kill those students? Without a word of a lie chills ran through me at this point. The question was so charged with energy and I was so worked up by that point. Slowly the glass began to creep away from the Y.

It ever so meticulously swept from one letter to the next that it would be impossible to believe that anyone was pushing it, the motion was just too smooth. In the end the message Brady gave us was I WANTED TO.

We stared at each other for a long time at that point. Those of us who believed from the first YES were panicked and the rest of us were catching up. The way I saw it either one of us was really trying to scare us or we weren’t playing a game anymore.

I wanted to believe one of us was playing a sick prank on the rest of us but then the glass began to move again without having been asked a question.

Slowly the glass laid out a question for us, ARE YOU SCARED? I couldn’t pry my eyes off the board, I remember hearing someone say it wasn’t funny anymore. Shrugging off the question, Randy pushed the glass to NO.

I think he felt it was a show of strength, of defiance or bravery. I don’t think it was any of these things. The glass slowly spelled it out for us—YOU WILL BE.

We were shitting at this point. Even if it was all a prank, we’d had enough. Most of us anyway. But Randy was spurred on by the threat.

He nudged me at that point and told me he had the question. He asked did you kill anyone in this room? I was mostly out of my head at this point but I remember that the glass didn’t move. It just sat there on the E. Randy smiled at that, said to us that the prankster apparently ran out of answers. I said let’s get out of here and got no dissenting comments.

We took our fingers off the glass and it whipped around. We looked at each other to confirm what we had just seen. I mean think about it, the glass moved after we took our fingers off it. On its own it moved! Impossible right? We came to the conclusion that we were imagining things until it moved again. Not slow this time, but lightning fast.

It spelled out six letters for us: NOT YET. At that point the candles snuffed out dropping us into the moonlight. Some of us began to whimper, and not just the girls.

I heard Tommy say let’s get out of here and like everyone else he didn’t have to tell me twice. We left the board behind and went for the staircase. Tommy led the way and got four steps down before it groaned. I pulled Jessica back before she could follow.

I can still remember the look in Tommy’s eyes that instant before the rod iron bent and gave way. The best way I can describe it is pure surprise. Plummeting two stories with the wreckage he landed hard on the concrete below. Even from our vantage point we could tell that his neck was broken.

I’ll remember the screams forever. We had just seen our friend die. But it was worse than seeing him die; it was knowing why. A malevolent force killed him; Brady killed him. We were through playing with him but he wasn’t through playing with us.

We backed away from the landing and stared at each other, willing each other really to come up with an idea. I suggested we find some bed sheets and tie them together to climb down. Randy scoffed at the idea, but he had nothing better so my idea won out.

I suggested it would be faster if we split up. I know what you’re thinking because it’s most likely the same thing my friends told me. Splitting up is never a good idea. In every horror movie ever made the monster always strikes when you split up. But like I told my friends, this isn’t a horror movie and the faster we get out the better.

Out of options, they agreed and we split. How I wish they hadn’t listened to me. I went down the hall in and out of bedrooms looking for sheets that hadn’t decayed to threads. I only found two sets stored in the closet of one of the last of my bedrooms. I knew they’d only stretch one flight and I hoped the others did better.

Back at the landing I set to work tying what I had. When the others made it back with three more sheets I thought it might just work, we might just make it out alive. Except one thing, as the time dragged on Randy never showed up. Looking at Greg I knew we shared the same thought. Neither one of us wanted to spend anytime searching for him.

Callous, yes, but we were afraid for our lives. Still though we couldn’t leave him. So after finishing our rope we set off down the hall. Coming upon the bedroom where the game started I felt a chill. An honest to goodness chill.

Before we even went inside I knew he was in there. We found him amidst our screams hanging by a bed sheet above the board. His skin was blue and we knew we were too late. I heard one of us shout look and point to the board. It might’ve even been me; I was so out of it by then.

Whipping around the board with surgical precision the glass spelled out JESSICA YOU ARE NEXT.

She screamed as you can imagine and I tried to offer comfort to her with my embrace. But she was shaking so badly I knew the only comfort for her would be getting her out. The same could’ve been said about me.

We left the room and Randy’s body hanging above it, and made our way back to our rope. Lowering it we saw it reach to just above the ground. We would have to jump the last few feet but it was definitely doable. All that remained was would the sheets hold?

One at a time we tested them by climbing down as far as they stretched and then jumping. It held for the first two of us without so much as fraying a bit. But as Jessica got halfway down to us, the knot holding the sheet to the landing unraveled.

I watched her grab at air for that split second before gravity took her and swallowed her screams. She hit in front of us with a sickening thud only to be covered by the bed sheets that had failed her.

We bolted for the front door and found it locked on the outside. We knew. Brady was loose again after twenty-five years and this time he wasn’t going to let anyone out alive.

Kicking the door it shook in the frame but wouldn’t open. Frantic we backed up and rushed it. Smashing into it together we busted it open and fell outside into the night. Scurrying to our feet we ran from the house on the hill.

That’s my story. That’s the night I wonder about. What? You want to know more huh? You want to know what happened after that. Most of all though you want to know who I am.

Well, okay I guess. We ran all the way to the police station that night and mumbled some coherence of a story to them. They descended upon the house like they had done in 1970 and found Jessica and Tommy where we said they’d be at the base of the fallen staircase. Upstairs they found Randy still hanging by the bed sheet.

But they didn’t find the board. The board has never been found and no one has ever believed what we said happened that night. The police said it was all a sequence of tragic accidents brought on by the age of the place and the imaginations of excitable youth.

I suppose that if I hadn’t been there I’d believe that too. A staircase collapses, a friend grief-stricken over it commits suicide, then a knot unravels. Nothing paranormal there.

But remember what I told you when I started, only the most unbelievable parts of my story are true. Now I’m finished.

What? Oh, you still want to know who I am or do you already know? If you’ve been paying attention you do. All right, if you don’t know pay up another two bits and I’ll tell you again. Here we go. There were five of us in the autumn of 1995…

Taken

As those of you who follow me may have seen all ready, there is a new book on my shelf. I'm very excited to announce that Taken the follow up to Stillness will soon be available on Amazon and Createspace.

No hard timetable just yet, but definitely before the end of summer!

Until then...enjoy the blurb :)

A killer is stalking the city…

FBI Special Agent Caleb Fine—along with the rest of the nation—sees the enigmatic predator known as “The Toymaker” lurking in every shadow. Always just out of reach, with each new victim he nabs; Caleb loses more of himself to the pursuit of darkness.

We have your wife…

The blinking light on his answering machine reveals these four words to Roger Whittaker as he returns home. They are destined to change the rest of his life.

Bo Lester from the Major Crimes Unit in Atlanta views the abduction of Miriam Whittaker as an inside job—someone at the CDC sold Roger out. For him the prime suspect becomes Lynne Bosworth. Her case is not helped by the animosity that has existed between her and Roger for the past six months. With few leads to follow, Bo demands that she return home from Peru—where she is stationed with the World Health Organization—to face questioning. Brought back to face the accusations she is aided in her defense by Caleb who works to free her and find out who is really behind Miriam’s abduction.

As the pressure builds a single demand is delivered—Roger is to attend the International AIDS Conference in Toronto and renounce HIV as the cause of AIDS! Stunned by this demand and fighting interests from all sides, what is Roger to do? If he refuses to comply Miriam will die. If he endorses the claim millions more could die.

Unless it’s true…

Stay tuned this weekend for my normal post where I'm going to attempt something different to celebrate having reached 25 followers; I'm going to post a short story here for everyone to read :)

Finding your Voice

One of the biggest influences I had as a writer early on was a particular English teacher in High School; his name was Stephen Moyer, or Mr. Moyer as I knew him at the time. In total I was a student of his 3 times including the advanced Writer's Craft course that he alone taught.

Mr. Moyer was known to be...a bit eccentric. Well, he would've been eccentric had he been rich but as any teachers reading this can attest to, teacher and rich don't often go together. So to be polite I can just say that he was different; as most great writers are. Mr. Moyer was the antithesis of that old nugget about those who can't teach, because he could write.

One of the sayings he could often be heard repeating to those of us lucky enough to be his students was a variation on "Have you found your voice yet?" I can't say how many times he looked sternly at me and asked "What is your voice?"

So what is my voice? What is any of our voices? What did the esteemed Mr. Moyer mean?

He believed, and I know him to be right, that every writer has a unique voice; a way of expressing their words that is truly their own. If you look at the greats as he often did (Faulkner, Steinbeck, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dickens, etc.) each of them wrote in a style that they owned. It was through the act of defining this personal style that they wrote such amazing stories. By crafting a distinctive voice they were able to imbue their words with personal experience and elevate them beyond just words.

As writers we should all aspire to first find, then hone our own voices. It is through this personalization of the craft that we can set ourselves apart from the multitudes of similar sounding voices out there. It is through perfecting our voices that we can become known as scribes of "honest" or "authentic" writing. And isn't that what the very best stories are?

What worries me today though is that there are too few teachers like Mr. Moyer active in the world to impart this wisdom. I think this is why I read around Goodreads how authors are striving to emulate this author or that author rather than trying to find their own style. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but it is also how bookstores become crammed full of one original novel and a hundred knockoffs.

Many here are fans of On Writing by Stephen King. I too have read it but, have stopped short of exalting it as the only road to success. For example, just because King deplores the use of adverbs, doesn't mean that the only good writing is devoid of them. This is what works for him; this is the voice that he has found and honed to much success.

It is his style, his voice; it works for him. But rather than copy it, I say it is incumbent upon us to find our own way of writing...our own characteristic and personal voice.

Personally speaking, I'd rather see a world where the shelves are full of the breadth of human experience described by unique and exciting voices. Rather that than where we seem to be headed; the shelves full of the same voice echoing across the page, becoming fainter with each repetition.

Somehow...I think Mr. Moyer would prefer that too.

Dressed for Success

I'm sure that most, if not all of us, have at one point or another been faced with the prospect of a job interview. Before going to said interview you likely polished yourself up a bit right? Combed your hair, showered, shaved (face or legs depending), put on clean clothes, maybe even a new suit. As the old adage says...dress for success.

Looking through the offerings of my fellow indie authors I'm left wondering why we don't apply the same adage to our work?

Is a publication really all that different from an interview? In a job interview you're basically selling yourself to the company you want to hire you. As authors are we not selling ourselves to potential readers whenever we put out a book? The similarity is striking and we should be doing everything in our power to put the best version of ourselves out there in both instances.

And yet I've come across so many indie books that lack the basic formatting that lends itself to success. I'm not going to name names here; I'm not about tearing people down but rather about building them up.

So with that in mind, this week's post is all about simple formatting elements that can help lend that all important air of professionalism to your book.

One of the easiest things you can do is justify your paragraphs. In Word this is literally just the click of a button. Pick up any traditionally published book and you'll see that the words resemble blocks on the page. Justifying your paragraphs just makes them more appealing to a reader's eye; our goal in publishing yes?

Another often overlooked formatting element is running headers. Headers and footers can really dress up your finished page, almost acting as a border on top and bottom. In Word this is again rather simple to accomplish. The problem that I've seen in a number of works is when the header is placed on the first page of a new chapter. When starting a new chapter the header should be omitted so as to maintain a clean appearance. You accomplish this in Word by using "section breaks" in addition to "page breaks".

I won't spend much time on page breaks but will just say you should be using them keep your breaks where you intend them to be upon file conversion. If this has tripped you up, you're not alone it's got me too!

And while on the subject of new chapters...why don't more us get creative here? I see so many bland chapter headings that make me wonder why the author doesn't change up the font or the size of the heading to make it "pop" or stand out. Such a small alteration but if it allows your work to stand out in the crowded field it will be well worth the effort!

So how about covers? They are the first thing a prospective reader sees of your work and as such are important. I have no issue with using stock photos personally as in this day and age there are a lot of quality photos out there. What I do have an issue with are quotes on the cover. Quotes, that is, that are not attributed to anyone.

If you're going to grace your book with a quote that says "A tremendous read" or "Best book I've read in awhile" then make sure you attribute it to someone who actually said it. When you don't...it appears as if you made it up yourself just to put on the cover and that detracts from all your hard work within the book.

So that's all I've got and I sincerely hope it helps the aspiring authors out there to put that last bit of polish on each of their gems!

Feel free to leave any other helpful formatting suggestions in the comments section as there are none of us who can't stand to learn a thing or two.

Excelsior!!