Rob Bignell's Blog, page 273

Weigh cons of a book presentation against pros

While readings, signings and other public presentations are a great way to promote your book, they aren���t always the best way to increase sales.

Before deciding to give a presentation, always balance the cons against the potential benefits:
��� Potentially low ROI ��� The expenses of attending a book presentation can quickly outpace the sales at the event. Generally, the farther away from your home the presentation, the more you���ll spend on gas, the more likely you���ll have to purchase a meal or two, and the more likely you���ll need a hotel. The return on investment simply may not be worth it.
��� Potentially low turnout ��� Unless you���ve done a lot of promotional work and are in a large metropolitan area, your event probably won���t attract a lot of attendees. This means minimal sales and maybe a little blow to the ego.
��� Potentially loss of time ��� Every hour lost writing are all that fewer pages you can publish. Ask yourself what is more productive: tweeting for five minutes to garner a lone book sale and then spending the other three hours writing your next novel or spending an hour on the road and then two more sitting at a poorly attended event in which you make just a couple of book sales?

Of course, the best way to determine if a venue or event is good for a presentation is to actually go there and if necessary taking your lumps. Asking other authors about their success at the same locales can be helpful, but sometimes their books are perfect for those who shop a certain bookstore while yours aren���t. So, look at the first year as a learning experience and be willing to lose a little money. The next book, you���ll know better.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.



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When to file Fictitious Business Name Statement

Should you set up a publishing company that will be the imprint of your book and run it as a self-proprietorship, you may have to file a Fictitious Business Name Statement. This also is known as a Doing Business As form.

It all depends on the name you give your business. If your personal name clearly appears in your business��� name, then you generally won���t need to file such paperwork. For example, if your name is Ann Smith, then Ann Smith Publishing means you���re in the clear. Vary it just a little, however, say to A.S. Publishing, and you almost certainly will have to file such a statement. If you go with something like Red Cliff Publishing, which doesn���t have your name at all in it, you definitely will need to file.

The process for filing differs from state to state. A good place to start is with your county���s or city���s recorder office. The paperwork is usually easy to complete, and there will be a small fee. Some counties and states also may require that you publish a notice over a week to a month in a local newspaper announcing your fictitious business name; this also usually comes at a cost.

Of course, once you file such a statement, then you probably will need to go to the next step in affirming your business: Separating the business��� revenues and expenses from your personal wages. Filing a FBNS will allow you to set up a bank account in the business��� name, to receive royalties checks in the business��� name, and to obtain credit cards in the business��� name.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.



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Never-ending vs. neverending vs. never ending

The number of errors involving these three words appears to be endless.

Never-ending is an adjective meaning having no end or interminable, as in The Earth enjoys a never-ending supply of sunlight.

Neverending (one word) is a variant of the word that increasingly appears in print, probably due to publication of the German fantasy story The Neverending Story. The German word for never-ending ��� ���unendliche��� ��� doesn���t have a hyphen, so perhaps the translator didn���t think one was required in English. All of this confusion is compounded by the grammatically incorrect capitalization of the e in the title of the movie adaptation (The NeverEnding Story).

And the misspelling of the word as never ending just plain needs to, well, stop���

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.



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Writing Inspiration: Man with a gun

If suffering from writer���s block, add something that demands explanation, a technique borrowed from author Raymond Chandler.

When Chandler had writer���s block, he would introduce a man with a gun, which then forced him to figure out who the man with the gun might be and what he wanted given what already had been written.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.



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Ways your main character can ultimately succeed

When reaching the climax of the story, the main character usually overcomes the central problem that he set out to solve. Still, this penultimate scene tends to play out differently from story to story so that no two tales that are truly original seem alike.

That���s because there are a number of ways that the character might succeed:
��� Special ability ��� Your main character may possess a superhuman trait or know some unique skill that gives him the advantage.
��� Special invention ��� Sometimes the main character might use a special weapon (often one he has made) or device that allows him to be victorious.
��� Ingenuity ��� While the main character might be ingenious in creating a special weapon, what is meant here is outsmarting bad guy or being clever to overcome the situation. Think Odysseus outfoxing the cyclops.
��� Courage ��� In a number of cases, the character will find the ability to overcome his inner fears or will simply take a big gamble. A good example of this is Henry Fleming in Stephen Crane���s ���The Red Badge of Courage.���
��� Cooperation ��� Working with others can lead to a solution. Usually such stories involve the main character deciding to cooperate with someone who he considers an enemy or less than an equal.
��� Self-sacrifice ��� The only way to succeed for some main characters may be to sacrifice something of incredible importance to them, such as a loved one or their own life.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge.I can provide that second eye.



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Five Great Quotations about What is a Writer

���...in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.��� - Junot D��az

���Writing stories is a kind of magic, too.��� - Cornelia Funke

���We don���t want to lead. We don���t need to follow. We stay home and make stuff up and write it down and send it out into the world, and get inside people���s heads. Perhaps we change the world and perhaps we don���t. We never know. We just make stuff up.��� - Neil Gaiman

���We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a writer - I am a person who does things ��� I write, I act ��� and I never know what I���m going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.��� - Stephen Fry

���...this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, How alive am I willing to be? - Anne Lamott

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.



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Writing Inspiration: Make your book���s cover

Often a vision you can literally see is more achievable than one written on paper. Take some time to make a book cover with your title and name as author on it. Post the cover over your desk or in a spot where you can see it each time you look up from writing.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

 

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Offer more than just a book reading or lecture

When giving a presentation about your book or a topic related to that title, you may want to consider going beyond a simple reading, lecture or Q&A. In an era when anyone can watch a video about virtually any topic at any location simply by whipping out a cell phone, many people expect more than just a lecture.

The most obvious solution is a slide show that complements the text of your presentation. It need not be a PowerPoint program, though putting such a show together is easier than you might imagine and worth learning if you have the time. If crunched, though, you might want to simply assemble a group of pictures, rename them so they are numbered in the order they will be presented, and then show them using your laptop���s media software with you clicking on the mouse to the next pic. When I recently gave a talk about wildflowers that can be sees while hiking a specific area, I showed pics of those blooms in my presentation. Make sure the pictures are large (over 90 KB in size) and hook at least a 17-inch monitor to your laptop for showing the slides.

Another option is handouts. Don���t inundate audience members with them, and be sure that they include information they would find useful. For example, with the wildflower presentation, on a single page I gave a month-by-month list of when plants bloomed in the area. Always be sure to leave some kind of info at the bottom of the page, such as a website URL, where audience members can purchase your book(s) related to the topic.

Yet another possibility is audio. While you don���t want music or other sounds playing as you read or speak, you can use audio to supplement your piece just as would pictures. During a presentation on birdwatching opportunities when hiking a region, I collected audio snippets of various bird songs and calls (all available online for free) and used my laptop���s media software to play them.

Indeed, anytime you can appeal to the audience member���s senses through sound, taste, smell or touch, you will make an impression upon them. So be creative ��� if you wrote a cookbook, offer food samples; if you wrote a book about beauty products, bring some samples for the audience to sniff or to even rub on their skin.

Book sales will be sure to follow!

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.



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Tips for naming your self-publishing company

When self-publishing, you probably want to create a business that serves as the imprint ��� or publisher ��� of your book(s). This helps increase the odds of receiving attention from mainstream media, bookstores, libraries reviewers and others who still haven���t accepted that self-publishing now dominates book publishing. 

The creation of this imprint is hardly deceptive, as some in corporate publishing and who are tied to that paradigm would have you and others believe. You creating a publishing company that owns the ISBN and copyright to your work(s) is no different that an inventor or a craftsman who creates a start-up in his garage. 

When naming your business, using your own name helps you avoid filing a ���Doing Business As��� (also known as a ���Fictitious Business Name Statement���) form with local or state authorities. Once you use a business name that doesn���t have your name in it, you���ll need to make such a filing. It���s usually a nominal fee, though, and worth the expense. Using your own name as the publisher, after all, undercuts the whole reason for creating a business in the first place ��� to sidestep the vestigial prejudice against self-publishing.

Here are
When coming up with a name, always make sure that it���s not already in use. If it is, you risk infringing on someone���s trademark rights. A quick Google search of the imprint name or online check with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (for U.S. authors anyway) is a good idea. Generally, if you sell or offer dissimilar products and services, you can get away with using the same name (Otherwise, a small business like McDonald and Son Auctioneers would infringe on the fast-food restaurant���s trademark.).

In addition, typically if another business in your county has the same or similar name ��� even if you offer vastly different services and products ��� you cannot use that name when filing your DBA.

Once you settle upon a name, you may use ���company��� as part it but do not use ���inc.,��� ���corp.��� or ���corporation.��� The exception is if you���ve set up your business as a corporation. Doing that, though, is of little value unless you���re annual profit soars to at least five digits.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

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Editing client publishes latest fantasy novella

A recent editing client of mine has published his latest fantasy novella. R.V. Johnson���s ���Beyond Terra��� begins when strange dark creatures suddenly swoop and crawl from the world���s pollution. Desperation and underground technology offer some solution, albeit perilous ones. Trenton Bonner is set to do whatever it takes to save his world and goes on a mission to do just that. What he discovers beyond Terra, though, he could not have prepared for. The book is available online, and you even can join a readers group for the title.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.



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