Ruth Harris's Blog, page 16

Self-Publishing or Traditional Publishing? Which is the Right First Step for YOU? Win a Free Book to Help You Decide

The list of million-seller "indie" authors is growing every day. Self-publishing has not only become mainstream—it's edgy and cool. Persuasive blogs by self-publishing stars like Joe Konrath, Dean Wesley Smith, David Gaughran and Kris Rusch have inspired a staggering number of new writers to self-publish in the past two years.

Publishing your own work is a way to save yourself from the sometimes-horrific treatment of authors by "legacy" publishers (the indie term for the old guard) who have acted greedy and desperate as the e-publishing revolution shakes up their world.

Indie publishing has also become a successful road to traditional publishing superstardom and major Hollywood deals for authors like E.L. James and Hugh Howey.

And this week, an indie even made it into the august pages of the New York Times Book Review.

But self-publishing is not an easy road—and a number of factors are making it more difficult than it was a few years ago—as I wrote in last week's post—so I urge new writers to carefully weigh their options. There are alternatives that aren't making so many headlines, but may be better for you personally.


I often hear from new authors who are feeling pushed into self-publishing by "experts" who tell them they are being foolish to query agents and small publishers. Or even that all publishers "hate" writers.

Yes, some traditional publishers and agents have behaved very badly recently, especially ones who used to rely on the mass-market paperback and have seen their markets evaporate. The must-read Passive Voice blog is full of hair-raising stories about publisher/agent bad behavior.

Some self-publishers have behaved badly too. The review-buying scandal of last summer is still having repercussions.

But John Locke's scammy review schemes and Harlequin's rotten contracts shouldn't sour you on either route. Authors on both paths still have highly successful careers.

So you shouldn't be looking at the rotten apples when you make your publishing decisions. You should be looking at yourself. Your own personal goals--and skills--should matter more than following trends.

Some people dream of running a mom-and-pop business. Others thrive working at a big corporation. Still others prefer to work for a local small business with only a few employees. None of these paths is wrong. It's about what suits your personality, and only you know which path is right for you.

All publishing roads are going to take patience, hard work, and the ability to deal with setbacks.

In order to make an informed decision, it's important to educate yourself about all publishing routes. If you're a beginning writer, you should be reading Agent Rachelle Gardner and the Query Shark as well as Konrath and Dean Wesley Smith.  (And BTW, learning to write a great query and synopsis is just as important for indies, since you'll have to query reviewers and learn to write great blurbs)

Read The Passive Voice, but also subscribe to the free Publisher's Lunch newsletter. Another must-read is Being Human at Electric Speed, the blog of former Writers Digest publisher Jane Friedman (which includes a weekly state-of-the-industry post from Porter Anderson.)

Don't let fourth-hand information on writers' forums push you one way or another. Absolute Write tends to be the comfort zone for a lot of people going the trad. route and the Kindleboards are home to some enthusiastic self-publishers. They are both great resources, but take any advice from individuals there with several shakers of salt. (Especially if they're cranky. As a general rule, I think it's safe to assume people who are in a chronic state of rage probably don't have all the answers.)

When you publish a book, you're entering an industry, so you need to know all aspects of it. Whether you go the traditional or indie route, you're starting a business, and you need to be aware of the marketplace. Things have changed a lot since the Kindle was introduced five years ago and you don't want to make a decision based on out-of-date information.

As I said on the blog last week, new retailers like Kobo and the newly-improved Smashwords are opening up the market. It may be more difficult to get your book noticed than it was at the beginning of the indie revolution, but a lot of self-publishers are doing very well. Friend of the blog indie author Saffina Desforges recently had three of her books in the top three spots in thrillers in the UK, and Catherine Ryan Hyde, my collaborator on HOW TO BE A WRITER IN THE E-AGE…AND KEEP YOUR E-SANITY has seen her career soar since she started self-publishing the books she had previously only been able to traditionally-publish in England.

And I should point out that the decision isn't really "either/or." An increasing number of top-tier authors like Saffi and Catherine are moving to the "hybrid" model, with an equal number of self-and traditionally published titles and a career aided by an agent/manager. The two "roads" are merging.

Consider the following:

1) Most self-publishing successes like Konrath, Eisler and Locke have agents.

2) The majority of self-publishing superstars started out traditionally published—with a strong platform built in partnership with their Big Six publishers.

3)  A lot of the biggest names in "self-publishing" sign with traditional publishers as soon as they get a good offer.

4) Indie publishing (small press or self-publishing) can be a dead-end in the traditional world if you don't have spectacular sales, so be wary of using self-publishing as a way of "getting noticed" by the trads.

There's a reason I put "FIRST STEP" in the title. Going from trad. to self-publishing is easier than going from self-publishing to trad., unless you have big sales. Like 20,000-book sales. Agent Janet Reid wrote a must-read post on the subject in October. She points out, "Publishers love debut authors, cause they're easier to pitch to retail accounts. It's easier to launch a career than revitalize one."

5) Other more "traditional" alternatives to the old Big Six paradigm are appearing all the time.
The new Amazon imprints are offering more lucrative contracts than the Big Six right now. There has been lots of innovative thinking from agents recently, in both the US and the UK, as Porter Anderson reported in this week's Writing on the Ether. Agents are becoming managers who help authors self-publish and traditionally publish at the same time. New small digital publishers are springing up every day.  They usually offer at least a 50% royalty and also help with promotion to your target market.Big Publishing is opening its doors to unagented work for the first time in decades with new digital imprints from HarperCollins and Random House . (Not to be confused with  Simon and Schuster's new experiment in vanity publishing--which is something to avoid.) 
So what does all this mean to the new writer?

It means the most important thing is to keep your options open, because what's true today may not be true tomorrow.

And how do you do that?

1) I urge new writers who aren't schooled in business to consider querying agents and smaller publishers before taking the self-publishing plunge.

I know—I can hear the groaning from everybody who's read the stories that all agents have horns. But the horror stories you've heard are about agents have been desperately clinging to the old paradigm. Most of those won't be around much longer. The agents who are succeeding in the new digital world are learning to be managers of the hybrid career. Having somebody on your side who knows the ropes can make or break a career, especially if you're not a born negotiator.

Here's what Porter Anderson had to say after attending London's FutureBook conference this week:

"If anything, the digitally enabled rise of self-publishing is emblematic of the transformation that agents, like publishers, are having to contemplate. And if there’s a single term for what agents do up ahead, “manager” seems to be part of it."

(But check them out at Writer Beware and don't sign away any rights or "in perpetuity" contracts.)

Yes, some books in some genres can't get an agent's interest no matter how well written, but everything's cyclical. A few years ago, chick lit was poison to agents, but recently I've seen a lot of them asking for it. And lots of small romance publishers were eager for it the whole time.

2) Take a good long look at your own goals and talents.

Self-publishing is about becoming a small business owner. Were you born with the entrepreneurial spirit? Do you love playing with numbers and marketing statistics? Are you a self-starter who prefers working alone? Then you're a born indie. (And you might be interested in the post today at the Writers Guide to E-Publishing about how to set up your publishing business as an LLC.)

But if the thought of balance sheets, market analysis and accounting fill you with loathing, opening your own publishing business could be a nightmare.

A huge amount of a self-publisher's time is spent in promotions and marketing. Yes, traditional publishing involves putting in a lot of marketing time, too, but you'll usually have some guidance and help. If you're indie, you're on your own.

As Self-Publishing advocate Ruth Ann Nordin said last week at the Self-Pub Authors blog

"If you don’t feel like doing all the work that self-publishing requires, then you probably should pick another business to go into because it’s harder to do this than a lot of authors will tell you." 

She also says in one of the comments: "I hate the blogs that preach overnight success. It’s doing so many authors a disservice. Those blogs make it sound like all you need to do is publish a book and watch the sales come in. If it was that easy, we’d all be hitting the bestselling charts."

But she also adds: "...i f you don’t mind doing all the work, then I think it’s one of the most worthwhile professions a person can have.  If you love it, it’ll be worth it."

Running a small business can be bliss for people who are bottom-line-savvy self-starters with a lot of patience. It also helps to have some capital saved up.

But if you work better with enforced deadlines, moral support, and a team to urge you on, consider alternatives:
Consider a small digital press in your specific niche. I'm very happy with my boutique press. My editor works with me on every aspect of my writing and book marketing. And I'm not alone. A literary author I know has recently signed with JMS books, a LGBT press which does promos and helps with target advertising and has got him a great collection of reviews many Big 6-ers would envy. Join an authors' collective: Indie authors are banding together to hire editors and designers and do joint publicity. I was just followed on Twitter by an interesting one called Indie Visible Start your own affinity group. Author Claude Nougat is actively working on starting a new genre, Baby Boomer Lit, and has formed a Goodreads group to promote it. This is the kind of innovative thinking that will drive the new publishing business.Keep your eye on the new digital imprints from the bigger publishers.
But before you join any small press or collective, make sure you read some of their titles and contact their writers in order to make sure they are 100% legit and professional. And always check with Writer Beware.

Finally take the current market into account. Does your genre sell better in ebook or pbook format? Indies depend on ebooks for most of their sales.

Right now, mostly adult genre fiction (especially thrillers, romance and erotica) and nonfiction books with a specific niche sell best as ebooks.People who buy pbooks (paper books) are more likely to buy literary (or literary women's) fiction and children's books.Children's books are finally starting to sell as ebooks, (up 300% in the last year) because of the new tablet technology. The black and white Kindle of a couple of years ago was no place for a children's picture book. But on the iPad or KindleFire, it's fantastic. Still, children's books do best in hardcover.Romance writers do best as self e-publishers. A survey last May said romance (especially erotic romance) did better than science-fiction, fantasy or literary fiction. Young Adult books are popular in both formats, and they are still the darling of agents and trad publishers. At the last writers' conference I attended, all the agents represented YA. Only one would even look at adult fiction. So if you write YA you've got a great array of choices.Whatever path you take as you start to publish, it's important to keep in mind that you'll have a much better chance of making a career out of your writing if you do two things first:

1) Establish a strong online platform in your genre

This doesn't mean making a lot of writer friends you chat with. You do want to network with other writers, but don't count on them as your core readership. Your fellow authors are not your audience unless you write how-to-write books or novels about writers. Network with people who read your genre. That means it's much better to blog about films or review books in your genre than it is to blog about fighting writers block and how to write a query letter.

2) Build inventory

It's hard to start a business. And it's very, very hard to start a business when you have only one product to sell. There's a classic Saturday Night Live skit from the late 1970s about a pathetic mall store that sells nothing but Scotch tape. It's hilarious. Fred Willard's clueless, doomed optimism is pure comic genius.

But do you want to be that guy?

WIN A FREE COPY!

If you're just finishing up your first or second book and all of this feels overwhelming, let me remind you that Catherine Ryan Hyde and I have written a handbook for beginning writers called HOW TO BE A WRITER IN THE E-AGE…AND KEEP YOUR E-SANITY .

Between us, we've got experience with Big Six publishers, small presses, boutique digital presses and self-publishing. We don't favor any one road and provide lots of advice for authors on all paths.

In honor of the holidays, Catherine and I are running a promotion this week of HOW TO BE A WRITER. We are giving away:

THREE FREE PAPERBACK COPIES OF HOW TO BE A WRITER IN THE E-AGE 
plus
THREE FREE E-BOOKS OF HOW TO BE A WRITER IN THE E-AGE--for Kindle or Nook (and they come with free updates.)
Anybody who would like to be eligible for the free give-aways, just mention "free book" in the comments and your preference of pbook or ebook. If you go over to Catherine's blog and comment on the give-away post, you'll get your name in twice. The contest will go until 9 PM next Saturday, December 15th. Winners will be announced on this blog next Sunday.


Oh, yes, and I have a little bit of news of my own. NO PLACE LIKE HOME , the fourth Camilla Randall mystery, is now available for purchase ("Likes" always appreciated.) And the boxed set of the first three Camilla books is now at a special holiday reduced price of $2.99. (also available at the reduced price in the UK.)

It was suggested to me that I ask people to nominate this blog for WRITER'S DIGEST'S 101 BEST WEBSITES FOR WRITERS. If you felt like nominating us, Ruth and I would be ecstatic. Submit an email with the subject line "101 Websites" to writersdigest@fwmedia.com to nominate http://annerallen.blogspot.com/ .

So what say you, scriveners? Do you aspire to a hybrid career at some point, or are you aiming to be 100% indie or 100% traditional? Do you have an entrepreneurial spirit? Or would you rather work with a team? Don't forget to say "free book" in the comments if you don't have a copy yet and you'd like to win one.

NEXT WEEK: We'll have a guest post from romance novelist and uber-blogger Roni Loren with some solid advice on using social media to promote your work. 

Indie Publishing in 2013: Why We Can't Party Like It's 2009

Amazon's Kindle turned five years old last week. What an exciting half-decade it's been!

Jeff Bezos showed his genius when he gave his e-reader that name. The device sparked a conflagration that is still pretty much out of control. The old publishing world is in chaos, and nobody has a clue what direction the wildfire will take next.

Although if you want a little glimpse into the crystal ball, Agent Laurie McLean offered some optimistic predictions in her guest post here two weeks ago.

But in just the two weeks since her post, we've seen more wild shifts and changes. HarperCollins, moving to more ebooks, is closing one of its biggest warehouses, and seems set to gobble up Simon and Schuster.  And Simon and Schuster has launched a new scary-scammy self-publishing wing by teaming up with the vanity publisher Author Solutions. Yes, the Author Solutions which was recently acquired by Penguin, which was recently purchased by Random House. And Random House is launching several new digital-only imprints. Ditto HarperCollins' Avon imprint which is actually soliciting your NaNo novels. (Yes. That one surprised the heck out of me, too.)

Confused yet? I sure am. Some people think the Big Six-no-Five-or-is-it-Four—are soon to become the Big One, which still may not be Big enough to compete with what some fear will become the most powerful publishing force of all: the Mighty Zon. (Sarah Lacy at PandoDaily has some interesting things to say on the subject of Amazon's inevitable dominance.)

In five years, Amazon has gone from mail-order bookseller to major player in world publishing.

They did this partly by sparking the "indie revolution".

The "revolution" was another product of Mr. Bezos' marketing genius. He wanted cheap electronic books for his new Kindle, and the Big Six were not about to slash prices for some upstart online retailer with a gadget nobody thought they needed. Publishers wanted to charge the same price for an ebook as they did for a new hardcover book. Amazon accused them of price-fixing and went after them through the legal system.

But meanwhile they needed cheap books for the new Kindle owners.

So they opened up Amazon to self-publishers, offering an author-friendly e-book creation system and a 70% "royalty" to authors who priced their books in the range Amazon wanted to promote: between three and ten dollars.

I'm putting "royalty" in quotes, because, by strict definition, Amazon doesn't pay a traditional royalty. Publishers pay royalties. Retailers take a percentage. For self-publishers, Amazon is a retailer, so technically, Amazon is not paying a 70% royalty; it's taking a 30% sales commission.

But whatever you choose to call it, the payment system worked. Big time. While the Big Six were shrinking advances, lists and print runs—and making increasingly unreasonable demands on authors—the Zon offered writers a new way to distribute their work and actually make money at it.

I first became aware of the viability of Amazon-aided self-publishing in late 2009, when a fellow chick lit author, Elisa Lorello, self-published a novel that went to the top of the Kindle bestseller list on Christmas Day. This was when traditional publishers were treating chick lit as toxic waste and refused to acquire any titles that didn't involve vampires, werepersons, or other dentally-enhanced people-eaters.

I paid even more attention a few months later when Amazon offered Lorello a nice contract with their first publishing venture, Amazon Encore.

Elisa became one of thousands of highly successful e-book self-publishers. In 2010, Amazon's new "indies" like John Locke and Amanda Hocking became household names. At the same time, established, agented novelists like Joe Konrath and Dean Wesley Smith self-published and started to preach the gospel of the "indie" movement.

Then, on March 21, 2011, New York Times bestseller Barry Eisler turned down a six figure advance from St. Martin's  to self-publish his new thriller.

That was the moment when even the nay-sayers had to accept that self-publishing had become mainstream.

Indies went on to become some of the greatest bestsellers of all time, like E. L. James (although, like me, she started with a small press, not strictly self-publishing.) Other self-pubbers made high-profile deals with Hollywood, like Hugh Howey, who sold his Wool books to Ridley Scott for some serious bucks. (Sorry, Hugh, that I tried to give Wool to Speilberg in an earlier version of this post. LOL.)

Subsequently, a whole industry of editors, designers, coders and online advertisers sprang up to minister to the needs of the new indie entrepreneur-authors.

John Locke wrote a book telling how to achieve Amazon success like his. Literally millions of self-publishers flooded the marketplace in 2011 and 2012. (Nobody's quite sure how many ebooks there are, since many don't have ISBNs.)

But a few months ago, things began to change. Amazon made some policy changes that were decidedly less friendly to self-publishers.

Indies who formerly sang Amazon's praises began to get cranky. I recently saw this lament on the Kindleboards (with apologies to Tennessee Ernie Ford.)

You write sixteen books, what do you getAnother year older and deeper in debtSaint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't goI owe my soul to the Amazon store.
Some authors even think indies are being "being quietly herded off into a corner" since the DoJ decision brought down the price of Big Six books. Stephen Hise wrote a dark post at Indies Unlimited on the effects of Amazon's policy changes on the indie author.

What we do know is that Amazon's attempt to bring down prices through the legal system finally paid off. Big name ebooks by Big Six authors are now selling for reasonable, and even give-away prices.

So indies aren't as necessary to the Amazon bottom line as they once were. I'm not sure things are as dire as Derek Haines says in his post in The Vandal, because established indies report they continue to have good Amazon sales. But he has some legitimate worries.

For the new author who is thinking of launching a career by self-publishing through Amazon, it's important to be aware things have changed drastically in recent months. One thing to be aware of—especially if you're a newbie—is that a lot of the most powerful marketing strategies of the "Kindle Millionaires" are no longer viable:

#1 Garnering lots of of Amazon reviews: A great deal of John Locke's success was due to his huge number of positive Amazon reviews. His "how I made millions" book claimed this was due to his expertise in targeting the right reader.

But it turns out his expertise was actually in buying fake reviews.

The paid review and sock-puppet review scandals that rocked Amazon this summer after revelations by Locke--and an embarrassing number of others--have resulted in a draconian crackdown on all Amazon reviews.

The L.A. Times reports that many authors have found their reviews disappearing. Some popular legitimate reviewers have had all their reviews (of indies and trad-pubbed books alike) deleted with no explanation. I've seen lots of reports from authors who have lost dozens of reviews for no apparent reason. And authors who question the arbitrary removals are told they'll be banned from selling on Amazon forever if they dare to question any action by the Great Zon. Even Amazon advocate Joe Konrath thinks they've gone over to the dark side with this.

Amazon now bans authors from reviewing other authors' books in their own genre. They claim this is because their TOS guidelines ban reviewing by a "competitor," and this protects against attacks on rivals by sock puppets. But they delete positive and negative reviews alike. And not only from authors in their own genre. Some people have been told all published authors have been banned from reviewing. (If the New York Times or the New Yorker did this, they'd have to go out of business. Authors have ALWAYS reviewed other authors.)

They are also deleting reviews by anybody with a name similar to the author. I've had reviews deleted from anybody named "Allen". The rational is that anybody with the same name has a financial interest in my work. (Yes, Woody Allen, Joan Allen, and General John Allen have a big financial interest in my books :-) )

As you can imagine, this has made many reviewers wary of posting anything to Amazon, and has left readers jaded and untrusting. Seeking reviews is now a much less sure-fire way of making sales. Unfortunately, search engines still favor books with more reviews. Not a good situation for a newbie self-publisher.

2) Using free ebooks to raise your Amazon profile. Elisa Lorello had her big Christmas 2009 success because she offered her book free on Amazon that day. That pushed her to the top of the "bestseller" list and raised her book from obscurity to the top of suggested "also boughts" and "top sellers" that appear on every Kindle.

But in late 2011, Amazon introduced KDP Select. Only authors enrolled in the "Select" program are now allowed freebie give-aways. Select requires exclusivity. If you sell ebooks at Barnes and Noble, iTunes, Smashwords, Kobo, etc—or even on your own website—you aren't allowed to list a book as "free" on Amazon.

And the "also boughts" and "top sellers" also heavily favor books in the KDP Select program.

Until recently, Amazon matched the price you charge for your book on other platforms, so it was possible to get around the KDP Select exclusivity by making your book free on Smashwords, but many of us are finding that even after several months, Amazon doesn't seem to be matching a "free" price.

They are however, sweetening the pot for KDP Select members by doubling the price they pay for "borrows" (Select books are also free to borrow for Amazon Prime members.) Now many Select books will get more than the sale price for a borrow. It's tempting, but only if you have other books available at other retailers. I think it's unwise for anybody to be 100% dependent on the whims of Amazon's ever-changing algorithms.

3) Selling mass quantities of 99 cent ebooks to become a bestseller on Amazon. A year ago, D.D. Scott, the force of nature behind the Writers Guide to E-Publishing, preached the gospel of "Snickers-bar marketing" and the 99 cent ebook.

But that has all changed. Here's what she said last week,

"Up until a few months ago, using the 99 Cent Price Point got you a ton of fabulous VISIBILITY ….You could more than make up for a higher royalty per book (using a price point of $2.99 or above) because of the higher quantity of books sold at the lower 99 Cent price.

BUT…not anymore!!!

Due to the agency pricing/cost-fixing schemes and the resulting Department of Justice settlement with a few of The Big Six Publishers – with several more holding out for litigation, many Big Six/TradiPubs are lowering their prices to between 99 Cents and $3.99.

Also…and this is HUGE…Amazon’s algorithms have definitely changed to favor the TradiPub books at these lower prices."

There was also a change in the Amazon algorithms last May that give a 99 cent book sale less "weight" in sales rankings. To be counted as a full "sale" a book has to sell for $2.99 or more.

4)  Getting featured on Kindle Nation Daily, E-Reader News Today, Pixel of Ink or other sites for e-book readers. Recently the big sites for ebook promos announced they will be severely restricting the number of free books they list, due to a firm request from Amazon. Here's how they put it at ENT.

"While Amazon cannot "make" us do anything with our website, they can tell us they will not pay us anymore if we don't do what they want us to do.  And what they've told us to do is cut down A LOT on the free books or they will not pay us at all.  I can't go into detail on what they've told us but this is something that will be affecting all sites similar to ours within the next month."

5) Promoting your work on Facebook. Facebook is still "free" for family and friends, but now you have to pay to use it for marketing. Meghan Ward talked in her post this week about "Promoted Posts", which Facebook launched in May of this year.

"For $5 $10, or $15, Facebook will make your post more visible within your followers’ news feeds. If you don’t promote your post, only a fraction of your followers will ever see it." 

Facebook's changes mean that only about 16% of all your followers now see your regular posts. If you want more people to see them, you have to pay around $50. Even for family photos and LOL Cat videos.
~ ~ ~So does all this mean the indie movement is over?

Not at all. Simon and Schuster wouldn't be making their clueless foray into self-publishing if they thought indie publishing was going to diminish.  

But I think it's important not to think of it as the "Kindle" movement any more. I think the "revolution" needs to wean itself from the Mighty Zon and Facebook to be truly "indie".

The truth is, "indie" is a misnomer for someone who is 100% dependent on a mega-corporation. Yes, when you publish on Amazon you're an "independent contractor" rather than an employee, but that isn't necessarily a ticket to financial independence.

I think the indies of the future will need to focus on smaller outlets like Smashwords, Kobo and Barnes and Noble, even though they may require more initial work.

Smashwords may be a little cumbersome, but it is a truly "independent" company. Mark Coker started it because he's an indie author himself, and I think right now he still only has about thirteen employees. It's still a very "indie" operation.

And a number of indies are finding Smashwords is their best source of revenue. Horror author Edward M. Grant said on the Passive Voice blog this week,

"I’ve sold about 4x as many e-books through Smashwords and its distributors as through Amazon in the last three months, and made more money on most of the sales."

If you want to support independent publishing, look for ebook titles to buy at Smashwords before clicking automatically to Amazon. You can buy a book there for your Kindle, Nook, Kobo, iPad or any other device just as easily as with Amazon. And there are a whole lot of great books free. (Shameless plug: My comic mystery SHERWOOD, LTD is free on Smashwords.) Leaving your reviews on Smashwords instead of Amazon may also have a greater impact. Certainly your review will have a better chance of a long shelf-life.

Kobo is another very author-friendly retailer that's just beginning to hit its stride. They're the biggest online book retailer in Canada, where they started, and now they've been acquired by e-commerce giant, Rakuten, they're getting a good chunk of the global market.

British indie superstar Saffina Desforges says Kobo is blitzing the airwaves with adverts for their mini ereaders, which are "cute and back lit--with a very attractive price tag of 40 quid."

Kobo reps tell me they plan to start forums and discussion groups to rival the Kindleboards. Let's hope they'll be monitored by polite Canadians so we can leave the crankypants Kindleboarders behind to snipe at each other in the Amazon jungle.

Let me be clear: I'm not telling indies to abandon Amazon. It still has 43% of the ebook market--which may go up again with the phenomenal success of the new Kindle Fire tablet.

And I think KDP Select is great for launching a book, but I suggest using it for the minimum of three months. Do your freebies and get your title and name out there. But then I think it's best to opt out and spread your book to as many platforms as possible.

Amazon's shift to favoring the traditional publishers may mean fewer "Kindle Millionaires," but I have no doubt there will be new Indie E-Book Millionaires.

For the new writers out there who are on the fence about self-publishing, my advice is to keep your options open. Don't make your decision based on old news. The new digital imprints and unagented submissions at Random House and HarperCollins could be game-changers. (They are offering real publishing contracts: the opposite of Simon and Schuster's vanity publishing imprint.)

And don’t forget there are wonderful small digital publishers like mine who pay great royalties and take all the financial risk by providing cover design, editing, formatting and even some marketing. A niche publisher that carries only your genre and targets your market can be a very good choice for a newbie writer who is not an expert in business or marketing. (Just make sure the publisher is legit and check them out with Writer Beware. If you have to pay up front or sign away any rights, you don't want to go there.)

Because now more than ever, indies will have to become market-savvy entrepreneurs. Here's advice from Kristen McLean at Tools of Change for Publishing.

"In order to be well-equipped for this new environment, we think authors and content creators need as much training in business and publishing expertise as they do in writing. They need to understand deep structural issues like the way data flows around the industry, new modes of discovery, new thinking about consumer behavior, how to read the numbers, the potential of new technology, and how to build an effective team around themselves so they can run their businesses."

One way for authors to keep up with publishing business news is to follow Jane Friedman, who has launched a new link list today of Best Business Advice for Writers.

Whether or not Amazon is "dumping" the indies, it's time to rethink the rules that have been working for self- and small publishers for the past four years. We all need to plan innovative marketing strategies that involve smaller, more indie-friendly companies.

You don't want to find you've escaped the oppression of the Big Six only to be squashed by the Big Zon.


Book News: Anne's new Camilla Randall mystery, NO PLACE LIKE HOME will be launching next week. It's set in San Luis Obispo, "the happiest town on earth" and explores how close we all are to homelessness. (I'm totally in love with this cover by Laura Morrigan.)

Also, we'll be having some exciting give-aways of ebooks AND paper books for HOW TO BE A WRITER IN THE E-AGE...AND KEEP YOUR E-SANITY on this blog and Catherine Ryan Hyde's next week. Stop by for a chance to win free books!

Frazzled? Frustrated? Going Mental? 6 Ways to Beat the Breakdown

I think it gets worse at this time of year. The holiday frenzy adds its own brand of crazy to our already pressured lives. I talked about that pressure a couple of weeks ago in my post on White (or Red) Queen Days: Why Are We Running as Fast As We Can to Stay in the Same Place?

It seemed to resonate with other writers, because the post got thousands of hits, and Porter Anderson mentioned it in his Writing on the Ether post last week, agreeing that it's increasingly hard to survive on "the accelerating authorial treadmill."

Now here's some advice from Ruth Harris, who's been surviving in this crazy business for a lot of years now and has figured out how to keep the frazzles at bay.

Six Ways to Beat the Breakdownby Ruth Harris
[image error] You’ve got a book to write, a cover to create, tweets to tweet and pins to Pin. There’s metadata, pricing decisions, giveaways, keywords, tagging, liking, formatting and facing FB. Your lists have lists, your back is killing you and your eyes are crossed from so many hours in front of the computer.

There are 1000 things to do and, sometimes, it feels like 999 of them are driving you batshit crazy.

You feel overwhelmed and out of control.

We’ve all been there, done that. Anne and me included. We decided it was time to take a step back and figure out how to be a writer in the Twenty-first Century without going bonkers.

1) Know your trigger points. What is it that absolutely, positively guarantees a meltdown? One more email that must be dealt with? A blurb that resists your creativity? A looming & leering deadline?

For me, it’s dinner when I’ve been working hard all day and am running on fumes. I don’t even always know how I feel when I’m in that state but Michael has learned to recognize the warning sighs (You think a crabby, cranky wife might be a tip-off?) Even though I love to cook, he knows when I’ve had enough and should stay the %#%!! out of the kitchen lest the pots & pans feel my wrath.

Born and bred in Manhattan, he’s a true New Yorker who reaches for the phone. There’s Afghan, pizza, Turkish, Chinese, A hamburgers, deli sandwiches and the long-running pasta palace nearby so when dinner is the tipping-point, we (he) knows the warning signs, has learned how to deal & keeps me out of trouble.

Whatever your own trigger points, it’s essential to recognize them (or have a spouse/kid/best friend who does) and can come up with a strategy to fend them off before you have a meltdown.

2) Recognize your limits. You’ve uploaded your new book to Amazon, Nook, Kobo and Apple, approached 10 book bloggers requesting a review, edited the first half of your next book, tweeted and posted to your blog. You took your oldest to the dentist and your youngest to ballet class. You hit the supermarket, the dry cleaner and the drugstore.

Uh. Really?

Don’t you think you might be pushing it? Don’t you think you should learn to prioritize? Don’t you think allowing a little space in your schedule might be a good move? Haven’t you heard of delegating? Does the laundry really have to be done tonight? And addressing those Christmas/Hannukah/ Kwanza cards? Can’t one of the kids help? Wouldn’t one of the neighbors, recently retired and sort of bored, enjoy lending a hand in exchange for a free book or a tray of your fabulous brownies?

You don’t need me to tell you’re not superman or superwoman. You need to tell yourself and keep reminding yourself. Take the pedal off the metal, back off, slow down, pace yourself.

3) Dump the OCD tendencies. IOW, don’t torture yourself with perfection because perfection is a fantasy. When I was preparing my backlist books for epub, I was sort of shocked to find a few typos and other minor mistakes. Not many, to be sure, but a few. Books published back in the day went through an editor, a copyeditor, and a proof reader. Not to mention the fact that the author (me) had two more go-rounds: galleys and page proofs.

You’d think that with that many eyes, no mistake would survive but you would be wrong. You should aim for an excellent book but not a perfect book because perfection simply doesn’t exist and the big advantage of cyber-pub is that if a reader spots an error you missed, you can fix it. Not possible in TradPub.

Mr. Monk solves crimes, but you aren’t going to solve the riddle of the perfect book. Hire an editor if you need to. Get your best friend, your crit partner, your neighbor who loves to read to do a careful proofing, then let it go.

4) Don't become a tech wreck: get help. Does uploading a cover image to specified measurements in KBs and MBs and pixels have you tearing your hair out? You mean you don’t even know what KBs and MBs are? And pixels? What’s pixels? Drunken elves? Does creating a text link cause you angst? Is Photoshop your Rubicon? And don’t even mention HTML, JPG & PNG.

Kids grew up with tech & if tech is turning you into a wreck, look for a kid—maybe even your own kid or the neighbor’s kid—to bail you out. Make a deal and pay them because what they do in saving your sanity is well worth it. Or, as the ad says, priceless.

5) Recognize burnout and deal with it. If you’re running on empty, give yourself a break (literally). Meditate, take a yoga class, have a 10-minute massage (most manicure places offer them). Read a good book. Watch a season’s worth of Homeland. Go to the movies, a concert, the ballet. Make a lunch date even if it’s only with yourself. Take the time to catch up with an old friend—gossip is a superb refueling technique & a great source of new ideas.

Here ares some suggestions for dealing with burnout ideas from other writers at the top of their game—

Mark Chisnell: Ace thriller author of the Kindle chart-toppers, The Defector , The Wrecking Crew and The Fulcrum Files —as well as contributor to leading magazines and newspapers including the Guardian and Esquire.

His advice: balance mental with physical:

“I've always felt that because writing is such a sedentary job, it's really important to balance the mental stresses with some physical ones—usually with some sport. So I try very hard to do a mix of yoga and aerobic exercise, and do some sort of physical activity every week. Football, surfing or mountain biking are my preferred forms of torture, but I'll take whatever the weather and geography will allow, even if it's just a run round the block. If I keep to this routine I find that I can keep everything else in perspective, and don't get to the frazzled and overwhelmed stage.”

Donna Fasano, superstar author of bestselling sweet romances—her latest is Her Fake Romance which earned a "Top Pick" 5-star rating from HarlequinJunkie.com.

She deals with the frazzle like this:

“There are always those two great and well-known standby remedies in my house: chocolate (for daytime frazzles) and wine (the perfect solution to evening frazzles). However, several other coping strategies have served me well. I find solace in nature, so I take a lot of walks. I visit friends. I take in a movie, usually a comedy because I love to laugh. I often will find myself up to my elbows in flour (I love to bake), or stirring up some new recipe in a pot (I love to cook). One of my favorite coping mechanisms is to switch gears, literally. I love my manual 6-speed convertible Miata. When I return from a glorious top-down drive, I don't seem to mind picking up my much-lighter Ms Overwhelmed, slinging her over my shoulder, and getting back to the endless tasks that come with the job of being an Indie Author.”

6) Go Noir. Scream it out and laugh about it. Considering all the things that go wrong, that get screwed up, that have you in fits, a sense of humor is your Number One offense & defense. When all else fails, when you look in the mirror and see Quasimodo, don’t scream: laugh. Be bitter, be outraged. You have the right, damn it!

Now that reviews are disappearing, your buy buttons have mysteriously evaporated and ancient covers from a long-forgotten Transylvanian edition have replaced the elegant & expensive covers on your author page, noir does the job.

You can even write a blistering email to the guilty cyber vendor invoking every known noun, verb, adverb & adjective deriving from the ubiquitous and much-loved f-word--as long as you don't hit "send."

On second thought, make that a capital F!

How about you, scriveners? Are you feeling the burnout? Is your family begging you to take a vacation...preferably alone? Is it all getting to be too much? How do you cope with the frazzles?

Blog News: Anne will be visiting Romance University on Friday, November 30th, where she'll be talking about Slow Blogging--another way to combat the creeping enfrazzelation.

What's Next in Publishing? Literary Agent Laurie McLean Looks in Her Crystal Ball

This week, we're honored to host Laurie McLean, a senior agent at the Larsen-Pomada Literary Agency who is also a pioneer in the indie revolution. Since she's been pretty good at predicting the big changes in the publishing industry in recent years, I asked her to look into her crystal ball and tell us what she sees coming up in 2013.

Laurie is one of the driving forces behind the San Francisco Writers Conference and San Francisco Writers' University. For more than 20 years she ran a public relations agency in California’s Silicon Valley, so she is wise in the ways of marketing and business. She is also a novelist herself, so she can empathize with what we're all going through in these wild and crazy times in the publishing business.



Laurie McLean’s Crystal Ballby  Literary Agent Laurie McLean
I am really taking a risk by making any kind of prediction here, since there are startling developments in publishing every single day. But what Anne demands, Anne receives. She’s got that kind of blogging power! So here are my predictions (with a little perspective) on the next steps for the book publishing industry.

THE PAST:

Before we get to the future of publishing, let’s all think back to 2008. A mere four years ago. The Amazon Kindle debuted. So did Smashwords. So did Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. This made it easy and profitable for authors to self-publish all kinds of writing. No more gatekeepers and hurdles. Just write and publish. Score a big one for our side!

In 2010 the first Kindle Millionaires were born, and vanity publishing was swept away in a tsunami of respectability once and for all. Sure, some assisted self-publishing options are still out there fleecing the unsuspecting. But for the most part, most writers know how to create an eBook and get wide retail distribution for free, and create a Print On Demand book for nearly nothing.

THE PRESENT:

This year, traditional publishing fought back with eBook originals, higher royalty rates that even escalated the more eBooks you sold, a ramp up in work for hire projects, eSerials, price wars, free novellas as marketing vehicles, and a price drop for book one in a series when book two was about to pop. Whoa!

We also saw the agent’s role changing (I am an agent, so my views are both informed and tainted).

Agents became publishers, self-publishing guides, freelance editors and specialists. I love it because while each agent knows the business of publishing, they also each have special skills and now they can come to the fore. Plus it means we probably won’t become obsolete in this brave new frontier.

I started two ePublishing companies this year with two of my award winning clients: Joyride Books for out-of-print backlist romance titles; and Ambush Books for out-of-print classic tween and teen titles. Bringing classics back so today’s reader can enjoy them makes me feel great. I think we’ll see the trend of agent-hybrids, or what I call author managers, accelerating in 2013.

Also this year the Department of Justice dropped the hammer on big publishers. Some settled (Hachette, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins) and some are fighting the government’s charge of price fixing (Apple, Penguin, Macmillan). What this will ultimately mean for the future of eBook pricing (and author royalties) remains unknown. Will this benefit the reader or create a monopoly…or both? The jury’s still out. Literally! Most feel that Amazon has already won the day. But my high tech background taught me to never count on the dominance of a clear leader. Remember how IBM owned the PC market? That is until Dell and Microsoft pulled the rug out from under them. Then there was Apple. And Google. So Amazon, watch your back for the smaller, faster, more nimble tech innovators in publishing.


THE FUTURE:

Okay, here’s where the big risk taking happens. What will happen in 2013?

I have been predicting for six months that one of the Big Six would be acquired. But I guessed that Amazon, who is the only publisher with beaucoup bucks, would buy HarperCollins or Simon & Schuster.

I was totally blindsided by the Penguin/Random House merger.




Will this open the floodgates for further mergers?

Will we have the Big Three instead of the Big Six?


I’m still holding out for Amazon to buy its way onto brick and mortar bookshelves through the credibility of an established publisher. Buying Marshall Cavendish’s and Dorchester’s backlist was a solid start. But let’s face it…they’re not HarperCollins. I think Amazon is not done buying publishers.Next up: Mobile Publishing. There are six billion, yes, billion, mobile phones worldwide, with China, America, and India as the biggest markets with the most growth potential. Smart phones also make nifty eReaders and most people carry their smart phones with them everywhere. Some even keep them by their beds while they sleep (you know who you are). So watch for short content, serialized stories, cliffhanger endings, flash fiction, articles, novelettes, and more experiments in publishing designed specifically for mobile computers. Text walking (and crashing) could be minor compared to being lost in the virtual world of a novel and ending up lost somewhere in the city!Publishing in the Cloud. Ah, yes, the cloud. It’s where data is going to be stored from here on out. It just makes too much sense not to do it that way. Regardless of your device, wouldn’t it be nice to have a ubiquitous library available to you anywhere? Google Play, the Kindle Cloud Reader, and iCloudBooks would be instantly available to you no matter what tablet/laptop/Kindle/Kobo/ iPhone/Android you have handy. Seamless bookmarking anyone? I’m in!Digital Paper/Folding Screens: We’ve just shaved off the tip of the iceberg with cool reading devices. How about digital paper that you can shove into your briefcase and unroll to read a full-page article or book page or app? Or a folding screen that fits in your pocket for quick reads or unfolds for larger types of applications? This technology is already here, they just have to bring the price down so it’s affordable.And talk about being affordable. How about the $13 eReader. Yes, you read that right. A German company has created the TXTR Beagle and is pricing it at $13 US, available worldwide. It is subsidized by the cell phone companies and it is bare bones basic. Works on AAA batteries. But for people who cannot afford even a $70 Kindle, this is inching us towards the razor and the blade with the eReader being the razor and content being the blades. I know what’s on my Christmas list.And finally, an easy one. Apps and enhanced eBooks are going to explode in 2013. They’re already phenomenal for children’s picture books. To me picture book apps are the modern equivalent of the Fisher-Price baby dashboard with the cranking handle, clicking steering wheel, beeper button, etc. And that’s just scraping the surface in creativity. I predict apps are going to start popping up for all kinds of books in all kinds of genres. I can’t wait. I mean you can already turn your book into a basic app using Smashwords. For free. What are you waiting for?
So tell me…

What do you think is going to happen in publishing in 2013?


Laurie McLean is the Senior Agent at Larsen Pomada Literary Agents in San Francisco. She represents adult genre fiction (romance, fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, suspense, thrillers, etc.) as well as children’s middle grade and young adult books. To query Laurie, please follow the the submission guidelines on her submissions page.


Laurie is also the Dean of San Francisco Writers University,  which offers classes on the craft of writing, the business of publishing and technological advances in both. In 2012 Laurie co-founded two ePublishing companies with two of her client partners: JoyrideBooks.com for vintage out-of-print romance books with her client Linda Wisdom; and AmbushBooks.com for out-of-print classic tween and teen books with her client Douglas Rees. 


Many thanks to all the bloggers who hosted and mentioned Anne and this blog this week, including Porter Anderson, who gave us some nice cyberink at Writing on the Ether and Debra Eve, who spotlighted Anne's books at Later Bloomer and Write it Sideways. A big thank you to D.D. Scott at the Reader's Guide to E-Publishing for posting my travelogue/love letter to Lincolnshire, the setting of SHERWOOD, LTD. And I much appreciate the Golden Review of THE GATSBY GAME at Indie Authors Anonymous.

And remember that Anne's comic mystery SHERWOOD, LTD is FREE at Smashwords and KOBO.

The Biggest Problem Facing the Beginning Novelist—And 6 Tips for Avoiding It

Creating compelling narrative takes more than great characters, sparkling dialogue and exciting action.  All those elements have to come together in one story. 
One story.
Not a series of episodes. 
As creatures of the television era, a lot of us tend to think in episodes rather than one long story arc. I know I do. My first book, which I worked on for a decade, contains what is probably my very best writing. Every scene is honed to perfection. 
But it's not a novel: it's a series of episodes. I had story, but no plot. The book is unpublishable. No wonder it got over 300 rejections. 
It took a very kind agent to read the whole thing and tell me what was wrong before I put it aside. "It reads like a sit-com" is what she said. Finally, that "aha" moment: I had episodes; not a novel.
I know I'm not the only writer who fights the episode habit. Episodic storytelling is the number one problem I see confronting the new writer. And sometimes seasoned authors run into the problem, too. 
One of my favorite movies about writers is Wonder Boys, based on Michael Chabon's prize-winning novel.  In the film, Michael Douglas plays a writer who can't finish his book.  Everybody assumes he's blocked, but—as we discover when he opens a closet stacked with reams of typed pages—the problem is he can't make the story end. 
I'm willing to bet that Michael Douglas's character's problem was episodic storytelling. 
Look at the trouble TV writers have ending a series. The weak last episodes of Seinfeld and The Sopranos come to mind.  And don't get me started with Lost...
Episodic storytelling happens when one scene doesn't generate the problem of the next scene.  You could shuffle the scenes around and pretty much the same things would happen. 
E.M. Forster illustrated this in one of his famous lectures on novel-writing: "'The king died and then the queen died' is a story. 'The king died, and then queen died of grief' is a plot."

You can just as well say "The queen died and then the king died." But the "dying of grief" makes no sense in reverse order. 
To write a successful novel, you need a plot. Just the one. Each scene needs its own story arc, but we also need one over-arching plot to compel us from scene to scene. 
So how do we do that? 
Here are a few things I've learned that helped me kick the episodic storytelling habit:
1) Start a novel with the ending in mind. I always do this now. After my disaster with the Novel That Would Not End, sometimes I even write the last scene first. It never ends up being the actual last scene, but it helps me enormously to have it sitting there as a goal. 
2) Write lots of short fiction before starting that first novel. If you think of your novel as a short piece stretched out, it can help you keep that plot in mind. If I'd spent that decade writing short fiction instead of polishing up that endless collection of chapters, I'd probably have reached my career goals much faster.  (And I'd have a ton of stories that can be published again and again. Stories have a long shelf life and are now pure gold in the age of the Kindle Single.)
3) Write a logline before you start.  I'm not telling you to outline. I know we should, but I can't bear to outline myself. Stories are so much more interesting to write when you don't know exactly what's going to happen. But you want to have the basic story in your head.  Try plugging your idea into this formula: When______happens  to_____, he/she must_____or face_____.  (More on loglines in my post on Hooks, Loglines and Pitches.) 
4) Make sure your story has an antagonist. Again, just the one. This doesn't necessarily mean a mustache-twirling Snidely Whiplash bad-guy. But you need a force working against the hero that's powerful enough to keep the plot going for an entire novel. Your hero can't just slay a new dragon in each chapter. He needs to live in constant danger from the Big Momma Dragon who never lets go and can't be slain by ordinary means. And Big Momma Dragon has to get meaner and more dangerous as her little dragons get vanquished.
5) Create characters who act rather than are acted upon. The protagonist's actions and choices should cause each new event. When you have a hero who causes things to happen by her actions (no matter how stupid) the story is propelled forward. You can do E. M. Forster one better with something like: "The king died, then the queen faked her own death to run off with a hot young dragon-slayer."
6) Consider writing your first novel in a genre with built-in structure. Romances and Mysteries have firm story structures. Romances need a HEA (Happy Ever After ending) with lovers united. Mysteries have to end with the revelation of who dunnit.  This doesn't mean you have to give up your favorite genre. Women's fiction can have a traditional romance story structure. So can historicals, fantasy and sci-fi. The mystery structure can be used in almost any genre from chick lit to scifi, and the unsolved mystery doesn't have to involve murder.
Many thanks to Pip Conner for his email this week that sparked this blogpost. He asked how to deal with that nagging feeling something isn't right with the WIP--even though you've been polishing forever. I told him most first novels have structure  problems. It's always worth a check of your story structure if something doesn't seem "quite right." 
Ask yourself these questions: 
Could you remove a scene or two and still have the same story outcome? Does the plot build from one inciting incident to an inevitable climax? Do you have both a protagonist and an antagonist? Does the protagonist have a goal that isn't achieved until the end?Does your book have three well-defined acts? (Here's a nice graphic on the 3-act structure.)
That scene that doesn't quite work may turn out to be a detour that moves us away from the plot and you may have to eliminate it. (Don't you hate that? Remember to save it for another novel or a short story someday.)
Obviously, it helps if you start the novel with some of the above things in mind, but even if you didn't, you can often fix a structure problem if you step away from the manuscript and re-examine it later with fresh eyeballs. 
Here's what I advised Pip:  

My strongest piece of advice is this: put it in a drawer and walk away. Close the file and don't look at it for two months. Go read a book in your genre. Then read another. Then read some books on story structure.
Robert McKee's STORY--although it specifically addresses screenplays--is the structure Bible. (But I just saw the Kindle edition is $23--yikes--so get it from the library.) Another oldie but goodie is James N. Frey's HOW TO WRITE A DAMN GOOD NOVEL. And Kristen Lamb's blog  has some fantastic advice on structure and the antagonist. Do a search on her blog for "The Big Boss Troublemaker." And if you're a techie sort, GalleyCat has a whole list of programs this week that help you outline your novel.

Then start a new book or story. Do not open that file for the whole two months.

When you get back to that old WIP, I'll bet you'll see a solution.
How about you, scriveners? Do you have recommendations for some good books or blogs on story structure? Have you ever written a Novel That Would Not End? Do you struggle with structure in your novels? 
COMING UP ON THE BLOG! Next Sunday we're going to present "LAURIE McLEAN'S CRYSTAL BALL"-- a visit from the dynamic literary agent Laurie McLean of Larsen-Pomada, talking about what she sees coming up in the publishing world. And on December 16th, we'll have our annual visit from Romance author and uber-blogger Roni Loren talking about how authors can best use Facebook and Twitter.

OTHER NEWS: I'll be interviewed at WRITE IT SIDEWAYS  on Monday, November 12. And don't forget that SHERWOOD, LTD, a Camilla Randall mystery, is FREE on Kobo and Smashwords. The Smashwords blurbitude didn't come out quite right--so it's credited to Saffina Desforges, who wrote the forward. But it got a nice review the first 24 hours it was up.

Reviewer David Keith said "It's not yer typical whodunnit, nor is the protagonist anything like a cop. Ms. Allen (or Ms. Deforges, as the case may be) has crafted a wily tale of murder, deceit, and intrigue that can stand with the best of them. Her characters are all too real and her dialogue took me from laughter to chills to suspicion of everybody in the book." FREEEEEE!

The White Queen Age: Why Are We Running as Fast as We Can to Stay in the Same Place?

This week I finished the first draft of my fourth Camilla Randall mystery, NO PLACE LIKE HOME, and sent it off to my editor. What a relief!

All my books are comedies, but they have a darker subtext, and this one, dealing with homelessness here in San Luis Obispo, CA— "The Happiest Town on Earth"—took a lot of soul searching. Finishing it left me feeling drained. But satisfied. I'd succeeded in doing some writing I was proud of, and I could enjoy the feeling of job well done.

For about 8 hours.

The next morning, I was confronted with a pile of procrastinated projects that literally brought me to tears. Huge, already-overdue writing projects, this blog, guest posts, plus falling fences, overgrown gardens, put-off doctor visits, unpaid bills, neglected family and friends. And my inbox is crammed with requests to help newbie authors, new literary magazines, and start-up reader/author sites. All worthy enough to be set aside for "when I have time"--whenever that may be.

No rest for the weary.

So I asked myself—when did I sign up for "weary"?





Do I really have to live this frenzied life that is taking such a huge toll on my health and home and friendships...and seems to get me no farther ahead?

In the final three months of last year, I launched five novels and two anthologies--all while keeping up this blog (which I couldn't have done without the wonderful Ruth Harris. Thanks, Ruth!) But it was pretty much the most exhausting thing I've ever done. I thought I'd get to rest afterward. But after a bout of pneumonia in January, my pace went back to frantic. I had a nonfic book to co-author and launch in June, the new Camilla mystery to write, plus dozens of guest posts, bloghops, blogtours, radio interviews, daily Tweeting, Facebooking, etc., and presentations at a seminar and a writers' conference to prepare

I know my schedule is nothing compared to what most authors face. In fact, I'm constantly hearing the message that I should be doing more. Lots more. And I have a wonderful, helpful publisher--so I have nothing like the workload of most indie authors.

But I know I can't keep up this pace for much longer without facing another health crisis. And a health crisis will eat up any profits I might make from producing and marketing more books.

On the morning I woke up to the tsunami of procrastinated tasks, I saw a tweet from a reader who has taken my Slow Blogging posts to heart. The wonderful Marcia Richards wrote a plea for blogging sanity that reminded me of something kind of important:

I'm a "Slow Blog" person, not a "work-24-hours-a-day-and-sleep-when-your-dead" person.

My nonfic book is called HOW TO BE A WRITER IN THE E-AGE…and Keep your E-Sanity! (co-authored with Catherine Ryan Hyde.)

So why have I been willing to give up my own "e-sanity"?

I think I started to forget who I am.

I call these crazed times "White Queen Days," after Lewis Carroll’s White Queen, who ruled a chessboard kingdom where "It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place." (Yikes. I stand corrected. it's the RED Queen who said this--the picture above should have been a clue, Anne. The White Queen did say the quote below. She also said, "Jam tomorrow, jam yesterday, but never jam today,"which is almost as good. Thanks Lexi Revellian for the correction! Yet another reason why we shouldn't write when were're on burn-out.)

The White Queen offered Alice this advice for surviving in her "Looking Glass" realm: "Speak in French when you can’t remember the English for a thing; turn out your toes as you walk, and remember who you are!"

Pretty good advice for the surreal world of 2012. Well, the French and the toe thing—not so much—but “remember who you are” is true wisdom.

Wisdom that I’ve been ignoring. I hope to remedy that.

The dictators of the new publishing paradigm say the average author should have followings in social media, including Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Goodreads, RedRoom, Libararything—and all the new and wonderful sites emerging daily. (There's a new reader site that looks like a nice alternative to the sometimes cumbersome Goodreads, called Readmill, which really does look intriguing if you've got more time than me.) Oh, and then those are those book trailers we're supposed to be filming...

And we're also supposed to blog three to five times a week.

All while we churn out twelve novels a year

Plus keep a day job and a tidy home, exercise daily, contribute to the community, and perform all the duties of the perfect parent/spouse, of course.

I think it's wonderful so many authors out there have the remarkable superpowers to be able to do all that.

But I'm not a super-hero. (You do not want to see me wearing my underwear over spandex pants. Seriously.)

I'm not even "the average author."

And you know what? Nobody is. We're not machines. We each have our own gifts to bring to the table.

I remember an old folk song from the pre-Civil War South I heard as a kid. It had a verse that resonated in my small, way-too-sensitive soul:

Blue jay pulled a four-horse plowSparrow, why can't you?Because my legs is little and longAnd they might get broke in two.
Yes, there are blue jays out there doing the work of four horses. They are amazing and due all the credit in the world.

But a lot of us are sparrows--and we're quite good at being sparrows.

The fact we aren't horse-impersonating blue jays shouldn't be held against us.

I think Harper Lee made as important a contribution to our culture with her one novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, as Prentiss Ingraham did with his 600+ books. (Note I had to provide link to tell you who Mr. Ingraham was, but not Ms. Lee.)

I think we all benefit from diversity. I know I learn more from reading books by a  lot of different authors than I would reading the same number of books by one author.

Agent Rachelle Gardner reminded us recently that it's going to take quality, not quantity, to stand out in this rapidly expanding marketplace. She says "The quality of your writing is going to determine if people want to read what you write."

And after telling us a year ago that all authors should have daily blogs with 15K hits or more a month, she's finally come around to the idea that blogging may not be for everyone.

I'm not saying that some authors can't produce a huge number of quality books in quick succession while blogging and Tweeting brilliant bon mots every fifteen minutes.

But personally, I can't.

Natalie Whipple, a successful children’s author, has a popular blog. Last year she wrote wrote a post about what she wished she’d done differently in her career. It was enlightening.

Here are a few of the things she’d do if she had a second chance:

• Spend less time online
• Spend more time reading
• Spend more time with her family
• Spend more time “living”
• Spend less time “waiting”
• Spend less time on news

She realized she’d been running in place so long, she’d been missing out on the things that mattered. I re-read that recently and it really hit home for me.

Maybe we can keep running like Alice, clinging to the White Queen, for a certain amount of time. But every human has to rest sometime. Hey, even the Lord rested on the seventh day.

We are bombarded with constant White Queen messages on the Interwebz: What—you’re not on Pinterest yet?! There’s another blog hop you’ve GOT to join!! Social media is 24/7!! Look what you missed while you slept, you lazy slacker!!! Whatever you do will never be enough!!!! Look at all the people who are writing/selling more than you!!!!!!

But yanno--I'm pretty sure all that tech is supposed to be here to serve us, not the other way around.

So if you're feeling as pressured as I am, be brave: shut out the noise. Write at your own pace. Ignore social media for a while. Read the “Slow Blog Manifesto”.

Compare yourself to no one. You may not be keeping up with Prentiss Ingraham's stats, but you may be creating the next To Kill a Mockingbird.

Take the White Queen’s advice: remember who you are…and keep your e-sanity!

I'd love to have writers at all stages of their writing journeys weigh in here. Are you feeling pressure to do endless tasks that get you nowhere?  This is NaNoWriMo month, so a lot of people are busy trying to access their own White Queens.  I think NaNo is a fabulous exercise if you've got the time to do it--at least once. But for the rest of us, maybe it's good to remember that we don't have to be in a state of frenzied activity to be productive...and that slow and steady can still win the race. What do you think, scriveners? 

TO ALL THE SURVIVORS OF SUPERSTORM SANDY: Our prayers are with you. I hope you have your power back or that you will soon. A catastrophe like this gives all of us a reminder of what's really important. Ruth Harris lives in Manhattan, but she seems to have come through it relatively unscathed. I thank her for being such a trouper and keeping up with the blog last week in spite of everything.


BOOK NEWS: SHERWOOD, LTD, joins THE GATSBY GAME and FOOD OF LOVE in HARD COPY. They are all now available as very nice paperbacks for only $8.99 (£6.29 UK) on Amazon. And in ebooks, SHERWOOD, LTD is FREE for Kobo! And free on Smashwords, too. (Please ignore the glitches. My publisher will correct my name and give some description besides "blah" very soon. )

When the Manners Doctor, Camilla Randall, flies into Robin Hood airport with a suitcase in one hand and a book contract in the other, she thinks she's leaving all her problems behind and is about to start a new life. If you look very carefully you may just spot the Sheriff of Nottingham, Maid Marian and even Little John hidden away. But as for Robin Hood himself... You'll just have to read it and find out.

COMING UP ON THE BLOG! On November 18th, we'll have a visit from the dynamic literary agent Laurie McLean of Larsen-Pomada, talking about the exciting new happenings in the publishing world. And on December 16th, we'll have another visit from uber-blogger Roni Loren talking about how authors can best use Facebook and Twitter.

8 Sure-Fire Ways to Improve Your Book—Tips from a New York Times Bestselling Author

This week we have some serious nuts-and-bolts advice from our own Ruth Harris. Ruth learned this stuff from both sides of the editorial desk, as an editor at Bantam & Dell, publisher at Kensington--and as a New York Times bestselling author of women's fiction and thrillers. Since I'm in the middle of editing my new Camilla Randall mystery this week, I'm using these tips right now
Number 8 is the biggest problem for me. It's amazing how many times I say the same thing. Just because your critique group has to be reminded of the plot every week doesn't mean your reader needs a recap in every chapter. Yup. I gotta use that delete button.
And remember Ruth has her own blog now, which provides links to wacky and fascinating news stories that can help jumpstart ideas for your own fiction: Ruth Harris's Blog.

If Ruth doesn't respond to comments in a timely way this week, she may be fighting the effects of the Frankenstorm about to hit the East Coast of the US. Take care, all of you back there in the path of Sandy and her stormy friends!...Anne
8 WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR BOOK—AND MAKE YOURSELF A BETTER WRITERby Ruth Harris
I’ve been a professional writer for over four decades. I started out writing cover copy and flap copy at Bantam and Dell, then built a freelance career writing magazine articles. Finally, I graduated to writing paperback original mysteries, then to women’s fiction and eventually to well-reviewed hard cover publication and appearances on the New York Times Bestseller List.

If you like TV's "Revenge" this is for you!None of it came fast but, over time, I became aware of my bad habits, figured out how to correct them and my books improved. My advantage was that I was an editor and worked with lots of writers, helping them to make their books better & in the process learning more and different ways in which writers undermine their own work.

Their problems and my problems won’t necessarily be your problems but I’m reasonably sure some of my “fixes” will show you how to take your draft and greatly improve its quality.

1. Embrace the power of the delete button. In my experience, cutting almost always makes a book better, more readable, more exciting. I think it was Elmore Leonard who advised taking out all the unnecessary words.

Specifically, that means delete all the spongy, weasely, weak words—you know, the ones that beat around the bush, the ones that don’t get to the point, the ones that aren’t crisp and precise, the ones that drag out a description without adding anything to it except length.

I duplicate my document before I begin so I can go back in case I get too enthusiastic but then I go ahead and cut like a maniac. Even though it seems terrifying, take out everything that doesn’t advance your story or help define your characters. See if the resulting clarity doesn’t vastly improve your book.

Sorry about this, but don’t just kill your darlings. Kill everything that doesn’t move the story forward. Any gems that don’t make the cut can be saved in a “future” file and used in another book where they pull their weight.

2.  Sharpen dialogue. Just as you leave our the um’s and ah’s of real life, leave out chitchat about the weather, the local gossip, the “warming up” before you get to the nitty-gritty.  No one wants to wade through digressions or long speeches that have nothing to do with your story or characters. Ernest Hemingway said that he wrote narrative in long hand but used the typewriter for dialogue—the rat-tat-tat was similar to the speed of talk.

Dialogue should be short and go fast. A scene with dialogue should have lots of white space. Allow your characters to give speeches at your own peril!

3.  Don't confuse the reader. It's "Dick and Jane": notice it’s not "James and Jane" and that’s for a reason. You want to help the reader as much as possible—it’s known as readability—and you’re not doing yourself or your book a favor by screwing up when you name your characters.

Example: The hero is Ken Brady. The heroine is Kathleen Boies. The villain is Kendall Brackner. The names are similar and the initials are identical.

Trust me, you are not enchanting your reader. You are driving him/her crazy, struggling to remember which of the K’s are OK and which aren’t.

Make a list of all the character names in your book and change names and initials wherever they need to be changed. Don’t confuse your reader. A confused reader is an unhappy reader and you know what that means: no repeat sales.

4. Utilize the almighty cliffhanger. The cliffhanger is the secret writer’s key to compelling the reader to turn the page. End every chapter on a note of suspense or irresolution. No exceptions. The reader, dying to know what happens next, will turn the page, will stay up till three AM to finish your book and then the next day tell her/his friends “you have to read it!”

The cliffhanger worked in beginning-of-the-Twentieth-Century weekly movie serials, in soap operas on radio through the 40’s and 50’s and then on TV. The cliffhanger hangs on today, you will find the little buggers right before the commercial break.

The cliffhanger worked then and it works now. Use it.

5. Have a flight plan. I’m a pantser, not a plotter. For me, a detailed outline results in a book that’s DOA. However, I do plan ahead in the form of lists of key scenes, turning points, notes about characters—anything I can think of that will propel the book along.

If outlines work for you, keep using them. But if you’re a pantser, at least begin with your fly zipped and your belt buckled. Let’s call our no-system system a flight plan.

6.  Know your crutch words. Every writer has them. To this day, I use “begin” even though I know better. To this day, I have to go back over my manuscript and get rid of it. Example: “She began to run for the bus” becomes “She ran for the bus.”

Simpler, more direct and more powerful and yet another example of the power of the delete button.

Do you abuse adverbs? A search for ly will ferret them out.

ID your own crutch words, be on the lookout for them and let them know who’s boss.

7.  Know your genre. You wouldn’t join an ice hockey team if you didn’t know how to skate. Ditto, genre. A hard-boiled romance? Really? With lots of tough talk? Dark alleys and gritty industrial setting? Beaucoup cursing? Well, lotsa luck.

Romance, thrillers, horror, romcom—all have conventions and readers expect those conventions to be honored. Disappoint them, and you and your book are toast.

Do your homework and study the genre(s) you work in. Read widely. Keep up with shifts and changes in the genre. Learn what your readers are looking for and be sure you give it to them. If you don’t, you’re wasting their time and your time.

8. Don't repeat yourself. Once is enough. This is a fairly common problem and not always quick or easy to fix because it involves actual thinking. Be on the lookout for places where you convey the same thought two or three times in different words. Usually, this kind of repetition means the writer hasn’t quite thought through what he/she is trying to say.

If you find yourself falling into this trap, you need to do the hard work of clarifying your thoughts and then conveying them clearly.

Decide exactly what you want to say and then say it. Do it right once and you don’t have to do it again

***.
Which one of these tips is most important for your own editing? If you're a pantser, how much of a "flight plan" do you have in writing? 

COMMENTERS: I've had to turn off the Anonymous comments because of a barrage of robospam. It was either that or put the CAPTCHA  back on. If Blogger won't let you comment, email Anne at annerallen dot allen at gmail dot com and I'll post it. 

I'd also like to have people weigh in. Would you rather I turn the "word verification" back on, or keep the anonymous comments blocked? 


BOOK NEWS!!! After a year's wait, Anne's mystery,  THE GATSBY GAME is now in paperback! Only $8.99 on Amazon US and £6.99 on Amazon UK. It's Anne's most critically acclaimed book--and offers a possible solution to a mystery that has been called one of Hollywood's Ten Most Notorious Sex Scandals. It's also available as a $2.99 ebook on all platforms. (link to Barnes and Noble in the sidebar.)

And guys, you don't have to be afraid this is too much of a "shoe novel" for you: "Dead End Follies" reviewer Benoit Lelievre said "I never thought I would have so much fun reading a chick lit novel, but this was great, even for my hardboiled sensibility." Vine reviewer John Williamson said, "Anne R. Allen has really taken mysteries like this to a new level. This is a guaranteed 5-star read that shouldn't be missed.

Opportunity for short fiction and poetry writers: Suzannah at the fantastic Write it Sideways blog is starting a literary journal that looks as if it's going to be a very prestigious venue for your work. She's also looking for editors and other staff (positions that will look fabulous in a query letter.) Find out more about the new literary magazine, COMPOSE at Write it Sideways.

What if J. K. Rowling had used a Pseudonym? Should Authors Use Different Names for Different Genres?

J.K. Rowling, the richest, most successful author on the planet, has been getting some pretty terrible reviews for her new novel, The Casual Vacancy. I won't quote them here. I think the Guardian's dismissal of it as "Mugglemarch" is probably one of the kinder ones.

A number of readers weighed in on The Passive Voice blog about it, and author Mary Sisson left this comment " If I were her I would have released this under a different name. All anyone is going to do is compare the book to Harry Potter, and then get upset because it’s not Harry Potter."

Other commenters agreed, saying things like,"The trouble with writing a series of such staggering success right off the bat is that inevitably everyone will be saying, 'It wasn’t as good as Harry Potter'."

But in the first three weeks, The Casual Vacancy has sold over one million copies.

So what if she had published it under another name, and kept the publishers from leaking her real identity? Would anybody be buying a pricey book with a ho-hum cover, bad formatting, and an unenticing title--from first-time author, Jo Nobody?

Or what if she'd started from scratch with a new identity, querying agents and editors like the rest of us? I haven't read the book, but I did look at the "peek inside" chapters on Amazon. I don't think the opener would have made it past most of those interns who read agents' slush piles these days. She breaks almost every one of the standard rules for novel openers: She's got a "Robinson Crusoe" opener with a lone character getting up in the morning, musing and flashbacking on page one. Then she kills off the P.O.V. character on page two.

Does that mean I won't read it?

Nope. I can't wait to get my hands on it.

Why?

Because she's J. K. Rowling, one of the world's greatest storytellers.

But if I heard the same stuff about Jo Nobody's book? I probably wouldn't bother.

So for me, the J.K. Rowling brand is the reason I'm going to read the book. And I'm pretty sure it's what motivated most of the million-plus buyers.

A pseudonym might have kept Ms. Rowling from getting those scathing reviews, but would it have got her any sales? Would it have kept her from being published at all?

It certainly would have kept The Casual Vacancy from that central spot in my local supermarket--usually reserved for exciting specials on seasonal Oreos and sugary cereal--instead of the back corner where they put their sad little shelf of books, along with the day-old bread and giant bags of dog food.

So what does this all mean for us mere Muggles? Should we use pseudonyms or not?

Lots of popular authors have done it. Stephen King sometimes wrote as Richard Bachman (complete with a phony book jacket photo reputed to be his agent's insurance agent.); Romance goddess Nora Roberts writes thrillers as J.D. Robb, and Dean Wesley Smith and his wife Katheryn K. Rusch write under dozens of pen names between them.

In fact, D.W.S. thinks authors who DON'T use pseudonyms are lazy and egotistical. He gives "not using a pen name" as his seventh way of "Killing Your Sales One Shot at a Time".

In another post, he gives the following reasons for using a pseudonym:  (I've paraphrased here.)

1) You write "too fast" for traditional publishing and you're only allowed one book a year under your current contract.

2) You want your readers know exactly what to expect from your brand (s).

3) Your writing might adversely affect your day job. (You're a youth minister who writes hard-core erotica.)

4) Your sales didn't live up to your publisher's sales expectations. (You've been told you'll never write in this town again.) 

5) You have family issues (You're telling the thinly disguised story of your Uncle Charlie's secret life as a cabaret singer named Chardonnay.)

6) Your real name is Stephen King.

7) You think this book isn't "good enough" for your brand.

8) You're writing work-for-hire in a branded series (Such as a Star Trek novel.)

Reasons #3, #5 and #6 are excellent arguments for writing under a name other than your own, but not for using MULTIPLE pen names.

Reasons #1, #4 and #8 only affect authors who are bound by old-school publishing contracts. These days, if you want to write fast, or don't fulfill your publisher's outsized expectations, you can simply self-publish. You can build on the brand name that you established as a traditionally-published author instead of going back to square one with a new name.

That leaves #2 and #7. Quite frankly, I don't get #7. Going to all the trouble of building a separate brand for a book you aren't proud of makes no sense to me. If the book isn't working, get an editor or collaborator or put the thing in a drawer and mine it for characters and short stories. I have at least a half dozen of them.

So the only compelling reason for MULTIPLE pen names is:

#2: You want to let readers know exactly what to expect when they pick up a book with that name on it.

But I feel you can show genre in other ways, like cover design. And you can put helpful text on there like, "Romantic Suspense by ..." or "A [Sleuth's Name Here] Mystery by..." in your metadata and cover text.

Even Dean Wesley Smith himself admits "sometimes readers will follow across genre lines. Give them the chance on a main website under a main name."

Certainly readers are crossing genre lines with J. K. Rowling. And other successful contemporary authors are luring their readers to cross those boundaries, too. Neil Gaiman writes everything from social satire to MG fantasy—and penned the screen adaptation of Beowulf--all under his own name. Literary prize-winner and Iowa M.F.A. Justin Cronin has recently moved from literary to horror with great success with The Passage.

Writing in multiple genres under one name is not a new idea.
Carl Sandburg wrote everything from poetry to historical biography to children's stories—all under the same name. Isaac Asimov famously wrote in "every category in the Dewey decimal system." Mary Stewart not only invented contemporary romantic suspense, but wrote some of the best high fantasy ever. And it may be that the digital era is changing things back to the way they were in earlier days. J.K. Rowling's success seems to show that brand trumps genre in today's world.

(And it also apparently trumps bad reviews.)

Plus the new publishing paradigm is blurring genre lines. And these days, position in a brick and mortar bookstore isn't the primary factor in selling books--name recognition is.

Writing in The Passive Voice comments on August 6th, epic fantasy author Tom Simon said:

"I’m highly suspicious of that advice about using pseudonyms for different genres; it may only be an artifact of the circumstances in which it originated. All data older than about three years is basically irrelevant to the new publishing model. It may be that the old advice still holds good — but if it does, it will have nothing to do with the original reason behind it. I would be very wary of assuming that the old practice is applicable in the new circumstances."

And: (my bolding.)

"I have not heard that anybody ever got mad because they bought Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare and thought it was a science fiction novel. But a lot of people bought Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare who would never have heard of it if it hadn’t been for Asimov’s SF. Note that Asimov built his reputation in the days before chain bookshops and computerized ordering — in other words, before multiple pseudonyms became useful as a way of gaming the system. It may be that the situation nowadays is more like the situation in 1965 than that in 2005."

Echoing his sentiments, author D.G. Sandru said in the same thread:

"Once you’ve got an author brand built, you can take it anywhere….Nowadays in the virtual book store at Amazon, with millions of titles, with millions of author names, for unlimited time, having a different pen name will diffuse your brand name. I’m in the process of writing a paranormal thriller and a true story. What are the chances that people that read my YA Fantasy under D.G. Sandru will find my other two books under two different names? Very slim. I would have to make three marketing efforts for three different names. Or instead of dedicating 100% to one brand name I would dedicate 33% to each pseudo name."

But another successful self-published author is very much in the Dean Wesley Smith camp. Regency romance author Anne Gallagher has recently published her contemporary women's fiction under a new name: Robynne Rand.

I understand her reasoning: her Regency brand is strongly traditional. She might lose readership if Anne Gallagher readers pick up a racy Robynne Rand novel and get offended. The same is true for most authors who write erotica as well as another genre.

Because pseudonyms are working for her, I asked Anne to weigh in on this discussion.

Why I Use Multiple Pen Namesby Anne Gallagher/Robynne Rand
ARA: Why did you decide to write your novels under different names?

AG: I built my "brand" writing Regency romance under Anne Gallagher. I write sweet historicals (no hanky-panky). My romantic women's fiction under Robynne Rand is contemporary with swearing and adult issues. There's a marked difference between the two and I didn't want to offend anyone (my Aunt Elsie comes to mind) if they picked up Remembering You and thought it was going to be a light read like The Lady's Fate.

ARA: Are you finding that marketing yourself as two different people takes more time from your writing than you'd like? Is one name taking more time than the other?

AG: Marketing under either name has always been a problem for me. I don't like tooting my own horn and any kind of promotion/marketing does take away from writing time. Robynne Rand is definitely harder to market. Even though it's still me, Robynne Rand is a newbie author. She doesn't have a huge fan base, (although my reviews are excellent) and I can't bang out books one right after the other like I do with my historicals. In writing historicals, there's a formula (more or less) I can follow. With my contemporaries, they're more complex, involving a deeper character arc. And truthfully, that's really the #1 marketing skill, just keep writing, keep publishing. A fan base will follow.

ARA:What are the benefits of writing under a pseudonym?

AG: If branded correctly, people know what they're getting when they pick up your book. For instance, I love Nora Roberts. I know who she is, what she writes, and I'll read anything by her. I had no idea she was J.D. Robb for about a decade. And though I like her Robb books, I won't go out of my way to buy one. I'm just not into the genre.

When people pick up an Anne Gallagher book, they know it's a Regency with a predictable HEA (Happy Ever After ending--ed.)  I didn't want to confuse people thinking they were getting one thing when it was definitely another.

ARA: Do you have any advice for authors who are trying to decide whether to write under two or more names?

AG: Build your brands differently. Market yourself as two different people. If you look at my Anne Gallagher blog you'll see a lovely young lady reclining on a chaise under a blanket of blossoming trees. All very calming, looking very historical-ish. If you go to my Robynne Rand blog it's totally different, contemporary with a shot of the Mount Hope Bridge in Rhode Island.

And start as soon as you know you've chosen that route. My mistake was not starting the Robynne Rand blog sooner, before the book came out. Or getting on Twitter sooner. Not that Twitter spam sells books, but at least my presence there may have allowed people to get to know me a little better. They might not buy this book, but they might buy the next.
~ 
ARA: I guess I'm lucky to have a muse who pretty much writes in one genre. No matter what I've tried to write in the last three decades, everything turns out to involve murder and mayhem combined with fairly cerebral romantic comedy. When you pick up an Anne R. Allen mystery, you know there will be a screwball romance, some darker literary subtext, and probably at least one villain attacked with a designer shoe.

I suppose Dean Wesley Smith would say I'm just too lazy to write steampunk erotica, space westerns, and techno-thrillers in my spare time. However, this does mean I personally don't have to worry about pen names.

I do understand why Anne/Robynne made her choice. If I were in her shoes, I might have made the same one. But I recommend every author carefully weigh the pros and cons. It takes a crazy amount of work to establish even one brand these days and I'm all about writers keeping their sanity.

Book-buying habits are changing. I think the "different names for different genres" paradigm does belong to old-style publishing. Readers are beginning to "get" the new/old way of doing things.

I think if PEN/Hemingway Award winner Justin Cronin had published his horror novel under a pseudonym, he'd never have got the major ink in the New York Times that sets his work apart from every other vampire novel.

And if Jo Nobody had written The Casual Vacancy, I doubt Ann Patchett would have interviewed her in front of a crowd at Lincoln Center who got so excited that Ms. Patchett said she was "going to have to hand out sedatives."And certainly Jo Nobody wouldn't get to go on the Daily Show and convince Jon Stewart that the U.S. needs a monarch.

And I doubt she'd be working on her second million in sales in less than a month.

Personally, I'd rather tough out the bad reviews than give up the perks of an established brand. (Even if my brand doesn't quite have J. K. Rowling's clout.) But I'd love to hear from writers on both sides of the question in the comments.

Do you write under multiple names? Do you think it's worth multiplying your marketing work in order to keep from offending some readers? Have you written in different genres under the same name? What kind of results did you have? Do you know of other authors who have written in multiple genres with the same name?

99 cents for limited time!BOOK NEWS: For some reason unknown to me or my publisher, Amazon AND Barnes and Noble have chosen to reduce the price of my first Camilla Randall mystery, THE BEST REVENGE , to 99 cents. Practically FREE! So if you've wanted to check out one of my rom-com mysteries and you like a bargain--here's a chance to grab one cheap. you can find it on Amazon US , Amazon UK, and Barnes and Noble. Somehow it seems to have disappeared from Kobo. The ways of the Webz are mysterious indeed. But we will be trying to raise the price back to $2.99, so grab it while you can.

I WILL BE ON THE RADIO on Thursday evening, October 25th, 8 PM Pacific Time, talking with award-winning author Elaine Raco Chase on Triangle Variety Radio. Just click on the Triangle link and listen on your computer. I'll be talking about the real-life Hollywood mystery behind my mystery novel, THE GATSBY GAME, which is supposed to finally be available in paper this week. It isn't yet, and nobody knows what the hold-up is, but I've seen the proof and it's very nicely done. But as I said, the ways of the Webz are a mystery to us all...

Beware the Seven Deadly Writing Scams

We first ran into Lila Moore's scam-alerts at The Passive Voice. We visited her new watchdog site, PopularSoda.com and were impressed with all her savvy advice. Indie publishing has generated lots of new money-wasters and scams. Popular Soda adds an indie-focused viewpoint to other author-advocate voices like Writer Beware and Preditors and Editors. Whether you're traditionally published or indie, the following tips can help you avoid wasting your money, creative property, and time. 

Seven Deadly Scamsby Lila Moore

These days, writers face a range of scams from mildly annoying to lethal. Deadly scams are ones which can destroy your bank account, your credibility, or your ability to profit from your work. Not all of these scams are perpetrated solely by malicious outsiders: some of these scams only work because the authors themselves are complicit and some of these scams are perpetrated by the authors themselves.

Here are the Seven Deadly Scams-- and how to avoid them.

1. Investing in Internet Points

Internet points can be anything from fake Twitter followers to a bump in your Klout score to more incoming links, or even paying to publish your work on a website highly ranked by Alexa  To be clear, these are not things which encourage audience participation or even simulate the appearance of it. These are simply number bumps.

So what's so bad about this? It's backwards. Why would you pay for the appearance of engagement instead of actually engaging your audience? 
You're spending real money to fill a stadium with cardboard cutouts. 
An inflated number of Twitter followers does not create an equal increase in sales. A higher Klout score does not upgrade your level of fan devotion. It is mistaking the menu for the meal. The numbers don't really matter: readers do. And if you're providing value, connections, and fun for your audience, the numbers will follow.

2. Paying for Fake Book Reviews

There's been a lot of discussion about paid positive reviews since the NY Times' "The Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy".  For me, part of the shock was realizing that fake reviews can and have been effective. 
Positive, paid-for reviews worked for top-selling authors like John Locke. As a beginning author, you don't have the luxury of millions of sales and hundreds of fans. Being exposed for scam reviews can quickly catapult you into ebook notoriety.

Your career might benefit from the scandal. Or it may take a dive and never recover.

Using fake reviews can kill off your credibility quickly*, and you’ll also lose the perks of real feedback: readers get a full understanding of your work, and you, as a writer, benefit from new opinions on your writing.

It doesn't make sense from a moral standpoint, but it also doesn't make sense from a monetary perspective. 
Positive reviews are expensive (they can be $100 each!) and there's no guarantee that you'll recoup the cost in sales. Take that money and put it towards editing, or a trip to a writing conference, or creative writing classes at a local college. Investing in yourself will help you grow as a writer; paying for positive book reviews only guarantees growing the reviewer's bank account.

(*Editor's note: Lila has a great post today with examples of real scam reviews and how to spot them. Also note: paying for negative reviews of "rival" authors is even worse. It's not just morally reprehensible but can destroy your career if you're found out. Beware ALL review mills.) 

3. Giving Away First Rights for a Cheap Prize

Writers (or anyone, really) can be dazzled by flashy graphics and promises of publication, monetary prizes, and the glory of winning an award. However, you need to make sure the award is worth winning. Prizes can range from simple publication on a website to a thousand-book print run. That print run sounds like a pretty good prize. The shout-out on the website is not.

Here's why: First rights are incredibly important in publishing. Many large publications will not accept work that has already been published elsewhere, and a post on a blog counts as "elsewhere". If you're entering a contest or submitting to a publication, you need to be okay if that story never garners anything more than a token payment (if that) and an appearance in an unknown journal.
This seems pretty above-ground, so where does the scam fit in? First, some companies are intentionally misleading about what rights they are using. They may claim you will retain all rights to your work. This is impossible: you cannot be published and still retain first rights to the writing. Some journals have both print and electronic editions, which effectively means you're giving up both first rights and first electronic rights in one go. Some publications request all rights, which means you can never again profit from the piece and the publishing company will own it. Despite this, certain publications use overblown rhetoric to persuade you to sign over your rights for a few shekels and a smile. 
Be smart. There's no downside for the publisher here: they can continue to profit from books, back issues, anthologies, and website traffic while giving up virtually nothing. Make sure you know exactly what you're giving up and what that means for the future. Aim your sights high and readjust a little lower if you're not getting any hits; don't start at the bottom and hope to climb to the top by....

4. Crowing about Cockamamie Credentials

Let's say a website calls itself innovative and groundbreaking, and claims to be one of the best places to publish. Let's say you fall for the slick marketing and submit. And let's say you get in, and let's say you put this credential in your official author biography.

What does that credential get you? If you're lucky, you might gain some respect and publicity. If you're not, you might end up worse off than if you never mentioned it. Flaunting credentials from an untrustworthy publication will make you look green at best. At worst, you'll signal to editors of established journals that you didn't research past publications before submitting, and there's no reason to believe you researched their publication, either.

Take a tailored approach to finding a suitable publisher: google the name of the publication with the word 'scam', read a few back issues, and look at the benefits to publishing there(avoiding Scam Number Three). If it seems like a good fit, then full steam ahead! But it's not worth winning space in an obscure journal just to see your name somewhere.

Some writers submit to these new or nameless publications because they simply want to take what they can get. But this exposes a logical inconsistency: If this is your best work, why aren't you submitting it to major, established, or reputable publications?
If it's not your best work, why are you-- 
1) not trying to improve it? 2) attaching your name to writing which doesn't accurately represent your abilities?

5. Pyramid Scheme Publications

Pyramid scheme publications are an interesting case, both because they've found a new form recently, and because they're not technically doing anything wrong. In the old model, like the well-known poetry.com scam, all submissions were accepted for publication. However, you'd have to pay for the book, for the inclusion of your biography, for a certificate, and for copies for family and friends. The scammer banked on your ignorance of the scam.

In the new model of pyramid scheme publications, they're still after your money, but more than that, they want your assistance in building credibility. Here's how it works:

They promise tons of exposure (but usually little to no pay) for publication in their new venture. Reviews are mostly positive, so you submit. Once you're accepted, you buy the issue and send the link to your loved ones. After all, it's only a few dollars. Because of your acceptance, you leave more positive reviews.

So where's the scam? The positive reviews were written by people just like you: writers with a vested interest in seeing the publication succeed, not independent readers who enjoy the content. When you encourage your friends and family to each drop a few dollars on the electronic version, you artificially inflate its sales figures, contributing to the revenue without seeing any benefit yourself.

To be sure, there are certainly reputable publications* which have strong marketing components and happy authors. But there is a world of difference between a publisher's selling books based on content and a company's relying on a growing stable of newbie authors to hawk the product like Cutco knives salesmen .

Before submitting, Google around and try to answer this question: is the publication praised by unbiased, independent readers or is it kept aloft by the efforts of naive new authors in a writing round-robin?

*Editor's Note  I want to expand on what Lila says about REPUTABLE anthologies. Donating a free story to certain anthologies can be very much to your advantage. Charity anthologies, like the Indie Chicks Anthologies and the Literary Lab anthologies  can offer great opportunities. Nobody makes money on these and all proceeds are donated to a specific charity, but they can be fantastic showcases for your work. Showcase anthologies can also be put together by author collectives or small publishers. If you're a beginning writer and some well-known authors are contributing to the same anthology, this can be a great way of reaching a much wider audience

6. Paying for Poor Publicity

There are sites which charge thousands for ebook marketing with no discernible result. These online marketing efforts can usually be grouped into three categories:
1) high prices for free services, 2) poorly targeted marketing efforts3) spam activities. 
Let's go in order:

There are many, many ways to promote yourself for free online. You can send out press releases to free databases. You can create social media accounts to make connections and promote yourself. You can ask book review blogs to take a look at your work. You can pay to have those things done, of course, but make sure you're not paying hundreds of dollars for someone else to upload your press release to those free databases.

Additionally, it doesn't make sense to pay to market yourself on Twitter if you have no intention of going back on Twitter once your publicity stint is over.

Poorly targeted marketing efforts tie back into the previous scam: You don't want to market to other authors. Unless you're selling a book of writing advice, other authors are not your optimal audience. Not only are they in the same boat, they might be in a different genre. 
Tweet-blasting your romance novel will not help if you're not reaching any romance readers. Some marketers promise exposure on dozens of blogs. Quality outranks quantity here.
A horror novel which gets a nod from a popular horror site will probably fare better than a horror novel mentioned on two dozen pet, beauty, or health food blogs (unless you're writing about a supermodel who rescues kittens and turns them into protein shakes). (I'm totally reading that book!--ed.)

Any of the above actions can be considered spammy if they're poorly executed. You might not have control over the delivery, frequency, or placement of ads. If a reader keeps getting unwanted information and ads about your book, they're going to start associating YOU with spam, even if you're not the one sending it out.

7. Indiscriminately Working for Free

Publications which expect free work are sometime snarkily called "for-the-luv" businesses. In the most malicious cases, a business-minded individual finds free workers by appealing to the authors' Higher Calling and Pursuit of their Personal Truth. It's fine to have such a lofty view of writing, but like I've said before, if you want to make money from writing, you have to treat it like a business.

And that means writing for free strategically.

As you may have noticed, this is a guest post. I wrote this for free. However, I only turned up on Anne's radar after my guest post on Duolit was picked up by The Passive Voice. Part strategic. Part luck. Part good writing, and part good timing.

So what's the benefit for me if I guest post for Anne? First, I'm making a connection with a real person. And yes, I will probably get some Internet points for this. But the connection came first. This is actual engagement, the meat and potatoes to fake Internet points' Diet Coke.

Internet points aren't the only previous Scams related to working for free. Low-budget startup publications also seem to think that free work is a fair trade for seeing your name on their site. Taking an internship at a reputable publication can benefit your career. It doesn't have to be a Big Six publisher-- even a respected regional publisher or local newspaper can net you some contacts and meaningful work experience. But that brand-new, non-paying, no-name publication that wants you to write and sign over the rights for five articles before letting you know if you got the job?

Hell no.

Another Editorial note: If you're going the traditional route, be aware the old traditional scams are still out there. Here's my post on how to avoid bogus agents who prey on authors who are trying to break into traditional publishing. 

Lila Moore is a freelance writer and copy editor based in New Orleans. She has copy-edited a wide range of materials, from national advertising campaigns to cookbooks. Besides her passion for editing, Lila loves ebooks and founded PopularSoda.com to encourage professionalism and high standards in self-publishing. Lila previously blogged about writing-related scams for Duolit. And on the Passive Voice  
NEWS! On Monday, October 15th, Anne will be visiting the Readers Guide to E-Publishing site (RG2E).  She'll be talking about the setting of her sp-o-o-o-o-ky comic mystery,  GHOSTWRITERS IN THE SKY ,--the Santa Ynez mountains of California (AKA Sideways Wine Country.)

What about you, scriveners? Have you run into any of these scams? Do you have other scams to report? Can you offer any exceptions to these rules like the charity anthology?

NaNoWriMo—Should You Join in the Silliness? 9 Reasons to Consider it.

First: full disclosure—I've never NaNo'ed. I'm a slo-o-o-w writer. My editor despairs. I've got a new Camilla Randall mystery due in November (No Place Like Home) which I've been working on for a year and haven't finished yet. (Yes, I've been writing, editing and launching six other books and two anthologies during the same year, but it's still not a great record. I write slow. I also read slow and blog slow. I even live in a place called SLO-town. )

But the world rewards fast writers. Look at Nora Roberts and James Patterson, who seem to turn out books at the rate Mrs. Smith produces pies.

Plus, even if you're fundamentally a slowpoke like me, NaNo is a great way to push through your blocks and self-doubt and get that novel out of your head and onto the page.

For the uninitiated: NaNoWriMo is the National Novel Writing Month project. Started in 1999 by a young San Franciscan named Chris Baty—and 21 of his verbally ambitious friends—it challenges you to write a complete novel in a month. That month is November. Last year over 250,000 writers—called “WriMos”—joined in the merriment.

Entering the contest—now run by Mr. Baty’s non-profit outfit, the Office of Letters and Light—is free. Anybody who finishes 50,000 words by midnight November 30th is a winner. No prize but a badge for your blog--and I think there are Tee-shirts you can buy this year--but completion of your novel is its own reward.

To enter, you register at NaNoWriMo's site so you can have your word count verified at the end of the month, and on November 1, start writing. It doesn't cost a thing.

But…don’t they write a lot of crapola?

Yup. And that’s the point.

It’s all about creating that awful first draft.

As Anne LaMotte wrote in her classic book for writers, Bird by Bird , “the only way [most writers] can get anything done at all is to write really, really, really shitty first drafts.”

NaNoWriMo forces you to get that dung onto the page.

Here are some benefits.

1) No time to agonize over your first chapter. You’ve read endless carping on blogs like this one about how the first chapter has to hook the reader, introduce all the major themes and plot elements, begin with the world’s most exciting sentence, etc. But when you’re writing your first draft, none of that matters. You’re introducing yourself to your characters and their world. You can worry about your reader when you start editing next January.

2) No frittering away time on research. If you’re one of those writers who has procrastinated for years, piling up reams of historical and biographical detail, this is your chance to actually write the *&%! book.

The truth is most of those details would bore the reader silly if you actually put them in your novel, anyway. You’re better off writing the book first and figuring out later whether your reader needs to know what they used for toilet paper in 13th century Scotland or what kind of underpants to put on Genghis Khan.

3) No time to censor yourself. You can’t afford to agonize over whether your brother–in-law/former teacher/ex-girlfriend will recognize him/herself. Or if your mom will find out you weren’t really at band camp that summer when you and your buddies took the road trip to Cabo. Besides you’ll be amazed how characters/situations inspired by real life take off on their own and create an alternate reality. And excuse me, when did your brother-in-law ever read a book anyway?

4) You won’t be tempted to save your best ideas for later. New writers are often terrified they’ll run out of ideas. But it’s amazing how many more will show up once you’re in the zone.

I recently read some great advice for writers in an article in Glimmer Train from author Josh Swiller: "Kitchen sink that first draft. Throw every damn thing in there. If you aren't sure something belongs, if you aren't even remotely clear what the point of a certain tangent is—in it goes. It can help to do this draft with pen and paper, in poor handwriting, so you can't be eying and judging what you've put down as you go along."

5) You’ll give up trying to control the process. If the story goes somewhere you didn’t expect it to go, or you can’t stick to your outline, you’ll have to run with it. When your muse is talking, you can’t take the chance of pissing her off for even a couple of days.

6) You’ll have a great excuse for skipping the family Thanksgiving with all those relatives whose politics make you despair for the future of the human race.

7) It’s fun—and a great way to meet other writers all over the world. Look in the NaNo website forums for online and in-person discussions and groups. More than 650 regional volunteers in more than 60 countries will hold write-ins, hosting writers in coffee shops,bookstores, and libraries. Write-ins offer a supportive environment, turning the usually solitary act of writing into a community experience.

8) Lots of very good writers do it. This week GalleyCat reported that 90+Books began as NaNoWriMo projects including Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, and Cinder by Marissa Meyer: all #1 NYT Best Sellers.

9) You'll get pep talks from famous writers Not only will successful WriMos like Marissa Meyer be standing by to cheer you on, but this year they've enlisted the likes of Nick Hornby and Lemony Snicket to give you helpful tips to keep you on track and pounding out those words.

If you decide to jump into the craziness, here are the NaNoWriMo rules:

Register at NaNoWriMo.Org before November 1
Write a novel (in any language) 50,000+ words long between November 1 and November 30. “Novel” is loosely defined. They say “If you consider the book you're writing a novel, we consider it a novel too!”Start from scratch. Previously written outlines & character sketches are OK—and highly recommended—but this can’t be a work already in progress to be an official NaNo novelBe the sole author. Although you can use the occasional quotation, you can't use other people's words, even if they're out of copyright. No collaborations allowed.Write more than one word. No repeating the same one 50,000 times.Upload your novel for word-count validation to the site between November 25 and November 30.
Chances are pretty good you aren’t going to write a polished, publishable novel in four weeks (although Charles Dickens is said to have written A Christmas Carol in six, four of which were in November, so there’s some precedent.)

But PLEASE don’t start querying agents or throw that puppy up on Amazon or Smashwords until you do a serious, in-depth revision. You’ll just add to the "tsunami of crap" self-pub-haters rant about, and/or you'll make agents and editors and their overburdened interns extremely cranky.

Oh, and if you are going the traditional publishing route, it’s not wise to reveal that the book began at NaNo—at least not in your initial query. Unfortunately, a lot of participants send off the unedited crapola.

Also, most publishers won’t look at a novel of less than 70,000 words, so even the Chuck Dickenses among you will have further work to do.

NaNoWriMo is now entering its 14th year and has become a respected institution in the writing community. GalleyCat is promoting it with a fun pre-NaNoWriMo contest.

There's also now a NaNo for kids and a Camp NaNoWriMo for people who have more writing time in the summer, and a super-posh one-nightwriting-marathon party in San Francisco and all manner of tee shirts, mugs, and other fun NaNo paraphernalia.

Last year 36,843 writers crossed the 50K finish line by midnight on November 30th, thus "entering into the annals of NaNoWriMo superstardom forever."

So if you have a book in your head, some spare time (and a very understanding family) you just might become one of those superstars this year!

For some tips on overcoming your blocks and getting that book out no matter what, you might want read this helpful and funny post by Delilah S. Dawson on how to barf a book.

So how about you, scriveners? Are you NaNo-ing this year? How much prep will you do? Have you ever "won" at NaNo? Have you tried and failed miserably, as I'd be sure to do? Did you fail miserably but still manage to get some good writing out of it? Do you think the whole thing is a bunch of batty San Francisco nonsense? (Sorry. I had to do the Baty/Batty thing somewhere. Old puns never die.)

Next week we're going to have a great post by Lila Moore from the watchdog site PopularSoda.com. She's going to tell us about "Seven Deadly Scams" being perpetrated on writers in this new publishing era. She's written about writing scams on Duolit and the Passive Voice, and provides warnings that all writers need to read.