Jane Friedman's Blog: Jane Friedman, page 94

Upcoming Events and Classes with Jane

This spring, I’ll be on the road speaking at a wide range of events on the East Coast (and one in Europe). Here’s an overview of where you can find me.

Richmond, VA: The Writing Show

When: Wednesday, April 24, 2019
This is roughly a 2-hour evening panel discussion on book sales and marketing. I’ll be joined on stage with author Chanel Cleeton. Cost is $15 (or $5 for students).
Learn more

Baltimore, MD: University of Baltimore Reading series —free and open to the public

When: Monday, April 29, 2019
I’ll be giving an evening talk on the business of being a writer
Learn more

Sweden: Stockholm Writers Festival

When: May 3–5, 2019
There are still a handful of tickets left (hurry). I’ll be keynoting and teaching a master class on publishing
Learn more

NYC: Build a Sustainable Business Model for Your Writing Career

When: Wednesday, May 29
This is a three-hour intensive workshop that’s genre agnostic. It works for any author, freelancer, or journalist. Registration is $99 and limited to 18 students.
Learn more

See my full speaking schedule here.

The Myth of the Natural Writer

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There’s a legendary joke about the writing life, often attributed to Margaret Atwood. It goes like this:

A brain surgeon and a writer meet at a party. The brain surgeon says to the writer, “How interesting, I’ve always wanted to be a writer, and in fact, when I retire, I’m going to be a writer.”

The writer replies, “Well, isn’t that a coincidence. When I retire, I’m going to be a brain surgeon.”

Countless young people want to pursue writing while still in school, but ultimately choose more stable careers (whether brain surgery or accounting or lawyering). Some think they’ll have time to write on the side, but it rarely turns out that way. So, as they near retirement—or when they have all the money or stability they need—then they write their first book. Often, it is unpublishable by traditional standards. Why? Not because they’re bad writers, but they’re emerging writers, despite their age and experience. For most of us, it takes more than instinct or desire to produce a skillful story.

In this month’s Glimmer Train bulletin, Erika Krouse discusses the myth of the natural writer—or the realization that few people (including herself) will be inspired, as if by magic, to produce a story that effortlessly works. She says:

I continued to write the same-but-different novel for seven more years, in seven completely different directions, with seven different middles-to-endings, all ludicrous. It felt like I was shooting one very slow bullet a year, hoping that if I closed my eyes and aimed at random, I’d hit the distant target I had only vaguely envisioned. How was I going to complete this idiot book?

Read her full essay: Plot Structure and the Myth of the Natural Writer (Also, Ducks)

Also in this month’s Glimmer Train bulletin:

On Killing the Cursor by David McDannald

A Family Theme, a Family Secret by Ken Cook

5 Ways to Market Your Audiobook Without Ads

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Today’s guest post is excerpted from The Guide to Publishing Audiobooks (Writer’s Digest Books) by attorney and audiobook director Jessica Kaye (@jessicakayeEsq).

Some authors and publishers seem to believe that by the simple act of making an audiobook available for purchase, there will be numerous purchases. Yet, as with all types of books, yours is merely one of many thousands published each year. You must make listeners aware that your product exists. Here are 5 different ways to do that without advertising.

1. Promote both book and audiobook.

Include a link or a QR code for the audio edition on every piece of communication—newsletters, website, social media, postcards, bookmarks. The audiobook is only one edition of the book. No matter how someone searches for your book, they should see that an audiobook is available. Share different audio clips from the audiobook on your social media channels. Add a blurb about or even a link to your audiobook in the front matter of your ebook, if you have one, and include the URL in your print books if you are the print publisher.

2. Host and publicize a video event.

Conduct an audiobook event on Facebook to celebrate release day or some other occasion in your promotions calendar. Host and record a video chat with your narrator and invite your fans and the narrator’s fans to participate in the live stream. Fans love to have a look behind the scenes. Once the event is over, post the video on YouTube. You and the narrator can then share the link to that video on your blogs and social media sites.

3. Upload samples to SoundCloud.

SoundCloud has become a viable resource for allowing listeners to preview audiobooks. SoundCloud does not sell the recordings, but it does permit the publisher to add a Buy link, which will take the customer to a site that does sell it. Take a little time to see the various listings publishers have uploaded there.

4. Get reviews.

Send a review copy to AudioFile Magazine and other publications that review audiobooks. Cultivate bloggers by checking APA membership and doing an internet search for audiobook bloggers. Don’t reach out to them without first familiarizing yourself with their blogs. If any of them align with what you’re doing, then do reach out to them. A good list of reviewers is cultivated over years, and as you meet authors and publishers, some will share contacts with you. Some of the major bloggers and podcasts in the audiobook community include:

www.theaudiobookblog.com
www.audiobookreviewer.com
www.audiobookstoday.blogspot.com
www.theaudiobookworm.com
www.karencommins.com
www.literatehousewife.com
www.towerreview.com

5. Try for awards to get into libraries.

Just as with film, TV, print books, and radio, there are competitions and awards for audiobooks. Some of these opportunities are free and some come with entry fees. Do these awards and reviews have an impact on sales of the winners and nominees? It’s hard to say, but it does seem likely there are at least incremental sales, however unmeasurable, for awarded titles, primarily because librarians are aware of most if not all of these awards, and libraries are an important sales venue for audiobooks. If a good review or an award can help get your audiobook into libraries, or into additional libraries, that is a good thing for your bottom line.

Audie Awards are given annually by the Audio Publishers Association. Submissions are made by publishers and there is a per-submission fee.

The Earphones Award is a designation rather than something you can put on your shelf, although you can get a certificate to frame and hang on your wall. It is awarded by reviewers for AudioFile Magazine . According to AudioFile publisher, Michele Cobb, “The award is given by AudioFile to truly exceptional titles that excel in narrative voice and style, characterizations, suitability to audio, and enhancement of the text.”

The Odyssey Award is given by the American Library Association (ALA) to the publisher of what the association judges the “best audiobook produced for children and/or young adults, available in English in the United States.” There may be additional titles featured alongside the Odyssey winner. Those titles are called honor titles. There is no charge for submitting audiobooks for consideration for The Odyssey Award.
A relatively new entry into the audiobook awards arena is the Voice Arts Awards, given out by the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences (SOVAS). This society was founded by voice-over artists to e ducate and award voice-over talent. There is a fee per entry per category.

For more tips

Check out the Audiobook Marketing Cheat Sheet at Karen Commins’ website.
Get a copy of  The Guide to Publishing Audiobooks by Jessica Kaye

Your turn: What strategies and tactics have you found successful in marketing your audiobooks? Let us know in the comments.

When You’re Just Not Ready for Rejection

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Today’s guest post is by Shana Scott.

There are a lot of articles about dealing with the constant rejection that comes not only with creative writing but also freelancing, and they offer good advice, but rarely do they discuss coming to terms with not being ready to deal with it.

All the good advice in the world doesn’t matter if the writer isn’t ready, and I wish someone would have said to me, “It’s okay you’re not ready now. You’ll get there in your own time.”

When you’re not ready

Let me say that now: It’s okay! If you stare at that submission form but can’t send anything out for an entire year, that’s okay! If you tell yourself over and over that they won’t want it—so you don’t send it—that’s okay! If that form rejection letter just ripped your heart out, stomped on it, and made you feel like nothing you write can possibly be worth anything, that’s okay!

It’s okay, because one day you won’t feel that way. Whether you are able to face that a few months down the road or in a decade, you’ll get there. Don’t feel like you’ve done something wrong by not being braver or more resilient or more stoic in the face of rejection. Rejection letters suck!

Not being able to handle rejection doesn’t mean you don’t care about your work or don’t believe it’s worth reading or that you want to be published any less than those who send their work out every week. All it means is you’re not ready yet. And that’s okay.

I wasn’t ready for a long time. A combination of fear of failure, low self-confidence, and the inability to process rejection meant that I sent out a single story once every year or two. It wasn’t for a lack of writing. I simply wasn’t ready to face that barrage of rejection letters that I was told I’d have to go through to achieve my dreams.

What is readiness?

So what did it take to break through the mental block? Because it is a mental and emotional block.

A little more maturity, a little less giving a crap if it fails, and a better understanding of the publication industry in general, which allows me to divest the evil rejection letter of its “Your work is crap, never send anything ever again” power.

The biggest hurdle was realizing I had a choice: Either I commit to submitting, or I accept that my writing is just for me to read. While it was going to be painful and it was going to be messy, if I committed, I had to be in it for the long haul, and I might as well make the biggest mess I could.

And what a mess I’ve made! There are stories I have complete faith in that I simply can’t find a home for. But since I have a better understanding of publishing, that doesn’t hurt as much as it used to.

Getting ready

If you aren’t ready to bite down and bear the pain of rejection, you can still do things to help your career.

Write. Hone your craft. Create the best stories you can. Submitting doesn’t make you a better writer, writing does. Take this time to examine your work and focus on strengthening weak points.

Join a writing group. It can be a couple people meeting once a month or a bigger workshop with many authors. A writing group can give you constructive criticism to improve and deadlines to keep you creating.

Research. Learn about the places you want to write for, even if you’re still too scared to send to them. Make a list of the best places for when you are ready to submit.

When you are ready

Most of all, remember that everyone makes a mess of it in the beginning. When I finally started to get those acceptance letters, they weren’t for the stories I thought they’d be. In fact, the first two I received were ones I sent because they were the only stories I had that fit the themes. They were the last stories I thought would be accepted, because I didn’t consider them my best work.

So write and learn and don’t let anyone shame you for not being ready to submit. You’ll get to where you need to be eventually, and the rejection letters will hold less power over you.

Just remember, they’ll still suck.

Note from Jane: For more perspective on rejection, check out these posts:

5 Lessons in Publishing Success
How to Avoid Misery Over Rejection

8 Mundane Elements You Should Cut From Your Story

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Today’s guest post is excerpted from How to Write a Page Turner (Writer’s Digest Books) by Jordan Rosenfeld (@JordanRosenfeld).

If we wrote novels that were hyper-accurate to the “real lives” of our characters—even those that populate fantasy and science fiction novels—they would be thousands of pages long and span a series too big to fit on any single shelf. Reality is full of uneventful, unremarkable, lackluster moments that, on the page, are about as tense and exciting as gray Play-Doh.

Creating tension is as much a function of what you leave out as it is what you put in, but often we can’t see those extraneous parts until someone points them out to us or expresses boredom with parts of the story.

The following tips will help you identify some of those mundane parts of your characters’ lives, and bad habits or techniques that don’t serve the tension of your novel, no matter its genre.

1. Vagueness

Often when we are first getting to know our characters, we do one of two things: We either model them after people we know, or we make them out of raw clay, little golems who are just generic people (often versions of ourselves). They might not yet have a distinct way of talking, offer particularly incisive observations, or possess a demonstrable personality. We might make them “average height” or “medium build.” These are acceptable for a first draft, but by the time you’re ready for readers to enjoy your story, you have to flesh out the vagueness into specifics with nuance and uniqueness. Moreover, characters should read as distinct from one another.

This applies to supporting and secondary characters, too; every character adds to the realism and plausibility of your story. If you have a generic “cop” or “clerk” or “housewife” or “schoolteacher” who isn’t also a real person with some sort of nuance either externally or in personality, the character will come off as flat and dull, and do nothing to support the tension of any given scene.

2. Excruciating detail

On the opposite end of vagueness is the use of too much detail. Perhaps your protagonist is a surgeon, a world-famous pianist, an engineer, or something else that involves a bit of technical know-how. You might be tempted to create verisimilitude by researching and then writing a scene in which your character performs brain surgery with exacting and precise details for pages and pages. The amazing thing about readers is that they need only a basic amount of realistic-sounding detail to feel that the scene at hand is plausible. Going overboard on detail or grinding things down too finely typically slows the pace and kills tension. And this applies to many things—you can’t fool the reader into accepting excruciating detail by putting it in dialogue, either. Your goal is realism, not a dissertation.

3. Dreary dialogue

Pleasantries (the weather, unimportant details, nice words) spoken between characters quickly become boring. The exceptions are if your characters are speaking these things under duress, or threat of harm, or if they are using the pleasantries as code for something else, or coupling it with body language that says a great deal more. Unfortunately a lot of dialogue between characters feels like filler if you aren’t intentional about it. Dialogue should be stylized and strategic—it should always reveal something about the characters who are speaking, and further the plot. Look for dull lines of dialogue and mercilessly cut them free.

Dialogue is about nuance and complexity. Think about how much people say without saying it directly. Spoken conversation is often filled with subtext and innuendo, inside jokes, or cultural idioms that not everyone understands. Use these to your characters’ advantage.

4. Stage directions

These are a series of small actions that get a character from point A to point B, or that help demonstrate what’s happening on the scene in too many steps. They are most commonly remnants of first drafts, but sometimes they crop up in later drafts, too. For example, a character with the goal of exiting a room does not need to be shown rising from a chair, looking about, striding across the carpet, grasping the doorknob and turning it before opening it, and then finally exiting. “He left the room” might suffice. Look for places where you are over-articulating the action into more steps than are necessary; these almost always kill the tension and slow the pace of the scene.

5. Telegraphing

Another tension-killing habit is essentially to announce to the reader what the character is about to do before they do it, unnecessarily, which I call telegraphing. Here’s an example:

He was going to leave this room and never look back. He stood up, “I’m leaving, and I’m never coming back,” he shouted as he stormed for the door.

Often we write these lines as notes to ourselves and then forget to delete them, but sometimes it reflects a lack of understanding about the work of a scene. The best method for action in a scene is to let your characters demonstrate the action themselves. That is to say, they get up and do something. Any time you are slowing down to have them think or observe first, you might be falling into telegraphing. When you use the narrative voice (that is, when information is not grounded inside and internal to a character’s POV) to say what is about to happen, you’re killing tension. Cut it.

6. Thoughts in the midst of action

The moment when characters are in the midst of big, dramatic action is precisely the worst time to slow down the energy and momentum of a scene to insert thoughts, especially long, drawn-out thoughts or epiphanies. Yet I see it all the time in my clients’ manuscripts.

Let me give you an example of the difference in what I mean.

With too much thought:

The hillside shook violently beneath him and began to crumble. Julia screamed and reached out to him. A huge crack appeared just feet from him. If he tried to run toward Julia, the earth would swallow him up. This reminded him of one of the times he went volcano hunting with his father as a child. When the ground trembled, his father had simply scooped him up and dashed toward safety. Julia screamed again and he lunged across the crack like a fool.

Revised, with a brief observation:

The hillside shook violently beneath him and began to crumble. Julia screamed and reached out to him. A huge crack appeared just feet from him. If he tried to run toward Julia, the earth would swallow him up. He was a child again, but without his father to rescue him. Julia screamed again and he lunged across the crack like a fool.

Hopefully you’ll have done the work of letting the reader know about your character’s past studying volcanoes with his father long before this moment, making it unnecessary to fill in backstory in a moment of action where tension needs to remain high.

7. Melodrama

While big, dramatic personalities can make for great fiction, be sensitive to melodrama—where a character’s emotions are way over the top, incredibly hyper-reactive, or bigger than the scene calls for. Melodramatic characters read as hysterical, unlikable, or implausible. Now, if your character is purposely melodramatic, that’s different. Feel free to carry on, but the story must accommodate that level of drama.

Sometimes we lean on melodrama when we don’t know how to demonstrate character transformation. So instead of gradually showing a character’s shift, say, from low self-esteem to confidence through events and scenes over the course of the novel, we simply plant them in later scenes as seemingly enlightened as a guru. Likewise, when we don’t know our characters well, they can overreact, become hyperbolic, or use too much sentiment to convey their emotions. The more effectively you do your work of writing scenes and following a plot outline, however, the less likely you are to need melodrama.

8. Over-sentimentality

Just as niceness is boring in fiction, so is too much sentiment. The mother who always tells her children they’re angels. The husband who cherishes his wife’s every breath. The schoolteacher who always looks only for the goodness in his students. After a while, these types of sentimentality become tiresome in the realm of fiction. Ask yourself about a character’s nuances and flaws, and try to give them layers instead.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out How to Write a Page Turner (Writer’s Digest Books) by Jordan Rosenfeld.

Simplify Your Submissions to Literary Journals

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Today’s guest post is by John Sibley Williams (@JohnSibleyWill1).

For literary writers—especially those focused on poetry and short stories—consistently submitting to and being published in literary journals can be a crucial step in being taken more seriously by book publishers. The reason for this is two-fold: it proves that you are a serious author dedicated not just to your craft but to the publishing world, and it proves that journal editors have already vetted and vouched for your work.

You may also end up making solid, sometimes personal, connections with editors (who may publish your work regularly, invite you to participate in readings, or request interviews) and other authors (who may share your work on social media and even endorse your next book).

Although our shared literary world may seem dauntingly vast and diverse, it’s actually a rather close-knit, interrelated community of impassioned individuals doing everything they can to ensure the power of the written word not only endures but thrives across generations.

Now, we’ve all repeated the mantras “Rejections are par for the course” and “It’s all about patience and persistence,” both of which are essential reminders of our precarious creative endeavor. But how does one go about submitting? Despite the subjective nature of editorial preferences, there are solid strategies to increase journal acceptances.

The Commonly Accepted Strategy

We’ve all been told that an intimate knowledge of literary journals is essential to securing acceptances. Most writers and publishing professionals recommend that you to read a few issues of a journal and submit only once you feel confident your work matches their creative vision.

This strategy seems intuitive and straightforward, and I’d recommend it, too, if we lived in an ideal world with ample free time.

The Truth about Submissions

But let’s be honest. It’s nearly impossible to read issues of every magazine you submit to. There are hundreds of literary journals, and you may have hundreds of poems ready for the world. If you read every journal, would there still be time to write?

Added to this, literature is inherently subjective. There is simply no way of knowing if a certain editor will accept a certain poem. Personally, I can attest to having hundreds of poems accepted by journals that, on the surface, don’t seem to publish work similar to mine. But I submitted to them anyway, and it worked. Why?

At their core, submissions are just a numbers game.

Most magazines receive hundreds, in some cases thousands, of submissions per month. Many have interns and volunteers sifting through submissions, only sending a limited number up the editorial ladder. And of those the editors actually see, a select few will be chosen for publication.

So how does an author surmount that mountainous obstacle?

Submit. Submit. Submit.


Submit continuously. Submit everything to everyone and wait until your pieces begin to stick. They will. You just need the right editor to read them, and you never know who will be the right editor for each piece.

Look past rejection. Don’t worry if a piece has been rejected by countless magazines. if you believe in it and are diligent with your submission method, it will find publication eventually.

Editors call this the shotgun approach. They warn against it, and I don’t blame them. But the simple truth is, it works.

Having taught dozens of submission-focused workshops, I’ve found that the expectation inherent in the commonly accepted strategy actually deters emerging writers from submitting at all. It’s been drummed into them that “real writers” must carefully study every journal, and they have neither the time nor the industry knowledge to do so. So they feel like unprofessional outsiders and end up fearing the submission process.

Telling my students that they should simply submit, regardless of their familiarity with each journal, has met with such surprise and enthusiasm. There’s a freedom in recognizing submissions aren’t some black-and-white, ivory tower art form.

Many editors may react negatively to this strategy. As a journal editor myself, I understand why, not least because going through unsuitable submissions takes time. However, let’s consider the only thing that really matters: ensuring literature thrives. I’d rather have to look at extra submissions that obviously aren’t right for my journal (we know those works right away and reject quickly) than demand everyone study us before submitting.

My Submission Strategy

After reviewing market directories and calls for submissions (in places like Duotrope or Poets & Writers), I place all journals I’m interested in submitting to into three prioritized categories.

The top tier is composed of the top 20 literary journals. The middle tier is composed of other well-known and reputable magazines. The final tier is composed of smaller magazines without national reach.

I submit what I consider my best pieces to the top tier.
For the middle tier, I submit those pieces I am confident in but don’t feel are my “best.” If my best pieces are rejected by a substantial number of top-tier magazines, I begin submitting them to the middle tier as well.
I approach the final tier if I can’t gain acceptance from the top tier and/or middle tier.

I always have all unpublished pieces simultaneously submitted to at least five magazines. This ensures at least five editorial sets of eyes will see the work, greatly increasing my chances of publication. As soon as a rejection comes in, I submit those same pieces to another journal. To keep my submissions flowing smoothly, I try to avoid magazines that do not accept simultaneous submissions.

And that’s really it. What it lacks in romanticism it makes up for in productivity and success rates. I currently have 1,500 poems published, many in top-tier journals. I usually receive a few acceptances every week, along with a dozen or so rejections.

Each rejection equals another submission. Each acceptance equates to an increased chance to publish with that journal again. Multiple acceptances can blossom into an ongoing relationship. And relationships are as crucial in literature as in our personal lives.

What’s your submissions strategy? How much do you study the publications you submit to? Let us know in the comments.

Writing for Audio: Understanding Attunement

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Today’s guest post is excerpted from Writing for Audiobooks: Audio-First for Flow and Impact by playwright and fiction writer Jules Horne (@method_writing).

When it comes to audio writing, “flow” is critical. Flow is the art of shaping the listening experience as it unfolds. Some flow techniques will be familiar, such as hooks and questions. Others, such as attunement, may be less familiar.

Flow is a kind of music, but not the musicality of the narrator’s voice. Rather, it’s the musicality of language structure itself—paragraphs, sentences, words and how they’re shaped to pull the reader through. The effect is similar to a story hook, but made of language structures. Let’s look at how this applies specifically to story openings.

Openings are crucial, as they’re the point where readers engage with your writing. It’s an emphatic position that commands attention. It says, Listen up! With audio, your very first words are for tuning your listener in. They don’t need to carry much meaning. Think of the phrase “once upon a time.” It doesn’t mean much. It just signals that a story is about to begin. What counts is what comes next:

Once upon a time there was small girl who wanted to visit her grandmother.

Listen! A story! About a small girl and her grandmother.

The first few words are like a musical upbeat—the intro before you land on the main beat. This kind of intro phrase isn’t just used in fiction; it’s just as common in non-fiction.

When I worked in a radio newsroom, we used a whole bunch of intro phrases at the start of news stories. And not just at the start of the bulletin but at the start of each story.

For example:

Moving on now to domestic issues… Staying with international trade… And in other news…
 Meanwhile…

Often, news stories can be as little as 20 seconds long, and each one needs a fresh attack. So these apparently meaningless signposts have an important flag-waving job to do. But as with fiction, the significant element lands not right at the start, as you might expect, but in the next few words. Like this:

And in other news, an escaped panda…
 Meanwhile in Birmingham, a couple have been arrested… And in other science news, a total eclipse…

Why is this? Because of a factor very important in audio writing.

Attunement

Attunement, or “tuning in,” doesn’t mean dialing to the right station. It’s the time it takes for listeners to engage with a voice. To pull focus. To get their ear in.

If you’ve done meditation practice, you’ll be familiar with attunement. In a room full of people, it takes a little while for everyone’s attention to settle where it’s meant to. So the group leader allows a little time.

Listening to audio is similar. Tuning in only takes a few seconds, but those seconds are vitally important.

First, voices are highly varied, and it can take a little while to get used to someone’s style of speaking. The narrator may have a different accent or dialect, a different speed, pitch or delivery than you’re used to. So these phrases act as a kind of voice taster, helping the listener to settle in.

Second, listeners drift. Their attention may have wandered to something else. They may need to be pulled into a new zone of focus.

And third, you may want to signal a new opening, a fresh point of attack. Maybe a new chapter or a change of scene, or simply a different news story.

Listeners need a moment or two to transition mentally, whether to a new voice or a new topic. Transitional phrases help to carry them along more gently, tuning their ears in. If transitions are too quick, they can sound odd, even comedic. Like this:

…the funeral takes place on Friday. An escaped panda…

If one story is sad and the next quirky, the transition is too abrupt and doesn’t allow any adjustment time, either for the listener or the speaker. You’ll often hear experienced radio presenters naturally pause to create a space for transition, or use a transitional phrase. It feels necessary for rhythm and flow, and it’s one of the main differences between audio and print.

Attunement is one reason why writers need to work particularly hard on openings. Look at the openings of new chapters and sections. Identify the main words that carry the most important meaning. Try to place them not right at the start of the sentence, but a few words in, to allow room for attunement. The listening human brain can hold only so many ideas at once. Overloading listeners with too much story detail can simply overwhelm them, so you need to choose what to focus on in those crucial first moments.

I like to think of story openings as cog wheels. The reader needs to engage properly and securely, to create traction that carries them along. If not, it can feel like a bicycle with slipped gears. You can slither along, miss bits, and never feel secure in the story.

In the hands of a skilled storyteller, you as a reader feel confidently engaged from the start, with just the right balance between clarity and intrigue. One way to achieve this in writing is to narrow your focus in your opening right down to very few elements. You can then develop these elements in more detail. But first, they need to be firmly established in your listener’s mind’s eye.

Three key elements

When you write a story, you need to paint a picture for the reader. With audio sweeping by so fast, the broad strokes of the picture need to be established even more quickly. A bit like a rough outline or a silhouette, something just for orientation. The details can be filled in later.

It can be helpful to shoot for only three elements–say, the character, the location, and how they’re connected.

A police officer lying down in a street. A woman in a field with a dog. A child sitting on a swing.

With these simple elements, readers can already create a strong visual image. This kind of starting point gives our minds a basic picture to hold onto. We can fill in the rest over time. We don’t need to know right away that the child has short brown hair and a green anorak, or that the policeman has a shotgun wound to his right temple. That level of detail can come in the second or third sentence, or later in the story.

But for orientation, especially with audio, it’s helpful if some clear visual building blocks land right at the start. It’s amazing how whole stories can be evoked with just three elements:

A man, a boat, a bird – The Old Man and the Sea. Two women in a car – Thelma and Louise.

So, check your chapter openings and see if your three key visual elements land effectively, using simple vocabulary. Don’t over-describe with complex vocabulary and variation, especially not until the concept has registered.

This is important not just for the very start of your novel or story but also for each chapter opening and for any new scenes and sections within chapters. Each of these calls for a mental leap by the listener, especially if you’re taking them to a new location, time, character or viewpoint.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, be sure to take a look at Writing for Audiobooks: Audio-First for Flow and Impact by Jules Horne, Book 3 in the Method Writing series.

Beta Readers: Who, When, Why, and So What?

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Today’s guest post is by writer Barbara Linn Probst.

 If you’re reading this essay, you’ve probably heard the term beta reader. Although some people do offer beta reading for a fee, the term usually refers to unpaid non-professionals who give feedback on writing prior to publication. Unlike critique partners, there’s no requirement to exchange manuscripts; unlike editors, there’s no expectation that beta readers will have advice about how to fix whatever weaknesses they find. They’re civilians, proxies for our future readers. Typically, they’re people we know, if not personally, then through a friend or writing community. We trust them enough to test our books on them and (presumably) listen to what they have to say.

Use of beta readers is widespread, but surprisingly little has been written about how writers actually use them and how they help—or if they do. Most articles focus on how to find beta readers or what questions to ask. See, for example, How to Find and Work with Beta Readers by Kristen Kieffer. But that’s not quite the same thing.

As a former qualitative researcher, trained to look at what folks on the “using” or “receiving” end have to say, I got curious about this gap. I put the word out on five different Facebook groups for writers, asking whether, who, when, why, and how people used beta readers. Within a few days, I got 92 responses. After parsing the responses into topics and themes, I ended up with nearly 200 distinct “bits” of information.

Here’s what I learned about how my fellow authors use beta readers. Not what other blogs tell them to do, but what they actually do.

Most people use a variety of beta readers—writers and non-writers.

Whenever 92 people respond to a question, there’s bound to be a spectrum of experience and opinion. However, responses to this particular question fell into three clear camps.

Readers only, please! Some people only used readers, never fellow writers, because they felt that readers were more authentic, representative, and jargon-free. They liked readers with “a sharp mind and attention to detail,” preferably from their target audience, who were familiar with and liked their genre, and whose judgment they could trust. Some preferred non-friends who had no expectations, vested interest, or reason to soften their response for the sake of the friendship. “I’ve had plenty of betas who ‘yes’ me to death and while nice for the ego, it’s not what you need.”

At times, specialty readers were also sought, either because they were experts in an area relevant to the book’s setting or plot (e.g., legal or mental health issues, a particular time or place) or because they could serve as “sensitivity readers” for content or characters outside the author’s experience.

Writers only, please! Other people were equally adamant that they preferred to use fellow writers, whom they considered better equipped to spot and articulate specific plot, pacing, and character issues. “Civilian readers don’t catch snafus like we do.”

On the other hand, they were well aware of the pitfalls of using fellow writers—in particular, the challenge for a writer of being able to switch gears and simply “read as a reader.” “We writers have a tendency to want to change it to how we would write it ourselves.” Interestingly, this is very much what I found, back when I was an academic and doing research on therapists who returned to “the client chair.” Most had a very difficult time surrendering to the patient role, even for an hour.

Both, please! More often, however, people preferred a variety of beta readers, both writers and non-writers. That could include family members, trusted critique partners, representatives of the target audience, strangers, and “intelligent friends.”

“You need a good variety to get a full understanding of the good and bad in your writing.” One person used one-third supporters/cheerleaders, one-third tough critics, and one-third “wild cards” whose opinion she couldn’t predict. “I like to ask two sets of people: a few that are my target audience and a few who can help edit and deal with higher level critiques.” 

What matters isn’t just who, but when.

Rather than thinking of beta readers as a single group, or of beta reading as a single event, many people use different groups of readers at different points in their writing, and for different reasons. They liked to have one kind of reader to review an early draft, but wanted a different kind of reader for a revision and a third kind for a polished manuscript.

These three “points in time”—early draft, revision stage, and final version—weren’t rigidly defined, of course. Nevertheless, people were consistent in stating that different types of beta readers were useful at different stages.

Fellow writers were seen as most helpful for early drafts, ongoing critique, and feedback when one was stuck, at a crossroad, or “when I have done everything I can with a draft but don’t know how to go further and need assistance with recognizing craft issues.” Drawing on a common lexicon, fellow writers could explain, more specifically, what was lacking or wrong—as long as they didn’t cross the line into “this is how I would have done it.”

Non-writers, on the other hand, were more helpful later, when the book was done, “as a test audience, almost as quality assurance,” but not for material that still required considerable work. Respondents emphasized that it was up to the writer to make the manuscript as polished as possible before showing it to non-writers, who “don’t want to read something that’s not been edited or is hard to follow.”

Using beta readers is worthwhile, if not essential.

Those who responded to the survey felt that beta readers were a necessary part of the writing process. “They are a huge part of my process since the longer I work on a manuscript, the more susceptible I am to blind spots.”

In some cases, people used beta readers because they couldn’t afford a paid professional. Betas were seen as an alternative way to get an independent, impartial view of their work. For other people, beta readers complemented the feedback they received from paid editors, preceding or following their input; that is, they used—and valued—both. “Betas tell you how the average reader will respond to your book, and the editor will make your book marketable.”

Getting the most benefit from a beta reader was a key issue. To avoid both generic praise and generic criticism, some people felt it was important to give readers a list of specific questions about structure, clarity, continuity, and character development. “The questions are the key to focusing the comments—otherwise you run the danger of vague praise or people thinking they’re line editors.”

On the other hand, some preferred to leave things open-ended, letting readers report what they actually felt, without being limited or primed—the way people will focus only on the color of a flower, ignoring its shape and scent, if you tell them that’s what you’re interested in.

Using beta readers has its pitfalls and limitations.

Problems can stem from an over-abundance of feedback—a trap that writers can fall into when feedback is free. “It’s way too easy to ask ten people for comments, and then implement all their comments and lose what I intended for the story.” Confusion and loss of focus will make the manuscript worse, rather than better. “If you get too many chefs in the kitchen, it can change the recipe, which is almost never the best solution.”

Because feedback from beta readers doesn’t reflect knowledge of writing craft, it may lack the specificity necessary for it to be “actionable.” As one person put it, “reverse engineering” is needed to translate a beta reader’s reaction into what exactly went wrong and what to do about it, requiring so many extra steps that it left him wishing he’d hired a professional—or never asked. In his view, willingness to provide useful feedback and the ability to do so aren’t the same thing.

As with all forms of feedback, quality will vary. “My experience is that you can find beta readers that are spectacular and some that are useless. And it is the same for professional editors. It depends on who you can find, not on whether you pay them or not, or whether they’re writers or not.”

Ultimately, of course, writers must decide what to do with the feedback they receive. People tended to feel free to accept or reject what beta readers told them. If a number of people pointed out the same weakness—especially if they included both writers and non-writers—or if the comments resonated strongly, the feedback was more likely to be taken seriously. What I don’t know—because I didn’t ask—was whether people felt the same way about feedback they had to pay for.

I guess that’s another study.

What can we learn from this study?

Know—and communicate—what you want from a beta reader. That may be different at different points in the writing process.
Seek diversity of background and viewpoint, depending on your aim. Sometimes you’ll want a heterogeneous group of readers, and sometimes you’ll want someone specific. Think about what you need before you ask.
Regardless of whether you also use a paid professional, beta readers can serve a vital role as a test audience. Just remember the difference between asking for someone’s experience and asking for her expertise.

What is your experience with beta readers? Share in the comments.

Schmoozing for Introverts: How to Network Like a Pro

Photo credit: icmaonline on VisualHunt / CC BY-NC-SA

Today’s guest post is by writer and editor Lisa Cooper Ellison (@lisaellisonspen).

Maybe you’re like me, someone with a mile-wide idea shelf but a short, stubby one for people. Perhaps you like your fellow humans generally, but your introvert soul prefers small-group interactions to huge crowds and forced small talk. Or maybe, like me, you grew up in a place where networking was either mentioned with disdain or not at all.

A writing conference may be your first professional networking opportunity. During my first few conferences, my angst could’ve lit entire cities. Fortunately, I wasn’t alone. Sensing my discomfort, a gracious mentor debunked the mysteries of networking for me. Studying her at future conferences revealed several tricks I could use to schmooze like a pro, or at least operate like a less awkward version of myself. This gift is one I’ll spend the rest of my life repaying and one I’d like to share with you.

Buddy Up

Whether this is your first or fortieth conference, it’s always better with friends. Invite a fellow writer to join you. If that’s not possible, put out an all-call on your social media networks to see who’s attending your #conference. Make plans to meet IRL (in real life) so you can either get to know each other or catch up.

But if you reach your destination flying solo and sans plans, there are still things you can do. Introduce yourself to your equally introverted and angst-ridden seatmates at the beginning of each session. If someone seems to be on the same conference track (as in you both continue to attend the same sessions), abandon your Twitter feed and strike up a conversation. Ask their opinion on the topic, where they’re from, or what they love. Steer clear of the seemingly obvious go-getter question: what’s your favorite book? That’s like asking a parent to name their favorite child. You’re likely to hear crickets as your fellow writer anxiously formulates a thoughtful, stranger-worthy response. Instead, ask what they’re reading now. See if the person has lunch plans. If they do, ask to tag along. Remember, conferences are for schmoozing and everyone likes to have a full lunch table.

Shop the Book Fair

Once you’ve buddied up, tackle the conference book fair. But before you enter, let me give you some advice. The primary mission for these journals is to spread the word about their publication and increase readership. A secondary mission is to connect or reconnect with author’s they’d like to publish. What’s not mission critical? Hearing cold pitches from unknown authors.

Upon arrival, select the tables you’d like to visit. If you’ve published in a magazine or journal that’s tabling, thank them for publishing your work. Say something nice about their organization (easy to do with some light research) and ask what they’re most excited about publishing next.

When visiting prospective places to submit, buy a copy of their latest publication. You can use this to decide whether your work and this outlet are a good match. Again, say something nice and if possible, talk about a favorite piece. If you want to get fancy, ask about the journal’s aesthetic, mission, or what the editors like best about working there. In other words, strike up an authentic conversation with the person in front of you. But do no pitch unless you’re asked to do so. Even then, your best bet is to secure an email address (if they offer) and send your pitch post-conference through the proper channels.

Remember, these editors are probably surviving on coffee and frequent visits to their happy places as they work to overcome their own people-related hang-ups. In this environment, your pitch is likely to be forgotten, but an authentic conversation with a fellow human is more memorable. It’s also something you can mention in your cover letter.

Do the Eating, Meeting, and Greeting

If you’re already overloaded, it can be tempting to skip social events. Before you do, remember these are your best opportunities to connect with fellow writers. At conference-sponsored meals and meet and greets, give yourself a threefold mission: meet other writers at your level, have authentic conversations with more experienced writers, and practice speaking with influencers without getting creepy or fangirling over them like I have. If you like something a presenter said, say so. If you’ve read their work, talk about what you liked and ask how they came up with their idea. If those questions make you sweat, ask what they love to do in addition to writing. Never bum-rush featured speakers just to say you’ve spoken with so and so, and never pitch to an agent eating lunch.

In fact, if you’re really interested in speaking with an agent, do some research before making contact. Agents are frequently overworked and underappreciated. If an organic meeting opportunity arises, compliment their presentation or talk about how much you love one of their client’s books. If you’ve read one of their articles, share what you learned. If they ask about your work, deliver your one-sentence elevator pitch. Don’t have one? Wow them by saying you have a work in progress but want it to take a back seat to the conversation you’re currently having—one that focuses on why you’ve been impressed with their work or perhaps a shared interest. If pitching is your main goal, sign up for conference pitch sessions so agents can give you and your work their undivided attention.

Allow for Happenstance

A fabulous writer friend of mine once told me about the importance of stopping by the conference bar at the end of the day. “You never know what might happen,” she said. In her case, she struck up a conversation that included a well-known author. At 2:00 AM, one of the writers in this conversation invited the stragglers back to his hotel room to show them something special. Feeling like this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and not as sketchy as it sounds given that she was with a group, she obliged. As the party continued their writing-related conversation, the writer passed around the whale blubber he’d brought with him. Yes, whale blubber. The thought of chewing on a hunk of whale fat makes me shudder, yet ever since she told me that story, I’ve yearned for my own conference-related whale blubber experience.

Now, before every event, I ask the universe to send me one. Finding my whale blubber generally requires me to stay open and check in with my gut regarding which opportunities to pursue. Sometimes it means breaking away from my carefully created conference schedule to try something new. As someone who’s not a night owl, my whale blubber experiences rarely happen at 2:00 AM, but I’m usually rewarded for my flexibility with some happy, unexpected moment.

Joyful happenstance allows you to be completely present and frees you from the neurotic thoughts that lead to awkward interactions. Happy and carefree, you can use my top three schmoozing tips. Be a good human. Respect the size of your people shelf and challenge it to hold a little more. When possible, seek out your personal whale blubber experience. Your writing life will be better off for having done so.

Changes to Amazon Advertising: What Authors Need to Know

Photo credit: Klaava.fi on Visual hunt / CC BY-NC-ND

Today’s guest post is by Dave Chesson (@DaveChesson) of Kindlepreneur.

Amazon is always looking for better ways to crank out a higher profit margin. While some of their updates have been much to the chagrin of authors, recent changes to their book advertising system should help authors make better decisions about their ads and target their markets more precisely.

But it’s not all good. I’m leery of some aspects I think might be problematic.

Note: If you’re less familiar with Amazon ads or aren’t sure how to create them, then check out my complete, free video course on Amazon book advertising.

Amazon advertising: What has changed?

A couple of months ago, Amazon changed the name of their advertising platform from Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) to Amazon Ads, which is why you might still see people, myself included, call it AMS.

On January 7, 2019, Amazon made some significant changes to the AMS features. Although there are slight variations throughout the entire system, most of the major changes can be grouped into three categories:

New Advertising Modes
Improved Dashboard
Better Advertising Targeting

1. New Amazon advertising modes

The first change we’ll explore is how Amazon has altered their advertising modes. Previously, authors had a choice of two methods to advertise their book:

Sponsored Product Ads
Product Display Ads

View of Kindle lock screen

However, Amazon has removed Product Display Ads and instead created Lock Screen Ads. Simply put, this allows you to display your ad on the screen of a Kindle when it is locked as well as on the home page of a Kindle device.

It works a little differently depending on whether the user has a Kindle Fire or not, but the basic principle is the same: when someone opens their Kindle, they will see your ad either on the lock screen or the home page—and hopefully click it.

While some authors believe this is helping their sales, I personally am not a fan of these ads. I believe a lot of Kindle users accidentally click on the ads on their lock screen or home screen. I know I’ve personally done this a couple of times.

The other issue I have is that I generally don’t shop for my next book using my Kindle. When I’m using the device, I’m reading a book I already have invested in. Therefore, I’m a bit wary about this option, and so far my own testing shows high clicks and low sales as compared to other modes.

2. Improved Amazon advertising dashboard

If you’re a book marketing nerd like me, this is a change you can truly get excited about!

For years I’ve been frustrated by Amazon’s dashboard—features common in any other sector of the advertising industry were not offered. To see if your ads had new impressions, or changes, you’d need to export Excel files each day and compare. Having to do this was wholly ridiculous, especially for a company as large as Amazon. Thankfully, Amazon has made some meaningful changes to their dashboard that have improved the user experience.

Amazon Dashboard, Campaigns view

Here’s what’s new.

Export. If you’ve used Amazon ads in the past, you’ll know how tedious it was to have to export your data, run it through a spreadsheet, and manipulate it outside of the Amazon environment. I have a background in engineering, so I’m kind of a technical guy, but even I found this to be frustrating. Thankfully, you can now do meaningful data manipulation within the Amazon advertising environment itself. This is a lot more efficient and saves the frustration of having to export the data.

Filters. You can now filter the data. This is particularly useful if you are running different campaigns, or different versions of the same campaign, as you can quickly and easily compare performance.

Timescale. Now Amazon allows you to quickly change the timescale for the data shown. You can easily see data from a particular time period. This is great to analyze trends. What direction are your ads trending in? Better or worse over time? You can use this data to make improvements to your campaign, and also to draw cause-and-effect relationships between your marketing decisions and the performance of your campaigns.

Columns. Amazon advertising data can be a little overwhelming sometimes, particularly if you’re not used to working with quantitative information. Thankfully, Amazon has made it a lot simpler. You can now easily select which columns are displayed, allowing you to see only the data you want.

Lifetime data. This is a great improvement. You can now easily and quickly export the lifetime data from your campaigns. This is a fantastic option to get a big picture overview.

3. Better Amazon advertising targeting

If you’re familiar with online advertising in general, you’ll know how important targeting is. After all, the ability to pinpoint your ad audience is one of the major advantages of online marketing.

As part of their upgrades, Amazon has improved the way you can target your ads and make sure you get your book in front of the market you want. Here’s some of the new targeting—plus one that isn’t as commonly known.

Product targeting. This is good if there is a specific book you really want to get your ad next to. To target a product, you use the ASIN. This stands for “Amazon Standard Identification Number.” It’s a ten-digit code that’s unique to each Amazon product. If you want to target a particular book, the ASIN is how it’s done.

Category targeting. Picking the right categories for your book is a key part of becoming a bestseller, and ensures the right people are exposed to your work.

Negative targeting. This change was made last year. With negative targeting, you can now suppress your ad from display when people type in certain words or phrases. Say, for example, you have written a book about the optics of twilight—how the light looks at dusk. Using negative targeting, you could ensure your book does not show up anywhere near Twilight (vampire romance) or people looking for a book in that genre or category. This ensures your ads reach the right people, saving you money and frustration.

See the changes in action

Final thoughts about the changes

After about a month of working with the new system, I’ll give them a B+. I like the new targeting with the ASIN numbers and the categories. This new emphasis on categories gives authors the chance to expand their reach by targeting relevant categories they had to sacrifice when publishing their book (authors are only allowed to pick three categories for their metadata). So, rather than sweating your selections, you can simply add even more categories when advertising. Also, the new dashboard is light years better than the original version, but some aspects could give more insight into what’s really going on.

However, when it comes to the Lock Screen Ads, I’m not a fan. In truth, I wasn’t much of a fan of the Product Display Ads either, so swapping one for the other doesn’t change much. This one will bring Amazon more money due to more clicks, but I doubt it will have the positive ROI that authors see elsewhere. However, that isn’t to say that Lock Screen Ads won’t work for anyone.

If you’re interested in learning more or starting your ads, be sure to check out my full free course about Amazon ads. I will be updating it soon to reflect the above changes once I gain more experience with each aspect.

If you’ve been experimenting with the new changes, let other readers know your thoughts and observations in the comments below. Let’s share our knowledge, experience, and insights.