Barbara Eberhard's Blog - Posts Tagged "self-publishing"

Today's writing was about trying to extend what happens in the first part of Rich People's Problems, so the climax of the plot doesn't happen on page 100. It needs to happen on page 200. Closer to 250 would be good.
So, I took what had been the opening chapter and expanded the main character's background into two chapters instead of one. I've already broken up a couple of other chapters, though I haven't finished writing the scenes that will expand them. Hopefully, by the time I'm through editing, rewriting, and expanding, the page count will sort itself out.
It's an interesting problem to have, needing to make the book longer. As noted, I need to add 100-150 pages to the beginning of my book.
I have a fellow author at work; both of us have "day jobs". She and I were chatting on Thursday about our writing, and she has the opposite problem with her current manuscript. Her plot midpoint is happening on page 300, and her book is only supposed to be 400 pages. So, she's spending time this weekend - and I suspect the next couple of weekends - trying to shorten the first half of her book by 100 pages or so. And then she still has to write the rest of the book!
She has a deadline, too, as she has a book contract. I envy her the book contract (she has an agent, too). But I don't envy her the deadline.
Deadlines are one of the reasons I haven't sought out an agent or a publisher. I write on my schedule, and I don't have anyone telling me what or when to write. I don't know Stacie well enough yet to know if her agent or publisher have had any say in what she's writing.
But I do know she's feeling the pressure of the deadline. And will have to write most nights after work to make hers. As she's a mom with a small child, that will be tough. I'm not a mom, and I don't write much during the week, unless an idea takes hold that I just can't not get down as soon as possible.
It's nice to have that freedom.

I've published 12 books now: 7 fantasy, 5 fictional biography/romance, and 1 biography. All are self-published, including my father's biography.
Since I've never published in any way other than self-publishing, I don't really know how more conventional publishing works. But I have read about it, and as I've written before, on the whole, I'm happy with self-publishing. I write what I want, when I want, and for whatever audience I choose.
The downside of self-publishing is a lack of marketing support, though from what I understand, even publishers don't do much marketing in support of new authors these days. I have this blog. I post about my books on various forums - several on Facebook, I just joined Instagram, and Eric shares my blog and book information on Twitter. I send out emails, both from my website and from my personal account.
But I've never made much of a concerted effort at marketing much beyond family and friends. It takes a fair amount of time to do it right. And money. I have done a couple of Book Bub advertisements. And I've done giveaways on Goodreads. Those have been helpful in getting more of the word out. And getting some reviews, as well, which are helpful. Honestly, I'm not planning to focus too much on marketing until I'm retired and can spend the time to do it right.
But Dad's biography is getting marketing from other sources, which I'm finding fascinating. First, one of the contributors posted about the book on LinkedIn. She's garnered many more likes than I have for the same topic. But then again, she's an architect, so that makes sense. I've sold at least one additional book to someone through her. She also posted a review about the book on Amazon, helping with my marketing there. Second, ANFA - the last organization Dad helped found - is planning to share about the biography on their website. Third, the contributor is planning to share about the biography at ANFA's annual conference, which ANFA may do as well - I don't know. Because - of course - Dad was an important part of that organization. Fourth - and I don't know if this will have any real impact - the biography is ranked #272 among biographies of artists and architects, far higher than any other book I've written in any of their respective categories.
The reality is that I've sold more of Dad's biography - Maverick for the Built Environment - than any book before. And that's before ANFA shares about it.
The royalties are still not much, just enough for a treat of a special dinner or something.
Writing and publishing has always been more about the fun of doing it than the money I make.
But I am finding this marketing and its effects fascinating. And somewhat financially rewarding. :)

With each book I publish, I agonize over which book categories to use to list the books on KDP, which translates to their listings on Amazon. You only get to choose three categories on KDP, and obviously, those choices help readers find the books - or not.
With Maverick for the Built Environment, biography was the obvious choice. But...there are all kinds of biographies. I chose "biography: artists, architects, and photographers" - which is kind of a weird set of choices - "biography: science and technology". When I first published the book, it topped out at 272 on Kindle under "biography: artists, architects, and photographers". That was amazing; today, two weeks later, it's at 909, which is still amazingly high. Amazon also added the book to "biographies: scientists", which I would argue doesn't really apply. And also to "artist and architect biographies", which is somehow different than "biography: artists, architects, and photographers" where it is also listed.
To try to get more views on Amazon for my fantasy books, where there are millions of fantasy novels, I tried to be a little more selective than just "fantasy". Eric did some research, and between us, we came up with "fantasy: epic" - which I think of as tales with life-and-death choices - and "juvenile fiction: fantasy & magic". The idea of "juvenile fiction" was to get younger readers to consider the trilogies; Harry Potter and the Anne McCaffrey books have created young readers for fantasy series. KDP didn't like the combination, though. It didn't understand how a book could be both juvenile fiction and adult fiction. Clearly, the algorithm was not designed by authors. As with Dad's biography, Amazon also has added categories for the fantasy trilogies. The last book in the first trilogy, The Prophecy Fulfilled, is #48,072 in sword and sorcery fantasy and #83,774 in children's fantasy & magic books. Sword and sorcery fantasy is another category I thought I'd used for the trilogies, though KDP doesn't reflect it. There are not really swords in my fantasy trilogies. But there is lots of sorcery, aka magic.
The last category of books I write, though, has proved the most difficult to categorize. I called the novels I write about love and life from a woman's perspective (first person narration) fictional autobiographies or fictional biographies. In KDP, I'm using the choices of "romance: contemporary" and "women's fiction: contemporary". On Amazon, they have also categorized the books under "biographical fiction", which I don't think I knew was a category. The problem with these categories are that I don't think of my novels as romances, at least not the kinds of romances I've read since I was a teenager. While the women and men I write about fall in love, and often have sex as a result, there is not a focus on the sex part. I don't write sex scenes in graphic detail. I chose "romance: contemporary" as a category because a lot of women read from that category. I just hope anyone buying one of my books and expecting lots of sex isn't disappointed. Likewise, "biographical fiction" is problematic as a category - to me - because the novels are usually only about a small part of the woman's life, the meeting and falling in love - not an entire lifetime. There's usually some other elements to the novels, as well, generally related to how they get past themselves and do the falling in love part. So, in that regard, romance is the focus on the books. But "biography", to me, implies a whole life's novel. So, I worry, again, about whether people will be disappointed in buying the books with that category when they find out the novels only cover part of the main character's life. Overall, I think "women's fiction: contemporary" is probably the best fit. I've read other authors in this genre, like Emily Giffin, and I would say my novels are similar in nature. Girl meets boy. Problems get in the way. Girl and boy have to find their way past them to find love.
When and if I ever do full marketing campaigns for my writing, I'll probably have to rethink these categories. Again. Maybe.

As I've written before, I have hesitated to call my non-fantasy novels "romances". I demurred this was because I don't have a lot of sex in the books. Which is true.

But also I've tried, in this novels, to bring a realistic portrayal of relationships.

I based my first novel, Life Reimagined, on my life. It was a retelling of a relationship I'd actually had and two takes on what might have happened - good and bad - if he and I had been able to work through the reasons we didn't end up together. In the process, I realized that the reasons we'd had for not making it as a couple had, in fact, been good ones. And getting the fictional couple past them had required some changes for both main characters that I don't believe would have ever happened in real life.

Two more of my novels are loosely based on actual events: Pre-Bound Girl and The Drum Set. In Pre-Bound, the main character falls for men who are never quite everything she wants based on a checklist she created for herself of the perfect man. In the end, she marries a man who isn't perfect, but who is perfect for her. I believe this is a realistic perspective, though also a romance trope. No couple is ever going to be "perfect" for each other; as a favorite columnist has written (I'm paraphrasing), "You aren't going to agree on everything. But you have to be able to live with the things you don't agree on, and you have to be able to disagree with honesty and trust." The Drum Set was based, in part, on the trauma and drama of a life-or-death situation. And that sometimes, facing hard situations forces one to come to the realization of what one wants, or makes one be honest with oneself and one's partner. Whether that ends up positively is a whole other question. In the case of my novel, it did. But again, the resolution felt real, probably because it mirrored much of what had actually happened in my own life.

The Gift for Michael has a supernatural component. In that, it's not realistic at all. How the two main characters come to love seems authentic, nonetheless. And there's a bit of a denouement where we learn a bit about what happens after the book ends. While the story ends with some aspects being idealistic (she gets a job that barely exists and probably isn't one you could afford to have a family on), I'd like to think the relationship between Michael and Amanda is honest and forthright.

Best Meet-Cute Ever had one of my most "controversial" relationships, because Jake starts off lying to Tina. Getting these two characters to be honest with each other and get past his terrible behavior took some doing. I'm happy that at least one of the reviewers said something to the effect of "Tina believed in Jake, so I tried to, too, and eventually did." That's entirely how I thought about it as I was writing. What could Jake do to gain her trust again? It's incremental. It's not like some romance novels I've read where the couple have one heart-to-heart conversation, and all is forgiven. Jake has to earn Tina's love after hurting her.

I'm at the point now in Rich People's Problems of trying to get the main characters back on track without making it forced. Anna's mother just called her out on thinking Anna and Andrew know each other when they haven't really spent time together in a couple of decades. Having been best friends when they were kids is a nice foundation. But it's not enough. And they aren't the people they were then. So, a magical post-sex, all is well, let's be together forever isn't in the cards. They have a couple of hard conversations ahead of them. The good news is that they've already had a couple of those deep discussions. They know how. They are learning to trust each other again after a teenage drama broke them apart. But it's not going to be easy.

So, is there a genre called realistic romance? Because I'm a romantic, which is why I've read hundreds of romance novels in my life. But I'm also a realist, which is why I call my books fictional biographies - because I'd like to think the people and stories could have been real.

Yesterday, I wrote about a conversation between my two main characters. I called the chapter "An Attempt at Talking".
Because these two have trouble talking. They've been denying their passion for each other for weeks since Anna came to the ranch. Really, they've been denying their passion since they were teenagers when Anna's mother interrupted them before they had sex. There are decades of pent-up passion that have underscored their more recent interactions.
Because there is this passion, and because neither of them is sure about the other, there has also been a lot of defensiveness. And pushing the other one away. Or not listening, jumping to conclusions. Almost every conversation ends up in an argument.
Except Andrew finally told Anna about his childhood. About losing his mother. And why he calls her Raggedy Ann. I don't want to ruin the book for readers, so I won't say anything more about that. But it was something he needed to tell her. And it led to them having sex. Finally.
But sex doesn't always solve everything. In fact, most of the time, it just creates complications. Which is what it has done between Anna and Andrew.
Because they don't communicate well. And communication has to be part of any relationship, along with sex. Or to put it another way, they will only be having sex if they can't find a way to communicate and start making love instead.
So, the day after their first foray, they try to talk about things. Really talk about the challenges between them. Anna's mother has convinced Anna that she and Andrew don't really know each other anymore. Which is true because they aren't good at communicating. And being honest with each other. And being themselves.
Anna tries in this chapter. She talks about her life now. How she's a successful writer. She's gotten a movie deal. She's wealthy. She's got a life back in New York.
But Andrew is still being defensive, and he doesn't hear her. And so, she reverts to being defensive, too.
And their attempt fails.
My intent was to have the next chapter be called, "Another Attempt". For Anna and Andrew to talk to each other, and really listen.
But, as is often the case, the characters had different ideas. Anna had a conference call for her movie deal. And then she had to talk to her editor. And her publicist. In short, she had a morning being the businesswoman she is.
Then, she went to Cecelia, who is the heart of the ranch - and the heart/conscience of the book. Anna talks to Cecelia about the fact that she and Andrew don't communicate well. And Cecelia disabuses Anna of some of her defensiveness about Andrew.
And, so, now Anna is ready to talk to Andrew again. 12 pages later.

I just finished writing my 14th book, Rich People's Problems: The Story of Raggedy Ann and Andy. That doesn't mean it's ready for publication, however. There's a process from here.
First, I spell check using Word's Editor function. It's far from perfect, but it's not bad. It catches most of the glaring errors, like subject-verb disagreement and the occasional use of the wrong word entirely. Word and I disagree on the comma before the word "but". Word doesn't use it often, whereas I was taught to use it more than not. I turned on the use of the Oxford comma in the Editor, as that's my preference. Using the Oxford comma is a source of much discussion in the writing community. Personally, I think it makes sentences clearer. The other place that the Word Editor and I have a certain style disagreement is on a series of conjunctions. For example, if I wrote, "Jack met Jill and Anne, and together they went somewhere", Editor would flag the second comma as unnecessary. However, again, in the way I was taught, you put that comma in to distinguish that Jill and Anne go together. Review using Editor often takes a while, as Editor flags a lot of things, and you have to read the sentences to make sure the edit should be accepted. I'm probably 40/60 - I only accept about 40% of Editor's suggestions.
Next, I order a copy of the draft book in paperback. I could order a hard cover, I suppose. It would solve the same purpose. But the hardcover has a different ISBN than the paperback, and I traditionally use the paperback ISBN in my drafts (and for the Kindle versions, where the ISBN is not needed). So, I just got in the habit of ordering a paperback version for my hard-copy editing.
Once I get that copy, I do two editing passes. The first editing pass is from the front to the back, reading as a reader would. In this way, I catch continuity errors. I make notes of breadcrumbs along the way, to make sure that all of them are used throughout appropriately and/or resolved in the end. Most of the time, I track the breadcrumbs on 3x5 cards. I might put other notes on the cards, as well. Generally speaking the cards are things I want to make sure I didn't forget about as I was writing. This is particularly important as my outline often changes as I write - as I've noted in other blog posts. So, an idea I might have had at the beginning of the story might not apply by the time we get to the end.
The second editing pass is from "back to front". I can't read every word from end to beginning - that wouldn't make much sense. But I read each chapter as a whole, starting with the last chapter and moving forward. In this way, I try not to get caught up in continuity, but only read for edits. I also use a different color pen for these edits, so they don't get confused with the first pass.
If I've made a lot of changes or had to restructure whole sections - which happens sometimes - then I'll order a second paperback copy and do the whole editing thing again. I haven't had to do that too often - thank goodness - but if needed, I would definitely do that.
Sometimes I put the edits from the first pass in before I do the second pass. Sometimes I wait and do them both together. Either way, I do check that I've incorporated all the changes by doing a scan of the edits from the back of the book to the front. Again, this avoids getting caught up in continuity. I'm just looking for the changes to have been put in.
Finally, I run Word's Editor again. This is just in case I've introduced new errors. Unfortunately, Word doesn't "remember" what I ignored from the first round. So this process will involve ignoring the same edits all over again. Again, it's probably 40/60 as to whether I accept the edits.
Then, the novel is ready for publication. The KDP site likes PDFs for the paperback and hardcover editions, so I will create those - swapping out the ISBN from paperback to hardcover, appropriately. The Kindle upload has to be a Word file, though. So in the end, I end up with three versions of each book: Kindle (Word), paperback (PDF; paperback ISBN), and hardcover (PDF; hardcover ISBN).
All three will be released for publication around the same time. But it's always the Kindle that gets approved first. Followed by the hardcover. And finally the paperback. Not sure why the paperback takes longer than the hardcover, but it always does.
Then there's updating all the other books with the new book in the list of books. That's a whole other process documented in an earlier blog post (12 x 3 = 36). This time, it will be 13 x 3 = 39, in addition to the new 3. Whew.

As I continue to write Journal of Grief, I have been referencing my emails from those days.
I have two sets of emails. One bucket is labeled "Parents Information", which includes emails from the last few years of their lives. It has emails from Mom's doctors. Emails from Asbury Methodist Village. And emails from and to my family about Mom and Dad, and the things that were happening in their lives.
The second bucket is labeled "Family Stuff". In summer 2020, I migrated emails about the family from my "Parents Information" label to the "Family Stuff" label, reflecting our change in life. Here are the responses I got from the Zoom invitations for a memorial for our parents in the fall of 2020. Ironically, we held it on what would have been Don Schon's 90th birthday - Don was Dad's best friend and shows up quite a bit in the biography I wrote for Dad, Maverick for the Built Environment.
Between these two repositories are the history of 2020 as my family experienced it. They are accompanied by the text exchanges among the four siblings and the ones I had with Asbury as Dad was dying, and Notes in my iPhone of Mom's health, which included some about Dad as well.
As I read through the emails, I remember those days. I've cried many times as I read them. Journal of Grief does seem to be an apropos title, after all.

I realized today that I had abbreviated some of the most important sections of Journal of Grief, those related to my father's death.
As I've talked to people about writing this book, the scope or tenor has changed a bit. Originally, I was thinking it would be about my family and the pain of losing both parents in a month, during Covid-19. And all of that is still true.
But several people have talked about the importance of documenting the craziness that was this period in history. Not only about how Covid-19 shut down the world, and even today is still impacting some aspects of life. But also what that really meant.
The pertinent example in our family's life is Dad's death. Normally, when a family member is dying, the family gathers to be with the dying person - and to be with each other. We had had some of this when Mom was dying. Since she took 10 days to die, and John and Michelle were able to get her into hospice at their home, the rest of the siblings had the opportunity to see her before she passed. We didn't get to do the collective grieving part of a "normal" grieving, as we tried to keep the possibly of virus transmission down. Eric and I went one day, and never returned. Richard came a day later, but only stayed for a day. Carol came next, though she stayed for the remainder of the time Mom took to die. This was the best we could do under the circumstances, but it did allow each of us to "say goodbye". When I left that day, I knew I would never see my mother again.
But Covid-19 impacted us much more profoundly when it came to our father. First, we couldn't go see him when we knew he was dying. The facility was on lockdown because of Covid-19. Second, even if the facility hadn't been locked down, it would have been not recommended for us to visit because Dad had Covid-19, and there were no vaccines yet. We could have - I suppose - found PPE and gone to see him, but it would have been very difficult. Third, because we couldn't visit, we couldn't hold his hand as he died, like Carol did with Mom. Fourth, we couldn't - as we couldn't with Mom - be together in our grief. Except over Zoom, which is just not the same.
In my first draft, I had written about all of that in a single paragraph, much like the paragraph above. But that isn't enough to truly describe the impact that Covid-19 had on our family during this time. So, today, I expanded that paragraph into a chapter, to fully describe how terrible it was to not be able to visit, to not be able to mourn together, and to not be able to memorialize our parents in the usual ways.
I also added some chapters on other ways Covid-19 disrupted our lives, to be sure to cover the recommendations by my friends that Journal of Grief include a reckoning of all the ways Covid-19 affected us all.

I've been writing books for almost 15 years now. I started writing my first novel in 2012 with the intent of publishing for my 50th birthday, which I did. I have always self-published, in part because I don't think finding a traditional publisher would be easy and in part because that way I have complete control of the process and the product. But it also means I sell few copies, and that means I make almost no money from my writing.
When I published my first novel, Life Reimagined, I had fantasies of it being "found" by some publisher, who would love it so much they wouldn't want to change a thing and would publish and promote it. I would make money - not a lot, perhaps, but more than I do now.
Then, I received high praise from the mother of a friend, who read the book "by accident" because they shared a Kindle library. She loved the book and asked my friend how she had found this author her mother had never heard of. My friend confessed that she knew me because she was my friend. :) Still, her mother read several of my other books and continued to tell my friend that she enjoyed my writing. It was a wonderful compliment.
Then, I started doing giveaways on Goodreads. In exchange for a free Kindle version of a novel, the giveaway awardees are supposed to write a review of the book. I've given away 100 copies of each of my books for several books now (I didn't do this for Maverick for the Built Environment, which is nonfiction). And gotten at most, three or four reviews of each. The reviews have primarily been positive, however, and the ratings have been mostly 4s and 5s. So, that gives me some hope that my writing is enjoyed by complete strangers.
But still I self-publish. And I make little money. And so, to a large extent, I've always said my writing is really a "vanity project".
If you look up the definition of a "vanity project", though, it says a vanity project is something released but failed. Usually financed by someone who has more money than sense. And just can't let go of what they "know" is a bad project.
In my case, however, I would define vanity project as something I do because I need to and because I enjoy it, and don't worry about whether it's going to make money or not. I self-publish because I love that my words are out in the universe. And seeing my name on the cover and spine of a book still brings a thrill, in my English major heart.
So, I guess it's vanity that I continue to self-publish with so little feedback on my work, except the three or four reviews I might get. But, you know what? I'm not hurting anyone by writing and self-publishing. So, I'm okay with that.

There are many considerations to make in writing. One of the most important is the type of narration.
First-person narration is used when the novel will be from a single perspective. I call my women's fiction novels "fictional autobiographies" because I use first-person narration when I write them. They tell the story from the main character's point of view, like a autobiography would.
But there are disadvantages to using first-person narration. It means that the main character has to be "in the room" for everything that happens and/or she has to hear about what happened in rooms where she was not. Other characters can - and do - recount things that happen elsewhere, of course. But everything is filtered through that one lens.
My fictional autobiographies require the life of the protagonist to change, often significantly. Such transformations are more impactful, in my opinion, when written from that person's perspective.
I suppose it might be possible to write a fantasy in first-person narration. But more often, as I have, authors choose to use an omniscience narrator. The narrator knows everything about everyone and everything. Thus, you can switch perspectives from one character to another. You can present information that the reader should know, but the characters may not yet.
For my Dichotomies trilogy, I'm combining the two. The first and last chapter are written in first-person narration. This establishes the main character - the title character of each book - in their own "voice". And allows the climax and denouement to also be from his or her perspective, adding more interest to those parts.
But the main body of the novels will be using an omniscient narrator, because that's just easier when telling a story with lots of characters with lots of their own ideas, not to mention a prophecy.
I personally have never seen this done before in a novel. I think it will give the Dichotomies trilogy an interesting twist.