Debbie Terranova's Blog, page 10

Tips for writers: Author Talks

My books on display at Kenmore Library 2015

I’ve just finished the March 2015 season of author talks at Brisbane libraries. What a joy it was to get out of my cluttered writer’s space, and meet people with an interest in my book or my topic or just writing in general.

In my job as a human resources professional, I’ve delivered lots of sessions before. But talking about yourself and your creative work for an hour was a bit daunting. My biggest fear was that no-one would come. But thanks to the promotional efforts of the libraries concerned, that did not happen. It makes me happy that our libraries give enormous support to local writers, artists, musicians and crafts people, as well as readers.

Here are four tips to help you prepare for an author talk.

1. Choose your topic wisely.

There are potentially dozens of topics you could cover in an author talk. In a library setting, attendees may be writers or readers, or learners of English, or people with time on their hands. Make no assumptions. Select a topic that will appeal to the broadest audience.

Keep to one hour, maximum. Any longer and either of two things will happen:

(a) your voice will give out or

(b) your audience will fall asleep or leave.

For my recent author talks, my topic was the story behind the story. Why? Because that’s what I’d want to hear about. I want to know what drives an author to commit a year or more to writing this particular story. I love watching the ‘extras’ at the end of a DVD. The motivation behind the film is often more fascinating than the film itself.

2. Create a visual presentation.

Keep it to around 8 to 10 slides, not ‘death by Powerpoint’. Find pictures that show your subject matter and add brief captions.

The visual presentation has a two-fold purpose. Firstly it gives your audience something to look at apart from you. Secondly it keeps your talk on track.

Save the slideshow onto a USB, email it to yourself, and print it out. If the venue doesn’t have an overhead projector, you can still show the presentation on an iPad or refer to the paper copies.

Allow 5 to 10 minutes at the end for comments or questions from the audience.

3. Select readings from your book.

People love hearing authors read their work. Choose around half a page for each, and keep it relevant to your topic. A word of caution: if you’re not an actor or a whiz at doing voices, steer clear of large clumps of dialogue.

Bookmark and label the passages, and mark on the page where each section starts and finishes. If you end with a ‘cliff-hanger’, people will be more inclined to buy or borrow your book to find out what happens.

Find a quiet place and practice reading the passages out loud. Do this at least twice. If you’re like me, you’re competent at reading silently inside your head but hopeless at sight-reading aloud. Even though I wrote the words, without vocalising them beforehand, I stumble and bumble like a six-year-old kid.

4. Deliver with passion and meaning.

On the day of your talk, choose your costume carefully. You are stepping into a role. Today you are an author, an authority on your work and your craft. Wear comfortable shoes, you’ll be on your feet for up to two hours straight.

Go to the venue early and prepare your space. Make sure the technology is working. If it isn’t, you can use the back-ups (iPad or paper).

Met the participants at the door. Welcome them and shake their hands. Invite them in. Thank them for coming. They may have read your book; they may never have heard of you; they may be escaping the heat in the nice cool aircon.

Whatever their reasons for being there, you are about to make new friends.

Enjoy!

The Story Behind the Story

I’ve been invited to do a series of author talks in Brisbane Libraries in March 2015. Besides being thrilled (and a little nervous), it’s made me think about what sparked a three-year writing and editing marathon that ended up as ‘Baby Farm’.

First and foremost was passion for the subject matter: forced adoptions. There’d been an Australian Senate enquiry into the draconian government policies of the 1950s, 60s and 70s that saw newborn babies forcibly removed from their unmarried mothers and put up for adoption. Submissions were requested from mothers and their children, and anyone else who had an interest. Hundreds were received. Some were one-pagers in faltering handwriting, some were long and heart-wrenching, some were professionally written by church and charitable organisations who were the chief providers of ‘care’ for pregnant teens.

The ABC picked up the story and produced a 4Corners documentary called Given or Taken? Do watch it. Be warned though, you’ll need a box of tissues.

What struck me most was the anguish the women had suffered over so many years. One said she’d knitted her son a jumper, one every year, from the age of one to the age of twenty-one. She kept them all so that when he eventually turned up – if he was still alive – he would know that she loved him.

The other thing that struck me was the secrecy and shame. In some cases women had kept their child a secret from family and friends, hoping and dreading at the same time that they’d be reunited one day.

And so it was for several friends of mine. One, who I’ll call Lynette, went on a sudden ‘working holiday’ to New Zealand for six months. More than two decades later she was contacted by her daughter, who’d found her through an agency specialising in family searches for children who’d been adopted. Lynette was both excited and terrified. Her biggest worry was how she was going to tell her own mother. At the time, Lynette was in her forties and her mother was more than seventy. Her story had a happy ending, but many didn’t.

Another friend, who I’ll call Narelle, discovered she was pregnant when she was six months gone. Her boyfriend had recently broken up with her and she was heartbroken. Her way of getting over him was to move out of home, drink copious amounts of wine, eat junk food, and party hard. I’d noticed her putting on weight and assumed it was her lifestyle. When she was finally ‘diagnosed’, she decided to tell her parents. They promptly disowned her. Two months later the baby was born. The hospital almoner (social worker) said, ‘Because you didn’t look after yourself, the baby was terribly deformed and died.’

Narelle never saw her child. It is unclear whether this information was true or false. According to the evidence many women gave to the inquiry, the harder they argued to keep their babies, the more persuasively they were told they’d be hopeless mothers and their child would grow up a criminal. In Narelle’s case, it is likely the child was put up for adoption.

Those stories formed the inspirational spark. The raw material was harrowing. I didn’t want to write a tear-jerker that went from woe to abject misery. I wanted to highlight the effects of the forced adoptions policy on those involved. And I wanted to update the subject matter, because the same thing is still going on today. Now it’s called commercial surrogacy, epitomised by the true story of Baby Gammy, the child with Down Syndrome born to a Thai surrogate mother and abandoned by his Australian ‘parents’.

In ‘Baby Farm’ those difficult themes have been transformed into a crime mystery.

Why do we write?

My poor old threadbare keyboard has officially retired. It was in a sorry state; half the keys had lost their paint, worn away through years of constant use. For the send-off I took a photo and put it up on Facebook. ‘Writer’s keyboard’ was the caption.

My eroded keyboard.

I was prompted to expand. When I counted up, I’d written rather a lot: two books, four novellas, several short stories, plus all the incidental stuff like blog posts, letters, and emails. A friend commented that writing must bring me a lot of joy.

Well that got me thinking. Joy was not the word I would have chosen.

Compulsion, frustration, nostalgia, despair, irritation, achievement, hope. Highs and lows and everything in between. That is what I feel as I stare at my computer screen, that infuriating rectangle of light. Night after night, my brain battles to convert thin-air imaginings into coherent sentences. Inspiration comes. The keys click in staccato and the acid on my fingertips erodes the letters away.

Why do we write?

What can be gained from hours of sitting and pondering and pulling at your hair?

For me it started with reading. For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved the look and feel and smell of books. And, of course, the stories they contained.

My mother tells me that I couldn’t wait to start primary school. In my young mind, the sole purpose of school was to learn how to read. When I came home after the first day in Miss Wadley’s grade one classroom, I raced to the bookshelf, opened one of my mother’s novels and then burst into tears.

‘What’s the matter?’ Mum said.

‘I’ve been at school all day long. And I still can’t read!’

Reading morphed into the desire to write. As I soon found out, wanting to write and actually doing it are two different things.

Wanting to write is easy. It’s a daydream, a fantasy. Picture yourself sipping wine by the fireplace or gazing over a blue ocean while perfect prose flows onto the page.

Being a writer is hard. Like any other gainful pursuit, be it art or craft or profession, writing requires practice if you want to be any good. Practice means you do it. Every single day. It’s a discipline, the same as brushing your teeth or washing the dishes. It doesn’t matter if you write for ten minutes or four hours, just write something.

When you are in practice, the words will come easily. Your word count will grow; your work-in-progress will inch towards completion.

One day you’ll look back and count all the stories you’ve written. Some might be published. Some might remain forever in the ‘bottom drawer’ of your computer. Some might still be brewing in your imagination.

You’ll take a photo of a worn-out keyboard to put up on Facebook and you’ll smile.

Yes, writing does bring a lot of joy.

Indie authors: Five low-cost ways to sell your book

Your precious cargo has been delivered. From your living room wafts a delightful fragrance. Paper and fresh ink and clean cardboard. The anguish of waiting is over. Your books have arrived. YOUR books! All neat and tucked-in with bubble-wrap. The cover looks fabulous and it has the feel of a quality read.

Now all you have to do is sell them. Easier said than done. Promoting your book is a creative activity in itself. Sitting back and waiting for the royalties to flow from Amazon or the like will send you to the poor-house.

Here are five low-cost ways of promoting your creation.

1. Tell your local newspaper.

Every week, free neighbourhood newspapers land unbidden on your front lawn. They’re full of real estate ads and not much else. Wrong! Local papers love local news. Think up a human interest story about you and your book. Perhaps there’s an interesting reason you wrote it. Perhaps, like Baby Farm, the story sheds new light on an event or a time of social change. Turn the story behind your book into a media release. Get the name and contact details of the relevant sub-editor. Talk to them if you can. Follow up with an email and attach your media release. If you’re lucky, you might get a call or a spot in an upcoming edition.

 2. Drop into your local newsagency or bookstore.

Local book retailers love local authors. Keep a stock of books in the boot of your car and spend a day doing the rounds. Chances are they might not buy your book but may be willing to stock it ‘on consignment’. This means you leave a small supply, say five copies, with the store for an agreed period of time. If they sell, the retailer pays you an agreed percentage of the RRP. If they don’t, you pick them up at the end of the period. Formalise this in writing, with a copy for the retailer and a copy for yourself. This should prevent any misunderstandings when it’s time to end the arrangement.

 3. Recruit friends to promote your fab creation.

Recruit your friends and family to help promote your book. You’re proud of your achievement and so are they. Use social media, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, your blog, your friends’ blogs, your telephone contacts list, your Christmas card list. Ask people who read and like your book to write a brief review on readers’ websites (e.g. Goodreads) and your online retailers’ website (e.g. Amazon).

4. Make your public library an offer they can’t refuse.

Make the pitch look and feel professional. For example, you might offer to donate a few copies of your book to the library, or deliver an author talk at no cost, or make a guest appearance at a readers’ group that meets there. Write a proposal letter to the library manager and enclose one copy of your book. Obtain permission to sell books to customers who attend your in-person events.

 5. Get a stall at the markets.

My book, Baby Farm, was released at the end of 2014. Just in time for Christmas. My highest sales day was at a market in a suburban centre. I wore lots of tinsel and a sign that said: I am the author. I talked my head off to anyone who’d listen and sold lots of books.

Indie Publishing #3: The joys of print-on-demand (POD)

One of the most difficult things I did in this foray into indie publishing was to set up for print-on-demand.

First things first, what is print-on-demand?

The quick answer is: exactly what it says. You want a book. You order it. The book is printed. Simple.

What it means for indie publishers is you no longer have to purchase a garage-full of books in order to get a reasonable quote for printing. While there are some discounts for larger quantities, you can order 50 and pay not much more per book than you would for 10. The difference for smaller quantities is the base cost of freight.

Here are my tips for print-on-demand, based on recent experience.

Plan A: Pick a company and go with what they want.

I stumbled upon an American company that offered lots of info and great templates for the dumb beginner. Exactly what I needed, so I signed up.

Bad move. After sinking a full day into formatting to their template, I hit a wall with the business end of the deal. First, I needed to quote an IRS number (American tax number). Weeks ago I applied for one but haven’t heard back.

Second, I needed an American bank account to receive author royalties. They didn’t do Australian banks or Paypal. The only alternative was to get a cheque in the mail. My last experience with an international cheque involved a woeful exchange rate and big bank fees. It was scarcely worth the effort.

Third, although they advertised broad coverage for POD services, they didn’t distribute to Australia. Getting hard copies of my novel was the very reason I wanted to go this route.

Strike three, you’re out.

Plan B: Ask writer-friends about companies with a local presence.

There were two companies that came with strong writer-friend recommendations. Both are American print-on-demand (POD) companies that cater for Australian authors.

Be warned, you’ll need to get an ABN (Australian Business Number). If it suits your financial situation, you can register as a sole trader for taxation purposes and you can register a business name with ASIC for a small fee.

Setting up an email account in your business name is also worth a thought. Certainly it makes you look more professional than if you use a social media type email address such as sweetlips@hotmail (unless you write erotica).

If you want to go the whole hog, you can get a domain name and have your own website.

Your POD company will ask you for an ISBN (the international number that identifies your book). ISBNs can be purchased from Thorpe-Bowker (they’re cheaper by the 10). Register each book title against its unique ISBN. You’ll need a separate ISBN for each ‘version’, for example the paperback version will need one ISBN, and the epub version will need another.

Finally there’s the formatting. Oh, the formatting! Setting up your manuscript for print is completely different from an ebook. For an ebook, you strip out the formatting. For a hard copy, you have to put all the formatting in, including page numbers, headers and footers, margins that allow a gutter for the binding and a curious phenomenon called ‘bleed’.

My tip is to start a brand new Word file. Set your ‘styles’ first. Copy your manuscript into the new file. Then spend the next several days checking and rechecking it. Look for formatting errors, check the visual appearance especially of chapter beginnings and endings. Make sure you don’t have ‘widows’ (single lines that flip over onto a new page).

Before you can even get a quote from the POD company, you need to state with certainty the number of pages. But every time you change the font type, font size, spacing, or margins, it changes the number of pages. The number of pages also dictates the thickness of the spine. The thickness of the spine and weight of the book affects the cost to post.

It sounds like an easy question: how many pages? But for me, this was the most time consuming, frustrating part of the entire process and the most difficult to get right.

When you’re done, submit two PDF files: one of your cover image and one of the interior of the book. A few days later you should receive a ‘proof’, which may be electronic or hard copy. Check again for errors, and give the go-ahead when you’re satisfied.

There, how hard was that?

Indie Publishing #2: The unintentional paperback

In my last post I extolled the virtues of indie publishing, based on my experience of launching a short story as an ebook.

My second ebook (full-length novel, Baby Farm) was equally easy to manage, thanks to the wonderful tools supplied by Smashwords and Kindle Direct (Amazon). These online distribution companies are designed to help would-be authors do it themselves. Their websites have lots of easy instructions and templates and advice to make self-publishing ebooks a cinch.

All that was so last week.

When I started distributing my lovely little flyers to tell people (mainly people I knew) about Baby Farm, the first response was Can I get it in hard copy?

‘Why do you want a hard copy?’ I’d ask. ‘You’ve got an e-reader, haven’t you?’

‘Ah … well … not exactly.’

‘But I’ve seen you with an iPad.’

At this point there’d be an apologetic shrug and an explanation that it was much nicer to snuggle up in bed with a real book  than a cold hard rectangle of luminous plastic.

I have a confession to make: I too am a bibliophile. There is nothing – absolutely nothing – like the smell and feel of a new book when you’re all alone late at night, tucked up under the doona.

I was going to have to do the very thing I’d vowed not to do. Have my book printed.

I took a deep breath. How hard could it be? The virtual variety had emerged without a hiccup. A day to strip out the formatting and prepare the file. My graphic designer had done a great job of the FRONT cover.

Okay. I’d need a back cover and a spine. And I’d need a printing firm to do the work.

I started looking on the internet and that’s where it became very, very confusing.

What did I learn? It’s all about the SIZE.

Dimensions are the key. After measuring all the novels in my library, I concluded that all books are different, sometimes by mere millimetres. The more recent ones added to my collection have large ‘face’ dimensions. They’re a bit like packets of breakfast cereal: all front and not a lot of depth.

Some are in inches (for example 6 inch by 9 inch) and some are metric (for example A5). If you go to your local printing company with a non-standard size (by their definition, not mine), they’ll quote you heaps more to print.

In my next post, I’ll share my hard earned tips for print-on-demand (POD).

Until then, may your writing be inspired.

From writer to publisher the ‘indie’ route

 

Well, it’s now six weeks since I took the plunge and indie published my short story Mowbray Brothers. A dinky little report on Smashwords shows daily ‘sales’, even though the story is out there for free. There’s a pie-chart that gives the total number of downloads from each retailer that carries my ebook. Most professional and encouraging.

It feels a bit like the stats page on your blog when you see all the countries of the western world lit up in colour. Proof that you’re making connections with people from places as diverse as Argentina, France, UK, Australia, USA, Germany, South Africa. No print publication could achieve that instantly and at no cost to its producer (apart from a computer and a bit of electricity).

Emboldened by the rush of enthusiasm and minor success, I’ve backed up with a second offering. Baby Farm. It’s a full-length mystery novel of 230 pages that took around three years to write, and then edit, and then polish into a readable product. I’m delighted to say it will be released next Monday, 22nd September 2014 and is available from your favourite online retailer (no apologies for the unashamed plug).

Sounds easy, right?

What was I thinking? I couldn’t have been more mistaken.

This is the real thing. It’s an ebook that I wish to sell. At $3.99 it costs less than a mug of coffee. Yet without the back-end infrastructure to support it, it will sink into oblivion in the sludge of poorly-written freebies and ‘erotica’ (sounds classier than porn) that clutter up online bookshelves.

Here’s what I’ve learnt so far about going indie.

1. Only proceed when you have a polished piece of writing.

It must have no spelling mistakes, no grammatical errors, no missing words, no typos, and no mystery formatting in the Word file.
Ask a writing buddy to proof-read it. If you have an eagle eye, file it away for several weeks then proof it yourself. There’s nothing more distracting than stumbling over a bunch of mistakes when you’re the reader. It gives the impression you don’t give a damn about your customers.
Hire a professional designer and make sure your cover looks amazing.

 2. Shore up the business side. You are no longer a hobbyist. You’re a writer and publisher.

If you aren’t a US citizen and you’re planning to use an American company like Amazon or Smashwords and their distribution networks, you’ll need to get:

An American IRS number or else send an IRS form with your tax file number to Amazon, etc. Otherwise you’ll lose 30% of any sales in withholding tax.
A Paypal account, or an American bank account, or a non-American bank account that can accept payments in $US. Your last resort is to be paid by cheque, because banks charge big fees to process cheques.
A suitable business name and matching email address. In Australia you may need to register as a business and get an ABN in order to deal with printing companies. Don’t think you can get away with just an ebook. Most of my friends, who range in age from early twenties to late seventies, want a ‘real book’.
For printing, you need to buy an ISBN and bar code. Ebooks don’t need an ISBN, though it’s better if you have one. You must use a different one for each ‘version’ of your book, ie one for the ebook, one for the hard-copy, one for a significant revision. If you use a free one from your ebook distributor, the distributor is registered as the publisher of the work (not you).

3. Work out a marketing plan.

Figure out how you’re going to tell the world (or at least your friends):

(a) that you’ve written and published an awesome book

(b) to buy a copy

(c) to tell everyone about it and so they’ll buy one too.

 4. Last of all, enjoy the ride.

I’ve probably got it about 70% right, so don’t hold it against me if you follow this advice and it doesn’t work out. As Australian motor racing champion Peter Brock once said, ‘Bite off more than you can chew and then chew like hell.’

After all, that’s what life’s about.

Passion and Possibility

The Story+ conference which was part of the 2014 Brisbane Writers Festival was pure inspiration. Described as ‘an intensive two-day conference exploring the future of writing and storytelling shaped by technology, design and data’, I didn’t know what to expect. Except maybe a roomful of young male techno-geeks and one middle-aged female (me).

What the heck, the event was free. If I felt overly intimidated, I could pretend to be lost and exit gracefully. Thankfully a writer friend, Marianna, also decided to go along. Based on my earlier estimation of gender balance, this would increase the female component by a massive 100 percent. United we stand and all that.

The reality was completely different. There was an eclectic mix of writers, illustrators, film makers and game developers all with one shared attribute. Passion for what they do.

Of the many excellent speakers, two in particular caught my interest.

The first was Greg Broadmore, an artist, writer and designer at the visual effects studio Weta Workshop in NZ and creator of Dr Grordbort. His passion is for retro sci-fi illustrations. In particular he loves to draw laser guns, space monsters and dinosaurs (with a few explosions thrown in for fun). When he talks about his work, the passion is palpable. He is a delight to listen to and I couldn’t wait to buy his hard-cover comic book, even though I’m not in to the Flash Gordon hero thing. The illustrations are gorgeous. The text is satirical and funny.

The second was Mike Jones of Portal Entertainment, a writer and creative producer who works across media. What grabbed me was his fresh approach to the business of writing. According to Mike, we must identify ourselves as ‘writers’ first, not as novelists or screenwriters or playwrights. Then, instead of creating work that is ‘character driven’ or ‘plot driven’, we create the storyworld. The storyworld is like a pressure-cooker of oppositional forces, a hot-house capable of generating different experiences and storylines. Within the storyworld you define active and meaningful roles for your audience. You have the power and flexibility to choose the best platform for each storyline. In this way adaptation comes before, not after, the work is created. Mike is also a strong advocate for the ‘writers room’ or collaboration between writers and other creatives to develop ideas and explore possibilities.

Thank you to QUT and Brisbane Writers Festival for this thought-provoking and uplifting event.

Sharing the love: online book reviews

Let me start by apologising to my writer friends and all the authors whose books I’ve read and enjoyed for not posting reviews and ratings on Goodreads and retailer websites.

It is not until you start ‘walking the walk’ with indie publishing that you realise just how important – no, essential – it is to have good reviews for your work.

Consider this. When you’re booking accommodation in an unfamiliar place, you first check travel sites such as Tripadvisor for reviews. Am I right?

On travel websites people pull no punches. If the place is really really good, they’ll say so. If it’s really really bad, they’ll say so. If it’s somewhere in between – good, satisfactory, ho-hum – they tend to abstain from leaving a comment. In general, an overall 4 to 5 star rating gets the business. Amongst glowing reports, outlier negative comments stand out. Often they speak more about the reviewer than the business, and may be due to a personal vendetta about something trivial that has blown out of proportion.

Importantly, accommodation providers with zero stars are avoided. Certainly when I’m looking to book and pre-pay for accommodation in a far-flung country, I don’t take the risk of committing to an unrated guest house unless all other options are unavailable.

And so it is with a book. Not as expensive as accommodation, admittedly. In fact many excellent ebooks cost less than a cappuccino. But in terms of committing time to the reading experience, the recommendation of other readers is an important consideration. Books, and in particular ebooks, without a single review struggle for airspace amongst the plethora of titles available.

How do you choose? Do you judge a book solely by its cover? By the sample chapter provided free? By the track record of its author? Or by the number of stars in the review?

As I write this post, there are 142,728 ebooks classed as ‘contemporary fiction’ on the Kindle site alone. The total number published on Kindle in all genres in the last 30 days is 74,755. There are another 11,093 titles listed as ‘coming soon’.

That’s an awful lot of books.

So next time you read something you like, take a few minutes to log on to your ebook retailer or a site such as Goodreads and leave your recommendation.

It’s easy and it only takes a couple of minutes. Your rating will help boost sales for the author, who is not paid by the hour and has laboured over the story for months or even years.

If you’re already part of a writing community, give someone you know a well-earned boost.

From now on, I will do the same.

P.S. If you’d like to download my book (it’s an adventure short story), visit your favourite ebook retailer (Smashwords, Apple iBooks, Scribd, Amazon Kindle) and search ‘Mowbray Brothers’. If you like it, I’d love to get some nice gold stars.