Meredith Bond's Blog, page 26

Beta Readers

A discussion has come up recently on beta readers. The funny thing is that it wasn't one discussion, it was two, in two completely different settings among two groups of people who had nothing in common (except me).

One person put out a call among writers asking where they got their beta readers. As someone who has always had this problem, I volunteered to read her work if she read mine. I now have a wonderful (I hope) novella to read. And very soon I'll send her the beginning of my YA novel which I hope to publish in the not too distant future.

In the other instance, the beta reading topic came up as an alternative to writing — something someone might do for money if they don't have the energy or inspiration to write (it was said to a friend who had just come out of the hospital). But I thought it was a really interesting idea — to get paid to be a beta reader.

So now, here come the questions. Would a writer (by default someone with a limited income, at least through their writing — I'm assuming that people who have sold millions of copies of books and earn a good living through their writing wouldn't have to pay someone to be a beta reader for them, they would have people lined up outside of the virtual door waiting to do that for them) be willing to pay for someone to read their work? If so, how much and is it worth it? And when you're a beta reader, are you actually critiquing the writing in question — giving thorough, thoughtful comments throughout the manuscript, or are you just giving your overall impression of the work? I'm assuming that a beta reader wouldn't do a line by line edit, that's for an editor to do (and something I do pay for and think it very well worth the money).

So, to go back to my friend's original question, where does one get beta readers? I know some writers rely on friends or family, but they have to be very good friends and really loving family to give you their honest opinion (frankly, I wouldn't trust my family, and I'd be afraid of imposing on a friendship to ask someone to do that for me). Some writers rely on their critique group, which definitely works for me (not that I have one at the moment, mine kind of fell apart, sadly) because it is made up of writers who are experts. And you can sometimes find some on Goodreads, if you find the right group and are lucky enough to have a few people interested in your work to do that for you. Otherwise…? I don't know. I'm looking for beta readers too, like, it seems are many others.

So where do you find yours and what sort of feedback do they give you?

CreateSpace Publishing

There a good number of really fabulous blogs out there which tell you how to publish your novel as an ebook, including how to code it into HTML (highly recommended). (I think I've mentioned on this blog the two that really helped me, but it certainly doesn't hurt to do so again — Guido Henkel and Paul Salvette, both have links in my blog roll over on the right). But there aren't a lot of blogs which tell you how to publish to CreateSpace or any other POD publisher (like Lulu), so I thought I'd talk about that today.

First of all, why aren't there so many blogs that tell you how to publish POD? Because it's soooo eeeaaasy! Yes, it is! You can see proof of that in the length of this blog (pretty short).

And next you should be asking why I use CreateSpace instead of Lulu or any other POD publisher. The answer to that one is one word: Amazon. Yup. Sorry, I know that a lot of people have been railing against Amazon recently, but they are still the largest on-line retailer. If you want your book to be found and bought, you want it on Amazon — it's that simple.

I have nothing but positive things to say about CreateSpace. I have published two books with them, so far, and it has been easy. When I have had questions, I email them and they get back to me with an answer within 24-48 hours. I like that. I had a question on KDP and they took four days to get back to me with a response that really didn't answer my question. Sigh.

So, how do you publish on CreateSpace? Here are the super-easy steps involved:

Create an account (free, natch).
Know what size you want your book to be — 5×8 is the smallest and a standard trade paperback size.
Download the template for the size book you'll be making (I would recommend downloading their formatted template — just makes things easier). This is where you find the templates: https://www.createspace.com/en/community/docs/DOC-1323
The template is a word document. You open up Word and then the template and then cut and paste your novel into it.
Be sure you take care of the nitty-gritty details like line spacing (single), and deciding whether you want the first paragraph of each chapter indented (I didn't and put in drop caps which span two lines — looks very nice). And don't forget to justify your margins.
Save your document as a PDF.
Download the template for your cover from here: https://www.createspace.com/Help/Book/Artwork.do. You'll need to know how many pages your novel is (it determines the width of the spine).
Use a professional designer or design your own cover (if you've already published your novel as an ebook, you've got the cover done and just need to do the back (blurb and any accolades you want to thrown on there) and cut and past the front into the right spot on the template). (I did my own for MITS and my husband did Chapter One.) I used Paint.net to create the MITS cover — I tried using Gimp, which a number of people recommended, but it was not intuitive to use and the help support is not helpful at all. Once I got the hang of paint.net it was a cinch — and I'm really not artistic at all. Your cover also needs to be in PDF form. I used Bullzip (freeware) to print it into a PDF.
That's it! You then decide what sort of ISBN you want — CreateSpace will give you one for free if you don't mind CreateSpace being your publisher, or you can buy one from them for $10 if you want to list your own publisher (MITS is published by Anessa Books — my own imprint)
Upload your files. The CreateSpace computer will check to make sure that there aren't any glaring errors and gives you an immediate way to look at the interior on-line. You then submit it to be checked more thoroughly.
Choose where you want your book to be sold — on Amazon is free and they also give you your own CreateSpace store page where you can sell it.
Decide how much you will charge for the book (they tell you the least amount you can charge, based on printing costs). They also have a calculator which will tell you how much royalty you will earn for each book, depending on the amount you charge for the book.
Put in all your descriptive information (the back cover blurb, author bio and BISAC code which can be found at http://www.bisg.org/what-we-do-0-136-bisac-subject-headings-list-major-subjects.php
Order your proof. Do be sure to check the proof thoroughly for mistakes because once you approve it, it's a royal pain to make changes — unlike with an ebook, you can't just upload another version. You have to republish the book with a new ISBN and, essentially, do everything all over again.

That's it! So incredibly easy, and so cool to have your book, physically, in your little hands.

Oh, and one more note — please check out my new blog page, Fooding! On it I will be posting easy, healthy recipes every Thursday (when I don't post a knitting pattern to my knitting page).  Thanks!

Where'd the time go?

An appropriate follow-up to all the marketing I've been talking about is how to keep it in control. I will read a blog, flip through a few others, follow a link here and there and all of a sudden, I glance at the clock and three hours have flown by! Has this happened to you?

I wouldn't mind the time so much, I mean, I am working, I am posting information, marketing my books, getting my name out there — all the stuff I'm supposed to be doing except for one minor thing. I'm not writing. And so far as I can tell from a few days of this, my book hasn't written itself and isn't any further along than it was before I started doing all this marketing.

There seems to be an infinite number of websites out there which talk about books and provide marketing opportunities, but I can't look at them all. I can't participate in all of them — and so many of them want active participation.

How many Goodreads forums are you a part of? How long can you spend reading on Wattpad or Authonomy (where you are not only encouraged to post your work and participate in their forum, but you are also supposed to read and comment intelligently on the work of other authors — it's kind of a tit for tat, you read their work, they read yours)? These can be very helpful websites because you can possibly get really good feedback, or at least, some feedback. On the other hand, who has the time? Or if I take the time, how can I also get my own work done?

Time-management. It seems like such a dirty word, doesn't it? It does to me. But with the marketing, networking and what-not, it's something I now have to start thinking about seriously. So, how do you manage your time? Are you finding the hours slipping away as I am? What do you do about it?

Last week I promised to tell you how many books I sold as a featured author on RG2E. Well, with KDP apparently having some glitch in their reporting system, according to them, I have sold one whole book. Yup. That's it. One. Pretty depressing, huh? I'm putting it down to the fact that it's non-fiction. I can only hope that things improve and that I don't show similarly "fantastic" results when my romance is featured.

Processing the Process

I not only walk the walk, I talk the talk, and I put my money where my blog is — is that enough clichés for you?  What I'm trying is say is that after all of my blogging about marketing for the past two weeks, I'm going to start to show you about marketing, rather than tell you about it (sorry, I'm a writer!).

I'm really excited because my writing book, Chapter One, is going to be one of the featured books (EOTD: ebook of the day) on RG2E (Reader's Guide to E-publishing; yes, they're really into acronyms over there) TODAY (Monday — for those of you actually reading this right after I published it Sunday evening).  This is going to be great because I'm finally going to get to see just what a little marketing can do for even a non-fiction book like mine.  And I promise to share numbers with you next week!  So, head on over, this is the link, and check it out. And I'm pretty sure they're going to be giving away a free copy of Chapter One too!

Now, on to today's blog topic. I wanted to chat about something that tied in with Chapter One, naturally, since it's the book of the day. And what better topic than a writer's process — namely mine (well, I can't very well talk about other writers' processes, can I?).

If you read Chapter One, something is going to pop out at you pretty quickly — I'm a plotter. I believe in thinking things out thoroughly before I ever start writing. It nearly always begins with character. If my original idea is for a plot line, I think about who would do such a thing; if it was a particular character, I'll start there and develop that person and what their story might be. Since I write character-based books, even if I start with the plot idea, I quickly move into what sort of character would be involved in this story, who would drive it from the inciting event, straight on through to my HEA.

For example, with Magic In The Storm (just published, yay!), it started with the idea of the seventh child of the seventh child being the most powerful witch, well, what if that witch turned out to be a boy? And from there I developed Morgan's story — character! In another book (which I really will finish writing, honestly!), I started with the idea of falling off a balcony — I'm always afraid I'm going to fall off balconies despite any railing. That's a plot line. But immediately I thought about why someone would have that fear, what happened to them, and naturally from there, who are they? I came up with the idea of a woman in contemporary Washington, DC who in her previous life was thrown off the castle battlements and so in this life she is terrified of falling over edges and balconies. (The story goes back and forth from her current life and her previous one — it's loads of fun!) But the idea started with a plot-line concept and went swiftly in character development.

So, I start Chapter One (the book) with characters. Delving into what sort of characters you've got and getting to know them better (complete with worksheets). We shift quickly into goal, motivation and conflict, which just furthers your knowledge of your characters and helps you shift into plotting. World building needs to come next because my story is going to take place in my world, whatever world that is — even if it's the real, contemporary world, it's the real world as my POV character envisions it (which could be very different from the way anyone else would). It's my hero's world and as such, I've got to know it and be able to describe it to my reader. I've got to know what can happen and what might happen, so that when it does, I'll be ready.

And finally, I'll graph out my story structure. Yes, graph! I've got a pad of graph paper sitting on my desk. I pull out a pencil and graph out the highs and lows, the climax, crisis and all the turning points of my story. As I do this, scenes pop into my brain. Sometimes they pop in complete, I know exactly what's going to happen; sometimes they just come in as hazy ideas (something really important happens here which makes my hero do this really stupid thing). This is when I pull out my scene charts (you'll find a copy in the book).  I fill out as many of these as I can, and as much of them as I can, and as I say, sometimes it's really sketchy.

Now, with all this fabulous information in front of my eyes, I've nearly written my first draft. Yes! I do consider this my first draft, especially if I've been successful in writing out a good number of scene charts. All I need to do now is write the book — and don't I just wish it were as easy as that sounds.

It never is because characters change; they do what they want to do, and things happen so that I'm not always certain I'm the one in control.  I end up having to rework my outline at least once. It's all a work in progress, but at least now I've got a strong base from which to work. And when things go off differently than I expect them to, or, as is more common with me and my writing, I find that I'm half way through my plot and only 30,000 words into the story, I've got something to go back to to beef it up — add in that subplot, or build up another.  And then back I go, into the trenches of writing and rewriting.

So, what's your process? Where do you start? And how much do you do before you actually start writing?

It's tomorrow!

Reader's Guide to E-publishing becomes officially live tomorrow!  I am really excited! It's going to be a really great site. How do I know? Because the Writer's Guide to E-publishing is fantastic and it's run by the same people. Check it out!

Marketing Get Your Marketing Here!

As promised, here is the low-down on a number of sites I listed last week. I reiterate, there are just a very small list of websites where you can publicize your self-published book and, possibly, get reviews.  These are websites where you can connect with readers and get your name out there — exactly what we all need to do to rise from morass of self-published book currently available.  Good luck!

LibraryThing is a neat place for bibliophiles. You create a virtual bookshelf of all the books you have read or want to read. Readers can go there, as well, to find books to read. There are lots of book clubs to join and for authors, you can make your book available (a specified number) for others to download (assuming it's an ebook, otherwise, you must send the chosen reader(s) a hard copy) and read. The "cost" of getting a free book is that a review of the book must be posted.  Publishers can post books to the "Early Reviewers List" at http://www.librarything.com/er/list and self-published authors can post their books to "Member Givaway List" at http://www.librarything.com/er/giveaway/list.

Wattpad (http://www.wattpad.com/) is an interesting website where people can post their work for others to read for free. I will repeat that one — yes, you are giving away your work for free. Why should you do this? Easy — you don't have to give away the entire thing (although, you certainly can if you want to). The site is meant for authors to serialize their books, so you post one chapter at a time. On each chapter post, you, naturally, also post where the book can bought. That way, if a reader simply can't wait until the next installment, they're can always go and buy it.  Another nice thing about Wattpad is that it allows readers to comment on what you've posted, so, someone can say what a fabulous chapter they've just read, or tell you if something was less than stellar too. Of course, the comments are public, so everyone will be able to read what others have said.  This site is not for the thin-skinned!

Goodreads (http://www.goodreads.com/) you should all know by now. It's an amazing site with so many aspects to it, I'm sure I haven't found even a quarter of them. You can create an author page there, put up your picture and your bio and make sure that they've got all of your books listed and attributed to you. You can also upload and sell your ebooks there. There are discussions (forum) as well as book groups. People can post reviews of individual books as well. It's a really neat site where you can interact as an author or a reader.

Kindleboards is a forum just for readers of Kindle books. There is another for Nook.  I haven't yet explored the Nook equivalent, but on Kindleboards, they are extremely particular where you post your book's information (an ad, if you will). So, here's my warning to you, if you post anywhere, but on the one board where you are allowed to post, you will be yelled at and shunned.  Unfortunately, at the time of writing, Kindleboards was not loading so I can't give you the URL to follow.

Another reader-centric website for ebooks is the new (ok, so new, it's not even launched yet!) Reader's Guide to E-Publishing (RG2E). So now is the time to get in on this brand new site. For more information on this website and just tons of really useful info. for any self-published author check out their author's site: http://thewritersguidetoepublishing.com/ . One word of caution here is that you do have to pay to get your book promoted on the site — it's not a lot, $25 gets you a "day feature", ie, your book featured on the front page of the website all day. They'll also tweet and put your book up on their Facebook page. Not too bad for not very much money.

Also for Kindle authors, there is iselfpub.com. This is a great site to find books and advertise yours. Like RG2E, you pay to be featured. Again, it's just $25, although according to their website right now it's free. I don't know how up to date that it because it says that it'll be free for the first 200 books that get signed up. I don't know where they are in that count.

Tumblr (talked about briefly in this month's RWR) is an odd site. As far as I can tell it's another place to publish a blog. However,  I have yet to figure out how you find a particular author.  You can't search for anyone there (unless you use Yahoo or Hotmail in which case, it will search through your contacts with your permission). Somehow, I haven't the foggiest idea how, people get put into categories and you can look through them and hope that someone interesting might be there.  An interesting aspect of the site is that you can follow blogs and reblog them, just like in Twitter.

And finally, don't forget to Google genre specific reader blogs. There are tons of them including a series which look connected — Kindle Paranormal Authors, Kindle Romance Authors, Kindle Mystery Authors, etc. Search and ye shall find!

A Wealth of Opportunities

Last week my husband had a huge project he absolutely had to get done. Naturally, he couldn't get any work done in his office because of the constant interruptions there, so he decided to stay home and work. I love my husband, I really do, but work with him in the house? No way! I couldn't concentrate with him mumbling to himself, tapping away at his computer (right next to mine!) and taking phone calls to discuss the project with the other people working on it.

So, what did I do? I decided to use my time productively doing something that  wouldn't make me scream and pull out my hair if I was disturbed every ten minutes — marketing! Yes, I explored all the different ways I can market myself and my books.

I started with the wonderful article published in last month's Romance Writer's Report (thank you Christine Fairchild!). In it, there were a number of interesting possibilities listed. I followed up on a few which I thought would be of most use to me, namely Tumblr, Wattpad and Klout.  There are a few other outlets which I already knew about: Twitter and Facebook (natch), Amazon's Author Central, Goodreads, and Kindleboards. And then there are a few more which I stumbled upon in my search through the internet: Librarything, Savvy Authors, Self-Publishing Review, i self-pub.com, and The Writer's Guide to E-Publishing.  I can tell you, I got two very productive days of marketing work done by exploring all of these fascinating possibilities.

Over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to explore these websites with you and show you what I've found. Yes, this means that I am, once again, putting my Chapter One chapters on hold and if that really bothers you, please, please, please tell me!

Also, if you know of any other marketing options or have used any of the ones listed above, please comment and tell us all about your experiences! We're all doing our best to get our voices heard and our books in as many hands as possible in this overcrowded market — knowledge should be shared.  Thanks!!

Chapter One: Characters

I know, it's been a while since I promised to blog about each of the chapters in my new writing book — but, hey, better late than never, right?

So, today we start with the first chapter and what I think is the most important thing in writing fiction: characters. Can you have a fabulous novel without fabulous characters? Well, yes, if it's got the most amazing, gripping plot. There are plenty of great mysteries with eh heroes. There are even some good science fiction books with just so-so characters. But you won't find a romance without wonderful, to-die-for heroes (and heroines). It's also hard to have a successful YA novel (no matter the subgenre) without a great hero. So, I start my writing book with creating characters.

You know that you've got to create a hero you can love, or at least like a lot. You're going to be spending a lot of time with this person, so you've really got to like him (I'm going with the male pronoun here, but please read it as gender-neutral). And you're asking your reader to spend a lot of time with him, so they've got to really like him too. To create this relationship between the reader and your hero, you've got to create empathy between them, preferably within the first few pages.

Make your hero someone your reader wants to be with. Put him in a situation that makes your reader care. And don't forget to make your hero heroic. He's got to do the right thing, be strong and wonderful and brave and have fuzzy socks — yes! Fuzzy socks. Fuzzy socks is that warm, comfortable, soothing feeling you get when you put on a pair of fuzzy socks on a cold, rainy day. Your hero has to give your reader that feeling of trust and comfort as well. Your hero has to have fuzzy socks (not literally, figuratively).

And most important and most difficult of all, is getting to know your hero. Know what he likes and doesn't like. Know how he reacts to a bad situation and to a good one. Know what turns him on and what really turns him off. Is he particular about something? Is he a slob or lazy? You need to know all of his ins and outs and why he is the way he is. You really, really, need to know him well. So write him, talk to him, write out a conversation he has with another character and get to know them both. The key is to spend time with your hero so that you can know him and can write him with authenticity. Fall in love.

At the end of every chapter in my book, I've got a check list of things you should be sure you have in your book. Here's the checklist for this chapter:

Characters Checklist

Are your characters well rounded, real to life people?
Do they have layers?
Does your hero have at least three heroic qualities?
Is your villain a well–rounded person or concept too?
Is there a strong supporting cast of secondary characters?

It's a Control Issue

I prefer to drive a car with a manual transmission. Why? Well, a number of reason: 1) It's fun! 2) I'm more in control of the car, and 3) It's way more fun!

When I drive an automatic, I don't even feel like I'm driving. Yes, I get to steer and decide how fast I go, but other than that, I'm not the one in control, the car's computer is. It decides if it needs to down-shift for more power going up a hill, it decides when to switch to a higher gear so that I can go faster. If I want more traction on a slippery road, I've got to wait for the car to figure out that the road is slippery — usually by actually slipping on the road. I hate that.

I want to make these decisions myself. I want to be in control of my vehicle. So, it really annoyed me when I wanted better gas mileage and so decided to buy a Toyota, Prius. It only comes with an automatic transmission. Honda has designed a manual transmission hybrid, and the Civic Hybrid used to come with a manual transmission, but just try finding one in this country. Hah! Good luck!

Ok, so what's all this got to do with writing and self-publishing? Excellent question, I'm so glad you asked! It's about control. I like to drive a manual. I like to be in control. I code my books into HTML myself before I upload them (well, at the moment, it, but there'll be more in the not too distant future!). I don't want to rely on a program to convert my book for me.

Most blogs that discuss formatting e-books tell you to first convert your Microsoft Word document into HTML. There are a couple of programs which will do this for you — Mobipocket Creator is the one recommended by Amazon itself. I've tested it out and it works great if all you've got is basic text. But what if you want to put in a picture or a fancy embellishment under your chapter titles? Forget it. Won't do it. No pictures. And, just like with Smashwords, if your styles are not just right, you could end up with different fonts here and there (my book in Smashwords still has different fonts in it even though the original document doesn't — I've uploaded it three times and it's still not right — why? Because their "meatgrinder" is screwing with the Word document I was forced to use).

The thing is, you can't control how your book looks if you use one of these programs. You have to hope that they'll convert your book to look the way you want it to look. Just like if you drive a car with automatic transmission and start going up a hill. If the computer doesn't down-shift that engine, you'll be chugging along at 15mph and there won't be anything you can do about it.

If you format your own book into HTML you get to decide how it looks. You get complete control with very little pain and just a little effort. With that manual transmission, you can down-shift when you need to — yes, you've got to clutch, but once you get the hang of it, it's so easy and takes so little effort.

It's all a matter of control. Do you want to have it or are you willing to give it up to a mindless machine?

And just as a little reminder, if you don't want to do the work of formatting your own book, I will do it for you. Email me for more information on my novel formatting services.

A Positive Attitude

It's going to be a great year — well, ok, the economy sucks and way too many people are unemployed, and the stock market is sickening, but let's be optimistic, the publishing industry is changing moment by moment, growing, expanding and being so innovative, what is there not to be happy about?

Am I jumping up and down for joy? Maybe not, because there is, as I mentioned a few downers. But on the whole I'm pretty optimistic about the future. There are so many more opportunities for writers now — although, I have to say, I feel bad for the agents out there who are trying to figure out where they stand among all this change. And the big, traditional publishing houses are really going to have to get on the ball this year. They're even worse than the European Union when it comes to adapting to what's happening today. The world has become faster (I love that commercial for 4G: that's so twenty-six seconds ago!).  And large institutions have got to be able to change and adapt more quickly to keep up.

Will we see shorter contract terms as some people have predicted? It could only be a good thing. Will traditional publishers offer higher royalty rates to compete with what Amazon and other on-line retailers are offering. That would be nice, wouldn't it? Or should we just give up on the big six as quite a few authors have already done. I know I'm not going to be submitting any more books to them, and when I gave up on my last agent, I decided not to even try to get another. Now, I'm finding that that was a good decision.  What do I need an agent for when I'm publishing my own books?

This year I'm going to finish the last book in my YA trilogy and publish it. I'm going to publish a book which I wrote for the love of it, but could never find a publisher to love as much as I did, and I'm going to look into making my books into audio books because I love them and would love to record my own books. My first four books, published with Kensington, are still under contract and won't be released for a few years to come, but maybe I can convince them to let me do something with those books since they're doing nothing. Yeah, I know, I shouldn't get my hopes up too much on that one — but it's such a waste!

I've got more book ideas to write and classes to teach (I'm so excited to teach self-publishing this semester, I really hope it goes well!). There is so many wonderful things to do this year and I plan on trying to do them all — because you never know, maybe the Mayans will be right.

Whatever you've got planned for this year, I hope all you want will come to you.