Jacqui Murray's Blog, page 196
February 3, 2012
How to Do Social Media Right
Kristen Lamb's wonderful social media how-to book, We are Not Alone: The Writer's Guide to Social Media (Who Dares Wins Publishing 2010), provides a great nuts-and-bolts introduction to the basics of marketing your book online. She
Market books with social media Photo credit: Jane Friedman
shares her knowledgeable insights in branding yourself, putting your name out there (something I innately fear), and joining the online conversation in an enthusiastic voice that can motivate you even though it's… just words. She then explains how to get your new 'brand' out there on the many facets of social media, including Facebook, Twitter, and a WordPress blog. She has a lively blog called Warrior Writers (the name alone should make you click through) where she explains that times have changed and she no longer pushes the My Space sign-up (I suggest Google Plus as a replacement because I've found lots of useful info in my G stream).
I've spent considerable time learning how to market online. I don't have a lot of discretionary money to hire agents or specialists. Spreading the word must be through me and be cheap. Since I have yet to publish a fiction book, most of my effort is directed at my non-fiction K-8 technology training textbooks. So, I sat down at my computer, Kristen's book in my lap, and compared her instructions to my current marketing plan. Here's what I found:
She convinced me of the importance of branding–putting my name on all my writing so readers understand my voice. As a result, I added my name to my WordDreams blog. I didn't add it to my tech blog because I think Ask a Tech Teacher (my blog name) is a brand of itself.
I purchased my name as a URL and set up a website (with the help of the wonderful guys at WriteClick who focus their blog templates on the unique needs of writers)
I pay attention now to my Twitter streams. I found out a lot of people were retweeting my material and mentioning me. I can't believe I never responded.
She explained that online marketing for writers isn't about pushing a book, but sharing expertise. That validates my inherent lay-back style. I'd much prefer to chat than sell.
She told me to create a collection of strategic content material–my best posts that showcase my writing, thought process and voice for potential readers. I've now done that. When I do guest posts, I can cull from this collection–update, add/delete as necessary, knowing the basic content is strong
I reworked my bio to describe me in the context of my brand. Since I have multiple personae, this was more challenging than it sounded on the pages of her book, but I've done that. Now, I attach that quick bio to each post as a summary of my creds.
I'm supposed to create a detailed profile of my reader demographics, but I have only a general one. Eventually, this suggestion will percolate through my brain enough to come up with a way to accomplish it, but right now, I'll settle for less.
The true test of a how-to book is whether it worked. Truth–I'm not sure. Don't get me wrong. I know she made the right suggestions. Every year, my sales increase. I'm doing as she suggested so I have no doubt that these types of actions are responsible for that increase, but I have difficulty knowing where to attribute the success. Here's what I mean:
Thanks to WordPress statistics, I can see where I'm getting my readers. In WordDreams, 80% come from Google or people who stumble on my blog. Only 20% are pull-throughs–from posts I've made, comments I've added to other people's articles, or my social media feeds. On the contrary, 80% of my Ask a Tech Teacher readers come directly from my effort–posts, comments, web presence, etc. Only 20% stumble on my content.
90% of my WordDreams readers don't interact, though they hang out and read a lot. On the contrary, 90% of Ask a Tech Teacher readers click through my links. Sometimes, I'll have 800 readers click through in a day compared to well under 100 on WordDreams .
Is anyone doing anything else that works for you? I'd love to hear about it.
Jacqui Murray is the editor of a technology curriculum for K-fifth grade and creator of two technology training books for middle school. She is the author of Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter's journey from high school to United States Naval Academy midshipman. She is webmaster for five blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for Examiner.com, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, IMS tech expert, and a weekly contributor to Write Anything and Technology in Education. Currently, she's editing a thriller for her agent that should be be out to publishers this summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.
Filed under: bloggers resources, business, communication, writers resources Tagged: book marketing, social media
February 1, 2012
Once a Year Blog Maintenance–Are You Up to Date?
For most writers I know, life zooms by with few breaks to pause, glance around at the surroundings and clean up the clutter and confusion that grows like mold from our everyday authorial life. The end of the calendar year was a good time to do
Yearly blog maintenance--have you taken care of it?
that, when many of us were blogging less, posting almost nothing, and had less commitments and obligations than would fill our usual week.
Have you seen those weeks? When push came to shove, they got pushed into my six (as my soldier friends say) and now I'm neck deep in New Year's resolutions, new projects and honey-do's. No matter. With my agent planning to send my book out to publishers in 3-6 months (assuming I complete the edits, sigh), I want everything with my name attached to it as extravagant and full of promise as a sunrise. Here's my list:
Checked old posts for grammar and spelling. I start with the most-visited articles (under Site Stats) and work my way down (in case I run out of time). I've been surprised what I can catch with a fresh eye
Checked my blog's sidebar for out-of-date and no-longer-relevant widgets and links, and new pieces (like awards I've received and links to share with readers) that add to the utility of my blog. I even moved the pieces around to give a fresh look to my seven blogs.
Checked my list of 'pages'. Sure, I'm on top of the Home page, but are the others still relevant? Is their information up to date? Umm, no, especially my profile. I've grown since I last updated it. I also cleaned up a few pages that I'd thrown up planning to clean up when I had a few extra minutes. And, I got ideas from e-colleagues and added a WIP and a Published page as well as Contact forms so readers could notify me if there was a WIP they'd like to know about upon publication.
Checked the appearance of my blog on a smart phone and an iPad to see if they required adjustments to display better. Truth, I'm not techie-smart enough to do anything about issues. Luckily, nothing struck me as impossible to deal with.
Checked my blog in different browsers to see if I should recommend one over the other for best-viewing. I checked Firefox, IE and Chrome–all looked fine.
That's it from my end. Do you have any maintenance issues you'd suggest for the new year? I'd love to hear them.
Jacqui Murray is the editor of a technology curriculum for K-fifth grade and author of two technology training books for middle school. She wrote Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter's journey from high school to United States Naval Academy midshipman. She is webmaster for five blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a tech columnist for Examiner.com, Editorial Review Board member for ISTE's Journal for Computing Teachers, IMS tech expert, and a weekly contributor to Write Anything. Currently, she's editing a thriller for her agent that should be be out to publishers this summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.
Filed under: blogs, writers Tagged: blog maintenance, blogs, writers life
Once a Year Blog Maintenace–Are You Up to Date?
For most writers I know, life zooms by with few breaks to pause, glance around at the surroundings and clean up the clutter and confusion that grows like mold from our everyday authorial life. The end of the calendar year was a good time to do
Yearly blog maintenance--have you taken care of it?
that, when many of us were blogging less, posting almost nothing, and had less commitments and obligations than would fill our usual week.
Have you seen those weeks? When push came to shove, they got pushed into my six (as my soldier friends say) and now I'm neck deep in New Year's resolutions, new projects and honey-do's. No matter. With my agent planning to send my book out to publishers in 3-6 months (assuming I complete the edits, sigh), I want everything with my name attached to it as extravagant and full of promise as a sunrise. Here's my list:
Checked old posts for grammar and spelling. I start with the most-visited articles (under Site Stats) and work my way down (in case I run out of time). I've been surprised what I can catch with a fresh eye
Checked my blog's sidebar for out-of-date and no-longer-relevant widgets and links, and new pieces (like awards I've received and links to share with readers) that add to the utility of my blog. I even moved the pieces around to give a fresh look to my seven blogs.
Checked my list of 'pages'. Sure, I'm on top of the Home page, but are the others still relevant? Is their information up to date? Umm, no, especially my profile. I've grown since I last updated it. I also cleaned up a few pages that I'd thrown up planning to clean up when I had a few extra minutes. And, I got ideas from e-colleagues and added a WIP and a Published page as well as Contact forms so readers could notify me if there was a WIP they'd like to know about upon publication.
Checked the appearance of my blog on a smart phone and an iPad to see if they required adjustments to display better. Truth, I'm not techie-smart enough to do anything about issues. Luckily, nothing struck me as impossible to deal with.
Checked my blog in different browsers to see if I should recommend one over the other for best-viewing. I checked Firefox, IE and Chrome–all looked fine.
That's it from my end. Do you have any maintenance issues you'd suggest for the new year? I'd love to hear them.
Jacqui Murray is the editor of a technology curriculum for K-fifth grade and author of two technology training books for middle school. She wrote Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter's journey from high school to United States Naval Academy midshipman. She is webmaster for five blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a tech columnist for Examiner.com, Editorial Review Board member for ISTE's Journal for Computing Teachers, IMS tech expert, and a weekly contributor to Write Anything. Currently, she's editing a thriller for her agent that should be be out to publishers this summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.
Filed under: blogs, writers Tagged: blog maintenance, blogs, writers life
January 31, 2012
Tech Tip for Writers #37: My MS Word Toolbar Disappeared
As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each Tuesday, I'll share one of those with you. They're always brief and always focused. Enjoy!
Q: My tools for formatting disappeared from the top of my MS Word (2003). Where'd they go and what do I do?
A: They do disappear at times, for no good reason. Here's the simple fix:
Right-click in the toolbar area at the top.
Select Format or Standard.
Make sure they're checked. That's where 99% of your tools live.
This is true in all MS Office software
Questions you want answered? Leave a comment here and I'll answer it within the next thirty days.
Jacqui Murray is the editor of a technology curriculum for K-fifth grade and creator of two technology training books for middle school. She is the author of Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter's journey from high school to United States Naval Academy midshipman. She is webmaster for five blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for Examiner.com, an Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, an IMS tech expert, and a weekly contributor to Write Anything. Currently, she's editing a thriller for her agent that should be be out to publishers this summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.
Filed under: tech tips for writers, writers resources Tagged: tech, tech tips, techie writers, writers resources
January 30, 2012
Writer's Tip #95: 8 Tips from Janet Burroway
Great tips for soon-to-be great writers
When you read your story, does it sound off, maybe you can't quite put your finger on it, but you know you've done something wrong? Sometimes–maybe even lots of times–there are simple fixes. These writer's tips will come at you once a week, giving you plenty of time to go through your story and make the adjustments.
I have a huge bookshelf of self-help books for writing. If I get stuck, I roll my chair around to face my floor-to-ceiling shelves and explore tips from Donald Maass, Bob Mayer, Strunk and White, James Frey on whatever my problem-du-jour is (last week, it was 'story arc' because my agent said he was rereading my mss to review the story arc.). These books are a wealth of information and take a long time to digest. I thought I'd take a few of my favorites and distill their highlights.
Today, I'll focus on the highly-respected Janet Burroway Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft (Longman 2003), the first book I ever purchased on how to write. It's full of ideas, suggestions, and tips, so I've picked eleven that made a difference to mean. If you enjoyed this book, please add the thoughts that grabbed you by the throat and inspired your writing under 'comments':
The process of discovering, choosing, and revealing the theme of your story begins as early as a first freewrite and continues …beyond publication.
John Gardner points out that theme 'is not imposed on the story but evoked from within it–initially and intuitive but finally an intellectual act on the part of the writer'.
Very few writers know what they are doing until they've done it.
Novelist John L'Heureux says that a story is about a single moment in a character's life that culminates in a defining choice
Mel McKee states flatly that 'a story is a war. 'It is sustained and immediate combat.' He offers four imperatives for the writing of this 'war story': 1) get your fighters fighting, 2) have something…worth their fighting over, 3) have the fight dive into a series of battles with the last battle … the biggest and most dangerous…, 4) have a walking away from the fight
A story is a series of events recorded in their chronological order. A plot is a series of events deliberately arranged so as to reveal their dramatic, thematic, and emotional significance.
Generally speaking…almost every occurrence of such phrases as 'she noticed' and 'she saw' should be suppressed in favor of direct presentation of the thing seen
Your fiction must have an atmosphere because without it your characters will be unable to breathe
It's the job of the writer to create a world that entices you in and shows you what's at stake (from fiction writer Nancy Huddleston Packer)
One of the most economical means of sketching a character is simply to show readers a personal space that the character has created, be it a bedroom, locker, kitchen, hideout, office cubicle, or even the interior of a car.
Rather than thinking of point of view as an opinion or belief, begin instead with the more literal synonym of 'vantage point'. Who is standing where to watch the scene?
Jacqui Murray is the editor of a technology curriculum for K-sixth grade and creator of two technology training books for middle school. She is the author of Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter's journey from high school to United States Naval Academy midshipman. She is webmaster for five blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for Examiner.com, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, IMS tech expert, and a weekly contributor to Write Anything. Currently, she's editing a thriller for her agent that should be be out to publishers this summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.
Filed under: writers tips Tagged: burroway, how to write, how to write a book
January 27, 2012
Book Review: Bloodland
by Alan Glynn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
British author Alan Glynn's third thriller "Bloodland" (Picador 2011) is about a rising star who's death captures the imagination of the nation (if not the world). The fun begins when struggling journalist Jimmy Gilroy is asked by a publisher to write her story. He is warned off by people he respects which makes him dig into her death to find out why powerful people would want her story stopped.
What he finds is a vast conspiracy that almost destroys him.
The most appealing part of what might otherwise be a mundane story (beautiful starlet dies in a car crash, nation feeds on the story–think Princess Diana) is the author's voice. It is a mix between a somewhat dark stream of consciousness and a non-formulaic approach to the wild ride of a thriller. It kept me reading despite the wealth of characters I had to sort through and the complexity of the plot Glynn wove. It made me wish I had the ebook so I could search. If not for the back summary, I don't think I could have followed it.
But that's part of the fun, isn't it?
Jacqui Murray is the editor of a technology curriculum for K-sixth grade and creator of two technology training books for middle school. She is the author of Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter's journey from high school to United States Naval Academy midshipman. She is webmaster for five blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for Examiner.com, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, IMS tech expert, and a weekly contributor to Write Anything. Currently, she's editing a thriller for her agent that should be be out to publishers this summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.
Filed under: book reviews Tagged: thriller
January 25, 2012
Mark Twain Flays Deerslayer
Last week, I reviewed Toxic Feedback, a discussion on how harmful the negative opinions of well-meaning people can be to writers. This next is a great follow-up, sent to me by one of the members of my writers' critique group. To have your 
writing flailed by the man whose picture likely appears next to the dictionary definition of 'Writer' might convince you to end your career. Lucky for us, James Fennimore Cooper either never read it or shook it off as the rantings of a jealous colleague:
Mark Twain's Critique of The Deerslayer
So peeved was Mark Twain by critics' acclaim of The Deerslayer that he unspooled them with delightful attention to detail. Twain said, "In the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115." And:
There are nineteen rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic fiction—some say twenty-two. In The Deerslayer, Cooper violated seventeen of them. These seventeen require:
That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the Deerslayer tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in air.
They require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it. But as the Deerslayer tale is not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to develop.
They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in the Deerslayer tale.
They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. But this detail also has been overlooked in the Deerslayer tale.
They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject at hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say. But this requirement has been ignored from the beginning of the Deerslayer tale to the end of it.
They require that when the author describes the character of a personage in the tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description. But this law gets little or no attention in the Deerslayer tale, as Natty Bumppo's case will amply prove.
They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship's Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it. But this rule is flung down and danced upon in the Deerslayer tale.
They require that crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader as "the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest," by either the author or the people in the tale. But this rule is persistently violated in the Deerslayer tale.
They require that the personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable. But these rules are not respected in the Deerslayer tale.
They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the Deerslayer tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together.
They require that the characters in a tale shall be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency. But in the Deerslayer this rule is vacated.
In addition to these large rules, there are some little ones. These require that the author shall:
Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.
Eschew surplusage.
Not omit necessary details.
Avoid slovenliness of form.
Use good grammar.
Employ a simple and straightforward style. … … …
Cooper's word-sense was singularly dull. When a person has a poor ear for music he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He keeps near the tune, but it is not the tune. When a person has a poor ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he doesn't say it. This is Cooper. He was not a word-musician. His ear was satisfied with the approximate word. I will furnish some circumstantial evidence in support of this charge. My instances are gathered from half a dozen pages of the tale called Deerslayer. He uses "verbal," for "oral"; "precision," for "facility"; "phenomena," for "marvels"; "necessary," for "predetermined"; "unsophisticated," for "primitive"; "preparation," for "expectancy"; "rebuked", for "subdued"; "dependent on," for "resulting from"; "fact," for "condition"; "fact," for "conjecture"; "precaution," for "caution"; "explain," for "determine"; "mortified," for "disappointed"; "meretricious," for "factitious"; "materially," for "considerably"; "decreasing," for "deepening"; "increasing," for "disappearing"; "embedded," for "enclosed"; "treacherous;" for "hostile"; "stood," for "stooped"; "softened," for "replaced"; "rejoined," for "remarked"; "situation," for "condition"; "different," for "differing"; "insensible," for "unsentient"; "brevity," for "celerity"; "distrusted," for "suspicious"; "mental imbecility," for "imbecility"; "eyes," for "sight"; "counteracting," for "opposing"; "funeral obsequies," for "obsequies." …
The Deerslayer a work of art? It has no invention; it has no order, system, sequence, or result; it has no lifelikeness, no thrill, no stir, no seeming of reality; its characters are confusedly drawn, and by their acts and words they prove that they are not the sort of people the author claims that they are; its humor is pathetic; its pathos is funny; its conversations are—oh! indescribable; its love-scenes odious; its English a crime against the language."
Counting these out, what is left is Art. I think we must all admit that.
Jacqui Murray is the editor of a technology curriculum for K-sixth grade and creator of two technology training books for middle school. She is the author of Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter's journey from high school to United States Naval Academy midshipman. She is webmaster for five blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for Examiner.com, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, IMS tech expert, and a weekly contributor to Write Anything. Currently, she's editing a thriller for her agent that should be be out to publishers this summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.
Filed under: book reviews, writing Tagged: critique, deerslayer, mark twain, toxic feedback, writers groups
January 24, 2012
Tech Tip for Writers #38: My Desktop Icons Are All Different
As a working technology teacher by day (writer by night), I get hundreds of questions about using technology in writing. Tech Tips for Writers is a weekly post answering those questions. I'll cover issues friends have shared, I've experienced or questions from readers. They're always brief and always focused.
Feel free to post a comment about what you the writer hate about technology.
Q: My desktop icons (those little pictures that allow you to open a program) are all different. What happened?
A: I get this question a lot. Push the start button and check who the log in is. That's the name at the top of the right-hand side of the start menu. It should have your log-in name. Any other, log out and log in as yourself and the world will tilt back to normal.
This happens a lot in my lab because I have separate log-ins for different grades. Students being students often forget to log out. I teach even the youngers how to check for this problem and solve it.
Truth be known, lots of adults have this problem, also. They're used to sitting down at a computer they share only with themselves. When tech comes and does something on it–say, fixes a problem–and they don't log out, my teachers are also lost
Questions you want answered? Leave a comment here and I'll answer it within the next thirty days.
Jacqui Murray is the editor of a technology curriculum for K-fifth grade and creator of two technology training books for middle school. She is the author of Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter's journey from high school to United States Naval Academy midshipman. She is webmaster for five blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for Examiner.com, an Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, an IMS tech expert, and a weekly contributor to Write Anything. Currently, she's seeking representation for a techno-thriller she just finished. Any ideas? Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab.
Filed under: tech tips for writers, writers resources Tagged: tech tips, tech tips for writers, writers resources
January 23, 2012
Writers Tips #94: 9 Writing Tips From James Frey
Great tips for soon-to-be great writers
When you read your story, does it sound off, maybe you can't quite put your finger on it, but you know you've done something wrong? Sometimes–maybe even lots of times–there are simple fixes. These writer's tips will come at you once a week, giving you plenty of time to go through your story and make the adjustments.
I have read several of James Frey's how-to books on writing–How to Write a D*** Good Novel and How to Write a D*** Good Thriller. Although I write thrillers (and I'll get one published if I ever get the rewrites done for my agent), there are a lot of general rules about constructing novels that apply across the board whether you write thrillers, romance, YA or novelettes. Frey points these out in a pithy concise manner that even those of us with short attention spans can get. Here are some of my favorites from his 176-page book, How to Write a D*** Good Novel:
"For most writers, and certainly all beginning writers, character biographies are a necessary preliminary step in the making of a novel."
Even though "Human beings sometimes do foolish things… All of your central characters, both protagonists and antagonists, should at all times be clever and efficient in handling the problems you have presented them."
quoting Raymond Hull: "The strength of the conflict is not just a product of the protagonist's strength" but is a product of the "strength of the opposition" as well
"The art of writing the dramatic novel is the art of holding the reader gripped in a slowly rising conflict."
"Does every dramatic story have a premise [a statement of what happens to the characters as a result of the core conflict in the story]? Yes… There is no formula for finding a premise. You simply start with a character or a situation, give the protagonist a dilemma and then meditate on how it might go. Let your imagination run."
"A story is a narrative of consequential events involving worthy human characters who change as a result of those events. In a dramatic story, the only kind generally worth reading, the characters will struggle."
"Where…do you start your narrative of consequential events involving worthy human characters? Usually, you begin just before the beginning."
"Aristotle said in the Poetics that the length of a drama should be such that the hero passes 'by a series of probably or necessary stages from misfortune to happiness, or from happiness to misfortune.' Twenty-three centuries later, Egri says the same thing when he insists that a character should 'grow from pole to pole.' A coward becomes brave, a lover becomes an enemy, a saint becomes a sinner–this is growth from pole to pole."
"Think of a climax as the target and the rest of your story as the flight of the arrow."
Jacqui Murray is the editor of a technology curriculum for K-sixth grade and creator of two technology training books for middle school. She is the author of Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter's journey from high school to United States Naval Academy midshipman. She is webmaster for five blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for Examiner.com, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, IMS tech expert, and a weekly contributor to Write Anything. Currently, she's editing a thriller for her agent that should be be out to publishers this summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.
Filed under: words, writers, writers resources, writers tips, writing Tagged: good writing, writers resources, writing tips, writing tricks
January 20, 2012
ABNA's Back!
It's that time of year again–for the fourth year. Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards (a cozy ABNA to us repeaters) is taking submittals starting January 23th and ending when they get 5,000 or Feb. 5th–whichever arrives first .
In the world of writing contests, there are a few details that set this one apart:
There is no entry fee. If you've entered contests in hopes of getting feedback to muscle up query letters, the cost of this approach quickly spirals out of control. ABNA skips entry fees, provides no comments until quarter finals. To me, that makes sense. If it's not good enough to get through, then agents won't be interested anyway
Submittals are read primarily by Amazon Top Reviewers, not professionals. I have no judgment on that; just throwing it out there
Two Grand Prize winners of a full publishing contract with Penguin.
You can't enter a published novel, but you can enter a self-published novel. That's unique.
So, are you inspired? You must have a completed novel (which I do). Here are other requirements:
The full/complete version of your manuscript must be between 50,000 and 150,000 words (check)
The Excerpt must be between 3,000 words and 5,000 words (check)
A pitch statement (cover letter/summary) must not be longer than 300 words (check)
Other registration information such as name, contact information, book title (check)
You cannot win if you don't appear at the awards ceremony. This entails a 3-5 day trip. Interesting detail, innit?
Here's a list of contestants who were published subsequent to entering this contest. It's impressive. It would seem that although only one person can win, contestants with strong novels get noticed and snagged by publishers.
This is about the only contest I enter, which I will do again on January 23rd. If you're also participating, feel free to post a link to your preview for others to visit. I'll definitely check it out.
Share under comments if you're entering. See you on the forums!
Jacqui Murray is the editor of a technology curriculum for K-fifth grade and author of two technology training books for middle school. She wrote Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter's journey from high school to United States Naval Academy midshipman. She is webmaster for five blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a tech columnist for Examiner.com, Editorial Review Board member for ISTE's Journal for Computing Teachers, IMS tech expert, and a weekly contributor to Write Anything. Currently, she's seeking representation for a techno-thriller Any suggestions? Contact Jacqui at her writing office, WordDreams, or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.
Filed under: Amazon, Book contests Tagged: abna, writers contests
