Dale’s Comments (group member since Sep 15, 2017)

Dale’s comments from the Navigating Indieworld Discussing All Things Indie group.

Denise,

Here's what I came up with. It mostly is just a rearrangement of what you already had, although I embellished a little. A few comments follow.

----------
"Time suckles memories and horrors of our lives. It brings clarity to the inevitable."

When Chicago Detectives Row Ferguson and Jonah Rome are handed the most gruesome murders in a year of soaring violence, their strained partnership is pushed to the edge. A young man and two attorneys lie dead, their tortured bodies painted with their own blood, strange pieces of metal placed by the killer at their sides. Everyone cries for justice: city leaders, the detectives' boss, and the families of the victims. Yet not one cooperates with the investigation. Ferguson and Rome are forced to walk a legal and emotional tightrope without a net.

And then evidence disappears. And Rome vanishes.

Their reputations and lives on the line, the detectives must confront a chilling possibility: is someone close to them sabotaging the investigation?
----------

First: "Rome vanishes." Obviously I don't know which of them vanishes. But I think you should put in the name. If you're going to say one of them vanishes, you're not giving away much by saying which one.

Second: I took a few liberties that I hope reflect what actually happens in the book, but bear in mind that I haven't read it yet. Most of these liberties are intended to intensify the tension. If you need to change them, try to replace them with something else that intensifies the tension.

Third: I don't know if you worked on putting keywords into this. If so, I may have messed it up a bit. Apologies if so.

Finally: I assume the quote that leads it off is from the book. I'm a bit unsure of it myself, but that may just be me. I had to read it twice to get it to make sense (which may astound you, but I didn't get much sleep last night). If other people seem to like it, go with it.

I hope this helps.

I'll suggest an edited version later today. This is just to remind myself, and to ask you to bug me if you don't hear from me. Sometimes I loose track of things. :-P

I sent them my two novels, offering 10 free ebooks and 3 free print copies. The first day, 7 ebooks of "The Fibonacci Murders" were given away and 3 of "True Death." One more "True Death" has since been claimed. At this point I've received just one review, that of "True Death"--alas, it was a bad review, but we'll see what else happens.

They made a big deal of how fast "Fibonacci" was going. Apparently it was one of their "best sellers" (so to speak).

Hi Helen,

Helen wrote: "Some of these stories are remarkable. ... I want to vote for my own story, but feel a little weird about that. Still deciding which to choose."

Well, don't do anything you'd feel guilty about. Vote for mine instead. ;-)

No, seriously, you can vote for your own. I've been posting flash fiction stories on and off there for over a year. I quickly realized the reader's choice award was nothing more than a popularity contest. Whoever can muster the most friends wins. I generally only win if I tag sixty people on Facebook. Then maybe fifteen or twenty will actually vote for me.

I'm more interested in the editor's choice awards, although to be honest sometimes their choices make no sense to me. My first story won, but since then no joy, although sometimes I'm convinced I should have won. But, well, I guess I would be. ;-)

--Dale

Hi PDR,

Try something like this:

----------
Of course Tizzie wasn't a slave. Nobody kept slaves in the Yorkshire Dale. Not in 1887. Not ever. Besides, her dear brother Jack and his Scottish wife Maggie had given her home and hearth. Is it so much to ask that in return she serve them as dairymaid?

But by twenty nine years of age, Tizzie has been reduced to skin and bone. Worse, although Jack has the help of three strong sons, he has begun to steer his own daughter Agnes toward the same life of hopeless drudgery in which he has trapped his sister. Determined that Agnes not suffer her fate, Tizzie seeks to break Jack and Maggie's hold over her. But the hearts of those two conceal greater treachery than Tizzie could ever have imagined, and she has only her wits to combat them.
----------

This may or may not entirely fit your story. The basic idea is (as with all fiction) to quickly hook the reader, and then build the tension. But unlike a complete story, a blurb should leave the reader hanging when the tension is at its peak. That gets them to open the book and see what's inside.

By the by, I didn't work in the "male dominated" bit because it wasn't clear to me that that was really the point here. It probably plays into your story somehow, but to me the intriguing part is the conniving couple Jack and Maggie, which kind of suggests it's not all a male plot. However, you can include it somehow if you really want it.

Sure, I'll give it a go, but I have to run just now, so I'll get back to you by tomorrow on this. If I don't, remind me.

Followed, PDR!

It always annoys my wife and I when we find errors in our books when we've been over them several times, then sent them to the author for review, then done a final check. But yeah, even big publishers have that problem. I read a science book a year or so back that had an entire half of a paragraph missing. The paragraph just ended in mid...

I'm pretty well convinced that this happens because of technology. The process of creating a book these days introduces more opportunities for errors to creep in than it used to. You can easily add errors while you're taking out other errors.

Some day I'm going to get myself a t-shirt that reads, "I hate typogorphical errors."

;-)

Amy

"So sorry for mixing up my terminology. That's very helpful thank you."

You're quite welcome, and no problem about the terminology. Everyone does that these days. I do think it's important to understand, though, what a publisher is and what it means if you are asked to pay to get a book produced: it means that you are the publisher, not the company doing the work. They shouldn't pretend to be publishers when they aren't.

Of course, it's all marketing. A real publisher makes money off of the sale of books, not off of authors, which is very hard to do. It's much easier to make money off of authors by saying, "Hey, give me a few thousand dollars and I'll publish your book!" We all like to hear the latter part of that, if not the former, and it's tempting to pay for it.

But if we're going to pay for it, we should at least understand what we're paying for and why they're charging what they do.

Let me offer a bit of perspective as a small publisher myself.

First, since we're writers, let's use words correctly, A publisher is someone who pays the costs of producing books. There is a difference between publishing a book and producing a book.

Vanity "publishers" are more properly vanity presses (and used to be called that, as I recall). They don't pay a penny for book production. They charge authors enough to cover their costs up front and make a profit. That's why they will publish anything. They've already made their money by the time the book is delivered to the author. The author is in fact the publisher in this case, because the author pays all book production costs. Worse, many vanity presses take advantage of how desperate many writers are to see their books in print and charge exorbitant fees. Supply and demand.

Print on demand publishers occupy a middle ground. They may pay some minimal costs for book production, but they don't print anything until a book is sold, so their risk is very low. They may also offer services to authors such as cover design and editing, for which they may charge. If they do charge, they are not covering these costs; the author is. At best, most POD publishers are co-publishers, since the author will pay either them or a third party for such services.

A traditional publisher covers all, or nearly all, of the costs of book production. When I publish a book, my staff (me, my wife, and one of my daughters) have selected the manuscript, edit it, do the layout, purchase artwork for the cover or hire an artist to produce the cover, index the work if necessary, buy the ISBNs, buy the bar code, pay for permissions if the manuscript contains quoted copyrighted material, pay the printer, and pay for delivery of the books to us. We do not charge the author one cent for any of this. In a few cases we've had to tell authors we can't use certain material unless they can pay for permissions, owing to the cost, but we try to avoid that. Consequently, our risk for each book is high and we do not pay large royalties (our standard rate for most authors is only 8%). We have to make back our investment and, we hope, a little profit, so most of the cost of a book has to go for that. This is why traditional publishers are a lot pickier about what they publish than vanity presses or POD publishers.

Vanity presses and POD publishers typically offer minimal marketing services. They might get a book listed in the online databases used by major book outlets and sell it on their own website, but little else. Traditional publishers, however, may not do much more, depending on their financial resources. Most of my marketing is limited to what I can get for free: social media, email newsletters, etc. We've generally found that the best marketing vehicle is actually the author. Authors who promote their works sell their works. Authors who don't, don't, and our efforts have only minimal impact on that. A larger publisher might be able to offer authors some kind of marketing budget, but not all can (or do).

In many ways, my view is that if you want to be the publisher, be the publisher: select your own editor, your own artist, your own printer, etc., and pay them for their specific tasks. But this is admittedly more work than going with a vanity press or POD printer. Doing it yourself is probably cheaper than (or at least no more expensive than) a vanity press. POD printing, maybe or maybe not. Ebook only production is of course another matter entirely.

By the by, professional typesetting makes a printed book look a lot better than anything you'll get from online tools. That's another subject entirely. My wife has learned the basics herself so we don't have to pay someone else for it. But there was a learning curve, and you can tell the difference between our earliest books and the ones we publish today.

Is any of that ramble helpful?

Not to rain on Ted's parade, but I posted a story there this week, too.

And, uh, yeah Ted, I actually did guess the subject before the end, but then I lived in California for a few years, long ago... ;-)

Hi Ruth,

I'm just now seeing this thread. Looks like you're probably swamped, but if and when you have time and inclination, I could add my first two mystery novels to your list. Of course I could. ;-) My third is (with luck) due out by the end of the year, so I'm trying to get some traction on the series.

The Fibonacci Murders
True Death

The first is currently on sale for $0.99 (ebook) and the second will be on sale in maybe a week or two. If you send me a message, I can also get you free copies if you like.

Thanks!

Theodore wrote: "Wish they would announce some new Editors' Choices."

They just did, for March/April: https://www.indiesunlimited.com/2017/.... I didn't win. I kinda think I should have won at least one, but then I always do think that. ;-) I only had entries in the first two weeks for which they selected winners. There is only one week they skipped over. I'm not sure if I had one in there.

They might announce May/June before too long. Sometimes it seems they go in spurts. We'll see...

Ben wrote: My wife and I have an indie based publishing company. We mostly handle book formatting at the moment, check it out below:..."

Hi Ben,

I just now got around to looking at this. I'll send you an email but just wanted to give you a heads up that I'm interested. Thanks!

--Dale

P.S. Blurb writing is very similar to query writing, so this clinic can also help you with preparing a query to send to an agent or publisher, if you're thinking about going that route.

I don't have a lot of time for reading everyone's books, but one small way I might be able to pay it forward is by helping others with their book blurbs. My wife and I have run a small press since 2010 and have written back cover text for most of the books we publish (principally non-fiction, but some fiction). I like to think I've become fairly good at blurb writing, although I'm sure I have plenty to learn still.

I've seen a fair number of blurbs by indie authors that are--to be quite frank--painful. Some even contain grammatical errors. This is the kiss of death for a book. A book cover is all about marketing, and that includes the blurb. You have maybe three seconds to capture a reader's interest via your front cover, then maybe another fifteen seconds to build that interest through the back cover text. At that point readers either look inside or move on. If the back cover says, "This author is boring," or worse, "This author can't write," it's all over.

With that in mind, I'd be happy to try to help any group member with cover text (and others can jump in, too, since I certainly don't know it all!). Bear in mind that some days I may not be too quick to respond. But I'll do my best. Just post your current or proposed blurb and we'll see what we can do with it.

All caught up on following, I think...

Thank you! Yes, it was just released. They are very slow at announcing winners and compiling the anthology, but then the staff is all volunteer and all have lives and jobs outside of IU, so I guess we can't complain too much.

One of my flash fiction stories appears in the Indies Unlimited 2016 Flash Fiction Anthology, now available at http://amzn.to/2yNCCfL. Today (9/30/2017) it's free. After that, it will be $0.99, although a few free days are planned for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Thank you!