C.L.’s Comments (group member since Jan 14, 2017)

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

Carrie wrote: "I just came across this one. It's only $1 to enter!! :-O

http://www.mcgrathhouse.net/indie-boo..."

You get what you pay for - that one is a popularity contest. The book with the most votes wins, i.e. the author with the best mailing list.

Book awards charge money because they have judges. And if the judges are important people/industry leaders, you have to pay for their time. Not to mention organizing the website, reviews etc.

I decided to only enter book awards that give you feedback/reviews regardless of how well you do - that way I at least get a blurb out of it.

So I entered The Wishing Shelf book award. This one is very affordable ($45 I think?) and pretty cool because the judges are focus groups from the target demographic. So if you write a children's book, actual children will be your judges. If you write adult fiction, a grown up book group will read and judge your book. All entries get feedback from the book groups.

I think that's pretty great so I entered for the feedback alone. But, despite the low fee, it's very poorly organized. Clearly everything is being done by the one man who founded the award, and so feedback is coming out piecemeal. The awards finished a long while ago and I'm still waiting for mine. But it's not a scam - they have a facebook group for the people who entered and they post regular updates regarding when feedback is going out etc. It's just that they could obviously use some staff, but can't afford it.

I entered the IndieReader Discovery Award and won in the humor category. It's really expensive - $150 but everyone gets a short blurb. It also seemed reasonably well organized - I got an email announcing that I had won, and it was announced in New York at BookCon so people actually heard about it. And the judges were Kirkus Reviewers, publishers and such. I know Carole Roman's son got a publishing deal after winning that award in his category.

Then there are awards like the IPPYs that are midrange in price and have real judges. There are TONS of categories so your chance of winning is decent, especially if you enter multiple categories. But if you don't win, you get bupkis, and with that many categories(we're talking like 50), I feel like the prestige is somewhat diluted.

I think that the BookLife prize is worth entering. It's $99 which makes it mid-range and everyone gets a detailed review, which would cost you hundreds from Kirkus or BlueInk. There's only one winner, so chances of winning are very low, but there are quarter finalists, semi finalists, and finalists, so you can advertise it if you end up a finalist, and it's so well respected that a BookLife Finalist probably has more industry sway than winner of an unheard of contest.

That being said, I definitely love that I can call myself an "award winning author" so if you feel like you have a quality book, it's totally worth entering. Do what I did and ask for an entry fee as a birthday/christmas gift!

Chemistry won the Humor category of the IndieReader Discovery Awards today, and Carole P Roman's Rocket-Bye won in Children's Fiction! Yaaay!
https://indiereader.com/2017/06/annou...

My book has swear words and minor (comic booky) violence but it deals with teen themes like body image, healthy relationships, and bullying. Think you'd be okay with it?

Roughseasinthemed wrote: "People. If you don't know what tense to write in, quite honestly you shouldn't even be thinking of publishing."

Excuse me, I'm well versed in how tenses work and I chose my tense and POV quite deliberately. But if you are so expert and well versed on narrative and tense, you would know that when a person chooses to write in first person, they have the problem of deciding WHEN the person is speaking from.

For example, in Bridget Jones's Diary, she is narrating the day's events from the perspective of the end of that day. In The Hunger Games Katniss narrates in the present tense, telling us the story as it happens.

If, in my case, the character is narrating from the END of the series, things get tangly, and that is what I am dealing with.

@Wolfen's response is much more helpful and sensitive to the nuances of my problem.

I'm afraid that I might give away too much of the story based on tense, or that it will look as if I don't know what tense to use, but I think Wolfen's guidelines are sound.

Wolfen wrote: "CL. wrote: "That's pretty much my problem. Some stuff will remain stable throughout the series and some stuff will change. Should I use past tense for all of it, or mix and match according to the f..."

But my character is telling the story retrospectively in past tense? i.e. it has already happened.

I did a review alert rather than a book tour and garnered at least ten reviews. I think I'm happy with that as an option.

Wolfen wrote: "That's pretty much what I was going to say. I'll add the caveat that, for the stuff the speaker is saying about *themselves*, if it's something they *still* do, then use present tense for that part, even while using past for things said about the person they are no longer with. "

That's pretty much my problem. Some stuff will remain stable throughout the series and some stuff will change. Should I use past tense for all of it, or mix and match according to the future end result?

Okay. I'm having trouble with tenses. This didn't come up in my first book but in my second book I have a lot of places where my narrator discusses relationships/character traits, and I don't know what tense to put them in. Like, if she's talking about her relationship with her boyfriend, should it say

"He loved it when I said things like that" and "I had always had problems with anger management"
or
"He loves it when I say things like that" and "I have always had problems with anger management"?

And when talking about character traits, should it be "He was always so calm" or "He is always so calm".

That sort of thing...??

Or does it sort of depend how the book turns out? Like if my character is narrating this from a point in the future, should I leave stuff that stays stable (ie her height) in present tense but things that will change (ie their relationship) in past? Argh!

Amy wrote: "Someone other than me bought a copy of my paperback. OK it's an old school friend of mine but even so, she bought one. So glad I republished when I found a word I got wrong. I republished a book fo..."

Hurray! I made more on paperbacks than I did on ebook sales this month, but that's not saying much...

Crossing fingers for your mum, Alex.

Yeah - thanks! Just got the free trial and I like that I can open scrivener files and it saves them again. I tested it and it didn't mess up my formatting or anything. I also love the detailed reports that tells you exactly how awful your writing is. I can see myself becoming obsessed with this.

R.L. wrote: "Omg CL your scrivener is so organized. I have it and am soo intimidated by it, I haven't used it outside of the notecards, but you made some valid points regarding the endless scrolling in Word. It..."

Just create a new document whenever you write a new scene. Any place where you would normally put a double space, basically. You can even maintain formatting etc by just right clicking on your latest scene, click duplicate, then click on the duplicate and delete the doubled content and keep writing. I move stuff into chapters and stuff later, in the editing phase. At first it's just a long string of documents which I shuffle around.

The real benefit to scrivener for me is how easy it is to organize my scenes. I write each scene in a separate file and it's so easy to go to the part I want to edit or rearrange the timeline. It's all neatly organized in chapters, and changing things around is as easy as click and drag.

I did a little video showing how I use Scrivener recently. You can check it out here:
https://www.facebook.com/cllynchautho...

The grammar check on it sucks, though. I use Grammarly in Word for that - I'll copy blocks of text in and out the way I do with Hemingway. I wish Grammarly and Hemmingway came with Scrivener plugins. Then it would be perfect. Maybe I should look into ProWriting Aid since it seems to do both things - but I like free better than paid.

I tried AMS and didn't get good results. I would be happy just to break even or have a very small positive ROI but my attempts got a lot of clicks but few purchases. I have 48 reviews and 4.7 stars so maybe it's my target audience that needs work?

I did Netgalley through Broad Universe which offers monthly listing, and I did a review alert on Xpresso book tours. Each one netted me 5-10 reviews.

Erin wrote: "C.L. wrote: "Three stars? That's a good review still, so I wouldn't worry. What is incorrect about it that makes you think she didn't read it?

My favourite bad review was from the person who said ..."

Fair enough. I don't blame you for being annoyed.

Three stars? That's a good review still, so I wouldn't worry. What is incorrect about it that makes you think she didn't read it?

My favourite bad review was from the person who said that my book was a "blatant rip off" of Twilight, and then listed all the ways that my book ripped off Twilight. A bunch of people then started commenting on her review pointing out that a parody is different from a rip-off. Same thing is happening right now on Tapas, where I just went live. In my first 24 hours, I got two one star reviews from people complaining that my cover ripped off Twilight. Clearly hadn't read even the first page, nor checked out my author profile which specifically says that I wrote my book as a commentary on Twilight - just basically reviewing the cover. No biggie. Someone else responded with a five-star review saying that it was obviously a parody, praising my writing, and suggesting they actually read it.

Your fans will jump to your defense and it's very satisfying.

Thanks Ben! And Carole - noted!

Aislinn wrote: "Well, I already have the newsletter sign up at the end of the book that gets them a free short story. So are you saying I should not have that, and have a separate one instead? None of the people s..." Hmm, that I don't know about. All I'm saying is that I keep the instafreebie list separate from the "people who have definitely read my book and want more" list.

Aislinn wrote: "So I need to write another story? Great." Or offer some other kind of incentive at the end of your book.