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Manipulating your thoughts into elegant prose takes a long time. Capturing unedited thoughts as they fly through your mind, however, can yield clean, concise copy, with ...
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Imagine you’re having a conversation with someone you love. You probably wouldn’t use big words to try and impress them or stop to think of the best way to say things, right? That’s the same immediacy you want to bag in your rough draft. The important thing is to get your copy down as quickly and naturally as possible.
Never compare yourself to anyone other than yourself.
It’s about getting that critic out of the way and immersing yourself in a flow of pure creativity. Do that, and you’re doing well.
For most writers, it’s more important to write regularly than to write a lot in any given session.
week than he does on the weekends, but to him, it’s the habit that’s most important. It’s exercise. As a result, his brain is conditioned to put new words
Scrivener as
Gwen Hernandez’s Scrivener for Dummies), but
Shut Out the World
We suggest you don’t. Close your door instead. Lock it if you have to. Close your window and don’t have anything in your office that you know will distract you.
possibly knock you from your story world — or from narrating if you write nonfiction. Writing is a “flow” activity, and you’ll lose a lot more than the five minutes you spend answering your wife or husband’s question about Grandma Beulah’s surprise party. You’ll lose all the time it takes you to get back up to speed and “in the zone,” too.
The best thing you can do for your writing is to tell those around you that you will be available for them before and after your writing time to the best of your ability — but that while you are in the room with your door closed, you are not to be disturbed.
and I’d never know, and that’s just how I want it. Lastly, wean yourself off of the Internet during your writing time. Don’t let yourself “just check e-mail quickly” or “just check Facebook for a moment.” Also, don’t have a ringing phone in your office.
In short, cut yourself off as fully as you possibly can when you write. The world can be without you for a few hours, and your writing will vastly benefit from the seclusion and the increased focus that comes with it.
Everyone needs an editor if they expect to look professional.
A line editor’s job is to make your prose sound as good as possible. They’ll suggest changes to the structure of sentences, removing or revising redundant text, rephrasing where needed, word substitutions, and grammar or typo fixes.
that independent authors hire a line editor. The expense may suck, but it’s better than looking like an indie punk to your readers.
good rule of thumb when receiving feedback from people who like and love you, in order to get a more accurate impression, is to double the negative things they say, then halve the positive.
Beta readers will generally answer specific queries honestly but hedge on more general ones. Instead of asking a giant question like, “Did you like it?” ask about situations, character motivations, narrative chain, believability of certain moments, and what things surprised them (something better have surprised them!).
Listen to Everything These people have taken their valuable time to give your work feedback, so listen to what they say. Don’t ignore the opinions you don’t like because you’re awesome and they don’t understand your staggering artistic genius. Listen with an open mind, then be as objective as you can in deciding what to change and what to leave alone.
But even beyond that, your first readers might offer you some nifty little ideas for future work in the series if you pay attention.
Your readers, if they’re engaged — and it’s your job to make them engaged — will offer all sorts of idea and theories and desires for your story’s future. Listen to them all, and you might find some gems.
Even better, keep in mind what your beta readers are: readers. If they have specific hopes for the story, they’re probably not the only ones among your larger readership. Satisfy your beta readers first. The rest will follow.
Don't Listen to Everything
but if you find that three or four people felt the same way, or are saying the exact same thing, that’s a trend, and you should definitely listen.
If your draft is full of errors, your editor will be overwhelmed by noting them and won’t be able to ease into the story and catch deeper, more subtle issues that could really make your manuscript shine. So, it’s to your advantage to self-edit as thoroughly as possible. This is a learned skill that will continue to improve, so long as you do the hard work of paying attention.
When I do this, I read through my manuscript inside of Scrivener, stopping to smooth out sentences that clang in my ear. This is a habituation thing, and you’ll learn it through practice, but in general anything that makes you hesitate will do the same for a reader. Reading should feel effortless, so make your sentences easy to absorb. This doesn’t mean dumbing down your language.
story’s end should be clear in your mind, so focus on removing any of the loose ends you undoubtedly wrote when you weren’t 100 percent sure how everything would eventually turn out, while simultaneously adding bits here and there that steer the story more faithfully toward your conclusion. Tighten your prose as much as possible. When in doubt, cut passages that seem to over-explain something or that are redundant.
“Omit needless words,”
Cut when in doubt. Your second draft should usually be around 10 percent smaller than your first, and taking out that 10 percent will invigorate your prose, guaranteed.
Always Edit for Flow You want your reader in a state of “flow” when they read your work, so whether you’re self-editing or reviewing suggestions from your editor, make your decisions based on what best serves that flow.
most readers would likely be American. We absolutely encouraged him to use the word and not change it, because it was being used in dialogue by a British character. Dialogue is different than narration. The narrator’s voice shouldn’t clash with the likely reader’s voice, but dialogue is the sole business of the character speaking.
We suggest you employ the 80/20 Rule. Get good editing, but don’t worry about perfect editing. Get a good line editor, hone your own ability to self-edit, get a few beta readers, and call it a day.
Do an 80-percent job using 20 percent of the potential cost and time so that you’ll still have the remaining 80 percent of time and money and can use it to create and publish more books.
We’re somewhere in the middle. We advise you to pay attention to your voice and be careful, but to trim the fat as best you can without going overboard and making your work sound like an encyclopedia —
Study Your Edits and Improve Your Craft When you get suggested edits back from your editor, it’ll be up to you to decide which to accept. You should probably, all other things being equal, accept more than you decline. (If not, why do you keep hiring this editor?)
As you go through your edits, pay attention. A good editor will explain his suggestions, and a smart writer will read those explanations and learn.
searches. Google is the world’s largest search engine, but Amazon isn’t far behind, and a good title gives you a better shot of coming up in searches on both. (The difference between Google and Amazon, by the way, is that most Amazon searchers already have their wallets out and are looking to buy — and that’s very good news for you if your title comes up first.)
So to sum up the “titles” discussion, we’ll put it this way: For fiction, use your ear. For nonfiction, use your brain (and keyword tools) to get inside the minds of people asking questions that your book can answer.
customer price tolerance, corresponding sales volume, and net profit per unit sold.
In other words, profit-minded people are always asking, “What’s the price and sales sweet spot that earns me maximum income?” You can raise the price until your sales numbers slow enough to make the price hike not worth it. Conversely, reducing price is worth doing if the increased number of sales you get from using that cheaper price makes for a higher net profit.
We’ve said it many times already, and will continue to say it because it’s the essential message of this book: Multiple products in the marketplace give you more to play with and make experimentation simpler. You want three things: conversion, readership, and attention. It can be quite valuable to set a ...
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Ed’s Breakers novels (as of this writing, there are four) tend to sell normally somewhere between $2.99 and $4.99. In September 2013, he created a box set containing books 1-3 in the series, priced it at 99 cents, and promoted it heavily. Soon after he did this (shortly after releasing Reapers, the 4th book in the series), the series’ established popularity combined with the cheap bundled deal shot him up to around #250 on Amazon, where he stayed for months. That kind of “stickiness” on the charts is unheard of on Amazon; most high-ranking books usually slide down in time.
and also stayed there. People were picking up the box set, seeing that Reapers was also discounted ($2.99 instead of $3.99) and bought that one, too. As of this writing, books ranked at #1,000 on the Amazon.com charts tend to sell around 100 copies per day.
If Ed had only thought about making money on the box set, it’s almost certain that he’d be making less overall … and even that bigger-picture profit isn’t the whole story. While Ed is riding high, he’s gaining readers. His mailing list is growing larger. Ed’s not done with the Breakers series yet, and will surely cash in when the next book comes out and when many more people know who he is, and are already salivating for what’s coming next.
Under-Pricing May Also Hamper Book Sales (And Can Make You Look Bad)
Today, the market is used to e-books — and because of that, 99 cents finally looks like the e-book ghetto price that it is.
Bundles Should be Priced Like Bundles Bundles are powerful. You’re giving people an easy “yes,” because they can pick up multiple books at a discount.
Whatever you decide, make sure to include the value pricing in your product description: “Save 66% over buying all of the books individually!”
largest buying audience by far, and no one can touch them … yet. For that reason, if you self-publish e-books, Amazon should be your first stop.
