Most everyone prefers to publish with a traditional publisher. Why? Because they deem your book worthy enough to take on the expense of publishing your novel plus giving you money to do it. They work with the author on edits and revisions to make the book the best it can be. They provide a quality cover and often ask for your input. They create a back cover blurb and many allow you to write your own or approve what they create for you. They print the book on quality paper often with unique and innovative covers. They distribute the book nationwide and promote it with you--and in some very amazing ways. The will often provide bookmarks, postcards, arrange public appearance and media coverage, as well as book tours. Along with that they provide a solid advance on royalties, and when the is recovered, they send a royalty statement and royalty checks twice a year until the book is no long in print. Traditional publishers will also provide you with some free copies of your novels or books.
But some people chose to self-pubish, e-publish or go with houses who use print-on-demand for publishing. Is this wrong? Not really. It depends on you, your book and your purpose for writing and publishing a book. If you want a writing career, traditional will work best for you, but if you have other reasons for seeing your novel in print, then other methods will work.
I read an interesting article on the Internet on CNN.com. It will provide you with good information to help you make wise decisions as you move forward in getting your novel published. Check it out. http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/04/06/print.on.demand.publishing/index.html
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
Writers Block Stimulator
Most everyone at one time or another goes blank while writing. My technique is to exercise--go for a walk or more likely get on my stationary bike and pedal. Perhaps this stimulates the blood flow to my brain or just removes me from the problem I'm facing in the book, but I often solve the issue while exercising in some way. The serious writer's block is the loss of creativity. This can last for long periods of time and can't be resolved pedalling a stationary bike for a half hour. So I'm really talking about those short blank moments when we don't know how to resolve a scene or create an amazing opening or devise grabbing dialogue.
A writer friend sent me a link to a site called 911 Writers Block. Though the examples are limited, I thought the tool was a great idea. The link is: Click here: 911 Writers Block
But the more interesting question is: What do you do when you go blank? When you can't decide how to resolve a scene? When your setting becomes dull? Please share your ideas with me in the comments section. You can also contact me through my website. I will enjoy sharing some of your ideas on this blog. Have fun with 911 Writers Block.
A writer friend sent me a link to a site called 911 Writers Block. Though the examples are limited, I thought the tool was a great idea. The link is: Click here: 911 Writers Block
But the more interesting question is: What do you do when you go blank? When you can't decide how to resolve a scene? When your setting becomes dull? Please share your ideas with me in the comments section. You can also contact me through my website. I will enjoy sharing some of your ideas on this blog. Have fun with 911 Writers Block.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Traditional or Self-Publishing: Which Is Best?
Many people deal with this getting-published issue when writing their books. Finding an agent first and then the long struggle to find a publisher for your work can be discouraging. People often give up after numerous rejections and decide to self-publish.
I am published traditionally which means my books are contracted and I receive a advance on royalties, royalty statements and checks covering new royalty payments twice a year, a guarantee of a certain number of author books mailed to me free of charge. My books are distributed by major distributors to bookstores and retail and grocery stories across the US and Canada and are sometimes translated into other languages and sold in other countries.
My books are also promoted by my publisher with advertising through the mail, in publisher catalogues and on varous media such as radio and TV spots and in magazines. They also do mailing campaigns and offer special discounts to encourage new readers.
The hard part is writing a book that can pass through a committee of people to deem it worthy of publication, meaning you have provided an excellent product that will appeal to the publishers readership. If you are rejected, this can mean several things. Your project doesn’t meet their current needs, someone has written a book too similar to yours, you’ve submitted a genre that doesn’t match their publishing needs or their mission statement, or that your work is not ready for publication.
Continuing to hone your craft is a good element of rejection. No matter how many novels you’ve written, continuing to learn to be the best author you can is vital to making an impact on readers and bringing in new ones. Few readers buzzes about a bad novel – except family and friends.
Once you sell your novel, you will work with your editor along with a copy and line editor to produce the best book you can. They will provide excellent artist to produce your cover and they will write the back cover blurb (unless you choose otherwise) and take care of all the copyright on your novel. You may have the opportunity to approve the cover and the blurb, but this often depends on the publisher.
Self-publishing and POD publishing (Print on Demand) often puts the burden on the author to edit, revise, create a cover, write a back blurb as well as market, promote and distribute their own product.
If you want to know more about self publishing, this link provides thoughtful information to help you make a wise decision.
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-18438_7-10119891-82.html?tag=smallCarouselArea.1
I am published traditionally which means my books are contracted and I receive a advance on royalties, royalty statements and checks covering new royalty payments twice a year, a guarantee of a certain number of author books mailed to me free of charge. My books are distributed by major distributors to bookstores and retail and grocery stories across the US and Canada and are sometimes translated into other languages and sold in other countries.
My books are also promoted by my publisher with advertising through the mail, in publisher catalogues and on varous media such as radio and TV spots and in magazines. They also do mailing campaigns and offer special discounts to encourage new readers.
The hard part is writing a book that can pass through a committee of people to deem it worthy of publication, meaning you have provided an excellent product that will appeal to the publishers readership. If you are rejected, this can mean several things. Your project doesn’t meet their current needs, someone has written a book too similar to yours, you’ve submitted a genre that doesn’t match their publishing needs or their mission statement, or that your work is not ready for publication.
Continuing to hone your craft is a good element of rejection. No matter how many novels you’ve written, continuing to learn to be the best author you can is vital to making an impact on readers and bringing in new ones. Few readers buzzes about a bad novel – except family and friends.
Once you sell your novel, you will work with your editor along with a copy and line editor to produce the best book you can. They will provide excellent artist to produce your cover and they will write the back cover blurb (unless you choose otherwise) and take care of all the copyright on your novel. You may have the opportunity to approve the cover and the blurb, but this often depends on the publisher.
Self-publishing and POD publishing (Print on Demand) often puts the burden on the author to edit, revise, create a cover, write a back blurb as well as market, promote and distribute their own product.
If you want to know more about self publishing, this link provides thoughtful information to help you make a wise decision.
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-18438_7-10119891-82.html?tag=smallCarouselArea.1
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Advice On Tactical Writing--POV
A good friend, Randy Ingermanson has given me permission to share this article with you on Point of View (POV) from his Advanced Fiction Writing blog. I believe that hearing information in a variety of ways helps an author learn even more. What one person says may not sink in, but when someone else says it, it makes sense. So I want to share this excellent information on one of the most difficult techniques to learn---using POV effectively.
Randy says:
Last month, I talked about the supreme importance of tactical writing. You can foul up the strategic and logistical aspects of your writing and you will survive. But if your tactical writing doesn't work, then you are in deep, deep trouble.
For the next few months, I'd like to talk more about tactical writing.
Tactical writing is about writing great scenes. The scene is the fundamental unit of fiction. If you can write a great scene, over and over again, then you can write a pretty good novel, even if the scenes don't actually hang together all that well.
Why is that? Because a scene is experienced RIGHT NOW. The previous scene was experienced a while ago and is no longer fresh in the reader's mind. The following scene hasn't been read yet.
So when your reader is experiencing your novel, whatever scene she is reading is the absolute most important scene to her. If that scene is good, then your reader believes the novel is good. If that scene stinks, then your reader believes the novel is skank.
The first thing you need to get right when writing a scene is this: Who is the viewpoint character?
Let me define what we mean by that.
You must choose one character that the reader will identify with throughout the entire scene. That character is called the viewpoint character (or sometimes the point-of-view character, often abbreviated POV character).
During the course of the scene, a major part of your goal is to persuade your reader that she IS the POV character.
That is no small trick. Your reader might be a rich, female, teenage Caucasian, while your POV character might be a poor, male, century-old Wookie. How are you going to persuade the reader that she IS the POV character?
More importantly, WHY would you want to do that?
The answer is simple. You want to give your reader a special kind of experience while reading. I call this experience a "Powerful Emotional Experience," and I have long been convinced that this is the main reason your reader reads.
To give your reader a Powerful Emotional Experience, you have to create an emotive context. That means getting inside one character to the exclusion of all others.
Why be exclusive? Why not let your reader share the experience with all the characters in the scene?
Because that's how people experience life. There are two kinds of people in the world -- you and everyone else. You experience yourself from inside your own skin, inside your eyes, inside your ears. You experience everyone else as outside your skin, outside
your eyes, outside your ears.
Your reader knows this perfectly well. When you insert your reader into your Storyworld, there is only one way to do so which will feel natural: Inserting your reader inside the skin and eyes and ears of exactly one of the characters.
The POV character will normally be a person. Rarely, it will be an animal. More rarely a plant. Even more rarely, an inanimate object.
Beginning writers often want to make their POV character some omniscient god-like person who sees into all minds. That's a mistake, because your reader is not omniscient. (I am willing to bet money on this.) Making your POV character omniscient will feel unnatural.
So why do some beginning writers want to use an omniscient point of view? Usually, it's because they have read a good novel that used omniscient POV. They assume the novel was good because it used omniscient POV. In reality, the novel was good EVEN THOUGH it used omniscient POV.
Some writers will even argue, "Charles Dickens wrote in omniscient POV, so I can too."
When someone takes this line with me, I sometimes say, "When you can write fiction one tenth as well as Charlie, then you can use omniscient POV." Which is a little unkind, but it's probably nicer than sticking a fork in their eye.
On days when I'm feeling a bit more patient, I observe that great writers of the past made many stupid mistakes, such as beating their wives, pickling their livers in alcohol, getting killed in duels, and using omniscient POV.
All of these are frowned on today.
Great writers of the past were great writers in spite of the mistakes they made, not because of them. It is widely agreed nowadays that the goal of the fiction writer is to make the reader identify with one particular character in each scene.
It's perfectly fine, of course, to make the reader identify with different characters in different scenes. Most modern novelists have several POV characters in each book, switching to a different one with each new scene.
That works very well. The only hazard is that if your scenes are too short, your reader will start feeling jerked around.
What doesn't work is "head-hopping" -- putting your reader inside the head of first one character, then another, then another, all within the same scene. Then the reader doesn't know whom to identify with.
Yes, there are some writers these days who still practice head-hopping. They get away with it because they are good storytellers whose strengths outweigh their weaknesses. But their editors wish they would stop.
It's a simple tactic -- choosing one POV character for each scene. Simple, yet powerful. All the other tactics we'll discuss in coming months depend on this one.
_______________________
Permission is granted to use any of the articles in this e-zine in your own e-zine or web site from award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the Snowflake Guy," publishes the Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 13,500 readers, every month. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, and have FUN doing it, visit http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com .
Randy says:
Last month, I talked about the supreme importance of tactical writing. You can foul up the strategic and logistical aspects of your writing and you will survive. But if your tactical writing doesn't work, then you are in deep, deep trouble.
For the next few months, I'd like to talk more about tactical writing.
Tactical writing is about writing great scenes. The scene is the fundamental unit of fiction. If you can write a great scene, over and over again, then you can write a pretty good novel, even if the scenes don't actually hang together all that well.
Why is that? Because a scene is experienced RIGHT NOW. The previous scene was experienced a while ago and is no longer fresh in the reader's mind. The following scene hasn't been read yet.
So when your reader is experiencing your novel, whatever scene she is reading is the absolute most important scene to her. If that scene is good, then your reader believes the novel is good. If that scene stinks, then your reader believes the novel is skank.
The first thing you need to get right when writing a scene is this: Who is the viewpoint character?
Let me define what we mean by that.
You must choose one character that the reader will identify with throughout the entire scene. That character is called the viewpoint character (or sometimes the point-of-view character, often abbreviated POV character).
During the course of the scene, a major part of your goal is to persuade your reader that she IS the POV character.
That is no small trick. Your reader might be a rich, female, teenage Caucasian, while your POV character might be a poor, male, century-old Wookie. How are you going to persuade the reader that she IS the POV character?
More importantly, WHY would you want to do that?
The answer is simple. You want to give your reader a special kind of experience while reading. I call this experience a "Powerful Emotional Experience," and I have long been convinced that this is the main reason your reader reads.
To give your reader a Powerful Emotional Experience, you have to create an emotive context. That means getting inside one character to the exclusion of all others.
Why be exclusive? Why not let your reader share the experience with all the characters in the scene?
Because that's how people experience life. There are two kinds of people in the world -- you and everyone else. You experience yourself from inside your own skin, inside your eyes, inside your ears. You experience everyone else as outside your skin, outside
your eyes, outside your ears.
Your reader knows this perfectly well. When you insert your reader into your Storyworld, there is only one way to do so which will feel natural: Inserting your reader inside the skin and eyes and ears of exactly one of the characters.
The POV character will normally be a person. Rarely, it will be an animal. More rarely a plant. Even more rarely, an inanimate object.
Beginning writers often want to make their POV character some omniscient god-like person who sees into all minds. That's a mistake, because your reader is not omniscient. (I am willing to bet money on this.) Making your POV character omniscient will feel unnatural.
So why do some beginning writers want to use an omniscient point of view? Usually, it's because they have read a good novel that used omniscient POV. They assume the novel was good because it used omniscient POV. In reality, the novel was good EVEN THOUGH it used omniscient POV.
Some writers will even argue, "Charles Dickens wrote in omniscient POV, so I can too."
When someone takes this line with me, I sometimes say, "When you can write fiction one tenth as well as Charlie, then you can use omniscient POV." Which is a little unkind, but it's probably nicer than sticking a fork in their eye.
On days when I'm feeling a bit more patient, I observe that great writers of the past made many stupid mistakes, such as beating their wives, pickling their livers in alcohol, getting killed in duels, and using omniscient POV.
All of these are frowned on today.
Great writers of the past were great writers in spite of the mistakes they made, not because of them. It is widely agreed nowadays that the goal of the fiction writer is to make the reader identify with one particular character in each scene.
It's perfectly fine, of course, to make the reader identify with different characters in different scenes. Most modern novelists have several POV characters in each book, switching to a different one with each new scene.
That works very well. The only hazard is that if your scenes are too short, your reader will start feeling jerked around.
What doesn't work is "head-hopping" -- putting your reader inside the head of first one character, then another, then another, all within the same scene. Then the reader doesn't know whom to identify with.
Yes, there are some writers these days who still practice head-hopping. They get away with it because they are good storytellers whose strengths outweigh their weaknesses. But their editors wish they would stop.
It's a simple tactic -- choosing one POV character for each scene. Simple, yet powerful. All the other tactics we'll discuss in coming months depend on this one.
_______________________
Permission is granted to use any of the articles in this e-zine in your own e-zine or web site from award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the Snowflake Guy," publishes the Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 13,500 readers, every month. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, and have FUN doing it, visit http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com .
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