Wow! I’ve been waiting for this information for ages. Join me in trying it, and let me know how it works for you!
Category Archives: business of writing
More Ways for Authors to Get Scammed
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
Victoria Strauss at Writer Beware continues to let us know when new scams proliferate—in this case, crooks pretending to be literary agents who just LOVE our books! I have actually talked to people who take such come-ons seriously.
Check out the examples and the advice for recognizing these criminals.
Photo by Dustin Tray on Pexels.com
The Complete Guide to Query Letters – by Jane Friedman…
Here’s an example of why Jane Friedman ranks as an incredible resource!
The query letter has one purpose, and one purpose only: to seduce the agent or editor into reading or requesting your work. The query letter is so much of a sales piece that it’s quite possible to write one without having written a word of the manuscript. All it requires is a firm grasp of your story premise.
For some writers, the query will represent a completely different way of thinking about their book—because it means thinking about one’s work as a product to be sold. It helps to have some distance from your work to see its salable qualities.
This post focuses on query letters for novels, although the same advice applies to memoirists, because both novelists and memoirists are selling a story.
Continue reading HERE
How to Query–and More
My last writers’ group meeting included a long discussion about the book market triggered by an article from Vox that one of my colleagues had brought in. The discussion branched off into familiar territory for aspiring authors: how to get published.
I often feel like a Grinch when I respond to these discussions and questions by saying, “Go online. Google ‘How to.’ There are many wonderful people out there providing solid advice and authoritative, expert guidelines.” Yes, there are also scammers, but if you follow the admonition not to pay anyone anything until you have investigated a wide range of options—and to take the same basic precautions you’d take buying any product—you won’t fall into any serious traps.
My point is often that a thirty-minute conversation can’t cover nearly enough ground to do more than point a new author in the right direction. In these groups, I recommend specific sources for follow up, such as Jane Friedman or Victoria Strauss or, for formatting issues as well as other self-publishing help, The Book Designer. For those convinced that formatting their own e-book is an overwhelming challenge, I recommend Smashwords and Mark Coker’s free e-book formating guide, as well as his list of formatters and cover designers.
Sites like these include links to dozens of helpful articles. Obviously, there are many others; these are just the ones that pop into my head on short notice, because they’re stellar.
Today, my feed included a post from yet another site just brimming with the kind of information the people in my group were craving: Anne R. Allen’s Blog . . . with Ruth Harris. So I’m linking here with advice to anyone starting out on this journey: Once you’ve read Anne R. Allen’s clear, direct instructions on how to write a professional query, browse the site. Click on the links. Subscribe.
I found sources like these the way I suspect anyone builds a personal knowledge base, by clicking on intriguing articles and subscribing to bloggers whose advice seemed relevant to my goals. Compilers like Chris the Story Reading Ape have also given me lots of trails to follow.
Comment and turn all of us on to your favorites. To whom do you go for expert advice on the many aspects of publishing, both traditional and indie? I am always up for learning more!
Sigh. Yes, We Have to Write Those &(%%$# Queries and Synopses.
I’ve given up fighting. I’m doing it, I’m doing it!
I wonder how many creative writing classes and MFA programs include a course in query-writing. I guess if you’re a superbly outgoing person capable of making such a stunning impression in an elevator that you get an automatic request for your fulls, you don’t have to.
Where can I find a class in how to be that person?
Sigh.
Doing the Things You Don’t Love to Get to Where You Want to Be
How I’ve Come to Love Book Pirates
Well, maybe that title is just click-bait. Hope it gets some clicks! 
More accurately, my title should read, Why I’ve Quit Worrying about Book Pirates.
Here are a few links you can check out if you’ve heard horror stories (I sort of have some), and/or if you’re interested in this debate:
- Neil Gaiman making claims about why having his books pirated is the best thing since adaptive cruise control (love it in my new car).
- D. G. Kaye on why you SHOULD worry about book piracy, and what you can do about it.
- Robert Kroese at The Creative Penn basically saying there’s nothing you can do about book piracy, so stop wasting your time.
- And Katy Guest at The Guardian on the scope of the problem of book piracy and why you probably can’t do much to protect yourself (horror X5).
My quick take—and my reasons for copping out on the anti-book-piracy crusade: Like some of the responders on Kaye’s post, I tried the beta Blasty service. I found myself on sites where I didn’t have the technical knowledge to identify the site owners (Kaye offers some tools to help with this). No address to which to send my own DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown notice. Some offered their own DMCA form—but every one I completed returned an error notice.
And after I’d spent a whole morning uselessly following Blasty’s leads, I got yet another massive list of all the places where my books could be downloaded for free.
Blasty offered paid services that would send the notices for me. There are other such services; comments on the various articles I’ve linked to above provide some sources, if you want to pursue this route.
But if you read the Guest piece, you may, like me, come away with a sense of “what for?”
“The legal and tech aspects of book piracy prevention are complex and fast-evolving, but those in the know describe it very simply: it’s whack-a-mole. One of the most persistent ebook pirate sites has been taken down multiple times, only to pop back up again under a .com, a .net and a .org domain name. At least 120,000 take-down notices have been issued against it already, involving web crawlers, lawyers, its domain host and the Metropolitan police. But that website is back regardless, complete with some intimidating legal language of its own, addressed to anyone who plans to complain.”
I have read, in more than one place, that many of the “free” sites don’t even have copies of the books they’re selling; they just want people’s credit card info. A lot easier way of taking people’s money than actually scanning books and repackaging them, I suspect.
Who knows? If the big publishers are really losing a lot of money to piracy, maybe they will finally figure out a way to protect their property. And maybe some enterprising soul will pirate their methods and share them with us (in a user-friendly form). Maybe even Amazon will catch on and act. In the meantime, I have other wasteful uses of my time that are a lot more fun than hunting down all those links and filling out a new version of that form ten times a day.
I’m thinking, in fact, about making more of my work (I really do have WsIP!) available for free. The truism Kroese and others offer makes sense to me:
The biggest challenge facing a new author isn’t piracy; it’s obscurity.
So from one so-far obscure writer to others, I’ve quit worrying about people stealing my books. When you read one you like, just be sure to tell your friends.
Are We Cheating Other Authors by Buying Used Books?
This debate featured back in 2016 by Nate Hoffelder on The Digital Reader about the vice and virtue entailed in buying used books—knowing full well that the author receives no compensation—resonated for me because I’ve been feeling guilty about my own Half-Priced Book purchases. I’m not sure I’m feeling less guilty, but at least I know that some defend the practice. The short argument is that used bookstores are where readers are created when they “discover” authors they come to love.
A couple of personal observations:
I’ve long been a fan of Dick Francis (and every horse person and most mystery readers should be as well, IMHO). I reached a plateau where I had overdosed on his formula and quit reading his new ones, and at some point I lost/gave away/never owned copies of his early books, among them some of his best. Off I went one day to my local B&N to pick up new copies and rekindle the relationship. NOT. B&N had none. Not even a recent title, for example those co-authored or authored by Francis’s son Felix in the writer’s final years and after his death.
So off I went to HPB. I was able to find copies of Dead Cert, Nerve, For Kicks, Flying Finish, and many others. Now I often find more recent titles for my bedtime reading and find that Francis is as entertaining as I remember him.
I guess I could buy these on Amazon. Not from Kindle—I hate reading online at bedtime. But am I cheating Francis’s estate, or his son? In my defense, often the earlier titles are available only from third-party sellers, usually used booksellers themselves. What’s more, checking on Amazon for this post, I found that some of the older titles are being released only on Kindle, with all print editions relegated to third-party sources.
I do use HPB and other used bookstores to “discover” authors I might like. I often feel that my reading is too limited and that I ought to be more up to date with what EVERYONE is reading. Every time I venture into the store, I pick up a book by an author I’ve not yet sampled, sometimes by authors I’ve never heard of, or by authors who have been declared the Next Great Thing. Just to see. If I’m going to toss a book to the floor after forty pages, I’d rather it be a book I paid $3.99 for rather than $29.95.
Will I then pay full price for the next title of an author I like? Hmmm. I did pay full price for a new title by Sarah Waters and might again. But I must confess, I tend to search at HPB first.
I missed this debate when it was supposedly “raging,” but it seems to me worth continuing.
What are your views on Used-Book-Buyers-Remorse?
Fake, Pirated And Counterfeit Books A Big Problem On Amazon – by Derek Haines…
Chris shares some frustrating news, but it’s information we should probably all be aware of–if only so that WE don’t end up buying pirated books. Check out Victoria Strauss’s account of her interaction with Internet Archive. But Derek Haines tells us that Amazon is just as guilty—and indifferent (no surprise).
on Just Publishing Advice:
Counterfeit books are still a big issue on Amazon
I can only write about the ongoing problem with books.
But Amazon has taken so little action, there could also be a problem with other counterfeit goods.
You could think that identifying counterfeit books would be easy. If you publish a book on Amazon, surely Amazon could at least check for plagiarism when pirates copy your text.
The problem is not new. I have been writing about pirated ebooks and books for a very long time.
Third party sellers are making a lot of money from pirated, fake and counterfeit books.
More importantly, so is Amazon.
Continue reading HERE
Counterintuitive Advice from Jane Friedman
If you don’t know about Jane Friedman, learn. Her site is full of excellent advice and links. Today, in my email, this article that contradicts what we might all think: that it’s always better to get lots of feedback. Not on this issue, Jane says. All over social-media sites for writers, you find people posting their book covers and asking for advice. But Jane says no: Don’t crowdsource your book cover! Who’d’a thunk it?
I admit I’ve been guilty of asking a couple of friends for feedback. Some of their responses have been telling, but they haven’t really told me how to improve my own “designs.” Since book covers, in my view, are the one component of self-publishing where you can’t avoid spending money, I’ve ended up looking for affordable professionals rather than trying to make sense of all the conflicting opinions myself. While I do think my current covers could be improved, that improvement will be part of an eventual complete revamping of my whole publishing enterprise, not to be undertaken until my infinite revisions of new books are finished.
So if you have advice for me about my book covers, save it for that day. Though I thank you all the same.
The #1 Mistake New Self-Publishers Make That Leaves Them Vulnerable to Publishing Scams – by Anne R. Allen…
Another extremely useful post from Anne R. Allen, via Chris the Story Reading Ape. A reminder to us all to DO OUR HOMEWORK if we want to publish and sell our books.
Publishing scams target babes in the woods
I hear about new publishing scams all the time. Sometimes scammers approach me personally, but more often I hear a sad tale of woe from some newbie who has fallen for the latest con.
This week I realized that almost all the victims of publishing scams have one thing in common: they don’t understand the most important part of the digital self-publishing revolution that started in 2009.
This is the thing you MUST understand in order to be a successful indie author:
Just Can't Help Writing 