Tag Archives: ebooks publishing and selling

August 13, 2016 · 11:28 am

Horse nut/Professor/Writer

My bio on Chuck Suddeth’s site! He’s posting info on sponsors and judges for the Green River Writers 2016 contest, now open. Check out the guidelines! And thanks, Chuck, for sharing!

ctsuddeth's avatarC. T. Suddeth

V. S. Anderson always been a horse nut, and as a young person, was a rabid horse-racing fan. So it’s no surprise that her first novels were about horses: the Kentucky Derby and the glamour of a Thoroughbred breeding farm—but with a little mystery and mayhem thrown in! For King of the Roses and Blood Lies, she drew on her years of working in the horse world, teaching riding, showing hunters, moonlighting on the racetrack, and for a while, owning and galloping her own racehorse.

Since then she has used her doctorate in English to teach writing at a regional campus of a Midwestern university—right across the river from Louisville and the Derby, in fact! She lives in New Salisbury, Indiana, where she gardens, watches birds, writes mystery/suspense (three novels in progress!), and rides Paddy, her sweet, sweet horse.

Visit her at

www.virginiasanderson.com

www.justcanthelpwriting.wordpress.com

www.facebook.com/virginiasanderson.writer

www.amazon.com/author/virginiasanderson

or follow her…

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Filed under Blood Lies, ebooks publishing and selling, Green River Writers, indie publishing, King of the Roses, Self-publishing, V. S. Anderson, Writers' groups, Writing, writing contests, writing novels

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August 9, 2016 · 12:03 pm

Language Warning! But You Better Read Anyway!

alarmed smileyAs usual, Chuck Wendig has his own way of saying things. So put your fingers in your ears so you won’t hear the bad words, and read! 25 Reasons I Stopped Reading Your Book!

I’ve posted my own reasons more than once. Here’s what I wrote on Chuck’s post:

I’ve posted more than once about my own answer to this question. Lack of voice is way up there. Too many characters and scenes feel pasted out of the Universe of Stock that we all have access to. No surprises, not in the characters’ actions, not in the diction, not in the rhythm. All stuff I’ve seen a thousand times (and don’t subject myself to any more).

What I call “illogic” fits several of these points: When something a character does or something that happens serves the prefabricated plot and not the story that wants to emerge from the characters’ interactions. I got into trouble myself once making characters do something they were screaming that they didn’t want to do. Ruined a potentially good novel, and boy, did I pay. Nothing in this post is truer than that the characters write the story. Listen to them.

And gosh, pages of exposition (and no, that’s not “literary fiction”). And too much info, too many characters, on page 1. And books that start with action before I can understand the conflict. And . . . and . . . and . . .

This post could easily be required reading in every “creative writing” class or critique group (though it would require a language warning in most settings, i fear).

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Filed under ebooks publishing and selling, Editing your novel, indie publishing, Learning to write, Plot Development for writers, self editing for fiction writers, Self-publishing, style for writers, What Not To Do in Writing Novels, Writing, writing novels

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July 3, 2016 · 12:12 pm

My First BookBub Rejection

I highly recommend alfageeek’s candid, nuts-and-bolts reports on the marketing process. See, for example, his series on Twitter ads. Now here’s one on Bookbub, which is way out of my league at present. but which might be useful to you.
And may I echo his exhortation: If you’ve read either of my books, PUH-LEEZE post even a few lines of a review.

Joshua Edward Smith's avataralfageeek

EntropyI decided to take a shot at doing a promo with BookBub. Over the past few years, they have become the most effective marketing platform for e-books. Their reputation is that they reject almost all submissions, and they never tell you why they rejected you. But if you manage to get accepted, then you will sell a lot of books. They regularly update a chart that shows exactly how many books people in various categories and price points sell. That’s useful, because if they accept you, the listing is very expensive.

I signed up to their email list to be notified about Erotic Romance novels, since that’s the best category for my novels. (Even though I can’t say that on Amazon.) I was pleased to see that the books being promoted were not out of my league. Of the 24 Erotic Romance books they have listed right now, there…

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Filed under Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, Amazon pricing policy, business of writing, ebooks publishing and selling, indie publishing, Marketing books, Money issues for writers, Myths and Truths for writers, Reviews, Self-publishing, Writing, writing novels

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June 30, 2016 · 11:56 am

Barnes & Noble to Start a Print Book Self-Pub Option?

Woman in dress and hat sitting on books and working on laptop

Check out this article from Digital Book World about a new venture at Barnes and Noble to allow self-published writers to offer print versions in B&N venues, hopefully a step that will help keep them afloat. Chime in with your views on whether this new option is worth a look.

 

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Filed under business of writing, ebooks publishing and selling, indie publishing, Marketing books, Print on Demand for fiction writers, Publishing, Self-publishing, Writing, writing novels

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June 26, 2016 · 8:40 am

Are You Botching Your Dialogue?

This post from Kristen Lamb’s blog gives some good basic guidelines for using and punctuating dialogue. These principles can be surprisingly hard to master, so a good primer is always helpful. The one I see most often is the use of an action as if it were a dialogue tag. To add to Kristen’s list, I’d say, “Watch out for that darn Autocorrect in Word. If you have it turned on and you accidentally type a period instead of a comma after the dialogue, Autocorrect automatically capitalizes the next letter, so you end up with two punctuation gaffes, not one.
Thanks, Kristen!

Author Kristen Lamb's avatarKristen Lamb's Blog

Screen Shot 2016-06-24 at 10.43.36 AM

Today we are going to talk about dialogue. Everyone thinks they are great at it, and many would be wrong. Dialogue really is a lot tricker than it might seem.

Great dialogue is one of the most vital components of fiction. Dialogue is responsible for not only conveying the plot, but it also helps us understand the characters and get to know them, love them, hate them, whatever.

Dialogue is powerful for revealing character. This is as true in life as it is on the page. If people didn’t judge us based on how we speak, then business professionals wouldn’t bother with Toastmasters, speaking coaches or vocabulary builders.

I’d imagine few people who’d hire a brain surgeon who spoke like a rap musician and conversely, it would be tough to enjoy rap music made by an artist who spoke like the curator of an art museum.

Our word choices are…

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Filed under correct grammar for writers of fiction, ebooks publishing and selling, Editing your novel, grammar rules for writers, indie publishing, Learning to write, Publishing, punctuation for writers of novels, self editing for fiction writers, Self-publishing, style for writers, Writing, writing novels

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June 3, 2016 · 10:24 am

Why Readers Stop Reading a Book.

The folks at Lit World Interviews conducted a survey. See where you fall on the spectrum! I posted my reasons for not finishing a book and for feeling kicked out of the story world; see if you agree!

Ronovan's avatarLit World Interviews

Recently, we here at LitWorldInterviews.com conducted a survey, “Why do you put a book down?” and through the assistance of the writing community we had a very nice response. Now it’s time to share what we found.

First, I want to say why the survey was conducted. We wanted to help writers by giving them the information they most need. If a reader takes the time to check out your book and don’t like it, they are unlikely to give you a second chance with your next work. First impressions mean a lot.

86.30% of those responding were Female, thus leaving the remaining 13.70% Male. Considering the majority of those reading novels are Female, although not quite this extreme, I’m comfortable with sharing what we found.

There were 34 sub-categories as a result of the survey. Those results were then placed into 5 main categories: Writing, Editing, Proofreading, Taste, and…

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May 27, 2016 · 12:14 pm

8 Common Creative Writing Mistakes | Writing Forward

I’ve responded to this post with the thoughts and comments below. Share your own additions!

I agree on these issues! It’s amazing how many cuts I can find when I know I have to. And the result is almost always an improvement.

I especially have to catch redundancy. It’s a good tool for drafting, since you can try out six different ways of capturing a setting or an emotion. But then come back and pick the best one of the six!
A few points:

  • Additional “filler” (or “filter”) words are “**She heard** the wind whistling through the trees” vs. “The wind whistled through the trees,” and “**She saw,**” which works similarly. These are so hard to catch.
  • RE spell-check: Instead of turning off spell-check, turn off “autocorrect” functions. You will be notified of typos, but the computer will not try to guess what you really intended. I’ve seen some pretty crazy computer-supplied corrections!
  • Also, grammar-checkers are notoriously poor substitutes for your own knowledge. The one on my Word program misidentifies fragments and rails against all kinds of style choices that work beautifully to establish voice.
  • Finally, do give “older” books a chance, even if you know that these days, you don’t dare write in an older style. The Victorians, for example, lived in a slower age, but they wrote some of the most gripping fiction you’ll ever read.

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May 23, 2016 · 10:16 am

Opinion: To Tweet or Not to Tweet? Does Twitter Worthwhile for Self-published Authors?

I’ve heard varied reports on using Twitter to promote books. Is Anna’s process the best to follow? How do you use Twitter?

Swedish indie author Anna Belfrage reports on her trial to see whether Twitter can sell self-published books and queries whether the return justifies the

Source: Opinion: To Tweet or Not to Tweet? Does Twitter Worthwhile for Self-published Authors?

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May 19, 2016 · 10:36 am

How you can avoid my mistakes

Check out these software tools from Jean. Do you use any of them? What was your experience like? Do you have others to recommend?

Jean M. Cogdell's avatarJean's Writing

And boy do I make a lot of them. Or so it seems.

I hope by sharing with you, these posts will stand as a reminder to myself, not to repeat the same mistakes over again.big mistakes

Why? Because mistakes are costly.

Mistakes cost when you have to do something over and over, not just in time but often in money too.

How you can avoid my mistakes…

  • Use the right software for the right job.

I tried to use “workaround” software but that only make the job harder and take longer. You know what I mean like using a shoe to hang a picture instead of hunting down that long-lost hammer in the garage.

  • A little investment is worth your time and sanity.

No one software does everything. Pick the one that works best for each task.

Listed at the bottom are some of the ones I discovered and love.

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May 17, 2016 · 10:15 am

Survey Question-Why do you put that book down?

I’ve been writing about this issue quite a bit on this blog, mostly because I’ve been disappointed by a number of the books I’ve picked up recently. My own concern is whether I’m being too curmudgeonly, since the books I can’t make it through often seem to have many fans. Here, I posted about the value of voice for smoothing over glitches that would otherwise stop me. And here, just recently, about a plot device in mysteries and thrillers that made me quit in the final chapters.

Others include what I call “illogic“: people who just don’t act like normal people or events that couldn’t happen because the author needs characters to behave bizarrely or the world to reorganize itself to make the plot work out. Hate that!

And not too long ago I stopped reading a book where everybody was so terminally nice that even when conflict reared its leonine head, everybody smiled and and gave it a gentle hug.

Finally, when I read a scene I could have written myself based on the hundred+ times I’ve already seen that exact scene or read that dialogue (e.g., “I want to be there for you”), I have a hard time pressing on.

Am I being too persnickety? I’m eternally grateful for books that surprise me, even if only just a little, with a view of the world I couldn’t get anywhere else.

Jog on over to the original post and add your thoughts, or share them  here.

Ronovan's avatarLit World Interviews

Here is the first of our LWI Survey Questions. Never a list, just the one. Yes, I know there are two but the second is clarifying the first. The results will be shared, minus names provided.

Make sure to share this post around through social media and reblogging.

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