Guest Post: So You Published. Now What?

I liked how Suckers Guild co-founder M Joseph Murphy announced the launch of his new book Council of Peacocks on his blog, so I got permission to share it with you:

My book, Council of Peacocks, is finished. I'm about to upload it to Amazon. Everyone tells me I should feel proud, that I've accomplished something amazing. But I don't feel it.

Surprisingly, I'm a little bit numb to it all. I keep wondering why I'm not jumping up and down and celebrating. Maybe it's because, for me, the publishing part isn't the accomplishment. And it's not about the money either. My expectations are very realistic. The average indie author only sells a few hundred copies. That's about all I'm expecting.

For me, the most important thing is to have people read the book and enjoy it. Maybe I'll jump up and down at my first positive review. Before indie publishing became a reality, I always expected to get my first rejection slip. That was how I would know I was a real author. So maybe it will be my first bad review. Maybe it will be my book showing up on LousyBookCovers.com.

Here's what I do know: now that I'm published I will not be watching sales numbers on KDP. Would Stephen King lurk in Barnes & Noble waiting for someone to pick up his book? No. What he did is what I'm going to do: keep on writing.

Young Stephen King

Most experts will tell you the way to make money as a writer is to write a crap load of things. I'm not going to waste too much time promoting Council of Peacocks right now. It will sell the more people become aware of me. I'll feel more excited when I have 3 or 4 books published. Maybe.

Truth is, the only time I get really excited is when I'm writing. All the other stuff - the promotion, the editing, working with cover artists and beta readers - all of that is a necessary evil. My passion is doing the work.

So what should I do know that I'm published? I'm going to celebrate by doing what I do best.  I'm going to write.

Guest Post: The Canterbury Tales: The Text Adventure

Luke Bellmason had an interesting idea for keeping himself on track and motivated while writing:

One of the great things about being an indie writer is that the hours are great, and the fact that there’s no boss, nobody telling you what to do or how to do it. The problem with that though is there’s no imposed structure forced upon you, it’s all self-imposed. And we all know that a self-imposed work structure is only as strong as the will of the person enforcing it, i.e. not very. Which is why I spend most of the time I set aside for writing on Twitter or writing blog posts.

What I really need, I often think to myself, is an office. Somewhere I can go that has no phones, no internet access and maybe is near a nice cafe. Maybe some proper, smart looking files to organise everything, and rubber stamps. You got to have rubber stamps! They make everything look all official. Then I think, no, what I really need is a company with a snarling Chief Editor who shouts at me to get my work on his desk by Friday!

Well, I can’t afford all of that, but what would my offices look like if I had unlimited funds? I imagined an old factory building, converted to offices but with the old upper walkway and stairs still intact. A big open ground floor, entry lobby, with a cafe, a video games arcade and perhaps a library. And a quiet room with leather chairs and newspapers. All of the actual writers would be upstairs; the Head Writer, the Story Editor and the snarly Chief Editor.

That was about the time I got a little bit carried away with this idea. After drawing out the upper floor, I imagined all the different stages of the writing process; from concept to planning, to writing the first draft, through the second draft to the final draft and proof reading. As has been said, we have to wear a lot of hats as writers, but for each task I imagined a completely separate writer with his or her own office. The various stories I’m writing for the Canterbury Tales all have to go through these stages, one by one.

So if I could imagine all this, I knew I could build it as a video game. Since my stories are ‘about’ video games, or video game universes, this seemed highly appropriate. And the simplest kind of video game I know how create is a text adventure, also highly appropriate since “words is my business.”

Using a piece of free software called Inform I was quickly able to construct this space (I didn’t bother with the ground floor since all the useful work will be done in the upper offices). I laid out the Project Director’s Office, the Planning Office, the Head Writer’s Office, the Story Editor’s Office, etc. I even built a tea room and a Character Lab, and a Locations Dept. And also an Art Dept.

So what actual use is all of this? Aside from wasting a huge amount of time I could have spent writing? Well, one of the main things I did was create ‘files’ as objects which could be manipulated in the game. Each story has a file and the file contains all of the drafts, outlines and concepts. I can move these files around to represent the stage I am at with a particular story in the so-called ‘real’ world. I can give the Miner’s Tale to the Outline Dept. and at the same time give the Slaver’s Tale to the Head Writer, which tells me where I am with each story.

I also programmed the Project Director to tell me which story is in which Volume and how far along each volume is. In the game environment I can organise the whole project, I can even do it on my iPad without needing to ever save or load the game since the game will be ‘always on.’

The best part though, is possibly the issue of morale. Writing can be a lonely process, and being in the middle of a large project it can sometimes be difficult to feel like you’re making any progress. So another thing I created was ‘posters’, which are game objects which are made by the Art Dept after each story is completed. I can hang these posters on my office wall in the game and see at a glance what I’ve achieved so far! I also added ‘unlockables’ which are little souvenirs of each story. These take the form of small cargo containers which have a little memento of a story inside them.

Interestingly, because this ‘text adventure’ is going to have to run for the rest of the whole project, two or three years, I’ve had to program it for stories I haven’t written yet and so it was while making these little mementos I came up with some interesting ideas. A couple of these ideas may well form the central theme for the Bounty Hunter’s Tale and the Pirate’s Tale, which I hadn’t even worked out yet. I hadn’t set out to come up with story ideas, but this how my mind works. I set out to do one thing and end up with another.

So now I have a whole Volume under my belt, and my virtual text adventure based office complex is ready to swing into action I’m ready to actually sit down and maybe, just maybe, do some writing!

Bartholomew Cubbins

One of the most wonderful things about being a writer is that through my characters, I get to be all sorts of different people in all sorts of different places doing all sorts of different things. I get to wear 500 hats, each one more beautiful - or more exciting, or more thought-provoking - than the last. And even if, like Bartholomew Cubbins of the delightful old children's story, my characters are in danger of having their heads cut off by an outraged king, I get to experience all the excitement and none of the danger.

As an indie writer, I wear a lot of hats in another sense, too. I'm not only the writer, but the editor (which is impossible: you can't edit your own work), the designer, the marketing staff, the maid and so on. Even the act of writing these blog posts is a marketing task.

I like blogging, even if sometimes I resent it because it takes time away from the central task of my life: writing fiction. Some other jobs I wish I didn't have to do, and editing my own work is something that of course I can't do at all, to the necessary standards.

Fortunately, I don't have to wear all the hats myself. I can trade hats with other indie writers, making editing possible and some of the other jobs much less distasteful.

I know a lot of my readers are fellow indie writers, so how about it? Who wants to wash my dishes today?

Guest Post: Cover Art

This is the final post in the special series of guest posts by Luke Bellmason to celebrate the recent launch of his new science-fiction book, The Canterbury Tales, Volume I. These posts are repeated from Luke's own blog. I wanted to share them with you because they give a nice little glimpse into what it's like for him as a writer. They were written before the book's launch. Here's Luke:

They say you shouldn’t do your own cover art for your book. It’s probably good advice, but I’ve always wanted to do book covers. About six years ago I did a full two year course at my local college in Graphic Design. Not because I wanted or expected to get a career as a graphic designer (though I admit it would have been nice), but simply because I wanted to learn more about how to do logos, cover art and such professionally. I got a HND in Visual Communications out of it, which is like a starter pre-university qualification.

This means I am actually even more qualified to do my book cover than I am to write my book; writing is something for which I have no professional training at all! It also means that I am in a fairly unique position of being able to truly reflect my book and my writing style in my cover art.

This is still the concept cover, but it’s beginning to grow on me. I wanted a cover which was like my writing style; bold, simple, straight-forward and clear. This design hopefully gives some indication of the four characters who’s stories feature in the volume. One of the major problems with having a title like ‘The Canterbury Tales’ is that I didn’t want to mislead people into thinking this was the original book, but really I’m going to have to hope that people read the blurb on the back before buying it so they know it’s not. The other factor I needed to consider was that the other two volumes need to have the same style of artwork, but look different, so I’ll be using different background colours for each one, and each character is going to have their own colour as well. I also wanted something which would stand out on the Amazon Kindle store, where the vast majority of sci-fi titles have starfields, ships, planets and such.

Of course, if I could actually draw I might have gone with all that stuff, but I can’t draw! So I use Adobe Illustrator, which is a piece of software so fiendishly difficult to use that few people get past the first two hours of trying to make it do anything even remotely useful. But I’m a video game player, I’m used to software which is difficult to control, which actively tries to make life difficult for you and which reveals its secrets to you only after you’ve shown it that you’re the boss! Learning to use Illustrator seemed a lot like that.

So, for those who are interested, The Canterbury Tales Vol. 1 nears completion. I have spent the past months editing, proof-reading and finishing off the text. Then came the task of taking the finished files and formatting everything into a word document to get it Kindle compatible. After that, I took almost three days to write the Preface and finally, I got to do the cover art – probably my favourite part of the whole process.

I posted this concept cover on my Twitter feed last night and this morning I woke to find it had been favourited by Ray Dillon! Don’t know who Ray Dillon is? Well he’s a writer and artist who does the artwork for HBO’s Game of Thrones and who has done a massive amount of work on comics, cover art and trading cards. After you’ve finished admiring my lovely cover, head on over to Ray’s page and marvel at his gorgeous images. Needless to say, I am super psyched about my cover getting favourited by such a luminary and wow, what a huge compliment. Thanks Ray!

My book’s going to hit the Kindle store in the next week or so, assuming I can successfully wrangle with MS Word and the upload process. I’ll be sure to post here when it’s finally up, check back soon for more news!

Guest Post: Self Publishing Authors Are ‘Suspect’ and ‘Cheats’

Please help me welcome today's guest blogger, indie novelist Derek Haines:

Is paying for advertising, promotion or even reviews cheating? I read this press release and wondered what point it was trying to make. Yes, it of course refers to John Locke buying reviews, which I must admit is becoming very old news now, but it goes on with carefully chosen vocabulary referring to self-published authors being labeled as unethical, suspect, spamming, inferior and cheats if they pay for promotion.

Then Sean Platt, the author of the press release, admits to having bought thousands of Twitter followers. Talk about hypocritical in the extreme.

So it’s OK to buy Twitter followers, but it’s not OK to buy promotion, advertising or book reviews?

But it did start me thinking about this whole issue of paid promotion, and I’m beginning to wonder if this is not a carefully managed attack on self publishing as a whole. It’s no secret that self-published titles are doing very well, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this success has ruffled a few ‘established ‘ feathers.

In my mind the whole issue is boiling down to one basic point. That is, that it’s OK to spend a bucket-load of money on book promotion if you are a major publisher to ‘buy’ an audience, but if you’re an ‘Indie’, you’re expected to do everything on the cheap and free and wait around for your family and friends to buy your book. Then if you admit to spending money on book promotion, you get labeled as a cheat.

What’s wrong with the idea that self publishing is a business like any other and as such there are marketing expenses and without this investment, books struggle to sell? I think it’s up to every individual self-published author to decide how they operate their business, and from my own particular viewpoint, no one is going to tell me how I should run my own business.

And if you’re wondering. No, I have never bought Twitter followers. Yes, I have paid for advertising. Yes, I have paid for book promotion. There are always expenses in any business. Even self publishing.

Derek Haines lives in Switzerland, and is the author of Eyes That Could Kill and several other books.

Suckers Guild

Late last fall, I got into a conversation on Twitter about how much better things would be for both writers and readers if there were an indie writers' guild. It started out very light-hearted - an offhand comment and a couple of joking responses - but very soon we realized we were onto something.

The Premise

The idea was that as much as we may want to, no one writer can ever produce a truly professional book all alone. It's not that we can't teach ourselves anything we would need to know. It's that no one of us could teach ourselves everything we would need to know, at the necessary level of expertise. And then there's the fact that you just can't edit your own work. To produce a truly professional book requires at least a few different pairs of eyes.

There are only three possible ways I can think of that an author can get a book out there, without compromising quality:

1. Traditional publishing. I mean really traditional publishing, with the full editing and marketing force that goes with that. This option is like the lady's slipper I found this morning: we can't exactly pick that one, because it's an endangered species.
2. Extremely expensive self-publishing. You pay for four, or at the very least, three expert editors, in addition to experts in layout, graphics, electronic formatting, printing, marketing and distribution. I've probably forgotten a job or two. Obviously, most writers simply don't have the money for this one.
3. Collaboration. Like bees in a hive, each of us has a specialty, or develops one, and we all work together to publish and sell books we're not ashamed to put our names on.

The Plot

So that's the idea behind the Suckers Guild. We looked around and didn't see any writers' group already out there that worked like this, so we started one. To learn more, you can visit the Suckers Guild site.

The Title

I know you're wondering why we named it the Suckers Guild. It came from the half-joking remarks that began the whole conversation, about how we don't want our books to suck, about how our lack of access to publishing resources sucks, and even about PT Barnum's famous saying, that there's a sucker born every minute.

In the end, we chose it because it reminds us that while we strive against all the odds life throws at us, there's no need to be stuffy and take ourselves too seriously. Because -  yup, I'm going to say it - that would suck.

On Paid Services for Indie Authors

Yesterday, we had Steven Ramirez here talking about the importance of quality for indie authors. I think  he makes a very important point, and I'm very glad he agreed to send me the post. Thank you, Steven.

One of the nicest things about guest posts, in my opinion, is that they let me bring in a variety ways of looking at things. Sometimes it's just a new way to say something I agree with, but sometimes the guest writer will have a different opinion than I do on a given topic. In the case of Steven Ramirez, I agree wholeheartedly that quality is essential in a self-published book, but I disagree with his recommendation for how to achieve that quality. 

I don't think it makes sense to pay money for editing, cover design or any other publishing component. If you can afford it, that's fine, but most of us can't. If we say that the way to produce quality books is to spend money, then we're cutting the regular people out of the indie scene and leaving serious indie publishing only to the lucky few with money. And that, of course, would go against the whole point of being indie in the first place. It's supposed to be about quality, not money.

So what should we do? Beat our chests and announce that we don't need no stinkin' editors? Proofread our own work and hope for the best? No, really, there is a better way. It's called barter. Yes, we should proofread own work: that's just a mark of a professional and courteous writer. But a book always needs editing by a fresh pair of eyes. Even if you're an expert in spelling and grammar, you can never catch all your own mistakes. Our brains tend to see what they expect, so if you already 'know' what you wrote, you won't necessarily be able to see what it really says on the page. 

Fortunately, there are lots of other authors out there who are very serious about their work and are also experts in various aspects of self-publishing. For example, there are professional-quality editors who need a service you can provide and are willing to barter. I might even be one of them.

Guest Post: The Importance of Quality in Indie Publishing

Please help me welcome today's guest blogger, Steven Ramirez:

Okay, so you’ve got this killer idea for a book. You’ve always known that deep down you are a writer, and that you want to make your living putting words on paper that other people will pay to read. You fire up Word and bang away. In a few months you have ninety thousand words that you can’t wait to share with the world, so you decide to put it out there.

But wait! You still need a cover. Hey, you’ve got a buddy that’s pretty good with PowerPoint. You ask him to “throw something together” for you. After a day or two he sends you the file. Looks pretty good, you think. Now you’re set. Your little heart is racing as you create an Amazon KDP Account and click on the “Add new title” button. You’re nearly there.

You fill out all the fields, set your price at $9.99, upload the cover and book, and PUBLISH! In a day or two you receive an email saying that the book is live. Whoo-hoo! You are now a self-published author!

Actually, you’re not. You’re just some person who threw something up on Amazon that no one—besides your mother and maybe your cousin—will buy. Why? Because you didn’t’ take the time, effort and money to produce a work of quality—a book that customers cannot wait to get their hands on.

Writing Isn’t Enough
I’m not saying you didn’t write a great book. You may be a talented individual with lots to say in a way that is fresh and imaginative. But without a good editor, you risk having people think you are lazy. I say this from experience. I’ve been writing for many years, but I still need an editor—every writer does. So you should budget for that.

A Good First Impression
Don’t forget that your title is out there along with around a million others. Customers have lots of choices, and they’ve been trained to know what’s good. If they see your cover and it sucks, you’ve pretty much made the decision for them not to buy your book.

Think about how you buy books. Isn’t the cover the first thing that attracts you? Sure, you want to “click to look inside.” But you won’t even get that far if the cover is no good. So hire a professional cover designer.

Formatting Counts
Another thing to consider is the actual formatting. Now, there are many ways to accomplish this. Many writers I know start out with a Word document, which is what I do. And we’re all pretty much aware of the fact that you can’t just upload it and expect to get a nicely formatted eBook. There is a fair amount of work involved.

More and more people are turning to Scrivener. I haven’t tried this program yet, but according to Joanna Penn, it rocks. Be sure to check it out.

Yet another way to go is to purchase a book template from Book Design Templates. They have templates for both eBooks and print. Or you could just hire someone to create the eBook for you. People like JW Manus and Guido Henkel.

Anything Else?
You should make sure that your eBook contains a table of contents. That’s just common courtesy. You should also ensure that the description is not only accurate, but compelling. If you can, include a few quotes from any early reviews you might have received.

Be realistic about the pricing. $9.99 for an eBook by an unknown author is most likely not going to fly. And $.99 makes you look like a hack. Take a look at other titles in your category and price accordingly. After a while, you will have a pretty good feeling about what is reasonable.

If you are doing a paperback version, make sure to go with services that other authors use and recommend. Two I can think of right away are CreateSpace and Lightning Source. And if you’re going the print route, make sure that the formatting is flawless. Remember, the goal is to put your book alongside other paperbacks from major publishers, and have them be indistinguishable in terms of quality. Since you’ve never done this before, you might also consider hiring a book shepherd like Joel Friedman to help you through the process.

Finally, don’t forget to put up a professional-looking author profile on Amazon. And make sure that your headshot looks good.

I’ll leave you with this last thought, something to remember each time you get ready to hit the “Publish” button: Indie Publishing isn’t hard. Indie Publishing something good is hard. Remember this, and you will have a much better chance of making your writing dreams come true.

About the Author
Steven Ramirez is the author of a number of short stories including his latest, Walker. He is planning to publish his new zombie novel, Tell Me When I’m Dead, this summer. You can find out more about Steven at his website, “Glass Highway.”

Fiction Writer Spotlight: Cathrine Garnell

I'm very happy to be able to say that indie writer Cathrine Garnell, author of Basil the Bionic Cat, has consented to an interview:

Jae: Why do you write fiction? What got you started and what do you think influenced you to take up fiction writing?

Cathrine: Ever since I was able to write, I’ve always penned stories of some sort or another. My mother used to read a lot of Enid Blyton to me when I was very small and I’ve always loved all types of stories.  As I got older and began to choose my own books, there was no stopping me and I’m the same now. My to read pile is humongous, it’s like the Leaning Tower of Pisa on my bedside table and I’ve even built myself a library to house my lifelong obsession with the written word!

Jae: Can you tell me a little about the books you've written?

Cathrine: My first published children’s novel was Basil the Bionic Cat – a story of Mad Scientists, secret laboratories, ruthless mafia gangs and Basil who becomes the world’s only Organic-Bionic Cat. Vile Violeticia was next, followed by Tamara’s Time Machine.   I’ve also co-authored three adult novels too: Clawless, The Cross of Ramplet and a marketing book called Cooking Up Customers.

Jae: How long does it usually take you to write a book?

Cathrine:  It depends what I’m working on. Basil the Bionic Cat took six months to write the first draft, but it was 92,000-ish words. Typically if I can get some peace and quiet a 40,000 - 50,000 word novel can take about 3 months.  Shorter books, perhaps only a month, if I can sneak off and get some quiet time.

Jae: How do you choose the titles for your books?

Cathrine: The titles come out of nowhere, literally.  I can be thinking about a 100 things at once and then a title will just pop into my head, I always make a note of every title that comes into my mind on my phone – that’s my new note book!

Jae: Do you think in concepts, pictures or words? If words, are they spoken or written?

Cathrine: I think in every medium, words, pictures and concepts all at the same time – it’s just how my brain works. It’s like a mass cosmic storm of endless information racing through my mind as the story reveals itself.  I type pretty quickly, but sometimes my fingers just can’t keep up with my brain! LOL

Jae: Tell me about your writing process.

Cathrine:  I don’t really have one, I know that sounds crazy, but I just sit at my computer, open a document and pray for inspiration.  Usually something triggers the words and then the flow begins. On a really good day I can write up to 10,000 words, however on a bad day perhaps only a thousand.

Jae: What’s the most challenging aspect of writing for you, and how do you overcome that challenge?

Cathrine:  The most challenging thing about writing is keeping up the consistency with one novel at a time – when so many ideas are popping into your head, sometimes it can be a bit difficult to stay with just one novel and I can have several on the go at once.  I don’t recommend this system at all, so now I try my hardest to stick with just one at a time.

Jae: What do you like least about writing?

Cathrine:  The least favourite thing for me about writing is the editing process.  It’s the fun-killer of creativity!  But it is a necessary evil of being an author, sad but true!

Jae: What do you like most about writing?

Cathrine:  You get to play god! LOL (Not that I have a god complex I might add!)  When you think about it, you actually are creating worlds and their inhabitants from scratch, so in effect you are The Creator of your creation.   I love the fact that you can do anything, say anything and create anything for your characters and worlds, it’s like pure magic.   It’s the best fun ever, especially when you’re writing something with a comedy element like my next novel – Kosmic K9 and BatCat.

Jae: How do you make time to write?

Cathrine:  Great question – now that my library is finally finished and has no internet in there at all – not even 3G  (on purpose I might add)  it makes it so much easier, as there is no lure to go online and check all my social media and websites!  Prior to this I was fitting everything in with periodic stoppages to go web surfing.  This interrupts the flow of the writing, so I’m really pleased to have a space where I can concentrate and there are no distractions, apart from the kitties who like to be with me. Basil can be a little naughty, he likes to tread on the keyboard if he’s feeling left out!

Jae: What important lessons have you learned as a writer that you'd like to pass on to others?

Cathrine:  The one invaluable piece of advice I can pass on to other writers is this:  Never stop writing, the more you do it, the better you become.  It’s that age old adage: Practice makes Perfect (well sometimes!)

Jae: What are you working on now? Can we expect a new book any time soon?

Cathrine: At the moment I am just finishing the final edits on my latest novel for the 8 - 12 age group.  It’s called Kosmic K9 and BatCat ~ Quartermass and the Pigs.  It’s due for release Spring 2013.

Why Do We Need Yet Another Writers' Group?

Yesterday our new indie writers' group Suckers Guild opened its doors and began accepting applications for membership.

Photo: catnkitten.com

But with so many writers' groups already out there, why did we start another one? And why should you consider joining it?

Different groups have different missions, and while others may exist for purposes like meeting like-minded hobbyists, providing services for a fee or even boosting self-esteem (all of which I applaud), Sucker's Guild's mission is more exclusive. Sucker's Guild exists to fill two important needs that we don't see being met effectively elsewhere:

1. An easy way for readers to sort the real authors from the dabblers. Indie doesn't have to mean low-quality, and certainly shouldn't mean you pay ten bucks for 90,000 words of rambling drivel. But there's plenty of that out there, and it's giving the rest of us a bad name. The Suckers Guild entrance exam is designed to weed out people who aren't serious about writing, and books will have to meet certain quality standards before they can be endorsed by the Guild.
2. A way for authors to get the editing, proofreading, design, formatting and marketing services that are essential to success, without having to pay cash for them. My hat is off to the professionals in these fields, but the reality is that few writers can afford them. Suckers Guild offers a peer-to-peer barter system in which each member provides services in his or her area of expertise and receives services in other areas.

Here's co-founder M Joseph Murphy explaining it another way:

For Fiction Writers: Suckers Guild Now Accepting Members

I'm happy to report that the Suckers Guild is now established and ready to accept new members.

The Suckers Guild is an organization of indie fiction writers. Tomorrow I'll cover why we started it and how it's unique. Today I'll tell you how to get in and what happens after that.

To apply for membership go to the How to Join page on the Guild website (SuckersGuild.blogspot.com) and follow the instructions. You'll find an entrance exam consisting of two writing/rewriting assignments. Simply put, we're looking for members who are serious about writing and strive to produce quality fiction.

Once you're a member, we'll send you a placement questionnaire. This will help match your needs with other members' expertise and vice versa.

You'll also receive a ranking based on your accomplishments so far, and you'll be able to increase that ranking by doing work in your field of expertise for other members. In return, you'll be entitled to have other members do work for you, in their fields of expertise.

Learn more by visiting the Suckers Guild website or liking its Facebook page.

Why Indie Writers Should Blog

One thing most literary agents seem to have in common is that they want authors to have blogs. Some of them won't even consider an author's work unless he or she has a blog and updates it regularly, on the theory of 'If you don't bother promoting your work, then why should I?'

Photo: funworth.blogspot.com

It seems to me that as indies, we should do no less. It seems to some other indie writers I talk to that it's a waste of precious writing time. We don't have to cater to those agents, after all.

Here's why I think we should blog:

Readers get enthused about authors, not just books: Ever wonder how some truly awful books climb to the top of the Amazon lists? I think you'll find it starts with charismatic authors connecting with readers, who buy the books because they like the authors so much. I'd like to say this doesn't matter if your book is good, but I'm afraid experience tells me there are just too many books out there, and yours isn't likely to be noticed without a personal introduction.

Google Adsense: Blame the economy if you want, or compare it to the decline of the horse and buggy, but the old buy-a-copy-for-twenty-four-fifty model is going away. A great alternative: offer valuable content consistently, sign up for Adsense and make your money like they do with television. It takes time, but it works.

To build a fan base: It's one of the nicest feelings in the world, knowing there are people out there - not just my family and friends but people I'd never heard of - who visit this site regularly to see what I've posted today, and are impatient for the next installment of my current novel.

I stumbled about quite a bit before I hit on a successful strategy. I'm sure the 'right' method varies according to your personal style and who your ideal audience is, but here's what I've found works for me:

Be yourself: Your unique personality is your most valuable product, and everyone has to come to you to get it. When I started this blog, I was very concerned with keeping up a professional image, to the extent that I kept my experiences, my feelings and my struggles as a writer out of it. As a result, I had very little to say that wasn't already being said on more popular websites. When I switched to a more personal approach, I found that I had plenty to say, and plenty of people wanted to read it.

Photo: essaywriter.co.uk

Be professional: Drama may be great for your fiction, but it has no place in your blog. If you're mad at your husband, you hate the President or your daughter's a &%@#!, tell that to your husband, the President or your therapist, but please don't tell us. It may be tempting, especially at first when 'nobody will see it anyway', but giving yourself a reputation as a whiner and a gossip will only hurt you.

Showcase what you love: It's part of what makes you unique and interesting, and enthusiasm is very contagious. Subjects that interest you will probably show up in your fiction at some point, anyway, so don't worry if your enthusiastic post on football or crannogs seems a little off-topic. It won't stay off-topic for long and it will help your readers get to know you.

Consolidate your online presence: I used to have two blogs and a website. I could never seem to keep them up-to-date, not to mention promote them, and readers who did stumble across one of them missed out on the other two-thirds of the content. When I discovered that Blogger would let me integrate my website with my blog by adding static pages, I was delighted. I combined them, directed my domain to the blog, and so far, the marriage has been very successful.

Photo: palimpsestone.blogspot.com

Post regularly. I have to shake my head when people tell me, "I don't blog that often because nobody reads it anyway." That's like saying, "I don't bother job-hunting because I don't get a paycheck." It may not be a pleasant thought in our instant-gratification culture, but writer loyalty has to come before reader loyalty; you have to earn your following. That doesn't mean you have to post every day, but you should post predictably and keep your blog fresh.

Keep your nose clean. Soliciting clicks, signing up for dubious link-exchange programs and spamming other websites will only hurt you in the end. Doing things the ethical way may take longer, but when you're enjoying the income from ten years of a solid reputation, you'll be glad you did.

Remember that blogging's only part of it. A blog is a social media tool, and by itself it's about as good as a one-legged chair. Integrate it with your ideal mix of Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Google+, LinkedIn and whatever else.

Join the Communist Party. Oops, I mean the community party. Talk about your fellow writers and other people you admire. Trade guest posts and include lots of links. And have fun. Nobody wants to read a grumpy blog.

Fiction Writer Spotlight: Michael Lane

I'm delighted to say that Michael Lane, indie author of the thriller Behind the Ruins, has consented to an interview:

Jae: Why do you write fiction? What got you started and what do you think influenced you to take up fiction writing?

Michael: I wish I could remember who said this originally, but the gist was that writers write fiction to tell the truth and write nonfiction to lie. Which sounds mean and horrible but I think the underlying concept is that “great truths” – emotional, philosophic or cultural – are best tackled in fiction, where you can set up your morality play to best illustrate your point. In a weird way working as a journalist returned my interest to writing fiction, since I can examine concepts in fiction that can’t be touched in print or broadcast media. I got to do that in Behind the Ruins and really enjoyed it.

Jae: What are some of your favorite books?

Michael: Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast novels, Glen Cook’s Black Company books, anything by Gene Wolfe, Leviathan by Paul Auster, Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk, McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, the first Gunslinger volume by Stephen King.

Jae: What's your career background, and do any of your work experiences show up in your writing?

Michael: I am a print journalist by training and work experience, which affects my grammar and word choice while writing. I tend to stay as lean and minimalistic as I can, avoid adverbs and minimize extraneous description or dialogue. Shorter is better.

Jae: Is Behind the Ruins your first novel?

Michael: It’s the first I finished. I can’t count the false starts, but that’s the norm for writers I’ve talked to. Making the mental commitment to finish is the tricky part. Writing is cake in comparison.

Jae: What's Behind the Ruins about?

Michael: It’s about a man trying to recover some sense of his humanity in an extremely violent post-apocalyptic world. I wanted to explore how violence as a tool can ensure your survival while emotionally and psychologically killing you. That the learning process is also a violent one hopefully makes people ask some more involved questions.

Jae: What setting did you choose for the story, and why?

Michael: It’s post-apocalyptic only because the desperate struggle for survival is integral to who the main character had become. It could have been set in the old west or the Crusades, I suppose, but that brings in some cultural, historical and genre baggage I wanted to avoid.

Jae: Do you think in concepts, pictures or words? If words, are they spoken or written?

Michael: When writing I think in both pictures and words. I tend to read (and write) in a spoken meter and try to “hear” the language. My early thinking on a story is almost pure imagery and visualization.

Jae: Tell me about your writing process.

Michael: I usually make a set of rough notes that are largely limited to character names and notes, a few brief notes on major locations and environments and that’s it. Then I write. I find that if I do a detailed outline I’ve told myself the story and won’t want to do it again in the initial draft. It sucks a lot of the life out for me. Behind the Ruins had a one-page character listing and a second sheet of location and technology notes. Those grew a bit over the course of writing the novel. When I’m writing, I religiously do 3,000 words a day.

Jae: How is the fiction process different from journalism?

Michael: It’s less deadline oriented, but it’s certainly similar in many ways. You have to get work done, get it done on a schedule, and it has to be clean, so speed and accuracy are both shared goals. The difference is the freedom to make your own story and tell the truth as you see it, rather than as four cited authorities see it.

Jae: What were your worst moments writing Behind the Ruins?

Michael: The first draft edit, which is the hairy one with major revisions, lots of language alteration and hair-pulling.

Jae: What were your best moments?

Michael: Finishing the first draft edit and realizing there was a good book in there despite all I’d done to it.

Jae: What important lessons have you learned as a writer that you'd like to pass on to others?

Michael: Set a daily word-count and meet it, even if you’re writing absolute garbage that day. If you do that, you’ll finish, and once it’s done there’s no passage so bad you can’t go back and fix it. Keep moving forward.

Jae: What's next for you? Is there another novel in the works?

Michael: There are. I have two started. One is a fantasy novel in its earliest stages, and likely the first of two or three in a series, while the other is a stand-alone thriller that’s about eighty pages in at the moment. I do want to revisit the world of Behind the Ruins, as well.

Indie Writer Professionalism

One of my favorite times of the day is the hour I set aside for reading. The truism 'you can't write if you don't read' gives me the perfect excuse to lose myself in the magic of all those wonderful books on my Kindle shelf.

Theoretically. What really happens is usually more like this:

I climb the ladder into the loft just under the roof of my family's cabin. I arrange the pillows and, if it's chilly, throw a fluffy featherbed over my legs. I open the Kindle app on my netbook and select that indie book I'd downloaded, that I've been dying to get my teeth into. I convert the netbook to a tablet, lean back against the pillows and start to read.

And it's awful. So I go back to the bookshelf and pick out another book, and it's just as bad. I end up spending the whole hour looking for a book instead of reading one. Sometimes the beginning is boring and I plow through, telling myself to be patient and see if it gets better, but it doesn't. Sometimes the characters don't feel like people, or feel like six iterations of the same person. Sometimes the text rambles until I'm lost, or the sentences just don't make sense. Sometimes the meaning is clear but the narrative is so hiccuppy it takes work to trudge through a page.

Sound familiar? It probably wouldn't take many hours like that to make me swear off indie books and stick with the imprints, except that I believe in indie publishing: I think it's the future of the industry. And one of those indie books is mine. No wonder it's so hard to get readers to take me seriously. No wonder my friends look so surprised when they read my novel.

But my experiences with indie reading also force me to ask: how good is my own book? I'm not worried about the plot or the characters. I have confidence in my writing voice, and was lucky to have beta readers with experience, expertise and honesty. But the reviewers may have been comparing my novel to a batch of indies like the one I described above, beta readers aren't copy editors, and I'm a terrible proofreader of my own work because I tend see what I meant to type.

One solution I've seen proposed (often by free-lance editors, of course) is to hire an editor. That's a great idea, but first we have to figure out where the inventor parked his time machine (somewhere in the borough of Richmond, outside London, of course). I think most of us right now are lucky to have enough money to sleep indoors and keep our children clothed. But of course, after our professionally edited books go blockbuster, we'll have enough to hire editors. So we just have to run to the future ATM real quick, and we'll get right on it.

As Star Trek's Captain Picard used to say, "Options?"

Three of us indie writers were talking about this problem on Twitter, and decided to look into forming an indie writers' guild. A few of the potential benefits:

• Pooling our strengths (and compensating for each other's weaknesses). For example, I'm good at characterization and grammar, and would gladly trade services in these areas for help with marketing, cover art or shoring up a sagging plot.
• Working more efficiently. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to have thousands of individuals stumbling around in isolation, teaching ourselves the arts of book formatting, cover graphics, personal branding, blogging, social media marketing, video creation and whatever else. If we combine our efforts, we should all have more time to write.



Photo: writetodone.com

• Raising our reputation. It used to be acceptance by a recognized publishing house that distinguished the quality authors from the dabblers. But now that the recognized houses have pretty much turned into a handful of mega corporations that avoid debut authors as much as possible, it's time for a new method of distinction. Membership in a guild with reasonable standards of professionalism would seem to serve that purpose nicely.

It all starts with the first step, of course, and that's finding out what you think. So we created a survey. The more indie writers who take this survey, the better the guild will be, so please take it and invite your friends. It's only ten questions.

Survey: What Indie Writers Need

What Do Indie Writers Need?

Okay, I know: indie writers need readers. All writers need readers. Too bad it's not as simple as that. We need our books to be coherent and riveting and eye-catching, and we need lots of readers to be aware they exist. We need somehow to spend all our time writing, and all our time marketing, and the rest of our time making a living until the first two pay off. We need people to realize we're serious professionals producing quality work.

Photo: copyblogger.com

And how do we get all that? Writer M. Joseph Murphy (@WindsWarlock on Twitter) tweeted the other day, "There's only so many hours in the day. I've just given up sleep. Much easier that way." I have a hunch that even if that were possible, it wouldn't be enough.

But the saying is true that 'many hands make light work.' (Which explains the multi-armed image associated with the Hindu supreme god Narayana. Edison's lightbulb, though, is still a mystery.) So a few of us have gotten together (virtually, of course) and created a survey to learn the specifics of what indie writers need. Once we're clear on that, we can start working together to get it.

The survey is short: just ten questions. If you're an indie writer, please take it, to help yourself and the rest of us, too:

Survey: What Indie Writers Need

Thank you.