Guest Post: Artwork

Here's another guest post by Luke Bellmason, as part of our series honoring the recent launch of his novel, The Canterbury Tales, Volume I:

As I get closer to the publication of the Canterbury Tales Volume 1 (it’s coming, it’s coming!) I start to bring together all the ideas I’ve been having over the last months about what the cover should look like. I had a few ideas about what I didn’t want the cover to look like; NASA star fields look fantastic, but a lot of sci-fi books all tend to go with that. I wouldn’t mind some starships flying around on the cover, but I can’t draw that well and again, they’re all much of a muchness.

So I went back to another game I had thought up about a year ago. As regular readers may know, The Canterbury Tales is based on a board game I was trying to develop, but it turned into a book instead. It’s quite fitting therefore that the cover and internal artwork for the book comes from another game I was tinkering with – namely a Sabacc card game.

The Sabacc game is from the Star Wars universe and there’s a few sets of rules out on the web which describe the cards and how they work. The major problem with recreating this game in the real world is that the cards in Sabacc are electronic and can change without warning. The cards actually shuffle themselves in your hand and the only way to stop them doing this is to put them in an interference field on the table, which of course reveals them to your opponents.

I found some images of what the cards might look like in one of the Star Wars comics and decided to develop the visual theme into a whole deck. I managed to make a set and print it out, but playing the game was a lot more complicated than most players could handle, so it got added to the growing pile of abandoned projects.

Until a couple of days ago. As I thought more about the artwork for the book I realised the visual style I’d used for the Sabacc game could easily be adapted for the individual characters. My thinking is that the Merchant, Assassin, etc. are cards in a deck that spacers might carry around with them, much like we have decks of cards knocking about all over the house. These cards replace the King, Queen, Jack of a standard deck – and handily there’s 12 such cards in a deck and 12 characters in The Canterbury Tales.

So here’s the first batch. The Assassin, the Knight, the Merchant and the Smuggler. The colours correspond to the theme I’ve got for each character, although in the print edition I’m going to have to go with black since I can’t afford full colour!

So, can you guess which is the Merchant, the Assassin, the Knight and the Smuggler? These are still early versions, but I’m thinking  about the general visual style and how I can use it in promotional material and to create the ‘branding’ for the book. A good, strong visual image is always useful to make a book stand out from the crowd, but I think the images are a bit too ‘bold’ at the moment and need toning down a bit, maybe with some effects or by printing onto something then photographed. I could even go into printing these out as wall art or screen prints, but I’m getting ahead of myself – I need to finish the damn book before I start getting wrapped up in promotion!

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.

Writing Tips: How to Use Your Bio to Turn People Off

Self-proclaimed bookworm.

Aspiring writer.

Writer and author.

Photo: usf.edu

These are just three of the phrases in people's Twitter, Facebook or even Amazon bios that drive me crazy.  I realize I'm a grammar nut and a bit of a purist, but it's not just that. These people are sabotaging their own success. I suppose I should be happy because it makes me look better in comparison, but it's hard to feel that way. Here's why they bother me:

• Self-proclaimed basically means 'I'm not calling her this; she's calling herself this.' So if you write it about yourself, what am I supposed to think?
• Aspiring means hoping. If you're an aspiring writer, then you're hoping to write. Well, stop aspiring and write already! 'Aspiring author,' is a different matter, but don't use it if you've got a book out.
• Writer and author. Since you can't possibly be an author unless you're a writer, why specify both? I can just imagine how this person's book must read: "I drove to the restaurant and steered. My wife had already arrived a few minutes earlier, and she looked lovely in a blue sleeveless dress and matching pumps, and she had clothes on. The wait was very long, but when the food came it was well worth it and acceptable. The food in that place is always delicious and edible, and both my wife and I love to eat and swallow there." 

Another thing that can turn off potential readers is using one word when you mean to use another one. Proofreading is very important (don't just rely on spell-check), but sometimes it's a matter of confusion between similar words. Here are some commonly confused ones:

• Loose is an archaic word meaning release. Use it if your fantasy character has been stricken by his conscience and decides to loose all his slaves. To lose means to be defeated in a competition or to be without something that you once had.
• Could of is incorrect. You mean to say could have. Same goes for should have and would have. It's a verb phrase: 'have' is a helping verb and 'of' makes no sense there because it's a preposition.
• Insure means make arrangements for payment if something goes wrong. Your car is probably insured. Troy Polamalu's hair is insured. Ensure means make sure. You should ensure that your meat is cooked before you eat it. In a lot of states you must ensure that your car is insured before you can register it.

Photo: usatoday.net

• Site, as a noun, means place or spot. Of course, it can also be a website: a place on the web. As a verb, it means 'put in place' or 'provide a place for.' Cite is a verb and it means reference. The related noun is citation. Sight, as a noun, is the sense we use our eyes for. As a verb, it refers to using our eyes to line up objects in a straight line. And that leads us to its other meaning as a noun: a tool we use for sighting, often called a gunsight. An example: "The dainty architect was always a welcome sight to new hires, but to the rest of us, she was a nightmare. No job was ever good enough for her, and she seemed to spend her entire time on the job site doing nothing but complaining and citing obscure regulations."
• A roll may be something to eat with dinner, the way the dice landed, a sleeping bag ready for carrying, or pretty much anything else that results from the act of rolling. A role, on the other hand, is a part to be played or a function to be carried out. If you tell me you've been 'roll-playing,' I'll think you've been playing marbles or croquet. 

And then there's the apostrophe-'s' issue. Which side of the 's' do you put the apostrophe on, or do you leave it off altogether? The answer depends on what you're trying to say. I'll get into that next time.

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.

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.

Marketing for Indie Writers: Facebook Pages

Someday I'd like to be so successful the paparazzi will do all my advertising for me. My dishes will magically wash themselves, and I can just write and eat and watch my books touch the world. Meanwhile, I use up a lot of the time I'd like to be writing in washing dishes, tidying up and trying to figure out how this whole marketing thing works.

Photo: guardian.co.uk

So far, three things seem to be working: Facebook pages, a Twitter account, and this website. Of course none of them works without the other two, but here I'll focus mainly on Facebook pages.

A couple of things I've noticed:

1. A Facebook page is not a website. I've seen authors comment that Facebook pages don't work as well as websites. That's true, in the sense that a washing machine doesn't work as well as a car.
2. An empty or stale page won't help. The purpose of a Facebook page (it seems to me) is to bring your latest writing news to interested Facebook users. But, 
3. Nobody likes to be spammed, either. I recently had to unlike an author's page because my feed was so full of random updates about her personal life that I wasn't seeing news from other authors.
4. A Facebook page is great for keeping your feeds organized. I like authors' pages as my page, not as myself, and that keeps the author updates separate from the news about my cousin's pregnant goat and my friend's latest rant about the President.

I think that with any social or grassroots medium, cooperation is key. We want likes, of course. Likes are the essential first step in getting updates out there. But after that, we want interaction. We want engagement. We want people reacting to our posts, leaving comments, and most of all, sharing our posts on their own walls. And here's where the golden rule comes in: we can't like and comment and share on our own pages. Well, we can, but it won't do much good. What works is to do it for each other. Thanks to Kev Hammond of Magic, Fairy Tales and Inter Dimensional Poking Devices for demonstrating this.

What I like to do:

1. Like an author's page as my page, not as myself. Not only does that help keep my feeds organized, but it helps other people find my page. I found out the hard way that if I like it as myself and my page, only my 'self' will show up in the list of 'who likes this' and people won't be able to find my page that way. Also, Facebook still calculates all my likes as just one like, no matter how many of my pages like your page. When I found that out, I had to make sure I had "Use Facebook as Jae Blakney" checked, and unlike a lot of pages.
2. Check the feed from other authors' pages, leave comments and share any posts I think my fans will find interesting. I'm just starting to do this, and I haven't got the hang of it yet. If you have any advice, I could sure use it.

I'll end by passing along another tip from Kev Hammond: 'sex and bacon'. He says that when he puts that phrase in his posts, a lot more people see them. I have a hunch it's not the bacon that makes it work.

Marketing for Fiction Writers

A big thank you to all the Twitter users who keep retweeting my tweets! It makes a big difference and I really appreciate it. I used to say so, personally, every time, but now there are just too many of you. What a wonderful problem to have! I do keep a list of all your usernames, though, and try to recognize you every Friday. If I overlook anyone, please speak up.

Photo: lifehack.org

Which brings me to the subject of marketing for fiction writers. There seem to be two basic schools of thought out there, from what I've seen:

1. Since we work so hard and produce products of value, we should sell them for a good price (even though we still may have to be working for a penny an hour for a while, until things pick up) and vigilantly protect our stories from being pirated or unintentionally shared.
2. Since most of the readers we're trying to reach need all the cash they can come up with for things like mortgage payments and fuel, and since most of us writers aren't famous yet, we should distribute our work as widely as possible for free. We should connect with other writers and pass their work on as well so they'll do the same for us, and once we've gained enough exposure, the money will come. It could be in the form of ad revenue on our blogs, or a publishing contract, or Kindle sales, or something else.

I tried the first option first, for over a year, and it failed miserably. For about three weeks now I've been wholeheartedly trying the second, and my blog traffic has skyrocketed. I want to thank Rebecca Scarberry (@ScarberryFields) and Nadine Ducca for the advice that got me started.

I'm still a rookie here, so advice from veterans is always appreciated.

Guest Bloggers Wanted: Fiction Stories

Yup, it's a shameless Google Ranking scheme, but a legit one. This is how Google Ranking is supposed to work: relevant content linking to relevant content, links that become popular by virtue or their quality, and all of that.

What I'm looking for is fiction stories, especially seasonal, humor and horror, since I don't write many of those myself. I'd love to liven this place up with a Christmas story, or Hanukkah or anything else December-ish.

I'm open to entire short stories, poems that tell stories, or excerpts of longer works as long as they can stand alone. If your piece fits, I'll post it here and provide a link to your site, blog or whatever, and ask that you provide a link to the post as well.

Guidelines:

1. The work needs to be your own or you need to have license to it.
2. It needs to be tame enough that I won't run into any trouble. I've promised Blogger and the search engines that there's "no mature content" here, and I need to stick to that. 
3. Start with a hook. Readers tend to move on if the first line doesn't grab them.
4. I'm looking for narrative that flows like music.
5. Please don't send teasers; that will only frustrate the readers and make them mad at me. I'm looking for whole stories, even if they are parts of longer ones.
6. How to contact: if your story is already posted online, you're welcome to post the URL in the comments section below. Then, even if I can't use it, people can still check it out. If you'd rather more privacy or there's no URL to post, go ahead and send me an email.

Networking as an Indie Writer

Photo: BNINH.com

Yesterday morning I went to a meeting. My friend Joe Lore of computer distributor Sunnytech asked me to sub for him at his Business Network International meeting. So I went, thinking I was there mainly to represent Joe and not myself or my writing.

But the format of the meeting let me do both. Everybody gives a one-minute presentation about their business, and I gave the presentation Joe sent me with, but I also had the chance to give one for myself. I chose to speak about my novel Resist the Devil.

I met a lot of interesting people, some of whom I hope to keep in touch with. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the members of BNI's Greater Salem chapter for not only making me feel welcome, but really drawing me in and letting me participate.

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