How to Blog: Essential Do's and Don'ts for Author-Bloggers

by Anne R. Allen

Do all authors have to blog?

Nope.

Blogging doesn't sell books. Not directly. And it's not a particularly good way to attract an agent (agents will glance at your blog if they're considering your query, but mostly to make sure you're not wearing a tinfoil hat and advocating the invasion of Canada.)

So what is blogging good for?

It's a way to make friends. With your readers and other writers.

John Green, superstar author of The Fault in Our Stars said on NPR last week that writing books is a life "in which you're in your basement alone for years and years, saying, 'Marco. Marco. Marco. Marco. Marco. And then if you're lucky, someone writes you and says ... Polo."

A blog provides people with a place to say "Polo."

(For non US readers, "Marco Polo" is a kind of annoying game of tag American children play in backyard swimming pools. The origins are unknown, although lots of people offer inventive stories "explaining" it on the Marco Polo game Wikipedia page.)

I spent the first few years of my blogging career saying Marco, without getting many Polos in return, until I won a contest run by uberblogger and then-Curtis Brown agent, Nathan Bransford. The prize was a guest spot on his blog.

That was my first lesson in "DO" #6 below.

I recently found my old journal from the day I got that guest spot. I had also just got the 70th follower on the blog. What an exciting day!

Four years later, the blog is getting 75,000 hits a month and Nathan is going to visit HERE next week...

So if you have a new blog, hang in there. You will get a readership. But it takes time.

I got an email from a reader recently asking if I was ever going to write about blogging for authors. I thought I'd been writing about blogging entirely too much. But I realized I hadn't written much recently, and other pieces have usurped my "how to blog" posts in the Top Ten posts in the sidebar.

So I figured it might be smart to provide an index of my "How to Blog" posts. Eventually I'll put a version of this post on a separate page for easy reference.

The problem with starting an author blog is that most of the instructions on blogging come from marketers and SEO specialists—people who blog with the purpose of getting revenue from the blog itself.

But as an author, you don't need to worry about advertisers and SEO isn't your top priority. Your blog is simply a part of your social media presence—your home on the Web where folks can stop in to chat. The only thing you want to advertise is your own books (and maybe your guests' books.)

Unlike a monetized blog, an author blog shouldn't be your main focus. And it shouldn't take too much time from your WIP.

Not that there's anything wrong with deciding you prefer blogging to writing books. Last week Nina Badzin wrote an inspirational post here about what happened when she did exactly that—and turned her love of blogging into a successful freelance writing career.

If you write primarily nonfiction—as a freelance essayist, journalist, or nonfiction book author—a blog is essential. You should start one as soon as you hang out your shingle. It's your portfolio on the Web: the place where people can stop by and see what you do.

But if you're pretty sure fiction is your primary medium, when should you start a blog?

Some writers start to blog too early in their careers and find it’s a time suck that keeps them from their fiction writing goals.

I don't think you have to worry about blogging if—

• You’re at a stage where you need to put 100% of your writing time into learning your craft and getting that WIP onto the page. 
• You’re a student who loves your creative writing class and hopes to be a writer someday, but you’re not sure what genre you’ll want to write or if you'll want to write novels, screenplays, poetry or whatever.
• You’ve written a NaNo novel and a few short stories but you know you've got a lot to learn and you're not ready to start submitting things yet. 
• You’ve been to a few writers conferences and you’re working madly on edits on your first novel and you’ve got this new idea you’re just dying to get on paper...

That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with blogging if you’re at any of those stages. For some of us, blogging is just plain fun. Playing around with words is good at any stage of your writing career, as long as it doesn't keep you from your basic writing goals.

But don’t feel pressured to jump in before you're ready. Blogging is a commitment. Don’t start if you don’t have the time or discipline to follow through.

I suggest you write at least four blogposts (more is even better) and have them ready to go before you set up the blog.

When should you start?

It's good to have a blog going by the time you start to send out queries or self-publish your first book.

You will need a website anyway. (Sending out a query when you don’t have a website is a waste of time. Many agents and editors reject on that item alone.) A blog is a website—while a Facebook, Google +, Twitter or Pinterest page is not. Nothing that requires membership counts. And a blog hosted by Blogger or Wordpress is free as well as being interactive—as opposed to a static website. So it counts as “social media.” It’s a two-bird stone.

Blogging provides the most effective long-term strategy for writers to get their names out there into the marketplace and interact with the public, because:

• You’re a writer. Blogging uses a skill you’ve already got. 
• Other social media are subject to faddism and rapid changes. (Facebook has become much less effective now that you have to pay to reach more than a handful of readers.) 
• Blogging is the social medium that gives you the most control over your brand.

But author-bloggers usually make one huge mistake: we follow rules established by other types of bloggers.

I made this mistake myself. 

Thing is: as an author, you are not blogging to monetize, so a lot of the standard rules don’t apply. You're blogging to make yourself an interactive home on the Web—a place for agents/fellow writers/fellow bloggers/publishers/editors/readers to find you and communicate with you. It's a place to establish your brand.

And your brand is YOU.

Here are some basic blogging rules authors would be wise to heed:

1) DO use an uncluttered, easy-to read design

Be aware that a light font on a dark background is hard to read for most people. Plus it tends to look like a 1980s computer interface. And it can scream "amateur". Light and bright and uncluttered is appealing and gives your blog a modern look.

If you use a standard Blogger or Wordpress free blog, the templates are pretty hard to mess up as long as you don't choose one of those white-on-black ones. (pale gray on white isn't that great either.) If you go with a Web designer and a self-hosted blog, don't let them talk you into too many bells and whistles.

And remember most people find pop-ups annoying.

2) DO learn to write good headers. An intriguing header is essential!

A good header should:

• Ask a question or provide an answer. 
• Attract search engines. 
• Make a good Tweet (even if you aren’t on Twitter, you want somebody else to tweet it and spread the word.) 
• Promise the reader something of value: information or entertainment 

Note: One-word and enigmatic titles may delight your muse, but minimalism won’t attract blog readers. Also stuff that’s unfocused, doesn’t inform, and nobody’s likely to Google.

Titles like “Scribbles”, “Alone,” or “Sad Thoughts” are not going to get you many hits. These are not words or phrases people are likely to search for, and they don't entice or offer anything. Look at the titles of our top ten blogposts for ideas on what works in a blog header. Numbered lists and questions work best.

3) DO include share buttons, a "follow" widget and a way to subscribe to the blog

Hey, somebody might stop by and like what they see. You want them start spreading the news. And come back.

Those little "f" "t", "g +1" and other buttons allow people to share your brilliant words to their Facebook, Twitter and Google+ pages. They are the way you will build a following. Put them up there even if you personally don’t use those sites.

It's how people will hear about your blog.

If nobody can Tweet or share a post they like, you're relying entirely on search engines for discoverability. Trouble is, a search engine can't find you unless you have a lot of traffic. And you can't get a lot of traffic unless people Tweet you. The Catch 22 of social media. Use the buttons.

And you want people to be able to subscribe by email. It's great to get people "following," but that just means they see the blog in their RSS feed when they happen to check it. A blogpost that lands in somebody's inbox is a whole lot more likely to be read.

I use MailChimp for our subscription service here. It's great as long as you don't get more than 2000 subscribers. After that, it costs 30 bucks a month, so when your numbers get up there, you have to do periodic housecleaning of subscribers who don't actually open the email. (But hey, that's what you call a First World problem.)

I know there's a lot of pressure to get people to sign up for author newsletters rather than subscribe to a blog. But I think a blog subscription is more useful.

Newsletters were big a decade ago, but there are just too many of them. And they're mostly self-serving and spammy. But a blog generally has actual content. So most people are more likely to subscribe to your blog than a "look at how fabulous I am" newsletter. I'll be writing more about this on another post.

4) DO post a bio and contact info—and your @twitterhandle, if you have one. 

You're doing all this so that people can find out about YOU. And contact you. And discover your books.

But you would be amazed how many bloggers don't even put their names on their blogs.  Or let people know what genre they write. ((The shy opposites of those braggy newsletter people.)

Even if you're a newbie and haven't published anything and haven't picked a genre, you still need a bio. It's best to put a short bio on the main page with more info on an "about me" page.

Yes. Your blog has many pages. Just click "pages" on your dashboard. In Blogger, you get twenty.

Here's a piece on how to write an author bio.

It's also important to put your @twitterhandle on your main page. That way, if somebody wants to Tweet the post, they can give attribution. Most share buttons only say "via @sharethis" but if you're on Twitter, you want it to say "via @yourname." Remember you're doing all this to establish that name!

5) DO ask questions, respond to comments and treat your visitors well

Be welcoming to people who visit your blog. Ask interesting questions that will get a discussion going.

You also want to respond to comments and make commenting as easy as possible.

You can’t control all the Blogger/Wordpress hoop-jumping. (I apologize to anybody with a Wordpress ID who can't comment here. I have the same problem trying to comment on a Wordpress blog, which is why I  use a Gravatar ID for Wordpress. If you have gmail or you're on Google Plus, you have a Google ID, so it's best to use that.)

If you haven’t had a barrage of spam, you can turn off the “word verification” or “CAPTCHA”. That will triple your comments. (Especially from people with older eyes who can’t read those %#*! letters to save our lives.)

I also suggest you don't moderate comments on new posts. I only moderate ones more than a week old. That allows for real conversation to happen on a new post. Older posts are the most likely to attract spam, anyway.

6) DO visit other blogs: comment and guest post

Reciprocate those visits. Nobody’s going to know you’re there if you stay home all the time. Get out and socialize! Social media is about networking.

The single best thing you can do to raise your search engine profile is comment on high profile blogs that are already on Google's radar.

Once you make friends with other bloggers, ask if you can guest post. And do invite other bloggers to guest for you. Guest posting is one of the best ways to increase your reach and your readership.

7) DO learn to write for the 21st century reader. 

People skim on the Internet. You need short paragraphs, subheaders, bullet points, lists, bolding, and lots of white space. Draw the reader's eye through the piece.

More in my post on How to Write Blog Content.

And some things author-bloggers DON'T have to worry about:

1) DON'T feel you have to blog every day.

Or even every week. Or on a schedule. (Although a schedule will give you a better chance of building a solid readership.) But it’s all good. For more on this, read my post on The Slow Blog Manifesto.

2) DON'T feel you have to keep to 300-500 words.

That's an old rule from the early days of blogging, when it was all about frequency of posts, not content. Google's algos have changed since then. They discovered people can feel cheated when they click through to a 3-paragraph post. The current ideal now is at about 1000-1500 words.

Make your post as long as it needs to be to cover the subject. If you go over 3000 words, you’ll probably lose some readers before the end, but some of our most popular posts come close 3000 words.

3) DON’T use a cutsie title that masks your identity.

The number one reason for an author to use social media is to get name recognition, so for heaven’s sake, PUT YOUR NAME ON THE BLOG.

Yes, a lot of blogs have cutsie names and the bloggers are anonymous. Many product reviewers prefer to remain anonymous. Ditto political bloggers.

But the reason you’re blogging is the opposite of anonymity. You want people to be able to put your name (or pen name) into a search engine and find you. Don’t make them rummage in their memory banks trying to remember if your blog is called “Songs from the Zombiepocalypse”, “Lost Marbles” or “MommiePornCentral". A whole lot more people will find you if they can just Google "Your Name."

Every minute you spend blogging anonymously is a minute wasted. Let the public know who you are and where you are and why we should be reading your stuff instead of the other 10 billion blogs out there.

4) DON'T limit yourself with a restrictive niche

For product bloggers and reviewers, niche is important. It's better to be the #1 blogger for jelly doughnut reviews or vegan baby food recipes than the 10 millionth blogger "musing about stuff".

But you're an author. Your product is YOU. Don't keep yourself hemmed in by a limited niche.

For a long time, I believed all the stuff about how you have to have a niche. So this is a niche blog. It's serving us well, but it hems us in.

Remember people surf the Web looking for two things: information and entertainment. Your blog can spin a good yarn, make people laugh, provide information, or all three, as long as you are putting it all in your own honest, unique voice.

I used to caution writers against  putting fiction on blogs. It is still less likely to be read, because people are mostly skimming blogs for information, but there's been growth in the "story blog" recently, so if you have flash fiction you don't intend to send to contests or journals, it's okay to put it on your blog. But do realize it will be officially "published" so you have given away first rights.

NOTE: It's still not smart to post raw bits of a novel in progress. Agents and publishers won't consider that book because it's now published (unless you're getting 100,000 hits a post.)  Also, readers respond much better to self-contained short fiction than unedited bits of novels. And remember your job is to entertain, not seek free editorial advice.

Another caveat: one of the least interesting topics to readers is your writing process. Hardly any potential reader wants to know your daily word count or your rejection sorrows. Other writers may stop by to commiserate, and you do want to network with other authors, but don’t make your writer’s block or attempts to get published the main focus of your blog.

You simply want to offer your unique voice talking about the things you feel passionate about: the research you’re doing on medieval armor; your theories on why raccoons are going to take over the planet; the hilarious adventures of an erotica writer running for PTA president. Anything that will draw in readers will work.

If you have "blogger's block", or are brainstorming for fresh content, author Linda Maye Adams offered this tip in the comments: there's a blog that provides daily "blog prompts", called the Daily Post. It looks like fun.

5) DON'T put a lot of energy into images.

(Unless you're a photojournalist, of course.)

You're showing off your WRITING SKILLS, remember?

Bloggers with monetized blogs need to spend a lot of time on images, and visuals do draw people in, but do you want people to notice somebody else'e photography or YOUR writing? 

Don’t waste lots of time looking for the right photo (or risk getting sued for using copyrighted material.)

If your blog is about travel, or fishing, or antiquing, yes, take lots of photos, but if the post is about books or ideas—don’t sweat it. The blog is going to be a showcase for what you can do with the written word. We’ve never used images on this blog, and we’re doing pretty well. If you do use images, make sure they are in the public domain. Try Wiki Commons or WANA Commons

6) DON'T obsess about SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Yes, you want to be picked up by the search engines, but your primary concern is entertaining your readers, not optimizing keywords for search engines. Early on a blog gets discovered by word of mouth, so it's more important to be networking with other bloggers than getting the attention of Google.

So that marketing jargon that goes over your head? Let it keep sailing by. It's not a priority for you.

7) DON'T start multiple blogs 

Professional bloggers sometimes have dozens. They have a Cupcake Recipe Blog and a Mommy Blog and a Support Blog for Persons who Suffer from Chronic Dandruff. All fine and dandy. They run ads for kitchenware on one and Pampers on the second and homeopathic shampoo on a third. And they aren't writing novels.

And you aren't running ads. So unless you write in wildly conflicting genres, like Christian Middle Grade fiction and Bigfoot erotica, you only need one blog. Blogs take time. And you have books to write, remember?

If you've started 15 blogs, go back to the first one, put all your best content on it (you can change the header, but the oldest one is the one Google knows best, so keep it.) Then delete the others.

Then go work on that WIP!

Here are a few examples of great author blogs

Alex J. Cavanaugh

Catherine Ryan Hyde

Donna Fasano

Donna Hole

Florence Fois

Elizabeth S. Craig

Some are superstars, some are midlisters, and some are pre-published, but they all do blogging right.

Here is an index of my posts on how to blog

How to Write Blog Content April 2014  

How to Comment on a Blog March 2014

Guest Blogging for Authors February 2014 

Blog Communities Guest post by Alex J. Cavanaugh from Sept. 2013

What Should an Author Blog About? August 2013 

How to Blog Your Way Out of the Slush Pile August 2013 

When is it Okay to Blog Your Book? April 2013

Is it Time for Authors to Stop Blogging? March 2013 

5 Blogging Rules Authors Can Ignore January 2013 

10 Mistakes of Author-Bloggers September 2012

The Slow Blog Manifesto June 2012

15 Tips for Guest Bloggers May 2012

Cyberbullies: How to Deal with Difficult Blog Visitors February 2012

How to Blog #3 What to Blog About February 2012

How Not to Blog December 2011

How to Blog: A Beginner's Guide for Authors December 2011

(Also this information and a whole lot more is available in the book I wrote with superstar author Catherine Ryan Hyde, HOW TO BE A WRITER IN THE E-AGE: A Self-help Guide . Only $2.99. And yes, the paper version of the second edition will be available very soon.)


What about you, Scriveners? Do you have a blog? Have you been resisting blogging? What do you find are the best ways to get traffic? Do you have any tips for the new blogger? What general blogging rules do you find don't apply to an author blog? 

BOOK OF THE WEEK

This week I'm doing a cover reveal: new cover by Keri Knutson of Alchemy Book Covers  I love the exploding cupcake!

  Food of Love: a Comedy about Friendship, Chocolate, and a Small Nuclear Bomb.

In honor of the re-launch, Food of Love is on sale for the next two weeks!  99c on Amazon.com and the equivalent on Amazon UK, Amazon CA, Amazon.com.au, (etc) and NOOK

Two sisters: one white, one black. Two world views: one liberal, one conservative. But these two women have one goal in common—one they share with most women in modern society: the urge to diminish themselves by dieting. Food of Love is a comedy that carries a powerful message. It offers some of life’s darker truths—told with a punchline. 

After Princess Regina, a former supermodel, is ridiculed in the tabloids for gaining weight, someone tries to kill her. She suspects her royal husband wants to be rid of her, now she’s no longer model-thin. As she flees the mysterious assassin, she discovers the world thinks she is dead, and seeks refuge with the only person she can trust: her long-estranged foster sister, Rev. Cady Stanton, a right-wing talk show host who has romantic and weight issues of her own. Cady delves into Regina’s past and discovers Regina’s long-lost love, as well as dark secrets that connect them all.

"I loved everything about this novel, the quirky humor and larger than life characters above all. The plot took me in unexpected directions and I could not guess what would happen next. This is a delightful surprise package skillfully bound by the author's immaculate writing. And like all stories involving a princess, it has a happy ending. HIGHLY recommended!"...The Bookkeeper

OPPORTUNITY ALERTS

Short Romance stories with holiday themes: Crimson Romance Ebooks (A division of F & W, publisher of Writer's Digest Books) is looking for holiday themed shorts (10K-20K words) Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa 2014, New Year's Even 2015, Deadline: August 15th

BLUE EARTH REVIEW FLASH FICTION CONTEST $2 ENTRY FEE. 750 words or less. Limit two stories per entry. First place $500. Second place $250. Third place $100. Winners will be published in the Blue Earth Review, the literary magazine of Minnesota State University. Deadline August 1.

The Saturday Evening Post "Celebrate America" Short fiction contest. $10 ENTRY FEE. The winning story will be published in the Jan/Feb 2015 edition of The Saturday Evening Post, and the author will receive a $500 payment. Five runners-up will each receive a $100 cash payment and will also have their stories published online. Stories must be between 1,500 and 5,000 words in. All stories must be previously unpublished (excluding personal websites and blogs). Deadline July 1.

MARK TWAIN HOUSE HUMOR WRITING CONTEST  ENTRY FEE $12 or $22. First prize $1000. Other cash prizes. Celebrity judges. Two age categories: Adult (18 and over) and Young Author (17 and under). Submit 10,000 words (or fewer) of any original work of humor writing. Submissions are not required to be in the style of Mark Twain or about Mark Twain. They want you to make them laugh! Deadline June 30, 2014.

The Golden Quill Awards are no longer recommended. 

How To Get a Book Published: A Step-by-Step Guide with Links to FREE Information for the New Author

The Interwebz can provide a wealth of information for new writers. In fact you can find pretty much everything you need to know to become a professional, publishing writer here on the Web, absolutely free.

But you'll also find a bunch of time-wasting bad advice that can lead you astray. When you’re a beginner, it’s hard to know who to listen to.

We decided we'd devote a page on the blog to some info for the writer looking to know the basics about how to get published. Thanks much to Janice Konstantinidis, the webmaster of the SLO Nightwriters for the suggestion!

This is not meant to be a comprehensive list: just a jumping-off place.

A new writer has a whole lot of options–and more are springing up daily. Nobody can say which publishing path is right for you. But we can steer you toward some blogs and websites that might help you decide and suggest some posts from our archives you might find useful

We’d love for readers to add their own recommendations to this list in the comments. We’ll incorporate your suggestions into a permanent page on this site.

OK: How do you get a book published?

Follow these steps and click through the links:

1) Learn about the publishing business

First, remember there is nothing wrong with writing as a hobbyist. You do NOT have to get a book published to call yourself a writer. (Do you have to join the PGA tour to call yourself a golfer?)

But if you do decide to publish, you need to be aware you are entering an industry. Whether you self-publish or traditionally publish, it's important to know how the business works.

We recommend reading Galley Cat, the publishing news round-up site.  It reports both traditional and indie news, and posts a self-publishers bestseller list.

Publisher’s Lunch, the newsletter for Publishers Marketplace, is the place for up-to-the minute news on what’s going on in traditional publishing. You can subscribe here. It’s free (Publishers Marketplace is not.) No matter how you publish, it helps to know what is selling right now, and who the players are.

We also are avid readers of the Passive Voice, which gives a round-up of some of the most important publishing stories of the day (and occasionally runs excerpts from this blog—thanks Passive Guy!) But be aware the comments tend to be weighted toward indie publishing.

2) Get short pieces published first 

Think outside the (full-length) book.  If you don’t have any stories, poems, reviews or essays in the archives, start writing them. It’s very, very hard to sell one book when you have no track record, no matter what publishing path you choose.

Then when you're working on your opus—or you’re editing it—you can also be sending stories, poems and essays to journals, local newspapers, blogs, anthologies, contests and websites in order to build your reputation as a professional writer. Again, this is important whether you self-publish or go the traditional route.

A great place to find vetted journals, anthologies and contests is C. Hope Clark’s Funds for Writers. Poets and Writers magazine also has an excellent list of contests, grants and awards.

But do check to make sure you’re not being taken in by bogus contests and fake anthologies. Always check them out at the Writer Beware blog. Bookmark that one. It's a must-read for all writers.

For more info about why you should be writing short pieces, check our archives:

Why You Should Be Writing Short Fiction
Short is the New Long

3) Finish your book 

Don't waste time worrying about publishing until you've got something to publish. Preferably several things.

Beginning authors are urged by some marketing people to start marketing long before they’re ready. Some seem to think authors should start “building platform” in the womb.

We think this is dumb. Learn to write, read informative blogs where you can network with other authors, and let yourself build up a body of work before you start trying to market yourself.

When you're starting out, it's better to read blogs than to write frantically on your own. Commenting on high-profile blogs is one of the best ways to get your name known.

Unfortunately, social media is writer’s block’s best friend. Not only is it endlessly distracting, but all the information on writing can also turn you into a perfectionist who keeps rewriting chapter one and never gets on with the story.

There are more great blogs on craft than we have room to mention here. It will depend on your book, genre and writing style which ones will resonate. One of my favorites is Janice Hardy's The Other Side of the Story. 

Some of our more popular posts on craft are:

10 Things Your Opening Chapter Should Do: A Checklist
12 Signs Your Novel isn't Ready to Publish

If you’re blocked and having trouble finishing and it’s anywhere near November, try barreling through during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo.) You can get lots of support from these folks. They help you let go of your perfectionism and get that book onto the page. There are now NaNos in the summertime, too.

4) Get your work critiqued 

And polished.  And critiqued some more. Then have it proofread. If you can exchange proofing with other writers, that can save you a lot of money.

A real-life critique group is great, because authors tend to be solitary and we need some human contact, but there are excellent critique groups online. We recommend  CritiqueCircle.com,  SheWrites or networking through My WANA, QueryTracker.net, AgentQuery.com, or Nathan Bransford’s forums.

But take care of yourself as you’re being critiqued. Realize there’s a little bit of the “blind leading the blind” going on with peer critiquing.

Also, your first critiques can feel like going through a meat grinder. For some self-protection techniques you might want to read these in our archives:

Bad Advice to Ignore From Your Critique Group
Should you eliminate “Was” from Your Writing? Why Sometimes “the Rules” are Wrong

5) Visit lots of blogs, online groups and forums to explore your options.

But avoid groups or forums where everybody tells you you’re a moron if you self-publish/Big 5-publish/small press-publish or whatever. People who believe in one-size-fits all are, um, morons.

You need to choose the right path for yourself and your work, and that’s going to be different for every writer.

Start with this post by Jane Friedman on how to get published. Jane is the former publisher of Writers Digest books and one of the most savvy people in the business.  This was pretty comprehensive when she wrote it in 2011, and most of the info still stands. Jane doesn’t post as much as she used to, but her blog is still one of the best. I love reading the insider publishing scoop from CNN's Porter Anderson there every Thursday in his Writing on the Ether.

A great blog for writers leaning toward the trad route but wanting to keep options open is agent Rachelle Gardner’s blog

Former agent Nathan Bransford's blog is one of the friendliest and most helpful place for newbies, and his archives are gold.

If you’re pretty sure you don’t want to go with mainstream corporate publishing, you’ll want to read Joe Konrath’s Newbie’s Guide to Publishing and David Gaughran.

If you’re leaning indie, the Writers Guide to Epublishing  (WG2E) is friendly and helpful with nuts and bolts issues, and welcomes trad-pubbed authors as well. (And Ruth Harris posts there once a month.)

A free site that's great for Romance writers is RomanceUniversity.

A great place to find blogposts that answer your specific questions is the Writers Knowledge Base, compiled by mystery author  Elizabeth Spann Craig. And if you're on Twitter, follow @ElizabethSCraig for the best links to writerly blogs on the Web.

If you’re pretty sure you want to go for that Big Publishing contract, Agent Janet Reid’s blog is great. Ditto Kristen Nelson’s Pub Rants. Also, the archives of Miss Snark are full of valuable information. And if you're looking for an agent, Chuck Sambuchino's Guide to Literary Agents blog is a must-read.

For YA and children's writers, you can read comprehensive agent profiles from Casey and Natalie at Literary Rambles and you'll also get lots of great info at Adventures in YA and Children's Publishing.

The Savvy Author's Newsletter also has excellent advice and it's free. They have a nice, friendly community as well.

6) Get yourself on social media...slowly

My personal recommendation: start a blog first. But don’t go nuts posting. Once a week or even once a month is OK to start, but the sooner you start one, the better. Search engines take a while to find you and you want Google to know who you are by the time you finish that opus.

A new writer's blog shouldn't be about marketing something you haven't published yet. It should be for networking and making friends. For information on what to blog about you might want to check my post on What Should You Blog About? 

For all social media advice, I highly recommend Kristen Lamb's Blog  (She also has great info on craft, presented in a fun, humorous way.) Plenty of bestselling authors owe their success to Kristen.

I also love Molly Greene’s blog for social networking tips.

In our archives: How Not to Blog (and the rest of my How to Blog series)
And Twitter for Shy Persons

7) Network with other writers

The writers you meet on your way up are probably also on their way up.  This is a business where who you know matters.

A person in your critique group today may be an agent or a bestselling author a year from now. I know many, many successful authors who got their agents through online networking. I know even more who found their designers, publishers, and most avid readers through social media.

You can network on blogs, forums and the many, many booky websites like RedRoom.com, LibraryThing.com, Goodreads.com, Shelfari.com, Reddit.com, Kindleboards.com, etc. and writers groups on LinkedIn and Facebook, plus the hundreds of writing forums.

BUT: Beware any group where you see snark or groupthink. There is horrific bullying going on in some of these sites. The nastiest seem to be the oldest. See my post on Gangs of New Media.

Absolute Write, some LinkedIn and Goodreads groups, and the Amazon forums are NOT recommended for that reason. I especially warn against the Amazon forums. They are rabidly anti-writer. The self-appointed enforcers will punish you for breaking their murky rules of conduct with all the self-righteous sadism of the Taliban slaughtering a schoolgirl. Don't go there.

The Amazon forums are not to be confused with the Kindleboards, where writers are welcome as long as they don't do any promotions.

The most friendly and safe forums are the personally moderated ones like Nathan Bransford’s forums, SheWrites (for women writers) and Kristen Lamb’s WANAtribe

Do NOT join more than two or three forums or groups. If you don’t find simpatico folks, move on. This is for making friends, NOT selling books.

Remember you are looking for friendship, moral support and an exchange of useful information.

8) Cultivate a patient attitude

This is a marathon, not a sprint.  I know you’re dying to get published, but believe me, it takes time to learn to be a writer. Malcolm Gladwell said it takes 10,000 hours to learn to do something well, and that sounds about right.

And I’m not just talking craft. You need to learn to take criticism with grace and never let them see you sweat.

If you think your critique group is bad, wait until the Amazon Forum Taliban hits you with 2 dozen one-stars because one of them knows your stalker ex-girlfriend who says you ditched her a week before the prom.

And you DO NOT WANT TO PUBLISH TOO SOON. It's the number one mistake new writers make.

That includes putting your book on your blog. Blogging is publishing. Lots of impatient newbies decide to blog their rough drafts. You don’t want to do that if you have any aspirations to being a traditionally published writer. Here’s Rachelle Gardner with a great post on the subject.

9) Learn to write a great query, synopsis and hook

Anybody wanting to traditionally publish needs to learn to write a query and a synopsis.

And sorry, self-pubbers, you do too. You’re going to be querying reviewers, bloggers, bookstore owners, etc throughout your professional life.  You have to be able to tell people about your book in three sentences or less.

Learn this now.

Best place to learn how to query: Janet Reid’s Query Shark blog.

Another is Nathan Bransford’s archives. Here's his great post on How to Write a Query Letter.

For an overview of Hooks, Loglines, Pitches check in our archives.

10) Decide what publishing road you want to take and start your career.

If you want an overview of your choices, check out my post on "Who are the Big 6? Answers to the not-so-dumb questions you were afraid to ask"

Then you can take one of any of a number of paths:

* Send out queries to agents if you want to try for a Big 5 contract. Find the right agent to query through AgentQuery.com and QueryTracker.net. And always, always, always visit the agent's own website to read the guidelines before you query.

or

* Query editors at small and independent digital presses if you want a publisher but prefer not to go corporate. You can find a list of literary small presses at Poets and Writers. I'd love to have a list of small and indie digital presses for genre fiction but they pop in and out of business so often it's hard to keep up. If anybody knows of a good list, please let us know!

or

* Submit to digital imprints of the Big 5 that do not require an agent (but before you sign a digital press contract, read Writer Beware on the new digital imprints and their contracts.) 

or

* Hire an editor and get your book polished up to self-publish. For nuts and bolts info on how to do that, read the archives of David Gaughran’s Let’s Get Digital. For a list of vetted editors try the Editorial Freelancers Association.

If you’re not tech-savvy and need help in self-publishing, we’ve heard good things about BookBaby.com and Draft2Digital.

Smashwords is also a great way to get on a number of platforms. And CEO Mark Coker has lots of great info on his blog. He's super-savvy and 100% pro-author. And people tell me Mark Coker's FREE book on formatting is a must read for every self-publisher.

11) Learn that rejection is part of the process

Scathing critiques, agent and editor rejections, terrible reviews: every single author who's ever lived has had to endure them.

Right now, go to the Amazon bestseller list. How many books do you see that you really, really want to read right now? Be honest.

Not that many, right?

Does that mean the other books aren’t good?

No. It means you personally didn’t feel like reading them today.

That’s what an agent does every time she looks through her queries. She has to choose what she personally likes. You could be the next F. Scott Fitzgerald, but if she’s in the mood for vampire erotica, you're getting a rejection.

From her. There’s always somebody else.

For some great insider info on what rejection really means, check in our archives:

11 Reasons Why Writers Get Rejected—And Why Only 3 of them Matter by Ruth Harris
Rejection: Why it Doesn’t mean What You Think it Means by Catherine Ryan Hyde

If you want more info on the care and feeding of the writers’ soul, as well as lots of in-depth information about the publishing process, you might want to spring for a copy of How to be a Writer in the E-Age by Catherine Ryan Hyde and yours truly. Not free. But a bargain at $2.99 for the ebook.

And don’t forget to have fun. Publishing is a journey. It’s important to enjoy yourself along the way.

Oh, and what can you do right now, this minute? You can write your author bio. It will make you feel like a professional and you can have it ready and waiting the first time one of those stories gets accepted.

Here's our post on How to Write an Author Bio Even if You Don't Feel Like an Author...Yet.

OK, Scriveners: What can you add to our list? Any must-read blogs that helped you on your road to publication? Any forums where you found BFFs? We welcome all your suggestions. 

BOOK DEAL OF THE WEEK

Food of Love--a comic thriller about dieting, chocolate, and a small nuclear bomb

Usually $2.99, now only 99c on Amazon , Amazon UK and NOOK 

"This hilarious page-turner packs a profound satirical bite. It's a Hollywood romp that provides romance, mystery, and an honest confrontation with the human condition. Food of Love is a funny and powerfully healing book." ...Lucia Capacchione, PhD, bestselling self-help author, Recovery of Your Inner Child

OPPORTUNITY ALERTS

1) Quirk Books "Looking for Love" contest.  They offer a $10,000 prize for the best quirky love story of 50,000 words or more. Visit the Quirk Books website to download the entry form or for further information. Quirk Books was founded in 2002 and publishes around 25 books each year. Their bestselling titles include Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Entries close October 1, 2013

2) A site for KOBO READERS: TrindieBooks.com This Canadian site is the KindleNationDaily for Kobo. Really nice folks, affordable rates, and their ads are FREE if your book is free for Kobo. Reach some of those voracious Canadian readers. Kobo is the most popular ereader in Canada.  Submit your book here. 

3) Escargot Books is expanding its catalogue and are now accepting submissions. Crime fiction (dark thrillers to cozies), women’s fiction, wealth and fitness, children’s, sci-fi and dystopian. All books will be published in digital format. Some books will be chosen for print and/or audio as well. Escargot Books does not offer an advance, but they offer higher royalties than traditional publishers, especially for direct sales from our website, as well as editing, formatting, promotion, and the company of bestselling authors. They have some big name authors and a good track record. Here’s their online submission form

4)  A Room of Her Own contest for women writers. Entry Fee: $15. Four prizes of $1,000 each and publication in Los Angeles Review. Submit a poem of no more than 36 lines, a short short story of up to 500 words, a story of up to 1,500 words, or an essay of up to 1,500 words. Visit the website for complete guidelines. Deadline: July 31, 2013

5) Advertise to British readers with EbookBargainsUK. Listings will be half-price through July and August and anyone listing then will get a credit for a free listing for September onwards (excluding the Holiday period December 20 – January 10). ALSO: They will be launching Ebook Bargains Australia, Ebook Bargains New Zealand, Ebook Bargains Canada and Ebook Bargains India soon, offering authors a chance to target their ebooks at readers through local stores in those countries. Inclusion in these international email newsletters will not cost you anything extra! The one small listing fee will get your ebooks in all five newsletters, reaching five of the biggest English-speaking markets outside the USA.

If you're in any of those countries, do sign up for their newsletter. It brings links to free and bargain ebooks—at the bookstore of your choice—in your inbox every morning. You can subscribe here.

We love your comments! If you can't get through Blogger's hoop-jumping, send me an email at annerallen dot allen at gmail dot com and I'll post it manually.

Bad Reviews—Six Reasons to Be Glad You Have Them

"What? Glad?" sez you. "There is nothing that makes a writer sadder than a bad review!"

That's true. They can feel like a sudden, nasty downpour on the biggest parade of your life.

Whether you self-pubbed or worked with a traditional publisher, the publication of your first book is a moment of personal triumph. You want to shout it from the rooftops: “HEY WORLD, LOOK WHAT I DID! I AM AN EFFING AUTHOR, PEOPLE!!”

And your book starts to climb up the charts. Wow. People are buying it. People you aren’t even related to!

Reviews start coming in. People like you. They really like you!!

But then…somebody doesn’t.

There it is, your first bad review, sitting there on Amazon or B&N or Goodreads, with its puny single star.

You feel like your head is going to explode. You’re not sure what will come out when it does--curses or tears--but it will probably be both. You want to fire off a response, saying what a moron the reviewer is because—well, first off—it’s not a zombie book. That’s why there are no effing zombies, OK??!! Don’t give me two stars because there are no zombies in my heartfelt story of a woman’s journey healing from her addiction to Hugh Grant movies, OK? And you say it’s too short? Almost like a novella? That’s because it IS a novella, you cretinous worm from Hell. It says so RIGHT THERE in the product information.

But of course you don’t write that down. That would be professional suicide. You know that.

You step away from the keyboard. You call your BFF/Sig. Other. You reach in the cupboard for your chocolate stash and eat a whole Lindor truffle bar while your BFF/Sig. Other is reciting platitudes about how you can’t please all the people all of the time and this too shall pass. 

You hang up and get in the car. It’s Haagen Dazs time. And yes, you go to the store and rent “Notting Hill” one more time.

OK, it’s good to mourn. You need to get that stuff out of your system. If you live near a place where it’s safe to throw things, go do that. I find throwing rocks at the ocean surprisingly satisfying.

But you do have to face that computer sometime, and when you do, it’s still there, those three nasty sentences that stink up your whole Amazon page like somebody’s poodle took a dump on your life-is-a-banquet buffet table.

Your career is over. It’s ruined. Nobody will ever buy your book again!!

Not true.

Quite the contrary, in fact. Bad reviews can actually be good for sales.

How?

1) They show you’ve joined the big leagues. 

All popular writers get bad reviews. Just go to any bestseller’s buy page.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone “nothing more than a shallow tale about a misfit who makes good.”

The Hunger Games  “semi-familiar plot, predictable ending, eh not worth my time.”

The DaVinci Code “Highs: the French sentences are correctly spelled. Lows: everything else.”

Freedom “I started to dog-ear pages on which cringeworthy prose appeared, and I did damage to 90 percent of the book.” 

Or even better, the classics.

Gone with the Wind “I use to feel bad about Sherman burning Atlanta, but that was before I read this book." 

Pride and Prejudice “This is without question the worst book I've ever read in my entire life. The style is clumsy though the author strives to impress with an aristocratic pompousness so typical of social climbers of her day.”

The Great Gatsby “this book is twilight without the vampires, which by the way is an equally horrendous affront to intelligent readers…I don't need a book about stupid rich people.”

Great Expectations “a shapeless mess of a story…presented in the most abrasive fashion possible.”

(I especially love the irony of that uber-clumsy sentence about Jane Austen, don’t you? I think there is a good deal of what shrinks call "projection" in negative reviews. Some wannabe writers seem to see their own faults in everybody else's prose.)

2) They prove your reviews are genuine. 

It’s no secret that some authors game the system by trading reviews or even buying them from unscrupulous review mills. Or they pressure everybody in their church Ladies’ Auxiliary to write versions of the same exclamation-laden rave.

BTW, I hear Amazon elves are making a sweep and removing lots of suspect reviews. Unfortunately, some legitimate reviews have been removed too. Be careful you follow Amazon’s guidelines to the letter. NOTE: don’t repeat a phrase from another review or the product description or you can get flagged as a phony reviewer even when you’re not.

The truth is most successful books do not have a full five-star rating. When readers see a page with nothing but five stars these days, they tend to feel skeptical.

3) They demonstrate what your book ISN’T. 

Knowing what your book is NOT can be as useful to a reader as showing what it is.  Sometimes a negative review comes from a person who got the wrong idea of your genre or subgenre. So the review will steer readers from buying the wrong book and generating more irate reviews. (One bad review hurts our feelings, but a whole bunch can seriously hurt sales.)

I had one reviewer call my rom-com thriller Food of Love “rubbish”, because, she said, “I read lots of lesbian romance and this was the worst I ever read.”

Well…yeah it probably was. That’s because it’s not a romance. And it’s not about lesbians.

All my work has strong, sympathetic GLBT characters, but anybody looking for hot girl-on-girl action is going to be seriously disappointed. So thank you, “rubbish” reviewer, for setting people straight (no pun intended.) Whoever told her FoL was a lesbian romance was misinformed—so I’m happy she’s cleared that up.

Another author I know got a one-star for her historical mystery because somebody ordered it thinking it was how-two book about medieval embroidery. OK, the one-star is a pain, but better than a whole bunch of one-stars from dozens of irate embroiderers.

4) They help you target your demographic. 

A review that tells readers what group doesn’t like your book can actually encourage the right readers to buy.

I read a complaint from an author who said she got two stars from a reviewer “because the characters engage in pre-marital sex”. 

Oooooh. There’s sex in it?  So you’ve been identified as a writer who does not write for evangelical Christians who wear promise rings.

That shows you DO write for readers who like a little steam in their lattes. In a world where 50 Shades of Gray is the number one bestseller, that hurts you how?

I had a similar experience with a reviewer who said my mystery Ghostwriters in the Sky was “too complicated.” He said he “couldn’t tell who the bad guys were until the last page.”

Thank you! That tells readers who like a complex, unpredictable mystery they’re in the right place.

5) They rally the troops.

If an author is unfairly reviewed or attacked by trolls, the fans will be outraged, too. It might even get them to write that review they’ve been meaning to write forever. (If you need more encouragement to review your favorite authors, read my post on Amazon reviews here.)

I haven’t had a lot of time to read (or write reviews) during this marathon year, but one book I loved was Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby. When I put it on my Goodreads page, I noticed a lot of clueless one-star reviews, obviously from people who didn’t realize it was about a minimally-produced record album like the Beatles’ famous “Let it Be…Naked”—and NOT about a lady with no clothes on. I made the time to write a review I probably would never have written otherwise. I hope I steered some of the right readers to the book.

Or there was the time I went to check out a new book mentioned in a Tweet and saw it had ten reviews already: all one-star—all attacking the author personally, saying nothing about the book.

It was an obvious example of cyberbullying. (For more on dealing with bullying in the trollosphere, Kristin Lamb has a fantastic post this week.)

Do you think I bought the book and, after enjoying it, gave it a good review? You betcha! (I also hit the "report abuse" button.) Plus I tweeted it to my followers and wrote an encouraging message to the author. Most humans are moved when we see a fellow human being persecuted.

6) They tell you what readers want 

Elizabeth S. Craig has blogged about how she learns from her negative reviews, and she displays a healthy, professional attitude we all should learn to emulate. You can learn a lot from your readers, who will let you know if they were angry when you killed off Aunt Millie, or didn’t like it when your romantic interest turned into Snidely Whiplash in your last book.

And believe me, if you have any typos, or your work needs editing, they’ll let you know about that, too.

On the other hand—make sure you’re reacting to a majority opinion and not just a handful of people in a bad mood. You don’t want reviewers to change your voice or artistic vision any more than you want your critique group to do that. 

In spite of all this, I do realize some reviews can be spiteful and useless.

Some of those may have been purchased. There are services that offer to leave bad reviews to bump authors ahead of you off the Amazon bestseller lists. (I’ve personally seen review mill sites, but they move around, so I don’t have a link right now.) On the plus side, their mostly illiterate “reviews” get taken down quickly. Amazon is on to them and will remove the review if you report abuse.  

Then there is the segment of the population who invent reasons to criticize and find fault with everything because they get off on it—especially if they can work themselves up into a self-righteous rage to justify their cruelty. Rage can produce a high very like cocaine. (See my post on Trolls, Sockpuppets and Cyberbullies.)

Unfortunately the anonymity of the Internet is where they thrive.

I’ve observed that freebie books tend to get the most troll attacks. That’s partly because people devalue things they don’t pay for, partly because they’ll download free books in genres they don’t usually read, and also because a lot of people simply hate self-publishing (change is scary).

Some people assume all freebie books are self-published—they’re not, but nobody is accusing these people of being rocket scientists.

You can usually tell a troll attack from an honest review. Trolls make it pretty obvious they haven’t read the book and use generic phrases—usually including “riddled with typos” and “obviously in need of an editor” even when they’re reviewing Jane Austen. They often dump lots of identical one- and two-stars all over Amazon. 

This is why Amazon has that “report abuse” button. (But never use it for an honest negative review.)

Sometimes a reader can leave a negative review because of something that has nothing to do with the quality of your book. Maybe your protagonist has the same name as the guy who just dumped her, or her own novel just got rejected by an agent who sat on the full for 18 months, or his mom just told him he he’s got to move out of the basement, and at 42, he really ought to find full time employment since he’s been working on that novel for 13 years now...

They aren't "abuse" in the Amazon sense, but do remember those rants aren’t reviews of your book. They’re verbal temper tantrums--the result of somebody having a bad day—or a bad life. You just happened to be in the line of fire. Smart readers can usually tell when the review is about the reviewer's issues, not the book. 

And chocolate helps. Or throwing rocks at the ocean.  Or maybe even watching a Hugh Grant movie.

What about you, scriveners? Have you seen clueless reviews of your favorite authors? Have you started to get bad reviews yet? Do you have any advice on how to cope with them? 

***

I have a bit of sad news this week. My US publisher, Popcorn Press, has closed its doors. But they have been incredibly gracious about handing all the files to me so I can re-publish with MWiDP. Thanks, Les—you’re a meticulous editor and fantastic book designer. And Kate—your covers are fabulous! Popcorn started as a poetry press and may be reborn as a poetry-only publisher some time in the future.

FOOD OF LOVE is now live under the MWiDP imprint on Amazon US and Amazon UK as well as Barnes and Noble. THE BEST REVENGE should be up there by tomorrow. The one downside is that I’ve lost my Amazon rankings, so FOOD OF LOVE, which had been on the bestseller list for romcoms in the UK since December has lost its status. A few “likes” and tags would be helpful, if you have the time. 

And YES, MWiDP will be re-publishing the Popcorn books in paper, AND, my other three mysteries should all be available in paper in the next few months. Yay treeware!

***

And don't forget the Digital Age Authors Intensive on July 14th!

You can learn all about how to be a writer in the digital age from iconic author Catherine Ryan Hyde and author, screenwriter, and radio personality Dave Congalton, as well as tech wizards, marketing specialists...and me. So if you're going to be on the Central Coast of California next weekend, don't miss this. There are still a few places available. Go here to register. 

Thanks to all of you who bought HOW TO BE A WRITER IN THE E-AGE last week and pushed us up the writing guide bestseller list into the top 20--ahead of the new Kindle edition of Strunk and White! 


Also: my Camilla Randall mystery SHERWOOD, LTD. is featured on Kindle Romance Novels this week and I'll be at RomanceUniversity.org on Friday the 13th!

Bad Critique Groups—8 Things That Can Push a Group Over to the Dark Side. Plus a Halloween Contest!

Good critique groups are the easiest (and cheapest) way for new writers to learn the nuts and bolts of the craft and keep those cringe-making first drafts from gumming up agents’ and publishers’ desks (or becoming part of Konrath’s tsunami of crap.)

UPDATE: If you're looking for a good online critique group or beta reader, Lynnette Labelle has formed a critique matchmaking service on her blog. She's got a great questionnaire that I think will weed out any of the following problems. Here's the link to Lynnette's Blog.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Group feedback can help skilled writers as well. A lot of us like to process our work through a group before we send it out into the unforgiving marketplace. (Nobody’s snarkier than the one-star Amazon reviewer.) I’ve read that even Amy Tan still runs her work by her critique group for feedback and suggestions.

I personally belong to a fantastic group that has become like family to me. I trust them with everything from nurturing my sucky first drafts to polishing final copy. We’re all veteran critiquers with long history together. Critiquing is a craft, just like any other aspect of writing, and abilities grow with practice. After fifteen years together, these folks are pros.

But I lucked out. Not all groups are useful. Group-think can be dangerous. One or two empathy-challenged control freaks can goad a group of mild-mannered scribblers into a verbal Lord of the Flies attack-fest that will stifle the most faithful muse and damage a fragile creative spirit.

And you can’t be sure the advice is worth heeding. As journalist Jim Bishop said, “A good writer is not, per se, a good critic. No more so than a good drunk is automatically a good bartender.”

Here are eight things that can make a critique group go sour:

1)     No rules. Without following standard protocol—like no cross-talk and no arguing—meetings can turn into free-for-all shout-fests.

2)     No moderator. Somebody needs to be in control and make sure rules are being followed and emotional arguments don’t derail the procedings.

3)     Misinformation. People who are full of false or outdated ideas of what constitutes good writing can ruin yours. For my tips on bad advice to ignore, click here. 

4)     The Grammar Taliban. You’re not going to be helped much by critiquers who harp about sentence fragments and how you should never use a preposition to end a sentence with. If you listen to them, your work will end up sounding like a high school term paper.

5)     Power Trippers. I’ve been to critique groups where one member went into a rage when it became obvious the writer being critiqued wasn’t going to make the changes the power tripper thought were required. These people need therapy, not a writing group.

6)     Praiseaholics. To them, any string of words typed onto a piece of paper is genius. Nothing is ever wrong and nothing can be improved. They might even get angry when you come in with a second draft, because the rough draft was “perfect.”

7)     Co-Authors. There’s often somebody sooooo helpful that she tries to re-write your story entirely—to sound exactly like one of hers.

8)     Dogmatic PC/Religious Policepersons. Critiquers who think you should only write stuff about people exactly like you, or them—or stuff that supports one political or religious world view—create tension that’s hard to overcome. Small minds create small books.

I’ve seen a number of wonderful writers pummelled by misguided critique groups. I first met author Catherine Ryan Hyde in her pre-Pay it Forward days when she read at a local critique group. Her story was brilliant. Scenes from it are still vivid in my mind. But the critiquers hated it—mostly because they didn’t think a woman who has never been in combat should be “allowed” to write about a male character fighting a war.

I was only a guest, so I wasn’t allowed to speak, but on the way out, I stopped her and said I thought they were full of crap. She shrugged and said she’d learned to cherry-pick the good stuff and ignore the rest.

But later that year I attended a prestigious writers’ conference where I saw an equally talented, but not as confident young man bullied by a bunch of know-it-all Bozos in a workshop. What was worse, they were egged on by the workshop leader—who seemed more interested in wielding power than in improving anybody’s prose.

I tried to speak to the abused writer afterward—to say how much I disagreed with what had been said—but he dismissed me with a few angry words and took off running. I realized he was close to tears.

That night I tried to write about that awful scene. In my story, the critiqued writer was so damaged by the bullying critiquers, he killed himself. Of course the story was way too melodramatic, so I later changed it to simply the appearance of suicide. Then I added a few more murders (I had to kill off that workshop leader!) plus some romantic sizzle, a couple of ghosts, a cross-dressing dominatrix, and a lot of laughs.

The result was a comic mystery called Ghostwriters in the Sky, set at a Z-list writers’ conference in the wine-and-cattle country north of Santa Barbara, CA. It was originally going to be published by my UK publisher as a sequel to The Best Revenge. I thought it had a great shot at finding an audience, because at the time I was a columnist for a popular writers' magazine, and this was a story I thought most writers would relate to.

But my publisher went belly-up and I slowly discovered that nobody in New York would go near a story about the publishing industry. 

“We live with this stuff every day,” wrote one agent. “We don’t find it entertaining in a novel.”

After a few hundred rejections, I put the book in the file of “not a snowball’s chance in Hades” and wrote a couple more books. But I was sad to lose the story. It’s got the most fun humor and most intricate plotting of any of my work. And Marva, the dominatrix, is one of my all-time favorite characters.

So I sure was pleased when Mark Williams asked to read Ghostwriters last August. He liked it and had some great suggestions of ways to make the convoluted plot less confusing. His suggestions were great, so I jumped into some major revisions.  

And now, ta-da: here it is. The world debut of the ebook of  GHOSTWRITERS IN THE SKY It's available at the US Amazon.com for $2.99 and the UK Amazon.co.uk for what I assume is the equivalent, which they won't let us Yanks see.

And as a Halloween gift: I’d like to give away a couple of e-books to any of you with e-readers or a reading app on your phone, PC or whatever. (And I can get a Nook version direct from the publisher, since Smashwords can be so slooooow.)

Just leave your name in the comments between now and 9:00 PM on Halloween, Pacific Time. I’ll give everybody a number and use a random number generator to choose two winners, which I will announce on November 1, along with some other exciting news.

I’d also love for you to share any experiences you’ve had with nasty critiquers. Have you ever felt bullied by a critique group? Or has somebody said something so nasty about your writing that you considered giving up? (It’s OK to comment even if you don’t want an e-book. I don’t have a Kindle yet, either.)

You can also read an interview with me today on Morgen Bailey's wonderful blog. Plus I’ve finally set up a Facebook authorpage. If you go over, you can see the covers of some upcoming books (and if you wanted to “like” the page, that would be awesome.)

And for you readers who, like me, haven’t yet been Kindlized: FOOD OF LOVE is now available in paper! You can buy it for $9.95 from Popcorn Press or Amazon.com (eligible for super saver shipping.) 

Coming up in the blog: Next week, on November 6, book reviewer DANIELLE SMITH of Chick Lit Reviews and News  is going to tell us how to query a book blogger, what her pet peeves are, and how to find reviewers in your genre.

Then on November 13, legendary mystery author and writing guru LAWRENCE BLOCK will be guest posting about his personal adventures with self-publishing. Usually you’d have to go to a writers’ conference or an MFA program to hear from a superstar like Mr. Block, so I’m totally jazzed he’s going to be visiting.

And in December, we’ll have a visit from one of my all-time favorite bloggers, Romance author RONI LOREN, who has an erotic romance coming out in January from Berkeley Heat. She’s going to counteract some of that doom and gloom and tell us some of the good aspects of being  published by a Big Six publisher.

The $79 Kindle and the Most Interesting Publisher in the World

OK, I can finally say it: I have three brand new novels coming out this fall!

Within a couple of weeks, THE GATSBY GAME will debut as an e-book. It’s a stand-alone mystery set in the Mad Men era that proposes a fictional solution to one of Hollywood's most scandalous mysteries. (It's #7 on the top 10 list, if you follow that link.) 

The e-book will be published by a cutting-edge new e-publisher: Mark Williams International Digital Publishing.

Two comic mysteries will follow with MWiDP: GHOSTWRITERS IN THE SKY and SHERWOOD, LTD. They are the first two in a series featuring a perennially penniless socialite and her gay best friend.

Yeah but…sez you—what about Popcorn Press? Haven’t you already signed with them? Aren’t they re-launching your two UK books, FOOD OF LOVE and THE BEST REVENGE? Haven’t they been very, very good to you?

Yup. But because both of these presses belong to a whole new “united we stand” type of small publisher, Popcorn will partner with MWiDP and publish paper versions of the three ebooks. Paper copies will be available at the Popcorn Press site (and amazon.com) about one month after the debut of the ebooks. And yes! Paper copies of FOOD OF LOVE are available for pre-order at the Popcorn Press site right now for only $9.99. 

So who/what is Mark Williams International?

Because MWiDP only officially launched this week, I haven’t been able to talk about it before, but if you follow this blog, you’ve seen Mark Williams’ comments to many of our posts. He’s the “quiet half” of the UK’s phenomenally successful writing duo known as Saffina Desforges. He’s also mentored a number of other UK writers to bestselling superstardom.

After zooming up to the top of the UK’s Kindle lists—and staying there for months—Mark and Saffi have been courted by some of the biggest agencies in New York and Hollywood. But they turned them all down. They realized there’s a lot more money (as well as freedom) in the indie publishing world.

But Mark, who has been a teacher and editor for many years, knew a lot of writers (like me) who don’t have the time or entrepreneurial skills to self-publish. He also ran into many successful US indies who didn’t have a clue how to break into the European markets.

So he came up with the idea for a company which is a mix of small e-publisher, self-publishing facilitator, and marketer. They will provide professional vetting, editing, cover design, coding and uploading--and also use the networking and collective marketing developed by indie Kindle authors. MWiDP will also take on successful indie authors who want to expand their markets on other continents.

It sounded so good, I jumped in, even though it meant turning down three offers from the traditional publishing world: three offers I would have killed for a few months ago.

Here’s what happened to me at the beginning of September—just as I was madly preparing my three presentations for the Central Coast Writers Conference. In the space of less than 48 hours, I had a request for a read from one of my dream agents, an offer of representation from a top agency, and an offer of a read of my full manuscript from an editor at a prestigious mid-sized publisher. I also had requested full manuscripts awaiting reads at two other agencies.

But each offer had strings.

• #1 was an initial request for a partial—the beginning of a road that usually takes over a year and so far has had about a 95% failure rate for me.
• #2 was a maybe-offer conditional on a draconian rewrite that involved cutting most of the mystery elements, removing the gay characters and subplots and turning the book into something I wouldn't feel good about promoting.
• #3 was from a company I’d recently discovered has a seriously author-unfriendly contract.
• The two fulls had been sitting at the agencies for over 6 months with no word from the agents, in spite of several inquiries, so I had no idea if they were still being considered. (More and more agencies no longer bother to send rejections for requested manuscripts--even fulls.) 

I mentioned my dilemma in an email to Mark--and he let me in on his as-yet-to-be announced publishing company plans.

Twenty-four hours later, I’d joined Mark and Saffi’s new venture. Here’s my page at their new website. 

What am I—nuts? Isn't this just drinking the Kool-Aid that Janet Reid warned us about?

Maybe. And I absolutely do not recommend this for everybody. Especially for newbies. I think most first-time authors should try the traditional route first. Even if it's only to build up some soul-calluses. Publishing a just-finished first novel usually ends in disappointment and often discourages good writers from staying in the game.

But for me, it’s already looking like a smart move. One of the major factors that swayed me was that Mark could get my ebooks out quickly. He'd already read two of the three manuscripts and knew they were almost ready to go.

He also told me this will be the “Christmas of the Kindle.” He predicted Kindles would get very cheap for the holidays—under $99—and said they'll be THE gift. He expects this holiday season to be the hottest e-book buying moment in history.

And guess what happened on Wednesday this week? Amazon announced its lowest price Kindle will now sell for…$79. And the new Kindle Fire--an ereader/tablet that competes with the iPad, will cost only $199 (a loss to Amazon they expect will pay off in other sales.)

So I think Mark has a pretty clear crystal ball.

He pointed out that in the three or more years it would take to grind even one of my books through the traditional publishing machine, the whole publishing world will have changed. There may not be any more big brick and mortar bookstores. That window in Barnes and Noble where I’ve fantasized seeing my work will probably display only Nooks and Snookibooks. E-books will reign.

So I realized that for me--after fifteen years of bloodying my knuckles on New York doors--it made sense to get all my books out right now. (This isn't all the books I've written, BTW--I've got some practice ones in the files that will never see Kindle-light.)

Mark certainly doesn’t recommend that everybody take out their rejected manuscripts and throw them on Amazon (or submit them to MWiDP.) But I had three finished, multi-critiqued, edited new mysteries. (And yes, Mark did ask for more edits and I’m in the process of killing some darlings, but his suggestions improved the books instead of gutting them.) 

Do I recommend this for everybody? Again I repeat: no. Going the indie or semi-indie route is likely to lead to disappointment if you don't have a body of work and you’ve only been at this game a little while. Writing narrative is a craft that takes years to perfect. You don't open a restaurant after your first cooking lesson.

The reason this move is best for me is: not only will MWiDP make my ebooks available immediately, but my chances of acceptance by the Big Six are abysmal. I only recently figured out why I've been getting so many "I absolutely loved this, but..." rejections.

1) I’ve been previously published, without stupendous sales numbers.

2) My work doesn’t fit into a neat genre category.

3)  I write funny. Humor is subjective and can’t please all of the people all of the time.

4) Funny books by women are often lumped together as chick lit—the most hated genre in New York.

If you’re just starting your writing journey, please don't let me keep you from pursuing your personal publishing dreams. By the time you have two or three books ready to go, the industry will have settled a bit from the e-revolution and you’ll have many more options than we have now. The Big Six may not be as big and Amazon and maybe Apple might be the most desirable publishers. There will also be lots of collectives and small e-publishers like MWiDP to choose from.

If you’re in the process of looking for an agent, please keep at it. Agents will have very different job descriptions in a few years, but having a savvy agent in your corner will always help your career. I’d love to have one myself.

But right now, with all these books ready to go, it makes sense for me to join Mark's new venture and be ready for “the Christmas of the Kindle.”

So who is this Mark Williams dude?

He’s not a guy to toot his own horn. He doesn’t even post a picture of himself on his blog. What I’ve been able glean from his emails and posts is:

• He’s a very good writer and editor.
• And a phenomenally smart guy.
• He’s based in London.
• He spends a lot of time traveling the world, teaching third-world children and building schools.
• He first became interested in electronic publishing because of the opportunity it provides to get books to children in remote parts of the world.  
• He’s traveled and taught in lots of dangerous places, like Soviet Russia and Saddam’s Iraq. He has braved revolutions and lost dear friends in horrific civil wars.
• Right now, he’s helping get solar power to a primitive village in West Africa so they can use computers and electronic readers—an effort partly funded by money from his book sales. (He asks that when you get your new Kindles, you consider donating the used ones to his project.)
• He is apparently living in a mud hut. I don’t know if that’s a metaphorical hut, but it doesn’t sound like the Hilton.
• I’ve got to admit I’ve done a little searching the old Interwebz for a picture—but a name like Mark Williams is as generic as, well, Anne Allen, so I haven’t got a clue how to find him. Unless maybe he’s this guy:

So here I go on another publishing adventure….whee!

So how do you feel about all this, scriveners? Are you ready to take the self-pub or indie-collective plunge? Holding out for the traditional publishing dream? Willing to go indie, but want an agent to guide you? Or are you a successful US indie who’d like help getting into the European and Asian markets?

*********

I'm starting little blog tour in my own slow way this week. I reveal a few personal secrets in a guest post at Karen Jones Gowan's blog, Coming Down the Mountain due to post next Friday, Oct. 7th, and I spilled more beans at Prue Batten’s ‘Mesmered” blog: (with a great comment from Mark Williams hisownself.) Plus I've got some very nice cyber ink from Danielle Smith over at Chick Lit Reviews. Anybody who'd like an interview or blog visit, do let me know (and anybody willing to do a review, I'll be forever in your debt.)