Category: Self-Publishing

Choosing a Publisher, Self-Publishing

Self-publishing vs …

A recent post on this blog regarding the traditional publishing industry took some feedback open to dialogue.

Information published through the self-publishing advice blog comes from various sources including published statistics, author experience, key industry opinion, and partially through the experience of the blog’s author, who has first-hand experience as an author with traditional and self-publishing options.

We may appear to some to be, as Laura Miller puts it, among the crowds lining up to dance on the grave of traditional publishing.

Miller goes on to make this statement, which comprises much of the content and philosophy behind this blog: “Aspiring authors have never had more or better options for self-publishing the manuscripts currently gathering dust in their desk drawers or sleeping in seldom-visited corners of their hard drives.”

Her opinion does not suggest a polemic. Rather, it poses the hypothetical in the circus of a rapidly changing industry. It’s no longer apples to apples.


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Self-Publishing

Show & Tell: Book Doctor on Backstory

The Book Doctor offers writing advice for the self-publishing author:

Q: What is back story?

A: Backstory (or back story) refers to the background of characters, the biographical information that made them what they became. It explains why they do the things they do or want the things they want. It gives readers an understanding of the motivations and goals of a character. In essence, it tells a story that happened before the one they are reading; hence, backstory.

Backstory can be revealed through flashback, thoughts, narrative, or dialogue. Personally I prefer backstory to be revealed through dialogue, which inherently shows, rather than tells, as you’ll see in my examples.

Let’s say that at age forty, Mary is studying to become a medical researcher, and you want readers to know why. I’ll give a few examples of ways to fill in with backstory. Each of my examples could go on a little longer and give more detail, but backstory is best when it comes out in short bits that do not halt the flow or kill the pace of the story.

Backstory through Narrative:

Mary had an eight-year-old daughter who had died of lung cancer, although the doctors were baffled about how such a young girl could have contracted the disease.

Backstory through thoughts or flashback:

Mary lifted the wilted rose, brought it close to her face, and sniffed it. The powdery texture and sweet scent took her back to her daughter’s hospital bed, the dying roses on the bedside table, while the child struggled for breath. What went wrong? How could an eight-year-old die from lung cancer?

Backstory through Dialogue:

“I don’t talk about it much,” Mary told her school administrator, “but I had an eight-year-old daughter who died of lung cancer. We never knew what caused it, how she could get lung cancer at her age. I want to discover something that will keep others from going through what we went through.”


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Bobbie Christmas, book editor, author of Write In Style (Union Square Publishing), and owner of Zebra Communications, will answer your questions, too. Send them to Bobbie@zebraeditor.com. Read more “Ask the Book Doctor” questions and answers at http://www.zebraeditor.com

Choosing a Publisher, Self-Publishing

7 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT TRADITIONAL PUBLISHERS

Things every author consider when considering self-publishing vs. the old-fashioned model…

7 – Traditional publishers lose money on over 85% of the books they publish, so they only accept around 2% of those that are submitted.

6 – They typically accept manuscripts only from established authors who have demonstrated a proven track record.

5 – Authors lose content control of their work during the editing process.

4 – Authors must still invest an enormous amount of time, energy, and money promoting a traditionally-published book.

3- Authors typically receive 5-10% royalty on the wholesale price of the book, and from that have to give 15-25% to their agent. Do the math.

2 – The majority of books published by old-fashioned publishers go out of print within 3 years. Many books that are stocked on book shelves remain stocked for as little as five weeks before being returned, unsold, to the publisher.

1- Old-fashioned publishers acquire all rights to your book and keep them, even when the book goes out of print or the publisher goes out of business. Yikes.


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Self-Publishing

Self-publishing Writing Advice from the Book Doctor

The Book Doctor runs through word choice for the self-publishing author

Q: A newspaper reporter in my writing club took me to task for using ‘whether or not’ in fiction dialogue. I see why the corsetry of reporting would not use this phrase, but isn’t fiction dialogue supposed to be somewhat the same as the way people actually talk?

A: First I must comment on the use of corsetry (the making of corsets or other binding garments). It made me smile; I’ve never seen the word used to refer to the limitations of journalism, but it certainly fits.

You’re completely correct that journalism has its confines, while dialogue in fiction has almost no such restrictions. All bets are off and all rules dropped when it comes to dialogue in fiction. While narrative has its guidelines, dialogue should sound natural.

People naturally speak in contractions and use expletives, slang, idioms, clichés and wordy phrases, all things that narrative should not use. Human beings repeat themselves and pick the wrong words, sometimes, too, which can add humor to dialogue. I saw much of that tactic used in the dialogue on the TV show The Sopranos. I recall one character kept saying, “I’m having prostrate trouble,” when the correct word is “prostate,” but many people incorrectly use the word “prostrate” in this sense.

Do people say “whether or not” when they speak? You bet they do, and it’s your choice as the author whether to use it in dialogue, but avoid it in narrative.


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Book Marketing, Choosing a Publisher, Self-Publishing

How do I get my self-published book into bookstores?

Traditional book retail stores often look for four things when deciding to order a book or stock a book on their shelves:

1. Availability with a wholesaler like Ingram.
2. A 50-55% trade discount, which means more money for the retail store. The highest trade discount you can set through most effective publishers is 55%, industry standard.
3. A retail returns policy. A few on-demand publishers offer an optional retail returns program. The retail returns option is generally only effective when each of these other criteria are met.
4. Finally, customer demand. Bookstores also require consumer demand for your book. Creating demand, or “buzz,” is up to your promotional efforts – it’s never to early to start planning. In addition to researching your upfront publishing costs, be sure to look also into these two critical things: (1) your book pricing structure and (2) the marketing support available with your publisher.


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