Tag: in your corner

Advocacy in Self-Publishing, elizabeth speaks, in your corner, Self-Publishing, Uncategorized

In Your Corner : Loving Your Self-Publishing Company

What does it mean to love self-publishing?  It’s one thing to love the theory of going indie: the creative control, the rights and royalties, the community spirit, and everything else that goes along with making your own way on your own schedule at your own page.  But it’s another thing to love the experience of going indie, and as our veteran self-publishing readers can attest, this experience depends in large part on the company you choose to self-publish through.

Has Amazon KDP moved past its “Big Bad” corporate image to provide personable services?  Will Kobo Writing Life treat you right?  Has AuthorHouse overcome its checkered past?  How do Smashwords, Lulu, and hybrid publishing companies like Outskirts Press measure up?  For those of you who are just starting out down this road for the first time, the answers to these questions may hold the key to unlocking the joyous, fervent love-affair you never expected to have.  I’m speaking, of course, about your love affair with your self-publishing company.

loving your self publishing company

I’d like to offer you a list of characteristics I think make for the ultimate lovable self-publishing company and also make for the most positive self-publishing experience.  What should you, the eager author, look for as you research what options are out there?

  • Expertise.  A company that says it knows what it’s about is all well and good, but a company that actually knows what it’s about makes for a far superior experience.  Since this year is a presidential election year here in the USA, bear with me a second: it might prove helpful to think of your publishing candidates the way you would your political ones.  What do you look for in your future president?  Know-how, that’s what.  Companies that lack this crucial characteristic slide headfirst into problems of honesty, accountability, schedule-keeping, transparency, reliability, and trustworthiness.  When researching your options, you can get a good sense of a company’s expertise by watching for those tell-tale symptoms of a company in retreat––a company that throws up smokescreens to disguise its lack of expertise.
  • Experience.  Coming on the tails of its close cousin, Expertise, this characteristic is of equal importance.  You simply won’t feel confident in your choice if you know you’re a living and breathing guinea pig for a wet-behind-the-ears company looking to build its portfolio.  And if you don’t feel confident, well, you won’t find yourself falling in love anytime soon.  As you carry out your research, watch for testimonials provided both by the company on its own website and by past clients elsewhere.  It’s easy to find out if a company has the necessary experience, since authors love to blog about what they love and hate; all you need is Google!  (And some spare time.)  The benefit of going with a hybrid self-publishing company is, in my mind, that you only have to research one vendor (the company itself), whereas if you take time to research your cover and interior book designers, editors, publishing coaches, website designers, copywriters, eBook and print on demand experts, and marketing specialists … well, you’re looking at a substantial investment of time and energy.  With a hybrid self-publishing company, these experts are vetted for their skills and reliability already.
  • Diverse offerings.  Your book is a work of art, and every work of art has its own special demands.  One of my college professors once compared books to babies, not just because authors feel a deep emotional connection with them, but because they seem to take on lives of their own and often prove as troublesome and demanding as a fractious toddler.  Because your book by its very nature requires special treatment, you as an author need to trust your self-publishing company to provide diverse customizable offerings to fit it––and you.  And while some self-publishing platforms might be willing to work with you on creating something totally custom from the ground up over the course of a dozen panicked phone calls, it’s better to start with set of offerings that you can winnow down to something close to what you want––and customize from there.
  • Flexibility.  Is this self-publishing company going to be a pleasure to work with?  Are they going to be calm, flexible, and eager to please––or are they going to be stubborn, inflexible, and resistant to your suggestions?  Are they willing to revisit decisions you’ve already made, or change course in the middle of the design process if you find this is what your book requires?  At the heart of a company’s openness to flexibility is its fundamental perspective on the nature of books.  If a company looks at your book as merely a product it is bringing to market, then of course it’s going to look for the fastest, most expedient way to do so.  If that company, however, understands that your book is a masterpiece and you are a partner rather than a problem or an obstacle in the way of publication, its representatives will work with you rather than around you.
  • Soul. “Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are,” wrote José Saramago in his book Blindness.  When you go looking for a self-publishing company, you’re not just looking for an entity that ticks all the boxes in your “looking-for” list; you’re looking for a company with that little something extra, that thing which moves a person or a company out of the realm of “things I’d be okay with” to “things I feel a deep connection to.”  You’re not looking for a company.  You’re looking for company along the journey.  You’re looking for a good match between you and professionals who know what they’re about, and who share your heart and vision for your book.  If this sounds a little like you’re looking to fall in love with someone, then you’re not far off!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Always remember: you are not alone. ♣︎

ElizabethABOUT ELIZABETH JAVOR: With over 18 years of experience in sales and management, Elizabeth Javor works as the Manager of Author Services for Outskirts Press. The Author Services Department is composed of knowledgeable publishing consultants, pre-production specialists, customer service reps and book marketing specialists; together, they all focus on educating authors on the self-publishing process to help them publish the book of their dreams. Whether you are a professional looking to take your career to the next level with platform-driven non-fiction or a novelist seeking fame, fortune, and/or personal fulfillment, Elizabeth Javor can put you on the right path.
elizabeth speaks, in your corner, Uncategorized, Writing

In Your Corner : Super Bowl 50 Edition

Will you be watching the Denver Broncos go toe-to-toe with the Carolina Panthers this Sunday?  Super Bowl 50 promises to be quite the event, and not just for the teams on the field––or their fans far and wide, or the support teams, or the cities which are represented, or even the disappointed followers of teams that didn’t make it.  The Super Bowl, like many other big sporting events in America and abroad, has the power to bring people together.  And whenever people gather together, whether it’s for Super Bowl 50 or some other occasion, you as an author have a unique opportunity to gather something else: stories.

superbowl50_banner

My favorite moment in many of the books I read and movies I watch is when a family gets together and the drama ends up spilling into the kitchen.  There’s something special about having all the generations represented, with their conflicting memories and versions of reality and worldviews.  These moments usually lay the foundation for some kind of resolution later in the story––resolution that smacks of reconciliation, and the importance of family (for better or worse).  The Swiss Family Robinson was among my favorite books as a child, and now as an adult I see the same thing happening in Isabel Allende, Kate Morton, Louise Erdrich, and Jonathan Franzen’s books––and the list goes on and on.  Some of my best storytelling memories––both as speaker and listener––revolve around my grandparent’s dinner table.  These are the moments we can’t afford to miss, as authors.

Am I recommending that you bring an exploitative reportorial mind to family gatherings?  No.  As writers we do have some obligation to report on reality––whether through the intimations of fiction or the facts of nonfiction––but we are not reporters.  (Unless, of course, that is your bread and butter profession.)  We do not inhabit those moments as objective observers, but rather intimate witnesses, and participants.  These stories have the potential to mean something to your readers (as inspiration for fiction, or the backbone of a memoir) precisely because you’re not objective.  They mean something to others only because they first mean something to you.

As an author, you have to strike the balance between participant and recorder.  It’s worth noting that some authors do not ask permission of family members and friends before writing about them (claiming that this allows more freedom of expression and less fear of even well-intentioned censorship), while others firmly advocate for asking permission out of respect.  I happen to be one of the latter, but I do recognize that it can be awkward to pull people aside to ask if it’s okay if I write down some of their stories.  A little awkwardness seems worth it to me, however, to know that I’m doing justice to the wishes as well as the words of the people who inspire me.

A couple of years back, when a relative of mine entered the hospital during her final days of struggling with cancer, my whole family came together––far flung cousins and aunts and nephews and great-grandchildren.  People had traveled from the far reaches of the country and in some cases, from abroad.  And something magical happened: the stories began to unspool themselves all around us.  I’ve never learned so much about my family’s history and legacy as I did in those days––and while it was magical, I wish it had been something other than suffering to have brought us together.  This isn’t exactly a recommendation to shout “Carpe Diem!” and add pressure to organize family reunions to all of the other responsibilities you face, but I do hope all of you find a whole host of precious shared moments that are rich with storytelling––whether this weekend watching the Super Bowl, or elsewhere––to enjoy in the coming years.

Always remember: you are not alone. ♣︎

ElizabethABOUT ELIZABETH JAVOR: With over 18 years of experience in sales and management, Elizabeth Javor works as the Manager of Author Services for Outskirts Press. The Author Services Department is composed of knowledgeable publishing consultants, pre-production specialists, customer service reps and book marketing specialists; together, they all focus on educating authors on the self-publishing process to help them publish the book of their dreams. Whether you are a professional looking to take your career to the next level with platform-driven non-fiction or a novelist seeking fame, fortune, and/or personal fulfillment, Elizabeth Javor can put you on the right path.
elizabeth speaks, Goals, in your corner, Uncategorized

In Your Corner : Resolutions for 2016 That Every Aspiring Author Should Make (pt 3)

Two weeks ago, I kicked off a new series for Self Publishing Advisor geared toward addressing a single and seemingly simple question:

What’s your goal for 2016?

Many of you probably have a few goals already lined up, consciously or unconsciously.  I know I do.  But you might also be of a similar strain to mine in that many of your goals, historically, have been doomed by a perfect storm of ambition, short-sightedness, and limitations of time, energy, and other resources.  When it comes to your books, however, failure is not an option.  Your book needs to be written, and your book needs to be read!  So how do we make this happen?  Over the last two weeks, I’ve covered the first seven steps to turning your New Year’s literary resolutions into reality:

  1. Set goals.
  2. Facilitate goals.
  3. Make writing a priority, and
  4. Read, read, read.
  5. Master at least the basics of social media.
  6. Research deeply, and
  7. Connect with other authors.

Today, I’d like to look at the next four steps:

  1. Embrace a good critique.
  2. Learn to love rewrites.
  3. Try something new, and
  4. Stop comparing your achievements with others.

collaboration

Let’s take a closer look at these points!

What does it mean to “embrace” a good critique?  We all want to improve our craft but find it difficult to be objective about our work without fixating on the flaws, large and small, that we as authors are bound to spot.  You may be one of the lucky ones who doesn’t obsess over these cracks in the pavement, but if you are, I can’t begin to recommend joining a critique group highly enough.  (Check out my comments last week about using social media to find your fellow writers.)  Not only is constructive criticism a writer’s best friend, but it’s the bedrock foundation of the rewrite!

And what’s this I’m hearing about rewrites?  On the scale of editing to revising to rewriting, editing involves a great deal of “tweaking” but rewriting involves the most intensive kind of substantial alterations.  Many people who self-identify as “pantsers”––authors who write the first draft quickly and without a lot of research or reference to an outline and so on––are the most in need of rewrites … but that doesn’t mean that a careful planner and strategic author can’t benefit from the freedom that only radical changes can offer!  No matter what kind of author you are, you must make rewrites, edits, and revisions a normal part of your writing process.  It helps to set your work aside for a few weeks before tackling revisions, but trust me … it’s worth doing.

rewrites

So I guess it’s time to try something new.  Are you feeling uninspired by the space opera novel you’re working on?  How about that Western or that crime novella?  If you find yourself facing the dreaded Writer’s Block and your love for writing endangered by boredom or frustration with how things are turning out with your current project, it’s time to mix things up and experiment with writing in other genres.  Doing so may reignite your passion for that romance novel or that book of poems … and stretching your creative wings is never a waste of time!

And lastly (for this week), it’s time to stop comparing your achievements with the achievements of others.  Every writer wants to be a published author, but each author’s journey is unique.  You must concentrate on your own goals, and your own personal definition of “success,” and remember what Teddy Roosevelt once said: “Comparison is the thief of joy.”

theodore roosevelt comparison is the thief of joy

Only once we lay aside our insecurities and our fear of failure can we truly thrive as authors, rediscovering day after day what it is that drives us to do what we do––write!

Always remember: you are not alone. ♣︎

ElizabethABOUT ELIZABETH JAVOR: With over 18 years of experience in sales and management, Elizabeth Javor works as the Manager of Author Services for Outskirts Press. The Author Services Department is composed of knowledgeable publishing consultants, pre-production specialists, customer service reps and book marketing specialists; together, they all focus on educating authors on the self-publishing process to help them publish the book of their dreams. Whether you are a professional looking to take your career to the next level with platform-driven non-fiction or a novelist seeking fame, fortune, and/or personal fulfillment, Elizabeth Javor can put you on the right path.
elizabeth speaks, Goals, in your corner

In Your Corner : Resolutions for 2016 That Every Aspiring Author Should Make (pt 2)

 

Last week, I opened a new series of blog posts with a simple question:

What’s your goal for 2016?

To steal a line from Spiderman’s playbook, “With great power comes great responsibility,” and with great optimism I think you’ll find a great capacity for willpower and determination to see your New Year’s resolutions through.  When it comes to self-publishing, I realize that I have a bit of a vested interest––alright, I definitely have an extremely vested interest––in that I both work professionally as an advisor within the parameters of the self-publishing industry and I personally believe in the mission of self-publishing, and in recapturing the rights and privileges that come with calling the shots on your own manuscript.  But despite my proximity to the issue, I think I’m being fully objective when I say that self-publishing this year is not “too much” or somehow “beyond” your ability to make happen.  You can publish in 2016, and I hope to provide you with some resources here in this series that will help you make that happen.

Last week, I examined four goals to get you started down the path to self-publishing this year.  They were to:

  1. Set goals.
  2. Facilitate goals.
  3. Make writing a priority, and
  4. Read, read, read.

parkour goals

This week, I’m going to take a close look at three additional goals, and challenge you to:

  1. Master at least the basics of social media.
  2. Research deeply, and
  3. Connect with other authors.

 

So, how does one become a social media guru overnight?  Well the short answer is, you can’t.  Or I should rather say, I couldn’t.  Not easily, anyway.  As with so many tips and tricks of the trade, mastery of social media platforms doesn’t just require proficiency––it requires significance.  Because social media is selling a product and that product is you, self-publishing authors have to be careful to create extensive social media presences without sacrificing what makes platforms like Facebook and Twitter and Goodreads so attractive in the first place: personality, presence, and authenticity.  (And a side note: it’s always better to pick up new social media skills slowly and incorporate them into a sustainable long-term strategy rather than burning yourself out on producing new content at a breakneck pace all of the time.)  Given all of the hassle of setting up a dozen separate accounts with their own quirks and password combinations, is it really worth going through the trouble?  Short answer: YES.  If you want to publish your book, you need to connect with your readers, and you need to stay up-to-date on the ways in which they discover and respond to their favorite stories.  If you’re strapped for time, you can always turn to a hybrid self-publishing company like mine, Outskirts Press, to take care of this part of the process for you.

And what’s this about “research”?  I thought I’d left all that behind when I graduated from school.  But research, when push comes to shove, is what elevates a book from being “interesting in theory” to “convincing and immersive.”  This isn’t to say you should stifle your impulse towards creative license, but it is to say that you should always be intentional about your digressions from fact––you should alter reality, not out of ignorance, but rather out of ambition, curiosity, and cleverness.  Says author Robert McKee,

“Do research. Feed your talent. Research not only wins the war on cliche, it’s the key to victory over fear and it’s cousin, depression.”

But “research” can look like many things, including visits to your local library to grill the staff on duty or, yes, even the occasional perusal of Wikipedia pages.  These are not the only options, however!  As Roman Payne writes,

“Who’s to say what a ‘literary life’ is? As long as you are writing often, and writing well, you don’t need to be hanging-out in libraries all the time.  Nightclubs are great literary research centers. So is Ibiza!”

Speaking from my own personal experience, boots-on-the-ground research is every bit as invaluable for the writing process as is amassing a databank of all of the relevant facts which circle your piece like electrons around the nucleus of an atom.  Research is not, however, the end goal: The end goal is to write and publish your book.  Never forget, in the immortal words of Dune author Frank Herbert:

“Highly organized research is guaranteed to produce nothing new.”

Which is to say, research alone won’t write your book for you.  Only you can actually bring a world to life on the page!

And while there are many ways to motivate yourself to leap (back) into the writing process, none has proven so valuable as the chance to connect with other writers.  Ultimately, no one knows the internal life––and struggles, and strengths, and successful strategies––of a writer than … you guessed it! … another writer.  This year, I recommend that each and every one of us involved in the indie, hybrid, and self-publishing industry should resolve to use social media or in-person or even online writing groups to connect with these rare global citizens, these other writers.  The relationships we build will prove invaluable, and provide us with opportunities to share publishing tips, encourage and inspire each other, and transform the “solitary life” of a writer into a journey that feels less lonely and more part of a greater collective effort to move forward.

Always remember: you are not alone. ♣︎

ElizabethABOUT ELIZABETH JAVOR: With over 18 years of experience in sales and management, Elizabeth Javor works as the Manager of Author Services for Outskirts Press. The Author Services Department is composed of knowledgeable publishing consultants, pre-production specialists, customer service reps and book marketing specialists; together, they all focus on educating authors on the self-publishing process to help them publish the book of their dreams. Whether you are a professional looking to take your career to the next level with platform-driven non-fiction or a novelist seeking fame, fortune, and/or personal fulfillment, Elizabeth Javor can put you on the right path.

 

elizabeth speaks, Goals, Holidays, in your corner, Uncategorized

In Your Corner : Resolutions for 2016 That Every Aspiring Author Should Make (pt 1)

What’s your goal for 2016?  New Year’s provides an opportunity to assess what has and has not worked in 2015 and resolve to make 2016 the best year yet, and for writers this opportunity is especially important.  To that end, over the coming weeks I would like to focus on a number of ways in which authors can meet their New Year’s resolutions for and through self-publishing.

writing goals

 

This week, I’d like to examine four goals.  I’m going to list them here, and then break them down individually–because let’s face it, nothing’s quite so simple as a list of neat bullet points when we’re talking about real life and especially real life for an author!

  1. Set goals.
  2. Facilitate goals.
  3. Make writing a priority.
  4. Read, read, read.

 

So, what does it mean to set goals?  What are the implications of a goal-driven self-publishing experience?  I have to admit, I find it nearly impossible to keep even a modest resolution–much less a lofty one–without clearly defined benchmarks to reach and methods to follow.  My first recommendation for you, the aspiring author, is this: If your resolution is to finish your memoir in 2016, make sure you break that resolution down into concrete, manageable steps.  If it’s to publish a cookbook, chart out the steps to making that happen.  If it’s to pen a romance novella, be sure to go about it in a structured way.  Leaving room for creativity in your writing doesn’t mean leaving room for things to fall apart in terms of planning and organization–and in fact, many of the authors I work with find that tangible, manageable goals help rather than hinder the creative process.

On to the second point.  What does it mean to facilitate goals.  To facilitate something means, loosely, “to make (something) easier : to help cause (something)” to happen, and to remove any hurdles that might prevent you from keeping your resolutions.  My job description boils down to facilitation, to helping authors get from point A to point B with the greatest ease and the least inconvenience possible.  Your job, as an author, is to make sure nothing gets in the way of your writing–and in the way of your writing reaching your readers.  I recommend reconsidering, if time is an issue, the number of hours that you work or your social commitments.  You need both time and energy to meet your goals, and those resources don’t just manifest out of thin air.  Someone once told me: “I think every person has a kind of emotional budget for the day.  You wake up, and you have a certain amount of energy, and you have exactly 24 hours.  You have to balance that budget by the end of the day and set up your budget for the next day.”  If you spend all of your time and energy on other things, you’ll have–literally–nothing to spare for the writing and publishing processes.

And that third step you already know to be non-negotiable: Make writing a priority.  You’ve heard all the tips and tricks before, some of them here on Self-Publishing Advisor: Take a break from TV and social media, and set aside a time to write every day.  Whether you post creatively on Twitter or write your spouse a juicy love letter, regular writing is guaranteed to feed your creative side and improve your craft.  There are loads of online writing courses and how-to guides to self-publishing available for free these days, and there are online communities and forums dedicated to providing support and encouragement to aspiring authors.  Every person will find help from different sources–there’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to writing and publishing–but one fact remains true for everyone.  There is no cheating when it comes to writing original content; it all has to come from somewhere.  And if you don’t carve out room for writing to be a priority … it won’t happen.

And last but not least: Read, read, read.  The number one piece of advice best-selling authors offer to other writers is to read as much and as widely as possible:

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”
— Stephen King

and:

“If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”

— Ray Bradbury

and last but not least:

“Be awesome! Be a book nut!”

— Dr. Seuss

See what I mean?  Reading may be the last item on today’s list of resolutions, but it’s by far the most foundational practice for you to succeed as a writer.  Books are your friends, both the ones that you write and the ones that you read, and your fellow book-lovers make the staunchest of allies in a world that can sometimes make it difficult to get out of bed in the morning, much less check items off the to-do list and meet your New Year’s resolutions.

But always remember: you are not alone. ♣︎

ElizabethABOUT ELIZABETH JAVOR: With over 18 years of experience in sales and management, Elizabeth Javor works as the Manager of Author Services for Outskirts Press. The Author Services Department is composed of knowledgeable publishing consultants, pre-production specialists, customer service reps and book marketing specialists; together, they all focus on educating authors on the self-publishing process to help them publish the book of their dreams. Whether you are a professional looking to take your career to the next level with platform-driven non-fiction or a novelist seeking fame, fortune, and/or personal fulfillment, Elizabeth Javor can put you on the right path.