| WRITER'S RESOURCES & TIPS | |
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You have been telling your friends and family that your screenplay, poetry, short stories or your novel is great, or perhaps are you looking for a writers workshop? Look no further than our Call for Submissions list. What you are searching for may be here. If you can’t find it, ask, we will do our best to find it for you. Click on the above Call for Submissions to connect to the list.
Quick Guide to Marketing Your Book on the Internet
Selling your book will be ten times easier as soon as you can accept this one, think-out-of-the-box strategy: your book doesn't have to be inside a bricks-and-mortar store to sell copies. Too many self-published authors get caught up in trying to figure out how to get distribution which will get their book into big box stores such as Borders and Barnes & Noble. The process can be expensive and daunting. But these days the best grass-roots marketing that can sell tons of books happens on the internet. Using a few tricks of the trade you could reach a wider audience, sell more books and do it while spending less money!
Create a Website That Does More Than Look Good
Enlist Others to Assemble a Special Offer Package
You ask people to donate services, a free download, or gift certificate (the idea is this helps them promote their businesses) and you bundle these goodies up into a bonus package that people receive when they buy your book. The offers should appeal to your target market. Then you set a launch day and everyone who contributed to the package sends an email blast to THEIR lists telling them of the great offer. So you not only have a great offer to entice people to buy, you also have the offer going out to A LOT more people!
I'll give you an example so you can see how this works. I recently participated in a special offer for Christine Martinello to promote her new book, The Momager Guide: Empowering Moms to Leave A Loving Legacy. You can see her offer, as well as the list of goodies she gave away, at http://www.christinemartinello.com/specialoffer. This offer was only supposed to last a week, but it's been so successful that Christine has allowed it to continue. She also went, in just a few days, from being ranked #2.4 million on the Amazon sales list to being ranked #13 on the parenting and families bestseller list and # 238 in overall book sales. A true bestseller!
Use Many Tools
E-newsletters, like this one, are a great way of establishing rapport with your readers and keeping them up to date on what's coming next. I recently signed up for Stephen King's newsletter so I can see how this mega-selling author continues to put himself out there. (Note: King and his publisher sent out text messages this week to random cellphones to promote his latest work, Cell. A great use of a different marketing tool!)
Don't overlook your email signature. I still get people interested in my book just because they saw it mentioned in my email signature. Keep it simple: mention the title, a great review and tell them where to get it. Since you can set your email up to put your signature on everything you send out, this is marketing you can just "set it and forget it".
Show Up in Many Places One last note: Because the internet is practically limitless in its reach, it's easy to get overwhelmed by all the marketing possibilities. Take a deep breath and map out your strategy. Not every tool will suit you, so don't try to do everything. It's better to choose two or three techniques and work those to success rather than do ten things, in a scattershot way, with poor results.
Author and Writing Coach Sophfronia Scott is "The Book Sistah" TM. Get her FREE REPORT, "The 5 Big Mistakes Most Writers Make When Trying to Get Published" and
Your favorite book store is having a 2 for 1 sale, you know you can't pass up a sale, especially when your most recent dates have been a good book and a tall hot cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows. But, darn it, you left your book list at home. So what's a girl or guy to do? Do you run to your choice of sections (sci-fi, drama, comedy, politics, cooking, self-help, black author section)? Or do you opt to wonder up and down, each, and every, row, reciting 1,000 titles and praying you recognize one?
How do you choose a book? By the Title? By the Cover? By the placement on the shelf? Look for familiar authors, then deduct the books of their you read, and if a new one is on the shelf? Or, do use your cell and call a friend, of course, that'll only work if your friend has similar reading taste.
Picking out the right book could be as hard as picking out the right outfit. I have a routine for choosing clothes when I don't know what I'm looking for. First, I find the color, then I feel the fabric, next I check out the style, lastly, I see if my size is available. I everything is in order, I'll try it on. If it looks good, it's a buy.
I choose my books in a similar fashion, first I find an interestingTitle, I check out the cover, next I read the book's summary or if it has short reviews on the back cover. The title is the first thing that grabs my eye. As a writer my biggest problem has been choosing Titles for my books, as a poet, I've hard time choosing titles for my poems. I can get away without using a title for a poem (calling it my "style"), I'm sure I couldn't get away with no title for my book.
If you're experiencing the same difficulities in choosing a Title for your manuscript or if you feel the title is not important, read the article What Every Writer Needs to Know About Titles by Julie K. Cohen (click here) Hopefully this will offer you more suggestions on choosing that Oh, So Important Title.
The Evolution of Self-Publishing
During the Soul Pitt's Evening with the Author event, many of the authors stated they opted for the self-publish route. With the next few issues we will focus on the self publishing world, with listing of various self-publishing companies; testimonies from published authors; information on what you can do to help you get your book ready for publishing; self-promotion and marketing tools to use. First we have an article from the Writers Digest website by Brian Klems, titled "The Evolution of Self-Publishing." Brian takes you from the gloomy stigma self-publishing had in the beginning to the many success stories.
Industry experts say self-publishing houses are growing nationally as authors realize they can put out books that look like they rolled off a big-name publisher's presses without going through the rigors of landing a contract with a publisher and struggling through the editing process. Click and read CRISTINA BREEN BOLLING's (Staff Writer, Charlotte Observer) article regarding this growing trend. Writing a Book and Want to Publish? - Amazon.com offers self publishing and on-demand printing services through BookSurge. See your book in print, reach readers directly and plan your strategy for success as a published author.
Writers OnlineWorkshops.com http://www.writersonlineworkshops.com
THREE LITERARY AGENTS WHO HANDLE ROMANCE WritersMarket.com lists more than 70 agencies that represent romance fiction. Here are three recently updated listings: The Evan Marshall Agency exclusively handles novels. A member of the Romance Writers of America (RWA), Mr. Marshall worked as an editor at major publishers and as an agent at The Sterling Lord Agency before opening his own agency in 1987. Recent romance novel sales include Copycat, by Erica Spindler (Mira), and The Good Doctor, by Karen Rose Smith (Silhouette). Nelson Literary Agency specializes in commercial fiction and high caliber literary fiction. Prior to opening her own agency in 2002, Ms. Kristin Nelson worked as a literary scout and subrights agent for literary agent Jody Rein. Recent romance novel sales include Cheating at Solitaire, by Ally Carter (NAL/Penguin Group), and Enchanted, Inc., by Shanna Swendson (Ballantine). Sha-Shana Crichton seeks women’s fiction, romance and chick lit. Prior to becoming an agent in 2002, Ms. Crichton did commercial litigation for a major law firm. Recent romance novel sales include Charmed and Dangerous, by Candace Havens (Berkley), and Weapons of Seduction, by Maureen Smith (Kensington). Q&A From The Chicago Manual of Style Q. Are poets allowed poetic license to do practically anything with punctuation? I ask this in view of a poem by Emily Dickinson that seems to use the em dash in bewildering and inscrutable ways. A. Yes, poets are pretty much allowed to do as they please. In my experience, they are sometimes even offended by editing, believing that their misspellings and inconsistencies are inspired, if not intentional. Of course, if poetry is idiosyncratic to the point of being annoying, nobody will want to buy it, so there’s some motivation for restraint in the first place.
Part 2: Reading To Learn Reading Good Writing and Reading Bad One writing book I read said you should only read the good stuff, the well-written works, and lots of them. I had a teacher in university who said, very enthusiastically, that you should read well-written and poorly written stuff, that the crap your parents try to convince you not to read can actually help you learn to write better. How can lousy writing by other people possibly make you a better writer, you may wonder. Mainly because you can see what the other person did wrong and avoid doing it yourself. In other words, you can learn how not to write, which is just as important as learning how to write. The Uses of Reading Non-fiction Non-fiction is vital for writers to read, because that's where you get information. Maybe you never intend to write non-fiction yourself, perhaps you want to write poetry and nothing else. But you should still read non-fiction. Remember that old saying that you should write what you know? Well, eventually you're going to really, really want to write about something of which you know nothing. Instead of letting your lack of knowledge stop you from writing, you can go out and read whatever you can find about that thing you want to include in your work. Say you wanted to write a novel with a main character who is a brilliant carpenter. Maybe the metaphorical aspects of carpentry fit right in with your theme, or maybe you just wanted to take up carpentry yourself but never got to it. But you know nothing about carpentry. What do you do? You go to the library, sign out a whole bunch of books on carpentry and read them. Make carpentry something you know. Write what you know, and if you don't know about something, go learn. Read some non-fiction. And you may find that if you look in the right place, you'll discover a whole lot of non-fiction that is as much fun to read as fiction (that's what some writers call "creative non-fiction"). Read, She Wrote, But Not Too Much So that's it. Read, read, read. Reading can teach you to write better and it can teach you how not to write. It can give you ideas, topics to write about, tidbits and facts to work into your fiction or poetry. The more real facts you have in a work, the more your readers will trust you. Reading can provide you with facts and reading can show you how to work those facts into your writing without having them stick out. But . . . . There's always a "but." If you really want to write, if you think you want to make writing your life, you need to try to write as much as you read. If you spend all your time reading, when will you write? Only you can find the balance between reading and writing that works for you. Good luck! Gevell, Owner - RealSistaWriters Part 1: Knowing What's Going On Why You Should Read the Genre You Write The other that reading within your genre does is let you know what has been done and what has been done to death. Wouldn't it be terrible to come up with what you thought was a brilliant new idea, only to find it has been done over and over by other writers? But if you've been reading, you'll know what those other writers have done with the idea, so you can do something unique, or with a different slant. And reading is a really good way of learning how to do things--how to work in description seamlessly, how to format dialogue, how to show a character is angry without having them say anything. Why You Should Read Outside Your Genre So reading within your genre lets you get to know that genre really well, lets you know what's going on so you can join the discussion (so to speak), and it teaches you how to write more effectively. What about reading stuff outside your genre? Why should you read the odd mystery if you want to write fantasy? Why read an SF novel if you want to write realism? One thing reading outside your genre can do is expose you to things you might not encounter in your genre. Literary fiction (or contemporary realism, or general fiction, or whatever you want to call it) often explores new ways of putting a story together, experimental forms and so on, where other genres are often more conservative. So even if you don't write that kind of fiction or poetry, you might learn a new way to lay out a story or verse that you can use in your own genre. Maybe another genre has explored topics that the genre you write hasn't really tackled yet. You can take the ideas from that genre and incorporate them into your own work. Anything that is a source of great story ideas is worth reading. part 2 next email. . . . Gevell, Owner - RealSistaWriters
Point of View (POV)
What distinguishes fiction form other genres is before you start writing your story, you must decide from whose POV the story will be told. Point Of View? To be honest, when I started writing my book all I thought I needed was a great story. My next step would be to sit down and start writing. Well I soon learned, writing isn't always about the gift to write. Writing a book includes understanding the proper use of Point of View. Some of you may ask, what is POV? According to Gary Provost (Beyond Style, Mastering the Finer Points of Writing) POV is the place from which the reader views your story. . . The POV character is the person from whose eyes the story is being told. I allowed a fellow, more seasoned writer to edit my first chapter. He offered positive feedback, which included yes, I had an interesting story with different twists that needed to be told, it was fast pace and already he wanted to read more. But. . . It was then I heard the word "VIEWPOINT". He told me I had an inconsistency thing going on with the viewpoint. I asked him to explain to what was a viewpoint. It wasn't just one viewpoint, there are different types of viewpoints: First-, Third-person or Omniscient Point of View. You can even switch the Point of View. (click on each title to read more about the viewpoint) The First Person viewpoint - the position from which the reader sees, hears and experiences everything in a novel -- depends on the type of book you are writing. Traditionally used in romantic gothic novels, the first person viewpoint is still often used today in mainstream novels, romantic suspense, and mysteries. The Third Person viewpoint is the most popular method used today. As with first-person viewpoint,(see January's tip) the writer becomes the viewpoint character and sees, hears, touches, wants, and remembers only what that character sees, hears, touches, wants and remembers. The only information readers are given is the information the viewpoint character has (except for things that can be demonstrated in dialogue or body language or innuendo). The omniscient viewpoint, in which the writer, rather than a viewpoint character, is looking at the scene and describing it to the reader. Often writers set a scene this way, before moving into a character's viewpoint. After reviewing the above POV, you may be wondering how do you choose your POV character? You may already have an idea whose your POV character will be. Whenever you outline your plot, it should always revolve around the one character you have in mind as your POV character. Sometimes you may have two characters as POV (this would work if your story is long enough to develop both characters). If you think POV is the end of your writing worries. You're wrong, we will be discussing in future issues; Keys to Effective Dialogue; Tips for Showing Not Telling and Pacing your story. If you have any other subjects you would like to discuss, send an email to Writing Resource Books: The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile by Noah Lukeman The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron Every Day English Handbook by Leonard Rosen Roget's International Thesaurus (never write without it) | |
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