EDITING FOR TOUGHIES

The difference between a first draft and the final draft should be vast. It is the difference between ignoring your readers and listening to them. It's the difference between being a loudmouth and being a writer. It's the difference between being an arrogant bastard who loves the sound of her own voice, and a dedicated, tuned-in communicator with a passion for words and a burning need to make

TWITTER FOR AUTHORS - PART 3: TWEETING IN THE VOID

This is one of my temporarily removed and now temporarily reinstated posts giving tutorials on Twitter. Please note that my forthcoming short ebook will do this much better and more conprehensively and more clearly! If I were you, I'd wait...

_______________________________
If you've read my first Twitter post, you'll know WHY you might want to be on Twitter if you're a writer. And if you've

On Beyond Ebooks

I'm loving the ebook revolution.

Obviously, I enjoy the money I'm making (close to $500 a day).

But it's more than that. I'm able to do things I never could have done in the traditional publishing world.

Not only can I release ebooks when they're finished (rather than waiting a year), and have much greater control over the content, cover, and title, but I can also play with the format and do new, interesting things.

With TRAPPED, I released two different versions of the novel in the same ebook download. The author's version and the uncut version. It's pretty cool to show fans all the stuff that was cut, added, and changed, and let them decide for themselves which one they prefer.

With SHAKEN, coming out in October, Amazon is also releasing a dual ebook. SHAKEN takes place during 1989, 2007, and 2010, and jumps around in time. I had a ball writing it, and showing Jack at various stages in her career while she chases the same bad guy over the course of twenty years. But along with the author's preferred version, the SHAKEN ebook will also come with a linear version. If people want to read the book chronologically, rather than go back and forth in time, they can. And even cooler, it reads well in both versions.

Eager to romp in this new digital playground, I have two more projects that will be released in September.

One is secret, and I'm not going to mention the title or the subject yet. But I will say it is a horror novel. And I will say I'm writing it with three of my peers. Those peers are F. Paul Wilson, Jeff Strand, and Blake Crouch.

When I was working on TRAPPED and ENDURANCE, I followed the same formula as AFRAID. In nutshell, I took a handful of characters and dropped them into a terrifying situation, then followed each of their journeys as they fought an insurmountable evil. No chapter breaks--just direct cuts from POV to POV.

It occurred to me that I could write a book in this style with other authors, and it would be a snap. Instead of me writing every character on my own, each of us could control a character, and the book will follow each storyline until they all converge. It's the exact same formula as AFRAID, TRAPPED, and ENDURANCE, except we can write it in 1/4 of the time, and it will benefit from four unique inputs.

I've worked with Paul, Jeff, and Blake on projects before. We're all having a blast putting our heads together and writing this outrageous, horrifying, over-the-top horror epic.

The thing is, this couldn't have happened in the print world. We would have had to get all of our current print publisher's approval (because of no-compete and first look clauses), had to have found a buyer, and had to have toned down some of the violence (this sucker is violent!) But doing this on our own, we have complete control, don't have to answer to anybody, and can write a novel just for the sheer joy of it. Then we can release it immediately after completion, and get the lion's share of the royalties.

I also am playing with the ebook format in another way. Remember the Choose Your Own Adventure novels from the 80's?

I wrote one with Harry McGlade (from the Jack Daniels series) as the hapless hero.

At the end of each section, you decide where Harry goes next. This results in hundreds of variations, and over a dozen different endings. This interactive format is perfectly suited to ebooks, where clicking on a link and being instantly transported to it is easier than flipping through a dead tree book, looking at page numbers.

The book is ridiculously entertaining to read, and I don't think I've ever had more fun writing something. Because the humor is so offensive, I never would have been able to sell this to a traditional publisher.

But with Kindle, I can really utilize the format to do things that publishers can't, and won't, do.

It's beyond liberating. As a friend of mine said, "Joe, you're finally unbridled." Which is what it actually feels like. I can run free, do what I want, and connect with readers on my own terms. I'm not restricted by anything, including my imagination.

Ebooks are more than just putting your run-of-the-mill stories into a digital format. They can actually do more than print books, and offer artists new, exciting opportunities. And we haven't even broached on the "enriched ebook" possibilities with audio and video.

I'm thrilled to be a writer in 2010. It's too cool.

QUERIES, SORTED

There are so many fantastic pieces of advice in this post by Ann Crispin on Writer Beware, and all of them are ones I mention in my talks. So, I can do no better than send you over there. Take every one of them to heart.

By the way, a query letter is a US term, quickly coming over here. It is so similar to the UK "covering letter"  that you can follow all the advice in this article for UK and US

Doers and Waiters

"It will be interesting to see what happens."

"No one can predict what will come."

"The publishing industry is changing."

"Let's wait and see."

I've seen these comments, and variations of them, quite a bit lately, all over the interwebs.

People seem to believe things are getting shaken up. And the overwhelming majority of them respond to this call to action by waiting around to see what happens.

This is a trait of human nature. No one wants to be the first to do anything. Because it's scary being first. You could be wrong. You could look foolish. You could make a mistake. You could lose money, or burn bridges, or destroy your reputation.

Look at agent Andrew Wiley. He published ebook versions of his clients' books, presumably because Random House wouldn't negotiate higher royalty rates. In response, RH stopped dealing with Wiley. Yesterday, Wiley announced they'd come to an agreement, and RH would once again be the publisher.

Wiley acted, and on the surface, it looks like Wiley caved in and lost.

That's why most people wait. They watch, and wait, and watch, and make comments about those who are actually DOING something. Some support the doers. Some belittle the doers.

But the actual doers are few and far between.

While I understand how difficult it is for people to take chances, I also have to wonder how these waiters view themselves.

Don't they know that waiting around doesn't make you successful? That the rich, the famous, the ones that society remembers and reveres, are the doers?

In the case of the current publishing climate, most of my professional peers, and all of the Big 6 NY publishers, are playing the waiting game. Rather than jumping into these scary new waters, they're at most dipping a toe in.

No chance taking. No commitment. Just waiting until they can be sure.

But there's a problem with waiting around to be sure. By the time you are sure, it might be too late.

I believe that if you aren't failing, you aren't trying hard enough. Sitting around and letting other people decide the fate of something important to you makes zero sense.

Sure, it's scary and risky to put your money where your mouth is, and to back up your opinions with action.

But history is written by those who do. Not those who wait to see what happens.

Wiley did it. For a month. I wish he'd stuck to his guns, but I applaud him for at least giving it a try.

What about you? What have you tried lately? What have you failed at lately?

As Meister Eckhart said, “The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.”

AND NOW UNPUTDOWNABILITY (via Nick Cross)

Nick Cross, whose writing blog I really really like, put a link to his post about Unputdownability in a comment under my recent post on Page-turnability. And his is such a good and relevant post about making your writing zing with unputdownability that I simply want to send you over there.

Of course, as there are different sorts of readers, there are different things which make a book

Publishers Weakly

According to this article, well known industry mag Publishers Weekly is going to "embrace the self-publishing phenomenon" and begin listing self-published titles in a quarterly supplement.

They are books and that is what PW cares about. And we aim to inform the trade.

On the surface, it seems they're actually acknowledging this red-headed stepchild of the publishing world. They even claim they're going to review at least 25 self-pubbed books per supplement. Perhaps those indie authors who fought so long and hard for respect will finally get some recognition from the industry that spurned them.

Intrigued? Interested? Willing to give it a try?

All it takes is $149 for the processing fee.

For that fee, PW will print your title, author name, ISBN, and a brief description, in their supplement. The fee does not include a review.

We briefly considered charging for reviews, but in the end preferred to maintain our right to review what we deemed worthy. The processing fee that guarantees a listing and the chance to be reviewed accomplishes what we want: to inform the trade of what is happening in self-publishing and to present a PW selection of what has the most merit.

They used the phrase "inform the trade" two different times, as if to hammer home the point that their magazine is there to serve the industry. At the end of the article, they even say, "books are our business."

Actually, this little venture seems more like "authors are our business." If PW truly believed in the worth and merit of self-pubbed books, and that their subscribers needed to know about this "phenomenon", then shouldn't they list these titles for free? If the trade really wants a compendium of self-pubbed ISBNs, surely this list will only make them more eager to sign up for another PW subscription, right?

But instead, I can't see this as anything other than trying to separate a writer from her money. The chance of being reviewed is dangled there like a carrot on a stick, but there are no guarantees. Which seems even less appealing than Kirkus Discoveries, which began offering a paid review service for indie authors a few years ago, and endured considerable flack for it.

The part that really makes me set my jaw, however, is this paragraph:

The entire PW editorial staff will participate in a review of the titles being considered for review, and we'll likely invite a few agent friends and distributors to have a look at what we've chosen. No promises there, just letting some publishing friends take advantage of the opportunity to see the collection.

Ugh. And this article was written by George W. Slowik Jr., the president of PW.

Making indie authors pay for nothing more than a few sentences in a quarterly supplement (not even the actual magazine) is pretty pathetic. But saying that agents will see this, under the guise of making no promises that they will, is really yucky.

The $149 fee also comes with a six month subscription to the digital edition of PW, which is normally $90. No word about getting a partial refund if PW folds before the six months is over. But if they're this needy for cash, and willing to go in this direction to get it, I don't have high hopes.

Which reminds me--I haven't gotten an issue of 8-Track Tapes Weekly in quite some time...