Archive for August, 2009
A Self-publishing Success Story
August 31st, 2009 by Barb Lilland“What I really want is to walk down the street and have someone come up to me and say, ‘I read your book in one sitting. I could not put it down.’ ‘” –Lynn Ruth Miller, How I became self-published
As writers, isn’t that what we really want? Sure, a Pulitzer would be lovely, and we’d throw a party if our name appeared on the New York Times Bestseller lists, but ultimately, isn’t it really about impacting another life through our words? In her blog, Miss Miller talks about how she couldn’t win the bookstore war (in competition with the big publishers), but she could win the readership war.
A great story, a compelling cover, strong marketing and publicity, and a savvy approach to online markets allows writers to get their message to their audience in a way that seemed an uphill battle a decade ago. Her self-publishing success story is both informative and uplifting for any writer hoping to touch lives through the pages of a book.
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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-08-30
August 30th, 2009 by BelieversPress TweetBot- Sony unveiled its wireless eReader at the NY Pub Lib. 7 inch touchscreen, priced at $399, works on AT&T's network, available by Christmas. #
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Crafting Your Bio
August 24th, 2009 by Kimberly BrockI recently came across an article titled, How to Write a Killer Bio by Marci Alboher. In it Alboher mentions, “While writers should have an advantage in crafting well-written bios, it’s remarkable how few unleash their facility with language when profiling themselves.”
Having a good bio is a necessity if you want to be successful as an author. A bio should be considered one of your staple marketing tools. You will use a bio on the back of your books, websites and it will be submitted with any marketing materials for potential speaking opportunities. When considering writing a bio I always ask the question, “If you had to be introduced at a speaking event, how would you like to be characterized?”
A couple of tips to consider:
- Scale. Depending on the situation, you may need to prepare a couple of different bio options. Some publications place a limit on the amount of characters they will accept and you may need to be prepared to provide a shorter, more concise bio. Others, you could allow for a longer, more detailed bio.
- Be truthful. This is not a place to embellish. Many consider a bio to be a shortened version of your resume. Don’t say, “I’ve sold more than 125,000 books from my garage” if you cannot back the statistic up (yep, it has happened!).
- Perspective. Although a bio should always be written in third person, adopting this perspective can be particularly helpful when writing about yourself. Although it may feel a bit uncomfortable at first, this really is the place to brag about your many accomplishments.
- Contact. Would you pay to place an ad and not include where to buy your product? Although there are many approaches to writing a good bio, which ever you choose do not forget to include your contact information. Consider your bio a mini advertisement about you.
Read How to Write a Killer Bio for additional tips.
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Hardcover books: No Jacket Required
August 24th, 2009 by Nick Ciske
The New York Observer reports:
September will see the publication of three unusual-looking books: Farrar, Straus and Giroux’s No Impact Man by Colin Beavan, Viking’s Bicycle Diaries by former Talking Head David Byrne, and Graywolf’s The Adderall Diaries by Stephen Elliott. What makes these books so unusual-looking is that, even though they’re hardcovers, their cover art is not printed on dust jackets but instead stamped directly onto the boards that hug their pages. The result is a handsome, eye-catching look that reflects a heightened awareness on the part of publishers that books these days cannot be counted on to simply sell themselves.
…
Part of the reason for that blandness, intuitively, is the cost associated with doing anything fancier. “You’d be surprised how few options there are, unless you’ve got oodles of money to spend on color and texture for the paper that covers most of our books,” said FSG designer Charlotte Strick, who created the design for Mr. Beavan’s No Impact Man. “The manufacturers just don’t have a huge range of these things.”
The wager with jacketless books like the ones coming out this September is that the extra money spent will attract attention they might not get otherwise by enticing booksellers to display them prominently in their stores and causing readers to notice them when they’re browsing.
The New Thing: Books Without Jackets
Tip: The book jacket can be wrapped around and glued to the book itself (called a case wrap hardcover). This gives you the fidelity of a full color cover, and the convenience of never losing, damaging, or discarding the jacket. It’s also a lot cheaper than the cost of stamping directly on the boards. A creative cover designer should be able to create a case wrapped book that looks like it’s stamped onto the boards, if desired.
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Inspiration and Fish.
August 24th, 2009 by Nikki Wallace“Don’t wait for inspiration. Get to work.” — Twyla Tharp
Years ago I had this quote scrawled on a yellow post-it-note and stuck to the side of my computer monitor at work. I had stumbled upon it in a magazine somewhere, and it resonated with me. Big time. I knew it must be immediately captured and placed somewhere in plain view, for I was well aware of how often I’d need its reminder.
I struggled, you see, with grabbing hold of that elusive thing called “inspiration”. It’s a dilemma I still find myself in, as I would imagine that any creative professional does.
After all, what artist hasn’t found herself staring at a blank canvas? An empty stage? A blinking cursor? A silent guitar? Or (in my case) a glaringly white new Photoshop document?
To the recreational artist, this isn’t that much of a problem. With no schedule, no deadlines, and no client to please, the art can be put on the shelf until inspiration arrives.
After all, that is the natural, human inclination.
And there’s the rub. For once the thin line between “recreational artist” and “creative professional” has been crossed (that is, as soon as the artist is creating something for someone else, to meet a deadline, and/or for any kind of payment), inspiration is not something that the artist can afford to wait for. Literally.
Deadlines can be counted on. Inspiration can’t.
So when I need to design a cover but the inspiration is just not there, instead of just walking away altogether, wishing that inspiration came on tap or could be bottled and sold (I’d be happy to design the label, pro bono, by the way), I try to practice Ms. Tharp’s advice:
I get to work.
I make pencil sketches. I do a photo search of key themes of the book to see what shows up. I set the title in a number of different fonts. I start piecing together random photos and title configurations to see if anything “clicks”. I move to a different project for a few minutes, hoping that it will stimulate the creative juices. I take a walk, breathing the fresh air and drinking in the beauty of creation. I brainstorm cover concepts with myself, jotting down any ideas that come to mind — good or bad. I ask someone else for their perspective. If possible, I change my work setting (a coffee-shop bustling with people or a quiet room with wide windows overlooking a lovely outdoor scenic can stir up emotions and ideas that an office can’t — and vice versa). I’ll even do petty things like change my computer’s desktop background (hey, it works for me).
The point is that I keep working, moving, thinking, and trying; persevering until I have something to show for it. It may take awhile, but it almost always proves effective in giving me something to work with.
I’ve heard it put this way: if you go fishing, you might not catch any fish. If you don’t go fishing, you definitely won’t catch any fish.
And so, along the lines of that last analogy, I offer this challenge and encouragement to myself and my fellow “creatives” in the publishing industry — designers, authors, illustrators, and the like: keep fishing, no matter how futile it may seem. There is much to be said — plenty of fish to be caught. Maybe all we need is to try some different bait.
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Riverrun Both Ways
August 20th, 2009 by Paul Hawley“From everyone who has been given much, much will be required.”
“Much is required from those to whom much is given.”
“Great gifts mean great responsibilities.”
Looks almost like an editing exercise, right? Actually, you’ll no doubt recognize part of Luke 12:48. Those three statements are a sampler of three basic translation approaches: formal equivalence (NASB), dynamic equivalence (NLT), and paraphrase (MSG).
To get to my own point, however, it’s three ways to phrase one golden rule when it comes to other people’s prose: As an editor, I’ve been given the opportunity to contribute, so I’d better do so with fitting respect and even fear.
Those of you who know my work will agree that (when it comes to editing, at least) I believe in overcommunication. I leave notes in the hope that every suggestion will make sense. I want my thinking to be plain to the writer. I try to anticipate questions, both from the writer and future readers, and touch up what is before me with their needs in mind.
I hope I approach every project not just as a piece of work to slog through but as an educational opportunity. I don’t say teaching opportunity because it nearly always amounts first to a learning opportunity for me. I resist the urge to explain, but there are times when a compact note is really a mini-lecture on some fine point. (The broader points I leave for an attached letter to the author.) Long note or short, the overcommunication urge works against brevity but drives me to get the most out of the fewest words.
The principle has a flip side, however, on which I think we rarely reflect. Risking immodesty, it amounts to my saying to the writer, “Now that I’ve given this back to you, bleeding red ink, with notes stuck all over it, bristling with questions, I’ve made your job a good bit harder right now.” To flip the point in my second paragraph: As a writer, I’ve been given a truckload of suggestions and feedback, so I need to consider it all carefully if I’m to improve this piece of writing.
And not just this piece of writing, I may hope. An author may have procured editorial services at a price and is entitled to expect quality input as a result. Beyond that transaction, my hope is that a writer will emerge from our interaction
• better able to anticipate questions and concerns raised by the piece,
• more sensitive to how ideas are organized through a paragraph or down a page,
• with a sharper eye for an unclear antecedent or loose modifier or possible double meaning,
• with more facility at varying sentence length and structure to manage pace,
• with a more sensitive touch on the point-of-view pedal for closing in and easing back from the details or characters of a narrative,
and so on.
In short: I am here to provide editorial services, but the way I see it, a key part of my job is to enable writers to better edit their own material and to understand and take the greatest advantage of what I do. If an author rises to the challenge, then the next time we work together, the writer will bring more to the process — and have a whole new level of work to do once my work is done.
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Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) Posts
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-08-16
August 16th, 2009 by BelieversPress TweetBot- From Chip MacGregor: At ICRS, I had a publisher say to me there were about 20 literary agents doing roughly 90% of the business. #
- RT @MichaelHyatt: RT @lnobles: Gotta love good news. For the first time this year Bookstore sales were up in June. http://is.gd/2fiUC #
- Samantha Ettus interviews Publishing Titans Jane Friedman and Larry Kirshbaum http://tr.im/wleq #
- RT @editorialdept: Our e-zine this month is focused on Christian publishing. http://bit.ly/ltT2H #
- Jane Friedman (former CEO of HarperCollins): "… I'm very bullish on self-publishing today …" http://tr.im/wluj #fb #
- Larry Kirshbaum (fm. CEO TimeWarner books): "We used to look down on [vanity publishing]…now the dividing line….is getting blurrier…" #
- Larry Kirshbaum: "Authors are finding that even if they are published by a big name they still have to do an awful lot of work themselves." #
- Larry Kirshbaum: You have to come with your own publicity ideas/publicist, you have to do marketing, you have to go out and meet bookstores. #
- Larry Kirshbaum: So the idea of the "self published author" is really a fairly broadly accepted concept now. http://tr.im/wlzg #
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Interview with Publishing Titans Jane Friedman and Larry Kirshbaum
August 13th, 2009 by Nick CiskeA candid and varied look at publishing’s past and future from the former CEOs of two of the largest publishers (HarperCollins and TimeWarner respectively). Well worth a watch!
Some highlights:
Larry Kirshbaum:
More and more authors are finding that even if they are published by a brand name big publisher they still have to an awful lot of the work themselves.
You have to come with your own publicity ideas, and often your own publicist, you have to do your own marketing, you have to go out and meet bookstores.
We used to look down on [vanity publishing] … now the dividing line … is getting blurrier and blurrier…
Jane Friedman:
… I’m very bullish on self-publishing today …
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Christian Small Publisher Book of the Year Award
August 13th, 2009 by Nick CiskeChristian Small Publisher Book of the Year honors books produced by small publishers each year for outstanding contribution to Christian life.
Nominations are accepted in eight categories: Fiction, Biography, Christian Living, Relationships/Family, Bible Study/Theology, Children’s Book 4-8 years, Children’s Book 8-12 years, and Young Adult (12+ years). Nominations must be received by November 15, 2009.
- Books must be published by a small publisher with annual revenues of $350,000 or less.
- Nominated books must be Christian in nature and intended for the Christian marketplace.
- All nominated books must be printed in English and for sale in the United States.
- Any small publisher can nominate titles for the Christian Small Publisher Book of the Year Award.
- Nominated books must be published in 2008 or 2009.
Christian Small Publishers Association is the sponsor of this book award. To view the complete eligibility guidelines and download the nomination form, visit www.christianpublishers.net.
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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-08-09
August 9th, 2009 by BelieversPress TweetBot- Just finished reviewing applicants for the Christian Publishing Specialist position. Very exciting options! #
- #1 Business as Mission Book Now in Paperback – BP helped Ken Eldred bring this out of print book back to the market. http://tr.im/vMUB #
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Christians who want to become excellent writers also need to serve an apprentice relationship with an experienced wordsmith. Ask the Lord to send someone alongside who is both a mature Christian and a gifted writer. Put yourself into an accountability relationship with him or her. And then, as you grow spiritually and professionally, pass along the same gift to another believer who wants to serve God through the ministry of writing.
— , Write His Answer
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