Business
First, my big news: at last I have a title! Unbounded has now become The Last Will of Moira Leahy. Whadayathink? And have I mentioned that rights for Last Will have been sold in Brazil? I’d better freshen up on my Portuguese.
I’ve been focused on doing as much as I can to set the stage for successful publicity and marketing of my book as possible, because starting next week I’m going to plunge into the work of book #2. (Yesss!) But not this week. Friday, I joined the networking capitol of the Internet, Facebook, something I thought I’d never do. I spent most of Snowy Saturday tinkering with my content, uploading pictures and reconnecting with old friends. I quickly realized Facebook’s power: it’s like your own personal CHEERS, where everybody knows your name. I dragged Kathleen into this as well, so if you’re on Facebook, please grab a virtual stool and sit beside us. Just say WU sent you and you’ll be friended.
How can Facebook help you, if you’re published or going to be published or hoping to soon be published? Check out Publishing Talk’s 10 Ways to Use Facebook article for some pointers, including why you should choose a profile pic of yourself and not your book jacket (at least until your release), and why it’s smart to set up groups and use them. By the way, you can join the WU group on Facebook, and even keep up with daily events there.
I’m also getting serious about my author website. A lot of unpublished writers build a website, because it can be such a smart marketing tool, but I was always too superstitious (read: lazy) to do it. I’d also thought that I should wait until I had a book cover to work with, but Barbara Samuel — AKA Barbara O’Neal, whose book, The Lost Recipe for Happiness, is already in its third printing (woohoo!)– reminded me that the site is there to sell me, the author, not one book. So I plunged into learning more about it and now have something that I hope is worth sharing. Here goes.
Therese’s Top Six Tips for Finding your Perfect Web Designer:
Read MoreKeep the image of the Celtic Snake in mind when you read this episode of Snippets (hint: its head is eating its tail).
The WSJ reveals that despite the economic meltdown, publishers haven’t given up on mega-advances for “blockbuster” project. The reason: it’s not good business. Blockbuster quotage:
“What would happen if a publisher like Grand Central decided to stop making large bids like the one it placed on “Dewey” and systematically walked away from the most sought-after — and therefore expensive — new properties?
“First, agents would stop sending such a publisher their most promising book proposals. “If you are constantly backing out of big-ticket auctions, your list is going to hurt,” is how one publishing executive explains it. “You are going to get a stigma that you don’t play for the big ones, and you are going to get shunned out. Agents will no longer consider you for what they feel are their best projects.” Publishers can’t afford to cost-save themselves out of the market. Even if they could develop extraordinary competence in finding gold in the “slush pile” of hundreds of pieces of unsolicited material received each week, the dividends would be limited. After one success, the talent the publisher had nurtured would discover the value of an agent.
“In addition, the most talented editors and other creative talent would leave to work for a publisher that would let them pursue the projects they thought had the highest chances of success. Careers are built on blockbusters. Jamie Raab, Grand Central’s publisher, is known for discovering the bestselling novelist Nicholas Sparks. As a result, she continues to receive a steady stream of the best new love stories from literary agents.
“Not bidding for sought-after projects also makes it harder to get best efforts from sales and marketing representatives and other internal constituents. After winning the hotly contested rights to a book like “Dewey,” it is easier for the Grand Central executives to make the case that this book will beat its competitors. Firing up those that will be involved in the book’s development and marketing process is important, because most media titles have only a short window in which to make money; the lion’s share of marketing activity takes place before their launch — when it’s still largely unknown how audiences will respond.”
Good news for anyone who has a “blockbuster” sitting on their hard-drives. It was hard for me to fathom how anyone would think a story about a library cat would become a blockbuster, but as we hear constantly, publishing is more art than science.
I had to chuckle a few days later when I read this article in the NYT:
Read MoreJanuary finds me working through the editorial report for my new adult novel, Heart’s Blood. I got my manuscript back just before Christmas and I have until the end of the month to make changes. (To recap, the editing is a joint venture for separate publishers in Australia, the UK and the USA – same book, different editions, same publication date of November 2009.)
When I turned in the completed manuscript a month or so ago, some aspects of the story still weren’t working – it was not great, just OK. But I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was wrong. The ms did have a disrupted path to completion, with a nine month gap in the middle while I wrote another novel at my editor’s request. The report on Heart’s Blood indicates that the part I wrote before the break is the weakest. The ms requires structural edits.
I absolutely hate structural rewriting. It’s messy, requires intense concentration, and often means deleting favourite passages to streamline the narrative. As a writer I am a control freak, and right now my work table looks uncomfortably busy: laptop centre stage, marked-up hard copy on the left, with the editor’s pencil comments now overlaid by my slashes and scrawls. The hard copy is bristling with star-shaped post-its, on which are scribbled things like ‘window, rain’, ‘pitiful remnant’ and ‘wager’. Other post-its are stuck directly to the table. To the right of the laptop is the editorial report itself, which contains firstly general comments about character, pace, themes and so on, and secondly more specific queries. My long-term editorial assistant, Sonia, is lying across as many pieces of paper as a large cat can reasonably cover.
Of the twelve novels I’ve written to date, three have needed significant structural reworking at the editorial stage. This time around I need to do substantial cutting and pasting – more of the former than the latter – and quite a lot of rewriting.
Read MoreIf you missed yesterday’s post by Kay Cassidy detailing the first of three fabu tips to help organize your space and rejigger your mind to improve productivity, click HERE then come back. Kay is not only a writer (her first YA novel, THE CINDERELLA SOCIETY, will be coming out in the spring of 2010), she has an MBA and was previously a corporate trainer. Now, she travels the country to teach marketing and business workshops to writers. We’re thrilled she took time out to guest blog with us. Enjoy!
Tip #2 – Organize Your Projects and Tasks
Once you’ve organized your space itself, it’s time to turn our attention to the projects and tasks that fill up our days and, sometimes, stress us out with worries of missed deadlines and letting people down. Being a professional writer means being in business for yourself. You need to keep up with the business of writing just like you keep up with your book deadlines.
Just like with organizing your work space, there’s no such thing as The Way to organize your projects and tasks. I use a combination of hanging file folders and a computerized To Do/calendar system. The key to it is to keep everything in one location. Productivity guru and New York Times bestselling author of Getting Things Done, David Allen, recommends three strategies that I think are awesome.
Create your master task list
First… do a brain dump of every task you can think of. I’ve found it’s best to do this in rounds because it’s kind of like peeling an onion. When you sit down with a notebook and write down everything you can think of that needs to get done, you’ll probably fill a notebook page with ease. Then set it aside for a day or two and do it all again. Once your mind has cleared all of those immediate To Do items from your memory banks (because it knows it’s all safely on your list now and won’t be overlooked), it’ll unleash a whole slew of new tasks that you’d probably forgotten about.
When I first did this a year ago in my quest to get better organized, I kept my notebook with me for about a week. I’d be washing dishes and think “Oh, I need to remember to send that anniversary card to my parents” or “I need to renew my blah blah membership.” Things will come to you at the most unexpected times. Keeping your notebook with you is a great way to make sure you capture all of those extraneous tasks.
Btw… my original task list was several hundred items long! And it was a huge relief when I had all of the tasks in one place and could begin organizing and prioritizing them. I no longer lived in that zone of “Am I forgetting something? I think I’m forgetting something…”
Organize your master task list
Read MoreToday’s guest blogger is the awesome Kay Cassidy! Kay not only has an MBA and teaches marketing and business workshops to writers around the country, but she’s a fabulous writer! She was a 2008 Golden Heart Winner (RWA) and writes fiction for teens that she says she wishes was based on real life. Her debut novel, THE CINDERELLA SOCIETY, will be a Spring 2010 hardcover release from Egmont with book two in the series to follow in Spring 2011. We’re so pleased to have her with us today and tomorrow to talk about three ways to boost your productivity. Enjoy!
Top Tips for Maxing Out Your Productivity
If you’re like most writers, you probably have a whole slew of fresh writing goals for 2009. You may even be wondering how the heck you’re going to accomplish them all too. Never fear! With a few quick tips, you’ll be on your way to a productive 2009.
Tip #1 – Organize Your Work Space
If you want to be productive, you need to have a work space that’s conducive to getting that work done. There’s nothing worse than being in the middle of working on a project only to have the flow interrupted when you can’t find that bit of research you dug up a few weeks earlier or you can’t locate your thesaurus.
Don’t worry, I promise you don’t have to be a neat freak. We all have different methods of getting organized, so there’s no one-size-fits-all solution here. It’s all about finding what works for you and sticking with it.
The Everything Out approach
Are you an Everything Out kind of person? Someone who likes having important projects sitting on your desk in tidy little stacks? Or maybe you’re an Everything Away person who thrives by kicking off each new day with a clear desk. Again, there’s no right or wrong way to get organized. But take a step back and think about whether you’re using your organizational style to its best advantage.
Read MoreFirst, if you were out shopping on Friday and missed our early post about an interesting agent roundtable discussion, click HERE to read all about it.
And now, we’re happy to report that Writer Unboxed is listed in the Writer’s Digest Yearbook as one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers (Thanks, Barbara, for the head’s up)!
We’re also thrilled to announce another contributor to our community. Independent publicist and occasional guest blogger Susan Schwartzman will be sharing her wisdom about something most writers dread: book publicity. As publishers downsize their promotion departments, writers will need to either use a DIY approach or hire an independent publicist. Susan will help us learn more about what it takes to get your book buzzing in a difficult marketplace.
Susan has been in the publishing field for more than 20 years. She began her career in book publicity in 1992 as a freelance in-house book publicist, working for major publishers, including Workman Publishing, William Morrow, Penguin-Putnam, Harcourt Brace, Villard, Wiley, Avon Books, Simon & Schuster, Warner Books, Red Dress Ink, New American Library, and Downtown Press.
As an independent book publicist, Susan has promoted a wide variety of literary and commercial fiction and nonfiction titles including cookbooks, self-help books, business books, environmental books, health books, parenting books, memoirs and sports books.
Her clients have included New York Times bestselling author Joseph Finder, M.J. Rose, Jason Pinter, and British bestselling author Nick Stone, whose latest thriller, THE KING OF SWORDS, was just released this December by HarperCollins.
Welcome, Susan!
Read MoreIf you’ve been itching to get a look at all that Publishers Marketplace has to offer but just aren’t sure if it’s worth the price, why not check it out for free right now? Through Saturday, December 27th, you can try the services for FREE. This, from their website:
Free trial offer: We do require your credit card number to complete your registration. For a limited time only, we’re offering a free trial period: join Publishers Marketplace now and you will not be billed until Sunday, December 28, 2008. If you actively cancel your account before December 28, you won’t be charged. (You must cancel through your Account page on this site, not by e-mail.) If you do not cancel, you will be billed $20.00 for membership from December 28 through January 27, 2009, and every month thereafter until you cancel your account. This offer expires at the end of day, December 27, and is valid only for new members who have not previously signed up for a trial membership.
For what it’s worth, I believe PM was instrumental in helping me make my sale. While you’re onsite, be sure to check out the Who Represents database and all of the new deals. Learn more about PM and how it can work for you HERE and HERE and HERE.
Thanks to Amy Atwell for the head’s up.
Write on, all!
Read MoreWe’ve (meaning me, mostly) been observing the ongoing debate over whether the Newbery award committee has focused less on finding compelling books for children and more on literary risk. The controversy has flared again in anticipation of the Newbery committee’s upcoming medal selection for 2009, which will take place Jan. 26. Will they select a book that appeals to children? Or push boundaries of what is considered literature for the core readership? Pins ‘n needles, y’all. (Thanks, Therese, for the ht!)
Paul Greenberg muses that perhaps a bailout of writers is what’s needed:
What would such a bailout consist of? In the 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt started the Federal Writers’ Project, under which some 6,000 out-of-work writers were hired over a period of several years to write guidebooks, oral histories, ethnographies and the like, and in the process “describe America to Americans.” The program not only kept American writers alive but seems to have helped them multiply, to the point where there are now, according to a survey released last summer by the National Endowment for the Arts, approximately 185,000 people in the United States who support themselves primarily as writers of books, plays, poetry, speeches and other literary matter. Thanks to this group, America has been described and redescribed so many times that I fear a kind of word-based Strategic Defense Initiative is taking shape above us, shielding us from harsher but more realistic foreign words and creating resentment among our allies.
I think he’s only partially tongue-in-cheek.
In the wake of a huge jump in demand for Amazon’s Kindle, even A-list publishers are taking e-publishing more seriously (PubMktplace, subcription required) and ready to “embrace risk”:
In “a challenging year,” Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy’s year-end letter is mostly focused on taking “time to celebrate our industry and our company, to remember and be grateful for what makes publishing an exciting and wonderful business and Simon & Schuster a special company within it.”
She also suggest that “this is precisely the moment – when established routines do not yield the customary results – that we must take chances and embrace risk.”
In digital news, like Random House, Simon & Schuster will “nearly quadruple eBook sales this year” even with a delay in their initiative announced at BEA to digitize another 5,000 titles. In January they will relaunch their website, “offering visitors a multitude of new and exciting ways to find out about our books, stay connected to their favorite authors, share their enthusiasm with fellow readers, and remain engaged with our content before, during, and after reading our books.”
All is not doom and gloom, however. Genres like fantasy and romance are thriving (via Galleycat):
Read MoreAs I wrote in my last Writer Unboxed post, I’m in the throes of publishing a writing book, Jump-start Your Novel with Kitty-cats in Action. I’ve designed and produced a review copy, and sent it out to seek blurbs from people in the publishing industry. I “know” the people I’ve contacted only through the Internet; nary a personal acquaintance among them, though I wish there were.
I’ve seen the opinion that “blurbs don’t sell books,” but I wonder if that’s true. A blurb from a writer or person I’m familiar with will usually prompt enough interest in me to pick up a book and check it out.
I think blurbs can give a certain amount of credibility to a new author, too. In fiction, a new thriller writer who is touted by a bestselling thriller author has instant creds. The book has to live up to it, of course, but such a blurb gets a first page in my door.
But my book is about writing, so I’m going beyond authors for blurbs to ask agents and editors for quotes. I figure it’s a credibility issue—even though I do freelance editing and have a modest platform on my blog, Flogging the Quill, which has been up and running for 4 years, blurbs on the book in a bookstore or on a website could make a big difference. If an agent or an editor recommends a book on writing, I figure that’s at least as valuable as one from an author to the market I’m trying to reach.
Actually, that market is you. How about giving me your opinion: how would you rate the value of positive blurbs by an author, an agent, and an editor for a book on writing?
The process isn’t exactly quick, though. The first person to agree to take a look was the legendary agent-blogger, Miss Snark, who said to send an electronic copy. That was a little over 6 weeks ago. I mailed physical books on November 28, and didn’t expect responses sooner than in a month.
So I have been delighted to receive three thus far. Let’s see if they influence your interest in the book.
Read MoreSo, as I’m sure you’ve all read (see Kath’s post yesterday), the sky is falling in the publishing industry! Editors are getting fired, no one is acquiring, book stores are in a free fall. Just like the rest of the economy, the book world is tanking with a capital T. Or is it?
I have news for you, I don’t think it’s that bad out there. I’m not minimizing the people who have lost their jobs (I know plenty of them) or the dire situations that plague the book stores. There’s no denying that. But I’m also hopeful that out of this whole mess, something positive is going to happen to our industry, and I’m hopeful that deep changes will be made as a result of what’s going on out there.
Now, what I’m about to propose probably isn’t that popular with writers. I know that, and yet, I still think it’s the right thing for the future of publishing. And that’s this (for starters):
Read MoreThe economic freak-out in the publishing industry is starting to pick up steam. Last Wednesday, heads started rolling (via NYT):
In a day of especially grim news for the book business, Random House, the world’s largest publisher of consumer books, announced a sweeping reorganization aimed at trimming costs, while Simon & Schuster laid off 35 people.
The moves signaled just how bad sales have become in bookstores and followed the news this week that the publisher of the adult division of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the house that represents authors including Philip Roth and José Saramago, had resigned, presumably in protest of a temporary freeze on the acquisition of new books.
Industry insiders were already calling it “Black Wednesday” as news trickled out about further layoffs at Houghton Mifflin, a cut of 10 percent of the staff at Thomas Nelson, the world’s largest publisher of English-language Bibles.
Bloomberg is reporting that other publishers are trying to squeeze the bottom line:
Read MoreKath is going to chime in tomorrow with an industry report, so today I’m going to focus on contests, adaptations and rejections, oh, my!
First off, if you’re still scrambling for gift ideas for writer-types, you must check out Inkygirl Debbie Ohi’s fabu list HERE. I’d like one of everything.
C. Hope Clark recently reported on several interesting contests, including the American Kennel Club Fiction Contest (fiction about a dog, no fee, good prize), the Debut Dagger Competition (UK fiction contest, great prize, work to be read by agents and editors), and the PM Moon Children’s Book Contest (children’s fiction k-3, publication prize). Check them out!
Have a rejection-letter collection? This, from Galley Cat:
Bill Shapiro (editor of Other People’s Love Letters) is looking for your literary rejection letters, planning to publish them in a 2010 collection entitled, Other People’s Rejection Letters.
If you need more immediate satisfaction (or sympathy) feel free to include your literary rejection in the comments section. Or check out the excellent Literary Rejections on Display blog.
Learn more about it HERE. And check out this essay on Guide to Literary Agents blog, 10 Hidden Gifts of Rejection Letters, for additional fun.
In case you haven’t heard,
Read MoreFallout from the global economic meltdown continues to rattle the publishing industry. I’m not trying to bum anyone out, but it’s good to be able to read the tea leaves. Not that it will stop any of us from Our Work.
Hat tip to Publisher’s Lunch for these snippets:
Shares in Barnes & Noble touched all-time lows in Tuesday’s trading with the company’s market cap below $800 million after dropping almost 6 percent–and the decline has continued in early trading today. On Thursday the retailer will report quarterly earnings. Their guidance forecast a loss of 10 cents to 15 cents a share, but analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expect a loss of 16 cents per share, on sales of $1.17 billion. BAMM reports on Friday, and Borders releases results on Tuesday, November 25 after the market closes. At current prices, the market value of Barnes & Noble, Borders, Books-a-Million and Hastings all together is less than $950 million. LINK
Announcing third quarter results, Books-a-Million said that sales of $111 million were down 5.7 percent overall, and down 9.9 percent on a same-store sales basis. Their net loss was $2.2 million, compared to a loss of $555,000 a year ago. CEO Sandra Cochran says: “We faced dramatic macroeconomic headwinds, and as a result we experienced our weakest comparable store sales in many years. The negative trends were broadly felt across most categories although bargain books, gifts and teen provided positive results. Our entire team remains focused on adjusting to this difficult environment by controlling costs, managing inventory and preparing for the holiday season.” LINK
Deepening concerns about holiday book sales and third-quarter earnings pressured Borders Group Inc. Friday as its stock dipped below a dollar during trading before rebounding slightly. The number of customers walking into bookstores has fallen sharply in the past month and investors are concerned that Borders will show further signs of weakness when it reports quarterly results Tuesday. The book retailer is expected to post a loss of 50 cents a share, according to analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. LINK
Time to buy more books.
Read MoreAbout a year ago, I concocted a proposal for a writing craft book based on content from my blog, Flogging the Quill. I came close with Writer’s Digest Books—they considered it for about three months, asking for additional material along the way. Rejection finally came because the editor who liked it and the one who didn’t couldn’t agree. They said to come back when I had published a novel.
So I’ve decided to self-publish, and then some. I could have just sent the manuscript to one of the POD outfits like iUniverse, but POD books tend to not be accepted by bookstores, which seems terribly limiting to me. So I’m forming my own publishing company. Here’s some of what this effort entails.
First, the book: Jump-start Your Novel with Kitty-cats in Action
While you can sell a non-fiction book on the basis of a proposal, you can’t publish one that way. So I had to write the book. It’s now an entertaining and enlightening 62,000 words. Copyediting was next. I hired a colleague who’s really good at that, and have gotten another non-fiction writer to lend fresh eyes. It’s amazing what they catch.
But a manuscript a book does not make, so I designed a book in an 8 ½ by 11 format because there’s a workbook section. Those are big pages to fill, so I’ve included a fair amount of photos and artwork, including some of my cartoons, to illustrate it.
I’m pretty good with Word, so I used that instead of a design program. To print, all I need to produce are PDF files, and I can do that with Word. And I’ve designed a cover, using Photoshop.
Oh, the obligatory photo. I hired a freelance photographer to get some head shots for the book and the website.
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