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From Buzzfeed

24 Things No One Tells You About Book Publishing

Ten years ago, my first novel Prep came out. Three novels later, here’s what I’ve learned about the publishing industry and writing since then.

Curtis Sittenfeld
BuzzFeed Contributor

A-real-bookstore

 

  1. When it comes to fellow writers, don’t buy into the narcissism of small differences. In all their neurotic c, competitive, smart, funny glory, other writers are your friends.
  2. Unless you’re Stephen King, or you’re standing inside your own publishing house, assume that nobody you meet has ever heard of you or your books. If they have, you can be pleasantly surprised.
  3. At a reading, 25 audience members and 20 chairs is better than 200 audience members and 600 chairs.
  4. There are very different ways people can ask a published writer for the same favor. Polite, succinct, and preemptively letting you off the hook is most effective.
  5. Blurbs achieve almost nothing, everyone in publishing knows it, and everyone in publishing hates them.
  6. But a really good blurb from the right person can, occasionally, make a book take off.
  7. When your book is on best-seller lists, people find you more amusing and respond to your emails faster.
  8. When your book isn’t on best-seller lists, your life is calmer and you have more time to write.
  9. The older you are when your first book is published, the less gratuitous resentment will be directed at you.
  10. The goal is not to be a media darling; the goal is to have a career.

Read the rest of the reasons>

New Trend Emerging as Traditional Publishers go Digital

 

Congrats to Amanda Hocking for using a traditional publisher to further her writing career.  She did the right thing seeking out a traditional publisher and the reason is clear – she wants to be a writer – not a book marketer, editor, designer and distributor.

This is not a new trend – it has been happening for years.

The caveat here is her content.  She has the content that sells – when she writes, it sells.  She can afford to give away a large piece of her royalties so she can spend more time writing.

So should every self-published author seek out traditional publishers for their work.  Maybe, yes and maybe, no.  Some authors like JA Konrath took the reverse course – he went from traditional publishers to self-publishing because he could get a bigger piece of the publishing pie, especially on his traditionally-published books that went out of print. Even luminary Stephen King experimented with self-publishing a few years back.

A new trend is emerging as traditional publishers go digital.  Currently, a self-published author could get their work in front of more people as an eBook than a printed book.  This is still true, but as more and more traditional publishers go digital, they can offer both – significant eBook exposure as well as print book distribution.  They will take a larger piece of the pie, but if your work is selling well, it is worth going with a traditional publisher.

Here’s the Amanda Hocking story from The New York Times.

A Successful Self-Publishing Author Decides to Try the Traditional Route

By JULIE BOSMAN
Published: March 24, 2011

If any writer proved that modern self-publishing could be a pretty sweet deal, it was Amanda Hocking.

Amanda Hocking, who has self-published nine books.

In the past year Ms. Hocking, a 26-year-old from Minnesota, became an indie heroine in the literary world for publishing nine books that sold a total of more than one million copies, nearly all of them in e-book form, earning almost $2 million for her efforts.

But for Ms. Hocking, self-publishing has had its limits. On Thursday she announced that she had sold a four-book series to St. Martin’s Press, ending a frenzied weeklong auction that involved nearly every major publisher in the business, including Random House, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins.

St. Martin’s, part of Macmillan, paid more than $2 million for the world English rights to the “Watersong” series, Ms. Hocking’s latest books in the young-adult paranormal genre. >more

A New Trend in Publishing is Emerging




As more and more authors turn to self-publishing, a new trend is emerging that may benefit publishers as well as authors.


Joe Konrath




Successful crime novelist Joe Konrath is probably the author who started this new trend and is the poster child of successful authors moving into the self-publishing realm.


According to an article in The Star-Telegram online written by Alex Pham of The Los Angeles Times,

“Joe Konrath can’t wait for his books to go out of print.


When that happens, the 40-year-old crime novelist plans to reclaim the copyrights from his publisher, Hyperion Books, and self-publish them on Amazon.com, Apple’s iBooks and other online outlets. That way he’ll be able to collect 70 percent of the sale price, compared with the 6 to 18 percent he receives from Hyperion.


As for future novels, Konrath plans to self-publish all of them in digital form without having to leave his house in Schaumburg, Ill.


‘I doubt I’ll ever have another traditional print deal,’ said the author of Whiskey Sour, Bloody Mary and other titles. ‘I can earn more money on my own.'”



Mr. Pham goes on to write, “It’s difficult to gauge just how many authors are dumping their publishing houses to self-publish online, though for now, the overall share remains small. But hardly a month goes by without a well-known writer taking the leap or declaring an intention to do so.”

However, Mr. Konrath is one of the exceptions to successful self-publishing because his fan base was primarily created by the marketing and distribution efforts of traditional publishing houses.

Does that mean an author needs to be published by a traditional publishing house to be successful later in self-publishing?

Not at all.


Mr. Konrath just stood up on his surf board and is about to catch one of  the largest new waves in publishing. He knows where his readers are and how to read them – online where most hang out.

As an aspiring or first-book author who is relatively unknown, you need to market your work to where people seek, read, recommend and review books – in social media: Facebook, Twitter, NING, Linkedin, Foursquare, Goodreads, and all the other social networking sites out there.

There is only one problem. By the time you learn how to effectively market your work on all the social media, you may be in an old-age home especially if you are not so computer savvy. Besides, when would you have time to write another book?

Most authors just want to write. They don’t want to wear six or seven hats and be the marketing guru, the sales superstar or the promotional genius.

This is where publishers can get their own surf board and ride the same wave as Mr. Konrath.  But some are just standing up on their boards, others are knelling and most don’t even see the social media wave.

Publishers can offer social networking services, electronic distribution and all the perks of traditional publishing to authors in digital and electronic form. This is a wave that is coming whether publishers like it or not so the best strategy is to make sure to have a surf board and to look out over the horizon. This publisher is certainly standing on his surf board poised to ride the next giant wave.

Have you written the Great American Novel?

From The Writer’s Edge blog:

Books in the Douglasville, Georgia Borders store.

Image via Wikipedia

As writers who have completed books, many of us believe we have written the great American Novel or a nonfiction book that will change the world. And we may have, but the hardest part of being an author is convincing others of your feat. Not that you’ve written a book, but that your book is revolutionary.The Writer’s Edge, May 2010

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Romance Writers of America announce finalists

    Romance Writers of America® (RWA)  announced the finalists for the 2010 RITA Awards®.

    The 2010 RITA honors romance fiction published in 2009. Over 1,000 novels and novellas were judged in 12 categories.

    Winners of the awards will be announced July 31st at the RITA and Golden Heart Awards Ceremony to be held at RWA’s 30th Annual National Conference in Nashville, Tennessee.

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    Writing is Similar to Computer Programming

      Ok, if you think this idea is off the wall consider this: if a programmer leaves out a single character or adds an extra character, the program will not work as intended.

      Writing in essence is the same. If you don’t craft your words, sentences and paragraphs properly, your intended message does not come across.

      Programming is a lot easier than writing – it’s exact – XYZ code tells the computer to execute a specific function. The computer does not have an opinion about the code and the code does not have several meanings.

      Writing, on the other hand, is more complex. Words have different meanings for different people. The structure of a sentence or paragraph may have one meaning for one person and different meaning for another.

      But if the writing has the right flow, the right words and the right structure it is like great poetry. That’s why we hear statements like, “The writing works! The writing pulls you in! I just love the writing!” It is the stuff of the classics and more.

      So what exactly is the right stuff – the stuff of classics, the magic of the writing? My take is that the writing communicates universal truths, truths that are common and important to all human beings. The universal appeal of these truths is so powerful that the writing lives on generation after generation, century after century.

      More importantly, the writing drips with emotion. Words can stir our deepest hopes and dreams, our imaginations, our inspirations and they let us dance in the joy of the things we love.

      It’s not easy getting words to do all those things, but as writers we always try. So if you can get the right “programming” for your words, you will write a classic that will live on and on.

      Try doing that with a computer.

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