Okay, I’ve just received the third manuscript in a row formatted in Courier. What are people thinking?
I believe that one of the Writer’s Digest books is still advocating the use of Courier. I hope not, but it must be so, because here it is 2008 and I’m still getting manuscripts formatted in Courier. Fiction, all of them; don’t know if that’s contributing to the problem or not.
People, people, people! Repeat after me: No more Courier! Yes, it looks like a typewriter. Is this supposed to be a good thing? Why on earth would you want to have your manuscript look like it was typed? Do you take pride in still using telephones and cars that must be cranked to get started? Do you light your home with candelabras? Do you shovel coal from your basement into your furnace? Why on earth do you want to use arguably one of the better inventions of recent times –– the computer –– and make it look like you’re not?
Trust me on this one: no one wants to read an entire novel printed in Courier. More to the point, no one wants to read a query letter or a book proposal printed in Courier. It’s difficult to read. It shows that the author really doesn’t know his or her way around a word processing application. It’s old-fashioned (and not in a good way). Did I mention that it’s difficult to read?
So what font should you use? Most people these days recommend Times New Roman. It’s a serif font that is easy to read on paper (and most of you will be submitting on paper). It doesn’t work as well for web pages –– computer viewing is a different affair altogether, one we won’t go into right now –– but for standard writing purposes, Times New Roman is your friend.
Okay: lecture over. And just to show that even Times New Roman has its detractors, read this fun piece in The Big Jewel: Less Popular Fonts Lash Out at Times New Roman.
Welcome to the 21st century, where you’ll be … beyond the elements of stye!
Posted in Books, Tools, Technology on July 20th, 2008
I was talking to a friend recently about a poet’s collection that I’d like to see put into a chapbook, when my friend said, “what’s that?” And while I’ve used the word here, there, and a little of everywhere, I had to admit that I … didn’t actually know.
So for those of you who, like me, tend to sometimes use words without knowing mch about their origins, here’s a little history lesson. Chapbooks originated in the Renaissance. Paper was fairly scarce, but a growing number of people in Europe were learning to read. Chapbooks were small printed books containing stories, poetry, songs, even sermons or essays, and were sold fairly cheaply. The men who bought them from the printers and then turned around and sold them on the street (the precursors, perhaps, of modern newsstands), were called chapmen … and the books, chapbooks.
These days, chapbooks are often used for poetry collections or essay collections, and are often given as well as being sold. They are also used by some publishers as a “teaser” of sorts for an author’s forthcoming book, a promotional/marketing tool to entice readers to purchase the book itself.
As Wikipedia would have it,
No exact definition can be applied. Chapbook can mean anything that would have formed part of the stock of chapmen, a variety of pedlar. The word chapman probably comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for barter, buy and sell. The term chapbook was formalised by bibliophiles of the nineteenth century, as a variety of ephemera (disposable printed material.) It includes many kinds of printed material, such as pamphlets, political and religious tracts, nursery rhymes, poetry, folk tales, children’s literature and almanacs. Where there were illustrations, they would be popular prints.
Want to read more? Someone at MIT did some work on chapbooks that can be found here.
And this just in: According to reader and book producer extraordinaire Dick Margulis, “Aldus Manutius commissioned the first italic types specifically to cram more words onto the pages of chapbooks, for a competitive cost advantage.”
So next time you want to mention collecting a friend’s poems into a chapbook, you’ll know whereof you speak (as will I!). And then, like me, you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
Posted in Books, About Writing, Words on July 17th, 2008
Okay, I’m not really as lazy as the last couple of posts may make you think: but it seems that the past week for some reason has been filled with brilliant advice from colleagues that I just have to share. Here I’m quoting a post verbatim from one of my brothers in the National Writers Union (which, bizarrely enough, is also Local 49 of the UAW, but that’s a story for another time). Randy Peyser, who runs Author One Stop, has some advice for anyone out there who thinks she or he has the perfect manuscript on Wicca, astrology, the Tarot, or dowsing:
I run a national publishing consulting firm and shop manuscripts to all of the Mind/Body/Spirit publishers. Here’s what I can tell you about them:
While it is possible to shop directly to a publisher, you MUST have a very strong book proposal to accompany your manuscript — and, like anything, it helps if you have connections to people within that publishing house, especially to the acquisitions editors.
Here is more information you should know:
You must have a unique twist to your subject matter. No publisher is looking for material that has already been covered, and so much of the New Age thought/philosophy/techniques have been covered. That’s why Harper Collins, who used to be a major publisher of New Age books, rarely publishes them anymore. It wasn’t until The Secret that the MBS publishers started to really “rev” up again. Now there are a flood of Law of Attraction knock-offs on the market, but that phase will probably wear thin soon.
You had better have a very strong promotional plan and be out there promoting PRIOR to sending them your manuscript, because publishers are interested in authors who have eyeballs — in other words, those authors who are out in front of audiences where they are being seen continually. Likewise, the competition section of your proposal had better be strong, because otherwise publishers will know you didn’t do your homework.
I know the majority, if not all, of the Mind/Body/Spirit publishers. Never tell a publisher that you know you have a bestseller or that you know Oprah will want to interview you. They will see both of these statements as signs of an amateur.
While you don’t necessarily need an agent to approach many of the MBS publishers, you will want an agent or someone at the NWU to help you with your contract. I used an NWU contract advisor for my first book, which was published by a New Age publisher. That advisor was superb. She gave me eight hours of her time and went through every single detail, telling me what I should fight for and what rights I should not give away. That being said, if I had to do it over again, I would have hired a literary agent to negotiate the contract at an hourly rate, because I didn’t have the clout to get everything I wanted as a first-time author. If I’d had an agent working with me, I could have at least doubled my advance.
So, who are the few agents out there who accept New Age books? Anyone ever hear of Eckhert Tolle? I consistently shop manuscripts to Eckhert Tolle’s agent. So far, this agent has been willing to consider every client I’ve sent to him. My reputation is always on the line when I send something out, so a book has to be polished and a book proposal has to be exemplary before I will ever send it out to someone who can command the kind of advance that Tolle’s agent can command.
Then there’s Sylvia Brown’s agent, but she only takes manuscripts that she believes will get a high six or seven figure advance and you had better have the promotional plan in place to prove it.
There are a few other agents I work with who shop to MBS publishers and there are still other agents I hire to negotiate contracts when I’ve found a publisher for one of my clients. They will negotiate a contract for $50/hour and
have taken about five hours to do contracts for me in the past.
So, there you have it. I hope this letter does not come across as self-serving. It is truly my intention to provide information that helps those who publish in the Mind/Body/Spirit genre to have the success they desire.
Much of this is good advice that transcends genres. As you know, putting together the best possible book proposal and brilliant query letter, having a platform, and having a terrific manuscript are the keys to getting published anywhere, though perhaps particularly so in this niche area. Follow his advice and you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
Posted in Proposal, Books, Submissions, Publishing, Getting Published, Publishers on July 12th, 2008
It’s a sad fact of modern life, but most people, once published, spend an inordinate amount of time checking their book’s ranking on Amazon. I’ve done it. You’ve done it. We’ve all done it. We don’t necessarily know what it all means, mind you, but we do it anyway.
If you’d like to feed the obsession and have someone else keep up with the comparisons for you, then you might want to check out TitleZ, a website mysteriously still in its beta version (and therefore still free) that will help you navigate the complexities of Amazon ranking for your particular title.
Want to learn more about what it all means? Then check out this article, written by one of TitleZ’s developers (looking oddly like Harrison Ford, gotta love PhotoShop…) who gives the following bottom lines:
Bearing the above very much in mind, here’s a temperature gauge you can use to get an idea about a particular title’s success. The following numbers apply to average sales ranks over time:
- Less than 100: Best-seller. Author, publisher, agent are all getting rich
- 101-1000: Extremely good performer. Any publisher/author would be thrilled.
- 1001-10,000: Very successful book. A few of these can sustain a small publishing company.
- 10,001-50,000: A successful book by most industry standards.
- 50,001-100,000: Not bad.
- 100,000 - 500,000: Not good.
- 500,000 or more: Poor.
Keep in mind that books with average ranks above 100,000 may have performed much better before we started tracking them on TitleZ. However, books that launch with ranks above 100,000 are probably not considered successful from a publishing industry point of view. Of course, the book could be selling well through non-bookstore channels such as trade shows, speaking events, etc. In general, though, we’ve found that Amazon sales ranks provides a good indicator for how a title is doing throughout the book market as a whole.
Bear in mind, also, that Amazon isn’t everything. Write a good book, develop an aggressive marketing plan, and leave the counting to others.
If you can.
And then you’ll be .. beyond the elements of style!
Posted in Books, Publishing, Getting Published, Publishers, Words on June 8th, 2008
I want to post a very short note today for both readers and authors, alerting you (should you not already know about it) to the online presence of Book Tour, where, as the tagline would have it, “authors and audiences meet.”
Book Tour is a free online clearinghouse for information about authors who are touring. It was started by Chris Anderson, the author of NYT bestseller The Long Tail, who knows a thing or two about marketing.
If you’re a reader, you can sign up to be alerted when authors visit your local booksellers. If you’re an author, you can list all of your appearances, show a picture of your latest book cover, and other nice perks.
From the Book Tour website:
As the world’s largest, 100% free directory of author events, BookTour.com makes book tours better.In just a few minutes any author can create a page showcasing their biography, books, and upcoming engagements. Listing new events is as easy as answering a few questions. Publishers, booksellers, and events managers can upload tour dates en masse using a simple Excel spreadsheet.
Most importantly, readers can peruse our database of author events for the best of what’s nearby, or they can track their favorite authors on tour.
Readers can invite faraway authors to their town, or get in touch with authors already scheduled to appear locally to address additional groups, from company speaker series to book group meetings.
For authors, BookTour.com serves as a one-stop tool for book promotion, allowing authors at all levels of their careers to locate receptive live audiences.
For readers and audiences, BookTour.com makes finding when a favorite author is coming to your town as easy as checking the weather.
BookTour is based in San Francisco, the city that buys more books (and wine) per capita than any in America.
Check out Book Tour, and you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
Posted in Publicity, Books, Tools, The Writing Life, Reading on May 22nd, 2008
All authors know that a good book review is worth its reviewer’s weight in gold. Reviews can be posted on the web at bookselling sites to encourage potential readers to buy; they can be used on book jackets as blurbs to encourage potential readers to buy; they can be quoted in sig lines to encourage potential readers to buy. Yeah, there’s a theme here: while it’s great ego candy to read a terrific review of one’s work, the bottom line is still, always, the bottom line: to keep selling, to stay in print, to make a living.
And reviews help. One of my publishers, in fact, absolutely swears by reviews, believing that they, more than anything else, are what sell the book. Whether reality is that extreme or whether success is a mix of many factors, book reviews still count.
Getting a reviewer to look at your book, however, may be a lot easier said than done.
There are certain good places to start. Your local newspaper or regional magazine is best: be sure to obtain the name of the correct person to send a review copy to, and add a very big note that says, “LOCAL AUTHOR.” Short of already being on the bestseller list, this is your best bet for reviews.
Don’t overlook Amazon. Amazon has a list of top-hundred reviewers, whose reviews carry more weight than those of your Aunt Edna who was “happy, dear, to write something nice about your little book.” With a little sleuthing, you can obtain their email addresses and politely request a review (and, of course, offer to send a review copy!).
The Big Boys of book reviews are tougher to get to, and I’m going to leave it to your ingenuity to figure out how; but I’ll start you off with a gift — the venues themselves:
So there it is. Write a fabulous book, get it critiqued via an online or real-time group, get it professionally edited, interest a publisher, sign a contract –– and start getting those reviews! And then you’ll be … beyonf the elements of style!
Posted in Publicity, Books, Words on May 18th, 2008
Yes, I said it. Anyone who knows me knows how far I’ll go to impress upon people the ethical requirement to patronize one’s local independent bookseller (”or they won’t be around any longer,” is my usual tagline here). And I still believe that, with all my heart. And I love love love my local booksellers and can’t imagine life without them.
But as I get older I’m less binary in my thinking, and I don’t believe that the Amazon/local bookseller necessarily has to be an either/or proposition.
Look at it this way. The goal for any published author is to sell thousands and thousands of copies of her books in a very short time, and she needs to be willing to do whatever is necessary to work with her publisher to make that happen.
And there’s no denying that Amazon is an excellent tool. The company actually does the industry a lot of good.
I love independent booksellers, but for economic reasons they are not always able to do what Amazon can and does (giving publishers workable terms and not ship returns, for example); and the reality is that for authors as well as for publishers and independent booksellers, selling books is a business.
The other thing I’m noticing about Amazon is that it is a tremendous marketing tool. Many people search Amazon for books and then buy them from their local independent bookseller. You can’t call a local bookseller or and ask the sales people to read you the blurb, the first chapter, or the reviews; and if you don’t happen to live close to said bookseller, this can be a problem — but you can get that information from Amazon.
Yes, Amazon is an impersonal megalithic corporation, and I don’t believe for a second that corporations are our friends. But that doesn’t mean that we cannot use them to our advantage, because they’re not going away anytime soon. Buy your books whenever possible at your local independent bookseller — I stand by my signature phrase — but don’t dismiss Amazon as a great venue for selling your books, as well.
And less binary thinking would be healthy for everyone … beyond the elements of style!
Posted in Publicity, Books, Tools, Doing the Right Thing on February 27th, 2008
Many authors quake at the portion of the book proposal that asks for their platform. What’s a platform? Why is it necessary?
The two questions go hand in hand. A platform is perceived by most publishers as being necessary in order to promote and market one’s book; it’s a way of reassuring the reader that you do indeed know what you’re talking about. It’s essential for nonfiction writers, but important also for novelists, especially those whose names are not (yet!) household words.
So what can you do if you don’t currently have a platform? Don’t despair; there are a number of ways of promoting yourself and your expertise in the public eye.
- develop some short how-to articles related to your topic and submit them to local print newspapers as well as to article sites (such as Helium) on the net. Make sure that you’re not submitting the same article everywhere or you’ll run into duplicate content issues; but get a lot of them out there.
- develop and market speaking topics of interest to groups like Women in Communication (AWC), your local Association of Business Communicators (ABC), and National Speakers Association (whose members often develop books to go with their platform message).
- teach a class in your subject area at a local adult education or community college facility.
- give a free presentation at your local public or city library on your topic. Build on this exposure and give more at less-local facilities. Don’t forget schools! High schools in particular are terrific venues for presentations or workshops.
- publicize yourself. Send out press releases whenever you’re involved in anything related to your topic. Send the releases to your local newspaper.
The more your name can be associated with your topic, the more you;ll be building your platform. Make sure that you keep track of all of your articles, speaking engagements, etc. in some sort of database so that the information is at your figertips when it comes time to write about your platform.
For novelists, remember that you can (and should) build your platform on more than just your writing ability. Your books will often center around a place, an activity, an occupation, or an idea; build your platform around that more tangible information and see how it helps sell books!
Building a platform takes hard work, but its rewards are myriad. Try it, and you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
Posted in Publicity, Books, Getting Published, The Writing Life, About Writing on February 24th, 2008
A colleague remarked to me the other day that he sees publishing going the way of the music business, with more and more “indies” appearing. He predicted that eventually there will be no conglomerates, no large publishing houses.
It’s a question being debated long and hard in a lot of venues, that’s for sure. I disagree with my colleague to some extent — what we’re seeing is more and more consolidation of the book industry (like many others — Beatrice Foods owns just about everything these days, doesn’t it?) and right now there are only really about seven publishers out there that matter. Oh, there are tons of other ways of getting one’s book out, and I think that that’s what my colleague is talking about. But there are some real differences between the music industry and the book industry that stand in the way of our doing what they did:
- More and more musicians are finding that they do better just “giving” away their music: creating buzz on the net, making downloads easy, that sort of thing. Music and viral marketing were made for each other. It’s much harder to get that kind of buzz going about an author: you can’t hear two minutes of their work and decide that it’s cool.
- Those same musicians are finding that the money is coming in in different ways, now that they’re giving away the downloads. Two major places where they’re generating income is in swag (shirts, posters, hats, jewelry, etc.) and concert tours. Neither of these is a viable money-maker even for a major author, much less anybody else.
So I don’t see that as a model. Things will change, mind you; people will hack the ebook readers and get books for free, no question about that, and we need to be ready for it (and not many really are, so many authors I know are crying that the sky is falling but not looking for creative solutions for shelter); but I think we need to find another model for it all.
And until then, the only way to get an endcap at Borders or Barnes & Noble is to pay for it, and only the Big Publishers can do that. Being in a period of transition is uncomfortable, but there’s part of me that’s hopeful: the world was never changed by people living in their comfort zones, and it seems to me that the future holds a lot of opportunities for authors — we just have to figure out how to seize them.
And then we’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
Posted in Books, Publishing, Getting Published, Publishers, The Writing Life, About Writing, Creativity on January 23rd, 2008
As Amazon grows (along with our dependency on it), I thought I’d take a moment to offer what might be some useful advice: points of contact.
If you find an error in your Amazon book listing, your name, etc., this is the email you want to use to try and sort it with the powers-that-be: book-typos@amazon.com. If that doesn’t work, or if you don’t receive a reply, you can also try community-help@amazon.com; at least one major distributor that I know of was able to correct some errors using that route.
With so little of what is “out there” on the web under our control, it’s good to be able to find some places where one’s voice can be heard. Email me and let me know if you have information on others, and I’ll share it here, too!
Amazon in particular does seem to experience more than its fair share of glitches. Any time Amazon launches anything new, it’s a given that something will have to be done to fix something or other that’s gone wrong – usually when Amazon lists something for sale that shouldn’t be. A colleague of mine guesses that they just snatch all the files in storage and do whatever they want with them, not bothering to check to see if the files are, in fact, available for publication. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that any ebook vendor that maintains libraries for their customers has to keep even out of print books in storage so they can be accessed by people who bought them.
It’s mostly sloppiness rather than any ill intent when this sort of thing happens, which doesn’t make it any less a pain for those of us who then have to jump through hoops to get it fixed. On the other hand, it always does get fixed, eventually.
So there’s hope! Contact Amazon today, and you’ll find yourself … beyond the elements of style!
Posted in Frustration, Books, Publishers on January 10th, 2008
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