Some Brief Advice for Indie Authors docx

Contents About This Book The Devil is in the Details The Work of Being a Writer Thoughts on Being a Writer Readership and Worldview Writing as an Income Stream “There’s Enough Success fo

Some Brief Advice for Indie Authors

By Sharon E Cathcart

Published by Sharon E Cathcart at Smashwords

Copyright 2012, Sharon E Cathcart

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Contents

About This Book The Devil is in the Details The Work of Being a Writer Thoughts on Being a Writer Readership and Worldview Writing as an Income Stream

“There’s Enough Success for Everyone!”

Never Underestimate the Value of Networking Things That Authors Should Know

Goal Setting Formulas in Writing: A Chicken/Egg Problem

The Fans Who Count on You Building Relationships with Fans

You Are a Brand

On The Concept of Creative License More Work on Branding Thanking Your Mentors The Business of Writing Recommended Resources About the Author Other Titles by the Author

About This Book

Shortly before my first book was published, I started an author blog I know, I know

You’re thinking “You and everyone else.” It didn’t take me long to notice that my most popular

posts were the ones in which I wrote about either the craft or the business of writing Some Brief Advice for Indie Authors is a compendium of those posts; they appear in approximately

chronological order, from the earliest days of my blog until now Read it, skip around from essay to essay, enjoy it; most importantly, though, take the advice that works for you and discard the rest Everyone’s business is a little different, and that’s just splendid

I’ve included a list of recommended resources at the very end These are books and websites that I have personally found helpful

Thanks, as always, for reading.

The Devil is In the Details

How much research should you do before you start writing?

That's a hard question to answer, to be honest However, you need to make sure you have the details correct Your audience may know a lot about your subject matter, even if it's something

that happens in the realm of fiction For example, in In The Eye of The Beholder: A Novel of the Phantom of the Opera, the majority of the action takes place in 1889 Paris That's the year that

Gustav Eiffel's famous tower opened; if I hadn't mentioned the Eiffel Tower at all, it would have looked rather peculiar to those who know their French history

Perhaps you're writing something about combat, maybe sword-fighting? Be sure that the weaponry you describe is doing what it should I read an otherwise nice short story a while back that had a fellow using a sabre (a cutting/slicing weapon designed for use on horseback) as a thrust-and-parry weapon in ground combat The blade is not designed for thrust-and-parry; it's curved, and only sharpened on one edge

That's what I mean when I say the devil is in the details If your reader keeps pausing in your story to say "Wait a minute, that's not how this works at all," you'll distract them and maybe even lose their attention

I'm researching and writing simultaneously for In The Eye of The Storm, as well as

researching for the final book in the trilogy (title as yet undetermined) The only way to make fiction believable is to know the little details of your setting, so get to know your librarian, the internet and any other sources of information that you have available

Attention to detail will bring your manuscript alive I promise

The Work of Being a Writer

Hi, everyone The following post comes from my personal blog of 6/10/09 I share it here to

let people know some of my experiences as I publicized the eBook edition of In The Eye of The Beholder I will share similar articles from time to time.

~~~

I should be drying my hair, but I just need to get this out

Being a writer is hard work Sure, there's the actual writing but then what?

I was thinking about so many things this morning, and trying not to be overwhelmed

Every submission requirement is different I'm in the midst of prepping yet another

version of In The Eye of The Beholder, this time for a UK publisher who is interested in

receiving my manuscript for consideration After that, yet another submission version to prep for Authonomy

Publicity is hard, and sometimes you make a mis-step I did already I submitted my book

to a reviewer who belatedly (and I mean belatedly; this had never been stated previously)

announced that he expects authors to query him before sending him works I sent a note of apology; there's nothing more I could do

I am sometimes frustrated by the publicity process, to tell you the truth We are all

taught not to be boastful and self-serving I used to work in public affairs for the Army, and I wrote press releases and promotional news information all the time Marketing myself, though, is

a challenge My new marketing postcards have arrived; the next step is getting them out to people

I have the additional burden of dealing with medically resistant depression That makes

getting out of the house to go to my day job (and every author of my acquaintance has a day job) difficult, so adding this additional "shift," if you will, makes things just a little tougher Thrown

in that my house is a disaster which just feeds the depression I'm working on the house, but sometimes it's all I can do to pitch out the recycling Those who cope with depression will

understand; those who have never been through it cannot possibly relate it's not something you can just "snap out of."

At the same time, I theorize that my depression may be a gift Many artists and authors

throughout history have been prone to bouts of melancholia I even gave my main character, Claire, a tendency toward melancholia in an attempt to get across what it's like to live in that state I don't know how well I succeeded in that regard only a reader could tell me

I really needed to get this off of my chest I am trying not to get frustrated or depressed this early in the game some minutes are better than others

Thoughts on Being a Writer

This is another re-post from my personal blog, dated May 24, 2009

~~~

I did a little more editing work on In The Eye of the Beholder today, both before I went to church and a little bit this afternoon after I re-watched PS I Love You After services, Rev Mike

gave me my chocolate bar (a prize for correctly identifying the language into which one of MCC's weekly reflections had been translated Polish) and the reprint of my first entry in the

Weekly Reflection series My article was picked up by another MCC for their newsletter.

So, I'm watching PS I Love You this afternoon, and one of the letters Gerry sends to Holly

talks about how he remembers her talking about creating something Holly talks about how creating things shows the world something about you: something that you didn't even perhaps know about yourself

It seemed like all of these experiences today conspired to make me realize something: I had stopped thinking about myself as a writer I guess I felt as though I no longer had that right after getting that rejection letter last year from the publisher I thought I was deluding myself, you know? I had a novel 55K plus words, with a plot and everything but I had stopped thinking

of myself as a writer

I don't know quite why I started the book four years ago, during an especially dark time in

my life It took me three years to finish it I am so proud of it, even as I go through this final batch of edits and tighten things up once and for all so that it can go up on the eBook site But other than this blog, I had pretty much stopped writing until Rev Mike asked me to write a weekly reflection I used to write for a living, folks But I stopped thinking about myself as an artist of words I wasn't kind enough to myself to think I had any business doing so

The overarching theme of In The Eye of the Beholder is the importance of compassion I also realize that it's the overarching theme of my two favorite books of all time (The Man Who Fell to

Earth, by Walter Tevis, and Phantom of the Opera, by Gaston Leroux) And yet I did not have

enough compassion toward myself to recognize that I was shutting down the most creative part

of me: the part of me that has, more times than I care to admit, shown me something that I didn't know about myself

So, here it is: I am a writer I am an artist of words My greatest gift is my pen (or, in this case, my keyboard) and what I make come from it I am so very proud of myself for what I have written already, and I am grateful for finding my way back to that place

Readership and Worldview

I read a fascinating book last week: All Marketers are Liars, by Seth Godin Now, Godin

doesn't really think marketers are liars; what he maintains is that they tell a story about a product that we believe, whether or not it is so, because it fits into our particular worldview

A worldview, according to Godin, is not something that you can change with facts, or a better product than some other guy So, he says, you need to figure out how to pitch your product

to people who share your worldview In other words, you need to figure out how to tell the story

to people who will believe it

I share all of this because lately I have been spending some time in an on-line forum focused

on historical romance novels As you know, In The Eye of The Beholder is exactly that.

Let me tell you something, friends: this group has been an education to me

One of the reasons I wrote In The Eye of The Beholder is that I was tired of reading the same

book with a different cover I found romance novels to be formulaic and had really grown tired

of them The heroine would inevitably be a 20-something virginal bluestocking, and the hero would inevitably be a handsome man with a dark secret in his past They would hate each other

at first (or they would love each other but some horrible circumstance would keep them apart for

a good portion of the book), but eventually they would come together and live Happily Ever After

Every Single Time It was like the publishers handed out a template to authors or

something

So, anyway, there was a question posted on the group about whether people expected or wanted a Happily Ever After in their romance novels With few exceptions, the answer was a resounding "yes" that they bought these books expecting certain things, and Happily Ever After was one of them

That's when I grasped something I hadn't thought about before: people buy books because they fit into a particular worldview, too People who really like the romance genre want to know that those elements of the story that I describe will be there

What I figured out, as a result, is that I needed to figure out how to pitch my book

differently Claire, my heroine, is in her 30s during most of its action, and she's no virginal bluestocking, as those of you who have read the book have reason to know She's not a typical romance heroine, and Erik is not a typical romance hero

I think that there is a definite historical romance audience out there for this book, and I think that there are some other audiences for whom it would be a good "pitch."

How does your worldview help you decide which books you buy? I'm curious to know your thoughts

Writing as an Income Stream

Hi, everyone I have good news to report, and that brings me to the concept of writing as an income stream

I've been chosen by Examiner.com as their museum correspondent in my area It's a paying gig that allows me to incorporate my journalistic skills and life-long love of museums into some additional money for our household It's hard to say how much that will be; payment is based on traffic to my page, and I need to generate some interest in museums My plan is to include the big traveling exhibits that come through, of course, but I also want to generate some interest in the smaller, less-traveled establishments It doesn't hurt that I've been a volunteer docent at two different area museums and have some insider knowledge, either

I have been fortunate enough, in the past, to have a full-time job as a newspaper journalist and editor: I got to write for a living It was my sole income stream Those jobs are few and far between nowadays; many newspapers seek freelance contributors and pay accordingly No novelist of my personal acquaintance writes full-time; we all have day jobs (even if that day job

is being a homemaker)

As with many people, my book is not my sole source of income I'm not going to get rich just because my name is on the cover I think that's a big misnomer In a GoodReads discussion group, we talked about how many of our friends think we must be rolling in wealth because our books are available for sale The days when you could make a decent living as a writer are in the past, and likely to stay that way (unless you're Stephen King, but that's a whole other story) I often say that you should write because you love it, not because you expect to become a

household name

There are paying gigs out there for writers, but you need to keep your expectations realistic Look at what is available to you and consider how you can use your skills to bring in a little extra money You never know where it will take you

"There's Enough Success for Everyone!"

I took advantage of a wonderful and unexpected opportunity this past Sunday I attended a Vision Binder Playdate workshop by life coach Molly Burke, Queen of Confidence

The theme was "Success," and we all worked on maps to show what success was like for us

in various parts of our lives (health, relationships, etc) We then worked on collages that showed images that related to our concepts of success We used lots of colors, magazine ads, words: whatever seemed right The idea was to appeal to the childlike subconscious that resides in all of us

There was a great deal of synergy in the room once we broke our silence Everyone had been diligently working away on their maps when Molly said "It's okay to talk about it." That's when

we started sharing our dreams, and discovered that people in the room with us had sources and ideas that would help on our dreams! It was splendid

I am afraid that Molly will, at some point, begin to think I've turned into a sycophant

Instead, I feel more like an evangelist I just can't say enough about her work The blog on her website is chock full of great ideas for making your life better, and that's just out there for

anyone to read and use

Me? I can't wait to take another class I'm planning for Molly's course on maximizing

Facebook fan pages

Never Underestimate the Value of Networking

Hi, everyone I am practically jumping up and down in my seat with excitement: I have a US

publisher for In The Eye of The Beholder: A Novel of The Phantom of the Opera As all of you

know, I have an eBook publisher, as well as a regular publisher in the UK However, lots of people in the US are (understandably) reluctant to order a book from Amazon UK or a publisher abroad given the current exchange rate, and many people are not keen on eBooks for whatever reason

So, here's what happened I wound up joining a boatload of author websites and starting to poke around here and there, post where I felt led to do so, and got to know some people

One of those people is Linda Boulanger, who runs TreasureLine Books We started getting

to know one another and, after a while, she sent me a pretty interesting proposal about publishing

my novel in the US

I won't lie; I wasn't sure what to think I asked a lot of questions and boy, am I grateful for

Linda's level of patience with me She clarified everything I wanted to know, and I am confident that this will be a very good working relationship as a result So, I took a deep breath and said

"Let's do this thing."

I'll be retaining James Courtney's beautiful artwork for the US edition; it's practically part of the branding for the book at this point Of course, we need to get the manuscript ready to go and then the issues with US Amazon that I have lamented so many times (they continue to insist the book is out of print, despite my UK publisher's protestations to the contrary) will be at an end People in the US will be readily able to obtain what I am confident will be a nice-looking book, and at a reasonable price

I'll keep you all updated as we progress

Things That Authors Should Know

My first book, Born of War Dedicated to Peace, was published in 1995 I was a

newspaper editor at the time, having already worked my way up the ladder as a reporter Since then, I've sold a novel in two different markets (US and UK), self-published two volumes of essays, and have a publisher waiting for a memoir Frankly, I've been writing for as long as I can remember

I have never forgotten some advice given to my first journalism class by the professor: "I cannot make you a good writer; you either are one, or you aren't." Half of the class dropped out after that

I'm not kidding

Here are some of the things I learned along the way that have helped me as an author I share these to help my fellow writers along the way

Grammar matters If you aren't sure about a word, look it up in the dictionary If you aren't

sure about grammar, get a good primer There are a lot of them out there Get a good

proofreader, too; don't rely on your spell checking software Book publishers don't have time to

clean up after you If your story is good, but your grammar is horrible, you're going to get a nice, generic rejection letter and that's about it

Detailed rejection letters are worth their weight in gold If you get a rejection letter that

tells you exactly what's wrong with your manuscript, take it to heart It means that someone took the time to tell you something besides "thanks, but no thanks." Chances are just about 100

percent that the advice will make your manuscript stronger

Facts matter, too Someone in your audience will know if you got it wrong Trust me.

Not everyone will like your story If we all liked the same things, there would only be one

book, one painting, one symphony, etc., in all of the world Grow a thick skin Write because you love it, not because you expect universal praise, laud and honor Readers' tastes are subjective; there are plenty of people out there who like books that make me groan in agony I'd be willing

to bet that some of my favorite books do the same to others

If you want to be a good writer, become a voracious reader You will start to see what

works, and why After you finish a particular book, or even as you are reading, ask yourself what

is working for you Do you believe what the author is telling you about a particular character or situation? How are they drawing you into the story? How is language used to create an

impression? To show you what is going on? Read with a critical eye so that you can understand how to make your own writing better

Take a writing workshop or course Not only will you make contacts, but you will learn

from others People will critique your manuscript and help you improve it Again, don't get into this looking for universal praise, laud and honor; you want people to show you where the plot holes, continuity problems and yes, grammatical issues lie

Publishing is a business As my co-author on Born of War said to me a while back, it's not

about whether your writing is brilliant or not It's about what the average person will buy at the store If an acquisitions editor has one or two "dogs," they're looking at a pink slip So, no, the acquisitions person is not going to "give you a break" because you're a teenager, have a disability

of some kind, couldn't afford a proofreader, or anything else They care about whether your book

is going to make them money Period

No one gets rich as an author It takes a long time to cash out an advance (meaning that the

amount of royalties coming into the publisher have now paid off the company's initial investment

in you and you get a royalty check) Most new authors sell fewer than 100 copies of their books, and publishers know this

Self-publishing is no guarantee of success Again, most new authors sell fewer than 100

copies of their books

You need a platform How are you marketing your books? Where are you pitching them?

Even mainstream publishers seldom put money into promoting new authors nowadays; they expect you to do it Be prepared to use social media (e.g., GoodReads, Facebook, etc.) to pitch your work

There is enough success out there for everyone I think that says it all

Goal Setting

I discovered something very interesting last year: I didn't get as much done as I wanted to

Oh, I talked about how I hoped to have In The Eye of The Storm ready for publication at the

end of the year (It didn't happen.) But I didn't make an actual plan

This year, I decided to do better Preparation is not lost time, right? So, I got a pocket

calendar and started putting in what life coach and author Stacia Pierce calls "faith dates" on it I put in the months in which I anticipated royalty checks for each quarter I put in the dates of a seminar I'm attending I put in my next dental appointment

Today I put in the months in which I will have my next two eBooks available to the public

I don't have a faith date yet for In The Eye of The Storm’s completion, but what came out of

this preparation process and goal setting was a recognition that I need to go into that manuscript for a major re-write and I'm only at about the halfway point Unless and until I get that re-write done, I can't project how long it will take to finish So, I set goals for the projects that I know I can have done soon, and will put the next bunch of faith dates together when I have a better idea

of how much I'm biting off

What goals have you set to advance your dreams?

Formulas in Writing: A Chicken/Egg Problem

"I got a story ain't got no moral, let the bad guy win every once in a while." "Will It Go Round in Circles," Billy Preston

A discussion on another forum where I participate went a little afield when someone brought

up formulaic books I responded by citing romance novels (which, I have admitted time and again, I have pretty much stopped reading, with the exception of those by Jaimey Grant, because

I like her community of characters who cross over among the stories) I even cited what I saw as the formula

A romance author told me that I was wrong; that my "perception" (her term) did not match reality

What's kind of interesting is that it's no secret that there are formulas for all genres of novels

I see it as a kind of chicken/egg problem, and I'll get to that in a moment

First, let's look at some sources that show my point

The Romance Writers of America lays out their requirements for what constitutes the

romance genre in fairly broad terms Then, they lay out the formula for the many subgenres That seems pretty straightforward to me

There's a great blog post by romance author Brenda Coulter, in which she compares the romance novel formula to making chicken soup

Author Stephanie Mittman has a slightly different take on the secret formula, but she also admits that it's there

How about some other genres? Elements that make a novel steampunk versus other types of science fiction are pretty clear Likewise mystery novels

You see my point, so I'll not belabor it further

Now we come to the chicken/egg part of the question: how did we get here?

When I first sought a publisher for In The Eye of The Beholder: A Novel of The Phantom of the Opera, I got a long and detailed rejection letter from the first house to which I submitted it

(Now, those letters really are a treasure; they're an opportunity to make your story better because they give you information My manuscript was much better for taking advice from that note.)

My co-author on Born of War Dedicated to Peace talked me down off the ledge by

explaining that book publishing really was about what sells (as he put it, "what Mrs Average will buy at Wal-mart") One or two "dogs," and an acquisitions editor is looking at a pink slip

My book is deliberately written against formula in many ways The heroine is not an early-20s virgin; the hero is not handsome and perfect That was part of the issue, and one on which I was unwilling to compromise

But I digress

So, here's the question: if all that's available to Mrs Average at Wal-Mart is what the

acquisitions editor thinks she wants, how do we know where the formulae originated? Do they really come from Mrs Average's buying patterns, or do they come because that's the only choice she's got thanks to acquisitions editors who believe that's the choice she wants?

You see the dilemma, I'm sure

And the truth is, no one really knows the answer to that question

What we do know is that formulae for certain genres have developed over time and that, as a result, readers have come to expect certain things from those books Some people like the "sure thing," and there's nothing wrong with that

The Fans Who Count on You

"Don't focus on counting the number of fans you have; focus on the number of fans who count on you." From the Facebook fan page of Puerto Rican a cappella group NOTA

In the past 24 hours, I've had cause to think about this quote from a couple of different perspectives

I am occasionally guilt of trying very hard to "grow" my fan page over on Facebook I had a contest for the person who brought in the most new members: the prize was having a character

named after the winner in my novel, In The Eye of The Storm (it was a three-way tie, so there are

three new characters) I share the page on my personal profile now and then, inviting new people

to join

None of this is bad, really

I also spend relatively little time on "billboarding": promoting my work Instead, I have regular, weekly features to engage my readers, specifically because I want to focus on the fans who count on me

Unfortunately, there are a number of examples out there where businesses don't get it

For instance, my husband moonlights a couple of evenings a week at a hobby store where he once worked full time It's a mom-and-pop place which, like many small businesses, is struggling

in today's economy

For many years, the shop has had arrangements with local school districts; the students get a discount on materials they need for certain projects

The original owner's son is now running the shop and his roommate buddy is now the

manager The manager decided it would be a great idea to tear out many shelves to install an indoor remote control car track (he and the owner's son are big into this hobby)

And where did the shelves come from?

You guessed it: the part of the store where the project supplies were housed All of those supplies were literally thrown into a storage area, with no organization whatsoever unless, of

course, the manager threw them into the Dumpster, from which my husband rescued several perfectly good, unblemished items

So, now the students come, looking for the things they need for their projects They are counting on this store When my husband proceeded to root through the storage area to find things for the kids, he was chastised He was told to lie and say that Item X was no longer

available, and to say that (more costly) Item Y could be obtained in the model trains department The manager doesn't care about the people who are counting on that store, in other words; he just cares about forcing them to spend more money

My husband refuses to lie to people

Another example is much bigger: the Borders bankruptcy

I remember when Borders was a bookstore Now they sell movies, music, t-shirts, stationery: you name it They lost track of the fans who were counting on them in their rush to get more fans

The Borders near my office was added the list of stores to be closed under the company's bankruptcy proceedings I wasn't even surprised, given how far they've gone from their

bookselling mission For crying out loud, when I asked an employee there whether they carried bookplates, he responded that they didn't sell dishes!

In the mean while, the tiny Books, Inc., store across from another Borders location (also slated to close) is thriving Why? Because their business is selling books The shop owner said in

a recent television news interview that his focus was on his customers, knowing what they like, being able to make recommendations for other titles accordingly and so on

In other words, Books, Inc., is focused on the fans who count on them

Focus like that is way different from figuring out ways to part your customers from their discretionary income and earns customer satisfaction that no amount of money can buy

Building Relationships with Fans

If I had a subtitle, it would be: Or, Some Things I Learned Along the Way.

The other day, I dropped someone from my personal Facebook page She's a professional author whom I knew casually from another website, and she sent me a friend request which I accepted

Given the way that authors tend to network, I'm sure you're wondering why I dropped her One hundred percent of her posts were billboarding about where to buy her books, sent via Tweetdeck I started to feel as though the only reason she'd invited me to be her Facebook friend was so that she would make a sale!

There are lots of ways to rock on Facebook (in fact, I took a class by that name from Molly Burke, Queen of Confidence) The main thing comes down to building relationships So, I'm going to share some things I learned from Molly and some I learned from trial and error when it comes to developing relationships with your fans/readers

Keep your personal Facebook and your fan page separate and don't post identical

material in both places Invite all of your personal friends to join your fan page, sure but make certain you aren't spamming folks with duplicate information The same thing goes for your personal blog and your professional blog