Booksurge merges with Createspace

I have to say, Createspace.com makes it very easy to put content into print. In today's world, is that what publishing is about? We need to take a serious look at what a book is and how we define the process of moving content out of our minds -- and off our desks -- and into the rest of the world.

How publishers calculate a novelist's advance

Cover price x advance orders x royalty rate x 1.3 x .5 x.6 = advance

For those of you who have number phobias, read on to find out how it all works:

The publisher gets advance orders. Say advance orders on this hardcover at 4,000 books. The publisher will often order a multiple of that number, the third factor in the above formula. If the order multiplier is 1.3, we end up with an initial print run of 5,200 books. If the hardcover is priced at $22, that's a potential gross of $114,400. The author's royalties would be approximately ten percent of that, or $11,440.

But wait. That's if the publisher sold every copy and that just doesn't happen.

Bookstores and distributors order book essentially on consignment. They've got a year to return the books for full credit. Hardcovers they actually ship back. Paperbacks, they just strip the cover off and mail that back. That's why you'll see that notice in the front sometimes about, "If you bought this book without a cover."

Sell-through is the term used to define what percentage of a print run is actually sold to consumers. A good, STRONG sell-through is 50%. In this case, that would be 2,600 books, or net royalties of $5,700.

So that's what you'll get, right? Nope. There's more.

Fifty percent is a GOOD sell-through. You might have a lousy sell-through.

To allow for that possibility, you're not going to get that entire $5,700. The publisher has some percentage of that that is policy. If, for instance, policy is 60%, you'll get an advance of $3,420.

I ran this by one of my editors and here's his response:

Your formula is sensible and in the ball park, although smaller publishers need a higher sell-through than larger publishers. There are two factors you didn't include, however. Let's say that the advance as calculated should be $3,420. The publishing director or business manager will press the editor to be conservative and offer an advance of, say, $2,500. The author's agent will likewise press the editor to offer an advance of $5,000, feeling that the extra cash up front will force the publisher to spend more money on marketing and publicity, in order to ensure recouping the advance. That doesn't necessarily happen, of course, but that's the way agents think. And agents would rather have their percentage up front, anyway. And then there is the pernicious practice of some publishers of holding some of the royalties back from the author as a reserve.

Just Released: The Black Belt Guide to Internet Presence

Well-trained martial artists concentrate on efficient and powerful moves. No telegraphing, no extraneous movements. Minimum effort for maximum effect.

The Black Belt Guide to Internet Presence will show you how to get the maximum return for the minimal expenditure of your time and talent.

This is what you’re going to do:

• Set up a blog
• Write a series of notes
• Schedule the posts
• Cross-connect it all

Sounds easy, eh? But the ins and outs of how exactly to wire it all are not all that obvious.

You probably already know what Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, and a few other social media destinations are. You may even have accounts with one of or all of them. If not, don’t worry. They’re very easy to set up.

I focused particularly on writers who want to sell books, so you’ll see a few references to readers and writers and publishing. But this system will work for any subject/cause/ business/obsession. Just substitute the word “clients” when I say readers and “your industry” when I say publishing.

So, if you’re ready for the down and dirty on establishing your internet presence, check out the Black Belt Guide to Internet Presence. Click here!

If you don't take it seriously, no one else will

An egomaniac with an inferiority complex: sound familiar?

If that glove feels just a little too much like it fits, then congratulations -- you're probably a fairly decent writer. Learn to live with the cognitive dissonance because it's gonna be around for a long time.

It's when the two opposites get out of balance that you'll run into problems. If you believe you cannot be taught, that you are GOOD and you don't NEED any editing or feedback or to progress -- you're out of balance. EVERYONE can get better. EVERYONE. Get teachable.

Conversely, if you subordinate your talent to other's needs too often, the Muse will poop on your paper. Muse poop, much like Greyhound poop, is not a good thing. I mean, you could stretch this analogy to the breaking point and talk about how it's good to poop on paper as opposed to the porch or the ungrouted new tile floor in the fireplace room, but seriously -- poop on paper that should contain brilliance is generally bad.

Take your writing seriously. Take yourself and your talent seriously. Humbly, but seriously.

And don't listen to nonwriters who think this is nonsense. If you're a writer, you know what I'm talking about.

Internet Road Kill: Dead Blogs

Nothing worse than a dead blog. But blogging/tweeting/posting status/bulletins/pages -- it all takes a lot of time and creative energy.

I've finally come up with a system -- and no, it's not some cheesy MLM auto-friender or something like that. It's simply the easiest way I've found to interconnect all my "stuff" -- Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and listserves -- to reach the most people with the least effort. Took me a while to puzzle out all the interconnections and third party add ons, but I think I've got it now!

There's an ebook on it on http://bamwriters.com.

(And if I'd followed my own advice last week, my blogs wouldn't be out of date! Catching up tomorrow!)

Smashwords

Most of us know about Kindle and a few other ebook formats. But how many are there, really? And how to reach all those markets without spending hours reformatting for each particular reader?

Solution: http://smashwords.com Smashwords will translate your WORD document into multiple ebook formats and pays high royalties, non-exclusive sales agreement. Check it out. Brilliant stuff.

Smells and bells and the first person.

 Common problem: a writer decides to tell a story in first person and then fails to exploit the full capabilities of that POV.

 

How do you know if you're doing this?

 

Look for passages where you attribute sensory experiences, e.g. I smelled, I heard, I  saw. Lose the attributions and place your reader directly inside your character's head.

 

Wrong: I smelled gunpowder.

Right: The room stank of gunpowder.

 

Wrong: I heard the bells ringing.

Right: The bells rang.

 

Same thing with feelings. If you have sentences that start, "I felt...," rewrite them to place the reader directly in the character's head.

 

Wrong: I felt worried.

Right: It wasn't going to be all right. It would never be all right.

 

See? Stay in the character's head, not outside it.

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POV and Distance from Character

Everybody knows what POV is, right? Point of View. Or, if you're in the military, Privately Owned Vehicle. (This will explain a lot of my confusion early on.)

 

POV is fairly easily mastered. You stay in one head in one scene, right? No telling the story from a female protagonist's point of view and then having her boyfriend do a "he thought" attribution in the same scene. That's not rocket science.

 

The more subtle issue is distance from the character. Let me give you a few examples:

 

Jason was wondering what the funny green bird was called.

I wonder what that funny green bird is called, Jason thought.

I wonder what that funny green bird is?

What's that funny green bird?

 

Do you see how these progress from rather distant to close in?

 

Once you get close, you can't pull back. That's the general rule.

 

The reason is that you'll jar the reader. After all, you've gone to a lot of trouble to get your reader to identify with your characters and suspend disbelief and buy the entire world you're creating. You've got them inside this character's head, along for the ride, then BOOM! You pull back from the character. That jars the reader out of the story and undoes everything you've tried to achieve.

 

So don't do it.

 

Tomorrow: Smells and bells and the first person.

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Want a few tips on writing?

"I'd love to buy you lunch and pick your brain."

Can't tell you how often I hear that. It's normally the follow up to a few emails in which new writers ask me to take a look at their works and give them a few pointers.

Tips, they're usually called. You know what tips are. Those succinct little tidbits that will solve writers' career dilemmas: no one wants to publish their stuff.

Sorry. No royal road to it. You put in a few million words and then yeah, you'll be able to make use of a few pointers. You'll have reached the level of conscious incompetence.

What most folks mean by tips is this: teach me to write well. After all, it's just a bunch of words and we all started mastering that at around age 2 or so, right? How hard can it be?

If you'd like me to teach you to write, take one of the classes. Or hire me to do it. Because honestly, while I love lunch out with friends, there are a few problems with the whole lunch and brain picking scenario.

1. It's worth more than lunch
2. It takes longer than lunch.
3. Ruins the meal to talk about bad writing and teach at the same time.
   
4. Until you've put in the time in front of the keyboard, it won't help.

It's like law. Just because it's in English, don't assume you understand it.

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Lowering the barriers or letting in the idiots?

I ran across a new crop of idiots the other day on ehow.com. There was one guy in particular whose only publishing credit was through Publish America – can you join me in saying "Ewwww!" – was telling everyone else how to write a query letter or some such nonsense. It was bad advice and worse writing.

These days, anyone can "get published". I used that phrase sardonically and with malice aforethought because it doesn't mean what it used to mean. Back in the ancient days – like five years ago even – before rampant POD and ISBN by the pound, getting published meant something. It meant that someone besides your Mom (who proofed and told you how wonderful you were) and your bank (who paid the check you wrote to a printer and told you how wonderful you were) and a printer (who called itself a publisher and cashed your check and told you how wonderful you were) actually thought your writing was fairly decent. Or if not decent, fixable and salable.

Not so these days.

Now, this is not to say the book industry and big publishers aren't without issues. We all know the system of advances, returns and sell-through is cumbersome and not working. I'm GLAD that the barriers to getting a book out there are lower. There's some good stuff that needs to see the light of day or at least the light of the endcap.

But the downside is that the signal to noise ratio has dropped dramatically. One can no longer rely on the fact that a book is actually IN PRINT in assuming at least a modicum of worth. Getting printed has become synonymous with getting published, and folks – that's just not the case.

If you are "published" through PublishAmerica, Xlibris or AuthorHouse – it doesn't count. Seriously. It doesn't. Not to the real writers. Not to say it's a BAD thing (although you could do better through Createspace.com or lulu.com or booklocker.com) and that you might not sell some books – you will if you work at it. It's just that it doesn't count as having gone through the traditional system, no matter how loudly you proclaim your status as an amazon.com bestseller (Guess what? That doesn't count either.) or your amazing adventures as a published author.

You're in print. That's a good thing. But it's not being published. And if you think it is, talk to me again after you ink your first deal with Berkley and get your first real editorial letter.

What's that? Berkley won't publish you? Neither will St. Martins?

Yeah. Wonder why?

That's kinda my point.

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A gift from a veteran

I’m retired from the Navy and today is Memorial Day. That’s all the explanation I really need to give for what I’m about to do.

I sold my very first book under my name to Berkley in the late 90's. I'd been writing technothrillers for them for a while under a tough guy name but it was the prevailing philosophy that women weren't supposed to write the sort of stuff I'm good at -- military action adventure. Chicks don't write that kind of stuff. Gag.

And why not? My novels are based on MY time in the Navy and MY TOUR at the War College and all -- heck, I was XO of the unit I'm writing about!

Anyway, Berkley was just then experimenting with female protagonists in technothrillers. There was some thinking that men wouldn't buy books like this written by a woman. They insisted that I use my initials rather than my name and we never ever capitalized on the fact that we were breaking new ground. Let’s ignore the simple fact that women buy 60% of technothrillers….

Personally, I deeply regret that I didn't insist on having my name on my books. I did not understand a lot of things I know about now -- heck, I barely knew standard royalty rates. As an aside, that's one reason I found the entire Reality Check series of workshops I do now. I don't want other writers to repeat my mistakes.

Anyway -- this book went on to hit the USA Today bestseller lists. We should have springboarded off that to push for wider distribution. My subsequent manuscripts sold in the six figure range. And then -- well, there's more to the story that I'll tell you about some day. At any rate, this was my very first bestseller.

Today, Memorial Day, I wanted to share it with everyone again. This is my present to you. There's no obligation.

Go to http://dogbooks.org and click on the Memorial Day tab on the top. Or use this direct link: http://dogbooks.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=23&Itemid=31 If something glitches, let me know. I think I’ve got it set up to work easily but one never knows for sure.

If you like it and you want to make a donation to At Risk Intervention (http://atriskintervention.org) to help us save more dog lives, that'd be both cool and tax deductible. Or if you'd like the file in a different format, you can get it from smashwords HERE (http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1983): http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1983. I think if you want Kindle etc it's $3. But this pdf is free.

Rereading it, I still love it. I see my strengths as a writer and wince over the places I want to rewrite. I know some of my students are going to read this and I'm going to hear about it later, as in, “Yeah, but on page 147, YOU did the same thing!” Hey, I was new. What can I say?

Let me know what YOU think. Because in my not-so-humble opinion, I think it stands up against anyone writing today and I think if you like technothrillers, you're going to love Rites of War and the books that followed. I sweated blood writing this book and I am jazzed about making it available now. (I'm still more than a little peeved about Berkley, in case you didn't pick up on that.)

Don't make this mistake

Don't let anyone else define who you are as a writer. Or as a person, for that matter, but especially as a writer.

Editors can talk to you about the realities of their lists, the markets and sales meetings. But they're not writers. They are not the ones who translate strange worlds and foreign concepts into words. They're not who you are. Listen to them -- but in the end, you are the translator, the one who understands. You must do your part before the editors can do their parts.

Integrating your online lives.

Oh, yes. I do indeed rock today. Blog/Twitter/FB all integrated.

Now, the folks who've been to my workshops know I preach that writers need to start well ahead of publication date establishing an audience, a platform. We have guidelines about how that needs to work within our publishing plans and it makes a huge difference in sales.

Recently, I've even been taking my own advice. Seriously.

And after a long few days of noodling about, I've got the pipeline down. A system. Yes, seriously.

Think I'll host an online course on how to do it all. It'll be up on http://bamwriters.com in a day or so and will save you a TON of time and frustration.

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BAMWriters Workshop

BAMWriters.com Structure Workshop and Reality Check, 30 May, Knoxville TN. Register at http://bamwriters.com (testing my blog/twitter/FB links!)