Painting With Light

How Easy is it to Become an Author?

January 15, 2018

You have stories to tell and fantastic ideas floating around in your imagination that deserve to be communicated to a vast army of readers. Hell, you can imagine and create stories that are as good as any of them out there, can’t you?

How Hard Can It Be?
Who wouldn’t be excited? You know in your heart you can be the next Hemingway, Faulkner or Rowling and your talent deserves the celebrity and prestige of authordom … and a shot at immortality.

Why? Because you’ve been validated by your friends.

Now, all you have to do is follow a formula to find a good agent to get your work published. If you don’t know one, you can sign on to the abundance of places on the internet claiming to locate them.

Easy, right?

Maybe you’ve already tried the traditional route. You’ve submitted your ideas to agents, or maybe you actually found a publisher, but your work didn’t sell very well. You’re certain the only problem was no one was promoting it properly.

What do you do now?

Self Publish?
Perhaps you’re thinking about doing it yourself and going indie. People have told you the traditional publishing business is faltering anyhow. Retailers like Waldenbooks and Borders are already out of business. From what you hear, Barnes & Noble is in danger, too.

Every day, advice for the self-published author is coming at you from people who tout their expertise. Many claim to offer you a magic ladder that will get you into the stratosphere. All I can say, if you decide to do it yourself, be careful who you use to assist you.

You’ll find services that say they were created expressly to get you discovered, increase your book sales, get your work on television, into the movies, or adapted for the stage.

Their come-ons are great. If you’ve dreamed that far, it’s easy to imagine lots of money rolling in, being lionized at book parties and having people line up for your autograph.

Why not?

Just remember, nearly everyone who tells you this comes at a price, and most guarantee nothing at all. All I can do is say good luck … and remind you: A fool and his money are soon parted.

Writers’ Conferences
You could decide to attend a good writers’ conference, which I actually do recommend – (see Rochester Writers).

Many occasionally offer speakers who can tell you how to find a good agent and make it in the business (but remember, many don’t tell you how they made it … because many of them didn’t).

You have to choose wisely.

CreateSpace
You decide to take the plunge and use CreateSpace to get your work listed on Amazon (it’s what I’d recommend, if you asked me).

Amazon welcomes you into their book-selling machine and, for all intents and purposes, you are finally what you always dreamed you’d be … a published author. Your friends and family are proud of you. Amazon has come to your rescue.

Except …

Okay, so you probably don’t get to quit your day job.

For some, that really doesn’t matter. Just being published is worth the journey. You are officially an author, sainted by experience, up there with Dickens, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Asimov, et al.

But readers aren’t stampeding to the cash register to buy your book, and those dismal sales are discouraging. So now what?

You try lowering the price to $9.99; then $5.99; then $2.99; then to .99 cents. Finally, you offer it for free (imagine the irony of becoming a best seller for a book that’s free). Nothing happens.

You can’t blame Amazon. You’re in a very crowded pond, in the company of a multitude of authors and literally thousands of books. How can readers find you? Oh, they might take a chance for free, or pack you into their Kindle to read some day.

Maybe.

Hard, Time-Consuming Work
This is when the “How-to-Succeed” boys will come after you again, trying to drag you into their podcasts and how-to subscriptions (always for a price), to show you how to stand-out from the mix.

They’ll dangle in front of you the possibility of speaking gigs, publicity and discoverability. Then (again for a price), they will tell you to get off your butt and blog like all-get-out, social network like crazy, create a massive circle of “friends” and cultivate those new “friends” like hell.

They’ll admonish you to personalize yourself. Tell folks your life story. Bond with them. Keep them engaged. After all, maybe some of them are actually readers. Finally, they’ll try to get you to push these new “friends” to buy your books and, above all, leave a review.

Promote Yourself
You might think that I’m putting you on, satirizing the indie author’s dilemma, but I’m not. I’ve been at this for many years, analyzing the process, studying it, experimenting.

Call this little exercise a cautionary tale. Better yet, a reality check.

Because there is no magic bullet.

You don’t realize it yet, but I just saved you a ton of money. I told you essentially what you’ll discover in all those “How-to-Succeed” sites.

You can promote yourself.

Just don’t go around screaming “Buy my book!” That will only succeed in turning people off entirely.

Getting your name burned into the public consciousness without a huge cash expenditure is a task requiring all your ingenuity and time. The net is like a bullet train, passing at warp speed. Getting the public’s attention is paramount. Keeping it is a small miracle.

Go For It
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to dampen your enthusiasm for becoming an author, because with social networking skills, optimism and energy, you might develop a following. If you stay the course, the sales, recognition, celebrity and fame you crave could be yours.

In the end, however, remember it’s really all about your work. Is your dialogue believable? Are your characters and your stories worth the reader’s effort? Do they engage, connect and inspire? Make certain they do, and you might get lucky.

After all, someone does win the lottery.

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My books have all garnered some terrific reviews, and you can see the ones I have available by using the Amazon link below. Look for them. Better yet, buy one and read it. You just might like it.

**********

I’ll be at the Rochester Writers’ Meeting this week. See you there!

**********

You’re invited to visit my website, BROKEN GLASS, or
like my Book of Face page. You can find me on Goodreads, or follow some of my shorter ramblings on The Twitter.

**********

Visit my web site to hear the remarkable radio interview about my novel “Blood Lake” by The Authors Show.

**********

Comments posted below will be read, greatly appreciated and perhaps even answered.

Tags: book marketing, self-publishing, using social media
Posted in Award-Winning Fiction, Book Promotion, Storytelling | 9 Comments »

Is This the Year of the Writer?

January 1, 2018

New Year’s Day is the time most of us reflect on the past year, while thinking about the goals and hopes for the new year ahead.

I had a fabulous 2017.

My books are still getting great reviews and winning awards.

I reconnected with some dear, old friends, had several successful book-signings and attended two writing conferences. I visited my grandkids in south Florida, and vacationed on the island birthplace of Alexander Hamilton (Nevis).

I ended the year with friends watching my beloved Detroit Red Wings pull off a shoot-out win in their new downtown facility … which we followed with a much-coveted locker room tour.

I’m making my usual resolutions: Lose weight, exercise more and eat more sensibly. As I get older, these become more important to getting healthier, which will, hopefully, let me get a LOT older (although, sadly, I often forget them by February).

But what does it mean as a writer?

For me, that part of my resolution is the same as it’s been for many years now … I’m hoping 2018 is the year I finish another novel.

For you, your resolution may be to make this the year you commit to a sustainable writing habit … or, maybe, make this the year you finally get published.

Here are four resolutions you can make to improve your writing to start the New Year. Pick one to start, or dive in with all of them. The result may be the best writing you’ve done yet.

Make Time for Writing
If you seriously want results as an author, you have to put your butt in the chair and write.

Wanna-be writers hear this all the time but, if you’re like most of them, you’ll come back with the fact you have jobs, kids, chores and other outside interests that take away from your writing time.

Most of you will add there are only 24 hours in the day to attend to these many responsibilities … and you also need to sleep.

But I say excuses are easy to make. There’s always time to write.

Think about it this way: If you’re only able to write for one hour a day, accomplishing only 500 words in that hour, you’ll have written about 15,000 words in a month. Even if only half of those words are usable, if you keep it up for a year, you’ll have written 90,000 words.

And that, my friend, is a novel.

Most, if not all of us, have at least one hour of quiet time a day to devote to our writing. And don’t think that writing time means just typing words into a blank Word document. Reading, research and writing exercises are also great ways to spend your time, because they move you toward your writing goals.

Embrace Your Personal Writing Style
I’ve talked about this before, too. You either outline everything first, or you fly by the seat of your pants.

Outliners are often much more organized, but their rigid structures sometimes get in the way of lightning-rod flashes of creativity.

Pantsers are much freer in their writing methodology, preferring to “make it up as they go” rather than adhere to a strict outline they write ahead of time. They often find surprises as they write, and they also tend to feel less inclined to “stick to a plan” … because they don’t necessarily have one.

But I’ll say it again: There’s nothing wrong with being either a Pantser or an Outliner. Both will get the job done if you work at it.

Step Outside Your Comfort Zone
Some of us are fiction writers and aspiring novelists. Some of us are memoirists. Some of us are a combination of all of these, in varying degrees. But all of us have a comfort zone, and if we stay within it too long, we risk stagnation.

So, resolve to step outside of your comfort zone. Experiment with styles and voices you’re not used to. Emulate authors you don’t normally read. Read books you wouldn’t normally pick up off the shelf.

If you’re strictly a fiction writer, branch out into the world of freelance articles, where science and special interest articles provide great fodder for new stories.

If you write nonfiction, study plot, structure, voice and pacing, all of which will help you write tightly wound, concise pieces with distinct tones.

My point is, we all get stuck in a rut from time-to-time. Actively finding ways to get unstuck is the mark of a great writer.

Call Yourself a Writer
This may be the most important resolution you make for 2018. It is for me every year.

You may think you can just dabble in this stuff and it might work out in the end. But being a writer isn’t a short journey. It’s a lifetime of work that takes a tremendous amount of effort to reap rewards.

Acknowledging your writerly status is one thing; living it is another.

2018 can be what you’re waiting for … your year for writing. Start calling yourself a writer.

Then make the most of it.

**********

My books have all garnered some terrific reviews, and you can see the ones I have available by using the Amazon link below. Look for them. Better yet, buy one and read it. You just might like it.

**********

You’re invited to visit my website, BROKEN GLASS, or
like my Book of Face page. You can find me on Goodreads, or follow some of my shorter ramblings on The Twitter.

**********

Visit my web site to hear the remarkable radio interview about my novel “Blood Lake” by The Authors Show.

**********

Comments posted below will be read, greatly appreciated and perhaps even answered.

Tags: award-winning writing, self-publishing, storytelling
Posted in Award-Winning Fiction, Storytelling | 6 Comments »

Books at Holiday Time

December 14, 2017

Photo Courtesy of Pixabay.

It’s that time of year again. In my neighborhood, holiday decorations are up, houses glow with lights, and the stores are crowded (which I take as a good sign). It’s also a time when we all think again about songs and stories based on the holidays.

Maybe it’s just the writer in me, but I also think about books.

One of my favorites is A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. It’s undoubtedly one of the best-loved (and best-selling) tales in English literature. It’s been a holiday classic since its original publication almost exactly one-hundred-seventy-four years ago.

The story explored not only Scrooge’s redemptive journey, but the lives of the poor majority surrounding him. Inspired by his own rocky childhood, historians say Dickens was writing an indictment of 19th century industrial capitalism, and the disparity between the poor and the wealthy in early Victorian-era Britain.

He used the stingy-old-man character named Scrooge as a means of highlighting the need to return to traditional Christmas values, family togetherness and charity.

It’s a message we could all stand to hear again.

I was surprised to learn the classic only took Dickens six weeks to write. Published in London by Chapman and Hall on December 19, 1843, it was an immediate success with the public. The initial print run of 6,000 copies sold out by Christmas Eve.

However, for its author, it was a grave financial disappointment.

Dickens insisted on a lavish format for what was to become the most famous of his holiday books.

He wanted A Christmas Carol to be a beautiful little gift book, and as such he stipulated a fancy binding stamped with gold lettering on the spine and front cover; gilded edges on the paper all around; four full-page, hand-colored etchings and four woodcuts.

Examining preliminary copies, Dickens decided he disliked the color of the title pages, and found the end papers smudged when touched.

He called for immediate changes and by December 17, two days before the book’s official release, the publisher had produced new copies, coupled with a number of significant textual corrections, which pleased the young author.

Dickens, who was still optimistic about sales, set the price of the book reasonably to encourage the largest possible number of purchasers. He hoped more sales would bring in larger profits, relieving some of his financial obligations.

You see, in order to get the story published fast, Dickens had agreed to an unprecedented publishing arrangement: he would assume all of the costs of the initial publication but, in doing so, would also gain all of the profits.

Dickens was initially elated with the public’s overwhelming response. But the cost of producing the book was so high that once expenses were tabulated, there was very little left over for the author himself.

When Dickens received the production receipts from Chapman and Hall, he found after the deductions for printing, paper, drawing, steel plates, engraving, coloring, binding, advertising and a commission to the publishers, the balance to his credit was only one-tenth of what he imagined, and far too little to live on.

“The truth,” wrote Dickens friend and literary adviser, John Forster, “was that the price charged was far too little.”

It’s interesting to note, despite the profitability shortfall, by February of 1844, less than two months after the book’s appearance, at least eight theatrical versions of A Christmas Carol were already in production. Since then, there have been literally hundreds more adaptations for stage, radio, television, and film.

The public loved it. The tale of one man’s redemption interwoven with Victorian Christmas traditions morphed into every publisher’s dream. The book has never been “out of print.”

I find it to be no small irony that for this instantly classic Christmas tale of greed and beneficence, Dickens received none of the millions Tiny Tim and Ebenezer Scrooge continue to generate every year.

**********

My books have all garnered some terrific reviews, and you can see the ones I have available by using the Amazon link below. Look for them. Better yet, buy one and read it. You just might like it.

**********

You’re invited to visit my website, BROKEN GLASS, or
like my Book of Face page. You can find me on Goodreads, or follow some of my shorter ramblings on The Twitter.

**********

Visit my web site to hear the remarkable radio interview about my novel “Blood Lake” by The Authors Show.

**********

Comments posted below will be read, greatly appreciated and perhaps even answered.