Jane Friedman developed a great infographic explaining the 5 different types of publishing--good information especially if you're trying to decide whether you want to self-publish or go a more traditional route.

Jody Hedlund addresses readers' criticism of authors--when is it too much? She advises that we always remember what it would be like to receive a nasty critique, and to be gracious in how we approach other writers.

Jody also has some tips for you on crafting a great book review.

We all need beta readers, no matter how good we are at our craft. Here Janice Hardy provides some insights on finding good betas, and why you need more than one.

Why attending a literary event may be the best way to land a literary agent of your own.

I read several great articles on self-publishing this week!

Be sure to check out these 5 Must-Do PR and Marketing Tips When Self-Publishing.

Another one for self-publishers--dealing with the ISBN. GalleyCat gives you some advice.

And then there's the all-important question--would self-publishing be a good option for me? Ask yourself these questions to find out.


Have a great weekend and we'll see you next week!

I'm critiquing a manuscript right now that's very good from a technical perspective. The writer knows her stuff, isn't making a lot of mistakes in terms of character or description, could marginally improve on some aspects, and has a firm command of sentence structure and language usage. We've had some exciting passages and characters struggling for their lives. But I have no idea why I'm reading this story.

Authors sometimes develop tunnel vision. To take a shot at an easy target (sigh) one of my critique partners asked me straight up, "What's the relationship between the main character and her mother supposed to be?" What kind of question is that? To me it was beyond obvious how the mother felt about the daughter and how the daughter felt about the mother. To me. It's not properly evoked in the manuscript, and so to everyone else, it was an unsettling bit of vagueness, and my critique partner is correct. It needs to be remedied (do you love my use of the passive voice there? Can you tell I'm reluctant to go back and edit?)

I couldn't see it myself because I knew what I meant. I suspect it's the same for the writer I'm critiquing now, and in case it's the same for you, here are some questions to ask yourself.

Is the main conflict of the story reflected in the first thirty pages? I'm not talking about jumping right in with all the juicy stuff you're rightly holding back until the proper time to reveal, but your actual story question. Let's go back to Star Wars (the first film) where our introduction to Luke shows us someone who feels oppressed by his circumstances, feels restless, feels he could do better, and is being held back by the constraints of the man serving as his father figure. We've already seen the Empire in action. Even without Lucas stopping the film to say "Wouldn't it be great if this restless, ambitious spirit could be put to use helping the Rebellion?" we feel that's the direction the story has to take.

Imagine if you just started with Luke going to town with his friends and drinking a beer, getting into a bar fight, tossing a quarter to an intergallactic beggar, repairing a broken droid he finds by the side of the road, chatting with a space trader... All the while he could be dropping hints that he's restless and his uncle is holding him back, and maybe we'd know there are Stormtroopers around. It could be exciting and well-written, but without the larger context of why any of this matters, we won't have a sense of where Luke is headed, and therefore where the story is headed.

You may think it's obvious what shape the story is going to take, or that your characters are pawns of the oppressive Evil Empire, or that your main character needs to develop self-confidence, but make sure it actually is. Go back into the text and actually highlight for yourself that the clues are there. 

You have to telegraph the main conflict of the story in your opening. Keep it understated, but include it. Your young magician is going to need to overcome his past? Fine. In the opening chapters, show a way in which that unspecified past is holding him back. 

Let's say you're reading a novel that opens with a mom and her seven-year-old child over dinner. There's no father or husband at dinner, and this appears to be their norm. Okay. Well, you can look at the cover or the category and figure out it's a romance, so probably the woman is going to meet someone and fall in love. But you're a bit directionless unless something happens during the dinner to tell us what is the obstacle to meeting someone and falling in love.

Child: "Oh, I forgot. We had a substitute for the afternoon. Mr. Miller got called out all of a sudden."
Mom: "Yeah. Probably fooling around with the school secretary."
Child: "What?"
Mom: "Nothing. Did you like the sub?"

Gee, she's bitter. Is that her past speaking? Was it the child's father who cheated, maybe her own father? Also, she doesn't mind talking right over her child's level of understanding -- was she treated with lack of respect as a child? Or is she just starved for adult conversation?

These are the tidbits we need in order to form a coherent world view within the story. We're also going to need to know how this woman fits into her society, how her situation compares to  those around her, how being single impacts her life and her child's life. Maybe it's beneficial to her to remain single because she's getting a barrel of money every month in alimony -- but show all this. Let us know what's holding her back and what's propelling her forward.

In Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need, Blake Snyder goes one further, and suggests you state the story's theme in the opening scene. We need a signpost so we know where we're headed. And yes, this works with my general aversion to opening a story with an explosion of action. We need to care, and before we can care, we need to know why we care. 

If you're on the road and you pass a sign that says Boston - 60 you have your direction, your time, your expectations. It does the same to telegraph the protagonist's hidden need and give a hint at the general problems of the world he's in. Once we know where your story is taking us, we're happy to come along for the ride.

---
Jane Lebak is the author of The Wrong Enemy. She has four kids, three cats, two books in print, and one husband. She lives in the Swamp and spends her time either writing books or knitting socks. At Seven Angels, Four Kids, One Family, she blogs about what happens when a distracted daydreamer and a gamer geek attempt to raise four kids. If you want to make her rich and famous, please contact the riveting Roseanne Wells of the Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency. 

Rejection.

It's a cruel beast, one that strikes through the heart of even the most stalwart person. Writers must be gluttons for punishment because our profession, by nature, is fraught with rejection. I've been asking for it myself for years now, as I've queried agents and editors and publishers while submitting my non-novel stuff around to everyone who'll read it. I've heard "no" more times than I can count.

And it never gets easier, not even when the no's are accompanied by apologies and compliments and offers to try again with something new. Even the form rejects hurt, making us think--what, I'm not good enough to reject personally? And how about the ones that say this is good but it doesn't fit my list/this issue/our publication? It's still a no. And it bugs us.

All these no's make it hideously easy for writers to doubt themselves. I used to wonder sometimes why I hadn't developed a complex. I wonder today if, in fact, I have.

Like most working writers (I hope so, at least) I have an email compulsion. I need to check and re-check and re-check often, hoping for a return on a query or a submission. I even developed a sort of separation anxiety since my day job is a twelve-hour shift without Internet. It had become so difficult to endure the day job-email blackout that I got a data plan on my phone. (And then I got a new phone because it was too hard to read mail on my Crackberry. Go figure.)

One day, my way out of work, I downloaded my mail to find new messages. Yay! I had that tiny thrill of happy-happy that momentarily satisfies my email compulsion. Even better when I saw two emails from a journal I'd submitted to back in October.

Of course, doubt strangled my excitement and the first thing I thought was, Oh great. Rejections. And sure enough, the first one was a form rejection. Boo.

Why bother checking the other right now? I thought. After all, it wasn't like the other had a subject that read BUT THIS ONE WE LOVED! Being a sadist, however, I decided to read it and get it over with, so at the first stop light, I hit retrieve. By the time the light changed, I'd noticed it was still downloading.

Fantastic, I thought. So much for painlessly ripping off that Band-Aid. The connection was murderously slow. Figures. This rejection was really going to make me work for it. I canceled the download and started over as I headed over the mountain. Fifteen minutes later, though, it was still only half downloaded.

What the heck? Curiosity consumed me. I pulled over onto the side of the road and checked the file size of the rejection. Eight MB. Ok. I checked the other one. Thirty-two hundred. Ooooo-kay. Which could mean…maybe not a rejection after all. I couldn't do anything about it, being in a low signal area, so I stowed my phone in my purse and resumed my drive home.

Here's where the whole I-think-I-have-a-complex comes in. I instantly began to doubt it could be good news. But I didn't have just any old doubt. Oh, no. This was Writer's Doubt to the nth degree.

Over the course of the next ten minutes, I went through a series of stages of doubt that ranged from maybe it's a form rejection and a copy of their newsletter to maybe it's a rejection and a copy of their submission guidelines with a warning to follow them next time. By the time I got home, I'd reached the confidence-crippling final stage of it's got to be a list of reasons why they're rejecting it accompanied by a wav. file of all the editors chanting YOU SUCK! YOU SUCK!

It took a while to get up the nerve to turn on my laptop and actually read the message. My heart was in my throat and my anxiety was so palpable the dog hid under the table and whined.

Stupid doubt. My poetry submission had been accepted and the email contained the contract.

Whew. Talk about dodging a bullet. I chuckled and sank bonelessly onto the couch, promising myself that, next time, I won't doubt myself to the point of neurosis.

But eh, who am I kidding? I may write fiction but I can't kid myself into believing that fantasy.




Ash Krafton is a speculative fiction writer who, despite having a Time Turner under her couch and three different sonic screwdrivers in her purse, still encounters difficulty with time management. Visit Ash's blog at www.ash-krafton.blogspot.com for news on her urban fantasy series The Books of the Demimonde (Pink Narcissus Press). Book Two "Blood Rush" was released May 2013. Currently, her urban fantasy novella "Stranger at the Hell Gate" (The Wild Rose Press) is available on Amazon's KDP Select.

Success Story

Please congratulate Naomi Hughes on her recent success at finding an agent! You can read her interview here.

Quick Tip 

Agents and publishers are gearing up for Book Expo America. Response times are likely to slow down until it's over.

Around the Internet

Consumer spending on books in 2012 was up 6.9% over 2011! (**flings confetti into the air**) Come on, economy. You can do it.

As reported on GalleyCat, the Department of Justice looked at eBook pricing before and after agency pricing took effect with five key publishers in April 2010. Very interesting reading, here.

Flying in the face of "write what you know," a 29 year old Chinese American from Queens is making waves with his novel about Mississippi. And the author has never been to Mississippi.

Amy Sue Nathan was one of the five winners in our April 2010 contest with agent Jason Yarn. She went on to become one of Jason's clients, and her first novel, The Glass Wives, came out yesterday. We're pleased to be able to find out how far she's come since our last interview with her!

Tell us a little bit about your novel and where people can learn more about it and where they can get it. 

THE GLASS WIVES is about Evie Glass, a divorced mom whose ex-husband dies suddenly leaving her the only parent of ten-year-old twins. Then, when Evie finds she’s strapped for cash, she takes in her ex’s widow and baby, so they can share living expenses and childcare. Troubled by this decision, Evie’s friends and family try to intervene, forcing Evie to walk out on long-time friendships until the widow causes a ruckus of her own. That’s when Evie has to decide who she can trust, and what really makes a family.

On May 14th THE GLASS WIVES became available in bookstores (indies and Barnes & Noble) as well as at Target stores. It's also available online everywhere books are sold.

What inspired you to write The Glass Wives? Where did the idea for this story come from? 

Like my main character, Evie, I’m a divorced mom in a suburb where everyone is married. And like Evie, my ex-husband passed away suddenly. When I divorced, I felt that some people were uncomfortable having a single mom for a friend. When my ex-husband died, well, they just didn’t know what to do with me, or my kids. We didn’t fit into any of the fixed suburban circles and frankly, I think the sadness in our lives overwhelmed them. Writing this novel allowed me to put this kind of discomfort—and its ramifications—on display and show that families are equal no matter their parts, and that the term broken home is outdated. There may be a few cracks in our walls, but broken? No way.

The sales aspect of writing—producing a good pitch and query and providing a great excerpt—can be very challenging for some writers. How did you learn to produce such catchy material? Were there any particular resources you used?

I have always belonged to writing groups and online forums, but I'd say in the years leading up to up querying my novel, the best resource was Backspace, where traditionally published authors (Karen Dionne, Randy Susan Meyers, Keith Cronin, and A.S. King, for example) and a few literary agents, were kind enough to give me tips, guidance, and advice that I always took to heart.

Do you have a writing routine?

When I'm on track I write fiction in the morning and non-fiction—essays, blog posts, interview questions, and interview answers (like these)—in the afternoon and evening. Working at home and being a single mom means I have to be flexible. Today my daughter had a doctor's appointment in the morning, so I did my fiction writing in the afternoon.  But my preference will always be morning. I'm an early bird!

What is the single best piece of writing advice you've ever gotten?

Recently, while working on the beginning of my new novel, I kept thinking about best-seller trends and what my editor would be looking for.  I considered fitting elements like magical realism or a heated romance, into my new story. And then Therese Walsh, author of The Last Will of Moira Leahy and co-founder of Writer Unboxed told me something very simple: separate the craft from the business. I wrote it on a sticky note and stuck it to my computer. She was right. I couldn’t worry about whether the book would sell, all I could do, at that moment, was to tell the story I needed to tell. And for me that story does not include zombies or a hot shirtless hero. At least not today.

What has been the hardest or most surprising thing you've learned on the journey between the time Jason began submitting to editors and your publication date?

That patience in publishing is not simply a virtue, it's a necessity.

What is the most important (or surprising) thing you've learned about publicity as you near your publication date? Do you have any advice for others on publicity?

I've learned there's no such thing as too much publicity. I'm not sure about "any publicity is good publicity" adage, but we'll see!  My advice would be to seize every opportunity to build relationships with readers and other writers because in the long run that will go farther than hundreds of "buy my book" tweets.

Are you working on any new projects? Can you tell us anything about them?

Absolutely! I'm always working on a few things, and right now I'm writing a novel about a blogger who tells lies online and keeps secrets in real life and what happen to make her finally truth. I'm also jotting down notes for two more book ideas I'm excited about. I know if I don't write down my ideas I'll lose them. Sometimes my best scenes are written on the backs of envelopes or napkins while I'm standing in the kitchen or parked in a parking lot!

Visit Amy Sue Nathan on her website, Twitter @AmySueNathan, or Facebook!

Daphne Uviller’s novels (SUPER IN THE CITY and HOTEL NO TELL) manage to be at once both smart and hilarious.  If you haven't read them, you should do so. Right now. Not only is Daphne herself both smart and hilarious, she has tackled a subject which terrifies so many authors (including me): Blurb Acquisition.  —Sarah P.

By: Daphne Uviller

You’re scanning books on the New Arrivals table of a bookstore (in this scenario, the end of civilization as we know it hasn’t yet arrived). You rapidly pick up and put down volumes, your neurons going slightly haywire over how to make sense of the crowd of titles begging for your attention, each of them desperate to take you out to dinner and a movie, maybe get to second base if you’d only give them a second glance.

Are you the type to be seduced by a cover? A first line? Do you go the Biblical route, letting the book fall open to a random page, and wait for soulful connection to leap forth?

Or do you read the blurbs?

Really? Huh. Tell me now. Is it the name of the blurber that attracts you? Or the title of her own book? Is it the phrase “New York Times bestseller” next to his name? Surely it isn’t the actual blurb itself. You don’t actually get around to reading that, do you?

Tina Fey is famous enough that she could afford to mock the entire blurb phenomenon on the jacket of Bossypants (“Totally worth it.” —Trees) and, like the rest of that book, she carried it off with self-deprecating humor. But the rest of us must use every last tool in the shed to promote our books, and the process of self-abasement begins long before your book jacket is even designed.

Scene II:
You’re sitting with your editor at a midtown Manhattan restaurant and you’re just so excited that someone is paying for your lunch and that you can say things like “lunch with my editor” that you don’t think to dread the awkward conversation about to unfold.

You’re each armed with a list of potential blurbers. On yours, some are friends who have published books who will almost definitely do you this favor; some are biggish names that friends of yours might ask on your behalf; and some are pie-in-the-sky reaches.

Yes, it’s your college application process, relived in all its horror.

Your editor goes first. She suggests a well-known writer who is in her stable and therefore (theoretically) easy to get. Alas, you’ve never heard of this well-known writer, but you don’t want to admit that you’re so unaware of your fellow writers, and, in particular, your editor’s other writers, so you feign excitement and hopefulness. “That would be AWESOME.”

Then you say, nervously snapping your breadsticks, what about, hee-hee, this is crazy, oh my god, I’d be so psyched, Nora Ephron?  And your editor dutifully scribbles something in her notes, and now it’s her turn to feign excitement and hopefulness. “Wow. That would be just...wow. I’ll see what we can do.”

With those out of the way, you turn to reality. “My friend came out with her first novel last year, and I blurbed her book, so she’d probably blurb mine.”

Great, great! What else?

“Um, well, this other friend, her book was serious literary fiction, not at all the same genre as mine, but she was a New York Times bestseller—”

“ASK her!”

So Hotel No Tell is blurbed entirely by kind friends: Jenny Nelson (author of Georgia’s Kitchen, which I blurbed) was well-matched to my book in terms of genre. Then I have Janice Y.K. Lee, who managed to complete her New York Times best-selling novel The Piano Teacher in small part because I made her meet me for writing dates, so I think she felt obligated. I’m extremely proud of my books, but I bet Janice was a little embarrassed. My publisher put her blurb on the front cover.

Then we alit on new territory: Hollywood. I remembered that I have friends who have written movies, funny movies. Movies that were actually made and released. Hey, this was interesting... And so, to my great delight, I have a perfect blurb by the writers of Dinner for Schmucks. These kind, talented men were, not to put too fine a point on it, fresh meat. That is, not too tapped out by dozens of previous requests to groan at mine. I think, I think, they actually enjoyed the task.

Years ago, after she’d established a rock-solid writing career but before summiting the Everest that was Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert promised me, “If you write a novel, I will blurb it. Remember that when you need incentive to keep working.” I finished my first novel just as the world was in the midst of its EPL frenzy. I gave Liz the option of backing out of her promise, telling her I understood that her name was now a commodity to be protected.

Forty-eight hours after she received the manuscript, she e-mailed me her blurb. My agent was able to put it on the manuscript of Super in the City before we sent it out to editors. It was rejected by seven houses before it was accepted, but I’m convinced that her blurb got my manuscript to the tops of editors’ piles.

There are writers known as “blurb whores” – people who will blurb just about anything with pages, and I think this is an outrageous stigma. What these generous people are doing is sharing their fame and good fortune, trying to extend it to help you, the newbie writer.

I hope one day to be well-enough-established that my skimmed name and praise on the back of a book jacket would be of some help to another writer.

Sarah: Thank you Daphne!  Can I ask you a question?  If you could ban any three adjectives from all future book blurbs, which ones would you choose?

Daphne: "Thoroughly enjoyable," "entertaining."  And "readable."  Because they damn with unoriginal praise.

Sarah: Ah, yes.  Sort of like calling a wine "drinkable."  Although... having a glass of drinkable wine while asking for blurbs is probably a good call.

Daphne: Indeed.


This post originally appeared on Blurb is a Verb, the book publicity blog. You may also be interested in How to Ask for a Blurb (Even When You're Intimidated).