Dealing with book reviews, or lack of them

I must confess that I'm sorely remiss about posting reviews of my book because,

1) I don't google alert myself. I tried, but it was old information and boring, so why bother? I know there's a trick to it, but I'm not really THAT interested. I should be, but . . .

2) I don't stalk my reviewers--well, not anymore. Stupid restraining order . . .  Just kidding! Again, this is a time consuming process. Many reviewers won't review electronic books and/or self-published books. There aren't that many reviewers of children's books who still review. Many of their sites are defunct.

3) I don't look my books up on Amazon that often. I used look them up, but when there are days and days of no sales and no comments. Again, why bother? I don't need to depress myself--I need to write the next book! Oh, I'll check Kindle DTP every now and then, but won't check Barnes and Noble's PubIT or Smashwords. Why? Because it takes FOREVER to log in.

4) I've learned that even when promised a review, it doesn't happen 85% of the time for various reasons. Disappointing, but true. I offered a number of my stories on various kindle boards and had a few people jump on the chance to read a free book by an unknown author. One of these kind reviewers was JML. No, I didn't pay her/him. No, I don't know her/him.

My first Amazon review of FAERIE: . . . uhm, YAY!

5.0 out of 5 stars Fast and FAERIEous, May 20, 2011
By JML - See all my reviewsThis review is from: The Fast and the FAERIEous (The Goblin's Apprentice) (Kindle Edition)

The Fast and the FAERIEous is another spectacular book by M.A. Golla. Continuing the story from To Gnome Me is to Love Me, 11-year-old Kyte has to cope with the drama of 6th grade while learning about and interacting with faeries, water nymphs, goblins, and the rest of the Mythical beings. These books keep getting better.

I do have a prequel to #3 called, A MAZE OF MONSTER MIX-UPS, which is a Halloween inspired short story that I plan to publish by the end of September.

I plan to publish The Goblin's Apprentice, book three, FOR WHOM THE BELL TROLLS, by the end of October.

AND I have another short story, SUGAR PLUM DISASTER, a Christmas inspired short story I will publish by the end of November.

So here's the dealio (guess which movie I stole borrowed this from?) I still need book reviews. I still need people to click, LIKE on my Amazon pages. I still need people to scroll down to the tags and agree with my tag cloud or add more tags. Tell your friends. Tell your family. Even if you aren't interested in reading this type of story, maybe you know someone who would be.

I will give away my books for any and all of these requests, BUT I want proof that you posted a review before I give away a free copy of book two, or Leprechaun.

And if you 'LIKE' my Facebook author page, you'll be the first to know when the other stories are up and I'll be giving away freebies through there.

That's it for today! Inspiration has struck and I'm writing The Goblin's Apprentice, book four, IT TROLLS FOR THEE.

Later, Peeps!

Ten Remarks about Self-Publishing

When I started this endeavor of self-publishing (referred to indie-published by many, but let's get real--it's self publishing!) my middle grade stories, I knew I would learn many things.

1) It's hard to make a living by writing. Then again, it all revolves around your definition of 'making a living'. If you want to live in NYC in a penthouse, then no, you probably won't make a living. But if you live in a cabin in the woods, well, your needs are probably minimal and yes, you can make a decent living.
--personally, I'd love to pay off my cover artists costs and have some money for a vacation, but THAT's not going to happen anytime soon!

2) Don't spend your money before you get it.
--Amazon pays quarterly. For example: The first quarter ran from Jan. 1-March 31. The books are closed around April 25. And I actually received a check four weeks after that on May 26. BUT if you don't make the minimum profit required, well, there's no check/deposit.
--so if you plan to quit your job and write, you need to have 3-4 publishable novels ready and available, THEN WAIT 2 OR 3 YEARS until you are generating an appropriate amount of income to support your household needs, including paying rent, utilities, food, AND insurance.

3) This is a long-term deal. Be patient. Very few people will do well right out of the gate. There are a few writers who are young and they've managed to score very good deals, post-self-publishing--Amanda Hocking is one. But for the rest of us, well, only time and word-of-mouth will help us. Even then, we still might not do as well as we would wish.

4) A writer need to have a business plan . . . AND about 4 or 5 books to publish that first year. The more you get out there, the better the odds of gaining readers. Trust me, it doesn't always happen, but it's better to load the dice in your favor.

5) There is still the stigma attached to self-published writers
--some of the stigma is well-deserved, but not by all self-published authors. Of course, I like to think I belong in this 'other' category
--I will reiterate here: Do NOT publish your first book--it usually isn't good enough. And your mom, spouse, brother, co-worker, etc. won't have the guts enough to tell you the truth. Remember the Jack Nicholson's line in A FEW GOOD MEN? "You CAN'T handle the truth!" Yeah, it's like that.
--Read and learn about the craft of writing, through classes, books and organizations.

6) Subjectivity. Once published (traditionally or self), no matter how clean your story is, someone will always find mistakes . . . and will tell you about them.
--not everyone will love your story.

7) YOU have to be agent, editor, formatter, cover artist and publicity expert. If you are unable to do something, you should PAY to have someone take care of it for you.
REMEMBER -- Cover, title, blurb. All three must be good enough to entice the potential reader to open to the first page. Then you have to reel them in with excellent writing.
--I can't draw worth a darn. I wouldn't even know where to begin to look for appropriate cover images for my story, therefore, I hired a cover artist.
--formatting isn't hard, just tedious
--copy editing (finding all those stupid mistakes, missing words, weird punctuation, etc) isn't hard, just tedious
--you have to pimp promote yourself. Ask various bloggers to post on their sites. Wander around various Kindle boards.  Offer freebies in exchange for a posted review (great in theory, but I've given away at least 10X more books than the reviews I've gotten).

8) Many reviewers won't touch you because you're a) self-published, 2) electronic, not paper.
--reality check here--I don't read reviews of books, but many people do follow reviewers, which results in exposure.
--many reviewers are bogged down with books from big name publishers that they don't have time to read everything they've been given.

9) Learning the business from the ground up. I've learned so much about the business of publishing a book that I feel confident continuing to get my stories out there.

And the best of all:

10)  READER'S EMAILS/REVIEWS.
--There is nothing better than reading about a reader's excitement when he/she is reading your story
--I have a special file on my Outlook where I save those emails.
--they make me happy and the reason I keep working to get the next story ready to publish.

That's just a few of my random blathering thoughts in a nutshell.

Later, Peeps!

The Truths about Self-Publishing

For those of you who think self-publishing is simply slapping your manuscript up on an e-pub site, let me be the first to educate you.

Just because you wrote a story, it doesn't mean it's ready for the big time.  Just because you read your rough draft and fixed a few errors, it doesn't mean it's ready for the big time.  Just because you allowed your family and friends to read your story (and they gushed . . . unlike my family who simply ignores me), it doesn't mean it's ready for the big time.

Once you finish that first story, you heave a big sigh, you can't wipe that huge grin of your face, you set it aside for a week or six, and you tell those near and dear that you finished your novel . . . and then the real work starts.

The creative portion of your work is out of the way, now you have to get analytical.  Yes, you have to be logical and think about how to improve your story and make it more marketable.  You need to see what's selling in your genre. You need to read your target genre VORACIOUSLY.  You need to know what length of book is acceptable for your particular genre.  You need to know what is morally acceptable in your particular genre. Pushing the limit on certain topics might work for your story, but be simply be AWARE. You might have a book that talks about abuse, drugs, and sex, but if it's for a Young Adult novel you need to approach it with a delicate touch.  YA's don't want preachy, they want real and if you can educate them at the same time then good for you.

And now you need to rip your story apart--RUTHLESSLY.  Cut any crap that doesn't move the story forward.  Cut any chapter/paragraph/sentence that doesn't show growth in your character, expand the plot, or reveal information. Cut any sentence that you have to read twice--if they confuse you, they will certainly confuse the reader. You need to be analytical about your story's pacing, characterization, and dialogue, which should reflect the style of each character (age, dialect, syntax).

If you think your story is ready to publish--think again. Do this 3-4 times before you even let anyone look at your story. Now is the time to call in your trusted writer friends, your critique buddies, or beta readers.  Let them know what is expected from them.  Do you want big picture items? Pacing, characterization, plot.  Or do you want them to find the nit-picky stuff? Grammar, punctuation, word choice (this is HUGE, especially with characterization). It's a waste of EVERYONES time if you have a CP fix your grammar and punctuation problems, if you have to cut an entire chapter or two because your pacing is off. 

REMEMBER: Fix the big stuff first and then work down to the little stuff.

You need to come up with a decent title.  It's up to you to find a title that conveys what your story is all about. Put on your thinking cap, brainstorm with your group of CP's, or simply jot down every crappy title you can think of until the most obscure thought pops into your mind.

Once you have a viable story and title, you need to come up with a blurb, synopsis and logline. A blurb is what you would find on the back of a physical book. It identifies the main character(s) and their conflict.  A synopsis (long-5-10 pages and short-1 page) describes your story in detail (some e pub sites require both).  And a logline is a way to convey your story idea in less than 30 words. Think of the TV blurbs in the paper or TV Guide. If you can't develop an 'elevator pitch', then you aren't ready for the big time. The Smashwords site requires a short blurb of less than 400 characters, not words, characters including spaces.  How would you tweet your story concept?  Condensing your 90,000 word story into 30 words is HARD.  You have to think about the core story, and then choose the words carefully to convey what that story is about.

THIS IS THE POINT WHERE YOU WOULD QUERY AGENTS AND EDITORS WITH YOUR STORY.  YOU ARE ALSO READY TO PITCH TO AN AGENT/EDITOR, TOO.
Now you need to think about your cover concept.  What is the impression you want the reader to have when they first see your cover?  Is it dark? Romantic? Thriller? Fun? Fantasy?  If this story is the first in a series, you need to think about the series logo, idea, or concept.  This idea will carry through all the books in the series, so spend some time thinking about your 'look'.  And if you have zero artistic talent, take a crowbar to your wallet and spend some money. 

Why?

Think about it.  What is the first thing a prospective reader sees when looking for a book?  The cover.

And now you have to think about tags.  Those are the words that will be searched on by a prospective reader. (for GNOME, I used, gnome, goblin, witch, magic, fantasy, etc)

You've checked all of the above and you think you're ready.

Think again.

Now it's time to format your story.  Get rid of all those stupid extra spaces that snuck in when you weren't looking.  You know the ones.  They're insidious.  Some times they crop up at the beginning of a paragraph or they multiply in-between sentences, or they'll even show up at the end of a sentence. This includes those extra ENTER keystrokes, which translate into blank pages in an e-book. You might not think it matters, but it does when your manuscript converts to the computer formats used by various e-readers. This is a good time to slowly go through your story AGAIN.  One trick is to go through it backwards to keep yourself from getting caught up in the story and missing things.

Verify each chapter number--trust me on this. Been there, done that. I forgot that I cut a chapter, which made everything wonky. If you changed a character's name, or left ??? where you meant to check something or find a more appropriate noun or verb.  Or simply left a word out of a sentence (and it had been missed by you AND THREE OTHER PEOPLE!). 

Take a deep breath and realize that you are now ready.  Look beginnings of other e-books that are in your genre.  Did they have a cover page, write a disclaimer, add licensing notes?

Now, you're ready.  Go through the instructions.  If you don't have a cover image the correct size, then fix it BEFORE you upload the image.  If you need to add a teaser chapter for your next book be sure to add it to your copy before you upload the document.

Then you have to fill out the legal forms and "sign the contract".

And all you have to do is wait for the money to roll in, right?  Be real, remember your you're (and this was after I proofed it 3 TIMES!) already in the hole . . .

Uh, think again.  Now comes the marketing part of the equation.

I don't know about you, but I'm beat.

So this is all for today!

Later Peeps!

Drudgery of Formatting

Tuesday morning, my beta reader/grammar maven sent GNOME back with her comments and edits.  This is the final FINAL edit of this story.  It's slow going because I decided to verify my formatting at the same time. 

When you take the step to self-pub, you have to do it all yourself (or pay someone).  Now, don't let the thought of formatting your work overwhelm you.  There are a few tricks of the trade, BUT it is very slow and tedious to check all your sentences to make certain you don't double space, have your quotation marks going the wrong direction, and place only one space AFTER every period, plus I didn't want too many paragraph returns between chapters since this can leave blank pages on e-readers.

I must say when my beta reader returned GNOME, she sent me an email along with the manuscript.  The one sentence that stood out was, "I read half the book last night, and frankly, I didn't want to stop, but I was SO exhausted I knew I was starting to read for just pleasure and I wasn't catching edits, so I shut it down for the night."

THIS was why I decided to take the step to self-publish. 

THIS was why I started writing middle grade.

I want to share my stories. I want to write stories that pull readers from their reality and immerse them into my fantasy. Editors and agents aren't looking for my type of story.  That's my reality. It's too light and not dark end-of-the-world type of story.

Is self-pubbing for everyone?  My response is still NO. 

This year, I intend to publish ALL my finished Goblin's Apprentice stories.  So far, that's three novels in the series and three short stories.  I also intend to write three more short stories.  Think about it.  The stories are written, but need editing, blurbs and covers= time and $$$.

Which means none of them are ready to go up without some work!

At the end of GNOME, I will place a teaser of the next book in the series, The Fast and the FAERIEous, but that doesn't mean FAERIE is ready to publish.  It needs edits-slicing and dicing-beta reads to catch the stupid mistakes (missing words, wrong tense, confusing sentences, etc). 

*sigh* and the cycle begins again.

I do have one regret by self-publishing.

I don't have any books to sign.  I won't get the chance to meet my readers at a book signing, but I'll take that trade off if I get kids to read my quirky stories.  And readers are more than welcome to chat with me on Facebook, or email me a note.

Sorry, I went off on a tangent again.

--and now, I need to figure out how to market my stories . . .

No excuse, just tired. 

Later, Peeps!

Contests, Bogus Contests, and Fun Links

A lot of stuff is going on in my head right now--no, the 'voices' aren't telling me to do bad things--it's more to the point of me  taking control of my career.  For the past mumble, mumble years, I have been trying to attract the interest of an agent or editor for my stories.

Uh, not much luck there. 

Though GNOME is out with two publishers one publisher (just got an 'R' last night) and one agent, I'm not holding my breath.  And reading numerous blogs by J.A. Konrath and Dean Wesley Smith, I decided to take a step toward self-publishing . . . a small step.  This week I'm going to be studying up on Smashwords and how to self-publish my short story, LOST LEPRECHAUN LOOT.  Now, I don't expect to make a lot of money, but I didn't set out writing to make a lot of money--the side effect would be nice, but I'm realistic here (Okay, it would be nice to make enough to pay for vacation.  See, I'm not asking for much!).  I want to share my stories with youngsters who enjoy being transported to another place, to a place where gnomes, faeries, and dragons exist. 

The only way that I can accomplish that is to do it on my own.  Publishing is changing.  And if writers let publishers and agents call the shots, we are giving our power away.  I'm tired of giving my power to another's whim and bias.  There are numerous writers who self-pub too soon.  I feel that my writing is ready, my stories are ready, and most of all, I AM READY. 

Contests:

Secret Agent contest:  There's a VERY narrow window of time to enter this contest.  READ the rules and don't enter unless you have a finished story!
http://misssnarksfirstvictim.blogspot.com/2011/01/january-secret-agent-eary-info.html

Writer's Digest monthly contest.  Deadline Feb. 10
http://www.writersdigest.com/YourStory

NPR 3 minute short story contest.  Deadline Jan 23
http://www.npr.org/2011/01/08/132744031/three-minute-fiction-round-6-laughing-and-crying

A link to a list of contests:  *WARNING* Do you own research.  Be wary of PAYING to enter a contest.
http://www.manuscriptediting.com/contests.htm

Bogus contest:  *WARNING* This contest will take your money and all rights to your story, see #13
http://ht.ly/3EazK

Fun links:

Liturature map:  put the name of your favorite author in the blank and click enter.  The site will 'discover' new authors that are similar to your interests.
http://www.literature-map.com/

Gender Genie:  Ever wonder if you write like a girl or a guy.  Or are you writing in  a male character's POV and wonder if you 'nailed' the guy voice?  Check this link out.
http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php

Thousands of Names: Sometimes it's hard to come up with a name for your character's.  Try this link.
http://www.lowchensaustralia.com/Names.htm

Dr. Wicked write or Die:  (desktop editon button on right)  Having a hard time focusing and just writing?  Depending how evil you make it, this site will start deleting your words if you don't write fast enough!
http://writeordie.com/