Do you like answering questions? Do you love a good survey? Do you delight in being asked for your opinion? Then step right up! Because I have just the thing for you….
As you’ll already know, I don’t just blog and write about self-publishing: I talk to people about it as well.
These speaking engagements are usually either a full day’s course, which is just me taking the participants through self-publishing from A to Z, or smaller, introductory style things, where I might aim to give an overview of the process in an hour and a half or two. I always aim to achieve at least what I consider to be the most important thing: to give the soon-to-be self-published author a roadmap, to give them the whole picture so they know the repercussions of, say, not choosing a cover design that works in thumbnail size and black or white, or why the actual self-publishing bit isn’t at the start of the process, but just after the middle of it. That’s what I wish I had back when I started self-publishing. Because although the logistics of self-publishing, like formatting an e-book, are easy to find laid out step-by-step online—including on this blog—it’s harder to find someone who will say ‘Well, first you must think of this…’ and ‘We do this now because we’ll need that later…’ and ‘For the love of fudge, don’t use tabs!’ Even before we get to that, it’s much easier to take things in when someone is telling you them. Scrolling through the internet is nowhere near as much fun.
But I’ve only ever done these talks here in Ireland, or in London. So if you live anywhere else and your self-publishing budget doesn’t consist of blocks of gold bullion, it’s not really possible for you to attend. Then when I was in Orlando in February and I met up with the lovely Duolit girls, they told me about Udemy, a service that allows you to upload and sell video courses online, which the buyers of can then access whenever they want.
I’m thinking of doing this, and I want to gauge whether or not you think it’s a good idea, whether or not you’d be interested and how much you think is a fair price to pay for it.
Warning: I may ignore every single thing I learn from this post, and do what I was planning regardless. We’ll see.
So, please read the information below and then answer the questions. You can also tell me what you think in the comments below. Thank you in advance!
The Plan
Self-Printed: The Sane Person’s Online Course to Self-Publishing will consist of three parts. Each one will stand alone, or you can get all three for the full experience. They’ll be based on the full-day self-publishing course I do in person, and will break down into three parts:
Preparing to Self-Publish
Self-Publish an E-book and POD Paperback
Launch and Sell Your Self-Published Book Online
Each of these will consist of a ‘main’ video (i.e. me talking to you) and supporting course materials in PDF (i.e. instructions for to print out and refer to if need be). The PDF materials will include Self-Printed: The Sane Person’s Guide to Self-Publishing. The videos will include on-screen, real time, step-by-step, click-this-button-and-then-click-that-one type instructions.
Before anyone says it: I’m not going to make an e-book only video. Producing a POD paperback is just an add on to the e-book process, really, and so it doesn’t warrant a video of its own. Everything ties in, so they go in one video.
There will also be a free to view preview video to give you an idea of what the course content is like.
The Pricing
Each video will be around 1.5 hours long and cost $49.
That’s about £29 or €36, per video.
To compare, my full-day course price ranges from $160 to $255. (The prices are set by the organizers, not by me.) That’s a range of £102 to £164, or €125 to €200.
So one day with me telling you in person: anywhere from $160 to $255.
Four and a half hours of me telling you via the magic of video: $150-ish. Plus you get lots of extra materials, you can go through it as many times as you like, and you don’t have to leave your house.
You’ll also be able to buy all three videos in one for $125.
The Credentials
Please take into account that I’m experienced at this—both talking about self-publishing and doing it myself. I’ve done events for:
And here are some things people have said about Self-Printed:
“The BEST book on self-publishing … Seriously, GET THIS NOW!” –David Wright, co-author of the bestselling YESTERDAY’S GONE series
“The best thing about Catherine is that she not only lives the dream, but offers you a stepladder up to join her. The advice she gives is utterly practical and the whole [book] is suffused with humour. I am a fan.” –Alison Baverstock, author of IS THERE A BOOK IN YOU? & senior lecturer on the Publishing MA at Kingston University (UK)
“An exceptional breath of realism, real knowledge and hard experience–don’t dream of self-publishing your book without it.” –Nicola Morgan, award-winning author of 90 books–including the Carnegie-nominated WASTED and WRITE TO BE PUBLISHED– and the blog Help! I Need a Publisher!
So, taking all this into account, please answer the questions below…
WARNING: This is one of them long ones. Better go get a fresh cup of coffee before you start…
We all know I love publishers. I still hope, should I ever finish The Novel, to be published by one of them. Say silly things like legacy or gatekeepers, or use something as serious and tragic as the Irish potato famine—or rape or Stockholm Syndrome, for that matter—to describe the relationship between the author and the business that has risked its money to get that author’s book to market, and you go straight onto my Naughty List.
(Well, there isn’t actually a Naughty List. Who has the time? I will roll my eyes at you though.)
I don’t believe for a second, for instance, what is pretty much an accepted ‘fact’ by the majority of the self-publishing community: that traditional publishers don’t publicize and/or care about the books they publish. I’ve seen for myself that this is simply not true. The bad publishers might not, but it’s up to you not to sign contracts with them. (Or at least not sign contracts with them twice, or tarnish all publishers with the same brush just because of one experience.) Even if I took away what I’ve seen firsthand, there would still be the evidence of logic: publishing is a business, and any business that isn’t run by morons wants to recoup their investment, i.e. any advance paid, printing and staff costs. They market and publicize and support their product as much as they can because it’s in their interests for it to sell.
Here’s a nice relaxing photo for you this Monday morning. You’re welcome!
Anyway, I tell you this because I want to make it clear that despite my self-publishing background, I ain’t a publisher-basher. But there is one area where some of them do need a stern talking to, and that’s their attitude towards using social media to promote their books. The Big Ones are all over it (that’s probably why they’re The Big Ones) but others aren’t even making an effort, which is crazy as they’re the ones who stand to benefit the most on the internet’s level playing field.
This is something they have in common with a lot of self-publishers, as luck would have it, so let’s talk about this attitude and the reasons behind it here today.
Do any of these statements sound at all familiar?
‘But does Twitter really sell books? So-and-so has 10,000 followers and he only sold 500 books…’
‘Ugh. I can’t be bothered with Facebook and all that silly stuff.’
‘Why waste your time on that when books have sold fine without all this rubbish until now?’
‘There’s no evidence social media does anything except suck away time.’
‘I have NEVER bought a book because someone on Goodreads recommended it to me. NEVAAAH!’
‘Is this over yet? Call me when Twitter is gone.’
(From the writer) ‘But I want just to WRITE!’
I talked about this recently in a post called The Author Platform: Are You Being Cautious… Or Just Lazy? But I think beyond caution and laziness, there’s yet another reason why you might be turning your nose up at the idea of using social media to sell books: you might have it all wrong. The phrases using social media to sell books and promoting your books on social networks offer no real, tangible, practical clues as to how one might do such a thing, and once you start throwing around buzzwords like discoverability, the process becomes even murkier still.
So I think it’s time we demystified this whole selling-books-with-social-media thing. Because maybe if we took your average Social Media Skeptic and explained to them, in practical, tangible terms, what it actually means, they’d feel differently.
Using social media to promote your book is not anything magic or mystical. It’s not a hit-or-miss fuzzy cloud from which success only rarely emerges. It’s just the simple act of:
Finding readers who liked a book like yours
Telling them about your one.
As the meerkats would say, simples!
And here’s another one… (Because who wants pictures of Twitter logos? BORING!)
But Wait… Does It REALLY Sell Books?
Yes, it does. It sold mine, it sells the books of my self-published friends, and it’s worked wonders for countless traditionally published titles. But most of the time, we can’t prove it. No one listens to self-publishers because for some reason self-published success is still treated like a total fluke. Even when the author says ‘Well, I did this and then I did this and then sales really picked up when I started doing this’, no one listens. They just think wasn’t he lucky?! And publishing houses use lots of different methods to sell books, so they can’t really say for sure why a certain book was a bestseller, only that, as a whole, the campaign worked. The other problem is that it doesn’t sell all the books, and the skeptics latch on to each Twitter-flavored failure and hold it up as high as they can. If it fails, it means they don’t have to worry about it.
But tell me what, besides Oprah or the New York Times, can be guaranteed to sell thousands or hundreds of thousands or even millions copies of a book? Two books get great media coverage, meet you inside the door of every major bookstore and collect glowing reviews. One ends up selling a million copies, and the other disappears without a trace. Why? Because that’s just how it goes! That’s how publicity pans out. Sometimes it works, and we don’t know exactly why, and sometimes it doesn’t, and we can’t say for sure what went wrong.
The beauty of social media is that, should it fail, the only thing you’ve spent, for the most part, is time.
The other benefit is that what you have done has been targeted to readers who like books like yours. Spend money on a radio ad, for example, and you don’t know who’ll hear it. But get your crime novel reviewed or mentioned on a crime book blog, or reviewed by an influential crime novel-loving Goodreads user, and you know that promotion hit home. People always want to know time-saving tricks for using social media, but social media itself is a time-saving trick, because it cuts you a path to your target market.
Much like Salon’s recent spate of anti-self-publishing articles*, we should also look at these so-called failures a little closer. When someone says ‘I used Twitter and it didn’t work’, is that really evidence that Twitter doesn’t sell books? Were they using it right? Like I said last Friday, it’s like having a treadmill in your garage, failing to lose 30 pounds and then concluding that treadmills don’t lead to weight loss. Did you use the treadmill? Did you eat right? Did you avoid those knock-off Choc Ices from Aldi? I congratulate you if you did, because they’re delicious…
We may have wandered slightly off topic here.
Anyway, social media can sell books. I know it can, because that’s how I sold mine—and how countless self-published friends sold theirs (a lot more of them than me), including a few who’ve sold more than 100,000—and because that’s how I now find out about a lot of the new books I buy and authors I decide to try. (Ooh, look: I’m a poet and I… am unaware.) Even if you don’t buy that, you can’t deny that the readers are out there, online. Twelve million of them on Goodreads. A thriving book-loving community on Twitter. And then there’s the fans and subscribers of countless book blogs, author websites, etc. They are there. You can’t deny that. And if you’re a reader, you’ll know that a good book recommendation is the best thing after a good book. We want to hear about the new books. We want to add to our To Read pile. And if you don’t bother telling me about your book, one of your competitors will get in there and tell me about theirs instead.
I want to go to there.
Engagement, Not Advertising
But it’s not advertising, and so saying ‘oh, so-and-so has 10,000 followers and he only sold 1,000 books, therefore social media doesn’t sell books’ means you don’t get any Pretend Choc Ices.
This is really, at the end of the day, about good content. Create good content, post that content, drive eyeballs to that content, convince me with your cover and your blurb and your advance praise and your writer’s credentials to hit the ‘Buy’ button and—ta-daa!—you’ve sold me a book. And by good content we mean something that stands alone as entertainment or useful information, even if you took away the advertising-a-book-bit.
While we’re on the subject of book trailers, STOP WITH THE MOVIE-STYLE ONES, for the love of fudge. Even if they work, they sell just one book—to me, the person watching it. But make it funny, make it entertaining or make it not really about the book at all, and not only will I buy the book, but I’ll pass the book trailer on.
For example, boring with a capital B:
Yawn.
But wait, LET ME STICK THIS UP ON FACEBOOK AT ONCE!
I read a great line about content during the week (from a graph on Pinterest, of all places): valuable content earns you permission to sell. Write it on a prominent Post-It, people.
Or read this great post on The Creative Penn which talks about this being not social media marketing but content marketing, with social media is just the delivery system.
The Numbers You Can’t Deny
Even if you don’t believe that social media can be used to sell books, here is a number you can’t deny: 12,000,000. That’s how many users Goodreads has. That’s a website where only people who love to read books and share the books they’ve read love to go. Twelve million. And that’s before we even think about the readers on Twitter, or Facebook, or blogs.
And remember: Goodreads, at its core, is about personal recommendations. We follow someone whose taste we trust, we see that she liked a certain book, we think we’ll like it too. Five years ago I would’ve finished a book I loved and told a couple of friends about it. Now, I can share it on Goodreads, tweet about it, blog about it, stick it up on Facebook… Word-of-mouth is still what makes a bestseller. What’s changed is that word-of-mouth now involves a lot more people, and because there’s a lot more people, it can benefit a lot more books.
We don’t know where Twitter and Facebook and all that malarkey will be in five or ten years’ time, but I think it’s safe to say that social reading is here to stay. So at the very least, you should be turning your head towards that.
The readers are out there. They want to know what to read next. And you’re publishing books. You two need to get it on.
I’m one of these readers. That’s why I can say this with a degree of confidence. Nearly all the new books I read (new releases but also authors I haven’t read before) now find their way into my consciousness via Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads or a blog post. Just this past week it happened with Just What Kind of Mother Are You? and My Criminal World, and I’m counting down the days until I can get my hands on a copy of The Silent Wife (which the internet just seems to refuse to shut up about, and tortuously it’s not out until July).
All you have to do is find us, tell us about your book through good content, a book which we should be predisposed to liking because it’s similar to other books we have publicly expressed a love for in the past, and finally aim to convince us, through the book itself (cover, blurb, etc.) to buy it.
No voodoo involved.
(Seriously: 2,015 words. And I wonder why The Novel isn’t finished!)
*Salon are really having a laugh lately. First of all we had I’m a Self-Publishing Failure, and the internet whispers tell me that the guy didn’t have an e-book for sale, and then we had The future is no fun—self-publishing is the worst, which was about a newly self-published author trying to promote his book through the same channels that had promoted the books he’d previously got traditionally published, like newspapers, TV, etc. which is just stoopid. Trad books=trad media. Self-published books=online media, i.e. the place where nearly all the self-published books are sold. I mean, REALLY.
What do you think? If you’re not using social media to promote your books, why not? And does selling books this way work on you? How do you find out about the books you read?
This day last week I was in Dublin, talking to publishers (scary!) about how to use social media to help promote their books, and why they should. The lovely Stephanie of Publishing Ireland, who organized the seminar, wrote a blog post about it for the Publishing Ireland site, and she’s kindly let me re-post it here so non-Publishing Ireland members can read it.
Come back Monday for my thoughts on the horrifying disconnect between what ‘social media’ actually is and what some publishers/some self-publishers think it is, and more about disused and dusty treadmills… (It’ll all make sense, trust me!)
Yes, even my Power Point presentations are pink.
Social Media is Just Like a Treadmill Really!
Blaming social media for not coming through is like blaming an unused treadmill, said Catherine Ryan Howard, author, marketeer and social media guru extraordinaire last Friday as she explained the inevitable question of whether or not social media actually helps sell more books. ’This is a question I get asked a lot’, she said, ‘and the answer is that it absolutely does!’ ’Having twitter, not using it right and then blaming it for not boosting your sales is like having a treadmill, not using it and blaming it for not losing any weight!’
Social Media for Publishers kicked off last Friday with a motley crew encompassing every sector from digital projects to marketing and editorial as social media guru Catherine Ryan Howard took us through the do’s and don’ts of how to sell your books through social media.
From the inescapable growth of Facebook and Goodreads to newer kid on the block Pinterest (which is by the way the fastest growing social network ever), Catherine offered a practical and no-holes barred approach to making your books more ‘discovereable’- a word which Catherine herself admits a certain hatred of!
Among the key points to take away from the session were simple and time-effective ways to use social media tools- and the right tools!, setting the right tone for your message, and, most importantly, accepting the fact that social media, in whatever tool it comes under is here to stay!
‘The seminar was very helpful and informative. Catherine’s lively and engaging presentation was excellent; she helped to dispel a lot of misconceptions about social media and provided very useful examples of how different elements/formats of social media are particularly applicable to publishing and, if utilised appropriately, can have a positive impact to create engagement with the book buyers we want to appeal to.’ –Helena King, Assistant Editor, Royal Irish Academy
‘The seminar was extremely relevant- Catherine was articulate and very engaging!’ – Kitty Lyddon, Manager, Assistant Editor at The Lilliput Press
Missed this one? Never mind, we have more seminars coming up in the series over the next couple of weeks. Keep an eye out for our next sessions on Fiction Editing with Rachel Pierce on 10 and 17 May. For more information, go to the Publishing Ireland website or email stephanie@publishingireland.com.
____________
Thanks Stephanie! While we’re on the subject of me telling people things, if you have attended one of my talks or workshops, didn’t find it completely awful/a total snoozefest and would consider writing a little endorsement like the quotes above, please write a few lines and send it to me via the Contact page. It’s for a secret summer project of mine… (Oooh, mysterious!)
On another related note, I will be talking self-publishing at the Guardian’s Getting Your Book Published Masterclass in London on June 15-16. Details here.
Regular readers of this blog or those of you who have ploughed your way through all 120,000 words of Self-Printed will know that I’m a big fan of The Book Designer and the man behind it, Joel Friedlander (@JFBookman on Twitter). It’s a fantastic resource for self-publishers and it always makes for interesting reading too. Joel also runs monthly e-book design awards, which offer a sometimes wonderful, sometimes… um, not so wonderful (ahem) insight into the world of self-published e-book cover design. Recently he launched Book Design Templates for self-publishers, and he’s here today to tell us more about them. Welcome, Joel!
Me: Please explain to us what exactly are your Book Design Templates, and how self-published authors can use them.
Joel: They are Microsoft Word template files specifically designed for authors who want to do their own book formatting. A template file is simply a pre-formatted layout used to make new documents with the same design. There are 9 different designs, and each is available in standard book sizes as well as in ebook versions.
The templates allow you to quickly create a book interior because all the basic work has been done for you. The templates are sized properly and contain all the Word style definitions needed to format the text in your book. Not only that, they come with the fonts you need as well as an extensive Formatting Guide that walks you through the process of getting your text into the template.
M: You know there are self-publishers reading this now who can’t imagine why they’d need to use one of these templates. Here’s your chance to convince them…
J: Well, let me tell you Catherine, that there are a lot of authors who need something like this. The reason I say that is because I see a lot of self-published books, and most of them contain formatting errors. And I don’t mean errors like forgetting to put in your chapter title, I mean errors in book construction.
Now there’s no reason an author can’t do the same thing herself. What the template accomplishes for you is to make sure your file is set up properly, that it looks good, that you’re using appropriate fonts, and that your book will conform to industry standards. So we’ve taken care of most of the work for you, and at a very reasonable price. I think that’s pretty cool.
M: Your website, TheBookDesigner.com, is a treasure trove of advice for the self-publishing author (that I recommend to other self-publishers all the time). What do you think is the ONE thing self-publishers need to know about producing a professional-looking print book?
J: If you want to create a package that gives your book the best chance of success, there are things you can do. First, for your cover, I strongly recommend hiring a professional cover designer, and this expense will be well worthwhile.
For those authors who plan to produce their own book interiors, you’ll need to learn about how books are put together, where each part is supposed to be in relation to other parts of the book, how we separate sections and number pages, and all the minutia of book construction.
Your other choices are to hire a book designer to format your interior, or you might want to take a look at our book templates, which take care of most of this stuff for you.
M: Once upon a time I didn’t understand why self-publishers would start Chapter 1 on page 1 when, presumably, there were traditionally published books on their shelves at home that they could pick up and refer to for guidance at any time. But since then I’ve made mistakes in my own paperbacks (such as not realizing that using MS Word’s sections feature, I can ensure that my blank pages are actually blank) so I can see how it happens. Why do you think it’s so difficult for self-publishers to get their print interiors right, especially considering that there are also—hopefully—avid readers?
J: Yes, it’s curious, isn’t it? I think I know why this happens, too. Almost all of us have grown up with books, and we were introduced to them even before we could read, when Mum or Dad would read us to sleep.
Consequently, we pretty much take books for granted. They seem like such dead simple parts of ordinary life, we can’t imagine that there’s anything complicated about them at all.
It’s only when you try to create a real book yourself that it slowly dawns on you that the apparently simple object actually has lots of parts, many details that need to be decided, and a whole raft of centuries-old conventions that need to be followed if you don’t want to create uneasiness in your readers.
M: Anyone who has ever tried to format their manuscript for upload to Smashwords or KDP knows that MS Word is indeed the devil. But why is it so difficult to make a good looking paperback interior with it? What are the biggest hurdles?
J: That’s pretty funny, Catherine. Of course, Microsoft Word is a brilliant program when it’s applied to its intended uses, mostly in an office environment. It makes it easy to create memos, reports, flyers, and many other common documents.
But it was never designed as a typesetting program, or intended for book layout. I can’t tell you how many self-published books I’ve seen with really horrible errors, like running heads on the title page, blank pages with page numbers, text that floats around the page, and formatting inconsistencies throughout.
Our templates were designed to get authors over those hurdles without them having to become Word ninjas. The template makes it easy.
M: The reaction to the Book Design Templates, from what I’ve seen, has been amazing. Has this surprised you? And what’s next for The Book Designer?
J: Right away it was obvious that we had hit on something people really wanted. Instead of struggling with Word for hour after frustrating hour, and not even getting the result you want after all that work, authors saw right away that the template would free them from the drudgery and mistakes. I love that.
What’s on the horizon? We’ll keep expanding the template line, since we’re getting regular requests for sizes and styles we haven’t had a chance to develop yet.
And I’ll break some news here too. My next business will go in the opposite direction. I’m working right now on setting up a business to provide done-for-you professional-level book interiors based on the outstanding typography produced by Adobe InDesign and employing my own award-winning book designs.
I can’t say any more about that yet, but I’m pretty excited about it. This way, no matter how an author wants to get their book done—by themselves using the software they already own and know how to use, or with professional typesetting—I’ll be able to help them get into print.
For over 25 years I’ve been an advocate for self-publishing, and I love helping authors get their books done and into the hands of readers. That’s my mission, whether it’s on my blog, with these templates, or any of the other ways I try to help authors realize their publishing dreams.
* * * * *
Thanks so much Joel! And if you’re interested in these templates, I have great news: Joel is offering Catherine, Caffeinated readers a whopping 46% off until April 30 on http://www.bookdesigntemplates.com! Just enter the coupon code template46 at checkout.
If you don’t want to go the template route, there’s also the very helpful Book Construction Blueprint, a fantastic resource for anyone creating their own books, and it’s available for free on the template site. You can find that here.
Since Monday I’ve been studiously avoiding my London-based Twitter friends. There’s stacks of unread blog posts in my Google Reader account* including a series from one of my favorite writerly advice sites that under normal circumstances I’d gobble up immediately. And every morning, my ‘Morning Briefing’ e-mail from The Bookseller is getting deleted without being opened.
Why? Because the London Book Fair is on, and I just can’t stand to hear about it.
Not because I don’t like the London Book Fair. On the contrary, I’d love to go. A hall filled with publishers, agents and authors chattering excitedly about books, meeting up with Twitter friends in real life, perhaps even being one of those crazy people who sidle up to agents in the bathrooms and casually slip USB sticks with their manuscript on it into a pocket or a bag… What’s not to like?
The fair itself is not the problem.
I am.
Once upon a time I had never even heard of the LBF, but since I entered the publishing world (through a back gate that Amazon took a crowbar to on my behalf, i.e. self-publishing e-books) four of them have gone by. Four of them! And each one is a reminder that I haven’t got published yet. I realize that I’ve achieved lots of other things, and that’s great, but they don’t add up to getting published. If anything, they make me feel worse, because I look around at all the people I know—and there seems to be lots of them—who are signing with top agents and getting amazing deals and just generally having fantastic publishing-themed things happen to them, and I wonder what the hell I’m doing wrong, because finishing a novel is the only thing on their writing CV while mine, between self-publishing and media appearances and speaking engagements and working with publishers, is running to two pages—
And then the penny drops.
They’ve finished a novel.
I have finished writing one novel in my entire life, and that was back in 2010. It actually coincided with the first LBF I paid any attention to.
I don’t generally talk about my non-self-publishing endeavors on this blog, so here’s a recap: since 2010 there’s been stops and starts, feasts and famines, and two entirely different genres. But due mostly to the fact that self-publishing—and talking about self-publishing—has really taken off for me, I haven’t finished a novel. And because my plan is to use this novel to get an agent, I’m stuck. Stuck and succeeding, at the same time. Amazing things are happening to me because of self-publishing, but my ultimate goal, that of getting a novel published, is getting nowhere.
And every time a LBF comes around it’s a reminder that I’ve somehow let another year go by without finding a way to balance the two. It’s just like New Year’s Eve: a reminder that you haven’t done all the things you said you’d do this year. Only this one is especially for writers, and everyone else at this New Year’s Eve party seems to have just signed a six-figure deal, despite the fact that it wasn’t even on their list of goals this day last year. Hell, they didn’t even make goals last year! This just happened! It all came as a complete surprise!
LBFs past serve as markers in my book deal pursuits. In April 2011, I’d decided to to ditch the new novel I’d started following the ‘we don’t love this but can we see something else?’ feedback that first novel had got, and focus on self-publishing for a few months instead, releasing Self-Printed and Backpacked only a summer apart. In April 2012, I was working on a chapter-by-chapter outline for yet another novel following a meeting with an editor who liked the sound of the idea but wanted to see it worked out, but I was only a few months away from ditching that too in favor of writing something completely different, the thing I (I’d just realized) really wanted to write. And today, April 2013, I’m a third of the way into that Something Completely Different, but busier than ever. I just sent 30,000 words of Travelled: Episode 1 to my copyeditor, I’m doing freelance social media work for a major publisher and ’tis the season of speaking engagements—I’m off to ChipLitFest in the morning and still need to finish my presentation.
I’m not complaining. Not at all. What I’m doing is berating myself for not getting a handle on this. I actually have loads of time. I have oodles of it: I don’t do anything else except this. And all those people I know who’ve signed deals? Almost all of them have full-time jobs. In terms of how much time self-publishing, etc. takes, I work maybe 4 full days a week. That leaves the equivalent of 3 just for writing. So why haven’t I finished? It might be fear, or it might just be plain laziness. It might be all those Scandinavian crime drama box sets. All I know for sure is that I haven’t finished writing a novel I really want to write and am really excited about yet.
I have a drastic plan on the horizon though. And the entire month of May is as yet mercifully free of events. And I’ve watched all three seasons of The Killing, two of Borgen and the only existing one of The Bridge, so I’m out of those for now.
I saw a quote on Pinterest last week: do something today your future self would be proud of. I’ve written it on a Post-It and stuck it to my Mac, and when I read future self I think of me a year from now, and how I’ll feel if I still haven’t finished the novel.
Because I just cannot face another LBF.
What do you think? Are there any milestones that send you hiding under the duvet? Or do you think events like the LBF make good goals to work towards, e.g. by the next LBF, I’ll have finished my novel? Let me know in the comments below…
*I know it’ll be gone soon—I’m moving to Feedly in baby steps.
Thanks to everyone who entered the Mousetrapped in hardcover/Self-Printed in paperback giveaway by leaving a comment on one or more of the Mousetrapped Madness posts, which were:
Please let me know whether you’d like Mousetrapped OR Self-Printed, and what name should go in the inscription. You can contact me through the Contact page.
And if you didn’t win, you have one more chance. I’m using Rafflecopter to run a Mousetrapped giveaway on Facebook. Technically it’s only for Mousetrapped but the winner can have any book of mine they want; I’m nice like that.
In other news, ChipLitFest is just two weeks away and a little bird tells me there’s four tickets left my ‘The Art Of Self-Publishing’ workshop (or there was three days ago, anyway!) Tickets are £25 and you can book them here.
There’ll be no Sunday Reads this weekend, so I’ll see you next week. Have a good one!
Following on from last week’s very popular guest post, Why Hire An Editor?, Robert Doran, editorial director at Kazoo Independent Publishing Services, is back today to tell us about structural editing. While copyediting and proofreading are absolute musts, I don’t think a self-publisher’s money is always put to best use by getting a structural edit for their book. So today Robert gives us some tips on, first of all, what a structural edit is, and secondly, what we can do ourselves to ensure our book is structurally sound. Welcome back, Robert!
Structurally Sound
Structural editing (sometimes called developmental editing or substantive editing) is the most complex and time-consuming stage of the editorial process. As a result it’s also the most expensive. Nevertheless a structural edit is something that most manuscripts can benefit greatly from. So what’s a self-publisher to do?
I know you’re expecting me to say, ‘Hire an editor!’ and if you can afford to do that, it’s probably the best option. But if paying for a structural edit means you won’t be able to afford a copy-edit, you need to consider other solutions. A copy-edit, to my mind, really isn’t optional, and it will always be the most effective way to spend your budget.
We’ll come back to how you can best handle structural editing in a bit, but first let’s look at what it actually is. Structural editing is looking at the big picture. It’s evaluating a manuscript as a whole and analysing how well its constituent parts contribute to the central message or narrative. Whereas the copy-editor takes a micro view, drilling into the detail, the structural editor goes macro and asks, ‘Does this work as a book?’
In fiction, the main areas that a structural editor will address are:
Plot: Does the plot make sense? Is it believable? Is it satisfying or does it leave the reader frustrated?
Themes: Are the themes effectively handled? Are there so many that the book lacks focus? Do they interfere with the plot or complement it?
Characterisation: Are your characters well developed and believable? Are they cast in a role that fits their personality? Do they sometimes behave out of character?
Point of view/voice: Is the voice consistent or is it sometimes confused? Is the voice authentic? Are you using too many or too few POVs?
Pace: Does the plot move forward at an appropriate pace? Should you cut that preface? Should the action happen sooner or should the tension build more slowly?
Dialogue: Do your characters sound real when they speak? Is your dialogue cluttered with adverbs and beats? Do you use clunky dialogue to move the plot forward?
Flow: Is the narrative interrupted by dead-ends and tangents? Is there so much back story that the main plot is dwarfed? Are there missing plot points that would give the narrative greater integrity?
In non-fiction, the principle is the same, but the specific issues are slightly different:
Thesis: Is your thesis relevant? Is it clearly defined or is it lost among marginal issues?
Exposition: Are your arguments clear and cogent? Are they well researched and properly supported? Do they have a clear relationship with your thesis?
Content: Are all the necessary topics sufficiently dealt with? Are the chapters weighted correctly? Is there superfluous content?
Organisation: Is the information organised logically? Are tables and illustrations used appropriately? How many levels of subheads do you need and how should they be arranged?
Tone: Is the tone appropriate for the audience? Do you need to eliminate jargon? Is the text accessible?
Pace: Are there passages that are bogged down in detail? Do you spend too long on detail irrelevant to the main thesis? Are there areas that need further exposition lest they be skipped over?
Although a structural editor may do a little copy-editing as they work through your manuscript, that is not what they are being paid to do. Their focus is much broader, and they will return your manuscript marked up with constructive comments and suggested rewrites that will in any case render the corrections pointless.
So, if you’re saving your money for a copy-edit, what do you do about structure?
Leave it alone. Put your manuscript in a drawer for a few weeks and forget about it. When you come back to it you’ll see it with fresh eyes and you’ll be in a much better position to read it critically. Then cut ruthlessly. Strip it out. Spike anything that you think you might use later or rewrite. You’re likely to find that your cuts have resulted in a tighter, more readable, and more enjoyable book.
Join a writing group. Creative-writing groups provide a great forum in which to have your work critiqued by people who are as passionate about writing as you are. Some opinions may be more informed than others, and you may have to sift through some personal prejudices before you get to the useful pointers, but there are bound to be people whose opinion you value. Keep an open mind and always thank people for their feedback, even if it’s unjustified criticism. If you’re seen to react badly, people with a real talent for spotting problems might choose to keep their comments to themselves. Critiquing sites and internet author forums can also be a great source of feedback and support, especially if you’re the sort of writer who doesn’t like to leave the house. Harper Collins set up Authoronomy.com as a novel way of finding new talent, but it’s also a great place to connect with other writers. YouWriteOn.com offers a similar service. You can read about Irish author Bob Burke’s experience with the site here.
Read books on writing. There are hundreds of books out there on writing. There are books on plot, dialogue, point of view, editing, and every other aspect of crafting a good book. The information is there for you to apply to your own manuscript if you’re prepared to spend fifty quid and a couple of weeks studying the texts. It might not be the same as having a fresh pair of eyes tackle your MS, but if you put a bit of distance between you and your work, you should be able to put your new skills to effective use.
Read the competition. It’s great to be original, but unless you’re Joyce or Kafka it’s best not to be too different. Your competition represents a good guide to what’s expected from you. You should aim to produce something better, extra or novel that adds to the canon, but don’t stray too far from the beaten track or your book won’t fit on any shelf. Read books published in your category in as critical a manner as possible. It helps if you’ve read a few books on writing first – you’ll find that issues to which you were previously oblivious suddenly come into sharp relief. Try to deconstruct the books and analyse how plot, characterisation, pace, etc., are handled, chapter by chapter. Many authors in your category will have faced similar dilemmas as you, and it helps to analyse their results.
It’s true that none of this entirely replaces a professional structural edit, but you can bring your manuscript a long way by investing just a few quid and some reading time. After you’ve done all this, it’s worth having a chat with your copy-editor to explain how you’ve edited. If you show them that you’ve put in the effort and, if you’re extra nice to them, they’ll be glad to watch out for any remaining structural issues. They may not deal with the problems in depth, but they’ll flag them, and, with all that reading under your belt, you’ll have no trouble sorting them out.
Robert Doran is Editorial Director at Kazoo Independent Publishing Services (www.kazoopublishing.com), a one-stop shop for indie authors who want to publish industry-standard books. He has nearly twenty years’ experience in bringing books to market and has worked as an editor, project manager, sales manager, and bookseller in Ireland and in the UK. He is a big fan of the Oxford comma. Follow him on Twitter @RobertEdits.
[Catherine’s note: Back in February I got to listen to the lovely Sarah Savitt talk about editing at Faber Academy, and she said, ‘The editor’s job is to ask the questions.’ She gave us some editorial notes to look at, and they were things that would be going through a reader’s head in a few month’s time if Sarah hadn’t raised them. Like: Why would this character forgive him? She’s no reason to, and But two pages back he said he didn’t agree with that! and I don’t understand why she doesn’t leave the car there?? A structural edit means that these questions get asked—and answered—in private (among other improvements!), before the book hits the virtual shelves, and not on Goodreads and Amazon customer reviews. Haven’t we all seen reviews where readers said something like, ‘I just didn’t get why he/she did that’? It’s like an English essay I wrote when I was in Sixth Class (age 12). The teacher, who usually championed my attempts, made me read out my mysterious character-being-chased-through-the-woods-at-night story (I was big into The X-Files then), before saying in front of everyone, ‘Catherine, you are the only one who knows what’s happening in this story.’ It’s a lesson I never forgot!)
