Craig Staufenberg Shares His Pet Peeves of the Publishing Industry @YouMakeArtDumb #AmWriting

Pet Peeves of the Publishing Industry

I’m annoyed by how nice everyone in the publishing is. Really. I’m sure there are some rude people, but I haven’t encountered them. Only nice folks, and that makes it hard to dislike the publishing industry as a whole. It’s much easier when you see “publishing” as this monolithic beast with a stranglehold on creativity, especially your own creativity. But that’s just not the case.

Which means there are two realities you have to face about publishing.

One, that it’s not out to get you. It’s not prejudiced against you. If it rejects you there are reasons for doing so, and not because the people are mean, jealous and spiteful.

Two, the publishing industry is trying to do something very, very difficult. Namely promote art, entertainment, and creativity, all while still keeping the lights on. Anyone who has tried to support themselves via their creative output knows how difficult this is. Now multiply that difficulty—think about trying to support an entire company, or even an entire industry, on creative work. It’s insanity, and I’m surprised publishing companies have been as successful as they have.

Really, think about it for a second. We’re not talking about selling widgets here. We aren’t talking about the success of an industry that sells bathroom cleaner. There’s nothing predictable about books. As long as the bathroom cleaner works, and as long as you market it, then you’re going to do alright. The same can’t be said about books. Even if a book is good, and even if you market it, there’s no guarantee it’s going to sell enough to warrant its investment. Now consider the fact bathroom cleaner companies don’t have to reinvent their product hundreds of times a year, and publishing companies do, and you see it’s sheer madness this whole industry works at all.

OK, it’s not a perfect analogy. The way publishing company’s sell their back catalogue and the works of established authors operates a lot like selling widgets. Pretty reliable. But still, publishing is trying to do something very challenging—balancing the demands of art and commerce, which have, as Linds Redding noted in his must-read post, always been strange bedfellows. Especially since publishing companies need hits to thrive and not merely survive, and these companies are completely unable to predict what the next hit is going to be. No one predicted Twilight. No one predicted Fifty Shades of Grey. Or Harry Potter.

In fact, when it comes to the book trade, the only people who have an even harder time than publishing companies are the authors themselves. While publishing companies are able to spread their bets across a large number of different books a year, even an ultra-prolific author isn’t going to crank out more than a few. The odds a publishing company will hit a home run on any given year is much higher than the odds a single author will.

Which, I suppose, is my biggest pet peeve of the publishing companies. They survive, while many, if not most, of their authors who fail. An author can spend their whole life writing books that don’t do spectacularly well, and that author could easily live a lower compensated, less comfortable, and less protected life than the employees and owners running the publishing companies. Publishers take on much smaller risks than authors. Publishers make small financial gambles, while authors bet their lives. Yet publishers have much higher upside than authors.

Bear in mind, this is an institutional issue. No evil genius thought this up. It’s how pretty much every large creative industry operates—from books to movies to music. But we’re not powerless here. And I’d like to see a publishing industry where the authors themselves are better rewarded, or at least better protected, than the companies that publish them, as the authors, always, are putting much more on the line.

When you die, your spirit wakes in the north, in the City of the Dead. There, you wander the cold until one of your living loved ones finds you, says “Goodbye,” and Sends you to the next world. 

After her parents die, 12-year-old Sophie refuses to release their spirits. Instead, she resolves to travel to the City of the Dead to bring her mother and father’s spirits back home with her. 

Taking the long pilgrimage north with her gruff & distant grandmother—by train, by foot, by boat; over ruined mountains and plains and oceans—Sophie struggles to return what death stole from her. Yet the journey offers her many hard, unexpected lessons—what to hold on to, when to let go, and who she must truly bring back to life.

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre – Middle Grade

Rating – PG-13

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Connect with Craig Staufenberg through Facebook and Twitter

Website http://craigstaufenberg.com/

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The Dangerous Writing Mind of Roland Hughes #Dystopian #AmReading #AmWriting

I must warn you, my mind is a dangerous place.  My friends have been hearing that since we were teenagers but it wasn’t until I started writing novels that they began to realize it was just a joke.

As a writer/author one question gets asked countless times.  I has many different wordings, but it is the same question.  “What lead you to write this story?”  “What was going through your mind as you wrote this story?”  “How did you come up with the idea for this story?”  The wording doesn’t matter, it is the same question no matter how it is phrased.  What they are really asking, even if they won’t admit it is “How can I (or my readers) write a story like this?”

Most author interviews I’ve read seems to indicate they become calloused from this question and toss out the same response no matter how it is phrased, like a politician with talking points.  In the past I have been innocent and tried to actually answer the way it was phrased in a politically correct manner.  Nobody wants to hear the honest answer.  The honest answer is “You can’t because I certainly didn’t.”

Shocked?  It’s true.  I didn’t get a writing degree, create an outline, or follow any rules other than grammar and spelling.  The character chose to tell its story.  I wrote it down as best I could then fixed a few things.  Quite honestly, if you wish to become a writer you just need to be adequate with spelling and grammar, able to hire professional editing and, most importantly, listen to the character.

If you are not a writer and reading this I fully understand if you are shaking your head.  It defies what most people are told when they are young, but it is the truth.  If you want to know how to be the kind of author who gets some good/great reviews on their work the honest answer is “you cannot be told.”  There is no response or set of rules one can provide you with.  There is no formula to creating something nobody has ever thought of before.  There is no college course you can take or degree you can get which will make you an author who gets good/great reviews no matter what admissions tells you when you are handing over your money.

You can learn all you need to know by reading two short stories in a single book.  The book is Skeleton Crew.  The first short story to read out of it is Ballad of the Flexible Bullet.  This simple tale explains in detail what the mind of a writer is really like and where stories really come from.  If you don’t believe that after reading it then either switch to non-fiction writing or choose a new line of work.

The second story you need to read (and in this order) is Word Processor of the Gods.  This one story tells you everything you need to know about every story you will ever write.  Your mind and story are both free to travel as far as they wish if and only if they keep a tether to that subset of things which define humanity.

Fornit Some Fornus

“John Smith: Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars” is one big interview. It is a transcript of a dialogue between “John Smith” (who, as the title of the book implies is the last known survivor of the Microsoft wars) and the interviewer for a prominent news organization.

Buy Now @ Amazon & B&N

Genre – Dystopian Fiction

Rating – PG

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Website http://johnsmith-book.com/

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@JR_Tague on Things She Had Known Before Writing Her First Book #YA #Fiction #AmReading

1) You always re-write the beginning pages.

Before I even had a plot for Leveling Up, I wrote the first two pages. They were basically Max introducing himself and telling the reader what he was about. When I finally had a story to go with those pages, I got a lot of positive feedback on them.

Then I went to a writer’s conference and learned in one of my first workshops that the first pages always get scrapped or re-written. I thought I’d be the exception. I’m a painfully slow, careful writer, which certainly has its drawbacks. But the positive of that is that I usually have a lot less editing to do later.

When I finished my first draft, I hired a developmental editor to help me get my story in shape for querying. And guess where we focused the majority of our efforts? ON THE OPENING. It was hard to admit that I wasn’t special. But it made sense. When you write the first few pages of your novel, you’re just starting to feel out your characters and settings. You’re just finding the story’s narrative voice. That makes those pages very important. And very special. But, as my editor pointed out, they were just for me. Once I had my narrator’s voice, I had it. I could use it to craft an opening that set up the proper expectations for the novel, and the work would be stronger for it.

2) Writing the middle is the hardest part and you’ll feel like giving up.

I was at about 30k words when I ran out of outline for my first novel. I knew from the beginning that Leveling Up was going to be a series, so I’d envisioned the first book as an introduction to my character and the issues he’d be struggling with throughout the series. Thing is, that’s not enough plot for an entire novel—even a shorter YA novel. I only had half a book and felt completely lost and discouraged. It was such a relief later when I learned that it’s a common problem amongst writers. Middles are just hard. But once you get past them, it gets easier again.

3) Trust your characters

I tend to spend a lot of time thinking about my characters and getting a vague, misty idea of what their stories are, before I ever start writing. So by the time I’m into the plot, I expect to have a good idea of who they are and what they’re all about. But often they surprise me. They want to do things I don’t expect from them. They have reactions and emotions I didn’t think they would. It almost feels like a betrayal at first. But I think it’s actually a great sign. It means they’re realistic.

4) Nobody wants to hear about your book while you’re writing it. But everyone wants to hear about how it’s doing once you’ve published it.

Hearing about another person’s work in progress, unless you’re an extremely good friend (which I’m fortunate enough to have), is super painful. Maybe not as bad as listening to someone’s weird-ass dream, but similar. Even once we’ve completed a draft, it’s difficult for most of us to come up with tag lines and an “elevator pitch” (one-sentence summation of the book). When we’re in the middle of a novel, it’s very hard to narrow it down. We’re too embroiled in the intricacies of the plot. Therefore I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to hear me yammer on about it.

It’s just that for me, that’s the exciting part—getting the story down. But once it’s published, it’s a real thing to other people. They are excited for you, and proud, and happy, and so supportive. And that’s when they want to know how it’s doing. Are sales good? Is feedback positive? What are you doing to promote it? Those are all extremely valid questions and they are coming from a good place. Buuuuut, I always want to answer that the book is done. I finished it years ago, in fact. I still love it and care about it and yes, of course I am trying to make sure it does well. But my head’s already in book two.

5) That it’s like having homework. Forever.

Writing isn’t a hobby; it’s a job. It was easier to lie about that when I was writing my first novel. Because any aspirations I had for it were kept secret, even from myself, for a long time. It was just something I was kind of working on, and I’d just see how it went.

But once I got serious about it, once I started thinking about the sequels and signing book deals, and coming up with other, unrelated series to write as well, that’s when I knew it had me. I was committed. There wouldn’t be just this one trilogy, there’d be other stories. There’d be other multi-book sagas to write. And before I knew it, it wasn’t a choice anymore. The stories had found me and I had to write them.

Max McKay gets a second chance at life when, after a bizarre accident on his sixteenth birthday, he is reanimated as a new breed of thinking, feeling zombie. To secure a spot for his eternal soul, Max must use his video game prowess as well as the guidance of Steve the Death God to make friends and grow up. As if all that weren’t hard enough, Max discovers that he’s not the only zombie in town. As he enlists the help of his new friends, Adam and Penny, to solve the mystery of their un-dead classmate, Max discovers that he must level up his life experience in order to survive the trials and terrors of the upcoming zombie apocalypse. And, even worse, high school.

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Genre – YA

Rating – PG

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Connect with J R Tague on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://jrtague.wordpress.com/

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Donald J. Amodeo's #WriteTip on Taking Charge of Your #Book Cover @DonAmodeo

In the world of traditional publishing, authors typically have little say over what goes on their cover. While this may sound scary (it certainly did to me), there’s a good reason for it. Most writers have a poor grasp of graphic design.

Yes, there are exceptions, but even with all the great tools we have at our fingertips today, browsing indie bookshelves often means having to sift through a sea of bland and amateurish cover art. An eye-catching cover can make an enormous difference in getting readers to crack open your book, so what’s a self-published author who isn’t a professional graphic designer to do?

Knowing your way around Photoshop never hurts, but don’t get cocky. When it came time to get the cover art created for Dead & Godless, I started by slapping together a mockup using my own design skills. While it wasn’t the Mona Lisa, it did give the pro whom I hired a clear picture of what I was going for. And don’t hesitate to hire a professional artist. It’s almost always worth the investment.

Whether or not you create a mockup, the artist you hire is very likely going to listen to your ideas, even if your ideas are terrible. As such, you would do well to understand some key principles of design.

For most potential readers, their first glimpse of your book will be in the form of a thumbnail. You’re going to need an image that stands out and a title that stays crisp and legible, despite being shrunk down to a mere 90 pixels in width. Contrast is your friend. Use a face if appropriate, as studies show that nothing draws the eye more than a person’s face. As for your fonts, try to resist getting too artsy. Big, bold and instantly readable is the way to go.

If you’re publishing a print edition of your book, be aware that there are a few issues that the ebook-only crowd don’t have to worry about. Does your cover art make heavy use of dark colors or black? Printed images always turn out darker than the native graphics on your computer screen, which means that unless you want to lose a ton of detail, you need to lighten up the print version of your cover. With Dead & Godless, I cranked the brightness up thirty percent. Only then did the paperback match the look of the ebook original.

Blue hues can also be a problem, since the switch to CMYK color (the color setting used by most printers) has a tendency to turn deep blues into purples. There’s no perfect solution for this, and it may not bother you at all, but if you want to lessen the effect, try tossing the image into Photoshop and editing the color balance, strengthening the greens. The result may look a bit turquoise on your monitor, but it helps preserves the blues when printing.

Lastly, if you’re using a print-on-demand publisher such as CreateSpace, keep in mind that the cut of your book will vary. What this means is that elements which appear perfectly centered on your native graphic may be slightly off-center on your paperback. You want art that allows for some wiggle room. Avoid design elements such as frames or borders around the outer edges of your cover, as it will be very noticeable when an uneven cut leaves one side shorter than the rest. Also, keep your text a safe distance away from those edges.

So does the process of getting your cover art created may sound like a hassle? Does it sound fun? Hopefully these guidelines will help you make the most of your book’s presentation!

When outspoken atheist Corwin Holiday dies an untimely but heroic death, he’s assigned a chain-smoking, alcoholic angel as his defense attorney in the trial to decide the fate of his soul.

Today many cast Christianity aside, not in favor of another faith, but in favor of no faith. We go off to school or out into the world, and we learn that reality is godless and that free thinking means secular thinking. But must faith entail an end to asking questions? Should not the Author of Reason be able to answer the challenge of reason?

Dead & Godless is a smart and suspenseful afterlife adventure that explores the roots of truth, justice and courage. In these pages awaits a quest that spans universes, where the stakes are higher than life and death, and where Christianity’s sharp edges aren’t shied away from, because we’re not called to be nice. We’re called to be heroes.

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Genre - Christian Fiction

Rating – PG-13

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Connect with Donald J. Amodeo on Twitter

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