The Word Cloud

About six weeks ago, I posted here my frustration about agents who are not very helpful and I recieved lots of comments saying why, don't give up and so on.

Today, I had a rejection that was helpful. They liked the premise of the work which they found engaging, but felt they couldn't connect with the writing, especially the dialogue. The whole email was seven lines, as are most. But they'd taken that bit of care to say, in brief, why.

During the six weeks it took them to respond - which is not a gripe - I have rewoeked C1 to make it, I hope, more dynamic.

If you'd like to read all 1,761 words, it's here in My First Book  http://writing-community.writersworkshop.co.uk/forum/topic/7320#7320 

But if you do, can you coment especially on the dialogue, please? Bear in mind it is set sixty years ago, so all those punchy contempoary phrases we're used to hearing today, will not be in it.

Eddy 

Tomorrow, I’ll be sending out my first three chapters of my murder mystery novel to a number of UK agents who I think might, no must, be interested. The day after I’ll sit back and begin to fret no doubt whether I composed a good introductory letter, compiled a brilliant succinct synopsis and, of course, did I cross all the i’s and dot the t’s in my sample manuscript? Then I’ll begin to wonder if I selected the appropriate agents to consider my work and if I did, will they like it. Next will come, when shall I hear I’ve been rejected?

The first chapters had been reviewed by the Writers’ Workshop last year. Since then, I have turned a lot of the novel on its head, written the MC in the first person and viewed the rail crash through the eyes of a survivor.

Rail crash, what rail crash?

Ah, should I have told you that?

Well OK, the novel involves the worst rail disaster to have happened in England, when 112 died and 340 were injured, and that’s all I’m giving away at this time. The chances of getting it published are about 1:1000. The chances of getting it published for the 60th anniversary of the crash by the traditional route, are even smaller. Time will tell, and you’ll be the second to know about it if it happens, if you sign up to my blog – see below. Of course it will happen – think positive, man.

Those first critical chapters have been tweaked countless times by me before going out to my beta-readers. Amazed at what they picked up on, I incorporated changes, added more detail, took some out, adjusted some characters – poor Lorna’s eye-colour went from black to brown and have ended up blue –  and I corrected punctuation and tense. Then I tweaked it another 50 times! WW call it ‘polishing’.

So, it should be word perfect and make absolutely addictive reading, for everyone and their dog. As I said earlier, time will tell.

Edwin Tipple

with thanks to Writer’s Workshop on letter & synopsis guidance. For more information about that, see http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/Get-literary-agent.html

and you can sign up for my blog here at http://www.edwintipple.wordpress.com to see how it all works out. Go on, I promise not to blog rubbish.

Readers can be a skittish bunch, bolting for cover at the first distant rumble of the author promo wagon.

I don’t blame them. Nothing spoils a good conversation like a salesman with a megaphone.

What usually happens is this. Readers find a nice site where they can congregate and have good conversations about books. A writer discovers the site and thinks he has struck gold.

Word of this rich seam of “customers” spreads like wildfire, and writers descend on mass hauling wagonloads of blurbs, excerpts, taglines, hyperlinks, ALL CAPS, and, yes, megaphones.

If the website has good moderators, they will nip this in the bud, and corral the writers into a little pen where they can all shout at each other, and not bother the readers.

Sometimes writers bitch and moan about this, but it’s not like they are banned from the rest of the site, they’re just not allowed to bring the megaphone with them. Sounds fair to me.

Besides, have you seen the sites without these rules? Not too many great conversations about books going on because the readers have bolted.

Some sites, like Kindle Boards, have the balance just right. They have a sub-forum for writers to talk shop. And they have a separate section for promo threads. That way readers who want to talk about books aren’t interrupted by salesmen or authors discussing promo strategies, and the writers discussing business aren’t being sold to either.

Writers can venture out to the larger site and engage readers, but promo is strictly banned, and even an oblique reference to your books can be frowned upon. Writers may display their wares in their signature, but that’s it. Again, seems fair to me.

All of the above is a somewhat convoluted introduction to a promo tip. However, the warnings are necessary, as the site in question – LibraryThing – is populated by readers who are (rightly) fiercely protective of their space.

They don’t take kindly to writers who barge in and start promoting. They will be dispensed with quickly, as I have seen first-hand. As I have said before, the golden rule of social networking is: Don’t Be A D*ck.

LibraryThing is full of great conversations about books with groups talking about every little sub-genre, every aspect of books and reading, and lots of other stuff too. It’s a site for readers. Writers are more than welcome, but only if they remember that.

In short, don’t promote your book. In fact, don’t even mention your book unless directly asked about it. You aren’t even allowed a text signature mentioning your books or your blog. You must enter with your “reader” hat on.

As such, it’s a great place to talk about books.

But there are promo opportunities too. They have a section of the site called Member Giveaways - which are an informal way for members to give away copies of books to other members.

Using this, I gave away 300 copies of my book, which has garnered me a ton of reviews.

   To see how, and for a chance to get your hands on an advance copy of my new book, read the rest of today's blog post:

http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2011/07/15/promo-tip-librarything-giveaways/

Amazon have been moving very slow in Europe. Now the world's 5th telecoms company - Telefonica - with more subscribers than AT&T and Verizon combined, is launching their own e-reader and e-bookstore. Expect the Kindle to launch in Spain (and the rest of Latin America) shortly. ¡Ay Caramba!

Read all the details here:

http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/an-international-challenge-to-amazon-from-spain/

Yesterday we surveyed the short story market, where you can find the right magazines for your stories, how you can sell the same story again as a reprint and to an anthology, why short story collections are such a hard-sell to publishing houses, and how and when you should self-publish them.

 

Today we are going to talk about novels.  There are only two real ways to sell your novel, and the choices are, for the most part, mutually exclusive, so you have a big decision to make.  The first way is to a trade publishing house (both large presses and small, independent presses), and the second is to self-publish.

Read the rest at:  Making Money From Writing, Part 2: Novels

Seen at a technology fair is the latest reader to rival the ubiquitous Kindle: the i-scroll. 

 

One of the first of a new generation of readers, the i-scroll takes customer preference for a tactile reading environment seriously. The parchment-textured surface even smells of old libraries. Storage is virtually unlimited, because the i-scroll incorporates a unique roll-up mechanism.

As with all new technology, there are potential problems. The analogue interface should allow personalized textual comments and the posting of critiques. However, the design of the stylus is suspect, and ridiculously over-engineered. Referred to as the ‘quill’, it is .ink-compatible.

Rumour has it that the transfer rate is slow and data-loss common.

It should be worth waiting a year for the expected i-scroll 2, as pundits expect it will utilize PEN technology.

It was not a conscious thing initially; but I realised when I got an e-book reader that I never downloaded anything to read (I'm talking novels here) that had not already been published in ''Traditional' form; i.e. Paperback/Hardback.

Even with my e-book reader, if it was a book I really, really wanted to read I would always get the paperback or hardback version, rather than download it.

I was then asked a few times to take a look at a couple of author's 'e-book only' books and I found myself declining.

Examining my motives, I decided that actually I didn't trust anything that had not already been published traditionally.

It seemed to me that I was considering 'e-book only' books as the literary equivalent of a film that goes straight to video without ever being shown in cinemas first. In the film business it seems to me that this is a suggestion that the film wasn't very good.

I'm sure this is not always the case - but nevertheless, in the case of films, it does seem to be at the very least 'unhelpful' in terms of its future sales potential.

My reasoning I guess was, that if no one, not even the author, was prepared to invest in the publishing of the book - why should I take the risk?

It also seems to me that, given the almost total lack of human intervention in a lot of e-publishing (Amazon's Kindle process is a prime example), it is absolutely possible to publish something without even the most cursory attempts at proof-reading, formatting etc. Granted some paper based books are full of errors, but the process at least demands a little effort.

Perhaps this is a major advantage of self-publishing? personally even if a book I had written was primarily aimed at 'the digital reader' - I still would have at least a limited print run done.

Of course in the future, I suspect there will be multimedia books incorporating video, music, interaction etc and these, by definition require some kind of device, but these are few and far between at the moment and I suspect, where the typical 'novel' is concerned, a large number of people, me included, will prefer traditional books.

Or perhaps I am unusual and nobody else distrusts 'digital only' books?

Ok, I've gone and done it. Bought an e-reader that is. Before you book loving folks hurl abuse at me and banish me to book-coventry, let me tell you a little story. It may just tip the balance from hate to understanding.

I have a twelve year old son who reads a book a day. He's a nerd. But he's my nerd and I love him. He's highly intelligent and cannot find nearly enough stimulation in this dull grey world of ours, so he seeeks it elsewhere. His current favourite genre is fantasy, but we've been through war stories, historical epics and all those kids books where children defeat the daft adults. He's done many classics, Sherlock Holmes and has dabbled in poetry - particularly the funny ones as he's got a great sense of humour.

I work hard at keeping him supplied with books to read. I buy new ones, trawl the charity shops and let him use both his own library card and mine. But I can't keep up! And I know that it'll be just as hard to keep him supplied with e-books, but if I run that alongside paper copies, I may just manage.

We went to Spain last month. Christian took fifteen books with him - his entire hand luggage allowance of 10kg plus a few stuffed into his little brother's Stig rucksack. He'd read them all within a fortnight, so we traipsed off to the second-hand English bookstore and bought half a dozen more - at four bloody euros each! That's a racket in itself.

Hubby flew home with the boys after three weeks, leaving daughter and I with our chum for a week. We'd booked three suitcases, one for him and the boys and two for us girls. Yes, I know, seems a little unfair, but you haven't met my fifteen year old daughter and her unfeasibly large wardrobe of clothes. There was no way that all of Chritian's books could come home. There had to be a cull. He was instructed to weed out the ones he didn't want to take. Hmm - none. So, after a bit of shouting and cajoling, I promised to bring back the ones he left behind.

Hubby arrived at the airport and, knowing that he was close to the weight limit, checked the suitcase. It was 5kg over. So he opened it. Little book-lover had stuffed his extras into the case once we'd gone to bed the previous night! Cue a rapid re-distribution of books. Rucksacks, pockets and hoodies  were stuffed to bulging with the literary stow-aways and all three of them walked through check-in carrying two books each. They just about got away with it.

The pocket e-reader weighs 220 grams and stores 350 books. It'll take up hardly any room in Santa's sack when he delivers it on Christmas Day and I'll make sure that there are a few e-book vouchers in Christian's stocking too.

I rest my case, your honours.