Category Archives: On Being a Writer

On Being a Writer

Self Publishing: Cover Tips

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In my last post, A Cover is Worth . . ., I talked about the importance of your book cover. In this post, I’ll share my tips for creating an effective cover.

Create one cover for all formats
Format your cover with enough pixels to meet the specs of all your publishing venues.

  • Smashwords and Apple require a minimum width of 1400 pixels, with the height greater than width.
  • ACX (Audible) requires a cover which is 2500 pixels, square.
  • Createspace requires 300 ppi.
  • KDP (Amazon) requires a minimum of 625 pixels wide and a minimum 1000pixels tall. Preferred dimensions are 1563 by 2500 and a height/width ratio of 1.6

Create a master cover file using a layer for each image and piece of text (in Photoshop, this is .psd), then tweak your .psd to fit different formats. I like a wrap-around cover for my paperbacks, so I start with that. I can crop out the front cover for eBooks. A wrap-around image also gives me the extra width for my audio cover. Another option is to use a front cover image that is 2500 pixels wide and crop the height for your audio cover.

Things to keep in mind:
Periodically scale your view down to the size of a postage stamp to see if your cover will pop in Amazon searches and “also boughts.” Is the title legible?

Research other covers in your genre. You want to stand out, but also follow genre conventions well enough that people will know what they’re getting.

Take your time. Look at your cover over a period of days. Today’s great idea may be tomorrow’s vomit-fest.

Your cover should reflect the mood of your book more than anything. Color is the most immediate signifier of mood. Think bright colors for fluff, pastels for romance, dark for thrillers, faded images for nostalgia.

Keep your fonts big, simple and bold.

Use the best art you can get for your cover, but don’t let it overwhelm the title and author. Don’t be afraid to overlap your image with text.

If you are using stock art, run a search on your image to see if it is overused. You may discover that it is associated with other products that would not reflect well on your book.

If you like a certain artist’s style, consider asking them about creating a custom image for your cover. It may cost less than you think.

Cover art does not need to be a literal illustration of your book, as long as it conveys an appropriate idea.

Red, yellow and orange on your cover will pop out and draw attention. A little will go a long way. Don’t overdo it!

You can use layer style settings to set off your text from your background. Subtle adjustments can make your text easier to read. Be careful about going overboard here, it can look gimmicky.

On Being a Writer

Self Publishing: A Cover Is Worth . . .

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Last weekend I gave a talk about self-publishing at the Regional Gathering of the Cincinnati Mensa chapter, invited by John Cunningham (AKA “Terry Dunn”), my one-man street team. As I spent my odd moments over the past couple months compiling the distilled wisdom of my two years as a self-published author, it seems like a waste not to share this information here. This is the first in a series of blogs derived from that talk.

I couldn’t complete the title of this blog because I can’t quantify the value of a good cover. I won’t say that people buy books because of the cover (though some fans report buying my first book because of the fetching portrait of Max on the front), but the cover conveys the first impression of your book, and may be your only opportunity to grab someone’s attention.

The digital landscape that makes it possible for me to earn a living as a writer also changes the way books are viewed and bought.

At a brick and mortar store, you are given a limited number of options in your chosen genre and are likely to pull out several to flip through. Unless the publisher has paid for a front-facing display, your first contact with a book is via the title on the spine. A nice cover is an asset, but is not necessarily involved in the decision to pick up a book.

Compare this with your experience at an online book store. Whether you browse categories or search keywords, you are confronted with a glut of postage stamp sized images accompanied by text. The image that catches your eye first has the best chance of being clicked. That takes you to a product page, away from the other books.

You have 1/2 second to grab someone’s attention with your cover. If you succeed with this, you have two to four sentences to keep it with your blurb. If you succeed here, people will do one or several of the following things: Buy your book (Yay!); Skip to the “Look Inside,” where you have a page or so to sell them with your prose (or not); or check out your reviews (A portion of your product page over which you have no control).

Unless you have been referred to a specific book by some means, the entire process of selecting a book online begins with the cover. I have had one person argue that they pay no attention to covers. I would argue back, based on my background in the visual arts, that we are affected by visuals whether we are aware of it or not.

If you have to make a choice in where to invest hard cash in publishing your book, put it on the cover. Formatting can easily be done by anyone willing to read Mark Coker’s free style guide at Smashwords. As a writer, you likely know other writers you can trade with for beta-reading/proofing/editing. Unless you’ve got mad graphic skills, I suggest getting a pro cover.

Next: Tips for creating an effective cover.

Books, On Being a Writer

Gotta Brag! A Shot in the Bark is #1!

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Doing the happy dance here! I never thought I’d see #1 in the Free Kindle Store. Shot is free through Monday. If you don’t have your copy yet, click the cover in the sidebar to get yours.

BONUS: Shot is part of the whispersync program with Audible. If you own the Kindle edition, you can get the audio, with Jane Boyer’s wonderful narration, for $1.99. How cool is that?

Art, Life, On Being a Writer

Tempering Those Great Expectations

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I was talking to Jessica today about everything I’ve been doing for the past week, preparing to launch Maximum Security – as I spoke, this familiar tide of excitement rose up in me along with visions resulting from the thought, “I could get a gazillion guests at my launch party, and . . . .”

And I squashed it. Like a cockroach.

Why? I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve only been writing for 3 years, but I’ve been painting for 40, and put on countless art exhibitions. I’ve learned one thing: God rains down sudden abundance on people like Colleen Hoover mostly to test the faith and commitment of everyone else (Okay, maybe Colleen being really talented and nice and totally awesome and deserving had a little, teeny bit to do with it).

My progress comes in inches and any big leap is followed by a setback. I feel like I’m doing the Cha-Cha-Cha. This is typical. Jack Canfield, author of Chicken Soup for the Soul, talks about the many obstacles he had to overcome to get the book published (144 rejections? A gross of rejections? Sheesh!) and then get it noticed.

The excitement I was talking about is that lottery ticket moment, when they call out the numbers and the first one matches your ticket. Then number two matches. All of a sudden, all things become possible and you feel like you might burst.

Then the third number doesn’t match.

When I buy lottery tickets, I put them in my wallet and forget about them until the next week. When it’s time to buy a new ticket, I pull out the old one and let the machine scan it. That way the anticipation is minimized and the let down is miniscule.

I try to approach launches the same way. Do the best I can to promote the book and don’t think about the results. Today it snuck up on me. Why did I squash it? It’s fun to think about having a runaway best seller and having the Big Six duking it out over you, and movie rights, and, and . . . .

Save your fantasies for your books. Fantasizing about personal success is like a drug. It sets you up for a crash when things don’t play out the way you imagined, and it keeps you from appreciating the results you do get. And like any drug, you always want more.

I read something many years ago that always stuck with me. You know how Van Halen (remember them?) got their record contract? One day this record producer (I think it was a record producer. It was someone important, anyway) wandered into an almost empty bar. There was this band playing their hearts out like they were in front of 1,000 people instead of 3. He knew right then and there that they were the real deal and he had to have them.

Imagine if the band had been focused on how they wanted a big crowd? Then nobody shows up and they get bummed, and their playing shows it, and the VIP isn’t impressed and heads out the door, leaving a half-full beer on the bar. Instead, they had an attitude that was something like, “Hey, this is so cool because we’re musicians and we’ve got a stage and we get to play music,and we love playing music.”

What if someone told them someone who could make their careers was in the audience? Ever blow something because you were putting too much importance on it? Ever focus so hard on winning big that you couldn’t enjoy what you were doing or the success you did have?

Remember Sarah Hughes? She won the Olympic Gold Medal in women’s figure skating the first time she competed. I’ll never forget her. Her performance was amazing. Why? Because she entered that competition in fourth place and thought she didn’t have a skating rink’s chance in you-know-where to win against her idols. She later said she decided to just appreciate skating in the Olympic finals and enjoy herself. I don’t think she was more talented than the other skaters. The three world-class veterans ahead of her were too grimly focused on winning. It showed in their tense and mistake-riddled performances. Sarah focused on skating and radiated pure joy during a perfect performance.

Pretending success isn’t important isn’t a tactic to get the money men knocking on your door. If Van Halen didn’t get the contract, if Sarah Hughes hadn’t won a medal, they would have still enjoyed that moment for all it was worth. It doesn’t hurt that being relaxed and in the moment is likely to result in better performance, and a better performance is more likely to attract attention.

Enjoy what you’re doing. Do the work, but focus on the process and leave the results to come as they will.

Life, On Being a Writer

The Power of Good Enough

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I’ve read amazing authors, from Ken Kesey and John Steinbeck to James Lee Burke and Harper Lee, whose perfect, seamless prose carried me away to those wonderful, far places where books transport us. I never imagined I could be one of them. They never inspired me to write.

My inspiration came from a very forgettable culinary mystery I got from the library. So forgettable that I can’t recall the name of the book or the author. I only remember reading it and (after I figured out who dun it and why, say a chapter in) thinking, “This got printed, and the library bought it. I could do w-a-a-a-y better than this.”

I thought about Tami Hoag, who started out writing mediocre romantic suspense and who now pens first-rate thrillers. I had a bit of a “Doh” moment. “Just because you start poorly doesn’t mean you have to stay that way. You can get better.”

These two instances gave me the courage to proceed when I dared myself to write a novel. They created a benchmark I could beat. “I don’t have to be perfect. I just have to be better than that.That will be good enough.”

It got me through my first novel, which is now in the same library with the nameless culinary mystery.

It’s important to have such a benchmark when you’re writing a book because a book is never finished. You just stop tweaking it and decide to let it go. Painting doesn’t have the same problem. You can only paint so much before you ruin your work with over-painting. The skill in painting lies in learning to stop before you hit that mark. Not so with writing. You can revise until Judgement Day and beyond.

“Good enough” gets published. “Not perfect yet” grows old with you, never leaving home.

I’m in a dangerous place. I proved I could write an engaging novel with A Shot in the Bark. I proved it wasn’t a one-off with Drool Baby. Now I’m in the final hours with Maximum Security and I want to make it better than ever. I’m being lured by the idea of perfection on my nth pass, goaded by my editor’s challenges to my creative genius suggestions.

I haven’t found my new benchmark, my new standard to beat, and it’s driving me a little crazy. But the calendar comes to my rescue. In 13 days, I’ve got to stop. I have a launch party to host. Maximum Security is already better than my past work. It will be good enough.

On Being a Writer

Social Media for Authors: Adding Value

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I’m trying to become more active on Twitter. For the past few days, I’ve been scrolling through my feed, checking things out. I’m following 800 people. Surely there will be something interesting, right?

Wrong. Unless you like hundreds of promotional tweets shoved in your face.

Much of Twitter is wading through truckloads of spam. It’s slightly classier than Viagra ads. Then there are those pithy quotes, from famous people and from books authored by the Tweeter. One step up are tweets of interesting articles, some of which I’ll look at. But it’s not what I want.

Finally, I spot a real, live human being (Nat Russo) who mentions losing weight this week. I tweet him back. “Good for you,” I said. Nat responds. OMG I feel like Robinson Crusoe finding Friday. He assures me that there are actual people holding conversations on Twitter and recommends a few (BTW, Nat has a whole series about Twitter on his blog, A Writer’s Journey, which I intent to gobble up as soon as I get a chance).

I’m thinking about those hundreds of writers and others, spending all those hours tweeting, whose promotions I skimmed over because I had no connection with them.

So, Rule 1: Be authentic and share yourself, connect with people. Hugh Howey and Colleen Hoover (follow Colleen on Facebook, her posts are hilarious) are extraordinary at their ability to share themselves with the public. I hunted up Nat’s blog because he talked to me.

Rule 2: People are either looking for information (otherwise known as “help”), or they’re looking to be entertained. That’s why they buy your books. This is called “adding value,” and that’s what will help them connect with you.

Rule 3: Put Rules 1 & 2 together. Connect in an authentic way while being helpful or entertaining. Or both.

Rule 4: Telling people about your book is neither connecting nor is it helpful or entertaining. Promotional posts, shares and tweets should be about 1% of your social media output.

So what exactly does this mean?

The new mantra in marketing is “Something for Nothing.” I just made that up, but savvy marketers like Tim Grahl of Your First 1000 Books say it is vital to give away your content.

If you write non-fiction, it’s easy. Give away valuable bits from your book. Tim says to be sure to give away your best stuff. Make it immediately useful. His mantra? “Be relentlessly helpful.” He says not to worry about giving away too much. It makes sense. If I like what someone has to say, I’m going to go buy their book rather than waste time digging through hundreds of archived posts or waiting for them to put it all on the internet.

If you write fiction, you can post free short stories on your site. If you post an excerpt, make sure it is a complete story in of itself, or the reader is going to be turned off. Find ways to connect with your target audience. Fiction writers typically blog about writing, post book reviews or post about subjects dear to the hearts of their target reader.

I’m still figuring this out. I’m in the process of making this site more attractive to dog owners, my target audience. I’m now creating dog memes for #WoofWednesday, and I have a gallery of my real-life four-footed muses. This is a work in progress.

Oh, but wait, there’s one more rule!

Rule #6: Give the people on your mailing list a gift they can’t get any other way, and keep giving them unique content.

This needn’t be onerous. For my emails, I send out my dog memes in addition to any notices. I add a line or two of back story about the dog or the meme to make it special. As for that special gift, be creative. I give members of my mailing list access to a drop box folder with deleted scenes from my books (Okay, there’s only one in there so far, but I have lots to add!).

For more about this, check out Tim’s book. To see if he puts his money where his mouth is, sign up for his mailing list and get his free 30 day course on building your platform.

Life, On Being a Writer

How Thick Is Your Skin?

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Yesterday, I was watching a video by Jack Canfield, and he said Chicken Soup for the Soul was turned down 144 times before it was published. I thought, “Wow, he must have really thick skin!”

We all get dissed. Our family and dearest friends don’t read our books. Maybe they think it’s silly we write them, or that we’ll never make any money doing it. I hear this over and over again in my writer’s group. Those of us who self-publish still get treated like our money and sales don’t mean anything by authors who publish by ‘legitimate’ means. My mother STILL wants me to look for a ‘real’ publisher. I keep running the numbers for her and she says, “Oh.” Until next time, anyway.

And you thought it was only your family, your friends and your colleagues who were unsupportive?

The one thing that derails success for creative folks more than any other is a thin skin. Every big project I’ve ever done has had naysayers, no matter how great the idea was, or how well it worked out, and it was vital to be able to keep my focus and look for people who did support me.

I wrote my first book as a lark and did not tell anyone about it until the first draft was done. I didn’t have to listen to any critics, and I think a lot of writers operate like that. There’s only one problem with this strategy. It’s essential to gather partners to your success before you’re ready to publish, and it takes time to do that. Thus exposing you to criticism during those crucial early days of developing your dream.

Forty years of creative work have taught me a few things:

  1. Criticism is more about the critic than the thing being criticized. They don’t believe they could pull it off, so therefore, you can’t either.
  2. People who diss you today will forget all about it when you turn out something great.
  3. You have to be 100% behind your project first. Are you willing to invest your time, your money and whatever it takes to make it happen?
  4. People like to be part of the crowd. Get your most likely supporters behind you, then go after the tough sells. List the people they know who are behind your project, and they’re more likely to jump on board.
  5. If they thought it was a great idea, they’d be doing it. If your idea is truly original, NOBODY is going to think it’s brilliant, at least at first. You’re going to have to sell the idea, over and over.
  6. If the criticism is specific, consider it. If it’s valid, use it to improve your project and thank them for pointing it out. Because your detractors will be your best source of information about improving your project. And it will piss them off.

Grab some Kevlar, pour another cup of coffee and keep on keeping on. If nobody gets what you’re doing, you may be onto something wonderful.

Dog Park Culture, On Being a Writer

For Hugh Howey

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My response to Hugh’s latest blog post:OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

On Being a Writer

Social Media for Authors: The Funnel

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The funnel is the most important concept in using social media. It’s the endgame. The funnel is how you obtain permission to directly contact your fans. It refers to the process of using social media to connect with your target audience, then draw them closer to you with great content that adds value (I’ll talk about that in my next post in this series) so that they want to give you their email list.

“Email? Isn’t that passe? I thought the whole point of social media was to get beyond email lists!”

You want email addresses. Why?

  1. Remember MySpace? Social media platforms go in and out of style. If someone loses interest in Facebook (or wherever) or the platform goes belly-up, you’ve lost contact.
  2.  Just because you’re in contact with someone on one of the platforms is no guarantee they’ll see your posts. The popularity of social media sites is also it’s biggest flaw. Feeds can become so crowded, posts spin by at the speed of light or they never show on feeds at all.
  3. Even the social media platforms have discovered they need email to keep members engaged. Which is why they send out notices for every little thing to their members.
  4. People check their email multiple times a day. It’s guaranteed they’ll see anything that winds up in their inbox.
  5. Even if they don’t open your email, they’ve seen your name and that keeps you in their mind. I may only open my LLBean emails a couple times a year, but seeing the name on a regular basis reminds me that I like to shop there.

It works like this: You connect with people via social media. You post new content from your web-site regularly (blogs are great for this). People go to your site to see this content. You have a prominent offer of special content if they sign up on your email list, including a specific (and attractive) gift for signing up, Then you keep that permission by sending out some form of relevant content once or twice a month (or even more often) .

I know this sounds a bit cold blooded. If you set it up properly, it’s an organic means to connect with the people who are most interested in what you have to share, and stay connected with them.

MailChimp is an excellent email service that allows you 2,000 subscribers free, with some limitations. You get great stats so you see who is opening your mail and clicking your links.  They have great tutorials. You cannot get the auto-responder with the free account, but the paid accounts start at $10 per month, if you want to go that route.

The key to all of this, the key to keeping this manageable for you and attractive to your target audience, is content. I’ll talk about that in my next post in this series.

On Being a Writer

Social Media for Authors: Venues

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Everywhere you turn, a new social media venue is popping up. It’s tempting to believe you have to have a presence on all of them. This is a mistake. Instead, choose the venue(s) that you enjoy the most and serve you best. Invest yourself there.  Make one your home and add more if you have a specific reason for doing so.  Some venues can act as bridges between venues or as a mean of providing additional content. Here are my observations about some of the more popular venues.

Facebook is the big daddy of social media. It’s so big, many other sites, such as Goodreads, allow you to use your FB account to sign in with. Facebook offers business pages to go along with their personal accounts. While a personal account is invaluable, I would not bother creating an author page.

The business pages are not set up to encourage interaction, and with the changes in FB’s algorithms, there is no guarantee your fans will see your posts. Feeding content to an author page to keep it viable consumes time that would be better spent elsewhere. Of course, if your readers love cat and bacon memes, go ahead and set up that author page, you’ll be able to funnel plenty of content into it via shares from your feed.

You need to consider what you will and won’t make public. Just remember that anything you put online can wind up anywhere. Keep in mind that the politically incorrect meme full of F-bombs that you “like” can show up on your friends’ feeds, just like your “shares” do.

I live by a “I yam what I yam” philosophy. My page is public because I want people to find me. I don’t worry about what I will and won’t say. I figure if you get my books, you’ll get me, and vice versa. I’m happy to accept friend requests from people who identify themselves as fans.

Not everyone feels that way. Some folks set up personal accounts that are specifically for author business. Others take advantage of the different levels of privacy available on FB.

Find groups that relate to your book topics and participate. I don’t bother with the open writer groups. I hear they are mostly spam. I do belong to a private author group. This is an invitation-only net work of people who know each other and it is a spam-free and troll-free environment. We’re totally dedicated to supporting each other, and I love it. Writing is a lonely profession. Finding or creating such an environment can be a huge boost to your state of mind, your writing and even your sales.

Twitter is a “microblogging” site. Each “Tweet” is limited to 140 characters. If you know someone’s twitter handle, you can direct a tweet to them. I was so put out with the last John Sandford, that I tweeted my review to his official account. I suspect it’s managed by underlings, but there is at least a chance that someone in his entourage read it. With Twitter you can do things like that. Twitter allows you to bypass gatekeepers to important people. My friend, Desiree, tweets with Michael Moore on a regular basis.

These days, too much of Twitter is spam, and a lot of it is authors following authors who follow them back. Still, it can have an extensive reach. I set up my blog to auto tweet my blog posts, and Twitter to automatically repost to my FB account.

The folks with the best followings are those who tweet random bits, things that are meant to amuse or glimpses into their life, usually with a wry slant.

Twitter invented the Hashtag (#) If you add popular hashtags to your tweet, it is likely to be seen by people interested in those subjects and can possibly extend your reach. I often use #dog, #mystery and #woofwednesday.

If you’d like to find actual readers to follow (and hopefully follow you back), look up the authors of books similar to yours. click on their list of followers. Follow their followers and some of them will follow you back. You can click on each name to get a mini version of their profile to vet them first.

When you get hundreds of followers, the feed becomes unmanageable. You can create lists of followers, and when you click on that list, you’ll only see those posts.

Pintrest lets you set up boards where you post like items. Instead of disappearing into the void of a feed like FB posts, these remain visible. On Pintrest, you can share book research with fans, create pages devoted to books, characters, or personal interests. You can organize book research and resources. I have not done any of these things. but I might. One of these days.

YouTube allows you to post videos. Some folks love it. If you have the skills to make a video (some of us dinosaurs don’t) it’s a nifty way to create content to share other places. For younger people, Vlogs are popular. Hugh Howey frequently makes videos for fans.

One of the best opportunities for authors on YouTube is  Parapalooza   This is a project that posts videos of authors reading their favorite paragraph from one of their books and fans reading a paragraph from favorite books.

Linkedin is great for connecting with people professionally. If your book is related to your professional life, or of interest to a particular professional group, this can be an invaluable resource.

Vine is another video site that limits you to six second videos. It’s good for being random and silly and mostly appeals to a younger audience.

Instagram is a phone app and a community. It allows you to easily post videos and photos online. It also allows you to share on FB and other sites. This is a terrific tool if you are the sort to make random posts/tweets about everyday events.

Reddit is an online community of forums. They have forums for pretty much everything. While not as direct as Facebook and other venues, this is a good place to find people interested in niche subjects. I found forums for UFOs, Atheism, Dinosaurs and Astrology. As with all public forums, don’t feed the trolls.

Goodreads You can list your books on Goodreads and have a Goodreads author page. You can also embed your blog to your author page.  You can give away books in the hope of getting reviews. Just don’t talk about being an author, unless you’re clear the group is okay with it. Join a few groups that interest you and talk about your reading experiences. Post reviews. Don’t respond to reviews of your own books, lest you get tagged “author behaving badly” and open yourself up to the Goodreads trolls. Goodreads has been taking steps to address trollish behavior, but it’s best not to take the chance. GR members are demons for group etiquette. Establishing a presence on GR takes a long time and a lot of effort. For some people it’s worth it, because your average GR member is a rabid reader and many are librarians.

KDP forum If you self-publish on Amazon, the KDP forum is an invaluable source of information about the ins and outs of publishing ebooks on Amazon. The Kindle changes every year but the posted guidelines don’t keep up with the technological advances. This is the best place to find out the latest about how to produce the best ebook formatting. I dumped the boards a year ago when several of us broke off to create a private forum, but I still recommend it to newbies. Don’t trumpet successes, because this can lead to troll Amazon reviews (which is why my friends and I play elsewhere now). It may be best to not use your real name here. This isn’t a place to promote your books, anyway.

KBoards (formerly known as Kindle Boards) This is a forum where writers are encouraged to mingle with readers, and some successful authors are known to hang out here. I don’t know much about it. Again, be sure to mind your internet manners and don’t feed the trolls.

WordPress is a blogging venue that functions somewhat as social media because it allows you to follow other blogs. It’s also easier for people who don’t know you to find your content. This is why my blog is posted here instead of at an independent website. It’s got plenty of bells and whistles and you can add pages and upgrade to turn your blog into a full website with an independent URL.

Next: The Funnel