Author: Elizabeth Spann Craig

One reason why I think traditionally-published writers are slow to make the leap to being dual-published (traditionally and self-published) is because the learning curve for self-publishing is so very high.

Here are my thoughts, so far, on e-publishing—in the hopes it will help someone else out there. Others, of course, will draw different conclusions from their own experiences…and I’d love to hear them because I’m figuring this out as I go.

Formatting and Conversion

I read and read and read about getting ebooks ready for publication. I even created mobi and epub files of my Word document…and thought they looked pretty good through the Calibre application.

The difference is, though, that I didn’t want pretty good. I’m used to having an interior book designer for my books…for the Memphis books, for example, I’ve got little pigs around the chapter numbers, etc. Just a lot of detail.

I know I posted yesterday on perfectionism and how it holds us back, but I wasn’t happy with my efforts at formatting/book design. Plus, there are only so many hours in a day and only so many things a writer can do well (or even competently). So I handed it over to a book designer and was much happier with the results. I paid for that service, but I know I’m putting an investment into my book for (with any luck), long-term results. In fact, I put in about $400-$450 into the ebook (can’t remember which), which again, I’m thinking will end up paying off in the long run by having a nice looking book.

Covers

Covers are important for ebooks, but they’ve always been important in publishing. With ebooks, though, you can even change a cover and see how the results work out. I’m very happy with mine, though (designed by writer and artist Kendel Flaum), so I’m not planning on doing any tinkering. A cover should look good in a thumbnail (such as you’d see on a Kindle or Nook).

Pricing

If you want a 70% royalty on an ebook (or 65% if you’re looking at Barnes and Noble’s PubIt), you’ll price your book at $2.99 and up. If you want to price your book lower than $2.99, you’ll get a 35% royalty from Amazon (40% from Barnes & Noble’s PubIt).

But you can also run short-term sales on a title. Sales on your ebooks can have other benefits—exposure (see below.) Mine will ordinarily be priced at $2.99, although I’ve run $.99 sales on it.

Exposure—Promo

For ebooks, promo seems to be a lot about getting noticed. There isn’t a physical bookstore, after all. You’re trying to get attention in a sea of books.

What helps a lot is to get into the ebook retailer’s algorithm (“customers who bought this, also bought this”). So, for me, if I’ve got a sale running on my book, it might mean (short-term) more sales. This means that people are buying my book at the same time they’re downloading other cozy mysteries. So the ebook retailer might recommend my book to cozy mystery readers when they’re shopping.

Getting our book noticed by an online retailer like Amazon means trying different things—short-term sales, asking bloggers for reviews (maybe sending them a free copy of the ebook…without requiring a favorable review), tagging books with appropriate tags to help connect readers with our novel, etc. There are also forums where it’s appropriate to post about our books—the Meet our Authors forum on Amazon (don’t post promo anywhere else there) and the Book Bazaar on Kindle Boards.

Thoughts on earning out with ebooks

With traditional publishing, there’s a point where your book earns out the advance you received from the publisher. It’s a very happy time. :) With self-publishing, you’re also looking to earn out in a way….but to recoup the money you put into the book on the front end (cover, editing, book design, etc.)

The best bet, overall, seems to be to write quickly, edit carefully, and publish as many ebooks as possible online. And, I’ll add that I think it’s important still to pursue traditional publishing—you’ll just learn so much and gain a real confidence in what you can do.

Remember, I do have a directory of ebook professionals that I’m adding to on a nearly daily basis. It’s a good starting off place for your search for someone to do a cover, book design, etc. There are a variety of services and a range of prices.

Got any ebook insights? Or ebook questions (although I’m probably not the right person to answer them, since I’m new to this, myself!) ?

I’m continuing on with the productivity theme this week. :) That’s because I’m revamping some of my mindset to get more writing done.

I’ve always been pretty good about resisting perfectionism during first drafts. That’s because I’d never get anywhere with a book if I tried to make it perfect as I went. The first draft is supposed to be a disaster. I don’t look at what I wrote the day before, just end my writing time with a quick cheat sheet to tell me where I left off and where I need to pick up.

I’ve even tried to get over my perfectionism for the final draft that I send in to the publisher. I still send last minute emails to editors and my agent saying, “Would you please use this copy of the manuscript and not the one I emailed you yesterday?” I’ll do that a couple of times if they don’t cut me off. :) But I’m doing better about it. If it’s done, it’s done—if my editors see a problem with the book, then they’ll be sure to let me know and I’ll fix it during the revision process.

But now I’ve run into a new issue—a backlist title that has been giving me fits for a month or more. I’m trying to squeeze in revision work on it right now because I’m waiting on outline approval for the second book in the quilting mystery series…and I have a little break before Hickory Smoked Homicide comes out November 1.

My plan has been to re-release this backlist book as an ebook at some point later this year or early next year. I’ve hacked it into bits and changed massive parts of it and am still unhappy with it. And I haven’t even reached the end of the book yet.

Maybe for you it isn’t a backlist book…maybe it’s a manuscript that you put aside for a long while and are coming back to. The good thing about doing this is that we can see the manuscript with fresh eyes and can see all its faults. The bad thing is that we can see all its faults. :)

What I’ve been doing (which I’m now realizing is *not* working for me) is to reread and revise the book from the beginning. So I’ll take a few pages, edit them, then rewrite the scene from scratch—taking the meat of the scene and presenting it in a different way.

The problem with doing this is that it takes forever. I don’t edit my other manuscripts this way. So why am I treating this one differently?

What I’ve realized in the last couple of days is that I need to make separate passes through the document—and not to get off-track by spinning my wheels in one particular spot in the story by trying to make it perfect. I’ll treat it as a draft. I’ll make a pass for basic changes (deeper POV, showing instead of telling.) , a pass for setting, a pass for character development, a pass for subplots that add to the main plot, etc. Then at the end of that, maybe I’ll make a pass through and see if I want to add or delete scenes.

This, I think, will at least make me feel like I’m making progress on the book. I need to believe there’s a light at the end of the tunnel or I really start losing motivation. With repetitive passes through the book, I’ll get a little sick of the book, but it’s not as bad as realizing I’m halfway through and have already spent more time on revision as it usually takes to write a first draft.

How do you keep perfectionism from holding you back?

I read a post from Inkygirl, Debbie Ohi, which really resonated with me the other day.

Debbie is an author and illustrator. She’s also very active online and is well-respected in the writing community for helping connect writers with resources.

She’s got a lot going on.

Debbie said:

I’m a social media addict. I’ve been a huge fan of online communities before the term “online community” even existed. These days, however, I’m feeling spread too thin over too many social networks: Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Second Life, various writing and illustration communities, plus all the blogs I either manage or in which I participate as a collaborator.

Debbie goes on to say that her main, long-term, goal is to get more books published. And the only way to do that, she explained, is to rethink the amount of time she’s spending online.

I’ve got the same goal—to write as much as possible and have more books published. There’s a big shift in my mindset, too. I’ve realized that I just can’t juggle everything every day. I’ve become more forgiving of myself and a little more flexible. And I realize my limitations.

These are ways I’ve tried to trim or streamline the amount of time I spend online:

Decrease the times each day that I check email. I also try to have dedicated times that I respond to email.

Plan more than one blog post at a time. I brainstorm blog posts for a week.

Timer: I set a timer to remind myself when I need to take a break from being online.

Blog visiting: I try to visit as many blogs as I can (I love finding out what everyone’s up to and love to get writing tips), but I divide up the blogs by different days so I’m not taking too much time out of .

Twitter—I skim my Google Reader and load the most-helpful post links into SocialOomph to post over a 14-16 hour period. First thing in the morning each morning, I make sure Twitter is set to load. Once a day, I check for @ messages and DMs to respond to.

Facebook and Google+: I have my blog set up to post on my Facebook page and just try to check in a couple of times a week (Facebook isn’t my favorite.) I enjoy Google+ more, but am trying to pace myself there, too.

Blog breaks: There’s also nothing wrong with taking a blogcation to recharge or with decreasing the number of days that you post. Please let us know beforehand before you stop posting that you’re taking a hiatus to relax—otherwise, we’ll worry about you. :)

How are you managing your online time? Feeling the need to cut back or are you balancing it well?

I have many hats—one a cloche with a fan of feathers for when I write mystery (don’t you think it makes me look mysterious?), a sunbonnet for western fiction, a fedora for nonfiction, a gimme cap for young-adult works, and, of course, a toque for cookbooks and other food writing. I used to have a mortarboard for my career in academic publishing, but I’ve turned that in.

Some people ask me how I can wear so many hats, but the answer, to me, is simple. It’s all writing in one form or another, and I am a writer. I cannot do math and probably couldn’t pass high school algebra. But I can work problems out in words—it’s what I do best and what gives me satisfaction. I like to take an idea or subject and figure out how to put it into words so that other people will read about it.

When I wrote historical fiction about women and young girls of the American West, I had to imagine myself in the nineteenth century West, though I doubt Libby Custer or Jessie Benton Frémont ever wore a sunbonnet. Still I had to know what they did wear—like weights in the hem of their skirts to keep them from blowing in the wind. And I had to think about what it would be like for Libby to ride across the plains on a reckless horse, or for Lucille Mulhall, the first Wild West cowgirl, to rope several horses, or for Etta Place to take part in a bank robbery and the hard ride of a getaway. It was a wild and exciting ride for a bookish girl like me who never was comfortable on a horse.

Young adult nonfiction was probably the greatest challenge to working out problems in words. I wrote for several companies that published for school libraries. The company would assign me a topic, and I’d research and write, usually about 5,000 words. I have written books on everything from vaccines and surgery to passenger ships, various state histories, biographies of several presidents. Probably the hardest one I ever did was on international women’s right.

Wearing a toque was no problem. I actually have one that I’ve worn to several book signings, but food writing comes easily to me because I love to cook and to eat new food. I did have to learn the mechanics—the proper presentation of a recipe, for instance. And copyright regulations (ingredients of a recipe cannot be copyrighted but directions can).

Mystery has been the hardest hat to keep on my head—that cloche wanted to slip off. I wrote my first mystery, if you want to call it that, almost 50 years ago. It was a knock-off of Nancy Drew that I wrote in the car while my then-husband drove us across country. It was, quite frankly, awful. Around 2000 I wrote a mystery I thought was pretty good and gave it to an agent—naïf that I was I didn’t realize that it mattered that cozies were not her field. I may go back and revisit that one someday.

I am forever grateful to Susan Wittig Albert for telling me to join Sisters in Crime. Then I joined the Guppies and Agent Quest and soon learned what an insider’s game looking for an agent was and how many people submitted countless queries without success. I was, I discovered, not only a newbie but a small guppie in a very large pond. I read listservs, I read blogs, I took online courses, and I learned so much it’s hard to hold it all in my brain. And members of Sisters in Crime and all its sub-groups are incredibly supportive of newbies.

My goal was to publish a mystery, and after seven or so rewrites and six years, Skeleton in a Dead Space launched from Turquoise Morning Press on August 29. I really like that cloche with a feather and intend to wear it for quite a while.

Thanks so much for guest blogging today, Judy! And for giving me some encouragement about trying new genres!

Judy Alter of Fort Worth, Texas, is the author of about sixty books for children and adults. Her main interest has been the experiences of women in the American West, and she’s written six adult novels with that theme and seven young-adult novels, as well as countless children’s books, mostly done for libraries on the American West and a variety of other subjects.

Judy is also the author of a memoir/cookbook, a collection of short stories, young-adult biographies of figures from Texas history, and two books studying the work of Texas author Elmer Kelton. Recently retired after 30 years with Texas Christian University Press, 20 of them as director, she is now devoting her attention to writing mysteries and, still and forever, writing about Texas. You can find Judy at her blog and website.

I’m speaking this Sunday at a Sisters in Crime meeting in High Point, North Carolina from 2-4.

I’m looking forward to the talk because I’m most comfortable with writers. Although I probably should be more comfortable with readers…it just hasn’t worked out that way.

I don’t have an assigned topic to speak on (sometimes when I speak with groups, they ask me to talk on a particular topic.) So I’ll set my own topic—it’s always better to go in with a plan. I’ve found that most writing groups want me to talk about how to juggle different series and publishers at once, how to use social media to promote, and how I got my start in publishing. This is all stuff I know by heart. :)

But I also speak with other types of groups, although I don’t think of myself as a good speaker (I’m getting better.)

Here are some of my thoughts and tips on speaking to different audiences:

Talking to children (if you write for adults): This is so dependent on the age-group you’re speaking to. I’ve done presentations for early elementary through middle school age, and my tip is to know your audience. The little guys just don’t have an attention span. Bring in lots of props. For early elementary age, I usually bring in my journals and writing from when I was a kid, encourage them to write their own stories, show them a marked up manuscript (for some reason they’re always very interested in this), and then follow up by reading a favorite picture book.

For older children (again, if you write for adults): I ask the teacher (whoever gave me the invite), how they’re teaching writing and what they’re focusing on. The last thing I want to do is undo what they’ve taught! I follow their lesson plan (frequently on topics like elaboration, how to start and end a story, focusing on a small part of a story instead of throwing the net too wide) and talk about how I use what the teacher has taught in my own writing. Older kids really want a Q&A session, too.

Talking to other writers: It’s important to know what you’re there for. Once I apparently didn’t get the memo and found out when I was at the event that I was talking about humor in mysteries. That was fine, but I usually don’t do well shooting from the hip! Sometimes they’ll want you to talk about something really specific—editing or promo or dialogue or POV. Sometimes they’ll leave the topic up to you (but you’ll want to plan ahead for what you’ll speak about….just to make your talk more polished.) I’m fond of handing out sheets with helpful websites, resources for writers, etc.

Talking to readers: This is always completely different from talking with other writers. Readers like to hear more about the writing life, how we come up with characters, why we chose our genre, where we find our inspiration, our favorite authors, etc. There’s also, subtly, a bit more of a sales aspect to talking to readers (because your books are for sale on the back table) and so you’ll want to use quick and interesting examples from your own work.

Talking to book clubs. How is this different from talking with readers? Because these folks have all read your book! And boy, you should know that book backwards and forwards. If you have written a fair number of books or have a poor memory (I can claim both) then bring a cheat sheet with you of characters and plot points. Believe me—you’ll need it.

Readings. Um…well, I hate readings. But you should always be prepared to give a reading, no matter who you’re speaking to. I’ve been surprised before by moderators who asked me to read from my book and was frantically flipping through, trying to find a good spot to read from. Just mark a book with a Post-It note and be sure to bring your reading glasses. Try to read with inflection. Keep it short. That’s about all the advice I have on this topic. :) I keep mentioning to event organizers that I don’t do readings, but apparently this message gets lost.

I could also talk about speaking on panels, but I’ll skip it here because it’s pretty easy—you’re usually speaking on an assigned topic, responding to moderator questions, sharing time with other writers (don’t hog the spotlight), and addressing one of the groups I’ve mentioned above (readers if it’s a readers’ convention, writers if it’s a writing convention.)

Have you spoken to different types of groups about your writing? Do you have favorite groups to speak to? Got any public speaking tips?