Book Review: Evertaster

I decided to take some time away from authoring and do a little book consumption. I almost mean “consumption” literally, because the book I just finished, Evertaster by Adam Glendon Sidwell, was good enough to eat. In fact, I dare you to read it without a wealth of snacks in front of you.

The hero of the story is a scrawny little kid named Guster, whose mom is so frustrated by his picky eating habits, she drags him into the dark alleys of New Orleans just to find something that he’s willing to eat. Guster’s true problem isn’t simple pickiness. He’s actually an evertaster, someone who can taste the tiniest molecules of everything that is put into food.

"Guster could taste the dirty corn fed to the chickens Mom used in her casseroles, or the foul rain that fell on the almond trees.”

He’s reached the point of near-starvation, because eating ordinary food (especially his mother’s casseroles) is intolerable to his poor little stomach. When they get to the city, a mysterious chef tells them about The One Recipe, which is the recipe for a food that is so delicious, it will end all wars. Guster, his mom, and his three siblings set off on a global adventure to seek out The One Recipe so Guster can finally fill his empty belly.

It was such a fun story, so absolutely ingenious, I had to share. The Johnsonville family traveled all over the world, fighting gorillas and giant chickens, trekking through the deep dark jungles and frigid arctic lands and remote islands, all the while running from a deadly mafia of evertaster chefs. Sidwell’s storytelling is magical and made me want to hop a plane and head off for an adventure of my own. He created such culinary visuals, I was ready to eat raw eggs or entire tubs of butter. I don’t think I’ll ever touch a casserole.

I first discovered the book on Facebook, funnily enough, on Sidwell’s author page. I loved the cover art so much, I shared it on my own page. When the book was finally released, it made the best seller’s list on the first day, which is unheard of for a first-time author.  Also impressive was the excerpt reaction of Orson Scott Card on the back cover. I stumbled across a book review from a blogger I’m following. The review convinced me to buy a copy of Evertaster for myself. I’m glad I did. I completely lost myself in the story and was curiously hungry during the whole adventure.

I would absolutely recommend Evertaster to everyone, no matter what genre you normally read. It’s a welcome getaway for all ages, and if you are an avid foodie, all the better for you. Kudos to Adam Glendon Sidwell for an excellent literary experience. I wouldn’t be surprised if Evertaster become the next classic fairytale, a book that lands in every nursery and every school library in the world. It was just that tasty.

Are you a writer if you're just pretending?

Years ago, a client asked me to rewrite his book for him. He said that the book, which was about small business planning, was outdated and needed a good refresh. He asked me to write the same information but using slightly different wording. I guess a red flag should have gone up right then, but I was still quite trusting at the time. The client sent me all the documentation and I got to work. Not more than a couple of chapters in, something just didn't feel right. The book manuscript he gave me was terribly inconsistent in style and language and sometimes didn’t make sense at all. For example, my client was Australian, but I noticed that large chunks of text were written in U.S. English, while some parts were in British English. The tone and voice of the pages weren’t consistent either. At one point, I noticed some text that referred to U.S. government offices. That’s when I stopped. I pulled various excerpts from my client’s manuscript and ran a little Copyscape check. The results should come as no surprise. The man did not write the content at all. He stole it from three books published by the American Small Business Association and from another book that was published by an Australian business organization. What he wanted to do was to take these four popular publications, reword them, and put his name on the final product. When I called him on it, explaining that it’s considered plagiarism to copy someone else’s work, he tried to convince me that he wasn’t doing anything wrong. He said that he purchased the books and then tried to return them, but the seller would not refund his money. In his mind, that meant he owned the books and could do what he wanted with them. I lost a lot of money by walking away from that job, and I don’t regret it one bit. I know people plagiarize, but I did think that this was an extreme case.

Not so. Years later, I still come across clients (and I use the term loosely) who want someone to “edit” a book that they hadn’t even written yet. They have an idea and want to make a book out of it. But they can’t write or they’re too lazy or for whatever reason, they are incapable of being a true author. So they hire a writer to edit their non-existent book, or they come right out and ask for a ghost writer.

I do understand ghost writing to an extent. If you’re a celebrity or someone who’s been through a newsworthy trauma, it’s perfectly okay to hire a writer to write your autobiography. I mean, it’s your story. You lived it, so you own it. But in my opinion, it’s quite different to hire someone to write your fictional idea into a book and then expect to get byline rights for it. It’s misleading and not fair to the readers, who all think Mr. Byline is a great author. It’s also not fair to the writer who, in many cases, does all the research, story building, writing and formatting. As a writer, I don’t understand the logic behind taking such a job. If you can write a best seller, why not do it for yourself instead of some bonehead who’ll pay you a hundred bucks for it? Admittedly, I am often willing to write articles and not take the byline. The reason is that I’m not interested in the subject matter and don’t need or want my byline associated with it. But a book is another matter altogether. A lot of a writer’s heart goes into a book. How do you part with that?

I recently came across another freelance writing proposal that was so outrageous, I laughed for ten minutes before sharing it with all of my friends. A man posted on a freelance site that he was a member of an internet marketing forum, posing as an expert in internet marketing. He wanted to hire a writer who was a true expert in the field to write hundreds of posts to this forum, using his name, so that he’ll look like a real expert and get credit for all the posts. Oh, and get this: He’s willing to pay a whopping 35 cents per post. No doubt this man will be paid highly for these posts and will establish himself as a guru of internet marketing. The writer, who is the real expert, will get 35 cents and a severe case of writer’s cramp. If the writer is smart, he’ll bypass the lowballing client and find a way to monetize his posts directly from the website.

It’s frightening how perfectly comfortable people are pretending to be something they’re not. I think it’s admirable when someone wants to write a book, or if they want to be a professional blogger or forum poster. A noble ambition. But if you’re not already a skilled writer, then the logical first step would be to learn. Take a class, read a book, practice. If you decide one day that you want to be a writer and then hire someone else to do it for you, are you truly a writer? I suppose I could say that I want to be a programmer and then hire someone to write code for me. I could declare myself an architect, then hire someone to design my house. I could do that. Maybe I could even make lots of money like these pseudo clients on the freelance boards. But it wouldn’t feel good, and that is the very thing that makes me write. It feels good to do what I love. It feels good to earn even a few pennies a day, because the words come from me. The language, the sculpture, the art. It’s all mine. There’s something gratifying about having a true skill and making it work for you, much more than having an idea and making someone else work for you.

I guess writing means different things to different people. To some, writing is a job. To others, it’s a way of life. The pretenders probably think of writing as a resource rather than a skill. But if you don’t have the skill, can you be called a writer?

Stop and Go, Switch Direction – Writer Needs vs. Reader Needs

I hate stopping a writing flow in the middle. It happens to writers a lot. I have stacks of half-written manuscripts, articles I never finished, and ideas that never even make it to the page. This is one disadvantage of self-publishing and freelancing. In a traditional writing job, you write what your client, publisher, or company wants and are paid for that work. The work is assigned to you ahead of time, along with an agreement for pay. When you self-publish and freelance, you write what you choose to write, typically what you love to write, and then hope to sell it later. You work on your own time, so it’s risky. Today’s topic follows along the lines of my post from October 2011, “The Real World.”

I have been working hard on my next book, which is teen fiction somewhere between funny and demented. Book sales for the previous two books are slow as are freelance gigs. I have to make a living, right? And I only have this one skill, writing. So I am toying with the idea of halting my fiction book temporarily and cranking out one or two non-fiction titles. I noticed a lot of non-fiction writers who write books based on their opinions or one experience that they feel makes them an expert. I think I have more to offer than that. People want to read books by truly qualified authors. I am qualified to write books about writing, not because I write this blog but because I have an education in writing and I have many years’ experience. My experience has not only been to write for people but also to teach them and to set up writing procedures and templates. I have style guides memorized (though I admit I do overlook a few rules when writing casually).

So I know I have the expertise. I have the qualifications. I need a niche. Lots of people write about writing. Why would my book stand out above theirs? I actually know the answer to that and it has to do with the readers’ needs.

Writers often write what they like to write. They write their opinions, their feelings, their experiences. It’s easy to write when you have that passion. The problem is that they don’t always write what the reader needs. Or they write what the reader wants but cannot produce the magical results that the reader expects. You can’t make someone else a great writer. You can’t make someone else a best-selling novelist. You can teach people grammar, but that topic is a little touchy since adults are aware that grammar is something they should have learned in grade school and are hesitant to relearn.

My aim is to teach potential writers exactly what they need to get through a task. In technical writing, for example, which is my primary area of expertise, there are various forms of technical documentation. It is very common for someone to be assigned the task of writing, say,  a Request for Proposal and have no idea what one looks like. It sounds like it would be a simple letter, but in fact, RFPs are typically 30+ pages long and are very detailed. If you miss a detail, your project could be disastrous and costly. This is just one example, but this is the sort of thing people need to know, how to do a specific task and what it looks like in the end. It’s all about need. What they need, not what I need, although it does feel good when you can help people out.

I do hate switching gears, even temporarily. But it’s a consequence of an occupation where you do what you want to, until you have to do what you have to do. It'll be a short break. I promise.

The Reading Experience

I finally broke down and bought a Kindle. I have mixed feelings about e-readers. From an author’s perspective, e-readers are life savers. They provide that extra boost in book sales by catering to the busy, impatient, and conservative consumers who like to read but just can’t fit it into their lifestyles. They allow writers to write more and publish faster. We can set lower prices and reach wider audiences.

As a reader, I see some benefits as well. If I feel like reading a particular book, I can do so right now. I don’t have to gas up my car or put on socks and shoes. I don’t have to hop from store to store to find the book. I don’t have to talk to anyone. I don’t even have to stand in line or wait for shipping. Just click, and it’s mine. In my house, I have a separate room dedicated to books. It was a dining room in a former life, but now it is a library. In my library, I have hundreds of books of all sizes and all genres. I have so many books, that they no longer fit on the wall-to-wall shelves I set up. They are stacked on the floor, spilling into other rooms, and just taking over my life. I love every one of them.

Imagine if I took every one of those books and dropped them into my purse. Obviously, it’d have to be a purse the size of a U-Haul truck, but it would be cool to have them with me all the time. As it is, I already carry 135 audiobooks on my MP3 player, 135 books in the palm of my hand. I can do that with my Kindle. I can take every book in my library and carry them all around in a single electronic device. It’s like magic. How exciting for a bookaholic! Can it get any better than that?

I had my reservations about e-reading. First, I just assumed that an e-reader would display pages exactly as a computer does, in pixels and refresh rates. I already spend too much time on my computer, to the point that my eyes throb at night and I can still see blinking spots even when my lids are closed. I even readjust the resolution in my dreams so I can see them better. The Kindle surprised me, though. When I first pulled it out of the box, there was a printed message on the screen that said something like “Fully charge your Kindle before using it for the first time.” I thought that the message was a sticker and I spent hours trying to peel it off. It turns out, it was the electronic display! The Kindle displays text as if it just came off a printer. It’s the neatest thing. I can’t even describe it except to say that every digital page looks like a printed page. It does not look electronic. It doesn’t even look real. I was seriously in awe, running around showing everyone. I charged up the device and downloaded my Kindle PC library and then purchased a handful of cozy mysteries. In four days, my Kindle never left my hand. It was a very interesting way to read. I didn’t have to turn pages or hold the book open or use a bookmark. It was all very convenient. The Kindle (and probably the Nook and other readers) is well designed with the avid reader in mind.

But while the Kindle has readers in mind, it fails to appease the book lover. In that respect, there were several downfalls. The biggest for me was the absence of a cover. I know that for my own books, I submit a cover with my e-books, but I guess the big publishing companies don’t bother. Book covers are important. They make one book stand out from another and for me, they help me recognize and pick out the book I want to read. My Kindle is not in color. I chose this one on purpose because of its battery life. But even in black and white, I expect to see book covers in my library. Instead, all I see is a list of titles, sometimes not even the whole title if the title’s too long. I select a book and am taken to the title page. When I open a book, the first page I want to see is its cover, not the title page. I want the real-book experience of choosing a book by its cover. I have a very visual mind. I don’t memorize book titles, but I do remember what the books look like. With a hundred book titles in my list, how am I supposed to remember that “The Anatomy of a Chemical Component” is a fantasy novel about alchemy or that “The Mysteries of Pixels and Poison” is a true story about hackers? I need a visual reference to guide me.

Another element missing from the equation is the book summary, typically found in the back matter of a paperback or inner sleeve of a hardcover. Again, how am I supposed to keep track of all these books if I don’t remember what they are about? All those cozy mysteries that I downloaded were part of the same series. Naturally, I wanted to read them in order. But I had trouble figuring out what each book was about, let alone the order in which they were written. I had to go to Amazon (using my iPhone, not the Kindle’s lame “experimental” browser) to read each summary and jot down the order. Not very efficient and definitely not the best book lover experience.

What about having to recharge your book? Even though my Kindle advertised a two-month battery life, mine lasted a week. Imagine my horror when I was just about to read the “whodunit” and my Kindle blinks off and is replaced with a message of “Recharge your battery.” I had to wait hours for the device to recharge so I could find out who the murderer was.

It was a big eye-opener for me. I found myself pondering the potentially disastrous future of depending solely on e-readers. Yikes, can you imagine such a dystopian world?

Mrs. Future Teacher:  Where is your homework, Johnny? Did your dog eat it?

Johnny: No, of course not, Teacher. He doesn’t like plastic. If you must know, my battery died.

Mrs. Future Teacher: Gasp! Oh you poor thing. I’ll give you another week to complete it.

The idea of e-readers replacing books terrifies me, even more so because it’s a very real possibility. I don’t believe it’ll be a conscious decision of every consumer in a single day but rather a gradual transformation. We book lovers adore our books. I can sit in my library for hours just staring at my collection and maybe sifting through a book or two. I love my books. I love the cover art and the design and texture of the pages. I love the craftsmanship and even the smell of a book. But reality suggests that it is no longer practical nor logical to have a physical library like mine. An entire room that holds nothing but books? It’s crazy. Ten years ago, there was no choice. If you had a large collection, this was the way to do it. Today it is much less necessary, and as new generations are born into this increasingly digital world, physical libraries may eventually grow scarce.

To be honest, I feel like a traitor. I feel like a traitor because not only do I now read e-books but I enjoy doing so. Every time I download an e-book, a print book is left behind. Some people might say I’m helping to save trees. I’m helping to kill books is what I’m doing. I’m contributing to the death of a timeless tradition. By downloading digital versions, I am saying to the world that I can live without paperbacks. Others are doing the same. E-books are already a popular trend, but very soon trend will outweigh tradition and paperbacks will become a thing of the past. So what is to be done about it? I don’t think there’s anything that can be done. I’ll never give up my library in my lifetime and will never completely stop buying physical books. But I can’t stop evolution. I can’t stop humans from seeking easy, fast, convenient, cheap, and lazy. I do it myself. It’s only natural.

I do hope, however, that future generations never forget what it’s like to turn a page.




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Judging a Book by its Author

Over the past seven years or so, I’ve attended a number of pop-culture conventions. While most of them are comic or gaming conventions, I tend to seek out the indie author tables. My intention is to buy a book from each author in support of fellow indies (even though I’m only recently published, I’ve been an aspiring potential unpublished author since birth). At these conventions, the books normally fall within one of my preferred YA/fantasy/dragon/magic/dystopian fiction genres and I’m usually excited to get home and start reading. But I don’t always leave the convention with a book, even if there are a half dozen authors spread up and down artist’s alley.

The reason has to do with the authors. I’m not one to readily embrace any form of social interaction, but when I approach an author’s booth with a keen interest in his/her book, I do expect, at the very least, a friendly hello. Unfortunately, many authors are so used to solitude, they forget that in public they are literary icons. More importantly, they are sales people. Say hello, answer questions, hand out flyers. Do something!

Five years ago, I stumbled upon a great find. A man and a woman were standing in the middle of the aisle dressed in Celtic/fantasy attire. They were greeting everyone, handing out bookmarks and magnets and, if a lurker lurked about too long, they launched into a pitch about their book. It turns out, these people were co-authors of an independently published book series called Rowan of the Wood (Christine and Ethan Rose). They were totally into it, cosplaying the characters, inviting people to join in on the fun of their world. The book itself looked great. Nothing about it was unprofessional, unattractive, or half-assed. The cover art was beautiful, the interior book design was perfect, and the story looked great. In fact, it really was great. I bought one right away and finished it before I even got home. There were wizards and magic and baddies and a past/present theme. Christine and Ethan clearly put a lot of passion and talent into it. As I read, I thought about their enthusiasm. The whole experience impressed me. This is how you sell an indie.

Four years ago, I came across another author. While this one was very personable and approachable, he was somewhat of a nutcase. I did enjoy visiting with him. He was funny. But he also had no talent, and he knew it. In fact, his lack of talent was exactly what he was pitching. He was standing there, waving people down, telling them, “I wrote a book. It totally sucks, but buy it anyway because I need the money…”  I actually did buy his book, mostly to show support and to give him the benefit of the doubt. I thought I could overlook the fact that the book was horrible, because the author was so friendly and funny. But it was truly bad. The cover was pure black with white pencil scratchings and a few stick figures. He was courteous enough to write “Not a Writer” on the front, just in case you had any delusions that you were about to read something professionally written. Inside, there was no copyright statement, no publisher information, and not even a title page. The content of the book consisted of two parts profanity and one part humor that only the author understood. He broke all the rules of writing and probably could have won an award for the anti-manual of style. I bought two of his books, but after the first one, I was laughing so hard, I couldn’t even go near the second. I wasn’t laughing with the book. I was laughing at it. I’ve got to give the guy credit for trying. But seriously, he’s the poster child for the bad rap indies get. I am not posting his name because my intention is to make a point, not to slam another author.

That same year, at another convention, I discovered another gem. This woman (again, I won’t mention her name) had a fantasy book that was right up my alley. Dragons and magical education and faraway lands. And while the cover art was quite bland, the story sounded intriguing. But as I stepped up to the table and read the back of the book, the author sat there like a dead fish. She didn’t smile. She didn’t look at me. She didn’t offer a synopsis of her book. She just sat there and scowled. I decided to go ahead and give the book a try. Again, the benefit of the doubt. Only when I told her that I’d like to buy a copy did she even move. She got up from her metal folding chair and slugged over to me, signed the book, took the money and dropped the book in a bag. No “thank you,” no “enjoy it.” Nothing. When I got home, I tried to read this book. I wanted to like it. But as I read, I kept recalling the dead fish lady slumped in a chair. From that memory, I developed a prejudice against the book. After a few attempts to get through the first chapter, I decided to put it away and try again later. Maybe I was just tired from the convention. Three months later, I tried again, and again six months after that. I could not get through it. I’m not entirely sure whether it was just boring or if the author herself ruined it for me. I suspect the latter.

I encountered hits and misses like these over the next few years. There was a time when I passed an author’s booth twenty times, because I liked the synopsis of his book, but it was too expensive and didn’t know if I could justify the expense. The author made no attempt to connect with me, even though I circled around his booth for hours. I didn’t buy his book.

The point I am trying to get across – for both myself and my readers – is that an author’s job is not done at the publishing of the book. Someone has to walk it and feed it, and that someone is the author. I’m not exactly Miss Marketing, but I do know that I represent my own books. If I take a stack of books to a convention or a signing or a book fair, my personality should reflect enthusiasm toward my books. I have to show professionalism so that visitors know the book was written by a professional. I have to show interest to show that the book is interesting. Christine and Ethan Rose had the right idea. They didn’t just sit there like a lump. They got involved, acted the part. They grabbed people from the aisles and convinced them that they couldn’t live without Rowan of the Wood. Kudos to them for scoring points for the indies.

Next year, if I can manage to publish my next two books by then, I may set up a booth at A-Kon in Dallas. My experiences above have taught me that I cannot simply throw some books on a table and wait for sales. I have to draw in interest. I need to be cultural and persuasive and fun. As a clinical sociaphobe, I might end up curled in the fetal position afterward, rocking back and forth and muttering to myself. But I consider it a small price to pay for doing this thing that I love. Writing.

Another Rant About Bookstores

Once upon a time, long, long, ago, someone wrote something down and someone else wanted to read it. Then lots of people wrote things down and lots of people wanted to read them. As time went by, these things that were being written got longer and longer, and soon, these writings were so long, the pages had to be bound into a durable leather binding. Hence, the birth of a book. Soon afterward, more people wanted to read these books, so more people learned to read. Great, they can read. Where can they buy a book? “Over here!” called one clever little man, who saw a market for a product and sought a way to deliver. He opened up a shop and sold only books. Hence, the birth of a bookstore.

The premise of this is quite simple. There is a need for a product that the customer cannot get at home. People are willing to travel the distance to a store and pay money for that thing which they cannot get for themselves. This was not much different from someone who travels to the store for milk. If you have a milking cow or can get milk delivered to your house for free, would you still travel to the store to buy milk? If you had chickens, would you go out and buy eggs?

I love bookstores. I really do. I love to wander around a bookstore, that smell of crisp paper and ink, the coffee shop in the corner, the stacks and stacks of books with colorful covers filled with exciting tales. My love for bookstores has not changed. My needs, however, have. The world’s needs have changed. If I need to travel to a bookstore to buy a book, then I will go there and the environment pleases me. The problem is, I don’t need to go anywhere for a book. No one does. The only time you may need to go to a bookstore is if you want your book right now. Sadly, however, you might still not get it. The last half-dozen times I went into a bookstore, they did not have the books I wanted. Why? Because while once there were hundreds of books to select from within the confines of a bookstore, there are now hundreds of thousands of books available online. Rather than finding out about books by word of mouth, we find out about books online. Bookstores can’t keep up. They have just enough room to stock the most popular books but not enough room to restock them if they sell out. On top of that, there are e-readers and Audibles and interactive books and read-to-me toys and cell phones to keep up with. Where does a brick and mortar bookstore stand among all this?

Answer: They don’t stand a chance.

The reason brick and mortar bookstores are dying (and yes, they are dying; don’t try to kid yourself) is because they are selling a dead product, that people don’t need, through a vehicle that is inconvenient. Granted, some bookstores have tried to keep up with the trends. I wholly give credit to Barnes and Noble for integrating the Nook into their sales model. Kudos to you, B&N; you understand that there is a change in the world.

Too bad you missed the point. The point that Barnes and Noble missed is that current consumer needs no longer warrant a trip to the store. If their wants say “I want this book, by this author, in a hardback cover,” their needs are saying, “How can I get this book exactly as I want with the least cost and inconvenience?” The answer will almost always be to shop online. The cost of gas is outrageous. Traffic is frustrating. We’re busy people trying to fit too many tasks into too little time. The resolution for all these problems is to “order in” when you can, especially when you are offered free shipping and lower costs. Do you see where Barnes and Noble failed? B&N mistakenly thought that the consumer “needed” e-readers. They saw the e-reader trend and that’s great. They offered an e-reader of their own. Also great. But selling the trend does not solve the vehicle problem. I can buy a Nook online. I can buy a Kindle or an Apple or a Sony online. So, Barnes and Noble, what else have you got?

A more innovative solution would be to stop catering to the “need,” which a brick and mortar will never fulfill, and start catering to the “want.” People want to go out. They want an escape, an environment, some excitement. They want something different. A long time ago, a trip to the bookstore could scratch that itch. There wasn’t much else that could compete with a good book and you couldn’t get it anywhere else. You could sit there all day and read, sip coffee, and then walk out with an armful of books. Now, there’s no reason to get in your car, drive through traffic and sit in a bookstore. I can sit at home and read. I can download my books in an instant. My coffee doesn’t cost $8 a cup and I don’t have to pay for gas.

If brick and mortars are going to stay alive, they need to reinvent themselves, not copy online stores. The reason Amazon.com was so successful was because they invented a need that consumers didn’t know they had. It wasn’t much different from the mall era. Malls created the opportunity to shop for everything in one place. Amazon went one step further. Shop for everything in one place and never leave your house. So now, if you want me to leave my house, you better give me a darn good reason. Be unique. Here are some examples:

• Hold a Nook Book signing – No, I’m serious. Start making Nooks with an autograph app and sell each one with a stylus. You can draw or sign just as you would when you sign for a UPS package. Then have a Nook signing. Authors come in and sign people’s Nooks and those signatures are saved digitally. Great way to collect autographs and not waste paper. 

• Have book scene re-enactments – Have the bookstore staff perform scenes from popular books, or invite acting students from local colleges to do it. Not only would it be fun, but it is great promotion for books. Hold these reenactments once a week or have it constantly going on so customers can always expect to see it. 

• Book readings – Why spend money on an Audible when you can go to the bookstore and have someone read to you? 

• Hate-the-Book Reviews – Book clubs can be dull. Everyone sits around conjuring up the symbolism of a book they may or may not have actually liked. It’s much more fun to pick on a book, even if you loved the book. Have you ever read a book and thought to yourself, “Why does she keep saying ‘gosh’? No one says gosh anymore. I hate that.” With a Hate-the-Book review, everyone notes what they hated about the book. The comments will likely be passionate and funny and may even sell more books. This would especially be awesome for kids.

• Scavenger Hunt -- Hold scavenger hunts in the store. Write a list of passages or quotes. Participants have to search through all the books in the store looking for those passages. When they find the passage, they write the title, author, edition, and page on which the passage or quote appears.

I’m not a bookstore owner, but I am a bookstore customer. I don’t want bookstores to die. I want them to care about me, the customer, enough to draw me back in. Right now, they are failing. I don’t want to drive to the store for an e-reader. DTP (defeats the point). 

I want something I can’t get at home.

Social Media Brings Me Judy

The greatest thing in the world happened yesterday. I got an email from Judy Blume. If you've never heard of Judy Blume, you were either raised under a rock or you knew all about adolescence before you came out of the womb. Judy Blume is a legend. She's one of those authors who finds herself at the top of a recommended reading list for young people. She's the Statue of Liberty for all young bookworms. Her books, for both young and old, all seem to portray the same message: If you reach a point where you don't know what to do in life, it's okay; neither does anyone else. She shows, through quirky and thoughtful characters, that it's okay to fumble. It's okay to stutter and stammer or be too fat or too thin or flat-chested or big-chested, handicapped, diseased, geeky, unloved, untouched, unhappy or just plain awkward. She says, hey, it's okay to dream. It's normal to wonder. If you're mean, if you laugh at others, or even if you laugh at yourself, that's fine. No matter what you do, you'll learn from it. She taught her readers that it's okay to be yourself, and nine times out of ten, you'll be imperfect.

I discovered through another blog that Mrs. Blume has a website. I stopped by her site and left a message on her guest blog. Anyone who has ever read a Judy Blume book, especially in the 70s and 80s, will understand my note:

C.Amethyst Frost

Dear Judy Blume,

I've read your books since the 70s. Thank you for getting me through an awkward adolescence when there was no one else to explain. Thank you for preparing me for adulthood when I had no idea what to expect. And thank you, especially, for inspiring me -- as early as the age of 10 -- to become a writer. I am me because of you.

Posted May 26, 2012 11:56 am

This is true. I was a heavy reader in my childhood, a trait that expanded exponentially through my adulthood. Back in the 70s and early 80s, no one talked about those sensitive subjects that complicate an adolescent's life. Schools had classes to tell you where babies came from, but the process looked so sterile and unnatural that no one really believed that's how it's done. Most of the time, however, there are questions long before you get to those classes. Most of the time, "things" happen before the classes as well. Parents were useless in these cases. No one taught them anything, so many of them didn't know how to teach their own kids. Not that it mattered. No kid was going to ask their first generation Italian-American/Irish-American/Jewish-American/German-American parents how a specific incident feels. And they didn't have to. Judy Blume did it for them. She taught 9-year-olds that being an older sibling can be frustrating and unfair, but there are rewards for being a mentor. She taught bossy 10-year-old girls that life changes as you grow up, and you may not have all the answers. She taught us that kids can be mean, but you can get through it.

By the time you're 13, you're addicted to Judy Blume's wisdom. Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret and Then Again, Maybe I won't bridged teenagers into their blossoming years, answering questions they'd never dare ask their parents. Mrs. Blume doesn't even abandon her readers there. Forever and Wifey are her way of saying, yep, even in adulthood, you won't know everything.

It was the intimacy I felt with these books that first sparked the writer in me. Her books were like friends. They talked to me. It only felt right that I talked back. It took decades to finally get here, and I will never be the legend that Judy Blume has become, but just as she took me from childhood, through adolescence and into adulthood, so too will she carry me as a writer.

Imagine my delight when I opened my email and found this:

From: Judy Blume <judyb@judyblume.com>
Subject: Thanks for your message
To: camethysfrost-books@yahoo.com
Date: Tuesday, May 29, 2012, 12:49 PM

Hi C. Amethyst,

Thanks so much for your warm and thoughtful message.  It means a lot to know how well you remember my books, and that they helped you during difficult times.  I'm trying to write a new one now.  Think it will be older YA, but it will probably take two years to finish it. (Ugh - writing is hard work!)  It's my readers who keep me writing.  Where would I be without you?  You can follow me on twitter @judyblume, though I'm trying not to tweet too often. It's too good a distraction.

Love,

Judy

P.S. - Watch for news of Tiger Eyes, the movie based on the book, on my website.

How cool is that? Social media is a crazy thing. We're at a time when everyone can communicate with everyone, no matter how famous they are, no matter how poor or rich they are. Those icons in our lives who were once immortal and untouchable are now only a couple of thumb taps away. We can now reach out to actors, politicians, artists, long lost relatives, and even the President of the United States through websites, texts, Facebook, blogs, and Twitter. (Judy Blume tweets! Who'd have thunk?)

When I was 8 years old, hugging a copy of Tales of the Fourth Grade Nothing at the counter of the Ocean Township library, only willing to release it long enough to have the librarian flip open the back (where it made that crinkly sound because it was covered in a protective plastic cover) and press a rubber date stamp onto a little card (my name was written on that card at least 10 times by then), I never imagined that I would one day be contacted by the book's creator. It was closure. That link between child and adult has finally clicked.

How to Avoid Indie Authors

I stumbled across an Amazon forum post that hit me pretty hard. The post is titled "How to Avoid Indie Authors." The comments are pretty harsh, talking about how they're tired of Amazon putting Indie titles in their recommendations. They don't want to buy books from Indies -- the books are awful and they're a waste of time and money. You can always tell an Indie book because the cover art will be "abysmal" and it'll cost less than "trad pub" books. They will be full of errors and are written unprofessionally. Amazon should filter out Indies so the customers don't have to sift through them all just to get to the good stuff. Amazon needs to "raise the bar" so that only quality books are sold.

Wow, I mean, it was pretty harsh. As I read through some of the 3,000+ posts, I could practically feel the fire rise up from my feet, burning the wooden post that was strapped to my back.

I wonder if it's time to re-educate the readers. These 8-10 posters judged independent authors as a single entity, based on an archaic belief that indies put no effort or professionalism into their books. Admittedly, I've seen some of awful indies that fit the mold these posters set out. There are a lot of "All About Me" books, where someone visited another country or led a rough life or found some kind of renewed strength. They decide to write down their experiences and share them with the world. But the books are poorly written or unedited or just plain boring. I can understand judging a book like this if proper effort was not put into it. But to lump all Indies together into the same category?

I tried to get inside the heads of these posters to understand their prejudice. First, I decided to think like a reader. I am qualified enough to judge books based on my experience as a reader. I spend (shamelessly) hundreds of dollars a month on books, mostly on Amazon.com and Audible. I've purchased so many books in the past 15 years, I practically own stock in Amazon. Not to mention the hearty business I've thrown Barnes and Noble, Borders, Hastings, and Half Priced books. I have read every day of my life since I was four. That's a lot of reading. I am definitely qualified to judge as a reader. Yet I don't feel the same kind of distaste toward Indie book authors. What did they do to warrant such a hateful gathering of Amazon readers?

As a writer, I also take offense. My books may not be best sellers, but I put a lot of work into them. I have a bachelor's degree in Writing and Linguistics (Georgia Southern University) and have been a professional writer and editor for many, many years. From the lifetime of reading that I mentioned above, I have a pretty good idea of how to tell a story. If I don't have a right to publish my own novels, then who does? What is the criteria to be a book author in these posters' eyes? Is it acceptance by the Big 6? Because if that's the case, they should probably pick up a few more "trad pub" books and investigate a little deeper. Publishers don't put much effort into their books. The past dozen books I've read from traditional publishers had errors. The last three books alone (same author) were so badly written, I had a hard time keeping up. It is a very popular, best selling series, too. What qualified this writer to be a novelist in the absence of experience and education? Luck, I guess. Publishers have to pick someone. I'm sure they have a lot of good material to choose from, but they could only pick one. This was it. It makes me wonder, though. Would these irate anti-indie posters have picked this author if he'd have self-published his book? Would they have read Harry Potter if Rowling had self published?

Times are changing. Authors are taking their art back from the publishers. But the world isn't getting the message. Maybe we need a more visible campaign. TV commercials, bus banners, highway billboards. "Buy Indie!" Remember a few years back when farmers got together and advocated local sales of meat, vegetables, and milk? Perhaps we need something similar.    

Marketing -- A Big Scary World

I think I've made it clear that I'm quite the sociaphobe. Writing books is so comfortable and safe for someone like me. That is, until the book is actually published, after which, the terror begins. I've been running around trying to figure out how to market my book. I'm not exactly the type to stand on a picnic table in a crowded park and yell out "Buy my book!" At first, I did a search for a publicist, someone who specializes in marketing for indie authors. Interestingly enough, I found that most of their marketing outlets were through social networking websites. The services included signing me and my books onto a Facebook author's page and registering for about a dozen book review sites. They wanted a lot of money to do it, too. It seemed kind of silly since the websites were all well-known and free to register. I can do it myself. Another service had to do with sending out press releases to major distributors...except that I'd have to write the press release myself. Again, why would I pay someone for that? If I have to write it, I can send it as well. Then again, my book is being distributed through Lightning Source, which is owned by Ingram. You can't get much more distributed than that. None of these paid services had anything unique, no marketing magic or inside connections. The end result is, do it myself.

It's not exactly an easy quest. The first thing I did was to set up an author page on Facebook. I don't have a personal Facebook page because it's not my kind of scene. I'm not interested in knowing every time a former high school classmate takes her kid to soccer practice. I could care less if someone is suddenly married to Jesus or "Likes" the Cats of America Facebook group. But I set the page up as an author, which was a pretty freaky experience. The page was confusing and cluttered. I first had to set up a people account before I could start an author page. Then I had to go through the people account and hide everything -- not exactly for privacy but because there was nothing on the page and I didn't want people to stumble across it and find a page full of blank fields. Once I had the author page set up -- with the most hideous combination of "cover" and "profile" images -- I struggled to figure out how to show off my books. Oddly enough, the author pages were not very author-friendly. I looked up other authors to see how they did it. Smaller authors like myself just sort of went with whatever they had. It looked like they had some trouble too, so that the pages were all a bit awkward. The more established authors -- like J.K. Rowling and D.J. MacHale -- had token pages. In other words, they had the page up but didn't put much effort into it. There were no posts or updates except by fans. I doubt the authors even know their pages exist, let alone visit them regularly.

A positive side of the Facebook experience was that I discovered a number of pages that catered to indie authors. On each one, I shamelessly posted a self-promotional comment and link (everyone was doing it). But after I did that, I would scroll through the page and find very useful information. I found links to various websites where I could display my book, and other sites that offered free book reviews. There were contests and tips and even groups that were willing to do book review exchanges. So while I originally was going to merely throw up my page and run, I've decided to sniff around a little bit more, get to know the authors and all the helpful pages.

So far, I've signed up with The Author's Den, which is kind of like a flea market for authors to show off and hopefully sell their books. I also contacted eBookSwag, which is another site to display your book. (They actually charge 10 bucks to show it off for a day, but every bit helps.)

I used to think that book contests were silly. Back when I was devoted to the Big 6 (despite their 400 rejection letters), I scoffed at the idea, thinking that respectable best-selling authors didn't enter their books in contests. Duh. I guess I'm the silly one. For one thing, winning a contest is yet another method of drawing attention to your book. For another, you can get cash prizes, which is really cool, especially if your royalty checks don't amount to much. The print version of my newest book, Dismal Thoughts, was accepted by Lightning Source and should be available on Amazon and friends very soon. I already ordered a batch for promotional purposes. One of those purposes will be to submit it to the Indie Book Awards. It couldn't hurt. CreateSpace on Amazon also provides a nice list of competitions. I shall enter those as well.

Marketing takes a lot of time, but it's not that difficult. The key, I think, is exposure. I don't have a lot of friends or family who'd want to read my preteen books, so I rarely pass them on to my sparse inner crowd. So I have to depend on the world wide web. It's a big world. But if I can reach just one person for every thousand, it's a good start.

Some Assembly Required Publishing

As you can see from my last post -- way back in October, I've been stressing for quite a while about getting my next book published. I finished writing it years ago (seems like it but probably more like many months to a year). Then I edited the heck out of it myself before hiring another editor. The editor of my first book (whom I hope is not reading this) left a few errors in the book. There were only about 5 of them, which isn't horrible in a 300-page book, but they were pretty embarrassing to me once I saw them. I don't know about you, but when I read a book, typos and spelling errors seem to glare up at me. I can never understand how someone can publish a book --- especially through a traditional publishing house -- without anyone noticing typos. It happens a lot these days. Apparently, I'm no better.

Anyway, as I was saying, I stressed over getting my "Dismal Thoughts" published. First, I needed a good editor -- whom I found (hi Sarah!). After the book was edited, I nearly had a breakdown worrying about a cover. None of the cover artists I found had the right style for my new book, and even those that came close charged an arm and a leg. I can't really afford to give up any of my limbs just yet, so I stressed over it for months.

My solution was to create a mock up cover myself that I could send to a cover designer, so the person would understand what I wanted. I figured it would be less stressful and save time bouncing artwork back and forth. Once I opened PhotoShop and got to work, I found myself tweaking and editing the draft until I was pretty happy with the results. Then I thought, "Why do I need a designer? I have the layout here already and all the tools to work with." The whole idea of indie is to do it yourself. So I did it myself. It took about a day to get the cover the way I wanted and then to format it according to the various guidelines. Then I prepared the manuscript for Lightning Source, Kindle, Smashwords, and Nook and started my submissions. It may take a few days for all the venues to review and process, but my ebook version is at least available through Smashwords today.

A year's worth of stress only took me a day to resolve. I wish I'd had the confidence in myself to know that the some-assembly-required publishing process was not as complicated as I anticipated. Now I have no excuse. It's time to finish book three.

The Real World

No matter what your method of escape, there is always the factor of the real world. The real world can really muck things up. The real world is made up of all the people you have to please. Some of them are people you love, like family and friends. Some you don’t know, like bill collectors or the government. You live your life the way society dictates, and if you’re lucky, you may have a little time left over to escape. Henry David Thoreau left society to be his own man. He wanted to write, and he wanted to do it on his own terms, with nothing but the heart of nature to keep him company. It didn’t really work for him. Society followed him into the woods. He would go off for a walk and come back and find broken twigs, cigar stubs, and pieces of trash in his cabin—signs of visitors. These people would come to check on him, not understanding—or maybe not wanting to believe— that a man can enjoy the company of his own skin. Surely he must be lonely. Certainly, he’ll need help and guidance. Once, Thoreau actually ventured out into society, mostly to pick up basic necessities that the woods could not provide. At that time, he was arrested, merely because he was not playing society’s game (didn’t pay taxes). His was a great lesson for all of us that there is no true escape, not in the real world.

Anyway, that’s my longwinded way of saying that I haven’t been writing as much as I would have liked. My next book is with an editor and will hopefully be out on the market in the next couple of months. The real world for me has been pretty hectic and is slowing down my progress. I will try to pick up the pace. My head is about to explode with imagination.

That Last Bit

I finished writing my second book. Or rather, I finished writing the book except for that last bit. It’s always hard to end a story, to finally cut the cord and prepare the baby for the world. I danced around that last bit for months, knowing the end was near but always having an excuse to avoid it. The book was easy to write since it’s full of sarcasm, a language I speak fluently. As I neared the conclusion, however, that old familiar chanting began in my head: Perfect ending, perfect ending, perfect ending.

An impossible task, said an almost inaudible voice. I pretended to ignore that voice, promising myself I would end the book with a bang. It’ll be the greatest ending in the world. My readers will cry, cheer, yearn for more. I’ll work on it tomorrow. No, tomorrow’s no good. Maybe next week. Next week turns out to be a busy week. Then there are holidays and birthdays and…..well, a little video gaming (hides face in shame)….and books to be read, and thoughts to be thunk. It all just adds up.

I have a manuscript graveyard, a garden of nearly complete stories, each having met its fate through umbilical rot. Each story had dozens of lives inside, characters with feelings and histories who depended on me for closure. I failed them. Decades have gone by. I still promise myself that I will bring them all back to life and finally set them free. Perhaps I will.

I already made a commitment to move each new child through swiftly, from beginning to end, and send them on their way. To honor that commitment, I first have to admit to myself that there may not be a bang. The ending, I have to accept, may be completely anticlimactic. As Nike says, “Just do it.”

To my readers (if my readers ever read my blog), I apologize in advance. I can’t promise a fireworks show at the end of every book. I will do my best, but I need to keep the line moving. That means everyone out of the pool as quickly as possible. No loitering.

E-books: Lining my pockets with the death of a friend

A couple of weeks ago, I walked into a local Barnes and Noble and froze. I looked around, took a few steps back, and looked around again. Was I in the wrong store? Maybe I strolled into the AT&T store by mistake. In front of me was a huge aisle full of kiosks. They could have been cell phones. But no. They were Nooks. To the right of the Nook kiosks, where the computer, travel, and business books used to be, were aisles and aisles of electronics – adapters, battery chargers, headphones, electronic accessories. I stood staring for longer than natural, blood draining from my face. They killed my bookstore.

“What happened?” I managed to squeak out to the nearest B&N employee. He pursed his lips, looking just as unpleased with the new arrangement.

“This is how we stay in business, to keep up with the online bookstores.”

Online bookstores. I spend an average of a hundred dollars a month at online bookstores. They’re convenient, that’s true. But nothing can replace a real brick and mortar building full of books. Books made of paper. There’s a smell, a feel, a sense of homage. I make a point to visit them often, usually walking away with a handful of best sellers or informative nonfiction.

This particular Barnes and Noble, which I’ve been visiting for the past six years despite their complicated parking lot, does not smell like books. It smells like plastic. Regaining my composure, I remembered that I was there for a specific reason. I needed a best selling book that my son asked for, for Christmas. There were five books in the series and I already bought 1, 2, 3, and 5. I needed book 4. I made my way to the young adult section and located the author’s shelf. There was one each of all the books I already had. Naturally book 4 was missing. I march over to the customer service desk and ask them to look it up.

“Looks like that one is still in hard cover,” the store clerk says, empathetically. “We won’t restock until it comes out in paperback.”

“But it’s a best seller,” I argue. “Why wouldn’t you restock a best seller if it’s selling so well?”

“We don’t have enough room on our shelves to keep them stocked.”

I look incredulously from the clerk to the electronics ensemble behind me. He nods gravely and tells me that he can’t order the book for the store, but I can order it online and would probably have to pay for express shipping since it was so close to Christmas. I think about the logic in this. I already got into my car and drove out to the store so I wouldn’t have to wait or pay for shipping. The store is too busy building a Nook empire to keep a best selling real live paper book and suggests that I go all the way home, get online (which is what is killing the store to begin with), and pay extra to have the book shipped in two days. I ended up buying the book at Borders.

I am conflicted about electronic reading. As a reader, the idea of plastic devices replacing the warm papery comfort of a real book is devastating. I want to rebel, start a Kindle burning (ha ha), stand in front of Nook/Kindle manufacturers with a picket sign. As an author, however, I must embrace it. Kindle and e-books are lining my pockets. Physical book sales are pretty low compared to the consumption of e-books. I am just as guilty for contributing to the death of the paperback. If you think about it sensibly, storing hundreds of books in one small device is great idea. And I think that Barnes and Noble is smart to keep up with the modern electronic age. They made the decision to sacrifice printed stock for profit. How am I any different?

But my inner bibliophile is wounded. I fear that one day when I am old and can’t defend myself, my home library will be converted back into a dining room and my descendents will build a book mausoleum in the backyard. I shall mourn in advance.

A Page a Day

My first publishing experience is not going as expected, and believe me, I didn’t expect much. Amazon and B&N have the book listed, but not complete listings. Neither has the cover art yet, and although Amazon has a description, it does not have the “Look Inside” feature. I spent weeks trying to get hold of Wingspan to find out why they are not listing properly. It took a while for them to answer and when they did, said it was an error on the part of Ingram distributors. Seems very unusual to me that a distributor that deals with millions of books a year would mess up on mine (although Wingspan insists it’s not just me). Today, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I uploaded a cover picture to Amazon and added a book summary to Barnes and Noble’s site by way of a customer review (of course I noted that I was the author). It’s the best I can do at the moment, since it is difficult for me to deal with these sites directly.

You might be wondering what I am doing in the meantime. Am I sitting by the computer all day loading and reloading the online website to see if they’ve corrected the error? Am I staring at my ratings, watching for a change in rank and sales? Well yeah, okay, I do that. But not all day.

What I do in the meantime is write. In addition to my day job as a technical writer, I work daily at completing my next books. While I have always been a writer, I have now reached the status of author. If I want to maintain that status, I need to produce more books, and I need to keep them circulating. Right now I am working on two books simultaneously. Both are for the juvenile audience, but one is straight fiction (bordering humor, depending on your perspective), and the other is fantasy. One is short and simple while the other is a full novel with a pretty complex storyline. You can probably figure out which one I’ll publish first.

Because I have so many other tasks going on in my life – work, family, marketing, etc – it would be easy for me to make excuses not to write. A while back, I proposed a challenge to some great writer friends of mine on a forum called The Writers’ Block. Most of us spend many waking hours writing for other people and not much time writing what we enjoy. Many of my friends have talked about their bestselling novels, the ones that they dream about but never had time to write. I proposed to them that they take time to write a page a day for themselves. A page can take fifteen minutes, or it could take an hour. If you can sacrifice that small portion of your day, every day, it eventually becomes routine. I began taking my own advice. Instead of writing a page a day, I write for an hour a day. It is the hour I get for lunch each day, where I’m just sitting there staring into space, poking at some overly buttered cafeteria green beans. That hour has become vital to my continuity as an author.

Writers have to write from the soul. It is our sustenance. Some of us take paying jobs writing ads, articles, manuals, and copy. We have the skill to make someone else’s message clear to the reader. But a true writer cannot live on bread and water alone. We need to take the time to write out some filet mignon, maybe even a little champagne. Writing isn’t about splashing words mechanically onto a page. It’s about splashing creativity and passion onto a page. It’s difficult to get passionate about a client’s sales pitch. That’s why an hour a day of personal writing is so important. Without it, writing is no longer a passion. It’s a job.

Social Networking – A Reclusive Writer’s Worst Fear

I suspect a lot of writers are like me, sociaphobes who spend more time in their fictional worlds than out in the open. The real world is a scary place. It’s unpredictable and sometimes cruel. Fiction writers deal with this by creating mockups of the real world, adding elements that save or destroy, depending on the situation. It’s all about control, I think, especially control over our own fears. I once read an article about a horror writer who was scared of the dark as a kid. (I think it was someone famous, but I don’t want to mention the name, because I’m not sure.) He was scared of monsters and boogie men and whatever creepy things may go bump in the night. He overcame the fear by writing about them, the most horrible worst-case scenarios that a monster can create. It was his way of controlling the monsters, controlling his own fears. The same is true for other writers. We know that we can’t stop death and hate and pain in real life, but we can create worlds where these bad things happen at our command. We’re not detached from it, and a good writer won’t make the bad things convenient. In fact, the more emotional we get from a scene, the more powerful it’ll be for the reader. It’s controlled in that the reader and the writer can walk away from the experience—much like a thrill ride at an amusement park—without truly being hurt.

The real world doesn’t give you that option. There are infinite possibilities of tragic events that cannot be controlled. They can be reduced and sometimes prevented by not putting yourself in a vulnerable position in the first place. Enter the recluse, the person who tries to control fate by isolating him/herself. The best way to avoid a car crash is to not drive. The best way to avoid negative confrontation is to not confront. Distance yourself from all means of social interaction. Don’t use the phone. Don’t join clubs. Don’t talk to too many people who might judge you. It’s a cushy little world – until you become a published author.

Enter social networking, a reclusive writer’s worst fear, but one of the most vital tool for marketing your books. I knew this stage would come. I’ve been bracing myself for it for years. As I patched up the last edits of my book, I was intensely aware of the social grim reaper looming over me, black cloak billowing in the wind. I can’t write him into submission, can’t stab him from my life with a fountain pen. This is something I have to deal with head on.

I’ve met many awesome virtual friends in the past few weeks, writers like me, some experienced and some new, who are going through the process. I’ve joined writer networks and now follow blogs that I actually read. It comforts me to know that these writers are human like me, not monsters or boogie men hiding in dark corners. This social networking gig isn’t as bad as I thought. It’s actually been a pretty positive experience so far. I’m not saying that I’m ready to pick up the phone and chat with people now – I probably won’t be attending any video conferences or all-night book signing parties any time soon. But I definitely see the value – no, the urgency of shedding my public phobia. It’s time to embrace the social reaper.

A Little Brighter

Maybe this situation is salvageable. Wingspan replied back that they can drop the listing price for the hard cover to $27.95 (at a lower royalty, of course). That’s still pretty pricey, but I checked BN.com today and found that they are listing Mourning Under the Bridge for a discounted rate. The hard cover is $23.72 and the soft cover $12.92. I’m pretty happy about that, because what is the point of publishing your book if no one can afford to buy it?

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do with my second book. POD seemed to be the easiest route, but I’m giving away a lot of my profit for nothing. I mean, I’d gladly pay the price if the publisher actually did something, like provide a professional layout without me having to tell them what to do. I’d love it if they edited their own work after they dumped the files into InDesign. For the money I paid, I shouldn’t have had to tell them that they misaligned several pages.

So what do I do? Should I go through submission hell with a hundred different publishers and agents only to lose my rights and get low royalties and very little marketing? Should I buy my own copy of InDesign and do the layout myself? I’m not sure I know the business enough to be comfortable with that. There really are a lot of options these days. I’ll have to look into what is available. I know Amazon has a program where you can upload your own book and they’ll do a print on demand for you. I’m not sure how that works yet, but I will put finding out on my to-do list.

In the meantime, Mourning Under the Bridge is listed on BN.com, but the entire listing is not complete yet. I’ve heard that it takes a few days for the cover art and summary to catch up with the listing. I don’t expect any sales until the listing is complete. When it is, I will post a link here.

Lessons Learned

I knew that my first published book would be a learning experience. I braced myself for the worst. Obviously I couldn’t imagine what the worst was. I think I have a better idea now. Yesterday, I got a congratulations email from Wingspan telling me that my book would be available at Amazon and bn.com in the next few days. They said I could order books for myself at cost if I wanted. Curious as to how much “at cost” was, I logged onto Wingspan’s site. I wasn’t so much shocked by how much they’d charge me for my own book. I was shocked to see how much they were going to charge my customers. My hardcover children’s book will be selling for a whopping $32! The softcover will be something like $16. My whole body went numb when I saw those prices. $32? Who in their right mind would pay 32 bucks for a first time hard cover book for their kid?? I personally spend hundreds of dollars a year on books, but I get a lot of books for that. I wouldn’t spend 32 bucks for Harry Potter, even if it was the first edition with J.K. Rowling’s eyebrow hair on page 145.

I am having a hard time not hyperventilating. I contacted my account manager to see if there is something that can be done about the price. I should have seen this coming. I asked them to set the book up in electronic form. The retail price they listed was pretty high even for e-books. I opted for the lowest listing price, but I still think it’s high. The royalties from Wingspan are pretty lame. I think it’s like 20%, which sounds great when you compare that to a traditional publisher’s standard 8%. The difference is that a first time, self-published book that is listed for $32 is not going to bring in any sales, whereas the lower priced publisher house book, even the worst story in the world, will at least bring in some stragglers. I am going to see if I can salvage this disastrous situation. The way I see it, the only way I can sell the book cheaper and still make money is if I buy the books myself (at cost) and sell them at a discounted price.

We can definitely mark this down as a hard lesson learned.

The Experience

My first book is called Mourning Under the Bridge. It is about a little homeless girl named Mourning who can do magic but has to hide in the shadows because the kingdom kills their orphans. In the midst of trying to rob a house, she’s caught by the king’s healer, an uppity rich man who cannot stand strays (homeless orphans). He sends her to the dungeons. Instead of being executed or banished, it is discovered that she has a family – a very wealthy family. Now after ten years of living on the streets, Mourning must adjust to a life of luxuries. Seems like a simple task, except that she keeps stumbling into a number of “accidents.” So either Mourning is just not cut out for this life, or maybe someone doesn’t want her around.

It’s a juvenile fantasy book that focuses a little more on home and family than on magic. Most of my books will be fantasy. I love magic. There are very few rules – or rather, you can establish the rules from story to story. Magic gives an impossible situation hope. It’s also fun to think of different uses for it. I don’t like to overuse it, though. There should be some sort of logic behind magic, where people don’t sit on their big butts and wave wands around to do things. It should be hard work. Think about the skills we have. You can be a really fast runner, but that doesn’t mean you run everywhere you go. Sure, it would be quicker if you ran to the laundry room, but you don’t need to. You also wouldn’t run to the grocery store to buy a week’s worth of food. Magic should be a skill like that. You can do it, but you wouldn’t do it all the time. In fact, I’m not crazy about magic for the sake of magic. It has to be something, like energy or concentration. There has to be some kind of scientific reasoning behind it, even if the reader (or even the writer) doesn’t understand what it is. So my characters aren’t going to say, “Hey I want a cheese sandwich” and then pop, there’s a sandwich in front of them. If magic was that convenient, life would be pretty boring.

I say that this is my first book, but of course you know that’s not true. I have dozens of books completed over a period of twenty five years. Mourning will be the first published book, the first one available in hardcover or paperback to anyone who wants to read it.

I am publishing through Wingspan Press, a POD shop that’s sort of a no-nonsense, no frills publisher. When I first selected them a couple of years ago, they offered more services than they do now. By the time my book was ready for publishing, they had reduced their offerings significantly. They used to offer bookstore returns, for example. Allowing returns gave your book a better chance of landing in a physical store. But as I pointed out in my last blog, bookstores are no longer thriving. It turns out, book returns were costing more than they were worth. In the POD world, when a bookstore returns a book, the author has to buy it back. That gets pretty pricey, especially in today’s market. Wingspan also had more marketing services. Now all they seem to offer are bookmarks and business cards.

Since I am sacrificing Mourning Under the Bridge as a learning tool, I knew I’d make mistakes. I opted out of the promotional bookmarks, etc. I also opted out of the book review service, which is something I probably won’t do for my next one. I actually know the importance of book reviews. But for a first book, it seemed a little fake to pay someone to provide a happy little blurb about how great my book is. I will definitely do review services from now on, but at least next time, it’ll be more like “C. Amethyst Frost, author of Mourning Under the Bridge, writes an awesome book about….” Maybe I’m thinking about this too hard, but I’m still pretty humble as a first time author. As I said, this is a learning experience. Once I have a second book published, I will start a crazy marketing campaign. Because then I will be a real author and not just a person who happened to publish one book and then decided to retire. Have you ever seen people like that? They write one book and then they just walk away. In my mind, a real writer keeps writing. Even if you’re not published, you keep writing.

One thing I have learned about publishing is that it is hard work. For anyone who has romanticized the process as submitting a book to a publisher and then basking in the glory of fame and fortune, get your head out of the clouds. Whether you are self-published or traditionally published, you will work. First, as I said in my first blog, you have to edit, edit, edit, and edit. It can take forever. A self-published author must hire a professional editor. If you think you’re perfect, get that idea out of your head. I am a freelance editor (in addition to writing books and monkey work as a tech writer). I know English grammar like the back of my hand. I am a true language artist. But even I need an editor. Editing requires you to look at a document with a different set of eyes. Writers are too close to their work. They tend to get caught up in the story and can easily miss common errors. When you write, even if you know all the rules of writing, it’s very difficult to follow them one hundred percent of the time. You write what is in your head, and usually the flow is so fast, your brain doesn’t have time to filter. You’ve probably caught a few mistakes that I’ve made in this blog. I have a bad habit of placing commas where they don’t belong and mixing tenses. These are the sort of errors I would have caught as an editor. Not while I am writing. I remember one time I sent an email to a group of co-workers, telling them to “site” their references. As soon as I clicked send, I saw the mistake and was horrified enough that I sent a follow-up email correcting it. The co-workers ribbed me for it long afterward. They were engineers and wouldn’t have noticed anyway. But that’s my OCD. Anyway, that’s my long-winded way of saying that you need to hire an editor, even if you are the queen of the spelling bee.

More about the hard work. So, first you write. Then you rewrite, revise, and proofread. Then you send it to an editor, proofread it again yourself, and send it to your publisher. Your publisher may ask you to make some changes. You make the changes and proofread again. While they are working on the proof, you should be coming up with a marketing plan. Even if you work with a traditional publisher, you have to market your own book. I have a few friends who have published through traditional means. They learned very quickly that publishers are not going to put in the extra time or money to pump sunshine into their books. If the author wants to stay in the publishing loop, he or she must get that book sold. (This is another epiphany I had about publishing houses – you give up your rights, get very little royalty, market your own book, and then have to stress over being blacklisted. I’ll save that gripe for another blog.)

For me, the hardest part was coming up with a summary for the book. How funny is that? I can write a 300-page novel but can’t write a summary about it. I stressed over it for weeks before coming up with a pretty sparse summary. I’ll have to work on that skill for my next book. And here is another difference between traditional and self-publishing. If you self-publish, you have to provide the cover art. That can be a good or a bad thing, depending on how you play it. The POD shops do offer cover design at an extra cost. The problem is that they don’t exactly customize the design for your book. It is a design (lines and shapes and colors) and not a piece of art. So you won’t typically have your characters on the cover or an artifact from the story. For a more customized cover, you have to hire a book cover artist. For Mourning Under the Bridge, my artist was my daughter, Jessica. She is an awesome artist and her style of art (cartoonish/manga) is what I wanted for this particular book. She drew the scene exactly as I imagined it and then added a decorative border to accent the tone of the book. Once your illustrator provides the cover art, he/she has to work with the publisher to get the size and alignment just right.

Wingspan provided me with a proof of the interior when they were done. I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the first proof. They use a program called InDesign, which is an application that I use on a daily basis at work. The first proof looked like they pulled my Word document into InDesign, added drop-caps and headers and that was it. Didn’t look like much effort was put into it. The headers were too large, the lines were too close together, and the text spacing was weirdly spread out. So I had to read through the entire proof (remember, 300 pages) and make a list of where I wanted improvements. At first I was a little annoyed about this, because all the issues I came up with were with layout. It seems like for the money I was spending, Wingspan could have at least done a layout review. Fortunately, they were easy to work with. I sent a list of things that could have been improved with and they were very accommodating. The cover proof came next. Again, I thought the layout looked strange and requested a few changes. Again, they met my needs. So after consulting back and forth, I’m pretty satisfied with both interior and exterior. But I thought I’d share that bit of it, because if you’re going to self-publish, the book is not going to magically appear in perfect condition. You have to have some idea of what you want.

So now that I’m good with the interior and cover of the book, it goes to the printer, where it sits in a queue for about four weeks. In the meantime, I’ve asked Wingspan to set the book up in electronic format. They will do that for an additional fee and will submit the ebook to Ingram and to Amazon. For future books, I will probably do this myself. I didn’t realize that Wingspan was going to give me such small royalties for the ebook, even though all they had to do was convert it to digital (which is something I could have done in InDesign, probably what they are doing). The reason I’m having them do it this time is because of the learning experience. I want to see how this all works so I am educated enough to make better decisions next time. I do get to keep the rights to my ebook, so I am free to submit the book to other electronic outlets.

Now I wait a few weeks for print. In the meantime, I am working vigorously to finish my second book. I need to keep the flow going.

My Journey Begins

My first blog. As with starting a new book, I first must stare at a blank page for a few minutes, feeling stupid and unworthy. That’s the routine. Writing for your own amusement is one thing. Writing something and knowing that someone else – possibly the whole world (that’s optimistic) – will read it is absolutely terrifying. It’s more frightening when I know that the reason for the blog is to record my success or, more realistically, my potential failure.

Let’s start with me. Who am I? I am a writer. I have always been a writer, although for many years, I quashed the idea in favor of more intelligent and scientific type of me. I used to write as a kid. I read constantly, no matter where I was. In between read-a-thons, I put pen to paper and wrote poems and short stories and children’s books. I even had an article published once when I was about 12. The tragedy of that little success was that I submitted it under an alias name. I had no idea that it would be published and that I would be paid for my contribution ( a whopping $25, which was a fortune for a first-time published writer of 12 in the early 1980s). I wrote the article for True Love magazine, and the reason I used a different name was because the story was based on a fantasy I had about a seventh grade boy who I had a crush on. Long after I had forgotten about submitting the article, I received a check for $25 and a copy of the magazine with my article. The check was made out to my fictitious name (it was Debra something, I think). I didn’t know at the time that you could submit a story under your real name and have a pseudonym byline. I wish I knew that, because that first publishing was gold to me, but without my own name and byline, it didn’t count.

Still, it was an inspiration. I spent the next ten years writing and submitting everything that flowed from my mind to my pen. Naturally, I also spent ten years receiving rejections. I finally gave up, deciding that I just wasn’t good enough to be a published writer. I kept writing, but I kept it to myself. I decided to try for something more scientific. I had the desire to be looked upon as someone intelligent. I did enjoy pondering over the universe and had developed an absolute passion for aviation and flying. So I thought aerospace engineering was my thing. Just the sound of it was impressive. A couple of years at UT Arlington --- and three do-overs of Calculus 3 – made me see that perhaps I was not cut out to be an engineer.

And then I got a story stuck in my head. Not just a little story, but an entire world with layers and complex characters. I lived it inside my head until I couldn’t hold it anymore and had to write it down. I wrote and wrote and wrote, all day. This other world was my whole motivation for life, for getting up in the morning. While I was writing, my daughter, who was about ten at the time, started reading behind me (I don’t normally let people do that). As I was into the fourth book of the series, my daughter asked when I was going to publish it, because she’s been telling her friends about it and they wanted to read it. It’s funny, but I had no intention of publishing this book. But once she said it, the idea was in my head. Unfortunately, the book was nowhere near publisher-ready. So I abandoned the fourth book for the time being and went back to the first, editing and revising over and over. It was painful, but I finally got the first book ready and submitted it. I waited for three months before getting that first rejection letter. Okay, no problem. I went back into the book and revised and re-edited. Then I resubmitted. Three months, rejection. Rewrite, rejection, rewrite, rejection.

Think about how time consuming that is. You have one book and even if you submit it to a dozen publishers, you still have to wait months for your rejection. And even if I did get it published, it would take years for the book to get to the printer. Then, there’s not even a guarantee that it would make it to the popular bookstores. It took me many years to learn this.

I finally decided that if I was going to be taken seriously by a publisher, I needed credentials, particularly an education in the field. So I went back to school and got a B.A. in Writing and Linguistics from Georgia Southern University. I had a minor in journalism and a concentration in technical writing (to hold me over while I sought to be a novelist). Sure enough, the publishers did now take me seriously. They still rejected my work, but at least now, I was getting personalized rejections and suggestions on how to improve the story. I also got personal letters saying that they enjoyed reading the book but they either didn’t have the space for my genre or the book didn’t get enough votes from the committee (My book made it to a committee! Woo hoo!).

Once again, I felt defeated. This time, I did not think it was my writing but rather the industry. It was just too competitive. So I turned to my backup career, technical writing. It’s an okay job. Right now, I work for an electronics company, and I get to play with toys before writing the user guides. But I have a stock pile of novels – entire worlds waiting to be released. And why shouldn’t they be?

I took another look at the industry and saw that a lot of things had changed since my first published work at the age of 12. A lot had changed since my book series was rejected. The world had gone digital. Readers had gone digital. Bookstores, which I visited on a regular basis, were no more than novelty shops. There were a handful of books from renowned best-selling authors and lots of celebrity and novelty items. But it was all so commercial and cookie-cutter. The good books were at Amazon.com. I should have seen this sooner. I was an Amazon premium member. I spent hundreds of dollars a month at Amazon.com, and although I still visited physical bookstores, my purchases there were significantly smaller.

And then there was Kindle. People saw that they could carry entire libraries in their pockets. I personally would rather have the paper copy. There is something about the smell and feel of a good book. But the world is going compact, so digital reading caught on better than I would have imagined.

Now the traditional publisher is the underdog, and it is much easier for aspiring authors to get their work to the public. A decade ago, I believed that self-publishing was for untalented writers who couldn’t make it in the business. But have you seen the crap that is on the shelves these days? I have picked up about a dozen self-published books at comic conventions, stories that were so creative and entertaining that I could not believe they weren’t sold in physical bookstores. Of course, realistically, there’s not enough room at the bookstores for every awesome book in the world.

So now I had to look at self-publishing from a different perspective. Why did I want to publish? Well, it’s certainly not to be famous. I’m not really looking to be in the spotlight. In fact, I’m a bit of a closet writer, a hermit, really. I’m not interested in book tours or Oprah interviews. I’m interested in writing. I want my layers and layers of fictional worlds out of my head and into a binder. My mind is getting crowded. So if I pay a little money to transform my stories into an attractive physical book, I can set them up as print-on-demand, and then if anyone else wants to read them, they can. If I make a lot of money, that’s great. However, I don’t expect to get rich. I just want to write.

As for making money, if I am going to eventually make a living off of my novels, I do need a little bit of a marketing plan. Even though I am not expecting my first book to sell in the thousands, if I can get dozens of different books out there, I may be able to bring in enough income to write books full time – which means devoting more hours and hence, producing more books. (Sorry, I almost never use the word “hence” but it seemed fitting.) Okay, so the plan is to write books, publish them through POD, and then write more.

Now, just in case you are wondering, I don’t JUST write books. I go through the whole process. I outline, write a draft, rewrite the draft, edit, edit again, send the book for professional editing, send the book for an informal review, rewrite based on feedback, edit the book again, and do several proofreads before submitting it. The POD publisher then sends me the first proofs, after which I edit again.

I am OCD about writing well. I have seen some horribly written self-published books, where you can tell that the author has no grasp of English grammar and obviously puts no effort into editing or even sending the book for review. Of course you can break grammatical rules when you write. If you don’t, your story will be dull. But you have to understand the rules thoroughly before you can even consider breaking them. It is a craft in itself to know which rules can be broken and which cannot. So, just in case you are wondering if self-publishing means a sub-standard work, my answer is that it is not the publishing method but the writer who can make or break a book.