Rock Paper Tiger

 Rock Paper Tiger, authored by Lisa Brackmann, is a hit. It’s gotten cover blurbs from some big name authors and a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Here’s a snippet from that review:

The China scenes are fast paced and strikingly atmospheric, and Ellie's backstory--her and Trey's return from combat is tough, sad, and endearing--is given in doses that perfectly complement the central action.

I was intrigued by the cover blurb for Rock Paper Tiger:

 Iraq vet Ellie McEnroe is down and out in China, trying to lose herself in the alien worlds of performance artists and online gamers. When a chance encounter with a Muslim fugitive drops her down a rabbit hole of conspiracies, Ellie must decide who to trust among the artists, dealers, collectors and operatives claiming to be on her side – in particular, a mysterious organization operating within a popular online game.

Lisa will be here tomorrow to talk about things you can do as a writer to tilt the odds in your favor – advice that can help get you published and read.

Speaking of reading, if you’d like to look closer at Rock Paper Tiger, maybe even buy a copy, check out her website. Then come back tomorrow to ask questions or to find out what the publicity person for her publisher said was the “single most useful thing an author can do.”

Any guesses what that might be?

Your Own Magazine

Ever thought about publishing your own magazine? Think that sounds even more difficult than publishing your book? Maybe not.

An article in Yahoo! News says it’s possible (not necessarily cheap, but possible).

MagCloud is a new service from Hewlett-Packard that, put simply, lets you make your own magazine online. You actually design your magazine offline — PDF works — and then upload it to MagCloud…. Issues cost 20 cents per page to print and mail….

Your magazine isn’t printed until someone orders it, so you don’t have to have tons of magazines sitting in your garage waiting for someone to order copies. And you, the publisher, get paid royalties once a month via PayPal.

If you’d like to get an idea of who else is publishing magazines, zip over to MagCloud and take a look and learn more.

I’ve been to some of your blogs where you posted fabulous pictures. Have you thought of creating your own magazine with them?

Here, not There

Today I was scheduled to report for the first day of two months of Federal Jury Duty…at 8 a.m….in downtown Austin where the traffic at that time of morning is bumper to bumper and parking spaces are nowhere to be found. But when I called in last Friday to find out what days I’d be needed the following week, I was told I would not have to call in …until November. I’ve been bumped. To celebrate my freedom, I’m linking you over to an interesting article on getting your self-pubbed books into stores.

Carla King covers a lot of important topics you’ll need to know, from The Databases, Traditional Print Book Distribution, POD Distribution with Lightning Source, POD Distribution with a Self-Publishing Firm, to A Middle Path.

If you self-published your book and would like to get it into bookstores, read the article. I’d add that you might want to check out SPANnet which has a free online community where you’ll get a lot of helpful information.

Wicked Working

It’s Sunday. The last day of my week in Lake Tahoe. I’m here at a conference, not a writing conference. This is an industry conference for my husband. I went to dinner Tuesday and Wednesday night and a banquet Thursday and a breakfast Friday morning.

Other than that, I’ve been in the room working: on blog posts or on guest posts or editing or answering emails, etc. Typical days for me except in a cooler place with huge pine trees and an absolutely gorgeous lake.

Here’s a few things I’ve learned:

1. If you’re gonna work in your hotel room, close the curtains on the window overlooking the pool.

2. Stop at a store and buy apples, bananas, and Diet Coke or you’re stuck going downstairs and buying a turkey sandwich for $9.

3. Not everywhere is as hot as central Texas. Take a jacket.

4. If you find a hotel with free WiFi, take all your vacations there and encourage organizations to plan their conferences there and then tell me so I can start a list.

5. Get a hair cut before you go. Bangs cut in front of a mirror with curved fingernail scissors are embarrassing.

6. When they give you a nametag and tell you to add a funny ribbon to it, don’t choose “I Read Your Email.” “I Smell Farts” would probably garner less weird looks.

7. If someone says, “Try a Pomegranate Licorice Martini,” don’t do it. Seriously. Don’t.

What lessons have you learned at conferences or hotels?

Support Those Who Support You

The wonderful blogger and freelance copywriter, Liza Carens Salerno, gave me the Journey Award earlier this month. If you have time, link over and check out her blog, Middle Passages. Liza said it’s given to bloggers who inspire or support or who make you think, or offer advice or ideas. Basically, it’s bloggers who support you in your own journey.

I don’t think there’s a set number of blogs to give the award to, so I’m choosing three (I’d make it four if I could give it right back to Liza).

Cold As Heaven because he always has something that makes me think or smile or sit back in awe.

Elizabeth Spann Craig offers valuable advice for writers day after day. She gets tons of awards, including having her blog, Mystery Writing is Murder, named one of Writer’s Digest’s 101 Best Websites for Writers – and she deserves every one.

Watery Tart, because she supports authors by having great guest bloggers, participating in blogfests, and performing lingerie training on very bad boys. No, really, she says that last one in her profile.

Thank you all, including all of you that I didn’t mention by name, for being supportive and fun to get to know.

Mermaid Tales: Screaming Underwater

If you’re new to Straight From Hel (thank you for stopping by and following), you probably don’t know about the Mermaid Tales. Every random once in a while, I tell a tale from my years of swimming as a mermaid in an underwater show at Aquarena Springs. Today, it’s summer shows, winter shows and screaming underwater.

Aquarena Springs was open 364 days a year. The only day we were closed was Christmas day. In the summer, there were probably 5 or 6 shows. Each show had three mermaids performing, sometimes four. The submarine would be packed for each show, probably a hundred or a hundred and fifty people. In the winter, the crowds naturally slacked off, so we didn’t schedule as many shows and there were usually only two mermaids, occasionally only one.

Summer: more people, more swimmers, tighter schedule. Winter: smaller audiences, less rush, fewer mermaids per show.

As you might guess, that led to some antics in the winter shows. One thing we mermaids liked to do was sit on our lily pads during picnic and talk to each other. Of course, the lily pads weren’t close together. They were spaced apart so that no matter where someone sat in the submarine, they could see at least one mermaid picnicking.

So…we didn’t actually “talk.” We screamed at each other.

I imagine the audience thought we were nuts. But, come on, the water was 76 degrees. It was winter and we were freezing our tails off for ten people. So we yelled back and forth.

I’d take a breath of air, yell something like, “Are you going to the keg party tonight?”

Ronina would yell back, “Which one?”

Me: “DU.”

R: “DU, as in, We do, do you?”

Me: “Yes.”

R: “Not gonna hang with a bunch of frat boys.”

Me: “Where you going then?”

R: “Party at the Hillside.”

What? You thought maybe we would be exchanging formulas for science class?

Author Lynne Murray

 Lynne Murray, author of the romantic comedy, Bride of the Living Dead, has had six mysteries published. Larger Than Death, the first book featuring Josephine Fuller, sleuth of size who doesn't apologize, won the Distinguished Achievement Award from NAAFA (the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance).  She has written three ebooks of encouragement for writers as well as essays, interviews and reviews on subjects that rouse her passions, many of those can be found under "Rants and Raves" on her web site.

She’s here today to talk about Revisions. Whether you love the writing stage where you revise your work or hate that part, you’ll like her take on Revisions.

Welcome Lynne Murray.

Revisions are my favorite part of novel writing.

The “dominoes falling” at the end of the first draft is a close second, but that can be so exhausting. I usually don’t sleep well during the last stages of writing the first draft of a novel, waking up in the middle of the night to add things that just won’t wait. Scribbling a cryptic note on my bedside notebook is not an option at that point. I do love how the plot all comes together. I’m not one who outlines much—I try but end up dropping through a trap door into writing the scene. One of the results of this weird process is that I’m always surprised to find that the action naturally gets faster and faster toward the end of the first draft as it speeds toward the conclusion. 

Once all the drama has unfolded and the shape of the book is in place, revisions allow me to dig deeper into the characters, the setting and the story.

Some writing teachers suggest compiling bios and even mug shots for the book’s characters as a method of getting to know them. This doesn’t work for me, perhaps because summaries of facts about people don’t spark my imagination. I learn much more about the people in the book by seeing them in action, particularly during revisions. It’s like discovering new facets of someone you thought you knew.

 Revisions can dig up important aspects of the book and characters. Daria, the heroine of Bride of the Living Dead, loves T-shirts that feature classic horror movies.  I knew that, but it became more and more important with each revision to defining Daria’s view of how both movies and clothes make statements about who she is and what matters to her.  If she’s going to please both families with a formal wedding she won’t be able to get married wearing a T-shirt depicting the poster from the 1958 classic “I Married a Monster from Outer Space.”

Daria’s not about to become a Stepford Bride. So how can she stay true to herself and still go through with the wedding?

As I dig up more questions about each character’s needs, the events of the book change too. For me it’s like driving around looking for something you didn’t know you were looking for. Once you find it, the surprise makes the reward even greater.

Too bad life doesn’t offer the same opportunities for revisions that we find in fiction.

Thank you Lynne!

Personally, I have love/hate feelings about revising. I dread it, but once I get into the process, I love the new material and the deeper understanding of my characters.

Lynne lives in San Francisco and when not writing she enjoys reading, watching DVD film directors' commentaries and spoiling her cats, all of whom are rescued or formerly feral felines. She also tweets and has two blogs, one under her name and one called Bride of the Dead (love that title!).

She’s also doing a blog tour. If you’d like to follow her on her stops, check out her schedule. And now, the Comment section is open for comments or questions about her books, her Revision process or even her cats! And be sure to keep an eye out for Daria in Bride of the Living Dead.

Bride of the Living Dead

 Tomorrow, Lynne Murray, author of the romantic comedy, Bride of the Living Dead, and six mysteries, will stop by Straight From Hel to talk about revising your manuscript. Lynne not only is a great writer, she’s also a lovely person. She was supposed to appear last Thursday, but with my computer crash, I lost her post and she graciously moved her tour schedule so she could come tomorrow.

I read Bride of the Living Dead, loved it and did a review. For those of you who haven’t read her latest book or haven’t picked it up in the store, here’s the cover blurb:

Indie film critic, Daria MacClellan, wants to marry the man she loves, but she's slipping on rose petals as if they were banana peels on her way to the altar. Big, beautiful and rebellious, Daria, who is most comfortable in a monster movie poster T-shirt and blue jeans, finds that her wedding is hijacked by family drama. How did she sign on for a formal wedding planned by Sky, her perfectionist, anorexic, older sister? Daria adores her fiancé and she loves horror films, but her wedding seems to be spiraling downward in that direction. Will a picture perfect pink wedding turn her into the Bride of the Living Dead?

As long as you’re in the store, check out the first in the Josephine Fuller series, Larger Than Death. It won the Distinguished Achievement Award from NAAFA (the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance). Then, check in here tomorrow to read her post about Revisions and to ask questions.

Book Tour Adventures

Arielle Ford recently did an article on The Huffington Post called The Adventures of a Book Tour. She had some interesting experiences and knows of some others who did as well.

One example was “Andy” who had an interview on the Today Show, but showed up totally unprepared and untrained. “He never mentioned the title of his book or had any usable sound bites. The host of the interview never mentioned the title either. The book never sold and Andy never got another book deal.”

There were also examples that had happier ends, like one author who showed up multiple times for a TV interview, only to be bumped every time by the OJ Simpson trial. “He was very polite about it each time followed by "I was busy writing my next book anyway". He was asked back several times and is still a regular guest. The lesson here is to surprise the producers by not blowing up and instead by being understanding and gracious”

I have an example of a friend who showed up for a book signing at B&N, only to find the store had ordered books with a similar title (by a long dead author). No books to sign. Luckily, friends came to support her – one of them the owner of a local independent bookstore. That friend drove to her store and brought back all of the author's books that she had in stock.

How about you? Do you have any book tour adventures to share?

Picture Books

I don’t write childrens books, but I still found an article by Publishers Weekly on Picture Books interesting.

It seems that at a meeting of the New England Children’s Booksellers Advisory Council, Ken Geist, v-p and editorial director of Orchard Books and Cartwheel Books and author of the picture book The Three Little Fish, asked independent booksellers to get behind picture books.

 “I’m not finishing this year until we move the needle and sell more picture books,” said Geist, who added that he was not speaking on behalf of Scholastic. “I’m here to talk about what we can do collectively to raise the profile of picture books.” 

Geist is trying to start a grassroots movement, asking booksellers to send him suggestions as to how to get kids back in the bookstores. The article lists some of the suggestions he’s gotten.

Like most of us, he’s not real keen on celebrity books.

 Singling out celebrity books like Tori Spelling’s upcoming fall release, Presenting...Tallulah, he added, “My worry is that that book isn’t going to make a lifelong reader.”

 What suggestion would you send him on very young children to read or parents to buy books for them?

Self-Publishing

If editors at New York houses loved your book, but ultimately turned it down because they felt they had too many similar books in that market, would you turn to self-publishing?

That’s what Boyd Morrison did. In The Huffington Post, he says he received “rave rejections” but no takers for his book, The Ark. So he posted his manuscript in the Kindle store.

It sold through word of mouth.

To my shock, my novels started climbing the bestseller list. Within a month, The Ark, which was getting excellent reviews from readers, reached number one on the Kindle store's technothriller bestseller list, higher than established authors like Tom Clancy and Brad Thor. In three months, my three books sold 7,500 copies and were selling at a rate of 4,000 books per month. 

That got the attention of an editor at Touchstone Books, who offered him a four-book deal and Morrison’s foreign rights agent sold The Ark to 18 foreign markets.

What about you? Would you try this? Do you think you could stir up enough “word of mouth” to sell copies and make money – or even get enough sales to attract an agent’s or editor’s attention?

Ever heard of the NBA?

No, I'm not talking the National Basketball Association. I'm talking about the Net Book Agreement.

According to Sam Jordison in the British paper,The Guardian, “the net book agreement (NBA) was a cosy arrangement put in place in 1899 to allow publishers to set the retail price of books. The big houses agreed that they would collectively refuse to stock anyone that tried to discount – not that they had to act very often because most retailers thought that the system worked in their interest too.”

This agreement was reviewed by the restrictive practices court in 1962 and declared “in the public interest because it allowed publishers to subsidise works of important – or potentially important – authors.” But by the 1990s the world had changed and after court cases, the agreement was declared illegal.

Jordison claims, “It's probably now harder for good writers to get into print – and definitely harder for them to receive the long-term support from publishing houses necessary to nurture their talent. Literature remains one of Britain's biggest exports – but for how long?”

In the end, he concedes that a call to bring back the NBA is “all pie in the sky.”

Is it better to continue with Costco and Amazon setting the price of books? If you’re a reader, it probably is. Not so much if you’re the author.

Crime Novels

Here in the U.S., we tend to think of crime novels as being wholly American. They thrive here and sell here probably more than anywhere else. The Washington Post, however, says that Scandinavian crime novels and writers are very hot right now.

There’s Stieg Larsson who wrote The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.

There’s also Camilla Lackberg who’s a mjor force in Stockholm and made her American debut this month.

Then there’s Norwegian Jo Nesbo and Sweden’s Henning Mankell.

Lackberg, whose book The Ice Princess is finally coming to the U.S., said, “I was at a book festival in Madrid and the schedule had me booked to sign autographs for three hours. Three hours! I thought it was a mistake. I got there, and it wasn't. I could barely move my right hand afterwards.”

According to Sonny Mehta, publisher and editor in chief of Knopf, Scandinavian crime fiction is different from what we expect here in the U.S.

"They don't zip along, these things. They're brooding. It's not plot-driven in the way that many of their American contemporaries are. . . . Part of the appeal is you're being introduced to something that should be familiar, that seems familiar, but it's not."

Any of you read these authors?

Netflix for Books

With the price of textbooks at an all-time high (some for $200 - $300 a piece), you knew someone would start a business to offer textbooks in a way similar to Netflix for movies.

The company that did it is called BookRenter. According to Daily Tech:

Users can search for books via their title or ISBN. They then specify a rental period and delivery option. The books are delivered with return UPS labels for easy return shipping at the end of the exchange period.

BookRenter is a start-up company and is already getting funding:

 After $6M USD in preliminary funding, BookRenter just scored $10 million in a Series B financing round.

It has partnered with 75 universities already and has a base of 1.3 million student subscribers.

Sure wish this had been around when I was in college. Books are more expensive now, but even then, in the days of the discovery of fire and watermelon, books were budget breakers.

Wonder what the compensation is to authors? There's probably a deal with the publisher since BookRenter would have to buy many copies of each textbook since their site boasts:

 3 million textbooks

96% guaranteed in stock

Or maybe this will push textbooks to become ebooks.

What do you think?

Pitfalls

How many bad things do you throw at your protagonist before you begin to think that perhaps you’ve hit them so many times the readers won’t believe s/he could still get up? You want to throw roadblocks in the protag’s way. Things can’t be too easy, be your book a mystery or a romance or sci-fi/fantasy. In order to be worthy of the prize at the end of the story, though, the protagonist must have gone through the “fire” to prove their worthiness.

I thought about this as I sat at my son’s computer and pondered the roadblocks popping up in my pathway. I’ve recently had a couple of big roadblocks, such as being called up for two months of federal jury duty. Then I’ve hit a couple of smaller bumps, like totally screwing up the front end of my husband’s car (long story) and having my computer die on me for the third time in four years and being stuck without a computer, which explains why I’m on my son’s computer at the moment.

Since this is real life, my life, I think I’ve had enough road blocks thrown my way. But probably not if I were a character. We throw more at them, more than we ourselves would want to handle. If we didn’t, readers would think, oh that was too easy … or they’d think, why did I waste my time on this book, I had it figured out after five pages … or, quit whining for heaven’s sake, just tell her you love her and move on to happily ever after since there’s nothing in your way.

Our characters not only can, they must take more. True, we have to make those small and large disasters believable and eventually overcome-able, but if your character is on a quest, be it for love or truth or the capture of a killer, then they must solve the problems, save the day, give something of him/her self in order for us to cheer and feel they deserve the reward (and for us to feel that we, too, deserve the reward, since for that short time, we are the protagonist).

Are you throwing enough at your protagonist? Are you making things difficult? Have you set up this character with enough inner and outer strength to persevere and become the hero? Are you, the author and god of this story, strong enough to test your protagonist?

Stephen Tremp gave me the Meat and Potatoes Award. Yay! Dinner tonight - no cooking! Oh wait, I just read the fine print. There’s no actually meat and potatoes, but there is this:

This prestigious award goes to a particular group of wise and experienced bloggers who have proven themselves over the course of time, trials, and tribulations.

Stephen gave it to five bloggers and I am very honored to be in his group since I would definitely recommend the other four.

I’m going to pass on the Meat and Potatoes Award to:

Alex J. Cavanaugh

Jane Kennedy Sutton 

Sia McKye 

J.M. Strother 

Glynis Smy

All 5 of these bloggers are exerienced and wise and wonderful to follow. Zip over and leave them a shout-out.

And Alex, Jane, Sia, J.M., and Glynis, you can have all the Meat and Potatoes you want, but go easy on those green beans!

The Texas Book Festival Gears Up

This past Thursday was the first official meeting of the volunteer Chairs for the Texas Book Festival. Our first business meeting is mostly a get together to meet any new Chairs, find out what everyone’s in charge of, see the preliminary layout of tents and rooms, and see what we can squeeze out of Clay, who’s in charge of authors.

We got nothing out of Clay, except that he has about half of the authors lined up. Clay works hard to bring both big named authors and upcoming authors to the Festival. In addition to phone calls, emails, in person talks, he spends about a month in New York every year talking to agents and editors and authors.

If you live in Texas or plan a trip to Austin, put October 16 and 17 on your calendar. This will be the 15th year for the Texas Book Festival. It’s held on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol, the streets surrounding the capitol and in nearby venues. Since 1995, the Festival has contributed more than $2.5 million in grants to Texas public libraries.

In case you’re wondering what it costs for you to spend the weekend with 200 authors, the answer is nothing. It’s free to the public.

If you live nearby or are coming, consider volunteering a couple of hours. Running the Festival takes over a thousand volunteers who can go online and pick what they’d like to do and when. The volunteer needs will go online probably next month, so keep an eye on the Texas Book Festival site. (And look for the Austin Museum of Art - the venue that I chair. I’ll be submitting my time slots and number of volunteers I’ll need.)

Books to Movies

It’s usually fun to read a book then go see it as a movie or TV show. What will the characters look like when they come to life on the screen? What parts of the book will be cut and what will make it to film? How will the director change the author’s words?

 Unfortunately, not as many books are being turned into film, according to Variety.

According to the Publishers Marketplace database, 205 Hollywood book deals were reported between June 1, 2008 and June 1, 2009. That number declined to 190 over the same span in 2009-2010. The biggest drop was in literary fiction, from 30 in 2008-09 to just 17 in 2009-10.

Those are overall numbers. Maybe your favorite genre is doing better.

The action-thriller-suspense field rose from 19 to 21. The number of deals held steady for vampire and zombie books, comic tomes, chicklit … and for kids' fantasy …. The biggest growth area for Hollywood acquisitions? Young adult (YA) books, which grew from 21 pickups to 36 during the timeframe.

If you’re hoping your book will make it to film, consider this:

 "Studios are clearly not interested in anything that's considered small, and anything under a $50 million or $40 million budget is considered small," says Bill Contardi, a lit and dramatic rights agent with Gotham-based Brandt & Hochman. "Serious fiction is often considered 'not big enough,' and there are fewer buyers for this material now."

Hollywood’s still looking for books, but they want the mega sellers primarily, the “sure thing”. What are they looking for today?

Risk-averse studios are increasingly shying away from material that can't be rendered in 3D or spawn a series of action figures.

So, what are agents doing?

As a result, many lit agents are shifting their focus to different genres, particularly books that skew to the under-18 crowd, like James Frey and Jobie Hughes' young adult novel "I Am Number Four," which is seen by DreamWorks as a potential franchise. Others with adult fiction clients are beginning to spend more time packaging material for TV than film.

 This is only a small portion of the article, so, if you want the full story, click over.

How about you? Have you already picked out the actors/actresses who’ll star in the movie or TV show of your book(s)?

Book Review: Shadow of Betrayal

Shadow of Betrayal is the third in the Jonathan Quinn series by Brett Battles, although it is the first in the series that I have read. Shadow of Betrayal can stand alone as a thriller, but some parts of it would have been more clear if I’d read the previous novel. Even though I sort of understand what the group “LP” is, don’t ask me to tell you.

The good news is you don’t have to know the specifics, just that LP is working against our hero, Quinn. There are two other main players. The first is Orlando, Quinn’s girlfriend and second in arms. Battles does a good job of portraying Orlando as tough and dependable and as much an expert as Quinn, yet she can be soft when the time’s right. The second is Nate who Quinn relies on, despite Nate’s having one prosthetic leg. (My feeling is that Nate lost the leg in the previous book since during this book Quinn is questioning whether Nate will be able to keep up while at the same time feeling guilty for how Nate lost the leg.)

Now that you know the characters, here’s the back cover blurb:

Three jobs, no questions. That’s the deal Jonathan Quinn -- freelance operative and professional “cleaner” -- has struck with his client at the Office. But his first assignment in rural Ireland unexpectedly results in four dead bodies to dispose of -- and leads him to an astounding mystery about to spin wildly out of control.

Now Quinn, along with his colleague and girlfriend, the lethal Orlando, has a new mission: find and protect a U.N. aide worker who has suddenly disappeared from her assignment in war-torn Africa. If it were only that easy. Soon Quinn and Orlando will unearth a horrifying plot that is about to reach stage critical for a gathering of world leaders -- and an act of terror more cunning, and more insidious, than anyone can foresee.

I could see the Jonathan Quinn series as becoming one that I follow. I like that Quinn and Orlando work together. It’s not often you see a woman portrayed as capable and as realistically as Orlando is. And Quinn, clearly the hero, is not one-dimensional. The story moved quickly and kept me turning pages.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FTC Disclaimer: Shadow of Betrayal was sent to me by Kaye Publicity in Chicago. I’ve no doubt that they hoped I would do a review, although they did not ask for one. But I liked the book, so I wrote this review. I also liked that they goofed and sent me two copies. Woo-woo! That means, I’m giving away the untouched copy (don’t think anyone would want my dog-eared one). So, if you would like Shadow of Betrayal by Barry Award winning author Brett Battles, leave a comment. You don’t need to leave an email address unless when I click on your name and go to your Profile, there’s no email address there. If there is an address there and you win, I’ll email you to get your mailing address. Also, I have no idea what it costs to mail things outside of the U.S., so if you know, give me a warning so I don’t faint in the post office when the bill is rung up. The drawing closes at midnight Saturday, June 12th.

Group Promotional Power

Bestselling novelist, non fiction author, and critically acclaimed photographic artist, Aggie Villanueva is joining us today. Published in her twenties, Aggie found local writers’ groups, the Mid-America Fellowship of Christian Writers three-day conference, taught at nationwide writing conferences, and published numerous writing newsletters for various organizations.

In 2009, she began the Visual Arts Junction blog, which in the same year was voted #5 at Predators & Editors in the category “Writers’ Resource, Information & News Source.” Now, under the Visual Arts Junction umbrella, Aggie has launched the VAJ Buzz Club – a club where members combine their individual marketing power, and much more, to create the ultimate BUZZ to launch each other’s books, products, seminars, contests, etc.

She’s here today to tell us about this new venture and the success members are having under her tutelage.

Welcome Aggie Villanueva.

VAJ Buzz Club: Group Promotion Power

The Author’s Promo Problem

As soon as that first book is published writers learn that we can no longer just sit back and sign books at events created for us. We are expected to be branders, professional bloggers, promoters, advertisers, event organizers, search engine optimizers, and the list seems endless. But I’d wager from what I hear that most writers hate promoting their books most of all.

Professional promotion companies are everywhere online, and they usually do a great job of it. But who can afford them? Obviously some can, but most writers are like me. There is no such thing for me as an advertising budget. There is barely an anything budget. Realistically we all know we will have to spend something for promotion, and ultimately it will cost our precious time too. But we’d rather be writing than overwhelmed in the marketing world we know nothing about. Even should we learn the basics, how do we get a list to promote to that is large enough to be effective?

Let’s Buzz Social Media Together

I propose blitzing social media with our book launches together.

Social media is THE marketing arena. Did you know that “1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media.” July 30, 2009, Socialnomics. And that “Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé. In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen.”

This year, 2010, Generation Y outnumbers Baby Boomers, and 96% of them have joined a social network, with FB and twitter still leading the pack. Social media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest.

But the goal isn’t just banding together to launch to thousands of followers in our own niche, but to faithful followers in our own niche. What’s the difference? Followers become faithful when we offer them value, when we really care about them, not just selling our books. That’s when books sell.

For instance, I’ve relationship with my 8,300 twitter followers. How do I know? 99.7 percentile of my tweets are retweeted by them. One reason for this is because if you added all my tweets together, just the ones that offers writing and related tips, you’d have a couple of books. And this is just one way to create connections with them.

Let’s combine our social media reach. Social media made mass marketing available free to all. But it’s still a numbers game. Not just numbers for number’s sake, but numbers within the exact niche we want to reach; writing and writing related social media contacts. So, we join forces to combine our faithful followers.

The Solution

Most writers I know don’t have time, or the inclination to dig into the study of promotion and marketing. Fortunately this study overlaps with the resource materials I write for my blog subscribers at Visual Arts Junction. And I have a history of organizational/promotional experience.

Working to promote my novel and Visual Arts Junction blog, is where I realized how hard it is to do alone. There is more than safety in numbers, there is power in numbers; promotional power plus affordability.

After working for a full year to promote my novel, Rightfully Mine: God’s Equal Rights Amendment, finally in April, 2010 the book not only made the top #100 on Amazon (best seller status) in three categories for both for print and electronic version, it made #2 in two categories, and #8 in another. I took this screen shot to prove it to myself!

I began wondering, if I made this happen for my own novel, imagine how much further we could go as a group of authors committed to about an hour per launch to promote each other’s book/product/event.

So I’ve combined the tried and tested structure I’ve learned with some of my new ideas to create an innovative group launch club that costs a tiny fraction of what promotional companies charge. The VAJ Buzz Club is born, and it offers both free supporting membership and paid launch memberships. For full details http://www.visualartsjunction.com/?page_id=4047. (We are NOT a buy-each-others’-book-to-become-a-best-seller-club.)

With our combined social media followers and email lists alone, we create a niche buzz like we couldn’t dream of on our own. Already our combined numbers are over 44,000.

This innovative structure means you don’t have to learn a new marketing career after all. But still, you are THE BUZZ. Check it out.

For those who aren’t interested in helping with the launches of others, we also offer Promotion á la Carte, Here you aren’t forced into bundles including services you may not need right now. You can pick and choose from our promotional service menu.

Stop by anytime to see how you would like to be THE BUZZ.

Thank you, Aggie!

If you’d like to know more about The VAJ Buzz Club, you can email Aggie (myaggie2@gmail.com) or visit the Club website.

I’d like to hear from all of you on this idea. Are you already part of a promotion group? Would you consider something like this - either joining or starting your own?

Apps for Authors and Readers

TV newscasters seemed to focus on the Internet connection glitch that interrupted Steve Job’s speech at the 2010 Worldwide Developers Conference rather than the announcements he made. So, in case you missed his announcements, here are a couple of updates about the iPad that you might find interesting.

According to The Huffington Post:

He noted that publishers have reported that, already, 22% of eBook sales are through iBooks….Jobs also announced that since the launch of the iBookstore 65 days ago, "users have downloaded over 5 million books" -- about 2.5 books per iPad, he said.

Good news. Now for the app news:

First, Apple has added a Stickies-like note-taking feature, and has a new bookmarking tool. The biggest news, however, is that iBooks will now allow users to read PDF files just like they would eBooks.

You’ll have a whole new bookshelf to display your PDF books.

And the last bit of news:

 …users will be able to sync their books across all of their Apple devices….First, you can purchase and download a book. It will download wirelessly. You can download the same book to all your devices at no extra charge. Buy it on your iPad, download to your iPhone. And iBooks will automatically and wirelessly sync your current place, all your bookmarks, and all your notes."

Good news for iPad and iPhone users. Also good for those who use the other eReaders. No doubt, they will soon follow suit in order to stay competitive.

I know quite a few of you have your books available in PDF form. Is this good news for you?

Are You Kidding Me?

Let me say upfront that I am not a geek. And I mean “geek” in a good way.

I totally admire every one of you who self-publish, create your own covers, and somehow have figured out how to get your books on Kindle and the Nook and all the other gadgets. I totally freaking admire you.

Never more so than when I read an article by David Gewirtz on ZDNet called, Six Tips for Getting Apple’s iBooks to Accept Your EPub File.

He began to lose me in the third paragraph when he wrote “… I attempted to sign in to iTunes Connect using my iPhone developer account…” Huh?

My eyes glazed over at: “The container.xml file contains a reference to the content.opf file, which, in turn, references the toc.ncx file. Here’s the thing: the content.opf and toc.ncx files are key to making all this work.”

Now I know a bunch of you are super smart folk who can probably speak the language that includes things like “META_INF” and “OEBPS” and:

I’d originally used UltraEdit on the PC, and when I moved the files to the Mac, I used TextWrangler. TextWrangler allowed UTF-8 encoding, but listed files as “(no BOM)” meaning the encoding isn’t prefaced by a multi-byte bill-of-materials. This didn’t seem to be a problem.

So, somebody zip over, read this article, and tell me what in the heck Gewirtz is saying. If you do understand it, is the process as hard as it sounds? Or does he make it crystal clear to those of you who speak computer? Then come back and tell me so my head will quit spinning around.

Openings Moved

When I wrote Dismembering the Past, the first draft started this way:

The first things Kelly noticed when she raised the lid on the freezer were the eyes. Eighteen glazed eyes reflected light from the frost-encrusted bulb. Heads and necks bent backward and blank faces tilted upward toward the sliding baskets of ice cream and ground beef.

Propping open the freezer door, she turned to the elderly man and woman behind her. "She killed all nine?"

Hoyt nodded. Sparse sprigs of hair fluttered around his ears. He shifted his balance and limped a half-step forward, pushing the silver-colored walker in front of him. Once he re-established equilibrium, he leaned heavily on the walker's metal frame and looked at Kelly. His left eye focused on her face; the right one remained closed except for a black slit barely visible through a curtain of snow-white lashes. "Yep, every last one."

"And they were like this when you found them? The police didn't alter anything?"

He turned his head and spat on the cement garage floor. "Police didn't do nothing. That's why Dot insisted we hire a detective."

"Now, Hoyt, that's not exactly true." Dot stepped around her brother-in-law and turned her watery eyes in Kelly's direction. Dot's tightly coiffed hair seemed to be held in place by invisible rollers. "They came out, Kelly, and talked to us. We gave them a picture of Mabel, but they said there wasn't much they could do since Mabel was a grown woman. Said there wasn't no law against a grown woman killing all her chickens, then hightailing it away from home."

Not bad. I liked it. I thought it had a good first line that would hook a reader. It had a twist that might make someone want to keep reading. But … maybe too many adjectives, too much description, for the opening of the book. Plus, it really wasn’t the focus of the book. It was a secondary story. I edited that scene and kept it, but didn't make it Chapter One.

The opening chapter is important - it focuses on the main character or the antagonist; it lays the groundwork for the main thread of the book; it grabs the reader and pulls him/her into the story; it tells the reader what kind of book this will be … one or all of these.

I eventually set aside this manuscript. But to see how I eventually started it, go to: Openings, a post I did back in May.

Does your opening lines come easily? Do you write and re-write?

Bidding War on Your Book

Wouldn’t it be marvelous if editors got into a bidding war for your manuscript? Of course it would. But let’s be realistic. If that actually happened, and remember we’re being realistic here, what do you think the top figure would be?

If you said two million, you might want to rethink that figure. Unless you’re Demi Moore. That’s exactly what her proposed memoir recently went for, according to Crain’s New York Business.

Her agent Luke Janklow put the memoir idea out there and HarperColllins Publishers won the bidding war, “agreeing to fork over more than $2 million for world rights….”

She definitely has a built-in platform and a husband who’s probably the top Twitterer in the world. She’ll make more than the two million. And the books not even written yet. Wonder if Oprah has already called her?

Pay for an Agent?

Okay, we all know (don’t we!) that you don’t pay an agent. If an agent wants money up front or wants you to pay for editing (or directs you to a specific editing service that charges, then they’ll read your submission), run. If you sign with an agent, you may be charged for some fees such as shipping your manuscript to editors…maybe.

But here’s a story where you can pay a top-notch agent to read the first 50 pages of your manuscript and it’s legit. But would you?

Each month, Irene Goodman of the Irene Goodman Literary Agency, “puts her services up on eBay to benefit three foundations that fund research to cure deafness and blindness: the Deafness Research Foundation, Hope for Vision and Foundation Fighting Blindness. Bidding starts at $500 for each of the three monthly auctions, and the winners get to have the first 50 pages of their manuscripts read and critiqued by Goodman.”

So, again, my question is…would you?

Authors Can Bite the Apple

Apple iBookstore is opening its doors to self-published authors.

According to an article in Information Week, Apple, which “sold over 1.5 million e-books through its iBookstore in the 28 days following the launch of its iPad,” is going to let authors make their books available, without having to have a publishing company or online self-publishing service do it for them.

Authors can still go through the Apple-authorized partners, but now they can also do the work themselves.

… individuals can apply to sell their books directly through iTunes Connect, Apple's online sales and marketing management tool set for content creators, publishers, and developers.

If you’re interested, check out the article, which lists the requirements and takes a guess at what the money split might be.

Who’s going to be the first?

Donna Fletcher Crow

 Donna Fletcher Crow is the author of 30-some books, mostly novels dealing with British history. The award-winning Glastonbury, The Novel of Christian England is her best-known work, a grail search epic beginning with the birth of Christ and going through the Reformation. She’s won numerous awards, including First Place in Historical Fiction by the National Federation of Press Women. Her newest book, A Very Private Grave, comes out this year, first in the UK and then in the US.

She’s here today to talk about what it means to be published in two different countries. She has a lot to say about how the dual publication affects editing, promotion and even paying taxes.

Welcome Donna Fletcher Crow!

Swimming the Pond

As I enter this exciting and scary world of virtual book tours I'm still smiling about the irony of talking about an ecclesiastical thriller on a blog named "Straight from Hel." And I must say any qualms I might have had were much soothed when I opened the blog and found fields of Texas bluebells and Helen's charming smile welcoming me. Thank you so much, Helen, for hosting me.

Since A VERY PRIVATE GRAVE, Book 1 in The Monastery Murders series released in the UK on June 1, just in time for their National Crime Fiction Week, June 14-19, and since the US release won't come around until the end of September, the whole split personality feeling of doing business on both sides of the water is much on my mind.

First, a word about the story. Felicity Howard, a wide-eyed, strong-willed, full-steam-ahead young American woman, who found teaching Latin to London school children boring, takes herself off to remotest Yorkshire to study in a theological college run by monks. Well, what else can she do with a classics degree? When her favorite monk is brutally murdered and Felicity finds her church history lecturer with blood all over his hands the fun really begins.

So I have a very American heroine in a very English setting .(I always have American heroines when using contemporary English settings— it gives me an excuse for the inevitable mistakes.) And, surprise, surprise, when I had my first telephone conversation with my new agent whom I had only met electronically, I discovered that she is English, living in America. So we quickly agreed that, given the fact that the ecclesiastical thriller subgenre is primarily an English invention, an English publisher would be the way to go.

I have been absolutely thrilled with the process. Of course, as we all know, the Internet puts the world at our fingertips, greatly simplifying such international alliances. Perhaps I should mention at this point that, although I have published 30-some books, I had been out of circulation for a decade. That made publishing A VERY PRIVATE GRAVE like starting a whole new career. Ten years ago contracts didn't mention electronic rights. Manuscripts were sent in hard copy. Editors sent notes on little yellow post-um notes. Authors didn't have web sites or blogs or Facebook pages or Twitter accounts. . . "O wonder! . . .O brave new world, That has such people in't!"

Other than the fact that the ground had shifted under my feet, and that my husband spent months trying to get the IRS to certify with the Inland Revenue that I am a US taxpayer, the first substantial difference I noticed was in the editing process. Never in 30 years in the business have I been edited so thoroughly. I can only hope that my editor in Oxford got paid something near what she was worth (as if anyone in this business does) because she did a simply heroic job and by answering all the questions she raised I believe the story was dramatically improved. And then the copy editor didn't merely correct my capitalization and comma usage, but had her own substantive questions. I hope I was able to communicate my appreciation to them.

And now I'm working with two publicists and two release dates, wanting the English release to be a success, but not able to get there to do any events or signings on site and with my American publicist warning me not to do too much advance promotion because it will just irritate people who can't get the book yet and will forget about it by September. And with my American enthusiasms I have the feeling I'm driving my very polite and very understated English publicist quietly mad as he has to explain to me yet again that "That really isn't done here as it is in America." It's a bit of a tightrope walk stretched over a very wide pond, but I'm loving every minute of it.

And if you're reading this in America, please, please put your name on the "notify me when it's available" list on Amazon so my American publicist won't be mad at me.

P. S. Helen has kindly invited me back after the US release, so we can see how it's all working out then.

Thank you, Donna!

Donna will be back in October to talk about the U.S. release of A Very Private Grave. I’m looking forward to that.

Donna is an enthusiastic gardener and you can see pictures of her garden and watch the book trailer at her website. At her site, you can also order A Very Private Grave in either country by clicking either Amazon (for the US version) or Amazon UK.

Feel free to ask her about her cross-continents publications, writing historicals, or what she’s working on next.

Swimming the Pond

 Even though we speak the same language, all things are not the same when it comes to the U.S. and the UK. Those differences can have a huge effect on writers who hope to get published on both continents.

Tomorrow, author Donna Fletcher Crow is going to stop by and talk about her life as an American who writes books set in the UK. Since Donna’s primary publisher is in the UK, her next book will premiere first in England, then in the US. She’ll cover topics like what this means when it comes to taxes, editing, and promoting.

Donna has published thirty books. Her latest, which comes out June 1 in the UK and in September in the U.S., is called A Very Private Grave, Book 1 in the Monastery Murders series. Because of the different release dates on two different continents, Donna probably feels like she’s wearing different hats to do the what would appear to be the same job, but, in many ways, isn’t.

Here’s a blurb about A Very Private Grave:

Felicity Howard, a young American studying for the Anglican priesthood at the College of the Transfiguration in Yorkshire, is devastated when she finds her beloved Father Dominic bludgeoned to death and Father Antony, her church history lecturer, soaked in his blood...

A Very Private Grave is a contemporary novel with a thoroughly modern heroine who must learn some ancient truths in order to solve the mystery and save her own life as she and Father Antony flee a murderer and follow clues that take them to out-of-the way sites in northern England and southern Scotland. The narrative skillfully mixes detection, intellectual puzzles, spiritual aspiration, romance, and the solving of clues ancient and modern.

I’m looking forward to hearing what she has to say, what the process has been like, and some differences she’s seen. You can also take a look at the book trailer.

You can leave a question for her today - and come back tomorrow to read her post. You’ll probably have even more questions then! (A shout-out to BFF Sally Baker for cropping photos for me while I await new software after a computer crash. )

eBooks, eReaders and Change

Change is inevitable. Book publishing can’t avoid change. It comes whether you want it to or not.

According to a Reuters article, book publishers are discussing the coming changes and are determined not to make the mistakes the music business made years back. They seem to all agree on this:

… the big change will come when there is a standard format across which all e-books can be published and shared. 

I am all for that!

David Shanks, chief executive of leading publisher Penguin Group USA, said:

"Our fondest wish is that all the devices become agnostic so that there isn't proprietary formats and you can read wherever you want to read," Shanks told Reuters. "First we have to get a standard that everybody embraces." 

According to the article, the cost of printing a book is a minor cost. The big bucks are spent on developing an author’s work and marketing it. Eileen Gittins of Blurb, which helps authors and companies self-publish, said:

 "The book publishing industry is becoming more blockbuster focused.”

To me, that sounds like it will be harder for new authors to get published, unless they have a blockbuster book, a huge platform and a marketing plan in place.

Change is coming.