Whose story is this?

One of the most important decisions a writer can make when crafting a story is to choose who the stars of the story are. Every story has a main character, a protagonist, about whose major life struggle the story revolves. This character is often categorized as the hero (or heroine). The villain (antagonist) is the individual or force the protagonist struggles against, creating the central conflict of the story. Serious trouble arises when the author can’t figure out who the story is really about. There are several possible causes for this.

The Scene Stealer. Sometimes a minor character (or the villain) becomes more interesting and steals so many scenes that the main character seems dull or plodding in comparison. Gradually the story becomes about the minor character, or at least so much that the tale becomes fragmented or torn in two or more directions, ruining the cohesive structure necessary for the reader to identify with and empathize with the main character, the star of the story.

The POV Mish-Mash. The author’s choice of point of view (POV) can have a miraculous or devastating effect on the story. Authors who choose to mix POVs within a scene (also known as ‘head-hopping’) run the risk of confusing the reader by presenting the thoughts and feelings of several characters all at once rather than confining each scene to one character’s point of view. The problem with mixed POVs is the reader almost needs a scorecard to keep up with whose head the scene is in at any given moment.

Diametrically Opposed Storylines. In the desire to craft a story rich with conflict and subplots, the author finds two very strong but very different storylines with separate characters existing within one story, creating an undesirable conflict in the cohesive nature of the story as a whole. The author may end up trying to alternate two opposing stories that are so different, they may not converge until well past the middle of the book. This kind of separate path approach may split the story down the middle and cause the reader to lose direction before the two dissimilar storylines merge and make sense.

Whatever the situation, the author should do what is necessary to bring cohesion to the story to keep the reader on track. In a future installment we’ll devote a detailed discussion to the very important (and sometimes controversial) issue of POV!

Willa Kaye Danes
author of
Pixie

learning from the past

We have a gentleman that comes a few times a year to our local theater, a beautiful 1927 grand theater. What he does is perfect for this historic movie theater; he brings a silent movie and plays accompaniment on a pipe organ.

Along with playing music, he tells all about the making of the movie and gives special tidbits of information about the silent movie stars in the film.

This time he brought "The Cat and the Canary", perfect for Halloween. The movie was very dramatic with its use of light and shadow, and the organ music did double duty for the sound effects. It reminded me of something that I needed to pay more attention to as a writer ... the setting.

In writing a setting, we can use scenery, lighting, or noises to set up the scene. Sometimes it is good to go back and see what we have left out of the setting. How can we improve the setting to enhance the mood for what is coming next?

C. Fern Cook
Wild Evolution
http:www.cferncook.com

Book Pricing and the Unknown Self-Published Author

We've been discussing this among ourselves regarding what readers want and what readers are willing to pay for in the current economy. While we can't argue that money is tight for almost everyone, and readers are probably being more judicious in their book shopping, we wonder what this means for new authors just starting out - both in publisher houses and self-published.

There's no doubt that some currently 'hot' books on the market are priced higher than other 'also ran' books. The price difference can be double or more, depending on whether one is offered in hardback. And in the ebook scene, the same kinds of differences can be seen. To put this in more understandable terms, let's use an example and compare 'apples to apples' by pricing both a popular book and a similar self-published book printed in trade paperback format:

The 'Twilight' series by Stephanie Meyers versus 'Generic Teen Vampire Book Title' by Unknown Self-Published Author.

Assuming that a reader even knows to search for the teen vampire book by Unknown/Self-Published, if both USP's book and SM's book appear in the search listings, and USP's book is priced at $16.95 and SM's book is priced at $12.99, assuming the reader has not read either one, on name recognition alone, my bet is that the reader will choose the cheaper and more popular book priced at $12.99.

Now let's suppose that Unknown/Self-Published decides to make her book more price-competitive and lists hers at $12.99 too. With the same reader conditions - not having read either book and recognizing author Stephanie Meyer's name or series title - the reader may seriously consider USP's book as a contender for the reader's $12.99 book allowance ... until the reader sees USP's cheesy cover and realizes this is a 'do-it-yourself' book. Again, the winner is the better-known, better quality book.

These are just suppositions based on our own reading and purchasing experiences. But let's delve a little deeper into the situation, assuming that both books are equally priced and have equally engaging covers. Why would the reader have any incentive to blow $12.99 on an unknown author's book? Has it received much media attention? No. Does the reader have any previous experience with this author's writing style? No. Does the reader have ANY reason to choose an unknown author over a known author about whom there is much media attention - and two movies produced from her books? Well ... what do YOU think?

The only reason we can think of that any reader might take a chance on an unknown author is if the reader heard good recommendations from trusted sources (friends, respected review sites, etc.). There's that dreaded M-word again ... MARKETING. And the reader finds the unknown author's book blurb particularly compelling - so compelling in fact that it sounds MORE INTERESTING than a book that is already receiving generous media acclaim. There's where excellent writing and marketing skill come into play again. And - AND - the reader has not been burned previously by gambling on an unknown author.

Now, wait a minute. What do we mean by 'burned previously by gambling on an unknown author'?

Many readers who read a lot are an adventuresome group and will take chances on books they haven't heard anything about. But with the proliferation of self-published UNEDITED books flooding the market (and we're talking about fiction here), we are seeing more and more reader review comments like, "Interesting story, but could use a good editor!" or "So many typos and other mistakes, I won't read this author's work again!" Are we exaggerating or making this up? Unfortunately, no.

So, what does all this mean?

What it means, we think, is that while the self-publishing venue has become affordable for everyone, not everyone should pursue self-publishing. Why? While traditional publishers and small established publishers have seemed to put up barricades keeping many newbie authors from getting published, what they have in fact been doing (as a side-effect of choosing to publish only books they feel are marketable) is acting as gatekeepers, helping to prevent terribly written books from flooding the market - which is what is happening right now. We're not saying all self-published books are written badly. What we are saying is that quite a few of them are. Because, while some self-published authors love to read so much they want to write their own books and get them published, loving to read does not guarantee good translation to writing well. By 'writing well' we mean producing a book that is engaging in plot, characterization, reading flow, AND does not contain so many typos, grammatical errors, and logistical and character and setting inconsistencies that it makes reading a chore of unbelievability.

So, back to the pricing issue. If you are an unknown self-published author hoping to sell tons of books and make a nice chunk of profit off each book, think again. Self-publishing venues like Createspace and others who provide the book producing service do so with THEIR OWN PROFITABILITY in mind. Their goal is to make a profit off producing the books you order or convince your friends to buy. If you place your book on Amazon, you may think you are getting more sales exposure, but as a tradeoff you are getting half as much profit. By bumping your book price up to $4.00 or $5.00 more than your net cost, you are in fact pricing yourself out of the readership market. And the same is true for ebooks, if you have tried venturing into that market.

Your only real alternative as a self-published unknown author is to do all the marketing you can, get your book reviewed in as many high-profile genre sites as you can (and hope for good reviews), and PRICE YOUR BOOK COMPETITIVELY IN THE OVERALL MARKET. That is the only way you will have a ghost of a chance of selling even a few copies of your book. And continued sales of that book and future books you may write will depend in large part on how well your book is written.

-Penumbra Publishing

Holloween giveaway and all day chat

Join me and a slew of other authors on Thursday the 29th for an all day chat at Author Island.
There will be a prize given away every hour including a copy of Wild Evolution and a reserved copy of Wild Justice (Wild Evolution's sequel due out in spring 2010).
Halloween is the perfect time for the story of Wild Evolution's macabre tell of murder and revenge.

To Self-Publish or NOT to Self-Publish ... that is the question

There's been some hot and heavy conversation about self-publishing these days, especially with the boom of self-publishing services like Createspace and Lulu and WordClay and others popping up all around. Rather than tell people what we think is best, we'd like to offer up some points for consideration to help authors decide for themselves what they might think is the best option for them. Truthfully, not everyone's situation is the same, and no one answer will be the best answer for everyone. Here are some things we think should be considered when trying to decide whether to pursue publishing by a RECOGNIZED BIG-NAME PUBLISHER (Random House, Harper-Collins, and so forth) as opposed to self-publishing. The first thing you should consider is...

AT WHAT STAGE ARE YOU AS AN AUTHOR?

THE BESTSELLER. If you're already multi-book published and have a few bestsellers under your belt, chances are your relationship with a recognized big-name publisher is already well established and you don't have any real reason to go off and jeopardize that by self-publishing your next book. You're already getting fat advances on future sales royalties, and your book sell-through numbers substantiate the publisher's repeated intention of paying you those advances. The only reason you might want to self-publish would be because you're at odds with your publisher over some book that departs from your usual fare, and the publisher is balking. Then maybe you would consider putting it out there on your own. And if you are doing well as an author, maybe you can afford to and have already hired your own book publicist. All you'd need then is an editor, a book producer and distribution network, and some cash to front the expense of getting your book out there. If you don't care how many copies sell, then why bother in the first place. More than likely you do care, so you will go all out on it. But you will also be snubbing your publisher, and they may not want to deal with you next time you come up with a book that is similar to what they have already sold. So our guess is, if you are already sitting pretty, you won't spoil things by going out and trying to reinvent the wheel by doing everything yourself.

THE MIDLISTER. If you're a midlist author with a recognized big-name publisher, and your sales are moderate, you might just be able to play on the name recognition you've developed as an author to branch out on your own and keep a larger portion of your sales royalties. Author J.A. Konrath has actually blogged about this very scenario, and it is an interesting blog to consider. But he does warn that what might work for him certainly isn't a one-size-fits-all solution.

THE RELATIVE UNKNOWN. If you are an author who's enjoyed mild publishing success with second-string publishers or indy publishers or small ebook publishers, and you do have a bit of author name recognition from sales through those publishing ventures, then you too might think self-publishing would be the way to go. But experience says that while the solo route is tempting, it may not work out as well as one might hope. One thing to consider is that your book sales might actually have been the result of a group promotional effort of authors at the publishing company - an effort you would be hard-pressed to duplicate on your own. So, for instance, instead of selling 50 or 100 books during an all-day themed chat on your publisher's hosted reader forum, you might sell 3 or 4 books on your own after working really hard to get an author interview or chat set up at a genre-based reader forum hosted by a review site.

THE UNPUBLISHED. If you are an author aspiring to be published, tread carefully. It might be tempting, after receiving several rejection letters, or bombing in several writing contests, to just chuck it all and go for the self-publishing route. It will be a lot easier and cheaper anyway, won't it? Well, maybe ... maybe not. What you have to consider are the following:

1. Why do I care if my book is published?
2. How many books will I need to sell to feel like I am a success?
3. Am I hoping to make a decent living off my writing?
4. Do I have the editorial savvy to make my writing as good as 'real' published work?
5. Do I have the technical savvy to work with a book producer to get my book in readable form?
6. Do I give a horse's pattoot how good my book is and whether or not readers will like it?

We could go on and on with the questions, but you get the idea. You need to have a plan before you go off on a business venture like self-publishing.

Oh, you didn't think self-publishing was a business venture? Well, you'd better think again. If you want to make a living at it, or want to make any money at all self-publishing, then it SHOULD be a business venture.

If your goal is simply to be published and be done with it, and have a couple books to give away to friends and relatives, then certainly self-publishing is the way to go, and there are really affordable alternatives available now - Createspace coming to mind first.

However, if you have more serious aspirations, like fame, fortune, and the satisfaction of seeing your book in print (not that ANY of these are guaranteed with publishing or self-publishing), then you need to look at the options available to you from a more serious perspective.

YES, you can self-publish and get your book out there in a matter of weeks for sale on Amazon if you go through Createspace, but if you want people to take you seriously as an author, you'd better make darn sure you can create a decent cover and edit your own work and produce the upload files per specifications. Book formatting is not a breeze. It can be done, but you have to understand HOW it is done before you just jump in there and do it. Createspace is pretty user friendly, but they do not have 24-hour tech support. They have a forum for you to ask questions, and maybe nobody will answer your questions for weeks at a time. You can email Createspace for help, but they won't do the work for you. So not only do you have to become your own publisher, you have to become your own preprint production staff, tech support, and quality control. Are you prepared for that? Or barring doing all that yourself, you can PAY a service to do it for you. Do you have $300 to $4000 sitting around to blow on getting your book self-published? The service fees can vary widely depending on who you go to for help.

When you start thinking how difficult it is to get the attention of a publisher as opposed to how hard it is to publish your book yourself, you might find yourself between a rock and a hard place. The downside is, in either scenario you still have to promote yourself and your book if you expect to make any sales. And chances are, your book will make better sales if it is published by an established publisher who already has a readership base and distribution channels. If you are your own publisher, you have to create all that from scratch AND do all the editing AND the artwork AND the preprint formatting AND the uploading of files AND the proofing AND the sales promotion AND...

Well, you're starting to get the idea now, aren't you? Self-publishing is not quite as easy as it sounds, if you are looking at it as a viable alternative to getting your book published with an established publisher.

Again, if you don't care what your book looks like or how many grammatical mistakes it contains, or how many copies you sell, then maybe self-publishing is the answer for you. But if you DO care about getting your work transformed into a quality product, then you have to be prepared to do what is necessary to ensure that it is - if you go the self-publish route. And that necessary work can turn out to be just as hard or harder than getting published by an established publisher.

ONE LAST THING TO CONSIDER...

Once you make the decision to publish your book yourself and it gets assigned an ISBN, it is considered published. And if you ever change your mind and wish you had just sent it to a publisher - TOO LATE. It's already published, and most publishers won't touch it.

So the self-publishing issue is a lot more complicated than your first thought. There are many things to consider before making a decision. Decide what's best for your situation, then choose wisely.

-Penumbra Publishing

putting yourself in the public eye

Marketing holds many avenues. Some can be done behind the scene like here as a blog, or you can put yourself out in the public with a book signing which is fairly common or you can do a live radio interview.

I did my first radio interview. It was a little nerve-wracking and I am extrovert. I have done public speaking in front of groups before but this puts it up a notch. I am glad I did it. Now that I have lived through the first one am ready to get another one lined up.

It is good for my soul to try new things and master them. I like a challenge, now I am ready to do it better. The first one was a little off, I think people could tell I was nervous. But that ain't going to stop me from doing it again.

The only problem with marketing is it takes so much time and you never know how well it works. I would rather spend time writing, that is a safe zone for me.

Marketing is a necessary evil, like cleaning the house, someone has to do it, and I can't afford a maid just like I can't afford a publicist.

C. Fern Cook
Wild Evolution
www.cferncook.com

What is a good QUALITY story?

We started this publishing company with an altruistic idea (that was perhaps not very well thought out in terms of profit-making business models - but oh well, that is an entirely different post begging to be written)...

We wanted to help new writers get their QUALITY work published, and to assist veteran writers who'd been overlooked by the big 'traditional' publishers get their QUALITY work published.

And why would we want to do this? Because we are authors who want our own writing to be published - and READ - with the ultimate goal of doing it for a living because it is what we love doing. Plus we wanted to have CONTROL over our books, to dictate how they will be produced and how they will look, and where they will be sold, and how much we will earn for the sale of our books.

We read quite a bit, and we believe we can recognize a QUALITY story when we see it. But when someone asks for a description of that elusive QUALITY, sometimes it is difficult to qualify and nail down definitively in cold hard words. But I'm going to give it a shot. For the purposes of this discussion, a QUALITY story means...

(drum roll please)...

A WELL-ROUNDED, WELL-BALANCED, WELL-WRITTEN STORY WITH AN ENGAGING, ORIGINAL, AND UNIQUE PREMISE THAT FEATURES INTERESTING CHARACTERS WITH DEPTH AND BELIEVABILITY.

Well ... now that I've written it down, it doesn't seem as if it should have been that difficult to say out loud and put in tangible form. But the truth is, what may seem 'well-rounded' to one person may mean something totally different to the next person. And 'well-written'? That leaves the field wide open, as do the phrases 'engaging, original, and unique premise' and 'interesting characters with depth and believability'. Wow, OK, so there is much more to be said on the subject, apparently.

Let's examine each part more closely with the intention of clarifying what WE mean by the sum total of this description of QUALITY writing. Because truthfully, no one can dictate what it shall mean to everyone - even though many try. What it boils down to from a publisher's standpoint (and probably a reader's standpoint too) is whether the story WORKS WELL for the person who's reading it, no matter whether that person is a friend of the author, a critique partner, a prospective agent or publisher, or any reader chosen at random. The more people from different arenas who can agree that the work is QUALITY, the more likely that it will be perceived by the general public as QUALITY, because we are then working from a concensus of opinion from a small sampling taken from a cross-section of readers that is much wider than the writer's best friends or family members. And this broad cross-section sampling is important, because it includes the opinions of people from different walks of life and different business backgrounds, and especially people who read a lot and know what works for them and what doesn't. That, my bookish friends, is called EXPERIENCE. Experience knows from trial and error what works and what doesn't. And when a book looks, feels, smells, sounds, and tastes like something that is QUALITY, then it is close enough to be judged as QUALITY.

One of the worst-case scenarios that any publisher faces is receiving a query from a newbie writer who has very little reading experience and very little writing experience, and very little experience, period. Because these are the writers who have not taken the time to find out what QUALITY writing is, so how can they possibly think they are magically going to produce it? I freely admit that flukes do happen, and sometimes a new writer will produce something good on the first try. But that is surely the exception, not the norm. Most newbie writers simply assume that whatever they have put down in tangible written form is unique and original, because THEY have never done it before. Just because they read some books or watched some movies or played some video games and then came up with a book plot that's similar, that doesn't mean it's going to be GOOD. It does mean the work is probably going to be a flippant and shallow rehash of everything that's already been done to death. I mean, if the author's book reads like a popular book or movie or game that's already come out, then where is the ORIGINALITY, the UNIQUENESS in it? That's not to say some premise can't be redone with a different twist, but if the author hasn't bothered to check what's already been written or produced in his chosen genre, how can he be sure that it hasn't already been written by someone else - perhaps much better?

And there's where the dreaded M-word comes into play ... MARKETING. A writer who is serious about producing QUALITY work will do the necessary research to know what his competition has already produced, what is already out there, and make sure his is different - UNIQUE.

Now in regard to WELL-ROUNDED, WELL-BALANCED, and DEPTH. 'Well-rounded' is defined in the dictionary as 'comprehensively developed and well-balanced in a range or variety of aspects.' The term 'depth' plays in there too, as in 'comprehensively developed.' The story plot and premise should have depth and meaning so that these features carry it through the entire length of the work. For instance, a 200-page novel about a woman in love with her boss better be about more than her going to work every day and fantasizing about how she can spirit him away for a romantic trist - unless her elaborate fantasies are so involved and detailed and improbably funny that they are actually the focus and the point of the story. Otherwise there needs to be some personal conflict, or some other things going on in the background for comic relief or dramatic emphasis. Without the necessary depth and development, that 200-page novel might as well be a 20-page short story.

But just filling the story up with an ensemble of characters won't do the trick. In fact, putting too much focus on too many characters can just make the whole story seem shallow and confusing. So that's where the term WELL-BALANCED comes in. There has to be some medium range of focus for the story. And to take the idea of 'well-balanced' even further, pacing of the story should be such that the first half (first 100 pages for instance) don't focus on one hour in the life of a character, while the second half speeds along and tells the next 30 years of the character's life. This kind of unbalanced tale could work if the focus was specifically on the character's life and a pivotal moment that shaped the rest of his life, but this is the exception rather than the norm. Balance also applies to point-of-view characters and verb tense, and other aspects of writing style. A sudden shift in handling of any of these aspects should be for a very good, justifiable reason, or the story will seem off-kilter, unbalanced.

And now to BELIEVABILITY. This means the story and its plot and its characters have to be more than cardboard cutouts, more than mere ghosts of the real thing. The characters should look, sound, and act like real people, people that behave logically within the constraints of the premise and the setting of the story. For instance, the writer should not have a damsel in distress in the 15th Century shouting modern explatives - unless it is a time-travel where the damsel is a modern woman somehow thrust into the 15th Century. And 'believability' is key, because while all the things that are going on in the book may be a fantastical conglomeration of action, if the transitions from point A to point B to point C and so forth don't smoothly move the characters around, with every detail accounted for, then believability flies out the window. One example of lack of believability is where the main character is cornered in an abandoned house by his nemesis and has no weapon to defend himself. But just as the villain is about to do him in, he grabs a gun off the dusty fireplace mantel and shoots his attacker. Gun? What gun? Where did it come from and why was it there? Oops! Believability just ran screaming from the story. Use a fireplace poker instead. With the character huddled by the fireplace trying to figure out what to do to save himself, the poker would be a logical and expected surprise solution - BELIEVABLE.

And last we have ENGAGING and INTERESTING. These two are the most difficult to pin down, because what may be interesting to me may be totally boring to the next reader. Why? Because we all have our own preconceptions of what is interesting to US as individuals. And that is not something that can be examined without first pigeonholing readers demographically.

Oh no ... the dreaded M-word again - MARKETING!!!

That's what GENRES are all about - trying to categorize books into common groups based on common themes that are perceived to be engaging and interesting to specific groups of readers. So the bottom line is, most genre books will not, by definition, be engaging and interesting to a broad cross-section of readers who may tend to focus on different genres to the exclusion of other genres. A writer cannot write one book to please everyone - or can he? If he manages to, he's got the infamous BLOCKBUSTER on his hands - a bestseller that appeals to a broad range of readers who might otherwise stick to their chosen genres to the exclusion of other genre books. That's the kind of book most writers want to produce ... a book that is loved and respected by almost everyone. But the making of a bestseller is best left for another post, so this should be enough for now to explain a QUALITY book.

Happy writing and reading!
-Penumbra Publishing