Self Publishing Today

Oh boy, Christmas and blogging really don’t mix! Here in Australia, it’s even worse because Christmas is in the middle of our summer – which means that not only are we gearing up for the festive season, most families are preparing for their big summer vacation as well. It doesn’t leave much time for writing, so I can see posts becoming a bit scarce for the next month or so.

However, as I said, sometimes a writing break can be a good thing – especially if you’re writing a novel.  It gives you a chance to get some distance. When you come back to your manuscript after the holidays, you’ll see it with fresh eyes and it’ll be much clearer what needs to be improved.

Happy holidays!

This rant about selfpublishing is worth sharing!

I just came across a site listing 400 authors who became successful after self-publishing.  The site uses the list as evidence that self-publishing can be successful.  However as one romance writer put it:

 “When these names get brought up over and over, it gives the impression it happens all the time. But when you have to dredge through millions of authors who have produced work over TWO HUNDRED years….then it’s the equivalent of saying a person can strike oil while digging a swimming pool.”

She has a point - but there’s more.  The world of publishing has changed a lot in that time.  Two hundred years ago, there were far fewer books on the market and far less people who could afford to buy them.  It was quite possible for an author to get a book printed and circulate it around the litterati in (say) New York or London, and that meant they had reached a big part of the world’s influential readership - which would be enough to make the book a sensation.  These days, there’s a lot more competition, and it’s much harder for your book to get noticed.   So you can’t really compare the successful self-publishers of yesteryear with today. 

Worth bearing in mind if you’re tempted to get sucked in by the “instant fame” syndrome!

Now that I’ve started recommending other sites, I may as well keep going!

Here’s an interesting one I came across recently - a guide for self publishers from ISBN Australia. If you’re wondering what an ISBN is, it’s basically a reference number that uniquely identifies a book.  It’s used by all the libraries and bookstores to order books, so it’s pretty important to have one.  The more reputable POD and self-publishing houses will organise a ISBN for you (they will charge you a fee because the ISBN agency charges a fee), but if you need to organise one yourself, this guide tells you how - and gives other useful advice for self-publishers into the bargain.  Worth a read!

I’ve come across a couple of other sites which review publishers. Piers Anthony reviews internet publishers. He doesn’t pretend to be impartial or expert, he just tells it like it is. I have to say, I rather like his style! Mary Wolf’s site is also about e-publishers.

Jewel Stone and the Passionate Pen provide lists on their sites of all kinds of publishing houses specifically for Romance and Women’s Fiction writers. If you’re a Romance writer, these are especially valuable because it looks like the Romance Writers’ Associations (which used to publish such lists) have now tucked that information away inside the “members only” sections of their websites.

Of course, if you are a Romance writer, then your first port of call would almost certainly be Harlequin – and if you’re not already a member of the Harlequin writers’ forum, the Write Stuff, you should be!

And now for the final stage of editing! If you can, print off the whole manuscript. Get yourself a red pen. Find yourself a quiet spot in a comfy chair, with a glass of water or a cup of tea to keep your throat moist.

Now start from the beginning and read the whole thing aloud. Yes, seriously! Don’t just read on automatic – pretend that your book has been chosen to be an Audio Book for the deaf, and you’ve been asked to record it. Read with feeling, as if you had an audience.

If you’ve been wondering why you’re doing this, you’ll find out pretty soon. Most writers are highly literate, so they read silently much faster than they can read aloud. That means you can skim over mistakes and scan clumsy sentences without noticing. Reading aloud slows you down so you become more aware of the words.

If your sentences are too long, you’ll run out of breath before you get to the end of them. Your readers may be reading silently, but they will mentally run out of breath, too – so get that red pen out and find a way to shorten or split those sentences.

If you trip over words or phrases, it’s a sign your prose isn’t flowing as smoothly as it should. It may just be that you need to improve your punctuation, or you may need to do major revisions. Stop, get out your red pen and revise it until you can read without hiccups.

You may find that exciting scenes don’t sound as climactic when you read them aloud. If that’s the case, you may have rushed them too much. The secret to conveying speed and action in print is to do the reverse – slow down, going into more detail than usual, documenting your character’s every reaction and sensation. Don’t try to rewrite whole problem passages like this on the spot – mark them to be worked on later.

If yours is a long story, it may take you several days to do this exercise, but believe me, it is very worthwhile.

Amanda of becomingafictionwriter.com has pointed out that I missed something – it’s so obvious that I took it for granted, but I should mention it. You need to check your spelling!

Once again, computers make life much easier for us these days because you can use the Spell Checker that comes with your word processing program. Don’t use it mindlessly though – read each suggested correction before you approve it, because spell checkers don’t check meaning, they simply pick the word that’s the closest match. If you’re not sure what the word means, look it up!

I am in two minds about using the Grammar Checker. The trouble is, Microsoft’s Grammar Checker is such an old fuddy-duddy! It follows very strict grammatical rules which would work perfectly well for a university thesis – but it doesn’t work for fiction.

These days when we write fiction, we don’t write as the omniscient author. We put ourselves inside the heads of our characters and write from their point of view. To create that illusion, we need to choose words that reflect the way that character would speak. That means our prose is more colloquial casual than the books of earlier times, which inevitably means it includes a fair amount of bad grammar. If you edit all that bad grammar out, your writing is going to sound stilted and old-fashioned.

It’s probably not a bad idea to run the Grammar Checker, so long as you don’t regard it as the authority. Look at what it suggests and don’t feel guilty about clicking on the “Ignore” button. One of a writer’s most valuable skills is to understand grammar rules well enough that you know when to break them!

There is one word to search for – “said”. Not because it’s bad in itself – in fact it’s the one speech tag you should use! In case you don’t know, a speech tag is, “he said”, “she said”, “he shouted” etc.

Once upon a time, we were told to think up clever alternatives to “said” (he replied, he retorted, he interjected etc). Nowadays, that’s taboo! “Said” is the best word to use because it’s an “invisible word” – readers gloss over it without even noticing it. You should only use an alternative word if it tells the reader how something has been said (e.g. he whispered, he shouted, he muttered).

However, even though “said” is invisible, it’s still better if you can avoid using a tag altogether – and that’s the reason for the search.

You can do using a tag by using context to make it clear who’s speaking.

For instance if you’re writing a paragraph from your hero’s point of view, you don’t need a “he said” because the reader knows who’s speaking. If there are only two people in the scene and the other person speaks, you don’t need a “he said” for that one either, e.g.:

Nathan handed Katie the documents, reflecting that she was looking as cute as ever. If only he could trust her. And where was her partner in crime? It was well past their appointment time. He crossed to the window and leaned out.“Where the devil is he?”

As you can see, it’s obvious who’s talking. However, if it’s a long conversation, it’s a good idea to drop in the odd “he said” or “she said” occasionally. Or use a beat (a short description to show what the person is doing while they’re talking), e.g.

Katie shrugged in exasperation. “How should I know?”

These edits will make your dialogue flow much better and sound more realistic.

There are a few other words that you should search for:

“Then” – a surprisingly unnecessary word. Wherever you find it, try deleting it and see what happens. Most of the time, you don’t even need to replace it with anything!

“That” – similar to “then” above. Often superfluous, you are better off without it.

“Suddenly” – one of those “-ly” words and one of the most over-used words in novel writing!

“And” – there’s nothing wrong with “and” where it’s needed, but often it’s used to connect two sentences that don’t need to be connected. Try taking out the “and” and see whether the two statements stand on their own. If the only reason you joined the two sentences together was to avoid starting with “He” or “She” twice in a row – don’t be so lazy, rewrite one of the sentences!

Oops, I didn’t finish covering “ing”. The other thing an “ing” search can catch is the use of “slow” verbs.

I’m sure you can hear that “I was walking” sounds pedestrian compared to the brisker “I walked”. You want to keep the action moving along, so the second option is usually better. However, sometimes the “slow” verb is essential, to describe something that was going on at the time – e.g. “I was walking the dog when I bumped into my friend Sandy”, so don’t be too quick to consign your slow verbs to the dustbin!

Finally, it’s worth noting that some “-ings” have nothing to do with either of the above, or I’d be in trouble twice in just this one sentence!

Speaking of “I was walking”, another good word to search on is “was”. Once again, there are lots of situations where “was” is unavoidable. However it is a boring little verb which you can often replace with something more interesting. Searching for “was” will also pick up any places where you have used Passive Voice. If you don’t know what that is, Google it and you’ll find lots of definitions – but basically, Active Voice is where your character is doing something, whereas Passive Voice is where something is being done to them. Active Voice always sounds more positive and lively whereas Passive Voice sounds – well – passive. For instance, it sounds much better to say, “The concierge opened the door as Katie approached” instead of “The door was opened as Katie approached”.