Author Archives: chucklitka

I think that most of the regular readers of this blog are writers of one sort or another. That being the case, I have a question for all you writers; how’s your writing going these days? Following some of the blogs of this site’s usual suspects, I’ve gotten the impression that writing isn’t going all that well, at least fiction writing, for some of us. I know that I’m in that boat, and I’m wondering how many of you find yourself sharing that boat.

In my case, I haven’t written any fiction since February, and that was mostly revising something I’d started last fall and abandoned. I abandoned it again after adding maybe 10K words. Since then I have managed to maintain my habit of writing an hour each morning by writing two blog posts a week. I’ve also spent the odd moments all spring and summer daydreaming a new story in fits, starts, and lots of dead ends. And I’m still not at a point where I can say that I have an actual story that readers might like to read. With winter looming and with it, nothing better to do than write, I really would like to find that story. The clock is ticking.

So how about you? Are you busy writing away? Great. Motivate us. Please.

Or are you like me, floundering? Are you searching for a story that you can get excited enough about to sit down and start putting it into words? And if you are floundering, do you have any idea why? Have you arrived at a point in life where you are wondering why you are trying to do this? Or is it simply a case of a lack of energy or health? Or is it a lack of motivation i.e. you’ve written books, and you are wondering if you need to write any more? Or are you like me; experiencing a lack of a new and interesting story ideas to develop? Or do you think it’s simply a temporary case of writer’s block? In short, are you desperate enough to write a blog post about not being able to write, just for something to write?

Please share your experiences with your fellow writers in the comments below. Misery loves company.

If you have ever wondered what you’re missing as an indie author vs a traditionally published author, now you can find out. All you have to do is listen to the Publishing Rodeo Podcast to hear traditionally published authors candidly talking about their experiences in getting their books published and then decide for yourself if the grass is really greener on the trad side.

I find myself looking forward to it each week, even though I have no interest in traditional publishing. I just find writing and publishing a very interesting subject. If you are interested, it is best to start at episode 1, as that episode lays out what most traditional authors won’t say for fear of getting on the wrong side of their publisher.

A year ago I took Google up on its offer to convert the ebooks I had in their store to auto-narrated audiobooks for free. In the last year audiobooks have more than doubled my sales on Google, accounting for 65% of those sales. Their ratings match their ebook version. When I converted my newest novel at the end of March, the program was still free, but they had added the option of using different voices for different characters in the story. You select a narrator, and then select from the voices they offer to voice the dialog of the various characters in the story, giving you the option of having an ensemble narrate your story instead of one person doing accents.

Traditional publishers will not sign a contract with an author unless the author gives them the audiobook rights. It is that lucrative of a market these days. Google is a free way of getting a foot in that market, with the bonus of being able to offer audiobooks at a very competitive price.

Sales of e and audio books on Google accounted for 67% of my total book sales for my eighth year of publishing. There are a billion reasons for this. Millions of people read and listen to books on their phones. The Google Play Store is the built-in store on all Android phones outside of China, and there are billions of them. There is no bigger market for your books in the world.

Everyone’s books, audience, and goals are different, but I have to believe that if you are selling wide, and not selling on Google or offering audiobooks, you are leaving money on the table.

The ten months of slumming in query hell looking for a publisher for my novel has taught me two things. The first is that I’m an author/publisher. No adjectives. Don’t need, or want, “self” or “indie.” Just the facts, madam; I’m an author/publisher.

While I mostly think of myself as a writer, I’m also a publisher. However, ten months ago I was a publisher of necessity, of laziness, of old age, and of writing out of fashion books. Not any more. I’ve come to realize that not only am I a real publisher, but I’m the best publisher for my work. I just need to work at it more.

Yes, we all know this. Certainly authors making big money, and those aiming to make big money know this. Indeed, they probably split their time between author and publisher on a 20-80 basis. They know that it’s the selling of the product, not the making of it, that brings in the money. But those of us who are, shall we say, more artisans than business people, likely pay far less attention to publishing than we had ought to.

The second thing I learned is the value of owning our own work. Not just the copyright, but all of it. And always. Ownership gives us unlimited opportunities to promote our work on an ongoing basis. We need not abandon it after six months if it doesn’t succeed, which seems to be the case in traditional publishing.

There are some easy things to do as publishers to keep our books fresh. It costs nothing to revise our blurb every now and again. Or try new keywords. We can change our prices every so often as well as offer sales on a regular basis. Not to mention offering boxed sets and special editions. Little things like this may tickle the almighty algorithm into making our books a little more visible.

New covers are another way of keeping books fresh. Excellent covers can be made at no cost using the free app Canva which offers templates for book covers and plenty of free art to work with. And these days there’s AI generated art. Author/publishers are now using it to make their own covers. There are YouTube videos to show you how to use it, and I dare say, with just a month’s premium membership in Midjourney (at $30 a month) you could probably produce a dozen different covers for every one of your books, and then give each a try to see what one works best.

Trying different publishing strategies also keeps our book catalogs fresh; from going all in with Amazon to going wide, and back again. Nor should anyone overlook any platform. Barnes & Noble offers their own print on demand service for paper books, just like Amazon, along with promotional options for both ebooks and paper books that might be worth looking into. Google is going great guns for me these days, in both ebooks and audiobooks. Audiobooks alone have doubled my sales.

One of the great things about being an independent publisher is that there is a community of us. There are web forums, Facebook groups, and discord channels devoted to writers and publishers like us. Not only are experiences, both good and bad, shared, but things like mailing lists, newsletters, blog posts, and promotional opportunities can be exchanged. I’m not on social media, and my publishing strategy does not lend itself to this type of cooperation, so I don’t know any details, but I know that they exist, and I suspect they are at least worth looking into if you haven’t already.

You can also use social media to get to know people who share your taste in books. There are many book people on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, Twitter, and discord servers associated with YouTube channels.. Just trying to sell them your book isn’t likely to work, but becoming an active part of the community might lead to sales eventually. Of course, if you have a promotional budget you can run ads on Facebook, Amazon, or other social media that target the people with similar taste to yours

Alternatively, you can do what traditional publishers do. They court “influencers” on the various social media sites by sending them either paper advanced reader copies of upcoming books or the ebook version. If you can find popular book people on YouTube, and other social media in your genre, it might be worth spending some money to send them copies of your books. Many YouTubers either list a mailing address or have an Amazon wish list that you can use to send them a copy of your book. I know that hosts of YouTube book review channels have “book hauls” to show off the books they receive each month. At the very minimum your book would get some nice words in front of several hundred to several thousand viewers, plus they usually include a link to buy in the description below the video. And who knows, maybe even a nice review.

It may also pay to get the word out locally via calling on local bookshops, donating books to libraries and charity auctions, as well as setting up a booth at local events. We’ll soon see how Mark does with his booth at the art fair.

None of these techniques are likely to start an avalanche of sales, in and of themselves. Still, in every author interview I’ve seen, when asked about how they got published, they cite two reasons. The first is that they kept at it in the face of rejection. And the second is a stroke of luck. Their story reached just the right person, in the right position, at the right time for luck to strike out of the blue. Paying attention to the publishing half of our business is like flying a kite with a key in a thunderstorm – creating an opportunity for luck to strike.

Do you, dear readers, authors and editors have any tips to share with us? Comment below.

“I went in. The room beyond was large and square and sunken and cool and had the restful atmosphere of a funeral chapel and something of the same smell.”

I don’t know what, if anything, I thought about that last sentence when I first read it many years ago. But when I read it a few days ago, as an author, I was blown away by it. It is an amazing sentence. The author wrote a clunky, awkward, and ugly sentence to describe an unpleasant room using plain, bland, and ordinary adjectives. The structure of the sentence rather than the words convey the image, the meaning. I have to believe that someone could only write a sentence like that if that someone was completely confident in their ability as a writer. If they knew what they were doing. If they didn’t care if anyone else did. Ram you, damn you, they were good even if you, and everyone, thought otherwise. This level of confidence in one’s talent, skill, and vision is what is needed to be a great writer. I think that you have to find that confidence within yourself – or perhaps in a bottle. In any event, you’ll not find the real vein of confidence in critique groups, beta readers, editors, or reviews. It has to have been there before that feedback, and perhaps, persist in spite of that feedback. You have to know you’re good and accept that not everyone will get it. What “they” think doesn’t matter. What you know does. And you do know, and are good. That’s what art is about.

The paragraph goes on:

“Tapestry on the blank roughened stucco walls, iron grilles imitating balconies outside high side windows, heavy carved chairs with plush seats and tapestry backs and tarnished gilt tassels hanging down their sides. At the back a stained-glass window about the size of a tennis court. Curtained French doors underneath it. An old musty, fusty, narrow-minded, clean and bitter room. It didn’t look as if anybody ever sat in it or would ever want to. Marble-topped tables with crooked legs, gilt clocks, pieces of small statuary in two colors of marble. A lot of junk that would take a week to dust. A lot of money, and all wasted. Thirty years before, in the wealthy closed-mouthed provincial town of Pasadena then was, it must have seemed like quite a room.”

– The High Window, by Raymond Chandler.

Ram you, damn you, he didn’t even care if all the sentences were even sentences. And trips you up at the end. He was a great writer.

Just say’n.

Amazon has a tab on your author page that readers can hit to follow their favorite authors to get alerted to new releases. Do you know how many readers are following you? I believe that until recently, this number wasn’t shown to authors. But it is now, if the number is more than 20. To find out if you have any followers, you need to go to your Author Central page. There you can:

Click the “Reports + Marketing” tab

Go to the “Reports” section.

You can then see the number of your followers under “Amazon Followers.”

If you dare.

Who, if anyone, helps you write and publish your stories?

In my last post I talked about how I didn’t think paid “professionals,” specifically editors, were worth their expense in indie publishing. The logical follow up question is, if not them, who? Who helps writers polish and publish their work? Or can you do it all by yourself?

Like in the previous piece, I’ll focus on the editorial side of indie publishing and ignore things like cover design and marketing. I’ll briefly discuss alpha and beta readers, critique and author groups. But what I, and I suspect other readers of this blog would really want to know, is who do you turn to, personally, for help in writing and publishing your stories? Please share your approach with us so that we can all learn. I certainly don’t profess to be an expert. Onward.

Alpha readers are people who read an unfinished, or unpolished version of the story and provide feedback on their experience. They are usually friends whose opinions the author trusts. Basically they are asked to say what, in their opinion works, what might not, and perhaps suggest ways to proceed. The YA author Alexa Dunn talks about submitting chapters of her work in progress to her alpha readers for feedback. And our own Mark Paxson has mentioned in a recent comment that he has exchanged the first 10 chapters of his WIP with another writer, to get feedback on it and how to proceed.

Critique groups, both in person and online are also a common way to get feedback during the writing process. I know of one self-publishing author who used an online critique group, however, it seems that she has settled on just one critique partner these days. I believe that our own Audrey Driscoll has at one time been a part of an in-person writer’s group that critiqued members’ work. I joined a discord group of mostly aspiring traditional authors with a scattering of published and self-published authors who will post their first chapters, or short stories and query letters for critiques, just to see how it works.

And then there are beta readers. Ideally these are readers who read a polished version of the story with the eyes of a regular reader. They can offer feedback on how a typical reader might find the book. They may suggest parts of the story that need clarification, or areas that are too wordy or unnecessary in their opinion. And they may also serve as proofreaders.

So how do you use these human resources, to help you produce the best story possible?

I’ll begin, just to start the ball rolling. I approach writing as a work of art, of personal expression, not as a commercial product. As with my painting, I want to create something that is as original and personal as I can make it. Though there are many cooperative and ensemble arts and complete originality is very rare, I view writing as a solo performance. Thus, no one sees my stories before I have written the first, second, and final draft, whatever that number turns out to be. In other words, the most polished version of the story I can produce. I write the story I want the way I want it, and assume that there are readers out there, somewhere, with similar tastes. Though please note, I don’t write to make money. If you want to make money, you need to create a commercial product, and you will likely need to write what your extensive market research has revealed about what your large target audience expects in its books.

Having produced my best copy, I then hand it off to my wife to proofread, knowing that, as my wife, she will feel free to criticize me, er, my work. And she does. Thankfully, not a whole lot, and I always find some way to address her concerns. For example she likes happily ever after endings for the romance elements of my stories, while I like to keep them somewhat open – life goes on after my story ends – and they keep open the possibility of a sequel. So my stories often imply an eventual happy resolution of the romance. However, in one case she didn’t think I had made that clear enough. I thought I had, and since I liked my ending, I added an additional scene with the couple after the original final scene with them, that better clarified their commitment to each other. In my most recent published work, she felt that I had ignored the fate of the other characters in the story at the end of it – the narrator should have been more concerned about them. While I didn’t think it was absolutely necessary, I did add a paragraph or two addressing her concern. In short, if she criticizes, I listen and usually find a way to address her concerns. She also finds the first 95% of my typos.

After my wife gets done with her proofreading, I send the story out to my beta readers. I have about half a dozen of them. Most, but not all of them, are readers who have taken me up on my invitation to email the typos they find to me so I can fix them, an invite I include in every ebook. They have stayed on and volunteered to beta/proofread my books before publication. As I have remarked before, their lists of typos rarely overlap by more than a couple of obvious typos. The more eyes on a manuscript, the cleaner it will be. And while I also invite comments and criticisms from them, perhaps because most are readers rather than writers, they rarely do make comments. But rarely is not never, and I consider any comments and suggestions they make just as carefully as I do those from my wife, and generally make changes to reflect their concerns. For example, in my yet to be published novel Berthold Gambrel suggested that I used a tagline a little too often, so I went through the MS either eliminating or altered the line here to there to reduce the number of times it was used. All my helpers, my wife and beta readers are all very helpful, and make my books so much better than if I had to do it all on my own.

So, in summary, while I closely guard my creative process, I also recognize my deficiencies as well, and welcome the help of others.

Now it’s your turn. Who do you turn to for help? I am sure we all have our own methods, and reasons behind them. Please share them in the comments below. Or, if you, like Audrey Driscoll, have posts on your blog about how you write and don’t feel like writing them again, please leave links to those posts in the comments below. While the name of this blog is Writers Supporting Writers, it is also a place where writers can talk about writerly stuff. Let’s do so.

Indie publishing gurus often advise would-be self-publishing authors to hire professionals – editor(s), proofreaders, cover artists, etc. – to produce their books in order to raise the perceived level of quality of indie published books. They are told that it is “best practice” to do so. I find this advice disingenuous, at best. The people who dispense this advice are certainly aware that for most would-be indie authors seeking advice, taking this advice the author will lose just about every cent they spend on these professionals, with no discernible result. I shall focus my rant on editors, but my points apply to all freelance professionals offering their services to indie authors.

First off, indie publishing is not traditional publishing lite. Mimicking traditional publishing processes is expensive and unnecessary, since traditional and indie publishing serve two distinct markets, each with their own requirements. Traditional publishing serves casual readers, discerning readers, and lovers of physical books who enjoy the popular culture around well known authors. Indie publishing serves avid, story orientated, value conscious readers. Consumers understand that if you pay a tiny fraction of what another similar item costs, you should expect something less. In the case of indie readers this compromise includes reading stories as ephemeral digital files on ebook readers or phones, with perhaps, nondescript style and less polished grammar, compromises they are willing to accept as long as the story itself is compelling. The story is king in indie publishing. And thus whatever value editors bring to a book is greatly devalued in indie publishing.

The role of editors in traditional publishing and indie publishing are significantly different and are likely to produce different results. In traditional publishing, authors are casual labor hired by the editor. The editor is their boss, and while they may only “suggest” changes in an author’s work, the author is wise to comply with the editor’s suggestions or risk being labeled “difficult,” and likely less employable. Unless, of course, they write books that sell. On the other hand, in indie publishing, authors hire editors, making editors the casual laborer. While freelance editors may, or may not be selective about the projects they take on, editors still know that they need to please their boss, the author, or risk being labeled, “difficult,” making it more difficult to land future gigs. Given this dynamics, it is not unreasonable to expect that the results of these two types of editorial processes will differ, with the indie editing process being potentially far less rigorous. In addition, in traditional publishing a number of different types of editors and proofreaders go over the manuscript, so that hiring a single editor is not the complete traditional editing process.

The next thing to realize is that editors are pretty bad at their job, if their job is to help you sell books. Editors, with the input of the marketing department and perhaps the publisher, are the people who buy the books in traditional publishing. The editorial team then goes to work to shape and polish these stories into books that sell. Nevertheless, in the end, only about one book in three turns a profit in traditional publishing. What other business would tolerate a 35% success rate? Given their success rate in traditional publishing, how likely is it that professional editing will have a positive effect on sales when it comes to indie publishing? What is undeniable is that it will have very adverse effects when it comes to making a profit.

Luckily, in indie publishing editors can easily be replaced, since there are many free or inexpensive alternatives. If an author feels the need to get an outside opinion on their work, their manuscripts can be vetted by partners, friends, beta readers, or critique groups for free. In addition, the free version of the app Grammarly will check for both spelling and grammar usage. While I have not used it myself, I understand that over the last dozen years or so, Grammarly’s AI has greatly improved, and that it can be trusted to correct your spelling and polish your grammar, thus doing the job of both editor and proofreader. Plus, you can choose to follow its suggestions or not, without being labeled “difficult.” In short, there is no reason to employ a professional editor to polish your prose.

Lastly, indie publishing is all about freedom. You don’t have to conform to the expectations of editors or the “industry.” You can write the story you want to tell, how you want to tell it. No one – agents, editors, publishers, critics – need to be looking over your shoulder when you write and publish your own book. You can write a product aimed at a specific bestselling market, or you can write a work of art that is a unique personal expression. The choice is yours. This choice should be celebrated and valued.

The bottom line is that indie and traditional publishing are not the same business. The differences need to be recognized and the process of producing a book approached from different angles. Mimicking traditional publishing procedures in indie publishing is both unnecessary and potentially very expensive. And given the realities that most indie published books – like traditional published books – will not turn a profit, it is wise, in my opinion, to increase your chances of turning a profit by minimizing or eliminating production expenses. This includes not only editing but cover art and all the bells and whistles that people are quite willing to sell to indie authors – before the book even has a chance to earn a cent. Perhaps once you have become a best selling indie author you might want to employ professional editors and artists, and such, knowing that the sales of the book will pay for them, and that you have more important things to do, like writing your next novel to get it out the door in three months. But until then, I’d say, produce your own book from chapter one to hitting the publish button.

As always, what do you think? Do you use, or have you used, the services of a professional editor? What has been your experience with editors?

As I recorded on this blog some six months ago or so, I decided to submit my most recently completed novel to a publisher during their once every couple of years open window for un-agented authors. With six to nine months to wait for them to get back to me, I decided to query this novel, i.e. send query letters to literary agents to see if they would take it on. I had no real expectations of success in either venture, I did it for the experience of doing it. The last novel I had queried – directly to publishers – was in 1980, so it was sort of a trip down memory lane.

Here is my literary agent report card. I set the bar for passing very low; a response. Professionalism is a two-way street. A response to a business inquiry deserves at least a 10 second response in a timely manner. All an agent needed to do to pass was to hit the return arrow on the query email, cut and paste a canned rejection letter on the reply page and hit send. Since agents can control not only the flow of queries via opening and closing query windows, but the number of clients they take on, there is no excuse for not responding to every query they accept. “Too busy” is not an excuse, for who knows what else they would be “too busy” to do, should they take your work on.

All these are American agents. All represent science fiction. All are open to queries from unpublished authors, and all were open to submissions when I submitted my query. All but one query was sent on or before Oct 1 – i.e. 3+ months or more ago.

Pass:

Hannah Bowman, Liza Dawson Associates; 4 Weeks – Stacy Testa, Writers House; 9 Weeks – Adam Schear, DeFiore & Co.; 9 Weeks – Jim McCarthy, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret LLC; 12 Weeks – Andrea Somberg, Harvey Klinger Literary Agency; 6 Weeks – Zoe Plant, The Bent Agency; 1 Week – Cameron McClure, Donald Maass Literary Agency; 5 Weeks

Fail:

Markus Hoffmann, Regal Hoffmann & Associates – Peter Rubie. FinePrint Literary Management – Shannon Snow, Creative Media Agency – Stephen Barbara, Inkwell Management – Joshua A Bilmes, Jabberwocky Literary Agency – Matt Bialer, Sandford & Greenburger – Stacy Testa, Writershouse – Michael Harriot, Folio Literary Management – Suzie Townsend, New Leaf – Lane Heymont, The Tobias Agency – Amanda Rutter*, Azantian Literary Agency – Naomi Davis, Bookends A Literary Agency

So what did I learn from this exercise?

First, and foremost, how happy I am that my creative works are not being held hostage by these people. I can reach a small but appreciative audience all on my own, doing it my way. I knew that already, but it made me appreciate the choice I made eight years ago all the more.

I came to better appreciate what people who view being a writer as a romantic occupation, and want to be a “real” one, have to endure in their pursuit of their dream. Better them than me, but still, they should be treated better than what they are.

The other benefit was a little more speculative. As time went on, I found myself vaguely dissatisfied with some parts of the novel, even after I had sent it off to my beta readers. Since I had the time, I took that time to try to address those nagging doubts by doing some revisions to the novel. I ended up adding over 5,000 words to it in the process. The question I can’t answer is; would I have done that if I hadn’t submitted the novel, or would I have released it with those nagging doubts? By the time I finished writing it, I knew that I would be submitting it. I knew that if, on the off chance, it would be picked up, it would go through several bouts of editing, so that it didn’t have to be perfect. But if this hadn’t been the case, would I have released it as it was in June? Or would I have held off and revised it, as I eventually did?. I can’t say. On one hand, I’m not the most patient of men, but on the other, I did delay the release of one of my early novels because I was dissatisfied with it, so going over it again would not have been out of the question. In any event, I see the advantage of waiting a while before releasing a story, though whether I will or not do so in the future is an open question, one that may never arise again. We’ll see.

At any rate, I have emerged from query hell unscathed and wiser for it. All to the good.

*Just as I pushed publish on this, I received an email from Amanda Rutter saying that she was leaving the business. It is a tough business, for writers and agents alike.

My first report can be found here:

https://wordpress.com/post/writerssupportingwriters.com/953