Vanity Publishing 2.0?

— Guest Post by Chuck Litka

(Mark here — Chuck just sent this to me and I think it’s a really good topic to discuss. I’m going to post it now and then come back with a response in my own post in a couple of days. Hopefully.)

They changed their name. They didn’t want to be associated with all those schmucks who believed in their stories enough to pay someone to print them – when no real publisher would. This new breed of authors were an entirely different breed than the old vanity press authors. They called themselves “indie publishers” because ebook self-publishing was different.

And maybe it was. You didn’t have to pay anyone to publish your ebook. You didn’t end up with a thousand copies of it in your garage. And your book was for sale world wide, all without spending a dime. At least you could, a decade ago.

But the times have changed. Fast forward to 2021, and indie publishing – especially if you’ve only gotten into indie publishing in the last couple of years – has become a slightly improved version of vanity publishing. Call it vanity publishing 2.0.

Oh, it’s still possible to publish your book without spending a dime. But it’s not considered “best practice” these days. The experts will tell you that a self-publishing author needs to hire a professional proofreader, and cover artist. They may also suggest that you consider hiring an editor, in addition to the proofreader. And maybe someone to format your ebook, and design the paperback edition as well. Oh, and we can’t forget audio books. You need someone to do that too. You have more choices these days, but indie publishing – the right way – isn’t much cheaper than in the old days of vanity publishing. You need to pay hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, to self-publish your book, the “right” way.

In the old days, you’d end up with boxes of books that you were expected to sell yourself. Today you have Amazon, et al, to sell your book. Except that they won’t. Oh, they’ll put your book in their online store – along with 10 million other books. But adding your book to their virtual shelves is about all they’ll do. It’s unlikely that anyone will ever find your book. Not unless you get out and sell it yourself. Just like in the old days.

They say that you have to “pay to play” in indie publishing these days. You need to spend money to make your book visible to readers. You need to advertise – on Amazon, Facebook, Bookbub, or whatever. The most popular indie publishers are spending thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars every month to keep their books in front of readers. You’ll need to compete with them. Somehow.

And you’ll need a platform. Certainly a website or blog, plus a presence on Facebook, Twitter, and maybe Youtube. And pay for an email service to handle your mailing list as well.

Confused, overwhelmed, lost? Don’t despair. There are classes and seminars on every aspect of indie publishing, taught by successful indie publishers. Most cost hundreds of dollars. Or you could simply turn to the vanity press – they’re still around – who will take all the hassle out of self-publishing, in excange for thousands of your dollars. But if you want to be successful…You know what they say; pay to play.

Most of all, you need luck. Lots of luck. Luckily, luck’s free.

So, yes, indie publishing today is different from the old days of the vanity press in many ways. But the fundamentals of self-publishing haven’t changed. If you can’t sell your book to a traditional publisher, you’ll need to spend your money to publish it. And the chances of making any real money, or reaching a wide audience, are little better than in the old vanity press days. And, truth be told, the name change fooled no one. Indie publishers are still considered publishers of the last resort – even if they’re raking in a million dollars a year doing it.

It’s never been easy to make money writing. Writing has always been about chasing a dream. A dream that, even if caught, would all too often, end up in a desk drawer. Computers, ebooks, and indie publishing promised not only to make catching that dream easier, but making money in doing so easier as well. They got it half right. It’s far easier to catch that dream and write a book these days. But, if it was ever actually easier to make money in doing so, that time has faded away.

So what? Creative writing is an art. Art doesn’t need to make money to be valued. Books need to be published to be a book And if an author believes in their book enough to open their wallet and publish it themselves, I think that’s money spent in a noble cause. Heck, a lot of people spend money on their passions and hobbies. A lot of people spend a lot of money. Viewed in that light, spending money printing your book is quite normal. So snobbishly dismissing this faith as mere vanity is missing the point. Self publishing today may be vanity press 2.0, but, if you believe in your dream, there’s no vanity in spending your money to bring it to life.


A Video Chat — Story Structure, Themes and a Few Other Things

Our latest video chat, in which Mark almost disappears from the screen at times, and we talk about story structure, themes, titles, and a few other random things.

(Mark here — a little behind the scenes look at what we do — We generally come up with a topic for discussion and then just wing it. This conversation went down several paths as we went along. Hope you enjoy it. I was planning on writing a post to accompany this chat, but didn’t get to it yet. That will be coming separately at some point in the future.)

The Journey Continues

— Mark Paxson

When we first started this blog, I published a couple of posts about my renewed effort to pursue a traditional publishing route for my new novel. I hoped that I would be able to use my experiences on this new path to help inform other writers.

The novel is a literary young adult piece. There are no vampires or werewoles, no dystopian future, and no football player-cheerleader-nerd love triangle. But because it’s YA, I thought I might have a shot at an agent. After sending some queries out and only hearing back from 1/3 of those I queried, I’ve given up.

I get it. Agents get a lot of submissions and they have a difficult job. They, like publishers, only get paid if a book sells. As a result, they are focused on finding books they believe they can sell. What’s frustrating though is the silence that comes from most queried agents, and the complete lack of any clue from those who do respond.

Admittedly, I ended up sending out fewer queries than I originally planned on doing, but at this point, I have no idea why the idea behind this story isn’t one that could sell.

I’ve given up on the traditional route. Again. I am now pursuing my own path for this book. For the first time since I started self-publishing, I’m putting money into it to see if that changes. I’ve hired somebody to design a cover. I’ve just joined the Independent Book Publisher’s Association, which offers members all sorts of discounts on various review, PR, marketing, and other sites. I also just paid for a review from Kirkus.

I believe in this story and want to see if I can make a splash with it. Hopefully, in the months ahead, I can share some successful lessons learned with you.

Does Fiction Need To Make A Point?

— Mark Paxson

One of my proudest achievements was doing so well on the college English placement test that I got to bypass English in college. Yes, my last English class was in 12th grade. I never took a class in the English Department in college. And I have a brother and father who both majored in English.

Why was I so thrilled about this? Because I hated English classes. The writing part was bad enough — I thought I was a horrible writer and hated it back then. But what was even worse was the need to analyze poems and short stories and try to identify the author’s point. Why did they write the story or poem? What did they mean when they used this phrase? Why do you think they picked the color red for the door? Blah, blah, blah. All I know is that whenever a teacher would ask that question, I wanted to stand up and scream, “Why? Because they just wanted to write a story!!! Why isn’t the answer that they just wanted to write a story?!?”

I’ve never really understand the need to identify the “why” of fiction. I read for enjoyment, entertainment, and escape. I don’t read fiction for any deep understanding of the writer’s objectives or of the human condition. I just want a story that pulls me along and keeps me turning the page.

I just finished a book. It’s a thriller. I completed it because I wanted to see how catastrophe would be averted, but it was a struggle. Why? Because the author clearly uses his fiction to spread his view that Jesus Christ is his savior and that Christianity is the light and the way of the world. There were points in the story where the need to proselytize came up in ways that were just completely ridiculous. Like when the CIA agent was racing to prevent the imminent launch of a nuclear weapon that would have killed millions, but he had to stop and spread the word to a colleague who had been injured. I seriously don’t need that when I’m reading fiction.

When I started writing, I remember having a brief conversation with another writer. She insisted that every story has a point. I’ve heard this from others as well, and I just don’t get it. 99% of the stories I’ve written have been about me coming up with an idea for a story and seeing if I could get it done. That’s the only point to my fiction.

There is one exception to this. My second novel had a point, but it proved to hit a little too close to home and I de-published the novel. Other than that, I just want to see if I can write a story. Each and every time I begin a piece, that’s my only objective. That’s the only point. There are no messages, hidden or apparent.

This is not meant to be a criticism of those who seek to use fictioni to make a point, to serve a purpose. Fiction certainly can be a wonderful way to deliver a message to the reading audience. But … does it need to? Does there need to be an inner meaning in everything we write?

Do you have objectives when you write? Are there messages you want to deliver with your fiction or poetry? Do you look for things like that in fiction you read? Fic

Reviewing (And Being Reviewed By) Other Authors

–Berthold Gambrel

In our latest chat, we discuss authors reviewing other authors, etiquette for rating books, whether writing is like baking, and more.

One thing I didn’t get a chance to say during the chat was that I always appreciate reviews from other authors, because they know what’s involved with writing and publishing a book, and are in a position to give more meaningful feedback. I know this because of how much better of a reviewer I became after I had gone through the process of writing a few books myself.

Also, there are good negative reviews and bad negative reviews. A thoughtful, constructive, well-written negative review can really help an author improve. (A bad negative review is one that criticizes the author rather than the book, complains about the physical condition of the book, the delivery time, etc.  🙂 )

Would You Recognize Your Characters…

— Chuck Litka

…if you ran into them on the street? How clearly do you picture the characters you create for your stories? Do you know exactly what they look like, and how they dress? And do you consider their appearance essential to your stories? I’m curious, because I have only the vaguest idea of what my characters look like. I leave it to my readers to create their own mental picture of the characters, since I don’t have one.

One of my reasons for this, is that I don’t have a visual memory. I can’t even conjure up a mental image of my wife of forty-some years in my mind. Nor of anything else, for that matter. At best I have a vague impression in my mind, the details of which fall apart if I try to focus on the image. The condition even has a name, aphanfasia.

However, I really can’t blame aphanfasia for the lack of description of my characters. If I cared to, I could create a deck of character cards listing their distinctive characteristics. I could scour the web for photographs of people to use as models for my characters. I could keep these cards and photos on hand to consult whenever I wanted to describe how a character looked. But… well, the key words are “if I cared to.” Having lived my life without the details of how people look cluttering my mind, I don’t feel a need to include many details on how my characters look or dress in my stories.

What I do, is select a few general characteristics for each character. I may assign them an eye or a hair color. Maybe they’re slim, lanky, or stout. Maybe they wear glasses or sport a beard. I think I described the major character of my last two books as having a “pretty face.” Rather than relying on visual descriptions of the character, I try to create my characters in the reader’s mind using their dialog and how they act.

And then there’s clothing, another aspect of a character’s appearance that I also skimp on. On describing the clothing, not the clothing itself. Again, I usually mention only a few characteristic features. I picture my spacemen wearing nautical clothes straight out of the clipper ship era, so they have caps (for no particular reason). I have a ship captain who wears a yellow sweater with his black uniform and a sentient robot butler that sports a yellow paisley tie with his formal black suit – as a mark of individuality.

No doubt this light handed approach to character descriptions would not work in some genres and some stories. There are genres where readers expect detailed descriptions of how the characters look, and how they dress – scene by scene. In these cases, omitting detailed descriptions of characters and dress would not meet readers’ expectations. Plus, in many types of stories, clothes can be used to define, or at least hint at, some of the character’s deeper characteristics, as well as their role in society and the story. And as such, describing what they wear may be essential to the story.

However, in my case, I believe that I can rely on my readers to fill in the blanks. And by being unspecific, I’m giving them agency to visualize my characters as they would have them look. Writing for a world audience, being unspecific is likely a plus.

But enough about my approach. How do you approach describing your characters? Do you love to create fully realized mental pictures characters? How do you create them? Do you imagine them first in your mind as a picture, and then describe them in words? Or do they take form as you write more and more about them? I know of one writer who uses a program called “Daz Studio” to create 3D images of her characters – mostly for her own amusement. Still, it is a way to bring imagined people closer to life.  

And finally, how important is the appearances of your characters in your stories and in the stories that you read? Share your opinions and your process.

Writing Simply/Writing Like You Talk

— Mark Paxson

A few days ago, Berthold published a post over on his blog, How Simply Should You Write? The post was in response to some essays by Paul Graham, who has written quite a few essays on a range of topics.

In a nutshell, Graham thinks that one whould write simply and also write the way one talks. Each of those concepts pretty much speak for themselves. Write simply means, well, to write simple. Keep it simple, stupid, in other words. Short simple sentences are better than long, convoluted ones. Be clear, don’t be muddled. Go for understandable words and constructs and don’t try to impress with big words or bigger sentences. From Graham’s perspective, complex writing is more difficult to read, it hides ideas rather than reveals them, and to him at least, complex writing is clumsy writing.

Writing the way one talks is a companion concept. He uses an example: “The mercurial Spaniard himself declared: ‘After Altmira, all is decadence.'” Graham suggests that nobody would talk like this. He can’t imagine anybody calling somebody else mercurial in the course of conversation. His essay on this topic bleeds into the write simply concept, He basically says that his objective is to write in language he would use in conversation. He wants it to be simple and to sound in written form comparable to spoken language. To Graham, spoken language is easier and less complex than written language.

Meanwhile, Berthold disagrees. He points to a couple of examples from George Orwell and Oscar Wilde as evidence that great writers throughout time did not write simply or write the way people talk. He also makes a point that Graham assumes too much about how other people may talk. Maybe Graham wouldn’t describe Picasso as “the mercurial Spaniard,” but Berthold certainly would!!!

Which gets back to the point I always make when somebody tries to suggest there is a “rule” to writing. It depends. It depends on you as the writer. It depends on you as the reader. It depends on all the other readers who might be reading your work.

It also depends on something else, particularly if we’re talking about fiction. How does the narrator talk and think? How do the characters engaged in dialogue talk and act? For instance, one of the things I started a few years ago is a series of short stories, that may become a novel, based on some characters who work for a traveling carnival/circus. The characters in this piece simply don’t talk the way I do. They have a different rhythm, a different language, slang that I’ve never heard off. It would make no sense then for me to write it the way I talk. No, instead, I have to completely strip away the idea of how I talk and, as I’m writing that story, talk in a way that is alien to me. In some respects, it’s kind of like method acting. If I’m ever to complete that story, I’ll have to immerse myself into the rhthym and flow, the accent and the slang, of a group of traveling carnies.

That said … I do think there’s value in what Graham says and with Berthold’s caveats in mind. I think the most important thing we can do as writers is to not make reading a challenge. Zoe Keithley, a wonderful woman who led some writing exercises I attended for several years, always said, don’t make it too hard on the reader. If a story is too difficult to read, the writer is going to lose a lot of readers. So, I agree in general with the concept of writing simply.

But there are degrees to simplicity. Nobody wants to read stories written in the Dick and Jane style, unless they’re teachers of reading in the early grades. Graham has a couple of good suggestions. Write a draft, just let it go and write (something I still haven’t figured out how to do). And then, go back and see how it sounds. Read it out loud. See if you can follow it. Does it sound normal? Or are there places where it’s obvious you’re trying to force something? Okay that last one is really my idea and I think that’s where I realize I’m getting too complicated in my writing. When I go back, and say “huh, that doesn’t sound right. What was I … oh wait, I could cut out half of this sentence, rearrange this, and then … much better.”

In conclusion, I want to go back to that “mercurial Spaniard” criticism. That stuck in Berthold’s craw and it is, in some respects, contrary to so much of what we are told as writers. Don’t use cliches, be unique, make things interesting. And I agree with those things. Maybe one wouldn’t refer to Picasso as a mercurial Spaniard in conversation (although Berthold disagrees), when reading a story … that’s part of the pleasure in reading. Seeing things, words and phrases, that you generally don’t see or hear in normal conversation. It’s what keeps fiction fresh and worth coming back to. How does this writer make another marriage gone wrong sound fresh and worth reading? How does that writer make another murder mystery unique and worth turning the pages? Through different words, different takes, different ways of presenting the pieces of the story.

So, yeah, keep it simple, stupid … but, don’t kill the uniqueness of your story by over-simplifying it. Yes, write the way you talk …. no wait, rewind … write the way your narrators and your characters talk. Push the edges and stretch your imagination. Don’t write the way you talk, write the way the people you have created would talk. And maybe, just maybe, one of them would refer to Picasso as that “mercurial Spaniard.”

A Video Chat — A Conversation with Richard Pastore

— Mark Paxson

We had a wonderful conversation with Richard Pastore, author of The Devil and The Wolf and an upcoming novel he promises to be something different. That’s the thing about indie publishing — a lot of what we read in the indie publishing world is just different than what we see in the traditionally published world. The Devil and The Wolf is a great example of this phenomenon.

Take a look and a listen. If you’re interested in participating in a similar chat, feel free to let us know in comments, or by email at writinghelp2021@gmail.com. We are very interested in getting more authors, more voices, more thoughts and ideas incorporated into what we do here. (In the meantime, after watching this video, I’m going to focus on blinking less.)

Until next time … keep writing, keep creating, keep dreaming.

Is Blind Support A Good Thing?

— Mark Paxson

When I first started blogging and publishing, there were a lot more writers out there in blog land. I got into what I felt was a pretty good community of writers looking to grow and learn, and also to support each other.

One of the tools I learned of back then was a blog tour. Basically, a bunch of bloggers sign up to promote somebody else’s book on their bl0g when it is published. I looked at that and thought, “Why would I promote a book I hadn’t read yet? Give me a chance to read it first and then I’ll decide.” But, for awhile, blog tours were a thing.

There is something similar now going on over on Twitter. #pitmad is a quarterly “event” where writers develop pitches for their manuscripts and tweet them out. Then others retweet those pitches as a show of support. There apparently is some kind of value to retweets. There are a bunch of agents and other writers who “run” this event. The next PitMad is scheduled for tomorrow.

The problem is that in the days leading up to tomorrow, I’m seeing all sorts of writers tweet that they will trade retweets with other writers or that they’ll retweet pretty much anybody’s tweet pitch. Which all leaves me completely unimpressed with the whole concept.

I absolutely totally, 110% believe that writers should support other writers. As Berthold wrote about last month, there are many views of how writers interact with each other, but at the end of the day we should all be in this together. II prefer to reside in a supportive community instead of a competitive community. As a result, I don’t want to bash the general idea behind PitMad.

The concept is a good one. Writers post their pitches and get feedback. It helps them hone their pitches and there are some who have got agents out of their PitMad participation.

However, the idea of blind support just puts me off the whole thing. It turns into a popularity contest instead of a value and quality contest. Support is good, but blind support just doesn’t seem to be very meaningful.

This is one of the things we indie writers should be careful about. I get that the point behind PitMad isn’t necessarily to support indie writers, but instead to support people in their efforts to get noticed by agents and publishers. I think it is relevant to what we do, however.

There is enough of a scarlet letter reputation for indie writers already. We are viewed as the trash heap of the published world by all too many people. So many of us can barely find any readers even when we give our books away. And all too frequently, we hear of readers who have no interest in indie books because of their poor quality.

What does it say about indie writers then that they are willing to endorse books they’ve never read or pitches they’ve never seen? I really think that we owe it to ourselves and to other indie writers to care about quality and to know what we are supporting in the industry before we put out an endorsement. There are enough good quality indie stories out there that we shouldn’t need to show our value in the community by supporting anything and everything that gets thrown out there.

Blind support, while it may feel good and may produce some blind support in exchange, doesn’t really produce any long-lasting value. At least that’s what I think. At some point, it becomes apparent that the support isn’t based on anything real. Here’s the real consequence. If you tell me a book is great on your blog, or on Twitter, and then I go read it and see that it is riddled with typos and barely edited, there’s a very good chance that I won’t pay attention to your recommendations anymore. There’s something else I won’t pay attention to — anything you produce.

Over the last few months I’ve thought of developing a pitch and participating in PitMad at some point. This week’s multitude of “comment here and I’ll retweet your pitch” and “retweet me and I’ll retweet you” tweets has turned me off of the whole thing.

What do you think? Ever participated in PitMad or a blog tour or anything else like that? Every endorsed a book you hadn’t read? (I’m open to the possibility. I’m interested in the why.)

Using the World of Englishes in Our Writing

A Guest Post by Chuck Litka

Like most self-published authors, I publish one English edition for the world. This means that some readers will find words spelled differently, or, dare I say, “wrong.” Or “wrong”. Since, in British English, the period goes outside of the quotation mark. Some readers will also have to translate, if they can, the different English terms for the same item, i.e. cookies vs biscuits, hood vs bonnet. And of course, every region of English speakers and readers have their own phrases and speech patterns, who may find my English off kilter and perhaps, hard to follow. While I don’t see this as a major problem, publishing one version worldwide does has its little issues.

However, if you look at it a little cross-eyed, you can find a silver lining in these little issues. If you’re always going to be wrong somewhere in the world, why not take advantage of that fact? Why not adopt parts of the different Englishes and use them to your advantage? For instance, in British English, unlike American English, you don’t use periods behind Mr or Mrs or any such title. Since that period tells the reader nothing they don’t already know, why waste a keystroke to clutter up your sentence with a useless period in the middle of it? It’s merely a regional convention, and you’re publishing for the world. I’ve eliminated those useless periods.

Adopting different spellings is a lot more risky, since there are readers out there laying in wait to pounce on any preconceived misspellings, especially if you try to mix and match conventions. However, I use the British “grey” rather than the American “gray” because “grey” brings to my mind a sharp, clear color, be it dove grey or battleship grey. Whereas “gray” brings to mind the murky, muddy color of the clay I used to play with as a child. However, beyond that, well, I was (rightly) dinged for my typos, wrong words, and misspellings in my early editions, so I don’t care to venture too much deeper into that potentially dark valley. However, I could see using the British spelling of words for a British character, while using American English for an American character just to add color to the characters. In my stories with British narrators, I turned on the British English spellchecker and used the British spellings, plus as many British terms as I could, though I likely fell woefully short in the latter, given my rather distant view of that variety of English.

And, as I mentioned, there are all those different terms in American and British English for common things. These can be more easily mixed in than the different spellings. I usually use “lift” instead of “elevator” and “flat” instead of “apartment” simply because I like them better, for whatever reason. On the flip side, there are words that mean two different things, for instance, “jumper” which is a sweater in British English, and a dress of sorts in American English, which you might not want to substitute. Still, if we are writing for the world, why not write for the world and use all the English we have at our disposal?

The British convention that I adopted right from the beginning is the single quotation mark – ‘’ – for dialogue, rather than the American double quotation mark – “” – for three reasons.

First, it works just fine. It’s largely invisible. No reader has ever complained about my use of the single quotation marks. And you know they would, if it bugged them.

Secondly, I think that it makes sentences look more streamlined – more elegant. That is just my opinion, of course, but I like how it does the job in a nice, understated way.

And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, it saves me time, effort, and perhaps some pain as well. I don’t have to stretch and hunt for the shift key for every quotation mark and use two keystrokes for it.  

I like to do things efficiently, and hitting one key instead of two for every quote makes my writing just a little more efficient. Of course, I still have to hit the shift key for the capital letter that follows the first quotation mark, but I’m pressing it down for a beat less, and the quotation mark at the end is a pure win. All these tiny movements in typing, repeated millions of times, add up. While I’ve avoided carpal tunnel syndrome so far, I still find that by the end of a final draft of a story, I can feel a bit of soreness in my left pinky finger, my shift key finger, despite using the single quotation mark.

It is said that the English language is the richest language in the world. As writers of English for the world, why not embrace the full scope of English and explore how we can enrich our English from this treasure trove. And, perhaps, save a few keystrokes along the way.

What do you think? What English conventions do you use in your writing? Have I missed some neat English tricks for efficiency and elegance? Or, on the other hand, do you see problems that I don’t in mixing and matching Englishes?


I am an amataur author. I write just for the fun of creating. I’ve enjoyed writing all my life, eventually taking the plunge into self-publishing in 2015. While most of my novels are old fashioned romances — adventures in exotic imaginary worlds, I have written something of a romance, and have just completed something of an old fashioned whodunit. I’m looking to write a Gothic style story next.