posted
Ok i need advice from the experienced. Book 1 of my series i have done a basic surveyof about fifteen :
8 18+ girls all great book hungry to read the next
7 men 1 said he didnt get it and didnt understand it. The rest great book. I have the book being fully reviewed for grammer problems. 4 edits later right on the edge of done. Now i'm at the point of publish.
A lot of pressure to self publish. Voices saying that where the moneyis ifthebook is good. The guy doing the base editing is saying would make a great cable series.
I'm as always taking everything with a grain of salt.
Thoughts??
Publisher? Self publisher? I hate the idea it has so much spark right now of It setting on someones slush pile collecting dust.
I'm very serious i even have people who are in on the hype that hadve said they might be interested in backing it if I had a solid plan.
Thoughts?
I will take them all before that final leap.
Esspecially since it was here I first started to really push my writing.
quote:Originally posted by walexander: Ok i need advice from the experienced. Book 1 of my series i have done a basic surveyof about fifteen :
8 18+ girls all great book hungry to read the next
7 men 1 said he didnt get it and didnt understand it. The rest great book. I have the book being fully reviewed for grammer problems. 4 edits later right on the edge of done. Now i'm at the point of publish.
A lot of pressure to self publish. Voices saying that where the moneyis ifthebook is good. The guy doing the base editing is saying would make a great cable series.
I'm as always taking everything with a grain of salt.
Thoughts??
Publisher? Self publisher? I hate the idea it has so much spark right now of It setting on someones slush pile collecting dust.
I'm very serious i even have people who are in on the hype that hadve said they might be interested in backing it if I had a solid plan.
Thoughts?
I will take them all before that final leap.
Esspecially since it was here I first started to really push my writing.
Only fair you guys offer an opinion.
Thanks
W. Alexander
Pardon me if you know all this already therefore this is a repeat. Hmmm...
Sounds like you have a good one there.
But publishing it either way is still taking a chance. For my novel I am going for E-publishing but that is not a sure proposition. But according to Dean Wesley Smith you can do both. Some publishers are buying novels that have been Indie published--some editors are even looking through new Indie lists.
Usually you send in a publishing package to a publisher which consists if synopses, first five chapters and a letter. You do that but mark in the letter that it is a E-book. If you do a POD-which according to him is a good idea-you send in the whole book. If the editor says no he-she will still keep the book and end up giving it away. But the chances of them saying yes isn't that much worse than if you sent in it without E-publishing it. Which are still very high.
If you just Indie publish it and it is good then it will sale and people will pass the word around and eagerly wait for the next one. Plus there is no time limit on Indie sales--you keep the book up for ever. In the traditional publishing you got only a couple weeks or so to sale enough to make them happy.
As I said you are taking a chance either way. One of the first few editors may buy it and give you a Niiiice contract but it could take a couple of years of sending it out to get to that place. (Shoulder shrug)
You could become the next big thing on Indie publishing or sale 10 copies per year for ten years. Actually I think if it is as good as your 15 seem to think it is you will sale a lot more than 10 per year but it may not be the same amount as it would sale Traditionally. But you make a lot more money per book Indie publishing.
There is a lot more work to get it ready to E-publish and things you would need to learn or spend some good money in having pros do the cover and format right and all that. And you need to watch for those who would charge a percentage of your profits instead of one price. Do you like learning new things? Do you have the time to do it all and still write. My book is half edited and hopefully the second half will be done soon but it will still take me a couple of months at least to correct everything. And then I need to work on the cover I have two covers in mind--one would cost $520 but be what I want and the other might be $20 to $100 and be a cover that would be Okay in my desires. I could do the second for less than twenty but I will need some help in getting the images I want together in a delightful look. I will be going POD too and I think I can write a back blurb okay and design the side.
Sounds like you have the copy editing down which can be a major expense. That helps. I tend to think going this way is the better way but it's a chore and will take longer but then again I don't know how long it would take to hear from an editor--that could take half a year and then do it again even if I send out five sets at a time.
Sorry for the length here this took longer to say than I thought it would.
Posts: 5289 | Registered: Jun 2010
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posted
Editor fix all errors. Went through soul twisting what i should change. Type set is second stage going to final pro this month. Only thing left they are looking at me is big company less money or self and invest. But like i said trying not to have stars in my eyes.
posted
A circle of acquaintances is a good start for getting feedback. An editor acquaintance is a good start from which to get style feedback. Though neither recommends either for publication recommendations.
Traditional publishing serves an essential function easily passed over in a rush toward publication: screening discretion. Higher-end publishers employ experts in the many arcana of writing, many of them expert editors. Even their unpaid interns and entry-level screening readers have above-proficient mechanical style skills. Effective literary agents as well have similar skills and employees and interns.
If one most common reason for impersonal form rejection exists, mechanical style faults is probably it. However, no comment why the manuscript was rejected. "Not at this time suitable for our list."
Not the everyday piecemeal style faults like easy to spot misspelled words, easy to spot punctuation errors, easy to spot faulty diction, maybe some easy to spot faulty syntax, But high order and advanced grammar faults. These are faults and errors that are nondiscretionary; hence, they are faults and errors. I don't use those two or similar terms lightly. They roll off the tongue or click into a keyboard too easily, for which they are vague and impotent, and unsuitable for general writing discussion or critique.
Spelling errors and word compounding errors, for example, words that have several forms, not just everyday homonym conflicts that any useful spell checker application calls attention to for evaluation: fissure, fisher; aloud, allowed; nose, knows, nos; anymore (adv), any more (adj); follow up (v), follow-up (n, adj); rear-end (v), rear end (adj-n), backside (n) back side (adj-n), and many, many thousands more. Those are still low-hanging errors that many readers who call themselves editors overlook.
Punctuation faults: One of the more common punctuation errors is comma use with dependent clauses: adverb phrases, restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses, preceding or subsequent dependent clauses, appositive terms and phrases. Many editors pay them no mind, never mind writers passing them over.
Diction faults: Misused, overused, abused words, faulty repetition, confused idiom, unsuitable words, dozens of grammar principles for this area. Not just the closest word choice, but the clearest and strongest word, and recasting if no suitable word exists. In this diction area somewhat and somewhat syntax is transitive and intransitive verb faults, faulty predicate construction, tense inconsistency, and others.
Syntax faults: This starts getting into errors beyond the abilities of somewhat proficient editors. Expertise is required here. Syntax commonly is taken to mean clause and sentence structure. Syntax includes as well paragraph and larger order structures through and perhaps beyond a single composition; for example, book length. Faulty sentence compounding is one of the more common syntax faults, yet the dozens of pertinent compounding principles baffle many medium-skill editors, let alone writers.
And many more and farther advanced style faults, too numerous to list here.
All the above to say style matters: mechanical style. The sometimes unclear expression for artful flair--style--is as well a matter of mechanical style. Artful expression principles nonetheless follow grammar principles. Grammar handbooks advise about a few style exceptions; rhetorical principles encompass the whole of exceptions. Rhetoric, actually, includes within its domain mechanical style and grammar. Equal style discipline and artistic expression creativity matter.
Many self-publishers pay little mind to a few of even the most basic style principles, let alone advanced principles, many self-proclaimed editors too. Self-publishing has a disreputable culture and marketplace position for that alone. Never mind craft shortcomings, like plot holes and viewpoint glitches, which are overlaps with style principles as well, covered to a summary degree in grammar handbooks.
Consider an editor deserving of the label has ready to hand and frequent reference resort to a comprehensive dictionary, a comprehensive grammar handbook, a comprehensive style manual, and a comprehensive English usage dictionary, at least, maybe a comprehensive synonym dictionary--not a thesaurus exactly--and a comprehensive rhetoric reference. A writer who would succeed can do no less than arm her or himself with equivalent references to those of the writing and publishing cultures. In the least circumstance, because a manuscript's progress through the publication pipeline will rely on its style, rejection may be solely because the work needed to adjust the style is too costly and time consuming for the manuscript, for the publisher, and for the writer. Never mind if the topic and such merit publication.
Frankly, bluntly, unflinchingly, I am not a recognized style expert; I am getting close, though. Tragically, grammar instruction in recent times has let down those who would write for fun, for profit, for acclaim. Deficits can be made up. Ultimately, in any regard, style is a writer's duty.
Again, frankly, bluntly, I'm not comfortable recommending a manuscript for publication before I've evaluated it. From samples and signals, though, I don't feel this one is ready for submission or publication.
posted
Do what you want to do. If you have time and patience, then write your query, blurb, synopsis and start sending it out to agents. You can test the waters by seeking out an agent. While you are waiting, start your next novel.
Give yourself a reasonable length of time and if nothing happens, you can always self-publish.
Like it or not, lots of people do not think self-publishing makes you a legitimate author. Look at what extrinsic says. I've self-published eight works, I know.
Be prepared to market your book either way. My very modest returns have been due to zero marketing, so if you decide to self-publish, don't stint on that. Very modest is not very fulfilling. If you decide to self-publish, like everyone else says, get editing done and get a good cover and make sure your blurbs are golden and then don't hesitate to get your book out there.
Posts: 1608 | Registered: Feb 2009
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posted
I don't think there is an easy answer here. I guess a lot of it comes down to is what do you personally want.
Traditional publishing is still the best way to get physical copies of your book into bookstores and Walmarts, but I think the old school publishers are overpricing their e-books, and losing a lot of that market to the self-publishers. I'd love it if I could get a publishing contract that would publish the hard copies but allow me to keep the digital rights, but I doubt any publisher would go for that unless I self-published first and my book sold really well.
I think both paths are hard and neither one is a guarantee of success. Getting noticed is a major challenge either way; whether you are trying to attract an editor, agent, or readers.
posted
There are going to be pitfalls and rewards either way. And frustration.
So it really comes down to what you want out of it and how much non-writing work you're willing to put into it. Because if you self-publish, you're going to be doing a lot of work that a traditional publisher would normally do. Cover art. Formatting. Distribution. Blurbs. Marketing. Finding reviewers. They all take time, effort, and sometimes money.
But they don't have to be entirely mutually exclusive. You could, for example, try querying while writing the next book. That way, you could bring them out closer together if you do self-publish.
Posts: 4633 | Registered: Dec 2008
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posted
Either way. IndieReCon is next week. A virtual conference. You might find some useful information to help with your decision there.
Posts: 4633 | Registered: Dec 2008
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posted
extrinsic, can you suggest some reference titles? I have Watt's An American Rhetoric and various fiction writing books. If a response would diverge too far from this thread's topic, would you mind sending me an email instead?
posted
I'd kind of plateaued on the Poet's Journey. My thought was that the law of diminishing returns meant that further and further writing learning takes more and more effort to accomplish less and less results. I visualized the point of satisfaction as an ever receding vanishing point. Twice as much effort covered half as much distance to the horizon. Four times as much effort, a quarter as much distance. Eight times, one-eighth. And so on. Exponential effort, fractional lineal progression.
Studying craft, voice, audience appeal, and mechanical style on isolated legs of the Journey as a lineal path is like reading: the words line up in a lineal string. Book design and publication production, though, reorients perception of a literature work as a multidimensional object. Writing and reading the story occupies a quantum space. The story in all its parts and parcels and whole transcends normal space.
I circled back around to mechanical style studies after intensive though individual craft, voice, and audience appeals studies. The four dimensions melded into a synergistic whole this go-around. The four dimensions unfolded from their lineal identities into a Riemannian manifold shape. Riemannian manifolds are topographic representations of shapes' surface geometries that extend to folded n-space representations of every included coordinate point.
Four dimensions became n-dimensions with near infinite expressions. Exponential growth emerged through multidimensional integration into situational awareness of the limited moment, larger awareness between, and whole picture. Battlefield integration for force multiplication strategies and tactics relies on similar geometries.
In other words, closely studying grammar in overlapping contexts of writing craft, voice expression, and appeals to audiences from a synergistic geometric approach opened up a multitude of writing insights. I'd thought I was past world-shaking writing epiphanies. The immediate moment of inspiration came from studying the grammar complexities of conjunctive adverbs, their dimensionality. The abyss is no longer a cold and empty, harsh void. Glorious!
Yeah, if you would, circle back to grammar studies. Understanding grammar principles' stale and stiff, dry and dusty formal tediousness might become the tipping point for enormous delights and writing success.
quote:Originally posted by kmsf: extrinsic, can you suggest some reference titles? I have Watt's An American Rhetoric and various fiction writing books. If a response would diverge too far from this thread's topic, would you mind sending me an email instead?
Thank You.
Besides grammar and language studies' potentialities from The Little, Brown Handbook and Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, and other essential mechanical style references, I most benefitted from a close study of The Poetics of Aristotle, Gustav Freytag's Technique of the Drama, Gideon Brown's Silva Rhetoricae, Jerome Stern's Making Shapely Fiction, Damon Knight's Creating Short Fiction, Seymour Chatman's Story and Discourse, and Wayne Booth's The Rhetoric of Fiction.
And in that order I studied them, circling and recircling back around through each as each became clearer and clearer from studying the others--"how way leads on to way" (Frost, "The Road Not Taken").
Booth's is where "reflector" type personas is fully covered. Knight's and Stern's are the easiest to accessibly understand. The others are heavy, dense, obtuse, my fellow poet. I mean, who else other than me reads the bright orange brick doorstop Chicago Manual of Style for entertainment? I've met a very few. Publishing culture stalwarts all.
posted
Thanks for the suggestions my fellow poet! I will check them out.
Now, I wouldn't go so far as to read Chicago Manual of Style for entertainment.
I think I'll pick up Poetics again once I'm through Watt's rhetoric book. The Muse called me away from Aristotle's work... alas I, too, have actually found that even casual perusing of rhetoric or fiction references will often provide inspiration to write. In our impatience, I think we risk throwing out form with the excuse that it is somehow restrictive or confining.
Stern's Making Shapely Fiction provides some good examples of form lending strength and effect.
One of my favorite examples is this metered quote:
"When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul Lends the tongue vows. ..." - Polonius
I'll keep you posted on any new additions I find as well.
Posts: 130 | Registered: Aug 2012
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posted
The only note of caution I'll sound is that 15 people is just that: 15. And I would guess that a handful of that number are giving you inflated reviews for the quality of work and their enthusiasm to read more.
If you haven't self-published before, there's no reason for you not to try it out now. If you go a totally digital route, it'll probably cost you next to nothing to throw it up on a couple of eReader services like Kindle.
If you plan on buying some self-publishing package, again, if it's not too much and you have some cash to spend, why not go for it.
I, personally, wouldn't base the decision on what 15 people, or even a 150 people said. Self-publishing is at its most successful when it's undertaken as if it's a commercial enterprise. How much time can you and will you spend to marketing the novel, how many physical copies you're getting (if at all), what venues have you researched where you can promote yourself, do you already have a market in mind where your writing can sell, etc.
But you definitely have nothing to lose if you throw up your novel in the slushpile of digital media and simply hope for the best.
Posts: 1216 | Registered: Nov 2011
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posted
If you hate the idea of it gathering dust in a slush pile just think of it gathering dust in your garage (if you print self-publish) or on amazon's servers (for e-self-publishing or POD). It's a pain getting read whatever your route. Really the only way to do it is jump in and try everything. I've read a lot of things that say the writers who self-publish and go for publishing companies tend to be the most successful. As long as you are working at it and learning as you go you will get better at it.
I am not experienced in getting people to read my work so I have no advice for you on that front except listen to the people who do have experience.
I do have a rant for you though. The editor's job isn't to fix your errors, it is to tell you where errors are so you can fix them. They aren't your life preserver they are your swim instructor. They aren't training wheels, they are your dad looking for the moment when he can let go. When an acquisitions editor reads your work they want it to scream, "money" not, "work." I advise you to make a serious study of grammar and usage. Practice it in everything your write, even the slightest text message. As a writer your job is language.
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You might find some useful information to help with your decision there.
