Entries from February 2008 ↓

I get a kick out of stumbling across nice book video trailers and this one was a special treat. I haven’t read the novel, so I can’t vouch for that, but the video trailer is a hit! This one is for Out of Her League, self-published by Delores Airey, a writer living in the United Kingdom. Produced by GWExtra.
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Want to see more? Featured book trailers.

Cheryl Robinson tells us how she went from self-publishing her first two novels to landing book deals with New York publishing houses. She also discusses why she decided to try virtual book touring for her latest title, Sweet Georgia Brown.

Connie Briscoe: You started out as a self-published author. Why was that? Did you try to find an agent or traditional publisher first? Tell us about those early years.

Cheryl Robinson: It took years before I decided to put my first novel to paper. I made a conscious decision when I started writing that I would self-publish because I had heard the horror stories on finding an agent or publishing company. I had also tried in the past to obtain an agent and I did receive my fair share of rejection letters, which discouraged me from pursuing my passion for several years.

So when I did finally sat down in front of my computer and decided to write my first novel, which was Memories of Yesterday, my thought process was that I would publish my first novel myself, and I felt very confident that I would gain the attention of publishers from that point.

CB: How did you finally land a literary agent?

Cheryl Robinson: I self-published Memories of Yesterday and sent it off to Earl Cox in New York who owned a small press and also provided consulting for authors. I was hoping that with his assistance I could take my novel to the next level. He wasn’t interested in my first book so the following year I self-published another novel, When I Get Free. I went all out with my promotional material–with a full-color press kit folder, a catchy title and a nice tagline.

I went back to Earl Cox and this time he was very interested. He received my novel on a day when he was flying to Los Angeles to meet with a literary agent about another one of his clients and he took my book with him, read it, and loved it. He passed my book on to the agent who also loved it. Within 30 days from that point, I had a literary agent.

CB: How is it different working with an agent?

Cheryl Robinson: The agent is the go between you and the publisher. Even if you have been working with the same editor for a while, the proper protocol is to have your agent pitch your next book deal and of course negotiate the contract. The right agent can make or break your career, I believe. They are very important and they must believe in you as a writer and in your work in order to work out the best possible deal for you.

CB: You are currently on a virtual book tour. Is this your first one and how is it going?

Cheryl Robinson: It is my first one and I am having a lot of fun.

CB: Why did you decide to go on a virtual book tour?

Cheryl Robinson: I needed to save money. I was spending thousands of dollars on marketing my novels, and travel was an enormous expense for me. I also needed to save time and find a smarter way to market my titles. For me, I think the virtual book tour is the best way for now.

CB: So you liked the idea of going on a book tour without ever having to leave home. When and where do you write?

Continue reading →

1) Not critical enough. I’m going to get blunt here. All too often new authors think their work is far better than it really is. With rare exceptions, I don’t read other writers’ manuscripts anymore for a number of reasons that I won’t go into here. But before I got wise, I would sometimes agree to read a new writer’s work if he or she asked me nicely enough. The writer would excitedly fill me with tales about how wonderful the work was and how it was the next Great American Novel. I would read it with eagerness only to end up hugely disappointed within a few pages. People assume this job is easier than it is. That’s because it’s harder to write well than it looks.

Be your own toughest critic. Read the kind of novel you want to write–again and again. Pick up books on how to plot and create characters. Take a course. When you proof your novel, pretend that it was written by someone else. Is it really just as good as the novels in the bookstore?

2) Not enough deep thinking. Can you summarize the theme or topic of your novel in one paragraph? Better yet, can you sum it up in a sentence? If not, you’ve got some deep thinking to do about where you’re going with this, or your novel is likely to go all over the place. And don’t tell me it’s about “life.” Every novel ever written is about life in one way or another. How’s yours different?

3) Writing about unfamiliar subjects or locales. This should be obvious but it isn’t always. There’s a rule that every new author should follow: write about what you know best. This is especially good advice for a first novel, because you’ve got enough to worry about without having to do a lot of extra research. Focus on creating better characters or fleshing out your plot instead. Hone in on your theme. It’s not only that you’re less likely to make errors if you know your subject and location well; you’re also going to be able to provide richer details that will make your work come alive.

4) Grammatical errors. No one is expecting you to be as knowledgeable as an English Ph.D. But your manuscript is expected to follow the basic rules of grammar. If you’re lacking in this area, get a book, take an evening class. A good place to start is The Elements of Style. This is something you can definitely improve if you work at it.

5) Not proofing the work enough. Typos are like cockroaches. They hide and then creep up when and where least expected. Just when you think you’ve squished them all, another one pops up. Still you gotta try your best to exterminate these pests. Proof your manuscript until you can find no more errors and then proof it again.

6) Relying on the judgment of family and friends. Proceed with caution for all sorts of reasons. One, your mom may praise your work because she doesn’t want to hurt your feelings. Or two, your girlfriend may be overly critical out of jealousy or for other hidden reasons. People have all kinds of agendas. Three, the person may not know what the heck he or she is talking about or maybe her taste in literature is just different. The list goes on and on. Let others read it if you want, but unless they’re professionals in the business be careful how seriously you take the criticism or praise.

Photo credit: jcarter/iStockphoto

Connie Briscoe Presents

After self-publishing her first two novels, author Cheryl Robinson, whose latest work is Sweet Georgia Brown, landed book deals with New American Library and HarperCollins. This week, Cheryl tells us how she finally landed a literary agent and a New York publisher.

Writing Tips

Also this week, I’ll list the biggest mistakes that aspiring and new authors make and suggest how to correct them.

Even if you’ve written the great American novel, no one is going to bother reading it unless it’s well written. Before my first novel was published, I worked as an editor for more than 10 years, so I have a good idea of what editors expect from authors. Having a good story to tell is a wonderful start, but if your manuscript isn’t well written it will never get read. So before sending anything out, do yourself a favor and polish until it’s the very best you’re capable of.

When I wrote Sisters and Lovers, my first novel, which went on to sell more than three-quarters of a million copies in hardcover and paperback, I spent several weeks editing it and making sure there were no typos or glaring grammatical errors. That was after I had spent nearly a year writing the novel. You’re not expected to turn in a manuscript that exactly follows the publisher’s standards–they have editors for that and each publisher is a little different. But you are expected to submit something that is neat and has consistent punctuation and usage and good grammar. In other words, you should know what a serial comma is and how to use it consistently. If you just thought–HUH?–you got some learning to do. The guides listed below will help get you started.

So polish, polish, polish. Be your own toughest critic!

Must-have Resources for Writers

The Elements of Style, by Strunk, White and Angell. This famous little book has been a handy reference of the basic principles of composition, grammar and word usage for writers since 1957. It was introduced to me when I was studying writing and publishing at George Washington University. Clear and concise. Every author or aspiring author should have one.

A CD-ROM based dictionary. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary both offer CD-ROM versions. I know you can look up words online now, but that never worked for me. It gets cumbersome to open my browser, etc., etc., whenever I need to check a definition or look for synonyms. I much prefer being able to click an icon on the taskbar at the bottom of my screen. I have an ancient version (doesn’t even have Internet terms in it), and it’s always the first software I move whenever I buy a new computer. I can’t live without it and someday I’ll update it to get the latest features such as audio pronunciations and color photos.

And especially for aspiring authors–
One or more of the Writer’s Market guides published by Writer’s Digest Books each year such as 2008 Writer’s Market, 2008 Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market and the 2008 Guide to Literary Agents. The guides list names and contact information on where to send your manuscript once you’ve polished to perfection. They also contain insightful articles about writing and publishing.

If you’ve got suggestions for writing resources you can’t live without, share them with the rest of us.

This week we have Dorothy Thompson and Cheryl C. Malandrinos of Pump Up Your Book Promotion, a company that sets up virtual book tours for authors. The concept of virtual book tours–or a blog tour as some call them–is relatively new and just beginning to take shape. Sometimes they mean one thing, other times something else. I think what has been developed by Dorothy and her group is one of the most interesting takes on this new way of promoting books.

For several months now I have been a member of a Yahoo e-mail group for writers started by Dorothy and I don’t think you’ll ever find anyone who is more enthusiastic about promoting authors and books. I’ve watched as she started and developed Pump Up Your Book Promotion into something quite impressive, with a client list that has included screenwriters, New York Times bestselling authors, self-published authors and others.

I had initially planned to have only Cheryl Malandrinos here today. Dorothy Thompson, the founder of Pump Up Your Book Promotion, was in the midst of moving. At the last minute I also heard from Dorothy, and the two of them are so forthcoming that I realized I’ve got a ton of information here and I decided to divide the interview into two parts.

Here for you now is Part 1 of “All About Virtual Book Tours.” I’ll run Part 2 in two to three weeks.

Connie Briscoe: When and why did you decide to start organizing virtual book tours for authors?

Dorothy Thompson: Hi Connie and thanks for having us. I started Pump Up Your Book Promotion in April 2007. We’re approaching our first anniversary in another couple of months, and I’m quite excited at how successful it has become. We started out with one tour coordinator–moi–and now there are five of us: Cheryl Malandrinos, Rebecca Camerena, Jean Lauzier, our newest addition, Jaime McDougall and myself.

Why did I start Pump Up? I had self-published an ebook called The Complete Guide to Selling and Promoting Your Self-Published eBook because I had found a formula that greatly increased web visibility. One of my past clients phoned me and asked if I could do to her book what I had discussed in the ebook. What she basically was asking was, “Could you be my publicist?” I wasn’t a publicist. I was an author who wasn’t published traditionally and if I wanted my book to sell, I had to find ways to do it. As my book wasn’t in the bookstores at that time, I had to focus on the Internet.

I agreed to do this for her and the rest is history. It was incredible and I found that virtual book tours were the perfect solution to bricks and mortar book tours, but the key is getting that high visibility during your tour which basically involves a lot of networking prior to setting up your tour, which I had already established. I stress networking to all my new clients and the time to start networking is before your book comes off the printing press.

Cheryl Malandrinos: I hosted Dorothy’s clients for months before joining the staff of Pump Up Your Book Promotion in October 2007. As for the reason, that’s easy-I love promoting good books.

CB: Tell us a little about what a virtual book tour is at Pump Up Your Book Promotion.

Cheryl Malandrinos: A virtual book tour is when an author travels around the blogosphere for a set amount of time–with our clients it’s a month. The author promotes her book by giving interviews, getting book reviews, and providing guest articles. Pump Up Your Book Promotion handles finding the blog hosts and acts as a liaison between the blog host and the author.

Dorothy Thompson: That’s the simple answer. The harder answer is that it takes an incredible amount of work on the author’s part to make it successful. You just don’t sit back and watch it in action. You become very involved as it’s progressing throughout the month or however amount of time you set one up for. I am finding that the authors who are out there plugging their virtual book tour on a daily basis are having greater results than the ones who aren’t.

CB: Can you give us more detail about what exactly the author is expected to do? Continue reading →

These days, new ways are always being devised to let authors control their own fates when it comes to book promotion and to help readers find authors and books they love. Prior to the days of the Internet, authors were at the mercy of newspapers and magazines to get the word out about their upcoming book tour dates. Sometimes they got lucky, sometimes they didn’t. Then the Internet came along and authors could list tour dates on their sites, but fans had to navigate to each author’s site if they were interested.

Now there’s something even better. At Book Tour, authors can create a page that showcases their books and upcoming tour stops. And readers can search the database by author name, book title or location and get a list of book events in their area. And it’s all free! Free to list your books and tour stops and free to search the directory.

Authors can also upload photos of themselves and a short bio as well their book titles with photos of the book jackets and then link to the books on Amazon, Barnes and Noble.com and other online bookstores. For readers, when you visit the home page, it will also automatically list authors currently on book tour near you. For example, for me today it showed that Felicia Pride, author of all things pop culture, is touring in Washington, DC, Maryland and Northern Virginia between now and April. Lisa Scottoline and other authors will also be in my area over the next several weeks.

There are a few quirky things about Book Tour. Like when I entered Baltimore under “places,” 61 venues were found, such as the Baltimore Book Festival, but for most of them it indicated that there were “no upcoming events.” Since only five venues are listed per page, you end up scrolling through a lot of pages to find random events in your area and it can get tiresome. Visitors searching for random events in their areas would be better served if Book Tour removed the venues with no upcoming events from the resulting list or listed more venues per page so you don’t have to do so much scrolling.

Other than that little peeve–and it’s minor compared to the good stuff–it’s a great website. It appears to be a little newish and right now seems devoid of ads, but I wonder how long that will hold true as more authors list their books.

Hopefully Book Tour will get better with time. I’m always in favor of anything that gives authors more control when it comes to promoting their work and gives the fans more information and options, and Book Tour does that. I’ll definitely be using it to list my stops next time I go out on book tour.

Book Tour

Connie Briscoe Presents–
Whether you call them virtual book tours or blog tours or something else, there’s no doubt they’re having a big impact on the book selling market and that the impact will likely continue to grow in the future.

This week I talk to Cheryl Malandrinos, who runs the Pump Up Your Book Promotion blog tours for authors along with her partner Dorothy Thompson. Malandrinos’ clients have included award-winning science fiction authors, screenwriters, and young adult and romance authors among others. She will tell us all about virtual book tours and how they work.

Eisa Nefertari Ulen, author and journalist, teaches English at a college in New York City and runs a fascinating blog with some at-times heavy discussions about the state of black book publishing.

Ulen just announced a fiction writing competition for unpublished writers being sponsored by the Go On Girl! Book Club on her blog. The prize is a hefty $500 and the postmark deadline is March 15, 2008.

The Go On Girl! Book Club was founded in 1990 and now has several chapters around the country. The group awarded me with the New Author of the Year award for my first novel Sisters and Lovers.

For details and guidelines, check out Eisa Ulen’s blog.

And go here for more details about the award and the Go On Girl! Book Club.

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You all know I love bookstores, right? No? OK, then I looooove bookstores. I can just hang out in one for a couple of hours, easy.

One of my biggest concerns has been that mortar and brick bookstores are going the way of the dinosaur once devices like the Amazon Kindle come down in price to around $50 - $100 or so, and the creators decide to make their money selling books rather than on the device. Remember record stores? Yeah, that’s what I thought was going to happen to bookstores. Not tomorrow or the next day, mind you. But within another 10 or so years.

Now there’s hope that I was entirely wrong. And this is one of those times when I’m glad to be wrong. But not for the reasons you may think. The reason is the new Borders concept stores due to debut during grand opening festivities on February 22 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the company’s hometown. According to Borders, it’s a 28,900-square-foot concept store–the first of 14 the company expects to open nationwide this year–and represents a big enhancement over existing Borders stores inside and out.

“This is a completely new shopping experience that sets Borders apart from every other store,” said Borders Group Chief Executive Officer George Jones. “We’ve stayed true to what our customers have always loved about Borders-deep and intelligent selection, knowledgeable staff, and a comfortable, welcoming atmosphere. Yet, we’ve brought a fresh new look and an exciting interactive dimension to the store with a Digital Center where customers can do everything from mix and make their own custom CDs, download books and music, publish their own books, explore their family history, and create photo books-all without being computer experts because we have trained people there to help every step of the way.”

The Digital Center sounds mad cool. Self-publish your own books? Create photo books? Sounds to me like Borders is saying, hey, don’t write us off so fast. We get it! You want digital. You want interactivity. You want control. Well, we got it!

Check out the video of what’s happening inside the new Borders bookstore. It’s so unlike anything you’ve ever seen in a bookstore. All I can say is, Borders please hurry and open one near me.

Borders Unveils First Concept Store