Editor’s Note: At times, the feed below does not work, but you can always access the IndepthYOU show by clicking on the BlogTalkRadio link at the bottom of this post. If the feed is working, ENJOY!
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On this day I’m letting others do the talking. You’ve probably heard of BlogTalkRadio but are you familiar with the IndepthYOU show on BlogTalkRadio? Each segment profiles “people who have created, invented, written or developed something that could improve our lives and/or change our way of thinking.” And the show is heavy on publishing industry types.
A number of authors and others in the publishing biz have been featured–from bestselling author L.A. Banks to book marketing guru John Kremer–many of them appearing in the widget above. And they give lots of advice about getting published and promoting your books. The director of public relations at Lulu.com and the CEO of IUniverse, two of the leading self-publishing programs, discuss their services. Tee C. Royal, founder of the literary group R.A.W.Sistaz talks about the book club and how writers can promote their books. And so many more have appeared on the show talking about books and publishing.
So put your feet up, scroll on down and take a listen.
One of our guest authors mentioned the websiteAgent Query as the place where she found her literary agent. So I went and checked it out and realized that I have come across this wonderful site before. It’s chock full of information about literary agents and it seems legit. You can search the database of agents with your own terms, and I found that my agent is listed as are other agents I know about. If this website had been around when I was starting out, I would have spent a lot of time on it.
Agent Query claims the database includes more than 900 “reputable” literary agents and their contact information. Agent profiles also include information such as the genres the agents specialize in and some of the authors represented along with the authors’ book titles (although this is not always up-to-date with the agent’s most recent acquisitions). In summary, the listings tell you everything you need to know about the agents short of whether he or she will represent you. And for that you’ll have to get busy querying the agents. For more on that see, How to Find A Literary Agent.
Agent Query has some very good articles for aspiring authors. I particularly like the one called “Beware of Scammers.”
Here’s a short excerpt–
How do I tell a reputable literary agent from a questionable one?
Legitimate literary agents make their professional livelihoods from the commissions they earn through the sale of their clients’ books to publishers. Reputable agents do not charge fees to review manuscripts, they do not refer writers to fee-charging editorial services, and they do not charge their clients up-front fees to cover the costs of doing business. Reputable agents earn their money through a 10-20% commission of the sale of book rights to domestic and foreign book publishers. Real literary agents with real book sales have real publishing contacts. They know editors. They know what editors like to read. And most importantly, literary agents know what specific editors want to buy.
Agent Query also has information about large and small publishers, writers’ conferences, grants for writers and much more. And it’s all free!
Are you an author, editor or publisher who constantly checks the sales rankings of titles on Amazon? If so, you’ll probably get a kick out of Title Z.
TitleZ allows you to retrieve historic and current sales rankings for many of the books on Amazon, so you can see how a title has performed over time. You can search for titles by keyword, book title, author’s name or publisher. Once you have a list of titles, you can select the ones you want to compare side-by-side.
TitleZ is in beta, which means they’re still working on it, and it does seem to have a few bugs as well as hits and misses. I entered my latest novel, Can’t Get Enough, and learned that its lowest ranking ever on Amazon was 645. The highest ranking was . . . well, we won’t go there.
However, TitleZ had no historical rankings for P.G.County, the prequel to Can’t Get Enough, or for You Only Get Better, a recent fiction anthology I participated in with two other authors. Oddly, it did have historical rankings for my first and second novels, Sisters and Lovers and Big Girls Don’t Cry. But they were both published before Amazon came along, so the historical rankings can only go back to when Amazon began to keep track of rankings. Of course, if Amazon had been ranking books back when Sisters and Lovers and Big Girls Don’t Cry were first published, we all know both novels would have ranked at like number 1 or 2. Right? Right.
I can’t say how accurate the information on TitleZ is, however, when I compared rankings on TitleZ with what is listed on Amazon, TitleZ was right on the money.
At any rate, it’s fun to spend a bit of time checking out various titles even now, and the site could be helpful if you need to research the current success of titles in a genre on Amazon, such as chick lit or mysteries, or to compare titles side-by-side.
But I think if TitleZ is ever going to be really useful in the publishing industry, it’s going to have to be far more thorough in terms of the titles it supports. Right now, it appears that the developers may have even abandoned the site. Although the Amazon title ranking data appears to be up-to-date, the Book News section on TitleZ, which includes links to publishing industry articles around the web, hasn’t been updated since 2006.
Hopefully, the lag is temporary—like an attempt to raise funds to take it to the next level or something—because TitleZ has real potential as a tool for authors and publishers who are hooked on Amazon. And there are many of us.
I haven’t taken the self-publishing plunge–yet! But it’s an exciting idea, likely one with very many pros and cons. One of the biggest pros that I can think of is having more control over all the major steps involved in getting a book to print. I can also imagine that all of that control (with less help from others) translates into some major cons. Still, more and more people are going this route, and it’s revolutionized the publishing biz.
Other folks know more about this hot topic than I do (and we know it’s hot because even Borders Bookstore is getting in on the act), like Kimberly Dawn Wells, who has used both Lulu and iUniverse to get her books out there and has written lots of articles on self-publishing. Kimberly also writes for Suite 101.com and she seems to offer some well-thought out advice based on personal experience–the best kind. She covers a lot of ground on her Squidoo page–from binding your book to avoiding publishing scams. Her page is one of the first places I would look for information if I planned to self-publish a book.
OK, since it’s Saturday you deserve to have a little bit of fun with writing, or typing, as the case may be.
Ever wonder how fast you type? Are you a blazing 100 words per minute typist? Or are you the slow and steady typist, at more like 40 words per minute? Now you can find out and have fun while doing it.
At this website you can test yourself and see how fast you can type. It has you type a a few random lines. If you make a mistake, it informs you, and you have to back up and correct it while the clock is ticking. It’s fun.
I scored 75 words per minute (wpm) with two mistakes.
Frustrated with trying to find an agent? Or maybe you’ve gotten enough rejection letters to plaster a wall in your office? No one can wave a magic wand to make it all better, unfortunately. But there is help out there and that’s what this site is about.
This week, I promised you a fantastic website for women writers (although you guys might find help here, too). Well, here it is. WOW! Women On Writing is an ezine that encourages communication among women writers, authors, agents, publishers, readers and others in the writing biz. WOW! describes itself as “a global magazine, designed to support women’s creativity, energy, blood, sweat and tears, throughout all stages of the writing process.”
Each month WOW! focuses on a different topic. For March they’re featuring Small Presses and Independent Publishers. In addition, WOW! is always full of information, advice and inspiration for authors–too much to list it all here. You’ll find articles on writing and promoting your work–such as creating characters, dealing with agents, and tips for beginning romance writers–and a whole lot more.
WOW! also features quarterly writing contests. Deadline for the Spring 2008 contest is May 31. The contest includes cash prizes, goodie bags and more. Plus your entry is published on the WOW! website.
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.
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.
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.
I love discovering good websites for authors and book lovers. I found Overbooked.org a few days ago while browsing–a favorite pastime of mine–and I’m still exploring it. Whenever I visit this quirky site I find a new little gem. It’s a cool website for authors and book lovers alike and features both fiction and nonfiction titles as well as old and new titles. It’s got special sections for Christian Fiction, Romance, African-American Fiction, Historical Fiction, Young Adult Fiction and more.
One of the more interesting features for authors–although any book lover can get into this–is Author Connections, where you can list your own book titles with descriptions and post a link to your website or blog. I listed Jewels: 50 Phenomenal Black Women Over 50 (my latest book) and it worked like a charm. This section is shaping into an interesting database and you can even download it. Yep, for free. The database is small now but could be really cool as more people add to it. I haven’t tried to download yet so I can’t say how well that part works. If anyone does try it out, let us know how it goes.
At times, Overbooked seems a bit clunky and outdated, and the navigation can get downright confusing (part of its charm?). Some of the links don’t work properly–for example the link to the “form” that you reach from the Author Connections link in the left-hand menu. Fortunately there’s another way to reach Author Connections, which I posted below.
To its credit, Overbooked does say that the site is under development and that parts of it are experimental–and I gather that you–the visitor–are a part of the experiment. What will you like? What will you avoid like the plague? How will you use it all? To me, Overbooked is an example of both the beauty and the curse of the web. You get to help shape the content but you gotta put up with something a little less than polished–usable certainly but… well, experimental.
Fortunately, there are some really nice features that make it worth the time and a little frustration–such as the many interactive areas, one of which takes you to Yahoo Groups, where you can post comments about books, although most of the comments at present seem to be authors hawking their latest titles. Another interactive area is the Overbooked Wiki, where anyone can post book related info. Again, this is just getting started and few items are listed now but it looks interesting so get on over there and add to it if you’ve got something to share.
A third interactive area looks especially promising and is called a “social network” or “social site.” This is billed as “a new social space for the chronically overbooked” and seems like a place where you can create your own book related group and comment and add photos and videos. How rich is that? I’ll definitely be digging more deeply into this area as it appears to be rather well done.
Overbooked is a volunteer project run by a librarian and it shows. The site was obviously created by someone with a love of books, and it’s a fun site to browse. I’d get in on some of its features now while it’s still young and growing, especially if you’re an author.
I've written both fiction and nonfiction and hit most of the major bestseller lists including the New York Times and Essence magazine. And I'm still trying to figure it all out.
Nevertheless, this blog is where I’ll share what I know about writing and promoting books. For more detail on what's here, check the
about page.
