Jul 16 2014

The Lazy Writing Phenomenon

Thanks to Amazon’s ‘instant’ publication feature for Kindle, more and more people are jumping on the author band wagon. While it has been a god-send for those authors committed to producing the absolute best work they have to offer, the ease of uploading a Word file and becoming an insta-author has caused a massive influx of mediocre drivel that has caused many, many readers to boycott SPAs completely.

And who could blame them? Gone are the days when books were re-written, proofread, and edited within an inch of their lives. Gone too, it appears, is any set of standards or dignity when it comes to producing quality work. People are no longer enlisting the help of professional editors to help them clean up the mistakes, develop their writing style, and polish the work so that it flows smoothly from beginning to end. It’s the lazy man’s way of writing, and anything goes.

These days any old thing will do, from poorly edited train wrecks with shifting tenses, wrong word usage, missing words, and typographical errors to poorly written pieces that are hallmarked as a ‘writer’s’ first attempts evident by the sheer number of errors, lack of any discernable syntax, no plot or character development, and zero writing style. The entire self-publishing craze has left the literary world awash in a sea of utter garbage, and thanks to such atrocities as Fifty Shades, even the formerly noble art of writing erotic romance has given way to stories and novels that read like badly directed D-rated porn flicks. More and more people are pushing ‘publish’ on the first thing that pops into their heads, leaving readers wondering what on earth happen to the art of the written word.

The entire process has made it quite an ordeal for professional authors who value their reputation and stake their name and their success on their ability to produce a well crafted piece to rise up above all the false advertisements and astroturfing to get their names out there. For those who choose to NOT stoop to the level of the other wannabe writers plaguing Amazon and GoodReads, it is becoming increasingly harder to rise up above all the fakery. Professional indie authors are being forced to either see their works fail miserably while all the other drivel gets snatched off the proverbial shelves, or begin participating in the same under-handed, sneaky marketing gimmicks that the less-than-scrupulous writers are doing.

It seems that the vast majority of the literary world has been reduced to little more than half-assed words slung at a page. It’s degrading as an author who takes pride in her work to be lumped in the same category as some of these people. Being a writer has always been a profession that was looked down on by the rest of the world, as if we were somehow less of an artist, as if our work did not count. Many of us have to work full time jobs because writing doesn’t pay well enough to cover the bills or feed our kids, and yet those of us who continue to take pride in our work and are dedicated to producing a quality product are being shoved further and further down the literary pole because readers simply can’t find a good indie book. It’s sickening, disheartening, and worst of all, it’s unfair to readers to constantly swindle them out of money by allowing fake reviews to trick them into thinking they are getting a professional product when all they are really getting is someone’s latest attempt to cash in on the whole business.

So where does that leave us? For readers, LEAVE REVIEWS. This simply cannot be stressed enough. If you come across something that isn’t suited to be used in the bottom of your cat’s litter box, then LEAVE A REVIEW. When you come across a great read, then LEAVE A REVIEW. Stop being passive about the whole thing while moving on to the next book. SPEAK UP.

In time, when enough reviews have been left that attest to the true quality of the writing, the fake reviews will no longer apply and readers will stop buying. Eventually the problem with badly written self-published books will take care of itself, allowing the good writers to once again be noticed and purchased. But that will only happen if readers stand up for themselves. STOP just assuming that the problem will go away on its own. Never underestimate the power of the review. It has caused many a writer to stop writing, and when used properly, it can stop the influx of drivel from taking over our lives.

Jul 16 2014

Why a Professional Editor is a MUST for Even the Most Diligent Indie Author

In all the years I have under my belt as a writer, I have humble beginnings as a proofreader and editor. Growing up, most girls had babysitting jobs or paper routes. Given my class ranking in high school, I made extra money by proofreading and typing up term papers, book reports, and oftentimes writing them as well.

During those first ten years or so of my writing ‘career,’ I sent out dozens upon dozens of query letters and samples of my manuscript. I received back just as many rejection letters, many of them with advice on how to improve my writing. Over the years, I received a lot of good advice, a lot of bad advice, and a lot of advice that just didn’t seem relevant or hold true for me as a writer. Some of it I took to heart, some of it I took with a grain of salt, and some of it, the really hard lessons, it took me years before I finally grasped the gravity of what those well-meaning editors were trying to get across to me.

One of the most important pieces of advice I ever received is also the one piece of advice that it took me the longest to finally understand and to accept as a writing truth, and that is the ultimate need for a very good, high quality, professional editor. With so many years spent as a freelance editor, I know full well how to edit and proofread a piece of work. Add in the thirty plus years spent writing and proofreading my own work, and all that experience has only honed my skills as both a writer and an editor.

But I was naïve when it came to my own work. I thought that editors were meant to be nothing more than spell checks with fingers, someone who picked up what MS Word could not, like correct word usage and punctuation. I could easily do this on my own, and have always put my own works through dozens upon dozens of rewrites and edits. I saw absolutely no reason why anyone with a strong grasp of the English language would want to spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars doing what anyone with a bit of patience could do on their own. Besides, I had read enough carbon copies of books that all sounded like they had been written by the same boring writer to know that editors could do real damage to the writing style of the original author, stripping it out to the point where even the action scenes seemed dull and lifeless. Who the hell wanted THAT for their story?

It was not until the self-publication wave hit Amazon that I realized just how very, very wrong I was in that mind set.

Editors do more than just find typos. Those that are good at what they do, do so much more than merely find typographical errors. Strong, professional editors help out the syntax of the sentences in the story, correcting grammatical mistakes that go beyond subject/verb agreement and shifting tenses. They actually help the author hone their writing style, make sure the storyline and the writing itself flows smoothly and is consistent throughout. They also make sure that the writing is actually good and does not read like something that the author just slapped down with never a rewrite or second thought about it.

A quality editor would never let something like “I’m already hard…..My cock would like to say ‘hello’ to her kitty….I slap her, make her mine…. She purrs, I smile….I whip my dick out, make her take it” ever see the light of day. This amounts to nothing but incredibly lazy writing by someone who has obviously never written anything before in their life. Even when writing erotica and porn, there is a right way to write it so that it sounds good, and a wrong way. A good editor would never have let this be published, and for good reason. It’s just plain horrible writing, lazy, the work of someone who obviously doesn’t care about the art of writing or their reputation as a career writer. It is just drivel, a vomit of words onto the page with no real plot line, no writing style, and no real care as to how the story and characters are presented.

And herein lays the problem with the self-pubbing industry. More and more people are hitting the ‘publish’ button on Amazon on the first thing they slap down on their computers and call it a novel. It’s not going through professional editors, if they bother to send it to any type of editor at all. Most self-pubbed authors are just doing it themselves or having friends, family, or a few beta readers with absolutely no credentials as editors look through and try to catch mistakes. It results in the above drivel, badly written ‘erotica’ and other stories that read like D-rated porn movies.

As a writer, I take great pride in my work. I spend months cultivating plotlines and characters, bringing them to life in my own mind before committing them to paper. I want to be taken seriously as a professional writer, which means that I take the extra time and the extra expense to produce a quality product the first time around. If you think you can bypass this and ‘save up’ to buy professional editing services once you ‘sell a few books,’ then consider this: readers RARELY re-read a novel, and if they do, it is usually only once. There are simply too many new books being produced that they want to read to go back to anything but a super-favorite novel and read it a second time. With that said, the chances of a reader going back and re-reading an indie published novel that has had the grammatical errors ‘fixed’ after they have purchased the book is virtually non-existent. Having a quality product for them the first time can mean the difference between the reader either returning the book/leaving a bad review, and them recommending the book to fellow readers. In addition, publishing a poor quality novel can stay with you for years, resulting in loss of readers who were unimpressed with your first work and refuse to take a chance on you producing better quality writing at a later date.

In the literary world, there really is NOT a second chance to make a first impression. So you have to ask yourself, is producing sub-par books something you really want to be known for as a writer? Is it worth your reputation as a professional or worth risking losing potential readers? In the end, no one, not even Anne Rice, can risk producing anything but the very best, quality work possible. Bottom line, if you expect to be treated like a professional writer, then you must produce and sell a professional quality piece. Otherwise, that imperfection could very well stay with you through the entirety of your writing career, a testiment to either your Success, or your Failure.

Jun 12 2014

The Publishing House Dance – When to Sign, When to Run

In the past eighteen months or so I have been approached by more than two dozen ‘publishing houses’ asking about my work with offers of publishing contracts. Most of the houses have been small, which I don’t mind, but I have turned all of them down. Why? Because not a single one of them was a legitimate publishing house.

I know what you are thinking. How do you know? What makes you such an expert? I know because I started trying to get published with mainstream publishers approximately twenty-five years ago. I spent years researching the industry, learning the big houses’ rules, regulations, submission guidelines, and how they operate. Since I spent so many years learning all about submitting to traditional publishing houses that were listed in the Writer’s Marketplace, it is no surprise that when I started getting offers from small houses, I could easily spot those who were legitimate from the ones who were not. In today’s article, I will share some of my knowledge with fellow authors in hopes that it will keep them from being parted with your hard earned money.

First, let it be said that scam artists and vanity publishers prey on authors who are so desperate to see their books in publication that they will gladly hand over vast amounts of money and sign any contract, no matter how ridiculous, just to make their dream a reality. Please don’t be offended by that statement. I am just as desperate to be published as any other author, which is why I chose to become independently published. The difference between me and authors fresh to the publishing world is that I have been in the industry for so long that I know what I am doing, I know how to spot scams, and I refuse to be taken in by them. I hope that if fellow authors take away anything from this article, it is that you do NOT have to sign the first contract that is tossed your way, you do NOT have to settle, and you do NOT have to give in to these scammers or sign your rights away to small publishing houses in order to make your dreams of being a published author a reality.

So what red flags should an author look for when considering possible publishing houses? What separates the legitimate houses from the fakers out there just looking to make a few bucks off of us? What are the differences between large publishing houses that can back up their authors with marketing budgets and those small houses that cannot? Below, I highlight the most obvious flaws that make faker companies and tiny publishing houses stand out like a sore thumb.

One – a legitimate publisher will NOT ask you for money, EVER. As a first time published author, they most likely won’t offer you any type of advancement until they have ‘recouped’ their financial expenditures on the business deal. The total number of copies you need to sell prior to seeing royalties will vary depending on the amount of money the publisher spends to produce and market your work, so be sure to discuss this up front prior to signing any contracts.

Companies that require you to pay any type of retainer fee, marketing fees, publishing fees, or the like are not legitimate publishers, regardless of their excuses and explanations as to why they ‘MUST’ ask for this upfront cost. Companies that request any type of upfront payment are either vanity presses that are charging you to publish your work, or scam artists looking to make a few quick bucks. This is not how legitimate publishing houses work, even small ones. They recoup their marketing and production expenditures from the sales of your work, which means that the only way they are going to make any money is if they are actively marketing and promoting your work. Basically, they make money when YOU make money, so there is a high incentive to at least get your books onto shelves and in front of readers.

Think of the publishing house as an investor. If you planned to start up a company, you would ask investors to invest THEIR money to help fund the business in return for stock in the company, or royalties paid out over time as the company grows and becomes more successful. Investors do not expect you to front the entire cost to start the company, that’s why they are called investors. They are investing THEIR money in hopes that they will receive more money in the long run from a profitable business. Publishers are your investors. They are using THEIR money to fund the business (your books and name brand) in hopes that their investment will pay off with more money received from a profitable venture.

Two – a legitimate publisher will have a marketing plan in place for your books that includes something IN ADDITION TO posting about the book on Facebook, publishing the book through Amazon, and posting buy-it links on their own website. The plan should include getting your books onto bookshelves of major book retailers nationwide, or, at the very least, small independent book stores in your general area. Again, discuss the marketing plan prior to signing any type of contract. If the publisher only plans to publish through Amazon and B&N, then you need to look very closely at their marketing plan. You can publish to these sites on your own and not have to pay out any of the royalties to a publisher. However, if they have a good marketing plan that includes spending money on advertisements that will show up on high profile/high traffic sites, then it could be a good trade off to sacrifice part of your royalties to them in exchange for them using advertising dollars to get your works out to the masses.

In addition, a legitimate publisher should have no problems going into detail regarding their marketing plan. Keep in mind that the plan will most likely be broadly stated until contracts are signed and a plan is drawn up for your specific work and market. However, the publisher should already have some type of marketing and business plan in place, so they should be able to give you a broad scope of what their marketing plans look like for any given book. At the very least, they should be able to share a marketing plan they have drawn up for another author.

Three – a legitimate publisher will NOT require you to sign over your copyrights. The contract generally gives them exclusive PRINTING RIGHTS to your work for a specific amount of time, but it should NEVER require you to give them COPYRIGHTS. You will want to look hard at the specified time frame that they retain these exclusive print rights and negotiate this wisely. You do not want them to hold the exclusive print rights for an extended period of time in the event that the work does not do well through them.

Consider this: your book fails with them and you signed a contract that gives them exclusive printing rights for 10 years. That means that until those 10 years are up, you cannot take the work to another publisher in hopes that it will do better with a new house and marketing plan. The last thing you want is for a publisher to hold print rights for so long that you have to scrap the work completely, especially if you feel that there is a market for it. You also do not want to have to take them to court to get your rights back or buy yourself out of an expensive contract. Negotiate this upfront to alleviate any possible pains that could arise in the future.

Four – legitimate publishers have STANDARDS and submission GUIDELINES while vanity presses, fake/scam companies, and other small houses do not. That is to say, legitimate publishing houses have very specific types of genres that they will publish. Vanity presses and other smaller houses and scammers will take on any genre from any author in any form, regardless of how badly written, poorly edited, or the content of the work.

If you have ever visited a larger publishing house’s website, like one of the Big Six, you will find a link to their submission guidelines page. Many publishers will no longer take on authors directly and will only communicate with literary agents. Most publishers rarely accept unsolicited manuscripts. In other words, you cannot just submit a sample of your work for consideration. Instead, you or your agent would have to submit a proposal which would include a query letter, a blurb, and a synopsis of the story. If the editor is interested, they will then request a sample from you or your literary agent. The submission guidelines will also outline what types of genres they will accept, how they want samples formatted, what types of files they will accept when submitting samples, even what to include on query letters. Most publishers also will not consider samples that have not been properly edited by a professional editor.

Fake publishers, vanity presses, and tiny houses rarely have any such guidelines. They will often approach authors out of the blue, will publish any genre including those taboo genres such as erotica that most reputable houses will not publish, and do not care about editing and formatting. Most of the houses I have been approached by have told me up front that they do not do any editing and that it was left up to me to hire a professional editor to clean up the manuscript. Otherwise, it would be published “as is,” meaning that however I submitted it to them was the way it would be uploaded to Amazon and printed out for any print copies that were being produced. They are not generally concerned by the quality of the product, only gathering up as much content from authors as possible and publishing through Amazon so they can collect a percentage of the royalties earned.

Legitimate publishers will NOT do this and they will NOT accept works that are unedited. Not even Anne Rice can get away with submitting a pile of unedited garbage to Random House, so if you have submitted work to a ‘publisher’ that you know is riddled with editing errors and they still agree to publish it, it’s not because you are a great writer or that they think you have ‘raw’ talent, it’s because they think they can sucker you out of money down the road. A true measure of the publisher is to purchase a few of the books that they have published and have an editor go through them. If the editor comes back with tons of errors, then you pretty much have your answer as to the quality of work they produce. And if you are giving serious consideration to signing on with them anyway, then you need to ask yourself if you actually want your name and your brand associated with such shoddy work. As an author, your reputation is everything. You do not want the world’s first encounter with your work to be anything less than absolutely stellar. Believe me, readers WILL remember, and they will review, and they will blog and share it with the entire world. You want to make certain that the work being produced will stand up to scrutiny by even the most hard-to-please critics.

Five – legitimate publishing houses only publish approximately 1% of all submissions they receive each year. Phony publishers and vanity presses will publish ANYONE, at ANYTIME, regardless of genre, content, strength of plotline, or writing ability. Legitimate publishers are very selective in signing on new authors, phony houses and small houses that are just getting started hand out contracts like candy. Again, you have to ask yourself if being published by any one calling themselves a publisher is really worth sacrificing your reputation as a writer who produces quality work. Do you want to be known as a professional writer, or have readers associate your name with work that is riddled with editing mistakes and typographical errors?

Six – when you are a freshly signed author, neither traditional houses nor phony/faker/small/vanity publishers are going to spend a lot of marketing dollars on you. That is not to say that a real publishing house will not have some type of marketing/business plan in place, but don’t expect them to start footing the bill to send you to author events or book signings. Most authors, even those that are well known, have to pay for such events out of their own pockets. Once you have proven that your work has marketing potential, however, a traditional publisher will begin spending more and more marketing dollars to get your works out to the masses. Small houses rarely have any type of marketing plan and expenditures aside from making posts on FB and their website, and of course scammers will never spend any of their ill-gotten gain on marketing anything but their scam.

Seven – legitimate houses are more than willing to answer questions and give details, vanity presses and scam artists will not answer questions directly, they try to avert your questions by changing the subject or ignore your questions altogether. Sometimes they will try to pressure you into signing contracts by telling you that their offer is for a very limited time, or make you think that you are doing something wrong by asking questions. I’ve had some of these houses tell me that if I was that worried about being scammed then they would just have to retract their offer (they didn’t have to, I politely told them that if they were that offended by me asking questions then I didn’t think we would be a good fit for each other).

Even if they are a legitimate publisher and they do not have time to answer your questions to your satisfaction, then you might want to consider going another route. I had contacted a very well-to-do publisher because I did not see their submission guidelines on their website. I sent a very short inquiry into the types of genres they accepted. What I got back was a very unprofessional “Just look at our site.” They could not take the time out to simply point me to a link, so what did that say about their work ethic? If they can’t be bothered to answer a simple question, then would they half-ass the marketing ventures for my books as well? Needless to say, I marked them off my list post haste and went on to the next publisher on my list.

Perhaps the best advice that can be given is the tried and true “when in doubt, do without” or in the case of publishing houses “when in doubt, do not sign.” Always trust your gut instinct, and if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Don’t think that you have to sign the first contract that comes your way, don’t think that you have to settle, and don’t sell yourself short. Ask questions, ask for sample contracts and sample marketing plans, engage other writers and ask for advice. If you have any doubts whatsoever, then do yourself the best favor you can and simply walk away. Take it from those of us who have been there and done that. Handing over your hard earned cash to scammers and signing away your copyrights just isn’t worth it in the long run.

Jun 10 2014

THE FRIEND – New Erotic Horror Release

Brand new erotic horror short from Nicola Chey Matthews released 6/8/14

BLURB: Nikki only wanted one thing out of life, and that was Noely. Tonight, would all her dreams come true, or would the high school dope head ruin all chances of her finally hooking up with the hunk she had dreamed about her whole high school life? After all, with friends like Deke, who needed enemies?

Readers are calling this short “a sweet, coming-of-age romance gone horrible, horribly wrong.”

Jun 9 2014

Why Blog Book Tours Fail Most Authors

 

In today’s digital book world, the tired old book tour has been replaced with the digital blog book tour where authors will “travel” from blog to blog doing interviews, blog take overs, guest blog articles, and also have their latest book/story reviewed by blogs. Depending on what type of tour you are doing, how many blogs you plan to hit and the length of time you will ‘traveling,’ a blog tour of just a few blogs over the course of a month can create hours of work and dozens of headaches. And with the amount of SPAs (self-published authors) hitting the publication scene each day, there simply are not enough book bloggers and reviewers to go around. This has created a major problem for authors who are looking to get bloggers to sign on for their blog tours. Bloggers have become so overwhelmed with the requests for reviews and tour stops that many bloggers have to turn down more and more authors. The whole overabundance of authors and books has created the perfect formula for blog tours to fail for most authors.

 

There are many reasons why blog book tours fail. Here, I will cover my own experiences, why the tours failed, and the major problems with blog tours and why they fail for 99% of authors.

 

Book tour blogs and book review blogs do NOT attract readers, they only attract writers, and if you are not being seen by readers, then you are wasting your time. The first obvious flaw of doing blog book tours is that the only blogs who are going to be willing to sign on for the tour are blogs who routinely host these types of tours, who do book reviews, cover reveals, and basically cater to promoting authors. Blogs of this type rarely attract anything but other writers, not readers. Why? Because these blogs are owned by people who do this in their spare time for nothing more than a free copy of a book and little else. They are not professionals, they are not getting paid to do this, and are basically doing it to keep a steady stream of free books coming to them. Their blog consists of little else than a quick review and a cover reveal with no real quality content. The reviews are almost always good because in order to keep their free books coming, they cannot do anything to get on the bad sides of authors, so they rarely attract readers because readers quickly realize the blog exists ONLY to promote SPAs and that the reviews are very biased to keep writers happy. So if you are not being promoted on sites that cater to readers, then you are defeating the whole purpose of doing a blog tour.

 

So exactly which types of blogs do you want promoting your work? First, you want blogs that cater to readers, not writers. Most blogs that cater to readers are going to be those who do book reviews of works that they purchased on their own and who give honest reviews of the work. Blogs who do this rarely do review requests, and if they do accept your review request, then you better BE PREPARED for BRUTAL HONESTY. Those few blogs who attract readers are not going to baby your ego and they do not take kindly to authors who demand nothing less than a 4 star review.

 

These types of blogs attract readers because they give HONEST reviews, not paid endorsements for authors. It is why their opinion of your work is worth 500 fake reviews by bloggers who agreed to give you a glowing review in exchange for a free copy of your book. When these types of blogs, online magazines and other sites review your work, it is an honor and can make or break your career. If you are going to ask for reviews, your best bet is get it in front of one or two bloggers that attract a large number of readers each day. Otherwise, you will discover a blog post about your book drowning on a blog with 15 to 20 other posts done that same day, all about other authors, their books, their reviews, and their cover reveals.

 

Blog tours that are filled with blogs ‘reviewing’ your book can create several dozen 4 and 5 star reviews fresh out of the gate, but readers have learned to spot these types of paid/fake reviews and may not be willing to read your work because of it. With so many authors paying for reviews by either out right buying them or trading books for reviews, more and more readers are beginning to boycott any author who actively engages in trading books for reviews to ANYONE. Readers want unbiased reviews by other readers, and authors that are seen constantly being reviewed by review blog sites are soon blacklisted by readers. So while you may be racking up on paid reviews, your sales and thus your rankings on Amazon will plummet because of it.

 

In essence, unless your work is being seen by the right high traffic, high profile blogs that are well respected and attracting tons of reader traffic, you are wasting valuable time and energy on other blogs. Instead of spending months of coordinating blogs and dates, begging bloggers to review your work, and creating tour packets and sign up sheets, your time would be better spent researching online magazines and high profile review blogs and approaching those sites with requests to review your work. Small time blogs with low traffic cannot help promote your work and will not further your writing career. However, the correct high profile and high traffic websites CAN help get the word out about your book.

 

In writing, as in any business, you must surround yourself with the correct type and quality of professionals. If you were a musician, you couldn’t spend all your time hanging out with other unsigned musicians and expect to get a record deal, so why would you spend your time getting your work reviewed by bloggers who can’t connect you to publishers and other readers? It’s the same principle, yet authors seem to have a hard time grasping this concept. STOP wasting time with low profile bloggers who are only reviewing free copies of books during their spare time and START looking for high profile bloggers who do this for a living. If your work isn’t being reviewed by someone who can help you, then you are doing yourself a great injustice by not striving to connect with those who can help you further your career.