it is official! X-Isle United Press has set the release date of Immortal Sins to be November 9th, 2014.
The Blog Review Tour officially kicked off a week ago, but this time we are not putting a cap on how many bloggers can sign up. If you have a blog and would be interested in receiving a FREE review copy of Immortal Sins, please visit the Immortal Sins Review Blog Tour Sign-Up Form.
Back in 2005 I began researching the self-publishing industry. I spent more than 15 years trying to get some of my first books published through traditional publishing companies. I racked up more rejection letters than I can count, had more than my fair share of well-meaning editors tell me that I might want to rethink a career as a writer, and for good reason. The first three novels that I wrote were utter crap, and editors were not afraid to tell me as much. I’ve had my soul crushed on numerous occasions, but through it all I kept writing, because I knew that the only way that I was going to improve as a writer was to practice the skill.
And so I did practice. I not only wrote three novels before I turned 25, but I also wrote countless term papers, an endless chain of book reports and composition papers for high schoolers and college goers alike. I joined several RPGs back in 2004 and, after nearly a decade of only scribbling down a few notes and trying desperately to breathe life back into those first few horrendous books of mine, books that I finally realized there was absolutely no hope for, I once again found myself enjoying the art of writing. At the urging of several thousand readers on my social networking page, I began researching self-publishing, and after two years of reading everything that I could on the subject and weighing the pros and cons, in 2008 I decided that I would at least give it a try.
Back then there were only a very small number of self-published authors and only a handful of true self-publishing venues to choose from. Most people had never heard of the phrase “print-on-demand,” much less knew what it meant or how it worked to an author’s advantage. And self-publishing back then was not the easy “upload and click publish” walk-through-the-park that it is today. It was old-school publishing, where everything had to be formatted perfectly in order for your file to be accepted by the POD. You didn’t have a few dozen fonts to choose from, the POD companies only accepted about 3 fonts and you had to spend days reading through forums and self-help PDF files buried on their sites to figure out what those few acceptable fonts were and how to embed them into your file. You had to learn about the different sizes of books, what mirror margins were, what a gutter was, and what it meant for your cover art to “bleed” when creating the file. It could take you weeks of playing around with the formatting of the file before you finally got the company to accept the file, and then if there was anything wrong once the file was converted, you had to delete the file and start all over again. It was torture. These days all it means to be an author is that you figured out how to upload a WORD file and stock photo to Amazon. When I first started, you actually had to learn how to format the entire interior of the file before you could upload it.
So all the annoyances aside of those early days into the indie publishing realm aside, to boost sales I also posted excerpts of my stories and novels on an adult site. I did that for about six years, slowly building up a reader base of several million readers. Towards the end, around 2012 or so, the site was being trolled so badly that I simply could not stomach going to the site. All the little wannabe writers had learned to game the system, figured out how to create an unlimited number of accounts and up-vote their works to the point where any author who wasn’t willing to stoop to their levels was quickly buried beneath all the utter shit writings that polluted the story site. Needless to say, I was not one of the authors who was willing to stoop to their levels. So I left the site, disgusted that the owners of the site allowed such behavior to go unchecked.
I am a damn good writer because I have spent more than 3 DECADES honing my skill. I have been ripped apart by some of the best editors and publishing houses out there, been rejected by all the major players and hundreds of the minors as well. I took their harsh criticism with a smile on my face and a thank you on my lips, listened to their advice, and spent years honing my skills and writing style. I have EARNED my right as a legitimate author through decades of practice, which is why it pisses me to no end to see my facebook list filled with wannabe writers who cannot string a complex sentence together without leaving out the proper punctuation and misspelling half the words in the damn sentence. I am tired of these people whining and complaining about readers who leave them bad reviews. If you can’t handle the criticism, then don’t publish. It’s as simple as that. Don’t whine, don’t complain, and don’t send your damn little facebook fuck-buddies to harass the reader because you would rather spend your time and energy trying to figure out a way to screw more unsuspecting readers out of their hard-earned money than improve your skills as a writer. That is not fair to the readers nor to the other writers who actually give a damn about their reputation as a writer and put forth a whole hell of a lot of effort to provide their readers with the absolute best product they can write.
I am fed up with “Amazon bestselling author” being a new catch-phrase that these idiot writers keep using to screw readers out of a few bucks. And I cannot even begin to tell you how revolting it is to be put into the same category as these people. I take pride in my work, I do dozens upon dozens of rewrites and edits, my work goes through as many as 6 professional editors before it goes up for publication, and about once a year I send items that have already been published BACK to editors to fine-tune them even more. I am a professional writer, I produce a professional piece of work, but these days, when you one-click that indie book, chances are you are getting little more than a pile of word-vomit from someone who slapped down the first thing that came to their minds and then uploaded it to Amazon.
But my unhappiness with FaceBook and the hordes of first-time writers isn’t my only gripe. Just like that site I used to post to, a huge chunk of the writers on my friends list have learned to game Amazon’s ranking system as well. They are creating multiple accounts to post fake reviews or having all their family and friends post fake reviews for them. I can name you more than a dozen websites where you can buy a scripted review for a few bucks. There are dozens of so-called ‘review’ groups on FB alone where people will sign up and post any review the author wants on Amazon in exchange for a free copy of said book. And if you don’t want to get blacklisted from the group, you had better NOT post anything less than the required minimum star rating that the authors demand. The sheer amount of groups and websites that have sprung up that allows authors to fake their way to a high-ranking on Amazon is utterly disgusting. And readers are falling for it, bad writing and all. Let’s face it, it doesn’t matter HOW much spit and polish you put on a turd because, at the end of the day, it’s still a turd. And there are now so many turds floating around Amazon that the entire site has become nothing more than a giant sewer filled to the top with one piece of word-vomit novel after another.
I’ve also had my fill with so many writers having pity-parties every few days. I’ve had one hell of a difficult childhood filled with physical, emotional, and psychological abuse. But you don’t see me posting about it on FB to drum up a few sympathy sales. And just because I write steamy books and shorts doesn’t mean I have to cyber with half my friends list and then wonder why my significant other left me. I’ve seen some writers on FB act like bigger whores than prostitutes on the side of a New York street corner. Acting like a douche-bag and lying to get more readers isn’t the right way to get known as a writer. What it WILL do is cause you to lose the support of those decent writers who value their reputation as a quality writer who strives to only put forth their absolute best work.
So I decided to make a change. Just like I cut out that other writing site from my life, I am now cutting out all the negativity from my FB life as well. I simply cannot sit by and keep biting my tongue any time I see one of these truly horrific writers post a book teaser filled with mistakes. I am not going to keep suppressing my sheer disgust with writers who keep claiming to be BEST SELLERS when their ranking is lower than mine and their name has never ONCE hit the ‘Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store’ list on Amazon. I am no longer going to literally pull my hair out whenever I see one particularly bad writer whore it up on Amazon and see his little harem giggle themselves silly whenever he starts talking about doing a live naked chat with his readers. I have tried ignoring these sorry excuses for writers, I have managed to NOT tell their readers that if they seriously think these are good books than they are flaming morons because honestly, it isn’t the readers’ fault. They have been conditioned to think that if there are dozens of positive reviews sitting on a book and the same dozen fake FB accounts keeps posting stupid-ass comments like “Yesss! That was soooo hot!” to such utter shit as “My dick would like to say hello to her kitty” then this author and his work MUST be good and popular, right?
WRONG!! FUCKING WRONG!! It doesn’t make it the book good or the writer a good writer just because you have a few dozen “people” talking about it anymore than it made “50 Shades” or “Twilight” good books. It’s the complex social behavior behind it that made everyone flock to it, the ‘herd mentality’ if you will. When you are put into a group where everyone is saying the same thing, you don’t want to be that one person who doesn’t agree for fear of rejection by the group, so you go along with it. Same thing is happening with these wannabe writers, just like it did with “50 Shades” and ‘Twilight.” They have their little clique filled with who are more than willing to harass the fuck out of anyone who doesn’t agree with them.
As a writer, as much as I would LOVE to tell these idiots how fucking bad they are as writers and that they really should pull that shit down from Amazon before they embarrass themselves further, I simply can’t BECAUSE of the herd mentality. So I have done the next best thing. As of today, I have started removing a LOT of these so-called authors from my friends list. I figure if I cannot support them as a writer then there is no need to have them on my friends list. I do NOT want to stoop to their level to make sales. I refuse to buy, beg, or trade reviews, I will not start posting half-naked pics of myself online and cyber-sexing with my readers in the comments section of my Fb posts, and I will not claim to be a best-selling author just to try to convince readers that they should buy my books.
What I will say is that 30 years of writing has made me a decent author, that I pride myself on producing the absolute best story that I can. I won’t say that my writing style and storylines are for everyone, but there is a reason why I have less than a 1% return rate on my books, and it’s not because I slapped up some word porn onto Amazon and then lied to my FB friends about being a best-selling author. I’ve tried mentoring these young ‘writers’ and have basically had them spit in my face. If you cannot be bothered to at least try to learn and practice your craft and show respect for those of us who have been in the business way longer than you have, then I simply cannot support you any longer. And it’s not because I think I am such a better writer, it’s because I have come to expect so much more from myself and other professional authors.
When it comes to reading, our mind naturally fills in missing words, doesn’t trip up on wrong-word usage, and will oftentimes auto-correct spelling so that minor flaws and typos are rarely noticed, especially by the average reader. However, as writers, and especially those of us who are independently published, we must take on the role of editor and proofreader once the rough draft of our masterpiece is finished. When it comes to self-editing our own work, we all wear the ‘beer goggles’ that makes finding our own mistakes even tougher than usual. Our minds are not only auto-correcting due to the way our brains are hard-wired, but after the sixth or seventh time of proofreading the same passage, our ability to detect inaccuracies becomes even more diminished from sheer repetition.
So what is an aspiring writer to do when it comes to self-editing? Of course, you should always hire a professional editor to do final edits and checks, especially if you are independently publishing. However, as many editors charge not only by the length of the finished piece but also by amount of work that goes into fixing errors, submitting a piece that is as error-free as possible will not only ease the cost to your pocket-book, it will also ensure that the final product will be as neat and typo-free as possible.
When deciding to tackle the all-important step of self-editing, you will find that each writer’s approach to the task will be as varied as their writing styles and genres. There really is no right or wrong when it comes to self-editing. The best advice will be to develop a plan of action and then carry it out, find out what works best for you, and stick with it. Below I outline my own personal system of conquering this all-important step.
1. The once-over, just for fun – To begin with, I will read over my story/novel in its entirety, just for fun, doing brief edits to fix grammatical mistakes, typos, and story-flow. These are the obvious flaws, the ones that are so bad that they just jump out at the reader. I don’t do heavy edits or massive re-writes, but I do take notes so that I can come back to a section to completely re-vamp if necessary.
2. The time consumer, part 1 – On my second run, I go through the story line by line, paragraph by paragraph. I start out reading each line of a paragraph, looking for typos, wrong-word usage, missing words, and grammatical errors, as well as light re-writes. I do this for each line of a single paragraph. Once I go through each line, I re-read the paragraph for story-flow for JUST that paragraph. I go through the entire story this way, line for line by each paragraph until I have edited the entire manuscript for typographical and grammatical errors. This takes the longest amount of time and can get very tedious. However, I have discovered that by breaking it down like this, finding and correcting typos and grammatical errors becomes much easier.
3. The time consumer, part 2 – The Rewrite Sessions – I go through the entire story from beginning to end, this time doing all the massive rewrites taken from my notes from the first once over. I am careful to note where the rewrites start and where they finish, so once the rewrite on a specific section in the book is complete, I will go back through that whole section line by line, paragraph by paragraph, to edit for typos and grammatical errors. Once I have edited just that specific section for errors, I read through it for story-flow and the overall feel. I continue on in this fashion, doing the rewrites and editing those sections until I have finished all rewrites and edits for each of the sections.
4. The final read – The final edits are done by once again reading through the entire book for fun, checking for story-flow, inconsistencies, and overall feel, as well as any wayward typos or grammatical errors. Anytime I change something major, I will go back and do a final read through, so I can end up doing several final runs before I am comfortable with the end result and ready to send it off to my editor.
Many years ago, I came across a conversation between a few trade published authors who kept referring to authors who had succumbed to the “Special Snowflake” mentality. I took great offense at a lot of what they were saying because, at the time, I was still a naïve writer who thought much the same way as the rest of the writing world.
Then the self-publishing disaster hit the publishing world, and I slowly began to see what those veteran authors were referring to all those years ago. I wrote an article about this several years back, but I feel the need to revamp the above statement. Most people are going to hate me for this, but it’s time that all those Amazon wannabes get a good dose of reality and pull their heads out of their collective asses. It’s time to stop deluding yourself and go take your meds. Seriously. You. ARE NOT. a special. Snowflake.
Trade publishers release approximately 300K books a year. Indie publishers produce approximately twice that many. The fact that you wrote a book is about as rare as someone buying a cup of coffee at some point in their lives. The fact that you managed to type out a few See Jane Run sentences on your computer, slap up a generic stock photo on it and managed to figure out how to upload it to Amazon does not make you interesting and it sure as hell doesn’t make you a professional writer. These days, nearly one in three people have now published a book on their memoirs, thoughts on parenting, aging, the tacky Fifty Shades knock off. There is absolutely ZERO barriers to becoming a published author these days. If you can manage to string sentences together, no matter how grammatically incorrect, presto, you’re an author. So again, You. Are NOT. Special. So get over it.
Being a writer is hard; being a successful writer is even harder. The sooner you realize these truths and accept them and start actually working at becoming a better writer, the sooner you will find yourself amassing actual readers and fans with the real reviews and the success that goes along with it.
1. Don’t quit your day job.
Whether you want to admit it or not, being a writer is a lot of work. And I do mean a LOT. OF FREAKIN’. WORK. Most writers won’t ever make enough money to support themselves or their families by pounding out novels. And those few that do usually can do so only because they are married with a spouse who works a steady Evil Day Job (EDJ) making enough money so that their writer spouse can keep writing full time.
Writers who have children and house notes and car notes and utility bills rarely make enough through writing on a continued basis to afford to write full time. Anyone telling you anything different is full of shit, period. Even bestselling authors aren’t rich by any stretch of the imagination. They don’t get to live in multi-million dollar houses and drive cars that cost more than most people’s annual salaries.
Not even when you manage to hit the NYT Bestseller list are you going to be rolling in the dough. Even if you managed to get an advancement from your trade publisher, your agent is going to take a chunk of that, followed by the IRS. Your publisher, if you are lucky enough to have been trade pubbed, will not start paying out royalties until your novel advancement has earned out, which could take years, if it happens at all.
Making enough to support yourself is rare, making enough to support entire families for years on end is even rarer, and hitting that multi-million dollar book deal is the rarest of all. Sorry to bust your bubble, but that’s just the way the business actually works. The rare author who hits it big is the exception to the rule, not the norm. The sooner you accept that success as a writer doesn’t always mean being a multi-million dollar NYT Bestseller with fans hanging on your every word, the happier you will be.
2. You are not the next Stephenie Meyer, Anne Rice, J.K. Rowling, V.C. Andrews, E.L. James, Stephen King…..
You. Are. NOT. Again, stop deluding yourself and go take your meds. Authors of any caliber got that way because they worked their butts off for years honing their craft, learning the industry, promoting the hell out of themselves when no one else would, and never took ‘no’ for an answer. In other words, THEY. DID. a LOT. of freakin’. WORK.
Success isn’t just handed to successful writers, and they certainly didn’t become successful by slapping up unedited garbage on Amazon and claiming it to be the best damn novel ever written. They did not become successful by then begging everyone and their brother to leave a bunch of fake reviews on GoodReads in a badly thought-out marketing plan to delude readers into buying their junk novels. And if your sole reason behind doing so is an attempt to cash in on the whole self-pubbing craze in an effort to get a chunk of the proverbial pie, then the joke is on you. When you are competing with THAT many people and THAT many new books each day, the slices of the pie continue to get smaller and smaller with each new book that hits the marketplace. When you are producing less than professional quality work, all you are really doing in the end is pissing off readers who were expecting a professional grade book but ended up getting sub-par drivel.
3. You are not a special snowflake. Deal with it.
If you enter into the industry as an unpublished writer who thinks that you are the absolute best, most awesome writer ever and have not produced the absolute best, most professional and awesome book ever, then don’t expect readers, and especially other seasoned authors, to flock to your side singing your praises. Sorry, it’s not going to happen. You are not a better writer than everyone else. Chances are you are not nearly as good as those writers out there who have spent years honing their craft. And you certainly aren’t better than those big-name authors who have earned the right to think they are all that. You. Are. NOT. Get over yourself. It’s annoying.
It simply amazes me at the sheer number of first-time writers out there who hit Amazon and FB every day thinking they are the bomb when it comes to writing, that they are the know-it-all of everything publishing and writing. They go around spamming FB and every group they can get into, singing their own praises and harassing anyone who dares to call them out on how bad their precious novel is, even though they have never even bothered to print the damn thing out and edit it or hire someone who knows what they are doing because they are simply. Just. That. GOOD.
Well, sorry to break it to you Mr. Joe-Blow, but if you don’t know your to/too/two or your it’s/its from your ass, and the punctuation police needs to come make a house arrest, then you need to sit down, shut up, and get to work on learning those basics before you start trying to convince others that you know what you are doing.
And you think you don’t need an editor? Pppffftttt, well think again, darlin’. Even I, someone with over thirty years of writing experience and a former editor KNOWS I need a professional editor. Anne Rice KNOWS she needs an editor. Stephenie Meyer? Editor. If you are going to be a writing diva right out of the gate who thinks the publishing world owes you something because your writing is pure gold then, man, you are SCREWED.
4. You are on your own.
It doesn’t matter if you are signed with a trade pub, a small house, or if you are 100% indie published, You. Are. On. Your. Own. Sorry to break it to you, but contrary to what you see in the movies or on Oprah, not even the big publishers are going to spend tons of marketing dollars on an author until they prove to the company through numerous bestsellers that they are golden. Only then, once you have proven yourself to be a genuine cash cow, will the company start paying out anything to promote your work. You cannot just turn in a manuscript or push publish on Amazon and think you are done. Writing the book is the easy part. Once it has hit the proverbial shelves, you will have to promote, network, market, and build your author brand on your own.
5. It’s a business. Start treating it like one.
If you are writing just for the fun of it and don’t care enough about the work, or your reputation as a professional writer, to bother to produce a quality product, then stop clogging up the marketplace and move aside for those of us who actually give a damn and want to make a living at it. If you don’t care enough to bother to even get a professional editor, then go slap your half-assed crap up onto a free site and stop fucking up the industry for the rest of us who actually work hard at producing a quality piece of work for our readers. Yeah, I said. Other authors have said, and I know it won’t win me any awards with other writers, but quite frankly, it’s the truth.
If you don’t want to put forth the work to hire a pro editor and market your work with sound marketing plans instead of under-handed gaming of the Amazon rankings, then why on God’s green Earth are you slapping up that crap on Amazon and wasting valuable space as well as turning readers against SPAs? You are making it harder for those of us who DO want to make a living at this profession. You’re like the really bad singer who wants it so badly but never bothered to take a damn singing lesson. There are real writers out there with real talent who don’t mind busting their asses to write quality work and spend the time, energy, and money it takes to hire professionals to get it right the first time. If all you are looking for is someone to stroke your ego, then go post your D-rated porn flicks onto an adult site and get. The Fuck. Out. Of. The. Way. Some of us don’t mind the hard work involved in producing well-crafted, polished books.
I am not writing this to try to discourage anyone from not going for their dreams or stop them from becoming successful. I’m writing this to lay out the cold, hard truth of the industry. Being a writer is a lot of hard, never-ending work. It takes practice to become a good writer, it takes time to hone your skills, and it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to build your brand. It is not for those who are looking to score a few quick bucks by gaming the Amazon system or for those who are not willing to put forth the time and effort it requires to produce a quality book. Those who think they are so good that they refuse to acknowledge the truth of the industry or refuse to take the advice and wisdom of seasoned writers will not succeed. Those who think they are so good that they do not need to edit or rewrite their books and insist upon publishing something on Amazon that they deem ‘good enough’ will not succeed. If you are truly serious about making it as a writer, then you will need to humble yourself, spend the time it takes to hone your craft, learn the industry, and be prepared to work like you have never worked before. Only then will you truly be successful as a professional writer.
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.
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