Publishing: How I Got Started

I’ve been asked often by other writers how I got started with publishing my books. Fair question. The publishing business is a complicated one, with many paths and many branches stemming from each of those paths. Now that Blogger has the option to add tabs to blogs, I thought I’d take advantage and use it to gather some of my thoughts and experiences with publishing. The main focus will be on indie publishing, since I am indie and haven’t been contracted. Maybe I can pull in some author friends who have been contracted to help fill that part of the information.

For the beginning of this series here on my blog (although I’ve been giving info to my On Our Own group for years), I’m starting with the few basics.

Back while I was working on Finishing Touches, which wasn’t my first written novel, but the first finished, I was asked what I planned to DO with all the writing I’d been working so hard on. Also a fair question. I didn’t start writing with the idea of publishing. I wrote because I’m a writer and that’s what I needed to do to be fulfilled. Did I want to publish? I wasn’t so sure about that one. It’s a scary thing, putting your work out there for readers to view and possibly tear apart. A novel is a part of a writer’s soul, at least mine are. Of course they are fiction, but not entirely. Much of who a writer is can be found better in her fiction than with normal activity. Did I want to share that much of me?

Not so much.

However, I loved my characters and my stories and yes, I decided I did want to share them. The question then was HOW?

I learned research methods in college, and I did plenty of it. That gave me a good general concept of where to start in publishing: research. So I did. In between writing and continuing to study the craft, I researched the publishing business. Now, I’m no expert. I don’t ever claim to be. But I did do my homework first and found I had three major options as to how to go about it:

1) Traditional

With traditional publishing research, which is where I started, I learned that not only would I have to do queries and synopses to mail out, that most don’t accept multiple submissions and can take weeks to months to answer before I could send it elsewhere if it was rejected, but I would also either have to search through to find the “right” publishers for what I wrote or find an agent to find the right publishers. Either one would take a good amount of time to find the match I needed. After that, it could take 2 years or so, IF my book was accepted, before it would actually come out. A good agent, as I found, is as hard to find as the right publisher. (And never, never PAY an agent! Legit agents make money when they sell your book, which is why they won’t accept you if they think they can’t sell you.)

Other than the time problem I had with this, I also had a problem with the “right” match issue. I don’t write to a commercially marketable genre, aka what’s “in” right now. I do my own blend of different genres and often they are very long. Most publishers will not accept more than 100,000 word manuscripts from new writers and many want no more than 60,000. Not a good match for me.

Also with traditional publishing, control is taken away: cover art is hired out with the author often having no say, how you market and where you sell is restricted, how long it takes to be available widely varies, and it’s always possible to get a contract only for the publisher not to bother ever putting it out. It’s happened. I didn’t want my hands tied. Not to mention the royalty rate is very low and many authors never get more than the advance. Advances are hard to come by these days. This method was not the right fit for me. So I moved along.

2) Self Publishing

Actual self publishing is when the author does all the setup herself, providing cover art (often purchased) and properly formatted text files, and then takes them to a printer (brick and morter or online), and pays all expenses to have them printed. It’s a risky way to publish, especially if your printer insists on you buying a large print run (sometimes 1,000 copies) that you then have to store. Doing this with an online printer is a safer way to go. Still, it’s an incredible amount of work and the author must BE a publisher, with publishing company name and the legalities that go with that.

3) Publishing Service

Many call them vanity publishers, but companies that will take your text files and assist you in producing and distributing your books save a lot of time for the indie author. They will also create covers for you, but I strongly suggest using your own, hiring that out to a good amateur artist if you don’t have the skills to do it yourself. Be careful doing it yourself. A good cover is very important. Also be careful about which company you choose, as there are a plethora of these places and many are more hurtful than helpful. Many, though, have good reputations, and this can be a viable way to get your feet in the publishing door.

I decided to go this way with my first books. Before I chose one, I did … more research. I compared fees with service, listened to what their authors had to say about them, skimmed message boards for good and bad of any I was interested in, and wound up choosing a small moderately priced company with all the services I wanted. It turns out that Infinity is now one of the top 2 recommended Publishing Services. Booklocker is also well recommended. Another that gets good comments from its authors is iUniverse. If you’ve gone this route with another company you’d recommend, please feel free to add it in the comments.

My latest book was done with an online printing/distribution service, using my own company and ISBNs. It meant taking the time to learn what I needed to know and do all the setup and the legal necessities, but if you have the time and ability to learn it, this is a good way to go.

There are benefits and drawbacks to each kind of publishing, and I’ll focus more on them in later posts. All of these will be gathered as links under my “Indie Publishing” heading at the top of my blog. Let me know if there’s anything in particular you’d like me to address.

As I said, I’m not an expert and cannot be liable for the way anyone uses this information. Do your own research! Be prepared before jumping into this business, because publishing IS a business, although writing is an art.
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My Don’t List: a Reader’s POV

I've been reading a LOT recently for review and for study. Since many of the things I see done not quite right enough tend to be repeated, I thought I'd gather my thoughts about what I've been seeing and share them. Not that I never make any of these mistakes, but focusing on them in other works helps me catch them in my own.
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My Don't List from a Reader's POV with a Writer's Experience

1) Don't be too repetitive. If you tell me once that the hero is downright sexy and the heroine is stunned by that, I got it. Once is enough. Move on to what else she discovers about him she likes or dislikes. Same with how bad the villain is. And don't tell us, just show us. The hero doesn't have to keep thinking how nasty he is. We'll see that in his actions.

2) This could be a style choice, but personally ... please don't head hop. I don't want to have to go back a paragraph or two and try to figure out who is in charge of telling the story at the moment because it flips without a break or notice. That throws me from the 'reality' of the action back to "oh, I'm reading a story the author is telling" and I like to stay completely emerged.

3) Don't let your characters address each other by their names too often. We don't do this in real life and having the same name repeated four times in two sentences is annoying. If two people are talking, we know they're talking to each other.

4) Don’t ramble. Write tight! This might sound funny coming from someone who writes literary-type romance and tends to add a lot in to the story, but when I read a book and think the first third of it was almost completely unnecessary, the story is much too loose. Work the pertinent details in throughout the story after the action has already started. A slow beginning is dangerous.

Make sure to go back and CUT what doesn’t need to be there. The reader shouldn’t think, “what was the point of telling me that?” Be ruthless. Keep all that pretty rambling (especially between characters) for yourself, but don’t pass it on to the reader … unless there’s a point to it. I do think there can be a point to it even though it doesn’t push along the story line, in some cases: humor to break tension, a piece of gorgeous description to create mood (if it’s not overdone), dialogue that reveals something about the character. Ask yourself if you would find interest in it as a reader, and be honest.

5) Adverbs! Don’t tell me she whispered quietly or walked loudly. A whisper tells me it’s quiet without the redundancy and by all means, say she stomped. It’s vivid. It’s strong. The difference between:

Max slowly walked over to the dog and carefully put a hand toward him.

and

Max crept to the dog and nudged a hand toward him.

is a huge difference. Adverbs aren’t taboo, but they should be replaced at least 95% of the time.

6) Tags. I don’t use tags in my own writing because too often they annoyed the heck out of me while I was reading. That may be too extreme, but it proves they can usually be replaced by action instead of the reader having to sort through a shuffle of unnecessary “he said, she said” phrasing. And again, don’t say “he said loudly” or even “he yelled while gulping his soda” – wouldn’t he choke that way? Yes, I’ve seen this kind of tag, the impossible feat.

7) Don’t use catch phrases. In romance, these would be “heaving bosoms” or “throbbing …” or many of the others I see overused. If you’re reading someone else’s work and notice phrases you use, stop and consider if they might be cliché and take them out. If you’re not reading within your own genre, you should. You’ll catch a lot of your own mistakes by noticing them in other works. Spending a few months stuffing yourself with books of your own genre is the best way to see if you’re using too many catch phrases that makes your story sound like everyone else’s. Even within the same genre, you don’t want that.

8) Don’t trust your editor to catch everything! From what I’ve seen in my months of stuffing myself with one genre, they won’t. Study writing rules on your own. Know grammar and vocabulary. The old saying, “if you want something done right” applies here.

9) Don’t trust yourself to catch everything, either. Before final send, get someone with writing knowledge and grammar ability and an eye for typos to go through it. Hopefully you can do this with a crit partner or fellow writer instead of paying someone. Don't use a friend or family member who is more interested in making you feel good than in telling the truth. That's not helpful. The truth might hurt, but it will advance your writing instead of keeping it stifled.

10) Don’t believe you’ll have the perfect manuscript with zero typos. I’ve yet to see one in any genre from any publisher. Readers easily overlook a few minor typos as long as the story is good and well-written. Don’t over-sweat the small stuff, but do try to catch everything you can.

Of course, you’ll never please all readers, but as an avid reader (and writer), these are stand-out things for me and makes the difference between and okay book and a good book I’ll recommend.
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Its & It's and Other Contractions

A friend posted a pet peeve on her Facebook the other day: using it's and its incorrectly. 

I agree. It bugs me to no small extent, especially when, unlike many English grammar rules, this one is easy enough to remember and use. So for the sake of other authors (as I've seen it misused by authors too often) as well as for anyone who cares about her grammar being correct and non-irritating, here's the rule:

When it's is a contraction, meaning it is, use the apostrophe: It's raining today.

When its shows possession, on the other hand, leave the apostrophe out: The rain made its leaves shiny.

Simple. Of course, it doesn't work that way with other contractions. For instance, "John's going to work" and "John's boat is orange" both use the apostrophe. So the only thing to remember is that if ITS shows possession, DON'T use an apostrophe. If you can change it to "it is" use it, but not otherwise.

Other apostrophes that mess people up are with plural possessives. A lady's dress is straightforward, but what about when there's more than one lady? If we have 3 ladies with 3 dresses, it would be: The ladies' dresses.  However, if the one lady's name is Jess, it would be Jess's dress, just like it would be Joan's dress. Simple?

If the possessive is plural to begin with, don't add an S after the apostrophe (do add the apostrophe!). If the possessive is singular, as in there's only one Jess, then add the S after the apostrophe.

But please, don't apostrophe a plural!  Trees are plural. NO apostrophe! One rabbit that multiplies becomes two rabbits, NOT two rabbit's. Rabbit's implies one rabbit owns (shows possession of) something, such as the rabbit's hole. Or if a group of rabbits own a hole together, it becomes the rabbits' hole (no S at the end because it's plural AND possessive).

Many new writers think they can rely on their editors (plural, no apostrophe) to catch these things. Unfortunately, I've seen many editors who didn't and the books go out with apostrophe mistakes. For those of you who write professionally, or plan to, don't rely on your editor for grammar knowledge. Learn it the way a mechanic has to learn how to build an engine, with all parts in the right places. That's your job.
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