The Seventh Screwup

I promised we could talk about ebooks and today we will.  

Let's start with digital publishing companies.  They don't publish print books and they don't prep manuscripts or covers for print-on-demand.

Do you know how long it takes to do the graphic design for an ebook cover once the art is complete?  Not long.  It's an absolute cakewalk compared to making a cover that wraps around a paperback.  Along the same lines, do you know how easy it is to prepare an ebook for publication compared to something that has to go to print?  Again, it's a snap.

Digital publishing companies prey upon writers who know how to write but do not know how to independently publish a book.  They'll lend you a hand with editing without being too handsy (unlike traditional publishing houses who are risking a lot and can get very handsy), they'll help you with a polished looking cover, and they'll do all the technical things you have no interest learning.  They'll skim a little off the profits on your ebook for themselves and everyone is happy.

These guys are less choosy than a traditional publisher.  You're way more likely to get a publishing deal with one of them.  Their standards are a lot lower because they have a lot less on the line.  They have invested very little capital in you (just what they paid for your cover art).  They'll put a few minutes into your manuscript in order to prep it for publication, they're tech-savvy and they're building an empire, so the more manuscripts the better.

Because their standards are lower, if you get turned down by one of them, it may mean that you are not ready to be a published author.  

However, do not despair.  Even if they turn you down, and you're done working on your manuscript, it's okay.  Go to a free writing website like Inkitt, Wattpad, Fictionpress, and post your writing there.  You can work with sample audiences there and get a feel for what people like.  You will have to write more than one book... but you were always going to have to write more than one book.  

The Sixth Screwup

Should I go with a traditional publisher or should I self publish?

If you are a new author and a publishing company is willing to publish you... something is probably wrong.  It might not be anything much, but whatever it is... it will probably amount to you not making much money.  It's actually pretty likely that you'll lose money.  

I see stuff all the time where new authors are asking if it's normal for publishing houses to ask their authors to put up money to get the ball rolling.  No, this is not normal.  Do not work with them.  

Here's how publishing works roughly.

You go into Chapters (or another book store), and you buy a book that costs $20.  Immediately, 40% (or $8) of that is going directly to Chapters just to keep your book on the shelf.  Of that $20, approximately $3 is paying for the book to be printed, $2 is paying for the shipping from the printer to the store, $5 is going to the publisher (which pays for the editing, cover art, design, marketing, and ads), $2 goes to the author (less if the author has a literary agent). 

If you self-publish, you pay all those fees yourself.  You pay for the printing, shipping, editing, cover art, design, marketing, and any ads.  If the bookstore fails to sell your book by a deadline, they may keep your book and sell it for whatever they can get for it.  As soon as a book in a bookstore is discounted, you can bet your booty-tailed-britches the author is no longer getting paid.  As a matter of fact, the author or the publishing company is losing money.  If the book store can't sell your books at all, a box of books to arrive at your house.  You may be able to sell them yourself, but also... maybe not.  Still losing money.

This means that a publishing company that does print books basically won't take you on unless they're certain you can bank.  These days, they mostly recruit independent authors who have already have a huge following.

Selling your own print books is a lot like selling Avon or Tupperware.  This means that people who love you and want to support you will buy your book. Once that dries up, you'll run out of people to sell to.  The people who know and love you probably won't enjoy reading your book.  I know that sounds rude, but it doesn't have much to do with your writing.  Reading things written by people you know is weird.  It's a weird experience.  They might not want to read any more of your books.  Don't take it personally.  You are going to need to find a bigger market than the people you know if you're going to survive.  

From the math I presented earlier, you've probably figured out that you are going to need to sell books into the tens of thousands in order to even make this worthwhile even as a side hustle or to come close to making minimum wage.

Put simply, you are not going to be able to find a publisher who isn't full of crap.  If you try, you will waste a lot of time trying... unless you already have an in with a publishing house.  

Personally, I think you should wait a bit before investing a lot of your resources in print books.  Sometimes they're flawed and you can't sell them.  Only order a few and see how it pans out.  

Next time we'll talk about ebooks.

The Fifth Screwup

A lot of writers think they don't need their own editor.  They think they're going to publish with a publishing company and it will take care of their editing for them.  It is true that a publishing company will probably get up in your business and ask you to make changes to your manuscript.  However, it's also true that a publishing company will not want to work with you if your work is unedited (they'll call it rough).  They want to work with hardened writers who are used to making compromises.

On the flip side, if you decide to go the indie route (self-publish without the financial backing of a publishing company), you're going to hit a roadblock.

Professional editing is expensive.

You're also very likely to despise your first editor with a potency that surprises you.  It's so expensive and time-consuming that you will want to bypass the whole process because writing a novel was supposed to make money, not cost you money.  Most editors that advertise on the internet have a rate of $5 for every 1,000 words.  This means that you will be very lucky to get your manuscript edited for less than $1,000.

I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking that my math sucks because it should only cost $300 to have a 60,000-word manuscript edited.  I promise you, my math is impeccable.  It took me a long time to acknowledge this, but this is the truth: a manuscript needs a minimum of three rounds of editing.  You will be lucky if you only need three rounds.

Each round of editing has a different purpose.  Allow me to explain.

Content Editing

Imagine you're in an art class and your art teacher is explaining how to draw a perspective drawing.  You draw the vantage point and every line you put on that page is working with that point in one way or another.  Some lines hold up others, but everything is acknowledging that vantage point.  Content editing is like someone taking your perspective drawing and erasing every line that doesn't play to the vantage point in some way.

Every word that doesn't help the plot, continue the themes, entertain the reader, speed up the action, foreshadow what is to come, or emphasize a point has to go.  This means that your manuscript is going to suffer a very substantial drop in its word count.  If you have written exactly 40,000 words, it's going to feel like the editor has cut off your arm.  You had written a novel, and now it's a novella, and you won't be able to turn it back into a novel.  In my experience, content editing is irreversible.  You can't add more to your story after without needing to go back and do another round of content editing after the adds.  Granted, you may improve your product, but doing two rounds of one layer of editing is going to be hurtful to your morale and your budget.

Copy Editing

This is when the editor puts each individual sentence under a microscope and asks if that sentence is effective.  This means that all ambiguity that existed in your drafts has to go.

This process is another place where beginners suffer because a lot of the changes suggested by the editor are correcting sentences which may not be technically wrong.  Sadly, that doesn't mean they aren't wrong.  Writing needs to be snappy, and if it isn't, then it needs to be fixed.

Also, it can get overwhelming how many changes the editor suggests, especially when there are over a dozen changes on a single page and there are two hundred pages.  They think that if they were a good writer, there would be fewer corrections.

Proofreading

I find that proofreading needs a different set of eyes.  You can use the same editor for content editing and copy editing, but you need a different editor for proofreading.  One may be tempted to think that you could have a friend do your proofreading because what you need more than anything is a fresh set of eyes and they would charge less than a real editor.

And you would be wrong.  Here's why:

1. Unpaid proofreaders take forever.  They have other things to do that are important and your book is not number one on their list of things to do.

2. They won't find all the errors.  No proofreader (even professional ones) find all the errors.  Many professionally published books have mistakes in them.  I saw one today!

3. They think that because the book is not yet published that there is still time to make substantial changes.  There is not.  You are at the end of the project.  You will not make everyone happy with your project.

4. Your relationship with your friend is more important than any book.

In conclusion, you need an editor.  Everything you have done may end up being a wash if you don't have one.  HOWEVER... online editorial services tend to prey on the insecurity of new authors and make them feel as though they are failing because they didn't do enough rounds of editing.  This can be a bit much when the average self-published ebook sells fewer than 250 copies (which generates a lot less income than the $1,000 I mentioned earlier).

You're going to need to try different things to find your balance when you edit your manuscripts.  I have hired editors.  I've done it myself.  I've taken help from teenagers who have acted as beta readers (they were my fans).  I've printed my book out and marked the crap out of it.  I've read it out loud and put on bloody stage plays in my bedroom.  I've begged for help from English teachers.  I've taken multiple grammar courses at a college.  I've privately redone my child's grammar lessons by myself.  I've used different word processors to try to fix the errors.  I've worked with editors at publishing companies.  And I've spent more money on editors than I've made with my books.

I still have people come up to me and inform me that there was actually a mistake on page 215 of my book...

No one can be perfect at this.

The only thing you need to remember is that there are going to be mistakes while learning to do this.  Handle your mistakes, either by fixing them or by forgiving yourself for them.  Then you can smile, even when there is a mistake on page 215... and 216.

The Fourth Screwup

Yes, we've arrived at the fourth place a novelist is likely to screw up.  This is at the end of the book.

I don't want to write a whole post about all the horrible things that can happen at the end of the book, but I do want to touch on one problem that happens at the end of nearly every project (book or not).  You're sitting at 97% complete and... you die.  I don't mean you literally die, but you die.  You've got like two chapters left to finish and you're scared, bored, and itching to move onto a new project, nothing looks right, you think you're stupid, and the last little bit is this unbelievable grind.

I find the only way to conquer this is to just sit down one day (without planning it) and just say, "Today, I'm finishing this!  If I get nothing else done today, that's fine.  Today, I'm finishing this!"  I sometimes accompany that wild declaration with an actual roar, but that's what I need to do to get pumped up.  So, sneak up on it, and don't let it go until you break its neck.

You are not to be trifled with.  You won't even be defeated by yourself.

But that's not the problem I wanted to address today.  The main purpose of this post is to talk about what happens after you've finished writing your first book.  In order to finish the book, you have used some time that you don't usually use to write, and that means that some of the things you usually do are lagging behind.  You write the glorious words The End, set down your manuscript, and abruptly realize you need to go make muffins, run a list of errands, follow up with other projects, and basically live your life the way you were leading it before the writing bug ate your heart.

It's quite some time before you make it back to your manuscript.  You have plans to submit it to an editor or a publishing company, but before you do either of those things (editors are expensive and there's a lot of stiff competition for publication), you decide to read over your manuscript to see if there's anything you can do to improve it by yourself.

Very wise.

Except you're about to get dropped on your bottom.  Psst!  It's going to hurt because your manuscript is not going to be as brilliant as it was when you left it.  When you get a bit of space from your project, you start to notice a few mistakes.  Scratch that... a lot of mistakes.  There are typos, to be sure, but there are also foundational mistakes.  Your writing style is not consistent.  You have not maintained reader sympathy with your characters.  Parts of the story are missing because they seemed so obvious in your head, so you didn't spell them out to the reader and on the re-read, you have no idea what you're eluding to with your careful prose.  And more.

It's very discouraging.

I recommend reading the manuscript again and writing two wish lists.

One list is about things you can see that are obvious fixes for this particular manuscript (cut this out, add this).

The second list is things you wish you did better generally.  This list refers to mistakes in your book that are so large, you can't possibly fix them without starting your manuscript over (things like voice or losing reader sympathy).  The thing is, no matter how brilliant your original idea was, by this point, you're done with it.  So, if you're going to correct this manuscript, you need to have written nothing on your second wish list.  If it's your first whack at writing a novel, you have to set this manuscript aside and label it as practice.  Then you have to start again with a new idea.

Coming up with a new idea terrifies some authors.

There is nothing to be afraid of.  As you get better at this, ideas will come easier and in larger quantities.  Sometimes people who approach me with an idea for a novel have no intention of writing out their idea themselves.  They want me to do it.  I always find it amusing that they think I'm starving for ideas.  I have made myself into an idea factory.

Your second attempt at a novel with a new story will be better than your first.  You'll figure out how to solve some of your fundamental problems while at the same time, correcting your writing style as you go so you don't keep making the same technical errors every step.  Don't be afraid.  You don't get something for nothing and the price of admission is practice.

The Third Screw Up

Of all the screwups, this one is my least favorite.  For all you novelists out there, this is not going to be news.  For everyone else, please know that bringing this up brings me no pleasure.  Remember that I was once a lowly writer who wanted to be a novelist... so, yes, the thing I am going to mention has happened to me.

Sometimes, someone tells me they've written a novel and they ask me to have a look at it.  They send over the electronic file and I open it.  Before I read any of the text, I check the word count because I'm concerned about this problem.

It's 15,000 words.

I write the author back and ask them where the rest of it is, hoping that there's more they haven't sent me for some reason.

There isn't more.  That's all of it.

Then I have the very non-fun job of informing them that their novel is not a novel.  It's a short story.

The author is confused.  There are chapters.  There are over twenty of them.

I get to explain that it doesn't matter that they cut their writing into chapters.  It's still not a novel.  To help explain, I start at the beginning.  500 - 20,000 words is a short story.  20,000 words to 40,000 words is a novella.  40,000 words to 60,000 words is a lazy man's novel (a lot of Harlequins are written in this range).  60,000 - 100,000 is a perfectly respectable novel with the sweet spot being at approximately 86,000 words.  100,000+ is for high fantasy authors who have really decent publishing companies backing them.  Independent authors can't market books of that length.  The word count is too large and there ends up being too much paper involved in the production of the book for it to be profitable. 

The author is embarrassed because they thought they'd written a novel.  Not only that but cracking out those 15,000 words was really hard for them.  I know.  Like I said, I've had this happen to me as well.

Getting past this problem requires a two-prong strategy.

First, you should think about the fire in your belly.  That fire inside you needs to burn long and hot.  Basically, this means that you have to angry.  You need to feel like books and their authors have let you down.  You need to want to make something different than anybody else.  If all you want to do is write the sorts of things you enjoy reading, you may not have enough fire to power your dream.  You need to believe that you have something to offer than no one else does, that your contribution to the writing world is INDISPENSABLE.  You need to be on fire.  If you feel this way, this setback will be nothing more than a blip and you'll soon pass over any embarrassment you felt writing a short story and trying to pass it off as a novel.

The second thing to note is that you are only at the beginning of your journey.  I'm an old hag and as an old hag, who has been doing this for twenty-five years, I can tell you, you're going to get better.  Things will flow better as you get more practice.  I can write 15,000 words in a day if I'm left alone to do it.  What was once rough will become smooth.

The Second Place a Novelist Screws Up

In my last blog, I talked about how even really good ideas have challenges attached to them.  I'm going to talk about that a little more today.

One time, I heard someone's idea for a novel.  It was an erotica parody and the idea itself was pretty entertaining, but the second I heard it, I knew the person who had that idea could not do it justice.  In order to write a successful parody, you can't just make fun of the genre.  That's not good enough.  If someone is familiar enough with a genre to get all the jabs, then it means your audience likes the genre.  You can't just slam it through a wall.  At the end of a successful parody, you finish with a love letter to the genre.  To pull it off, you have to love that genre.  I was betting that the guy with that hilarious idea for an erotic parody had absolutely no love for erotica, and thus would be unable to pull off the necessary second half.  Start with the jokes; finish with a kiss.

The disaster happens when the author sits down and starts writing.  They finish to the end of their introductory plot arch and then they're left scratching their head.  What are they supposed to do next?  They don't know.  They think they're blocked, and they are.  They aren't writing.

Writers get blocked when there's a disconnect between their expectations and their ability.

Sometimes it's because a writer notices a gap in popular storytelling, and they wonder why no one has written a story that follows the missed pattern.  They think that because they spotted it, they're the one to write it, but finding storytelling ideas this way does not account for a particular author's skills.  It's like applying for any job that's available, not your dream job.  You can plod away at it, but it might be like climbing a mountain with toothpicks.  It's going to take forever and it won't be very much fun. 

Other times, it's because an unpracticed novelist expects that because they have been writing adorable little projects for years that the skills they learned writing those can easily be transferred to a larger project.  They're going to find out that that isn't necessarily the case.  I always say that a novel is 60,000 words, but you can easily make more than 60,000 mistakes.  That's because it takes skill to manage multiple plot lines, character arches, ongoing themes, foreshadowing, and provide consistent writing throughout a piece.  Sometimes people who only write tiny pieces do not have a regular voice they write with.  They read back their writing and oops!  They're discouraged because when they read someone else's book, it looked so effortless; they thought they could easily write a novel too.

Those are just two ways that our expectations can murder us.  We want to be smart.  We want others to think we're smart.  We want to be creative about what we write about and how we write it.  Yet that is not coming through on the page.

We need to let go of our expectations.  Forget about planning a manuscript you think will be profitable.  Instead, write something from your heart, and don't worry about writing well.  For your first book, just try to make it to 40,000 words.  In your next manuscript, focus on getting to 60,000.  You'll be so much smarter about how to craft a plot after your first two attempts.

And I know no one wants to 'practice' writing.  Everyone dreams of getting it right the first time and being a huge success.  That's something else you're going to have to let go of.  No one writes their best stuff at the beginning of their career.  If you analyze why you're writing and it's because you want a ton of attention, fame, and money... maybe find something else to do.

The Very First Place a Novelist Screws Up

Conception.

You wouldn't think that a person could screw up on their writing before they've written a word, but I've found that that is the most likely place for a person to screw up.  Let me explain why.

Sometimes, I have people approach me and ask me if I'm a writer.  I reply that I am a novelist, and they proceed to tell me they have a great idea for a book.  At this point in the story, I'm inwardly groaning because there is no right way for me to respond to them.  Without having heard their idea, I know it's good.  People are smart, inventive, and creative.  A person would not sit a novelist down and tell them an idea for a book that wasn't going to appeal to someone.  They tell me their idea and it's great.

But even great ideas have challenges attached to them.  If I tell this aspiring author the troubles attached to their idea, they are going to feel deflated, defeated, and they'll give up. 

If I tell them their idea is great without attaching a specific warning, something else will happen that is equally bad.  They'll get really excited and they'll tell me a lot more about the story than the simple premise.  The creative pistons in their head will start firing and they'll tell me every part of their story that they've worked out.  This is a mistake, but I let this happen many times before I realized how big of a mistake it was. 

You see, talking is a form of expression.  So is writing.  If you performed an experiment by writing a fresh draft of the same short story every Friday for a month, then read them over to try to choose the best one... I bet you'd pick the first one.  I don't know why your first half-brained attempt is usually the best one, but it is.  I have written many things that were excellent, but for some dumb reason, I lost my first whack at it.  I've had to pick up the pieces and replace it with other text which isn't as good.  It's a second try instead of a first try.  Back to the aspiring writer, they've had their first whack at their story talking to a woman in a park, not on a page where it can be recorded, studied, and possibly improved. 

Months later, I run into this person again.  I slap them on the back (if they make me listen to their idea for a novel for more than five minutes, I reserve the right to slap them on the back), and I ask them how their novel is coming.  They look at me like I'm the body they buried in the woods last summer because they thought they were never going to see me again.  They choke their response.

They haven't worked on their book since we last spoke.

I slap them on the back again and remind them that there are lots of things in life that are more important than writing novels.  They shouldn't give it another thought... but they do.  A little later in the conversation, they'll sidle up to me and ask me timidly if I have finished writing the novel I was working on when we talked last.  I'll tell them I have, and they will be reduced to ashes at my feet.

You see, when we had our conversation about their perspective book, they felt a surge of validation as creative energy flowed through them.  They felt like they were a writer (without actually having any idea how much unpleasantness that word carries because all they can see is the elusive glamor attached to any artsy pursuit).  After all, they were having a conversation with a writer who was acknowledging them as a writer.  They felt talented, appreciated and their brain sealed the idea as fulfilled and finished because they had received their reward.

When I confronted them about the status of their project, I stripped them of all those lovely feelings about their idea, but also about themselves.  I've made them into a person who only knows how to run their mouth without actually buckling down and writing.  They're embarrassed.

I'm unhappy too because it was not my intent to embarrass them.  I was trying to be supportive and friendly.  Back in those days, I didn't yet recognize the cycle of people who like cornering authors in public and begging them for feedback on work that doesn't exist. 

The solution?  For me, I try to pull the plug on writers telling me their ideas.  I remind them that if they like their idea for a story, that's all they need.  Someone out there will like it.  They don't need anyone's permission to write.  Neither do I.  Neither do you.  So, go write.