Yes! Absolutely. Without question. Regardless of how good your writing is, you need a professional editor to work with you before you publish.
Think of it this way: your editor is a black box through which you send your manuscript–line by line. She will tell you whether the ideas, thoughts, connections and emotion you intended to produce in the reader’s mind when you crafted that sentence is what you actually produced.
But what if the bookstore could be re-thought from the ground up? That’s what Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park, CA, has begun to do.
Kepler’s has for many decades been the premiere independent bookstore in the Stanford area. I remember haunting its aisles as a student in the late sixties. But like all independent bookstores, it has struggled mightily to stay alive over the past decade.
Now the current owner, Clark Kepler, has brought in some smart partners who are creating a new business model: the store will be reworked as a place where the community gathers to share ideas. Books will be a part of that–but the events portion of the business will be spun off as a nonprofit. And digital books and ereaders will be embraced as another way to support the exchange of ideas in this new place.
If you’d like to know more about Kepler’s new vision, check out this 4-minute video:
In yesterday’s blog, I listed three awards programs I’ve had some experience with and can recommend to independent publishers and self-published authors who would like to garner some kudos for their work.
But I forgot to mention the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, organized by Independent Book Publishing Professionals Group (IBPPG) in conjunction with Marilyn Allen of Allen O’Shea Literary Agency.
The nonprofit Indie Book Awards offers cash prizes ranging from $100 to $1,500 for books in 60 separate categories—fiction and nonfiction. Perhaps more importantly, one winner from each category gets a review by literary agent Marilyn Allen, who has worked with such authors as Stephen King, Ken Follett, Barbara Kingsolver, John Gray, and Mary Higgins Clark.
One of my authors won a Finalist Award last year in the Children’s/Juvenile Fiction category. Perks included cash, an elegant awards reception at the Plaza in New York during Book Expo America (BEA), stickers for the cover of his books, and free publicity.
One of the difficulties of self-publishing is that the responsibility for getting the word out about your book lies squarely with you. There’s no publisher cranking out press releases, no publicist lining up media tours on your behalf, no sales force selling your books into bookstores. (In truth, few traditional publishers are still doing that for their own authors these days. As Seth Godin so aptly observed: out of the 75,000+ books published by traditional houses in any given year, perhaps 100 of them receive the full marketing muscle that publishers can deliver.)
That’s why you might consider entering an awards program. If you win, you get bragging rights, which you can parlay across the Web and in your print promotions.
This time of year, there are several excellent awards programs to consider—each of which welcomes self-published books. Here are three I’d recommend:
Foreword Review’s Book-of-the-Year Award Deadline: January 15, 2012 Program offers awards in 60 separate categories. Two Editor’s Choice prizes of $1,500 are awarded, one for fiction, the other for nonfiction.
Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award Submissions received: Jan 23 – Feb 5, 2012 (limited to first 5,000 entries in each category) Two grand prizes are awarded, one for general fiction and one for young adult fiction. Each winner will receive a $15,000 publishing contract with Penguin.
And here’s a little tip from someone who’s hosted more than one awards program. If you do win, show up at the awards ceremonyand accept your award with your most gracious smile. People remember.
Are you considering republishing your children’s book, cookbook, graphic novel, crafts guide or travel book in digital format?
For these kinds of books, the ePub format—which allows words to flow from one page to another as your reader enlarges text or changes fonts—doesn’t work. The illustrations, sidebars, and photos you so carefully placed beside certain sections of your book take on a life of their own.
For such books, you need to create a fixed-layout file, one that displays each spread just as your designer originally planned. Fixed-layout ebooks look great on the new tablets that everyone’s getting for Christmas (Apple iPad, B&N Nook, Kobo VOX). But they are tricky to produce, especially if you’re moving from a print book into an enhanced iBook for the iPad.
Renowned explanation graphics designer Nigel Holmes and I have been running down rabbit holes for the past year trying to get his book Pinhole and the Expedition to the Jungle into a fixed-layout format for the iPad. We finally did it.
And here are the top things we learned:
There aren’t yet many vendors who know how to take a print book and turn it into an enhanced ebook for the iPad. We used YUDU, which is located in (surprise!) Great Britain. Innodata also works, I’m told.
Price pressure on these books is fierce. You spend a chunk to have the book recreated for the iPad, and the market wants to pay $3.99 or less. Yike. Hopefully, all those folks who got iPads for Christmas will be looking to buy enhanced ebooks, which could drive up revenue.
If you hold the iPad in landscape mode, you see an entire spread from the book–without a seam. Nice! But on the iPad’s 10-inch screen, the font you chose for your print book looks small—and on the 7-inch screen of all the other tablets, it’s unreadable. Of course, your readers can enlarge the text with their fingers, but then you lose the effect of the spreads.
Every new format of a book requires a separate ISBN number. Per BISG.
For a little extra pizazz, we also laced the adventure story with sounds. If you have an iPad and would like to see the result, here’s a free peek.
Here’s a prediction: within three years, we’ll see the publishing industry split into two tiers. Bestselling authors will work with traditional publishers—Simon & Schuster, Random House, and HarperCollins. And new authors will prove themselves in the self-publishing arena before they’re allowed to play in the big leagues.
If you’re an emerging author, you’ve probably already stumbled into this world. You know it’s practically impossible to get the attention of an established publisher. And if you do get lucky and find a publisher, the marketing department (now staffed by a couple of 24-year-old interns) all but ignore your book while they focus efforts on proven authors. Your paltry 10% royalty doesn’t really matter since your sales figures are so low. After six weeks, your publisher pronounces your book sales “disappointing” and loses interest.
At the same time, Amazon is opening doors for self-published authors. In May of 2009, the company quietly launched Amazon Encore, its first imprint as a publishing company. Using both sales figures and customer reviews, Amazon identifies books with potential and invites their (often self-published) authors to sign with Amazon Encore. The selected books are then formatted for all platforms (print, ebook and audio) and reintroduced into the marketplace–backed by Amazon’s substantial marketing muscle.
The number of titles published by Amazon Encore is small so far, and the imprint seems focused on novels. But if you’re invited to play, word on the street is that the royalty deals are far sweeter than those offered by traditional publishers.
And here’s another prediction: within ten years, serious self-published authors are going to wonder why they ever needed any publisher—Random House or Amazon Encore.
The competition between Apple and Amazon for the hearts and minds of readers continues to be good news for us all.
Amazon has just announced a new series of Kindle products that includes the Kindle Fire, a touch-sensitive, color tablet that–at the retail price of $199–will pressure Apple to bring down the price of its iPad.
In an air-conditioned tent in central Manhattan–ground zero for the publishing industry–Bezos demoed the new device, which he’s calling a “media tablet.” Its 7-inch touchscreen provides readers access to apps from Amazon’s Android appstore, which includes Kobo reading apps and magazines.
Equally interesting for readers (and writers) is a new Kindle Touch, which includes an “x-ray” feature that allows you to “look at the bones of a book”–including characters, terms and Wikipedia references. The two new Touches retail at $99 and $149.
You can find succinct reviews and specs for these various tablets at Engadget and TechCrunch.
“Time is not free—that’s why it’s so precious and worth fighting for.”
— Anne Lamott
I’m a huge fan of Anne Lamott. Not just because she celebrates “sh*tty first drafts,” but because she explains the writing process in such human terms—something that brings both joy and angst. (Let’s be truthful here.)
If you’re deep in a writing project, do yourself a favor: keep a copy of Bird by Bird on your night table for a little end-of-the-day support. She’ll make you feel you’re not alone in your crazy attempt to capture lightning in a bottle.
So far over 350 publishers have signed up to look over these manuscripts. They’re not the biggest publishers in the US, but in this age of niche publishing, it’s generally more important to find the right publisher for your book than the fanciest publisher in New York.
Earlier this week I chatted with Charlie Friscia, the director of the service, to see how it’s doing, Here’s what he said:
Why was Bowker Manuscript Submissions (BMS) created? Based on our discussions with publishers, we quickly learned there is a challenge in the way unsolicited manuscripts are handled. More often than not, unsolicited works are not reviewed by publishers because of the unmanageable number of submissions they receive.
BMS was created to provide publishers with a systematic way of searching for the type of book that best fits with their list, and potential authors with the knowledge that publishers have committed to using our “portal” to search for new talent.
The Evangelical Christian Publishing Association (ECPA) launched a similar service in their market over ten years ago. The service has triggered the career of several authors, most notably, Susan Meissner, who was discovered by Harvest House in 1994 and who has gone on to write ten novels, selling over 90,000 copies of her books.
How many manuscripts are being submitted per month? We’re still in our infancy–working on building the community. Although the numbers are small, we’re seeing them grow each month. Once we’re fully established, we anticipate receiving as many manuscripts as our sister site Christian Manuscript Submissions–75 to 100 per month.
Which book categories receive the most submissions? Not having much data to go on, it’s hard to say–but the most popular right now seems to be FICTION ACTION & ADVENTURE
And which publishers are looking over these manuscripts? There are over 350 registered publishers committed to using the site. We’ve partnered with the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), who offers the service as a benefit to their members.
If a book has been self-published, can the manuscript still be submitted? Absolutely. We actually encourage any self-published author who is looking to be picked up by a traditional publisher to take advantage of the site.
How much does it cost for an author to post his or her work? The service costs $99 per book proposal or manuscript – far less than the cost of mailing a copy of your proposal to 350+ publishers.
Do you really need an editor?
