I keep hearing the argument that writers should write for the love of their craft and never expect anything in return. That we shouldn't charge any money and just give our books away for free. That we should be thankful when people read the things we write and that should be enough.
We can't do this.
We're not writing for free when we refuse to charge. We're paying a bunch of people money to get published instead. Writing for free costs money.
Right now, I charge for one out of two of my books. Guess what? I'm in the red. I make less money than I spend right now. I am paying other people money for the privilege to write and I'm not, by any means, giving all my books away for free.
Because the writing industry is a billion dollar industry, especially for a lot of the people who aren't writers. There's a lot of people we have to pay in order to get our book published and read.
In fact, writers have to constantly be careful because there are many people who are predators out there who will ask for a couple thousand dollars to help us get a bestseller or help us write a book and we wind up with nothing but a hole in our pocket instead.
So even if we wanted to break even and not make any money to write, we would still have to charge you to cover our expenses.
You get this when it comes to watching movies. There's film. Actors need to be paid. Sets need to be made. Costumes need to be designed. Directors need to be hired.
You get this when you play video games. People need to test the games. People need to draw the graphics. People need to design the levels.
So why don't you get that writers need to charge money, too, even if all they were to do was break even?
Things Writer's Pay Money For:
1. Editors Cost Money
They cost anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand a-piece. Ideally, we're supposed to pay three editors that each focus on different things. You can't worry about editing the grammar,until you finish editing the basic story for instance. Because if you edit the grammar first, then you might wind up deleting entire sentences that were edited for grammar and adding new paragraphs that weren't and then you need to edit for grammar again.
I don't have a lot of money, so I use critique partners and one editor at the end. If I had more money, you bet I would go for three editors!
We can't skip having at least one editor. Our readers will stop reading our books if we skip the editor and all books in the future will look stupid because they will be full of mistakes. Even those of us who know a lot of rules mess-up because our eyes auto-correct things on the screen (because our brains know what we meant to say) and we wind up not seeing it.
2. Cover Art Costs Money
You can cut costs for making a cover by doing things like using stock photos, but then you wind up finding out that one of your author friends has a very similar or identical cover to yours because they used the same stock image.
If you want a unique cover that perfectly displays your book, then you need to book a place to shoot a photo, hire models. set designers, and a photographer. Sometimes you can do some of these jobs yourself, but it tends to turn out better if you hire someone else.
You know the fonts on covers? Those cost money, too. People make them and we have to pay them.
Usually authors don't know a lot about graphics. I mean, we try, but we can't do the fancy things that true graphic artists can, so we have to hire those as well to put all the pictures and all the fonts together.
This can add up to a lot of money, depending on which of these things you use.
3. Advertising Costs Money
There's a certain amount of things you can do to advertise for free . You can post on social media for instance.
But generally speaking, to get featured on a lot of mailing lists, blogs, web-sites, and more, you need money.
You also need money if you want book swag. These are things like bookmarks and key chains with pictures of your books on them.
The worst part of all of it is that certain social media sites, like facebook, make it difficult to announce your book release unless you pay them now. They make sure a certain amount of your followers do not see your post unless you pay them.
You may say,"It's not necessary to do all those things to sell books to people."
I gave a $100 Amazon Gift Card away recently. It was for FREE. And entering it could take as little as a couple of seconds and still, getting entries for it was like pulling teeth.
When you have a free book, people don't just jump all over it and try to get three copies of it and tell all their friends, like they do with free samples at the grocery store. Most people still don't notice you or care.
There's so many free books now that people ignore the majority of them. Imagine if ALL books were free and how much money every author would have to pay just to get people to notice their book exists at all.
I'm releasing a free book soon and just to begin, just for my launch, I've spent almost $600 in advertising and I'm thinking about saving money so I can spend more.
Some of that cost was for that $100 Amazon gift card. Because contests cost us money, too.
4. Distribution Costs Money
Printing books cost money. You already know this probably. The paper and ink are expensive and we can't just give you physical copies of books without asking for some money.
Well, guess what? It costs money to distribute e-books, too! Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all those places, they take money out of our pockets for every sale we get.
Sure, if we don't charge, it is free and they get nothing.
But if no one charged....
Ebooks would go away. Because, you see, it costs money to have a web-site. The domain name, the bandwidth, all that costs money. Every time someone accesses your site and downloads your books, it costs someone, somewhere out there, money. So every book can't be free or there won't be enough money to sustain the web-sites that host them.
5. Formatting Costs Money
I can format my own books, luckily, but most authors can't. It's actually very difficult at times and time consuming. In fact, as of right now, I've been working on formatting my books, many hours every day, for the past five days.
So most authors have to hire someone to format their books.
6. Copyrights Cost Money
The government doesn't give you copyrights for free. They charge you.
But a free book doesn't need a copyright, right?
Wrong.
Copyrights aren't there just to protect money. They also protect your name. When you have a copyright on a free book, then no one can steal the book and put it under their name and claim they wrote it.
7. Software Costs Money
When you want to write, you need Microsoft Word at the very least. There were times when I couldn't afford a copy or didn't have a copy available to me. I had to use free software. This has been a mistake for me.
One time, when I was using Open Office, I submitted a story to someone and somehow half the names were changed to a totally different name. I still don't know how this was possible. My copy looked fine, but on the other person's end, it was a mess. I didn't have the right software and that likely had a lot to do with it.
Even if authors don't make their own book covers, they sometimes have to make their own graphics and need software to do so. See my banner on this blog? Made by me. What did I need to make it? Software.
8. Our Computers Cost Money
Well, everyone has a computer. Surely, this one doesn't count.
Yes, it does.
I don't have a computer right now. Luckily, my husband does. Mine broke months ago. I backed up my stories, so I didn't lose anything, but I've been forced to borrow his to write whenever he can spare it. I can't just go out and buy myself a computer without money. Without a computer, I can't write.
Let's hope my husband's computer doesn't break, right?
9. Classes Cost Money
I admit that I did a lot of my learning on my own, using the internet and critique partners.
But writing is actually a very difficult job and if you want to learn certain things that took me years to learn in less time, then you might want to take a class.
Education costs money.
10. Conferences Cost Money
While conferences aren't a necessity, they can teach you a lot and get authors socializing with certain people in the publishing industry. These connections are helpful when it comes to getting our work in front of publishers.
11. Submissions Can Cost Money
Some agents take e-mail submissions of your stories. Others require you to spend money on all the paper and ink it takes to print out your query, synopsis, and manuscript, and then mail that heavy package to them.
You also have to provide the self-adressed stamped envelope yourself. Because agents don't want to pay anything to write back. Authors have to absorb that cost.
This is fine if it's one person you submit to, but authors often submit to many agents. When you have to print out your two hundred page manuscript twenty times, cover the cost of mailing something heavy like that, include a SASE, it adds up over time.
12. Book Tours And Appearances Cost Money
I already covered some of this in the advertisement section. I mostly want to talk about authors making physical appearances to book stores.
First, is the money they have to pay for travel.
Then possibly for food and a hotel stay.
There's also the cost of buying or renting a table and chairs.
There's the cost of ordering a bunch of your books to sell and possibly some swag to give away.
Publishers don't cover the costs of these things almost ever. Even if they did, they'd stop doing so if they had to give all books away for free.
13. Websites Costs Money
The domain name costs us money. We have to renew it every year or two as well, which costs more money.
Separately, we need someone to host our domain name and pages. We have to pay for bandwidth.
Personal Reasons Why We Need Money:
1. We Ignore Our Families For You
So far, this year alone (it's only February), I didn't do my husband's laundry for two weeks in order to write and I didn't pack his lunch for three weeks.
I've also had to tell my Mom and Husband several times to stop speaking to me because I have to write instead of socializing with them.
I suppose I could just treat writing like a hobby and stop taking it so seriously, but if all writers did that then we'd release one book every five to ten years. If you're willing to wait, that's fine.
We can treat it like a hobby and have no author ever live long enough to complete their ten book series because six books took them sixty years of hobby time to complete.
Or we could get money for writing and be motivated to ignore everything else in our lives in order to get more books out to everyone.
2. We Lose Friendships For You
I haven't talked to my friends in forever. That's because I have a book launch coming up. At the end of this, I will have to pick up the pieces and see who wants to speak to me anymore. Because I didn't even tell them why I was busy. I just dropped off the face of the earth.
One of my friends called me back on January 15th and it's February 15th now and I still haven't called her back. It's going to be really awkward once I do.
3. We Accept All Your Criticism With A Smile On Our Face
Remember that job where you worked at for McDonald's when you were a young adult and you had to deal with those customers that hated you and thought you were an idiot? Well, writers have to deal with that, too. Except the people who hate us and the jobs we do get to post their opinions on the internet forever, so we and everyone else can keep reliving it.
It's fine. It doesn't bother me. I can handle it and I want people to post their real opinions, but to get to this point...yea, there were tears at times.
Not just tears from readers' opinions, but from publishers and agents who rejected my work. We aren't allowed to talk back to any of these people and that's fine.
But I feel that it's fair for me to say that I deserve to be paid for it. The money helps the sting some and it gives us something to strive for. Because we're never going to get universal praise, so if that's what we are after, then we will give up after our first book.
Money is something realistic we can get as a reward for finishing a book. Praise and acceptance is not.
So working really hard and then getting a bunch of criticism and no money is just going to make the majority of us quit.
4. We Write Even When We're Ill
I've done this many times. I know writing is a fun activity, but it's not fun when you have a horrible cold or are worried about your blood test results when you go to the doctor the next day.
5. We Constantly Study
Writers are never done learning. We ask people to critique us. We study and discuss grammar.
Do you know the different between "into" and "in to"?
Do you know the difference between "awhile" and "a while"?
What is an em dash?
An author needs to know the answers to all those questions and many more.
We need to be able to word sentences a hundred different ways in our head and know synonyms for every word, so we can word each sentence perfectly.
It's not about having poetic prose, it's about knowing how to communicate. You might say,"Amanda peeled a piece of fruit" or you might say "Amanda peeled an orange." The second sentence is short, but portrays a more vivid image.
Authors need to know how to work things in a bunch of different ways, so we are able to communicate with you as effectively as possible.
6. We Don't Want To Be Homeless Or Go Hungry
Writing takes up a lot of time. If you think it doesn't, that's because you've never done it.
We're creating things. We're giving you a product. You pay for other products. Pay for ours, so writers don't become the homeless guy on the street with a long beard scribbling on a napkin and talking to himself.
7. It Gives Us Time To Write When We'd Have To Be Working Somewhere else
Books are released faster when we have more time to spend on them. It allows us to give you more entertainment.
8. Other Writers Get Paid
Would you expect people who reported on the news to work for free?
What about people who write the instruction manuals that come with cars?
What about the writer who writes speeches for the President?
Then why expect fiction writers to work for free?
9. We Have Hard Deadlines
When people get a doctorate degree, they get years to research and write their dissertations.
Authors are expected to write three hundred and fifty pages every three months. There are many articles out there about how authors who write any slower than that will never make an income.
It is very, very difficult. I've been writing for ten years and I'm still working up to the point where I can complete a novel that fast.
None of that includes all the blog posts, facebook posts, articles, or whatever else an author writers. Those are just bonuses that we are also obligated to do.
10. We Write When We Don't Want To
We take writing more seriously than anyone you will ever meet. It's our job, it's our life. We literally fight about it all the time. If you go on social media and you follow enough writers, you are going to see them arguing over this or that. Sometimes it's something as silly as commas and sometimes it's big things, like how much writers should be paid.
We don't fight because we hate each other and writing. Just the opposite. We fight about our thoughts and opinions on writing because we care about it so much, to the point where a lot of us are workaholics.
We've worked years, training ourselves to write even when we hated it, to push forward even when it's a struggle. Because this is our job and we take it seriously.
Shouldn't there be some respect for that?
Monday, February 15, 2016
Sunday, January 31, 2016
Win A $100 Amazon Gift Card!
GO TO THE RAFFLECOPTER BELOW TO FIND OUT ALL THE WAYS YOU CAN ENTER TO WIN A $100 AMAZON GIFT CARD! IT'S EASY!
Why You Should Join My Mailing List (Besides Winning A $100 Amazon Gift Card)
1. I write short stories all the time. I send most of those to my mailing list. No one else sees the majority of them and you don't have to pay anything to read them. It's just something I do for fun and want to share with all of you.
2. I won't spam you to buy my books all the time. I'll just tell you when I have new releases or when one of my books is available for free or on sale.
3. I will send you announcements whenever I am giving away free stuff and you might get automatic entries that no one else will get.
4. I will send you fun activities, like quizzes, to take. For example, I plan to send a quiz in the near future about "Which Greek God Are You Most Like?"
5. I will give you free previews of my writing before anyone else gets to see any of it.
6. You can unsubscribe at any time.
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Why You Should Join My Mailing List (Besides Winning A $100 Amazon Gift Card)
1. I write short stories all the time. I send most of those to my mailing list. No one else sees the majority of them and you don't have to pay anything to read them. It's just something I do for fun and want to share with all of you.
2. I won't spam you to buy my books all the time. I'll just tell you when I have new releases or when one of my books is available for free or on sale.
3. I will send you announcements whenever I am giving away free stuff and you might get automatic entries that no one else will get.
4. I will send you fun activities, like quizzes, to take. For example, I plan to send a quiz in the near future about "Which Greek God Are You Most Like?"
5. I will give you free previews of my writing before anyone else gets to see any of it.
6. You can unsubscribe at any time.
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Friday, January 29, 2016
15 Writing Parodoxes That Frustrate Most Authors
Writing is weird. Everyone thinks it's one thing, then you get into it and you find out it's a totally different thing. These aren't necessarily my opinions, but thoughts I've seen expressed by the writing community as a whole. Here are a few of the paradoxes of being a writer:
1. You must learn all the rules of writing, so you can know all the best ways to break these rules.
2. You will post about grammar and punctuation on facebook. You might even correct people's spelling every once in awhile, but you live in a constant state of fear that everyone will find out that there are a lot of things about the English language that you still don't understand. Do they know that you googled the spelling of that word before you typed it? If only they could see all the red your editor marks on every page of your novel before you publish it. What if they knew about the time you were playing madlibs and you got adverbs and adjectives confused with each other?
3. Readers are tired of reading the same formula books, but when they read your book that breaks the rules, they wish you'd write like everyone else more.
4. You have two agents interested in your manuscript. One agent rejects you because they think your characterization is weak, but your plot is amazing. The other agent rejects you because your plot is weak and your characterization is perfect. Which one is it? *cries*
5. You must post on social media all the time. Readers like getting to know authors personally, but don't post anything personal because this is a business and not your diary. You don't want to make a fool of yourself.
6. You want to be popular as a writer, but fear going viral.
7. Some books that make millions of dollars through self-publishing were rejected by publishers because they didn't fit the market.
8. You rewrote something twenty times that your critique partner thinks is "good for a first draft." (So is it terrible for a twentieth draft?)
9. Everyone should be honest in reviews. As an author, you are a terrible person if you do anything to influence a review for one of your books. But if writers post anything except for five star reviews for other writers, then they should know better than to be honest. You're destroying another author's reputation by not saying their book is perfect!
10. One star reviews that say,"This book was amazing!" Five star reviews that say,"I hated this!"
11. If you spend a second typing up something and posting it on the internet and then it blows up in your face, it will never go away. People will screenshot it and re-post it. It will haunt you for the rest of your life. If you write a novel and work on it for years, but it doesn't sell enough copies, then your publisher will take it out of print and everyone will forget that it ever existed.
12. You're not good at writing because your books don't sell well. You'd be popular if you were good at writing. Then, when you hit the NYT bestsellers list, you're still not good at writing because all popular novels are shallow drivel that even a monkey could write better. Maybe your novel would be good if it wasn't so popular...
13. You write everyday to the point where it's destroying your social life and making your house a mess, but people wonder when you'll get a real job and stop sitting around, doing nothing.
14. In order to feel good about your writing, you need critique partners and editors to rip your stories into shreds and tell you everything that's wrong with the story. If they tell you it's all perfect, then you know something is wrong.
15. You cried when you got your first one star review, but you tell everyone else to suck it up and get used to it because this is a harsh business that only thick-skinned people can handle.
And last but not least...
You love writing more than anything AND you hate writing more than anything. It's the easiest job in the world AND the most difficult. It makes you feel like a genius AND a complete idiot.
1. You must learn all the rules of writing, so you can know all the best ways to break these rules.
2. You will post about grammar and punctuation on facebook. You might even correct people's spelling every once in awhile, but you live in a constant state of fear that everyone will find out that there are a lot of things about the English language that you still don't understand. Do they know that you googled the spelling of that word before you typed it? If only they could see all the red your editor marks on every page of your novel before you publish it. What if they knew about the time you were playing madlibs and you got adverbs and adjectives confused with each other?
3. Readers are tired of reading the same formula books, but when they read your book that breaks the rules, they wish you'd write like everyone else more.
4. You have two agents interested in your manuscript. One agent rejects you because they think your characterization is weak, but your plot is amazing. The other agent rejects you because your plot is weak and your characterization is perfect. Which one is it? *cries*
5. You must post on social media all the time. Readers like getting to know authors personally, but don't post anything personal because this is a business and not your diary. You don't want to make a fool of yourself.
6. You want to be popular as a writer, but fear going viral.
7. Some books that make millions of dollars through self-publishing were rejected by publishers because they didn't fit the market.
8. You rewrote something twenty times that your critique partner thinks is "good for a first draft." (So is it terrible for a twentieth draft?)
9. Everyone should be honest in reviews. As an author, you are a terrible person if you do anything to influence a review for one of your books. But if writers post anything except for five star reviews for other writers, then they should know better than to be honest. You're destroying another author's reputation by not saying their book is perfect!
10. One star reviews that say,"This book was amazing!" Five star reviews that say,"I hated this!"
11. If you spend a second typing up something and posting it on the internet and then it blows up in your face, it will never go away. People will screenshot it and re-post it. It will haunt you for the rest of your life. If you write a novel and work on it for years, but it doesn't sell enough copies, then your publisher will take it out of print and everyone will forget that it ever existed.
12. You're not good at writing because your books don't sell well. You'd be popular if you were good at writing. Then, when you hit the NYT bestsellers list, you're still not good at writing because all popular novels are shallow drivel that even a monkey could write better. Maybe your novel would be good if it wasn't so popular...
13. You write everyday to the point where it's destroying your social life and making your house a mess, but people wonder when you'll get a real job and stop sitting around, doing nothing.
14. In order to feel good about your writing, you need critique partners and editors to rip your stories into shreds and tell you everything that's wrong with the story. If they tell you it's all perfect, then you know something is wrong.
15. You cried when you got your first one star review, but you tell everyone else to suck it up and get used to it because this is a harsh business that only thick-skinned people can handle.
And last but not least...
You love writing more than anything AND you hate writing more than anything. It's the easiest job in the world AND the most difficult. It makes you feel like a genius AND a complete idiot.
Friday, January 22, 2016
90 Days By T.E. Ridener
NEW from T.E. Ridener!
Book 2 of the Prairie Series, 90 Days, is now available.
This book features a FtM trans hero and the lady he loves.
-----BLURB-----
While her sister and future brother-in-law prepare for their wedding day, which is set to happen in three months, 24-year-old Laney McIntosh is barely holding her life together by a thread.
She’s been forced to fake a smile for months for the sake of her family, but she isn’t so sure she can do it anymore. There are secrets she has kept and they will threaten to shatter the picture-perfect status they’ve finally achieved since her sister’s return.
Through the ever-growing darkness in her mind there is one beacon of light that shines brighter than the rest: Benji, one of her sister’s best friends.
Benji Palmer is a transgender man and he has his share of demons, but what he feels for Laney has only been growing stronger since the moment he met her. Despite his own struggles he wants nothing more than to make Laney happy and he’s determined to heal her heart.
A lot of things can happen in 90 days.
Good things.
Bad things.
Crazy things.
Beautiful things.
Will Laney and Benji finally get the happily-ever-after they’ve always wanted?
BUY LINKS:
US: http://amzn.com/B019B6WEE8
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B019B6WEE8
AU: http://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B019B6WEE8
WHERE TO FIND T.E. RIDENER:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TERidener
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TE_Ridener
Blog: https://teridener.wordpress.com/
Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/116562535517354273173
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Writing "For Exposure"
There's nothing wrong with writing for free if that's what you want to do, but there's a few things you need to know before you agree to do this. This advice applies to writing free short stories, novellas, and novels, not to blog posts. That is a totally different topic.
1.) Don't Do It If The Person Doesn't Make You Sign A Contract
This should be a huge red flag for you. If they don't make you sign a contract, they don't know what they are doing. It doesn't matter if the person is one of your author friends or an actual publishing company, there should always be a contract.
Why?
Because it establishes a communication about expectations. It makes sure everyone understands what is going to happen and there are no disagreements over it. It protects both parties.
We tend to think of contracts as something you use to negotiate money and when you write a short story for free, there is no money involved. So when there is no contract, it's easy to shrug it off.
I've done this three times. Two out of the three, I was given a contract to sign. The other one, there was no contract and I still feel like that one was a mistake. I'm happy about the other two.
The person I didn't sign a contract with did zero editing of my story. The other two had editors that worked on it. The person I didn't sign a contract with was rude to me as soon as I agreed to let her use my story. The other two were very polite and professional. The person I didn't sign a contract with didn't give me a free copy of the book, she made me purchase it. The other two gave me copies of the book and one of them even signed it with a very nice note!
A contract is the difference between a professional and an amateur. It doesn't matter if you've known each other for years and you are best friends, draw up a contract anyway. You need to iron out all those details. It doesn't make you any less of good friends.
2.) Your Name Will Be Hard To Find
Unless you are a NYT Bestselling author and they are trying to sell more copies using your name, your name will probably be hard to find. It's unlikely that it will be on the cover. It will probably only be in the blurb and right next to your story title inside the book.
This might disappoint some authors, especially if it's the first thing they ever published, so I just thought I'd warn you.
The exception to this rule is if you are a part of an anthology of novels. Usually only a handful of people are part of something like this, so there's enough space for everyone's names.
3.) Do It For Fun Or Experience, Not Exposure
The last short story I submitted to an anthology, I did it because I wanted my story included with the kind of authors that published with that place and because I wanted to see a story of mine in print for the first time.
I don't know if publishing with them gave me any sort of exposure, but it doesn't matter. It's nice to see my name on something other than an ebook.
It's next to impossible to measure a word like "exposure", so people can promise you this and it doesn't really mean anything. So ignore that. Take it out of the picture and try to figure out if you're doing it for any other reason.
If it's just for exposure, just so your other books will sell well, then you are likely to feel resentful and disappointed when an anthology doesn't make you suddenly a NYT Bestselling author.
I will admit, I've met one exception to this rule. There is one author I know of whose first bestseller was an anthology, but that's not the case for most of us.
It's unlikely that anyone will remember you wrote for the anthology, even people who are fans of your books and read them regularly. Most people think I've published nothing in the last three years and that isn't even true. I've published a few short stories, but no one noticed it because my names aren't on the covers and I can't tag my author profile on Amazon to the books.
That's why you really need to make sure you are doing this for the right reasons. It takes time out of your life, time you could be using to gain exposure in other ways.
1.) Don't Do It If The Person Doesn't Make You Sign A Contract
This should be a huge red flag for you. If they don't make you sign a contract, they don't know what they are doing. It doesn't matter if the person is one of your author friends or an actual publishing company, there should always be a contract.
Why?
Because it establishes a communication about expectations. It makes sure everyone understands what is going to happen and there are no disagreements over it. It protects both parties.
We tend to think of contracts as something you use to negotiate money and when you write a short story for free, there is no money involved. So when there is no contract, it's easy to shrug it off.
I've done this three times. Two out of the three, I was given a contract to sign. The other one, there was no contract and I still feel like that one was a mistake. I'm happy about the other two.
The person I didn't sign a contract with did zero editing of my story. The other two had editors that worked on it. The person I didn't sign a contract with was rude to me as soon as I agreed to let her use my story. The other two were very polite and professional. The person I didn't sign a contract with didn't give me a free copy of the book, she made me purchase it. The other two gave me copies of the book and one of them even signed it with a very nice note!
A contract is the difference between a professional and an amateur. It doesn't matter if you've known each other for years and you are best friends, draw up a contract anyway. You need to iron out all those details. It doesn't make you any less of good friends.
2.) Your Name Will Be Hard To Find
Unless you are a NYT Bestselling author and they are trying to sell more copies using your name, your name will probably be hard to find. It's unlikely that it will be on the cover. It will probably only be in the blurb and right next to your story title inside the book.
This might disappoint some authors, especially if it's the first thing they ever published, so I just thought I'd warn you.
The exception to this rule is if you are a part of an anthology of novels. Usually only a handful of people are part of something like this, so there's enough space for everyone's names.
3.) Do It For Fun Or Experience, Not Exposure
The last short story I submitted to an anthology, I did it because I wanted my story included with the kind of authors that published with that place and because I wanted to see a story of mine in print for the first time.
I don't know if publishing with them gave me any sort of exposure, but it doesn't matter. It's nice to see my name on something other than an ebook.
It's next to impossible to measure a word like "exposure", so people can promise you this and it doesn't really mean anything. So ignore that. Take it out of the picture and try to figure out if you're doing it for any other reason.
If it's just for exposure, just so your other books will sell well, then you are likely to feel resentful and disappointed when an anthology doesn't make you suddenly a NYT Bestselling author.
I will admit, I've met one exception to this rule. There is one author I know of whose first bestseller was an anthology, but that's not the case for most of us.
It's unlikely that anyone will remember you wrote for the anthology, even people who are fans of your books and read them regularly. Most people think I've published nothing in the last three years and that isn't even true. I've published a few short stories, but no one noticed it because my names aren't on the covers and I can't tag my author profile on Amazon to the books.
That's why you really need to make sure you are doing this for the right reasons. It takes time out of your life, time you could be using to gain exposure in other ways.
Tuesday, January 12, 2016
Time To Break Some Rules
So I usually try to follow the rule of never responding to any of my one star reviews. It draws unnecessary attention to them and people are entitled to their opinions. Their negative feedback often causes me to analyze my own writing and change it in the future, so it's not really a bad thing.
Also, I love reviews. Even bad ones can help me sell books.
But today, I am going to make an exception and talk about a one star review that I received recently for my free novel "Pandora's Mistake."
I'm not angry at this review at all. I totally get where this person is coming from and why they said the things they did. I don't even want to address most of their review. I just want to talk about one sentence that they wrote at the end of the review:
"Wouldn't recommend to anyone with qualms about sexism."
This part of the review really stuck with me. I couldn't stop mulling it over for days after I read it. It's not because I am angry that they posted it. Some of it is that I am concerned for the reader. I think I might have struck a nerve with them and hurt them unintentionally and that was not what I was trying to do with this book at all.
I get why they wrote what they did. Pandora is a very naive woman in my novel. She was created by Zeus and then told that her only job in life was to be the perfect wife to Epimetheus. Epimetheus is a horrible husband who winds up being physically and emotionally abusive. She worries that it's all her fault that she's being treated this way, that maybe she should have been a better wife. Deep down inside, she rebels though, looking to Prometheus for escape from the situation (he has been abused, but by the gods, too) and she calls to Zeus for help as well. (He's like her Dad, after all, since he created her.) She wants to know why Epimetheus isn't getting nicer when she's trying to do everything right. Zeus never replies because he has abandoned her.
The only way I can really talk about this is for me to break another rule, a rule that involves not talking about personal stuff more than I'm usually comfortable with online.
I grew-up surrounded by very conservative people. I lived in California all my life, but I grew-up in a small town where people were different than stereotypical Californians. They were very religious and a lot of people might consider them to be the kind of people who take things too far. I knew a lot of homeschoolers (I went to homeschool myself for a few years as well.) Even though we didn't live in the south, they were the type of home-schoolers who liked to argue that the south should have won and even held an annual Civil War Ball.
I was told by many, many people in my life that I had to be quiet and nice and submissive. That I was stepping out of my place if I argued too much and that no man would ever love me if I behaved that way. That women weren't allowed to have authority over men and that they made terrible leaders because they had periods and too many emotions. That the greatest gift in life for a woman was to be married and have kids. When I had a certain career goal that many woman I knew disapproved of as a teenager, they would tell me,"Just wait until you meet the right man. You'll forget all of that and become a housewife."
I did meet the right man and I am a housewife now. My mother is also a housewife, so don't get me wrong, I don't think there's anything wrong with housewives or anything wrong with women who work. But I also don't think there's anything wrong with a man staying at home and taking care of the kids and I don't believe I should have to submit to anybody. I believe we are all equals.
Those ideas being forced on me over and over again made me very confused as to what it meant to be a woman. It made me make some poor decisions in life because I was just trying to follow the rules. Pandora is facing a similar dilemma. She's trying to be a submissive woman and it's not working.
I have rebelled against these ideas as an adult. I married a man who had a very strong, loud, single mother. I adored her. And I laughed when I was around my husband, my brother-in-law, and my brother-in-law's father. My brother-in-law and his father were saying how most of the men in their family can't resist marrying loud, opinionated women and how they were as annoying as they were lovable. It made me crack up. I am always the quietest person among them and it's nice to have a husband who appreciates you when you are fighting for something. Who admires you when you are strong and roots for you as well. Who likes it when you have opinions and express yourself.
But because I grew-up with that background, I kind of threw parts of it into that Pandora story. How the reality of being the perfect, submissive wife is actually horrible and how all the people who told you to be that way are not going to be there for you to help you through it when things get bad.
And it's not just my experiences I am basing this on. I've seen how these ideals have effected people's marriage.
I also wanted to say something about Pandora. She's the Eve of Greek Mythology. She's the reason that some people, even to this day, will say sexist things about women. She's seductive and she's overemotional (supposedly.) She's also stupid. So she uses all of that to unleash every horror onto humanity. Women are men's "curse."Or so the myth likes to claim.
No one even remembers that it was really Zeus who wanted to destroy humanity (because he was angry at Prometheus for giving men fire.) That she could have been trying her best to be a good woman and wife, but since a god planned all along to use her to destroy her own species there was little she could do to stop him. She was just a new person (with the mind of a child), she wasn't going to know how to outsmart him. She was being used by everyone around her.
I wrote my series to be about looking at characters from new perspectives. I don't view the world as black and white, I view it in shades of gray. I find it interesting to make Pandora and Medusa into heroes when they are traditionally viewed as failures and villains. Or like in my next book in the series, the one about Sisyphus, I show how badass he truly is, how much of a threat he was to the gods, even though to most of us he is an unknown and unimportant character.
I just can't say any of this stuff in the book because you are not allowed to as an author. You are not allowed to be a character with opinions and feelings about things. Your characters just have to be themselves. You can't put footnotes here and there, saying,"By the way, reader, I do not approve of any of these actions" or "Do you get this metaphor? This is about oppression of woman in society."
I can't have all my characters spouting my beliefs for me either. Not only would that be easy to see through, but it would be boring and unrealistic.
I like to write about people who are different from me. I like to write about people who offend me. I've been close to a lot of people when I've seen them go through bad things and I like to write about what I've seen other people go through as well.
I assure you, Zeus and Epimetheus are the villains in my story. Especially Zeus. I am the opposite of most people who love the Greek Gods. I think they're all a bunch of jerks, except for Hera (unless Hercules is involved.) I also happen to like Persephone and Hypnos a lot, for some reason. I think I hate Zeus more than any other greek mythological character ever, which is saying a lot since Tantalus murdered his own son and tried to feed him to the gods for dinner. I still hate Zeus more than that.
We live in a harsh world and sometimes it's hard for me to write happy endings when I haven't seen justice occur in real life, so it's probably confusing sometimes when my characters don't have happy endings. I'm working on that part of my writing, but when it comes to the greek myth books, I embrace the tragedy of stories just like the ancient greeks embraced it as well.
I don't hate conservative people. I have people on my friends list on facebook who are conservative (and who don't necessarily believe any of the things I mentioned here) and some of the closest people to me in real life are conservative people.
So I want you to know, if you were the person who left that review, I'm sorry if I triggered something for you. I don't want to be a reason why you cry or feel angry. And I just didn't feel right not saying anything about it, even if I may be unable to address reviews like this in the future.
I write things sometimes so that people who had bad experiences or did bad things in their life can have people in fiction that they can relate to. I don't pull punches when my characters are suffering and I don't always fix all of their problems. It's just how I view the world and how I view writing.
And if you don't like it, that's fine, you don't have to read my books or give me any of your money. I accept it, but I'll still be your friend on social media if you want and I hope you can understand where I am coming from.
Also, I love reviews. Even bad ones can help me sell books.
But today, I am going to make an exception and talk about a one star review that I received recently for my free novel "Pandora's Mistake."
I'm not angry at this review at all. I totally get where this person is coming from and why they said the things they did. I don't even want to address most of their review. I just want to talk about one sentence that they wrote at the end of the review:
"Wouldn't recommend to anyone with qualms about sexism."
This part of the review really stuck with me. I couldn't stop mulling it over for days after I read it. It's not because I am angry that they posted it. Some of it is that I am concerned for the reader. I think I might have struck a nerve with them and hurt them unintentionally and that was not what I was trying to do with this book at all.
I get why they wrote what they did. Pandora is a very naive woman in my novel. She was created by Zeus and then told that her only job in life was to be the perfect wife to Epimetheus. Epimetheus is a horrible husband who winds up being physically and emotionally abusive. She worries that it's all her fault that she's being treated this way, that maybe she should have been a better wife. Deep down inside, she rebels though, looking to Prometheus for escape from the situation (he has been abused, but by the gods, too) and she calls to Zeus for help as well. (He's like her Dad, after all, since he created her.) She wants to know why Epimetheus isn't getting nicer when she's trying to do everything right. Zeus never replies because he has abandoned her.
The only way I can really talk about this is for me to break another rule, a rule that involves not talking about personal stuff more than I'm usually comfortable with online.
I grew-up surrounded by very conservative people. I lived in California all my life, but I grew-up in a small town where people were different than stereotypical Californians. They were very religious and a lot of people might consider them to be the kind of people who take things too far. I knew a lot of homeschoolers (I went to homeschool myself for a few years as well.) Even though we didn't live in the south, they were the type of home-schoolers who liked to argue that the south should have won and even held an annual Civil War Ball.
I was told by many, many people in my life that I had to be quiet and nice and submissive. That I was stepping out of my place if I argued too much and that no man would ever love me if I behaved that way. That women weren't allowed to have authority over men and that they made terrible leaders because they had periods and too many emotions. That the greatest gift in life for a woman was to be married and have kids. When I had a certain career goal that many woman I knew disapproved of as a teenager, they would tell me,"Just wait until you meet the right man. You'll forget all of that and become a housewife."
I did meet the right man and I am a housewife now. My mother is also a housewife, so don't get me wrong, I don't think there's anything wrong with housewives or anything wrong with women who work. But I also don't think there's anything wrong with a man staying at home and taking care of the kids and I don't believe I should have to submit to anybody. I believe we are all equals.
Those ideas being forced on me over and over again made me very confused as to what it meant to be a woman. It made me make some poor decisions in life because I was just trying to follow the rules. Pandora is facing a similar dilemma. She's trying to be a submissive woman and it's not working.
I have rebelled against these ideas as an adult. I married a man who had a very strong, loud, single mother. I adored her. And I laughed when I was around my husband, my brother-in-law, and my brother-in-law's father. My brother-in-law and his father were saying how most of the men in their family can't resist marrying loud, opinionated women and how they were as annoying as they were lovable. It made me crack up. I am always the quietest person among them and it's nice to have a husband who appreciates you when you are fighting for something. Who admires you when you are strong and roots for you as well. Who likes it when you have opinions and express yourself.
But because I grew-up with that background, I kind of threw parts of it into that Pandora story. How the reality of being the perfect, submissive wife is actually horrible and how all the people who told you to be that way are not going to be there for you to help you through it when things get bad.
And it's not just my experiences I am basing this on. I've seen how these ideals have effected people's marriage.
I also wanted to say something about Pandora. She's the Eve of Greek Mythology. She's the reason that some people, even to this day, will say sexist things about women. She's seductive and she's overemotional (supposedly.) She's also stupid. So she uses all of that to unleash every horror onto humanity. Women are men's "curse."Or so the myth likes to claim.
No one even remembers that it was really Zeus who wanted to destroy humanity (because he was angry at Prometheus for giving men fire.) That she could have been trying her best to be a good woman and wife, but since a god planned all along to use her to destroy her own species there was little she could do to stop him. She was just a new person (with the mind of a child), she wasn't going to know how to outsmart him. She was being used by everyone around her.
I wrote my series to be about looking at characters from new perspectives. I don't view the world as black and white, I view it in shades of gray. I find it interesting to make Pandora and Medusa into heroes when they are traditionally viewed as failures and villains. Or like in my next book in the series, the one about Sisyphus, I show how badass he truly is, how much of a threat he was to the gods, even though to most of us he is an unknown and unimportant character.
I just can't say any of this stuff in the book because you are not allowed to as an author. You are not allowed to be a character with opinions and feelings about things. Your characters just have to be themselves. You can't put footnotes here and there, saying,"By the way, reader, I do not approve of any of these actions" or "Do you get this metaphor? This is about oppression of woman in society."
I can't have all my characters spouting my beliefs for me either. Not only would that be easy to see through, but it would be boring and unrealistic.
I like to write about people who are different from me. I like to write about people who offend me. I've been close to a lot of people when I've seen them go through bad things and I like to write about what I've seen other people go through as well.
I assure you, Zeus and Epimetheus are the villains in my story. Especially Zeus. I am the opposite of most people who love the Greek Gods. I think they're all a bunch of jerks, except for Hera (unless Hercules is involved.) I also happen to like Persephone and Hypnos a lot, for some reason. I think I hate Zeus more than any other greek mythological character ever, which is saying a lot since Tantalus murdered his own son and tried to feed him to the gods for dinner. I still hate Zeus more than that.
We live in a harsh world and sometimes it's hard for me to write happy endings when I haven't seen justice occur in real life, so it's probably confusing sometimes when my characters don't have happy endings. I'm working on that part of my writing, but when it comes to the greek myth books, I embrace the tragedy of stories just like the ancient greeks embraced it as well.
I don't hate conservative people. I have people on my friends list on facebook who are conservative (and who don't necessarily believe any of the things I mentioned here) and some of the closest people to me in real life are conservative people.
So I want you to know, if you were the person who left that review, I'm sorry if I triggered something for you. I don't want to be a reason why you cry or feel angry. And I just didn't feel right not saying anything about it, even if I may be unable to address reviews like this in the future.
I write things sometimes so that people who had bad experiences or did bad things in their life can have people in fiction that they can relate to. I don't pull punches when my characters are suffering and I don't always fix all of their problems. It's just how I view the world and how I view writing.
And if you don't like it, that's fine, you don't have to read my books or give me any of your money. I accept it, but I'll still be your friend on social media if you want and I hope you can understand where I am coming from.
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
Why Confidence Is Important In Writing
I love dark entertainment. It doesn't matter if it's books, movies, television shows, or video games to me.
There was this television show that I started watching recently. It's called "Flesh And Bone." It's a dark television show about ballerinas. The main character has practiced so hard in the first episode that she is able to easily rip off her own toenail. There's blood on her hands, but she pushes herself and binds her foot up. She sucks up the pain because she is up for an audition for a paying ballerina position. One of the teachers rejects her as soon as she starts talking.
But she remembers that toenail. She remembers that earlier she ran away from a painful situation and she knows she deserves this opportunity. So she asks for another chance. She could have bowed her head and walked away like the other girls, but she stands up for herself instead. And she passes the audition with flying colors.
Why? Because she had confidence. People without confidence bow their head and agree when someone tells them they failed. People with confidence, keep trying and believing. They stand up for themselves.
I know that people say that the most important thing to have in the publishing industry is thick skin, but I disagree. If you have confidence, you don't even need a thick skin. If someone doesn't believe in you, it doesn't hurt you because you believe in you.
In fact, I believe that the reason some authors get angry at one star reviews is that secretly, deep down inside, they wanted to be validated. They don't feel confident in themselves and their writing, so when they see anything that's not positive written about them...it makes them feel bad about themselves. They get defensive and sometimes they lash out, making the whole thing worse.
If you are a self-published author, like myself, then you have only one person who believes in you: YOU. You don't have a publishing industry standing behind you or an agent submitting your story to various places. You have to do it all yourself.
I'll tell you something that was previously a secret. That anthology that I recently published with? I was terrified when I submitted my short story to them. I've written several short horror stories in the past few years, including that one, and all of them, including that one, have been rejected by the magazines I've submitted them to. If I hadn't submitted anyway, though, I wouldn't have gotten to see my pen name in print for the first time.
If you are not confident as a writer, you are not going to try for the opportunities that are presented to you. You're not going to network with people the way you are supposed to. You won't know how to use your contacts to accomplish things.
If you are not confident as a writer, you will hold back when you are writing. You won't dare to write in your own special way. You'll try to write like everyone else because you believe in them and not yourself.
If you are not confident as a writer, you will not submit your stories to different places. Yes, even in self-publishing you must deal with submissions. Sometimes there are awards you can try for or reviews from bloggers. If you are insecure, you won't bother. Because you "know" before you even ask, that they aren't going to accept you.
If you are not confident as a writer, then you won't be able to justify with your family why you need money to pay for an editor or advertising. You'll feel guilty for making them survive on macaroni and cheese and hot dogs for a week because you need the extra money. Eventually, you'll stop using the money on yourself because it's just your "stupid" writing and what does it matter anyway.
You'll be robbed of time by people who don't think your writings important. You will agree with them.
And you won't tell anyone about your books. Your friends and family will be shocked when they find out you published something. You won't have the support of them. You'll never know you have the support of fans because you'll never mention your book to anyone.
You won't know when to tell people 'no.' You'll always do what your editors and critique partners say, even if it destroys your story. You'll regret everything you write. Because you don't believe in yourself and your abilities.
I know how it feels to lack confidence, so I hope as a writer that you don't lack confidence.
It's easy to believe in yourself when you have a team of people complimenting you and backing you up, but when you are standing alone, sometimes against criticism, it's difficult.
But it's okay to be confident. It's okay to reach for the stars. To sometimes publish before you are ready because you will learn and to strive for goals that seem impossible. Believe in yourself and do it anyway.
It doesn't matter what other people say. Their words can't hold you back.
There was this television show that I started watching recently. It's called "Flesh And Bone." It's a dark television show about ballerinas. The main character has practiced so hard in the first episode that she is able to easily rip off her own toenail. There's blood on her hands, but she pushes herself and binds her foot up. She sucks up the pain because she is up for an audition for a paying ballerina position. One of the teachers rejects her as soon as she starts talking.
But she remembers that toenail. She remembers that earlier she ran away from a painful situation and she knows she deserves this opportunity. So she asks for another chance. She could have bowed her head and walked away like the other girls, but she stands up for herself instead. And she passes the audition with flying colors.
Why? Because she had confidence. People without confidence bow their head and agree when someone tells them they failed. People with confidence, keep trying and believing. They stand up for themselves.
I know that people say that the most important thing to have in the publishing industry is thick skin, but I disagree. If you have confidence, you don't even need a thick skin. If someone doesn't believe in you, it doesn't hurt you because you believe in you.
In fact, I believe that the reason some authors get angry at one star reviews is that secretly, deep down inside, they wanted to be validated. They don't feel confident in themselves and their writing, so when they see anything that's not positive written about them...it makes them feel bad about themselves. They get defensive and sometimes they lash out, making the whole thing worse.
If you are a self-published author, like myself, then you have only one person who believes in you: YOU. You don't have a publishing industry standing behind you or an agent submitting your story to various places. You have to do it all yourself.
I'll tell you something that was previously a secret. That anthology that I recently published with? I was terrified when I submitted my short story to them. I've written several short horror stories in the past few years, including that one, and all of them, including that one, have been rejected by the magazines I've submitted them to. If I hadn't submitted anyway, though, I wouldn't have gotten to see my pen name in print for the first time.
If you are not confident as a writer, you are not going to try for the opportunities that are presented to you. You're not going to network with people the way you are supposed to. You won't know how to use your contacts to accomplish things.
If you are not confident as a writer, you will hold back when you are writing. You won't dare to write in your own special way. You'll try to write like everyone else because you believe in them and not yourself.
If you are not confident as a writer, you will not submit your stories to different places. Yes, even in self-publishing you must deal with submissions. Sometimes there are awards you can try for or reviews from bloggers. If you are insecure, you won't bother. Because you "know" before you even ask, that they aren't going to accept you.
If you are not confident as a writer, then you won't be able to justify with your family why you need money to pay for an editor or advertising. You'll feel guilty for making them survive on macaroni and cheese and hot dogs for a week because you need the extra money. Eventually, you'll stop using the money on yourself because it's just your "stupid" writing and what does it matter anyway.
You'll be robbed of time by people who don't think your writings important. You will agree with them.
And you won't tell anyone about your books. Your friends and family will be shocked when they find out you published something. You won't have the support of them. You'll never know you have the support of fans because you'll never mention your book to anyone.
You won't know when to tell people 'no.' You'll always do what your editors and critique partners say, even if it destroys your story. You'll regret everything you write. Because you don't believe in yourself and your abilities.
I know how it feels to lack confidence, so I hope as a writer that you don't lack confidence.
It's easy to believe in yourself when you have a team of people complimenting you and backing you up, but when you are standing alone, sometimes against criticism, it's difficult.
But it's okay to be confident. It's okay to reach for the stars. To sometimes publish before you are ready because you will learn and to strive for goals that seem impossible. Believe in yourself and do it anyway.
It doesn't matter what other people say. Their words can't hold you back.
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