How to get Published

I've put a lot in this blog for writers. This is the $64 question: How to get published.

1) Write well. (refer to all the ways I said to do that in this blog's posts, and get info from others too.).
2) Research your target (learn about the industry, so you know what you're doing).
3) Write a great query letter (Jen Garsee is going to do a guest post on this topic).
4) Write a great synopsis.
5) Don't rush the process, wait until you have your best work ready to go.

Most querying is done online these days, keep in mind that if you are querying in a country other than your own, if you send an attachment change the paper size to match the common use in that country. They might want to print your synopsis and pass it around the office because they love the concept of your ms.

Well, that's it in a nut shell.

MS Synopsis

The point of the synopsis is to tell the whole story of an ms in a way that interests the reader (a literary agent or publisher you want to wow) in one page. A good synopsis can lead to a request to read a partial or full of your ms. A synopsis is a combination of book report (remember those?) and a book review, but a bit different.

The format is universal with a few personal variances per agency or publisher. The sensible approach is to go with the basic format, then make the changes necessary to comply with the specific preferences of your target.

Start with setting your word processing software like this:
*One inch margins all around (top, bottom, sides). One inch is 2.54 cm.
*Single space lines.
*Font is usually Times New Roman or Courier, 10-12pt. I like Tahoma 11pt.
*Center the title, which is Synopsis: title. (If you manage to get the job done in less than a page, then put synopsis and the title on two lines - followed by a blank line.)
*Word count. This is generated by the software, but you'll have to type it in where it goes. There is a mathematical formula for estimating word count. I generally use 300 words per page and do a ballpark of how many chapters end short of a half page. I bet there is an A4 formula out there somewhere, but I've never needed to use it.

What to write:
*Regardless of the POV of the ms, a synopsis is always written in third person.
*Focus on the main character (MC), not all the minor characters. Indicate the MC's name, but honestly, unless they are referred to by their first and middle name by everyone in the ms, then no one cares what their middle name is. For example, I have two friends named Mary Ann. One goes by Mary Ann and the other by Mary. On the second one, no one would care about the middle name if she was the MC.
*Tell the setting, genre, time (contemporary, historical or future -- by indicating the date)
*Tell the whole story. Write the beginning, middle, end of the story. (YES! Tell the end of the story.)
*Tell only the major twists.
*Use active language, rather than passive.
*Don't get poetic, cute, or clever.
*Do not talk to the reader, ie, using second person, YOU. "You will love this book" NO. "You will be scared spitless." NO!
*Don't pitch. None of this: Everyone will love this book. That's a bad pitch anyway, but pitches don't belong in a synopsis.

If I help someone with their synopsis, I want them to tell me nothing about the story before I read the synopsis. The synopsis has to stand on its own. It has to tell the story honestly, but engagingly. Cut out the non-essential rambling. Some people accept a two page synopsis, but if you can do it in one page, then you have done it correctly. The standard is one page. The grammar and punctuation should be perfect.

Give the synopsis to a few reader friends. Listen closely to the questions they ask after reading it. It is likely the agent or publisher will have those questions too. Don't dismiss the questions. Fix the gaps. There is only one shot per target at getting this right.

Wednesday Rant

Not that I don't always have an opinion, but this is worse than usual. Maybe it is because I wrestled the devil all night or maybe one cup of coffee in the morning is now too much for me.

Junk mail. Yep. It is such a waste of time. Sometimes I send myself junk mail -- only I didn't send it -- and no matter what the subject line says, it is for off-the-grid prescription drugs. I can't even report it as spam or I'll block email from myself. That would screw up sending the newsletter notice to 'me' and blind copying it to everyone else. Technology, sheesh! I'm not on any medications, so it is lame to target me.

Tiny URLs. Yep. So what's wrong with such a brilliant idea as tiny URLs? Some of those URLs I add to my blogs are real monsters. Well, mind your manners. The only place tiny URLs are appropriate is (IMO) in tweets. And only then because of the character limit to the messages. I rarely click through a tiny URL in an email, even when it comes from a trusted sender (see above about trusted senders not always originating the email). I want to read the address before I click on it. Sure the full URL could look innocent and reroute to a porn site. But it rarely does. I want a clue to where I'm going before I click on the link. Save the trust games for corporate retreats.

Authors get rich promos. This is most of my spam email. Authors, especially indie authors, are a cash cow. Everyone has a service to promote YOUR book to thousands of readers. None of them give actual sales numbers of a real book, none of them give the name of unknown authors who have used their service and made back the membership fee. One of those spam adverts came today. It only costs $200 a year to showcase my books on their website to thousands of readers. Most of the time, they don't have thousands of readers. Finding readers is like herding cats. They come when they are good and ready. Readers are such an mix of people, how does one target them? No one knows. There are other sites that range in price much higher than that one -- and they think writers can't do math? I've watched these websites come and go. Yeah, and would I like to buy the Brooklyn Bridge too?

There are (book) PR firms around that say all these sensational things about what they can do. They say exactly what the novices want to hear. The only problem is after years of watching their websites, I've not seen them actually do anything more than make a living off of the fees from authors. In this business what isn't on their website is just as important as the advertising copy on it. If you don't see a list of client books that you can trace to other locations (besides on line retailers) then it is unlikely they have actually made an author any money. Exposure, maybe, but money??? I think we would have heard about that phenomena, just like we heard about The Shack selling hundreds of thousands of books. That success can be found in unrelated, independent sources.

So, what works in marketing books? Mostly it is endorsements from trusted sources.

All the HIP PEOPLE are going to HATE this post.

I just can't get into this social media gig. I've tried. It doesn't flip my cookie. I don't think it is fun, and fun isn't the reason I'd do it since I 'do' real fun rather than virtual fun.

I have talked with people who are in marketing for their real job. For me and my type of writing the time vs outcome factor just doesn't come out mathematically in my favor.

I know I look like the high school nerd without a twitter, facebook, or the-flavor-of-the-day logo on my website and blog. To me, those sites are like walking into a room (or the stock market pit) where everyone is shouting at once. I can't deal with that.

I know some people enjoy it, or think they do. I know it works for some people, or they think it does. By my analysis, it doesn't work for me by the numbers or by my personality. So, I'm just saying, assess it for yourself and make sure it isn't taking more than you get from it.

Just passing on a link on the topic:
http://www.bloggingauthors.com/blogging_authors/2009/11/2/social-media-myth-or-miracle.html

the price war...

Believe it or not, I am not surprised with Walmart, Amazon, and Target's action to devalue best sellers - called 'lost leaders' and books are the perfect choice.

Amazon surely knows how the publishing industry works, but the other two are probably clueless, like most people on the outside of the industry. I understand that Amazon reacted to what Walmart did. That's business. It isn't my philosophy, but most people aren't like me. (Thank God?) I like to make my own business decisions, rather than let others define me.

This is a quick publishing industry overview, certainly I can't write how the industry works in one blog post - nor would I be fool enough to try.

There is a long and complicated process involved in acquiring books. But let's say that has been done. There is THE LIST. At the top of the list are the best selling author's new works. They usually pay handsomely for those books, but the books earn their keep. What else they do is cover the cost of the books that aren't great earners. Some of the mid-list and bottom list are fillers; stuff you have to have to make a well rounded list. Some are slow, but steady earners.

The list pays the salary of all the people it takes to make a book, royalties to the author, contracted services, like printing, shipping, and warehousing. Besides the people any business would have, there are book industry specific people: Acquisition editors, line editors, cover artists, marketing, advertising...blah, blah, blah, who are paid by the earnings of the best seller books.

Money spent on advertising, marketing, and PR is proportionate to the expected earnings of the book. Sometimes the publisher is pleasantly surprised. Sometimes they lose their shirt.

So when Walmart (are we not surprised this company did that?) sells expected best sellers at a loss, the worry is that 1) the public will devalue books and come to expect books to be that price at their local bookstores; 2) that publishers will be forced to reduce their list price (the price on the book cover) because of the changed perception of value by readers; 3) small bookstores will be hurt the hardest and many long standing family businesses will close (Watch the movie "You've Got Mail" with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan).

The worry about the small family owned bookstores is the one that I think is the most likely to happen, if this pricing war continues. These stores (Walmart, Amazon, Target) can afford to sell the 10 or so best sellers at LESS than they paid for them because they hope in the process other purchases (marked up per usual) will be made at the same time. The small bookstore, or Indie bookstore, is banking on those best sellers to do what they do for the publishers -- cover the cost of less selling books.

If you read my newsletter then you know my trilogy is on Amazon.com. When those three books sell I will make minus $3.13. Yes, I will lose $3.13. As you can see, I can't really afford to do that for long before I write more books that cost me less to print and ship. I do have a plan to fix that bleed and I could suck it in and compromise quality by putting the books on amazon another way than the way I am.

I don't think readers will believe that best selling books can be had or should be had for $9.00. Besides readers trade books with each other and read them for free. Same with borrowing them from a library - free. Same with garage or boot sales - nearly free. It isn't like the author is getting royalties on anything past the first sale.

So what is the bottom line? Well, it is likely not going to last. Sure some people will go for the deal, others won't. Most likely people in the industry like me won't shop those places for those books simply on principle. But I do shop those stores regularily.

There is still lots I omitted: coops, sell through numbers, and remainders for example. You can google those. If you want to know more about this, google something like: book pricing war. I had links, but you're capable of researching this, if it interests you. If you are a writer, this should interest you.

BUZZ-BUZZ, BOOK BUZZ

The Festival on LYRIS 5 by Nick Daws

Wow! I've read some of Nick's non-fiction works, but until the Blog Party, I didn't know Nick wrote fiction for publishing.

The Festival on LYRIS 5 is certainly a fun read. Nick adds humor in word choices and the precarious situations Rick Barrett finds himself in this fast paced galactic adventure. There is the perfect amount of SciFi 'stuff' to satisfy fans of Science Fiction, yet it isn't so hard-core to be off putting for any reader of any age.

As to be expected from Nick, LYRIS 5 is well written and engaging from the first moment to the last. I didn't see the big twist coming at the end and would have never, ever imagined it.

This is a fantastic little book (novella) which is complemented by the wry illustrations of Louise Tolentino. If I did book reviews The Festival on LYRIS 5 would get a galaxy full of stars.


Nick Daws is a professional freelance writer in the UK.
Visit Nick's fantastic blog: http://www.mywritingblog.com/
Purchase The Festival on LYRIS 5 here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-festival-on-lyris-five/5217081 or go to http://www.lulu.com/ and search by author or title.

Manuscript Formatting

To continue the list I started last week:

These things can be set up to happen automatically:

a) 1" margins all around. Top, Bottom, and both sides;
b) Double space lines;
c) Number pages, either top right or bottom right - you wouldn't believe the number of people who don't number the pages;
d) Header on every page, the order varies, but the header should contain the working title and the author's name (or at least last name);
e) Title page should include contact information in the lower left corner, (name, mailing address, phone number, email address, genre and word count);
f) It is my personal preference to have widows & orphans turned OFF, but probably most people accept either format. I think it looks less 'neat' with it turned on, though be careful about them. Google or go to 'help' in your software and learn what Widows & Orphans are -- especially if you are going to self publish and have to do the formatting. They really make a book look self-published (in a bad way);
g) Use a sensible font and pt size. Agents read such a large part of their day, make it easy on their eyes. Don't get cute with fonts. Besides, if it is online rather than in print, your font might not be supported by their software. Someone once used a font I didn't have (hard to imagine, I have tons of them) and it was $29+ to purchase it -- I passed.

These things have to be done manually:

a) One space (only) between sentences.
b) Insert page breaks at the end of a chapter so the new chapter begins at the top of a new page. Do not hit the 'enter' key repeatedly to do this, you have to use the page break function or you are totally screwed when you edit or do rewrites.
c) Center Chapter heading, use the center function, do not tab over and guess at the center. A computer might seem like a modern typewriter, but it behaves differently if you don't use the computer functions.
d) Use the tab rather than the space bar to begin a new paragraph.
e) Technically the first sentence of a Chapter is not indented. I ignore this because I begin my books (always) with a line of dialogue.

I'm sure I've forgotten a thing or two. I do these things automatically because I have done them for years. Sitting here looking out the window at the snow it is a bit harder to think of them for a list. Review their website, many agents and publishers list specific guidelines for submissions. These serve two functions, they want things that way and they want to see if you can follow instructions.

This stuff is for fiction mss, not for non-fiction...though a memoir is not fiction, it is done in a novel or fiction format.

Additions to this info or questions about it are welcome in the comment section. We're all in this together. Like Nick said yesterday, don't obsess - but do remember you are applying for a job as a novelist against tons of other applicants. Look sharp. Write well.

More on Manuscrips (mss)

The question continues on the 'single' or "double" quote marks for dialogue in UK mss. I asked UK writing guru, Nick Daws, his opinion since he is my "go-to guy" and head moderator of MyWritingCircle.com writer's forum.

Nick said:
Both single and double quotes are used in Britain. I would say that single quotes are still more common, but double are widely used as well. Of course, quite a lot of books we get here are by US authors originally. I guess their UK publishers don't think it's worth bothering to change all the quotes from double to single!

In the end, a lot of it probably comes down to house style. An independent UK publishing house I've had some dealings with, Tindal Street Press, uses single quotes in all of its books. Large, multi-national publishers often use double, though. I suppose it's more convenient for them to apply one style in all the countries they operate in.

I followed up with asking what he would do if he was submitting an ms to a UK literary agent and here is his answer:

Personally, with a UK publisher, I would use single quote marks unless there was good reason for using double. But really, I don't think it's that important, as long as you're consistent.

So there you have it.

I've thought more about formatting mss, since I don't want to short sheet the information that I can share.

It is far easier to set up your word processing software in the beginning than to go back and fix everything after the fact. If you are the hands on type of learner, here is an easy tip:

Paste a page of your ms into a new document. Then go through the menus at the top of the page (or ribbons if you are using MS Word 07). Go through each drop down menu item, even if you know what "print" and "save" is. Take your time and when you get the print window, explore each thing that you can click on to customize the features. You don't have to waste a ton of paper, but do look at each item and explore what it does.

Continue methodically working your way though each function until you come to something new. Learn it. If it is a simple task, move on to the next item. It is a waste of time to go through this quickly and not really learn the new functions.

This will take a week or maybe two, but you should know a whole lot more about your software and be able to command the functions you need to produce a professional looking ms after you've mastered your software.

I use WordPerfect and can customize my tool bar. One of the things I did was to change "save" to "save as" so that I would be prompted rather than accidentally overwrite something in haste...or fatigue. Most likely you can do this with MS Word, though I am only aware of the small tool bar at the top left that can be customized. However, you need to learn and master the software you use.

Tomorrow I'll make a more comprehensive list than I mentioned last week.

Meet Nick Daws, professional writer and contributor to the Blog Party: http://www.mywritingblog.com/

The Last Draft

One of the things I wasn't going to do with my blog was write about how to write. For one thing, there is tons of stuff on the internet about writing - not to mention all the books on how to write.

Well, anyway - I've gone and done it, haven't I?

Okay...the next tip is to put away the perfect little ms and research the literary agents or publishers for a list of where it will be submitted. When that gets boring, work on query letters.

Then pull out that ready-to-go ms and read it aloud. Is it really ready to go? Listen to what you are saying. If that ms was written by someone else would it really be finished? Best go through it with an objective eye. You only get one shot to shop that ms to each of your targets. Make it a good one.

Some people say the most common error is shopping an ms before it is ready for a professional to read it. I agree. Put your best foot forward.

Get everything ready, your ms, your query letter, your synopsis, and your list of targets (agents or publishers). Then begin to query.

Dialogue Tags -- according to...ME!

Keep in mind that I write literary fiction. It isn't something many people write and for good reason, it isn't all that popular.

More or less, though, there are writing skills that cross the genre. This is, of course, my take on how to write. The popular wisdom runs the gamut on dialogue tags from zero, nada, absolutely never to use what is needed.

It is one of the most annoying things I've found in reading is to lose track of who is saying what in a conversation. It annoys me so much that the second time I have to stop reading the story to count down and figure out who said a particular line, I toss the book in the trash bin. So here is my take.

One thing that should help is it is unlikely every character talks like every other character. That helps with keeping straight who is talking. For example, in High Tide, Shasta is a six year old who lived on the street with her homeless family. Now what are the odds that she is going to speak well? Slim. So Shasta throws in a double negative every once in a while, because that is how real kids talk. The nuns, on the other hand, generally speak in full sentences. Other's speech is determined by their ethnicity. And, if you've read my books, the Parade Lady really plays a trick on Kathryn with her Southern Rural Appalachian dialect. So number 1 on the list is make the characters speak like they would in real life according to how you have described them.

Another thing that can be done is to make the narrative surrounding the dialogue clear enough about the situation that it is clear what is happening and the conversation makes innate sense. Don't go overboard and make the narrative boring or the reader will never get past it to the dialogue.

And finally, the basics:
a) When the dialogue is a short conversation of 6 or 8 lines between two people, it is probably going to be easy enough to follow without dialogue tags;

b) When person 1 and person 2 take turns, it is easy to keep track in a short conversation that goes 1-2-1-2-1-2. But if someone speaks outside of that ping-pong style, if someone interrupts and takes two turns, like 1-2-1-2-2-1 then it might be necessary to tag the switch up. Certainly give that conversation a second or third going over to make sure it is clear to your reader;

c) When it is a two person conversation that is rather long, add a dialogue tag once in a while as a benchmark to make it easy for the reader to be certain who is speaking.

d) When there are more than two people in the conversation, then it is likely dialogue tags will be needed to make clear who is saying what - maybe not on every line. On occasion a third person can jump into a two person conversation, say a line and leave with it clear what happened. For example, and this isn't the world's greatest example, two people are on the street arguing or at least disagreeing about where they are going. When they hop into the taxi, person one says to the driver a destination and the cabby replies his one line in the whole scene, then person one continues to talk with person two.

Now the nuts and bolts of dialogue. In the USA we use double quote marks at the beginning and end of spoken words, with single quote marks for something quoted within a spoken text. In UK English, single quote marks are used where we use double quote marks.

In the US, commas and periods (full stops) are usually placed inside the ending quotation marks. Colons and semicolons are placed outside quotation marks. Question marks and exclamation marks are placed outside or inside the quote marks, depending on the sentence structure. (Look up that one, if it applies.) Just keep in mind to review American punctuation rules if you aren't an American writer, but plan to shop your ms to the American industry.

Keep tags simple. There is nothing wrong with saying 'said'. The best thing you can do for dialogue is read it aloud. If you say something different from what you wrote, what you said is probably better than what is in print. Swap it around.

Most publishing houses have their inhouse standards on dialogue tags. There is probably lots more on this on the Internet. There are probably plenty of writers who disagree, but this is my take on dialogue tags.

The main thing is that your writing is not work to read; not for agents/publishers or for your readers. You want your ms read clear through. You want your book published. You want readers to love your book so much that they tell others about it.