Music provides the sound track for our lives. Nancy often says, “There’s a song for everything,” and quotes a lyric. It’s no wonder that writers seeking to create a mood or capture a moment in time should be tempted to do the same thing.
But when you are tempted to quote a song lyric in your book, think twice.
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Today we are offering a collection of tips, ideas and tools to help create a buzz about your book and keep up with new developments in the business of writing and publishing. Follow the links to the latest business news for writers from top sources around the web.
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Last weekend at the Wordstock Book Festival in Portland, Oregon I had an opportunity to talk with Beth Anderson, Executive Vice President and Publisher at Audible.com. We discussed how an author can get a book or ebook produced as an audiobook.
This spring Audible, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, launched a new process for creating audiobooks called The Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX) Audible describes ACX as “a dynamic online marketplace, production platform, and sales system. ACX directly connects professional authors and other book rights holders with actors, studios, and audio publishers to…provide an easy way to turn professionally published books -new or old – into professionally produced audio books.”
Here's a short YouTube video to describe the process.
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I love book festivals.
Wordstock, last weekend in Portland, Oregon, was wonderful. How could it miss with some of the nation’s finest authors, people in the book business swapping insider knowledge about what’s new, and an audience of people who want to talk about books.
One of the highlights was PEN/Faulkner Award winning novelist T.C. Boyle’s appearance. I have enjoyed reading Boyle’s work for years. A polished speaker and fine performer, Boyle read his short story Top of the Food Chain, an ironic, but chilling account of a senate committee investigation of a Third World environmental disaster.
After the reading he told the audience that he had just finished his next novel days before beginning his current tour with his new book T.C. Boyle Stories II. The new book should be out next year, he said. Then he paused and corrected himself to say we could expect it in early 2015.
Early 2015! Twelve to fifteen months.
It was a sharp reminder that it takes a long time to publish a book.
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You may have been offered a contract by a traditional publisher. Or you may be considering a self-publishing company. Maybe you plan to be a true self publisher taking complete personal control of your books publication. Before you go any further, ask yourself a simple question: What’s in it for me?
Wise authors have become comparison shoppers. Weighing all of the factors in each route to market, which is the best deal for you?
Set up a spreadsheet in which you can make a side-by side comparison of your options. Here are some things you’ll want to include in your comparison.
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If you do research for a book – and almost all of us do whether it’s for fiction or non-fiction – what can you legally take from your sources and what might get you into trouble?
The obvious answer is what they told you in elementary school, “Don’t copy.” So high profile writers have been embroiled in some ugly public flaps over this simple idea. Alex Haley, author of the blockbuster Roots settled a copyright infringement suit with fellow novelist Harold Courtlander for $650,000. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin settled with writers of three books following accusations of plagiarism by the Weekly Standard.
But assuming you are trying to play by the rules, what are those rules?
The answer is based on the legal concept of Fair Use.
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I love book festivals.
We exhibit at some of the biggest and best in the country including the Tucson Festival of Books, The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, and the Miami Book Fair International. Nancy and I are looking forward to Wordstock in Portland, Oregon next weekend.
If you love books, you can’t beat the conversations at a book festival. Each time we go we meet some wonderful people, talk about interesting and exciting books, explore the craft of writing, and learn more about what is happening in the business of books. You can get a great education at a book festival just by walking around, talking to people, visiting fellow exhibitors, and dropping in on some of the speaker sessions. We come home enriched by the experience.
Each time I go to a festival I set a goal. This my goal time is to learn more about tools that will help self-publishing authors in their roles as entrepreneurs.
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Thinking about publishing a book? Would it be better as an e-book, a print edition, or both?
The Self-Publishing Review offers some illuminating statistics on the subject in a wonderful infographic by Catherine Tosko titled People With E-Readers and People Without E-Readers.
Here are a few things you’ll want to consider in making your decision.
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Forbes.com has some valuable business advice for authors who want to self-publish their books: Get professional help.
Many self-publishing authors see the process as a DIY proposition. But Forbes reports that “authors who did their own editing and cover design made only 38% of the average” amount earned by self-published books.
Authors who got help with editing, copy editing and proof reading saw their earnings increase 13%. Authors who hired professional book designers as well as editors saw their books earn 34% more than the average for a self-published book.
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There has been a lot written celebrating the elimination of gatekeepers – agents, editors, and traditional publishers – who blocked many authors from access to publication. Self-publishing has allowed writers to find their own readers. E.L. James and her Fifty Shades of Grey series have inspired many people to say, look what happens when a writer can get her own books out there to find an audience.
So self-publishing has provided authors with opportunities that didn’t previously exist, but, although not many people are talking about it, authors also lost some important things when it became possible to do an end around and totally bypass the traditional gatekeepers. Let’s take a look at some of the things authors lost.
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Why Would You Want a Print Book? asked Rich Meyer in a recent post on Indies Unlimited. While the reasons he gave for publishing his quiz books exclusively in e-book formats may be valid for him, his was only one answer to a complex question. It deserves a more complete answer. Let’s look at some of the reasons you would want a print edition of your book.
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The New York Times’ Sunday Dialogue: Tumult in the Book World took on the question, “Can traditional bookstores survive the digital marketplace?”
Reader Barry Brisco didn’t think so. His assessment of the situation is that the same thing which happened in the music and video business will happen with books:
…because the barrier to entry is lower than in the past and the means of distributing the content is vastly more efficient. It will be the same with written expression. Writers will still enjoy creating stories using the written word, and people will still enjoy spending time with a “good book” — regardless of the technology used to consume it.
Brisco’s view seems to represent pretty accurately the people who think that the changes in the publishing world will have few consequences beyond opening up the path to publication for authors.
There’s a problem with that view. If self-publishing and e-books have eliminated the barrier to market entry they have also eliminated the processes that created a “good book” that people will still enjoy reading.
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When you are writing nonfiction, particularly about people who are still living, it’s worth giving some thought to some of the legal issues which might arise.
Most questions which arise about the portrayal of a person in nonfiction are based on one of two legal questions:
Defamation: A person may claim that the book contains falsehoods that hold the subject up to scorn.
Invasion of privacy: Legal expert Howard G. Zaharoff told Writers Digest that a person mentioned in a book has “The right to avoid disclosure of truthful but embarrassing private facts…” The issue here is not the truth of what is reported, but whether it is “not related to public concern.”
Both are potential issues. Even when a person portrayed in the book is dead, his family members might claim either defamation or invasion of privacy.
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Most people writing family history books and memoirs have a very small audience in mind. They want their children, grandchildren and maybe a few close friends to know something about their origins and life experiences. They see their book not as a commercial project, but as a way to share and preserve their heritage with a group of people they love. They are not experienced authors and know very little about the world of book publishing.
Unfortunately, they hold onto a great myth about getting their story into print. It’s rooted in the experiences of people they may know or have heard about who published a book just a few years ago. The people they heard about went to offset printers – the only kind available at the time – and found they had to purchase a minimum of 250, 500, or even a thousand books. It cost them thousands of dollars and they still have boxes of unread books sitting in their garage. The family historians who want to pass on their stories to their grandchildren may not know much about publishing, but they know they don’t want to have that same awful and expensive experience. They don’t need anything fancy. To economize, they’ll take their book down to the local copy shop, get it printed and coil bound and give copies to their intended audience. They will save a bundle in the process. Unfortunately, that’s just not true.
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Being published by a traditional publisher carries with it a certain cachet. It confers the prestige of being a “real” writer that self-published authors often lack. Some of that is changing. Self-publishing grows more legitimate by the day. But, let’s leave the question of who published your book says about your standing as a writer aside and look at it strictly as a business proposition.
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Mark Coker, founder of the Smashwords indie e-book self-publishing platform, speaking at the RT Booklovers Convention in Kansas City earlier this month, offered some valuable advice for authors who want to increase e-book sales.
Coker summarized his remarks, which are based on an analysis of indie e-book sales data, on the Smashwords website in a post titled New Smashwords Survey Helps Authors Sell More e-Books.
Coker advises authors to “…imagine dozens of levers and dials attached to your book that you can twist, turn and tweak. When you get everything just right, your book's sales will increase … through word-of-mouth. … I refer to these tweakable things as Viral Catalysts. A Viral Catalyst is anything that makes your book more available, accessible, discoverable, desirable or enjoyable to readers.”
He examines six of these potential viral catalysts. We’ll summarize what he had to say...
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The time-honored way of writing a book is to…write it. That is, to plan what you want to communicate, to put your materials in order, and then write it out. Most writers use Microsoft Word, or Pages, for Mac. Then they turn to an editor and a designer to get their book done and published. Is there a way around this? Can you skip the effort and cost of making a professional book? That is where templates come in.
Do templates help? Do they make this process easier? Is the outcome better? We will explore the pros and cons of the three types of template-based publishing that we’ve seen.
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There’s excitement in the air this week in Las Vegas. No, not the sound of jackpots on the slots and cheers from the craps tables. The National Genealogical Society’s annual conference opened today. Over a thousand family history enthusiasts are diligently seeking just one more ancestor.
It seems like a large share of them also want to create a family history book. They have kept us busy this morning with a barrage of questions. Most of the conversations seem to begin, “I want to publish a family history. Can I …?”
I think the reason people begin this way is that they have never been through the process of bring a book to life before. It seems overwhelming to them. I can understand that. We try to demystify the process and help these would be authors get from where they are to the beautiful heirloom book they dream of. Here’s how:
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Selling people a dream is easy if it’s their dream.
A lot of people dream of being an author, seeing their words printed in a book which flies off bookstore shelves and almost overwhelms Amazon’s buy button.
When the Author House website promised: “You set your book publishing goals. We’ll help you reach them,” or the Tafford Publishing website said, “Our publishing experts and production team are on hand with whatever your book needs,” the best seller took on the quality of Gatsby’s green light for the would-be authors, a dream clearly visible and sure to be realized.
160,000 of them flocked to Author Solutions, the parent company of Author House, Tafford, iUniverse, XLibris, Palibrio, and other imprints, which proclaimed itself “The leading indie publishing company in the world.”
Last July, Penguin Publishing, one of the Big Six publishing houses, no doubt with an eye on Author Solutions’ $100 million annual revenue, purchased the Bloomington, Indiana-based company.
Author Solutions is the biggest fish in the rising tide of self-publishing.
Last week the New York law firm Giskan, Solotaroff, Anderson & Steward filed a complaint against Author Solutions suggesting that it is a shark.
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The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, which bills itself as the largest book festival in the country, will draw 150,000 people to the University of Southern California campus this weekend.
Speakers will include literary superstars Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood and Jonathan Lethem, but there will be plenty more including Lemony Snicket, Basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Olympic Gold Medalist Brian Boitano, Iron Chef Alex Guarnaschelli, and Hollywood celebrities Molly Ringwald, Carol Burnett and John Cusack. There will be screenings by the USC Film School and Southern California’s food trucks.
On another level the festival is a lot like another event less than a week away the National Football League Draft.
The draft is an event at which every NFL team is trying to put together a roster of players that will take it one step closer to the Super Bowl Championship.
Most of the folks at the LA Times Festival will be like the millions of football fans who will be entertained by the unfolding action. But there will be a significant number of authors who are just finished with a book or who will be finished soon. They are a lot like the NFL coaches and general managers who are trying to put together a winning team.
The difference is that the authors will be trying to put together a team that will help make their book a success. Some will be looking for literary agents to place their book with a traditional publisher. Others plan to self-publish and need editors and book designers to help them create a professional looking product. Most of them will be looking for help with publicity and marketing for their book.
As they search for talent for their team, there are some things these authors could learn from the denizens of the NFL draft rooms.
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