Predators are looking for newbies who make these mistakes.
by Anne R. Allen
We all make mistakes. It’s how people learn. But some new writer mistakes can end a writing career before it starts. They play into the hands of the predators who make money off the delusions of newbie writers.
Ruth and I are long-time industry veterans, and as we say “we made the mistakes, so you don’t have to.” We were jazzed when two organizations honored us for our work this week.
Author Marketing Services named us one of the “50 Kickass Resources for Indie Authors.”
And the site “10 Greatest” put us on their list of “Top Writing Blogs”
Thanks, Tiana!So here are some of the new writer mistakes we want to help writers avoid.
1) Writing-in-a-Garret Syndrome
It seems half the people I meet are “working on a book.” I met one at the supermarket this week. He wanted to tell me about struggling with his opus—at great length. I tried to be polite, but as my bourbon-caramel gelato began to melt, I suggested he join the Nightwriters in San Luis Obispo—an excellent group for writers at all levels. (And you still have time to enter their annual writing contest, The Golden Quill Awards. More info in Opportunity Alerts.)
“Oh no,” supermarket man said. “I’ll never show my book to anybody. They might steal my ideas. They can read it when it’s published.”
And I got a couple of messages this week from writers who had the same reason for not sharing work. They’ve been told to blog, but fear people will, yup, “steal their ideas.”
These are people writing in a vacuum. They don’t realize that ideas are everywhere, and most writers have more than they can use in a lifetime. These wannabes also don’t know creative writing needs to be read by dozens of critiquers, beta readers, and editors before it’s ready for publication.
And there’s the problem: newbie writers are usually fearful, but they’re fearful of the wrong things.
I meet so many writers like them. They think the thought is all that counts. Not the hard work of learning to write. Not taking classes or reading blogs and magazines that might improve their writing skills. Plus they refuse to educate themselves about the publishing business.
They say “that’s procrastinating. You just have to sit down and write.”
So they keep slogging away, sure that when they finally finish, all they have to do is phone up an agent, get a 6-figure book deal, and they’re on the gravy train. (For more on the fantasy vs. reality of traditional book publishing, here’s a great post from Graeme Shimmin.
These people are prime targets for bogus agents, editing scams, overpriced marketing schemes, and ruthless vanity publishing companies because they’re so easily flattered and bamboozled.
The Nonfiction Garret
Nonfiction writers seem most likely to fall into the writing-in-a-garret syndrome. They think a memoir or how-to book is somehow easier to write than a novel, so they believe they don’t need writing classes or critique groups.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Nonfiction needs to be even more carefully structured than fiction—especially memoir. A simple chronology almost never makes for compelling reading. (For more on writing memoir, see my post on How to Write a Publishable Memoir and Memoir or Fiction ?)
Many new nonfiction writers don’t even Google their subject to find out how many similar books are out there.
I ran into a newbie writer on Medium recently who’s blogging her book on how to self-publish. But it was painfully obvious she didn’t know a thing about the publishing industry. She focused on sales of print books, but doesn’t know what a book distributor is. Her piece accused the biggest self-publishing companies, including Amazon, of being scammers because they didn’t pay her royalties for books that hadn’t been sold yet. She didn’t understand anything about how the business works.
I did a quick search that came up with over 400 books on how to self-publish. She obviously hadn’t taken the time to look at any of them.
Not a good plan. There’s a reason nonfiction book proposals have to include “comps” (comparable titles.) You need to be familiar with the competition before you bring a new product into the marketplace. And if your product is inferior to what’s already out there, it’s time to rethink.
The Fiction Garret
Then there are the fiction writers who pile up files of half-finished stories and bits of novels for years and never polish them or send them out.
I know why they do it. I was a “garret writer” in my early writing years.
If you don’t show your work to anybody, and don’t compare it to anything in the marketplace, you can hang onto the fantasy that your work is heart-stoppingly brilliant and unique.
As long as nobody reads your work, you can believe your genius will propel that WIP from your computer’s hard drive to the top of the bestseller lists in no time once you make the decision to share it.
Sorry. The odds are that’s not going to happen.
Spending years in a writer-garret will not work in your favor. You’re setting yourself up for nasty disappointment and/or some serious scamming when you do decide to publish.
Scammers thrive on your delusions. Make sure you get a reality check from beta readers and critique groups before you venture into the marketplace.
2) Trying to Publish Too Soon
This heads the list of new writer mistakes. And it’s why scammy vanity presses are thriving. Most first novels are only semi-readable. They have pacing and structure problems. They’re often riddled with cliches and dialogue tags that look like a game of “Tom Swifty.” Saggy middles, slithery points of view, and Mary Sue characters abound.
That’s why they’re called “practice novels.” We learn by doing, and writing a novel is the way to learn to write a novel. And it takes a long time.
But just because that first novel took a long time to write doesn’t mean anybody will want to buy it. Consider the time you put in as tuition in your own private writing course.
Literary agency slush piles are stuffed with unpolished manuscripts that might have been fine books in the hands of a skilled writer, but the author hasn’t acquired those skills yet.
Bogus agents are happy to take them, though. For a fee. Then maybe they’ll sell them to their own bogus “publishing company,” which will be happy to take more of your money. But your book will only be printed, not published.
Of course these days unskilled writers can self-publish and put that stuff right into the marketplace.
But do you really want to do that?
What if you write a great book in a year or two, but that practice novel is out there on people’s e-readers, advertising your weak writing chops? Plus the scathing reviews are attached to your name. Do you really want to sabotage the sales of your future masterpiece in order to feed your ego now?
For more on this, see my post on Practice Novels.
3) Turning up your Nose at Bestsellers
It’s amazing how many people who want to be writers do not read. Try to talk to them about books that have sold in the past 5 years and they go blank, or get huffy and say, “I only read the classics.” (Which they often haven’t opened since college.) I hear so many new writers say they don’t read bestsellers because:
A) “They’re all crap.”
Which is usually followed by statements like:
“I’ve read James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Faulkner…and every word Kerouac ever wrote. You seriously expect me to learn from reading 50 Shades of Grey or that Duck Dynasty guy?”
These people have apparently never seen a bestseller list. They don’t know that authors like Michael Chabon, Jonathan Franzen, and Donna Tartt are bestsellers too. Whenever I write about the importance of reading contemporary fiction, a bunch offended English majors will inevitably accuse me of writing bad 50 Shades knock offs. They think that by insulting me they’ll make the 21st century go away.
Of course, mostly they’re just telling everybody they haven’t set foot in a library or bookstore since college.
You can’t enter the marketplace if you don’t know what buyers are looking for. As brilliant as the novels of Virginia Woolf are, they’re not bestsellers right now. And even if you are the reincarnation of William Faulkner, you’re probably not going to attract a lot of 21st century readers writing lush, Southern Gothic prose.
No, you don’t have to read Fifty Shades of Duck Dynasty.
But if you’re writing romance, you’d better have read Debbie Macomber, and if you have a wartime thriller, you should be aware of Mark Sullivan. If psychological thrillers are your thing, and you haven’t read Paula Hawkins, you’re going to be out of the loop.
One agent suggests you read the debut novels of top-selling authors in your genre. Don’t only read the stuff superstars are putting out now they’re famous. See what popular writers first created that allowed them to break into the business. Studying those will help you break in, too.
If you don’t pay attention to what’s selling, you can fall for the scammy vanity press that will extort more and more money from you to endlessly market a book nobody wants.
B) “I need to be true to my voice.”
Oh, I know that one: “I can’t read other writers when I’m working on a novel. I don’t want to lose my voice. What if I start writing like Jonathan Franzen or Margaret Atwood?”
I used to say that stuff too. Until I realized I should be so lucky. A few echoes of the greats in my work would not have been a problem.
The great painters all started by copying the classic works that came before them. Picasso copied El Greco and Goya, and you see lots of references to their work in his. As he said, “Good artists copy. Great artists’s steal. ”
A lot of beginning writers create incomprehensible prose in the name of “voice.”
Of course there are plenty of scammers who will tell you any book is genius. A bogus editing outfit may run it through spellcheck and grammar software and tell you the book is ready to go, when it’s completely unreadable. And a vanity press will be happy to take your money to publish it.
But no matter how much you pay for advertising or getting into some “bestselling” boxed set, your career is going nowhere if you haven’t learned how to write what people want to read.
4) Obsessing about Marketing before you Learn to Write
On the other end of the spectrum are the newbie writers who put way too much energy into marketing before they’ve had time to master the craft. They’re thinking about book-selling instead of book-writing long before they have to.
I heard from a writer recently who had paid a vanity press a huge amount of money to publish and market his book, but he couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t selling.
Turned out he’d never had the manuscript read by anybody. He wanted to know where he could find beta readers—for a published book he’d already spent thousands to advertise. Ack! He had the process completely backwards.
I met another writer who was obsessed with social media marketing. He told me he had a website, X number of followers on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram and Tumblr. He asked me…did I think he had a big enough platform to start writing his first story?
Poor guy. He had never written a word of fiction, but he’d spent a ton building a platform to sell it. He was constantly paying to “boost” his Facebook page and he’d even paid for more “traffic” on his blog.
This is like putting all your money into renting a store when you have nothing to sell.
You don’t need to worry about marketing or finding a publisher until you’ve got one or two polished, critiqued books in the hopper, some short work published in journals or anthologies, and you’re ready to start a writing business, either indie or traditional.
Don’t put money and time into marketing something that doesn’t exist!
5) Expecting to Make Money with a First Book
This is embarrassing, but I have to admit that after I signed with an agent with my first novel, I quit my day job and expected to be paying bills with an advance by the end of the year.
You guessed it—that’s not exactly how it turned out.
The agent shopped it around, failed to sell it and dropped me. When I got the bad news, I hadn’t even finished a first draft of a second novel.
I was so devastated, I didn’t write another word for months.
It’s easy to get discouraged when you’ve been slogging away on a book for a year and then realize revising it may take another six months or a year. You’ll probably start querying the rough draft and get nothing but rejections.
But it turns out a year is nothing. Try ten. Very few authors make money on a first book. When you hear about authors having huge successes with a “first novel,” keep in mind it’s their first published novel, and they’ve probably got many years’ worth of practice novels in their files.
Write because you love it—because you can’t help yourself—not because you’re counting on becoming the next J.K. Rowling by Christmas.
If you need money right away, keep the day job. Or find a part time one. Until you have at least five titles, you’re not likely to make substantial money, whether you’re traditionally published or indie. Yes, it’s been done, but those authors are the exception to the rule.
Many of the big-earner indies have fifty or sixty books out there.
Vanity presses that tell you you’ll make back the thousands of dollars they’re charging with the sales of a first book are flat-out lying to you.
6) Writing Novels Exclusively
This was me. Once I decided I wanted to have a writing career, I dove into writing novels. I left short stories and poetry behind. People told me they were for amateurs. (And in those days, nobody wrote novellas because they were considered “unpublishable.”)
That’s because in the early 90s, most magazines had stopped publishing fiction. The only way to publish was to spend a lot of time researching the small, low-circulation literary magazines. Which of course could only afford to pay in copies. The bottom line didn’t look good to me.
I was short-sighted. If I’d had more publishing credits and contest wins, I would have found a publisher for my longer fiction faster.
I’d also now be sitting on a goldmine, since short stories, novelettes and novellas are hot commodities. See more about the value of short fiction in my article for Writer’s Digest. And here’s a post on how to structure a novella by by Paul Alan Fahey. Paul also has a new book out on writing and marketing short stories and novellas, The Short and the Long of It.
Getting your work vetted by contest judges and journal editors gives you the credibility you need to get a legitimate traditional contract or a successful self-publishing career. Don’t spend years writing a novel and then expect it to make a big splash. Start small and build your portfolio and reputation. That’s the way other “overnight sensations” actually did it.
Anybody who tells you that a completely unpublished writer is likely to succeed with a first novel is probably trying to benefit his bottom line, not yours.
7) Partying Like it’s 1999
With all apologies to the late, great Purple One, authors who pretend the last 17 years never happened are sitting ducks for industry predators.
Most of the people I know in real life are aware I literally wrote the book on HOW TO BE A WRITER IN THE E-AGE, but I’m amazed at how many won’t take a look, even if I offer a copy as a loan.
“Oh, I know all that stuff,” they’ll say.
Then they’ll come to me three months later and say “I just paid five thousand bucks to get my book printed. I’ve got six cartons in my garage. How do I get them on Amazon?”
Sigh.
If you don’t read blogs, don’t participate in social media and pretend the Internet doesn’t exist, you’re going to walk into the publishing world with “prey” stamped on your forehead.
Every phony publisher, bogus agency, and scammy editing service with a slick website is waiting out there, ready to pounce.
So do your homework and don’t hide in a fantasy garret. Even if you’re only writing as a hobby, if you want to publish at all, you need to learn how the business works or you’ll pay a lot of money for something embarrassing.
Always check out a company at Writer Beware, and never sign a contract without running it by a legal professional. For real self-publishing advice, follow Joanna Penn’s blog and The Alliance for Independent Authors. Reedsy and Writer’s Boon can give you lists of vetted service providers. And David Gaughran’s book Let’s Get Digital gives a great overview of indie publishing.
And if you missed, it check out Ruth Harris’s great post on fantasies that stand in the way of a publishing career.
***
UPDATE: For people who are afraid to show their work to other writers for fear someone will steal your “great idea”, here’s a graphic UK author Graeme Shimmin just sent. (There’s a link to his article on myths about writing in the “Garret” section above. )
What about you, scriveners? Have you made any of these mistakes? What new writer mistakes did you make when you were starting out? Have you ever been scammed by a vanity press, phony marketer, scammy editing service, or a bogus agency?
by Anne R. Allen (@annerallen) September 3, 2017
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Hey Anne — thanks for a fine post once more. The situation that hurts me most is the Publish-too-Soon Syndrome. There are countless published books out there with huge potential & absolutely no chance of going anywhere due to being published too soon. I know some lovely human beings who’ve worked so hard on their books, then skipped the editorial process & gotten the book(s) out there to languish on the digital shelf. Thanks for helping the next generation of authors avoid this sad situation.
CS–Isn’t it sad when you read a book you know could have been good with a little more work? I fear about 80% of indie books need another pass through the editing process. And trad pubs are doing this too. Writers are told to write faster, faster, and faster, but obviously, the quality suffers and every book goes out half-baked.
Fabulous, that’s our agreed keyword for your posts Anne, and this one’s no different. I especially like how you pair up each “don’t” with a clear and horrifying “here’s why not”. We ARE prey if we don’t pay attention.
For me it’s all about #4 these days I think, getting the marketing right is almost a contradiction in terms especially without money. I’ve read many really good authors whose books are well worth it but we flounder after the way to build the platform and send the message.
I absolutely love this: “Write because you love it—because you can’t help yourself—” that says it all. So you have to a) WRITE something, and also I guess b) have an honest reaction to it. No shame if it turns out not to be your thing.
(Final note, when you coined a famous ad-phrase, the one ending in “so you don’t have toooooo” of course I had an hysterical image of you and Ruth happily spinning down the drain. On your way to authoring success I hope! Thanks again for all the good advice.
Will–The marketing thing has us all stymied. I honestly don’t know what works anymore. Even people who are lucky enough to get into BookBub (and have the $$$ to pay for an ad) say they don’t get the bump they used to. There are just too many of us trying to get a piece of an ever-shrinking pie.
We have to write for the love of it, because there are no guarantees of financial reward.
Excellent, as usual, Anne.
2) Trying to Publish Too Soon
A novel that goes out too soon may sell a few copies, but readers may decide that it is so full of typos, plot holes, and formatting errors that they decide to never buy another book written by the same author.
Kathy–That’s exactly the problem. With the ever-swelling number of authors to choose from, why would anybody go back to an author who wrote a sloppy book?
I’ve known two writers who focused on marketing instead of practicing on the writing side. It’s hard talking to these people because they think they can game the system by finding the right audience. They won’t do the research on the industry, or ignore what they do find. One of the writers thought the publishers had the secret to what made a best selling novel and weren’t telling anyone (and he didn’t read many novels either). He’s no longer writing novels.
The other thought story didn’t matter as much as marketing. We thought he was a decent writer but needed to up his game to get noticed. It was hard watching him, because he absolutely refused to improve the story telling skills. He wanted to write full time–hated his day job–but seemed to entirely miss the connection of how to get there. He listened to one critique group, probably all beginners, who told him his stories were great, and not to the one that told him how to improve. The bad part is he gets on panels at cons and advises other writers…
Linda–I hear you. The system-gamers and conspiracy theorists are impossible to communicate with. Luckily, they do usually quit. But much more upsetting is seeing people like your example #2 who don’t write worth $#&! but are out there at conferences telling good writers what to do. (And very often their marketing “tricks” are outdated anyway.)
Excellent, excellent, and perfect timing, as I launch into teaching Crafting a Novel at college for the umpteenth time! Will point every student to this post. Thanks again, Anne, for all you do for others in the writing field.
Melodie–Glad this post will help. If we can keep a few newbies out of the clutches of scammy publishers and bogus marketers, we can congratulate ourselves on a job well done.
Great picture of the vultures.
Henri–We have lots of them here on the Central Coast of California. In fact the photo of a turkey vulture in Wikipedia is from Morro Bay.
Anne—Caveat scrivener! Excellent post and thanks, too, for including Graeme Shimmin’s excellent post on fantasy vs reality. Since our “business” is fantasy, we writers seem to be especially prone to career fantasies. For another take on writers’ fantasies and how they can stand between us and success, see my June post. From Ruth, waving from the drain! 🙂
https://selfpublishingsites.com/2017/06/6-fantasies-stop-writing-success-fight-back/
Ruth–What a great point! Yes. We deal in fantasy–that’s our job. So it makes sense that writers slip into fantasy when it comes to their own careers. I should have linked to your post up there with the one on trad publishing. I’ll go do that now!
So much this! I’ve tried to gently discourage writer friends away from vanity publishers and they did it anyway. Last week a neighbor said she wanted to talk to me about the book she’s writing because she has so many questions and needs help. I suggested SLO Night Writers. Her answer? “I’m afraid to join a writing group because someone will steal my fabulous idea.” I told her nearly ALL writers think their story is fabulous (except those days when we think it’s absolute s**t) and nobody would steal her idea. I have so many ideas I WISH someone would steal a couple so I could narrow my focus. haha Just kidding. Kind of.
Of course, I’m guilty of a few items on your list. I once got so discouraged because I changed the ending of a ms at the request of a VIP editor at a whoop-de-do Big 5 publishing house who ended up not picking up my book, that I put away ALL my writing and sulked. For over a decade! Turns out that was my practice book and her criticism made the next two much better.
And I’m always embarrassed to admit how many of the classics I haven’t read. There, I said it. Most of them bore the heck out of me. I do read in my genre and check out other types of books that are selling well, but I agonize even more over not reading enough, period. Not because I’m worried it will affect my writing voice, but because I run out of day and end up falling asleep on the second page. I buy and borrow lots of books. Between writing, revising, running a business and managing a rental property, I usually only manage to read one a month. I’ve already read one of the books in your trilogy and I’m off to buy the bundle. Thanks for another fantastic blog post, Anne!
Eldonna–That woman should get together with the guy I met in the supermarket. They can not share their books together. Haha! Only people who don’t write much think that the idea for a book is more important than the process of writing it.
I once rewrote a book for an agent who ended up not taking it. I know how discouraging that feels. But your story sure does have a happy ending. Congrats on your big book deal with Kensington!
I think we all find it harder to make time for reading once we start publishing. Keeping up with the industry and social media can take so much of our time.
Great article! It is sad that so many authors are taken advantage of this way. Also one aspect you didn’t mention: the less expensive scammer that tells the author they are great and only need a little formatting and cover design (which they still do for a large fee, but sounds like a deal at the time). The author publishes the book themselves but without the editing and necessary other work to make it a success.
It isn’t as common as the full out print/publisher type of scammer, but they are out there.
Dondebon–There are definitely some digital-only publishers who are unscrupulous. They take a book and say they’re editing it, but only run it through spellcheck, then format and slap a ready-made cover on it. A lot of them sprang up at the beginning of the “Kindle Revolution.” Most of them have gone under, but others have switched to vanity publishing but pretend they’re real publishers. Thanks for reminding us they’re out there.
Anne, such good advice as usual. I am often surprised by those who want to talk about publishing, but don’t want to do any research about the current state of the industry. There are so many exceptional resources out there, for every aspect of publishing, that it only takes a few days of dedicated reading to get the basics.
Underscoring your terrific list is a decision. Hobbyist, writing for friends and family? Or a career that takes time and investment, like any small business. That seems to be the two roads in the woods that any author faces at some point, and the one taken makes the difference.
A career author needs feedback. Diversifying the product line helps extend the brand and offering a quality product is essential unless you want your name quickly associated with “meh.” I also want to know what other types of products are in my chosen niche, etc etc. Today’s author is a solopreneur and your blog supports our success.
Carmen–You make a great point. I think a lot of hobbyists don’t want to admit they’re hobbyists. They think a magical fairy is going to transport their private efforts from their hard drive to Oprah’s desk and they’ll become rich and famous authors overnight without going through “all that boring stuff.”
Writing is a wonderful hobby and people shouldn’t be ashamed if they’re writing for themselves and not the marketplace. But they shouldn’t be sending their work to agents or publishing unedited work and giving all indies a bad name.
Yes indeed. And the formatters I mentioned contribute to this problem as well: sending a book out before it is ready for the marketplace.
Don–I want to make sure people know that’s only true if the formatter is pretending to be a publisher. Formatters aren’t editors. Their only job is to format what is given to them. Like a typist. If people want editing, they have to pay an editor. It costs a lot more for editing than formatting.
Yes of course, in general yes that is all they are. But there are those out there that pretend to do more (and do a lousy job in the first place).
Don–I know you know that, but I want to make sure people don’t confuse standard formatters with editors. The problem is when formatters pose as editors, or worse, “publishers.” And yes, there are predators out there doing that right now.
This post really opened my eyes, Anne. I am one of the people who find it difficult to accept the fact that a writer needs to write a few practice novels before attempting to publish one. But there’s no way around it, like you pointed out, unless the writer wants to publish a novel full of errors.
Thomas–First novels can often eventually be published–after the author acquires the skills. Most first time novelists bite off more than they can chew. They try to write Lord of the Rings or War and Peace instead of a novel with a single point of view, smaller scope and simpler structure.
Hey Anne,
I guess most of these mistakes – if you’re smart enough to persist past them – is what we all go through at the beginning. Although personally, I never feared my ideas would get stolen so much as I feared that I just sucked. LOL.
The other mistake that I observe in green writers is that they aren’t willing to or don’t understand that they need to pay their dues. As in any career – you just don’t become the CEO or a best selling author overnight. That’s just one of those Hollywood B-movie tropes that continues to live on for some reason. Any ‘overnight sensation’ has spent years honing their craft before the big break happens.
And it’s not just learning your craft, researching the industry, etc that I mean by paying dues either – I’m talking about supporting other authors and author friendly folks and giving help to those peers freely and without expectation of quid pro quo.
I fear that because self publishing has become so easy that writers are really operating in a vacuum. They don’t reach out to other writers, they don’t make connections in any meaningful way with the community, and simply buy into these vanity motivated ‘services’ that stroke their egos, take their money, and teach them how to game the system.
I truly believe there is such a thing as karma and no one is immune to it. You do in the end, get what you give. If you give of yourself to your craft, your work, your peers, and your community – ultimately you will succeed. But if you believe arrogance and tricks to scam the system or play the angles will get you anywhere, then you will become a very unhappy camper in the long run.
Great post as always.
Cheers,
Annie
Annie–You make such an important point! Nobody gets to play Carnegie Hall after their first year of piano lessons, but so many writers think it works that way with writing.
AND: Yes! You need to network with your fellow authors. These days it’s all about who you know, and if you’re sitting in your garret, nobody knows you. How do you get to know people? Be helpful and friendly and kind. Karma does come back. Thanks!
This post needs to come with a megaphone, maybe on a truck, that maybe cruises around the parking lot of every writer’s convention/workshop — it would be a start, eh?
I have novel starts, poor discarded novels, ideas for novels stuffed in drawers, boxes, two computers…and everyone who would hold still long enough has been forced to read them. Most simply aren’t a real story – you know what I mean? Great idea, unique concept, but a fully-formed story can’t be hung on it. I have published short stories from way back, when mags still took them, and now wonder if I should take a break from editing and look at all my old stuff that couldn’t hold novel water, but might now be workable for the current ‘shorter’ market…
The newbies I encounter as an editor do many of the things you’ve listed, but I would add – strongly – that beyond them not reading current best sellers, they don’t know ANY of the top writing blogs! it just stuns me. I refer new authors to you & Ruth, Janice Hardy’s Fiction University, and Kristen Lamb, for a wide range of approaches. I also point out Writers in the Storm, Writers Market, Writers Digest. Plus the fact that there are many, many excellent and reasonably-priced classes available, something to fit every pocketbook, time frame, and writing skill.
The other newbie issue that makes me take breaks is wanting one review pass. Rough draft, one pass. Sometimes, two might be choked out. They want the book to just “pop!” appear. One young author was so happy with her cover design, while I was still explaining why she had no story yet. Drama, cry, lips set in firm line, drama, cry, hands on hips, drama, try not to cry, but do….
Thanks for being ever-resourceful, Anne. And thanks to Ruth for always adding one more tidbit, and her posts that don’t take no guff….
Maria D’Marco
Maria–I’ll bet if you go through those old stories with the editing chops you’ve got now, you’ll have a gold mine. Lots of places are looking for stories. I’ve been working with Radish, a new phone app for fiction, and they’re looking for original stories. You get paid per read.
And yes, not taking classes, reading blogs, or even magazines is a huge problem. I recently told a friend who’s been “working on a book” for 3 years that we have a lot of the info she needs on the blog. “I don’t read blogs.” she said. So I suggested a subscription to Writer’s Digest. “I don’t want any of that stuff o get in the way of my creativity,” she said. In other words, she’s never going to get published. Sigh.
Anne,
Great article. I have met so many new writers who use the “someone might steal my idea” line. I meet a lot more on the end of the spectrum, too, though. “Is _____ a good idea for a story?”
I’ve been somewhat guilty of the “I’m not reading that bestselling trash” (much to my chagrin). On the other hand, I do read a lot of newly published, midlist and indy authors.
Stephanie–Oh, yes! And there’s the guy who says, “I have a great idea for a novel: you write it and we’ll split the profits 50-50.” I wrote a whole novel about how that can go wrong: Sherwood, Ltd.
Good for you to be reading indies. I do too. And sometimes I have to hold my nose with the bestsellers. My first publisher insisted I read Dan Brown, which annoyed me. But he had a point about Brown’s talent for building suspense.
Wonderful post. I have been so grateful for my two critique groups and my beta readers. Valuable “tools of the trade”. The comment about not reading because of wanting to keep your voice pure is interesting. I go back and re-read stories I’ve written years ago, and when I read a particularly good line, I sometimes ask myself, “Did I really write that?” Ha! I attribute it to reading enough to recognize brilliant writing, even when it is occasionally mine! Thanks again for sharing your wisdom with us.
Christine–Don’t you love it when you pick up some old writing and go “who wrote this? It’s great!” And who knows, it might have been because I’d been reading some fantastic writer at the time. Reading can only enrich our own writing.
Been there, done that with vanity publishing and vanity literary agency/ Learned an expensive lesson before going back to square one, which was picking the brains of writer friends that I’d first met as blog readers. I do have a few regular publishing credits under my belt, but that alone does good a writer not make. I did fall into that trap of “copyright anything and everything no matter what’ early on, but learned my lesson well on that.
I write, I work on my skill set by blogging and I have fun doing it. At this point, I’m trying to get enough manuscripts completed so that not only I have a good backlog to work with but I can take a minor respite from original writing as well.
GB–I think I remember that you’re one of the many authors who got taken in by the slick marketers at AuthorSolutions or one of the many vanity presses they gobbled up. Sorry you had to go through that.
And that’s one I forgot! The copyright scam.. “We’ll copyright your book for only $200” or whatever. When it only costs $35, and you DON’T need to do it with an unpublished book.
Blogging is one of the best ways to polish your writing skills, and you’re best off waiting to publish until you have a body of work, so you’re doing it right this time!
I suspect a big driver behind some of this willful ignorance is fear. Fear their work isn’t good enough, etc. It’s easier to stay in a garret than actually put it out there. I was surprised how much resistance I had to certain stages of the process.
Of course, there’s also the fantasy element you described. That can also be a fear-driven.
I’ve watched how independent publishing has grown and the way the weeds have moved in. Many of the self-publishing houses were bought out by the same company and shifted more vanity. I took an excellent workshop from one newer house but they soon turned super-vanity. I think they have more staff in marketing now than book production.
I’ve found writers groups really valuable. Lots of great tips that have saved me a lot of time, not to mention feedback on my writing. I get a lot of the second from my blog also.
David–“The weeds have moved in.” Great way to put it. There used to a number of good self-publishing outfits when POD was first invented. They got bought up by AS and turned into vanity presses that make all their money selling useless marketing packages to their victims.
And with the “Kindle Revolution” a lot of indies made serious money.. But Amazon has changed its algos and no longer favors indies. So scammers have moved in who claim they can get the big numbers indies used to get back in 2009-2014. You can’t turn back the clock by gaming the system. Amazon catches on real fast. And authors lose.
Great insight and links, as usual. “Write because you love it—because you can’t help yourself—not because you’re counting on becoming the next J.K. Rowling by Christmas..” This is the second best piece of writing advice. The very best piece of writing advice is “Put your butt in the chair and write, and when you think you’re done for the day, stay another 20 minutes.” Whatever is next on the list is a very distant third.
Steve–Thanks a bunch! And yes, that’s the best advice out there. Write. But do get feedback.
Once again, great advice. I learned not to sequester myself in my writing room without getting anyone else’s opinion on my work. A second and third (or more?) pair of eyes is definitely necessary. I can’t see the forrest for the trees. After having my books edited, only then did I realize what was wrong.
Thank you.
Patricia-Oh, those first edits! They can make you feel like chucking in the whole thing and never writing again. And sometimes–sometimes–the editor is wrong. But usually, after you start making the changes, you have that “aha” moment and realize the edits make the book better. You just had to get somebody else to make the trees into a forest. 🙂
Thank you, Anne. This is a excellent post. My problem isn’t that I am loathe to do practice novels, or stories. My problem is that when I’m done a story I’m certain it’s not there yet and another half dozen practice novels are needed before I consider trying to publish. I’m not afraid that someone will steal my ideas, I’m afraid no one would want to.
Hmm, sounds as though I seriously lack confidence. I’ll work on that. Thank you for all the delicious links to follow.
Eve–We authors can careen from one end of the confidence spectrum to the other, can’t we? Sounds as if what you really need is some beta readers to give you an honest assessment. And maybe a couple of contest wins or placement in a literary journal to boost your confidence. I suggest sending out a story every week and collecting those rejections. Catherine Ryan Hyde, who is now one of the most successful authors in the world, got over 150 rejections before she got her first story accepted. Look in the “opportunity alerts” below and choose a place to submit. You might even win some money!
All good advice.
Florida–Thanks for stopping by!
Yes, all good advice. I almost broke into the short fiction in McCalls and Redbook, but I didn’t. I self-published some of those stories, but it was a good way to LEARN. Now I use social media, read your blog and many others, belong to a writer’s group with many who are published and PAY to have people read my work. It’s getting better and better.
Beth–I used to send my stories to McCalls and Redbook, too. Dreaming of those big bux. They paid amazingly well. I never got more than a standard rejection, but I think writing stories for that market–and studying the ones they published–helped my writing a lot, too. I remember discovering Joyce Carol Oates in Redbook. Those stories were awesome!
Yes, feedback of any kind is going to make us better writers. Even if we don’t take the advice, we can see how others react to our work and hone in on the right audience.
Shared. Love the insight of self acknowledgement. Funny 🙂
Paul–Thanks for spreading the word!
Anne, I wrote my “practice novel” decades ago, then didn’t write another for about ten years. That one (a fantasy novel) was rejected by several publishers. But I was able to figure out what needed to be changed. About ten years later I got around to the rewrite, and now it’s published.
I submitted that novel to a publisher who offered me a contract. I didn’t need to consult an attorney to recognize the contract was akin to legalized theft: Publisher gets the copyright, publisher gets all rights to any other medium, if publisher goes out of business, author can buy back rights at a price set by the publisher. I declined.
One other thing–I’m always reading a book. Sometimes only twenty minutes a day, but every day. I’m now reading the third in a fantasy series and I suddenly realized that the author was showing me how to write a fantasy series!
Thanks to you and Ruth for the outstanding work you do to keep us all from disaster. (Those of us smart enough to read your blog).
Fred–Thanks for sharing your experience. Unfortunately, scam publishers are everywhere. This should be a red-flag to anybody ” if publisher goes out of business, author can buy back rights at a price set by the publisher.” Yikes!! I’m glad you figured that out before you signed your work away.
And you’ve got it right. Reading is the key. If you don’t read, you can’t write.
I’m a professional editor and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve offended clients by suggesting changes to their manuscript. How dare I do such a thing? I also seem to have a never-ending supply of authors who balk at the idea of paying for a professional edit but will happily shell out thousands of dollars to publish a book I know at a glance is practically unreadable.
Lynne–I’ve worked as an editor, too, and it’s amazing, isn’t it? They pay for an editor, but don’t want to do any edits. Or worse, they pay a vanity press $1000s to publish an unedited mess, rather than do the work to make it into a good book. Sigh.
Yes, I’ve begged and begged and begged some people to have edits, knowing what they’re about to do. It’s hard to watch them walk away.
Lynne–It’s even harder to avoid saying “I told you so” when they come to you six months later, saying “My book’s not selling. What do I do now?” Sigh.
I haven’t had that problem yet.
Great post, awesome list. Primarily I fitted ‘prey’ – I was naïve. When someone from Xlibris said they would publish my book in print (it was in Kindle format) I believed them. That was maybe six years and three books ago.
After being ‘stung’ once, now when I receive emails – or even text messages to my phone. “We think your book (so and so) would be a good fit for our company… ” I Google them. Usually they are some sort of vanity press.
As a matter of interest, since December 2016 Xlibris AKA Author Solutions have come up with so many creative ideas as to why they never paid the royalties due. They were learning new software. In the end I contacted Better Business Bureau in the state their head office was. Guess what. Should be in my bank by the end of the month. I don’t know how many times they said that.
Your post should be required reading btw. I have just finished reading a book with the craziest formatting. I have read others where it seems the writer has run it through a spellchecker and never checked the spellchecker.
I deeply appreciate your article and it has brought me to a decision. I am struggling with book 5 in the series I have been writing, but have been pushing to finish it. No. I won’t. It will be done more quickly if I ‘chill’ instead of push.
Many thanks,
Susan
Susan–XLibris was one of the nastiest of the AS imprints. So sorry you got caught in their web. What a disaster! Because they posed as a “publisher” people didn’t realize they were just an overpriced version of CreateSpace–that never pays its royalties. I think there are 1000s of lawsuits against them now.
Sounds like you made a good decision. Sometimes taking some time off to let the muse work in the back of your consciousness is exactly what you need to make a book come together. You’ll be taking a walk or weeding the garden and it will come to you and you’ll rush to your computer and the book will seem to finish itself. That happened with my latest. Good luck with yours! .
Excellent article, Anne, thank you! There is just so MUCH ‘advice’ out there (some of it good, some of it not) that it is genuinely bewildering to the newbie writer looking to self-publish for the first time (it isn’t so long ago for me that I’ve forgotten, and it is still very easy to fall for the lure of yet another way to ‘write better/faster’ and so on… I often kick myself!)
It is also sometimes hard to avoid the feeling that everyone else knows more than you do and to want to do something about it; I think one of the hardest things is knowing who to trust; where to spend your hard-earned cash and where not to. I paid for a professional critique of my first full-length manuscript and was advised to take a creative writing course, which I did; and I am so glad I took that advice.
It saddens me when I hear about fellow writers who are too afraid to share their work with anyone in order to get feedback – anyone who has ever read an acknowledgments page knows that ‘even’ best-selling novelists share their work-in-progress to get feedback and advice as part of the writing process, I’d say that the first stage of writing a book may be a solitary affair, but the finished article is usually a team effort!
Thanks again for this.
E.L. The huge amount of bad advice out there is what prompted me to write HOW TO BE A WRITER IN THE E-AGE with Catherine Ryan Hyde. We saw so much bogus advice out there.
Not all critiques that writers get are useful. But taking a class is, because you can see a continuum of writing skills in your fellow students. Great advice.
The saddest thing about the garret writers is that they often think when they finally decide to share their work that means publication. They don’t understand there are a gazillion steps in between.
Overall, a great article. I agree with most of the advice.
Not all of it, however.
For example, “Obsessing about Marketing before you Learn to Write”.
In fact, you should think about marketing as soon as you think about writing that first book. Marketing guru and mega bestselling author Seth Godin advises,
“The best time to start promoting your book is three years before it comes out. Three years to build a reputation, build a permission asset, build a blog, build a following, build credibility and build the connections you’ll need later.”
I agree with Seth. And as John Kremer (author of “1,001 Ways to Market Your Books”) once said, “The first question you should ask is: ‘Who is going to buy my book?’ And you better have a damn good answer!” This is part of the marketing that should start when you are considering writing a book.
Also, the importance of having a professional editor is vastly exaggerated.
This has alwasy been my motto (Enjoy the typo if you can find it):
“Do It Badly — But at Least Do It!”
This approach has helped me get published in 22 languages and 29 countries, a total of
111 book deals with foreign publishers, all without using a North American foreign rights agent.
I don’t strive for perfection and never will.
These words of wisdom from one of my favorite writers have guided me through the years.
“It’s better to do a sub-par job on the right project than an excellent job on the wrong project.”
— Robert J. Ringer
My international bestseller “The Joy of Not Working” had over 150 spelling errors when I first self-published it in 1991. It wasn’t until three years later when the book sold over 30,000 copies and when I did a spell check that I discovered those spelling errors. Did this impact the sales of this book? Very little, near as I can tell. For the record, the book has now sold over 300,000 copies and still sold over 5,000 copies in print and 2,000 in eBook editions last year, 25 years after it was released.
In short, I am not saying that a writer shouldn’t correct obvious grammatical and spelling errors. I do believe, however, that great content is much, much more important than having a book perfectly edited and proof read. Also, there are times when it pays to hurry and get a book out in the shortest time possible at the expense of excellence. I once wrote a book in three weeks and had it in print two months after the day I started writing it. It ended up selling over 50,000 copies and earned me a tidy sum.
One more note: I got hired to do a 45-minute keynote presentation about “The Joy of Not Working” to 1,200 career professionals at the National Career Development Association conference in Orlando on June 29. I was paid several thousands of dollars plus first-class expenses. One of the principles that I used in presenting this speech was: “Do It Badly — But at Least Do It!” It worked out really well. Here is the link that the National Career Development Association put up for the PDF of my PowerPoint Presentation that I used for my keynote.
https://associationdatabase.com/aws/NCDA/asset_manager/get_file/160417?ver=1
As you can see, it is very amateurish. Even so, I did better with my keynote than the three people with PhD’s who did the keynote presentation the previous day. The three people with Phd’s were operating out of perfection. I was operating out of excellence with great content.
But what would I know? My books (mainly self-published) have only sold 960,000 copies worldwide and have only earned me over $2 million in pretax profits.
Ernie–Seth Grodin, like you, is talking about NONFICTION books. But it’s very different for creative writers. Most people won’t buy unreadable, verbose novels and memoirs.
And bragging doesn’t sell novels the way it sells nonfiction get-rich-quick schemes.
Creative writers need to learn to write readable, lean prose before anybody will pay money to read their stories. The world already has enough crap novels. It needs GOOD novels. So this is very bad advice for novelists.
Hi Anne!
Sorry for the very late comment, I’m only stumbling upon your blog today.
I’m not by any way or mean an expert author, but thought I’d share my limited experience with you.
I write Fiction novels. Being the exact opposite of a garret-writer, I put my -copyrighted- drafts online for my millions of beta-readers to comment. It allows me to know what they like and more importantly what they don’t, and while I never alter my story line, I do try and adjust my style to fit their expectations.
English is a foreign language to me, and I took to writing in it as a challenge. I did read a lot about creative writing, editing, proof-reading, and took a course on self-publishing. I also had my first novel evaluated and edited by professionals before putting it on Amazon.
When checking out the competition, I began to wonder whether it was worth the effort. One top self-published Historical Romance author on Amazon writes her books in three weeks, doesn’t research or edit, barely varies her story line, and still her fans devour everything she throws at them. Many self-published -and some professionally published- books on Amazon are plagued with typos, poor to no editing, and a complete lack of research.
While I have done my best to avoid these flaws, my writing is nowhere near stellar. I was lucky enough to sell thousands of eBooks, spend three months in the Top100 Amazon Best-sellers list, and make a pretty penny out of it. I was also offered book deals by two legit publishers, including one for five novels.
Main stream readers nowadays seem to pay little to no attention to the literary value of a book, as long as they like the story. Whether this has to do with the education system, new technologies or a lot of them not having native English I couldn’t say, but it is a fact.
Give people a compelling narrative and they will read it, no matter how bad the writing. This has been abundantly demonstrated in the past few years.
Don’t get me wrong, I still wish to improve the quality of my work. I just won’t expect it to increase my sales.
Jany–Good storytelling IS good writing. I’m not talking about literary perfection here. I’m talking about learning to write a compelling story. That’s very hard to learn. But obviously you have. Congrats on your success!
Anne, I just found your blog, have book marked it. Exceptional piece on writing in the dark, you hit the nail on the head. Fear and self doubt prevent more people from self-publishing successfully then anything else, and They Become Open Prey to the Scammers. Fortunately, for myself, I have been able to avoid most pitfalls and avoided the scammers. Thank you,
Joe–Welcome! Fear and self-doubt can manifest in many ways. Some of them end up being self-fulfilling prophecies. People who are afraid of getting critiqued by a group, beta reader or editor will self-publish unpolished stuff and get terrible reviews and sales, so when somebody shows up and says, “give me $2000 to be in a boxed set and you’ll be a bestseller!” –they go for it. And they still have a bad book,and no individual sales and they’re out $2000. Self publishing is a boon and a curse for new writers. They still have to put in their time to learn to write in order to be successful.
When I was much younger (tween or young teen), I signed up for a poetry “contest”. Lo and behold, I was selected for publication. Me! And, if I wanted a copy of the anthology of these selected writings, all I had to do was mail $24.95 + shipping & handling to…. Yup, I was bamboozled.
While on the topic of charlatans,is there a trusted list of writing contests? I always have the underlying feeling that contests are just a ploy by the publisher to get free content. Actually, better than free: You pay them.
James–That diabolical scam is still going on. Except now the book full of unvetted poetry costs $45. My neighbor fell for it just last year. (God forbid she should read my blog. How could I know anything? I’m a neighbor. Haha.)
You can find vetted contests from Poets and Writers magazine. (www.pw.org) and at WinningWriters.com, (A WD Best 101 site) also from the Funds for Writers newsletter from C. Hope Clark. And right here in our “opportunities alerts” section.
Perfect! Thank you for the list. And, the moral of your story is good fences don’t always make good neighbors.