With the help of some of the speakers at this year’s San Francisco Writer’s Conference, BookBaby is putting together a free PDF guide on the craft of writing.

Author Constance Hale contributed an article from her website (Sin and Syntax) called “Secrets for Sinful Prose” which I thought was worth sharing now for its own sake, and to give you a sneak peak at some of the content we’ll be featuring in the guide.

In Secrets for Sinful Prose, Constance shows how to make every part of a sentence work for you. How should you choose adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and prepositions?  Where should you put them in the sentence, And why?

Check out the full article HERE!

At the 2011 BookExpo America, BookBaby president Brian Felsen interviewed popular alternative cartoonist Josh Neufeld about storytelling, collaboration, and fatherhood. In this segment, Neufeld talks about how a writer can draw from their everyday life and transform the mundane details into something transcendent.

BookBaby president Brian Felsen interviewed Emily Powell of Powell’s Books at the 2011 LA Times Festival of Books. Powell’s Books is the largest independent new and used bookstore in the world. In this segment they discuss the strategies that have kept Powell’s relevant in the post-Amazon world.

Truman Capote at Home

If your readers love your books, they’re going to want to fall in love with you too! Maybe that sounds a little creepy, actually. What I mean is this: fans want to get a behind-the-scenes glimpse into their favorite author’s life, an inside look that makes them feel more connected and invested to that writer and their work.

Give your fans up close & personal access with affordable video/editing technology. Don’t have a video camera? Borrow a friend’s smartphone, and find a computer with iMovie. In a few hours you’ll have behind-the-scenes video content to share on your blog, website, YouTube channel, Facebook, and Twitter (and for use in any blog outreach and promotion you’re doing).

Here’s a few video-promotion ideas for writers to help spark your brain:

1) A 1-minute documentary about your writing room: the desk, the window, the typewriter or computer, the cup of water or whiskey, the full ashtray, and the cat lounging by the door. Show us where the magic happens!

2) A mini-documentary: gather or shoot whatever footage or photos you think you’d need to edit together a 3 or 4 minute story of you, your writing, your influences, your motivations, your struggles, and your successes. Show the world what makes you tick!

3) Moving-picture marginalia: if they’re done cleverly, you could even entertain your readers with short (30-90 second) video clips about things that have little direct connection to your writing life. Show us the bleachers where you had your first kiss, the snowed-in car that you’re shoveling off, the cranky way you sit when you’re in the airport, etc.

You don’t have to reveal too much, if that sort of thing makes you uncomfortable. Just a quick 30 second clip with something compelling will go a long way to maintaining a sense of connection to your readers. Try it out!

We’d love to hear about your experience shooting promotional videos for your writing career. Feel free to comment or post links to YouTube in the section below.

Also, check out:

Video Promotion for Authors, Pt 1: the video interview

Video Promotion for Authors, Pt 2: live-streaming for readings and book clubs

-Chris R. at BookBaby

Publish your book today for iPad, Nook, Kindle, and more!

Thanks to GalleyCat for introducing us to a new search feature called Yasiv which displays a visual recommendation web between similar books on Amazon.

Yasiv is a visual recommendation service that helps people to choose the right product from Amazon’s catalog … it shows what people are buying with other products. A link between two products means that they are often bought together. By simply observing the network of products one may guess what has more popularity and what has less.

That’s what Yasiv says about themselves, at least. Want to see it for yourself? Here it is in action.

-Chris R. at BookBaby

At the 2011 San Francisco Writer’s Conference, BookBaby president Brian Felsen interviewed best-selling novelist Clive Cussler about the writing life. In this segment, Cussler talks about how his writing has changed lives, and how he built his career one step at a time.

Publish your book for Kindle, iPad, Nook, Sony Reader, and more!

At last year’s San Francisco Writer’s Conference, BookBaby president Brian Felsen interviewed best-selling author Clive Cussler about how he serves a niche market with his writing, and how his action/adventure character Dirk Pitt first came to be.

Publish your book for Kindle, iPad, Nook, Sony Reader, and more!

[This is an excerpt from a piece I wrote for The Creative Penn. Click that link to read all 12 steps!]

While you should be reading other peoples’ work all the time, it hardly does any good to bemoan the fact that you do not posses the same kind of talent that, say, Nabokov or Dickens wielded. Your talents are unique. And Jealousy is bad for the soul; it is energy poorly spent.

Plenty of authors have been lauded in their day, only to be forgotten years later. Plenty now-infamous writers were relatively unknown while still alive. Poet X might have you beat in terms of vocabulary, lyricism, rich imagery, and clever turns of logic, but your simple, conversational style may communicate with readers in a far more raw and visceral way. Know what I mean? You may have your heroes beat in some departments, but have room for growth in others.

Basically, there’s no way to assess how your audience (perceived or real) is going to react to your words in comparison to any other writer’s, living or dead. You just can’t know. So don’t even worry about other writers. Don’t worry about your perceived audience. Just write. Once you’ve written enough material, judge yourself (but not too harshly) and revise from there!

Decent book publicity often equals sales and one of the best first steps you can take to help yourself get the attention of the media is to have a comprehensive and catchy digital press kit. The goal of an online press kit is provide a quick and simple way for media and other important influencers to find out everything they need to know about you and your book in one place. A digital press kit isn’t just for media either; it can also be an easy way for others to see your credentials and accomplishments as an author at a quick glance.

What’s included in a digital press kit may vary from resource to resource, here are our suggestions:

Book info – Include a succinct but detailed summary of your book (write it more like a news reporter, and less like a salesperson).

Image of the Book, eBook cover – Include both a high resolution version and a low rez version for ease of use online.

Author bio – Who are you? Introduce yourself in at least 3 sentences.

Image of you the author – Include one high resolution version and one low rez version.

Contact info – Include an up to date email address (and make sure it’s something you check often) as well as a phone number.

Anticipated media Q & A – Think about questions a journalist might ask you in an interview and write the answers. What motivated you to write this book? What about this genre appeals to you? What inspired the title? Are you working on any other books or projects currently?

Facts and figures – Include any interesting tidbits about writing your book here. (eg: “It took me 7 years to write this book and I did it all from the loft of the barn on my family’s alpaca farm.” or “I wrote the entire first draft of the book freehand.”)

Book reviews – Display any positive things influencers are saying about you.

Accolades – Show off any awards you as an author have been given or your book has received.

Book excerpts – Present a chapter or partial chapter to intrigue fans and media.

Think we missed any essential components of an online press kit? Let us know in the comments section below.

-Molly King

Sell your book on Amazon, iBookstore, Nook, and more!

Drama!

In the book world? Yes.

Barnes & Noble has announced that their physical stores will not carry any title published by Amazon. The boycott does not extend to B&N’s (Nook) eBook offerings, however.

Two giants duke it out in a battle for the ages, but there may be only one! Just kidding. Hopefully there’s room for both B&N and Amazon in the bright future of books.

Details HERE.

-Chris R. at BookBaby

What do agents look for in a book?

Well, perhaps not surprisingly, they’re looking for a lot of the same things as publishers; after all, that agent is going to have to convince a publisher’s acquisitions editor that you book can sell!

Below I’ll list some of the qualities that literary agents want to see in a new manuscript. Of course, it’s difficult to scientifically quantify things in this realm; there is no set criteria, and agents are going to be going on their gut instincts more often than not. But at the same time, if you keep these things in mind when writing you’ll increase your chances of finding an agent to represent your book:

Marketability- Hmmm. What the hell does that mean? Well, will your book sell? To how many people? Maybe you’ve written the definitive volume on mass-produced pre-war clocks. While that may be exactly what a niche press is looking for, it probably doesn’t have the makings of the next Da Vinci Code. To attract an agent (whose main task will be to get you a deal with one of the major houses), you’ll need to write a book that can sell, and sell big. The broader the appeal, the better your chances.

Uniqueness- Having broad appeal does not mean you need to pander. It shouldn’t be a cookie-cutter book. You should provide new perspectives on a relatable theme, or twist expectations in pleasing ways. Can you make the familiar new? You’ve upped your chances of finding an agent.

Clear demographic- This is part of marketing, of course, but you want to be sure your book has a target audience and an obvious place on bookstore’s shelves. While you SHOULD be unique, you don’t want your book to be so complex and convoluted that people don’t know what to do with it.

Along these lines, if someone asked you what your book was all about, could you pitch it to them in two sentences or less? Could you convey something about the plot, characters, attitude, AND style, all in a matter of seconds? If so, agents, editors, and publishers will appreciate the effort to keep things succinct! Plus, if your pitch is concise and descriptive, they probably will assume your writing is equally crisp and focused.

For more on this, see the point below about writing effective query letters.

Killer Query Letter- It’s worth mentioning that agents won’t even see your actual BOOK until you’ve intrigued them with an excellent query letter. This letter needs to convey the uniqueness and marketability of your book in just a few paragraphs. Make sure to spend some serious time and effort on your query letter. You’re a writer, after all! If it doesn’t sparkle, why would an agent assume the prose in your manuscript is any good?

Here are 3 videos with advice on crafting a great query letter.

Memorable- The people you want to impress most are the hardest people to impress. They have a hundred other manuscripts on their desk right now. At the end of the day, did your query letter stand out? Did you hook them enough with a few paragraphs so they want to read the whole manuscript? And when they read the book, did you leave them with a feeling they can’t shake? Did you make them laugh the loudest? Think the hardest? Uncap their deepest reservoir of sorrow? With so much competition, your book needs to be worth a second thought.

Polished Product- You can have a rough tone and a gruff style, but make sure the prose are polished. Does your book read like a finished work of art? Ask friends to read it and point out any flaws they find (grammar, syntax, character development, continuity, etc.) The less work an agent has to do to prepare your book for the big time, the more they’ll like you.

So, those are my thoughts. What has your experience been like finding an agent? Were they able to successfully pitch your book to a publisher? We’d love to hear about it in the comments section below!

-Chris R. at BookBaby

P.S. Also, see our article on finding a literary agent. 

[This is an excerpt from a piece I wrote for The Creative Penn. Click that link to read all 12 steps!]

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Franklin Roosevelt helped launch his presidency with those words. He was, of course, talking about measures the United States needed to take in order to pull itself out of the Great Depression, but he could have just as easily been giving a pep talk to writers who were wallowing in a creative slump.

Most of the time, writer’s block is nothing more than fear. Afraid of what, though?

-that you’re out of ideas.

-that your best work is behind you.

-that you’re a phony.

-that you’ve exposed too much of yourself, or not enough.

-of future failure.

-that maybe you’re not the genius you thought you were.

Rid yourself of the Genius Curse

Elizabeth Gilbert did a great job in her 2009 TED Talk of illustrating how we’re crippled by an obsession with our own intrinsic genius. We’re limited by the notion that every utterance we make, every phrase we write, every idea we have, should be pure brilliance. No pressure, or anything!

Do we really think our work should be transcendent at every turn?

No wonder we end up going through extended periods just staring at a blank page or hating everything we’ve written recently. Creativity requires a sense of hard work and discipline as well as a sense of play and discovery.

Want to be cured of your fear of failure? Here’s step #1:

1. Don’t be married to results.

This first tip is common curing-writer’s-block advice, but it’s also critical! Most people have to write pages of utter crap before they stumble upon that moment, phrase, idea, or character that really makes things click. No one else has to see that pile of crumpled papers in the trash. It’s your little secret.

Remember, brilliance has no deadline. Just sit back and enjoy the sound of your fingers on the keyboard or the scratch of your pen against paper. If you DO have a deadline, be easy on yourself and accept the fact that not every sentence you write will sparkle.

For the next 11 steps, check out The 12-Step Cure for Writer’s Block.

Never heard of Pinterest? Don’t feel bad; most folks haven’t yet. But the social network that allows users to post interesting links and images to a virtual pinboard is growing quickly, and it can be a great promotion tool for writers.

For more details on how to use Pinterest to promote your writing career, check out THIS STORY from GalleyCat.com.

BookBaby has just made available (for FREE!) the first in an ongoing series of PDF guides that give you the inside secrets from indie authors who have made it big!

In part 1, learn about how CJ Lyons went from being a pediatric ER doctor to a New York Times best-selling author.

• Discover the ONLY two rules she follows when writing.
• Understand how “Emotional Velcro” can capture your readers.
• Find out how being honest and truthful with yourself is the key to promoting your book.
• …and much more.

To download the guide for free, click HERE.

PublishersWeekly.com just posted a recap of yesterday’s lively panel discussion from the Digital Book World conference called “Doing It On Their Own: Self-Publishing Authors Find Success.” BookBaby CEO Tony Van Veen was a panelist, alongside popular self-published authors Bella Andre and Elle Lothlorien, and Bob Mayer of Who Dares Wins Publishing.

To check out the highlights of this talk, click HERE.

 

Let’s look at a couple headlines, shall we?

1) 19 books on a recent USA Today bestseller list sold more e-book copies than print. In fact, the list’s top six books all sold more e-versions than print versions. According to USA Today, it’s the first time the Top 50 list has had more than two titles in which the e-book sold more than the print copy.

2) 1 in 4 Americans own an eBook reader. Affordable eBook readers like the Nook and Kindle Fire sold like hotcakes in advance of Christmas, and now at least a quarter of the people in this country are reading eBooks.

BookBaby VP Steven Spatz recently attended the Writer’s Digest Conference in New York City and sends in this report:

At the risk of sounding like a certain country comedian, the underlying theme of last weekend’s Writer’s Digest Conference in New York was simple and blunt advice for aspiring authors laboring on their books.

It was simply: “Get ‘er done!”

Their books, that is. There’s been no better time in history to be an author with all of the new self publishing opportunities. The window is wide open and it’s time for every author to climb through it. But you’ve got to finish what you’ve started and that means devoting the necessary hours to your writing hobby.

BookBaby was one of the lead sponsors to the annual Writer’s Digest event held each year in the heart of Manhattan. Approximately 400+ authors enjoyed a 3-day weekend of sessions on a range of topics, from writing and editing tips to book marketing and promotion.

One of the more lively sessions discussed the role of traditional agents and publishers in today’s eBook-oriented marketplace. The panelists agreed that these companies provide many of the services that are required to produce quality books such as editing, cover designs, promotion and distribution. But today’s hardworking self-published author can create their own network of industry sources, including companies such as BookBaby, and claim their rightful place in the literary marketplace.

Book marketing is always a hot button topic, and the Writer’s Digest Conference featured a number of sessions devoted to this issue. My favorite takeaway was from a panelist who focused on the necessary basics of writing your book with a marketing mindset. Authors need to know exactly who they are writing for. The writer that says his target reading audience is every man, woman or child on the planet is not likely to find success. If authors can clearly define their audience, they can both write and then eventually market to this tight niche group to begin to build their own following.

Publish your book today with BookBaby!

Forbes.com recently featured one of the best articles I’ve ever read on the power of niche blogs for promoting your book. Writer Michael Ellsberg gives a personal account of his successful book launch and how an endorsement from Tim Ferriss helped him sell far more books than a piece in the New York Times or a story on CNN.

He says of the experience: When trying to promote a book, the main place you want coverage is on a popular single-author blog or site related to your topic.

But that is just the thesis statement. Check out the full story HERE for details. It’s a loooong article, but so worth reading in its entirety.

-Chris R. at BookBaby

 

Here are 3 quick videos to help you think about and compose a query letter that will entice literary agents.

and….

and…

Anyone who’s spent serious time in a writing group or workshop knows that not all members’ opinions are equal.

Everyone has different tastes, biases, and motives. You may occasionally find the class or group split right down the middle on a particular phrase, character, line, or plot point– half of them pleading with you to take it out, half of them claiming it’s essential to your work!

So how do you listen to the good suggestions and sift out the bad? — Check out Kristen Lamb’s article “Can Critique Groups Do More Harm Than Good?”