Are Your Fonts Commercial?
by Bill Peschel • Book Design
Regarding your trade paperback books published by KDP, the question might come up: Are your fonts commercial?
I learned this during a kerfluffle I had with Amazon regarding one of my books. It took a week to resolve, and diverted me from my other book-writing projects, but since I learned a little something about fonts, I thought I should pass this along.
It happened when I updated the content for the trade paperback version of The Complete, Annotated Mysterious Affair at Styles. It was a simple process, and when they sent me the email that it had been published, I went on with my life.
A few months later, while checking something else on my dashboard, I saw that my book was listed as “On Hold.” In other words, it wasn’t on sale. No reason given.
First lesson: Amazon will not tell you when a book is on hold.
Working through the Contact Me section of the dashboard, I had them call me and I explained the situation. I’ll give them credit, when the operator saw that my book was On Hold, he passed me up to a senior support specialist. Over the next few days, I talked to three of them, because they were passing messages to the tech people about my problem.
The tl;dr edition: Once I understood what their problem was, I solved the problem.
Here’s how.
During the review process, KDP examines the fonts used in the book to see if they’re approved for commercial use. Two of mine weren’t. They told me which ones.
This surprised me. I wasn’t using them for the book.
Then I looked at the interior PDF to see what fonts were embedded in it (to get there, click on File, then Properties, then Fonts).
Turns out I was wrong. There they were.
I checked my Word file. It seems that, I created the Styles file by taking the file for another book, cleared out the text, and replaced it with the new book. But when I did that, blank spaces retained the non-commercial fonts. They did not appear in the book, but remember that in Word, blank spaces have a font assigned to them as well.
And it was these blank spaces that tripped the Font sensor at KDP.
I searched for those fonts and replaced them with commercial fonts, and the book went through just fine.
Are You Using Commercial Fonts?
Here’s how to find out. If you’re using Windows, the Fonts folder can be found by going to the C: drive, opening the Windows folder, then the Fonts folder.
Once there, look for the Font Embeddability category. Chances are, it’s not there. You’ll have to turn it on.
Hover the cursor above the subject line (which displays “Name”, “Font style”, “Show/hide”, “Category”, etc.), right-click, and select “Font Embeddability.”
Here’s what it’ll look like:
Every font has a status in this column: blank, Installable, Editable, Print and preview, and Restricted.
If a font is Restricted, it does not have a commercial license. If it says anything else, you’re good to go.
Second lesson: Even if you have a free font, even if it was given to you to use for commercial purposes, it doesn’t matter if the font is Restricted.
I had downloaded the font from a free site. It had no author attached to it, and no way to reach him. He had even commented that the font was free and could be used for any purpose.
But what he had done was create it using professional software that automatically saved the font as Restricted.
It doesn’t matter what I can tell KDP. All they can see is the Restricted flag, and I had no way to remove it.
(Actually, I lie. Back in the 1990s, someone wrote a program that flips the Restricted bit to Installable. A notable typographical firm made him remove it from the Internet, but he left the source code online. It’s a bit hinky, and I wouldn’t use it on a licensable font, but it’s there.)
As you know, I searched the Word document for every appearance of the banned fonts and eliminated them. I made the PDF of the interior and checked it to make sure that the fonts were gone and uploaded the new file.
A day later, KDP emailed me and reported that the book was for sale again! Which was great, but I still lost sales.
Conclusion
Like I said, chances are, this may be a problem you’ll never run into.
On the other hand, now you know how to check your fonts to make sure they’ll pass the test. If you put your fonts to the test, you won’t wake up one day to find your books not selling.
Should Authors Insult Customers
by Bill Peschel • Public Persona
File this under the category “The things authors do that make me shake my head in wonder.”
There’s an author who also sells publishing services. Rather than identify him or her, let’s call him RedShirt.
RedShirt puts out a brochure listing his services. It’s an expensive piece, with color pictures of the books he’s worked on, and a detailed description of what he does. He comes across as very positive, very informative, and very supportive.
He also lists things that he won’t do and it boils down to two things. He won’t plagiarize, and he won’t work with Christians.
Not only won’t he work with Christians, RedShirt’s very emphatic about it. He devotes a paragraph to explaining that he thinks Christians are misguided in thinking that they can pray away “poverty, sexuality, race, or gender.”
(Pauses, takes a sip of coffee.)
This disturbs me. Not that RedShirt believes this. It’s a free country. Helping someone publish a book is a creative undertaking, and he shouldn’t work with people whose values he doesn’t share. I wouldn’t cite anti-discrimination laws to force him to accept work from a Christian group, any more than I would force a bakery to design a cake for a same-sex couple’s wedding.
No, RedShirt’s statement bothers me for two reasons. First, he demonstrated an inability to write clearly. The sentence about praying away “poverty, sexuality, race, or gender” is confusing. How do you pray away a race or gender? Why would you?
Second, RedShirt deliberately goes out of his way, in his promotional material, to attack a group of people who might still want to buy his services. Christians write children’s books that don’t mention God. They write memoirs without intending to proselytize.
Does this mean he shouldn’t mention this? Of course not, but he could have phrased it in a way that doesn’t intend to hurt. He could have written, “I’m not comfortable with religious material.” If he knew book packagers who deal in this area, he could offer to give the customer a reference.
It’s all in using the right words.
There’s another reason why this statement – even if it doesn’t apply to me – would make me reluctant to use RedShirt’s services. It’s the vehemence of RedShirt’s objections to religious content. It stands out sharply against the positive tone of the rest of the brochure. How easy will RedShirt be to work with? Would anything I say or do trip RedShirt into objecting?
So I’m not saying you shouldn’t talk about subjects that matter to you. That may be your jam to do so. I’m just saying you should think about the effect your words may have and decide if they’re really worth saying.
Cupboard Maker Books to Art, Business of Writing Classes
by Teresa Peschel • Book-Related Events
Cupboard Maker Books is one of our favorite places and not just because of the 150,000 books and free-roaming cats. Michelle Haring, its intrepid and fearless owner, believes strongly in the benefits of not just reading good books, but writing good books to feed that hunger.
To that end, she hosts a lot of book events at Cupboard Maker Books. She hosts signings, book launches, several monthly book clubs, and anything else of interest to the reading world.
Now, she’s embarking on an exciting new venture, and we at Peschel Press are going to participate in as well.
Michelle is starting a yearlong program on “how to write” for anyone who wants to write their first book. The once-a-month classes will be held at the bookstore, from 5 to 8 p.m. on the third Sunday of each month.
There are twelve classes in all, starting on Sunday, Jan. 19, 2020. Classes don’t end after the three-hour lecture, however. There’s an hour scheduled for dinner and socializing with the instructor and the other students from 8 to 9 p.m.
These classes are appropriate for writers at any stage in their writing career. Half of them are devoted to the craft of writing and the other half to the business of writing. While it’s important to be au courant on your grammar and plotting, don’t forget that writing is also a business. Few writing classes, even at the Mast of Fine Arts level, discusses issues such as cash flow, estate management, or basic understanding of contracts.
This writing program will.
Bill and I are participating, not only by attending the classes, but teach a class on the business of writing: cash flow, contracts, what advances really are, and other fun stuff like that.
It’s appalling how many authors don’t understand that an “advance” is an advance payment on hoped-for royalties and if your books don’t sell enough to “earn out,” you – the writer – will never see another dime. In fact, if you don’t earn out, you may never get another contract with that traditional publisher.
You’ll be signing up for all twelve lessons (no a la carte) and you’ll get instructors like Don Helin, Maria Snyder, Geri Krotow, Laurie J. Edwards to name just a few. And us. We’re not nearly as well-known but Michelle believes we have information that no one else talks about; i.e., money or why if you pay $5,000 to a book packager, you have to earn that much in net profits just to break even.
The tuition is $400 for all twelve classes (and dinner!) or just shy of $35 a class. This is a bargain especially compared to that MFA program you may have been contemplating. Quicker, too. If you sign up before Nov. 30, you’ll receive a discounted rate of $360, in effect getting one class free.
Don’t wait too long to sign up; the class is limited to 20 people.
Bill and I are looking forward to Michelle’s Story Makers Class. We expect to learn a lot for ourselves and to share our hard-earned wisdom about the writing business.
See you on Sunday, Jan. 19, 2020!
Insanely Optimized Amazon Pages
by Bill Peschel • Amazon
Part of my mission at the Career Indie Author is to present to you best practices that work today. This can be good ways to format your books, organize your business, or keep track of your work.
Today, I want to talk about an insanely optimized Amazon page I found. I came across an author who is doing everything right when it comes to tricking out her pages and taking advantage of every tool in Amazon’s box.
As people in the 20Booksto50K group have learned, the shortest route to success as an indie writer is to a) write a series of books on a subject where there’s a lot of demand, b) put those books in Kindle Unlimited to attract the whale readers, and c) align everything else to lure readers to your first book so that they’ll blaze through the rest.
If it works, the result will be a higher rank for your books, to a point where Amazon will help you do the heavy lifting by displaying your books to more readers, giving you a further boost in the rankings and more $$$$.
This sounds easy, but it’s not. It means writing great books and commissioning great covers that are on-brand and clearly identify the genre. It means writing a reader magnet that will encourage you to sign up for the newsletter. And it means putting all this on your Author Page, the book pages, and your website so people can find them.
Now hear me out: I’m not saying you should do this. You shouldn’t have to do anything. It’s your career. In my book, Career Indie Author (still being written at this point), I write that there’s only four things you should do:
1. Write and publish your work.
2. Create a website where potential readers can learn about your persona, your books, and where they can buy them.
3. Create an Amazon Authors Page. Most of your books will be sold through them, and you need to tell potential readers about yourself and your books.
4. When the time is right, advertise your books.
You don’t have to write in a series. You don’t have to offer a reader magnet and start a newsletter. You don’t have to do anything. It’s your career.
But conventional wisdom, backed by my knowledge of the writers who have made a success of this, show that writing in a series and funneling readers through KU works, so long as the books succeed as entertainment.
So How Do You Know Brook Wilder?
Answer: I don’t. My wife and I were looking for books on Amazon recently. She read romances, among other genres, and we came across a cover that caught her eye.
So we clicked over to Brook Wilder’s author page, and found a lot of covers just like it:
You can tell at a glance, from the model and the title, what genre this is (bad boy romances). The type emphasizes the title, but the author’s name is clearly seen. There’s an icon placing the cover within a particular series (and in fact, I just realized that the type font and colors are the same across a series as well. “Ride Rough,” “Ride Wild,” “Ride Deep” and “Ride Home” are part of one series, “Renegade” and “Redeption” another, while “Bought” and “Shackled” belong to a third series.
Let’s turn to Brook Wilder’s author page. Here, she hides behind an icon, instead of an author photo. There are a number of reasons she did this. It could be she’s a man, or not photogenic. This could be a house name for a number of writers collaborating. In any event, using the logo works.
Beneath it, instead of an author bio, there’s a URL link to her website where she’s offering a free book for signing up to her mailing list. There’s also an announcement of her next book (although it needs updating), and then there’s her bio, written with attention paid to keywords useful in searches: hot stories, bossy alpha males, sassy women, hard-bodied tattooed heroes, strong heroines, and stomach-clenching suspense.
Wilder’s book description for “Ruined Mercy” show a similar attention to detail. There’s the headline which summarizes the book. Further explanation in the next section is delivered in three sentences, and then more details in the next six.
The description is capped off with a paragraph delivering more keywords, and telling the romance reader exactly what to expect. There’s even warnings of strong language, strong situations, and possible triggering (which conversely could also be words to attract certain readers).
Clear, easy to read, on-brand and on-genre. I don’t know how this could have been improved.
Actually, it can be. Despite a beautiful looking site, it’s unfinished. There’s nothing else beyond the newsletter call to action. but that doesn’t take away from the fact that this is still a well-optimized Author page and book description page.
Three Bits of Indie Publishing Advice
by Bill Peschel • Publishing, Writing Advice
I had planned on writing about the best Amazon book page I’ve ever seen, but it wasn’t finished in time. So here’s some indie publishing advice inspired by a post from Jane Friedman’s site.
While “Three Critical Things You Won’t Learn in an MFA Program,” by Susan DeFreitas addressed traditional publishing, her gems of wisdom also works, with some tweaking, for indie authors.
If you’re interested in MFA programs, DeFreitas’ post is worth reading. For indie writers with no intention of going near one, here’s how I rewrote her bullet points for indie authors:
1. Peers and mentors don’t read the same way readers do.
One big difference between indie and trad-published authors is in the use of beta readers. Indie authors love to rely on them, while trad authors probably treat them the way movie makers look at preview audiences and studio notes.
Having someone else look over your manuscript – whether they’re friends, members of your writers group, an editor-for-hire, or another writer – is a great way to get feedback on your work.
The thing to keep in mind, however, is that you’re in charge of the book. This doesn’t mean rejecting every suggestion or observation that doesn’t align with your vision of the book, but it doesn’t mean accepting every suggestion, either.
In the writers group I attend every month, we have a good range of readers, which means a wide range of responses. We have readers (like myself) who look for grammar and spelling errors. We have people who have expertise in particular subjects. And everyone reads and can lend their perspective as a pretty unbiased audience. The critique can be hard to take at times – I still shake when one person said my romantic hero looked and acted like Danny DeVito – but it’s never personal. And I made sure to DeVitolize my lead.
Having a number of people read your manuscript can also give you an idea of what observations and suggestions to follow up on. There may be one person who dislikes something; that you can ignore if you think you’re right. If everyone thinks that the fight scene was badly done, or dislike your hero, you might want to think hard about tweaking the character.
But no matter how much feedback you get, in the end, it’s your story. Learn from your critics, but don’t let them steer you wrong.
2. It’s a numbers game.
DeFreitas was talking about submitting manuscripts, with the idea that the more you do it, the greater the chance of succeeding.
This also applies to self-publishing. If you want to succeed in turning your passion for telling stories into a full-time job, you have to keep producing stories.
This seems obvious, but I’ve seen a number of first-time authors ask online what they can do to increase the sales on their sole publication. Yes, it’s possible to advertise. It’s possible to hop on social media and tell everyone about your book. You can even arrange for booksignings.
But the best way to sell books is to keep writing more, especially if you’re writing commercial fiction. In fact, next week’s post will show you someone who’s doing just that.
3. “Comps” aren’t just for the marketing department.
DeFreitas makes this point when dealing with agents and editors, so I’m just repeating what she advised authors to do.
“Comps” are a list of books that are in the same genre as yours, that are closer to your title than the majority of books in that genre.
For example, fantasy is not just fantasy. There’s high fantasy (“Lord of the Rings”), heroic fantasy (“Conan”), comic fantasy (Discworld), dragon fantasy (Anne McCaffrey), and dynastic power-struggle fantasy (“Dune” and “Game of Thrones”).
Where does your book fit in?
This can be a touchy subject. We’d like to think that our book is original, that it can’t be compared to anything that’s come before.
Hogwash.
All artists build on the work of previous artists. We can’t help it, and it’s useful to recognize and acknowledge it.
Comps are also useful when deciding what you want to write next. This is business-type thinking, and many authors are resistant to it. But it’s also realistic thinking. If you want your books to sell, if you are seriously about making money as a writer, then you have to understand what the market wants.
Put it another way: Every successful author knew the genre they were writing in. Stephen King knew horror. John Gresham knew legal thrillers. Nora Roberts knew romance. They knew the types of stories they wanted to tell. They knew what emotion effect they wanted to inspire in their readers.
How is knowing your book’s comp titles any different?
As you learn about the business of writing, you’ll find that this knowledge applies to the craft of writing. If your goal is to reach out to readers, you’ll need to make decisions about your plot and characters. Sometimes you may choose to adjust to the demands of the market; other times, you won’t. Getting a clearer picture in your mind of the risks and rewards will help you make decisions you can live with, and profit from.
Hemingway and Immersive Writing
by Bill Peschel • Sentences • Tags: Hemingway
I’ve been on a minor Hemingway kick lately. Last time this happened a few years ago, I reread “The Sun Also Rises” but in conjunction with “Reading Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.” The second book annotated the first, chapter by chapter, placing Hem’s book in its historical context, and sometimes lifting the metaphorical iceberg he wrote about to show what was going on underneath the words.
This year, I’m reading a new edition of “A Moveable Feast,” his memoir of Paris. This reedited version of a book Hem left unfinished, because of his suicide, restores material his last wife, Mary, had cut, and threw in other Paris sketches, incomplete drafts, and even alternative drafts.
Reading this edition was like sneaking into his writing space and rummaging among his papers. Seeing how he wrote could give you ideas about changing your processes.
For example, in the “Fragments” section, the editors printed Hem’s many attempts to write an introduction to “Feast.” None of them were used.
There are 11 attempts, ranging from three sentences to several paragraphs. All of them are variations of the “this book is fiction” theme. All of them want us to understand that Hadley (his first wife, who he dumped for a younger and richer model) was the “heroine” of the book and that he hopes she understands why he wrote this.
Sometimes, his train of thought took a different siding. He’ll talk about a subject grounded in fact, like the changes in skiing — “Nobody has to climb on seal skins anymore” — then turn mystical — “People break their legs and in the world some people still break their hearts. They come down faster and they drop like birds that know many secrets.”
These are snacks for Hemingway fans, but to writers who struggle with putting their thoughts down on the page, it’s comforting to see great writers struggle too. Hem fought back by being persistent. Instead of rewriting the same paragraph — he started from the beginning. Perhaps it was the best way to get his thoughts in order, to hear the music of the sentences.
In another example, he talked about F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was a long paragraph, and we can conclude that it went on too long about Fitzgerald and took the reader away from the purpose of the introduction. It’s a reminder to kill our darlings. It can be beautifully written, but if it doesn’t work, cut it out.
The Value of the Right Details
But that wasn’t what I’m here to talk about. But since I’m not Hem I’m going to leave it in.
In “Feast” there a sketch about writing called “Birth of A New School,” and my attention was arrested by the opening.
Writing teachers tell us that we should use all our senses in our work. We should put in details to help ground us in the story. Dean Wesley Smith talks about this in his class on writing with depth, and the example below seems to apply here.
Smith talks more about depth in this post about Dean Koontz.
I want to quote two paragraphs from the sketch to show what I mean. “Birth of A New School” opens with you, the writer, in a Paris café. It’s early morning and in the air hangs the smell of the new day and the sweeping and the mopping. You have your lucky charms (a horse chestnut and a rabbit’s foot, the fur worn down to muscle and sinew) in your coat pocket, two pencils, the blue-backed notebooks, and your luck scratching inside your pocket, reminding you that it’s there.
First sentence, second paragraph:—
“Some days it went so well that you could make the country so that you could walk into it through the timber to come out into the clearing and onto the high ground and see the hills beyond the arm of the lake.”
Plain description. Country … timber … clearing … high ground … hills … arm of the lake. It trusts the reader to fill in the details with their own experiences.
Some people wouldn’t get it. Perhaps they’ve never walked through the woods. Or they want to see the picture painted by the writer, like Bob Ross filling in one of his landscapes. This is still immersive writing.
Second sentence. Note how it shifts back to the writer, then shifts back into the scene. It’s a long sentence, but you never lose your way, so long as you read each word:—
“A pencil-lead might break off in the conical nose of the pencil sharpener and you would use the small blade of the pen knife to clear it or else sharpen the pencil carefully with the sharp blade and then slip your arm through the sweat-salted leather of your pack strap to lift the pack again, get the other arm through and feel the weight settle on your back and feel the pine needles under your moccasins as you started down for the lake.”
This caught my imagination. I’ve worn backpacks, so I could recall the feel of it on my back, and how you had to move the straps to support its weight. I can also remember and re-experience the moment when you fall into your story, when the words you’re putting on the page turn into memory and experience.
I also experienced this, so to give Hem a chance to tell it properly, I’ll back up a bit before running into the third paragraph:—
“… get the other arm through and feel the weight settle on your back and feel the pine needles under your moccasins as you started down for the lake.
“Then you hear someone say, “Hi, Hem. What are you trying to do? Write in a café?”
“Your luck had run out and you shut the notebook. …”
The rest of the sketch details the encounter between Hem and the intruder. It’s very funny, and I’ll leave you to discover it for yourself.
The lesson I’m learning is that to describe a place truly, choose the right words and only the right words. Descriptions are not necessary, but what the person inhabiting the space experiences is. What that person feels — the sweat-salted leather, the feel of pine needles, the weight of the pack — can mean more to the reader than what the person sees.
And the second lesson is to find a café where your friends can’t find you.
Are Book Marketing Programs Scams?
by Bill Peschel • Business and money
The short answer is: Not all of them.
The better question is to ask “How can I tell the difference?”
I hope by the end of this article you’ll know enough to tell the scammers on sight, and learn a few critical thinking tools to help you sort through the rest.
Let’s start by setting out what book marketers do.
Generally, they’re the people who want to insert themselves between your manuscript and publication. They take several forms.
There are those who offer services for a fee. They’ll help shape your book for publication: editing, formatting the print and ebook versions, designing the cover, and writing the ad copy. They’ll offer marketing services. They’ll handle copyrighting it. They’ll even help you place your book with movie and TV producers.
They offer their services piecemeal, or as part of a package that can reach several thousand dollars.
Then there are those who offer to teach you how to do everything I listed above. Many of them promise to help you become a best-selling author. They give advice on what makes a kick-ass cover. They sell courses on using Amazon and Facebook ads. They teach you about social media, and how to write your blurbs and ad copy. They’ll sell you books, video courses, and even one-on-one consultations.
Now, these can be very useful products and services. These can also break your heart and empty your bank account, paying for services that you never receive, or don’t give you the results you want.
How can you tell the difference between the gold standard and fool’s gold?
By thinking critically, educating yourself, and doing a little research.
Let’s start by directing you to the Writer Beware site, run by Victoria Strauss. In particular, this post from a few days ago about book marketing scams run out of the Philippines.
If you’ve never heard of Writer Beware, then bookmark it and start reading it.
After you read that post, you’ll understand the first sign that you’ve encountered a scammy service:
They call you first.
Rule one: Never deal with any salesman who calls or emails you first.
Note I said salesman. Reject them out of hand. Everyone else, listen to their pitch, but keep in the back of your mind that chances are they’ll want money from you. But who know? You may hear from the local library wanting you to join their local author festival. A reporter may have heard about your book and want an interview. It could happen.
It could also be someone representing a sketchy “book festival” wanting you to pay to play. Or it could be someone offering you a slot on a “nationwide podcast,” but you need to fork over the bucks to participate.
Apart from those rare exceptions, it’ll be someone who is trying to sell you a service. You were put on their list because you just put up a website and recently published your first book.
They won’t just call, either. They look for author websites and send you an email offering their services. I get those pitches often. I don’t respond to them.
Your response is easy: hang up. Don’t engage with them. Don’t listen to their pitch, just hang up. Your time is limited.
The logic is simple: People who are good at their jobs are swamped with work. Good cover artists and editors with a reputation are booked months in advance. Good marketing and publicity services don’t need to blind call someone who self-published their first novel. They’ve got plenty of authors knocking on their doors to pick and choose.
So if someone calls offering a publishing package, or an introduction to a Hollywood producer, hang up.
Identifying the White Hats
If you are shopping for publishing or marketing services, you have to turn on your brain and think critically about the claims and advice you’ll hear.
Years ago, a book came out that took a critical look at Wall Street.
It was called “Where Are the Customer’s Yachts?” Fred Schwed Jr., a stockbroker himself, pointed out that of everyone involved in the stock market, the only ones who got consistently rich were the brokers and advisors.
Not the investors.
It was written in 1940, and the advice still holds true today. In fact, it’s been shown again and again that investing in an index fund that matches the ups and downs of the stock market will do better than investors picking their stocks.
And whether the stocks go up or down, the businesses in the middle always make money.
There’s a similar gold rush going on in indie publishing. It seems like for every person that tries to offer clear-eyed advice on how to write, publish, and market your books, there are a dozen who promise riches if only you buy their advice.
The question is: How can you tell the difference between them? This is where thinking critically comes into play.
Recently, I listened in on a pitch promoted by a well-known name in the book marketing field. The person, call him Mr. Greene, claimed to have had great success putting authors on the bestsellers list, and he promised to share what he learned with us.
Now, I knew Mr. Greene wasn’t going to tell us everything. He was offering his free lecture to sell us on his services. That’s fine.
But I listened critically to what he was saying. I also listened to and what he wasn’t saying.
Could he get me my yacht? Or was he the only one who was going to sail away?
Here’s what I learned:
What Are His Qualifications?
Who was Mr. Greene? Where did he learn his job? Where did he work?
I don’t know. He never said. I don’t know if he worked in the book industry, if he owned a marketing business, if he earned an MBA. Nothing.
He did say that he helped authors sell millions of dollars in books. He helped put books on the bestsellers list. And he promised to help you do the same.
That’s it.
Not a good start.
So I looked him up online and researched Mr. Greene. It turns out he did have experience in the publishing industry. He started a distribution company. He wrote a book.
In other words, his silence about his background was simply an oversight.
I looked at his book. Published a few years ago, it described the publishing and distribution process. Worthwhile if you’re looking to sell your books through bookstores, but pretty basic information.
I looked inside. In the introduction, he wrote that Mark Twain self-published his books because no one else would.
That made me frown. I had researched Mark Twain’s life for my book of Sherlock Holmes pastiches. Mark Twain self-published his books because he wanted to make more money at it. As publisher, he would pocket the publisher’s profits as well as author royalties. Mr. Greene was wrong.
Oops.
The book has some reviews and a decent rating, but its high Amazon ranking indicated that it wasn’t selling and not much effort has been made in promoting it lately.
The lack of a successful book in Mr. Greene’s past is not an automatic disqualifier. There are a number of reputable teachers in a similar situation.
Robert McKee is considered a creditable teacher of screenwriting, despite never writing a good screenplay.
Authors praise John Truby’s “The Anatomy of Story,” even though his greatest success was writing three (3!) scripts for the “21 Jump Street” TV show (he was also story editor on the show). He claims he served as consultant on more than unnamed 1,000 scripts, and he has a few endorsements from screenwriters and producers.
There’s another author whose courses I’ve taken and learned from.
Some people are better at teaching than doing.
Let’s just say Mr. Greene is falling behind and leave it at that.
Show Me the Yachts
Another way to tell if a person offers a valuable service is to look at his results. If a person is promising to make you a success, then you need to see a fleet of customers’ yachts.
Listen for any verifiable claims. Follow them up. Are they successes? Do the authors have real careers?
Mr. Greene mentioned about a half-dozen authors. Most of them were attached to endorsements, thanking him for getting their books into libraries, or bookstores, or for getting their sales to climb.
Of the rest, two of them got their books mentioned in magazines.
Only one saw a book reach the top of a bestseller list, thanks in part to a Bookbub promotion. The book was traditionally published, so it already had some publisher support. Still you could give Mr. Greene credit for this one.
Looking up the authors who endorsed Mr. Greene’s work showed a variety of subjects: thrillers, business self-help, young adult, and political advocacy. The books look as good as anything put out by New York, but their sales ranks were not very high.
Conclusion: Mr. Greene was a legit book marketer, but the results I saw didn’t justify the price of his services.
Are There Good Marketers?
For a look at someone who seems to offer a good service, let’s look briefly at Mark Dawson’s courses.
(Note: I have no connection to him. I listen to his Self-Publishing Show podcast and am a member of his Facebook group. I’ve never taken any of his courses.)
First, Mark Dawson is a best-selling author, currently making easily a six-figure income each year (and apparently shooting for a seven-figure 2019).
Even if you don’t believe that (and you shouldn’t believe what anyone says online, really, as a general rule), you can look at his Amazon Author Rank and see he’s moving serious numbers.
This is what I mean by critical thinking. I could claim I’m making a six-figure income. I can say anything. But if you look at my books, you’ll know instantly that I’m not a best-selling author. Mark is.
Mark offers several courses, in particular a basic one on publishing (Self Publishing 101, which costs about $500), and an in-depth one on online advertising (Ads for Authors, which I think runs about $750). They’re expensive, but far less than Mr. Greene’s service.
A quick look around online led me to this post about his Self Publishing 101 course. It’s a detailed and positive review.
I also looked at several promotional videos by authors who have taken his course, such as horror writer Christopher Coleman, historical saga writer Octavia Randolph, and romance novelist Maria Luis. Not only were they positive reviews, but they talked about how much they were earning after they took the course. A look at their books show hundreds of reviews, and Kindle ranks in about the 10,000 range (Luis’ latest novel is at #957. That’s for the entire store). Excellent results.
So that’s it. When shopping for services, look around, ask questions, think critically, and research any verifiable claims.
And write great books.
Build Style Sheets to Keep Track of Your World
by Teresa Peschel • Writing Advice
A Style Sheet is a useful thing to have handy. This is true whether you are writing a short story, a novel, or a 17-volume series.
How many books have you read where a character’s name is given incorrectly or changes halfway through the novel? A style sheet would have prevented that problem.
What is a style sheet? It’s a cheat-sheet for writing. They remember all those tedious dates and odd name spellings that are so easy to get wrong.
Your style sheet will remember for you, and it will also remember for your editor. Editor likes style sheets attached to the story they are editing since many questions come pre-answered, and they don’t have to stop their work and nag Writer (that’s you) to enlighten them.
This is one of those things that are easier to do than to describe, so let’s build one. Style sheets, by the way, are much easier to construct as you move forward with your story, rather than after the fact.
On a sheet of paper, make space for each letter of the alphabet, along with – if your story demands it – spaces for numbers and typographical characters. You can build your style sheet on paper or on your computer. If you build your style sheet on notebook paper, expect to rewrite it a few times as you add and change and correct.
On your computer, give yourself two columns, A to Z.
As you write the story, list every character’s name in the story. For given names and family names, you may want to list the name twice, once for the first name and then once for the last name. If your character is named “Pauline” list her twice. Under P list her as “Pauline (Whitman)” and under W, list her as “Whitman (Pauline)”.
It seems like overkill, but it makes it easy to tease apart multiple members of several families.
This dual-entry method also lets you identify characters by their relationships. Thus “Pamela (Pauline’s maiden aunt) (Abraxas)” provides you both the family relationship and the fact that “Pamela” doesn’t have the same last name as “Pauline”.
More importantly, having all your characters listed means that if you have to set the manuscript aside, when you return to it, you’ll know that your heroine’s name is “Pauline” and not “Penelope” or “Paulette”. It’s especially important with secondary characters, which are easier to forget.
Keep Characters Identifiable
Style sheets can also help reduce confusion with names. As you add names, you’ll see at a glance how many characters have names starting with “P”. This could confuse the reader. If you see ten names starting with “P” and no compelling reason to do so, your style sheet will nudge you to choose names from elsewhere in the alphabet. If you do have a compelling reason to have Peter, Paul, Paula, Patty, and Prince, you can make it clear in the story why you’re doing this – say, there’s a huge inheritance at stake if they were named that way and zero inheritance if they don’t — and you can select names that look as different as possible on the page while still starting with “P”.
All done?
You just got started.
Record Other Proper Nouns
Next, list all the street names, town names, country names, planet names, etc. If there are several towns with streets in each, list the names similarly.
That is, “Chocolate Avenue (Hershey)” under “C” and then under “H”, you list “Hershey (Chocolate Avenue)” followed by “Hershey (Cocoa Avenue), “Hershey (Granada Avenue)” and so forth.
Just as the overall list is in alphabetical order, the entries under each letter should be in alphabetical order.
Are you using specialty words? Foreign slang? Made-up words? Words used in an unusual way (i.e., a word normally not capitalized but you always use it with a capital letter to indicate it has a different meaning)? Do any of your words include accent marks over the letters? List those too.
Having your specialized vocabulary, foreign slang, and made-up words in a convenient list ensures consistency in your spelling and keep the Editor from harassing you because you need your characters to say “humuhumunukunukuāpua`a” instead of “Hawaiian Trigger Fish” (it’s true; look it up).
While you’re at it, throw in pets, species, named weapons, and anything else unique to your story.
After that come numbers and specialty characters. Is the dotcom venture capital firm that Pauline is investigating named “%Doom”? Are you writing about the band *NSYNC or country singer k.d. lang? Your style sheet needs a section for this too. Do your characters send text messages using emoticons? If they’re chatting via AOL with each other because your story is set back in 1995, you need to list what they use so Editor doesn’t change what you want into something incorrect for the story’s time period.
Your style sheet answers whatever questions could come up in the revision stage.
So that’s your style sheet for your short story or novel.
Style Sheets for Series
For a series, you may want to consider using two style sheets: a master sheet that cover all your books, and a style sheet for each book. Entries are created using the same format as above, but master style sheets are arranged differently so you can remember in exactly which book Penelope (Pauline’s secret twin sister) first appeared.
As with your novel sheet, start with two columns: from A to Z. Pauline will be listed twice: both as Pauline (Whitman) and as Whitman (Pauline). At this point, add the books this character appears in, such as “Pauline (Whitman) (Pauline’s First Peril)”.
Pauline is our major character so she won’t need much more. A minor character, like Penelope, needs a list of each appearance along with the book in which she becomes a major character. Thus, Penelope (Zimmerman) (Pauline’s First Peril) is followed by (Pauline and the Hideous Discovery). This title is the one where Penelope gets to shine in all her villainous glory. This is her main story, although Penelope, true to her nature, keeps coming back for more. She’s the mastermind behind so many other schemes, even if she doesn’t put in a personal appearance.
As you write your series, you’ll be constantly updating your master name style sheet.
Your series master style sheet will have a page just for locations. You know how to spell Paris? True! But your master style sheet will say Paris (Pauline’s First Peril) (Pauline and the Hideous Discovery) (Trapped in the Seraglio) etc., etc. Every time a location appears in the series, add that location name to the master style sheet with a notation as to which book it appeared in. Then, later on, when you insert new novels into your series, you’ll have a fighting chance of keeping track of the sleazy nightclubs and seedy bars that Pauline frequents. Readers notice continuity errors such as when “The Bearded Clam” dive bar which was located in Ocean City suddenly relocates to Kansas City.
This location master style sheet is critical for a huge fantasy or science-fiction series that ranges across space and time. Don’t count on remembering all those tiny details. Let your master style sheet do it for you.
Your series master style sheet, just like your individual novel style sheet, will also include pages for magic weapons, pets, mystical words, techno-babble jargon, and anything else specific to the series. As with names and locations, list the novels in which
each term appears, with a notation (if needed) as to first appearance.
Your style sheet is a living document. You’ll be updating it every time a new character makes an appearance or walks down a dark street in the seedy neighborhood or develops a new martial arts technique that needs a cool name. Each novel written in a series will add to your master style sheet. If you set aside your manuscript or your series for a few years, your style sheet will remember all those pesky details for you.
When you’re finished with your manuscript, check it over with your style sheet to ensure no character changed names in mid-stream by accident. This is also your last chance to decide you’ve used too many names starting with the letter “P”. Make your changes and corrections as necessary. Then, when you forward the clean manuscript to Editor, send your style sheet along with it.
Editor will thank you for your style sheet. You’ve made Editor’s job easier, just like you kept your manuscript clean of easily made but not always easily corrected errors.