Getting Started in Ebook Publishing by Stephanie Zia

Hello. I'm thrilled to be here amongst so many fantastic UK authors who are also embracing digital publishing. For my first post I've been asked to say a little about me.

I began publishing at the beginning of 2010 when ebooks were very much an American affair. US Amazon Kindle was well underway but ebooks were mostly PDF documents sold from websites. They were packaged with funny, box-like, mock 3D real-book images, and usually advertised with lots of scrolling, bright red, writing with a massive "one time offer" only deal of £50.00, or even more, at the bottom.

I was trying to make ends meet, as you do when you've got an agent but no publishing deal and a very sick partner, working at home for a TV script transcription company. My only other regular work was as a household tips columnist in The Guardian Saturday magazine. I was asked to transcribe an interview with Tay Zonday for a programme about the future of the media. When his song Chocolate Rain went viral in July 2007, Tay became one of the first YouTube superstars. He predicted it all for books with 100% certainty in that interview.

My agent was sending out my novel at the time but had no interest in finding a publisher for my growing collection of Guardian columns. So, with her permission, I set up a Mr Site website for £9.99. This included a ready-made online shop that transferred digital documents instantly to purchasers and a domain name for a year. I made my PDF book, and an Amazon Kindle book for the US on the side, and started selling it. I'd been blogging for some time about the daily trials and tribulations of finding my second agent and getting my third novel out there. The mood of the blog lightened considerably over the following years! There was so much to learn about ebooks. I soon discovered Smashwords, run by a really friendly clued-up guy called Mark, and Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble et al opened up yet more sales platforms for no initial outlay. I tried to keep my blog posts on all the ins and outs of getting ebooks made and sold updated, but it was impossible to keep up with myself. So, for my second book I decided to put all of my posts and notes together into a guide.

One of the joys of ebooks and POD paperbacks is that they are so easy to update. I welcome readers' criticisms and suggestions and tend to update the ebook about once a month and the paperback about once a quarter. There's an accompanying update blog on my website so that those who've already purchased don't miss any new developments. For UK authors, getting a US ITIN tax number is a case in point. You used to have to jump through so many, many hoops to get this number which stops Amazon, US CreateSpace, Smashwords etc deducting 30% of all your income at source. A reader alerted me to the latest system:

Non-US authors can now apply for an EIN NUMBER (Employer Identification Number) by phoning the US Embassy in their country of residence. Thanks to blog reader JTR for this information:   ”I told them I was a UK based author and they said the EIN was fine, I was effectively the sole proprietor of my own business – I didn’t need to go to the US embassy..”

I haven't had any confirmation from anybody else yet that this new system works. When I do I shall be updating again.

Other recent developments relevant to UK authors:

CreateSpace, who now pay $ royalties into UK bank accounts, have just announced they are publishing POD paperbacks to European Amazon platforms. This gives your paperback readers the free postage option. It's not automatic though, books have to be opted in individually.

Amazon pays royalties directly into UK and other European bank accounts. This is for UK royalties only at the moment but hopefully US royalties will follow.

With input from a PR professional, an artist, an IT man and an editor from mainstream publishing, my little self-publishing website, Blackbird Digital Books, named after a tame blackbird who visits our flat, continues to grow. I've now parted with my agent, self-published that third novel and retrieved the rights to my first two novels as well. Instead of transcription typing late into the night, I am writing, publishing and getting paid for it.

I understand why new writers want to achieve "published author" status via the mainstream, and would encourage them to first go down the route of finding an agent. Books still need the professional editorial eye, proofreading etc. and good agents obviously have their fingers on the pulse when it comes to contracts, world markets etc. The difference is that before there were no alternatives for us. Now there are!

Top 10 Rules For Children's Writers (visiting schools) - Simon Cheshire

Me at a school

Talking to classrooms full of schoolkids is part and parcel of being a children's writer these days. I've no idea how this came about - in my day, the very concept of an author coming into school would have seemed bizarre. Anyway, a lot of children's writers visit a lot of classrooms.
For me, it's a joy. Truly. I should think 90% or more of visits to schools absolutely make my day, gladden my heart and restore my faith in humanity. School visits make it worthwhile putting up with all the practical, emotional and financial rigours that the jobbing writer endures.
As the end of the school year rapidly approaches, here are my personal thoughts on the subject, as distilled from loads and loads of schlepping around the country and trying to hold 10-year-olds spellbound for 45 minutes...

1. It does get easier. When I started going to schools, I wasn't terribly good at the whole keeping-'em-spellbound stuff. Er, OK, to be brutally honest, I bombed. Big time. But now, though I say so myself, I'm a pretty good public speaker. After a while, all that stuff actor luvvies say about 'reading an audience' stops sounding like pretentious drivel and starts making sense. You really can play it on-the-fly and adjust your performance as it goes. And it is a performance.
2. OMG, RELAX! Even if you're terrified, you must come across as entirely confident and at ease. Nothing loses a classroom full of kids quicker than nerves. Nothing.
3. Find your natural habitat. Personally, I much prefer larger groups of kids, the bigger the better. I know others like the smallest groups possible. Stick to what you're comfortable with. If you don't like talking to more than one class at a time, don't be persuaded to address the entire school at Assembly. With that in mind...
4. Learn to say 'no'. For example, I'm not a teacher. Never have been. I thoroughly enjoy talking to an audience and hearing their ideas, but I simply can't do the full 'workshop' thing and replace what a teacher would do during a lesson. I've learned from bitter experience that if a school says something like "we'd like you to lead a story-writing session and help grade their efforts" I must say (gently!) that my skills don't stretch that far. After all, they wouldn't expect a visiting firefighter to do that, would they? And with that in mind...
5. Be clear and up-front. Have it right there on your website what you can do in schools. I try to make my Teacher's Page as comprehensive as possible. Go through the National Curriculum and see if you can tie what you talk about into something specific that children will have been learning about in class. Teachers really appreciate that.



Me at another school

6. Help schools help you. Do whatever you can to save teacher-time. Give them a flyer they can put up around the school, for instance; if books are going to be on sale, order the stock and do the fetching and carrying (see note below); email the school some free chapters - or send them a free copy or two, if you can afford it - that the children can read before the event.
7. Do it yourself. Never let a third party organise a school visit for you, unless it's someone you know and trust (a personal contact at a publisher, for instance). If you're standing in front of a large group of kids, and they don't know who you are, or why you're there, and you're clearly wasting your time, you can bet there's a third party involved. I hate to say it, but public libraries are the worst offenders here. Not all of them, by any means. I've been doing some visits through Birmingham Central Library recently, and they're totally wonderful. But many aren't. Sad, but true.
8. Charge a fee. I've done freebies in the past, and I'll very occasionally do them now, but the rule of thumb is: invoice 'em! Schools do expect to pay visiting speakers. You're a professional giving up your time. Of course, the million dollar question is: how much? A safe bet is to go by standard Society Of Authors suggestions, around £300 a pop, but I know quite a few writers charge more. I'd say, be flexible but don't undervalue yourself.



Yes, it's World Book Day, and
yes, I'm the twit in the
Sherlock Holmes outfit

9. Giveaways are nice. If your budget will allow, take along a supply a bookmarks or pencils - pre-printed with info about your books, of course - which every pupil can have. Even these days, you'll find the occasional school that gets jittery about the 'if one kid can't afford a book, no kid shall buy a book' idea. A giveaway helps reassure them that you're not some slavering greedy Bob Diamond figure.
10. Whatever happens, smile. It's rare, but sometimes things do go wrong. I've been left alone with a class of baying maniacs; I've been berated in a crowded Staff Room for writing a book which included the word 'witch'; I've had teachers yattering and marking homework all through my talk; I've had secondary pupils tell me just how boring they thought my book was; I've talked to kids while the council rat catcher has laid bait behind me... At all times, smile sweetly. Never criticise, never walk out, and never lose your cool (well, cases of full-scale assault excepted, I suppose). Because, unfortunately, the only person it'll reflect badly on is you. All anyone will remember about you is your purple expression of rage. Not fair, but there it is.

As I said above, these are personal thoughts. If your own ideas or experiences contradict mine, feel free to say so. I once went to a (very prominent!) school whose pupils had, I later found out, chewed up and spat out more than one visiting writer, but which I found to be perfectly OK. 'Go figure' as they say.

Note on point 6: How many books should you take to a school? I've found that, on average, around 15%-20% of the children you talk to will buy a book. Ask the school exactly how many kids you'll be seeing and judge accordingly.

Simon Cheshire is a children's writer who'll be your bestest friend ever if you buy his ebooks. 

His website is at http://www.simoncheshire.co.uk/ 
And his blog about literary history is at http://bookhistorystudies.blogspot.com/

Der Überläufer – An Adventure in Translation

My writing has appeared in a lot of different places, including some other languages; my first novel was translated into Dutch, Japanese and German, back in the day when I brought out my fiction through traditional publishing houses.

The Defector, in German

After embarking on my indie or self-publishing project, Amazon started opening Kindle websites in places other than the US and the UK – and one of them was Germany. Ah ha, I thought, I have German editions of both my first two novels, I wonder if I can self-publish them as eBooks?

I was lucky (although it didn’t feel like it at the time) that the German publisher, Delius Klasing had already taken the books out of print. I have a rule to always get a rights reversion letter when this happens – if you’ve not seen one, it’s pretty much what it says on the tin. It’s a letter that confirms that the publisher of your book is no longer publishing your book, and that they accept that as a consequence of a clause (that should be) in your contract – they return the right to publish it back to you.

It’s a complicated way of saying that you can now go ahead and sell the book to another publisher, if you can find one. Or these days, self-publish it as an eBook or Print on Demand edition.

This is how The Defector ended up being published by Random House in the UK in 1996. Then taken out of print, so I could republish it with Harper Collins ANZ in 2002. And then taken out of print again, so I could self-publish it with Smashwords in 2009 and then Kindle in 2011.

I had already got the rights back from Delius Klasing to publish The Defector in German, and as they had already gone to the trouble of translating it I had a big headstart over my plans to make the book available in the other new Amazon Kindle markets – France, Italy and Spain. The problem was that I didn’t own the translation, Delius Klasing had paid for it, and they owned the right to its use.

It was an interesting negotiation, and it took months – but in the end I managed to get them down to an amount that I thought I had a half chance of getting back, and we did the deal. I got a simple letter saying that I had the right to use the German translation of both The Defector and The Wrecking Crew and, eventually, a PDF of the two books in German.

This is where the real work started.

The first stage was to get the books converted into the Word document format that both Smashwords and Kindle Direct need to be uploaded to their eBook service. A small fee to Adobe sorted that out. But once they were in Word, I discovered that the full-justification format that Delius Klasing had used, meant that there were dashes between any word that had been broken at the end of a line - thousands and thousands of them. Oh, and there was another problem, Word wasn’t interested in working in German.

It took a while, and some experimentation, but in the end, I got Word to love German, and found a global search and replace that would find and allow me to get rid of all the dashes. At least I think I did because, as it’s in German and I don’t speak the language, I don’t really know. Some of them should maybe have been there...

Now I needed a title, a blurb and a cover. I’m lucky to have a couple of good German friends, and after some brain storming we settled on a straight translation of ‘The Defector’ into ‘Der Überläufer’. The Wrecking Crew was more difficult, no meaningful direct translation was available, so we settled on Schiffe versenken – which is actually the name of the game that we know as Battleships in England. It had a good ring to it, even to my English ears.

 I returned to my accommodating 99designs.com (see last month’s blog) designers, and got them to do a German version for a small fee. And then I paid the same German friend to translate the blurb, and the front and end matter.  Finally, I was more or less home and dry, I’ve had plenty of experience formatting for both Smashwords and Kindle, and this wasn’t made any different by the foreign language.

The Wrecking Crew in German

I uploaded both books to Kindle Direct’s Select, and then waited until they had picked up a decent (five star) review. I set them to give away for free for the five days allowed by inclusion in Kindle Select, and waited. Both books were downloaded close to 5,000 times and reached the top two of the overall Kindle freebie charts.

When the free promotion was over, The Defector hit #3 on the overall ‘Paid’ chart and was #1 thriller for several days, spending a couple of weeks in the Top 100. The Wrecking Crew didn’t do quite so well, but a couple of weeks after the promotion is over, I’ve earned enough to cover all my costs, and probably cover the time I put into the project too. Now I just have to hope that the books will keep earning for a very long time... and that Amazon open a Japanese and Dutch Kindle store soon. Meanwhile, I have an Italian translation in progress, but that’s a story for another day.

Find Mark Chisnell online at:

Website: www.markchisnell.com

Twitter: twitter.com/markchisnell

Facebook: www.facebook.com/mark.chisnell.writer

Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/markchisnell

THE DEMOCRACY OF STORY - Pauline Fisk

This is a post about two lately-comers to the world of story, electronic publishing and flash fiction.  Wednesday 16^th May was the first ever National Flash Fiction Day, celebrated not just across the UK, but online too, and across the world in some cases, Australia being among them and New Zealand as well.

In the county town of Shrewsbury, flash fiction was celebrated too.  It was a huge success - a packed coffeehouse event that saw strangers coming together to share their short, short stories, make common cause of their inspiration and write on table-cloths, backs of envelopes [well, one envelope - I wouldn't want to be seen exaggerating here], anything that came to hand. People having been stopping me on the street to say how much the evening meant to them. Some said they hadn't written stories since they were in school.  Others said it provided them with a way of getting personal without feeling exposed.  When are we doing it again, they wanted to know.  And it's that 'we' that I love.  Flash Fiction Eve wasn't mine, for setting it up.  It was OURS.

The connection with digital publishing, you may ask? It’s in the heading - that word 'democracy' - and in that other word 'ours'. In Shrewsbury on Flash Fiction Eve people claimed story-writing for their own.  For one fabulous night stories weren't something that only ‘proper’ writers could produce.  People wrote their own.  Sometimes they did this alone.  Sometimes they did it in groups.  Sometimes they wrote with friends.  Sometimes they wrote with total strangers.  But they wrote and wrote all evening and, as someone who's always had a passion for getting people writing, it was wonderful to see.  


In the e-publishing world, something similar is happening.  Some may get sniffy at dross in the e-book market giving digital publishing a bad name.  But  one person's dross is another's opportunity for self-expression.  People are doing it for themselves, that's the thing.  They're making story their own. They’re publishing online. Democracy again.  It’s their call.  


And it's our call too.  For published authors who have books beneath their belts, and writers of repute who have something good to say - here’s a chance in the world of story to say it in a whole new way.  No one knows what will happen next in electronic publishing.  But we’re in this all together.  We're doing it for ourselves, and doing it our own way, and and these are exciting times.  Democracy again.   

If you know nothing about flash, here are a couple of questions taken from my interview with Calum Kerr, the man behind National Flash Fiction Day.  The full interview can be found on my website.  

Q. What are the characteristics of flash fiction - apart from being short - that you most admire?

For me it's about being able to paint in miniature something which can shift your whole world. The right word in the right place making all the difference.

Q In your own flash, what are you trying to achieve?

It depends on the day! I've been doing a project to write a flash a day for a year. I finish at the end of April. Some days I'm just getting something done. Other days, I'm pushing myself, trying new genres, new styles, new perspectives. But, I think, with every story, I'm trying to give a glimpse of the world that is surprising and recognisable at the same time. Something which will make the reader nod and say 'Yes, that is how it is.'

Q. On a sliding scale of literature from great to shit, where do you rate flash?

What a great question! I rate it the way I rate any other literature, depending on the instance in front of me. I have read some very, very bad flash-fictions, but I have also read some that made me cry and some that made me laugh out loud in a crowded place. It's all about what the writer does with it. In a flash you can conjure a whole world very quickly and take your audience on a huge journey, and because it is so short the emotional impact of the piece can be that much greater than in, say, a novel. But, at the same time, if you get it wrong, it's just a bunch of misplaced words.  Personally, I like flash. I like the concise nature of it and the ability to do a lot in a small space. I think it's a really good exercise for a writer in how to cut out the dross.

For the completely brilliant short film of Shrewsbury’s Flash Fiction Eve event click HERE. 

If you want details of the film makers, who are brilliant – especially when it comes to filming arts events - click R & A COLLABORATIONS

Pauline Fisk is the author of eleven novels, including e-books MIDNIGHT BLUE and IN THE TREES.

How to get on well with Twitter - by Roz Morris

I had to be dragged to Twitter by the scruff of my tail. I had a blog - wasn’t that enough? Wasn’t Twitter just a means of wasting time? 

I soon saw it was a fantastic move. A couple of days in, my blog visits trebled. If your blog is like your writing salon, until you’re on a network like Twitter you’re talking at a closed door.
And blogging aside, Twitter is a terrific tool in its own right. Half your job as a writer is making contacts; on Twitter you can do that without ever going to a meeting, a group or a launch. 

So those are the professional platforming reasons to tweet. But Twitter is not a pitching party or a careers fair. It’s not your blog. No one has to follow you, read your tweets or pass on your news. Although you can bumble up uninvited, it’s as easy to buzz people off as it is to make friends. 

Here are some things I learned along the way.

1 The 80:20 rule - What do you tweet? Obviously you want to draw attention to your posts or books, but tweet others’ posts, books etc far more than you tweet your own. No one minds if you go promo-mad at times of excitement, such as launches or if you get a new review, but some people hammer away with ‘my book is marvellous’ day in, day out, excuse or no. When you do mention your book, introduce it gracefully - eg ‘read the first 15 pages of The Erring Cupboard here’ - which doesn’t leave the reader feeling hectored. 

2 Make tweets interesting. Don’t put ‘Interesting post http:whateverblog.com’. What’s it about? What made YOU find it interesting? Twitter’s about contact and personality. Write a headline of your own, or at least put the post’s headline: ‘Why Twitter isn’t trivial’. And not every tweet has to be a link. Be a person. Ask questions. Some folks start each day with a hello to whoever is out there. Trivia is fine if it’s engaging; Twitter is sometimes about putting a hand out and seeing who waves back. Be spontaneous. Be surprising. Be silly. 

Let him do his own tweeting

3 Don’t regurgitate inspirational quotes. They’re usually crap and have been seen a thousand times. Make up your own - we’re writers after all. Gandhi can tweet his thoughts for himself. 

4 Not too much, not too little. Everything comes out on the tweet stream instantly. When I started I thought I was doing the right thing by putting up a burst of tweets, but that makes you look as though you’ll deluge people. Conversely, if the last time you posted was two weeks ago a potential follower may assume you gave up. 

5 Find a scheduling service to spread your tweets out. You want to keep a steady presence, but you don’t want to be a slave to it. I use Hootsuite (which is, like Twitter, free as air). Other options are Tweetdeck and SocialOomph. Then I hop back to see if anyone has responded to them, or if I can natter to other people who are interesting. 

6 Credit others. When I retweet a post, I include the name of the original writer (searching for their Twitter handle if necessary) AND the handle of the person who passed it to me. There are two reasons. As a journalist I feel it’s unprofessional not to credit sources. Reason 2: Twitter tells you if someone has mentioned you. If you mention another tweep’s handle, they see - and thus they might become interested in you... another tweep’s wings just flitted through your heavens. (More on Twitter handles here from my friend Porter Anderson at the blog of agent Rachelle Gardner.)

7 Don’t start a tweet with @name unless you only want it to go to the people who follow them and follow you. That’s usually a very small set. But put a magic full stop in front of the @ and you will tweet it to all the people who follow them PLUS THE people who follow you. Big difference. 

8 Although you want your content to go viral, do not include the words ‘please RT’ or ‘worth the RT’ unless your tweet is for urgent humanitarian reasons. I’ll work out for myself if I want to RT. 

9 Don’t tweet as the character from your book. Would you follow that if I did it? Some publishers are telling writers to do this - but this advice has usually come from consultants who haven’t a clue. One Big 6 publisher I know had Twitter training with such an expert, who neglected to tell him the stuff in point 7 about @s and full stops. 

10 As this is a conversation, I leave point 10 to you. In the comments or on Twitter :)

Thanks for the pics James G Milles topgold  Daquella Manera  

Roz Morris is a bestselling ghostwriter and book doctor. She blogs at Nail Your Novel  and has a double life on Twitter; for writing advice follow her as @dirtywhitecandy, for more normal chit-chat try her on @ByRozMorris. Her books are Nail Your Novel: Why Writers Abandon Books And How You Can Draft, Fix and Finish With Confidence, available in print and on Kindle  She also has a novel, My Memories of a Future Life available on Kindle (US and UK) and also in print. You can also listen to or download a free audio of the first 4 chapters right here.

Cally Phillips is reviewing the situation

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Yes of course. But what credence do we give to it?

Opinion after all is defined as ‘belief  based on grounds short of proof’, a ‘view held as probable’ and where it is personal opinion these are the beliefs/views of one person. Not proof. Not evidence.  Nothing necessarily critical or objective or even based on any relevant grounds.  That’s the thing about opinions. We’re all entitled to them, but they don’t have to be worth much. For them to have a value they need to be based on something more.  The tag line of my last novel Brand Loyalty is ‘reality is what you choose to believe’  so you might imagine, I’ve thought, and written about this quite extensively.  My opinions and reasoned judgements are converted into narrative form in order to address the issue.  If you really want to look deeper, I suggest you read it.  That’s my opinion and recommendation. BUT…

Whereas you probably wouldn’t take the opinion of a person you’d never met and knew nothing about in a whole range of other situations, for some reason it seems to be acceptable in the world of books. And especially now in the world of ebooks.  If someone came up to me and said ‘monkey brains are tasty,’ I’d probably think twice before taking them up on the offer.  If someone said ‘buy a Porsche it’s a really good investment,’ I’d also think twice. If they said ‘this is the best investment in the world,’ I’d want a bit more information on both them and the investment opportunity.  If you question (as you should) why you should take my word that Brand Loyalty is any good, you might also question why you would take anyone else’s opinon.  Yet currently it seems we all gaze like rabbits in the headlights, convinced that reviews on sites set up to shift product or ‘sell’ (yes, even social networks are there to sell – just sometimes more obliquely) are worth the virtual paper they are written on.

Wake up your critical faculties folks. Before it’s too late. (This is another plug for Brand Loyalty by the way.)

Time is money.

In February I put my time where my mouth was and set up the Indie Ebook Review site. It was deliberately set up as a challenge to the Amazon ratings/review system. (and others of that ilk that are springing up everywhere) Since then I’ve been amazed how many times people want our reviews to be added to the Amazon ratings (do people not get irony?). But beyond that, the site offers a serious choice.  You can trawl through Amazon listings and ratings and find stuff you like OR you can go to IEBR and have someone offer you a selection as a start point. We aim to narrow the field down a little bit. The IEBR site has no financial impetus and no axes to grind. That unsettles a lot of people. Too good to be true? No, just a personal belief in the value of informed choice. 

What’s a good review then?

Reviews in general are getting a bad review just now. Because anyone can write anything (and do) on Amazon/Goodreads and the like, they are a cause of stress and confusion. People believe that the good ones are ‘rigged’ and the bad ones put them off reading the work they are looking at. Trolls abound whose purpose seems to be to put everyone down.  And so people are being adversely affected by reviews…. whereas at IEBR we are use reviews for a positive purpose. The reviews are compiled by professional writers (able to balance personal opinion with critical analysis) who comment on books they’ve enjoyed and offer the reader another level towards an informed choice. 


You may say I'm a dreamer...

I wish this kind of site could take the place of having to rely on Amazon rankings and reviews, but at the moment this is just a dream.  In our ‘market driven’ virtual world, until and unless IEBR becomes more visible or more trusted or more talked about, people will keep using the tools they know of (even if they don’t trust them) wasting time and effort (and occasionally money) on things they won’t even enjoy.


Read more books   

IEBR isn’t proscriptive in telling you what to read but in a typical month we give you three or more chances a week to find something of interest.  You won’t like all the books – the range is broad as are the tastes and interests of our reviewers - but if a person finds they like 2 books a month that we’re reviewing its surely worth stopping by regularly and looking at our recommendations?  Even if we give you 10 books a year that you like– and they will probably be 10 books you’d never have found otherwise - isn’t that a good thing?  And hopefully by regularly reading our reviews you will also see how unhelpful a lot of poor reviews are.  You will see that the review is more than a personal opinion or ignorance dressed up in abuse. 

Is free always good? 

It may be a wonderful feeling to download zillions of ebooks for free (or cheap) just because you can, surely it’s a better feeling to find a book (e or otherwise) that you like and read it! Because it’s not just about owning (or lending) books is it, it’s about reading them. Isn’t it? E-books are not just another futures trading commodity. They offer the potential for the widespread dissemination of many of the great wonders of the world.


Just another opinion?

The above is not just my opinion. Of course my opinion is contained within it, but the opinion is based on a) experience b) study and c) analysis.  I could go into all these in detail but you either trust me or you don’t. If you don’t know me, find out more about me and then decide whether I’m talking out of a hole in my head or saying something worth listening to.  And if you prefer fiction to lecturing, try out Brand Loyalty. Although I often think that the more people need to read it, the less likely they are to want to. But that IS my opinion.

Just do it.


But whatever else you do today, go to the indieebook reviewsite and see what you think. Better than Amazon? Make up your own mind.

Let's all play spot the irony. 

By the way  Brand Loyalty recently made it to #1 in the Amazon Free listings for political fiction both in UK and US. Now THAT is ironic.  Now you'll have to pay £1.95 for a copy. But I think it's worth it. And if you can't make up your own mind, you may as well go along with my opinion, right? 

New Writers Beware - or at least be very, very careful...by Catherine Czerkawska

The bird that almost didn't fly.

You can't get editorial help from a committee or, worse, a multitude. Well - you can - but it stands a good chance of turning your work into a camel. (I know, I know, camels are pretty efficient beasts in their way - but only in certain circumstances.) Some years ago, when I was despairing of finding a publisher for my next undoubtedly mid-list and cross-genre novel, I decided that I would blog it, a chapter at a time. If you want to read it, it's called Bird of Passage and you can find the whole novel, properly published on Amazon Kindle, here if you're in the UK and here if you're in the USA. But definitely not on any blog.
         Even then, I was an experienced and well published/produced writer with a good track record. And although I'm always very happy indeed to talk about my writing, what inspires it, how I feel about it, how I work, and so on, I made it clear that I didn't want detailed editorial feedback. It had already been through the editorial process several times. I was putting the finished book out there a chapter at a time, as a gift to potential readers. This was a few years ago and eBook publishing wasn't yet the option it has since become. But I wasn't looking for helpful advice about my writing style.
         With hindsight, I must have been very naive (stupid, somebody rightly said!)  Because people immediately started to tell me what I was doing wrong and what I should definitely be doing to remedy it. After a couple of chapters, I deleted the whole thing and filed it away until the advent of Kindle Direct Publishing gave me another, better option.
          The book had needed work, and I had already sought editorial help from somebody whose judgement I respected, and who asked the right questions - lots of them -  rather than telling me in minute detail what I 'ought to be doing.'  The right questions had made me think again, made me question and revise the novel - but I did this on my own terms and in my own voice. It was still a mid-list novel, so it was always going to be hard for it to find a conventional publisher, but I'm satisfied with the book, (or as satisfied as any writer ever is) and a number of readers seem to agree with me. Of course not everyone will like it, but that's fair enough. Why should they? Not everyone likes every kind of music, or every kind of art. But isn't it odd how people who would never tell a professional:  'you should have composed your piece of music like this', or 'you should have painted your picture like that', will still say 'you should have written it in this way.' An experienced artist friend has just confirmed what I have always suspected - that they would get a very dusty answer if they did!
          It's because hardly anyone can write music, only some people can paint - but almost everyone thinks he or she can write. I heard a newsreader say, only the other day, that he was going to write 'the novel' when he retired, and couldn't help muttering at the television, 'yes, and how about me becoming a newsreader then?'
          I'm slightly phased by the number of sites I have come across where people with few credentials presume to tell other people what is wrong with their work, and how they ought to change it.The burgeoning of Kindle publishing has only encouraged more of them.
Most experienced writers are wary of doing this because we know that there are ways of going about it which don't damage the new writer's search for his or her own voice.
          Don't get me wrong. We all need help. We all need an external perspective on our work. In fact there are some wildly successful writers who would clearly benefit from the services of an editor, but who have become too successful for their own good. Nobody dares to point out that the king is semi-naked.
          But I've news for new writers: words of wisdom from somebody who has been through the mill. There is no easy way. There are no shortcuts. You have to try, try and try again and any help has to come from somebody with proven credentials, with experience, and perhaps most of all, somebody who understands what you as a writer are trying to achieve. Otherwise, it's like trying to learn brain surgery from a plumber. Or, for that matter, plumbing from a brain surgeon. 
          If you have to pay for this kind of advice - and you probably will - then so be it. It's hard work, it's far from casual, it's a very definite skill, and altogether, a good editor is a pearl of great price.
          On the other hand, a string of contradictory and confusing comments, however well meaning, is worse than useless. If you ignore them you'll still feel depressed by the criticism. If you try to take them all on board, your work will eventually implode under the strain and you'll be left with nothing but a heap of miscellaneous words and ideas. 
          By all means, go online to find an editor or editorial help - but do be prepared to check credentials. There are reputable editorial agencies out there where you can get feedback on your manuscript for a fee. Some of AE's own authors offer this service, and they know what they are talking about, but you'll find others, some of them recommended by respected writers' organisations. Word of mouth is probably best of all. If an editor comes recommended by a writer whose work you admire -  or possibly is a writer whose work you admire - you can be pretty sure that they'll offer a good service. I'm not touting for business here, because this isn't something I do now - although I have done it in the past, primarily for the Open College of the Arts but also as a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow, and had the satisfaction of seeing some of my students through to publication or production.
          But I reckon writers ought to be wary of those ad hoc feedback sites where everyone weighs in with an opinion. You may disagree with me, and if you do, I hope you comment below because this is something we should at least be discussing. 
          I've tutored writing groups in the past, and although people are happy to read out work, and accept feedback within a real group, this generally involves small numbers in a sheltered environment where a certain amount of trust has been established. Even then, as a tutor or group leader, you have to be careful to organise things so that the advice offered doesn't become too prescriptive. All groups tend to have a few forceful personalities who will try to impose their opinions on the others. But sometimes, the best writers are also the most unsure. The trick is almost always to ask questions rather than offer solutions, thus allowing the writer to find the answers for him or herself. 
          I think I first became aware of this when I was writing for radio. With radio drama, studio time is always at a premium, and the writer is generally expected to be at hand to make any changes and adjustments to the script. I thoroughly enjoyed this aspect of the work, loved the challenge of rewriting on the hoof. But it struck me that most of the time, where a director or an actor might query lines, even when they offered an alternative, that was never what I went with. I would make changes, but they would invariably be my changes. The few occasions when somebody made definite changes were disastrous. And it wasn't just me who thought so. The critical consensus agreed with me. As time passed, and I found myself working with people who had become close friends, that changed a little. Some actors, some directors, I knew I could trust implicitly to get it right. We were on the same wavelength. And that was even more of a pleasure. 
           Most of all, you have to read. It never fails to astonish me how many so called 'creative writing' students or aspiring writers don't read widely. Find out those writers whose work you love and read it intensively and mindfully. Some of it will rub off. A year's good reading is probably worth ten years of editorial help. 
          But the essential trust had to be established first. Trust in a writer to inform you. Trust in an editor to ask the right questions. You can't have that kind of trust with the whole world. New writers should always beware of strangers.
          Catherine Czerkawska

Visit my website at www.wordarts.co.uk 
or my blogs at http://wordarts.blogspot.com and http://theamberheart.blogspot.com 
I'm always happy to hear from my readers - honestly.