Feedback Needed: Him for the Holidays?

As my series for Rebel Ink Press starts to wind down, with three released and two more waiting in the wings, it's time to start thinking of them as a series, including promoting them as a group and coming up with a title for the paperback release in 2012. *squee*

This "series" isn't a series in the traditional sense - they don't have the same characters or the same setting. In some cases, their styles and subgenres are even different, though they are all short erotic-romances (or romantic-erotica). One is semi-paranormal, one is comedy, one is cowboy, a couple have May/December themes, and one is glam.

What connects them is that they all take place around a holiday, and all of them have mismatched couples, combining types of people who normally wouldn't have found each other - a cowboy and a city slicker, a jock and a virginal musician, a prof and a grad student, a bartender and a socialite, and a yuppie and a hippie-witch. All of them have heroes that I adore.

In thinking about titles, one of my rough attempts has kind of grown on me, which emphasizes the lovable heroes and the gift of finding love:

Him for the Holidays

So... What do you think? Catchy? Trite? Overdone? Predictable? Cute? Annoying?

I'm totally open to hearing your reactions, criticism, or other suggestions. I'd like to settle on one quite soon so I can start thinking of them as a group.

Thanks in advance!
AH

Very, Really, Actually

I use these words way too often, and end up doing an editing sweep especially for them. I don't know how or when they became habit, but I'm hypersensitive to them now, and they bug the hell out of me. Wasn't it Mark Twain who said to insert the word "damn" every time you are tempted to say "very"? "Then your editor will delete them, and your writing will be just as it should be," I think the rest goes. Really.

So, what are your no-no words?

Question for You: Submissions

Tomorrow, I will be posting about the submissions process, since that is basically what my life is about these days. Today, I want to know from writers what your favourite/least favourite part of submitting a query and/or a manuscript is.

Please, comment below!

Question for You: What's on your WIP List?

A "WIP" is a Work in Progress. You see writers of all sorts all over the net fretting and/or crowing over their WIPs - second only to our children (and usually somewhat above our Day Jobs), the WIP is the centre of our world. We are only as good as our current/next WIP - because these will, hopefully, be our future releases.

Yesterday, I actually got around to updating my WIP list on my website. This occasionally falls by the wayside, since working on my WIPs takes up so much energy, I often don't have time to talk about them! WIP lists are useful, because they help an author keep their projects straight, and keeps them on track by publicly shaming us if we don't finish them. It is also a way to note for readers that you are still active and working, and there will be more to come.

So, what's on your WIP list? Care to share a link, or note a few important projects? Comment below, and let us know about your babies! 

Question for You: What Are Your Fav Romance Epubs?

Hi folks!

With Draft 3 of the new novel off to readers, and Draft 4 to follow when I get that feedback, I am currently researching epublishers for the submission phase of the book's strategy for world domination. I have a list of suspects, and am going through them one by one.

So, my question to you this week: What are a few of your favourite romance epubs? Which have you worked with? Which do you buy from? 

Please, comment below, and share some great finds!

Question for You: What's Your Favourite Cover?

What is your favourite book cover?

Could be either a book you've written/illustrated or one you've read.

Come'on - brag about your cover artist!

Comment below.

Question for You: On Betareaders...?

In keeping with the betareader theme this week, which I kicked off yesterday with my love letter to the wonderful bunch and will continue later in the week with updates on revising my new novel (now tentatively entitled Textbook Romance), today's "Getting to Know You" questions are all about betareaders.

Authors: How do you choose your betareaders?

Readers: Have you enjoyed beatreading?

Also, anyone with tips about the process, an anecdote of note, or a great betareader they want to brag about, please leave a comment!

***

Next week's theme will be book covers, so drop me a line at anneholly2010@gmail(dot)com if you want to trumpet your covers!

Question for You: What makes a Great Kindle Sample?

If you have a Kindle, you know that most ebooks on Amazon come with a sampling feature, which allows you to read the first bit of the book - usually about 10%, I think.

Recently, I downloaded the Kindle for PC program so I can look at how samples impact the reader for myself, comparing book samples that make me feel like buying to samples that don't make me pause to pass it by. Is the sample more or less influential than the synopsis? Can a good sample counteract a so-so synopsis, and vice versa?

It is reasonable to assume that more and more writers are keeping the sample in mind when they edit. Even though we have always been told to give the opening of the book all we have, the sample adds a renewed urgency to those first 10-20 pages of the book.

So, my question(s) for you: Do you sample religiously or only occasionally? What makes a Kindle sample pop for you? What rings the no-sale bell for you? How do you edit for a killer Kindle sample?

Please, leave a comment!

Question for You: What's on your Editing Hit List?

This past week and a bit, I have been slaving away trying to whip my WIP into shape, scouring it for typos and plot holes, strengthening the little threads, and punching up the dialogue. This week, I'm opening up my dirty little editing secrets in a series of three posts exploring my worst weaknesses, but there are other little habits that I also have to watch for: forgetting to use contractions when necessary, using way too many purple adverbs, reusing phrases that I love a bit too much... The list goes on and on.

I think it's useful and important when a writer knows their bad writing habits, especially in editing.

So, today's question: What little foibles are you constantly fixing in your work in post-production or on the look out for during writing? If you are an editor or a reader, which bad habits do you hate most?

Leave a comment, and let me know what you think!

A Personal Project on the Horizon

Hanging out with self-published folks. I think that's what has done this. I don't know; the Kool-Aid looked innocent enough. I guess I should have guessed by smiles on their faces as they offered it... Actually, maybe it's just that SP people seem so full of energy. Or that they've convinced me it's an outlet for a story that isn't likely to find a home any place else.

Either way, I am thinking of doing a self-publishing project.

No, I am not going to start self-publishing my genre fiction, or the new comedy I am writing. Those will still go to nice, small but competent epublishers who are willing to take them and give me the editorial and cover support I still need as a new author.

But, I have had an idea in my head for some time, and this project - a special, personal one - might just go self-published. A few years ago, a tragedy happened in my family. I won't go into details here, in case I decide to keep it private, after all. But I've been working on the story of this tragedy for some time - knowing I would write about it some fashion some day.

I have been considering writing it as a gift for my mom and dad. A short; around 20k or so. I thought to write it, convert it to PDF and get it coil bound at Kinko's for them. It's not a commercial book. I plan for it to be well-written and complete, but I had no idea of selling it.

But now, seeing the features of modern self-publishing, including "Create Space," which makes printing it in paperback a lot easier, I am intrigued. And thinking about it. Certainly, it would be more of an exciting thing for my parents in "real paperback."

So, I don't know. If I figure my way around Amazon, and get a cover art/layout, buy an ISBN some place (if I can), and hire a personal developmental editor, line reader, and proofer. Learn about the formatting (yikes!)... Maybe. Just maybe.

I'm keeping it in mind, anyway.

Help! Another Identity Crisis

I've seen these two terms chucked around, "Indie" and "Traditional." Now, I know these terms are rife with some controversy, since they were (according to interwebs lore) first coined by a shady vanity press in order to glamorize their scam. Yet, regardless of how the categories started, they have been widely adopted in the "writing world" - or, at least, in that corner which I haunt.

I have always understood it to be a matter of scale.

"Traditional" publishers, in my understanding, included the Big Companies - the brick-n-mortar, advance-granting, agent-oriented, paperback-lovin' companies that market/sell internationally and make big bucks, and all those mid-range companies run on this model in hopes of being one of the Big Publishers. We can all name several of these off the top of our heads, no doubt.

"Indie" (short for "independent") publishers, I assumed, included the small scale publishers - micropresses and self-published authors who have a smaller distribution and privately-seeded marketing budget, no agents and no advances, but royalties from sales alone. Largely, these days, this means epublishing.

This week I ran into a handful of blog comments that claimed "indie" doesn't include self-published. But, this sentiment I easily disregarded as indie authors who, foolishly, have bought into the idea that self-published means vanity publishing and terrible quality. These comments were, after all, left on a now-fairly-famous so-so review to which the regrettably deficient self-published author under review left some awful, immature and petty ravings, involving the senseless repetition of expletives. I can see why people were scrambling to distance themselves from her.

However, I then came across something a little more puzzling, and not exactly unique - and from a source I can't so easily dismiss. From a NY Times bestselling author and writer of "how to write" pieces, Bob Mayer, it was hard to ignore. This quote, which was not the gist of his point (just what struck me), is from the June 12th post on his blog Write it Forward:

I use the term indie for one who self-publishes and trad for those who are published via a traditional publishing house. I’ve copyrighted them and you need to pay me any time you use them. Joking.

True, Mayer is clearly expressing his terms as he sees them for the purposes of his post, which is an otherwise considered and useful editorial. Yet, he is not the only person defining these terms this way, and I am confused.

I consider myself an "indie author," though it seems many people do not grant me this category. However, I am not really published through a "traditional" venue, either. So, what the hell am I?

First off, why do I consider myself "indie"? Well, frankly, my publishers thus far have been pretty independent - without a big corporate source of money, no advances, requiring no agents, not having a publishing "house" as such, and focusing largely on ebooks, they seem to me to be small-scale and, therefore, not the same as those commonly recognized as traditional. They are, I believe, independently owned and operated by individual publishing entrepreneurs. I don't even think they have investors beyond their owners/managing editors.

And why am I seemingly not "indie"? Because I do publish through companies not belonging to me that employ editors not controlled by me, and, especially, because I do not "self-publish." I guess. (Insert "head scratching" emoticon here.)

Now, I suspect the easy argument is that these companies could become traditional-scale in time, and that Harper-Collins might have started out as a micropress (I really couldn't tell you if it did or not, actually). Also, more obscurely, the concern might be that these publishers, be they ever so humble, might be creatures similar to the "gatekeepers" that indies dislike so strongly, and that signing with these epubs might be "compromising my artistic vision" in a way that self-pubbed writers don't have to. Finally, I reckon the royalties thing is the kicker - as long as a middle man is getting a cut, I guess (according to some) I am not truly "independent."

Well, colour me confused. I can understand the arguments and points above, but they never occurred to me naturally. I had to ponder them.

But, the point of all this is - Even if I concede that I am not "indie" (which I don't, really), I am left with a dilemma. What am I? In this recurring rhetoric of "indie" vs "traditional"... which am I? Am I an "us" or a "them"? In a greyzone, worthy of the attention of neither?

True, we shouldn't think in those terms of narrow categories, but such is what we have to work with in the seedy underbelly of starving author forums. So, where do I land?

It would just be nice to know.