Here’s a fun posting today guaranteed to put a smile on your face. It’s a parody music video from “Weird Al” Yankovic titled “Word Crimes.” It’s funny no matter who you are, but it’s hilarious if you happen to be a writer and/or English major. Enjoy!
If you fear you may be guilty of word crimes, check out the professional editing services at Outskirts Press.
“Have you ever wondered how you’re going to do it all? You’ve looked down your list of things to do: formatting, cover art, copyright registration and editing…not to mention all of the marketing and Ingram distribution once your book has been published – and had that moment of panic. Don’t worry! You can relax! We’ve got you covered with our One-Click Publishing Suites, which include everything you need to make your non-fiction, fiction, children’s book, or spiritual book a success.
Today you can save $500 with this special introductory offer on our new One-Click for Non-Fiction package. One click is all it takes to connect with a team of professionals who will assist you every step of the way. One click is all it takes to get a professional custom cover, professional copy editing, and an enhanced interior. One click is all it takes to sell a high-quality paperback on Barnes & Noble and Amazon and a high-quality e-Book on the Kindle. But don’t wait! This offer is good this week only! Right now, you’re only one click away from achieving your dream of becoming a successfully-published author. Promotion Code: Save500Aug16″
Such is the promotional copy that greets new authors when they explore our new One-Click for Non-Fiction publishing suite this week, and its $500 Introductory Offer. I believe the first paragraph touches upon a common feeling among all authors — an overwhelming sense of … what to call it? … Concern? Anxiety? The jitters? Publishing your first book can seem overwhelming for new authors, and that is why they seek out services likes those offered by Outskirts Press. In our 14 years of industry experience, we have identified a few things that can help make good books great, and professional writers extraordinary. Two of the most necessary components of a fantastic book are professional editing and professional custom cover design. ALL our One-Click Suites include both.
We call them “Suites” because they are a bundle of quality pre-production, production, and marketing services designed exclusively for a particular type of book. At the present time we have launched our New & Improved Outskirts Press with 4 One-Click Suites: Non-Fiction, Fiction, Spiritual Books, and Children’s Books.
For the thousands of authors who have published with one of our a la carte, custom publishing packages (and those have all changed, too — more on that at a later date), the One-Click difference is nothing short of extraordinary. Let me briefly walk you through the publishing process of both, starting with the custom, a la carte package first:
All that customization is great, and some of our authors THRIVE on the degree of flexibility and choice we give them. But making decisions can slow the process down and allow for some important ingredients to be opted-out-of (like editing, or custom cover design, or marketing services).
In comparison, here is the publishing process for the One-Click Non-Fiction Suite:
No long lists of trim sizes to fret over. No price plans and trade discounts to worry about. No cover themes, interchangeable image libraries, or concern about selecting the correct production & marketing options. That’s because the One-Click Non-Fiction package already includes everything a professional non-fiction writer needs to publish the non-fiction book of his or her dreams (and significantly increase the chances for its success, and its success in book contests).
What’s it include? And why is it important? This is a long list, but if you’re thinking of making an investment into your non-fiction book, it’s one worth reading.
Before I continue, I will say that copy editing and custom cover design are so important, they are mandatory components of our Best Book of the Year Awards, and our EVVY Nominees. Since we KNOW all our One-Click suites include both professional editing and professional custom cover design, all One-Click packages are automatically eligible for both contests. Speaking of which, our 16 EVVY Award Finalists were just announced, and you can see them here. Winning an EVVY Award is a prerequisite to winning our Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year Award (and its $1,500 Grand Prize).
Amazon “stuff.” We all know Amazon is the world’s largest retailer (yep, they overtook Wal-Mart), and they’ve been the world’s largest bookseller for even longer. When I mentioned that the “Marketing COACH” was what we do differently, I could also mention all the attention we focus on Amazon. I wrote a little book titled Sell Your Book on Amazon, so I know a thing or two about it, and I make sure our marketing support personnel, as well as our authors, know how to “work Amazon”. We make sure our One-Click Non-Fiction books are redesigned for the Kindle e-book reading devices and submitted for distribution on Amazon’s Kindle platform. We make sure their hard copy book is in Amazon’s “Look Inside” program because of the benefits that creates for the Amazon search algorithm. We make sure their annotation and summary and sales page are top-notch. You know, all that stuff every self-publishing author should do for every book they publish. We do it for our One-Click authors.Whew. As if that wasn’t long enough, as a reward for reading this much, here are some “hidden benefits” that come with the One-Click Non-Fiction package. We don’t really promote these, per se, but I know how the website is programmed, so it’s also true that:
There you have it. The One-Click Non-Fiction Suite from Outskirts Press. Publish your passion.
As we endure the final stretch of NaNoWriMo where half a million writers from around the globe challenge themselves to write 50,000 words in 30 days, I’d like to offer some words of motivation, if not inspiration. It’s been difficult for me to find the time and the energy to write more of my novel, Idle Hands, every day of the month. I’m happy to report that out of the whole month, I only skipped one day entirely (and it was a bear dragging myself out of the “word hole” that resulted from that lapse). Even on days where I REALLY didn’t feel like writing, I at least kicked in 400-800 words.
And here’s what I discovered: I was extremely disappointed in myself the whole day (and the following day) when I skipped writing entirely. That’s 48 hours of disappointment that could have been averted with one single hour of creativity. Talk about a positive return on your investment! One hour of time invested for 48 hours of satisfaction. And even if you can’t always contribute an entire hour of time, as these monthly stats have shown, every word counts. Every word contributes to your final goal of finishing that book. Even if you only put in 100, or 200, or 500… that’s more words than you had yesterday. More words than you had the day before that. Books are not infinite. They have a beginning, a middle, and an ending. If you always find a way to contribute SOME words to your book every day, there will come a day when you finish it.
And those days when you write your book, you’ll feel better about your craft, and your writing career. You’ll find that those hours of satisfaction and accomplishment are longer than the time you spent writing. And that beats the 48 hours of feeling bad for NOT putting in a single hour.
Here are my NaNoWriMo stats for yesterday, November 25:
| Average Per Day | 1876 |
| Words Written Today | 2423 |
| Target Word Count | 50,000 |
| Target ~ Words/Day | 1,667 |
| Total Words Written | 46,903 |
| Words Remaining | 3,097 |
| Current Day | 25 |
| Days Remaining | 6 |
| At this rate, you’ll finish | Nov 27 |
| Words/Day to finish on time | 517 |
If you’ll look at my NaNoWriMo stats for yesterday (posted below), you’ll see that I’ve crossed over 30,000 words written, which leaves less than 20,000 words to go. So does that mean I only have to write 20,000 more words to finish my book? Well, no. It means I only have 20,000 more words to write in order to “win” National Novel Writing Month (they consider it “winning” if you write 50,000 words in 30 days). Whether or not you actually FINISH your book is not of much consequence to them.
But that seems like a pretty arbitrary goal, doesn’t it? Writing 50,000 words in 30 days? So, yes, while I’m on track to write 50,000 words in 30 days (in 28 days, actually), I’m afraid I’m not on track to actually finish the book. You see, I just got to the point in the plot where Fenderson takes Brad on a road trip to Las Vegas on their way to the port to get on the cruise ship. If you’ll remember the posting that introduced the original outline for Idle Hands, you’ll see that Las Vegas wasn’t even mentioned, and you’ll see that by November 17th, Fen was supposed to have already killed Jacob. And, here I am, on day 18 and they haven’t even gotten to the cruise ship yet.
That’s okay, rarely are today’s modern works of fiction only 50,000 words. Idle Hands was always going to be longer.
But the point of this is to realize, for all of us WriMo’s out there, that writing (and finishing) a novel is the real goal, no matter how long it takes. They just put a 50,000 word number on it, and an arbitrary starting and ending date, to put us all on the same page (pun intended).
So if your book is less than 50,000 words and you finish it before the end of the month, start writing a new one. And if your book is going to be longer than 50,000 words, and therefore not finished by November 30, keep on writing, even if you “won” NaNoWriMo.
You don’t publish 50,000 words. You publish books.
My NaNoWriMo stats for November 17:
| Average Per Day | 1792 |
| Words Written Today | 2236 |
| Target Word Count | 50,000 |
| Target ~ Words/Day | 1,667 |
| Total Words Written | 30,473 |
| Words Remaining | 19,527 |
| Current Day | 17 |
| Days Remaining | 14 |
| At this rate, you’ll finish | November 28 |
| Words/Day to finish on time | 1,395 |
A week ago I mentioned one of our best-selling authors at Outskirts Press, Mirtha Michelle Castro Marmo, and her success with using social media. The Self-Publishing News blog recently interviewed her, and here are some helpful excerpts from that interview for those of us participating in NaNoWriMo (and for all writers, come to think of it):
OP: What do you find to be the most rewarding aspect of becoming a published author?
MMCM: The most rewarding part is and will always be the ability Letters has to touch people. It’s crazy because I didn’t think people really read books anymore. But for me, having these girls go and buy my book, and spend their twenty dollars or so on Letters–it’s amazing, that someone believes in things still. People say my book has helped them heal, and that it has touched them, and that they have read and reread the book five or six times. It’s not a long book, but still! That’s the best feeling. A lot of girls and guys have hit me up, saying I inspired them to write again. It’s so great, because I’ve had people inspire me throughout my life, so it’s kind of like I’m paying it forward. I love showing people that things are possible. When I first saw Jennifer Lopez in a movie, you know, I was like–wow, a Latin girl on screen! I was being represented. It was so powerful. If I can be an inspiration to someone to write, to publish a book, that’s beautiful.
OP: What advice would you offer new authors?
MMCM: Go with your gut. Don’t write for what you think people want–write your heart. People receive honesty well, unless they’re your ex-boyfriend or girlfriend. Just be honest in your writing, and then publish it. Don’t go to the coffee shop where people are writing scripts and things like that when you’re trying to write something heartfelt; the city noise and the distractions will prevent you. Take that time for yourself. Imagine you’re meditating with your computer, with words. Really listen to your soul, so you can express what it wants to say.
OP: What does the average day look like for you, as a writer?
MMCM: I make time to write, and obviously I also write whenever I feel something specific move me. I’m constantly thinking of new material, so I’m constantly on my phone. Some people might think I’m texting, but I’m actually writing. Discipline is super important. With acting as well, you want to go to class–you want to make sure you stay on top of your game by auditioning. It’s an entire job just to get the audition, and another job to book it, and then another job afterwards. The same discipline I follow as an actor I bring to my writing. I wake up early every day and try to write something, whether it’s one paragraph or a chapter. Each morning at a given time, I’m writing.
You can read the whole interview at Self Publishing News.
Mirtha Michelle Castron Mármol’s book, Letters, To The Men I Have Loved, has been one of Outskirts Press‘s Top 10 Bestselling Books every month since it was published in June. Mirtha Michelle Castron Mármol is known for her roles in the “Fast & Furious” franchise and the upcoming film, “AWOL-72,” and she keeps her fans and readers up to date on her activities through Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram. Check out her hashtag, #MMCM, to learn more about her work.
I hate to change so abruptly from such an inspiring post to such a depressing statistic, but I didn’t get ANY words written to my book yesterday, so my NaNoWriMo stats for November 12 look like this:
| Average Per Day | 1628 |
| Words Written Today | 0 |
| Target Word Count | 50,000 |
| Target ~ Words/Day | 1,667 |
| Total Words Written | 19545 |
| Words Remaining | 30,455 |
| Current Day | 12 |
| Days Remaining | 19 |
| At this rate, you’ll finish | December 1 |
| Words/Day to finish on time | 1,603 |
For the second time this month, the Stats are tracking me to finish AFTER the deadline. I’d better pick it up!
For the past 12 days I have been actively participating in National Novel Writing Month (along with some 500,000 of my fellow writers). NaNoWriMo, as it is known, challenges people to write 50,000 words to a novel in 30 days. I’d guess the majority of people who start the process may not successfully cross the 50k finish line, and that’s okay. At least they tried. But, impressively, many people make the attempt year after year. They keep on plugging along. As I quoted Ray Bradbury in yesterday’s post, “You fail only if you stop writing.” That’s not only true for National Novel Writing Month, but it is true EVERY month. In fact, it’s a good lesson for life in general: You only fail if you stop writing trying.
What I noticed as I was looking at other WriMo participants’ stats is that those writers who won usually stopped right around 50,000 words. They crossed the finish line, yes, and then promptly stopped writing their books. Their word counts rarely extended much beyond the 50,000 word requirement.
There are exceptions, of course. One WriMo wrote over 105,000 words in 30 days, but in general, the WriMos I researched who “won” did so by just squeaking past the finish line.
I’m probably going to “squeak” past the finish line, too. Once I reach 50,000 words, I’ll probably stop.
But should I?
Should any of the WriMo’s stop at 50,000 words? Should we stop writing on November 30th? Perhaps National Writing Month is only about cranking out 50,000 words in 30 days; but writing is about something more than that — it is about establishing a writing routine that is driven by a self-imposed goal (50,000 words) and a self-imposed deadline (November 30). These goals and milestones may not SEEM self-imposed in November, since NaNoWriMo is “throwing” this worldwide writing party, but the truth is, it IS self-imposed. There’s no one FORCING you to write 50,000 words in 30 days during NaNoWriMo. Those of us who are doing it, are doing it for ourselves. To see if we can.
What’s stopping us from doing the same thing in December? And in January? And February?
After all, that’s what a writer would do. As Richard Bach once said, “A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.” Let’s all keep writing, even after NaNoWriMo 2014 comes to a close…
Here are my NaNoWriMo stats for November 11, 2014:
| Average Per Day | 1776 |
| Words Written Today | 2007 |
| Target Word Count | 50,000 |
| Target ~ Words/Day | 1,667 |
| Total Words Written | 19545 |
| Words Remaining | 30,455 |
| Current Day | 11 |
| Days Remaining | 20 |
| At this rate, you’ll finish | Nov 29 |
| Words/Day to finish on time | 1,523 |
Outskirts Press has over 12,000 followers/fans on its Facebook page at http://facebook.com/outskirtspress — and some of our most popular posts have been inspiring quotes that we’ve shared to our writing community. As we begin the second full business week of NaNoWriMo, I thought I’d share a few quotes that seem particularly appropriate for those of us attempting to write 50,000 words in 30 days during National Novel Writing Month:
“A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.” ~ Richard Bach
“If you wait for inspiration to write; you’re not a writer, you’re a waiter.” ~ Dan Poynter
“Write your first draft with your heart. Rewrite with your head.” ~ Mike Rich
“Fiction does not spring into the world fully grown, like Athena. It is the process of writing and rewriting that makes a fiction original, if not profound.” ~ John Gardner
“You can’t think yourself out of a writing block; you have to write yourself out of a thinking block.” ~ John Rogers
“You fail only if you stop writing.” ~ Ray Bradbury
Keep on writing, fellow WriMo’s!
My NaNoWriMo stats for November 10, 2014:
| Average Per Day | 1753 |
| Words Written Today | 1730 |
| Target Word Count | 50,000 |
| Target ~ Words/Day | 1,667 |
| Total Words Written | 17538 |
| Words Remaining | 32,462 |
| Current Day | 10 |
| Days Remaining | 21 |
| At this rate, you’ll finish | 26-Nov |
| Words/Day to finish on time | 1,546 |
I’m taking a “blogging break” today, but I’m still going to get some writing done on my novel, Idle Hands, and in the meantime, here are my stats for Saturday, November 8. It was a pretty productive day…
| Average Per Day | 1803 |
| Words Written Today | 2606 |
| Target Word Count | 50,000 |
| Target ~ Words/Day | 1,667 |
| Total Words Written | 14,430 |
| Words Remaining | 35,570 |
| Current Day | 8 |
| Days Remaining | 23 |
| At this rate, you’ll finish | November 28 |
| Words/Day to finish on time | 1,547 |
One of the most important elements of writing a query letter is addressing it to the proper publisher. Your query letter must demonstrate that you understand their business and that you’re going to be not just professional, but an absolute JOY to work with. I feel my next book will be a good candidate for Wiley & Sons, for a number of reasons. One of their imprints is the “For Dummies” series of books, and while my book doesn’t necessarily fall into that niche, it is of a similar-level reference type.
If you’re in the mood to write a query letter, the first step is finding the appropriate publisher for your book. Amazon can help you do this. Locate a book that is of similar subject matter. Look up the book on Amazon. Find where it lists the publisher — in the product information section. Next, go to the sub-menu bar at the top and click Advanced Search. Enter that publisher’s name into the “publisher” field, and choose “bestselling” from the criteria drop-down. Your search results will then show all the books from that publisher in order of their sales, top to bottom. Not only does this give you the power to discuss other books this publisher has published from a knowledgeable position, but it prevents you from drawing comparisons to poor selling titles. You want to draw similarities between your book and other books by that publisher that have sold well!
If you don’t like the title selections from this publisher, locate another book and start the process over again. The point is that you are able to reference titles by name in your query letter, and comment intelligently on those title’s sales numbers, at least as Amazon is concerned. In general, you can assume that if a traditionally published book is selling well on Amazon, it is probably selling relatively well offline also.
I’ll start this topic by referencing a previous posting where I was considering adding “best-selling author” to the name of my blog. The purpose is to add another applicable keyword phrase that people who may have interest in this blog could conceivably type into a search engine. I’ve already discussed in the past how blog names and individual blog post titles are important to consider for SEO purposes.
But, as I mentioned, adding “best-selling author” brings up a host of considerations, the first of which I’ll dissect now.
1. Keyword optimization is already complicated, and is made even MORE annoying by words and phrases that are – or could be – hyphenated. At Outskirts Press, we run into this issue all the time within our marketing and IT departments regarding “self publishing” because you see it hyphenated just as often as not, and when considering topics like SEO, you are wise to support what people might do, and not necessarily what is correct. That’s why pay-per-click bidding on common misspellings of popular keywords is almost as competitive as bidding on the correctly spelled words.
At any rate, adding “best-selling author” to my blog name raises one issue solely based upon the hyphen. Without any other considerations, would it be better to say “best-selling” or “best selling” or “bestselling?”
Hyphenation is often subjective, and everyone has an opinion. Other writers and editors are particularly apt to point out your foibles if you do something they don’t agree personally with — so there’s one can of words, right there, raising the ire of my target audience. What can you say about a language where there are multiple manuals of styles — Strunk & White, A.P., Chicago– all equally credible, but often different in their approaches? Officially — which means, in my humble opinion — “best-selling” should be hyphenated because you are linking a modifying adverb that doesn’t end in “ly.” Other examples of this include “ill-favored” and “well-known” and… yes … “self-publishing.”
So, if one believes that little dose of English 201, one agrees that “best-selling” with the hyphen is the way to go.
But here’s the problem. The whole point of adding “best-selling” to the blog name is to optimize this blog for search engines, not to toot my horn! Well, okay, maybe it is to add a small amount of additional credibility — but we’ll address that later, too…
The fact is, the majority of people don’t type hyphens into search engines. In fact, a surprising number of people often don’t type spaces into search engines, particularly in the case of potentially hyphenated or compound words like “self-publishing” or ‘best-selling.”
So, that logic would suggest that “bestselling” is the way to go. But you know what? “Bestselling” isn’t a single word according to either of the dictionaries I use as a resource –where, often, compound words will be spelled differently depending upon the dictionary. To add further complexity, of course Bill Gates and Word thinks “bestselling” is just fine; so who do you believe? Webster, who has been dead forever, or the richest guy in the world? It’s a tough choice, and Word for Windows has let me down before… I think we’ve all become too reliant upon its “spell check” and “grammar check” functionality that we sometimes eschew true copyediting due to time constraints or resources. Word is fairly competent when it comes to correcting misspellings, but less capable when it comes to correcting incorrect word usage. For that reason, when submitting a book for publication, I would recommend utilizing the services of a human copyeditor and not relying solely on a computer’s functionality.
Back to the story of what to do with this “best-selling” quagmire. All decisions should be made by weighing all the pros and cons. And that requires understanding more of the issues. Am I a best-selling author? There’s more to that answer than just a hyphen, so more on that in the near future…
President of Outskirts Press 