Who hasn’t wished at some point wished she could be in more than one place at a time? Or grab an extra scoop of ice cream without doubling the calories? Or maybe get two sales for the cost of writing only one story, like British blogger Deborah Walker, http://deborahwalkersbibliography.blogspot.com/, who recorded an amazing 179 sales last year.
How did she do it? First, of course, by writing a lot and submitting a lot. But she notes that about half of those 179 sales were reprints. Yes, she’s learned to double dip on her sales by tapping the market for reprints. (And by marketing to foreign language venues, but more about that in a minute.)
I’m far from being as prolific as Deborah, but I’ve learned to love the reprint market. Reprints don’t always pay as well as markets for previously unpublished work, but they offer a chance to get our work in front of the eyes of new readers, or in new media. (Audio publications in general love reprints!) And don’t tell anybody, but sometimes I’ve even sold reprints for more than I got from the original sale.
Check your contracts to be sure you have the right to sell your story again. Typically, all rights (except first English-language or first North American publication) will revert to the writer within six months to a year.
Find those reprint markets the same way as markets for original work, online. I love to hear from readers about their favorite search sites. Mine include The (Submission) Grinder, http://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/ (free); Ralan, http://ralan.com/ (free); or Duotrope’s Digest, www.duotrope.com/, (by subscription, but consider checking out is first-month-free offer), where I set the search parameters for “accepts reprints”.
And about those foreign language markets Deborah uses? Canadian speculative fiction writer Douglas Smith maintains a list of non-English markets at his site, www.smithwriter.com/foreign_market_list.htm/.
How else to double dip? After long resisting the lure of Pinterest,
www.pinterest.com/, I realized it’s a great second venue for the photos I take for my blog posts. There’s no pay, but it taps a different set of potential readers.
Another double dip comes from book reviews. Recently, I wanted to help my friend, Kathleen M. Rodgers, whose new novel, Johnnie Come Lately, was published this month, and realized I could post virtually the same review I’d posted at this blog on Goodreads, www.goodreads.com/; and Amazon, www.amazon.com/. I stumbled around those sites a little before getting comfortable with their formats, but a couple of postings, I feel like an old hand. Again, its multiple places for people to read about Kathleen’s book and see a sample of my writing as well, at a single swoop.
Ardent reviewers and review readers will want to see Dallas Morning News writer Joy Tipping’s list of book review sites and blogs, “To get your book reviewed, take Tipping’s tips.” at this site. And for anybody who loves getting those free review copies, the Dallas-area Fresh Fiction organization is advertising for reviewers. For information, see http://freshfiction.com/.
And share all the ways you double dip as well!
Showing posts with label Fresh Fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fresh Fiction. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Monday, November 10, 2014
Wordcraft -- Romance vs. suspense: he writes, she writes
Was there an unintended pun in the subtitle of the panel at the Readers & ’ritas convention last weekend: “The Difference Between a Straight Mystery and a Romantic Suspense”? Because the three authors who addressed a room full of romance fans turned the word “straight” on its head.
In fairness to the convention’s organizer, Fresh Fiction, the panel was supposed to consist of three women authors. But when one had to cancel, the moderator tagged the first male author invited to the convention, swashbucklingly gay author/writing teacher Damon Suede to fill in. Joined with mystery writer/Italian translator Traci Andrighetti and suspense writer/scientist Lara Lacombe, the result was a gleeful hour spent tugging at the boundaries of romantic fiction, mystery, and male-female viewpoints.
After reminding the audience that the etymology of “romance” derives from the original word for a novel, Suede, Andrighetti and Lacombe played with ways to define “romance”, “mystery” and “thriller/suspense” in modern terms.
The function of a mystery, Suede posited is “that things will be untangled when they go wrong”; that of a thriller/suspense becomes “maybe no one will help you” and that of a romance is “someone will help” when those tangled things are going very, very wrong. In other words, the overwhelming characteristic of a romance, both readers and authors agreed, is that the relationship between two people is paramount.
Still, in drawing the line between mystery/thriller and romance, “I think it’s often a shame that mystery writers forget there’s often a love interest involved” in their books, Andrighetti said.
The problem, she believes, often lies in the sexual stereotyping of books. “We say women write romance and men write mystery.”
Suede agreed. And that the stereotyping works both ways.
He was told by other romance writers that he wouldn't be able to write romance, “because I’m a male writer. I think many more guys read romance than we think. I have a fire house in Austin that reads all my books (Hot Head, Seedy Business, Grown Men, Horn Gate, Bad Idea) ¾ and they’re straight guys. They say, now I can talk to my girlfriend about this stuff.”
“In my family,” Andrighetti counters, “my dad and brother are really uncomfortable reading my books (Limoncello Yellow and Prosecco Pink). (But) I read in Italian, and I was inspired by a woman named Gabriella Genisi, and 70 percent of her readers are male.” (She’s also thrilled at the prospect of translating Genisi’s work for English-speaking readers.)
And then, ahem, there’s the stereotype that romance readers, well, maybe any readers, don’t want to try anything too challenging. Which brought the panel back to the dilemma of Lacombe. Make that, Dr. Lacombe, with a doctorate in immunology and microbiology. Mild-mannered science professor by day, she writes suspense with romantic elements (Lethal Lies, Fatal Fallout, Deadly Contact ) by night.
Do you find it hard to dumb down your books?” an audience member asked.
Not even an issue, Lacombe insisted. The thought that readers may consider themselves “dumb” distresses her. “I think you’re taught to think you’re dumb. That’s not right. I try to write the books with a bit of knowledge that lets people say, now that’s interesting.”
Leading to an aha moment from the game theory book, A Theory of Fun, Suede said. “There’s a balance between fun that’s too hard and fun that’s too easy.” Finding the right balance between easy and hard is the challenge. “If it’s too much of either, it’s boring.”
For more about Andrighetti, Lacombe and Suede, as well as the Readers & ’ritas convention, see the site for convention sponsor Fresh Fiction, at http://freshfiction.com/.
In fairness to the convention’s organizer, Fresh Fiction, the panel was supposed to consist of three women authors. But when one had to cancel, the moderator tagged the first male author invited to the convention, swashbucklingly gay author/writing teacher Damon Suede to fill in. Joined with mystery writer/Italian translator Traci Andrighetti and suspense writer/scientist Lara Lacombe, the result was a gleeful hour spent tugging at the boundaries of romantic fiction, mystery, and male-female viewpoints.
After reminding the audience that the etymology of “romance” derives from the original word for a novel, Suede, Andrighetti and Lacombe played with ways to define “romance”, “mystery” and “thriller/suspense” in modern terms.
The function of a mystery, Suede posited is “that things will be untangled when they go wrong”; that of a thriller/suspense becomes “maybe no one will help you” and that of a romance is “someone will help” when those tangled things are going very, very wrong. In other words, the overwhelming characteristic of a romance, both readers and authors agreed, is that the relationship between two people is paramount.
Still, in drawing the line between mystery/thriller and romance, “I think it’s often a shame that mystery writers forget there’s often a love interest involved” in their books, Andrighetti said.
The problem, she believes, often lies in the sexual stereotyping of books. “We say women write romance and men write mystery.”
Suede agreed. And that the stereotyping works both ways.
He was told by other romance writers that he wouldn't be able to write romance, “because I’m a male writer. I think many more guys read romance than we think. I have a fire house in Austin that reads all my books (Hot Head, Seedy Business, Grown Men, Horn Gate, Bad Idea) ¾ and they’re straight guys. They say, now I can talk to my girlfriend about this stuff.”
“In my family,” Andrighetti counters, “my dad and brother are really uncomfortable reading my books (Limoncello Yellow and Prosecco Pink). (But) I read in Italian, and I was inspired by a woman named Gabriella Genisi, and 70 percent of her readers are male.” (She’s also thrilled at the prospect of translating Genisi’s work for English-speaking readers.)
And then, ahem, there’s the stereotype that romance readers, well, maybe any readers, don’t want to try anything too challenging. Which brought the panel back to the dilemma of Lacombe. Make that, Dr. Lacombe, with a doctorate in immunology and microbiology. Mild-mannered science professor by day, she writes suspense with romantic elements (Lethal Lies, Fatal Fallout, Deadly Contact ) by night.
Do you find it hard to dumb down your books?” an audience member asked.
Not even an issue, Lacombe insisted. The thought that readers may consider themselves “dumb” distresses her. “I think you’re taught to think you’re dumb. That’s not right. I try to write the books with a bit of knowledge that lets people say, now that’s interesting.”
Leading to an aha moment from the game theory book, A Theory of Fun, Suede said. “There’s a balance between fun that’s too hard and fun that’s too easy.” Finding the right balance between easy and hard is the challenge. “If it’s too much of either, it’s boring.”
For more about Andrighetti, Lacombe and Suede, as well as the Readers & ’ritas convention, see the site for convention sponsor Fresh Fiction, at http://freshfiction.com/.
Monday, November 11, 2013
Wordcraft -- Romance writing with a side of mayhem
There are as many kinds of romance writing as there are writers--or readers. And last weekend’s Readers & ’ritas conference in Allen, Texas, brought out so many, I had to make some difficult decisions in picking which discussions to attend.
One that made the list was the “50 Shades of Mystery” panel featuring authors with styles as different as Diane Kelly’s relatively light-hearted Death and Taxes series, Mary Burton’s law enforcement thrillers, Kay Thomas’s Elite Ops military-flavored series, and Dianna Love’s terrorist hunting operatives. The covers for their books feature guns, bullet holes, and fully-clothed characters (with maybe a bare shoulder or so). And they do believe in doing their background work, from the Writers Police Academy; to citizen police academies, to trying on the ever-present Kevlar vests. And talking a lot to experts.
So what, exactly, does it take to write a story that qualifies as “romantic suspense”? And how much suspense/thriller/mystery gets added to the mix? And given the usually slender page counts for series romances, how much room does a writer have to deal with multiple plot complications.
To a great extent, panelists agreed, the answers depend on the which publisher--and which line of that publisher--the author is writing for.
“We talk a lot about the percentage,” Thomas said. “It’s fifty percent suspense, fifty percent romance for some lines,” with other publishers looking for as little as twenty percent or as much as eighty percent of the plot to come from suspense elements. Although Romance Writers of America’s criteria for awarding awards requires the love story to be the main focus, sometimes the suspense is dominant bookstores don’t even shelve the volumes in their romance sections, as Kelly says happens to hers.
And Love and Thomas are tending toward single title books rather than series, to allow for more complicated plots. “My newest is 110,000 words,” Love said. “I write what I
enjoy and I like really big.” (Compare that to the Romance Writers of America guidelines for “traditional romance” with word counts topping out at 60,000.)
How hard is it to do to the technical research for suspense writing, a reader asked. “The research can really fuel your writing,” answered Burton, who recommends the Writers’ Police Academy, to be held next fall in Jamestown, N.C. And all panelists agreed on the need to check facts with experts.
“People are so willing to be helpful,” Thomas said, adding that she’s also lucky to have a homicide detective as a family friend.
“It helps if they know you,” Burton agreed, and especially if the interviews are done in person, “because honestly,” she admits, “if you just email, your questions will sound kind of creepy.”
Face to face interviews can also bring out information a writer may not think to ask questions about, Kelly noted.
Just how much of the facts she gathers does a writer need to put into her books?
“Sometimes you can’t be technically correct but you have to do enough to draw the reader in,” Burton said. “Too much information is a huge temptation.”
“It’s a balancing act,“ Kelley said. “What do you owe your sources and what do you owe your readers? I would never make (my sources) look bad, but as a writer I have to do what it takes to entertain a reader.”
Readers & ’ritas is a program of Fresh Fiction, the brain child of mother-daughter book reviewers Sara and Gwen Reyes. See Fresh Fiction events and featured authors, at
www.freshfiction.com/.
For information about the Writers’ Police Academy, which usually sells out quickly, see www.writerspoliceacadmy.com/.
(Next Monday--romancing the paranormal, another facet of the Readers & ’ritas conference.)
One that made the list was the “50 Shades of Mystery” panel featuring authors with styles as different as Diane Kelly’s relatively light-hearted Death and Taxes series, Mary Burton’s law enforcement thrillers, Kay Thomas’s Elite Ops military-flavored series, and Dianna Love’s terrorist hunting operatives. The covers for their books feature guns, bullet holes, and fully-clothed characters (with maybe a bare shoulder or so). And they do believe in doing their background work, from the Writers Police Academy; to citizen police academies, to trying on the ever-present Kevlar vests. And talking a lot to experts.
So what, exactly, does it take to write a story that qualifies as “romantic suspense”? And how much suspense/thriller/mystery gets added to the mix? And given the usually slender page counts for series romances, how much room does a writer have to deal with multiple plot complications.
To a great extent, panelists agreed, the answers depend on the which publisher--and which line of that publisher--the author is writing for.
“We talk a lot about the percentage,” Thomas said. “It’s fifty percent suspense, fifty percent romance for some lines,” with other publishers looking for as little as twenty percent or as much as eighty percent of the plot to come from suspense elements. Although Romance Writers of America’s criteria for awarding awards requires the love story to be the main focus, sometimes the suspense is dominant bookstores don’t even shelve the volumes in their romance sections, as Kelly says happens to hers.
And Love and Thomas are tending toward single title books rather than series, to allow for more complicated plots. “My newest is 110,000 words,” Love said. “I write what I
enjoy and I like really big.” (Compare that to the Romance Writers of America guidelines for “traditional romance” with word counts topping out at 60,000.)
How hard is it to do to the technical research for suspense writing, a reader asked. “The research can really fuel your writing,” answered Burton, who recommends the Writers’ Police Academy, to be held next fall in Jamestown, N.C. And all panelists agreed on the need to check facts with experts.
“People are so willing to be helpful,” Thomas said, adding that she’s also lucky to have a homicide detective as a family friend.
“It helps if they know you,” Burton agreed, and especially if the interviews are done in person, “because honestly,” she admits, “if you just email, your questions will sound kind of creepy.”
Face to face interviews can also bring out information a writer may not think to ask questions about, Kelly noted.
Just how much of the facts she gathers does a writer need to put into her books?
“Sometimes you can’t be technically correct but you have to do enough to draw the reader in,” Burton said. “Too much information is a huge temptation.”
“It’s a balancing act,“ Kelley said. “What do you owe your sources and what do you owe your readers? I would never make (my sources) look bad, but as a writer I have to do what it takes to entertain a reader.”
Readers & ’ritas is a program of Fresh Fiction, the brain child of mother-daughter book reviewers Sara and Gwen Reyes. See Fresh Fiction events and featured authors, at
www.freshfiction.com/.
For information about the Writers’ Police Academy, which usually sells out quickly, see www.writerspoliceacadmy.com/.
(Next Monday--romancing the paranormal, another facet of the Readers & ’ritas conference.)
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