Wordcraft – Blogging: easy as a message in a bottle

Recently a friend asked me, as friends do from time to time, how to go about writing a blog. The best thing I can tell them is that blogging is like sending messages in a bottle. Don’t send one and stop, waiting for the ship to find you. Don’t send one, hoping you’ll get rich and famous overnight. Keep the messages coming.

I only started writing a blog because the instructor of a writing class I went to told us that all writers must participate in social media. She refused to consider the excuses -- that writers are the most introverted and socially awkward of so-called professionals, a claim backed by extensive research (which I’m making up as I go along) indicating that as a group, we rank lower in interpersonal skills than sociopathic basement-dwelling computer hackers. I started with Facebook; went on to build my own website, now mercifully demolished, from a box. Then I tried blogging.

There are lots of websites that support blogging, but why not start with a free site like this one at Blogger or Wordpress, which may be more popular with writers, at least writers I follow.

It was so easy, no worse than setting up a Facebook account. Of course, I was doing everything completely and totally wrong. I learned this the first time I typed in my own URL and Google told me it couldn’t find it.

Fortunately, a few months later the DFW Writers’Conference  included a class on blogging, taught by Kristen Lamb, a tiny blonde, martial-arts chopping dynamo out to prove to writers that we can overcome the weaknesses of our blogs. Which she knew because she had been there. 

In general, it’s safest to let Kristen speak for herself through her blog, which she will, even if I could manage to slap zip ties on her wrists and gag her with duct tape, because that’s the kind of woman she is. But I’ll mention her first rule: forget the natural writerly tendency to try to fade into the background, hiding behind some blog title that’s supposed to sound cute but actually is just stupid, like mine, which has required years of therapy and massive doses of mind-altering drugs to overcome. Kristen admitted, like a motivational speaker at a 12-step program, that she had done this herself, but had overcome by relentlessly rebranding her blog as (gasp!) Kristen Lamb’s Blog. Google it. It works.

Kristen’s second rule of blogging is to rip any thought of ourselves as “aspiring writers” right out of our frontal cortexes. Ouch! (But don’t you feel better now?) “Aspiring” is for sissies. We’re writers. So we write, and we feed our blogs by writing. Often. Writing regularly and often in itself puts little bread crumb trails on the Internet that lets search engines like Google’s find us. In the meantime, we should link, link, link like crazy to our blog’s URL. Google’s bloodhounds are out there sniffing.

Somewhere along the line I heard that the simple act of writing regularly helps us write better. It’s true, although it helps if we write intentionally and with no more than moderate amounts of the above-mentioned mind-altering drugs.

We also need a theme for our posts, indeed, for our entire blog, maybe for our entire lives. (Theme being something I learned even more about from another amazing DFW Conference speaker this year, Disney Jr. channel’s photo mom, Me Ra Koh.)

I can’t remember whether Kristen ordered us to include images with our blog posts or whether I learned that on my own, but do it. Any image, even the craziest, immediately draws more attention from web surfers. Internet guru James Gaskin, who I met at another writers’ group confessed that he got a cat just so he could post cute cat pictures with his blog.

Like James, I take most of my own pictures or download them free from sites such as Wikimedia . There are sources of clip art pictures, some of which you have to pay for. Remember to play right with copyright rules or you may find FBI agents knocking on your door. And they’re way less good looking in person than in the movies.

Wordcraft – Self-publishing? It takes more than a click

The question left hanging at last Tuesday’s discussion of self-publishing, from a panel discussion by Sandy Steen, James Gaskin, LaReeBryant and Susan May at the recent Southwest Chapter of Mystery Writers ofAmerica, was: how does an author determine how much to charge for her (or his) book? And the still more urgent question of how to induce customers to buy those books, no matter what the price? Because writing a book and preparing it for publication is only part of the story.

The CreateSpace option at Amazon for paper copies of self-published books informs the author of the print cost (which will be primarily for paper). According to the panelists, all veterans of both traditional and self-publishing, this cost typically runs from $7-$8. Without taking into account the author’s time in writing the book and preparing it for publication, any price of more than $8 a copy should be gravy, right?

Except “you won’t sell many paperbacks,” May said, “because most people who read voraciously use e-readers.” (She prints a few paper copies of her books for signings, which she can buy at a, yes, discounted price from Amazon.)

Or say you’re publishing your work as an e-book on Amazon’s Kindle, with the 70 percent royalty option. Although Amazon’s maximum price for most e-books is $9.99, “Amazon can discount the price without asking you,” May said, with royalties based on the sales price, not your list price.

“The good news is, as a self-published author, you have total control,” May said. “The bad news is, you have total control.” And in most cases, that means total control of the marketing of books. (Relative newcomer to self-publishing, Booktrope, offers a team model of publishing, including a marketer as well as editor, cover designer and proofreader in addition to the author, with royalties being divided between all team members.)

How much time should a self-published author expect to spend on marketing, compared to writing?

“Probably 50-50,” Bryan said, “if you’re really doing it well. If you’re going to do it yourself, you need to be sure you’ve got the aptitude to do it.”

“You’ve got to brand yourself,” Steen said, remembering “to add blogging, tweeting, and all that in your time budget for marketing.” May, for instance, guest blogs regularly, multiple times per month, at three separate sites.

What other marketing venues are available to self-publishers beyond Internet sales and limited personal signings, an audience member asked. Although panel members warned that self-published books had no chance of gaining a foothold in most brick and mortar bookstores, is there a way, an audience member asked, to get self-published books into libraries?

Basically, Gaskin said, only by donating them, and even then libraries may refuse to accept them for shelving. Besides continuing prejudice about the writing quality of self-published books, “Many self-published books,” he said, “are not ‘libraryized’ – not tough enough to hold up to repeated lendings.”

What about crowd-funding, an audience member asked, both to raise money to pay the cost of editing, cover design, and publishing? Won’t such funding not only save the author out of pocket costs but also provide a guaranteed audience?

Gaskin’s opinion is that most such efforts actually are under-subscribed, but “I can give you some good news. There’s a formula, that if you have a thousand fanatic fans, you can make a living as a creative artist, because they will buy your book and proselytize for you.”

However, once the market for one book has become saturated, fans will require the author to keep writing more books. “The more books you have, the more presence you have,” Steen said. “The basic problem is, you have to write the book, and you have to write a good book.”

Wordcraft – Publishing: getting our books out there

It was the Fourth of July, early on a beautiful Saturday morning of a holiday weekend. So why was a room full of people taking a break from the holiday at the monthly meeting of Mystery Writers of America’s Southwest Chapter? We’d come to hear four longtime writers, veterans of the business, talk about the topic dear to all our hearts – getting published.

Fiction writers Sandy Steen, LaRee Bryant and Susan May, and computer how-to guy James Gaskin (who also dabbles in fiction) found most of their audience’s questions were about self-publishing, which was OK, because they’ve gone both ways, self-publishing as well as the traditional variety.

Although audience questions started with how to format books for self-publishing, panel members emphasized that the quality of the writing has to come first. “There’s one thing I see about self-published books,” Steen said, “it’s that there’s a lot of dreck out there. Anything you submit, from a query to a full manuscript, needs to be as clean as possible.”

Bryant, who is a professional editor as well as author, agreed. “If you’re going to do it yourself, you need to be sure you’ve got the aptitude to do it.”

So just hard is it to prepare a book for self-publishing, an audience member asked. Is it worth doing yourself, or is it better to hire someone?

Susan May: “I’m a firm believer from many years in business, that you do yourself what you do well. Otherwise, hire it out.”

That said, the multiple options available for self-publishing, such as CreateSpace, have made the formatting the questioner was concerned with one of the easier parts of publishing. (If in doubt while at the self-publishing site, ask for a guided tour, which will explain the concepts as the author goes along.) Pick a standard font (typeface) such as Times New Roman or Courier, in a 12-14 point size.

Steen prefers Garamond, a family of typefaces, which also have a familiar look for most readers. It, as well as Times New Roman and Courier, are all serif typefaces, meaning they have ornamental extender lines, typically at the bases of letters. An audience member asked about the use of the Arial typeface, a sans serif font. But although sans serifs have what some consider a more modern look, Bryant advised against them, finding that they don’t show up as well on e-readers.

However, panelists recommended checking any unusual typefaces to be sure they are no longer under copyright by their creators. Otherwise, authors may find themselves billed thousands of dollars for use of a copyrighted product. (And about copyrighting your own book? That’s the easy part, panelists agreed. The U.S. Copyright Office charges about $35 for the process.)

“What’s the most popular size for an e-book?” was another audience question.

Mass-market size books, the old ones small enough to fit into a pocket, are going out of style in paper because their pages are more difficult to cut. Again, to keep formatting the same for both paper books and e-books, panelists recommended what’s called “trade” paperback sizes, six inches by nine inches, or 5 ¼ by 8.

Bryant suggested that with the slightly larger 6 x 9 inch size sometimes decreases the number of pages, which in turn may decrease the publishing costs. In no case would any of the panelists recommend trying to scrimp on costs by using smaller typefaces. Bryant would never go smaller than 12 point; May typically uses 13 point.

With self-publishing also comes the need to make decisions about marketing, including how to price your own books. At this point, the discussion took a sharp turn into questions about book promotion, to be continued next Tuesday.

Wordcraft -- Kittens, couture & tech for non-techies

Things I learned from tech geek James Gaskin: easiest password technique ever, why every writer needs a kitten, and that Hawaiian-style shirts know no season.

I already knew about Hawaiian shirts from watching Gaskin man the audio system at the monthly meetings of the Southwester chapter of Mystery Writers of America. But I didn’t learn the technique that will make me throw away my scribbled stash of passwords until I heard him speak at the recent meeting of the Writers Guild of Texas.

It was part of the wisdom Gaskin disbursed in his “Technology for Writers: Tips, Tools, and Tricks to Produce and Promote Your Words” program for the WGT audience gathered at the Richardson, Texas, library.

In between working his day job, Technical Solutions for Small Business, Gaskin writes (his latest books are Texas Hysterical Society and Email From A Dead Friend), and delivers his signature deadpan humor.

“Somebody once asked me for my best writing advice in a word,” Gaskin said, opening his talk. “I thought¾ ‘Finish’! So thanks for having me, it’s been a pleasure.”

Seriously, he stayed to offer a simple tip for constructing passwords, which have morphed into pass phrases. “The trick today is to have a different password for every site.” Unfortunately, most of us find this so daunting we use the same passwords for multiple sites, or succumb to jotting them down, or to trusting management of our dozens of passwords to online sites. Gaskin’s formula: “I have four numbers that mean something to me, then I have something (alpha) in the middle that means something to me, then another four numbers and a special character,” for example, “1234WGT5678!”. Or “1234MWA5678!”

Tempted to use your birthday for the numbers? Think again. As Gaskin said, “Nobody on the Internet deserves the truth from me. When I’m asked what my birthday is on the Internet, it’s not my real birthday.”

But how often do you change your passwords, an audience member asked. Gaskin’s answer: “I don’t, because I know the people who stole a password at Target don’t have my password for the Writers Guild.”

There was, of course, much more technical know how (we stayed until the library’s PA system warned it was about to close), but you’ll have to contact Gaskin at www.gaskin.com for the full accounting and his list of helpful writing, organizing and editing software. I only have space now for his words of wisdom about kittens: get one. But first, get a blog.

And then, “Write this on your hand,” Gaskin said. “Never post a blog without an image. And if you can put a picture of a kitten on your blog, do it! I got a kitten, just for pictures.”

The illustration is of, yes, the real James Gaskin (in the marvelous shirt) with a crowd of admirers. Now if I could only manage to squeeze in a kitten¼

***

Totallyunrelated useful bytes: Oops, I goofed on the dates for the Dallas Public Library’s expansion of Sunday-Monday hours. New hours for the Audelia Road, Dallas West, North Oak Cliff, Oak Lawn, Paul Laurence Dunbar Lancaster-Kiest, and Preston Royal branches will begin Monday, April 6. All library branches will be closed April 5 for Easter.

And this coming Saturday, February 7, my friend Kathleen Rodgers launches her latest novel, Johnnie Come Lately, at Barnes & Noble, Southlake, TX, from 2-4pm. Kathleen will sign copies of the 2nd edition of her earlier novel, The Final Salute. Both books will be shelved under "New Fiction" and both are available at B & N online.