Tag: publishing

Of Plans and Reminders

Charles French had a post on Arrowhead Publishing a few weeks ago. Its subject was creating business plans for books. I’d come to a similar conclusion to his ideas on my own a few years ago as part of my quest for greater organization, but his ideas had greater depth than mine. It’s always good to find something like that and learn more.

But after reading his post, I continued along thinking I’d begun weeks ago about the need for larger involvement in the business side of my self-publishing efforts. And after reading French’s post, I realized that I’d conceived many of the needs and ideas required but had failed to execute.

I had the dream. I had an action plan. I wasn’t acting.

After considering that realization with irritation and annoyance with myself that ended with a stern lecture, I answered myself, with some plaintiveness, as the business persona of my being, I’m not given much time or energy for taking care of business. The writer gets the most attention and indulgence. That’s followed by the husband, friend and son. Then the human gets attention (for things like time off, socializing, partying and exercising beyond the daily ritual of decompressing), and the editor, leaving crumbs to the business person.

I agree, I answered. Part of this is because I don’t to do the business side. But accept it: it must be done.

Okay. What can we do about it?

Well, like writing in the beginning and everything else, it’s about allocating time. I’d planned to give these matters attention – that’s why I was annoyed – but permitted my resources to be diverted into other things, important things like killing time by playing computer games, reading books, or playing with cats. Just as I do for everything else, I need to structure recurring time in my life for the business side of publishing.

And it is a recurring need. Publishing and selling books is as dynamic as any marketplace. As an unknown with no name recognition trying to learn the business, I need to work harder, as hard as an athlete trying to make a team, or a writer writing a book. As I wrote in a post when I began thinking about this, I Will Do Better, my efforts are meager and weak. It’s shocking to realize that I wrote that in the middle of January.

Once again, I remind myself, intentions aren’t sufficient. Just as writing in the first place, exercising, or acquiring and degrees, focus and application are needed. I can’t accept that, oh, I did this, and now I’m done. No, this is very much trail and error. It should all be considered as a first draft. Sometimes the blurb written and used isn’t working. New venues for publishing, distributing, advertising and selling are always springing up. If I want to expand my sales, I need to expand my efforts.

Okay, but I already knew all of this. I wasn’t acting on them. This was a case of out of sight, out of mind. Just as I need structure to pursue writing my fiction, I need structure for selling it. Moving the business guy up in the order of priorities isn’t necessarily needed, either. Rather, I realized that I needed to remind myself that the business side needs to be attended.

So I jumped into my Google calendar and set up reminders. Do this, do that. Check this, check that. And I set aside time via reminders to research and read about the business aspect of publishing and selling my own work.

Writing, publishing and selling isn’t a destination. Just like life and living, it’s a journey to be embraced and taken every day. Recognize what must be done but recognize it doesn’t need to all be done at once.

But recognize, it must be done and keep going.

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The Fuel

I’m mostly a self-driven vehicle, writing out of need to imagine and tell stories, and entertaining myself. Mostly, I energize via reading what I’ve written, editing and revising it and pressing on. Mostly, I write from practice and habit, walking to awaken the muse, giving her a mocha to encourage her engagement, and then shutting off everyone in me except the writer.

Mostly.

But that’s all about the writing side. The damn business side is depressing. The need for accepting rejection, considering advertising campaigns, hunting for copy-editors, beta readers, cover designers, publishing venues, publishers and agents are all depressing.

I’m not nuanced in demographics and specific costs structures, operating margins, etc., of the publishing industry, but I do understand that it’s an involved, expensive business on the traditional side, and it’s a crowded field in the self-publishing and digital publishing arenas. I understand on emotional, physical, intellectual and financial levels about the difficulties with finding representations, publishers, sales and readers.

That doesn’t make me feel any better.

I read fiction and non-fiction to study and absorb others’ ways with ideas, stories, characters, plots, words, settings, beginnings, middles and ends. I read them because I enjoy them. I want to be entertained and I want to escape.

But I read other writers ‘like me’ for true incentive about writing, dealing with rejection, and why it’s difficult to solve the writing, publishing, sales and marketing puzzles. Writers are my tribe; we write because we often feel we must, or we’re addicted to the dream or the process, or we’re using it to therapy to cope with who and what we seem to be.

Several families co-exist in that tribe. One family consists of the writers who have made it – King, Rowling, Chabon, Frantzen, Erdrich, Collins, Lee, Green – how many need be named? We each have our writing heroes.

My family is that other one, the family of writers who write each day, wonder how much writing is enough writing, publish short stories online, the writers who are struggling not to write, but to live and exist as a successfully published writer. I spent much time with their words and blogs online. I take comfort in our shared misery of struggling. It allows me to say, “See, it’s not just me. It’s not just Michael Seidel.”

And that’s a relief. I often think it is just Michael Seidel. I often feel like I’m right on the cusp of making a breakthrough and then the moment is gone. It’s exasperating and debilitating. Yet, I sense other writers live in that same zone by the words they write online.

From them, I get my fuel. Because sometimes, I want to stop. Sometimes the muse asks, “Excuse me, but are we wasting our time here?” Sometimes the internal writer agrees, “Yeah, shouldn’t we just go wash and wax the car and have a beer, or volunteer for some charities, or go find a job? Wouldn’t any one of those things be more productive than the daily rituals we follow?”

But my family of writers and I all answer, “No.” I can elaborate, “You’re not correctly measuring what it means to be productive, that being creative and imaginative is more worthwhile to me than those tasks you ask me to undertake instead.”

We know this. Commercial and critical success is a matter of validation and pride. It’s driven in part by family and friends asking us, “How is the book coming along? When will I be able to read it?” They do not understand the difficulties not just in writing, but in getting published and noticed, of making sales.

Usually, we don’t bother to explain the intricacies their question deserves. Nodding, we just tell them, “It’s coming along.”

Then we add the exchange to our fuel.

3

A Year

It’s been a year since I collected my last IBM paycheck.

I expected a lot of changes in that year. I’ve been disappointed.

One bitter reason for wanting to leave IBM was my unhappiness of how callously we were treated as individuals. That’s my perception. Others may not share it. The work had become routine and boring. I was rarely engaged, and my circle of involvement seemed to be shrinking. So, I was receiving less validation that I was worthwhile to the company or that anyone there appreciated my work or efforts. Hence, I wanted to leave. When they offered me the choice, I took it.

Yet, being freed from employment didn’t do anything to enhance my sense of validation. If anything, the solitary habits I employ and my social awkwardness remain, so I’m just as out there on my own now as I was when I was employed, and experience even less evaluation. It’s tested my strength and determination.

I thought my writing career would take off. It hasn’t. I didn’t appreciate the hard work required to not just prepare a book to publish but also to market. I naively thought, “If I write it, they will come.”

My year of being unemployed, the first since I was seventeen, taught me how much I require structure, goals and a vision to keep me moving forward. I’ve been forced to re-evaluate what I’d established in the past that helped me succeed, and create new structures, goals and a vision. That’s all still in progress. I also needed to educate myself more about the writing business, something also underway. Frankly, it’s wearying.

In thinking about all of this, I resolved, “I will do better.” It’s a big poster in my mind, glowing at me all the time. “I will do better.”

Today’s writing session is finished. I only wrote about fifteen hundred words and edited some. The novel is becoming hugely busy. I reached the point that I felt like a puppet master getting entangled in his puppets’ strings. Pacing across the coffee shop with impatience and frustration, I gazed out the window and recognized, I need to stop today. Regroup and marshal my energies and intentions to proceed. It’s a complex novel, with complicated plots and societies, set in the future, with unique words, and yada, yada, yada.

Those of you who write will totally understand.

 

9

I Will Do Better

I’d been reading articles on success  by Nichole McGhie at The Excited Writer, and how success is defined by Lisa Kron at Writer Unboxed, along with posts about believing in myself and being great, both by Jay Colby.

I was intimidated about trying to be great. I am intimidated about trying to be great. Who am I, to dare to think I can be great? Hell, I’m intimidated about trying to be mediocre.

I used to facilitate strategic planning sessions for U.S. Air Force units. The steps were about defining how the units viewed themselves and what they wanted to achieve. The mission was who they were and why they existed; the vision is who they wanted to be, which would be gained through their accomplishments. Goals were established and plans put into action.

Likewise, I used to write and conduct performance reports. While I’m unimpressed with the standard performance report processes and mechanisms the USAF and many corporations use because they’re rich with folly, the best part of the process for me was asking myself and my people, “What do you really to do? What do you really want to be? Who do you really want to be?”

This worked well. My teams and the individuals were stronger for the effort. The visions provided structure and discipline.

I did the same for myself for my writing endeavors. Such a vision is a powerful, sustaining force. When you’re tired, depressed, frustrated or bitter, a vision of what you’re pursuing is a magnificent catalyst for taking a deep breath, mining out some new source of energy and determination and pressing on regardless.

It’s done wonders for me. I write consistently and patiently, defining and re-defining my process as I learn. I’m pleased with myself as a writer.

I’m not pleased with myself with the business aspect of writing. As I’ve noted before, I had a vision, write a novel. Done, done, and done again and again and again. But guess what? As writers, editors, and publishers all know, writing a novel is the beginning. So while my vision was beautiful for being a writer and writer, it was not significantly developed for being a successful published writer.

I was thinking of all of this today. Using Jay Colby’s questions in his post on greatness as a starting point, I decided I would treat myself to an off-site and set aside a large part of a day to defining my vision for being a successful published writer. Along the way of thinking and deciding this, I considered my meager, weak efforts so far. They’re frankly embarrassing and depressing, yielding the results you’d expect from such half-assed mediocre work. That’ when the voice in me said, “I will do better.”

I know that voice; it’s my inner voice of determination. It’s not a wheedling, apologetic voice used while called on the carpet and groveling. It’s not a voice employed to mollify another, nor a voice of regret when I’ve been caught doing something another doesn’t like. This is the voice of one who has been down, recognized he’s down, and decided that he’s fucking tired of being down. I know this, because I’ve heard this voice before, several times in my life. Each time, though, it took a descent into a morass of doubt, self-pity and self-flagellation for me to speak and hear the voice. The difference this time is that I only usually answered with that voice only after others told me I had the potential to do more and be more; this time, I’m telling myself.

“I will do better.”

9

Giving Up, Going On

  1. On a delayed train from Manchester to London in 1990, Rowling wrote her initial Potter ideas on a napkin. She typed her first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone on a typewriter, often choosing to write in Edinburgh cafés, accompanied by baby daughter Jessica, now 19, named after Jessica Mitford, a heroine of Rowling’s youth. ~ J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series and other novels.
  2. In the end, I received 60 rejections for The Help. But letter number 61 was the one that accepted me. After my five years of writing and three and a half years of rejection, an agent named Susan Ramer took pity on me. What if I had given up at 15? Or 40? Or even 60? Three weeks later, Susan sold The Help to Amy Einhorn Books.     ~ Kathryn Stockett, author of ‘The Help’.
  3. After she wrote Still Alice and was ready to get it into the market, Lisa spent a year trying to get literary agents and editors at publishing houses to speak with her. The editors all treated her as yet another aspiring writer not worth their time, and the few literary agents she managed to reach thought her novel wouldn’t sell. ~ Lisa Genova, author of ‘Still Alice’.
  4. The situation was improbable. Just one year prior, Weir, a computer programmer by trade, had given up hope of becoming a professional writer after failing to get a single agent or publisher excited about his work. But then he posted The Martian online, and it generated such buzz that now here he was, signing mid-six-figure deals with both Crown Publishing and Twentieth Century Fox. His self-publishing success story—well-paid tech nerd becomes really well paid novelist—made him the envy of every would-be author who ever fantasized about ditching his day job. Even critics were on board. (“Brilliant. A celebration of human ingenuity and the purest example of real sci-fi for many years,” said The Wall Street Journal.) ~ Andy Weir, author of ‘The Martian’.
  5. He pitched the book and was rejected 27 times before a chance encounter with a friend who had just landed an editing job.  Geisel told his friend about his book, about the rejection, and told him he was fed up and about to destroy the book.  The friend read it and Dr. Seuss was born. ~Theodore Geisel, author of ‘The Cat in the Hat’ and other books.

It’s just something to think about. You, and your good taste and writing skills, may be unknown and yet still be a brilliant writer and yet still be unpublished and unknown.

And you, along with the editors, publishers, agents, family members and critique group who rejected you, might all be right. You don’t ‘deserve’ publication. And you do.

If you go into Amazon and read some novels, you’ll discover scathing reviews of great classics and best-sellers. And there are books like ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’, which I didn’t like, that began as fan fiction published on a website and ended up as a best seller and movie.

You can’t predict what will happen so invest that energy elsewhere. Write like crazy. Plan and write. Revise and edit. Establish a process or system and keep trying, keep trying, keep trying. Write because you enjoy writing. Write a book in a month in November. Do what it takes. Believe in yourself. Keep believing.

And keep trying.

 

4

Liberated!

I’ve been mentally hemming and hawing, doing an aw shucks shuffle self-effacing, anxious shuffle off to one side, afraid of being in the spotlight, afraid of being ignored by the spotlight, and frightened that if the spotlight finds me, it will illuminate all my shortcomings, limitations and errors.

I’m a person of hypocrisies and conflicts, dreams, judgments, anxieties, hopes, optimism, and pessimism. I’m trying to let go, hang on, and move ahead. Ultimately, I have accepted myself as a failure. That’s important, and reassuring. And it’s a lie.

I don’t consider myself a failure (at the moment, although that can change in a moment). But without realizing it, that’s the crux of what’s bothering me the last few days. Publishing another book. Self-publishing, with all its baggage, an epub, with all of its connotations. Some of these perceptions are fossils I acquired in another era, and I know they’re not true on one level, but they’re hard to let go. But sometime yesterday, I literally said, “Fuck it.” I was speaking to myself, and allow myself to use such language with myself and around myself. So, “Fuck it,” I said. “Publish it. You’ve done your best. Will there be errors? Maybe. But maybe not. Will people like it? Maybe. But maybe not. But what will happen if you don’t publish? You will stew and fester and keep re-living the pro and cons of the possibilities. So, fuck it. Do it.”

I feel much better now.

At least, today.

3

Sour Grapes, Writing Ed.

Yeah, it’s like, bleah. Like work. Ugh.

Published Road Lessons with Savanna this week. It acquired the attention an elephant bestows on an ant. Anxiety and conflicts arise. Depression. Acceptance, the need to be patient, the requirement to market the book. It takes time, I tell myself, and scream back, “Time? Time?” Because time, you know, stirs fear, impatience, anxieties, as I await time’s passage. Time can be a right cruel bully.

That’s my background moodiness as I return to copy-editing Everything Not Known today. A quarter million words, seven hundred plus pages. I have completed editing on seven chapters. 21,000 words.

Oh, boy. This is going to take forever.

Forever? Could you be exaggerating?

Trying to encourage myself, I say, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”

“Shut up, you moron,” I answer. “Keep your platitudes to yourself.”

I enjoy the novel, which is good, happy news, even, as it was written with me in mind as the audience. That’s the only audience I understand, so I kowtow to me and my taste. I’ve tried writing and editing to others’ preferences but their guidance, feedback, and input, is confusing and conflicting. So, responding with great insight and maturity, I replied, “Whatever,” and write for myself.

The snarky corner of me notes with withering contempt, “Who do you expect to read your book if you write if for yourself, you marketing moron?”

Ready for that query, I tell myself, “Good to hell.” So there.

Enjoying the novel does help copy-editing it, but this isn’t my favorite pastime, so I chaff, complain and offer childish whines about what I’m doing and most do. Intellectually, I know, yeah, this must be done, and this, too, shall pass, and other pithy, worn encouraging sentiments. Intellectually, I can see into myself and see all the nuances of living and existing irritating me and the ridiculousness of my complaints.Intellectually, I know enough of myself to know it’s part of my cycles of spirit, attitudes and emotions to drift into the dark side. I know I’ll emerge from it in a few days.

Intellectually, I know it’s all human nature.

Intellectually, I still tell myself to go to hell. Then I drink the coffee, take a deep breath, and play a game.

Then I go to work.

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Basking

Pardon me, everyone, but I am basking today.

I have at least reasons three for basking, all related to my writing endeavors, and by basking, I mean enjoying the glow of accomplishments.

The first is that my ebooks are doing better than I expected (although not better than fantasized…but, come on…). Their buying patterns are so different so I’m curious about whether that will continue. My mystery novel, Life Lessons with Savanna, a KDP exclusive, shot out and up for a few weeks, but then dropped to nothing. On the science fiction side, Returnee (also a KDP exclusive) began with slow sales but has consistently built and grown, now accounting for all my sales and reading activity. Either way, someone out there is looking at them, and I’m basking in that.

More importantly and satisfying for me is completing the second book in the Lessons with Savanna series, the sequel to the previously mentioned Life Lessons with Savanna. This one is Road Lessons with Savanna. I finished writing it yesterday and completed the cover design last night, presenting me with double basking reasons. Some people are impressed that I took Road Lessons with Savanna from concepts to novel in less than four months (I began writing it on March 3rd, 2016, and finished on May 30, 2016), which is decent for 100,000 words. I attribute that to becoming more comfortable with my conceiving, writing, plotting and editing processes. I hope I’m right and that I’ll successfully duplicate that performance.

My third basking reason is perhaps more profound. While writing Road Lessons with Savanna and conceptualizing the next in the series, Personal Lessons with Savanna (and even writing two chapters), I discovered I grew more into my writing skin. That means I more easily put it on. Writing sessions are typically 90 to 120 minutes. I generally achieve 1,000 to 3,000 words in that period.

After basking today, I’ll update my Booklife profile and work on preparing Road Lessons for KDP processing and release. Road Lessons will also be a 90 day KDP exclusive. Returnee will come off the KDP exclusive list in June, and I’ll then take it to Smashwords to provide it with more publishing venues. I plan to keep Life Lessons with Savanna and Road Lessons with Savanna on the KDP exclusive list until I write and publish the third book in the series, Personal Lessons with Savanna. Personal Lessons will also spend 90 days in the KDP exclusive club. Then the three will expand to Smashwords.

Meanwhile, for June, I’m completing the final edit on a science fiction novel, Everything Not Known, targeting an early July release. It’s been edited several times but it’s a complicated, 200,000 word tome, so I want to go through it one…more…time.

So, yea! I’m basking. Now, I have my quad shot mocha. To work.

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