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Why Good Friends Make Bad Reviewers

November 30, 2009 by Susan Wenger, Designer "I had some friends read my book, and they thought it was good."

We've heard this refrain at Wheatmark many times, usually when the subject of copyediting comes up. Whether the author hasn't budgeted for an edit or simply believes it's unnecessary, his first line of defense is often the opinions of the friends and family members who have seen his manuscript.

When an editorial analysis comes back with suggestions for improvement, the reaction may include a dash of defensiveness. "I had some friends read my book, and THEY thought it was GOOD!"

Despite said praise, these unedited works generally aren't ready for prime time. Some contain a lot of spelling errors, some aren't organized clearly, some are difficult to follow, etc.

Whenever an author's friends have given a manuscript high marks despite what I would consider obvious problems, I've wondered why.

Maybe they didn't want to hurt the author's feelings.

But a recent experience gave me new insight into the friends-and-family bias. While visiting my parents for Thanksgiving, a close friend asked me to read the novel he'd started and tell him what I thought. My friend is a good writer, so I was happy to do it.

Sure enough, it was brilliant. The unique premise! The well-worded descriptions! The clever turns of phrase!

Then came the aha moment.

I wasn't evaluating his work in the same way I would if I picked it up in a bookstore.

Instead, my thought processes went something like, I couldn't write fiction in a million years. How does he come up with these ideas for his plot and his characters? It's like magic.

So I took a step back and forced myself to read the pages again. I pretended I was in a bookstore, scanning the content to see if it was worth my time and money, expecting a certain level of quality.

I still found the story highly entertaining. But I also realized it wasn't ready for print yet. After a great, hooky first sentence, many paragraphs of description and backstory followed. They were very well-written paragraphs—which is why I didn't notice a problem at first—but if I were skimming the first chapter in a bookstore, I'm not sure I'd have enough patience to wade through all the telling to get to the action.

The lesson? Even your most brutally honest friends and family members aren't the best people to screen your work. They may be too dazzled by the fact that you could write a book at all to notice its flaws.

Where, then, should you go for unbiased feedback? Here are a few ideas.

• Get a Wheatmark Editorial Analysis
  We always recommend the Wheatmark Editorial Analysis, which evaluates your manuscript in terms of mechanical issues (spelling, grammar, punctuation), organization, clarity, and style. However, you should be looking for critiques elsewhere as well.
  
  
• Take a writing class
  Are you new to the publishing biz? Try a writing class at your local community college. Your teacher will be willing to provide real constructive criticism. Even better, she will be able to articulate it more clearly than the average reader.
  
  
• Join a writing group
  The quality of feedback in writing groups may vary, but the potential rewards are great. In the right group, you'll get reactions from writers who want to help you improve. Just as importantly, you can learn a great deal by critiquing other people's work. When you discover what bores you, confuses you, or compels you to read further, you can apply this knowledge to your own writing.
  

Eventually you will get your book into print. At that point, your target audience will decide whether it's worth a read. If you've done your homework, sought out criticism from people outside your immediate circle, and eliminated the flaws based on that criticism, the rest of the world will be much more likely to judge it favorably.

Other People’s Websites: Market Your Book Using Article Sites

November 21, 2009 by Sam Henrie, President

We’ve all heard of the concept of using “other people’s money” to build your wealth. There’s a book marketing strategy, called article marketing, that employs a similar concept—using “other people’s websites” to build your book sales. Specifically: Write articles on topics related to your book and submit them for posting on websites that get heavy traffic from your target audience. At the end of each article, make sure your byline includes a link to a web page where the reader can get more information about you and your book. This way you can leverage the traffic that “other people’s websites” have to increase your book sales.

Here’s how to do it:

Write relevant articles
The articles you write should be of great interest to your target audience—that is, those people who would be most likely to buy your book.

Submit your articles to an article submission website
There are quite a number of sites these days that offer free content, especially articles, to webmasters, ezine editors, and bloggers. The five of the most popular are:

Ezine@rticles (http://www.ezinearticles.com)
Articles Base (http://www.articlesbase.com)
Goarticles (http://www.goarticles.com)
Article Alley (http://www.articlealley.com)
Article Dashboard (http://www.articledashboard.com)

Submit your articles to websites that your target audience frequents

If you don’t already have a list of sites that your target audience visits, then you’ll want to make one. Use a search engine like Google, and some choice keywords to track these sites down.

Create an article tagline that sells your book

On the Internet, a tagline is usually placed at the end of an article and is no more than five or six lines long.

Your tagline, sometimes called a byline, should, at minimum, contain essential information about you, along with the title and ISBN of your book.

If the website you are posting on allows it, then also include a live link directly to your web page.

Or, you can include a link to a web page at which the book can be ordered, whether it is your site or an online bookstore like Amazon.com.

Be Promiscuous

While the best place for your articles is on “other people’s websites,” you should also put your articles on your own website.

Post a message letting visitors to your website know if it is OK to reuse your articles on their websites.

Maybe Larry the Liquidator (Other People’s Money by Jerry Sterner, 1988) had it wrong, and there are actually four things in this life that offer unconditional acceptance: dogs, doughnuts, money, AND websites.

Book Marketing Without Even a Shoestring

November 20, 2009 by Sam Henrie, President

What can you do when your book marketing budget is $0?

Lots, it turns out.

In 2008 Nadine M. Rosin published The Healing Art of Pet Parenthood, a true story about the human-animal bond, healing cancer holistically, senior canine care, and an empowering new take on the grieving process when a beloved animal passes away.

Since its release, this Wheatmark-published book has sold hundreds of copies and its sales continue to grow—without the author having spent a single penny on marketing. Here are some of the most effective no-cost marketing strategies that Nadine used:

• She started following a targeted audience on Twitter—one that included pet parents, pet-sitting businesses, animal nonprofits, shelters and rescues, book lovers, cancer survivors, veterinarians, and the holistic community.
• She built relationships with these tweeters, which not only led to book sales, but also to numerous radio, podcast, and online interviews all over the U.S., England, and Australia. One natural pet food distributor she connected with on Twitter has copies of the book shipped to Nadine directly from Amazon.
• Whenever the pet of one of the distributor’s customers passes away, the distributor emails Nadine a printable FedEx shipping label so she can personally inscribe and send a copy to the customer at no expense to her.
• She created profiles on pet social media sites, including Dogster.com and Doggyspace.com.
• She commented, commented, and commented again on other people’s blogs and pet profiles. Engaging with people in this way, offering to help with pet, health, and grief issues related to her book and experience, has led to strong online relationships with readers, bloggers, and social media pros. This has resulted in even more interviews, sales, speaking engagements, and book signings; a fan base of reposters and retweeters; and valuable personal correspondence, support, and endorsement from such fellow tweeters as Guy Kawasaki (Apple & Alltop) and Yvonne DiVita (blogger for Purina and LipSticking).
• She wrote blog posts for other pet businesses’ blogs.
• She wrote blog posts about other pet businesses for her own blog.
• She volunteered to write magazine articles, always including her book’s purchasing information and URL in her signature/credentials.

Nadine is passionately committed to marketing her book, and no ingredient (not even a big budget) is more important than that!

How Long Does It Take to Publish a Book?

November 20, 2009 by Kat Gautreaux, Account Manager

In a world of instant access—movies, music, email, and even overnight shipping—the pace of publishing can often seem sluggish.

With print-on-demand technology rising in public awareness, more new authors are experiencing the excitement of seeing their manuscripts in print.

A quality book, however, isn’t built in a day, a week, or even a month.

Many of our authors just getting started aren’t aware of how much time it takes to make their book a professional one.

On the other hand, it’s still faster than traditional publishing by leaps and bounds.

Wheatmark account manager Lori Sellstrom recently spoke with Betty Jo Tucker, author of Susan Sarandon: A True Maverick and Confessions of a Movie Addict.

According to Betty Jo, in both cases, a traditional publisher initially requested that she write the books. However, this same publisher could not deliver the fast turnaround time she wanted.

“At my age, you just can’t wait around for the traditional publishing schedule,” said Tucker, a retired college dean. “I wanted to find a way to get my books out quickly so that the movies I was writing about would still be fresh in people’s minds. I started to look into how to do this faster and that’s when I found your wonderful company.”

So how long does it take exactly? That depends on each book, as different components of the publishing project affect the publishing timeline. Editing, for instance, will add another two to four weeks to the schedule. Editing is also an essential way to make your book even better, so it’s a worthwhile delay.

If you have a deadline in mind, make sure you discuss it with your account manager during your initial meeting. Although they can’t make your book happen overnight, they will help you set deadlines to reach goals that are within reason.

What’s It About: How to Write Enticing Back Cover Copy for Your Novel

November 03, 2009 by Susan Wenger, Designer You stand at the doorway of your favorite coffeehouse, scanning the area for your friend. Julie is tucked away at a corner table, reading a paperback. She doesn’t notice you until you take the seat across from her.

"Oh, sorry!" she says. "I've been completely engrossed in this novel. It's really good!"

"Cool. What's it about?" you ask.

"It starts out in Baltimore, when Lisel—that's the main character—is fourteen. Her parents pretty much ignore her because they're so focused on her older brother. The brother's name is Carl, and he's really smart. All he's ever wanted to do when he grows up is become a doctor. The parents are immigrants, and they've done okay given that their English isn't great, but they really want Carl to achieve the American dream.

"Okay ..."

"Lisel resents this a little, but it's the way it's always been, right? So she doesn't think about it much. But then the whole family takes a trip to Boston so Carl can do a college interview, and while they're driving there they get blindsided by an out-of-control driver. Carl ends up with permanent brain damage. He has to relearn how to tie his shoes."

You nod, grateful that Julie has gotten to the point. "So it's about how the family copes with this."

"Well, not exactly. The book skips ahead to when Lisel is in medical school. See, her parents transfer all their ambitions for Carl onto her, and she doesn't want to disappoint them. She gets into Harvard, and she meets this guy who seems perfect ..."

Your friend tells of Lisel's struggles to get through medical school, her painful breakup with the aforementioned guy after she discovers he's been cheating, and the challenges of building a practice. Your mind begins to wander as she describes, in intricate detail, Lisel's attempts at a love life.

"So she agrees to a blind date set up by her mom, and she totally doesn't want to go," says Julie. "But he actually turns out to be really cool, maybe someone she can trust. She tells him she used to like acting in high school, before the thing with her brother, and he convinces her to audition for this theater group really close to where she lives—"

"Okay, okay," you say, waving your hands desperately. "But what is the book ABOUT?"

"That's what I've been telling you for the last seven minutes." She blinks a few times, clearly mystified. "Hey, I've gotta use the restroom. Could you watch my stuff?"

As Julie cheerfully makes her way to the other side of the coffeehouse, you pick up the book, flip to the back cover, and read this:

Most of Lisel's childhood was spent in the shadow of her brilliant and ambitious older brother, Carl. When a car accident left Carl severely brain damaged at the age of seventeen, she quietly took on the dreams he would never fulfill in an attempt to ease her parents' grief. She went to medical school, graduated with honors, and now maintains a thriving practice.

But cracks appear in Lisel's seemingly perfect life. The only human beings she interacts with on a regular basis are her patients and the men she meets on disastrous Match.com dates. When she joins a community theater group, she finds that rekindling her interest in acting only magnifies her dissatisfaction with everything else.

Should the choices we make in high school determine the course of our entire life? Are parental approval and the trappings of success enough to sustain us? In turns heartbreaking and hilarious, A Hand-Me-Down Life is a deeply satisfying story about one woman's quest to find her own path.

Here's the million dollar question. Assuming this is the kind of book you might enjoy, which description is more likely to make you want to read it: the blurb on the back cover, or the blurb as Julie might have written it?


At Wheatmark, we've encountered many authors who are capable of penning interesting books, but become absolutely lost when it comes time to create the promotional copy for those books. Too close to their own work to know how to sell it, they often fall back on Julie's rambling monologue approach to plot summary.

If you've run into the same problem, take a few deep breaths and relax. We're here to help.

The key thing is to keep it simple. Pare it down. Don't tell the entire story in your blurb.

That's great, you say, but how do I know what to leave out?

Good question. There are actually many ways to summarize any given plot, and the one you choose should depend on who you think will read it.

For instance, the Hand-Me-Down Life blurb is geared toward readers who like stories about quarter-life or mid-life crises. If we wanted to hook people who are into family dramas, we could play up the pressure Lisel's parents put on her to fill her brother's shoes. If the overall tone of the book is light and humorous despite the serious subject matter, we might emphasize the romantic interests—neither of whom even get a mention in the current blurb.

Obviously, you shouldn't make your book out to be something it's not. You just need to focus on certain elements of what it is so you can present a coherent narrative.

Still don't know which plot points to highlight? Try writing different versions of the blurb. Put the samples up on your blog (if you don't have one, you should) and show them to friends. Which version makes people want to flip open to the first page?

If you've done your job, then readers will want to know the whole story. And to find out, they'll read the whole story!