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Does Pro Editing Pay Off? (… Help You Land a Publisher, Sell Tons of Books)

Posted by: Laurel | Comments (4)

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011

Is professional editing worth it? The answer depends on just one thing: Where, in your development as an author, you currently are.

If this is the first book you’ve ever written and you’re mostly self-taught, professional editing is most likely not the only step you need to take between banging out your manuscript and landing a publisher.

In fact, for a first-time author with no formal training, I wouldn’t recommend professional copyediting at all.

What’s Really Needed

Copyediting (not the same as developmental editing or book-doctoring) is one of the last steps before submission. And if the basic elements of fiction (or nonfiction) are only half-realized, or missing altogether, no amount of editing for errors of spelling, grammar, and syntax; no amount of querying the absence of meaningful transitions, the presence of redundancies, or violations of consistency will matter. An unrealized book manuscript with perfect spelling, grammar, and syntax is still a manuscript that’s not yet ready for publication.

What is needed — when that is the case — is practice: writing one book after another to learn the nuts and bolts of craft, as well as how to coax the magic of art onto the page.

Most successful authors produce between two and ten practice books before their “first” book is awarded a pub date. To snag the brass ring of publication, an author must first be a longtime student of the form.

But many otherwise sensible people don’t see the need. “I’m a fan of So-and-So,” they say. “I see how his fiction formula works. And I can do that, too – only a thousand times better.”

The Path to Publication

The thing is, books are far easier to read than they are to write. Even the most clichéd genre fiction requires a surprising amount of skill – skill that its author worked to acquire. Realizing this fact — that practice will get you where you want to go — is the ultimate encouragement. It means there’s a path to this place (though each path is individual, with its length, twists, and turns unique).

Time for a Manuscript Evaluation

Let’s say you’ve done a bunch of practice books, cultivated your skills for a number of years, and you’re solidly at the next stage of your development as an author — what then?

You might be ready to hand your manuscript over to a developmental editor for a written manuscript evaluation. An eval will tell you where you’ve succeeded and what you’re especially good at — as well as where you need to think things through a bit more and do some additional work.

With your evaluation in hand, you can nurture the less well-developed parts of your manuscript, learn new skills, restructure if needed, and rewrite — perhaps several times more.

After that, you may be ready for a developmental edit, if other issues remain; or, you may be ready for the final polish of copyediting. It all depends.

Copyediting Can’t Realize Your Book

Copyediting can’t take the place of practice — just as it can’t turn an undeveloped concept into a fully realized piece of fiction (or nonfiction). Authors really do have to write-rewrite-rewrite their way into a successful version of their books. But they can get professional help as they learn how.

Publishing & Selling Books

Still want to hear about getting published, and selling tons of books? Let’s look at each of these, in turn.

To get published, you not only need a well-written, well-edited book with a compelling concept (in a genre that’s selling well), you need a well-developed author platform.

Your author platform is the interactive “stage” you assemble with followers on Twitter, fans and friends on Facebook, subscribers to your own book blog, and connections on LinkedIn, as well as social networking sites designed for readers and authors. Your author platform is the entire world of online contacts who know you and are willing to support your books by “word of mouse.”

The bigger your platform (it should include media contacts, too – both on line and off), the more interested an agent or publisher will be in your book. That’s because thousands and thousands of connections are expected to yield thousands and thousands of sales: bigger platform, bigger sales.

But there is another way to seek publication. Since most major traditional publishers want authors with a major national platform — something first-timers don’t often possess — many authors with viable projects have turned to self-publishing to open the closed publication door.

The Sales Queen of eBook Fiction

As a case in point, there is a new novelist in her mid-twenties who’s had jaw-dropping success this past year with her self-published eBooks. It’s a story that’s brought cheer to aspiring authors everywhere.

Amanda Hocking built her author platform by writing one YA novel after another — for a total of twelve in several marketable categories (notice not only her dedication to practice, but her market-savvy choices), and then she inspired a cadre of book bloggers to blog-up nine of her eBooks. She also cultivated a following through her own blog, as well as on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, and other social networking sites.

The pay-off for all that work (completed while working a full-time job) was pretty spectacular. So far, she’s sold over 614,000 eBooks through online bookstores, netting several million dollars and becoming the top-selling eBook author (looks like that’s also worldwide).

What Amanda Hocking’s success story illustrates so well is the inseparableness of platform and sales. When she originally self-published one of her novels on Lulu.com, she sold exactly zero copies, as she hadn’t yet cultivated her platform for book promotion.

Quality’s Paramount

But don’t get the wrong idea. Platform (like copyediting) needs to be applied in the service of good work: the quality of your novel, memoir, or nonfiction book is paramount. Because it is, you really do need to take seriously your just-getting-started period of practice, study, and learning (which of course never really ends), whether undertaken alone, or with the guidance of a developmental editor or book coach.

The goal is to work toward the fullest development of your talent as an author — because that’s what will land a publisher, or make it worthwhile to self-publish. If your book is good and your platform solid, your work will sell well.

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BookMarket Chat

This post was written as a stepping-off point for the Book Market Chat (#BookMarket) scheduled for March 31 (from 4:00-5:00 PM, EST) on Twitter.com (or TweetChat.com). Since 140 characters are not nearly enough to convey the above thoughts on editing, publishing, and selling, a blog post seemed the best way around the limitations of tweeting.

Categories : Becoming an Author

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A Successful Writing Life That Began at Sixty

Posted by: Laurel | Comments (0)

Wednesday, November 24th, 2010

“Sometimes the big barriers in life,” writes award-winning author Carolyn Howard-Johnson, as she remembers her first attempt to get a writing job at Good Housekeeping Magazine in the early 1960s, “can’t be seen and acknowledged. Because we may not even know that those barriers are there.”

After a 1950s childhood in Utah, during which her mother advised her to “become a teacher, because you can be home the same hours as your children,” Howard-Johnson went to college, majored in English Literature, and dreamed of writing a novel like Gone with the Wind. But it wasn’t until she applied for work as a writer that the invisible barriers facing women became — not visible, exactly, but nearly tangible.

* * *

When I applied for a job as a writer for the Hearst Corporation in New York at age twenty, and was told to take the typing test, I politely pointed out that I wasn’t applying for a job in the typing pool.

“No typing test, no interview” was the immediate retort. So I took the test and was offered a job as a typist. Surprised, I somehow found the courage to insist upon the interview I’d been promised. Not that it made any difference. What I didn’t realize was that typing skills were only required of women — not men — seeking employment at a Hearst magazine.

Much later, I realized that this kind of institutionalized prejudice feeds on the ignorance of its victims. Sheep-like, they accept the status quo because they don’t understand what they’re really facing, and because no other options seem available.

Something similar was at work when I married and had children. I left my writing career (by then, I was a staff writer at The Salt Lake Tribune) with hardly a backward glance, since I was doing what was then expected of women — by nothing less than the entire culture.

As we all know, things are different, now. So much so, that if you’re younger than your mid-fifties, you probably can’t remember a time when women didn’t know they had choices. “You can’t be a nurse,” I remember my mother saying, while laying out my limitations, “because your ankles aren’t sturdy enough.” And of course I couldn’t be a doctor; that “wasn’t a woman’s profession.” But, she advised, “Learn to type. Every woman should be able to make a living if her husband dies.”

My young husband’s career took precedence, because that was how it was done. We had two children, carefully planned – also how it was done. But by the 1970s, we both wanted to spend time with our kids while being in command of our own lives, so we built a business. After that, we lived through floods and moves, enjoyed traveling. And, during all forty of those years, I didn’t write — even though the culture gradually changed in ways that impacted me and others like me. Women acquired the right to have choices. More importantly, we became aware that having choices was itself a kind of choice, an open door.

Finally, at sixty, I realized that the place in my life which my children used to fill was many times larger than the space they actually left behind. I knew I needed to write; the time had come. But after four hundred pages, I saw that something major was wrong. Writing a novel wasn’t as easy as writing news stories. There were certain skills I didn’t have. So I took classes at UCLA and attended writers’ conferences. I listened to teachers, revised, and listened again.

In time, my novel, This Is the Place, “fell into place” on the page. Much of it was my own story — the warp of it was real, while the woof was imagined as fiction. After my first book was published, I went on to write a series of nonfiction books for writers, and to teach at UCLA myself, but I know that the novel I was able to produce at sixty-something contains more well-lived insight than it would have had I succeeded in writing it at twenty.

So, in some sense, I managed to turn those invisible barriers — the cultural prejudice I faced as a young woman — to my advantage when I, at last, became a mature novelist.

* * *

Carolyn Howard-Johnson is the recipient of eight awards for her novel, This Is the Place, available on Amazon.com: http://tinyurl.com/26u22ru Her main website address is: http://www.HowToDoItFrugally.com Her blog address is: http://www.SharingWithWriters.Blogspot.com On Twitter, you can find her at: http://www.Twitter.com/FrugalBookPromo

Categories : Becoming an Author

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And the Lesson of the Susan Boyle Story Is . . . ?

Posted by: Laurel | Comments (4)

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

Not what you might think.

That is, not what you might think — if you are an author or will-be author.

You’ve most likely heard of Susan Boyle, the Scottish singer whose jaw-dropping performance has inspired adoration worldwide.

She appeared on Britain’s Got Talent, an English program similar to American Idol, the famous amateur talent venue, on April 11.

Since her televised audition, millions upon millions (120 million, so far) have watched Susan Boyle sing “I Dreamed a Dream” on the video-sharing site, YouTube. And many of those millions have watched her video again and again, and yet again.

. . . Watched the awkward first moments on stage . . . her unlikely physical appearance . . . the smirks and snickers from the audience . . . the smarmy questions from Simon Cowell, well-known as the verbally bruising judge on American Idol.

And then the moment comes when she sings. Her voice is beautiful and strong and hopeful. It is professionally trained and disarmingly real — sounding a bit like Julie Andrews, or Judy Garland.

In mere seconds, the audience is on its feet, clapping and cheering. Even Cowell’s face transforms, and the smile he wears as he gazes up at her, stage microphone in her hand, is sweetly beatific.

This is Susan Boyle’s miracle. She inspires “the better angels of our nature” in those first seconds when the contrast — between our expectations of her and what she actually delivers — cracks open our hearts like walnuts.

Her sweetness and soaring talent force us to find our own sweetness. We can’t help it, really. We go there willingly, overjoyed at her triumph.

All around the world, people have the same response — only too happy to clap, tear-up, and cheer. National differences dissolve. They mean nothing. For her audience has become humanity.

Of course, the sheer magnitude of our response to Susan Boyle is not because of our unbridled interest in a talent contest video.

It’s because Susan Boyle is completely . . . herself. The self who is immensely talented. And the self who contradicts all expectations about appropriate self-presentation for very public consumption.

Beautiful on the inside, she forces us to see our superficial standards as silly and empty. Honest and guileless, she forces us to see their opposites — qualities our celebrities so often express — as, again, silly and empty.

Not that we actually think these things.

Watching her performance, we absorb her meaning instantly. Beyond any capacity for thought, there’s something about Susan Boyle that we just “get.” Even the Simon Cowells among us do.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Now here’s the question. What is the lesson of the Susan Boyle story for authors?

There are, actually, many lessons, but they all begin with this. By embodying the dream that authors so often have — the dream of achieving a breakthrough triumph — she both raises and answers the question of how such an achievement is possible.

So here is how it’s possible. How she did it.

Susan Boyle has been singing since she was twelve years old. Her talent surfaced early, so she performed locally many times. In her thirties, she took weekly voice lessons for several years (acting lessons, as well), and, in between working and caring for her elderly mother, performed whenever she could.

From this part of her story, the lesson for authors might be that the cultivation of even a very obvious talent requires support — teachers, venues, and the encouraging applause of a community — in order to grow and develop, over time.

Then, there is the element of timing. Susan Boyle has said that she’s ready now, whereas she wasn’t before (there was one disastrous audition when she was so nervous she could barely sing). And since her mother passed away two years ago, at ninety-five, she no longer has her former primary-caretaker preoccupation.

For authors, the lesson is not that your life needs to be empty of responsibilities. Rather, that by giving yourself all the time and training you need to strengthen your talent and psyche — so you can accept public attention without wilting — you are respecting your own proper timing for the unfolding of your gift.

Still another aspect of Susan Boyle’s life was crucial for her success. She was deeply motivated by a desire to make her mother’s wish come true. They had watched Britain’s Got Talent on television together, and, Susan said, “She thought I’d win, if I entered.”

To posthumously please her mother, she did. And whether she wins the final round of BGT or not, she has won millions of fans, worldwide.

For authors, the lesson may be that the single most important reason for cultivating your talent, beyond your joy in expressing it, needs to be something larger than yourself. You need to have some vision for your work, a purpose beyond yourself — if not someone you love and want to please.

One last aspect of the Susan Boyle story stands out: Her strength of character. Apart from her gracious and forthright answers for reporters, her response to the unimaginable pressure of sudden global fame and adulation has been very instructive. It confirms what we see in her — that she is genuine, through and through.

Asked whether she’d consider a “makeover,” she has repeatedly said no, not right now. And though she has acknowledged that, in her own words, she “looks like a garage,” she has also said: “I look like Susan Boyle. What’s wrong with that?” Indeed.

For authors, the lesson might be that the positive estimation of the world is nothing — is, in fact, worse than nothing — without solid self-worth. Sometimes, authors think success will give them a pumped-up value, at least the outside kind. But it doesn’t work that way. The more you value yourself, the more likely it is that the world will, too.

Look at it this way: a person whose self-esteem rested solely upon the opinion of others would never have taken the stage as Susan Boyle.

And so, from this gifted woman’s story, we can discern six immediate lessons (though many others exist) that are helpful to authors.

Writing talent may be a gift, but it needs to be cultivated, expressed, and celebrated — a gift is also a responsibility.

Nurturing your talent through training strengthens and develops it, so it is ready to be shared.

The support of family and community is helpful, and maybe critical, to the unfolding of your talent — from its modest first emergence to its full flowering, over time.

The issue of timing when sharing your gift with the larger world may be individual and tricky, but it can determine the eventual outcome. Have respect for your own proper timing when deciding whether it is time to seek publication.

Your character — your emotional maturity — will determine how you handle success, whether badly, or well.

Finally, what you need as a gifted writer is an additional spark, a reason to succeed that is larger than yourself alone.

Susan Boyle’s spark seemed to come from her relationship with her mother. The unwavering belief of someone so important, someone she loved, inspired her to audition once more. And her mother was right.

Beliefs, like dreams, come true.

Categories : Becoming an Author