About Me

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I am a self published author from Brooklyn, New York. I have been publishing my work since 2004 and currently have four titles on the market in print and ebook format. I write horror and fantasy fiction as well as books for young adult. I am also a playwright with stage productions in and around New York City. Visit my website at www.hobbcatpublishing.com

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

PART ONE: PUTTING YOUR BOOK TOGETHER

Like any business, it costs money to be a self publisher. Regardless to the fact that we are in the age of Kindle, Nook, E-Reading where uploading a book for you to these services are free, you still need money to self publish. Book covers are still needed, editing services are a must and you will need to purchase sample copies of your books to make sure everything is done right. If you plan to print books, either traditional printing or print on demand, you need to buy copies of your books to sell. You should research how much it will cost to do all of this. If you choose to skimp on quality, you will get what you pay for. Here are some essential steps.

Drafts: Before anything you will end up writing several drafts of your book. Take your time. A book does not need to be rushed. Since we are talking self publishing here and you are not on a publisher’s deadline, you have time to get things together. When you are done with your draft, re-read it and make corrections. Look for as many mistakes that you can find. Give it to someone else to read and let a fresh set of eyes look for mistakes. Do this and make as many rewrites as you can before you send it to an editor. The fewer mistakes you have in the manuscript, the easier you make it for the editor to concentrate on editing the structure of the story.

Editing takes place after writing the final draft of your book. You need to find someone to do a good copy edit which means they will not only work on grammar and spelling but story structure as well. A really good editor will give you some great tips on how to make you work stronger and more appealing to your readers.

Do your homework and make sure you get a reputable editor. Although we live in a time where going online to look for our needs in the norm, you will want to do more than surf the web for an editor. Talk with other writers who have success with them. Get recommendations. Do not just trust testimonials on editor websites, be proactive and try and reach out to the clients they serviced. There are some good editors out there but there are a lot of shams out there as well.

Editors are not cheap. The most disheartening thing for a writer is to pay a lot of money for a service and it turns out to be terribly done. I fell victim to this. I had two books that I paid a lot of money to be edited by professional editors I found online. Six months after they were on the market, readers and former editors informed me that my books were filled with mistakes. Keep in mind that even top selling authors books from major publishing houses sometimes have mistakes in them. But there were so many mistakes in mine that the books had to be recalled. I had to suspend working on new work and spend months fixing them.

When that editor is done, you give it to someone else to proof read and make corrections. Then you get a proof reader to proofread that. Regardless to the fact that I proofread it before giving the final payment, I missed things. If you are a writer and do not have editing experience or know what to look for, you will not pick up on these; as is my case. I am not a former English teacher or editor and I can find the basic errors. But a really good editor will find the mistakes. But even they miss things so it’s always better to get another set of knowledgeable eyes to look over your work. I will have another blog just on this situation coming soon.

Copyright your work and make sure you copyright your work through Washington DC copyright office. Although you are considered the sole owner of a piece the second you put pen to paper, for legal reasons, you want to be on file with them. www.copyright.gov There are several different stories out there about poor man’s copyright, the most notable is mailing the documents to yourself and not opening it. Whether this is a myth or not, you don’t want to leave anything to chance. The fee to copyright is a small price to pay to ensure ownership. It will take a few weeks to get the official; document back for your work but you can continue to move forward on the rest of your duties.

Book Covers are very important and would be the next thing you want to do. Prices on these will vary and depending on the quality of what you want, can be worth the price. You will often hear people say go to a book store and look at the books and see how your genre covers are done. I will add one more to that; go and look at movie posters too. Ever notice that after a book becomes a movie, that movie poster will appear as the new cover? Movie posters can provide further in inspiration for your covers. Can you do a book cover yourself? Sure, if you have a friend who does great work who can do it for little or nothing. If you are an artist yourself and can do it, by all means take that route. But remember the cover catches the eye like a movie poster. Poor or very generic looking covers will shun potential readers. No matter how well the story is inside, the cover is important. When I published my first book, A Gamble of Faith, I used the cover art from the playbill of the stage play. It was a very wonderful drawing and I thought that it would go over well with readers. I took the book to a writer’s conference and a book reviewer took one look at it and said “You need to get rid of that cover.” I asked why and he told me that because it was a drawing, it looked more like a book for teens than a book for my target audience which was adults. He told me that it looked childish (this was not a knock against the artist in anyway) and that no adult would buy it. I did explain that I kept it because people were familiar with the art and he said “That’s understandable if you were just selling the book at the play, but this is the book business. No one will buy it.” I took his advice and found a professional book cover artist to do a fresh cover based on the story.

The professional book cover artist took time to create something that matched the book. He talked with me and ran off ideas. With the new cover, I did see a change in sales. More people came to my table at the book fairs to get a closer look than they did before.

Book Layout will be the next thing you have to do. That’s the inside of the book. Font size, spacing, page numbering all have to be clean and straight. Next to editing, this too needs to be proof read so that you don’t send a book to print with. When you are done with your manuscript, apply for an LCCN number from the Library of Congress. You can file for one at www.pcn.loc.gov . The number is free and takes a few days to get. Once you have the number place it on the interior of the book where you put your copyright and ISBN number. You will have to send them a copy of the book for their records. I will address those in a minute.

So once you have done these things, it means you’re ready to print and sell right? Not just yet. Remember, it’s a business. You have a few more things to do that will add to your costs.

IS SELF PUBLISHING RIGHT FOR YOU? INTRODUCTION

I am often asked by writers if it’s a good idea to just go ahead and self publish their own material. Rather than try and get a publishing house to publish their work. The answer to that all depends on whether or not you are willing to do the kind of leg work to be a self published author. I can only speak from my experience as to the choice a person should make. I will share that with you now. First you have to understand what self publishing means. Self Publishing is publishing. Publishing is a business. So when you hear someone say I’m a self published author it means they are in the publishing business for themselves. They are not doing books for multiple authors, just their own work. So essentially they are doing everything a traditional publisher would do and more.

As a self-published author your work doesn’t end when you have finished the manuscript. It’s actually beginning. You will be putting the entire book together, from cover to cover. Overseeing every detail for your book. It’s going to take up a lot of time. So you need to educate yourself on the things that you will need before you put the book to bed. It requires time, money, patience and perseverance. Once you decide to publish the book on your own, you now have stepped into a world that requires your full attention. It’s not an undertaking you go into lightly.
If you have no desire, beyond just writing, to do the leg work it will take to get your books out there, stick with sending your manuscript out to publishing houses and/or agents.

But if you want to go forward with it, allow me to help you get on your way with some pointers and lessons I learned along the way. Let’s start from the beginning.


When I decided to self publish in 2004, I had no idea what I was in for.

My first novel A Gamble of Faith was based on a play I wrote. I took the advice of a former classmate of mine to publish through IUniverse. At the time, IUniverse was the way everyone who self published was going.

Several things attracted me to them. They touted that you are the self published author. You retain all the rights to your work. They took care of it all, the cover, layout, printing and a direct link to Barnes and Nobles after your book was printed. You also got print on demand which also meant that I would only have to print the amount I needed, not 1000 copies up front like you would have to with a regular printer. What aspiring writer wouldn’t pass up a deal to be on Barnes and Nobles? I would be selling thousands in no time. So I went with them, got the book done, sent a blast out to friends and family and waited. I was under the assumption that all I had to do is get the book to print, get the word out and I was on my way.

Boy was I wrong. I saw barely saw any money come in other than the copies I sold at the plays performances I was still doing. What went wrong?
I had published a book with no plan. No idea of who to sell to, where to sell, no marketing concepts (other than selling at plays) and pretty much not clue as to what to do. That was my first mistake, not having a plan.

A trip to a writer’s conference taught me a few other things I was completely unaware of. I would have to start all over again if I wanted to do it right. Just because the book is on the Barnes and Nobles list didn’t mean it was going to sell. I had to get out there and talk to bookstores, go to book fairs and make appearances to get the book known. I was in business whether I knew it or not. The business of selling a book and myself.

Thursday, December 01, 2011

Putting Pen to Paper: Getting Started on the Path to Writing

I am at a signing or convention. Someone will walk up to me, tell me they have a story they have always wanted to write. It’s a really good story they feel will make a good book. The only problem is that they have no idea how to go about writing it. They tell me their issues with writing and want to know how I am able to sit and write an entire novel. Here are some of the things I am told and how I respond.

“I just don’t have the discipline to sit and write.”- Okay, you want to write a book. You have the story in your head but you don’t have the discipline to sit down and spend a few hours a day to write. Well here is the bottom line, if you don’t have discipline, you can’t be a novelist. You can disagree with me all you want but this goes for anything you pursue in life. You have to have discipline to be a writer. The book is not going to write itself because you will it to do so.
First and foremost, writing is not only work, its hard work. I cannot stress this enough. Authors enjoy writing but the process takes awhile. When you pick up a book from the bookstore and take it home, does it ever cross your mind how much time and effort is put into a novel? Every single word on the page was thought out by the author then edited many times before reaching your hands. Authors spend many hours in front of their computers and/or notebooks fleshing out stories. It takes time and patience to do this, especially in a series.

I often hear people ask “Why does it take so long for my favorite writer to put the next part of the series out? All he/she has to do is write. It shouldn’t take that long.” News flash, just like you go to work from 9 to 5 and labor, so do writers. Yes, writing maybe the only thing we do for a living (if many of us are lucky to do that) but it is still work. Some stories require months of research. Others take longer because of a pace the writer maybe working at. Sometimes, a writer may have more than one series they are working on and tend to work on what is speaking to them at the time.

“But I just can’t sit in silence and write.” - Who says you have to sit in silence? Every writer is unique in their own way. Some writers can sit in silence for hours and work. Others listen to music that inspires their work. I like to work in a place where there are distractions (i.e. work, bar, television playing). It keeps my brain active and distractions force me to focus on my story. You have to find what works for you. Once you do, you can find your rhythm


“Do I need to write an outline before I can start writing a novel?” – There is only one time I don’t write an outline and that’s when I am doing a short story. An outline is very important and necessary when writing a novel. You might have an idea for a great story but you’re going have to break it down into chapters. By outlining each chapter beforehand it helps you make the story flow better. This also gives you the chance to design the characters better by working out their back story and strengthening your plot.

Writers will tell you that a story has a nasty habit of going where it wants to go, not where you tell it. So you may start out coming up with a story and heading down one path then all of a sudden something unplanned happens and you end up going in a different direction. By having an outline written and following that, you can determine just how far off course you can go. You might find yourself coming up with a completely better story than you first came up with.

“How many hours do I need to work on my novel?” – This goes back to discipline. You should devote how many hours you feel your work deserves. I personally devote about three hours in the evening to writing and leave Saturdays and Sundays up in the air. Even a writer needs to take a day off from the voices in their head.

Even if it’s not a major piece, I am always writing something in that time frame. Just to keep the creative juices flowing.
Come up with a time frame that works for you and use it. You can write in the morning, during your lunchtime, break the time up into different points of the day. But use that time to the fullest.

"Do you need to do research if you are writing a fiction novel?" - I do. It does help to make your story more believable if you have facts tied into it. Some writers like to put fictitious characters in real world settings. A good example of that is historical fiction. John “Jack” Aubrey is one such character. The famous character from the Patrick O’Brian books (Master and Commander, Far Side of the World) commands ships on the high seas during the Napoleonic War. Though he never existed, most of his naval battles and adventures are drawn from actual Royal Navy history.

I spent five years reading about angels for my book The Dead Syndicate. Learning about their powers, their weapons, what they look like. It helped me to build a world around them that was believable.

With horror stories, I watched a lot of the Discovery Channel and followed up reading up of various animals and insect that became characters in my stories. In my book Anthorrorgy, the story called Vampsquito is based on some research I did on mosquitoes. Knowing the habits of mosquitoes and what makes them annoying to people helped make the story more realistic. That helped me to create the monster that terrorizes a town.

Even though its fiction, it still has to be believable to the reader.

“Should I go to school for writing or take a class?” – There is nothing wrong in furthering your education. Sometimes just taking a simple class can help you tighten your technique; build upon your story structure and how to create an effective plot. It all depends on what you feel you will need help with in order to make you a stronger writer. It’s not a requirement that you go to school to be a writer but every little bit does help.

“Can I just write my entire book by hand? Do I need to type it because I don’t know how to type?” – I know what you’re thinking and the answer is yes; someone actually has asked me about that. You can write the draft of a novel anyway you feel comfortable. But if you plan to print or even try and sell your manuscript, you better learn how to type. Even if you have to do it hunt and peck style, it has to be typed. No one will read it in a hand written form.
Your manuscript will go through a lot of drafts before its ready to be put out on the market in any form (publishing house or self-published) and it will be 100x’s easier to retype the work on a computer than hand writing the pages.

“I don’t have the patience to sit and write for hours.” – I put this statement last because I'm usually very blunt about answering it. It's not to be mean but I take writing very seriously. This statement is a tad bit different than the discipline one. Whereas you find it hard to sit and focus on what you have to do to write, this means you lose interest quickly and just stop doing it. There is nothing wrong with taking a break to recharge your batteries to keep going. But if being out with friends is more important or playing that video game is a must and seems better than sitting for how ever long you need to write, you’re not ready to be a writer. I tell people flat out you either do it or you don’t. Writing, whether a career or hobby, does require a level of devotion. If you can't give it the attention it needs, writing may not be for you.

Overall,if you have a passion for writing, sit and write. It's that simple. Writing is like any other venture in life. It requires time and focus. Give it that and the return will be great.

Next up I will talk about self-publishing and give tips on going down that road.

Do you have any questions about writing? Let me know how I can help.