Please welcome the new cover to book two in the Carolina Slade Mystery Series. This is the brand-new design for Tidewater Murder. The story takes place in Beaufort and St Helena Island, South Carolina. Yep, lots of water in this book – marsh, beach, and even deep water. That’s all I’m saying for the moment. The book is due out in April, and I cannot wait!

I’m so glad I did not have the responsibility of this cover on my back. For those who don’t know, The Carolina Slade Series is a traditionally published series through Bell Bridge Books out of Memphis, TN. I love my publisher. They decide on the cover. They might ask my feedback on color or if something in the picture isn’t accurate, but for the most part, I get little say.

When you self-publish, you have all the say-so in the world in terms of the cover. That’s a good AND a bad situation to me. I’m not sure my artistic eye is all that sophisticated. Authors assume they know best what to place on a cover. I’m glad the choice isn’t totally mine to make.

The design clearly shows the beginnings of a brand. I love the format. Originally the stripe containing my name on this cover’s proofs was green. I felt it too close to the Lowcountry Bribe cover, and when sitting on a bookshelf, the spines looked almost identical instead of as two separate books in the series. I know…who looks at a spine anymore. Well, I just didn’t want to risk it, you know?

Also, I wanted a shrimp boat, but the publisher wanted a lighthouse. Down here in my neck of the woods, lighthouses mean North Carolina, and if you are from either state, you know that you do NOT confuse the two. The first lighthouse was striped, like a few NC lighthouses. The publisher listened to me, researched the fact there were 22 lighthouses in SC to determine it was safe to put a lighthouse on the cover, then researched THE lighthouse mentioned in the book to be accurate. The lighthouse then lost its stripes and became solid white.

It’s amazing what goes into a cover. I’m humbled at what an artist does. And I’m grateful that I have a publisher that takes charge but with empathy with a writer’s concern.  Good balance.

(I’ll keep you updated on Tidewater Murder’s release!)

A friend just called from Edisto Beach, my second home, and marveled at the reviews of Lowcountry Bribe. She noted  one in particular from a Simon & Schuster author, and read it to her college-aged daughter who happened to be visiting.  “Ooh, tell her to buy that beach house for sale and move down here,” said the daughter, with visions of my millions in the bank.

I told my friend what I made per book, and that my agent received a portion of that tiny amount and she went silent. “Ewww,” my friend said. “That’s not fair. You do all the work.”

JA Konrath posted one his best pieces ever on the exploitation of writers. He explains SO well about how writers have always been exploited, comparing them to railroad labor in the 1800s. Comparing them to the horse Bower in Animal Farm by George Orwell. . . a poor animal that supported the evil pigs to the day he was sold for slaughter. Ignorant and blindly loyal.

I agree with him. I believe Apple and the five publishers in cahoots with Apple, conspired to capture the market against Amazon. Yes, that’s illegal, and that’s why the Department of Justice has filed suit against them. (Read more about the details of the suit at Nathan Bransford’s blog.) There are better ways to deal with the huge shift in publishing these days. They are fighting to keep things closer to the old ways instead of embracing the new.

Amazon cares about readers. Authors should care about their readers. Apple and the Five cared more about profits. I understand one has to run a business, but one has to also move with progress. Amazon is staying ahead of the pack, obviously, or the others wouldn’t have felt the need to collude and impede Amazon’s progress. They eventually broke the law. People, there are better ways to fix this broken industry than this.

But back to what’s important . . . the readers. Yes, it should always come full circle back to the readers. Like any business, you should be customer-driven.

Readers want to be empathetic toward authors, admire them, and feel akin to them in some capacity. If you stick to your writing, always writing, making it clear that you’d do it no matter what, your readers support you even more. When readers see that you’d write if they paid you in peanut shells or M&Ms, they marvel. You’re doing this for them. Of course, you’re also doing it for yourself, because you are compelled to write your stories. It’s in your DNA. But being so martyred as to endure the shenanigans of the publishers in all their craziness, can only help you in the eyes of your readers . . . just as long as you can afford to pay the power bill to keep your computer going.

NOTE: This blog post is also at Edin Road Radio where Hope presents tonight at 6:30 PM Eastern Time. Tune in and listen!

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Lowcountry Bribe, the first in The Carolina Slade Mystery Series, portrays a smart yet low-key protagonist who’s satisfied being a government bureaucrat, making loans and grants to the rural residents of South Carolina. When one of her clients, a good-old-boy bubba hog farmer, offers her a bribe, her world explodes with adversity. Her husband, her office, her children, everything and everybody seem against her or threatened until she has no choice but to become a different person and fight back.

When you compose words and scenes, you don’t foresee how readers will accept them. Writing a regional novel, I had my doubts whether folks in the Pacific Northwest, New England, or the Midwestern Corn Belt would find it interesting. The dialect, slang, and witticisms held deep South connotations, and humor is difficult to spin on a universal scale. What I saw as beautiful scenery along the marshes of my home state might seem icky to someone from the city. And unless someone grew up on a farm, would hogs add anything to a plot? My concern was underlined by New York agents who voiced skepticism about the culture and didn’t “get it.”

I drove myself crazy, wondering how to rewrite a tale that everyone would appreciate. Some colloquial verbiage was cut when my international online critique group didn’t understand, like “happy as a dead pig in the sunshine.” I wrote and rewrote and rewrote again, striving for a balance between a colorful Southern lingo and a language everybody understood.

However, after 72 queries, a California agent who raised horses grasped the visual of the writing and the uniqueness of the story. Thanks to her, a Memphis publisher, Bell Bridge Books, read the manuscript and loved the sass and setting, understanding all my Southernisms.

A writer cannot write for all readers. The best of the bestsellers are not beloved by all, regardless of their talent. And those that try to compose for all sorts of interests will fail. So I stuck to what I knew, the environment I grew up with, using the background I loved so well, telling myself I might have to settle for regional acceptance.

To my amazement, the reviews on Amazon show that readers interpreted the story in many different ways.

Some saw it as a mystery interlaced with humor and wit. “…a fiery and fiesty Southern Belle with a wickedly dry sense of humor and an endless supply of priceless (and quite quotable) one-liners.” While others saw the protagonist as, “a tough mother, bitchy boss and remorseful, reluctant wife.”

One labeled it as a suspense thriller. “Lowcountry Bribe is as good a suspense thriller with a strong female protagonist as I have read, and that includes the likes of Patricia Cornwell, Janet Evanovich, J.D. Robb, or Jan Burke. Slade can, and does, run with the best of them. This is a spine tingling thriller with a twist that will take your breath away…” While another considered it, “Part southern fiction, part hard-boiled mystery and part romance, and well worth my time.”

I teared up over and over as each of the 67 reviews poured in. These readers “got it,” but each in his or her own way. One even saw it as a testament for abused women, because of what Carolina Slade overcomes in her journey. Each reader saw what they loved in a good story, and thanked me for writing this mystery for them, painting a protagonist they would like.

That’s when it hit me.

When I finally decided to write a story that came from my core, sculpting the characters, dialogue, setting, and plot from my foundation, using the prime of my talents, I not only wrote my best, but I wrote what’s best for every possible person out there.

It doesn’t matter if a town in some state, or a section of the country, or a demographic strata somewhere doesn’t “get it.”

When we splinter our skill in an effort to please all, we dilute it. When we concentrate on using the individuality of our skills to their utmost, pumping our guts into a project, we give it power. And that is the ultimate legacy any writer, any creative spirit, can give the world.

I was reading a blog post about publishing options and marveled at how terms morph and paradigms shift over such a very short time. Not two years ago, we fussed over traditional publishing, vanity publishing, and self-publishing. Many whined about SO many choices, worried how to select the “right” one. Well, hold onto your hat. Now you can choose traditional, vanity, self-published, Indie published (why the capitalization??), and hybrid.

If you’re an author trying to decide how to publish, you’re allowed to throw that hat on the ground and stomp on it. I know. It’s frustrating. I’ve self-published and traditionally published, and years and years ago, I once vanity published (trying to forget that experience).

No one way is right for all, but you have definite issues to consider with each one. You just have to weigh the good, the bad, and what fits in your life, your marketing plan, and your pocketbook.

Traditional

• Pays royalties based upon sales
• You pay nothing
• Highly vetted
• What you generally see on bookstore shelves
• The publisher is responsible for formatting, cover, editing, distribution
• You sign away an agreed upon number of rights
• Found at Amazon and B&N and in Indie bookstores.
• ISBN belongs to traditional press

Self-publishing / Indie publishing

•  You pay everything
• You own all rights
• You receive all money
• You are the publisher, responsible for formatting, cover, editing, distribution
• You are the distributor
• Some difficulty placing books in brick and mortar stores
• Found at Amazon and B&N online and e-book venues like Smashwords
• Common method used for e-book sales
• Indie means an author creates the image of an imprint or “publishing house” for his/her books
• ISBN belongs to you/your imprint

Hybrid Presses

• You pay part of the cost
• You negotiate the rights, but are usually able to keep more, if not all, rights
• You receive royalties, usually at a higher rate than traditional
• You choose the degree of editing, formatting, cover, and pay for the service
• Your investment determines the print run, just like self-publishing
• Sometimes material is vetted, depending on the entity
• ISBN belongs to hybrid press, but might be negotiated.

Vanity-Subsidy Presses

• You pay everything
• You own all rights
• You receive royalties at a much higher rate than traditional
• You agree to formatting, cover, editing, distribution, marketing in the price
• Agreements may be made to restrict rights of author and increase rights of press to harbor the book in its catalog
• Minimal vetting; some do not vet at all
• ISBN belongs to press

Somebody may take issue with bits and pieces of each of these, and in real life, there are exceptions within these categories as well as some entities that may feel they don’t fall into any of the above (like Publish America). If you are new, just notice the terms and read the general descriptions. It’s tempting to jump into publishing, but you don’t want to spend months and years on a story to ruin its appearance to the world. Choose wisely, and only after doing your research. It’s well worth the time and investment of your full-attention to know what you are getting into . . . and what you are choosing not to.
 

How would you reply if asked this question? Indignant? After all, everybody has to start somewhere, plus you’ve been writing various pieces for years.

Everybody has to write the first manuscript. But few of them need to publish that first manuscript.

If you went to the doctor, needing an operation, you might ask, “Have you done this sort of operation before?” What if the reply is, “No, but I’ve been studying how to do it.” You’d move on to another doctor, because no matter how long he’s read the books and tested on cadavers, he hasn’t proven himself.

To an agent or publisher, saying this is your first book is like saying, “I don’t know what I’m doing yet, but trust me, it’s going to be a great book!” Rachelle Gardner, an agent with Books & Such Literary Agency, recently penned a great post about this subject: “4 Reasons to Write Several Books — Before You’re Published.”

You need experience before you publish. So what is experience?

1. Completed manuscripts of other books.

Just the fact you’ve spent years (yes, as in many months) writing says something about your diligence. That doesn’t mean two or three first drafts. It means books you struggled with and might be willing for someone to read and consider in addition to the one you are pitching. Trying to query about the fourth book you’ve written versus the first, tells a professional that you’re fighting in this business until you get it right. That’s enough thought to give someone pause that you might be worth considering.

2. A writing reputation elsewhere.

Published twenty magazine articles? Published numerous columns for your newspaper? Taught creative writing? Written for nonprofits or corporations for a reputation period of time? Received an MFA? Published nonfiction or commercial material and now dabbling in fiction? Show something. Have nothing? Then you know what you need to do.

3. Contest wins.

A zillion contests exist for unpublished writers. Frankly, most contests do not require experience or publishing credits. However, place in several contests, and you gain credibility as well as put your name in the view of important people in the business.

I want experienced people teaching my children, removing my gall bladder, or selling my house, just like agents and publishers want experienced writers. No, you might not have published a book, but show you are fanatically serious about this business by giving them something, anything, to show you are experienced in one way or another.

This particular publisher caught me eye this week. They say they are closed to everyone except certain people with certain situations. I expected them to say they’d only publish currently published authors or those they’ve published in the past, but their list is bigger than that. Then I noticed a trend. See if you see it.

DOG HORN PUBLISHING

http://www.doghornpublishing.com/submissions_exceptions.html

Dog Horn Publishing is dedicated to publishing the best in cutting edge literature. We publish bold voices and writing that takes risks. We are less concerned by genre than we are by defying convention, taking readers someplace new, and challenging the limits of what writing is and does.

 We are currently closed to unsolicited submissions. This is largely due to the fact we can only publish a few books each year and have a staff of three. This is also partly due to the fact that many writers who submit do not seem to understand what it is we’re looking for and have not looked at our existing catalogue. With that in mind, we want to make it easier for those writers who are appropriate to reach us, and easier for us to handle the number of submissions.

We consider solicited submissions to be those from existing Dog Horn Publishing or Polluto writers, Dog Horn Masterclass students and graduates, writers recommended by our authors and peers, writers represented by an agent, writers with publishers whose work has links to our own (i.e., they publish similar genres or similar authors), and writers who are members of a professional organisation (e.g., SFWA, HWA, BFS, BSFA, etc). Until further notice, we will also consider submissions from subscribers to our newsletter and/or Polluto as solicited, for the simple reason that our subscribers should at least have a good idea of what kinds of things we publish.

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How brilliant! The writer who skims these guidelines will read the line I underlined and stop. That’s what the publisher wants. A serious writer will read the guidelines further to the end, to understand the publisher in case it’s a good fit and the writer might want to come back later. But this publisher, in order to curtail submissions and workload, lead with the negative to see who keeps reading. In the end, if you are a serious writer, you’ll fit into one of the categories for consideration, but only if you respect the publication.

Lesson: Don’t be flip about submissions. Don’t waste a publisher’s time. It isn’t a matter of how many publishers you can shotgun submit to, in hopes that you hit one that answers. This publisher, like all publishers, want you to know who they are, know what they publish, and make an intelligent decision to pitch accordingly. Of course, the query letter would clearly show how much the writer has in common with the publishing house.

Take publishers seriously. Send them a letter as if you are applying for a job that means the world to you. Because if a publisher takes you on, it’s usually in hope that you are a long-term, hard-working writer with a voice that will represent the publisher well. It isn’t just about you publishing or the publisher making a buck. It’s about the publisher looking good, too. You are a good-will ambassador for any publisher that signs you on, and the editors reviewing your query letter needs to see that potential shining through. The above guidelines are doable . . . you just have to possess enough fire in your belly to fit the requirements.

I’m gaining new respect for what goes into a book’s creation with a traditional press. This week it’s been all about the cover and the title. The publisher has allowed me input, but the ratio is two editors to one author, so sometimes I lose. But the thought process is still cool.

I won’t tell you my original title because I don’t want it to stick in your head. It was two-words and to the point. I adore to-the-point. It makes my day. And the title fit in a theme with the other two books nipping at this one’s heels. So now we have to change all of them. That’s okay. I’m good with that. They were very accommodating with my preferences in the story. I’m still scared to say the title quite yet, though. They haven’t given me the nod.

But we emailed back and forth in a three-way conversation for three days. Probably 20 emails. We looked at the crimes in the book, the location, the characters, the lifestyle of the region. Finally we narrowed it down to locale being the carrying theme. Then we couldn’t agree on which location in the book. I lost on that one, but the final choice was doable.

The fun part was filling out a Q&A for whoever creates the cover. I described the protagonist. I rated the story on light/dark, mood, pace, emotion. I had to name five items from the book that could represent the story. That was friggin’ hard to do and not look like a cliche. I even was asked if my book were a color, which one would it be. (I chose Rust.) Then I had to find covers and images from Dreamstime.com to give them ideas on how I invision the story.

If I ever self-publish a book, I’ve learned I’ll never use a template. Not after seeing the thought that’s going into this cover.

If you choose to self-pub, however, make yourself slow down and brainstorm with someone who respects you and your story. Do not stand alone in all these decisions of title, cover, font, and so on. Get feedback. Let someone validate your selections, or dash your choices. You need that.

My writing group isn’t happy that the book’s name has changed. After all, they’ve heard it by another name for years. But I’m not the one investing the money into the book. I’m not the one with a neck on the chopping block, with a serious need for this book to make a return on investment. I think we forget that when we get sassy about publishers. They spend thousands of dollars and we sit back and cry like divas, in many cases, because the title and cover aren’t what we envisioned. Or they made us change the protagonist’s choice of boyfriend or alter who kills the bad guy. I, for one, am willing to listen. They’ve made way more money at this than I have, and the least I can do is give their expertise a chance to pitch itself to me.

Now I’m anxious for them to start book two. It’s beginning to get fun and wild, people. Just realized this post really doesn’t have a lesson and maybe not a fluid theme, but hey, thought you guys would appreciate the update. Hope it made sense.

www.fundsforwriters.com

Live and let live. Lately those words have fallen out of my mouth more than I’d like to hear. We’ve become a nation and a world of adversarial opinions, and it does more harm than good, in my measly little humble opinion. For some reason we think we have to present our side to the world as if it was the only viewpoint that matters, and as writers, we need to stop and think about that.

We often write with a slant. After all, we query editors with ideas intended to match the readership of a publication. Left wing, right wing, Protestant, Catholic, wild game eaters, vegans, home-schooling, public school – we are supposed to be able to move with the subject, telling the story that needs telling. Or more so, telling the story that an editor wants to buy. We are spin masters!

However, when it comes to our profession, we tend to don blinders, dig in heels, and tout missives about “the best way” to do many tasks. For people being so open minded when writing articles and posts, we sure can be stubborn when it comes to topics like:

-self-publishing
-libraries loaning e-books
-Amazon’s payment policy
-selective agents and subsequent rejections
-Big Six publishers versus small presses
-commas
-level of social media participation
-and so on

As someone once against self-publishing, I’ve learned to accept its place in the industry. I’ll use whatever comma rule an editor wants me to use. I’ve chosen a small press for my fiction, but do not profess it’s the best and only decision that makes sense. I blog, but don’t expect every writer to own a five-post-per-week blog.

As the member of several listservs, where writers list their stands on many subjects in the industry, I easily tire of those touting one road to anything. I’m not far from removing my name off most of them. As fallible, less-than-perfect human beings, how dare we profess one method to our madness? As creative creatures, we are diverse by nature, a freedom we should embrace.

Live and let live. Each author can pick a route and make it work for him in terms of writing, promotion, agents, and publishing. And we need to accept the choices of that author. We don’t have to buy his book or comment on his blog, but we don’t have to bash his chosen direction.

Because we have a voice . . . because we have the Internet . . . doesn’t mean we have to use either like a megaphone, flaunting our decisions and belittling others. To each his own – live and let live. As the clamor settles down, you might learn another way to be better at what you do.