Cheryl Cowtan on Writing

Oh sorrow! Oh my! Oh me! I just discovered PitchMAS ten days too late. And I'm going to post about it, so you and I never miss it again. PitchMAS seems to be a query-fest that occurs between December 15th and 16th during which authors can submit a 35-word pitch through email to the twitter pitch geniuses. On December 19th, the top 75 pitches will be posted on this blog   http://pitchmas.blogspot.ca/  and agents and publishers will weed through and make comments or request manuscript pages. On December 20th, everyone and anyone can tweet their 140 character pitches with the hashtag #PitchMAS. The line-up of  ready and willing publishers and agents just waiting to find that perfect twitter pitch is pretty impressive, not to mention all of the authors and other industry folk following for fun. (Check out the list here  http://pitchmas.blogspot.ca/2013/11/epic-announcement-pitchmas-2013.html ). So, it's over. How can it help us now? Easy. Read through the list...

Janet Reid, Literary Agent: World building : I'm seeing a lot of queries for historical novels that clock in around 70K. My first thought on seeing that word count is "there&#3...

I wasn't going to go with an agent for my novel and here are the reasons why: Agents generally take 15%  Publishers list their submission guidelines on their web pages, and I can follow those Query letter example s abound, and I can apply those Lawyers share free publishing contracts with do and don't list s, and I can read those Kindle offers online publishing , and I can learn from their format suggestions DuoTrope and Submission Grinder offer access to calls for submissions, and I can track mine I have three family members who are active in the book industry, and I can ask them And I did all that. And I submitted my novel, "The Precious Quest" to three of the biggest fantasy publishers who accept submissions from authors.  A year and a half later, and three rejections later, I have run out of big publishers who accept high fantasy and who accept from unagented authors. Still confident, I felt I could get my 90,000 word, high fantasy that took ...

As authors, we do all we can to promote ourselves online. You've heard the list: tweet, blog, post, publish, advertise, trailerize, subsidize... whatever. It's all true, but you could spend hours and days and weeks and years without really nailing serious traffic and gaining exposure. So how do you make sure your efforts are gaining a balanced and appropriate outcome, when compared to all the hours you've put in? Get graded on your marketing efforts at  http://marketing.grader.com . Type in your Web address and you'll be off and running as the application checks: programming keywords and tags positioning links linking to your site ability to follow easily (twitter, facebook, etc) saturation of key search words mobile marketing and more Test yourself, then follow the instructions for improvement and retest. Watch your score go up.

I'm not going to use fear language in this post because I don't think informed writers should be afraid. An ePublishing contract should address: The platform (print, or ebook or DVD) The term (how long) The compensation (how much) The scope (territory/area) When viewing an ePublishing contract (a contract between you (the author) and a publisher who will put your work online in ebook format), you need to consider a few rights. When signing away rights, you are agreeing to give the ePublisher certain access and ownership to your material. In a contract,  you "represent and warrant" (own) all rights to your original material. But you don't own all rights to third party material (quotes, images from third parties). These rights have to be examined before signing certain rights away to the ePublisher. An "out of print reversion of rights to the author" clause must be revised for an electronic book, which will never go out of print. Make sure the...

When a bookstore can't sell copies of your novel, the books get sent back to the publisher, who marks them with a dash, slash or smash and then off they go to a remainder bookstore like BookCloseOuts.com . Gloria Ferris signing  Cheat the Hangman As the author, you'll never see a penny from the remainder sales. However, if you offer to sign all copies at a bookstore, they will think you're wonderful, and your books may never be sent to remainder heaven, because publishers usually don't take signed books. Dianne J. Ferris signing The Purple Doll

If you're a writer without an agent, you're probably spending way too much time searching for potential publishers. I search on google, I log on MS Excel. I have the skills to do it myself, but I have not been writing all summer. Why? Because I'm juggling the submissions of 1 novel, 3 short stories, multiple poems and a novella. It doesn't seem like much, but when you factor in the searching, the rejections and re-submissions, it can become quite time consuming. The second issue with google searches is the results are saturated with outdated calls for submissions. I read, I get excited and then buried somewhere in the text is the end date of the call. I have seen some that are five years old. I need to write - not spend so much time submitting. So the question is: Should I try an agent who will take approximately 14% of my royalties and might not even search and submit for me (not all agents perform those tasks)?  Or should I move to a query database online to ...