EDIT THE BLASTED BOOK

A Handbook for Indie Authors - Part 1

This is Part 1 of a series about editing fiction, particularly romantic fiction, including mystery, suspense, paranormal, and futuristic. Although it is intended for indie authors, who very much need to improve the quality of what they’re uploading to the Net, much of it also applies to authors who would like to put their best foot forward when querying an agent or an editor. Do you want to present a manuscript which is going to cost the publisher time and effort to whip into shape, or do you want to present a professional-looking manuscript, which will cost very little time and money to be ready for publication? In today's tight economy, which manuscript will the editor choose?

A no-brainer, right?

Below is an introduction to the scary world of what it takes to make a manuscript ready for publication.


Editing vs. Copy Editing.

Many authors are not aware of the difference between editing and copy editing. I’ll try to make it clear.

Editing is done by a person who has worked his/her way up in a publishing company, someone who has struggled long and hard to have “Editor or Associate Editor” beside his/her name. These are the people to whom you or your agent sends your manuscript. These are the people who will decide whether or not your book is published.

Copy edits are usually done by young publishing hopefuls, not long out of college. Frequently, they work at home. They are paid at “piecework” rates to find the nitty-gritty mistakes in your manuscript, from spelling, punctuation, and grammar to continuity (Were Betty’s eyes blue in Ch. 1 and brown in Ch. 6?) and facts (Do you have a bastard inheriting an English title? - an absolute no-no). And, yes, copy editors make beginner mistakes. I’ve seen books where the copy editor inserted a decimal before 9mm, which would require the gun to have the smallest bullets in the history of the world!

You get the message: Editors are highly experienced; they’re paid the relatively big bucks. Copy editing is lower echelon - almost anyone with a good English background, a keen eye, and patience can do it.

Editing. Among the many things an editor must look for are:

1. Does your first page capture a reader’s attention?

2. Same for your first chapter. Does it have enough action, interesting dialogue, colorful details (whether setting, secondary characters or plot) to keep the reader turning the page?

3. Have you introduced both hero and heroine in the amount of time that is appropriate to the genre you’re writing?

4. Have you made your hero and heroine likable? (They can have faults, but can a reader see that these will be remedied? Or is it merely a minor fault that makes your character more interesting?) Are your characters sympathetic? Do they have vulnerabilities? Will your readers root for them, really care about them?

5. Is your writing voice developed enough to appeal to the mass romance market?

6. Did you carefully outline your plot in your synopsis, then leave it there, assuming that the reader now knows everything he/she needs to know? (Which is nothing, as the reader never sees anything but the short blurb on the back of the book (or on screen in an online catalog.)

7. Have you ignored one of your two main characters, vastly favoring the point of view of one over the other? And, consequently, not revealing enough of the ignored character’s thoughts, actions, and motivations?

8. Have you used so many secondary characters in the first few chapters that they completely overshadow your hero and heroine?

9. Conversely, have you created interesting, perhaps even colorful, secondary characters who truly enhance your story and are not simply being used as a “dialogue foil” to present backstory?

10. Did you bring your story to a stop in Chapter 1 by cramming in huge chunks of backstory, tempting your readers to chuck your book at the wall?

11. Or possibly you forgot to include any backstory or identification of your characters at all, making them blank-faced talking heads. After all, you know who they are, why can’t the readers add mind-reading to their skills?

12. Dialogue. Have you incorporated setting, actions, description, and/or introspection (thoughts) into your dialogue? Otherwise, we’re back to talking heads against a blank canvas. Not a pretty sight.

13. Did you write twenty words when ten would say the same thing and be more effective?

14. Do you have enough plot to hold a readers’ attention for the full length of your book? Or are you giving us “diary entries” of daily activities instead of a story that is moving forward at a fast enough pace to satisfy modern readers?

~ * ~

The items listed above are just some of the things an editor must look for when reading a manuscript. And, more importantly, if the editor thinks your work worth the effort, he/she must then find ways to explain to you what must be fixed before your book is ready for publication. This requires a great deal of skill and experience and is a long, long way from simple copy edits. Yes, misspelled words and bad punctuation jump out at readers and are easy to criticize, but it’s the more serious “edits” that make or break a book. Indie authors must realize this before they simply have someone proofread their manuscript and “certify” that it’s ready for publication. Almost all manuscripts require careful “editing”and not just “copy editing.”

I have a long list of books in my Kindle archives, books by authors I will not read again because their book did not capture my attention. Or books I put aside after ten pages because they were so poorly constructed I couldn't read any farther. But I keep active on my Kindle one of each book by authors I like to remind me to look for that author’s next book.

Be the author whose book is “saved.” Whose next book is eagerly awaited.

And never forget—although good spelling, punctuation, and grammar are important, your book won’t make it without a good story and well-drawn characters.

So do it right . . . make more money.~ * ~

Coming next: Edit your own books or employ a professional?

Thanks for stopping by.

Grace, who writes as Blair Bancroft
& edits as Best Foot Forward (editsbyBFF@aol.com)

Brave New World - Indie Publishing

WELCOME to the Brave New World of Independent Publishing! Below is a nutshell view of what I learned as I formatted and uploaded Lady Silence from my Signet backlist. Hopefully, it will be helpful to other authors who would like to take their backlist out of mothballs. And also help newbies who are asking themselves, "Should I?"

Independent publishing is sweeping through the Internet with the momentum of the seminal changes in the music industry. No sense arguing the pros and cons, because indie publishing is here to stay. It’s not going away.

Do I recommend it for an unpublished, unknown author? Only if you’re going to spend full-time marketing that one book on every media and social network available. (And most of us want to keep writing far too much to get trapped long-term in the whirlpool of marketing.)

But I heartily recommend that published authors with a backlist seriously consider independent publishing. The first book’s a bit of a chore, but as more and more of us take the plunge, there will be a growing list of “experts” willing to pass along their new-found knowledge. Which is what I’m attempting to begin with today’s blog.

Yes, you can offer your backlist to one of several royalty-paying e-publishers. (Been there, done that.) But when I heard how well a friend of mine had done with her backlist on Kindle - way better than my current e-royalties - I thought, “Well, heck, why not try it?” Only time will tell, of course, if I made the right decision. But at the moment it feels good. And my low-priced e-Regencies will, I hope, encourage people to consider buying the higher-priced ones from my e-publisher.

How to take the plunge.

First, be sure you have the rights to your book. If you don't, call your print publisher and the main switchboard will direct you to the correct person for rights reversion. For e-pubs, a simple e-mail will do. And then be patient. For Penguin Putnam, it took perhaps two months. For my e-pub, less than a week.

Re-editing is your decision. You can use your original manuscript, as is, or you can choose to re-read and revise, line by line. I chose the latter. I’ve now ploughed my way through three of my six Signet Regencies, making deletions and additions. The result: hopefully, a more polished book, based on what I’ve learned in the years since I wrote the originals.

To learn the ropes of formatting and uploading your manuscript, Smashwords is the place to begin, because Mark Coker’s Smashwords Style Guide gives detailed instructions on how to format your book to an MS Word doc that is acceptable not only to Smashwords, but to Kindle and Nook (even if their instructions don’t say so). I read the Style Guide on HTML. I e-mailed a Mobi version of it to my Kindle and read it again, taking copious notes. And when I finished all my formatting, I re-read the most pertinent parts for uploading again. Coker covers everything, including how to fill out the form so you can get paid! And once you’ve conquererd Smashwords, Kindle is relatively easy. Amazon’s Kindle mentions only HTML in its instructions, but you can use that same Word doc you formatted for Smashwords (minus the front page) for uploading to Kindle.

Warning Note: Do not copy the Smashwords License Agreement as it is laid out in the Style Guide. Not wanting to make any mistakes, I did exactly that, centering just as Mark Coker laid it out. And ten days later I was told I to revise the front page so that there were no Hard Page Ends within the body copy of the agreement (those page ends necessary to format the agreement exactly as Coker wrote it). Sigh.

Further Warning: There are dire warnings in the Style Guide about translating Word Perfect to MS Word for successful e-formatting. Needless to say, I was worried. For Word Perfect users who would like to know how I did it, please e-mail me at BlairGAK@aol.com.

ISBNs. I made the decision to buy a list of ten ISBNs, even though they are not required by Smashwords or Kindle. They are, however, required by Nook. It’s an expense, but I wanted to give Lady Silence every opportunity for distribution.

Nook’s PubIt will also accept an MS Word doc (according to their Support Center), but I found their instructions far less indie friendly than Smashwords or Kindle. At the moment, I admit, anyone wanting to read LADY SILENCE on Nook needs to download the EPub version at Smashwords. (For which Smashwords offers directions!)

An interesting sidenote: when I questioned PubIt’s requirement that biographical material be sent THREE MONTHS in advance, Support didn’t answer me, but the “three-months” instantly disappeared from the PubIt vendor requirements.)

Moral of this story: Am I still submitting original material to royalty-paying publishers and e-publishers? Absolutely. Will I continue to format my backlist for indie pub? Yes, yes, and yes. As fast as my fingers can format and I can get cover artists to do their thing. And, if all goes well, I may even consider uploading that book New York never quite understood. And the one that had too many points of view for a couple of e-publishers. Books of my heart, but not of the editor’s heart.

Important repeat: If your name is already known in the publishing world (p- or e-pub), your indie offering is more likely to have a decent chance of success. And your less expensive indie backlist may increase the sales of your more expensive works.

Brave New World
It’s all yours, so come join me and the other indie authors who have taken the plunge.

Thanks for stopping by. Comments are always welcome.
Grace Kone, writing as Blair Bancroft & Daryn Parke

P.S. I also offer editing, copy editing, and Beta reads at Best Foot Forward. For a brochure, e-mail me at editsbyBFF@aol.com