This is a guest post by Terri Giuliano Long

For better or worse, the days when they were the sole gatekeepers are behind us. Today, rejection by traditional houses says little about a book. “Some wonderful books [are rejected] for various reasons—nothing to do with quality,” says Jenny Bent. A publisher may reject a book because it doesn’t fit into a clear category. A traditional house may also turn down a book if it doesn’t have an obvious audience or if the author has too small a platform or a poor sales track with previous books.

In the old days, determined authors turned to self-publishing—or vanity presses, as they were called—as a last resort. Serious authors, concerned about being black- balled, dared not self-publish. As a result, talented authors like John Kennedy Toole, whose posthumously published masterpiece, A Confederacy of Dunces, won a Pulitzer Prize (1981), went to their grave believing their work did not measure up.

Today, many talented authors choose the self-publishing route and they do it for a variety of reasons. Jackie Collins recently shocked the literary world with her announcement that she planned to self-publish a new, rewritten version of her novel The Bitch. “Times are changing,” Collins said of her decision, “and technology is changing, so I wanted to experiment with this growing trend of self-publishing.”

Industry superstars like New York Times bestselling authors Barbara Freethy and C.J. Lyons use self-publishing platforms to market their out-of-print backlists. Other authors are drawn to self-publishing because of its flexibility, the ability to publish within their own timeframe, for instance—perhaps to leverage topical interest or mark an anniversary. Others authors self-publish out of a desire for artistic control.

Self-publishing can also be a practical way to build an audience. Today, publishers expect authors to have a solid platform. By self-publishing, emerging authors can build the fan base necessary to attract a traditional publisher for their next work. Other authors, long-timers as well as newbies, feel they can make more money on their own. At $2.99 a pop, authors earn nearly $2.00 on every eBook sale. Even at 99¢, with average royalties of 33¢ to 60¢, earnings on a hot-selling book can quickly out-pace the meager advance offered to all but the superstars by a traditional house.

These days—insult-hurling aside—traditional and indie authors are more alike than different. Mindful of their increased scrutiny, self-publishers take full advantage of the myriad professional services available to authors. Indies hire experienced editors to copyedit and proofread. For their cover and interior designs, some work with the same graphic artists who design for the traditional houses. Professionals are available and widely used to covert documents to digital and paperback formats, and POD printing has gotten so good that, to the typical untrained eye, print-on-demand books are virtually indistinguishable from books printed on an offset press.

Literary agent and publishing consultant Joelle Delbourgo, founder and president of Joelle Delbourgo Associates, Inc., formerly a senior publishing executive at Random House and HarperCollins, says some self-publishers go a step further and work with a professional publishing partner, a strategy she recommends. A publishing pro with a track record of success can bring an author to the next level, Delbourgo says.

For a few years, Bethanne Patrick, a publicist and media consultant also known as “The Book Maven,” creator of the global reading community Friday Reads, was skeptical of self-publishing. Through her work in social media, Patrick has read more indie titles and gotten to know writers who’ve chosen to self-publish. More and more indie authors, she’s noticed, seek the advice of freelance editors, publicists, and marketing consultants—and she’s intrigued.

As well-educated and experienced writers—emerging authors who’ve honed their craft as well as established and traditionally published authors—increasingly opt to go the indie route, the bar is rising.  As with indie musicians and filmmakers, indie authors bring new life to an evolving industry. Today, readers have access to a wealth of funny, poignant, brilliant voices of talented new authors from around the globe—voices that, just a few years ago, might have been silenced by the old guard.

The opportunity to self-publish—to publish their books their own way—has given both emerging and established authors more freedom than ever before. So, yes, now that readers choose which books to purchase and support, dollars may shift and some traditional authors may be forced to give up a slice of the pie. Change is never easy; inevitably, there are bumps and bruises along the way. But, like it or not, indie publishing is here to stay. And the publishing world will be all the richer for it.

About this post’s author:

Terri Giuliano Long is a contributing writer for IndieReader and Her Circle eZine. She has written for numerous publications, including the Boston Globe and the Huffington Post. She lives with her family on the East Coast and teaches at Boston College. In Leah’s Wake, her debut novel, began as her master’s thesis. For more information, please visit her website or connect via Facebook, Twitter or her Blog.

This is a post by Pavarti K Tyler

Religion and literature have long been intertwined.  Some of the best writing and poetry exists within religious texts.  From the poetry of the Bible’s book of Psalms to the lyrical cadence of the Qu’ran’s surahs, the beauty and power of words is one religious writers have honed. But what is the place of religion within works of fiction?

Sci-fi authors have long known that the way to create depth and meaning for their fiction is to layer in religious themes.  From Frank Hubert’s epic classic Dune to Indie Author George Elder’s upcoming release The Genesis Continuum, fictional religion is a necessary component. Through this religious vehicle authors are able to investigate fundamental questions of human existence. Who am I?  Why am I here?  What is my purpose?

For fiction that deals with real issues of religion in modern day society, there isn’t a good category.  The tag of Religious Fiction takes on the assumption that the content will be compliant with the Religion referenced.  Christian Fiction doesn’t just mean that it’s about Christianity but that it is consistent with the expectations of Christian Readers. Many readers are turned off by the label of Christian Fiction, not because they’re unwilling to read about Christians but because they worry the book will be sanitized to the point of uninteresting (which isn’t necessarily true).

Islamic Fiction is a relatively unknown category, but those who use it to identify their books take the meaning quite seriously.  When a book is coded as Islamic Fiction, the content is expected to be hallal and there for permitted within the confines of Islamic guidelines.

One of the exciting things about Indie books is that rules don’t apply to Indie Authors in the same way they do to traditionally published authors.  We are able to mix genres and create a new market for interstitial content.  It’s an exciting time to write, but even more, it’s an exciting time to read.

Religion is an issue that affects us all deeply.  No matter your personal beliefs, or non-beliefs, almost everyone has an opinion on religion.  Be it the existence of God or the importance of organized worship, something about religious life.  And yet, a book which deals with issues of religion directly is relegated to the abyss of “General Fiction.”

Two Indie books I’ve recently read come to, Bengali Girls Don’t by LA Sherman and Doxology by Brian Holers.  Both deal with the very real role religion plays in the lives of the main character as well as the impact it has on the culture around them, and yet neither would be considered a “religious” book.

As a reader, I’m excited by these conversations.  I’m excited to gain insight into how other people experience their worlds and the role religion plays.  It gives us the opportunity to understand those different from ourselves in a deeper and more intimate way that general fiction allows because those questions of out greater meaning are addressed.

When you can understand what someone else believes, even if you don’t believe it yourself, you are able to connect on a deeper level.  Fiction is one of the only places where we are able to immerse ourselves in the experience of another person or culture.  Perhaps Indie Authors are on to something. Transgressive literature has always challenged the way we think about the world, and Indies have the rare opportunity to write about religion without the constraints of the traditional market.

About this post’s author:

Pavarti is a member of the Novel Publicity Team as a PR Campaign Manager. She also provides content editing as a consultant or for her Novel Pub clients. Her unique experience as a dramaturge, both on and off Broadway, has provided her the opportunity to work closely with many playwrights and directors, allowing Pavarti to consider both the literary and audience perspective. Pavarti K Tyler’s novel Two Moons of Sera is a Fantasy/Romance and is being released in a serial format. Her next novel Shadow on the Wall is scheduled for release in early 2012. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter, or her website.

This is a guest post by D.K. LeVick

As the saying goes “the devil’s in the details.”

When writers of historical fiction put words to paper, they bear the responsibility to transpose their readers to the time period of their story. This doesn’t mean telling them it’s 1776 – it means transporting them to 1776, making them feel it, live it, and be a part of it – having them jump up and march along with the fife and drum.

If this is only done on the macro level, the characters are superficial and transparent. The reader sees through the ruse and doesn’t feel authenticity. To lift the characters off the pages and bring them into the minds and hearts of the reader, the writer must work on the micro level—down in the trenches – with the details. And here he must tread carefully, for it can easily be overdone. Too many details are overpowering and will bog a story down quicker than a hippo wallowing in molasses. Inserting a few carefully selected details, in a natural way so that they are not recognizable as being inserted, will unconsciously allow the reader to live them. This is where the writer’s art comes in to play, weaving the facts and substance of the era into the spirit and essence of the story, putting the reader into the story’s setting as a witness to the action.

For every word of detail the writer puts to paper, a hundred words were researched, reviewed and revised. Each sentence represents hours of background investigation, study, and learning about the times, people, environment and cultures of the era.

If a writer’s passion is the blood flowing through his veins, then research is the muscle that forms his flesh.

During the writing of Journeys across Niagara (formerly Bridges – a Tale of Niagara), I traveled down many roads of research. Not so much for the main story line of Kevin and his friends living in Niagara Falls during the ‘60s, (having lived that era myself – I was my own research), but for the historical stories embedded in the novel. Encompassing four actual events, covering over 200 years of history in the Niagara Region, and crossing lines of culture, nations and habitat, each story required a separate journey of research and investigation. The stories are separated by many decades in a rapidly developing part of the New World undergoing major political, societal and cultural change. The world of the English drummer boy and the Iroquois brave in 1763 was a different world from the world of slavery and abolition found in Lizzie’s story of 1859. Conversely, the Hermit of Niagara lived on top of Niagara Falls in 1831, while the only instance of Niagara Falls stopping was in 1848, a mere 17 years apart. Despite this relatively close historical proximity, significant changes had occurred in the Niagara Frontier between these two times due to the advent of the Erie Canal and the introduction of the railroads along with a spreading population, radically affecting the culture of the people.

Research is the mantra of the historical fiction writer. It is hard work and takes considerable time but it is as crucial to success as the re-entry heat shields are to the space shuttle. I often wonder how earlier writers researched their subjects and eras. (hmm, could be a story there in the making.)

“To where do we go?” the writers asked. They went to the libraries and to building personal acquisitions of books and writings. Yes, long, hard, tedious work, not to mention costly, but worth the effort and cost.

Today, all that’s changed; writers have the advantage of the internet. Call up any subject or key word and information is immediately at your fingertips: images, words, histories, background, essays and opinions—lots of opinions. This is a huge advantage for the modern writer, but I also see a snare lying in wait for us. As wide and as deep as the internet is, it only coughs up what someone has put in it. And those things are repeated over and over. The internet fools us into thinking we can click on any subject and then magically and instantly become ‘well-informed’ and ‘all-knowing’ about that subject. It has the potential to inject an entire population, on a global scale, with a ‘one-click’ mentality regarding any particular subject.

That’s one scary thought! The same singular knowledge and information is put out and repeated to all who punch in a keyword or subject, and most inquiries stop at that level. Much of this information has already been filtered and is steeped in ‘opinions’ before we ‘surf’ through it, filtering and discarding along the way. We too easily fail to dive genuinely into the heart of the matter as true research demands. With enough repetitions and enough people reading the same things without rebuttal and opposing views and insights, we begin forming a global community of keyboard punchers who think along the same lines. And we then put our faith in it – “I read it on the internet, so it must be true.” There is a great risk of an unconscious ‘dumbing down’ of the entire world concerning any given subject of history – like-minded regurgitating with like-minded.

Understandings about people and events can easily become condensed down to a singular ‘common’ or ‘general’ opinion, and we all know that there is nothing ‘common’ or ‘general’ concerning people. People are unique, diverse and always at emotional states with one another, whether loving or hating one another. And history is nothing more than a reflection of those people and those emotions. And make no mistake about it, we must fully understand and know all the details of history or the past will overtake the future.

Think for a second about what power true censorship would have over this medium. The world’s understanding of history would be revised and reshaped to conform to the political or social designs of those doing the censoring. This isn’t fantasy or paranoia talk, for we know all too well that such things have happened down through history by governments, religions and organizations burning, rewriting and revising history for their own purposes and agendas. It’s not inconceivable or preposterous to think it could happen with the internet and we mustn’t be complacent– for there are governments, around the globe, imposing censorship and monitoring the internet as I write.

True research goes beyond the internet and dives into the heart, fiber and cellular DNA of the matter. We, as writers, owe it to our readers and to those who went before us, to embrace research with both arms wide open, welcoming the joy of bringing history to life.

“To where do we go?” the writers ask. We go to the libraries and to building personal acquisitions of books and writings. Yes, long, hard, tedious work, not to mention costly but worth the effort and cost.

Gee – I guess not all that much has changed after all.

About this post’s author:

Born in Buffalo and raised in Riverside/Blackrock, I graduated from Riverside High School and spent time in the military, serving in the Army. Returning from Southeast Asia I earned my college degrees from New York State University and settled down to raise a family in Western New York. It was during this time that I learned of the beauty and splendor of the Niagara Gorge and came to revere and love the glory of creation as given to us through the Niagara River. Although I have always loved writing, most of my writing energy was expended on technical manuals and papers. However, after publishing a number of short stories, I revised and published my debut novel Journeys Across Niagara, entering the writing arena for personal satisfaction and for your enjoyment. I would like very much to hear from you through WordPress, Twitter, Email, or Facebook.

This is a guest post by Melinda Atlas

“So … you’re a writer? You have a blog? That’s so unique!” –Nobody

Everyone has a Facebook profile , a blog, and too much spare time. Especially that girl on Twitter who posts “I’m so busy!” ten times a day. Unfollow her. She’s lying.

And she won’t read your writer blog anyway. Trust me.

Your mom might read it. Your best friend since third grade will say that he read it. And a few other friends you spammed will attest to reading it.

But they probably didn’t.

And what about that stranger who commented on your blog and said, “If you want to know any recipes for butterscotch tomato soup then check out my website!” He didn’t read your blog either.

Why? What invisible banner are you waving around on your writer blog to chase people away? Could it be the “I typed this while pooping: Ten Things to Make You a More Efficient Writer” entry or that “I eat unattended children” catch phrase under your blog title?

It just might be.

But more likely, it’s the blog itself. How it looks, acts, and presents itself to the company in the living room. If it rips out a fart, fondles your boss, and leaps through the window naked, you may have a problem.

There a few other things your blog shouldn’t do… .

1) Boring Blog Titles

“The Diary of Author Name.”

”The Curious Writing of Author Name.”

“My Blog, My Writing.”

My God that’s so unoriginal. If you want people to see you as unique and lively, then be unique and lively.
Come up with a name, Google it, and if nobody else has it – go for it.

2) Too Much Clicking

Let’s say that I go to your site and look at your navigation links:

Home. FAQ. Contact. About the Author. That first novel you wrote. The second novel you wrote. The third Novel you wrote. That project you want everyone to click on. Extras. Links. People You Like. Definitely Not a Link to Porn. Extras. More Extras. Short-Stories. Poems. Random. Donate. Porn.

If your navigation can’t fit in one line across the page, then you’re doing it wrong. I won’t click on every one of these links, and I will have a hard time seeing what I do want to click on.

Organize one category for “Writing,” one category for “Extras,” one for “Contact,” one for “FAQ,” and one “About.” When I hover my mouse over “Writing” it should pop up with a short list to “Poems. Stories. Novels.”
And so forth.

3) Oh God, My Eyes…I Don’t Even…

Pink text with a purple background. Font style is curvy, size two, and doesn’t match the font outside of the blog entries.

The background is a stretched photo of that hot rod car you wish you could buy. Your blog has nothing to do with cars, but it’s so sweeeet.

But your blog shouldn’t look like you threw up all the colors, things, and words that you like. Customize with care.

Bad Customization:

• Light colored text on black background.
• Neon coloring on any background.
• The hyperlinked text is the same color as regular text. Thus, all your links look like underlined words. Not links.
• Blurry or stretched header. This says “good enough” instead of “good.”
• The background is blurry, stretched, or irrelevant to the theme of the blog.

Worse Customization:

• You made your own template from scratch. You know just enough coding to screw up the page width, images, and so forth.
• The background is a standard template with absolutely no customization. Readers can tell. They blog too.
• The background is just a generic picture of books, pencils, or other writerly items. You found it on Google.
• Your banner or header takes up the entire page, and it’s just a photo of some tree with a bit of grass and your name in tiny letters in the corner. I don’t want to have to scroll past that every time I reload the page.

Good Customization:

• Black text. Light background. Preferably not blindingly white. Look at Youtube.
• Templates. All blogs come with them. Tweak it consistently across the blog so that all fonts, colors, and sizes match.
• Your background. It’s customized and relevant. It might even have text that tells me to where to find you on Twitter and Facebook.
• Maybe I don’t even notice your background. It’s not distractive and idoesn’t take up the entire blog. This is a good thing.

4) Look at my Novel Covers. LOOK AT THEM.

No, I haven’t heard of your “bestselling” Sword of the KnifeGun Trilogy. No, I did not really want to click on your blog and end up with a photo gallery instead of a blog. That’s what Pinterest is for.

Pick one novel/cover. A stunning one. Make it big enough to read the little text, but not big enough that your side-bar could fit a whole other blog in it.

If you cannot do this, then, crop the image and just use the title. If it’s a good novel, that will be enough to get me to click it.

5) Pics Or It Didn’t Happen.

No photos in your blog entries? Then there’s nothing to catch my eye and stop me. I will skim through, but I probably won’t read much. Get something funny, interesting, thought provoking. Put relevant images in your blog entries.

6) Lame, Distracting Apps

Everyone’s seen a hit counter. And a “quotes of the day” box. Unless you made that app yourself, nobody really cares.
And quotes of the day? We can get quotes from that chick on our Facebook who keeps posting them as her status.
We go to your blog to see you. So get social networking apps. Show us your latest tweets and statuses.

Remember. Everyone has a Facebook, a blog, a Twitter. You don’t want everyone to think that you let your thirteen-year-old cousin design yours.

This is how you get your readers to stay more than five seconds, so put more effort into it.

Customize, legitimize, and strategize.

Or they won’t read your writer blog.

About this post’s author:

What am I? I am aware that I look like a dictator in my writerly photo. Yes, writerly is a word. Trust me. I’m a very good pathological liar. Anyway, I’m twenty. Unfamous. Canadian. I am a not-for-profit editor, so feel free to give me a shout on my Facebook Page. You may stalk me on Twitter as well.

This is a guest post by Laurance Kitts

First of all, many of you may be new—or only think you’re not new—to writing. There are some cold hard truths you must face if you want to make it as a writer. I plan to smack you in the face with many of those truths right now. When you have finished reading them, read them again and again until you can look in the mirror and state without a doubt that this is what you want to do with your life. Otherwise get out while the going is good.

The untold truth about becoming an author

1. Writing a book does not make you an author. Writing a good book does. Your first novel will probably suck. You will put yourself into all the details and think it’s great, but the reader will pick up on all your influences and aspects of your life that you put into it. Nobody likes a rehashed plot, so if all you’re doing is writing the same stories with that little extra twist, please examine your career choice, save everyone their money, and stop yourself from being some jerk critic’s field day. Writing a book is easy, but writing one that is more than an entertaining weekend read and more of the kind of writing that touches people’s lives takes time. Crank out the rehashed crap all you want, but write down those twists and original concepts on the way.

2. Prepare to market yourself. By this I mean that you need to do something every single day to spread your name through the world. Chances are that, unless you are some rock star writing a memoir, you don’t have a fan base. You may think you do, but you don’t. What you have hopefully are colleagues, friends, and acquaintances that support you. You may also have the naïve idea that a publisher will do the work for you. Wrong! A writer must market themselves. A secret you may not know is that a publisher will look to see if you even have a market of your own to begin with before taking the initial steps of putting their necks on the line for you.

If you’re going the DIY route, this is even more important. You need Twitter followers, Facebook fans, a network, and even a blog. People have never heard of you and they need to like you before they will ever buy your book outside of an on-a-whim ebook shopping spree where somebody included you.

Now read that all again. Okay, so are you prepared for this journey? Can you handle these implications set forth to all modern day writers? If not, I’m sorry to destroy your dream. But if this doesn’t sound scary to you, feel free to jump onboard with me for the ride of your life. I can’t teach you how to become the novelist of the century, but what I can do is teach you how to market yourself from ground zero.

Fire up your computers, writers! It’s going to be one long day. Today you’re going to inject yourself into every social media outlet available. I hope that you have done this in some way already, if not your day just got a whole lot longer.

Start with a Facebook page. Make it your name, not just something you have done such as a novel or series. Market yourself first, any books second. Make it look snazzy, fill it with content, and then wait a day so as not to flood everyone’s newsfeed with posts before inviting your entire friends list to like the page.

Next create a Twitter account. Find a good background and write a bio. Read articles on how hashtags work and the ones you need to know in this field. COMMUNICATE WITH OTHER PEOPLE. It doesn’t matter whether you’re making fun of a celebrity to their face or complimenting another author—this is key if you want to get anywhere.

Dive further into new crowds of people by joining places such as LitReactor and Scribophile. You won’t find “fans” there, but you will find the chance to build a network with fellow writers that will become an incredible asset to your future literary empire.

Many will tell you to get a blog. It’s not a bad idea; in fact, for a long time you could find me at www.laurancekitts.com. I posted poetry all the time, a short story a month, and every once in awhile an article of some kind. It brought me some exposure, yes. However there is only so much traffic that tags and proper SEO can bring to your website. In the end I began a site of a different breed. In my eyes, this is the key that both upcoming writers AND published authors overlook.

Word of mouth generates more traffic than anything some webmaster guru could tell you. In fact the most rebellious non-generic advice I could tell you on marketing yourself is to STOP TALKING ABOUT YOURSELF. Does that sound crazy? Well trust me, it works. Nothing throws me off a new writer like a Facebook page filled with nothing but self-important posts. If you go to laurancekitts.com now, you will be redirected to www.slityourwristsmagazine.com. What I built was a site to interview other authors and musicians. Talking to other people builds your network and makes their fans wonder who the heck you are. I took it a step further by making it into its very own indie literary journal. Now writers are being read alongside interviews with both popular and upcoming bands and authors. Oh, and the word of mouth potential? It is practically limitless; every band or author I interview directs their fans to me, and with every writers’ submission I approve come the colleagues, friends, and acquaintances with whom they share their writing.

I’m not telling you to copy my idea, but I am saying that you need to branch out. Focus on your work being included in anthologies and journals across the web rather than your own site. Write guest articles for any website that you can and infiltrate the business in all possible fields. Stop spamming people with your book links and make them like you as a person before becoming an internet sales person.

Help other people and they will help you. I did this all from a couch I call my bed with nothing but a Netbook and seventeen dollars to my name (or domain name you could say), and all it took was the research and the will to begin building something new. If I can do it under these conditions, I’m sure you can do it even better.

About this post’s author:

Laurance Kitts is an editor, interviewer, and the founder of Slit Your Wrists! magazine. He writes poetry, fiction, and random articles throughout the internet. He likes pizza, beer, and sketchy people. Keep his upcoming debut novel Autophonomania in mind when you run low on toilet paper. You can reach Laurance on Facebook and Twitter, and by email.

We recently had the priviledge of twitterviewing  John Paul Jaramillo, known as @johnpjaramillo across the twittersphere. He’s the author of the literary short story collection, The House of Order. Be sure to check out John’s website for all the latest news and events.

To learn how a twitterview works, to read past twitterviews, or to find out how you can have your work featured in our promotional twitterview series, please visit www.novelpublicity.com/twitterviews
 

This is a guest post by M.B. Mulhall

I can’t say I’ve ever been to a book signing, but I’ve always wanted to go. Authors are like my rockstars, so to have them sign one of their books for me is the equivalent of some rocker throwing their sweaty bandana at me from the stage—cool, yet much less damp and gross.

So when e-books started gaining popularity I did have the thought “oh…now there will never be a reason for me to go to a book signing because most of the stuff I buy is in e-book form so what will they sign, my Kindle cover?”.

Yeah, that wasn’t happening. Then I stumbled up on a program called Kindlegraph.

It’s a fun little application where you can go and request a personalized digital inscription from an author for a specific book. The request gets sent and the author will type up a little message, and then they can literally sign it (although let me tell you, it takes a lot to make that signature look neat!) or they can “adopt” a signature, which just turns your name into a script font. I prefer the real thing; even if it is sloppy, you know someone really took the time to do it rather than a bot or something.

I haven’t had enough time to browse through all the authors signed up to participate, but from what I did see, there seem to be a lot of indie authors, which is pretty cool in my opinion. I feel like it’s one more thing the indie author can use and offer their fans that perhaps some of the traditionally published authors cannot. Also, many indie authors have neither the opportunity nor the funds for book tours, so this gives fans a chance at a sort of meet and greet with the author without having to travel to a major city or wherever the author is speaking. I could see this being used in conjunction with a live webcast. A book tour where no one has to leave their computers! It’s the future, baby!

Now, just so you know, you do NOT need to own a Kindle, or any e-reader for that matter, in order to request or receive a Kindlegraph. The Kindlegraph is really a PDF file with the book cover image, the message, and the signature. You can have it sent directly to your Kindle (although I don’t recommend this, and I’ll tell you why in a minute) or to your email address. So it really is open to everyone.

Kindlegraphs are free BUT there is the possibility that you could get a charge. The charge comes in on the delivery directly to your Kindle. Whispernet, which is the network that does Kindle delivering, charges a fee to have “personal” documents delivered to your Kindle; I think it’s 99 cents per document. While it’s not a hefty fee, why should you pay when you can get it for free? The way around the charge is to set up your Kindle address as your personal email address. Then you have the option either to keep a file on your computer with all the documents or to attach your Kindle via USB and drop and drag the document to your Kindle. I’m not sure how other e-readers work, but I would guess you could do something similar.

I think indie authors should definitely take advantage of Kindlegraph, as it can be another great marketing tool and can add to the uniqueness of the indie experience. Readers, you can use it to get to know some great up-and-coming authors and have something from them before they blow up and start to seem untouchable (as popular/famous people can often seem.)

So authors, go ahead and sign your books up. Readers, go check it out. If you search, you may just find this mild mannered blogger/indie author there as well!

About this post’s author:

MB Mulhall is the author of the young adult novel Near Death and the upcoming release Tears of a Clown. She is also a budding photographer. When she’s not pecking away at her keyboard or looking at the world up close through her lens, she’s got her nose stuck in a book. A Jersey girl, born and bred, she spends much of her time scouring the boardwalks for images to capture and conversations to overhear. MB dreams of filling bookshelves with her own work and of plastering her walls with photographs she’s taken from places around the world. MB blogs twice a week at Keystrokes and Word Counts. You can also “like” her on Facebook, and if that’s not enough you can always follow her on Twitter and see the ridiculous stuff she tweets about.

This is a guest post by Terri Giuliano Long

I’ve been working on a story about the self-publishing stigma for IndieReader. Does the stigma still exist? I’ve been asking. Is it warranted? Over the last few years, we’ve made tremendous headway, so I anticipated people saying no. In fact, all but one said yes.

If anything, the proliferation of inexpensive eBooks has cut into profits earned by traditional houses and, by extension, their authors. Traditionally published authors are infuriated; while their complaints may seem absurd—the big names still own the market, after all—I understand their frustration. No one likes a cut in income.

Literary karaoke? Please. Yet, despite my frustration toward the authors who cast these aspersions, I’m far more dismayed by the responses from the bloggers and industry leaders I interviewed for the article—our friends. Time and again, I heard, yes, there are terrific indie authors, but too many indies put out junk—books that are badly written or edited and poorly produced—e.g., with an amateurish cover. These perceptions are partly the fault of the hacks. And they’re partly our fault.

Author in-fighting aside, we must do a better job of disseminating our message. The time has come—many authors are doing this already—for talented authors who care about quality, who work hard, hone our craft, and put quality books on the shelf to differentiate ourselves, to stand up and show the world what we’ve got.

We owe it to ourselves to continue raising the bar. Authors who write like they’re in kindergarten, can barely string two coherent sentences together, don’t bother to edit or proofread, treat bloggers rudely, and insult readers by offering anything less than a professional product—make indies easy targets and give all of us a bad name.

Before we can reach the next step, even hope to eradicate the indie stigma, we need to separate, prove to the world that we’re different from and better than the hacks. This means, we must be vigilant, work hard, and behave in the (digital) world.

In the words of a blogger I spoke with, “authors need to produce the very best work they can. Be sure your book is ruthlessly edited, proofread, and copyedited – by a professional.” “Self-publishing shouldn’t be an excuse to not do the hard work,” someone else told me. “For a lot of authors it is and that’s keeping the ‘not good enough to get traditionally published’ myth very much alive.”

Lest I overwhelm with bad news—I must say, I’m tremendously impressed with and humbled by the phenomenal work I see (and it’s only getting better!) as well as the talented, caring, generous authors I’ve met. For many indie authors, self-publishing is no longer a last resort. It’s a choice. What a wonderful, freeing notion that is!

I published In Leah’s Wake in the hope of selling enough books—I was aiming high, hoping to hit 5,000—to attract the attention of a traditional publisher for my novel-in-progress, Nowhere to Run. Over the last year, I’ve worked hard—and thanks to many of you—surpassed my wildest dreams! It’s been an amazing ride. All the angst, the hard work, every 16-hour day I’ve put in has shaped and in some way prepared me for this next step. Like many of you, I’ve heard from agents and a few major publishers have asked to see my next project. But I’ve decided to go indie instead.

I believe in the indie movement. I believe in indie authors. I believe in you.

I believe in us!

We can’t change perceptions overnight and we won’t convince anyone to buy into the notion that, across the board, indie and traditional authors are the same—because we’re not. No question, the talented, hardworking authors are absolutely equal. I’ve seen your books. I’ve read your excerpts. I’ve seen your amazing reviews!

The bad indie authors blow even Snooki out of the water.

It’s time to move away from the Snookis in our midst. When they shape up, we’ll take them seriously. In the meantime, with our attitude, our hard work, our commitment to excellence, let’s show the world what being indie is truly about!

About this post’s author:

Terri Giuliano Long is a contributing writer for IndieReader and Her Circle eZine. She has written for numerous publications, including the Boston Globe and the Huffington Post. She lives with her family on the East Coast and teaches at Boston College. In Leah’s Wake, her debut novel, began as her master’s thesis. For more information, please visit her website or connect via Facebook, Twitter or her Blog. This week she is running Indie Week on her blog – a week-long celebration of indie authors, promoters and industry influencers. You can follow #indieweek on Twitter to stay informed or visit the event page.

This is a guest post by Dr. George H. Elder

I love Lord of the Rings’s story line, but many literary professionals feel that the work needed a bit of editing. The same could be said of any number of Sci-Fi texts, including some of the classics. Of course, Sci-Fi has changed a great deal over the years, and the often gaudy literary style that typified early books are now seen as gouache. Yes, woe is unto the writer who uses too many “ly” words or adjectives. We now call such writing “pulpy,” as in the excess paper that is needed to find a home for the verbiage.

Mind you, some folks like that verbiage. Alas, a personal desire/taste cannot stand in the face of contemporary style’s winds—however those breezes may shift. I wish more writers would understand this basic truth, what we perceive as good or bad is context-bound. Hey, popular music, clothing, and literary style are ephemeral by nature. Styles change and evolve as time and shifting tastes dictates. Thus a writer’s words which are seen as the “perfect exemplar” of today may be regarded as the fodder of tomorrow’s humorists.

But that does not excuse writing that is poor is terms of grammar, syntax, word choice, and all that. I have a Masters in Writing from UNH and a Doctoral Degree in Communication from Penn State, but I can’t spell to save my life and my prose is certainly not the best. Yeah, I can spin a yarn, have good imagination, and possess a knowledge base that is probably more varied than most. I’m a former academic who knows that he does not “know,” so there is still a small bit of hope for me.

For example, I know I need an editor in the worst way, and I honestly believe that almost all writers are in the same boat. Some of us fall in love with our words, but that doesn’t mean they should all be there! A trained set of eyes that is not invested in the text is a writer’s best friend. Those eyes can see what is invisible to authors. Our passages become like children, along with the natural reluctance to cast them adrift.

But we have to let go, and herein comes the need to employ a person with the ability to help polish our work. When writing Genesis, I used three layers of editing—friends (including writers), an editor who proofed text books, and the publisher’s editor. I am sure some things slipped through the process, and much was changed. There were also disagreements along the way. For example, I like putting dialogue with action descriptions because we often talk while doing something, as in:

“You’re an ignorant sot,” Anita said while glaring at George. “Can’t you see that word’s like ‘while” and ‘as’ will become redundant if you use this approach?” She paused, shook her head, and added, “It is possible to use clauses that separate words and actions, even if that interrupts what some call flow.”

 Now my publishing editor recently changed a bunch of lines in Genesis Book 2 to coincide with the advice Anita just gave us, and I just about had a fit! I mean, I could feel something akin to the pain of childbirth setting in, and I’ve had kidney stones! What I saw was edited prose that went like this:

“Let’s be reasonable about this,” Ragmor advised. Perhaps he had overplayed his hand.

Wherein, I wanted prose that expressed the ideas as thus:

“Let’s be reasonable about this,” Ragmor advised, realizing he had overplayed his hand.

Another example is:

“And even Maglee’s name came to you.” Ragmor stared through the pane. “So I suspect you also know what became of her.”

Whereas I wanted:

“And even Maglee’s name came to you.” Ragmor observed while staring at Kara. “So I suspect you also know what became of her.”

 The point is, these are stylistic choices, and I often opt to connect a bit of dialogue with a concurrent action. I like playwriting, where words and actions are intermixed by way of stage directions. I suspect my writing shows a bias toward this mixture, and some may find that annoying.

When editing, it is essential to think about how others experience our text. Inevitably we must find a place of humility, and understand that we often cannot see the forest except for the trees. It is possible for an editor to be incorrect, but it is at least as likely, depending on the editor’s skill, that some good advice is offered that ought to be employed. In any event, I opt to accept an editor’s choices in most cases.

At the end of the day, the work has the author’s name, for better or worse. If the editor cannot explain why X, Y or Z should be changed, then stand by your work. However, if what the editor relates makes sense and is in line with current trends, go with the flow. It hurts me to say this because I detest going with the flow. Indeed, that advice violates every bit of who I am as a person. Yet if we become beasts of ego, our writing will reflect this—and our words will become pedantic and judgmental. We will pontificate on high without even contemplating that we could be wrong.

About this post’s author:

Dr. George H. Elder has lived a very eclectic professional and personal life. His education started with his Ph.D. from Penn State (in Speech Communication) and continued with a Master’s Degree in non-fiction writing from UNH. Dr. Elder has stepped into many different roles in his lifetime – a college teacher, custodian, upper-level scholar, drug addict, weight lifting coach, bouncer, and much, much more. The author of numerous articles in popular press and a scientific textbook – Dr. Elder prides himself on his ability to cover a wide range of issues with his wealth of personal knowledge and professional expertise. You can learn more about George’s writing and philosophies on his website: http://www.ghe101library.com/about or by following him on Facebook.

This is a post by Vicky Torzsok

You’ve been contemplating moving to WordPress, but you don’t know whether to go for it or stay on Blogger? I’ve been in the same boat as you. I used Blogger in the past 6 months, and even though I’ve been thinking about moving for a while, I was terrified. However, I finally plucked up the courage and went through with it last weekend. Since many people have been asking me about my first impressions with WordPress and the reason why I left Blogger, I decided to write a post about it in which I explain some of my concerns in connection with Blogger and discuss whether it’s worth leaving your old blogging platform or not.

The main reason why I left Blogger was that in the past couple of weeks I’ve had constant issues with comments not showing up, blog titles not showing up, and several other things making blogging less enjoyable than it was before. Mind you, apart from the time when Google decided to delete my blog for no apparent reason, I’d been quite happy with Blogger. Up until now.

I’ve only been on WordPress for about 72 hours, but I’m in love with it already. For me the most striking difference between the two platforms is how professional WordPress looks compared to Blogger. And in WP’s case, professional doesn’t equal complicated. I thought I’d be confused with its system and need weeks to figure out how it works, but here I am, typing away with a huge smile on my face. Anyway, here’s why I think you should go ahead with moving to WordPress. Mind you, I’m talking about self-hosted WordPress blogs, not the free WordPress ones. For more information about the differences between these two, check out this article.
 

Why switch to WordPress?

Control over your blog

One of the most important differences between Blogger and WordPress is the amount of control you have over your blog. Blogger is owned by Google, and Google has the right to delete your account without a warning. I’m not making this up and yes, it does happen – it even happened to me once. I don’t think I’ve been that terrified in my life. And apparently, Google may remove your blog even if you use a custom domain name (e.g. myblog.com instead of myblog.blogspot.com), so a self-hosted WordPress site is definitely better in this respect. With WordPress, you’re in control.

SEO

Another reason why I switched to WP is SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization. It basically includes processes behind improving a site’s visibility in search engine results pages, such as Google. What exactly is “Search Engine Optimization,” and why should you care? More info here. What made me think in the first place was this article – apparently, if your blog’s HTML coding is bad, your site will be down ranked. Well, I happened to check my blog with W3C validator while I was still on Blogger and there were almost 600 errors in my blog’s html. I mean, 600?!?! Holy shrimp. The great thing about WP and its blog templates is that they are more SEO friendly. Now that my blog is all set up and my template looks almost identical to the one I had on Blogger, I went back to W3C and checked my blog’s html again – guess how many errors it had? 7. Instead of 600. Sounds a tiny bit better, right? In addition to this, WordPress has a great number of SEO plugins you can install and work with, and they’re super easy to use.

Plugins

WOW. One of the things I love most about WP is the awesome plugins. WP plugims make your life super easy – there are thousands of them, and you can access each of them right from your Dashboard, including a built-in Google Analytics or Statcounter app. How cool is that?

Simplicity

I just love WP’s post editor. It’s quite similar to Blogger, so it doesn’t take too much time to get used to it, but it’s much better and easier to use. I’ve constantly had issues with Blogger’s editor and photo uploader, so it’s such a huge relief to finally be able to use this one. Plus, I know many people who originally write their blog posts in Microsoft Word before they post it on their blogs, but I noticed that it tends to mess up their blog’s template. I’m not kidding, I’ve seen it happen many times. But do you know what? WP has a button which lets you paste a text from MS Word – AND it doesn’t mess up your theme. Cool, huh? You don’t have to worry about it being complicated even if you’re not a HTML expert – the post editor looks almost identical to the one we have in MS word so you don’t even have to go near the HTML editor button if you don’t want to.

Privacy

I know some people are obsessed with privacy and captcha (which I still hate, by the way), but they don’t realize that it’s actually the number one reason why people can’t or simply won’t comment on their blog posts. WordPress is definitely much better with filtering out spam. An interesting thing about WP’s comment system is that, in addition to being able to moderate your comments before publishing, you can edit your comments too, which you can’t do on Blogger unless the commenter deletes his/her comment and re-submits it. Plus, WP also lets you password-protect your posts – either all of them, or just the ones you’d prefer not to make visible to the public.

I’m sure there’s much more but these are the things I can tell you right away, 3 days after switching blogging platforms. All I can say is that I’m pretty sure it’s going to be worth it. I love the fact that WP makes everything so easy and that’s a huge plus when you don’t have much time beside work and reading. If you’ve been considering this move for a while just like myself, I would definitely say go for it. You’ll be surprised how professional looking and clean your blog is going to be, and its simplicity will definitely save you a lot of time.

About this post’s author:

Vicky is a member of the Novel Publicity Team as a Blog Tour Assistant. Vicky is currently studying British literature and culture at the University of Debrecen and hopes to fulfil her lifelong dream of moving to the United Kingdom as soon as she graduates. She hopes she’ll be able to work in publishing someday, but she’s looking forward to seeing what the future holds for her. When she’s not working or studying, Vicky runs a book blog at Books, Biscuits, and Tea. You can follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads or her website.