Four Things To Decide Before You Write Your Memoir

Jan29

Dawn Field has written this post that I thought might be helpful to you memoir writers out there. I wrote a memoir myself (Living in the House of Drugs), but it wasn’t my memoir so I had a few other things to consider.

As with any book I write, I did some research by reading and skimming many other book of the same genre. This gave me an idea of what was out there, what type of story telling I liked and how I might make the memoir I was writing a bit different. Dawn gives you a few other things to consider. I especially agree with her that most good memoirs have a message they convey (think Eat Pray Love or Wild) but they all don’t. Some are just good stories (like Angela’s Ashes).

The other thing to remember when writing a memoir, the more you write it using the structure of a fictional story, the easier and more enjoyable it will be to read. This is something to keep in mind when you’re trying to decide on tense, use of quotes (or not), use of dialogue, story structure…

(Note: this post is taken from the BookBaby blog. This does not mean I am endorsing BookBaby. Though I haven’t heard anything particularly bad about them, always read the fine print related to upfront or down the road fees when going with any service – mine or anyone elses 🙂

Dawn: “Memoirs are their own class of writing, but they have to adhere to the principles of storytelling. Here are 4 things to consider when you write your memoir.”

Source: Four Things To Decide Before You Write Your Memoir | BookBaby Blog

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Where Publishing Dreams Become Reality

Free Speech Tested by Simon and Schuster

Jan16

What do you think – authors out there?!

ckbooksblog

Drew Angerer/Getty Images from npr website

Did anyone hear this piece on NPR recently about a book by social media provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos?: https://www.npr.org/player/embed/509497010/509542890

It’s an interesting topic of conversation, in particular for all writers and readers out there. Does anyone have the right to promote hate speech? Is it right for Simon and Schuster to promote it by publishing this book (and profit from it)?

Ah…the democratic process in motion.

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Designing a Book Cover That Tells

Dec28

I found this helpful post by Christopher Lentz who is a guest on “The Owl Lady’s” blog – Vivdrewa.me. I had never heard of the backward six scan we apparently all do. I also like his comment in his “squinting at it” section. What is prominent does depend on who you are as an author. I’m sure you’ve noticed how some (not all) prominent authors have their name almost as large or larger than the title. They are obviously selling themselves and their reputation that you’ll want that book you’re looking at. Most of us aren’t in this category – not yet anyway 😉
There – I learned my new one thing today. Hopefully I’ll learn a few more, too 😉

CKBooks Publishing
Where Publishing Dreams Become Reality

Viv Drewa - The Owl Lady

By Guest Blogger Christopher Lentz

If you’re reading this, you’re probably a storyteller. That’s part “story” and part “teller.” So what do your book covers tell potential readers?

First confession: I may be new to the self-publishing world, but I’m not a newcomer to the universe of design and marketing. Since the launch of my novel,Blossom, I continue to be amazed by how many people are attracted to and comment about the book’s cover.

Though trends in romance cover designs come and go, timeless and tested truisms of marketing contributed to Blossom’s cover design. Here are five things I applied while designing what’s proving to be an impactful, engaging cover.

Second confession: If you’re looking for a guaranteed how-to list of tips for designing covers that will propel you to the heights of TheNew York Timesbestsellers list, this isn’t it. If you find one, let me…

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The #1 Way to Write Intense Story Conflict

Dec20

K.M. Weiland has a wonderful blog for writers, if you haven’t already seen it. In this post she talks about how writers make readers care about what is going on in a story, which should be a lot of conflict or things that get in the protagonist’s way of their goal.

And by the way, have a wonderful holiday and an even better New Year!

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To reach your goal of writing gripping and intense story conflict, you must first learn how to make that conflict matter to readers. Here’s how!

Source: The #1 Way to Write Intense Story Conflict – Helping Writers Become Authors

CKBooks Publishing
Where Publishing Dreams Become Reality

Belleville Middle & High School Principal’s Blog: Author Visit for 8th Grade

Dec12

Just spent the morning with four of Mrs. Schultz’s 8th grade classes talking about story structure. Maybe not their favorite subject but as I explained to at least one class, they can’t get away from it, whether it’s for a book they are writing, a class paper in high school or college or a work proposal when they are out of school and in the working world. Being able to have people understand what you’re writing and even entertaining them on top of it is a skill worth getting down and may not be as hard as it seems 🙂

The kids listened well, didn’t fall asleep (which was nice), and had some good questions.

You’re doing a good job, Mrs. Schultz! Thanks for inviting me into your classroom!

Source: Belleville Middle & High School Principal’s Blog: Author Visit for 8th Grade

Print Piracy and Free Trade

Dec7

My general take on print book priracy (or ebook priacy for that matter) – it’s not worth my energy and time to do anything about it. There are so many other positive things I need to do with my time related to my books (and my personal time for that matter), but David has given us some very good information about how the process all works, and good information and knowing the process that you’re a part of (whether you like it or not) is always a good thing.

I have also had an issue with my ebook and print books not being connected, but I was also able to fix that by contacting the kdp support people, and it only happened once. But if you want to know how to fix it yourself, David tells you how.

Source: The Book Designer – Practical advice to help build better books

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Where Publishing Dreams Become Reality

How to Write a Press Release for a Book – The Happy Self-Publisher

Nov27

“You’ve just published or are about to publish a book and you want the world to know about it, right? A press release is an effective way to capture the attention of the media and other organization…” Lois Hoffman

“An effective way to capture media attention”? I’m not so sure. I’ve written and sent out many press releases and have garnered little media attention, and I know I’ve done a decent job with the release.

Are they still a good idea? Yes, mostly because it’s not that hard to do and it is something you want on hand, in case an opportunity comes up for you to use it – like if you have a book launch at a local bookstore or library; and it is another marketing tool that media are used to seeing, so it doesn’t hurt to send it out – especially to smaller, local papers, radio and TV stations. You might get on the morning news program, who knows. I have had to create one at the last minute for one of my books because I didn’t do it initially and I needed it for a book contest I was entering or some such thing.

And the shorter the better. Everyone is busy so keep it simple and concise. Also know that the media may even use parts of the release verbatim (to save them time), so keep that in mind when writing it, along with the idea that the more “news worthy” it is, the more likely the media will pay attention, so change it depending on who you’re sending it to. You might want to say something different to your local paper than to a larger organization you have no particular ties to.

The link below is to Lois’ full article on press release specifics. Check it out!

Source: How to Write a Press Release for a Book – The Happy Self-Publisher

CKBooks Publishing
Where Publishing Dreams Become Reality

KDP Print – Amazon is Beta-Testing a Combined Kindle and POD Dashboard

Nov20

Here’s some interesting news from Nate Hoffelder for those authors who have just electronic versions of their books. This is a wonderful service for authors to get their print books done as well.

But once this becomes a thing – remember that Amazon charges 60% for expanded distribution of print books.

I recommend to all my clients that they sell print books through Amazon, opt out of Amazon’s expanded distribution, and use IngramSpark for expanded distribution, which has wider distribution around the world (including libraries) and you get to choose what % the retailer gets (though keep in mind – 40% is standard for retailers and Ingram takes 15% so the standard is 55%). They also print better quality books (ones that you might order for yourself to sell or give as gifts.)

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For the longest time Amazon has offered two distribution platforms for books. Publishers could use KDP to sell ebooks in the Kindle Store, and they could use Createspace (and before that, Booksurge) to distribute POD books. Now Amazon is testing a combined interface where publishers can manage both their ebooks in the Kindle Store and their POD books in Createspace. The new feature is called KDP Print, and according to the comment thread at KBoards this feature has been available to a limited number of KDP users since July 2016. […]

Source: KDP Print – Amazon is Beta-Testing a Combined Kindle and POD Dashboard | The Digital Reader

CKBooks Publishing
Where Publishing Dreams Become Reality

A Script Reader’s Checklist – ScreenCraft

Nov14

For those of you have been attached to this blog for a while, you know I wrote a screenplay for my book A Burnished Rose – which is about a nurse in WWII. I am still working on pitching and improving that one but I’ve started on a new project – a screenplay for my 2016 Moonbeam Book Award winner Intrigue in Istanbul: An Agnes Kelly Mystery Adventure, which is about a young girls adventure in Istanbul with her grandmother.

I wanted to make the process a bit easier on myself, so I started looking around for a program I could use to write it – mostly something that did the correct formatting for me. Believe me, it doesn’t format easily in word.

From my Wisconsin Screenwriters Forum group, I had heard of Screencraft’s screenwriting contest. Well it happens that screencraft has developed some screenwriting software called Writerduet, one version that you can get for free! (Just my price range!), though the paid version is less than $100, so it’s pretty reasonable too.

I’ve been using it for a few days now and I really enjoy it. It does make the process a lot faster and has a collaboration feature that may come in handy WHEN the screenplay wins in a contest and gets picked up by someone!

When you sign up for the software, they get your email, of course. So I’ve been getting lots of screencraft advertising, of course. But I also received a link to this post by Terri Rossio, which is a wonderful list of what a good screenplay looks like.

Source: A Script Reader’s Checklist – ScreenCraft

Do take a look and take some notes, if you’re a screenwriter yourself.

Happy writing!

CKBooks Publishing
Where Publishing Dreams Become Reality

Book Promotion: Do This, Not That – October 2016

Oct19

Amy Collins gives us some good advice about planning ahead related to book marketing and sales, not something I am particularly good at. I also want to add, it has been my experience that libraries also tend to budget quite a bit ahead, so if you want to offer a writing program, or “How I Self-Published My First Book” workshop, or a book reading/sale, you would want to contact libraries now. Many will be planning for next year about now.

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Amy’s post:

October already? How the heck did THAT happen? Another month of great marketing and sales successes to be had. Let’s get started with this month’s three tidbits of book promotion experience:

Source: Book Promotion: Do This, Not That – October 2016 – The Book Designer