If you ever doubt self-published books...

At times, I doubt myself.  Particularly because no agents would take on my book.  I feel as though a traditional publisher would help me get the publicity I need to sell books and get my name out there.  I just wrote about it the other day, in fact (http://saskiaeakyil.blogspot.de/2012/06/give-up-no-not-yet.html). 


And then I read this blog post (thanks, Krisiny!!!) and realized that, as an unknown first-time author, having a traditional publisher and agent might not have helped me at all.  I just need to keep plugging away at guest blogging and other forms of publicity, because someone might read my book because of it.  And if they do, they might like it.  And if they like it, they might tell a person or two about it.  And if they do... that's how it really works for unknown writers.  A lot of hard work and word of mouth.

Amazon was so thrilled with the post, which is by a previously traditionally published author who disses traditional publishers and praises Amazon/Createspace/KDP, that they made it  a front-page story.  Which will totally help Jessica Park sell books, further convincing her that self publishing is better than traditional publishing for her.  One of her best points as far as I'm concerned is that certain character ages fall into a black hole of literature - there is no "category" for 13-year-olds (too old for middle grade, too young for YA), no category for 18-25 year-olds...it's ludicrous.  And it is absolutely the fault of the large publishing houses who market books as they do.  I actually wanted to write a book about a 13-year-old, but was reminded that there's no category for that.

I'm still not 100% convinced that self-publishing is actually better... Ms. Park did have publisher backing for years, which surely gave her a feeling of legitimacy and she surely benefited from that publisher's connections - it is incredibly hard to get self-published books reviewed.  I will still try to get an agent for my next book.  I will still enter it into contests.  But if, in the end, I decide to self publish again, I won't feel too bad about it.

Thank you, Jessica Park, for helping self-published authors gain some legitimacy!

who are you???

This blogger read my book, at least she says so on her blog... http://nextbestbook.blogspot.de/2012/05/its-monday-what-have-you-been-reading.html#comment-form

Who is she?
How did she hear about my book?
What did she think about it?

Mysteries I hope I will one day solve......

Give Up? No... not yet

I finally have the idea for my next novel quite solidly outlined.  As I start to write, the rejection letters for other things I've queried have come in.  I hear a lot of "you are an excellent writer, but I didn't fall in love with the characters," or "your writing is solid, but the story is not for me".  Either this stuff is generic rejection stuff (in some cases, it doesn't seem to be based on other stuff in the letters), or I'm JUST NOT GOOD ENOUGH.  And I think to myself, will this next novel be "good enough" for an agent to bite?  And then for a publisher to bite?  Or will it also be close but not quite there.  One agent has asked to see my next novel, which is encouraging.  But it's a lot of work to write a book, and I wonder if I should be spending my time this way or if there are more constructive things I could be doing.

The answer?  OF COURSE there are more constructive things I could be doing, but my problem is that I write because I can't help myself.  And if I give up, I'll never, ever know if I could do this, write a book good enough and sale-able enough that someone would want to publish it.

And this stream-of-consciousness blog post answers the question of what success means to a writer:  getting published by a publisher.  Not because they are the final word, but because they have a gazillion contacts that I do not have.  Newspapers and radio stations and magazines aren't interested in my book because I published it myself, which unofficially means that it is not good enough for them.

But there are rays of light in these dark thoughts.  A lot of people have read my book, loved it, and written positive reviews.  A lot of people have recommended it to their friends.  And at the end of the day, I feel confident that I did, in fact, write a really good book.  A book I would have wanted to read when I was 16.  I'm recording the audio book now (SLOW process, as slow as writing!), and I am truly enjoying it because - surprise - it's a fun story, with some very funny, sweet, poignant moments.

So it's not really true that I define my talent through the eyes of agents and publishers.  The truth is that I just want to get my story out there, and it's a frustratingly difficult thing to do all on my own.

So I guess I'll just keep on writing, at least for now.  My deadline is the end of December because I want to enter my new book in the 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest.  So here goes...

Review: Midwest Book Reviews

I kinda get now why there has been some criticism of Midwest Book Reviews.  If you look at the reviews, they're almost all positive, and some of them are so short that the "reviewer" might have just read the press release.

They've now reviewed my book twice.  The first review was so flawed (reviewer had not even read the press release correctly) that I complained and requested a new one.  Many months later, here it is:

In "Secrets of a Summer Village", 17 year old Rachel Guo finds herself spending part of a once-in-a-lifetime summer with a Turkish family in a village situated on the western coast of Turkey. This will also be the village where she will begin by not knowing her own mind, and conclude with an unexpected romance and her own coming of age as a young woman. Author Saska Akyil has a natural talent for bringing her characters to life and providing the reader with a true 'mind's eye' experience in a pleasant read which will prove a perfect summer pastime! "Secrets of a Summer Village" is highly recommended for personal reading lists and community library contemporary fiction and young adult fiction collections.


Was it worth all that hassle?  Not really.  I mean, it appears that the reviewer did read at least part of the book this time, and the review is positive and says I have a natural talent... which of course I agree with (hahaha), but I think... I hope they wouldn't have said this without actually reading it.  If you read through their reviews, I think I notice a trend that they don't comment on the writing style at all sometimes - and those might be reviews that were written without any book-reading going on.

I'm going to have those last two sentences put onto Amazon, though.  Maybe someone will read it and like it. Hmmm.

Never. Give. Up.

Two things that I have read today have motivated me to keep trying at this writing thing.

The first was a rejection letter.   Sounds wrong somehow, but there are three types of rejection in the world of query letter and manuscript submission.

1.  The first type is very anti-climactic: no response.  It's annoying, but doesn't hurt that badly unless it's from an agent or publisher that you were really sure was going to LOVE what you have written. 
2.  The second type is the form rejection letter.  It's more respectful than the no-response rejection because you get closure and can move on, but it hurts a bit more.  Form rejections basically thank you for your submission and tell you it was not right for that particular agent/publisher and encourages you to keep trying.  It's not actually very encouraging.  
3. But when an agent or publisher takes the time to write you a personal e-mail rejection, it can be encouraging.  It tells you that somebody actually read what you sent them and cares enough to respond.  Here's the one I received this morning.  It's from a publisher, in response to the query and MS I sent them of The Solstice Dance, a children's picture book I wrote quite a long time ago:

Thanks very much. Very charming material. But I'm afriad we're not in a position to do this kind of book currently, particularly if an illustrator is not involved with the submission. Particularly with this book, getting the geography, customs, garments, and other details correct requires specific knowledge in order to avoid cultural gaffes.

Perhaps a publisher with more extensive connections with illustrators would be a better choice? Thank you in any case for you interest and for sharing your submission.

I really feel like writing back to him, begging him to reconsider, offering to find an appropriate illustrator... but I won't.  I'll write back to thank him for taking the time to write me a personal e-mail.

The second thing that motivated me today is something I read on the website of a publisher's editorial guidelines.  They likened getting a book published to becoming a famous actor, and I thought about all the stories of actors going to auditions with hundreds of others, and getting rejected for years before getting a break.  Sure, some actors get lucky the first time, but those are in the extreme minority.  Some of them may go on to write scripts and produce their own movies, which is similar to self-publishing.  Instead of being discouraged by this comparison, I'm encouraged by it.  At least I don't have to live in Hollywood and try out in front of impatient directors.  

It is pretty exciting to hear back from agents and publishers, even when it's a rejection.  If you want to be a writer: Never. Give. Up.

Recording an Audiobook & Waking a resting project

As I've mentioned before, it takes a really long time to record an audiobook.  My book has 28 chapters, and each takes about half an hour to record.  So 14 hours, which doesn't sound long except that I really have other exciting stuff to do, like laundry, taxes, and tidying up.  So if I manage to record one chapter a day, I am happy.  Some days, I've recorded two, but that won't happen today because I promised myself I would work on the taxes, and I've also promised myself that I will write at least one blog entry a week, and it's already been a week...  And if you think that recording takes a long time, consider this: I am not capable of reading from my book for half an hour without making mistakes.  I mispronounce words, skip words, read in the wrong "voice"... the audio has to be edited.  The way I've been doing it is to just repeat the messed-up sentence and remove them later.  My lovely husband has offered to do the editing for me, but it takes a really long time for him, too, even though he's much better with the equipment than I am.  So I've asked OpenBookAudio if they do that sort of editing, and at what cost.  Worth asking, but I'm guessing it's probably more than I'm willing to spend.

There's also a question on my mind, of whether I should offer the audio as free podcasts until the audiobook is complete and for sale.  This could build interest and an audience, but I don't want to simultaneously offer my book for sale and for free.  So I could only do this if it's possible to delete the podcast once the audiobook is on Audible.  Something to look into.

Meanwhile, I've decided to continue querying a project that has been resting for about a year - it's a children's picture book I wrote about Nardugan, a celebration of the winter solstice, and the book is called The Solstice Dance.  I had some interest when I queried it to agents, but no bites.  I'm not even considering self-publishing this one, because the cost of self-publishing a picture book is prohibitive.  In addition, I'm not a great artist, so I'd prefer to have a real artist do the work.

I had a friend, who is an artist, do the artwork of three pages, and offered it when I queried, but I later learned that in fact it doesn't work that way.  You are either a writer who is paired with an illustrator by an agent or an editor, or you are an author-illustrator.  They don't seem to want you to find your own artist.  Unless you're famous, probably, but I'm not famous.  Rather than querying agents this time, I'm going to directly query small publishers.  I don't know how that works, either, but a few of them do accept unsolicited queries, so I'll try that once I've written myself a list of the publishers that might be interested.

So much to do, and so much fun!

Going International

An awesome blogger and prolific reader and reviewer in India has posted about my book on her blog: http://booksonmyshelves.blogspot.in/2012/05/secrets-of-summer-village.html.  As cool as that is, even cooler is that we have become "pen pals" for lack of a better word, with my book as the catalyst. 

My husband has his regular day job, and also has a side business selling fine wine over the internet.  I don't think we've made back the initial investment yet, but it's enriched our lives because it has helped us meet interesting people we wouldn't have otherwise met, and learn something new that we likely wouldn't have learned. 

The book seems to be life-enhancing in the same way.  Good reason to publish a book, and I'm not joking!

Blog Tour?

A blog tour is like a book tour or concert/album tour, except that the author doesn't actually have to leave her/his living room.  There are sites that organize blog tours for authors, but I haven't had the luck to "go" on one yet.  Instead, I'm slowly organizing guest posts for myself, finding blogs that are looking for guest bloggers via LinkedIn, MyBlogGuest.com, Twitter, and internet searches.  Reviews of my book are also trickling in. 

Today, I received links to my new blog guest post for an Australian writing website:
http://cutecopy.com.au/live-to-write/

as well as fabulous reviews on Goodreads:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/285433004

and on Flipkart (think: Indian Amazon.com):
http://www.flipkart.com/secrets-summer-village-1463740115/p/itmd3fjggzgudehf?pid=9781463740115
by a reviewer in India whom I have never met in person. 

It is exceptionally hard for authors to get publicity for their self-published books, no matter how great those books are.  The effort does not end when the book is finished - that's when the hard part actually begins.  Every single day, you've got to do something to get and keep your name out there.  I don't know if my random guest blogging can really be considered a "blog tour," but at the moment it's the closest I can get to one!

I am so grateful to all you out there are supporting me, by reading my book, by writing reviews, and by sharing my book with others!

Audiobook and book trailers

That's write, I'm recording one.  I could have paid thousands of dollars to have someone else do all the work.  Time is money and it does take a lot of time to make a DIY audiobook, but I am not willing to spend thousands of dollars when I can probably do a decent job myself.  There is a great company called Open Book Audio that can make the audiobook for you, OR take a book you recorded yourself and take care of the distribution on Audible, for a small cut.  They require that the recording be of a high quality and that the book be broken down into 30-minute segments.  That's what I'm up to right now.  It may seem like a piece of cake, but I am completely unfamiliar with the technical aspects of recorded sound.  As if that's not enough, it's really hard to read out loud without making mistakes, especially for 30 minutes!  My book has 28 chapters, and each one will take me approximately half an hour to read, half an hour to edit.  That will add up to 14 hours of reading and 14 hours of editing.  28 hours of work... And let's not forget that everything takes longer than we expect. 

So far, I've recorded one chapter.  After dealing with some major technical difficulties (take one: recorded chapter one, forgot to save it, program crashed, lost it. take two: program crashed when I tried to export the file to .wav format, figured out that Firefox and Pro Tools are not friends.  take three: tried to send the file to the nice, helpful Open Book Audio people, but it's way too huge to attach to e-mail, finally uploaded it to Dropbox), I've sent Open Book Audio the Dropbox link, and hope they'll be so kind as to let me know if the sound quality meets their quality standards.

In the meantime, I'm also working on creating a book trailer for YouTube.  Apparently, this is what all the cool authors are doing.  I am so cool.

Sailing new waters, friends!

Live to write

I don't live to write, nor do I write to live.  That is not what this post is about.  When giving advice about writing, many authors (including myself) say that it's important to read and to write.  What they so often forget is to remind us to live.  Without traveling, talking to friends and family, eating, loving, laughing, crying, fighting, getting sick and getting well again, agreeing and disagreeing, being too hot and too cold, we aren't living.  And without living, how will we have anything interesting to write about? 

So, what have I been doing for the past 10 days?  I've been living.  I haven't done any writing (though I cannot stop my writer brain from recording visions, smells, and sounds for future books...).  I feel refreshed and ready to start typing again.  Got writer's block?  Live a little in order to write.