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Friday, March 15, 2013
Just Two More Days to Win a Kindle and Other Prizes - Book Launch is Saturday March 16, 2013
Friday, March 8, 2013
Guest Post by Dianna T. Benson -- A Writer's Journey
Dianna T. Benson
When U.S. DEA Special Agent
Lelisa Desmond refuses to follow an order to bury evidence in a high profile
case, her superior hires a hit man to kill her deep in the ocean off Grand Cayman Island
With no one to trust, Lelisa enlists
Inspector Alec Dyer for help but learns she's his number one suspect in the
scuba diving homicide. She sets off on a daring mission to bring down the man
who ordered her execution. A man in a high position, with power friends. A man
who will stop at nothing to silence her forever in order to hide his son’s
crimes.
A Writer's Journey
In 1993, I started writing my first suspense novel. After
completing five novels, I signed with an agent in 2007. Six agents offered me
representation that spring; it was difficult to turn down the other five since
all of them are top-notch agents. In the fall of 2007, a film agent requested a
screenplay of The Hidden Son after reading the book. Just days before I
completed the script, I learned the film agent suddenly and recently retired
due to health issues. I never pursued anything further with the script.
In 2009 I was offered a four-book publishing contract in
mainstream, but soon after that my husband was diagnosed with cancer. I turned that
contract down to focus on our young family of five, and God carried all five of
us through the surgeries and radiation treatments.
I finaled in the Golden Palm in 2007, finaled in the
Daphne in 2010, double semi-finaled in the Genesis in spring 2011, and won the
Genesis September 2011. I switched agents January 2012. I signed a nine-book
publishing contract July 2012. My first book, The Hidden Son, released in print world-wide on March 1, 2013.
Starting in February 2012, for thirteen weeks I had a
pending contract offer from one of the largest traditional print publishing
houses. They made me an offer only three days after my new agent submitted my
work out. The entire editorial staff and the entire leadership team loved my
writing, but the business team was concerned their suspense list is already too
full.
The senior acquisitions editor drew up a matrix broken
down by genre of their release list for 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 (my books
included in it), proving to them they have room and finances for one more
suspense writer (me). Much to that editor's stunned shock, after thirteen weeks
the business team decided they can’t add another suspense author.
During this thirteen week timeframe, the senior acquisitions
editor thought it was just a matter of time before my contract finalized, so my
agent understandably let go of all the other interest in my writing. Soon after
those thirteen weeks with that publishing house, Ellechor Publishing House, a
small traditional print house, contacted me and asked me to submit my 2011
Genesis Winner, Illusion of Safety. A
few days after I did so, they offered me a nine-book contract.
The publishing industry today is not just about the
writing (not even close). A reputable agent won’t offer representation unless
he/she truly believes the writer has potential in today's market. Your
marketing platform needs to be an absolute stand-out. Example: I’m an EMT and a
Haz-Mat and FEMA Operative; I write suspense and medical thrillers.
However, even if you have a solid marketing platform,
there are other obstacles.
Two other large traditional print houses loved my writing
as well, but neither could offer me a contract only because they can’t have me
competing with their current authors who write the same genre I do.
A limited number of books every month are print-published
worldwide. Every traditional print house nowadays (large and small) is fighting
to stay in business, and it takes a ton of money to publish and market a book,
so the business team of any traditional print house needs to be convinced
spending tons of money on a debut author is profitable for them without
hindering any of their current authors.
Contest wins look great on a proposal, but in the end the
business side of a publishing house makes the final decision on contract offers,
and reality is unpublished writing contests have no relation to their current
lists, their financials, the market, sales, a writer’s platform, or what
constitutes as excellent and high profitable writing.
A little discouraging, but my hope here is to inform (not
discourage) as well as to focus on the positive.
The publishing industry is rough, but I think stand up
comedy is way harsher. When a comedian gets rejected (their act isn't going
well), they're on stage in front of a live audience—yikes.
Keep in mind, if you’re unable to land an agent and/or a
traditional print publishing contract, it doesn’t prove your writing is the
problem, so continue to believe in yourself as a writer.
Above all, if you love to write, then never stop writing.
God gave you a passion, so spend time on your passion and enjoy yourself! It
may not be all about the writing anymore in the industry, but it will always be
all about the writing to us writers.
*****
Dianna T. Benson is a 2011
Genesis Winner, a 2011 Genesis double Semi-Finalist, a 2010 Daphne de Maurier Finalist,
and a 2007 Golden Palm Finalist. In 2012, she signed a nine-book contract with
Ellechor Publishing House. Her first book, The
Hidden Son, released in print world-wide March 1, 2013.
After majoring in
communications and a ten-year career as a travel agent, Dianna left the travel
industry to earn her EMS degree. An EMT and a Haz-Mat and FEMA Operative since
2005, she loves the adrenaline rush of responding to medical emergencies and
helping people in need. Her suspense novels about adventurous characters thrown
into tremendous circumstances provide readers with a similar kind of rush.
Dianna lives in North Carolina
with her husband and their three athletic children.
Website: www.diannatbenson.com
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Friday, March 1, 2013
Fearless Friday! Meet Matthew R. Horn
Meet Matthew!
At the age of 14 Matthew began taking writing classes from none other than his own mother. Having a Master's in English, she wanted her children to be able to communicate properly with the written word. Of course, Matthew hated this. However, nearly twenty years later the lessons learned combined with the imagination born from sheer boredom have cultivated a desire to share his imaginings.
To better tell his adventure stories, Matthew began taking lessons in Martial Arts in 2011. Having achieved a Red Belt in Tae Kwan Do and having broken his nose during a sparring session, Matthew has a unique ability to combine his imagination with real-life experiences to tell stories in a way that are creative and adventurous, yet gritty and realistic.
In September of 2011 Brighton Publishing made Matthew's second book, The Good Fight, his first published novel. The sequel, Nothing Good, is Free is now out in eBook and will be released by
You can contact him clicking the "Email the Author" link from the homepage. You can also follow Matthew on both Facebook and Twitter.
The
Good Fight
ISBN
978-1-936587-04-9
About the Book:
Jeffery Scott had always made it on his own.
An unwanted child, Jeff spent his childhood being pushed from family members to
orphanages before finally ending up on the street, until one night, in an alley
behind a popular restaurant, Jeff’s life was saved by a dark suited vigilante.
Through the mask of the vigilante, Jeff found the courage he needed to change
his life, to get an education and become the person even his own family had
told him he could never become.
Sixteen
years later, Jeff is only a semester away from graduating from community
college. With his eyes on graduation, Jeff’s life once again crosses with the
dark suited vigilante. But this time, he learns the vigilante’s identity. Over
the next year, Jeff fights to discover the line between what he wants and what
he must do. His decisions will not only affect those he cares about, but will
also alter the course of his life.
Nothing Good is
Free
ISBN: 978-1-621830-37-5
Detective Martell of the Chicago Police
Department has a big problem on his hands when he discovers a connection
between a recent drug bust and a case he worked on in the ’80s. Not sure if he
can trust his peers, Martell goes to the one person he knows he can count on:
Jeff Scott.
Jeff has taken over as the city’s vigilante after Jim, his predecessor, was killed in a drug bust. Toward the end, Jim’s demeanor took a turn for the worse as he became more violent in his work and went after bigger thugs, which ultimately led to his untimely demise. The last thing Jeff wants is to let a life of violence get the better of him and end up like Jim. So, in a pursuit to avoid the same destiny as his mentor, he seeks the truth about Jim and the life he led before the two joined forces.
Jeff has taken over as the city’s vigilante after Jim, his predecessor, was killed in a drug bust. Toward the end, Jim’s demeanor took a turn for the worse as he became more violent in his work and went after bigger thugs, which ultimately led to his untimely demise. The last thing Jeff wants is to let a life of violence get the better of him and end up like Jim. So, in a pursuit to avoid the same destiny as his mentor, he seeks the truth about Jim and the life he led before the two joined forces.
Buy on Amazon
Buy on Barnes and Noble
Now for the interview:
Share
something not many people know about you:
In January of 2011, I joined the Blue Dragon Tae Kwan Do school in
order to learn a new skill, try something new, but also to learn the mechanics
of hand-to-hand combat to better write my adventure novels. This last December I took a punch to the face
while sparring and broke my nose. Having
now been through the surgery and almost fully recovered, I feel that I have
‘earned’ a unique viewpoint in how these fight scenes can be described. I would, however, not recommend anyone try
this at home.
Are you a “pet person” or prefer no
pets? I love animals and grew up with cats
in the home. However, my wife is
extremely allergic to pet dander and as such, my house is animal free.
Would
you rather travel or stay at home? Honestly, it depends on the last time
we went out. I love to read, and spend
time with my wife in the safety of our own home. However, we love to travel and have seen a
good deal of the country so far. We just
booked our first European trip as well.
Do
you read more or write more? I definitely read more than I
write. I try to read the Bible every
morning and I like to read fiction before I go to bed. My writing usually occurs when my wife and
child are napping.
Prefer cake or pie? I know I’m not helping by straddling the line, but if it’s a birthday, cake. If it’s a holiday meal, pie. I love’em both.
Would,
or do, ride a motorcycle or prefer to ride/drive a car? Finally
an easy one. I love motorcycles and have
two of them. My father taught me to ride
as his father taught him. I always ride
with full gear ie. helmet, leather coat, leather gloves, jeans, and boots.
Are
you happy or joyful? Joyful. I
know Jesus, how could I not be?
Do
you eat at home or eat out? I’m a routine guy so eating at home is
the most important thing. However, I
really love a good restaurant.
Listen
to music or prefer quiet? I enjoy music sometimes, but I
definitely prefer quiet.
Monday, February 25, 2013
Part I, What I Did Not Know About CreateSpace, by Lorilyn Roberts, and Part II, Comparing Lightning Source and CreateSpace, by Bruce Brodowski
PART I
WHAT I
DID NOT KNOW ABOUT CREATESPACE
By
Lorilyn Roberts
Lightning Source and CreateSpace
are the two leading companies that self-published authors use to publish books.
While the process of publishing with Lightning Source is more complicated and
time-consuming, the end result of publishing with CreateSpace may be different from
what you expect, particularly with their expanded distribution.
Recently I went to Books-A-Million
to see if they would be able to order one of my books for the bookstore. Since
the manager is someone I know – her mother is one of my best friends, she, of
course, wanted to know all about my new book. I asked her if it would be
possible for Books-A-Million to order my book Seventh Dimension – The Door either for the store or for a customer.
She looked up my book on the computer and found it on the Books-A-Million
website, but it showed that store delivery was not available. However, my book
could be ordered online by a customer as long as it was delivered to the
customer’s home.
The manager said they had gotten
around this issue before (a book being listed as “not store deliverable”) and
she would see what she could find out. When I came home, I called CreateSpace.
Their phone rep said their expanded distribution, which I paid extra for, was
done by Ingram. I would have to ask them why Books-A-Million didn’t have store
delivery availability. I went on the web and searched for Ingram. In an
epiphany moment, I got a live person (not a recording or computer) who was very
helpful (amazing things happen every once in a while).
This is what I discovered as one
of the major differences between CreateSpace and Lightning Source: CreateSpace
does not have returnability of books. In other words, if a bookstore were to
order 10 books and only five of them sold, the bookstore couldn’t return the
unsold books to CreateSpace. If that same bookstore ordered 10 books from
Lightning Source and only five sold, the bookstore could return the unsold
books to Lightning Source (if your contract is set up that way). Therefore,
it’s much easier to get bookstores to buy books from self-published authors who
publish with Lightning Source than with CreateSpace.
The CreateSpace rep also said that
with CreateSpace, you can open your own ebook store and give an additional
discount to bookstores. Another choice is for bookstores to set up their own
account with CreateSpace and then they could order books directly from CreateSpace.
However, I doubt that a major book chain would open a CreateSpace account to be
able to accommodate one customer who special-ordered one book. Also, CreateSpace
only gives a 25 percent discount to bookstores. Not awful, but not the best. When
I did my initial research between the two companies, no one explained these differences
between the two companies in terms that I understood.
I also noted on the CreateSpace
website, they make this statement:
We will determine how to handle Customer returns of Units, which
may include, without limitation (a) in the case of physical Units, placing the
returned copy of the Unit into inventory and reselling it to another Customer,
in which case we will have no obligation to pay you any Content License Royalty for
the resale of such Unit (because we paid, or will pay, you for the original
sale of such Unit); or (b) destroying the Unit and calculating amounts due to
you net of the Content License Royalty we
previously paid for the destroyed return. We reserve the right to prohibit
returns under any circumstances (or to impose any other restrictions on
returns) with respect to sales or rentals (if applicable) of electronically
formatted Units. If a Unit is returned and we have already paid you a Content License Royalty on
the returned Unit, we may offset the amount of the Content License Royalty we
previously paid you for that returned Unit against future Content License Royalty,
or require you to remit to us the amount of the Content License Royalty we
paid to you for the returned Unit.
Despite the fact this
paragraph makes it appear that CreateSpace allows for book returns, I checked with their representative
once again, and they do NOT have “returnability” of books. Period.
The Ingram representative said,
though, that you could get around this. She gave me an email address and I contacted
that Ingram person to see what I could do to make my books returnable with CreateSpace.
I wanted bookstores to be able to order Seventh
Dimension – The Door for a customer as a special order even if they weren’t
going to stock it.
I specifically asked this
question of CreateSpace before I decided to publish with them: “If a customer
walked into Barnes & Noble and requested my book, could the store purchase my
book for their customer?” I was told yes, with expanded distribution. THIS IS
NOT TRUE! Again, store delivery is not available through CreateSpace.
With Lightning Source, you
can. In fact, bookstores may even stock your books if they know they can
return your books if they don’t sell. I cancelled my expanded distribution with
CreateSpace and will be adding Lightning Source as one of my publishers for
books I want to sell outside of Amazon. I want any bookstore to be able to
order my book for one of their customers without having to set up a separate
account with CreateSpace. What bookstore is going to do that for one customer
for one book? Nada.
I understand from other
articles I have read on the web that Lightning Source will also distribute to
Amazon and I can’t limit that distribution to outside of Amazon. That means I
will have two detail pages and two sales rankings because I have a CreateSpace
ISBN for CreateSpace and a separate ISBN for Lightning Source. The biggest disadvantage
with that is when it comes to sales rankings. Instead of all sales being to one
ISBN number, they will go to two numbers. I suppose you have to choose which is
more important—sales ranking or availability of books to bookstores. It’s a
tough choice, but I think I’d rather go for book sales. I’d take money any day
over sales rankings, even though I know a higher sales ranking generates more
sales. But when you are at the bottom of the barrel, all you can do is go up, so
I figure I can’t lose, except not to do anything but limit my books to Amazon
distribution, which has been paltry at best as far as print book sales.
(As an update to the comments above, I later learned you can "retire" the ISBN number from Create Space and just use the ISBN number for Lightning Source and you can ask Amazon to add all the reviews from the Create Space ISBN version to the Lightning Source version before you retire the Create Space ISBN. I have since done this and resolved the issue).
(As an update to the comments above, I later learned you can "retire" the ISBN number from Create Space and just use the ISBN number for Lightning Source and you can ask Amazon to add all the reviews from the Create Space ISBN version to the Lightning Source version before you retire the Create Space ISBN. I have since done this and resolved the issue).
The above comments
were originally posted in a similar form on the John 3:16 Marketing Network
Forum and one of our members, Bruce Brodowski, posted some additional information.
For those who are still confused or uncertain about whether to use CreateSpace
or Lightning Source, here are his follow-up comments. He has published with
both CreateSpace and Lightning Source.
PART
II COMPARING LIGHTNING SOURCE AND CREATESPACE
by Bruce
Brodowski
1. LSI does not do business with authors. They only deal with publishers. That means you have to set yourself up as a publisher with a DBA (doing business as) legal name.
2. LSI ONLY accepts book covers on their templates. If you don't have a means to do that, (such as Indesign) then you have to hire it out. I hired out mine to Walt Shiel and now to Lisa Hainline.
3. Mainline bookstores do not shelve books of self-published authors. However, they will order them through LSI IF they get their normal discount of 40%. They require all books to be returnable; otherwise, they will not order them. This means that all books submitted to LSI must be set up at a 55% discount and returnable. Be careful! LSI gives you two choices:
Returnable and shipped to you—you get charged for the cost of the returned
book—OR you can make them returnable from the bookstore and then destroyed. I have since changed all of my books to make them returnable and destroyed to cut the cost of returning them to me.
4. If you establish an account with LSI, you need to fill out ALL of the forms necessary for ALL other countries. There are several.
5. The advantage of LSI is they own Ingram Distributors, which is the largest distributor in the world. This allows your book to be ordered from LSI to all bookstores in other countries.
6. You need to use you own ISBN. They are available through Bowkers.
7. LSI is better quality than CreateSpace BUT more expensive. Your cost per book is more than CreateSpace.
8. NEVER approve a book with LSI until one or two weeks after CreateSpace. Otherwise Amazon.com will use LSI INSTEAD of CreateSpace and you will make fewer royalties.
9. NEVER upload your interior pages to LSI UNTIL ALL MISTAKES ARE CORRECTED. Only upload the final version. I just made this mistake. I found grammar errors. I uploaded the revision. Then I found content errors.
I uploaded the revision. LSI nailed me for $40 for each revision. I just lost $80 and will have to sell 80 books to recover from that mistake. From now on, I will upload my books to CreateSpace first, order proof books, make revisions, and when I finally approve the PDF for CreateSpace, I will upload that PDF to LSI.
10. There is an upload cost for LSI. You get what you pay for.
11. Always order books for yourself from CreateSpace. They are cheaper. I am about to put an order in for 50 books. Always drop ship single copies of books through CreateSpace. Let them do the packaging and shipping and bill you for it.
I have now successfully published on CreateSpace with no upload cost and no revision cost. I am distributing only through two channels: Amazon.com and Amazon Europe. This is the main way of selling my books to the public. My books are being sold on ALL Amazon.com websites in all countries.
I do not use Expanded Distribution because I have an LSI account and I use my own ISBNs. There is a danger in using CreateSpace ISBN's as discussed in Charlotte at our last writers’ group meeting. If you use CreateSpace’s ISBNs, CreateSpace can do anything they want with your book. By using my own ISBN, they can’t. In my opinion, the Expanded Distribution is worthless.
To sum up, my book A Journey to Heaven is available online at Barnes and Noble because of my account with LSI. The bookstore in Meadville, PA, Tattered Corners, that is hosting Tammy's March 9 book signing was supplied 10 books that I drop shipped to the bookstore through a CreateSpace order. As of yesterday, the store is also able to order more books through LSI/Ingram and will do that at a 40% discount before the book signing. The book store Park Road Books (an Indie bookstore) in Charlotte, NC, has approved carrying A Journey to Heaven on consignment. I will order books through CreateSpace at my cost and supply them to that store. They will pay me 60% of the sales price of the book twice a year.
One other thing: I have a sales use tax license for NC and have had temporary licenses for other states in which I have sold. The only way around this is to have a bookstore run your books through their cash register during a book signing. They collect and pay the sales tax.
Borders did that for me as well as a sweet bookstore in Inlet, NY.
Phew, that is a lot to cover and I probably forgot some things. I hope this may help to clear up the differences between Lightning Source and CreateSpace.
You can contact Bruce Brodowski on his website at http://orphanheart.wordpress.comhttp://orphanheart.wordpress.com/
For another excellent article on this topic, visit: http://www.novelpublicity.com/2011/10/createspace-or-lightning-source-which-is-the-more-intelligent-choice-for-self-publishing/
To learn more about the John 3:16 Marketing Network, where information like this is shared daily, go to http://lorilynroberts.com/john_3_16_marketing_network.html
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