Copyright and other things

Copyright
Visit http://www.sitepronews.com/ to read a good article by Judith Kallos on internet copyright. It tells you what is and isn't kosher to do with web content and e-mails. It was interesting to know that you hold the copyrights to e-mails that you send and it is illegal for the recipient to forward, post, or print that e-mail and show it publicly in any way without your permission. That might be a good notice to include in the signature line of all your e-mails.

I just finished the Da Vinic Code and I thought it was truly horrible. The writing style wasn't even on parr with Nancy Drew books, and Mr. Brown did very shoddy research (his locations in Paris and London were wrong, and several of his "facts' were inaccurate). And yet the book is on all of the best seller lists and won the Booksense book of the year award. I guess there is no accounting for taste.

The Wall Street Journal reports that airport bookstores are considering buying new books back at 1/2 price after the flight is over. I wish they had done that on my flight back from London. I would've unloaded the Da Vinci Code in a second!Some good sites I've come across lately are :www.readerville.comhttp://bookangst.blogspot.com/Hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving!

E-mail queries

In today's information age, it feels foolish to mail queries to agents and then check your box each day for the reply. No one wants to wait weeks for a response. We want to know right now if Agent Joe Public thinks our book is brilliant. The same is true for freelance writers. It is much more efficient (and cheaper) to e-mail a magazine editor that to mail out a query and wait weeks before you can begin work on a story. More agents and editors are accepting e-mail queries, and after the Anthrax scares some publishers only accept e-mail. Before you send out that e-mail query, keep these things in mind:
1) Make sure the editor or agent accepts e-mail queries. This may sound obvious, but just because you can find their address online, it doesn't mean they will open you e-mail. Check their web site for the e-mail policy. Many agencies and organizations have a separate e-mail address for submissions.
2) E-mail queries are still business letters and should be treated as such. Put all of your contact information either in the top of the e-mail (centered or right hand corner) or below your name after the salutation. An easy way to remember this is to add your contact information into your e-mail signature. Don't use fancy fonts or wild colors, and no emoticons! Keep the font style, size, and color easy to read (yellow font on a green background can give agents and editors headaches and they will assume you are unprofessional).
3) Don't be long-winded. Queries are typically one page. You can get away with a little more in an e-mail, but not much more.
4) Don't put all caps or symbols in the subjects line. Your query might be mistaken for spam and could be sent to the trash folder. Simple titles like "Fee Charging Agents Query" is sufficient.
5) Remember that e-mails are time & date stamped communications that can be used in court. Don't claim to have endorsements from authors that have never heard of you or plagiarism other works. A query is a sales pitch, but it needs to be 100% true. Agents/editors could terminate a contract if you misrepresent yourself.
6) Don't send attachments until you are asked to. If you want to include a writing sample, paste it into the body of the e-mail (no more than 5 pages) . For a magazine editor, you can provide a link to your work online. It should be all in one place (not 10 different links) and easy to access. Literary agents are too busy to surf the web looking for your work. Either give a small sample in the e-mail or wait until they ask for more.
7) Some agents/editors will respond in the same day to a query. Make sure your novel is polished or your story idea is ready to go before you click send.

Once your query is ready to go, you can check out these sites for submission information:

For magazine writing--
http://www.magazinewriting.com/
www.assignmenteditor.com

For agent information--
http://www.aar-online.org/database.html
http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/

I'm back from my honeymoon

With the wedding and honeymoon behind me, I am back to the business of writing. And an e-mail from my agent reminded me that it is a business. My agent, the wonderful Lisa Silverman with PMA Lit & film management, sent me an e-mail from an editor at one of the major publishing houses. The editor expressed interest in my manuscript, and after she wrote how much she was enjoying the book, she asked if I had any author endorsements to get over "the first book hurdle". For a publisher, buying the manuscript of an unpublished author is like a school hiring a bus driver who has passed the driving test. The first book hurdle keeps many writers off the bookshelves (myself included) in today's tight economy. Nonfiction and magazine writing doesn't fall under this catch-22 as often as fiction writers, but no genre is immune. Fortunately, I do know published authors who are willing to give me a blurb, but that isn't enough. To show this editor that I can make it over that first book hurdle, I'm writing a marketing plan that will outline all the things I plan to do to promote my book. My blog and website (www.bookedandprintedsubjects.com) are a part of promoting my book and myself. I published the first (of many I hope!) article on writing in an online newsletter. The pay wasn't much, but the newsletter has 7,000 readers. I'm willing to be a panelist at writers conferences, have a booth at an arts festival in the town the book is set in, write articles for newspapers, do radio interviews, raffle of signed copies of the book for charity. Anything that will get my name and the title of my book out to people. When you start writing, all you want to do is create, but don't forget to be creative about how you sell your book because you will always be selling your book. First to an agent, then to a publisher, and if you are lucky to readers. (This weekend I am writing a treatment to pitch the screen rights to my husband's true crime book, so you still have to sell after you've won the readers!) Having a gimmick can't hurt (a marketing item that relates to your book) but don't let that define your writing or write you into a corner. Write the book you want to write, and let the market come into play when you start to pitch it. I'll let you know how it goes.

Book Review

"Guerrilla Marketing for Writers" by Jay Conrad Levinson, Rick Frishman, and Michael Larsen. $14.99 Writers Digest Books.
This book had been languishing on my shelf, bought in the hope that I would someday have a published book to promote. When I told my agent that I would write a marketing plan to include with the pitch letter, I dusted it off and started reading. "Guerrilla Marketing" is full of useful advice on how to sell your book. It also includes a list of the top 100 cities ranked by the number of books purchased there each year, and resource listings to help promote your book. No matter what kind of writing you do, the book offers ways to promote yourself and your work. The format is short chapters with bullets that include the type of promotion (radio interview, contests, charity donations) and what the promotion costs (free, low cost, expensive) so you can easily skip over parts that don't interest you and quickly locate essential information. Most of the promotions listed are free, and some even include you getting paid. If you want to market your work, or just read up on marketing in general, this is an effective, user-friendly guide to selling your book!

Resources for Writers

I am addicted to dictionaries and thesauri. Anytime I write, I have at least 2 reference books with me. My favorites are The Synonym Finder (J.I. Rodale, Warner Books 16.95) and the Flip Dictionary (Barbara Ann Kipfer, Writer's Digest Books $19.95). The Synonym Finder is a super thesaurus, listing more words per entry than a traditional thesaurus. Flip Dicttionary allows you to look up words by subject or concept when you don't know what the word means. If you look up hobby, it will have the technical names of several popular hobbies. If you look up football, it has a list of popular football plays and terms. In software, I had the program Word Menu (www.writersstore.com $34.95). It allows you to look up words by concept as well and has a unique oraginzation and subjects. You can download a demo of the product at the store's web site. The downside to this software was that it was a download only and you had to buy it each time you upgraded and bought a new computer, but now it is available on CD. The Writer's Store is a great site for writing supplies (but it focuses on screenwriting). And a new book for writers is The Oxford Thesarus for Writers. I haven't used this book, or even flipped through it, but Amazon is discounting it 32% right now and selling it for $27.20. If you sign up for their credit card (Christmas is coming!) you can buy it for $8.00. Here is Amazon's description:
This brand new thesaurus from Oxford, the most trusted name in reference, is the first to be developed by writers, for writers. In addition to the more than 300,000 synonyms and 10,000 antonyms found in the thesaurus, each of our distinguished editorial board members (including David Auburn, Michael Dirda, David Lehman, Stephin Merritt, Francine Prose, Zadie Smith, Jean Strouse, David Foster Wallace, and Simon Winchester) has contributed frank, funny, thoughtful, and, most of all, word-wise mini-essays on words that they particularly love, hate, admire, or are just plain puzzled by.
If you buy it and love it, let me know. I'm always looking for the next great reference book. For free options, www.dictionary.com has always worked well for me.

Book Review & Useful Links

Book review of “Writing the Breakout Novel” by Donald Maass
For the most part, this book is just more of the same. Maass doesn’t tell you anything insightful or especially helpful, but what sets this book apart from other writing reference books is its inclusion of subplot. When I needed to flesh out the subplots in my novel, I scoured the shelves at my local bookstores in search of something that would serve as a light in the darkness. Many books defined subplot, but this was the only one that gave tips on using subplots (how many, how they should relate to plot) that were helpful. If you are looking to expand your novel’s world beyond your main character, give the plotting chapters a read, otherwise you might find the advice Maass gives a little stale.

Here is the blurb for Maass’ book:
Writing the Breakout Novel by Don Maass ((c) Don Maass 2001, Writer's Digest Books, ISBN 0-89879-995-3) offers strategies for both first-time writers and mid-career novelists to take their prose to the next level and write the breakout novel.

Useful links:
http://www.writing4success.com/index.htm

Has a newsletter that includes tip sheets for writers (of fiction and nonfiction), informative articles, and lots of links.

www.writing.shawguides.com

This site lists writers conferences by date or state. A great resource.

www.everywriter.com

Lots of useful information for writers.

Fee Charging Agents (as printed in the 9/26 edition of Funds For Writers Newsletter)

Every writer wants an agent. They are the gatekeepers to the
publishing industry. Go to any major publisher's website and
somewhere on the page in bold print (and underlined twice just
in case you missed it) is the phrase "no unsolicited manuscripts."
And that's it--your "Great American Novel" is doomed to languish
in your desk drawer until you can land one of the great New York-
dwelling agents. It is that feeling of desperation that fee-
charging agents prey upon.

When it comes to agents, the old adage "you get what you pay
for" doesn't ring true. Reputable agents do not charge fees
for reading or representing your work. Reputable agents will
not refer you to a specific editor or editorial agency, nor will
they offer to edit your "promising manuscript" for a reasonable
fee. Fees and editing kickbacks violate the canon of ethics set
forth by The Associations of Authors' Representatives (AAR),
where member literary agents pledge "never to mislead, deceive,
dupe, defraud, or victimize their clients." Real agents earn
their living selling books--period. When I sent out a query
letter for my literary fiction novel, several high-profile agents
requested to read the manuscript. Some asked for manuscript
changes, others passed. None said they were so busy representing
their Pulitzer Prize winning authors that they needed compensation
for the time it would take to read my work. None of them suggested
that I pay them for their editorial comments.

Fee charging agents will send out apologetic letters or e-mails--
"Due to the highly competitive fiction market, we are forced to
charge a nominal reading fee…" or "we think your manuscript shows
great promise and would love to represent it, but we feel the
manuscript first needs to be polished. For $2000 our in-house
editor will…" They'll take your money and do nothing to sell
your book! The average agent gets thousands of query letters a
year. To make $100,000 per year, a fee-charging agent only has
to find 300 authors willing to pay their reading/representation
fee of $350 a year. And it can sound so fair; I mean who isn't
willing to pay $30 a month for the chance at publication? But
that's the catch. You won't get published. This agent has made
an easy six figures by doing nothing but responding to query
letters with a request for money. Why would they waste their time
taking lunches with editors and making phone calls to sell a book
when they could make more money staying at home and fleecing a
few more authors?

If an agent offers you a contract, do your homework. Go to
his website and read his client list and then verify that the
clients are legitimate. Visit the Association of Authors'
Representatives (AAR), Publishers Market Place, and Preditors &
Editors web pages and see if the agent has any documented sales
or has had complaints lodged against him. But the most important
thing you can do is believe in your work. Don't let flattery or
hard-sell tactics influence you to write out that check. Keep
sending out queries, keep writing, keep revising, and when someone
demands money up front—keep on walking.

The following sites provide free information literary agents
and scams:

The AAR Agent database
http://www.aar-online.org/database.html

Preditors & Editors l
http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/

FictionAddiction.Net
http://fictionaddiction.net/agentwatchdog.html

Publishers Market Place
www.publishersmarketplace.com

Writing for the Market

Many writers have trouble deciding what genre they write in. You know if your fiction or nonfiction, you may even know that you are romance or mystery, but are you gothic romance, cozy mystery, chic lit, or mainstream? Sometimes the lines blur and you can market the work in a few ways, but you are more likely to find an agent and/or publisher if your work can be clearly defined. I don't mean that you should copy other writers, I'm saying find out what elements make up a genre book and then decide if your book meets the criteria. Mystery is fairlyclear cut, you're either hard boiled, cozy, medical/forensics, cop, or PI (there are others), but what if you just write plain old fiction? Are you mainstream, commercial, or literary? Well, there is a way to make a distinction, and it is pretty low tech. Would your book be sold in an airport or grocery store book rack? If your answer is yes, then you are mainstream/commercial. If you think your book wouldn't be sold in those kinds of places, then you are more than likely literary fiction. There are other factors, how heavy is your book on characterization, plotting, themes, but the grocery store question usually gives you the most accurate answer. Publishers release books in 3 seasons: Spring, Summer, and Fall. Spring books are new writers and midlist writers with book that are usually meant for serious readers. Summer is for the grocery store kind of fiction. None of the summer books will get nominated for Pulitzers. They are meant to be read on the beach, on a plane, anywhere that you just want light entertainment. The fall books are the heavy hitters. The are the serious literary books or the well known writers (Stephen King and John Grisham have fall releases). The next time you are in your local bookstore, take a look at the new release table and see what books are similar to yours, or check the publishers catalogs for the next year. See how the books are promoted and what the ads are saying about them. This information will come in handy when you decide what genre to market your book in.

my blog, just elsewhere!

http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/BookedandPrintedSubjects/

It has the same information, and a less attractive format, but you might want to check out the site. You pay to join ($5.95 per month) BUT, if people read your blog, you get money! Your membership fee is divided up among the blogs you view. If Joe Blogger reads your blog 40% of the time, then you get 40% of Joe's monthly fee. If you are into blogging, it might be an easy way to earn a little money.

List of Writer's blogs

If you would like to read other blogs, Will's Domain has a list of blogs by subject. Here is the link the the writing blogs.

http://www.wilsdomain.com/blogs/writers-blogs.html