Merry Christmas

Just wishing everyone a Merry Christmas on this fine Wednesday afternoon.  My family is planning to go to my dads this year, all of us kids are here and we are going to do Christmas like we did when were kids, with our kids and parents.  Were sleeping over, playing games, eating home made chicken noodle soup and just having a blast.  I am really excited for it.
I don't what your traditions are, but I hope you guys have a blast doing everything, and hope you get to spend time with loved ones.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Visit from published author Cortney Pearson

Last night at our local NaNoWriMo meeting, we had a special appearance from self published author Cortney Pearson who talked to us about her journey to becoming published.  Here are some notes from her class. 

RNR- Redo and Resubmit, meaning they like what they have seen but they want certain things fixed.

Beta Readers- volunteers to read and review/edit if you ask them to on a certain subject like does everything connect, does the relationship fit?...

She went through an made pros and con lists for both traditional publishing and self publishing.

Traditional Publishing PROS:

Possible Advance

Printed books/ books on shelves

Editor invested in your story

Team of marketing and publicity experts

Have the repute  to be able to say I have representation from so and so…

Possible book tours/signings.

CONS:

Tons of waiting

Rejections

Split income with agents and publishers, publishers get the majority.

No say on cover

Agents have many clients and you get pushed aside

Despite marketing team, you still have to do your own marketing

Slow release schedule

If your book doesn’t do well, they can pull it from the shelf

More waiting

No guarantee that everything I write will get out there

Self publishing PROS:

Total control

Minimal waiting

A choice in cover design

Books will never go out of print

I can publish what I want

Once investment is made back, all money goes to me

Control over marketing

Control over price

I can publish whenever I want

Huger potential for making money-more lucrative

Time management

No more querying

Join the throng of published writers sooner and display books on my blog

Move forward with my writing career instead of doing the same thing I’ve been doing for years

Possibility of getting noticed by an agent should my books do well

CONS:

No books on store shelves

Pay to have editor/cover/marketing

No audio or foreign rights

No NYT bestseller list

No Agent-but I could

Venturing into the scary unknown

Time management

So all in all, there are more positives to self publishing than traditional, depending on who you are.  These lists are different for everyone.

She also noted that when you do start, have back up books so that you can publish one, right after the next, between a couple months between each, because depending on which company you went through for self publishing, your book stays at the top of the lists, if you publish your books within a window of 60 or 90 days.   

That goes the same with traditional publishing.  Whenever you do, they usually sign  you up for a 3 book contract anyways, which take a year each before they are officially published, and it will help keep the flow going.

The top best sellers right now are Romance, Paranormal, Thrillers and Mysteries.   So think of which genre your book fits in when you are publishing.  Her book Phobic is under horror, but she could have put it under thriller or paranormal.   

One of the downsides that are worth it in the end, to self publishing, is you have to foot the costs for anything, like editing, cover photo if you don’t do it yourself and so on. 

She had her cover done for her as well as editing, because no matter how good you yourself are at writing, you will always miss things, and it’s good to have a professional take a gander at it to make sure.

She published through CreateSpace, which for all those of you who have winner goodies from Nano, will be able to see a goodie code from them.  Take the opportunity to check them out.  Her books are a per demand publishing.  Meaning nothing is printed until it is bought.  So she doesn’t have to worry about any upfront costs just to get some inventory made for anyone who wants to buy her book.  She merely sits back and let’s CreateSpace worry about getting them printed.  Which is an ease for anyone. 

Her main job is marketing, and continuing to write her awesome books, which she already has one underway to be published in March.  We are so excited for her.  And we really appreciate her coming out and telling her story to us.    It was very helpful, and definitely helped me make some decisions for my future books.  I hope everyone else who attending enjoyed it and got something out of it.

Minecraft

I was on the look out for some awesome books and I came across this deal.  I wanted to put it out there for all to see, in case you were interested. 
Get this deal before it is gone.

Minecraft: The complete Handbook Collection

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0545685192/ref=as_li_qf_br_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0545685192&linkCode=as2&tag=authdesthamp-20&linkId=MXVVGW4PVNWYELMQ

Newest Cover Idea

The Ideas of both the cover photo and title have been put into surveys and displayed on Facebook.  It's a really good idea to use in finding which of your ideas would catch the audience.  Here are the newest versions of them, after getting a couple reviews from the ideas before.  I think they are cool, but I don't know which one I like the best.  Kind of hard when there are that many options.

 

 

 

It's Title Time

Hey, I'm working on my Title and I would love to get your help.  If you could please choose your two favorite titles out of the selections and post your answers in the comments below this post.  Which of these titles would catch your attention and get you to possibly rent, or buy the book  because of this title.  Thanks for your help.

A. Echo of Royalty
B. Hierarchy of Blood: Echo
C. To Be A Royal
D. Becoming a Royal
E. Vampire Royalty

Fun days

So I went to the Salt Lake Comic Con last weekend.  It was a blast.  We were only able to go to the Saturday part because my husband had already taken off too much time for work for this week to go hunting.  But seeing how it was our first time going, we were ok only going to one of the days to use it as a trial run.  Make sure we even enjoyed going.  It was a lot of fun.  We saw Danny Glover from afar along with a couple other stars.  I also save David Farland, Brandon Mull and a few local authors.  It was great seeing them out there promoting there works and being there to talk to there fans.  
Me and JD have decided to go back either next April or the next September.  There is also the Fantasy con in between we could go to.    We are into the dressing up and hanging with our fellow nerds type of people.  So everything was awesome to us.
I got some great photos of dressed up people and they were awesome.  I went as Bo from Lost Girl.  I even bought a little sword the size of a knife to add to the outfit.
It was a great trip.  Not only for the availability to see stars and meet fellow book writers, but also to just get some time away.  I'm one of those people who seriously need recharged sometimes.  Life gets overwhelming and it's nice to have some peace or shall I say, not the normal atmosphere.  No kids, no work, not house cleaning, no nothing. Just me, my husband and what ever we wanted to do.
There are some people out there that don't ever need that recharge.  They don't need to get away every now and again because they blend into there lives really well.  I blend into mine, kinda.
Sometimes people need to get away from the monotony.
So, if you have ever thought of going to a comic con of sorts, do it!  It is an experience you will not regret.  You get to meet many authors that are there putting out there work, and they do such a great job explaining there books being great hosts of there booths.  It'll be fun when it's my turn.

Another Day In The Neighborhood

So, I allowed myself to get involved in an argument on a facebook thread.  I shouldn't have let myself, but I do think I bowed out of the argument pretty well.  The thread was on a writers page.  There are tons of them on there that people can post questions, or advice and so forth to the writer community.  I tell ya, I felt like I was in High school all over again with the other people in the thread cheering on the rude person I was speaking with.  He was rude and had an attitude that he knew everything.  I don't not appreciate people like that.  When someone asks for help on a general forum, asking everyone and not one single person, that gives everyone the right to comment.  I posted my idea, and he responded rudely that it wasn't helpful at all and that the sentence the girl had asked for hadn't changed.  I got upset that he was rude.  Anyone who could read that could understand that it was rude.  If he wouldn't have said it the way he did, and asked it nicer there would have been no problem, I would have responded with my reasoning in kind.  But he was rude and I responded likewise.  
The point I am trying to beat around the bush with is this, there will always be a writer whether published or not, that will be rude, think they know more, and say something.  It's ok, kind of.  Just think of it as this.  There will always be mean people in the world that think they know better.  But if you always keep in mind that you know you aren't perfect, you aren't the smartest person in the world, that will help you along.  There is more peace in humility than there is in bigotry.    I hope that if you have an experience like that, you will remember this.  You aren't alone, no its not high school anymore, but there are still some who like to think so. 
Please have a good day, and keep your chin up.