Category: publishing

Bring wine, not a bullhorn

- Stacy

I’ve found all sorts of new people on Twitter to learn from. One is Chris Webb, Associate Publisher of Technology at John Wiley and Sons. I found his blog through his twitter. This post especially will be of interest to authors and anyone else seeking to reach readers through social media, a topic which of course we’ve discussed here in the past. It’s short and sweet, and I quote the most important part here:

It seems simple and obvious, but the statement is at the heart of what usually goes wrong for those who only view social media as another channel to send the same old messages. Y
ou need to be a part of the community, connecting, contributing and sharing and not just broadcasting about your product or service. If you do this, the opportunities to introduce people to your product or service will present themselves naturally. But you have to listen and watch for them as part of the ongoing conversation.

Note that what he says is actually from a larger webinar which he links to.

More catching up–Writing Excuses

- Stacy

Happy New Year! I’m spending the day doing absolutely nothing. I have so much to do–finish painting one corner of my office so I can reassemble the office and finally unpack all the books, and finally have a working workspace; fold laundry; read submissions; maybe even get some exercise in (boy, do I need some yoga after that snowshoeing the other day! so fun, but wow, does it make you sore!)–but today I’m ignoring it all and spending the day cuddled up with my kitties and catching up on things like Writing Excuses, the podcast about writing run by my friends Brandon, Howard, and Dan. They always have good informative things to say, but I just noticed that in particular they interviewed Brandon Mull way back several months ago about children’s literature.

It’s relatively basic–the things they
talk about are things that most of my readers would consider a given–but I think it’s a great place to point friends who are thinking about writing for children but don’t know the market at all, because they define children’s lit, discuss how content breaks down the age groups, book length, viewpoint, vocabulary needs, characterization, and other essentials to consider for someone new to the market.

If you haven’t listened to Writing Excuses before, check it out. You’ll be able to catch up pretty quickly–each podcast is only 15 minutes long, "because you’re in a hurry, and [they]’re not that smart."

Bio and Author Recommendations

- Stacy

Stacy Whitman specializes in fantasy and science fiction for children and young adults, and related genres. She spent three years as an editor for Mirrorstone, the children’s and young adult imprint of Wizards of the Coast in Seattle. She holds a master’s degree in children’s literature from Simmons College. Before that, she edited elementary school textbooks at Houghton Mifflin and interned at the Horn Book, as well as a brief stint as a bookseller. Stacy edited such favorite fantasy titles for children and young adults as the highly acclaimed YA series Hallowmere, the middle grade fantasy adventure series that debuted with Red Dragon Codex, and The New York Times best-selling picture book A Practical Guide to Monsters.

 

Stacy provides all phases of editorial services to publishers, including developmental editing, line editing, copyediting, and proofreading. Contact her at stacylwhitman AT gmail DOT com to discuss projects.

 

Stacy’s middle grade and young adult novel critique and editorial services for individual writers come in two sizes:

 

·         Critique of the cover letter/query and first three chapters from your finished manuscript, giving an editor’s point of view on the strengths of the first impression. Service includes comments on her impressions of the story from the first three chapters and how the beginning hooks the editor, including suggestions for improvement. This usually takes about an hour of her time.

·         Developmental edit of the full manuscript, including an editorial letter to suggest improvements in plot, character, pacing, voice, audience, and any other areas in need of improvement. Comments will also be noted in the manuscript itself. The time this takes varies from manuscript to manuscript. Email to discuss particulars.

 

 

The cost of these services are based on her rate of $50 an hour, with a minimum of one hour. Contact her at stacylwhitman AT gmail DOT com to discuss your project.

 

Special discount For returning clients who want a full developmental edit, a $50 discount off the cost of the edit. Ask me for more information.

 

****Individual consults on queries, chapters, and manuscripts are for manuscripts that are already finished. If you have more general questions, I’m always glad to answer them here on the blog as time permits, but for questions specific to your manuscript, you’ll get the most out of my advice if you’ve finished your book first. Note that this specific advice is a paid service, but if you have a general question that would be of use to
all blog readers, by all means ask away and I’ll post an answer for all to see.

 

 

 

“Stacy was my very first editor, and I really couldn’t have asked for a better person to induct me into the world of publishing. It felt more like the book was a collaboration of ours rather than a tug-of-war as can so often be the case. I’ll always be grateful for her nurturing honesty and excellent editorial eye.”

—Tiffany Trent

In the Serpent’s Coils

By Venom’s Sweet Sting

Between Golden Jaws

 

“I highly recommend Stacy. She’s a pro you can count on for good, solid advice, and she’ll help you bring out the best in your manuscript.”

—Printz Honor author Amanda M. Jenkins

Queen of the Masquerade

 < /p>

“Stacy Whitman not only has a keen eye for editing, but has a deep understanding of the children’s market. I know this for a fact, since she was instrumental in helping me sell my first children’s book.”

—Brandon Sanderson

Elantris

Mistborn trilogy

Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians

Wheel of Time: A Memory of Light (with Robert Jordan)


“Stacy was my first editor, and I feel very lucky to have worked with someone who understands my writing so well. She has a knack for seeing the true story inside a manuscript and helping an author bring that story up to its highest potential. She is a great communicator, and is positive and enthusiastic to work with. I am grateful that I got to work with her and hope to continue to work with her far into the future.”

—Rebecca Shelley, writing as R.D. Henham

Red Dragon Codex

Brass Dragon Codex

 

 

“Stacy’s editorial work on my book was nothing short of brilliant, and I have no doubt whatsoever it never would’ve reached publication without her. I’ll forever be in her debt.”

—James Dashner

The Maze Runner

The 13th Reality

 

 

“As an editor, Stacy has a clear vision of the potential of a story and its characters as well as the talent to bring out the best in a writer. She is committed to her writers, her advice is open for discussion, and she has an intuitive feel for where the writer wants to go with the story. I enjoyed working with her and hope to do so again in the future.”

—Angelika Ranger

Maiden of the Wolf

 

“Stacy Whitman is an excellent editor. Her feedback is invaluable, and her ability to look at a book both as a whole and as individual scenes is exceptional. She places each moment in the manuscript within the overall plot, and her commentary not only helps the moment; it does wonders for the whole. She’s enthusiastic, easy to work with, and brings a great deal to any project she works on. I’m grateful for the times I’ve worked with her, and look forward to doing so often in the future!”

—R
ee Soesbee

Black Dragon Codex

The Elidor Trilogy

Elements Trilogy

 

“The best friend a manuscript ever had is a good editor. If you’re like me, you can get too close to the material to see where you’ve missed things. I worked with Stacy on Wizard’s Return, my third YA book for Mirrorstone. She worked with me to fill in some gaps in the character arcs and to focus the story as a whole. I can say without reservation that she made it easy for me to take my work from good to great. Stacy is easy to work with, throughly professional, and highly skilled. Your manuscript deserves her as its editor.”

—Dan Willis

Wizard’s Return

Dragon Well

Dragon Spell

 

“Stacy was the first editor I ever worked with and I now consider myself spoiled for future books. She kept a perfect balance between criticism and praise, and I improved greatly as a writer because of her comments. She was always available when I had questions about everything from basic plot to author appearances. Bronze Dragon Codex would not be the book that it is without her, and I can never thank her enough.”

 

—Amie Rose Rotruck < /p>

Bronze Dragon Codex

 

 

An announcement, of sorts

- Stacy

I was recently asked to the LDS Storymakers Writers Conference as a guest editor. If you’re LDS or interested in the LDS writing world (including as an LDS author writing for the national market), I hear it’s an excellent conference. (This one will be my first.) As you’ll see from the link I just noted above, my bio says that I was formerly with Mirrorstone (which we all know) and that I now consult for Tor (which few have known up to this point).

I’ve postponed announcing the news on this blog because I’m still working on contracting my first book, so I didn’t want to announce anything prematurely, but since it was okay to say so for the conference, I’ll go ahead and let you know here, too: I am looking for books to acquire as a consulting editor for Tor’s children’s book lines (Starscape, Tor Teen, etc.). This just means that I will acquire books on a freelance basis rather than in-house, though the duties are pretty much the same. Tor has a lot of editors who work with them in a consulting capacity, and it seems to be a pretty successful model for them.

Right now I am not open to unagented submissions unless I’ve had previous contact with you through a conference or a submission at Mirrorstone where I asked for a full manuscript (or a revision of that full manuscript). I’m just getting started, and I want to be sure that I keep the field narrow for the moment. As time goes on and if this freelancing continues to succeed, then I will open up to more unagented submissions. So if you’re LDS and can make it to Storymakers, the conference might be a good place for you to come and meet me!

I don’t have submission guidelines yet, but as time goes on I will post them here. I will continue to run my critiques as a separate business for the foreseeable future, as well.

Here’s hoping that the snow (snooooow, ooooooh!) will let up enough for the roads, and be well and good deep everywhere else! I personally think that sometime in the future, someone should invent something that funnels all the snow to just where we want it, thus eliminating the mess and slush in the street and on the sidewalk. Pretty, perfect snow everywhere you look–except for the road! 🙂

Further back in the not-so-way-back machine…

- Stacy

This link is over a month old, and but Booksquare’s Kassia Krozser speaks directly to what we were discussing a couple weeks ago about reaching our readers through online efforts.

Specifically, Kassia is talking about social networking vs. viral marketing. Our teen readers and their little siblings are as much naturals at the social networking thing as my generation of kids was at picking up Pong and the Apple IIe. It makes sense to them, having these kinds of conversations about whatever strikes their fancy–including books. And they’re savvy enough to know their spam from their real conversations. As she notes, readers don’t want to rehash the cover copy. Despite the seeming shallowness of online communication–it’s rather short and swift, after all–the depth that can come from these short conversations goes far beyond a sound bite.

So how does a publisher or an author start a conversation with teens via
social networking?

One thing I’ve found is that as I network on Facebook and Livejournal, this very blog, with adults who are social-networking savvy, the word of mouth of something that is of genuine interest to those I talk to gets passed on. We all know how fast a meme can spread, how linkage gets passed from one blog to the next. Right now there’s a list of science fiction and fantasy reviewers that’s being passed from blog to blog so one blogger can index all the reviewers out there, and it spread like wildfire–I’ve seen it on Wands and Worlds (I think?), Gwenda Bond (maybe? aw, it was somebody on my friends’ list feeds!), and several other blogs, who saw it on blogs I’ve probably never seen, etc.

Those adults will be read by the teens they know, who, if they find the conversation interesting, will share with their friends. Obvious, I know, but my point being that I think it starts there–friending libraries on MySpace and making sure they know about local booksignings through social networking, friending libraries on Facebook if they’ve gotten that far (I haven’t started looking for libraries on Facebook, so if you know if they’ve gotten into that the way they have MySpace, let me know; personally, I find MySpace annoying and rarely check in on it). Teen librarians are great at passing the word on to their teens about events and information that is interesting and useful to their particular community.

Also, I find that often authors themselves have more interesting conversation starters than publishers do, because they have a personal connection to the material that the on-message publishers don’t. This isn’t a bad thing! It’s just that it demonstrates the importance of the author’s efforts in reaching readers via social networking, because they can do what a publisher or even individual editor often can’t: offer that personal perspective, the behind-the-scenes look into the head of the creator that readers will find fascinating. It’s like seeing the making-of video, all those extras on the Lord of the Rings DVDs.

Anyway, just go read the post, because she has a lot more to say on it than I do. Go!
 

And then there’s the writing end of things…

- Stacy

James Owen just pointed me in the direction of his post from a few days ago, A Career as a Novelist–In Layman’s Terms, a metaphor which those of you who are still in the throes of writing your first book will sympathize with–and those of you with published books will probably have experience with in the way James does. I read it in quick passing and was nodding the whole way through, and in taking a second look I thought perhaps others might nod as much as me. And if you aren’t nodding from prior knowledge, let this be a lesson: writing is work. Getting that writing contracted to be published is more work. And then, you have an editor that you work with
(muahahaha), and then there’s the work of marketing. It’s almost like, I dunno, a real job.

And of course, thinking of the whole process in terms of The Fellowship of the Ring makes it even more interesting. 🙂

Also related, over at , Seanan McGuire discusses the timeline of a book–which involves a lot of work, and a lot of waiting. Great reading.

More on marketing

- Stacy

I’m afraid that even before I left Mirrorstone, I wasn’t reading my friends page daily, because there are just so many things to keep track of, and if even half of my 73 friends were to post daily, that’d be a lot of reading. But I really want to know what everyone is up to, so I’ve been going back into the archives to play a little catch-up.
Almost a good week ago now, Agent Kristin posted about the book launch party of a client of hers, who happens to also be a TV producer in New York City. Marianne Mancusi then lists several really great tips for authors for their own book launch parties. Remember our discussion about marketing your book? She has some great tips for announcing your launch with an email blast inviting pretty much everyone you know, whether they’d be able to make it or not, to your book launch. Not to mention a
whole pageful of other great tips. Here’s a small taste:

Consider co-hosting the party with another author. One, it’s more fun to plan a party with a partner and two it takes off some of the hosting pressure the night of. You can also potentially double the guest list, increase networking opportunities, and introduce a whole new audience for your books and theirs.
…
Follow up. Over the next week, email your guests and thank them for coming. Especially the new people you met at the party. If you have a photo with them in it, send it with the email. And speaking of photos – upload them right away and put them on your blog, MySpace, Facebook, whatever. People who attended want to see themselves and people who didn’t get to go want to live vicariously. But you lose your momentum if you wait a few days.

Her tips on venues, invitations, gift bags, working the room, and so on are spot on, and she’s got some really creative suggestions that could bring the price of a launch party down for authors, who usually don’t have piles of cash sitting around.
I would also add that if you’re publishing a book for teens or kids, to think about adapting her tips to a kid-friendly environment and to invite readers in your target age group–even if it’s just all the kids you know. Or perhaps to do an adult-centric launch plus a teen-friendly launch. The goodie bag idea could be targeted for teens with just a little tweaking: items like free introductory yoga classes and self-tanning lotion would transfer well. You could probably get local sports and recreation outlets to include a coupon, not to mention local teen-centric outlets at the mall. You could also think about offering up a gift card to a local shop for a nominal amount as a drawing for those who attend (and might be able to get that local shop to sponsor it). By focusing on teen readers, getting teens (or kids) to read, and combining that with any local appeal your book might have, or topical interest, you’ll be able to create a fun, unique event with some media appeal. I’m thinking particularly of the Percy Jackson parties that were thrown at local bookstores before the Percy Jackson books were really big–I saw news reports of the author getting kids involved because of their interest in Greek myths.
So go check out her post, and see if you can find ways to adapt her tips to your own book!

On buying books: hardcover vs. paperback

- Stacy

Cherie Priest posted today about her new release–happy book birthday, ! Her post relates to several things I’ve been hearing lately, so I thought I’d put them all together in one goulash of a post.
Laurie Halse Anderson () and other authors are encouraging people to give books for Christmas and other holiday gifts. As their graphic says, books are "Longer lasting than a fruitcake, cheaper than a flat screen, and more fun than a partridge in a pear tree." Consider in your holiday gift-giving to give books.
As you’re considering this, I’d also like to point out that a lot of authors are having a hard time this time of year. Sales dropping off directly affects their income, and many authors have to cut back on things like health insurance, home repairs, and other vital necessities. Scalzi has posted a fundraiser for one such author who was in danger of losing her house–thankfully, people banded together and raised enough money not only for her mortgage payment, but also to help fix her sewer system, which was badly in need of repair. (People are so good to each other in hard times! I recognize that’s not always the case, but when it is, it’s amazing.)
So when you go off to buy a book, seriously consider whether you can fit a hardcover book (or two or three or more) into your budget. Hardcovers are often the place that publishers judge an author’s sales, not to mention that sales within the first few week’s of a hardcover book’s lifetime will determine whether that book stays on chain bookstores’ shelves–which determines whether that author will earn out their advance, be able to pay the bills, etc. etc.
If all you can afford is a paperback or checking the book out from the library, that’s okay. Most authors I talk to would rather have someone read their book than not! But if you do have the money in your budget and would like to support the author being able to write more books, think about getting the hardcover.
For more information on how a hardcover vs. a paperback affects an author’s bottom line, see Brandon Sanderson’s post on the subject. A small sampling:

Well, lets look at the 20,000 people up above who bought that paperback book. If half of them checked it out at the library, and the other half bought the book from Amazon in hardback, the hardback would sell 10,000 copies. (And libraries would order more, but that’s another story.)
Anyway, assuming the royalty for that hardback jumps up at 5000, those same twenty thousand readers have spent roughly the same amount of money as they otherwise would have, yet they would have paid the author $28,000 instead of $10,000. Plus, instead of two worn paperbacks, they have a very nice hardback that will last them for a while. 28k isn’t a huge amount of money, particularly once agent fees and taxes come out, but it’s the beginning of a livable income. Add on some foreign sales, and things start to look bright–particularly for a writer, who is likely doing what he or she loves to do.

Note that Brandon uses some simplified numbers, and doesn’t take into account that publishers *do* give bulk purchasers like Amazon a discount (though they still pay the author the same royalty)–oftentimes, independents can buy a book off Amazon for cheaper than they can get it from the publisher–but he makes some good points. This is where Indiebound comes in–getting a hardcover
from the independents supports a much more sustainable business model, in stores where you can find salespeople who actually know the books they’re selling. But that’s another discussion altogether, and I digress.
Anyway, just some food for thought about possibly making our money stretch further and supporting the artists who make the books we love at the same time.

Let’s play the Glad Game

- Stacy

I wouldn’t really describe myself as an optimist, but I’m not pessimist, either. Tonight I was on a nostalgia trip, and TCM obliged me with both The Parent Trap and Pollyanna. And I think that we can all learn something from Pollyanna, learning to look for the things to be glad about when you’re in a situation that might not be so happy.
So, publishing friends, let’s play the Glad Game! What good news is there as we approach some troubled times? I have a lot of things to be happy about personally, but I think that there’s a lot of good out there professionally too. For example, look at how many teens are out there passionate about reading. Retail sales may be down overall, but ours isn’t the only industry dealing with that, and being able to interact with the teens I know (and the cousins who are on the verge of leaving their teens) and see how passionate they are about the books they’re reading makes me remember that this is why I’m in this business.
Sales make sure I have a job, that’s for sure (and that can be read ironically right now, since I don’t have a full-time job, but even
so…) but none of us got into this business for the money. The money just makes sure that we can get the right books into the hands of kids and teens to get them excited about stories and reading.
What do you have to be glad about?