FundsforWriters - August 11, 2017 - The Bookstore versus Amazon

Published: Fri, 08/11/17

Volume 17, Issue 32 | AUGUST 11, 2017

Message from the Editor

Slept very little last night. I usually go to bed with a chapter, scene, or book idea in my head, ponder it until I go to sleep, then wake up with great ideas. Not 100 percent in results, but some days it's remarkable.

Problem is last night I went to bed WANTING to think about the Chapter 22 in my current WIP and wound up with a whole new book in mind. All - night - long. The ideas came and went, grew and shifted, to the point this morning I had to write it all down.

I'm a big believer in letting the subconscious work for you. The thing is, however, that you have to forget all the other crap. No thinking about your chore list, or what to wear, or how you hate your mother-in-law, or the fight with your sister. Nope. It's all about what you are writing.

It does not replace the writing, but it sure can give you phenomenally great new ideas for your stories. I am twenty years proof positive of it.

Sweet dreams!

C. Hope Clark
Editor, FundsforWriters
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SPONSOR OF THE WEEK

Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest

http://winningwriters.com/tompoetry15th year. $4,000 in cash prizes, including $1,500 for a poem in any style and $1,500 for a poem that rhymes or has a traditional style. Both published and unpublished work accepted. All entries that win cash prizes will be published on WinningWriters.com. Entry fee is $12 per poem. Each poem may have up to 250 lines. Submit by September 30. Winning Writers is one of "101 Best Websites for Writers" (Writer's Digest). See guidelines, past winners, and enter online via Submittable at winningwriters.com/tompoetry

Editor’s THOUGHTS

THE BOOKSTORE VERSUS AMAZON

There are readers who like bookstores and readers who prefer Amazon. Pitting them against each other is like telling people they ought to like Coca Cola over Pepsi. They have their reasons, and you won't change them.

Most of the time.

“If the bookshops are good enough, if the relationship with your customers is truly there, if your booksellers are enjoying themselves and you’ve trained them and you’ve respected them and you’ve allowed them to develop their skills… then our customers truly will remain loyal to us.” ~James Daunt, managing director of Waterstones, at the 2017 Australian Booksellers Association’s annual conference in Melbourne

But sometimes bookstore employees forget. Sometimes they let their personal feelings float to the surface, and therein lies a key reason people go to Amazon versus a bookstore . . . to purchase a book of choice in a nonjudgmental atmosphere. They want to feel the store is benign, much like a doctor who treats anyone, regardless of who they are or what disease they have. Take away that safe feeling , and both a bookstore and a doctor loses credibility . . . and business.

I love the blog, The Passive Voice. Recently, PG (the blogger) wrote about a bookstore worker who struggled with store visitors when they asked about or purchased books that the worker did not believe in. PG mentioned in the end that readers "prefer a judgment-free zone like Amazon over a meatspace retail with a side of attitude." http://www.thepassivevoice.com/2017/07/a-booksellers-elegy/

I would like to take bookstore consideration one step further. How does a bookstore treat an author? Whether a fledgling indie author or a New York Times best selling author ten times over, the human is still there. And any writer is a rabid reader, with word-of-mouth power. And a small-time local author will tout that small-town indie bookstore much louder than that big-town author who flew in and out.

Without a doubt, bookstores prefer best-selling authors for sales. But there are ways of delivering the message when a bookstore can only purchase so many books or house so many signings, and a smart bookstore owner would benefit by being strategically kind to all. For instance, I cannot help but recall the bad experiences I've had with bookstores, and in my hectic schedule, just don't care to revisit those stores even with seven novels under my belt. Which means I do not refer people to them, either.

A lot of this attitude concerning bookstores explains a lot. At a bookstore, we find atmosphere and personality . . . but is it the personality you want? At Amazon, we find the widest selection of books and a market that doesn't judge. Bookstore owner...love everyone who comes in the door and respect their choices. Let them know they are cherished individuals, and you'll do anything to make them happy. They'll love you back, I promise.

Hope's Appearances

--September 12 - 1PM - Mark Dawson Podcast Self-Publishing Formula

--September 24 - 7PM - The Writers Chatroom with Hope

--November 3-5, 2017 - Independent Writers Conference - Philadelphia, PA - and guess who is one of the presenters! I'd love to meet a herd of FundsforWriters followers while I'm there. Check it out.

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WORDS OF SUCCESS

It is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.

- Brother David Steindl-Rast

Success Story

If you've had a success as a result of reading FundsforWriters, please let us know. We want to share it with our readers!!! Be sure to include a website or blog address. Email to hope@chopeclark.com

How to Format an Ebook for Kindle

by Katherine Mayfield

Congratulations! You’ve finished your book. If you’ve polished your manuscript and had it edited, you’re ready to publish on Kindle. Not much in life is free anymore, but publishing a Kindle book is. You can format a Kindle book yourself and upload it to Amazon for no charge. Here’s how.

By the way, the less manuscript formatting you do, the better it will look. Graphic images sometimes do not survive uploading. Use a tildy (~) or three stars (* * *) to break up text instead of a Wingding.

•First, SAVE your manuscript as a new doc so you’ll have a copy of the original. You won’t be able to use the Kindle version for anything else once you’re done.

•Margins should be around .5 top and bottom, .8 for left and right margins.

•Don’t use more than three or four line spaces to separate text—more than that can cause text to break to a new page on smaller readers such as i-Phones.

•Use font sizes of 16pt or smaller—a title with a lot of text can easily run over to a second line.

•Be sure to include a title page and brief copyright notice.

•Marketing tip: If you’ve written other books, you can include them on an “Also by [your name]” page, with clickable links (just make them hyperlinks in your manuscript). Also, put your author bio at the end.

•Option: you can make the chapter titles in the Table of Contents into clickable links by making each chapter title a “Heading 1” (select the title and click on “Heading 1” on the toolbar—modify the style if needed) and then creating the Table of Contents after that (under the “Reference” tab).

•Don’t include page numbers or page breaks—just let the text run on. Otherwise, the finished product will be a mess! You can, however, insert page breaks at the end of chapters.

•Don’t add headers or footers.

•Amazon usually indents paragraphs during formatting, so I suggest not adding any. But they sometimes change their process. If your final uploaded version doesn’t show indents, .3 is a good indent for paragraphs.

•Include a line space between each paragraph for a little more “white space.” Also, shorter paragraphs are more visually appealing on a Kindle reader or i-Phone than longer ones.

When you’ve finished formatting (and spellchecking!), save the file so you have a final copy for Kindle, then save it again TO A DIFFERENT FOLDER as “Web Page, filtered.” If you don’t save it to a different folder, Word will automatically transform the doc you just worked on into the html file, and then you won’t have the original (which you might like to use to create an EPUB version or PDF later).

Then page through the html file to make sure it looks okay (use the Paragraph tool on the toolbar to check the number of line breaks between paragraphs). Go to Amazon’s Bookshelf (https://kdp.amazon.com), click on “Create a New Title,” and follow the instructions to upload the book. You can also use the Cover Creator tool to create a cover at that point.

After you upload the interior of the book, BE SURE TO PREVIEW IT using the Amazon previewer. There will probably be errors, and readers who write book reviews on Amazon are not always kind about typos or formatting errors in the books they read (this is why editing is so important). You can fix and re-upload it as many times as you need to in order to make it perfect. Remember, you’re creating your reputation as a writer with every book you publish.

Best of luck! And Happy Writing!

BIO
Katherine Mayfield is the author of the award-winning memoir, The Box of Daughter, and a number of books on coping with emotional trauma and bullying in the family, at school, and at work (www.katherine-mayfield.com). She teaches memoir writing online, is a book editor and formatter, and helps bloggers create books from their blogs. She blogs on dysfunctional families on her website, www.TheBoxofDaughter.com.

COmpetitions

ENCHANTING TRAVELS TRAVEL WRITER AWARD
https://www.enchantingtravels.com/enchanting-travels-travel-writer-award/
NO ENTRY FEE. Deadline August 31, 2017. Enchanting Travels offers custom, tailor-made journeys to 32 destinations in Africa, South America, Asia and India. To celebrate the fascinating stories that can only be experienced when one travels, we award the Enchanting Travels Travel Writer Grant. The winner receives USD$1,000, as well as the opportunity to take up an internship or write your thesis at Enchanting Travels. Any student aged between 18 to 32 years who is studying any of the following subject themes, or similar: Tourism, English, Journalism, Literature, Geography, Anthropology, History. A jury of our own travel experts will choose the 10 best submissions, and the winner will be determined by online voting on the Enchanting Travels Facebook page.

MSLEXIA NOVEL COMPETITION
https://mslexia.co.uk/products/competition_entry_fee/womens-novel-competition-2017/
£25 ENTRY FEE. Deadline September 18, 2017. The competition is open to women of any nationality from any country, and welcomes 5,000 word extracts of completed, unpublished novels of at least 50,000 words in length (not including the title). As well as the top prize of £5,000, the winner and four finalists will receive manuscript feedback and introductions to agents and editors at a special event held in London. Novels must be for adult or young adult readers; non-fiction or fiction for children under 13 is not eligible.

THIRTY POEMS FOR SAN ANTONIO'S FIRST 300 YEARS
http://geminiink.org/30-poems/
NO ENTRY FEE. Deadline August 15, 2017. The contest will be judged by a panel of nationally recognized poets. Winners receive a $250 prize and publication in a chapbook titled, Thirty Poems for the Tricentennial: A Poetic Legacy. Winning poems will be turned into graphically designed vinyl installations by local artists and designers in an exhibit at the Plaza de Armas Gallery and installed in local libraries and city facilities. The anthology will be launched at a public reading and opening reception. Contestants may submit up to three unpublished poems (75 lines max each) in any style. Poems in English and Spanish are welcome.

THE LARRY BROWN SHORT STORY AWARD
https://pitheadchapel.com/the-larry-brown-short-story-award/
$10 ENTRY FEE. Deadline October 31, 2017. Submit a short story less than 4,000 words. First place $250, second place $75, third place $25.

GRANTS

NEBRASKA FELLOWSHIPS
http://www.artscouncil.nebraska.gov/grants/grant-categories/individual-artist-fellowships.html
Deadline November 15, 2017. The Individual Artist Fellowship program recognizes exemplary work by Nebraska artists and provides support through public recognition and monetary awards of $1,000 to $5,000. Applicants are adjudicated by a professional, out-of-state panel according to the merit of their work. The program rotates annually, highlighting different artistic disciplines each year. The upcoming Award Cycle is for Literature.

FELLOWSHIPS AND SCHOLARSHIPS - ECKERD COLLEGE WRITER'S CONFERENCE: WRITERS IN PARADISE
http://www.writersinparadise.com
Deadline November 15, 2017. Writers in Paradise 2018 is now accepting submissions for workshops in fiction, nonfiction and poetry with Andre Dubus III, Stewart O'Nan, Ann Hood, Laura Lippman, Les Standiford, Major Jackson, Sterling Watson, Laura McCaffrey and Lan Samantha Chang (for a special three-day short fiction workshop). We offer more than 30 different fellowships and scholarships on a competitive basis. Located on the coast of the picturesque Boca Ciega Bay in St. Petersburg, Florida, Writers in Paradise offers an intimate eight-day experience of workshop classes, roundtables, panel discussions, Q&As, readings, book signings, and receptions with our award-winning faculty and guest speakers. The conference will take place January 13-20, 2018.

AMY LOWELL POETRY TRAVEL SCHOLARSHIP
http://www.amylowell.org/applicationInstruct.html
Deadline October 15, 2017. Submit either 40 typed pages of your poetry or two copies of a printed volume of your poetry and two copies of no more than 20 additional typed pages. The Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship awards approximately US$58,000 annually to a poet to spend one year outside North America, in whatever place the recipient feels will most advance his or her work.

CREATIVE CITY GRANTS - BOSTON
https://www.nefa.org/creative-city-grant
Deadline: September 25, 2017. Artists of all artistic discipline(s) and with roots in diverse cultures, forms and aesthetics are welcome to apply. Examples include but are not limited to dance, music, visual art, literary art, or multimedia art. Must be sited in the city of Boston and take place in the public realm with minimal barriers, if any, to public access.

FREELANCE MARKETS

LA TIMES
http://www.latimes.com/la-trw-guidelines-story-story.html
The Travel section, both print and online, is looking for bold, original travel features that tell a great story. Stories should be sophisticated, compelling, complete and written with flair. They should evoke a strong sense of place (sounds, colors, smells, tastes), time (when did you go?), expertise and personal perspective, and they should be written with a precise story angle. Print stories (other than briefs) vary from $200 to $750, depending on placement. Online only stories generally pay $500, but if they are used in print, we will pay depending on placement. There is but one payment; the contract you sign gives us permission to use in any medium. Weekend Escapes pay $200. Blog posts pay $75 with no additional money for handout art (or $25 for an original piece of art).

VOX
https://www.vox.com/2015/6/12/8767221/vox-first-person-explained
We're looking for a wide range of perspectives from writers of every age, gender, race, sexual orientation, and political leaning. We also happily accept pitches from previously unpublished writers — or, for that matter, from non-writers who may have an important story to tell but need help turning it into a piece; we're here to provide that help. Vox is a news site that loves current issues and culture, business and science. Pays $500.

MOTHER OF INVENTION
http://motherofinvention.twelfthplanetpress.com/submission-guidelines/
Deadline August 31, 2017. Mother of Invention anthology will feature diverse, challenging stories about gender as it relates to the creation of artificial intelligence and robotics. We want to bring some genuine revolution to the way that artificial intelligence stories are told, and how they intersect with gender identity, parenthood, sexuality, war, and the future of our species. We are looking for stories of 500–5000 words, within our stated theme and not published previously in any medium, including limited audience media such as Patreon. Payment is US$0.06 per word.

DIVA
http://www.divamag.co.uk/How-To-Contribute-To-DIVA/
DIVA pays £150 per thousand words. We pay in pounds sterling, in the month of issue. DIVA brings you the latest in lesbian and bi related celebrity interviews, news, politics, pop culture, style, travel, social issues, entertainment and more. We tackle the tough topics, like racism in the LGBT community, mental health and the challenges facing queer youth, and profiles of inspirational women making a difference to the lives of lesbian, bi and trans women.

JOBS

SENIOR EDITOR - CRIME FICTION
https://www.mediabistro.com/jobs/description/360212/senior-editor-crime/
Literary Hub is seeking a full-time editor with a special expertise in crime fiction (including its subgenres: mystery, thriller, procedural, legal, historical, etc.). This editor will help in developing and launching—in collaboration with Lit Hub’s current editorial staff—a dedicated, discrete crime fiction channel that will offer the same daily editorial mix of original essays, excerpts, and online-friendly features that have made LitHub.com a success. Location New York City.

MAGAZINE EDITOR
https://www.mediabistro.com/jobs/description/360628/freelance-magazine-editor/
South Bay Accent, an award-winning, bimonthly lifestyle publication serving Santa Clara County/Silicon Valley, CA, has a permanent part-time, freelance contractor position available for an experienced Managing Editor residing in the South Bay area (Silicon Valley, San Jose and the Peninsula).

EDITORIAL RESEARCH SPECIALIST
https://www.mediabistro.com/jobs/description/360627/editorial-research-specialist/
We're looking for an Editorial Research Specialist to join our content team as we elevate our quality and our publishing capacity in 2017 and beyond. As an Editorial Research Specialist, you'll work with Staff Writers, Editors, and other members of our team to gather the data we use to fuel our reviews, and make sure it's rock-solid. This role requires a blend of research chops and tenacity in the quest for truth — plus supernatural attention to detail. Location Seattle, Washington.

LITERARY AGENCY ASSISTANT
https://www.publishersmarketplace.com/jobs/view.cgi?job_no=19612
Location New York, New York. Massie & McQuilkin is seeking a full-time literary agency assistant to start as soon as possible. Responsibilities include --handling general administrative tasks and office maintenance, logging submissions and contracts, scanning contracts and royalty statements, and facilitating author/editor interface. Also, reading unsolicited and client manuscripts and writing reader's reports, rejection letters and editorial letters. Also, vetting and negotiating contracts as well as assisting with foreign rights, tracking payments, and evaluating text and photo permissions.

Publishers/agents

UPSTART CROW LITERARY
http://www.upstartcrowliterary.com/
Submit a query and 20 pages of your manuscript to one of the agents listed online. At present, Danielle Chiotti is seeking fresh young adult and middle grade fiction across all genres. Please put your query and sample in the body of the email. We will not open emailed attachments.

THE STEVE LAUBE AGENCY
https://stevelaube.com/guidelines/
We focus primarily in the Christian marketplace and have put together an outstanding gallery of authors and speakers whose books continue to make an impact throughout the world. Has a very detailed guide for submitting both fiction and nonfiction.

DAVID BLACK LITERARY AGENCY
http://www.davidblackagency.com/submissions
To query an individual agent, please follow the specific query guidelines outlined in the agent's profile. Not all agents are currently accepting unsolicited queries. To query the agency, please send a 1-2 page query letter describing your book, and include information about any previously published works, your audience, and your platform. Remember that this letter is our introduction to your work and who you are as an author and, if applicable, an expert in your field. If someone kindly referred you to us, do please let us know.

NELSON LITERARY AGENCY
http://nelsonagency.com/submission-guidelines/
Make sure NLA represents your genre. (See what our agents are looking for by looking at each individual agent.) You may query only one agent at the agency. Our first-round readers and agents share and discuss query letters, so a response from one NLA agent is a response from all NLA agents. Does NOT represent: Nonfiction, Memoir, Screenplays, Short-story collections, Poetry, Material for the Christian/Inspirational market, Children’s picture books, Early-reader chapter books.