After almost twenty years of editing, we become more and more convinced that reading, the way we do it as editors, is a skill. We characterize this as reading with the mind rather than the heart, and it is surprising how few people actually do it. Most people read into books rather than actually reading the words on the page. They bring what they know and believe to the process and experience the book through those filters, almost as if it is their book.  Our book club does this, and we even know agents who read this way.

This put authors in a dilemma. Almost everyone needs someone to act as book reader, to help give needed perspective and helpful advice.  Obviously, finding that special reader is a matter of trial and error. Here are some red flags to watch out for in the search for a good reader:

Beware of readers who seem to be reading a different book than the one you thought you wrote: If you are writing a murder mystery and your reader gets caught up in a secondary love story and sees that as the main arc of the book, don’t abandon your mystery to play up the love the story. You may need to do more work to bring your mystery center stage, but don’t abandon it for a different book. You’ll end up with a strange hybrid.

Do not trust readers who make your book all about them. You are not interested in their emotional response to your book. This can be hard when the reader is saying flattering things like, “Your book really spoke to me.” “I really identified with the main character.” Uh-uh. That person is not reading your book; they are reading their fantasy about your book.

Be afraid of your friends, very afraid: How many of them are likely to risk hurting your feelings by saying something negative, even if it might be helpful? Asking friends to do this really isn’t fair to them and puts the friendship in jeopardy.

You are not looking for new ideas or a co-author: You have worked for months, if not years, on your book; you don’t need a co-author now. The reader, who tries to horn in on your manuscript with lots of “great ideas,” is not helping you so much as ego-tripping.  Don’t let this person distract you.

Trust your gut, trust your gut, trust your gut:  Sometimes the voice coming from your gut can be very small and faint. You really have to cultivate this voice and you have to trust it. This can be easier advised than acted on. We recently suggested a major change to one of authors. “Oh,” the author said, “I knew it. I knew I should do that.” The author then went on to explain that the manuscript had been give to a reader, who got caught up in a secondary story line that distracted from the main story. The author went with it, ignoring the gut.

You have a vision for your book; deep down, you know what is right for it. Don’t take any counsel that isn’t sitting comfortably down there. A good critique should make you think, “Oh wow, why didn’t I see that?” Good advice will resonate.

When your gut speaks, hold on to that reader. You will need him/her for the sequel.

Here is a cartoon that illustrates another pitfall of reader/writing groups.

Some memoirs are so compellingly written that they are worth reading just for the way the author uses language. Mary Karr, who wrote LIARS’ CLUB, is in this category. She is a poet, and her use of language is just exquisite. Karr also knows how to tell a story. Her book is a series of entertaining short stories about her family. If you go this route, the stories have to be really entertaining, and each one has to be a whole. Let go of the idea that you are going to tell EVERYTHING that ever happened to you. And if you find yourself dribbling between stories, stop it.

Another way to write a successful memoir is to look for the story that your life is an example of. A number of years back, one of our clients, Carol Cline Schultz wrote CROSSING THE VOID, her memoir of an aphasic stroke that completely robbed her of words. She could not speak, read, or write. Her book is the story of how she painstakingly taught herself to do all those things again. She had to figure it out; there wasn’t an expert she could go to who could simply teach her to talk again. So how she did it, her story, is of interest to readers, many of them in the speech pathology field.

Yet another approach to writing a successful memoir is to put your life into a greater context of time and/or place. In other words, use your story to tell the way it was in a particular time and place. A recent client did this very well in his yet-to-be-published memoir, CONEY ISLAND DAYS. With his permission, here is an excerpt from Richard Pepitone’s book. Notice how he starts with the world around him and brings it back to his own life.

The year was 1944, and I went to all the theaters in downtown Brooklyn: the Brooklyn Fox on the Flatbush Avenue Extension off of DeKalb Avenue; the Brooklyn Paramount at the corner of Fulton Street and DeKalb Avenue; and the RKO Albee up the street from the Paramount. The Strand, the Majestic, and the RKO Orpheum were all nestled together on Fulton Street. The Orpheum was the only theater of its kind in Brooklyn, leftover from the old vaudeville days. Most of the performers were old-timers and had been doing their acts since long before I was born. Some had been successful at one time, but had lost their appeal to the fickle public and changing times; many were just lost along the wayside. Other than my father playing instruments in the living room, it was the only live entertainment I’d ever known. For me, a stage full of people who wanted to reach me, delight me, and make me laugh, and an audience that wanted to share the experience with me, was a world away—away from arguing parents who weren’t concerned about my comings and goings, schoolteachers who held me in contempt, and a neighborhood of bullies.

 The market for memoirs is over saturated; they are tough sell. So it really is imperative to find the story in your life that will appeal to readers.

It is tempting to imagine that all the characters in all these books are suffering from attention deficit disorder. But really this is a language issue. Authors who write about characters beginning things are technically correct. You have to begin something before you can do it, but in the telescoped world of a book, it is usually preferable to skip that first step. Characters can just do whatever it is: Character X washed the dishes. Character Y closed the windows. Or better yet, be specific: X moved a stack of plates to the dishpan and picked up the sponge. Y slammed down the living room window as the rain pelted in and ran upstairs to the bedroom.

 “Begin to” or “began to” are mostly just extra words that get between the reader and the book. An exception to this is when a beginning has significance in itself: The race began with a shot from the pistol. Since the race and the outcome of the race are likely to feature in this story, the beginning has importance.  Winter began that night with a shot of brutal cold. Here again, winter is likely to last some time and have an effect on the story so the moment of its beginning has significance. God began by creating heaven and earth. This paraphrase of a famous book needs no explanation. The beginning, in this context, matters.

           As you write and find yourself using “begin” or “began,” step back and see if the sentence really needs these words. If you can pretty much just cut them out and not affect the meaning of your story, you don’t need them. When you do this, you are beginning to self-edit…

An effective book is usually a series of scenes like this strung together. They can go back and forth in time; they can happen out of sequence but each one should be round and full like a fat bead on a necklace.

The difficulty with this is that sometimes you have to advance your plot; you have to convey information to the reader simply to move the story, as a whole, along. And often, this information does not lend itself to a big, blown-up scene. This is where you have to be tricky and clever and figure out how to fold the plot-advancing info into another scene. If, for instance, it is important to let readers know that Jim found the key in the silver box, you don’t have to bring Jim into the study, have him see the silver box and retrieve the key. Instead, as Jim is rowing on the lake with Sarah, who he intends to strangle in the marsh, you can simply have him pause to rest and wrap his fingers around the key in his pocket. He can remember where and under what circumstances he found it.

When you find yourself stringing together paragraphs that hop from subject to subject, it is time to step back and think about what you are doing. Here is the kind of thing to be on the lookout for:

Jim was growing increasingly irritated with Sarah, who could not stop talking about her tedious Thursday writers’ group and her novel. She had now been writing it for more than a year but Jim still hadn’t seen any of it. He continued to wonder if he was in it and what she might be saying about him.

Summer had turned into fall and they hadn’t taken any vacation. Jim had been working hard at the office at on the Grantham bribery case which was due to come to court in October. Grantham was still dropping in every day to see how it was going. Jim didn’t tell him the defense was a weak one.

In August, Sarah took up yoga so she was gone on Wednesday evenings. Jim found the house peaceful and quiet as he drank his nightly martini. This set him thinking – not for the first time – about how nice it would be if there was more quiet.

 These paragraphs read like a checklist: Establish the passage of time, check. Explain what Sarah is doing, check. Establish what is still going on with Jim, check. Imagine how exciting this is for the reader. These graphs can probably all be cut. Instead the writer should jump to the next important scene where something happens and fold this information into it.

This piece is aimed at ebook authors but it applies to traditional books and books with traditional publishers as well. Publishers don’t always do the best job of promotion and wonder of wonders, they too are somewhat baffled by the new world of books.  “…while ‘word of mouth’ is the holy grail of book-selling, we publishers were never very involved in the conversation,” writes Island Press Publisher David Miller in the Washington Post. “…publishers now must connect directly with readers. Increasingly, we need to create word of mouth ourselves.”

So however you get to publication, you should be taking promotion into your own hands, and key to promoting an e book (or any book) are reviews. So today, we offer some websites where authors can go to get reviewed:

Goodreads is pretty much the go-to site for both readers and authors. The Goodreads community is 14 million people and growing. They are all book lovers. You will want to post your book and author profile on Goodreads. And if that doesn’t generate reviews, you can also advertise. Goodreads enables authors to promote themselves according to genre, reader age, gender, and location. In other words, you get an extremely targeted advertising opportunity.

Successful ebook author, Hugh Howey, featured in our last blog, started his publicity campaign with Goodreads bu sending free copies of his book to bloggers and reviewers. A few raves and the reviews snowballed. Fiction author Lindsay Buroker says she spends $4-$5 a day on Goodreads and earns $10-$14 in royalties.

Bookrooster will route your book to a select group of readers who will read your book and post their reviews on Amazon. The $67 fee Bookrooster charges does not necessarily buy you good reviews, just honest ones. As the old expression goes, a bad review is better than no review at all. And a mix will look more true than all five-star reviews. You will have to line up for Bookrooster, which is currently accepting only two titles a day.

The Kindle Book Review offers a list of reviewers for your Kindle book. You choose the reviewer by scrolling through a list of reviewers until you find one whose expertise matches your book. Write a formal review request, inclulding a brief synopsis, the author’s name, the title of the book, and a link to the book in the Amazon Kindle store. Include a digital copy of your book in the format that works best according to the reviewer’s specifications.

KBR reviewers are not obligated to review your book, but if they choose to do so, they will be honest. If you get a good review or good-enough review, you can add it to your website or prodcut page.

The Indie View offers a similar list of reviewers. If you get one of them to give you a four or five star review, The Indie View will give you a page to list and promote your book.

BookDaily gives subscribers access to the first chapters of books so they can sample books they might like to buy and read.  Authors can register for free and post a book chapter, upload a bio and photograph, upload a promotional video and a link to their website.

The Book Hookup is a group of five reader/reviewers in various parts of the country. They are accepting a “limited” number of e books for review in a limited number of genres, including contemporary fiction, romance, historical romance, urban fantasy, dark fantasy, paranormal and young adult.

Howey first published his postapocalyptic thriller WOOL as an e book on Amazon, charging ninety-nine cents for each of the series’s five parts. A year ago, WOOL – which takes place in a postapocalyptic future where a few thousand remaining humans live in a giant, 144-story underground silo – went VIRAL.  It has sold more than half a million copies and generated more than 5,260 Amazon reviews. Mr. Howey has earned more than a million dollars in royalties. The film rights have been sold to producer Ridley Scott.

So, no wonder Howey has not jumped at six- and seven-figure offers from traditional publishers.  Publishers did not want just the print rights to his books. They wanted the lucrative e-book rights as well. Howey wasn’t about to give those up. On his own, he keeps 70% of his books’ royalties.  Most publishers offer a digital royalty rate that amounts to 10% to 15% of a book’s retail price.

 ”I had made seven figures on my own, so it was easy to walk away,” Mr. Howey told the Wall Street Journal. “I thought, ‘How are you guys going to sell six times what I’m selling now?’ “

Last fall, Simon and Schuster offered Howey a print-only deal.  And he took it. The deal is so unusual that it has generated a lot of press – and also that sound of writers cheering. “It’s a sign of how far the balance of power has shifted toward authors in the new digital publishing landscape,” the Wall Street Journal says, adding, “Self-published titles made up 25% of the top-selling books on Amazon last year. Four independent authors have sold more than a million Kindle copies of their books, and 23 have sold more than 250,000, according to Amazon.”

Since our business is manuscript editing, we have our own reasons for being excited about the e-book revolution. But we were once novel writers. We were what is known as mid-list authors, which is to say not best sellers. Our books sold in the thousands, maybe tens of thousands, and nobody ever thought they were going to do better. We were treated accordingly by our publishers: small advances and no book tours. A few years later in the mid-1990’s, publishers pretty much stopped printing mid-list books at all, not enough return.

For mid-list authors, which is the vast majority – the 99.9% of authors – e-books present an opportunity where lately, there has been none. Hip hip hooray!

A simple way to check the rotation of an outrunner motor is to find an old
prop with a MUCH larger shaft hole and hang it on the shaft.

 – Please advise me if expired Bisquick is poison as I have read in the past. 

I can’t believe that you would write such an article as in the March Bulletin page 3  Face the Mortality Gap, on health and safety, and  then illustrate it with 2 people riding bicycles WITHOUT helmets. 

 I was visiting a relative who had a fireplace that had no glass doors.They were heating the house with a fire and I was there all day. When I got home, my family noticed my coat (etc) smelled like a bonfire.  I have washed my clothing and the smell is gone, but my coat is wool and says dry clean only.  How can I get the odor out without the expense and bad chemicals used when dry cleaning ?

I have an inspirational story about a homeless dog with eight puppers (sic).  I would love to share it and write more about it. I found you on Oprah’s website.  Any suggestions where to start? 

 I WAS TRYING TO FIND A BOOKLET ON ALL OF THE ROYAL DOULTON CHARACTER MUGS & JUGS. I HAVE BEEN COLLECTING THEM FROM THE LATE 1950′s. I WANT TO CHECK OFF THE ONES THAT I HAVE

I   D O N ‘ T   COLLECT  THE   T O B Y  O N E S.

We dutifully write back to all the queries we get that are clearly not aimed at manuscript editing. But we do wonder how they get to us in the first place. Presumably, they begin with a search. Someone types a search phrase, or keyword, into a search engine, like Google, looking for something. And somehow The Word Process popped up.

Our best guess is that these keywords contained the word “editor.” “Editor” can mean anything from a newspaper or magazine editor to a software editor to a photo editor to a video editor to a (yes!) manuscript editor. Search engines, clearly, aren’t awfully good at distinguishing. A Google search for “editor” yielded on the first page links for photo, video and publication editors, editor jobs and proofreading.

Search engine algorithms are said to be enormously complex and unfathomable even by the sizable industry that has sprung up to suss them out. We wonder where the search words go, what virtual twists and turns they take to bring to us the quest for the imperial commander. It makes us glad to be human editors, making honest assessments of which words belong in a narrative and which don’t. If you want a book edited, skip the search and go directly to our address: thewordprocess.com.

Nunberg says that Downton writer/creator Julian Fellowes made no effort to get the dialogue right for the time period. He says spotting modern-day expressions in the early 19th-century series is “as easy as shooting grouse in a barrel.” For instance: Lord Grantham says, “I couldn’t care less,” Thomas, the footman, complains that “our lot always gets shafted.” Cousin Matthew announces he has been on “a steep learning curve.” (Wikipedia cites “early” uses of the learning curve metaphor in 1998 and 2000.) Nunberg also says that Lord Grantham should have waited a couple of decades before telling his chauffeur to step on it since early cars did not have accelerator pedals.

Not only are Downton characters speaking in modern language, Nunberg says they are thinking modern thoughts:

“The earl who frets over his duties as a job creator, the servants grappling with their own homophobia — those are comfortable modern reveries. Drop any of them into a drawing-room comedy by Shaw or Pinero, and they’d be as out of place as a flat-screen TV…

“Those clangers are just too weirdly modern to ignore. It’s not that Fellowes lacks an ear for the speech of the Edwardian age; it’s that he doesn’t seem to have much of an ear for the speech of this one.”

In other words, Fellowes doesn’t hear it when he writes a bit of dialogue that isn’t true to the Downton era. But this is something for writers of historical fiction to pay attention to because audience members, often do hear the clinkers even if they don’t know what they are hearing exactly. Something just registers as wrong or even a bit inflammatory, hence, smack talk.

We live in an era of relentless fact checking. Getting the facts right didn’t matter so much before the internet, but now, it does. The web makes it easy to check up on the use of language. But it also makes it relatively easy for historical writers to get the language right in the first place.

While we were on vacation last week, we read a book that handles this problem in some inventive and hilarious ways. WHERE’D YOU GO, BERNADETTE by Maria Semple is told in the first person by eighth grader Bee Branch. But the focus of the story is Bee’s reclusive mother, Bernadette, who is in a world of her own. For instance, she outsources her chores to India. Rather than shop or go to the doctor or hire a landscaper, she e mails her virtual personal assistant. These transactions are an important part of the story and the narrator, Bee, originally knows nothing about them.

To get around this, Semple includes the actual e mails between Bernadette and her assistant:

From: Bernadette Fox
To: Manjula Kapoor

Oh! Could you make dinner reservations for us on Thanksgiving? You can call up the Washington Athletic Club and get us something for 7 PM for three. You are able to place calls aren’t you? Of course, what am I thinking? That’s all you people do now.
I recognize it is slightly odd to ask you to call from India to make a reservation for a place I can see out my window…

Semple’s book also includes letters, F.B.I. documents, correspondence with a psychiatrist and an emergency-room bill for a run-in between Bernadette and her neighbor. All these documents are collected, Semple tells us, and later delivered to Bee so she can include them in the story she is telling. Thus, Bee can report events that she didn’t know about when they happened. It’s really clever, as the New York Times review of the book noted:

“…these pieces are strung together so wittily that Ms. Semple’s storytelling is always front and center, in sharp focus. You could stop and pay attention to how apt each new format is, how rarely she repeats herself and how imaginatively she unveils every bit of information. But you would have to stop laughing first.”

If you read this book, stop laughing and pay attention to its construction. There is a lot to be learned.

You can find Seth’s blog and see hoe he describes the various phases of writing HERE.