Does it pay to advertise your book?

I'm in the process of conducting an experiment right now -- advertising my novels on Google Ads.

You see, I received a coupon for $100 of free Google advertising recently.  I couldn't use it in my business (needed to be a new google ads account), so I decided to blow it on my novels.

The entire ad/keyword development was a bit too much for me to grasp in the beginning, but the nice people at Google did all the basic work for me.  They developed the 35 permutations of the keywords, wrote four ads, and set everything up.  All I needed to do was identify a landing page for the ads (I picked Smashwords), and develop a "call to action" (a 40% discount using the code I provided), and I was off to the races.

I set the bid price for each ad was set at $1.00 per click (which is a lot, since my profit per copy is only around $3), and I set a $10 per day limit.  Through six days I've had 28,000 views of the ad, 94 clicks to my landing page (at a cost of $72), and...zero sales using the discount code.

But an interesting thing has happened.  Could be coincidence.  Could be normal momentum.  But my sales at normal prices at B&N, Amazon, Smashwords, and Createspace, have all taken a jump upward.

Not exactly a controlled experiment, I'll grant you.  There are other promotional efforts going on as well, so I can't isolate the improvement in sales to just this action.  But I admit, I'm intriqued.

Now I'm trying a few things with the remaining dollars.  Some ads without a discount.  Landing pages directly on Amazon, and a lower bid price (at $0.50 per click).

My gut feel right now is that if you have a way to show off all your work on a single landing page, and if you have enough books out there, and if you can get the cost per click price down low enough (yeah, a lot of "ifs") this just might pay off in the short term, and provide longer term benefits as well.

More later if I learn anything else from the experimentation.

Another Day, Another Project

Plenty has happened since my last post on this board.  On the publishing side, "Deliverables" was published on KDP, making it an Amazon exclusive (at least in ebook form) until the end of June.  Admittedly, this is an experiment -- an attempt to reach the audience of "free" borrowers subscribing to Amazon Prime.  So far, the results have been underwhelming.  I also published "Incentivize" on both Amazon and B&N.  I've been recruiting reviewers, and have a long sign-up list, but very few actualy reviews posted at this time.  I'm hoping to get twenty reviews by May 15th -- a long way to go.

On the writing side, results have been more encouraging.  I finished the second draft of "Empowered", and currently have it percolating in the back of my head.  I was pretty enthusiastic with how the story came out, and love the setting -- Indianapolis during a winter blizzard.  I also defined a new novel -- "Synergy" -- I owe a thanks to my brother Andy for the title.  The story was inspired by an embezzlement-suicide story I read in the news, and features an extended chase through several parts of Brazil.  I'm looking forward to writing it.

Currently, I'm working on the first draft of "Pursuing Other Opportunities," a novel that includes the return of characters Mark Carson aka. Matt Lively, from my first novel.  The story is set in a remote portion of British Columbia where I went white water rafting a few years ago, and focuses on the kidnapping of a corporate executive.  I've written about 10% of the draft, and it seems to be shaping up quite nicely.

I'm still struggling with the plot for "Supply-Chain," a second novel set in Ethiopia -- one focusing on modern slavery.  I can't quite make the story I want to tell work.  As a result, it has been delayed in the schedule several times.  I'm considering a fall trip to Ethiopia, which I hope might provide some inspiration.

Writing Inspiration

With the proposal development of PURSUING OTHER OPPORTUNITIES, I currently have more or less a dry well when it comes to additional story ideas.

The only dribs and drabs out there are SUPPLY CHAIN, and idea I tried to develop once before, but found it to be less than inspiring (although I do have an idea which will improve the story, and revive a character from INCENTIVIZE -- Disco Martin -- that I enjoyed).  The other story is really just my reaction to a newspaper article involving a trade association and embezzlement and the disappearance of the President of that organization.  This latter idea is just a kernel of a plot, one that needs to be more fully developed.

Beyond that, I find myself, perhaps for the first time since I began writing, without a killer idea to take forward.

So I have my ears open, and am searching for some strange or unusual corporate behavior that could become the basis of a new Corporate Thriller.  Personal stories are welcome!

Juggling Projects

So how many writing projects can an author have in process all at the same time?

I haven't found my personal limit yet, although I can see that the snail's pace of progress will probably be the limiting factor.

Right now I have DELIVERABLES in final edits with Eric Dalen.  HEIR APPARENT and NAVIGATING CORPORATE POLITICS are out for friends to read and comment on.  I'm doing the first draft read-through of EMPOWERED right now.  And I just finished up design on PURSUING OTHER OPPORTUNITIES and am anxious to start the first draft.  And then there's LESSONS LEARNED THE HARD WAY, which I feel a strong need to get back to sometime in the not too distant future.

Sometimes people ask em if I get the stories mixed up.  Or how I could possibly keep track of all these plot threads.

It's actually a very good question -- if you asked me right now about a particular character in one of the books not currently in active review, I might have trouble even coming up with the name!   But once I'm deeply into the writing, I can pick up or put down any of these active projects without a hitch.

The only issue is, as I've noted above, the slow rate of progress.  If I focused solely on one project, I could knock out a first draft in a month.  But that rarely is happening these days.

Some Numbers

I've followed the blog of Jon Konrath (A Newbie's Guide to Publishing) for some time now.  In addition to providing plenty of facts surrounding changes going on in the publishing biz, Jon provides his numbers.  Something I appreciate.

Reading Jon's blog was the first place I became aware of the royalty disparity between traditional publishers and self-publishers.  I'm quoting from memory, so the numbers may not be exact, but with a traditional publisher, you would earn around 17.5% of the list price of your book.  That percentage appears to hold for both paper and electronic formats.  

If you self-publish, the electronic copies will earn you 70% of the list price (assuming you stay within Amazon's $2.99 - $9.99 pricing band).  For LEVERAGE, which is priced at $4.99, I earn $3.49 per copy sold.  To earn the same per copy through a traditional publisher, the electronic version would have to be priced at $19.96.  That's a huge difference.

Self-published paper is a little different -- at least with CreateSpace, where I've been doing my paper copies.  I list them for $14.99, and earn $3.98 per copy or about 26%.  Not as great a deal, but still better than the traditional publishers.

But I'm not looking at the big sales numbers Konrath is currently experiencing.  I have one novel out, and sales are trickling in.  I'm more interested in just getting to break-even on the project, knowing that as long as I keep writing new novels, the old ones will continue to get some play.

So with that being said, here are my numbers.

LEVERAGE total investment  was $2,080.35 most of which was editing services ($1,800).  The rest has been inventory I've personally purchased for sale, proof copies, CreateSpace pro plan (now defunct), and some business cards to hand out to people with my web address.

Earnings thus far have been $580.82 excluding month-to-date sales on Amazon (3 copies at $3.49), and 17 copies on Smashwords totaling roughly $100 that haven't been paid to me yet.  If I add those in, I could say the book has earned just short of $700.  In the interest of full disclosure, I also have 15 copies of the novel in inventory which I've paid for, and will eventually sell.  They should generate another $225.  Someday.

LEVERAGE was "released" on CreateSpace and Smashwords on September 11, 2011, and on Amazon/B&N on January 11.  So it has been out for about five months.  Average earnings have been $140 per month.  At that rate, it should hit break-even at the 15 month point, or right around the end of November 2012.  Monthly sales have been roughly flat, although I keep hoping for an uptick.

The economics of INCENTIVIZE and DELIVERABLES will both be more difficult -- INCENTIVIZE required almost $3,900 in investment, and DELIVERABLES will be around $3,500 once everything is complete.  If they earn $140 per month, they will take 28 and 25 months to hit breakeven respectively.

So, economically, I'm hoping that 1+1+1 (as in completed novels) will equal more than 3.  I'm hoping each new novel will develop its own audience, and will draw readers to the other books I've penned.

One thing for sure -- I'm not getting rich bywriting.  Quite the opposite, I've got thousands invested in my work thus far, and other than a lot of encouraging reviews, not a lot to show for it.  But I do love the creative aspects of the work, so I don't foresee stopping anytime soon.

Pursuing Other Opportunities

I started design work this week on a new novel -- PURSUING OTHER OPPORTUNITIES.  This novel will be a sequel to LEVERAGE, reusing three of the characters from the story.

The tale is set in central British Columbia where a group of consulting company senior managers  are meeting for their annual retreat.  During a whitewater rafting excursion on the White Mile (a trip I've made myself), a disaster occurs that has its roots in the power struggle going on within the firm.  The tale that spins out of this involves murder, arson, kidnapping, love, using people, and plenty of corporate politics.

Although in its early stages, I'm quite enthusiastic about the project. 

I feel an explanation is in order concerning on the titles of my novels -- something no one has ever directly questioned, but probably needs some clarification.

All my novels utilize over-used business-speak terms as their titles.  Most of them actually annoy me a bit, and I find it amusing to use these words as titles for my books.

LEVERAGE -- possibly the most over-used term at a recent employer.  It felt like the term was used by the CEO in nearly every sentence.  And it seemed to have some kind of magical or mystical quality.

INCENTIVIZE -- my top disliked non-word in common business usage.  Incentive is a noun, so stop trying to "verbize" it.  Instead of this stupid term, speakers should say "provide an incentive".

DELIVERABLES -- "goals", "objectives", and "targets" cover the landscape perfectly well.  Deliverables is another mouthful meaning essentially the same thing.

HEIR APPARENT -- is business-speak, but perhaps not quite as irritating as some of the other terms.  It just fit extremely well with the plot of this novel.

EMPOWERED -- "empowerment" is even worse, but didn't quite fit the story.  This term is so overused that it has leaked into all kinds of non-business subjects.

SUPPLY-CHAIN -- What is this exactly?  Consultants use it as a substitute for "suppliers".  Unnecessarily.

PURSUING OTHER OPPORTUNITIES -- the official notification often says this when an executive has been fired.  Does speaking in code really soften the blow of job loss?  Some seems to think so...

If anyone has other favorites, I'm open to suggestions for future novels...just comment here.

Navigating Corporate Politics

I finally had an idea gel this last week -- one that's been rattling around in my brain for a while.  An idea for a non-fiction book that I could put together inexpensively and without a huge effort.  Now that I've latched on to the idea, I'm at a bit of a loss as to why it took me so long to recognize it.

Two years ago, when I started to get serious about writing, I began to blog.  Why?  Because that's what everyone said I should do.  So I blogged about various topics, mostly things of personal interest.

When LEVERAGE started to take shape, I knew I would need to focus the blog more on areas that could help confirm my expertise in some of the darker side of business and management.  Again, why?  Because that's what people said I should do -- build additional "credibility" as an expert.

To do this, I started off with a white paper:  "Power and Politics in the Corporation".  I created a novel way (no pun intended) to view the corporate political environment, and added a couple of lists of tactics people used when they were playing politics.  When I launched this website soon after, "Power and Politics in the Corporation" was one of the first things I posted.

Then came a series of thirty blog posts, expanding on the topic, and providing details about the various political tactics.  These didn't come out of some reference source, but are, instead, from my personal observations and experiences during my years in the working world.

Over time, I've received many hits on the site from people looking for information on corporate politics.  In fact, searches on terms related to corporate politics are my biggest source of traffic.

So what's the idea?

Turn the white paper, and blog posts into a short business book on the subject -- one I can sell at a modest price.  By doing so, I'm hoping to increase traffic further, provide material that can be helpful to people, and hopefully generate a little revenue.

Over the last few days, I've assembled a first draft, which was quite easy as the source material and research already existed.  I hope to have something in the market in a relatively short time.  Then I can see if this was just an okay idea, or a really good one.

Heir Apparent -- Draft #2

I put the finishing touches on the second draft of novel #4, Heir Apparent, Wednesday.  Today I'm doing a mini-celebration by catching up on blog posts, and (gasp) assembling three new toyboxes for the little kids.

Heir Apparent had a few issues when I read through the first draft -- a huge and somewhat confusing cast of characters spanning three different corporations (who are all embroiled in a series of murders), portraits of four business leaders that were a little mixed up, and a protagonist who was still lacking an inner conflict.  Those issues are mostly solved now (there are still a lot of characters, but hopefully, they are less confusing to the reader).

I think the plot line, one that occurred to me years ago while I was still working, is fantastic.  I've ordered a proof from Createspace, and will be having a close friend read through it and see if it measures up.  With three novels under my belt, I'm feeling pretty confident it will.  At least with some additional editing.

I find getting to significant milestones in a creative project to be extremely satisfying.  Even the daily "I'm gonna edit three chapters today" work usually feels rewarding.  I wonder if other authors have a similar experiences...

Publish it and they will come -- not so far.

Leverage is now on Amazon, on B&N, and available through Smashwords (and thus Kobo, Diesel, Apple, and Sony) and in paperback form from CreateSpace.  My real and virtual distribution channels are loaded with inventory.

So where are the readers, the book lovers, the buyers?

When I was in business, we used to joke about "field of dreams marketing".  It was the belief that if you really did build that better mousetrap, the world really would beat a path to your door.  In the tangible products business, it didn't work.

In the world of publishing, it doesn't work either.  Doesn't work squared.

In the pre-electronic media period, choices were limited.  If you managed to win the lottery and end up on bookshelves at bookstores or other outlets, you had a reasonable chance of being noticed.  Of being purchased.  After all, a bookstore only has so much shelf space.

But even then, it was difficult.  You could have a great product, and languish.  You could have a book lots of people would love, but never be noticed.

Now, with electronic media, the number of choices has exploded.  Getting noticed, getting a chance, building a readership -- it's harder.  And now, in this brave new world, you have to do most of the work yourself.  Even if you are traditionally published.

I've got a great product (at least that's what readers have told me), a good cover, good description, and the availability is there.  Now how do I get some attention (short of robbing a bank, of course)?

Trying what I can think of, and hoping for the best.

Tom

If you enjoyed this blog post, please check out my novel, LEVERAGE: A Corporate Thriller.

Amazon, B&N an update

Today is the day.  But because of the variable timing required to get the books up and active, the novel was actually live at both sites on Sunday.

So how is it going thus far?

One book sold on Amazon, zero on B&N.  But then it's really too early to tell anything.

Eleven reviews on Amazon (as of this morning), seven on B&N.  I recruited twenty-two reviewers, but I know a couple haven't finished reading the book yet.  I am hoping to have fifteen reviews on Amazon by end of the week.

I sent press releases to four local newspapers, one called back to set up an interview for friday.

Of course, doing what I can on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Google +.

It will be interesting to see where things go from here.

Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Here I Come

After a few months of testing, planning and final editing, I'm releasing LEVERAGE for the Kindle and Nook.  The planned release is January 11th, although the timing may be off by as much as a week either way due to the review process on both sites.

As part of the process, I will be reducing the price of the book from $7.99 to $4.99.  After a lot of research, I believe this is a price much closer to the market for self-published work.  I may even run some short promotions once in a while to experiment with pricing

I've got roughly twenty reviewers lined up to write reviews of LEVERAGE once it comes out -- I'm hoping this will help attract attention to the novel, and will also help turn some browsers into buyers.

I am definitely excited about the prospect of broader distribution and easier access to my novel for Kindle and Nook users.  Where things go from here is anyone's guess, but I have high hopes that LEVERAGE will begin to take off and climb the Amazon sales chart!

Heir Apparent -- second look

I'm well into the editing process for Heir Apparent, and have to say -- this novel should be a good one!

Of my first three novels, Leverage and Incentivize are fairly violent, while Deliverables is focused more on white collar crime.  Heir Apparent is the most violent and action-packed yet.  I've finished about 80% of the read-through, and there's action on almost every page.  And a few twists and surprises thrown in as well.

Leverage was a mystery, as well as a thriller.  Deliverables too.  Heir Apparent carries on that tradition, but in this case, the reader probably won't have as much trouble figuring out "who done it" as they will "why", and "with who's help".

The concept of the novel comes from a personal experience -- one night during a retreat dinner I over-heard my boss, the CEO of the company, say to the CFO "I'll never retire."  On hearing this, I turned to him, looked him straight in the eye and said, "Well, then someone will just have to kill you, won't they?"  Of course, I meant it as a joke, but then got to thinking -- what if a senior manager did decide they needed to kill the CEO?  What if they were smart, experienced with weapons, and an excellent planner and dissembler?  Could they pull it off?  How would they commit the crime?  What actions would they take to throw the police off their trail?

Thus, the concept for Heir Apparent was born -- a good decade or more before the actual writing began.

Now, reading through the first draft, I am very happy with the way the plot evolves and with the way the story spins out.

Of course, as with any first draft, there is plenty to correct.  There are too many characters across four different companies profiled in the tale.  There is not enough development on a couple of the core characters.  And there are plenty of the garden variety grammar, usage, dialog and word selection corrections to make.  I'm hoping after just two passes through the manuscript, I can send proofs out to a couple readers and get their reactions (email me if you're interested in helping).  I'm hoping by inserting this step in the current process, I can go without writing a full third draft.  We will see...

But for now -- quite happy with the work in progress.

Tom

If you have yet to read any of my novels, both Leverage and Incentivize are currently available on CreateSpace (paperback) and Smashwords (eReaders).  Deliverables should be released in early 2012.

It's too short!

I finished my first draft of EMPOWERED, and it is underweight at just 70,000 words.

I've never had this happen before.

Usually my first draft comes in at over 100K words, and much of the editing process is devoted to cutting out repetition and exteraneous elements (usually ones that sounded on point, or I thought were funny) in the beginning.  Of course, I do add some material -- normally descriptions of characters or settings -- but those additions ususally don't amount to much.

So what do I do?

I could go in an deepen the story at the beginning.  I could provide more backstory.  For example, in EMPOWERED, the main character already has some flashbacks to business lessons he learned from his mentor.  I could add more of these.  But I worry that this might slow down the pace, and if there's one thing I don't want in my novels, its flat spots.

I could add a secondary plot.  Well, perhaps it would be a tertiary plot -- there's already a secondary one present.  This can also slow things down, but tied in correctly, it could add some additional drama and provide some additional tension.

Or I could add a few twists -- that worked well in LEVERAGE, and really EMPOWERED in its current form might be a bit too...transparent.  I like my readers guessing, rather than knowing what might happen next.

But it is a quantry and a strange place to find myself in...

Self-Published, a view from this side

I have two novels now available for sale -- eVersion and paperback.  And my agent is still getting no traction with either novel at traditional publishers.  So I thought it might be interesting to update my views on the self-pub route at this point.

1.  Revenue is nice.  Got my first check from CreateSpace's September paperback sales a few days ago -- a whopping $77.  But at least it's something.  I've got about $2,000 invested in getting LEVERAGE to publication, and now I've only got $1,923 to go to break even.  And sales of LEVERAGE in October and thus far in November have been a bit more brisk, so I'm getting a little traction.  Even if I was able to land a publishing contract tomorrow, it would be a good year before I saw a cent.  Cash flow now is a nice thing.

2.  Marketing is tough.  In the back of my mind, I figured I knew quite a few people -- have 500 Linkedin contacts for instance -- and I could rely on these contacts (who are basically in my targeted market for the book) to purchase, review and help spread the word.  And to a reasonable extent, it has been true so far.  But the marketing effort is taking a lot more time than I expected, and it requires persistence.

3.  The big splash.  I haven't self-published on Amazon or B&N yet.  There are three reasons for this.  (1)  I didn't want to share 10% of the purchase price with Smashwords just because I was too lazy to prep and submit the document myself.  On Sony or Apple -- acceptable, not the big two.  I may rethink this stance as I don't want to end up with three different ISBN numbers out there, thus spreading my sales across three different tracking numbers.  Sales quantity is important for climbing the rankings (and ending up in searches) at these big ePublishers.  In retrospect, I should have just purchased my own ISBN numbers.  (2)  I wanted to enter with a splash -- having reviews lined up, and some buzz on the books already rolling.  I'm almost there with LEVERAGE.  Where to actually draw the line, is not obvious, however.  (3)  I wanted to be able to release three titles in a relatively short time frame once I put the first one up.  There seems to be a "critical mass" phenomena with the ePublishers, where more titles have a multiplicative effect.  I felt (rather arbitrarily) that three was the right number.

4.  Prices will need to drop.  Eventually.  Both novels are currently priced at $14.99 in paperback, and $7.99 eVersion.  This provides me with about $5 in profit on each.  And compared to known authors, these prices don't appear to be too high for those buyers that personally know me.  But in the Amazon/B&N environment, they will be high for self-pubbed work.  I will undoubtedly have to drop these prices once I release there, but to what level, I haven't decided.  The paperback price doesn't have a lot of room to fall, but since all the eBook pricing works off of percentages, I could go as low as $2.99 there.  This definitely requires some additional study.

5.  New work is suffering.  Not on a quality basis, but in quantity.  With me spending so much time on marketing, my next two titles are progressing quite slowly.  I suspect HEIR APPARENT is a year away, and EMPOWERED, which I just finished the first draft of last week, is even further out.  I'm not, however, certain this would be any different if I had a traditional publishing contract.

So the view this far in is a bit of a mixed bag.  But I love learning new things, and this Self-Publishing journey is at least providing plenty of opportunity for education.

Tom

Cover Montage

I was playing with cover designs tonight (to be used as background on my twitter account -- Sprinklerboss62).  The final image, a combination of both LEVERAGE and INCENTIVIZE covers looked nice, so I'm sharing it here.

INCENTIVIZE Update

I've been making considerable progress on INCENTIVIZE over the last thirty days.  I now have a new cover image (shown below):

I finally broke down and hired a graphic artist to develop this image for me, as I just wasn't happy with anything that I could come up with on my own.

The downside is that INCENTIVIZE will have roughly twice the break-even volume of sales as LEVERAGE between editing services, cover design, proof copies, and the like.  We will have to see if this was a wise decision or not somewhere down the line.

DELIVERABLES is also nearly finished.  I would like to have a professional editor take a look at that novel as well, but hopefully it won't require quite as much work as either of the first two novels did.

Currently I am working on the first draft of EMPOWERED, but it is progressing slowly.  Now that I have other projects (like marketing the published work) competing with the new draft, I just can't get one done in thirty days.  I'm approaching the half-way point on this new novel, and I do have a first draft of HEIR APPARENT to work on next.

While doing the work on all these other things, I've reconsidered the plot-line on SUPPLY-CHAIN.  This novel is in the design phase currently.  I believe I will use the Disco Martin character as the protagonist here, as he is kind of "left over" at the end of INCENTIVIZE, and I like him.  I believe that will make the story more interesting and less predictable.  Martin is a very capable guy, but will be dealing with life in the private sector after a career in the Navy SEALs.

All in all, lots to work on!

Published, after a fashion

I was shocked to see it has been nearly a month since the last update to this journal.  Well, a lot has happened in a month.

School started, which helped to normalize my writing schedule.  In the greater regularity, I made considerable progress -- finishing the editing on INCENTIVIZE, and completing about a third of EMPOWERED's first draft.  That was the progress on the hardcore writing activities.

But I'm even happier to report that my first novel, LEVERAGE, is now available for purchase.  The paperback version can be obtained from CreateSpace at this address:  https://www.createspace.com/3646246, or if you have an eReader, you can purchase from Smashwords at:  http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/88909.

The savvy reader will realize that these are self-published resources.  Yes, LEVERAGE is self-published now.  I've still got an agent, and he is still looking for a traditional publishing deal.

But I was getting far too many requests from people to read the book to accommodate via photo-copied manuscripts.  And my printer ink has its limits too.

For now, I'm staying off the big distributor sites like Amazon and Barnes and Noble.  I don't want damage LEVERAGE's chances of getting a traditional publishing deal by launching it on Amazon and having a limp response.  So IF I decide to release LEVERAGE there, it will be with a well planned launch somewhere down the road a bit.

So I'm pretty excited about the progress, although it isn't necessarily along the lines I would have originally preferred.

If you're curious about the novel, check out the LEVERAGE page here on my website.

Tom

Accepting Feedback

It would be a rare writer that could alone craft an entire novel, free from mistakes and optimally tuned to give readers what they are looking for.  Perhaps there are some very experienced authors who can produce a novel all on their own -- relying only on their own editing skills to bring the project to completion.

Clearly, I am not one of them.

I know I need editing and proofreading help, because when I do accept it, the editors find the same types of mistakes over and over again.  And in alarming quantities.

But I don't like it.

Perhaps it is a matter of pride -- the better I think I am at the craft, the more resistant I become to editor's suggestions and improvements.  It wasn't too difficult to accept with my first novel, but it is becoming harder and harder as time rolls along.

I notice I particularly dislike deletion.  It sometimes feels like a limb being torn away from the manuscript.  I hate losing that witty dialog, a clever turn of phrase, an interesting location.

I also dispise discovering spelling and other technical errors, and, alas, I make quite a few of them.

I do appreciate it when an editor takes a humorous passage, and makes it funnier, but still wonder why I couldn't come up with that myself.

Big picture errors, like timelines, plot illogic, characters doing things for seemingly out-of-character reasons -- yikes.

But I try to bear up under these critiques in the interest of producing a better product.  So I swallow the pride, and somehow square up the feedback with my own image of self as an author, and generally make the changes.

But I can't help but wonder how other authors deal with the same thing.

"Asked" and "Said"

I'm sure I'm not the only new author who has been perplexed by this "rule".

When both reading, and with writing, I get bored with the constant stream of "he said/she said" (no I don't mean the movie).  So I try to insert other words -- shouted, yelled, whispered, called, etcetera.  Yet, my editor unfailing removes them.  It is, I have come to learn, one of those unerring signs of the amateur -- along with using the names of the characters in the dialog, more on that one in a future post.

So why is strictly sticking to "asked" and "said" a rule for the new author?  I have no idea, other than it's just a convention.  So every now and then, I slip an alternative back into the dialog.

Story Timeline

I have one of my novels in serious editing mode currently (INCENTIVIZE).  This is the most complex storyline of any of the novels I've written, with multiple threads, and action taking place in fits and spurts.

Now, I may be odd in this respect, but when I read a story with multiple threads, I'm okay with the storylines being a bit out of synch.  I realize the author sometimes intentionally "de-synchronizes" the tale for dramatic effect.  Usually, everything comes back together at some future point, and I kind of enjoy puzzling over where things are on the timelines of the various storylines.

Unfortunately, with INCENTIVIZE, I let it get a bit out of hand.

So over the past day, I put together a detailed excel spreadsheet showing the main storylines, and the sequence of scenes versus the actual calendar date.

Wow.  There was some stuff that was waaaaayyyyyy off.  Repairable, of course, but undoubtedly confusing to a reader.

The tool really worked well at pointing out where the sequencing of scenes needed work.  I'll be using a similar tool for all future novels where there are multiple timelines involved.  The next one where I know this comes up is HEIR APPARENT.