Members of the Workshop receive a weekly newsletter with writing tips, as well as news from the publishing world, both traditional publishing and indie. Here is a sampling.

How do you decide whether to find a publisher or go Indie?

The decision is a big one, and it all depends on how much control you want over your work.

I looked over my newsletters and they are all geared toward the indie author. That is what I know, and for me, going indie was the right decision. But it might not be right for you.

When you are sending out query letter after query letter, the idea might flit across your mind, too. For me, the decision was easy. I simply had no other alternative. Fifteen years with an agent and no book published? After years of quick response from her, then one entire summer when she was in the hospital, all communication stopped. I believe my agent died. We were in a financial jam, my books were all I had to try to make money, the clock was ticking, and I had no intention of starting the hunt all over again.

It was time to pull the plug on the whole traditional publishing idea and self-publish. And it worked better than I ever dreamed.

The competition was not so fierce then. If you look back a couple newsletters, you will see that the total number of books on Amazon now is estimated to be 48.5 MILLION. It’s easy to get lost in the crowd, but if you’re indie, you have options and tools to gain attention. If you are traditionally published, you have to hope your publisher is willing to do what it takes to get your book noticed, because otherwise, you are pretty much on your own anyway.

When do you give up and go indie?

Here is the most concise rundown of the pros and cons of each. Joanna Penn has it both in written form and in video. Give it a listen or read it over because if you are going to keep writing, some day you will be faced with this very decision.

https://www.thecreativepenn.com/self-publishing-vs-traditional/

In the meantime, let’s get to work on our books. After all, without a book, you can’t publish anything!

Last week I told about using Amazon Author Central for ads. What else is Author Central good for, and why do you need it?

You will note that I used the word “need” in connection with Amazon Author Central. Author Central is where you set up your author page. Last week I mentioned how the author page gives you one location where you can list all your books. Amazon makes it very easy for readers to find you—IF you have the author page all set up.

Find a book. Any book. (I’ll use one of my own for an example.) The author name will look like a hot link whether there is an author page or not. If they have an author page, when you put your mouse over their name, a box will pop up that gives you the option of going to that page. And all their books will be listed for your reading pleasure.

Now, if you don’t have an author page, your author name will still look click-able. Only if you click on it, and there is NO author page, you will be routed into an endless loop: the book listing in a regular Amazon search page, click on the book, off you go to the sale page where the author name looks click-able, but if you click on it, you go right back to the Amazon search page.

I was doing some research to see if I could find an example of why it is so important to identify your books and have them grouped, and I found three books close together in a list, all with the same author name. You can see two of the books here.

The Kathryn Sullivan of Agents, Adepts & Apprentices has an author page, and you can track down all her books. We can thus rule her out as part of this mystery. The other Kathryn Sullivan has no author page. Does she have more books? I did a search with her name and, yes, both Katherine Sullivans came up, along with a Kathryn D. Sullivan, a Kathy Sullivan, and nine other authors with no relation to the name I searched.

Help your readers find you. Make your author page and claim your books! If you are traditionally published, make sure your publisher sets up your page, or permits you to do it yourself. Each time you release a new book, novel, or novella, get it on your author page ASAP. Find your fans and keep them. Don’t make them have to scrounge all over Amazon or anywhere else to find you.

Is your book stuck? Do you need ideas?

Who hasn’t heard the phrase in writing of the “sagging middle?” Have you met it, when your book just feels flat and you just know your reader will be bored (because you are and you’re writing the thing) and they will put your book down and maybe never pick it up again? What do you do to avoid it, or worse, get out of it once you confront it?

Years and years and YEARS ago, I went to a writers’ conference. In one of the sessions, they gave a whole list of ideas to help fill in that sagging middle when you just can’t figure out where to go next. Blessed with packrat tendencies, I saved that list. And even was able to find it!

So here it is:  WHAT TO WRITE NEXT:

(There obviously are more ideas than presented here; this was just what came from that conference.)

  • Write a love scene (it was a romance conference, of course that would come first!)
  • Write an argument or confrontation
  • Describe a location
  • Go shopping
  • Go to a wedding
  • Go out on a picnic
  • Write a moment of fear
  • Give or receive an unexpected gift
  • Introduce children or animals
  • Introduce a rival
  • Stage a rebellion
  • Have a betrayal
  • Create a home
  • Write a scene around a costume, anything from something you’ve always wanted to a ballgown or wedding (see above)
  • Work in a scene or memory about a famous place
  • Bring in an object or prop, from a family Bible to burnt biscuits
  • Put your character in the hands of their enemies . . .
  •  . . . have them in the bosom of their family (maybe one and the same?)
  • Require them to hide
  • Order Chinese food, or Mexican, or Italian, or Thai, or . . .
  • Recall their first kiss (romance conference, remember)
  • Take them out for an evening, to a restaurant or a brothel, a square dance or a political meeting
  • Put them to work, physical or mental, creative or menial, dangerous or boring
  • Introduce someone famous
  • Make them sick
  • File a lawsuit against somebody
  • Bring them to a royal court
  • Work in an event, from a holiday to a rite of passage
  • Kill somebody off
  • Have a baby

With each of these, you also have to describe your character’s reaction. Do they meet the world head on, and would sickness and being stuck in bed drive them batty? Or are they very accepting, and will the same thing give them a chance to shine with their courage and acceptance, and maybe inspire the other characters in the novel?

I also ordered a game that is filled with idea possibilities perfect for writers, but that’s for another time.

To publish under your own name, or to make up a pen name, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler to suffer the pains of using your own name and lose anonymity, or to take a new name and spend the rest of your life insisting that yes, you DID write that book.

With apologies to Shakespeare, the decision whether to keep your own name or to choose a pseudonym is not an easy one. I know, because it is one I struggled with and to this day wish I had made a different decision.

All my life I have hated my name. Seriously. You try sitting in a room with other people waiting to be called in for an appointment, or walking down a crowded hallway and hearing someone call your name only to find out that they are looking for somebody else. Do you know how many times that has happened? Here I had a chance to change it and become someone else, even if only in one part of my life.

So why didn’t I pick a pen name? To be frank, I couldn’t think of one I liked. Here I was, hating my name, aching to take a new one, but unable to figure out what name would work. I was brand new to the world of author-hood, and I didn’t know the rules, didn’t know what name would fit both me and what I planned to write. So now I’m stuck living with the consequences of having lost any hope of anonymity.

I’m not well-known in the author community, so truthfully it hasn’t become an issue. I just wish I’d made the other choice.

Happily, a blogger-author-entrepeneur-programmer I follow regularly—have even purchased one of his programs and use it regularly—has put out a massively long blog going through all the whys and wherefores of the choice. He even has (and where was this when I needed it?) links at the bottom to pen name generators. My favorite is Reedsy’s.

If you are traditionally published, your publisher will likely make this decision for you. But with more and more people choosing to take their future writing life into their own hands, this is a decision that has to be made.

Also, if you have published in one genre and are now branching into another, a different pen name might become a necessity. I faced this choice a second time when I ventured from Biblical romance to Regency. I decided it was hard enough to find my niche once; I didn’t want to have to start that a second time.

What is “write to market,” and how do you do that?

“Write to market” means structuring your novel to follow the rules of storytelling so the readers know what they are getting and get it. For example, in romance the standard is “boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back.”

I don’t know if you’ve heard of the book “Save the Cat! Writes a Novel,” but in that book, author Jessica Brody (to quote her, “former movie studio executive turned struggling novelist”) analyzed a large number of successful novels, and discovered a story structure that all of them shared. Once she put what she learned into practice, she went on to sell her novels to Simon & Schuster, Random House, and Macmillan.

She shares what she learned in her book, but better yet, she developed a template you can use to help you structure your own novel into something that satisfies the yearning of your readers.

In a nutshell, here is the story structure all successful novels follow:

  • Opening image (who your hero is, what their world is)
  • Theme stated (hint at the hero’s arc)
  • Setup (explore hero’s life and flaws)
  • Catalyst (something upsets the status quo)
  • Debate (hero struggles with what to do next)
  • Break into 2 (moving into the next part of the book, a decisive action)
  • B Story (introduce a new character)
  • Fun and Games (hero struggles)
  • Midpoint (false victory/false defeat. Hero thinks he has it figured out, but now you raise the stakes)
  • Bad guys close in (doesn’t have to be people. Could be internal flaws take over)
  • All is lost (hero reaches rock bottom)
  • Dark night of the soul (hero processes, darkness before the dawn)
  • Break into 3 (hero realizes what they must do)
  • Finale (hero acts)
  • Final image (we all want to see the happily ever after)

This is just a rough summary. If you want to know more, go to her website and find a more detailed explanation of how this works. Or buy her book.

Better still, there is a ‘beat sheet,’ a template you can download and use as you write (or rewrite) your next novel. I have it for my Scrivener program. I don’t know how it works for Word, but if you want to try, go to this page and find the box below. Sign up (yes, you have to give your email; they have to send it), and follow the instructions to install it. (At least, that’s how it works in Scrivener.)