This is definitely a book that will split adults, you’ll either love it or you’ll hate it. With teens I can see this book being hugely popular, not only does it deal with things that are prevalent to their world but each character, good and bad, is easy to connect with. Combine that with a clear writing style, fast paced plot & some juicy twists and teens will gobble this one up! Highly recommended to all YA teens ages 14 and up, this is a must read! I would also highly recommend this to adults who are interested in getting inside the true psyche of today’s American teenager, regardless of what you might find there!
Thursday, July 16, 2015
Friday, July 3, 2015
CORRECTION: You may NOT get a free copy of COME SIT BY ME by going to the NetGalley website. They have to approve you, by some algorithm I don't understand. Be patient, however, and I think there will be a giveaway of the book later on as part of the promotion.
In other news, a publisher called ChiTeen wrote me and said that they had seen COME SIT BY ME was being published, and they reminded me I had sent the book to them for consideration, so now they were no longer considering it. What they omitted was that I sent the book to them last November (2014)! It is the usual thing now for publishers and agents just not to reply to your submissions or queries, and after several months without hearing anything from ChiTeen, I sent the book to Booktrope, which is now about to publish it. Tells you a lot about the speed with which things are done at Booktrope.
In other news, a publisher called ChiTeen wrote me and said that they had seen COME SIT BY ME was being published, and they reminded me I had sent the book to them for consideration, so now they were no longer considering it. What they omitted was that I sent the book to them last November (2014)! It is the usual thing now for publishers and agents just not to reply to your submissions or queries, and after several months without hearing anything from ChiTeen, I sent the book to Booktrope, which is now about to publish it. Tells you a lot about the speed with which things are done at Booktrope.
Thursday, May 28, 2015
new book on the way
We're making progress at publishing my first book with Booktrope.com. I'll write more about the process later, but suffice to say that the editor actually helped me to produce a better book, and the proofreader has done the same. (Can't say that about very many of the editors I've had with traditional publishers.) The cover artist has done outstanding work. Here is an early version:
We may add a little more color and make the title larger, so that it shows up on the tiny images they use for amazon and other web sites. I think it's one of the very best covers we ever had. This is not, BTW, a horror novel. It's about the aftermath of a school shooting, when Paul, a new student, tries to discover what motivated the shooter. Paul is in danger of being the next casualty. I'll post here when the book goes on sale.
We may add a little more color and make the title larger, so that it shows up on the tiny images they use for amazon and other web sites. I think it's one of the very best covers we ever had. This is not, BTW, a horror novel. It's about the aftermath of a school shooting, when Paul, a new student, tries to discover what motivated the shooter. Paul is in danger of being the next casualty. I'll post here when the book goes on sale.
Saturday, May 9, 2015
What Publishers Do For Writers
There was an article in the NYTimes last week about a young man, Max Brallier, whose online book has attracted more than six million readers. It's on a site called Funbrain, and is basically a comic book called "Galactic Hot Dogs." So Aladdin, a division of the Simon and Schuster publisher, has paid him a seven-figure (that's $1,000,000 +) advance for the rights to publish the book (and two sequels) in traditional paper-and-ink format. Aladdin is printing 500,000 copies, and is promoting the book through a million-dollar print and online marketing campaign.
All this is certainly good news for Max Brallier, and fellow authors should applaud his success. What I found interesting came at the end of the article, where it describes his previous work experience. To quote:
"He took a job in publishing shortly after college, at Penguin, and then at St. Martin's Press, where he worked in marketing. That experience has made him keenly aware of how unusual it is to have millions invested in promoting his book. 'So many books get almost zero done for them these days,' he said."
There it is straight from the mouth of someone who has worked in publishing houses. Your chances of getting your book promoted are almost zilch--unless you've already lined up six million potential readers.
That's not true, of course, at a new paradigm publisher like Booktrope (at least in theory). Every book has its own book manager, editor, proofreader, and cover designer--all of whom share in the book's profits. As you know, that's where I am now, and fingers crossed!
All this is certainly good news for Max Brallier, and fellow authors should applaud his success. What I found interesting came at the end of the article, where it describes his previous work experience. To quote:
"He took a job in publishing shortly after college, at Penguin, and then at St. Martin's Press, where he worked in marketing. That experience has made him keenly aware of how unusual it is to have millions invested in promoting his book. 'So many books get almost zero done for them these days,' he said."
There it is straight from the mouth of someone who has worked in publishing houses. Your chances of getting your book promoted are almost zilch--unless you've already lined up six million potential readers.
That's not true, of course, at a new paradigm publisher like Booktrope (at least in theory). Every book has its own book manager, editor, proofreader, and cover designer--all of whom share in the book's profits. As you know, that's where I am now, and fingers crossed!
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
Progress at Booktrope
Well, to continue my experiences with Booktrope...the editor turned out to be first-rate, every bit as good as I hoped. If you ever put a book on Booktrope, look for Ross Hardy to be your editor. For this book, I wanted a male editor, not because I'm sexist, but because I hope the book will find an audience among teen-age boys, and I wanted to get the details right. Ross was very helpful with that, and presented suggestions along the way, many of which I accepted. Now the ms. is in the hands of a proofreader, again one of my choice.
Should you think that picking a proofreader isn't such a big deal, let me tell you a brief story about a proofreader we had many years ago when we were doing a YA bio of Captain James Cook for Putnam. The proofreader sent back the manuscript and we saw that she had added copy to our book. It was good copy, and we knew from our research that it was accurate. But it seemed almost too good, so we poked around in our research materials, and found that the proofreader had lifted entire sentences, word for word, from a classic book on the subject. Fortunately, we found that out before the book had gone to the printer's. But if we hadn't, we would have been labeled as plagiarizers--not the proofreaders. So don't take the proofreader for granted.
Should you think that picking a proofreader isn't such a big deal, let me tell you a brief story about a proofreader we had many years ago when we were doing a YA bio of Captain James Cook for Putnam. The proofreader sent back the manuscript and we saw that she had added copy to our book. It was good copy, and we knew from our research that it was accurate. But it seemed almost too good, so we poked around in our research materials, and found that the proofreader had lifted entire sentences, word for word, from a classic book on the subject. Fortunately, we found that out before the book had gone to the printer's. But if we hadn't, we would have been labeled as plagiarizers--not the proofreaders. So don't take the proofreader for granted.
Sunday, April 26, 2015
So far, Booktrope has worked out very well for me. The way it works is that editors, proofreaders, cover designers, and book managers (who sell the book in various ways) post their profiles/qualifications on line. Then the writer contacts the ones he/she likes to ask if they'd like to join the team for the writer's book. I posted the manuscript online so they can tell what they're in for. Right now, I have all four positions lined up with people I think are highly qualified. While the editor is working on the manuscript and the cover designer on the cover, the book manager and I have been discussing ways to publicize the book. She is encouraging me to get on as many social websites as possible. I'm already on Facebook, and have two blogs, this one and one for the Samurai Detective Series (seikeiworld.blogspot.com).
So I signed up on Twitter, and I'm still puzzling over what people who aren't famous use it for. I don't know how to restrict myself to 140 characters. I looked at the Twitter site for John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars, a very successful YA book and less successful movie. I ran into a blizzard of posts like, "My wife and I are getting dressed for the Time 100 Most Influential People gala," and "Kanye West is entertaining at the Time 100 Most Influential People gala. He's a genius."
OK, enough of that. I get sick retyping things like that. Eventually we're all going to wind up like the Kardashian family, except for those of us who aren't strikingly beautiful or handsome. (The rest of us will just be their followers.)
I'll try to post more often here because the book manager says I have to do that to attract more followers. We'll see.
So I signed up on Twitter, and I'm still puzzling over what people who aren't famous use it for. I don't know how to restrict myself to 140 characters. I looked at the Twitter site for John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars, a very successful YA book and less successful movie. I ran into a blizzard of posts like, "My wife and I are getting dressed for the Time 100 Most Influential People gala," and "Kanye West is entertaining at the Time 100 Most Influential People gala. He's a genius."
OK, enough of that. I get sick retyping things like that. Eventually we're all going to wind up like the Kardashian family, except for those of us who aren't strikingly beautiful or handsome. (The rest of us will just be their followers.)
I'll try to post more often here because the book manager says I have to do that to attract more followers. We'll see.
Saturday, April 4, 2015
some good news
Here at last is some good news. I should have posted earlier that Dorothy and I found an editor who gave us some work. This person edits the successful Grosset & Dunlap "Big Head" series. It got its nickname from the cover art. Each book is a biography, and the artist portrays them with "big heads" that make them easy to spot. The books are paperbacks, aimed at a younger-grade audience, and most importantly sell like crazy. Anyway, they're branching out from biographies into places and events, and we were assigned a very desirable subject: the Great Pyramids.
We recalled years ago reading that the two most popular subjects for young readers were Ancient Egypt and Dinosaurs, and we told an editor (jokingly) that the obvious title would be "When Dinosaurs Roamed Ancient Egypt."
Anyway, the editor liked what we did, and "Where Are the Great Pyramids?" is scheduled for publication this fall. We were assigned two more titles, and are hard at work on them.
Even better news is that I found somebody who liked my YA novel "Come Sit By Me." Since this book has a school shooting as its back story, publishers and editors and agents ran from it like vampires from garlic. The great fear is, I assume, that there will one day be a school shooting and the shooter's locker will be opened to find that he (they're always male) had been reading "Come Sit By Me."
The fact that this is a topic that is probably discussed in every high school, and most grade schools, in the country means nothing to the publishers.
Having given up finding a publisher or agent, I began to look into businesses that have what I call a new paradigm for the publishing business. I wasn't going to pay for having my book published--that's a very old paradigm called vanity publishing.
No, this company brings together authors, editors, designers, and "book managers" on projects. Everybody is given a share of the profits (providing there are profits). That gives everyone on the project an incentive to do well--a piece of the action, you might say. What's in it for the author? Well, first of all, my share of the profits is 30%--much better than any publisher ever gave me. And secondly, I am finally assured that the sales people involved will actually try to sell the book. I will keep you all posted on how it goes.
We recalled years ago reading that the two most popular subjects for young readers were Ancient Egypt and Dinosaurs, and we told an editor (jokingly) that the obvious title would be "When Dinosaurs Roamed Ancient Egypt."
Anyway, the editor liked what we did, and "Where Are the Great Pyramids?" is scheduled for publication this fall. We were assigned two more titles, and are hard at work on them.
Even better news is that I found somebody who liked my YA novel "Come Sit By Me." Since this book has a school shooting as its back story, publishers and editors and agents ran from it like vampires from garlic. The great fear is, I assume, that there will one day be a school shooting and the shooter's locker will be opened to find that he (they're always male) had been reading "Come Sit By Me."
The fact that this is a topic that is probably discussed in every high school, and most grade schools, in the country means nothing to the publishers.
Having given up finding a publisher or agent, I began to look into businesses that have what I call a new paradigm for the publishing business. I wasn't going to pay for having my book published--that's a very old paradigm called vanity publishing.
No, this company brings together authors, editors, designers, and "book managers" on projects. Everybody is given a share of the profits (providing there are profits). That gives everyone on the project an incentive to do well--a piece of the action, you might say. What's in it for the author? Well, first of all, my share of the profits is 30%--much better than any publisher ever gave me. And secondly, I am finally assured that the sales people involved will actually try to sell the book. I will keep you all posted on how it goes.
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