Betsy Horvath

Category: Publishing

  • Finding an Objective

    computerwithcatHello, dear readers, and welcome to December. Soon it’s going to be 2017!  Yeesh.

    I always get somewhat introspective at the end of the year, thinking about where I’ve been and where I’m going.  Because of who I am, I also beat myself up for not making as much progress as I think I should have made.  Then, after weeping softly into my pillow, I pick myself up, look ahead to the new year and determine that the next 12  months will be different and better than the last.  They will!  *shakes fists at sky*

    This year, I am scrutinizing my author “business.”  I put “business” in quotes because so far it hasn’t been much of one.  But I am determined that’s going to change.  So the next series of blog posts are going to be all about my goals and objectives as I try to move forward, the decisions I’m making, and why I’m making them.  I’m looking at every corner of what I’ve been doing, looking for places I can improve, and trying to see how I can make this dream of being an independent author a reality.

    I realize many of you reading have absolutely no interest in being an author, but I thought I would post about this stuff because 1) it’s what I have to post about, and 2) recently a number of people have asked me about publishing a book.  It’s my hope that this series of posts will help by showing some of the decisions that need to be made if you go independent.

    If you don’t give a fig about the author biz, well, think of this as reality TV.  Honey Boo Boo tries to be an independent author.

    And away we go!

    This year I achieved some of my goals by getting out Believing It, and by writing the first drafts for the next novel and novella.  That’s awesome, and I’m very happy to have accomplished those tasks.  But I had also wanted to have at least one of the other two books out this year.  That’s not going to happen.  Why?

    At first, I thought it was simply because I didn’t have enough time.   It’s true that I do have a lot of demands on my time – I work full time, am the caretaker for my elderly mother, and, sometimes, I actually have a life.

    But the more I thought about it, the more I realized time was only part of the problem.  The fact is, the real reason I didn’t hit my goals (or at least get closer to hitting them) is because I was flailing around like a dandelion in the wind, trying to do everything and not focusing on the tasks that I NEEDED to do.  Like, oh, writing. (there will be a future post talking about 80/20 tasks).   I was pulled in all sorts of different directions, flitting here and there, and not concentrating on creating books.  Those other things ate up the time I had.  Then I blamed my lack of time as an excuse for not getting more done.  In truth, I had set myself up for failure.

    Which brought me to my first question regarding my authorial ambitions – “is this a hobby or a business?”  Because if I’m trying to do this as a business, I need to change the way I’m working, and I need to be much more dedicated and efficient.  I need to make some decisions I’ve been ignoring and do things differently.

    In other words, “what is my overall objective?”  It’s important to know because the overall objective will (and should) drive the rest of the goals and tasks that need to be done.  It needs to be identified first.  And then—and this is important—it needs to be written down.

    I’ve been thinking a lot about these questions, and here’s what I think my overall objective is (roughly):  I want to be a reliable mid-list author who makes decent money from my books.  I want to consistently and routinely publish multiple books per year and I want to be paid for those publications.  I want to have a loyal fanbase who enjoy and want to read my books (people other than friends and family – LOL).  I do not necessarily want to be a famous author, or even exceedingly rich–those things each have their own price.  I want to be the workhorse writer you can count on with an actual backlist of titles and series you can dive into.

    In other words, I want to have more than three books out in the world.  I want this thing to be a viable business.  Most importantly, I am ready and willing to do the work to make it happen.

    Okay.  Awesome.  So, what’s next?

    Yeah.  Good question.  I think this is where the individual goals come in.  What needs to be accomplished to make this objective a reality?  What time frame do they need to be done in?  What can I realistically do, and what changes do I have to make to what I’m doing to meet my goals?

    And that’s what I’ll be working on this week!

    Stay tuned, friends, for the next installment of….”As The Writer Turns”

    womancomputernight

     

     

     

  • The Third Time Around

    learningHello, friends!  As I indicated in the last blog post, I did indeed learn many valuable lessons while publishing my latest book, Believing It.  So many valuable lessons, in fact, that I wanted to write about them before I forgot what they were (I’m dottery and middle-aged, you know). You may consider this post to be kind of a memo to my future self.  And let us hope it’s not boring for the rest of you.  Because if it is, I should probably have just written a, well, memo.

    Every time I go through the writing / publishing process, I learn more about what I’m doing.  For Hold Me, my first book, I learned a LOT about finishing a book, having it edited, having it published by a traditional publisher (even though it was published as an ebook, which was a little unusual back in 2011).  I learned about the reality of publishing–what a publisher will  do for you, what they won’t, and how to start building an author platform.

    For my second book, Handling It, I learned a lot about starting out as an indie author. Yes, I learned about finishing another book when nobody really cared about it (the second book is almost always more difficult than the first, I think), but most of the unfamiliar territory I ran into was related to getting that book to market.  In other words, finding an editor, coming up with a cover and sales blurb, formatting, getting set up on all of the various sites, starting the actual business, setting up a print book, and so on.

    This time, the third time around, I learned a lot about the publication process itself and how important it is to plan and prepare. In other words, the lessons were about treating writing as a business and, hopefully starting to view myself as a professional.

    That’s because the issues I had in this case weren’t necessarily anything to do with the manuscript. The actual book hasn’t changed from the time I finished edits and considered it complete.  All of the problems I ran into with this project were related to my approach to the publishing process.

    For example, the biggest thing I’ve learned is that, if I use formatting software, I have to CHECK to make sure the formatting has worked correctly BEFORE publishing the book. I can’t just assume that it is okay, I can’t be lazy—I have to go through the file and check FIRST.  Trust me–I won’t forget that one again!

    But there are other things, little tidbits of advice I want to pass on to my future self to help when I go through this process again.  Such as–

    • Don’t believe Amazon when they say you can upload an ePub file. If you want your book to display properly on Amazon devices, you have to load the Amazon formatted file.
    • All of the platforms display differently, so don’t assume you know how the book is going to display on someplace like iBooks based on the Amazon platform.
    • Don’t sweat the small stuff. All eReaders are different, and people can personalize them in ways you can’t anticipate. Set up the book properly, load it in the correct format, and trust that it will display properly when the customer views it.
    • Don’t go all crazy trying to upload your file again and again and again to tweak little things here or there.
    • Don’t rush!  Make sure you’re comfortable BEFORE pushing the “publish” button.
    • Don’t depend on the previewers available on the different sites for quality control. They are helpful when uploading to make sure everything transferred correctly, but they also don’t give a 100% accurate view of the book. Quality control should be done on your own system. Be confident your book is formatted, then confirm the site feels the same way.
    • If you have to upload your book more than once, make sure the publishing process is complete before you try to upload it again. Read the fine print – Amazon says your book is live, but there’s a note that it takes 24 hours for changes to take effect. Publishing again before the publication process is complete in the first place only confuses the site.
    • Make sure you’re comfortable with the cover before you go live. If you don’t like the cover, change it, but ideally not when you’re in the middle of the publishing process.
    • Have a publishing schedule that builds in time for the actual act of publishing. It will get easier, but it’s not magic pixie dust.  It will always take time.

    Among other things.  Did I mention, “Don’t Rush?”  I think I’m going to have a sign made for that one.

    So, all in all, a good learning experience and a final product I’m proud of.  But that leaves us with the million dollar question…

    Will I listen to my own advice?

    Only time will tell!

     

    lessonslearned

     

     

  • Panic, Planning, and Publishing

    HmmmPreviously on Betsy’s blog…

    Betsy has just published her third book, Believing It, and the publishing experience was more than a little stressful.  Part of that has to do with the fact she decided to put the book out right when she was scrambling to finish her taxes.

    But it was also stressful because Betsy can be something of an idiot.

    Harry, the white Gerbil who has the unenviable task of Guiding Betsy on her Quest to become a successful indie author has a few thoughts on the matter.  He’s in Betsy’s brain now, looking for her.

    Let’s see what happens…

     

    *Harry walks down the corridor in Betsy’s brain* *Enters his office* *Stops*

    Betsy?

    *Betsy is sprawled face down on the sofa in the office* *Grunts unintelligibly*

    *Harry shuts office door* *Trots to sofa* *Considers Betsy* *Jumps up and perches on her butt*

    You do realize you’re insane, right?

    *Betsy grunts*

    And I mean other than just blogging about the voices in your head. We’re talking full blown mania here.

    Am not.

    Really? Exactly how much time have you spent obsessing about publishing in the last two weeks?

    I was just concerned about the shopping experience.

    Oh, bull. I live in here, remember? I was so drenched in stress hormones I had to shower twice to wash them off.

    *Betsy rolls over* *Harry nimbly jumps off before he is crushed under her*

    Of course I was stressed!  Okay, maybe I was a little quick pushing the “publish” button. Maybe I didn’t think things through exactly. I was just intent on making my date. Getting the thing up and running the way I’d promised.

    First of all, you were the only one really intent on making that date. You hadn’t actually promised a date to the world at large.

    I always feel like I’m running to catch up, and that when I actually have a product to put out there, I want to get it done and out because I’m afraid I won’t ever actually put it out if I don’t push it through and do it.

    You rushed.

    Yeah.

    And you pushed the “publish” button.

    *Betsy sighs* Yeah. And then I saw that the Amazon file was opening in the table of contents-even though it shouldn’t have been doing that.  So I fixed that, or thought I did.

    So you published Believing It again.

    And then I found formatting errors in all of the vendors’ files, where some paragraph indents were missing.

    So you published Believing It again.

    And then I wanted to put in links to Believing It in the back of Handling It when I had the links available.

    So you published Handling It again.

    And then I figured out how to make the covers for both books nicer. That was fine, but I wanted to put the updated cover in the actual books, so people would have it when they opened.

    So you published both books again.

    And then I announced Believing It was published, only to realize, right after I did, that I’d missed some other missing paragraph indents, and it was still opening in the table of contents or other random places on Amazon, even though I thought I’d fixed it.

    So you published Believing It again

    And then I realized that the reason the Amazon file was opening in random places was because I’d uploaded an ePub file—which you’re supposed to be able to do—instead of an amazon format file.

    So you published Believing It again.

    *Betsy sighs* Yeah.

    *Harry jumps up to the top of his gerbil habitat* *Grabs little bottle of orange juice* *Takes a long swig* Sweet Christmas! No wonder you got confused.

    *Betsy sighs* Yeah.

    *Harry rests little arms on the edge of the habitat* So, maybe you should have looked into all of this before you pushed publish in the first place?

    *Betsy sighs* Yeah.

    *Harry considers her for a moment* Okay. Let’s regroup.

    Okay.

    First of all, the book is finished, up, live, published. And now that your insanity seems to have settled down, it actually looks relatively nice. That’s all good.

    *Betsy straightens* You’re right. That IS good.

    *Harry holds up a paw* But because you didn’t plan, because you rushed, because you panicked, and because you were an insane idiot publishing over and over again instead of getting it all right before you pushed “publish” in the first place, people might have bought the book when the shopping experience was not ideal.

    *Betsy droops* I know. *Looks at Harry* But the book itself never changed. It was always just formatting. I wasn’t editing the actual book.

    Still. *Harry looks stern* You don’t have so many readers that you can afford to make people angry or confused because the book they purchased opens the first time to some random place instead of chapter one like it was supposed to. Or that when they’re reading, some paragraph formatting is missing in a few places. It makes you look very unprofessional.

    *Betsy droops further* I know.

    So you need to plan. You need to find the problems first, fix them, and THEN go live.

    *Betsy kicks toe of running shoe against coffee table* I know.

    You can’t panic, and rush your product to the market before you’ve thought everything through.

    *Betsy throws up hands* I know, all right? I know! But the book is fine now on all of the platforms. I’ve tested it. It looks fine. It opens to chapter one on Amazon. The places where the paragraphs weren’t indented is fixed.

    You never have a second chance to make a first impression.

    *Betsy droops even more*  I know

    Okay.  Let’s hope you mean it.  *Harry crosses little paws over his chest*  Anything else you’ve learned from this experience?

    *Betsy straightens*  Oh, tons!

    Then we know what to talk about next time.

     

    To be continued…

     

    circus-bear-pic2

  • “Believing It” is LIVE!

    My friends, I am pleased and proud to tell you that Believing It, the latest book in my “Welcome to Hardy Falls” series is LIVE!  LIVE, I TELL YOU!  Maybe I’m not alive at this point, but the book is birthed and out in the world!  And it is now available as an e-book wherever fine e-books are sold.  This is book 0.5 in the series, so it is the prelude to Handling It (book 1).

    Without any further ado, here’s the information!

    Sometimes you just need a second chance to get it right.

    June Esperanza has managed to make a pretty darned good life for herself in the little Pennsylvania town of Hardy Falls. True, she’d never intended to stick around this long, but it all worked out for the best, didn’t it? After all, she has a job she enjoys, friends she loves, and a place in the community. So it shouldn’t matter to her in the slightest that Calvin Hardy has decided to move back home fifteen years after he dumped her on her butt and hit the road. She could care less what he does.

    Calvin knew he’d made the biggest mistake of his life almost as soon as he drove away from June, but he also figured she’d never forgive him. How could she when he’d hurt her so badly? He never expected that, years later, he’d find himself divorced from a loveless marriage and coming back to Hardy Falls to help deal with a family crisis. He never thought that once he saw June again, he’d want her more than ever. Now he’s determined to convince her to give him another chance. If they can get beyond his mistakes of the past, maybe they can finally have a future–together.

    June’s not sure it’s a good idea to believe anything Calvin says, let alone learn to trust him again. Does she even want to try? One thing’s certain–there’s no way she’ll let him hurt her this time around.

    Welcome to Hardy Falls, a little town nestled in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, where love has a way of sneaking in and catching you by surprise–even when you thought you had locked all the doors.

    Click HERE if you want to read the first chapter.

    Believing It is available in the following stores (it’s in others, too, but I didn’t want to list them all) –

    Amazon US  |  iBOOKS  |  NOOK  |  KOBO  | ARe

    Amazon.uk  |  Amazon.au |  Amazon.ca  |  Amazon.de

    The paperback version’s coming soon, if anyone cares.

    *Whew*

    I thought this whole publishing thing was going to kill me.  And just who decided it would be a good idea to do all of this work the same week I was trying to finish my taxes?

    But the most important thing is–it’s out!  Hooray!

    In case you’re confused, I know I said in another post that I was going to do a pre-order, but it turns out I don’t have a clue about what I’m doing, and setting up a pre-order takes planning and confidence.  That wasn’t in the cards this time around.  But maybe for the next one…

    All in all, I’m pretty pleased with how everything turned out.  And I think the finished cover looks pretty.  If you take a glance at the sidebar, you’ll see I updated the Handling It cover, too.  Of course, I just put through a test purchase with Amazon, and it looks like they have the old cover in the actual e-book file, even though I changed it and the preview showed correctly.  *sigh*  It just goes to show you – it’s always something.  (I know it’s not that big of a deal, but I wanted everything to be perfect.  And it’s not.  Like life.)

    The next newsletter will come out tomorrow!  Now I’m going to go to bed.

    Fly free, “Believing It.”  Fly free.

    jumping-girl

     

     

     

     

     

  • Categories and Key Words

    fairytaleAs I come to the end of the editing process for my new book, Believing It, I’m pointing the rudder of my wee little ship towards the rocky shore of publishing. That means getting the manuscript formatted and up for preorder on all of the various book sales sites.

    And it means I’m thinking about sales categories.

    And since this is what I’m thinking about, this is what the blog post is about. Take that.

    You wouldn’t think coming up with sales categories would be complicated, would you? But au contrair, mon ami. Categories, genres, and keywords can drive you a little crazy.

    Yet, they are important and useful tools, because they are ways to let your readers know exactly what kind of book you’ve written and where to find it. So I guess I’ll just have to suck it up and deal.

    Okay. First let’s look at the big picture. It’s important to know what genre your book belongs in. If you think your novel is science fiction and it’s actually fantasy, it can end up in the wrong place. That just annoys your readers and makes it harder to find.

    Romance is the main genre I write in. It’s pretty easy to identify Believing It as a romance – the romantic story and relationship between the two main characters is the primary thrust of the book. In addition, and just as importantly, at the end of the story the relationship between the characters is whole and moving into the future.

    Romance—check.

    But because the romance genre is so big, there are tons of sub-genres, like contemporary, historical, erotic, western, etc. If the genre you write in has a lot of sub-genres, it’s just as important to nail the right one of those as it is to get the correct main genre.

    For example, back in 2008 or 2009 (I forget which), I entered my first book, Hold Me, in the Romance Writer’s Association Golden Heart contest. That’s the contest for unpublished authors, and gets you some exposure to the publishing industry.

    When I entered the book, I said it was a contemporary romance because it took place in the current day. However, Hold Me is a romantic suspense book because the protagonists are in danger most of the time. I didn’t understand the difference, so I put it in the wrong sub-genre.

    Did that make a difference? Maybe not. But it probably annoyed people who had signed up to review contemporary romance and got handed a romantic suspense book instead.

    Believing It is a contemporary romance. It is set in the current time, and the protagonists are dealing with issues in their normal lives. Although it has erotic content, that’s not the thrust (heh) of the story, so it’s not an erotic romance. They’re not in danger all the time, so it’s not romantic suspense. They’re not solving a crime, so it’s not a mystery romance.

    Contemporary romance—check.

    Now we get to the part that can make you crazy. The contemporary romance sub-genre is ALSO really big, covering lots and lots of titles with lots and lots of flavors. If I want the readers to understand what my book is about, I have to try to refine the category even more.

    Amazon offers lots of niche category options, and lets you choose a number of them for your book so you can show up in more than one place. I want to choose the ones that are as small as possible—it’s a heck of a lot easier to be noticed in a small sub-sub-category where you’re only competing against a handful of other titles. On the other hand, I probably still want to appear in the main contemporary romance category as well (I just won’t get much traction there).

    In addition, Amazon lets you set up a number of key words or phrases to help with search results. These key words can also trigger categories. It would be wise for me to take advantage of as many of them as I can.

    I think that Believing It is a romantic comedy, and that’s a smaller sub-sub genre, so I’ll use that one as well as contemporary romance. For key words and phrases, I have “second chance romance”, “small town romance”, “working woman”, Pennsylvania, and some others.

    Unfortunately iBooks, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo do not let me refine the categories as much as Amazon does. I’ll have to be satisfied with “contemporary romance” on those sites. They also don’t allow as many key words and phrases as Amazon, but I’ll use what I can.

    And now I’d better get back to the editing, because none of this is going to matter if the book isn’t finished.  I’ll just  spend all of my free time writing notes about sub-sub-genres and key words

    Publishing, my dears, is complicated.

     

    woman thinking

     

     

     

     

  • Checking In

    penguin waving

    Well, I just looked at the date of my last blog post and good golly Miss Molly, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?  Sorry about that. I’ve actually been busy working on writerly things. As opposed to just telling you I’m working on writerly things when really I’m eating myself into a sugar-coated coma.

    Okay, maybe there have been some sugar-coated coma moments happening because – peanut butter ice cream.  And maybe some diabetic moments. And a few mental, emotional, and spiritual breakdown moments.  But mostly I’ve been working on writerly things.  So I thought I’d write a quick post to tell you-all what’s been going on, writerly-wise.

    After I posted Handling It to the major ebook retailer sites, I took a couple of weeks and built out a world map for the whole Hardy Falls universe. I learned the hard way with my first book that I need to do this when the characters are alive in my mind– not just assume I’ll remember all of the backstories I’ve created for them when it came time to write the next book.

    My problem with a world map is always figuring out how to do it.  Individual Word documents just don’t seem to work for me.  With so many characters and stories, I lose track of where the documents are and what I’ve called them.  If you can’t retrieve data, it’s not worth anything.

    Plus, I’m a piler not a filer.  Once I file something away, I forget it exists.  This is as true on my computer as it is in my file cabinet (or file pile, as it were).

    I found a program called Scapple, made by the people who make Scrivener, and it was a godsend.  It’s like a virtual whiteboard where you can drop notes and text wherever you want on an ever-expanding page. Then you can link the notes together in various ways.  That lets me find the different strings of thought, and then see how the stories and backstories relate to each other visually. And because I worked out dates and ages and all that kind of thing, I’ll be able to be consistent across books.

    So, that’s good.

    When I realized I was using the world map building as an excuse not to move forward, I made myself stop and turned to creating the print copy of Handling It.

    Holy layouts, Batman! The print version took a LOT more time to create than the ebook version.  I think that’s because the ebook version is really just a glorified webpage and there’s not a lot of personalization.  There can’t be – everyone has a different device, and everyone’s device is set up differently.  Not only must the book look different on an iPhone than it does on a Kindle Fire, but every reader has the ability to change fonts and sizes and that sort of thing.  So the formatting for an ebook is stripped down to make sure it works everywhere.

    But a print book requires a very particular format.  The layout is written in stone, as it were.  And it’s hard to know what the interior or the cover will actually look like when you hold them in your hand as a 5.5 x 8.5 book.

    I bought a template so I could lay out the book and the cover in Word, and then use the Word documents to create the appropriate .pdf files.  Since my book already was in Word, I thought it would save time.  It didn’t.

    Well, okay, I guess it kind of did because the margins and gutters and bleeds and fonts were all set up and ready to go, but it definitely wasn’t the “I’ll just pop my book in here and we’re good” experience I’d hoped for.  Especially when I decided I wanted to change some of the formatting.  If you’ve never entered the hell caused by changing style formatting in a Word template, count yourself lucky.

    A lot of time.

    But the print book is finally finished now, I think.  I’m waiting for a print proof copy, and if all goes well it should be available for sale next week.  I’ll post more info on that when I have it.  Once it’s ready, you’ll be able to order a print copy of my book just like you can order a print copy of any other book.

    In between wrestling with world maps and Word templates, I made sure Handling It was available as an ebook everywhere I possibly could.  Now it’s up on Smashwords in addition to all of the other sites, which means it’s available in the Overdrive and Baker and Taylor library systems and can be ordered by libraries everywhere.  It’s also available on Flipkart, which is the biggest ebook site in India, for what that’s worth.  Actually, through all of the various platforms and systems, it’s available in 160 countries.

    Wow, what a learning curve.  It’s been extremely interesting, but it sure has taken time.  On the other hand, I know that when I’m ready to publish my next book, I’ll have a better idea about what I’m doing and it shouldn’t take as long.  That’s the goal, anyway.

    So, now I should be able to blog regularly again, for those who care.  Don’t worry – Harry, Skipper, The Muse, Coffee, and the rest of the gang will be back and better than ever.  I’ll also be starting my monthly newsletter in the next couple of weeks – I was waiting until I plowed through some of this publishing stuff before I tried to figure out Mailchimp too.  I hope you’ll join me – it’s going to be fun!

    Along with the newsletter, I’m trying to decide if I want to sell direct. I don’t know – it could be a good idea, or it could open me up to a world of hurting.  We’ll see….  I’m also thinking about production schedules, objectives, measurements of success, expanding into other genres, and, oh yeah, writing.

    Why, I think I’ll go do that now.

     

    writing