Showing vs. Telling

 It is almost cliché to tell potential authors they need to show instead of tell. Blog posts abound on the topic. Unfortunately, people seem to little understand what this means. 

The classic example is telling:

Lita was angry when she saw the mess the dog had made.

And showing:

Lightning shot out of Lita's eyes when she surveyed the remains of her stuffed animal scattered down the hallway and Rover staring guiltily up at her with a piece of fluff stuck in his teeth. 

One sentence is certainly more descriptive than the other, but both these examples are not a really good explanation. 

The real difference between "telling and showing" actually has nothing to do with description but rather how you tell the story. For example, an author could spend an entire chapter talking about the villain setting up a trap and going into great description about it. This would be "telling" the reader there is an intricate trap. Imagine if in Raiders of the Lost Ark, it began with people setting up a warning totem, designing the light trap and setting the spears in it, digging out the pit, attaching pulleys and levers and designing a mechanism that caused the spots on the floor to shoot darts out of the walls when people stepped on them, rolling the giant boulder into place and creating the weight triggering system, and finally setting the gold idol in place. This would tell the viewer there was a trap, and the viewer would see how intricate and dangerous it was because of the work that went into creating it. 

However, this does not make for interesting fiction. Readers are not trying to learn how to create traps--although the author should have a good sense of how it was done. Instead they want to see the traps in action. That is what we get in the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark--not the traps being set, but them being first avoided and then triggered by Indiana Jones. This is the "showing" everyone talks about as being necessary to a good book. It reveals the story by walking the reader though action and conflict.

The one sentence examples above are poor because they focus on description. Showing and not telling is more about reader engagement. I could say, "Five natives worked together slowly pushing the three ton boulder up the steep slope of the cave as sweat poured from their faces and hands." This is very descriptive, but not interesting because there is no conflict. It is only a group of people working hard to achieve a task. However, I could also say, "Five natives worked together slowly pushing the three ton boulder up the steep slope of the cave as sweat poured from their faces and hands, making it difficult to maintain their grasp." In this sentence, I have suddenly added a conflict. Instead of telling what the natives were doing, I showed that they were doing something potentially dangerous. Whether the rock slips and kills them all makes the story more interesting by compelling the reader to keep going to find out if the natives finish the job or not. 

The single sentence examples are also poor because both could be found in good, engaging writing. If the plotline of the overall story is about Lita needing to get to Paris immediately to save her sister and the dog mess is one of many obstacles preventing her from catching her flight, it should be quickly dealt with and related back to the conflict of potentially missing her flight. The focus should be on getting to the flight not on once incident with the dog. The first sentence would be best in this case because this is one little step in the big picture of what is happening to prevent her getting to Paris. If on the other hand, the dog incident is the only reason Lita potentially is going to miss her flight (or potentially miss it), the second sentence would be better. Or if the whole book is about Lita's daily struggles (or her struggles with the dog) and how she overcomes them, the second sentence would be better. In determining which events to be descriptive about and which to glaze over, you need to condense the main plot of your story into 2-3 sentences and then determine how much does the event support that plot. 

In Raiders of the Lost Ark, the plotline is that Indiana Jones' rival, Belloq, is always thwarting him after Jones does most of the work. Belloq joins forces with the Nazis to find the ultimate weapon: the Ark of the Covenant, and Jones must obtain it before them. Natives building the trap would not support this plotline at all. Jones going through the traps only to lose the artifact he obtained to Belloq does support it. 

The Repeat Customer

As a freelancer, I generally prefer repeat customers, and I am sure many other freelancers would agree with me. A repeat customer means they are happy with your work. It also means you know what to expect and they know what to expect. I love repeat customers that come back every few months or so with a new project for me. I especially love it if these projects are diverse and interesting, but I am even okay with general repeat business of the same type.

There is one sort of repeat customer I am not particularly fond of. One of these was Tommy. Now, Tommy was a nice guy who paid me to write something up for him and paid me well. He was very easy to get along with, and I had no complaints. However, after I wrote out a brief story for him and finished the job, he returned two years later. This time, he told me he had made a few changes and he wanted me to edit it. I agreed, of course, but the thought of working on the same project again did not appeal to me. I like lists. I like to check things off my lists. I don't like those things to reappear on my lists. However, I knew Tommy, and I knew he was a good client, so I accepted.

I also once had a house that I bought from a repo bank sale. I scrubbed and repaired and got that house beautiful and sold it. Three years later, I was looking for a house and that one was on the market, so we went and looked at it. Never do this. The people who had it last had completely destroyed everything I did and made the home worse than when I first moved in. I wanted to cry.

Along the same lines, it is always a challenge to accept the same work that a client has "changed" after you had it. My Mona Lisa was now covered in graffiti--and I couldn't, of course, change it back to my story. I wanted to be sick. Needless to say, the next time he asked if I could help him with it, I had to decline. I couldn't bear doing it again. 

Don't do this to a writer. If you hire someone to write your book because you recognize that you are not skilled enough to do it yourself--don't make changes to it when they are done, and if you do--don't hire them to edit it again. There are plenty of freelancers in this world who will tell you what you want and give you whatever garbage you want them to spit out. In short--hire someone who doesn't care about the final project. If you want a good product, pass it off between three or four different good freelancers. If they all agree and you don't, they are probably right.

There are some people who return with the same project and who have not destroyed it. In this case, these are what I call hangers on. You have finished a project gone through multiple editing stages, and they come back three years later and ask you to do another editing pass. There is nothing really wrong with this (unless you aren't going to pay them additional money for the extra pass), but at some point, as a writer, you just want to yell: "Let it go!" You can always polish more, but you have to realize when you are spending 6 hours to find the one remaining typo, that is not the best use of your time.

Stay Away: Weebly/ Square Website Builder

 For those who have followed me a while, you probably know we used to have a real website beyond this blog at Moonfruit.com. Moonfruit was an amazing website-builder; e-commerce; host. We had them for over a decade, I believe. In 2020, because of so many malware attacks on Flash, it was discontinued by Adobe and removed from basically all browsers. Moonfruit had been a victim at one time from one of these attacks, actually, and had shut our websites down for three days, I believe, because of it. Moonfruit, unfortunately, was solely built on Flash. 

At the time it was stopped, Moonfruit announced that it had two options--redo everything from scratch without Flash or stop providing service. Needless to say, they chose the latter and refunded unused funds. This was a sad day because as I already said, Moonfruit was amazing.

I have been trying to find a new provider now for four (almost five) years. I am not necessarily looking for free, but at the same time, we only sell a minimum amount of goods on our website. I don't need a lot of bells and whistles. For the most part, I just link to our Amazon store. Moonfruit allowed us to collect funds from Paypal through our email if people wanted to buy in bulk at a discounted rate or directly from us. 

Today, I decided that I would go with the Weebly set up: $13/month for e-commerce or $10/month if you paid for the full year. This was a great rate! Unfortunately, Square apparently bought Weebly several years ago and is trying to make it obsolete. When I went through the setup, Square directed me to its own website and then did a bait-and-switch where I was going to have to pay $32/month!!! 

Further, I had to actually create an account to find this out. Once you create an account, you cannot delete it--you can only "deactivate" it. This is the biggest bunch of garbage I have ever come across. I will probably have to end up sending a "cease and desist" letter to square telling them all my information better have been removed, my account deleted, and the website that I did not set up or build, but which they are saying now exists (deactivated and without a domain name--because I didn't get that far), removed. This is a big pain in the rear since they are the ones who did not disclose accurate prices up front.

Weebly looks like a good website builder, but I had also looked at Square directly and disliked what I saw. I would stay away from both!

Goodreads Giveaways: Are They Still Worth the Effort and Cost?

Initially, I could list a Giveaway for free if I was paying for the print books and distributing them. I thought Goodreads encouraged independent authors and catered to those who wanted print books, however, this week I discovered that Goodreads now charges $119 to publish ANY Giveaway. This makes doing a Giveaway financially prohibitive for indie authors wanting to give out free copies of print books. The publishing company that indie authors use is already making a profit off us when we order the print books; most indie authors do not have a marketing budget and have to do self-marketing to reduce costs to $0 or as close to that as possible; we are giving away free copies of print books that cost us time and money to purchase and ship. On the flip side, traditional publishers (and some vanity presses) have marketing budgets and print the books at cost and do not make any profit off the copies they give away, and they usually have bulk rate mailing permits that get up to 60% off mailing costs.

I have given away hundreds of free copies of my books through past Giveaways with little to no return (maybe 1-2 new reviews for every 100 books given away--some of the print book Giveaways got me better return rates, but many of the reviews were solely posted to Goodreads and not Amazon where they would boost my marketing placement). If we choose the e-book giveaways, we get the added bonus of free books and distribution but paying $119 for a print giveaway does not get us ANY of this. 

In simpler terms: To run a Giveaway for 100 e-books of one of my books, The Corruption, would cost $119. I would not have to worry about distribution or anything else. 

To run a Giveaway for 100 print books of The Corruption would cost your fee $119 plus $538 for mailing costs, another $75 for shipping supplies, and $575 for the actual books plus the cost of shipping the books to me. I would also have to go to the time and effort to address and mail each one--probably a 2 day project.

Both of these options would give me about 2 reviews and 0 new purchases of books. On the other hand, I can promote my books in other ways that are equally or more effective on other platforms, including Amazon and this blog for free. 

So I asked Goodreads these questions:

(1) Why does it now cost for both print books and e-books? 

(2) Did you decide to cost authors more so that you could make print book Giveaways exclusive to big budget publishing companies like Harlequin? 

(3) What benefit are you providing to indie authors by charging us the exact same amount for two entirely different Giveaways--one where you take care of purchasing and distributing the books and another for the same price but where we have to do all the work and pay additional costs to give our print books away? 

This was the response I received: 

Thank you for reaching out to us with your concerns about the Goodreads Giveaway program. We greatly appreciate your detailed feedback and the time you've taken to share your experience as an independent author. Let me address each of your points:

Regarding the costs for both print and e-book giveaways:

The introduction of fees for all giveaways was implemented to cover operational costs and to improve the quality and reach of the program. We aimed to ensure the sustainability of the service and potentially increase the visibility of giveaways to readers.

On the impact on independent authors vs. large publishing houses:

I want to assure you that our intention was not to exclude independent authors or favor large publishing companies. The standardized pricing was an attempt to streamline the giveaway process for all participants. However, we recognize that this change has had a significant impact on independent authors with limited budgets, and we appreciate you bringing this to our attention.

Concerning the benefits provided for the cost:

The Giveaway program aims to offer increased visibility on Goodreads, potential for more entrants and reader engagement, automated winner selection and notification, and simplified distribution for ebook giveaways. However, we understand that these benefits may not fully justify the costs, especially for print giveaways where authors bear additional expenses and logistical responsibilities.

Your detailed breakdown of the costs involved in running print giveaways versus e-book giveaways is particularly insightful. We recognize the significant difference in effort and additional costs required for print giveaways, and your point about the disparity in pricing despite these differences is well-taken.

Please know that your feedback is invaluable to us. Goodreads continuously evaluates its services, and insights from authors like yourself are crucial for understanding the real-world impact of our policies. I will personally ensure that your concerns are passed along to our product team for consideration in future updates to the Giveaway program.

We appreciate your past promotion of Goodreads Giveaways on your blog and understand if you feel the need to update your review based on these changes. Your perspective as an active member of the indie author community is especially valuable to us.

If you have any additional questions or would like to discuss this further, please don't hesitate to reply to this email. We're committed to supporting authors and improving our services based on user feedback.

Thank you again for your candid feedback and for bringing these important issues to our attention.

Needless to say, with this new development, I plan to start doing print book giveaways on this blog sometime in the next 6 months instead of using Goodreads. I hope Goodreads lowers its price for print giveaways in the future, but until then I cannot recommend independent authors using them.