Noob Writing Mistakes

 I read a lot of Indie books. (Yes, I am kind of masochistic that way.) In general, people who don't have some sort of state or top-tier private college/university education in writing should hire someone who does to help polish their book. Yes, this is expensive, but it's actually a lot cheaper and easier than in the olden days when you had to hire a vanity press. Even people with upper level education in writing need editors to help polish, they just don't need as much polish. Beta readers are okay to use in addition to professional help, but they should be used more for finding out if your book is mostly coherent and enjoyable.

I repeatedly find the same mistakes over-and-over in new indie author work, so I figured I would address some of them here to help those who, for whatever reason, feel they can't afford the education or hiring someone. These are not all inclusive and can never take the place of a professional.

1. Not re-reading what you've written in one setting.  This one always blows my mind. This is something that is drilled into middle school age students as soon as they are taught to write: "Proofread" your work before you submit it to your teacher. Like many goofy teachers below the university level, they misuse the word "proofread," but that doesn't change the fact that only the most immature writers think they can put out a written work without giving it a second read through. 

Most of my novels are 50,000-75,000 words. If I am not working on the same book every day, I always go back and reread the whole story before adding to it. It is unbelievably easy to either write things that you, yourself, do not understand the meaning of because you misworded it or to forget what you have already said in the story. I mean, if you can't stand to read your own work, why would you push it on others?

2. Excessively and awkwardly using literary devices. If you have used the word "like" more than once every 1000 words (about 4- 8,5" x 11" double-spaced pages) and you are not writing some sort of simile induced poetry, you are not truly writing descriptively but rather overusing a literary device in your prose. Similes are the most basic and overused of all the literary devices. Unless you are writing literary fiction, literary devices should be used sparingly. 

3. Author's notes before the book. Many indie authors like to talk about themselves and their books. Author's notes at the end of a book, explaining what inspired the story and the connection you hope the reader will make to it, can add a nice personal connection for readers. Most of the author's notes that indie authors use, though, are placed at the beginning of the book and these authors use them to either explain the book almost to the point of apologizing for writing it. If you have to explain details about your book to your reader before s/he reads the book--there is a problem with your book. If you have to apologize for writing it, than either you are trying to target the wrong market (that will reject it) or maybe you shouldn't be publishing it at all? There is certainly art for art's sake, but artists, directors, and authors who make this kind of art could really care less if you like it or not. If you, the author, do not feel your book is justified without a lengthy explanation, it is probably one of those things that you can regulate to the back of your closet for your kids to ponder some day instead of releasing it to the general public. 

4  Mislabeling the Preface, Prologue, Introduction, or Foreword (including misspelling any of them). Although Author's Notes don't really belong in the beginning of a book, there are several ways you can introduce the book without making an apology for it. A "Preface" is kind of like an author's note. It covers what inspired the book and how it came into being and usually ends by thanking the people who helped with it. (Just thanking people would be an "acknowledgement.") Whereas an Author's Note would focus on making a connection with the reader, A Preface would give more insight into the process and focus on praising those who helped the author. A Prologue is part of the story, usually backstory that the reader must know for the rest of the story to make sense. This is not just random backstory that the author finds interesting. Authors should know all the details of their characters' backstories--the readers do not need to know all this information in a dump at the beginning of the book. An Introduction tells the reader information that is necessary for reading the book, but that is not part of the backstory. If you have created a unique world, where let's say gravity is reversed, this isn't really "backstory" information but it is necessary or the reader is going to be confused when s/he begins reading. A Foreword is where someone who is not the author (but who is famous) talks about how great the book is and how it affected them. As such, Forewords should never be found in Indie books unless you happen to be on good terms with your next-door-neighbor, who also happens to be someone like Stephen King or Johanna Lindsay, and you are so close that you don't feel like a heel asking him/her to (1) read your book and (2) write a foreword for it. If your neighbor is truly famous enough to write a foreword for your book and actually impress your readers, then s/he is probably not going to be able to tell you "yes" or "no" immediately, regardless as to how many times you have saved his/her cat from falling in his/her pool, because they will have to consult their publicist or manager or whomever is guiding them on their public image before they help you with your book. 

5. Excessive typos. There is absolutely no reason for this, even in an Indie book. A few typos--whatever. Excessive typos? MS Word and Google Docs have a spelling and grammar checker built in. Grammarly has a free spelling and grammar check that is a little more advanced. Not using at least one of these is just lazy. 

Doubting what these are telling you and making changes to the programming (i.e. marking something as correct when it says you are not) when you have never had formal training and just "think" you are right, is just dumb arrogance. Once you have told these programs you want to accept errors, it is difficult to go in and fix that.

6. Not understanding what a paragraph is. As a general rule, sentences do not make good paragraphs. In dialogue, there may be a back and forth of one-sentence paragraphs, but in prose, repeated single sentence paragraphs should not be used. Most of the time, these single sentences can easily be combined with other single-sentence paragraphs around them because they are still on the same topic. 

7. Writing in a foreign language. If you don't speak the language, don't write in it. I read several languages well enough that I am confident translating into English from them. I only translate into English because I am a native speaker and native speakers of target languages are best because we are pretty familiar with nuances and idioms. That said, I feel confident translating into French/Spanish/Latin/Italian for the brief instances they may be needed in a book. For German, I can go to my Mutti, who is, well, German. Most newbies tend to think they can use Google translate or AI and that's close enough. It isn't. there are some garbage translations I have seen--to the point I have no clue what the author is trying to say because they chose some convoluted way AI told him/her to say it.

Also important on this topic: If your reader isn't going to understand what is happening in the book without you putting translation notes in it-don't write in a foreign language. I defer to The Lord of the Rings for the best example of how to do this. Tolkien was obviously inventing several languages. He was a linguist so he could do that and do it correctly. There is a glossary you can use to translate everything because without it no one would be able to translate what was said (he was the only one who initially knew the language he had invented, after all). Real, modern languages don't need glossaries because they are easily looked up online. At the same time, readers could read Tolkien and never look up what the orcish or elvish or dwarvish was saying because they never missed out on the actual story by not knowing what those words meant in English. Now, I have seen even traditional publishers, or rather Amazon imprint publishers, add in a translation after using a foreign phrase. In this latter case, the translation was not necessary because the rest of the story allowed the reader to understand what was happening. Having the English translation pulls you out of the story more than having text like: 

"I love you, my sweet," Emilio whispered in German. 

Using a foreign language for authenticity when you don't really know what you are saying and when you feel you need to translate it immediately back to English in the text is poor authorship. 

8. Not understanding formatting conventions or using them inconsistently. Print books have indents at the beginning of paragraphs. Online and e-books have spaces between paragraphs. Some newbies combine these, which is confusing and wastes space. Other newbies fail to be consistent in formatting and italicize things randomly, switch fonts without seeming reason or consistency, and improperly use things like bold face and all caps. Publishing companies have style guides for those areas of grammar that are flexible in correctness but that need to be consistent throughout a manuscript. It might help if you establish basic rules and write/type them out in your own style guide document. Then go through your manuscript after editing to ensure you have followed these rules consistently. (This is called proofreading.) 

9. Not citing works or including quotes without permission. If you quote anything in a book--fiction or non-fiction--you must cite the source. There are some times in fiction where using a footnote is a better choice that directly citing the source in the text. However, directly quoting another source in fiction--especially from songs--is plagiarism unless you have written permission from the copyright owner of that quote, and you then explain that you obtained that permission in the copyright notice. In general, you can quote up to 500 verses from the Bible in your work, as long as they meet certain requirements and you cite which version of the Bible you are quoting as well as the book, chapter, and verse of the quote. As an indie author, it is generally best to just stay away from direct quotes. 

10. Not understanding your target audience. Every book has a target audience. Usually, the people who are your target audience are those who enjoy reading the genre you have written in. This means that if you write a mystery and call it sci-fi, when it doesn't have any sci-fi elements, then you are going to make your target audience unhappy. I have definitely seen mislabeled books--some are occasionally even put out by traditional publishers in an effort to sell books, like 50 Shades of Grey, that are erotica to a bigger audience. By marketing 50 Shades of Grey as a romance instead of as erotica, it reached more people than it would have, because fewer people read erotica than they read romance. This, is extremely risky because in doing this, you have to have a big enough marketing campaign to get millions of books into readers hands before bad reviews start flowing in. In other words, the book isn't that great but you already sunk a bunch of money into it, so you have to create a massive marketing campaign to recoup your money before people start letting other people know how bad it is. Movie producers also do this--giving you a trailer that has only the best parts of the movie and then you get there and the movie is awful. It's a gamble, but if you are going to lose money anyway and if you are a big publishing or production company, it is a gamble you may take. 

In general, indie authors do not have well-funded marketing budgets. Five bad reviews can be pretty difficult to overcome, and it is even more difficult to get a decent reimbursement for your work prior to those bad reviews going live. 

Aside from passing erotica off as romance, the other area where authors regularly misread their audience is marketing something as a "Christian" book. Many people are "Christians" and don't seem to realize that their behavior and the things they are alright with are not actually okay when one reads the Bible. Evangelical Christians, who see the Bible as literal, make up 1/4 of the population of the U.S. and they have and extremely strong review system online and through churches. If you slap the "Christian" label on your book, and it doesn't meet the standards of what a Christian book is, people (including myself) will complain, and they will do it loudly. 

Granted, in my case, I complain against all mislabeling. I recently read a "mystery" series that was actually a soap opera in book form. That's the quickest way to get a one-star review from me--don't understand who your audience is and market to one audience when your book belongs with another audience.

How Do I Get Reviews for My Self-Published Book?

 Another author on Goodreads asked me this question on my profile, but after asking immediately pushed her own book. If you include a link to your book anywhere it wasn't asked for (including in a comment here), it is spam and will probably be deleted. I struggled all day today with (a) responding to her question on my Goodreads profile and thereby not only encouraging her (and others) to spam because her book link would now be published on my profile or (b) report her to Goodreads as a spammer or (c) ignore her. None of these options appealed to me. 

First, I have not read her book, and I do not intend to read or review it. It's a self-help book, and that is one of the few genres in which I have no interest. You have to write a really good self-help book to get me interested in reading it--although it doesn't necessarily need to be targeted to me. 

Second, she called me "Jenna," which makes me think I wasn't the only author who got thus spammed. Note: If you are writing to anyone, especially book editors of traditional publishing companies, and you are using a form letter, make sure you change names, addresses, etc. No one wants to get a letter addressed to someone else. 

Third, I have no way of questioning her to try to find out if she was intentionally spamming me or not. I have reported other people for doing things like this, but usually only under pressure from fellow moderators (who want me to report people because they don't want to be spammed, too--and by reporting them, it will mark them as a spammer and reduce their ability to do this or they will get their account banned). 

Finally, I really don't like to ignore questions--especially legitimate ones, which is why I decided a blog post was the best way to deal with this.

So, the best way to get reviews is NOT to spam people--especially other authors. Sending me a link to your book is not going to get me to buy it. Even if I do buy your book, that doesn't mean I have to or will review it. Plus, if the person you spam gets upset over that tactic, they could leave you a bad review.

I discussed Goodreads Giveaways as a method of getting reviews here. It is expensive and for about every 100 books I gave away, I got 2 reviews in return. Still, that is one way to get reviews.

You can also pay scammers to write (usually AI generated) reviews for you that are vague. These are generally all positive because you are paying them and really have little value beyond tricking algorithms (at least temporarily). These are also usually expensive, and you are not dealing with good people. Most fly-by-night marketing scams also use these. If you are caught doing this, however, you may end up getting your publishing account banned from Amazon. 

You can do review exchanges--but by that I do not mean you give me your book for me to review and I give you mine. This is called a reciprocal review (you are reviewing someone who is reviewing you), and it is forbidden (and can get you banned) on most sites that allow reviews. A legitimate book exchange allows you to give your book to someone to review and in exchange you review someone else's book. There are a few groups like this on Goodreads. These do not usually cost anything (or sometimes cost the price of a book), but they require a time commitment to reading other books.

There are also numerous paid services that have started doing this--but only a few of these are reportedly reputable. These are also online review exchange websites. These are a little more risky and also tend to be expensive. Some require you to use them with ARC (advanced reader copy) distribution before you publish your book fully (it should, however, be edited and polished fully). Some are set up so that you can give reviews for other books to earn your reviews, but all of them use a business model with varying costs if you want to get enough reviews for your book to be worth using the service. I watched a YouTube video where an author talked about how great one of these was. However, I noted that she spent hundreds of dollars and admitted she only got about 16 Amazon reviews. Goodreads reviews are great, but they don't usually translate into sales as well as Amazon reviews. I find it hard to justify that kind of money for the return. 

I have some other methods of getting reviews that I plan to explore over the next couple of years. I plan to write a second post about those methods and explain whether or not they worked. 

Avoiding Market Saturation with Books

 The problem with self-publishing is that anyone can do it. One problem is, of course, that books with little to no editing are published, which are irritating to read. Sadly, this is the least of the problems with self-publishing. Many self-published fiction books lack a beginning, middle, and end or other necessary parts of fiction. Non-fiction lacks proper sources and citations. Now, the above you can sometimes find in traditionally published books, as well. I have also, uniquely, discovered that the self-publishing industry is extremely dishonest because so called authors will publish awful "romance novels" that are 12 pages long and charge you $1 for them! 

Something else you won't usually find is market saturation.

What is market saturation? There is only a certain audience for any type of book. For example, just because you can put out fifty word search puzzle books a day doesn't mean there are enough people in the world to buy them. This is why puzzle books were usually created by specific presses dedicated to printing them and these presses only put out a limited number each month. They could put out ten books a month and make plenty of money where today a person could put out 50 books a day and might only sell ten books each month because the market is saturated. There is not a big enough audience for puzzle books to buy all the puzzle books that are being printed by indie publishers who have watched a couple YouTube videos on getting rich quick by publishing puzzle books. 

Obviously, there are a lot more than these "low content" books out there. Journals, coloring books, notebooks, planners. All of these are being pushed out because the latest "influencer" has said you can make a ton of money doing it. 

When the self-publishing craze first started, it was public domain books, like Pride and Prejudice. From the time Jane Austen first published her masterpiece until about 2005, there were about 100 editions of this book produced by various publishers. Now there are over 5000, which, of course means, thousands have flooded the market in the past few years. Amazon actually prohibits these at this point, but they are still getting produced by fooling the system. 

Once Amazon stopped people from reprinting public domain works en masse, people then switched to creating "commentaries," "analysis," or "reviews" of the books--again en masse. Market saturation does not make you a million dollars. Nor does attempting to enter a market that is completely saturated--especially if you are an unknown publisher. The only thing market saturation does is ensure people, who write good puzzle books or book commentaries will never make money off of them or even be discovered by readers who might enjoy their work. If anything, market saturation with quickly produced garbage only ensures that the market for those kinds of books will shrink even smaller. How many times is a reader going to purchase a book only to be disappointed with the content because it was generated by AI or only superficially written in a hurry before s/he decides to stop purchasing books?

Publishing companies with marketing departments understand this. If you publish one or two junk books each year, it won't destroy your audience. If you constantly turn out poor quality content, it will. This is why most of the major traditional companies have set up "imprints" to capitalize on the self-publishing craze while keeping a distance from themselves. I question if they will escape unscathed, though. 

I will tell you honestly that you may put little effort into jumping onto the latest self-publishing craze, but by the time you hear about it, it will already be a saturated market. If you want to make money self-publishing and have that income continue, it is hard work.

Off Topic Publishing More Scam Than Real Publishing Company

 So, I subscribe to Globe Soup's Contest Newsletter, which I plan to write about in the future. They send e-notices for contests not affiliated with them (albeit these are prefaced with warnings that they are not from them). Last month, I entered one from Tadpole (in addition to entering one from Globe Soup). I would deem Tadpole to be a legitimate publishing company--even though their material comes from publishing paid contest entries and the "longlist" winners seem to be high. The reason is because they are upfront about being an online literary magazine, and they have real prizes. Some of these are marketing packages, but you get a complete, free marketing package if you win one.

When I went to check out the Off Topic Publishing Contest, warning bells went off. First, there seems to be only one contest judge--the owner and founder of Off Topic Publishing. This, in itself, doesn't necessarily mean anything, but it is a flag. The only reason this would be legitimate, in my opinion, is if the small publishing company needed more submissions and was using the contest to do that. 

Then, however, I looked at the prizes. In reality, the first place prize is the only one that wins anything: a free manuscript critique/ and $100 CAD. That would be a decent prize, except a manuscript critique is not very valuable--you can get those for free from a beta reader. An edit would have been more valuable, as long as the editor knows his/her stuff. You also get free tickets to an online writing conference promoted and created by Off Topic Publishing. Writing conferences are, in general, scams. It is great to hear authors talking about their work, and this particular conference discusses copyright, which is important, but like all such conferences, the cost of attendance is high. Because this one is online, you could just go to YouTube and find a similar experience by piecing together your own conference. In person at major writing conferences, you might at least get some vendor freebies and contacts with publishing companies in exchange for the outrageous price. 

Sadly, and something that should always send up more warning bells, the rest of the prizes consisted of worthless "free" tickets to the conference and discounts on editing or critiques. Presumably, since you are paying for it, you get to choose which you prefer. Please note: A discount is NOT a prize. That is what car dealers send to everyone on the scratch off "prizes" they use to get you to come to their "sales event." 

At $20 CAD a pop to enter this contest, one has to wonder why the prizes are so chintzy. I have no clue how much she has offered to pay the four speakers at her conference, but at $120 CAD per ticket, presumably, she can have 20 full-paying attendees and still walk away in the black. Keep in mind that it is online, so she doesn't have to pay for space or anything else, other than potentially a Zoom meeting if she gets more than 90 people registered. At that point, she can certainly cover Zoom charges. As far as the contest goes, if she gets 5 entries, she has covered the first prize payout. In fact, if 125 people enter her contest, she has more than covered prize and conference fees. 

So, perhaps, she is just a smart businesswoman? (Even then I wouldn't recommend entering this contest--why pad someone else's pockets?) Then, I went to the "submissions" section of the website. Unfortunately, this is a short-story vanity press. You submit a short story/essay to their website, but you have to pay a rather large fee--$50 CAD, if you are accepted for publication in their anthology!!! Now, presumably 10+ authors will be included in this single book. For that $50, you get only 1 "free" copy of the book. I can publish and buy books a lot cheaper than that on Amazon-and Amazon allows you to have your own imprint if you want to buy ISBN numbers. Notably, ISBN numbers cost $30--but that isn't per book! I understand they are using IngramSpark, which is more expensive than Amazon but offers wider distribution, but IngramSpark does not require exclusivity. They could also offer books on Amazon and buy the copies they distribute to the authors for lower cost. Apparently, the founder is not a smart businesswoman.

I am okay with self-publishing authors starting their own publishing business, although I don't recommend it. (Yes, I know, I am trying to do just that.) However, I am not okay with self-publishing authors starting a vanity press. If you want to hire me as an editor, I am all for it and advertise my services on my website. At the same time, I do not have the capabilities at this point in time to accept and review manuscripts that I will then publish under the Dreaming Reality name. When I do that, if your manuscript is accepted, it would not cost you a thing to have me edit it other than a percent of the sales. This would be a big jump to go from only producing my own work to producing the work of others. I need to make sure all books I publish can be available across a wide spectrum of platforms--right now I am only set up on Amazon, although I am going to be expanding, hopefully by the end of this year onto other platforms (IngramSpark and Draft2Digital-formerly Smashwords) so I can get better library and institutional coverage. I would need to have more marketing strategies in place. I would need to also have the time to review submitted books--which for me would mean submission windows that would not be open all year. 

Most disappointing, is that since this contest requires you to submit the first 2,500 words of a novel, it makes it seem like you might get a publishing contract with them. However, when you look at their published book list on their website, there are only 10 different books and one calendar offered. Most of these are poetry anthologies edited by the founder, and two poetry books are written by the founder. Only one is a novella, which seems to be a collection of flash fiction--even though the contest seems to be looking for full-length novels. Although the contest does not limit genres, it seems like only poetry and flash fiction is all they have ever published. To me, there is no reason to offer a contest for full-length novels if you don't print them, except to get authors' hopes up that if they win they will get a traditional publishing contract. Instead, they will get connected to a vanity press that seems to have been started to boost the founders vanity. 

Big or small, a publishing company should put promoting their author's works and making money by selling them instead of promoting contests and making money by selling tickets to online writing conferences. In this case, it seemed like the "publishing company" also did little to promote the books they produced.

The Do's and Don'ts of Writing for Children

 I have one children's picture book that is currently published, but I have five children, so I feel like I am justified in talking about some basics when it comes for writing for children. I am going to use my book: Sal, Captain of the Baby Guards, and a middle reader book, Saving Bigfoot Valley, that just got a five-star review from me for examples.

1. Know your audience. Many people writing Indie books for children and think they all have to rhyme. This is false. In fact, unless you are a poet, you really shouldn't rhyme. Many books that I have reviewed in this past year that were rhyming children's books were written by people who used slant rhymes and neglected the meter. Sal, of course, doesn't rhyme. I actually have no desire to write a rhyming children's book. As you move into older age groups (i.e. 8+ is when beginning chapter books should start transitioning into a child's reading diet if not before), rhyming is not going to capture your audience. 

2. Unless your book has an upper and lower age limit, do not set it on Amazon. I get it. This feature can help you target your age group in Amazon searches. However, there is a big problem that I have occasionally fallen into: If you set a lower age limit, i.e. 14 years old, the upper limit is sometimes set to 18. 

So, if you click to Sal, you will see the age limit of 7-9. I probably should lower that to 3-9, but this works because adults are not going to pick up a picture book to read. Since the topic of the book is  a fear of vacuum cleaners, older kids aren't really going to be interested in it either. S.D. Brown's Saving Bigfoot Valley is targeting a specific age group: 9-12 year olds. Since this book talks about body changes during puberty, this is a good age group. One problem would happen if you wrote, say a book like Twilight, which would appeal to 14-year olds, but the top accidentally got set to 18 years. Twilight is a book that appeals to both children and young adults, so you have limited your audience. The other problem would be setting an adult book with adult subject matter to, say 13+, because it was written at a 4th-grade level. In this case, you are identifying your book as fit for children when the subject matter is not. Misidentifying your audience can lead to bad reviews. 

3. Including objectionable material in kids books. I list many things as "potentially offensive" in my reviews, including things like "parental disrespect" that some people might not find offensive at all. In this case, though it covers only the biggies: anything other than mild violence, rape (there a limited places where this could be used offscreen in a high school/YA book), any sex (again, offscreen is now okay in YA books, but this subject is touchy, so it's best not handled even in YA), religious topics unless it is a religious book, political topics unless it is a political book, LGBQT+ unless your book is an LGBQT+ book.

Anyone who has read the news, knows that several books are being banned from libraries and other places. Parents ultimately get to decide what their kids read, see, and hear. Inherent in the freedom of speech is the freedom to not listen to speech. If you include objectionable material in your book, you need to inform people about it instead of trying to sneak it under the radar just to sell books. Not telling your audience what they can expect leads to poor reviews and getting your book banned when parents allow their kids to check out a "children's book" only to find out it isn't. 

4. Does your theme make sense to the age group?

Just because you make a cartoon filled book, doesn't mean it is for children. If you make an adult cartoon book, you need to make sure that it is clear the audience is for adults. Animal Farm is a book about animals, but it also contains complex sociopolitical themes. It isn't really a book for 5-year olds. Think about what you want to say with your book and about the story you are telling. For younger children, complex explanations about nuclear physics is not appropriate. At the same time, books about everything from birthdays to potty training are in abundance. My son was afraid of the vacuum cleaner, which is why I wrote Sal. I couldn't find any books about that fear. For middle schoolers, the difficulties of going through puberty and books that show good examples of friendship are appropriate, but a book about potty training at this level or where a character gets married would not be. Young Adult books usually have characters who are on their own and out in the world--even if the character is only 16 and technically too young to have to face those things. Some books can appeal to more than one audience, but if you try to do that and fail, you risk getting bad reviews.