Smiling Sharks

June 25, 2024 by Harvey

In today’s Journal

* Still Playing Catch-Up
* Smiling Sharks (guest post)
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Still Playing Catch-Up

I didn’t write on the novel at all the day before yesterday because I was recovering from remembering that I’m actually 71 years old after pretending for a few days I was 26. (grin)

And I didn’t write on the novel at all yesterday (Monday) because I’m dealing with fallout from having lost my cell phone during the trip.

My son drove about three hours back and then forward again to check the two possible places where I might have lost it as I stepped out of the car. Unfortunately, it was no longer in either place.

Which means some worthless, unscrupulous piece of sh-tuff broke a cardinal rule of humanity: If it doesn’t belong to you, don’t take it.

And no, s/he didn’t pick it up and turn it in somewhere so I could get it back. This wasn’t a Good Samaritan. This was a piece of worthless human filth looking to profit off another’s loss.

We dealt with the physical loss of the phone by having that phone removed from my account and substituting an older phone for it.

The only thing that really gripes me is that whomever picked up my phone saw my beautiful little girl’s face on it as soon as s/he picked it up. That’s a pleasure s/he didn’t deserve, and I sincerely hope a whole slew of extremely bad things happen to him or her.

I’m still grieving over the loss of that baby on April 11, 2023. It’s taken me a couple of days to calm down and remember that this time I lost only a stupid phone, not the girl herself.

Anyway, I hope to get back to the novel today, finally.

In the meantime, today my buddy Dan Baldwin is allowing me to cross-post his bloggette as a guest post. It’s a good one. Enjoy!

Smiling Sharks

by Dan Baldwin

I recently ghosted a book for a businessman who needed his book in public as quickly as possible. I recommended, and he agreed, that Indie publishing was the best, fastest and most economical track.

The book was written, passed by a first reader, and edited, and I handed over a ready-to-go manuscript to my client.

At this point in production I’m out of the picture. I did recommend some very talented and remarkably affordable creatives to format the book and do the design work on a cover.

His book was ready to go. But it didn’t.

Instead of being available in 80 or more countries in the world in ebook, paperback and hard cover, his manuscript became stalled in limbo.

Worse still, he is out several thousands of dollars—more, actually than he paid for the ghostwriting!

What happened?

Somebody saw him coming.

He wanted reassuring words and unrealistic promises. And that’s what he got. I warned him about the literary sharks in publishing who feed on frightened authors.

The company representative made all kinds of promises. They would assign an editor to the book, would launch it as a best seller on Amazon. They’d create a website, promote the hell out of the work in major media, plus a list of other services.

I heard recently from a mutual acquaintance that my author is very dissatisfied with this organization because they haven’t delivered on their promises.

Why should they? They have the man’s money in their bank. They can take their time, and if fulfilling the agreement fails, the author has little or no option except to take his lumps and hope for the best.

The company was a hybrid publisher. It’s something of a middle ground between traditional publishing and Indie publishing. I have used all three, so I have experience in all arenas.

I publish traditional and hybrid, but only in extremely rare situations and for very specific reasons. Nine out of ten books I publish are Indie. There are reputable and honest traditional and hybrid publishers who do honor their commitments to their authors, but there are also those sharks.

For example, another client bought a package from a hybrid publisher. Among other things, they promised to copyright the book, set up an author’s page on Amazon and Facebook, get the book on Amazon and other distributors, format the book, design the front and back cover and the spine, and help with publicity.

For this work the company charged between $6000 and $10,000 depending on the list of duties in the contract. Of course, the price tag increased with the addition of other items from the menu.

That’s fine. With the reputable firms “ya gets what ya pays for.” The problem I have is that the poor author pays a lot of money for services he can handle himself for little money (compared to those large fees) or for no money at all. Here are a couple of examples.

I saw one firm charging $250 for “copyrighting” an author’s work. What the poor sap of an author who signed this agreement didn’t realize is that once his work was in physical form—the manuscript—it was copyrighted and has the full protection of U.S. copyright law.

The firm’s term “copyright” actually meant “copyright registration.” There’s no need to pay someone $250 or more to register a copyright. The form can be downloaded from the internet. It’s a simple one-page document to fill out and the fee is modest. Currently the cost is only $45.

Setting up an author’s page on Amazon and Facebook can be done quickly and easily if you know one of those 10-year-old computer whizzes down the street. You can hire someone for very reasonable sums if you shop around. You can even do it yourself using easy-to-use templates provided by the service provider.

Getting the book on Amazon and other distributors is at no cost to the author. The distributors earn their money from a percentage of sales. For the author, the process is extremely simple: just upload manuscript and cover files and whammo, you’re published.

Formatting and cover design fees are all over the board. If—BIG IF—if you have a good sense of design, you can do your own covers using templates.

Go back and read that BIG IF sentence; a good cover design is essential.Formatting using the distributors’ format templates is simple and doesn’t require a super sense of design, just common sense.

I’ve received estimates from various freelances ranging up to several thousand dollars, but there are very talented designers who will do an excellent job for a fraction of that amount. Shop around.

[Editor’s Notes: 1) I’ve seen these places also offer, for a fee, to get an Library of Congress Catalog Card Number (LCCN). The LCCN is unnecessary, but if you want one, it’s also free. And 2) I still recommend Get Covers for inexpensive, excellent covers.]

When it comes to publicity, regardless of what you hear, unless you’re Stephen King or one of the other top-tier authors, you’ll be doing your own PR.

Those are basic skills, such as writing a news release, that any author can pick up in no time. Other chores, such as media contacts, are basically secretarial-type duties.

If you don’t have a secretary, like most of us, it’s basically developing a list, writing and e-mailing news releases, following up with phone calls, and hoping for the journalistic lightning to strike. It will, and sometimes in surprising ways.

I explained all of the above and more to my ghostwriting client. The advice I give my authors is factual and realistic, but I never promise what I know no one can deliver. My author clearly wanted to hear a tall tale, and one of the sharks filled that need.

And now my former client is feeling the bite.

***

Thanks, Dan! Great post as usual.

Talk with you again soon.

Of Interest

Fly Metamorphosis is a Beautiful Nightmare

The secret behind reading Chinese characters

This one tweak can 3x book sales

I still recommend Dean Wesley Smith’s How to Write Fiction Sales Copy Mine is dog-eared.

The Numbers

The Journal……………………………… 1340

Writing of Blackwell Ops 25: Rafe Andersen

Day 9…… 5366 words. To date…… 23402
Day 10…. 1270 words. To date…… 24672

Fiction for June…………………….….… 37836
Fiction for 2024…………………………. 378433
Fiction since October 1………………… 681490
Nonfiction for June……………………… 21150
Nonfiction for 2024…………………… 204780
2024 consumable words……………… 583213

2024 Novels to Date……………………… 9
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 1
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)……………… 91
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 239
Short story collections…………………… 29

Disclaimer: Harvey Stanbrough is a prolific professional fiction writer. On this blog he teaches Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Unreasoning fear and the myths of writing are lies, and they will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. Harvey will never teach the myths on this blog.

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