by: Joelle Charbonneau
Most of us get into the writing gig because we want to…well, you know….write. That makes sense. Right? Writers write. End of story.
Well, not exactly. At some point it is the dream of many if not most writers to make the leap from one who writes to one who is published. The day I made that leap from a writer with a manuscript to writer with a published novel, was the day I had to stop thinking of myself as just a writer. Suddenly, I was an author.
What’s the difference between the two, you ask? Ha! Well, to me the two have huge differences in the scope of the work involved. Let me show you:
A writer
1) writes
2) rewrites
3) edits
4) writes some more
An author
1) writes
2) rewrites
3) revises
4) submits
5) does edits
6) networks
7) does copy edits
8) proofs typeset pages
9) answers lots of e-mails
10) deals with promotion
11) files taxes (oy! I hate that one!)
12) is told how cool their job is on days they want to hide under the bed
13) deals with cover art (which thankfully, I only have so much say in because I can’t draw a decent stick figure)
14) etc…etc…etc…
The day I shifted from writer to author was the day I went from a writer to a business person. Suddenly, half the time I spent “writing” was spent on the business of writing instead of just the creation of words on the page. Which meant I needed more time to spend on writing. Funny how that works. It also meant I needed to improve my multi-tasking skills. It used to be I started one project, worked on said project until I reached the end, edited said project and polished it again before I put it to the side and started the next. I was a one project at a time kind of girl. This week, I’ve worked on writing on my second YA novel INDEPENDENT STUDY, wrote a prequel short story for THE TESTING for my YA editor, had a three hour meeting with a publicist, edited page proofs for Murder For Choir, did taxes, started organizing a panel for an event I’ll be attending, worked on brainstorming ideas for release events, send a few e-mails to authors I love asking them if they’d blurb my book, exchanged lots of e-mails with editors and my agent and fellow authors and wrote some blog posts. Phew!
Trust me when I say I love being an author. I love writing books, meeting readers and other authors and learning about the strange and ever changing world of publishing. But it is a job. And like any job there are days I am overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work that is in front of me. On those days, I remind myself how lucky I am to be doing this gig and try not to panic as I work through the to-do list and attempt to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Because, face it, I wouldn’t give up this job for anything.
So, for those of you reading this post – tell me – do you think being a writer and being an author are two different thing? If so, what are the differences you see and if not – why not?
Showing posts with label the job of being an author. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the job of being an author. Show all posts
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Sunday, April 3, 2011
The guide to being an author in the age of the internet
by: Joelle Charbonneau
Yes – that is a lofty title to this particular post. Perhaps too lofty for me to accomplish alone. However, I’m going to take a whack at it in hopes that if I miss something someone will come to the plate and take their own swings.
Aside from the start of the major league baseball season, last week featured a terrible online moment for authors/writers/bloggers. You might have seen it. A blog featured a review for a self-published author that wasn’t entirely favorable. The author then decided to confront the reviewer in the comments section of the blog. Actually, the author commented more than once and was not only confrontational, but a bit classless. Word about the review and the author’s reaction spread over social media, as it has a tendency to do, and within hours there were over 300 comments posted. The author’s book also took a beating over at Amazon in the reviews section pulling 1 star reviews from people who were commenting on her online behavior and not on her writing.
We’ve talked about reviews here at DSD. Reviews are part of life. Good, bad, indifferent – authors have to deal with reviews and they are under an obligation to themselves to deal with them professionally. In the old days (yeah – I’m referring to less than ten years ago here), an author would get reviewed, tell all their friends and readers about the good ones and mourn the bad ones with a gallon of double fudge chocolate ice cream. If you didn’t subscribe to the trades, you never saw the review. Nowadays there is nowhere to hide. Social media spreads the word about good and bad – and let’s face it – it spreads the word about the bad much, much faster. Had the author from this week’s review meltdown kept quiet, the review would have basically gone unnoticed by the book reading universe. Her friends would never heard about it. Almost the entire pool of potential readers would never have seen it. The world would have moved on.
So here is my list of dos and don’ts for authors. Yes, some of these might seem totally obvious, but hey this week demonstrated that maybe for some they are not.
1. Keep your emotions and your conflict on the page – writers work hard at ratcheting up those things in their manuscript. Readers love emotion and conflict when it is central to your story, but they don’t belong as part of your public author persona.
2. Never put anything in writing online that you do not want to follow you for the rest of your career. A piece of paper can be burned but the internet is forever. Agents, editors, bloggers, booksellers and readers all can and do use Google. Trust me – you don’t want them finding this stuff.
3. Don’t create fake accounts on Amazon or on other review sites just to bump up the number of good reviews. Yes, people do this, and, yes, people get caught.
4. Always think twice before hitting send on any post be on Twitter, Facebook, a blog, e-mail or anywhere else. Refer to rule #2 for the reason.
5. Do not create a Facebook or Twitter account if you know you cannot control your emotions. This doesn’t make you a bad person or a bad promoter. This makes you self-aware.
6. Call your friends, family or favorite pizza place when you get a bad review. Never share that disappointment in public. It makes you look bad.
7. Never post on a blog where an author has created an unprofessional spectacle of themselves. You do not want your name associated with that kind of train wreck in any way, shape or form. With that in mind, you also don’t want to post Amazon reviews as a way of kicking an unprofessional author when they are down. Get out of the way of the train, watch it pass by and move on.
8. Posting a reviewer’s home address or phone number on Twitter (or anywhere else) and telling your fans to contact the reviewer to disagree with the review is never a good idea. (I wish this one had never happened, but a NY Times Best Seller did this. She has since heeded rule #5.)
9. Remember the Golden Rule. How you treat others online will determine how you are perceived. Does this mean you can’t disagree with people? Hell no! The best discussions I have on Facebook and Twitter are ones where there is heated disagreement. But it is the manner in which you argue and fight and even how you agree that is important.
10. When in doubt, turn off the internet and write. Hey – we’re writers. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing.
Well, that’s my list. What rules on your list did I fail to mention?
Yes – that is a lofty title to this particular post. Perhaps too lofty for me to accomplish alone. However, I’m going to take a whack at it in hopes that if I miss something someone will come to the plate and take their own swings.
Aside from the start of the major league baseball season, last week featured a terrible online moment for authors/writers/bloggers. You might have seen it. A blog featured a review for a self-published author that wasn’t entirely favorable. The author then decided to confront the reviewer in the comments section of the blog. Actually, the author commented more than once and was not only confrontational, but a bit classless. Word about the review and the author’s reaction spread over social media, as it has a tendency to do, and within hours there were over 300 comments posted. The author’s book also took a beating over at Amazon in the reviews section pulling 1 star reviews from people who were commenting on her online behavior and not on her writing.
We’ve talked about reviews here at DSD. Reviews are part of life. Good, bad, indifferent – authors have to deal with reviews and they are under an obligation to themselves to deal with them professionally. In the old days (yeah – I’m referring to less than ten years ago here), an author would get reviewed, tell all their friends and readers about the good ones and mourn the bad ones with a gallon of double fudge chocolate ice cream. If you didn’t subscribe to the trades, you never saw the review. Nowadays there is nowhere to hide. Social media spreads the word about good and bad – and let’s face it – it spreads the word about the bad much, much faster. Had the author from this week’s review meltdown kept quiet, the review would have basically gone unnoticed by the book reading universe. Her friends would never heard about it. Almost the entire pool of potential readers would never have seen it. The world would have moved on.
So here is my list of dos and don’ts for authors. Yes, some of these might seem totally obvious, but hey this week demonstrated that maybe for some they are not.
1. Keep your emotions and your conflict on the page – writers work hard at ratcheting up those things in their manuscript. Readers love emotion and conflict when it is central to your story, but they don’t belong as part of your public author persona.
2. Never put anything in writing online that you do not want to follow you for the rest of your career. A piece of paper can be burned but the internet is forever. Agents, editors, bloggers, booksellers and readers all can and do use Google. Trust me – you don’t want them finding this stuff.
3. Don’t create fake accounts on Amazon or on other review sites just to bump up the number of good reviews. Yes, people do this, and, yes, people get caught.
4. Always think twice before hitting send on any post be on Twitter, Facebook, a blog, e-mail or anywhere else. Refer to rule #2 for the reason.
5. Do not create a Facebook or Twitter account if you know you cannot control your emotions. This doesn’t make you a bad person or a bad promoter. This makes you self-aware.
6. Call your friends, family or favorite pizza place when you get a bad review. Never share that disappointment in public. It makes you look bad.
7. Never post on a blog where an author has created an unprofessional spectacle of themselves. You do not want your name associated with that kind of train wreck in any way, shape or form. With that in mind, you also don’t want to post Amazon reviews as a way of kicking an unprofessional author when they are down. Get out of the way of the train, watch it pass by and move on.
8. Posting a reviewer’s home address or phone number on Twitter (or anywhere else) and telling your fans to contact the reviewer to disagree with the review is never a good idea. (I wish this one had never happened, but a NY Times Best Seller did this. She has since heeded rule #5.)
9. Remember the Golden Rule. How you treat others online will determine how you are perceived. Does this mean you can’t disagree with people? Hell no! The best discussions I have on Facebook and Twitter are ones where there is heated disagreement. But it is the manner in which you argue and fight and even how you agree that is important.
10. When in doubt, turn off the internet and write. Hey – we’re writers. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing.
Well, that’s my list. What rules on your list did I fail to mention?
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Where do you draw the line?
by: Joelle Charbonneau
The “job” of the author has changed a great deal over the years. Years ago, the author’s job was to write a good book, edit said book and then write another. Sometimes the author would be asked by the publisher to do a book tour or some promotional things when the book was launched, but mainly the author’s job was to write.
With the advancement of technology, a published author’s job has become much more. Publishers want their authors to be involved in social media – be it Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, Goodreads or whatever else is out there. They want authors to attend conferences, sponsor their own tours, take out their own advertising and do the heavy legwork to get noticed by readers. They also would like authors to have their own website.
Author websites always confuse me. Do I have one? Yeah, although I admit I haven’t put a great deal of work into keeping it new and fresh. I update it with my new titles and release dates and have an excerpt up and a new one will be posted soon. I even have a FAQs section although it isn’t nearly as cool as Steve Weddle’s. However, that being said, I struggle with viewing my website as a weekly destination point for readers. As a reader, I've never gone to an author’s website to read an excerpt or check out their tour photographs or just to drop by and see what’s new. Why? I have no idea. I just don’t.
Now, I realize not everyone is me (thank God for that!) and I realize that a website is important to many readers. But this week I heard someone say that they were angry at authors who had websites but did not provide an e-mail address for the reader to contact them directly. This reader was incensed that after taking the time to read the book and then look up the website they could not reach out and have immediate access to that author. They even went so far as to say the author was arrogant and clearly didn’t appreciate their readers.
Really?
I mean, I have an e-mail address on my website and a surprising number of readers have actually used it which always brightens my day. But that is my choice. Isn’t it? When did being an author mean that the public has a right to be able to reach out and touch me whenever the urge strikes them? What if an author has a sick family member they are tending to or is holding down two jobs while writing in the dead of the night and doesn’t have the time to answer e-mails? Does that mean they appreciate their readers less than one who is happy to post their contact information?
What am I missing?
Is the author website really that central to an author’s career and more important – do you feel slighted when an author doesn’t provide an e-mail address for you to write to them? Has that really become part of today’s definition of being a published author? And while we're talking about it - what kinds of things do you want to see on an author website and which ones drive you nuts? Here is your chance to let us know how we are supposed to be doing it. I'm taking notes.
The “job” of the author has changed a great deal over the years. Years ago, the author’s job was to write a good book, edit said book and then write another. Sometimes the author would be asked by the publisher to do a book tour or some promotional things when the book was launched, but mainly the author’s job was to write.
With the advancement of technology, a published author’s job has become much more. Publishers want their authors to be involved in social media – be it Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, Goodreads or whatever else is out there. They want authors to attend conferences, sponsor their own tours, take out their own advertising and do the heavy legwork to get noticed by readers. They also would like authors to have their own website.
Author websites always confuse me. Do I have one? Yeah, although I admit I haven’t put a great deal of work into keeping it new and fresh. I update it with my new titles and release dates and have an excerpt up and a new one will be posted soon. I even have a FAQs section although it isn’t nearly as cool as Steve Weddle’s. However, that being said, I struggle with viewing my website as a weekly destination point for readers. As a reader, I've never gone to an author’s website to read an excerpt or check out their tour photographs or just to drop by and see what’s new. Why? I have no idea. I just don’t.
Now, I realize not everyone is me (thank God for that!) and I realize that a website is important to many readers. But this week I heard someone say that they were angry at authors who had websites but did not provide an e-mail address for the reader to contact them directly. This reader was incensed that after taking the time to read the book and then look up the website they could not reach out and have immediate access to that author. They even went so far as to say the author was arrogant and clearly didn’t appreciate their readers.
Really?
I mean, I have an e-mail address on my website and a surprising number of readers have actually used it which always brightens my day. But that is my choice. Isn’t it? When did being an author mean that the public has a right to be able to reach out and touch me whenever the urge strikes them? What if an author has a sick family member they are tending to or is holding down two jobs while writing in the dead of the night and doesn’t have the time to answer e-mails? Does that mean they appreciate their readers less than one who is happy to post their contact information?
What am I missing?
Is the author website really that central to an author’s career and more important – do you feel slighted when an author doesn’t provide an e-mail address for you to write to them? Has that really become part of today’s definition of being a published author? And while we're talking about it - what kinds of things do you want to see on an author website and which ones drive you nuts? Here is your chance to let us know how we are supposed to be doing it. I'm taking notes.
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