This is a response to Jonathan Karp's article, "This Is Your Wake-up Call: 12 Steps to Better Book Publishing" in the 04/20/2009 issue of Publishers Weekly.

Karp’s article on how to improve the state of the publishing industry is witty, informative, and important. I certainly recommend that everyone interested in the way that books are selected, published, and marketed and sold should read it.

So how does Fantasist Enterprises stack up against his list? Well, since we’re still a small organization, a lot of things automatically do not apply, so I’m only going to focus on a few things.

1) End the Kabuki Publishing: mostly, this does not apply to us, since we haven’t reached the point where we are required to attend sales conferences or generate seasonal catalogues. But I was involved in that process a handful of times during my experiences in the publishing industry. I’ve seen what happens when you promote a book that is still in the works, including it in a catalogue before the first draft is even completed—and what happens when the manuscript hits the fan and the book is not delivered in the time it was originally expected. Publishing is an industry full of delays, but it’s a mess when sales agents expect a book and it’s still months away from being completed.

So how do we better judge publication schedules? I’m not entirely sure . . . but I know I do not like having to push a book long before it’s been completed. Sure, mention it in lists of upcoming projects . . . but the catalogue-style complete information could wait until the book is closer to being completed. This is the digital age. Catalogue information can be distributed quickly and easily through electronic means.

2) Prioritize and Specialize: That’s the name of the game with small presses. Do I really need to go into that one?

3) Tell the Truth: Basically, Karp is saying that if a book sucks, don’t try to market it as a masterpiece. Tell the author that it’s bad. If they are unhappy with that, they can go elsewhere.

Now, I’ve not had to face this problem yet. At least not on a large scale like a second or third novel from an author I’ve already published. It’s a tough call especially if an author with a following turns in something that you’d rather use as a doorstop than read. But I hope that my editorial integrity would hold strong in that instance and keep me from going the easy route and publishing it. I’d certainly feel embarrassed if a work of low quality sat on store shelves (or in the hands of readers) with the FE logo on the spine.

I have faced that issue on a smaller scale when selecting short stories for anthologies. I have turned down submissions from authors who have some level of a following if the story did not meet the standards of quality that I look for, or even if the story did not fit the theme or the mood that the book began to take on as I made selections.

4) More Editorial Quality Control: This is at the heart of what I do at FE. I’ve been accused of being a perfectionist, but I do understand that nothing can be perfect, and eventually you have to let a work go out into the wide, cruel world. But I believe in going over manuscripts multiple times, until I’ve reached a point where the critical voice inside my head is either silent, or just quiet enough that it does not jar me out of the story. I am a firm believer that there is such a thing as good style and bad style in writing. There are things that are effective, and things that are not so effective.

It is also possible to be a great storyteller, but a poor writer. I am more apt to pick a story by a good storyteller, who needs help with his or her writing than the other way around . . . but . . . I will not allow weak writing to go straight to publication. I will work with authors in order to help them polish their stories—and hopefully they will learn something along the way, which will improve their future writings.

5) Advertise: Karp says that advertising is essential and necessary, but I’ve long been of a mind that ads really do not add up to additional sales. He points to The Da Vinci Code and The Historian as bestsellers that “were made with significant ad campaigns.” But I have a feeling that the ads in question were in large, national publications . . . publications whose ad space is well above FE’s relatively small advertising budget. If we had the money, I’d definitely spend more on large ad campaigns.

I do like what Karp has to say about how advertising revenue keeps publications in business, which allows them to be around in order to print reviews. It’s a good example of how everything in life is interconnected . . . even (especially?) in the business world. It’s why I feel that it is of utmost importance for authors to help support the publishing houses they wish to work with by buying copies of their publications and spreading the word about those publications to as many people who will listen. The better a publisher is doing, the better they will be able to serve an author by producing a quality product and helping him or her promote their work.

Dark Scribe Magazine has announced the nominees for the 2nd Annual Black Quill Awards, and VEINS, by Lawrence C. Connolly, has been nominated for Best Small Press Chill! Every vote helps, so please follow the link above and cast your vote.

Remember, voting closes at midnight EST on Sunday, January 25th, 2009. And please, tell your friends!

I receive several emails a month asking me how people should go about getting published, so I wrote this blog in order to give as much advice as I can in one place.

First off, the ways in which one can become a published author vary (every author has their own story), and depend upon what kind of writing you do. Most of my experience is in the publication of fiction, so that is what I will focus on--though much of the same advice holds true for non-fiction writers as well. I am also going to assume that the ultimate goal is to publish a novel.

1) Read in Your Genre: You want a career in letters? Then you'd better be an avid reader. Focus on your genre. Read the classics and the modern masters. Take note of what is good and of what is bad. Get a feel for what works for you as a reader. Get familiar with the expectations of your genre. Know it inside and out so that your work will feel comfortable and familiar enough that readers are willing to take a chance on it (oh, this guy is compared to my favorite author!). You must also know how to surprise and wow them, though, since that is what will bring them back for more.

2) Read Widely: Don't get stuck in the genre ghetto. Roam around the bookstore or library a bit. Cherry-pick titles from other genres. See what you can learn from them about the craft. Read lots of non-fiction. That will enrich your brain, and give you lots of ideas to play with. The more you know, the more real you can make your imaginary world and people.

3) Write Well: Sounds obvious, but it's not. Writing is a fine art that requires a lot of work to get right. You can teach yourself by following steps one and two and practicing your writing everyday. Add to that by reading books about writing and style. Join a writing group. Maybe even go to school for writing (if you want to write popular fiction, take a look at Seton Hill University's distance-learning masters program).

4) Find an Editor: Despite doing steps 1-3, most people will never be able to clean their own manuscript to a perfectly professional polish. It is very hard to look at something objectively when you are that close to it. At the very least, put a draft in the drawer for a few weeks before going back over it and attempting to give it a thorough edit. That time will allow you to step back just a little bit. Then read the manuscript out loud. You'll hear a lot more mistakes and poor style. If you can get an experienced writer to critique the manuscript, that's a plus. But an edit from a professional editor will still make a very large difference. Shop around until you find one you are comfortable working with. I’d appreciate it if you keep me in mind, too. :-)

5) Sell Some Short Fiction: Try your hand at short fiction, especially if there are markets for it in your genre. The speculative fiction genre is blessed to have Ralan.com for information on markets. You can also refer to the 2009 Novel & Short Story Writer's Market. You want to try and get some publication credits under your belt to show a track record of having your work recognized as publishable and that you are familiar with working with editors and publishers.

6) Develop a Platform: Get known in the writing community or some other organizations. Teach. Give talks at conferences. If there is some current issue that is even tangentially related to your novel, get out there and get involved. When the book comes out, tie all of that work together. Be prepared to speak and attend events.

You absolutely need to be out there selling your book . . . and agents and publishers are going to want to see that you understand this and have already begun to build your network. Given the choice between two equally great books, one written by a hermit, the other written by an activist, there really is no choice for the smart publisher.

7) Pick a Publisher or Agent: Use resources such as the 2009 Novel & Short Story Writer's Market, 2009 Guide To Literary Agents, or Jeff Herman's 2009 Guide To Book Publishers, Editors, & Literary Agents to zero in on agents and publishers who you think would be a good fit for you. I would not recommend going with either a publisher or an agent who has placed ads about seeking new material. They may not necessarily be scammers, but chances are they are too new or unconnected and desperate for material.

Some people say to find an agent first. This does make sense since many of the larger publishers will not accept unagented materials. Others say that you should get a publisher interested before querying agents. Once you receive an offer, just say something along the lines of, "I have to run this by my agent." Then you edit your query letter by adding information about the offer, and start sending your packet to agents. This will sweeten the deal for the agent and make them more willing to take a look.

Yes, the agent will still expect a cut even though you were the one to make the sale, but it will be worth it to have an agent looking over your contract and watching out for your best interests.

8) Send Query Letters: A good query letter is very important for both agents and publishers. Think of it as a job interview. You need to present yourself as professional and confident, but approachable and personable. Your letter must be brief. Three paragraphs ought to do it. Greet the person in the opening and explain why you've chosen to send them material. If you have any kind of connection with them (you've met, they represent your mentor, their client recommended that you contact them) mention it here.

Then you need to introduce yourself and give a little background information if it is relevant to the material you are pitching (if your main character is a high school teacher, and you've taught for ten years, mention it; if you graduated from a creative writing project, mention it). Then you need to describe the project as quickly and convincingly as you can. No more than one or two sentences, though. This is not the place for a complete synopsis.

9) Speaking of the Synopsis: You should have two kinds. The first is your page-long synopsis. It can be single-spaced. The longer one should be double-spaced, but is roughly a page per chapter. Obviously, it is going to go fairly in-depth.

You usually only send the page-long version with your query and the page-per-chapter version with your complete submission when asked for it. Pay attention to what publishers and agents want you to send. Many of them want different things at different times. It all depends on how they like to work. So pay very close attention to their submission guidelines. If you do not follow them you will appear to be unprofessional, careless, or possibly even so self-obsessed that you do not care about making life easy on the people who could be making your writing career. And you don't want that. Agents, publishers, and editors are very busy people. They will remember the ones who do not respect that fact.

10) Repeat: You'll probably have to do that last step several times over. Get used to rejection. This is not a business for the overly sensitive. Acquisitions are based on personal taste, experience, and the agent or publisher’s understanding of the market. Tastes and the market are always shifting. Sometimes editors do make mistakes. Legendary editor Robert Giroux failed to sign Jack Kerouac.

But even if you feel someone has made a huge mistake by not signing you, don't burn any bridges. The idiot who did not offer you a contract might end up taking the place of the editor who eventually did (or they might be good friends), leaving you in a sticky situation if you bad-mouthed the first editor at conferences or on your blog or a discussion board.

11) You are Working on Another Book, Right?: Don't allow all of the business aspects of writing and publishing take over completely. You should always be writing (that's what makes a writer, right?) and working on something new. Then, if you never manage to place your first piece, soon, you'll have something else that you can shop around.

12) Networking Matters: It's not all about who you know, but it's certainly a big piece. Yes, you need to have talent and a polished book, but you also need to get to know the players in the game. Publishing is very much a personal business, and it is a very small world (which, as I hinted above, could be a bad thing if you don’t play by the rules . . . but it should be a boon if you consistently play nice).

So get involved in writing groups to get to know authors near your home and listen for any networking opportunities. Go to conferences and conventions so you can meet established authors and (hopefully) their agents and editors.

13) Final Thoughts: Despite all of the advice out there on the subject, the reality is that there is a different story about each author's path to publication. It all depends on being in the right place at the right time, with the right combination of talents, surrounded by the right people. It's much like having the proper alignment of stars for a fortuitous birth . . . except that you have control over much of the process and can work towards aligning all of the pieces.

Lawrence C. Connolly will be talking about creating tension in fiction and reading from his novel, VEINS at the Borders in North Wilmington at 7:00 PM on Friday the 12th.

This particular talk was well-received by the Garden State Horror Writers, back in July, so if you're looking for some advice on amping up the tension in your fiction, don't miss it!

Connolly will also be reading, signing books, and playing music from the VEINS soundtrack at Between Books in Claymont, DE on Saturday the 13th from 2-5 PM. Between Books always makes us feel at home, and they throw a great event.

Please pass this information along to anyone who might be interested! Crowds are great fun. See you there.

Copies of veteran short story author Lawrence C. Connolly's first novel, VEINS, are now shipping from www.FEBooks.net and www.VeinsTheNovel.com with a wider release in August.

A fast-paced supernatural thriller, VEINS features a visceral plot and engaging characters brought to life through amazing portraits by Star E. Olson. Once you start reading, you won't be able to stop until the final bullet is fired and the last body falls.

The synopsis:

Fleeing from what should have been a perfect crime, four crooks in a black Mustang race into the Pennsylvania highlands. On the backseat, a briefcase full of cash. On their tail, a tattooed madman who wants them dead.

The driver calls himself Axle. A local boy, he knows the landscape, the coal-hauling roads and steep trails that lead to the perfect hideout: the crater of an abandoned mine. But Axle fears the crater. Terrible things happened there. Things that he has spent years trying to forget.

Enter Kwetis, the nightflyer, a specter from Axle’s ancestral past. Part memory, part nightmare, Kwetis has planned a heist of his own. And soon Axle, his partners in crime, and their pursuer will learn that their arrival at the mine was foretold long ago . . . and that each of them is a piece of a plan devised by the spirits of the Earth.

The Reviews: (more at www.VeinsTheNovel.com)

"This rich, mesmerizing, and darkly wondrous novel held me under its spell for days as I read it, and haunts me even now, weeks later. This is what grand story-telling is all about, regardless of genre. I began the novel as an admirer of Connolly; I finished it as one in awe—and so will you."—Gary A. Braunbeck, Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild Award winning author of Destinations Unknown and Mr. Hands

"Much like the souped-up vintage Mustang that cuts through the heart of the story, VEINS starts fast, accelerates quickly, and finishes with a flourish, fulfilling all the promise at novel length that Lawrence Connolly has been flashing for years in his outstanding short stories."—Robert Morrish, fiction editor of Cemetery Dance

A couple weeks ago I discovered that Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword & Sorceress 23 was open for submissions via e-mail . . . for four more days. I’ve been thinking lately that one of my big regrets from the past few years is that with all of the time and energy I’ve put into Fantasist Enterprises, I have done very little writing of my own. Besides that small burst of creativity roughly this time last year, and a short story I wrote in December, I’ve written nothing more than letters, e-mails, marketing materials, and the occasional blog.

I slid into the publishing business thanks to my love of reading and writing. Story is my passion, and I decided that I wanted to spend my time working with it. I knew I had a lot to learn about writing, and was planning on going to Seton Hill’s writing popular fiction program so I decide to focus on learning about publishing by doing it, and allowing my own writing to simmer on the back burner while I worked. I reasoned that after graduating from Seton Hill, I’d been more accomplished at writing, and could then turn my attention more towards getting published.

Even though I completed a draft of a novel in order to graduate, and I wrote a handful of short stories during school, after graduation, writing just faded away. The bug bit every once in awhile, but never so hard that I really accomplished anything. Seeing that call for submissions really made something click. It’s time that I actually make the time to do some writing of my own.

So I gave myself a challenge. I would write a story to submit to the book, which meant coming up with an idea, writing it, getting someone to proof it, make any final edits, and e-mail it . . . in four days, knowing that I would be working on three of those days.

I placed a link to the webpage about the call for submissions in my Firefox toolbar as a subtle reminder, told a few folks that I would not be as responsive as usual over the next few days, and then did my thing. On the days I worked at my part time job, I ran through scenes in my head and then I would jot down notes and rough blocks of prose during my breaks. I only had Thursday all to myself since there was a lot of work to be done for VEINS on Tuesday. So that meant a few very late nights and early mornings.

I managed to do it. I wrote 37 pages, had Meesh proofread it, did some fine-tuning of my own, and sent it out. I did not have high hopes, and I am sure the story is still rough, but the point is, I gave myself a challenge and I pulled it off.

And yes I got a rejection less than 24 hours later, but I saw that I can write and actually finish stories, and rather quickly. If I could survive on three to four hours of sleep a night indefinitely, I’d be able to churn out a novel every month at that rate.

So my next writing challenge is to finish a novella that I started months ago, and actually send it out to Writers of the Future. From there, I’ll just have to watch out for more interesting anthologies to try and write for.

In case you haven't heard, Amazon is up to something that is going to make things harder for a lot of independent presses and self-published authors.

The long and the short of it is . . . at some point in the not-terribly distant future, if your POD book is not printed through BookSurge, which is owned by Amazon, it will not be available for sale on Amazon, except through their used book dealers. You can still sell them through the Amazon Advantage program, but that adds another layer of fees to the already razor-thin profit margin on many, if not most of these books.

They are not looking for exclusivity, so you could still produce POD books through alternate vendors in order to reach other sales channels (such as through Lightning Source which sells direct to Barnes and Noble and to the trade through Ingram). But this will require multiple setup fees, as well as multiple sets of files, since printers have varying requirements that need to be met in order to print the books.

While it's certainly easy to just say suck it up and do what Amazon wants, for many small presses and self-published authors, all of those extra fees, and the extra time, is just too much, so some will be forced to choose between being sold at Amazon, or being sold elsewhere.

If you care about these issues at all, please repost this information and make sure that Amazon knows that people are not happy.

For more on the subject, here are some links:

Angela Hoy's article on WritersWeekly.

The response page to that article (contains lots of links, up-to-date news, and a list of other articles).

SPAN Executive Director Scott Flora's letter to Amazon's Jeff Bezos.

E-Reads' Richard Curtis's article on E-Reads (he evidently saw this coming).

So, I've been very busy for the past couple of years, working on building my press, freelance editing, and working the occasional hours at a part time job. It's a period of time in my life that seems to have dragged on with near-constant work and very little rest.

As such, my own writing has suffered. I just haven't written to any sizeable amount in quite a while. After editing nine or ten hours straight, I usually don't want to sit at the computer and put down words of my own. That drive gets hamstrung.

I thought it was simple exhaustion. Then I realized there was a deeper, less obvious problem: I wasn't day daydreaming.

Years ago, during those times when I did not have to have my brain working on something 100%, my mind would be running all over the place, dreaming up locales, characters, conversations, visual snippets, bits of action scenes . . . all the tiny building blocks of story. If I was driving, I was also talking to myself. If I was doing manual labor, I was blocking out a fight scene.

But some time ago, I began filling those moments with worries of business or personal matters. How was I going to complete the editing on such and such a project in time? Were things with the current flame really going to work out?

Rarely do these worrying sessions produce anything positive. In Tai Chi, we learn to be 100% involved and 100% aware. It's a simplified way of saying that you should be able to do what you need to do in the here and now while still being aware of what's going on around you and knowing when you need to react to something. That doesn't mean you need to ignore your problems . . . it just means you give them their fair due and then move on.

I know I sound a little contradictory right now. I'm telling you to be 100% involved and 100% aware . . . and yet I'm telling you to daydream. I'm saying it's imperative for writers to daydream . . . just don't do it at the wrong time. Don't get so wrapped up in your narrative that you crash your car. Don't ruin a relationship because you never listen to the other person because you're hearing other voices in your head.

But when the time is right, allow your mind to wander. Have fun with it. Just imagine. Then you'll have so much more fuel with which to fire up the creative engines.

I know that since I've started retraining myself to daydream, I've been writing more. Not much, but more. The whole time and energy thing still gets in the way . . . but the characters get so insistent again, that every so often, I just can't hold them back anymore. And I love having that feeling. I love knowing that I have to get a scene down or I'll go crazy.