Looseleaf Editorial & Production

Book Editing & Design

blogging

Looseleaf Contest: Appealing to Readers with Your Writing Blog

by 2 Comments

inkPageant

For the month of February I’m partnering with inkPageant, a writing blog aggregator, to bring you a contest you can enter by posting on your blog. There are two prizes:

  1. A 20-page critique (or 3 hours of copyediting, if you don’t have a manuscript ready)
  2. A 50-page critique (or 6 hours of copyediting)

The 20-pager will be given randomly (you can have up to 3 entries) and the 50-pager will be given to the person who writes the best post that appeals to both writers and non-writers (i.e. readers). I’ll explain how to enter your posts in the contest in a minute. First I want to explain appealing to readers and how you can do it without leaving your writing-related comfort zone.

Appealing to Readers

I’ve mentioned before that fiction writers who want their blog to attract readers need to learn to blog about something other than writing. The easiest way to do this, while still appealing to your writing buddies and improving your own writerly sensibilities, is to review something with a plot (e.g. books, TV shows, movies). Ideally you’re reading and viewing things that would also interest your readers, and the time you spend analyzing those works will help you develop your awareness of story elements in your own work.

You can also blog about things that will interest your reader and relate to the books you write. For example, horses interest readers, and writers who need to know about horses for their books could use a few prods in the right direction. Historical fiction, steampunk, and other genre readers may be interested in clothing styles for certain time periods, as will writers who write in those eras. There are entire worlds of topics you can write on, most of which will appeal to readers. (But if you only talk about the craft of writing, you’ll miss your mark.)

Readers also tend to enjoy satire of genre tropes and expectations, so if you’ve got satirical chops, funny always wins over readers.

How to Enter Your Posts

To enter the contest, register at inkPageant and submit your post to them. They’ll review your post and add it to their pages.

Winning the 20-page Critique. Any post, whether it appeals to readers or not, gets you an entry for the 20-page critique prize. You can have up to 3 entries (each blog post is an entry), and the winner will be chosen randomly at the end of the month.*

Winning the 50-page Critique. I will review every post inkPageant aggregates in the month of February, and the post I believe is of the best quality and best appeals to readers and writers will win the author the 50-page critique.*

____________________________
*If you’re already a Looseleaf client, or if you’re a family member of mine, you’re disqualified.

Weekly Roundup: 12/31–1/6

by 2 Comments

The Rook Trailer

You all know how excited I am about The Rook, which comes out next week, right? Then you’ll all want to watch the book trailer, right? Of course you will!

Kristine Kathryn Rusch: Writers: Will Work for Cheap

Kristine Kathryn Rusch looks at the money writers make. As you might expect, she tears down certain traditional publishing standards, but she hardly leaves self-publishers unscathed. If you write, regardless of how you intend to publish, you should read this. Afterward you might still have the mentality Rusch attacks (i.e., it’s better to be read than paid), but you’ll be more aware of the choice you’re making.

This post is longer than those on most other blogs, but it’s well worth the read.

Daisy Whitney: 7 Best Practices for Building an Online Presence

Author Daisy Whitney looks at some best practices in the online world. I’m a big proponent of authors figuring out how to be in the internet’s eye before they really dig in to blogging and social media as marketing platforms, and Whitney does a good job of giving you a foundation.

Weekly Roundup: 12/3–12/9

by Leave a Comment

Shape Catcher

This isn’t exactly brand-new stuff, but this website is an awesome tool for anyone who presents writing on the internet. Most of the time the general characters on your keyboard are good enough for you, but if you need a special character, visit Shape Catcher, draw your character in the box, and the site will spew out code for all the characters it can find that might be what you’re looking for. Chances are, if there’s code for it, Shape Catcher will find it.

Hand-written letterDaniel Abraham: A Private Letter from Genre to Literature

Genre writer Daniel Abraham writes an elegant letter from genre books to mainstream books. I for one enjoy genre books and mainstream books, and it’s nice to see a new way of presenting the fact that neither one should be snubbing the other. Whether you read genre, mainstream, or both, take a minute to read this letter.

Chuck Wendig: The Seduction of Self-Publishing

There are a lot of good reasons to self-publish. There are a lot of good reasons not to. There are a lot of bad reasons for both options as well. Chuck Wendig, a self-published author himself, talks about the seduction of self-publishing, why he’s glad he didn’t have it as an option five years ago, and why he’s glad he has the option now. If you’re considering the self-publishing path, take a look at this post. It’s rational in a debate that has a lot of irrationality on both sides.

Galley Cat: American Booksellers Association Attacks Amazon’s Price Check App

You’ve heard about Amazon’s new app, right? The one that gives shoppers a $5 incentive if they scan the barcode of a physical book with their smartphones and then buy in on Amazon? This is the ABA’s response to that. In some ways, Amazon’s idea is like price-matching offers or coupon clipping: it’s a way for people to save money. On the other hand, it gives you an incentive to go into a store, use its space, its personnel, and its merchandise to find what you want, and give that store nothing in return. It’s basically a way of saying: “Go have Joe do all my work for me, then I’ll give you want you want.” Amazon gets the reward for the store’s efforts. Not illegal, certainly, but it doesn’t exactly thrill me either. Still, I’m not surprised. This response from the ABA is a little like that: not explicitly outraged, because this is the sort of thing the ABA has come to expect from Amazon, but peeved nonetheless.

Jessica Hische: Inspiration vs. Imitation

Jessica Hische—a letterer, illustrator, and designer—writes about the line between inspiration and imitation. What’s the difference between being inspired by someone’s work and imitating it? Hische speaks in terms of illustration and design, but the same principles apply to writing. It’s sometimes a fuzzy line—what one person thinks is a ripoff another person may think is a fresh take on old ideas—but it’s one you should consider. Are you imitating someone for the sake of learning something? Wonderful. Are you imitating someone for the sake of selling something? Probably not the best idea.

Image by Simon Howden via FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Blogging for Fictioneers

by 4 Comments

Lately there’s been a bit of hoopla surrounding blogs that belong to fiction writers, or writers that expect blogs to be a means to building a platform. Last week Roni Loren shared a post in which she rants about blogging, and she sums up the arguments and annoyances several people have voiced about author’s blogs. When you’re a fictioneer, what should your blog be doing for you?

Reasons to Blog

There are a few reasons why a writer would decide to blog:

  • To gain personal validation by whispering (or shouting) into the interwebs
  • To engage in a community
  • To gain exposure (i.e., build a readership platform or name recognition)
  • To drive sales

If you’re posting when you feel like it, responding to comments when you have them, and commenting on others’ blogs, you’ve got the first two reasons down pat. If those are the only two you have in mind, you’re golden. But if you want the last two, you’ve got to think about the way you blog a bit more, and you may need to do things a little differently than you expect.

One of the main gripes about writer blogs that Loren addresses is that writers who blog about writing are only engaging other writers, and many aspiring author blogs devolve into something nearing drivel. If you are blogging to reach readers, you need to be writing posts that appeal to them, not your critique group. You should also make the content engaging, not just whatever you were thinking that day. Illustrator and art director Jon Schindehette points out that random madness will not engage a readership/viewership, even if eclectic posting makes you feel better.

Reader-focused Blogging

If you want to engage a readership and not just the writing community, you need to write posts aimed at your target audience. To do that, first determine what about your writing will appeal to a reader.

  • Do they like action? Write about your favorite action sequences in film or about martial arts, explosions, or weapons.
  • Are they into crazy science? Write about the bizarre bioluminescent chemical recently discovered in a deep-sea fish or dark energy.
  • Is your writing in a specific genre with an active fandom? Review other pieces of work in your genre or talk about what makes the genre great.

For example, for a couple of years now I’ve had an idea for a story about a spice caravaner and a cook. Spices feature prominently, as does food in general. I know that if I were to write and publish this story I would share recipes for meals in the book, spicelore, and spice-related history on my blog. It relates to my story and it relates to readers.

There are plenty of other things I could write about for that story, and there will be plenty of reasons why readers will be engaged in your novel. You don’t have to pick just one.

Balanced Blogging

Does everything need to be reader focused? Heck no! You should be yourself, and if you’re a writer, you think about writing. But you should consciously include posts that talk about things your readers like and things they want to know or hear. In my example, I wouldn’t necessarily need to start a dedicated food blog where I posted nothing but bizarre things I’ve learned about cinnamon. But I’d do food-based posts occasionally, because it would be relevant to my readers and could be shared with non-writers who have not read my books. I’d engage with non-writers who are interested in those topics (i.e., I’d expand my “engage in a community” reason for blogging beyond the borders of book creators).

The things you share can widely vary. They might be video games, other books, movies, annotations to your stories, poetry, sailing, science, spacecraft, or cooking. If the ideal reader for your book would enjoy it, write it. Then share it.

When someone who has read your book comes to visit your blog, that reader is looking for you, so you shouldn’t smother who you are or what you think about. Just curate your thoughts and target them. If you want to try to engage new readers with your blog, you have to keep in interesting for someone who reads the sort of things you write, but who doesn’t know you or have an interest in writing his or her own novel.

Balance your blog: express yourself, but target those expressions. Meandering blogs soon see readers meandering away. Balance your focus: if you’re a fiction writer who also blogs, you should make sure you’re not putting more weight on your blog than your fiction. Unless you’re a blogger first and a fiction writer second, you shouldn’t allow your online activities to overshadow your stories when you’re creating. Stories reach readers; occasionally blogs help the stories get in readers’ hands.