Tag Archives: Writing Business

The Need for Speed – Ask Alice Saturday

Get Published, Indie Pub, Kindle Bargain, ,

Road Runner imageQuestion. You talk a lot about the positives of Indie Publishing. Is there a negative for you?

Answer. For me there definitely is one negative. The emphasis on frequency of publication.

The three requirements for Independent Publishing success as a fiction writer – according to what I’ve been told – are these.

  1. Write in a popular genre.
  2. Write a series.
  3. Publish every 3 to 4 months. Preferably every 3 months.

I’ve got the first two covered. Romantic Suspense is a popular sub-group of a very popular genre. I’m also writing the Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series.

I was doing all right with number three for a while. A Wrong Way Home launched in February. A Year of Summer Shadows in June. Four months apart not three but still in the frequency ballpark.

That looked okay on the calendar but I knew better. Making book number two’s publication date was a stretch for me. An uncomfortable stretch. To accomplish it I did a truly stupid thing.

I rushed the manuscript straight from my editor’s hands into production. I didn’t do the final crucial read-through myself.

I’ve been around way longer than enough to know there are edits only the author’s eyes will see. I rushed it anyway. Because I didn’t want to commit the allegedly deadly sin of letting five months pass between published books.

Since then I’ve committed other sins that also toll the death knell to my frequency of publication. Specifically I’m guilty of wanting and having a personal life. Complete with family and friends and even some fun.

In the 1990’s I set all of those aside to pursue a career as a literary agent. I was all business all the time and the goddess of commerce awarded me well.

What I seem to be experiencing now is a case of Been There Done That when it comes to All Work and No Play Make Alice a Successful Woman.

Whatever the cause may be – I’m just not feeling the need for speed. I fully understand this flies in the face of my having told hundreds of writers in my workshops that they must be Warriors on Behalf of Their Careers.

All the same – I’ve decided not to renew my fast lane pass. Which also flies in the face of the three-prong program for independent publishing success.

I’ve been fortunate to experience a number of worldly successes in my life. Maybe I’ve fulfilled my required quota of those.

Maybe it’s time to seek another kind of success. The kind that perhaps doesn’t involve being a warrior at all.

RR

A Wrong Way Home – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book 1 – the eBook – is FREE at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00T9RVGGC. It’s also free at Barnes & Noble and iTunes and KOBO and other online platforms. A YEAR OF SUMMER SHADOWS – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book #2 – is also available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZBOTH5O. These are my 12th and 13th novels. Number 14 will probably take longer to arrive. Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.

 

Poking Around & Making Lists – Orr What? Wednesday

Indie Pub, Kindle Bargain, Writers Life,

Cliffhanger imageI’m a member of the generation just before the cusp of tech-everything. I was born into pages between hard covers. I’ve lived through soft covers and back into hard ones again. Only now they enclose computers and devices.

I’ve spent too much time hanging off the edge of that cusp. Barely keeping up. Certainly not abreast of the new thing. And there always is a new thing.

Still I’m feeling more in control where I am these days and not because my arm muscles are any more equal to hanging onto the edge of things. I simply have a better fix on where the new tech and the old non-tech fit into my hierarchy of needs.

Succinctly put – new tech for me is about poking around. While old non-tech is – as it always has been – about making lists.

A visitor to my office glanced at my laptop one day and made this remarkable statement. “Do you realize you have the Library of Congress on your desk?”

I did not realize that but it has stuck with me ever since as a pivotal piece of information. Because I know what I’d do if I were left on my own in the Library of Congress with nobody around to badger me with the rules. “Don’t touch that.” “Stay out of there.”

Without those guardians and gatekeepers admonishing me to behave I know exactly what I’d do. I would Poke Around.

The deluge of marketing I’ve created recently – in the preparation for and the wake of launching one book and taking another permafree – has taught me something crucial.

New tech is the seventh heaven of poking around. Not so much for finding answers as for ferreting out directions and discovering approaches.

Poke around over here and you are sent over there. Everywhere you go there’s information. Google a question. Get pages of possibilities. Each page an overstuffed attic of cubbyholes and corners – for poking around.

That’s where old non-tech and Making Lists come in. I cull the pieces of information I’ve poked loose from my new tech explorations. The ones most relevant to my projects. Then I write them down. You read that correctly. I write them down with a pen on paper. Remember them?

I’m personally best satisfied when collecting my cullings in notebooks. Maybe because as a writer I possess a primal urge to see my words in print on pages between covers.

Of course the pages within those covers are in turn covered with lists. I don’t know a multi-tasker worthy of her personal organizing system who doesn’t live by lists.

Thus the Library of Congress meets the moleskin-clad number I carry in my handbag and I am at ease. Perhaps not on the cutting edge but not stretching my poor arms into rubber strings either. I poke around and make my lists and am well served by both.

Now all I need is – well I guess – nothing. Except maybe world peace and a trust fund. We’ll chat about those another time.

RR

 A YEAR OF SUMMER SHADOWS – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book #2 – is available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZBOTH5O. The eBook version of Book #1 is FREE. A Wrong Way Home – at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00T9RVGGC and other digital retailers. These are my 12th and 13th novels and I did a lot of poking around and making lists with both of them. Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.

 

How Far You Can Go – A Writer’s Business Plan Step 3 – Orr What Wednesday

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Road Runner imageRefresher Course. A Writer’s Business Plan Step 1 – Work Your Butt Off. I told you about a high time I had with a long table full of clients back in my agent days. High in every respect because we were in a revolving restaurant at the top of a fancy hotel. And I got there by working my butt off.

Refresher Continued. A Writer’s Business Plan Step 2 – Do Everything Right. I told you about doing something crucial very wrong – my first lunch with an editor. Thank heaven she was a compassionate soul or I’d have made an even bigger fool of myself than I did. BUT I never let myself play the fool again.

Now we’re at Step 3. Which takes me back to the beginning when I had the wild idea to become a literary agent – my previous profession before becoming a full-time writer. Please forgive me if I digress to tell you where that brainstorm bright light epiphany idea came from.

I’d been enjoying a good run as an in-house book editor. I edited mystery novels – intense and demanding – no loose ends allowed. And Regency Romance novels – fun fun and more fun. So I had a good work balance going. Except for one thing. I was employed as an editor but I had the soul of a writer.

An editor’s job is to serve the interests of the publisher she works for. High – perhaps highest – among those interests is contract negotiation. The editor is supposed to get the writer to sign on the line for the least money and the most punitive terms possible. Sorry if that offends anyone. I don’t edit or write for a publishing house any more so I can be straight-from-the-hip all the way.

My main personal problem as an editor was my gift for contract negotiation. For some reason – probably my genetic gift of gab – I could whittle authors and their agents down down and down some more. But I didn’t like myself for doing it. So I decided to switch teams and use my negotiating skills on behalf of writers instead.

Then somebody told me I needed a Business Plan. “Why do I need a business plan?” I asked. “In case you have to go to the bank for a business loan,” was the answer. I couldn’t imagine wanting to deal with a bank that would trust me with their money at that tenuous point in my agent life. But I worried myself over the plan thing anyway.

I bought books at my favorite indie store – long-since gone. I researched in the library. This was back when we still did that. I checked out the internet too. What I found were basically templates and templates didn’t say much to me about what I wanted to accomplish in my career.

The truth was – at that point – I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to accomplish in my career. That lack of knowledge became the saving and the making of me as a businesswoman. I didn’t lock myself into specifics because I had no idea what they should be.

A single sentence popped into my head. “Let’s see how far I can go.” I wrote it on a sheet of paper and hung it on my office wall. That sentence turned out to be the brainstorm bright light epiphany I needed because it made all of what came afterward an adventure.

Granted I worked my butt off and enjoyed the successes and hotel-top parties that brought me. I also did my best to do everything right and when I fell sort I learned and changed tactics. The same way I changed tactics after my editor lunch debacle. Beyond that I kept the future open and my Velcro grasp at the ready to latch onto every opportunity that came my way.

Plus – I kept on keeping on in the direction of how far I could go at the fastest pace I could manage. Because – like the Road Runner – I know that Wile E. Coyote is back there. And even though he may not be so wily – coyotes have teeth.

I leap into my new adventure as a full-time writer with all of that in mind. If you asked me what you should do I’d advise the same. Let’s all of us simply See How Far We Can Go. My experience tells me we’ll be in for a happy surprise.

RR

My current novel is A WRONG WAY HOME – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book #1 – available at amazon.com/author/aliceorr. A YEAR OF SUMMER SHADOWS – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book #2 – launches with summer on June 22nd. as my 13th novel.  Let’s see how far it can go. Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.