Location, Location, Location! (and a plug for Broken Glamour)

by Maggie Marr

I am kicking off the new cycle at the Girlfriends Book Club and our topic is location. How do we choose where our books are set? Or does the setting choose us? How does setting impact character? These are brilliant questions developed by Sylvie Fox and Laura Spinella and Saralee Rosenberg.

Take a look at my books. All but one are set in Los Angeles. The sole book set outside Los Angeles in Powder Springs, Colorado, a Rocky Mountain town, is Courting Trouble.

My books are not just set in Los Angeles but they are located in the small, industry town that is Hollywood. While Hollywood is a geographical place in Los Angeles, the geographical place is not to what I refer when I write that my books are set in Hollywood. I am referring to an Industry located within Los Angeles but with outposts throughout the world. I am referring to movie-making, TV making, script-writing, directing, producing, and all the executive functions that go with those endeavors.


Hollywood, that small town within a big city informs my characters, their personalities, their decisions, goals, motivations, and conflicts.





Today, Broken Glamour the second book in my Glamour Series publishes. This is the love story of Amanda Sterling and Ryan Sinclair. Amanda grew up in Hollywood, was raised by one of the premiere families in the Industry, while Ryan broke into the Business due to his talent as an actor. I loved writing this book. I loved how tortured Ryan was because of his addictions and how lost Amanda was because of being ousted from her prime spot as part of Hollywood royalty.

Amanda Legend may loathe the entertainment world, but she understands the rules. She also knows Ryan Sinclair, understands alcoholics (she grew up around a few) and now, after being banished from her posh lifestyle, needs a paycheck to get to New York. Amanda accepts the job as sober companion to Ryan Sinclair for his first film post rehab. But Amanda must learn to ignore her attraction to Ryan, because falling for a guy like him would pull her back into a world she desperately wants to escape. 

Amanda and Ryan's love story shows how two emotionally damaged people can take a chance and allow love to grow. This was a story I was drawn to write because of the characters, but these characters were created by their environment. A place that I love and call home: Hollywood.

Leave a comment and tell me one of your favorite places whether it be on a map or not. Random.org will select a winner and they will receive a digital copy of Broken Glamour.

Maggie Marr is an author, attorney, and producer. She began her Hollywood adventure pushing the mail cart at ICM where she became a motion picture literary agent. Maggie is the author of the beloved Hollywood Girls Club Series which includes Hollywood Girls Club, Secrets of The Hollywood Girls Club, and Hollywood Hit. The Glamour Series is her new adult contemporary romance series. Hard Glamour published January 2014 and Broken Glamour released today! She has written for TV and film and ghost-written for celebrities. Look for her May 2014 release, book 2 in the Eligible Billionaires Series; One Night For Love, book 1 Can't Buy Me Love is available now. You can find Maggie on facebook and twitter.
http://amzn.to/1gOX0wm

Is Going Indie Right for You? by Jess Riley

Unless you’re a member of the Lykov family, you’ve probably noticed that publishing has undergone some dramatic changes in the last few years. Most notably, it’s become easier to self-publish your work and actually make a living writing.

But how do you know if “indie publishing” is right for you?

My first novel was published in 2008 by Ballantine Books; the book sold at auction and went back to press three times. Not too shabby for a scrappy little midlist title! But the publishing landscape has changed significantly since that book sold, and I’m convinced that the same manuscript wouldn't sell today.

In the four years since that book was released, I wandered through a bleak literary desert littered with false starts, missteps, second-guessing, rejection, and depression. My original editor tried to help, pitching story ideas that I inevitably botched because they didn’t come from my own little Eeyore heart. She moved on to different publishing houses and new projects, and I returned to the desert.

In 2011 I was hit with the idea for All the Lonely People. My agent loved it (which came as a huge relief), and we submitted to maybe a dozen publishers, getting heartbreakingly close rejections. A few months into our submission process I began to lose patience and heart. Maybe I should have given it more time, but this past fall I pulled the book from submission and after lots of agonizing, released it myself.

I was inspired in part by Karen McQuestion, another Wisconsin writer who told me self-publishing was the best thing she’d ever done for her career; she controlled her destiny, and her readers were judge and jury of her work. (And who could argue with sales topping 500,000?) My husband also eloquently pushed me into the indie camp with, “You don’t want to be like the Confederacy of Dunces guy, and people only read your stuff after you’re dead.”

Several of my other author friends also encouraged me, because they too had made the leap…and it wasn’t that scary.

So I swallowed my pride along with any misgivings I had and prepared for Plan B. It’s a personal decision for each writer, and knowing what you hope to get out of it before you take the plunge helps. I’m pretty new to it all (and I still have lots to learn), but here are a few early observations:

Know your audience, know your genre. If you write genre fiction—especially romance or thriller—self-publishing could be right for you. If you write literary fiction, legacy (traditional) publishing is still a better fit.

Learn from the best. Before I took the leap, I researched what other successful indie writers were doing. Many are incredibly generous and knowledgeable (J.A. Konrath and Dina Silver come to mind), and have blogged at length about their experiences. In some cases, I hired their cover artist, formatter, and editor.

Hybrid helps. If you go indie, having a background in traditional publishing helps.  You can still succeed without it, but it does make things a little more challenging (depending on your genre), at least initially.

Define what success means to you. Regardless of how your work is published, remember that a very small percentage of all writers can earn a living writing full-time. Have realistic expectations; self-publishing does give you a bit more breathing room (no push to sell big the first week, no pressure to earn out an advance), but it might take months or years for your career to build.

Book bloggers are an indie author’s best friends. I was fortunate to have the support of several awesome book bloggers. If you don’t have the time to devote hours and hours to researching and pitching bloggers in your genre, consider investing in a coordinated blog tour or netgalley listing. You won’t have traditional exposure, so reader and blogger reviews are more important than ever.

Most importantly, be a professional, and be 100% sure your book is the best it can be. You might get just one chance to convince a reader that your story is worth their time and money. Quality counts.

Have an eye-catching, professionally-designed cover, and be prepared to pay for it.  The same goes for conceptual and copy editing. Which brings me to:

Have an amazing, professionally-edited story that people will recommend to their friends. Both legacy and indie publishing depend so much on word-of-mouth. Write a freaking incredible book.   This goes without saying regardless of how the book is published, but self-publishing can make it too easy to put something out before it's ready for prime time. (Refer to Saralee Rosenberg's awesome blog post a few days ago for some tips on that front.)

And be flexible and kind to yourself. There is a learning curve involved. If something doesn’t work, try another approach. Tweak your sales copy, re-do your cover, experiment with pricing or author collaborations. Keep learning, keep evolving. Take full advantage of the control indie publishing affords you. Think of your marketing approach the same way you think about your crummy first draft: you can always revise it.

Or better yet, write the next book.

I’d love to hear your thoughts: if you’ve gone indie, and what are your takeaways from the experience? If you’re an aspiring author, which publishing model appeals to you more?

~~~~

Jess Riley just released her first novella, Closer Than They Appear:
a quirky mix of lad lit and chick lit with recipes and bingo cards, because why not?
 

The Girls’ Guide to a Book Launch

by the Kenny Powers of Publishing, Jess Riley.

Some of you know I just released my second novel. It’s been four years since I shepherded a book into the world, and I forgot what a stomach-clenching stress-bomb launch day can be.

The day of your book release feels a little like a Christmas morning in which any of the gaily-wrapped boxes under the tree might actually contain a turd. You begin terribly excited: how low will my amazon ranking go? Who will retweet the exciting news? How many fabulous reviews will be posted? How many copies will I sell? Will someone send me flowers? Will I have that special glow about me that people can’t help but compliment so I can blush and say, “Thanks, I just delivered a book baby.”

(Sidebar: did I actually just use the word “gaily?” Moving on. )

As word gets out, you start to wait for that one person to mention it, to say they bought it or loved it or simply acknowledge the fact that you have a new book out, to throw you even the rattiest of bones. The great majority of your friends and family are beyond the moon for you, shouting your great news to the heavens, but you zero in like a laser beam on the fact that ONE fellow author, relative, or friend totally ignored you. This is probably because: they hate you/think your book sucks/hate your politics/think you are a potty-mouth damned to hell/are the meanest, biggest doodoo-heads in the world and probably steal from the elderly and laugh at sick children, they steal from the elderly and laugh at sick children WHILE they’re leaving you a one star review and why won’t they just love you? Why? (sob) You’ll change! You will! You’ll buy them lunch, babysit their kids for free, be their personal chauffeur, change your politics and taste in music if they only validate your existence! Please!

I am NOT like that.

Actually, they’re probably just busy, but we’re funny like that. My dog is like this too, because she always sucks up to the one person in the room who wants nothing to do with her.

And WHOA SALLY if you’re indie publishing your book! Traditional publishing puts little muscle behind your promotion to begin with (unless you’re a Marquee Name, in which case hello! My name is Jess Riley! Do you need someone to pick up your dry cleaning?) When Driving Sideways came out I bent myself into a pretzel for 50 hours a day promoting it: contacting book bloggers, coordinating contests and social media, sending hand-written cards to every indie bookstore manager in a million mile radius, setting up signings and readings, streaking naked through my alma mater’s homecoming game wearing nothing but my book cover in body paint.

Just kidding. I didn’t do that last part. There was one awesome thing I did, and still continue to do: meet with book clubs. They give me wine and laugh at my jokes, and I always drive home afterwards singing along with the radio and feeling like a rock star.

Despite working my heiny off to be noticed in a sea of worthy books, the ONE THING that made all the difference in the world for me was being picked up by Target. One thing that was beyond my control. Well, you write the best book you can, but that’s a given. There are a lot of them out there.

So what advice do I have for you if you’re counting down to your own book launch? If you have a traditional publisher, you still have to promote the hell out of yourself (which most of us hate), but you’re incredibly lucky, because at the very least you will have distribution and consideration by old guard reviewers. People won’t give you the stink eye and say things like, “I only read real books.”

Now.  After rigorous editing and careful consideration, are you indie-publishing? Okay, great! Do you feel that little whinging around the edges of your soul? That’s your ego. Take it in the back yard and shoot it. Now roll up your sleeves and get to work. Email your writer friends for support, and make a huge pot of coffee. You're standing on the edge of a cliff, naked, waiting for someone to either shove you over or wrap you in a blanket and say, "Oh honey, let's get you back to the yurt." But while you wait, there are a thousand book bloggers to put in that spreadsheet ...

Jess Riley just launched her second novel, All the Lonely People. It's about crazy family members and holiday angst and Christmas dinner in a cafe full of dogs. BOOK GIVEAWAY: Email her, leave a comment below, or "Like" her Facebook page by December 1st to win one of three signed copies!

So You Say You Want to Publish Your Own Book… by Jenny Gardiner

It's been nearing two years now since I decided to self-publish a novel. Back then it was in the early days of indie publishing, and I made the decision based on instinct, purely because I'd gotten a Kindle for my birthday that previous December and was so hooked on the convenience of it, the ability to acquire new books within a minute's time, the elimination of tons and tons of paper waste that was endemic with the publishing industry, etc. I just knew if I loved this cool, new (and then overpriced) gadget, then others would too. And I knew once the price came down on it lots of people would be on board. I'd decided the time was upon us when I heard that Apple would be launching this new product called an iPad soon. That was the magic bullet to bring the price down on e-readers so that people would buy them.

It was slow-going in the early days. That first year I hardly sold any books. Hardly anyone owned e-readers. Plus it was hard to determine the proper pricing--it made sense for an e-book to be cheaper than a book that is printed, but how much cheaper? Hard to know. And it seemed that those who owned Kindles were looking for free content. Maybe to save money after shelling out $350 for a Kindle? hehehe

Have I learned a lot in the past two years? Oh, if only you knew…

There was a time when I wanted to stay parked firmly in the camp of publishing with New York houses. That's the way it was supposed to be. But something happened along the way: times changed. New York houses changed (well, actually more like they failed to adapt, which led to their becoming much more irrelevant). It went from a reasonable proposition to an unrealistic one. More and more houses were putting all the demands on authors with little-to-no risk on their part. If a book didn't sell gangbusters, it was automatically because the author somehow failed. Which we all knew was baloney. But it was easiest to blame the most vulnerable in the trail: the writers. Advances became so small as to be almost insulting: once upon a time an advance would enable an author to write from book to book without quite starving to death. But advances were becoming so small that it was the equivalent of working a minimum wage job for about a week: clearly not enough to sustain someone. Authors were busily working their tails off, building a healthy mountain of debt and not ever seeing much money for their efforts (while readers falsely believed writers were living it up like the Kardashians!).

But then Amazon decided to offer authors what no one else had truly done: respect. In the form of a legitimate level of royalty payment. Enough to help pay for groceries! Imagine! Granted, it was part of their multi-pronged attack against the industry-slash-attempt-to-curry-favor-with-a-susceptible-population. But hey, I admit, I was completely vulnerable! Throw the possibility of actual wage-earning my way and I'll foam at the mouth! I have no pride!

But what I hadn't expected that I love about publishing myself is that I have control over my career again. No longer am I at the mercy of vagaries over which I have no control. No editors who leave in the middle of a book, leaving you essentially unrepresented for your book's publication and floundering in no-man's land. No houses who lose interest in the novel and neglect to promote it. No IOUs on royalties stuck in this mysterious accounting category known as "reserves", which means you'll never see a penny of it. Basically no one to blame but me if it doesn't do well. But now I have an artist's palette of options to try to fix that if it doesn't sell: change the cover. Change the descriptive jacket copy. Try various promotions both within Amazon and without. If the book doesn't sell, it's not dead in the water as it once was with a New York house. It just calls for some refining. Tweaking. This was a new concept: rather than sit passively by while my home was engulfed in weeds, with indie publishing I was able to take proactive measures to spruce up the curb appeal and ensure that people were interested. This is a great gift that Amazon has given authors. And one that benefits readers. For far too long authors were shut down with terrific books simply because they didn't fit within the narrowly prescripted terms of their genres and those of bricks-and-mortar stores: i.e. if it couldn't be easily categorized on a shelf, it wasn't going to find a home. But now if you write a book that transcends genre descriptions, one that might be part suspense, part women's fiction, and part sports narrative, well guess what? Somewhere on Amazon, you'll find your readership. Chick lit, once considered the graveyard for all eternity for writers, has returned with indie publishing: we knew the readers existed. It's just that publishing houses refused to take a chance to publish that type of novel after they'd killed the genre. It's a whole new world in publishing, and I'm so happy to be in the frontier of it, taking charge, owning my career again.

Over the past two years I've become a scholar of sorts, learning the ins and outs of independent publishing, trying to discern what works and what doesn't. There's a lot of trial and error, and there isn't always a simple answer. Plus it's true, rather than devote all of my time to writing, I'm having to divide it in order to focus also on trying to succeed in this New Publishing World Order. But hell, even if publishing through "legacy" New York publishers I was spending much of my time with marketing and publicity, sucking away time I'd otherwise spent creating worlds as a writer. At least now I'm doing it while earning an actual living, which is a good thing, if nothing else because it enables me to continue to be a writer. And that's a good thing.

So if you're interested in checking out my indie-published books, here they are!













and others I have with other publishing houses:





and coming very soon:




and please come visit me on twitter and Facebook here and here

The Rebel Writer

by Malena Lott

Are you a rebel writer? I've been pondering the word lately, most likely from all of the Egyptian news and other uprisings and the sick feeling in my gut with the ugly "liquidation" signs at Borders. I also have a fair amount of upheaval and change in my life - our house sold after a tepid try last year and after only two weeks on the market in January, we had to scramble to find a new home and get moved in 30 days. Yeah, that kind of new year. Which brings me to a home for our books - both at the publishing stage and at the retail front.

While I've always been entrepreneurial, lately I've felt my rebel spirit commanding more of my energy. While I'm working on my first non-fiction book about zen, I find embracing change and practicing contentment in rough situations also spurs radical action on my part in an area I can have control over.

Point: My agent is about to put my YA on submission. I'm not giving up on the traditional route to publishing with a big house, especially at my agent's deft command, yet after the writing, the author has no control. For control freaks (ahem) that's rather tough.

Rebel Counterpoint: I launched an indie press and promo service with my triple-threat husband (writer/editor/graphic designer). See, there are projects I want to do that may not fit into a traditional publishing mold, so I'm forging ahead (typical Aries, head down, horns out) and have three simultaneous projects seeking submissions via a contest. I've also marketed for nearly every industry out there. Why not help authors - my favorite kind - with their promotion? I have no qualms about trying something new, something that a lot of big houses can't always do because of the risk involved.

Point: I should revise my "soul novel" I wrote a couple of years ago and incorporate the feedback from the editors who rejected it and try again. New editors and publishing houses are out there. No writer wants to give up on having their "break-out" novel.

Counterpoint: I have other stories I will indie-pub through my Buzz Books line because I want to continue to see where digital publishing goes. I wrote a novella last year called LIFE'S A BEACH that's being edited now and will release as an ebook just in time for summer. I love novellas! I hope more authors I love start writing them, too. I can read three novellas in the time it takes me to read one 300 page novel. In today's fast-paced society, of course short stories and novellas will see growth. (Right, I'm not crazy here, am I?) I self-pubbed FIXER UPPER, and it required a big learning curve, but I'm nearing the top of the hill now, so I know future projects will be easier to manage. (That's the optimist in me talking.)

Another aspect of being a rebel writer is that you are writing what you love despite what is selling or "popular" at the time. Though people tell you time and again not to chase trend rainbows, hearing things like "such and such" is no longer hot or publishers have too much paranormal (well, they do, but it doesn't mean a great story isn't out there), so it can be frustrating for a writer who is spending hundreds of hours of time on a story.

Here's where the rebel writer spirit comes in. Used to, you might think, "I could write this and it may not sell and I'll stuff it in a drawer." But more and more we'll see that projects that writers love will find a home for their story, whether with the new indie digital publishers that can help writers find distribution and an audience for their work or figuring out how to do it on their own. Which is quite empowering, thankyouverymuch.

Are you a rebel writer? What's the most rebellious thing you've ever done in the writing realm?

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