Do I Need an Editor?

Hiring an editor can be expensive and scary, but do you need one? That depends on a lot of things—your publishing goals, current progress on your novel, where you are as a writer, your financial resources, etc. Ultimately, it's a question only you can answer.

Today's post is an effort to help you make that decision. I'm aware there is a potential conflict of interest in that I am an editor-for-hire, but you're all very smart. I trust you can take my opinions to make your own informed decisions.

I'm Just Starting My First Novel

If you're just starting to write—you haven't even finished a draft yet—I'm going to say no, you don't need a professional editor.

An editor could provide high-level feedback on your first chapters or even your outline. Depending on your experience and personal goals, that might be really useful to you. But for most people, you will learn far more by finishing a novel (including but not limited to whether the writing life is even for you) than you will from professional feedback at this stage.

If you really want help with that first novel, then what you might want is a writing coach, not an editor.

I Finished My First Novel

That's great! Finishing a novel is hard! The question now is what do you want to do with it? You need revisions, and you very likely need extra eyes on it for objective feedback, but do you need a professional editor for those things?

Maybe. First, consider the following:

• Do you want to publish this novel for a larger audience (i.e., people you don't know)?
• Is this novel so important that you want to get it just right? (Let it be known that most writers feel this way about their first novels.)
• Have you gotten feedback from others yet?
• Can you ruthlessly rip your novel apart? Are you willing to delete whole chapters, rewrite whole sections, or worse?
• Can you afford it? And can you afford multiple rounds of editing if it comes to that?

If the answer to most of these is no, then you might not need a professional editor yet. The price of editing has to be worth what you get out of it—including how much of the editor's advice you are able to act on!

Before seeking a professional editor, try to get feedback from people you know. You can learn a lot from other writers or even friends and family, and it won't cost you any extra.

Don't know any other writers? Dig around online. Hang out on social media. Put out a call to swap beta reads. And keep track of the people who say yes! Not only can you get extra feedback this way, but it's also a great way to find new friends.

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Let's say your novel is finished, you've gotten high-level feedback (professional or not), and you've completed your revisions. Your novel is pretty good, you'd say. Now, do you need an editor?

Depends. What do you want to do with that novel?

I Want to Get an Agent

In general, agents are looking for two things: (1) is your story something they can sell and (2) is it written well enough to sell it. After you've finished the novel, there's little you can do about the first one—the agent will either like your story or not.

The second is where an editor can play a role, but is hiring one necessary? Again, this is a maybe. If you have no other way to get feedback, then a professional editor can provide that for you. If you've received several rejections—I'm talking dozens, probably hundreds of rejections, maybe even on multiple novels—then a professional editor might be able to help you figure out why and how to move forward.

Do not assume that an agent will edit your novel for you. Most don't, and those that do are usually just looking at massaging certain selling points so they can more easily pitch it to publishers.

But also, don't assume you need a professional edit to get an agent. You do need feedback, but it may or may not need to be professional at this point. That's up to you.

I Have an Agent

If you have an agent and are shopping your novel to publishers, then ask your agent about this. That's what they're there for, after all.

If you have a publisher, then you probably don't need a freelance editor. The publisher is likely doing that work as part of your deal.

I'm Ready to Self-Publish

You've finished your novel, gotten your feedback, revised it like crazy, and now you're ready to push that button and rake in the dough. Should you get a professional edit first?

Yes. HECK yes! At the very least, you want a proofread to make sure there are no obvious errors, but you probably also want a line edit (sometimes called a copyedit) to identify weaknesses, inconsistencies, and make your prose really sing.

A publishing press will do this for you, big or small. It's part of the deal that benefits both the press and the author by putting your best foot forward. But if you are your publisher, then—just like getting a book cover, typesetting, marketing, etc.—you are the only one who's going to do this for you.

Don't assume you can catch everything yourself. I have edited for a number of excellent authors, and no matter how good or experienced they are, I have always found ways to improve their work—not because they aren't as good as they think, and not because I'm so awesome, but because a novel is never perfect, and it is always worth the money to improve it.

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This doesn't cover every possible scenario of course, but these are the most common points at which you might consider hiring a professional.

And for your second, third, or fourth novel? I'd say the calculations are the same, except now you have more experience as a writer (and possibly as an agent-seeker or a published author, depending on what you did with those first novels). If anything, you can trust your gut even more about whether a professional edit can help you.

If you are considering a professional edit, I'm happy to help. I can even provide a free sample edit to help you decide. But there are many, many other editors who can help you as well. I encourage you to do your research, compare, and find the best editor for you and your work.

If you're willing to do all of that, you are unlikely to regret it.

Should You Keep Writing?

Like I said last week, publishing is a difficult business. And there will always come a time when you wonder whether you're wasting your time—whether you should even be writing at all.

How do you know when to keep going and when it's time to quit? Ultimately, only you can decide, but personally, I would first ask...

Do you enjoy it?

If you have time to write and you enjoy it—not getting published but the act of writing itself—then don't quit! Why would you? We only have a limited number of days on this Earth. You might as well spend them doing something you love.

But nothing is fun forever, so...

What if you don't enjoy it?

This is a harder question. If writing pays your bills, that's fantastic and maybe a good reason to do it. (MAYBE.) If it's not and you're just hoping to get rich, well... that's a bad idea, statistically speaking.

So, if writing doesn't bring you joy, and it's not sustaining your existence, then that begs a more difficult question....

Why are you writing?

Truth-telling time. I've been writing seriously for decades, but the last few years, I found an increasing fear every time I sat down to write. I enjoyed being done with something, but I only got that feeling once a year or something. I wasn't making money with my novels, and I had very low prospects of doing so.

All of that's par for the course, but I was also dreading the act of writing itself. The thought that I "had to" write every day was stressing me out.

It took me a lot of therapy and inner work to figure out that a large part of why I was writing was for external validation. I wanted people to read what I wrote and think I was cool—that I had worth. Turns out, that's not a great reason to write.

But I do love writing. My mind is spinning worlds and stories all the time, and I want them to go somewhere. I've done game design, D&D, novels, short stories, and I love them all! But novels are such a great medium for the stories I want to tell that I haven't been able to give them up yet. As I'm learning to let go of the need for validation (NOT! EASY!), my self-inflicted pressure to write has eased, and I've found myself enjoying the act of writing again.*

* Not always. It's still hard, but I'm motivated to work through it. Everything's a process.

Figure out why you're writing.

Your own motivation might be a mix of things, healthy and otherwise. And that's fine! Virtually all of our motivations are like that. But when writing or trying to get published becomes hard—and it will get hard!—understanding yourself is the only way you'll know whether it's worth it to you.

And fun fact! Even if you give up writing for a time, you can always come back to it. It's not like it's going anywhere, and you might learn a lot about yourself in the process.

Control What You Can... Let Go of What You Can't

Publishing is a difficult business. Millions of new books are published each year, yet the average book sells only 1,000 copies in its lifetime and fewer than 500 become NYT bestsellers. Traditional publishers account for maybe one million of those books, and still, that's only 1–2% of the projects submitted to them.

The odds of making it rich or even just making a living by writing novels are... not great.

I don't say this to be a downer. I say it because I love data and find it very useful for making plans and managing expectations. I say it because I'm also a writer who wants to be one of those statistics (the good ones, at least), and data helps me understand what I'm getting into.

Here's some slightly more encouraging data:

• More than 95% of books that publishers reject are "poorly written, have a bad or unoriginal premise, or are irrelevant."

They call it the slush pile, but it's entirely avoidable. As you improve your writing, you'll easily rise up above the slush. This is a thing you can control.

• Nearly 67% of sales are in authors' backlists.

The odds of good sales might be bad for one book, but they increase with each book you publish. As you write more, you sell more. This is also a thing you can control.*

* With self-publishing, at least.

In every area of life, there are aspects you can control and aspects you can't. You can't control whether somebody makes you angry, but you can control what you do with that anger. You can't control whether somebody likes you, but you can control whether you like yourself.

In publishing, you cannot control the publishers, the readers, the market, or virality. You cannot control whether people will buy or enjoy your book. You cannot control how much money you make or what people say about you. But there are things you can control.

You control your writing.

You decide what words go on the page and whether there are words at all. You can improve your skill through practice. You alone decide what and how many stories you tell.

You control your schedule.

You decide how many days you write, for how long, how many words. You decide whether you're going to write a ton in one sitting or a little at a time—and both are fine! You alone decide how to balance writing with the rest of your life in a way that brings you joy.

You control whether you keep going.

You decide if you will keep writing, take a break, or stop altogether—again, all are fine decisions so long as they are your decisions designed to fit your life!

If you want to keep writing no matter what, nobody can stop you. The more you do so, the better you'll get. If writing is something you want, then the only way to fail is to give up on it.

It's important to let go of what we can't control so that we can focus our energy on what we can. I'm not saying it's easy—I know from experience it's not!—but it's possible, and it's the only way to find joy in what we do.

Control what you can. Let go of what you can't.

Writing for the Market

A common question writers wrestle with is whether they should write what they love or write what will sell. This is an important question! But before I try to answer it, I need to drop an important truth:

Nobody knows what will sell.

I mean, we all make our guesses (and agents and editors are in a better position to gauge these winds than most of us), but it's not like Rowling sat down and decided that a story about a wizarding school was a gap in the market that would definitely be a hit. Heck, even publishers didn't know—the first Harry Potter book was rejected 12 times!

Trying to write a bestseller is like hitting a moving target with a paper airplane on a breezy day. It can probably be done? But it's easier if you can just throw a thousand airplanes.

I don't know about you, but I don't have that kind of time.

Here's what you can do though:

(1) Know your market. Read books that target the same audience you want to target. Learn what's out there. Try to understand why it works.

(2) Enjoy your market. The number of authors who can find success writing for a genre they don't like are very, very few. Most of us write what we write because we were readers first—because we like our genre!

You don't have to enjoy everything in your target market of course, but the books you don't like are selling for a reason. You may not agree with it, but it will help you immensely to try and understand what your audience sees in them.

(3) Write what you want to read. There are multiple reasons for this. One is because if you don't enjoy it, neither will your readers, but another is because you're gonna be reading this book a lot.

(4) Put yourself in your work. There are no ideas so original that they are unlike anything that has ever come before, but there is no one else in the world with your life, your experience, your voice, or your story. The one thing every breakout hit has in common is novelty, and nobody can write you but you. Use that.

(5) Don't give up. Not everyone is going to be a success, but failure doesn't exist. If something doesn't work, examine why and try again.

Nobody knows what will go viral (and if you do, please explain this to me), but there are elements within your control. You just have to try stuff and see what works. Know your market, take risks, and be yourself. It's the best any of us can do.

Question for you: Is there a novel that you think shouldn't be popular but is? What do you think draws readers to it?

Finding What Works for You

Hey, look! A post!

Let's talk a bit about online presence—how writers and other creatives are told (or expected) to have one whether they like it or not. You gotta be on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and blogging (well, maybe not blogging anymore, but I will! Sometimes! Screw you, conventional wisdom!).

So the two of you who pay attention know that I've been streaming on Sunday nights for *checks calendar* about a year now. I started because it looked like fun, because I thought it would be a good way to play games I couldn't play around my kids, and because I saw people gathering an audience and I thought, "Hey, maybe I could do that."

Understand, I know how hard it is to build an audience, and I know nothing makes that happen overnight. I never expected to have hundreds of viewers who would all run to buy my books. I figured I'd just build something small—like I did here and on Twitter and Facebook—and maybe, maybe when I had something to sell or to say, that would be another platform for it. And I'd get to play games in the meantime.

Anyway, it turned out not to be as fun as I thought.*

* For me. Other people have fun with it, and that's awesome, but it just wasn't meshing with my schedule or personality.

I am no longer streaming. Could I have built an audience? Sure. But I realized I was no longer looking forward to it, and the idea of not streaming felt like... relief.

And that's my point. When you're looking at ways to build an audience or online presence, you have to HAVE TO evaluate what works for you—what do you enjoy, what comes naturally, what do you look forward to (at least most of the time)? Because otherwise... it just won't work no matter how hard you bang your head on it.

And besides, streaming (and blogging and tweeting and instagraming and... tumbling?) doesn't sell books. Books sell books. And now I have a little bit more time to do that.

So anyway, there's your conventional wisdom for today. Also your general update: I'm still working on stuff for you to enjoy, but I've got nothing finished or announced yet.

I do have a progress chart for the mobile gamebook though (I post updates for this on Twitter and Facebook occasionally). Here's where I am:

I hope to have this thing turned in by early July. We'll see.

So what are you working on?

Success You Can Control

When we start writing, a lot of us do it, at least in part, to be "successful" (maybe just me, but I'll assume a lot of us because it makes me feel better). By successful, I mean like famous, best-selling, award-winning, rich, amazing whatever. And we know, we KNOW we can't control it, but it so feels like we can. Shoot, I've been writing professionally for almost a decade and have been rejected more times than the 45th US president has lied on record, and I still feel like I can control it.

(Sad that this had to get political? Me too, man. *heavy sigh* Me too.)

It's not just writing either. This is true in basically every creative industry and probably a fair number of non-creative ones as well. But what do you do when success doesn't come? Like, for years and years and years and . . . nothing?

There are lots of ways to deal with it, but I think they all boil down to these two: either give up or redefine success.

Now, when I say "redefine success," I don't mean give up on your big goal-dream of making it big; that's just giving up. I mean redefine your goals to be something in your control so that you're not just pulling yourself out of bed each morning, but rather you're jumping out of bed because you have another successful day ahead of you.

This is what I've been doing lately. I've still got big dreams, and I'm working hard toward them: I have a novel outline in the hands of a Big 5 editor. I have a mobile gamebook in the works. I hope to carve time to write some more novellas. But my happiness isn't resting on those things. They're way too far out, and too much of it is out of my hands. Saying my book has to sell or my game has to hit it big is just begging for depression.

So where is my happiness? Partially, I'm still trying to make myself truly believe these things, but here's where I want it to lie:

• In making enough money each day to feed my family well and maybe take them to a movie every once in a while.
• In spending time with my family.
• In having time and purpose to create something that I love.
• In having time to play a game or watch Netflix every so often.

I have so many freaking projects that if I put my happiness in any one of them -- or all of them all at once -- I'd end up working 28-hour days only to have the project flop while simultaneously missing out on what makes these projects worth doing at all.

So I'm trying to take things slow, one day at a time and enjoying my family at each step. How about you? What does success look like for you?

The Importance of Being Mercenary

A thread I posted on Twitter that is important enough (and I think about this stuff often enough) to post it here.

Stop me if you've heard this one, freelancers (or don't, because I'm also tweeting this to remind you and me that we're not alone). 1/

— Adam Heine (@adamheine) November 8, 2017

So, this gamebook I'm working on is super fun, but I keep struggling to make time for it because it's effectively on spec. 2/

— Adam Heine (@adamheine) November 8, 2017

And I'm constantly shouting at myself, "It's okay! Stop feeling bad! You have no contractual obligations! Paid jobs come first!" 3/

— Adam Heine (@adamheine) November 8, 2017

But I feel guilty anyway, because I really, really, really, want people to be happy with my work. 4/

— Adam Heine (@adamheine) November 8, 2017

I literally dream about the cheap/good/fast triangle. The gamebook folks clearly opted out of fast, so I'm giving them cheap and good. 5/

— Adam Heine (@adamheine) November 8, 2017

And I tell myself that's okay, but it never feels okay. 6/

— Adam Heine (@adamheine) November 8, 2017

Freelancers who are in the same boat, listen: Take care of you. Honor the commitments that are honoring you with money first. 7/

— Adam Heine (@adamheine) November 8, 2017

Working on spec is fine; just make sure it's not the only thing you're doing. 8/

— Adam Heine (@adamheine) November 8, 2017

(He says, even though that's exactly what he did for three months before Torment turned into a paying thing.) 9/

— Adam Heine (@adamheine) November 8, 2017

"But what if this unpaying gig becomes the next big thing?" Hey, if you have flexibility to take that risk, go for it. Otherwise, maybe think twice. 10/

— Adam Heine (@adamheine) November 8, 2017

Like, I had that flexibility when Torment came around (also a lack of other work). I don't have as much flexibility for risk now. 11/

— Adam Heine (@adamheine) November 8, 2017

Remember: Anything can fall through at any time. If on-spec work falls through? More free time! If paid gigs fall through? Starvation! 12/

— Adam Heine (@adamheine) November 8, 2017

This PSA brought to you by my conscience and self-esteem, both of which are looking at me like this. END/ pic.twitter.com/RJLWhekUt7

— Adam Heine (@adamheine) November 8, 2017

You Get One Debut... But That's Not All You Get

My friend and former query twin* Krista Van Dolzer wrote this excellent post for authors trying to get published.

There have been a few exceptions...but for the most part, you only get one chance to make a first impression. Stated another way, you can only be a variable when you're actually a variable. If you don't have a sales record, publishers have to rely on a set of complicated formulas--and possibly their tea leaves--to determine how much your book is worth...

But once you have a sales record, it will follow you around for the rest of your career. Publishers no longer have to guess how much your books are worth; your sales figures will tell them.

Her point (which I totally agree with) is that you should be careful how you debut and whom you debut with. Don't jump at the first small press or self-publishing option you get without really thinking about it. People generally put more value in unknown potential than they do in someone who has a record we can look at. Publishers and the reading market are not immune to this. (This has recently become an additional reason for me not to jump onto Kickstarter with my beloved-but-rejected novels. Not yet, anyway.)

However, I would submit that you're more likely to write a bestseller in your 3rd or 4th or 10th book than you are in your first. I'm basing this on the fact that many of the bestselling novels I know and love were not debut novels:

• Orson Scott Card. Best known for Ender's Game (1985). It was his 8th published novel.
• Suzanne Collins. Best known for Hunger Games (2008). It was her 8th published novel.
• Scott Westerfeld. Best known for Uglies (2005) and Leviathan (2009). Uglies was his 8th published novel (dang, a trend!).
• Brandon Sanderson. Best known for Mistborn (2006) and his contributions to the Wheel of Time series (2009+). Mistborn was his 2nd published novel.
• Neil Gaiman. Best known for Sandman (1989+), Neverwhere (1996) and a bunch of other stuff. But his first published novel was co-written in 1990 and he'd been writing graphic novels since 1987.
• Chuck Palahniuk. Best known for Fight Club (1996). This actually was his first novel, but according to Chuck it "was a huge failure" and the film (released three years later) "was a flop."

Of course we know plenty of debut success stories: J.K. Rowling, Pat Rothfuss, Kiersten White, Stephanie Meyer. But I hypothesize that they are the exceptions. (I admit I could be totally wrong about this, of course. I would love to see some data on this :-). Most of the big authors I've seen have worked and failed** and worked hard again until FINALLY they had something that hit that elusive golden snitch of a nerve that every publisher is looking for.

My point is that, yes, your debut is something special that you should take care of. Don't squander it the first chance you get. BUT if selling stories is something you really want, don't stop writing. Ever. No matter how you debut, no matter what publishers or the market thinks of you, there will always be a way for you to get new words to your readers. There will always be a chance that the next thing you write could be The One.

Statistically, the more you write, the better that chance gets.

---------------------------------------------------
* Krista and I were on surprisingly parallel querying-agent-submission paths for about a year or two, before she got a book deal and I got a job.

** Maybe not "failed" so much as "didn't hit it ridiculously big."

So You Launched a Kickstarter Campaign

ARE YOU CRAZY? WHAT DID YOU DO THAT FOR?!

Kidding.

So, you know you're ready for Kickstarter, and you've put your entire pitch together. What can you expect from the campaign itself?

THE LIFE OF A KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN
Most Kickstarter campaigns follow the same general trend:

1. A large amount of pledges on the first day.
2. A quick drop-off of pledges over the next couple of days.
3. A long "lull" where the amount of pledges per day is about the same.
4. A spike of incoming pledges on the last two or three days.

From this, I can tell you a few things.

First, don't freak out during the lull. It's perfectly normal, and there's nothing you can do about it (almost nothing; see below). Instead, interact with your backers and continue your non-spammy publicity (again, see below).

Make the first day of your campaign count. A lot of projects, even major ones asking for millions of dollars, like to throw their project up one day and surprise everybody. Mostly, this doesn't go like everybody thinks it will.

A better idea is to float the idea of a Kickstarter to your existing network (you do have one, right?). These are your core fanbase and your early backers. By telling them what's going to happen ahead of time, not only do you make sure that some people show up on that first day, but you can also get a sense of whether your Kickstarter is even a good idea. Are they excited about it? Worried? Do they have ideas for rewards you can offer? You can learn a lot from your core fans, so don't hesitate to include them on the idea.

Prepare for the last days. You'll have spent the lull interacting with the core backers who hang around the Kickstarter page, but on that last day you'll see an influx both of people who haven't been to the page in a while and who have never heard of your project at all. Make sure the information on your front page is still clear to someone who knows nothing about your project or stretch goals. Make sure your updates are inclusive.

THE LULL
Every Kickstarter campaign has a lull. It's perfectly normal, but your backers might not feel so. You can educate them on the basic life of a Kickstarter, but there are other, better things you can do to make them feel like the campaign is still moving.

Interact with, and listen to, your backers. I cannot stress this part enough: people want to feel like they're making a difference. If people suggest good ideas -- stretch goals, rewards, ways to improve the product -- take them, run with them, and don't forget to credit the people who submitted them.

Also answer their questions or just hang out with them in the comment threads. People are much more likely to invest in a person than a project, so make yourself real and personable to them.

Make stretch goals. Now, stretch goals are not appropriate for every project, but if they make sense for yours, then do them. In fact, plan them even before you launch (you never know when you might, you know, break the fastest to a million dollars record). They won't break the lull (more on that in the next section), but they'll give your core backers things to watch and root for.

Some of them might even plunk down more money just to meet a stretch goal.

BREAKING THE LULL
There is very, very, very little you can do to break the pattern of the Kickstarter lull. For the most part, there are only three things that can give you a spike in the middle of your campaign:

1. Get to within a few percent of your funding goal. If you look at the pledging stats for other projects, you will notice that almost every single one has a spike of new pledges and new backers on the day they met their goal. Once again: people want to feel like they're making a difference.
2. Get publicity to an audience that hasn't heard the news yet. This is about marketing. By the middle of your campaign, your core fanbase knows about the project. Their friends have heard about it. Is there anyone else in your target audience who might not have? Find them. Find the forum or news sites they hang out at, and tell them too. (But DON'T SPAM. Spamming only reaches the same audience repeatedly, thus annoying them. Even well-intentioned fans can be guilty, so be careful.)
3. Make an announcement that changes the nature of the project (in a good way). For example, say you launched a Kickstarter to get internal illustrations for your book. Halfway through the campaign, you announce that Tony DiTerlizzi(!) has agreed to do the illustrations. Whether it's a newly revealed stretch goal or not, this sort of announcement can give you a huge spike in pledges once people hear about it.

Don't freak out if these spikes don't create a new level of daily pledges. Very likely, the pledges will jump up for a day or two then go back to the normal lull. But that's okay. You've created excitement, given your core backers something to talk about, and made just that much more money. And that ain't bad.

Hopefully this little mini-series (written while my novella is in the hands of the most awesome critique partners in the world) will help you, should you ever decide to Kickstart a novel. Or anything, really. You can't predict everything, but neither is it all completely random. Let me know if you have any more questions.

So You Want to Launch a Kickstarter Campaign

I think one of the reasons 56% of Kickstarter projects fail is because people tend to believe it goes:

1. Have idea.
2. Click 'Publish.'
3. Rake cash.

But a Kickstarter campaign, a good one, is a lot of work. Not as much work as writing a novel, but it's not something you just post on a whim. Before you click "Launch," you need to know (or have) ALL of the following.

WHY KICKSTARTER?
This is every backer's first question: "Why are you coming to me for money instead of doing it yourself?" There are lots of great answers to this question. For example, you might want to:

• Gauge interest before spending a year of your life writing it (though be warned: if you have no writing experience, people are going to wonder what, exactly, you're gauging).
• Fund a nice print run, limited edition hardcovers, etc.
• Fund a marketing campaign for a novel you've already written.
• Hire an illustrator for the book cover, a map, or internal illustrations.
• Hire an editor to give the book you've already written the polish it deserves. 

Whatever your reason, it's part of your pitch, and part of the reason people are going to back you. They want to be a part of something important, so make them feel that.

A FUNDING GOAL
How much money are you trying to raise? This is more critical than you think. People often judge a campaign based on how much it asks for. If you ask for $1,000, people don't expect much, but you lose some respectability. Ask for $10,000, and now people expect something serious -- a midlist author or a book that had a publishing contract but backed out for some (respectable) reason, for example.

Obviously it's not just about appearances either. How much do you actually need? What are you using it for? Are you barely covering your costs or did you build in a profit? Did you remember to take into account Kickstarter's fees? Rewards? Shipping? Once you are successfully funded, you are responsible for all the promises you made during the campaign. Make sure that, if you hit your minimum funding goal, fulfilling all those rewards will still be worth your while.

BACKER REWARDS
What are you offering your backers in return? Obviously a copy of the novel, but in what format? For how much? Do you have more rewards for people who want to back you at a higher level? Think carefully about this, because fulfilling rewards (especially physical ones that have to be mailed) can eat up a lot of your budget. But at the same time, people won't back a project if the reward they want is too expensive.

ART
You're a writer, so what do you need art for? Well, you don't have to have it, but if you can get good-looking art -- maybe concepts of your story, a map of your world -- it can make an average pitch look great.

Be careful, though. Bad visuals are worse than no visuals at all. 

THE PRODUCT
You might think that because the Kickstarter is meant to determine whether or not you'll even make the product, you shouldn't have to do any work on the product at all. This couldn't be further from the truth. The more work you put into your novel (or whatever you're pitching) ahead of time, the more faith your backers will have that you can pull it off.

There's a balance though. If your product is completely finished, people will wonder why you need to raise x-thousand dollars for it, and they could be more hesitant to put their faith in you. Again, people want to feel like they're making a difference.

THE VIDEO
This is the first thing people see when they hit your Kickstarter page. You don't have to have one, but some people are more likely to watch a two-minute pitch than read all the text on your page. How to make a good video is beyond the scope of this post, but in general:

• Keep it brief.
• Pitch what you're doing, why you're the one to do it, and why you need the backers' help to do it.
• Show off any art you've got, even if it's just concepts.
• Don't show anything that makes you or your product look bad. Kickstarter is about transparency, but you can go too far.

THE PITCH
This is the meat of your Kickstarter page. It's got to have all the information listed above, plus more to pre-emptively answer any questions a potential backer might have. The better you anticipate and handle potential questions, the better your launch will go.

What happens after launch? I'll deal with that in the next post.

So You Want to Kickstart a Novel

Kickstarter has funded the hopes and dreams of thousands. Could it do the same for you?

Maybe.

First things first: Kickstarter is not the new self-publishing. A quick look at their own stats will prove it: less than half of the projects put up on KS have been funded. The statistics for the publishing category are even more grim: only a 31% success rate.

Still, it's better than querying, amirite?

I want to spend a couple of posts talking about what you can do to get yourself in that 31%, and why you might want to do it at all. Kickstarter isn't a magic bullet.

NOTHING IS.

But it does have a couple of benefits over publishing straight to Amazon. Specifically:

1. It shifts the risk. Instead of spending a couple years writing a novel only to discover nobody wants it, you can learn the same thing after only a couple of months.
2. You can get input directly from the people you're writing for on what they like and don't like.

What Kickstarter can't give you is writing experience, which is admittedly kind of critical. So I can't really recommend it to inexperienced writers. But if you've been writing a while, and you've got this great idea for a story, but nothing of yours has ever sold really well and you're not sure if it'll be worth your time, well.... you might look into it.

There are 3 things you should probably have to run a successful Kickstarter. If you're only asking for a little money (say $1,000 or less), maybe you can get away with one of these. From $1k-10k (where most of the successful publishing projects are), you want at least two out of three.

(1) A great idea. Be careful here. Everybody thinks they've got a great idea. You've got to have an idea people want. No, more than that: an idea they need. It's hard to pitch something innovative, and a lot of great-but-untested projects fail right here. This is why nostalgia and spin-offs sell really well. But if you're an author looking to self-publish, you don't have the luxury of a license. High concept is your friend.

(2) Evidence that you can pull it off. Because everybody has great ideas, people are hesitant to back someone if that's all they've got. They want to know why you're the person to put this together. Anything that proves you can write: short stories, a blog with a following, even a popular Twitter feed. If you don't have anything, try an excerpt of what you're planning to make.

(3) A network of people to spread the word. Kickstarter does not mean instant visibility. While it's true your backers have a vested interest to spread the word on your behalf (another benefit of Kickstarter), you have to get some backers first. Having a platform to start from can help a lot.

If this looks a lot like what you need to succeed in self-publishing -- or querying agents and editors, for that matter -- you shouldn't be surprised. Kickstarter doesn't change the playing field. It just shifts things around. Instead of WRITE => BUILD PLATFORM => MAKE MONEY, now it's BUILD PLATFORM => MAKE MONEY => WRITE.

These are all just guidelines, of course. It depends very much on how much money you're asking for, and even then there's no guarantee that any of these will make your Kickstarter successful (see what I said before about magic bullets). Though if you've got an idea people are craving, a history that shows you can pull it off, and an audience just waiting for you to launch so they can tell their friends about it, well . . . then you might have something interesting indeed.

But you still need a campaign. We'll talk about that next time.

Kickstarter, Self-Publishing, and Video Games

You've all heard of the literary self-publishing revolution. (Heck, some of you are on the barricades). What you might not know is there is a similar revolution going on in video and board games. It has to do with Kickstarter.

Kickstarter is a funding platform for creative projects. Anyone with an idea for a book, a movie, a game, a technology, or whatever can launch a project page and see if people are interested in funding their project. Authors have used it to self-publish: to fund cover artists and editors, and to see if there's a market for what they want to write before they write it.

We all know why authors self-publish: because breaking into the Big 6 is freaking hard, especially if you write for what is essentially a niche audience. Turns out the same thing is true in games.

Video games, in particular, have their own Big Publishers -- companies with the connections and resources to develop triple-A titles for the major gaming consoles. I don't even know how an independent developer would sign on with them. You'd probably have to prove you have a significant platform first, or else develop a Halo clone or something else they know will work. (Sound familiar?).

But not everybody wants to make Halo.* A number of developers have been using Kickstarter to pitch the games they always loved, and to see if enough people feel the same. You may have even heard of some of the biggest ones:

* Nothing against Halo, of course. There are some very talented folks making those games.

Double Fine Adventure was a Kickstarter campaign by developer Tim Schafer, maker of some of my favorite games of all time: the Monkey Island games, Grim Fandango, and Day of the Tentacle. Last March he asked for $400,000 to make a new adventure game -- something big publishers haven't wanted for decades. He got $3.3 million and kickstarted a revolution (see what I did there?).

A month later, inXile entertainment (starring my former and current boss) pitched a sequel to a very old post-apocalyptic RPG. Wasteland 2 got running with nearly $3,000,000.

Project: Eternity is the brain child of Obsidian Entertainment, home of most of my former coworkers. They asked if people wanted to see a spiritual successor to the old Infinity Engine games like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment. Seventy-four thousand people said, "YES!"

Why am I telling you this? Well, partially because it's fascinating to me. Anything that makes it easier to fund, create, and distribute creativity is awesome, in my opinion.

But also to show that independent publishing is not strictly a book thing. In the last year, there have been seven million-dollar video game projects on Kickstarter, dozens of smaller ones, and who knows how many hundreds of similar board games, RPGs, and other things.

And just like in the book world, I think the way to look at self-publishing is not as a challenge to publishers, but more like filling holes that publishers leave unfilled. Three million dollars sounds like a lot, but when triple-A budgets regularly hit 30 or 40 million, you can understand why EA and Microsoft might not be interested in a niche RPG.

In the same way, ten thousand book sales might not interest a publisher used to selling books in the hundreds of thousands, but to the self-published author, those ten thousand sales are game changing.

Whatever. I just like where the future is going. I'm excited to see what happens next.

What about you? Have you ever backed (or launched!) a Kickstarter? What do you think about the platform.

The Problem With Self-Imposed Deadlines

The trilemma above is a universal for any project. And I've realized this is exactly why my self-imposed deadlines almost never work. I mean, I'll set them, but then I'll get stuck on something, or a problem will appear that I didn't foresee. And once my deadline is broken, replacing it just feels . . . fake.

My self-imposed deadlines don't work because, in the querying and submission stages, the choice above is made for me:

CHEAP, because nobody's paying me. (The only way it could be cheaper is if I paid for the privilege to write which, really, yuck).

GOOD, because if it's not my best stuff, then nobody will ever pay me.

In a way, it's kind of nice. I don't have to choose! I can take all the time I need to make it right, and it's okay.

Under real deadlines, now, I'm a pro. But that's usually because somebody gave them to me. With money. And an implicit declaration of which of these three is least important to them.

I can do that.

How about you? Do self-imposed deadlines work for you?

When Is Piracy Okay?

It's been a while since we talked about piracy. I don't have anything new to say on the subject, but I thought we could have a little discussion starter. So first, a poll: When is it okay to pirate something?

The question is about ethics, not legality. The legality answer is easy and objective (for most countries, the answer is "never").

poll by twiigs.com

ANSWER DESCRIPTIONS:
1) Never. Self-explanatory, I think.

2) When there is no way to get it, even with money. For example, your favorite TV show is geo-blocked and is not available on iTunes. Netflix and Hulu are likewise geo-blocked. You couldn't pay for a copy even if you wanted to.

3) When there is no way to get it, except with a lot of money. The publisher of a book you want refuses to release an e-book version. You could get a paper copy, but within shipping it'll cost like $40. For one book.

4) When you've already paid for one version of it, but you want another version as well. You bought that TV show you want on iTunes, but you want a DVD so the kids can watch without tying up your computer.

5) When you could get a version of it, but it's not what you want. You don't actually want it on iTunes, since iTunes sucks on Windows and you'd rather watch it on your TV.

6) When you could get what you want, but the owner of the property is a money-grubbing corporate tool. Why pay for it when you can stick it to the man?

7) Whenever the heck you want. It's a free country. Also self-explanatory.

Feel free to elaborate your answer in the comments. It's a sticky issue, after all.

I'll be honest: I answered (2). We try very hard to lean toward NEVER (seeing as we are not, in fact, poor mountain villagers that eat only rice and chilis), but we also have a So You Think You Can Dance addiction that Fox won't let us feed :-(

On Covers and Curse Workers

I just finished reading RED GLOVE, the second book in Holly Black's Curse Workers trilogy.

And GAH! This trilogy!

Understand: I LOVE the stories. Love the characters, love the cons (oh my GOSH, the cons), love the powers, love the world. I think I liked WHITE CAT better than this one (the big con felt . . . connier in the first book), but RED GLOVE was still very good.

When I read WHITE CAT, my only problems with it were a minor plot issue and the cover.

Guess what my problems are now.

So, the minor plot issue is really minor. More of a world-building nitpick than anything: If everyone wears gloves all the time -- and the murderer was wearing gloves when she was caught on camera -- why would Cassel need to wipe prints off the gun? (And do police even use fingerprinting if everyone wears gloves all the time?).

 
But the cover. It's better this time -- it's not whitewashed, for example. Actually, it's a pretty cool design, but . . . I dunno. See, I think boys would love this book. Crime bosses, con artists, murders, brothers. What's not to love? But the cover's PINK, man. Even I was embarrassed to read it in public.

(Okay, so I'm very easily embarrassed. But still, it'd be nice if the cover could be more...neutral.)

The Science of Persuasion

A friend directed me to this great video on persuasion. It's about the psychology behind why people make decisions, and how you can ethically apply these concepts to persuading people to do what you want. This is ridiculously useful if you're trying to get somebody to buy something (like, say, a book you wrote), but it also applies to things like getting people to follow your blog, critique your manuscript, or blurb your novel.

(You can use them unethically too, of course. That's the problem with scientific principles. Con artists, for example, make use of these tricks all the time. For the record, I don't endorse this.)



In case you can't watch the whole thing, here's a summary on six shortcuts people use to decide whether or not to say yes to somebody.

1. RECIPROCITY: People are more likely to say yes to someone who has done something similar for them. It works best if you give something FIRST, and if that giving is PERSONALIZED and UNEXPECTED.

2. SCARCITY: People are more likely to want something that is about to be unavailable.

3. AUTHORITY: People are more likely to go along with something suggested by a credible expert. Apparently, this works even if the expert obviously benefits from whatever is suggested.

4. CONSISTENCY: People are more likely to do something consistent with prior commitments they have made. Even if that commitment is something minor (like hosting a guest post for a blog tour of your upcoming book), it can increase the likelihood of more major behavior (like buying your book when it comes out).

5. LIKING: People are more likely to do something for people that they like. And some of the main reasons people like someone are: (1) that person is similar to them, (2) that person compliments them, and (3) that person is cooperative with them.

6. CONSENSUS: When people are unsure about something, they are likely to look at what others are doing before making their own commitment. This is probably why bestsellers take off like they do. It's also why shills work.

Many of these seem obvious, but you'd be surprised how effective they can be when you use them intentionally in a marketing campaign (and ethically; sock puppets have a way of backfiring).

What do you think? Have you seen these work?

It's Okay to Write Slow

J. K. Rowling took five years to write the first Harry Potter.

It's okay to write slow.

Those of us who take a year or more to draft a novel are tempted to believe we're doing something wrong. Like we're too lazy, managing our time wrong, editing our words too much, or (God forbid) not meant to be writers at all. Some of those things might be true, but slow writing doesn't prove it.

(Terry Pratchett wrote his first novel at 400 words a day.)

You might be climbing a learning curve. My first novel took me 5 years to draft, 2 to edit. My second took me two years total. It's still slow, but I'm getting better. You will too. That's what practice does.

(The Harry Potter series took an average of 2 years per book to write.)

You might be a planner. Natalie Whipple can tell you that fast drafts don't mean finished products. They need a lot of editing after they're "done." Not that slow drafts are perfect, but sometimes slow can mean cleaner.

(George R. R. Martin took 6 years to finish the latest Song of Ice and Fire book. I still bought it.)

You might be unpublished. There are really only two reasons you have to write fast: (1) you signed a contract with a deadline or (2) you write to put food on the table. The rest of us have the freedom to write at whatever pace we want, learning as we go.

(Susanna Clarke took 10 years to finish her debut novel, which won some awards and got optioned for a lot of money.)

You might have a life. Maybe you have a full-time job, a family, and an X-Box. Kids are a full-time job on their own (I know, I have ten) and worth more than a publishing contract. Not that you shouldn't go for the contract too, but if you're sacrificing writing speed to play Guitar Hero with your daughter, I call that a win.

There are reasons writing can take a long time, many of them good.

Live life. Write slow.

(remixed from a guest post I did for Natalie Whipple)

How to Beat Your Fears

Step #1: Get in the ring.

The Secret to Getting Published

Self-Pubbed vs. Traditional: Which is Better?

Someone asked me this recently and my answer got kind of long-winded insightful, and I figured why not inflict it on you guys? I'd save myself the trouble of writing another blog post you guys might be interested in what I think talking about it.

Although my personal neuroses have staunchly led me down the traditional path so far, the short answer is I don't think either path is objectively better.

Traditional publishing is harder to break into. You have to please more people (agents and editors need to believe they can sell your book, and sometimes they're done with a genre that readers still want) and you have to deal with more rejection. It will stretch you though, and if you make it, the benefits are pretty huge: an agent to partner with, professional editing, cover design, print distribution, etc.

Self-publishing, obviously, is easy to get into. I could do it right now. But success is more difficult because you have to do it yourself. You have to edit it (I recommend paying someone). You have to get a cover (again: pay someone). You have to find your audience by yourself (and hope they're into self-published e-books). The benefits are freedom, speed, and control.

But in my opinion, the biggest danger in self-publishing is fooling yourself. Susan Quinn addresses this really well in her Seven Questions to Ask Before Self-Publishing. I've seen a few folks go to self-publishing before they were ready. Some had been rejected by traditional publishing and didn't take the hint. Some thought the praise of their writer friends meant that perfect strangers would feel the same way. Some believed the hype of the self-pubbing community and were surprised when they only sold 200 copies.

Which path you choose depends on a lot of things: your writing, your personality, the market. But very generally, my advice is don't self-publish your first book.

But do query it.

Most likely it will be rejected, but I think you can learn a lot by querying, without harming your reputation or your status as a debut author. (I should note that weak sales in self-pubbing might not be a lot of harm, but I personally think you can learn more from querying anyway, so why risk it? You can always self-publish it later).

But no matter which path you take, no matter how low the sales or how high the rejections, don't give up and don't stop writing. Not if this is what you want. There are a lot of ingredients for success, but I've become more and more convinced that the most important one is stubbornness.

What do you guys think? Is there a better path? Why?