Thinking of Revising Your Self-Published Book? Read This First!

It’s no secret that first-time authors have an incredible learning curve, and that curve gets a lot steeper when they choose to self-publish.  After pouring their blood, sweat and tears into their book, they realize that all that effort was just the beginning. They now have to be willing to tirelessly promote their work and carve a presence for themselves in the endless sea of books flooding the market today. While self-publishing has done much to equalize the playing field, it has also placed a tremendous responsibility squarely on the author’s shoulders. Authors can publish their book without having to jump through hoops for agents and publishers; they also retain complete control over the finished product. However this control means that the author is accountable for errors in grammar, character development and storyline.  Like anything else in life, this process gets easier with experience, but there is one thing about that first book that may come back to haunt you.  

Let’s say that a few years ago you wrote your first book and “threw it up” on Amazon.  Perhaps you did not have it edited, or you didn’t know how to properly market it. In any case, it didn’t do much in the way of sales.  But undeterred, you stuck with your writing, and now you have improved your skills, you’ve found an editor that you work well with, and you have become a self-promotion expert.   Armed with this knowledge and perhaps a few books under your belt, you decide to go back and revise that first book—your baby.  When you’re done, you have a masterpiece! Beaming with pride, you make it available for sale, only to receive a slew of negative reviews, citing all its errors.  WHAAAT?! After careful investigation, you learn that the original version of your book is still available online, and that’s what readers and reviewers are getting their hands on.  

This is an all too common problem, and one of the topics on last week’s Aspects of Writing Radio Show. I spoke with James Kelly, the show's host and a published novelist; Janet Coursey, author of The Secrets of Time, and PR guru Travis Shortt about what authors can do to remedy this issue.  Here are a few takeaways from that discussion:

• If you are in the process of readying an original manuscript for self-publishing, the answer is obvious: don’t rush to publish! Get that editor, make sure your book is properly formatted, and have a marketing plan ready.
• If you have already published a first edition and are writing a revision, contact the publisher and tell them you would like them to take down that original version. Be persistent; email and/or call them and try to get a definitive answer as to when it will come down.
• Then, before publishing the revision, do an Internet search to find out if the original book is still available anywhere else.  Please note that it is not always possible to remove old versions. If this is the case, you must make it clear to your potential readers that there is a new version available.  Provide identifying information--such as a new cover, ISBN number, publisher, publication date, etc.—in all of your marketing materials.    

To hear a replay of that show, click here. For more advice on writing, publishing and book marketing, tune into Aspects of Writing every other Tuesday on KLAV radio. The next live show is Tuesday, March 25 at 2pm Pacific/ 3pm Central / 5pm Eastern.

Learning to Love Passive Construction

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of The Frugal Editor
 

Writers of fiction, and nonfiction for that matter, are told to avoid passive sentences for a variety of reasons. After all, they tend to tug on the forward momentum we are usually after. But passive construction can be used effectively, too. Like all love, we need to accept passives, try to utilize what they’re good at and, at the same time, recognize their flaws and make an effort not to let them into our lives.

A good editor may help you avoid passive constructions by suggesting changes that will make them active. Try doing it yourself with the three examples below.

1. "I was offended by the President's proclamation."

2. "Catherine was being watched."

3. "Catherine was being silly."

Here is your cheat sheet:

For the first example you would, of course, make it "The President's proclamation offended me."

For the second, you'll have to provide the intended subject. It might look like this: "The fuzz watched Catherine." (So, maybe you'd be more formal (-: and call them "coppers!" ).

The third example might throw you a curve. That's because it isn't a passive sentence. Here's the thing. We tend to assume a construction is passive when we see helper verbs and "ing" words. But these are not always passive indicators. That's one more thing for you to figure out in addition to deciding whether you want to avoid a passive construction anyway.

There are reasons to love the passive. I mean, language develops out of need (among other things). So we sometimes need the passive and when we do, and recognize why we do, we can grow to love it. Here are reasons you might want to intentionally use passive verbs:

1. You want to slow down the movement in a saga sent in the 19th century

2. You're using passive construction as part of a speech pattern used by a particular character.

3. You’re writing political copy and you want to avoid pointing a finger at, say, the FBI because you don’t want to get put on the dreaded US No-Fly list. So instead of saying “The FBI is watching Carolyn.” You say, “Carolyn is being watched.” No blame that way.

We need to know not only how to make verbs active and when to leave them alone, and, yep, when to use them to our advantage. That way we can learn to love them.

----- Carolyn Howard-Johnson's first novel, This Is the Place, won eight awards and uses the passive voice liberally because it is set in a slower time, a different culture. An instructor for UCLA Extension's world-renown Writers' Program, her book The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won't is recommended reading for her classes, and was named USA Book News' "Best Professional Book." It is also an Irwin Award winner. Her second book in the How To Do It Frugally series is The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success is also a USA Book News award-winner as well as the winner of the Reader View's Literary Award in the publishing category. She is the recipient of both the California Legislature's Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment Award. She is a popular speaker and actor. Her website is www.HowToDoItFrugally.com.
 

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