Writing

I have good news, and I have bad news.

The good news is that, in the era of eBooks and low-cost graphic design, readers are less inclined to judge a book by its cover.

The bad news is that it’s never been easier to judge a book by its reviews. And well-contemplated reviews are increasingly rare.

NetGalley (www.netgalley.com) seeks to address this problem by facilitating online reviews for a wide range of authors, from indie first-timers to best-sellers. Pay their fee, upload a digital copy of your manuscript, and they will make a digital copy of your manuscript available to hundreds of thousands of ‘professional readers’ – bloggers, media, educators, librarians and booksellers.

Authors (or publishers) have the choice of restricting copies to only the readers they approve, decisions often based on the reader’s profile or past reviews. Or you can open the title up to all NetGalley members without vetting them individually – a greater risk, with a potentially greater reward. (There are no guarantees that reviews will be favourable, though readers mostly stick with their preferred genre and use a logical method for evaluating titles. Mostly.)

Authors can also choose a number of additional add-ons, from direct email campaigns to being part of monthly newsletter distributions. A typical NetGalley run lasts for six months and costs USD$450 (USD$699 if it includes a newsletter spot). Three-month listings can be purchased by members of the International Book Publishers Association (IBPA) for USD$199. Direct email campaigns can run into the thousands.
In terms of actual results, a regularly listed title might receive a few hundred ‘requests’, which may in turn generate perhaps twenty or thirty reviews along with some additional library sales, bookstore orders and blog posts. My debut novel Rum Luck was available for a six month period and promoted via a NetGalley newsletter – it was the subject of around a dozen blog posts and about 80 reviews total – 40 on Goodreads and around 35 on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca combined.

Even the least expensive NetGalley listing may exceed the budget of many crime writers. A no-cost alternative is to give away eBook ARCs via LibraryThing (www.librarything.com), which allows authors to distribute up to 100 eBook ARCs per giveaway. (Fair warning – I have not attempted this myself, and have heard from other authors that LibraryThing readers grade on a harder curve.)

Overall, I found my listing on NetGalley to be worthwhile – particularly for a debut novel. A six month run was probably more than I needed, as most requests were placed in the first few weeks. An IBPA listing should be sufficient for most. Next time, I would book as early as possible (six months or more) to get my choice of newsletter slots. I would also make my title available to all NetGalley members, rather than evaluating readers one at a time. And I would run a LibraryThing giveaway as well.

This post originally appeared in the Crime Writers of Canada publication Crime Beat in January 2018.

In which we talk about the inspiration for Rum Luck, humor writing, bringing out a character’s voice and my own eventful travels in Costa Rica.

I made around 25,000 revisions to the manuscript for ‘Rum Luck’, from when I first queried agents to when I sold to a publisher a year and a half later.

Here’s what that looks like when crammed into a single image:

(Thanks go to Amy McCullogh and Will Hill for first doing this with the edits they got back from their respective publishers.)

I almost didn’t post this.

It’s tough to be a writer who is sitting on a manuscript that hasn’t yet found a home. No one needs to make that time any more difficult that it is already. And there’s no doubt – that’s a lot of changes. A veritable sea of red. Quite possibly a very daunting sea, depending on where you’re at in the writing process.

Don’t be discouraged.

When that manuscript first left my hands, it was perfect in my eyes. But only in my eyes. It needed more.

That red is the ‘more’, those elusive improvements that could only come through outside feedback – in my case, the beta-readers, prospective agents, my former agent, a professional editor, potential publishers, and eventually the editors at Five Star – including the eminent Deni Dietz.

Over a year of editing.

I didn’t listen to everyone, all of the time. But I did look for trends. If several readers made the same suggestion, I took it very seriously. And even when one reader said there was too much description and another not enough, I asked myself – is there a problem with the description?

And by slogging it out – getting rejections, making changes, and repeat – I was able to get the feedback needed to bring ‘Rum Luck’ to where it needed to be. And get shortlisted for an Arthur Ellis award. And then get a book deal.

Aspiring authors – don’t worry if you think your book isn’t quite ready for prime time. You may just need to ask your beta-readers for a map to help navigate that sea of red.

Update: I’ve had some feedback to the effect of ‘OMG is that even the same book?’ – the answer, surprisingly, is ‘yes’. This is pretty much the exact same story as what I started with. I mostly streamlined the descriptions and removed a lot of unnecessary scene direction – character’s shooting each other looks every three lines, or spending half the book drumming their fingers on something. I also took out a lengthy flashback and added another day to the timeline. The dialogue, however, has remained virtually unchanged.

I used to live in fear of re-writes – I’d think, “I need to make sure this is perfect, or I’ll lose it all during the edits” – but the truth is that if it’s gold, you’ll find a way to use it. And if it’s not gold, you won’t miss it when it’s gone.

Rum Luck is coming out from Five Star Publications in February 2016. To stay in touch, join my mailing list (sidebar) or ‘like’ my facebook page.

Feedback from the peer edits is in. It’s time for the final push on the ‘Death in a Bottle’ edits. By early next week, I’ll be sending out the first of the query letters to agents. It’s an exciting time – the project has never felt as real as it does now.

I’d like to extend a huge thank-you to everyone who took the time to review the novel and share your thoughts. Andrea, Janet, Sheri, Seb, Graham and Garry. When I first asked for help with the review, I had no idea that so many would be interested in reviewing the novel. After I sent out the dozenth copy, I started to wonder whether I hadn’t made some sort of horrible mistake – that I was essentially asking for my novel to be edited by committee.

But as feedback arrived, I soon realized that this kind of peer review was exactly what I needed. Comments like “awesome”, “excellent”, and “magical” reaffirmed that the plot, characters and setting were still on the rails, while your solid constructive criticism will help ensure the novel is polished to a high sheen in the days to come.

I would like to give special thanks to Andrea, Graham and Garry for taking the time to perform a full copy edit on the work. I had reached point where my eyes simply don’t see the errors any more, and was debating sending ‘Death in a Bottle’ out for a professional copy edit until your feedback came in. Your edits have saved me a huge amount of time and money, for which I am very grateful.

For those of you who still have a copy that you were planning to review this week or next, please do continue reading and send over your feedback when available. I expect it will take weeks before an interested agent requests pages, so I will continue making modest changes after the initial letters go out.

Back to the word mines. Wish me luck.

(or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Peer Edits)

Suddenly, in the midst of a maelstrom of e-mails and edits, a strange calm has descended over my keyboard.

Writing a novel is a daunting challenge. Not only does the word count seem to grow at a snail’s pace, but there is the constant nagging worry that plagues every author – “Is it any good?” I took breaks during this creative period, but they were more… reprieves than anything else. It’s hard to truly take a break when you know that you have another 30,000 words left to write.

The day I finished the novel was a good day. I took the evening off, watched Captain America and Thor, and washed down a plate of beef curry with a cold lager or three.

The next day, the real work began. Editing. I gave myself a week to edit the rough draft, but I should have set aside two or three. Sometimes, I spent hours on the same page. But after a sixty-hour death march, I finally reached the end.

Or so I thought. Then it was time to build a website, draft a synopsis, craft a query letter and start knocking on doors. And, the most important of tasks, send the novel out to people who can tell me whether it’s any good. It will be two to three weeks before I find out the answer to that question of questions.

There is, of course, always more to be done. I could be researching agents and publishers. I could be integrating each and every piece of feedback as it comes in. I could start on the second instalment of the Bar on a Beach Mystery series.

But instead, I am enjoying the brief window in time, this eye of the storm, when there is no mammoth task begging for my attention. I am going to tidy my office and pull dandelions from my garden, and steel myself for the months ahead – the daunting business of convincing a publishing house to place their chips on my square for the next spin of the wheel.

Wish me luck.