What made you start the new venture, Garry?

Through our parent site, www.writeitclearly.com, we received a lot of enquiries from talented writers who wanted to get their books and newsletters to a large target audience. Having read these books, we realized the enormous talent that is out there, but which for one reason or another, has not been recognized and published by mainstream conventional publishing routes. So we devised www.ebook-library.net, where contributors can submit their writing on whatever subject they like. We format it and provide a site where readers can browse through and immediately download what they like!

What books do you have so far?

We have an excellent self help book on how to beat gambling which is ONLY available online and the demand for that has been unprecedented. We have The Truth about Sales, which is THE invaluable guide on understanding the truth behind the sales mask. We also market fiction books; One Dog and his Man is an extremely humorous volume with illustrations by the late cartoonist, Larry, a view of the world through the eyes of a Labrador called Oberon. It’s coming soon.

Are you looking for writers in particular genres?

We are looking for contributors on ANY subject; that’s the beauty of the site! If you have something to contribute, then someone, somewhere will want to know! www.ebook-library.net is the ONLY place where such a diverse range of subjects can be accessed at the click of a button!

Is this the future of book publishing?

We see e-book publishing as the way forward; the vast majority of people have access to the internet now and rather than browsing through a physical library to find the right information, we can offer it through an easy to navigate and accessible medium.

This is going to be expensive, isn’t it?

The beauty of it is that it doesn’t cost the author an arm and a leg! Through www.writeitclearly.com, we can offer unbelievably competitive pricing for proofreading and editing that works out at 1p (approximately 2 cents) a word! After that formatting and marketing of the book is FREE! We publish the completed manuscript and 80% of all sales of the fully formatted e-book will then go directly to the writer! It really is as simple as that.

Will you publish absolutely anything?

We are confident that this innovative concept will attract interest and with a bank of experts working behind the scenes, we can offer the very best in grammatical accuracy and content for every book that is submitted. Of course we have to have editorial integrity and if we feel that the content is not suitable or there simply isn’t a market for it, then we will be honest.

www.writeitclearly.com was founded in 2005 by three UK based freelance professionals. Since then, the business has grown globally to include proof reading, editing, translation and now e-book publishing.

I’ve interviewed her today on my Writing Lab. Nikki answers questions on her writing process, her sources of inspiration and also has details of a brand new offer that she’s making available to people who comment on the tour.

One of the most baffling, and disappointing aspects of novel writing is the rejection letter. Many new writers are frustrated after receiving 5, 10, and even 20 rejection letters.

Writers are told not to be disheartened, or quit submitting their manuscript to publishers. There is a better way to become published, but it is difficult, so few writing instructors tell writers abut the ‘art of selecting a publisher.’

Writers

Both editors of my ‘Are You Ready to Submit’ series asked the same question, ‘Why do you spend so much time explaining the publishing industry?’ The answer is simple, so writers know how to win a publishing contract before they start writing their book.

Publishers

There are more than 5000 publishers. The annual book sales in the US average about 26 million a year. Thousands of books sell each year. Thousands of books sell well.

This is because publishers find a niche they can service, and give bookstores a stable product they can market. In the publisher’s eye, a book is nothing more than a commodity to sell, like a house, a jewel, or a chair.

Each publisher looks for something different. Even if they are not formula novels, there are similarities in the books published by different publishers.

Write For Publication

When teaching the online course, ‘How to Write and Edit a Novel,’ I ask students to look into publishers before finishing their novels. Many writers have a list of five favourite publishers they want to handle their books.

I then tell writers to ask themselves why they want that publisher to handle their manuscript. There are several good reasons. The writer may like the stories, the characters, the interesting plots, how easy the story is to read, the level of escapism, etc.

There are a few bad reasons. The publisher pays advances, they appear lenient on their guidelines, or the genre is reputed as being ‘easy.’

Then, I tell the writers to write for publication. Do not write away, without aim or form, and then hope some publisher wants the novel.

The Marketable Novel

One reason why writers should pick a publisher before finishing their novel is so they can write a marketable novel.

There are two types of novels. The artistic novel is one born in the writer’s creativity with little thought of the reader’s desires or publishers needs. These receive the most rejection letters. Writers must randomly submit, hoping one publisher is looking for their particular novel.

The second is a marketable novel. It is similar, and hopefully better, than what their favourite publisher is currently selling. Face it, publishers are in business to make money. Hand them a book they can sell, and they ‘will’ accept it, even if it needs work.

Genre

Genre is vital to writing a marketable novel. There may be 1000 romance publishers, but they do not all publish every sub genre. There are dozens of subgenres for the romance genre. Each of these are divided by types of character development, intensity of conflicts, and plots.

Submitting to a publisher, on the single merit that they handle romance novels, or fantasy, or erotic, is an exercise in futility that will result in dozens of rejection letters.

Submissions

Writers who do not research publishers, looking for the one house where they belong, are forced to play ‘submission roulette.’ This is a game where the writer submits, to publishers just because they publish romance, or thrillers.

I honestly believe that there is a publishing house for every manuscript. Knowing which publishers handle the type of story, character, conflicts, and plots that you are writing, or changing your novel to fit their needs, will reduce the number of rejection letters a writer will receive.

*******

Suzanne James is a writer and publisher. She runs Inspired Author, a free resource for writers, and WritersOnlineCourses.com.

Luckily, right about the time that my art teacher was trying to disown me, I discovered that I was good at something else - languages - and that’s how I got to know the people who would join me on my first publishing venture. I was already hooked on reading (and really enjoyed English Lit classes), and this would get me hooked on writing (in spite of my English teacher’s criticisms of my poetry).

When I was 16/17 (in lower sixth, which for my American friends is the class before your final year of high school), a friend and I took over the defunct school newspaper. When I say defunct, I mean that it had appeared sporadically throughout my five years at that school. C and I decided to take it on and run it. We learned the hard way what it takes to create a publication:

• We had to commission writing from other students
• We had to edit it
• We had to rewrite it if it didn’t meet the brief or write it if someone missed a deadline
• We had to arrange for illustrations
• We had to learn to price the paper to recover our costs

Now these were the bad old days before desktop publishing, so putting together a school newspaper meant using a Gestetner machine. It was time to outsource. We drafted my mother and anyone else who could type to type the content we had on stencils. Where that wasn’t possible, we got someone with excellent writing to copy the content onto the stencils. We found a way to incorporate the drawings (don’t ask me how; I can’t remember) and then we began the messy business of inking the machine, attaching the stencils and getting the number of copies we needed. In the process we got covered in black ink, but that didn’t detract from the thrill of our first publication. Once we had stapled it all together, we were able to sell our first issue of Breakthrough for a paltry sum.

This experience got me hooked on connecting with readers through writing and publishing. It was kind of like early blogging, without the technology. We put material out and got almost instant feedback, which we used to improve the next issue. We were in touch with our readers - heck, we were our readers! I can still remember the thrill of seeing my name in print for the first time - and I still love it now. And even though a lot of my freelance writing is ghostwriting, I still get satisfaction from writing something that others want to read.

For more on getting published, check out the Inspired Author blog. 

So it was because of this that I decided to attend one of the Inspired Author Friday night online workshops. The reason was that writing coach Lori Chance was going to be there, and I figured it would be a great opportunity to finally kickstart that novel writing.

It was an interesting session, in which I got very public therapy for my novel writing malaise. Lori was great, talking me through all the reasons why I might not be getting started with the novel (time pressure, fear of failure, perfectionism) and the qualities I had used in the past to successfully step out of my comfort zone (focus). We talked about ways of getting support with novel writing (courses, critique groups and so on). But the upshot was not what you might think.

At the end of the session I felt exhilarated and liberated because with Lori’s help I had finally given myself permission to let that novel go, at least for now, and to concentrate on writing one of my other ideas instead. I have now put some regular writing time in the diary (only once a week, but once I get obsessed, as I will, I’m sure it will be more often) and a friend has offered to set me up with her writing group.

So I want to say a public thank you to Lori. I also want to let you know that you can benefit from her experience for free. Lori’s got a site at DestinationWords and a free writing life coaching group on Myspace. Browse around Lori’s profile and you’ll find a lot of useful and interesting stuff - and some of it can be applied to anyone, not just writers.

For more on writing, check out the Inspired Author blog.

In the last month or so, I’ve done a couple more sites for them. I did an intro page to freelance writing (not live yet) and some tips on educational travel. Freelance writing was relatively easy, while educational travel was done late at night and in a hurry after my laptop trauma. (Not my best work, it’s safe to say, but it was competent and it was delivered on time.

But now I’m really happy, because I’ve become their expert on self-publishing. To do this, I had to assess the existing site, write 10 new tips and advise on how the site could be improved. In return, I’ve got a link to my blog and to my new ebook. It seems a good deal to me. Self-publishing, here I come!

For more on getting published, check out the Inspired Author blog.

A couple of weeks later I got back an email that said that they liked the book but felt it was a bit thin. Who could blame them? After all, it WAS based on a bullet point presentation, so I knew it was light on content. But sending them the presentation gave them the chance to assess whether it was something they would publish. After I thought about it for a while, I decided to beef it up by including some of my original blog posts from here, generalised so they didn’t just apply to writers. This book is the result of the combination.

The whole process has taken several weeks. TodayBooks are extremely slow at responding to email. What I like about them is that if they think changes are needed they tell me. They also promote the book on the home page. Most importantly, I get an ISBN, so I can list my book with Amazon and others.

There’s one thing I thought they could have done better. The suggested a new title and asked me to write sales copy. I had no problem with that - after all, if I wasn’t prepared to promote my own book, why should they? But … they’ve changed the title again and they didn’t change the sales copy to match. That’s why the title of the book is SEO Tricks but the sales copy refers to Web Page Action. That’s a bit careless, I think.

All in all, I’m happy. I’ve got my second ebook out and it’s a general one that I can promote heavily. It will look great in my profile on IFreelance and other places. And I may make some pocket money from it, too

Remember when I told you to Feel The Fear …? Well, I took my own advice and submitted a few poems to RITRO. The first of them was published today. It’s called Rain.

I get no money but a great deal of satisfaction, mostly at having had the guts to go for it. And hey, it’s only taken 26 years. What have you got hidden in your writing closet that you should give an airing?

It’s intended for first time authors and asks and answers writers’ questions on:

• the commissioning process
• choosing a publisher
• making money
• whether writers need agents
• writing a proposal
• contract negotiations
• working with publishers
• dealing with rejection

This book is clearly written and full of useful case studies. It is probably the best book on publishing I’ve read all year.

Read a more detailed review here or see it on Amazon.

For more on writing and publishing, check out the Inspired Author blog.

A few years ago I had a friend and fellow writer staying at my house. She’s someone I’ve known for years, whose opinion I respect. We did a kind of ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours’ thing. I read some of her poems and she read some of mine. She thought they were good, and that gave me the courage to show them to a few family members.

Fast forward to 2006 and I still had done nothing with my store of 50 poems. (The only exception were a couple that were inspired by particular people. In those cases I showed them the poems before putting them away). I looked at them again and decided to risk submitting some of them to a couple of poetry mags. I heard nothing - still haven’t. Then one day, I needed something for my blog urgently and I published one of my poems. A couple of days later, I got an invitation to join Todays-Woman.net (a writing group). I was elated, signed up and posted a couple of poems, to which I got a great response. Encouraged by that, I posted Gratitude here (97 reads and counting).

So when Katryn published a call for submissions to RITRO, I decided to go for it. It was hard to let my babies go, but to date, I’ve submitted three poems and all three have been accepted. I’ll post a link when they’re up.

My point is that if you want to get your work published, you’ll have to show it to someone other than the cat and dog. So why don’t you have a look at all your unpublished work, pick one thing you’re really happy with and send it off somewhere. What have you got to lose?