So what is a Proactive Writer?

It’s a writer that recognises that the publishing world has changed and the road to writing success lies in their own hands. This is not to say that they need to do everything alone (on the contrary partnership is a big part of the process), instead a Proactive Writer is one who is prepared to do what is needed to developed their own work, their own reputation and their own marketing.

I am hoping to develop the concept of the Proactive Writer over the coming weeks, but for now here’s the key attributes of a Proactive Writer:

They produce remarkable work,

They have an active and persistent online presence,

They embrace technology,

They participate.

Thoughts?

So you have written your first draft and its now time to go back and make it all nice and shiny. Here are a couple of tips to help you get the most out of re-writing and editing the first draft of your novel.

Wait - The first piece of advice is to wait. By this I mean give it as long as possible between completing your first draft and starting on the second. Waiting weeks or even months will pay off, since you will come back to the text with a renewed vigour and a fresh set of eyes.

Cut and expand – It is essential that you only include text that moves your story forward. Your reader is by nature impatient and they will have little time for bloated paragraphs and fluffy descriptions. Ask yourself as you read – ‘Do I need this section? Does it move the story forward?’ If the answer is no, then cut the text. Painful but essential. By the same vain if a section is essential to the story but does not give enough information or detail, then expand. You can’t assume that readers will know certain facts unless they are presented in black and white.

Ask a friend to read - I recently wrote a blog post about getting the most from third party editing. I would suggest you go back and have a read of this post. A friend’s feedback can be essential, but only if managed correctly.

Read out aloud – I would strongly suggest that you read your text out aloud. I use a software program called TextAloud when editing. This is text-to-speech software that reads back your work. It gives you a new feel for your writing and will highlight any section that are jerky or simply don’t make sense.

Don’t worry about word count – Writers are often obsessed by word counts. You will often find blog posts listing supposed ‘ideal’ word counts for certain genres. The reality is that as long as a novel is not stupidly long or stupidly short, it will be fine. So if your work needs an extra chapter or if you feel a character can be cut – do it! Forget the word count, since the integrity of the narrative is far more important.

1.Don’t be amazing - The single most common reason for novels not being published is that they are simply not amazing. Publishers have an almost unlimited supply of writers looking to get their books in print, so why would they publish anything but the very best writing? Your novel being good is just not good enough.

2. Produce a rubbish pitch - Many writers spend years writing a novel and then look to knock out a book proposal in a matter of hours. Writing a book proposal is an art. In essence your query letter and synopsis are sales documents convincing the publisher that you are a serious writer, who understands the market place in detail and has written an excellent book.

3. Don’t do any research - Failing to do the research needed to write your book, or find the website that offers you the best advice on writing a book proposal, or pick the most suitable agent, or pin point the ideal publisher or identify the competition all equal failure.

4. You are not differently different - Novels take a long time to write and the publishing industry moves (relatively) quickly. Churning out books that are the same as the bestsellers when you start writing is a recipe for disaster. Your book needs to clearly fit into a genre but still be differently different enough to give it a unique angle in the marketplace.

5. You give up – Only by giving up will you ensure that your novel will never get published.

It is easy to turn twitter into a competition. It is easy to look at the number of followers you have, those of your twitter friends, and those of mega twitterers like @stephenfry (944790 followers at time of writing) and turn it all into a competition. It is easy to think that the one with the most followers wins. The one with the most followers sells the most books or inspires the most readers. The truth is different.

The truth is that you need fans not followers.

The aim of twitter should be to attract solid, reliable, engaging, trustful, active, encouraging, supportive and friendly followers. The problem is that these kinds of followers are hard to find. They are selective with their attention. They are wary of clogging up their twitter stream with useless, non-value adding noise. These kinds of followers take time, effort and thought to attract.

I have now been using Google Wave for a few weeks (garysmailes@googlewave.com) and I am ready to declare that it will have a big part to play in the future of a writer’s online platform.

This video will explain Google Wave:

In essence wave allows many people to collaborate and converse. It makes sharing easy. Keeping it brief I think that Wave will be like twitter, in that once people understand the platform they will find new and exciting ways to exploit its potential. Wave lends itself perfectly to group discussions and online ‘teaching’ exercises.

I have five wave invites sitting at my account. If you leave a ‘pick me’ comment, I will pick five lucky people on Monday and fire out the invites.

Good luck.

and the winners are…

Dmitri,

diane,

techtigger,

Selorian,

Mary.

Here’s a quick and dirty list of tools and websites you can use to build yourself an online platform. They are mostly free!

Wordpress with Thesis theme and Statpress Reloaded to check your visitors statistics.

Twitter.

Social Oomph to schedule tweets and vet followers.

Bit.ly to shorten links and keep track of clicks.

Facebook.

LinkedIn.

Delicious to share your book marks.

Stumble Upon Up to spread the love.

Which site would you add to the list?

Here’s a bonus video to get you started:

It seems that both writers and publishers simply can’t resist the temptation to talk about their books. It is becoming an increasingly common site to see writers’ blogs that contain post after post about their upcoming book and why you need to buy it now. It is the same for some publishers, day after day they are looking for new and slightly different ways to tell us about their books.

My advice is simple – STOP.

The world of one way advertising is dead and buried. No longer are readers happy to sit passively whilst publishers and writers instruct them what to buy. Today we live in a new world. A world were readers are empowered, have choices and can buy ANY book they want at a click of the button.

So the answer is simple. Stop talking about your book. Stop trying to convert readers of your blog into buyers of your books. Stop being a salesperson. Instead, take a step back and make some friends. Focus on adding value to your blog reader’s lives. Make coming to your site a pleasure, something they look forward to doing. Give away books, links, information, humour, secrets, knowledge – anything of value. Talk about things that readers find interesting - the writing process, the publishing process, anything but buying your books.

And here’s the real secret. If you can turn your readers into friends they will buy your book anyway.

Why?

Ask yourself this question – If YOUR friends had their book published would you buy it?

This post was first posted on Caroline Smailes’ website. Caroline is a co-founder of BubbleCow, as well as our star editor and critically acclaim writer in her own right.

Yesterday I received an email from Scott Pack, containing my edits for ‘Like Bees to Honey’.

I’d been expecting them, but still my stomach turned. I’ve never worked this closely with Scott and having a new editor is a lot scary. What if I didn’t agree with his changes? What if his comments made me want to sulk or stamp my feet or both? What if his email was really just to say that he’d made a mistake and didn’t want to publish me? Honestly, I felt sick in my stomach.

I clicked open the attached file, took a deep breath and read his notes that were both general and specific. I think I must have been holding my breath because I let out a huge sigh, prompting G to ask what was up.

“Edits,” I said.

“OK?” G said.

“Very much so,” I said.

Because they were. I printed out the notes and found myself nodding. The comments were right and if I could manage the tweaks and changes, then it was clear that the book would be better. I felt excited, as in ‘little girl’ excited. Then Scott phoned to talk through it all and probably to make sure I knew not to rewrite the whole thing, just to tweak the parts indicated. I’m glad that he did.

That’s the thing with me and with most writers. Writing evolves and alters with each novel written. I finished ‘Bees’ over a year ago and my writing style has now changed. Novel 4 has paragraphs and correct grammar (I know, I know!), ‘Bees’ doesn’t always. So the main point of consideration is that during the edit I have to remember to keep ‘Bees’ true to the time that it was written (if that makes sense) otherwise it’ll end up a mish-mash of styles.

So now I’ve two weeks to complete these edit and then ‘Bees’ is booked in to be copyedited. The production process has officially started and some exciting decisions are being made. For me, the best part of production will be seeing the cover for the first time. I have absolutely no idea what to expect, but do know that some exciting options are being considered. It’s agreed that ‘Like Bees to Honey’ is my most commercial novel to date (it’s still a bit wonky, so don’t worry). The ideal readership would be located somewhere between ‘Lovely Bones’ and ‘The Time Traveller’s Wife’. Big books, big expectations, little me. I just really and truly hope that I can do what Scott needs me to do.

So, here I go. Wish me luck, please.

[note to reader: I found the rather beautiful photo here]

Picture the situation…A new writer has spent a year writing a novel then, once deciding it is ‘ready’, has knocked up a quick query and synopsis and sent the book out to ten publishers. Three months later the writer is sitting on ten rejections and decides that self publishing is the way to go.

Before any writer splashes out their own money on publishing their own book, they should first consider just why traditional publishers have passed up on the opportunity to publish.

A novel can get rejected for many reasons:

It is not good enough: This is by far the most common reason for a book getting rejected. The writing or plot or character development or grammar or overall structure or pace or (could be a number of things) simply are not up to publishable standard. Publishers will work with writers to a certain extent in an attempt to improve a novel but if it is too much work then the book will simply be rejected.

Poor query or submission A writer can spend years writing a novel but then wants to knock out a query and synopsis in hours. There are tons of resources on the internet to help writers prepare a decent submission package. Yet, many writers still simply include a query letter that says ‘please read my extract’ and a synopsis that is just a straight description of the plot. Poor query and synopsis will equal rejection. Publishers are just too busy.

No market: If a publisher is going to take on your book, then they must believe they can sell enough books to cover printing costs, pre-printing costs (editing etc) and any advance they pay. It is not uncommon for a publisher to reject a book because they feel they can’t sell enough to break even.

It is not differently different: Publishers realise that selling books is tough and being ‘like Harry Potter’ is not enough for a book to do well. In a publisher’s eyes books need to be differently different from their other titles. By this I mean that need to be similar enough to fit a genre but different enough to stand alone in the market as something unusual and unique.

Wrong publisher: Finally it might be that your book has simply been pitched to the wrong publisher. Each publishing house has its own specialities and if your book falls outside their list it will be rejected, even if it ticks all the other boxes.

So, the question any wrier that has been rejected must ask themselves before considering self publication is why was I rejected? It may be that you have a masterpiece on your hands, but it may also be the case that you have a novel that needs more work or whose market is too small to make it worthwhile or is just not differently different enough to appeal. Is self publishing really the best option?

(Note to reader: I’ve a copy of Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julian Smith to giveaway. All details can be found at the end of this post.)

Occasionally you come across a book that changes the way you think. The Cluetrain Manifesto did this for me, as did Seth Godin’s Tribes. Well I think that Trust Agents is another one to add to that list. I say, I think, because strangely Trust Agents contains nothing I didn’t already know, though much of it was bubbling away at a subconscious level. What this book does is to bring these thoughts to clarity, condensing years of experience of interacting on the internet into a set of clear rules that will alter the way I work on a day-to-day basis.

In summary Chris Brogan and Julian Smith suggest that the way to gain influence in any community (especially those based online) is to become, what they term, a Trust Agent. In essence this is a person that helps to facilitate other people’s interactions, adding value along the way. The pair offer a guideline of six areas in which a person can focus to develop their talents as a Trust Agent.

1. Make Your Own Game – This is a technique where an individual finds their own niche, or way of doing business, that separates them from their competitors.

2. One of Us - A mixture of building empathy and conversation with the people you are trying to influence and connecting with the key players in any given market area.

3. Archimedes Effect – Understanding how to spot and manipulate leverage.

4. Agent Zero – Connecting with others and building small but powerful networks.

5. Human Artist – Learning how to interact effectively with people on a daily basis.

6. Build Armies - How to build and lead groups of people to achieve mutually beneficial goals.

Ultimately it is difficult to do this excellent book justice in a short review. What I can say is that the content of the book will change the way you think about the internet. If you are serious about doing business, or building a community, online then this is a must read book.

To have a chance to win a copy of Trust Agents all you have to do is leave a ‘pick me’ comment by 3pm (GMT) October 23, then I’ll pick a winner at random. This competition is open to all.

Alternatively you can buy a copy of Trust Agents here.