The END... aaaaaand the Beginning

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Carrie in PA

Carrie in PA

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I just wrote THE END on the first draft of my current novel. It's contemporary Christian romance, and I'm quite pleased with the direction it took. Now it goes on the back burner to simmer a while before I start the massive edits/revisions. Hooray for the "comments" feature in Word... I have all sorts of helpful notes for myself, gems such as "this section is crap, fix it" and "were you drunk when you wrote this?" LOL

Before I dive into editing and revising, I'm going to start on my next project, which I'm rather nervous about. It's non-fiction and uses a loooooooot of personal anecdotes and experiences, so it's a lot riskier than fiction. But that's okay. I'm up for the challenge.

Tomorrow. I'll be up for the challenge tomorrow. I'm too old for this staying up 'til midnight crap. LOL!

What's everybody else working on??
 
Deb Kinnard

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Congrats to you both! I'm working on print edits and formatting for the "Faith Box" series. All three books are going to print and have to be reformatted.

Color me silly, but back in the Dark Ages when I set out on this quest, wasn't formatting the publisher's job?

:Shrug:
 
Calla Lily

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Deb, Desert Breeze is making you format your books? Why? They are supposed to be a legit publisher.

This might do with a mention in BR&BC.
 
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Fictional Cowboy

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Kudos on step one! What I like to call "Write Now. Right Later."

The cozy mystery I was plotting was coming along very nicely. That is, until a much better, and completely different, idea came along that I couldn't refuse. It's still a cozy but it's more original and has a completely different feel to it than my first attempt. The first one was definitely easier to plot and write. But the extra efforts on the new version are worth it.
 

citymouse

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Calla Lily said:
Deb, Desert Breeze is making you format your books? Why? They are supposed to be a legit publisher.

This might do with a mention in BR&BC.
Click to expand...

I've published 3 novels and one novella and not only did I have to send in the text formatted, I had to put in the headers and footers (pages, title, author's name).
This trend of making the author do all the formatting is the price paid for having a 'legit' publisher take on a book.

Marketing, publicity, etc is also the author's job. I'm not talking self-pub companies. I believe the E-pub businesses have realized that they can band together and require all this work. I don't know one that doesn't require it. They do provide editing, cover art and a website catalogue. The author does the rest.
To sum up, the author creates the story, writes the story, edits the story, writes the blurb, formats the text into book form, and gets 30-40% royalties which are subject to contract limitations.

There is an upside. No agent required. Manuscripts can be emailed in, thus shortening response times. Queries are often not needed. And you avoid the stigma that self-publishing smacks on your effort.

Also, not all books are accepted by E-publishers. This is important for those who consider self-publishing a book, because with the demise of brick and mortar bookstores that have traditionally blackballed self-pub works, a self-pub book can be represented as an equal product among E-tailers like Amazon. The downside of this is, editing services are not cheap, and of course the cost of self-pub companies vary.
 
Calla Lily

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citymouse, I'm gobsmacked.

I have 3 books published with Midnight Ink. I wrote the books They did everything else. Everything: editing, formatting,cover design, ARCs, the works. They are print and e. My royalties were standard. However, I also got a decent advance for the books.

I have a new contract with Henery Press. They are royalty-only, no advance. They are e first and also do short print runs. Like MI, they're doing everything else. Everything: editing, formatting,cover design, ARCs, the works.

Both MI and Henery accept unsolicited mss, however, my agent subbed my books to them. Electronically, not hard copy. As Word docs. All correspondence and editing has been electronic as well.

I'm rather appalled at the cojones of publishers who requires the author to do all their own work plus most of the publisher's work, yet takes a cut of royalties. For what? Their name on the "spine" to "prove" the book isn't SP?

If you're okay with PMing me the names of your publishers, I'd like to know. This seems to be worthy of a general discussion.
 
veinglory

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I have yet to have an epublisher ask me for anything other than standard manuscript formatting. It seems rather line-crossy. Bascially they are getting the author to do free work for them?
 

meangene01

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Congrats and it sounds cool. There are not enough Christian romance novels out there.
 
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