Book Selection

As I look through free Kindle books it has me thinking about how I select a fiction book. Non-fiction is completely different. This is a much a message to me as anything else. I think my fiction selection generally follows this pattern:

• Author - If it's by someone I like, nothing else matters. Preston and Child could write a vegetarian cookbook and cover it in a paper bag. I'm in.
• Cover - Yeah, we know, don't judge a book by it's cover but I'm a visual person. Cover's tell me a lot. Is this supposed to be a thriller? Is it chick lit? Horror? Romance? A good cover at lease gives me the category. Joel Friedlander knows more about books covers than I ever will. The more of his stuff I read the more I notice covers.
• Description - I need to know the storyline. If the storyline and the cover match, then I'm really interested. If you give me a chick lit cover on a book about finding Incan gold while being chased by alien frogs I'm put off by the disconnect. It makes me think that you're sloppy. I don't care about blurbs. Blurbs are crap. I've watched celebrity endorsers scribble out a blurb in 5 seconds flat without knowing jack about the book.
• Ratings/Reviews  -  Yep, I read reviews. I tend to read them on Amazon and Goodreads. I to put more stock in the Goodreads reviews but I'll check Amazon because of the volume. Anything really generic is ignored. I tend to read the good and the bad to get an idea of what to expect.
• Price - If the cover is good and the description works I'll take a chance if the price is right. An indie author that no one has ever heard of trying to price their work at $9.99 probably doesn't have a chance. Remember, the first criteria is author. If I like someone's stuff I'll buy it, even in different genres.
• Buzz - Rarely but occasionally I buy a book based on buzz. About half the time it works out. If someone is already getting that kind of buzz they don't need me.

Author, cover, description. That's the key, in that order. A good cover shows professionalism. A good description proves that an author can write. A review or two and a reasonable price gives me a reason to try. If I try a book and I like it, I'm willing to buy more.

10 Kooky Tips On How To Write A Book

Wordserve Water Cooler has 10 Kooky Tips On How To Write A Book. Among them:

2) If you have kids, get a lock for your bedroom door
My reasoning is two-fold: 1) my bedroom is where I write, and 2) my bedroom is where I cry when I am convinced that I cannot write, and it seems to upset the children when I cry uncontrollably.

Make sure to check out the rest.

Visual Cues in Writing or My Gunsmith is Writing a Zombie Novel

I saw Larry Correia's post "My gunsmith is writing a zombie novel".  That's all it took and I was off to UprisingCrusader.com to follow the progression of the story.

Joseph Chetwood is writing much of Uprising Crusader online. The story is serialized on the blog but it feels like you're reading a working draft. I'm assuming that there will be an edit round when he's done but the story itself is intriguing. The gunsmith angle brings a nice dose of realism.

More intriguing is that in every installment he has a single image that is representative of that section. I have no idea if this will make it into the final draft. As a reader, I almost hope it doesn't. The images distract from my imagination. BUT AS A WRITER, IT WORKS. I tend to a be visual person and I love the idea of using an image of what I'm trying to convey in a particular section to help move my writing forward. I'm tempted to try that with the fiction piece I'm working on.

Photo Credit: Some rights reserved by sbpoet

Reading, Writing, Truth

Mmmm - Nicholas Bate

New Writing Project(s)

I’ve got a new writing project to announce. After playing around with short form fiction for Dynamics GP I’ve decided to write some longer fiction. I had an idea for a novel that my daughter loved. She’s reads almost as much as I do and has become a good sounding board for ideas. Since this is my first foray into longer fiction it may end up as a novella (~40k words) or I may go all the way to novel length (~80k words).

We’ll see where the story takes me. I’m about 10k words in and it’s a lot more work than short stories but I’m still having fun. I haven’t decided on the indie versus traditional publisher route yet. We’ll see what the finished product looks like and how a big a hurry I’m in to get it out. First novels are usually pretty rough. I’ll have more as it progresses.
On another note, I’m working with Packt to try to pin down a new Dynamics GP book. We generally agree on the ideas but we’re struggling with timing versus release dates. If I hurry, I can get a GP 2013 based book out by Convergence 2013 in March but if I want to include Excel 2012 examples instead of Excel 2010, Excel’s release date will preclude having the book at Convergence.

So the debate is big sales splash on release but possibly shorter shelf life versus a launch at a smaller event (like the GPUG Summit) but a longer potential shelf life. We’re still debating.

The Shiver

The Shiver:
It goes by many names. The Tingle. The Aha. The Wow.
I call it The Shiver.
It’s that moment when you know you’ve written something good; something worthy of sharing. The words themselves aren’t anything special. They’re common words, words you’ve used before.
But this time it’s different. The words…they…you have no words to describe it. They. Just. Work.

Read the rest of the The Shiver