Is It Done Yet? How to Know if Your Book is Ready to Market

Sculpture by Marcel Buhler, courtesy Cream Contemporary

Scan advice from agents and editors, and you’ll find a common thread: too many writers send off their work before it’s ready. Reader reviews of self-published books echo this concern. But how do you know when a piece is as good as it’s going to get?

This is trickier than it sounds. Part of the fun and frustration of writing is that a piece can always get better. Most published writers will tell you they’ve wished for changes even after their work came out in print. And while much writing goes off half-baked, it’s also possible to overcook a piece, to fiddle with it till it falls apart on the page, or to play with it more or less forever, thus staving off any chance of rejection.

Let’s assume you’ve engaged in that recursive process of discovery, prewriting and drafting and revising until you have what feels like a decent draft. You’ve let it set awhile, and in the most objective of ways you’ve approached it again. You’ve gotten critiques from a few trusted readers. Is it ready for market?

Even when your instinct tells you a project is ready, it’s good to go one more round, taking time to move through the project chapter by chapter, doing the same sort of writer-as-reader analysis you’d do on a good published book by another author. If your piece is an essay or short story, so much the better – there’s a lot to evaluate.

Hand write your notes, both in the text itself – marking lyric moments, best parts, surprise and delight – and also in a free-standing list. Handwriting keeps your right brain involved in what’s essentially a left-brained pursuit.

Here’s what I look for. When it comes to revision, I’m not a big fan of checklists, so beware. This sort of analysis too early in the project can stifle creative energy. Plus this is my own personal list,  keyed to what I find engaging in narrative (fiction and non) and slanted toward my own shortcomings. Your ready-for-market survey might look quite a lot different. 

• The basics: notes on time, point of view, narrative distance, voice, and length.
• Beginning and end: Copy down the first and last sentences in order to study the frame for the piece.
• Scene and summary: List these, in order. For the scenes, note ways in which characters change from beginning to end. Note how backstory, if any, works in.
• Characters: What do the characters know about themselves? What are they blind to? Which feelings are articulated? Which feelings need to be articulated? In what ways are they larger than life?
• Arc: Where’s the set-up, the climax, the denouement?
• Surprise and delight: What feels most fresh and alive in the piece? Consider word choice, metaphor, humor, voice, plot, character.
• Suspense: Foreshadowing, not overdone. Consider what’s not said, what’s withheld, and conversely, what’s revealed and where.
• Language and details: Where’s the sharp, smart language? The humor, if any? Make sure nothing’s overwritten or over-explained. Even after a few rounds of revision, I find myself lopping off ends of sentences, where I’ve said too much.
• Lyric moments: Identify the ones you’ve got, and look for places where they should be.
• What it’s about: If you thought you knew and now you’re seeing something more, less, or different, that can be good, as long as you make the most of what you discover. Pay attention to how the focus is revealed to the reader. Sometimes it’s too obvious, sometimes it’s too subtle. Every story is two stories: identify both.
• Where you copped out: Consider the ways in which your project could be more than it is – more emotional depth, more distinctive voice, richer language, more layers.

Beware, too, the opposing tendency: to hold back your work indefinitely, for fear it's not good enough. If you've done everything here, it's time to move the book on to a few trusted readers and/or an editor who'll help you see past your blind spots. Have courage! This is why you wrote the book, yes? So it will find its way to readers, once it's the best it can be.

Why We Care: Detroit’s Little Library Challenge

At the Little Free Library on Hiland Mountain

Never has there been so much noise about books, publishing, and authorship. Or so much handwringing. Amazon vs. Hatchette. The Big Five vs. the Little Guys. Sound bites vs. sustained immersion. Upheaval, bottom to top.

Let’s set that aside for a moment to focus on one simple precept: the power of the book to transform. Then extend that to an entire community that’s taking on the big, big challenge of transforming itself through the power of books.

That’s Detroit’s Little Library Challenge.

I write my books from a little house on an Alaska mountainside that’s 3000 miles from Detroit. My closest Little Free Library is another three miles up the mountain, along a winding road with views of Cook Inlet and, on clear days, a big beautiful mountain, which we Alaskans call Denali.

Distance and differences aside, I’m rooting for Detroit’s Little Free Library Challenge. Kim Kozlowski’s IndieGoGo project is all about the things we Alaskans believe in: community, resilience, and self-reliance, empowered by a deep and transcending appreciation—call it love—for the spaces around us.

The goal of Detroit’s Little Library Challenge is to make their city the Little Free Library capital of the world, with a phase one goal of setting up 313 Little Free Libraries. It’s good press for a place that’s had more than its share of bad. But the Challenge is also about the fundamental transformations that happen through books. Readers are smarter than non-readers, with above average emotional intelligence and empathy. The number of books in a home is the single best indicator of how well a child will do in school. Reading reduces stress and improves sleep. All good things for a community that’s looking to make a comeback.

We’re rooting for them, all the way up here. Along with other Alaska Authors, I’m donating books to seed an Alaska Little Free Library on the streets of Detroit, a reminder that when times are tough, it doesn’t matter where you live—we all come together.

But for this Little Free Library to become a reality, we need your help. For just sixteen dollars, you can do your part to make it happen. Let’s show Detroit some love!

If you’re an author, Detroit’s Little Libraries project is accepting donations of autographed books to seed regionally-themed libraries as part of their Ambassador option. But for those libraries to be built, they also need cash, so please join in this outpouring of love and affirmation by pledging your support today. (For Alaska: 16 authors bringing 4 pledgers each, and we'll meet our goal!) 

Are You Famous? Tips for Author Appearances

An onstage event: (left to right) Beth Hill, Seth Kantner, Peggy Shumaker, Joan Kane, and me.

I don’t mind telling you: I’m a tad exhausted, coming off two weeks of author appearances centered around my latest novel Cold Spell. For us author types, that much meet-and-greet can be grueling.

A friend of mine who has worked as a publicist asked if my publisher had arranged the events. Nope. I did that myself, though I had a lot of help from gallery owners and booksellers and college folks and a local writers organization. There was the launch, of course, and there were signings. But there was also a ticketed dinner event (sold out!), plus two “onstage” conversations and a workshop. At each appearance, I enjoyed the company of other authors, which made every event more enjoyable and better attended than it would have been had I gone solo.

A few tips for planning author appearances:

·         Venues: Although a few of my recent events were out of town, they were all within driving distance, which was a big relief to me. I enjoy travel, and if there’s a chance to connect it with books, so much the better. But as most authors will tell you, the traditional book tour is not nearly as glamorous as you might think, and it’s not especially good at getting books sold, either. For the most part, I chose local venues based on relationships I’d already built with the owners and managers.

·         Costs: The traditional book tour has two main objectives: to build relationships between authors and readers (including key readers, like booksellers) and to keep an author’s name out in front of audiences during the launch period. Is it cost-effective? Not really. From a publisher’s point of view, it’s more of a long-tail investment, getting their most popular authors out to meet and make fans. Regardless of how they’re published, some authors front the costs for their own book tours, but I haven’t run across any who’ve found it, dollar for dollar, to be a good investment. If there are places you’d love to visit or places you’re visiting anyway and you’re able to arrange author appearances there, great—you’ll enjoy the journey, and your expenses may even be tax-deductible, if your writing efforts qualify as a legitimate business with the IRS.

·         Occasion: Author appearances don’t have to be launch-related. It’s always a good idea to get out and meet readers at book signings, readings, and other events if you’re good at that sort of thing and you actively promote those events through your friends-and-fans network. My recent events were launch-related, but they also tied in with an annual event, Alaska Book Week, which I helped start a few years ago.

·         Audience: Don’t just expect people to show up. They’re busy, and even though you’re an author, that doesn’t make you famous. Line up your events well in advance (six months, at least, if they’re out of town), and think beyond the traditional reading/signing. Look for groups that might have an interest in your book or in your journey as an author. Or maybe there are workshops you could teach. If your appearances are value-added for the audience, with book sales taking second billing, you’re more likely to find interest.

·         Partners: Another way to expand your audience is to participate in well-conceived events featuring multiple authors. It’s more fun, too.

·         Preparation: If you’re reading, practice and—extremely important—time yourself. Any reading that lasts more than ten minutes, including the introduction, is probably too much. If you have more time to fill, engage your audience with slides, anecdotes, and the like. Your knees might be shaking, your onstage persona should exude charisma and confidence. Relax and have fun, and your audience will follow suit.

·         Numbers: You may not sell lots of books. But simply spreading the word about your appearances increases your visibility and draws attention to your book.

·         Blog tours: Because of the costs involved, many publishers now favor blog tours in which the publicist arranges guest blogs, interviews, and book reviews at well-read blogs and then turns the author loose to fulfill the assignments. No hotels, taxis, or airfare are required—only the author’s time. Lots of it. One friend of mine had to cover 100 blog stops for the launch of her book. Are blog tours effective? In theory, anything that gets you and your book in front of readers is helpful, and anything online has the advantage of creating a permanent presence for you and your book in the ever-expanding internet archives. If your publisher arranges one, you’re obviously going to participate, time suck or no; to refuse would be bad form. If you’re publishing on your own, consider whether the potential benefits are worth the time you invest. You can use the online service Alexa to make sure the blogs you’re touring are at least as well-trafficked as your own blog (assuming you have a blog). And as with most everything in publishing, be prepared for a lot of rejection (mostly in the form of silence) when you email bloggers asking for them to host a stop on your blog tour. I generally approach only those with whom I’ve developed some sort of personal connection, through social media or my fan base.

·         Party on: A new darling of the traditional publishing industry is the book launch party. But unless you’re a big, big name with a blockbuster title, they’re not offering to throw the party on your behalf; they want you to host a party and invite all your friends and sell a few books. All well and good—especially for the publisher, since they’ve invested nothing other than the suggestion—as long as you have the resources and enjoy that sort of thing. I like a party as well as the next person, but I agree with an author friend who points out, hey, we’re the writers—shouldn’t they be buying us drinks? If you want to celebrate your launch without breaking the bank, look for a no-host venue where your guests can buy their own food and drinks, preferably one that will allow you to sell and autograph books without charging you a percentage. Some authors even throw launch parties online, though to me that seems a stretch of what you can do with a keyboard. Maybe once someone invents virtual cocktails, the online launch party will catch on.

Fact and Fiction: Life into Story

Whenever I hear the latest update on the ebola outbreak, I think of Don Rearden. I can’t help it. In his novel The Raven’s Gift, he wrote about the devastation brought on by a deadly disease that spins out of control. Sure, his book is fiction, and at that time he wrote it, he was thinking bird flu, but the parallels between fact and fiction are a little uncanny.

On a less dramatic scale, I’ve seen a similar tension between fact and fiction play out involving a plot point in my first novel A Distant Enemy. Nearly two decades ago, I wrote a set-up that involved intentional fishing during an emergency closure in Southwest Alaska. In the last few years, a similar scenario had played out in a very real conflict over changes in salmon harvest more drastic than any I’d dared to imagine. Arrests and court battles followed. Decisions were reached, but the battle is far from over.

It would be nice to think that when it comes to such things, we authors are smart and savvy and maybe even a little prophetic (oh lottery numbers, please make yourselves known!). But really, the whole thing boils down to this: in fiction, our material is life as it’s lived and known and hidden and dreamed.

Not that our task is easy. Our own lives infuse our work with power even as “real life” gets in the way. We face hard choices about what constitutes truth. And sometimes what we think we know is only a smattering of what’s required of us to get it right on the page, which means research—lots of it, even for stories.

As author Peggy Shumaker so aptly puts it, "the whole truth is never available to us." And yet somehow in our work, we wrestle with the facts of who we are - the things we can face and the truths we aren't ready for yet. The unknown always feels bigger than the known.

Then there are the practical matters of whose stories we tell and what right we have to give voice to anyone, along with the fine points of perspective and the tension between getting the facts right (whatever form "right" may take) and staying true to the narrative as well as the extent to which we live the facts of our work as opposed to drawing on the experiences of others.

The intersection of fact and fiction makes for great conversation among writers. Tomorrow we’re headed to Soldotna to share that discussion with local readers, writers, and seekers, along with the just plain curious. One and all, you’re invited to “Fact and Fiction: Life into Story,” a reading and book talk hosted by the Kenai Peninsula College Showcase Series in conjunction with 49 Writers.

And wait, there’s more: Don and I couldn’t be happier to announce that Seth Kantner (Ordinary Wolves, Pup and Pokey, Shopping for Porcupine) will be joining us for this lively discussion. We hope you’ll be there too: 7 pm, at KPC’s McLain Commons. Admission is free, with book sales and signing to follow. The next day, Don and I will be teaching workshops on character and point of view. For the workshops, preregistration is required; head on over to the 49 Writers website to get all the scoop.