#ASMSG #MFRWOrg #ThankfulAuthor 2016: @KimHeadlee is thankful to be...

… alive.

It may sound a bit maudlin for this time of year, but it's the unvarnished truth.

Of course, I'm thankful for family and friends and readers of my books, and for my health, but I wouldn't be here to gush about any of those things if I had not escaped a near-fatal car accident—an end-over-end flip, landing on the roof—in 2003. The first thing I said when paramedics pulled me from the wreckage: "Cool! This means I have more books to publish!" The second thing I said was, "Oh, my neck!"

Two surgeries and a second death-brush later, I found myself with permanent pins in my neck… and a publishing contract in my hand from HQN Books, an imprint of Harlequin, for my female-gladiator novel Liberty.

Today, ten years almost to the day from the release of Liberty, I am proud to present my latest title:
 

The Business of Writing:
Practical Insights for Independent, Hybrid, and Traditionally Published Authors
by Kim Iverson Headlee

Nonfiction: Business/Advertising,
Language Arts/Publishing

Release date:
14 November 2016

Book description:

Have you written a book but don’t know how to go about getting it published?

Have you published a book but need advice distributing it to more sales channels?

Are you hunting for more ways to improve your bottom line?

The Business of Writing: Practical Insights for Independent, Hybrid, and Traditionally Published Authors is the go-to guide for everyone wishing to start—or jump-start—their writing careers.

Whether you write fiction or nonfiction, discover the answers to such questions as:

• Do I really need to incorporate, what “flavor” of company should I set up, and how do I take the plunge?
• How do I manage my writing expenses and taxes?
• What is an ISBN, where do I get one, and how many will I need?
• What is an imprint and how do I establish one for my books?
• What decisions must I face in the prepublication phase?
• Do I need to register my book’s copyright and how do I accomplish it? What about using other copyrighted materials?
• How on earth do I condense my 100K-word book to a 300-word description, let alone a 20-word tagline?
• How do I select the best keywords for my book?
• What makes for a great cover and how can I get one?
• What do I need to know about book formatting—print as well as digital?
• How can I turn my book into an audiobook?
• How do I develop and refine my author brand?
• How can I land invitations to speak at conferences and conventions?
• I use several pseudonymns. How do I manage them all?
• What’s an ARC? A media kit? A book trailer? A blog tour?
• Do I really need to start a blog? Send out a newsletter? Dive into social media? Give away my books?
• How do I price my book? Should I pick one price or vary it? Where are the best places to advertise my sale events?
• How much is all of this going to cost me??

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the publication and promotion process, let award-winning, critically acclaimed author Kim Iverson Headlee give you the practical wisdom you need to stay on task and perhaps even come out ahead.

Buy links:

~ Kindle ~ iBooks ~ Kobo ~ 24 Symbols ~ Smashwords ~

Best of luck with all your writing—and publishing—endeavors.

Author bio:
KIM HEADLEE LIVES on a farm in the mountains of southwestern Virginia with her family, cats, fish, goats, Great Pyrenees goat guards, and assorted wildlife. People and creatures come and go, but the cave and the 250-year-old house ruins—the latter having been occupied as recently as the midtwentieth century—seem to be sticking around for a while yet. She has been a published novelist since 1999 (Dawnflight, Simon & Schuster) and a student of Arthurian lore and literature for nigh on half a century.

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The Business of Writing by @KimHeadlee: Who Let THAT Dog Out? #ASMSG #MFRWOrg

A comment I heard often in 1997 after landing my first New York publishing contract was “Congratulations; you’re running with the big dogs now!” It was a good thing that occurred before Baha Men released their hit single or I might have driven my first fans crazy serenading them with the famous refrain… and I would have lost major points for professionalism. 

Although the concept of the “lonely writer’s garret” still carries a certain romantic flair, once a writer has transitioned into preparing to make money off his or her words, he or she becomes a professional writer.

But what does that mean, exactly?

Writers being creative beings, this can mean a number of different things in terms of personal appearance, behavior, and habits. For the writer who wishes to be perceived as a professional, these aspects center upon various demonstrations of common courtesy… the exercise of which seems to be eroding in this day and age of Internet anonymity.

Opportunities for an author’s professionalism to shine include correspondence, deadlines, and personal appearances.


Correspondence
As a professional writer, you should always remain mindful of how you are perceived by your audience, not only in the content of your books or articles but in everyday correspondence tasks. This applies to email, text, chatting, and “earthmail” interactions with:

• Literary agents, editors, cover and interior-layout designers, promotional companies, accountants, and other service personnel. This includes all individuals and companies, whether prospective or contracted.
• Booksellers and other event organizers, both before the event and in giving thanks afterward. Expressing appreciation can be the fastest way to earn a return invitation.
• Book bloggers and other reviewers, when asking for reviews as well as in optionally expressing thanks for a helpful review.
  
  Never engage a reviewer if you are in any way dissatisfied with the review. I unpack that advice in this blog post, but it cannot be emphasized enough.
• Your fans—and this goes double for anything written online, even in so-called private messages. Any site can be hacked or monitored, so the best policy is to presume that nothing is private and structure your interactions accordingly.
• Anyone with whom you need to send follow-up correspondence for any reason.

Deadlines
Ah, the dreaded d-word. For journalists, deadlines are most often perceived as just a means of structuring one’s workday. For everyone else, especially those of us who write book-length fiction or nonfiction, adhering to content delivery deadlines that are established by another party such as a publisher can be problematical at best. And yet delivering a completed manuscript on time will set you apart from the madding crowd of authors who play fast and loose with their time and with their editor’s or publisher’s patience.


Personal Appearances
There exist countless opportunities to present yourself as a professional writer in public.

• Online. I have already covered fan interactions; here I refer to things such as the random tweets, retweets, pictures, videos, and status updates that you choose to share to your sundry social media platforms. As you decide upon your online persona, make sure that it jives with what you write, for that persona will become a part of your author brand. And then tweet/retweet/share accordingly. For example, if you write Christian fiction, I would advise against saying anything in a tweet that you wouldn’t say in church.
• Book vending and signings at bookstores and conferences. Your in-person persona should also jive (or at least not conflict) with what you write. On the other hand, if you write about serial killers, you might wish to think twice about acting like one in public. You can get a lot of mileage from being courteous, respectful, and appreciative of customers, noncustomers, and event hosts, regardless of what type of books you write. Keep in mind that you are competing for readers, some of whom may be offended and turned off from your books if you act rude, superior, or condescending in person.
  
  When in doubt, recall the mantra spouted by the Penguins of Madagascar: “Just smile and wave, boys, smile and wave.”
• Writers’ conferences. If you’re a member of the Romance Writers of America, I don’t need to tell you how to present yourself as a professional in this type of venue. You know already—or you should. Although I haven’t attended an RWA national conference in several years, I can pretty much imagine what the most recent one looked like: out of two thousand attendees, 1,942 were power-suited women (whether publishers, editors, literary agents, or authors), fifty-five were similarly attired men, and the remaining three were newbie women authors who didn’t receive the dress code memo, showed up in blue jeans and an “I [heart] My Book Boyfriend” T-shirt, and missed the entire first day of panels shopping for an emergency power suit and accessories. Okay, I jest… but barely.
  
  The dress code memos will of course vary by genre. At a typical World Fantasy Convention you’ll see no shortage of suits, but very few of those will be draped over authors, who sport pretty much whatever tickles their fancy, short of character costumes. Although I haven’t attended a WFC since the debut of the first edition of Dawnflight in 1999, I have it on excellent authority that a few steampunk outfits show up here and there, so if that’s your chosen genre, then by all means go for it.
• The grocery store. The what? Yes, there is always the possibility that you could be recognized in a chance public encounter, so your appearance and behavior choices matter there too.

As I always advised my kids as they were growing up, no one will ever fault you for being polite, gracious, appreciative, respectful, and kind. The people you impress with your professionalism may remember those choices and become extra supportive of you and your work.
 

Preorder The Business of Writing today!

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The Business of Writing by @KimHeadlee: Professional Editing #ASMSG #MFRWOrg

Madeline McDowell Breckinridge ca 1920,
US public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

You can slap together a collection of words, dash off a DIY cover, upload it all to Amazon, and call yourself a writer. You might even make some money doing so, and good for you if that happens to be the case. 

Being a professional writer, however, entails ever so much more than the technical definition of earning money for one's efforts implies. 

One of the biggest complaints I hear—and see—with books written by independent authors is the sheer volume of grammar, punctuation, and spelling mistakes. In fact I would go as far as to say that poor editing is a leading contributor toward the subpar reputation of independently published books as a whole.

Mistakes will catapult a reader out of a story faster than you can&helip; think. And if you believe your readers won't notice or care about poor editing, then I respectfully suggest that you are underestimating —and alienating—a large sector of your audience.

That's not a risk that I'm willing to take with my own fiction, and I hope you agree.

To be fair, books churned out by the Big Six (or Five, or whatever the ever-collapsing count du jour) publishers often contain glaring errors too. The first edition of my novel Liberty, published by HQN Books in 2006, had sections of missing and repeated pages in three different combinations (!!), which proved to be a nightmare for me when trying assemble good copies for personal appearances. That wasn't an editing issue, of course, but it's a graphic illustration of my point that mistakes do happen at even the highest levels of the publishing business.

The bottom line is that authors who are contracted by large publishing houses already enjoy a level of respectability that's built in to the system. The rest of us must do our level best to achieve respectability on our own, and the first step toward that goal is to hire a good quality professional editor, and perhaps even two: one for content editing and one for copy editing.

My primary editor is Deb Taber, and I simply cannot say enough good things about her work. She is the consummate professional, she knows the English language inside and out (and, with regard to my projects, sideways :D), and she offers encouragement along with suggestions for improvement. I get nothing for mentioning her here other than the satisfaction of knowing that you will receive the highest quality feedback if you choose to hire her to edit your work.

Someone else whom I commend to your attention is Robin Allen of Griffin Editorial Services. I have known her for going on 15 years now, and all the copy editing work she has ever done for me has been absolutely top notch. Again, I get nothing for the mention other than knowing that you will be as delighted with her editing work as I have been.

You say you cannot afford to hire a good editor?

I say you cannot afford NOT to.

Budget for it, or set up a crowdfunding campaign if you must, but please do not be tempted by those who claim that you can successfully edit your own work. The fact is that the human brain is wired to see what it expects to see, thereby making it impossible to remain objective where the editorial process is concerned.

I implore you to help halt the downward spiral in perception of the quality of independent authors' works by hiring professional help to make your book be the absolute best product that it can be.

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November noodling from The Dawnflier of @KimHeadlee #MFRWOrg #ASMSG

Although I have some exciting book news to report, I'm saddened today by the loss of my stepmother, who was instrumental in helping my dad heal from my mom's passing fifteen years ago. Phyllis was a wonderful woman, and I'm grateful for the impact she had on my dad's life.

On the left is a vintage photo of my late Uncle Fred that I'm running today in honor of Veterans Day. After an extremely full and fulfilling life, he passed away in September 2015.

Book news:

• The Business of Writing: Practical Insights for Independent, Hybrid, and Traditionally Published Authors is available for preorder on Kindle, Kobo, the iBooks Store, 24 Symbols, and Smashwords. Other formats are in the process of being published, and I will announce those links after they go live. The book is scheduled for release on November 14.
• King Arthur's Sister in Washington's Court: Its blog tour is scheduled to begin on November 14. It has received another award, but I'm sworn to secrecy until December. Meantime, mark your calendars to enjoy the one-day 99-cent sale in honor of Mark Twain's birthday on November 30.
• Next on my docket: tackling the edits and e-book formatting for Raging Sea: Enemies and Allies. Meantime, download your copy of Raging Sea: Reckonings, which is permafree for Kindle, Nook, iTunes, and Kobo customers!

My next personal appearance is as an author-guest at Chessiecon in Baltimore the weekend after Thanksgiving. I will presenting part one of my Business of Writing workshop on Black Friday (3:00), and part two is scheduled for 11:15 a.m. on Small Business Saturday. I will be involved in other panels and the group autograph session too. Please cross your fingers that I will have the print edition of The Business of Writing available by then!

I am thankful for your interest in and support of my work.

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Twitter has unjustly blacklisted this blog as a "spam or malicious" website. As you can see by its content, it is neither spam nor malicious. If you enjoy this site, please consider performing the following steps:

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Thank you so very much and have a blessed day.

***

All this month, you are invited to…

— Follow Kim on Twitter
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— Subscribe to Kim's YouTube channel
— Leave a comment on any page of The Maze, especially if you have done the Twitter, Pinterest, and/or YouTube follow

… and each action this month is good for one chance to win a copy of any of Kim's e-books.
Please enter often, and good luck!