The Life of an Indie Author - Tales from the Writing Trenches

Back in 2013, when I completed my first novel: PERFECT PAWN, I remember sitting there smiling or a moment and then the realization hit me: Now What? It seems funny to me now, as I look back on those dark times, but for me that was the moment when the creative rubber truly hit the literary road.

As I sit here formatting the print version for my soon to be released COLD CASE anthology, I realize a lot of you might be in the same ballpark I was in 2013. Despair not, you've got this. 

When your book is complete (it really isn't) you're left with two choices: Pursue a traditional publishing course or opt for the indie road. If you choose indie, you have a helluva road in front of you, because you will have to embrace the roles normally filled by the staff at publishing houses. So what does this mean? Well, here is what you can expect to do: 

1. Write Book

2. Edit Book (Then edit it again, and edit it again after you get reader feedback)

3. Format Interior Book (At least 2 versions: Print & eBook)

4. Design Cover Graphic (Both full-size and thumbnail)

5. Secure ISBN numbers

6. Submit to Publishing Platforms

7. Design Social Media Engagement

8. Advertising

Still want to be an author? Good. 

These might seem like monumental hurdles to overcome, but I assure you they are not. Having just released my fifteenth book I can tell you that you can learn these skills. Are they easy? No. You might master one area and feel like you are slogging through quicksand for the others. But each book will become easier if you commit yourself to listening and learning. I think every indie author owes it to their craft to help others. I’m a firm believer in the old adage: A rising tide raises all boats.

Of the eight things I listed above (you might have more), the most important are 1-4 and 8. To me the first four are crucial, because if you do not have a solid book, nothing else matters. Obviously your writing is paramount, but without an attractive cover most books will get passed over. Too many authors take a pass on this, opting to use templates and are left wondering why their books get no traction. You only get one chance to pull a reader in and the cover does it. If your book uses a stock template cover, readers may be less inclined to take a risk.

Once you’ve overcome that hurdle, and you have piqued the curiosity of the potential reader, you have another one to consider. When a reader looks inside the book, they expect yours to look EXACTLY like every other book they read, meaning it should be formatted like existing books. Open a book from a well-published author and copy that interior. You might think that edgy font looks cool, but have you ever considered that some readers have reading issues. Clear fonts should be the standard. It’s a book and should not be as difficult to read as ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.  

The other important thing is advertising, and I cannot stress this enough. It sounds counterintuitive, but if you want to make money, you have to spend money. I know that is hard for someone on a limited budget, but it is the truth. Don’t believe me? Here is a graph for my debut novel. I think you can figure out exactly when I started aggressively advertising. This is also the part where I humbly admit my wife was right when she advised me to advertise sooner.

Now, should you do this right away? I don’t know. Personally, I would save this one until you have 2 or even 3 books under your belt, because advertising will correlate to sales over your entire span of works. Readers are much more eager to try a new author if they have several books they can read after the first one hooks them. 

I hope this helps you to understand where to go next. These are the areas that I have identified, but you might have others. The important thing is to keep writing and embrace your craft.

I hope you enjoyed this post.

Writing Tips: Getting your law enforcement characters right!

The tires on the unmarked, midnight black Ford Mustang locked up, leaving twin ebony streaks along Fifth Avenue and filling the air with the pungent odor of burned rubber, in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Colton Bane leaped from the car, his blued steel .44 caliber Smith & Wesson Model 29 in one hand and his NYPD detective badge in the other. He approached the group of uniformed cops standing outside the entrance. “Who’s in charge?” he asked gruffly. “I am, sir,” a sergeant responded. “I’m taking operational command,” Bane replied. “Give me a sit-rep.” “A terrorist is holding the Cardinal and several parishioners hostage in the sanctuary. ESU is responding, but they are a half hour out.” “No time to wait,” Bane scowled, “I’m going in. Give me your MP-5.” The sergeant handed Bane his weapon. “Secure the perimeter,” Bane said. “I’ll handle this.” “Yes, sir,” the sergeant replied, redirecting his cops. Bane racked the weapon’s slide, chambering a round, and entered the darkened church.

Thrilling, yes?

Realistic,………..?? Absolutely not, yet it is something that plays out in a lot of books and movie / TV shows.

As an author I get it. You want to create these dramatic events, or elevate the ‘badassery’ of your protagonist, but there is an inherent risk that you will also turn off a large segment of your readers / viewers and that is the last thing you should want.

Why do I say this?

While it is often acceptable to take some literary license with your work, the above paragraph completely ‘jumps the shark.’ If someone were to write the above paragraph it would conclusively show that they have either done zero research or they don’t care. It’s one of the reasons my family will not watch a NYC themed movie with me, because I pick stuff apart for their sloppiness.

In the above case, let’s point out the problems:

1.       NYPD does not assign unmarked Mustangs.

2.       NYPD does not use .44 caliber revolvers and the nomenclature for a badge is a ‘shield.’

3.       Rank is respected and a sergeant, who is a superior officer, would not refer to a detective as ‘sir,’ nor would they relinquish control of a scene if they were the ranking officer present.

4.       A sergeant would also not be the ranking officer at such a high-profile incident like a terror attack. You would have everyone from the P.C. down at the scene, and certainly an ungodly amount of chiefs present.

5.       Normal uniformed patrol officers do not carry heavy weapons, which an MP-5 would qualify as, and they would not relinquish it to anyone else.

6.       ESU would be on the scene within several minutes and they, not the lone detective, would be the ones making entry.

7.       MP-5’s don’t have slides, they have a cocking lever, but cops don’t carry their weapons without a round in the chamber.

Unless you are writing within the supernatural genre, fiction should fall within the realm of plausibility. Working within the lines of a particular subject, such as police work, establishes credibility with the reader. Then, when you have to dip slightly outside those lines a bit, in order to further your plot, they are less likely to be as critical. Take my character of James Maguire.

Do I take some literary license with him? Yes, I do. In my twenty-years with the NYPD I can’t say I knew too many 1st Deputy Commissioners or Police Commissioners who were as hands-on as he is, but prior to that I established who he was. First, he had been a sworn officer (detective) and second he has a background in special operations (Navy SEAL). So he isn’t the typical civilian political appointee. When it comes time to do an interrogation readers accept that he has the ability from his time as both a SEAL and a detective, or when he bursts through a door it’s because he was a sworn officer, so his response is seen as normal.

That being said, when a raid on a terrorist location is conducted, it is not Maguire going through the door, but ESU. Why? Because, even though it is something Maguire has done, it would be grossly inappropriate. A closer examination shows that he is more involved in the planning / investigative side. When he steps outside this bubble, it is beyond his normal role, such as searching for someone outside the confines of New York City.

As writers, we owe it to the reader to get it right. This means taking the time to research the topic so we are proficient in it. It’s hard to believe that, in the 21st century, we have access to unlimited information and resources, yet we continue to get it wrong. I remember when I was doing research for my debut novel, PERFECT PAWN. I made sure I got the correct radio call-sign for the New York State Trooper. Why? Because I didn’t want someone familiar with the state police to read it and go, ‘Oh, that’s bullshit, that’s the troop code for Farmingdale, not Batavia.’  Remember, the devil is in the details.

One of the glaring mistakes that turn me off a series occurred on the popular television show: BLUE BLOODS. Tom Selleck plays the lead character, Police Commissioner Frank Reagan. This is an NYPD show, yet we see Frank not only wearing a uniform (remember, the police commissioner is a civilian mayoral appointee), but he wears 4 stars which are equal to the 1st Deputy Commissioner or Chief of Department. The show effectively demoted him.

Sorry, Frank, that’s not how this works,…………….

There are other issues, but I don’t want to ruin it for fans.

If there is one piece of advice that I can give to authors, it is to know your subject. Never assume that the same rules in LA apply for a cop in NY. If your book involves a detective in Miami, make sure you take the time to learn as much as you can about how the Miami-Dade police operate. Don’t lose the reader because you screw up the terminology or something as seemingly insignificant as the gun they carry and never, ever, have detectives issuing orders to ranking officers. Remember, detectives are (almost) always an appointed position. A big difference when compared to promoted. They might give ‘orders’ to police officers at crimes scenes for which they are responsible for, but try that with a sergeant and above and I guarantee they will get an ass-chewing.

Do I get it right 100% of the time? No. Are there times when I have to be flexible to push a story-line? Yes. But the key is to keep it real as much of the time as you can. A book that takes longer to write because you spend the time doing research will always be much better than the quick one with glaring errors.

Happy writing!

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Tools for Writers - ProWritingAid

I rarely endorse any products, but I recently came across one called ProWritingAid that has improved the way I write.

I wrote my first NYPD novel, Perfect Pawn, in 2012. Back then, my creative writing training comprised everything I had forgotten in school and the ungodly amounts of reports I had written during my police career. Not exactly a solid foundation to become an author, but I had a story to tell and I enjoyed writing them. Eight years later I have written thirteen books that span three different fictional series’ and several non-fiction works.

Over the years I have improved as a writer, but in the beginning I got blasted frequently by reviewers. While the found the books enjoyable, they took exception to the grammatical errors in my earlier works. What can I say besides mea culpa? As I said, I’m a story-teller, not an English major, but that doesn’t mean I am ignorant when it comes to acknowledging my weaknesses. So I did the best I could, taking the criticisms to heart and trying to learn on my own.

As an aspiring author, you learn several hard truths. The first is that this game is rig against you. Those lucky enough to get a publishing contract get access to a wide variety of tools that help them deliver a polished product, including editing services. Indies can also accomplish that, but it comes out of their pocket.

Here’s a rate schedule put out by the Editorial Freelancers Association in 2008:

Basic copyediting: $25 to $40 per hour Pace: 5 to 10 pages an hour
Heavy copyediting: $35 to $50 per hour Pace: 2 to 5 pages an hour
Substantive editing: $40 to $65 per hour Pace: 1 to 6 pages per hour (also called line editing)
Developmental editing: $50 to $80 per hour Pace: 2 to 5 pages per hour

For argument’s sake, let us assume that an Indie author produces a 350 page book. Even with the most basic editing, it will probably run them around $2k. This means that they will have to sell over 1k books before they realize any profit. If you add in the cost for a cover and formatting, it will be a lot more.

I found myself in the same literary boat. While I had the ability to design my own covers, and taught myself formatting, I floundered in the area of editing. I tried to get the help of others, more knowledgeable in grammar, including an English teacher, but it wasn’t enough.

About a year ago, I came across a link for a program called ProWritingAid. Admittedly, I was skeptical at first, but since it was a onetime fee, I bit the bullet and tried it. I figured the worse it could be was a tax deduction at the end of the year. I ran my first novel, Perfect Pawn, through it and sat back. Now mind you, I had been ‘editing’ this book for nearly seven years. Every time I would get a negative review I would go back and do another review to fix the mistakes.  At the point I ran it through the ProWritingAid summary program. I thought the book was pretty solid, clearly I was wrong.

What the results showed was that my overall score, after all those edits, was only a 77 out of 100. On top of that, my grammar was an 81 and my style was an abysmal 56. It felt like I got kicked in the guts.

I sat down and began reviewing each chapter, doing my best to make corrections, while not impacting the story. In the end, I improved my overall to a 93 and my grammar to a 99. I wish it were perfect, but you will never be 100 percent. After all, in one of George R. R. Martin’s professionally published / edited book there is a sentence that says they “raped the windows”……….. Ouch.

As indie authors, we must always look to improve, not just for ourselves, but for the readers experiences as well. I firmly believe that ProWritingAid can do that, so much so that I have gone back and have begun re-editing all of my books using this program. Not only is it going to help with your grammar and spelling, but it will also show you the words you use too much.

If you are an author, on a limited budget, I suggest that you give it a try. I’m sure you will find it to be a worthwhile investment.

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Best wishes, Stay Safe, & God Bless.

Andrew