Networking Tips for Shy Writers: Three Steps to Success

If you're a writer, you likely want to make a living from your craft, but the idea of networking to market your skills or work may seem too intimidating for you.  As a shy writer, I've had to develop the skills to connect with others to promote my work.  Here are three quick tips to get you started.

Be No One Else But Yourself

Much of Western business culture is biased towards extroverts. It seems that you need to be outgoing, charming, and charismatic to really make it big.  For a shy writer, this belief is not only intimidating, it's repulsive.  It seems that we must become someone other than who we are to succeed.  That creates an understandable resistance to the whole idea of making a living from writing.

Writers thrive most whenever they express themselves authentically.  That's why it's important to walk into every networking event as yourself.  If you're shy, be shy. If you hate small talk, don't do small talk.  Simply be yourself in every interaction you have when meeting others to promote your work.

Of course, you may be asking "how can I be myself and still be sociable enough to succeed at networking?"  The best way to defeat your anxieties about networking for your writing is to actually go and do it, as yourself.   

Attend Two Networking Events a Month

In the same way that you didn't have to take a class in order to learn how to ride a bicycle, the best way to learn networking is to just do it.  Find two open networking events happening this month in your local area, and then go to them.  Ideally, space them two weeks apart so you can establish a rhythm to your routine.

A great resource for finding these events is Meetup.com.  This is a site designed to connect like-minded individuals, so if you're a writer, look for writer's guilds, book clubs, and marketing groups to start.

If this idea stirs up your anxiety, then this should calm you: when you go, you don't have to talk to anyone. What you're doing is learning through immersion. Show up without attachment to any particular outcome.  Your only goal is to get in the room.

At these events, you don't need to invent an icebreaker. Everyone is there for the same reason you are: to connect with others in business, so feel free to walk up to anyone and just say "hi". For that same reason, you may not have to do anything to have someone come up to you.  As with riding a bike, you'll get used to networking with practice.  Let your connections happen naturally, and be gentle with yourself. 

Learn From The Experts

As critical as learning by doing is, don't forget to read up on what the experts have to say about connecting with people. I recommend Dale Carnegie's How To Win Friends And Influence People, the cardinal guide on communication for business and pleasure.  Another great read is Nicholas Boothman's How to Make Someone Like You in 90 Seconds or Less, which uses an approach based on neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).


Jody Aberdeen is a freelance writer and the author of the sci-fi romance Convergence.  You can visit his page at www.jodyaberdeen.com or his blog, Another Odd Place For A Hill.  
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Collaborative Book Writing 101

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by Kelly DeBie

Waves frantically to our readers...how have you all been?

It’s been quiet around here for the past few months. I blame summer.

Now that it’s officially fall, it seems that almost every writer I know has begun to hunker down and get serious about writing again.

One of the biggest projects I am working on currently is a collaborative book. The title of it is Sunshine After The Storm: A Survival Guide for the Grieving Mother, and it should be available as an ebook next month, in hard copy shortly thereafter. 

It is the brainchild of Alexa Bigwarfe, who is currently in Washington, DC advocating on behalf of the March of Dimes.

As the title suggests, it is a book targeted to an audience of women who have endured infertility, miscarriages, stillbirths and the loss of their children. Assembling the writers for the book was made possible only through years of connections online of women who were willing to tell bits and pieces of their stories in their blogs.

With each story shared, others would come out of the woodwork, leaving comments and even being brave enough to write about their own losses. Over time, more and more of us became connected to each other, so when the idea of the book came to be, it didn't take long to circle the wagons.

This specific subject matter was quite amenable to a group approach because each of the contributors had a different experience to share, and as a cumulative whole we have addressed a large spectrum of maternal grief issues. An individual writer would, hopefully, only have experienced one or a few of those losses, but not all of them. Bringing our stories together lends more credibility to the book as a whole because we are all speaking from experience, not speculation.

As with any kind of collaborative project, each contributor brought their own background and experience to the piece, in addition to their own style and approach. We've been fortunate thus far that we are all on the same page as far as content and structure go. We've worked together to pull quotes from our own experiences to open each chapter as well.

I don't honestly know how much of the heavy lifting Alexa has done with the book, as she has been the one responsible for all the details. She found the editor and has been the contact person for everything, all the way down to choosing the images for the cover. I suspect she has put far more work into this than she leads on, and for all her efforts, we are tremendously grateful.

With this particular project, there hasn't been a financial motivation to write the book. There never was, and from the beginning, we agreed that the majority of the proceeds would be put back into printing additional books to distribute to hospitals and clinics to help grieving mothers. As an individual writer, I may eventually see a small return on it, but this particular book wasn't written for that reason. It was written to help other women. In the event that a collaborative book is written purely for profit, you would have to make sure that all contributors are agreed on the distribution of income from it ahead of time after all overhead was covered.

Obviously, how you go about gathering writers for a collaborative book will depend on the subject matter. Given the right subject matter, a collaborative approach can be preferred to solo writing, and I believe this is one of those subjects. It certainly cuts down on the amount of material that each person needs to generate, but provides a legitimate publishing opportunity.

In addition to all that, you also have a larger circle of influence built in for marketing simply by virtue of the fact that different writers contributed to the piece, and each will share it with their friends and fans. This book has already drawn a significant amount of interest as a result of our varying reaches.

This book has been a true labor of love, built from years of pain, put together for a reason, and is one that I am proud to say that I am a part of.

How Do You Promote Something Written With A Pseudonym?

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by Kelly DeBie

The rumors are true. I’ve been “writing” a few books for a while now, which is a round-a-bout way of saying that there are some really awesome books that mostly reside in my head, none of which have found their way to paper in a legitimate enough form for me to really refer to them as books.

I started one eons ago now, when I was in an entirely different place and time. Though that book still may end up manifesting in some form someday, it's not a reflection of where I am currently, and I've got other books to write these days.

One of them exists now in a form that I can comfortably call a book. There is a table of contents, a rough outline of chapters, a few completed chapters and a running list of things I need to make sure I include.

When I'm in the zone, I'm pounding out 3,000+ words a sitting.

It appears I'm finally in the place to write this book, and this one will get finished.

The trouble with this particular book is a simple one, but one that will inevitably make getting it published someday much more difficult. It is this: I can't attach my name to it. I can't have it associated with me. I need to use a pseudonym.

This presents an interesting problem.

I have a few contacts in the publishing world, and may have to call in a few favors...but this book is going to have to be completely amazing for a publisher to take a risk on it, particularly when I refuse to associate myself with it directly.

OR

I can self publish, accepting the truth that I will be almost completely limited in my ability to promote it, at least to any of my already established fans, readers and contacts. If I call in favors from the people I know, they will obviously know that I wrote the book. If enough people know, everyone will.

What to do, what to do?

Fortunately, the book is nowhere near done. Once it's done, I will almost certainly edit it for twice as long as it takes to write it. After that I will likely ask a few trusted friends to proof it for me, and depending on what they say entertain the idea of bringing in an editor.

Then I will have to make a decision. 

I suppose that in the meantime, I should start working on setting up a social network presence for this alter ego of mine. I'd tell you what I pick for my pseudonym, but then I'd have to kill you. 

Not really, but you get my point.

If anyone out there has advice for me, lay it on thick and rich. I have no clue how I'm going to do this.

This month, I'm seeking, as opposed to offering, help

Tweet  I'm afraid this month, I'm in the position of seeking assistance instead of offering it. I just published my first book in May and find myself trying to figure out how to promote sales. Part of the problem is I don't really want to be a person who sells books; I want to be a writer who puts my book in front of people and their eyeballs in exchange for money. "Well, there's your problem, dummy", you're saying. "That's what selling books is! Suck it up and do it." Yeah, I know. But while you're right, you're also wrong. As Icy mentioned in the last entry, there is no shortage of writers on Twitter who do nothing but hawk their books. Regrettably I follow a bunch of them although I don't know why I ever did in the first place. It's like DVRing a tv channel that shows nothing but infomercials. Believe me, I've been correcting that mistake ever since. The point is, I consider those people to "just" be book sellers and I refuse to become one of them. For one obvious reason, it's obnoxious and boring. For another, I doubt it's very effective.
Luckily, I'm in a position where I don't have to move X number of units by such-and-such date or I'm out on the street. That reduces the stress significantly (although, I'm sure it also reduces my overall motivation). Still, I'd love to sell lots of books and get more and more people to read the book, so I'm here looking for tips and tricks just like you. Here's a list what I've done so far, what I think the results have yielded and what I need to do better.

• I had a book release party - This was a lot of fun. I invited friends and close associates because it was largely a "thank you" to people who have supported me in various capacities over the years and with whom I wanted to celebrate the success of completing the task of getting something published. I sold enough books at the event to break even on the cost of the party (actually, a little bit ahead). I think everyone enjoyed themselves but I'm not sure how many, if anyone, have word-of-mouthed the book to friends of theirs who weren't there.
• I've made it available via multiple sources - Amazon, CreateSpace, an e-store at my web site. Of course, the task is driving traffic to those sources. My blog readers are certainly aware it exists.
• I've solicited Amazon.com reviews from readers - Good news: every one has rated the book FIVE STARS! Bad news: There are only two of them. I need to get aggressive about soliciting more reviews, I think.
• I've done a couple of local radio shows - I don't like to brag but I'm pretty good at holding my own during interviews so I think the ones I've done have gone pretty well. I need, and want, to do more. 

That's all, really. I know I need to do things like approach the local media and knock on the doors of my local independent booksellers, and I will do those things. I'm wide open to suggestions for stuff I haven't thought of or non-traditional tactics though.

- Clark Brooks

Learning the Language of Rejection

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By Gayle Francis Moffet

As of the writing of this post, I have a 17% acceptance rate. That means I'm doing pretty well for myself at this point in my career (three years in). It also means I have an 83% rejection rate, and while that's sort of soul-crushing on  a super-gray, cold day when I'm out of coffee and grumbling at yet another unfinished short story, most days I'm glad of it. That 83% rejection rate has allowed me to learn the language of rejection and to understand that different rejections mean different things. There's a lot of power in knowing this language, and I think it's something that writers shy away from because to learn the language you have to embrace the fact that rejections are much more common than acceptances.

So far (this is a work in progress), I've identified three distinct type of rejection:

1. Form rejections
2. Personal rejections
3. Unclear rejections

Form rejections are the one any writer who's submitting knows best. It's one or two lines with no personal touches. It looks something like this:

Thank you for your submission. We have chosen not to publish it. Good luck placing it elsewhere.

The translation of this rejection generally falls under two categories:

1. We read it and didn't like it.
2. We read it, and it didn't fit with our editorial guidelines.

How do you know the difference? If you read pieces accepted by that market before submitting, you probably got rejected for reason #1. If you didn't read anything from the market before submitting, you probably got rejected for reason #2. Why didn't the editor tell you which one it was? Because there's not time for that. Every extra minute an editor spends on an unwanted piece is a minute taken away from work that's actually wanted. You wrote something. They didn't want it. That's all they need to tell you to move on to the next piece.

What to remember when getting a form rejection: It's not a judgement on your writing as a whole, and it's not a judgement on you. It's a judgement of an editor's preferences. You didn't meet them. That's not a good or bad thing, just a plain fact. If you want to submit something else, make sure to review some recent issues or blog posts or anthologies or however the market publishes and really compare what you want to send to what they publish already. Is it on-message? Does is feel like a good fit? Are you meeting all of the required guidelines? If you can say yes to those questions, submit again. The worst thing that'll happen is you get the same rejection again, and now that you know what to expect, it doesn't sting quite as much.

Personal rejections are rejections that come with some sort of clearly personal note from an editor. A couple of weeks ago, I got a rejection from Oxford American. It looked like this:

Looks like a basic form rejection, right? On the front, yes. On the back, someone hand-wrote a couple of lines, telling me to keep up the great work. Personal rejections mean exactly one thing:

1. You were so, so close.

If you get a personal rejection of any length, it means you were under consideration. I call it "getting to the table." Your submission got out of the inbox or the envelope, and it got to the table where everyone sits and takes a vote on what's going to be accepted. Form rejections can happen in a vacuum, with one person reading and deciding to reject your work and not pass it on for a second opinion. Personal rejections always happen after discussion and consideration.

What to remember when getting a personal rejection: They wanted to publish you but couldn't quite do it. Anyone who takes the time to write you two lines or send you an e-mail about the rejection process (I got one of those recently) likes what you did and hopes to see more of it. Send more of it. Do not send the same thing back with revisions unless specifically asked.

Unclear rejections are rejections that fall somewhere between form and personal. They're rejections that you can't quite parse for meaning, and you're left wondering if you got flat-out rejected or if you were in serious consideration. They look something like this:

Thank you for submitting your work. We enjoyed reading it very much, but we have chosen not to publish it. We encourage you to submit other work for consideration and wish you the best of luck in placing this piece.

Half of this reads as a regular form rejection (it's not getting published and best of luck), but the other half reads like someone might have plugged in a couple of extra lines to encourage you (enjoyed reading it and submit other work). The problem is, if you've never been rejected by that market before, you don't know for certain what's form and what's not. Unclear rejections are, in my case, rather anger-inducing because they're unclear outside of the "no." Here, you can see an illustration of my thought process*:

The interrobang sums up the issue with unclear rejections rather nicely: It's not quite one thing, but it's not quite another, and that makes it hard to fully understand how you should interpret what's happened.

What to remember when getting an unclear rejection: It's still a rejection. It's still a clear no. Do not e-mail back asking for clarification. Do not give it any more weight than a form rejection. Do not assume it's a personal rejection. If you must find out for certain if it's meant to be a form or personal rejection, submit something else appropriate to the market (Read: don't send something you know won't fit just to see the response; it's unprofessional) and see what happens. If you get rejected with the same letter, it was a form rejection. If you get rejected with a variation of the above letter, the first one was probably at least somewhat personal. If you get accepted, don't worry about it because you just got accepted (always awesome).

The truth of it is, you're going to spend way more time getting rejections than you are getting acceptances. It's the nature of the business. Knowing how to parse the rejections will, in part, make them easier to deal with. Form rejection? They didn't want it; time to move to the next market on the list (I generally find three possible markets at a time for any one piece). Personal rejection? Is there anything else you've got publishing-ready that will fit what they want? Is there anything simmering in the back of your mind that you could write up to send to them? Unclear rejection? Eh. You can try again, certainly, but you can also just move to the next market and come back to the unclear one later if you really want. There's no shortage of markets, just shortages of your time. Hopefully, reading through this will help you use yours more effectively and keep you from worrying too much over markets that turn you down. It happens. I know. I see it 83% of the time.

(As I was doing one last proofread for spelling errors [a cup of coffee for you if you spot one I missed], this article about decoding query rejections came across my twitter feed, and it's worth checking out.)

*I drew that thing, but it wouldn't have gotten drawn if a dear friend hadn't said that's how she pictured me getting mad in the first place.

Printer's Key: for Writers, Readers, and Collectors

by Carrie Bailey

Opposite the title page in almost every book printed after the middle of the last century, on that one page with the publishing and copyright information...yeah, you know the one...where you look to find the information you need to cite your sources in a bibliography... lie the perplexing and seemingly pointless series of numbers called the "Printer's Key." Unless you're an avid book collector or a neurotic book scholar, should these numbers mean anything to you?

Maybe, but truth be told, even self-publishers and the most artistically distracted of writers benefit from knowing more about their the industry (keep reading if you buy that argument, if not here's a link to the Peevbody Award in case you happen to know a struggling artist who could use a boost).

Here's an example of a copyright page for J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix:

The copyright page is always on verso meaning on the left hand side and situated opposite from the title page. The numbers at the bottom are the printer's key also called a number line. Generally, the first printing starts with "10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1" with the lowest number indicating the number of the printing.


In this Harry Potter book, the numbers "03 04 05 06 07" are also included and indicate the year of publication with their lowest number. In this case, it is 2003. These numbers identify the print run of the particular edition rather than the edition itself, which is usually stated on the copyright page as well.


For book collectors, the first printing tends to hold the most value. Something to think about when browsing through yard sales this summer?

Advice from Publisher, Zion Imprints on Poetry Part. 1

by Judith Angeles

A Letter to the Spoken-Word Artist Who Wants to be a Page-Word Artist

Dear Writer,

If you are thinking of submitting your original work to ZION IMPRINTS or would like some general advice on writing poetry. Please read on.

I have taught many classes about the wonderful world of revision to (generally speaking) Spoken-Word Artists. You know, the world where you look over your poem the second, third, fifth, sometimes the one-hundredth time, and you may change a word, a line, a comma, or re-write the whole thing. To get them out the world of writing poems to spit then move on to the next open mic or slam, is to have them look at revision in another way. For if you want to be printed in digital or print form the great pain in the ass, called Revision, must be sorted through. Sometimes when I teach this subject those writers who are reluctant to revision tense up, but for other writers it is their favorite part to do because revision implies another chance on getting it nearer to perfect. Think about it, in the past how many second chances did you get easily as with backspacing, crossing out, or erasing. The real world doesn't work that way. But, the reason why we are writers is to imagine and play. Right? And create worlds inside of worlds. Right? (Um… okay, I think I need to stop using the word world. It is not a good tool in writing; it is too redundant *message*.) So, with published poetry screwing up is a second chance not always acceptable, unless it is purposeful in the poem (more on that later).

Performance Poetry can be a tricky because it relies mostly on memory. When listening to a poem, one does not see/hear the poem line by line or word for word. All our mind is doing is listening for understanding and complexity. We are not searching for grammar or form. We are not thinking about spelling or word choice. We just sense rhythm and feel it out, which is why performance can trick you into believing that the poem is actually good. So, when the page becomes your stage all those elements of writing play a role in whether it is deemed good or not. In reading, one gets to scan in-between the lines. While with hearing, one relies on their memory to follow along. BUT that only depends on if you are hearing the poem for the very first time. How many times has someone bought a book or a CD because the performance was amazing, but when he or she read or re-listened to his or her investment, they may have felt cheated because the quality of the work is lacking?... It happens and it has happened to me.

In the spirit of receiving submissions and people wanting feedback on their writing, here are some brief and general suggestions in revising your poetry. Always remember that the first draft is just a free-write. It is your right in the free-write to not think about anything but getting your “thing” out. It is later, with revision, that one pays attention to the details. So, here is some ways to relook at the details:

• Avoid overused phrases or clichés. They cheapen the craft of your writing. People want to read a good story that is written well. Not, hear what they already heard a million times before. So be careful of clichés. Be weary of those ghosts that sit around without anyone noticing because they are a casual and cool, but in poetry they can haunt your writing and make everyone run away from your work.

• Form. Form. Form. Form. Form is incredibly important. Make sure that every indent is purposeful. Every comma has a reason. And that every line break holds the following one for ransom. Every line should pop. Every line should matter.

• Rappers and the like, be careful with puns and punch lines. This runs rampant in Spoken-Word. Because there is a lot of that out there it can double as a cliché.

• Over used words like -heart, love, revolution, peace, tears, cry, and so on- can also weaken the poem because of the ambiguity in those words. Images can always replace those kinds of words. Remember the idea is to be authentic and to present words in new and fresh ways.

• Look at your metaphors literally. Meaning, follow your metaphor(s) and see if they would make sense even if they were true/literal. This is a tricky concept to grasp and may need another blog post to flesh out. But, follow the metaphor(s). And if there are too many, see if that serves your writing. If not, choose the strongest one(s) and expound on it, and make connections.

• Write from a place of sincerity. Even if you’re a sincere jackass or afraid. Dive into the speaker and frame it for whoever he/she/thing is speaking/writing too.

• Leave room for mystery don't tell us. Let the imagery work for itself.

• Now, the most important rule of ALL. Your job as the poet is to break the rules. To prove the rules wrong and still create amazing work. If not, follow them and master them.

I have been guilty of breaking rules, even my own. It is all a learning process…

Thanks for reading and if you are interested in knowing a little bit more about my press and how to submit your work for publication, visit www.zionimprints.com.

Be Well in Writing,

Judy