Category Archives: Self Publishing

indie-publishing, Screenwriting, Self Publishing

Question: How would you suggest getting past the dreaded “we do not accept unsolicited material” notice?

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

It’s really simple: you send a query letter.

Companies DO NOT want to see your screenplay; that is the “unsolicited material” they don’t accept. They’ll accept query letters all day long.

Do your due diligence: find out who you contact, and send your query letter specifically to that person (or department). That’s the professional way to get your foot in the door and, ultimately, to get the company to ask to see your screenplay.

indie-publishing, Self Publishing, Writing

How can I send manuscripts or drafts of my book to publishers without having the fear of my ideas/writing getting stolen?

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

First and foremost, you DO NOT send an unsolicited manuscript to anyone. All they’ll do is just throw it in the trash; no reputable company accepts unsolicited material.

Second, you DO NOT contact publishing companies. No reputable publishing firm accepts non-vetted material.

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Dead Tree Books, eBook, indie-publishing, Questions and Answers, Self Publishing, Writing

Why do writers still need publishing companies, when you can self publish?

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

Writers don’t need publishing companies. They haven’t needed publishing companies for more than a decade.

Writers also shouldn’t self-publish. With the maturation of the indie publishing community, there are professionals (the exact same professionals who work for publishing companies) who can help any anyone with a manuscript go from writer to author.

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Questions and Answers, Writing

Question: Do you think that novelists can write about what they don’t know?

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

Answer: Nope. If you write what you don’t know it rings false, and that transfers directly to the page, and the reader will always pick up on it.

To correct some misconceptions:

  • How many submarines did Jules Verne ride in? None. But he was intimately familiar with the French submarine experimenters of the time – including the submarine “Le Plongeur” designed and built by Simon Bourgeois and Charles Brun, which (gee, coincidentally enough…) just happened to be around for seven years before 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was published, and which Verne actually saw when he was writing the story.
  • Fiction isn’t about “what you don’t know” at all. It’s about storytelling. Good storytellers write what they know. They always have, they always will.
  • Those who claim you should write what you don’t know – using the “crusading knights” and “dragons” and “space travel” and all the Hogwarts stuff doesn’t exist argument – clearly don’t understand storytelling. A story isn’t about the inner workings of hyperdrive, the quantum physics of a witch’s spell, the anatomy of a dragon or any of that ancillary ‘color.’ A good story is about heroes and villains and love and hate and human emotion. THAT is what good storytellers always write about; they write what they know.

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eBook

Scribd cuts off romance and erotica

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

Scribd, the subscription-based content platform has apparently alerted its publishing partners that it will be dropping a number of romance and erotica titles from its ebook catalog.  Smashwords CEO Mark Coker announced the news on the Smashwords website yesterday, along with the estimate that Scribd will drop 80-90% of the Smashwords romance and erotica titles.  Mark is a strong proponent of indie publishing, and has been critical about the viability of a subscription model for ebooks (Amazon has updated its author compensation model for their Kindle Unlimited subscription platform starting July 1, 2015; authors now get paid “per page” read).

From Mark Coker’s post:

Scribd, the fast-growing ebook subscription service, today announced dramatic cuts to their catalog of romance and erotica titles.

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