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Copywriting for the Rest of Us

I picked up Copywriting for the Rest of Us free last night and read it this morning. It’s short but useful. Although it’s not targeted specifically at authors, I recommend it to authors who need to write blurbs or queries. In other words, all authors with a book to publish.

Coincidentally, I just read this advice again, in a different source. This book is on copyrighting (writing ad copy), and it’s free on Amazon right now (Aug 10): Copywriting For The Rest Of Us (Marketing For The Rest Of Us)  –  http://amzn.to/19UBYgN

One of the things he says is the “best” way to learn copy is to write out other people’s ads word for word. It both teaches and inspires.

This sounds crazy, but it’s true. I first learned this technique from a book on writing sentences: To actually copy, word for word, a sentence or a scene of a writer whom you admire. The logic: we remember admiring a clever sentence, we remember the way a beautiful passage made us feel, but we forget the mechanics of how it happened. So when we go to copy it, we end up doing a clumsy job.

If you actually copy the sentence/paragraph out word for word, you have intimate knowledge of how it was done, and you are actually “doing” it.

The next step is to copy the form of the sentence but change the content to your own — but keep verbs, adjectives and nouns in place.

I tried this technique with a few of the most beautiful, and to me, emotional scenes from my favorite books, and was amazed at how much the author HADN’T said. One of my problems is overwriting, I think, trying to spell out exactly what the reader should feel… this was not the right approach at all. This method helped me see that in a direct way.

Now, the weird thing is that even though I knew about this method for writing scenes and sentences, I still NEVER thought to apply it to writing blurbs, those book descriptions you put on the back of a paperback or in the book description on Amazon. And yet, I always struggle and sweat to write blurbs. DUH, this is something to practice by cooing other authors. I knew that. At one point. But I forgot. This book on copyright writing reminded me that this same technique is important for all the “secondary” kinds of writing we authors must do — queries, blurbs, reviews, even blog posts.

If you want help writing your blurb  copy good blurbs of good books. If you’re self-publishing, this is really important. I’ve seen many good indie books with horrid blurbs that don’t sell the book at all. If you’re trying to snag an agent and a big publisher, this is also great for practicing query letters, since a query is basically formed around a blurb about your book.

I believe it’s still free, so hurry and grab your copy right now.

You might also want to visit Mike Shreeve’s website. He has lots more on Facebook ads, videos, increasing your rank on social media sites all that juicy promotions stuff that we writers hate but need to learn.  🙂

Five New Facts about the Book Industry

The Art of Elysium

One of the cool things about cinema as an art form is that thousands of artists of all types collaborate together to produce one work of art. If you happen to be in the Pasadena area today, you can come meet some of the artists for Elysium in person.

Elysium is a highly anticipated science fiction film staring Matt Damon. In the year 2154, the very wealthy live on Elysium, a standford torus high-tech utopian metropolis located in orbit around Earth that is free of crime, war, poverty, hunger, and diseases, while everyone else lives on an overpopulated, ruined Earth below. The citizens of Elysium live a life of luxury which includes access to private medical machines that offer instant cures, while the citizens of the Earth struggle to survive on a daily basis and are desperate to escape the planet. Those who maintain Elysium will stop at nothing to enforce anti-immigration laws and preserve their citizens’ lifestyle, even destroying ships that attempt to get there. Come see rare behind the scenes artwork by artists from the production design, storyboards, and visual development team.
Bring your questions for the Q&A session and meet the artists one-on-one as they sign copies of the new Art of Elysium book.

$5 Admission at the door. Seats are limited, standing room available.

Featured Artists:
Scott Kravitz (Lead Animator)
Mitchell Stuart (Concept Artist)

Event Schedule:
4:00PM – 5:00PM (panel presentation)
5:00PM – 5:30PM (Q&A)
5:30PM – 7:00PM (book signing)

Three Problems With Middle Novels

The Unfinished Song series is half-way through. Not coincidentally, I’ve been obsessing lately about how to write solid “middles.”

1. Filler

2. Repetition

3. Jumping the Shark

Render by Heidi C. Vlach

In a far distant land, where magic flows and legends bloom, three races face their troubles together.

A TROUBLED COMMUNITY

The insect-like aemets built new homes under mountain maples, and they wished for luck. But the years brought them much work and meagre reward. After poor harvests and a brush with forest fire, now wolves are striking down aemets who venture into the forest. Wolves have never menaced peoplekind in any of the teaching legends. Always a non-violent people, all the aemets know to do is
work harder and pray.

A GIRL CALLED LUCKY

Rue is a young aemet coming of age in this strained village. Named after the fortuitous rue plant, she has never cared much for the idea of luck. She believed from the start that it was folly to live in this place — and when fellow aemets turn up dead, Rue is through waiting for the winds to change. With her aemet skill of sensing air movement, her chemistry training and a guard dog at her side, Rue promises herself that she’ll find the root of Aloftway’s problems. But she’ll need help from otherkind allies, including the local recluse, Felixi. He is a dragon-like korvi, and a hunter of big game — who knows more about the wolf attacks than he’s willing to share.
Render is part of the Stories of Aligare, a fantasy series set in a magical, human-free world. It is a stand-alone novel, only loosely related to other Stories of Aligare.

Shadowhero by Jacob Dunn

Ninth-grader Jared Brooks is tortured by the shadows of his life. The shadows distract him during tests, they keep him up at night, they bring out the worst in him. And they give him so much power that he almost never loses in a fight.

Sadie knows what Jared is and what he can do. When she invites him to join a group of high school students who carry out questionable tasks for the secretive Shadowcouncil, Jared begins to hope he can use the darkness inside himself for something better.

After discovering he’s a Shadowhero, Jared thinks there’s nothing he can’t do. When his brother offers him a chance to go boxing, he can’t say no. But one bad choice leads to another as Jared’s shadow takes him down a dark path.

When Sadie gets hurt, Jared must choose between the darkness offered by his shadow, or the new life that Sadie has shown him.

Every Shade does something they regret…

Find out more about Jacob Dunn on his website and Facebook.

Excerpt:

All the students sat silent, reading or making quiet marks with their pencils. But their shadows were restless. Girls taking the test had shadows chewing gum, brushing hair and playing with makeup. Some shadows ogled at boys, and my cheeks burned as I noticed a shadow gazing at me, followed by the bleach-blonde fake-tanned girl actually looking up at me and smiling. She winked.

Some boy shadows seemed equally distracted by girls while other shadows seemed disinterested or aloof. And among the class were several shadows going insane. They angry about the quiz and upset that they hadn’t studied or that that they didn’t know an answer. All of them were talking.

All of them but one. I had done nearly a 180 in my seat before I saw Sadie. She didn’t look tired from the night before. No one would be able to guess that it was her body that had gone flying through the air and dented the lockers out in the hallway.

Calmly, and in sync with her shadow, Sadie reached down down with her pencil write. As I focused in on her, all the other shadow’s voices faded away and Sadie’s voice entered my mind as clear as a bell.

So…the answer to 10 is D. Sadie reached out to write her answer down on her paper when her gaze snapped up to me. You know it’s rude to eavesdrop, right?

All the other voices simultaneously flooded back could still envision Sadie’s green eyes–it was liked I’d been looking right at the sun and then turned away. How had she talked to me like the voices? She had told me the voices were the shadows. Now I was confused…but not about the answer to question 10.

—

Tara’s Comments:

I’ve only read the first of the Shadowhero books (I prefer the covers on the separate books) so far, and I will read the others. I enjoyed the unique magic in this series. The troubled young man, with anger issues and a talent for boxing, is a fresh YA hero. Jared discovers that he is a Shade, which means that he has a Shadowtalent. The ability to see and hear the true actions of people’s shadows gives him strength, extra-perceptive powers and the ability to overhear thoughts.

Dunn merges two fancies about shadows. One is the idea that your shadow can do things on its own, and that these things represent the desires of your unconscious mind. The other sense of shadow is as our dark side, our more violent or selfish inclinations. The shadows heckle you to do terrible things. Jared joins a group of other teen Shades whose job is to help catch those Shades who have listened to their shadows and turned to a life of crime. He himself, however, must wrestle with his own temptations.

The main problem I had with the book was the formatting. It was wonky, which made it harder to read than necessary.

7 Things I’ll Be Blogging About

This is going to be one of those blogging about blogging posts.

Over in the Archive of my blog, is a list which reminds me how often I’ve posted a month. The last year looks like this:

• ►  July(5)

• ►  June(20)

• ►  May(4)

• ►  April(2)

• ►  March(1)

• ►  February(6)

• ►  January(11)

Seriously, Tara? That’s pathetic. I can do better than that.

Plus, I noticed that I haven’t updated my cover art blog in two years. Now, the strange thing is, this is not because I haven’t done any cover art. I have, but clients usually found me another way, through referral. I’d like to share some of those covers, and maybe do some other fun stuff with cover art, like more editions of “Help! My cover looks like crap!”

I was going to re-start my 500 Words blog in September. The reason I opened a second blog was to (1) share Initiate online for free — this was before I was able to make it free on Amazon, and (2) showcase other authors, especially those with fantasy, sf, or young adult novels. I wanted to showcase a good book with an excerpt at least once a day. It was a distinct from a book blog proper, because I don’t have time to read all those books, so I couldn’t read all of them, never mind review all of them. But I loved connecting with other authors. I ran the blog for four months back in 2011, and I found a lot of good books that way.

As I revved up to restart 500 Words, however, I had to ask myself if spreading my energy over three blogs is a good thing. Probably not. So, I will moving 500 Words over here.

Between now and December, I promise this blog will have a post every day. If I can pull it off, there will be two or three. Here’s what you can expect:

(1) Me, mouthing off about something. Cause it’s my blog, so if I want to rant about something, or share something, dangnabbit, I will. Usually, this will be about writing or publishing. But if last year’s calendar is any indication, not every day.

(2) Writing posts. I’ll continue to have posts by Rayne Hall and possibly other guest bloggers about writing.

(3) Initiate. The entire book, 500 words at a time. I know a lot of you have read it already. This is for those who haven’t. From time to time, I’ll post excerpts of other books of mine too. If I have some juicy scenes from WIPs in the fall, I’ll post those too. (Though it’s always tricky to post the best stuff and avoid spoilers!)

(4) Cool books. Showcased with an excerpt. Keep in mind I haven’t read all of them. Some I HAVE read and are FRICKIN’ AWESOME. Some might suck. No, no, let’s not assume that. Let’s be positive. Anyway, that’s the purpose of the excerpt, you can judge for yourself. I expect you to use your brain. You’ve been warned.

(5) Book trailers. Because I love book trailers and used to post about them, so I’d like to do that again. And movie trailers, if I think it’s relevant. By relevant, I mean, of course, that I am crushing on the lead actor it is a fantasy or science fiction or book related movie.

(6) Book bloggers. I don’t do reviews (or haven’t yet) but I keep up with a lot of book bloggers who do maybe I’ll showcase some of those too.

(7) Artists. There are some amazing artists out there and I love to showcase their work when I can.

Book Trailer: STYXX by Sherrilyn Kenyon (Update)

Sherrilyn Kenyon is one of the few authors I can honestly say I found through her book trailers. She has a lot of them, and they are always fun.

I read here that it was no coincidence I found Kenyon through her trailer. There was a huge campaign associated with her first book trailer.

With a summer release for the paranormal romance, St. Martin’s had a huge investment in a 350,000-copy first printing. They hired professionals to create a 33-second book trailer, Dark-Hunter Acheron, then hired Zeitghost Media to manage the campaign. The publishing house sent an e‑mail with a link to the video on YouTube.com to 90,000 people, which was preceded by teasers several days before announcing that something big was coming. Zeitghost Media distributed the video across the Web, and dozens of blogs and Web sites picked it up and continue to feature it. It’s had more than 429,000 views. On the Dark Hunter website and offline, they also used these marketing tools:

Ebook giveaways Wallpaper, screen savers, cursors, banners Dark Hunter quiz Publicity through media channels such as Publisher’s Weekly Twitter feed, Facebook Fan page, MySpace page, Free short story to download

The video was important as a destination for potential readers, but email announcements were used to jumpstart the video. Once on the site, there were other ways to find information about the book. There were downloads, giveaways. In addition, St. Martin’s used traditional press and many social media. Was it the book trailer that made the difference in people choosing to buy the book? Or was it the combination of efforts?

This is mindboggling and, for an author, a little intimidating. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a list of 90,000 friends to whom I might email my latest trailer.

There’s an ongoing debate among authors and publishers about whether book trailers do any good at all promoting books. (This is a slice of the ongoing debate among authors and publishers about whether ANYTHING AT ALL does any good at all promoting books.) I think it’s one of those things that doesn’t help much if it’s done cheaply, which, alas, is all that most of us can afford, but as part of a huge, well-funded campaign can do wonders.

Helpful, I know.  😉

I’d be curious to know what experiences other authors have had with book trailers. Does a trailer have to be a big-budget production to help, or can a simple, home-made video also attract readers?

Sharknado in Two Minutes

My son is having a birthday party this month. He’s turning seven. Water slide, kiddie pool, water guns and inflatable sharks. The theme: Sharknado!

If you still haven’t seen this glorious masterpiece, here’s the movie in a nutshell:

Kindred by Nicola Claire

“You may not be aware, ma douce, but not all vampyre have a kindred, some will live out their existence without such beauty in their lives. I have waited five hundred years for you.” 

Vampires, shape shifters, ghouls and magic users abound in a world where the Norms, (those humans without paranormal abilities) are ignorant of the creatures of the night and the supernatural species that live alongside them.

Lucinda Monk is a bank teller by day and a vampire hunter by night, but she wasn’t always a part of this world. Thrown into a heady mix of powerful people and sensual beings, she’s had to find her way practically blindfolded in amongst the creatures of the night. But she’s a capable and realistic kind of girl. Her motto: never show fear. But, there’s something different about Lucinda, something those creatures she hunts, want. In order to stay one step ahead of the enemy she has to let the enemy in. In all his compelling, seductive and delicious ways. Sleeping with the enemy has never meant so much before. But, can she trust him?

From the urban streets of the city, to the dark alleys and sinful bars that promise a wickedness a girl from the farm has never before been exposed to, Lucinda gets drawn irreversibly into the dark side of life. And if the Master of the City had his way, she would always be his. For eternity.