Category Archives: novels

Your Author Bingo Card

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For a while now I’ve imagined various writing and publishing accomplishments and events as various boxes on an author bingo card you could fill.

Unlike conventional bingo which looks at getting five numbers in row, the goal in author bingo is to see how many achievements you can check off. Successes, setbacks and failures, they all count. It’s as a fun way to deal with the ups and downs of publishing and being an author, as well as a device to acknowledge those hard won accomplishments and experiences.

Below are candidates for your author bingo card, in many cases grouped by progressions or types of publishing experiences. I’ve personally checked off many of these on my own author bingo card, but nowhere near all of them.

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Writing a short story. Getting your first rejection. Getting your first acceptance.

Seeing your story published. Having a second story published. Seeing one of your stories appear in an anthology. Having a collection of your stories published.

Writing a novel. Receiving feedback on your novel. Working with a developmental editor. Working with a copy editor.

Sending out a query. Landing an agent. Getting a publishing deal from a NYC publisher. Being published by a small press.

Setting up self-publishing.  Novel published. Publishing a book that bombs, either trad or indie.

Getting a positive review. Getting a negative review. Getting no reviews for a particular book. Getting a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly, or the equivalent in Booklist or Library Journal.

Having an audio book produced from one of your works.

Finding your books in your public library or in a bookstore.

First email from a reader. Being emailed by a reader pointing out you got a detail wrong. Two bingo boxes if the emailer alleges you got a detail wrong about firearms.

Having a book reach the top 100 in a category on Amazon. Having a book reach the top 20. Having a book reach the top 100 on Amazon. Becoming a New York Times Bestselling author. Becoming a #1 New York Times Bestselling author.

Completing your first series. Completing your second. Your third.

First convention appearance. Being a guest of honor at a convention. Serving as toastmaster at a convention.

Receiving an award nomination. Winning an award. Serving on an awards committee.

Being interviewed on a podcast. Being interviewed on the radio. Having a book be highlighted /reviewed in a YouTube video or a BookTok.

Changing editors. Being dropped by a publisher. Having your agent drop you. Landing a new agent.

Discovering your books have been pirated. Discovering your books have been used to train AI. Getting a scam email about marketing and publishing “opportunities.”

Switching sub-genres. Publishing in an entirely different genre. Returning to a genre you’d previously published in.

Presenting a writing or publishing workshop. Teaching a class on writing or publishing.

Selling foreign rights to one of your works. Having a story or book optioned by Hollywood. Having a story or book become a movie.

Relaunching a previously self-published book. Self-publishing a previously trad-published book. Having a self-published novel appear in a multi-author box set. Landing a traditional publishing deal for a book you originally self-published.

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Again, while these external outcomes are largely outside of your direct control, I believe it’s important to recognize what you’ve achieved, noting the milestones on your writing and publishing journey. It’s also a way to enjoy that journey.

How about you? Do you like the idea of an author bingo card? How do you acknowledge or celebrate your own publishing milestones and experiences?

Reader Friday-The Last Novel

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Noooooo!

 

Sorry if I skeered ya…the last novel hasn’t actually been written yet. (I think…)

Whew!

 

 

Here’s what today is about.

Please share with us the last novel (or novella) you read. Include the title, author, and publish date, and maybe your critique. Would you recommend it to readers?

 

Here’s mine:  Finished “Out of the Far North” by Amir Tsarfati and Steve Yohn—the 3rd of 4 in a series, published in 2023. Just started the 4th, “The Sick Man’s Rage”, and I’m hoping there’s going to be a 5th! Middle East, spies, heroes, cool weapons, and a teensy bit of romance. Right up my reader’s alley.

Okay, your turn!

 

The ebook future’s so bright that I gotta wear shades

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By P.J. Parrish

I am constantly losing my sunglasses. This is a big deal when you live in South Florida where people wear them even in winter. Double big deal for me because I need prescription lenses.
Plus I like looking cool, you know? And as any woman of a certain age can tell you, sunglasses are the way to go if you want to jazz up your look and can’t afford an eye job. (Stay with me here, you men out there, I am getting to what this has to do with writing, I promise).
But I lose my glasses. Have left them all over the world.  So when a girlfriend told me about this great online glasses maker Warby Parker I went to check them out. Nice shades! At prices I can afford! And I don’t have to go to LensCrafter at the mall!
Then, as I was reading about this new online company, I had an epiphany about -– wait for it! –- my ebooks.
Warby Parker is one of many new upstart online-only companies that are finding great success by bypassing the traditional retail model. Which is exactly what all of us writers are trying to do with our ebooks these days, right? 

Brief background: The four geeky guys behind Warby Parker (the name is from two characters in a Jack Kerouac journal) were trying to figure out why designer glasses cost beaucoup bucks and discovered it’s because everyone in the process was taking a cut — designers, manufacturers, brands, wholesalers and retailers. So they eliminated the middlemen, lowered the prices and built their reputation and customer base via the internet.

Sound familiar? In the traditional publishing model, think of all the folks who get a cut before you the author does — agents, editors, designers, copy editors, bean-counters, printers, binders, warehouses, distributors. And that’s before we even get to the bookstores. This is why royalty rates for hardcovers usually range from 10 to 12.5 percent, with 15 percent for big authors. Paperback is even less. Everyone along the book line has their hand out.

Back to Warby Parker for a sec. They seem to be pretty inventive. On their site, you can upload a photo and do a virtual try-on. And they’ll send you five frames to try on at home free. Isn’t such agility also one of the hallmarks of good ebook authors today? Every author I know who is succeeding at ebooks is thinking outside the old marketing boxes.  We are packaging our books in boxed sets. We’re offering short stories and novellas. We’re being flexible with pricing and even — gasp! — giving our products away. (It’s called sampling in business and it’s been a successful practice since the 19th century.) How many of you have tried to get your traditional publishers to do some of this? Maybe drop the price of your backlist ebooks to help catapult your new book? Show of hands for those who succeeded? That’s what I thought…

So what about that epiphany? Well, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it’s not an epiphany so much as an affirmation of something I already knew in the back of my brain. I am new to the ebook self-pubbing business. I’ve only put one backlist title out there, Dead of Winter, and one novella, Claw Back. I know I have a ton to learn and some catching up to to do. (I mean, I can’t even figure out GoodReads, for corn’s sake).

What I have figured out is that I need to be a better business person. Yeah, I am a writer first and the creation of the story will always be paramount. And I want to keep a foot in traditional publishing because I still believe there is a place for actual books you can hold and actual bookstores you can visit. (even the Warby Parker guys figured this out — they opened a couple boutiques because they realized people still want to touch things before they buy them.).

But my real epiphany is this — that if I don’t pay attention to Parrish Inc. no one will. I have to get rid of any illusions I still might have about some nice big paternalistic publisher being there to always watch over me.

I may need glasses, but I’m not blind.