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I've written two books, but don't know what to do with them. I've sent them to over 30 agents, and had one self published as a PDF file (it wasn't in the right format to publish to Kindle). However, I've had no luck in selling anything. Does anyone here know of anyone who might be interested in my work? You can find my manuscripts, here.... (One Screwy Week is my masterpiece).
I don't know how it works with books, but can you get professional feedback on your work? Like we get coverage for our scripts? If you write a script and it consistantly gets CONSIDERS, people will read your work. Like Robert McKee says, everyone is looking for a great story, and I believe that to be true.
Calibre is a free and powerful software tool which you can use to convert your file to e-book or to a kindle file. Kindle also provides a thing caled kindlegen I believe to get your files ready for kindle.
Simply throwing your book on kindle without some kind of strategy is probably pointless. You need to have some strategy to lead people to your books and get them interested.
One thing you can try if you feel really confident in your book: Kirkus reviews has a program where you can pay for a pro review, which you can use for your book if the review is positive. It's expensive. I think about $375. I believe they also select a couple of books a month to promote in their magazine.
But you better make sure your book is really ready in every way. There are a lot of people out their trying to get published. Most of them think their books are ready, and very few are. How does one know? That's the $64,000 question isn't it. I don't have the answer. Join a writing group and get some feedback.
Of course, maybe you already know all this stuff and you really are ready! Some unknown writer who had an English degree but has been kind of a vagabond the last 20 years wrote a book last year that got picked up by Hollywood and is a best seller. Actually, I think he was discovered by Kirkus. His book was just featured in my local library. So it CAN happen! Good luck!
Thanks, both of you. About converting my book to a kindle file, my book is formatted like a screenplay, so I can't do that. I think kindle only accepts traditional style books. I might look into getting professional feedback, thanks.
I'm not sure how I book can be formatted like a screenplay. Unless it's a screenplay. Maybe take the opportunity to prose it up! I switched to mostly prose a few years ago. One thing I did to help me get better at prose was to convert some feature screenplays to prose. It usually took me about 2 weeks to convert, and I would add stuff. I'd end up with a story similar in length in pages to the screenplay.
Hi Simon, as someone who works in publishing (not fiction, sadly, so I can't help you in that way) I'd say it's actually relatively simple to self-publish using Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing platform. We publish playscripts, laid out pretty similarly to screenplays, and we have hundreds available to buy via the Kindle Store. Those were professionally converted from PDF by a conversion house and we work with a distributor, but you can do it yourself if you're willing to put in the time and effort.
All the info is here: https://kdp.amazon.com/ You'll probably need to work a bit on the formatting - which program did you write this in? If you can copy it into Word and amend as required, you'll probably have better results - but they offer preview functionality so you can keep tweaking until it looks the way you want.
It's obviously not just as easy as getting it out there - working with a traditional publisher gives you access to marketing (which is what I do), sales, editorial teams that'll hopefully increase your chances of success (if they're doing their jobs right!). But for entrepreneurial people, who're confident in their work and willing to work hard to drum up interest, self-publishing is a totally valid way to go. Joanna Penn is a good person to look at if you want tips on making it as an indie author: http://www.thecreativepenn.com/
And if it's a success and you find a readership, there's always a chance that a publisher will snap it up down the line. For instance, The Martian and Fifty Shades of Grey both started off as self-published books - the former serialised and given away for free, I believe - and once they'd proven they had commercial potential, someone swooped to help the authors take their books to the next level in terms of exposure and revenue.
Keep trying agents and publishers if that's the way you want to go - though honestly, the industry is pretty risk-averse right now, and a book as unusual as yours in terms of format will have extra hurdles to clear in terms of convincing them to take a chance on it. But if you want them out there, then take another look at self-publishing. Good luck!
Thanks a lot, I'll check out that website. I wrote my script, using a program called ScriptIt. I've since upgraded it, to Movie Outline 3. I'm not sure I have the skills to write using prose, but if I was told by someone they'd publish my book, if I did so, I'd definitely give it a try.
A book store in my neck of the woods has an entire sections dedicated to Self-Publishing if you need a place to start. I kind of used their formatting template to create my own PDF in book format. I myself have no intention of publishing my own work; I just wanted it to look somewhat true to an actual book. But, IMHO, if you want to publish, you’re gonna’ have to make it look legit before anyone will take you serious.
The site is here, just click on the section titled ‘Self-Publishing’ for an entire breakdown of the process.
Simon, to me the first step is to determine whether you want to write a novel or a script. You did kind of a hybrid of both. I can't see that being sold. People buy books. People buy scripts. People don't buy book/scripts.
I have to agree with Dave. But it really depends on what your goal is Simon.
For example, maybe you're just trying to find a different way to sell a script. If that's the case, I always encourage this kind of outside the box thinking. If this is your plan, you're not trying to make money off the book/script, but you're hoping it will get discovered by someone who wants to make a movie. And as I have posted here, there is a trend in Hollywood for studios to obtain the movie rights for books, even short stories.
If you're actually expecting to make money off a book that's not even a book, I don't know. I mean there are thousands of writers out there, many of whom have been writing for many years, developing the craft, trying to break through. So the odds are already stacked, but you stack them even more if your book is not even really a book.
But don't take that to be discouraging, because I mean the opposite. You're willing to explore different paths, that's good! There are so many options for a storyteller. For one thing, you could put in the time to master prose. If you're young, why not? It will always improve your screenwriting if nothing else, and you might end up being a novelist.
But if you really despise prose writing, there are still other options, such as graphic novels. Or if you're a great story maker, but you feel your pose falls short, you could partner with someone with the opposite situation. There are people who are pretty good at prose but who don't like coming up with their own plots.
If you're still relatively young, I would really suggest exploring prose though. You don't have to write literature. Neil Gaimon writes mostly kids books and graphic novels. He's not a great writer, though he's become decent...but he is a good storyteller.
Another guy is Blake Crouch, who I think began as a screenwriter. He does a combo now, TV series and thrillers. His writing really came a long way. His last book, Antimatter, is very good read. It's not literature, it's good clean suspense writing. His older stuff is available for free if you sign up for kindle unlimited, which is free the first month to try. You can see how his writing grows from little novels that were obviously converted from screenplays.
So you're doing great exploring these things, keep on trucking.
There are all kinds of great books. I made the switch about 3 years ago. My prose wasn't bad, but there was a ton of learning I needed to do. I read King's book on writing and the Struck Rules on Style. Thinking that was enough, I set to writing. About a year and a half ago, I joined a local writer's group. That was good for feedback.
This past September, I realized that even though my prose was not bad, I still was making some poor decisions. And in any field you want to succeed in, you have to work your ass off to master everything you can. So this psat fall I read several more books on writing and style, and on literature.
For example, there is a cheap book on kindle called It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst. There are other similar books you can get for cheap. It takes a few days to get through them, but it's worth it.
If your writing is sometimes ok but needs a lot of work, there is no doubt you can make great strides quickly.
Alright, thanks, I'll bear that in mind. I'm kind of desperate for work, right now, and rewriting my book would take a long time. I'd certainly give it a rewrite if an agent told me to, but at the moment it's a risk. I was thinking I could make some money from my blog, or something, I've also tried finding work teaching joke writing courses. I've had some interest from an employer, but he said he can't book me any teaching slots, at the moment.
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