As a writer, you may be underusing technology in places that it could really help improve the quality of your writing. Take Google for example. Sure, you do research on Google, looking up facts and checking to make sure that you have the right background information. That in itself is a valuable tool that writers even 15 years ago never had. If that's where your interaction with Google ends, you're missing out on a lot.

Often times it's the little details that pull a reader into the world you are describing, and those details are easier to ascertain than ever.

Here are 3 ways that Google can help improve your fiction writing:


1. Google Image Search
We've all done it. We've racked our brains, trying to picture the perfect item to fit the scene we are writing. We've drawn on every memory we have to try to describe it to the last detail. In order to illustrate how Google Image Search can help in this situation, let's try a little exercise.

First, write a 3 sentence description of an old truck that has been sitting in a field for a long time. Ok, did you do it?

Now, click on this link, find the perfect truck to fit your story, then try writing the 3 sentence description again using that picture as your visual guide. See how much easier that was?

It's just a guide, of course. You're still 100% in charge of what that truck looks like. Maybe the one you found was exactly what you were picturing EXCEPT, that it needed to have a flat tire, or should have been rusted yellow instead of blue. Either way, the writing will come much more easily if you use visual guides and there are plenty at the ready on Google Image Search!


2. Location Scouting Through Google Earth
If you're writing a story that doesn't happen in your own back yard you should travel to the actual location and check it out. What's that you say? Too expensive? Lucky for you the Googlers invented Google Earth. It's not as easy to use as some of the Google services, because you have to download and install a program. However, once installed it can take you away to wherever you want to go and show you what it's actually like in that location.

Google Earth is not only a picture perfect satellite map of the world, it's overlaid with tons of photos, 3D renderings of buildings (if you turn that feature on in the "layers" tab at the bottom left) and even 360º photos in many areas.

For example, if you're writing a story that has a scene in Rome, just outside of St. Peters Basilica, the images on Google Earth will give you much more detail than any map ever could. This screenshot shows one of the 360º images, which gives up tons of useful information, not just for description, but also when writing the actions of the scene. Could a person hop the gates? How close do the cars actually get the the square? How tall are the adjacent buildings?



Of course, more famous locations are better photographed and mapped out but Google is adding new areas every day. Even if you're looking for a desolate location, give it a shot! Even the Mojave Desert has some 360º shots!




3. Go Shopping for Details with Google Shopping
Say you have a well-off character that would likely wear a watch worth more than most cars. But which one? Are you a watch expert? If not, hit up Google at the top of the page, then click on "Shopping."

Here you'll be able to search for anything you want, specify a price range or sort by specific brands. Unlike Image Search, these listings typically have all of the technical specifications of the product which you can use as well.  I wouldn't recommend clicking add to cart on the $51,600 Special Edition Oyster Rolex, but now that you know it exists you'll be able to add it to the wrist of your character and give him that much more life!

Another great example where this technique is useful is wardrobe. You're not a fashion designer, so don't try to describe the clothes of your characters from your imagination. A quick search for Paisley Dress shows how diverse a simple piece of clothing can be and how minor details can affect the believability of a character.

Sometimes the scene, the clothes and the location are all going to just come to you, with no stress what-so-ever. For all of those other times, when you can use a hand, these are all great tools to improve the descriptiveness of your writing without trekking halfway across the world and back!

Any questions or comments let me know at founder@authorstand.com! If you have another tool you use which may help other writers let us know that as well!

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Other than already being a famous author, what's the most important factor in getting someone to read your book?



Answer is: Having a solid, intriguing synopsis for each story.



When a book-buyer is looking for something to read, they will typically ask themselves the following questions, in this order:



1. Who is the author?


This takes us back to an earlier blog post about big name authors having somewhat of an advantage in selling books. They are a known entity, and as such book buyers have a much higher level of trust. 

This trust takes time to build. It may seem circular, but the way you build this type of reputation is by having more and more book buyers read your work. This is a big part of the reason AuthorStand encourages aspiring authors to offer their work for free on our site. The more people you get reading your work, the more YOUR work will be in demand!



2. Does it SOUND like something I'd like?


This is where a solid, intriguing and to the point synopsis can really help get readers to take the leap and read your book.

 Unlike #1, it does not take a good deal of time to slowly build up to a good synopsis! This is one aspect of your book marketing that you can improve upon immediately. 

Here are some tips for making your synopsis the best it can be:



A. Put the same level of care in writing your synopsis that you did writing the story itself. More people will read the synopsis than will read the actual novel, so don't skimp!



B. Sell your main character or characters. Let the readers know WHO they will be reading about. Why should they care about this person? Why is the character intriguing or what makes him/her special? Practice describing your characters, in detail, with as few words as possible and you'll get very good at this quick introduction.



C. Set the stage. It's not enough to say "Set in 1864 France..." and expect readers to know what that means. You're the one who dug through all the French history books to check for accuracy, to get it all right, so pull out all of the tricks in your adjective bag and transport the reader to the world in which your story is set!



D. Don't give it away. This may seem obvious but it happens more often than you would expect. Don't even hint at the ending.  Avoid terms like "It all works out in the end." or the like. You're trying to get readers to flip to page one, and they're not going to do it if they already think they know what happens on page 300!



E. Include keywords. We're operating in a digital world now, and many people will find your listing through the search function on AuthorStand, or even through search engines like Google and Yahoo!, so make sure you include words that a reader might type into a search engine and expect for your book to show up. If you are writing about vampires, make sure the description explicitly says "Vampires." Don't hint at these things, or imply them. Just state them plainly as search engines can only read, not infer. 



Follow these tips and remember that when you're writing your synopsis you're not writing to entertain, you're writing to get readers attenting. Keep that all in mind and you should easily come up with a few great paragraphs that make your book a must read!

Any questions or comments let me know at founder@authorstand.com! Spirited debate is always welcome!

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Most people read a good deal every day. Unfortunately for aspiring novelists, an increasing majority of the reading being done is on email, blogs, social media and text messages. In fact, a 2007 Study by the NEA found that over half of all Americans age 18 to 24 read no books at all for pleasure. For even more depressing facts you can read the whole report here.

While we can't say that e-readers have officially "taken hold" of the reading public yet, they are starting to grow beyond a niche product and becoming more of an everyday tool for more and more readers. As this happens, the habits of readers using digital devices is coming into focus.

Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported on a study, funded by Sony Corp., in which users of e-readers of all kinds answered questions about how their reading habits have changed. Here are some key take-aways from the study:

• 51% of e-reader owners increased their purchase of ebooks in the past year.

• The average e-reader owner reads 2.6 books per month compared to 1.9 books per month for print-book readers.

• 86% of e-reader owners use their devices at least once a week, 51% use them every day.

This leaves one big question left to be answered though:

• Are people reading more because of e-readers OR are the people who read more the ones buying the e-readers?

As sales of e-readers grow to a larger percentage of the reading public, the answer to this will become clear. I, for one, find myself reading much more because of the convenience and availability of my e-readers. Now, if the book I am reading becomes less than intriguing, I simply switch to one of the many others I have available. In the past, with no other literary alternative, I'd likely play Cat Physics or Peggle on my phone. While they are both fantastic time killers, neither comes close to enhancing my life as much as a good book!

How about you? Do you have an e-reader? How has it affected your reading habits? I'd love to hear your take, either here as a comment or email me at founder@authorstand.com!

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This article will, in the end, give you guidelines for what you may be able to charge for your work as an aspiring author. On our way to those guidelines we will look at how they were achieved and give you the tools to make pricing decisions for your own fiction works. (Note: Non-Fiction works are a bit different animal, so I'll go over non-fiction pricing in a post next week!)

The answer to "What Should I Charge" is simple, but it leads to the real question you should be asking, which is a bit more challenging to answer.

The simple answer is:
As much as readers are willing to pay for it!

The more complex question that this leads us to is:
How much will readers be willing to pay for my work?

In order to answer this, you need to answer a few other more basic questions.

Question #1: What are other people charging for similar works?

Answering this question is what publishers refer to as "market research." Literally researching what is happening in similar markets. For example, if you've written a horror novel, you could look around online and find that Stephen King and Clive Barker both have the ebook versions of their most recent novels priced at $9.99 and they're selling tons of them.

Question #2: What does the word "similar" actually mean?

If you stop there and you price your novel at $9.99, you're probably not going to sell very many of them. That has to do with what the word "similar" actually means. In this instance, the word refers to the perception of the product in the mind of the reader, without them ever having read it. Your novel could be better than any that Stephen King has ever written, but book buyers don't know that. In their mind, a known author's work is more valuable because of the higher probability of it actually being something they enjoy reading.

Known authors are closer to a sure bet, but if a reader decides to read YOUR work they are taking a chance. They're putting up around 4-5 hours of their life in the chance that they might discover another author that they  enjoy reading. For this chance they will likely want to be compensated with a reduced purchase price.

I use Stephen King in this example for a very specific reason. The story of Richard Bachman illustrates exactly what we mean when we discuss the term similar. Stephen King, in a publishing experiment of sorts, released some of his novels under the pseudonym "Richard Bachman." One of these novels was "Thinner" which sold 28,000 copies in it's initial run. Later when it was revealed that Bachman was actually King, the book sold over 10 times as many copies.

The books contained the same exact words and the same title. Simply changing the name of the author to a known entity increased sales by 1000%.

Question #3: How do I cope with being unknown?

The best way to combat "unknown" status is to become "known." In the beginning it comes down to a combination of a low price and hardcore self promotion. Unless your writing is a secret that you have never told ANYONE about, you are technically already "known." It just becomes a question of how well known.

What happened when you wrote your first work of fiction? If you're like most of us, you handed it to your mom and you asked her to read it. How much did you charge her? It's a serious question. Unless you're Alex P. Keaton, the answer is probably zero dollars. And it's safe to say your mom is now a fan (although she's probably somewhat biased) and looks forward to your next work being written.

Without even realizing it you had invoked the power of free as a marketing tool. You gave her something to read, you didn't charge her anything and now she wants to read more.

Sure, it is a bit easier when the reader is your mom, but this system works the same exact way with book buyers. If you want to quickly build a following, free is the best price for your work. Just like with your mom, give them something they will enjoy reading and don't charge them anything for it—get them hooked on your writing and then start charging an appropriate amount for your other works to generate your income.

At the beginning of the article I promised there would be some pricing guidelines here at the end, so here goes. Remember, these are guidelines. In the end you'll have to play with the price to find out what readers are willing to pay for your work, and those numbers may go higher than what's listed below as you become more well known!

When you are ready to start charging, here is what is recommended.
 
Novels (50,000 words or more)
In the beginning your novels should be priced no higher than $3-5. That's 30-50% of what known authors are getting for their novels in ebook format, which when combined with an enticing synopsis, may just be enough to get readers to give you a shot.

Novellas (15,000 to 50,000 words)
Readers place more of a premium on bulk than writers do, so while you put the same amount of thought into your last novella that you put into your last novel, readers are not going to put the same amount of money into your pocket for it. Therefore, recommended starting price for novellas is $1.50 to $3.

Short Stories & Flash Fiction (under 15,000 words)
For Short Stories & Flash Fiction, we recommend that you either offer them for FREE or compile multiples into a single work. Compilations can bring in as much as a novel or novella depending on the total work count of all of the short stories contained therein.

Poetry
If your poem is of the "epic" persuasion, like the Illiad or Dante's Inferno, you can treat it like a novel as far as pricing. However, it's not likely that readers will pay any amount for a single sonnet or haiku. If you're writing shorter poetry it should be treated like short stories or flash fiction. Give it away or compile multiple works to create something for which readers will plunk down their hard earned cash.

Any questions or comments let me know at founder@authorstand.com! Spirited debate is always welcome!

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And why you wouldn't be able to stop them even if they weren't!

by Joe Niewierski
Founder of AuthorStand.com

My name is Joe Niewierski and I am a bibliophile. Like other book collectors, I have come to love the feel, the smell and the weight of each of my books. I know where I found them, how much I paid and what their monetary value is on the collecting market (although many of them are priceless to me).



In most articles that start out this way, the next line is usually "but now the Kindle, iPad and other eReaders are trying to take that all away from me...and I won't stand for it!" I, however, believe that many of my book collecting brothers have a short-sighted and narrow view of what the eBook market actually means to collectors.



When I think back to the point that I started collecting, I knew nothing of what made a book a first edition or how to grade a book on its condition. I had a paperback copy of "Catcher in the Rye" and even then it was my favorite book. Not because of its bland “classroom edition” cover. Not because it had the right markings to denote it was a first edition (which it definitely did not!). I loved it because of the words that were written in it—because of the story that Salinger wove and pulled me into.



I will go out on a limb and say that the majority of us who have devoted efforts to building up a great library got started collecting when we read a great book that we wanted to ensure we would be able to read again and again. Think back to book number one, and you'll begin to understand why this book collector is embracing the eBook revolution. To determine which side you'll be on in the upcoming struggle, you must decide if you are a collector of the written word, or a collector of paper and leather. Is the physical representation more important than the words it contains? Does a paperback copy of "Gatsby" have less social impact than a true first edition?



I've chosen to embrace the eBook revolution for the reasons stated above, and your choice is up to you. However, if you do choose to resist it, you will most likely be toiling in futility, and here's why:



The high-end of early publishing consisted of illuminated manuscripts. These were completely hand-written and hand-decorated volumes only available to the wealthiest of Europe's elite. Then along came Johanes Gutenberg with his movable type press. Once the type was set, he could produce multiple copies of a book very quickly, making them less expensive. These books were more functional, getting the words on the page and out for people to read, but much less beautiful than the predecessors, the illuminated manuscript.



The action that created the publishing industry as we know it destroyed the illuminated manuscript craft in the blink of an eye. Surely there were many manuscript collectors who were not happy about it, but there was nothing they could do. With a reduction in the production cost of books, more people would have a chance to read them, giving more authors the opportunity to be published and have their works read.



That change happened in 1439, and while relatively minor changes have been made in the printing process to reduce production costs, the basic premise of the industry remained the same for almost 600 years. Get the words onto the paper, bind the paper into a book, ship the book to the stores, then sell the book to the reader. All of this is very costly in materials and manpower. The upfront costs of printing and distribution for a single book were so high that they had to be covered by a third party, which is where publishers come in. 



Publishers back your book, get it printed and distributed, then split the profits. Sounds like a good deal, and it was for a very long time. The only drawback is that limited upfront funding resulted in a limited number of books and authors being published each year. The majority of would-be authors ended up as unpublished (or failed) authors simply due to the limited number of available places at the table. 



Even that might not be a huge problem if the publishers (and their editors) always chose (and everyone could agree on) the right books to publish. Take, for example, "Gone with the Wind." Some consider Margaret Mitchell's only novel to be as close to "The Great American Novel" as anyone has ever come. The book was reportedly rejected by 38 different publishers prior to being accepted by Macmillan. Had it not been for Mitchell's persistence, combined with the foresight of a single editor, there would be 1037 pages of classic prose in a landfill outside of Atlanta, and the world would have been robbed of a great story.



Gutenberg and his press greatly reduced the cost of production, opening up the world of books to a whole new audience. The eBook revolution moves the cost of production and distribution closer to zero than anyone ever could have imagined. This not only opens up the world of books to new audiences, but it opens up the world of writing to new authors by removing the need for upfront costs to be paid by a third party. As the eBook trend increases, traditional publishers will become less and less necessary in their current form. Even they themselves see it coming and are doing what they can to protect their industry, in part by use of publishing delays and artificially inflated prices.



No one will be able to control it for long. As eBooks and eReaders gain more of a foothold into the market, readers will figure out that they should be seeing more options when selecting what to read. They should have access to more choices in the traditional genres, as well as access to works about more obscure subjects. For example, if an author writes the definitive book about one particular species of plankton, most publishers would reject it on the basis that there may only be a market for a few hundred copies, if that many. The book never gets published and those few hundred people who may want or even NEED that book will never even know that it exists.



In contrast, an eBook could be created and distributed at such a low cost that it could make a return on investment for the author, even if it only sold the projected “few hundred copies.”



The eBook industry will soon allow for the free flow of ideas, allowing the market to decide which works are needed and/or wanted. That concept is one that is good for the collector of the written word, and is carried by what will likely prove to be an unstoppable force as it grabs hold of new generations. So, if you do determine yourself to be a collector of paper and leather, and lamenting the world’s coming switch to eBooks, you may be in for a rough ride.



If you found yourself in my camp, where the work of the author is of greater importance than the work of the printer, the future looks bright my friend… very bright indeed.

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