What Sells Books

 

Copyright Glo Lewis 7/17/2023

 

Dear Readers of My Blog, 💚

 

What Sells Books:

I think most publishers would agree that a book’s cover and its title are the top two selling features of a book. When I was deciding on the title of my first novel, Avezzano and New York, the era was just before America became such a globally-conscious nation, so I might have been a little before the curve in creating my title, because perhaps not that many readers were intimately familiar with Avezzano, a province of Abruzzi, Italy, in the central part of the nation. Surely, more readers are familiar with the area now. But either way, just about everyone on earth has heard of New York, so the second half of my book’s title would always carry the day, I figured back then, and I was right.

When you make your final decision about your book’s title, write down some options, and run your proposed titles by trusted family members and friends for their feedback; ask them for positive and negative remarks about your options. Of course, ultimately, you’ll have to make your own decision, so choose carefully.

In choosing a cover for Avezzano, I had the idea in my mind of an old truck, circa 1930s and Italian, red in color, which, if memory serves, was the color of Franco’s truck (he is a lead character in my book)— or the vehicle was brown (I can't recall)— but I believe it was red. So, I had hoped for a cover with a country road and a vintage red truck at one end. However, I was self-publishing on Amazon’s CreateSpace, so unless I was willing to pay for a jacket designer, I had to work with the photographic options presented by CreateSpace. And they didn’t have any red truck cover photos. This was a very discomfiting reality as I was already facing a cost of $500 to self-publish my book at that time, so I really could not afford to pay a cover designer on top of that fee. I got lucky, however, in that there was one cover depicting the woods, and I decided that the mystique created by those trees would make for an awesome softcover book, particularly since one of my lead characters, Topazia (Topaz), drives into the woods at one point. And I’m still enormously proud of my book’s paperbound cover. You can view it for yourself by going to Amazon.com and entering either Glo Lewis or under books, Avezzano and New York.

Why Self-publish?

One might ask why someone would self-publish; you don’t have to, clearly. You also don’t have to be jerked around by people called agents, who don’t know how to write. In my experience, so many book agents are full of themselves, very rude, and perhaps even jealous that it’s not worth wasting your effort. By the time that I was ready to send the digital copy of my book to an agent, the young woman who had expressed interest, was leaving the field. And I was burned out on the snootiness of many agents. If you finish writing and editing a book, absolutely, you can shop it around; it's a protracted process, however, as one is expected to allow time for an agent and their agency to evaluate your book, before you might shop it elsewhere. Yet, it's a worthwhile endeavor to try to find a reputable publisher for your creation, once you also have your synopsis ready, which is essential to explain what your book is about to an agent and to put on your book jacket or softcover. (Research how to write a synopsis on Google and elsewhere.) But many agents seem to have no idea of what it takes to create a worthwhile book. And publishing houses are not giving the kind of extremely generous advances that they once did. So, if you shop your book for a while and can’t get any interest, don’t lose heart—just self-publish it. Amazon’s CreateSpace was professionally cordial toward me. I went through three or four proofs, and then I finally approved the last one. The entire process was done digitally online, and they guided me along. I had quite a satisfactory experience with them. I had read from another author to be really careful about reviewing my proofs, because once you give your approval and pay the fee, your book will be published just as you approved it to be, so if there are any errors, readers will be distracted and disappointed by those forever and a day. And you will always regret that you didn’t do your due diligence for your own book. I took that sound advice to heart, and I’ve never regretted doing that and never looked back. I once had a colleague, who had read my book, say that it was the only book that she had ever read without an error. That’s saying something. Because I read a lot, and because of Karen Kirtley’s Advanced Editing course and Vinnie Kinsella’s Basic Editing class, both in the Master’s in Writing Program at Portland State University, in Portland, Oregon, I learned so much about advanced editing that I am able to detect terrible editing errors in the great books that I read. If your editing skills are not up to speed, for a high price, normally, you can have your book edited. But it would be worth it to take basic and advanced editing, which will stay with you and help you to hone your editing skills in such a way that you won’t ever lose them, unless you have a stroke or some other serious medical problem. But why should we live for the worst outcome rather than for the best ones? I prefer to think positively and to strive to fix all issues that we can resolve. Very often, senior citizens can take college classes for free (probably even online now); they won’t work toward a degree if they are free, but you will gain the editing knowledge that you may need, which would be the reason to take such classes. If you do take editing classes, you needn't stop writing while you do so. In fact, I urge you to keep writing, no matter what. If you are not inclined to take a course in editing, you can teach yourself this skill, albeit in a much slower process, by researching the rules of grammar, spelling, and punctuation online. Yet, editing is a valuable skill, composed of many layers and types of editing, which can also be explored online. Take editing extremely seriously.

Characters should represent ethnic groups:

In today’s global marketplace, readers either prefer to see several ethnic groups represented in some way with characters, or at minimum, they will normally notice if your book is not in some respects inclusive. Therefore, if you are an African American writer who has many Black characters, be sure to include at least a couple of characters from other races. Likewise, if you are a Caucasian writer, don’t neglect to include characters from other ethnicities. Readers want to see the world as it generally is, to be able to relate to your characters and to have their circumstances and dilemmas resonate with them. So, don’t disappoint. Naturally, no matter what your race is, include characters from other nationalities, minorities, tribes, clans, sects, castes, and so on.

A Teaching Novel:

I am evaluating the value of creating a teaching novel for you. I liked my Joe paragraph and thought it might be an intriguing example. Here is that paragraph from Blog post 9:

Joe didn’t like these people. He knew they had power so vast that they could annihilate him from his own life and bring him to such a level of ruination that he would want to put a grisly end to himself. In his mind, he saw himself loading a well-oiled gun. Yet, a tiny flame of wildness flickered in his ragged heart. He knew he’d lived through worse. Maybe not what these people would view as more dangerous, but in his own soul, even as a four-year-old child in the back alleyways and avenues of New York, he’d had to cope with his own demise and possess the street smarts of an adult. He knew how to keep his mouth shut. How to look out for his older brother without being noticed. Right now, he would play ball, because the flashing reminder of early terror hissed its wisdom from behind the mask of his face. “Sure,” he whispered— “sounds good.” But deeper, beyond the stone of his dark eyes, revenge began to take shape.

First, I would like to point out something in the last sentence, which is:

“But deeper, beyond the stone of his dark eyes, revenge began to take shape.” I want to call your attention to the phrase, “the stone of his dark eyes.” Some of you may have wondered why I didn’t write, “the stones (plural) of his dark eyes,” since obviously, we have two eyes. And the reason that I wrote, “the stone (singular) of his dark eyes,” is because the word, “stone,” is meant to mean “hardness,” but to use the word “stone” is, I think, more artistic, and I would argue, even harder than the word “hardness.” Certainly, stone more closely aligns itself with revenge than does hardness, I would contend, from an artist’s point of view.

Additionally, you will note in the last three sentences of that paragraph the words “behind” and “beyond.” These two words come near each other, so we want to watch for details such as this and not repeat the same word. When crafting the Joe paragraph, I searched Google for a synonym for “behind” and found “beyond,” which worked nicely. My master’s thesis professor, Tony Wolk, used to put a little red check mark when I would put the same significant word twice in close proximity. So, pay attention, and search for appropriate similes rather than repeat a word, when possible.

When I was crafting Avezzano, there came a time when I realized that I needed to go back to the drawing board and create some fresh similes and metaphors. I recall spending an entire day imagining metaphors and jotting them down for potential use in my book. Remember that a metaphor is when one thing is another, e.g., the Perfume River is a necklace of flowers, winding its way around the Hue Valley in the City of Hue in Vietnam, versus a simile, e.g., the sand whipped up an undulating vertical column like a dancer in the sirocco desert wind.

Outlining a Story or a Novel:

I mentioned in a prior blog post that it’s always a promising idea to create a map of your novel, which is basically just a well-thought-out outline. You can do this for a short story also, but it’s particularly important for a novel. When I was writing Avezzano, I didn’t create an outline until I had completed the first 100 pages. At that point, I realized that I needed to be thoughtful about where the story was headed and to get those ideas down on paper. And far into the work, I was so glad that I had prepared in this way, because a few times I got lost and couldn’t remember where the plot was going. In consulting my map for the book, I realized on at least two occasions, that I didn’t wish to continue in that vein. Rather, I preferred to go off into another direction. And that was fine. As my Writer’s Digest Novel Writing School mentor, Dov Silverstein, taught me, you don’t have to follow your map, but it’s good to have one. Another time, I was going to kill off one of my lead characters, Franco, but my daughter, Taylor, said, “Why not have them triumph?” And I realized that that was a fine idea, and I went with it, and Franco lived to “fight another day.” And I’ve always been so glad that I allowed Franco to live, that my daughter had given me sage advice in time. Because I wrote Avezzano for the big screen, and I am quite certain that moviegoers would find it to be quite an unsatisfactory experience for Franco to die; that is, if my book ever makes it to the silver screen. So, craft an outline of your chapters— a map, if you will, so you know what’s going to happen next. And again, you can always change your mind, but it’s wonderful to fall back on in the clinches. Therefore, I think soon, we will craft a map of a teaching novel based on the Joe paragraph, which will hopefully be instructive in how to outline a novel preparatory to writing it. We can think on these things. Keep writing!

 

God Bless, and more to come soon…Glo