This Crazy Writing Life: Defining Irony In The Time Of Covid

By Steven Womack

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In this month’s installment of This Crazy Writing Life, my original intent was to start where I left off with last month’s column on eBook distribution and explore the options and possibilities of print.

That was the plan, but as someone once told me, we make plans; God laughs.

So before we move onto more serious stuff, a little sidebar.

The last half of August saw something we’ve never seen before—two major mystery conferences were taking place in Nashville in back-to-back weeks. Killer Nashville, of course, is now a major regional conference that draws writers and readers from all over the country, if not the world. The week after KN, Nashville hosted Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention, the largest gathering of mystery writers and fans in the world.

This was, to paraphrase a conversation Joe Biden had with Barack Obama after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, a big effin’ deal… This has literally never happened before. For two weeks or so, Music City became the center of the mystery world.

I can’t remember the last time I was so excited about something. I’ve been pretty transparent about my struggles in the writing career arena. When I left academia in 2020—after the college where I’d been teaching for twenty-five years quite literally closed its doors and went out of business—I’ve been trying to resurrect a writing career that was once almost promising.

So I signed up for both, with great relish.

I was thrilled when I was assigned four panels at Killer Nashville. At Bouchercon—where the competition for panels is somewhat stiffer—I was assigned one. This felt great. It was like the old days, back in the Nineties, when I was a full-time mystery writer and making a living at it.

Then, ten days before Killer Nashville opened, I woke up with a fever about five o’clock in the morning. I tried to slough it off, but after a few hours, I decided to take a Covid test.

Positive…

Everything went downhill from there. I’m an old guy, an immuno-compromised cancer survivor. When I still tested positive and still sick after a week, I cancelled Killer Nashville. A week later, same results.

So long, Bouchercon.

And want to know the irony of this? One of the panels I was scheduled to be on at Killer Nashville was “Handling Successes and Setbacks As A Writer.”

The universe has a weird sense of humor. I had to cancel my appearance on a panel about handling setbacks because I had one of the biggest setbacks in quite awhile.

Define irony…

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So let’s talk about print books and how you indie pub them. We’ll start with a few basic assumptions.

First, most indie pub authors I’ve ever met make most of their sales (and, therefore, most of their money) from eBooks. So if you want to delve into the print arena, just be aware that it’s an awful lot of effort and cost for the least return. For many writers these days, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. On the other hand, there’s nothing like the feel, smell and heft of a real book.

Second, the technical aspects of producing print books are way more complicated and demanding than eBooks. Why? Because eBooks are marked by flowability, which means you don’t have to typeset them. The text just flows out of the ether and into the e-reader. There’s no set trim size. The user actually determines the font, point size, leading, and measure. Actually, in real life whatever device the user is reading them on determines these factors by default and the user can change them if they’re savvy enough.

(As an aside, don’t know what point size, font, leading, and measure mean? Then you’ve got an even higher technical hill to climb…)

Third, be aware that the print landscape is a little more complicated if you hope to sell print books in both brick-and-mortar bookstores and Amazon. No brick-and-mortar bookstore will order a print copy of your book from Amazon and set it on their shelves. For one thing, most bookstores hate Amazon with a fiery, searing, scorching passion. More than that, bookstores depend on wholesale discounts and returnability for survival and Amazon’s not about to help them on that front. So what this means is you’ve got to upload one set of files to Amazon and one to a wholesale book distributor. And then you hope to high heaven the same files will work for both outlets.

Fourth, unless you have a garage the size of a warehouse and deep pockets, you’re not going to go the old school route of finding a book printer to print up a few thousand of your books and then ship them to your home address. Chances are they’ll sit in your garage until the mice find them, at which point you’ll have a bunch of fat, happy mice on your hands. And if you do get lucky enough to sell a few of them, you’ll be buying cardboard shipping boxes, packing tape, and bubble wrap, then loading up the old SUV for a trip to the Post Office or UPS. If you’re not up for that, then you’re going print-on-demand, or as it’s commonly called “POD.” And that, as they say, is a whole nother ball of wax itself.

When I decided to tackle indie pubbing print books, I had a built-in advantage. Early in my career, I spent about a decade working in publishing in New York City and Nashville. I worked mainly in art departments, where I typeset books, ads, catalogues, brochures, and a ton of other stuff. But what I mostly did was interior book formatting/typesetting. I’ve probably either typeset or supervised the typesetting of a few hundred books over the years.

So those terms I threw at you earlier? What do they mean?

A font is the particular typeface you’re using. There are hundreds of typefaces and families of type, but all fonts can be broken down into basically two types: serif and sans serif. Serif typefaces have a small stroke or curlicue attached to the larger, main body of the letter. Sans serif typefaces don’t have these add-ons and the letters are just lines. If you bring up your word processor and type a few words in Arial, then type the same few words in Times Roman, you’ll see the difference. Most books are typeset in serif typefaces, except for certain types like manuals, guidebooks, nonfiction, etc. Most fiction is set in the more traditional serif typefaces, which tend to have, for lack of a better term, a classier look to them.

Point size is literally the physical size of the type. There are 72 points in an inch. Most books are typeset in around 12-point type, with some variations. Really long, thick doorstopper books might be set in point sizes less than 12. Down around 10-point type, though, they get mighty hard to read.

Leading is the distance between the lines, called that because years ago when books were typeset by hand, the typesetter inserted thin strips of lead between the lines to separate them. Most books are typeset with an extra few points on top of the point size. The point size/leading is usually expressed as a fraction, i.e. 12/15. When there’s no extra space between the lines, as in a book set in 12/12 Times Roman, that’s said to be set solid. And for anyone beyond the age of twelve, they’re really hard to read. Almost no one does it.

Measure is the width of the line, which is directly related to your trim size and margins. You want to have some kind of margin on each page; you don’t want the type to run from one edge to the next. You’ve got to design it just right to hit that visually appealing sweet spot. You don’t want too much white space or too little around your page of text. This also affects your page count, which is critical.

So there in just over 300 words is a summary of my decades in typesetting. But there’s a lot more to learn. Know the difference between a widow and an orphan and why you want to avoid both? There’s not room here to get into that, but Google it. It’s fascinating stuff. Trust me.

Once you’re ready to get into actually formatting a print book, where do you start? The easiest way is to get a dedicated app for typesetting, but truth is you can typeset a book on Microsoft Word. I’ve done it. It’s a PITA and I won’t do it again, but when I started six or seven years ago, there wasn’t much else out there. Vellum typesets books, but as I mentioned in an earlier column, Vellum only works on a Mac platform.

And for many years, the go-to software package for interior book design (and many other forms of graphic design) was Adobe InDesign. It does everything and does it well. But like all things Adobe, it’s expensive to start with and requires decades of study on a lonely mountaintop in Tibet to master it (okay, decades? Maybe I’m overstating a bit…).

Kindle Create is free, as is Reedsy’s Book Editor app. I don’t know much about them, though. There are a few other paid packages. Just Google them and get reviews.

I wrote last month about Atticus, which is produced by a company here in Franklin, Tennessee called Kindlepreneur. In the past year or so, they’ve added a print typesetting function to what has emerged as the best eBook formatting software in the business. Every review I’ve read of it is spectacular, but since I haven’t indie pubbed a book since their print functionality went online, I’ve got no personal experience. But if it’s like everything else Kindlepreneur does, it kicks butt and takes names.

We’ve barely scratched the surface on the technical challenges and considerations of print book formatting and design and I’m already out of space for this month’s edition. So I’ll stop here and next month we’ll move on to the differences between an eBook cover and a print book cover, how you make a cover work, and then onto the challenge of making book distribution outlets work for you.

As you’ve seen, This Crazy Writing Life is a grand adventure. Thanks again for playing along.

Gotta Go Through It

By Chrissy Hicks

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Have you ever heard the children’s song, “Going on a Bear Hunt?” My toddler requests this often—either for me to sing the tune for her or play it during car rides.

The main plotline involves a group of people (or a couple, depending on the version) going on a bear hunt, claiming they’re “not scared.” However, after overcoming several roadblocks and approaching the bear in a cave, they realize the terrifying result of their actions and run away. As they face each obstacle, they sing the same chorus, “We can’t go over it, can’t go under it, gotta go through it,” before proceeding through the barrier. 

It had me thinking—partly because this song is frequently stuck in my head—that this idea of going through obstacles is a lot like the writing journey. The initial blocks you might face when starting out might be: finding ideas, getting the first draft fully written, carving out time to write, determining whether you’re a plotter or pantser (or somewhere in between), finding a supportive writing community. Once you get past this, your next hurdle is to polish your manuscript so shiny you’re not sure you want to look at it anymore; this often involves the recruitment of beta readers and editors. Once you’ve leaped over all that, you have yet another hill to climb: how will you share this book with the world? Self-publish? Hybrid? Approach small publishers directly? Find an agent? Each of these options presents an entire list of risks and rewards each, but let’s take finding an agent as an option, for the sake of example. You decide to query your novel—this book you’ve spent countless hours writing, revising, rewriting, revising again—and you spend an incredible chunk of time researching agents, perfecting your query, and emailing these agents, hoping you get a “yes.” When you do finally get your acceptance and you sign with an agent, it feels like Christmas. You’ve found your “bear.” The hunt is over.

Except it’s not. It’s only just begun.

Agents get rejected by editors and publishing houses too. They deal with their own set of setbacks. And what happens when a publisher accepts the manuscript? And it’s published? There’s yet another slew of expectations for the writer when it comes to marketing their book (or at least assisting with the process). Plus, the publisher will likely want more material (not just a single book), so you find yourself back to the beginning, with a fresh page and a whole new set of challenges. When you find yourself in this place, so close to your goals, terrifying as it all may seem, will this scare you away? Or will you stay the course?

The point of this brief exposition isn’t to deter you from writing. The point is simply this: there’s not much you can control outside of your writing and your dedication to the craft. You can’t control whether agents will sign with you, whether readers will like your work, whether you hit the New York Times Bestseller list or barely earn out your advance. So, what will you do when you face these obstacles? If you can’t go over it, can’t go under it, will you move through it?

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Chrissy’s work has appeared in three consecutive issues of Bridgewater State University’s “Embracing Writing” book for first-year freshmen. Her writing portfolio also includes publications in The Broadkill Review, SUSIE Mag, The Storyteller, and informative pieces for a local online newspaper. One of her unpublished novels, Foul Play, was a Suspense Finalist for the 2022 Claymore Award, and an excerpt from her unpublished novel Overshadow won Top Three Finalist of the 2024 Thomas Mabry Creative Writing Award. Though her background is in counseling, having earned a master’s degree in this field, when it comes to the art of writing, she’s an autodidact. She studies books she loves and enjoys completing various creative writing classes online, and attending writer’s conferences whenever she can; Killer Nashville is one of her favorites. Additionally, she’s volunteered since 2023 as a general editor for the Killer Nashville Magazine. She resides in Tennessee with her family, their talkative Husky, and a frenetic cat. You can find her online here: https://chrissyhicks.wordpress.com/ where she occasionally blogs about the writing life and reviews craft books.

Finding Your Niche as a Writer

By Linda Hughes

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It seems easy enough. You know what types of mysteries sell and make a lot of money, so you figure that’s what you’ll write. But then things start going wrong: It’s a struggle to finish a book, your beta readers are less than enthusiastic, agents reject your queries, or nobody buys your book.

Does that mean you’re a terrible writer? Maybe not. Here are some things to consider before you hang it up and schlep back to that former job you walked out on.

1: Are you certain about the requirements for the genre and subgenre you’ve chosen? They are very specific in most cases. For example, you might think you’re writing a cozy mystery but you have a character who likes to cuss. That’s not a cozy, which doesn’t allow blatant sex, violence, or profanity. Therefore, if you’re marketing it as a cozy mystery, readers and agents are disappointed. They aren’t getting what they want. That doesn’t mean you’re a lousy writer; it means you need to find the genre and subgenre that fit your writing and market to readers who want that type of story.

2: There are several subgenres for mysteries, which is the genre I’ll use as the example here. What they’re called depends on where you look, but let’s assume you want your book to be listed on Amazon. If you’re not sure about genres and subgenres, this helps:

• Go to Amazon, click on “Books,” don’t type anything in the search box but click on the magnifying glass. Scroll down to “Departments” and click “Mystery, Thriller & Suspense.” There you will find Amazon’s version of subgenres, which they call subcategories.

• Click again on the left hand column, on Mystery, for another drop down list, showing more Catagories.

• The most popular subcategories for Mysteries are Cozy, Hardboiled (no holds barred), Police Procedural (usually from a police detective’s point of view, the “POV”), Private Investigator (who can be a retired police detective), and Women Sleuths.

• Click on each subcategory. Books that are bestsellers in each one will pop up. Click on several books and examine them closely. Read the descriptions, look at the covers, and read the reviews. Which books in which subcategories are most like yours? That’s where your book belongs. You can also research the requirements for each genre and subgenre using Google or any search engine, but examining the actual books is a great starting point. Reading some of those books is even better.

• Here’s where it gets a bit confusing: When you set up your book in Amazon, you are allowed to list it under two categories or subcategories. But if you have an Amazon Author’s Account (highly recommended), you can email customer service and ask for eight more. The more slots it fits into, the more exposure your book gets. However, don’t use them all if they aren’t a genuine fit. Readers search for books by category, and will be mightily disappointed if they pay for a book that doesn’t meet their expectations. They’ll let you know about their dissatisfaction in reviews.

3: Most important is that you find the right subgenre fit and therefore market your book to the right readers.

4: However, after all that research, what if you still aren’t sure of the subgenre you prefer for writing mysteries? You could experiment with short stories or blog posts. Try different POVs. Practice. (I know, you just want to publish and make money. For most of us, it doesn’t work that way. We need to work on honing our craft.) As you write, be aware of which type of story you most enjoy working on. What you enjoy is going to produce your best book.

5: Don’t be afraid to be a genre-switcher or to write different books in different genres and subgenres. Again, if each book sticks to its category’s requirements and is marketed to the right audience, it has a better chance of success. That certainly has worked for Nora Roberts, known for her romance novels, who also writes mysteries under the pen name J. D. Robb. A pen name is optional, as today’s contemporary readers are quite accepting of genre-switching, as long as they know what they’re getting.

6: Lastly, consider the possibility that you need to learn more about how to write a good story that is marketable. There are countless resources available to help you learn about good writing and about managing the business of writing. The annual Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference is an excellent place to start. Whether you’re an aspiring or established writer, this gathering offers not only education and inspiration, but camaraderie, as well. It’s my favorite writers’ conference every year. Here’s the link: https://killernashville.com/killer-nashville-writers-conference/

Finding your niche as a writer means you’re willing to explore and ready to enjoy the craft of writing. As writers, we work hard – that’s true – but we also revel in the experience. So explore, learn, do the work, and write that great story that brings you joy. (And may it bring you a bundle of cash, too!)

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Linda Hughes is a #1 bestselling co-author and award-winning author of twenty books and three screenplays. She loves to genre-switch amongst mysteries, historical romantic suspense, and family saga. Her latest is a romantic novella, Lilac Island. Find her on Amazon at: https://www.amazon.com/Linda-Hughes/e/B000APKVGI