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    How NOT to Write a Novel: First-book errors to avoid
    How NOT to Write a Novel: First-book errors to avoid
    How NOT to Write a Novel: First-book errors to avoid
    Ebook121 pages1 hour

    How NOT to Write a Novel: First-book errors to avoid

    By Gene Grossman

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    About this ebook

    Successful author Gene Grossman admits to having made almost every mistake possible during his writing career, and with this book, tries to help new novelists from following in his footsteps when trying to write their first book.

    He discusses the benefits that new technology offers, and his 20 chapters contain much valuable information,plus writing/publishing/distribution tips.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMagic Lamp Press
    Release dateNov 22, 2009
    ISBN9781452306360
    How NOT to Write a Novel: First-book errors to avoid
    Author

    Gene Grossman

    GENE GROSSMAN was born in Chicago, Illinois and raised in the North side neighborhood of Albany Park, where he attended Hibbard Elementary and Von Steuben High School.He pursued majors in psychology, chemistry and mathematics at Wright Junior College, Roosevelt University and Illinois Institute of Technology - all the while working his way through high school and college by playing piano in clubs on Chicago's then-famous "Rush Street."After moving to Southern California, he worked his way through law school playing piano in night clubs and appeared as a musician in seven major motion pictures.While slowly building his law practice, Gene purchased a truckload of movie equipment he rented out to film production companies and then started his own production company which over the years produced more than 50 educational programs on subjects ranting from Boating and Celestial Navigation, to legal subjects (Depositions, Bankruptcy, etc.) Sign Language Instruction and many more.Always having been interested in boating, getting divorced prompted him to buy and move onto a 45-foot Chris Craft motor yacht in Marina del Rey California,.Years later, while serving as navigator on a yacht delivery from the U.S. to Tortola, Gene wrote his first book, "Celestial Navigation for Dummies" (before the popular series of 'Dummies' books was created). He used his own production equipment to shoot a video on the subject Celestial Navigation - "Sextant Use and the Sun Noon Shot" and unintentionally started the nautical video industry in this country.Over the next few years he followed that first title up with more than 50 other educational DVD titles, all displayed on his production company's website at www.MagicLampDVDs.com.Having moved on from doing scripts for his video productions, Gene turned to writing fiction, and now spends most of his time in the marina on his new boat, where he created the 15-book series of 'Peter Sharp Legal Mysteries,' all now available both in print and as eBooks at Smashwords via www.LegalMystery.comIn addition to the 15 Peter Sharp novels, Gene compiled a group of fiction and non-fiction titles that he has either written or edited for others, plus some classic stories: the publishing company he formed (www.MagicLampPress.com) now has more than 60 books in print.The Peter Sharp Legal Mystery Series#1: Single Jeopardy#2: ...By Reason of Sanity#3: A Class Action#4: Conspiracy of Innocence#5: ...Until Proven Innocent#6: The Common Law#7: The Magician's Legacy#8: The Reluctant Jurist#9: The Final Case#10: An Element of Peril#11: A Good Alibi#12: Legally Dead#13: How to Rob a Bank#14: Murder Under Way#15: The Sherlock Holmes CaperThe Suzi B. Mystery Series (a spin-off)#1: ...Sorry, Wrong Number#2: Movie Magic#3: Two Perfect Crimes#4: He's the Guy#5: The Magic BulletsAll 20 of Gene's mysteries are described in detail in a free eBook: The Mystery Books of Gene Grossman: Summaries with the Author's Comments.

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      Book preview

      How NOT to Write a Novel - Gene Grossman

      How NOT to Write a Novel

      First book errors to avoid

      Gene Grossman

      ©MMIX Gene Grossman

      All rights reserved

      Cover photo by Vance Zachary

      All rights reserved

      Smashwords Edition 1.0, November 2009

      *****

      Table of Contents: Publishing Rules to Live By

      1. To Lie or not to Lie

      2. Play it Again, Sam

      3. Judging a Book

      4. Interior Design

      5. Bounty on the Mutiny

      6. An Agent of Change

      7. The Numbers Game

      8. Non-Publishers

      9. Stop the Presses

      10. Distribution

      11. The Amazon River

      12. Website Required

      13. Welcome to the Revolution

      14. A Rose by any other Name

      15. The Title Fight

      16. IBPA (PMA)

      17. Oh, the Horror

      18: Finding Your Voice

      19: The Shortest Distance and the Arc

      20. Common Writing Mistakes

      • The Apostrophe

      • Phrase Matching

      • Spelling

      • Identifying Your Pronouns

      • Being Consistent

      • 35 More Things Not to Do

      *****

      Chapter 1: to Lie or not to Lie

      I can watch Spencer Tracy in Inherit the Wind, Bogart in Casablanca, or José Ferrer in Cyrano de Bergerac every time it’s on TV, but I’ve only read Romeo & Juliet once – in grade school. I just can’t seem to get into that story anymore, already knowing how it ends. That’s one of the problems with good fiction: it’s supposed to have a beginning, middle, and an end, and along the way there’s a plot and some dialogue – and once you’ve read it, there’s no sense doing it again for the next couple of years.

      The only exception in my mind is the same one that applies to the movies mentioned above: a magnetic character and/or some fantastic dialogue.

      I really enjoy watching Basil Rathbone do his amazing deduction rants in those old Sherlock Holmes movies, and I read the complete collection of Holmes stories every couple of years. Similarly, I’m sure that there are people out there who will watch a movie with some other allegedly sexy male or female star, just for the ‘eye candy’ or tremendous special effects, but that’s tough to write into a book.

      Don’t get me wrong: there are plenty of terrific works of fiction written, but the purpose of this book is to advise you what not to do, and in all honesty, if I was starting my writing career over again, I’d have stayed away from fiction for the first 13 books I wrote. My main mistake was in not realizing what a tough ‘sell’ fiction is, when compared to non-fiction. Unfortunately, I found this out a little later than I would have wanted to, and that’s one of the reasons why I’ve written this book – to try and direct you away from many of the mistakes that first-time authors make, because the field of first-time novels is getting quite crowded, and the last thing you want to do is flaunt errors in your first novel.

      As we’ll discuss later in this book, there are a lot of places to distribute books, and a lot of distribution channels that will take just about anything you have to offer (on a full return basis), but the best ones to do business with are those companies that don’t want to take on a new title unless they think it will sell... and many of them no longer will accept new authors’ fiction submissions. Their reasoning is quite simple: if you’re not an established author with a name that will attract readers, they don’t want to waste their time stocking and marketing your title. But if you’ve got a well-written non-fiction book on How to Make a Widget, then they’ll consider taking it on and marketing it to all those members of those widget-making societies. There’s a defined market for that widget book out there that includes every store in the English-speaking world selling widgets and widget-making supplies, plus the hundreds of widget-making societies and widget collectors. More about this will continue below, after this brief comment about the various categories of eBooks.

      * * * *

      I recently checked a website that lists the number of titles it offers in each of their 51 categories. Rather than give you the entire list in alphabetical order, I’d like to keep this book down to under 5 volumes, so instead I’ll merely list the categories in order of popularity, so you can get some idea of how the field looks with respect to competition.

      First are the categories in which there are more than one thousand eBook titles available:

      19,879 Fiction

      6,980 Undefined

      4,867 Business & Economics

      2,989 Medical

      2,324 Computers

      1,924 Religion

      1,859 History

      1,175 Poetry

      1,115 Technology

      1,068 Science

      1,033 Self-Help

      And then there are the categories at the bottom of the frequency chart: those with less than one hundred titles being offered:

      90 Games

      90 True Crime

      87 Foreign Language Study

      82 Art

      73 Architecture

      62 Pets

      41 Crafts & Hobbies

      37 House & Home

      36 Comic & Graphic Novels

      14 Antiques & Collectibles

      10 Gardening

      2 Non-Classifiable

      Note that in the top two categories and the bottom category are those titles that cannot be easily pigeon-holed: the ‘Undefined,’ and the ‘Non-Classifiable.’ Out of curiosity, I checked the last category out, just to see what type of titles they couldn’t classify: they were both about alleged cover-ups that discussed Iraq and 9/11. I’m sure that soon a new category of Political Theories will be added to their site, because guys with great access like Bob Woodward and all the other ex-politicos will always be writing books and hawking them on the talk-show circuit.

      I also checked to see what the 6,980 ‘Undefined’ titles were, and saw that most of them wound up listed like that simply because there just weren’t the proper categories available. With enough thought and planning, I’m sure that the website operators could come up with a place to put books like PaintShop Pro 9 For Dummies, or Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. A simple addition of just two categories would solve a lot of problems: one for MYSTERY, and another for COMPUTER SOFTWARE USAGE.

      You should learn three lessons from the list above:

      1) Make sure that whatever you write can be easily classified. Next time you’re in a bookstore, walk around and try to imagine in what section your book would be placed.

      2) Remember that your book will have to compete with others in the same genre, so unless you think you’ve got something great to offer, don’t try to push that big boulder uphill.

      3) Maybe it would be a better idea to go after of the 100 people looking for a book on Gardening, than trying to be found by the 50,000 people interested in fiction. Of those looking for fiction, 49,990 will not get to the bottom of the Fiction category list, but all 100 of the avid gardeners will at least have a chance to see your title.

      * * * *

      Now, getting back to the widget examples above, if you agree with the numerous potential marketing possibilities for the non-existent widget-making books, then try to imagine how lucrative the market might be for a non-fiction book about making something that really exists. There are companies who have compiled mailing lists, sales lists, email lists and other types of contact information for just about every niche product and market imaginable, and they are all there waiting for a resourceful marketer to use, to sell specialty or non-fiction titles about genres from Business to Travel, with sub-categories that cover every item, service, or person you can imagine.

      It all depends on what you really want as an end result. If you are only interested in getting this ‘great’ love, adventure, or other type of story told because you think it’s a page-turner that everyone will love and some studio will want to make a motion picture about, then by all means, write your fictional tome and I wish you the best of luck with it. Just keep in mind that if you do become successful with your first work of fiction, they’ll surely

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