3 unexpected programs to help you publish a book [PART 1/3]

by benmweilertNo Comments
Many months ago, I described the amount of work a writer would need to do by themselves to publish a book. Not only is there research, formatting, and graphic design involved, the writer also has to write said book. This whole process can be daunting, especially in the digital age. We have so many different programs at our fingertips to help us plan, write, and publish. A lot of these programs can cost a significant amount of money. Sure, programs like Aeon Timeline, Evernote, and Scrivener might be worth the money in the long run, but you’ll inevitably have to learn how to use these programs, which can eat into your writing time. What if I were to tell you that there’s a suite of programs you probably already have installed on your computer that can accomplish many of the same functions as the programs that cost a lot more? Many of you probably already use these programs on a regular...
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Why “spell check” is not enough

by benmweilertNo Comments
English is hard. Certain words may be spelled the same but have completely different meanings. Other words may sound the same, but have different spellings (and thus, different meanings). There are even words that may change meaning with the addition or subtraction of a single letter. This is why context is a huge part of the English language. Depending on the words around it, the correct word can be implied, but an incorrect word will still jar the reader enough to pull them from the story. They’ll likely re-read the sentence, trying to make sure they understood the author correctly. When they realize the writer made a mistake, they’ll continue reading, but they’ll have a seed of mistrust planted in their minds. From that point onward, they’ll question every word the writer uses, just to make sure they aren’t mistaken again. This increases scrutiny on the part of the reader, and can often distract from the author’s intent: conveying a...
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The 4 types of edits, and why you need to do them all.

by benmweilertNo Comments
It is a rare feat to be able to write a perfect story. It’s even rarer to do so with the first draft. Hubris blinds the writer who considers the first draft of their writing to be perfect. Some writers might fall into the trap of crafting every single word of their first draft, thereby almost ensuring that the first draft will never be complete. On the other end of the spectrum from the “perfect first draft,” we have writers who will continue to polish a story forever, never settling for “good enough.” While no story can be “perfect,” editing will help to get it close enough for publication. In my experience, editing takes up the majority of the writing process, and for good reason. While some authors may continually iterate the editing process, I have found that there are four types of edits every writer should use when revising their work. These four types range from simple spot checks to...
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3 reasons why you shouldn’t pick sides

by benmweilert Comment Closed
Just like everyone has a bellybutton, we all have opinions. However, if the 2016 election has taught us anything, it’s that most people’s opinions seem to be on extreme ends of the spectrum. I know you can’t please all the people all of the time, but as writers who want to sell books, we should at least try to remain unbiased. Sure, our beliefs will usually leak through into our writing. If we leave it at a subconscious level, this amount of bias isn’t too bad. When a writer tries to take a purposeful stance on something via their fiction, most of the time it falls flat and fails to convince anyone to change their mind. Here are three reasons why writers should try to be neutral in their narrative: Opinionated writing appears preachy I get it. The world is a mess, and we all want to blame someone for it. In these trying times, it’s easy for writers to mount their...
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Expectations and a Reviewer’s Rubric

by benmweilertNo Comments
When I first started my website, www.benjamin-m-weilert.com, I knew I wanted it to be a repository of reviews for all the books I’ve read and all the movies I’ve seen. I have some of these reviews scattered across the web, but I wanted a single location where all of them could reside. A single place where I could control these reviews. Now that my website is almost a year-and-a-half old, I have accumulated over 250 reviews on it. These reviews range from nights at the Colorado Springs Philharmonic to audiobooks to movies to books received from authors and/or publishers. As most of my reviews, I provide a “star” rating to help visitors to my site determine if the piece of media is worth their time. Early on, I based most of my ratings on an intuitive “hunch” of what I felt the work deserved. This scale (from 0.0 to 5.0) is mostly subjective and, while this is still largely the case,...
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How to handle a bad review

by benmweilertNo Comments
You can’t please all people all the time. The best you can do is please most people most of the time. This adage is as true in life as it is to writing. Some readers will love your book, others will not. We all love to receive glowing reviews, as they boost our confidence, but what about those readers and reviewers who don’t care for our book? While I’ve received a few bad reviews for my books, as a reviewer of books, I have had to write some bad reviews. If your book is out there for the public to read, you have to expect to receive a bad review eventually. There are two ways to deal with these negative reviews: the right way and the wrong way. How you handle bad reviews says a lot about who you are as an author. My first one-star review was for my first book, First Name Basis. While I was upset that I received this bad...
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The problem with self-publishing

by benmweilertNo Comments
As a self-published author, I was almost surprised to find how easy it was to get my book out there. Back in 2011, when I published First Name Basis, I used the tools available to me through my “print on demand” publisher of choice: CreateSpace. From the cover creator to the interior template, all the work I did on my book was my own. Sure, I had a few people read through it and give me some notes on proofreading errors and other minor tweaks, but in the end, I did all my own writing, editing, and formatting so that the story I wrote would be available to a broad audience. Since then, I have learned just how much more work must go into self-publishing a book. Still, it remains a free endeavor for anyone who wants to publish their own book. Self-publishing a book is surprisingly easy. Fast forward to today, and I have read more than my fair share of independent...
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What a month of content looks like

by benmweilertNo Comments
Back in June, I wrote a post about what it takes to “do it all” as an independent author. While one of the many tasks of the independent author is marketing, nobody will buy your books if you’re always promoting them on social media. There needs to be a balance of promotion and what’s known as “web content.” Web content doesn’t need to be much, especially for social media, but the fact that you’re continually posting about something shows that you’re actively engaged with people who could potentially become your audience. There are plenty of debates about which social networks to post to, how often to post, and when to post during the day (or during the week), but this post won’t go into the details of that. I still haven’t figured out the “sweet spot” for social media, but I have accumulated a regular schedule of web content that helps me to be active on these platforms. When it comes...
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So you want to be a writer . . .

by benmweilertNo Comments
Congratulations! Admitting that you want to be a writer is the first step in achieving that goal. “But . . .” I hear you hesitate, “what does being a ‘writer’ even mean?” Plenty of people have their definitions for the term, but in its simplest form, being a writer means that you write. Simple, no? Some of the complexity of the term “writer” comes when people make the transition to “author,” since being an author usually means you’ve published something (be it self-published or traditionally published). I consider myself an author because I have written books and published them. Others might disagree, since the process of being traditionally published is a lot more involved (and complicated). Either way, we’re getting ahead of ourselves a bit. Let’s start on the ground floor: being a writer. Being a writer simply means that you write. If all it takes to be a writer is to write something, then you could be a writer just by writing...
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Dear Young Adult Fans

by benmweilertNo Comments
Calm down. I know you sometimes take it personally when someone doesn’t like a book that you love, but that’s the beauty of life: people are allowed to have differing opinions. When it comes to the Young Adult (YA) genre, I recognize that it’s not written for me, as the demographics of the genre sway more toward women than men. By the same token, I know most women aren’t going to read the science fiction or fantasy books that men seem to enjoy (this has its own problems, which I’ll get to later). With the enormous influx of YA books hitting the marketplace after the success of the Harry Potter and Hunger Games series, there are plenty of books to choose from . . . and not all of them are well written. Regardless, I still occasionally pick up a YA book that seems to have an interesting premise in the hope that it’s the rare gem in the sea of mediocrity. When I first started...
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