Precious Beta Readers

A beta reader is someone who looks over your manuscript to find weaknesses before making suggestions for improvements.  Unlike how we utilize critique group members, your beta reader usually reads the entire book at once.  He more accurately simulates the experience of your book’s ultimate audience—your buyers.  Their time and skills are best used if they don’t need to focus on line edits like grammar and spelling.  Try your best to give them a clean copy. 

A helpful beta reader will make suggestions to improve the story, characters, and setting, basically all the big picture items.  I’ve been a beta reader and I’ve also had others take that one last look for me.  I’ve found they can be book-savers: finding plot holes, questionable believability, problems with continuity and characterization, even factual inaccuracies.

It’s common for a careful writer to have a beta reader or two peek at her book before she sends it to agents or editors or out for self-publishing.

It helps your reader to know what you are concerned about.  Below are some questions you might want to ask so you can get actionable feedback on your book:

- Did you feel drawn into the story?

- Did anything bug you?

- What's the one word you'd use to describe each character?
- Who was your favorite character?
- Favorite scene?
- On which page do you think you know what the story will be about?

- Did the story grip your attention right away?
- What do you wish were different in chapter one?
- What's your favorite Chapter?
- Where did you skim?

- Why?

- What do you feel the arc of each character was?
- Was that satisfying?
- Where did you cringe?
- Why?
- Where did you cry/gasp/laugh?
- Why?
- What was too predictable?

- Where?
- What do you consider the dark moment?
- Were you satisfied by the end?
- Why?

- Would you want to read the next book?

You'll notice there are many whys... that's because it’s much more helpful to know WHY something is good or bad so you can go back and do more or less of that thing.

Remember to thank your Beta Reader!  In one case I sent my beta reader a box of goodies that matched the theme of the book she’d read for me.  One of the best gifts you can offer is to reciprocate.   It’s a learning experience whether you are on the giving or receiving end.  To all the beta readers out there:  THANK YOU!   

      -   From the Inkpot

What’s Your Loot? Remember Book of the Month Club?

If someone handed you a box and told you there’s loot inside custom chosen just for you.  What would you imagine the contents would be?

[Books perhaps?  All your favorite genres?]

 

When you were a kid, did you ever wish your birthday came more than once a year?  How about once a month? 

 

Ready to commit $20-150/month to have unexpected goodies with a theme mailed to you every month?  It’s the new book of the month club.  They are subscription boxes. And I’m not talking about the Dollar Shave Club.

 

These little monthly “gifts” offer a general smattering of items each month, gear related to your interests.

 

[Like a book you choose because of your interests.  I remember my father getting Books of the Month-The Godfather, The Happy Hooker, Joy of Sex.  I wonder if he had a secret life.]

 

One of my sons has rated wine choices in his monthly delivery. The other son has, on top of that, delivered goodies targeted toward hipster guys-Bespoke Post.  Among other funky, foodie items, he got gourmet salts and squid ink which he used to take his homemade pasta dish to the next level.  He chooses from a short list, but many of these subscription services offer boxes of awesomeness filled with random surprises.

[like a great book!]

The possibilities are endless now that buying on line is standard practice and shipping costs are negligible.  We’re talking about year-round Christmas for all ages.

[Do we not love to go into a bookstore and browse, collecting a handful of stories we hadn’t planned on getting?]

There’s Birchbox for guys, delivering a monthly selection of grooming and lifestyle products, from face cleaner to bow ties.

Awesome Pack thrills big kids and families with board games, plush toys and activities.

Some subscription boxes are higher end--$100 and up--like Wil Wheaton Quarterly Co. curated by celebrities, style experts, authors and bloggers. You might even open up to a Dungeons & Dragon starter set.  Carrots for new parents surprises with books and toys for $120/box. 

Some are more focused like TeeBlox and Once Upon a Tee targeting fans of Doctor Who and The Legend of Zelda with officially licensed t-shirts; Brick Loot specializing in building items like legos; for college kids, a care package with snacks and household items called Pijon; BarkBox for dogs; NatureBox for snackers [popular with high Coloradans?]; Tasting Room for wine; and Kiwi Crate for 3-7 year olds who like craft projects. And one I would have loved as a kid, Tinker Crate, for older kids’ science projects.

GET YOUR GEEK ON!

The trend seems to be all the rage among geeks and gamers, who have flocked to Lootcrate, 1Up, Geek Fuel, Geek Me Box, ComicBoxer, Star Wars Smuggler’s Bounty, Nerd Box.

 

 

Power Up Box, HeroCrate, Super Loot ZBox, Comic-Con Box, IndieBox. Super Loot and ZBOX from Zavvi and VillainCrate.

[Really want to invite VILLAINS into your house?]

 

 

What do the Geeks and Gamers who pay for them get?

 

[Just like a book, they have to crack it open and dip in.]

 

What the Geeks can expect to find:  South Park gear, Nintendo exclusive t-shirts, Marvel, Star Wars, DC Comics and Pokemon figures, prints and figurines, and Horror Collectibles

 

[…which made me wonder if it all the elements are legal.]

 

These thingies of the month clubs are not companies unique to the U.S.; if you are in Australia, you can order up Box 51 and Epic Crateness.  Hero Box.  

 

My favorite company name is Bento Box.... clever.

 

They claim to use a panel of experts to pick comic issues around a theme each month, that the value of each box is at least $60. But the monthly rates: $20 (1 mo.), $18.34 (3 mos.), $17.50 (6 mos.) Shipping:  $5 in the U.S. / $12 to Canada

Some are aimed at female geeks:  Fan Mail from who you may receive a Spider Man necklace and a Superman Comic, Gamer Girl Monthly (which offers exactly what it sounds like),

Instead of reading about your favorite manga or movie character, you can wear him in the form of a t-shirt.

Friend Alicia Howie enjoys her $20/month with S&H subscription to one of the most popular subscription box companies, Lootcrate, especially her Labyrinth t-shirt.  I wonder if Merle Haggard and Prince have t-shirts in any company’s box of loot this month?

What would be in your ultimate loot box?  Mine would definitely have gourmet food items, books, yellow pads, and a great pen.

      --- Inkpots

Spin, or no spin? (How many books have you written?)

There are no silly questions, right? Well, maybe a few. Such as, “How much do you weigh?” Or, “Are you going to eat that?” But when I consider questions a writer is asked by folks who don’t understand how long it takes to write a book, edit a book, sell a book (hopefully), market a book, and then start all over again, my head spins around á la Linda Blair. (Don’t worry, that typically only happens when I’m alone and sitting in front of my monitor.)

Anyway, should we really be totally honest when responding to questions such as, “How many books have you written?” Or, “Is this your first?”

It has to be confusing if I say, “I’ve written five or maybe it’s six if you count the entire overhaul of my third, when I completely changed the genre but if you throw in partials, it might be nine or ten, anyway, I finished writing my first book over twenty years ago, and at some point before I finally sold my third manuscript, I realized how poorly written the first and second ones were, even though I love those stories and characters and back then thought one of them, or both (!) might be a best seller as for the next, well, you do know about my second book, it came out in 2011 and I’m trying to get an editor or agent interested in a novel I co-wrote two years ago, but so far no luck in the meantime I’m pubbing a collection of five short stories, and that ebook should be out in a few months then I’m going to focus on the SF manuscript that’s nearly 50% complete or maybe another non-fiction I have two of those started wait, I have to change what I said earlier about how many I’ve written, I forgot to count those plus I do have three screenplays I co-wrote do they count and I also have a cool YA screenplay that I’d like to get back to, but I’m a fairly slow writer, so it might be a while.”

Whew!

There goes my head. Around and around she goes.

Instead of being completely honest, is it fair to simply offer a smile, along with a business card? Perhaps accompanied by, “Publishing is a terribly slow process, but I do have a small collection of short stories coming out soon.”

Then again, perhaps I should learn to embrace the spin cycle!

~ Folio

HOW many inches?

I had the very great pleasure of attending World Fantasy Con last year, and fortunately my friend Laura warned me about the bag of books given to attendees. Free books?! How wonderful! But oh my aching shoulders - what a heavy carry-on bag and suitcase! 

While in the midst of unpacking, I realized yet again that our bedroom bookcase was absolutely stuffed, and my bedside table already moaned beneath two piles of books stacked to the edge of the lampshade. I put away my suitcase and wandered into our office. Nope, that bookcase was also full, as was the one in the hallway, and there were even three unread books on the coffee table in the living room. I shrugged and headed back to the bedroom, where I stacked the new books between my dresser and chair.

Then I wondered how many inches of unread books I really had.

For a true picture I would need to include the unread books on my Kindle as well as the ten or twelve books tucked here and there on the bookcase. Oh, and then there’s the thirty-some odd books I have noted on my Goodreads “to-read” list – books I know I want to read but haven’t yet purchased. Could I count those? Should I? My husband has a stack of books that he’ll eventually share with me, and there’s usually at least a few books stashed beneath the Christmas tree as well as those three on the coffee table.

Hmmm. Forty-four inches beside the dresser, approximately twelve inches on the bookcase, seventeen inches on the bedside table, and on my Kindle I’d estimate at least twenty-five inches. My husband has to have more than twenty inches, and…

…books, book, BOOKS!

How many inches do you have?

-- Folio

Originally posted in November 2011

What our bookshelves say about us

We recently celebrated our family’s annual New Year’s Day Festival Clean-out, an energetic annual clutter purge accomplished to the driving beat of power tunes. Though usually we tackle our closets, this was the Year of the Bookshelf. Our daughter got in the act too, wisely perceiving that a day of sorting, organizing and cleaning the upstairs bookshelves would calm her college application angst.

Around this time a Sister of the Quill forwarded an article that made me think about our books. The article covered someone who used books solely as décor, and this clever sister suggested a Plumtree baddie patterned on him; anyone who so misused books would have to be villainous. A great idea!

I began to wonder about our motivation for wall after wall of books in our home, on every level and nearly every room? Were we like the villainous collector who displayed them for appearance only?

I took a good hard look at our books as we disassembled and reassembled our shelves. The first task was to replace the mantel books I’d removed to make way for the advent calendar. There was no hiding from the fact: these twelve books were chosen for the gold on their bindings. Uh-oh...

I tried to evaluate them as a stranger might. Their bindings were works of art, like paintings one might put on the wall. But they passed another test: their insides were art as well: Kim, by Rudyard Kipling; The Silver Chalice, by Costain; The Cornerstone, by Zoe Oldenbourg; The Works of Stevenson; The Works of Gautier (okay, I admit to not even knowing who this is, but my mother gave me the beautiful gold-stamped leather volume); A Gentle Madness, by Basbanes (every bibliophile’s favorite); London, by Peter Ackroyd; and The Illuminator, a historical bibliomystery that helped inspire my current book.

Opposite this mantel is the real family bookshelf, a true wall of books. There is an entire shelf devoted to the novels of Diane Mott Davidson, my patron saint of fiction writing. Just looking at this shelf is an inspiration; she holds the quadruple titles of kindest mentor, most dedicated professional, most voracious reader and most generous giver of books (in addition to other titles). Once I asked her how she could possibly read so much. She said breezily, “That’s what writers do!” Many years later, I get it: Writers. Must. Read. Everything. It is what we do.

Moving along that same line of shelves, there’s a Bill Bryson section that kicked off an invaluable non-fiction reading spree for our oldest daughter. My much-thumbed college thesis books on Willa Cather sit side by side with books on women of the West, and women writing the West. Included in two of these, Leanin’ Into the Wind, are essays by Sister of the Quill Shannon Baker.

Immediately above and below these are shelves on London, English royal history, Colorado hiking/wildflowers/birds, a cheap complete Dickens recalling a day trip to Hay-on-Wye, a childhood set of World Book Encyclopedias, the Left Behind series, all of Jan Karon, American and British political history and speeches, typography, writing, contemporary literary book-club category fiction, and more precious works by my Sisters of the Quill, Soliloquy by Janet Fogg and Ashes of the Red Heifer by Shannon Baker. I can’t wait for the day, not far away, when I slide Karen Lin’s multiple brilliant works onto the shelf beside them.

I see now that the wall o’books fills multiple roles. It’s meaningful memorabilia, it’s storage for useful books we want to revisit, and yes, it is beautiful.

The sets make especially attractive bursts of color. The red 1950s World Book Encyclopedias evoke the distinctive scent of their pages, and the memory of school assignments done with them in my childhood home. My sister’s name is written in the front of one she must have taken to school once, in the careful hand of a twelve-year-old. I smile ruefully at the hole drilled partway through the cover of the Volume H, the top of a stack I used to brace something while drilling a hole for one of the girls—another school assignment.

There are other reminders of our origins: my father’s Boy Scout Handbook from the year 1935; a treasured English literature anthology from the college my mother never thought she’d attend as a farmer’s daughter, and in it the poem Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe, unconsciously memorized in childhood, which still sends shivers up my spine. Up high sits the thick Iain Pears novel given me by a college friend, An Instance of the Fingerpost, which helped inspire the book that has enriched the last eight years of my life. There’s the paperback teen Bible my sister gave me that helped cement my faith at age fifteen, and the book of O. Henry short stories from my other sister that inspired a love of reading. The shelves dedicated to the ocean and sailing make me think of my heroic husband, who piloted us through sailing trips in foreign oceans. Nestled alongside these is the copy of Moby Dick I paraphrased for two little girls before a memorable trip to Nantucket.

Enough! Suffice it to say that I want to keep these precious memories close, so a casual glance might graze them at any time, and pass them on as heirlooms. They’re more than books, they’re our lives; a record of where we’ve been, and emotional and spiritual support for the journey. - Storm Petrel

Folio Got Her Books!!!!

Hooray Folio! You got your books! Happy waltz, tango, rumba, swing, jitterbug, salsa, cha cha. Hope the champagne was good! Congratulations on work now tangible! Happy hugs, Inkpot