Guest Post: Your Book Cover and Promotion

Lynne Jamneck is a South African writer, currently living in Wellington, New Zealand. She has published short fiction in various markets, including Jabberwocky Magazine, H.P. Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror, So Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction and Spicy Slipstream Stories. For Lethe Press, she edited, selected and introduced the SF anthology, Periphery. She is currently studying toward a degree in English Literature and Religious Studies at the Victoria University of Wellington and writing her first speculative novel. She blogs at http://lynnejamneckdiaries.blogspot.com/

"The Voyage Out" by Gwyneth Jones (Periphery: Erotic Lesbian Futures edited by Lynne Jamneck) has been published in the 26th Year’s Best SF, edited by Gardner Dozois.

The ROR team would like to thank Lynne for her series of blog posts about editing this week. Check out her previous posts on the Highs and Lows of Anthology Editing and Editing Dos and Don'ts - it's not too late to join the discussion!

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Your Book Cover and Promotion

Now, cover images—most authors have no or very little control over what actually ends up on the cover of their books. Unless your first name is followed by something like King, or Rowling, the likelihood that you will not have final say over the cover of your book is always going to be there. I made sure to state in my editorial contract that I wanted to be directly involved in this aspect of the anthology. I do believe that a cover can make or break a book. People have short attention spans, and you need to hook them in. The cover is the first thing they see. Plain as that. So hook 'em.

Promoting is another important aspect of the post-publication period. Make sure you announce the release of your title on appropriate listservs and groups where you can connect with other like-minded readers and authors. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter can serve very well as promotional tools. And blog, blog, blog, always providing a link to the title listed on a space like Amazon, Barnes and Noble or your publisher for those eager to buy a copy.

Yes, it all sounds pretty technical and like a lot of slogging through massive amounts of words. And it is. But look—you're not going to be doing this sort of thing unless you like reading, right? And you're not going to do it to make money, either. (Trust me, you're not.) Hopefully, you've let yourself in for this little adventure because you're a little weird (at least, according to your "normal" friends) and you get a kick out of seeing thirteen-odd stories find one another in the space of two-hundred pages, the whole thing coming together to say something about that initial spark which set the project in motion originally. That's how I define a highlight. When you finally hold the finished product in your hand and it hits you that an idea in your head has become something physical, something concrete. Periphery ended up being short-listed for both a Lambda and Golden Crown Award this year, which is fantastic, and I think certainly a reflection on how much of a positive experience it was for me. Different editors work in diverse ways. I don't think there is a particular right or wrong way of going about it. As both a writer and an editor, for me personally I want to say something through editing as much as I do through writing. It's only the approach that changes.

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Tansy says: Thanks, Lynne! I'd love to know - since you were involved in choosing the cover - why you went for this piece of art and what it says to you, and about the book it belongs to. Anthologies are more and more becoming the preserve of the small and independent rather than mainstream 'big' presses - can anyone else cite some good examples of cover art matching the anthology to great effect? Or have any other happy/horrific cover art stories?

Editing: the DOs and DON'Ts

Posted on behalf of Lynne Jamneck. The ROR team would like to take the chance to congratulate Lynne. Gwyneth Jones's story 'The Voyage out' which appeared in Lynne's anthology, Periphery: Erotic Lesbian Futures, has been selected to appear in Gardner Dozois' 26th Year's Best SF.



Lynne talks about anthology editing.

The next thing that you're going to want to remember is that you're going to read a lot. Though I had specific authors who were contributing, I also sent out an open call, because there's nothing quite like the potential for discovering a gem of a story from someone unpublished. But the opposite is also true. The likelihood of reading a lot of bad stuff is, well, very likely. And for heaven sakes, when it comes to emailing writers to tell them that they're stories have unfortunately not made the final cut, be gentle. Don't be snotty and don't be mean. Be encouraging where you can. But be honest, too.

Once you have your stories, the editing process starts; working with your final contributors to make their stories the best they can be. There is a fine line here, and I think I'm lucky in the sense that I'm a writer myself. I thought "how would I like an editor to approach me, to ask me about potentially changing an aspect of my story?" And really, the only reason you would ask any author to do that is because a) something does not make logical sense, or b) a small change can potentially illuminate something deeper relating to character, motive or the general impact of the story.

Because my background is mostly in the creative side of things, I chose to leave the mailing out of contracts and payments to contributors to the publisher, who was happy to do so after I had supplied them with up to date details of contributors' contact details.

Rowena, here. What experiences have you had working with editors? I discovered one of my short children's books had been extended by one extra page without being consulted. What was disappointing was that the added text completely missed the point of the original text. It was just plain bad and it had my name on it.

Horror stories, anyone? Or have you been inspired by a great editor?

Drop by Post

The 26th Year's Best SF, edited by Garnder Dozois.

Honorable Mentions for RORees:

Rowena Cory Daniells. Purgatory (Dreaming Again)
Richard Harland, A Guided Tour in the Kingdom of the Dead (Dreaming Again)
Margo Lanagan, The Fifth Star in the Southern Cross (Dreaming Again)
Margo Lanagan, An Honest Day's Work (The Starry Rift)
Margo Lanagan, Night of the Firstlings (Eclipse Two)

YAY!

The Highlights and Pitfalls of Anthology Editing

(Posted on Lynne Jamneck's behalf)


Where to begin? I know—thank you Marianne de Pierres for asking me to blog about something that, at least from my experience, no-one seems to know if there is a right or wrong way of going about doing. I've heard horror stories from other editors about their experiences compiling anthologies and I must admit, I'm not nearly an expert on the subject. So all I can talk about is my own experience as it played out when I put together Periphery—Erotic Lesbian Futures for Lethe Press.

Selecting A Theme

First of all, I think your experience is going to be much more satisfying from the start if what you are aiming to compile speaks to you personally. One of the reasons I enjoyed putting Periphery together was because I was aiming to create the kind of anthology I had been looking for in bookstores for years, without ever finding it. What was that you ask? It's hard to explain in a few sentences but the gist of it was that I wanted to read SF stories, written from a queer perspective where the eroticism functionally contributed to the overall story; was, in fact, essential to it. So I had two perspectives that I wanted to blend effectively, and I count myself extremely fortunate to have received the wonderful stories I did from the range of contributors included in the final collection.

Because I had such a specific idea of what I wanted, I also had specific authors in mind that I wanted to approach. Some of them I had spoken to before, or worked with before whilst others were authors whose work I admired. The great thing about most SF authors is that if you send them a nice email and ask whether they'd be potentially interested in contributing to your project, the likelihood of you getting a nice, timely email back in return is almost guaranteed. Whether they will be able to contribute depends on various factors, but I'd say the most important is payment, and whether they have time available.

Most publishers will advance (once your proposal has been accepted) an amount either before or after publication to pay contributors, depending on contractual agreements. Needless to say, the bigger the payment, the better the chances of having high-profile authors involved, though this isn't always the case. It's not because writers are greedy, it's simply because writing is what they do for a living. They need compensation for the time they commit to projects.

What unforgettable short stories or anthologies have you read? Why were they unforgettable?

Madly, Without Measuring (Tansy's Writing Process)

I think my writing process is somewhere between Rowena's tidy linear progression and Trent's addictive scrambling in the dark.

Generally speaking, I do start at the beginning of a novel, keep writing until I get to the end and then stop. I've written with different techniques over the years and have realised that doing too much in the way of note-writing and plotting ahead of time is very bad for me. Having said that, I usually have an end point - a final scene or moment - and do my best to fall gracefully towards it.

I don't write that scene down, though, as Trent does. (I did this once and promptly stopped writing the book) I rely too much on the twists and turns my brain comes up with as I write to dare guess things like the mental state my characters might be in at the end of a book.

With Power and Majesty, book one of the Creature Court (which I sent off the final version of to the publisher about ten minutes ago) I had that scene in my head for years. I knew exactly how the first book would end, and it would blow readers out of the water! During my enforced exile from that novel (as I finished my thesis and had a baby) one of the toughest things I had to come to terms with was that the amazing scene that had dragged me through so much writing so far would not in fact fall at the end of book one. Too much had to happen. In the end that scene fell in the middle of book 2 (I wrote it for real a couple of months ago) and I hope it will have similar stunning effect on readers (though it may make fewer of them wish to kill me than if it had been the end point of a book).

The big difference to how I write now, as opposed to how I wrote before motherhood, is that I have learned to draft more 'lightly' than before. I used to be the kind of dense (as in thickly spread prose, not dumbarse) writer whose book would be at least in third-fourth draft stage by the time I came to the end of it. But that kind of writing requires uninterrupted space, quiet, and an attention span. All things that flew out the window when I gave birth.

Now I write faster, more furiously. I lay down drafts without worrying too much about the details, and then come back and put in the hard yards on the Make Writing Good aspects. Oddly I find that the end result of this is still more time-efficient than my old style - though I've written quite a lot between then and now, and it could just be that I'm a faster writer than I used to be.

Indeed, I've learned that anything to push the pace along is good for me. When I am in Writing Mode I need a daily quota to hit. Nanowrimo's 1667 or so daily count is a bit of a push, but I found earlier this year that 500 or 1000 was perfectly doable. I am an obsessive, compulsive person and if I don't tap into this side of me, I don't get any writing done at all. (I've just come out of a 2-3 month stint of Editing and am so looking forward to getting back to daily wordcounts)

As for the rest of it - well, when I first saw Rowena's references to scene notes, glossary of terms etc, I laughed, because I now have all these things for P&M - but only constructed them over the last month or two, in self defence, after working on the book on and off for over five years. I knew I needed the glossary this year when I started writing Book 2 and realised I didn't remember half the names of my minor characters. Likewise I needed to sort out a timeline for my backstory once and for all - as I learned upon the discovery that I had at least three versions of several relationships floating around in my "notes."

My Swedish writing fairy has been begging me for a copy of my Fasti (the festival calendar I use for Power and Majesty) for ages, so I finally sent it to her, in an excel doc full of various notes, plans, etc. She declared that my worldbuilding could fill a book. I got mildly hysterical and said 'it's not worldbuilding, it's self-defence!' Actually, the calendar, based on the Roman Fasti, is the only piece of worldbuilding I set up for myself *before* writing, and thank goodness for that.

So yes. I have actually come up with a similar process to Rowena's, but instead of setting myself up properly from the start, I hurl myself haphazardly into my novel-to-be, only producing supporting material and organised notes when the many problems caused by not having such things stack up so high that I can't see daylight.

In short, I write like I sew, madly and without measuring! Anyone who has ever seen one of my quilts is currently nodding sagely and saying 'that explains a lot.'

There is more to say here on the inspiration side of my writing process - words, music and images, but I might come back to that next week. Right now, there is celebrating to be done. One book down, two to go!

Trent, Orbit and Death Works

Our own Trent Jamieson announces his exciting three book sale to Orbit.

Writing Process

Inspiration for King Rolen's Kin, my new fantasy series.

Havock 21 asked about the writing process. I'm a real control freak, I must be the exact opposite of Trent!

I've just delivered King Rolen's Kin books 1,2, & 3 to my agent. If you could see me now, I'd be doing the Happy Dance.

This has been a long time coming. Back in 1998 I wrote a fantasy novella. Not much call for novellas of 90 pages, so I put it aside. Came back to it in 2002 and it grew into a book. That one book grew into three books and the first 3 chapters were what I submitted to my agent, John Jarrold, when I approached him to see if he would take me on, in 2005. (Only book one was polished, the rest was about 600 pages of story arc).

Unlike Trent, who writes a bit here and a bit there. I sit down and write from beginning to end. If I jam up, it is because something isn't working earlier on and I go back to the beginning and do a rewrite. By then I know the world and the characters so much better, so I do what I call 'layering'. I add layers of characterisation and back story with each rewrite.

But it gets very complex with over 1700 pages of story. So I keep scene notes for each chapter as I write. That way if I decide a character had to have a certain prop with him 7 days ago before he was kidnapped, I can make sure he had it on him, without wandering around pages of manuscript trying to find the exact scene.

I also keep a 'terminology' file. Like all fantasy writers, I create my world and people it with societies, inventing words along the way. I have to remember how to spell those words and what they mean. So I need a terminology file.

Then because I have multiple points of view and the narrative takes place over so many days/weeks during the course story I keep a 'timeline' file so I know how many days have passed and where each person is at a particular time and how old they were when things happened in the backstory, (only important things that affect them now).

I also keep a file of images that have inspired me. For King Rolen's Kin I did some research into Russia. Thirty years ago there was a National Geographic cover of a Russian peasant boy. I can still see it clearly in my mind's eye. I needed a look for the people, and a look for the way they built their homes and strongholds. I wanted it to be a little different from your average medieval fantasy. So King Rolen's stronghold has towers and domes. Inside it is ornately decorated like St Petersburg.

When I'm writing the world I create seems more real to me that the world where politicians wrangle over Utegate.

Was that the kind of writing process you were wondering about, Havock21?