Francine Craft

Wondrous Sunset

Ask yourself if you really want to succeed.  Stupid question?  Far from it.  Success means many things to many people.  Webster’s definition that I like best speaks of being favored.  Not an exact quote, but that’s one of the deepest meanings.  To be favored is often to meet with hostile envy.  Can you take it?  Think about it long and hard, because it’s an emotional basic of self-publishing.  Not everybody can do it and some will be envious if you’re successful with it.

Now, to the nitty gritty.  Not enough of you who are interested in self-publishing are willing to do the basics.  Study the market for your book — first.  Sound crazy?  Greedy?  It’s not.  Why spend a big chunk of your time, emotions and energy on something that a little spadework will show isn’t going anywhere?  I can hear you groaning that you write from the heart and that’s what matters, isn’t it?

Indeed it is, so why not consider tweaking your treasured baby so it’s what you want it to be and it fits what the reading public wants.  For that, you’re going to need a  market analysis that will tell you who’s reading what, what’s selling, where, and for how long.  Anybody who writes a book and doesn’t get a market analysis is cheating him or herself.  Like love, you have to be involved with it to appreciate it, and like love, it grows and develops as you put yourself into it.

I thought it was crazy to get a market analysis at the beginning.  I’ve learned better and I think you will too.  They aren’t expensive.  You can google it or you can contact Wheatmark.com.  It’s much to your advantage.  Try it.

Filed under: Publishing by Francine Craft | Social tagging: basic > first things first > Google > hostile envy > inexpensive > love > market analysis > Marketing > self-publishing > success > Wheatmark
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Nature At Her Best

If you hope to succeed with self-publishing as with anything else, you’ve got to get your act together. First, relax and use your noodle.  As I’ve pointed out here, study the field thoroughly, take the time to familiarize yourself with the good guys and the bad guys.  Make use of your Better Business Bureau; they’ll point out the rotten ones.  Go to your library, google, check out Amazon, but somehow get the so-called bibles of self-publishing.  There are few, but they’ll save you a lot of trouble.

An excellent place to start is with Wheatmark.com.  That excellent  publishing company offers you a free series of pamphlets for downloading.  Reading them, you’ll find out if self-publishing is for you.  Better to find out early than late.  And too, they have an excellent book for free downloading called Marketecture.  That one book transformed my life, and I’ve been a published writer — by good publishers — for 20 years.  It is well written, clear, concise and to my mind, one of the best I’ve read.

Too much information and your mind is going to sleep.  Please mull this over and come back for more which I’ll share with you often.  I just wish I’d had someone to offer me more tips in a blog, but little was available when I became hooked years ago.  Now you’ve got me and I’ve dug deep and found much.  I’m willing to share because I want your ideas and your experiences. So, stay tuned!

Happy self-publishing!

Filed under: Publishing by Francine Craft | Social tagging: get it right > libraries > Marketing > Publishing > self-publishing > sharing tips > Wheatmark
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Earth and Sky

I will begin again today to discuss self-publishing and what it can and cannot do for your books.  I began to be interested in this very useful form of publishing more than 20 years ago.  At that time, it wasn’t very well regarded, results were so-so and it could be expensive.  Today, it’s all the rage, and the results are beautiful.  But look before you leap, and study, study, study the field.

Stay away from the companies that don’t answer promptly, give you short shrift when they do answer and who give evasive answers.  It wasn’t quite a horror story, but a woman I knew was in tears because her book was more than halfway through the printing process when several new costs came up that she hadn’t been carefully told about.  So, a year later, still no book.  Check to see if their total cost quoted allows for a Library of Congress Control Number if your book is fortunate enough to get one.  You’re going to have to have an ISBN.  You’ll want your book to be listed with W.W. Bowker.

It will be helpful to have a See Inside The Book feature with Amazon.  How much does company charge for extra copies?  It’s to your advantage to check all this out before you begin.  And whatever you do, check and double check your contract.  I would advise legal assistance.  It doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg.  Universities in your town or nearby have law schools whose students can and will help for a nominal fee.

Thus you begin on firm footing and you won’t be crying later.  Most companies do a good job putting out books.  It’s no longer difficult, so that leaves time for getting a good market and editorial analyses, then superb editing and proofing.  The list isn’t endless.  It just seems that way.  And, with your brainchild in hand, and few or no disappointments, you’ll be glad you published with care.

Filed under: Publishing by Francine Craft | Social tagging: books > coming up short > disappointment > editing > editorial > heartache > Marketing > pitfalls > proofing > Publishing
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I’ve studied books and videos about Haiti for more than 20 years, at first doing reseach on a couple of books I wanted to write, then out of sheer interest.  I haven’t written about the devastation that has swept that country in the past couple of weeks because there seemed to be nothing I could add in the way of helpful present-day information.

Now that things have settled just a bit, I find myself musing on the fact that our media has done a good job of giving us facts and figures, but nowhere do I find columns and writeups and broadcasts that give us the “soul” of the Haitian people.  Ah yes, we have idiots like Pat Robertson, who calls  himself a man of God, who ascribes the devastation as God’s punishment of the Haitian people for their massacre of the French long ago.  Of course he says nothing about the horror that Black Haitians lived through under the French enslavement, thought to be one of the most inhuman known.

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Filed under: Publishing by Francine Craft | Social tagging: devastation > drums > French > Haiti > help > hurricane > other countries > Pat Robertson > slavery > U.S. > voodoo > Voudou
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Little Shaniya Davis

Few things have caught my troubled attention like the Shaniya Davis case.  This little five-year-old’s background is pretty well known, and the fact that she was raped, strangled, and abandoned by a monster her mother had sold her to as a sex slave is well known too.  The funeral drew 2,000 or more mourners and a famous sports star paid for her funeral.

Yes, I weep and others weep for another of God’s little angels, but how long will our tears last?  And what will we do to prevent this kind of thing from happening again?  I’ve done articles of abuse of all kinds, because any abuse demeans the human spirit and human life.  I got little response.  I belong to Child Prevention Abuse organizations.  Do you?  I certainly hope so.

Shaniya’s mother is a monster who should never have become a mother.  Yet she has another seven-year-old daughter and is pregnant with a child by her present lover.  Monster or not, her life goes on.  Detectives say she sold Shaniya into sex slavery to pay off her bills.  You have only to look at the photos of the child in her last days to know she was being wretchedly treated.  Her hair is neglected, her suffering is plainly mirrored on her face.  This child was being looked after, or rather neglected, by someone from hell.

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Filed under: Publishing by Francine Craft | Social tagging: bad mothers > child > drugs > evil > horrendous > McNeill > monsters > murder > rape > throwaway
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