Do you ever check yourself? In what you say, what you do, and what you write? Do you stop and say, “Here’s a line I must not cross”? Or do you spew your thoughts and ideas out loud and on paper and in blog posts across the web without a thought for how they will be perceived by others?

This is an electronic world we live in and as much as things are so very easy now because of technology, it is also a very harsh and unforgiving frontier on some fronts. What you put out there in the electronic world can and will, and often does, come back to bite you on your pretty little ass.

Have you ever heard of the Wayback Machine? I can use it and dig up cached copies of websites I built more than 10 years ago. I cringe when I see them because my work is more refined and prettier now. And even though those sites are no longer up, they are still out there for people to find, if you know how to dig.

When you post to your blog, how many people are going to see it and remember your words? Dooce is a blogger who became famous for losing her job because of what she said on her blog. My own pal Karl had the same thing happen to him. I even have a post on my blog about “How I Almost Got Karled” which is about how I got “talked to” at work because of frustrations I’d unloaded on my personal blog.

Yahoo groups and blogs are places you can call your own, but you have to ask yourself how much access do people have to those things? How much of yourself are you giving away to others in a thoughtless, careless manner? Are you giving a stalker the means to find your house or your place of employment? Are you giving readers a bad view of yourself as an author when you whine constantly on your blog or public group about your bad editors, stupid publishers, and the antics of other authors who are behaving in a less than professional manner? And what about when you blatantly do things on groups that are against the rules? Don’t those things reflect poorly on you as well?

Yes. They. Do.

If promo is only Monday and you send one through on Wednesday, and you do it more than once, people start thinking you’re either getting preferential treatment (which will piss them off) or that you’re arrogant and don’t give a shit about anyone’s rules.  The more authors and readers see you do these things, the fewer fans and buyers you get for your books. And yes, the more publishers and editors who see it, the fewer houses you’ll find for your work. No one wants to deal with a prima donna. Maybe you’re not really one, but by flaunting the rules repeatedly, you’ve given the impression that you are.

If you post the wrong kind of promo to a loop, the same thing holds true. If the group is for sweet romance only and you’re posting sci-fi erotica you can be sure that someone – probably lots of someones – are going to notice. And they won’t forget that you were either too stupid to figure out your promo didn’t fit that group or you were too arrogant to care. Readers don’t want to buy from authors who are assholes. I don’t want to buy from authors who are assholes. Most people don’t.

And speaking of groups, how much should you tell people on an open, public group? I have a closed, non-public, invite only group. I say whatever I want there and invite the members to do the same. But we’re talking about two dozen people who probably aren’t the type to go spilling their guts to the web that Rott made Lex cry last night. (He didn’t. It’s just an example. LOL) Or that menopause is kicking my ass with more periods than I’ve had in 10 years. (Quite true, unfortunately.)

But did you REALLY need to know that about me? Did you REALLY want to know it? And should I have even told you? How much of my private life should I share with you before it becomes monotonous and stupid and fuel for someone to make fun of me in an effort to boost their sales by hopefully diminishing mine?

And more than all that, how much do you have to say and do before you lose the respect of others, sales for your books, and publishers you can submit to?

If you sign a contract with a house not to give away more than 5 copies of your book and you give away 10 and the publisher finds out about it because you posted it to your blog all braggy-like…do you think they are just going to smile and say, “Oh, that Lex. She’s just the nicest thing. We’ll just tell her not to do that again.” HELL TO THE NO. They are gonna be pissed and rightly so. You are now in breach of contract, honey, and if they have already gotten on your case for other things (promoing with non-sanctioned excerpts and blurbs and artwork, talking about their staff publically in a way that isn’t positive, etc.) you can bet your bottom dollar that your next submission to them is going to be looked at askance.

Sure, the big sellers get away with these antics. Sometimes. But do you want to risk it? Risk sales, fans, professional respect?

Authors need to press the flesh, get out there and tell people who you are, show them your work. But you need to do this in a professional manner, using the most polished tools you have, and you need to always be aware of your web-presence. Be aware of the fact that no matter how casual the internet is, it’s a faithless bitch who will stab you in the back because every freaking error and misstep you have ever made in this cyber world can be uncovered and used against you.

Choose your words and deeds wisely in public, and make no mistake, this internet IS public. The information you whisper in one ear on the net isn’t really going into just one ear…it’s going into millions. Edit yourself as you should edit your work. And before you frown at me and tell me that’s a lot of extra BS you never signed up for with this gig, let me remind you of things your parents probably told you.

Put your best foot forward.

Think before you speak.

Before you type into that chat window, IM window, Twitter box, Facebook wall, Yahoo group, blog post, blog comment, forum,  message board, PM, email, text message, or any other social media or internet related thing… do those two things.  And remember, there’s a reason people yell TMI across all social media. Sometimes, there are things we just don’t want to know.  So before you spew your guts out on Facebook or the loops, you better make sure you know and understand just exactly what truly is too much.

It is now the close of my first year as a published author. I received my first contract on October 30, 2008 and my first release was February 22, 2009. With 2009 being my first year in this business, I thought it would kinda cool to see where I stood at the end of the calendar year. So here are some numbers to get you rolling.

Submissions: 17

Contracts: 17

Releases: 15

Print books: 3

Rejections: 3

Revise and Resubmits: 2

Anthologies: 3

Short Stories: 8

Novellas: 6

Novels: 2

Bestsellers: 4

Publishers: 8

The rejections were both right at the very start of my career. Two for Silver Lining and one for the first version of Runaways. The publisher who turned down Runaways didn’t even have their doors open yet and didn’t open them when they had posted that they would. That was probably a narrow escape I had there. The two for Silver Lining were followed by an acceptance. However, the small press where Silver Lining is didn’t give the antho a very attractive cover and I haven’t seen any royalties from this short story.

The R&Rs were for The Phoenix Prophecy (Where There’s Smoke.) Loose Id was interested but since it was an anthology they wanted some changes. Liquid Silver said they’d take it as a series rather than an anthology but wanted the ending to have more pop. I fixed the ending and LSB contracted it.

The two contracted submissions that aren’t out yet are The Phoenix Prophecy: Where There’s Smoke and a dark tale in the Weirdly 3 anthology, Ain’t Nuthin’ But a Hellhound.

The three print books are Tales of the Darkworld Volume One (Shifting Winds and Hot Water), Fire Season, and Love Me Dead.

The three anthologies are Weirdly 3 (that isn’t out yet), Thrilled (with Silver Lining), and Love Me Dead (with Rousing Caine.)

The short stories are Silver Lining, Mating, Runaways, Ain’t Nuthin’ But a Hellhound, Christmas Hookup, Christmas in Hell, Christmas Catch, and Holiday Hearts.

Novellas are The Wise Guy, Shifting Winds, Hot Water, Rousing Caine, The Pixie Prince, and Where There’s Smoke.

Novels were Fire Season and Ride the Lightning.

My publishers are Pink Petal Books, Liquid Silver Books, MLR Press, Cobblestone Press, Freya’s Bower, Wild Child Publishing, Noble Romance, and Midnight Showcase Fiction.

Now, the term bestseller is where you all may find yourselves scratching your heads. What ranks as a bestseller on some publisher’s lists (for their house only) would not cut it up against the numbers of a bigger house or a third party distributor like All Romance eBooks. I’m not going to get into a big discussion on that. I think it’s a topic for another day, but I need you all to understand the framework for the numbers I’m about to give you.

Basically, I have four bestsellers: Fire Season, Mating, Shifting Winds, and Christmas Catch. All of these have earned their silver star at ARe. The reason I’m using ARe as my yardstick for what’s a bestseller is simple. ARe sells books from ALL publishers, not just my publisher. So those books have sold really well at ARe despite the fierce competition. Christmas Hookup, which isn’t counted here because it’s free, has been listed as the best selling book of the western/cowboy category at ARe for a year. (When you sort the category by best selling Hookup rises to the top. It’s been that way since January 2009.) My estimate (I’ll have actual numbers on this probably next week) is that it’s been downloaded over 2,500 times between ARe, PPB, and some damned pirate site that showed actual download numbers until I had em remove the book. I can tell you that Fire Season alone has sold over 500 copies. Shifting Winds, in a single day of freebie downloading at ARe, was downloaded almost 2,000 times.

At PPB, to make it onto the bestseller chart, you have to have sold about 50 copies there on the publisher’s site.  So the #1 book on their bestseller list is probably closer to the 150 copy mark. (These are guesstimates. I don’t have hardcore numbers but Mary says it sounds about right without us crunching the actual numbers.) So far, all of my PPB releases have reached this benchmark. This sounds pretty good to me for a small pub only in its second year (but growing.) I know I’ve sold more at PPB with any one single title up against my one title at Cobblestone.

Now, looking at the numbers from a royalties perspective I can tell you that Fire Season (which released in July) would have made me PAN eligible. It’s my understanding that to be PAN eligible an author has to have made at least $1000 from a single title in a calendar year. (There’s a whole other criteria thing re non-vanity publishers and RWA eligible blah blah, but I’m just talking money here not politics.) A thousand bucks from one book in six months is a lotta clams. And I can see what I’m making in royalties but those payouts don’t give me a true sense of where I am with sales. I just go spend the moolah. LOL I can tell you that my royalties jumped significantly when my publishers put my books on ARe, My Bookstore and More, Fictionwise, Amazon, and others. Which is one reason I used the ARe yardstick here to define bestseller.

I could give you more numbers. Promo related stuff like:  I did three radio interviews, was a featured author on TRS once, did thirteen interviews, and fifteen guest blog posts.  I could tell you how many contests I’ve had, how many bookmarks and magnets I sent out. But promo is something I’ll get into another day. Suffice to say that I gave away books (both Ebooks and autographed print books), magnets, bookmarks, bookcards, and sent out author holiday cards.  This coming year I’ll have stuff going to some cons too. Lori Foster’s may see a very unusual Lex basket. The Escapade Slash con will have Love Me Dead bookmarks. EPICcon will have Ride the Lightning magnets. Promo stuff builds goodwill and people really remember you for those darn magnets!

So at the end of the year, I’ve surpassed my only goal of a dozen releases by three. But a dozen releases, even with so many of them being novellas or shorts, is a shitload of work. You have to be committed and driven. You have to have a promo plan and manage it while managing to write and keep to deadlines. You have to learn from your edits and editors. You have to read and pay attention to industry blogs to see what pubs not to sub to. You have to have a PLAN for your CAREER. Because at the end of this year, that is the one thing I’ve taken away from this experience in spades… I have a new career. And fuck me if it ain’t getting hotter with each release.

I may not have arrived yet… but I think just about everyone knows I’m coming.

I’m anal. No one I know would describe me any differently. I write a book and then take a couple of days off. I come back to it with rested eyes and I begin a self edit. I look for all the telling that I know I do. I insert all the dropped words I know are missing. I look for pet words and phrases. I look for weak spots in the storyline or plot. I look for places where I rushed and could have explained better. When I’ve done all that, I turn it over to another set of eyes.

When I write M/M, the next set of eyes usually belong to a gay or bi man. Most other stuff I turn over to one of three people whose opinions I value as a critiquer. None of the three pull any punches with me. They are hard on me.  “You info dumped here, delete it.” “Too much scenery here, not enough emotion. Shift the focus.” “I really think you have overused the word PINK. You need to search on it and remove it.” Sometimes when I worry about how something will be perceived, I get a new set of eyes, a true reader. For Ride the Lightning with it’s suicide scene, I wanted someone other than my normal critters and betas to tell me the book was fine with that scene in it. So I handed the manuscript to one of the AWH puppies.

My point here is that when you finish a manuscript… you are far from finished. In point of fact, the real work has just begun. Trying to polish something that is your baby can be very difficult. You’ve been looking at it so long, you don’t see the dropped words and missing commas and hyphens. Having another set of eyes is IMPERATIVE. If you are doing it all on your own and subbing it to publishers you are probably going to get a rejection or at least a revise and resubmit.

How do I know this? I’ve been reading submissions for Freya’s Bower and Wild Child Publishing for nearly a year now.  I’ve seen a lot of authors turn in manuscripts that could have been better if only they had critters, beta readers, and had learned to self edit. Missing periods and scrambled words just don’t belong in a professional submission. You should not be sending your story to a publisher without someone else vetting it first. Even the best of us can miss a dropped word. In fact, most authors miss them because they’ve just been too close to the manuscript. The other set of eyes is pretty much mandatory for catching those boo boos.

Now, go ahead and crit my blog post. It’s a blog post, not a manuscript for a publisher. At the same time, it’s nearly 9 pm and I’ve worked OT today and I haven’t been sleeping well.That means  SOMETHING is bound to be wrong with this post! Will I see it? Maybe not.  Will you? Well, you’re more likely to than I am! And that right there is the thrust of my post.

As writers and authors, you should be self editing. But you should also have those manuscripts critiqued by someone who is knowledgeable and willing to tell it like it is. Sycophants need not apply for this job! (Don’t know that word? Dictionary.com! GO. Go, now!)

If you are not self editing and you are not using critiquers who know what they are talking about… you are not ready to be published. You deserve all the stinging red marks an editor is going to fill your manuscript with. And if you receive a rejection, well, you may just deserve that too because I am here, telling you what to do to help avoid those things.  If you choose to ignore my advice, you’re courting the big R or the grumpy editor with the red tracking marks. If you don’t believe me, ask the whacker wielders at AWH.

Avail yourself of the groups out there that can help you. Ask published authors or former editors to read your work. If you are a writer who has never been pubbed, don’t hand your manuscript off to a handful of other aspiring writers who are in the same boat as you. Give it to someone more experienced. If you are an author already, give the manuscript to another author or former editor. Perhaps someone who has been doing this longer than you or who has had more success at it. Don’t sit on your laurels and turn in shitty, messy manuscripts to your editors thinking they will take it cause they took the last three… You may find yourself shocked right out of your complacence with a big, fat rejection email.

Go on out there and edit yourself. Then get someone else to crit it. Give yourself a fighting chance to win at the publishing game.

Have a great day!

Lex Valentine