“I touch my fingers against the smooth skin of my cheek. I can’t feel where the purple begins and ends, aside from it being slightly warmer, but I know exactly where it is—it spreads out from the right side of my nose, almost to my ear, and comes down to my bottom lip in a lopsided triangle.

“I know I’m lucky; it could be worse. The port-wine stain just misses my forehead and eye, which means I don’t have glaucoma, seizures, and brain abnormalities. But I still feel like I’m from another planet. Maybe that’s why I love comics so much. Superheroes are always outsiders, and most had difficult childhoods. They feel like my people. I finger comb my hair over the right side of my face. I know from long practice by the weight of my hair and the angle it falls, that it’s covering my cheek enough to help me pass. I don’t need a mirror to know. Not that I own one.”

STAINED is available now from all major book retailers!

So many of my clients have reached out to me wanting a blog tour, but all too often I end up cringing when I hear what it is they want. If you’re not familiar, a blog tour is a really interesting concept in which you as the author “appear” on several different blogs and talk about your book. It’s organized into a tour because it has defined start and end dates, which helps with the promotion and the generating of the all-important buzz.

There are a couple of inherent problems with a blog tour.

First, they’re not new anymore. Everybody’s doing it. Even worse, tons of people have decided that just because they know how to work Facebook, they’re now suddenly qualified to create a blog tour AND charge money for the service. I’ve seen companies spring up overnight with flashy little websites that charge hundreds of dollars to get all of their blogger friends to let you write a blog post to pimp your book.

Second, there’s no very concrete data on how good an investment this is going to be. There are so many variables that come into play, such as the genre you write and the quality or pricing of your book, that it’s impossible to say, “Blog tours are the best promotional tool EVER!” or “Blog tours are the biggest waste of time and money EVER.” It’s impossible to say whether or not investing your time and money in this promo concept will pay off in terms of book sales.

Third, how can you be sure that the blogs you’re being hosted on actually have a readership? If you’re scheduled on ten different blogs whose only traffic is the blogger and whose only shares are coming from the account she made for her cat, you’re not going to sell any books or build your audience.

Finally, the biggest problem is they are so easy to screw up. As an author, you are relying on other people to post the writings that you send them, and sometimes they just can’t post them for one reason or another. I’ve also clicked a link that some author tweeted, announcing that today’s stop on his blog tour was at such-and-such a website, and was HORRIFIED to see that his political spy thriller novel was being featured on a website whose background was a deep blue starry field filled with fairies and unicorns. The unicorn crowd who pops over to that particular website doesn’t strike me as huge Alex Cross fans. I may be judging here, but that’s just the feeling I got.

So, does that mean we should all shun blog tours? Of course not. But it does mean you have your homework to do.

First, there are lovely people out there who really just care a lot about indie authors, and those people will be happy to help you find book reviewers or people to let you talk about your book. For free, even.

Second, if you are paying a company to set this up, ask for the concrete numbers of book sales or audience shares that they have generated from the last three tours they set up.

Third, find out who these blogs are before you pay anything. Make sure they are specific to your genre and that they have a genuine audience who shares the posts, not a cat walking across a keyboard who accidentally hits the Share button.

The most important thing you can do is to remember that a blog tour is NOT a way to shove your book in people’s faces and get them to click the BUY button. It is a way to connect with readers, to share a little bit more about yourself and your craft, and to build connections within the publishing industry. And make sure that you use your tour to reciprocate, and to share the bloggers’ generosity in hosting you by supporting them and their readers.

While all the news about self-publishing and indie publishing makes it out to be some new wave-of-the-future option for authors, self-publishing really isn’t a new concept. Sure, the stigma has been mostly torn away in recent years, but even decades ago an author with a completed manuscript and a healthy checkbook could get published.

Here was the problem: notice that I didn’t say a “good “completed manuscript. It just had to be finished. And even that was not a deal breaker.

Vanity presses opened their doors many years ago to cater to authors who could not get published otherwise. Their business model consisted of taking your money, turning your typewritten pages into a print edition, then charging you outrageous amounts of money for copies of your own book, which YOU were now responsible for shipping, storing, selling, marketing, more shipping, more storing, and ultimately giving away to all of your friends and family members for Christmas.

Now that self-publishing and print-on-demand publishing have come along, guess what? Those vanity presses didn’t go anywhere. They’re still sitting there, taking authors’ money and often giving them a box of poorly edited doorstops in return.

“But hold on there a minute, missy!” you might be thinking. “There are some reputable companies who help authors in that way!”

Of course there are. And I don’t want to sound for even a second like there’s not a reputable non-thief, non-charlatan vanity press out there. I’m sure there are a handful. And those companies actually do serve a purpose, as their model is to support authors who don’t have the knowledge or know-how—or heck, even the time—to format and publish their books on any of the awesome print-on-demand platforms out there.

But there are some things you HAVE to be aware of when considering a vanity press:

1. Who else has used this company? Ask for a list of names of authors and books, and check out those books online. Read reviews of those books. Are there awful comments about the horrible formatting or the lack of editing?
2. DEMAND that the vanity press NOT list itself as your “publisher,” and here’s why. They are not fooling anyone in the industry into believing that your book was picked up by a publishing house, AND they have total access and control to your sales page. YOU will not be the person given access to your sales report and you will instead rely on your “publisher” to tell you how many copies you sold.
3. NEVER work with a company who is going to charge you thousands of dollars up front for their services AND take a percentage of your royalties. They already got paid! YOU paid them! WHY are they also taking your royalties?
4. Check out how much YOUR copies of YOUR book will cost you. Believe it or not, there is sometimes a barely-better-than-retail cost to the author of the book. It’s understandable that the company would make a profit on the printing of your book; they have bills to pay, too, after all. But it is inexcusable that an author pay sometimes only $2 less than a reader would pay for a copy of the book.
5. Find out BEFORE you sign WHO is going to work on your book. It’s easier than ever for someone to hang out a shingle and call himself a publisher, all while telling you that his “team of professionals” will work on your book. That could mean that he has his mom edit it and his cousin draw a picture for the cover. Ask for names of these professionals in advance and check them out online.
6. READ YOUR CONTRACT.
7. READ YOUR CONTRACT. That had to be said twice. If you don’t know what it states, how do you know if the vanity press broke it? Did you get everything you paid for? Were you LIED TO and told that he owns the rights to your book? Or did you really and truly just sign away the rights to your book? READ and know it before you sign.

Upfront service providers should exist to help authors with the creation of their actual books, but they aren’t supposed to be allowed to stay in business if they’re just out for a quick buck. Look them up before you sign anything, and watch out for yourself.

A really, really great thing has happened, mostly thanks to the ease and lack of risk involved in digital publishing: the genres are blending and blurring into whole new, never-before-seen categories within their rigid guidelines.

Once upon a time, genres not only had strict conventions for storyline, subject matter, there were even acceptable limits for word count. This was back when any book that was lucky enough to get published had to first run the gauntlet of agents, acquisitions editors, content editors, editorial boards, even the advertising and PR guys within the publishing house. Basically, if it was too risky in terms of content, it was too risky to invest in publishing.

Thanks to the boom in self-publishing and digital publishing, authors and publishers are somewhat more free to experiment, to take risks, and to encourage whole new readerships with unconventional books. The age-old romance novel with its tidy resolution has given way to the cliffhanger ending trilogies. The young adult novel, that once used to be no more inappropriate than Meg getting her period in Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, has now given birth to a whole new genre called New Adult, which finally addresses some of the very real mature topics that affect YA readers. Science Fiction has finally been broken down into a wide array of categories; now, you don’t find books about space aliens attacking Moon colonists plopped on the bookstore shelf right next to a book that is mostly written in Elvish.

But as an author, how do you categorize your work on a retailer’s sales page if it’s a little bit of everything? What do you do if it’s a New Adult Paranormal Romance Middle Earth Fantasy Mystery?

Since you only get so many keywords to work with, decide which of those categories is the absolute best fit for your book. If there are trace elements of mystery to your book, you still might not want to list it next to the latest cloak-and-dagger spy book. If the only thing about it that would make it New Adult is the fact that two of the trolls get caught with their pants down behind some sort of glowing tree, you probably don’t have to worry about listing it as New Adult.

Your categories and keywords when you go to list your book must be aimed at your broadest target audience. At the same time, if you are querying your novel to agents or publishers, the same rule is still in effect: target your agent search to the most appropriate agent for your work based on its most prevalent genre.

The most important thing you can do is make sure that your book actually NEEDS to be in all of those genres at once. If your book could be listed in fifteen different genres on the bookstore shelves, it MIGHT (oh stop it, I said MIGHT) be a little muddled, rambling and confusing. While the publishing industry may have thrown open the doors to new types of books, the readers still have some level of expectation from what they want to read in their favorite genres.

How do you rate a book that is filled to overflowing with amazing stories by talented writers, while knowing that it was created to bring inspiration and support to someone facing dark times? Recent troubles have seen authors and publishing industry professionals band together for good like superheroes. The collaboration of experts who donated publishing services to raise money for the families of victims of the Newtown shooting was remarkable, as was the Indies Unite For Joshua IndieGoGo campaign comprised of indie authors who came together to raise funds for a fellow writer’s son’s medical expenses associated with leukemia. And now a new face joins the ranks of authors experiencing hardship, and once again, the writing and publishing community has answered the call.

Orange Karen: Tribute to a Warrior, is a short story anthology with a little something for everyone. Vampires. Sweaty romance heroes. Old ladies named Miss Della. Even a murdered race car driver. By bringing together thirty-nine authors whose works were accepted from the piles of submissions, the organizers behind Orange Karen have crafted a work of profound love and support, while still a work of incredible literature.

According to a press release announcing the book’s launch tomorrow, “ORANGE KAREN: TRIBUTE TO A WARRIOR is a collection of 39 stories that explore the strength and resilience of the human spirit. From the monster in the basement to the teddy bear on a young woman’s pillow, each story uses the colour orange as a thematic element, revealing the power of love, friendship, and the will to live. Karen DeLabar is a friend, author, and mother. In June of 2012, she was tricked with Toxic Shock Syndrome. One hundred percent of the proceeds from the anthology will be donated to Karen and her family, to assist with her medical expenses, and ongoing recovery.”

While Orange Karen officially goes on sale April 11th, so much work has been done leading up to the book release that the authors themselves appear to be more excited than DeLabar. Some of the contributing authors are professionally published veteran authors, but for some, this anthology marks their publishing debut. All told, the vast differences in the stories and writing styles themselves will mean that it can appeal to a broad audience.

Orange Karen will be available from Amazon in ebook and print editions, and a very special tribute event open to all attendees will take place on Friday, April 12th, at 9pm ET via Spreecast.

I have been pleasantly surprised by the numbers of clients I’m finding who call upon my company for editing. First, it demonstrates that there are a lot of writers out there who are serious about their craft and are willing to invest in making it shine. It also shows that the first wave of “get rich quick” authors who were dumping total crap on Amazon when digital publishing first took off may have finally moved on to another hobby.

But what does an editor do for you that your mom, your friend, and your former English teacher can’t do? One word: HONESTY.

I don’t mean regular old-fashioned “does this shirt make me look fat?” honesty, I mean the brutal, ugly truth kind of honesty. I mean the kind where the editor reads your manuscript and says, “I think I can edit this. Give me six months, and by the way I take all major credit cards or monthly installments.”

No one wants to hear how bad their writing is…except for a real author. Pretend authors, people who just want to be able to truthfully announce that they have written books, don’t want honesty. They want praise. Real authors want help making their books into the best possible stories they could write. And that’s what an editor does.

Decide on your goals for writing and then decide if you want an editor or just some fans.

While you’re deciding, PLEASE go read this awesome article about how a group of concerned citizens fought back against the government…to save the apostrophe. I am seriously going to join the Apostrophe Protection Society that is heralded in the article.

What is an even worse crime, in my ever so humble opinion, is the sentence fizzle. Yup. A fizzle.

A sentence fizzle (I made that term up, feel free to use it) is a long drawn-out sentence that takes several rereads in order for you to realize there is no verb. It’s a like a sentence fragment that was hatefully leading you on, making you believe that there was going to be a verb somewhere at the end… and then nothing.

Usually, fizzles happen one of two ways. First, it can result accidentally from revisions, where the author took out something or reworded part of a paragraph, and the fizzle just accidentally and quite sneakily scooted on in there. The other more common culprit is trying to write a verbose description of something, coupled with not self-editing, which results in a paragraph-length sentence fragment that no one bothers to fix.

Beware! Fizzles are deadly and they’re coming for you. Attack them head on by rereading your work and by sticking to standard conventions for subjects and predicates!

It actually feels really good to claim to be protesting Downton Abbey’s most recent heinous development, along with the inner rage release at having to wait until season four to find out what will happen to the family now that its sole visionary is lying on his face in the mud having been flung from his motor car. Wait…spoiler alert. Oops.

Actually, this blog is not closed down nor is it even on a planned hiatus. I just got very, very busy with a lot of really great things happening in my life. Exhausting things, but great nonetheless. I’ve finished a book and am in the process of doing my first round edits, and I started my own business that has hit the ground running.

One of the many great things about being a writer (besides that fact that writing can be done just about anywhere) is the healing and calming renewal that comes from sitting for a while and just writing. Whether it’s a long-overdue blog post or an intro chapter to a book that is still just swimming around the edges of your consciousness, there’s a fulfillment that comes from getting some writing done. It’s cheaper than therapy and it helps to center you.

So when you get busy, don’t forget that a little writing time can actually help you be better at all the crazy stuff you have to do!

In all the years that I’ve taught Romeo&Juliet to reluctant high schoolers, I’ve always had to explain WHY the priest sends Romeo to Juliet’s house before his leaves for his banishment to Mantua. It never fails to cause the giggles when I’m explaining that Romeo had to sleep with Juliet in order to make the marriage unbreakable. If Romeo had left town like he was supposed to, the marriage could have been quietly annulled and Juliet could have still married Paris.

Just YESTERDAY I realized: if Juliet married Paris, the Capulets would have been linked to the royal family, making them more powerful and more untouchable than the Montagues. It would have resulted in an all-out-war, the kind where the whole town ends up wiped off the map. And the priest couldn’t allow that to happen.

I never thought of it like that, until our class discussion yesterday. And it made my day! I love these amazing moments when a book you think you know suddenly surprises you.

One of my other favorites is To Kill A Mockingbird, and for the very same reason. EVERY time I read that book, I learn something new about myself and about the characters. The plot practically changes every time I read, because as I’ve grown wiser, I start to notice more and understand more. And I love that.

So how do you incorporate timeless a-ha moments into your writing?

While you can’t write your book planning for your readers to discover something new between the covers in sixty years, you can involve some plot twists that make readers see something new. The book Holes, for example, is so full of crazy plot twists and overlapping stories–with basically three different stories happening at the same time–but it all comes together at the end and all of the stories become one. It’s an amazing moment in the book.

Create tension that leads to eye-opening resolutions that surprise your readers but also leave them with goosebumps over how great it was!