Month: October 2020

What Goes on the Copyright Page

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So, you’ve finally finished your story…and you think you’re ready to start printing. Well, as we discussed in Front and Back Matter last year, there are some items that need to be added to the ms to make it a complete book. Most readers wouldn’t miss some of these if you left them out…but reviewers and agents will certainly notice—if the right things aren’t in the right place, it will mark you as an amateur. Proofreaders should note the missing items, but as some of them are optional, ones you want might be overlooked.

This time we’re going to go into depth on the Copyright page…the only page that traditionally starts on the verso side of a sheet. (That is, on the left side, an even numbered page.) This post is a ‘tool’ listing things you don’t want to forget.

What is Required

The only thing that is actually required on the copyright page is the copyright notice itself in its basic form:

  • The word ‘copyright’ or the ‘©’ symbol
  • The year the work was first copyrighted
  • The author’s name

You can get the ‘©’ symbol by typing a ‘c’ in parens…or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl‑Alt‑c. The copyright year is when you completed the ms and it appeared in ‘fixed form’. (We’ll go into that in a bit.) The author’s name is the same as the name on the by-line as recorded in any listing of books. It does not have to be the same as your legal name…if you’re using a pseudonym, then that goes here. Your agent and publisher will know to make the checks out to your legal name.

Let’s deal with that ‘fixed form’ requirement now. In 1886, representatives from almost 200 countries got together in Berne, Switzerland, and established an international agreement on copyrights. The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works declared that a creative work is automatically protected as soon as it is written or recorded on some physical medium. That means, just thinking about your story isn’t enough, nor is writing an outline or a few chapters, but printing it out the whole thing so you can hold it in your hot little hands is quite enough. These days, even saving it onto a hard drive might be enough.

Although there is no need to ‘register’ your copyright to have it be valid, recent court decisions have suggested that it is in your best interest to do so. Without registration, you may be limited to actual damages and lost profits, whereas with a registered work, you could receive statutory damages and attorney’s fees as well.

Optional Items

Other items are traditionally included on the copyright page, and you should consider including them…to look more professional.

  • ISBN

The International Standard Book Number identifies each version or edition of your book. Listing the ISBNs for your print book, ebook, audio book, etc. is a good way to spread the news.

  • Rights and permissions

A standard paragraph that claims all rights to copy the content of the book is important. You should specifically mention certain permissions. It can be as simple as “All rights reserved” or as involved as:

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations used in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, contact Author@AuthorSite.com or Publisher@PubSite.com

You can look through any books on your shelf to see the other various ways it can be written.

  • Disclaimer

In case your story seems to be written about some real people, you might want to distance yourself from any such claim by including a disclaimer. Here’s an example:

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events, or conversations is entirely coincidental.

If you’re writing non-fiction or memoir, you could include something along the lines of:

Although based on reality, some of the names have been changed and descriptions altered to protect the identities of persons involved.

Note: We do not offer legal advice here, so if you are uncertain as to the legality of your work, please seek the advice of a licensed Intellectual Property attorney.

Additional Items

  • Design, production, editing, illustration credits

You should use the Acknowledgements page to give thanks to certain folks for helping to create your book, but here you should give official mention of those who have made your book possible.

  • Publisher’s address

Your publisher may insist on this, along with a logo. He deserves mention for all the work he does to get your work before the eyes of the world.

  • Trademark notices

If you’ve used any trademarked names you should identify their ownership, but consider if they are really needed: Product Placement.

  • Edition information

Especially useful for non-fiction is to indicate which Edition this printing is. All you need is “First Edition” or “Second Edition” etc.

  • Country in which the book was printed

Some readers are concerned where their goods are coming from, so you’d include this info to ease their minds.

  • Environmental notices

Mentioning that the paper has been certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative program, or that the ink is organically based, are nods to the environmental awareness of the author and printer.

  • Ordering information

Along with listing other version of the book under the ISBN section, you can include references to sites where this or other books by the author can be found.

  • Author website

Definitely included on the About the Author page, you can additionally list contact info for the author here.

Include the ones you want and feel are necessary for your book, but don’t try to be everything to everyone.

Scene and Sequel

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Readers want action in the stories they read…but incessant action is not only tiring, it also gets to be boring as well. Following an action scene with a moment to pause and reflect on that action gives a rise and fall feel to your story…ebb and flow, inhale and exhale, yin and yang. Just another aspect of nature, though an important one. As day follows night, sleep takes turns with wakefulness, and up succumbs to down, your story needs to follow the natural flow. In the writing world, these two phases are referred to as Scene and Sequel, and they each have their own structure…which we will discuss in detail.

Note: When we talk about a scene (lower case ‘s’), we are talking about a single location, time, and POV. Every time we change location, time, or POV, we have a new scene…and that is indicated by a break of some sort: section, chapter, or dinkus. (Avoid using just a blank line as it may end up at a page break, and thus be invisible to the readers.) When we talk about a Scene (upper case ‘S’), we mean that part of a scene where the action occurs…which is then followed by a Sequel.

Scene

Each Scene is composed of three parts: Goal, Conflict, and Disaster. Leaving out any of these parts makes a Scene fall flat, so when Plotting out your story, list the GCDs for each Scene.

Now, let’s examine each of these parts.

  • Goal

Your Hero wants or needs something. It must be some precise item, plainly identifiable—you should be able to point to it and name it. Without a Goal, your Hero is at the whim of the universe…passive and boring. You need a Hero who is going to do something because he wants to do it. Characters who want something are much more appealing than puppets…even if he’s a bad guy, he still has ambition, and that’s what readers want.

  • Conflict

Despite having a Goal, he shouldn’t be able to achieve that goal…in spite of his actions towards it (sometimes because of his actions). There will always be some kind of difficulty…again, refer back to nature: there must needs be opposition in all things. Eventually he will accomplish something on his way to the Goal, but success has no worth if it comes without effort.

  • Disaster

Now comes the good part. Regardless of his intent, his efforts turn sour, making his simple Goal now even more impossibly far away. Whatever he had wanted at the beginning, he now has more to deal with just to get things back to normal…so he can start working towards his Goal all over again.

If he did somehow manage to reach his Goal, the story would be over—no more reason to continue reading. The narrative would have ended. Even when you get to the actual end of your book, you can always leave a few questions open, yet to be tied up…leading to the next book in the series!

Sequel

Each Sequel is also made up of three parts: Reaction, Dilemma, and Choice. As with Scenes, listing out the RDCs for each scene as you plot helps keep the story in line.

Now that your Hero has messed things up even more than before, it’s time for him to sit back and ponder his next move. A Scene is for action…now is a time for re-action.

  • Reaction

The first thing your Hero does is react emotionally to the Disaster that he’s just created, a gut reaction. He’s knocked off balance for a bit…he’s distraught and doesn’t know what to do. If you need time to pass, now is when you do it…not too much, though, because you can’t suffer indefinitely. Sooner or later he has to accept his mistake and check out the remaining opportunities.

  • Dilemma

Unfortunately, there are no good opportunities, and if his Disaster was serious enough, there aren’t any opportunities at all. This is where he has to consider what to do next. Your readers will worry along with him…wondering what he could conceivably do next. Expanding on the horrific possibilities, he finds that none are what he wants, but he has to pick one.

  • Choice

As with the Goal, your Hero is not a wimp—he doesn’t wait for someone else to do something. He is active and boldly goes forward and makes a choice, even though his options are few, and none of them are preferred. Hopefully, he selects the least bad one, but any choice is better than doing nothing. After this monumental choice, he now has a new Goal…and we circle back to another Scene where he is about to do it all over again.

Put Them Together

After a Scene comes a Sequel…and after a Sequel comes a Scene. Alternating through your story, those two elements give readers a feeling of tension, then relief, then more tension and more relief. Although the relief is never quite enough to eliminate the tension, so the tension continues to build.

When you’re ready to end your story, you can let the cycle come to a close…by either letting your Hero finally accomplish what he’s been trying to do all along…or by dishing out some final setback he will never recover from. Remember that throughout your whole story, the Hero is facing a Transformation…reaping either success or failure, life or death, renewal or destruction.

Properly done, the only complaint from your readers will be that they missed dinner because they couldn’t put your book down.

More Steps to Marketing (Press Releases and Special Deals)

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This time we’re going to cover two more techniques to get your book noticed. With over 2,000 books being released daily, it’s no wonder that journalists don’t have time to go out and find them all…and certainly don’t have the time to read even a small portion of them. That’s why you need to write a Press Release to tell them how wonderful your book is. Save them the time and hassle of a bunch of questions by answering them first.

Once everyone has at least heard of your book, you need to convince them to pick up a copy. That’s more easily done by offering them some really Special Deals. We’ll go over a few different methods that should be a good start.

Press Releases

Sample of a Press ReleaseSend out Press Releases to various news agencies to announce some newsworthy information: the release of your book. (There are other styles of Press Releases, but we’re going to stick to this one here.) Fairly short, one or two pages, they answer the important questions someone might have about your release. They are vital to journalists, who depend on you to tell them what’s so great about your book, but remember, journalists aren’t influencers—this is a news article, not an advert, so stick to the facts, no exaggerations. Let the journalist add the appropriate interest.

Your job is to make the journalist’s life easy, so when writing up a Press Release, consider all the questions they might ask…and come up with intriguing answers. Don’t forget to mention your release party, too…scheduled to coincide with your online release.

What goes into a Press Release?

No matter the subject, all Press Releases need to have some basic info:

  • Headline—grab their attention and let them know what it’s all about
  • Subhead—summarise the details (italicised), where and when
  • Release info—traditionally “For Immediate Release: <date>” at the top
  • Dateline—to verify relevancy of info
  • Lead—brief overview: who, what, when, where, why (one sentence)
  • News Peg—why is it important…now?
    Consider tying into current events (NewsJacking)
  • Body—details about info in lead
    • most newsworthy first—basic facts
    • quote—they will use this in their reporting, so make it good
    • background info last—fluffy stuff
  • Boilerplate—common facts (the same for all Press Releases you write)
    • Author info—so they know who you are
      (you can use the About the Author from your book)
    • Logo or picture—so they can visualize you and your brand
    • Contact info—so they can get a hold of you (or your PR team)
  • End mark—traditionally ### to indicate “that’s all”

How to Make a Press Release Work

Make your Headline catchy. You only have one line here, so keep it focused and make it count. Although you should have the headline in mind when writing the body (to keep on topic), I find it easier to write the headline after I’ve finished the rest, as a tie-up. An interesting tool to play around with is the free Headline Analyzer run by ShareThrough.

Write in third person, describing the people and events as an outsider would see them. Avoid “I, we, our, or me”. Break up the Body with a quote or excerpt from the book. Offer a free copy of your book.

Aim for publications that have a Target Audience that matches yours. Make certain to send it to a person, not a generic email box, and use a detailed subject line. Post it on your website and share it with the world in social media.

Send it out on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday between 9am and noon. Earlier in the week gives them more time to work on your story, and before lunch has the best response rates. Try to avoid sending it out at the top of the hour…wait a few minutes, then send it out.

Specials

Everyone enjoys a special, so when you want to give your book sales a boost, consider doing something nice for your readers. If you have a series of books, you can bundle the first few in a box set* at a lower price than the individual books. Once readers have become invested in your stories (dollar-wise as well as devoted to your characters), they’ll be more willing to continue with full-priced books later on.

If you don’t have a series, you can take books with similar themes or settings and put them together likewise. Books that share a common subgenre, characters, or settings would be perfect to combine. Again, once hooked on your story-telling proficiency, readers will gladly pick up your other books at full price.

Either way, you can also add in as-of-yet unpublished extras in the bundle. A novella or short story with some of the same characters, same setting, or same theme would make the boxed set worth even more. Readers who’ve already purchased the separate books might even opt for the bundle just to get the bonus stories.

Local bookstores often host gatherings where authors can sell books. Readings or talks on non-fiction topics can draw quite a crowd. You can bundle books there, too…though not with a fancy cardboard box…just a fat ribbon, or something appropriate to your genre, tied around a stack of books. Also, be certain to offer signed copies!

Consider book festivals in larger, nearby cities. Panel discussions are a good way to get your name (and face) out there, and there are plenty of opportunities to make bundled sales.

Although libraries are a good source for books, having a sale there doesn’t seem to work quite as well…most visitors are expecting to get free books…not have to pay for them.

*When is a Boxed Set not in a Box?

Apparently, when Amazon lets authors combine a series of books into a single “boxed set”, they aren’t actually putting them into a box, despite the fact that the picture shows a nice cardboard sleeve around multiple book spines. That’s why when you set it up, you aren’t allowed to mention the term “boxed set”. All you end up getting is the separate book files merged into one huge book…with a max limit of 828 pages!

To create a real boxed set, you’d have to go through a fulfilment company to put it all together…or you could turn your garage into a book boxing service. If you do, I’d suggest advertising and helping out other local authors.

As You Know, Bob

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This is one of my favourite comments to write on someone’s ms…because it often engenders a long conversation with authors, who often don’t realise what they’ve done. From the name, you can deduce that dialogue where one character tells another something that they both already know is called As You Know, Bob (AYKB). Writing an AYKB dialogue might be used to reveal info to the reader, but if the characters already know it, why would they mention it? Obvious information is never included in casual conversation.

Although it can appear in any kind of story, the two genres that suffer the most from AYKB are historical and speculative fiction. Historical because of all the research needed to maintain accuracy, and speculative fiction because of all the world building. Once that historical research or world building is done, authors just can’t keep it to themselves. They want readers to understand all the work they did to create the background…which should remain in the background.

It’s true that readers love to immerse themselves into a world unlike their current reality, but don’t rub their noses in it. Make everything so common and expected that they feel as if they are actually there. When conversations exist only to leak info to the readers, it feels fake and throws the reader out of the story.

Research

Some research is needed to ensure accurate historical facts or the plausibility of your world, but to do it right, you have to spend hours collecting or creating the material and gathering it together into a Story Bible. You need that tome, but the readers want a book with excitement and action…with people doing things. After so much investigation or construction, it might feel wasted not to share it all with your readers…even if they don’t care. Don’t let the research drive the story—if it doesn’t propel, toss it. You may have spent a lot of time exploring a limited topic…just to perfect a single sentence or even a single word…but only the info the reader needs should remain.

We know readers might need some details to understand your book, but you can’t interrupt the action to dump it on them…find another way that seems ordinary and natural. Sticking those details into dialogue won’t sound realistic, and the readers will know it—flagging you as a newbie. Forcing your characters to talk about something common (to them) would be similar to you explaining to your brother how flipping a light switch lets electricity flow through wires to the bulb and illuminate the room. Either you both already know, or you don’t care…as long as it works. Same in your story: it may not be necessary for the reader to understand…either it works or it doesn’t, but how is irrelevant.

In fact, having characters talk about things that are ordinary in their world tends to make those things stand out…in other words not ordinary…the opposite of what you had in mind. By not discussing something, the characters and the readers will assume it is normal and routine. Again, try to Resist the Urge to Explain…anything.

Examples

Here are a few examples (some of which we’ve seen in mss we’ve edited!). We’ll discuss why they are so bad and how they could be fixed.

  • “Amy, I heard your husband, Brian, got a new job.”

Unless Amy has more than one husband, including both the title and the name is redundant. So how do you let the reader know that Amy’s husband is named Brian? Turn it around in dialogue:

  • “Amy, I heard your husband got a new job.”
    Amy nodded. “Yes, Brian finally got the security approval.”

Takes care of the AYKB and makes an opportunity to let slip more info.

This next one is totally made up, but it demonstrates a point.

  • The pilot came over the PA just as the plane was about to take off.
    “Just a reminder that the partial vacuum created by the accelerated air over the wings will lift us into the air as we fly.”

You probably can’t imagine that anyone would really say that, but just check out the next one.

  • The captain came over the ship-wide comm and announced,
    “All staff, take your duty positions as we are about to breach space through an Einstein-Rosen bridge, not actually travelling faster than light, just covering a huge distance in a short time through a distortion in space-time.”

This is pretty much the same as the one above, just in a different story, but how many times have you heard something just like it in a SciFi book?

How to Fix the Problem

The best way I know to fix this problem is to introduce a character that doesn’t know the detail. Either he doesn’t know that one detail, or he’s just plain stupid and doesn’t know anything. We call these characters a foil—just don’t make him too stupid. A good example of a foil is Robin, Batman’s sidekick. Whenever Batman does something amazing, Robin says, “Wow, Batman, that was neat. Why’d you do it?” When Batman answers, his motivation is revealed to both Robin and the reader. If Batman is always doing amazing things it can get excessive, so either do it rarely, or make it something comical that the reader will come to expect. (Think about it…why else does Robin exist?)

An alternative to a foil or sidekick is a newbie or an outsider. Bring someone new into your world, and they will need explanations that the reader needs to hear. You might have a native tell the explorer that if he even offers a handshake, he might get his hand chopped off…because no one in this village likes to be touched. That would be a good piece of world building that needs to be revealed…but only when a character needs to hear it.

When you think you’ve got it fixed, run it by your Critique Group or beta readers. If they don’t complain about the revelation, then it might pass the AYKB test. You can also read your text aloud…or even have the dialogue read through as if it were a play. Highlight each character’s lines in different colours, gather a few friends, sit around a table, and have them each read a part. Watch to see that they don’t break out into laughter or snigger as they read (unless your work is intended to be humorous!).

Exceptions

Many of us have friends who sound as if they were walking encyclopaedias. They stand around rattling on about things that everyone already knows…or doesn’t care about. If you have a character like that, then you may let him pontificate to his heart’s delight. Just paste in the Wikipedia text, add quotes, and a dialogue tag.

  • Eric sat up and said, “Forensic science, also known as criminalistics, is the application of science to criminal investigations, as governed by the legal standards of admissible evidence and criminal procedure.”
    Everyone else just rolled their eyes and laughed.

With this technique, you can create a character who just randomly spouts out non-sequiturs, data no one needs, facts that no one wants. I’m certain you all know someone like that.

Killing Reviews

Huge blocks of excessive exposition that aren’t part of the story, can lead to readers and reviewers stopping before they get done reading your book. One of the last things you want to see in a review is “Did not finish”.

Forcing readers to put up with extraneous side discussions tempts fate…and that’s a temptation you don’t want to risk.