Writing 101: Regard or Regards?

Adding an s to a word may be enough to completely change that word. With other words, however, the change is not so big. When it comes to regard and regards, does that little s make a difference?

To S or Not to S

I'm writing to you in regard to a book review. 

Regard is sort of an old-fashioned way to say about or concerning. Or is it regards? Use it in the sentence, and it still makes a lot of sense.

I'm writing to you in regards to a book review. 

In the example, the correct usage of the word is regard. You're talking about a book review, a singular object. This means that any modifier of that noun should also be singular -- so leave off the s.

But in the plural, you want to add the s to regards. Let's look at an example.

With regards to the book review requests I've been sending...

Now you're talking about more than one object -- requests. That means now you add the s to make your sentence technically correct. 

However, this is an extremely fine grammar point that most people ignore altogether. Regards and regard are used pretty much interchangeably. Use the one that sounds best to you for the particular sentence you're writing, and you should be okay. Remember that when you doubt your grammar, just read it out loud. If it sounds weird, it's probably wrong.

Guest Post: Cost-Cutting Editing

by Leti Del Mar

Everything I have ever come across in regard to self-publishing says I should get my work edited.  Even those who don't self-publish are still urged to have their manuscript edited before submitting it to agents or publishers.  It makes sense to have your work edited, but it can also be incredibly expensive. I asked around for someone to edit my 82,000 word manuscript and the price range was $500 to $1,500!  ...And that was people just getting started in the business, not those who come highly recommended.

What if you're just starting out and uncomfortable with spending that much money on editing?  What is an aspiring writer to do?  Fortunately, I've got some cost-cutting suggestions!

When it comes to editing for content, you absolutely need another pair of eyes looking over your work.  A free way to do this is to ask a beta reader to read your book.  A beta reader is someone who will read your work and then give you their opinion. It is a good idea to have some questions in mind you want to ask about plot, characters and setting. A good beta reader will give you his or her general ideas and point out inconsistencies or troubled areas.  I've had great success connecting with beta readers on message boards. Try Goodreads groups, World Literary Cafe and the Kindle boards.

• Sway students. If you want a more personal touch and are willing to shell out some cash, try your local college or University. It is amazing what $50 will buy you. Post a notice asking for English students to critique your work.
• Swap edits. Use those message boards to find other authors willing to swap edits. Ask for a thorough edit and have them consider grammar, spelling and punctuation.
• Swap services. Are you handy with graphic design? Swap a cover design for an edit with another author. Are you super duper organized and have contacts with book bloggers?  Perhaps you could swap organizing a blog tour in exchange for an edit.  Hit those message boards and advertise what you can do in exchange for a good manuscript edit.

There are also some great websites out there to help you edit your work.  Grammar Girl answers all sorts of grammatical questions for free. Auto Crit will assess your work and search for things like overused words, spelling mistakes and some grammar issues. You can try it for free, but their packages start at about $50 a year. I love Grammarly! It does a wonderfully thorough job of searching your work for all kinds of grammatical mistakes.  Again, you can try it for free. Ttheir packages start at around $20 a month.

Are these options as good as hiring a professional editor? No.  However, if you are just starting out or if your books have not sold enough that you can justify investing $1500, these suggestions will help you put together a more professional product -- whether you are self-publishing or submitting to agents and publishers.

Want more cost-cutting advice? Check out my book, How To Self-Publish: A DIY Approach. It is available on Amazon for just $0.99.

About the Author

Bio: Leti Del Mar lives in sunny Southern California with her husband, daughter and abnormally large cat. When she isn’t writing, reading or blogging, she is teaching Biology and Algebra to teenagers. Leti is also a classic film buff, passionate about Art History and loves to travel.

 Leti's blog    Amazon    Goodreads     Facebook   Twitter

This book is for anyone who has ever considered publishing their own work but has either thought the process seemed too complicated or too expensive. My newest book will hold your hand as it guides your manuscript from your word processor to a formatted e-book and paperback. It will show you how to launch and market your book, get reviews, and use social media to establish an author platform. I promise to show you how this can all be accomplished for less than you would spend on a week's worth of lattes!

My Do-It-Yourself Approach is full of useful advice and practical tips any author new to the world of self-publishing can easily implement.

The best news? I am not alone in this endeavor. I have teamed up with 6 other authors who represent a wide variety of writers including; Craig Hurren, Victoria Sawyer, Carmen Stefanescu, Clancy Tucker, Melissa Wray and Lee Zamloch. They have each contributed their insight on topics like the importance of research, coping with bad reviews, creating a brand, utilizing feedback and much more!

Writing 101: Unsolicited Advice

Once you've been an indie author for a while and published a few books, you begin to gain a certain amount of wisdom and experience. You know, for example, how to format an ebook, where to go for cover art, which Goodreads groups to use to find reviews. The indie author community is largely a place for sharing information, and there are times when it all feels friendly. And one day, you may be compelled to take some other indie author under your wing and share your valuable experience with them. You may, one day, feel the need to give out a little unsoliticed advice -- with the best intentions in mind, of course.

I warn you not to do this...no matter how tempting it might get. 

Everything You Can Do...

Say you're hosting an indie author on your blog, or you're being hosted on their blog. Suppose, during the course of getting all of this organized, you notice something on their blog or Twitter profile or Amazon page or whatever. Something...that's just wrong. Maybe the blurb is all wrong, or the cover is crazy-looking, or they're just misunderstanding Twitter all to hell and back. 

You know better. In fact, you made a similar mistake and learned all about it. You know exactly how to fix the problem...and it would be fairly easy to do. So do you tell your indie author colleague, and grace them with the value of your knowledge and insight? 

Absolutely, unequivocally, no. It doesn't matter how nicely you phrase it or how well-intentioned you mean it. If you give you unsolicited advice to another author, it's going to be interpreted as a criticism 9 times out of 10. Of those 9 times, 8 of them are going to go poorly when that other author tells you off (or worse, points out your own flaws). It's just a bad situation for everyone. They won't take your advice any way except the wrong way, they certainly won't follow it, and you're just going to wind up feeling bad and frustrated. It could even lead to an argument and it could very easily ruin the opportunity to work with this author in the future. 

Wait until they ask. If they ask you what you think, they're opening the door and they expect to get some criticism back. When you give unsolicited advice, it very often feels like an attack to indie authors -- who are, generally speaking, a little nervous and unsure of their art in the first place. If they don't ask, they don't ask -- and it isn't your place to give them the help they need. If they're not asking you, it's because they don't want your help. 

So make it easy on yourself, and simply don't give out unsolicited advice. It's almost never received well, and you have lots of other stuff to do.

Writing 101: A Labor of Love?

Do you get crushed by every negative review? Feel a deep pain in your gut if someone doesn't absolutely adore your book? As an artist, it's natural for you to love your creations...but it's something you've got to avoid. Loving your books is dangerous. 

Love's Labor Lost

I wrote, once, about falling in love with one of my books...and how it nearly destroyed me. Now I know that I should never love one of the books I write....I should love writing itself. 

There is a difference, believe me. If you love your book, you're going to be sensitive about it. You're going to find it much harder to listen to criticism that may help you, and you're going to struggle to read and absorb those reviews you work so hard to receive. 

What I'm saying is this: that book isn't going to love you back. Don't give your heart away to something that can't return it or even reinforce it. Don't love your books, love the work. If you love writing itself, rather than the stuff you create with it, you'll always be a writer. If you fall in love with a book, you may get your heart broken. And you may come really close to never writing again, which is exactly what happened to me.

Writing a book is a labor of love, but that doesn't mean you should love the book. You should like the book. You should enjoy reading it (because if you don't, no one else will). And you should definitely put a lot of labor and love into it...just don't fall in love with it. Keep your distance, and stay professional as a writer. This way, you'll always get better as an author...and you'll always be able to move on to your next book project. 

Indie News: Indie Authors Want to Rule the World

Self-publishing is spreading, like a word plague, across the globe. Amazon has launched the Kindle Store and their KDP program in Mexico. Tears for Fears said that everybody wants to rule the world...but Amazon may actually do it one day.

The two launches mean that indie authors in Mexico will now have the option of self-publishing their work through the online giant. Stateside authors enthusiastically embraced the KDP program upon its launch, unleashing a tidal wave of indie titles. The availability of the Kindle Store in Mexico means that US authors will now have the option of selling their books to Mexico, and vice versa. 

Self-publishing has spread so far so fast, many have questioned whether it signals an end to traditional publishing. If self-publishing and ebooks become the norm, Amazon really could rule the world one day.

Writing 101: Being Scary

Some storytellers know how to be frightening. But does it come to them naturally, or is being scary a skill that writers can learn? 

Boo

Like most things, writing is about 10% artistry and 90% grueling work. In other words, I believe much of the skills that create a writer can be learned. And if you can learn to write, you can definitely learn to be scary.

After all, isn't it something that everyone practices doing every single October? For Halloween, people dress up to look frightening and throw parties meant to scare their guests. Haven't you ever pulled a prank on someone, or crept up behind a friend to startle them? You've done stuff to scare other people before. Now, you have to harness that innate streak of meanness...and put it on the page. 

It's okay to be a little mean, sometimes. That's really what scaring people is all about. That...and a few other tricks. 

• Sudden shock: This is a classic horror device you'll find in every single scary movie. The sudden shock is a surprise scare that comes out of nowhere. You set the stage by painting a scene that feels calm to the reader. For example, the heroine is reading a book in the library. She's snuggled up in some large chair and there's a roaring fire. Maybe even the pitter-patter of rain on the window. Nice and cozy, right? It is until all the lights go out and a defeaning scream renders the air! ...And that's an example of the sudden shock, only please pretend it's written in a much more compelling fashion. 
• Slow suspense: To really understand suspense, watch some Hitchcock movies. He was a master of dragging out the thrilling moment you just knew was coming. Create slow suspense in your books by painting vivid scenes with words. Plant little hints and moments in the scenes that lead up to the moment. An example might be your heroine walking up a flight of stars and down a long, dark hall. With each step, she's expecting the crazed maniac to leap out at her. Each breath, each sound, each moment is agony. By the time she gets to the end of the hall, the wait is just unbearable. 
• The unexpected event: Create true horror with the unexpected event. It isn't enough to scare your readers. They're expecting a scare. Now, you've got to surprise them. Instead of waiting for the heroine at the end of the hall, after all that torturous suspense, there is no crazed maniac. It's only an empty wall. She laughs, a little hysterically, and turns back around. The killer leaps out at her from the ceiling! He's been suspended above her head the whole time. This unexpected event is surprising and scary.

With those three tricks in your writing bag, you should be able to scare readers. It also helps a great deal if you come up with a protagonist that people want to root for and a villain that's totally frightening. Think about all the stuff that scares you when you need new ideas. What gives you nightmares? What makes your skin crawl? What do you envision when you picture a guy you absolutely wouldn't want to mess with?

You've experienced fear, and you've probably tried to frighten others. That means you're already halfway to writing a great horror story. So think scary, and use writing tricks to make your words come out that way.

Writing 101: Use Amazon to Find More Buyers

When was the last time you looked at your books on Amazon? If you're doing your promotional tweets and paying attention the way you should, your answer should be today or yesterday at the earliest. If you're not looking at the page all the time, you're missing opportunities to sell more books. You can use that page to find more buyers, and that's pretty invaluable.

Right in Front of Your Face

If you're anything like me, you don't need to be reminded to look at your book's Amazon page. I checked it every 20 minutes for three weeks after I published my first book, no exaggeration. My biggest thrill came from receiving my first review, but this was only slightly more exciting than seeing something in the "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" section. Seeing something appear in this section meant that someone actually bought the book, and I paid attention.

I'm still paying attention to that section of my book pages, and you absolutely should be doing the same. It's a gold mine for potential readers. I want you to take a look at all of the books in that section, and pay attention to the authors who wrote them. Look for those authors on Twitter. If you find them there, you're already a whole lot closer to getting more sales. 

Readers who bought your book also bought books by those authors. You know it's true because Amazon says so, and they probably have an underground lab of statisticians who do nothing but invent new algorithms all day long. So it follows that people who like those authors will also like you, right? Yes, good logic. That's where Twitter comes in. 

First, follow the authors that you can find on Twitter. Next, look at their followers -- and follow them. Now, not all of those followers are going to follow you back...but some will. And those new followers are more likely to purchase your book, because they already like books that are similar to yours. See how it works? 

That's how you use Amazon to find more buyers. So stop reading blogs and start getting to work. You've got stuff to do.

Writing 101: Use Cross-Marketing

Cross-marketing is a fancy term that's usually applied to product linking. You may not be aware of it, but you see cross-marketing all the time. When the commercial tells you that the cheese spread goes great with this cracker, that's cross-marketing. Coupons from soda that allow you to buy candy is another example. Cross-marketing is everywhere, and you can use a form of it to promote your self-published books.

Finding the Links

You're not a huge corporation and you probably don't have a bunch of industry-related ties, but as an indie author you can still use cross-marketing to push your work. Like every other type of indie promotion, it only requires a little bit of outside-the-box thinking. 

Let's play a game. Answer this question: what's your book about? Make a list of words that come to mind when you ask yourself this question. Think about all the different activities and events depicted in your book and place them on the list. 

Now use it to cross-promote your work. Link your book to products or activities and use that for marketing. A cross-marketing Tweet, for example, may read "Enjoy skiing? find out what happens when this daredevil hobby turns deadly in Sabotage Slopes."

Is there a lot of food in your book? "We all eat, but in Roman Vacation you'll find out what it's like to eat gourmet meals every day." See how it works? Now start composing your own.

You probably don't have the connections to work out expensive advertising agreements with corporations, but you can still link your work to promotable products and activities. Make your list, find you links...promote your book.