Author vs. Monster

By day, I work for a publisher/distributor. By night, I’m an author (self- and traditionally published). Thus, I regularly communicate with a fair number of bookish people. And what’s the latest buzz? Horror stories about self-publishers who can only be labeled as . . . “bad.”

Yes, it’s true: There are a lot of bad self-publishers out there. There are plenty of good ones too (although not nearly as many). Not sure which you are? Take this quiz and find out!

True or False?

1. Bookstores buy their books from amazon.com.

2. You’re a published author; you are entitled to book reviews. Demand them!

3. You’re such a good writer that you don’t need an editor.

4. Your local independent bookstore is obligated to carry your book (even though you never shop there).

5. You designed your own cover, even though you have no graphic-design training.

6. Your illustrator is a friend, relative, or friend of a friend who “just likes to draw.”

7. The more times you pester a reviewer, the more likely you are to get reviewed.

8. Anyone who criticizes your book must be wrong. After all, your kids loved it!

9. You have written an angry email to a book reviewer.

10. Blogger/reviewer submission guidelines are for other authors. Not you.

11. Your book is so incredibly awesome that you should be given special treatment by bookstore owners, bloggers—and everyone, for that matter.

13. You’re mom proofread your book. That’s good enough.

14. Your text is hard to read, but the font is really cool and different, so that makes it okay.

15. You found some (or all) of this quiz offensive.

Quiz Results

If you answered “true” to any of the above questions—except maybe the last one—you might be a bad self-publisher. You need to either (a.) educate yourself, (b.) stop it, or (c.) quit self-publishing.

If you answered “true” three or more times, you are most certainly a bad self-publisher. Your book isn’t very good and/or you won’t get far with that attitude.

If you answered “false” to all of the questions above, way to go! You’re probably one of the good ones.

Care to add more questions to this quiz? Please do so in the comments!

Kruse Jasper – character sketches

Author — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 03:47:31 +0000

What do you think of these awesome character sketches from Deborah Garcia? Me likey!!!

Kruse Jasper begins on Monday (yikes!)

Author — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 16:31:17 +0000

Okay, so, wow. When I decided to write a Twitter novel more than a month ago, it felt like I had forever to prepare for it. But as time is wont to do, the “launch date” crept up on me all too quickly. Monday is the day, and I am not at all prepared. And you know what? I’m okay with that.

I was going to have the @KruseJasper page customized and cool-looking, with finished illustrations and the like. That will still happen; it’s in the works. But I forget that minor details like, oh, character design need to get finalized first, which takes a fair amount of time.

I was also going to have an official story outline finished, complete with chapter titles and a detailed list of bullet points. So far, not so good. I do have about half of it finished, and I know where the story is going. For now, I suppose, that will have to be good enough.

This isn’t your typical Twitter novel. I’m actually writing an early reader chapter book, which some adult readers might find overly simple. So my goal isn’t to attract thousands and thousands of followers (although I’ll be thrilled if I do). Rather, I’m treating this as a writing exercise. Kruse Jasper is a book I wanted to write anyway, and writing it as a Twitter novel—140 characters at a time—is almost sure to keep me challenged and interested throughout the process.

I’m excited. It should be fun. And for your part, it shouldn’t take too much time to read it. My plan is to write three or four tweets per day. We’ll get through about one chapter a week, so that means the story will likely reach its end before Halloween.

If the idea of an Indiana Jones type of story in the form of a Magic Tree House type of book appeals to you and your family, I invite you to join me, beginning Monday, @KruseJasper.

My author photos: Which is your favorite?

Author — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 00:08:22 +0000

The big day arrived: photograph day. I probably should’ve planned ahead . . . but I didn’t. I dug through my closet, looking for the perfect shirt to wear. In the back, I found a shirt that I had completely forgotten I owned; it was one of those shirts that got compliments every time I wore it. Actually, it’s my only such shirt—well, except for my Chewbacca costume T.

Anyway, when I got to the shoot, I discovered WHY that shirt was in the back of my closet. So, um, if you happen to notice any stains on any of these pictures, just ignore those. (Thank you, God, for Photoshop!)

Take a look, and let me know your favorite by either

A.) Leaving a comment here

B.) Posting at facebook.com/RJFanPage

C.) Tweeting @Ryan_J_Jacobson

Thanks for your input!

Photos by Cheryl Rozek

My to-do list

Author — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 18:46:42 +0000

Oh, the life of a part-time author: So much to write, so little time to write it. Unfortunately, updating my blog keeps sliding down my to-do list. I keep looking at all of the stuff I need to finish, and my posts are the things that get left undone. So, in an effort to kill two birds with one stone (so to speak), today I’m putting my to-do list right here on my blog for you to . . . enjoy?

1. Finish writing Storm at the Summit of Mount Everest. It’s a choose-your-path book, and I only have three wrong-choice/death-scenes left to write. But these are my least favorite things to write. I’ve been putting this off for a good two weeks now—and the publisher is impatiently waiting.

2. Finish the story outline for Kruse Jasper and the Legend of the Dreamcatcher (@KruseJasper). Yeah, um, the Twitter novel only begins on Monday!

3. Get back to writing Can You Survive: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. I already admitted defeat and asked Deb Mercier to co-author this with me. But I still need to finish my half of the work.

4. Update my websites. Another thing on my to-do list for far too long. This one has been looming near the bottom since January.

5. Customize my Twitter page. I just learned how to do this—so cool.

6. Customize my Facebook fan page. Ditto.

7. Write a “free” Can You Survive short story to post on my website. For now, I’m playing with the idea of adapting Edgar Allen Poe’s the Pit and the Pendulum.

8. Update the blog with some fresh posts. It will happen some day. I promise!

“Just” a self-publisher?

Author — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 16:59:19 +0000

I get kind of defensive about self-publishing. I don’t really mean to, but I can’t help it. When someone says something bad about self-publishers, it puts me in a foul mood. It’s probably because I hate being labeled and lumped into a group that is seen so negatively.

And yet, I get it.

The best and worst thing about self-publishing is that anyone can do it. It’s a great alternative for talented writers who can’t seem to catch a break with traditional publishers. It’s an intelligent business plan for authors who find themselves selling more of their own books than their publishers are selling. And it’s tailor-made for impatient, perfectionist, control freaks like me!

But there are a lot of deluded writers out there. These are the people who think their first draft is perfect, don’t need an editor (or even a proofreader) and don’t believe anyone who has anything critical to say about their work. Their husband/wife/mom/dad/children love their book, and that’s all the validation they need. They decide to self-publish, do everything on the cheap and end up with a sub-standard product that retails for way too much. Worse yet, they often get very defensive and combative about their work.

(See what I’m doing? I’m hypocritically lumping people in the same way I hate to be lumped!)

Unfortunately, the vast majority of self-publishers seem to lean more toward my second description than my first. I know this because I went on a quest, inspired by my blogger friend Danielle, to find 10 really good self-published children’s books by 10 different authors. And, to tell the truth, this was surprisingly difficult to do.

But I did! I searched far and wide, sifted through plenty of mediocre—and several really poor—samples. And I found some really, really good books. I’m not going to tell you what they are yet because Danielle is going to feature them on her blog this summer. But my point is this:

Self-published books can be just a good as traditionally published books.

And truly, some of them are.

Besides, like it or not, with the market dominance of Amazon and with the emergence of ebooks, self-publishing looms large as a trend for the future.

“Kruse Jasper” has its illustrator!

Author — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 03:51:55 +0000

The pieces continue to fall into place for Kruse Jasper and the Legend of the Dreamcatcher. I recently completed one of my favorite things to do when beginning my own projects: select an illustrator.

When I self-publish, I usually do so on a pretty tight budget. Luckily, I’ve developed a win-win relationship with the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD). Long story short, I offer an internship and a modest stipend to a student illustrator; the student gets some spending money, college credit and published work for their portfolio.

Kruse Jasper’s illustrator is one we almost used for my upcoming Storm at the Summit of Mount Everest. But since the book is a follow-up to Lost in the Wild, our first choice was to use the original illustrator, David Hemenway. His schedule opened up at the last minute, so we offered the project to him.

I felt bad that this happened in the eleventh hour, and I was really impressed with the student’s portfolio. So when I decided to move forward with Kruse Jasper, I very quickly got back in touch with her and with the folks at MCAD.

And now that everything is nice and official, I am pleased to introduce Deborah Garcia!

This illustration is something of a self-portrait (I think) and is the style in which Kruse Jasper will be illustrated. For more of Deborah’s work, check out her online portfolio.

And now for a book title

Author — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 16:58:53 +0000

I have the name of my character: Kruse Jasper. And I have the beginning of the name of my story: Kruse Jasper and the . . . what? Hmm, this is the really big, hard question. For what will Kruse be searching? The Lost Ark of the Covenant has already been found, as has the Holy Grail, thank you Mr. Jones et al.

The thing about Indiana Jones, he’s always looking for something the bad guys want to use as a weapon of evil. Nazis, Russians (wait, that never happened!), creepy chanty people, Indy battled them all to find those priceless treasures. I want Kruse to be doing much of the same. He needs his ante upped. He needs to be stopping the baddies from taking over the world.

And yet, there’s a real opportunity here to introduce new readers to a little bit of history and culture.

I said it once, and I’ll say it again: Hmm.

Luckily, I won’t torture you with the days and days of anguish I endured in my quest to solve this riddle. And, yes, I did solve it. I scoured the internet for true, honest-to-goodness missing artifacts from history. Nothing I came up with seemed worthy of a villain’s take-over-the-world scheme.

It seemed that maybe history wasn’t exactly the way to go. Rather, I needed a history that was a little more, um, exaggerated. Something more along the lines of folklore. And that’s when I was struck by a (very) rare moment of brilliance. The perfect solution was . . . Native American folklore! Fascinating legends, a great opportunity to share parts of history that need sharing, and massive kid appeal. Trifecta! It’s all right; you can say it: I’m a genius.

So, that’s when the fun began. I got to read a bunch of Native American legends and chose the one to center my first (hopefully of many) Kruse Jasper story around. With that said, I’m pleased to announce the title of my new project:

Kruse Jasper and the Legend of the Dreamcatcher

The story begins on Twitter @KruseJasper on July 18.