Do literary awards help your fiction writing career? After starting my writing career in 1992 and my editing and publishing career in 1996, I can firmly say yes. Literary awards improve public awareness of your book and increase book sales.

The reason award winning books sell more is the award is a powerful third party (independent) endorsement. When someone with no financial interest in a book goes out of their way to read it and honor it, the public takes notice. This is the same reason why book reviews have more impact than an expensive advertising campaign.

Now that said, it does takes time, effort and usually at the very least a little money (if not more) to place your book in the running for an award. Almost any award. You should plan this cost into your promotional and marketing efforts for the book.

If you’re interested in going in this direction, step one is do some Internet research to find all the different award competitions to which you might be able to submit your work. There are always the big name competitions in your genre. Everyone knows these and they’re easy to find. But, there are also many smaller awards out there given sometimes by quite unlikely sources.

Do not make the mistake of either overlooking, or underestimating, these awards. Any official notice, praise or singling-out of your work, no matter what the source has the potential to increase book sales (you know the old adage — there’s no such thing as bad publicity).

Step two is to pay whatever small entrance fee might be connected to the award you’re going after. This should only be done, however, if you get the sense that the award is genuine, or at least respected. There are competitions out there which are merely set up to rake in entrance fees. Oh, someone will win the award, but there isn’t quite the same amount of prestige attached to such an “honor.”

Step three, of course, is to send a copy of the book or e-book to the panel of judges.

For example: My publishing company published a military science fiction anthology entitled Breach the Hull in 2007. That was the first year we started publishing e-book versions of most titles. The editor and his wife, Mike McPhail and Danielle Ackley-McPhail, found an e-book literary award online and decided to enter the book’s Microsoft Glassbook e-book version. It was a good call on their part — Breach the Hull won the 2007 Dream Realm Award for best e-book anthology! Sales of the title have steadily increased as the publicity from the award has spread across the Internet and genre conventions.

Of course, winning is just the beginning. Once you have the award in hand, then you want to display (with all the bells and whistles you can manage) the logo of the contest on your websites and provide it to interviewers in the media as well. Create a cardboard stand up of the book cover and award logo to take with you to conventions. Something plastered with the words “Winner of the So & So Award!” Mention the fact that the book won the award on every panel you are a part of at conventions. Let the world know about the award at every reasonable opportunity.

Second example: In 2008, Marietta Publishing published the follow up book to the Amazon best-selling Bad-Ass Faeries. The second book in the series is titled Bad-Ass Faeries 2: Just Plain Bad. One of the four editors is Danielle Ackley-McPhail. She decided to enter the e-book version in a literary award contest. In March of 2009, it was announced that Bad-Ass Faeries 2 had won the 2009 Eppie Award for best e-book anthology! (Eppie Awards go by the year the award is awarded, not the year of publication.)

Danielle and Mike are using the internet to track down what is waiting out there for all authors and small press editors and publishers. Winning the awards means all the hard work they put into writing their stories and putting together their anthologies has now paid off in a bigger way, but they had to do the work to find the competitions. These opportunities don’t come knocking even the much-talked-about one time on your door.

You have to go find them.

The bottom line is, plan ahead to enter your books in literary award contests. They will help publicize your title and improve your book sales. It certainly does not hurt to have a few awards on your resume as an author, either.

Trust us.

As predicted and discussed earlier in this blog, it’s looking more evident every day that the future of book retailing does not include large square footage brick and mortar bookstores. We predicted chain bookstores would mutate into smaller café type locations where you would shop for a book online and then order it and that it would then be physically printed in the backroom of the café in less than twenty minutes while you sipped your cup o’joe. Well, we were proven correct much sooner than even we thought it would happen.

Lightning Source in LaVergne, Tennessee is the largest print-on-demand printer in the world. It is also a subsidiary of Ingram Book Group which is the world’s largest book wholesaler. Lightning Source (LSI) is an Ingram Content company which focuses on increasing book sales for publishers with technological innovations and low cost and minimum risk “just in time” printing and distribution systems. On April 16, 2009 LSI announced the launch of the Espresso Book Machine (EBM) in conjunction with On Demand Books.

On Demand Books, LLC is the owner of the Espresso Book Machine and was founded in 2003 by Jason Epstein, a renowned inventor with a sixty year track record in the book business. The Espresso Book Machine was named the best invention of 2007 by Time Magazine. For more information on this company go to www.ondemandbooks.com and read more articles by Newsweek, The New York Times, Fortune, and more from CNN and NPR.

This pilot program between Lightning Source and On Demand Books will literally change the way people buy printed books and even e-books. What this new system entails is you literally buying an e-book and downloading it to your iPod, PDA, laptop computer as a Microsoft Glassbook file from Ingram’s online catalog, or you ordering a book to be printed on demand in the back room through the Espresso Book Machine.

Believe it or not, the EBM prints, binds and trims perfect bound paperback books on demand at the point of sale. What this means is the end of large, space-wasting, inventory-storing mega-book stores. It is, after all, much easier to put ATM-sized Espresso Book Machines all over the place than it is to build large over-sized book stores. This amazing new innovation will make shopping for books and buying books much more convenient. Not to mention the novelty of having a book printed immediately and put in your hands hot off the press! No more dog-earred pages, no more fingerprints, broken spines, coffee stains or other signs of previous prospective buyers left behind on your book. Each copy is brand new.

Already planned point-of-sale locations for EBM’s include bookstores and libraries for starters. Coffee shops, cafes, universities, and retailers such as Walmart and Target will quickly come on board as well. About 85,000 titles will be available through EBM’s beginning in May of 2009. Publishers that are participating in the pilot program include John Wiley & Sons, Hachette Book Group, McGraw-Hill, Simon & Schuster, Clements Publishing, Cosimo, E-Reads, Bibliolife, Information Age Publishing, Macmillan, University of California Press and W.W. Norton. In approximately six months the EBM retailing channel will be available to all publishers that use print-on-demand services through Lightning Source.

We predict this new in-store print-on-demand model will have a rapid and positive impact on book sales globally. For struggling publishers and retailers the EBM channel collapses the book supply chain, boosts backlist title sales, matches supply with demand, eliminates returns and powers new, high growth sales channels. This is a major leap forward for the publishing world that will definitely impact authors in a number of ways — all of them positive.

What’s the biggest challenge facing us as writers. Many beginners look at the half-empty glass and consider their greatest obstacle to be the finding of the right publisher for their work. Well, maybe that isn’t quite the challenge you think it is.

Today there are about 83,000 independent publishers in North America, working, of course, in the most serene of harmony with the six major publishers (all based in New York City). The six major publishing houses are Random House, Penguin Putnam, Hachette, Von Holtzbrinck Publishing Services, Simon & Schuster, and Harper Collins Publishers.

And, this is merely covering books and/or novels. When you include print magazines along with Internet based e-magazines and e-book only publishers, the opportunities to get published expand even more. No, there are plenty of publishers, and they all want things to publish. No, the big challenge is: how do you find the right publisher for you?

First, take a look at your own bookshelves. There’s a good chance that the publishers you read the most are the publishers looking for the kind of material you want to produce (or are already producing). This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but it’s a good starting place.

C.J. Here: Of course, you could be like me. My strong suits are (according to most of my fans and critics) action, adventure, hardboiled realism, and lovecraftian horror. But, what do I read the most, what movies and shows do I enjoy the most — comedies. Yes, I do write comedies, but they aren’t the big ticket items in the Henderson display case.

Bruce & C.J. Here: The bottom line is, you should determine what publishers lean toward your kind of work. Find the people who are looking for you. And, you do have to go to them. They aren’t going to come to you. Why should they? They’ve got hundreds of people banging on their doors every day. So, to be seen and heard, you’re going to have to do some more work. And, here’s a popular mantra of this blog, there is always more work to the job of writing than just the writing. Getting the work done is certainly a hard part of the job, but it’s not the only part. However, before we get sidetracked into all those additional things you have to do to get yourself in print, let’s stick with this one for the moment.

First, go online and research the names of editors and publishers at each company and print out each company’s submission guidelines. Next, see if the publisher’s website has a public appearances calendar. If an editor or publisher is going to attend a convention this is a golden opportunity to meet them personally. A great deal of actual publishing business occurs at conventions, often in the bar. So you need to attend science fiction, fantasy, and horror conventions on a regular basis. If there are any conventions in your immediate area, you should check their guest and attendance lists to see if any editors you might need to meet are scheduled to be there. If you’re a sci fi writer, and you find that at a local con two sci fi editors are going to be there…what are you waiting for?

Usually at a convention an editor or publisher will speak on panels about the book business. Attend these panel discussions, take notes, and introduce yourself at the end of the panel. Instead of trying to sell them a finished work of your own, ask them a straightforward question such as, “What fiction does your publishing house need right now?”

Don’t be afraid of these people, either. They’re just people doing a job. Ask things like, “I was thinking of forcing all 700 pages of my new manuscript on you right here and then calling your office every day for weeks, but my schedule just won’t allow it. Do you have any better suggestions?” Show them you have a sense of humor, that you understand how tough their job is, and things will go a lot smoother. If you manage to find them in the hotel bar, don’t feel awkward about offering to buy them a drink.

Here’s a universal truth: It is easier to get published by supplying a publisher with what they need. If you have no reputation established with a publisher and no fan base waiting for your first novel it is — sadly — really hard to get published. If you can fill a need at a publishing house, however, you can establish yourself at the right publishing house for your fiction. This is a case of opportunity meeting preparation. Always deliver high quality fiction — on time — for a publisher and they will come to rely on you. Independent publishers are very approachable via query letter or email. Submission guidelines on their websites will inform you about what they need at the moment.

Bruce here: If you don’t find what you’re looking for, then ask. “Excuse me, but can you tell me what you need at the moment.” Let me give you an example: when I founded Marietta Publishing in 1996 I published only horror for the first six years. Then I decided to expand to the science fiction and fantasy genres. Two savvy authors asked me what I was looking for and immediately sold me two novels and a short story collection in those new genres. All because they asked me the key question!

Bruce & C.J. Here: Now, it’s still true that in almost all instances, any of the major publishing houses still require writers to have a literary agent in order to submit manuscripts to them. The only weakness to be found in this armor is that due to the excessive downsizing over recent years, most of the majors have come to use book packagers to fill their publishing schedules. A book packager comes up with ideas for series of books for publishing houses and then matches up writers with the project. The packager edits, hires the cover artist, designs the interior and exterior layout, and delivers the completed book on a CD-ROM to the publisher. In our genres the two major book packagers are Martin H. Greenberg and Bill Fawcett. Greenberg is the founder and President of Tekno Books and Fawcett founded Bill Fawcett & Associates. Use Google to look up others by searching under the keywords, “Book Packagers” and “Book Developers.”

Be sure to ask them the same key question and you may get hired to do something new, or possibly even sell something you already have on hand. You won’t know until you try!

As we have been discussing in earlier blogs, the invention of the Amazon Kindle e-reader has created an exciting, and completely new form of book. Kindle e-books are less expensive than most printed books today or as inexpensive as a mass market paperback with a retail price less than $9.99 typically. We predicted before in this blog that the second generation Kindle (not yet available) will probably create a combined e-book and audio version book. By being connected to the Internet 24/7, the Kindle has finally created a superior form of the traditional book that will most likely kill off a vast portion of what we now think of as the publishing industry in no more than the next ten years.

As authors, the big question for you is, how will all of this, as well as other on-the-rise technologies such as print-on-demand printing, affect the book business for you personallyr?

Amazon.com can offer some 1.6 million titles online each year to its customers — world-wide — while a brick and mortar big chain bookstore such as Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Books-A-Million can only offer about 56,000 titles per year to those customers willing to leave their homes and walk through their doors. As the availability of e-book versions expands through the Amazon Kindle system and its competitors, the demand for more expensive print books will steadily decline. The big chain bookstores are going to have to sell more books online as a result. Large square footage stores are going to be replaced by book cafes where a reader browses websites and then orders a book to be printed in the back room of the book café on a print-on-demand printer. (A hot off-the-printer book to go with your hot bagel and hot coffee!)

Think opera. When operas were in vogue, they were the only game in town. That’s why they were three, four hours long, because for those who could attend, they were sometimes the only entertainment to be found outside the home for six months to a year. Then, over the centuries, traveling shows, then theater circuits, then radio, movies, television came along, the marketplace for operas shrank, and shrank some more. Now, it’s an art form kept alive through grants, tax dollars, and as Blanche said, “the kindness of strangers.”

Or, if you need something more recent, the reel-to-reel, then the cassette, the 8-track, the CD. Or all the various permutations of television. Technology mutates, and those whose ability to make a living depends on any particular branch of technology had better keep their eye on what’s going on within the nuts and bolts section of their industry. Buggy whips, anyone?

Not all of these retailers are going to make the transition, especially after publishers and authors realize they can sell directly to the readers with much greater ease than ever before. Book wholesalers and distributors are going to become a thing of the past in the next ten years. We can say that confidently because there will in all probability be no traditional bookstores (outside of a handful of used book stores) with printed books in ten years. The Amazon Kindle Internet based e-reader system is actually a distributor and retailer combined. The big difference is the Amazon Kindle sells electrons while old fashioned book distributors have to physically warehouse and ship printed books all over the place. Amazon already uses the Amazon Advantage program to cut out book wholesalers and distributors by buying books directly from publishers such as Marietta Publishing and hundreds more. The Amazon Kindle e-reader system accomplishes the same goal for Amazon.

Because of all this, we predict there will be five major delivery systems for e-books in the near future.

1. Amazon.com
2. I-Tunes (Apple)
3. Fiction Wise
4. E-Bay
5. Barnes & Noble/Sony Entertainment

You read it here first— Borders and Books-A-Million won’t be around in ten years. Barnes & Noble will have to combine forces with Sony to create an Internet based e-reader distributor/retailer system to compete with the Amazon Kindle system. The current Sony e-reader is the next closest thing to an Amazon Kindle. The key is having a strong Internet platform to transmit e-books to shoppers and then a quality e-reader for them to build an e-book library inside.

Currently Amazon charges a 65% discount off the cover price to publishers to distribute and retail their e-books. The e-books are converted to a unique e-book language designed specifically to be read on an Amazon Kindle only. That leaves 35% for the publisher and author to divide up between them. With a $9.99 retail price 35% is $3.50 with $1.25 going to the author and $2.25 going to the publisher. For the author that is a 12.5% royalty rate which is much higher than the average 8% royalty paid by publishers. So everyone makes a higher profit. It is a win, win, win business situation. The publisher has no printing costs, no inventory taxes and no shipping costs to pay, so the $2.25 is a net profit before taxes.

It is highly likely that publishers will produce only e-books and audio books in the very near future. Audio books will be produced automatically by sophisticated software programs that will “read” the words in the text file to create a synthesized voice “reading” the words out loud like a recording — but it will not be a recording. This software technology is already being developed and will be commonly used by publishers to produce the e-book of the future that incorporates text and audio combined. When a publisher sells an e-book from their own website or a genre specific book club, the profit margins will be even higher.

Let us also remember that E-books can also be produced as multi-media presentations with animation or video components as part of their whole. Indeed, who is to say that these electronic books will not follow the path of the DVD? Author commentary, deleted scenes, extended scenes, outlines, character sketches, bonus short stories–once paper, ink, binding, et cetera, and their inherent expense are done away with, there is no telling where the idea of books will go.

Amazon Kindle e-books can also contain advertisement directed at a very specific target market. A publisher can sell ads inside Kindle e-books and update them automatically through the Kindle system periodically. This idea constitutes the first new profit center in publishing in centuries.

E-books can also be shorter “one sitting” reads designed for readers’ faster paced lifestyles. The price can be lowered for the shorter work as well. A writer can create more products more quickly this way. A lower e-book price will help readers try new writers. When a writer has established a large enough fan base they can use the Amazon Kindle system to self-publish and cut out the publisher to make a higher profit margin. For a publisher to survive in the near future they will have to provide better editing and marketing services to a popular author. Publisher websites will have to be excellent promotional tools for writers.

So what does all this mean to you, the up-and-coming author? It means you may have less than a decade to get all your ducks in a row. So, turn off that TV, put down that beer, et cetera, and get to work. Now.

Or, don’t blame us when you get left out in the cold.

Bruce Here: A writers group is a regular meeting, offline or on, of at least semi-like-minded writers seeking to improve their writing skills by giving each other constructive feedback. One of the biggest challenges facing a new writer is the vacuum in which most writers work — especially new ones. Face it, most writing is done alone. Most writers can’t rely on constructive feedback from members of their own families and friends. They’re biased toward encouraging loved ones. The only way to find out what areas of your craft you need to improve is to be a part of a writers group.

Ideally you want to have a group no larger than five people so that you don’t spend all of your time reading and critiquing other peoples’ work. You want them to write in your same genre or genres. Reading a romance story when you are into writing science fiction is not a great idea. If you aren’t widely read in your genre(s) you will have a problem telling the other writer if their work is original or not. There are different types of writers groups and I’ll go through them one at a time.

The first is the beginner’s writers group. This is composed of writers who are just getting started out and have not been published yet. Keep the criticism constructive and honest. Quality feedback is crucial in these early stages as a writer. Everyone has to start somewhere — most people never start — they make excuses and don’t sit down and write.

C.J. Here: There is one big thing to remember, though, and this counts for all the various groups being discussed. One of the toughest obstacles for all writing groups is learning how to give and accept criticism. The problem, oddly enough, does not come from people getting their feelings hurt by those who have nothing valid to say. The real problems start when those being criticized can’t stand to hear the truth. Writer A tells Writer B that this character is wooden, or all their dialogue sounds the same, and A is absolutely right, and B goes into a massive snit. Here’s your big advice, toughen up, Sparkie. This is just the beginning. You’re preparing for a career in the spotlight. Why do you think writers and actors and singers and every other kind of performer have such a high career-mortality rate? Why do you think Britney shaved her head? This is a job with enormous pressures. If you can’t take the heat in someone’s living room, sitting around with people you know with chocolate chip cookies and Doritos on plates with paper towels under them, and your favorite drink in hand … just wait.

Of course, Writer B had better not be talking out their ass, either. Criticism is a two way street. You don’t sit there just waiting to hear what people have to say about your work and not caring about theirs. You are there to help one another, to make each other’s work stronger.

So, in other words, if you can’t take the heat — go home. And, if you can’t dish it out in a helpful manner — go home and stay there.

Bruce Here: Eventually some of these writers will start getting published occasionally. This is the group that will form the basis of the intermediate writers group which is the next step up. At this stage you are still creating your own style of writing and learning to use the tools of your craft. Those tools include metaphors and similes, three dimensional characters that are not stereotypes, realistic dialogue, creating interesting settings and painting descriptions with excellent word choice. Some of these writers will begin to be published on a regular basis and will move up to the semi-pro writers group.

A semi-pro writers group makes a decent amount of their income from writing. Meetings are spent discussing finding literary agents, working well with editors, and finding decent publishers that actually pay for writing. Tips and strategies about self-promoting and building a fan base are exchanged. Experiences in the book business are shared — both good and bad. Out of this group a few will make it to the major publishing houses in New York City.

When you become a professional writer your writers group changes. The first person you work with is your literary agent. You will bounce ideas for books off your agent since your agent has to sell your manuscripts. The agent reads the manuscript as you write it giving feedback along the writing process. When the first draft of the manuscript is done it is sent to your editor at the major publishing house. The editor will send the manuscript back for as many rewrites as they feel are necessary to create a top notch book. At some publishing houses the publisher will also read an edited manuscript and give feedback. Once the galleys are created a copy editor goes over them and sends the final corrections back to the writer. You make the final corrections and send in the finished manuscript to be published.

For some writers a writers group does not meet their needs. In this case the writer can work with an independent editor to help create finished manuscripts. Even professional writers need feedback in order to bring out their best work. Whatever methods work best for you should be used with the goal in mind of creating a great read.

C.J. Again: If you fnd yourself one of those people who can’t work with a writers group, however, think on the “why” of it. Perhaps you’ve just fallen in with a bunch of losers who are holding you back. Brittle, petty types who can’t take criticism but love to fling out invective to cover their own inability to do good work. It happens, and it happens often.

On the other hand, maybe you’re a little brittle and petty yourself. And listen to me here, this is not an attack on you. How could it be? I don’t know you. You’re just some person who came here to read this in the hopes of finding something that might be useful. Well, trust me, this is all for your own good. I had no one to tell me any of this, and I worked my way up the hard way. And I was as brittle as they come. I don’t think I was ever petty, my self-esteem was too tiny and frail to allow that. But I was easily devastated and sometimes I wonder how I got this far.

So, again, trust me when I say this, look for people you can work with, who will tell you the truth, but who will do so in a manner you can live with — that won’t, in other words, choke the life out of you. And then, once you have these people, you treat them with the same respect. Elsewise, nobody gets nuthin’ out of the deal except wasted time.