How To Lose Fans and Alienate Visitors

Hi, Joe or Jane Author. My name is...well, it doesn’t really matter what my name is, all that matters is I’ve just signed up for your newsletter, or started visiting your site or blog, or registered for membership on your site, or started following you on Twitter, or friended you on Facebook or MySpace or FriendFeed or Goodreads or LibraryThing or something similar. This should be the start of a wonderful relationship, in which you share useful and amusing information with me and I sing your praises to everyone I know, buy your books, register for your webinars and show up to your speaking engagements. So far, so good. Now here’s how to f**k it up.

Bombard me with emails. When I signed up for your newsletter, Helpful Tips or the like, unless you specified otherwise at the time I signed up, I’m expecting to hear from you no more frequently than once a week. And in all honesty, if your messages take longer than about five minutes to read, I won't. Between my job, my family commitments, my social commitments, my own reading and writing, and the fall TV schedule ramping up again, I don’t have time to wade through your too-frequent or too-lengthy missives.

Bait and switch me. It might surprise you to learn that when I signed up for your newsletter or Helpful Tips I was expecting to receive…wait for it…news or Helpful Tips, NOT advertising messages. It’s fine to have a one- or two-line sales pitch at the end of your email, or to send out the occasional message about your upcoming book or speaking engagement, but the rest of your content better be worth my time and attention. Look at it this way: would you read a magazine that had nothing but full-page ads in it? If your favorite TV show suddenly started consisting of 80% ads and 20% show, would you keep watching it?

Son of bait and switch me. If you’ve promoted your free webinar, ebook, members-only site, newsletter or whatever else you’ve got as Twenty Surefire Strategies to accomplish some goal, and I sign up, I’m expecting to receive…you guessed it: Twenty Surefire Strategies. When you give me a series of sales pitches for twenty fee-based products or services from you and your affiliates instead, I tend to conclude you’re a lying liar.

Return of the son of bait and switch me. Goodreads, LibraryThing, Shelfari and other reader community sites are places where people share their reactions to books they’ve read and engage in discussions about all things book-related, generally from a reader’s perspective. If the only books on your virtual shelf are those you’ve written yourself, or if you’ve got a variety of books on display but reserve your gushiest reviews for your own work, it’s obvious you’re using the site as a marketing outlet. Way to give new authors everywhere a bad name.

Bait and switch me, the revenge. It’s great that you’re branching out into new areas, or already operating in multiple areas, but don’t assume I want to branch out with you. I signed up for your Sci Fi Wonks site because I enjoy science fiction in general, and yours in particular. Imagine my surprise (and annoyance) when I also started receiving emails from your Gory Horrors site. And your Renaissance Romance N’ Ribaldry site. And your [insert religious affiliation here] Inspiration Of The Day site. And your eBay store. Bonus question: how angry do you think I was to find there were no “unsubscribe” links in any of the unwanted emails?

Bait and switch me, the final chapter. I understand I may need to provide my email address when posting a comment on your blog or site, because it protects you from spammers and hackers. And of course, if I’ve used the Contact form to send you a remark or question off-site, you need my email address to respond to me. But neither of these actions gives you the right to add me to your mailing list. Even if you’ve added some verbiage to your site pages to indicate that’s what you’ll do anytime someone enters his or her email address anywhere on your site, since that’s not how upstanding and honest most sites operate, if you want to avoid any appearance of bait-and-switchery you need to have a separate page just for mailing list signups.

Bait and switch me, the remake. Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, MySpace and other social networking sites are intended for…seriously, do I have to say it? Social networking. Not marketing or sales pitches. If most (or worse, all!) of your tweets, status updates or blog entries are only there to promote yourself or your work, you’re wasting my time. Just like I said about signing up for your newsletter or Helpful Tips, I wasn’t expecting to get a steady stream of advertising.

Are you beginning to sense a common thread? When I’m getting a lot of quality content from you, I don’t mind getting a modicum of advertising and promotion too. Sometimes I’m truly glad to hear about your new book, service or product, especially if I’m getting a special discount, premium edition or access to material or events not made available to the general public. But the moment the balance between content and advertising tips in the direction of advertising, I’m out. The moment I start thinking you’ve abused my trust, I’m out AND spreading the word. So please, don’t make me tweet angry.

I'm Back - With A Post About 'The Rules'

I've been away because I've been judging in this year's Writer's Digest Self-Published Books contest, and unlike some other contest judges I know of, don't think it's fair to reject any entry after reading only the first paragraph---or less. I read all of the 25 books allotted to me from cover to cover, and went back to re-read certain passages in most of them when compiling my judging notes. I say this not because I'm fishing for compliments on my judge-ery, but because the experience of reading all of those books, in a short period of time, in the context of a contest really opened my eyes to something: strict obedience to The Rules is more likely to ruin your work than breaking them.

You know about The Rules, right? That collection of unofficial, yet oft-posted admonitions purporting to warn fiction writers about the prose and story bugaboos that will result in instant rejection? Things like, "delete all adverbs," "vampire stories don't sell anymore," and "publishers hate prologues"...ringing any bells?

As we all know, it's not difficult to find numerous exceptions to any such rule among mainstream, bestselling books. But the response to these rebuttals is invariably some airy statement about how big name authors can get away with that stuff because they have an established fan base, whereas you, a mere beginner in the game, never could. This statement and all its variations are wrong.

Paradoxically, the only distinction between a flawed piece of prose and a flawless one is the question of whether or not the prose sings. In other words, if we feel it does not sing, we say the prose is flawed. It's usually pretty easy to zoom in on problematic sentences or passages that seem awkard, and if certain aspects of those sentences or passages seem to repeat in other works you judge to be flawed (e.g., heavy use of adverbs), it doesn't seem like much of a leap to conclude the repeated items are the root of the problem. It seems very logical to conclude that if only those specific items were eliminated, the prose would be flawless. But as it turns out, this is a HUGE leap and it's NOT logical. There are only two possible reasons for finding broken rules in big-name authors' books: either the broken rule wasn't noticed, or else it was noticed but editors deemed it too minor to bother changing.

If a flaw was noticed but left unchanged, the author isn't necessarily 'getting away with it.' Readers notice when prose is awkward, but they're not generally peeved enough about it to return the book for a refund. Even so, many an established author has found his readership fading right in line with his attention to detail, so breaking The Rules isn't some automatic privilege of becoming a big-name author. I'm sure anyone reading this can think of at least one former-favorite author whose books you stopped reading because the quality of the work seemed to be slipping, or getting repetitive. It's not like authors have to toe the line right up until they hit the Times' bestseller list, but can relax from there on in. Sometimes flaws go uncorrected simply because in terms of time, money and human resources, the publisher's judgment came down on the side of "leave it alone".

If the so-called flaw wasn't noticed, that was either due to a simple editorial oversight or because the so-called flaw wasn't perceived as a flaw at all. In either case, the author still isn't getting away with anything. The question of whether or not the prose is flawed ultimately comes down to each reader's individual experience, and if a reader doesn't like the work, it doesn't really matter what his specific reasons are. That reader will come away thinking the writing was weak.

When a so-called flaw isn't perceived by readers as a flaw at all, the work isn't some exception that proves The Rules. It's an example of excellent authorship, and excellent authorship isn't about how many adverbs you use, or whether your story has a prologue, or whether your protagonist is a vampire. Excellent authorship in fiction is about storytelling. It's about pulling the reader or listener into a world you created and convincing her to care enough about the characters in that world to invest many hours of time and effort on learning more about what happens to them. It's about engaging the reader or listener so fully that he literally shuts off all awareness of the "real" world around him, whether because he's immersed in the plot or fascinated by the characters---or both.

The thing is, excellent authorship cannot be defined in any fixed manner; what makes one piece of work wonderful may be entirely different than what makes another piece of work equally good. For example, many people would laud Terry Pratchett for the humor in his Discworld books, but that doesn't mean that as a rule, all novelists should strive to inject humor into their work. Similarly, many others greatly enjoy the occult elements in Anne Rice's vampire and witch novels, but that doesn't mean adding occult elements to your novel will make it a surefire winner.

Conversely, choosing what to leave out of your novel by hewing to The Rules like they're your religion will not make your novel a surefire winner, either. What it WILL do is drain all the life, personality and originality from your work. In judging, I read many books that were absolutely pristine in terms of following The Rules yet were so boring, predictable or colorless that reading them felt like homework. Many aspiring authors don't seem to realize this, but an author's unique "voice", his or her specific style of communicating, is defined by when and how that author breaks The Rules. If you never break The Rules, you will never find or develop your author's voice. And as a reader, having recently read 25 novels from different authors in rapid succession, I can tell you that I'll take adverbs, prologues and vampires over boring in my novels any day.

Some of the best work I read broke numerous rules, and in every one of those cases the storytelling was so powerful that I didn't even notice any rules being broken until much later, when I went back to try and put my finger on the specific qualities that made certain entries so much stronger than others. At that point I had my eye out for The Rules, and having been schooled in them for so many years I suspected I'd find the stronger entries were stronger precisely because those authors managed to avoid breaking The Rules. But I was wrong.

In comparing the greats to the not-so-greats, there was plenty of rule-breaking happening on both sides of the fence. The only difference was, in the greats I didn't notice the rule-breaking during my first read-through, whereas in the not-so-greats I HAD noticed. It became very clear to me that what separates successful prose from flawed prose isn't the question of whether or not the author uses a prologue, adverbs, vampire characters, or breaks any other rule: it's whether the author succeeded in pulling me in. Period. But since there's no simple way to explain how to pull a reader in, no universal method or style that works for all writers in all genres at all times, we tend to find other, easier mile markers upon which to hang our hats. Hence, The Rules are born. Hence, huge populations of writers become convinced that good fiction writing is about following rules, not storytelling. I think this must be because it's very comforting to believe there's some secret formula or magic method that invariably leads to success, and very scary to think there isn't.

In my critiques of those 25 books, my notes on how the books could be improved had to do with things like characterization, phrasing too awkward to be easily understood, story arc, plot logic and pacing. I didn't advise anyone to kill the adverbs, strike the prologue, or eliminate the undead from their stories. I'd already read plenty of work that had done all those things and more in service (or servitude) to The Rules, yet still failed to hold my rapt attention. In the end, the books that piqued my interest and held it were the ones I judged most promising, regardless of The Rules. Plenty of these needed a good edit, a little work on pacing or character, or improvement in some other area of mechanics, but all of those things are easy to fix. If your story lacks personality, originality, or imagination, neither I nor anyone else can tell you how to fix those problems. It's like telling a musician to play better.

If you must have rules, I'd say these are the only two you need:

1. If it weakens, or adds nothing to the work, change it.

2. If it strengthens the work, leave it alone.

I think you'll find that these two rules alone cover everything from spelling and grammar to plot and pacing, and that there's no flaw you can think of in a piece of prose that can't be fixed through the application of one or the other of these two rules. Even murkier areas like character, theme and tone are covered by these two rules, because every choice you make in drawing character, conveying theme and setting tone will weaken, add nothing to, or strengthen the work overall.

But as I'm sure you've noticed, these rules are fairly useless unless you can tell the difference between what weakens/adds nothing to, or strengthens, a piece of work. And if you can already tell the difference, then you don't need these rules to begin with. Unfortunately, there's no rubric to which you can refer on this, it comes down to your gut and the reactions of your readers. Even spelling and grammar aren't so clear-cut as you might think; believe it or not, there are times when purposeful misspelling and incorrect grammar really can strengthen a story; just ask Burroughs or Vonnegut.

In the end, the inherent problem with conventional wisdom is that if you follow it, you end up with a conventional product for conventional people. And when was the last time you heard a novel praised for being conventional?

Psst! Discount Code For Writer's Digest Business of Getting Published Conference

I'll be presenting a workshop at this year's Writer's Digest: The Business Of Getting Published Conference, and the nice folks at WD have provided me with a $50 discount code my audience can use when registering for the conference (discount code below). From WD:

The Writer's Digest Conference: The Business of Getting Published is designed to guide any author through the new dynamics of today's publishing world. The event is Friday, September 18 through Sunday, September 20, 2009, at the Marriott Marquis Hotel, on Times Square in New York.

With emphasis on platform, networking and social media, The Writer's Digest Conference is an innovative and ground-breaking conference, featuring the industry's top forward-thinking speakers, leading sessions on topics relevant to the current state of the publishing world. Chris Brogan, social media genius, is the keynote speaker. Other speakers include Mike Shatzkin, the industry's top
publishing consultant; David Mathison, whose online sales success is the
new business model; Bill O'Hanlon, one of the country's top motivational speakers; April Hamilton, leading proponent of independent publishing; Jennifer Gilmore, author and former publicity director at Harcourt; Kassia Krozser, editor of BookSquare.com, a leading publishing blog; Christina Katz, author and well-known blogger; Amy Cook, attorney focusing on issues affecting writers and small publishers; independent editors Ruth Greenstein, Linda Carbone, and Alice Rosengard; and Seth Harwood and Scott Sigler, whose own podcasts and videocasts have made them superstars in the business; and many more, plus the editors of Writer's Digest!

Registration is now open at www.writersdigestconference.com. Writer's Digest has partnered with the Marriott Marquis to bring you an incredible rate of $199 per night. Details on the website.

My specific workshop is called "Indie Authors and the Temple of DIY":

This 90-minute session will cover three major topics: Laying The Groundwork, Publishing, and Promotion.

‘Laying The Groundwork’ will address what it means to be an indie author, how to decide if indie authorship is right for you, publishing options (i.e., Print On Demand [POD], subsidy, ebook, podcast/audiobooks), how to choose a publisher, and creating your author brand.

‘Publishing’ will delve into the nuts and bolts of publishing: when and how to hire out for professional services like editing and book cover design, formatting your manuscript for POD and ebook publication (including Kindle publication), working with a POD publisher, using Smashwords and Amazon DTP to publish ebooks.

'Promotion' will provide an introduction to Author Platform and a survey of both traditional and new media approaches to book promotion, with a specific emphasis on budget-conscious strategies.

Attendees will be given access to free, supporting excerpts from The IndieAuthor Guide, provided online in the form of downloadable pdf documents.

This workshop will be offered on Saturday, and again on Sunday. I'll also be there for the "Breakfast With the Stars" networking continental breakfasts on both days. And now...drumroll please...here's that discount code: HamS6.

Hope to meet some of you there!

An Author's Field Guide To Internet Trolls

‘Author Platform’ is the buzzphrase of the moment. If you’re doing a good job of creating and maintaining that all-important communication channel between yourself and the public, it’s only a matter of time before the web trolls descend upon you to ruin things for everyone. Herewith, I present a relevant excerpt from Ms. Gertrude Strumpf-Hollingsworth’s “Encyclopedia of Annoyances, Bothers and Frustrations”, which provides a valuable natural history lesson in the identification and management of the species most likely to darken an author’s virtual doorstep.

Introduction
The Internet Troll (webicus infuriatum) is a hardy, highly adaptable family of parasites with established populations all over the web. Most leading Techno-Naturalists classify it as a viral organism due the fact that it reproduces by infecting members of targeted populations. Once exposed to webicus, susceptible individuals soon display the aggression, vitriol and boorishness which are the identifying hallmarks of all Trolls.

Hiding behind a pseudonym, webicus will quickly become the dominant element in any online ecosystem which provides it with a steady supply of attention and argument. In fact, webicus is so skilled in monopolizing these resources that it frequently drives off larger, but more peaceable, local populations. While all Trolls are destructive, there are perhaps none so pernicious as the subspecies which target author websites and online writer communities. Armed with a voluble nature and much larger vocabularies than other Trolls, these are particularly troublesome.

The Queen Bee/King Drone (lordicus cliqueium)

Behavior: Lordicus begins by befriending charter members and site owner/administrators alike with its initial friendliness and offers of assistance. With favors banked and loyalties established, lordicus reveals its true nature when another community member voices a dissenting view, or becomes as well-liked as lordicus. In either case, lordicus and its followers close ranks to attack or freeze out the other member, claiming to speak on behalf of the entire community.

Control: The only effective method of lordicus control is a strongly-worded email from the site owner or administrator. Lordicus’ response is invariably a dramatic, martyred leave-taking from the site, after which it will continue to lurk and foment dissention among other members via off-site communications.

Identifying Call: A shrill, “Who do you think you are?”, sometimes followed by a low-pitched, “Nobody cares what you think, anyway.”

The Puffed Pedant (self-importantia verbosia)

Behavior: Self-importantia is known for its lengthy, patronizing deconstructions of other members’ writing, in which it takes great pleasure in pointing out every broken rule of grammar, plotting, characterization and the like, regardless of whether or not said rules were broken intentionally, as a stylistic choice. Given that s.i. is never a published author in its own right, one might expect other community members to routinely disregard its remarks. However, s.i. posts with such smug conviction that it effects a sort of Jedi Mind Trick on the least experienced and most gullible members of the community.

Control: Since s.i. doesn’t technically overstep a site’s Terms of Service, there’s little the site owner/admin can do to put a stop to its antics. It was once thought that exposing the Pedant to the works of Kurt Vonnegut or Anthony Burgess would humble and silence the creature, but field studies have proven it will merely label such works “the exception that proves the rule” and emerge both unscathed and uneducated by the experience. Depriving s.i. of the attention, argument, and writing samples it craves usually proves more effective.

Identifying Call: A repetitive, clucking, “Do your homework.”

The Prickly Recluse (hypersensitivium rex)

Behavior: This species is known for its uncanny ability to incorrectly interpret the tone or meaning of any other member posts, regardless of how innocuous those posts may be, invariably choosing the most negative or insulting meaning possible and taking that meaning entirely personally. From there, hypersensitivium will repeat and repost its incorrect interpretation in an effort to rally support and sympathy for itself.

Control: First-time victims generally interpret the Recluse's behavior as innocent misunderstanding, and will usually attempt to resolve the matter with an apologetic, clarifying post. However, since hypersensitivium will misinterpret the palliative post as well, such efforts are destined to fail. A warning post or email from the site administrator will generate one last, self-pitying post from the Recluse, followed by several weeks of absence from the site. It is from this latter behavior that the Recluse gets its name.

Identifying Call: A sharp, striking, "How dare you!"

The PubPro Mimic (wannabeum knowitallia)

Behavior: This type of Troll masquerades as a publishing industry professional with many years of relevant experience, yet never offers any proof of its claims and simply ignores all requests for such. Nevertheless, using its supposed trove of expertise as bait, wannabeum easily attracts a cadre of insecure writers looking for a “secret handshake” or other insider knowledge that might give them an edge in getting published. Since wannabeum lacks the expertise to which it lays claim, its haughty assertions about writing, getting an agent, publishing and bookselling are largely false. Even so, any attempt to correct the Mimic directly, or even to merely post an alternative viewpoint, will backfire in a firestorm of belittling recriminations from the Mimic, which will rely on its claimed expertise as all the support or proof its posts require.

Control: Catching wannabeum in a resumé lie will cause it to immediately vacate a site, but this is nearly impossible since wannabeum never posts under its real name and is careful to keep the identifying details of its claimed career experience vague.

Identifying Call: “If you’d worked in the publishing business for as many years as I have, you’d know how ridiculous you sound.”

The Equalizer (evenus stevenus)

Behavior: Evenus is the self-appointed score keeper and referee of any community it inhabits. Evenus keeps constant track of who has shared good or bad news, who has posted congratulations or sympathy, and whether or not such congratulations or sympathies are adequately effusive and timely. Anyone failing to pass the Equalizer’s test is subjected to the same kind of freeze-out favored by the Queen Bee / King Drone, but unlike that species, the Equalizer keeps the impetus behind its attack secret for as long as possible. Often, Evenus deprives its victims of this information for so long that another member of Evenus’ circle is ultimately the one to reveal it.

Control: As with the Puffed Pedant, since Evenus doesn’t technically break any site’s Terms of Service, little can be done to discourage it. One can either ignore Evenus or strive to steer clear of it.

Identifying Call: frosty silence.

The Sock Puppet Master (bittera duplicator)

Behavior: Perhaps the most pathetic of all the Troll species which favor author communities and websites, bittera creates its own support network by setting up multiple user accounts. It uses these accounts to create negative or attacking posts about others and their work, then uses its other accounts to second its own opinions in a masturbatory fashion.

Control: No specific action is necessary. Bittera will eventually reveal itself as a fraud by losing track of its various aliases, posting in the tone or style of one persona while logged in as another. Once exposed, this Troll will immediately delete all of its past posts, close its many accounts and move on to a new site. It may reappear months later to set up a new collection of accounts and aliases, but only when it’s sure its past activities have been forgotten.

Identifying Call: mockingbird-like repetition of, and agreement with, anything posted under any of its many aliases.

The Fake Friendly (condescendiosa passive-aggressivium)

Behavior: This Troll openly attacks and insults authors and their work, and when called to account for its unacceptable behavior, claims its remarks have been misinterpreted and it meant no offense. For example, in a thread about the merits of giving away free ebook copies as a promotional gambit, following the post of a member extolling the virtues of free ebook copies, it may post, “If your book was any good, you wouldn’t have to give it away.” When the other member responds with understandable anger and offense, the Fake Friendly will defend itself by retreating behind a response along the lines of, “I didn’t say your book actually is no good, I’m just saying that you deserve to be paid for quality work.”

Condescendiosa can keep this back-and-forth dance of insults and re-interpretation going indefinitely, but its most maddening behavior is its penchant for claiming the moral high ground by recasting its abuse as simple, well-meaning honesty, which it says others can’t tolerate on account of being overly sensitive.

Control: Much like the Sock Puppet Master, this type of Troll is always the cause of its own undoing. As it slashes and burns its way through the community, systematically training its disingenuous focus on member after member, condescendiosa eventually finds it has more enemies than cohorts and vacates the premises.

Identifying Call: “You’ll never make it as a writer if you don’t develop a thicker skin,” and “I don’t know what you’re so upset about.”

Invented Ideologies And Lexica

My blog series on the most common problems I found in the self-published, non-fiction books I recently judged for The Next Generation Indie Book Awards continues. In part one, I discussed books written by authors who are not qualified experts in their chosen subjects. In part two, I wrote about authors who come across as dabblers or flakes in their author bio. Part three was about memoirs masquerading as reference books. In today’s post, the last in the series, I’ll address the type of book that introduces an author-invented ideology and a new lexicon to go with it.

An ideology is a body of belief that guides an individual, group or social movement. For example, Freemasonry, veganism and all the religions of the world are based in ideologies. Many more ideologies are introduced in self-help books; Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus is one example. An ideology often has its own lexicon, or vocabulary. For instance, Scientologists are on a quest to become “clear” and Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) practitioners use “tapping” to eliminate negative feelings.

Obviously, all ideologies were ‘invented’ by some person or group and if you’ve hit on a new body of belief about something, you may have to develop new terminology to explain it. However, your new concepts and ideas can only resonate with the reader if the reader understands them. Successful education in any new subject always begins with a foundation of basic ideas and concepts, ideally using examples drawn from the learner’s everyday life or experience. If you intend to teach the reader an entirely new way of thinking or being, it’s critical that you make it as easy as possible for the reader to learn and comprehend.

Several of the books I read were filled with needlessly complicated explanations of relatively simple concepts. I’m not sure if the authors were trying to impress readers with their huge vocabularies (or huge Thesauruses), or were genuinely incapable of communicating their ideas more simply. In either case the resulting books were a chore to read, difficult to understand, and not at all likely to inspire me to adopt the author’s professed ideology—assuming I could ever figure it out. The following two sentences should illustrate my point:

Track your resting cardiac and pulmonary throughput, as elevated rates of cardiovascular and respiratory activity in a resting state are often indicative of incumbent physical, mental or emotional demands on a systemic level.

Pay attention to your heart rate and breathing when you’re not being physically active, as an elevated pulse or labored breathing at such times may be a sign of physical, mental or emotional stress.

Believe it or not, both sentences communicate the same thing. Which one would you rather read? Now imagine 2-300 pages of the first type of sentence; would you want to read that book?

The poor choices with existing language were challenging enough in these books, but a couple of the authors went a step further by introducing positively baroque terminology of their own—with the words and phrases frequently bearing trademarks. I realize there are instances where an invented word or phrase is needed to make a strong impact, or to describe something that’s never been described before. I also know that inventing and trademarking a name for some concept is a way of laying claim to the discovery of that concept.

Nevertheless, the reader of a mass-market self-help book isn’t expecting to learn a whole new language, and probably has no desire to do so. She bought Freedom to Imagine* in the hope of learning how to spark her creativity, not to be told that her Creative Collective of Pattern Recognition (CCPR)™ is an Imaginational Oppositional Hindrance (IOH)™ to her ability to Futuretask™ and achieve a Creatively Cooperative Psycho-State (CCPS)™. None of those terms are real (as far as I know), but I saw equally annoying jargon in some of the books I read. There are several problems here.

First and most important is the fact that the author didn’t have to invent any new terms. All that the above sentence says is that old habits and patterns can prevent people from being open to new ways of thinking and doing. Rather than communicate this idea in plain English, the author forces his readers to decipher and memorize new terms and acronyms.

Secondly, if new acronyms are introduced every few pages, it’s only a matter of time before the reader begins confusing them or forgetting what they stand for. The author’s use of new terms and acronyms hasn’t made his ideology easier to understand, and in fact he’s made confusion and wrong conclusions much more likely.

Third is the risk that the author’s made-up lexicon will just seem silly to the reader. Seriously, didn’t you have to stifle a giggle while reading the jargon-heavy sentence?

Finally, all that invented terminology makes the book hard and unpleasant to read. Persistent use of unfamiliar terms and acronyms breaks up the flow of sentences and paragraphs, often forcing the reader to re-read entire sections of the book.

Sometimes it truly is necessary to develop new terms and teach them to readers, but only when the thing you’re trying to explain cannot possibly be explained any more clearly with words already in use. In the books I’m talking about, it seemed to me that the authors’ motives had nothing to do with clear explanation. Rather, it seemed they were trying to lay claim to concepts by naming them (and sometimes, trademarking the names).

What the authors fail to recognize is that there will never be a need to defend their claim to this or that term if nobody wants to read their books in the first place. Moreover, the authors can only defend their claim to the invented (and/or trademarked) name, not the concept described by the name. And how likely is it that some other author will make the fortune that was rightfully the first author's by throwing around terms like Imaginational Oppositional Hindrance (IOH)? Not very.

*not a real book

Memoirs And Reference Books Are Entirely Different Things

My blog series on the most common problems I found in the self-published, non-fiction books I recently judged for The Next Generation Indie Book Awards continues. In part one, I discussed books written by authors who are not qualified experts in their chosen subjects. In part two, I wrote about authors who come across as dabblers or flakes in their author bio. Today, it’s about memoirs masquerading as reference books.

As with all the posts in this series, since I’m not allowed to reveal identifying details of the actual books I reviewed, the book names and specific contents discussed herein have been fabricated. While they serve to illustrate the types of problems I saw, they are not meant to refer to any real books.

Reference Books Are Supposed To Inform AND Educate

The jacket blurb describes Bicycling To Victory as a book filled with insight and advice for the competitive cyclist, and since it was written by a world-champion cyclist, there’s no reason to doubt that jacket copy. But in the book, the author merely relates his experiences on the competitive cycling circuit. No explicit advice is given, and at no point does the author finish up his retelling of a given incident by pointing out what he learned from the experience.

The cyclist has written a memoir, not a reference or educational book. His fans and fans of the sport may find the book interesting, but since it’s classified and described as a reference book, anyone who buys it is probably expecting to gain some instruction and practical tips. Those buyers will be disappointed.

Your Experiences May Not Be As Fascinating To Others As They Are To You

A body shop owner writes Bringing Back Baby, a book about his experiences in restoring numerous classic and rare cars over the many years of his career. Each chapter covers a different car, first describing how the car was obtained and what was wrong with it, then explaining what the body shop owner did to fix it. For example, one of the cars was missing its original headlamps so the body shop owner had to scour the internet and junk yards in four states in order to find the necessary replacement parts.

However, the book doesn’t offer any kind of detailed, step-by-step directions for working on the cars, and there’s nothing unique or special about the various strategies employed by the author in locating missing parts and necessary supplies. Finally, since each chapter is about a different car, and each car requires a specific repair that doesn’t relate to any of the other cars in the book, the book can’t even stand as an overview of classic car restoration.

This is another memoir, just like the cyclist’s book, but it’s a memoir that isn’t likely to interest anyone but the author and the owners of the cars he restored. I saw several examples of memoirs that had been wrongly classified by their authors as nonfiction, reference books, the contents of which would only be of interest to people with a personal connection to the subject matter.

If Your Book Is A Memoir/Self-Help Hybrid, Don’t Leave Out The Self-Help Part

The memoir/self-help hybrid is an increasingly common type of nonfiction book, but again, your accomplishments and experiences in overcoming various challenges don’t automatically make a book based on those things a self-help book.

Reading With My Mind Shut relates the inspiring story of a man who overcame dyslexia and Down Syndrome to complete his education and eventually become a special education teacher. The book names the facilities and programs which helped him along the way, and describes his personal experiences with those facilities and programs. However, while the book may be a terrific memoir, it’s useless as a self-help book because it doesn’t truly offer advice or instruction to the reader. It’s only a self-help book to the extent the reader is willing and able to utilize the exact same facilities and programs in the exact same ways as the author.

In Dance To The Tune That’s Playing, the author provides a series of anecdotes drawn from her experiences as a social worker serving the needs of battered women. The jacket copy suggests the book as a self-help manual for battered women, their friends and family. Each anecdote follows the same pattern of building trust, identifying the client’s specific needs or fears, and serving those specific needs or fears. But because each client’s circumstances are different and the author’s methods for building their trust and serving them are different in each case, no general conclusions can be drawn by the reader. The author hasn’t presented her anecdotes in a framework of methodology or instruction, nor concluded each story with an instructional passage explaining how readers can extrapolate from the story to address their own issues. So while the anecdotes may be interesting or even comforting to the target audience, they aren’t “helpful” in the self-help sense.

Coming Up Next Time: Invented Ideologies And Lexica

Nobody Wants To Take Advice From A Dabbler Or A Flake

My blog series on the most common problems I found in the self-published, non-fiction books I recently judged for The Next Generation Indie Book Awards continues. In part one, I discussed books written by authors who are not qualified experts in their chosen subjects. This time, I take on the dabbler: the author who comes across as a jack of all trades, but master of none.

Nobody wants to take advice from a dabbler, but judging by many of the supplied biographies on their book jackets, plenty of self-published, non-fiction authors seem to be totally unaware of this. They seem to think that if their qualifications in the subject matter of their book are light or spotty, their unrelated experiences and accomplishments will establish some level of general authority for them in readers' minds. This is not true.

Every non-fiction author has hobbies or interests outside of the subject matter of his book, but the only hobbies and interests his readers need to know about are those which help to establish his credibility as a subject area expert. It’s typical for non-fiction author bios in mainstream books to include some mention of the author’s general area or country of residence, and maybe a line or two about marital and family status, but that’s about it as far as personal details go.

Given that the person who buys your non-fiction book is, in a sense, 'hiring' you to educate them on some subject, your author bio is like a job application. Don't mention anything in your author bio that you wouldn't list among your qualifications in a job interview. While you may very well be "an eco-conscious lover of life, dreamer of dreams, and chaser of rainbows,” such a statement will not instill confidence in a potential employer, nor anyone perusing the jacket of your non-fiction book.

Just as in a job application, relevance matters. Nobody wants to buy a book on estate planning from an author who describes himself as a “Yoga instructor, 4th Degree Black Belt, Photographer and Community Theater Director”. Such a bio just makes the reader wonder why the author didn't write a book on yoga, martial arts, photography, or running a community theater, since those are his stated areas of expertise. If you have no experience, education or training to speak of with respect to the subject of your book, you’re not qualified to write that book.

Similarly, the longer your list of disparate professional titles, the less credibility you have in the minds of readers. The multi-gifted likes of a Leonardo DaVinci or Benjamin Franklin come along once in a generation or less, and anyone else laying claim to a half-dozen, unrelated professional titles is more than likely just padding her resume. Either that, or she's someone who's quit (or been fired from) every job she's ever had because she can't fully commit to any profession. Either way, it doesn't look good.

Invented, self-assigned titles are also a bad idea. Stating that you’re a “Spiritual Color Consultant / Themed Self-Actualization Life Coach” doesn’t make you seem important, accomplished or authoritative to the reader; it just makes you seem like a self-aggrandizing flake who has no legitimate educational or work experience.

Along those same lines…enough already with all the authors claiming to be a “Life Coach” when they can’t list any educational or career credentials justifying that title. While Life Coaching is a genuine career (just ask Tony Robbins), the title has become a trendy, umbrella term that’s frequently appropriated by people for whom a more accurate title would be “Unemployed Guy Who Thinks He’s Good At Helping His Friends Solve Their Problems”.

The fact that you helped your best friend start up her small business and provided moral support during her divorce does not make you a Life Coach, nor does the fact that all your salon clients bring their job, relationship and family problems to you because you give such great advice. A legitimate Life Coach is engaged in Life Coaching as his or her primary occupation, and typically has some kind of certification, or a degree—often an advanced degree—in a subject related to business, counseling or education. A legitimate Life Coach can usually introduce herself as the founder of, or a partner in, a thriving practice with a lengthy list of satisfied clients.

If you genuinely feel you’re in a position to advise others on how to be more organized, self-confident, driven, assertive, etc., but can’t offer degrees or a longstanding practice to back it up, then zero in on the training or career experience you feel justifies the title of Life Coach and spell that out in your author bio instead of just granting yourself the title.

Coming up next time: memoirs and reference books are entirely different things.