I met author Margaret Dilloway when I was managing the BlogHer Book Club. We discussed and reviewed her first book, HOW TO BE AN AMERICAN HOUSEWIFE, and her second book, THE CARE AND HANDLING OF ROSES WITH THORNS. Since then, we've grown friendly and I even got to have dinner with her at last year's BlogHer conference. When author Angélique Jamail gave me the opportunity to interview another author for Women Writer Wednesdays on her blog, I picked Margaret. I hope you enjoy the interview! We discuss craft, her favorite of her books, her career and more!

For the book club discussions:

• HOW TO BE AN AMERICAN HOUSEWIFE
• THE CARE AND HANDLING OF ROSES WITH THORNS

Here I've spent the first half of 2014 thinking I could no longer run giveaways for THE OBVIOUS GAME on Goodreads because it was published in 2013. (The dropdown in the author tools area only give you options for the year prior to your pub date and the year of your pub date.) I was sad, because Goodreads giveaways are such a win/win. They are inexpensive for an author to run (you only pay for the books and shipping) and they provide exposure as each sign-up adds the book to the signee's to-read shelf, thus giving the author and the book exposure she wouldn't otherwise have had. Lately most of my dealings with THE OBVIOUS GAME have been either asking people to review it or answering emails from people who love people with eating disorders (in which really what can I say but, "Well, I wrote an entire book about what I want to say to you now, so maybe you could read that and then let me know if you want to talk more"). The answering the emails part is really hard. Really hard. But I am really glad I at least have the book to point them to.

And this is the part where I say, "Hey, if you've read THE OBVIOUS GAME, could you drop me a review on Goodreads and Amazon? It doesn't even have to be nice! Nobody likes everything." And then I follow that up by saying, "If you haven't read THE OBVIOUS GAME, mightn't you request it at your library, and if your librarian has trouble, she can contact me and I will get her the book with my author discount?" And then you might say, "But I really want to help you MORE." So of course I would smile sincerely and say, "Well, you could buy my book! Or even just share the giveaway so more people will know it exists." And then I burst into tears and throw my arms around you.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Obvious Game

by Rita Arens

Giveaway ends October 27, 2014.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

 

Enter to win

Here I've spent the first half of 2014 thinking I could no longer run giveaways for THE OBVIOUS GAME on Goodreads because it was published in 2013. (The dropdown in the author tools area only give you options for the year prior to your pub date and the year of your pub date.) I was sad, because Goodreads giveaways are such a win/win. They are inexpensive for an author to run (you only pay for the books and shipping) and they provide exposure as each sign-up adds the book to the signee's to-read shelf, thus giving the author and the book exposure she wouldn't otherwise have had. Lately most of my dealings with THE OBVIOUS GAME have been either asking people to review it or answering emails from people who love people with eating disorders (in which really what can I say but, "Well, I wrote an entire book about what I want to say to you now, so maybe you could read that and then let me know if you want to talk more"). The answering the emails part is really hard. Really hard. But I am really glad I at least have the book to point them to.

And this is the part where I say, "Hey, if you've read THE OBVIOUS GAME, could you drop me a review on Goodreads and Amazon? It doesn't even have to be nice! Nobody likes everything." And then I follow that up by saying, "If you haven't read THE OBVIOUS GAME, mightn't you request it at your library, and if your librarian has trouble, she can contact me and I will get her the book with my author discount?" And then you might say, "But I really want to help you MORE." So of course I would smile sincerely and say, "Well, you could buy my book! Or even just share the giveaway so more people will know it exists." And then I burst into tears and throw my arms around you.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Obvious Game

by Rita Arens

Giveaway ends October 27, 2014.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

 

Enter to win

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQYrLR1aauk] 

Thanks to my friend Nordette for making me aware of the existance of these two awesome ladies. BAM!

After I attended RT Booklovers, I came home and plotted out my scenes and updated my long synopsis of the new adult novel I'm working on now. (I've decided it's new adult, not young adult, because the story works better that way. Though I would like to write another YA novel. Really like writing teenagers -- it's such an exciting and also terrifying and also boring time of your life, all at once and every day.

Then I completely stalled out as we started spending every night ripping apart our kitchen and foyer and then slowly rebuilding it and holy hell we're not done yet because the last cabinet is STILL not installed which means the pantry can't be attached to the wall, which means every bit of nonrefrigerated food I own is on the kitchen table and floor. And because I can't control that situation, I turned my frenzied eyes back to a project I can move forward: THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES.

The beginning is so hard. I don't really know Meg well enough yet. I'm getting there, slowly, but most of what I'm writing right now will probably end up chucked and I'm just writing it to get to know Meg and for no other reason. I like the plot so far, which is funny because the plot was the hardest part of THE OBVIOUS GAME. Of course, I didn't really think about the plot in advance for TOG the way I am PARKER CLEAVES. I probably should've done that, but what did I know about writing novels? 

So now I've got a scene list that I like and it's much easier to sit down after my daughter goes to bed and tell myself to just start a scene or add to a scene that's started or just puke out a thousand words somehow and then you can watch TV. I've been doing that and I'm up to about twenty thousand vomit words. This way of thinking makes the process much easier because I have absolutely no delusions about this rough draft being good. No, it's vomit with maybe a few decent sentences sprinkled in there so I don't set my Mac on fire in the end.

The other thing that's different this time around is the pressure I'm putting on myself to move forward. I do want a career as a novelist. I want to write a bunch of books. It seems more likely that I'll get anywhere if I have more than one book. But the first novel is done, I proved to myself I could do it, and that temporarily has muted a huge voice in my head. (There's another one in there pointing to my book sales, but I just shush it by saying DISCOVERABILITY, ASSHOLE, and that works for as long as it takes me to fall asleep at night.)

I haven't added anything to my PARKER CLEAVES pinboard in a while, so I added something today. I'll be adding to the board as I write, for my amusement and anyone else's. I also have a pinboard for THE OBVIOUS GAME.

ONWARD!

Some of you expressed interest in what I'm doing with my publishing interactions with readers and other authors. My motto is pay it forward and hope and also pray hard and row for shore. In other words, while I think there is something to books sell because they are really beautiful or profound or poignant, there's also even more to books sell because people realize they are there in the first place. That's the toughest part of publishing right now. With 235,000 self-published books coming out yearly -- that's self-published, not even counting the number of books that come out with a traditional publisher -- distribution and discoverability are huge to a book's success. Knowing how hard it is out there for a gangsta, every author I've befriended and whose book I liked has received his or her share of tweets, Facebook likes, Goodreads shelves and now Riffle lists that I can provide. I've even starting to write Amazon reviews -- I didn't realize in the past how powerful those are. I know, naive. But it's so true. The nicest thing you can do for an author is throw out an Amazon or Goodreads review.

I've been digging through the various places in which one can get a review or a mention. In addition to the usual social media channels, there are also very book-specific sites. Today I'm going to cover one in particular: Riffle. It is brand new, and I got the insider scoop because of a job-related connection. As a beta user, I've been busy curating lists:

• Shaped My Life
• Writing I Admire
• Learned Something About Writing or Technique
• Great Reads for a Rainy Day
• Good Books for Teens
• Books I Threw Across the Room (the anti-list)

I also use Goodreads almost daily, but I use Goodreads differently than I use Riffle. Both tools are good for discoverability. On Goodreads, I seek reviews and I give reviews (I need to catch up on that, note to self) and I also use the shelves to track which books I'm going to read in which order. With two to three books a month that I need to read for my job as managing editor of the BlogHer Book Club (another fabulous place to get ideas for what to read next, *cough*), two or three YA novels a month I'm reading to get a feel for what works and what doesn't and a few other picks mixed in, I'm plowing through more pages a week than I have since graduate school. And you know what? It feels great. I feel energized after I read a good book. I don't feel that way after watching TV. Sometimes, I'm too drained for anything but TV, but I've found since I started reading more I feel like the world is more interesting.

And isn't that interesting?

Back to bookish tools. I digress.

As a reader and an author, I want to help other readers and authors find great books. I don't see Goodreads and Riffle as being any more competitive with each other than I see Pinterest and Facebook being competitive with each other -- they tap into different facets of the same communication. Riffle is very visual and very curated -- it's pretty much pure discoverability, and I love the way it works visually. Here's my profile page on Riffle:

Here's my profile page on Goodreads.

Riffle is just pretty, and the lists I curate there are not everything I've read, but things I've read and mentally sorted into a list. Sometimes physically sorted on my bookshelves at home.

I follow other people on Riffle -- people I know and people who have clever list names. Here's the main Riffle page.

I have friends on Goodreads, too, and if someone sends me a recommendation and I know that person, I usually put their recommendation on my shelf. Both Riffle and Goodreads are useful tools for those of us who just inhale literature and don't want to waste our time on books that just aren't good.

Life is short. Read the best.

If you'd like to get an invite to Riffle (it's currently invite-only as the rollout begins), click this link between October 29-31st. They'll know you came from Surrender, Dorothy, and this is the only place you can get access to this particular invite. I know, we're totally snooty around here, right?

And also, please do friend me on Goodreads if you use it so we can see each others' books. I am reading gazillions of things right now and I'm happy to give you my honest take on whether or not I liked it on a variety of levels.

I'm getting ready to take off for New York City to speak at Book Bloggers Conference, which is part of Book Expo America. The opening keynote is author Jennifer Weiner, and the closing remarks -- wow, is the world small -- are by my friend Jenny Lawson, also known as The Bloggess.

My session is on monetizing book blogs. I'm excited to meet and talk shop with my fellow panelists.

So You Want to Make Money?

Syndication, Monetization and Affiliate Programs for your Blog

Moderator: Scott Fox, ClickMillionaires.com
Speaker: Rita Arens, Senior Editor, BlogHer.com
Speaker: Ron Hogan, Beatrice.com 
Speaker: Thea James, Co-Founder, The Book Smugglers
Speaker: Sarah Pitre, Blogger, Forever Young Adult 

Though it's making me sad to leave for two nights, I'm beyond excited to wade in the deep end of publishing for a while day and a half. I WILL TAKE WHAT I CAN GET AND LIKE IT.

I'll be photoblogging hopefully while I'm there so I can take you with me. This is a huge conference for the publishing industry, and I have no idea what to expect.

BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS 

Today the little angel and I and two of our dear friends ventured down I-70 to Heins Farms, a working dairy farm about an hour outside Kansas City. They supply Roberts. We had a grand old time, extended NY subway version to follow, but please to enjoy this cow video for now.

Here's a link to all the cow pics and videos that I took while on the Heins farm.

And!

• Why Vampires Make Bad Boyfriends -- my review of Deborah Harkness' debut novel, A Discovery of Witches, for BlogHer Book Club
• Like Jane Austen? The folks at Penguin and BlogHer are giving away five sets of two awesome books: A Jane Austen Education and Jane Austen: The Complete Novels (yes, it's all of them in one book). Comment to win!
• There's still time to sign up for my author/blogger workshop this Saturday at The Writers Place. Hope to see you there!
• Tonight Jill Miller Zimon and EM Zamotti will be live blogging the Republican debate at BlogHer. You can feed your tweetstream into the live blog or just read Jill from the left and EM from the right. Should be entertaining, to say the least!

Last week, I got an envelope from my publisher. The first few times, I ripped them open excitedly, trying to figure out the numbers. Book-selling numbers are very difficult to make sense of, and I know this is not just me because every single author I've talked to has rolled his or her eyes when I asked how the hell to read a royalty statement.

"Just wait for the check," said one and went to get another drink at the bar.

"Start your next book," said another, and he laughed and laughed and laughed.

While I was working on my next book and waiting for that check, I attempted to predict out how likely it was I'd ever get one. Not everyone does. In fact, rumor has it that most authors don't earn out their advances. I don't know if this is true or not, but that's what the Internet told me.

The more I learned about returns and sell-ins and sell-throughs and discounting and backwards numbers, the less enthusiastically I ripped into those envelopes. I think there was one royalty period when I didn't even get an envelope.

Then ... this envelope. The numbers appear to have started over, and they're from December. And there was a check in there. A royalty check.

And so of course I started jumping up and down and screaming. My parents and sister were here for the weekend and everyone looked at me in confusion, trying to decide if I'd finally snapped or what. I tried to explain the backwards numbers and the confusion and frustration of trying to figure out what was going on with the book, and then I gave up and just kept jumping because that's okay, too. Beloved says all the time it's enough for the book just to have been published, but to me it wasn't enough. I wanted it to earn out.

I don't know if it earning out meant financial success for my publisher, and it certainly doesn't mean I can quit my day job. It was just really important to me. It means it was worth it to sit there at conference signings two years after the book came out, when people came up to me and said essentially, "You're still doing this?"

It gives me more energy to write the bio and marketing plan I was advised to write to go along with my novel query. Because this book business has such high highs and such low lows: I need all the help I can get.

It was a big help.