Library Journal and Biblioboard have selected my second novel, Divided We Fall, as a featured indie novel in its curated SELF-e Select module!
This means my novel will soon be available to libraries all over the US through BiblioBoard Library. In addition, Divided We Fall will soon be available to readers throughout my home state of Pennsylvania in the Indie PENNSYLVANIA module as a highlighted selection.
The idea behind SELF-e is to expose notable self-published eBooks to readers around the country who are looking to discover new authors. Libraries can make ebooks available for free with no requirement to return the book and no multi-user restrictions.
Libraries are a perfect place to discover new books, and I’m super excited that both of my novels will soon be available for free to this large audience of hungry readers.
Divided We Fall by Adam Bender
In Divided We Fall, Elite Guard Eve Parker must arrest her fiancé after he loses his memory and becomes a revolutionary called Seven. But when Eve learns more about the President’s plan to broaden citizen surveillance, she begins to question what she’s always believed to be right.
Seven runs, but in his flight realizes that losing his memory may not have been enough to erase his feelings for Eve. Unable to escape his past, Seven determines that he must come to terms with the man he was if he ever wishes to win freedom.
You can buy Divided We Fall today as an eBook or paperback from Amazon and other major online retailers.
Join my mailing list to get a free eBook edition of the first book in the series, We, The Watched.
Reedsy co-founder Emmanuel Nataf talks about the future of indie publishing.
Credit: Reedsy
Just because I’m an indie author doesn’t mean I can’t get good help with editing and book design.
I recently signed up for Reedsy, an innovative web platform that helps indie authors find freelance publishing assistance. A few days ago, I signed ex-DC Comics editor Rachel Gluckstern to edit my upcoming novel, The Wanderer and the New West. It’s an exciting collaboration that was made possible by Reedsy.
Reedsy was founded in London during the summer of 2014 by Emmanuel Nataf, Matthew Cobb, Ricardo Fayet and Vincent Durand. For the first year, the co-founders worked on Reedsy as a side project on nights and weekends, but it became a full-time job after the startup was accepted into Seedcamp, a London-based startup accelerator. Soon after, the tech startup raised cash from angel investors including Ben Yoskovitz, the bestselling author of Lean Analytics. Today, Reedsy is a team of seven that operates out of a co-working space in the Shoreditch neighborhood of London.
I spoke with co-founder Emmanuel Nataf about what Reedsy hopes to accomplish and where it sees the publishing industry headed. You can read the full interview below.
Adam: What problem were you trying to solve when you created Reedsy?
Emmanuel: We were seeing two major publishing trends converging. On the one hand, more and more authors were self-publishing, as they could easily reach an audience through digital distribution (460,000 titles were self-published in the US in 2014 according to Bowker). On the other hand, more and more top publishing professionals have left traditional houses in the past few years and have gone freelance, available to work with both traditional and self-published authors.
At the time, we were seeing too many low-quality books being pushed to the Kindle Store. It was clear that self-publishing was not yet a viable alternative to the traditional route. Quality can only be achieved with an investment in editorial, design and marketing services, something that self-published authors did not have access to. They needed a single, trusted and quality source of people that they could collaborate with.
It’s from this frustration that we decided to create Reedsy, a curated marketplace for the
publishing industry.
More recently, we started to work with traditional publishers as well. They have been impressed
with the level of quality Reedsy professionals can provide, and love the way our collaborative
tools streamline their workflows.
Adam: Today, authors can self-publish a book all by themselves if they want to. Why is it important that authors pay for freelance help, and how big of an investment does that need to be?
Emmanuel: The production process of a book doesn’t stop after the writing phase – it starts there. Self-publishing authors can certainly release new titles much faster than “Big 5” authors but they can’t skip editing, design or marketing if they want to have any chance of being successful. In fact, to stand out from the crowd, they need to publish a high-quality product and have a solid plan to commercialize it. This takes time and requires experience. This is where Reedsy professionals can help.
We are planning on open-sourcing our data so authors can get a better idea of the cost of self-publishing. However, for an 80,000 word book that needs editing, design and marketing help, you will need at least $2,000. Most spend $5,000 or more if they want to work with award-winning professionals and want to design an aggressive marketing plan.
Adam: The publishing industry is in a state of flux right now. Where do you think it’s going, and how well will self-published authors fare against industry published authors?
Emmanuel: The whole value chain is evolving so much that I’m not sure how long the selfpublishing/traditional publishing antagonism will remain.
For instance, we recently helped PFD Literary Agents set up their own digital imprint where they give a very interesting 50/50 deal to authors. The emergence of more digital imprints is something that we follow closely. What we believe, though, is that the production of high-quality books can be commoditized through a service like Reedsy, and that publishers should only do what they do best: curate content, offer physical distribution and negotiate foreign rights.
Credit: Reedsy
Adam: How many freelancers and how many authors do you have on Reedsy?
Emmanuel: About 6,000 authors have joined Reedsy so far and we have selected 300+ professionals out of 7,000 applications.
Adam: What is the most popular service authors are looking for when they join Reedsy?
Emmanuel: Self-publishing authors are mainly looking for editing services when they come to Reedsy. We would love to see self-publishing authors invest more into their book covers though: too many of them still underestimate the incredible impact a beautiful cover can have for their book sales.
We see mix of authors looking to self-publish and authors looking to polish their manuscript before submitting to agents or publishers, which is why we recently added a “query letter review” service to our marketplace. Eventually, we want Reedsy to become the backbone of the industry, providing high-quality services to all authors or publishers.
Adam: Do you have any minimum qualifications for freelancers? Is it required they have
experience in the publishing industry?
Emmanuel: Yes! Our team receives hundreds of applications every week and only selects a handful of professionals. The objective is to provide the highest level of quality to authors and publishers. This is why people often describe Reedsy as a “curated” marketplace. We require a strong experience working at top publishers or with bestselling authors and a portfolio of at least 10 books. We also ask them to connect their social networks to Reedsy so we can verify their online identity.
Adam: How does Reedsy make money? Is it purely commission-based?
Emmanuel: Our fees are shared between professionals and clients who both pay a 10 percent commission on every transaction. This allows us to develop our product, curate our network, and offer customer support with a 100 percent satisfaction guarantee.
Adam: Besides Reedsy, what other innovative companies are helping indie authors right now?
Emmanuel: Crowdfunding platforms are a good complement to Reedsy. For instance, Reedsy authors often use Publishizer or Kickstarter to raise funds to pay for our services. We are also pretty excited to see what Find My Audience is going to release in the coming months to help authors locate and engage with a highly qualified audience.
Adam: What’s coming next for Reedsy? What can you tell me about any plans to further expand or enhance your services?
Emmanuel: Many things! First, we will be adding more services to our marketplace in the coming months: marketing, ghostwriting and translation will be progressively rolled out. Then, we will be adding dedicated publisher accounts to allow publishers to manage entire teams and projects through Reedsy. Last but not least, we will be releasing our collaborative book editor to allow any author to work collaboratively on their books and get properly formatted EPUB and PDF files instantly.
Thanks so much to Emmanuel Nataf for the Interview! For more on innovative indie publishing companies, check out my interviews with Story Cartel, NoiseTrade and The Fussy Librarian.
Big news for my upcoming third novel! I’m excited to announce that Rachel Gluckstern will edit The Wanderer and the New West.
Rachel is an award-winning editor who worked more than ten years at DC Comics, including as editor of the Batman Group from 2010 to 2015. Follow Rachel on Twitter and check out her LinkedIn profile for more details. We connected on Reedsy, an innovative web platform that helps authors find freelance publishing assistance. Be sure to check out my interview with Reedsy co-founder Emmanuel Nataf.
Rachel will be doing content and copy editing on The Wanderer to sharpen my prose and, generally, to keep me from looking like a hack. I’d be lying if I said comic books didn’t influence the knockabout action in my new book, and I believe Rachel’s experience with action/adventure stories will really give the novel a boost.
I completed my own edits for The Wanderer last week, and–if you’ll allow my biased opinion–it’s a fun and topical book. The story is set in a possible future won by gun evangelists and advocates for hands-off government. Plagued by shootings, this America has returned to the ways of the Wild West, a lawless land where people make their own justice.
Editing is more than fixing typos. Over the past few months, I have gone into detective mode — reading and re-reading my story and taking notes about what I need to add, what I need to cut, and what I need to reorder. Writing a novel takes a lot of time, and a lot of things — including characters and writing style — can (and should) evolve as you write. Sometimes as I write, I know that a scene doesn’t quite work, but don’t have an immediate solution. Rather than bash my head against the wall, I just move on to the next scene, because in my experience the perfect solution often comes along later when I’m solving something else.
Sometimes, editing feels like this. But it’s worth it! Credit: @GUARNIERI / ELLO
Cutting scenes can be hard. One of my problems is that I’ll write a joke or a bit dialogue that I believe is terribly clever, but in fact does nothing for the story. Usually my wife and editing ally Mallika calls me out on (and ruthlessly chides me for) such passages. It’s hard to hit the delete button, but in the end it’s better for the overall story. This is why I always am wary of new editions of novels or movies that restore previously cut material. In most cases, scenes or chapters are cut for a reason.
While I have cut some unnecessary segments in The Wanderer since the first draft, I’ve also added a few chapters in the middle to fill what I saw as a void in the plot. Without giving much away, there’s a part about two-thirds of the way through when the heroes decide to go stop the bad guy. In my original draft, however, there didn’t seem to be quite enough pushing them to make that decision beyond my fervent wishes as the author. As I went to work coming up with a new episode, I inadvertently addressed a few other weaknesses along the way (remember what I said before about waiting for the perfect solution?). I didn’t just fill a plot hole; I created one of my favorite sequences in the novel!
Editing is hard. It takes a lot of time. But it’s also a lot of fun. And when you read the end product, I think you’ll agree it’s worth it.
I am happy to say I’m getting close to the finish line for my edits, but of course, that will only mark the start of the next challenge: getting the story through someone who does this for a living — a professional editor! How’s that going to go? Stay tuned!
I am not one of those authors who writes on a typewriter. How do you delete?! No, I need tech to keep me organized and to give me the flexibility to jot down ideas or do actual writing on the go.
Here are the apps and gadgets I currently rely on the most for writing:
Evernote
Logo credit: Evernote
I often get ideas for my stories when I’m riding a subway or walking in the park. I can either keep reciting the idea in my head over and over until it was pounded into my memory, or I can just make a quick note on my phone using Evernote. The app syncs notes across all my devices, so when I get back to my computer at home, it’s right there and ready for me to act upon!
Scrivener
The corkboard view in Scrivener keeps me organized. photo Credit: literature & latte
Look, Word is a great app and I still use it for short things like letters and news stories. But novels, which can be 80,000 to 100,000 words, get unwieldy real fast. If you need to refer to some detail earlier in the story, you’ve either got to do a lot of scrolling, or try to remember a specific phrase and search for it in the text. If you realize Chapter 8 should really be Chapter 6, you’ve got to cut and paste (and it’s scary to do a Ctrl+X on an entire chapter), and then renumber all the affected chapters.
Scrivener does all of this for me and I don’t have to panic. It puts each of my chapters and each of my scenes into notecards that I can reorder at will through drag and drop. It all displays a list of everything in a convenient sidebar that I can use to jump around my book at will. And it backs up everything, so if disaster strikes, I can restore my project! I can even take snapshots of scenes I’m about to massively revamp, just in case I change my mind later. Brilliant!
Microsoft Surface 3
Surface 3. I don’t use it to research plant cells, though. photo Credit: Microsoft
This is my latest tool, and I’m already loving it. I needed something light and portable so I could write on the go without feeling like I was carrying a bowling ball in my backpack. I also needed something with a decent battery life. Finally, and this is critical, I didn’t want to pay heaps of money for a Surface Pro 3.
Surface 3, the Atom-based cousin of Surface Pro, meets these requirements handily. It’s a beautifully engineered device that’s perfect for writing at the café. cases. It’s not my main PC, so I didn’t need it to be super powerful. I just needed something with a clear screen and a decent keyboard that runs Scrivener okay. Sold.
My only complaint is that Microsoft totally gets you with the separately sold keyboard and pen. These things are essential to the experience, and you end up paying almost $200 more than you expected. I know, I know, I could have gone Macbook Air, but I’m stuck on Windows.
Oh well, at least it’s kept me writing! Time to finish that novel…
Library Journal and Biblioboard have selected my second novel, Divided We Fall, as a featured indie novel in its curated SELF-e Select module!
