Guest Post: Jean Nicole Rivers Talks About Getting Your Book Ready For Publishing.

This week instead of my usual writing prompt, I'm here with a quest post with Jean. For those who don't know Jean Nicole Rivers is a published author, her most recent book, Black Water Tales :The Unwanted is a truly gripping and nail biting experience.

Today Jean wants to share 3 of the most important tips when it comes to getting your work published for the 1st or maybe the 7th time.

Getting Your Book Ready for Publishing

Getting your book ready for publishing is a broad topic and in this post I am taking a very wide-ranging approach that considers the key elements that you must tackle to make sure that your book will be ready for publishing from day one.

1. The Good Story: Before you even begin writing your book you need to be certain that you have a story that the general population or at least a niche population will find interesting and want to read. All of our stories sound great to us and of course mom, thinks they’re awesome, but unfortunately that is not enough. It is imperative that you put together an extensive outline or synopsis and get the opinions of people who don’t know you and have nothing invested in telling you only what you want to hear. This is where the beta reader comes into play. Beta readers are inexpensive and impartial and can read your story and tell you, immediately, what is good about the story and what is…not so good. Catching these components that are not so good early on is going to save you a ton of disappointment later.

2. Extensive editing: Editing is more than likely going to be your biggest expense (before you get to marketing), but it is undeniably the most imperative. Nothing turns a reader off more than errors. Don’t get me wrong, nothing is perfect. I find mistakes in books published by the mammoth publishing houses all of the time, but your aim during the writing process should be to remove as many errors as possible. If you spend the money anywhere on your book, spend it here! This is where it counts.

3. A dazzling book cover: Last but not least, is your book cover. Make it amazing. One of the age-old book arguments is whether or not to judge a book by its cover and whether or not you should, the fact of the matter is many people do and will. The cover of your book is its calling card. Before a person can read the name of your book or the blurb, the first thing that they see is the graphic image that is on the front, the colors, the font and all of these elements should speak to your potential buyer immediately, else you risk losing the reader.

There are countless vital components and concerns when preparing a book for publishing, but the ones above are crucial and special care should be taken with them in order to ensure the success of the novel you have worked so hard to give to the world.

Follow/ stay up to date and contact Jean using the following links.

Jean Nicole Rivers

www.jeannicolerivers.com

www.facebook.com/JNicoleRivers/

@JeanNicole19 (Instagram and Twitter)

www.goodreads.com/author/show/5832487.Jean_Nicole_Rivers

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOU4nXpJy5vMTkWOhjuS5yQ

Check out Jean's Black Water Tales so far here:

Black Water Tales: The Unwanted: http://tinyurl.com/zacbfcl

Black Water Tales: The Secret Keepers: http://tinyurl.com/zvoyfgq

Guest Post - Come Sit By Me Book Tour

 

 

A Books Eternal Glory is very excited to welcome a guest this week. Today we have Thomas Hoobler, the author of Come Sit By Me who wanted to talk about the research he conducted to write the novel. 

"Research I did for Come Sit By Me

For a novel, there are two kinds of research you can do. The first one is to find out as much as you can about the setting, the time, the background, and the subject generally. A good example of this kind is the research my wife and I have done for our mysteries that are set in 18th-century Japan. When people ask if we have ever been to Japan, we say we have visited the Japan that we write about the only way you can: in books.

You have to be careful that this kind of research doesn’t turn your book into an encyclopedia article. You have to use it only as part of the main thing: the story. It’s a place where your characters live.

When I decided to write a book about a school shooting, I read a book titled Columbine by Dave Cullen. Cullen is a reporter who investigated the shooting at a high school in Columbine, Colorado. He was very thorough and I learned just about as much as I could about the school and the two shooters. But when I finished, I decided that wasn’t the kind of book I wanted to write. I also decided that the book didn’t answer the most important question of all: Why did they do it?

 

So I used the second kind of research: I used my imagination.

Now, this doesn’t mean that I didn’t do any research. I had gone to high school. I later taught in a school. In both places, I observed the students around me. I drew conclusions about what motivated people. I saw how certain people were rejected by others, and I understood how that made them feel because I myself experienced rejection. I observed how some people lead others, and saw that some of these leaders were not (in my opinion) good people. I saw that people who were otherwise good shunned people who were unpopular. I saw that people can be cruel and thoughtless. All of this was research for writing about a high school and the students in my book. Anybody who writes stories about people has done this kind of research. Let me add that nobody in any schools I attended ever shot up the place. In addition, none of the characters in my book are exactly like any students I personally knew.

 

When I wrote the book, I felt that I had a character down on paper when he or she acted the way I knew real people behave. When that happens, the characters start to do things by themselves. That’s when you know you’ve done your research.

I think I should mention one other book I used as research. I really struggled to find the right voice for Caleb, the shooter. (If you want to know how a dead person can speak, you have to read the book.) I don’t think I ever knew anybody who was quite so damaged as Caleb. Yet I didn’t want to make him a monster who acts without reason. That would be a cop-out. So I read a story by Nikolai Gogol titled “Diary of a Madman.” That helped me find a way to give Caleb his voice."

 

 

 

 

I just want to thank Kellie Sheridan who initially contacted me about joining the book tour and for also helping set the date and for providing all of the material used in this post. I look forward to seeing the other posts that come as a result of this book tour.