Agents! The Ins and Outs

Before understanding the process of getting an agent, you must first understand what an agent actually is. To begin, an agent is not a publisher (a common misconception) but more of a middleman. They are the ones who will put your invaluable manuscript into the hands of a publisher, saving you the hassle. It's not easy to get a foot into the door of the literary world - and more often than not, will leave you with nothing more than a sore toe. The agent is a professional individual who has been trained to not only save you a foot, but to select the publisher who best fits the genre of your work.

The process of convincing an agent to handle your manuscript is actually very similar to that of going straight to the publisher. First, you must send a query letter. The query letter can be best described as your literary resume for the manuscript in question, and like a resume, it should be brief and to the point. They want to know who you are, and just why the hell they should give a damn about what you've written. Behind the query letter, they will usually ask for a few sample chapters or a plot-outline. If this tiny bundle is enough to convince the agent of your impending success, they will take you under their wing and begin the hunt of finding an appropriate publisher. The appropriate publisher depends on a number of deep circumstances, but luckily for you, you don't need to know them! This is the work for the agent.

So, here comes the million dollar question:

Why would you want an agent?

As previously described, an agent is a trained individual who will dig-up the perfect publisher for your work. They are the matchmakers of words. They will work night and day to get you the absolute best recognition for your work. But all of this doesn't come without a price, and a certain percentage of your revenue will always be isolated to them. 

There are lots of successful writers who have skipped agencies and gone straight to the publisher, and I don't mean to discourage anyone from this route, but the sad truth is: becoming published isn't what it used to be. Publishers are overwhelmed with hundreds of manuscripts a day, and it can be difficult for them to give the individual attention each one deserves. With an agent holding your work up to the light, however, a publisher already knows that a fellow businessman believes your manuscript is money.

But at the end of the day, it's your hard work. If you honestly believe in it, then why shouldn't someone else?

Getting Started Part Two: Now What

A lot of writers seem to feel that getting started is one of the hardest things to do when trying to tackle a longer piece of work. Whether it’s pulling characters out of thin air or finally putting the pen to paper on that story, it’s no easy task,though I would argue that an equally difficult step comes directly afterword.

So this is it, you’ve done it. At long last you’ve gotten through the prompting and clustering and you’re on to writing the story itself. Everything’s all peaches and roses until it happens: you lose your way. You don’t know where to go from the beginning. All the rough ideas have exploded on to the page and you sit there crying, wondering what kind of cruel god would let this happen.

I think it’s safe to say we’ve all been there. You’ve got a bunch of wonderful rough ideas and maybe you’ve even written a few scenes down, but don’t know where to go or keep going with it. It’s key to take it slow and keep the mood.

Do not rush. It’s essential to take time with your main characters and really understand them. If you don’t your whole story will fall apart. No matter how good the plot sounds when messily jotted down in a notebook, when the time comes to really write it you’re going to realize some problems.  The missing details in the characters or the plot holes are going to bubble to the surface. Don’t let them scare you away from your story. Play with them; take the time to figure out what’s missing or what doesn’t need to be there. These decisions can be hard to make so it’s important to make sure you’re in the right mindset.  

Whether you’re continuing your work or just messing around with a new idea, make sure you have an inspiration supply. Something to get you pumped up about a certain time period or genre you want to work with. Thinking about writing a medieval fantasy? Crack open A Game of Thrones. Want to go with a classic horror feel? Why not compare adaptations of Frankenstein? Something to get you thinking and feeling the tone you’re trying to create. There’s nothing like a little inspiration to keep you passionate about your work.  The same could work with music. Pop on a soundtrack that reminds you of your piece.

Do whatever works for you, just don’t stop writing. As scary as the second step can be it’s better than falling down the stairs.

Importance of Researching for Writers!

Far too often, writers forget to perform a certain task while they're writing. Research. Yes, sometimes it's easy to get by, faking your way through scenes and activities as though you know what you're talking about. But without research you lose out on giving your audience an authentic experience.

Cleaver little liar aren't you? Not informing yourself often leads to similar books being written, misleading information, and loss of trust and interest from the readers.

After thinking about it, I've come up with two general areas writers must think about when doing research:
1. Researching other books on your topic
2. Research on the specifics

Authors should take it upon themselves to research the other pieces of writing that are similar to their own topics, both current works and past. This will allow authors to know what's been done already, as well as what's popular at that time.


Selene; Underworld

My first example of this is Vampires. Ah yes, the ever so popular vampire. I'll be the first to admit I like a good paranormal story, but after a while it does get dull. With so many books about vampires out there; I looked it up... it's in the thousands now, it's becoming harder to come up with new material about them (try and re-vamp the Vampire). To just scratch the surface of vampire novels there are The Vampire Diaries by L.J. Smith, Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead, The True Blood Series by Charlaine Harris, The Twilight Series by Stephanie Meyer, The Marked (House of Night Series) by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast, and many many more.


Another example would be the similar plot lines in both Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, and Koushun Takami's Battle Royale. Both novels are about groups of tributes/students who are pit against each other in vicious and gruesome fights to the death until there is only one survivor.

Research on specifics involves doing research on all the little details for the writing, your setting, activities/ hobbies the characters may partake in, as well as certain moments in history or a certain time era.

A personal example I have of this is when one of my characters was using a P.O.Box. I had never used one, so I went into Canada Post and asked the process of getting one. It has actually become a habit, asking questions to strangers about random little things, like, "I see you have a lip ring, do you feel it when you kiss someone?"

Research is as beneficial to the authors as it is the readers. Create a piece of writing that is authentic and unique to you. Make it something someone hasn't read already. Save a book, Canada; do your research.

A Conversation with M. Travis Lane

M. Travis Lane

I had the privilege of conversing with M. Travis Lane, an accomplished poet, teacher, wife, and mother.  I was warmly welcomed into her house of interesting things, greeted by the beautiful cat Sylvia, and fed delicious tea and ginger snaps.  We discussed much–beauty, truth, art, life.  I left with a new awareness of both the act of writing and reading, and of the world around me. Here are some excerpts from that conversation.

What is the duty of a writer? Does writing serve a necessary function in society?

“I think it depends on the writer.  Many of us feel that what we are doing is really needed.  But whether it is needed for society or for our own soul, I don’t know.  There are some poems that are clearly meant to focus people’s attention on things that are wrong.  But, sometimes, one feels that one is simply bearing witness to how things are.  There is more than one way of bearing witness.  Is this necessary?  I think it may be necessary for us as a species.  And it is certainly a lovely way to live.”

Does one choose to be a writer?

“No.  I never understand when someone says ‘I want to be a poet!’.  If you are a poet...you write!  You may be a bad poet, you might want to be a better poet, or you might be an inept or dull poet, but if you write you write.  It’s like saying, ‘I want to be blue’. Either you’re blue or you’re not.” 

Of all of the virtues you have as a writer, which do you feel is the most important to encourage?

“The ear.  Listening to the sound of the sentences.  Much of the poetry I write is musically intensified prose.”

Ash Steps, Cormorant Books, 2012

How important is it that the reader gets a message from your work that was intentional?  

“It depends on what they read [into it].  Basically, my work is emotional.  If they get the emotion right, if they want to interpret it one way or another...[it makes] no difference.”

What is the best way to go about reading poetry?

“With love.  Sometimes the poem has no message.  It’s more like music. 
      I think we can get too involved in the minutiae.  It is fun to do the minutiae, if you enjoy that sort of thing.  If I were to teach poetry to high school students, I wouldn’t ask them to understand it; I would ask them to memorize great gobs of it and stand in front of the class and recite. I wouldn’t care if it was Robert Service or Robert Browning; love it first."

She explained that this is also how to approach writing poetry–feel first, love first, and the minutiae will happen if it is meant to.  Poetry is natural, and one’s role as a poet is to express the world to itself.

M. Travis Lane has a large body of work; I encourage you to explore it with love.

Narrators: Reliable and Otherwise

SPOILER ALERT: Read no further if you haven't already read or seen Fight Club and think you might like to some day.

When reading or watching movies, does it ever occur to you that what you’re being told might not be all that reliable? Do you ever suspect that the narrator may be twisting the truth, leaving things out, or perhaps simply perceiving things so differently that it’s hard to tell what’s really going on? 

A typical narrator will tell you exactly what’s going on, and won’t lie about it. Using an unreliable narrator is a great way to add some mystery to a piece of work. 

One of the perhaps most well-known unreliable narrators is Jack, from Fight Club. At the start of the book and the movie, Jack meets Tyler Durden. They become close friends, and they create Fight Club. The thing is, Tyler isn’t real; he’s a creation of Jack’s mind. Jack doesn’t realise this until it’s nearly the end of the book/movie, and because he’s the narrator, even if the readers have their suspicions, they can’t really know for sure. 

The result of which is that Chuck Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club, kept the readers guessing. It was used as a great plot twist near the end, and was responsible for a great deal of suspense. Because Tyler isn’t really there, it leads readers to imagine what the different interactions between Jack and Tyler looked like from outside of Jack’s head.

A more extreme and less known example is the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The short story is written like a series of journal entries. It begins rather innocently, with the narrator writing about staying in a beautiful estate over the summer, even mentioning that her husband doesn’t believe that she is sick. Gradually, with each new entry, the narrator becomes more and more unreliable. It becomes clear that the narrator is mentally unstable. It gets to the extent that she begins to see people in the patterns of the wallpaper in her room, and comes to believe that she, herself, was once trapped inside those patterns and had escaped. 

Because we know that she isn’t reliable, it’s hard to tell what it is that she’s really doing. She could have been lying down and staring at the ceiling the whole time. She could have been gnawing at her bedposts or attempting to climb the walls for all that we know. 

Forcing readers to use their imagination, to think, rather than to just read, is the result of using an unreliable narrator. It forces them to participate, rather than simply observe.    

Avoiding the dreaded 'Mary Sue'

         Unfortunately, we have become all too familiar with characters like Bella Swan and Anastasia Steele within these past few years. Characters like these have been knocking around for awhile but recent authors such as Stephenie Meyer and E.L. James have brought them to the forefront of pop culture. These stale character types are often called 'Mary Sue' as a way of expressing how generic and awful they are.
tvtropes.org describes the Mary Sue term to be difficult to pin down. tvtropes.org goes on to say that there is limited agreement with what traits belong to a Mary Sue. Personally, I always understood the Mary Sue to encompass all or some of the traits associated with a flat and unappealing heroine.

(Not naming any names here)

  Author Wish fulfilment is one of the traits mentioned by tvtropes and is one of the first to be associated with a Mary Sue. This is most commonly found in fan fiction but as Twilight has shown us, it doesn't belong exclusively to this genre.
You shouldn't use your character as a self esteem booster by making her who you've always wanted to be by putting her into situations (especially romantic ones) you've always wanted to find yourself in. You have to let your character be her own person. To do that, you have to recognize that she will have flaws and that's ok. When you create a well developed character, readers will like her in spite of those flaws and sometimes even because of them.

Author Stephenie Meyer

  "I'm so plain....why does every vampire, werewolf, CEO and college boy want me!?" said every Mary Sue.

To me, this is the most annoying characteristic of all and it shows up time and again. The character describes herself as being so unremarkable that no boy will ever love her but to everyone else (except perhaps the reader), she is the most fantastic person they've ever met. James' Anastasia Steele of 50 Shades of Grey cannot handle the fact that someone so rich and handsome as Christian Grey could ever truly love her. In Meyer's Twilight, Bella Swan sees herself as so clumsy and awkward, she can't believe that both Jacob Black and Edward Cullen are madly in love with her. Frankly, the readers can't believe it either.

Me after reading Breaking Dawn

The saying, "Other people will love you once you love yourself" applies to fictional people as well. Not to say that there can't be well developed, likeable characters who hate themselves but that a character who is so obviously idealized yet so openly self deprecating is such an intense contradiction that she makes no sense at all and suspension of disbelief is lost. This causes the character to come across as shallow, not to mention transparent. The author and their voice is clearly seen behind the veil of the character.
A well rounded character should be a different person from the author and from all other characters, both inside the story and within fiction in general.

Keeping the Audience in Mind When Writing

For any piece of writing to be successful, the author must know who their intended audience is. Before sitting down to write, one should ask, “Who am I aiming this for?” If you were asked to write something for a group of kids in nursery school, you wouldn’t want a story about a serial killer that has a severe case of schizophrenia, you would want to write fairy tales or nursery rhymes since they’re fairly happy and amusing for young children.

Before I started to write this blog entry, I did a little research and looked at two of my favorite authors, Darren Shan and Cassandra Clare. As I read things on their websites, I asked myself, “What kept me reading their books?” It didn’t take long to get an answer. I liked what they wrote about. Each of them had stories that I found appealing because I liked the plot and characters. 

my copy of the Cirque du Freak series

The first series I had read by Darren Shan was his Cirque du Freak series. At the time I was about thirteen and I thought it was terrifying. And I had loved it because I had wanted to read a horror novel. I read that series three times between the eighth grade to the eleventh. Somewhere between that time period, I found that the same books that terrified me when I was thirteen hardly had an effect by the time I was seventeen. Part of that reason was because I had read it a few times, but a larger part was that I was starting to fall out of the age range that Cirque du Freak targeted. It was a series for children and I was growing up. What scared me at thirteen wasn’t as scary because it wasn’t intended to scare a seventeen year old.

my copy of the first three Moral Instruments books

I found with Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments series, it had an older intended audience than Cirque du Freak. It had plenty of action, very in depth relationships between the characters and the plot was well constructed. If you think about it however, so does Twilight, so why didn’t I like that? The answer, I’m not apart of the Twilight audience. It didn’t hook me nearly as well as it did for Twilight fans. As I read through it, it seemed like I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as others. From the beginning when I read City of Bones however, I was a member of the audience. It was exciting and forced me to keep turning the pages. I was constantly trying to guess what was going to happen next.

When writing, it’s important to keep in mind who the writing is intended for. A story meant for young children won’t appeal to adults nearly as well. People looking for action, wouldn’t find as much satisfaction out of a love story compared to someone that wants to read romance. To make a piece of writing successfully, it is important to establish who your audience is and keep them in mind as you write.

Copycat Creativity

Tolkien, re-read Beowulf please! As a dedicated student I take plagiarism very seriously. As if your work being stolen wasn't bad enough: imagine your work being tweaked and submitted to a publisher, only to make thousands of dollars. For those of us who place our work online it's a struggle to feel completely comfortable about your work not being protected from plagiarizers of all forms. To explain this feeling to friends who do not write, I tell them that when I place my work online and I hit the “post” button, it's the same feeling you get when you leave your child or pet with an unknown sitter: you may return back to find your baby in a bad situation. Let's face it: imagination is becoming a thing of the past with the arts and crafts boxes being tossed to make way for technology. Literature and ideas are becoming more and more accessible to those who are less and less original.

I have heard every excuse there is. Examples include:

-there are only so many ideas, therefore people are bound to repeat ideas without knowing each others work.

-I just wanted to expand on the idea.

-I forgot I read something like that the day before I published my similar story.

I understand that people make mistakes, and that sometimes avid readers have so much on the go that it is difficult to recall the “exacts” about everything we read. Sadly, I also know that a conscious reader will never be able to completely steal my original plot without noticing similarities. In response to this, I have come up with a checklists you can use to ensure that your story is original as it can possibly can be, and you will never have someone claim that your work is an echo of theirs.

Lynn's checklists for anti- creative writing plagiarism

1. Think critically- does this story sound familiar in any way, shape, or form?
2. Ask those you trust- often, as writers, we develop a close circle of fellow writers we trust. Ask friends to review your work- they will notice if there are similarities to anything they've read, and be able to help with the editing process.
3. Google- we use Google everyday, so why not when writing? Google your character names, plots, and even a few sentences just to verify that nothing like your work already exists on the internet.

Do you have other ways of avoiding repeat ideas and creative writing plagiarism in your work? Share them below!

rewriting, rewriting, rewriting.

"In those early pages and chapters anyone may find bold leaps to nowhere, read the brave beginnings of dropped themes, hear a tone since abandoned, discover blind alleys track red herrings and laboriously learn a setting now false."

-Annie Dillard.

It takes a lot out of any writer to be forced to part with their words. It takes courage and faith to let go entirely. It's necessary however to move forward.  The real writing process begins with a draft.  The first copy you show to another human being, the first soul crushing edits you receive, that is where progress is made and where great stories are born.

That's not to say threads can't be saved to bind together new ideas. Perhaps a few sentences from a page are what's left after the edits, whole paragraphs even.  It won't be easy but it will be helpful.  Once you've reached that ninth edition of prose it should look nothing like the first draft you wrote in the wee hours of the morning.

It can be hard, but its best, once finished, to get up and leave your work. Let it steep and give yourself a break. Go back to it, read it out loud, read it in funny voices, read it to your stuffed animals. Then sit down again and be honest with yourself. Was that description necessary? Could I have written a stronger opening? Is that character too flimsy? DON'T LIE, you're only ruining your work.

Just like people change, stories change. From day one to day 67, your characters may undergo some major personality altercations, your themes may not wish to be straightforward and weak, and you yourself may not wish to ever see the same words on a page for fear of going insane.

So in short, no one will ever write perfect first words. Thinking so will only weaken you as a writer and as a person. So delete, scratch out, or throw away what you thought was gold and rebuild with courage that you did not just throw away the best story ever written, but you will soon be much closer to it.



http://theamericanscholar.org/endless-rewriting/#.Ut2UsWasEy4

&

The Writing Life by Annie Dillard

Writers and social activism: How writers set out to change the world for the better

It's actually pretty simple to incorporate social activism into our writing. In fact, I'd argue that it's hard to avoid doing. It's impossible, after all, to write anything without incorporating at least some of our own experience, and the sad fact of the matter is that every one of us is affected by at least some of the countless flaws in human society. These social issues inevitably work their way into the worlds we write, and to some small degree our audience is bound to pick up on it.
We find ourselves accidentally raising public awareness of the social issues that concern us and before we know it, bam: we're activists.

That was easy!

The most straightforward way to go about this is to go out and have ourselves a personal experience that is both directly pertinent to the issue in question, and remarkable enough to be worth writing about. John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me, for instance, is a journalist's firsthand account of wandering the southern U.S. in medically induced blackface in order to expose the extreme racial tension to the public eye.

For those of us who lack Griffin's heroic-to-the-point-of-insanity dedication to our writing, this can be done quite effectively with fiction. 

Zuzak's The Book Thief uses a fictional narrative to explore the Nazi regime's exploitation of the power of literature; their mass publication of propaganda novels and burning of any books they considered subversive bears an eerie resemblance to the Harper government's recent destruction of thousands of volumes of environmental science records.

Likewise, Hosseini's The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns paint a vivid picture of contemporary race and gender inequalities in Afghanistan, and Rob Moore's deceptively comedic Fat is an uncomfortably realistic parody of the contemporary West's attitude toward body-weight.

There is, however, another approach to activist writing. It is the rogue class of socially aware literature, often unnoticed for what it is, but even more effective in its subtlety: science fiction. Seriously. It is easy (and heartbreakingly common) to dismiss the science fiction genre as mere whimsical escapism devoid of any noteworthy intellectual content. 

And to be fair to the critics, not all of it was exactly profound.

However, this assumption is also dangerously ignorant; some of the most prevalent social issues in the contemporary world can be found prophesized in science fiction literature over half a century old.

Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, for instance, presents a man raised by Martians who brings to Earth a philosophy that could solve all of humanity's problems, and who (spoiler alert) is ultimately shot to death for challenging social norms too radically. (Okay, you're safe again.) This warning against the dangers of conservatism and structural functionalism is even more relevant today than it was then, as those very same conservative attitudes are possibly the biggest threat to our sustainability as a species.

Likewise, famed whistle-blower Edward Snowden just recently exposed the United States as a dystopia all too familiar to fans of George Orwell, where every aspect of everyone's life can and will be spied on for the sake of crushing subversive elements. Orwell's prediction may  have been thirty years off, but it is no less uncanny.

We don't even have to delve into sci-fi antiquity to notice this effect. The relatively recent Hunger Games trilogy uses a post-apocalyptic America to draw attention to the power of entertainment to subdue and mollify a population: an effect which has become painfully evident over the past year. Monsanto's campaign against small-scale organic farmers and the States' drone strike on a Yemeni wedding party somehow wound up with far less media coverage than a Louisiana redneck making a homophobic remark on reality TV (surprising, I know) and the various things Miley Cyrus has done with her butt.

The point here is that if we want our writing to really resonate with the relevant social issues of the day, the vivid worlds of deep space and the distant future can offer an incomparably engaging experience that will get readers even more passionate about the issues we address. What's more, they can appeal to an audience that might be put off by more blatant means of social criticism.

The 'final frontier', essentially, should never be the last resort. After all, if our society has any hope for improvement...

... it's going to be in the future.

Sources of reasonable legitimacy:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/capt-trevor-greene/science-cuts-canada_b_4534729.html

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/nsa-carves-pathway-into-international-computers-1.2496943

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/nsa-collects-millions-of-text-messages-globally-the-guardian-1.2499963

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101331915
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/19/the-aftermath-of-drone-strikes-on-a-wedding-convoy-in-yemen/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Repetition; The brilliance and loveliness of brilliant writing and lovely words.

As writers we like words. We like the way they roll off our tongue and how lovely they sound in our ears and hang brilliantly in the air. As human beings we have favourite things...

I have favourite words; lovely and brilliant are two of them, and I use them a lot! 

When I speak, when I write and in my head before I do either of the latter, but what happens when we use those words over and over?

As a child whenever I got in trouble I wrote lines to teach me a lesson. 

Do me a favour, read what the stormtrooper is writing. Out loud about 25 times.

"I will find the droids I'm looking for." 

By the end of that did you even know what you were saying? 

This is call 'DE-SENSITIZATION' 

It happens when we see, hear, read, say or feel the same thing over and over again.
When we repeat words, they lose their meaning. 

   

If you chew bread too many times it gets soggy, this is the same with words. After 'chewing' on a word for to long it gets soggy and mushy and downright gross.

I love brilliantly formed writing with lovely imagery and brilliant uses of metaphors and lovely descriptions. I find it most useful when writers use lovely adjectives and brilliant adverbs to describe their brilliant ideas and lovely structures. 

If you read that line and noticed the first, second and third use of my favourite words good job!
Did you also realize though that after you read it the second time you read over them they started to get soggy?

There is a solution though! Go get a dictionary. Find the word you want to use. Find synonyms-other words and phrases that have the same type of meaning or the same exact meaning and use them! 

HOMEWORK!

Do something for me, for literature.

Find your favourite words.

Write them in a notebook, on your mirror, in the comments below.

Then search for other words and use them!

In the long run you will have lovely writing with some brilliant metaphors, but you will also have some amiable sentences that in my opinion may deserve their own splendid page. 

Online Self-Publishing for Dummies

So, after toiling over your keyboard for months on end, banging your head on the desk, proofreading, editing, and making your final draft, you’ve finally finished writing your very own manuscript.  Congratulations, take a bow! Now what do you do with it?

If you’d like to go the traditional route and submit your manuscript to publishing houses, print that baby out and mail her off.  If, however, you’d prefer to choose the more modern route, you may submit your manuscript in e-book form online and skip some of the hassle and rejection letters.
Make sure your new e-book has a fabulous, eye-catching cover. Just because you are going to be publishing online doesn’t mean you don’t need to draw the eyes browsing the digital bookshelves to your work. If you are not the artistic type, spend a few bucks and pay someone to make you a professional book cover.

Book and cover ready…check.  Now what? You have several options available.  You can choose to go with several companies which provide online book publishing services.  Each company has their own requirements and each offer different profit margins for the writer. A few companies are Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Smashwords, BookBaby, Barnes & Noble's PubIt, Lulu, and many more.
 I looked in depth at Lulu, as this particular company seemed to be very user-friendly for first timers.  On this site, you have the option of paying to have your document transformed into an ebook, or the free option of doing it yourself.  Lulu will also get you an ISBN number for your book free of charge enabling you to actually sell it.

Lulu provides step-by-step instructions to make sure you have everything you need, and that you have done everything necessary to get your new book published.  Lulu will give you 90% of the proceeds from selling your book online.  You can choose to distribute only through their site, or through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and many more.

You may be tempted to price your book on the high side... BUT WAIT! While you might think that this will earn you more money pricing high, online book buyers tend to look for books with a price range of $.99 to $2.99.  Pricing your book competitively with others in the same genre will increase the likelihood of people downloading your book. Consistently pricing your books reasonably will also make sure you get people coming back for more.



Not enough info, you say? Please check out the following links for details:

Lulu http://www.lulu.com/
Smashwords  https://www.smashwords.com/
Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing https://kdp.amazon.com/kdp/self-publishing/signin?language=en_US