My Grandaughters' Bunyip Stories

About twelve months ago my grandchildren and I were looking for frogs and tadpoles in the local creek that runs through the golf course and into the park. We started making up stories about monsters and people of old. From that little game I produced a bunyip story good  enough to be short listed in the Melton City Short Story Competition.

Kyamah started the Dadididi tale you can find on the link below, she was almost nine when the project started and this is a very rough first draft.

After seeing children and teenagers receiving awards at the short story awards has re-ignited her passion to write, and even if Dadididi remains untouched you can see where her career as a writer began.

Montana too has worked on a yarn about kids a creek and a monster. She will post her story soon.

http://wurugi.blogspot.com.au/p/kyamahs-scary-stories.html

Writers Victoria

Today I received my copy of the December Issue of The Victorian Writer and found a wonderful piece on how to get off of the slush pile written by Shivaun Plozza. She has encapsulated a lot of information in about 450 words. Shivaun talks about the synopsis and how important it is to getting your manuscript read. Drop over to her blog where she has offered even more advice to would be published writers.

Link:   http://shivaunplozza.blogspot.com.au/p/services.html

Should I set up my publishing company and embrace other authors or not.

Since writing the post below, I like many other self published writers have hacked my story around numerous bookshops across Australia. I have pestered my friends, family, associates and anyone else I can think of, for leads to people who might like to buy a book. The only thing I haven't done is to set up at any of the many book fairs, as I have only had the one book to sell. This is the same problem facing any salesperson canvassing for sales, how can I strengthen my product line to make a sale every time I call on a bookshop?

 

Knowing I can only realistically expect to produce and publish one quality 100,000 word novel per year if I am trying to do the marketing and selling too, it's not enough. If I wait for three years I may have three books to sell by the one author, me. While they may be great novels, they are still too small of an offering to make me a serious competitor in the book sales business. Therefore, what options do writers like me have?

1. We can continue to submit our work to the regular publishing houses and hope to land a deal.
2. E-publish our work on the various forms and promote it via e-mail and social media trying to drive possible buyers to our books.
3. Self publish via one of the many vanity publishers and do the rounds of friends and family.
4. Develop your own publishing house to manage the printing registration and distribution.
5. Establish a co-operative scheme to embrace authors of a similar mindset and present their work as a combined and professional publishing company that will attract the interest of distribution businesses across the globe.

Over the past few weeks I have developed a fondness for the latter scheme if I am unable to find a publisher for my next two novels. The only drawback I can see is that I'd prefer to be writing than building a business, and I'm sure this is the same for every writer I know. However if we wish to be professional writers producing quality work and being properly promoted and compensated this may be the only option for many.of us.

For now I'm only tossing a few an ideas around but would be interested in comments from anyone about their success and failures at becoming published in hard copy.

Either leave me a comment, or e-mail me at terry.probert@bigpond.com

Terry

 

 

Tuesday, 22 January 2013

To Self Publish or Not? That is the Question.

Having finished my novel KUNDELA I have sent out samples to different publishers. Having religiously followed their submission guidelines in the hope that someone would chance upon my masterpiece, I have checked the e-mail inbox daily with disappointment. Weeks of waiting and with response times now passing I have to face the possibility of not being picked up on this first round of enquiry letters.

I have been through most of the self publish websites and now have would be publishers from all over the world willing to publish and market my book for a fee, in some cases a rather large fee. I don't have that kind of money to spend, and I'm not sure that Francis from Frisco can be bothered with the marketing plan my novel needs. I think it's an opportunity for them to make money from the author rather than the other way around.

Taking the view that I'm a trades person with a commodity to sell takes the marketing of KUNDELA into an area I know well. I've spent all of my previous career in sales and marketing so I have the skills. What I don't have is the contacts, therefore I will need an agent or at the very least the contacts an agent has. The first question raised now, is how do I do I gain that knowledge. Therefore I started to research the people who have been in a similar situation to me and gone on to become successful and published authors.

From my research I find that it is necessary to embrace rejection as something that teaches you a lesson, and to learn from it. Another point I found helpful was to create a business plan for your proposal. To sell anything you need to know everything about it, what it is, what products it competes with, the strengths and weaknesses of both yours and your competitor's product.

Now I am on a quest to structure a business plan for KUNDELA, complete with a marketing plan, sales strategy and finance plan. Now I find that I'm on familiar ground with a product to sell.

Proving that writing is a business.


One of the sites I found helpful was a You tube Interview by Stacey Cochran with John Fuhrman as his quest. It is over 50 minutes long but contains some wonderful information.

Melton Short Story Competition

Last Friday night a good number Melton City Council's best writers, their  families and friends gathered for the annual short story competition. Each year the council has offered an opportunity for local writers to submit stories poems and plays and compete for both monitory reward and more importantly recognition among the writing community.

The Melton City Council provided three competition categories this year and offered monitory prizes for each. Entrants were advised of being short listed a couple of weeks prior and this added to the tension in the room as every author there wondered if they had been successful and their guests wanted to know who had won too.

Amra Pajalic, author of 'The Good Daughter' was master of ceremonies for the night and kept the night moving as she introduced the judges and winners of awards.

I'm told the adult section was fiercely competitive this year, and Beverly Eikli said she had a tough job picking the finalists. This comment lifted the spirits of the entrants as each of us wanted to know if the standard of our writing was of quality.

With a great sense of pride I listened as Beverly called out my colleague Chris Mack from last year's Longitudinal Writing Workshop as the first place winner.

Her story about a child finding her place among her peers was a heart warming account of a girl from a low income family looking for clothes at the local tip was read to the spellbound crowd. It was a wonderful rendition and something I'd love to have happen with one of my yarns.

In equal second place was Fikret Pajalic and I shared this award with him.

In third place was the fantastic Melton writer, Craig Henderson, who I believe should win almost everything he enters. Yes his short stories and longer works are that good.

When I think back over the months that I have spent with some of these people I find that the work and time given by Merlene Fawdry to assist and encourage writers of all skill levels is evident in the winning stories.I met Merlene last year by attending her workshop and was impressed by her drive and commitment to help us succeed.  Some months later I was in awe as she selflessly gave her time to copy-edit and produce an anthology of stories by Melton and Caroline Springs storytellers. Storytellers who by way of the book can be proud of the stories and poems she helped polish to make suitable for publication.

I have put my story 'Banib the Bunyip' onto Amazon's Kindle format and for December it is only US$ 0.99 to download.

Here is the link: http://www.amazon.com/Banib-Bunyip-Terry-L-Probert-ebook/dp/B00GRLFU2E

Banib the Bunyip is a Dreamtime story told by an Aboriginal boy to a group of kids on a school camp. It's a scary story that my friends and family love and it's set in Melton to the west of Melbourne. I'd love to get some feedback on what people think of the story so please let me know as both good and bad critique is welcome.

Blog Links:

• Chris Mack:                  http://chrismackauthor.wordpress.com/

• Merlene Fawdry:          http://www.blogger.com/profile/08318707687125028987

• Amra Pajalic:               http://www.amrapajalic.com/

Save Mona 693 petition signatures and climbing.

With every project we plan there are milestones and one of these is a tipping point. For the wild rhinos across the world their extinction has already crossed that point and it seems they are doomed for extinction. So why should we care. We should care because we can and we don't wan to tell our children and our grandchildren we stood by and did nothing while these animals crashed into a bloody and horrible death at the hands of poachers.

From my point of view the problem needs to identify why the animal is being poached? Oh and I do know it is for the belief that the horn is an aphrodisiac but if that is the root cause it should be easy to manage a change in opinion by offering a substitute, the makers of products like Viagra spend millions each year telling us about a better sex life. I think this is like many things only available to the rich, it is about status and power. Rhino horn is about power, being dominant showing that you can thumb your nose at the world and everything in it. Proving that everything has a price and you can pay it..

Ask yourself these questions and maybe you will find the answer:

• What turns a farmer into a poacher?

• What can we do as a group?

• What can I do as an individual.

If you want to do something to help today drop into the Save Mona website and sign the petition, we are not at the tipping point yet where a groundswell of support will cause politicians across the globe to do something but if you share your thoughts and encourage others to sign the petition maybe we can bring these animals back from the brink.

Click here now to take part: http://savemona.org/ and please remember to post the link on your social media timelines too.
Cheers,
Terry L Probert

Kundela Update

Today has been one of frustration, and missed opportunities for NaNoWriMo. I have been refurbishing my contacts database to ensure that it is up to date and I'm sure that most of the bookstore were busy when I asked them to confirm their details.

The reprint of KUNDELA has arrived and I'm extremely pleased with it. The new cover distinguishes it from the old one yet retains its Aussie character. I have taken an opportunity to change a couple of irritations that bugged one or two fo my critics but that's all it needed.

To say I'm a happy camper is an understatement. A big shout to all of you who have bought the first copies, they were a small print run and your support is power for my pen.

More updates to come.

Save Mona

Thanks to all my Facebook friends who have liked and shared the Save Mona page. Your actions will create a groundswell of people expressing the same opinion and one day we may save these creatures and many others from extinction.

Let us all hope our grandchildren don't point to a photo of a rhino and say why didn't you do something Gramps?

Check out the website and leave a comment please: http://savemona.org/

And the petition: http://www.change.org/en-AU/organisations/save_mona

Thanks everyone.

Terry