As I sit here, thinking about NaNoWriMo – I started freaking out. There was a reported a surge in self-published ebooks that had no business being on the market in December of last year (unsubstantiated, I did no science). I can only attribute this to NaNoWriMo participants who were naive enough to believe they had a publish-ready novel after a month long 2000+ words/day writing binge (for the sake of this article, we will refer to them as NotSoPubRedNo's).
This scared me as a self-publisher of ebooks. Would anything I put out in the few months after NaNoWriMo be automatically labeled a NotSoPubRedNo? Probably. If I were a book review blogger I might just be inclined to reject all submissions at least until February. That is probably why I am not a book blogger.
To combat the NotSoPubRedNo plague, I will take two approaches.
1 - Get out all my review requests for completed works by the end of November. So yes, I am back to stalking reviewers. I found a creepy, new method too. For those that are closed to reviews or those who haven't responded to a request – find them on Goodreads, friend them, suggest your book.
2 - Start a campaign within the NaNoWriMo community to just say no to NotSoPubRedNo's or in other words...NoNotSoPubRedNo (ok – I am probably getting a bit ridiculous here, I blame the rum).
This campaign will consist of tweeting, facebooking, google +ing, blogging, talking, Morse coding, smoke-signaling (again with the rum) all the steps writers must take after NaNoWriMo to produce a PubRedNo. See what I did there? Hashtag it. Tweet it.
Step 1:
Finish it. 50,000 words does not a novel make.
Step 2:
Edit it. Substantively, professionally.
Step 3:
Edit it again. Grammar, punctuation.
Step 4:
Critique it. Join a group; get feedback.
Step 5:
Edit it again.
Step 6:
Cover art. Hire those Mormons - see my post on why.
Step 7:
Step 8:
Publish then market that bee-atch! Bee-yatch. Beetch. None of those look right. I'll have to google it.
So there you have it. Eight steps. Boom!
