Revise and Republish?

The Increasing Fluidity of Books & Publishing

by Jodie Renner, fiction editor and craft-of-fiction writer   

If you’re an indie author with e-books on Amazon, have you revised and re-uploaded any of your e-books, in response to negative reviews or other feedback? Or even just to add improvements or additions you thought of yourself? I do, quite regularly. And it seems to me that many authors, including high-profile ones, who are receiving similar negative reviews for a book should be considering doing this. What do you think? 

With more and more authors publishing their own books as e-books, and even publishers releasing increasing numbers of e-books, which can be updated as often as the author/publisher chooses, how does that impact the content of the books? I’m thinking that using this privilege can’t help but improve the book, and the overall quality of e-books available.

Can and should we use reviews and other feedback to constantly (or occasionally) update or revise our books? Why or why not?

Would you or do you alter/tweak/revise/change your book because of many similar reviews?

And if you do revise your book because of negative reviews, what do you do about the fact that the reviews are still there, even though the issues have been addressed and hopefully fixed? Would you respond to the well-thought-out ones you felt had a good point and tell them you’ve made some changes based on their review?

And will more and more traditional publishers with digital imprints start tweaking their books based on informative, thoughtful reviews? Or on many negative reviews with basically the same objections? Will individual e-books then be in a constant state of flux, based on feedback and current trends?

I’ve heard of authors changing the ending to please a majority of readers who objected to the way their book ended. What about changing other aspects of a book that would require more extensive revisions? What if a lot of faithful followers found one of your protagonists too hard-edged or whiny or sarcastic or whatever? Would you go back to that book and tweak your characterization and their dialogue, etc. to make them more sympathetic and appealing? Or what if lots of readers complained about a major plot hole? Would you go in and fix it, in hopes of stopping the flood of bad reviews?

If your novel is solely an e-book at this stage, it’s quick and easy to upload a newer, better version after making the revisions. But then you have some people who have the original version and others who are buying the improved product. 

I’ve published two craft-of-fiction e-books on Amazon-Kindle (with more to come) and have updated and expanded both of them several times, which is a wonderful feature and option/privilege, I think, especially for writers who are still honing their craft and learning from their mistakes.

Since I published my first e-book, Writing a Killer Thriller, in July 2012, I’ve added two chapters
and revised the whole thing. In the last few days, I added another chapter and deleted one near the end that was too repetitive, a summary that basically reiterated points made in the rest of the book. I just republished this most recent version, and a new cover, and am working on two more new chapters for the book. This approach would have been unheard of ten years ago, but I’m grateful to have the control to be able to do this with my “learning” first book.

Then I’ll ask Amazon to notify earlier buyers so they can upgrade for free. I’m also publishing the new chapters on the blog of my new, author website, so people who’ve bought earlier versions of the e-book can just read the new chapters there. And I’m planning to publish the new, expanded version in print soon. And I assume I can keep the same title...?

(As an aside, when I first published this e-book, I enabled Digital Rights Management and have since been told that was a mistake so I didn’t do it with my second book. Does anyone know if there’s a way I can disable that? It doesn’t seem possible.)

And what about if your book is already in print? Say you’ve published with a POD house like CreateSpace, like I did, for my Style That Sizzles & Pacing for Power book (available as an e-book, too). Do you consider re-issuing a second edition? All my comments for Style that Sizzles have been positive (29 reviews to date, with an overall rating of 4.9 stars out of 5), but I’m considering publishing a newer, improved second edition. Am I getting carried away here? When do you say, “Enough, already,” and move on?

*Update, February 2014: I updated Style That Sizzles and retitled it Fire up Your Fiction.*

Writers - Do you revise your e-books to address issues that readers feel detract from the overall positive impact of the book?

Should we embrace increased reader involvement/interaction? Or would that just be opening a can of worms?

Readers & Reviewers - Do you appreciate it when writers revise based on your input? Do you enjoy the extra involvement of being a beta reader or active reviewer?

Do you even check back occasionally to see if writers have revised their book based on similar negative reviews by you and others? Would you like to see authors comment under your review if they've addressed your concerns?



Jodie Renner has published two books to date in her series, An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: Writing a Killer Thriller and Fire up Your Fiction (Style That Sizzles & Pacing for Power), which has won two book awards so far. Look for the third book in the series, out soon. For more info, please visit Jodie’s author website or editor website, her other blogs, The Kill Zone and Resources for Writers, or find her on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. And sign up for her newsletter.
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Show Your Setting Through Your POV Character

by Jodie Renner, editor, author, & speaker  

Fiction writers – one of the fastest ways to bring your story world and characters to life is to portray the setting through the senses, feelings, reactions, and attitude of your protagonist.  

Enhancing your fiction by filtering the description of the settings through your viewpoint character’s senses is a concept I instinctively embraced when I first started editing fiction years ago. I was editing a contemporary middle-school novel, whose two main characters, a boy and a girl, were both eleven years old (I’ve changed the details slightly). The author had them describing rooms they entered as if they were interior decorators, complete with words like “exquisite,” “stylish,” “coordinated,” “ornate,” and “delightful.” Then, when they were in the park or the woods playing and exploring with friends, each tree, shrub and flower was accurately named and described in details that were way beyond the average preteen’s knowledge base or interests. 

Besides the obvious problem of too much description for this age group (or for any popular novel these days), this omniscient, literary, “grownup” way of describing their environment would not only turn off young readers due to the complex terms and sophisticated language, but also create a distance between any reader and these two modern-day kids. As a reader and editor, I didn’t feel like I was getting to know these kids at all, as I wasn’t seeing their world through their eyes, but directly from the author, who obviously knew her interior design terms and flora and fauna! By separating us from the main characters through this unchildlike, out-of-character description of their environment, the author inadvertently puts a kind of semi-transparent wall between us and the two kids. If we don’t get into their heads and hearts, seeing their world as they see it, how will we get to know them, and why will we care what happens to them?

I advise my author clients to not only show us directly what the characters are seeing around them, in the character's words and thoughts, colored by their attitude toward their surroundings, but to bring the characters and story to life on the page by evoking all the senses. Tell us what they’re hearing and smelling, too. And touching/feeling – the textures of things, and whether they’re feeling warm or cold, wet or dry. Even the odd taste. And don’t forget mood—how does that setting make them feel? Emotionally uplifted? Fearful? Warm and cozy? Include telling details specific to that place, and have the characters react to their environment, whether it’s shivering from the cold, in awe of a gorgeous sunset, or afraid of the dark. Bring that scene to life through your characters’ reactions!

This technique serves to deepen the characterization, bring the character to life, and make us feel like we're right there, while showing us the relevant, even critical aspects of the setting.

As Donald Maass says, in Writing the Breakout Novel, “Place presented from an objective or omniscient point of view runs the risk of feeling like boring descriptive. It can be a lump, an impediment to the flow of the narrative.”

He continues, “Do you have plain vanilla description in your current manuscript? Try evoking the description the way it is experienced by a character. Feel a difference? So will your readers.” 

James Scott Bell also advises us to “marble” the description of the environment in during the action. “The way to do this is to put the description in the character’s point of view and use the details to add to the mood.”

Jack M. Bickham gets more specific on this: “When you start a scene in which Bob walks into a large room, for example, you do not imagine how the room looks from some god-like authorial stance high above the room, or as a television camera might see it; you see it only as Bob sees it, coming in….” And include what he’s feeling, hearing, and smelling, too. Filter the scene through his perceptions and feelings. “This leads to reader identification with Bob, which is vital if the reader is to have a sense of focus.” 

Copyright © Jodie Renner

Resources:
James Scott Bell, Revision & Self-Editing
Jack M. Bickham, The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes
Donald Maass, Writing the Breakout Novel
– And Jodie’s experience reading and editing fiction

P.S. Click HERE for some basic tips on creating sentences that flow, on Jodie's own blog.

Jodie Renner is a freelance fiction editor and the award-winning author of three craft-of-writing guides in her series An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: Captivate Your Readers, Fire up Your Fiction, and Writing a Killer Thriller, as well as two clickable time-saving e-resources, Quick Clicks: Spelling List and Quick Clicks: Word Usage. She has also organized two anthologies for charity, incl. Childhood Regained – Stories of Hope for Asian Child Workers. You can find Jodie at www.JodieRenner.com, www.JodieRennerEditing.com, her blog, http://jodierennerediting.blogspot.com/, and on Facebook and Twitter.

Successful Sentence Styles for Stories, Pt. I

by Jodie Renner, freelance editor and craft-of-fiction writer

Fiction writers – do you pay conscious attention to sentence structure? If you’re a natural and your writing flows well, you probably don’t need to. But if it’s choppy, awkward, repetitive or confusing, it's time for some tweaking and editing. 

Today I'll talk about incomplete sentences in fiction. 

Nonfiction writing usually demands grammatically correct, complete sentences, but in fiction, partial sentences are often more effective to set a tone or mood, especially in dialogue.

Partial sentences can also be excellent to add tension or for emphasis, especially at the end of a scene or chapter, as in this chapter ending from The Sentry by Robert Crais: 

...he told himself the violence in his life had cost him everything, but he knew that was not true. As lonely as he sometimes felt, he still had more to lose. 

He could lose his best friend. 

Or himself. 

Sentence fragments are great for dialogue and thoughts.

To sound natural, dialogue needs to be casual and often consists of one- or two-word questions and answers, but even the narration of the story is really the thoughts of the viewpoint character for that chapter, so incomplete sentences can work there too, sprinkled in here and there, especially at times of stress.

But there are incomplete sentences and there are incomplete sentences.

For better flow of ideas, in most of the narration it’s usually best to complete a thought within a sentence. Otherwise, readers can feel subliminally irritated.

~ Don’t break up the natural flow of a thought. It's jarring and confusing.

To be avoided: half-thoughts or phrases that demand more, like these constructions I find in fiction manuscripts I edit:

Unfinished: He looked down from the helicopter. Speed boats and yachts crisscrossing the islands.

Better: He looked down from the helicopter. Speed boats and yachts crisscrossed the islands.

~ Finish the thought.

If you start a sentence or clause with “When” or “If” or “Since” or “Because” or “But if,” etc., finish the thought in the same sentence, otherwise it can be annoying to readers. If…, then what? When…., then what?

Avoid disjointed fragments like:

While I was there. I picked up your mail.

Since you’re going there anyway. Could you get me a coffee?

With each bit of information they dug up. His concern deepened.

Instead, for better flow, turn the period into a comma and complete the thought within the sentence:

While I was there, I picked up your mail.

Since you’re going there anyway, could you get me a coffee? Etc.

Avoid: He shrugged. “I’m no expert, but if you add up all the stories. Well, it looks like the real thing.”

Instead, write: He shrugged. “I’m no expert, but if you add up all the stories, it looks like the real thing.”

~ Connect ideas for better flow:

Before: His birthdate showed him to be in his early forties. The tall, gaunt man looked to be sixty.

After: His birthdate showed him to be in his early forties, but the tall, gaunt man looked to be sixty.

~ Anchor a sentence with a verb, to complete the thought of a sentence that seems to leave us hanging.

Sentences can often do without a subject, if the context tells us who the subject is:

He quietly opened the door. Peeked into the room. Looked around. Not there. Backed out and closed the door.

But verbs are more important. What is the person/thing doing? That info is necessary for the reader to visualize what’s going on.

Vague: He looked up. A man on the roof.

Better: He looked up. A man was crouched on the roof, poised to jump.

Vague: She turned the corner and looked around. Some teens in the vacant lot.

Better: She turned the corner and looked around. Some teams were playing baseball in the vacant lot.

And here, the second sentence needs a verb: Karen Reilly climbed out of the car. Thin and gaunt, with stringy blond hair, her face lined with tension.

Like maybe: Karen Reilly climbed out of the car. Thin and gaunt, with stringy blond hair, she moved stiffly, her face lined with tension.

~ For better flow and a complete thought, it’s often better to join up sentence fragments with a word, a comma, or a dash:

Before: After their mother died, Jane’s father moved the whole family back to Illinois. A fresh start for them away from the painful memories of Texas.

One possible solution: After their mother died, Jane’s father moved the whole family back to Illinois for a fresh start away from the painful memories of Texas.

 

Before: Carol asked the taxi driver to take her to the Café de Paris on St. Jermaine. A quaint pedestrian street speckled with elegant boutiques and chic cafes.

After: Carol asked the taxi driver to take her to the Café de Paris on St. Jermaine, a quaint pedestrian street speckled with elegant boutiques and chic cafes.

Before: The SWAT team evacuated the building and then began tests for chemical or biological agents. Anything that could have a delayed release.

After: The SWAT team evacuated the building and then began tests for chemical or biological agents—anything that could have a delayed release.
 

In Part II on my blog on March 9, I talk about ways to tweak your sentences to create a more sophisticated, compelling sentence structure and a more natural flow of ideas. Any comments or suggestions you may have are most welcome!

Jodie Renner, a freelance fiction editor specializing in thrillers and other fast-paced fiction, 
has published two books (& e-books) to date in her series, An Editor’s Guide to Writing

Compelling  Fiction: Writing a Killer Thriller and Style that Sizzles & Pacing for Power, both in e-book & print. Upcoming book: Immerse the Readers in Your Story World. For more info, please visit Jodie’s author website or editor website, or find her on Facebook or Twitter, and read her blog posts on The Kill Zone and Resources for Writers. To subscribe to Jodie’s "Resources for Writers" newsletter please click on this link.