Do Authors Need Liability Insurance?

03/28/2012

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You've  worked hard  earning every penny of your ebook and print book profits - so imagine losing it all in  a legal  battle over the originality of your story or characters. Today, just the act of defending yourself in court,  regardless if you're found guilty or innocent, could create financial ruin. 

Does this really happen and do authors really need to protect themselves?
  
This great question was posed to me recently and it's one I hadn’t really thought about, before now. Since Mary’s book was centered around herself and her family, she was in a lot less danger of being sued over copyright infringements or misrepresentations. But, for authors not writing memoirs or autobiographies, they may want to consider protecting themselves, especially since we live in such a litigious world. Just ask J.K. Rowling, who had to defend her idea of the Triwizard Tournament she wrote about in the 4th book of the Harry Potter series. Fortunately, she was on her way to becoming the first billionaire author, so she had a cushion to fall back on.  But, the average author is not as lucky.

As I researched this subject, I learned that surprisingly all authors, even those publishing traditionally, need to consider carrying liability insurance as the traditional publishing houses are no longer fully protecting authors under their policies.

For more information on the reasons and resources for obtaining coverage, check out this interesting article by Amy Cook on the Writers Digest website.

Do you think it’s necessary to have Liability Insurance? Have you purchased a policy and/or faced a legal battle over your book?

I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences.

--
Andrea Bandle
Writer/Editor, Co-Founder
editor@helpmeselfpublish.com
@HelpMeSelfPub
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Road Map Writing

03/16/2012

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Road Map Writing
“Geez, looking back on draft 1, I can really see how some of the scenes and dialogue were really not going anywhere, but I guess that happens when you write (by) stream of consciousness. I am almost done revisiting your summary report and want to praise you on your expertise. You really pinpointed all the problems and boy, were there a lot.”
 
These kind words were sent to me by an editing client who wrote the first draft of her first novel by the seat of her pants. She had an awesome idea, wanted to write a book, sat down, and did it. And it is a really cool concept that I look forward to helping her promote once it’s completed. As much as I admire and respect her ability to just go for it without any prior experience, courses taken, or even reading a “how-to” book on writing a novel – this approach did create many challenges: the main one being the amount of loose ends and a lack of a tight, cohesive story where everything has a purpose within the plot. There were other issues, too – but for the purposes of this blog post, I wanted to focus the attention on plot creation.

My client enjoyed writing stream of consciousness and was a little leery at my suggestion of creating an outline for a more structured story. But, I assured her that she didn’t have to choose between writing extraneously versus structured.

“I think as you fine tune your writing skills, you'll be able to utilize your impulse writing with your initial ideas and notes, with a more structured approach to creating the actual manuscript. It's sort of like the difference between planning a trip and just getting in the car and going. Of course, if you decide to just get in and go, it's probably helpful to at least have money and a map.”

Instead of choosing one technique over the other, she could combine the two. How so? By simply beginning her writing projects stream of consciousness. All initial ideas can be written down as they come. No rhyme or reason, just off-shoots of each other. Then, once a specific idea has been chosen, that’s when the gears can be switched to a more structured approach. The idea being that you are constantly going back and forth between these techniques of stream of consciousness for ideas and then structure for bringing those ideas to life within a story.

Here’s a great article by David Carr from The Book Designer website that I recommend for assistance on how to create a story outline. And don’t worry…there are no Roman Numerals involved.

Do you write stream of consciousness, structured, or a combination of the two?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the subject.

--
Andrea Bandle
Writer/Editor, Co-Founder
editor@helpmeselfpublish.com
@HelpMeSelfPub
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Editing Tip: Read Aloud

03/02/2012

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Read Aloud
Have you ever received those emails testing your ability to read the words when they're just a jumble of letters and numbers? Here's an example: 7H15 M3554G3 53RV35 7O PR0V3 H0W 0UR M1ND5 C4N D0 4M4Z1NG 7H1NG5! Apparently, our brains will fill in the gaps for us and adjust the word to create what we need to see, once we figure out the first word or two.
 
Well, this can be challenging for an editor. One of my clients, recently asked me if I would prefer to read her manuscript in printed form as it was easier for her to read it that way and was kind enough to offer to print her book for me and send it via snail-mail. This wasn’t necessary, as the last several years I’d adjusted myself to be able to read online, especially for work, having spent my adult life on the computer. (For pleasure, I still enjoy the old fashioned curling up with a good book where I can feel the thickness of the cover and smell the ink and paper. But, work and the computer are synonymous for me.)

Plus, making corrections on paper seems antiquated to me, now. Sometimes, I’ll make a note, only to have my question or concern answered a few lines or paragraphs down. Also, note making or rewriting sentences and paragraphs are a lot more challenging on paper. It’s much cleaner to have these marks electronically. That and it feels kinder. (Perhaps it’s my memories of my work in school being marked up in red ink, but a tangible mark on a piece of paper feels more permanent – like the difference between writing in pencil versus ink.)

But, either way, paper or onscreen editing, it doesn’t rectify the problem with my brain filling in the errors for me. Where does my “eagle eye” come from? I think it comes from reading aloud, something I recently found myself doing. It’s not louder than a whisper, and sometimes it’s me just moving my lips. I think the combination of these two activities forces me to see things I might otherwise miss.

Try it. Especially if you’re stuck on your dialogue writing. Hearing it spoken out loud will test how natural the words sound. You’ll also be surprised how many more errors you spot.

Do you read your work out loud before submitting it? As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas.

--
Andrea Bandle
Writer, Editor & Co-founder
editor@helpmeselfpublish.com
@HelpMeSelfPub

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