What they said. There's a fine line between adding character and annoying your reader and making him/her think you're ignorant.

Bump!

Bump!

Bump! Come on over and gab about books!

Sure, no problem.

Definitely post those in the comments and give the links!

Thanks!

Please feel free to share about anything -- even a book you read recently and loved. Fangirl Friday is all about books...books we love, books we're reading, and books we wrote! Hopefully people can find some great weekend reads!

I've been tasked to put together a proposal to self-publish a Junior League cookbook. This particular Junior League last did a cookbook in 1999, and they used Wimmer as their "publisher" but my friend in the League is convinced that they can do much better by self-publishing and I am pretty certain she's right.

But before she can convince the rest of the committee, she needs to put together a proposal, so she needs numbers. So of course, she asked me, her only friend who self-publishes. 

The package they need to compare is a 288-page cookbook. She doesn't know how many recipes that works out to, or really anything at all. Just that the proposal they got from the vanity publisher is for a 288-page book.

So....if you have self-published a cookbook or if you offer editing and/or formatting services for non-fiction, cookbooks in particular, I need to know the following:

What should they expect to pay for--
* editing
* print layout
* ebook formatting

If they go this route, the committee would select the recipes and would do the necessary due diligence to determine that they actually are good and work. I also advised that they would put together a "template" for members to use when submitting their recipes, so they're all in the same format and so could basically be cut-and-pasted into the final thing, once the committee has engaged in the necessary selection and arrangement, along with any supplemental writing and descriptions.

So they really do just need editing and format.

Can anyone help? What have you paid for this? Or if you offer these services, what do you charge?

I think they might take agented submissions, but maybe not. Mostly I think, as Nykki said, it's invitation only.

They do take agented submissions, as well as by invitation. I have been contracted for a couple of short projects, and both times it was by invitation only (and really because of "who you know" -- I know they didn't just discover me in the vast sea of Amazon).

It's Friday, so you know what that means!

http://www.rubyslipperedsisterhood.com/fangirl-friday-3-13-15/

Come chat with the Rubies and our readers all about books! Is there a book you're currently reading that is great? Did you recently read something amazing? Are you an author who had a new release this week? Or maybe your books are free or discounted today? Tell us!

Longer doesn't mean bloated. I don't describe clothes nearly as much as many authors of novellas. Scenery descriptions bore me. It's more about secondary characters and the duration of the storyline, I find. But I write quite zippily. Lots of dialogue.

Pride and Prejudice would be a good example of a long book that is a quick read. My favorite kind of book: humor, dialogue, interesting characters and story line beyond the romance. Yet it's much longer and more complex than even a long current romance. It just doesn't "read long." But you can happily dive in there and stay a while.

Which isn't to say that the only good books are long. Just that long doesn't necessarily mean bloated.

THIS. I was actually *shocked* to discover that Pride & Prejudice is as long as it is, because it has always felt like a quick read to me. I'd never call it "short" but it certainly didn't read long because of the pacing, dialogue and characters. At 122,000-ish words, that's WAY longer than the average book I read (I generally top out at about 100,000 words when I read and love the 70-85K range). Those 500,000-word doorstoppers aren't even on my radar. I will NEVER read one.

Anyway, what I love about ebooks is that if readers aren't actually picking up a physical, tangible printed copy, length is no longer an absolute. I've read plenty of novellas that are much more satisfying reads than full-length novels, whereas in a print world I would likely never even consider buying a novella. What matters is whether a story FEELS big, satisfying, and complete.

Keep those comments coming! Have you read anything good lately? Any news about your own books? Share!