Creative Writers Workshop

Leave your Memories Behind!!! Write it the Write Way!!! Make it Happen!!!

 

Reflections Publishing House, is a small press publishing company with a writer’s component, founded in 2005. We’ve discovered a critical need for writers to attend a workshop to learn the fundamentals of the writing and self-publishing processes, and are in dire need of giving your writing the raise it deserves.

Do you have a story to tell or have an idea for a book but after writing a few pages you stopped? Do you have notebooks full of writing but no clear sense of how to turn it into a manuscript? Or you have a manuscript that you’ve been working on for years but just can’t seem to complete it? Reflections Creative Writing Workshop is the answer for all your needs.

Reflections Publishing House

The Place Where Writers Go to Grow

Creative Writers Workshop

Six Personalized Writing Sessions

· Nurture your love of writing, and storytelling

· Learn the dynamics of the creative writing process

· Discover the purpose of your writing

· Write Story/Poem for Class Anthology and learn Self-Publishing Basics

· Receive a One on One Coaching Session

· Receive professional critique on your work

Beginning
Saturday, June 22, 2013 - 3:00 PM to 5 PM

 Yvonne Burk Community Center

4750 W. 62^nd Street

Los Angeles, CA 90045

 To Register

310/695-9800

dabellis@reflectionspublishings.net

meltaylor@reflectionspublishings.net

www.reflectionspublishings.net

 $75 includes

6 workshops; course materials and private coaching session

FREE

 Introductory Session June 22, 2013

INTERESTING FACTS OF THE BOOK   INDUSTRY

PART TWO

There are about 1.5 million books in print at any one time in the United States.

Bookstore sales by month would surprise the average consumer. You probably think December is the high month. Yet the big bounce is in January and again in August and September when university sales are made. The lowest month is April with only $0.987 billion in sales.

Some 300 to 400 mid-sized publishers exist. 78 percent of titles brought out come from a small press or self-publisher. California is the stronghold of small presses with approximately six times the number located elsewhere. Colorado and Minnesota also have large independent and self-publishing communities.

On the average a bookstore browser will spend eight seconds looking at the front cover and 15 seconds scanning the back cover.

The size of the small press movement is estimated to be $13 billion to $17 billion a year, as opposed to traditional publishers who are responsible for bringing in $26 billion.

Nonfiction typically outsells fiction by two to one. However, at least 20 percent more fiction is being published these days via the Internet and (POD) Print on Demand.

Interest in poetry and drama has grown by more than 33 percent since 1992.

The average number of copies purchased by the author from one of the POD Company is 75 books.

One book per year is produced in America for every 2,336 people— in contrast to one for every 545 individuals in the U.K. Other countries ahead of the U.S. on a per capita basis are Canada (577), New Zealand (779), and Australia (2,041). A poll of 2,700 U.S. Internet users, representing about 100 million U.S. Internet users, indicates that about 8 million unpublished novels and 17 million unpublished how-to books have been written by that Internet-using population alone. Women buy 68 percent of all books sold. Most readers do not get past page 18 in a book they have purchased.

52 percent of all books are not sold in bookstores! They are merchandised via mail order, online, in discount or warehouse stores, through book clubs, in nontraditional retail outlets, etc. 64 percent of book buyers say a book’s being on a bestseller list is not important.

The #1 nonfiction bestseller for 2001 was the Prayer of Jabez, exceeding 8 million copies. Self-Matters were #1 on the 2002 list with mere 1,350,000 copies sold. John Grisham’s The Summons topped the fiction list with 2,625,000 copies. The best-selling trade paperback during 2002 was, of all things, a cookbook: Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook, and how to. How-to, memoirs, and religion were also strong sellers.

Parables, short tales of fiction that teach a life lesson, have many avid fans that drive them onto bestseller lists. One of the most recent is Who Moved My Cheese? By Spencer Johnson, MD. Dr. Johnson began his career as a self-published author

Bookstores are famous for returning books to publishers. The industry return rate is typically 36 percent for hardcovers and 25 percent for softcovers.

It takes an average of 475 hours to write a novel. Fiction is considered successful if it sells 5,000 copies. Writing a nonfiction book requires about 725 hours. A nonfiction book is deemed successful when it reaches 7,500 copies sold.

The largest advance ever paid for a self-published book is a whopping $4.125 million. Simon & Schuster paid that for Richard Paul Evans’s The Christmas Box.

We have researched a multitude of sites and publications to pull these facts together for you. They include the ISBN agency, R.R. Bowker; Harris Interactive poll; Book Industry Study Group; Bookwire.com; Seybold Conference; IBPA;The American Association of Publishers; Authors Guild; Lulu.com; Jupiter Media Matrix; parapublishing.com; Foreword Magazine; Department of Commerce; Publishers Weekly, various news releases; Books in Print;, Forrester Research; Morris Rosenthal; Romance Writers of America; Shelf Awareness; U.S. News & World Report; Poets and Writers; M. J. Rose; Borders; and SIMBA Information.

All information in this post was taken from Self-Publishing Resources by Marilyn and Tom Ross

Are You a Storyteller or a Writer?

 So now I'm on the vibe of understanding and applying the storytelling techniques to my writing. In one of my creative writers workshops, we talked about the difference betweeen showing and telling a story, and this applies to all genres of writing. But let's talk first about stiorytelling, and how it dresses up your words, how it uses everyday language to SHOW... the reader the story, example: "I looked out the window and saw that it was raining." that's telling something, it's a fact, it's raining. Now let's take the same words and show them. "The icy rain was pounding on the window so hard it startled me." That felt different, I could see the rain on the window. I actually felt the cold icy drops on my skin...burr.
Bring your words to life with active language, we talk a lot about active and passive language in our workshops, watch using the words be, will, these are passive works, enter into the conversation in present tense, example Passive - I will write today. Active - I am writing today.
Just a few tips on writing the write way.
Back by popular demand is Reflections Creative Writers Workshop beginning Satuday, June 22nd in Los Angeles. More information forthcoming!

Debbie Bellis, Publisher/Writers Coach

Interesting Facts about The Self and Traditional Publishing Industry

Part One

Previously, writers had fewer options to get their manuscripts into print. Mostly their choices were either traditional publishing or self-publishing. Self-publishing was considered by some to be "not real publishing," and could be the kiss of death for an author wishing to be taken seriously. Some traditional publishers were reluctant to accept their work, some literary agents wouldn't represent them, and some sales outlets wouldn't stock their books. Some called it "Vanity Publishing" to marginalize their work. Writers were left with few options, and had to do their own promotion and marketing. Some simply sold their books out of the trunk of their car, or to anyone who expressed an interest.

Authors submitted a manuscript directly to traditional publishers, hoping to find one who had an interest, and was willing to invest in publishing it. As those publishers became more risk adverse and less willing to accept unsolicited manuscripts, writers were forced to search for agents to represent their work. As agents became flooded with manuscripts, they also became more selective, accepting fewer manuscripts. Writers were now left with even fewer options. The process then became more difficult, as writers had to find an agent, and the agent now had to find a publisher.

The landscape has certainly changed over the last few years. Regardless of what you're told, the days of back room deals in smoke filled rooms with an agent using their influence and insider contacts to get a book published, are long gone. Professional relationships are still extremely important, and good agents may have more access because of their reputation for handing quality, but the days of wheeling and dealing with graft and corruption are gone.

Authors today have several options to get their work into print and be successful. What's happening in the book publishing industry today is comparable to what happened to the music industry a few years ago. The music industry was similar to the book publishing industry today. An artist could have the greatest song in the world, but if they couldn't find an agent who could sign them with a record label, they virtually had no chance of it ever being heard. The option was to produce their own record and try to sell it themselves. This was rarely successful.

As technology changed to digital, it became a viable option for artists to establish their own record labels. Service companies came into existence providing everything the artist needed to make their work available to the public. Some major record labels and agents ignored the new options and fought to brand self-recorded artists as "not real recording artists" with non-viable records. Eventually they lost the battle. In the recording industry today, artists no longer have to rely on major record labels to get their music to the public. The term “self-recorded” is no longer used nor has any meaning.

When self-publishing was in its infancy, the quality of the books were generally not on par with commercially published books. Many books were obviously self-published. With cheap construction, inferior typesetting, poor interior design and amateur covers, the books looked “home grown.” With today's technology, self-published books can be identical in quality and design to books produced by the largest firms. There are numerous examples of successful self-published authors who strongly advocate this method of publishing.

The greatest validation that subsidy publishing offers is the fact that some of the largest publishing houses have established subsidy imprints, providing writers with additional options. The houses of Thomas Nelson, Harlequin, Lifeway, Hay House, and Random now own all or portions of subsidy imprints. Some traditional publishers and agents still condemn subsidy and self- published authors for a variety of reasons. A subsidy or self- published author doesn't need an agent, thus cutting them and their profits out of the loop. They also no longer need the traditional publisher, cutting them and their profits out of the loop. In self-publishing, authors can reap most of the profits from sales while retaining full control of their work. In subsidy publishing the author maintains more rights and has more control than in a traditional format, but fewer rights than in self-publishing. Subsidy publishing is not necessarily the right option for everyone. It generally requires more author participation in addition to an author investment of funds. It's a partnership, which each partner investing in the potential success of the book.

Stay tuned for Part 2