AskAuthor chat with Rebecca Syme (& giveaway!)

We're kicking off our ShoreIndie AskAuthor series on Sunday, June 11th at 8pm ET with USA Today bestselling romance and cozy mystery author Rebecca Syme!

Rebecca Syme writes small town romance as Becca Boyd and cozy mystery as R.L. Syme. She is a long-time foodie and loves fancy cheese. Becca calls the mountains of Montana her home and draws inspiration from the beautiful vistas and heartwarming people. She is the USA Today bestselling author of the Line of Fire series of sweet romances and part of the Chick Tales continuity series set in Somewhere, TX. Her newest series, The Matchbaker Mysteries, falls into cozy culinary mystery and releases on July 1st. You can find her on Twitter talking #fancycheese or #Chopped, and on Facebook with her fans in Becca Nation. She is represented by Lane Heymont of the Tobias Literary Agency.

Connect with Rebecca: Website   Twitter   Facebook

Editor's Note: Not only is Rebecca is the author or co-author of over a dozen published books, but she also co-hosts the Smarty Pants Book Marketing Podcast and teaches courses on craft and indie authorship through the Margie Lawson Writer's Academy - including the excellent Indie Insider course, from which I learned everything I wish I'd known about indie authorship when I was starting out - and is a ShoreIndie sponsor. Bring all your questions about self-publishing and indie authorship over to the #AskAuthor hashtag on Twitter, and get ready to learn TONS.

We're also running a giveaway all day Sunday of Rebecca's latest book, VANGIE VALE AND THE MURDERED MACARON, due out August 1st! Enter below before 11:59pm on Sunday the 11th to win a paperback or an ebook copy of her new foodie cozy mystery!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Submissions to the 2017 contest are CLOSED

As of 9am ET on Monday, June 5th, submissions to the 2017 ShoreIndie Contest are closed.

Now the real fun begins! 

Tune in to #SIsubs & #ShoreIndie on Twitter for writing tips on the book blurb and first five pages as the editors tweet anonymous feedback about their submissions from June 5-10.

Attend the Author-Editor pair announcements, tweeted by @ShoreIndie, at noon ET on Sunday, June 11th to see which 10 authors the editors have chosen to work with for the 7-week Editing Round. The 10 winners of the blurb critique raffle will also be announced on this day.

Keep an eye on the website for the Editing Round Event Schedule, which will include the days & times of:

• #AskAuthor chats with the ShoreIndie Featured Authors and Judges. Want to know more about how to format for ebook and print? Whether to join the KDP Select program or distribute your book more widely? How to grow your audience and sell more books? These chats are fabulous opportunities to learn more about other indie authors' experiences - what's worked for them and what hasn't.
• Mini-workshops on craft, hosted by ShoreIndie editors.
• Giveaways of marketing consultation, Write! word processing software, ebooks about the business side of indie authorship, and books by our Featured Authors.

HUGE THANKS to everyone who entered the contest and to all who have watched and cheered our authors and editors on from the sidelines. We look forward to a summer full of rich conversations about indie authorship and tons of writerly and bookish fun!

How to Process Feedback

by Carly Hayward

ShoreIndie is a community full of editors and fellow authors wanting to help your manuscript be the best it can possibly be. The community this contest fosters is one of the most valuable prize you could win. Even if you aren’t picked by an editor or you don’t win during the judging round, there is a lot of value to this contest. The ShoreIndie editors are a fabulous resource, and lucky for you, they are chomping at the bit to give you feedback. They all have your best interests in mind, and they want to help you make your best book.

The way to get all that feedback is to engage. Don’t just submit your manuscript, talk to the editors on Twitter. Ask them as many questions as your heart desires. It’s what they are here for. They want to get to know you and your book. And believe me, we love giving advice!

Top 8 Problems That Turn Readers Off

by Carly Hayward

ShoreIndie is about to begin, and I bet you’re wondering what you can do to catch an editor’s eye. We editors see hundreds of manuscripts during these contests, and there are some common problems that will turn us away from your manuscript. While all these problems can be overcome by a fabulous voice or a plot that we can’t look away from, it’s best to avoid them.

Let’s dive right in! Here are the top eight problems we see over and over again:

1. Head-hopping: This term can be easily misunderstood. Head-hopping is not the same as multiple points of view or omniscient narrators. It’s when you are within the head of one character, understanding their opinions and viewing everything through their perspective, and then suddenly you are hearing the thoughts of another character. Multi-POV changes points of view after chapter or section breaks and remains in one character’s head at a time. And an omniscient narrator may be able to see into everyone’s head but has a bird’s-eye view; their POV is distinct from the characters.

7 Signs You're Not Ready for That Editing Contest

by Elizabeth Buege

After several rounds of helping authors get their manuscripts agent-ready through Pitch to Publication and RevPit events, I’m excited to get on board with ShoreIndie, helping indie authors get ready to share their books with the world. In these contests, I’ve read through hundreds of entries, and now I can quickly tell the difference between people who are ready for an editing contest and those who aren’t.

Are you thinking about entering ShoreIndie or another editing contest? It’s important to make sure you’re ready first. Take a look at the seven red flags below—if any of them apply to you, stop and take notice. It doesn’t mean you should give up and walk away; it means you should think about why they apply, how you can fix them, and whether or not it’s a good idea to enter the contest. How are you doing in each of these areas?

10 Reasons I'm Excited about ShoreIndie

by Sione Aeschliman

[Note: this post was updated on June 1, 2017 to reflect last-minute changes to the submission process.]

A few weeks ago I wrote a post called "6 Reasons to Follow #ShoreIndie," in which I gave some arguments for why writers should follow the ShoreIndie Contest regardless of whether they intend to submit. Today I'm going to focus on my own personal reasons for being excited about this contest - as its creator, as an indie author, and as a member of its editing team.

1. I know of no other contest like this for indie authors.
Existing contests open to indie authors fall into two main categories: published manuscripts and unpublished manuscripts. This contest falls into the latter category, and it distinguishes itself from existing contests in that 1) it is run by freelance editors, not by a self-publishing service; 2) TEN authors, not just one, will win professional editing; and 3) the prize packages are designed to include services and resources to help emerging indie authors begin to grow and sustain their careers, not just publish a single book. So yeah, I'm pretty darn proud of what we've put together. The contest being the first of its kind? Bonus.

2. Supporting indie authors as leaders in the publishing industry.
I am a person who is driven by a fierce independent streak and a strong commitment to social equality and self-empowerment. So it makes total sense that I'd be excited about the fact that we who write the books now have access to the means of production and distribution. But it goes beyond that, too. One of the biggest opportunities that self-publishing authors have is to push the boundaries laid down by traditional publishing - by publishing content deemed too risky for traditional publishing, by blending and inventing new genres, by introducing readers to voices and perspectives that aren't yet making it through the gates of traditional publishing. I firmly believe that once the self-publishing community has proven that there is a market for a wider range of voices and perspectives, more traditional publishers will be willing to take these projects on. Everybody wins.

You Should Enter That Contest

by Nicole Evans (@thought_stained)

If you stumbled upon this blog post, you might be considering entering #ShoreIndie, a new contest for emerging Indie writers to win free editing and support through your writing journey. (Want more details? Check out this blog post here.) But you also might be feeling some apprehension or some nervousness thinking about submitting your work into a contest. You might still be on the fence whether that’s a risk you want to take.

As someone who has entered into three such contests and not won a single one, I want to encourage you to enter that contest.

A year ago, I was also in your shoes. Only battling in the query trenches a few times before and receiving rejection after rejection, I was wary about opening myself up to “failure” once more. I had doubts that my work was truly ready. I was nervous to send my work out to be critiqued, worried that the feedback would find it wanting and I’d be discouraged to keep trying. Before finally convincing myself to enter, I had this false idea that you could only gain something from Twitter-based contests if you won.

I was very happily mistaken.