Xlibris presents a Guide to the Foreword, Preface, and Introduction

Guide to the Foreword, Preface, and Introduction

Xlibris knows you’ve asked the question, “When is this book actually going to begin?”

By Xlibris Publishing - September 26, 2013

Xlibris knows you’ve asked the question, “When is this book actually going to begin?” How many readers, turning the page in anticipation of seeing “Chapter One,” have been met instead by a preface? Or have read a few pages of introduction, only to realize at the end that it wasn’t even the book’s writer speaking to them?

What is a foreword? A preface? An introduction? Do you need all of them? In this article, Xlibris will clear up the matter for our authors, once and for all!

The Foreword (NOT the “forward!”)

This is probably the easiest part to identify because it’s usually written by someone other than the author. Basically, it’s someone else telling you why you should read it. “Who” writes it is just as important (and sometimes more important) as “What” that person writes.

If you’re self-publishing, find someone with authority on your book’s subject to write your foreword, because they’ll be lending you a bit of their credibility. While your mom would no doubt lavish praise on your latest whodunit, unless her name happens to be Cornwell, Gerritsen, or James, her stamp of approval is unlikely to increase your sales.

Remember, the foreword is a marketing tool. Whoever writes it will likely be mentioned on the book’s cover; after all, if one of a reader’s favorite authors likes this book, maybe the reader will too.

The Preface

Here things become a bit murkier, but not overwhelmingly so. Whereas the foreword was praise from someone other than the author, the preface gives the author a chance to toot her own horn. It’s a bit like a job interview; the author will talk about her own credentials, and why her book is worth your time. Like the foreword, a well-written preface will build credibility for the book. The author might also explain what led her to write the book in the first place.

Some authors will include acknowledgements in the preface, while others will give these their own section called, predictably enough, “Acknowledgements.”

The Introduction

The preface is where the author talks about themselves, but the introduction is where the book itself takes center stage. Usually (but not always) written by the author, the introduction is where she starts to whet your appetite for what follows. If the book has a central theme it will be likely be raised here, as well as a summary of the book’s contents. The goal here is to grab the reader’s interest, to make them continue turning the pages. If the preface answers the question “Why was this book written?” the introduction answers the question “What is it about?”

So that does it for the foreword, preface, and introduction. We hope our self-publishing writers have found this interesting and informative! Next time, we’ll flip to the rear of the book and see what lurks there. For now though, Xlibris hopes you’ve found this interesting, and looks forward to seeing you again!

Find Xlibris Publishing on Google+.

Read More

Techniques for Paraphrasing

Xlibris knows that paraphrasing means putting content, whether written or spoken, into other words. In writing, using direct quotations can be very easy. Sometimes, using quotes in your writing is important, but overusing them is the sign of a bad writer or implies you are just unfamiliar with the material you are writing about.

Paraphrasing allows you to reorganize many different sources in order to clarify meanings and to create a better understanding of the topic. However, you want to make sure you are using new words without retaining the original structure. Whatever you do, you do not want to plagiarize. That would be immoral, unethical and illegal.

When writing on a particular subject, Xlibris suggests using three or four different sources and writing a summary of all of them using your own words. You want to try to write a number of ideas in a simpler and more direct way.

There are many ways to rewrite and clarify ideas without using the same words and structure. You can use synonyms and change the parts of speech of some words, which mean changing adverbs to adjectives or verbs to nouns and vice versa for example. Try to use short words and short sentences when possible.

It’s also a good idea to change passive voice to active voice whenever you can. You can transform active voice to passive voice sometimes, but remember that most intelligent writing uses active voice, except in technical writing.

You can alter sentence structures and word orders as well as changing the types of sentences used in the originals. In other words, modify questions into statements and turn simple sentences into compound or complex sentences, etc. Try varying your conjunctions by using synonyms too.

Not only do you want to change sentence structures, but also try to vary the order of the ideas. It’s usually possible to put them in a more logical order or simply make your writing flow a bit smoother by doing this.

Anyway, practice makes perfect, so Xlibris self-publishing recommends choosing a topic, finding several sources of material about it and practicing writing your own summary, paraphrasing the original ideas. Do this, and you will find that you have quickly mastered the art of paraphrasing.

Original post here: http://www.xlibrisselfpublishing.com/writing-tips/techniques-for-paraphrasing/

Read More

Xlibris Book Video: The Written World

Fatimah Jan. The Written World. Bloomington: Xlibris Publishing, ISBN 978-1-47977-623-8. 2013. Perfect Bound Softcover.

What if a stranger came into your life

and gave you the power to change an entire world?

Unearth the story of a young innocent girl

who discover she is destined to become the

keeper of an empire and it's seven kingdoms

In Fatimah Jan's debit novel a spell-binding

fantasy becomes reality.

Overview:

What if you were given a notebook, what would you do with it? What is the first thing that comes to mind? Is it worthless and meaningless? Is it a waste of time? Could you believe that the words you wrote had a significant meaning . . . something that could impact other people's lives, something that could help others? Would you still do anything with the book? 

Sophie is a poor child from a large family. Living with the thought of one day being thrown in the streets had always stained their lives. Her father works several jobs only to be paid the minimum wage. Life is hard on the Bennet family. One day, a stranger visits her and gave her an unusual book. An empty book meant to be filled in only by her. 
Sophie begins her unknown journey that is soon to unfold. With every single word she writes, a new door in her life is opened, which reveals the most astonishing events that must play a part in her life in the near future.


Original video via Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJr7D86Px1A&feature=c4-overview&list=UUrgndUBO4qevd1DfhNPweyQ

Writing A Book?         Call 1-888-795-4274 or email publishtoday@xlibris.com for your free consultation. Get Started today by requesting your Free Editing Guide.

Read More

Author Interview: Gloria Naylor

Four Questions for Gloria Naylor

1. Recent publishing industry news points out that despite a stronger presence of African-American literature, the range of interests, voices, and concerns of African-American readers are not adequately represented in books produced by the traditional publishing houses. Do you think smaller presses and self-publishing will help change this?

I believe they already have. Small presses and university presses have traditionally been a home for a wide array of views and concerns for African-Americans. And that's the way it should be. I don't feel that commercial publishing houses can — or should — attempt to cover all the special interests that prevail. Many are not equipped with the editors or marketing techniques to target the best audience for certain books. While a smaller house may not reach as wide an audience for a certain book, they will certainly target and reach an interested audience. And writers should not just want to be published — they should want to be read.

2. Have you ever considered self-publishing?

I've personally been fortunate enough to find an interested publisher for most of the work I've produced. And I've felt that the time and business acumen needed for self-publishing were beyond my abilities. But it's not something I would rule out for a person who's interested in investing all the time and effort needed.

3. There's also some debate about African-American literature being lumped together in bookstores, removing it once again from the general category of "literature" or general fiction, and therefore separating it from the literary "canon," whatever that is. What's your take on this?

I'm of two minds about this issue. There is really no one lump category called "American literature." The literature, like the country, is a polygot of different cultures and regions. Each has produced a distinct school of writing speaking to that particular uniqueness. But the politics of literature has traditionally relegated heterosexual white male literature from the northeast as American literature and everything else — regional, cultural, or female — as "special" literature. While I do take exception to this, I feel that African-American literature does have a core following of readers and scholars who cannot always depend upon the mainstream reviewers to alert them of new books in print. In this case, a separate section helps to serve the need of those readers to keep up with what's on the shelves. And if that is the motive of the booksellers, then I don't see a problem. But if the shelf placement is to meant to segregate the books, then I think a re-evaluation of the mindset of the bookseller is in order.

4. A recent Washington Post article discussed the issue of "writing what you know" vs. "writing what you want to know about." Can a white writer adequately write about black history, or Native American history, for that matter? Do you subscribe to the old "write what you know" cliche, or are research, passion, and interest sufficient requisites for writing?

I believe that the world is open game for any writer. If a subject is approached with care and compassion, then writers can cross cultural divides and do a creditable job. However, what cannot be researched or empathised is the personal resonance of a particular cultural experience — you have to be there to know there — which does not say that a black writer with inadequate skills can convey aspects of black life better than a white writer with greater skills. But nothing surpasses having a writer with the requisite skills catch the tones and textures and nuances of their own specific culture — they can make you feel what they feel, see what they see, hear what they hear. And it's from that formula that all the truly great books have come. But a merely good book isn't a bad thing either.

Gloria Naylor is a writer for theatre, film and television and the author of novels which include The Women of Brewster Place (1983 National Book Award Winner), Mama Day and Bailey's Cafe. She also edited the anthology, Children of the Night: The Best Short Stories by Black Writers 1967 to the Present. Her novels now mark their twelfth language translation.

Ms. Naylor graduated with highest honors from Brooklyn College and received a masters degree from Yale University. She has been distinguished with numerous honors including Senior Fellow, The Society for the Humanities, Cornell University; the President's Medal, Brooklyn College; and Visiting Professor, University of Kent, Canterbury, England. Ms. Naylor has won Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships for her novels; for her screenwriting, she has been awarded the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. In April of 1994, Bailey's Cafe enjoyed a successful run during its world premier at the Hartford Stage Company.

Original post, visit the Xlibris.

Writing A Book? Call 1-888-795-4274 or email publishtoday@xlibris.com for your free consultation. Get Started today by requesting your Free Editing Guide.

Read More

Author Interview: M.J. Rose

Originally posted on Xlibris Author's Lounge

Six Questions for M.J. Rose

1. Your first novel, Lip Service, was an online publishing success. What was your experience with potential publishers of the novel prior to that, and what prompted you to take matters into your own hands?

When my agent tried to sell Lip Service in 1996, we got two offers on it from the New York publishing community but ultimately the marketing departments of those two companies nixed the deals because the novel didn’t fit into a genre or niche. My agent suggested I write a new novel since editors liked my work so much, so I started to do some research which led me to the Internet.

Months online passed and I started to realize that the Net would be a great place to sell original fiction via electronic downloads. (This was in 1997 and no one had heard of ebooks yet.)

It took me till the late summer of 1998, but I worked out all the kinks and came up with a marketing plan and started selling Lip Service from my own website. Only a few months later, the book was discovered by Erika Tsang, an editor from the Doubleday Book Club and The Literary Guild. It was the first time they had discovered a book online or bought a self-published novel. A few weeks after that, Pocket Books bought the print rights. Lip Service is now available or will be soon in England, Australia, The Netherlands, Germany, and France. Pocket Books releasing Lip Service as an ebook is really bringing it full circle.

2. Why did you choose to use the M. J. Rose pseudonym rather than your own name? 

I knew I was putting a very racy prologue up on my website and wanted to avoid getting any strange phone calls at 2am, so a pseudonym was in order. My mom — who had been my main source of encoragement all my life and always knew I'd one day be published — had just died. It was in honor of her that I took her name and added my own first initial: M. I wanted the original J. Rose to be part of my book in a meaningful way.

3. How did you get over the self-publishing stigma that so many would-be self-publishers seem to suffer? 

I didn't. I suffered it every day for eight months. Got laughed at and ignored by many. It bothered me but only to a point because I started getting such incredible reviews from readers and so much fan mail. Within a few months the derision began to matter less and less.

4. Lip Service was picked up by Pocket Books, a traditional publisher, and I understand you're working on another book that will be published with them. Do you feel more secure now that your work has been recognized by a larger publishing house? What if Pocket had never come along but your work was still selling just fine? I have to admit that I do feel more secure as an author now. Even more so because Pocket bought the second novel and then the first. I also feel validated because Lip Service is starting to get some attention for its literary merits. It was recently chosen to be part of Esquire's summer reading list. And Susie Bright recently chose Lip Service for her anthology, Best American Erotica 2001 — that was enourmous validation.

I don't have any idea how I'd feel if a print publisher hadn't picked up my novel — and its been too wonderful a ride for the last eighteen months to even think about it.

5. What are the some of the best techniques you've utilized to self-market your work? 

Generating word of mouth amoung readers. Each book is unique and the way to generate that buzz is unique for each title — but people telling other people is the only way to market fiction.

6. Do you have any predictions for the future of self-publishing in terms of industry attitudes changing? 

Industry attitudes already have changed. Time Warner's new publishing arm, iPublish.com, which opens up submission to unagented authors is proof of that. I recently interviewed the editor of iPublish for an article I recently wrote for Wired News. Her name is Claire Zion and she told me that she believes 20% of the books that are not published probably have potential but marketing demands that if a book can't sell over 25,000 copies, editors and agents have to pass on it. Now with ebooks, those books that have smaller audiences can be epublished because printing costs are eliminated and so are the issues of returns and warehousing.

M. J. Rose has been called the poster girl of e-publishing by Time and has been profiled in Forbes, Business 2.0, Working Woman Magazine, Newsweek and New York Magazine.

In March 1999, her novel Lip Service was the first e-book discovered online, published by Pocket Books in August, 1999. It was available as an ebook on May 16 and will be published by Pocket this July as a trade paperback. Her new novella, Private Places, available in five installments, is up now at Mightywords.com.

Her next novel, In Fidelity, will be published by Pocket Books in March 2001. Her non-fiction book, How to Publish and Promote Online, written with Angela Adair-Hoy, will be published by St. Martin's Press in January 2001.

Rose also covers the ebook industry for Wired News. She is currently working on her third full-length novel and is on the advisory board of Writer's Digest.

This article posted at http://www.xlibris.com.au/authors-lounge-q-and-a-rose.aspx

Writing A Book?           Call 1-888-795-4274 or email publishtoday@xlibris.com for your free consultation. Get Started today by requesting your Free Editing Guide.

Read More

Author Interview: Janet Wong

Four Questions for Janet Wong

1. Your career took quite a different direction at one point, and now you're writing for kids. How and why did that happen? 

Before becoming a children's author, I was a lawyer. In my last job, I was the Director of Labor Relations at Universal Studios Hollywood, firing people, negotiating union contracts, and battling discrimination claims. It was mean-spirited work, and one day I started thinking hard about how I was spending the big money I made fancy uncomfortable clothes and pantyhose and dry cleaning and expensive restaurants and I saw all of a sudden that I'd rather do something more important with my life. I couldn't think of anything more important than working with kids, but I'd been a substitute teacher in the New Haven school district while I worked my way through Yale Law School, and I knew I wouldn't survive as a teacher! So I decided to quit my job and try to write for kids. A year and a half later and many manuscripts and 26 rejection letters later  my first book, Good Luck Gold, was sold. This was a very short time, an unusually short time, thanks to my mentor and UCLA Extension instructor, the poet Myra Cohn Livingston. 

2. What does poetry do for you, and what do you observe it doing for other people? 

I hated poetry as a child mainly, I think, because most of what we read was written by dead English poets. And I hated having to memorize a poem, stand up in front of the class then forget the poem. Myra Cohn Livingston was one of several speakers at a one-day UCLA Extension seminar that I took just a month after quitting my law job, and I had no idea who she was. (I was there to hear the editor speak about how to sell a picture book.) When Myra started talking about poetry, I started doodling and looking out the window. Then she read a poem of hers called "There Was a Place," from a book by the same title now, sadly, out of print. After she read this poem, a 12-line poem about a child's lost father, I found myself blinking back tears. I had never heard children's poetry like that, a serious poem told in very simple words about such an important and universal subject. I recite this poem often, when speaking in public, and always it brings tears to the eyes of several people in the audience. 

I think that when many people hear the words "children's poetry," they think only of silly, entertaining poems with a regular rhythm and rhyme. That's why they're so surprised when they discover the whole wealth of contemporary children's poetry that is serious, or funny in a very sophisticated way, and often unrhyming: poems by Nikki Grimes, Alice Schertle, Deborah Chandra, J. Patrick Lewis, Paul Janeczko. The best of these poems can change your way of seeing something in less than a minute, read aloud. 

3. So what's this about one of your poems appearing on New York subway and bus posters? 

In April, May, and June of 1998, the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority chose three poems for its Poetry in Motion program, and 5,000 posters with my poem "Albert J. Bell" from A Suitcase of Seaweed were placed on buses and subways in New York City. It was quite an honor, since the other two poems chosen were William Blake's "Tyger" poem and Theodore Roethke's "The Bat"! I do about 40 school visits a year, all over the country, and recently I was in New York to work with two schools. Sitting on the subway, I noticed one of this year's Poetry in Motion posters up in the corner, beyond posters about teen pregnancy and ESL and what a joy! By the time I finished reading the poem once and twice and three times I was at my station. Poetry can do so much in such a little space, and in the most unlikely places. 

4. Many of your school programs fall around significant times of year, such as Mother's Day and the Lunar New Year. How does this assist you in terms of teaching, and in terms of marketing your books? 

My third book, The Rainbow Hand: Poems About Mothers and Children, begs to be read around Mother's Day, so this is why many schools invite me to visit them then. My seventh book, This Next New Year, illustrated by Yangsook Choi, is a picture book about the Lunar New Year as a time of hope so it is natural, too, that teachers and librarians would be most interested in it at the Lunar New Year. But I do school programs the whole year round, even in summer. 

My fourth book, Behind the Wheel: Poems About Driving, has been used successfully by high school teachers to motivate reluctant readers and writers to write their own poems about driving experiences, real and imagined. My fifth book, Night Garden: Poems from the World of Dreams, encourages students of all ages to write about their dreams; and my sixth book, Buzz, a picture book about the buzzing sounds a child hears in the morning, lends itself to an exercise in onomatopoeia. Teachers are doing amazingly creative things in their classrooms, making all sorts of curriculum connections. When I visit a school, I usually model a metaphor/simile exercise where a child will take a family member and turn that person into a plant, animal or object. I will always remember the girl who said, "my mother is like braces / she's a pain to deal with / but she straightens me out."

About the Author

Janet Wong was born in Los Angeles, California and grew up in Southern and Northern California. During her junior year in college, she lived in France, studying art history at the Universite de Bordeaux. When she returned from France, Janet founded the UCLA Immigrant Children's Art Project, a program focused on teaching refugee children to express themselves through art. Janet graduated from UCLA, summa cum laude, with a BA in History and College Honors. She then obtained her JD from Yale Law School, where she was a director of the Yale Law and Technology Association and worked for New Haven Legal Aid. After practicing corporate and labor law for a few years for GTE and Universal Studios Hollywood, she chose to write for young people instead. 

Janet's poems have been reprinted in many textbooks and anthologies, as well as in some more unusual venues, including the New York subway and on a car-talk radio show. 

Janet's awards include the International Reading Association's "Celebrate Literacy Award," presented by the Foothill Reading Council for exemplary service in the promotion of literacy. She also has been appointed to the Commission on Literature of the National Council of Teachers of English. Janet's first two books have received several awards including the prestigious Stone Center Recognition of Merit, given by the Claremont Graduate School's Stone Center for Children's Books. Articles by and about Janet can be found in the Claremont Reading Conference Yearbook, Scholastic's Instructor Magazine, Creative Classroom, Teaching and Learning Literature, California English, Booklinks, and various other teaching journals and newspapers.

Original article via: http://www2.xlibris.com/authors_lounge_QA_wong.htm

Writing A Book? Call 1-888-795-4274 or email publishtoday@xlibris.com for your free consultation. Get Started today by requesting your Free Editing Guide.

Read More

Top Tips to Improve Your Proofreading – Part Two

Whether you enlist the services of an editor or not, you should still want your book to leave your hands looking as professional as possible. In this second installment of proofreading tips, Xlibris Writer’s Workshop discusses more techniques from the experts for finding those embarrassing errors before anyone else does.

1)    Have someone else read your work. This is probably the most important tip and, unfortunately, the one most likely to be skipped by writers or bloggers rushing to post. Well, don’t skip it. There’s nothing like a second set of eyes checking your work, and not just for spelling or punctuation errors. Remember, you wrote the piece, so naturally you understand what you were trying to say. A second reader may find that the meaning isn’t so clear, or point out inconsistencies that you didn’t realize existed.

2)    Read it aloud. This will reveal mistakes you missed when you simply scanned the page silently. If the piece isn’t too lengthy, consider having it read aloud to you. One additional note: if you’re writing a screenplay, it’s VITAL that you have the script read aloud, and not by you! If your reader has difficulty with a line, whether due to sentence construction, word choice, or sentence length, it’s likely that an actor will have trouble too.

3)    Read it backwards. This technique, obviously, won’t help you with sentence construction errors, but it’s useful for finding spelling errors. When you read forward, you tend to get into the “flow” of a sentence and are more likely to miss spelling mistakes. Starting at the last line and working backwards breaks up that flow, and allows you to focus on each word individually.

4)    Proofread a printed copy of your work. There are several reasons for this. Most writers find that they are simply more successful at finding errors when they take a break from their monitors and use paper instead. Perhaps there’s just something about changing the format that allows you to read with a fresh eye. There’s another reason, though. When you proofread, you should only proofread; this is not the time for stylistic changes or reworking dialogue. If you’re proofreading on your computer, it’s too easy to slip back into “creative mode,” which will make you a less effective proofreader.

5)    Use your word processor’s spell checker, but don’t trust it completely. While not a replacement for a second set of eyes, a spell checker is still effective at calling attention to things you may have missed. They aren’t perfect though, so treat their advice as if it’s coming from your mom: listen to it, but don’t necessarily follow it.

In today’s world of e-publishing and blogging, where the “Publish Now” button is always close at hand, the potential for errors to make it to your readers has never been higher. By following these tips though, you maximize your chances of catching them in the draft stage.

Stay tuned for more tips on this vital stage of the self-publishing process! Xlibris thanks you for visiting, and looks forward to seeing you again at Writer’s Workshop! For more information, check us out at www.xlibris.com.

Original article here. http://www.xlibrisselfpublishing.com/editing-guidelines/xlibris-writers-workshop-presents-top-proofreading-tips-part-two/

Writing A Book?             Call 1-888-795-4274 or email publishtoday@xlibris.com for your free consultation. Get Started today by requesting your Free Editing Guide.

Read More