Wednesday 3 December 2008

Wondering about... excerpts

What makes a good excerpt?

Frankly, I have no idea.

I've been wondering about it, but I'm yet to reach any sort of conclusion.

Still, I'm quite please with the one TEB has put out for The Gift. It went live today (or maybe yesterday and I just didn't notice until today...)

You can see it here. It's the start of Chapter 1.

You can also see the one I picked for the Hitting the Hotspot blog here.

There's also going to be another one on my website as soon as I get a chance to post it up there. (Link on it's way as soon as the excerpt is actually there to be linked to.)

I've picked up another excerpt that I'll be promoing on different groups etc. (By the way, I'm always looking for new places to promote stories, so if you know of one, please let me know.)

And that's it.

If anyone has any advice about excerpts, feel free to share :)

...

Update on WIPs:

Between Tooth and Paw has been accepted by my editor (Yay!). I turns out it's probably not going to be suitable for the anthology (my two straight guys get a bit too friendly, lol) but it might yet find a place as a stand alone or as part of my Perfect Timing series. Wherever it ends up, it has been accepted. Very excited about that.

I'm admining like crazy this week, so I don't have an editing WIP to share progress on, but the short I'm writing at the moment is going quite well. I'm over 1/3 of the way through it and I'm hoping to finish it by the end of the week.

3 comments:

Michelle said...

Congrats!

One thing about excerpts that I was told is you might want to go with the SAME one where ever you post them because you really don't want to "give away" too much of the story. The whole idea is to tease people enough so they want to buy the book.

lol, just like my grandmother told me, "why buy teh cow when you can get the milk for free."
:-)

Kim Dare said...

Hi Chelle. Thanks for commenting.

I think it depends on the length of the book - sort of a percentage thing. The Gift is about 25k, so I've been advised it's safe to have a couple of excerpts as long as they are short and don't give away the best bits :)

I'm working in the hopes I can bring someone who reads an excerpt in one place across to somewhere else I'm posting one, get a few more people to the blog and the website at the same time as promoing the book.

I think your grandmother was right - a sip of milk to make sure the drinker leaves wanting more is the best way.

Bronwyn Green said...

Yay you! Congrats on having your latest manuscript accepted - that's wonderful!