On Writing

Those who have followed my blog in the past are aware that my preferred writing critique community is Book Country. There has been a lot of controversy regarding the site, so I thought I would give you my opinions on it before I start with the user guide.

First and foremost, I have no relation to Penguin, Book Country, or the creators of the site. I’m just another user of the site. I have no special background, I don’t even work in publishing, and I don’t have a contract with Book Country, Penguin, or any of Penguin’s other ‘children’.

Now that we have that out of the way, the most common concern or complaint that I hear about Book Country is about its terms of use. The writing of it, like most legal documents, is heavily worded to protect the company. Because there are unpublished works going on the site, it is necessary that Book Country protects itself and its users.

So, the biggest myth I’m going to dispel here is that you lose your rights to publication of your story by using the critique workshop part of Book Country. Simple answer, this is false.

In order to keep your words on their site, there is a limited amount of copyright that you must relinquish to Book Country. Sorry, this is the law. You do this every single time you post anything anywhere on the internet. People, in this case, are getting pissed off because Book Country is open about the minor copyright that has to be granted to display the words on the site. This copyright is required for any critique site. That is the basics of copyright.

IE, you are granting them permission to make a copy to be viewed in the browser of anyone that is trying to critique your words. Without this grant, they couldn’t do that.

You don’t lose your rights to publication doing this.

Let me also point out a few things; the people who are in charge of bringing the site to life are former editors, agents, and a publishing house. Book Country isn’t Penguin, and using their services doesn’t give you a contract with Penguin, but they’re in the background. Just like Harper Collins and authonomy, you better believe they’d have people on the lookout for potential contracts to snap up for their publishing house. It hasn’t happened yet, but give it time and I would not be surprised if it did.

The difference between Penguin and Harper Collins is very simple: Penguin lets users communicate with one another to honestly improve their writing. Harper Collins has set up a popularity contest using publication contracts as a bright, shiny lure for writers.

I won’t get into Book Country’s Self-Publishing line of services. I haven’t done any research on it, and it makes zero difference on how I use the writing community. I’m here to discuss Book Country as a writing tool, not a publication method.

If you do not have a login for Book Country, start here. Click Join Now, read the Terms of Use, fill out the basic information and submit.

The screenshot above is for when you’re logged out of the site, but shows a lot of the basic functions of the workshop. Book Country Favorites are books that have high stars in overall and additional categories. Buzz Books are books that have gotten a lot of reviews, read, followed, or recommended often to other users of the site. On the left hand side, you will see a few sections of the site: Books, Discussions, People, Industry Blog, and so on. This is the core of the site.

Books is where you go to find new books to read and review. On this site, by review, they really mean critique. This isn’t like book reviews where you do literary analysis of the book for its secondary themes and values. It is a place to offer suggestions and improvements to help writer’s improve their craft. I have mixed feelings on the use of the word review, but I’ve gotten used to it, and tend to just view it as ‘critique’ in the back of my head.

Once you’ve made your login, go ahead and make certain you’re signed in. While you can explore and read without signing into the website, it gets much, much, easier to show you the entire site — including going through the book creation process — if you have a login.

This is a screenshot of my main page on Book Country. You will see this page often. Let me explain a few elements of this page, which will be of importance to you as you get to learn the site.

Your Bookshelf contains two elements: The books you have written and the books you are following. In my case, I have three books I have written, and seventeen that I’m following. When you read and review books, you may find a book that you particularly like and want to follow. You may do this to see when the book is updated, or see how the book ranks in the general scheme of things.

I do use following for that purpose, but I also use it as a place to keep track of the books I need to read and review. I do a lot of reviewing, but sometimes it takes me a little time to get to a book for review.

As you can tell, there are a lot of colors here. The orange books are fantasy genre books. The purple book is a romance. Green is for science fiction, and the lighter blue is for mysteries. Horrors fall under the fantasy genre, so will appear as orange books on your shelf. The darker blue is for Thrillers. This will let you get a glance at the genre of a book without ever having to open it. For people who are picky about the genres they like to read, this is a great thing. Every book has a small square of color in the lower right part of the book icon. This is the tone of the book. A turquoise-ish colored square represents a tone that is fantastic with a hint of dark. Gray squares represent darker tones to the novel.

Recommendations from your Connections are just that; they are books that your connections think you should read.

Next, we have Your Discussions. One set is Discussions you have started, the other is discussions you are following. When you create a discussion, it is automatically added to the Discussions You Started section. If you want to add a discussion to the Discussions You’re Following section, you will need to click ‘Follow This Discussion’ in the Discussion Forums. Connections can also recommend discussions for you to participate in and follow.

Finally, we have Your Network. This is the section where your Connections and the people you’re following are located. Connections are people you want to share your entire book with and generally trust. People you are following are people you are not entirely sure about, but want to see what they’re up to. Following is a bit like stalking. You want to see what is going on, but you want to do it from a distance.

Connections are for those who mutually want to stalk one another, trust each other enough to share space with, and want to be able to read all of the available amount of a book.

For reference: A non-member can only read 5,000 words of a book. A member can only read 30,000 words of a book. A Connection can read the entire thing.

Honestly, I don’t use anything above this fold-line in my browser. However, below the fold, there is a place you can follow industry posts, and there is the Book Country Favorites and Book Country Buzz Books, as well as the categories you’re following. Usually, I just go click on Books to see this, which we’ll do now. (Alternatively, you can be lazy and just follow this link.)

These two screenshots show the basics of the Book link. The first screenshot has the current Favorites and Buzz Books, as well as a quick link to the Genre Map. (We’ll go into this tool next.) The second image shows you the layout of the site if you expand each of the category links. They haven’t expressly told anyone how it works, but I suspect that the further to the left you are, the higher you are ranked among Favorites and Buzz Books. The general listing at the top is random, drawn from the pool of books that are Favorites or Buzz Books.

If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you can also find a list of books that have gotten no reviews at all. While there aren’t any special rewards for reviewing these books, I tend to look there first, so that new users can feel welcome to the site.

This is perhaps the aspect of the website that makes Book Country so unique. The Genre Map is a stroke of brilliance. (You can access it through the Genre Map link to the left, or through the big banner at the top of the Books page.)

My preferred genre is High/Epic Fantasy, so why don’t we click there?

Oohoo! A box appears. This shows published books of the same type. Go ahead and click Explore the Map. This is where the real fun begins.

Bear with me for a brief moment. I know this is a lot to go over. The Ls on the page are Landmark books. If you click on one, it will show the cover of a landmark book. Titles in this genre include (at time of this post): Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb, Magic Kingdom of Landover by Terry Brooks, Eye of the World by Robert Jordan, Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind, Acacia by David Anthony Durham, A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin, and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.

The point of these books is to help you figure out, by tone and style, the kind of books that you want to read.

Click anywhere on the map to get to the next level of the Genre Map.

I have clicked where there is a small cluster of books. You can see the books there. If you click on a book, you will see a short blurb of the book, and you can read it if you desire. Please note the left side of the Genre Map. A mini map has appeared with a red pen nib. By moving the pen nib (click on the part of the mini map you desire), you can browse through all of the available books. The screenshot below shows the paranormal romance genre map. The background of the genre map has changed to be the appropriate color for the genre, but beyond that, it is the same concept for each genre type.

Now it is time to think about doing a review of a book. Everyone has their own review style. The interface is pretty simple. You will get an overlay with the book for you to read, as well as a set of three input boxes. Once you have put enough words into the input boxes, you will be able to select a star rating for the book. I explain how I critique on Book Country here. I will let you determine how best you want to review, but I really recommend putting thought and effort into your reviews. This is a good way to improve your own writing craft. Yes, it takes more time, but if you want to be a serious writer, isn’t it worth investing your time so you can improve? One or two sentences of fluff means nothing to no one.

I rank my stars by how close to publication I feel the book is. It isn’t personal. On average, I give out 3*, but I will give out 1* if I feel the book needs a rewrite or significant work to be ready for publication. I would NOT recommend giving out *’s based off of how you feel personally for the writing or for the author behind the writing. But, please, do be polite and kind. It goes a long way toward letting the receiver accept your review.

I am using Danielle Poiesz’s book to show the review pane. She is one of the staff of Book Country.

At this point, you have everything that you need to make use of the site… with one exception. Uploading your book.

To get back to your main page, you will want to click the Book Country logo in the upper left. This will take you to the starting page. On the upper right side of the home page, there is a link that says Upload your Book. Click it.

You will get an overlay that asks for the Title and Subtitle. The Title would be the actual Title of your Book. The subtitle could be things like the name of a series. The subtitle is optional. Once you do this, you will be brought to a page for your book. Here, you can do the following:

Modify the name and Subtitle of your Book.

Add Chapters. Here you will want to use one of the formats allowed; I typically just make a word document for each chapter and upload them individually. This works well for me. When you click Add, you will be brought to a page that allows you to upload chapters.

Classify your Book. This part is important. It determines where your book shows up on the genre map. Tags are categories that your book falls under, and I recommend adding as many as you can that fit your book. It does help users find your book through other search functions I haven’t gone into in this tutorial.

Describe your Book – Short Description. This is the short blurb and should serve as a hook to get people interested in reading your book.

Describe your Book – Full Description. This is very similar to the blurb found on the back of a book, and should also serve as a hook.

Author’s Note: This is anything that you feel is necessary for readers, requests for certain things to be critiqued, etc.

Here is a series of screenshots showing one of my books after I have added all of the data.

Your book should look something like this when it is done. On the last screenshot, you have the option to Make your Book Private or Delete. Making private ensures that only you can read the book. This preserves the reviews you have received. Delete is a total removal from the site and should be used with caution. It is not reversible to my knowledge.

There is much, much more to this site than what I’ve presented, but this should be enough to get you started. Good luck, and happy writing.