Business End

Articles about the business aspects of publishing and self-publishing.

How To Lose Fans and Alienate Visitors

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Hi, Joe or Jane Author. My name is…well, it doesn’t really matter what my name is, all that matters is I’ve just signed up for your newsletter, or started visiting your site or blog, or registered for membership on your site, or started following you on Twitter, or friended you on Facebook or MySpace or FriendFeed or Goodreads or LibraryThing or something similar. This should be the start of a wonderful relationship, in which you share useful and amusing information with me and I sing your praises to everyone I know, buy your books, register for your webinars and show up to your speaking engagements. So far, so good.

Now here’s how to f**k it up.

Bombard me with emails. When I signed up for your newsletter, Helpful Tips or the like, unless you specified otherwise at the time I signed up, I’m expecting to hear from you no more frequently than once a week. And in all honesty, if your messages take longer than about five minutes to read, I won’t. Between my job, my family commitments, my social commitments, my own reading and writing, and the fall TV schedule ramping up again, I don’t have time to wade through your too-frequent or too-lengthy missives.

Bait and switch me. It might surprise you to learn that when I signed up for your newsletter or Helpful Tips I was expecting to receive…wait for it…news or Helpful Tips, NOT advertising messages. It’s fine to have a one- or two-line sales pitch at the end of your email, or to send out the occasional message about your upcoming book or speaking engagement, but the rest of your content better be worth my time and attention. Look at it this way: would you read a magazine that had nothing but full-page ads in it? If your favorite TV show suddenly started consisting of 80% ads and 20% show, would you keep watching it?

Son of bait and switch me. If you’ve promoted your free webinar, ebook, members-only site, newsletter or whatever else you’ve got as Twenty Surefire Strategies to accomplish some goal, and I sign up, I’m expecting to receive…you guessed it: Twenty Surefire Strategies. When you give me a series of sales pitches for twenty fee-based products or services from you and your affiliates instead, I tend to conclude you’re a lying liar.

Return of the son of bait and switch me. Goodreads, LibraryThing, Shelfari and other reader community sites are places where people share their reactions to books they’ve read and engage in discussions about all things book-related, generally from a reader’s perspective. If the only books on your virtual shelf are those you’ve written yourself, or if you’ve got a variety of books on display but reserve your gushiest reviews for your own work, it’s obvious you’re using the site as a marketing outlet. Way to give new authors everywhere a bad name.

Bait and switch me, the revenge. It’s great that you’re branching out into new areas, or already operating in multiple areas, but don’t assume I want to branch out with you. I signed up for your Sci Fi Wonks site because I enjoy science fiction in general, and yours in particular. Imagine my surprise (and annoyance) when I also started receiving emails from your Gory Horrors site. And your Renaissance Romance N’ Ribaldry site. And your [insert religious affiliation here] Inspiration Of The Day site. And your eBay store. Bonus question: how angry do you think I was to find there were no “unsubscribe” links in any of the unwanted emails?

Bait and switch me, the final chapter. I understand I may need to provide my email address when posting a comment on your blog or site, because it protects you from spammers and hackers. And of course, if I’ve used the Contact form to send you a remark or question off-site, you need my email address to respond to me. But neither of these actions gives you the right to add me to your mailing list. Even if you’ve added some verbiage to your site pages to indicate that’s what you’ll do anytime someone enters his or her email address anywhere on your site, since that’s not how upstanding and honest most sites operate, if you want to avoid any appearance of bait-and-switchery you need to have a separate page just for mailing list signups.

Bait and switch me, the remake. Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, MySpace and other social networking sites are intended for…seriously, do I have to say it? Social networking. Not marketing or sales pitches. If most (or worse, all!) of your tweets, status updates or blog entries are only there to promote yourself or your work, you’re wasting my time. Just like I said about signing up for your newsletter or Helpful Tips, I wasn’t expecting to get a steady stream of advertising.

Are you beginning to sense a common thread? When I’m getting a lot of quality content from you, I don’t mind getting a modicum of advertising and promotion too. Sometimes I’m truly glad to hear about your new book, service or product, especially if I’m getting a special discount, premium edition or access to material or events not made available to the general public. But the moment the balance between content and advertising tips in the direction of advertising, I’m out. The moment I start thinking you’ve abused my trust, I’m out AND spreading the word. So please, don’t make me tweet angry.

 

April L. Hamilton is the founder and Editor in Chief of Publetariat. This is a cross-posting from her Indie Author blog.

God, Living Is Enormous

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This essay, from Benjamin Anastas, originally appeared in the Sept/Oct/Nov 2009 issue of bookforum.com, as well as in the print edition of the same issue of Bookforum magazine.

It’s typical of God’s vanity that, after creating the heavens and the earth and all that goes with them, he had to go ahead and claim the word for his son’s business. “In the beginning was the Word,” the opening lines of the Gospel of John instruct, “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Ever since, the power to capitalize the w has been the prize that nearly every writer would kill for—or die trying.

If the poem is a salvo at the skies and the play a pincer movement, then the novel is a full-blown putsch. It creates its own firmament between two covers, divides light from darkness, fills the waters with odd life-forms, and chokes the earth with abundance. The novelist’s word is almost the Word. One problem: What about the God who invented it? He must be killed, captured, or paid off handsomely and sent into exile. He must be dealt with.

The first volume of Susan Sontag’s journals, edited by her son, David Rieff, and published last year under the title Reborn, begins with an entry dated November 23, 1947—Sontag was fourteen—listing the precocious Californian’s core beliefs. At the very top, marked “(a),” is “That there is no personal God or life after death.” Before Sontag has ever published a word, she has written God’s death sentence.

This small matter settled, she follows up with her second belief: “The most desirable thing in the world is freedom to be true to oneself, i.e., Honesty.” Sontag is free to think her own way into understanding. Like the apostle Paul, she has learned to “put away childish things.” She has turned to literature for guidance. The rest of Reborn—if not the rest of Sontag’s life—is a testament to this. Sontag exhorts herself to read Stephen Spender’s translation of Rilke’s Duino Elegies, immerses herself in the work of the principled French libertine André Gide, judges Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain to be “a book for all of one’s life.” She compiles laundry lists of novels, plays, stories, and books of poetry that she aspires to read like a mystic seeking out new and ever more demanding spiritual disciplines. In 1949, when Sontag joined some friends for an audience with Mann at his home in Pacific Palisades, her journal entry describes the encounter this way: “E, F and I interrogated God this evening at six.”

Reborn, just as much as it provides a glimpse into a cultural celebrity’s fiercely guarded private life (and we don’t have many left that hold such fascination), gives us a record of how Sontag gained the visionary powers that every fiction writer covets. She approaches the novel with a certainty so fervent that it is clearly on par with religious belief—not even Gide, or Mann, would question the affinity. Sontag acknowledges this fact in one remarkable line from Reborn that could be adopted as the novelist’s credo: “God, living is enormous!”

God, living is enormous. As a pure sentence, it is almost perfect. There is no end to its reverberations or bottom to its mystery. There is murder in the “God” but also reverence; fiction may be “the slayer of religions, the scrutineer of falsity,” as James Wood writes in The Broken Estate, but what novelist can dream of competing on the playing field of the printed page with a Maker whose every word arrives as truth, whose every idea is fact, and whose pride of authorship extends to all creation? Despite the long odds, one of the novel’s chief concerns from its beginning has been to try and steal a little thunder from the Divine— or at least his home office on earth, the church—through satire, mockery, and, at times, outright sacrilege. The trope had already been well established by medieval literature (see The Canterbury Tales); Cervantes, then Fielding, continued the ritual undressing. It wasn’t until the late nineteenth century that Victor Hugo would stop the action of Les Misérables for a polemic against the institution of the convent, although his broadside makes a crucial distinction: “We are for religion, against the religions.”

This stance, with its haughty backhand to the church for its hypocrisy and all-purpose endorsement of religious mystery—no matter what form it takes—kept the belief necessary for the novel’s survival alive, while preserving a place for the novel as a kind of opposition party to scripture. Perhaps no novelist’s work has embodied this paradox more than Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s—and he managed it by virtue of an imagination so all-encompassing that it might have been a gift from God himself. He even offered his readers a prophetic taste of modernism in a speech the Grand Inquisitor gives to the returned Jesus in The Brothers Karamazov:

How many among those chosen ones, the strong ones who might have become chosen ones, have finally grown tired of waiting for you, and have brought and will yet bring the powers of their spirit and the ardor of their hearts to another field, and will end by raising their free banner against you!

Read the rest of the essay on bookforum.com.

Free Web Savvy For The Book Industry

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Social media expert Mark Blevis is offering a series of free webcasts aimed at helping authors and publishing professionals get up to speed with using social media. From his site:

After three years of working with publishers, editors, publicists, authors and illustrators, and following my experience at BookCamp Toronto this past June, I decided it was time to offer the book industry the support it needs and the training it doesn’t have the budget for.

I’m teaming up with Greg Pincus to deliver a series of FREE webcasts that will give book publishers, publicists, authors, illustrators and enthusiasts social media savvy for outreach and promotion.  The series is titled How social media can help you sell books: Guidance for the book publishing industry and its stakeholders and each installment will seek to answer the question: How does this help me sell books?

Don’t miss the first four free sessions.

SEP 10 – Finding the Conversation: Who’s talking about you and what they are saying

Understanding search and alerts to monitor the digital conversation.  This session will focus on effective use of Google with references to Technorati, Twitter and IceRocket. (REGISTER)

SEP 17 – Twitter: More than “What are you doing?”

Why use Twitter, how to engage and craft your message, using hash tags and a few Twitter stories. (REGISTER)

SEP 24 – Bloggers/Podcasters are People, Too: Engaging with the social media community

Recommendations for meeting, relating to and collaborating with the social media community. (REGISTER)

OCT 01 – Remarkable Use of the Internet to Promote Books and the People Behind Them

Storytelling and interesting examples of effective book promotion in the digital age. (REGISTER)

 

Web Hosters Ordered To Pay $32M For Contributing To Copyright and Trademark Infringement

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In an article from Jaikumar Vijayan, which appeared on Computerworld on 9/1/09, it’s reported that a California jury determined web site hosting companies can be held liable for the illegal copyright and trademark infringement activities of their clients when the hosting companies were made aware of such infringement and still failed to take any action.

Content created by authors and released by publishers may be protected by trademark (e.g., trademarked processes or techniques, terminology, character names/likenesses, book series names, etc.) as well as copyright, so this case sets a legal precedent upon which authors and publishers can rely in fighting online piracy of their works. 

See also: Internet Defamation, Author Platform And You.

9 Things To Do To Make Sure Your Next Blog Post Is Read By More Than Your Mom

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This post, from Darren Rowse, originally appeared on ProBlogger on 9/3/09.

Two days back I explored the myth that all you need to do is write great content on a blog for it to get readers and introduced the idea of ’seeding’ content rather than ‘forcing’ it upon readers.

Today I want to take the ’seeding’ idea a step further and give a few examples of ways that you can do it – and in the process hopefully grow your readership beyond your immediate family (not that there’s anything wrong with Mom reading your blog).

I should say that while this post contains 9 ways to promote a blog post – that I rarely use all of them at once. Keep in mind that the idea of ’seeding’ is not about forcing things but rather it is about getting things going and then letting something organic happen. You might need to put a little more effort into things somewhere along the way to keep momentum going (like ‘watering the garden’ helps a seed to grow) but the idea isn’t for force things.

So without further ado – let me share a few of the techniques that I use to ’seed’ content:

1. Tweet it

I find that one of the most effective ways to get a link to a new blog post ‘out there’ is simply to tweet it. Tweeting a link is quick and easy to do – and if you do it well it can be quite effective at both driving direct traffic to a blog post but also in starting other little viral events on other sites.

The effectiveness of this does depend a little on the size of your follower group – but other factors you can have a little more control over include:

  • timing your tweets to be during peak times when lots of people are on Twitter.
  • doing a followup tweet to your original one (I only do this on important posts and usually try to change the wording so as not to annoy people too much)
  • the wording of your tweet (give people a reason to click it)
  • making your tweet ‘ReTweetable’ by not making it too long (I keep these seeding tweets to under 120 characters to leave room for people to retweet them).

I find that when something does well on Twitter (and not every post will) that it can often trigger a secondary event on a site like Delicious. This in turn can trigger blogs to link to my posts or other social bookmarking sites to pick up links.

2. Facebook Status Updates (and other social media)

This is of course similar to Tweeting a link. I’ve not had as much success with Facebook as a promotional tool for my blogs but know of a few bloggers in different niches who find it to be more effective. Whether it sends loads of traffic or not it can be helpful in an overall strategy.

Similarly I sometimes also use other social media sites like LinkedIn’s status update if I feel that the content I’m promoting is better suited to other audiences. Again – it depends partly upon the size of your network on these sites but even a small but relevant network on these sites can trigger other bloggers to link up or secondary organic submissions on other social sites by those in your network. You never know what impact sharing a link in these sites can have until you do it.

3. Pitch it to another Blogger

Is the post you’re promoting relevant to the audience of another blog?

This is a question I’m always asking myself as I’m writing blog posts. As I write I jot down the names of other bloggers that have an audience that might find what I’m writing helpful. This means that when it comes time to promote the blog post I have a ready made list of people to shoot out an email to to let them know about my post.

I don’t send these emails out often, nor do I send them out to the same group of bloggers repeatedly – but if I genuinely think my post is of high quality and that the blogger will find it relevant I will.

Check out these suggestions on how to pitch other bloggers for some more tips on how to do this effectively.

Read the rest of the post, which features six more options to spread the word about your blog posts, on ProBlogger.

How Lucky We Are That The Book Business Is Not Like The Movie Business!

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This post, from literary agent Richard Curtis, originally appeared on the E-Reads Publishing In the 21st Century blog on 8/17/09.

Is the book business beginning to feel like the movie business? An article by the New York Times‘s Michael Cieply might reinforce the similarities.

Cieply reports that, unlike filmmakers like Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino who landed huge studio deals at the Sundance Film Festival, today’s aspiring young movie makers have got to finance everything, investing in themselves on the speculation that lightning will strike in the form of financing and distribution by a major studio. As more and more authors throw in the towel in despair of landing a book deal with a big publisher, they are publishing their own books and underwriting every step from editorial to publicity.

Are there other ways to compare Cieply’s description of the film industry with the current state of publishing? Let us count them, and to help you, I’ve taken the liberty of extracting some of Cieply’s descriptions and substituting language that might reinforce the idea that New York is a lot closer to L. A. than a five hour flight on the red-eye.
 

The glory days of independent film [first novels], when hot young directors [authors] like Steven Soderbergh and Mr. Tarantino had studio [publishing] executives tangled in fierce bidding wars at Sundance [Book Expo, Frankfurt] and other celebrity-studded festivals, are now barely a speck in the rearview mirror. And something new, something much odder, has taken their place.

Here is how it used to work: aspiring filmmakers [authors] playing the cool auteur [literary lion] in hopes of attracting the eye of a Hollywood power broker [major New York literary agent].

Here is the new way: filmmakers [authors] doing it themselves — paying for their own distribution [self-publication], marketing films [books] through social networking sites and Twitter blasts [social networking sites and Twitter blasts], putting their work up free on the Web to build a reputation, cozying up to concierges [maitre d’s] at luxury hotels [chic publishing watering spots] in film festival cities [New York] to get them to whisper into the right ears.

Read the rest of the post on the E-Reads Publishing In the 21st Century blog.

The Wrong Questions

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This post, from Gallagher Girls series author Ally Carter, originally appeared on her Ally’s Diary blog on 9/11/08.

I attended a couple of writers’ conferences last summer. I enjoy conferences. I like notebooks and name badges and having an excuse to wear the three cute outfits I own.

But this year it felt like I gained less from the sessions themselves than I usually do.

This is probably due to a lot of things, not the least of which is that I’ve been doing this for a while now and I’m simply farther along the learning curve than I used to be.

As a result I spent a lot of time twisting in my chair, wanting to shout out the things that I’ve learned so far. But I couldn’t. Because shouting is a good way to get escorted out of the Hyatt or the Marriott.

So instead I’ll do my shouting here–in the comfort of my own blog.

Please note that what follows is my HONEST opinion about the differences in writing for teens and adults. If you don’t want my honest opinion, stop reading. If you continue to read, consider yourself warned.

One of the sessions that I attended was a session on the differences in writing for teen and adult audiences. But two minutes into the session I wanted to stand up and tell everyone in the audience that they were asking the wrong questions.

Now don’t get me wrong, they were no doubt very common questions, but in my opinion if you want to be successful in the YA market, they were the wrong questions.

So here is my lame, Thursday-morning-just-got-back-from-the-gym-and-I’m-too-lazy-to-go-upstairs-and-do-some-real-work attempt at answering the wrong questions and steering people toward the right ones.

WRONG QUESTION: How do I develop an authentic teen voice?

THE RIGHT QUESTION: Do I have a voice that’s appealing to teens?

After all, would you ask "how do I write in a voice that mystery readers would respond to?" Or "how do I sound like a science fiction reader?" No. You wouldn’t.

Your voice is your voice is your voice. Period. And frankly, either you’ve got a voice that teens will enjoy or you don’t.

Furthermore, all teens don’t sound the same and neither do all teen novels.

There are very successful teen authors who use long sentences and huge words and very complicated sentence structures. And then there are teen authors like me.

There is no such thing as a "teen" voice. And no amount of hanging out in shopping malls and eavesdropping on the kids at the next table is going to teach you to write in a manner that will appeal to those kids.

Furthermore, trying to mimic those readers is an almost surefire way to make those kids hate your book. They know imitators when they see them. They don’t take kindly to pandering.

Trying to write like you think teens want you to write is the fastest way I know to fail in this business.

Write how you write. Either it’ll work for the YA market (or the horror market, or romance market, or scifi market, etc) or it won’t. At the very least, teens will respect you for it.
 

Read the rest of the post (it’s quite lengthy, so there’s still much more to learn from it) on Ally Carter’s Ally’s Diary blog.

What Is 'Value Added' And What Does It Have To Do With Indie Authorship?

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This post, from Publetariat founder and Editor In Chief April L. Hamilton, originally appeared on her Indie Author Blog on 1/7/09.

I’ve been taking a lot of flak lately from professionals in the graphic arts and typesetting fields because in The IndieAuthor Guide, I more or less tell indie authors that in most cases, the services of those professionals are optional. The flakkers protest, in frequently ugly tones, that I’m giving bad advice in this regard and a book brought to market without their services is a "defective" product.

Here’s my recent response to one such complaint:

The local independent bookseller who stocks my titles has said that to his (professional) eye, apart from the lack of a recognizable imprint logo on their spines, my books are indistinguishable from mainstream books. So long as the readers and booksellers are pleased with my books, I’m meeting the demands of my target audience. And that’s what indie authorship is all about: reaching and serving your readership, not slavishly following the conventions of traditional publishing, regardless of whether or not they form a value-added proposition where your intended audience is concerned…I and my books are doing pretty well. And in the final analysis, in attempting to judge the merits of what I propose and advise in The IndieAuthor Guide, isn’t *that* the only benchmark that really matters?

After I posted, another flakker chimed in to berate me further, pretty much missing my point about ‘value added’, and it occurred to me that it may be a term that merits some further exploration. It’s something one hears bandied about in the business world quite a bit, and entire books have been written on the subject. In simple terms, a ‘value-added proposition’ is something in which you invest time or money because there will be a commensurate payoff, or payback of that investment, in the future.

For example, let’s say you manufacture protective cell phone covers. People like your covers and they’re selling pretty well, but you think you could do even better if you started printing licensed cartoon characters on them. So you go through the paperwork and expense of getting the licensing rights, you re-tool your shop to print the characters on the covers and you invest in some extra advertising to let everyone know about your new product line. Naturally, you must price the new line higher to absorb the added expenses, but you’re confident it’ll be a hit. Three months down the line you find your old, plain covers are selling just as well as they ever did, and sales on the new covers are decidedly slow. Clearly, printing licensed cartoon characters on your covers was NOT a value-added proposition. Customers may like the new covers, and may even prefer them to the plain ones. But if they don’t prefer the new covers enough to pay extra for them, it doesn’t make business sense for you to be producing them.

And what does this have to do with indie authorship, you ask? When bringing your book to market, every time you make a choice that involves investment of your time or money you should be asking yourself, "Does this constitute a value-added proposition for my target audience?" Because if it doesn’t, you should be looking for ways to reduce or eliminate that investment. Based on my research and experience, I’ve concluded the average reader doesn’t know or care about the minutiae of ‘proper’ typesetting according to mainstream pubishing standards. So long as the text is easily legible and looks about the same as that in a mainstream book to a typical (non-industry) reader, the reader will not find fault with the layout and typesetting in a given book. I freely acknowledge that people who follow the directions I provide in The IndieAuthor Guide will end up with a book that’s instantly recognizable as self-published to most industry pros, but since those pros are not the indie author’s intended audience, their opinions are irrelevant in this regard. Therefore, investing hundreds or thousands of dollars in professional typesetting and layout services does not form a value-added proposition for most indie books.

In deciding whether or not to invest in this or that service or product when bringing your book to market, let your target audience be your guide. If your target audience WILL notice and care about details of typesetting and layout for instance, paying for those professional services is a necessary expenditure for your particular book. However, if paying for those services requires you to price the eventual book so high that no one is willing to buy it, then the entire book fails the value-added proposition test.

Cover design is another area where value added comes into play. The IndieAuthor Guide includes directions for designing your own book cover, but many authors feel out of their depth when it comes to graphic arts and design and will prefer to hire out for those services; even so, they must wade through a seeming ocean of possible vendors and price ranges. Of course you want a cover that will draw the potential buyer in, even when viewed as an icon on a webpage if your book will be sold online. However, spending thousands of dollars on a piece of commissioned artwork from a name artist for your cover doesn’t necessarily add value for which your eventual readers will be willing to pay extra.

Since increasing the retail price of your book to absorb that cost may alienate potential buyers, you need to consider how many extra books you must sell at your regular retail price to recoup the money you spent on the cover artwork. In some cases, the investment will be worth it. In other cases, not so much. You can usually get an attractive, professional-looking cover which effectively conveys the theme of your book from a journeyman graphic artist at a much lower cost, or even from an art school grad student who’s willing to do the cover for free in exchange for the portfolio sample and exposure. As with any small business expenditure, you must balance the benefit against the cost when determining how much money to spend on professional services.

Let me hasten to add: I am not suggesting that indie authors try to do everything ‘on the cheap’ for the sake of saving money or increasing royalties. On the contrary, I advise indie authors to do all in their power to deliver a product that, to the typical book buyer, is indistinguishable from the products of their mainstream competitors. That means quality editing, paper, printing, cover design, and more. What I AM saying is that each time you’re faced with decisions about whether, and how much, to spend on some aspect of your book’s production or promotion, carefully consider the matter of ‘value added’.

How To Fail At Self-Promotion

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This post, from Merrilee Faber, originally appeared on the e-Fiction Book Club site on 8/16/09.

Here’s a tip for the clueless author.   Self promotion does not mean spam.  Word of mouth?  Not YOUR mouth.  Getting noticed?  Not successful if people remember you as an arrogant arse or a nutter.

(Obligatory disclaimer; the opinions expressed in this post are mine and do not represent the views of other members of the e-Fiction Book Club.)

Back to the soapbox.

I know you want the world to hear about your opus.  I get it.  And getting noticed in the vast sea of information that is the internet can be an uphill battle.

But just think for a moment.  Remember those comments you get, the ones trying to sell pharmaceutical products, or encourage you to explore the dubious delights of a XXX site, or the ones that promise to make your sex life better?  How many of those do you read?  How many of those do you post to your site, thinking ‘wow, I’m so glad someone told me about that’?

My blog is not here as a vehicle for your marketing activities.

When you post a long advertisement about your book/site/product whatever, you are spamming me.  Your information is unsolicited, and that means it’s unwelcome.  Yes, even here, on a book review blog.  The rules for submission are posted on the front page and on the submission page.  90% of the authors who find us can figure it out, why can’t you?

Wail, bitch, moan, they say, how am I going to get noticed if I don’t spread the word about my book?  Oh, I noticed you, all right.  But I’m certainly not encouraged to click through and read your book.  I’m going to hit the Spam It button, and say bye-bye.

There are ways to do self promotion right, and the internet is a great vehicle for it.  If you can’t be bothered to Google ‘internet marketing’, I can’t help you.  But I will pass on 3 marketing guidelines for the clueless author (and any authors who might just be uninitiated.  There’s a difference, and mostly it’s to do with attitude.)

1.  Be involved, be interesting, be a person.

People connect with people.  Want to be noticed?  Get out there, on Twitter or Facebook or WordPress or whatever.  Find your community.  Get involved.  Read blogs, post comments, tweet about your day.  Connecting, finding followers and building your audience is primarily about making friends.  You don’t have to be the life of the party; networking is just getting to know people, and letting them get to know you.

 

Read the rest of the post, including tips #2 and 3, on e-Fiction Book Club.

Twitter Chats For Writers

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This article, from freelance writer and illustrator Debbie Ridpath Ohi, originally appeared on her Inkygirl.com site. It is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission, but as it is updated frequently, we strongly recommend you bookmark the source article and revisit it from time to time. Debbie is best known for her Inkygirl comics, which are geared to writers.

It took me a while to check out a chat on Twitter because I figured it would be complicated, and I lacked the time to learn a new user interface. To my surprise, it was MUCH simpler than I expected…and a lot of fun!

Twitter Chats For Writers

(Updated by @inkyelbows on August 24, 2009)

Compact writer chat schedule (for details, read further down on page):
EVERY DAY: #amwriting, #writegoal, #writingparty plus others (see hashtag list below)
SUNDAYS: #writechat
MONDAYS: #litchat, #journchat
TUESDAYS: #kidlitchat
WEDNESDAYS: #litchat, #memoirchat, #wnw, #editorchat
THURSDAYS: #poetry, #dnchat
FRIDAYS: #platformchat, #litchat, #scifichat
SATURDAYS: #ScreenwritingSaturday

If you’ve never tried a Twitter chat, here are some tips to help you get started:

What IS a Twitter chat?

A chat on Twitter basically consists of people making posts that include a particular hashtag (words that start with ‘#’). To read posts made in a chat, you just search for that hashtag in Twitter. Here’s a sample search for the hashtag ‘#writechat.’

If all you want to do is monitor a chat and not say anything, that’s all you need to know. You’ll need to refresh the page to see updated posts.

If you want to say something in the chat, just post your comment to Twitter, but make sure the hashtag is included somewhere in your post so other people in the chat will see it. That’s the simplest way to participate in a chat so if you’re in a hurry, there’s no need to read further.

However, it can be a hassle to have to manually add the chat hashtag each time you post (and inevitably you forget) and also to keep refreshing the search result page. To make Twitter chats a more pleasant experience, there are many Twitter chat tools available (for free!); I’ve included a list of some later in this page.

Where to find Twitter chats for writers

These dates/times are accurate as of today, as far as I know. Info may change, however, so be sure to verify this info by checking the hashtag before attending your first chat. Info was excerpted from Meryl.Net’s great list of chats, this Google Docs chat list, Twitter, and comment posts. If you run a regular Twitter chat for writers that is not listed below, please post info in the comments at the bottom.

Every day (”slow chats”)

The following are more motivational groups rather than scheduled Twitterchats, but are still a great way of meeting other writers on Twitter.

#amwriting: Every day
See @johannaharness’s FAQ.
When: anytime.

Other hashtags of interest to writers: #authors, #pubtip, #nanowrimo, #writegoal (post your daily writing goals and get inspired by reading goals by other writers),#wip, #wordcount, #writetip, #novelists, #writers, #writing, #writingparty.

Reminder: Hashtags are useful in filtering Twitter posts, but DON’T OVERUSE THEM. Here’s a great post about how to use and not use hashtags.

Scheduled

#writechat: Sundays
Topic or topics are usually announced at the beginning of the chat.
Moderated by @WritingSpirit
PST: 12-3 pm
MST: 1-4 pm
CST: 2-5 pm
EST: 3-6 pm

#journchat: Mondays
PST: 5-8 pm
MST: 6-9 pm
CST: 7-10 pm
EST: 8-11 pm

#kidlitchat: Every Tuesday starting July 21st
Craft & business of writing for young people, board books up through YA. Topic or topics are usually announced at the beginning of the chat.
Moderators: @gregpincus, @bonnieadamson
PST: 6 pm
MST: 7 pm
CST: 8 pm
EST: 9 pm

#litchat: Monday, Wednesday, Friday
Mission is to connect readers with books and authors.
Moderator: @litchat.
Transcripts on blog.
PST: 1-2 pm
MST: 2-3 pm
CST: 3-4 pm
EST: 4-5 pm

#WNW:
Wednesdays
Wednesday Night Writer. Fantasy/Fiction discussion group on Twitter.
Moderator: @_decode_ .
PST: 5-8 pm
MST: 6-9 pm
CST: 7-10 pm
EST: 8-11 pm

#memoirchat: Every other Wednesday at 8 p.m. EST.
Moderator: @alexisgrant
For writers of memoir.

#editorchat: Wednesdays
…A place for professional writers and editors who use the micro-blogging service Twitter to discuss how best to help one another.
Moderator: @LydiaBreakfast
PST: 5:30-8 pm
MST: 6:30-9 pm
CST: 7:30-10pm
EST: 8:30-11pm

#poetry: Thursdays
We talk poetry. Readers, writers, and all others encouraged to join. Moderator: @gregpincus.
PST: 6-7 pm
MST: 7-8 pm
CST: 8-9 pm
EST: 10-11 pm

#dnchat: Thursdays
For those who write fiction for online publication. “DN stands for DigitalNovelists.com, which is the platform most of us in the group publish on, but all web fiction writers and fans of web novelists are welcome.”
PST: 8-9 pm
MST: 9-10 pm
CST: 10-11 pm
EST: 11 pm-12 am

[Publetariat Editor’s Note: also check out #followreader, on Thursdays at 1pm PST, 2pm MST, 3pm CST and 4pm EST. Each week features a different topic of interest to authors, publishers and readers]

#scifichat: Fridays
Moderated by: @DavidRozansky. Follow @scifichat for schedule changes and announcements.
PST: 11-2 pm
MST: 12-2 pm
CST: 1-3 pm
EST: 2-4 pm

#platformchat: Fridays.
Moderator: @thewritermama.
PST: 11-12 am
MST: 12-1 pm
CST: 1-2 pm
EST: 2-3 pm

#scifichat: Fridays
Moderated by: @DavidRozansky
PST: 11-1 pm
MST: 12-2 pm
CST: 1-3 pm
EST: 2-4 pm

#ScreenwritingSaturday:
Saturdays (all day)
Moderator: @UncompletedWork.

To see other chats, please visit Meryl.Net’s list of chats and What The Hashtag.

USEFUL TWITTER CHAT CLIENTS

You don’t have to have a special Twitter chat tool to participate in a Twitter chat, but it can make things easier.

TweetChat: This is my favourite so far. Very simple to use. Web-based, just enter the hashtag you want to follow, enter the chat room, and you don’t have to keep adding the hashtag to every post because TweetChat does it for you.

TweetGrid: Also Web-based. You can participate in more than one chat at the same time but this means you have to enter the hashtag each time you post to make sure it goes to the right room. I find it enough of a challenge keeping up with ONE chat and can’t imagine trying to participate in more than one, though.

TweetDeck: If you use this desktop app, then you can create a column that filters the hashtag/chat name.

Related sources:
Meryl.net’s article abou Twitter chat clients
10 Free Twitter Chat Tools

FOR THOSE NEW TO TWITTER CHATS

Tweeting With Your Twitter Community: How To Participate In A Twitter Chat by Jeff Hurt
How to Join Twitter Chats from Meryl.net
How To Participate In A Twitter Chat

A FEW TWITTER CHAT TIPS

If you’re arriving after the chat has begun, try to catch up on older posts to find out what you missed. DON’T start posting right away — you may be interrupting a moderated chat with guest authors or editors, or there may be a particular theme or topic of discussion.

Don’t get angry if people seem to be ignoring your posts. In a crowded chat, posts often go by very quickly and people often miss reading some posts. System lag can also delay the public appearance of posts. Wait a little and then try re-posting.

I’ve found it handy to keep an extra window open, to monitor any “@” replies I may have missed seeing in the main chat window.

If you’re replying to someone’s comment, be sure to include that person’s account name in your post so they see it.

If you’re using a regular Web browser, include the proper chat name hashtag, or no one in the chat will see your post.

Proofread your tweet before posting.

Try to stay on topic, if there is a topic of discussion.

Don’t forget that if you have a protected Twitterfeed, people won’t be able to see your posts unless they’re following you. Consider opening a separate (and public) feed for chats.

If you use one Twitter account for regular posts as well as for chats, you may want to warn your followers that you’re about to participate in a chat and may therefore be posting a LOT for the next little while. Or you might consider having a separate account just for chats. Here’s how I tweet.

Even though the environment may seem intimate and casual, ALWAYS REMEMBER that your posts are public. You can always count on someone taking a screenshot of an embarrassing post before you have a chance to delete it, plus certain types of feeds will still retain your post even if you delete it. Never, ever post in anger; don’t forget what happened to Alice Hoffman.

Never post in anger. (see above) I know I keep harping on this, but I’ve seen far too many writers make this mistake and regret it later. If you want to disagree with someone, do so respectfully. Don’t let someone goad you into a flamewar. Also remember that people reading your Twitter page will only see your posts, and not the others in the discussion. These readers may include other authors, editors, and agents whose professional opinion of you may be altered for the worse, depending on what you post.

TWITTER CHAT ACRONYM PRIMER

I’m still learning the acronyms, but here are some you may come across in a Twitter chat for writers:

YA = young adult
MG = middle grade
UF = urban fantasy (thanks to @tom_hummer)
FWIW = for what it’s worth
LOL = laughing out loud
LMAO = laughing my ass off
RT = retweet (usually precedes the Twittername of the person who is being quoted or retweeted)
BFN = bye for now
TTFN = ta ta for now
BRB = be right back

Here are some other chat acronyms
Chat acronyms used in e-mail, IM and text messaging (includes handy search box)

FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO RUN A TWITTER CHAT

How to Run a Successful Twitter Chat (from Meryl.net)

FOR THOSE NEW TO TWITTER OR TWITTERCHATS:

10 Ways Twitter Can Help Writers by Debbie Ridpath Ohi
The Twitter Chat Experience – by Swan
What Tweetchats Can Do For You by Ami Spencer
Twitter FAQ: RT, HT, OH, ETC by Brent Ozar
Twitter 101: Clarifying The Rules For Newbies from SheGeeks.net.
The Beginner’s Guide to Twitter – by Michael Hyatt (CEO, Thomas Nelson)

How To Set Up A Blog Book Tour

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This post, from Pat Bertram, originally appeared on her Book Marketing Floozy blog on 8/24/09.

Alan Baxter is an optimistic cynic and dark speculative fiction author, based on the South Coast of New South Wales, Australia. His writing is primarily based in the magical, the spiritual, the religious and the arcane with tendencies towards horror, depravity and battles between light and dark. Baxter says:

A blog book tour is a great way to generate buzz about you and your book. It’s essentially free, it generates a lot of hits on your site and others, and it creates an ongoing interest in your work. As a result of a blog tour, your books and name will gain exposure to potentially thousands of new readers. And all it really costs is time and effort on your part.

Any author, however they’re published, needs media attention. The new media of blogging and social networking is a great tool to use to your advantage. Working with other people, cross posting on a variety of media, gives you a saturation coverage for a period of time that can have excellent ongoing results.

So what is it? A blog book tour is essentially taking your books out on the virtual road, in much the same way that authors would traditionally tour the country, visiting various bookstores promoting their work. In this case, an author visits a different blog every day where they engage in various activities (interviews, guest posts, reviews and so on) and make themselves and their books known to the audience of that particular blog. There’s great cross-promotion as the writer’s audience gets exposed to a variety of blogs they might not have discovered otherwise (which is good for the blog owner) and that blog’s existing audience learns about the author and his or her work.

I currently have two novels out, RealmShift and MageSign, and it was these two books that I recently took on a blog book tour. My books are available in print and ebook format and I also have a novella available as a free ebook, Ghost Of The Black: A ‘Verse Full Of Scum. By taking my two novels on the virtual road, I opened up my both those novels, my free novella and my other work featured on my website to a wide audience that may never have heard of me or my writing before. It also helped to increase exposure to my indie press, Blade Red Press. Building an author platform online is essential for indie authors and a blog book tour like this is a great way to expand that platform.

It helps to offer something special. I really wanted to make an aspect of this tour something attractive — a special offer for people following along. It’s difficult with the print editions of my books through Amazon or places like that to make any changes in the short term. However, all my books are available as ebooks in a variety of places including Smashwords.com. With Smashwords there’s an excellent degree of control for the author/publisher. With any title you have there it’s possible to generate vouchers to vary the cost of your books however you please. So that means that I was able to set up a voucher code that was made available to anyone following the tour, valid only for the duration of the tour. If those people then came to Smashwords to buy RealmShift or MageSign they could enter that code and the books only cost them $1 each, instead of the usual $3.50. Giving very cheap or free content has proven itself many times over as an excellent way of generating interest in new work and it also gives people an added reason to check out the blog tour.

As for how successful a blog book tour can be, it depends on how much work an author puts in? With anything in this game it’s all about how much work you do. It’s also about working smart. If you get involved with a variety of blogs, with a widely varying audience, and you ask those people to promote the tour for you, then a lot of publicity can be generated. You can also make sure that you and those others involved cross-media promote with things like Twitter, Facebook and so on, to attract as many potential readers as possible.

Read the rest of the post on Book Marketing Floozy.

Here I am — warts and all!

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I’m Richard L Sutton — Richie to my buddies, and much worse, sometimes.  I’m hoping to discover why my new personal pronoun, Indie Author is a good thing, among my peers and hopefully among the reader market.

I’ve been writing since before I left college in 1970, but I had to wear a lot of different hats, first. Finished my first novel 6 years ago, behind the cash register of our family business.  We moved that online in 2007 and now I don’t have any excuses left — it’s onwards and outwards.

My first novel, The Red Gate a 386 page historic fantasy set in 1912 Co., Mayo Ireland was published in April via CreateSpace and is available in their E-store, and on Amazon. I hope those who like a traditional family saga with a twist will take a look at the preview Amazon has posted and leave me some comments, especially after buying the book!

I’m also enjoying the communities on Litopia and Authonomy, where I have gotten some very good criticism and ideas for marketing. I look forward to some rousing dialog on these pages — sadly, I don’t tweet, though.  Truth be told, my eyes are too old to see those teeny, tiny buttons.

 

Four Wonderful Tools For Writers In The Digital Era (That Aren't Word Processors)

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This article, from Jeremiah Tolbert, originally appeared on his site on 5/11/09.

As a designer, I’m always stumbling across useful resources and tools online, but for whatever reason, I find fewer tools that really exist to help make writers’ lives easier.  That doesn’t mean they aren’t out there.  It just means you have to dig a little deeper.  Today, I thought I would share some tools that can make certain aspects of the writer’s life a tad easier.

1. Dropbox

If you’re anything like me, you don’t always remember to run your backups.  With recent computer troubles, I’ve been making a much bigger effort to backing up everything of importance.  About six months ago, I started using Dropbox and I haven’t looked back.

Dropbox is an online versioning and backup system.  You install dropbox on your windows or mac computer and everything in the folder called “My Dropbox” is constantly uploaded to the server.  When you make modifications, it keeps a record of these changes and you can go to the web interface and load older versions.  Accidentally overwrite a file?  Dropbox can save your butt.  It has saved me on more than one ocassion.

Even better, Dropbox can be installed on multiple computers, keeping your dropbox folder synced up to all of the machines.  Whether you’re on your office computer or your laptop, you will have access to your files.

Finally, Dropbox users can share folders with one another.  We use this feature extensively at Escape Artists to deal with our production files, contracts, and various business documents and resources.

My biggest concern when I first started using Dropbox was that it would constantly be uploading my 50+ megabyte photoshop files, and my bandwidth would be devoured.  It actually tracks the differences, though, and only uploads the changed bits.  I’ve never noticed Dropbox being a hog of my writing.

There’s a free 2 gigabyte account, which should be more than enough to protect your writing documents.   I pay for the 50/gb a year plan for $99 per year because I truck in larger files.    Dropbox is available for Mac, PC, and Linux.

2. Evernote

I work across 3 different computers, and keeping my research notes in an easy-to-access format, while maintaining flexiblity and a variety of formats, isn’t easy.  That is, until I discovered Evernote.  What I was looking for originally was productivity software to help myself implement the GTD method.  What I found instead was a very useful program for organizing all those little bits and pieces of things that I need to access from time to time.

Evernote works on a very simple system of notebooks and notes.  You can add tags, and just about any kind of media into a note.  You can clip entire webpages into a note, or just the URL.  You can make screen captures very easily.  And then the real power is, it’s constantly backing up your notes to the server, and syncing them with all machines you run it on.  There’s a usage limit for free accounts based on data transfer, but I’ve never even gotten halfway there.  I don’t tend to use much in the way of multimedia files though.

Not only do I use Evernote for sorting and keeping track of things like research notes, storynotes, and so on–I often start writing my blogposts there.  Any kind of document where the format isn’t necessary, that I want to be able to access from anywhere.  You can even record voice notes with the iPhone app and they will be synced to all your machines.  I used this feature to take down some notes on my novel project while I was driving across Kansas alone.  Very useful feature.

There are a few things about Evernote I do find lacking.  For one, you can’t sort notebooks into collapsible hierarchies.  I would really like to be organize my notes in a similar fashion to my email program.   You can kind of fake this with saved searches for tags and so on, but I don’t really need a more detailed system of organization than notebooks/folders.

Evernote is available on Mac, PC, and iPhone. It has a very nice web-based interface as well.  If you have an internet connection, you can get to your notes.

Read the rest of the article, including tools #3 and #4, on Jeremiah Tolbert’s site.

5 Tips For Joining Your First Social Media Site Such As Twitter, Facebook Or LinkedIn

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This post, from Yvonne Perry, originally appeared on her Online Promotion Made Easy blog on 8/17/09.

Getting started on social media can often be deceptively simple – What’s the big deal? You sign up. – or intimidating – Why am I being asked for my date of birth? – or overwhelming – How do I find people to friend or follow?

The truth is that this is a world of official and unofficial rules. It is easier if you start out knowing what’s what, and this is probably especially important if you’re more of an introvert.

Let’s imagine you already use email, search for information on Google, and read blog posts. But you’ve never joined any social media sites. How do you start?

1. Decide how comfortable you are sharing information about yourself. And the corollary to this – how wide a sharing of this information are you willing to do.

If you’re a book author and want people to buy your book, it’s a good idea to decide that you will share personal (although not private) information to as wide an audience as possible. If you only want to connect online with former high school friends, your target audience is much smaller.

If sharing information makes you somewhat nervous, think about what it means to be personal as opposed to private. Personal is a good marketing book you just read that you can recommend to help others; private is a fight you had with your business partner over implementing the marketing steps recommended in the book.

2. Ask online savvy friends which popular site they would recommend you start with based on your goal. (And do start with just one while getting your feet wet in this brave new world.)

• If your goal, for example, is to have a wide audience, then Twitter may be the best choice because of its "open to everyone" format.

• If you only want to search for high school friends, then Facebook may be the best choice as you can confine your information to a very small circle and can search by name for those long-long friends.

• If you want to make connections to help with a future job search, then LinkedIn, whose format is set up for such a process, may be the best choice for you.
 

Read the rest of the post, including tips #3-5, on Online Promotion Made Easy.

How To Avoid The 11 Biggest Mistakes Of First-Time Authors

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This article, from Roger C. Parker, originally appeared on the Personal Branding Blog on 8/5/09.

Writing, books, and personal branding go hand in hand. When you know how to write, and you use that power to write and promote a book, you can change your life.

Writing and promoting a book opens windows of opportunity–opportunities that would never otherwise show up. As a published author, you’re branded as an expert to new clients, prospects, and job opportunities. Your book becomes your business card, proving your expertise and professionalism. You can access experts you’d never, otherwise, be able to access.

You can leverage your book into whatever you want your life to be.

As Harry Beckwith wrote in The Invisible Touch, “If you want to change your life,”write a book.”

Success, however, is not guaranteed

Many first-time authors are not prepared for the possible land mines and pitfalls along the way. Many find writing a book to be a frustrating and unrewarding experience.

Fail to receive rewards

The following are the 11 biggest reasons many first-time authors fail to receive the rewards they expect:

1. Unrealistic expectations

Don’t expect to get rich off your book, even if it’s a success by publishing standards. The vast majority of books fail to earn out their advance.

Instead, right from the start, develop a personal marketing plan to leverage off your book.

Instead of trying to make money on the book itself, use your book to open doors, promote your credibility, and build relationships with readers. Know how you’re going to profit from your book through follow-up information marketing, providing sales and services, or seminars, worksheets, and paid speaking and training.

I’m amazed by the number of authors I’ve interviewed for who have told me they devote their publishing advances and royalties to charity, knowing that profits from book sales will never equal the profits from their own back-end products and services.

2. Writing without a contract

Never write a book without a signed contract. Instead, prepare a detailed book proposal and two sample chapters.

Publishers are increasingly selective the titles they accept. Often, less than 1 in 50 titles proposed are published. Worse, most books change during the writing and editing process.

Writing a book that isn’t accepted is not a good use of your time!

3. No agent

It is essential that you be represented by a literary agent.

Publishers rarely accept unsolicited book proposals. Unsolicited proposals are frequently returned unread or are simply discarded. The right agent will know exactly which publishers might be interested in your book.

More important, publishing contracts frequently contain “boilerplate” text that can sabotage your writing career before it begins. You must have an agent who knows what to look for and is able to negotiate more terms.

[Publetariat Editor’s note: while it’s true that most of the largest publishing houses won’t accept unsolicited manuscripts, very many mid-sized, and most small, imprints will. Visit each imprint’s website to learn whether or not your unsolicited manuscript will be accepted. However, regardless of how your manuscript finds its way to an acquisitions person, when things get to the contract negotiations stage you must have an able and experienced representative at your side, whether in the form of a literary agent or an attorney well-versed in literary rights contracts.]

4. Weak titles

Titles sell books. The title of your book is like the headline of an advertisement. The title is the “headline” that helps you sell your project to acquisition editors as well as bookstore readers.

Successful titles stress the benefits readers will gain from your book. Successful titles arouse curiosity and offer solutions. They often include consonants and alliteration (repeated ”hard” sounds like G, K, P or T).

5. Title versus series

Don’t think “book,” think “brand.” Focus on a series of books rather than an individual title. Publishers want concepts that can be expanded into a series rather than individual titles.

Do it right, and your first book becomes your brand, the “shorthand” that identifies you. Think in terms of brands like Jay Conrad Levinson’s Guerrilla Marketing series which has provided him over thirty years of quality lifestyle, challenging clients, and speaking opportunities throughout the world…and still does.

Read the rest of the article, including points #6-11, on the Personal Branding Blog. Also see Roger C. Parker’s Resource Center for more great marketing tips and articles.