Sell

I could say creative writing is right-brained and publishing is left-brained; writing is artistic, publishing all business. I could say that and I’ve heard it said by some “experts” but, even though I did just say it, my experience of both realms forces me to say it ain’t so.

For twenty-some years I wrote creatively and paid scant attention to publishing. I used Lulu.com to get my books published but never saw many sales. In fact, all my books except the one I’m working on now are free to download. I could apply what I’ve recently been learning about publishing and help them sell but I consider them my practice books, possibly well written but not as important to me as Notes from An Alien.

Even Notes from An Alien, when it’s published in April and can be purchased for cash, will still be available for free. One ultra-creative thing I’ve learned about self-publishing is that Free helps Sales–check out the article Giving It Away on Forbes.

There’s the whole argument raging in the hallways of the Internet about traditional vs. self-publishing but I’ll have to leave the particulars about that issue for a possible future post. All I’ll add right now is that, if you decide self-publishing is what you want, definitely check out FastPencil!

So, what have I learned about (self-)publishing that makes it not just some business activity that follows the creative joy of the writing discipline?

Well, the first truth that hit home in my study and activity to promote my forthcoming book (and promotion is critical, ’cause, if no one knows about it, it won’t sell), the first creative activity that publishing demands is forming relationships with people.  And, relationships, whether you form them in person or online, can be just as creative to begin and sustain as the partnerships authors have with their characters ( see my previous post 🙂.

If you were trying to find a mate in your personal life, you’d either play the field or, at least, study the field before you committed yourself. That takes creativity.

If you’re looking for a set of characters to populate a book, the process may be more “mystical” or artistic but you’d still be interacting creatively with potential characters.

And, when it comes to finding the audience for your book (and, you’d better start looking for them before or during the writing of the book), it’s not just some dry business-metrics activity. You have to get out there and flirt with the people, find out who responds, and start acting magnetic toward the best catches…

I could go on with the parallels of creativity in writing and publishing but blog posts are best digested when served in small portions. For more detailed info on publishing creatively, check out the list of links on Publetariat.

Have some experiences where you learned how to be creative about publishing?

Have some questions about why self-publishing might be better than traditional publishing?

Have some jokes about the pitfalls of creative writing/publishing?

Please, do share in the comments 🙂
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Follow the “co-author” of Notes from An Alien, Sena Quaren:
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This podcast is an interview with me about career and life change which is relevant for the New Year. I was  interviewed a few months ago by Kathleen Alexander from Clever Fox, who guides self-motivated individuals, budding entrepreneurs and solo-preneurs though starting their own business or in launching an ‘outside of the box’ career.

Podcast: Download (Duration: 43:14 — 28.1MB)

In the intro, I mention my new year’s resolution post and also JA Konrath’s post ‘You should self-publish‘.

In this podcast you will learn:

• What motivated me to try to change my life and career after 13 years of being a business consultant. How life got in the way for years before I made the goal to write a book and finally achieved it.
• About how I wrote my first book, How To Enjoy Your Job, and then took my own advice  and started something on the side whilst still working. How I wanted to share everything I learned along the way which is why I started the blog.

• On scalable income. The myth of passive income but how you can create a book/product to earn more money than just swapping your hours for cash.
   
• On finding your passion and getting what you focus on. How The Creative Penn has changed in the two years since I started it, and how my own goals have changed. Start with some goal in mind but start down the slope like a skier and then you can zigzag down, changing your direction as you go. The law of attraction requires action.

• Why should someone try to write or publish a book as a serious business strategy? It gives you credibility and helps you stand out from the crowd. With Amazon.com, you can publish globally and market internationally. It can also solidify your own knowledge and help you understand how you can share your work with the world. Creating a book can be the basis of your other products for multiple streams of income.
• On the phrase “published author”. You can be published on Amazon.com and have the same digital shelf space as anyone else.

• My top 3 tips on marketing your book. Based on my experience, blogging is my no. 1 tip. My blog has been the basis of all the income I’ve made online with book sales, speaking and all the other opportunities that have come my way. It’s your home on the internet, your online hub.
• Social networking is a must. I started doing this because I had to, but it becomes a pleasure and a hobby. I like Twitter but you might like other networks. Twitter is full of entrepreneurs and bloggers, although now it’s also more mainstream. On growing Twitter followers.
• Multi-media is powerful, including audio and video. You stand out in a world where people are still scared of the technology. It can help people get to know you, then they might like you and trust you.
• Being helpful is a massive driving force for me, as it is for other people. It’s also the best way to build a following.

• How self-publishing is now moving towards indie publishing, or independent publishing. The stigma is diminished and being replaced by the pride of indie authors! How print on demand can change your life, saving you time and money. No stock, no money upfront, no postage pain. On publishing ebooks and the Kindle. (Lots more on publishing options here) On perceived differences between print and ebooks, and my rant on why you should be selling ebooks even if you don’t want to read them. (Note – the costs for formatting ebooks are more like $100-$150 now)  

• On working 4 days a week and achieving while working. Working 4 days a week has enabled me to make the change and grow The Creative Penn slowly. It frees up a whole day worth of creation. I had done the big event before when I quit and sold my house to make a go of writing. It failed so this time I decided to work on it slowly, with a period of transition. How my job just pays the bills now,  I opted out of the IT career. It pays the bills while I build my future. Having the bills paid means you don’t desperately grasp any opportunity, but you can choose what fits your ultimate goal.

• You also have to consider what you want to give up to write your book. I gave up one day a week of work and also gave up TV, as well as a very small social life! I also know what I want to achieve and I’m focused on that entirely. I am controlled about my time and diarize work time, novel time etc. I mention Hyla Molander who is writing a memoir with 4 kids.

Thanks again to Kathleen Alexander from Clever Fox for the great interview. This is a reprint from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.

My answer to this post’s title is, “Yes!!“

I’m not sure about the meanings of “angel” that include the winged variety but the ones who live up to the root meaning of angel, Messenger, are alive and well; and, one of them, in the guise of Joel Blaine Kirkpatrick–husband, father, son, brother, author–from Southwest Colorado, has given me an angelic gift that can only help me in my never-ending efforts to promote my forthcoming book, Notes from An Alien.

I met Joel in the forums of BestsellerBound, “…a place for independent authors to connect with readers.”

That was months ago and he seemed like a great person. He even shared some feedback with me about my book 🙂

Then…

Last month, he dropped an Angel Bomb. He offered me and 62 other authors a chance to be included in three Anthologies that would have the first chapters from our books along with pictures, bios, and Web links. And, not only did he take on all the work to produce these e-books, he’s distributing them as widely as he can! And, they’re Free!!

I uploaded them to this blog and I’ll put the links at the end of this post. But first, a few words from Joel himself:

“Book marketing, it turns out–immediately–can be quite a chore. It is not always something Indie authors can make a great deal of time for.  All of us Tweet, and Facebook, and link in other places like crazy, but, visibility is something that is not easily generated, with those short bursts.

“I wondered for a long time, what good effort would provide the highest visibility. Free books seem to get lots of attention. Many people seem tempted to at least sample free items when they are available. Yet, even that can be a crowded arena.

“All that wondering led me in a very natural direction; the great forum at www.BestsellerBound.com , that is a growing group of really fine people, all with a similar problem as mine. I guessed they could be collected, in a massive promotion that could be unique.  I could not imagine any other display with such appeal. All I needed to do, was ask.

“They responded, in droves. It has been more fun, putting all those authors together, than I expected. And a lot less work that anyone might imagine. (But, leave that part secret…we don’t want too many copycats.  :-)”
~ Joel

Joel has four novels to his credit…

And, here are those Anthologies the Angel Joel created:

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Follow the “co-author” of Notes from An Alien, Sena Quaren:
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Here I go again, treading into dangerous territory. Last post, I put my thoughts about the proper function of fiction on the line. Now, I’m going to expose my beliefs about the writing process itself.

I’m calling this dangerous territory because the word “danger” comes from roots that mean the “power of a lord or master”. And, the last thing I am is some kind of lord, master, guru, or expert. So, putting my thoughts and feelings about writers and their characters out into the communal space of the Internet is dangerous because it might seem like I think you should believe what I say. In the last post, I mentioned that my thoughts would probably make some folks want to argue with me and it will probably happen this time to. Good thing I’m brave 🙂

So, let’s get to it–writers have characters. Where do writers get those characters? Why do so many writers talk about their characters as if they were real? And, even more amazing, how in the world could an otherwise rational writer say, with heart-felt conviction, that one of their characters made them change what they intended to write? If you’re not a writer and don’t know anything about writers, you’ll either have to take my word that writers really think their characters can change their minds or do a bit of Googling…

I should qualify what I’m talking about just a bit. Obviously, we’re considering fiction writers and, maybe obviously, we’re dealing with serious writers–the kind that can’t not write; those people who risk their social lives by continuing to engage in an activity that seems miraculous to non-writers. You can tell a serious writer, no matter the maturity of their craft, because they refuse to give up on their writing no matter how difficult it becomes.

I want to quote Sonia Simone here because this determination of writers to persevere comes from what’s called a growth mindset; and, in just a minute, I’ll be bringing in a real master/guru (who some folks would call exceedingly dangerous) to explain the source of a growth mindset.

Says Sonia: “All babies and small toddlers have a growth mindset. If you’ve ever watched a baby learn to walk and talk, you’ve seen the growth mindset in action. They get frustrated, sure. But giving up is never an option, even for a moment. They’re driven by that quest for mastery. No one fails to learn to walk or talk because we get depressed and think it’s too hard or we aren’t ‘talented’ enough.”

No, I don’t think all serious writers are babies, though they do seem to have a deep childlikeness at times. The reason for the quote is that writers have to struggle with characters to create what we read. They don’t just get born with some weird talent to create fiction that seems real–they work very hard at it, sometimes fight with their characters, usually have to change and grow personally because the characters are spookily right.

So, where in the hell do these characters come from? I believe they live in what Carl Jung (the potentially “dangerous” guru I mentioned) called the Collective Unconscious. For now, let’s just say the characters live way, way deep inside the writer’s mind. What’s truly weird about this character-creation process is that, even when a fiction writer “borrows” traits from people they know or even puts a real-life person in their work, the final character revealed is unique and clearly their own person.

How does a serious writer live anything like a normal life when things like this are going on in their heads? Some don’t live anything like a normal life. Some “control” the effects of relating to their characters with drugs. Some take refuge in spiritual or psychological realms that “explain” the process. Some create brilliantly for a short time then flame out like a meteor…

If you’re a writer, please share your thoughts and feelings in the comments…

Last thought: Watch a writer take a photo of a criminal and create their own character from it 🙂
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Follow the “co-author” of Notes from An Alien, Sena Quaren:
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AND, Get A Free Copy of Our Book

I’m venturing into dangerous territory with the title of this post…

Let me clarify the exact bit of territory I want to defend.

First, when I ask if the writer’s job is recording or creating, certain easy and obvious answers come up:

* Journalists mostly record, though they can do it creatively.
* Essayists and article writers can slide back and forth between recording and creating.
* Fiction writers create, though there may be a bit of recording in some of their work.

In this post, I’m only going to talk about fiction writers and the specific territory I want to defend is this:

Even if a fiction writer uses real life settings, or even, at times, real life people in their work, they should always have the creation dial set at max and the recording dial turned way down.

Some of you might consider that last sentence as being too obvious to need any discussion.

Some of you might want to start an argument with me.

I’ll address my defense to the people who want to argue. The rest of you might wonder what the heck there is to argue about. Fiction is creation, and that’s that. Well…

Some fiction writers feel that their job is to record life; maybe do it with some creativity, but capturing what exists and rendering it is their prime function. I, almost violently, disagree.

I’ll include a link here to an article on Naturalistic Literature but not as any sort of proof of what I want to say. It’s merely to give you an example of the worst type of fiction writer–not necessarily worst as far as how they use words (they may be quite literary) but worst because of what their writing says about humanity.

Naturalistic literature gives what some folks might say is a true picture of the human condition, an almost scientific recording of the plight of certain people. Well, even a highly creative fiction writer might include a rather reportorial rendition of someone in their work; but, if they are true creators, they’ll find a way to infuse what may be sordid or terrifying conditions with a sense of underlying hope or faith. Let me try a short, and simplistic, example:

Take a character who’s a day laborer, beats his wife and children, and discovers he has terminal cancer.

The naturalist would merely record the conditions and have the character die off. The reader would receive no more value than if they actually knew such a person and stood by and watched the man come home every day, beat his wife and kids, then die of cancer.

The creative writer could take the same character and use their circumstances to show any number of human principles that could raise the man’s actions and death to a level that could inspire the reader–possibly to help abused women and children, or investigate the relationship between anger and cancer, or at least serve as moral food for thought.

My firm belief is that fiction’s proper purpose is to help humanity raise its sights, improve its situation, and strengthen its resolve to make life really matter…

I’m not trying to advocate some sort of sterile, moralistic fiction. We still need a damn good read and we don’t need a book telling us how to live our lives. Still… Showing the reader that even the worst conditions can hold some promise for improvement, even if the characters fail miserably to attain that promise, is, to me, a job that fiction writers should always be working to master.

Would you want read a book in which the characters always fail at life?

Would you like to read a story that had a few characters who failed but you still had your feelings affected in a way that helped you, in your own life, to understand or heal or help?

O.K. That’s as far as I can take my foray into this dangerous territory; at least, in this post…

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Follow the “co-author” of Notes from An Alien, Sena Quaren:
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The 2010 Results are In: My First Year of Blogging was Successful!

One nice thing about a WordPress blog is that they give you a report at the end of the year on how your blog did against the competition, on WordPress.  I would like to thank all of my readers for following my bittersweet ramblings, and I promise that 2011 will be more upbeat, and contain more useful information for my readers.  Without further adieu, here are the results for the FlaAuthor.wordpress.com blog.

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,600 times in 2010. That’s about 4 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 72 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 60 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 17mb. That’s about 1 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was October 2nd with 70 views. The most popular post that day was Can I Write? – Feedback from My Editor.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, twitter.com, linkedin.com, mail.yahoo.com, and kickstarter.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for views from sandhausen, public isolation, public isolation project, internet world map 2010, and internet structure.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Can I Write? – Feedback from My Editor October 2010

2

About the Authors July 2010

3

Public Isolation Project November 2010
2 comments

4

Views from Sandhausen – Proposed book cover September 2010
3 comments and 1 Like on WordPress.com,

5

Thoughts from an Unemployed Professional November 2010
1 Like on WordPress.com,

These results are very modest, compared to my competition, but have served to introduce Views from Sandhausen: Experiences from a Foreign Service Assignment.  For an author, it is all about building a platform before releasing a book.  Given that half of my income in 2010 was consumed by medical expenditures, and that was WITH great medical coverage, the end of the tunnel is in sight and you can expect more in 2011, afer my finances stabilize.

As I have told you all before, May your year of 2011 be the best ever for all of you (and me)!

Cliff

I’ll start explaining the title’s formula with the word "strange". Its history shows it meaning, "from elsewhere, foreign, unknown, unfamiliar".

A Strange Life…

So does reading then writing then publishing then repeating the process create a life that’s unfamiliar, unknown, foreign, and from elsewhere?

Ask any serious writer 🙂

The reason I started this little explanatory formula with reading is because I’m in agreement with the folks who say the best training for writing (besides writing itself) is lots of reading. Of course, reading might also be the research that writers often do–even the kind of "reading" they do in their own minds when they invent characters and worlds.

This reading of one’s own mind isn’t all that hard. It is strange, though, because it usually doesn’t involve words. It’s the heart reading what the mind is saying from its depths.

So, then comes the writing. If you aspire to create a wonderfully strange life, I suggest you not read a bunch of books about writing before you actually do a whole bunch of writing. In fact, the formula should have a little feedback loop between reading and writing: read>write>read>write, etc.

Then, publish. This doesn’t have to be normal publishing. Since the word means, "to make public" and public means, "open to the community", the community you publish to could be as small as a group of friends.

Then comes repeat. If you want a truly wonderful life that constantly surprises you with the unfamiliar, that leads you to the unknown, that introduces the foreign, and entertains experience from elsewhere, you have to get a cycle of read/write/publish going.

Think of a coffee house. Imagine the person who reads books, then shares their experience in their own words. Every time you visit, they have a new story. Pretty soon, they’re telling their own stories. By the way, one of the original meanings for the word "write" was "paint".

So, there they sit reading their own minds with their hearts and painting verbal pictures that inspire the little coffee house community.

The first people who led a wonderfully strange life may not have had coffee, but they had their community. They spoke heart-felt words that captivated their friends.

They were our human family’s first authors…

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This post, by Mike Shatzkin, originally appeared on The Shatzkin Files blog of the Idea Logical Company on 12/23/10.

It’s a pre-holiday week and a busy one following a busy one last week. So time for blogging is limited and, besides, all you readers have presents to wrap.

But there is one subject to ruminate on just a little bit that came up repeatedly during last week’s business. Constance Sayre of Market Partners and I are doing a joint exploration of ebook royalty rates for a presentation at the Digital Book World conference in January. We created a survey to allow agents to tell us anonymously what kind of deals they were striking and we got about 130 responses.

(Market Partners’ newsletter, Publishing Trends, has a report in their current issue, released today, on what the agents said and the full data will be released for our attendees at Digital Book World on January 26.) We decided to balance our presentation by giving publishers an opportunity to give their side of the story, also anonymously (except, since we interviewed them, we know who they are. The agents, having responded online and in privacy, can’t be tied back to their answers. Connie and I are good at keeping confidences.)

We spoke to seven CEOs last week, a couple of whom were joined by colleagues who actually do the contract negotiating. What they told us about ebook contracts is what we’ll talk about at Digital Book World.

But just about all of them made an ancillary point and that’s our subject today. The point they made is that the main task ahead of them in the next few years is to completely reinvent book marketing. There was clear acknowledgment across the board of something that has concerned us for some time: that inevitably declining retail shelf space means a commensurate decline in critical merchandising capability.

Changes are definitely occurring. The big publishers are undeniably SEO-conscious, investing real effort thinking about what search terms apply to each book they publish. They’re all experimenting with Facebook and Twitter and other social networking sites as well. Various community-building tools, including the very ambitious Copia platform that launched a few weeks ago and the John Ingram-funded start-up Rethink Books and its new Social Book capability, are now being tried out. The established ebook vendors, notably Kobo and Kindle (on my radar screen; I’m sure Nook and Google too), are building social capabilities into their platforms. And the established book discussion networks like Goodreads and LibraryThing are continuing to add participants, books, metadata, and conversation that constitute raw material for marketing the next book from any publisher.

Read the rest of the post on The Shatzkin Files.

Posted by Alexander M Zoltai.

I’ve had the Kindle for over a year and the iPad for a few months now. Here’s how I am using both devices.

In the video below, I explain:

Reading fiction. Pretty much only on the Kindle device or on the Kindle app on the iPad/iPhone. I am quite loyal to the Amazon.com brand and experience as I have been buying physical books from overseas for years. It is a natural extension to move to the Kindle store, buy books there and read over multiple devices. The iBookstore is not very well populated as yet, and the Kindle app on the iPad is preferable.

Reading blogs. I use the iPad to relax and browse my Google Reader feeds as well as my social networks. I love using Flipboard, a fantastic app that formats the feeds into a magazine style layout with different sizes and pictures. It is addictive to read on Flipboard so that is how I find all the interesting articles that I tweet @thecreativepenn

Reading non-fiction/online course materials generally in PDF format. I do a lot of online courses and learning. Much of that material is formatted in PDF. I use GoodReader app on the iPad for this and love to be in the hammock with the iPad, a notebook and a cup of tea.

Multi-media. I am watching more videos on YouTube on the iPad as part of my surfing. I have also read some ebooks with embedded links to video that are great on the iPad specifically.

Traveling. When I was in Bali, I used the iPad for email, skype phone calls and twitter/facebook while I was away. I didn’t take the Kindle device as it is specialized but I did sync the same books and read them on the Kindle app. Using the iPad for skype saved me lots of money on international phone calls as well as being easy for email so I could work seamlessly while traveling. It’s definitely the device I will use in the future for travel.

Email/social networking/news on a casual basis. This may freak some people out but I often read email/twitter/FB/news while having breakfast! My husband also has an iPad and consumes different media to me. I often read UK and European news and he reads information from New Zealand (our respective countries of origin). Sitting at breakfast with a newspaper is not unusual for many couples, and for us, it is sitting with iPads. I don’t feel like it is work when I can just check a few things on email, reply to a few tweets and catch up on the news.

Overall, the iPad replaces laptop usage rather than Kindle usage. I am shifting consumption of blogs/video/learning onto the iPad whereas I did that with my laptop before. It is much more relaxing to sit with the iPad on the couch than to sit with a laptop. I still use the Kindle device for reading fiction primarily as their are no distractions when using it. The iPad has multiple distractions!

Do you have an iPad? How do you use yours?

This is a reprint from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.