Sell

Articles about book / author promotion and marketing, and author platform.

The DIY Author

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This post, from Pat Holt, originally appeared on her Holt Uncensored site on 10/6/09, and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission. The embedded video clip of Seth Harwood is provided with his permission.

What To Do When the Mainstream Yawns: Part 1

Seth Harwood is the kind of Internet techno-whiz that fuddy-duddy types like me are scared of.

He’s so knowledgeable about podcasting, video-posting, eBook-pricing,  iPhone-apping and what is now called (nostalgically by everyone but me) “the Amazon Rush” that I wanted to run the other way.

Then I read his fiction and became a Seth Harwood fan. Then I watched his video and became a Seth Harwood student.

You can see why Seth is in the vanguard of a new writers’ movement by taking a look at the instructive interim video he made some months ago (see it below on my very own blog! and thank you, Seth, for permission).

Here we learn that no matter how many rejections slips you’ve received or how unknown you are as a new writer, you can create that elusive “platform” that mainstream publishers (so cowardly!) insist authors must bring to the table. And you can build an audience that grows into the tens of thousands.

The first step, says Seth, is to make a podcast of your manuscript (before it’s ever published) and give it away. “Think of a podcast as a free, serialized audiobook,” he says.

With a minimum of equipment, a little music and a lotta passion (plus some blankets absorbing echo-chamber sounds in your closet), you can produce a quality narration that equals anything on Audible.com, and again, you do this long before your manuscript comes out in any kind of print version.

Seth did this one chapter at a time with his detective novel, “Jack Wakes Up,” which he followed by two other “Jack” books in the series. He placed each chapter as a freebie podcast on iTunes, thus tapping into an engaged audience that loves to hear edgy stuff and Tweet about it like mad.

What I appreciate most about Seth’s video is his ability to make sophisticated, low-cost technology look easy and his love for the open source movement, that learn-it/do-it/share-it approach to advancing new ideas that benefits everybody on the Internet.

Especially Seth. When you see the numbers that built up during Seth’s do-it-yourself career you’ll  see why individual writers today have a lot more power acting as their own independent contractors than as supplicants to a dismissive and sluggish (and arrogant) system. The question we’ll consider in Part II is, how can authors make these numbers work for every title?

Seth’s Story

Seth HarwoodSeth started out like many unknown writers. He piled up so many rejection slips and unanswered submissions that finally he said to heck with it and decided to go directly to his audience.

A fan of audiobooks, Seth believed what Steve Jobs (reportedly) said –  that nobody reads anymore, but a lot of people listen — to books on CDs and iPods in autos, in waiting rooms, on the jogging trail, in bed.  Seth figured people would love a good Raymond Chandleresque yarn with a fresh twist, narrated by his very own self and so full of sly humor and eccentric characters that listeners wouldn’t care if they got stuck on the freeway or waiting for the dentist.

So Seth set up his podcast equipment and began narrating a chapter every week, which he offered for free on his own website (http://sethharwood.com) and also listed as a free serialization on iTunes.

He used the introduction and the sign-off of each segment to plug his other fiction (beautifully written short stories, very sweet and tender, but more later on this, too), his discussions on Facebook and Twitter and his offer of free PDFs of each chapter (and later of the entire manuscript).

You may think that’s a lot of giveaways (Random House sure did later), but Seth saw it as great publicity, and boy, was he right. The podcast was downloaded to about 30,000 people and the PDF of the entire book over 80,000 times.

Along the way, Seth was trying to alert literary agents to this kind of high-voltage interest in “Jack Wakes Up,” but basically the mainstream didn’t understand what he was saying. So what if 30,000 wastrels download your novel for free, Seth was told. That’s what everybody says. When somebody actually buys the book, let us know.

The Amazon Rush

 

Enter Breakneck Books (now part of Variance), a small New Hampshire publisher of action and science fiction novels that published a small POD (print-on-demand) print run of “Jack Wakes Up.” Little did Breakneck know what Seth had up his sleeve.

Since the protagonist of the novel is named Jack Palms, Seth asked his supporters not to buy Breakneck’s edition until Palm Sunday, when he was certain the title would be listed on Amazon. And on that day, he wanted everybody to buy the book only from Amazon, hoping that the impact of a concentrated rush of sales would send the book’s ranking through the roof. Indeed it did: the book started out among the lowest of rankings (in the hundreds of thousands) and, as Seth’s followers feverishly bought the book from Amazon, the ranking soared past that of best-sellers and famous authors, finally tapping out at an astonishing 45 overall in the Books category and number one in Crime and Mystery.

Seth used this historic rise-out-nowhere to interest a literary agent, who submitted the book to mainstream houses (with a this-guy-is-hot proposal), and the next year, “Jack Wakes Up” was published as an original paperback with a sensational cover from Three Rivers Press, an imprint of Random HouseJack Wakes Up

So. Great story, right? Seth’s with a mainstream publisher now and all is well, yes?

Oh, dear. See you next time for Part II.

P.S. By now enough authors and small publishers have attempted the Amazon Rush that it’s old hat to the mainstream book industry, so if you’re an unknown author, the word is, don’t bother. In a way, I’m sorry to hear it.  If ever there were a means of demonstrating  audience interest (and the dreaded notion of “platform loyalty,” ick), that was it. Of course authors are creative enough to find new ways to move books into the mainstream, so I shouldn’t worry. But again, I’m the old fuddy duddy. I hate to see authors turning themselves into self-styled barkers! Here they are, the center of the book industry, having to hoodwink publishers just to get attention! Well, pardon. More in Part II.

Bookmark Holt Uncensored and check back at that site in the coming weeks for part two of this profile. For more information about author Seth Harwood, visit www.sethharwood.com.

Don't Hate The Wait

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It’s a cliché that so-called overnight successes are many years in the making, but it’s also true. As you plug away at your day job and your manuscripts, year in and out, it’s easy to get discouraged. It’s hard not to feel nothing’s ever going to happen for you. And when you read about some hot new author du jour you’ve never heard of who got a six or seven figure offer, landed a spot on Oprah and got a full-page profile in The New York Times, it can seem impossible to be happy for her. In that moment of—let’s be honest—bitter resentment, it is impossible to imagine your dreams coming true. But if they ever do, it will be due in large part to all the time you spent waiting for it to happen, and how you spent that time.

I queried agents on a novel of mine for the first time about thirteen years ago. I was fortunate to land a great agent in that first round of queries, and I thought my writing career was well on its way. Thought is the operative word there. The novel didn’t sell. I wrote and submitted a second novel, which also didn’t sell. Most frustrating of all, the reasons for the rejections had nothing to do with the quality of my writing, which New York editors said was very strong. It came down to what those editors thought they could or could not sell up the chain. So I back-burnered my writing dreams for a while and got on with life: marriage, kids and jobs. It was just a few years ago that I became an advocate for the indie author movement, and I won’t have a book out from a trade publisher until next year. But looking back on it, I can honestly say all the time I had to wait, and how I spent it, was instrumental to my eventual success.

Marriage and becoming a parent have informed my work in authorship to an extent that can’t be overstated. This isn’t to say I think you’ll be a poor writer unless you get married and have kids, I’m just saying that the experiences I’ve had in those two areas have changed the person I am, caused me to abandon many of my formerly-cherished views, and caused me to look at people and the world differently. Others can get the same benefits from relationships with family and friends, romantic partners, travel, or any sort of life-changing experience.

My day jobs have all had their part to play as well. Working as a technical writer made ‘writing tight’ a reflex for me. Being a software engineer ingrained discipline and attention to detail, both of which are critical skills for any writer. Managing software projects taught me the value of organization, working to a plan, and prioritizing my time and effort. If I hadn’t learned those lessons, there’s no way I could’ve found the time, energy and will to pursue my goals in authorship with everything else I had going on in my life. Working as a web developer and database administrator paid huge dividends when it came to launching and growing my author platform. And continuing to work those day jobs exposed me to all manner of personalities and experiences I could draw upon later, whether in terms of creating a composite character for a story or working with peers and industry people on the business side of things.

What if that first novel had sold? I would’ve been thrilled at the time, but once the initial fanfare died down I think disappointment and failure would’ve settled in pretty quickly. The publisher wouldn’t have lavished a big offer and promotional budget on me, and I wouldn’t have had the money, skills, discipline or maturity to tackle promoting myself and my book on my own. I wouldn’t have had the first idea how to map out a project plan, assemble the necessary talents I lacked (if I even recognized that I lacked them in the first place), or network effectively. My novel most likely would’ve faded from store shelves pretty quickly, and I’d be damaged goods as far as publishers were concerned. Even if the story had been much brighter, if the book had been a surprise hit, I doubt I would’ve sustained a writing career for any length of time. How could I cope with this new, ubiquitous thing called the internet if I’d spent all my time holed up in my comfort zone with a word processor? Given my naiveté, relatively sheltered life to date and ordinary, suburban upbringing, what more could I draw from the well that would inform, entertain or inspire readers enough to keep them buying my books? How could I write about loss, the brow-beating yoke of responsibility, or the push and pull of adult relationships with any authority?

Some of you may already be protesting that there have been plenty of young, breakout writers. But ask yourself this: how many of them have had solid careers that spanned decades, and how many had a hit book or a single hit series, then never struck gold again? There are probably so few exceptions to this that you could count them on one hand, and in every one of those cases the author in question was most likely a true prodigy. For the rest of us, being made to wait till we’ve lived a little longer and experienced a little more of what life has to offer isn’t a bad thing.

Having to work a day job while you’re doing all this living and experiencing isn’t a bad thing, either. If you’re a cashier, bar tender, waitress, salesman or customer service rep, you’re learning how to comfortably interact with strangers and that will serve you well when you’ve got a book to promote. If you’re a worker bee in a tech field, author platform is going to be a walk in the park for you. If your job is the type that isn’t terribly interesting or intellectually demanding, such as assembly line work, driving a bus or working a fast food grill, be glad you have all that mental freedom to ruminate over your ideas and characters for hours a day; just keep a notebook and pen close at hand so you’ll be ready when inspiration strikes. If you’re a teacher or a caregiver of some sort, your daily interactions with the people you serve will enrich your characters and strengthen your dialog in a way no amount of creative writing seminars ever could. No matter what your day job is, it’s keeping you solvent and improving your writing. It, and the wait, are helping to ensure you’ll be ready when opportunity comes knocking.

So don’t hate the wait, and don’t resent your day job. Embrace them, and welcome all they have to offer.
 

This is a cross-posting of a post that originally appeared on my Indie Author Blog.

Don't Be Part Of The 5%: Master The 5 Crucial Author Platform Skills

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For the past several months, I’ve been working on the Publetariat Vault. Among the hundreds of authors who’ve registered for Vault membership, about 5% are completely overwhelmed by the listing form. They refuse to read or follow the instructions on the form, or think 17 required fields are too much to ask, or don’t know how to create a synopsis or excerpt in pdf, rtf or txt format, or don’t know how to upload files to the site using the typical “Browse” + “Upload” button combo. And they’re kind of pissed off that we’re asking them to do all of this in the first place, they’re walking away from up to 5 months’ free listing time on account of tech frustration.

A couple of years ago I would’ve said the 5% are absolutely right, such a form is too demanding and no author should be expected to have that level of tech savvy. But the bar has been raised, and nowadays any author with a strong platform has all the skills necessary to easily complete the Vault form. The rest can no longer afford to be part of the 5%. It’s not fair, and it has nothing to do with quality writing, but it is the reality.

Any author who’s not yet heard the term “author platform” could only have been lost at sea or living in Amish country, but even among those who know it, I’m finding the term is often not fully understood. Many authors, both aspiring and published, indie and mainstream, think succeeding with author platform means having a blog or author website. And maybe they Twitter a little, or have a Facebook or MySpace page. They also often think author platform is something that’s very difficult and/or expensive, and only applicable to published authors.

They are wrong, on all counts.

Author platform encompasses everything you do both to promote your work and to establish yourself as a “brand” in the marketplace, and ideally, it begins long before you have a book to sell. Even if you intend to go the totally mainstream route of writing the best damned manuscript you can and then querying agents and publishers, you can no longer expect to get a pass on author platform. I’m currently working with Writers Digest on the publication of a revised and updated edition of my book, The IndieAuthor Guide, and when our talks began the very first questions they had for me were all about my author platform. What websites do I have, and how much traffic do they get? How many pageviews, how many unique visitors? How frequently do I blog? How frequently do I have public speaking engagements, and where and for whom have I done such engagements? Do I maintain an email newsletter or membership list, and if so, how large is it?

If you’re lucky enough to get a request for the full manuscript from an agent or publisher, are you prepared to answer all these questions? Because if you’re not, you’re not ready to have your full ms requested. And if you’re intending to self-publish, you should be asking these questions of yourself already.

Lucky for all of us, the minimum skills needed to do a pretty decent job with online author platform are few, and easy to master. The way it works is, with each new skill you acquire, new online promotion and publication options are opened to you. And when it comes to author platform, you want every available option at your disposal.

You must know how to use webforms to comment on articles or blog posts online, create and maintain your own blog, create and maintain a fill-in-the-blanks sort of author website, or have a Facebook or MySpace page.

If you also want to provide an online cover image of your book, or an author photo, you must either know how to create digital images (pictures a computer can read because they’re stored as a computer file; if you use a digital camera and know how to get the pictures off your camera and onto your computer, you already know how to create digital images) or have the images supplied by someone who does know how to create them, you must know how to use a graphics editor program to resize the images as needed to meet the file size and dimension requirements of the various sites on which you intend to share them, and you must know how upload files to a web server using a “Browse” + “Upload” button combo.

All the skills mentioned thus far are also needed to self-publish your work in hard copy formats via an online print service provider such as Createspace or Lulu, and to self-publish in various ebook formats via online ebook conversion services such as Smashwords or Scribd.

If you want to make excerpts of your work available for free viewing on your blog or website (which is one of the cheapest and most effective ways of growing readership), on top of everything else you must also know how to create an excerpt of the full work and output that excerpt to pdf format.

Let’s stop and take inventory. If you know how to use webforms, how to create and resize digital images, how to upload files to a web server and how to output your work in pdf format, you’ve got most of your self-publishing and online author platform options covered with just five basic tech skills. You can have a blog and a fill-in-the-blanks type of author website. You can comment on blogs and articles all over the ‘net. You can publish your work in multiple formats and make it available for sale online through various outlets. You can make excerpts of your work available online. You can Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn to your heart’s content—and you can do all of these things for the cost of nothing more than your time and the price of a single author copy (in cases where you’re self-pubbing in hard copy)! You’d be a fool to turn your back on such an embarrassment of author platform riches, but that’s what the 5% do every day.

Now, if you also want to Twitter, you’ll want to bone up on web abbreviations, emoticons and hashtags. If you want to be able to add cool little widgets (e.g., hit counters, ‘my Goodreads bookshelf’, BookBuzzr, etc.) to your blog, author website, Facebook, MySpace or other online pages, you’ll need to be comfortable copying and pasting snippets of HTML or script code from the widget provider into the desired location, but even then, someone else is providing the code and all you’re doing is copying and pasting it the same as you’d do with any ordinary text. The best part is, most such widgets are available for free! If you don’t know how to use them, you’re missing a huge opportunity to jazz up your platform at no cost.

When you’re ready to graduate to the master class, you can learn about RSS syndication and how to set up a simple web form on your site or blog to allow your readers to subscribe to your email newsletter, but this is nothing you need to think about right away.

For now, just focus on mastering the 5 crucial author platform skills and get yourself out of that doomed 5%.

Addendum: Regarding the Vault form, I’m the first to admit it’s a lengthy form. Authors will need to spend half an hour or so pulling together all the information they need to create a listing, and an additional 5-10 minutes to complete the form. However, the form includes very detailed instructions for every section and field, required fields are limited to those items publishers have said are most important in making acquisitions decisions, and authors participating in the Vault’s current promotions are getting several months’ free listing time. I’m sure those who go on to strike deals with publishers or producers will feel it was well worth filling out the form.

This is a cross-posting of a post that originally appeared on my Indie Author Blog on 10/8/09.

Promoting Books With Keyword Rich Articles

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This article is cross-posted from The Savvy Book Marketer, where it originally appeared on 10/7/09.

Posting articles on your own blog and submitting articles to article directories, newsletters and other blogs are very effective ways of promoting books. Articles posted on other sites can drive direct traffic to your website and improve your site’s search engine optimization.

Good keyword optimization will increase the chances of people who are interested in your topic finding your articles in article directories and through search engines. Here’s my formula for promoting books by writing keyword rich articles:
 

  • Determine the goals of the article: how will this article help you in promoting your books and what action do you want readers to take?  
  • Define the target audience: who are you writing to?  
  • Select the topic of the article: what do you want readers to learn?  
  • Determine the approximate length. I usually shoot for around 500 words, but anywhere from 400 to 700 is a good length.  
  • Outline the points you will cover.  
  • Select a primary and perhaps a secondary keyword phrase for the article. I use Google’s keyword tool for keyword research.    
  • Write the headline, using the primary keyword at the beginning.  
  • Write the article.  
  • Go back and find ways to work the keywords into the text of the article, while keeping it sounding natural. I highlight keywords in yellow as I insert them, so I can easily see how many times the keywords are used.  
  • Write a good resource box at the end of the article, giving readers a reason to click through to your website.  
  • Proofread carefully. I find it more effective to print my articles for proofreading.
     

You may hear various experts talk about keyword density – the ratio of keywords to total word count on a Web page. I don’t count the words, I just try to make it look natural and don’t overdo it. If you stuff in too many keywords or write awkward sentences, it will be obvious and will tend to turn readers off.

In this article, Promoting Books is my main keyword. I didn’t try to optimize for Article Marketing because that term is too broad and not focused enough on my target audience, authors. I used the keyword phrase Promoting Books seven times in this 434-word article.

Keep in mind that the most popular keywords are not necessarily the best ones, because you will face much more competition. According to Google’s keyword tool, Book Marketing gets 60,500 queries a month, while Promoting Books gets only 1,600. But there are far more web pages using the term Book Marketing. I use a mixture of highly popular and more specific "long tail" keywords when promoting my books through article marketing.

Dana Lynn Smith, the Book Marketing Maven, specializes in developing book marketing plans for nonfiction books. She is the author of the Savvy Book Marketer Guides. Dana has a degree in marketing and 15 years of publishing experience. Read her complete bio here.

Exciting Changes To The Indie Author Stem To Stern Cruise!

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GREAT NEWS!

We’ve added Kirk Biglione of Medialoper and Kassia Krozser of Booksquare to our speaker roster, to present our workshop on Author Platform and Social Media for Authors. We’ve moved the cruise date back to October 10-17, 2010, to allow more time for you to plan and budget. We’ve reduced the first deposit required to hold your cruise spot to just US$25—and you’ll have till May 6, 2010 to make your second cruise deposit of US$250, and till July 12, 2010 to make payment in full for the cruise! You’ll now have till March 15, 2010 to book your workshop registration at US$600, and until May 30 to register at the rate of US$725. Visit the Indie Author Stem to Stern Workshop Cruise page for full details!

Why Responsible Aggregation Is Not Only NOT Evil, But A GOOD Thing

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This is a cross-posting from April L. Hamilton’s Indie Author Blog.

There’s a lot of hue and cry against online aggregation circulating around the interwebs these days, and I really don’t get it.

Aggregator sites reprint excerpts from other sites’ articles and blog posts, along with a ‘keep reading’ or ‘read the rest’ link to the source article/blog post. The more responsible aggregators also include the name of the author, and the most considerate ones also include links to the author’s website or blog and a link to the home page of the site where the article or post originally appeared.

If an aggregator site prints an entire article or blog post, or 50% or greater of the article/post without the author’s permission, well that’s just theft. If the ‘read the rest’ link opens the source web page in a window controlled by the aggregator, that’s tantamount to theft since it appears to the viewer as if he or she hasn’t left the aggregator site; worse yet, most such windowing systems don’t make it easy for the viewer to escape from the aggregator’s window. They may click links on the source site, but the linked pages still open up in the aggregator’s window. As a web consumer, I find those aggregator windows incredibly annoying and have come to avoid following links provided by such aggregators.

If an aggregator fails to credit the author when printing an excerpt and ‘read the rest’ link, it’s depriving the author of his or her due and that’s wrong, too. If an aggregator surrounds aggregated material with lots of paid advertising, particularly advertising with which the authors of aggregated material might take issue, that’s also an abuse of the authors’ material. But if the excerpt is brief, the author is credited, a ‘read the rest’ link is provided back to the source article without wrapping it in the aggregator’s window, links are provided to the author’s website (where available) and the home page of the site where the aggregated material originally appeared, and advertising surrounding aggregated material is minimal and non-offensive, with very few exceptions (e.g., aggregation of material the author is offering for sale) I really don’t understand why authors or anyone else should have a problem with it.

Publetariat, a site I founded and for which I’m Editor in Chief, has a mix of both original and aggregated material. The site focuses on content for indie authors and small imprints, and operates on a ‘we scour the web for relevant articles so you don’t have to’ sort of paradigm while also providing a discussion board area and member profiles with blogging capability. Every weekday at about 11am PST, I tweet a link to the site with the titles of articles posted to the site for that day. My tweet is often retweeted by my Twitter followers, but I’ve noticed another phenomenon going on: some people retweet, but only after changing the link to point directly to the source article. They seem to be making a pointed, if somewhat passive, statement against Publetariat’s aggregation, but I don’t know why they feel the need to do so since Publetariat is providing a service to both the author and readers.

Publetariat is a heavily-trafficked and well-respected site in the publishing world, and it gets several thousand unique visitors every week. It also gets thousands of RSS feed hits every month. The site has a traffic rank in the top 2% of all sites worldwide, and a Technorati blog rank in the top .2%. In other words, getting your material on the front page of the Publetariat site gets you a LOT of exposure to a highly targeted audience of authors and publishers. Let’s look at a specific example.

My blog post entitled “Self-Publishing: Future Prerequisite” was published on my blog on 9/22/09 and cross-posted to the Publetariat site the same day. To date, the post on my blog has received 221 hits. Not too shabby. But the same post on Publetariat has received 709 hits: over three times as many reads. In the current climate, in which authors are supposed to be doing everything they can to attract readership and attention, why wouldn’t they want three times as many readers for their content? And if you’re an author services provider, such as an editor, book doctor or promotional consultant, why wouldn’t you want three times as many authors to know about you and your site?

To date, there have only been two authors/webmasters who’ve asked to have their aggregated material removed from the Publetariat site, and both times, Publetariat has complied with the request. But I will never understand why those authors/webmasters are turning down an opportunity for such highly-targeted, free exposure from a responsible aggregator.

When Publetariat aggregates, we credit the author, provide a ‘read the rest’ link that isn’t wrapped in a Publetariat window, provide a link to the author’s own website where available, provide a link to the home page of the site on which the aggregated material originally appeared, and sometimes even provide links to buy the author’s books or other merchandise—and these are not affiliate links, Publetariat isn’t making any money on those click-throughs. We do everything we can to ensure both the author and the site where the article originally appeared will benefit from being aggregated on Publetariat.

What about advertising? Isn’t Publetariat profiting from aggregation through its site advertising, and not sharing that profit with the bloggers and authors who’ve made it possible? While Publetariat does carry paid advertising, from the day the site launched to today, despite our impressive traffic stats we’ve received a grand total of about US$65 in ad revenue. All the rest of the advertising on the site consists of public service announcements and traded links. Advertising revenue isn’t even enough to cover our hosting expense.

So, it’s clear that Publetariat is a responsible aggregator. You can also see what Publetariat has to offer an author of aggregated material, and that Publetariat isn’t profiting financially from aggregation. But there’s one more facet to explore here: why it’s better for a reader to discover a given blog post or article aggregated on Publetariat instead of on the source site or blog.

When a reader visits my blog, they’re getting my content only. That’s great for me, but somewhat limiting for them. If they come across my blog posts on Publetariat, they’re also getting exposure to lots of articles and blog posts from my fellow authors, author service providers, publishers and more. Sometimes, they’re seeing material relevant to writers that originated from a site they weren’t at all likely to discover on their own because it’s not a site geared specifically to writers. It’s like going to a great party that’s filled with fascinating people and discussions, any of which you’d love to know more about, and having introductions to those people and discussions made on your behalf by the host of the party.

People who retweet links to Publetariat’s aggregated material only after editing the link to point directly to the source site are leading their Twitter followers away from the party, and depriving them of everything else Publetariat has to offer.

A last objection that’s sometimes raised is the matter of click-throughs. Some will argue that the click-through rate on ‘read the rest’ links is low, that many visitors to the aggregator site will only read the posted excerpt. This is true, but every reader who does click through is a reader you didn’t have before your piece was aggregated.

So if Publetariat or any other site wants to aggregate your material, so long as the aggregator site is higher-profile than your own site/blog and they intend to aggregate responsibly (with proper credit and links, no wrapper window, no offensive advertising), it’s not evil. It’s the easiest free promotion you can get.

And if you’d like your site or blog to be on Publetariat’s list of available sources for aggregated or reprinted material, post your name and a link in the comments section, below, along with your preference for having your material merely excerpted with a ‘read the rest’ link, or reprinted in full on the site.

Why I Am Not Afraid To Take Your Money

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This post, from Amanda Palmer, originally appeared on her blog on 9/29/09. Amanda Palmer is known primarily as a musician and cabaret artist, but what she has to say here is something authors need to hear, too.

aie!

i had two conversations within the last 24 hours which made me feel like blogging about this.

one was with jason webley, who i’ve been living with for the past week in the Middle of Nowhere.

i was writing a press release and in it disclosed how much money i made from the recent london webcast (about 10k).
i gave a copy of the text to jason to proofread over a cup of tea (that’s what rock stars do for each other nowadays instead of leaving lines of blow on the backs of bathroom toilets).
he suggested taking the money part out. he gently advised; he’s heard people gossiping about me and my shameless revelations about my webcast/twitter income etc.

right around the same time i got an email from beth, regarding the future of my webcasting.
she suggested we do something totally free and not ask people for any money.
she’s been picking up on heat from people that the ask-the-fans-for-money thing has gotten out of control.

listen.

artists need to make money to eat and to continue to make art.

artists used to rely on middlemen to collect their money on their behalf, thereby rendering themselves innocent of cash-handling in the public eye.

artists will now be coming straight to you (yes YOU, you who want their music, their films, their books) for their paychecks.
please welcome them. please help them. please do not make them feel badly about asking you directly for money.
dead serious: this is the way shit is going to work from now on and it will work best if we all embrace it and don’t fight it.

unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve surely noticed that artists ALL over the place are reaching out directly to their fans for money.
how you do it is a different matter.
maybe i should be more tasteful.
maybe i should not stop my concerts and auction off art.
i do not claim to have figured out the perfect system, not by a long shot.

BUT … i’d rather get the system right gradually and learn from the mistakes and break new ground (with the help of an incredibly responsive and positive fanbase) for other artists who i assume are going to cautiously follow in our footsteps. we are creating the protocol, people, right here and now.

i don’t care if we fuck up. i care THAT we’re doing it.

in fact, i ENJOY being the slightly crass, outspoken, crazy-(naked?)-chick-on-a-soapbox holding out a ukulele case of crumpled dollars asking for your money so that someone else a few steps behind me, perhaps some artist of shy and understated temperament, can feel better and maybe a little less nervous when they quietly step up and hold out their hat, fully clothed.

i am shameless, and fearless, when it comes to money and art.

Read the rest of the post on Amanda Palmer’s blog, and if you like what she’s saying and doing, buy something from her.

Creative Commons: What Is It And How Can It Benefit You?

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This is a cross-posting from The Creative Penn site, where it appeared on 9/13/09.

I went to a fantastic workshop this weekend at the Brisbane Writers Festival on Creative Commons. It was presented by Elliott Bledsoe, who is Project Officer at Creative Industries and Innovation in Australia and a wealth of information in this area. (You can find him on Twitter @elliotbledsoe). All the detailed information is at: http://creativecommons.org/

This is such important information for authors online so please read and share!

What is Creative Commons?

  • It is a version of copyright licensing, and it relates to your creative works. The basic Copyright law says that no one can copy or distribute your work, or use it, remix it or profit from it. This law becomes impractical in the digital environment where sharing, remixing, distribution and marketing are so important. Creative Commons licensing is a license you can put on your work to allow some of these things and make Copyright work for you and your creativity. Read this for the full lowdown on Creative Commons.
  • You can license your work for different purposes. The main aspects are Attribution (you let others use/distribute your work but you must be attributed as the creator), Share Alike (you can use my work but you must share your own work too), Noncommercial (you can use my work but you can’t profit from it), No Derivative Works (you can use my work verbatim but you can’t remix it or change it). For more on the different licenses, read this. People can approach you for options beyond the license e.g. you have a novel released under Creative Commons which is Noncommercial but someone approaches you with a movie idea based on it that will be sold. You can still allow them permission.

How can it benefit you as an author?

  • On Piracy vs Obscurity. You need to make your own decision as to whether you want your ideas to be out there and used (and potentially pirated), or whether you want to keep them in a drawer where no one will discover them. If you want to be a successful author who sells books, you need to be known and the internet is the place to build your global presence. The risk of piracyis nothing compared to being unknown. Cory Doctorow addresses this in “Giving it away”, a Forbes.com article where he describes giving the ebook versions of his books away for free under a Creative Commons license. His sales increased but his books were also translated by fans and his ideas spun into new creativity.
  • “Share your creative wealth and accomplish great things”. This is a quote from the video at the bottom of the page which explains Creative Commons in a great way. The internet has changed the way we produce and consume information. We all find ideas everywhere now. We put our thoughts and text online in the hope of building an author platform, or selling our books/products or finding an audience. Other people may get ideas from our work, and Creative Commons enables a legal way for them to re-use or remix it. This has started in mainstream books now with the success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a remix of Jane Austen. Is it fan-fic or a remix of a Public Domain book?
  • Collaboration and Creativity. Expanding the theme of fan-fic and remixes, licensing under Creative Commons gives people the ability to take your work and recreate it in different ways based on your ideas. This could spread your work much farther than you could do on your own and may lead to some extraordinary ideas you can take and reuse in your turn. Is your idea your own? or can you release it and see what happens to it out there in the big wild?

How can you license your work as Creative Commons?

  • Advice from Elliott was: Have a really good think before you do license as Creative Commons. Are you really happy for people to use your work? Can they make money from it? Can they remix it? Only license once you are sure.

How do I find other authors and creatives using Creative Commons?

  • You can find works licensed under Creative Commons by including it as a Search term on sites like Google and Flickr. Many of the images I use on this site are Flickr Creative Commons and I add Attribution to each one. Use the Advanced Search option. You can also use http://search.creativecommons.org/
  • I have now licensed this site under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License, you can see this on the sidebar under my books. This license applies to the blog content and does not currently apply to my workbooks, Author 2.0 material and published books. This means that you can use my posts on your own websites, books and projects as long as you attribute me and this site as the original creator, share the work derived from it and don’t make income on it. Start with this one and spread the word about Creative Commons! You can see all the international licenses here. 

 

Publetariat Presents: The First Indie Author Stem-to-Stern Workshop Cruise!

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In this exclusive, weeklong, all-workshop cruise aboard the Carnival "Fun Ship" Splendor (the one with the big waterslide you’ve seen on Carnival’s TV commercials!), just 24 UPDATED: 30 attendees will have the opportunity to learn everything they need to succeed with self-publishing, ebook publishing, podcasting, author platform and book promotion from Publetariat founder and Editor in Chief / self-publishing expert April L. Hamilton, ebook publishing expert Joshua Tallent, authors and podcasting experts Seth Harwood and Scott Sigler, and author platform / social media experts Kirk Biglione and Kassia Krozser—all while enjoying a wonderful cruise vacation on the Mexican Riviera from March 7-14, 2010 UPDATED: October 10-17, 2010!

In addition to attending four, 3-hour workshop sessions on POD Publishing, Ebook Publishing, Author Platform/Social Media and Podcasting/Author Platform, each attendee will also receive a private, one-on-one, 45-minute coaching/consulting session with the speaker of his or her choice. This private consulting session alone is a $300 value. Add to this the opening night Meet and Greet, mid-week mixer and farewell mixer, and you’ve got a whole lot of face time with workshop speakers to get your questions answered and issues addressed as part of a very small group.

Also, we’ve scheduled all our workshops for "at sea" days, so attendees will be free for sightseeing and shore excursions on the three in-port days at Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan and Cabo San Lucas. If you’re already thinking about taking a vacation and attending a writers’ retreat or conference next year, why not do both in this one trip?

For full details on pricing, the workshops, cruise itinerary, presenter bios, travel agent contact and more, check out the Indie Author Stem to Stern Workshop Cruise page, and if you’re interested, register and get your deposit for the cruise in right away; there are only 24 UPDATED: 30 slots available, and once they’re gone, they’re gone!

Building On The Momentum

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Promoting doesn’t and shouldn’t end with the book sale. I live in the middle of farm country where book sale events are hard to find. Harvest is about ready to start. Winter is coming soon. The internet is my best method for promoting. I’ve just had a successful book sale. Now I can build on that and find ways to promote the fact that I am an author with books for sale until the next event.  Do I know everything about promoting?  I’ll be the first to admit that I’m still learning. 

I took my camera to the last book sale and snapped a lot of pictures. The first pictures I had my son take of me in my pioneer dress and bonnet and of my table after it was set up with stacks of books and the two posters. With these pictures I made an album on Facebook and other web sites complete with captions.

On twitter, I submitted messages about my book sale and later wrote to take a look at my album on Facebook. By the way, I am developing a following. I have at least two authors following me now – Stephanie Cowell and Steve Weber the author of Plug Your Book – online book marketing for authors (which I have).

Every time I find a website for writer/authors I’ve signed up. In fact, I am on so many that I had to log them in a book with login name and password. I wanted to stick to one login name.  My choice of names should describe me and what I do so I picked booksbyfay. I don’t want to miss an opportunity to reach internet users. Having a list helps me keep track so I don’t forget to make entries on one of those web sites about a new book, a book sale or press release. Several of these websites have links to other websites which I happened to registered on so I can link what I do to be announced on those sites.

I’ve put a link to Publetariat where I could. Hopefully, internet surfers will come across my blog post on the front page. I appreciate the opportunity to help other authors. On Biblioscribe, I wrote two news articles. One article was about the success of my book sale. The other article was about my blog entry "Preparing For A Book Sale" posted on the front page of Publetariat. That should get people to take a look at Publetariat and perhaps become interested in my blog.

So don’t stop promoting after a book sale event. Keep finding ways to get your name out there until the next event.  Then work on that event and build on the momentum.

Reviews, Word Of Mouth And Super Users

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This is a cross-posting from Alan Baxter’s alanbaxteronline site, from 9/28/09.

Today I’m pleased to present a guest post by MCM. This post explores the difficulties in building a fan base through word of mouth, and talks about how reviewers can help us with that.

Recently, I’ve had some conversations with very smart people about the future of publishing, specifically about how readers and writers can connect directly and make old-style functions like reviewers obsolete. It’s a great notion with dangerous consequences, and if you’re game, I’ll explain why.

Here’s the thing: the internet breaks down barriers and actively enhances communication between people. In the old days, it was impractical for an author to chat with their fans; today, it’s downright pedestrian. The old notion of “word of mouth” expanded beyond your neighbourhood and now covers the globe. Tell your five best friends about your new book, and they’ll tell their five best friends, and eventually you take over the world. It is, theoretically, pure unbridled exponential growth (at least until you run out of people to tell). This is the way of the future.

Except it’s not as easy as it seems. Just because you tell your five best friends, it doesn’t mean all of them will like your writing enough to tell anyone else. There are lots of factors that play into the “infection rate”, but the end result is you may only get one of your friends to follow through. And then only one of their friends. And so on. It’s still exponential, just working on a lesser scale.

Word of Mouth (WOM) depends less on the potential pool of converts, and more on the accessible pool. There are billions of people on the planet, but you probably only know 0.000002% of them. Add in decay (meaning your WOM is not eternal… eventually, the lag in reading will affect the infection rate) and your growth is severely capped. If you have 135 friends at the start, in most cases you’ll end up with a total audience of 621 (note: all numbers are based on a rough systems model and are probably too high).

135 Reviews, word of mouth and Super Users Guest post by MCM

Next time around, you’ll have a base pool of 600 to work from, which helps a lot. But unless you’re willing to spend years and years building up an audience, straight WOM is not going to cut it.

This is where Super Users come in. They are, very simply, people with a lot of friends and influence. If they say “this book is awesome!” a larger percentage of their network will act on the promotion. You get a 1% infection rate, but they’ll score 10% or higher. Add that to their larger pool, and your growth will have much more potential. Switch from a gentle curve to a steep one, and you see the difference.

The other benefit of a steep curve is that the decay is postponed… someone, somewhere will always be finishing your book and telling their friends about it. It creates a constant state of critical mass, which also ups the infection rate. Think of it this way: nobody likes to be dancing alone, but if you’ve got a large pool of people all dancing together (even if some of them cycle out after every song), it looks like a party. You’re more likely to dance if that’s what everyone else is doing. Super users can find enough people to throw that party.

Super Users can take many forms online, but one important role to weblit is the reviewer. People are looking for advice on what to read, and reviewers read a lot of material. As a reviewer proves their merit, their social network grows, and so does their influence. Writers can expand their network with every new title, but reviewers can expand with every new posting.

135and1000 Reviews, word of mouth and Super Users Guest post by MCM

The value for authors is that a single positive review by an established reviewer can give them access to thousands of eyeballs, not just hundreds. If you have no social network, a reviewer can give you one. If you already have a solid base, a reviewer can help you tap a different set of people, or at least add to your own influence.

To compare: if your book is reviewed by someone with a social network of 1,000, your total audience potential increases from 621 to 4,937. If their social network is 10,000, you’re looking at just shy of 82,350. Imagine someone with a million Twitter followers reviewing your book… you’re looking at 8,242,224 converts.

1000and2influence Reviews, word of mouth and Super Users Guest post by MCM

The trick for weblit reviewers is that, right now, very few of them have large followings. That’s something authors can help change, by supporting and promoting them. It may seem unappealing to put reviewers on a pedestal (especially since it reeks of gate keeping), but if you look at it objectively, a healthy weblit community depends on a healthy reviewer class.

The question of how to build a SMART reviewer class is something I’ll cover in a guest post on Novelr tomorrow. And yes, it’ll have more graphs. Yay!

MCM is the creator of the animated series RollBots as well as the author of several picture books for kids. His grown-up work includes the sci fi thriller “The Vector” and a crowdsourced mystery novel called “Fission Chips”. He has a background in programming and systems thinking, which is how he learned to make graphs. He lives in Victoria, BC, Canada with his wife and kids, and may be at least partially insane.

What are your experiences with word of mouth marketing? Do you trust all reviewers or no reviewers? Do you have particular places that you’ll go for reviews to help you decide on a purchase? Leave a comment.

One Thing Leads To Another For Book Promotions

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When I signed up for the internet a few years ago, I researched about author promotions on the internet. I still do search for new ideas. One thing I learned right away was that authors need a website. This was before I had a book published but dreamed that it might happen some day. So I hunted for a free website. I tried several and couldn’t figure out how to submit to them. Finally, I found tripod and understood the easy instructions. I haven’t had problems submitting to my website, but I hear that people have trouble finding it. Perhaps that’s because it’s free. http://www.booksbyfay.tripod.com

Every site I’ve registered on, I use booksbyfay to log in. I wanted a name that clued people into what I do. Now thanks to google search, I get about four pages when I put my name Fay Risner in the search box because of all the websites I’ve advertised my books on. Google uses a small portions of the websites announcing my books or events.

Now I have four blogs. I copy and paste the same entry on each one, but hopefully, I attract the attention of many different readers. Awhile back a woman emailed me she had linked one of my blogs to a website she belongs to because she likes what she read and wanted others to read my blog. Good Reads website put the bookshelf containing my books I entered there next to my blog on blogger. Amazon decided to give each author a page and blog.

A woman approached me at Civil War Days to ask if I would like to be a guest blogger on her blog. She asks people who are writers or illustrators. I told her I’d be delighted.

Another woman asked me to be a guest speaker for her church group "Golden Girls" to talk about my books.

　

 

Sometimes I hear things and think I should remember that for future reference. About five years ago I was told a successful business man from Texas came back for a high school reunion in Belle Plaine. A former classmate said he brought each of them a signed copy of his new book. So the 8th of August I had a high school reunion. I gave out 21 copies of my latest book "A Promise Is A Promise". Since then I have sold 11 other books to the classmates and one teacher.

This particular teacher wasn’t but a few years old than me when she taught high school home economics and girls gym. She took a liking for my whole class of 32 students and has been our cheering section ever since. She comes to all our high school reunions and keeps in touch with many of us. Always, she gives us encouragement and praises our successes. While I was at my book sale on Saturday no one could have been more surprised than me when she came walking across the park toward me. I asked how she happened to be there. She said because she heard I would be selling books. I thought she was teasing but turns out a former classmate passed on my news about going to Civil War Days. Do teachers today still have that commitment to students so many years after they are out of school? I think not. Oh, maybe they take an interest in one or two, but not 32.

I let you know how my guest blogging and book presentation for the women’s group turns out.

 

　

　

　

　

What Makes A Great Author Website?

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This post, from Thad McIllroy, originally appeared on his Future of Publishing blog on 9/19/09, and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.  

A colleague of mine who is a noted Canadian historian, and a prolific writer, asked today what makes a great web site for an author. So I began an exploration:

Most publisher websites for authors are pathetic, placeholders with short bios and links to books. A case in point is Canada’s “most venerable” old publisher, McClelland & Stewart. I wrote:
M&S is pointless:
http://www.mcclelland.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=31934

With their partners in crime (Random House, Doubleday, etc.) they have created BookLounge.ca, which makes the first mistake of forcing you to register (I never did succeed in completing my registration).

I try without success to find any content from M.G. Vassanji (who was well-featured on M&S). Odd.

So I check out my old friend, Lucinda Vardey, and find that her listing is no better than if it appeared on the M&S site:
http://www.booklounge.ca/author/results.pperl?authorid=31912

Then I turn my search to well-known (i.e. bestselling) historians:

Niall Ferguson has what I would call an “adequate” website.

http://www.niallferguson.com/site/FERG/Templates/Home.aspx?pageid=1

There’s some substance to it, but many flaws. He doesn’t offer a blog per se, but rather a blog-like “thing” labeled “journalism”. The entries are often short and blog-like…it appears they were published elsewhere, but we can’t find out where.

There’s a listing of the two spring courses he taught at Harvard, but no listing of what he’s teaching this fall.

There are three videos offered with no indication of their content or length or why we might want to watch them.

You can sign up for a newsletter, but have no method to view a sample and no idea how frequently it might arrive.

NONE of his publications has a live link (including his books), so you have to expend extra effort to find out more about them.

Well, enough of Prof. Ferguson

* As an aside, I do not like E.L. Doctorow’s site: http://www.eldoctorow.com/ for essentially the same reasons. There’s a professional design and lots of content, but none of it is particularly engaging.

Jared Diamond does not appear to have a website.

Gary Wills does not appear to have an independent website

Bob Woodward has a surprisingly uninteresting website: http://bobwoodward.com/

Thomas L. Friedman, has a pretty good site because it’s packed with relevant, current stuff. There’s no interaction, per se, other than the usual “subscribe to my newsletter”.

But, for example, on the page for his latest book: http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/bookshelf/hot-flat-and-crowded-2
…you can download a sample, hear an audio preview and download a discussion guide. These are useful and show some generosity and thoughtfulness on the part of the author (or his publisher or publicists or whatever). Foolishly he offers no blog nor a way to contact him directly (although if you go to his page on the New York Times you can contact him directly there).

You’ll see he’s now on LinkedIn, which is the best professional social networking site (as vs. the child’s FaceBook). I recommend LinkedIn— basic membership is free. Plaxo is roughly 65% as good as LinkedIn and also free for basic service.

Malcolm Gladwell has a very simple site: http://www.gladwell.com/index.html

There’s always something to be said for simplicity. He also offers a genuine direct way to email him and a COMPLETE and accessible archive of all his great articles from the New Yorker. He’s generous with his excerpts from each book, and has a good Q&A for each. The blog is badly out of date. Not bad overall.

Back to the Yankees:

Doris Kearns Goodwin’s site rates about 5 out of 10. http://www.doriskearnsgoodwin.com/

The good is the personal stuff in the right-hand column on the home page. Also there’s a way to email her directly. The material available on her books is pathetic.

So here’s a Geist author with a beautifully-designed site:
http://www.sheilaheti.net/

Would this be “the right site” for you? Probably not. By the nature of your profession, more formal approaches are called for. But that doesn’t mean your site shouldn’t be fun also.

To me the keys to a great author web site are:

  1. The short answer is ENGAGEMENT: your site should make the reader feel that they’ve been inited into your living room for a chat.
     
  2. The same keys as apply to all great web sites: good design, clear navigation, lack of clutter, etc.
     
  3. A distinct personality to the site, which, god-willing, mirrors the personality of the author.
     
  4. More good stuff stuffed into the site than a child could pray for on Christmas.
     
  5. Backgrounders, audio-podcasts, videos from YouTube, discussion points. etc.
     
  6. Your blog should be hosted on you key site: your author site. Comments must be allowed, but moderated. The blog MUST be current.
     
  7. Generous links to other material you’ve produced that’s available online.
     
  8. Generous (AND APPROPRIATE) links to colleagues and other sites of interest. In return, they should agree to offer a link to your site.
     
  9. A direct way to email the author.
     
  10. Do not favor a single online bookseller as a source to get obtain books. Let your reader decide.
     
  11. Free previews of work-in-progress.
     
  12. Friendly personal info on you and your family and friends with lots of cute photos.

    [Publetariat Editor’s note: let your comfort level, as well as the comfort levels of your family members and friends, be your guide here, but we do recommend at least including the same quantity and type of personal information one typically sees in the author bios printed on book jackets.]
     

  13. A “Resources” section for those who want to explore BEYOND your work.
     
  14. You must establish your authority. This can be done in subtle ways (which I think comes naturally to good authors), but also requires a link to “Reviews,” and wherever possible links to live online reviews.
     

So there it is…one of several viewpoints about the ideal author’s online site. To overlook the effort is to overlook your career. 

September 21 update. Forgot ito include:

15. Don’t be shy about using ALL of the social networking tools available to you, at the very least Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace…

Thad McIllroy has authored or edited a dozen books on technology and marketing issues surrounding electronic publishing, color imaging, PDF, workflow, publishing automation, and the Internet. He’s also written some 200 articles and delivered innumerable seminars on a broad range of industry-related topics. He acted as Program Director at Seybold Seminars for five years, and in 1990 co-founded (with Miles Southworth) The Color Resource, a publishing and distribution company devoted to books and training materials on color design, imaging and prepress.

More recently he wrote the Composition, Design, and Graphics chapter (with contributions from Frank Romano) for the Columbia Guide to Digital Publishing (Columbia University Press, January, 2003). He’s a contributing editor to PrintAction magazine, a columnist for XMLPitstop.com, and a member of the Technical Association of the Graphic Arts, the Association for Computing Machinery and the Content Management Professionals. For three consecutive years he was named one of Canada’s 50 most influential people in graphic communications.

How Can I Help You With NaNoWriMo?

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This post, from David Niall Wilson, originally appeared on his Glimpses Into An Overactive Mind site on 9/23/09 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

Sometimes I have so much to say I can’t shut up.  Seriously.  Just ask people within earshot.  Other times, though, I sit and tap the keys nervously and think – I should be working on that story instead of doing this.  Currently that story is Glenn and the Tart of Mortar Psycho Maine Tenants which I hope to complete tonight, or tomorrow night.  Still, I like to be productive in many arenas, and one thing that has become an annual goal is to help as many people as I can to prepare for the annual National Novel Writing Month challenge.

I’ve done Nanowrimo successfully every year since 2004, which was the first time I managed to say I was going to do it and actually start.  I’ve sold most of what I’ve written durning those challenges, and I’ve got a couple of decades of writing experience, a few awards, for what they’re worth – I like to think that when I post here I am somehow giving back and helping with the next “round” of creativity.

So here’s the deal.  If you have a particular subject you are interested in regarding Nanowrimo or writing, post it in the comments section and I’ll do my best to get to it.  You might want to type it into the search box here on the site though, because odds are I’ve covered it at least once.  Here are search links to a few common writing topics, and a couple of less common topics.  Sorry, the Nanowrimo lolcats keep showing up in all the searches … 🙂

Outlines

Characters

Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

Wordcount

Scheduling

Lolcats (these are important)

You might also find these links helpful / interesting:

Vintage Soul – dedicated to my Nanowrimo-written novel due out in hardcover this December – you can pre-order and get a signed copy cheap – particularly if you are a Nanowrimo winner, or Follow Me On Twitter!

Heart of a Dragon: You can register here to read along as I write this year’s Nanowrimo Novel – which is book II in the series begun in Vintage Soul – the DeChance Chronicles.  There are also more Nanowrimo tips posted here.

The Necronom-Icon – not really Nanowrimo related.  Short stories inspired by the smiley faces and tiny Emoticons proliferating on the web. All free.

Hope I’ve been of some help…

–DNW

Written by David Wilson – Visit Website
Follow me on Twitter

David Niall Wilson has sold 17 novels and nearly 200 short stories and has won the Bram Stoker Award for poetry and short fiction.  His novel Vintage Soul is due in December from Thompson/Gale Five Star and his collaborative novel with his wife, Patricia Lee Macomber – Stargate Atlantis: Brimstone is also due in November.

A Conundrum…A Long Conundrum (Be Prepared)

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This is a long one, so grab a cup of coffee and get ready to mull with me…

I’ve been mulling over one of many, odd conundrums that seem to exist in the murky world of mainstream publishing. It’s an obscure, opaque condition writers can run into with a first novel.

It is an undisputed fact that most books sell poorly. No matter whether they are mainstream published with the requisite fanfare, or Indie Published with the fanfare authors can muster on their own. Very, very few books become best sellers, let alone covering their own publishing run costs, with the one exception of POD books.  It can be depressing for any writer who really has the drive and desire to publish.

Now, if we take a look at publishing from the Literary Agent’s perspective, facing the fact expressed above, they must concentrate upon books they are pretty sure they can sell, and remember, they are selling to in most cases, long-established publishing relationships. Personal relationships.  An agent "vetting" a book reduces the risk for the publisher substantially.  It also cements relationships within in the industry. 

There are clearly observed, followed trends in book buying. What readers buy in numbers is what publishers need to publish.  It is a matter of economics, especially in the downturn we are all experiencing. 

Most publishers show great pride in their discovery of a new author with a great, new voice, especially if their work has marketplace traction.  Let’s assume the writer writes fiction, which is harder to sell well than a self-help, non-fiction title.  So the writer starts out with reduced expectations.  The publisher will promote and distribute the book, but probably not as well as they would if it were determined to be a current "best seller" genre book.  The author is still heavily responsible for promoting the book as much as possible in order that a great number of readers is exposed to it, just like an Indie Author must do.  No difference, yet.

When the book sales begin, for most new authors, they will be initially slow.  If you browse discount sales table at book sellers and library fund raisers, you’ll find books from recognized writers, but titles you probably never heard of.  Some of them are early work that didn’t gain market traction. I have several of these in my personal library — some from hugely selling writers, whose initial work wasn’t grabbed up.  Some of it is good, some of it is really terrible by comparion with later work. 

Taken as a whole, despite a huge outpouring of argument I’ve heard regarding the traditional role as gatekeepers, protecting the public from an influx of bad books, mainstream publishers produce bad books too. They also produce good book that don’t sell well. Right now, they can’t afford to tie money up with many mistakes, so they will rely more and more on LIt. Agents to only send them really saleable new work. This puts tremendous pressure on agents to dismiss the overwhelming majority of work submitted, in favor of book genres and styles that are currently enjoying success.

That, by and large, leaves most new literary fiction authors out.  Once a new author’s book is as good as it can be honed, assuming the writer wants to publish these days, the only option seems to be Indie Publishing, for one big reason.  An author who writes well, but whose genre isn’t currently popular, may get an agent to represent them, but if, after the launch and a year on the market, with book poor sales, the publisher will blame the agent.  Depending upon their financial committment to the book, they may cut back on their reliance on this agent.

Publishers today, can rarely afford to put their money towards tenuous future sucess. They need success now. An agent must help create success in order to keep their own bills paid and cover more than their expenses. If a represented book languishes, the agent will think less of the writer’s work, in fact being less than anxioust to pitch the next one.  The writer gets a bad rap, right at the start. A smart writer with an eye to the future would want to avoid this kind of situation. 

Poor booksales, are a killer of potential for everyone involved, yet without promotion, review and backing, good sales are very hard to achieve, even if your book is a jewel.  Most of the — hell, all of big media press goes to best sellers, not to competent novelists working in a literary genre.  The web is full of blogs and writers articles confirming the "death" of literary fiction.  I believe that it is a premature announcement, personally. On the other hand, if you write literary fiction, you must either adapt and begin writing in genres that sell (read: vampires, serial mysteries and religious conspiracies) or be realistic and expect that you won’t be the first best selling author on your block.

Confronting that fact tends to deflate the writer’s ego pretty quickly.  But you can always blow it up again.  By choosing to publish independently, you eliminate most of the poor industry associations that plague most debut novelists.  You are still required to produce work as good or better than anything mainstream published. To do less work in honing your novel is just foolishness.  You will need to involve outside editors, whether paid or unpaid. You will need to keep submitting your work to agents and to online reviewers, but all of the results will reflect upon your involvement. If you were accepted as a mainstream published new author, and your first book did poorly, you would probably not have the automatic deal for your second book anyway. Be realistic.  If you are an Indie Published author, when it’s time to move on, you can move on with little of the baggage that would accompany you to new pitches after a lackluster track record. 

Another important force in mainstream or Indie Publishing are book reviewers.  Reviewers also like the cache and potential financial gain of being in on a great ride, so they are also becoming more selective. Indie authors, unless self-published with traditional distribution will find most mainstream doors are closed to them.  I’ve read repeatedly on the web that the one bright spot in reviews for Indie Authors seem to be the Amazon Top Reviewer List. Not all are actively accepting new book submissions, but the ones that are — and you have to be very selective yourself, pairing your work with the individual reviewer — will read your book, and give you a review that will sit on the page where your book appears.  It doesn’t seem to matter if your book is self-published or not, and online promotion is one area where Indie Authors usually shine, or at least glow brightly! Besides the obvious, these reviewers have followers, sometimes in the hundreds of thousands! It will just cost you the postage and a copy of the book.

So, the daunting task of getting a first novel published can be a conundrum — a puzzle within a puzzle.  Translation: you’re damned if you do, and almost damned if you don’t.  Fortunately for Indie Authors, some of the most opaque, inscrutable parts are missing, along with an out-of-pocket percentage here and there. This leaves you free to find your readers and provide them with entertaining novels, at less risk to your long-term reputation, and less risk to your financial health.

Whew!  Thanks for having the patience to listen to the whole sermon.  Let me know if your experiences differ, how and why, or if you can add anything else to this dicussion.