If You Build It, They Won't Come

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This article originally appeared on the Publishing Trends website in December of 2008.

To be on the Web or not to be on the Web—sorry, technophobic authors, that’s no longer the question. Rather, what should be on your website and how can you draw traffic to it? There’s no universal key to success. But with help from a recent groundbreaking report and four web designers who specialize in author sites, we’ve come up with some guidelines.

The Codex Group is described by its President, Peter Hildick-Smith, as a “pollster for publishers.” Last summer, Codex undertook a massive author website impact study that surveyed nearly 21,000 book shoppers. Its objective was to understand the relative effectiveness of author sites among shoppers and to determine the elements that will keep them coming back to the site. We spoke with Hildick-Smith and four book-loving Web marketers and designers—John Burke, Vice President of FSB Associates; Carol Fitzgerald, Founder and President of the Book Report Network; Jason Chin; and Jefferson Rabb (who also consulted on the Codex study, along with Columbia University’s Charlotte Blumenfeld)—to find out what makes an author site not only good-looking, but also successful.

“From an author’s perspective, if you are going to invest the time and energy in writing and getting a book published, it’s a big drawback if you can’t then be found online,” says Burke. Furthermore, the Codex report found that visiting an author’s website is the leading way that book readers support and get to know their favorite authors better. And this is true regardless of age. While those under 35 visited websites more often than those over 35, over-35-year-olds still used author websites as their main method of learning about the author. “This isn’t a generational thing,” says Hildick-Smith. Fans are also much more likely to visit the author’s website than the author’s page on the publisher’s website.

The survey found that 7.5% of book shoppers had visited their favorite author’s website in the past week. As a point of comparison, 7% had visited the Wall Street Journal’s site.

And any remaining skeptics out there, take note: Website visits translate directly to the number of books bought. Book shoppers who had visited an author website in the past week bought 38% more books, from a wider range of retailers, than those who had not visited an author site. “Is putting up a website going to make a book a bestseller? No,” says Chin. “Is the website going to help the author build an audience? I believe it can. What you don’t want is for someone to hear about your book, search for it with Google, and find nothing. That’s a potential lost sale.”

Web presence is especially essential in today’s economy. “Websites have become even more important as people are not in stores discovering books,” Fitzgerald says. “We need to get them jazzed about a title and their favorite author and give them reason not just to buy the book, but also to have a relationship with the author and his or her work so they become evangelists for them with fellow readers. These next months, author websites and communications with readers are going to be critical for engendering excitement in readers online, since something as crucial as in-store browsing is not happening.”

The point, of course, is not just to get readers to visit an author site once, but to keep them coming back. How do you make a website sticky?“The saying ‘build it and they will come,’ well, they won’t,” says Burke. He and the other designers we spoke with agreed that flashy design is not a key to success, and the Codex Group research bears that out, with Stephenie Meyer’s website as a case in point. It receives more traffic than any other fiction author site, yet its design is extremely basic, “probably a generic template where you plug in your header graphic,” says Hildick-Smith. “She may only be paying $15 a month for this site on some server system. It’s not elaborately designed at all. But she’s got a daily blog, and more than any other site in our study, she has links to fan sites. Fan site links appear to contribute to loyal audience traffic.”

Read the rest of the article at Publishing Trends.

Unlock Writer’s Block – From Sandy Nathan's YourShelfLife.com What You Need to Know When the Words Won’t Flow

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How are motivating a recalcitrant horse to get into a horse trailer and getting your mind to spit out words when it doesn’t want to the same? Read this article and find out.

'm going to illustrate this blog post with a simple tale springing from ranch life. This is a true story, obviously, since those are photos. This is The Day Corcovado Learned to Load and Unload from a Trailer. Note that the horse is not freaking out, pitching a fit, or tramping his handlers. No, Corco is doing something more effective. He's adopted The Mule Stance. My mind is following Corco's example as I contemplate rewriting Mogollon.

I’m going to illustrate this blog post with a simple tale springing from ranch life. This is a true story, obviously, since those are photos. This is The Day Corcovado Learned to Load and Unload from a Trailer. Note that the horse is not freaking out, pitching a fit, or tramping his handlers. No, Corco is doing something more effective. He’s adopted The Mule Stance. My mind follows Corco’s example as I contemplate rewriting Mogollon.

A while ago, I wrote that I was going to blog about the rewrite, the re-vision, of my draft version of Mogollon, the sequel to my award winning book, Numenon.

That was weeks ago. In that time, we put a Kindle version of Numenon out for 99 cents. Sales went crazy, Numo hit # 1 in Mysticism, and then cruised near the top of the Religious Fiction category.

This was a problem.

Why? Because Numenon is the introduction to the series. It’s got every hook in the world in it to make people want the sequel. It ends with a bang and points the reader dead at  Mogollon, the rewrite of which we are discussing.

Numenon’s readers are already asking for the sequel; some are getting kinda grouchy about it. How long will my readers wait before dumping me entirely?

The book’s first and part of a  second draft is written. All I have to do is open my computer files and wail away, toiling for a really long time to get the manuscript cleaned up as well as I can. Then I have to go through the editorial and proofing process, necessitating months and months of hard work before a publishable version exists.

As owner of an Indie press,  after I do all the above, I get to manage the design and publication process, and then marketing and sales.

I  can’t open the manuscript’s files.  I’d rather do anything than think about the changes  I have to make. I’d as soon dismember my firstborn child as whack away at Mogollon.

DO YOU THINK I’VE GOT WRITERS’ BLOCK?

* * * 

An undisclosed amount of time later and the guys have the task in hand. All they have to do is get Corco from where he is into the trailer.

An undisclosed amount of time later and the guys have the task in hand. All they have to do is get Corco from where he is into the trailer. All I have to do is get Mogollon into print.

WHAT IS WRITERS’ BLOCK? Essentially, it’s psychological resistance. Usually it involves the writer’s ego: “My work is so important … The world needs my masterpiece. I can’t write. If I can’t write, I’ll die, and the world will be left without my words … What a tragedy.”

I realize that sounds judgmental and mindless of the pain of the condition, but remember that the blocked up person I’m talking about is me. I exhibit almost every causal attitude I’ll discuss below.

The desire to write the Great American (Latvian, Lithuanian, or Other) Novel can shut a writer down: “I have this HUGE idea. Can I possibly express it? Am I big enough? Good enough?” Hand wringing. Angst. Pain. It’s based on an inflated image of one’s importance in the Grand Scheme of Things.

If you regarded finishing your novel the way ranch people regard mucking out the stalls, would it be so hard? So wrenching? Would you stay awake nights because you couldn’t finish the job? No. When writing becomes a job of work, histrionics leave and you can get the thing done.

Writer’s block also can be associated with positive things. Sherman Alexie, the bestselling Native American author, reminds us that success can block you up good. How can you write when your last book was a national bestseller and your publisher is leaning on you for the new one? And grumbling about your contract and the advance you got for the three book deal?

Heart breaking, isn’t it?

Just plain fear is behind a lot of this. Can I do it? Can I bring it across? It’s the terror that arises when one faces in front of a blank screen or empty page. My eyes widen and I suppress a scream  . . .

Real progress: both front hooves are on the ramp. Corco continues to exhibit the Mule Stance.

Real progress: both front hooves are on the ramp. Corco continues to exhibit the Mule Stance. These photos were taken over several hours of intense human-equine power negotiation. Notice the carrot in Barry’s hand. Sometimes positive reinforcement doesn’t work. Also–Corco had a bath before these pictures were taken. His coat is wet from suds, not sweat. It’s the guys who are sweating.

Laziness sometimes lurks behind the inability to finish a tale. Writing a novel is about the hardest kind of authoring imaginable. (Though I think a surgeon friend’s rewrite of his textbook on arthroscopic ankle surgery ranks up there)

You may begin your manuscript and discover that completing it requires the discipline to sit down and bang it out––to sit for days, months, and years. Despite your earth-shaking, sure to be a bestseller idea, your book won’t exist unless you write it down.

“It’s just too  hard … I can’t do it.” Another tragedy.

So you go to a writing group for support and stick around until you hear their feedback to your cherished production. Sometimes this can be bracing in a “pull up your socks” way, and sometimes it can shut down all creativity. Rough editors can do the same.

The rest of humanity, household pets, inanimate objects, and lousy viruses and bacteria can stop a writer’s progress. Life intrudes.

“Marge, there’s a truck in the living room. It just came through the wall.”

Call it resistance or an errant Mack truck, writer’s block is writer’s block. A cure exists. I have written about it: The Ultimate Cure for Writer’s Block. If you get what I say in this article, block will not trouble you, unless it wants to.

* * *

ON THE OTHER HAND, YOU MAY NOT BE ABLE TO FINISH YOUR MANUSCRIPT BECAUSE THE TIME ISN’T RIGHT. You and your book idea might not be cooked enough.

In a revolutionary move, Tony has PICKED UP CORCO'S HOOF and placed it farther onto the ramp. Notice that nothing has changed in the horse's stance. True resistance, perfectly executed. Well done, Corco!

In a revolutionary move, Tony has PICKED UP CORCO’S HOOF and placed it further onto the ramp. Notice that nothing else has changed in the horse’s stance. True resistance, perfectly executed. Well done, Corco!

THE PROCESS OF TEACHING CORCOVADO TO LOAD AND UNLOAD ILLUSTRATES THE LESSON IN THIS ARTICLE:

YOU CANNOT MAKE A 1,200 POUND ANIMAL DO ANYTHING. IT HAS TO WANT TO DO IT.

YOU CAN’T MAKE A WRITER SPIT OUT WORDS, EITHER.

WRITER’S BLOCK IS LIKE THE BERLIN WALL:  YOU CAN’T GO AROUND IT, OVER IT, OR UNDER IT AS LONG AS IT’S STANDING AND THE GATES ARE CLOSED.

RECALL THAT THE BERLIN WALL (which some of you may not remember) CAME DOWN WHEN THE TIME WAS RIGHT.

RESISTANCE IS LIKE THAT: It seems like a solid wall, but it’s got invisible cracks. As time passes, doors open, and close. Keep your eye on the wall, and go through when an opening appears. (That means write like crazy when you can.)

WHILE YOU’RE WAITING, DO SOMETHING ELSE.

THINGS TO DO WHILE WAITING FOR AN OPENING IN YOUR RESISTANCE:

READ. You can read all sorts of stuff, including my online magazine,  SPURS MAGAZINE. SPURS is about changing the world, or at least cleaning up some of its nasty bits. I named it SPURS because in life, sometimes you need spurs to get moving. I’ve been writing SPURS since the late 1990s and am about to unleash it in blog form, as soon as I get over my paralysis over rewriting Mogollon.

Advanced training technique: Tony waves his hat while Barry pulls on the lead rope.

Advanced training technique: Tony waves his hat while Barry pulls on the lead rope. Corco remains unmoved. Some people resort to offering buckets of carrots and grain at this point. When that doesn’t work, they escalate to use of two by fours and longe whips. Nasty. We don’t do that. The inter species negotiation process intensifies as and the sun drops on the horizon …

SPURS’ WRITERS’ CORNER. Not only do I have a ‘zine, I’ve got a ‘zine for writers, dealing with topics that writers must manage or go insane. The WRITERS’ CORNER is one of the most popular locations on my web empire. (I’ve got 52 URLs, compadres.)

[Note: If you think Mogollon needs rewriting, SPURS’ WRITERS’ CORNER needs major surgery. Read it and know it’s a draft. I’ll rewrite it before I die. Or make it into a blog. Okay?]

SPURS’ WRITERS’ CORNER contains a bunch of articles relevant to writer’s block. These articles walk through the process of writing as experienced by me and many others. (Lots of references & links.) Please allow your browser time to open at the links.

As everything else fails, Tony and Barry attempt to FORCE Corco into the trailer.

Tony and Barry attempt to FORCE Corco into the trailer. Barry is inside the trailer, pulling hard, while Tony applies muscle at the other end. Does it work? What do you think? You can no more force a horse into a trailer than your brain to kick out the right words. (Note: Do not do what you see above at home. What’s shown in the above photo is extremely dangerous and very bad horsemanship. Corco could kill either man if he lunged forward or bolted backwards.)

TO DISTRACT YOURSELF WHEN YOU CAN’T WRITE,  YOU CAN ALSO CLEAN THE HOUSE, ROLLER SKATE, GO TO YOUR SHRINK, BLOG ABOUT YOUR BLOCK, ENTERTAIN YOUR FELLOW WRITERS, OR TAKE A NAP.

MOSTLY, CONTEMPLATE THE SITUATION UNTIL YOU REALIZE THE REAL REASON FOR YOUR BLOCKAGE/STOPPAGE.

WHAT WRITING THIS ARTICLE DID FOR ME WAS MAKE ME REALIZE THAT:

  • I’m tired.
  • I need a break.
  • A real break where I do NOTHING, NADA, ZILCH.
  • NO book marketing, planning the next move, scheduling book signings, reading blogs on marketing, sales, the latest Net techniques.
  • Take the box of books out of the trunk of the car “just in case.”
  • I need to stop doing what I’m doing and allow my personal process––my soul, if you will––to call the shots.
  • When The Universe wants me to finish Mogollon, I will, and probably pronto.

[HERE’S AN EXERCISE: I throw them in all over Stepping Off the Edge, might as well here. Please jot down any images or thoughts that come to you while you read my list, and the rest of the article, including hops to Spurs’ Writers’ Corner and Spurs Magazine. Take some time and generate your own list of word blockers. Where are you in the process above? I’m not saying that you’re worn out, either. Your situation reflects your writing style and process. You may need a kick in the rear.]

MY REAL PROBLEM IS: I’M POOPED.

I’m taking that break, goin’ to Santa Fe for three weeks. Santa Fe, New Mexico, is like catnip to me. Where we stay, there’s no Internet, no phone, no TV, no roads. Just wind and sky and a few snakes.

Tony leads Corcovado out of the trailer.

Tony leads Corcovado out of the trailer. Note how relaxed the horse is. He never had a problem going into or out of a trainer from this day forward.

WHAT DOES CORCO  SAY ABOUT THIS?

About a minute after the previous photo, Corcovado walked into the trailer easily and with no fuss. He’d decided that he wanted to.

When your soul/brain/heart/body/hands decide it’s time to write, you will. You’ll write good stuff, that deserves to see the light of day.

PS. If you liked this article, you will like my book Stepping Off the Edge. It has much more about living the writer’s life, success, triumph, despair, and JOY.

STEPPING OFF THE EDGE on KINDLE– 99 cents for a limited time!

NUMENON on KINDLE––99 cents for a limited time!

Hasta luego, amigos! I’ll write more later! I have a date with a dirt road and cactus.

 

Numenon, by Sandy Nathan, is a Nautilus Book Awards Silver Winner!

Numenon, by Sandy Nathan, is a 2009 Nautilus Book Awards Silver Winner!

Sandy Nathan
Winner of the 2009 Silver Nautilus Award for Numenon
The Nautilus Awards are dedicated to “changing the world one book at a time.” The Nautilus Award was established to find and reward distinguished literary contributions to spiritual growth, conscious living, high-level wellness, green values, responsible leadership and positive social change.

By winning a Nautilus Silver Award with her book, Numenon,  author Sandy Nathan joins the ranks of  Deepak Chopra, M.D., Barbara Kingsolver, Thich Nnat Hanh, Jean Houston, PhD., Eckhart Tolle, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. All are Nautilus Award winners.

Art Winslow and Book Critics: the bonfire of their vanities

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This post, by Jeff Gomez, originally appeared on his Print is Dead Blog on 5/30/07. Hard as it may be to believe, book review sections were already beginning to shrink and disappear even then—two years ago.

Last week, Art Winslow had an essay on the Huffington Post site’s Eat the Press section; entitled “The New Book Burning,” the essay revolved around the recent reduction of book review sections in a handful of major American newspapers.

Writes Winslow: “In the new book burning we don’t burn books, we burn discussion of them instead. I am referring to the ongoing collapse of book review sections at American newspapers, which has accelerated in recent months, an intellectual brownout in progress that is beginning to look like a rolling blackout instead.”

First of all, I think Winslow is being more than slightly hysterical when he tries to portray the disappearance of book review sections as being “the new book burning.” That’s not only a ridiculous suggestion, but a dangerous one.

Burning books is about the totalitarian eradication of what the ideas in books represent, whereas book review sections being slimmed down or phased out is about simple economics and the fact that, in our Internet age, things are rapidly changing and book reviews are no longer needed. But Winslow prefers to take a darker view, rhetorically asking, “How did we arrive at what seems to be a cultural sinkhole?” Instead of answering that, I’d like to ask Winslow a question: “Where have you been for the past ten years?”

But what I find most interesting about Winslow’s essay is that he’s a “former literary editor and executive editor of The Nation magazine and a regular contributor to Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Bookforum and other publications.” So it seems that Winslow, and many critics and writers like him, are really just clamoring to keep their jobs. In the end, they don’t want things to change because they don’t want to give up the power they currently have.

In the past, Winslow and the other book reviewers out there acted as the arbiters of literary taste: when they would write a good review of a book, their review had the power to propel that book into the national spotlight (and vice versa; a bad review could ruin a book, and sometimes an entire career). So while the importance of movie critics has lessened over the years (gore-fests like Hostel and Saw, which are routinely ravaged by reviewers, go on to make millions at the box office despite what any critic says), in the book world, reviewers have — until fairly recently — retained their clout. (As New Order put it in a song, “We’re not like all those stupid people/who can’t decide what book to read/unless a paper sows the seed”).

But with the Internet, blogs, the rise of “citizen journalism” and user-generated content, book reviewers are seeing their little corner of the world erode and fall into the sea, and they don’t like it.

Read the rest of the post on the Print is Dead Blog.

Science Fiction Doesn't Have To Be Gloomy, Does It?

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This article, by Damien G. Walter, originally appeared on The Guardian UK Books Blog on 9/24/08.

The future can be worrying to consider at the best of times. But with a global economic crisis looming, a war on terrorism and the continuing threat of climate change to ponder, the future looks bleak indeed. It’s at times like these that people seek escape in the pages of popular fiction. But anyone looking for a better future in science fiction is in for a shock.

Back in the golden age of science fiction, the future was a much brighter place. Pulp magazines gave readers amazing stories of flying cars, towering skyscrapers and the utopian metropolis. Legendary writers like Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov predicted a future where science took mankind to the stars and beyond. And all this in the face of the Great Depression, two world wars and the constant threat of nuclear annihilation. There was no lack of reason for people then to be very gloomy indeed about the future, but maybe because the times were dark, readers flocked to the visions of a brighter future offered by science fiction.

But for all its sense of wonder, golden age science fiction was guilty of a peculiar naivety in its depiction of the future. In its wake the character of the genre changed radically. The new wave movement, lead by writers like J G Ballard, Michael Moorcock and Harlan Ellison, reacted against the pulp roots of the genre, writing science fiction that drew heavily on literary technique and values.

Writers from Ursula K Le Guin to Octavia Butler saw the potential of science fiction for expression, but rejected the overwhelmingly white, male perspective that dominated the genre. Bruce Sterling, William Gibson and other cyberpunk authors imagined futures so dark that even the human soul could be destroyed. Science fiction evolved into a sophisticated literature of ideas, offering dark warnings of the future to come.

Read the rest of the article on The Guardian UK Books Blog.

Bloggers, Ask The Right Question: What If I'm Sued Tomorrow?

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This post, by Joan Stewart, originally appeared on her The Publicity Hound’s Blog on 4/28/09.

If you blog, the worst of your worries shouldn’t be how many times to post, or what to write about, or whether to use WordPress or Typepad.

Your Number One concern—the question bloggers never think to ask—should be: “What if somebody sues me tomorrow for copyright infringement, defamation or invasion of privacy—what does that mean?”

Here’s what it means. It could cost you your house, your car and your future income stream.

Take it from me. Being named in a defamation suit that asks for a quarter million dollars in damages turns your world upside down, then drops the bottom out of your stomach.

That’s what happened last October. A reporter from People magazine had called, asking me to comment on a story they were writing about a lawsuit that had been filed by the former headmistress of Oprah Winfrey’s school for girls in South Africa. The plaintiff named me in the suit, along with Oprah and Huffington Post.

Nomvuyo Mzamane, the former headmistress of the Leadership Academy for Girls, cited comments to the media that Oprah made in October and November of 2007 after a dorm matron at the school was charged with assaulting and abusing students.

Mzamane named the Huffington Post and me for a blog item I wrote in November for this blog and for Huffington saying Mzamane was charged in connection with the scandal. She was not charged. I had erred. And the first I had learned about the lawsuit was when People called asking me to comment.

I responded quickly, and People used the entire statement:

“I’ve learned that in my November 7, 2007, blog post, ‘Oprah Scandal: A Lesson in Crisis Management,” and in a column I wrote for Huffington Post on November 19, 2007, I inadvertently erred by saying that the former head mistress of Oprah Winfrey’s Dream Academy was charged with a crime. I deeply regret that error and apologize to former head mistress Nomvuyo Mzamane.

“Journalists, including those on blogs, make mistakes, and if Ms. Mzamane had contacted me about that directly, I would have corrected it online — with an apology — immediately. I have not, in fact, been contacted by her or served with a lawsuit. I’m a firm believer in full compliance with the law, with the Public Relations Society of America’s Code of Ethics and with the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics, and know that I was in compliance with all three in this case.”

I also wrote a correction for my blog. That weekend, I started contacting business associates who might be able to tell me where I could turn for help defending the suit.

I tracked down an old college friend who had worked as a libel attorney in Philadelphia, where the suit was filed. She gave me two good leads:

Read the rest of the article on Joan Stewart’s The Publicity Hound’s Blog.

Seth's Blog: Advice For Authors

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This post, by Seth Godin, originally appeared on his Seth Godin’s Blog on 8/2/06.

It happened again. There I was, meeting with someone who I thought had nothing to do with books or publishing, and it turns out his new book just came out.

With more than 75,000 books published every year (not counting ebooks or blogs), the odds are actually pretty good that you’ve either written a book, are writing a book or want to write one.

Hence this short list:

  1. Lower your expectations. The happiest authors are the ones that don’t expect much. 

     

  2. The best time to start promoting your book is three years before it comes out. Three years to build a reputation, build a permission asset, build a blog, build a following, build credibility and build the connections you’ll need later.

     

  3. Pay for an eidtor editor. Not just to fix the typos, but to actually make your ramblings into something that people will choose to read. I found someone I like working with at the EFA. One of the things traditional publishers used to do is provide really insightful, even brilliant editors (people like Fred Hills and Megan Casey), but alas, that doesn’t happen very often. And hiring your own editor means you’ll value the process more.

     

  4. Understand that a non-fiction book is a souvenir, just a vessel for the ideas themselves. You don’t want the ideas to get stuck in the book… you want them to spread. Which means that you shouldn’t hoard the idea! The more you give away, the better you will do.

     

  5. Don’t try to sell your book to everyone. First, consider this: " 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school." Then, consider the fact that among people even willing to buy a book, yours is just a tiny little needle in a very big haystack. Far better to obsess about a little subset of the market–that subset that you have permission to talk with, that subset where you have credibility, and most important, that subset where people just can’t live without your book.

     

  6. Resist with all your might the temptation to hire a publicist to get you on Oprah. First, you won’t get on Oprah (if you do, drop me a note and I’ll mention you as the exception). Second, it’s expensive. You’re way better off spending the time and money to do #5 instead, going after the little micromarkets. There are some very talented publicists out there (thanks, Allison), but in general, see #1.

     

  7. Think really hard before you spend a year trying to please one person in New York to get your book published by a ‘real’ publisher. You give up a lot of time. You give up a lot of the upside. You give up control over what your book reads like and feels like and how it’s promoted. Of course, a contract from Knopf and a seat on Jon Stewart’s couch are great things, but so is being the Queen of England. That doesn’t mean it’s going to happen to you. Far more likely is that you discover how to efficiently publish (either electronically or using POD or a small run press) a brilliant book that spreads like wildfire among a select group of people.

     

  8. Your cover matters. Way more than you think. If it didn’t, you wouldn’t need a book… you could just email people the text.

     

Read the rest of the post on Seth Godin’s Blog.

Twitter: What Is It, And Why Should Authors Use It?

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This article originally appeared on The Creative Penn on 1/20/09.

Twitter is a social networking tool based on regular updates of 140 characters only. This means you have to be succinct and creative in what you broadcast. I have been reading about Twitter for some time but have only recently joined up (@thecreativepenn).

So How Does It Work?

You “follow” people and can see what they post. People follow you and can see what you post. You can find people by searching for their names or Twitter handles (prefix @), or you can let Twitter suggest people you might be interested in (Find People -> Suggested Users)

You post on the web, by mobile phone or through an application like Tweetdeck which helps you organise your own and other people’s tweets.

Tweetdeck also has a useful URL shortening tool, so you can paste in a really long link and it shortens it for you. (You can also change the colours if you don’t like them).  

People post some very interesting things – news items, links to great sites, promotional info, personal information. You can respond directly to that person – yes, even if they are “famous” ! This can potentially get you noticed by them. You can “re-tweet” other people’s posts i.e. pass them on if it is something interesting. You can ask questions and respond immediately to other people you have connected with, even if they are across the world.

Why Should Authors Use Twitter?

·         Online knowledge and influence. 6 million people and counting belong to Twitter including some of the most influential people online today. If you want to be an author who makes money online, you need to be where the action is.

·         You can network with some great people you might never have met otherwise.

·         You can learn an awful lot by reading tweets from people who know more than you.

·         You can promote yourself. You shouldn’t promote all the time but you can add links to your blog posts, your website or notices of your appearances. You can gain significant traffic this way so it is worth a try.

Useful Twitter Links For Authors 

Directory of book trade people on Twitter – follow them for industry news

Top bloggers you can follow through Twitter – see how they use it for tips of what to do yourself

Authors on Twitter – some surprise entries include John Cleese and Stephen Fry

Some lessons learned from the first few weeks on Twitter – Don’t always promote yourself, Do engage people, Offer valuable content.

The most followed people on Twitter – no. 1 is Barack Obama

6 tips for using your Twitter profile to get new followers – includes creating a custom profile page and using your bio to the best advantage

Feed your blog to Twitter using Twitter Feed

17 ways you can use Twitter including finding prospects, and getting feedback

For the more experienced – Twitter tips – lots and lots to implement on here!

This is an initial post on Twitter as I am just a beginner – I will do more posts later on with more interesting developments! But so far, it is not a waste of time which is the main comment people seem to have about it.

Follow me on Twitter!  

How Many Books Do You Have To Sell?

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This piece, by Jim C. Hines, originally appeared on his blog on 4/29/09. In it, Mr. Hines looks at what it takes for a mainstream author’s book to "earn out" its advance—and why big advances aren’t necessarily a good thing for authors.

Publishers and authors tend to keep actual numbers under wraps when it comes to print runs and books sold. As a result, new authors are often clueless as to what’s normal.

I know I was completely lost the first time I saw actual numbers for Goblin Quest. Was my book selling well? Was I going to get dumped if I didn’t sell 100,000 books in the first year? How many books did my publisher actually print?

I don’t actually know what my print runs have been. I have some guesses, but nothing from the publisher. But then I got to thinking…

We know the median first novel advance for a SF/F author is probably around $5000 or so. That’s the boilerplate first offer I got from Baen (which then fell through, but that’s another story). Average is a little higher than the median, but I’m going to stick with $5000 for ease of math.

We also know not all novels earn out their advance, especially first novels. $5000 is a best-guess on the part of the publisher as to how much they should invest in your new book.

Sticking purely with mass market paperbacks for the moment, let’s say you get royalties at 8% (fairly standard but not universal for an original mass market, I believe) and a cover price of $7.99 (also standard U.S. cover price for mass markets). So you’re earning $.64 per book.

Juggle the numbers, and a $5000 advance means you’re going to need to sell roughly 8,000 books (7,812.5) in order to earn out. In my case, I’d guess the publisher probably did a print run between 10,000 and 15,000 books, but that’s a total guess, and hopefully more experienced publishing folks can speak to that piece.

(ETA: [info]ramblin_phyl points out that there’s also a break-even point in the cost-efficiency of first print runs, which might mean the numbers on that run were a little higher.)

Hardcovers and e-books add more variables, as the royalties are different, but I’m trying to keep things as simple as possible for this example.
 

Read the rest of the article on Jim C. Hines’ blog.

Buy Sandy Nathan's Stepping Off the Edge for 99 cents! Kindle version is less than a buck!

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Stepping Off the Edge is a wild ride to sacred places.
Stepping Off the Edge is a wild ride to sacred places. Includes an exclusive interview with Bill Miller, award winning Native musician, artist, & speaker.

Now you can buy the Kindle edition of my award-winning book, Stepping Off the Edge , for 99 cents! The book is offered at this great price for a limited time only. Click here and go to the Kindle store.

The Kindle edition of Stepping Off the Edge is absolutely gorgeous: The Native American themed interior and cover converted to the Kindle format better than I hoped. All of my pen and ink drawings are included and look beautiful.

This is the book that proves spiritual studies do not have to be boring. Stepping Off the Edge is part memoir, part self help, part riding lesson (horses play a big part), and all amazing.

This book was written during a period of my life that I’m glad is over. Though it provided great material and a way of illustrating everything useful I learned earning two master’s degrees and a life of spiritual practice.

Join me as I find my roots in Missouri’s Ozarks, travel to Tennessee to a Native American retreat, and meet Bill Miller, multi-Grammy winning musician and artist. Lots more, including the meaning of the word "fault" to people from California.

STEPPING OFF THE EDGE WON SIX NATIONAL AWARDS!
* 2007 Benjamin Franklin Award Finalist in New Age (Spirituality/Metaphysics)
* Bronze Medal Winner in Self Help, 2007 IPPY Awards
* National Indie Excellence Awards 2007: Finalist in THREE Categories: Memoir, Self Help, & Spirituality.

FROM THE BACK OF THE BOOK:
When Sandy Nathan set out to write a book about her profound experience at the Gathering, a Native American spiritual retreat, little did she know it would guide her to chronicle a life of stepping off the edge. Again and again , she takes the risks needed for her soul’s growth and vividly presents her personal journey––one of growing into the courageous spiritual being she is. Sandy reminds us we all possess spiritual greatness: It is our birthright.

By walking with Sandy along her path we get more than a glimpse of a person. We get a revealing and inspiring view of her life. Her adventure and the understanding she adds as she writes help us use her experience to enhance out own development. This book does much more than tell about a life: It takes us by the hand (or sometimes by the nose) and leads us to the opportunity afforded by spiritual practice. And practice is the key word.

Stepping Off the Edge is alive with information and inspiration. It is a book about doing. It’s more than a book that describes chocolate cake or even one that tells you how to make chocolate cake. It is a book that gets your mouth watering for chocolate cake and then lets you loose in the kitchen stocked with recipes and everything you need to make your own chocolate cake. With fudge frosting. And chocolate chips if you want them.

In this fascinating narrative you will encounter the basics of prayer, meditation, worship, spiritual retreat, and how a life can become dedicated to the pursuit of experiencing the divine. You will even find how to domesticate your mind and make it an ally in your quest for inner knowledge.

It is said that the path to self-awareness is a solitary one. Stepping Off the Edge opens you to the possibility that it can be fun, challenging and rewarding.

Sandy Nathan & Bill Miller at the Gathering Book Signing
Sandy Nathan & Bill Miller at the Gathering Book Signing

WHAT DO THE CRITICS SAY?

"This is a dynamic book. It’s alive with Ms. Nathan’s passion, and her presence is in every line, teaching and learning with you, helping you when you stumble, because she’s stumbled too. It’s rich with energy and meaning."
– Gerald DiPego, Screenwriter, Phenomenon

"Sandy’s book has got to be one of the most fun to read books about spirituality ever written. She takes the reader along on her adventures with a down to earth approach and style that keeps the reader in touch–with both reality and spirituality. Informative, entertaining, and enlightening."
Natural Horse Magazine, Volume 8 Issue 5

#PublisherFail: The ONE Thing Big Pub Must Change In Order To Survive

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Big, Commercial Publishers:

First, the bad news. Your revenues are in decline, your distribution model is unsustainable, you’re beset on all sides by technologies and cultural changes that seem to have just as much potential to harm your interests as to further them, and despite having been in the same business for over a century, your inability to predict your customers’ wants and needs makes you feel (and operate) more like professional gamblers than the capable captains of a respectable industry.

Now, the good news. All of these seemingly insurmountable challenges are really just the distracting side effects of a single, underlying issue. Better yet, it’s an issue you can resolve anytime you like, by yourselves, without the input of any high-priced consultants, the adoption of any expensive new technology, nor the invention of some as-yet-undiscovered business paradigm.

When I tell you what the underlying issue is, your initial reaction will most likely be to dismiss what I’m saying out of hand. All manner of rebuttals will immediately spring to mind, you will remind yourself that you are the publisher here after all, and there’s no way some nutjob on the internet could possibly understand your business as well as you do.

If only for the sake of being able to honestly say you’ve explored every possible option, please commit now to keeping an open mind for as long as it takes you to finish reading this article and giving it full consideration. At this point, can you really afford to ignore any new ideas?

The underlying issue is this: you have an image problem. More accurately, you have a self-image problem.

You don’t recognize the business you’re actually in, and as a result you believe your business is unique and ultimately unassailable on some level. This distorted self-image keeps you from fully aligning your business practices with your business goals and the desires of your customers.

You think you are curators of literature, and both authors and guardians of culture, but those functions cannot possibly be performed by any organization being run with a primary profit motive. You are no more curators of literature than Nike is a curator of shoes. If you wish to remain solvent, you can only be authors and guardians of culture to the extent that it helps (or at least, doesn’t harm) your bottom line.

You also believe your industry in its present form is a permanent fixture of modern culture, an institution venerated by the public it serves. You believe in the inevitable longevity of your industry, in its very right to exist regardless of profitability, with the same certainty and fervor the executives of print newspapers had about their own industry until very recently.

If you could see yourselves as outsiders do, you would realize you’re actually engaged in the most common (and possibly oldest) business there is: producing and selling consumer products. There is no shame in this; your products have the power to inform, entertain and inspire. However, bibliophiles notwithstanding, there is nothing inherently valuable or sacred about your products, and you will only remain in business as long as large numbers of people are willing to buy them. Yours are not the only products that can inform, entertain or inspire. If consumers find a competing product they like better, they will buy the competing product.

The fact that your product happens to be books doesn’t make it unique or special in any way, in a business sense. However, you believe books are special and unique products, and have built your entire industry around traditions and practices that support your false belief, often to the detriment of your business. In every other commercial industry, traditions and practices are only honored so long as they help (or at least, don’t harm) the bottom line.

Purveyors of computers, cell phones, clothing and even kitchen appliances wait to see how well consumers like a given product before investing the effort and money on releasing a premium edition of the product. If you intend to release both a premium (hardcover) and standard (paperback) edition of your product, you release the premium version first, and release of the standard version is often contingent on sales performance of the premium edition.

Many times I’ve wanted a book that I couldn’t afford in hardcover, or didn’t think was worth the hardcover price, but the book was never released in paperback. Apparently you aren’t aware of this, but cost-conscious consumers—and this group encompasses most consumers—will frequently "wait for the paperback" in the same way they will often opt to skip a movie at the theater and "wait for the DVD" or "wait for it to come out on cable". This business practice alone probably costs you millions of dollars a year in unsold hardcovers and lost paperback sales, yet you continue to do it because it’s traditional to your industry and you’ve attached a certain degree of status and internal fanfare to the idea of a hardcover release.

Movie studios allow their customers to access and use their products when ever, how ever, and in whatever format those customers want. Whether it’s in the theater, on DVD for sale or rent, Blu-Ray, via digital streaming online, on pay-per-view, or even on an iPod, the customer is completely empowered to control his experience of the product. As a result, many, many more copies of the product are sold and filmmakers earn much more money than if they limited their films to theatrical release alone.

(continued…comment area is on the next page)

 

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#PublisherFail: The ONE Thing Big Pub Must Change In Order To Survive, Pt. 2

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(cont’d from Part 1)

Meanwhile, your industry is investing its time and money in practices, devices and technologies intended to keep control of, and broad accessibility to, your products out of the hands of your customers. You don’t release every book in print, audio and ebook formats. You release very few titles in audiobook form, yet fight against Text To Speech (TTS) technology even on books you have no intention of ever releasing in audiobook form. You don’t show strong support for cross-platform ebook standards, yet you fully support the proprietary file formats used on the Kindle and Sony Reader. Having learned nothing from PR debacles in the music and film industries, you are moving to criminalize your customers with stringent DRM.

You believe your products are special and your role as their producer grants you both rights and responsibilities over and above the mere needs of your customers. 

With respect to TTS and DRM, Big Pub hides behind a shield of ‘protecting the interests of the artist’, just as music and film producers have done in the past. But it didn’t take long for those producers to realize motivated pirates and hackers will always exist, and withholding purchase and use options from your entire customer base in order to discourage the criminal acts of a few is a bad business decision. They also realized customers are willing to pay for digital media, and in fact will buy digital media just as often as hard copy media, so long as it’s convenient, affordable, and meets their needs. Free from your curator complex, they’ve embraced digital media to the fullest extent and are reaping the benefits.

The software, videogame and film industries take cross-platform support for their customers a step further by providing simplified or downsampled versions of their products for use on mobile devices. No one playing Guitar Hero on a Nintendo DS expects the same gaming experience as playing the full-featured console game, no one using MS Office Mobile expects to find the same feature set as regular MS Office, and no one watching a movie on an iPod expects the same audience experience as seeing the film in a theater. Makers of these products understand that on a portable device the customer’s priority is—surprise!—portability. Content and functionality matter to customers too, but customers are willing to trade bells and whistles for convenience and cost savings.

When you start down the road to release a book in electronic, portable form, you begin with the assumption that you must preserve the “integrity of the page” and “integrity of print branding”. If you can’t exactly duplicate the frames and shading employed in sidebars, or get the tiny graphic of the geek with his finger in the air to display in the exact location and size as they appear in the print book, you don’t want to release an electronic version at all. Even when working with a minimally-formatted book like a novel, you strive to preserve original fonts, typesetting and layout details in the ebook version. You set up task forces, invest in development of new devices, software and technologies, and generally make things much harder and more expensive than they need to be.

You appear to be completely oblivious to the fact that one of the major draws of the ebook is the flexibility users have in controlling how the text is displayed. Most e-reading software and devices allow the user to change the font, font size, line spacing, orientation of the page, and sometimes even the font and page colors. All your efforts to preserve the “integrity of the page” are wasted.

Nevertheless, you pass the expense of these efforts on to the ebook buyer, and as a result your customers think you’re ripping them off on ebooks. You repeatedly defend your pricing on the grounds that your overhead in producing an ebook is comparable to producing a print book, but you leave out the part where you could provide a simplified version of the ebook at a much lower cost—a cost consumers would find much more reasonable and appealing. You ignore the customer’s priorities (portability, convenience and cost savings) in favor of your own, self-imposed priorities. Once again, it’s because you believe your products are special and you answer to a higher calling than serving your customer base.

Even your unsustainable policies concerning bookseller returns are the direct result of placing your flawed self-image and industry traditions above the needs of your customers. Chain bookstores are no longer the only game in town for bookselling and consumers already know the chains can’t compete with online vendors for selection or price, with ‘big box’ stores for convenience or price, nor with indie booksellers for service. None of your customers’ priorities are being served by chain booksellers (which is why they’re suffering a slow economic death), yet you continue to remain in voluntary bondage to the chains and even grant them preferential terms.

When chain record stores like Musicland and Tower Records began to falter, record labels didn’t engage in efforts to prop them up or prolong the inevitable. Instead, the labels followed their customers into new markets and new distribution models. If you didn’t feel beholden to the ‘old ways’ of bookselling, you would do the same.

If you want to take the high road and place artistic integrity and tradition above profit, that’s fine. Independent imprints do it all the time. The only problem is, preservation of artistic integrity and tradition often exists at cross-purposes to mass-market economic demands. You want all the big profits that come from serving the mass market, yet believe you are entitled to deny the wants of that market whenever you choose, with no impact on your bottom line. You feel justified in forcing your customers to subsidize the costs and suffer the inconveniences of your misguided efforts in curatorship.
 

Let libraries, museums, academics and critics decide which of your products are worthy of preservation, just as they do in art, film and music. Drop your curator complex, and suddenly all the ancillary challenges and crises that eat up most of your days and resources fall away. Of course you will always have the challenge of trying to forecast which products will be most popular to your customers, but so does every other business that produces consumer products.

Letting go of costly, needless business practices reduces your risk on each individual product, and enables you to open up new revenue streams that can help balance the overall profitability scales when an individual product fails. Focus on making your customers’ priorities your own, and the way forward becomes obvious.

And lest you think your industry can never fail completely, since people will always need sources of information, inspiration and entertainment…there’s an app for that. Lots of them, actually.
 

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April L. Hamilton is the author of The IndieAuthor Guide and the founder of Publetariat. Her latest book is From Concept to Community.

Oh What A Tangled Web We Weave

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This piece, by Janice Hardy, originally appeared on her The Other Side of the Story blog on 4/15/09.

We spend a lot of time focusing on our core conflict, and rightly so since that’s what driving our novels. But what about the subplots? Those pesky side stories that either deepen our novels or side track them to dark alleys and bang them over the head.

With my first novel, the subplots ruled. Every time I got a cool idea for a character, no matter how important they were, I ran with it. That’s probably why I had eleven POVs and couldn’t tell you what the dang book was about.

The next novel, I kept a tight leash on the subplots. The book was pretty flat, because nothing beyond the main story ever happened to shake things up.

Finally, I found a balance that worked for me. Core external conflict, core internal conflict, handful of subplots.

But there’s a catch…

They all have to be connected.

The core conflict is the bulk of my story. Protag needs X, and will do anything to get X. But constantly reading about, oh lets make up something… Bob being chased by zombies … is pretty boring after a while. We all know how stories go. We know that Bob is going to be thwarted by zombies at every turn until the end of the book, where he’ll pull something out of his, um, hat and save the day. (or get eaten if that’s the kind of story you’re writing).

Bob’s core conflict: Zombies are trying to eat him and everyone around him.

His goal: To survive and kill off the zombies.

Yawn.

We need subplots to spice this up so it isn’t as predictable what will happen. I could give Bob another threat to deal with, say crazed renegade bikers taking advantage of the chaos, who are also trying to kill him. But really, two "trying to kill you" threats are basically the same thing. The stakes are still the same, and the story is still going to follow the same path as with the zombies. There’s nothing new to offer the reader in terms of a problem to overcome.

What I need to do, is give Bob a problem that has totally different stakes than getting eaten. He has to risk something else that matters to him. End of the world stories need a little romance, so let’s give him Jane.

Jane is the love if his life, but he’s been afraid to tell her that. They’re running from zombies together, and he’s working up the courage to profess his love for her. He has something beyond himself at stake now, and bad things could happen to either. Worrying about Jane is an additional worry for Bob. But what might happen to Bob can easily still happen to Jane, so the stakes are only marginally raised. We need a different threat. A personal threat, since the other threats are all impersonal.
 

Read the rest of the article on Janice Hardy’s The Other Side of the Story blog.

Ed Patterson's Interview on the Ozuna Show – Archive is now Available

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For those of you who were unable to listen to my hour long interview on the Bobby Ozuna show – The Soul of Humanity – last Wednesday, the show can be heard in the archives by following the link below. It takes about 5 minutes to download on a DSL or broad bandwidth computer. 
 
The link to the radio show archive is here.
 
 
I would appreciate any feedback you could provide.
 
Thanks
 
Edward C. Patterson
Author of The Jade Owl and 10 other published books

 

eBook Reader Screens

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This content is cross-posted at KindleFormatting.com.

There has been a lot of talk lately about eBook device screens, so I thought I would add my thoughts to the mix.

Steven Windwalker wrote recently about the future of E Ink and what he expects we will see in versions of the Kindle coming in the next few years. He based his predictions on information from the makers of the e-paper screens and on the assumption that Amazon will stick with that technology indefinitely, and the predictions sound very plausible.

My concern with that possible roadmap is that the "full-color" device Stephen mentions for 2011 will probably be quite anemic in actual color. The current color E Ink technology is limited to pastels, and from what I can tell will always look washed out and not true to the actual colors being displayed. The technology just seems flawed in that regard. 

Note: I originally misquoted Stephen in this post. After he graciously pointed that out to me, I have adjusted my previous thoughts. My sincerest apologies, Stephen. 

The most interesting news recently is that PixelQi  is developing a screen  with three different settings: low-power black and white, e-paper, and full-color LCD. It sounds to me like this technology has some great value and will become a condender in the marketplace. Add to that Mike Cane’s guess  that PixelQi might be providing Apple with screens for its rumored tablet/eBook device, and we have some tantalizing reasons to stay up with the news. 

However, I’d like to point out that three screen display modes is still that: different display modes. Just because I am outside do I have to stop seeing color? That might work well on an OLPC, but I like the best possible display on my devices.

That’s where a little-known  and seemingly ignored technology comes into play. I don’t remember where I first heard of the Qualcomm mirasol display, but I am pretty sure it was not in relation to eBooks. The mirasol technology is reflective like E Ink, but it is full-color with faster-than-video refresh rates. Yes, you heard me right. We could have an eBook device that uses the same power consumption as the current ones, but with color and video. Where do I sign up? 

The bummer is that the technology is still in development. Qualcomm has successfully deployed monochrome screens, but apparently making the full-color ones is more difficult.

I think the major players in the eBook market are barking up the wrong tree. E Ink is fine for basic devices, but I would much prefer the mirasol screen to a washed-out, pastel, slow-refresh E Ink screen that we might possibly have in two years. 

Here is a sales video that might be interesting to the more sales or techie-oriented among us. And here are some interesting pictures of the full-color screen in different lighting situations.

Joshua Tallent is an eBook guru located in Austin, Texas. His company, eBook Architects, provides eBook formatting  and consulting to authors and publishers, as well as information about the Kindle eBook format at KindleFormatting.com. Joshua is also the author of Kindle Formatting: The Complete Guide.

More On Revising And Editing

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This piece, by David B. Coe, originally appeared on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Novelists site on 4/23/09. 

 I’m in the midst of rewrites.  I received a revision letter from my editor the other day and have been wading through his comments, trying to bring fresh thinking to a novel that I finished six months ago, the last book in a series that I was glad to finish. 

Don’t get me wrong; I like the series very much, and I think that the three books taken together represent my best work to date.  But this trilogy followed a five book series set in the same world, and I.  Am.  Ready.  To.  Move.  On.  

And in fact I have moved on.  I’ve completed the first book in a new project that I love.  My mind is there, in that new world.  My head is filled with the stories of a whole new cast of characters.  Wrenching myself out of that world and back into this one is no small feat.

I find myself wishing that just this once my editor had said in his revision letter, “David, this is perfect.  Don’t change a word.”

Okay, I’m back now.  For a while there I was laughing too hard to type….  

I’ve described the revision process in a more methodical way elsewhere and I won’t bother going over it again here.  But I will say that, for me, it may be the most emotionally draining part of writing a novel and preparing it for publication.  I don’t mean this as a complaint.  Truly I don’t.  But going through my own 140,000 word manuscript reading comment after comment about all the things I did wrong isn’t easy.  

This manuscript is actually pretty clean; few problems over all.  Still, there must be 300 comments in there, ranging from subtle changes in wording, to corrections of silly mistakes, to more substantial comments relating to character and plotting.  And though I love my editor, and though I’ve been through this many times before and have developed a fairly thick skin, I have to admit that some of my editor’s remarks raise my hackles.

Read the rest of the article on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Novelists site.