Month: October 2009

Excerpt from Open A Window – Alzheimer's Caregiver Handbook

by

 

 

This is my description of what happens to a person’s brain when they have Alzheimer’s disease.

 

 

When we are born, our brain is full of well lit, airy, vacant rooms with an open window in each one. Knowledge and experiences flow through the open windows to fill the rooms as we grow, and flow back out as we mentally call on them to create the type of human being we become. Imagine if by the time you are in your sixties, you was to find yourself searching for a thought in the memory room. You find that the room had become dark, the drapes are drawn. You strain to see the familiar object you are searching for in your mind, trying to remember what it looked like the last time you saw it, but you can’t find that object in the dark.

That’s what happens to a person who is afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease. One such person was a large framed, boisterous farmer who spoke with a loud voiced, salty vocabulary. First, the memory room in his brain became dark, then other rooms darkened as they were covered with a black shroud called plaque that continued slowly to spread from room to room.

As it entered the open windows, the plaque closed them, and the drapes drew shut to put out the light. As this happened to the farmer, he became a shell of the man his family and friends once knew and was admitted to a care center. In time, he forgot how to feed himself, had trouble swallowing, couldn’t do his activities of daily living skills, and could barely stand long enough to transfer from the bed to the wheelchair. The only vocabulary he had left was loud, frustrated profanity unless he chose to parrot short sentences he heard from the aides such as "It’s time to eat.", or "It’s bedtime.".

There came a time when the farmer quit repeating what he heard. His face became expressionless, and his eyes stared vacantly. I was sure that most of the windows in his brain had shut, became locked, and would never reopen again. I was wrong!

Since the farmer was in his room most of the day, I had taken to sitting him in the living room with the other residents after the evening meal. I hoped people talking, and Vanna White flashing across the television screen would stimulate his mind. As time went by, I gave up hope that what I was doing would trigger anything in the farmer that I would see outwardly, but I consoled myself with the idea that I didn’t know what was happening inside those dark rooms in his brain. You know how the window frames in an old house doesn’t fit quite tight, and a small amount of air seeps between the sills and the frames? I thought maybe that might be how the windows in the farmer’s mind were working so I felt I shouldn’t give up trying to stimulate him even if I couldn’t see I was helping him.

One evening at bedtime, I pushed the farmer’s wheelchair across the living room. As we neared a visitor, sitting by his wife, the visitor reached out his hand and patted the farmer’s knee.

"Hello," the visitor greeted.

"Hello," the farmer returned in his booming voice, and he called the man by name. The blank expression on the farmer’s face changed to one of joy at seeing an old friend.

"He knows you!" I exclaimed in surprise as I realized the farmer recognized the visitor, and he actually spoke without repeating another person’s sentence. The farmer’s eyes remained focused on the visitor.

"He should," the visitor replied. "We’ve been friends for years, and we were both on the board of a business in town for a long time, weren’t we?"

"Yes," the farmer answered with gusto.

I could see a calm look of contentment on his face as the memory room’s window crept open to let out the memories I had been so sure were trapped forever in darkness.

"We went to a lot of those board meetings together," the visitor continued. He patted the farmer’s knee again as he said, "This is the man who made a lot of the important decision at the meetings, didn’t you?"

Tears welled up in the farmer’s eyes as he struggled to grasp memories long forgotten. I hated to see him so sad, and I didn’t want this to be an uncomfortable situation for him or the visitor so I tried to add a little humor to the conversation.

"Oh, sure! Were those important decisions what time to go get the beer after the meetings were over?"

Both men laughed at my teasing as the farmer slowly boomed out, "Yes!"

Then I explained to the visitor that it was the farmer’s bedtime so he had to leave. By the time I had wheeled the farmer the short distance down the hall into his room and closed the door, hiss face was expressionless again. His eyes stared vacantly, focused on the drapes behind his bed which were closed across the window just like the pair that darkened the window that had shut again in his mind.

For all my trying, I hadn’t been the one to open a window for the farmer, but that’s all right because I was there to see it happen, and that was enough incentive to make me keep trying.

　

Published in Open A Window – Alzheimer’s Caregiver Handbook by Fay Risner CNA    ISBN 1438244991

And in Jolene Brackey’s book Creating Moments Of Joy –third edition 

ISBN 1557533660

 

 

 

 

Excerpt from Open A Window – Alzheimer’s Caregiver Handbook

 

Windows In The Brain

 

The DIY Author

by

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.

16 Ways to Increase Creativity and Generate Clever Ideas

by

This post, from Seth M. Baker, originally appeared on his Happenchance blog on 9/15/09.

Do you ever feel like someone replaced your brain with a cinder block?

Has your river of brainy brilliance turned to a sluice of stumped stupidity?

No matter what kind of work you do, sometimes you run into a wall; the ideas dry up and you feel anything but creative. It happens to everyone. Don’t worry. You’re not alone. You need a break. You need a strategy. You need a saga.

Here’s your saga, delivered in 16 steaming hot points. Use them, abuse them, but do tell me how they work for you.

1. Consistent Effort If you make a consistent effort to create new things, you’re bound to have results. If you just wait around for inspiration to strike, you could be waiting for a long time. Inspiration tends to strike those who are already in the middle of the creative process. A reward, if you will, for your diligent work.

2. Record Everything Keep a notebook, sketchbook, or recording device handy at all times. Ideas are slippery as eels, and if you wait too long, the damn things will swim away. If you have a smashing idea just before you fall asleep, you probably won’t remember it in the morning, and if you’re driving or rolling on the subway, something else will distract your attention.

3. Elaborate on Something If you’ve already made something cool, go back and see if you can’t expand on it. Especially if some time has passed and an idea has had time to incubate, you’ll have new things to add, angles to elaborate on.

4. Switch Gears If you’re doing brain work, do body work, and vice versa. If you’re writing a report, do a puzzle, if you’re building a sculpture of a giant chrome sponge, sing a song.

5. Think Laterally Look for associated ideas, especially while you’re already working on something. As I’m writing this, I’ve had ideas for four six more posts. While I won’t use them all, it’s nice to have them to draw from.

6. Mind Maps Mind maps are effective because they make the most of lateral, horizontal thinking. They give you a chance to put a lot of information down about a topic without worrying about actually organizing the information. This is just my opinion, but mind maps may be a close representation of how thoughts are structured. Here’s the wiki entry.

7. Don’t be Afraid of Bad Ideas When you have a lot of bad ideas, you’re bound to have good ones. Plus, with lots of bad ideas you’ll have less trouble telling the good from the bad.

Read the rest of the post, which features tips #8-16, on Happenchance. Also read the follow-up post, 14 More Ways to Increase Creativity and Generate Clever Ideas, also written by Seth M. Baker, on the same site.

Are Publishers Too White To Survive – Who Cares?

by

A recent meeting with two Caucasian well-respected literary agent friends of mine cemented that concern when one announced, “We’re all the same, [people the publishing industry]. We’re all white, we’re all over-educated, Ivy-leaguers, many of whom are trust fund babies.”

Jeff Rivera, Declining Book Sales?

WTF? Seriously?

This is apparently going to be remembered as Rant Week since I’ve been forced to emphasize the loud in loudpoet way more than usual, so bear with me a minute and don’t jump to any conclusions.

One of the few things I hate more than pundits are stereotypes, especially when they’re being used to make a point I might otherwise be inclined to agree with, but Rivera’s well-intentioned point in his GalleyCat op-ed so overshoots the mark that it’s kind of embarrassing, especially in light of his usual editorial role there as, well, the token guy of color.

Or so it felt for his first few months when the majority of his posts included the qualifier… “of Color“.

In the op-ed, Rivera argues that the decline in book sales is partly because the “publishing industry has lost touch with… who the consumer actually is.” No argument there, but then he takes the rather bizarre angle of citing a US Census Bureau projection that “by 2042 the minority (aka person of color) will actually become the majority” and concludes that “there are not enough people of color working in the book publishing industry.”

Despite the industry having a lot more immediately pressing concerns than the racial make-up of the country 33 years from now (?!?!), I’m still kind of with him overall — I’ve been in way too many meetings in my career where I was the only naturally tan face in the room — but then he totally jumps the shark with the “Trust Fund Muffy from Harvard” nonsense that’s the diversity-in-media equivalent of Godwin’s Law.

Does publishing have a diversity problem? Hell yes; of course it does! But just like comparing someone to Hitler tends to stop a debate in its tracks and makes the person making the comparison look foolish, dropping the trust fund stereotype into this particular debate — even if it’s your Caucasian friend saying it — has a similar effect.

Justine Larbalestier garnered a lot of attention earlier this summer when she intelligently and rationally spoke out about the whitewashing of the cover of her latest novel, Liar, by its U.S. publisher, Bloomsbury, jumpstarting an invaluable conversation that ultimately led to the cover being changed after the backlash become too loud to ignore. A white woman from Sydney, Australia, Larbalestier once answered the question asking why her protagonists weren’t white by noting: “Because no white teen has ever complained about their lack of representation in those books.”

That’s an issue I’ve wrestled in the past, particularly in relation to comic books, noting that I wanted “heroes that I can share with my kids as they grow up so they don’t have to look to a Boba Fett, his face always hidden behind a mask, his true identity unclear.” (Funny that, years later, he’d actually turn out to look a little bit like me after all. Closer than Luke Skywalker, at least!)

On the question of whether or not “black books” sell, Larbalestier smartly notes:

The notion that “black books” don’t sell is pervasive at every level of publishing. Yet I have found few examples of books with a person of colour on the cover that have had the full weight of a publishing house behind them…

There is, in fact, a large audience for “black books” but they weren’t discovered until African American authors started self-publishing and selling their books on the subway and on the street and directly into schools. And, yet, the publishing industry still doesn’t seem to get it. Perhaps the whole “black books don’t sell” thing is a self-fulfilling prophecy?

In the end, it all comes back to marketing and an exaggerated sense of entitlement.

MOST books don’t sell, and it’s typically only the sure bets that get a publisher’s marketing muscle, ineffective and out of shape as it may be in many cases. Unless they’re already a well-established name, every author is going to have to bust their ass to market their own work, whether it’s published by a traditional publisher or self-published. I used to run into many of those authors Larbalestier mentions, on the subway and on the street, hand-selling their books to anyone who’d show interest, and the poetry slam and indie comics scenes are powered by the exact same kind of ambition and drive.

While the major publishing houses could certainly do more to encourage diversity in their staffs, both on the editorial and business sides, most of them aren’t exactly standing on the firmest ground these days, so why worry about them anyway?

I’m inclined to go back to my comic book days and quote Cheryl Lynn of Digital Femme, whom, frustrated by the sad state of the comics union, nailed the solution back in 2007:

“I can see that I am going to have to make the fucking comics.

…right now I’m doing the second easiest thing. And that is to not-so-politely bitch. Because I suppose I’m still hoping that someone else will make the fucking comics. Because there are a ton of people out there with infinitely more talent and monetary resources than I possess. People who already have an established reputation and a publishing house that adores them. And I don’t. But they don’t give a damn. And I do.”

At the end of the day, we have two choices: complain and hope somebody fixes things for us, or STFU and get to work being the change we want to see in the world.

Rivera, for the most part, seems to be a good guy trying to do his part to change things for the better via his well-intentioned “People of Color” contributions to GalleyCat, and his own project, GumboWriters, but that op-ed is the rare case of words speaking louder than actions and potentially doing more harm than good.

This is a cross-posting of a post that originally appeared on Loudpoet on 10/9/09.

Don't Hate The Wait

by

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.

Crafting Your Back Cover — The Selling Continues….

by

…or at least it should continue.  The work you’ve put into designing an effective, attention-grabbing cover now continues with the spine and back.  I’ve made a point of mentioning in the first installment of this discussion, that I believe the spine can be as important as the front cover in generating interest.  It might be where your sales presentation begins.

If your book is going to be marketed to book sellers, and they will display it in the stacks, then the spine may be your only chance to persuade a reader to pull your book out and give it a look.  It’s a possibility that you should plan for, whether bookseller sales are a definite part of your strategy right now or not.

Of course, if your book will be hard-bound in cabretta leather with gold-leaf titling, then this discussion won’t be appropriate, but for anyone marketing a paper-bound book, this is for you.  

Tradition seems to work…

Tradition dictates that on a book spine, the authors name appears at the top, and is smaller in size than the book title.  Unless you have a very compelling reason why you want to alter this, having to do with your book’s content, resist the temptation to get too creative here.  The traditional way is what readers expect to see, and it might confuse them, and lose their interest, if it is not set up that way.  Be sure to leave space for your publisher’s imprint, if needed. 

I like the way a wrap around cover/spine/back leads the reader to naturally turn the book over and over in their hands.  If your background graphic image can be set up that way, it subtly implies a "continuing" story — on the cover.  Hard vertical edges, such as in abruput color changes, from font, to spine, to back cover, stop the eye and might distract the reader’s attention from abosrbing your carefully crafted pitch.

Even if only a small section of the front image will wrap around, I believe it is an effective tool to carry the reader’s interest to the back cover, where you do the main selling.

The point of the excercise…

The reason for a back cover design, is to persuade the reader to open up your book.  It will carry some very important information.  Foremost, is your hard-hitting, highly condensed lead-in copy.  A paragraph. Two at the most. Only narrative that leads to action. Events.

Use a "lead in" as the heading. It should be considered your agent pitch on steroids — lean and mean.  You shouldn’t summarize here, you should give the reader a savory taste. Whet their appetite for the salient meal inside: tasty, well-defined and believable characters, an intriguing plot, and questions. 

I’ve found that it makes good sense to end your back-cover pitch with a question or two.  The idea is that the answers will be found inside — in the reading.  Never ask a prospective buyer a question they can answer "no" to.  Leave them with "leading" questions — the kind that pose a situation, impart emotions or create empathy.  In the case of a non-fiction work, it’s always a good idea to reinforce the benefits by leaving them with specifics — here, concentrate upon the strengths of your work, as opposed to any other source where the answers might be found by the prospect.

Assembling the pieces…

Insert this element using the grid we discussed before — the rule of fives or fifths.  Be sure to include live space for barcoding/publisher’s imprint in the grid design.  A cover wrap around here can carry over to bleed, or end 1/3 of the way over.  You can end it with a hard color edge — creating a dark field for your copy — or a gentle fade, if a white or light-valued copy area is what you have in mind. 

If the background ilustrative or photographic cover image wraps, look for apparent lines within the image that will provide a good visual tie-in the the pitch heading.  Use the same visual eye-movement ideas we discussed in the first two installments. Lead the reader’s eye to your pitch. Put your pitch copy in the proper position for maximum retention and readability using at least 12 point type here in a font that carries into the book’s content.  You’ve got one more element to place.

Smile….Really?

Another element that will be found on the back cover is the author photo.  It isn’t an absolute, unless who you are is central to the work inside.  On the other hand, a good portrait can work well in helping the prospective reader find "comon ground" with the author.  This personalizes the message, and gives the writing inside a real voice. 

Don’t just use any old shot of yourself you happen to have handy.  You’ll want to consider contrast and lighting, so the best of the image will be communicated even in a smaller size. It should be cropped tight for maximum "interaction" with the viewer, and your eyes shuld seem to make eye contact. 

Your expression, in the image should connected with the feeling of the "voice" inside, and the subject matter.  For example, I wouldn’t use an author photo with a big, toothy grin on the back of a work dealing with the Irish Famine.  I wouldn’t want to use an image that looked like you were burying your mother either.  I tend to like a generous, open, yet pensive expression in author photos.  Unless you’re pitching (you’re still pitching here…) something hilarious — when a big grin might actually work well. 

Try out a few different images, on dummies of the back cover, printed on your trusty photo printer, until you select one that covers all the bases for you and those whose opinions you trust.  Find out why they like the shot, not just that they "like" it.  You’ll get more insight as to what an author photo can do.  Also don’t be afraid to use a gray-scale image for your photo — it seems to carry a bit more "gravitas" for most viewers, but color might really be important, say if you’re a colorful person (red hair, green eyes, for example) or need to make a more personal connection with the reader.

Double-check the size of the publisher’s live area — for your publisher’s barcode, imprint, etc.  They will usually tell you what size they want you to leave, or it will be in their cover template.

Testing…testing…1,2,3…

One final step, that I recommend, is to find an old paperback, the approximate size of your book and glue (rubber cement works really well here) an actual size full-color dummy of your cover to it, making up a full dummy of your book. 

Then, dummy or full color proof from your publisher in hand, pay a visit to your local book seller. Even if bookstore sales are not going to be a major part of your marketing, the knowledge gained from hands-on experience running a bookstore can be invaluable to acheiving the best cover you can for your book. 

Make an appointment firsthand, explaining that you want to get some impressions from the seller and staff, and that you want to test your cover on tables and in stacks to see if the cover design works the way you want it to. 

Then go in, and do it. Take notes.  Be sure that every impression you receive is the one you’re after. If one differs, be sure to take it seriously. Consider a re-design if the departure is distracting enough to be a problem.  You’re looking for raves here — and while they may be low key (no gleeful clapping, etc.) they are what you need to hear. If you don’t — ask why not, and try to get your respondents to be specific.  Take their comments seriously — and consider them all before signing off on that final proof.  It’s always easier to fix something before putting it out there in front of the market. 

Finally — keep listening. Keep asking. If there is a distraction of problem with your cover, you can still revise it — if you’re POD publishing, that is — and acheive better sales as a result of your effort.  Don’t lose interest.  Your book may have new lives ahead you haven’t considered.  Maybe an entirely new market niche will open up that will require a specialized edition — who knows?  Keep your options open, and be ready to implement them on a moment’s notice. 

Good luck — remember that the writing is supposed to be the fun part. The rest is hard work.

Note: If you’d like specific feedback, in a curmudgeonly fashion of course, on your book’s cover design, then by all means, submit jpg image(s) for my consideration in your comments.  I’ll get back to you within a week, if I can.

#FridayFlash: Justice For Cody

by

This is something new for me. Since I’ve been so busy with the whole indie author dog and pony show, I haven’t had time to work on my latest novel in over a year. But this new thing, flash fiction, has come to my rescue and I’m finding I really like it. Flash fiction is short stories of just a few pages (or less!), and many authors have begun posting them on Fridays. Hence, #FridayFlash.

The brevity of the format makes it feel much more doable than trying to make progess on a novel, and I’m finding the limited space forces tight writing and necessitates focus in a piece. I think it builds and hones skills. As often as time allows I’ll be posting my #FridayFlash here on Publetariat, since people come to my Indie Author Blog to read stuff about self-publishing and indie authorship, not my fiction. So here’s ‘Justice For Cody’. – A

 

She drifted back into awareness as the voice intoned, “…but we’re afraid your son’s—” the doctor glanced at the chart, “Cody’s vision impairment is permanent.”

“Vision im…you mean the blindness?” she whispered.

“Yes, Mrs. Cortez.”

She didn’t react, just sat there, pale and blank, in shock. After a full minute of uncomfortable silence, Dr. Whaley cleared his throat and motioned for a nurse to take Linda by the elbow. “Mrs. Cortez, Carrie will take you to a private lounge where you can lie down and rest for a while. Is there anyone you’d like us to call?”

“My husband,” she mumbled.

Two long, blurry days later, Linda and her husband sat at the breakfast table in their small apartment. Linda slapped the Formica surface hard with an open palm and raged, “No, Rafael! Paying the medical expenses is the least of this, our son is blind! He will be blind forever!” She stood up and paced the room as she became desperately businesslike. “He’ll have to quit Little League, and you know how he loves it. Then there’s karate, I don’t see how he can keep going to karate. The fun run in May, he’ll have to withdraw.”

Rafael grabbed her by the shoulders, forcing her to stop her frantic movements and thinking. “Linda, please. Forget about all of that for now, none of it matters. What Cody needs most right now is both of us, and his best friend.”

Linda’s eyes narrowed and her jaw clenched. “A proper best friend wouldn’t have made him do anything so dangerous. I never liked that Steven, I never trusted him!”

Rafael pulled her firm to his chest. “Shhh! You know that’s not true. We both love Steven as much as Cody does; he’s a good boy. It was an accident.”

“No!” she shrieked, and Rafael hugged her tighter. She buried her tears in his chest. “Don’t you care? Don’t you want…justice for Cody?” she whimpered.

“Baby, there is no justice for Cody. This is nobody’s fault.”

Linda yanked herself back from him and fixed him with a hateful stare. “You can give up on our son, but I never will.” She grabbed her purse and stalked out, leaving Rafael to gaze out the window. And feel guilty for being able to do it.

It took weeks to find the right attorney, but at last Linda was satisfied the Lynch boy’s family would pay and pay dearly for what their son had done to hers. She knew Steven’s mother would be bringing him to visit Cody at 4pm today, as she did every day right after school at Steven’s insistence. All of this Linda had learned from Rafael, having successfully avoided running into those awful Lynches herself during visiting hours.

Linda clutched the papers in her hand as her heels clicked curtly on the tiled hospital floor; she was looking forward to seeing the reaction on Debbie Lynch’s face. Rafael’s ultimatum sprang to mind one last time like a warning bell, but she shoved it aside. If Rafael didn’t want to do right by his only son, then she didn’t want to stay married to him, either.

She took a deep breath and threw the door open. “Debra,” she said, flatly.

Steven rushed up to her, shoving brochures and papers up toward her face. “Mrs. Cortez? I been learning about all the things to help Cody—well, my Mom helped me look on the internet…” At this, Linda shot a glance at Debbie, who averted her reddened eyes and lifted a Kleenex to her nose.

“—an’ I found out there’s this special school for the blind right here in Austin, an’ I got this application for a seeing eye dog an’ my mom and dad said it’s even okay if I wanna raise a puppy to be Cody’s seeing eye dog, an’ I can help Cody learn his way around the neighborhood till then, an’ I’ll walk him anywhere he wants to go, an’…an’ I’ll….” he burst into tears and threw his arms around her hips.

“Mom?” Cody’s small voice called from the bed, his bandaged head swimming to try and locate the sound. “Is Steve okay?”
Linda’s hand curled into a fist, crumpling the papers. She weighed them for a moment before tossing them in the wastebasket. She put a hand down to stroke Steven’s head. “Yes, honey,” she said. “Steven’s just fine.”

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

by

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

by

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.

Open A Window

by

I’d say out of all my books Open A Window (Alzheimer’s Caregiver Handbook) ISBN 1438244991 is the one I am most proud to have written. At the nursing home, I’d been approached by resident families with questions. Not realizing the awful twists and turns Alzheimer’s takes, family members were caught off guard. They needed education.

 

 

The thought came to me that I should write an Alzheimer’s Caregiver Handbook to help educate people who have loved ones in the nursing home. I made a list of all the symptoms and behaviors that went with Alzheimer’s disease. While I was working, I watched for examples to use in this book. Each example, I wrote down right away when I got home so I wouldn’t forget any of the details. Eventually, I had enough information to make a book.

 

The program – Lotus – came with my IBM computer in 1999. I know that program has been outdated for a long time, but I like using it for documents. I’m used to it. The program has a booklet maker which came in handy back in the day when I had to make hard copy. The book pages are printed from the middle of the book back to the front on even pages. Turn the pages over and print the odd pages. This wasn’t a perfect system. I had to start over several times, because of printer errors.

Finally, I had a completed manuscript. After some consumer shopping, I found a Print shop to make my books. I wanted two staples to hold the book together on 100 books. That must have been a time consuming job that the workers weren’t crazy about doing. The woman at the counter tried to talk me into using the spiral plastic or perfect binding. I didn’t want my book to look like a telephone book, and perfect binding was expensive. This special book should look as much like any other book as possible so I was determined to use staples.

I designed the cover myself. A simple window with tie back curtains in purple, because that is the Alzheimer’s Association color. That cover didn’t suit the printer. They had to use one of their clip art windows. It’s been awhile, but I think the reasoning was I had too many shades of purple in my curtain plus the brown window. Thinking back on that explanation, it seems to me that no matter what the cover colors, the printer should have been able to print them. Anyway, I paid the extra $25.00 for the cover. The discussion about the staples and the cover kept up over a couple of weeks while they held up my printing job. By that time I was anxious to get my books done before the Printer found some other problem. The window turned out to be a good choice for the cover after all.

The nursing home administrator helped with book sales since many prospective book buyers that needed educating went through her office. People read the book and sent me complimentary comments. They were relieved to at last understand in layman terms what happens to a person who has Alzheimer’s disease.

In 2000, I started an Alzheimer’s support group at the nursing home. Open A Window came in handy as an ice breaker. I read a chapter. That was enough to get people started talking about what has happened with their loved ones. You would think that the many people in this support group over the eight years I facilitated it would be book buyers. In some cases, that was true. More times than not, someone would get me aside, with tears in their eyes, to whisper about a particularly hard situation they had at home. Always, I could say I knew how these people felt, because I had been there while taking care of my father. I offered advise from my experiences but I wanted to do more. I gave them a copy of my book. At the December meeting, I always came up with some small gift for the members. One year, it was a copy of my book. Since I hadn’t meant for this to be a profit making adventure, all I wanted was enough money to cover the printing cost.

Most of the books I sold went to audiences I spoke to on behalf of the Alzheimer’s Association. I was asked to speak at a training session for new employees at a Cedar Rapids Nursing Home. I left one of my books and mentioned reading from the book worked well for a support group. Soon after that, the social worker asked me to come to her support group meeting to speak. I sold several of my books as a result of that meeting.

The nursing home gives a inservice each month to educate the staff on various topics. One time, Jolene Brackey, a well known Alzheimer’s speaker and author, was invited to talk. At that time she lived at Polk City, Iowa. Since then she has moved to Montana. To find out more about her, her website is http://www.enhancedmoments.com This young woman gives a very dynamic speech that has her audiences laughing one minute and close to tears the next. Jolene asked if we had a support group she could talk to after the inservice. My group met at night, but I put out the word and had an afternoon meeting.

What I didn’t know was the administrator had sent Jolene my Open A Window book. After she read Jolene’s Creating Moments Of Joy book, she told her there was an author at our nursing home. She sent me a note to let me know how much she liked what I had written. One day, I received a call from Jolene. She was writing her latest book Creating Moments Of Joy the third revised edition. Jolene asked me if she could use some of my stories in her book. I was thrilled. That was the first of my writing to get published. Jolene said I was more descriptive than she was. That was quite a compliment from a woman who writes as well as she does.

When my supply of books ran out, I wanted to order another 100. By then I had come up with more examples so I had to do a new hard copy. Then I set to work on the cover. I didn’t want to pay another $25.00 so I scanned the window on the cover. For the new cover, I enlarged the window and the title. I bought stock paper and printed my covers to be stapled on the books. The old question of did I really want staples came up again. I held my ground and got what I wanted.

Under the window on the cover, I put By Fay Risner CNA. The idea of using CNA was to give my book some credence as help in a complicated disease. I got the idea while I attended an Alzheimer’s annual conference in Cedar Rapids. A speaker was listing who would be talking that day. One topic was about therapy dogs. The speaker said the dog used in the session was so well trained, he had more alphabet soup behind his name than she did. It occurred to me that I had alphabet soup behind my name. Granted I was way down on the health care totem pole, but still I should use what I have.

In 2002, I had mentioned to the Alzheimer’s Association director that CNAs aren’t getting enough training about Alzheimer’s before they start work. An evening session was started that year for CNAs to coincide with the evening session for family members. I was asked to be the first speaker. One woman in the audience is a social worker. She bought a book. Months later, I received a call from her. She was taking books to a social worker conference in Ames. Would I like to give her a box of my books to put out for sale? I was thrilled. She sold them all. The next year, the social worker took another box. A social worker at the conference took her book back to Grinnell. Loaned it to an nurse training CNAs and that nurse ordered three more to use for her training sessions.

Now I have Open A Window published. This is one of the books sold at the Lemstone Christian Bookstore in Cedar Rapids at Collins Road Plaza across from Linndale Mall. On the back cover of my book is a review from Jolene Brackey. Below that is as many of the reader reviews that I could fit on the page. I’ll talk more about the importance of reviews one of these days.

 

 

　

　

 

Mom tells me you haven’t fed her all day.

Dad keeps asking me the same question over and over.

Aunt Mable wants me to take her to her parents house. Her parents passed away years ago.

NaNoWriMo 3: What I Love

by

This post, from Jodi Cleghorn, originally appeared on her Writing in Black and White blog on 10/7/09. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, which takes place annually in November. 

Knowing what you love about NaNoWriMo and always being able to remind yourself of those seductive elements, is possibly the difference between finishing NaNo and getting your winners badge, or committing yourself to the wayside and another lost opportunity.

I learnt this important lesson, of focusing on what you love from my dear friend Dan Sinclair (aka Mama Magic). She wasn’t actually writing about NaNo when she imparted her wisdom, but about mothering. All too often (and I am one who falls into this trap) we can focus on what we hate, what we struggle with, what bogs us down, what we just don’t and can’t love enough or at all. It’s no wonder we get caught in all types of negative circular thinking. If instead we look to and cultivate the things we love and enjoy, AND have them at the ready, we really can get through any crisis or low point. Or even better, we can create environments, both internal and external, where we don’t end up having to deal with a crisis or low point.

So I thought it would be a good idea to suss out what it is I love about NaNo in the lead in, to get a psychological jump start on November. Then if the going gets tough, as it will undoubtedly do at some stage, there will be a point of reference to return to and refresh myself on why I chose this somewhat crazy path (again!)

These are the ten dot points I came up with and over the next few days I will explore them in more detail.

  1. It’s all about writing fiction
     
  2. It gives me an opportunity to truly get lost
     
  3. It provides me with a continuing story
     

Read the rest of the post, which includes her dot points #4-10, on Jodi Cleghorn’s Writing in Black and White blog.

How Book Authors Can Use Facebook As Part of Their Social Media Strategy

by

This post, from SACHI Studio, originally appeared on the SACHI Studio site on 4/23/08.

This is the next in a series of guides on how book authors can achieve social media success. The first was a 5-page article on why book authors should use WordPress as part of their web presence.

The following is a 4 page primer on how book authors can use Facebook as a viable social media tool to give more exposure to their book and work.

If you wish to read a print version of this, you can download the 4 page pdf guide here. Otherwise, you can read the entire guide in its entirety below.

Sachi Studio is available for Facebook social media consulting for selected book authors as well.

Update 8/13/09: Our new free eGuide, “Facebook Fan Pages for Book Authors” is out. Click on the badge to learn more.

[Publetariat Editor’s Note: we’ve disabled this link since it leads to a page where you’re asked to complete an online form; as Publetariat has no control over the site or form, we prefer that if you’d like to follow the link, you do so on the source web page.]

badge
 

A Primer to Social Media Marketing on Facebook for Book Authors 

Like many other businesses, book authors are flocking to various social media communities such as Facebook and Myspace. They want to leverage these sites as best as possible to give more exposure to their books. But too many are lost and lack both direction and strategy as to how to best use these communities.

The following is a primer for authors to use Facebook as a viable social media marketing tool.

Before we get into specific methods and activities to use on Facebook, there are five principles that any book author should adhere to in the social media space. It is important you are aware of these fundamentals as they make up the foundation of success in social media.

  1. It’s not about you. It’s about the community. Too many overzealous marketers forget this principle when it comes to social media. They focus too much on promoting themselves at the risk of ignoring the needs of their users. Your followers have a voice that want to be heard. Create initiatives that allow your users to voice their thoughts and opinions on your work. Try to focus on their needs while simultaneously meeting yours.
     
  2. Be sociable. It’s not called social media for nothing, folks. This means that you shouldn’t just upload photos of your latest book tours or just promote the book on your Facebook profile. Be personal and allow those connected to you to see some personal stuff of you. In the world of social media, it helps to be three-dimensional.
     
  3. Think long term and be consistent. Don’t quit after a few days of work. Social media is a relatively new field. You have to continually test and benchmark various initiatives before you start to see results.
     
  4. Focus on user generated content. Much of the successful social media strategies today focus on allowing the end user to generate the content for us. There are too many authors who ignore or don’t realize how much power their users have in contributing to their work. Look for ways where you can get the community to do the work for you.
     
  5. Focus on multiple generations of users. Many of the failed social media strategies today are a result of marketers focusing on their first generation users. Successful strategies rely heavily on getting the first generation of users to continue to spread the message to their network and getting that network to spread it to their network. Hence, don’t just market to friends but to friends of friends of friends. As they say in networking, it’s not who you know, but it’s who they know.
     

Now that we’ve listed the basis tenets of successful social media strategies, let’s get into specific activities that authors can use on the Facebook platform.

Read the rest of the post, which includes 8 specific Facebook strategies for authors and book promotion, on the SACHI Studio site.

My Bio: www.davidluck@davidluck.net

by

 

I was born in rural Wyoming during a June snowstorm. The wide open spaces of Wyoming’s high plains provided the perfect place for me to grow and develop a keen imagination. It was working ranches along the Laramie River that help me develop an ability to write from a cowboy perspective: sparse, direct, and from the heart.

 

I attended Colorado State University, graduating with a degree in veterinary medicine. I make Denver my home with my wife Shirley. Together, we have four children and six grandchildren. I have written three books: Ghosts of Leadville, a book of poetry and photography about Leadville, Colorado, Men Are, short story fiction about the loves, lives, and feelings of men as they age, and Scraps, my latest book of fictional fragments.

 

When not writing, bicycling, photographing, or reading, I perform orthopedic surgery for dogs and cats.

 



Scraps

by

My new book of short stories, Scraps, is now available through Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble, and I invite you to check it out.

From slice-of-life vignettes to narratives with suspense, the short stories in author David Luck’s fiction collection stem from his observations of life around him. After moving from an isolated mountain cabin to a home near Sloan’s Lake in Denver, Colorado, Luck was intrigued by the activity surrounding the lake. Luck used these situations as fodder for this book.

Scraps’ first story, “Angelica and Carlos,” introduces the young Angelica as she waits for her son to be returned from a weekend visit with his father, Carlos. When Carlos and Roberto are more than an hour late, Angelica wonders if she will ever see her son again. In “Balby, England,” an American couple, married for forty-one years, travel to England for the first time and become the unwitting targets of a beautiful thief. “Going Postal” tells the tale of Maggie, a homeless woman; Jasper, a retired gentleman who has taken up in-line skating; and Merna, a cantankerous mail carrier —and how their lives intersect in an unusual way.

Infused with sensory images woven with beautiful language, the stories in the collection give a glimpse into situations, people, and places with which we can all identify. Author bio: www.davidluck.net.

Rising Above The Grass

by

This post, from Bob Spear, originally appeared on his Book Trends Blog on 10/6/09 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

Last year over 275,000 new books were published. Actually, there were more than that because not all were reported to Bowker, the keepers of the assignment and registration of ISBNs and publisher of Books In Print. Then add to that very large number the books written and proffered to publishers which didn’t make it. Now, look at the various Best Seller lists and count the number of books listed (a few hundred at best). Now you have an idea of the odds involved in marketing books, especially your own. How can you rise above the crowd or grass level so that you’re seen?

There are many genres and sub-genres; however, for our purposes, let’s address nonfiction, fiction, and leave children’s books for another blog.

Nonfiction: This is the easiest genre to market. There are major distributors who refuse to carry anything but nonfiction because of this. It’s easier to: write well, define, identify market segments, and has multiple delivery channels. In addition to traditional bookstore channels, other channels can include: selling off the back table at a speech or training, partnering with a corporate entity to publish their own edition, selling direct by snail mail or by internet. Nonfiction lends itself very well to “Long Tail” marketing, which is identifying small but myriad niches that are outside the radar of the major publishers but can be lucrative to small, specialized presses. Working the media is far easier because specific topics and themes break out nicely for talk show themes.

To be seen above the grass in the nonfiction pasture, one needs to understand all these market channels and more. Use any and all the channels in conjunction with publicity, article marketing, blogging, social networking and general word of mouth. Obviously, any one of these areas is deserving of a separate blog.

Fiction: This is much more difficult to write well and to market. Although fan groupings can be broken out and defined, it’s not so easy to do so as it is in nonfiction. Fiction can be far more emotional (except for certain nonfiction “causes”). Reader tastes vary widely and reader needs are more difficult to nail down than they are in nonfiction.
It’s more difficult to align a book’s story with a talk show theme, for instance, yet that is what an author or publicist must do to fit into a media format. Some fiction genres, such as Sci Fi or fantasy are especially difficult to shape into an interview environment.

For fiction to be seen above the grass, social networking and word of mouth are king. Another avenue is getting your book turned into a movie, which usually won’t happen in nonfiction how-to books. The marketer’s focus is at the mercy of people who are opinion drivers. That’s where their focus should go: toward opinion makers such as Oprah and the like.

Endurance: Nonfiction tends to stick around longer due to its education potential. It lends itself to updating and new edition publishing. It can be milked for a long time. Fiction, unless it becomes a classic, is here today and gone tomorrow. Even really popular fiction authors are only as popular as their latest book (how have you entertained me lately?). These are considerations when deciding what to write. Some of my nonfiction has been around since the late 1980’s and still sells steadily. I expect my fiction, which will be coming out this winter, will have its day in the sun, and then I’ll have to write more, if I want to stay above the grass. As an author, you need to consider all these aspects and elect how you want to spend your writing minutes.