Month: September 2011

19 Ways to Get More Readers for Your Author Blog

by

Author blogs are an intrinsic part of your author platform. You can get more readers for your blog. You may have read many of these ideas before, but let me ask you: How many have you done in the last 30 days?

Blogging is a marathon, not a sprint. You are building a media asset, and that takes time. Many of these techniques take a little effort and can be done in a few minutes a day. There is never going to be a day when you do them all at once, so look at it more like a menu.

 

  1. Write more often—if you don’t have enough traffic, write more often. This is not necessarily good news, since you may feel you already have enough to do. But when you’re growing a blog, there’s no better way to increase the energy flow to your blog than increasing the amount of energy you put into your blog.
     
  2. Write better articles—look at the last 10 articles you’ve posted to your blog. How many did people really care about? How many did you write for yourself, more than your readers? If you have to, and in contradiction to #1 above, write less frequently but better.
     
  3. Do something different—give readers a reason to come to your blog. If you’re doing what everyone else in your niche is doing, why should they? What is it that no one has done? What angle is uncovered? What insight is lacking in the conversation?
     
  4. Do something big—create a big list, a smashing resource directory, an exhaustive collection of tools, a survey of every viewpoint on a subject. Whatever it is, make it useful, the kind of thing you yourself would link to or bookmark for future reference.
     
  5. Kidnap a celebrity—interview the biggest star in your niche, or the most controversial, or the person with the biggest blog in your field. Aim as high as you can, you will be surprised. Make a regular feature of profiling or interviewing movers and shakers in your industry.
     
  6. Start an argument—disagree loudly with an established authority in your field, an “A-list” blogger, or the institutional overseers of your domain. Demand a response.
     
  7. Rant—find an injustice in your field, something blatantly unfair or a monopolistic company taking advantage of the little guy. Rant about it, invite others to contribute.
     
  8. Guest post—take your show on the road. Create a goal to contribute to someone else’s blog on a related topic once a week, once a month, whatever you can do. Query bloggers and read their archives. Fashion a headline for an article they’ll find irresistible.
     
  9. Comment—leave comments that add to the discussion, that amplify what others have said, that disagree respectfully with the author, that bring something to the table. Pick 5 or 10 blogs and stay in touch with them, commenting when appropriate.
     
  10. Upload articles—put some articles on articles sites like ezinearticles.com and make sure you link back to your blog. Use the same keywords you use in your blog posts.
     
  11. Explore your analytics—dive into your blog’s analytics to find the keywords people are using to arrive at your blog, then. . .
     
  12. Research keywords—use keyword tools to find as many keywords related to your blog as you can. Compare different forms of common terms in your field, since they can have radically different search volumes. Use this information when you write your blog posts.
     
  13. Curate content—serve up links to content elsewhere that you’ve checked out. Use your expertise and the time you spend surfing to collect links that others will find useful. Use social media to spread these links and do link posts on your blog to save others the time of finding great content.
     
  14. Run contests—have a regular contest, giveaway, prize, sweepstakes, awards or some way to create an event. Use your blog to promote it and ask participants to link back.
     
  15. Frequent forums—make a habit of commenting on forum threads that concern your topic. Like commenting, aim to improve, amplify or otherwise contribute to the ongoing conversation. Don’t forget to put a link to your blog in your signature that shows up when you post a comment.
     
  16. Give something away—put together an e-book, a PDF, a template, a checklist, a special report, a worksheet or anything else that others can get real value from. Give it away every day, not just once. Make sure people know they can share it with everyone, and remember to put a live link back to your blog in the giveaway.
     
  17. Write list posts—write the top 7 things, the best 9 widgets, the 5 things people haven’t considered, the 9 top places to get stuff, the 5 best tools for the job, and the 3 reasons list posts beat all others.
     
  18. Take a course—there are several excellent blogging courses that will teach you a huge amount about blogging and gaining traffic. Blog Mastermind is the one I used to grow this blog, and you can find others. Invest in yourself, it pays. (affiliate link)
     
  19. Ask readers—run a survey, ask for comments, ask your readers what they need, what articles they would like to read, where they are stuck, what they need help with.

Blogging is more fun, and more effective, when you have more readers. Every blogger wants more readers, but you have to spend time on more than just your writing to get that blog traffic.

Pick a couple of these ideas and put in 15 minutes today. It takes many little streams to build to a river.

Got something to add to the list?

 

This is a reprint from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer.

A Book Is a Book — Or Is It?

by

This post, by An American Editor, originally appeared on that blog on 9/7/11.

If we look back to the beginning of the agency model in ebooks, which began a little more than one year ago, we can find the publishers’ claimed rationale for changing models (which occurred with a mighty push from Apple): to protect ebooks from becoming mere commodities and to prevent consumers from establishing a mindset that $9.99 is the right price point. Okay, that was the rationale, coupled with a fear of Amazon becoming too powerful, that was bandied about. The question is: Were publishers successful in preventing the commoditization of books?

The reports from the Agency 6 indicate that ebooks are rapidly becoming a significant source of revenue for publishers, perhaps even their primary growth area. Latest reports show growth in ebook sales (Barnes & Noble reports 140% rise in digital sales; Hachette reports ebooks as 20% of U.S. sales and 5% of worldwide sales; Penguin and Simon & Schuster report digital as 14% and 15% of revenue, respectively; Bertelsmann/Random House reports digital sales in the first six months of 2011 as exceeding all digital sales in 2010);  and a significant decline in mass market paperbacks (down 14%). Profits are up slightly, even though volume appears to be down somewhat. All of which seems to favor the notion that the publishers did the right thing.

What we don’t know, of course, is how the sales are breaking down by price point. I can relate anecdotal evidence that the agency pricing scheme is a failure on several levels, but no data has been released that enables a careful analysis.

I’ve mentioned it before, yet it is still true: Whereas before agency pricing I bought a lot of hardcover books and ebooks from the Big 6 publishers, my purchases have declined since the institution of agency. Whereas I used to visit my local Barnes & Noble at least once a week and buy a few books each time, it has been nearly five months since I last visited the store and bought an Agency 6-published book.

If the Agency 6 intended by their action to make me accept spending more than $9.99 for an ebook, they have failed — and failed miserably – because I am pretty unwilling to accept even $9.99, let alone a higher price point, as the sweet price point. Instead, I’ve gotten used to the indie author price points of $5 and less, with less being the dominant word.


Read the rest of the post on An American Editor.

Author Ethics: A Practical Guide

by

This post, by Julie Ann Dawson, originally appeared on her Tales From The Sith Witch, a Bards and Sages blog, on 9/3/11. It serves as an introduction to a more thorough project of research and analysis on the topic, so please be sure to click through on the ‘read the rest’ link at the end of this excerpt to view the supporting research notes and related essays.

 In 2004, I self published my first full length book, September and Other Stories.  I immediately began to contact some review sites in order to obtain reviews.  Some never responded.  Some responded with a “we’re sorry but we’re backlogged” excuse.  One, however, responded very firmly that “I no longer review ANY self published books.” 

It seemed like a curiously worded rejection, but reviewers have a right to review what they want so I let it go.  Since the site also offered advertising, I queried about the cost of placing a banner ad.  The response was even more firm. “Look, I don’t do business with self publishers.”

Being new to the industry, I thought I must have done something wrong and upset the site owner.  That hadn’t been my intention, so I sent her an apology for whatever it was that I did.  A couple of days later, she sent me an email apologizing for overreacting.  This led to a startling conversation. 

The reason she had stopped reviewing self published books was because she was terrified of self publishing authors.  She had received several threatening and harassing responses to perceived negative reviews of self published books.  The most recent incident and the one that convince her to stop reviewing self published books altogether, was a man who threatened to find her and rape her daughter.  She was in the process of getting a restraining order, because the man had called her house to let her know that he knew where she lived.

I wish I could say over the years this was an isolated incident.

Bad behavior is not unique to self-publishing authors.  I think most horror readers remember Anne Rice’s rather public meltdown on Amazon.com regarding negative reviews of Blood Canticle*.  John Lott used the fake persona of Mary Rosh to anonymously defend his own work and post reviews of his book More Guns, Less Crime*.  In April 2011, Dilbert creator Scott Adams admitted to engaging in sock puppetry to defend his work*.  These incidents grab our attention because of the celebrity status of those involved, but also because such public displays are thought rare.

But the media doesn’t report on public meltdowns of self publishing authors.  Nor do bloggers spend their hours unraveling the elaborate astroturfing schemes of self publishers.  Yet there is a general acceptance of the belief that such unethical behavior is far more common among self publishers than it is traditionally published authors.  And not only is it more common, but more extreme. 

*footnotes are provided for these references on the source post


Read the rest of this post about Author Ethics, and also see the supporting research notes and related essays, on Julie Ann Dawson’s Tales From The Sith Witch blog.

Ebook Pricing: A Rumination

by

There have been numerous articles, online and off, discussing ebook pricing and I won’t bother to list or link them here – I’m sure you ingenious readers can find them. So why am I chiming in again? Well, it’s a fluid subject, always on the move. More and more people all the time are taking up ebooks and it will become the norm. It’s impossible to put timeframes on something so variable, but it will happen.

There are several theories on how ebooks will fit into the mainstream. Firstly, it’s important to remember that it’s not either/or. You don’t have to choose. I love all books. I love print books and ebooks. The vast majority of new books I buy these days are ebooks, but if I really like something I’ll get a hard copy to go on the shelf. Or if a book is a particular piece of art, I’ll get it. I love getting contributor’s copies of books I have stories in, because I’m a vain fucker and like to point to the brag shelf and say to people, “Yes, I have work in all those anthologies. And those are my novels. Ahaha.” Shut up, I need validation.

I see the general breakdown of production settling into something along these lines: All new titles will be ebooks, some, especially from smaller publishers, being only ebooks. Alongside that I see a lot of publishers using Print On Demand technology to make paperbacks available to those who like them. And then a short run of actual printed stock, possibly limited edition hardbacks for collectors. That makes three primary delivery systems of stories – electronic, mass-market (though probably POD) and artefact. This is my prediction, but it’s not particularly relevant to this post. I’m looking here at ebook pricing based on the fact that ebooks will become mainstream and will eventually be everyone’s primary method of consuming stories. Don’t get upset, there’s nothing you can do about it. Have you seen Star Trek? How many real books do you ever see? Yeah, it’s gonna be like that. You can’t hold back the future any more than you can hold back the tide with a broom.

So, how should we price ebooks? I ran this question by the straw poll that is my Twitter and Facebook tribe and got some really interesting answers. Firstly, I’ll give my personal opinion.

An ebook should always be cheaper than the print book, by a fair factor. If most paperbacks are $9.99 or less, then ebooks of those titles should be $7 at most. If a book is really popular and in demand, like the new George R R Martin book, it can be more. The Kindle of that one is $17, which is fine, because the only other option is a $40 hardcover. At least, that’s true for Australia. On Amazon, the book is listed at $35 but on special at $18.81. Add postage to Australia and it’s close to $40 again. However, once the paperback edition comes out, that ebook puppy better drop to less than the paperback price or the publisher is taking the piss.

So, for the purposes of simplicity, let’s look at standard paperback vs ebook pricing. If the print edition is $10 or less, the ebook needs to be at most two thirds of that price. There’s no production cost once the e-edition is set up and ready. There’s no distribution cost. And there’s no physical artefact for the reader. Sure, we’re buying the story and that deserves to be paid for, but the item itself is also a factor.

“What about the poor starving author?” you cry. I am one, so don’t come crying to me. Of course the author needs to be paid and we need to value his or her product. But let’s not get all high and mighty without the facts, ma’am. Ebooks generate a massive royalty compared to print. If the author has signed a good contract – and they should be getting a new agent if they haven’t – they should be getting a royalty model on ebooks different to print.

My novels are $9.99 in paperback and $3.99 in ebook. (So reasonable I’ll wait here a moment while you go and buy them… got ‘em? Good. You’ll love them.) I make a bigger royalty on ebooks than I do on print, even though the retail is less than half. That’s because the margin on print production to retail is very slim and I get a slim cut of that. The margin on ebook to retail is far bigger, often up to 70%, and I get a far bigger slice of that pie. Mmm, virtual pie.

So authors can actually do better selling ebooks for far less than print books. Right now, if I sold 10,000 copies of RealmShift this year, I’d much prefer to shift 10,000 ebooks than print ones, as that would pay me far more handsomely. And I do like a handsome paycheque. I would also love to sell 10,000 copies of anything this year, please tell your friends.

Personally, I’m against the popular 99c price point for ebook novels. As an introduction, or a special offer, it’s a good idea. But for novels I think it generally undermines the value of the product. In my experience, most avid readers will view a 99c novel with suspicion and expect it to be shit. They’ll often be right in that assumption. It’s important for authors and publishers to not devalue their content. As one author said, “If people think my novels are only worth 99c, I don’t want them as fans.” That’s a bit extreme, but he has a very valid point. If people aren’t prepared to pay the equivalent of a cup of coffee for your months of hard work, well, fuck ‘em.

I have a novella available for 99c, which is deliberately priced low for several reasons: It’s only around 30,000 words, it’s available for free right here on this website and it’s a teaser, to help people notice me. I also self-published it, so I keep all the royalties, such as they are. Sure, I think it’s worth more than 99c, but I also think it’s fair to charge that and hope to get more readers that way.

So my thinking is that the sweet spot for ebooks is the $3 to $7 price range, with exceptions made for very special items. Authors will make at least as much, if not more, than they would from paperback sales and consumers get to read more and still value the work of the people they like to read. Given that paperbacks here in Australia are usually around $20, I’m actually happy to pay anything up to $15 for an ebook, but I really stop and think twice if it’s over $10.

I won’t name names, because I didn’t ask permission to use the comments, but here’s what some of the people on my social networks had to say on the subject:

I’ve paid up to $9.99 for a book a really wanted, but insofar as most genre fiction the price range generally is settled between $4.99-$7.99. A lot of indies sell their books at 99 cent, but I personally think that is a mistake because all it does is get the value shoppers and it rarely builds a loyal following. At least at the $4.99 range you have wiggle room to offer periodic sales and such.

I’ll pay up to $15, but only for something I really want to read. Generally $7-10. I tend to steer clear of anything at 99 cents simply because it’s so ingrained in my mind that anything priced so cheap can’t be good.

I’d pay up to $15 though the most I’ve yet paid was half of that. I love that you can get classics and foreign books, many that are not available in print here in Australia, for free or very cheap.

I think 10 bucks is reasonable.

I usually pay around the $10 mark – give or take $2-$3. Like others, I get twitchy if it’s only 99c or so, unless I know the author.

$2.99. Can’t borrow ‘em out. Can’t resell them. No physical formatting. No shipping. No distribution.

I get uncomfortable with anything over the $10 mark, but have no real basis for that limit. Will pay more for favourite authors just as I was and am willing to pay for hardcover rather than wait for paperbacks for same.

$5 its a new technology.

I generally won’t pay more than $5 depending on restrictions. If it’s only a license to read (a la Kindle) I pay less

up to $10 is ‘buy without thinking twice’ & up to $15 is ‘buy at once if I *really* want it. Anything higher, I hesitate.

$6-7? Like to compensate author/editor for the work, but don’t want to pay non-existent print/delivery etc costs.

So from that selection of comments it seems there are certainly a number of things people still take into consideration and DRM is a big factor. But the general consensus is ten bucks or less overall, with a couple stretching out to a maximum of $15. Interesting times, indeed.

You’ve read my thoughts and heard a few others. What do you think? How much will you pay? And how much or how little do you think is unreasonable?

 

This is a cross-posting from Alan Baxter‘s The Word.

Kill The First Novel? Are You Insane?

by

Yesterday, we excerpted from and linked to a piece by Edan Lepucki, in which she talks about letting go of a first novel that didn’t sell. Today, we excerpt from and link to a rebuttal from Kristen Tsetsi.

“Magic 8 Ball,” I asked, “will my first novel be published?”

Yes. Definitely.

Hm.

“Magic 8 Ball, am I a man?”

Yes. Definitely.

Dammit.

___________

Edan Lepucki, in her recent article in The Millions, briefly plays with the idea of a) showing her cleavage in her author photo or b) falsifying her bio to make herself seem exotic (foreign) and male (thought to be more skilled/serious writers) as a means of getting the attention of publishers who haven’t been interested in her novel, which was (less interestingly) written by “an American woman living in an uncool neighborhood in Los Angeles.”

I’ve thought about this, too. And, like Lepucki, I gave it consideration “not entirely seriously, and not entirely in jest.” It’s occurred to me as a woman not-yet-beyond-relative-youth that in this country (and most others), breasts will sell just about anything. A “serious” writer posing topless with her manuscript? Sure, it reduces her to a sex object and reeks of desperation, but all evidence points to It Would Probably Work. As long as the book gets published in the end, isn’t it worth it? And isn’t it the people suddenly giving it attention because of a pair of breasts, and not the author, who should be ashamed?

Like I said, I’ve thought about this.  I’ve also thought about creating a male, and fully Albanian, pseudonym (“Tsetsi” is exotic enough, but “Kristen” doesn’t have that foreign flair).

Because like Lepucki, I’ve been close to publication, and now I’m faced with a dilemma not so different from hers: what to do if a book doesn’t sell.

THEN

Like Lepucki, I’ve had an agent. But way back before finally acquiring that agent, a long line of query rejections had been blissfully interrupted by emails – and a phone call – from fairly big-name agents who said things like, “We love this, but literary fiction is hard to sell, and even harder when it’s coming from an ‘unknown.’”


Read the rest of the post on Kristen Tsetsi‘s blog.

New Novel "Be Still and Know That I Am" Now Available

by

 My new novel, "Be Still and Know That I Am" is now available

More New Authors Turn to Self-Publishing

by

This article, by Faiza Elmasry, originally appeared on Voice of America on 9/2/11.

Self-published books outnumber those released by traditional publishers

More and more authors are taking control of their future by self-publishing their work. In fact, more books are self-published than are issued by traditional publishers, according to Bowker, which compiles publishing statistics.

Self-publishing means you not only write the book but take on production and sales as well. In earlier centuries, most publications were self-published, but over time the role of author and publisher became separate.

 

However, in the last few years, given the difficulty of finding a traditional publisher, a growing number of new authors have chosen to bypass traditional publishing and do it on their own.

"Holly Heights" is Patricia Ruth’s first novel. “It’s a slice of suburban life and a story everyone can relate to,” she says.

After she finished writing and editing her novel, she was eager to see it in print. “I did try to go the traditional publishing route by sending inquiries to agents and publishers.”

It was a long, frustrating and, ultimately, unsuccessful process.

“I’m a member of a very popular club of authors that get rejected by agents and publishers," she says. "I’d get rejections from agents. It would come on a strip of paper, maybe two inches long, not even the courtesy of a full page letter. It’s outrageous the stuff you get back."

However, despite the setbacks, she was still determined to be published and a visit to a book fair inspired Ruth to do it on her own.
“I saw that there was so much going on with self-publishing and empowering authors," Ruth recalls."You know I felt it was very doable.”

The first step was to discover how to go about it. 


Read the rest of the article, which includes an embedded audio segment, on Voice of America.

Shutting the Drawer: What Happens When a Book Doesn’t Sell?

by

This essay, by Edan Lepucki, originally appeared on The Millions on 8/23/11.

In May, after my novel manuscript had been read and rejected by a healthy number of editors, my husband rewrote my author bio. It read as follows:

Edan Lepucki was born in Lodz, Poland, in 1981. He currently lives in East Bushwick.

As an American woman living in an uncool neighborhood in Los Angeles, I thought this hilarious. I also wondered — not entirely seriously, and not entirely in jest — if the revision might help my situation. My situation being that my agent had begun submitting my book nine months prior (not that I was keeping track), and it remained unsold. Admittedly, there had been close calls with two different editors, but, as everyone knows, almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. I was in the same place I’d been back in September. That is, unpublished. The waiting game was starting to char my soul; if you drew a finger across it and put that finger to your tongue, it would taste bitter. Joking with my husband (“Now that I’m nursing, I’ll send them a new author photo, cleavage and all!”) was one of the few coping mechanisms I had left in me.

Now that it’s almost September (“If anyone in publishing actually worked in the summer, I would’ve sold my book by now!”), the jokes aren’t as funny. The truth is, my novel isn’t selling, and it probably won’t. There, I’ve said it. Eventually, a writer must accept rejection, accept the death of her first true darling, and move on. Can I face that sobering reality? Can I put my first book into the drawer, and shut it?

Others have done it before me. There’s a long and rich history of successful writers whose first (second, third…) books didn’t see the light of day. I remember when Myla Goldberg came to speak to the Creative Writing Department at Oberlin. She explained that Bee Season was actually her second novel. “My first,” she told us wide-eyed undergraduates, “you’ll never read.” At twenty, I thought this terribly tragic. In the New York Times Sunday Book Review, Dan Kois wrote about novelists who abandoned books for one reason or another: Michael Chabon’s infamously unfinished tome, Fountain City, for instance, and the burned pages of Gogol and Waugh. But the differences between these authors and myself are important. Firstly, they all had dazzling careers, failed book or not. I can’t (yet…) say the same for myself. Secondly, these authors decided to kill their books, whereas my darling was murdered.


Read the rest of the essay on The Millions.

Happy Labor Day!

by

Publetariat staff are taking Friday, 9/2 through Monday, 9/5 off in observance of the U.S. Labor Day holiday. No new content will be posted to the site until the evening of Monday the 5th, though Publetariat members can still post to the Publetariat Forum and their own Publetariat blogs in the interim.

And by the way, did you know Labor Day was made a U.S. national holiday in order to quell social unrest following the deaths of some striking workers at the hands of the U.S. military and U.S. Marshals in 1894—essentially out of government fear of retaliation from the labor movement? Yeah, neither did we till we looked it up on Wikipedia.

Words And Music: Should Books Have Soundtracks?

by

This article, by Sarah Crown, originally appeared on the Guardian UK’s Books Blog on 9/1/11.

A new company, Booktrack, is devising book-length soundtracks for novels and non-fiction. Is it a good idea? Or do we risk losing the serendipitous soundtracks that already accompany our reading?

How’s about this for some brave new world-ery? Very interesting piece in The Atlantic about a company called Booktrack, which "creat[es] synchronized soundtracks for e-books that dramatically boost the reader’s imagination and engagement".

The company was founded by brothers Mark and Paul Cameron, after Mark realised that "as he selected his own music-reading pairings" he was "choosing songs that emotionally corresponded to the words on the page". Inspired, the pair set about devising "movie-like soundtracks for digital books" (it only works for digital books, as the soundtrack needs to be linked to the page you’re reading), combining sound effects and original music. They only have tracks for a handful of books so far, but if you click on the copy of Sherlock Holmes on the top shelf on this page, and watch the trailer, you get a sense of where they’re going with it.

It’s an interesting idea, and I’d quite like to try it out. If done well, I guess it could potentially enhance the reading experience, though I worry – even from watching that brief Sherlock Holmes snippet – that the words and the sound effects would fall out of sync too easily. My only real concern is that I’d be sorry to see the demise of the accidental soundtracks that have punctuated my own reading life.
 

Read the rest of the article, and view a video about Booktrack, on the Guardian UK’s Books Blog.

Melissa Conway Presents: The Indie Author Lament

by

In which indie author Melissa Conway presents a humorous ditty and video that details her journey from being a writer who aspired to publication with a traditional publisher to a published indie author who’s now coping with the realities of author platform and self-promotion.

 

Also see Melissa’s new site, Indie Review Exchange, where indie authors and their fans can help one another out with review exchanges.