Month: October 2011

NaNoWriMo: Some Helpful Hints and Tools

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For those of you who will be participating in NaNoWriMo…this post, by Steven Sande, originally appeared on the TUAW blog on 10/29/11.

This morning, I noticed a tweet from @rvbelzen that said, "As a NaNoWriMo veteran, do you have any tips for this NaNoWriMo newbie, maybe an article you wrote about it?" Most of the posts that I’ve done about National Novel Writing Month for TUAW have focused on the tools, not on the technique. Based on the tweet, I thought I’d give you some hints from a three-time NaNoWriMo winner (that means you wrote a 50,000-word novel in the month of November) about how to prepare for the writing marathon.

Helpful Hints For Writing Your NaNoWriMo Novel

1) Make sure you have a broad outline of your plot and characters in your mind or on paper. This was the hardest part for me the first two years I did NaNoWriMo, as I had a story in my head but didn’t spend the time to think of characters or how the story was going to evolve. As a result, those first two novels were only about halfway through the total plot line when I got to 50,000 words. What I suggest is sitting down with your favorite writing tool — whether that’s TextEdit, Word, Storyist, Story Mill, Scrivener, or another other writing tool, and just write a quick outline of how the story is going to unfold. Come up with character names and a rough description, locations, etc., and write them down as well.

2) At some point on November 1st, sit down for an uninterrupted spell of writing. In order to write 50,000 words in a month, you’ll need to average 1,667 words a day. I find that setting aside time to write in a place where I’m not going to be interrupted by talk, TV, or tweets is essential. If you’re enthusiastic about your story, that 1,667 words is going to flow out of you, and you’ll find that some days you’re writing 2,500 words. Go for it on those days, because you’ll have other days when you need to take a break. My favorite place to write NaNoWriMo novels? The kitchen table. The chair is uncomfortable, so I need to write quickly so I can get out of it ASAP.

3) It’s all about words, not about tools. I’ve noticed over the last few days that I see more and more tweets about "which tool should I use?" There are debates going on about the merits of Storyist versus Scrivener, or using one of the many minimalist writing tools. Here’s my take on the writing tools: don’t go out of your way to buy a new app that has lots of bells and whistles, because they’ll get in the way of writing your novel. Many of the novel-writing apps have ways to write outlines, build character cards, etc. I found these tools to be so incredibly distracting that I finally just started using minimalist tools. You can easily write a NaNoWriMo novel in Pages or Word — you don’t need an "author’s tool" unless you really think it will help you. My second NaNoWriMo novel was actually written in TextEdit.

 

Read the rest of the post on the TUAW blog.

NaNoWriMo and Why I Don't

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NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. I’m going to rant a bit here, because I’m pretty much against it in every way. However, and I’ll say this again at the end because it won’t sink in with the converts, if it works for you, more power to your elbow. But what is it really working?

The principle is simple enough – for the entire month of November, you write and try to get down 50,000 words in 30 days. That’s 1,666 words a day on average. Any old words will do – if you get 50,000 or more, you “win”. What do you win? Well, probably several weeks or months of editing at best.

 

From the NaNoWriMo website we get these gems:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing… The goal is to write a 50,000 word, (approximately 175 page) novel by 11:59:59, November 30.

First point of order – 50,000 words is not a novel. It might be a children’s or very young adult novel, but even then, not really. Most young adult novels are between 50,000 and 60,000 words. Most adult novels are over 80,000 words. The vast majority of publishers will not accept a novel of less than 80,000 words.

Then there’s this one:

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. This approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Quality doesn’t matter. Lower your expectations. These are never things we should apply to our writing. EVER. The whole concept of NaNoWriMo seems to be to churn out 50,000 words of shit, just to call yourself a winner, and then try to knock it into some kind of shape afterwards.

Why not just aim for 20,000 good words throughout November? Then again in December, January, Feb and March. Then you have an actual first draft novel. And a far better one than you’d achieve using the NaNo model. You won’t have to lower your expectations and take quantity over quality. And you know what you’ve done as well? You’ve become a writer. You had a goal to write a novel and you did it. Not a goal to vomit up 50,000 words no matter what in a month and call it a win.

What do you win? Nothing, except a feeling of disappointment and an unfinished novel.

nanowrimo 400 NaNoWriMo and why I dont

Talking about previous participants, the site says:

They started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists.

No. Just no. They didn’t. They may very well be novelists one day, but churning out 50,000 words of shite in a month does not a novelist make.

So yes, I’m being especially harsh. It’s hard to write a novel, trust me, I know. It’s a fucking chore to find writing time, to force that thing in your head out on to paper (or screen, more accurately). Sometimes it’s like trying to crap a watermelon out of your face. I get it, I really do. And I can see why some people appreciate the drive of NaNo to force them into a deeper writing zone.

A lot of great novels have grown out of NaNo projects. A lot of people take great strength from the whole NaNo community and the shared support and encouragement. Writing can be a lonely pursuit. I think most writers actually like that – I know I do – but we all crave community. I have many friends in the writing world and we do support and encourage each other. All the time, not just during November.

Any writer can achieve that. You start writing, you join some online forums, you join your local writers’ centre and start making friends. Join a crit group. Toughen up and listen to advice. Take any favours you can and offer your help to others in response. Before long you’re a writer with a writing community around you. That’s how we’ve all done it.

I can’t help thinking about all those would-be writers who get all excited for NaNo, shit out 50,000 words and then live the rest of the year in a mire of inactivity because they were ruined by the NaNo experience. Or all those who don’t “win” and then just have something else to beat themselves up about instead of writing.

It’s simple – writers write. Not every day necessarily, because everyone has a life, even full-time writers. But just write. Don’t mug yourself with perceived wordcounts, or pointless goals. No one wins or loses. We all write, hopefully we get published, and we keep trying to get better and get more published. Lots of little victories among hundreds of failures, but the determined and thick-skinned among us power on through sheer bloody-mindedness.

Here’s my advice. Fuck NaNoWriMo. Set yourself a new goal, a far simpler one. Here it is:

I will be a writer.

Simple as that. You write whenever and as often as you can. You keep writing whether you get down 1,666 words in a day or 6. Or 6,000. Fuck it, it doesn’t matter. Find the broader writing community and become a part of it, we’re happy to have you. And keep doing it. However fast or slow you write, just write. Finish a novel. An actual novel, not 50,000 words of drivel that might be 20,000 decent words when edited that might be part of a novel one day. Then keep going and write some more.

I see NaNoWriMo as a circus of short-term back-slapping and pointless goals, far removed from what’s really needed to be a writer. But, and here it comes again for the NaNo fans – if it works for you, go for it! I hope you get inspired, churn out 50,000 or more fabulous words and end up with the start of a novel that you go on to finish and get published. I hope it hits the bestseller lists and makes you rich and famous. I really do. But you know what? It’ll take more than 30 days. I’m just saying.

I’ll be over here, growing a moustache for Movember.

 

 

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

Z Winters: YA Dystopians

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For a long time I’ve thought about trying my hand at writing YA dystopian novels. It’s a genre I really enjoy and I have a ton of creepy ideas for them. I hadn’t pursued it because I felt like I’d need to create ANOTHER identity. And really, there are only so many separate brands I can maintain. It gets difficult, especially when you are building brands and not having crossover/cross-pollination. But for some reason there seem to be a lot of paranormal romance readers who also read YA dystopian. I have no idea why this is. And I fit into that camp as well. I enjoy reading both genres.

 

So I thought I didn’t really want to create a whole other identity somewhere, just a slight branding distinction. Like if I’m going to write both genres, I don’t want someone to pick up a PNR from me expecting YA dystopian or vice versa. But since there is a lot of crossover potential, as long as it’s easy to tell which is which at a glance, there should be no problem with keeping it all in the family so to speak.

I set up a Facebook fan page for Z Winters. Yes, that’s my sad little fan page with nothing on it.

On Twitter, I am Z_Winters (Don’t forget the underscore.)

And I also purchased Zwinters.com and Zwinters.net

So I’m ready to roll with that when I get ready to. Please note, I am NOT changing my name. I am simply adding a new brand identity. Zoe Winters will still be there and she will continue to write paranormal romance. (No, that didn’t sound schizophrenic at all!) Z Winters will write YA dystopians. I will be cross-promoting the names also.

Those who are waiting for more Pretverse, don’t worry. I am not writing my dystopian until I get Dark Mercy (the novella/novelette coming in November), The Catalyst (tentative title for book 3) and LifeCycle (book 4), out the door to you. I just have this awesome idea that’s been percolating and really want to write it. And even though there are some dystopian type themes in Pretverse which will be expanded upon, this particular idea won’t work in that world and doesn’t fit a paranormal structure.

I’m not sure how many dystopians I’m going to write. I’ll probably publish them less frequently unless I just get on a tear with ideas. But by keeping the pen names so closely linked together, I feel like it will be less stressful/overwhelming trying to build a totally separate brand with a totally new readership because I anticipate a lot of the Zoe Winters readers will also read Z and vice versa.

And that’s all I have to say about that. :)

 

 

This is a reprint from Zoe Winters‘ weblog.

The Cost of Kindle Books – Pay Up or Shut Up

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This post, by Kristen Tsetsi, originally appeared on her site on 10/28/11.

There’s an entire thread on Amazon’s discussion forum dedicated to the “high” cost of Kindle e-books. One commenter, J. Bryan, writes

I only buy books that are $3.99 or less. If the publishers and/or Amazon want to be greedy, that is their choice,but I will not pay.

J., I understand your position. $3.99 can seem like a lot of cash for a book. But, if I may…

COST PER WORD:   BOOK VS. SONG

Consider the song “Sail” by Awol Nation (for example):

At $.99 for this 131-word song on Amazon.com, you’re paying approximately $.007 per word.

However:

25 of those words are “sail.”

14 of them are this: “La la la la la la oh!”

5 words, “Sail with me into the dark,” are sung three times, so they account for 15.

Which leaves 74 original words at $.012/word. (I happily paid the $.012/word for “Sail.”)

Now, consider John Grisham’s Kindle version of The Client, well above your acceptable price range at $7.99.

The Client is 496 pages.

Cost: $.0161 per page (which is just a bit over the price per word for the song “Sail”).

Average word count per page: 250

Cost of The Client per word: $.00006

(Note: Even if some of the words in The Client are repeated, for a book’s repetition to match the repetition of a song, whole paragraphs or chapters would have to repeat, so we won’t count the “and” and “the” and “a” words as “repeats.”)

 

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

A Cynic's Guide To Foreshadowing

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In which Keri Payton of Quill Cafe book reviews offers a reader’s tongue-in-cheek advice on effective foreshadowing—NOT!

10 Steps to Anticipated Surprises

  1. Insert a character with seemingly no purpose at the beginning of the story. Have him show up at the climax or when there is a big reveal. The real reveal is that his purpose in the story is foreshadowing.

2. Have your protagonist read about or overhear certain information. Is there a rumoured Special Powered One? Surprise, surprise when it turns out to be your protagonist.

3. Use the weather and setting to reflect the upcoming mood of the scene. Bonus cliché marks if it rains and then your character receives really bad news.

4. Have a wizened mentor suggest at something ominous but not tell your protagonist anything substantial until the climax. Regardless, your protagonist is amazed and shocked at the reveal, even though the old geezer could have just told him what was going on chapters back. Cheers.

5. There should be a useless looking object that your character gets stuck with. It should be so seemingly irrelevant that it can only be exceptionally relevant. Later, it saves your protagonist’s life.

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes 5 more tips, on Quill Cafe.

Amazon Author Page

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This post, by Publetariat founder and Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton, originally appeared as a guest post on the BookBuzzr Blog on 10/21/11.

Amazon has been instrumental in the rise of the indie author. Amazon provides do it yourself publishing platforms both for ebooks (Kindle Digital Publishing platform) and print (Createspace), as well as its own imprint for a print and ebook publishing model. But that’s just the beginning. Amazon takes things a step further by treating indie authors the same as mainstream-published authors when it comes to marketing and promotional opportunities on the site. One example of this is Amazon Author Central, through which anyone who has authored content offered for sale on Amazon can have his or her own, dedicated Amazon Author page.

 

An Amazon Author page can be a surprisingly robust plank in your author platform, especially considering that they’re offered totally free of charge. Your Amazon Author page can include all of the following:

• Author Photo
• Author Brief Biography
• Author Bibliography (of books/content for sale on Amazon)
• Author Blog Posts
• Dedicated Discussion Board
• Integration With Facebook, Twitter, and Email

Here’s my Amazon Author page:

Setting up your Amazon Author page is very, very easy, and it’s an opportunity that’s open to all authors, mainstream-published and indie alike.

First, you need to have an Amazon account. It doesn’t matter whether you have one set up as a consumer or self-publisher, either type of account is fine to use for Author Central sign-up. Just go to the Amazon Author Central page, login, and fill in the provided form to have an Amazon Author Page created for you. On the U.S. site its URL is http://authorcentral.amazon.com, and on the U.K. site the URL is http://authorcentral.amazon.co.uk . This page shows the options and tabs available to you once you’re logged in:

 

Read the rest of the post on the BookBuzzr Blog.

Drink The Kool-Aid

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This post, by J.A. Konrath, originally appeared on his A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing blog on 9/30/11.

Yesterday, an agent blogged about a speech she recently gave to Sisters in Crime. Some of the advice was fine. Some was archaic (no, writers don’t need to attend conventions or volunteer for anything), but this was just downright awful:

"Do NOT drink the kool-aid on E-publishing. It’s too early to be making sweeping statements about any of it. We’re all learning this as we go and the right answer to almost everything is "we’ll see what happens."

I threw up a little in my mouth when I read that. It’s terrible advice, especially coming from someone who should have writers’ best interests at heart.

Here are some sweeping statements I’ll make, which can be verified:

1. Ebooks sales are going up, paper sales are going down. This trend WILL continue. This means that you need to worry less about who handles your paper rights, and more about who handles your erights.

If you handle your own erights, you keep 70% of the list price (that you set.)

If you let a publisher handle your erights, you get 17.5% of the list price (which they set.)

2. There isn’t much a publisher can do for you that you can’t do for yourself (or hire someone to do.) In other words, paying a publisher 52.5% to create cover art and do some editing is crazy.

3. More and more self-pubbed authors are doing well. And more and more legacy pubbed authors are trying self-pubbed. On this blog I’ve had dozens of guest posts, and listed hundreds of authors by name, who are making good money. Some are getting rich. None of them would be making bupkis if they didn’t drink the Kool-Aid.

 

Read the rest of the post on J.A. Konrath‘s A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing.

Is It Apple Forcing Down Apple’s Hardware Prices, or Amazon?

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“Apple’s Lower Prices Are All Part of the Plan,” ran the headline for an interesting piece yesterday by Nick Wingfield of the New York Times.

Really?

Wingfield believes that Apple, “once known as the tech industry’s high-price leader,” is carrying out a major strategy change to the point where it is now competing with, and often beating, its rivals on hardware prices.

 

I’ll have to admit that despite some interesting anecdotal pricing comparisons made by Wingfield, I’m not feeling him. Yes, Apple has certainly shown some signs that it is pulling back some on its hardware prices, and those prices could soon collapse by 30% or more due to forces entirely outside Apple’s control. We’ll get to that, but it is unlikely that such a collapse would reflect Apple’s strategy.

To conclude that Apple has a real commitment to competitive pricing in its corporate DNA, we’d have to see a lot more evidence of significantly  lower prices on mainstream hardware items like the iPad, the iPod Touch, and the various workhorse Macs (as opposed to boutique products like the MacBook Air or carrier-subsidized products like the iPhone.)

It could happen. But to suggest that Apple management will be in the driver’s seat applying the gas on such a strategic transformation is to ignore a number of powerful forces that leave Apple few options.

For starters, let’s look at the tablet market, which it is entirely fair
to say was created through the innovative brilliance of Apple and its
late leader Steve Jobs. The brilliant success of the iPad — both in its elegance and in its acquisition rate by the public — made fierce competition inevitable. So while iPad sales continue to grow dramatically quarter over quarter, iPad’s overall tablet market share fell from 95.5% a year ago to 66.6% in the third quarter of 2011, FierceWireless reported Friday. Nothing truly stunning there; it’s a pattern one could expect to see in any new market as it begins to mature.

A little more of a jaw-dropper is that the market share for the various Android tablets on the market — including devices from HTC, LG, Motorola, Samsung, Acer and Dell — grew from 2.3% to 26.9% in the same period.

Now, in the fourth quarter of 2011, the Android market share is likely to grow even more dramatically with the launch of the Kindle Fire tablet, priced at $199 and capable, Amazon clearly believes, of doing everything an iPad can do except for the things that only a few people really care about.

If the Kindle Fire hits the hardware sweet spot once people have it in their hands, it could quickly become the single most coveted holiday gift for smart grownups this year at that $199 price, and that price and popularity would constitute a very powerful if traditional pressure on the $499-to-$829 iPad price structure.

But there is another set of pressures forming just now that could totally pull the rug out from under iPad prices. As we reported last week in our post Interested in Trading Up for a New Kindle Touch or Kindle Fire Tablet? Pull Your Clunker In to Amazon’s Super Lot, Amazon is now investing website real estate and an aggressive marketing campaign to create its own secondary marketplace for virtually all tablets and ebook readers. If Amazon can succeed at enticing thousands of the customers whom it shares with Apple to trade in their iPads and iPod Touches for the 30% to 40% offers now on the Amazon website, those trade-in units could stake Amazon or its “Warehouse Deals” subsidiary to an off-price inventory that might, in time, create an entirely new form of downward pricing pressure on Apple.

What’s really going on here? Obviously, an important part of Amazon’s motivation is to give its customers as much incentive as possible to buy its latest-model Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire units, and regardless of what you paid originally for an iPad it’s a compelling proposition to be able to trade it in now for a brand new Kindle Fire and actually have money left over.

But there could be another mission for Amazon, one that could well influence the economics, the retail pricing, and perhaps even the share price for a competitor such as Apple over the next few years. It’s easy at this point to think that Amazon’s new two-way hardware market will be dwarfed in scale by Apple’s front-door production and retail power.

But Amazon knows better than anybody the effects that its Amazon
Marketplace secondary market for new and used books had on competing
booksellers and publishers over the past decade. Some in the publishing
industry believe that Amazon’s customer-friendly innovations actually
destroyed billions of dollars in corporate wealth, even if it also
fueled tens of thousands of small and often home-based businesses.

“Some companies,” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is fond of saying, “do everything they can to raise prices for their customers. Other companies do everything they can to lower prices for their customers.”

It is clear that Amazon has always been the latter kind of company, and equally clear that Bezos feels that Apple has been the former kind of company both generally and in its activities with the Big Six publishers to create the “agency model” to fix ebook prices at higher levels than Amazon wanted to charge.

If Apple now seems to be in a state of transition from the former kind of company to the latter kind of company, it remains to be seen whether the transition is “all part of Apple’s plan” or, at least in some significant part, the result of an impressive array of economic pressures that Amazon’s innovations are bringing to bear on Apple.

Note: it happens every 90 days or so, and this afternoon Amazon will report its quarterly earnings after the close of the markets, with the usual conference call scheduled at 5 pm Eastern. Apple reported its earnings last week and apparently disappointed investors. Amazon may well do the same in the short term, but the company’s commitment to low margins could well be leading it to a promised land in which it could gain as much as 50% of the U.S. trade book market by 2013.

 

This is a reprint from Stephen Windwalker’s Kindle Nation Daily, where you can find real-time listings of free and quality 99-cent Kindle books in Amazon’s Kindle store, as well as book reviews, news and commentary about the Kindle and ebooks in general.

And Pretty Words All in a Row: Tightening Your Narrative Focus

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This post, by Janice Hardy, originally appeared on her The Other Side of the Story blog on 10/19/11.

First drafts are typically messy. We let our creativity guide us and the story goes where the story goes. It’s not uncommon for a first (or even second) draft to be a bit all over the place. Eventually we’ll get to a point where it’s time to tighten, not only the prose, but the narrative as well.

It’s time to look at your narrative focus.

Narrative focus is the theme or idea that ties a sentence, paragraph, scene, chapter, and book together. It’s what keeps the story flowing because everything is lining up like lovely little story roads. It helps keep the pace moving as events and details are building upon one another and making the reader feel like the story is going somewhere.

Like so many things in writing, narrative focus affects the macro and micro levels of your story.

Sentences
Have you ever read a run-on sentence? Odds are it lost its focus. It’s trying to do too many things at once and you’re not really sure what the point of the sentence is. Or you’ll find a sentence that’s trying to cram something in that doesn’t really go with the rest of it.

Bob ran for the car, jumping over the barrel of firecrackers he still couldn’t light, trying to ignore Sally screaming that she’d never leave the keys in the ignition and he was looking in the wrong place.

Um, what?

Do you have any idea what this sentence is trying to say? What’s important here? Going for the car, lighting the barrel of firecrackers, or the keys in the ignition.

Try keeping the focus of each topic together.

Bob ran for the car, ignoring Sally’s screams that she’d never leave the keys in the ignition. He jumped over the barrel of firecrackers he still couldn’t light.

Better, but there’s still trouble here, because what do firecrackers have to do with going for keys? This kind of narrative wobble is common when you’re trying to slip in details and aren’t sure how they fit. This can lead to unfocused paragraphs.

Paragraphs

Remember English class? One topic per paragraph? That still holds true in writing.

 

Read the rest of the post on Janice Hardy‘s The Other Side of the Story blog.

Top 8 Tactics to Power Your Online Book Launch

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Okay, you’ve finished your book, filled out all your book metadata, and gone through the publishing process. Soon, your book will become available for sale online. For many authors, this is a critical time in the lives of their books.

Why? When your book is new, it’s the natural time to do a book launch. In fact, it’s possible to re-launch a book any time there’s a reason to do so, but the vast majority of book launches are, appropriately enough, at the time of initial publication.

 

The idea of a book launch is to turn the publication of the book into an event. Events, by their nature, draw more attention from the public. Your event is one-time-only, happening live, and the more ways you can attract attention during the launch period, the more eyeballs you will attract to your book (and your other books, if you have related books in print already).

Let’s look at the elements that can go into a book launch. You won’t be doing all these things, so don’t immediately become overwhelmed. Think of this more as a menu of options you can choose from.

8 Ways to Make Your Book Launch Take Off

First, decide whether you want to run all of your activities on a single day, over the course of a week, or extending to a longer time period. Any of these options is workable, and I encourage you to spread them out if your time is already at a premium. Remember that you’re in charge, so you get to decide the exact parameters of your book launch. Here are some things you might include in your book launch:

  1. Media Kit – This is essential. It’s the established way for you to get your information to book reviewers, media contacts and other bloggers. I won’t go through the whole media kit here, but it should include your book launch media release (see below for more information), photo of your book cover, photo of the author, marketing information, sample interviews, and a concise cover letter.

    2.  

  2. Guest Posts – One of the best ways to bring your message to new groups of readers is by offering to write guest articles for other bloggers. This can be done as part of a blog tour or on its own. In any case, by introducing yourself and your subject to new networks of readers, your book will get more of a boost at its launch.

    3.  

  3. Book Trailer – Short videos that act like movie trailers for your book have become more and more popular in the last couple of years. Some books seem to lend themselves to this treatment more than others, and some of the most effective I’ve seen are for fiction, like thrillers and romances.

    4.  

  4. Media Contacts – One way to help your book get off to a good start is to get the attention of the media. This might be through an interview with the local newspaper or radio station about your book, or it might be articles you submit to magazines or online periodicals in your niche. Developing a list of media contacts who are interested or who have reported in the past about your topic will be very useful for this effort.

    5.  

  5. Book Reviewers – Planning your review campaign well in advance will allow both print and online reviewers plenty of time to prepare a review about your book. Although we can’t dictate the schedule on which these reviews are released, let reviewers know when the launch will be happening and other events scheduled for the time period of the launch.

    6.  

  6. Contests & Giveaways – One of the techniques that’s been used to good effect by lots of authors is to give away a set number of books during the launch period. These may be offered by lottery, for leaving comments on your blog, for posting Tweets about the book launch, or any other way you can dream up to attract people’s interest. Free anything is still a powerful pull for lots of people, and getting your book into as many people’s hands as possible is the aim of your launch, so get creative here.

    7.  

  7. Blog Tour – A blog tour organizes the guest posts, giveaways and blogger networking into a formal schedule during your launch period. Setting up guest appearances on blogs, which allows the bloggers to introduce you to their readers, is a terrific way to grow your own reader community and enhance your relationship with lots of bloggers in your niche. You can promote your tour schedule on your own blog and through social media to create some excitement for all the events you’ve planned.

    8.  

  8. Media Release – Although your media release is an integral part of the Media Kit I mentioned at the beginning, it’s really a key piece of your book launch as well. Why? A well-written and targeted media release will bring together all the best reasons people should be interested in your book, your subject, you and your book launch. And if your book legitimately addresses more than one audience, take your basic media release and re-write the headline and first paragraph to highlight the connection to other groups.

Taken together, putting together a book launch can be a lot of work. But there are a lot of tangible and intangible benefits you get from going through all this trouble. And while our basic aim is to sell books, if you’re in this for the long haul, you’ll recognize that these benefits will repay your efforts in many ways. For instance, by going through the launch, you can:

  • Create better relations with other bloggers in your field
  • Better understand your readers and why they respond to you
  • Explore aspects of your subject that might be of interest to different groups of readers
  • Learn which approaches work best in driving traffic, and interest, about your book.

Running a book launch can be a demanding, exhausting and exciting adventure. You’ll learn a lot, and you’ll be able to use that learning for your next book. So give it a try.

 

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

WIG&TSSIP: Point-of-View Methods

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This post, by Mark Barrett, originally appeared on his Ditchwalk site on 10/13/11.

The Ditchwalk Book Club is reading and discussing Rust Hills’ seminal work, Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular. Announcement here. Overview here. Tag here.

So much has been written across all mediums about point of view in storytelling that the aggregate should be classified as a type of pollution. And all the more so because such conversations almost always reference a system of categorization rather than the act of creation. To paraphrase Hills: while it’s always useful to have something to say to an academic, getting lost in critical blather is pointless.

 

To begin, any story you tell will have at least one point of view. It doesn’t matter which medium you’re working in or what your objective is. You can try to entirely scrub point of view from a story as an exercise and it will still be there. Why? Because anybody who experiences your story knows that it didn’t come from their own head, which means it came from somebody else’s head, which means it has a point of view.

Point of view is inherent in storytelling. The question, then, is how you most effectively control and make use of this always-on, omnipresent aspect of fiction. Fortunately, just as audiences are open and willing to suspend disbelief in order to participate emotionally in the fiction you create, they are generally open and willing to adopt whatever point of view you want to use. If a particular point of view makes your work better or more convincing, that’s not only the point of view you should use but the point of view your audience will want you to use.  

Following up on the previous section, Hills connects the abstract notion of choice with the concrete question of point of view:

The choice of the point of view to be used in a story may be pre-made, more or less unconsciously, by the author, as being basic to his whole conception of it. Otherwise, though, choices about point of view will undoubtedly be the most important decisions about technique that he has to make.

 

Read the rest of the post on Mark Barrett‘s Ditchwalk.

7 Social Networking Mistakes to Avoid

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Everyone says you must social network as part of your author platform.

Publishers, agents, self-publishing marketing people, other authors. It now seems part of the non-negotiable author platform for indie authors and those wanting a traditional deal.

But there’s more to social networking than just marketing.

I started blogging, tweeting and Facebooking over two and a half years ago and consider it a life-changing experience. I have made some fantastic online friends, connected with peers in the industry, gained an online platform that now reaches thousands of people and my novel, Pentecost, is still in the Amazon bestseller rankings after six months, based on a launch fueled by social media. Twitter in particular is an important part of my social life as well as my work and I am a passionate evangelist for the platform.

It doesn’t matter what social network you want to jump into, there are principles that apply to all and some basic mistakes that you can avoid which will make it a much more effective place for you to be.

Here are the top 7 mistakes authors and writers make in social networking.

(1) Not being useful/interesting/entertaining.

If you want to stand out in a crowded market online you have to offer something to people. Remember the phrase ‘what’s in it for me?’ Everyone wants to know things that will help them, or interest them or make them laugh. If you’re not offering that, then you won’t get attention. If you don’t have attention, it won’t lead to interest in you or action in terms of buying your book. So focus on being one of these things as the main pillar of your social networking. For example, I tweet useful links to blog posts on writing, publishing and marketing @thecreativepenn .

(2) Not understanding generosity and social karma.

There is an understanding online that we are not competitors, that this isn’t a zero sum game, that the pie just gets bigger. In fact, those of us in the same niche post on each others blogs, share posts that aren’t our own and promote other people’s products, even if they overlap with ours. The blogging and social media world is all about being generous with links, with information, with help. It makes the community a very positive place to be and we all benefit. It’s important to do this for it’s own sake but it also generates social karma, as in you will receive back in the measure you give. I don’t mean this in any spiritual manner, just that ‘what goes around, comes around’ as in any community.

(3) Not being personal enough.

Yes, you have to be useful but you also have to be a real person. Don’t just tweet information all the time. Intersperse some updates about your life, your writing, maybe your pets or interests, some photos. People connect with people, not info-streams. Use pictures and also link to multi-media that you create or participate in. Remember that people buy from those they know, like and trust so you have to earn that. I also recommend using a picture of your face throughout your networking. It’s much more personal to connect with someone specific rather than an avatar or random picture. Using the same picture all over the web is a good idea and will help people recognize you across the networks.

(4) Being too personal or too marketing focused.

Of course, personal does need balance. You can’t just have personal updates as no one is interested in that. Also, do not just tweet about your new book. The fastest way to get blocked by people is if you are just interested in selling your stuff. There’s a time for that but it’s AFTER you’ve built up some social karma and goodwill with the online audience. Also, if you want to get retweeted, or Liked so your post is shared across other people’s networks, it needs to resonate. That generally means it should have a good headline. I frequently rewrite headlines from blogs in order to get more Retweets. Basic copywriting skills will serve you well here. I recommend Copyblogger as the best place to learn about this and much more on internet marketing.

(5) Expecting short term gain.

Social networking is basically hand-selling to people around the world. You have to connect with people over a longer period of time, before you try to sell them your book. Many authors dive into social networking just before their book launch and then try to sell immediately, or try desperately to grow their following at the last minute. But it doesn’t work like that. You need to work on it consistently, putting in the effort to create relationships over time. This is a long game. Luckily, authors are used to long term projects!

(6) Not being consistent with niche and timing.

People tend to clump together around their interests online, so people will follow your twitter stream for several reasons. They like what’s in your profile (writer/author/loves books!) or they like your tweets/updates, or both. It follows that you need to be consistent with the topics you share because those people will be turned off if you start in a completely new direction. So I tweet about writing, publishing and book marketing @thecreativepenn. I can be tangential e.g. creativity, books I’m reading, things that relate but I won’t be sharing on things really outside the niche e.g. weight loss/ TV programs etc. If you stick to your niche, you will develop a nice, tight community who share your interests. Consistency is also important in terms of timing. If you don’t tweet/update/post for months, people won’t follow you. Simple as that.

(7) Not being global enough with tweet timing and book availability.

Online social networking opens up the world to your books. That is truly exciting…but only if you take advantage of the opportunity.  I’m based in London but 70% of my traffic comes from the US and 15% of my podcast audience is in China, and there are many others represented in my twitter stream and blog traffic stats. The only way to reach people everywhere on social media is to use a scheduler for your tweets. I use Su.pr but you can also use SocialOomph or Hootsuite. Scheduling in multiple time zones means you can appear in streams at different times of day. It’s what I used to specifically try to network with Americans (and it works! Hello American friends!) However, you should also remember that there is only a point in connecting internationally if your book is also available everywhere i.e. on Amazon.com and also in ebook format.

So, those are the top mistakes I see people making on the social networks. If you have any more lessons to share, please add them in the comments below.

 Do you need some more in-depth help with social networking?

Many people want to be successful at social networking but they are afraid of wasting time and not being effective, as well as the concerns of privacy and just not knowing where to start. So I have launched a multi-media mini-course that will help with this.

It has a 59 page ebook, plus audios and 4 behind the scenes videos on all the major social networks. I share all my top tips and strategies for building your social network and using your time most effectively. I help you through the process saving you time and effort in jump-starting your social networking platform.

It’s just US$39.99. Click here to learn more about it .

 

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

E-Book Cards Will Change The Way You Sell E-Books: Transform A Digital Book Into A Physical Product

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Publetariat welcomes author Cheri Lasota. In this guest post, Cheri introduces the idea of using physical gift cards as a means of ebook distribution through brick-and-mortar and other offline outlets.

Have you heard of e-book cards? If you haven’t already, I think you will soon. They are a new book marketing technique making headway and headlines around the country now. 

I heard about them from author Dean Wesley Smith. The idea stems from this simple question: how do authors and publishers sell a digital product in a physical store? 

So many of us are releasing e-book only versions of our fiction. In such cases, how do we sign our books at events? How can we hand-sell our books at conferences, speaking tours, or to the neighbor next door? How do we start to educate the paperback public that e-books are both the wave of the future and the here and now? E-book cards can accomplish all this.

These plastic cards are the same size as your credit card or the gift cards you might buy at the store. Why that size and shape? 

·      You can fit them into your wallet or purse.

·      You can slip them into larger sleeves or envelopes that can display even more content about the book.

·      You can put them in a display holder that has a slot for business cards.

·      You can sign them at events because the plastic makes them durable.

·      You can mail them in a standard envelope for promotional packages because they are so small and compact. 

And just think about how little space they would take up on the bookstore shelf, as opposed to a 600- to 800-page paperback?

SpireHouse Books released my novel on Sept. 13, 2011 and we have wholeheartedly embraced e-book cards in our marketing campaigns since then. 

Thus far, we sold many of the cards at my book launch, I’ve sold some by hand, several stores are displaying and selling them, many have bought them as gifts for their friends, and I have used them as giveaways at events and elsewhere.

In the future, we plan to mail them out to book reviewers,continue to use them for giveaways and to sell at events, give them as gifts for holidays and birthdays…the possibilities are endless.

You can tailor your e-book cards for your own needs. For my cards, my publisher put the book cover on side 1 and included two important notes on it:  “E-book Card Edition” and “Read On Any Device.” On the accompanying display, we mention that the e-book card edition is cheaper than anywhere else the book is sold, which gives bookstore owners a clear incentive to stock them and gives readers a great reason to buy in-store as opposed to buying online. Our e-book card edition also contains exclusive content.

On side 2, we included a “tagline” as well as a short synopsis of the storyline; clear, concise instructions on how and where to download the book; an ISBN/barcode; and a unique scratch off promotional code,which the buyer plugs into my publisher’s website.  

We see this as an incredible opportunity for bookstores as well as authors and small publishers. Spread the word to other authors. Talk about this with your local bookstore managers. Think outside the box and you may find that these cards give you access to readers you never thought you could reach. 

Have questions? Just comment on this post.

 

[Publetariat Editor’s note: more of the how-to nuts and bolts, and costs, of getting ebook cards produced are covered in this linked post from Dean Wesley Smith, which was referenced by Cheri near the beginning of this post.]

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SpireHouse Books just launched Cheri Lasota’s first novel, Artemis Rising, this fall. The book is a YA historical fantasy based on mythology and set in the exotic Azores Islands. Currently, Cheri is writing and researching her second novel, a YA set on the Oregon Coast. Over the course of her sixteen-year career, she has edited fiction, nonfiction,screenplays, and short stories for publication. Cheri also has twenty-four years of experience writing poetry and fiction. Learn more about Artemis Rising at http://www.cherilasota.com or buy it at http://bit.ly/ArtemisRisingNovel.

 

Guest Post – Piracy and Free Content with Foz Meadows

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This guest post, by Foz Meadows, originally appeared on Alan Baxter’s The Word on 10/11/11.

Today I’ve got a guest post from author Foz Meadows. A discussion elsewhere led to this very lucid and, to my mind, accurate post on the nature of piracy in the digital age and the pros and cons of authors offering free content. It applies equally to all forms of digital media. I agree wholeheartedly with Foz on this and hope it makes some interesting reading for you guys.

Piracy and Free Content
by Foz Meadows

solace and grief front cover Guest post Piracy and free content with Foz MeadowsNeil Gaiman tried the free giveaway experiment a little while back – the readers of his blog voted which novel of his they most wanted to recommend to friends (it ended up being American Gods), and then he made it freely downloadable for a month, after and during which time his publishers monitored his sales to see what happened. Similar to Cory Doctorow’s experience, sales of ALL his books (and not just American Gods) went way, way up, which I think Gaiman compared to something of a library/lending effect, i.e.: most people discover new authors because someone, be it a friend or a library, loans them a copy of the book, thereby encouraging them to buy that author’s works in the future but without the initial risk of paying money for a product they might not like.

What I took away from the whole endeavour (apart from the fact that, when it comes to any experimental sort of book sale process, it is very helpful to already be a megastar) is that it seems to work best for writers who already have a published back-catalog. Putting up one book for free, for a limited time, draws attention to all your works together; and if people like the free product, then they’re more inclined to pay for your other stuff, because you are now one of Their Authors. Which could work as a promotion for a second book if done right, I think – but the call is yours.

Regarding people who download, I do think there’s something to the argument that the majority (or at least, a significant proportion) of DLs don’t actually constitute a lost sale, per se, so much as a parallel form of consumption. Allowing for the 10% of assholes who will always rather steal than pay even when they can afford it, I know there have been myriad reported instances where people who already own physical copies of books have sought out illegal digital versions because of region control issues in the legal versions, such as someone from Australia not being able to buy an ebook version of a novel they already own because it’s only published in America.

 

 

Read the rest of the post on Alan Baxter‘s The Word.

Let's Talk About The Author's Journey

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My first book, Southern Cross, falls under Historical Fiction. It is a spy/murder/mystery that takes place in 1938 and 1939. The journey from writer to self-published author has been long and interesting for me, but not without its potholes. I am beginning to see that promoting my book is going to be more difficult than writing it. Southern Cross is listed on Amazon in England, Germany, and France. So far one copy was sold in England. Nice, but how did they find me and how do I reach other potential readers? I have a webpage, listed on page one of a Google search. I just started a FaceBook page. So far I have been able to do it all myself and would like to keep it that way. What methods have worked best for you?