Month: March 2013

Indie Author Branding: How to Figure Out How to Brand Yourself

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This post, by Elizabeth Barone, originally appeared on her site on 3/24/13.

It took me about a year to figure out how to brand myself as an author. This was after I decided to be a professional novelist. Before I figured it out, I worried about it almost all the time. After all, I used to work with non-profits and small businesses to create their web presence—a form of branding.

I couldn’t figure out how to translate those principles to my own company. It just didn’t work. For example, a company has a mission statement and a logo. While I have a few reasons for writing and morals when it comes to being a writer selling a product, I couldn’t convince myself to put an official mission statement on my website. That just seemed silly! In the same vein, it seemed weird to develop a logo for myself.

Meanwhile, I read articles about choosing a genre and establishing yourself as an author of a niche. “How can I pick one genre when they’re all so fun?” I would wonder, staring at the screen. Picking one seemed more committal than a manwhore getting married. What if I wanted to write romance down the road? What if I decided horror was really my thing? I couldn’t very well keep changing genres.

The only thing I had going for me was a website: elizabethbarone.net. While I really would have preferred the .com, I made this place my home base for my books, news, and blog not long after deciding to work toward being a full-time author. I did very little to brand it, other than experiment with WordPress themes, and play with headers in Photoshop.

Then I stumbled upon an interview Joanna Penn did with CJ Lyons, who calls her books “thrillers with heart.” I liked the term immediately because it not only perfectly described her books, but gave her room to write in all genres. If she wanted to, she could even write horror under that term, as long as there was some heart in it. That got my wheels turning and then branding made sense to me. I didn’t have to pick a genre. I could write “drama with grit”:

stories powered by strong, intricate characters who are plagued by realistic problems and situations.

 

Read the rest of the post on Elizabeth Barone’s site.

How to Set Up Google Authorship (and Why You Really Should)

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If you write any online content, Google Authorship is something you can’t afford to ignore.

Authorship is Google’s program for verifying the identity of online writers. Once you have claimed Authorship, any time one of your articles or blog posts appears in someone’s Google search results, they will see your picture and a link to your Google Plus profile.

You can see an example linking to one of my blog posts below.

This has obvious advantages in terms of giving your posts added visibility and increasing the likelihood they will be clicked on.

In addition, though, using Google Authorship will boost your credibility and expert status with Google in topic areas you write about regularly. It will also help your original articles rank higher than sites that have (legitimately or otherwise) copied your content.

A further advantage is that if a user returns to their results list after reading an author-tagged search result for a certain period of time, Google will add three additional links to similar articles from the same author below the link they originally clicked. How cool is that?!

So far there is no evidence that articles with Google Authorship automatically achieve higher placings in search results – but as Authorship helps build your reputation, it is likely that in the longer term it will assist you in achieving higher search-engine rankings as well.

Before you can set up Google Authorship, you will need two things: a Google Account and Google Plus (also written Google+) membership.

If you use any Google services that require you to log in – Gmail being the best-known – you will have a Google Account already. Otherwise you can sign up here. It’s free and only takes a moment.

Google Plus is Google’s attempt to create its own social network to rival Facebook. Although it has failed to capture the public imagination in the way Facebook has, according to this recent article on ZDNet it now has over 343 million active users. That puts it ahead of both Twitter and YouTube (which Google also owns, incidentally).

Google Plus is already tightly integrated with other services such as Google search, which is a good reason to open an account in itself. You can check out my Google Plus page here, incidentally.

Assuming you have a Google Account, joining Google Plus is simple (and free). Just visit the Google Plus website to sign up. The Digital Unite website has detailed step-by-step instructions to joining Google Plus, if you need them.

With that done, you are almost ready to set up Authorship. There is just one more thing to do, which is to ensure that you have a good quality portrait photograph that Google can display in search results. You can upload or change this via your Google Plus profile page.

Setting Up Authorship

There are two main ways to set up Authorship. The first, and simplest, can be used if you have an email address on the same domain as the blog or website you want to claim Authorship for.

For example, if you want to claim Authorship for articles you write on www.mywebsite.com and you have an email address of writer@mywebsite.com, you could use this method.

In that case, visit the Google Authorship page and submit your email address to Google via the online form. Google will send you an email containing a link to click in order to confirm that this is indeed your account. Once you have done this, Authorship will be set up for the domain in question. The root domain will also be added to the list of items in “Contributor To” on your Google Plus profile page.

No matter how many articles or posts you publish on this domain, you should only need to do this once. For Authorship to work, however, it is essential that every article or post you write includes the word “by” (without the quotation marks) followed by your name exactly as it appears in your Google Plus account.

Note that doing this will also add your email address to the Work section of your Profile. By default this is viewable only by your Circles (people you have chosen to follow in Google Plus). You can keep your email entirely private if you wish, however, by editing the visibility settings in the Work section.

Of course, this method can’t be used where you don’t have control over the root domain, as is the case with many blogs on free hosting services such as Blogger and WordPress.com. The same may apply with blogs you have written guest posts for. In that case, you will need to use a two-step method.

First, go to your Google Plus profile page and click on “About”. Scroll down a bit and you should find a box headed Links. I’ve copied mine below…

As with all the images in this post, you can see a full-sized version by clicking on the image concerned.

Click on Edit at the foot of the box, and click on Add Custom Link in the “Contributor To” section. You will then be able to add the website concerned to the list of sites there.

That’s not enough for Authorship to work on its own, however. This is where Step 2 comes in. You will need to add a piece of code on the web page concerned that identifies you as the author. Here is the code I use:

The URL in the middle is that of your Google Plus Profile page, so you will need to navigate to this and copy it from your browser’s location bar. Obviously, the reference number of your page will be different from mine, but otherwise if you are on the correct page it should look similar.

The other crucial element to include is the ?rel=author tag directly after your Profile page URL. This tells Google that you are claiming Authorship for the post or article in question. The anchor text you use doesn’t really matter. I’ve used my name in the example code above, but you could put “Google Plus” if you prefer. In that case it will render as in the following example: Here is an Authorship link to Nick Daws’ Google Plus page. Either way, it should work without any problems.

To test that you have set up Authorship correctly, go to Google Webmaster Tools Structured Data Testing Tool. Enter the website’s URL in the box and click on Preview. A results page should then appear showing whether Authorship is working or not (and how it has been verified, using email or rel=author markup). Here are the results I got for this blog when I tried doing this just now:

As you will see, it wasn’t possible for me to use the email method for my blog, so I used the rel=author method.

Naturally, with guest posts you have written in the past, Authorship won’t work unless the necessary code is inserted. You might therefore want to write to the owners of the blogs concerned asking if they would be kind enough to add a link to your Google Plus page using the “rel=author” tag.

And that’s it, really. In this post I have tried to show you all the basics you need to know in order to claim Authorship of your blog and guest posts. If you need more help, Google Webmaster Tools has pages titled Author Information in Search Results and Link your content to a Google+ Profile using “rel=author”.

Good luck setting up Authorship. I hope that in this article I have convinced you that it’s worth doing, and it isn’t rocket science!

If you have any comments or questions, please post them [in the comments section on the original post, here], and of course I’ll help if I can.

This is a reprint from Nick Daws’ My Writing Blog.

Publishing and Bad Publishing Are Not the Same Thing: A Publisher's Response to "An Agent's Manifesto"

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This post, by Peter Ginna, originally appeared on Dr. Syntax on 4/1/12.

The London agent Jonny Geller stirred up a lot of discussion, and a flurry of Twittering, by posting “An Agent’s Manifesto” a week or so ago. Jonny contended that in the “maelstrom” of the current book business, authors are being forgotten, taken for granted by booksellers and, in particular, by publishers. The original post seems now to be behind a paywall but it’s extensively quoted here and here. He writes:

The author is not an object which a publisher has to step over in order to achieve a successful publication. If they have a problem with the cover, blurb, copy or format, then something isn’t right…Remember, we don’t have a job without [the author]. For those of us still working in the legacy business of publishing books, here’s a reminder of the primary mover in this chain.

A great many people retweeted his column or commented on it using words like “fantastic.” And his dim view of publishers was echoed elsewhere. At her blog, the novelist and ghostwriter Roz Morris had even more negative opinions of my colleagues:

It is common, behind the scenes, to hear editors talk about authors with undisguised loathing – not just individual ones who may be difficult, but all of them, authors as a breed. There is a culture that authors must not be listened to.

I have to say that I don’t buy these generalizations about our business.

I have worked at publishers large and small–two Big Six houses, a literary indie, a university press, and currently a house I’d describe as mid-size. Never, ever, at any of them, have I heard authors discussed with “loathing.” At all of them it was fully understood by editors, marketers, and management that the author is, in Jonny’s words, “the primary mover” in the publishing firmament. The whole enterprise would not exist without authors. To put it another way, as one of my colleagues says, “the author is our customer.” I simply don’t know anyone in publishing who thinks of an author as “an object we have to step over to achieve a successful publication.”

At Bloomsbury, we regard the author as a key partner in marketing the book, because as Jonny correctly observes, “the author is the expert” on the subject, setting, and likely readership of her book. We want to tap into that expertise, and use the author to help mobilize the networks of readers who are going to respond to what she’s doing.

 

Read the rest of the post on Dr. Syntax.
 

Why I Chose An Assisted Self-Publishing Service

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This post, by Debbie Young, originally appeared on How to Successfully Self-Publish on 3/28/13.

Horror stories of indie authors ripped off by unscrupulous assisted publishing services companies are enough to propel any author on the road to becoming a one-man self-publishing band. But in my view, you should no more let these few rogues tarnish the business of ethical service providers than allow your perception of banks to be dictated by hoaxters who email you for your pin number in order to empty your bank account.

Nor should you assume that the safest way forward is to go it alone unless you are prepared for some serious multi-tasking.

DIY self-publishers must add to their job title of writer all of the following positions of responsibility: copy-editor, proofreader, typesetter, graphic designer, cover artist, print manager, e-book formatter, legal services manager, distribution manager, delivery boy, sales-person, promoter and PR.

This demanding job description does not suit everyone, especially those who are already juggling a day-job, family responsibilities and a social life – oh, and writing their next book!

If you prefer to outsource your book’s production, you should feel free to do so — while still retaining the status of indie author. It’s just a question of choosing the right partner.

To help you do this, I’ve compiled a comprehensive checklist (below), with the help of my friend, Helen Hart. As the author of nine traditionally published YA novels, and director of my own preferred publisher, SilverWood Books, Helen completely understands the writer’s viewpoint and how important each book is to its author.

It doesn’t surprise me that her company has amassed an extensive list of clients who value her expertise, including well-known traditionally published authors who have turned indie (prize-winning author and broadcaster Sarah LeFanu, USA Today bestselling historical novelist Helen Hollick), established self-publishers of multiple books – Harvey Black and Gael Harrison, and many debut writers.

1) HIGH STANDARDS

On the shelf of a bricks-and-mortar bookshop, their books should not be stand out as self-published. Cover design, paper quality, format, blurb, internal layout – all of these features should equal those of traditionally published books. Ask to see samples of your prospective partner’s books. Touch them, hold them, read them. Download their e-books to check for layout and typos. Are they up to scratch?

2) CLEAR COMMUNICATIONS

 

Read the rest of the post on How to Successfully Self-Publish.

10 Winning Marketing Strategies for Your Self-Published Book

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This post, by Robert Bidinotto, originally appeared on his site. on 3/17/13.

Some time ago, I published a piece telling aspiring authors “Ten Reasons You Should Skip Traditional Publishers and Self-Publish Ebooks Instead.” Yet despite the clear advantages of “indie” over “traditional” publishing, the prospect of “DIY” publishing still scares the hell out of many writers. Their most common worry?

“But…how would I market my book on my own?”

That fear is the main reason why so many hold out forever for a traditional contract, then accept lousy ones. They want a publisher to take the burden of marketing off their backs.

Well, let me share a dirty little secret that publishers don’t want newbie authors to know. Despite all their advance promises to give you lots of promotional support, they mostly will leave the marketing of your book up to you.

That’s right: They save their promotional budgets for King, Evanovich, and Grisham—not for struggling beginners or “mid-listers.” So, if you’ll have to promote your book all by yourself anyway, then why surrender most of your royalties and rights to a publisher?

Still, the question remains: How do you market a self-published book?

I spent a long time studying the promotional methods of successful self-published authors before I released my debut thriller, HUNTER. And, as I have described here, their tips helped HUNTER to become a big bestseller in December 2011.

I learned that becoming a successful “indie” author requires two basic things. First, you must craft a book that appeals to an identified target audience. Second, you must make your book “discoverable” to that target audience.

Let me explain what that means, in ten steps:

1. Write the best book you can—then, write your next one.

Crafting an appealing book is 90% of the marketing battle. No amount of marketing ingenuity will help an unappealing book succeed. On the other hand, I’ve seen great books succeed with little or no marketing push. (Hugh Howey’s Wool is an outstanding example.)

Bottom line: Good “word-of-mouth” is the best advertising.

In addition to writing a good book, the next best marketing tactic is to write more good books. Each new title will broaden your name recognition and generate more sales for all your previous ones. That’s because many readers are “binge readers.” They find an author they like, and they then seek out and scoop up every single title that the author has written previously.

Even better, write a series. Books linked together by some connecting theme (think of John Gray’s “Mars and Venus” books), or by some appealing character (think: Harry Potter, Jack Reacher, Stephanie Plum, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, Mitch Rapp, Mike Hammer, Scot Harvath, Sean Dillon, Spenser, Elvis Cole, Joe Pike, etc., etc.), will foster a virtual addiction in your fans, who will then eagerly await the publication date for every new installment in the series. Better yet, each new book released will attract new fans, prompting them to go back and buy all the prior books in the series. That’s how bestselling authors expand their audience over time, often geometrically.

 

Read the rest of the post on Robert Bidinotto’s site.

A Sentimental Education: Sex and the Literary Writer

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This post, by Julia Fierro, originally appeared on The Millions on 3/27/13. NOTE: this piece contains explicit language.

In writing my first novel, Cutting Teeth, when I got to the first scene that demanded dramatized sex — action, sound, smell, taste, the works — I paused. The word that made me lift my fingers from the keyboard was “clitoris.” Was it okay to use this word? What would my fellow literary writers, my former teachers and classmates at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop think of me? I laughed at my insecurity, although part of me loathed my hesitation. Of course it was okay. It’s just a body part, I told myself. I had the same reaction in the other sex scenes I wrote — most involved a man and a woman, one two women. Nipples. Cock. Dick. Balls. Even typing these words now gives me a shiver of fear, as if the literary gods will strike me dead, or brandish me with a scarlet S for writing not only bad sex, but any sex at all.

Today, sex is everywhere — on TV, our computers, even our phones. But in the last two years, since Fifty Shades of Grey became the fastest-selling paperback of all time, the jaws of literary writers have dropped, their shock over the book’s success, despite its unliterary style, echoing over the Twitter-waves. Part of me wants to say I was one of them — if only to be included in their elite ranks — but I wasn’t that surprised. I haven’t forgotten the lusty attraction of my grandmother’s paperback romances, which, as a pre-teen, I had secreted away to read at night by flashlight.

Long before I thought of myself as a writer, I was a reader. I grew up in a house of few books — my father’s set of encyclopedias in his native Italian and a handful of history books left over from my mother’s college education. My mother has a Masters in Education, but she hasn’t read a book in decades. My father was hungry for knowledge, but struggled to read our middle school science and social studies textbooks, the basic English too much of a challenge.

As a child, books were a magical distraction from my anxiety — what, 20 years later would be diagnosed as obsessive-compulsive disorder. At school, every real-life, real-time decision — who to befriend, who to avoid — carried an infinite possibility of catastrophe, but I was safe when living inside a book. The day came when it seemed as if I’d read every book in our small school library, and the librarian was at a loss for suggestions that were age-appropriate. This was the mid-1980s, years before the YA market exploded. I needed the imagined life books gave me — without them it seemed as if real life lost its luster.

I stole one of my grandmother’s Danielle Steel novels. I don’t remember the title, only the pearlescent cover’s gold-embossed cursive that promised diamonds, high heels, and Farah Fawcett-hair — a glimpse into a dramatic adult world. What I do remember are the sex scenes. I replaced the book the next week and stole off with another, and so on, until I had read all in my grandmother’s collection. Those books taught me so much — that you could have sex standing up or even underwater in a pool! Along with the sex came emotion. These men and women were brazenly sentimental, confessing passion, hatred, and envy, and that melodrama kept me glued to the page.

 

Read the rest of the post on The Millions.

A Perspective On Early Success in Publishing

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I was talking to a friend who was becoming frustrated by all these authors who seem to have only one or two books out and their books are selling like crazy. Or friends of hers [whose] debut books are getting these really big deals with major publishers. And she’s feeling down about it.

So I wanted to talk about this topic because I know a lot of my fellow writers feel this way, and I’ve felt like this too before. I’m not immune to the frustration.

So here we go:

[Publetariat Editor’s Note: strong language after the jump]

You do not know another author’s history. You don’t know how many books they wrote before they published one. You also don’t know a debut author is really a debut author. They may have 50 titles out under other pen names. Whether readers know it or not, and they have the finances from other books to help them launch this one. They have more contacts to help them promote their book. They know what works and doesn’t work for them to get the exposure they need. They know their pricing strategy. They are bringing a LOT to the table that they’ve learned from their previous pen name incarnations.

Most people who “hit big” have put in the time. They have their million words under their belt. They’ve practiced. They’ve learned their craft. In short, they have earned their success.

However, some people will inexplicably hit big with the first book they ever wrote. It may even have a ton of typos. You may think it sucks. But for whatever inexplicable reason it seems to sell like gangbusters.

Everybody thinks they want to be this person. But unless you are E.L. James and become literally rich over a few books, and movies are gonna get made, you do not want “early success” as an author.

One of the worst things that can happen to your career is to sell the shit out of book 1. I know that sounds crazy to you, but let me explain why.

The general public is fickle, they are forgetful, and they have a constant barrage of “bright shiny” in front of them 24/7. (Which explains the other two things.)

If you have one book out, readers who love you right now may or may not even remember you when book 2 comes out.

Early success, unless it is epic is rarely a great thing. And if it’s epic… and you had early success before you put in your million words or 10,000 hours for mastery, then the pressure of continuing to please your readers on book 2 or 3 is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Unless YOU feel you’ve reached some level of mastery/competence, it’s going to be hell writing all those other books with so many eyes on you waiting.

Margaret Mitchell never wrote another book after Gone With The Wind because she said she “couldn’t top the damn thing.”

Now you know why there are so many “one hit wonders”.

So… what do you want? What do you really want? Here is the best possible scenario in my personal opinion. Your mileage may vary, this is just how *I* see the world:

You write a ton of books, each getting better and stronger than the last. You build a consistent and loyal fan base. Your 20th or 25th book hits BIG.

And then?

All your new slobbering fans have 19-24 other books to read. They will not forget you. You can actually retain those readers.

How many readers do you think you retain if you hit big with book one or two and it takes you 8 months or a year to get the next book out? You can’t write fast enough to keep their attention. Trust me.

Not in the Twitter age.

Think about it.

I speak as someone who had a little bit of “too early success”, but not enough to tip me over into the super safe nearly famous zone.

It makes it more difficult when things slow down a little and you have to start building that net underneath you of backlist.

In fact, today it occurred to me… if I don’t count my short story and I don’t count individual novellas but instead just count the omnibus since it’s “book 1″, I only really have 5 titles out for Zoe. And only 6 for Kitty.

I have a LOT of work ahead of me. Because when I do write that book that mass quantities of people slobber over and miss meals and bathroom breaks for… I want them to have PLENTY of other books by me to read… so I can retain them as a fan for life.

I’m in this for the long haul, and I’m in it to win it. But it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

 

This is a reprint from The Weblog of Zoe Winters.

Lew Wallace: From Disgraced Civil War General To Bestselling Author Of Ben Hur

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This article, by John Swansburg, originally appeared on Slate on 3/26/13.

I.
Lew Wallace was making conversation with the other gentlemen in his sleeper car when a man in a nightgown appeared in the doorway. The train was bound for Indianapolis and the Third National Soldiers Reunion, where thousands of Union Army veterans planned to rally, reminisce, and march in a parade the New York Times would later describe as “the grandest street display ever seen in the United States.” It was Sept. 19, 1876, more than a decade since the Civil War had ended. Wallace had grayed a bit, but still wore the sweeping imperial moustache he’d had at the Battle of Shiloh. “Is that you, General Wallace?” the man in the nightgown asked. “Won’t you come to my room? I want to talk.”

Robert Ingersoll, also a veteran of Shiloh, was now the nation’s most prominent atheist, a renowned orator who toured the country challenging religious orthodoxy and championing a healthy separation of church and state. Wallace recognized him from earlier that summer, when he’d heard Ingersoll, a fellow Republican, make a rousing speech at the party’s nominating convention. Wallace accepted his invitation and suggested they take up a subject near to Ingersoll’s heart: the existence of God.

Ingersoll talked until the train reached its destination. “He went over the whole question of the Bible, of the immortality of the soul, of the divinity of God, and of heaven and hell,” Wallace later recalled. “He vomited forth ideas and arguments like an intellectual volcano.” The arguments had a powerful effect on Wallace. Departing the train, he walked the pre-dawn streets of Indianapolis alone. In the past he had been indifferent to religion, but after his talk with Ingersoll his ignorance struck him as problematic, “a spot of deeper darkness in the darkness.” He resolved to devote himself to a study of theology, “if only for the gratification there might be in having convictions of one kind or another.”

But how to go about such a study? Wallace knew himself well enough to predict that a syllabus of sermons and Biblical commentaries would fail to hold his interest. He devised instead what he called “an incidental employment,” a task that would compel him to complete a thorough investigation of the eternal questions while entertaining his distractible mind. A few years earlier, he’d published a historical romance about the Spanish conquest of Mexico, to modest success. His idea now was to inquire after the divinity of Christ by writing a novel about him.

It took four years, but in 1880, Wallace finished his incidental employment. He called it Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. It’s one of the great if little known ironies in the history of American literature: Having set out to win another soul to the side of skepticism, Robert Ingersoll instead inspired a Biblical epic that would rival the actual Bible for influence and popularity in Gilded Age America—and a folk story that has been reborn, in one medium or another, in every generation since.

II.

 

Read the rest of the post on Slate.

Are African Writers And Readers Ready For The eBook Revolution?

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This guest post, by Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima (with an introduction by Joanna Penn), originally appeared on Joanna Penn’s The Creative Penn on 3/23/13.

This week, the “father of African literature’ Chinua Achebe died, leaving behind a legacy for Nigerian authors. Today I welcome another Nigerian author Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima to discuss the outlook for ebooks in Africa.

Ebook sales are stabilizing in the US and UK, but the rest of the world is out there waiting for our books!

Those of us who can price reasonably, to take into account exchange rate differences, can potentially build a fan-base in countries that may be surprising to some.

Nigeria is one of the fastest growing emerging economies, and with the prevalence of cellphones in Africa it may become a fantastic new market in the next few years, even though there are still challenges right now.

Ebooks are outselling paperback and hardcover books in America and Europe, but not yet in Africa.

Today, Nigerian author and blogger Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima will tell you why the story is different in Africa.

Ebooks are not popular among writers and readers in my country Nigeria, and the rest of Africa, even though millions of people have been using email over the years and are now engaging in daily conversations on popular social network sites like Facebook and Twitter.

The majority of Africans are still living according to the standards of the last century, writing long hand and either paying for word processing or slowly doing so themselves on their desktops or laptops. The exception would be the African writers based in the U.S., UK and other developed societies who have to use the tools their peers are using in the 21st century. South Africa is ahead of Nigeria and other African countries in using smart phones and tablets but only got her first ebook store, Kalahari, in 2010, but the ebooks are overpriced for the rest of the continent.

Why is the penetration of ebooks challenging right now?

Generally, from South Africa to Nigeria, the two main challenges of ebooks are:

  • low level of bandwidth and the low capacity of the data cables making the access to broadband expensive and unavailable to the majority of the populations.

But in spite of the low internet penetration in Africa, there is only one choice left for the majority who are still crawling and lagging behind, if we cannot beat them, we have to join them.

And that is why I give a thumbs up to David Risher who has launched Worldreader to take “1 million e-books to children in the largely English-speaking countries of Ghana, Uganda, and Kenya” and has raised a total of $1.5 million to fund his digital literature revolution in sub-Saharan Africa.

“David is pushing a fundamental conversation: How do you create a culture of reading in a place that hasn’t had one?” said Anne Marie Burgoyne, Managing Director of Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation that supported Worldreader with $300,000 last September.

Is indie publishing the future?

 

Read the rest of the post on Joanna Penn’s The Creative Penn.

Killing Off A Character

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This post, by LJ Sellers, originally appeared on the Crime Fiction Collective blog and is reprinted here in its entirety with that site’s permission.

I killed my first recurring character recently, and it still haunts me. She wasn’t particularly popular, but the manner of her death was shocking. The ending made my beta readers cry for my protagonist, but they said they loved it. And so did my publisher. So I crossed my fingers and let it go to press.

Still, I knew it was a risk. Readers complain loudly when writers kill characters. They post negative reviews and ratings and often claim they’ll never read another book by the author. Some even follow through.

Television writers kill characters even more often than novelists do. Have you seen the third season of Downton Abbey? Viewers were infuriated. Or the last season of Grey’s Anatomy? Ouch!

Why do authors do it? For several creative reasons and possibly one egocentric rationale. First, the self-centered reason. Literary experts say if you’re not willing to kill a character, then you’re not a real writer. They say you lack the courage to be realistic and daring. So killing a character is a challenge that many writers feel compelled to experience.

But that’s not why I did it. If a character’s full story arc has been told, and there is nothing left for that person to do, then killing him or her is essential for the series. It’s only fair to readers to cut the dead weight and allow the story arc of other characters to grow and take new paths. Sometimes a death at the end of one story is the best way to set up a new story that begins with an emotional punch. Also, the action in the climax is often so intense that if no one dies, the story doesn’t feel realistic.

Another reason—which TV writers cite as their main motivation—is that killing a character creates uncertainty. Once readers/viewers realize that anyone could die, that quiet dread ratchets up the suspense.

Which is why readers and viewers keep coming back to a series even after someone they love has been dispatched. Many fans will rant and rave, but eventually they’ll accept the development and find themselves ready for more. Only now, their anticipation will be greater than ever.

This pattern is probably truer (safer) for television than novels. Book lovers get more attached to their mainstays, and therefore more upset by unexpected deaths. When you kill a recurring fictional character, you will lose some readers forever.

What is the payoff for novelists? The satisfaction of telling the story the way they envision it. The freedom to take the series or protagonist in a new direction. Maybe even more important—the rush of taking a risk and the confidence that comes with surviving it.

So in Rules of Crime, book seven of the Detective Jackson series, I finally killed a character and I made my protagonist suffer for it. So far, most of my faithful readers have supported—even loved—the decision. But not everyone. I just hope the few who are disappointed will come back to find out what happens next. Book eight is written, and I’ve made the development pay off in an a rewarding way.

What about you? Have you abandoned an author for knocking off a favorite character? Do you give TV writers more slack than novelists? Tell me what you think [ in the comments section on the original post ].

Facebook Followed You To The Supermarket

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This post, by Farhad Manjoo, originally appeared on Slate on 3/20/13. While it focuses on consumer products like detergent, authors who use, or are considering, Facebook ads should read it.

Even if you never click on Facebook ads, they are making you buy things.

This is a story about advertising on the Web. Specifically, it’s about ads on Facebook, a hugely popular free service that’s supported solely through advertising, yet is packed with users who are actively hostile to the idea of being marketed to on their cherished social network. Considering all of this, the best place to start is with your primary concern about Web ads. This is what I hear from readers every time I write about the online ad economy, especially ads on Facebook: “I don’t know how Facebook will ever make any money—I never click on Web ads!”

And that’s not all. You’ve checked with your friends and relatives. No one you know has ever intentionally clicked on a Web ad. OK, once, years ago, a co-worker told you about a guy who knows a guy who tapped an ad on his phone. True story! But don’t worry. People close to the situation dismissed it as a one-time deal. The guy wasn’t trying to tap the ad; he just had really fat fingers. He felt really bad about it afterward, too.

So, the question persists: How does Facebook expect to become a huge business if most people you know never click on ads?

The answer is surprisingly obvious. It’s a fact well-known to advertisers, though it’s not always appreciated by people who use Facebook or even by folks in the Web ad business: Clicks don’t matter. Whether you know it or not—even if you consider yourself skeptical of marketing—the ads you see on Facebook are working. Sponsored messages in your feed are changing your behavior—they’re getting you and your friends to buy certain products instead of others, and that’s happening despite the fact that you’re not clicking, and even if you think you’re ignoring the ads.

This isn’t conjecture. It’s science. It’s based on a remarkable set of in-depth studies that Facebook has conducted to show whether and how its users respond to ads on the site.

 

Read the rest of the post on Slate.

Does Your eBook Need an ISBN?

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This post, by Kristen Eckstein, originally appeared on her Ultimate Book Coach site.

An ISBN, International Standard Book Number, has been the standard in the publishing industry for eons to track title listings, multiple editions, book formats, and sales. Knowing this definition alone might make you instantly jump to the conclusion that you do, in fact, need an ISBN for all formats of your book, including the eBook format. But for eBooks the ISBN rule gets confusing, especially with the rise of Amazon’s popular Direct to Kindle program.

The question: Does your eBook (Kindle, Nook, iBook, etc.) need an ISBN? The short answer: It depends. There are several factors involved in applying ISBNs to eBooks, not the least of which is price. According to Bowker, the ISBN agency, every format of every book should have its own unique ISBN for tracking purposes, including multiple eBook formats such as PDF, MOBI, etc. This guarantees publishers are paid the correct amount for book sales, customers know exactly what version of what title they are purchasing, libraries can file eBooks and stock physical books once rather than mistakenly buying the same title twice, and retailers list books correctly in their databases.

However, there is also the price factor to consider. Some eBooks sell only a few dozen copies. In the United States, Bowker (the ISBN agency) charges $250 USD for a block of 10 ISBNs, and you can burn through them in a hurry and never sell enough eBooks to make up the investment for the ISBN. Not to mention the cost of proper eBook formatting, professional cover design and retailers’ required discounts. This may make you re-think applying an ISBN to every eBook you publish. When might your eBook not require an ISBN?

Short answer: If you’re only publishing on Kindle or your own website and nowhere else, Amazon’s Direct to Kindle program has its own internal tracking number assigned to each eBook. Since your eBook is not sold anywhere else, Kindle tracking is all you need and you don’t need to concern yourself with “wasting” an ISBN on that listing. If you publish a lot of Kindle books from interviews, blog content or transcripts, it’s best not to apply ISBNs to those titles.

Which begs the question, when do you want an ISBN assigned to your eBook?

 

Read the rest of the post on Kristen Eckstein’s Ultimate Book Coach site.

Socially Awkward – Why Your Online Friends Don’t Buy Your Book

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This post, by Catherine Tosko, originally appeared on The Self-Publishing Review on 3/19/13.

I have, apparently, 539 friends. Facebook tells me so.

I have a fan page for my book, with over 1000 likes. My Twitter is a healthy 600 odd and I have over 50 mentions on Google for the title. But you see, I know that not everyone rushed over to Amazon and picked up their copy the day it went on sale. I know this because I sold 23 copies on the first day. That was it.

So how the heck do I get every single one of those people to buy a copy of my book? Glibly “liking” my book page seems to be the done thing, a nod to my efforts, and a polite if awkward obligation by passers-by, as if I am at a cocktail party handing out flyers, a scenario something like this:

“Hey guy, do you know about my book? Here’s a flyer!” I cry, with my Facebook page.

This person, an acquaintance from 1997, who mostly likes kittens and memes about feeling positive, is kind of hampered to have to respond, but takes the flyer based on me two years ago, “liking” his band page (terrible band), and says simply ” Um, I’ll check it out.”

This is how my Facebook Likes seem to manifest. They are not what you call ” convertible” , i.e. they do not equate to a sale.

In the same effort, I respond to others. I write them encouraging messages, using emoticons. I hate emoticons. But if someone I think may buy my book, even out of sympathy, if I use them, I am all for the smileys.

Then I have my real life friends and family. Probably about 100 people on there.

 

Read the rest of the post on The Self-Publishing Review.

Authors Unplugged: Smart Book Marketing Includes Going Offline

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Most of us who sell our print books through CreateSpace or other print on demand vendors, and our ebooks through Kindle Direct Publishing or other ebook retailers and distributors, usually focus our marketing online.

This make sense. A lot of business and marketing happens online these days. Many of us are also bloggers with territory staked out in the digital world, and with lots of connections on social media.

In fact, social media marketing is often the beginning and end of authors’ marketing plans. From blog tours to Facebook contests to Pinterest pin parties to online press release distribution, we digital authors attempt to fully exploit the domain in which we operate.

But are you missing something?

Going Offline for Book Marketing
If all the marketing you’re doing is online, you may be missing out on lots of excellent opportunities to market your book.

Remember that our biggest effort in marketing is simply getting our books in front of enough people to give them a chance at success. You can’t get people talking about your book and, hopefully, referring it to other people in true word-of-mouth promotion, if they don’t know it exists and have never seen it. So awareness and exposure are really our biggest goals when we launch a new book.

But there are still lots of ways people get together, network, and learn about new things in the real world.

To help you think about this and get started, here’s a brief list of offline opportunities that might work for you. Even if you only use one of these suggestions, you’ll see results you couldn’t have gotten online.

8 Ideas for Offline Book Marketing for Indie Authors

  1. Print books vs. eBooks—While it’s difficult to sell ebooks at an event or book signing, many people will buy a print book if they see them stacked up in front of them. After all, a book is something you can pick up and handle, and that’s often a powerful buying incentive. Print books also act as mementos of the occasion, or a way to further explore a topic that has ignited your interest.
  2. Social media vs. in-person contact—I love social media and use it every day. But it’s really quite different to have a conversation with a colleague or a reader or a prospective client in person, where the centuries-old conventions of human interaction come into play and the levels of communication are much deeper. If your aim is building trust in your readers, interacting with them at events will be helpful and instructive at the same time. For instance, just recently a friend told me about something that needed to be fixed in one of my products. But I doubt she would have taken the time to write to me about it because messages like that usually seem like complaints. In person, she could deliver the message with exactly the right intonations, smiles, and gestures so the communication was nuanced and effective.
  3. Giving presentations to build your platform—If you become a subject-matter expert, you’ll start to get invitations to speak to groups within your industry or field of study. These are terrific platform-building opportunities. Not only do you get to meet people you may not have known about before, you also get the implicit endorsement of the group that’s putting on the program, as well as the positive expectations attendees at your event will bring with them. Combined with this is the name recognition and awareness you’ll get from the promotion for the event that will reach many more people than will actually attend. (Check out my own appearance schedule.)
  4. Back-of-the-room sales—Did I mention you can sell books at many of these in-person events? Well, you can, and these sales may be your most lucrative. In some cases, you can sell your books for the full retail price, so a $15 book might yield you $12 profit. In other cases, event organizers or bookstore hosts will want a 40-50% discount. But they will handle the sales transactions for you, and people at these events often buy books written by speakers as a way to remember the presentation or the overall experience they had at the event.
  5. Writing for print—Remember newspapers and magazines? They are still out there, and they still have an unending need for good quality content to fill up those pages. For many people, reading an article by you in a respected industry magazine may carry a lot more weight than reading the same story on your blog. Since you’re developing content, submitting story ideas to editors at local papers or trade magazines can only multiply your readers and your exposure.
  6. Offline review media—You undoubtedly included those local papers and trade magazines in your review program, right? You didn’t just rely on bloggers and online media for reviews because you know millions of people rely on these print media to make critical buying decisions and to learn about new trends in culture. Don’t overlook them.
  7. Repurposing your expertise—Some authors have found running live events to be highly profitable. You might write about a subject that lends itself to workshops, where you can teach the same ideas you’ve written about, or try out new ideas to see how they work in the real world. Fiction authors do this, too, leading trips abroad and organizing writing workshops in vacation destinations.
  8. Developing media contacts—Part of your job as an indie publisher is establishing media contacts, too. For fiction authors, this might involve the local papers, where you can expect to find some natural interest. For nonfiction authors there are niche publications or media outlets related to your topic, and if you write on their topic, they’re likely to be open to an approach.

Notice that I haven’t mentioned book launch parties or book signings, traditional events many authors include in their launch planning and which happen offline. But I knew you would think of those yourself.

Where would your offline marketing fit in to your book promotion plan? Or do you have some suggestions I haven’t included? Leave a note in the comments to share it with other authors.

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

Atomization: Publishing as a Function Rather Than an Industry

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This post, by Mike Shatzkin, originally appeared on the Idealog blog on 3/19/13.

The announcement of what amounts to the first book publishing program spawned by Google demonstrates a paradigm we’re seeing repeatedly. It suggests a sweeping change in publishing from how we’ve known it. The bottom line is that most people employed publishing books perhaps as soon as 10 years from now won’t be working for publishing companies.

The trade publishing business over the past twenty years has been transitioning from what it was for a century. The Internet, which so many of us said two decades ago “changes everything” is ultimately responsible. Amazon.com has been the primary catalyst, with print on demand technology (especially Ingram’s Lightning Source) and ebooks (mostly Amazon, but others too) as supporting players. With so many more books to choose from and really available than there ever were before, the function of gatekeepers, which trade publishers and booksellers clearly and proudly were, becomes an anachronism.

The big question — at least for me — is what is trade publishing transitioning to? What does the trade publishing world look like when it doesn’t primarily reach readers through bookstores anymore, a day which one could say has already come in the past five years.

Overall trade sales today outside of special outlets, catalogs, and what remain of book clubs divide into three big chunks: one is printed books sold in stores, one is printed books sold online, and one is ebooks. The latter two are sold without stores, and far more than half of that is sold by Amazon. And that is the way it is most helpful to think about sales because it is only print-in-stores that requires (or benefits from) a big publishing organization.

What the latest Bowker information has to say, lumping ebooks into “online commerce”, is that 44% of sales are online, 32% through physical retail, and the remainder through book clubs and warehouse clubs (physical retail to me!) and “all other channels”. But they also report that 30% of sales are ebooks, which would mean that they’re only calling 14% of the remaining 70% online. There are a lot of ways to count these things, and the resulting calculation of 20% of print sales being online feels very low to me.

It all depends on what kind of book we’re talking about, of course. I visualize the market breaking into thirds among the three chunks. Certainly, one-third ebooks is an understatement for fiction.

However we view the current division of sales, the trade book business was built in a completely different environment. Indeed, the central proposition that all publishers offered all authors is ” we put books on shelves.” The companion reality was “you can’t do this by yourself”.

As recently as 2007, before Kindle, there were no ebook sales and upwards of 85% of print was sold in stores.

 

Read the rest of the post on the Idealog blog.