Month: December 2013

So Why is Your Marketing Failing?

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This post, by Pratik Dholakiya, originally appeared on Jeff Bullas’ site on 12/16/13.

Internet marketers everywhere seem to agree that if you don’t have an audience, you don’t have a future. They argue that if you have to pay for traffic to make money, you’re not just being wasteful, you really don’t understand how the social web works, or where marketing is headed in the years going forward.

Well, I’m going to respectfully disagree. If you ask me, if you want your business to have a future, one audience isn’t enough. The truth is, the most resilient businesses are going to need at least two audiences if they hope to make the most of limited resources to succeed. Maybe that is why your marketing is failing.

Let me explain.

Meet your two audiences

You don’t know it yet, but you actually already have two audiences. The problem is, you’re probably alienating at least one of them. Here’s what I’m talking about:

1. Core audience

These are the people who are completely obsessed with the topic in question. The live, eat, and breath the stuff you blog about. In fact, some of these people will know even more about the topic than you do, at least when it comes to certain aspects of it.

2. Mainstream audience

These people have little or no direct interest in your topic, but they might have some tangential interest in it. For the most part, the only thing they want to know is why any of this should matter to them, and if you can’t keep them entertained, they won’t be hanging around for long.

While your business won’t necessarily die without both of these audiences, let’s just say that without some appeal to both of them, your use of resources will be…less than optimal.

 

Brands that failed to reach both audiences

There’s certainly no shortage of brands or campaigns that failed because they failed to reach both audiences.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Jeff Bullas’ site.

 

Successful Authors Are Outliers, Not Statistics

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This post, by Bob Mayer, originally appeared on his Write on the River site on 12/10/13.

Digital Book World has put out another survey about authors, indie authors, hybrid authors*, hobbits, wizards and drones.

While I applaud the effort, I find a lot of the data about authors essentially skewed, especially when it comes to those of us who make our living writing. Especially for those of us who’ve made our living writing for more than a year or two, ie those who’ve made a career writing. Which is about as rare as a hobbit in an orc bar. Unless it’s being served for dinner.

While I’m not a fan of Malcom Gladwell’s public condemnation of Amazon while still selling his books there (also Scott Turow), I accept that they are both highly paid indentured servants to their publishers who have no control over whether their books are sold at Amazon. Gladwell wrote a book introducing a concept called Outliers, which looks at the factors that lead to high levels of success (see, I link to the book on Amazon—please donate all sales to charity, Mr. Gladwell). I submit that any person who can make a decent career as a writer of fiction (ie a professional bullshitter) has achieved a high level of success in the world of publishing. It’s something I learned in Special Forces, who are almost all outliers.

So how are successful authors outliers?

Gladwell: “the biggest misconception about success is that we do it solely on our smarts, ambition, hustle and hard work.”

I do think we need all four; and while I know writers who’ve come from nothing and pushed all four to the extreme and have become successful, there are certainly other factors that Mr. Gladwell explains.

At Cool Gus one of our mottoes is: the best promotion is a good book, better promotion is more good books. Gladwell has a term called “Accumulative advantage”. He uses the example that most elite Canadian hockey players were born earlier in the year. What’s the connection? Since leagues are done by year, a kid born in January has almost a year of experience and growth over a kid born in December. Thus the earlier birth players seem to be the best. Thus they are treated as better—it’s a case where the rich get richer.

In publishing this means those of us who came out of traditional publishing with rights to some or all of our backlist have had a huge advantage.

 

Read the rest of the post on Write on the River.

 

Why Writers Must Self-Publish Their Books

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This post, by Joel Friedlander, originally appeared on his The Book Designer site on 12/2/13.

In yesterday’s New York Times there was an opinion piece by Gary Gutting, a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. Here’s a quote:

“Even highly gifted and relatively successful writers, artists and musicians generally are not able (to) earn a living from their talents. The very few who become superstars are very well rewarded. But almost all the others—poets, novelists, actors, singers, artists—must either have a partner whose income supports them or a ‘day job’ to pay the bills. Even writers who are regularly published by major houses or win major prizes cannot always live on their earnings.”
— New York Times, The Real Humanities Crisis

You know this is true as well as I do, and it speaks to several larger truths:

◾ the low regard most creative artists who are not “superstars” generally command in our society

◾ the lack of leverage most creatives have in dealing with corporations who license their work

◾ the disempowerment of writers who are not “bestsellers” and who, by and large, are poorly compensated for their work

Stable jobs with dependable income involve helping the wheels of commerce keep turning, or unavoidable occupations like road building and health care.

But try making a living as a poet, a writer of histories, a novelist, a short story writer, a playwright, or any kind of writer whose work isn’t essential to making a living, and you better not give up that day job.

We don’t need to comment on the values this reality expresses, but we do have to deal with the consequences.

Now, with all the new tools of publishing, we can take a bigger role in our own publishing careers than ever before.

 

Self-Publishing Today

Talking to authors—and especially authors who have already been published by big traditional publishers—you can see the excitement and anticipation when this subject comes up.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on The Book Designer.

 

3 Techniques to Proofread Your Story

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This post, by Andre Cruz, originally appeared on his The Word blog on 10/3/13.

After I complete a story, I just want to be done. Don’t you? I mean, to develop a story from mind to paper takes time and after spending a lot of it you want to kick your feet up and move on. You figure to have someone else proofread your story, since you’ve heard that it is better to have a fresh pair of eyes look at your manuscript.

In the beginning of my writing career, I felt that way. I figured that once I completed a story I needed someone else to look at it for proofreading. I thought that proofreading my own story was not only a waste of time, but toxic to my story’s overall success.

That is not the case. In fact, I have found that it is the complete opposite. No matter who you find to proofread your story. Even if they offer some of the best proofreading services, nothing beats you reading through your manuscript yourself for errors before you send it to a proofreader.

Think about it. No one knows your story as well as you do. So when proofreading your own manuscript, you are more capable of finding things that should be there, but aren’t, such as certain dialogue and narrative. A proofreader will only be able to correct what is there and if they are capable enough to feel something is missing in the manuscript, will they be able to correct it as well as you would? I don’t think so.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on The Word.

 

Just A Standard Contract…

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This post, by Alex Adsett, originally appeared on Writers Victoria on 12/13/13. Note that while the author is Australian and what she covers here are standard publishing contract terms from Australian publishers, much of what’s there matches the standard boilerplate in an American commercial publishing contract as well.  It’s a particularly noteworthy read for anyone who intends to sell foreign publishing rights.

I often have authors approach me for publishing contract advice with the almost sheepish disclaimer “this looks pretty standard”, with the usual follow up, “so it will probably be alright”.

I always want to ask, “how do you know?”, and unless you are an author who has done their research or published before, do not just trust that every publisher will send a contract that complies with industry norms. Even if the publisher tells you it is a standard contract, they (a) might be fibbing, but also (b) might be wrong. Just because it is perhaps that publisher’s everyday contract, does not mean it is in accordance with the broad industry standards that authors should expect to receive.

I am not blaming the publishers (except the fibbing ones) as many operate within their own bubble, and even if they wanted to, government regulations frown on any commercial competitors getting together to set commercial terms. So here are some of the key “standards” that are broadly accepted as the base commercial terms across the Australian publishing industry, and what every author should know before negotiating their publishing contract:

– 10% RRP print royalty. It is standard for the publisher to pay 10% royalty based on recommended retail price (Note: RRP is very different to net receipts) on all print editions (including the subsequent paperback edition that will go on to backlist for decades).

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Writers Victoria.

 

Top Seven Reasons To Self-Publish

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This post, by Mari Selby of Selby Ink, was originally published on The San Francisco Book Review site on 12/5/13.

When Selby ink was founded 15 years ago publishing a book followed a routine process: You started by calling agents and editors who most likely told you to send them a query letter. Next step was usually a book proposal (if they were interested), plus a few sample chapters. Then the waiting game started, usually ending with disappointment. On the other hand, the option to self-publish was there, but it had a certain stigma…like your book wasn’t good enough for a “real publisher”. And eBooks were unknown!

When we see the sales figures for a self-published book like The Shack we realize that times have changed. Today self-publishing is not only popular, but often it’s the preferred publishing path of many respected authors. As long as your book is professionally produced, with an eye-catching cover and compelling content, you can directly compete with any bestselling author.

Thinking about publishing your book in the New Year? Here are my seven best reasons to self-publish your book:

1. Timing: Traditional publishers work on a long production cycle, they often plan a year to a year and a half—or even longer—to get a book out. As a self-publisher you can do it in a fraction of that time. It’s your material, your career move – you can take control of when you want to publish.

2. You Just Might Strike It Rich: Self-publishing offers the potential for huge profits. No longer do you have to be satisfied with the meager 5 to 15 percent royalty that commercial publishers dole out. When you use creativity, persistence, and sound business sense, money is there to be made. Most publishers require their authors to do their own promotion, why not self-publish and earn a 40 – 400% margin? If your book becomes a hit, publishers will come calling and give you the upper hand in negotiations.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on The San Francisco Book Review site.

12 Mistakes Nearly Everyone Who Writes About Grammar Mistakes Makes

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This post, by Jonathon Owen, originally appeared on The Huffington Post on 11/20/13.

There are a lot of bad grammar posts in the world. These days, anyone with a blog and a bunch of pet peeves can crank out a click-bait listicle of supposed grammar errors. There’s just one problem — these articles are often full of mistakes of one sort or another themselves. Once you’ve read a few, you start noticing some patterns. Inspired by a recent post titled “Grammar Police: Twelve Mistakes Nearly Everyone Makes,” I decided to make a list of my own.

1. Confusing grammar with spelling, punctuation, and usage. Many people who write about grammar seem to think that grammar means “any sort of rule of language, especially writing.” But strictly speaking, grammar refers to the structural rules of language, namely morphology (basically the way words are formed from roots and affixes), phonology (the system of sounds in a language), and syntax (the way phrases and clauses are formed from words). Most complaints about grammar are really about punctuation, spelling (such as problems with you’re/your and other homophone confusion) or usage (which is often about semantics). This post, for instance, spends two of its twelve points on commas and a third on quotation marks.

2. Treating style choices as rules. This article says that you should always use an Oxford (or serial) comma (the comma before and or or in a list) and that quotation marks should always follow commas and periods, but the latter is true only in most American styles (linguists often put the commas and periods outside quotes, and so do many non-American styles), and the former is only true of some American styles. I may prefer serial commas, but I’m not going to insist that everyone who doesn’t use them is making a mistake. It’s simply a matter of style, and style varies from one publisher to the next.

3. Ignoring register. There’s a time and a place for following the rules, but the writers of these lists typically treat English as though it had only one register: formal writing. They ignore the fact that following the rules in the wrong setting often sounds stuffy and stilted. Formal written English is not the only legitimate form of the language, and the rules of formal written English don’t apply in all situations. Sure, it’s useful to know when to use who and whom, but it’s probably more useful to know that saying To whom did you give the book? in casual conversation will make you sound like a pompous twit.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on The Huffington Post.

 

Put Yourself into Your Writing

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This post, by Steven Ramirez, originally appeared on his Glass Highway site on 10/10/13.

There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.

That quote—or variations of it—has been attributed to the sportswriter Red Smith, among others. I’ve thought a lot about it over the years, trying to determine whether the writer was (a) being funny, (b) over-dramatizing or (c) attempting to impart real wisdom. Recently, I’ve come to believe that C is the correct answer.

Good writing is about the mechanics. Great writing is about putting yourself into the words. Actors talk a lot about this—putting themselves into their character. I once asked a friend of mine who had studied method acting at the Actors Studio, “Do you actually become the character?” “No,” he said. That would mean I’m insane. Good point.

So, must writers become the characters we are writing about? No, but there are three things I believe to be essential if you want the reader to believe they exist.

You Must Understand
Without understanding, you’re doomed to writing thin, unbelievable characters. I should know—I’ve written enough of them. We all have. In screenplays, people always talk about a character’s backstory. Screenwriters spend a lot of time writing detailed histories of their characters, things like where they went to school, whether they have siblings, the kind of music they enjoy, etc.

Me, I don’t do that. I always start with someone I know or someone I’ve met. Sometimes, I create a composite. The point is, by honing in on a specific person, I’ve already got my backstory. To me, it’s a waste of time to create a fake history when there are so many real, interesting people in the world. And this is not say that I don’t embellish.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Glass Highway.

 

Creating A Discussion Guide For Your Book

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This post, by Lisa Lickel, originally appeared on the AuthorCulture site on 12/9/13.

Love em, Hate em, want them in the back of the book or not—discussion questions do add a new dimension to your work.

I’ve had publishers tell me they don’t want them in the book, and know of some publishers that require questions. I’ve put them in one of my books, and have designed them for several of my books as well as for other books in my book club when I’ve been the discussion leader.

Why questions? Questions are good for personal reader reflection, but especially for a group discussion guide. I think that questions in the back of the book make your work look serious. Readers can skip them if they want. A discussion guide may mean inclusion in book clubs. Why do I want book clubs to read my book? First of all, these questions give me a place to do some explaining that I can’t inside the text; it also gives me an opportunity to point out my subtle genius points that may have been, sadly, overlooked. Think of it like watching the TV show Lost with JJ’s subtexts. Secondly, sales, library sales and borrows, word of mouth, my friends. Possible author face time. Feedback. Book clubs are always looking for fodder, and while it’s annoyingly true they tend to choose NYT bestsellers, there’s no reason to think yours can’t make a list or two.

The larger publishers like Random House often have author pages with all kinds of goodies-author interviews and background for the books, and discussion questions. Read some of them for some pointers.

ReadingGroupGuides website is one of the top ones to go to for great discussion questions, but they’ve gone from a $100 to $20 fee to have your material placed there. However, if you can get in on other readers’ group blogs, and especially GoodReads, an Internet search will bring up your name and book. I’ve placed questions on GoodReads for my books. Don’t forget to put them on your own site, Amazon and BN author pages and forums.

How to devise your questions for either fiction or non?

Foremost, never make them yes or no questions, or lead to obvious answers. If the questions are in the book, you can refer to page number, such as, “On page 142 Cala Lily has a breakthrough. What is it and how did it affect her feelings toward Reed?” However, it’s best not to be that specific due to readers having different versions.

How many questions should you write?

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on AuthorCulture.

 

Can Perseverance Be Taught?

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This post, by Angela Duckworth, originally appeared on Big Questions Online on 8/5/13. Since perseverance is definitely a requirement for success as an author, whether indie or mainstream, the post raises a question that’s pertinent to most of us.

Can perseverance be taught? As a psychologist who studies achievement, I am asked this question more frequently than any other.

This question is motivated by two everyday intuitions, both of which have been confirmed in empirical research: First, some people are, in general, more persistent and passionate about long-term goals. Compared to their less gritty peers, these individuals are more resilient in the face of adversity, bouncing back after failure and disappointment and otherwise staying the course even when progress is not obvious. Second, grit predicts success. Grit is not the only determinant of success – opportunity and talent matter, too. But on average, grittier individuals are more successful than others, particularly in very challenging situations.

So, can we intentionally cultivate grit in our children, in our employees, in ourselves? Relative to many other scholarly traditions, the science of behavior change is in its infancy. Still, we know enough, I think, to answer that question in the affirmative. Can perseverance be taught? Yes. Do we know how? More and more – though, of course, there is much to be discovered.

As a starting point, we should acknowledge the empirical fact that perseverance, like extraversion, intelligence, and every other trait psychologists measure and study, is a function of both genes (nature) and experience (nurture). So, while science is a very long way from identifying the specific genes that contribute to individual differences in perseverance, we know that each of us comes into the world with proclivities, already different from one another based on the DNA we inherited from our mothers and fathers. Of course, the very same research also tells us that whatever our genetic endowments, our particular life experiences – what we see and hear, how we are treated by others, which of our actions is rewarded or punished – nudge us closer to one end of the perseverance spectrum or the other.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Big Questions Online.

 

Amazon Makes Life Easier For Authors of Historical & Literary Fiction

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This post, by David Gaughran, originally appeared on his website on 10/22/13.

There are lots of reasons why self-publishing success stories tend to concentrate around writers of “genre” fiction, but it’s a mistake to assume that success is impossible if you write literary fiction or historical fiction (which tends to get lumped in with literary fiction, even though it’s just another genre… like literary fiction!).

The first is demographics: romance and erotica readers were the first to switch to digital, followed by mystery and thriller fans, leading to the success stories of Amanda Hocking, Joe Konrath, and John Locke.

I remember SF/F authors complaining (back in 2011) that their readers hadn’t switched to e-books yet, casting jealous eyes at the outsized romance audience. But as readers did move across, we saw people like David Dalglish and BV Larson breaking out, and the rest of “genre” fiction soon followed.

The rise of “genre” self-publishing was also aided by the mistreatment of the midlist by large publishers: falling advances, worsening terms, and the shifting of the marketing burden onto the author’s shoulders. With bigger names jumping ship and striking out on their own, the increasing selection of quality self-published books at very low prices (and often exclusively available as e-books) acted as a strong pull factor for readers of genre fiction to switch to digital.

Non-fiction has been slower to go digital for a few reasons. First, technical limitations of e-book formats and the devices themselves have made the digitization of anything other than straight narrative text troublesome – even the minor technical challenge posed by something like footnotes has yet to be resolved in a satisfactory way.

On top of that, non-fiction authors tend to be treated a little better by publishers, especially in terms of advances – so there’s less of a push factor encouraging authors to self-publish. This means less big name authors dragging print readers to digital with low prices and digital exclusivity, and, thus, a smaller reader pool for non-fiction self-publishers.

The case of historical fiction and literary fiction is a little different. Weak digital sales from large publishers, and the relative lack of self-publishing success in these genres, has led some to worry about the future. But I think something else is going on here.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on David Gaughran’s site. dfaf

 

The Cardinal Sin No Writer Should Ever Commit

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This post, by Jody Hedlund, originally appeared on her blog on 11/26/13.

This post contains SPOILERS for the newly released book Allegiant by Veronica Roth. So if you’re planning to read the book and don’t want to know what happens, then click off this post and come back after you’ve finished the book!

I already made the mistake on Twitter of blabbering about Allegiant with no thought to the those who might not want to know what happens. I won’t make the same mistake here! So again, please don’t read further if you want to avoid a MAJOR spoiler.

I read the first two books in the popular dystopian Divergent series this past year. But they didn’t wow me, especially the second book, Insurgent, which I thought was rather slow and confusing at times.

But my daughter LOVED both. So she kept me well informed when the countdown began for the third book’s release. When the big day came, she asked me to buy it for the Kindle since the wait for it at the library was like a million years long.

I clicked over to Amazon to check on price for the Kindle and the audio versions. And to my utter bafflement, the book had less than three stars as the overall rating. Of course, I was even more astonished to see that the one star reviews completely outnumbered the five.

As I started browsing to see why the book had garnered so many one stars, I read things like:

“Possibly the Worst Trilogy Ending I’ve Ever Read” and “Horrible Just Horrible!!” and “Outraged”

After seeing those headings, I had to read the reviews. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to know why readers hated this book!

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!

The number ONE reason why readers hated the book was because in the end, Roth KILLS OFF her main character. Yes, the heroine DIES.

Over and over in the reviews readers say they felt betrayed by Roth, that now they wish they hadn’t read any of the books in the series, that they won’t read them again or go see the movies.

The bottom line is that readers are crushed. They invested time and money into the books. More importantly they invested emotional energy into falling in love with the heroine. And after waiting with such expectancy for the series to come to a satisfying conclusion, they are instead left feeling empty and hopeless.

After reading the reviews, I now have absolutely NO desire to read the last book. In fact, I now felt like I wasted my time reading the first two. So even though I haven’t read Allegiant, I can completely relate with what readers are saying about it.

As I analyzed the overall reader reaction (along with my personal response), I quickly realized that Roth committed a Cardinal Sin that no writer should ever commit. And that’s this: Don’t kill your main character.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Jody Hedlund’s blog.

 

Don't Be Too Quick To Shut Down That Author Blog

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This post, by Publetariat founder and Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton, originally appeared on her Indie Author Blog on 12/9/13.

As many of you already know, [the] Publetariat site was offline entirely for close to two months in the early part of this year, and then it was back online but laying more or less fallow for several more months while my work continued behind the scenes to ensure the site was secure and functioning properly.

Now that I’ve got it up and running again, with new material being posted there five days a week, I’ve discovered that many of the sites and blogs I used to visit when searching for possible content to share on Publetariat have disappeared.

I suspect many of those missing site and blog owners eventually threw in the towel because they felt they didn’t have the time or energy to keep adding new material on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis, and having been repeatedly admonished to do so, felt there was little point in keeping the site or blog going if they couldn’t live up to that requirement.

Giving up was a mistake.

As you may have noticed, I don’t post here daily, weekly, nor even necessarily monthly. I post when I have something to say that I think is worth sharing, and frankly, it just doesn’t happen all that often.

Don’t get me wrong: I am most certainly NOT saying that people who DO post daily, weekly, et cetera are just flapping their gums for no good reason. Plenty of bloggers have a lot of interesting, valuable, educational, or even just amusing stuff to post on a regular basis, and I applaud them for being so prolific.

But even if you’re like me, only posting as time allows and when inspiration strikes, it’s still worth keeping your blog up because longevity has intrinsic value on the internet. Here’s how the cycle works:

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on the Indie Author Blog.

 

100% of Independent Publishers Who Do This Will Sell More of Their Work

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This post, by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant, originally appeared on Copyblogger on 12/5/13.

Most independent authors and content creators aren’t thinking in terms of building product funnels when they write their books and stories.

That is a mistake.

Whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction, smart writers who know how to build their catalog around funnels will always make more money directly with their words than writers who publish their work using the old “hope and pray” business plan.

Here’s how you do it.

 

Be a smarter publisher

We wrote for our own sites and blogs like Copyblogger for years — about business, entrepreneurship, marketing, you name it. But we both made a major shift during 2012 and 2013, and we spent the last year writing and publishing 1.5 million words of fiction through our company Realm & Sands.

In the two years since Copyblogger ran this post about serialized fiction, Sean has also published another two million words at his other company, Collective Inkwell, with David Wright.

But none of those millions of words were left to sell based on chance.

We wanted to make our full-time livings as authors — and since have — so we opted for something more certain.

Our words are our art, yes. But once those words are scrubbed in the editing process, they became products for sale. And what do smart marketers do with products? Well, if they want to sell any of those products, they arrange them into funnels.

Each week, we host the Self Publishing Podcast. In a year and a half of our show, the most frequently visited topic is how to build funnels.

Why?

Because applying proven marketing principles to independent authorship is how successful indie publishers turn a “luck of the draw” marketplace into a sound enterprise with a stable income source.

In our opinion, putting your work into product funnels is the very best (and most important) thing an author can do to increase sales … assuming you’ve created an excellent and professional-looking family of products.

Ready to sell some books? Well then, let’s take a look at “Funnels 101,” starting with exactly what they are and why you should care.

 

What is a funnel and why does it matter?

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Copyblogger.

 

Creating an Ironic Tone in Your Fiction

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This post, by Jack Smith, originally appeared as a guest post on Elizabeth Spann Craig’s site on 12/9/13.

Let’s say you want to create an ironic tone in a story or novel—it’s just needed.

First off, what is tone? On the one hand, we might say that it’s the apparent attitude of the narrator toward the characters and the world they people. But it should also be said that everything in a fictional work relates in some way to the tone. If every character in your story drives crazily and exceeds the speed limit, this will certainly affect the tone. If all the clocks are off twenty minutes, this will too.

To create the right tone, you need to think about character actions, dialogue, and setting. All of these will affect the tone of your story or novel. But you also need to attend to matters of style.

Being something of an iconoclast, I tend to go for irony. An ironic tone is, of course, the right tone for satire—which is my usual medium.

And so when I’m thinking about creating an ironic tone in my work, I find myself—and this tends to happen as I write—depending on the following useful tools:

1. Diction—words that create a witty, humorous tone

2. Irony and Paradox—both deal with contradiction, the first with the gap between what you expect and what you get; the second with apparent contradiction.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Elizabeth Spann Craig’s site.