Platform Resolutions For Writers 2010

This post, from Christina Katz, originally appeared on her blog on 1/4/10, and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission.

Before writers establish an author platform, they typically establish a writer platform. Over the past decade, thousands of writers have parlayed established influence into traditional book deals. Landing a traditional book deal is still an effective way to exponentially increase your credibility and visibility.

Your “platform” refers to what you do in the world with your professional expertise that makes you visible and influential in the world. Having friends on Facebook or followers on Twitter is not your platform, unless the majority of those people know who you are, what you do, and are enthusiastic about your work.

I thought I would offer some advice about how to slowly and steadily establish a lasting platform. You may note the lack of fanaticism in this advice and the emphasis on enduring success instead. I’m a mother and a wife, a freelancer, a speaker, a teacher, and a blogger, so aiming for balance is the only way I can afford to work if I plan on sticking around for the long haul.

This advice has worked consistently for my students over the past several years. I think you will find that a grounded, step-by-step approach works just as well for you if you choose to follow it:

1. Develop a platform topic that you love and can work on tirelessly for the next few years. Your passion of the moment should come in second to the topic you could delve into deeply for a good, long time. Prior professional education and a depth of personal experience are going to be a boon to your platform if you have an eye on a future book deal.

2. Hang back from establishing a blog on your topic until you have cultivated a wealth of content and experience working with others on specialty-related activities that lend credibility and trust to your name. Others will tell you to start blogging immediately, but don’t, if you want to be efficient with your time and money.

3. Instead, gain authority by seeking publication in established, highly visible publications both in print and online that serve your target audience. Avoid the kind of publishing that anyone can accomplish, like posting on article sites, and work on your professional communication skills instead. By all means, avoid the content mills offering writers slave wages with the promise of future earnings.

4. Don’t begin any kind of marketing campaign for any product or service offerings until you have established yourself as a go-to person on your topic, again saving you time and money. Before you look at ways to serve others directly, channel your expertise into the best service methods possible based on your strengths and weaknesses. This is a meaty topic that is covered in-depth in my book, Get Known Before the Book Deal, Use Your Personal Strengths to Grow an Author Platform (Writer’s Digest Books 2008).

5. Then, develop a product or service that can become one of several multiple income streams over time that will support your goal of becoming a published author. For example, teaching classes over the years has allowed me to re-invest more of the money I earn from writing books back into book marketing. Make sure any offerings you produce are released conscientiously and are integrated into the professional writing you already do. Otherwise, you will seem like you are all over the place and just trying to score a buck.

6. Don’t expect your platform to support you financially for at least one or two years, as you micro-invest in it, re-invest in it as it grows, and expand your visibility.

7. Once you have a professional publication track record in your niche topic, then it’s time to hang your online shingle. I’ve seen this accomplished in as little as six months by exceptionally focused students. Take a portion of the money you’ve earned writing and invest it in a professional quality online presence.

8. A low-cost way to do this is to purchase your name as a URL and use a hosting site like GoDaddy.com to host a WordPress.org blog. I use the Thesis Theme, which you can see in action at my blog. In this way, a blog can also serve as your website where you post your published clips, offerings and bio. If you don’t have a ton of money to invest in the look of your site, you can always pay a designer later.

9. Delay partnering with others on joint ventures until you have a clear idea of your own strengths and weaknesses in and around your topic. And when you do partner with others be extremely discriminating. Make sure the partnership is going to be win-win-win for everyone involved.

10. Start an e-mail newsletter or e-zine with those who are most interested in your topic. Build your list by invitation and then grow it into a permission-based following over time. Create an expected, ongoing dialogue that is mutually beneficial to everyone involved and your list will grow.

11. Now you are ready to start blogging. And yes, I mean while you continue to do all the things we’ve already discussed. Be sure to zoom-focus your blog on what you have to add to the conversation that is already going on about your topic. Don’t just share information; make an impact. Make your blog a go-to, up-to-date resource for your audience.

12. Partner selectively with others who serve the same general audience that you do with integrity and humility. Spend time getting to know folks before you decide to partner with them. You can’t afford to taint the reputation you have worked so hard to establish by partnering with just anyone.

13. Now that you have an established niche and audience, definitely participate in social networking. I like Twitter, Facebook, and Linked In because they all offer something unique. The best way to learn is to jump in, spend an hour online each week until you are up and running. Follow the instructions for getting started provided by social media expert Meryl K. Evans.

This start-up plan for a writer platform will eventually blossom into an author platform. From start to finish, implementing a solid platform following this advice should take you about a year. By the end of that year, you will have established yourself as a serious contender in both professional and online circles, without killing yourself for some huckster’s promise of overnight success.

Have a plan. Leave a legacy in words, connections and professional influence. If you are consistent, by the time the year is done, you will have made effective use of your time and money in 2010.  I wish you the best of luck in your platform-building efforts!

 

Christina Katz is the author of Get Known Before the Book Deal, Use Your Personal Strengths to Grow an Author Platform and Writer Mama, How to Raise a Writing Career Alongside Your Kids for Writer’s Digest Books. She has written hundreds of articles for national, regional, and online publications, presents at literary and publishing events around the country, and is a monthly columnist for the Willamette Writer. Katz publishes a weekly e-zine, The Prosperous Writer, and hosts The Northwest Author Series. She holds an MFA in writing from Columbia College Chicago and a BA from Dartmouth College. A “gentle taskmaster” to her hundred or so students each year, Katz channels over a decade of professional writing experience into success strategies that help writers get on track and get published. Learn more at ChristinaKatz.com.

Publetariat, Circa 2010

April L. Hamilton here, your friendly Editor in Chief, with some Publetariat news and freebies for you. On February 11, Publetariat will celebrate its one-year anniversary. It’s been a busy, fulfilling 11 months, and Publetariat has some new developments and giveaways set for its audience in 2010, as well as one event. 


Publetariat – New Contributors

First, Publetariat is proud to welcome Joel Friedlander, Jenn Topper, Stephen Windwalker, Bob SpearRichard Sutton (The Indie Curmudgeon) and Mark Barrett as regular site contributors. Indie authors and/or publishing professionals all, they’ll be bringing valuable information and thought-provoking opinion to Publetariat.

 

Publetariat – Blogs and Free Exposure
Just a reminder: all Publetariat members have access to create blog entries on the site, and the 10 most recent blog entries are always featured on the front page of the site in the right-hand column. It’s an easy, free way to get some exposure to Publetariat’s  audience of writers, authors, publishers, and all manner of other bookish types, and that audience is quite large. As of this writing, Publetariat ranks in the top 1.4% of all websites worldwide in terms of traffic, per Alexa.

Publetariat membership is free, and we don’t share your contact details so you need not worry about being added to any spam lists. Heck, Publetariat doesn’t even send out any type of newsletter, so you don’t have to worry about us clogging up your in-box, either.

I’ll be honest with you: I do not recommend using Publetariat’s blogging feature as your primary blog, because it will always be framed by Publetariat columns/content (as opposed to a blog that contains nothing but content related to you and your work) and it doesn’t have all the nice bells and whistles you can get with Blogger, TypePad, WordPress, or another dedicated blogging site. Still, it can be a nice adjunct to whatever else you’ve got going on, and you may want to use it just to publish the occasional article you feel is deserving of wider exposure than your blog’s traffic level typically provides. I use it as an adjunct: even though I have my Indie Author Blog set up with Blogger, I use my Publetariat blog to publish my weekly #fridayflash flash fiction because my other blog is dedicated to posts about authorship and publishing.

If you’d like to start blogging here, just sign up for a free member account and, once your registration has been confirmed via email, log in and click the Create Content link in the upper area of the left-hand column on any page of the site. Select Blog Entry on the Create Content page, and you’re ready to go.

 

Publetariat Vault – Free Listings for the First Half of 2010
Sister site The Publetariat Vault was launched last summer and has recently announced it is extending free listings through June 30, 2010. The Vault is a listing service for self-published authors who still own the rights to their works and wish to sign those works with a mainstream publisher, literary agent or film/TV/game/multimedia producer. Self-published books which have generated a lot of buzz, or sales, or both, are of great interest to such people, but until now it’s been very difficult for them to locate these books in the vast, undifferentiated sea of the internet.

That’s where the Vault comes in, providing not only standard catalog data (e.g., title, date of publication, page count, etc.), but actual sales figures and author platform links as well. Some have asked why anyone who already has a slushpile on his or her desk would want to search the Vault, and the answer is simple: not only is the Vault’s content searchable based on specific criteria (e.g., genre, protagonist sex or age, intended reading age for audience, more), but the results of Vault searches include actual sales and author platform information. This extra bit of information and links enable self-published authors to clearly demonstrate how both they, and their books, are performing in the marketplace.

The reason behind the decision to extend six months of free listings, a $60 value per listing, comes down to raising awareness. While the Vault has already registered such searchers as Sourcebooks, NBC/Vivendi/Universal (TV shows, movies, games), agent Nathan Bransford and publishing think tank Idealog, we recognize that the site needs more time to fully develop and become a trusted resource for its intended audience of authors and searchers alike—but we don’t expect authors to finance the effort.

This article provides a good overview of what the Vault is and how it works. You can read the Vault’s FAQ here, and its Terms of Use here. You can view a sample, dummy listing here, and see what the publisher/agent/producer search form looks like here. If you decide to register for a free account, you can do that here. After doing so, you will receive an email with full details on how to create your listings and bypass the PayPal payment system when publishing them.

We’re also working on expanding the Vault to include authors who have published with a small press but are still seeking representation; there will be announcements both here and on the Vault site when site changes to accomodate such authors are complete.

 

Vault University – Free Lessons/Handouts in Publishing and Author Platform/Promotion
Sister site Vault University launched last fall. This site provides monthly lessons for authors in two curricula: Publishing and Author Platform/Promotion. Vault U. was originally developed as a free educational service for authors who have their books listed in the Publetariat Vault: authors with at least one Vault listing are entitled to free enrollment in the Vault curriculum of their choice, though they’re enrolled in the Author Platform/Promotion curriculum by default since that’s the area of most interest to most self-published authors. If you take advantage of the Vault’s free listing offer above, you’ll also get access to Vault U lessons for free through 6/30/10. 

But that’s not the only means of getting free lessons and handouts from Vault U. Because lessons tend to be lengthy, entire, self-contained sections of lessons are often provided in the form of separate, standalone pdf "handout" documents. When this is the case, Vault U. makes those standalone pdfs available online free of charge to anyone who wants them. I always tweet about them, so if you follow me on Twitter ( @indieauthor ), you’ll be sure to hear about any that are posted in 2010. There are also plans to add a page to the Vault U. site with links to all available free handouts by the end of this month, so watch the Vault U. site for the appearance of that page. So far, Vault U. has offered the following freebies:

Crunching The Numbers: How It’s Possible To Sell Every Copy Of Your Self-Published Book And Still Lose Money – And How To Avoid That Outcome

Setting Up An Author Blog

Basics of Effective Website Design (intended for authors with some web developer skills and HTML literacy)

What Goes Into An Author Press Kit

If you like what you see in these lesson materials and would like more, but don’t wish to list a book in the Vault, Vault U. also accepts paid subscriptions at a rate of $5/mo per curriculum. You can read more about the Publishing curriculum here, and about the Author Platform/Promo curriculum here. Subscription links are provided at the bottom of each of those pages. 

 

Author Workshop Cruise
Finally, there’s the Author Workshop Cruise, scheduled for the week of 10/10/10. In this weeklong, all-workshop cruise, only 30 attendees will have the opportunity to learn everything they need to self-publish and promote right. It’s a vacation and writer’s workshop bundled into a single trip.

Workshops will be led by me (self-publishing in POD formats), Joshua Tallent (publishing for the Kindle), Kirk Biglione and Kassia Krozser (author platform and social media for authors) and Seth Harwood (author platform and podcasting for authors). Attendance is limited to allow for more personalized attention, and because all attendees will receive a private, 45-minute consulting session with a workshop presenter.

Cruise sponsors include Writer’s Digest, Smashwords and Everpub, and travel arrangements are being handled through AAA Travel, of the Auto Club of Southern California. This hasn’t been officially announced yet, but just between you, me and the internet, in addition to premiums provided by sponsors and workshop presenters, all cruise attendees will also receive a free, 12-month enrollment in the Vault U. curriculum of their choice as a benefit of cruise attendance.


That’s about all the news for now, but plans for a first-anniversary giveaway are in the works too so stay tuned!

The Threat to Poetry

This article from Mark William Jackson appears on http://markwilliamjackson.com/2010/01/11/the-threat-to-poetry/

My recent post, the poem Only Poets Read Poetry generated a great discussion, not so much the poem as the title. I was hoping to further the discussion as we covered to a depth of degree what could be interpreted by the line ‘only poets read poetry’ but barely touched on what could be done to steer the interpretation towards the positive.
 
I had two meanings in mind when I wrote the line, it could mean that poetry readership is very limited, to the point where only people who write poetry themselves are interested in reading poetry. The positive interpretation I had was that anyone who reads a poem, puts their mind into the mind of a poet and therefore becomes a poet.
 
Through the discussion Graham Nunn made the statement that ‘the reading of poetry is as much an art as the writing of it.’ A valid point supporting the positive interpretations, but does this lead to a reduction in readership due to the difficulty in comprehension. Poetry is well regarded as the most obscure of the literary arts, is this obscurity necessary? What purpose does it serve? I don’t think poetry should be as obvious as a Stephenie Meyer novel (I have not, nor do I plan to read one of these, this comment is a reflection on her readership(!)), but do we need to get to a point where, like W.H. Auden who awarded John Ashbery’s Some Trees (1956) the Yale Young Poets Award then later confessed that he didn’t understand a word of it. Are poets scared to reveal too much, or scared of becoming popular?
 
Graham’s comment led Stu Hatton to add another interpretation to the line, as in ‘only the elect can read poetry’. There is an art in reading poetry, only certain people have the skills to be able to read poetry, is this obscurity deliberately used by poets to reduce readership and maintain an elitist stance?
 
An alternate definition of obscurity was raised by Danielle Cross who chose the take that ‘good poetry is hard to come by’. Accessibility to poetry was discussed by Ashley Capes in terms of technology which has granted access to anyone who has the tech savvy to start up a blog, anyone can create a poetry page and call themselves a poet. Is this a good thing? People can now choose to call themselves poets and no longer have to rely on the acceptance of an editor.
 

 

Amelie, The One Minute Version

Here’s another of my three-minutes-or-less editorial screenplays of a movie I’ve seen which strained my credulity, patience or sanity on some level. I find it’s fun to rewrite those movies to more closely approximate my experience of them. This was my take on Amelie.

 

 

EXT. PARIS – GREEN
Impish, charming, disarmingly cute AUDREY TATOU disarms her ANGRY NEIGHBORS with a charmingly cute smile.

ANGRY NEIGHBORS
We have seen ‘Emma’ and ‘Chocolat’, and we know what you’re up to! You are trying to impishly charm us into changing our selfish, staid and priggish ways with your disarming cuteness.

AUDREY TATOU
(Impish)
Am I not cute? Do I not remind you of Bjork?

ANGRY NEIGHBORS
Must…resist overwhelming power…of cuteness…anger weakening…

AUDREY TATOU
(Disarming)
Have you noticed the way that the clouds all look like hearts and teddy bears when I’m around? Or that everything is green?

NOT-SO-ANGRY NEIGHBORS
We surrender to your impish charm. All of our lives have been enriched by your
disarming cuteness, the greenness and the teddy bear clouds.

Only slightly less impish and charming NINO steps forward.

NINO
I am hypoglycemic.

AUDREY TATOU (Charming)
Ah, the man of my dreams!
They exit together, Audrey skipping.

NINO
Could you please try to be less impishly girlish? It makes me feel a little pervy.

 

THE END

 

Bundle Up, It's Harsh Out There

[Editor’s Note: after the jump, this post contains strong language].

It’s f***ing freezing here. I was walking up First Avenue wondering how the hell people could be outdoors with no hat or scarf on. There were plenty of people looking perfectly stunning without the bundling that I am so comforted in. And then I arrived at my building and there are a half dozen fools huddled like zombies with no f***ing jackets on, smoking, no jackets. Ew.

So it got me thinking about going out unprepared for–well, anything. How could anyone step outdoors without preparing for the weather or traffic, making dinner reservations, bringing your Duane Reade coupon card, and the list goes on. (Sorry to non-New Yorkers, but these are essentials here.) And then I realized that MOST people launch into things unprepared, not just going outdoors or to a restaurant without reservations, but bigger things, like writing a book or launching a website.

I trained as a boxer, and I am also neurotic. So I have a leg up on the preparing-for-the-worst thing. But others–those of you who are, sadly, optimists–you might not have prepared to get punched in the mouth. While those punches may not always come, you still need to be prepared. And without preparing, you can’t possibly have enough wherewithal to take the offense with your work.

So that’s what my message is here today. I’ve seen so many aspiring authors launch into writing without the business plan to support their objectives. Or, worse, no objectives. They launch a blog with "ramblings," "random thoughts," "musings," and other shit. Here’s your first punch in the mouth: NOBODY WANTS TO HEAR YOUR FUCKING RAMBLINGS, asshole. Don’t speak up unless you have something to say of value–our googles are clogged up with half-assed blogs and websites regurgitating blather and spewage of verbal sewage. If you’re a writer, you most likely have more meaningful messages or short fiction–write it and you’ll earn readers.

This complicates things for the ever-increasing catalog of content swimming around our internets. It’s an inordinate challenge to find what we’re looking for now because of a general lack of organization; and because the current technology platforms for showcasing talent really only allow for the loudest voices to be heard, not necessarily the most appropriate, deserving, or talented ones.

Boo hoo, you say, the hard-working artist is ever the underdog. Well, buck up cowboy.
 

  • Readers need to speak up and help define how content must be organized. Readers need to get smart really fast and figure out how to grade the shit writing out there and let the good stuff emerge more visibly. No more mainstream book reviews, because they eliminate the independently released features altogether, so you have to find another way to trust recommendations. That’s what social media is for, right?
     
  • And writers aren’t off the hook. Look, agents and publishers aren’t superheroes. You can figure out what’s shit and shouldn’t be marketed. It’s like all of a sudden once someone becomes a writer they lose all sense of how their work compares to everything else out there. Come on, don’t tell me you can’t step back and get a perspective on your work and be a little more critical?
     
  • And as for the technology? We have to do better. "They" will only know what we need and want if we tell "them." Customer support and letter writing can have a profound effect on new products. SOMETHING has to be done about the haphazard bullshitty way platforms like Authonomy are headed. Goodreads has a better handle on it, but there still it’s clunky. We’re grownups, we don’t fucking need "friending," "following," and "fans," for chrissake. There’s got to be a better way.

(And yes, I’ll put some serious thought to it and make some proposals, myself, so I’m not just sitting here throwing bags of shit from behind a tree.) 

Writers all need to put their business plan in writing, realizing that writing a book that they want people to read is equivalent to launching a business. How many books do you want to sell? Print? Independent publisher or publish it yourself? Format it yourself for both electronic and print? That’s really hard but good luck. Where will you print it? What’s your wholesale discount? Who will sell it? Non-bookstore venues–and if so, which ones: schools, business premiums, cafes, others?

Learning as you go isn’t that hard. I’m doing it now. But knowing that preparation for the next step is what will keep you above water is vital to the survival of your own esteem; since knowing that few friends and family will purchase your book, you are most likely relying on total strangers to give you a pat on the back and $10 for your book.

This is a cross-posting from Jenn Topper‘s Don’t Publish Me! blog.

Talking Voice

What is “voice”?

There are differences of opinion on this, but generally speaking a writer’s voice is that combination of style, technique, tone and subject matter that immediately identifies a piece of writing as part of a specific author’s canon of work. As a rule of thumb, if you can imagine a contest in which entrants would attempt to emulate the style of a given author (e.g., Hemingway, Poe, Shakespeare, etc.), then the author in question has a very distinctive voice.

There are those who believe voice is an inborn talent that waits to be discovered, and then there are those who believe voice can be taught. Both camps tend to agree that regardless of where voice originates, it must be cultivated in order to reach its full potential.

Many writers think of voice as something that doesn’t apply to nonfiction, but this isn’t true. Such nonfiction authors as Stephen R. Covey, Seth Godin and Chris Anderson have very distinctive voices; reading their books, one gets a sense of each author’s unique communication style.

While some authors are celebrated primarily on the basis of their unique voices (e.g., Kurt Vonnegut, William Blake, Poe, etc.), there are many, many more who’ve captured a loyal following with compelling subject matter presented in a relatively generic style. Furthermore, it’s possible to have a very distinctive voice and not attract a following.

So don’t let the matter of voice stall your writing, and don’t make the cultivation of voice your primary objective. A writer who imagines his work too run-of-the-mill attempting to consciously cultivate a distinctive voice is like a party guest who imagines his stories too boring consciously trying to make them more interesting. The effort invariably shows, and tends to result in affectation: an unnatural slant to your phrasing, and word/technique choices that draw attention to themselves—thereby pulling readers out of your book. And there’s no point in waiting to write until you’re convinced your voice has emerged, because it’s only through repeated use and exercise that a writer’s voice is discovered and developed.

Many aspiring authors equate a strong writer’s voice with quality writing and therefore assume that if they haven’t developed a strong voice, their work won’t be any good. There’s a big difference between great writing in the mechanical sense (e.g., proper sentence construction, good grammar and spelling, effective plotting, natural-sounding dialogue, etc.) and great writing in the artistic sense (e.g., work that makes the reader think or feel, or both), but there’s little doubt writers must master the former before they can aspire to the latter.

The bottom line on voice is this: the lack of a distinctive writer’s voice may prevent you from winning the Nobel prize in Literature, but it will not prevent you from having a fulfilling career in authorship. There’s more than one way to reach a readership, and we’re not all destined to be the next Burroughs or Hemingway. Therefore, the matter of voice isn’t worth worrying about.

Focus on honing your skills and let your voice emerge when, and if, it will.


[This is a cross-posting from my Indie Author Blog, and is excerpted from a lesson I wrote for
Vault University, with a little extra commentary added.]
 

BookBuzzr – The One Free Tool That Every Author Needs For Book Marketing

This post, from Saneesh, originally appeared on the Freado The Book-Marketing Technology Blog on 10/20/09.

[Note from Publetariat Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton: While this is really just a promotional piece about the BookBuzzr widget, since that widget is free and I use it myself and can therefore recommend it personally, it’s a resource I’m very happy to share with Publetariat’s audience. I’ve embedded the BookBuzzr widget for my book, The IndieAuthor Guide, at the end of this post so readers can see for themselves exactly what it is and how it works.]

As an author trying to market your book online, you may find that many of the simple steps involved in Internet marketing are actually quite daunting. Consider the simplest and most important prerequisite, of offering an extract of your book online in a nice to read format that can be easily shared among your readers.

 

99% of author websites are unable to allow sampling of books on their websites. They simply stick in an image of their book and hope that this is enough to stimulate the desire to read the book among site visitors. You know you can do better than that!

BookBuzzr is built from the ground-up for word-of-mouth (or shall we say, click-of-mouse) book-marketing. By signing up for BookBuzzr you can allow readers to browse through portions of your book in a nice to read online, flip-book format where the experience is similar to reading a real book. Additionally, they can get a [centralized] listing of all things related to your book such as links to where they can buy your book, where they can discover interviews with you, where they can listen to podcasts related to your book and more.

Need another reason to sign-up for BookBuzzr? Let’s talk about "share-ability" or "distribute-ability." Let’s say you saw a book-extract of a book that you loved and you want to share this with readers of your blog. The best most people can do is to put up a link to the book-extract. But is this enough? The era of people going to a few "destination" websites to get their content is over. Today you are as likely to see an interesting video embedded on a blog that you discovered as you are to see that video on YouTube. So we’ve taken care of this for you. Fans of your book can easily embed your book on their personal blogs and become ambassadors for your book.
BookBuzzr is intended to take care of most of the details related to online book-marketing and book promotion on an ongoing basis. At the very least, BookBuzzr helps you to:  

  • Reach your target audience by allowing them to discover your book in various places such as blogs, websites, social networking sites and more.
     
  • Tell them that your book is available by providing links to places where they can buy your book.
     
  • Persuade them to read it by allowing them to easily sample your book with jaw-dropping book simulation technology.

As a bonus, when you sign up, you also get listed on fReado.com where readers can interact with you and with other readers. Further, you can link from fReado to your own author site or blog, thus helping your search engine rankings. Because fReado.com is optimized for search engines and because fReado.com is regularly crawled all over by the major search engines, the information about your book will soon be noticed and your pages should be listed in response to web searches. We also have plans to connect fReado with Facebook Connect. This enables your readers to:
 

  • Seamlessly "connect" their Facebook account and information with your book
     
  • Connect and find their friends who are on fReado
     
  • Share comments made on your book with their friends on Facebook

Sign up now for free and join other elite authors who understand the art of online book promotion!

Given the growth of Twitter and its importance in helping authors build their platform and sell more books, a number of Twitter features have been added to BookBuzzr to help authors market their book on Twitter with a large degree of automation. The goals behind these features are:

  • To help the author gain more followers on Twitter
     
  • To make the book more visible among the authors’ Twitter followers
     
  • To help readers of the book share the book among their Twitter followers.

These Twitter features for marketing books online include:
 

  • Authors can schedule tweets about their book in their Twitter accounts daily or weekly.
     
  • Every time a reader opens an author’s book-excerpt, a tweet goes out to the authors Twitter followers mentioning that the book was opened.
     
  • Readers will find a link to follow the author on Twitter when they are reading the author’s book-excerpt and when they finish reading the book-excerpt.
     
  • Readers can tweet about the book with just a few clicks. 

 

The Shoe Is On The Other Foot

This post, from bookseller Rich Rennicks, originally appeared on his The Word Hoarder blog on 10/20/09.

[The intent of this post is to step back and consider the industry-wide implications of $8.99 bestsellers. I’m making multiple assumptions where I do not have all the info, so I invite corrections, counter arguments and real numbers before anyone jumps off any cliffs.]

The shoe is on the other foot this morning, with indie booksellers contemplating deserting publishers for cheaper $8.99 books at the mass merchants. Amazon.com, Walmart.com and Target.com are waging a price war over the top dozen-or-so projected bestsellers of the holiday season.  To do so they are all willing to make a loss of $5-$6 on each book – which is staggering, because last time I checked market share wasn’t legal tender. Naturally, indie bookstore buyers have concluded that if you can purchase books you know your customers will want, at a lower price than directly from the publisher, and force a competitor to take a loss on each copy, why the hell wouldn’t you?

This is my attempt to make a case not to desert the publishers. [Full disclosure: I work for a small publisher and part-time for an indie bookseller, hence the need to look at the situation from both sides.]

The reason to support publishers by buying directly is because of all the services they deliver which indie bookstores value: selection, curation, marketing, creating demand? (You know, many of the same things we tell customers they’re supporting when they shop indie…) The irony of this situation is not lost on anyone.

The question is, who loses if indie bookstores cancel and reorder at 8.99 from the gamblers who are prepared to take a loss of almost $5-$6 on each copy? Publishers theoretically ship the same number of books, just through different channels. Those publishers are making the same profit whether they ship through Wal-Mart or directly, as giving one channel a larger discount than another would be illegal, right? [Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that the ABA took publishers to court over this exact issue several years ago.]

 

Read the rest of the post on Rich Rennicks’ The Word Hoarder blog.

5 Lies Writers Believe About Editors

This post, from Jeremiah Tolbert, originally appeared on his site on 5/7/07.

At least in the science fiction community, there’s a lot of false community wisdom floating around about the editorial process. Some of them may have been true once.  Some were probably invented to mess with the heads of noobs. Some of them are carefully nurtured lies, like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Well, no longer.  I’m here to tell you the truth, no matter how ugly it may be.

LIE #1:   Editors give every story fair consideration. OR:  Editors reject stories without reading them at all.

The truth is, the slush is deep, and it’s rarely an editor’s favorite part of the job. Why do you think so many places have slush readers?

Every story doesn’t get fair consideration. Not every story deserves it. If you can’t be bothered to read the submission guidelines and follow them, it’s an easy rejection. If you have five grammar and spelling mistakes in the first two paragraphs, it’s an easy rejection. If it’s a story about vampires, and I hate vampire stories, it’s mostly an easy rejection.

Most stories get at least a page out of me. Then I skip to the last 3 paragraphs, if I’m feeling generous. Some get less. Some work is so obviously bad that it’s startlingly easy to know it’s not going to work.  But every story gets looked at. Nothing ever gets rejected without being partially read. Honest.

LIE #2:  Editors never reject a good story.

I rejected plenty of really good stories at the Fortean Bureau. I’ve even rejected a couple at Escape Pod.  The reason is pretty simple: editorial vision or scope. The Fortean Bureau was looking for a particular kind of story.  Your space opera, no matter how good, was never going to appear there. Likewise, we don’t accept horror or fantasy at Escape Pod. If the story is good, and sucks me in, I will recommend sending it over to the other editors.

Stories get rejected for being too long, too short, too similiar to another story the editor has already bought… there are as many reasons for rejection as there are stories. And not all of them involve you making mistakes. There are aspects of the process that a writer cannot control. Best to just relax about it.

LIE #3:  Editors don’t foster new writers like they did in the old days, and don’t care about new talent.

John W. Campbell was a meddlesome bastard who sent his writers specific ideas for stories. He was not what you call a “hands off” kind of editor. He wrote his fair share of stories, and some of the tales I’ve heard about him make me think that he was often thinking as a writer as much as he was an editor. He wasn’t afraid to rewrite someone else’s story.

For whatever bizzare reason, some people wish editors would take that level of interest in their work, and  they lament that editors no longer foster new writers, giving them the kind of constructive criticism that leads to their personal growth. Everything for writers was just wonderful back then but these editors today are jerks!

Not true.  Campbell may have had time to do this with a larger percentage of his submissions, but the field was smaller then. Today, there are tens of thousands of writers all trying to break in to the same publications.  We simply don’t have time to give personal feedback to each submission. These days, sometimes the best you get is an encouraging rejection. My first came from Stanley Schmidt: “I like your writing, so I hope you will send more in the future.” Not very specific, but it does the trick. It tells you that you’re on the right track.

As much as I give Gordon van Gelder a hard time for his opposition to online media, the man writes a very succinct and helpful rejection letter. Even the form letters have a system to them to help you figure out why the story was rejected.  I always simultaneously feared and looked forward to his short notes.

Editors do build a stable of writers. The reason most people don’t see it is because by the time you come along, the editor has already established a group of authors he or she can count on. But short story writers in particular are always going on to write novels, so openings do occur from time to time.

If you really want feedback on your work, join a workshop or critique circle. It’s not the editor’s job to help you become a better writer. Sometimes, we’re helpful, but we can’t do it for everyone.

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes Lies #4 and #5, plus one Truth, on Jeremiah Tolbert’s website.

Bookshops Are Dead: And I Killed Them

This post, from Eoin Purcell, originally appeared on his blog on 1/4/10 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

2009 was a weak year for me in book reading terms. I read perhaps 26 or so (with some extra I’m fairly sure I have forgotten):

1) Europe Between The Oceans
2) A Fire Upon The Deep
3) The Ascent of Money
4) Blood of the Mantis
5) The Training Ground
6) Dragonfly Falling
7) The Blade itself
8)Millennium
9) Before They Are Hanged
10) Ireland in 2050
11) Gutenberg Revolution
12) Empire in Black & Gold
13) Empire of the Sea
14) Edward I: A Great & Terrible Kind
15) The Last Argument of Kings
16) The Steel Remains
17) The Dreaming Void
18) The Adamantine Palace
19) Defying Empire
20) The Darkness That Comes Before
21) A Shadow in Summer
22) A Betrayal in Winter
23) An Autumn War
24) Young Miles
25) The Stars My Destination
26) Earthman, Come Home

On the other hand I bought quite a few more than that, perhaps something like 50 or 60 books. I’m hoping to push the read figure up towards 45 or so and if I’m really lucky, I might even average one a week.

Serious thoughts
I was thinking while calculating this poor reading effort of the changes that Seth Godin pointed to in a recent post:

iTunes and file sharing killed Tower Records. The key symptom: the best customers switched. Of course people who were buying 200 records a year would switch. They had the most incentive. The alternatives were cheaper and faster mostly for the heavy users.

He drew a comparison with books and Amazon’s recent somewhat questionable Kindle news, that they sold more books via Kindle than in paper on Christmas day:

Amazon and the Kindle have killed the bookstore. Why? Because people who buy 100 or 300 books a year are gone forever. The typical American buys just one book a year for pleasure. Those people are meaningless to a bookstore. It’s the heavy users that matter, and now officially, as 2009 ends, they have abandoned the bookstore. It’s over.

I think Seth is right and yet wrong. He is right, bookstores as we’ve known them are dead. But Amazon killed them long before they released the Kindle. Cheap books delivered through the mail are the way forward for those of is who buy in large numbers (I’m probably a medium rank buyer of books).

The Book Depository sucks up a good 60% of my book buying at the moment and accounts for almost all my new book purchases with 10% or less spent in chain stores or supermarkets. The rest is spread very unevenly as follows: 25% in second-hand and car-boot sale locations (Ravenbooks features here and I suspect in 2010 will feature even more) which is made up almost exclusively of out of print and pre-2000 books, the last 5% or so gets spent fairly randomly everywhere from good independents, to local shops with self published titles and random online direct purchases and ebooks (I’m still primary print and suspect I will always be so, despite a belief and passion for digital text).

He is wrong, however, when he says that the top rank of book buyers are gone for ever from print, because many of those buying books on Kindle will buy some, get some free and eventually return to print books, many more of the top buyers will simply ignore digital books in favour of print because they like it.

This is not a defence of print against digital (like this op-ed from Jonathan Galassi president of Farrar, Straus & Giroux) as, ultimately, I believe the bulk of books will be read digitally before the end of the teens, but it is not as simple a case as music when whether or not you had a cd or an mp3 makes little difference to the listener, the quality was just the same and the process of using it fairly similar too. Books on the other hand are usable on their own without input from a device of any kind and with the proviso that there is light. Those readers who, like me, still enjoy the experience of reading in print will still buy in print even as the price of print books rises.

So there will be demand for print books but at a much reduced level (because many others will shift to digital as will casual readers and new readers) and the economics of bookshops will become completely skewed favouring the online Emporia. Booksellers can react by hand-selling to customers and making themselves relevant as Ravenbooks has (I am increasingly sure of finding a pile of relevant books there every time I walk in) and no doubt this will mean concentrating on older books, out-of-print books and second-hand books, books that appeal directly to the customer, and print-on-demand books printed directly on site (though I am less convinced of the economic case for this).

Whatever way you look at it though, by not buying in chain stores, and rarely enough in independents, I killed the chain bookshop and I got away with it!

More to come today!
Eoin

Eoin PurcellEoin Purcell works and lives in Dublin where owns and runs Green Lamp Media, a publishing, publishing services and content company. Green Lamp works with authors, publishes books digitally and in print and with publishers on social media and content projects.

He was formerly commissioning editor with one of Ireland’s oldest independent publishers Mercier Press. Prior to that he worked at Nonsuch Ireland as commissioning editor and publishing manager. He is a board member of Publishing Ireland, the Irish Publishers association.

He contributes occasional blog posts and columns on the Irish book trade for The Bookseller magazine. He also writes a blog at www.eoinpurcellsblog.com and edits www.irishpublishingnews.com

Ten Words You Need To Stop Misspelling

There are a few words that are commonly misspelled or simply used incorrectly. I’m quickly becoming a fan of The Oatmeal comics and today they’ve got a good list of ten commonly misspelled words, along with that special brand of Oatmeal drawing and comedy. The words they cover are:

Lose/Loose

Weird not Wierd

Their/They’re/There

Your/You’re

It’s/Its

Definitely

Effect/Affect

Weather/Whether

A lot not alot*

Then/Than

Find the comic and explanations here.

* Also in this category there should be a discussion of any+, such as anywhere or any more. Or Anymore and any where. There’s no clear line here and some people connect any word with "any" in it and some are selective. Personally, I’m selective. Your thoughts?

Are You Writing Disposable Fiction?

This post, from Kat M., originally appeared on her Adele Journal site on 12/13/09 and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission.

I used to hang out with a lot of musicians — really good ones of various flavors.  One of them was in one of those PBS-sponsored youth classical contests (can’t remember if he won, though.)  A couple of them were in the Hollywood movie-scoring scene already.  Some did work in games soundtracks.  A couple semi-famous singer/songwriters.  And some were electronic musicians who wrote dance songs.

The electronic musicians had a problem.  Like any artist, they wanted to make something enduring, but they knew that their work was destined to be, at most, a seasonal hit in the clubs.  Whatever they wrote would be replaced with the next tune that satisfied people’s dance music cravings.

Electronic music is inherently consumable and disposable.

Electronic dance music is functional — it’s designed to make people want to dance for a long time and strengthen people’s ties to certain lifestyles. These things don’t happen by accident; a good dance music writer knows why people listen to it and leverages his knowledge. To non-expert listeners (people not in the scene), all the songs in a style — like house, hip-hop, trance, d&b, 2step, etc — sound basically the same, since they have to operate within the guidelines of this function.

You’d think that this would make dance music producers take their art less seriously, knowing that their audience is going to consume and discard their work.  But no, the best of the electronic musicians still thought of themselves as “real musicians,” regardless of their genre’s critics or their work’s fate.

These composers proved to be as dedicated to their craft as the Hollywood orchestral soundtrack writers.

But it makes sense.  If they’re serious about making good music, they have to think of themselves as 1st class musicians, not just “dance producers.”

If they think of themselves as 2nd class musicians — “I just write electronic stuff” — they damn themselves to settling for a lower grade before they sequence a single beat.  They won’t think it’s possible to write a great piece within the genre, and their music will never be great, just satisfactory.

Even worse, they will limit themselves to tools within the style only, taking the conventions, cliches, and standards as their starting point.  This creates me-too music and basically precludes creativity — the same kind of creativity that Massive Attack had when creating their signature sound and broke out of existing genre rules.

Are you a writer, or a “popular fiction writer?”

So, what does this mean for you, a writer?  Let’s pretend you’re a romance writer.  How do you think of yourself and your stories? Are you a writer, or a “romance writer?”  Have you lowered standards for your own stories just because you write fiction that people tend to read & recycle?  In your heart of hearts, do you feel like a 2nd class citizen just because of your genre?

Do you believe that it’s possible to write a masterpiece in your chosen genre?

If you truly want to write something that endures… that’s not automatically destined for the read & recycle fate… that won’t get replaced in the reader’s memory by the next satisfactory thing… then start thinking of yourself as a 1st class writer, not a “romance writer.”  Think of your stories as stories, not “romance stories.”  Believe that even though you write in a popular genre, you can achieve masterpiece level with your stories.

Only then will you stop being limited by your own thinking, and only then will you be able to write at maximum capacity.

 

Kat M. is both a successful publisher and dedicated critique partner for mature-audience fiction.  As a result of her dual life, her blog, Adele Journal, has a dual focus: helping authors write better adult genre fiction, and helping them market themselves more effectively. Visit www.adelejournal.com for the latest articles and tutorials.

How I Sold 10,000 Copies of My Self-Published Book

Jill and I were sitting around talking about friends and people we knew. I was trying to explain how the system of personality types we were studying was actually complex enough to explain all the differences we were observing in our friends.

At one point Jill said to me, “How are people like me—new to this system—supposed to learn all this? You’ve been talking about astrology, endocrine glands, mythology… I can’t even keep track of it!” She looked exasperated.

“Well, just ask me if you have a question. How about that?” I said.

“That’s no way to learn something this complicated. Isn’t there anything written down?”

We looked at each other.

“Why don’t you write it down, Joel, you know all this stuff. That way it would be available for anyone who comes along later, and it would be better than having to find someone to ask every time you had a question.”

I had to admit Jill was right. It had just never occurred to anyone to write it all down. It was a study that hundreds of people were involved in, and which grew and changed, like a living teaching, over many years. 

A Book is Born

Soon I was deep into the book that would become Body Types. What had started out as a little project to write down a few things about types had morphed into a full-scale manuscript that would take me over a year to put together.

Eventually I formed a publishing company—Globe Press Books—and published Body Types in both hardcover and softcover. I had an advantage at the beginning because I was a member of the group that had been developing this Body Type information, and I knew they would buy the book when it came out.

Here are the first two keys to selling your self-published book, and this is exactly what I did with Body Types:

First, identify a market for the book that you can easily advertise to. In my case, this was the group that we belonged to. I had membership lists with mailing addresses on them.

Second, make that market an offer they cannot refuse. I mailed to every address I could get, offering a special discount to people who ordered before the books were printed.

The great thing about this was that I collected enough money to pay for the initial print run of 2,500 books. I sold hundreds of copies in advance.

Since I had been in publishing, and had a graphic design studio at the time, I knew how to hire an editor, and how to create a book that looked as professional as any other book on the market. There was no indication that the book was self-published because of the strong prejudice against self-published books at the time.

Third, get professionals to edit and design your book so you can compete toe-to-toe with any other book on your shelf.

Find a Spot on the Shelf

Next we went after book reviews. This was crucial, since we couldn’t afford to advertise.

Fourth, we mounted a large book review campaign. We mailed to several hundred media outlets, gathering numerous reviews.

We then used the positive reviews to leverage ourselves in the larger network interested in spirituality and eastern teachings. We identified this as our natural market.

Fifth, we generated press releases using the reviews and used them to establish an identity in our niche.

But What’s it All About?

Keep in mind that the biggest stumbling block we had with this book—and it was our only book for a couple of years—was that it was about a subject that no one had ever heard of. This is a daunting challenge that we addressed by taking our message to educational centers.

Sixth, we obtained teaching assignments at large alternative centers like the New York Open Center and the Omega Institute. Catalog mailings listing course descriptions and the title of the book multiplied our outreach through large scale network effects.

This all helped with the specialty bookstores that we needed to make the book a success. In our niche, these are “new age” or “human potential” specialty retailers.

Seventh, we personally sold each specialty retailer we could identify, by mail and by phone, to convince them they had to have this book, the only one on its subject.

Back to Press

It took less than a year to sell the initial print run. We now had an account at Baker & Taylor, and a lot of people knew who we were. Because the book was unique, it established a place on the shelf of many bookstores. This is publishing gold. It means that, even though they may have only 1 or 2 copies on the shelf, when those copies sell, the bookstore reorders the book because they know there will be continuing demand.

We went back to press, concentrating on the $9.95 trade paperback (hey, this was the 1980s). Eventually sales, never that robust, slowed down. But they never stopped.

Eighth, we listened to our market. Readers only wanted the softcover so we abandoned the hardcovers, which had been a difficult sale anyway.

Eventually I started working on a new edition to incorporate the new research I had been doing, to add illustrations and a new forword by Stanley Krippner, Ph.D. We put a new cover on the book, and issued the second edition with another print run of 2,500 softcovers. Since I now had a publishing company I had national distribution, and the book spread even farther.

The Ripples Widen As They Spread

I was invited to be a presenter at the First International Enneagram Conference at Stanford, and continued to give workshops after we moved to California. A couple of years later we went back to press for another 2,500 books.

Ninth, we continued to leverage into bigger networks. Each one helped amplify our message, and bring new readers to the idea of body types.

Body Types stayed in print continuously for 16 years. I didn’t want to keep printing the book, and had handed over the distribution to another publisher, since I had closed our company. Eventually I let it go out of print.

Perhaps 10,000 books in 16 years doesn’t sound like many to you, but it was profitable from publication date. Now, thanks to print on demand and digital printing, Body Types is back on the market with a new cover, happily sitting on Amazon for people to rediscover.

Takeaway: Think about what you know that others might find interesting. Know your niche and how to market to people with similar interests. Create a quality product. Take one step at a time and build credibility, leveraging into larger and larger networks. Take the long view, seeding success tomorrow by your actions today.

 

This is a cross-posting from Joel Friedlander‘s The Book Designer site.

Writing For Fame and Fortune – NOT!

Last night, my bookstore’s writing group had the good fortune to hear from Patrick Dobson, author of Seldom Seen, a highly touted first book—a travel memoir of his walking from Kansas City to Helena, Montana in 1995. This Nebraska University Press title which has become a Midwestern Booksellers Pick has been getting very good reviews from Kirkus and others. Patrick is one more overnight success. Yeah—right—overnight.

He regaled us with how it took him 14 years to see his book in print. This is a phenomena often seen in literary and music circles when someone unknown suddenly hits the charts. In Patrick’s case now at age 41, he had left a stultifying job to perform his two and a half month walk  back in 1995. Seldom Seen is the first of two books describing the events and people he met along his way.

Patrick has done a lot of signings and book chats throughout the Midwest. He observed the many self-published writers he’s met during his marketing efforts and how sad it is to see them feeling crushed because their works are not being accepted. The problem , he said, was not because they were self-published, but because they expected to throw some words on pages without getting professional help. They had not really worked on the writing process. Patrick had been a journalist for five years. He had degrees in English and literature. He is just finishing up work on a doctorate in ecological history. He’s also a working member of the ironworkers’ Union with lots of real world experience. Despite all that education and experience, the publishing process with a university press took four years of peer reviews and rewrites.

How can a writing wannabe hope to have a credible work without this kind of background and assistance? The usual success by celebrities writing their books is generally not due to their writing abilities, but to their ghost writers’. The normal success is due from hard work on the part of the writer, whoever that may be. One cannot expect instant fame and fortune without paying one’s dues to the goddess of muse. It took me twelve years to get published. To expect instant success for writing a book is just not realistic without getting some assistance along the way. This is why folks like me exist—folks who have paid the price in experience who can help others along the way by providing editing, designing, and coaching services. Very few people get rich from writing. The probabilities are heavily weighted against the new writer. Heck, they’re heavily weighted against highly experienced writers.

If you are writing to gain fame and fortune but aren’t willing to put in the work required for a credible work, you need to rethink your writing scenario. I say the best reason to write is for the love of communicating and writing. The work and the journey is what makes the writing process worth it.

 

This is a cross-posting from Bob Spear‘s Book Trends Blog.

For Authors: Hard Way to Get Kindle Readers

This post, from switch11, originally appeared on the Kindle Review – Kindle 2 Review, Books site on 8/19/09.

We’ll call this the ‘Own Your Niche’ strategy. Joshua Talent at Kindle Formatting has already demonstrated it. However, it’s Aileen Harkwood’s Kindling Romance that really shows how powerful it is, and that authors can do this.

Picking the Right Niche

This is pretty simple – pick the niche that your book or kindle related product is in.

Take Kindling Romance – the author writes romance novels so she picked ‘romance ebooks and kindle romance’.

One thing to note is that you should own www.yourname.com – However, it has ZERO value until you’re a big author. So there’s no point in making it your main blog.

Things to take note of –

  1. By choosing ‘kindling romance’, it still shows up for ‘kindle romance’ on Google. In fact it shows up in the top 5 results. 
     
  2. Her own book is prominently advertised on the right. 
     
  3. The site’s general focus is ebooks from various companies, not just Amazon. 
     
  4. She blogs relatively often and provides good value (see section on value).
     
  5. Cater to authors and readers. More on this later, perhaps in another post.
     
  6. She started on July 11th, 2009. In approximately 1 month she’s #5 on google for kindle romance books.

The last one is crucially important. The two sites running ads are paying hard money and she gets traffic for free.

Things to avoid –

  1. If you must go with a free hosted solution like wordpress, at the minimum buy your own domain name so that all links are to your domain, and not to wordpress.
     
  2. If you can, host your own site and use your own domain. WordPress does not let you run ads, does not allow affiliate links except to Amazon, etc.
     
  3. Trademarks. Check with a lawyer.

Providing Value and Owning the Channel

At the moment, if you are an independent author, there is no one who has much incentive to promote you.

Readers might – however, the middlemen control everything.

How you change that is by providing value to people, and thus making them use your site (and you) as a resource. Let’s look at Kindling Romance –

  1. Daily features such as Bestsellers in Romance eBooks, New Releases, eBook Stats.
     
  2. A blog that provides updates on romance book deals and news.
     
  3. A blog that lets authors promote their books.  

Provide a ton of value so that users use you as the channel for books and ebooks in your niche.

Handling Competition – Authors


Read the
rest of the post on Kindle Review – Kindle 2 Review, Books.