Publetariat

100 Essential Sites For Voracious Readers

by

This post originally appeared on the Masters in English site in March of 2013. For authors who want to know where the readers are, and where the influential book bloggers are, this list is indispensible.

The advent of e-readers has allowed people to carry a lifetime of books in their backpack for convenient, backlit reading anywhere. This proliferation of reading gadgets has not only been a boon for passionate readers, but for writers as well. It is easier and less expensive than ever for independent authors to publish their works to a possible audience of millions. This is a huge benefit to both writers and readers, and has led to an outpouring of independently published e-books for lovers of all genres. This list is a celebration of reading and writing for both academic and general audiences.

General Literature & Publishing

From e-publishing gurus to literature critics, authors, and bookshop owners, many people in the business of selling words have blogs and online storefronts to reach an ever more electronically connected audience of voracious readers.

  1. Project Gutenberg

    Project Gutenberg

    Project Gutenberg provides a library of over 42,000 free eBook titles in the United States due to expired copyrights. The project categorizes the free e-books that are available and offers links to download locations.

    Must Read: eBook Catalog

  2. New York Times – Books

    NY Times Books

    The well-known New York Times Review of Books is one of the largest and accessible sources concerning literature. You’ll find countless interviews, reviews, and exposés of some of the finest contemporary authors.

    Must Read: Harvest by Jim Crace

  3. The American Literary Review

    The American Literary Review

    The American Literary Review was created through the creative writing program at The University of North Texas and publishes a wide range of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction from writers with varying degrees of experience. Spring 2013 will feature the final issue in print before exclusively embracing the digital medium.

    Must Read: American Literary Review Current Issue

  4. The American Literary Blog

    The American Literary Blog

    The American Literary Blog focuses on 19th century literature, encompassing not only very popular books of the period, but more obscure titles as well. The blog includes links and dates to various talks and appearances.

    Must Read: Curry: The Better Years Begin

  5. Reader’s Almanac

    Readers Almanac

    The Readers Almanac is the official blog of The Library of America, a nonprofit publisher whose goal is ensuring the most significant works of American literature stay in print.

    Must Read: Forthcoming From Library of America

  6. The Elegant Variation

    The Elegant Variation

    Mark Sarvas runs this acclaimed literary blog that has a casual tone, while still maintaining a substantive style.

    Must Read: Five Authors to Watch in 2013

  7. TeleRead

    Teleread

    TeleRead features “news and views on e-books, libraries, publishing, and related topics” with special emphasis on reading related technologies such as e-readers, e-book managers, and the general creation and distribution systems used by Amazon and others to purvey written media in electronic form.

    Must Read: Amazon Isn’t Evil

  8. Maud Newton

    Maud Newton

    Maud Newton’s literary blog is colored with a significant amount of cultural commentary. The depth of the blog is furthermore accentuated due the amount of travel he does and his ability to blend history into his reviews.

    Must Read: Letters From Jerusalem

  9. Girlebooks

    Girl E Books

    Girlebooks has a 21st century view on being a book blog and exclusively handles ebooks, particularly those with women as authors. The blog aims to take a more active role in breaking out of the cycle of women being the only readers of literature authored by women.

    Must Read: Summer Promotion 2012

  10. The Bookshop Blog

    The Bookshop Blog

    The Bookshop Blog is an in-depth blog compiling Top 100 lists for various genres, bookstore profiles, and general musing over different philosophies concerning how we read and interact with books.

    Must Read: Remembrances of Bookstores Past

 

Read the rest of the post, which includes 90 more sites categorized by type, on Masters in English.

The Public Library: Historic Artifact or Adaptive Success? (infographic)

by

This infographic and accompanying introduction originally appeared on CityTownInfo on 3/28/13 and is reprinted here in its entirety with that site’s permission.

Since the founding of the first public library in the U.S. in 1731, libraries have provided a conduit to knowledge for the general populace. Toward the end of the last century, however, the Internet dramatically changed how and where we access information.

The Web has introduced virtually limitless access to information. With this alternative to traditional print media, public libraries are facing new challenges: online resources allow people instant access to books, magazines, job information and applications, health information and online classes. So how do libraries plan to continue engaging communities? In the face of new technologies, libraries are adapting to a new reality.

Eighty-one percent of American adults use the Internet and almost as many people agree that free computer and internet access (including Wi-Fi) are very important services that libraries offer. In fact, 62 percent of libraries are the sole provider of computers and Wi-Fi for free in their community. Libraries also offer technology assistance, help with social services applications, tutoring and advice for job-seeking patrons.

Over the past decade, public libraries have been increasing in number, but the growth hasn’t kept up with the population. Between 2000 and 2009, public libraries increased by 1.7 percent, but the national population increased by 11.7 percent. Overall, the digital age has ushered in radically changing media on offer at libraries–San Antonio, Texas, for example, is planning to open a public library without books this fall. Instead, it will have computers, tablets, laptops and e-readers with preloaded titles. While the bookless library has been attempted in the U.S. before, in 2002, it didn’t last: patrons eventually asked for actual books.

So how are public libraries currently being used and are they here to stay? This infographic examines the current use of public libraries and challenges to their preeminence as providers (and symbols) of knowledge.

Sources:

Pew Research Center, “Demographics of Internet Users”, 2012
American Library Association, “State of America’s Libraries Report”, 2012
Institute of Museum and Library Services, Public Libraries Survey (Fiscal Year 2009), 2011
NPR, “A Launch of the Bookless Library”, 2013

For a complete list of sources, please view the infographic:

The public library: Historic artifact or adaptive success
Courtesy of: CityTownInfo.com

Ether for Authors: Goodreads. Badreactions.

by

This post, by Porter Anderson, originally appeared on Publishing Perspectives on 4/1/13. It gives an excellent overview of the facts about Amazon’s intended acquisition of Goodreads, a roundup of reactions, and some analysis from cooler heads.

To many, Amazon is an evil corporation hellbent on destroying the world. They have made these intentions clear by paying authors a shitload and fighting to lower the price of books for readers. I think we can all agree that authors and readers are scum, and this preferential treatment on the part of Amazon should be looked at with complete distrust.

Hugh Howey writes about the destruction of the world for a living. In this instance, he’s on his site, in Amazon and Goodreads.

And by Thursday afternoon, around 4:45 p.m. Eastern, he had a lot to write about. The Amazonian Apocalypse indeed was upon us. We were up to our digital derrieres in that greatest of all booky community blessings: reach out and share the hysteria.

In four sections of this edition of the Ether, I’m going to focus on this new development at length, here at Palpitating Perspectives.

The event, in and of itself, is of genuine interest, certainly. But also worthy of our attention is the fact that it’s not cause for the self-defenestration you’d think was contemplated by some of our colleagues on hearing the word.

We didn’t just get news Thursday. We also got a fever dream’s descent into alarmist indulgence.

I was reminded of a typo in the Sunday bulletin at one of my father’s churches many years ago. We were posted at the time to the Methodist church in Denny Terrace, a suburb of Columbia, South Carolina. The listing was for a parish picnic that afternoon: 4 p.m. today: Church-Wide Panic. Please be prompt. Well, here was Goodreads being acquired by Amazon. The panic surely started promptly. And now was the fimbulwinter of our discontent made glorious slapstick by such loud reactions.

Never mind Goodreads founder Otis Chandler’s statement on his site’s blog, Exciting News About Goodreads: We’re Joining the Amazon Family!

It’s important to be clear that Goodreads and the awesome team behind it are not going away. Goodreads will continue to be the wonderful community that we all cherish. We plan to continue offering you everything that you love about the site.

The angry faithful blew off those niceties with the ease of Amazon Certified Frustration-Free Packaging. It didn’t seem to matter what Chandler said. This man who 30 minutes earlier was thought a hero by his lit-legions now was pictured with his wife, both of them holding Kindles with Goodreads stickers on them.

Read the rest of this very lengthy and in-depth post on Publishing Perspectives.

Why Do We Hate Certain Words?

by

This post, by Matthew J.X. Malady, originally appeared on Slate on 4/1/13.

The curious phenomenon of word aversion.

Publetariat Editor’s Note: this post contains both strong language and numerous instances of words many people hate.

The George Saunders story “Escape From Spiderhead,” included in his much praised new book Tenth of December, is not for the squeamish or the faint of heart. The sprawling, futuristic tale delves into several potentially unnerving topics: suicide, sex, psychotropic drugs. It includes graphic scenes of self-mutilation. It employs the phrases “butt-squirm,” “placental blood,” and “thrusting penis.” At one point, Saunders relates a conversation between two characters about the application of medicinal cream to raw, chafed genitals.

Early in the story, there is a brief passage in which the narrator, describing a moment of postcoital amorousness, says, “Everything seemed moist, permeable, sayable.” This sentence doesn’t really stand out from the rest—in fact, it’s one of the less conspicuous sentences in the story. But during a recent reading of “Escape From Spiderhead” in Austin, Texas, Saunders says he encountered something unexpected. “I’d texted a cousin of mine who was coming with her kids (one of whom is in high school) just to let her know there was some rough language,” he recalls. “Afterwards she said she didn’t mind fu*k, but hated—wait for it—moist. Said it made her a little physically ill. Then I went on to Jackson, read there, and my sister Jane was in the audience—and had the same reaction. To moist.”

Mr. Saunders, say hello to word aversion.

It’s about to get really moist in here. But first, some background is in order. The phenomenon of word aversion—seemingly pedestrian, inoffensive words driving some people up the wall—has garnered increasing attention over the past decade or so. In a recent post on Language Log, University of Pennsylvania linguistics professor Mark Liberman defined the concept as “a feeling of intense, irrational distaste for the sound or sight of a particular word or phrase, not because its use is regarded as etymologically or logically or grammatically wrong, nor because it’s felt to be over-used or redundant or trendy or non-standard, but simply because the word itself somehow feels unpleasant or even disgusting.”

So we’re not talking about hating how some people say laxadaisical instead of lackadaisical or wanting to vigorously shake teenagers who can’t avoid using the word like between every other word of a sentence. If you can’t stand the word tax because you dislike paying taxes, that’s something else, too. (When recently asked about whether he harbored any word aversions, Harvard University cognition and education professor Howard Gardner offered up webinar, noting that these events take too much time to set up, often lack the requisite organization, and usually result in “a singularly unpleasant experience.” All true, of course, but that sort of antipathy is not what word aversion is all about.)

Word aversion is marked by strong reactions triggered by the sound, sight, and sometimes even the thought of certain words, according to Liberman. “Not to the things that they refer to, but to the word itself,” he adds. “The feelings involved seem to be something like disgust.”

 

Read the rest of the post on Slate.

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

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Setting Up Authorship

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why I Chose An Assisted Self-Publishing Service

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1) HIGH STANDARDS

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

2) CLEAR COMMUNICATIONS

 

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

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

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Read the rest of the post on Dr. Syntax.
 

A Sentimental Education: Sex and the Literary Writer

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Read the rest of the post on The Millions.

10 Winning Marketing Strategies for Your Self-Published Book

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let me explain what that means, in ten steps:

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

A Perspective On Early Success in Publishing

by

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

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

So here we go:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then?

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

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

Not in the Twitter age.

Think about it.

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

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

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

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

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

 

This is a reprint from The Weblog of Zoe Winters.

Killing Off A Character

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are African Writers And Readers Ready For The eBook Revolution?

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why is the penetration of ebooks challenging right now?

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

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

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

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

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

Is indie publishing the future?

 

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

Does Your eBook Need an ISBN?

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Facebook Followed You To The Supermarket

by

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Read the rest of the post on Slate.