Marketing
Once upon a time, there was vanity publishing.
Remember? Those were the days when self-publishing had a very bad rap.
Not so much because the books’ quality was shaky (though that tended to be true), nor even because authors had to pay to have them published (though that was indeed frowned upon), but mainly because of the way the firms offering self-publishing services operated.
These firms cut a very nice profit offering everything from proofing to interior and cover design and could earn even more by proposing pricey add-ons, like copy-editing and developmental editing. Some would even encourage authors to buy into these add-ons by telling them their books had qualified to be nominated for an award but would only be eligible to win if they purchased these extra services. This was — and still is — considered particularly slimy and underhanded. All the more so since many authors, vulnerable in their eagerness for recognition after years of rejection, readily opted in.
Now that self-publishing has been officially de-stigmatized and it’s becoming increasingly acceptable for authors to pay for their books’ production, cottage industries are cropping up around the needs this has created: editing, page and cover design, eReader formatting, distribution to brick-and-mortar shops, marketing, promotion and more.
On one hand, this opens up a whole new world of freedom and opportunity for both authors and publishing-world entrepreneurs. On the other hand, it has given way to a shady side worthy of old stigmas that all authors should be aware of.
On this shady side, service providers don’t just offer add-ons, but either require them or make it very difficult for authors to turn them down. For example, a
Read MoreLately, a new mantra has caught on: “There’s no better time to be a writer.” Not only has self-publishing helped open the doors to so many aspiring authors, but the online world has created more opportunities than ever before to build a platform, network and self-promote.
From a schmoozing and promotion perspective, anything seems possible. We can have conversations with Jodi Picoult on Twitter, send Facebook messages to Paulo Coehlo and mingle with top agents and editors right here on Writer Unboxed.
All of which is wonderfully democratic and very much in the spirit of the camaraderie and connectedness that defines our times. But it has also created a whole new realm for potential missteps and frustration.
Along with the sense that anything’s possible has come – for lack of a better term – a sense of entitlement. With the perceived level playing field the digital age has created, the notion that having written and published a book, any book, means we’re eligible to be considered by any and all gatekeepers to widespread recognition, from Oprah to the The New York Times.
Although we long for this to be true, and perhaps it should be, it simply isn’t. Take a look, for example, at this painfully eye-opening article by Washington Post book reviewer Ron Charles called, “No, I Do Not Want to Read Your Self-Published Book.” (Ouch!)
What is true, at least for the most part, is that while most books sent in to the venerable gatekeepers of recognition will indeed wind up in the shredder
Read MoreI take a nap every day.
That seems like something of a confession, because I find that there is a strange fixation in our culture of a certain kind of productivity. One where you have to be “always on,” always “crushing it,” always stressed, always available, always buried by email.
Too often, this creates the expectation that “overwhelmed” is the only reasonable state of being. That, if you aren’t overwhelmed, that somehow, you aren’t doing it right; if you aren’t overwhelmed, you aren’t pushing yourself hard enough.
Yet, I find the following to be true:
I work with a lot of writers, and in a recent course I teach, 30+ writers were sharing their short/mid/long term goals. One writer mentioned a short-term goal of writing four books per year. A few others had similar goals. This goal – write four books next year – was amidst a list of many other responsibilities, both personal and professional.
When I pointed out how bold this goal seemed, the writer explained how within their genre, writing/publishing four books per year was the expectation.
Now, if you want to write 4 books next year, that is awesome. I support you in that.
BUT…
If you are doing it because it is “what is expected,” that’s simply not healthy. It is no more healthy than corporations that expect their workers to pull 12 hour shifts everyday… to give up weekends… to work on Thanksgiving Day… to spend time away from family… to cut their maternity leave to the bare minimum… or to diminish the value of personal health by adding on more hours, more responsibly, more pressure.
Read More© iStockphoto.com
Earlier this year, at an online forum for writers that I frequent, I watched a familiar scenario play itself out. A new member joined the forum, full of excitement (and not a small amount of hubris) about the novel he’d just completed. As he posted his early attempts at a query letter for others to review and critique, two things quickly became clear:
The first one is not necessarily a bad thing. We should be excited about what we’ve written. And we should believe in the literary merit of our work (but not to the extent that we let our egos blind us to the possibility of improving our work).
It’s the second thing that can be the real killer, and yet it’s so common. Many new writers assume the way to write their first book is to simply sit down and start typing. On one hand, this sounds wonderful, and artistically pure. But on the other, imagine applying that logic to some other large task. If you wanted to build a house, and you had no background in construction or architecture, would you just grab some boards and nails and start hammering? Or would you perhaps want to put some planning into the project first?
Over several days and numerous threads on that forum, I watched a painful but increasingly familiar cycle unfold, as this new writer came up against some of the harsh realities of writing and selling commercially viable fiction. So, to borrow from the Kübler-Ross Model (AKA the five stages of grief), I thought I’d share my observations with you, and see if perhaps any of these stages sound familiar.
1. Denial
What do you mean my 375,000-word opus is too long to be marketable?! And what’s this “genre” of which you speak? I refuse to limit my creativity by trying to confine my work within a single easily identifiable genre! And why on earth should I have to bother with writing a query letter? Can’t I just call up one of the top agents and hire her – after all, she works for me, right?
It quickly becomes clear when a writer hasn’t done much (or any) homework on how the publishing business works. And when the harsh realities of this business begin to reveal themselves, some writers are not exactly open to the information.
Photo by Toby Oxborrow
Many people bemoan the self-involved writer on social media, the one who is constantly vying for attention and over-promoting their own work. This puts other writers (you, perhaps?) into a conundrum: you WANT attention for your work, but only in an elegant manner. Self-promotion, with grace.
This week, I read The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. He tells stories about people managing complex situations, where thousands of small actions mean the difference between life and death for those around them. The most compelling stories in the book revolve around surgeries where a patient’s life was dangling on the line, or flights where something goes horribly wrong and hundreds of people’s lives are in jeopardy.
Giving (Not Getting) Attention
The author posits that in cases of extreme complexity (air travel, modern surgery, massive construction projects), the individuals responsible for them needed to strike a balance between simple automated actions that helps prevent mistakes (checklists), and the nimble self-direction that a top surgeon, pilot, or construction manager have earned as experts.
The author made the case for simplicity and established process amidst great complexity.
This had me considering where I put my attention. Gawande made a compelling argument about how simple mistakes are overlooked in a surgery, resulting in the patient dying over something that should have been routine.
When I consider the goals and challenges of the writers I work with, it had me thinking more about how we give attention, and less about how we get attention.
Overwhelmed
Most people I meet are overwhelmed in some way. The complexity of their lives seems to have hit a breaking point whereby the common refrain is “there just aren’t enough hours in the day.”
As I sit here and write this, I just glanced at the cover of The Checklist Manifesto and noticed the subtitle: “How to Get Things Right.” This seems almost like a backhanded reference to the famous “Getting Things Done” concept – where we don’t just worry about “done,” we worry about “correct.”
A qualitative difference.
This definitely seems to resonate with the worldview of writers I know: less interested in ‘anything’ that works, and more interested in grace during the process.
Read MoreLet’s say your book is coming out in several months, and you fall into the camp of those who want to put some time and resources into promoting it. Knowing that that your publisher can’t commit to much more on the publicity side than mailing out galleys to a standard media list, you’ve decided to give it your all, to go ahead and hire an outside publicist.
But as you research firms and see the 5-figure price tags for most campaigns, a lump forms in your throat. Your advance was modest. You know you can’t begin to estimate how much, if anything, your book will generate in sales. At the same time, you’re learning that the gist of what a publicist does is build press lists, write elevator pitches, send emails, make phone calls, mail galleys and coordinate interviews when opportunities arise. All of which seems pretty straightforward. You figure that if you had the time and the nerves, you could probably handle much of this yourself.
What’s more, the publicists you’ve interviewed have been honest, explaining that there’s no guarantee about the number of media appearances you’ll get or where they will be. NPR? The Today Show? Highly unlikely, but it’s always worth a try.
Why, then, does the average monthly retainer for a respected PR firm run between $3,000 – $7,000 with a minimum commitment of 2 – 3 months (according to this Writers’ Writer’s Digest article by Mari Passananti, who has done her research meticulously)? And — especially given that nobody can predict the connection between publicity and sales — what exactly are you getting for this price?
First, quite simply, you’re buying his or her expertise. Sure, you could subscribe to a service like Muckrack and download lists of reporters. You could sign up for HARO and SourceBottle and respond to requests if any good matches come up. But how do you know whom, exactly, to contact on a given list, what to say to them, when or how? Chances are you don’t. But your publicist does, and has many years of experience working with the press along with a solid understanding of the nuances involved: How to get reporters’ attention amid the hundreds of requests they get each day. How to talk to them. How to interpret what they say. What reporters want and need, how this differs from one publication or outlet to the next and what makes a pitch into something a reporter can actually use.
Second, you’re buying sweat equity. Lots of it.
Read MoreWe’re thrilled to have Joanna Penn back with us today. She’s an author, speaker, and entrepreneur, and was voted one of the Guardian UK Top 100 creative professionals 2013. Her latest book, Business for Authors: How to be an Author Entrepreneur, is out now in ebook, print and audio. Joanna’s website, The CreativePenn.com, is regularly voted one of the top sites for authors and self-publishers. Writing as J.F.Penn, Joanna is also a New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author.
Follow Joanna on her blog, on Facebook, and on Twitter!
Take Charge of Your Author Business: 5 Aspects to Consider
Writing for the love of it or to create something beautiful on the page is absolutely fantastic. But if you want your writing to pay the bills, you need to start thinking of it as a business. You need to think of yourself as an entrepreneur. Here are some definitions to begin with:
A writer is someone who writes.
An author is someone who writes a book, however that is defined these days.
An entrepreneur creates value from ideas.
So, an author-entrepreneur takes each book much further, exploiting the multiple opportunities and value in one manuscript and creating a viable business from the ideas in their head. (How cool is that?)
If you want to take the next step into being an author-entrepreneur, here are five things to consider:
(1) Reframe all parts of your business as creative
“I just want to write. I don’t want to do all the other stuff.”
These words are a constant refrain at writing events, but they can never be the reality of the author’s world anymore. Perhaps they never were. However you publish, you have to pay attention to marketing, and you have to connect with readers. You should certainly care about how your books are distributed and how the finances work.
Business is perhaps the ultimate creativity. You are potentially creating something huge in the world from nothing more than the human mind. Wow! So if you want to be an author-entrepreneur running a viable business, then it will help to reframe all aspects as creative.
Business as an author is about writing, of course, but it’s also production and distribution, customer service, sales and marketing, technology, financial accounting, strategy, and planning. If you think of those things as negative, then you will never be a happy or successful author-entrepreneur. You can hire experts to help you, but you need to understand how the business as a whole hangs together. If you love creating and you love to learn, then reframing your business activities as creative will transform the way you work!
Read MoreBack in July, I wrote a post about my reluctant journey into the seemingly overwhelming world of audiobook production and the lessons I learned along the way. I shared my advice for choosing a narrator and selecting the right royalty structure, and warned of some production perils to avoid. Many of you responded to that post with questions about how to market an audiobook. As a former corporate marketeer, your interest in this side of things got me excited— probably because my friends’ eyes glaze over when I say words like “metadata” or “demographics”—so I’ve returned today to address the issue.
As an independent author and publisher, I’m constantly faced with the challenge of how to compete in a crowded marketplace with titles that have big budgets and entire publicity teams behind them. Many shy away from the challenge, chalking it up as impossible, but I’ve learned that you can reach readers without spending big money; you just have to be creative.
Here are nine easy and inexpensive ideas you can try right away…
1. Reviews
Just as there are reviewers for print and e-books, there are reviewers who specialize in audiobooks. There are traditional publications, like AudioFile Magazine, which is published in print and digital formats and is dedicated solely to audiobooks, as well as a host of audiobook review blogs that are always looking for new titles. These reviewers can be found with a simple Google search or by perusing directories like the Book Blogger directory, Indie View, or the Book Blogger List.
Don’t forget about your own fan base. If you’ve produced your audiobook with ACX, then you will receive 25 promo codes that you can use to give away free copies of your audiobook in exchange for a review.
>Tip: As stellar reviews come pouring in, re-post them on your social sites to help spread the good word.
2. Interviews
Reach audiobook enthusiasts using other audio formats, like radio and podcasts. There are thousands of radio stations and podcasts that offer a variety of programs, which are often looking for guests and experts. Think about the subjects explored in your audiobook and how they could translate into an interesting discussion or interview. Then, identify a list of shows that would benefit from having you as a guest and pitch yourself to the shows’ producers.
For example, my audiobook, Empty Arms, explores teen pregnancy, forced adoptions, sealed records, and their devastating impact on an entire generation of women, so I’ve been targeting programs that deal with women’s issues.
To find radio shows that might be a good fit for your subject matter, check out the Radio Locator database. It’s a useful tool that allows you to search for radio stations by geography or format and then connects you to each station’s website, where you can learn about upcoming show topics and find the producer’s contact information.
For podcasts, visit the Podcasts section of the iTunes store and try searching for different keywords related to your book. You’ll be surprised at the number of shows you find. (Here’s an interview […]
Read MoreWhat is your capacity to create?
Many people I know tend to express some aspect of their lives as being OVERWHELMED, and that they wrestle with ANXIETY on a daily basis. In developing your craft as a writer, in publishing a body of work over time, in connecting with your audience in meaningful ways: how do you create greater capacity for these things to happen?
How can you create more expressions of accomplishment (“I am working on my fourth novel!”) than you provide excuses for procrastination (“Oh, I haven’t written for weeks, the kids started soccer.”)
Creating capacities is an obsession of mine: how to develop skills, processes, and strategies that address the overwhelm and anxiety that spreads through our lives like a virus. Capacities can have exponential potential: they can be honed (as a craft); can be reused again and again in different ways as your writing career grows and evolves.
This is a mindset I default to when considering authors: you are not just publishing a book, not just creating a product and putting it into the marketplace; you are developing capacities as a creative professional. Because for many authors I know, the book is one of many that is inside them.
Creating Habits That Build Capacity
I am writing my first book. After years of planning, outlining, and failing to do so, I am now just doing it (hat tip to Nike.) I have been working with a friend who is a book coach to help frame what it is about, and then she had me start writing it.
Then something unexpected happened, something she didn’t ask for: I started writing 1,000+ words a day for the past 20 days. When I sent her the last batch of pages, she responded with this:
“87 pages???? Do you SEE that? 87 pages?? Weren’t you the guy struggling to write a 3-page article about 3 months ago?? I’m sort of baffled by what’s happened — and awestruck and thrilled for you!! But I also sort of don’t get it. This never happens….”
My friend is book coach Jennie Nash, who was recently featured in a Writer Unboxed interview here, and who has published seven books of her own, plus working with goo-gobs authors. So that feedback from her, admittedly, feels good.
My response:
“Honestly, I don’t see it – the 87 pages. I see 1,000 words every morning. The habit has made it easy to see this – work through it – and move on. I just wrote my 1,100 words for the morning, which I needed to get through before I could read and respond to email. That is all I see. ”
And I wrote 1,000 words towards the book before I was allowed to work on this very blog post.
If you would have asked me a couple of months ago about writing a book, I would have told you that there is no room in my life to write a book. It’s not even about time, it’s about creative energy, which all goes into working with writers and developing these blog posts, and other material. Realistically: there is no room to write a book.
Yet… there clearly is […]
Read MoreBefore we get to today’s post, I wanted to make you aware of an offer by a group called Writer Mamas. These women are trying to raise funds so that several WU community members can attend the Writer Unboxed Un-Conference in November. To that end, they’re selling $200 worth of writing books and guides for half cost. Click here to learn more about the offerings.
“That’s putting the cart before the horse, isn’t it?”
This is probably the metaphor I like the least, yet hear most often. In what context do I hear it? Things such as:
Why do I dislike this phrase? Because it simplifies to a romantic narrative of how to succeed as a writer. It nearly always whittles it down to:
Romantic thing about writing vs creepy horrible spammy businessy thing.
It’s easy to feel wise and pure by saying things like that. I mean, I would love to say:
“Filing a joint tax return before hugging my wife is like putting the cart before the horse.”
Or
“Waking up early to change the cat’s litter box before writing a poem about my son is like putting the cart before the horse.”
For the context of a writer, when we talk about success as a PROFESSIONAL – things are often more complicated than simple romantic contrasts. You have to do a wide range of tasks concurrently; you are unsure of what works; the world you WANT to live in (where cupcakes have no calories and where a book naturally finds its way into readers hands), differs from the world we DO live in (where it may actually take effort to help get a book into the hands of the right reader. Don’t even get me started on cupcakes…)
Now, before I go further, I want to be clear about two things:
But I worry that these simplistic phrases and encouragements: “don’t put the cart before the horse” mask the reality of how complex success really is:
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It’s no secret that publishers do little these days to promote most books but that there’s an infinite number of steps authors can take to fill the void, from DIY to hiring an outside publicist. Nor is it a secret that even the most exhaustive efforts can potentially get you….almost nowhere in terms of sales.
This may be why many authors opt not to do much promotion if any aside from what their publishers have planned (typically mailing out galleys and ARCs to reviewers) and to focus their energies instead on what they really love: writing.
That’s a perfectly understandable and admirable choice. As agent Donald Maass wisely noted in a comment to my last WU post, “The better bet [rather than spending too much time or money on promotion] is to write a killer Book #2.”
In an ideal world that’s what we’d all do. That world would be delightfully zen, free of the complications that come with drive, ambition and a desire for recognition. Free, too, from any need or desire to try to make a living from our craft. Our next book might be that killer or it might not; in the end its destiny is something we don’t control. But it wouldn’t matter and we’d be content to keep on writing.
In reality, though, most of us need or yearn for more. We certainly need to pay the bills, and would love to see our writing play a role there. We may have spouses or partners who are eager (read: impatient) to see us ‘taking action’ beyond drafting and revising to make that happen.
More importantly, though, we also crave some form of recognition and have deep-seated desire to interact with readers, to share with them
Read MoreWhen I chatted with Teri a few months ago about this post, I wanted to tackle the question of money and advances and marketing dollars. I was feeling frustrated that certain publishers continued to make seven figure offers on debuts which no doubt continued to take the wind out of the sales of every other book placed in the same publishing season as said book. Why put all your eggs in one basket? Clearly you don’t have a crystal ball to tell you that this one book is THE book that’s going to make it, so why not spread the wealth around a little more evenly?
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that that’s not totally a fair lament, certainly not for me, the agent, to make. Part of the reason these deals ratchet up into the seven figures is that agents are able to auction books up to that price in a bidding war. I am not innocent of this. I once had an editor say during a best bids auction that he was going to be really mad if he ended up paying way more than he should. He even added that it would hurt the publication. Well, yikes. I responded, I think fairly, that I didn’t have a gun to his head and that he should pay what he thinks it’s worth. But I do think he makes a good point. The whole set up of the auction and competition can lead some publishers (not all) to overpay. All to say that it’s not the big bad publisher that is entirely to blame for my initial frustration.
The general unspoken belief is that if your publisher pays more money for a book, they will inevitably put more marketing muscle into it. But in my own experience, I’ve seen things play out much differently.
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