Marketing
“You have the minimum amount of my attention.”
How does that phrase make you feel? This is a quote from the movie The Social Network, where the character of Mark Zuckerberg explains why he is not focused on the legal proceedings of those who are suing him:
When I work with writers, I am focused on helping them find their ideal audience, and develop communication and trust with them. I tend to call this “platform,” but others refer to it by other terms.
What sometimes surprises me is the missed opportunity by those who want to give their readers only the “minimum amount” of their attention. In other words: I will give you JUST ENOUGH attention to get you to buy my book, and then: nothing more.
Sometimes, these are just fearful justifications from overwhelmed authors. Someone who is:
I never want to forget that writers don’t practice their craft in a vacuum. The context of their entire lives is ever-present.
But is it okay to phone it in? To do only the minimum amount of what is expected? To show up, but just barely?
Read MoreThe highway to publication overflows with cars: luxury behemoths; sensible hybrids; nondescript, windowless vans with strange dents that protrude from the inside. Each bears the logo of the mechanic who brought it to life. You’ve built a car, too, with good mileage and a cherry spoiler. [Author’s note: The cars are a metaphor for your books.]
But when you get your baby on the highway, you can’t ignore that a metallic paint job and tilt steering is all that differentiates your vehicle from every other car in its class, no matter what shiny-metal totem adorns its hood. How does your creation stand out? You don’t need a better insignia. You don’t even need the car metaphor. You need to remake yourself. You must become the deer sprinting headlong across the road. When your book crumples someone’s hood and cracks their windshield, rest assured you’ve got their attention. And that’s pretty much the Tab-A and Slot-B of branding.
[pullquote]You need to remake yourself. You must become the deer sprinting headlong across the road. When your book crumples someone’s hood and cracks their windshield, rest assured you’ve got their attention[/pullquote]
As a twenty-first-century author, the fulcrum of your success is your personal brand. Think Hemingway’s manliness. Neil Gaiman’s leather jacket. Harlan Ellison’s sociopathy. A lot of folks are confused about what exactly branding is. Folks like me, for example. After extensive research in the furthest corners of the internet–at great risk to my personal safety and sanity, you’re welcome–I’ve determined that branding means pretty much whatever you say it means (and since I’m the big shot with the column, when I say “you” I mean “me”). So here’s how to get started building your personal author brand:
Read MoreBack in December we received a note from author Kim Boykin, whose debut novel The Wisdom of Hair was set to release in March. We book WU guest slots far in advance, and had to let her know that we would’t be able to offer anything in March, however something Kim said to us sparked another idea. She spent a good deal of her own money on promotional opportunities offered through the Brenda Novak Auction last year–opportunities that have and will help her to market The Wisdom of Hair. The Brenda Novak auction, which raises money for diabetes research and has become very popular among all in the writing community, was kicking off again in May. Maybe there would be an opportunity to talk about it then?
Absolutely.
Said Kim:
I believe writers make a difference just by telling stories. Winning the right item for your writing on Brenda Novak’s Auction For Diabetes Research can go a long way toward advancing your publishing career AND go a long way towards saving lives.
Last year, Kim came away with many useful wins, including an AUTHORBUZZ Package from Author M.J. Rose and more. (She’ll tell you more about them below.) Wonderful buys, and it’s a win-win-win for Kim as the cause hits close to home. She said:
Both of my husbands parents are diabetic and my grandmother was too. Brenda Novak’s son is 15 and insulin dependent, it’s a cause close to many hearts.”
You can learn more about Kim and The Wisdom of Hair on her website and blog, and by following her on Facebook and Twitter. Enjoy, and bid, WU’ers; this is a great cause.
Doubling Down
Recently, I told a group of aspiring authors that there’s never been a better time to be a writer, and it’s true. Even with traditional publishers still trying to figure out the industry and Amazon’s continued march toward domination, I believe this is the best time in the history of storytelling to get your story out.
As a novelist, I thought nabbing a publishing contract would be the hardest part of the process. I was wrong. Whether it’s your first or your fifty-first, getting your book noticed today is like meeting a blind date at a massive cocktail party in the middle of Times Square and telling him to look for the girl in the little black dress.
So, what’s a traditionally published or self-published author to do? Coming from a marketing background, I looked for ways to maximize the advertising and promotions budget I set for myself and found bestselling author Brenda Novak’s Annual Online Auction For Diabetes Research.
Read MorePhoto courtesy Wikimedia Commons
(This graphic shows the lyrics to a classic Disney Song. Can you read it?)
Whether on a book cover, a website design, an ad, or even a whole marketing barrage, graphic design can either materially increase your book’s chances of getting attention or can leave it unrecognized in the mountain of competitors. This goes for the self-published as well as for the commercially published.
While it is certainly possible for you to do your own graphics, or rely on your publisher, there are also very good reasons for writers to hire a professional graphic artist. Without elaborating on those reasons, in this post I’ll give you some brief insight into the working process of a graphic designer, and give you some pointers on how you as a client can increase the chances that your designer will give you exactly the fabulously stunning image that you wanted on time, under budget, and with a minimum of frustration and drama. There are a number of other websites that discuss graphic design, but I approach this topic from the viewpoint of a writer.
This will be the first of a two-part post. Today’s post will cover Knowing What you Want, Finding the Right Graphic Artist, and The Basic Graphic Design Process. The next post will discuss Money Matters, Tips to Getting the Right ‘Look’ and Avoiding Graphic Design Landmines.
First, Know What You Want.
Knowing what you want doesn’t mean that you can ‘see’ the exact image in your head down to the Art Nouveau font and the impressionist landscape detail background. (If you can ‘see’ the exact image you want in that much detail in your head, then DIY graphic design might be for you.)
Knowing what you want means you know what kind of graphic product you want to produce and what format that product will take. This involves far more than ‘style,’ it involves knowing the nitty gritty of the final product, how big it needs to be, what text it will include, what images it will include. For example:
Read MoreI’ve been thinking
a lot
about
how we judge
and filter
and decide
who
what
where
is good
online.
Seth Godin recently talked about how what you share online becomes your own personal “backlist” as a person. And that, as the years go by, your backlist should help support you, instead of being something that closes doors.
But one example he used was jarring to me:
“I almost hired someone a few years ago–until I googled her and discovered that the first two matches were pictures of her drinking beer from a funnel, and her listed hobby was, “binge drinking.” Backlist!”
This terrified me.
That as we, creators.
We writers.
We artists.
We musicians.
We… human beings…
Can be judged
So quickly
So completely
For a moment
An expression
Even one that may be ill-advised (yet entirely legal.)
It seems unfair
To need to craft one simplistic narrative
Of one’s work
Of one’s life.
Read MoreGIVEAWAY: I am very excited to again give away a copy of my newest book, CREATE YOUR WRITER PLATFORM. It’s a book all about how to build your visibility, brand, network and discoverability so you can better market yourself and your books. I’m giving away 1 copy to a random commenter based in the U.S. or Canada; comment within one week to win. Good luck! (Update: Dori Weinstein won.)
My screenwriting partner and WD coworker, Brian A. Klems, is gearing up for the April release of his first book — a humorous guide for fathers called OH BOY, YOU’RE HAVING A GIRL: A DAD’S SURVIVAL GUIDE TO RAISING DAUGHTERS (Adams Media). On top of that, my coworker Robert Brewer (editor of Writer’s Market) recently got a publishing deal for a book of his poetry. (This is big because getting a book of poems traditionally published is next to impossible.) So I find myself as a cheerleader for my writing buddies — trying to do what I can to help as their 2013 release dates approach. I help in two ways: 1) I use my own experience of writing & publishing books to share advice on what they can expect and plan for; and 2) I simply do whatever little things I can that help in any way.
This last part brings up an important point: Anyone can support an author’s book release by doing different things to help the book sell and get noticed. So, in no particular order, here are 11 things — some big, some small — that you can do to support a writer friend when their book comes out:
Read More“A writer should do what they do best and only this: write.”
I heard this statement again at the Digital Book World conference in New York City last week, and I began really considering if I agreed with it. We are at a funny time in the world of creative expression, one where the artist, the musician, the writer no longer absolutely NEEDS middlemen in order to make a living with their art or craft.
Layers have been removed between the writer and their audience. No longer is a publicist or an agent or a publisher required. YES, they are powerful partners in one’s writing career, but they are now an OPTION, not a requirement. That is a huge shift.
So for you, the author, you get to choose whatever type of writing career you would like. There is no single path anymore. Yes, you can just write and do nothing else. No marketing, no social media, no book tours, no worrying about cover design, or translation, or rights, or file formats, or metadata, nothing. Just write. Go ahead, I don’t mind.
But…
With 1.5 million books published last year, what we are seeing is that lots of folks are doing just that: writing. Which is why I focus more and more not on getting one’s work published, but ensuring it is read; ensuring it finds a reader who appreciates the work, and is affected by it in a positive way.
It sounds romantic to say that a writer should just write. The implication is that a writer should not become marketers. They shouldn’t sell out, and belittle their writing talents by becoming a salesperson. Insert complaint about authors yelling “buy my book!” on Twitter, all day, all night.
This romantic vision aligns with a vision we hope to have of the world, one of the authentic craftsperson or artist, honing their skills with a zen-like focus over the course of years.
Read MoreMore and more authors want to publish ebooks and need covers, but many don’t feel they can afford the services of a designer. To be frank, I see author-created covers that do not serve the author well.
But I also see well-done covers, so I thought I’d offer some resources for creating professional book covers for a low cost in case you’re handy at design. Full disclosure: the examples here are cover designs for client novels and memoirs.
Design goals
Your first and foremost goal for a design is, in my view, storytelling: The cover begins to raise story questions in a viewer’s mind and/or gives a viewer a sense of what the story is about. A strong cover design can evoke mood and emotion that foreshadow the story.
Secondly, the title and author’s name need to be legible in the small thumbnail sizes used at online booksellers such as Amazon. The example to the left is the size you’ll see on Amazon’s search page. Some design clients prefer that their name be smaller, but my feeling is that your name is the core of your brand, so it should be legible at small sizes.
Lastly, and obviously, covers need to be eye-catching—if a browser’s eye isn’t drawn to your color by color and design, it won’t be seen (right).
Free graphics software
First up is the software you need to create a cover complete with an image and typography. I use Photoshop, but that’s a costly program. There’s a sophisticated free application called GIMP that offers just about all of the tools that Photoshop does, but at no cost. It’s available for Windows and Mac OSX platforms. One caveat: the only color option it offers is RGB (red, green, blue), the system your monitor uses. For ebook covers, that’s all you need, but for a print edition you will need a capability to utilize the CYMK (cyan, yellow, magenta, black) color system that is used by most printers ( I think Lulu can utilize RGB images).
I found a free online converter (RGB to CYMK) here. And there is a plugin you can download called Separate + available that will add CYMK separation capabilities to GIMP. It appears to be free, but I haven’t tried it.
Read MoreToo many book launches are panic attacks, similar to a trip to the dentist.
With 1.5 million books published last year, writers nowadays know that publicity for their books around book launch can be challenging. The days where you can silently write your book, and then scream about it on launch day are producing lesser results than they may have once done.
So we introduce this concept of author platform – slowly developing a trusting relationship with your ideal readers over time. So that, when your book finally does launch, you have an audience of people waiting for it. They WANT to buy it. They WANT to spread the word. You have to rely less on screaming at the world about your book, and more on communicating with an audience that already knows you and trusts you. An audience ready to take action, to buy your book.
But we are all busy. We put off core aspects of developing your brand as a writer because, well, you are writing; you are working through a tough publishing process, whether you are self-publishing or going through a traditional agent/publisher relationship.
So we wait. And as the book launch approaches, it becomes more and more similar to how we treat a trip to the dentist:
Read MoreOne of the things I fear most with all the publishing and promotional advice zipping around the cybersphere is that some people—quiet people who have something really important or compelling to say—will look at all that is ‘required’ of them to get published or to promote their books and they will become so discouraged they never even give themselves a chance.
The thing is, I know that many quiet people have amazing stories to tell, their very quietness contributing to their heightened sense of observation, or their rich inner life feeding their understanding of human nature or providing fertile ground for some really dramatic stories—stories that may be exactly the sort I am starving for.
I’m afraid these people will take one look at the suggestion that one must have 10,000 followers on Twitter or 5,000 Facebook friends and throw up their hands in despair and assume there is no way that they can create enough noise to break through that barrier—that there is no way their stories can break through that barrier.
I reject a world where the only stories that get heard are those told by loud, flashy people or those who have a sales or entrepreneurial skill set and are willing to use it set at full volume in order to get their books in front of readers. Sometimes the very skills that allow a person to tell the stories we most need to hear are the same skills that preclude them from ever being able to do those things.
So I would like to remind all those quiet, introverted writers out there that there is not only one path to successful publication and that not all quiet people will finish last. The quiet road may be harder or take longer, but rest assured, there is a road.
Read MoreDo you sometimes get turned off by writers who try to market their books online or at conferences?
For instance:
What if, right now, I linked to a $5 ebook I wrote on how you can sell more ebooks and suggested you buy it? You just cringed, right? Don’t worry, that link only takes you to a picture of My Little Pony.
What is it about money that makes us question someone’s intentions? What are the “rules” about if and when you can actually inform people that you have a book you wouldn’t mind they check out?
Tad Hargrave has an interesting way of looking at what marketing is, the following is from a talk he gave in the UK:
“I find that a lot of people are in this situation where they are good at what they do, they have spent a lot of time and money learning to do what they do, but they haven’t necessarily learned how to articulate it or market it. If I had to sum up marketing in a sentence, I would say that marketing is about establishing the value beyond the immediately apparent. This is one of the core challenges in marketing: how do we take what is good on the inside, and make sure that gets seen and understood on the outside.”
He lists four reasons that marketing is valuable:
Read MoreDo you have a team working for you every single week to ensure you are a success? Do you protect your writing time, getting strategic or tactical help with some aspects of your writing career, freeing up your creative energy and your time to actually WRITE? Today, we are going to talk about how you can – and SHOULD – build a team to give you more time to write, and find more success doing so.
YOU ARE NOT AN (OVERWHELMED) ISLAND
Drowning? You are not alone. So many authors I know feel completely overwhelmed with some, if not all, of the following:
So stop pretending you can do it all, that you are just one productivity app or one productivity book away from balancing it all. Balance is an illusion. Why? Well, imagine a perfectly balanced scale. What does it take for it to become unbalanced? ANYTHING! The slightest movement, the slightest weight put on one side or the other kills the balance. Now, imagine a scale trying to balance six thing, representing each of the obligations many writers face which I described in the bullets above. How easy is that to balance?
Managing a successful writing career takes time to figure out. You need a team. The best time to start building one? Right now.
When you are overwhelmed, you miss opportunities. You don’t show up to events, you don’t schedule meetups, you don’t pursue new ideas to find an audience, you don’t take some crazy risk. You… just… try… to… keep… your… head… above… water.
You need space to not just be creative in your writing, but to be open to new experiences, have the space for long unexpected conversations, and to potentially try new things.
Opportunities happen because of relationships. Getting that speaking engagement, a chance meeting with an agent, connecting with another author who reshapes how you think about your own writing career.
NO, EVERYTHING DOESN’T NEED TO BE CRAFTED BY YOU
Read MoreIn the last four weeks I’ve done three workshops, two of them at writer’s conferences. As always, I found it all stimulating. And I sold some of my books—understandably, a number of copies of Flogging the Quill, Crafting a Novel that Sells (usually after the class had happened) and a number of copies of The Vampire Kitty-cat Chronicles; that one brings up a question that I’ll address later on selling actual, physical books versus selling on the Internet.
Workshops by other pros never fail to stimulate
Even though I’ve been at this writing and editing business for some time now, I never fail to come away from the workshops and presentations I get to attend with new insights and notes on things I can do in my WIP.
How about you? If you’re a seasoned pro, do you go to writing workshops? If you do, are they helpful for you?
Teaching workshops is also stimulating. I enjoy them and have fun, and every one sharpens my own understanding of what works and what doesn’t work in fiction, and I apply that to the next workshop and to my editing work. Well, to my writing, too. I’ll admit that it’s also great fun to have one’s views and coaching validated by workshoppers in their comments after the class and in their evaluations.
Presenting a novel is hard
At Wordstock in Portland, I did my first-ever presentation of one of my novels, The Vampire Kitty-cat Chronicles. I had 50 minutes – and an audience of 6 people. I don’t think I did well.
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