Marketing
One of the comments on my last post in which I asked writers if they liked their online persona, suggested the following:
“I would like to suggest a follow-up post you might consider. This one would be for older writers like me. They grew up without online anything, but in a time when values and standards related to the written word took precedence for anyone who wanted to be a writer. They still have something to say (even to younger readers), and know how to say it, but are lost in cyberspace.
What guidance or advice could you give to such writers? You run a successful PR company, and some writers with deep pockets might be able to do business with you. But what about others with some money, but limited resources? If the writing itself is what still matters, older writers need someone like you to point the way through the minefield. Otherwise, we will be silenced before our time.” – Barry Knister
Dear Lost in Cyberspace,
A good percentage of my client base is above 60. I’ve launched books by authors who have published for the first time at 80-something. To say I adore writers of retirement age would be an understatement. Why? They listen carefully. They are present. They show considerable patience. They value time. They respect the outcome even if it’s not the desired outcome.
The other night I took my daughter to the Jingle Ball concert at Madison Square Garden sponsored by iHeartRadio and Z100-FM. The crowd was rabid with pop music fans in glowing reindeer headgear and bright bulb necklaces. The evening was fantastic, but what I remember the most is singer/songwriter Charlie Puth saying the following, and I paraphrase…It’s great to see my songs on TikTok remixed by so many, but nothing beats this. His hand pans over the crowd of thousands that he just sang his heart out to. And man can he sing.
My advice to you Barry:
Tell your story.
After you’ve found the editor of your local paper, email them your pitch or snail mail a copy of your book with a copy of the pitch. Remember to say what town you live in. If you don’t hear back, send another email a few weeks later.
Go beyond local to your regional daily and magazine. Some communities even have local cable access programs and news and lifestyle websites that you can pitch.
Kathleen Troy and Dylan
I’m very excited to present today’s Author Up Close featured writer to the WU community. I met Kathleen Troy through her publicist and have been delighted to follow her journey to publication. Kathleen is an author, movie producer, and a writing and law professor at Cypress College, but her passion is dog training. She has combined her love of writing with her love of dogs in her Middle Grade mystery series Dylan’s Dog Squad. Three books in, Kathleen’s learned a lot about the industry, including why it’s important for authors to understand the difference between publishing their work and finding distribution for it. In this Q&A, Kathleen shares lots of valuable insight, and one of the most important lessons she says she’s learned along the way: find good people who can help you achieve your goals.
GW: Thanks for agreeing to share your writing and publishing experiences with the Writer Unboxed community. I like to start by asking writers about their author origin story; it’s kind of like a superhero origin story but with a pen. What’s yours?
KT: Writing has always been a part of my life. When I was growing up, if I had a bad day at school, I just came home and wrote myself a better one. No denial there. In undergrad, I minored in journalism. My father always liked to read my stories. When he was diagnosed with cancer at forty-seven, we were told from the onset it was fatal. So when he was in the hospital, I started writing a murder mystery novel for adults. When I visited with him, I would read him a new chapter. Sadly, he died before I finished the book, and I put it away.
One night I was at a very bad play, and I told my friend that my book was better than the play. He said, “Everyone always says that.” I insisted my book really was better and decided to finish writing it. I got an agent on my first try and an offer on my first submission. I was excited until I learned the offer was to sell the novel outright. It would no longer be mine. I really, really wanted to be published but I turned down the offer. I’d written the book for my father, and I realized that I didn’t want to sell a memory.
GW: You write Middle Grade fiction, and specifically, you’ve written a series about a group of friends and their dog, Dylan, solving mysteries together. How did the idea for the series come about?
KT: The Dylan’s Dog Squad Series is largely based upon Dylan, an American Cocker Spaniel, and his true-life experiences, adventures, and training.
In the series, Casey’s brother Aiden, an American professor living in South Korea, bought Dylan but got frustrated with the dog and sent him to Casey, his twelve-year-old brother in California. Casey is thrilled to have a dog, his mother less so. Casey and Dylan have thirty days: Casey to learn the responsibilities of dog ownership and Dylan to learn to be a good dog—or else. They form an inseparable bond, are never apart, and, in each book, they continue to grow as a unit.
The idea for the […]
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So much is expected of authors these days: not only the writing and editing of our work, but also promotion, speaking, social media, newsletters…the list goes on.
One efficiency tool used by many authors to help with promotion and social media is Canva, an online graphic design tool that can be used either on a computer or via an app on your phone. The benefits of Canva are endless: designs are professional-looking, easy to create, downloadable, and entirely customizable. You can mix and match designs (copy & paste is your friend here!) to achieve precisely the design you’re wanting. Canva also has an incredible “Help Center” full of design tutorials and content suggestions.
Most Canva design tools are free to use, though an upgraded “pro” version is available for $120/year for anyone desiring premium content. This gives you access to more fonts, branding kits, scheduled social media, and more.
Below, I’ve listed several design ideas for authors looking to get started with Canva. Or, for those of you already using the tool, perhaps something below will spur a new idea!
Canva design idea #1: E-books
This design idea is great for social media to advertise and promote that your book is available in e-book format. Simply choose a design template that you like (try element keyword searches like “kindle” or “ebook”.) Then, upload an image of your book’s cover and overlay it onto the template.
Don’t forget to utilize Canva’s resizing tool, too: it can quickly resize images to fit Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and so on! No need to recreate the image every time.
In this image below, as indicated by the red arrow, I’ve overlaid my book’s cover onto a “blank” e-reader. I can then download this image and use across any social media.
Canva design idea #2: Audiobooks
The process for this is almost identical to the above, however I used the keyword search “audiobook.” Remember, as you look through Canva’s image results, try to choose ideas that are aligned with your social media or brand aesthetic.
Also, for both e-books and audiobooks, don’t forget that by posting promotional images, you also need to include purchase links so your followers can buy what you’re promoting!
In this image below, as indicated by the red arrow, I’ve overlaid my book’s cover onto a “blank” phone screen, which is situated next to a pair of headphones. I can then download this image and use across any social media.
Canva design idea #3: Press kits and speaker resumes
Press kits make an excellent addition to your website, so event organizers can quickly access key information about your work, location, social media reach, etc. Similarly, speaker resumes are beneficial if you’re seeking speaking engagements or want to partner with a speaker’s bureau.
Thankfully, Canva has countless templates for this. Whether you’re going for something edgy, whimsical, basic, or anything in between, you’re bound to find a design you like. Below are a few screenshots to give you an idea of Canva’s offerings in this space.
Canva design idea #4: Graphics for websites and newsletters
Hate pulling together imagery for your website and newsletters? You’re in luck: Canva can do so much of this heavy lifting for you. Below is an image I pulled together for a Writer Unboxed post about Read More
My family has been enjoying the ABC sitcom Abbott Elementary, about a Philadelphia public school with limited means that’s run by a principal obsessed with social media and youth. Abbott’s teachers are from different generations with almost nothing in common, but what they share is an incredible dedication to their professions and students. You may have heard that actress Sheryl Lee Ralph won an Emmy for her role as Teacher Barbara Howard. She’s outstanding.
The other night we watched the episode “Wishlist” and it struck a chord. Read on…it’s coming.
The teachers have shared their wish list of school supplies with the greater community, and instead of receiving the necessary notebooks and pencils that are needed, people are dropping off old fax machines that might smoke once plugged in.
Twenty-something teacher, Miss Teagues–ever the optimist–puts together a simple video to share on social media but history teacher Mr. Hill says that it’s missing a little something … the internet is a big place and you need to cut through the noise.
Anyone practicing social media as part of their career marketing efforts has heard about “cutting through the noise.” Am I right?
Miss Teagues seeks out Principal Ava Coleman who just happens to have a green screen in her office. Miss Teagues comments, I can get you a lot of views and that means a lot of supplies. But I’m gonna need full creative control. Do you twerk?
Do you twerk?
The stylized video in which Miss Teagues looks like a Marvel character gets 20K views in a matter of hours and is even shared by Taye Diggs! Her school supplies runneth over.
Now, Mrs. Howard, a seasoned motherly type, hasn’t gotten any new supplies and her students are using water to paint with. So Miss Teagues calls upon Principal Coleman again for help. Principal Coleman creates an emotionally manipulative video that makes the students and teachers look sad, impoverished, and hopeless. The video goes viral. Mrs. Howard receives boxes of supplies and genuinely believes that the Good Lord is working on her behalf. Until a group of influencers shows up with more cases of supplies each holding up their iPhones to capture Mrs. Howard’s reaction does Miss Teagues fess up to her meddling.
Mrs. Howard makes it clear that she doesn’t want her students to think they are lesser than others. To paraphrase…My kids don’t have half of the supplies they need most of the time, but they don’t need to know that. Our job is to build them up and make them confident. My students don’t need to feel less than others because they do not have stuff. Talk about what they do have, and not what they don’t.
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I’ve spent the last several months rekindling an old relationship. We have sneaked off to hotels in Philadelphia and Minneapolis, and to the quiet mountains of Vermont. We’re already plotting another getaway in November.
Before you get too concerned about where I’m headed with this post, please note my travel partner isn’t an old flame — or a scandalous new one. I’m referring to my carry-on roller bag. And those weekend getaways? Think literary conferences.
My no-frills roller bag and I are out of practice after two years of Zooming into literary conferences instead of traveling. We’re both a little older. My needs have changed, and I now expect more out of our 10-year relationship. Covid has altered how I travel, in big ways and small. I’m now obsessed with flying without checking any luggage because of the increase in flight delays, cancellations, lost bags, and missed connections. I want to get in and out of the airport, bus, or train station as fast as possible. And I don’t want to lose my bags.
I’ve assembled a list of my favorite travel hacks that allow me to comfortably pack for at least five days at a literary conference or on a book tour without checking anything. I realize these tips and hacks won’t work for everyone. The types of fabrics, the size of the clothing, and the season will impact how much can fit in any bag. This list is meant to share ideas that work for me. Hopefully, you will find some of them useful. Some items are relatively cheap; others are more expensive. They’d make thoughtful gifts for the writer (or any traveler) on your shopping list — including yourself!
My favorite travel hacks:
All the clothes in this image fit inside the hanging shelves, which compress to fit in a roller carry-on bag.
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In a recent email from author Emily Kimelman, she laid out a whole new model for self-publishing that I found especially intriguing, and I thought the Writer Unboxed community would as well.
Emily is the best-selling author of two series—the Sydney Rye mysteries and the Starstruck thrillers—as well as the Kiss Chronicles urban fantasy series under the name Emily Reed. Spending her early years in the Soviet Union (her father was a foreign correspondent for the Philadelphia Enquirer), she caught the wanderlust bug at a young age and has traveled the world from Mongolia to Costa Rica to Spain and beyond, and she often bases her books on her experiences abroad.
(Personal note: Emily is also my wife’s best friend, and they’ve been “sisters from different misters” since they met at age twelve while attending The Baldwin School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.)
I recently invited Emily to share her publishing experiences and her unique new venture with our readers.
Why did you originally decide to self-publish?
In 2005, I was in my twenties and coming up with my life plan.
I wanted to write mystery novels because I enjoyed reading them, and writing them seemed like the most fun way to make a living.
I researched how to support myself as an author and decided I’d write a stunningly good book, get an agent, then a publisher. Then they’d take it from there while I wrote in cafes around the world with my dog sleeping peacefully at my feet and my fingers clacking away on my keyboard.
I did write a stunningly good book (it took 5 years), and I did get an agent …but the rest didn’t fall into place until I became my own publisher.
I’m entrepreneurial by nature and watched the self-publishing market emerge from a shameful little corner of the internet into a powerful force traditional publishers were ignoring. So in 2011, when my agent still hadn’t sold my book, I figured I had nothing to lose by going indie.
How have you monetized your books – in particular, share with our readers “how it works” with Amazon.
Retailers like Amazon pay between 30-70% royalties depending on the cover price.
While self-publishing gives authors more control and higher royalties than traditional publishing, retailers don’t share any data—like who bought your books. You’re basically a wholesaler who is allowed to set the retail price.
Also, Amazon runs ads for other products—and books—on your titles’ pages which makes sending your readers there kind of a gamble—they can easily be distracted before clicking the buy button.
How did this part of your career go?
It went great! And I still sell my books on all major retailers.
The better I became at advertising and promoting myself, the more money I made. But I also started to understand how disadvantaged I was compared to others’ selling digital products online.
When you’re spending multi-five figures on ads, and not getting any data from your traffic, you’re paying to give Amazon a lot of customers.
The first month I grossed six figures and retailers kept 35%, I knew it was time to move toward direct sales.
BookFunnel, a delivery service for ebooks that indie authors use to send out ARC copies and reader magnets, integrated with Shopify and other sales platforms a few years ago. But until […]
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Image – Getty iStockphoto: Phonlamai Photo
Scaring Up Some Audiobooks
Recently, a distributor of digital books – both ebooks and audiobooks – announced that it was adding a new offering for publishers: “AI voicing” for audiobooks. The company could barely clear the word audiobooks before rushing to assure everyone that “AI narration” would never match the primacy of audio work using human readers and production. The caveat, going on and on, came across almost as an apology before any offense had been committed.
True, a certain resistance to the idea of machine-generated audiobooks is hardly eased by such headlines as Synthetic Voices Want To Take Over Audiobooks (Wired, January 27). No, they don’t. Synthetic voices don’t want to take over audiobooks. They don’t want anything. They’re synthetic. But book publishing is an industry that’s never accepted digital developments easily. Even after e-commerce and digital products played a key role in the US market’s comparative success during the still ongoing pandemic, those “synthetic voices” seem to murmur something sinister.
The many vendors now offering machine-generated audio narration know that this is the pushback to expect. It’s a mindfield of emotional reaction. They’re nervous about it.
Some defensiveness isn’t without reason. The business of gifted human narrators – who are actually readers, voice actors, interpreters, not narrators, the term has never been quite right – are supported by many additional workers in important roles. Those workers include sound technicians, audio editors, studio and tracking-booth providers, producers, in some cases directors, and more folks. Jobs are involved, and they comprise a lot of talent and many skill sets. Programs like the Audio Publishers Association support these workers, and the APA’s Audie Awards rightly honor their work in 25 categories.
Nevertheless, there are compelling reasons for publishers to listen to machine-generated audiobook readings. The kind of work they can handle is unlikely ever to be produced in human readings because of the cost factor.
As many publishing professionals readily agree, machine-produced voicings may be best for nonfiction, which is generally thought not to need the emotional and aesthetic nuance of fiction. But of course, in a great many cases, nonfiction is read by the human author, who may be untrained and inexperienced at the microphone. While there’s always someone asserting that those “synthetic voices” feature many mistakes in pronunciation, so does the work of many human authors.
Just days ago, I heard a very fine, prominent nonfiction author in his reading of his own book pronounce scathing with a short a, making that first syllable rhyme with cat. Most of us have had the experience of discovering, red-faced, that we’ve been pronouncing something wrongly for years. The audio edition of one of last year’s most important American political books was at times almost comical in its mispronunciations by its much-praised author. In both machine-generated and human-produced readings, proof-listening is critical to catch these things.
Still, the imperative for publishers regarding audio actually goes beyond nonfiction.
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It’s firefly season in my part of the world. As I write this, it’s dusk, and my front yard is just starting to light up. For the next few hours the fireflies will flash their little butts at a much higher concentration in front of my house compared to my neighbors.
I get a better light show in the first half of summer not because my yard is more beautiful or well-kept than others, but because in the two years we’ve owned our house, we haven’t raked or blown away a single leaf. We don’t mow the grass very often, and we don’t do anything to control the population of clover, fleabane, and purple dead-nettle as they slowly take over. Fireflies spend 95 percent of their lives as larva in leaf litter and other dark, moist environments, and they only live for about two months as adults. If we had bagged up all those leaves last fall to be taken away, we would have lost all those larvae.
We’re lucky to live in a place without a homeowner’s association to dictate what makes a yard “attractive,” so we’ve been able to allow nature to reclaim some of what had once been an average suburban yard: a stretch of seeded grass, azaleas bushes (which don’t attract many pollinators, as they bloom too early in the season), and some border grass (an invasive ornamental). When I tell other homeowners I’ve let my yard go wild, they will sometimes joke that it must be so much easier to not have to do yardwork. And, yes, it is easier to not have to spend hours mowing the lawn, raking, pulling weeds, or filling in patchy sod every weekend. But it does take work: we’re constantly cutting back ornamental vines that threaten to choke off pollinator-friendly plants, and uprooting invasive plants that will outcompete native flora if left unchecked.
And that’s one of the major differences between the wild yard and the more traditional manicured lawn: one attempts to dominate and control the landscape. The other works with it. This means that I’ve had to teach myself how to identify the most common plants that crop up in my yard (there are some great apps out there that make this easier than it once would have been). I’ve learned which ones are native and which ones are invasive, which feed local wildlife and pollinators, which enrich the soil when they break down, which offer shelter for beneficial insects in the winter.
As writers, we’re frequently told by other well-meaning industry professionals about the “rules.” I don’t mean grammar rules, bur rather the rules of structure, of story progression, of beats. It’s easy to get bogged down in trying to follow all the rules. Am I hitting all the correct beats for my genre? Does every scene further both the plot and my main character’s internal development? Does each plot point occur the on the exact correct page?
Do these frameworks help create interesting stories? Abso-freaking-lutely. Just as I still put effort into my yard, guides for story structure and genre are worthwhile tools. But—like most things—there are limits to what one can accomplish by sticking strictly to what’s considered “good.” Particularly when we […]
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For my last post in April 2022 I asked a few authors at different stages in their careers, what did they learn about book marketing and PR which was surprising. The feedback I received from writers was that these little nuggets of book marketing communications wisdom really hit home. So, I’m at it again with advice from five savvy authors.
The Differences Between PR and Marketing
“I think I didn’t realize at first that book marketing and PR were two completely different entities! In the beginning, before someone explained it to me, I thought PR and marketing were all the same thing. believing it all came under the umbrella of any kind of exposure for your book. It wasn’t until a dear friend explained that marketing “cost the publisher money” to ensure a novel was “seen” by potential readers with promotions like advertisements and blog tours, did I fully understand it was something that was guaranteed because it was paid for by the publisher. –Alyson Richman is the USA Today bestselling and #1 international bestselling author of several historical novels including The Secret of Clouds and the forthcoming The Thread Collectors with Shaunna Edwards.
A Holistic Approach
I originally thought that the objective of marketing and PR was to get my book sold. Period. What I’ve learned is that marketing and publicity create channels to reach readers via influencers, podcasters, bloggers, traditional media, etc., who then serve as conduits directly to readers. The more channels you employ to draw attention to your book, the better because this is an extremely competitive industry in terms of getting your pages onto the eyes of readers. It’s also imperative to collaborate on the marketing and publicity of your book and to not assume you can sit back and let your publicist and/or marketing professional do all the work. Yes, they understand the business of pitching and positioning your book. But, you know your story better than anyone, so when you have an idea or an angle that you feel can influence readership, go with it. Or, at least, run it by your publicist; she’s a wonderful resource.-Eileen Brill has written professionally for the restaurant, hotel, and commercial real estate industries. A Letter in the Wall is her first novel.
PUBLICITY BASICS 101: Get to Know Your Publicist
Okay, so you have been working with your wonderful editor on this precious book of yours for a long, long, long time. You feel that you now know your editor as well as you know your husband or parents or child and your editor most likely feels the same way about you.
But what do you know about your publicist?
Most likely she or he is a total blank in your mind. So although I’m saying get to know your publicist, you really want them to get to know you in a way that your editor might not know you— or at least they don’t know what you feel is important about your book in terms of connecting with the marketplace. A slight footnote here: Editors don’t really like the word ‘market’ or market place—it’s too coarse for them I’ve discovered. Too transactional, etc. The vulgarity of the terms […]
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Urban Fantasy Author, Mel Todd
Despite Mel Todd’s warning that we shouldn’t use her as a role model for our own self-publishing journeys, I think indie and traditionally published authors can learn a lot from this sci-fi and urban fantasy author who pivoted from writing in a genre she didn’t love, to writing stories on her own terms. Below, the author and creator of Bad Ash Publishing—the publishing company that houses her twenty-plus titles—shares insights into her career, her missteps, and how she went from writing fanfiction to making over $150K in one year.
GW: Thanks for agreeing to share your writing and publishing experiences with the Writer Unboxed community. The first thing I’d like to ask is what genre(s) do you write in, and why and when did you start writing with the goal of publication?
MT: I probably first thought about it seriously in 2011. I published my first novel in 2013. Originally I started in romance (mistake, I’m not that good at romance), then I had my world shatter in 2016, and I realized I’ve always read sci-fi, fantasy, and urban fantasy, so why wasn’t I writing that? I dove back in, and in 2017 published my first work of Urban Science Fiction. I haven’t looked back.
GW: Why did you choose the self-publishing route?
MT: There are a few reasons. One – I had a friend that I knew (and still know) from my fanfiction days (which I still write) who had gone into self-publishing and was picked up by 47 North. His second year he paid more in taxes than double what I earned that year, and I was making a good salary at the day job at the time. He encouraged me to do it, but I made that romance mistake, and I paid for that with a few years of lost opportunities. Two – I am not good at writing mainstream stories. Agents and publishers need stories that resonate with the mainstream. My stuff is weird, and I consciously make the choice to write stories without a romance subplot now.
GW: Tell us a bit about your self-publishing journey.
MT: Laughs – I don’t mind sharing, but it would not be wise to use me as your role model for your journey. I’ve been writing fanfiction since about 2004. And in my heyday, I was getting 10k hits in the first 24 hours of posting a chapter. So, when I started to self-pub, I leveraged that existing audience. Well, the two romance novels I wrote went nowhere. Partially, it was my lack of marketing know-how (remember this was back in 2013 and 2015 that I published these) and that the fanfic I wrote wasn’t romance. Yes, I was a bit dense, but it’s complicated.
In 2017 I wrote the first book in my Kaylid Chronicles, then started publishing that series in 2018. That year I earned $6K. I kept writing and trying. In 2019 I earned under $4k. I’m sitting there going, well this series isn’t working. Let’s try a new one. I started my Twisted Luck series—a zero sex/romance Urban Fantasy—and published book one of that series in 2020. Something about it, and the following novels, caught fire, and I earned a bit […]
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When it comes to book marketing, this is what’s been the water cooler talk recently:
I’ve said this before–I learn a lot from my clients. Many come to me with a wealth of marketing and PR hits and misses. For this post, I asked a few authors at different stages in their careers, what did they learn about book marketing and PR which was surprising. Additionally, I wanted to know if they had a quick tip to share with a debut author. Here’s what they said.
Randy Susan Meyers is the internationally bestselling author of five novels, including Waisted, The Widow of Wall Street, Accidents of Marriage, The Comfort of Lies, and The Murderer’s Daughters. The Fashion Orphans, her most recent release (with M.J. Rose), is available now.
Learning to do Facebook ads myself surprised me in that a) I could master the skill, 2) I found I enjoyed learning graphics, and 3) that I could track how my sales were affected—and thus saw the effectiveness/ineffectiveness of what I learned.
What’s one quick marketing tip I’d like to offer a debut novelist?
One quick tip is this: Canva’s learning curve for graphics is far easier than others. Also, they have the sizing for ads and social media built-in. (My second tip is this: find what you enjoy doing (for me, it was graphics and newsletters) and dig deep into that modality.) *We discussed “find what you enjoy doing” in 2019 post.
Carleton Eastlake, TV writer and producer, debut author of Monkey Business (out on May 3)
As a new novelist, I attended the Association of Writers and Writing Programs in Philadelphia this year with my publisher to sign advance copies of my debut novel Monkey Business. In typically shy author fashion, I vaguely smiled at the passing crowds and prayed for a response. Fortunately, at the turn of the hour, I was joined by a second signing author who charmingly invited over anybody who for even for an instant in typically shy reader fashion almost met his look while wandering down the aisle.
I should have expected it – although a new novelist, I’m an experienced TV writer-producer who has worked fan conventions – but I really was astonished at how most passing readers were delighted to be drawn into an encounter with a friendly author. He sold out not only the publisher’s shipment of his own books for the convention but sold an astounding number of mine as well.
It’s hard for most people, authors included, to engage in this way, being inviting and available, amusing and persuasive – but not harassing, stalking, or looking desperate. But in that hour I learned it’s a skill worth bravely developing. (Which, I should add, that other author had absolutely, consciously perfected: it […]
The German playwright and novelist Gustav Freytag wrote Die Technik des Dramas, a definitive study of the five-act dramatic structure, or arc, in which he laid out what has come to be known as Freytag’s pyramid. Under Freytag’s pyramid, the plot of a story consists of five parts. (Definition paraphrased from Wikipedia).
1. Backstory/Exposition: The story begins in late January, 2020, when the debut novelist (nine months out from pub day) hears an international news piece about contagion on cruise ships. The author is on a cruise ship; a three-week trip around South America. The ship staff have protocols—lifeboat drills and announcements, outside doors locked in high seas. The author lines up with the other passengers, and like obedient preschoolers they insert hands into a portable spray-sanitizer station before returning onboard after shore excursions. She finds the delay an inconvenience, the alcohol gel irritating. She starts to carry scented hand cream. The term “Legionnaires disease” circulates and goes away. From Buenos Aires, the author telephones a foundation in France to secure the use of a photograph from 1930 for cover artwork. At sea, she is frantic for a good internet connection; final blurbs are trickling in, the cover design is finalized, and the title font.
Then, somewhere near the Falkland Islands, there is a new page up on Amazon, with her own name and a preorder link for her book. The author drinks free shipboard Champagne and Googles her title over and over and each time it hits she feels a little thrill. She posts photographs of the cover design on her Instagram page along with whales and seals and by then, the cruise is over and she returns home, anxious to begin pre-publication marketing of her debut novel.
Inciting Incident: CNN reports about a ‘wet market’ and pangolins, and the world gets stranger and stranger. “Those poor authors who have books coming out in June!” the author laments, with shallow sympathy and large-but-silently selfish relief, that her book does not come out until August 2020, and all this virus foolishness will be old news.
The author has a live reading with a poet in late February, in a bookshop, and tells herself that by August and launch time, she will have her talking points and gestures down. She orders a Great Outfit for the book festival talk, along with mounted posters of her book cover to stand in the background behind the podium. The Great Outfit is expensive; a little edgy-in-a-good-way, and she rationalizes that it will help her feel confident at public appearances.
2. Rising action: By March, signs of spring are appearing, but the author’s focus is not on her garden. The news is sobering. Dr. Fauci is introduced into the plot. The author worries about elder loved ones and is afraid to get on a plane and fly halfway across the country and stay in a hotel and mingle with thousands of people in a convention center. Thousands of attendees back out, thousands vow to go anyway. She cancels attending AWP at the last minute. She feels bad for the members of her speaking panel, but they replace her easily.
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Please join us in welcoming Victoria Strauss to Writer Unboxed as a new regular contributor. Victoria is not only a multi-published novelist and author of short stories, she is the voice of Writer Beware–a group dedicated to empowering writers by unmasking writing scams and schemes. We’ve been fans of Writer Beware and Victoria Strauss for as long as we’ve existed here as a site, and we could not be happier to have her as a member of the WU team. Welcome, Victoria!
When I do presentations and Q&As, I’m often asked to name the most common scheme or scam writers need to watch out for.
Usually, I have to think a moment before I answer—not just because the universe of writer-focused predation is constantly evolving (for instance, there are far fewer fee-charging literary agents now than there were when Writer Beware was founded), but because the ways in which writers can be tricked and exploited are so many and various that it’s hard to choose.
These days, though, I can respond without hesitation. By far the most prevalent writer-focused scams are solicitation scams.
Solicitation scammers contact writers out of the blue with publishing-related offers that seem too good to be true. A literary agency is interested in your work! A prestigious publisher wants to acquire your book! A film producer wants to turn your novel into a movie! A marketing company can expose you to millions of potential fans!
You know the old adage, though: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. In reality, these offers are not about boosting your career or raising your profile. Whatever enticing carrot a solicitation scammer may dangle before you, the real aim is to get your money.
Solicitation scams and schemes are not new. Back in the days of snail mail, costly print vanity publisher Dorrance Publishing was notorious for soliciting submissions from copyright registration and magazine subscription lists. (Dorrance has re-tooled itself for the digital age, so its solicitations now come via email.)
Profiteering contest and awards programs have also long been prolific solicitors (for instance, J.M. Northern Media, which runs multiple high-entry-fee “festivals”), as have bogus Who’s Who registries. Predatory author mill Omniscriptum regularly solicits submissions to its many imprints, and if you write nonfiction, you may have been contacted by Close-up TV News, a pay-to-play “news” program that has been chasing customers for nearly two decades.
Over the past three years, though, the volume of solicitations has exploded, driven by a huge rise in publishing-related scams from overseas, and also by the pandemic, as in-person networking and marketing opportunities for writers have dwindled and online activity has increased. Self-published and small press authors are the solicitors’ favorite marks. But any writer can be a target.
WHAT YOU MAY ENCOUNTER
Fake Literary Agents and Agencies
Real, reputable literary agents—whose inboxes are overflowing with submissions and who have no need to solicit clients–rarely reach out directly to writers they don’t already represent. For scammers, on the other hand, cold-call solicitation is their main recruitment method. And large numbers of them are posing as literary agents and agencies.
Fake agency solicitations typically involve strategically […]
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Credit: Canva
Several years ago in a campaign wrap-up call for an author’s first self-published book (she had a few books with big houses in previous years), she commented to me that she was disappointed by the lack of blogger reviews I had gotten for her novel. Fair enough – most of the bloggers that had covered her in the past either hadn’t responded to my outreach, expressed that they had too much on their plate, or were nowhere to be found. When a book is self-published, publicists often receive a different response from media and influencers, so the quiet didn’t weigh on me heavily. When I told my client we had secured and paid for a BookBub deal that lead to more than 27k downloads and dozens of favorable Amazon reviews in just a week’s period of time, creating a halo-effect for her previous works and introducing thousands of new readers to her work, she said nothing except to ask what was BookBub was. (It was in our proposal and letter of agreement.) Some months later, I heard she had gotten an offer from one of Amazon’s publishing imprints for that very same book. Bravo!
Let’s break this apart.
-We were at a turning point in the blogging world. The reason for my poor showing on the blogger front was perhaps less about me doing the work and more about the fact that bloggers weren’t doing so much blogging anymore. Hello #bookstagram
-BookBub was founded in 2012. Think about when you first started using this influential platform. For any author that has gotten a BookBub deal – how thrilled were you?
-Amazon started its publishing arm in 2009 and launched several imprints in its first two years. And that was over a decade ago. I love the idea of more authors having a shot at living their dreams, but what does it mean for PR?
This morning I was listening to David Bowie’s song CHANGES. I love Bowie–the oddity, the wandering, the uniqueness, the fact that he was always ahead of the time, THE CHANGES.
Here in book world, you may have noticed some of the changes–popular books out of stock, less attendance at Zoom events, publishers not wanting authors to do virtual bookstore events, delayed shipments, authors creating their own platforms on social media, lots of Instagram Live programming, less reviews, not much differentiation of books in media coverage.
As we head deeper into 2022, here’s are some things to consider about PR and marketing. As usual, I had a little help from my friends in the biz.
M.J. Rose, Founder of Authorbuzz; Co-founder Blue Box Press; Bestselling novelist (current book out is The Fashion Orphans with Randy Susan Meyers)
We are finding with so many more books being released than ever before, one of the most important new developments is that the book’s Amazon page is more important than it ever has been.
There’s a limited amount of information any marketing can impart. Ads interest people in the book but what sells the book is the book description and reader reviews and excerpt on the Amazon page.
So what is key? The book description needs to help the reader know quickly if the book is for them or […]
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