Business
Kath here. It’s such a thrill to be able to introduce one of the most courageous writers that I know, and a dear friend, historical romance novelist Elena Greene. Like most professional writers, Elena suffered ups and downs with a bit of sideways thrown in for good measure throughout her decade-long career writing Regency-set romances. Things didn’t look so great when en masse and seemingly overnight romance publishers left the genre of category historical romances behind for good. Elena was one of many orphaned authors struggling to regain a foothold in an industry saturated with historical romance authors.
But as we know, digital publishing was right around the corner, and Elena had the foresight to make astute decisions that put her right back on the bestseller lists, and she did this all while overcoming a personal hardship. It’s the kind of writing success story that I love. I knew you would too, so I asked Elena to guest post with us on how she was able to revive her career by capitalizing on the new digital paradigm, and sell more books than she did when she was traditionally published. Happily for us, she obliged. Enjoy!
In September of 2005, my writing career looked quite promising. Having sold five traditional Regencies (short romances set in the era of Jane Austen), I was enjoying the debut of my sixth. Lady Dearing’s Masquerade was a Signet Super Regency, longer and more sensual than the usual traditional Regency, a stepping stone toward my goal of writing longer historical romances. I had a great relationship with my editor and Lady Dearing’s Masquerade was garnering great reviews.
However, the writing was on the wall for the traditional Regency genre. Both the Signet and Zebra lines closed soon after. My editor moved to another publishing house. My agent and I could not see eye to eye on which project I should tackle next. For the next few years I struggled, trying different projects but losing my confidence on the way. Finally, in 2008, I decided to part ways with my agent. My enthusiasm for writing rebounded and I finally knew which story I had to tell next.
I had about 50,000 words written by January of 2009, when things fell apart again. My husband suffered a sudden and severe stroke, due to a dissection of his left carotid artery, which left him paralyzed on the right side and unable to speak, read or write. For the following two years, I was too busy caring for him and our school age children to do more than miss my writing. Fortunately, he made good progress. Though still unable to work, he became independent enough that I once again had some time for writing.
As I emerged from my caregiver’s fog, I discovered that digital publishing had taken off. Authors I knew were doing well reissuing their backlist romances on Kindle, Nook and other readers. Encouraged by their success, I decided to reissue Lady Dearing’s Masquerade, since it was my best work to date. I did the formatting myself, since I knew some HTML and wanted to cut costs. Knowing a good cover was important, I commissioned a gorgeous one from Hot Damn Designs. And my […]
Read MoreThe proverb says, Don’t judge a book by its cover, but whoever dreamed that one up can’t have been working in the publishing industry. It might be an indictment of human shallowness, but you can’t help first impressions. You will not judge a book by its cover once you’ve read it, of course; but first you have to be enticed to pick it up in the first place. Always, and not just in modern times, publishers have known this and expended great effort on making their books look attractive at very first glance.
Ideas of what constitute attractive of course have varied over the ages but it is interesting to see some themes are recur again and again. Gold-embossed titles, for instance; we might think of that as a modern phenomenon but in the 19th century every self-respecting book had gold embossing. Fancy typescript’s another. One thing that has changed a lot though, at least in English-speaking countries, is the changing attitudes towards illustration on the cover. Nineteenth-century books are often profusely illustrated inside but the cover is mostly patterns and designs, often sumptuously presented on fine leather binding, with gold embossing and all. But the only covers that were illustrated with actual scenes or people were the cheap throw-away jobs printed on flimsy paper—penny dreadfuls and chapbooks, and the like. In the early to mid twentieth century, illustration on a cover was still often associated with cheap—with pulp fiction, if you like. If you wanted literary, you had to go for fairly plain covers. Elegant, maybe, but plain. This is something that is still quite a common thing in some countries, such as in France, where novels reckoned to be literary are still published in restrained wrappers, on very good stiff paper(not hardback, though) with little decoration, except maybe a border, and the author’s name and title of the book in elegant typescript. But in English-speaking countries, that rule has quite gone out of the window, and bookshop shelves are a push-and-shove gallery of the bold, the beautiful, the soft-focus, the looked-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time and the frankly lurid. Drawings, paintings, photographs, graphics of all kinds jostle for our attention. In fact the restrained unillustrated cover is so rare these days that it’s commented on as though it were a quirky experiment!
For a writer, that first impression readers get when they see your book is of course vitally important too. But there’s another even more important consideration: what does the cover say about your book? Not just its Pick me, Pick me qualities, but whether it expresses what you feel to be the essence of your lovingly-crafted work. There’s nothing worse than being handed a cover which clearly demonstrates that the designer has no idea what your book’s about, or its emotional tone: and if that’s the case, that’s probably because the publisher has either not briefed them properly, or worse still, has completely missed the point about your book. Fights over covers are very common! (As well as secret dismay that isn’t expressed until it’s too late.)
Read MoreIt seems like as soon as we tackle one hot “it” tool and capture ways to use it for publicity (first Facebook, then Twitter), something new and even cooler comes along and grabs everyone’s attention. Right now that “it” tool is Pinterest and I’ll admit – I’m hooked.
If you’re not familiar, Pinterest is like an online scrapbook or a place to create an online inspiration board. Basically, you find images and videos you like and “pin” them to your online boards. Others can see your boards, see what’s inspiring you and be inspired too.
For instance, I used Pinterest to help create a story board for a client photo shoot I recently did – we found some amazing images of the look and style we were trying to achieve in the photo shoot and shared the board with our models and photographers. It was a great way for all of us to see the vision and get inspired for the photo shoot.
I’ve seen others use Pinterest for dinner ideas (a “must make” board), for gift ideas, for room makeover ideas and even one recently called “books worth reading”, where the creator had pinned up book covers of books she recently read and loved. This inspired me and starting feeding my creativity as a book publicist – as I’m always trying to find new and exciting ways to help authors promote their books online. I thought, how can I counsel my clients to add Pinterest to their social media strategy in smart and creative ways? Would it work?
After doing some research and talking with some Pinterest fanatics as well as book lovers, here are a few ways authors can engage potential new readers on Pinterest and help spread awareness and interest in their books.
#1 Add the “Pin it” widget to your site
Read MoreBookmarks, fridge magnets, pens – if you can’t wait to order objects that display your cover art or announce your authorial name, you aren’t alone. “Swag,” as these tangibles are known, signals to oneself and others that an author has “arrived.”
It serves several other time-honored purposes within the publishing world:
In this post, I want to list some of the more creative promotional applications I’ve seen, then add a few fantastical suggestions of my own using WU contributors as guinea pigs. (Click on most enclosed images to see the larger version.)
The Collectable
1. Business Cards:
For a change from standard business cards, check out these tiny Moo cards. In this post, WF author Liz Michalski describes how she used them to point readers to hidden content on her site.
2. Some authors use trading cards to promote characters.
Read MoreTherese and Kath here to introduce the newest member of the WU team. You’ve seen independent editor Victoria Mixon here before. We love her for her ability to plumb the depths of craft knowledge, her commitment to making hard-to-understand concepts understandable, and her personality. So when she offered to provide a column to us for the upcoming WU newsletter–a column full of craft and editorial questions provided by our readers, and answered in advice-column style–we couldn’t resist. We thought it could be a good idea to give you a taste of what she’ll be offering readers in her “Ask Victoria” column for us, so that’s what today’s post is all about.
A big thanks to the WU Facebook Community for sending questions to Victoria; she’ll be using several of them moving forward. You can submit questions too, by leaving them for Victoria here in comments. Enjoy!
Dear Victoria, Column One
Dear Victoria,
Aside from meticulous proofreading, how can we, as writers, make your job easier?
Signed,
Hungry for Knowledge (AKA Kristin Pedroja)
Dear Hungry (AKA Kristin),
The best thing you can do, as a writer, is be open to the extraordinary complexity, scope, and sheer hard labor of writing a novel. Random typos aren’t a problem. But you must set your ego tenderly aside and bring to your editor your deep and abiding passion for this manuscript and this craft.
Although I’ve worked with dozens of clients, I’ve never seen a manuscript that didn’t need a lot of work. And these are final drafts! Novels that clients have brought to me secretly thinking, ‘She’s going to catch a few typos and tell me she stands in awe.’ I know this because they tell me about it later, laughing after they’ve learned just how much more there is to the story they want to tell—how much deeper and more satisfying this work is than they ever dreamed, but how much more complicated.
Read MoreAs a frequent speaker, one question I can count on, in every setting—no matter the topic, event, or audience skill level—is:
How do you find the time to do all this?
“All this” refers to writing, blogging, marketing, promoting, social media, website building, blogging, traveling, speaking, plus my day job of university professor. The question comes up so often that I wonder what kind of secret people think I’m hiding, like …
Up until now, I’ve never had a good answer for people who asked this question. I sleep, eat, watch TV, and have downtime like everyone else.
But I’ve been meditating on what helpful advice I might have that doesn’t involve miraculous scientific advances or large inheritances.
Here are 5 strategies.
1. Decide what you’ll stop doing—and I’m not talking about TV.
Read MoreI always tell people that my biggest challenge of my job in helping people find literary agents is correcting bad information on the Internet. This is no doubt my biggest challenge on a day-to-day basis in helping people get published.
But if I had to pick a second frustration — one that drives me absolutely bonkers more often than I’d like to explain — it’s the fact that so many writers make themselves difficult to contact and hurt their writer platform. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve wanted to help someone or promote a book or interview an author only to find no e-mail address anywhere online. For example, at least a dozen times, I’ve found a great debut author online whose book I wanted to include in my recurring Writer’s Digest magazine column (“Breaking In”) only to find … no e-mail. No Twitter. No contact information. Plenty of times no website at all. Other times I’ve wanted to interview up-and-coming writers for one reason or another, and I face the same problem. They don’t make themselves available, and I find someone else instead. (Makes you wonder … perhaps someone reading this column right now missed out on some easy promo because they kept their e-mail hidden.)
I have no idea why people make themselves difficult to contact. I think it comes from some sort of old-school fear that if their e-mail is online, all hell will break loose and their identity will get stolen by someone in Chechnya or they’ll be deluged with spam and from hundreds of people asking to borrow money.
Take it from me — this will not happen. I make myself very available through all channels and am in a position to help people, but the amount of cold-contact e-mails I get each month is small and manageable.
The point I’m trying to make is this: In this day and age, book publicity is very valuable and very hard to come by. The last thing writers want to do is make it more difficult for editors to publicize their books. In order to give yourself the best chance at success, here are my suggestions for all up-and-coming writers in terms of making yourself available and easy to contact:
Today’s guest is back for an encore. Author Kim Wright was with us back in October to talk about ways not to behave with your agent. Today she’s back for more commonsense advice for writers. Kim has been writing about travel, food, and wine for more than 25 years and is a two-time recipient of the Lowell Thomas Award. Her debut novel, Love In Mid Air, has received critical praise. She’s also recently released a book for writers called Your Path to Publication. Take it away, Kim!
The Twelve Most Dangerous Words for Writers
There are twelve words in the world of publishing that, while innocent enough on their own, can collectively sink your career.
Ready?
You just need to concentrate on writing the best book you can.
The problem with the sentence is that it’s accurate – but incomplete. The danger lies in the word “just.”
Yeah, you have to write the best book you can. That’s absolutely, completely, and totally necessary and, God knows, such a hard task that it logically seems like it would be enough in and of itself. But the truth is, that’s only the first step. The first step out of approximately 274. And it’s a crime for published writers to imply that’s all there is to it.
So why does the myth live on? Two reasons.
Many long-established writers actually forged their careers back when this was an accurate statement. Back in the days when all a writer had to do was show up in New York with his latest opus, down a few martinis over lunch, sign his new contract, and skedaddle back to his cabin/ranch/beach house to begin the next one. But when a writer who’s been at it for fifty years tells you these stories it’s a history lesson in how publishing used to work, not helpful advice for how to launch a book in 2011.
When more recently-established authors mouth these words, something different is going on. They’re just telling people what they want to hear. Most writers are introverts and English majors, people who don’t want to promote, go on book tours, reach out to the bloggers, or worry about what 15% of 25% less 15% comes to after taxes. So if you tell them they don’t have to do those things, you’ll be very popular. Say the twelve words out loud at a writing conference and you’ll be wildly applauded. Write them on a blog and you’ll get a lot of “Likes.” You’ll be considered a “real writer,” someone who walks through pie fights in a white suit, who remains miraculously unsullied by the marketplace.
But it’s not 1961 – or even 2004. So much more is required of the author now that it’s unrealistic and unfair to imply that the publishing industry still works like that. Or that it’s a meritocracy, unfailingly rewarding the talented and ignoring the hacks. I bet everyone reading this post right now knows people who have written good books and can’t get them published – and meanwhile Snooki has a book deal. We’ve got to wake up and admit that there’s more to being a writer than writing. A would-be author who doesn’t figure out all the […]
Read MoreNot so long ago, “being a writer” might have cost us our sanity, consumed countless hours each day and caused us to opt out of paying jobs, but it didn’t actually require spending money.
Those days are over.
A veritable writing industry has emerged in the wake of the digital revolution, complete with webinars, seminars, conferences and manuscript consultations available to all — for a fee. Amid today’s fierce competition, writers with professional aspirations know how important it is to partake in these. Regularly.
At the same time, we all know that authors are becoming increasingly responsible for most or all of their publicity expenses. With advances shrinking, too, that means emptying pockets, dipping into savings.
And with the rise of e-books and easy self-publishing, all writers have the opportunity to reach large audiences directly. But building the awareness it takes to reach them, and appealing to them with a respectable level of professionalism, requires cash.
Yet somehow, the gritty, romantic notion of pinching pennies while quietly scratching out our drafts, of using advances to fix leaky roofs or pay off credit card balances then doing everything from building web sites to pitching the media by ourselves, continues to shape many writers’ choices. We ask friends to copy-edit our manuscripts. We design our own book covers. And publicity? Forget it. Once the book is out, we tweet about it, do a few book club events, contact a local paper, cross our fingers and start writing something new.
But those of us who truly want to establish a niche as an author and give our books a fighting chance to sell MUST come to terms with the fact that in this day and age,
Update: Congratulations to Mari Passananti, winner of Christina’s book!
Therese here. Today’s guest is the original Writer Mama, Christina Katz, author of three books for writers, including The Writer’s Workout: 366 Tips, Tasks & Techniques, out in print as of this past Tuesday. The Writer’s Workout joins Get Known Before the Book Deal and Writer Mama in a star collection of writerly helpmates authored by Christina, and is truly packed with great tips and advice. I’m so glad she’s with us today to present some excerpts from her book, offering new thoughts on the elusive fiction writer’s platform–something we often wonder about, question, and bravely attempt to build.
Why this topic? In Christina’s own words:
Of all the questions I get, some of the most frequent are from fiction or memoir writers asking what the differences will be in their platform development, because, after all, they don’t write nonfiction and they think they never will.
I can’t say often or vehemently enough that all writers need platforms regardless of genre and that the best time to start the development process is now. So I picked a few chapters from The Writer’s Workout to deliver this message for me. The following example chapters are taken from the book, which is subtitled 366 Tips, Tasks & Techniques, because it offers career advice for every day of the year (Writer’s Digest Books, December 6, 2011).
I hope these excerpts will spark a discussion of how important platform is for every kind of writer, how a writers job is basically never done, and what an adventure it is for fiction writers to explore fresh ways to write about what they do and seek out fresh publication opportunities beyond the book. Thanks for chiming in with your experience for the chance to win a copy of The Writer’s Workout.
Don’t forget to answer Christina’s comment at the end of the post for a chance to win a copy of The Writer’s Workout. Enjoy!
Always Be Building
Writers seem willing to acknowledge that nonfiction writers need platforms, but the debate on whether fiction writers, memoir writers, and children’s writers need one rages on.
I can clear this up. Every writer who plans to publish or be published needs a platform. It doesn’t matter what you write. As with most things, the sooner you get started, the better because platforms take time to establish, cultivate, and build. No exceptions.
Understand that platform applies to every kind of writer. Don’t get platform confused with what you’d like it to mean. There is a lot of misinformation and quibbling about what platform is and isn’t and whether or not writers need to work on building one and when. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah … in all the time spent debating, a writer could have built her first platform.
To clarify, debating about whether or not you need a platform should not be confused with actually taking concrete steps toward building one. Get out of the debate club and get into the platform-building club. Take a no-whining oath and get to work building a productive platform that offers folks the value only you can offer.
Need examples?
Read MoreWhen we talk about writing, we talk about paper. We talk about facing a blank page, or putting pen to paper; we talk about compelling books as page-turners; and we talk, of course, about judging a book by its cover. But we all know by now that writing and publishing have changed so much in the past few years that paper is only a portion of what’s going on. You could go through every single step in the lifecycle of a book — writing down the idea, composing and editing text, submitting portions to beta readers for critique, reaching out to agents and selling the book to a publisher, going through revisions and copyedits and final layout, and finally, seeing the book released — without a single word of that book ever existing on paper, at any point.
Mind-blowing, isn’t it?
So often when people talk about the new reality of publishing, they talk about e-books as an “alternative to traditional publishing” — something you can do on your own, or at least close to it. And that’s certainly one approach. But e-books released by traditional publishers are also a huge part of the landscape, so no matter what path to publication you plan on taking, count on e-books to be part of it.
On one hand, there’s nothing special you need to do. For my book The Kitchen Daughter, which was released as an e-book on the same day it came out in hardcover in April 2011, I had no separate process for the two book types. The copyedits I worked through for the print book were made in the e-book, and when I approved the cover image for the hardcover, I was approving it for the e-book as well. From my vantage point, it was all the same.
And in my promotion path, same thing. Reviews of the book tell people what’s in it, not where to buy it. Some book bloggers received e-galleys of the book and some received physical ARCs, but their reviews rarely differed based on that. As someone who supports independent bookstores, I leaned toward encouraging people to buy the book at their local indie or other book outlet if possible, but for the most part I just talked about The Book, and left the rest up to the reader. Some authors run e-book-specific or even Kindle-specific promotions, targeting that specific group of readers. I didn’t do that — largely just because I was doing so many other things I just didn’t have time for it.
What were the results of focusing on promoting the book, not the form the book took? I never crunched the numbers in depth, but the pattern was easy to see: some months, The Kitchen Daughter sold just as many electronic copies as it did hardcovers. Clearly, e-books weren’t just part of my landscape — they were half the hills, half the trees, half the horizon.
Later this month, I’m trying something new.
Read MoreI wish they taught this skill to students in high school or college. Creative writing students especially need to spend a semester on it, but never do. You’d think publishers would deliver a 101 guide on it for their authors, though I’m not sure the publishers themselves always know anything about it.
The skill is copywriting. What is copywriting? According to Copyblogger, one of the top sites dedicated to the subject:
Copywriting is one of the most essential elements of effective online marketing. The art and science of direct-response copywriting involves strategically delivering words (whether written or spoken) that get people to take some form of action.
Here are 3 primary ways that copywriting becomes essential to your success as an author.
1. Writing query letters, synopses, and other submission materials
This is the classic form of copywriting that most writers engage in. A query letter is not a straightforward description of your work. It’s a sales letter. It should be persuasive and seduce the agent into requesting your work.
And this is why writers struggle with queries, because they can’t bridge the gap between writing to entertain (or inform or inspire) and writing to persuade. It’s a different mindset, and it requires an ability to look at one’s work as a product that has a selling point. (If you need more information on how to formulate a hook, click here.)
I used to have a boyfriend who spent 10 years in sales. What I learned from him is that it’s not about succeeding on your first try or even with the majority of tries. It’s about making the highest number of tries with the best prospects, then bouncing back quickly from rejection.
Unfortunately, most writers’ egos are fragile, and they can’t see the query process as one of the oldest practices in human history—a sales practice where rejection is commonplace.
So, adopt the mindset of a copywriter. You can’t convince everybody, so just convince one person who’s a good match for what you’re offering. (But make sure you deliver the quality goods you promised!)
2. Writing copy for your website and social media profiles
Read MoreKath here. New York Times bestselling author Barry Eisler made headlines when he turned his back on a six figure deal to self-publish his highly anticipated thriller THE DETACHMENT as an Amazon Kindle exclusive.
Barry, a former CIA covert operative, had been appearing on the bestselling lists for years with his nailbiting thrillers. His handshake deal with St. Martin’s was one any author would be thanking their lucky stars to entertain. So when news about Barry’s move to Amazon hit the intertubes, people raised a brow — and authors watched closely. Was he insane for walking away from that kind of money and the in-house support offered by traditional publishers? Or was he prescient? Now it seems that Barry’s decision is a harbinger of things to come for authors looking for their footing in the new digital age, and that traditional publishers (or what he calls “legacy publishing“) are finding it difficult to react to shifting consumer patterns — to the detriment of their authors.
We asked Barry to share his insights with the WU community, and happily for us, he agreed.
Please enjoy our guest post with Barry Eisler.
There are really just a few critical aspects of the revolution in publishing. If you understand these aspects, you’ll have a proper framework. If you have a proper framework, you can make good decisions.
First: Digital is increasingly becoming the dominant means by which books are distributed. Digital will never replace paper entirely, but it will displace paper, relegating paper to a subsidiary right. For anyone who doubts this, I recommend my blog post Paper Earthworks and Digital Tides, and Be the Monkey: A Conversation About the New World of Publishing, a free downloadable book I wrote with novelist J.A. Konrath.
Second: Unlike in paper, where an author needs a distribution partner to cost-effectively reach a mass market of readers, in digital a lone author has exactly the same ability to distribute as any New York-based, billion-dollar multinational conglomerate.
This bears repeating because it’s so revolutionary it can be hard to get one’s head around. In digital distribution, legacy publishers offer zero value. An author can distribute one-hundred-percent as effectively alone as she can with a legacy publisher. In other words, in digital distribution, an author has no use for New York. For more, see this guest post I did at J.A. Konrath’s blog, A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing (a blog you should absolutely be reading regularly).
Note that I’m only talking about distribution and I’m only talking about digital. I didn’t say that New York publishers have no value to offer in paper, in, editing, or in other areas. To me this is obvious, but I’ve learned to include this sort of disclaimer to make it marginally more difficult for dodgers, denialists, and dudgeon demons to avoid actual thought in favor of straw man arguments and other mischaracterizations of what I’ve actually said.
Third, and flowing from the first two: in a digital world, the primary value a publisher can offer an author is direct-to-consumer marketing. This is why Amazon is so strongly positioned to succeed in digital publishing: its book […]
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