Business
Sometimes you don’t see the gold beside you because you’re too busy searching for it elsewhere, assuming it will be hard to find. Such was the case when I opened my eyes to BookBuzzr recently–a service that had been mentioned on Twitter, but that I hadn’t explored. When I did take the time to explore it, I was blown away by what they offer authors.
Curious? I thought you might be, so BookBuzzr’s CEO, Vikram Narayan, and I have a Take Five for you today.
Q: For people who’ve never heard of BookBuzzr, can you explain what the service offers?
VN: BookBuzzr is a free, online book-marketing technology for authors. It consists of three components:
– A BookBuzzr widget of your book which can be shared on social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Orkut etc. This widget is also an excellent replacement for your book-cover image on your website or blog.
– An email signature that is created from your book and that can be used in your emails.
– A Twitter marketing feature set which allows authors to accumulate followers and automatically tweet about their books to their respective followers without making it too much like a sales pitch.
The author also gets a free listing on fReado.com – a sister site which hosts books in BookBuzzr format.
Here’s an example of a BookBuzzr book widget:
Q: Oh, that’s my favorite BookBuzzr widget. (Koff.) How did BookBuzzr come to be?
Read MoreWhile my first day at the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference was pretty busy with my workshop/presentation “Creating a Killer First Page” and being on an editor’s panel, the other days I was free to go to other presentations. One of the other editors on the panel was Kathy Dawson, Associate Publisher at Dial Books for Young Readers. Kathy is sharp and smart, and kindled an interest in YA fiction in me. And she had a workshop on children’s fiction later in the week.
I’ve tinkered with the idea of YA before, but not gotten serious about it. An early clue, back before I parted with my agent, was the result of a submission of one of my novels, a coming-of-age story titled The Summer Boy, to John Scognamiglio, Editorial Director of Kensington Books. He told my agent that he loved the characters, the story and the relationships, but it read too much like a YA novel to fit in his list.
Later, I wondered if another novel, The Vampire Kitty-cat Chronicles, might be YA. I asked a local librarian to read it and see if she thought it could be YA, and she thought it would.
Hmm.
So I attended Kathy’s workshop. Her discussion, and then the fall catalog for Penguin Young Readers Group that she provided gave me a lot to chew on. One thing that Kathy said that gave me a fresh way to think about writing for the YA audience is that “They are kids experiencing things for the first time—and they don’t know if they can get through it.”
I learned that “writing down” doesn’t happen YA.
Read MoreGetting published is an achievement for any novelist. Staying published is harder. More difficult still is reaching higher levels of success, from breaking out to becoming a brand name.
Where does that ultimate stage of the journey begin? Many authors break into the business writing some type of genre fiction. It’s a great way to start. Plot foundations are in place. There is a ready audience. Reviews and even awards can be won.
Genre writing, however, can also be a trap. Plot patterns can become a crutch. Characters can conform to fan expectations and genre conventions. Easily renewed contracts make genre boundaries safe and reliable.
Genre writers, I find, can get so stuck in their comfort zone that they can’t find their way out of it. The larger scale of breakout level plots becomes intimidating. Their characters stay small. It’s as if authors’ imaginations have atrophied. What is really happening is that they are afraid.
Read MoreToday we welcome author and online marketeer J.C. Hutchins to Writer Unboxed! J.C. is not only the author of a brilliant, multimedia thriller novel, Personal Effects: Dark Art, his technothriller trilogy, 7th Son, has become the most popular podcast novel series ever. Yes, really. Today he’s going to tell us about his unboxed road to publication and share a few of the secrets to his success. Take it away, J.C.!
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Why giving it away is okay … and how online promotion can help sell your fiction
Thank goodness for plot twists. Readers love ’em. Authors especially love ’em, as they keep things ultra-interesting, and spin stories into unexpected creative territory.
And thank goodness for real-life plot twists, too. One such twist hit my life in 2005, and sent my fiction writing career into uncharted places. Back then, I was reeling from a stack of agent rejection letters for 7th Son, a technothriller trilogy I’d spent three years writing and editing. I was convinced the series was deader than disco. Put a toe tag on the thing, dig.
But during this nasty revelation, I was exposed to podcasting (if you’re unfamiliar with podcasting, think “free downloadable internet radio”), and a handful trailblazing of unpublished authors who were releasing their novels in serialized audiobook form. I sensed an emerging trend. Since I reckoned I couldn’t sell 7th Son, I could at least share it — so I started podcasting the first 7th Son book in February 2006. I recorded and edited the episodes myself, posted them online, and learned to promote the series along the way.
Read MoreSo I got my hiney handed to me over this one space verses two spaces poll we ran last week. My DH argued in favor of one space; I am an ancient crone who cannot stop typing two. But one space clearly won the day 64% to 29%. The gloating I’ve had to listen to . . . oh, the gloating. Misery.
As a peace offering, he sent me the link to the 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest winners. Congratulations, Dave McKenzie, for submitting this gem of so-bad-it’s-good writing:
“Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin‘ off Nantucket Sound from the nor’ east and the dogs are howlin‘ for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the “Ellie May,” a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin‘ and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.”
Though I am partial to this one from Glen Robins of Brighton, U.K.:
Read MoreHave you ever heard of The Audies? They are, according to the AudioFile Magazine website, “awards recognizing distinction in audiobooks and spoken word entertainment sponsored by the Audio Publishers Association (APA).” This year’s Audie for general fiction was a tie, going to both Stephen King’s Duma Key, read by John Slattery, and Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows’ The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, read by Paul Boehmer, Susan Duerden, Rosalyn Landor, John Lee and Juliet Mills. Other Audie awards are given for literary fiction, mystery, romance, science fiction/fantasy, teen lit, children’s and more. (Read the full list of categories and winners HERE.)
I don’t listen to scads of audio books, but I own a few. Sometimes I buy an audiobook if I loved a novel to bits and want to experience it in a new way; I own Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit, and Stephen King’s Shawshank Redemption on audiobook, for example. Other times I buy audiobooks for car trips, mostly for my kids. We own the entire Harry Potter series in audio form (as well as in hardcover), and they’ve provided hours of true entertainment on long car rides. Last year’s “solo narration-male” winner was Jim Dale, who I think utterly deserved the award for his many voices and expressive delivery in the Harry Potter series. (You can listen to an outtake of Dale’s work on the AudioFile magazine website, HERE.)
I enjoy these books, hearing someone chew over the author’s chosen language like auditory candy. But as a writer, I wondered: Is writing to be heard something to consider when you’re drafting your novel? I spoke with Robin Whitten, editor and founder of AudioFile, to learn more.
Read MoreSo about ten months ago, when the hardcover of Time of My Life hit the New York Times best-seller list, I posed the question: just what does becoming a bestseller really do for you? I wasn’t sure, but thought, because I didn’t see much of a difference in, well, much of anything, after it hit the list other than a lot of people congratulating me (which, hey, I didn’t mind), that the payoff might come for the paperback release. And, with said release just three weeks out, yes, I wanted to report back that indeed, becoming a best-seller does change the trajectory of your book and perhaps your career, albeit with delayed gratification.
Here’s what I know now: I see a pretty huge difference between the release of this paperback and the release of my first book’s paperback. With the ammunition of that fabulous New York Times Best Seller blurb on the cover, I’ve landed a big order from Target, which, according to those in the know, is a very, very good thing for my book. I’ve got a PR budget, a marketing/advertising budget, and I’ve been granted a very ample print-run. Did any of these things happen for my first book? Ahem, no. Would they have happened if it hadn’t landed on the list? Well, who knows? Maybe sales would have been healthy enough that my (fabulous) publisher would have set aside a budget anyway, but maybe not.
Read MoreKath here. Like many families in this economy, we supplement our two-income household with a secondary source of income; in our case, freelancing work in the writing profession. My husband, a librarian, also creates indexes for non-fiction books.
When people ask us about it, they are surprised that such an opportunity exists. Inevitably they ask a barrage of questions. The No. 1 comment is: “I didn’t know book indexers existed!”
They do. And they get paid for it.
Book indexing is not for everyone. As much as I love to read non-fiction, I’m not sure I could read a text for organizational structures and the plain hard work and tedium of detailing an index. But for those who are curious, I thought I it would him to lift the veil a little.
On the fringe of the writing profession exists a pocket of freelancers known as indexers. Indexers create indexes for a variety of formats, including monographs, journals, and web sites. The most common form of the index can be found at the back of a non-fiction book.
Like many freelance occupations, book indexers can either work full-time or as a sideline to their day job.
Read MoreChristina Katz recently sent a message to me on Twitter:
Can you do #platformchat this friday from 2-3 EST? I’d love to have you talk about your pre-pub. platform development.
I said yes. Later, I realized this chat would have only two guests: Jane Friedman, the Publisher and Editorial Director at Writer’s Digest, and me.
No pressure.
The event itself went well, though. Christina asked thought-provoking questions about life as a nonfiction writer, fiction writer and blogger. Many of those who’d tuned into the event spread the word and retweeted lines that resonated with them; others asked smart questions, made insightful comments. Once finished, I had about 60 new followers–most of them writers. (You can read the transcript HERE and learn more about Twitter chats HERE.)
Since a lingering effect of the chat has been platform-on-the-brain, that’s the subject of today’s blog post.
What is platform?
In easy terms, platform is what’s available to you so that when you have something to say, you’re heard. In our interview with Christina Katz, she described it like this:
A platform is a promise, which says you will not only create something to sell (a book), but also promote it to the specific readers who will want to purchase it. A platform-strong writer is a writer with influence. Your platform includes your Web presence, any public speaking you do, the classes you teach, the media contacts you’ve established, the articles you’ve published, and any other means you currently have for making your name and your future books known to a viable readership. If others already recognize your expertise on a given topic or for a specific audience or both, then that is your platform. Your platform communicates your expertise to others, and it works all the time so you don’t have to.
How do you build a platform that will stand out?
You build a platform by building a specific reputation, developing a niche, and connecting with others, regardless of what you write. But take care if your plan is to latch your name to a big genre label.
Read MoreOne of the regular commenters on my own weblog asked me recently to write about genre. She wanted to know if an author starts out with a particular genre in mind, and if so, how is such a thing planned? How do you write yourself into a genre?
I’ve been thinking about this for days, and getting crankier by the minute (which has nothing to do with the person who asked the question; she just hit one of my buttons). Genre is not one of my favorite words. Before I go on, a confession: I know what I’m wishing for is impossible.
This is what I want: abolition of the idea and practice of genre in writing and shelving fiction.
Think about this for a moment. You walk into a bookstore because you want the latest Walter Moseley or Eloisa James or A.S. Byatt, and you head straight for the section where you’ve found those authors before: hard-boiled crime, romance, literary fiction, respectively. Once you get there, you pause to have a look at what else is new in that section, and then you pay and leave.
On the way out you may be passing a novel you would fall in love with, but you don’t see it. You’ve got genre blinders on, and it doesn’t occur to you that there might be something worth reading in science fiction or horror or historical fiction. I can almost feel you shifting uncomfortably in your seat. You’re thinking: but I don’t read horror. Horror is for … other people. I read serious fiction. I read fiction with literary merit.
You know it’s true: Many people will simply refuse to browse in the horror section (or crime, or romance etc) because they’ve been told that so-called popular fiction is inherently less valuable, and they don’t want to be seen there. Theoretically, of course, a novel sitting in the horror section could be very serious, and even fulfill some of the self-aggrandizing characteristics of literary fiction. It might have both complex, evolving characterizations and plot.
Genre is a marketing convenience; it is also a straight-jacket for creativity.
Read MoreToday’s guest blogger, Anna Louise Lucia, is someone I’ve come to know through a super supportive goal-in-a-month (GIAM) writing group. Anna’s latest book, Dangerous Lies, was recently released, and I was intrigued to know more about her publishing experience, as she’s published with an indie. She graciously agreed to illuminate all of us.
Thanks for being here, Anna. Take it away!
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When Therese kindly invited me to blog on Writer Unboxed, she had one request – can you give us a perspective on writing for an indie?
At which point, naturally, my mind went blank.
And, as usual, when my mind goes blank (guys, this happens WAY too often!) I turned to friends and colleagues for answers. “Why did you choose an independent publisher?” I asked, and “what’s your take on writing for one?”
My first reply, from Phil Bowie, (whose latest release KLLRS was called, “Good, solid, face-paced adventure fiction,” by Stephen Coonts) was, “how are you defining an Independent Publisher?”
Thanks Phil. ;-)
Good point, though. There’s a lot of confusion out there about different routes to publication. I’d be a fool if I thought I could take you through all of that. But I think I can define what an indie is.
Medallion Press is adamant they are neither a “small press” or a “print on demand” publisher. They are not, emphatically not, a vanity press. They are an Independent Publisher – a publisher that isn’t part of a large conglomerate or multinational. They have print runs and sales figures that qualify them for RWA recognised status, and they, crucially for professional writers, offer advances and competitive royalties.
Independent presses are small, though. They don’t have the entrée to Walmart’s book aisles, and they can often struggle to get books on display on the shelves of major bookstore chains. However, collectively, independent publishers make up approximately half the market share of the book industry.
So that’s an Indie. But why choose one?
Read MoreFirst off, happy release day to debut author, Kristina Riggle, who blogs at The Debutante Ball. I’ll be interviewing Kristina here soon, and I’m really looking forward to reading her novel, Real Life & Liars. Learn more at her website, HERE.
In just under four months, The Last Will of Moira Leahy will be released. I still can’t believe it. And I think someone smudged over all the days from January through June, because I don’t remember feeling their hours properly. I’m not as far along in book #2 as I’d hoped to be. Sure I’ve been working on it, but I’ve also spent time on other things almost-published authors need to do. Here’s what:
Website. I wanted my website be full bodied and complete, so after way too many hours of working on content, trolling Flickr for the perfect photos and acquiring permissions to use those photos, and emailing back and forth with my fabu designer, Sunni, to get the site *just so*, I can happily announce that ThereseWalsh.com is up! A warning: If you don’t like music, turn your speakers off before visiting. I opted to include music on the main page; it’s not only part of my brand, the song–Atlantico by Roberto Cacciapaglia–pretty much summarizes the book, musically speaking. I’ve only heard one negative comment about it so far, but if you have strong feelings one way or the other, please speak up; I’ll appreciate your honesty. Really, any feedback is appreciated. If you see a typo, don’t be shy about telling me. If you love something, I’d like to hear about that, too. And be sure to check out the photo journal, which is as close to a book trailer as I’ll get for Last Will.
Social media. This may or may not be a surprise to you, but I’m kind of an introvert. That being the case, social media wasn’t something I’d embraced until I *had* to. Barbara Samuel convinced me to join two particular groups, and so now you can find me on both Facebook and Twitter. Allison has blogged a lot about Twitter here lately, but I just wanted to let you know that I, too, have formed some great connections on Twitter in particular–maybe as important as the connections I’d formed here at WU and at Backspace and Absolute Write .
At the urgings of my publicity team, I’ve also joined groups like Goodreads and Shelfari, though I’m not doing very much there yet. I have a feeling I’ll abandon LinkedIn at some point. I’ve learned something a lot of you probably already know–social media can be a time suck. Be careful how you use it.
Blurbs. Our fifth blurb for the book came in just yesterday. My editor and agent did most of the work contacting authors for potential blurbs; I only contacted a couple of people on my own, and reaching out didn’t take a lot of time. But making a bullet […]
Read MoreA few months back, I blogged here on Writer Unboxed about my ambivalence toward Twitter, and I promised an update as I debated whether or not to stick with it…and so, today, I thought it would be a good time to talk about why I’m a Twitter convert.
Let me back up a little bit and say this: as writers, our job requires that we write. Obviously. But what I think a lot of people forget is that our job also requires that we sell ourselves. (Not, um, in the prostitution sense, but in the marketing sense.) Too many writers forget that. You can write the best book in the world and if no one has heard of it (or you), it’s not going to make one dang difference. This isn’t the sexy side of writing; it’s not the “I’m an artist” side of writing, but guess what? You don’t have a choice. There are too many books published these days, there are too many authors fighting for co-op and review space, and readers’ limited attention spans and budgets. It’s not a question of if you need to market yourself, it’s a question of how.
And thus, that leads me into Twitter. As you know, I was skeptical. It seemed like a narcissistic, self-involved activity – posting updates of my daily routine, of whatever fleeting thoughts were flying through my brain. But, I admit that I was wrong. Twitter, in my opinion, can be a pretty powerful tool to get people interested not just in your books, but in YOU, and again, in this competitive market, that only serves as a benefit. Right now, I have 900+ followers. Here are 900 people who might not have heard of me before I signed up, 900 people who might retweet (Twitter speak for “forward”) something on my behalf, 900 people with whom I can engage in a conversation, finding a mutual interest or common ground or shared love of a TV show that makes me (and vice versa, of course, as I’m always game to find others who share my love of The Bachelorette, etc) a little more interesting to a potential reader, and thus, make them a little more likely to pick up one of my books. There’s a reason, after all, that we love those gossip magazine features, “Stars, they’re just like us!” Which isn’t to say that I’m a star, but is to say that anything you can do to make readers feel a personal connection with you is a plus. (And I don’t mean to imply that my time on Twitter is simply a strategic move to get readers to like me. I enjoy the hell out of it, and I enjoy the hell out of the conversations I have with total strangers. Weird, I know.)
A few random Twitter tips/thoughts that are strictly my opinion:
Read MoreNews and views from around the intertubes:
Book Business has published a great article on the top 50 women in the book publishing industry and how they’ve become the driving force in today’s market.
From multimillion-dollar acquisitions to multimillion-dollar best-sellers, powerful women stand at every pivotal, decision-making point in the book publishing process. Book Business’ first annual “50 Top Women in Book Publishing” feature recognizes and honors some of these industry leaders who affect and transform how publishing companies do business, and what—and how—consumers read.
There are too many gems in the massive article, but it’s well worth reading to give insights into what editors are thinking when a project comes across their desks.
Amazon’s Kindle reader has some competition now. The Cool-er is the next wave of e-book reader, with some notable upgrades from Kindle (and a cheaper price):
Above all, the Cool-er’s books are far less restrictively protected than Amazon’s or Sony’s. For starters, you can read one on your Mac or PC. According to Interead, starting this fall, you’ll be able to sell books you’ve written on Coolerbooks.com; you’ll keep 50 percent of each sale.
And most intriguingly of all, you can share a Cool-er book you’ve bought with four other people. Think family, buddies or book club.
That’s a huge deal. It takes a step toward addressing what may be the biggest remaining e-book gotcha: you’re stuck with your books forever. On the Kindle, for example, once you’ve finished reading a book, you can’t pass it on, sell it or even donate it to a library.
But as an iTouch enthusiast, I’m even more excited about the prospect of books being downloaded as an app right to my “baby”.
The Random House Group today announced the launch of new ebook reader applications available on the Apple App Store. The apps have been developed in partnership with Verlagsgruppe Random House in Germany and allow iPhone and iPod touch users to download digital editions of current bestselling titles.
The launch list includes:
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