Writing Process Blog Tour

Jemima Pett author of The Princelings of the East series and a whole cornucopia of other books, recently tagged me to join the Writing Process Blog Tour.

If you are tagged, you are to write responses to the questions below and then tag three other authors.

At the bottom of this post you will find three talented authors who will be posting in the next week or so.

The Questions

What am I working on?

I am exactly just over the halfway mark in the first draft of A Quill Ladder, the sequel to my middle-grade/YA novel A Pair of Docks that explores the boundary between science and witchcraft. I will be publishing A Quill Ladder in November and am quite excited about how the draft is going.

I am also working on my next novel for adults about a single mom who has battled alcoholism in the past and is trying to put her life back together in a small town after the disappearance of her fiancé. The tentative title is Broken Wing, but that could change. I will be posting a blurb for that novel on my site soon. I also just finished and pressed publish on the ebook for my first adult novel In the Shadows of the Mosquito Constellation this morning! This book has been seven years in the writing so I am very glad to have it finally see the light of day. In the Shadows is set in a post-economic collapse world and explores the moral questions associated with adjusting to life without all of the things, like grocery stores, to which we are accustomed. It also has some romance and a whole lot of adventure. Check it out!

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

My work has a lot of complexity and is written, for the most part, with literary fiction-style prose, but with action adventure-style plots. I do a lot of research to try to create intricate believable plots and I hope that I tie everything together at the end.

Why do I write what I do?

I just get ideas for stories – sometimes in dreams, sometimes just in my imaginings, and then my mind moves forward and starts developing them (generally unbidden). But because I am an environmental researcher in the fields of climate change, energy, and food security, my writing does have an environmental theme, or is attempting to make some sort of social commentary with regard to the way we live. I am too shy to be a politician myself, so I use my books to bring forward some of the ideas that are important to me and that I think we need to talk about. So I guess I am hiding behind my characters.

I also wrote A Pair of Docks with a strong female science geek protagonist to encourage girls to believe that they can be scientists and specifically to consider being physicists and chemists. I wrote about that in this blog post on Girls in Science.

How does my writing process work?

I work in a variety of ways. I usually start with an idea and try to develop it and the characters in my mind first so that I have an idea of the overall plot arc and the main characters before I even sit down to write. Then it is a pretty organic process of just starting to write and get in the character’s heads and take the story where it needs to go. Sometimes I have certain information or clues or events that need to happen in a chapter based on my loose mental outline, so I make those happen. Other times things just pop into my head as I am going along. For example, in my most recent chapter in A Quill Ladder, some of the characters broke into an office to get a map, and the map was missing. I knew beforehand that the map was missing, but I did not know until I was writing it that they would find drops of blood in the office as well. I am inspired by dreams or things that I see that I think will fit. There is a lot of serendipity in the writing process, whereby the more I am working on something, the more ideas I generate, and the more they fit together. I am constantly surprised by how interconnected things are and how lucky I get when I am researching something.

I do write myself into a box occasionally and have to backtrack and undo something, or adjust something, but that happens in the rewriting process. I generally try to get the first draft written over the course of about five months, writing 1200 words a day as many days of the week as I can. Then I start editing. I rewrote A Pair of Docks almost entirely four times, and I rewrote In the Shadows of the Mosquito Constellation probably twenty times. I am hoping that my future books don’t have to be entirely rewritten quite as many times.

Who’s Up NEXT Week (or so)?

I’ve invited three wonderful authors to take part, all of whom are writing books I really admire (you can read my reviews of them). Only two have said yes so far, but watch for me to add the third name in the next day or two.

Kev Heritage is the author of YA novel Blue into the Rip and the IronScythe Sagas. The introduction to the IronScythe Sagas is currently free on Amazon. He is also one of the authors of the bestselling From the Indie Side anthology and quite a few other books. Kev is also known to engage in hilarious question and answer sessions on Twitter while he commutes to and from work at hashtag #KevSA. You can find his website here, and follow him on Twitter here.

Yolanda Ridge is the author of two middle grade novels about the irrepressible Brianna Bridges entitled Trouble in the Trees and Road Block. My youngest child loved them both. Like me, she lives in the mountains of BC (don’t all fabulous writers?) and is an all around great person. There is a rumour that she is working on something new and exciting that I can’t wait to read. You can find her website here.

Esther Krogdahl released her modern-day fantasy novel, Ruthless, in February this year. The uniquely supernatural storyline is filled with unpredictable twist and turns that keep readers turning the pages. Busy with a full time job as a software developer, Esther has spent every spare moment over the past year developing the story, swapping writing code for writing her novel. Esther’s web site and blog offers candid insights into indie writing and publishing, mixed with her sassy observations on life and nerdy reviews of games and technology.

Look out for updates on this post to their slots in the Writing Process Blog Tour – or visit their blogs now (linked to their names) and follow them!

Marketing Your Book – A Primer – Part Six

This week I am covering the following aspects of marketing:

1)   Independent booksellers

2)   Your friends

3)   Wattpad

I have also added a few more topics to the "marketing your book" list – book events, participating in an anthology, and Lendle. I will cover those in part eight of this series and will continue to add new ideas as opportunities arise. I have also made sure to update earlier posts with new data as I have added to my marketing experience so be sure to check back on earlier posts for new information.

Independent Booksellers

Photo Credit: bass_nroll / flickr / Creative Commons

Getting your book on the shelves of local independent bookstores is an important part of your marketing platform. This is especially true of bookstores in your local community if you live in a small town, as many of your friends will want to buy your book and they will also want to support their local bookseller. One of the sales people at our local store took an interest in my book and talked it up to many customers. As a result, I sold almost forty books from my local bookstore alone.

But it is also important to try to get your books into bookstores in the surrounding area. Because you are "local" you will still have some appeal for buyers and independent booksellers will often help you out by putting your book out in displays with other local authors (I also saw advice that you can buy foil stickers that say "local author" on-line and just slap them on your book. I have not done this yet but it seems like a good idea).

In order to get into independent bookstores, you generally have to be willing to take returns – that is your books is basically on consignment at the store and if it doesn’t sell, you don’t get paid and you have to go retrieve your book. As a result, I kept the bookstores I approached within driving distance and on routes that I often travel for work or holidays - otherwise you have to pay the postage to get your book to the store and get your returns back, which will probably decimate any profit you may have made. Booksellers will also want a reasonable margin. Some say 40% is the standard, but I found that booksellers in my local area were willing to take a little less once I explained my costs.

In order to interest them, I did up a sell sheet with some of my best reviews, contact information, book blurb and a general outline of what I was hoping for from them. I found this to be an effective way to approach them. I emailed out the sell sheet and told them I would drop by with a copy of my book for them to look at. That way they could think about it without me standing there and I didn’t have to walk in and introduce myself totally cold as they had some idea who I was. So far, I don't think I have sold a HUGE number of copies, but I have sold copies and five local booksellers have taken my book.

Some experts would say that it is not worth the effort of trying to get your book on bookstore shelves, but if you keep your effort limited I think it is worth it. Being in your local bookstore just gives you some street cred as a writer, and it is certainly nice to see your book on a shelf somewhere other than in your own office (it is also nice to see an empty spot where your books once were because they sold out). It also helps to support local booksellers which I would argue is very important.

Some other tips that I have not tried in this regard but might in the future include: 1) Signing up with a regional book distributor so that booksellers can order from them instead of you. This might work if your book is already established and there is a demand for it, but at this point if you are an unknown, the bookseller still has to hear about your book, and that means you have to go into the store. 2) Listing your book with Nielsen or Books in Print. This may help again if your book is in demand, and it may help with your credibility when you go into stores. But again, the reality is that you need to be discovered by these booksellers and the main way you are going to accomplish that is by standing in their store wearing your best and most sincere smile. 3) Ensuring your promotional material, including your website, do not just list your book as being available on Amazon. After all, Amazon is one of their main competitors. Why would they want to take a book that heavily promotes their competitor? 

Bottom Line: All of the bookstores I approached took a few copies of my book and while I have not made scads of money this way, it has helped to get my name out there and some people (understandably) just love buying their books from a local bookstore.

Your Friends

Who really are your biggest fans? Well, okay more accurately who are your first fans? Your friends. And hopefully if you are a good enough writer, they will continue to be your fans. I don’t market to my friends a lot, because really they like me for reasons other than my writing. But when A Pair of Docks first came out, I did post it on Facebook, which thanks to my lovely friends, did create a small Facebook frenzy – probably because I rarely mention my writing on Facebook, so many of them had no idea I even write, never mind that I had a book coming out. Of course now a few of them actually think I’m rich, but that is another story.

My friends were super useful in giving A Pair of Docks an initial boost, especially on Amazon.ca and pushed it into the number one spot on the Hot New Releases in my category within 24 hours of releasing it. In addition, when it was doing really well as a result of a promotion that I did in February, I asked my friends to buy it at that point in time – but only if they had been planning to buy it anyway. It is possible that their additional purchases were enough to push me into the number one slot in my category. It might have hit number one anyway without the help of my friends, but I’m still very grateful for their support.

Bottom Line: Your friends count as customers and make sure you do not ignore them. They can help get your book off the ground and be those extra few purchases in times of need. It’s also just nice to have people say to you in person “I loved your book.” Make sure though that you are respectful and only market to them on occasion. Endless reminders to “buy my book” will not go down well with your friends – and nor should it.

Wattpad

Okay so I’m tainted. I’m not watty material. I have never been able to quite find my way in these social marketing networks that require a lot of interaction and friending and reading of other people’s material on the part of the writer in order to sell a few books. I would rather just write and read the stuff I want to read. I also find it easier (for me) to spend the time I would spend cultivating relationships in these social networking sites working for pay, so that I can afford more effective (in my mind) advertising for my novels. I know that writing these days is all about building relationships and a fan base and I am not adverse to interacting with people, but I am just not sure if the amount of time and types of interactions facilitated by Wattpad lead to that result. It is, it seems, mostly a community of writers, and while it is great to have writer friends, you need to have a community of readers.

That is like the longest disclaimer ever. For some people Wattpad works. Some people have gotten traditional publishing contracts as a result of their huge popularity on Wattpad. But does Wattpad actually sell books? I am not so sure. Most people are on Wattpad in order to access free writing, and in order to promote their own writing. Once you have read something for free, are you actually going to go out and buy it? Some people try to get around this by posting first drafts or the first half of their novel on Wattpad and then telling people to go to Amazon for the final copy. However this is not considered to be cool Wattpad behaviour. For the most part, to be successful, you need to regularly post new chapters and be willing to share an entire novel for free.

I know a writer who has been hugely successful on Wattpad with over 400,000 reads on her novel, but when I checked her sales rankings on Amazon, it did not seem that her Wattpad success has translated into sales. Maybe it will translate into sales on future books though.

Wattpad is also a community of, for the most part, younger females. Thus the books that tend to be most successful on it are YA, fan-fiction, paranormal, fantasy and romance. This creates a different set of social norms than curmudgeonly old people like me are used to (okay I'm not that old). While most people of course were respectful, some of the dramas that unfolded there during my brief testing period, in which writers would publicly post rants that people were asking for their next chapter and they were busy and nobody understood, were a bit wild. My life is dramatic enough. I am not sure if I need to partake in that kind of on-line drama.

On the other hand, if you have a novel in your drawer that is in reasonably good shape and you don't have aspirations to publish it right away, you can throw it up one chapter at a time as a serial on Wattpad. This could be a low interaction way to potentially attract readers and purchasers for your other work. It still requires work though. You want to ensure that it is error free and you still have to check back in and respond to comments from readers. CJ Archer offers some great thoughts on how Wattpad can work for writers and how she used it to promote her YA novel The Medium. Also scroll down and read the comment from Charlotte with regard to using Wattpad promotions. This may be a useful strategy to consider. Again though, it is all about having an entire novel you are willing to share for free, and while I might get there some day, I don't quite have enough material yet.

Bottom Line: As with any social networking writing site, you get what you put into Wattpad out of Wattpad. If you are willing to take the time and comment on other people’s work, you will probably get reads for your work. Some people seem able to get a lot of reads without putting in that networking time, but not many. Certain genres that appeal to younger people seem to do better on this front than others. It is unclear, though, whether Wattpad popularity translates into sales, unless you have an entire novel (potentially the first in a series) you can share for free.

Formatting Your Novel - The Spaces

This week is a bit of a different focus as I am again working on formatting, this time of In the Shadows of the Mosquito Constellation, which is now with the proofreader. As with A Pair of Docks, I had questions that I needed to address with three simple aspects of formatting:

• The first line of each chapter;
• POV shifts; and
• Scene breaks.

Try as I might, I could find no definitive advice on how these three things are handled, and surprisingly there seems to be a lot of confusion out there on the part of editors. There is lots of advice on how to handle these things when formatting your manuscript for submission to agents and publishers. The advice with respect to manuscripts is that the first line of every paragraph should be indented and single or double line breaks, hashtags or stars should be used to show scene breaks. But there is limited advice on whether scene breaks and POV shifts within chapters should be treated differently, and there is almost no advice on how any of these things should be handled in the final formatting of a novel. Although I have not, until this year, spent a lot of time examining just how novels are formatted, I had the vague sense that the first lines of scenes and chapters may not be indented and that some symbol or row of stars is often used to separate both scenes and POV shifts.

 eLizArFeiNieL Creative Commons

Since I could find no definitive “Formatting Your Novel for Dummies” on-line, I decided to go to the best resource I often have – the books on my shelves. Books written from one POV, or that have POV shifts that only occur from chapter to chapter, are obviously easier to format, as it is only the scene breaks and the first line of each chapter for which decisions need to be made. Since my novels include both scene breaks and POV shifts within chapters, I decided to investigate only books that I know include more than one POV. To ensure a somewhat diverse set of results, I pulled twelve such books from my shelf.

A minor digression before I give you the results. I have always called the symbol that you sometimes find between scene breaks and/or POV shifts a glyph. Turns out that they are not called glyphs, but that glyphs are often used to create them, and that they have no generally accepted name – how confusing is that?

Here is the helpful explanation on Wikipedia:

“Space between paragraphs in a section break is sometimes accompanied by an asterism (either proper ⁂ or manual * * *), a horizontal rule, fleurons, or by other ornamental symbols. An ornamental symbol used as section break does not have a generally accepted name. Such a typographic device can be specifically referred to as dinkus, space break symbol, paragraph separator, paragraph divider, horizontal divider, thought break, or as an instance of filigree or flourish. Ornamental section breaks can be created using glyphs, rows of lozenge, dingbats, or other miscellaneous symbols. Fonts such as Webdings and Wingdings include many such glyphs.”

I have never heard it called a dinkus, but okay…

So how do most publishers approach these formatting issues based on my research.

First Line of Chapter

Unlike other paragraphs in the chapter, the first paragraph of the chapter was universally NOT indented in all of my sample books. From there it varied in terms of the typography including the following:

• Drop Capital: 4
• Three to five words all in small caps: 3
• No special typography: 2
• Raised Capital: 1
• Five to ten words in different font: 1
• Drop Capital and three words all in small caps: 1

Conclusion: Definitely no indent, and then the drop capital and small capitals approaches seem equally popular.

POV Shifts

POV shifts were treated very differently in the twelve novels I examined, but again as with the first line of the chapter, the first line of a paragraph where the POV had changed was NOT indented in all of the books. From there, the typography, size of the line space break, and symbol with no accepted name (which I am going to call a glyph) varied:

• Three to five line spaces, no special typography or glyph: 3
• Three to five line spaces and a glyph, but no special typography: 3
• Three to five line spaces, a glyph and first three to five words in small capitals: 2
• POV shifts only chapter to chapter or when one character writes a letter: 2 (technically these ones don’t really count)
• Three to five line spaces, and first three to five words in small capitals: 1
• Single space, drop capital and character’s name: 1
• Three to five line spaces, a glyph and first five to ten words in different font: 1

Conclusion: Lots of variation. Again, definitely no indent, larger spaces than I expected, and either nothing or just a glyph seem most popular. Note that a glyph appeared in six of the twelve examples considered. Some of them are really flashy though with special typography, glyph and large break.

Scene Changes

As with the other breaks, there was no indent in all but two of the examples examined for scene changes. In seven of the novels, POV changes and scene breaks, where the POV did not change, were treated the SAME. In the other five novels, the scene changes were usually more subdued than the POV change breaks. In three, they were just a single spaced break with no glyph or special typography.

• Three to five line spaces, no special typography or glyph: 2
• Three to five line spaces and a glyph, but no special typography: 2
• Single line space with an indent: 2
• Single line space with no indent: 1
• Three to five line spaces, a glyph and first three to five words in small capitals: 1
• Three to five line spaces, and first three to five words in small capitals: 1
• Three to five line spaces and first five to ten words in different font: 1
• Single line space with first three words in all caps: 1

Conclusion: Scene breaks can be just as flashy as POV breaks, but in general they are not. The number of line spaces tends to be smaller and there is more limited use of glyphs. Scene breaks also sometimes have indents.

By instinct, I had been doing it correctly (or in one of the accepted formats). Perhaps I have internalized all my years of staring half-awake at books more than I thought. I now know what a dinkus is, but I think I will continue calling it a glyph.

What about you - what have you noticed? Am I hallucinating those glyphs?

Marketing Your Book – A Primer – Part Five

I am deep in final editing land for In the Shadows of the Mosquito Constellation (so many comma choices) and first draft land for the sequel to A Pair of Docks, so I will keep this brief. I also happened upon a few more marketing options in the last few weeks so I will add those to my list and do a seventh blog post in my marketing series. There may be a brief blog hiatus as I have to make some critical comma decisions in the next few weeks, and will have some other exciting writing news to share soon.

The marketing approaches I am going to address this week include:

·      Freebies

·      Sales

·      Price Pulsing

Price pulsing, freebies and sales are considered to be central to the marketing of indie books. Indie authors have far more control over their pricing than traditionally published authors and this gives them the freedom to use pricing as a marketing technique, often to great effect. In general, the indie strategy of keeping one’s e-book price low, relative to traditionally priced books, at times is a critical marketing ploy.

Freebies

Free used to be a key marketing strategy when Amazon counted free downloads as equivalent to sales in terms of Amazon rankings. Authors used free periods (usually through the one per three month five day free periods allowed on Kindle Direct Publishing Select – but there are other ways) to launch their rankings into the stratosphere, build their fan base and get reviews, and then hoped to translate their rankings and reviews into steady sales. However Amazon no longer counts free downloads as equivalent to sales, so this is no longer as effective a strategy. Nevertheless many writers still use free periods, or permanently free status (particularly for the first book in a series), as a key marketing approach. There are also a huge number of advertising sites specifically geared to advertising free books.

Some authors swear by free, including Lizzy Ford, who made all of her books free for 12 months, and Lindsay Buroker, who has had the first book of her Emperor’s Edge series available for free for a long time.

Joe Konrath also makes a very good case that free still works, and points out that free even worked for one of his books that is written under a pen name that he has not copped to owning yet – to make the point that free works also for relative unknowns.

Having observed it in action, free definitely works, especially if you have two books (two books in a series is even better), and you use your free period on your first book to drive sales on the second. Be warned though, you are going to give away a lot of free books, and for some people, particularly if you only have one book, it might not translate into continued sales once you start charging again. I am definitely going to try free as soon as book two of the Derivatives of Displacement is finished. If you are not part of KDP Select, you can make your book free by lowering the price on other platforms and then ensuring Amazon knows about it. Amazon will price match and your book will end up free. This seems to work but can be risky as it is not clear how quickly you can move the price of your book back up.

Bottom Line: Free still works. However it seems more effective when you have more than one book out and free downloads on one book result in additional sales on the other book.

Photo Credit: EnjoyTheFresh / deviantART / Creative Commons

Sales

Sales are other price related marketing strategies, especially since Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select now has the Kindle Countdown opportunity that allows you to keep your 70% royalty for an up to seven day ‘sale’ in which you can reduce the price of your book (within limits based on the original price) and then have it step up in price over the course of your sale until it reaches the original price. You can also just have it at one single sale price over the course of your countdown. Amazon puts a helpful Countdown meter of some sort on the side to help potential buyers feel the pressure. You must not have changed your price for thirty days before you start a Countdown.

You can also simply put your book on sale at any time on KDP and lower the price to 99 cents. But in the absence of a Countdown sale, you are only getting 35% royalty.

I have done both a straight 99 cent sale and a Countdown 99 cent sale. I kind of sullied my numbers though by advertising my Countdown sale so I can’t compare it directly to my straight 99 cent sale. I chose advertisers that did not cost more than $22 per day and used a different advertiser for all but one day of my six-day Countdown.

Based on my sales numbers, running a 99 cent sale of any sort without advertising is not really worth it. You might move a few books, but not a lot (keeping your book at 99 cents permanently is discussed below). Coupling advertising with the Countdown sale moved books, enough in one day for me to get bestseller status in my category and the glorious orange flag that accompanies it. That was a very exciting day.

It is important to note that on the days I did not have any advertising running, and I just had the Countdown sale on, I did not move any books. However most of my sales during the Countdown occurred during the last two days of the Countdown, which is also when I had my best advertising lined up. So did I sell a bunch of books those days because it was approaching the end of my Countdown (and the counter was ticking away) or because of the advertising? I don’t know. It is also critical to note that Countdowns can only be seen by US and UK customers (if you have a high enough original price to run a Countdown in the UK – I didn’t). So it is a bit more exclusive.

Despite the glory of being number one in my category for almost 48 hours, I did not quite cover my advertising costs with my sales returns, so don’t plan a trip to Hawaii before your Countdown. I managed to continue selling a few books a day after my Countdown ended, but within a week had returned to my usual sales patterns.

Darren Patrick and M. Louisa Locke offer very good analyses of their Kindle Countdown experiences (note that in the same post Locke also analyzes her experience with KDP Select free days and found them to be superior).

Bottom Line: Sales, and in particular Kindle Countdown sales, can boost your ranking and sales and result in a post sale bounce, but generally only if you do a promotion/advertising at the same time.

Price Pulsing

Everyone views price pulsing a little bit differently. For some people it is just simply a sale in which you drop your price and then raise it again while you are still cresting in the rankings, hoping to hold onto that ranking once your book has returned to the regular price as described by (and invented by?) David Gaughran.

Another approach to price pulsing is just to try a range of different price points for your book for a period of time each and finding the so-called sweet spot for your particular book. For some people, this is maintaining their price at 99 cents. You have to move a lot of books at 99 cents though to earn the same as what you would earn at $2.99, which is why $2.99 is one of the most common book prices out there for indie books. Others find they sell more books at a slightly higher price point of $3.99 and $4.99. As always, Lindsay Buroker offers some great thoughts on the topic. The point is to try a range of different prices and finding out what works in terms of the intersection between sales and returns from those sales. However, it is important to note that if you are planning a Countdown sale you can’t do any price pulsing in advance.

However price pulsing is not without its critics and some folks in forums suggest that if you consistently price pulse, some readers will simply wait for sales on your books (however they have to be watching your book pretty closely to know that you price pulse).

Bottom Line: I have not tried much in the way of price changes – I have just shifted between 99 cents and $2.99, but some further exploration might be worthwhile.

I would love to hear about your experiences with pricing. What worked, what didn't?

Marketing Your Book – A Primer – Part Four

Okay, Kindle Countdown on A Pair of Docks done, temporary bestseller status in my category achieved, powder skied, it must time for another blog post on marketing.

This week I am focusing on:

·      Entering book competitions

·      Giveaways

·      Advertising

These three options are where marketing can start to get more expensive than the previous options discussed, which have tended to be more time consuming than costly. Book competitions, giveaways and advertising can range from very expensive to moderately expensive and should be considered very carefully as a result.

Entering book competitions

There are a wide range of book competitions that indie authors can enter including the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, the Writer’s Digest Self Published Book Awards, the Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Award, and the Indie Reader Discovery Awards. See Kill Zone’s Book Contests for Indie Authors for a complete list with an analysis of each of the awards. Some of these awards are more prestigious than others with better prizes, while some are considered more vanity awards with a large number of categories in which apparently everybody wins. Some also include some side benefits, such as reviews, the judge’s score sheets and displays at book fairs. The Kill Zone offers a fairly good analysis of which awards are the best, while Writer Beware offers a rather scathing summary of the awards it believes to be the biggest scams.

While as an Indie author it might be tempting to enter all of these contests, aside from the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, they all have a fairly steep entry fee, ranging from $60 to $200, and often require you to submit hard copies of your novel, which will cost you not only for the hard copies, but also for the postage. Moreover, it is not clear whether wining an award actually translates into sales. You might be better off spending your money on advertising. I researched the past winners of the Readers Favorites Awards, considered to be one of the more vanity inclined awards (depending on your perspective), and found that the majority of the winning novels do not seem to be selling any better than my novel. Of course they might have had a sales bump around the time of the award, and the award stickers probably help, but it is not clear that they are worth the entry fee. Carrie Rubin offers a great rundown of her experience winning the Readers Favorite award. She is honest that it may not have resulted in any increase in sales, but it sounds like it was a truly positive experience for her. Let’s face it, we all want people to read our books, and winning one of these awards at least means your book was considered better than the other entries – and despite what some people claim about awards with so many categories, I am sure there were other entries.

Aside from the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, which is free to enter and has great prizes (and therefore is a no-brainer), I decided to enter the Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Award and I may enter one other contest this year – either Writer’s Digest or IPPY, but we will see how my marketing budget is going vis a vis my sales. I will keep you posted on the results of my contest entries.

Update: Well, I did not win the Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Award, but I did make it into the second round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. I will definitely enter that again given how painless it is.

Bottom Line: Enter the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award and research the other awards. Consider entering one if you think your book has a chance, but understand that winning may not result in any additional sales, and that some contests have less cache than others.

Giveaways

So the biggest giveaway site of all is of course Goodreads. Goodreads at this point will only allow you to give away paper copies of your book and you must mail them to your winners. As a result, it is not free to do a Goodreads Giveaway. You will have to pay for the copies of your book and the shipping, which depending on where you live and which countries you allow entries from, can be expensive. Because I live in Canada, I had to spend $10/copy for shipping and all of my winners were in the US. It would have been more expensive if I had not limited my Giveaway to Canada, the UK, the US and Australia. I gave away three copies, so my total cost was $54.

Goodreads does a great job of advertising your giveaway and those entering are given the option of adding your book to their ‘to read’ shelf, which many of them will, which is why, despite the expense of the paper copies, I think it is the most effective giveaway around. Goodreads also claims that many of their winners will read your book and write reviews. I ran my giveaway for a month and had 1164 entrants, and 494 people added it to their ‘to read’ shelves. To date, one of my winners has reviewed my book (thank you!) and my book still sits on the to read shelves of 477 people. I believe it resulted in a couple of sales, and subsequent reviews, as well as some positive interactions on Goodreads.

Bottom Line: Goodreads Giveaways get people to add your book to their shelves and draw some attention to your book. They are probably worth the money, but be wary of the shipping costs.

Advertising

Photo Credit: Jason Jones /flickr /Creative Commons

There must be at least a hundred on-line advertising sites for ebooks – and they vary in terms of their effectiveness. If you have been around the Indie world for long, you will have heard of Book Bub, Pixel of Ink and EReader News Today (ENT), which are considered at this point in time to be the Holy Grail of book advertising sites. Book Bub and ENT both require 10 or more at least 4 star reviews on Amazon (note - subsequent to this original post, Book Bub dropped its requirement to 7 reviews and indicated that each book would be evaluated on its own merits). Pixel of Ink is not currently accepting advertising for books over 99 cents in price. Book Bub is quite expensive depending on your genre and the price is higher if your book is not free or under $1. For a contemporary romance, a Book Bub ad will cost you $280 for a free book, and $580 for a 99 cent book (fantasy, science fiction and middle-grade fiction are all cheaper but still a minimum of $120 for a 99 cent book and higher for a regularly priced book), so you have to move a lot of books to justify that cost, and they are picky about what books they take. Some people try and try again to get their book advertised on Book Bub to no avail. But it is believed that Book Bub does work. ENT advertises for a percentage of your royalties during your advertising period.

I only recently topped seven positive reviews on Amazon so I have yet to try any of these sites. I did however try Kindle Nation Daily. I purchased a eBook of the Week ad in their Kids Corner for $149.99. For that, I got an ad front and centre on their Kids Corner, an interview with a 5th grader and a bonus book report from another 5th grader to use for my promotional work. They were lovely and helpful and tweeted about my book as well. But did I move books? I would say I sold about 20 ebooks at $2.99 as a result of the promotion. Not enough to pay for the promotion, but enough to get me ranked in my category a few times.

More recently, I did a kindle countdown promotion where I sold my book for 99 cents for a week and Amazon notes on their site that it is a limited time sale (you can tier it so that it goes from 99 cents to 1.99 to your original price over the course of a week – I will blog more about this next week). I wanted to advertise during my sale so I looked for cheaper advertising options that do not require more than 6 reviews, which is what I had at the time.

I went with: PeopleReads for one day for 6.99, Bargain Book Hunter for two days for $22.50, Booktastik for one day for $10, kboards for one day for $20, and BookBlast (which now appears to be called Book Sends) for one day for $20. I had each ad run on a different day of the promo so I could evaluate which one worked the best. My promo overall was pretty successful. I did not move a tonne of books, but I did manage to jump to number one in one category getting the bestseller flag for 48 hours and number two in another category. Which advertiser worked the best in terms of moving the most books on their day? Hands down BookBlast, which moved more than quadruple the number of books than the next leading contender. Because my book was only 99 cents (but you maintain your 70% royalty with the countdown), I THINK I covered my advertising costs with my sales, but I can’t be sure until I get the final statement from Kindle Direct Publishing. Unfortunately after several heady days at the top of my categories, I am starting to fall again as the sales dropped off once the countdown ended.

Update: Subsequent to this post, I crossed the magic 10 review threshold for A Pair of Docks and applied to Book Bub for an ad. I was accepted on my first try, which was very exciting, and scheduled the ad to occur during another Kindle Countdown. Book Bub delivers, and I again achieved bestseller status in my category. But more importantly, I managed to hold on to my sales, and the number two spot in two of my categories for almost a week after the promotion. Here I am sitting next to Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time.

Bottom Line: Advertising moves books, and helps with your sales ranking. However some of the smaller advertisers do not move enough books to pay for the cost of the ad. But they do result in your book getting in to the hands of more readers, which could help with reviews. I have not yet figured out how to get momentum from the ads whereby the sales continue following the advertising period, but so far the best results have come from Book Bub.

The First Two Months of Publishing

I am taking a short break in my marketing primer series as I have a big promotion coming up on February 17th and as a result should be able to give you more accurate details with regard to the effectiveness of the next four marketing strategies on my marketing list in two weeks.

In the meantime, my book is now two months old. I’m not sure if it has quite got its legs underneath it yet, but it has managed to teeter about the room a couple of times without taking out the coffee table.

These are the things I have learned in the first two months of publishing:

Leo Reynolds / flickr / Creative Commons License

1) It is possible to check your Amazon ranking and sales numbers every hour.

You shouldn’t. I rationalize it based on the fact that knowing how many sales I’ve made (or haven’t made) helps me to understand which of my marketing strategies are working. But checking every hour is probably qualifies me for some sort of psychiatric drugs, except that I know many other authors are doing the same thing – right? You are, aren’t you?... Guys?... Okay, okay. I’ll stop. The good news is, I now have a very good understanding now how quickly books slip up and down the Amazon ranking scale.

2) Five star reviews rock.

Yup, they do. Not much I can add here. Each one is a gift. They are why writers write. And even though I managed to restrain myself from filling the reviewer’s inboxes with smiley face filled thank you notes (as apparently that is bad form), I appreciate them more than words can express. 

3) A three star review feels like a bad review, but it isn’t.

Remember, three stars on Goodreads means that the reader actually liked the book – at least according to the Goodreads rating system. If a three star rater reader also left a review, not only did they like your novel, but they liked it enough, or felt sufficiently strongly about some aspect of it, to take the time to write something. Even in my less than glowing reviews, my reviewers have thus far been able to identify things that they liked or loved about my novel, and the things that they didn’t like or love, for me provide useful feedback with regard to what not to do next time. I have received some really thoughtful comments from readers, and I absolutely appreciate that they engaged with the content in a meaningful way and took the time to send their thoughts along. Ratings also mean different things to different people. One person’s three is another person’s four or even five. I have been consistently surprised to look at three star ratings (on other people’s books) that start with the sentence: this was a really good book.

4) Many popular and well-written books have Goodreads and Amazon ratings of just under four.

Just to be clear, I am still sitting in the fours in my ratings, but I had thought that when a book slips into the high threes, you know, like 3.87 or 3.56 that it is doomed. After doing a bit of research I realized how wrong that is. Multitudes of books that sell well have ratings in the high threes. In fact some of the more popular books have slightly lower ratings than less popular books, because they have so many ratings. If a large number of people read and rate your book, you are bound to have some less than stellar ratings and that is okay because a large number of people have read and rated your book!

Writer Kristina McMorris suggests that one of the best antidotes to a less than glowing review is to go and read a bunch of one-star reviews of some of your all-time favourite novels. I did spend some time doing this and I have a much better understanding of how readers engage with books and the range of reasons they do not give it a five-star rating, which are not sometimes the reasons that you think.

5) Your acquaintance’s romance novel will outsell your middle-grade fantasy.

I had this wild impression that middle-grade fantasy was a big seller. You know, like Harry Potter, Percy Jackson and the Chronicles of Narnia. Turns out middle-grade fiction might not sell as well as adult genre fiction. Many popular marketing sites state straight up that you will not have as much luck with children’s books as with adult books. R.L. Lefevers observed:

Also, in general, there are generally lower sales expectations for MG titles and (slightly) more willingness to wait for the slow build that happens as MG filters through the system. Many…things…don’t even happen until a year or so after a book has been out.

Okay, so patience is in order. I can work with a slow build. Perhaps I don’t have to start writing romances then. Well, I guess I already do write romances. I will be interested to see how they compete with my middle-grade books.

6) Many of my initial readers and fans are adults.

Yikes. Maybe I didn’t write a middle-grade fantasy. Knowing your audience is always a tricky thing, and in marketing I am constantly having to decide whether to push A Pair of Docks in the middle-grade or adult direction. A Pair of Docks, like Harry Potter and most of those great Pixar movies, is aimed at both adults and kids. But are adults really reading middle-grade fiction? Or are there just a few exceptions? In See Grown-ups Read, Alexandra Alter observes:

Middle-grade books have become a booming publishing category, fueled in part by adult fans who read "Harry Potter" and fell in love with the genre. J.K. Rowling's books, which sold more than 450 million copies, reintroduced millions of adults to the addictive pleasures of children's literature and created a new class of genre-agnostic reader who will pick up anything that's buzzy and compelling, even if it's written for 8 year olds. Far from being an anomaly, "Harry Potter" paved the way for a new crop of blockbuster children's books that are appealing to readers of all ages.

Overall there is far more crossover among adult, young adult and children’s literature than there ever was and less stigma for adults to read children’s books. Diary of a Wimpy Kid, believe it or not, was originally written for adults, but the publisher convinced Greg Kinney to target it towards kids.

Okay, so maybe that is all okay.

7) The long tail requires a lot of patience.

Hugh Howey and many other Indie authors talk a lot about the long tail of publishing – that it takes time for a book to build and an author to establish him or herself. Books that do not take off immediately have “forever” as Howey suggests to go viral and make it, and because they are ebooks or print on demand books, they have the luxury of having the time to do that. In the traditional publishing world in contrast, if a book doesn’t make it in 6 weeks to 6 months, it’s a goner. I’m not saying they are wrong. But darn, if forever doesn’t seem like a long time to wait.

8) I still don’t think of myself as a writer.

Despite claiming this was one of my goals for 2014, it is still an area of work. At best now, since most of the people around me are aware of my novel, I can muster an “I am sort of a writer, and I write.” I'm a hedge better, and I automatically don’t claim success in most areas of my life in case I later fail (and stating that I am a writer would be claiming success, right?), even though I have been paid to write and edit environmental reports and articles for years. So, I am not sure what that makes me - a report writer? But I am getting better at claiming to be a writer, especially after reading this article on the self-limiting habits of writers. I have also ordered Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking. It still ranks second in its Amazon categories despite having been published in 1993! I will let you know what I think.

9) The one good thing a day mantra works.

When I started this indie publishing and writing process, I wanted to set realistic goals. I decided the day after I published my novel that I would be happy if one good thing happened each day in association with my writing – just one! A sale, a good review, a nice comment from someone, an invitation to an event, an interview, even a virtual high five from another author. Two months later, I am surprised to discover that only one day in the last two months has passed in which not one good thing has happened. These good things have sustained me through the doubt (and some of the bad things).

Keep the good things coming, I say!

Marketing Your Book – A Primer – Part Three

My apologies for the brief blogging hiatus. I spent the last several weeks working, watching my children’s ski competitions and finishing the final major edits to my next novel In the Shadows of the Mosquito Constellation.

Given that these blog posts were getting rather long, I am going to start focusing on three marketing techniques a week instead of six and spread this series of posts over a few more weeks.

So this week we are focusing on:

• Participating in social media groups with other writers;
• Participating in social media groups with other readers; and
• Interviewing/Reviewing the work of other writers.

These are all the networking type approaches. In the traditional world, knowing the right other writers and reviewers can certainly help a writer’s career, and it certainly makes those book-related parties a lot more comfortable, but do these kinds of networking approaches work in the Indie world?

Participating in social media groups with other writers

There are many social media groups for writers in a variety of places – Facebook, LinkedIn, World Literary Café and so on. Many writers, keen to commiserate on the challenges of writing and hoping for the benefits of reciprocal promotion, participate in them. I belong to a few myself (some of which I love, some of which I am not as excited about). Some of the groups require you to be an actual member, while others allow you to drift in and out reading posts.

Photo Credit: jef safi \ 'pictosophizing via Compfight

There are pluses to these kinds of groups. Often other writers share useful links or insights. It is occasionally interesting to hear about the days of other writers (but sometimes other writers can seem pretty whingy). In addition, when these groups are willing to engage in reciprocal promotion, such as writing reviews for each other, posting each other’s links on their own websites, liking each other’s Facebook page and buying each other’s books (the list goes on an on), they have the capacity to push a book into the top 100 in its category and get a whole bunch of other eyes on the book, which can then generate ongoing sales. Some groups also exchange services such as proofreading, beta reading and cover design. In addition, meeting the right writer (although less likely perhaps than in the traditional world, but still possible) can open the door to a whole new set of opportunities if they decide to mention your name to their own fans, introduce you to someone, or even better (and I have seen this happen many times), co-write a book with you, publish anthology with you, or release a box set with you. These can be very positive outcomes.

On the other hand, these groups can be a huge time sink – they are a virtual water cooler in which you can end up spending a lot of time hearing about people’s navel gazing about their writing as well as their stapler obsessions – and in many groups you end up hanging out with writers who may or may not be producing quality work. Moreover if you accept promotion from people within your writing group, you also have to be willing to promote their work even if you do not think it is of high quality, and this can be very uncomfortable, not to mention a little bit ethically questionable from my perspective. I understand the need for indie writers to help each other out, but there is also a line and it is important to know where your own line is.

Bottom Line: Participating in groups of writers and engaging in reciprocal promotion can move books and get you a bunch of positive reviews. But you have to be prepared to do the same for others even if you don’t appreciate their writing, and you then to some degree become linked publicly with writers you don’t necessarily want to be linked with. If you find a group of like-minded and like-quality writers to hang out with virtually that you are excited about promoting then by all means take advantage of this opportunity. Groups that just exchange ideas are also really useful. You may not sell books directly from groups like this, but you might learn how to sell books in other ways, and some stapler stories are interesting.

Participating in social media groups with other readers

If you are a writer you are probably reader, and if you are not, you should be, and chances are, as a reader, you are already on Goodreads. Goodreads is one of the best sites for making friends with other readers, and in doing so gaining more reads for your own novel. Of course you should set up an author page on Goodreads and get your book listed. You can also link your blog to your author page. These are things you should automatically do as part of your author platform (see last week’s post). But after that you should move on to actual interaction. Goodreads allows you to join various groups of readers (and groups of readers/writers) who engage in Read 4 Reviews, Book of the Month, Author of the Week, and other types of promotional activities. You can search for and join groups relevant to your book and then find the threads that allow you to sign up for a variety of promotional activities. You can also take advantage of the opportunity to write short reviews of the books you have read and build a fan base for your reviews – some of your fans may decide to check out your novel. You can add your books to lists in Listopia on Goodreads and then vote for them. The general wisdom here is that you should not put your book on any "best of" lists and focus only on a few lists that fit the genre of your book. You can also do giveaways, but that will be discussed next week.

I have had some success in the Read 4 Review threads, and a few people who I have sent copies of my book to have given me positive reviews. I have also met other writers working in the same genre and exchanged useful ideas, and I have had some interesting conversations with both readers and writers regarding books in my genre in general. I did add A Pair of Docks to a time travel list on Goodreads, but am feeling a little leery about going too far on that front. I will probably add it to a few more lists as time goes on. I still have more to explore on Goodreads. Thomas Umstattd offers some additional ideas and I am taking a Goodreads Power User course in March from the Author Learning Centre. However overall, my experiences on Goodreads have been very positive and I believe I have at least sold a few books as a result.

Bottom Line: As with anything, you can spend a lot of time on Goodreads, but an investment of some time is worth it as it does seem to result in a few sales, and it is kind of fun to hang out with people who are so excited about reading.

Interviewing/Reviewing the work of other writers

It is possible that I am now doing semi-periodic reviews of other indie books for Underground Book Reviews (well more accurately, I have done one and have been scheduled for two more). I don’t know if this will result in book sales for me (my first review did not seem to), but it is another opportunity for exposure, and even through just the one review, which also involved an interview, I got to meet a pretty cool author, Tony Perez-Giese, and talk about writerly things and become Goodreads friends with him. He also subsequently tweeted and posted the review and interview on his sites. Doing reviews does give you a legitimate reason to approach other writers that you probably would not normally have the guts to contact (or perhaps that is just me) and learn from their approaches. Martin Crosbie swears by simply approaching other successful indie writers and interviewing them about their methods. He has found most indie writers to be totally receptive to sharing their experiences. He doesn’t generally blog about the interviews, but he shares them in his workshops, and believes he has gained many valuable insights from them. Being a genuinely friendly guy, he also seems to have made a lot of good writer friends, which has served him well. Since I am not that great at the cold call (or cold email), contacting other writers under the banner of conducting reviews for a legitimate review site allows me to potentially learn from and network with other writers (which allows for the range of benefits outlined in the section on participating in social media with the right writer). In addition, reviewing other books requires you to read more deeply and consider what works and what does not work in other people’s writing, which will help make you a better writer and reader.

Bottom line: Reviewing other people’s work will probably not sell books in the short-term, but it can help increase your exposure, improve your writing, and allow you to meet cool writers, who can help your career. In the long-term if you establish yourself as a reviewer of quality, it may help move books.

As always I am happy to hear about your experiences. I am still learning and will add to this post on an ongoing basis.

Marketing Your Book – A Primer – Part Two

Okay, so this week I will focus on the next six items in my long list of potential ways to market your book that I provided last week. The next six approaches on the list included:

• Your blog
• Your platform/social media presence
• Your email list
• Tweeting/Facebooking/Google+ing about your book
• Reviews
• Blog Tours

Your Blog

Okay so we all know the importance of having a blog, right? And I just to be clear here, I am differentiating a blog from a more static website, or a website where you occasionally provide announcements or talk about your book. A blog is a place where you talk relatively regularly about issues, generally related to writing, beyond just your book. There are some amazing writing blogs out there. These include David Gaughran, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Catherine Caffeinated, The Book Designer, Hugh Howey and Chuck Wendig. I read them regularly, both for the insight these writers provide into writing, self-publishing and traditional publishing, and because their comments are a virtual hangout place for writers. Got a problem? Chances are one of these bloggers will have addressed it. But, here’s the catch, except for a couple of them, I have not purchased any of their books. And I have only purchased their non-fiction, except for Wool. But did I buy Wool because I read Hugh Howey’s blog, or because everyone is buying Wool? Probably the latter.

Overall, unless your blog becomes a book (and generally speaking this only happens if you are writing non-fiction), blogging does not seem to sell books. Nevertheless Holly Robinson and Mike Duran argue that it is still worth it. Not only does it help hone your writing skills, but it’s free marketing (aside from your time of course, but as a writer you get used to working for free), and each blog post adds to your discoverability and on-line persona. If you are like me, it is far easier to convey your personality in a thoughtful (or reasonably thoughtful) blog post than a 140-character tweet that I generally bollix. Robinson and Duran claim that blogging add to your snowflake effect – each blog is a snowflake that will hopefully add up to 40 cennies of fresh pow…okay that last bit was my addition. I do live in a ski town after all.

Bottom line: Blog regularly and thoughtfully. It will raise your profile, but don’t expect it to result in direct sales and don’t let it take away from your fiction writing.

Your Platform/Social Media Presence

Photo Credit: .aditya. via Compfight

Okay, so this section covers more static websites, your Facebook Posts, Tweets, Google+ posts and comments on other people’s blogs and in on-line discussion forums. This does not include posting and tweeting about your book. That is covered in the next section. This is more about sharing the general glowing wonderfulness of your personality, both by building relationships and being funny or quirky in your posts, or just somehow being interesting. Here’s my take: most people just are not that wonderful or interesting and you could sink a lot of time into trying to be an on-line personality. How many real relationships can you realistically build on-line? You can build some, and I have, and I really like my on-line friends. But I doubt they have bought my book, and if they have, that is only a handful of purchases, because I only have the capacity to engage with twenty to thirty people on an ongoing basis on-line, whereby we really and truly have a relationship. If you have hundreds of on-line buddies, and hang out in chat rooms all the time, you may not be spending enough time writing. And yes, your on-line buddies might buy your book, but if you have not taken the time to write a good book, nobody else will. The same goes for posting an endless stream of tweets and Facebook posts. Yes, you might be entertaining a few people, but you are not writing your book. (Note: that these comments do not apply to people who have no children, pets, spouses, jobs or other interests and therefore have their entire day to devote to writing and building on-line relationships – you are lucky and you should absolutely make use of the opportunity you have.)

Bottom line: Yes, you should have a Facebook account and a Twitter account, and maybe a Google+ account. By all means make comments on your favourite blog posts. You must have an on-line personality – and you should endeavor to make it as interesting and wonderful a personality as possible, but be judicious in the amount of time you spend on this (you can only be so interesting and wonderful) and do not expect it to sell books, unless you are one of the very lucky few.

Your Email List

People who sign up to receive emails of your blog posts and book updates are generally more committed fans than those who follow you on twitter or stumble across your blog from time to time. David Gaughran swears by the power of an email list – he should probably know, as he likely has a long one. The thing about an email list, is that it does ensure that fans who like your writing (or your blog) enough to sign up for the list, do not miss the boat when you have a new book out. It also ensures that they will likely become more regular readers of your blog because they will always know when you have a new post. Will it convert the regular blog readers into book buyers? Maybe a few. An email list, does give you the opportunity to be a bit more aggressive with your marketing materials as you are sending them out to people who have at least some interest in you (rather than tweeting ad nauseum about it to people who don’t – see below). This could convert a few tire kickers into buyers. But too much and you will seem spammy and they might unsubscribe.

Bottom line: Set up an email list by all means. It is an easy and passive way to stay connected with people who at least at one time were vaguely interested in what you have to say. Don’t spam people though.

Tweeting/Facebooking/Google+ing about your book

Buy my book, Buy my book, Buy my book, New 5-star review, people can’t put it down, rave reviews are pouring in… and so on. We all know these tweets. We all get them all day. We all have probably posted a few. Do they sell books? I don’t know. Do you buy books from people who tweet about their books all day? I will follow their links sometimes and check out their Amazon ranking, and admittedly, some of them are clearly selling books. But are they selling as a result of the tweets? I’m not sure. If they are the determined sorts that they come across as in twitter, I can’t help but wonder what else they are doing to sell their book. I’ve bought the ebooks of a couple of the most egregious tweeters, especially when they are free (so not really a purchase then), just to see what why they’ve managed to get themselves so excited about their own writing. The two I downloaded were not bad (at least the first few pages weren’t), but I suspect a lot of books out there are not bad, and I won’t be returning to those authors to make a paid purchase. The Militant Writer says tweeting and Facebooking about your book it is a total waste of time – people do not go on Twitter or Facebook to find books to read. This Goodreads discussion by other authors seems support that conclusion – although there is a good suggestion to embed your Amazon Affiliate link in your tweet links and then if they buy something else while they are on Amazon, you get credit.

I did a $40 paid twenty-four hour twitter campaign just to see what would happen (I am into doing things for fun now). I don’t think I had a single sale from the campaign, and I spent the day writhing that I was spamming every last person that I knew. Because I was! Chuck Wendig said it best – Your book is not pepper spray that you must fountain into my eyes.

Bottom Line: $40 for a tweet campaign won’t break the bank if you want to give it a try. You can watch your sales figures for yourself. The general wisdom is that tweeting and Facebooking relentlessly about your book does not sell books. Yet, for some reason, it does seem to be working for a handful of people. But is that really the way you want to sell books? Of course, I still follow people who relentlessly tweet about their books because it is kind of like watching bad reality TV – I kind of want to see how far they are actually going to go.

NB: Somehow the tweet service that I signed up for spent another 24 hours tweeting about my novel a month later. I didn't pay for it, so not sure how that happened. Anyway, it did not move a single book. Just saying.

Reviews

Finally, today we are getting to something that might actually work. Reviews. Good reviews and recommendations from other readers might actually sell your book. You also need a certain number of four or five star reviews to be able to advertise on certain sites such as Book Bub and EReader News Today (generally 7 to 10). And realize I am talking about Amazon or Goodreads reviews mostly here. Indie books will be ignored by the traditional review community. It takes time to get reviews though, because people have to find your book, read it, and like it enough to post a review.

There are two types of reviews. Unpaid and paid. Most people in the book business, especially in the indie book world say that you should only go for unpaid reviews (in fact many people get downright vitriolic about the topic – but more about that in a few minutes), which means a time consuming task of submitting your book to appropriate unpaid reviewers, doing Goodreads Giveaways hoping that one of the winners will review the book, trying Read for Review groups on Goodreads or Library Thing (David Estes has a great article about this) and praying to anyone relevant that one of your book purchasers will also review. I like these kind of reviews because they seem sincere and well…real. A thoughtful and positive review on an influential website, such as this review of A PAIR OF DOCKS by Jemima Pett, can definitely help sales. I did notice a small jump in sales just after Jemima posted her review.

You can pay a service a small administrative fee to submit your books to reviewers for you for honest reviews, and the reviewers do not get paid. On-line writing groups will also sometimes do reviews for each other. You could go this path, but honestly, having watched it, I don’t recommend it. Other writers, especially indie writers, are hoping to sell their own book, and they may hope that if they write a review for you, that you will return the favour, and worse that you will feel obligated to do a good review. I have watched writers do this, and it is a bit uncomfortable. Reviews should be absolutely honest, and I do not believe that some of these are - and it is part of what gives indie writers a bad name. I get it. It is so challenging for indie writers to get reviews that doing each other review favours becomes very tempting. It is okay for writers to write reviews, but only when they have limited to no connection to the other writer, are willing to be absolutely honest, and/or do not expect any sort of review in return.

So that brings us to paid reviews, which is a very sticky subject. They are not cheap. A paid review at Indie Reader costs $150 and a paid review at Kirkus can run you over $500. You can also get three reviews at Readers' Favorite for $129 (note that Readers' Favorite also does free reviews, but you have to wait a long time, and I do not believe they post these reviews on Amazon). Some people argue that reviewers who are paid are influenced by that pay and will be inclined to give a better review. There is a very interesting discussion regarding this on Indies Unlimited. Let's just say it is not looked upon kindly by many other indie authors, and Amazon does not let you include these so-called honest paid reviews in your review section. You can include them in your editorial section on Amazon. I used to think they are honest reviews (I could not see why someone would fake a review even for pay), but having explored this a little further I'm no longer completely convinced. I don't have a problem with paid honest reviews. But I don't think you can guarantee paid reviews are (of course you can't guarantee unpaid reviews are either), and I just can’t see how a single review, even from an influential source, is going to produce the return on investment needed.

Then there is the very different issue of paying for ‘good’ reviews that are 'legally' posted on Amazon by people claiming that they received a copy in exchange for an honest review, and unfortunately some indie authors have gone down this path. Also unfortunately, this approach has proven successful in making these authors best sellers, which casts a dim light on all indie writers, undermines the value of all reviews, and makes it very tempting for others to follow that path. Don’t, or we will all end up just reading donkey poop.

Reviews are such a big component of marketing that they could be their own post and I have only covered the basics of some aspects of reviews here. There are also services like Net Galley and Bookvetter. Some writers also put a note at the end of their books requesting readers to post a review. I will have to do a post solely devoted to reviews sometime soon.

Bottom-line: Reviews may not sell books directly because so many people have found ways to ‘get’ good reviews without necessarily writing a good book, and therefore people distrust good reviews more than they once did. A critical mass of good reviews will help though, and a lack of good reviews, or bad reviews, will hurt your sales (unless you are Veronica Roth).

Blog Tours

Okay, so word on the street is that blog tours do not work. But not being one to just take the word on the street, I have decided to try one myself and I will add to this post once I have. There are really no hard numbers. Lynne Cantwell at Indies Unlimited observed that her Blog Tour did help to get reviews on Amazon and Goodreads and went generally towards building her brand. Did it result in sales…perhaps not so much and Cantwell notes that you really have to check the Alexa ranking of the blog you are touring on (The Alexa ranking gives you some idea with regard to the popularity of the blog, but it is not completely reliable). Lev Raphael echoes this and claims that he saw no increase in sales whatsoever. Nevertheless, every little bit of exposure helps, and there are other reasons for doing a blog tour beyond just sales. You might make some positive connections and get some good reviews, and the idea sure feels better than spamming people.

Okay so having just completed a blog tour, I can say with a bit more conviction that they do not appear to sell books. But I did, as Cantwell noted above, get a couple of reviews on Amazon as a result of my tour. I probably should have investigated my tour organizers a bit more thoroughly - they were lovely and organized, but they do not specialize in middle-grade fiction or fantasy. In fact, they seem to specialize more in erotic fiction. So despite the hosts seeming like very nice people and being very supportive, my little squeaky clean fantasy looked a little out of place on their sites and I doubt there is much cross-over in readership among those who prefer erotic fiction and middle-grade fantasy. My bad.

Bottom Line: If you have the time and money, you might as well try a blog tour, but if you don’t, don’t sweat it.

What do you think of all of these approaches? Have you had a different experience from the ones described here? If so, I would love to hear from you.

Marketing Your Book – A Primer – Part One

Making your book stand out in a crowd is not easy. Given that I an information sorter for my day job, I found it helpful for my own purposes to organize and analyze the marketing options available to writers. Below are the broad categories of marketing as I see them. Note that I am using the term marketing very loosely. Some of these categories are not ‘true’ marketing, but all contribute to your overall likelihood of book sales.

Don McCullough/Flickr

• The quality of your book itself
• Your next books
• Your book category and key word choices
• Your book genre choice
• Writing a series
• Sticking to one genre
• Your blog
• Your platform/social media presence
• Your email list
• Tweeting/Facebooking/Google+ing about your book
• Reviews
• Blog Tours
• Participating in social media groups with other writers
• Participating in social media groups with other readers
• Interviewing/Reviewing the work of other writers
• Entering book competitions
• Giveaways
• Advertising
• Freebies
• Sales
• Price Pulsing
• Independent booksellers
• Your friends
• Wattpad
• Sharing stories/parts of your book for free
• Cross-sales
• Participating in an Anthology
• Book Tours
• Book Events
• Book Fairs
• Individual blog promos
• Book Release Parties
• Podcasting your books

Whew…that is a lot of options, and there are sub-categories within each of those categories. No wonder most of us writers run around from marketing option to marketing option like crazed lunatics. Here are my thoughts on what works, and what doesn’t. I will focus on the first six today, and the remaining strategies over the next few months. I will add to these as my sales increase (I hope) and I learn more about what works and what doesn’t.

The Quality of Your Book Itself

This relates to how well-written your book is, the quality and appropriateness of your cover design, and the professionalism of your editing, proofreading, formatting and blurb. This is one of the most important components of marketing and the one where you should be spending the most money. It is also vital for your long-term writing career. It is possible to hit it lucky with sales of one less than professional book, but I doubt readers would continue to come back for more.  

Bottom line: Ensuring you have a good quality product is a must and you should budget at least $2500 and a heck of a lot of your own time for this.

Your Next Books

It is common wisdom that the best marketing for your current book is your next book: that writers should spend 30 percent of their time marketing their current book and 70 percent of their time writing their next book. I have also heard many times that few writers start to develop momentum until they have three books out. Kristine Kathryn Rusch has the following to say about this:

Don’t even bother to try to be “discovered” until you have a body of work. Not one novel. Not even two novels. Maybe not three or four or five. Worry about being discovered after you’ve published a good handful of novels or short stories or plays or nonfiction books.

This is apparently particularly true for trilogies or series, where some writers will write all three or five books before publishing the next one, so that if readers like one, they are not waiting too long for the next one, thereby killing the momentum the writer had been able to develop. Hugh Howey suggests that if he ran Harper Collins, he would hold the first book back until the second book was in the can and the third book was scheduled.

It seems that gone are the days where writers put out a book every two to three, or seven years. In this digital world, people expect more instant gratification. On the other hand, there can be overkill on this front. There are certain writers who have put out a book a month for several years. I can’t see how they can maintain the quality with that kind of schedule. Moreover, I like to read a diversity of writers. I have no interest in reading twelve books from a single writer in one year. But if you spend all your time marketing your one book, you aren’t likely to go very far.

Bottom line: You must write. You are a writer. You must get your next book out, but don’t rush it.

Your Book Category and Keyword Choices

This seems like an obscure little topic but the categories and keywords you select for your book in Createspace and Kindle Direct matter for a couple of reasons. First, you want to pick categories and keywords that people search for frequently on Amazon – that are still relevant to your book of course – because then your book is more likely to come up in searches. There are entire books and databases devoted to the best and most frequently searched keywords. For example, check out Michael Alvear’s How to Sell Fiction. Of course if you want to do your own research, you can simply start typing in key words to Amazon and Amazon’s helpful prompts that show up in the search window once you have typed a single letter or word will give you some insight into what others are entering. The higher the prompt in the list, the more frequently other people type it in. Do your own research on categories by spending some time checking out the detailed categories of other books that are like yours.

The categories you choose also matter for a second reason. When people buy your book if you manage to hit the top one hundred in your category, which is not actually that hard to do with a few sales, you then get this nice looking little ranking at the bottom of your Amazon page which I had for A Pair of Docks last night:

If your ranking in your category is high enough, and your book has been released in the last month, you will hit the hot new releases for your category and potentially show up in the sidebar hot new releases (see image below), which means everyone searching in that category can see your book, which will hopefully generate more sales.

The key here is that sometimes if you pick a more obscure category (not totally obscure, but less popular) for your book you are more likely to hit number three in the hot new releases and appear in the magic sidebar. Martin Crosbie has some great insight into categories in his book How I Sold 30,000 ebooks on Amazon’s Kindle.

That said, while I spent a lot of time agonizing over categories, Amazon seems to have made some of its own choices with regard to my book category, but since I made the magic sidebar with A Pair of Docks at least a couple of times, I’m not complaining.

Update: I have since listened to the Self-Publishing Roundtable's podcast on categories and keywords. It is definitely worth a listen, and realized that I was successful in getting into the categories that I wanted (beyond the limited ones that Amazon allows) because I made specific, and good, key word choices that reflected the additional categories that I wanted to be in. If your key words match categories exactly, then Amazon will often put you in to those categories. The podcast is definitely worth a listen (as really are most of the episodes of the podcast). Some also suggest changing your categories and key words frequently to try to get traction in other categories.

Bottom line: Do your research on categories and key words, make some good choices, don’t agonize over them because Amazon seems to help you, and remember you can change them.

Your Book Genre Choice

Certain genres of books sell better on Amazon than others, and certain genres of books sell better on Kindle than others. In general, YA, New Adult, Romance, Fantasy, Erotic Romance, and Thrillers seem to do well on Kindle. Middle-grade fiction, like A Pair of Docks, not so much, as kids in general still prefer paper books. But I would argue that A Pair of Docks is actually a middle-grade novel for adults, kind of like Harry Potter (so you should check it out :-) ). C.S. Lakin did a fascinating experiment. She observed that most very successful self-published authors were writing to a specific genre, while she tended to write more literary fiction and less easily categorized work. As an experiment, she picked a subgenre in which she was told book ‘sell themselves’ wrote a novel under a different name and found, to her surprise, that the book literally did sell itself. You can read about her experience at The Book Designer.

Jessica Bell also makes a compelling case for writing non-fiction as a means of selling fiction, especially if you write literary fiction. These can include guides to writing, public speaking, or marketing your book. Or if you have an expertise in another area altogether, it is worth considering whether you can produce some niche non-fiction that will draw attention to your fiction.

Bottom Line: Your genre choice counts. Some genres simply sell better than others, especially in self-published and/or ebook form. Non-fiction books can draw attention to your fiction.

Writing a Series

This is similar to your book genre choice. Trilogies and series tend do better and develop bigger fan bases than stand alone books. If readers like one book, they are more likely to buy the next one in a series, rather than your next totally different novel. A series also allows you to experiment with hooking readers by making the first book, or first two books, in your series permanently free as Lindsay Buroker has done with her Emperor’s Edge novels.

It is also possible to break a much longer novel into a series of shorter ones or novellas and then compile them into an omnibus as Hugh Howey did with Wool. The shorter novel – less than 60,000 words is in now and this approach allows you to publish frequently, which allows for new publicity and announcements – you have something new to announce rather than just pounding people with buy my book tweets (see next week’s blog) – and keeps up your opportunity to be in Amazon’s hot new releases. The larger novel needs to have logical break points though, allowing for the individual novels with real story arcs. But if you do go with a series, you had better darn well make sure that your second and third books in a series are at least as good, if not better than your first book or readers will be very disappointed, as we’ve seen from reader responses to Veronica Roth’s conclusion to her Divergent Series. The low ratings do not seem to be hurting sales though.

Bottom Line: Consider a series but only if you can maintain quality.

Sticking to one Genre

Apparently readers like it if you are predictable and they know what they are going to get when they buy your new book. Many successful self-published writers, such as Kristine Katherine Rusch will write under different names for each genre they write in. Rusch has a great overview of the different genres and different branding for each genre. At the very least, Rusch observes, you need different branding for the different genres you write in. Lindsay Buroker suggests a slightly different approach of branding yourself and finding the common thread among the books you write if you want to genre hop. She does note though that pen names might be desirable if you are writing both children’s books and erotic romance.

Bottom Line: If you are a prolific writer with many ideas, it might be hard to limit yourself to one genre, and Rusch, and other writers such as Nora Roberts, have proven that it is doable. However it is very important to consider issues of branding when genre hopping.

Yikes. That’s a lot of words for only the first six. Stay tuned next week for: your blog, your platform/social media presence, your email list, tweeting/ Facebooking/ Google+ing about your book, reviews and blog tours.

Please, as always, feel free to comment and share your own experiences!

Thumbnail Photo Credit: Don McCullough via Compfight http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/

I’m a Writer (and I’m Proud)

Randy Heinitz /flickr

January 1st: The time of resolutions, of living cleaner, living better, doing better, getting up at dawn to write (which will never happen), drinking less (also unlikely), and just improving my general personhood.

I don’t often make New Year’s resolutions. But on the eve of a brand new year, I do usually give some thought as to how I could do things better, how I could be happier, and how I could make the others around me happier too. In reality, I do this much of the year, but I give this category of thought special dispensation on January 1st. I often hope for guidance from the stars, or the gods, or the tarot, or the coffee grounds, or the mouse entrails my cat leaves on the stoop.

Sadly, the entrails and gods seldom have much to offer. Neither does my family who I routinely pester with questions regarding what I should be doing differently in the upcoming year (often laying my head on the table in despair surrounded by empty wine glasses). Should I quit my day job and focus on my writing? I always hope they will give me a resounding yes – they never do. Should I just start saying no to everything – volunteering, new contracts, extra work that makes me harried and disagreeable? I try very hard to do this but saying no is a torturous affair for me.

The reality is for the most part, compared to most people in the world, I am supremely privileged, and I in general, do a reasonably good job of exercising, eating healthy, having friends and writing relatively regularly, while maintaining a household and a part-time day job. I set goals and for the most part meet them. If I were to make a New Year’s resolution, it would mean that I have to drop or do less well on one of the important things I already hold in a precarious balance. Okay I’d be happy to drop the day job, but since as indicated above, I seem to have little support for that resolution, maybe that isn’t in the stars (or the entrails).

marsmet546 /flickr

While I know all of this, and I know that in most cases resolutions do not work, I nevertheless always hunger for some sort of change on January 1st. Some sort of positive new direction, hope or focus. Just one little resolution. At least enough so that I feel my head-on-the-table-pestering-my-family-surrounded-by-wine-glass sessions were fruitful. Besides, despite my glowing description of my life in the previous paragraph, I am chronically stressed, never make time for myself, have to deal with a dying parent, and feel pulled in too many directions each and every day (which sometimes makes me a little cranky). I don’t know for sure, but I rather suspect that my family would like me to resolve to be worse. To be less determined to exercise a certain number of times per week, to allow our house to be a mess, to make simpler but less healthy or tasty meals, to turn in less perfect work products. But since they do not seem receptive to pestering today, I cannot confirm this for sure. However, for me, these would be tough resolutions to make.

I have read the resolutions of other writers. Most of them revolve around the writing and/or publishing process - committing to writing regularly, writing a set amount of time per day, writing every day, enjoying writing, enjoying publishing, not worrying about your sales (yeah right). There are some good resolutions out there – Chuck Wendig’s most notably (of course) are worth a read. Jeff Goins also offers some good advice, and he is right, I should probably be more enthusiastic about embracing the pain of rewriting until it hurts.

But for the most part, aside from the continual difficulties of squeezing writing in amongst the clawing demands of my life, I feel like I have a decent handle on the writing process.

In a Writer’s Digest article from 2013, Rachel Randall suggests resolving to call yourself a writer...hmm. This would definitely be a challenge. I write, but I would not dare call myself a writer, at least not out loud or in anything other than a self-deprecating tone (making it clear to all listeners that I think my claim to being a writer is about as farcical as when I used to claim in the bar in my twenties that I could have become a model – that was cringe-worthy even at the time).

But funny, I also ski, and am quite fine with calling myself a skier, even though I actually write better than I ski (and I am not a bad skier). Randall points out that many of us think that writing may work out for us in the end, and it may not. Thus many of us are probably hesitant to call ourselves writers. There is also the risk of course that people will make fun of us. But Randall points to a passage by Larry Brooks in which he says the following:

If you are a writer–and you are if you actually write–you are already living the dream. Because the primary reward of writing comes from within, and you don’t need to get published or sell your screenplay to access it. …

Maybe there is something there. I ski for only myself, and I call myself a skier. Perhaps I can also call myself a writer.

Great. I will call myself a writer. I should. It’s time. Maybe.

But that somehow doesn’t seem big enough, bold enough, for what I want to achieve in 2014. I know I should probably stop apologizing for my writing, feeling bad that I am not tending the kids, or cooking, or earning more money. But that is unlikely. Even now as I sit here working on this while someone else does dishes, I feel bad.

My bold resolution should have something to do with hope, or believing in my writing. I tried faith a few years ago. That did not work out very well. I was too hardened in the writing world at that point to let it take root. The funny thing is, I do believe in my writing. I believe it is good. I would not have continued on as long as I have if I did not. But I do not believe that good writing is enough to make it. When I first published my novel A Pair of Docks, I hoped it would take off immediately. Despite a few heady days as my friends and family purchased, it did not become an overnight bestseller.

After a few days of worrying, I decided that all I needed to feel good about my progress was one good thing a day – one sale, one person saying they could not put it down, one good review, one good rating, one retweet of my posts about my novel, one technical success. I know that this is a long game and that I need to play it to win. And guess what? Since I made that deal with myself, I have not yet gone a day without at least one good thing. I have also discovered that if you are determined enough, you can find one good thing – every day.

Maybe my initial resolution about faith was too focused on the external world. What I do have faith in is myself. My 2014 resolution is that I will play this to win – one good thing at a time. And I will call myself a writer (to the mirror at least).

Photo Credit Rocks: Randy Heinitz via Compfight http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Photo Credit Clock: marsmet546 via Compfight http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

After You have a Published Novel

Eight things I learned in the first two weeks of publishing

When I first started writing seriously about six years ago, I had no idea what the publishing world was like. I thought that as with many pursuits, if one had some ability and worked diligently at it for several years, that success, at least in some reasonable form, would happen.

I did learn, rather quickly, that this was not the case. That there were literally hundreds of thousands of people with the same goals with respect to their writing that I had, competing for the attention of limited readers.

I reset my expectations a bit. And, not surprisingly, as I work my way through trying to achieve some success in writing fiction, I continue to have to adjust my expectations.

Two weeks ago, I published my first novel, A Pair of Docks. This was a learning experience in itself. Eight things I learned in the first two weeks are:

1) It does not take many sales to shoot into the hot new releases or into the top 100 in your category

When I first announced that A Pair of Docks had been published, of course my wonderful friends and family, as well as a few acquaintances, rushed on-line to buy it. On the first day of sales, I managed to be #1 in the hot new releases in my category on Amazon.ca, which meant that I was featured in that very desirable side bar so everyone looking for other books in my category can see my book. I took a screen shot. On the second or third day of sales, the purchase of a few e-books on Amazon.com, launched me as high as #7 in hot new releases in my category and #38 overall in my category. I also took screen shots of that let me assure you. The important thing to note here is that it did not take that many sales (at all) to achieve this, which tells me that the Amazon algorithms are pretty elastic and that when people boast about their achievements in their categories, I am not sure if it means much (although I will still keep the screen shots).

2) It also does not take very long for your Amazon rankings to drop once your sales fall off

Once the rush of friends and family was over, I managed to hang onto my hot new release and top 100 ranking in my categories for about 36 hours. Not long. My brief shiny moment of success had ended. Those darned elastic Amazon algorithms.

3) Without reviews, your moment in the sun in the hot new releases will not likely translate into sales

What is the first thing you look at when trying to decide whether or not to buy a book by someone other than your writer friends? A lot of people look at the reviews. In my rush to get my book out before Christmas (because that’s when people buy books, right?) and make sure it was completely error free, I did not even think about the importance of reviews. I have subsequently learned that other writers actually quietly publish their novels and then spend several months acquiring reviews before officially announcing that they have published. Thus when there is the initial rush to buy their book and they show up on desirable Top 100 lists that get them noticed, they have reviews to spur more purchases. Lesson learned. If anyone wants to review my book now, that would be great.

4) Some people will like your book, but they won’t often post official reviews, and just so you know, some people won’t like your book

In the past week, I have heard the following:

“Brilliant! Loved it . . . Looking forward to the next one, don't keep us waiting too long.”

“It's a great read!

“It's a bit of a page turner. . . A little sleepy today!"

“I've finished the first chapter and it is great. Already looking forward to the sequel!”

Great okay, love you guys, can you post that on Amazon please? Then there are the people you don’t hear from and you lie awake at night wondering what possessed you to send your sh-- out into the world. Maybe they haven’t read it yet – I mean really, my reading pile is so high that sometimes it takes me several months to get to a book and a few weeks to get through it when I do. But you know some of them have read it, and they didn’t like it. And they are now looking at you funny, and you won’t get invited to as many parties, and they will talk about you and your dumb book at the parties you’re not invited to, and you will wonder why you did not remain a project manager who organized community playground installations (which definitely lands you on the A-list party circuit let me tell you). Seriously though (although that was a bit serious), it takes awhile for a book to develop some momentum. Be prepared for that and don’t hope too much in the first two weeks.

5) People will congratulate you and think your accomplishment is really exciting

I was not prepared for this. In my mind, I have only accomplished something if people buy my book and LIKE it. I have received many hugs in the past two weeks and I come away from each and every one of them a sicklier shade of grey. Thank you so much to the kind and lovely people who were congratulating me, but writing a book is easy – that’s why the market is flooded. Writing a good book that people like, that manages to rise out of the vast swathe of books and be successful is hard. I can’t believe how many people have said to me – you must be so happy. Um, yes happy that I never have to proofread the *&^% thing again, but not really otherwise. I’ve just taken the biggest public leap of faith in my life – happy doesn’t really come into it. If I win a Nobel Prize for Literature some day, then by all means congratulate me – we can have a super big party with gin and tonics all around. But right now, I'm just hoping that you don't look at me funny. What I really want is for people to respect my crazy-assed choice to try to be a writer, know that I am doing my best to do good work in a virtually impossible field, provide feedback (good or bad) on the quality of my work (so I realistically know whether to stick with it or quit), and understand that many good books do not become bestsellers. It’s also okay to say nothing (and think nothing). NB: Also, no need to pity me if I fail. I went into this knowing the odds. It would help to remember I have a day job where I am an experienced professional and do really good work (just so I can salvage some small sliver of self-respect).

6) You will have to sign your book

I was also totally unprepared for this one. Since I type a lot (read all day, every day), my handwriting is a bit rusty. It would be a good idea to think about this in advance – what pen are you going to use, what are you going to say, and where are you going to sign? Practice signing a few blank sheets of paper. Trust me, it will save you a couple of nights of sleeplessness worrying about how you botched up your friend’s book with your hopeless donkey scrawl.

7) You will be torn daily between the decision to write your next book, promote your existing book or go skiing

Okay you might not be tempted to go skiing, but…okay I just went skiing…but now I'm back and really focused. I was told once that once you have a book out, your time should be 30% promotion and 70% writing your next book. Others say the best promotion for your existing book is your next book. Yet others say you must do a fair bit of promotion to get your book noticed…and in case you haven’t noticed there are a lot of people promoting their books (so you are competing with a heck of a lot of noise). Your existing book is unlikely to get noticed unless you do some marketing, but how much is enough and what kinds are successful? These are the subject of raging debates in all corners of the Internet these days, and there are no easy answers (although I will post about my experiences in a few weeks). We have all been pummeled by the “buy my book” tweets. Kristine Kathryn Rusch has an excellent article on the challenges of discoverability. She goes with the WIBBOW philosophy, which is an acronym that stands for Would I Be Better Off Writing and claims that in most cases, you are better off writing your next book than promoting your existing book. Which is great because that brings me to my next point.

8) Self-promotion sucks

Yup, there is no way around that. Every time I send out a tweet about my book or post something on Facebook I cringe. I probably won’t get better at it. I should probably just spend my time skiing because much of it does not work. But more about that soon.

So help a writer out. Buy my book. Read it. Tell me what you think. If it sucks, and the next one sucks too, please tell me and put me out of my misery. If you love it, tell me. You don't have to post a review (although it would be much appreciated), personal emails will do very nicely - either way.

Photo Credit: kevin dooley  via Compfight

Why I Write...or Girls in Science

Girls still staying away from the hard sciences

In an article entitled "Missing From Science Class", the New York Times reported this week, that despite modest gains, women are underrepresented in the fields of science and technology – particularly the more physical sciences, such as physics and computer science. In an earlier article, Eileen Pollack noted that only one-fifth of physics Ph.D.’s in the United States are awarded to women, and only 14 percent of physics professors in the United States are women.

There are many reasons for this. But one of them is that it is believed that girls have internalized the belief that they are incapable of mastering these fields as well as men. The lack of women in science is problematic, not just because it means that some females are missing out on a pursuit that they could truly love, but also because we need more scientists, and perhaps we need what women could potentially bring to science.

What does this have to do with writing you ask?

Despite my obvious predilection for writing, a question that I often ask myself is why? Why do I write? Anyone who has read some of my previous posts knows that I could engage in far more lucrative activities, such as raiding the local school bottle drive bin, and potentially experience equivalent success trying to become an Olympic figure skater.

Orwell, in a 1946 essay, claimed that there are four basic motives for writing: sheer egoism (fairly self-explanatory), aesthetic enthusiasm (you love beautiful language and a perfect plot), historical impulse (you want to record history for posterity’s sake), and political impulse (you have a message to share). Pardon my loose bracketed translations – I THINK that is what Orwell meant. I will deal with the ego issue in a separate post sometime in the future, but all I can say is these days, trust me, few writers write for ego fulfillment.

I definitely write because I love complex and perfectly interwoven plots (aesthetic appreciation). American writer, Edmund White likened writing to building a sandcastle or a Lego tower. And that is how I feel when constructing a novel, trying to find just the right piece to fit in each part. When I wrote A Pair of Docks I imagined I was building this:

Of course it is entirely possible that I was producing this:

But I suspect I may also be possessed of political impulse. My novel, A Pair of Docks is about a girl, Abbey, who is a genius, and has a particular talent for, and interest in, physics and chemistry.

When I was a girl, I, too, had somewhat of an ability in physics and chemistry. Enough to be at the top of my class in both subjects in my, albeit small, high school and win a reasonably sized four-year science scholarship. I thought physics and chemistry were cool, and I planned to become a physicist.

In case you had not already guessed, I did not become a physicist. There were many reasons my science career went off the rails. For starters, university science is hard, and I had no experience with not getting almost-perfect grades. I was alone in a swathe of young men (which was less fun than you might think), and the TA's and professors were not interested in spending time to help us understand the material. The four-year science scholarship would only be renewed if I maintained straight A's. I didn’t. I lasted four months before finding a safer more welcoming haven in the environmental sciences. I’m not blaming anyone for my failure to succeed in the hard sciences. Perhaps it was not in my cards. But I have long since wished I had possessed the tools to take a better run at being a physicist or a chemist.

Reasons girls (and boys) do not become scientists

Eileen Pollack contends that the lack of women in science stems from two factors:

1)   A lack of self-esteem and confidence in their ability of succeed in science due to the subtle, and not so subtle treatment of women by their male peers, parents and society at large. This starts in childhood when boys are encouraged to play with Lego sets and girls are taught to dress up dolls. But continues often in high school physics, where girls will find themselves a minority in a class of boys who will often tease girls that physics is for boys. And yet in my day, girls had clearly internalized this message, too. It started in Physics 11 when most of the girls claimed they did not understand, and it was too hard – in a very dramatic fashion, as if it was cool to break down in class. I was mystified by their behaviour. I was the only girl in Physics 12. I got some teasing smiles from a few classmates but I proceeded to get the highest marks on all the tests and they accepted me. But my science self-esteem was evidently not as solid as I would have liked as it did not take much in the way of failure in university calculus for me to believe I did not have the math chops for physics. Pollack was surprised to find that in interviewing young female physics students in 2010, that in some ways, these issues seem more prevalent than they did when she went to school in the 70s.

It is possible, of course that boys are simply more interested in physics than girls, but it is also possible that, as Pollack argues “boys are encouraged to tough out difficult courses in unpopular subjects, while girls, no matter how smart, receive fewer arguments from their parents, teachers or guidance counselors if they drop a physics class”. Pollack notes that her physics professor at Yale received D’s in some of his early university physics courses. D’s? I bolted from physics at the first sign of B’s.

2)   Women discouraged from studying the hard sciences by their parents and peers because these sciences “are for nerds and losers”. Pollack presents sitcom The Big Bang Theory, whereby scientists are characterized unfavourably next to a stylish, cute, wannabe actress character, as evidence for this hypothesis. I am not sure if The Big Bang Theory is total evidence of our casting of scientists as nerds and losers, but I do think we are failing somehow to convey the coolness and elegance of math and science to both girls and boys. When I was in high school, I found it thrilling to do algebra, draw momentum diagrams, and balance chemical equations. I try to sell the same excitement to my own children, but so far, I’m not sure if they’re buying. Many of our novels for children and teens are becoming more profoundly not about education and science. They are about kids being warriors or popular or vampires. I know kids like to read these books and I am not opposed to them. I have read them too. But I wanted to offer the counterpoint, a book that made being a scientist exciting, where mysteries could be solved using the scientific method, and sometimes not (because let's face it, sometimes you need a good battle scene), and where a girl could be obsessed with the periodic table. I wanted to write about a likable brilliant girl, who loves science, and despite her beliefs that she is a geek, is really not.

I didn’t set out to write a story with a political message. I just wanted to create a grand adventure and build with Lego blocks. I’m not suggesting that girls must become physicists or chemists, I just want both girls and boys (and adults) to be offered the opportunity to get excited about science, and feel that they are fully capable of pursuing science careers if they so desire.

Photo Credit Lego Scene: Dunechaser  via http://compfight.com

Photo Credit Pile of Lego: LostCarPark   via http://compfight.com

Photo Credit Beaker: Express Monorail  via http://compfight.com

Proofreading

Nine things I learned about proofreading in the last two months

I have spent the last two months working with a copyeditor and two proofreaders on my novel A Pair of Docks. I am a fairly clean writer. I do not usually have run-on sentences, I can spell, I generally have subject-verb agreement and I know how to use most major punctuation marks (although I still struggle a bit with commas, em dashes and colons). In my day job, I often work as an editor and proofreader of technical writing. I thought the copyedit and proofreading portion of publishing my book would be a breeze.

I was very wrong. Here is what I learned:

1) Consistency, consistency, consistency:

My manuscript is fairly complex in the sense that the characters are trying to solve a mystery. They read things, Google things, write things down, quote things, work with symbols and sometimes very large numbers and refer to past conversations. There are sounds, and physics rules that run through a main character’s head. All of these portions of the text had to have their own formatting, and set of rules and that formatting and those rules had to be applied consistently throughout the document. This requirement to be consistent, more than missed commas or typos, was the main challenge in my manuscript. To the extent you can, go through and identify all of these types of unique formatting before the copyeditor starts, decide how you are going to treat them and make a style guide (see below). There will be ones that you did not think of that crop up as you go, but if you have the style guide started, you can just decide on a rule and plunk it in to the style guide.

2) Develop a written style guide right from the beginning:

There are only a few absolute rules in punctuation, spelling and grammar and different copyeditors and proofreaders will have different preferences. Do you allow sentence fragments or run-on sentences? Do you use colons? Do you use the Oxford comma? Do you put a comma before the word too when it means also all the time, none of the time or just some of the time? Do you use single quotations or double quotations? Do you use single quotation or double quotations for things that are referenced or ‘air quoted’? Do you leave a space on either side of a set of ellipses or close it up to the text? Work with the first person in your line up of proofreaders to develop this style guide that outlines all of the rules around your manuscript and how you are going to treat unique elements from the beginning. Review it yourself. Make sure you are happy with it and give it to the next people in your proofreading line up. This will not solve all of your problems, but it will help a lot.

3) Expect to proof your own manuscript more times than you ever though possible or desirable:

You in the end, especially if you are self-publishing, but even if you are not, are the person who cares the most about this manuscript. You are the only person who knows exactly what you are trying to say and you are the only person who will read it more than twenty times (you will probably in the end read it at least fifty times – your proofreaders will not). Even though it is said that you cannot proofread your own work, you actually can, and you are one of the most important proofreaders of your own work. You must review and proofread it before you send it to a copyeditor, and you must review and proofread it after each round with a copyeditor or proofreader. They will miss things and make mistakes, just as you will. It is critical that you review your document with eagle eyes after each round of editing, and catch as much as you can. Reading your manuscript for the fifty-second time is an excruciating process, but it is necessary. Spend time with it. Do not rush it.

4) Reformat your manuscript and print it out to proofread it early in the process:

I like trees. I fancy myself an environmentalist. I resisted printing out my document to proofread it. The thought of wasting that much paper and ink horrified me. But there is no way around it. It has to be done. Better yet reformat it into book form (by either using columns or changing the paper size settings and changing the line spacing) and print it out. Mistakes your eyes have glossed over time and time again will be obvious. Do this after the copyedit before you submit it to the proofreader. You might need to do it a couple of times. You will save yourself a lot of headaches trying to get things fixed once it has already been formatted.

5) Expect mistakes:

You will make mistakes, and so will your copyeditor and your proofreader(s). There is no way around it. We are all human and there are so many moving parts (letters, words, punctuation marks, spaces) in your manuscript that it is impossible to catch everything. As Grammar Girl pointed out: “If I produce 1,000 words a day, and I let 1 typo slip by every week, that's actually a 99.986% success rate. If you think about it in terms of letters rather than words, since most typos happen at the level of letters, that 1 typo a week equates to about a 99.997% success rate.” That is actually pretty good when you think about it. According to Copyediting.com an association of professional copyeditors, studies have indicated that the best a human can do—even a professional proofreader—is 95% error detection. So unless you have paid someone to review your manuscript again and again, or devote themselves to it for several weeks, and let’s face it, most of us cannot afford that, expect a few errors to slip through. It is your job as the writer to do a final sweep – but also to understand that you, too, will miss things.

6) The more eyes the better: 

Everyone is better at catching different things. My copyeditor was great at commas, capitals, spelling, general style and working with me to determine my goals around the manuscript. My first proofreader caught paragraphing issues, comma and consistency issues. My second proofreader helped me with hyphenating adjectives, identifying coordinate adjectives and doing the final sweep. All of those inputs were essential. But more eyes also resulted in conflicts and challenges that I had to resolve myself and sometimes take back to the preceding person in the line-up to ask their thinking or logic. As one of the professionals who worked with me pointed out: “I am more flexible Grammar Girl and she is more Chicago.”

7) Keep a list of your own bad habits and check them first the next time around:

I way overuse the words “Well” and “So” at the beginning of dialogue. I also overuse ellipses. I capitalize things like City and Mayor that do not need to be capitalized. I underutilize contractions. I would have saved myself a lot of irritation if I had sat down and printed out my manuscript (see number 4) and identified these problems at the beginning, so they could be dealt with, rather than at the end when I have to have them deleted from an already formatted document. You won’t catch all of your bad habits, but you will catch some. Now I have a running list of things to watch for in my next novel taped to my wall.

8) There is no escape from learning the rules – or trying to:

I am decent at punctuation and grammar. I know when something looks right or wrong. I know the difference between its and it’s, there and they’re and effect and affect. But before September, I did not know what a coordinate adjective was, or how it should be punctuated, the Oxford comma (even though I had heard of it) was a bit hazy to me, and I did not understand the difference between a restrictive versus a nonrestrictive sentence-ending participial phrase (even though I had by instinct been punctuating them correctly). I was even a bit uncertain around semi-colon use. I had thought I could hire a professional to know those things for me. I was wrong. Even if you hire a professional, you still have to know enough to check their work and you will be so much better off if you know the rules yourself (especially since you won’t have to ask your professional dumb questions). I spent a lot of time looking things up. I learned a lot. I will never be Grammar Girl (although I can aspire). I will forget some things and will have to revisit them the next time. But each time I do this, I think (hope) I will get better at it and for me, since I edit and proofread for my day job, the skills will transfer to my other work, so it is a win-win.

9) Sometimes there are no clear rules:

This was a hard one for me to wrap my head around and there was some disagreement on my copyedit/proofreading team regarding this. Most of us accept that sentence fragments and the occasional deliberate run-on in fiction are okay, but not everyone agrees. What do you do when a character Googles something? Put what they Googled in single quotes, double quotes, and/or italics. What about when they read something? Should what they read be in quotes and/or italics? Should there be a colon or comma after the word read as in “She read: … ” or nothing? Do very long numbers in dialogue get spelled out or indicated in numeral form? Should you put a comma every place where you can put a comma? I spent a lot of time searching for answers to these questions and scouring other books only to find that there were no clear rules (I really wanted rules).

That summarizes what I learned about the copyediting and proofreading process over the last two months. The other point I would make is that it cannot be rushed. While at times I was incredibly impatient (mostly with my own pace, not that of my professionals), and just wanted to be finished, the work had to be done. I can only hope that with the help of my list above, it will go faster next time. For another excellent resource on proofreading, check out this Instructional Solutions article on 17 Proofreading Techniques. It may be focused on business writing, but the rules apply to fiction as well. I would love to hear about the experiences of others in their editing/proofreading process.

Photo Credits

Marked up paper: withassociates via Compfight 

Sign: rick via Compfight

Dialogue Tags

Don't we use said anymore?

So I was told, emphatically, by a editor that I did not vary my use of dialogue tags sufficiently - that I used "said" far too often and that I should employ a myriad of other tags (muttered, exclaimed, protested, begged etc.). I was taken aback by this as the instruction I had always received was that you should use said most, if not all, the time. Asked is also occasionally okay, as is the use of no dialogue tag (if it is clear who is speaking) and the use of action tags. My understanding that using other dialogue tags (especially ones that are more colourful - grunted, hissed, proclaimed) was an absolute no-no and that these other dialogue tags were considered to be said-bookisms and marked you as an amateur. Here is another post about them if you don't believe me.

Literature was once replete with said-bookisms. D. B. Jackson has a good post on this. But this changed in the last 20 years and now the majority of writers use said. Or so I thought. But after the encounter with the editor I decided to check. Maybe something had changed. Maybe I had taken the advice too literally.

I used my customary method - I examined the books on my book shelf. Given that my upcoming novel is a middle-grade novel, I focused only on the middle-grade and YA books on my shelf in case they were different than adult books. I went through ten pages of each book and counted the dialogue tags, including the use of no tag and action tags in each novel, and then like a good scientist turned writer, I graphed them. The ten pages were selected pretty randomly, but they had to have dialogue, and they had to have at least one fairly lengthy section of dialogue among three or more people because it is easier to use no dialogue tags when only two people are speaking.

What did I find?

Said still wins the day by a long shot. The first graph here shows the totals for the 8 books that I examined. Said was used 235 times, whereas no tag was used 108 times and action tags were used 78 times. Asked was used 36 times, and other dialogue tags were used 74 times - the most popular being (that had 4 or 5 total uses across all 8 books) continued, whispered, began, demanded, called, muttered, and told.

Graph two here shows the usages by each of the different books. You can see that some writers favour action tags (as in City of Bones), while others eschew action tags altogether and prefer to use no tags (as in The Golden Compass). You can also see (and this is a general hypothesis that requires more data) that younger fiction (Percy Jackson) may favour the use of other tags more frequently. It is of course easier, and perhaps preferable, to use action tags and no tags if possible. However, when a dialogue is occurring among more than two people, it is harder to avoid the use of tags altogether.

This was an incredibly useful exercise for me, and made me more confident in my choice to stick with said most of the time. I would love to hear your thoughts on dialogue tags.  

Thumbnail Photo Credit: Mark Wathieu 

Setting up a Facebook Author Page

I've been trying to decide whether to set up a Facebook Author page for my writing. I have a website, a personal Facebook account, a LinkedIn account and a Twitter account. I also dabble in Google+, but I really haven’t figured out how to use it yet so my apologies if I have inadvertently not added you to my circles yet (or done anything else that is egregiously against Google+ etiquette).

To date, I have kept most of my writing information and updates confined to my website and Twitter account with some erratic and unskilled use of Google+ on the side. I have kept my Facebook account mostly for personal use, although I follow a lot of writing organizations and am friends with quite a few writers. I use LinkedIn for my consulting work only.

This divided approach has worked for a while and has allowed me to avoid pestering my friends and family with information about my writing efforts – because really, do they want to know? And it has prevented some of my Facebook friends (ex-boyfriends, certain family members, friends who might laugh at me) from knowing too much about how seriously I take my writing “hobby”.

The Power of Facebook

However there are times when I think it would be valuable to use Facebook to talk about my writing and promote my books a little bit. Facebook is a platform that offers significant reach and has significant SEO (Google yourself and you will find that your Facebook account is probably in the top results). It also allows for longer updates than Twitter, but more informal ones than my website – to talk about my writing (and more importantly, unlike Google+, I get how it works).  In addition, although Jane Friedman correctly argues that a Facebook author presence does not replace your personal author website, there are some things that you can do on Facebook – such as give aways or other contests, through things such as Fan Appz and RSS Graffiti that you often cannot do on your personal website (see the article by Emlyn Chand on how to do this). This functionality might be useful. At this point in time, my website won’t even let me have more than three font sizes on a page. I could also add a “like me” button to the sidebar of my website giving people an opportunity to stay connected.

Which Facebook Approach is Best?

As a result, I have debated setting up a Facebook Author page that people can “like” that will allow me to post more about my writing and continue to avoid bugging my friends. Some of my writer friends have done this, while others use their personal Facebook account to talk about their writing. I decided to look into the pros and cons of each approach.

Using Your Personal Facebook Account

Jane Friedman at Writer Unboxed recommends using your personal Facebook account to connect with potential readers and talk about your writing. Nathan Bransford and Ann Hill agree. Friedman suggests using Facebook lists to group your friends and manage who sees what. Bransford and Hill note that you can turn on subscriptions on your personal Facebook page, thereby allowing people to follow your public posts, without you having to accept friend requests from people you do not know. You can set each post to either be public, which means it will go to everyone, or to just go to your friends. This is an option that I was not aware of. Not that there is a line up of people I don’t know waiting to friend me (yet). Hugh Howey uses this approach, as does Bransford himself.

So what are the pros and cons of using a personal Facebook account for writerly communication?

Pros

1. Your personal Facebook account is probably already set up, and you already have friends on it – you won’t have to suffer the ignominy of having only two likes on your “fan” page, and having to beg for more, or invite your existing friends to “like” you. (As one writer noted, asking people to “like” your page isn’t his idea of an enjoyable way to relate to others… of course I spend so much time alone with my cat I am not sure if I am totally up on enjoyable ways to relate to others).
2. As Bransford observes, you only have to maintain one profile, which for me, given my more sporadic posting record, might be the best approach. (After all they say to only post interesting things, and I’m afraid it takes me a while to think of interesting things).
3. As Friedman observes, not using your personal Facebook page is essentially ignoring your first potential circle of fans – friends, family, colleagues, and others who probably (hopefully) want you succeed and support your work.
4. I can potentially connect more with other writers with whom I am friends on Facebook. I enjoy reading their posts and shares on writing, so why wouldn’t they enjoy mine? (But I’m Twitter friends with most of these writers anyway so we already connect with regard to writing on Twitter – is there a value-add associated with Facebook? Most of my writer friends do both, so I conclude there must be some value-add.)

Cons

1. My Facebook friends may not be interested in writing at all – or if they are, may not be interested in me as a writer.
2. Many of my Facebook friends might think it is strange if I post about writing.
3. If I use the subscription approach suggested by Bransford, then I will have a big Follow button on my personal page, which might look a bit obnoxious to my friends.
4. I may have to become more interesting, which for me appears to be a lifelong endeavor. This means I may have to stop posting so many photos of my cat.
5. Apparently - and this is a biggie - using Facebook to promote or "sell" your books is against the Facebook Terms of Service. I'm not sure where the line between legitimately "talking" about your writing and books with Facebook friends and "selling" your writing and books is. A lot of writers do use their personal Facebook pages for their writing, but beware of tripping over the line into selling.

Creating a Facebook Author Page

Hill argues that a Facebook Author page is the best approach for veteran writers with multitudes of fans and many books, who want to keep their personal life and writing life completely separate. That doesn’t exactly apply to me, but there are still some pros associated with a Facebook Author page that should be considered.

Pros

1. I don’t have to worry about pissing off/boring my friends (any more than I already may do in person) by spamming them about my books and/or writing.
2. I could set my cover photo to include my book covers or some personal branding splash and update my personal information to reflect my writing information.
3. I would have access to analytics with an Author page that I would not with my personal profile.
4. A Like button seems a bit more benign than a Follow button.
5. People who want to check out your Facebook Author page do not have to be Facebook users to do so, and there is not the commitment of following. 
6. You can have more than 5,000 fans, whereas on your personal account you can only have 5,000 friends. However the subscriptions approach on your personal account gets around this as you can have unlimited followers.

Cons

1. Although I am trying to be more consistent with my blog posts, I don’t have a clear schedule for using Twitter and I am not a big poster on my personal Facebook account. So if I did not update my Facebook Author page regularly, that may reflect badly on me. This is a con for both approaches though. See number four above.
2. The dreaded lack of likes. Melissa Foster has 12,659. Many of my writer friends have a respectable over 100 likes. What if I only end up with four?
3. Hill observes that Facebook has changed its algorithms such that Author Pages, or Fan Pages more generally are showing up in the news feeds of only a small fraction of the people who "Liked" their page, unless they pay to "Promote" their posts to ensure that they showed up in more followers' news feeds. 

Once you have made a decision which way to go, there are many posts with regard to how to set up a Facebook Author page, or manage subscriptions and lists on your personal Facebook account. There are also many posts with tips on how to use your Facebook account or page for your writing information. Friedman of course reminds us not to misuse it as a marketing bullhorn. Probably good advice. Bransford also notes that you can set up a Facebook page for your book, so that when and if people search out the title they can easily find it. Then you have to maintain two, and perhaps three, Facebook pages though and that seems (for me anyway) onerous.

That is all I could find on the pros and cons of a personal Facebook account versus a Facebook Author page. I would love to hear any additional thoughts. I am still undecided, although now I’m leaning towards using my personal Facebook account, or nothing at all (I’m still working on becoming more of an extravert, and besides I’m sure my cat understands me).

Photo Credit: mkhmarketing http://mkhmarketing.wordpress.com/

Front Matter

The time has come for me to consider what I want to include in the front matter of my book. Front matter is those pages before the book actually starts. You know, the section with the title page, some legal stuff, dedications, an amazing photo of moi (not likely). At least I think that’s what goes in the front of a novel.

But maybe I had better check. 

Okay, so as usual, the book designer genius Joel Friedlander has the lowdown on what you put in the front of your book with all sorts of fancy titles and words – like frontispiece, verso and half title. Definitely check out his post for a comprehensive list of what can be included in front matter and the general order. But front matter can be long or short and I was most interested in what is usually included and what is almost always included in both print novels and ebook novels.

Print Novels

I used my usual method of surveying the books on my shelves for this. The basic elements of front matter included in all print novels are:

• A Title page—The title page includes title, subtitle, author and publisher of the book. Sometimes it can include the publisher location and year of publication.
•  A Copyright page – The copyright page is usually on the other side of the title page. It includes the copyright notice, edition information, publication information, cataloging data, legal notices (i.e. that the novel is a work of fiction), and the book’s ISBN. Credits for design, production, editing and illustration are also commonly listed on the copyright page.

The front matter of most print books also includes:

• A dedication

• Blurbs of support or praise for the novel from reviewers and/or other authors (note that Friedlander does not include this in his list)

• One or more half title pages (extra title pages with just the book title before and/or after all of the front matter)

Less common elements in order of the frequency of their appearance in the books from my shelf include:

• A list of other books in the series or by the author
• A quotation (called an epitaph) 
• A Table of Contents
• A list of characters
  
• A prologue
• A map
• A book description
• An excerpt
• Information about the author

Acknowledgements and information about the author are generally at the back of the book.

It is also important to note that most print books (traditionally published ones that is) include cataloguing data on the copyright page. In some books this includes a summary of the book and tags or keywords for what the book is about. I believe this is called metadata and I understand it is important for the “findability” of books. I will be looking more into this in the future.

Ebook Novels

But what about ebooks? Are they different? I had heard that it is desirable to keep the front matter of ebooks short, since you want to get your readers to the actual story as soon as possible in the Look Inside feature on Amazon, so they are more inclined to buy your book.

I decided to check out the front matter of ebooks by ten self-published successes including J. Konrath, Hugh Howey, Bella Andre, Melissa Foster, CJ Lyons, Russell Blake, Scott Cramer, Theresa Ragan, Aaron Saylor, and Keith Robinson.

I discovered that there is a vast amount of variation and there is simply no truth to the suggestion that ebook front matter is shorter. However, I did note that three of these authors had their Look Inside set to jump over the front matter straight to chapter 1. I will have to check out that setting. In addition, there is no consistent order in which these items appeared – in many cases it seemed almost random. Usually, the title page appeared first followed by the copyright information and then all of the other stuff, but not always. Likewise, although the Table of Contents often appeared closer to the start of Chapter 1, this was not always the case.

Below are what these ten authors included in their front matter, from most common to least common, with tallies in terms of how many included what.

• Title Page – 9
• Table of Contents – 8
• Copyright (the c in a circle with the author’s name and the year) – 8
• Rights notice (the all rights reserved, this book may not be reproduced in any way statement) – 6
• Dedication – 5
• Cover designer credit (sometimes with website) – 5
• Legal notice (the this is a work of fiction statement) – 4
• Contact information (email, twitter, Facebook, and/or website) – 4
• Introduction (why I wrote this) – 3
• About the series and/or book – 3
• Press name and/or logo (some indies set up their own imprint) – 3
• Blurbs from reviewers and/or other authors – 3
• Edition number – 2
• Formatting credit – 2
• About the Author – 2
• Recipe or music list or something unique - 2
• Foreward – 1
• Quote (epitaph) – 1
• Editing credit – 1
• Proofreading credit – 1
• Excerpts that link to author’s other books – 1

Whew… that is a lot. Several of the authors who are well established definitely used the front matter as an opportunity to highlight their success in the form of blurbs, introductions and statements about themselves.

From the Tables of Contents I could also determine that a few authors put sections about their other books, about themselves and their copyright notice at the end of the book.

Based on the above, I would say if you are trying to keep your front matter short, pretty much anything goes and almost all of it could be moved to the back of the book. Based on the above, I would be inclined to definitely include a title page, table of contents, copyright statement, rights notice, legal notice and my press name. I think I would also like to credit people, but I am not sure. I might put that at the end.

I would love to hear what you think, and your experiences designing and selecting your front matter.

Photo Credit:  MikeBlogs via Compfight Creative Commons       

Trim Size and Your Novel

Or everything you thought you wanted to know about trim size but were afraid to ask

Who knew you could spend almost an entire day researching trim sizes? I didn’t. I didn’t even know what trim size was a month ago. And I certainly did not know how much variation there is in trim sizes in the publishing world.

So what is trim size? Trim size is basically the size of the book. It is called trim size because that is where the book is trimmed at the end of production.

Trim size affects a lot of things including (obviously) the size of the book, the number of pages in the book, how the book looks and feels, and the cost to produce the book. These are important things to keep in mind as you make choices about trim size.

There are industry standard trim sizes, there are certain trim sizes offered by self-publishers (usually industry standard) and there are certain trim sizes that are customarily used for certain kinds of books, such as children’s books or graphic novels, but there are no set rules.

The only real rule is that mass market paperbacks – the ones you can usually buy in grocery stores – must be 4.25” x 7”. Most other books, other than hardcover books, manuals and workbooks and photography or art books, fall under the general category of trade paperbacks. Trade paperback novels, memoirs and non-fiction can range in size from 5.06” x 7.81” to 6” x 9”, although some non-fiction can be larger at 7” x 10”.

The most common/popular trim sizes are:

5 x 8 inches (203 x 127mm)
5.06 x 7.81 inches (198 x 129mm)
5.25 x 8 inches (203 x 133mm)
5.5 x 8.5 inches (216 x 140mm)
6 x 9 inches (229 x 152mm)

Joel Friedlander is really the guru on trim size (and many other aspects of book design) so check out his posts in this regard.

Certain trim sizes are favoured for certain types of books. Children’s books are often smaller at 5.06” x 7.81”. Longish literary fiction is often 6” x 9” to accommodate longer word counts.

Trim Sizes and Types of Book

Despite reading all of this, I still was not sure what trim size was best for my novels given their word counts and genres. My middle-grade novel is 79,000 words and thus may be too long for a 5.06” x 7.81” trim size. My adult action-adventure is a hefty 138,000 words. Is that going to be a tome in a 6” x 9” trim size? How are they going to look and feel?

I needed some data. The best place for that of course was my bookshelf. Armed with my very irritating metric-only ruler, I started pulling books off my shelf. I made the following interesting observations.

There is a lot more variation in book sizes than I expected. I thought all the children’s books would be 5.06” x 7.81” and all the adult books would be 6” x 9” but in fact, some of the children’s books were bigger than 5.06” x 7.81”, and many of the adult books were smaller than 6” x 9”.

Middle-grade Fiction Books

The middle-grade fiction books on my shelves tended to be more “square” at 5.25” x 7.55” (?? – I don’t see that on the list of industry standard sizes) with a few, such as The BFG, clocking in at the standard 5.06” x 7.81” and the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series measuring 5.5” x 8” (again I can’t find that on the standard size list… maybe my ruler is broken). I also had one that was 5.06” x 7.55”.

Young Adult Fiction Books

The YA books tended to be slightly larger, but still smaller than the adult books, with the smallest at 5” x 8” and the largest at 5.5” x 8.25”(again not on the standard list) and one in the middle at 5.25” x 8”. These books tended to be much longer – all over 480 pages with lots of front and back matter.

Adult Fiction Books

These also ranged. Many of the books on my shelf, including, notably, all the self-published ones were in fact 6” x 9”. But there was also significant variation and some were 5.25” x 8.25” and some were 5” x 8”. When She Woke measures a strange 6” x 9.1”

To be clear here, I held the books up to each other to compare sizes after I measured to make sure the non-standard sizes were not a result of bad ruler use – they weren’t.

All of these books look fine. In some respects, the 6” x 9” ones border on feeling too big, but are fine. I would not go any bigger, and if your word count allows it, I would consider going smaller. As Friedlander observes, smaller sizes can make for a more intimate reading experience.

Trim Sizes and Word Counts

So what word counts work for what trim sizes anyway? Obviously with longer word counts, you want to consider bigger trim sizes so your book is not massively thick. Font size and line spacing are going to play a key role here in determining page length, but it is still good to know (vaguely) what word counts work for what trim sizes, as nobody wants to read 8 point font. Font sizes in printed novels tend to range from 10 point font to 11 point font with line spacing set at 120% to 125% of the font size. But there is a lot of variation in how much space different 11 point fonts take up.

I found the following rules of thumb, in terms of calculating number of pages based on word count and trim size, from Fiona Raven:

For 5.5” x 8.5” trim size, divide your word count by 390 to determine number of pages. So for my middle-grade novel, that would be 79,000/390 = 202 pages.

For 6” x 9” trim size, divide your word count by 475 to determine number of pages. So for my adult action-adventure, that would be 137,000/475 = 288 pages. Sounds like a positively slim volume!

But there seems to be a wide variation in these guides. I have also read from reasonable that you should assume 300 to 350 words per page no matter what the trim size (?). At 300 words per page, my adult action-adventure will be a more unwieldy 457 pages. Ack!

My formatter has just informed me that for 5.25” x 8” my 79,000 middle-grade novel will be about 300 pages. So that is about 263 words per page. I sincerely hope that if I choose 6” x 9” for my adult novel that I will get more than 263 words per page.

Update: I chose to make my adult novel In the Shadows of the Mosquito Constellation a 6" by 9" and had it set in 11 point font with 16 point spacing. It clocked in at a tidy 394 pages including all the front and back matter. Very relieved. One thing I did discover after originally having it set too small and too tight (10.5 font and 13 point spacing) and the doing line counts on many of the novels on my shelf is that most 6" by 9" novels have 32 to 34 lines of text per page. This is another good thing to check if you are in doubt with regard to your font size and spacing. But I will do another separate post on this sometime soon.

Word Counts and Printing Costs

My calculations started to panic me a bit. What if my action-adventure novel is too long? We’ve all heard that rule that novels should be between 80,000 and 100,000 words. I’ve been told by agents that they won’t consider anything over 100,000 words. Is this the ideal size of a novel? If so, my 139,000 word behemoth is way over the mark.

But, still, the books that I grabbed from my shelves to do my measurement exercise seemed to suggest otherwise. Not one of the adult novels was under 390 pages. I’m not sure what word count they are but surely they are over 100,000.

I did a quick check of word counts on popular novels and was stunned to find that a huge number of them are well over 139,000 words. All this time spent writhing in shame that I am way out of the ballpark!! Look at these numbers (from commonplacebook.com):

138,098 – Snow Falling on Cedars – Guterson, David
143,436 – The Two Towers – J. R. R. Tolkien
144,523 – One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
145,469 – Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
156,154 – Watership Down – Richard Adams
157,665 – Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood

186,418 – Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
190,858 – Goblet of Fire – JK Rowling
196,774 – The Corrections – Franzen, Jonathan
216,020 – The Amazing Adventures of Kavelier and Clay – Chabon, Michael
225,395 – East of Eden – John Steinbeck
257,154 – Order of the Phoenix – JK Rowling
349,736 – Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
418,053 – Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
455,125 – The Lord of the Rings – J. R. R. Tolkien
561,996 – Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
587,287 – War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
591,554 – A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

Check out the list at Indefeasible as well as it includes some analysis of award winners too.

This list tells me there is no ideal novel size in terms of reader preference – at least it is not necessarily under 100,000 words. There is an ideal novel size in terms of printing costs though and, according to Novel Writing Help, for many publishers, that ideal size is between 80,000 and 100,000 words. This is because it costs a lot more to print a longer novel, but you cannot increase the price of a longer novel to match the printing costs (we don’t pay twice as much for a 600 page novel as we do for a 300 page one). As a result, publishers must sell more units in order to make a profit. Thus, they tend not to take chances on first time novelists with long novels.

However, as ebooks are on the rise, length may not be as critical, as obviously they do not have to be printed. That said, I think I better investigate the costs of printing my not-quite-a-behemoth adult novel before I proceed. That will be the subject of one of my future blog posts.

As with all my posts, this is just an overview of what I have learned through a little bit of research. Please feel free to add or clarify, I would love to learn more and hear your thoughts!

Photo Credit: » Zitona «          via Compfight http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ 

Why do we Stigmatize Self-Publishing?

Why do we Stigmatize Self-Publishing?

Why do we stigmatize writers who self-publish? Other kinds of artists  – painters, musicians and filmmakers – are respected for their efforts to sell their work on their own. Artists sell paintings out of their house and in local galleries. Musicians put out indie records and tour around local clubs and restaurants to promote their work. They have  local followings and fans. We do not refuse to go see a band because a big label has not signed it. We recognize and respect it either as an up-and-coming band learning their art and building a fan base, or a band with decent talent that we like to listen to that might never make it big. Indie filmmakers are totally respected by both those in the film industry and the public for having the guts, talent and perseverance to put their work out there.

Why then can writers not do the same? What about writing requires curation and gatekeeping in a way that other art does not?

There is a lot of terrible self-published work out there, but surely there are terrible paintings, garage bands and indie films. Yet we still respect these other artists for putting their work out there for the public to decide on what it likes. Even if they fail, we have the attitude that at least they tried and followed their dreams. It is okay for a band to make a living doing small gigs and weddings.

Self-published writers, however, are often rejected by the traditionally published world and the public unless they make it big. There is limited respect for selling a decent number of self-published  novels or appealing to a small fan base. Self-publish and your neighbours and friends (especially your writing friends) will whisper “she self-published” as if you were caught sending photos of your  privates to everyone in town. We in general refuse to treat writers like we treat other creators. This is changing of course, and many self-published writers indicate they have had a very positive reception and experience.

I think the stigma associated with self-publishing is wrong. Let’s look at some of the reasons why it should go away altogether.

1)   Many famous writers in history self-published. According to Melissa Donovan of Writing Forward, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Jane Austen, William Blake, Benjamin Franklin, Edgar Allan Poe, Gertrude Stein, Mark Twain, and L. Frank Baum all self-published before they were traditionally published. 

2)   Many great books were rejected multiple times. Books like Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Animal Farm and Lolita were all rejected over and over. While the authors of these three books persisted and eventually received publication, their repeated rejection indicates traditional publishers cannot always identify what will  resonate with the public. We expect writers to persist through rejections that would bring people in other professions to their knees. What if these writers had not persisted? How many great novels sit in  drawers because their authors did not send it out one more time to just that right publisher or agent who could see the merit in their work. The Help by Kathryn Stockett was rejected over 60 times. I went to a conference once and a writer who was an invited speaker indicated his first effort had been rejected 127 times. 127!!

3)   Many writers like the control and the financial returns  associated with self-publishing and do not want to be traditionally  published. The traditional view is that self-published writers are  those who have been rejected by every publisher under the sun because  their work basically sucks. However some writers now, such as Hugh  Howey, never considered a traditional publisher, while others, such as Polly Courtney, returned to self-publishing after being signed by a traditional publisher. There are many such examples of writers who like the control of self-publishing. When you self-publish, you get to select  your editor, choose your cover design and decide how you want to market  your book. When you traditionally publish, you do not. Self-published writers also receive a much higher share of the sale of their books – up to 70% of the cover price, compared to the 10% commonly associated with traditional publishing. It is simply no longer true to say that self-publishers are those who could not make it in the traditional publishing world.

4)   Some self-published books are good and sell well. The idea that all self-published work is crap is simply incorrect and self-published novels are selling. In 2012, according to CNN, Amazon indicated that 27 of the top 100 Kindle ebooks were self-published. Self-published books are regularly making the New York Times bestseller list and the number of self-published writers who have made it big is continuing to grow with names like Hugh Howey, John Locke  and Colleen Hoover. There are also many self-published writers who are not famous but who are making a living. Detractors will point out that  most self-published writers sell fewer than 100 books, but there is also  a high percentage of failures in traditional publishing, so it is not clear why this failure-to-sell stigma should attach itself to self-publishing.

5)   Traditional publishing can lead to a stigma too. Being selected by a traditional publisher is not the windfall that many  believe it is. It works out wonderfully for some writers, but they give up control over how their book is marketed and where it is  sold. Traditional publishers generally focus much of their effort on their best-sellers and established writers. New writers whose books do not sell well during the first six weeks can find their books pulled by booksellers and their chances of future publication diminished, which leads to a stigma of its own. The publishing world is simply not kind to writers who have only fair to middling success, or who have limited  success on their first time out. Stories abound of writers whose books were just not given a chance on the shelves and find their books wallowing in the warehouse while they struggle to find a publisher for  their second novel. Sometimes (often?) it takes more than six weeks for a   book to get noticed and become a success, or more than one book for a writer to become a success. In many other careers, we allow people to  grow and develop in their profession. For some reason, in writing, we often do not provide that opportunity.

6)   The whole stigma just does not make sense. Going back to the story about the man whose book was rejected 127 times. We laud a writer whose work was not good enough for 127 publishers or agents and invite him to a conference as a success story (and receive no actual  information regarding the number of books he has sold – just that he  ultimately was ‘approved’ by the industry), but we snub a writer whose  self-published work sells reasonably well. We admire indie films and bands and allow them to distribute their work through a variety of  traditional channels such as radio stations and movie theatres, but we mock self-publishing (calling it vanity publishing) and many bookstores still refuse to put self-published books on their shelves.

If you read any articles on the stigma of self-publishing (and there are lots), check the comment sections at the bottom. The level of  disagreement over self-publishing is significant, with some commenters staunchly defending the traditional publishing industry, decrying the  crap that is self-published and emphasizing the need for curation in  books, while others point out that they are making a decent living as a self-published writer and noting that perhaps it should be up to the  public to curate. I am still not clear why the debate rages in  self-published writing more than in other areas of art. Are there more self-published authors than there are garage bands, artisans and indie film-makers and, in particular, are there more bad self-published  authors? Maybe, but that still does not mean that they should be mocked so derisively. Those who are not good enough or don’t have some sort of appeal will simply fail to find an audience and will likely eventually channel their efforts into some other pursuit. Those who are good enough and find an audience, even if it is a small audience, deserve the  same respect that other artists receive.

I am not suggesting that the traditional publishing world sucks  (indeed, it routinely selects and publishes a multitude of brilliant books), or that writers should not consider the many potential benefits associated with traditional publishing. I just do not understand why traditional publishing and self-publishing cannot co-exist and why there has to be such a stigma associated with self-publishing. It is hard enough for writers of all types (traditional or self-published) to be successful and build a career that none of us (especially those of us who are writers) should look down our noses at those who try their hand at getting their work out there through other means – whether they succeed or fail.

Photo Credit: marymactavish         via Compfight http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/      

Writing Shit

Writing Shit

I’ve been meaning to rewrite this post for some time. It was one of my first posts as a blogger and thus I had not yet settled on how I was going to approach blogging or how much time I was going to put into each post. Nevertheless, this has probably remained one of the most popular posts on my blog, and thus I decided it was time to rewrite it, because it was at best half-assed. At worst, it might have been sh*t.

1) Sometimes you will think your writing is fantastic. Sometimes you will think it is shit. Both will probably be correct.

Writer Hari Kunzu, in The Guardian Writing for a living: a joy or a chore? probably captures this best in the following quote about the writing process, and in particular of writing novels:

"Along the way, there are the pitfalls of self-disgust, boredom, disorientation and a lingering sense of inadequacy, occasionally alternating with episodes of hysterical self-congratulation as you fleetingly believe you've nailed that particular sentence and are surely destined to join the ranks of the immortals, only to be confronted the next morning with an appalling farrago of clichés that no sane human could read without vomiting."

We have all had the experience of reading our own writing and being blown away by how great it is. We have probably also all had the experience of cringing in despair at how appalling it is. Sometimes we experience both emotions regarding the same section of writing depending on our general state of mind when we read it. Writing well is insanely hard. There is a fine balance between looking at your work critically and improving what needs to be improved, and brow-beating yourself into believing that it is shit and you will never write well. Most writers probably do both. But serious writers know anything can be improved. It just depends how long you can keep at it. As Stephen King observed in On Writing:

"Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes  you’re doing good work when it feels like all you’re managing is to  shovel shit from a sitting position."

2) You have to be prepared to write shitty first drafts.

Most writers will know this comes from Annie Lamott's Bird by Bird and most writers will be thoroughly acquainted with writing shitty first drafts. Shitty first drafts are critical to the writing process and you will never be a writer if you do not get words down on the page. The key is to know that it is a shitty first draft and not to stop there. Shitty first drafts must be revised, again, again and again.

The tricky part comes sometime between the fifth and the tenth draft when you are no longer able to discern whether you are improving your manuscript or ripping apart that which gave it soul or movement. That’s when the writing process gets shitty (but that’s another post).

3) There are few accepted external criteria with regard to whether your writing is shit or not.

Okay, yes if you have sold a million books, fans love your writing, the reviewers fawn over you, you have won a Pulitzer and you make $5 million a year, your writing is probably not shit. But very few writers have achieved all of those things. Best-selling authors get panned by reviewers. Prize-winning authors fail to sell copies. Different readers have different tastes and very little writing will be universally loved. Thus while external feedback is important in determining whether your writing is shit or not, it is not the only metric you should use. If you have met even one of the above criterion, you should probably be happy. Even if you haven’t, your writing might not be shit. There is just so much writing out there that some good writers will fail to get noticed. Definitely do not use your ability to generate income from your writing as a criterion for determining whether your writing is shit or not.

4) Your writing might be shit.

This may be the hardest thing to accept as a writer. Some of us will simply not be good enough, or as good as the truly gifted writers out there and no amount of revision will make our writing not shit. Not everyone will be a good musician, artist, or doctor. For every human endeavor, there are people who fail. Just take a quick sift through some self-published novels, and even some traditionally published ones if you want to unearth much shit (you will also find many great novels).

There is a somewhat pervasive myth that you can do you want as long as you work hard enough at it. This is simply not true, and at some point it may be desirable to accept that your writing may be shit. That does not mean you cannot continue to write. I am a shitty ballet dancer, but I love it, and I get a lot out of trying to improve just a little bit each year. But it is also important to be realistic. I will never make a living dancing ballet and it is quite possible, you or I, will never make a living writing. But sometimes it’s also important to have a big slug of your gin and tonic and see number one, two and three above.

Photo Credit: andreasf 

One writer I know tells me that he sits down every morning and says to himself nicely, "It's not like you don't have a choice, because you do - you can either type or kill yourself." ~ Anne Lamott, 1995