Publishing isn’t what it used to be. Want to be a successful writer? The way to paying your bills does not run exclusively through New York anymore. You now have the opportunity to carve your own niche. Here’s how to sharpen your tools.
Why doesn't star poker player Phil Ivey get to the final table every year in the World Series of Poker? In fact, why hasn't he ever won the main event? Every observer of the game puts Ivey at the top of the charts in terms of all-around poker skill. He wins a lot of tournaments, but never the big one.
It's because poker isn't only about skill. You've got to get the cards. You can go all in with pocket aces only to see your opponent from Hoboken draw that third eight on the river.
So yeah, it's a mixture of skill and luck. Which pretty much defines any endeavor in life.
Of course, stronger skills increase your odds of success. As one wag put it, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”
In the writing world, especially now, you'll hear a lot about luck and the “harsh reality” of publishing. Whether you're self-publishing, going with a traditional house (large, small, or in-between), or doing a mixture of both, the truth is it's hard to break through and earn big numbers.
If that's the reality of it, then what's the solution? The same answer you'd give anyone starting a business. Do you really want to do this? Are you willing to look reality in the eye and make adjustments? Is this business enough of a passion that you'd do it even if you barely clear your bottom line (e.g., run an independent bookstore)?
Yes? You will keep writing? Even if things are not taking off? Okay.
The great world religions and various schools of philosophy teach that unhappiness comes primarily through expectations unfulfilled. Expectations can form images in your mind, such as seeing your e-book hit the Kindle Top 100 list or some such thing. When it doesn't happen, your brain orders a secretion of chemicals that make you feel like pig slop.
Set goals and have dreams, yes, but temper them with the understanding that you’re not to depend on them for your happiness. “If you can dream, and not make dreams your master ...” Kipling wrote.
Get feedback. Read books and articles on writing. Keep learning. Try new things. Experiment with short form. Maybe you'll find a new genre you like and that readers like, too. At the very least, you'll be exercising your skills. Dean Koontz was a middling writer for the first ten years of his career. But he was crazily prolific. And all along the way he taught himself about the craft. When he intentionally took a leap into deeper characterization (with Whispers) he shot up another level. And he's had several leaps like that since.
It’s always a combination of things that betters your odds. Knowing how to free your voice is one of those things. When you find the joy in your writing, your voice is freed almost automatically. And it's also more fun to write this way. You might as well have fun at this thing.
As I’ve said before, if you get a rejection from a publisher or agent, let it hurt for half an hour, then get back to your keyboard. The same goes for those who self-publish. Your latest release mired in mud? Okay, grouse to somebody about it, or bay at the moon, but then get back to work on your next project.
If you love to write, why would you ever stop? If writing doesn't make a living for you, do it because you love it, and do what you can with it. Keep your day job but find your “quota sweet spot” (the number of words you can comfortably type in a day) and stick to it.
Persistence plus production plus quality improvements lead to success. That's been the formula for business success ever since Eli Whitney. (Did you know the cotton gin didn't make him rich, but muskets did, years later? Well, now you do.)
Let Hugh Howey, the huge self-publishing success, have the last word (from a comment1http://www.kboards.com/index.php?topic=164629.msg2361138#msg2361138 on KBoards.com):
Which leads to my point of this long-winded nonsense: Time has to be an ingredient. An important one. This [self-publishing] revolution has barely gotten started. Good luck and bad luck require time to even them out. If you've done everything right, your works might take off in ten years. Who knows? We haven't been at this long enough. I think it's too early for any of us to say something isn't working or that it won't work. I just have to remember back to writing seven novels over three years and watching them sit between #335,204 and #1,302,490 in the Amazon store. I didn't care. I just kept writing. I read about Amanda Hocking, and I thought: “Hellz yeah!” And I kept writing. I gave myself until I was 40 and I had twenty titles published before I worried about whether I sold enough to pay a bill. And even if that never happened, it was an excuse to publish twenty titles. I could always say that. No one could take it away from me. And anyway, I'd sold a handful of books and heard from people that they loved them. I remembered when that was just an idle dream.
The self-publishing revolution has spawned a veritable flood of advice, how-tos, blogs, commentary, and hoopla. Below is my overview on the most important things you need to know to get started ... and thrive as a self-publishing writer.
Supersuccessful indie writer Bella Andre said in an interview, “I have an economics background and I’ve always been entrepreneurial. This is the perfect sweet spot for me, someone who understands how to run a business, really enjoys building a brand and marketing but also has a deep creative strain.”
You can find your own sweet spot if you learn to think like a publisher.
There are three main functions of a publishing house: acquisitions, production, and marketing. Everything a publisher does falls under one of these umbrellas.
You need to think that way, too.
In a publishing house there are weekly meetings called “pub board.” This meeting is usually made up of representatives from editorial and sales, along with the publisher. At this meeting editors present projects they believe the publisher should buy and bring to market.
The editors have to convince sales that the book is commercial enough for the company to make money from it, and that the author is one who deserves their investment.
The editors are always trying to find a “fresh voice.” The sales team is always trying to find commercial viability.
So in thinking like a publisher, and considering your own projects, put those two things together: your voice and what has a chance to sell.
When a book goes into production, there is a series of steps the publishing company has long since followed. You need to do the same.
Included in this is a physical print copy of your book. You will want to go through the same quality controls as you prep your print version. I use CreateSpace, Amazon's print-on-demand service, and have been extremely pleased.
Other authors choose to go with a company called “Lightning Source.”
Either way, you need a professional-looking layout and print cover. For this, I highly advise you hire the work out to a professional. But you can begin teaching yourself about the important concepts by looking at articles on thebookdesigner.com.
Finally, there is a marketing plan for each book. See the following.
This means not just writing, but growing as a writer. You should be studying your craft while simultaneously producing your words. See chapter six on studying the craft.
As Brian Tracy puts it, “The companies with the highest quality are the companies that earn the highest profits. They represent the greatest opportunities for the future.”
Remember, you are in business, and you need a checklist for the essential quality factors for your book production.
For self-publishers, this is the list:
Some writers just want to write. The idea of learning tech stuff fills them with dread.
That's okay. You can simply find people to work with in each of these areas. Using Google and, best of all, recommendations, you can find freelancing professionals and begin to build a team you can rely on.
A word about one-stop services, like BookBaby. For a fee or a percentage, a service like this will distribute your e-book to various online retailers. This is as an alternative to setting up your own accounts with those retailers and uploading the books.
The advantage to the one-stop shop is that you don't have to think about the distribution details. You have one place that distributes and collects the dough and pays you.
On the other hand, you lose some flexibility. If, for example, you want to change the price of a book, it can take weeks to get that to happen.
While the final decision is up to you, I am most in favor of self-publishing writers setting up their own publishing company as a corporation. This is not hard to do. Consider LegalZoom.com as a starting point. In this scenario, you will have direct accounts with the big retailers.
There are mountains of books, blogs, articles, and consultants that offer endless advice on marketing strategies. All this information can be confusing. What works best? What should I spend my time on? How can I market and write at the same time? What price should I make my books?
But you have to consider these questions. You need to commit to a written plan and then work at it with good return on investment (ROI).
Start by committing to your craft. Your goal is to become a master. As agent Donald Maass says, “Your best promotion is within the covers of the last book.”
This also means that it's going to take you more than one book to gain traction and momentum.
You will need a website that is navigable and has a place where readers can sign up for your e-mail list. You should have a link in the back of all of your e-books that takes people to this sign-up page. Use a company like MailChimp or Vertical Response to store your list and give you HTML for your sign-up forms.
After your book has been out a while and has garnered a number of reviews (twenty is a good benchmark), you can pay for placement in various deal-alert services. This requires that you lower your normal price for a few days so subscribers get your book at a nice discount.
The biggest service right now is BookBub. Options include BookGorilla, eBookSoda and several others. Paying for placement is always worth it, even if you don't break even the first time around. That's because you're paying for readers, a percentage of whom will become repeat customers.
Other strategic opportunities include blog tours, writing guest commentary on blogs, setting up a dynamic Amazon author page, and speaking at local events. But none of them are as good as word of mouth, which is generated by people loving what you write.
Regarding social media, remember that it is about true interaction and community. You build trust that way and network with readers. When you have a book come out, you can certainly mention it, so long as you are not hammering your followers with variations on “Buy my book!”
Choosing the right price for your book is a matter of strategy first and ultimate revenue second.
If you're just getting started, you want to get eyeballs on your pages. One strategy is to price your novel at ninety-nine cents, which gives people low risk for trying you out. You also might want to give the book away for free. One way to do that is via the Kindle Select program, which requires you to be exclusive for a ninety-day term with Amazon.
There is no way to know for certain which is best. It may even vary from book to book.
You simply have to try things and track your sales every month.
Self-publishing is a volume business. The more good work you put out there, the better you are going to do.
How good?
It depends. But if you want to start at the top, there is the writer previously mentioned, Bella Andre. She was a traditionally published category romance writer in 2010. She'd done eight books for two different publishers without much financial success.
Self-publishing was just coming into its own, and at a friend's suggestion Andre decided to give it a try.
She uploaded her first e-book, Love Me, and priced it at $3.99. In one month she made $20,000, which was four times as much as any book contract she’d ever signed. She put up another e-book a few months later and it became the first self-published title to hit Amazon’s Top 25 best-sellers list.
Andre was in the right place at the right time with the right product (romance) and the right work ethic. Between 2010 and 2014, Andre put out thirty, count 'em, thirty! e-books. Her earnings over that time? All she will say is that it is in the “eight figures.”
Remember, that is the top of the heap, but it shows you what's possible if you keep on keeping on, and most important, you write well.
In the strata under people like Bella Andre and Hugh Howey are a huge and increasing number of authors who are making fantastic money as writers.
Many more are making enough to quit their day jobs.
Even more than that are making enough for car payments and mortgages, and their kids' educations.
And the great part about being a self-publishing writer is that no one can stop you.
You get to keep going. You get to keep trying. You get to keep getting better. You don’t have to sit down with someone telling you you’re not capable, that you should just quit, that you should go away and leave your dreams to others. You don’t have to take that as long as you’ve got a keyboard and an imagination.
And in this way, you can never be defeated.
Are you a real writer?
Then keep writing.
And don’t stop.
Ever.
The new world of self-publishing options calls to mind the golden age of the pulp magazines. During that era, roughly 1920–1950, writers could earn decent money pounding out stories and novellas for a penny a word.
Later, the 1950s boom in mass-market paperbacks provided another source of lettuce for the enterprising author. Production and quality were key. If you could deliver the goods on a regular basis, you could actually make a go of the uncertain and unpredictable writer’s life.
The same thing is true today.
Many use short-form fiction as a strategic component of building a lasting readership. With e-readers and (increasingly) smartphones used as reading devices, short fiction is once again in demand, as evidenced by venues such as Amazon's Kindle Singles.
Hugh Howey, the self-publishing superstar who shot to fame with his Wool series, had no idea what was going to happen when he published the first 12,000-word story on the Kindle platform. “That was it,” Howey says. “There was no more story. I made the work available and did zero promotion for it. I thought it was the least commercial of my works, being short and very inexpensive.”
But soon Wool was outselling all his previous works combined. One thousand copies in a month, three thousand the next, and ten thousand the month after that.
Howey knew he had a hit on his hands. “I heeded the flood of e-mails and reviews,” he says, “and started writing the next part.”
The rest is well-known in the indie world. Wool was optioned for film by Ridley Scott. A print-only deal with Simon & Schuster followed. Howey retained the right to publish the e-books on his own.
There is always the chance that a good series of short fiction will catch on and become a solid income stream. But that’s not the only reason to pursue short-form work.
Prolific writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch, who makes good money from short stories, also uses them to help create and enhance her full-length fiction. “I explore the worlds of my novels,” she says. “If I introduce a major new character, I write a short story to figure out who that character is.”
Rusch also uses her short work to find new readers. She’ll take a story that is normally for sale online and make it free for a week. “I put up a free short story every Monday and take that story down the following Monday. Free, one week only. And boy, has that grown my blog's readership, and my own.”
Short-form fiction is anything less than a novel. The minimum word count for a novel varies, depending on genre, audience, and (as with many things in publishing today) whom you ask, but is usually tagged at 50,000. Below that, you have the following, with slight variations of opinion:
Between 20,000 and 50,000 words, the novella was a popular form in the age of the pulps because it could take up most of a magazine and leave readers feeling like they got a good story for their money.
But when the pulps dried up, so did novellas. Though a title occasionally broke through (e.g., The Bridges of Madison County) or was included in a collection of short fiction by a single author, most traditional publishers did not find novellas cost-effective to produce.
Now the novella is back and self-publishers—who don’t need to worry about things like print runs and page signatures where e-books are concerned—are releasing them in droves.
A novella works best when it has one main character and one main plot. An example is James M. Cain’s classic crime novella The Postman Always Rings Twice. Coming in at just under 40,000 words, it’s a love-triangle-leads-to-murder story. It has the famous opening line: They threw me off the hay truck about noon.
The story is told in first-person narration by Frank Chambers. But novellas work equally well in third-person point of view.
Other famous novellas include:
Not quite so well-known is the novelette. At between 7,000 and 20,000 words, it allows for a little more breathing space than a short story without requiring the fuller complexity of a novel.
A novelette, like its beefier cousin the novella, is best when it’s about one main character and story. Novelettes are perhaps best known in the sci-fi world. Howey’s original Wool, for example, was novelette length. The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America give an annual Hugo Award in this category. Perhaps you’ve heard of some of the other famous winners:
An enduring and popular form, the short story can pack an emotional punch as powerful as a novel. At 1,000–7,000 words in length, the best stories usually revolve around one shattering moment.
The shattering moment can come at the beginning of the story with the consequences played out (e.g., “A Candle for the Bag Lady” by Lawrence Block); or it can come at the end, usually as part of an intriguing plot that has a surprise ending. A master of this form is Jeffery Deaver (see his collections Twisted and More Twisted).
And, yes, the shattering moment can be in the middle, as in Raymond Carver’s classic “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?”
Usually under 1,000 words, flash fiction is a world of its own. You can explore many venues for this type of work online.
Short-form fiction published as independent, stand-alone works should not be viewed (at least initially) as a source of major self-publishing profits. That’s because to remain competitive on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and other retailers, you have to price them at the lower end—usually for ninety-nine cents or for free. Pricing is not a science, so you should experiment. A novella might support a price of $2.99 or even more on occasion. It takes several months to a year of conducting pricing/promotional experiments and collecting data to figure out what’s working best for you.
Here are some other strategic uses of short fiction:
Use them in the Kindle Select program. Kindle Select is a program Amazon offers under the Kindle Direct Publishing umbrella. By giving Amazon exclusive distribution rights (in ninety-day increments), you can offer a work for free for five days. Those days can be spaced apart or used all at once. For all of the rest of the days in this period, your story will be priced as usual.
My preference is to use all five days in a row and to get the word out on social media. The goal is to get eyeballs on the story and to make new readers who will then want to seek out your full-length books. If you don’t yet have any full-length books to offer, these free looks can begin to build your readership with your readers.
Use your stories as free giveaways when people sign up for your newsletter. Successful independent writers know that the two best marketing tools are word of mouth and an e-mail list of readers. To start building that list, many authors include a sign-up form on their blog or website. When a person signs up, a free story or book is sent to them.
I recommend using at least a novelette-length story for this—make sure it’s a good one. You not only want those sign-ups, you also want readers who will become fans.
Use them as serials. Using a model from the good old days, many writers are now serializing their novels. They publish in installments and charge a low price. Some authors refer to this as episodic fiction, likening it to a television series such as Lost or True Detective.
Later, as Hugh Howey did with Wool, you can gather the series into one volume. But also heed Howey’s advice: “I think it's a bad idea to simply chop up a novel into shorter pieces. Each work needs to satisfy on its own.”
Howey emphasizes that each piece “should have its own beginning, middle, and end. Cliff-hangers work only if the protagonists have overcome some other obstacle along the way. Don't string your readers along; invite them back for more.”
Use them to promote a new novel. A few years ago, the big publishing houses started commissioning short works from their A-list authors. Lee Child, Michael Connelly, and Janet Evanovich—just to name a few—put out shorts featuring their popular series characters. Doing so not only helped promote their next novels, but also kept their readers engaged during those in-between periods.
Use them to keep your joy alive. Sometimes you need to write something just for the fun of it. This keeps your writing chops sharp and your writer’s soul soaring. That’s how it was with my short story “Golden.” It’s not my usual thriller or noir beat, but it was a story I needed to write. It makes me happy that it’s out there—and that readers have found it.
“If you like to read short stories, write them,” Rusch says. “It's that simple. Write what you love. That's really the most important thing—and believe it or not, the most important thing to making a living.”
Use them to increase your chances of success. If there’s one consistent drumbeat coming from successful indie authors, it is that they believe production is key. And that’s not surprising, considering it’s similar to the thinking that occurred during the pulp era I talked about earlier in this chapter. One of those great pulp writers, Edgar Rice Burroughs, once said, “If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.”
One of the long-term consequences of the digital revolution is, of course, the decline of physical bookstores. Remember when there were at least two or three great bookstores in town? There were more in a big city, with a lot of indies to choose from, as well as the chains. I remember Pickwick, which was bought out by B. Dalton, which was bought out by Barnes & Noble.
There was Brentano's, which was acquired by Waldenbooks, which was acquired by K-Mart, and rolled over into Border's.
Then, all of a sudden, there was no more Border's.
And now poor Barnes & Noble is the last chain standing. But it's been closing stores left and right. Its CEO was ousted. The future of its remaining brick-and-mortar outlets is cloudy at best. Which of course ripples upward to the traditional publishers.
We all should have bought Proctor & Gamble stock in 2007, when the Kindle hit the market, because P&G makes Pepto-Bismol. Sales of the pink elixir must have shot through the roof in publishing boardrooms across Manhattan.
All of which leads us to another consequence of monumental importance: the end of discoverability.
What do I mean? Take a look at these stats from an article in Salon.com (July 19, 2013):
According to survey research by the Codex Group, roughly 60 percent of book sales—print and digital—now occur online. But buyers first discover their books online only about 17 percent of the time. Internet booksellers specifically, including Amazon, account for just 6 percent of discoveries. Where do readers learn about the titles they end up adding to the cart on Amazon? In many cases, at bookstores.
The brick and mortar outlets that Amazon is imperiling play a huge role in driving book sales and fostering literary culture. Although beaten by the Internet in unit sales, physical stores outpace virtual ones by 3-to-1 in introducing books to buyers. Bookshelves sell books. In a trend that is driving the owner of your neighborhood independent to drink, customers are engaging in “showrooming,” browsing in shops and then buying from Amazon to get a discount. This phenomenon is gradually suffocating stores to death. If you like having a bookseller nearby, think carefully before doing this. Never mind the ethics of showrooming — it’s self-defeating. You’re killing off a local business you like. (If you prefer e-reading, many independent stores have agreements with Kobo and Zola Books that give them a cut of e-book sales.)
As online sales continue to gain ground and shelf space diminishes, “discoverability” has become a big worry-word in the industry. To make a point so obvious that it’s sometimes overlooked, the most crucial moment in bookselling is the moment a reader finds out that a book that sounds interesting exists. How else is she going to buy it?
So there you have it. Physical bookstores are (were?) the big driver of discoverability. Shoppers walked in and saw a huge front-of-the-store display of a writer the publisher put big bucks behind. They saw recommendations from store staff, and the covers of certain titles displayed with full cover showing. They saw all sorts of books in all sorts of ways.
But when that space is no longer there, what happens to discoverability?
Well, you can try to create a new stream. A newly implanted CEO of a big publisher says the major houses are the ones who will be able to “crack the code of discoverability in a world of fewer bookstores, to come closer to the end consumer, to keep readers more interested in reading and provide them with the best reads.”
To which I say, with all due respect, there is no code to be cracked. There never was. Once upon a time there was but one system with but one player: the publishers, who controlled placement in bookstores.
But the era of massive placement is over. What do we have instead? An old-fashioned system, one your grandparents called merit. That means trust, which is earned, over time, as people come to rely on the quality of your offerings.
This is good news for writers. Because it should be about the writing, and writing is a craft, and craft can be learned, and writers can get better.
In the past, writers needed the backing of a big publisher to get any prominent real estate in a store. Precious few writers ever got the royal treatment. But now the playing field is digital. And those who compete directly for reader loyalty do so with the same chance to grab market share as anyone else.
Thus the key to success in this game is not advertising, shelf space, co-op, The New York Times, algorithm ping-pong, bookstore signings, launch parties, or social media saturation. It is simply and reliably this: producing good book after good book.
Sure, you need a home base (website) and a modicum of exposure to social media. You have to give some thought to how you present your professional self to the world. You'll have to explore means of “getting the word out” when you have a book available.
But all that pales in comparison to the most crucial factor, now and forevermore: the quality of the experience you deliver to readers. Concentrate on that and discoverability will take care of itself.
The traditional book publishing industry, God bless it, may be hacking and wheezing like characters in the last act of La Bohéme. I wish it were not so, as it is a good thing to have printed, bound volumes of paper books for those who prefer that medium. But as Dr. House is wont to say, “Tragedies happen.”
For writers of any stripe––be they independent, traditional, or hybrid—now is the time to step away from Mimi and her coughing fit for a moment and take the long view. And that's where we see the long tail.
What is “long tail marketing”? Very simply, it holds that the profitability of small business is directly proportional to the number of products it has for sale over time. The more products (factoring in quality, of course), the longer the tail. Instead of looking for the next big thing, a business may sell “less of more.”
Old school thinking focuses on the launch. The front list. The blockbuster. The big rollout. Backlist is largely left alone, except for heavy hitters who get the shelf space in the bookstores.
Self-publishing writers, the ones who are making some good money at it, go at it the other way. Volume is the key. That's what wags the long tail.
Traditional publishing is beginning to recognize this, and thus is asking its A-list writers to produce more, faster, and even to supplement their front list with shorter works.
In other words, we are all long tail marketers now.
Many self-publishing writers miss this, however. I hear and read laments from writers starting to self-publish that haven't seen big sales. They think that means failure. But that's old school thinking. It's not about a title or two spiking its way up the Kindle list a month after release. That's nice when it happens, but the real meat is in the long tail. And what is the long tail? It’s adding more product over the course of time.
As I like to say, the final “law” of success in this writing game is to repeat the production-publication cycle over and over for the rest of your life. Why not? If you're a writer, this is what you do until you can't do it anymore, right?
Yes, you need quality control. That's a law, too. But here's another aspect of the long tail: Single title duds are not fatal to a career. All writers in the traditional world know that they are only a dud or two away from being unemployed. Tales of authors getting nice advances, having the books disappoint the sales department, getting dropped by their publisher, and not being able to find another because of lousy numbers are innumerable.
Self-publishing with a long tail is the reverse of that scenario. If a book or two is a dud, it doesn't mean that you can't produce a better book next time. You can even remove the dud and re-do it if you like.
Also, you can try out new niches for a spot on the long tail. In old school thinking, you are tied to a single brand. In the new school, you can play. You can create works of any length. You can start a series based on a lark and let the readers decide if it continues. And here's another factor: There is no huge up-front cost to publishing like this. Even something that doesn't sell well will make you Starbucks money eventually. No harm, no foul.
Some other things the long tail method brings to the table are listed below:
What you need is optimism, a work ethic, and consistency. Then you will grow an audience that is fitted for you. You might even make a living at this eventually. But even if it's only a moderate stream of income, that's a nice thing to have feeding your bank account every month.
Think long term, long tail. And keep writing.
My grandfather, Arthur Scott Bell, was born in 1890. He grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he was an outstanding athlete for Ann Arbor High.
He won an athletic scholarship to DePauw University, later transferring to the University of Michigan to play football. He joined the Army in World War I, and during that time he met my grandmother, Dorothy Fox. One of the treasure troves I have is the box of love letters he wrote to her from Fort Sheridan, Illinois. My grandmother kept them all, bound with ribbons. When my father was little, he'd hear his father call his mother Dot, and he combined that with Mama, so ever after my grandmother was known as Mama Dot. Later on, my dad started calling his father Padre.
And that's how all his grandkids knew him.
One of Padre's favorite phrases was, “Go your best.” He said that to me a number of times—when I was off to a new school year, or starting Little League.
During the Great Depression, Padre fed his family as a field salesman for the Encyclopedia Britannica. He was a stellar salesman, rising to become one of the top ten in the entire company.
From what Padre and my dad told me about those days, I gathered five lessons that apply to writers (and anyone else) trying to peddle their wares.
Padre loved the Britannica. I have a full set from 1947, passed down to me. (Note: If you have one, don't get rid of it. The entries in these volumes are often better and more authoritative than anything you can find today.)
Do you believe in your product? Are you convinced that what you're writing is the best you can make it? Or are you going out there with something less than that––and still expecting good sales?
Padre was a lifelong learner. On my shelf I have Padre's dictionary, the Webster's New Collegiate, 2nd Edition. In the front of the dictionary, on one of the blank pages, Padre had written himself a note on a new word: psycho-cybernetics. That would place this note around 1960, when the book by Maxwell Maltz first came out. Padre was seventy years old then but still interested in growing his vocabulary.
He was of the Dale Carnegie school of self-improvement. Another treasure I own is the hardcover copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People that Padre and Mama Dot gave my dad upon his graduation from Hollywood High School. They each inscribed it. Padre wrote the following:
To have a friend is to be a friend. I am sure you are getting to be an expert at it. Don't let down!!
And from Mama Dot:
You can do more than strike while the iron is hot. You can make the iron hot by striking.
Are you growing as a writer? Are you spending some part of your week in purposeful study of the craft? Padre and Mama Dot's generation believed anyone could succeed if they studied and worked hard enough.
Padre had a definite strategy when he pulled into a new town. He looked up all the lawyers and doctors. These would be the people most likely to have some disposable income during the Depression. Thus they would be the most likely to buy.
Simple enough. But when it comes to marketing, how many writers out there are trying to cast a wide net in the hope of snagging some random fish? The difference between 100,000 low-engagement followers and 10,000 quality followers is huge. Don't try to be all things to all people, but be a value add-on for those who most likely want to sample your work. When you blog or tweet, do it with your specific audience in mind. What interests them? Write about those things and link to that content.
My grandfather was a natural storyteller. He had a deep, resonant voice. I can hear it now. And when he started spinning a tale, you sat mesmerized.
I remember one story he told about a football player at Michigan named Molbach. The fellows called him “Molly.” He was a fullback, a powerhouse runner who could not be stopped in short yardage situations. Padre told about one tough game where Molly put his head down and ran so hard he kept going over the sideline and ran right into a horse––and knocked the horse down!
Padre's storytelling made you feel good. He brought you into the moment. The legend in the family was that Padre had a story for every occasion.
Does your marketing make people feel good? If someone sees your tweets or Facebook posts, will they generally be pleased with what you've posted? Or do you depend on a barrage of useless “buy my book” type messages?
Work at making your social media a pleasure for others to read. “To have a friend is to be a friend.”
Padre was a man “at home in his own skin.” He'd been through plenty in his life, the Depression not least among them. But he always came out all right in the end.
He had the greatest laugh in the world. It came from deep in his chest and rumbled out in joyous reverberation.
Remember that you need to be able to laugh. And in order to laugh, you can’t be constantly stressing over outcomes and expectations. If you follow Padre's lessons, you'll work hard on yourself and your writing. You'll be smart about marketing and refuse to let setbacks stop you. You simply won't worry about the things that are outside of your control.
Manage your expectations; don't let them rule you. Concentrate on what you can do, not what is out of your hands.
Strike the iron.
Keep writing.
Go your best.
It was probably the English actor Edmund Kean (1787–1833) who uttered famous last words that have been attributed to others. On his deathbed he was asked by a friend if dying was hard. The thespian replied, “Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.”
Let’s adapt this to fit our lives as writers: Writing is hard. You should know that already. (I should say “writing well is hard,” but that doesn't sound as snappy.)
But here's the other side: Marketing is easy.
Yes, I said easy. I can hear the sighs, nay, the howls of protest. “If it's so easy, how come my books aren't selling?”
The answer is almost always: Because writing is hard. You've got to have a superior product to sell, and that's not easy. It's not easy for any business to create great products. If it were, everybody would be a business success.
Believe me when I say it takes quality production that you repeat, over and over, for the rest of your life, to make a go of independent publishing.
So why am I saying marketing is easy? Because marketing is not the same as that tiresome buzzword, discoverability. If you remember that, your life will be a lot happier. Write well, and market easily, and discovery takes care of itself. In fact, that's the only way it gets taken care of at all.
You see, the marketing venues that work best for fiction writers are now pretty much settled. In my opinion, these are the top five:
This is, has been, and always will be the greatest driver of sales for any novelist. It is “passive marketing,” because others do the promoting on your behalf.
Beyond the book itself, you really cannot do anything to improve word of mouth. Some authors attempted to do so a few years ago, by buying five-star reviews. But that practice quickly flamed, and some authors suffered because of it.
So don't stress about this aspect of marketing. But in the words of Bonnie Raitt, give ’em something to talk about.
Growing a list should be one of your ongoing enterprises. You should have a website with a place for readers to sign up for your updates. You should also learn how to communicate effectively so as not to annoy people. Don’t make your communication to your list just a “please buy my book” appeal. Make your notifications a pleasure to read. For example, I always try to include one fun fact or laugh line in my e-mails. And I keep it short!
As I mentioned earlier in the chapter, if you're just starting out, the Select program from Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is one of the best ways to get your work out to new readers. You list your book exclusively with the Kindle store for ninety days and are allowed to offer your book free for five days within that period. The days can be used singly or in order. I advise using the days consecutively, as I mentioned previously.
How you utilize KDP Select with multiple titles is up to you, but I would advise keeping at least some short fiction works with the program. You can use free promotion to introduce new readers to your writing.
Services like BookBub, BookGorilla, and Kindle Nation Daily may run an ad for your book. You pay for the privilege. But here is where many writers make a mistake. You should not view this kind of ad as a way to make money or “break even.” You may, in fact, not make back your initial investment.
But it's still worth it because when you attract new readers, a percentage of them will become repeat customers. Thus the value of your return is not dollar for dollar, but future income based upon the new readers you generate.
It's necessary to have some footprint out there in social media. But don't try to do everything. Pick something you enjoy and that doesn't gobble up too much of your time. Remember, social media is about “social” and not (primarily) about selling. There is a part of social media that's too hard for me to recommend: personal blogging. I participate in a group blog. Trying to produce content by myself, at least three times a week, takes too much time and effort for too little return. The people who can do this are few, and I'm still not convinced the return on energy (ROE) is worth it. Choose wisely where you specialize.
Now the hard part, writing. Concentrate most of your efforts here. Writing is a craft. It has to be learned, practiced, polished, criticized, revised, and practiced some more. It has to be wild and free on one side, yet disciplined and structured on the other.
Yes, you can write for pure pleasure, that's fine. You don't have to sell in big numbers if you don't want to. But if you're serious about gathering readers in ever increasing numbers, work at the craft.
Beethoven had to work at his music.
Picasso had to work at his painting.
Pete Rose had to work at baseball. He became one of the greatest hitters of all time with less than all-time talent. His problem was that he thought gambling was easy.
So here is your lesson for publishing: Work on your writing and don't gamble.
Seth Godin, whom many consider the premiere social media guru, uttered a word of caution to traditional book publishers at the Digital Book World conference:
The challenge we have is not all of your authors want to be good at social media. And not all of them have something to say when they’re not writing a book. Is the only way to sell books to dance faster than everyone else? I don’t think it is. … What we have to figure out is not merely does this author have 70,000 good words to say in a row, but do they have a following, can we help them get a following, are they the kind of person where a reader says, “I can’t wait for your next work.”2Quoted by Jane Friedman (https://janefriedman.com/ebooks-print-market/)
The prevailing wisdom about social media has coalesced around the fact that it is best for forming community and only marginally effective for selling things like books. A good social media presence (henceforth referred to as SMP) certainly can help with a launch if—and this is crucial—you have established trust by consistently offering quality content to your followers.
On the other hand, abusing your SMP can render the whole thing a complete waste of time.
What do I mean by abuse? I call it the Ned Ryerson Syndrome. You remember Ned, from the great comedy Groundhog Day. He was the insurance salesman who accosted Bill Murray in each reload of the day, until finally Murray just punches him in the face before he can get a word out.
What does Ned do wrong? Count the ways! He demands attention. He exhibits lousy communication skills. He makes lame jokes. Worst of all, without an invitation, he pushes his product into Bill Murray’s face and keeps on doing it.
I like to do a little personal research on this issue every now and then. The way it happens is that I’ll come across an indie author I don’t know but who looks interesting. Most of the time it’s because a nice book cover catches my eye. I’ll click to see if that author has other books, and what the general reviews and ranking are. Then I’ll check on his SMP.
For example, I’ve had the following situation occur. I noticed a really nice thriller cover from an author I hadn’t heard of. He had three other nice thriller covers. But his Amazon rankings were not good for any of the titles. He had a handful of reviews that averaged out to ... average.
Now, I believe the books themselves always have the most to do with any of this. But there may be other reasons a book or series doesn’t take off.
I checked this author’s SMP, starting with his Twitter account. And boy, did I find Ned Ryerson.
Not one of his tweets contained content or attempted to interact with others. Every single one was some sort of sales pitch. There were different kinds of pitches: a deal kind, then a line from the book kind, followed by a book cover kind, and an elevator pitch kind. All with links to sales pages.
Over on Facebook, I saw more of the same.
This author was not only wasting his time, he was hurting his prospects. He was making everyone who follows him feel like Bill Murray in his eternal recurrence: Oh boy, here comes Ned Ryerson again! Do I have to live this moment over and over?
Remember, the last time Murray sees Ned he just punches Ned in the face.
Here’s the SMP lesson of the day: Don’t make people want to punch you in the face.
What kind of guest is that? One who brings something to a social gathering that people like. Be a content provider. A person who says things that bring a smile, a new thought, or a helping hand.
Don’t run up to people and yell. Grow naturally.
Honestly, didn’t your mother teach you not to say the first thing that pops into your head?
“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”
—Abraham Lincoln.
When you launch a book or announce a deal, do so via your SMP. But make sure such things are only about 10 percent of your messaging. That’s my unofficial anecdotal rule of thumb.
One of the key elements of selling online these days is the ability to write book descriptions that sizzle and do the job in three paragraphs or so. In this age of short attention spans, you can't afford to waste any space.
For amusement, I randomly looked at some descriptions (sometimes called “cover copy”) from best-selling authors. You ought to do the same. Go through Amazon and study the best books in your genre. See what professional marketing people have come up with. Figure out what works and doesn't work for you. Then write your own copy accordingly.
Here are my thoughts on three book descriptions:
He lives in solitude beneath the city, an exile from society, which will destroy him if he is ever seen.
She dwells in seclusion, a fugitive from enemies who will do her harm if she is ever found.
But the bond between them runs deeper than the tragedies that have scarred their lives. Something more than chance—and nothing less than destiny—has brought them together in a world whose hour of reckoning is fast approaching.
In Innocence, #1 New York Times best-selling author Dean Koontz blends mystery, suspense, and acute insight into the human soul in a masterfully told tale that will resonate with readers forever.
My score: B-
The first line is pretty good. It captures my attention, and makes me want to read the next line (which is the whole secret of copywriting).
But that second line is a bit soft. I would change “do her harm” to “kill her.”
The third paragraph is ambiguous. I'm not sure why I should care that these two people have a “bond.” The second line is rather ponderous to get through and has no real specificity. What sort of “reckoning” are we talking about here? Why are these two people involved?
The last line, of course, is puffery for the author. If you're Dean Koontz, you deserve it. But even here, such effusions as “will resonate with readers forever” may be over the top. My advice for us mere mortals: Do not use any of that kind of fluff. You can mention kudos, but only if you back it up with something like a nice blurb from a well-known writer or a review from a trusted source. I don't care how good your self-published thriller is, it is not going to “leave readers transformed forever and change the course of history for all mankind.”
NYPD Red—the task force attacking the most extreme crimes in America's most extreme city—hunts a killer who is on an impossible mission.
A vigilante serial killer is on the loose in New York City, tracking down and murdering people whose crimes have not been punished. The number of victims grows, and many New Yorkers secretly applaud the idea of justice won at any price.
NYPD Red Detective Zach Jordan and his partner Kylie MacDonald are put on the case when a woman of vast wealth and even greater connections disappears. Zach and Kylie have to find what's really behind this murderer's rampage while political and personal secrets of the highest order hang in the balance. But Kylie has been acting strange recently—and Zach knows whatever she's hiding could threaten the biggest case of their careers.
NYPD Red 2 is the next spectacular novel in James Patterson's newest series, a book that proves “there's no stopping his imagination.” (New York Times Book Review)
My score: A-
This copy starts with a “headline” style, which is often a good idea, but only if the headline is short and to the point. Here, I would take out the whole parenthetical statement and leave this: NYPD Red hunts a killer who is on an impossible mission.
The next two paragraphs are excellent. They are specific and to the point and tell me exactly what type of story this is. It has both outer plot (serial killer) and inner journey (Kylie has been acting strange recently). It's all there.
The puffery about Patterson is, of course, also well deserved. Notice that it is backed up with a clip from a trusted source.
Stone Barrington is back in the newest edge-of-your-seat adventure in the New York Times–bestselling series.
Stone Barrington’s newest client does not seem the type to bring mayhem in his wake. A polite, well-deported gentleman, he comes to Stone seeking legal expertise on an unusual—and potentially lucrative—dilemma. Stone points him in the right direction and sends him on his way, but it’s soon clear Stone hasn’t seen the end of the case. Several people are keenly interested in this gentleman’s activities and how they may relate to a long-ago crime ... and some of them will stop at nothing to find the information they desire.
On a hunt that leads from Florida’s tropical beaches to the posh vacation homes of the Northeast, Stone finds himself walking a tightrope between ambitious authorities and seedy lowlifes who all have the same prize in their sights. In this cutthroat contest of wills, it’s winner-takes-all ... and Stone will need every bit of his cunning and resourcefulness to be the last man standing.
My score: B-
The headline focuses on the series character, which is fine. Readers of the series will want to know about it. “Edge-of-your-seat adventure” is a cliché, of course. I wonder if readers have a slightly negative reaction to such things, even subconsciously. Maybe it doesn't matter. I'm not sure. What are your thoughts on it?
The first paragraph is problematic. What is a “well-deported” gentleman? I'm not even sure that's a grammatically correct use of the word deported, which itself is archaic. Key copyrighting tip: Don't make readers work hard! Write in such a way that a middle school student could read the copy and not get tripped up by any of it.
Also, is there enough at stake here? Why should I care that some people are “keenly interested” in this gentleman's activities? It's also a bit too long for a cover copy paragraph. I'd break it up into two.
The second paragraph gets us a little closer to specifics and how they involve the lead character. I'm okay with that.
And here's one for a short story:
Sometimes, comedy can seem like death …
For Pete “The Harv” Harvey, stand up comedy is a serious business. At least, he wants it to be. But the struggle to make it in the glitter dome of L.A. hasn't exactly been a smashing success.
One night, after bombing onstage at a local club, Pete wonders if his next stop is managing a car wash. Then a man sits next to him at the bar—a man with an almost unbelievable proposition. One that could mean a whole lot of money to Pete “The Harv” Harvey, who will soon learn that deals too good to be true are no laughing matter.
I think the author, James Scott Bell, did okay with that. It's brief and to the point, gives the setup and then gets out of the way. But in the interest of fairness to the other students, he will not give himself a grade!
Measure your own book descriptions against those written by professionals. You can find them by browsing any online bookstore.
So what, in the end, is the writing life?
It’s romantic, but also hardheaded.
It’s fulfilling, though sometimes heartbreaking.
It’s something you can do like an assembly line worker––think Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times, standing at the moving belt making the same wrench moves over and over again.
Or it’s something you can do like Cary Grant seducing Ingrid Bergman in Notorious. Or Elizabeth Taylor making eyes at Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun.
It can be a job. And there’s nothing wrong with that. John Cheever would put on a suit and tie in his New York apartment, take the elevator to the basement where he had a writing space, and write.
John D. MacDonald would write until five p.m. and then knock off for martinis.
You can make it a life of self-expression, of getting your ideas down because you desperately want someone to read them.
You can even write for yourself alone and leave your collected works to an executor.
You can write for money. You can write for love.
You can write for money and love.
Whatever you choose, do one thing for me, will you?
Honor the craft.
That means giving a rip about good writing. It means trying to get better at what you do. It means spending some time in study and reflection on what makes writing great. And then trying to do those things in your own writing.
Put passion and craft together. It’s unbeatable.
Write hot, revise cool.
The great Ray Bradbury, in Zen in the Art of Writing, says:
Zest. Gusto. How rarely one hears these words used. How rarely do we see people living, or for that matter, creating by them. Yet if I were asked to name the most important items in a writers make-up, the things that shape his material and rush him along the road to where he wants to go, I can only warn him to look to his zest, see to his gusto.
Zest, gusto, joy. These are necessary conditions for a great writing life. But to zest, gusto, and joy you must add the shaping of words, the skill of plot and character, of scene and dialogue.
Fall in love with your writing each day. But plan some trips with a map, too.
When you write, write as if it were impossible to fail. When you revise, revise as if your groceries depended on it.
Write like a wind tunnel. Edit like a vacuum cleaner.
Write like there’s no tomorrow. Edit tomorrow.
Write like you're in love. Edit like you're in charge.
I like what Brenda Ueland says in If You Want to Write:
Mentally (at least three or four times a day) thumb your nose at all know-it-alls, jeerers, critics, doubters ... Work from now on, until you die, with real love and imagination and intelligence. If you are going to write you must become aware of the richness in you and come to believe in it and know it is there.
It’s there, the richness. It’s in you.
Let it out.
Just write.