Twittequette Tips Part 2

by Jemi Fraser

Last year, I posted some Twittequette Tips (Etiquette on Twitter). If you're new to Twitter, you might want to check some of these out, especially if you're considering interacting with agents/publishers.

Today's rant topic is DMs. DMs are Direct Messages, private conversations between 2 Tweeps.

If we've only just met (meaning you followed me, and I followed you back), there's probably no need for us to have a private conversation yet. Let's get to know each other first!

I've had plenty of DM conversations with people I know well on Twitter, but for the most part (for me at least), Twitter is about having fun and making connections with other people, and most of those conversations can be carried on in public. DMs are a great way to warn Tweeps when their Email accounts have sent me spam, to ask/send email addresses, along with other more obvious uses.

(Warning: Personal Pet Peeve Rant Ahead)

If we've just met, please don't send me a DM and:

• ask me to buy your book or other product
• link me to where to buy your book or other product 
• ask me to give you money through a fundraising link
• ask me to like your FB page

If you met someone in a coffee shop, on the street, or at a friend's house, would your first sentence to them, your first conversation, be to ask them to buy your stuff???? I sincerely hope not!

Don't do it on Social Media either.

I've bought dozens of books written by friends I've met through social media, probably well over a hundred by now. NOT ONCE have I bought a book by someone asking me to do so via a DM.

Marketing is tough. Lots of our authors here at FTWA have posted advice on that, and will continue to do so (click on the Marketing link in the sidebar!). Maybe this seems like an easy way to promote, but, for me, it has the exact opposite effect.

(Okay, rant complete)

What do you think? Are automated DMs requesting a new follower buy something okay or annoying? Have you bought anyone's book that way? Or (like me) have you unfollowed people who pester in DMs?

Jemi Fraser is an aspiring author of contemporary romance. She blogs  and tweets while searching for those HEAs.

Self-publishing, Free, and Flexibility

by +J. Lea Lopez 

Free is a hot topic in the publishing industry. Depending on who you ask, free is:

• an effective pricing strategy
• the only way to get people to take a chance on self-published books
• the reason publishing as we know it is dying
• devaluing writing and making readers reluctant to pay for good books
• pointless
• a way to gain exposure

And a whole host of other things. Everyone has an opinion, and if you know me even a tiny bit, you probably know that I'm going to tell you that none of those opinions are 100% right or wrong. There's often bits of truth behind each person's opinion. Quite often, authors will speak from personal experience, and in that case, I'm certainly not going to tell anyone that they're wrong about what they've experienced firsthand.

I can tell you from the experiences shared with me by several successful self-published authors that free certainly has a place in your arsenal of tools. Depending on the genre and type of book, it can be a very powerful tool. If all (or several) books in your romance series are out there and you're looking for a way to grab some more readers, putting your first book free (and yes, it is still possible to go perma-free on Amazon) could be a great tactic. Especially if each book has a strong hook or lead-in to the next.

If you're not writing a series, can free still work for you? Maybe. Maybe not. But a great thing about being self-published is your ability to analyze, react, and adapt. As a self-publisher, you have to be flexible and know when somebody else's tried-and-true isn't so true for you. Let me share my own experience with a free book as an example.

When I self-published last year, I knew I was going to publish my contemporary NA romance Sorry's Not Enough, but I was worried about readers taking a chance on me, an unknown author. Everybody was talking about the free strategy then like it was the holy grail of marketing tactics. But my book was a standalone. How could I still make the free strategy work for me? I got the brilliant (or so I thought) idea to pull together some of my short stories that had both romantic and erotic elements and package them in a collection. I figured it was a good introduction to my writing and a good lead-in to my novel because each of the short stories had elements you can find in my novel: character-driven and introspective narration, complicated relationships, steamy sexy.  It had to work, right?

I published my collection, Consenting Adults, and included an extended sample of my novel at the end of it so readers would be instantly compelled to go buy it after (hopefully) having enjoyed the short stories. Then I made it free. And then I spent many months trying to figure out if the free strategy was working like it should. I mean, I was getting a few sales a day of my novel usually, and the short stories were consistently ranked between 300 and 500 overall in the free Kindle store and in the top 10 of a couple different category lists. That must mean it was working, right? So I left it alone. Then something happened this year that made me rethink the free strategy for my books.

Sales of Sorry's Not Enough began to decline slightly early this year. I only worried a little bit, wondering if it was just a bit of a post-holidays slump. Sales continued to decline. And continued to decline. As of writing this, I've seen roughly a 60% decline in sales of my novel since the beginning of the year. Most of this year my worrying has centered on how to turn that around, how to increase visibility for the novel, how to entice more people to buy it. That included running price promotions, creating a new cover, tweaking the description and keywords, trying paid promotions on different web sites. Aside from publishing another book (which I'm working on doing), I felt I had done everything I could do and I had to stop driving myself nuts over it. And that's when my focus shifted from the novel to the free short story collection, and it dawned on me.

Free wasn't working for me. In all of my fussing with Sorry's Not Enough, I never paid attention to the fact that free downloads of Consenting Adults were still pretty steady. There's been a slight decline since the beginning of the year, maybe 15% or so, but nothing like what I've seen with my novel. My free book was not pushing readers to my paid book. And that's what it's supposed to do. That's the whole point of the free strategy. Obviously it was time to rethink that strategy.

I knew these things for sure:

• Consenting Adults has great innate visibility thanks to my keywords, description, and categories (and magic, because I swear sometimes it all just feels like magic)
• When you search for "erotica" in the Kindle store, Consenting Adults is the top result
• It had a consistent download rate of several hundred a day when it was free
• People who downloaded it for free were not going on to buy my novel

Because of that last point, I felt confident that having the short story collection out there for free was not doing me any good. That was the whole reason I'd put it out there for free to begin with. But could I make money with it? Would people pay for it? Or did they only want it for free? Based on those first three things I knew to be true, I decided that maybe some people would be willing to pay for it. I decided that even if no one bought it and the rank plummeted once it switched over to the paid lists, I'd wait to see if it negatively affected sales of my novel to further test my guess that it wasn't pushing people to the novel anyway. And if only two or three people bought it every day, that's still more money than I was making from 400 free downloads a day.

Consenting Adults switched over from free to paid this past weekend, and so far, people are still buying it. Not 400 people a day, but enough that I'm cautiously optimistic that this was the right decision. So what's the lesson for you self-publishers out there?  

Free is a tool. Use it wisely. Flexibility is also a tool. Use it to take calculated risks and to kick free to the curb if it doesn't work for you.

What are your experiences with free, either as a reader or an author?

Rude Drunk People & Why You Don't Want Them On Your Team

by Mindy McGinnis

First off, I want to be quite clear that it's very possible to be drunk and not rude, and also to be rude and not drunk. I have nothing against drunk people, but I do dislike rude people. This is just a general, for the record comment before I get to my point. Ahem...

There's been a lot of talk among authors lately about about the usefulness of street teams as a form of marketing and promotion. In theory, I like this idea. It's grassroots, it's out-of-the-box, it's people telling people about books, and hey—that's what I do for a living in the 40/wk.

But there's a drawback to street teams that I want to mention here, as it's relevant to our nation in general at the moment.

I live in a swing state. Anyone in Ohio will tell you that if we took all the political ads in our mailboxes alone and mashed them into paper mache we could have a decent facsimile of the Trojan Horse. It goes without saying that the TV, radio, billboards and yard signs are as clogged with political yeas and nays and Vote This Way Not That Way information than the nose of the average person with a sinus infection.

And then there's the people—the campaign teams of citizens who are donating their time to promote the ideals of someone they believe in, to raise the awareness of their candidate and platform. And good for them, I applaud the people out there who have that kind of conviction and selflessness to do that.

Except for the ones who are kind of assholes about it.

Not that long ago I went out to eat and as I was walking through the parking lot a carload of young political types came roaring through, a big fat sticker on the passenger door of their car loudly proclaiming who they supported. They drove too fast in the parking lot and parked crooked so that whoever was next to them had to slide through about two inches of space in order to get into their own car (no doubt noticing the sticker as they did so). Then the group went into the restaurant, drawing attention to themselves even as they walked by nature of how loud and abrasive they were, particularly their laughter, clearly designed to broadcast exactly how much fun they were having and precisely how clever they all were.

And trust me, they weren't.

And then the behavior continued inside, where they got nice and drunk and everything went up a notch, except of course the cleverness which continued to degrade.

Here's the thing. I'm not a prude. I get drunk. I can be loud. I know that in their minds these people were off the clock and just out being young and awesome. Their goal of having fun had no political agenda—but the car they were driving automatically associated them with someone who needed to make a good impression on the public, and the connections being made by that particular group on that particular night with that particular candidate were not so positive.

I think for authors street teams are open to the same connotations. Especially as debuts, we're excited to have people who want to promote us. It has so many attractions—free labor, word-of-mouth for audiences beyond or below your age range, no geographic limitations, etc. But you can't control the actions of your volunteers. Even your most enthusiastic reader and supporter might make a side comment to her friend that a pedestrian overhears and dislikes. What will they remember? The face of the girl, or her words in connection with the shiny swag with your name on it?

I'm still split on the idea of street teams for this reason.

What are your thoughts?

Mindy McGinnis is a YA author and librarian. Her debut, a post-apocalyptic survival tale, Not a Drop to Drink, will be available from Katherine Tegen / Harper Collins in Fall 2013. She blogs at Writer, Writer Pants on Fire and contributes to the group blogs Book Pregnant, Friday the Thirteeners and The Lucky 13s. You can also find her on Twitter & Facebook.

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GET YOUR QUESTIONS READY

In an upcoming post From The Write Angle contributors will answer your questions. What's it like to "get the call" either from an agent or a publisher? How do I get my MS in to Hollywood? How do historical writers do all of that research? 

What are your questions for our contributors? Keep an eye out for our upcoming call for questions. 

A Gatekeeper's Manifesto

by R.S. Mellette

In May of this year, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos told the New York Times, “I see the elimination of gatekeepers everywhere.”

As co-Director of the Dances With Films festival, I am somewhat of a gatekeeper myself, and I can tell Mr. Bezos, the world is not ready for raw art.  Without gatekeepers, there is nothing to tell the consumer, "This product is good; that one is a waste of time," and believe me, the majority of unfiltered art is horrid.  Much of it is so bad it's painful to experience.  With leisure time at a premium, there is a tremendous value in the consumer being able to shop from behind well-kept gates, buying only what has been keeper-approved.

As an writer, I've also run into some gatekeepers I'd like to kill.  Generally, these fall under the heading of those who use the phrase, "People don't like..."

Believe it or not, it is not a gatekeeper's job to guess what people will like—or even, what they will buy.  This concept flies in the face of what every gatekeeper thinks their job is, so I'll say it again.

It is not a gatekeeper's job to guess what people will like—or even, what they will buy. 

Marketing executives, who have somehow become the biggest gatekeepers of them all, like to think they believe this manifesto.  They rush around with spreadsheets of sales figures on works that are "like the product we're considering" (aka "comps") to predict—not guess—exactly how much people will like this new product and how many they will buy.  Often, they are quite accurate.

But it's still just a guess, and it doesn't address products for which comps are hard to find.  It only works for established customers, and doesn't consider new ones.

So what if we take out the idea of what other people like or don't like entirely?  What if gatekeepers all followed the three rules of criticism: 1) Are the Artist's objectives clear? 2) Does the Artist achieve those objectives? 3) Does the Artist do this in a way that I like?

Yes, rule number three goes against the marketing idea so many MBA's learn in college that "your opinion doesn't matter."  I say it does, and here are the numbers to back me up:

According to the US census, there are about 314 million people in the country right now.   So let's say you, as a gatekeeper, are an average member of that population.  That means you're in a group of about 157 million people.

No?  Since you're a gatekeeper that means you probably went to college, you read more than the average person, might have traveled more, etc.  Okay, so let's err on the conservative side and say you represent, not 50% of the population ... and not 25% ... let's say you share just 1% of the same taste and sense of quality as the rest of people you grew up with, went to church with and hang out with.

That leaves 3 million customers who will like the same stuff you do. 

Of course, not all 3 million are reachable and not all of them are going to buy whatever it is you're selling, but in this model, they are interested.  So let's say only 10% of them are buyers.

That's 300,000 in sales.  Is that good?  Noah Lukeman writes extensively on the subject of book sales, so an educated person's answer would be, "maybe."  But here's a quote from his calculations I find interesting.

It is easy to gauge if a book is a huge failure, selling only 100 copies, or if it is a huge success, selling 100,000 hardcovers—but what if it falls into that gray area? What if it sells 7,000 hardcovers? Or 11,000 trade paperbacks?

By those standards, one tenth of those potential buyers would be a good hit for a first time author.

So, without regard to what people may or may not like, if a company can sell to one tenth, of one tenth, of one percent of the population, or .01 percent, then they are doing well. 

Now let's look at the gate keeping process for books.

LEVEL ONE—The Author.  If an author is good—which is a big assumption—they have slaved away to create the best work possible.  This means they've had beta readers.  They've done workshops.  They might have hired editors.  They have created to the best of their ability a finished product, which they submit to:

LEVEL TWO—The Agent.  This is the front line.  The agent faces pure raw art.  Mike Rowe should do an episode of Dirty Jobs on the muck they have to slog through to find a single gem.  I know from working with the film festival, that finding those gems is as exciting for the agent as it is for the people who created them.  Together with the author(s), the agent will polish the work for presentation to:

LEVEL THREE—The Editor.  An editor is not looking for a diamond in the rough, but a diamond among other precious stones.  If the agent and author have done their jobs, then any one of the works submitted to an editor should be able to find a market (see the numbers above).  In theory, an editor should then be choosing, not so much the books that are of the best quality—since they are all gems—but the books that best fit into the entire piece of jewelry the imprint is creating.  Here is where it is important for the imprint to have good internal communications.  If the editor isn't sure what pieces they are looking for, then how can they make an informed decision?  Once the editor has found a manuscript, then he or she will work with the author and agent to present it to:

LEVEL FOUR—Acquisitions.  Mathematically speaking, at this point a blind monkey could pull the submissions from a hat and have the same chances of finding a successful book.  I don't mean that figuratively.  I can't remember where I read the article, but someone ran the numbers and found that random selection of projects submitted to a Hollywood Studio would be as successful, if not more so, than choices made by the executives.  Acquisitions often means a committee of people, usually dominated by:

LEVEL FIVE—Marketing.  Imagine an executive walking into his boss's office and saying, "I am not good enough to do my job, so you should make it easier for me."  Sounds ridiculous, but that's what marketing has been doing for years.  "We can't sell that," they say.  Or, "there isn't a market for that." 

And people believe them.  The gem that has been vetted and polished by the author, the agent, the editor, and presumably the editor's boss is tossed aside because someone says they can't find a market for it.  Out of 314 million possible customers in the United States alone, they can't find a market?  Out of 7 billion people on the planet, they can't find a market for something that every gatekeeper before them has said is a quality product?

What happened to a salesman's pride?  What happened to the salesperson who would say, "I can sell shoes to a snake?" 

Moreover, what happened to the boss who would tell the sales department, "this is the product we're making, now go sell it." What happened to the boss who would fire someone who said, "I can't do my job"?

So is Mr. Bezos right?  Will we see the day when all gatekeepers are as unemployed as the writers they reject?  I don't think so.  I certainly hope not.  But some of them should be told, "Thank you, but step away from the gate.  Your job is inside."

R.S. Mellette is an experienced screenwriter, actor, director, and novelist. You can find him at the Dances With Films festival blog, and on Twitter, or read him in the Spring Fevers anthology.

Extend Your Shelf Life: Tackling the Library Market

by Cat Woods

Personally, I love libraries. I love the atmosphere, the sense of peace and the very smell of thousands of amassed books. I hope someday, my books will love the library as well. As a writer of juvenile literature, I fully realize the library market has the ability to make a title.

Young kids take weekly trips to the library from their classrooms. There, they are exposed to hundreds of books and authors they otherwise would never hear about. Think of libraries as television commercials for the elementary student. Students are captive audiences to the books on the shelves, and when they find one they like, they become instantly gratified. Books are checked out and drug home in back packs for use as bed time stories. In this scenario, both parents and children can fall in love with an author and look for new titles to grace their private collections at home.

In middle school and high school, books are often bought for classroom curriculum. If your title is picked, multiple copies are purchased to be read year after year. Not to mention, teens and preteens visit the library to check out the newest author-of-the-month. This age-group reads voraciously and will often latch onto a genre or two with such gusto that librarians struggle to keep titles on the shelves. This can lead to outside sales, as youth are notoriously impatient when it comes to waiting.

Each month, library boards wrack their brains to find presenters who will bring patrons into their facility. They adore authors who can offer a fun or exciting program to any age group. They use you to make their library a happening place to be. After all, their funding is impacted by their circulation. And more funding means more sales and more choices, which in turn feeds circulation. It's a win-win situation for all involved.

Yet, some writers I know shy away from the library market, pooh-poohing it as an unnecessary avenue in which to sell their books. After all, library books are free, no?

Well yes, to the public. But not really, because every book on library shelves has been purchased with real money. Often times at double or triple the cost of a book store edition. Thinking e-books? Many libraries have already weighed in on the great debate and are showing their support to both patrons and writers by connecting them through e-book subscriptions.

Check out Books and Such Literary Agency's blog for a low-down on how it all works and how this motivated agency is making inroads in the marketing world. With over 2,500 on the Library Locator—the nifty thing Books and Such is part of—this "free" market could help an author sell-through and earn back an advance.

So, is the library market an untapped avenue for you as a writer, or does this free service seem a bit too trifling to pursue? Which shelves would you like to see you work on and why?

That Spam I Am—If You Don’t Know the Difference Between Meaningful Interaction and Spamming You are Wasting Your Social Media Time (and Mine).

by Sophie Perinot

You know what drives me crazy (currently)? How much of what passes for author interaction at social media sites these days resembles spam.

I made the connection a few days ago while clearing out the spam comments at my blog. They almost all start out the same, with a sentence that looks like the writer (probably a bot) might actually have read my blog post—“I enjoyed this post. This topic is really very intesting...”—then they turn into self-serving sales drivel. And while I was gleefully emptying the spam filter it occurred to me that I’ve been seeing lots of this same sort of “let me say a polite thing about you so I can talk about ME, ME, ME” stuff on twitter, in on-line writing groups, and on facebook lately.

Frankly, it’s cheesing me off.

It’s gotten particularly bad in writing and reading related facebook groups. When I join a group devoted to say “Lovers of Mysteries with Dogs as Their Main Character” (okay I made that one up, but I don’t want to point fingers at actual groups or communities), I expect folks therein to share information on good books with doggy detectives, or links to websites to help me in researching or writing same. Instead what I am getting these days are nearly naked advertisements—“My book ‘It’s a Dog Eat Dog World’ just got a super-duper review at ‘Dog books R us!’ Read it here. Or better still buy my book here, or here, or here.” Come on fellow writers, if I want advertisements there are plenty running along the top or side of every darn website I visit. You’ve got a personal facebook page, probably an author FB page, and doubtless an author website to share good reviews and “buy it now” links on. You can even directly and unabashedly promote your book at those locations (though the jury is out on how effective that will be for you). But the essence of communities/groups (even in the virtual world) is dialogue.

A hybrid of “boast posters” are the folks who share EVERY blog post they’ve ever written or will ever write to a facebook group, or to twitter for that matter, irrespective of whether it’s on topic. Sure, if you (or if I) have written a post that is germane to the topic of a group or comment thread (or touches on one of the subjects that you assume people follow you on twitter to hear about) then posting your link is a worthy public service. But if you are just slapping up everything you can think of to increase your name recognition then spare us and save yourself the time (because pretty soon I for one am going to stop even looking at your posts because I already KNOW what they will say—some version of “look at me.”)

As writers today there is a great deal of pressure on us to market our own work, and very specifically to have a presence in the virtual world. But I presume that an annoying presence seldom sells a book. If you join any community of like-minded people as part of your “building an internet presence” campaign, you should try to interact with fellow members in a genuine, non-agenda-driven, manner. And just for the record the interaction is neither effective nor genuine when it amounts to commenting on topics started by others in true spam form (“I am fascinated by cocker spaniels but for a really great blog on poodles, more specifically MY poodles, click here”).

People can smell a fake a mile away—just like I can pick out the spam comment at my blog even when they are cloaked in an attempt to look like a genuine response. And if you are a spammer not a genuine community member you are wasting your time. Because the truth is I buy two kinds of books: 1) those receiving notable reviews or buzz from reviewers I trust (whether that’s a “R”eviewer in the print or digital media or the guy I sit next to on the bus every morning and discuss books with); and 2) books written by friends (folks I’ve gotten to know through writers conferences, through on-line communities and through their blogs). You are no friend of mine if you spam me.