How's Social Media Working for You?

by Matt Sinclair

This past weekend, I attended a nonfiction agent panel conducted by the New York Writers’ Workshop. These panels are done in coordination with the organization’s pitch weekends, where writers learn how to and then pitch their manuscripts directly to editors, which sounds like a great program, though I’ve not done it myself.

I've attended these panels before-- both for nonfiction and fiction-- and met several different agents, many of whom are household names in the households of aspiring authors. This time, the agents on the panel were Peter Rubie, CEO of Fine Print Literary Management; Katherine Fausset, an agent with Curtis Brown; Rita Rosenkranz head of the Rita Rosenkranz Literary Agency; and Richard Florest, an agent with Rob Weisbach Creative Management.

The panels are great opportunities for writers in the NY area to get a sense of what these agents are looking for, and as Fausset said, you can slide mention of these workshops in your query letter as a small demonstration of your dedication to the craft and to answer the question about why you’re pitching your manuscript or proposal to the specific agent.

To be honest, this particular panel reiterated a lot of the basics that most of us have heard before, and I’m not going to go over them point-by-point. The good news is nonfiction is currently a strong market for writers, especially if you have built a strong platform. One tidbit I found particularly interesting that I wanted to share here: If you can show that your self-published book -- fiction or nonfiction -- sold at least 5,000 copies, your ability to succeed in an agent’s eyes goes up significantly. Of course, 10,000 is better, and they’re not saying that they’re going to rep that specific book that you self-pubbed, but they’d be willing to hear your pitch for the next book. But if your first book still had an audience to meet, then maybe they would pick it up. It’s not common, but it happens.

I also enjoyed the discussion of “community,” in other words, your reach on social media such as Facebook and Twitter. But, as Rubie said, “No one knows yet how social media translates to sales.”

I spoke with Rubie after the panel and he explained that there really are no metrics to determine what a strong community means in terms of sales. Part of the problem is that things are changing so quickly that the value of something as a measuring tool is ephemeral. Basically, what worked last summer might have run its course by Thanksgiving. Moreover, followers don't translate to product moving out the door. You might have 1500 Twitter followers, for example, but it’s entirely possible that fewer than ten of them will buy your book.

To be honest, I'm starting to wonder if I, and most writers without major marketing teams behind them, are approaching social media the right way. I know Twitter is a great way to develop conversations with your audience, but I'm not sure it sells books. Facebook? I've found it invaluable to rebuilding friendships with those I went to school with. And I've met writers I wouldn't have met otherwise. I might even have sold a book or two, but probably not a lot of them. My blog? Let's just say it is in the midst of a rethink.

Although the panel didn’t discuss this, it reminded me of the concept of “influencers,” which is a term used in advertising about the specific word-of-mouth folks who can really change people’s minds (Oprah being the most often-cited example, back when she still had a ratings-dominant television show.) Not everyone’s Oprah. But you probably have an influencer or two in your lists of followers. If you are the type of person who understands how to drill down into your twitter and Facebook following data, if you can quantify your audience that way, you might be able to drive home the potential audience for your book to an agent. More power to you. In fact, if you know how to do that well, I might want to chat with you…

Indeed, I'd like to hear from you on a few things. How is social media working for you? Do you have any real metrics for how it's helping you build your audience? Or do you use it for other purposes?

Matt Sinclair, a New York City-based journalist and fiction writer, is also president and chief elephant officer of Elephant's Bookshelf Press, which earlier this year published a short story anthology called Spring Fevers, available through Smashwords, Amazon, and in print via CreateSpace. EBP's latest anthology, The Fall, will be released in late October. Both anthologies include stories by fellow FTWA writers, including Cat Woods, J. Lea Lopez, Mindy McGinnis, and R.S. Mellette; R.C. Lewis and Jean Oram also have stories that will be in The Fall. Matt blogs at the Elephant's Bookshelf and is on Twitter @elephantguy68

 

New York Writers' Workshop, Nonfiction Agent Panel

by Matt Sinclair

If any of you were wondering what Ms. Query Shark, Janet Reid, has been up to lately (she is closed to new queries until July), I met her recently. She was sitting on a panel of nonfiction agents for the New York Writers’ Workshop.

First, let me just say that I really love these NYWW panels. This is the second time I’ve attended one and there’s another coming up in April for fiction that I plan to attend, too. They get top-notch agents like Reid of FinePrint Literary Management, who was joined this day by Rita Rosenkranz of Rita Rosenkranz Literary Agency and Regina Brooks, president and lead agent of Serendipity Literary Agency.

NYWW is an interesting organization, and I learned that they don’t cater only to New York-area folks. The agent panels are part of their pitch conferences, where writers from all over come to hone their proposals and pitch to editors. (I was told that they’ve had people fly in from Australia to do these things!) The workshop is the teaching division of an organization called New York Writers’ Resources, and they also have a webzine called Ducts that publishes personal stories – both fiction and nonfiction – and a publishing arm called Greenpoint Press.

Back to the agent panel. I came looking for what’s going on in nonfiction, but a lot of what they talked about pertains to fiction writers, too. In particular, I wanted to hear their thoughts on the brave new world of independent publishing/electronic publishing and what effect it was having in nonfiction. The first question was about whether writers still need agents. Obviously, the panelists have a vested interest in saying yes, but their answers were to the point, and I’d argue that they could have emphasized their value even more than they did.

Rosenkranz said that while writers can be more entrepreneurial these days, there’s more for agents to do with writers. The rights areas alone are changing to say nothing of the markets themselves. You still need strong writing, a hook, and a platform to get anywhere in nonfiction, but if two of the three are strong, a good agent can help you work on the third. Agents also are crucial to helping steer your career in the right direction. Janet Reid said there are lots of tools out there (e.g., Absolute Write, Agent Query, Query Tracker) that can help you find agents who represent what you’re writing.

The trick is finding a good agent for you. Make sure they’ve sold something. Don’t be too concerned if they don’t have a Web site, she said, since there are many excellent agents who don’t. That said, each of these agents recommended writers consider the new, hungry agents who are starting to build their lists. In fact, Reid brought two FinePrint agents with her – and they’re very much open to queries, by the way.

So, how has electronic publishing changed nonfiction? Some of the categories have thinned out, they said. Books on parenting and cooking, for example, aren’t doing so well with agents. Reference books are almost exclusively on the Web these days. What’s still working? History, narrative nonfiction, politics, and science.

Brooks said that with regard to nonfiction e-publishing, they’re all still figuring the market out too. Things like Web-enhanced books and audio books are changing the rights areas – which is another reason why it’s important to have an agent.

How do you break through all the noise? “Never lose sight of your audience,” said Rosenkranz. Communicate with your readers happily and frequently through social media vehicles (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) But she added that you shouldn’t burn yourself out on this. You need to maintain a presence, not be a meteor and fizzle out.

One thing that surprised me was when Brooks said memoir is doing extremely well. “Even stories about overcoming adversity can do well in this market,” she said. “But it needs to be a very well told and interesting story.” There too, you need to be diligent about your promotion.

Reid did a quick overview of how to write a nonfiction book proposal. There were no surprises there. All the usual suspects (writer's platform, table of contents, overview of the marketplace and competing titles, etc.) were there and they are all still important. With the exception of memoir, agents of nonfiction are not looking for completed manuscripts. If they like your query, they would ask for your proposal, not your manuscript. In case you were wondering, they want the proposal ready before you query. For those of you who aren’t aware, proposals are major projects in themselves and often run longer than fifty pages.

One of the messages these agents kept emphasizing was know where to find your audience. Who is going to buy your book? Where are they? “It’s incredibly important to have the platform,” Brooks said, “but if you can’t prove that you know how to get to your audience, it will be very difficult to get a publisher to fund the project.”

Developing the platform, of course, is not a simple thing. I'll circle back on that topic again in the future.

Any questions? I have additional notes from the panel session. Perhaps I can share more of their wisdom.

Matt Sinclair, a New York City-based journalist and fiction writer, recently published a short story anthology called Spring Fevers, which is available through Smashwords and Amazon. It includes stories by fellow FTWA writers, including Cat Woods, J. Lea Lopez, Mindy McGinnis, and R.S. Mellette. He also blogs at the Elephant's Bookshelf and is on Twitter @elephantguy68.

The Non-Fiction World

by Darke Conteur

Most of the posts on this blog deal with genre fiction, but I wanted to take a moment and talk about non-fiction.

Memoirs, self-help, academic, there are so many types of non-fiction; it’s as varied as genre fiction, but unlike genre fiction, the main thing you need to sell your book is a platform. Some kind of credentials that says you know—or are qualified—to write this particular book. This is most evident with self-help or any academic novels. Here are several key things I found very interesting.

Platform is EVERYTHING in non-fiction. That notion was driven home at a recent writing seminar I attended, and the main thing they suggested for new authors to use to build their platform? Self-publishing. According to the speakers, the best way for non-fiction publishers to sign you on is to have a certain number of books already sold. If the number is high, they see it as testament that your book is good, and they are willing to RE-PRINT that book and distribute it to a wider audience. Yeah, floored me too.

Now, memoirs are a different read. While they still follow the same path as self-help and academic, you better have one Hell of a story to tell. Sorry, just surviving a horrible disease doesn’t cut it anymore, but surviving a horrible disease by administrating your own biopsy skills while living on a frozen tundra where the next shipment of supplies aren’t due for another six months, is gold. (HINT: Think researcher in Antarctica).

Children’s books are another big seller, but I was astonished to learn that they suggested you market your story to the PARENTS, and not the child. After all, it’s the parents who are buying and reading the story, not the children.

One thing that genre fiction has over non-fiction is numbers in the digital market. From what I could gather, non-fiction is slower than Big Publishing to delve into eBooks. Perhaps that’s because genre fiction is written by more people, I don’t know, even the speakers couldn’t explain that one, but they are gathering more interest.

With the digital tsunami rolling through the publishing industry it will certainly be interesting to see what the future holds for this branch of the publishing world.

Telling My Story—Or Not

by Matt Sinclair

I was not born in a log cabin. I have neither run for public office nor finished a race longer than 6.2 miles. Despite my best attempts, I did not play professional baseball and have never dated a supermodel. (And I'm not quite sure which of those two I tried harder to accomplish.) I am not an alcoholic, though there were a couple nights during college when it may have appeared I was trying hard to become one. There was one time when I almost wasn't allowed out of a rehab facility when I was visiting a friend ... but seriously, who hasn't had that experience?

In fact, when it comes right down to it, my life is a pretty average tale of suburban youth, assorted mistakes and successes, several thousand baseball and softball games, a little love, a lot of boredom, and probably a few million words read and written. Not much to write about that the whole wide world might find even moderately interesting.

Of course, if I ever sell the manuscripts I've written and build the audience I'm hoping to develop, then all bets are off!

I wouldn't call myself a regular reader of memoir, but I've read enough of them to know what I like. In the past several months, I read Heaven Is for Real and McCarthy's Bar—though I'd call the latter a travelogue more than a memoir. I generally stay away from the celebrity tell-alls because I just don't care about most of those people.

Which brings me to my point: Unless you're a celebrity or have gained a level of noteriety for whatever reason, if you're writing a memoir you must ask yourself the same question that an agent would ask. Why should anyone care?

I don't mean to sound flippant, and I'm not being cruel, but the world is filled with pain and suffering and always has been. What makes your pain and suffering worth reading about? What lessons that you've learned do the book-buying public absolutely need to learn?

Then again, the same might have been said to Frank McCourt, whose memoir, Angela's Ashes, was arguably one of the best and most well received in the past twenty years. And he answered those questions. The book is many years old now, but the reason it was successful is timeless. It had something many aspiring memoirists fail to accomplish in their manuscript: a narrative arc. It was a story—a true story, yes, but a story nonetheless.

It felt real not because it was real but because there was a storyteller behind it. In a great memoir, like a great story, there is search and discovery. There is change. Even a well-written recitation of facts comes across as a mere chronology, not as a story.

A wise friend of mine shared a tidbit that helps place this all in perspective. The things that happen to you are events, she said, but a series of events does not make a compelling story. When she was in college and some of her classmates prattled on about what happened to them, their professor was known to say, "I don't care what happened to you. I only care what you did!"

Get it? No matter how amazing that car accident you narrowly averted was or how awe-inspiring was the sight of dolphins swimming beside your boat, they're meaningless unless they changed you. You survived your brush with death? That's nice. But you haven't changed one whit; you're still a twit. Show me why I should care.

Unless you have the built-in audience a celebrity can attract, your memoir won't sell unless it has those essential story elements: action, reaction, and change. In my opinion, it's one of the many reasons memoirs are queried much like novels: If the story doesn't attract an agent's attention, it's not going to do a whole lot for a large audience either. Without a story, you're just spinning tales and your wheels.

What is the story of you? Is it worth telling as memoir?

Now, back to me....

Platform vs. Credentials: Not a Minor Point

by Matt Sinclair

While reading through agent blogs recently, I came upon a wonderful distinction that sums up quite well one of the challenges that frustrates writers of nonfiction: Platform vs. Credentials.

What's the difference? Well, let's put it this way. Say you're the president of a small company that produces widgets. You started in the field as an unpaid intern in widget making, got a full-time job after graduating from Widget Tech (Go Wingnuts!), and worked your way up the ranks to be chief widget operator and finally president. You're a big wig in your little widget world. Congrats. You have credentials.

But do you have a platform? Not necessarily.

You see, the thing is, you're running a small regional operation that until recently was struggling to make payroll, remains virtually unknown outside of the widget world, and makes decent widgets but is not recognized as an innovator. To make matters worse, you cancelled your subscription to Widget World Times ten years ago. I mean, who does that?

You don't have a sturdy platform. As far as the widget world is concerned, you're a dinosaur. In fact, if it weren't for your son, you might be facing difficult decisions about the future of your little company.

Your son, who you hired a year ago after he earned his masters in widget management and who followed at your heels since he was a kid, not only gets a subscription to Widget World Times, he's been published dozens of times in its competitor publications and has a column in the Widget Gazette. In addition, his blog, Widgetwatcher.com, is quickly becoming a must-read for the widget cognoscenti. Not only does he boast of his hundreds of blog followers, his frequent Twitter posts get retweeted regularly by the 4200+ followers he has there. And comments? Jeez, he pays your teenage son $10 a week (and supplies him with a six-pack of beer on occasion—but you didn't hear that from me) to moderate the comments on Widgetwatcher. Not only that, but they both comment on other widget-related sites and blogs. Heck, your son's Twitter ID "Widgetwonder" is known throughout the industry.

Your son is developing a platform. If he can help you grow that company, then his platform becomes even stronger. Because he doesn't quite have the credentials yet. Maybe you and he could write a book together.

Does that help? Do you have credentials but no platform? What have you done to develop either? Please share.