by Pete Morin
Like most self-published novelists looking to crack the Amazon sales riddle, I’ve spent some time in the Kindle customer forums, and trawled the myriad of eBook sales websites that offer freebies, near freebies, advertising, interviews, etc. After nearly a year of it, I can confidently say that I have no better idea today how to sell successfully than I did the week before I uploaded Diary of a Small Fish.
And that’s okay, because the playing field is different today than it was then. Hell, it’s different than it was yesterday, and it’ll be different tomorrow.
But while I have been unable to extract any stone tablet Strategies for Novel Marketing that apply across the board to all fiction, I do occasionally come up with a nifty metaphor to keep my blogging active and current.
Amazon is a chowder festival.
For those unfamiliar with New England clam chowder (I shall not abide a diversion to that inferior stepson, the Manhattan clam chowder), it is a recipe with base ingredients of clams, potatoes, onions, and cream (or milk), and has been around in limitless varieties for hundreds of years. You can add dill, or rosemary, or coriander, or chocolate—anything—but the bottom line is, if you haven't used the magic 4 ingredients in roughly correct quantities, your chowder will fail.
In summer months, many seacoast communities have Chowder Festivals, where local restaurateurs compete for the prize of Best Chowder. I was, for a time, an avid participant in the Cape Cod Chowder Festival (now in its 32nd year!). The winner of the contest is not chosen by culinary experts of the chowder genre, however.
The winner is chosen by customers.
This is where the Amazon-chowder metaphor works, I think.
Chowder eaters come in all varieties. Some understand the fundamentals of chowder (can’t have too many potatoes or too few clams, can’t use too much pork fat or bacon, and for god’s sake, forget about the corn starch!), and some haven’t a clue what good chowder is, they just like to taste. I overheard one “judge” express his adamant preference for chowder thick enough to stand a spoon upright. This is utter heresy, as chowder aficionados know, but as the old saying goes, the customer is always right.
Still, while clueless chowder judges may indeed outnumber the culinary experts (you can tell by the plaid shorts and sunburn), never do they elevate a pasty gruel to the top of the chowder heap. Why?
Just because. No product ignorant of cooking fundamentals tastes good. Crap chowder always tastes like crap, even if you salt the hell out of it. People will taste it, go “Ewww” and move on. They don’t have to determine that the potatoes were mushy, the onions were undercooked or the clams were spoiled (I’ve seen that train wreck before). They just “know.”
A novel is like chowder. It has clams (plot), potatoes (characters), cream (voice) and onions (structure). In a good novel, each ingredient is of good quality, and in proper proportion to the whole. Too little of one (or more) results in a reader’s diminished enthusiasm. Too little of all is a revolting experience.
There is a lot of bad chowder out there on Amazon. But Budweiser isn’t the #1 selling beer in the world because beer customers have discriminating palates. A Burger King Whopper isn’t made by a graduate of the American Culinary Institute. But damn, it tastes good.
You can’t worry about that, though. You can’t make a sublime paella and expect it to sell better than a Big Mac. The numbers just don’t work in your favor.
But you can always make a good chowder, if you just get the basics down. Then you can add whatever you want to make it your own.
Amazon is the ultimate test kitchen. There is always a multitude of tasters, looking for cheap eats. Give them more for their money than they expect, and you’ll do okay.
Just don't add corn starch.
Pete Morin is the author of Diary of a Small Fish and can occasionally be found swimming in his own pond.
Showing posts with label Pete Morin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pete Morin. Show all posts
Friday, July 6, 2012
Monday, May 7, 2012
Muse, Marketplace, Masters
by Pete Morin
I spent this past weekend at The Muse & The Marketplace, a very popular writers conference run by Grubb Street, a superb literary non-profit organization here in Boston. This is a sort of “report from the Front.”
I decided to attend my first M&M because of my previously reported travails that arose out of being a pantser. The program offered a number of seminars on plotting and revision, taught by published authors with superb credentials. The signature of M&M.
So I began Saturday morning with “The Organic Outline,” hosted by Josh Weil, a man with quite a resume, including fellowships and awards from the Fulbright Foundation, the Dana Foundation, the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences, the James Merrill House, and the MacDowell Colony. When he started quoting Flannery O’Connor about the definition of “organic,” I feared I was in deep water. “Don’t impose the form upon the story,” he urged. “Allow the form to arise out of the material.” He described the organic outline as a “scaffolding or road map,” but with a lot of flexibility.
Josh referred to Stephen King’s mistrust of plot as the enemy of “spontaneity,“ what happens in the moment. A story makes itself, he said. “The writer’s job is to give it a place to grow.”
This was promising to be a fine weekend, I thought. Josh had accomplished in just one hour what I’d failed to do in four months—he’d given me some reassurance that the process was indeed as mysterious and vexing for him as li’l old me.
Two further seminars on plotting and “writer as entrepreneur” delivered their own valuable nuggets, but the lunch was worth the weekend by itself.
M&M offers its participants a special opportunity on Saturday to share lunch with one of the M&M’s special guests. For an extra $75, one can eat a ginger & soy seared salmon with a star instead of eating dry chicken in the main ballroom.
I’d splurged, and been given my first choice, Barry Eisler (although I would have been thrilled with any of the special guests, who included dozens of published authors, literary agents, in-house and independent editors, publicists, etc.). Barry is a consummate gentleman, generous with his time and attention, and palpably intelligent. His shared some insights into what made a couple of recent films and novels stand above their competition, and was genuinely curious about our own paths.
But all due admiration for Barry, he was not the highlight of the lunch. It was the sudden realization that the man sitting to my right was Jason Ashlock, the founder and President of Moveable Type Management, a very successful (and young!) New York agency that has moved beyond the standard agency model to offer its writers more aggressive strategies and services in the digital marketplace. Jason’s personal interest is in the non-fiction market in history and politics, so we had some common ground there, particularly regarding my old friend Michael Beschloss. Jason asked about my self-publishing experience, why I did it, how it was going, and what I thought the future looked like. Sharp fella, and genuinely curious.
Also at the table, Ben Winter, a multi-published, multi-genre novelist and writing teacher, and Michelle Toth, a Grubb Street Board member and recent debut novelist. Both radiated their passion for fiction and interest in their colleagues.
All I can say is this:
You tend to learn something from hanging around these peeps, doncha think?
Saturday came to an exhilarating post-cocktail crescendo with the keynote address from Richard Eoin Nash. Nash’s resume is too long to recite here. Jet me just tell you that this man induced goosebumps at the three minute mark of his address, and if I mentioned his name ten times today, the goosebumps returned each time. He is a true visionary and boundary pusher, and you should rush off and see what he’s been up to at Small Demons, Red Lemonade and Cursor. You really won’t believe it.
Here was Nash’s preface: As traditional publishing frets about the threat to their loss of control in publishing, we need to be reminded that before Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press around 1450, authors were 100% “in control” of publishing their work.[1]
Is my enthusiasm seeping through here?
What could possibly top that, right? Surely, it was all denouement from here.
Eh, wrong.
Sunday began with Stephen McCauley (whose 1988 novel, Object of My Affection, was adapted to movie in 1998) and Alessandro Nivola discussing what makes a novel good fodder for a film. I knew McCaluey from an earlier social occasion, but truth be told, I’d never heard of Nivola before. Dumb me. Man’s got a rezzie. And he went to Exeter and Yale, so he’s smaht, too.
Of course, McCauley asked him, every novelist firmly believes his/her novel is destined to become an Oscar-worthy film. What does Alessandro want to see in a script?
A lovable rogue who’s a total mess, hot blooded and reckless, with a big heart. Sounds like Paul Forte to me!
What can fiction writers learn from screenplay writers?
Economy. Feeling of movement, rhythm. Something changing in every scene. And subtext. People rarely say what they mean.
After a luncheon keynote address from the incredibly magnetic Julia Alvarez and some useful tips and talk about marketing and promotion, it was time to get back into the nuts and bolts of the novel revision process. In this final exercise (for me), I was dumbstruck to watch as Alexander Chee weaved us through his own process, as much tools as magic and mirrors, where I was once again reminded of what Josh Weil had mentioned 30 hours before – that the process of writing fiction is organic, has a life of its own, and if we do it right, we are not totally in control of where our stories go and must trust our characters and Muse to guide us.
I’ve felt since late 2011 that I was slipping into a bit of a funk, unable to complete my second manuscript or market my first with any vigor or enthusiasm. I needed a slap in the face and a pat on the back. Little did I know that M&M was going to give me both, delivered time and again by a roster of amazing and inspiring talent.
[1] Gutenberg was also the inventor of “moveable type,” although Nash credited his successor, Manutius Aldus with the more important inventions of the semi-colon and italics. He also credited the company named after him for the creation of Pagemaker, the first available tool for desktop publishing, as the beginning of the threat to traditional publishing.
Pete Morin is the author of Diary of a Small Fish and can occasionally be found swimming in his own pond.
I spent this past weekend at The Muse & The Marketplace, a very popular writers conference run by Grubb Street, a superb literary non-profit organization here in Boston. This is a sort of “report from the Front.”
I decided to attend my first M&M because of my previously reported travails that arose out of being a pantser. The program offered a number of seminars on plotting and revision, taught by published authors with superb credentials. The signature of M&M.
So I began Saturday morning with “The Organic Outline,” hosted by Josh Weil, a man with quite a resume, including fellowships and awards from the Fulbright Foundation, the Dana Foundation, the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences, the James Merrill House, and the MacDowell Colony. When he started quoting Flannery O’Connor about the definition of “organic,” I feared I was in deep water. “Don’t impose the form upon the story,” he urged. “Allow the form to arise out of the material.” He described the organic outline as a “scaffolding or road map,” but with a lot of flexibility.
Josh referred to Stephen King’s mistrust of plot as the enemy of “spontaneity,“ what happens in the moment. A story makes itself, he said. “The writer’s job is to give it a place to grow.”
This was promising to be a fine weekend, I thought. Josh had accomplished in just one hour what I’d failed to do in four months—he’d given me some reassurance that the process was indeed as mysterious and vexing for him as li’l old me.
Two further seminars on plotting and “writer as entrepreneur” delivered their own valuable nuggets, but the lunch was worth the weekend by itself.
M&M offers its participants a special opportunity on Saturday to share lunch with one of the M&M’s special guests. For an extra $75, one can eat a ginger & soy seared salmon with a star instead of eating dry chicken in the main ballroom.
I’d splurged, and been given my first choice, Barry Eisler (although I would have been thrilled with any of the special guests, who included dozens of published authors, literary agents, in-house and independent editors, publicists, etc.). Barry is a consummate gentleman, generous with his time and attention, and palpably intelligent. His shared some insights into what made a couple of recent films and novels stand above their competition, and was genuinely curious about our own paths.
But all due admiration for Barry, he was not the highlight of the lunch. It was the sudden realization that the man sitting to my right was Jason Ashlock, the founder and President of Moveable Type Management, a very successful (and young!) New York agency that has moved beyond the standard agency model to offer its writers more aggressive strategies and services in the digital marketplace. Jason’s personal interest is in the non-fiction market in history and politics, so we had some common ground there, particularly regarding my old friend Michael Beschloss. Jason asked about my self-publishing experience, why I did it, how it was going, and what I thought the future looked like. Sharp fella, and genuinely curious.
Also at the table, Ben Winter, a multi-published, multi-genre novelist and writing teacher, and Michelle Toth, a Grubb Street Board member and recent debut novelist. Both radiated their passion for fiction and interest in their colleagues.
All I can say is this:
You tend to learn something from hanging around these peeps, doncha think?
Saturday came to an exhilarating post-cocktail crescendo with the keynote address from Richard Eoin Nash. Nash’s resume is too long to recite here. Jet me just tell you that this man induced goosebumps at the three minute mark of his address, and if I mentioned his name ten times today, the goosebumps returned each time. He is a true visionary and boundary pusher, and you should rush off and see what he’s been up to at Small Demons, Red Lemonade and Cursor. You really won’t believe it.
Here was Nash’s preface: As traditional publishing frets about the threat to their loss of control in publishing, we need to be reminded that before Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press around 1450, authors were 100% “in control” of publishing their work.[1]
Is my enthusiasm seeping through here?
What could possibly top that, right? Surely, it was all denouement from here.
Eh, wrong.
Sunday began with Stephen McCauley (whose 1988 novel, Object of My Affection, was adapted to movie in 1998) and Alessandro Nivola discussing what makes a novel good fodder for a film. I knew McCaluey from an earlier social occasion, but truth be told, I’d never heard of Nivola before. Dumb me. Man’s got a rezzie. And he went to Exeter and Yale, so he’s smaht, too.
Of course, McCauley asked him, every novelist firmly believes his/her novel is destined to become an Oscar-worthy film. What does Alessandro want to see in a script?
A lovable rogue who’s a total mess, hot blooded and reckless, with a big heart. Sounds like Paul Forte to me!
What can fiction writers learn from screenplay writers?
Economy. Feeling of movement, rhythm. Something changing in every scene. And subtext. People rarely say what they mean.
After a luncheon keynote address from the incredibly magnetic Julia Alvarez and some useful tips and talk about marketing and promotion, it was time to get back into the nuts and bolts of the novel revision process. In this final exercise (for me), I was dumbstruck to watch as Alexander Chee weaved us through his own process, as much tools as magic and mirrors, where I was once again reminded of what Josh Weil had mentioned 30 hours before – that the process of writing fiction is organic, has a life of its own, and if we do it right, we are not totally in control of where our stories go and must trust our characters and Muse to guide us.
I’ve felt since late 2011 that I was slipping into a bit of a funk, unable to complete my second manuscript or market my first with any vigor or enthusiasm. I needed a slap in the face and a pat on the back. Little did I know that M&M was going to give me both, delivered time and again by a roster of amazing and inspiring talent.
[1] Gutenberg was also the inventor of “moveable type,” although Nash credited his successor, Manutius Aldus with the more important inventions of the semi-colon and italics. He also credited the company named after him for the creation of Pagemaker, the first available tool for desktop publishing, as the beginning of the threat to traditional publishing.
Pete Morin is the author of Diary of a Small Fish and can occasionally be found swimming in his own pond.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Self-publishing? Use the right tools!
by Pete Morin
When I began to write Diary of a Small Fish in February of 2008, I had no idea if I’d even finish it. All I had were some searing memories, a simple idea and a new “hobby.”
When I finished it and began to query in July of 2009, I had a little more than a pipe dream that I’d even get an agent. My query went 0-for-110, and I was ready to pack it in when I met Christine Witthohn at the first writers’ conference I attended, Crime Bake. She liked my elevator pitch—mostly because she’s married to a lawyer.
In April of 2010, we became a team. I went through 6 months of rewrites, and in December of 2010, Christine submitted the manuscript to a carefully selected group of editors.
Four months later, having heard nothing from any of them, Christine and I began to discuss the prospect of self-publishing. I am very fortunate to have found an agent who understands and embraces the changes in the marketplace.
So, I have now launched Diary of a Small Fish and joined the proud ranks of the “indie” community—or as those stuffed shirts call us, “self-publishers.”
What did I do to prepare for this? A lot of things you’ve already read about. There’s nothing particularly new I can tell you, but perhaps I’ll reinforce messages you’ve heard before. Maybe you'll even disagree with something—if you do, you're not necessarily wrong. We're just blogging here, you know.
Building a Platform
This is one of those terms that sounds more impressive than it really is, but still, a see a lot of people who think of the word “platform” as a synonym for “soapbox.” I think that’s a big mistake.
When you see someone up on a soapbox (figuratively speaking), what is the first thing that comes to mind?
He’s selling something, or he’s lecturing. Unless you know who he is, odds are you’re going to tune out or take him for a nut job.
A platform is a “following,” but not in the sense of a pied piper—that would be Grimm. A platform is what I like to look at as an ever-expanding circle of friends, acquaintances and affinity groups with whom you’ve interacted such that they are likely to have an interest in what you are doing. I believe you need to begin doing this well in advance of launching a novel and asking people to buy it.
My social media tool of choice is Facebook. I’ve picked and chosen my friends—not every single person inhabiting the realm, and not all writers. Many old friends from Authonomy, other writers who are friends of friends. Old school chums from as far back as first grade. Musician friends and local music fans from the Boston area. Artists from other venues. I’ve introduced many of these people to each other—so my old high school chums are now interacting with writer friends in UK, Australia, Japan. I make sure to post things on my page that are not just writing related. A lot of articles on publishing, for sure—things that other writers will find helpful. Book recommendations when I’ve found something special. Also quirky news bits, cartoons (thanks to brother Jim for his stellar work!), jokes, gags, you name it. The idea is to establish a track record of posting things people like to see. When your posts come across their news feed, they’re highly inclined to click and read.
The measure of success isn’t necessarily in the number of comments. I’m guessing that for every comment you receive on a FB post or blog entry, there are at least three times that number who’ve read it. So if you use Facebook, pay some attention to varying your material. Be eclectic. Be unique. Be funny. One thing I notice is the number of “likes” that come from people who aren’t even friends. I’ve gained dozens of new friends that way!
I don’t think it’s possible to fully utilize every social media tool there is. Unless you don’t eat or sleep. The best you can do—and still have time to write—is to pick one or two to focus on, and hit them hard. And keep busy enough on the others that you’ve at least got some activity.
If you’re keeping a blog, bear in mind that your blogroll is as or more important than your own posts. You get more out of commenting on other peoples’ blogs than you get from your own page. I’m very bad at this, but try to stop in for visits on a regular basis, and leave a card at the door (i.e., comment) before you leave. You’d be surprised how this results in increased traffic to your own.
Don’t post for the sake of posting. Offer something interesting or don’t post at all. Your goal is to give people a reason to return. If you take care that each thing you post is worth their time, they will return. Give them a reason to doubt it, and they’ll desert you quickly.
The trick to making social media work for you is to understand to whom you’re marketing. I do not do Facebook or my blog because I believe my market is other writers. It isn’t. They are my friends, my colleagues. We’ve experienced this changing landscape together. We’ve offered each other support, critique. I’ve bought and read more than two dozen SP novels this year alone. Other writers are not my sales market. But they are an important—critical—part of my marketing effort. And I theirs. So my objective is not for them to buy my novel. It is to make them aware of it, and give it to them if I can. Big difference, both response and what they do with it.
Building a Book Cover
If you’re now reading for the first time how important the cover of your eBook is, you really haven’t begun to do your research. Suffice to say that “don’t judge a book by its cover” might be useful as a life metaphor. It doesn’t reflect the nature of the vast majority of book buyers whose very first buying instinct—looking inside the cover—is based exclusively on that very act.
Do not make the mistake of using your own instincts to become “art director” in this. I know—you’re a creative artist! You know what “good art” is! You don’t need to spend money having someone else tell you what’s pretty!
In most cases, this is a big mistake.
I have the benefit (perhaps) of enough years of circumspection to recognize what I don’t know. Graphic art is definitely one of them (as my wife, a graphic artist, well knows). But graphic art as applied to an eBook cover that will appear on a website as a thumbnail image is an entirely different matter. You simply must have foremost in your mind that a small image of your cover must stand out! It must stand out!
To appreciate this, you need to go to the eBook websites and look at hundreds of images. Just scan them with your eyes. Note which ones your eyes stop on. Do you see any pattern? Is there a particular color that attracts more than others? Notice all those fonts? Contrasts? Design elements?
Ack! If you’re putting up a free eBook collection of shorts, maybe you can afford to let it fly and pull up an old painting from the public domain. I did that with Uneasy Living, and it came out all right, maybe. But when you’re putting a debut novel out there with the intent to make a statement, you don’t want to rely on an amateur—you. You’re not an amateur novelist. Why have an amateur cover?
If one of your main objectives in self-publishing a novel length work is to maximize sales (and it may not be), then you must hire a graphic artist who understands the online sales dynamic. It’s one of the “expenses” you simply cannot avoid—that and the professional editor (see below). The competition for book cover art is like the Agora marketplace. Prices are reflected. Have an idea what you want, listen and be flexible to expertise you don’t have.
Everyone knows a graphic artist. I was ridiculously lucky to have run across an amazing artist who I’d shared a dorm with forty years ago. I stumbled upon Dean Rohrer on Facebook, and when I asked him if he wanted to help me, he was more than happy to help. He might regret that decision now, but in the end, both of us are rather proud of the final product and thrilled to have had this project to reunite us after all these years.
Arranging Your Innards
So you have a completed novel in proper manuscript format. I have two questions for you.
Did you have an editor read it?
Yes? Good for you. You can skip this next part.
No? You didn’t have the manuscript read by a trained set of eyes? Why? You can’t afford to?
You can’t afford not to, at least if you’re serious about what you’re doing.
There are a lot of ways to get your manuscript edited. One of course is to pay for it. The web is crawling with “professional editors,” and you have to do your due diligence to choose a decent one. What kind of diligence is due? Ask for a list of clients and contact them. Ask for the editor’s own writing sample and read it.
The cheapest way to get an edit is to use the barter system. I have a very reliable, solid, professional editor. How do I pay him? I get him more business. I read his stuff—whenever he asks. I pay him any way I can, whenever I can.
I’ll close this subject with one simple statement. If you think you can effectively edit your own work, you’re wrong. There are no exceptions to this rule. Prove me wrong, go ahead.
Are you sure your manuscript has been expertly converted and formatted into the various eBook formats?
This is a closer question. There are a lot of wonky-type writers out there who are in their element playing with file formats, converting to mobi or epub or prc or whatever. I did my own for a short story collection, and it worked out okay. That is, there are no glaring screw-ups, no stray returns, missing indents, extra page breaks.
But I have to say, I’ve read at least 25 self-published novels this year alone, and without a doubt, the most glaring annoyance (besides bad spelling and grammar) is formatting screw-ups. You worked your tushie off to get your prized work to this stage. Why take a chance on your own inexpertise?
There is a small army of people out there offering the service, but again, you have to pick carefully. A badly converted book is just as bad as a badly edited one. I chose to use Rob Siders, whose service, 52Novels.com, does the conversions for some of the big-selling authors like Joe Konrath. Rob did one hell of a job, used three different fonts, and inserted a very catchy fish hook in the chapter headings. He wasn’t cheap, but his work was meticulous, and I knew when I uploaded the files I wasn’t going to get any unpleasant surprises. In the end, it was money well spent, and looking at the book on my kindle, I have to say it looks lovely.
This is all very heady stuff these days in the publishing world. It’s like the days of the California Gold Rush, tens of thousands of enterprising folks rushing toward Sutter’s Mill with their picks, shovels and pans. Like that enterprise, in the world of self-publishing, the ones who strike gold are likely to be those with the best tools—and a little luck, of course!
When I began to write Diary of a Small Fish in February of 2008, I had no idea if I’d even finish it. All I had were some searing memories, a simple idea and a new “hobby.”
When I finished it and began to query in July of 2009, I had a little more than a pipe dream that I’d even get an agent. My query went 0-for-110, and I was ready to pack it in when I met Christine Witthohn at the first writers’ conference I attended, Crime Bake. She liked my elevator pitch—mostly because she’s married to a lawyer.
In April of 2010, we became a team. I went through 6 months of rewrites, and in December of 2010, Christine submitted the manuscript to a carefully selected group of editors.
Four months later, having heard nothing from any of them, Christine and I began to discuss the prospect of self-publishing. I am very fortunate to have found an agent who understands and embraces the changes in the marketplace.
So, I have now launched Diary of a Small Fish and joined the proud ranks of the “indie” community—or as those stuffed shirts call us, “self-publishers.”
What did I do to prepare for this? A lot of things you’ve already read about. There’s nothing particularly new I can tell you, but perhaps I’ll reinforce messages you’ve heard before. Maybe you'll even disagree with something—if you do, you're not necessarily wrong. We're just blogging here, you know.
Building a Platform
This is one of those terms that sounds more impressive than it really is, but still, a see a lot of people who think of the word “platform” as a synonym for “soapbox.” I think that’s a big mistake.
When you see someone up on a soapbox (figuratively speaking), what is the first thing that comes to mind?
He’s selling something, or he’s lecturing. Unless you know who he is, odds are you’re going to tune out or take him for a nut job.
A platform is a “following,” but not in the sense of a pied piper—that would be Grimm. A platform is what I like to look at as an ever-expanding circle of friends, acquaintances and affinity groups with whom you’ve interacted such that they are likely to have an interest in what you are doing. I believe you need to begin doing this well in advance of launching a novel and asking people to buy it.
My social media tool of choice is Facebook. I’ve picked and chosen my friends—not every single person inhabiting the realm, and not all writers. Many old friends from Authonomy, other writers who are friends of friends. Old school chums from as far back as first grade. Musician friends and local music fans from the Boston area. Artists from other venues. I’ve introduced many of these people to each other—so my old high school chums are now interacting with writer friends in UK, Australia, Japan. I make sure to post things on my page that are not just writing related. A lot of articles on publishing, for sure—things that other writers will find helpful. Book recommendations when I’ve found something special. Also quirky news bits, cartoons (thanks to brother Jim for his stellar work!), jokes, gags, you name it. The idea is to establish a track record of posting things people like to see. When your posts come across their news feed, they’re highly inclined to click and read.
The measure of success isn’t necessarily in the number of comments. I’m guessing that for every comment you receive on a FB post or blog entry, there are at least three times that number who’ve read it. So if you use Facebook, pay some attention to varying your material. Be eclectic. Be unique. Be funny. One thing I notice is the number of “likes” that come from people who aren’t even friends. I’ve gained dozens of new friends that way!
I don’t think it’s possible to fully utilize every social media tool there is. Unless you don’t eat or sleep. The best you can do—and still have time to write—is to pick one or two to focus on, and hit them hard. And keep busy enough on the others that you’ve at least got some activity.
If you’re keeping a blog, bear in mind that your blogroll is as or more important than your own posts. You get more out of commenting on other peoples’ blogs than you get from your own page. I’m very bad at this, but try to stop in for visits on a regular basis, and leave a card at the door (i.e., comment) before you leave. You’d be surprised how this results in increased traffic to your own.
Don’t post for the sake of posting. Offer something interesting or don’t post at all. Your goal is to give people a reason to return. If you take care that each thing you post is worth their time, they will return. Give them a reason to doubt it, and they’ll desert you quickly.
The trick to making social media work for you is to understand to whom you’re marketing. I do not do Facebook or my blog because I believe my market is other writers. It isn’t. They are my friends, my colleagues. We’ve experienced this changing landscape together. We’ve offered each other support, critique. I’ve bought and read more than two dozen SP novels this year alone. Other writers are not my sales market. But they are an important—critical—part of my marketing effort. And I theirs. So my objective is not for them to buy my novel. It is to make them aware of it, and give it to them if I can. Big difference, both response and what they do with it.
Building a Book Cover
If you’re now reading for the first time how important the cover of your eBook is, you really haven’t begun to do your research. Suffice to say that “don’t judge a book by its cover” might be useful as a life metaphor. It doesn’t reflect the nature of the vast majority of book buyers whose very first buying instinct—looking inside the cover—is based exclusively on that very act.
Do not make the mistake of using your own instincts to become “art director” in this. I know—you’re a creative artist! You know what “good art” is! You don’t need to spend money having someone else tell you what’s pretty!
In most cases, this is a big mistake.
I have the benefit (perhaps) of enough years of circumspection to recognize what I don’t know. Graphic art is definitely one of them (as my wife, a graphic artist, well knows). But graphic art as applied to an eBook cover that will appear on a website as a thumbnail image is an entirely different matter. You simply must have foremost in your mind that a small image of your cover must stand out! It must stand out!
To appreciate this, you need to go to the eBook websites and look at hundreds of images. Just scan them with your eyes. Note which ones your eyes stop on. Do you see any pattern? Is there a particular color that attracts more than others? Notice all those fonts? Contrasts? Design elements?
Ack! If you’re putting up a free eBook collection of shorts, maybe you can afford to let it fly and pull up an old painting from the public domain. I did that with Uneasy Living, and it came out all right, maybe. But when you’re putting a debut novel out there with the intent to make a statement, you don’t want to rely on an amateur—you. You’re not an amateur novelist. Why have an amateur cover?
If one of your main objectives in self-publishing a novel length work is to maximize sales (and it may not be), then you must hire a graphic artist who understands the online sales dynamic. It’s one of the “expenses” you simply cannot avoid—that and the professional editor (see below). The competition for book cover art is like the Agora marketplace. Prices are reflected. Have an idea what you want, listen and be flexible to expertise you don’t have.
Everyone knows a graphic artist. I was ridiculously lucky to have run across an amazing artist who I’d shared a dorm with forty years ago. I stumbled upon Dean Rohrer on Facebook, and when I asked him if he wanted to help me, he was more than happy to help. He might regret that decision now, but in the end, both of us are rather proud of the final product and thrilled to have had this project to reunite us after all these years.
Arranging Your Innards
So you have a completed novel in proper manuscript format. I have two questions for you.
Did you have an editor read it?
Yes? Good for you. You can skip this next part.
No? You didn’t have the manuscript read by a trained set of eyes? Why? You can’t afford to?
You can’t afford not to, at least if you’re serious about what you’re doing.
There are a lot of ways to get your manuscript edited. One of course is to pay for it. The web is crawling with “professional editors,” and you have to do your due diligence to choose a decent one. What kind of diligence is due? Ask for a list of clients and contact them. Ask for the editor’s own writing sample and read it.
The cheapest way to get an edit is to use the barter system. I have a very reliable, solid, professional editor. How do I pay him? I get him more business. I read his stuff—whenever he asks. I pay him any way I can, whenever I can.
I’ll close this subject with one simple statement. If you think you can effectively edit your own work, you’re wrong. There are no exceptions to this rule. Prove me wrong, go ahead.
Are you sure your manuscript has been expertly converted and formatted into the various eBook formats?
This is a closer question. There are a lot of wonky-type writers out there who are in their element playing with file formats, converting to mobi or epub or prc or whatever. I did my own for a short story collection, and it worked out okay. That is, there are no glaring screw-ups, no stray returns, missing indents, extra page breaks.
But I have to say, I’ve read at least 25 self-published novels this year alone, and without a doubt, the most glaring annoyance (besides bad spelling and grammar) is formatting screw-ups. You worked your tushie off to get your prized work to this stage. Why take a chance on your own inexpertise?
There is a small army of people out there offering the service, but again, you have to pick carefully. A badly converted book is just as bad as a badly edited one. I chose to use Rob Siders, whose service, 52Novels.com, does the conversions for some of the big-selling authors like Joe Konrath. Rob did one hell of a job, used three different fonts, and inserted a very catchy fish hook in the chapter headings. He wasn’t cheap, but his work was meticulous, and I knew when I uploaded the files I wasn’t going to get any unpleasant surprises. In the end, it was money well spent, and looking at the book on my kindle, I have to say it looks lovely.
This is all very heady stuff these days in the publishing world. It’s like the days of the California Gold Rush, tens of thousands of enterprising folks rushing toward Sutter’s Mill with their picks, shovels and pans. Like that enterprise, in the world of self-publishing, the ones who strike gold are likely to be those with the best tools—and a little luck, of course!
Friday, June 24, 2011
In Defense of Language
by Pete Morin
This past week, Boston’s illustrious Mayor, Thomas M. (“Mumbles”) Menino, in his inimitable high dudgeon, called upon the Nike company to cease its sale of tee shirts that, he said, condone the use of drugs.
The tee shirt has the word “dope” printed in large red letters, above a prescription pill vial, out of which spilled skateboards and snowboards. It is part of Nike’s campaign to celebrate vigorous outdoor physical activity:
"These T-shirts are part of an action sports campaign, featuring marquee athletes using commonly used and accepted expressions for performance at the highest level of their sport, be it surfing, skateboarding or BMX.”
Menino—an infamously dull-witted fellow who rarely completes a sentence without a malaprop—isn’t buying this clever marketing. He thinks the campaign is “outrageous,” and he’s calling on the company to cease and desist.
“Dope” is a versatile word, for 4 letters. Depending on its context, it can mean any number of things. From the Dictionary of American Slang
I love that—“dudical.”
It can also be used in a verb phrase, dope out, to mean (a) to figure out; calculate; devise: to dope out a plan; (b) to deduce or infer from available information: to dope out a solution to a problem.
But for Menino, there is only one meaning conveyed—or understood—those nefarious substances that are the bane of the inner city streets.
A while back, I posted about a kerfuffle involving a blog participant’s use of the phrase “tits up,” to mean—as was perfectly obvious in context—a business failure.
This was met by a chorus of outrage from some women who were offended by the slang use of their cherished body parts to convey the intended, and understood, meaning. That men have tits didn’t matter. If it is capable of offending someone (regardless of its intended meaning), it needs to go. This notion goes well beyond the venue of online chats.
As writers, while we are not constrained to leave our ideologies on the stoop, I submit that we have a superior fidelity to the meaning of language. Our task is to use words to convey thoughts and images as perfect and true to our intent as our language will permit (and even make up our own words, if that’s what works). This is not an obligation that ought to be confined to the work-in-progress. We do not sweat out perfect prose in fiction, punch a clock, and then slouch to the misuse of nouns—or too their misinterpretation, whether we are the speaker or listener. When we see or hear a word with multiple meanings, we don’t apply one that is obviously unintended.
What is at stake here is something quite sinister—something George Orwell portrayed in a rather iconic masterpiece. That is the risk that someone else is going to tell you what your words mean, or worse yet, whether you can say them at all, and they might even spy on you to do it (that last link is frighteningly replete with such instances). Someone else is going to determine that your speech has racist intent. Or that you are a sexist.
Or that you are promoting drug use.
There is nothing relative about language. Words have their etymology. Used with care and clarity, they convey a specific, intended meaning. Where they are misinterpreted to mean something clearly unintended, it is not the fault of the speaker.
As you slave over your manuscript tonight after the children are in bed, consider how difficult your task would be if you had to examine each of words to insure that they were not capable of being misinterpreted by someone with another agenda—one having nothing to do with truth.
[I am glad that—to date—Nike is sticking to its guns (oh my, how inappropriate a metaphor!) on this. For my part, I think the campaign is anti-drug. Get high on life; surfing, snowboarding and surfing are our drug of choice, etc.]
This past week, Boston’s illustrious Mayor, Thomas M. (“Mumbles”) Menino, in his inimitable high dudgeon, called upon the Nike company to cease its sale of tee shirts that, he said, condone the use of drugs.
The tee shirt has the word “dope” printed in large red letters, above a prescription pill vial, out of which spilled skateboards and snowboards. It is part of Nike’s campaign to celebrate vigorous outdoor physical activity:
"These T-shirts are part of an action sports campaign, featuring marquee athletes using commonly used and accepted expressions for performance at the highest level of their sport, be it surfing, skateboarding or BMX.”
Menino—an infamously dull-witted fellow who rarely completes a sentence without a malaprop—isn’t buying this clever marketing. He thinks the campaign is “outrageous,” and he’s calling on the company to cease and desist.
“Dope” is a versatile word, for 4 letters. Depending on its context, it can mean any number of things. From the Dictionary of American Slang
dope
n. a stupid person. : That dope has done it again!
n. drugs in general; marijuana. : How much dope do you do in a week anyway?
n. news; information; scuttlebutt. : I got some dope on the tavern fire if you want to hear it.
mod. best; most excellent. : We had a great time there. It was dope and dudical.
I love that—“dudical.”
It can also be used in a verb phrase, dope out, to mean (a) to figure out; calculate; devise: to dope out a plan; (b) to deduce or infer from available information: to dope out a solution to a problem.
But for Menino, there is only one meaning conveyed—or understood—those nefarious substances that are the bane of the inner city streets.
A while back, I posted about a kerfuffle involving a blog participant’s use of the phrase “tits up,” to mean—as was perfectly obvious in context—a business failure.
This was met by a chorus of outrage from some women who were offended by the slang use of their cherished body parts to convey the intended, and understood, meaning. That men have tits didn’t matter. If it is capable of offending someone (regardless of its intended meaning), it needs to go. This notion goes well beyond the venue of online chats.
As writers, while we are not constrained to leave our ideologies on the stoop, I submit that we have a superior fidelity to the meaning of language. Our task is to use words to convey thoughts and images as perfect and true to our intent as our language will permit (and even make up our own words, if that’s what works). This is not an obligation that ought to be confined to the work-in-progress. We do not sweat out perfect prose in fiction, punch a clock, and then slouch to the misuse of nouns—or too their misinterpretation, whether we are the speaker or listener. When we see or hear a word with multiple meanings, we don’t apply one that is obviously unintended.
What is at stake here is something quite sinister—something George Orwell portrayed in a rather iconic masterpiece. That is the risk that someone else is going to tell you what your words mean, or worse yet, whether you can say them at all, and they might even spy on you to do it (that last link is frighteningly replete with such instances). Someone else is going to determine that your speech has racist intent. Or that you are a sexist.
Or that you are promoting drug use.
There is nothing relative about language. Words have their etymology. Used with care and clarity, they convey a specific, intended meaning. Where they are misinterpreted to mean something clearly unintended, it is not the fault of the speaker.
As you slave over your manuscript tonight after the children are in bed, consider how difficult your task would be if you had to examine each of words to insure that they were not capable of being misinterpreted by someone with another agenda—one having nothing to do with truth.
[I am glad that—to date—Nike is sticking to its guns (oh my, how inappropriate a metaphor!) on this. For my part, I think the campaign is anti-drug. Get high on life; surfing, snowboarding and surfing are our drug of choice, etc.]
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Hurry Up and Wait No More
by Pete Morin
I began my first novel around February of 2008 (one of the very first—and very crappy—draft chapters is still posted at youwriteon). At that time, the “e-Reader” was an infant (the Kindle arrived late in 2007), digital publishing was still pretty much a novelty (Smashwords was born in May of 2008)(read a fascinating history of digital publishing here), and the Big Six held a de facto monopoly on an author’s access to readers. If you wanted to “self-publish,” you were pretty much committed to driving around with a trunk full of your books, peddling them to bookstores one-at-a-time.
By February of 2009 I thought I had a halfway decent product when Diary of a Small Fish finished in the top-5 one month on Authonomy and received a fairly complimentary review by a Harper Collins’ junior assistant editorial intern (heh). There might have been a modest number of pioneers out there, but self-publishing still carried that stigma—might be good but not good enough for a real publisher. No, you have to take a shot at the brass ring, right? A year of revising and editing ensued.
By February of 2010, well—I had an agent (and a damn fine one at that!)! The promise of acceptance (if not acclaim) was within grasp. So was the Kindle, for millions. And Nook and iPad and you-name it. By God, a revolution was in progress, and the Grand Dames of Mid-town Manhattan were on an extended cocktail hour. (A year—or ten—to respond to a manuscript submission?) Why, they actually had their noses in the air at this silly notion of a digital revolution. These apocryphal anecdotes of authors actually selling a previously self-published manuscript to one of them. The very idea!
Another year of revising and editing.
And here we are today. Hundreds and hundreds of damn fine novelists (and yeah, okay, thousands of crumby ones), impatient with the glacial pace of traditional publishing’s reaction to a new paradigm—uploading manuscripts by the thousands, selling millions of copies. The number of self-published authors being offered deals increases daily. Joe Konrath waves the flag, Barry Eisler joins him. Amanda Hocking sells one million eBooks in a year and wows the world with her multi-million dollar offer, an exclamatory statement that a writer can do it either way, and damn successfully. But she’s just the biggest and latest example of the trend sure to continue.
I was trying to think of an appropriate metaphor for the contrast between the self-publishing phenomenon and traditional publishing. I think I have it. The former is like a street bazaar, thousands of vendors and buyers jostling in the dusty streets.
The latter is like a Sotheby’s auction of rare coins.
Okay, I admit it. I still want to be like so many of you—a rare coin, minted by a name brand. I still want the spine of my novel to have the word “Penguin” (and not in the title). But above all, I want as many people as possible to read it and enjoy it, and I want them to read it before the beginning of the next decade. I haven’t got all goddamn day.
I began my first novel around February of 2008 (one of the very first—and very crappy—draft chapters is still posted at youwriteon). At that time, the “e-Reader” was an infant (the Kindle arrived late in 2007), digital publishing was still pretty much a novelty (Smashwords was born in May of 2008)(read a fascinating history of digital publishing here), and the Big Six held a de facto monopoly on an author’s access to readers. If you wanted to “self-publish,” you were pretty much committed to driving around with a trunk full of your books, peddling them to bookstores one-at-a-time.
By February of 2009 I thought I had a halfway decent product when Diary of a Small Fish finished in the top-5 one month on Authonomy and received a fairly complimentary review by a Harper Collins’ junior assistant editorial intern (heh). There might have been a modest number of pioneers out there, but self-publishing still carried that stigma—might be good but not good enough for a real publisher. No, you have to take a shot at the brass ring, right? A year of revising and editing ensued.
By February of 2010, well—I had an agent (and a damn fine one at that!)! The promise of acceptance (if not acclaim) was within grasp. So was the Kindle, for millions. And Nook and iPad and you-name it. By God, a revolution was in progress, and the Grand Dames of Mid-town Manhattan were on an extended cocktail hour. (A year—or ten—to respond to a manuscript submission?) Why, they actually had their noses in the air at this silly notion of a digital revolution. These apocryphal anecdotes of authors actually selling a previously self-published manuscript to one of them. The very idea!
Another year of revising and editing.
And here we are today. Hundreds and hundreds of damn fine novelists (and yeah, okay, thousands of crumby ones), impatient with the glacial pace of traditional publishing’s reaction to a new paradigm—uploading manuscripts by the thousands, selling millions of copies. The number of self-published authors being offered deals increases daily. Joe Konrath waves the flag, Barry Eisler joins him. Amanda Hocking sells one million eBooks in a year and wows the world with her multi-million dollar offer, an exclamatory statement that a writer can do it either way, and damn successfully. But she’s just the biggest and latest example of the trend sure to continue.
I was trying to think of an appropriate metaphor for the contrast between the self-publishing phenomenon and traditional publishing. I think I have it. The former is like a street bazaar, thousands of vendors and buyers jostling in the dusty streets.The latter is like a Sotheby’s auction of rare coins.
Okay, I admit it. I still want to be like so many of you—a rare coin, minted by a name brand. I still want the spine of my novel to have the word “Penguin” (and not in the title). But above all, I want as many people as possible to read it and enjoy it, and I want them to read it before the beginning of the next decade. I haven’t got all goddamn day.
Friday, April 1, 2011
How Do You Get To the NYT Bestseller List?
by Pete Morin
Bennett Cerf, the co-founder of Random House (better know to the people of my generation as one of the panelists on What's My Line?) told this story in his 1956 book, The Life of the Party: A New Collection of Stories and Anecdotes (now available on eBay for $1.99).
Rumor is that a pedestrian on Fifty-seventh Street, Manhattan, stopped Jascha Heifetz and inquired, "Could you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?"
"Yes," said Heifetz. "Practice!"
Clearly, Heifitz's invocation is well-applied not just to music, but practically every skill acquired by mankind.
So how does an aspiring novelist practice? Food fights have started over less controversial questions.
Well, of course, you must write! But what good is writing all the time if you don't know what you're doing? You have to know what you're doing. How do you learn what you're doing? Some insist you must go to school and acquire a Masters in Fine Arts. Catcalls and brickbats ensue.
Here's a suggestion that I learned from James N. Frey, in his superb how-to book, How To Write a Damn Good Novel. [N.B. Frey is one of dozens of successful novelists who've shared their ideas, methods and suggestions. An aspiring novelist who doesn't read these—at least some of them—isn't, in my opinion, serious about becoming a successful writer.]
Besides being a multi-published novelist, Frey has taught creative writing at a number of institutions for two decades. He was Teacher of the Year at UC Berkeley in 1994. His methods of teaching are alluded to repeatedly in his books, which are universally praised. Bottom line, a good guy to listen to.
Frey has his students select a work of fiction by their favorite author. They then select 2-3 pages from the book that they find particularly excellent, and then copy it. Word for word.
Here's what Frey says about it:
You will not only get a feel for how good stylists use words, you will feel the timing and the rhythm of their prose and the snap, crackle and pop of their dialogue.
The next day, write a few pages imitating the style. If the scene you typed out is an outdoor scene with a lot of action, write the same sort of scene, trying your best to imitate style.
Do this with other authors you admire, regularly. Here's what he says the result is:
By doing these exercises, you'll soon discover that your own, individual, distinctive styles will emerge, styles suited to your personality and to the particular story you are writing, styles unlike any of the styles you've been imitating.
We all have favorite authors. They all have their own style and methods. Very few of them are similar. We aspire to write like our favorites, or at least to learn how it is and why it is that these authors succeed in their craft. We can do that by sitting in a classroom and deconstructing sentences, examining their syntax, etc. Like MFA students do, maybe. I'd just as soon jump into the polar bear pit at the zoo.
But here is an exercise where, Frey assures us, we can see measurable results, and rather quickly:
Doing the following exercise a half-hour to an hour a day has made some of the worst prose-writing students in my classes into some of the best... in a few months—or less. Often the improvement is very rapid and the degree of improvement is astonishing.
A final word about reading.
You cannot become a better novelist without reading novels. Not just a few, but dozens. Hundreds. Maybe the exercise above reduces the number of Leonard novels from 15 to 10, but if you want to write mysteries like Elmore Leonard, you have to read everything Elmore Leonard has ever written. Otherwise, you'll probably end up sounding like an amateur who's copying Elmore Leonard.
Until about 7 years ago, I didn't read that many novels—maybe 5-8 per year. Now I read 5-8 per month.
That's practice.
Practice, practice, practice!
(The joke is also referenced in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds when Brad Pitt's character Aldo says "You know how you get to Carnegie Hall, don't ya? Practice".)
Bennett Cerf, the co-founder of Random House (better know to the people of my generation as one of the panelists on What's My Line?) told this story in his 1956 book, The Life of the Party: A New Collection of Stories and Anecdotes (now available on eBay for $1.99).
Rumor is that a pedestrian on Fifty-seventh Street, Manhattan, stopped Jascha Heifetz and inquired, "Could you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?"
"Yes," said Heifetz. "Practice!"
Clearly, Heifitz's invocation is well-applied not just to music, but practically every skill acquired by mankind.
So how does an aspiring novelist practice? Food fights have started over less controversial questions.
Well, of course, you must write! But what good is writing all the time if you don't know what you're doing? You have to know what you're doing. How do you learn what you're doing? Some insist you must go to school and acquire a Masters in Fine Arts. Catcalls and brickbats ensue.
Here's a suggestion that I learned from James N. Frey, in his superb how-to book, How To Write a Damn Good Novel. [N.B. Frey is one of dozens of successful novelists who've shared their ideas, methods and suggestions. An aspiring novelist who doesn't read these—at least some of them—isn't, in my opinion, serious about becoming a successful writer.]
Besides being a multi-published novelist, Frey has taught creative writing at a number of institutions for two decades. He was Teacher of the Year at UC Berkeley in 1994. His methods of teaching are alluded to repeatedly in his books, which are universally praised. Bottom line, a good guy to listen to.
Frey has his students select a work of fiction by their favorite author. They then select 2-3 pages from the book that they find particularly excellent, and then copy it. Word for word.
Here's what Frey says about it:
You will not only get a feel for how good stylists use words, you will feel the timing and the rhythm of their prose and the snap, crackle and pop of their dialogue.
The next day, write a few pages imitating the style. If the scene you typed out is an outdoor scene with a lot of action, write the same sort of scene, trying your best to imitate style.
Do this with other authors you admire, regularly. Here's what he says the result is:
By doing these exercises, you'll soon discover that your own, individual, distinctive styles will emerge, styles suited to your personality and to the particular story you are writing, styles unlike any of the styles you've been imitating.
We all have favorite authors. They all have their own style and methods. Very few of them are similar. We aspire to write like our favorites, or at least to learn how it is and why it is that these authors succeed in their craft. We can do that by sitting in a classroom and deconstructing sentences, examining their syntax, etc. Like MFA students do, maybe. I'd just as soon jump into the polar bear pit at the zoo.
But here is an exercise where, Frey assures us, we can see measurable results, and rather quickly:
Doing the following exercise a half-hour to an hour a day has made some of the worst prose-writing students in my classes into some of the best... in a few months—or less. Often the improvement is very rapid and the degree of improvement is astonishing.
A final word about reading.
You cannot become a better novelist without reading novels. Not just a few, but dozens. Hundreds. Maybe the exercise above reduces the number of Leonard novels from 15 to 10, but if you want to write mysteries like Elmore Leonard, you have to read everything Elmore Leonard has ever written. Otherwise, you'll probably end up sounding like an amateur who's copying Elmore Leonard.
Until about 7 years ago, I didn't read that many novels—maybe 5-8 per year. Now I read 5-8 per month.
That's practice.
Practice, practice, practice!
(The joke is also referenced in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds when Brad Pitt's character Aldo says "You know how you get to Carnegie Hall, don't ya? Practice".)
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