Category Archives: Marketing

A guest post by Shelley Reddy.

Two aliens walked into a library, and approached the front desk. “Hewwo, Wibrary Wand. Take us to your Weeder.”

I love that libraries are offering new ways for people to encounter stories and content. The library district where I work offers four online libraries, free music downloads, video streaming, language learning programs, virtual magazines, and over 300 free online classes –including courses on writing and publishing. Furthermore, the branches host workshops, e-publication seminars, author visits, as well as other programs. Those are a lot of opportunities for writers to improve their skills or connect with readers.

As a book lover and writer myself, I feel supremely lucky to be in such an environment. However, I’ve found that there are two great challenges to working in a public library.

I will never read all the stories that are out there –nor even all the great stories.
Libraries do not have enough room on the shelves or in the budgets for all the material which is being released into the world.

While the first is frustrating fact of life, the second creates a fundamental problem for libraries and their staff.

Like any reader, library staffs love stories, engaging characters, and the way writers spin worlds from varying combinations of a mere twenty six letters. We firmly believe that there is a book for every reader, and a reader for every book. The archivist in us treasures the ability to preserve the stories and match their authors with readers. However, when the books keep coming in and circulation slumps, the books sit, waiting like the residents of the Island of Misfit Toys.

Eight months ago, we had this problem in our large-print section. The books – built up over years of healthy budgets- were so numerous, and packed so tightly together, that it was nearly impossible to pull a title off the shelf. Many popular items were on the lowest shelves, forcing our most elderly patrons to bend or kneel to find them. The shelves themselves were located in the darkest portion of the building –which hadn’t been a problem when half-empty shelving allowed sunlight to filter through. We didn’t have a way to showcase the amazing titles and authors in our collection. For our readers, the wonderful adventures they wanted to experience were lost –buried amongst the blurred, shadowed mass of text and color.

Something had to change. In library land, we call the process of choosing what not to keep “weeding”, and it is a battle for the soul as much as for inches of clear territory. If you ever had holes seared into your jeans in an Arizona July while crouched on burning gravel engaging in tug-of-war with mutant dandelion roots that may well survive nuclear holocaust and overtake the planet… you understand. For the beginning library professional, weeding is an alien, uncomfortable process. The Archivist in our soul battles with the Grim Reaper’s devotion to the big picture.

“It won an award,” the Archivist begs. “It changed the way we view prosaic noun development.”

“No one’s read it in twelve years. There’s more dust on it than King Tut’s tomb. Let it go.”

“But it won the Nobel! The movie was adored by critics, and it’s only eleven months until the Oscars. It could be in a display…”

“The movie came out five years ago, the critics were the only ones to embrace it, and you have two copies that haven’t been touched. Let it go.”

And -unless we want to appear on a future spin-off of Hoarders- the Archivist usually must acquiesce. In time, we learn to merge those different personalities –Archivist, Entertainer, Promoter, Reaper, Teacher- into one vision and one voice. Even so, each time I go out to the shelves, I am girding myself for battle -with the collection, and with myself.

As hard as weeding can be, however, I’ve found it to be one of the most essential skills a librarian –and a writer- can possess. The ability to step back and take a look at the larger picture, analyze the weakest points, and either strengthen those struggling elements or –if necessary- remove them, is essential to presenting a stronger, more tailored and unified whole.

In writing, extraneous characters appear from the ether and run off with the plot just when the action is building. We are introduced to a mass of characters that all have similar, strange names, forcing us to stop in the middle of the climactic battle and ask “Wait… Is Oleo the alien prince, or Ollea? Or Olyvan?” We struggle to find the critical message of the piece amongst the bright, bubbling, endless –and ultimately circular- analysis of the main character’s daughter’s friend’s shoes.

We all have scenes and sentences we love. We birth them, shelter them, dote on them and sing their accomplishments to the world. Sometimes, however, as the story grows and changes, that scene or character or bit of dialogue that we love just doesn’t work the way we expect. It drags the pacing, weakens our characters, and provides irreconcilable plot challenges. We scold it, shift it, stare at it in consternation, and wonder why it just won’t play with the rest of the group.

Sometimes, as hard as it can be, we must accept those story elements for what they are and stop trying to force them into our vision of how we want them to sing in our magnum opus. Adopt the eyes of the alien –the outsider, the foreigner, the expert critic. Look at your creation and analyze what does and doesn’t work. Ask yourself why it isn’t working. Then change it.

In the library, we recently overhauled our struggling collection. We removed the underperforming, the damaged, and the extraneous. We reorganized the structure so readers didn’t have to stand on their heads to identify the gems. Amazing stories and characters created by wonderful authors now had space in which to shine. Our readers loved it. Yours will, too.

In the library, and in my own writing, the weeding process continues. There may be a mutant dandelion or two, but fortunately I work in a library. I’m sure there’s a cookbook around here with a recipe for dandelion stew…

Two aliens walked into a library… it sounds like the start of an interesting journey.

Shelley Reddy Bio:
Like many authors, Shelley Reddy has been a bibliophile and library lover since a young age. A paraprofessional with the Queen Creek library in Arizona, she currently is working on her next book.

Book Reviewing in the Trenches

April 22, 2014

fictorians

Author's Perspective Branding Business Craft & Skills Guest Posts Marketing Reading Reviews 2 Comments

A guest post by Ann Cummins.

Two aliens walked into a bar.

Well, that’s not quite right. They were New Yorkers just beginning to mutate. One was a writer, the other a tailor. The bar was crowded. It was karaoke night.

The writer was miffed. Had a bad week. It wasn’t his writing. His writing was great. First novel done and sold, review copies out; there would be royalties, he was sure.

But he’d spent the week trying to track down some fool tailor, who was never in his shop. The writer was getting married. This tailor was supposed to be the best, and the writer wanted the guy to sew him a wedding shirt. But the dang tailor was MIA, which made the writer’s skin crawl. He liked people to be where they said they’d be when they were supposed to be there.

The tailor, his skin was crawling, too. Some sub-species writer had flamed him on Yelp. For ever-so-long, the tailor had enjoyed a 5-star rating. “I’ll pan him on Amazon,” the tailor groused. “Just wait ‘til his book comes out.”

The writer’s day was getting worse. There were so many people between him and the microphone. He needed to vent. He wanted an audience. In frustration, he shouted to the room in general: “I’ll yelp him again. I’ll give five-stars to his competitors.”

“Who?” the room shouted back. So the writer told the story, and the tailor, he listened.

Blood in his eye, he could barely see the abomination that was calling himself a writer. “You!” he shouted.

The writer stared in horror at the needle-fingered couturier.

Both lunged. One skittered spider-like, the other bull-dogged: Over shoulders and under legs, they tore through the crowd in a dead heat toward the stage, each desperate to get to that microphone first.

(For details on the non-fictional story, go to: http://www.dailyfreeman.com/general-news/20130820/writers-new-woe-revenge-e-reviews)

*****

I published a short story collection, Red Ant House, with Houghton Mifflin in 2003. I was lucky. They assigned me a publicist, who sent out many review copies, followed up, and as a result my book was widely reviewed.

It was my first book, and I didn’t have much name recognition. My editor suggested I start reviewing books. Get my name out there. So I contacted the wonderful Oscar Villalon, who, at the time, was Book Review Editor for the San Francisco Chronicle. Oscar gave me a shot. Actually, he assigned me a 250-word review for a 600+ page tedious historical novel. A challenge? Yes. But I guess I did OK, because for several years after that, Oscar assigned me books. I graduated to the 800-word review.

But then, the congenial world of writing and book reviewing morphed into what it is now: the free-for-all electronic media driven Tower of Babble (not that that’s a bad thing, but it’s definitely a new frontier). Newspaper sales dwindled. Editors slashed or eliminated their book review sections.

In 2007, I hit the trail, promoting my new book, Yellowcake. The scene on the street was depressing: vacant buildings where bookstores used to be; conferences where bug-eyed writers paid for a ten-minute shot at sweet-talking an agent. And where were all the readers? I, and many writers I know, gave readings to empty rooms in a few holdout bookstores. The only writers getting any attention were showboats emboldened to camp it up and draw blood if necessary. Whatever it took to get an audience.

I decided to go home: To do what I could to promote writing and reading in a civil environment at the grassroots level. I contacted my local NPR station in Flagstaff, Arizona, KNAU. We launched Southwest Book Reviews. I aimed to review books by small regional publishers that might not get the wide media attention big bucks publishers could buy.

So how does a writer get reviewed these days? My advice: Read. Work at the grassroots level to promote reading. Contact favorite magazines, radio stations, websites. You’d be surprised how many will say yes to a well-written review about books by favorite and new authors.

What goes around comes around. Writers who read and write intelligently about books inspire readers. Readers, we hope, get excited about books. We all fan the dying embers, and everybody wins.

Bio:

Ann Cummins is the author of a short story collection, Red Ant House (Mariner, 2003) and a novel, Yellowcake (Houghton Mifflin, 2007), a San Francisco Chronicle notable book and Best of Kirkus. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere and have been anthologized in a variety of series including The Best American Short Stories, The Prentice Hall Anthology of Women’s Literature, Best of McSweeney’s, and The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories. A 2002 recipient of a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship, she’s a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and the University of Arizona writing programs. She’s on the fiction faculty at Northern Arizona University and the Queens University low-residency program in Charlotte, North Carolina.

My Journey to Professionalism, Step 1: Establishing My Identity

March 27, 2014

Nathan Barra

Branding Business Character Marketing Nathan Barra 1 Comment

As hobbyists, writers create stories for our own enjoyment and for the satisfaction of sharing our vision. To be a professional, however, we must take a step beyond that and become small business owners. Though we still love writing and storytelling, the professional writer wears many hats, interacts with many different people, and works hard to produce the highest quality product he or she can. Professional writers are editors, accountants, marketers, designers, and their own most devoted agent. Though we interact with professionals who do all these job functions for us, the modern writer must take responsibility for his or her own career, learning and growing into other functions in order to be successful.

It took me a while to see this, and even longer to believe it, to understand what it means. By talking to a number of experienced friends, people who had traveled this road before me, I was able to see further down my own path, and start taking the first steps in my own journey.

The first step in creating your business is imagining it, creating your brand and beginning to build your name. Though writers sell individual works of fiction, I would argue a writer sells themselves, their abilities as a storyteller and their name as their primary product. There are an ocean of voices out there, all clamoring to be heard, so why then would a reader become a fan? How does a writer assure return business? It starts with the writer’s brand. The first step I took to becoming a professional was designing my identity and creating Nathan Barra.

The writer’s brand starts with the name, something that will appear on books. In November, I wrote my Fictorians post on the choosing of a good pseudonym, so I am not going to repeat what I said there. Instead, I want to emphasize how important it is to approach the branding process intelligently. Any other business, be a Coca-Cola, Calvin Klein, or Google, hires marketing firms to establish an identity that is immediately an easily recognizable and distinct. As writers, we must also do this, be it often with a smaller budget.

When you work with a designer on a branding package, one of your early conversations will be what you want your brand to convey. For me, I wanted Nathan to have two faces. First was the face I showed to consumers. I wanted Nathan to be dependable, intelligent, articulate and someone that readers would trust to produce high quality work regularly, stories they would enjoy reading even if it was outside their normal genre comfort zone. The second visage of Nathan was the professional face. I wanted industry professionals to see me and believe that I would be a reliable coworker, someone who would produce high-quality work on time, with regularity, and would be someone that they would enjoy working with.

My designer and I took these ideas and built my website, my logo, and my color palette. I created a look, a series of outfits that I wear whenever I make professional appearances as Nathan. I started pulling together a media package to give out when I guessed posted. I established Nathan Barra.com, and my blog, In Brief. I worked hard to create posts and gather content of the highest quality that I could manage. Most importantly, I was never, ever late. All these actions fed into the brand I was trying to establish.

At first, Nathan was a mask that I wore, and identity that I adopted when I wrote. However, in the year since I established myself as Nathan, that identity has become a second skin. Nathan is who I am when I write and when I interact with industry professionals. Nathan, and the brand I built around him, is the basis of my business.

That step taken, I began looking to some of the writers that I admired, both the professionals and the semi-professionals, to chart my next step. Though I haven’t spent a great deal of money on Nathan Barra, the cost of design work, hosting fees, and conferences isn’t insignificant. I haven’t been tracking my finances like it’s a business, but rather spending like the hobbyist. Therefore, my next step seems obvious. I need to change my spending habits and whip myself into financial shape. More on that tomorrow, however, when I speak about my second step in my professional journey.

Dispelling the Myths, Part Two

March 14, 2014

Evan Braun

Business Evan Braun Guest Posts Marketing Publishing Self-Awareness The Writing Life 1 Comment

A interview post with Jen Greyson.

Yesterday, I posted the first of my two sit-down posts with author Jen Greyson, author of Lightning Rider and Shadow Boxer. Her publishing story began a couple of years ago upon selling her first novel to a publisher—and not just any publisher, but The Writer’s Coffee Shop, the company behind Fifty Shades of Grey. Here’s the interview’s conclusion.

EB: What kind of marketing went into your book’s release?

JR: Press release and a blog tour, social media on launch day. I devoted a ton of time into finding bloggers to review/tour for this book, so both sides worked pretty hard on this launch. I also did a big launch party and the publisher sent me bookmarks and fliers for advertising.

EB: What were your biggest turnoffs in the traditional publishing experience?

JR: In a nutshell, I gave up a lot and got very little in return. I bought into the myth of traditional publishing (though I’m not sure if I can even call this a “traditional” deal, because they were basically a small-press). I figured once I had a contract I’d ‘made it’ and everything would be a piece of cake from there. Boy, was I wrong. I still had to devote a ton of time and energy into sales. As I did the math, it became obvious very early on that I could do the same amount of work as an indie and make a lot more money. (This was a royalty-only deal.)

At the time I released Lightning Rider, NA (new adult) was really gaining traction and the publisher didn’t know how to market NA (or fantasy) because they’d never had one. They were really open to my suggestions, and that was great, but I’d chosen them because I thought they had some marketing “secret.” In the end, I picked a publisher that was a bad fit for my book, but I wanted to be published so badly that I overlooked a lot of red flags.

EB: After the release, how were your sales?

JR: Sales were nowhere near the Fifty Shades numbers I’d hoped for! 🙂 That ended up working in my favor, though, because of a clause I negotiated that specified that if I didn’t sell a certain number of books within the first six months, the contract could be terminated.

EB: Did you take any “missteps” along the way that you would caution other writers about?

JR: Don’t be so eager to get published in the short-term that you overlook the long-term. One book is nothing in terms of a writer’s career. (I’m hoping for another thirty-five years!) It was really hard for me to be unbiased about the deal, and if I’m truly honest, I don’t think anyone could have talked me out of signing with them. I wanted to be published. And because of that craving/desire/crippling need, I wasn’t as smart as I should have been. I wasn’t realistic about what a first book by a first-time author was going to do. I believed I was the exception to the rule.

EB: After having pursued traditional publishing, what are you doing now? How has the experience influenced your career path?

JR: Right now, I’m self-pubbing all my titles, and that’s probably the plan for 2014. Interestingly, the workload hasn’t changed, but my royalty checks have! And because I’m trying to expose myself to readers in a genre dominated by indies (NA), I need to be able to drop titles every three months. I can’t afford to wait eighteen months for a traditional deal—not right now, and not with my NA titles.

I’m definitely not opposed to doing a traditional deal in the future, but now that I’m out from under the myth of traditional publishing I think I can make a much more educated decision. I also have a better understanding of what goes into getting each book into readers’ hands, and I know how to budget and value my own time in the equation.

My path isn’t necessarily what’s right for anyone else. Writers need to do their homework. Talk to other authors who’ve been there, seek counsel, be smart. And in the wise, wise words of James Owen: “Never, ever, sacrifice what you want the most, for what you want the most at that moment.”

Guest Bio:
From the moment she decided on a degree in Equestrian Studies, Jen Greyson’s life has been one unscripted adventure after another. Leaving the cowboy state of Wyoming to train show horses in France, Switzerland, and Germany, she’s lived life without much of a plan, but always a book in her suitcase. Now a wife and mom to two young boys, she relies on her adventurous, passionate characters to be the risk-takers. Jen also writes university courses and corporate training material when she’s not enjoying the wilds of the west via wakeboard or snowmobile.