Category Archives: Publishing

And no, I don’t mean with an iron despite the picture.

Whether your traditionally published, e-published by a publisher, or indie/ self-published, marketing is where it’s at. With the rise of Kindle Direct and other media that allow self-published writers to get into the larger marketplace, writers, especially new ones, struggle to get noticed. One of the ways to do that is to establish strong “brand” recognition. Your brand is what and how you market. So, let’s start with the concept of brand recognition. You, dear writer, are a product just like a Hershey Bar. And just like a Hershey Bar, you want an immediate connection to the consumer (reader) on the mention of your name (brand). I know for me, when hear or even type “Hershey Bar” a vision of the dark brown wrapper full of chocolaty goodness pops into my head. That’s good brand recognition Some products so dominate the market that the brand name is synonymous with the product – as examples look at Kleenex and Xerox. Excellent branding and marketing.

The interesting thing about Hershey Bars is that at one point the product so dominated the market it had become synonymous with chocolate bars. Then it made a mistake. Hershey decided it could stop advertising, that’s right just stop. But it lost that dominance when it did because Nestle, among others, increased advertising. Hershey tumbled from the top of its chocolate mountain.

My publisher’s first anniversary is in a few weeks. As part of prepping for the event, I typed “Musa Publishing” into Amazon to see what there was to see. Here’s what I noticed. While the search brought up non-Musa books, at least 90% of the time I could tell if it was really a Musa book by looking at the thumbnail picture of the cover. I was able to reject books that didn’t fit my profile by looking at them. That’s good branding (and a great art and marketing division).

What does this tell writers about branding? Several things.

(1) You MUST create a brand.

Writers like Neil Gaiman have a brand. Again, if you’ve seen a picture of Neil or met him in person, he is always wearing black on black. Kevin J. Anderson has a brand. Take a look at his press releases and photos, he’s always in a sport coat, usually camel colored, or a dark brown leather jacket, a softly colored oxford shirt (usually with the sleeves rolled to the elbow (if no jacket), and jeans. That’s his brand. I could recall it without looking at any of his press photos making it a successful brand. Dean Wesley Smith has his hat. And so on. If you look at the superstars in the writing field, you’ll note each one of them has a consistent look or brand. That’s not a coincidence. It’s done very intentionally and by design.

The picture on tthe right is part of my brand. I’m a mommy, writer, lawyer who writes fantasy, often with romantic story lines. What was I aiming for in a look then? Something polished and professional, but that was soft around the edges to suggest that romancey feel. Did I do it? Feel free to tell me in the comments. I’m a lawyer, which means thick-skinned and I can take it.

Anyway, I go to professional writing events – seminars and conferences dressed in at least business casual. If weather permits, I wear a blazer. Why? I’m trying to create a look or a brand.

(2) Get professional help.

I don’t mean a therapist. I didn’t take the photo on the right. I hired a professional do to it. I also hired a fashion consultant, who went through my wardrobe and engaged in the Ceasar-like task of indicating thumbs up or down. We went shopping. I now have a new wardrobe that “fits” all of my jobs – mommy, writer, lawyer.

(3) Use your website and blog.

Okay, don’t look at my website yet. It’s under construction to fit with the current branding attempts. Or actually, look at the website as what not to do. It’s a mess. I hired (see item #2) a website designed who’d never worked with a writer before, didn’t understand what I wanted/needed, and didn’t know what a falcon was or at least couldn’t find an image of one for the site. This last one is tough since the website’s called Falcon’s Fables. Sigh. Anyway, the original website is a lesson in better than no website than a bad one. I now have a webpage designer who has worked with a lot of writers, knew what a falcon was, and designed a kick-butt new logo, which is in the same color family as the rest of my items. I’ll let you know when we’re ready to reveal.

My blog is a different story. I designed that, and while it’s still not perfect it’s a closer fit to the brand I’m trying to create.

(4) Market

Don’t make Hershey’s mistake. You must market. Even the superstars of writing have tweet, FB, maintain a website and regularly attend conferences. A few of them still go on book tours. You have to get your name out there. Your publisher might give you some press, but it’s not enough. You need to be out in the world where people can find you. If you have friends with blog, be a guest blogger. While the site your a guest on may only have 50 followers, odds are there are 40 people that weren’t also your followers.

Join blog hops. What’s a blog hop, you say? A blog hop is a sponsored event where a number of blogs post together, usually on a common theme and contest. An example is probably the best way to show you. Right now, I’m participting in the Wicked Pleasures Scavenger Hunt Blog Hop with 21 other writer. All the blogs are linked, and readers get a chance to win fabulous prizes at each site. Readers, most of whom would not normally visit my site, are encouraged to do so. They are “required” to look around the site if they want to enter the scavenger hunt since they need to find the answer to the hunt’s question. At the end of the hunt, Rafflecopter will choose the winners. Again, a blog hop is a great way to introduce yourself and work to readers. The cost of the giveaway is minor. I’m signed up for a blog hop a month until the end of the year and am looking for more hops to join in 2013.

If you are blogging, the cover of your book (or one of your books) should almost be your digital signature. Just like your words, you can and should market your covers. Your covers should have been designed with their marketing functions in mind. If you’re writing a steamy romance and your cover brings to mind a sword and sorcery fantasy you might have misbranded, and vice versa. Make sure the promises your covers (front and back) make match the pages in between them.

(5) Keep it professional.

We all have pet causes and beliefs. But unless they aid in attracting your target audience, keep them off your professional pages. If you are really keen on the idea that evil robots should rule the world, create EvilRobotsToRule.com and post your manifesto there, ideally under a different name. Bringing personal causes to the forefront of your professional page will reduce your potential reader pool.

(6) NEVER EVER get into a flame war.

This is a subset of #5 but it’s important enough to mention separtely. Just don’t do it. It takes a lot to build a career. It takes one rant to destroy it.

(7) Protect your brand.

Protecting your brand on the legal side may mean getting patents and copyrights, but I’m taking about a bit more than that.

Realize every time you go out with your “Author” hat on, you are marketing. You are always on stage. Be nice. If you are nasty to someone asking about your writing, you’ve lost a reader, and maybe several readers as that person tells his friends how mean you were. Good impressions can be lost, but bad impressions are almost always forever.

If you’ve created a “look” -whether for clothes, covers, or voice – make sure you are using it.

As noted in #6, if someone attacks you or posts a “bad” review, don’t argue with them. Everyone’s entitled to an opinion regardless of how much you may disagree. You give that negative comment too much attention when you respond. If the response escalates into a war, you’ve lost so much more than you’ve gain.

Good luck and good branding to you all.

To restore Daphne to her nymph form, Apollo must bargain with treacherous Hades, but Death may demand too high a price.

After all I’d said about marketing, you didn’t really think I’d leave the cover of my newest release, Apollo Rising, off this post, did you? Thanks for reading.

The Value of Mentorship

September 12, 2012

Evan Braun

Evan Braun Publishing The Writing Life 1 Comment

As a writer, it has always been a struggle to get readers. I suspect this as close to a universal experience among writers as exists. My early novels went largely unread, but I harvested as much encouragement as I could from the crop of readers available-parents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles. That feedback kept me going.

It’s somewhat ingrained in us to value the opinions of those closest to us, which is exactly as it should be. But if we’re on a professional trajectory, a point must eventually come when parents, brothers and sisters, and aunts and uncles can no longer advise us in the way we need. In short, we grow up.

The longer I write and the better I get, the easier it is to find readers. Slogging through one of my books is no longer quite the imposition it used to be back when I was writing grade-school Star Trek tin-in fiction. My approach to plot and characterization has grown more sophisticated, and as a result my mother’s opinion has become steadily less critical to my process.

Let me take a rabbit trail for a moment. Until the last few decades or so, in western society, a person developed into a professional in their chosen vocation through mentorship and apprenticeship. It seems to me that we are so independently-minded today that we’ve progressively moved away from that. Which is a shame, because it’s critically important to take advice and guidance from those who have already accomplished that which we are trying to do. It doesn’t make much sense to glean career advice as a writer from a doctor or mechanic. While I’m sure there will always be some professional carryover, it’s apples and oranges.

The American dream-or at least as I understand it, as an acknowledged Canadian-is for every individual to become a self-made man (or woman). The emphasis being on the word self. But wouldn’t it be much better to have a mentor? Wouldn’t it to be much better to have some help along the way from someone who has already walked this difficult and barely navigable path? Wouldn’t it be better to follow in someone else’s footsteps?

As a writer, I value the opinions of my peers. But I value the opinion of my betters all the more. So if you’re trying to make it as a published author, you would be well-advised to hang out with published authors. Over the last few years, I’ve come across a lot of successful authors who are more than willing to pay it forward by lending a helping hand to those who are a few steps behind them on the publishing track.

Take advantage of such opportunities when they present themselves. And when they aren’t just falling into your lap, seek them out.

Book Trailers

September 10, 2012

Frank Morin

Frank Morin Publishing The Writing Life 4 Comments

I recently attended the LTUE (Life, The Universe, and Everything) conference in Orem, Utah at the UVU campus. I sat in on the book trailers class more out of curiosity than any real expectation to learn anything useful. After all, I had never heard of book trailers.

This turned out to be an extremely insightful session.

Book trailers are a growing phenomenon. Just like movie trailers, some authors and publishers are now developing book trailers. This was news to me. I had never considered making a trailer for a book. But as was stated in the panel, today’s world is a video-centric world so a book trailer could draw a very wide audience.

What a brilliant idea.

Who doesn’t love a good movie trailer? When done right, they can drive moviegoers into a frenzy to see the movie. Book trailers can do the same thing.

Then again, a bad book trailer can be the stake through the heart of your book.

My first thought was, “Book trailers? That’s great for publishers with a marketing department and deep pockets to pay for expensive graphics design or live actors.”

But, book trailers can be more affordable than you may think. The panel at LTUE gave us some useful tips.

First, for the do-it-yourselfers, there are some great sites to download photos, music, and even video clips royalty-free for very reasonable prices, like iStockPhoto. With a little work, you may be able to piece together an excellent trailer with very little cost. Please remember, no matter where you find your material, make sure you have permission to use it. One author mentioned that they produced a book trailer independently. When they signed with a publisher, they were forced to take the trailer down because they could not guarantee that all of the images they used were royalty free or used with permission.

A couple of points were stressed repeatedly:

Find the right music. Great music can make your trailer. Bad music will kill it. Again, there are lots of resources online for royalty-free music. Or, if you know a musician, they might just let you use their music for free as a way to increase their own presence on the web.
Don’t underestimate the importance of asking. If you want a piece of music, or a photo, or even live actors, ask them. Many people will give permission for their work to be used, or will offer to help free of charge because they see your trailer as a way to highlight their talents.

Another idea is to check with local colleges, or with any college students you might know, particularly those involved in film production or any related field, including acting or modeling. You may be able to get high-quality assistance from students looking for a good project. Again, they want their names out on the net, and this provides a way.

One example of a good book trailer is the one for Dan Wells’ new book, Partials. You can view the trailer here. It had only been out a month when I watched it, and the YouTube link had already received almost 3000 hits, plus all the hits on the official web page.

I also found this one for Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters, that was very well done.

Never Surrender!

July 2, 2012

Brandon M Lindsay

Brandon M. Lindsay Publishing The Writing Life 5 Comments

With so many people officially on the self-publishing bandwagon, there have been a lot of proclamations going around to the effect that grand success as a self-published author is no longer possible. Even our own guest, David Dalglish, a paragon of self-pubbing success if ever there was one, has admitted that a significant factor of his triumph was timing. And now, it seems, the moment has passed.

The secret is out. The vast sales a few authors achieved in the early days of ebook self-pubbing led to an avalanche of me-too-ers. The market is flooded, and now the chance to have your book become a blockbuster requires you to compete with horde upon horde of writers who had the same idea as you. The picture painted by the self-publishing statistics floating around on the interwebs seems a bleak one indeed. Having seen it, some people may even decide that it is not worth the struggle.

But when taken in context, nothing has really changed on that front, at least not in a negative way. According to a recent survey, the average yearly take of a self-published author was $10,000, with a majority making less than $500 a year. How is that a bad thing? Before self-publishing was a viable option, failure was much harsher. Failure meant no money and no readers. I would gladly take $500 a year and a paltry following over nothing at all.

I should also point out that I hate statistics as a guide to personal action. The reason is that it’s easy to look at a given pie chart and think, “Oh, I have a 78% chance of failing to achieve my goals, so I’m not going to bother.” But no graph can ever tell you who you are. You are you, and there is a 0% chance that you are anyone else. Always keep that in mind when looking at statistics that attempt to tell you what kind of life you will have and thus how to live it.

Besides, there are exceptional writers out there. Imagine if your favorite author had looked at the odds of getting published and said, “Meh. Not worth the risk.” They would have never taken the plunge; they would have filed their TPS reports, always wondering, “Could I have been a success?” And the world, deprived of their creations, would have been a dimmer place. Perhaps you are one of those outliers. Perhaps you are really as good as your mom says you are.

And if you are that good, if you are the next Patrick Rothfuss, Stephen King, or [insert favorite author here], and you quit now, I am going to be very, very pissed off at you.

Hopefully, none of this means anything to you, because deep down, you are a writer. And writers write, no matter what anybody else says.

Never surrender.