Cindy Dees's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"
WRITING WITHOUT A NET
Before I was published, I used to sit down at my computer and write whatever story most captured by interest and enjoyment. I knew nothing about genres, or commercial categories of stories, or the targeted audiences of major publishers. I just wrote to please me.
But then I sold, and quickly I found myself boxed in creatively by which stories my editors would let me write. Publishers are not entirely wrong to build these boxes, by the way. They do careful sales analysis and closely watch which types of stories are selling well and which types tank completely. They want their authors to write books that will actually sell well and make them money.
Now that I have dipped my toe into the world of self-publishing, I abruptly find myself freed from the traditional publishing box. Shockingly , I also find myself a bit agoraphobic after a decade of traditional publishing. I actually am uncomfortable without that box of publisher expectations containing, limiting, and directing my creative impulses.
I did NOT see that one coming.
I have to say, though, that, as glad as I am on the one hand to be able to write whatever stories I want and to believe in them utterly, on the other hand, I'm not willing to leave behind everything I have learned about commercial markets and reader preferences in my traditional publishing career.
I think there is value in paying attention to what sells. I'm not talking bout chasing fads. Those come and go way too fast to bother with. I'm talking about timeless elements of good storytelling. There are, in fact, tropes and techniques that sell consistently and never waiver in popularity. I'm not averse to knowing what those are and highlighting them as they happen to fit into the stories I want to tell.
There is value in staying up to date on what publishers are buying and in watching which types of books make the best seller lists. It's a good thing to read the authors who are selling millions of books and asking yourself what about their writing resonates so strongly with the reading public.
It's not that I'm going to be a sales whore and merely chase what seems popular this week. But I can put a few creative fences around myself that don't cramp my stories. When I face a choice in where to go with a story, it won't kill me to choose the path that leads toward commercially viable elements within a story.
This is a business after all (in addition to being an artistic expression of my personal internal insanity). While I'm delighted to be free to write wherever my imagination takes me, it's not a bad thing to nudge my imagination in commercial directions when doing so won't compromise my story.
Funny how often this business boils down to a balancing act between art and business. And even in the self-published world, that has not changed.
But then I sold, and quickly I found myself boxed in creatively by which stories my editors would let me write. Publishers are not entirely wrong to build these boxes, by the way. They do careful sales analysis and closely watch which types of stories are selling well and which types tank completely. They want their authors to write books that will actually sell well and make them money.
Now that I have dipped my toe into the world of self-publishing, I abruptly find myself freed from the traditional publishing box. Shockingly , I also find myself a bit agoraphobic after a decade of traditional publishing. I actually am uncomfortable without that box of publisher expectations containing, limiting, and directing my creative impulses.
I did NOT see that one coming.
I have to say, though, that, as glad as I am on the one hand to be able to write whatever stories I want and to believe in them utterly, on the other hand, I'm not willing to leave behind everything I have learned about commercial markets and reader preferences in my traditional publishing career.
I think there is value in paying attention to what sells. I'm not talking bout chasing fads. Those come and go way too fast to bother with. I'm talking about timeless elements of good storytelling. There are, in fact, tropes and techniques that sell consistently and never waiver in popularity. I'm not averse to knowing what those are and highlighting them as they happen to fit into the stories I want to tell.
There is value in staying up to date on what publishers are buying and in watching which types of books make the best seller lists. It's a good thing to read the authors who are selling millions of books and asking yourself what about their writing resonates so strongly with the reading public.
It's not that I'm going to be a sales whore and merely chase what seems popular this week. But I can put a few creative fences around myself that don't cramp my stories. When I face a choice in where to go with a story, it won't kill me to choose the path that leads toward commercially viable elements within a story.
This is a business after all (in addition to being an artistic expression of my personal internal insanity). While I'm delighted to be free to write wherever my imagination takes me, it's not a bad thing to nudge my imagination in commercial directions when doing so won't compromise my story.
Funny how often this business boils down to a balancing act between art and business. And even in the self-published world, that has not changed.
GAINING TRACTION in SELLING BOOKS
So, I've been actively working to increase my visibility, and hopefully, my sales for exactly one year, now. A number of people have asked me what the secret is to getting their books noticed, and here's what I've learned in my own search for an answer to that one.
I blissfully wrote forty books in obscurity, and without lifting a finger to do any self-promotion or social media work for ten years, on the mistaken assumption that if I just wrote enough good books, readers would find me and I would be successful.
I've won some great awards and generally get excellent reviews. Editors love my work and I've studied the craft exhaustively. I think it's fair to say I'm not a half-bad writer.
And yet, my sales have languished. They're not bad, especially given the state of today's market, but they just weren't going anywhere. They were flat. Lying there like a dead fish.
Then two things happened. My entire backlist of forty books was put up as ebooks by Harlequin. I did the math as my royalty statements came in and saw that I made about 3K on the list over two years, and Harlequin made 150K.
Let me write that out. One-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollars. Of which, I got chump change.
The second tectonic shift in my perspective came with my first sale to Entangled Publishing, a strictly e-publishing house with a brilliant and business savvy publisher at the helm by the name of Liz Pelletier. I got a crash course in the potential power of e-publishing and of social media.
Like it or not, I was forced to admit that I was getting left in the dust and needed to move into social media and e-publishing. Immediately.
I started with 55 Twitter followers, 156 FB followers, and a dreadfully outdated website that I hadn't updated in two years.
It's now one year later, and I've got 77K Twitter followers, 12K FB followers, 4K Goodreads followers (hey, I've only been on GR for two months), 1K Linked In contacts, and a vibrant new website that reflects both genres I write in. I even guest blog occasionally for other people. Go me.
But how are my visibility and sales doing?
I have to say, my visibility is definitely improving. It's clear that more readers know who I am when I go to reader events. Other writers are starting to know who I am and what I write. I'm gaining traction.
It's not an overnight success story. I'm working hard and putting in a lot of hours. But it is gradually working. I've been hurt by a gap in my publishing schedule, but I'm picking up momentum as more books start coming out in a steady stream again.
A couple of great opportunities have dropped into my lap as a result of my hard work, and I'm hoping to capitalize on at least one of them later this summer. As it unfolds, I'll let you know how it goes.
My sales are growing a little. It's not a giant leap in tax brackets...yet...but the visibility is definitely translating to new readers.
Is my hard work paying off? Yes. Slowly. It's taking time, patience, and a ton of effort to make myself more visible to readers. I have to actively market myself and my books. And I have to write a lot of good books and keep a continuous flow of them coming.
It's taking persistence bordering on sheer, cussed stubbornness to claw my way to higher visibility and sales. This is not a project for the faint of heart. But it can be done.
I've met any number of extremely successful authors in both traditional and self-publishing. And let the record show, they ALL work their asses off.
There is no magic shortcut to increasing your visibility and sales. Quit looking for it and get to work.
I blissfully wrote forty books in obscurity, and without lifting a finger to do any self-promotion or social media work for ten years, on the mistaken assumption that if I just wrote enough good books, readers would find me and I would be successful.
I've won some great awards and generally get excellent reviews. Editors love my work and I've studied the craft exhaustively. I think it's fair to say I'm not a half-bad writer.
And yet, my sales have languished. They're not bad, especially given the state of today's market, but they just weren't going anywhere. They were flat. Lying there like a dead fish.
Then two things happened. My entire backlist of forty books was put up as ebooks by Harlequin. I did the math as my royalty statements came in and saw that I made about 3K on the list over two years, and Harlequin made 150K.
Let me write that out. One-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollars. Of which, I got chump change.
The second tectonic shift in my perspective came with my first sale to Entangled Publishing, a strictly e-publishing house with a brilliant and business savvy publisher at the helm by the name of Liz Pelletier. I got a crash course in the potential power of e-publishing and of social media.
Like it or not, I was forced to admit that I was getting left in the dust and needed to move into social media and e-publishing. Immediately.
I started with 55 Twitter followers, 156 FB followers, and a dreadfully outdated website that I hadn't updated in two years.
It's now one year later, and I've got 77K Twitter followers, 12K FB followers, 4K Goodreads followers (hey, I've only been on GR for two months), 1K Linked In contacts, and a vibrant new website that reflects both genres I write in. I even guest blog occasionally for other people. Go me.
But how are my visibility and sales doing?
I have to say, my visibility is definitely improving. It's clear that more readers know who I am when I go to reader events. Other writers are starting to know who I am and what I write. I'm gaining traction.
It's not an overnight success story. I'm working hard and putting in a lot of hours. But it is gradually working. I've been hurt by a gap in my publishing schedule, but I'm picking up momentum as more books start coming out in a steady stream again.
A couple of great opportunities have dropped into my lap as a result of my hard work, and I'm hoping to capitalize on at least one of them later this summer. As it unfolds, I'll let you know how it goes.
My sales are growing a little. It's not a giant leap in tax brackets...yet...but the visibility is definitely translating to new readers.
Is my hard work paying off? Yes. Slowly. It's taking time, patience, and a ton of effort to make myself more visible to readers. I have to actively market myself and my books. And I have to write a lot of good books and keep a continuous flow of them coming.
It's taking persistence bordering on sheer, cussed stubbornness to claw my way to higher visibility and sales. This is not a project for the faint of heart. But it can be done.
I've met any number of extremely successful authors in both traditional and self-publishing. And let the record show, they ALL work their asses off.
There is no magic shortcut to increasing your visibility and sales. Quit looking for it and get to work.
HOW I GROW SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWERS
In no particular order, here a few things I've figured out about how to grow the number of followers I have on social media:
Twitter feeds Facebook and your web page. If you get Twitter followers and then post links to your other platforms, some percentage of those Twitter followers will migrate to your other platforms.
How to grow Twitter, then? I like an app called JustUnfollow. It tracks the number of people who follow and unfollow me, and it ranks orders my followers and the people I'm following but who haven't followed me back from oldest to newest or newest to oldest.
Okay, what the heck does that all mean in lay terms? I can follow a group of people on Twitter, and Justunfollow tells me who follows me back, who doesn't follow me back, who actively unfollows me, and who I followed the longest ago who hasn't followed me back. That last one allows me to unfollow people who've had a while to follow me back but didn't.
Someone's going to stand up right about now and yell that churning is illegal. And it is, according to Twitter's usage rules. Which is why I think of what I do as enlightened pseudo-churning. I follow and unfollow people at a steady, controlled rate that's not high enough or aggressive enough to trigger churning alarms.
Here's another thing I learned. I unfollow people who haven't followed me back in a couple of weeks and follow new people in their place EVERY SINGLE DAY. Building followers is a cumulative effort. There's no sense doing it hit or miss. You have to commit to an ongoing effort if you want to see big numbers. (This is also how you don't get suspended for churning. Do it slow and steady. Or, if you're feeling aggressive, medium and steady.)
I had 55 Twitter followers on May 15th last year when I started actively building my Twitter list. I have 79.5 thousand followers as of this minute.
Another feature of Justunfollow is an automated "thanks for following me. Hi, it's nice to meet you" type message that gets sent to everyone who follows you back. When I started growing my Twitter list, about 1 person in 50 went over and followed my FB page. And they tended to find my personal page.
Then, I wrote a warm, friendly, lightly humorous, hello, nice to meet you note for Twitter that includes a bitly link to my FB author page. Voila. 1 Twitter follower in 7 comes over to this page, now. Much better.
I also use an app call TweetDeck There are several similar apps that are just as good. It allows me to write tweets and schedule them for future posting dates and times. This means I can sit down once a week or so, write a bunch of tweets, and then spread them out through the week without having to get on Twitter every day and make tweets (which interrupts my writing time mightily and gets to be overwhelming, to boot.)
I use Justunfollow to find out when the bulk of my followers are online, and I schedule my tweets on TweetDeck to happen during the peak usage time for my followers.
Okay, one last tip and then I'll stop, because I can see your eyes starting to glaze over.
Justunfollow has a feature called copy followers. I can type in the Twitter handle of, for example, a really famous author who writes in the same genre I do. Her entire list of followers whom I don't already follow pops up on my screen. I can then follow her followers. This means I'm following people who a) are readers b) are active on Twitter and c) like an author who writes similar to me.
If even a quarter of these people follow me back, I'm populating my Twitter list with people who are likely to enjoy my books in the future. I can advertise my books on Twitter to them and stand a decent chance of some of them checking out my books.
I think the term for this is farming for followers. Regardless, it's effective and builds not only raw numbers of Twitter followers but USEFUL Twitter followers.
I apologize if that's too much detail for everyone but Keith, whose question sparked this post. Good luck with your own follower lists! (And if you follow me, I'll follow you back!)
Twitter feeds Facebook and your web page. If you get Twitter followers and then post links to your other platforms, some percentage of those Twitter followers will migrate to your other platforms.
How to grow Twitter, then? I like an app called JustUnfollow. It tracks the number of people who follow and unfollow me, and it ranks orders my followers and the people I'm following but who haven't followed me back from oldest to newest or newest to oldest.
Okay, what the heck does that all mean in lay terms? I can follow a group of people on Twitter, and Justunfollow tells me who follows me back, who doesn't follow me back, who actively unfollows me, and who I followed the longest ago who hasn't followed me back. That last one allows me to unfollow people who've had a while to follow me back but didn't.
Someone's going to stand up right about now and yell that churning is illegal. And it is, according to Twitter's usage rules. Which is why I think of what I do as enlightened pseudo-churning. I follow and unfollow people at a steady, controlled rate that's not high enough or aggressive enough to trigger churning alarms.
Here's another thing I learned. I unfollow people who haven't followed me back in a couple of weeks and follow new people in their place EVERY SINGLE DAY. Building followers is a cumulative effort. There's no sense doing it hit or miss. You have to commit to an ongoing effort if you want to see big numbers. (This is also how you don't get suspended for churning. Do it slow and steady. Or, if you're feeling aggressive, medium and steady.)
I had 55 Twitter followers on May 15th last year when I started actively building my Twitter list. I have 79.5 thousand followers as of this minute.
Another feature of Justunfollow is an automated "thanks for following me. Hi, it's nice to meet you" type message that gets sent to everyone who follows you back. When I started growing my Twitter list, about 1 person in 50 went over and followed my FB page. And they tended to find my personal page.
Then, I wrote a warm, friendly, lightly humorous, hello, nice to meet you note for Twitter that includes a bitly link to my FB author page. Voila. 1 Twitter follower in 7 comes over to this page, now. Much better.
I also use an app call TweetDeck There are several similar apps that are just as good. It allows me to write tweets and schedule them for future posting dates and times. This means I can sit down once a week or so, write a bunch of tweets, and then spread them out through the week without having to get on Twitter every day and make tweets (which interrupts my writing time mightily and gets to be overwhelming, to boot.)
I use Justunfollow to find out when the bulk of my followers are online, and I schedule my tweets on TweetDeck to happen during the peak usage time for my followers.
Okay, one last tip and then I'll stop, because I can see your eyes starting to glaze over.
Justunfollow has a feature called copy followers. I can type in the Twitter handle of, for example, a really famous author who writes in the same genre I do. Her entire list of followers whom I don't already follow pops up on my screen. I can then follow her followers. This means I'm following people who a) are readers b) are active on Twitter and c) like an author who writes similar to me.
If even a quarter of these people follow me back, I'm populating my Twitter list with people who are likely to enjoy my books in the future. I can advertise my books on Twitter to them and stand a decent chance of some of them checking out my books.
I think the term for this is farming for followers. Regardless, it's effective and builds not only raw numbers of Twitter followers but USEFUL Twitter followers.
I apologize if that's too much detail for everyone but Keith, whose question sparked this post. Good luck with your own follower lists! (And if you follow me, I'll follow you back!)
ORGANIZING YOUR WRITING BUSINESS
It's not enough just to write books in today's publishing industry. Like it or not, you will be running a small business if you pursue publishing books.
You can get organized on paper or you can build elaborate computer spread sheets. But I'm here to tell you a shoebox of receipts and notes on sticky pads ain't gonna cut it.
I recommend highly that you get organized NOW before all hell breaks loose in your career. It's murder being as busy as heck and trying to develop a system for tracking everything...and writing and doing promotion and self-publicity...and learning the business...and sleeping.
Here are a few organizational tools that I could not survive without in no particular order:
1) Book Production Tracking Spreadsheets. I have one for my print published books with traditional publishers, and another one for tracking production of my self-published books. They are VERY different animals--the things authors need to do in each type of publishing stream are completely different.
2) An expense tracking sheet for self-publishing. I do one for each book I work on during a year. Makes taxes easier.
3)A bookkeeping program for recording all writing-related income and expenses and automatically generating a Profit and Loss Statement for tax purposes.
4) A reviewer list: These are long-time, loyal fans who love my books and have volunteered to get advance reading copies of my books and post reviews within a day or two of their release on various websites.
5) A Vendor List: This has contact info for all the various contractors I use to produce a book--cover artists, developmental and copy editors, business card guy, book mark printer, promotion firms, t-shirt guy, you name it. When I see a great piece of work or get a glowing recommendation from someone I trust, I add that vendor to my list. If my usual person can't do what I need, I have a quick back-up without having to do a ton of research.
6) A file with all my official author photos, all my covers, cover flats, banners, and thumbnail images in it and clearly labeled. I keep my most current bio with this stuff, too, because if I need my bio, I probably need some pictures, too.
7) A spreadsheet with the name, hair, and eye color, and general description of all the main characters of my books. You'll be shocked how often you refer to this after you've written a few novels, particularly if you write series.
8) A spreadsheet with all my titles, publication dates, and ISBN's, sorted by series. Another list I go to all the time.
9) A list of all my self-published ISBN numbers, Bowker numbers, and BISAC codes for each self-published book.
10) A list of media outlets (i.e. radio stations), bloggers, review sites, magazine editors, etc. to contact when I have a book coming out.
11) A back-up copy of my Mail Chimp mailing lists. I keep these because I'm paranoid that I'll lose these lists someday. They're worth more than gold to me.
12) A PAPER list of all my user names and passwords related to my writing.
13) Contact List of writers: I keep emails and phone numbers of all my writing friends and acquaintances. I use it to ask quick research questions, get advice, or just vent.
14) A calendar/appointment book/app. Write down every deadline or due date the moment you learn of it. You won't believe how many little details will come along that are SO easy to let slip through the cracks. The devil's truly in the details in keeping airborne all the balls you will have to juggle.
I'm emphatically not a natural list maker, but my life is a hundred times easier if I have a place to drop pieces of information as I get them, and to retrieve pieces of information as I need them. It's also vital to step back now and then and look at the big picture. What deadlines are coming up, where are the converging crises down the road that you need to start minimizing now? Spreadsheets are a great visual snapshot of what's racing toward you.
Whatever organizational tools you use, the key is to use them from the very start, tweak them to fit you perfectly, get comfortable with them, and use them faithfully. The day will come when you're so busy you can't see straight, and only these lists will keep you on track when your career gets hot and heavy.
And yes, that's a great problem to have. But make no mistake: successful writers pretty much without exception work their TAILS off. And they HAVE to work efficiently. You might as well develop that efficiency now since huge success is just around the corner for you!
You can get organized on paper or you can build elaborate computer spread sheets. But I'm here to tell you a shoebox of receipts and notes on sticky pads ain't gonna cut it.
I recommend highly that you get organized NOW before all hell breaks loose in your career. It's murder being as busy as heck and trying to develop a system for tracking everything...and writing and doing promotion and self-publicity...and learning the business...and sleeping.
Here are a few organizational tools that I could not survive without in no particular order:
1) Book Production Tracking Spreadsheets. I have one for my print published books with traditional publishers, and another one for tracking production of my self-published books. They are VERY different animals--the things authors need to do in each type of publishing stream are completely different.
2) An expense tracking sheet for self-publishing. I do one for each book I work on during a year. Makes taxes easier.
3)A bookkeeping program for recording all writing-related income and expenses and automatically generating a Profit and Loss Statement for tax purposes.
4) A reviewer list: These are long-time, loyal fans who love my books and have volunteered to get advance reading copies of my books and post reviews within a day or two of their release on various websites.
5) A Vendor List: This has contact info for all the various contractors I use to produce a book--cover artists, developmental and copy editors, business card guy, book mark printer, promotion firms, t-shirt guy, you name it. When I see a great piece of work or get a glowing recommendation from someone I trust, I add that vendor to my list. If my usual person can't do what I need, I have a quick back-up without having to do a ton of research.
6) A file with all my official author photos, all my covers, cover flats, banners, and thumbnail images in it and clearly labeled. I keep my most current bio with this stuff, too, because if I need my bio, I probably need some pictures, too.
7) A spreadsheet with the name, hair, and eye color, and general description of all the main characters of my books. You'll be shocked how often you refer to this after you've written a few novels, particularly if you write series.
8) A spreadsheet with all my titles, publication dates, and ISBN's, sorted by series. Another list I go to all the time.
9) A list of all my self-published ISBN numbers, Bowker numbers, and BISAC codes for each self-published book.
10) A list of media outlets (i.e. radio stations), bloggers, review sites, magazine editors, etc. to contact when I have a book coming out.
11) A back-up copy of my Mail Chimp mailing lists. I keep these because I'm paranoid that I'll lose these lists someday. They're worth more than gold to me.
12) A PAPER list of all my user names and passwords related to my writing.
13) Contact List of writers: I keep emails and phone numbers of all my writing friends and acquaintances. I use it to ask quick research questions, get advice, or just vent.
14) A calendar/appointment book/app. Write down every deadline or due date the moment you learn of it. You won't believe how many little details will come along that are SO easy to let slip through the cracks. The devil's truly in the details in keeping airborne all the balls you will have to juggle.
I'm emphatically not a natural list maker, but my life is a hundred times easier if I have a place to drop pieces of information as I get them, and to retrieve pieces of information as I need them. It's also vital to step back now and then and look at the big picture. What deadlines are coming up, where are the converging crises down the road that you need to start minimizing now? Spreadsheets are a great visual snapshot of what's racing toward you.
Whatever organizational tools you use, the key is to use them from the very start, tweak them to fit you perfectly, get comfortable with them, and use them faithfully. The day will come when you're so busy you can't see straight, and only these lists will keep you on track when your career gets hot and heavy.
And yes, that's a great problem to have. But make no mistake: successful writers pretty much without exception work their TAILS off. And they HAVE to work efficiently. You might as well develop that efficiency now since huge success is just around the corner for you!
GET YOUR E-HOUSE IN ORDER!
Have been on a crushing series of deadlines, in the midst of which I'm doing the biggest online promotional push of my career to date. I have been lucky to be invited into a 12-author mega-set of military romances about SEALs. (It goes on sale July 22nd, by the way.) Many of my fellow authors are bestsellers with a TON of publishing and marketing experience. Working with them has felt like drinking from a fire hose.
The single biggest lesson I've learned so far is to get my electronic house in order BEFORE my career really shifts into high gear. I was partially there, but from these REALLY organized authors, I've realized just how much more I needed to do. By the way, all of the suggestions I'm about to make apply equally to print authors, e-authors, and self-published authors.
What exactly does getting your e-house in order mean, you ask?
It means having your website completely up to date, with a fresh look, a steady flow of new material populating it, all the links working, current bio, complete booklist with ISBN's--number one reason people visit author websites is to find their books--so make that easy, and active buy links on the site.
It means having chosen how you're going to do your newsletter. I use a website that generates newsletters and manages mailing lists. There are many excellent ones. Find one you like. Email is the number one way people communicate these days. You'd be crazy not to develop a e-mailing list for sending out news, information, and marketing material to your readers and fans.
Oh, you have no reader/fan list yet? Start building one! Now! This is an area I've been sadly lacking in, so I've signed up with an online contest manager to give away prizes for me for the next several months in return for the entrants to the contests signing up for my email list. The contest site is genre specific to the books I write and generates thousands of names over several months.(It's not cheap, but I'm paying to make up for my lack of knowing to do this earlier.)
You don't have to give away books on these contest sites. You can give away gift cards or electronics or something else relating to your books.
Even at the very beginning of your career, there's no reason not to start aggressively building your newsletter list. Every time you make a public appearance, at a book signing or a speaking engagement, set out a sign up sheet for your newsletter. Collect business cards and throw those people onto your mailing list. Collect names and email addresses EVERYWHERE.
Everywhere you have an online presence, you should have an active link to sign up for your newsletter. It should be on your website, author pages at book retailers, in the back matter of your ebooks, on your blog, etc.
Become one with a URL shortening website. I use www.bitly.com and customize the names of each short link to show what it is. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, visit bitly and poke around. You need to know about sites like these.They make putting newsletter lists and buy links easy and manageable.
Whether you like them or not, and whether or not you use them, you should have an account in your author name on every major social media site. If nothing else, block out your name so a Ukranian porn site doesn't grab it and use it once you get famous! You may not use a particular platform now but may find you use it later in your career, or that your publicist/publisher wants to use it in your behalf.
Regardless of whether or not you use each social media platform, your bio should stay current on that platform, along with a complete booklist, buy links to your books (if they're allowed), and a link to your newsletter.
Set up your various electronic platforms to cross-pollinate one another. When I make a blog post to my website, it automatically propagates onto several other sites, which saves me time and increases my exposure. You'll see a double posting of this article on this page, in fact. I find that on FB, my fellow writers prefer to read the original article and not link through to my website to see the full article, so I do both. I actually compose the article here, then copy it to my website and let it propagate from there to a half-dozen other locations.
Guest blog now. You should develop a list of friendly bloggers who like you, your books, and your genre and who are happy to have you guest blog on their sties whenever you've got a new book coming out. These relationships take time and effort to develop. Do not wait until you're in a promotion panic to find these people and cultivate relationships. Help them out now; they'll help you out later.
Meet and schmooze reviewers now. Same as with bloggers, meet the important ones to your genre and make friends with them. Do anything you can to help them out now. They'll be worth their weight in gold later.
Develop a list of your rabid fans right now. Ask them down the road to read and review your books on the big book retailer sites. Reviews are VITAL in increasing your sales. You may as well stack them in your favor and make sure you're actually getting reviews. Even if this list starts at five or six people who are your friends and neighbors, EVERY REVIEW COUNTS. Build this list aggressively over time.
Start developing a list of free and paid sites that promote the kind of book you write. These can be review sites, promotion sites like BookBub, paid advertising sites, or free lists that send out freebie book deals. Try to find out the size of their distribution list, what they cost, and what it takes to get onto their site.
These are by no means the only things necessary to get your e-house in order, but they're a start. The bottom line is, do EVERYTHING you can to be ready to hit the ground running when it's time for your next book to come out and for you to promote the heck out of it.
http://bit.ly/HotAlphaSEALs
The single biggest lesson I've learned so far is to get my electronic house in order BEFORE my career really shifts into high gear. I was partially there, but from these REALLY organized authors, I've realized just how much more I needed to do. By the way, all of the suggestions I'm about to make apply equally to print authors, e-authors, and self-published authors.
What exactly does getting your e-house in order mean, you ask?
It means having your website completely up to date, with a fresh look, a steady flow of new material populating it, all the links working, current bio, complete booklist with ISBN's--number one reason people visit author websites is to find their books--so make that easy, and active buy links on the site.
It means having chosen how you're going to do your newsletter. I use a website that generates newsletters and manages mailing lists. There are many excellent ones. Find one you like. Email is the number one way people communicate these days. You'd be crazy not to develop a e-mailing list for sending out news, information, and marketing material to your readers and fans.
Oh, you have no reader/fan list yet? Start building one! Now! This is an area I've been sadly lacking in, so I've signed up with an online contest manager to give away prizes for me for the next several months in return for the entrants to the contests signing up for my email list. The contest site is genre specific to the books I write and generates thousands of names over several months.(It's not cheap, but I'm paying to make up for my lack of knowing to do this earlier.)
You don't have to give away books on these contest sites. You can give away gift cards or electronics or something else relating to your books.
Even at the very beginning of your career, there's no reason not to start aggressively building your newsletter list. Every time you make a public appearance, at a book signing or a speaking engagement, set out a sign up sheet for your newsletter. Collect business cards and throw those people onto your mailing list. Collect names and email addresses EVERYWHERE.
Everywhere you have an online presence, you should have an active link to sign up for your newsletter. It should be on your website, author pages at book retailers, in the back matter of your ebooks, on your blog, etc.
Become one with a URL shortening website. I use www.bitly.com and customize the names of each short link to show what it is. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, visit bitly and poke around. You need to know about sites like these.They make putting newsletter lists and buy links easy and manageable.
Whether you like them or not, and whether or not you use them, you should have an account in your author name on every major social media site. If nothing else, block out your name so a Ukranian porn site doesn't grab it and use it once you get famous! You may not use a particular platform now but may find you use it later in your career, or that your publicist/publisher wants to use it in your behalf.
Regardless of whether or not you use each social media platform, your bio should stay current on that platform, along with a complete booklist, buy links to your books (if they're allowed), and a link to your newsletter.
Set up your various electronic platforms to cross-pollinate one another. When I make a blog post to my website, it automatically propagates onto several other sites, which saves me time and increases my exposure. You'll see a double posting of this article on this page, in fact. I find that on FB, my fellow writers prefer to read the original article and not link through to my website to see the full article, so I do both. I actually compose the article here, then copy it to my website and let it propagate from there to a half-dozen other locations.
Guest blog now. You should develop a list of friendly bloggers who like you, your books, and your genre and who are happy to have you guest blog on their sties whenever you've got a new book coming out. These relationships take time and effort to develop. Do not wait until you're in a promotion panic to find these people and cultivate relationships. Help them out now; they'll help you out later.
Meet and schmooze reviewers now. Same as with bloggers, meet the important ones to your genre and make friends with them. Do anything you can to help them out now. They'll be worth their weight in gold later.
Develop a list of your rabid fans right now. Ask them down the road to read and review your books on the big book retailer sites. Reviews are VITAL in increasing your sales. You may as well stack them in your favor and make sure you're actually getting reviews. Even if this list starts at five or six people who are your friends and neighbors, EVERY REVIEW COUNTS. Build this list aggressively over time.
Start developing a list of free and paid sites that promote the kind of book you write. These can be review sites, promotion sites like BookBub, paid advertising sites, or free lists that send out freebie book deals. Try to find out the size of their distribution list, what they cost, and what it takes to get onto their site.
These are by no means the only things necessary to get your e-house in order, but they're a start. The bottom line is, do EVERYTHING you can to be ready to hit the ground running when it's time for your next book to come out and for you to promote the heck out of it.
http://bit.ly/HotAlphaSEALs
Facebook Algorithms, part deux
It's good to lurk on multiple writer's loops where authors compare notes and experiences. Recently, a lot of us have been talking about our dramatically shrinking FB reach. As far as we can tell, our favorite social media host is messing with its "post reach" algorithms again.
What seems to be happening--and this is by no means scientific or confirmed, but merely the observation of multiple authors--is that when a post goes out, if many or most of the first 5-10 people who read it interact with it by liking it or sharing it, then the post is labeled "hot" and gets a much wider distribution.
Conversely, if few people or no people interact with the post immediately, it's buried, and very few people see it.
Also, posts with key words like "New Job" or "New Baby" get wide distribution immediately.
When a post gets a lot of comments with the word "Congratulations" in them, the post gets wider distribution.
FB admits to having up to 100,000 parameters that determine how widely posts are distributed. Hence, I think it makes great sense to copy your articles and news and post them on other social media platforms that are readily accessible to your readers, friends, and fans.
In my case, I post the big stuff to Goodreads, my Amazon Author Page, and most importantly, my website. I talked in my last post about setting up a widget folks can opt in to that notifies them anytime I make a post there. IT gives a short sneak preview of the post (just a few sentences) so people can decide if they want to click over an read the whole thing. Very handy, and my fans, friends, and readers never miss a post.
Unlike here, where your odds of seeing my posts are currently sitting at a whopping 1.5%. Just sayin.
What seems to be happening--and this is by no means scientific or confirmed, but merely the observation of multiple authors--is that when a post goes out, if many or most of the first 5-10 people who read it interact with it by liking it or sharing it, then the post is labeled "hot" and gets a much wider distribution.
Conversely, if few people or no people interact with the post immediately, it's buried, and very few people see it.
Also, posts with key words like "New Job" or "New Baby" get wide distribution immediately.
When a post gets a lot of comments with the word "Congratulations" in them, the post gets wider distribution.
FB admits to having up to 100,000 parameters that determine how widely posts are distributed. Hence, I think it makes great sense to copy your articles and news and post them on other social media platforms that are readily accessible to your readers, friends, and fans.
In my case, I post the big stuff to Goodreads, my Amazon Author Page, and most importantly, my website. I talked in my last post about setting up a widget folks can opt in to that notifies them anytime I make a post there. IT gives a short sneak preview of the post (just a few sentences) so people can decide if they want to click over an read the whole thing. Very handy, and my fans, friends, and readers never miss a post.
Unlike here, where your odds of seeing my posts are currently sitting at a whopping 1.5%. Just sayin.
tTHE LEADING EDGE OF BOOK PROMOTION
Part of your job as an author, whether traditionally print published or self-published, is to do self-promotion. But, with something like 5 million writers self-publishing these days, the promotional waters are getting pretty darned crowded. It's critically important to do self-promotion that doesn't get drowned in the deluge of other promotion, and which actually gives you a reasonable bang for the buck.
This means a second vitally important part of self-promoting is staying on the leading edge of what marketing tools are available, what's being tried and experimented with, and what's working for a lot of authors.
And THIS means you need to fairly continually research what's going on in the field of book marketing. Freaking out a little, yet?
One way to do that is to follow my posts, where I try to highlight marketing and promote tools I've found that are working for some or many authors.
For example, here's one I learned about today from another VERY marketing savvy author. It's called THUNDERCLAP. It's like a Kickstarter Campaign for self-promotion. You put a book up on the site, and then you have to gather 100 supporters. If you do that, then your advertisement goes out to the various social media lists of all those people automatically. If you fail to get the minimum 100 likes, then your campaign dies and is nixed. If you want, you can turn it into a bit of a game among your friends, family, and fans.
Here's the link to the THUNDERCLAP campaign I'm doing for a terrific boxed set of books I wrote in. Give the link a click and check it out. This may be something you can do for your book. And hey. The price is right. It's free! If you're feeling generous, feel free to support our series. Will be happy to do the same for yours...
http://thndr.it/1s2JVcr LINK
This means a second vitally important part of self-promoting is staying on the leading edge of what marketing tools are available, what's being tried and experimented with, and what's working for a lot of authors.
And THIS means you need to fairly continually research what's going on in the field of book marketing. Freaking out a little, yet?
One way to do that is to follow my posts, where I try to highlight marketing and promote tools I've found that are working for some or many authors.
For example, here's one I learned about today from another VERY marketing savvy author. It's called THUNDERCLAP. It's like a Kickstarter Campaign for self-promotion. You put a book up on the site, and then you have to gather 100 supporters. If you do that, then your advertisement goes out to the various social media lists of all those people automatically. If you fail to get the minimum 100 likes, then your campaign dies and is nixed. If you want, you can turn it into a bit of a game among your friends, family, and fans.
Here's the link to the THUNDERCLAP campaign I'm doing for a terrific boxed set of books I wrote in. Give the link a click and check it out. This may be something you can do for your book. And hey. The price is right. It's free! If you're feeling generous, feel free to support our series. Will be happy to do the same for yours...
http://thndr.it/1s2JVcr LINK
MARKETING PLAN - YES, YOU NEED ONE
Are you groaning yet? Most people do when asked to write a business plan or, heaven forbid, a marketing plan. Having just participated in a group of extraordinarily successful authors using one to methodically put a book on the New York Times Bestseller List, I'm here to tell you, marketing plans work.
Over the next few months, my plan is to walk you all through the development and implementation of the marketing plan for a print book I have coming out about a year from now. Before you roll your eyes and tell me I've already got a bunch of sales and audience established so anything I'm doing won't apply to you, next year's book will be a fantasy novel. I've never published anything in the fantasy genre, so I'm coming to the table with nothing. Zilch. I'm starting from scratch. I'll report on the project as I go, and you can follow along. We'll learn together what does and doesn't work and find a few pitfalls along the way, I'm sure.
I started with a marketing plan--wrote it over the past several days and put it to bed last night. I have a little money to spend here and there, but my goal is to do the majority of the work myself rather than throw a lot of money at other people to do the leg work for me.
First, what the heck IS a marketing plan? It's a list of all the things you're going to do to publicize your book and convince potential readers to buy it. Not too tricky in theory, right?
But why bother? Because it gives you focus. A discrete list of things to do. Efficient use of your non-writing time. You can set deadlines for yourself based on your plan, if that floats your boat.
Too often, writers approach publicity in a random fashion without any real direction. Or they time their marketing efforts poorly--either stretching them over too long a period of time, or not concentrating them immediately after the book's release. My usual crime is to focus hard on publicity for a little while, then get involved with my writing for several weeks and ignore marketing entirely in the mean time in too stop-and-go a fashion. A marketing plan can help you remedy these issues.
It doesn't have to be fancy. But it does have to have a list of all the things you can realistically task yourself with doing to publicize your book. If you have a budget for marketing, now's the time to figure out where and how you're going to spend it.
I sort my marketing plan into types of activity and then make To-Do lists under each heading. That's pretty much it. This is actually what I show my publisher when it's time to have marketing meetings for my print books, too. For this marketing plan, my main areas are: Street Team, Author Social Media Campaign, Publisher Social Media Campaign, Paid Promotion, Interactive Website, Original Written material, Personal Appearances, and Miscellaneous.
If you don't know what to put into your marketing plan, look at the marketing other authors are doing for their books. Choose the stuff that won't make you crazy to do and emulate that. There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of books available on marketing self-published books, and there are thousands of websites, blogs, and articles devoted to it. This is the part where you do your homework and decide what fits you and your book best and what is most likely to reach the target audience for your book. (You do know who your target audience is, of course.)
Once your plan is drafted, pick a release date if you're self publishing, or use the release date your publisher gave you and work your way backward, setting dates by which you need to have all the pieces of your plan in place. You'll likely notice a horrible log jam of deadlines when your book comes out and perhaps two weeks before it comes out. I always seem to hit a wad of deadlines about 4 weeks and 8 weeks out, too.
At any rate, look at the stuff in those crazy overloaded times and pick the ones you can front load. Slide those deadlines earlier. These are projects like pre-writing blogs for blog tours, per-loading Tweets into my Tweet Deck for that time period, maybe getting books ready to send out to reviewers (either packing and addressing envelopes for print copies or getting PDF files properly formatted and ready to go out for ecopies).
There will always be more marketing you can do, so beware of losing yourself and your writing time in trying to chase down every lead and every idea you run across. Remember, if you're not writing more great books, you'll soon have nothing to market at all. Many authors I know spend around four hours per day writing and four hours per day doing business and marketing. Me, I prefer to write about twice as much as I work on marketing stuff each day...maybe 4 and 2 or 6 and 3. Or on a bad day, 8 and 4.
However, when it comes down to a hard choice between writing or marketing where you can't do both...WRITE.
Up next, I'll write about researching reviewers, finding readers, and building lists. And I'm hoping you guys will help me with that one...
Over the next few months, my plan is to walk you all through the development and implementation of the marketing plan for a print book I have coming out about a year from now. Before you roll your eyes and tell me I've already got a bunch of sales and audience established so anything I'm doing won't apply to you, next year's book will be a fantasy novel. I've never published anything in the fantasy genre, so I'm coming to the table with nothing. Zilch. I'm starting from scratch. I'll report on the project as I go, and you can follow along. We'll learn together what does and doesn't work and find a few pitfalls along the way, I'm sure.
I started with a marketing plan--wrote it over the past several days and put it to bed last night. I have a little money to spend here and there, but my goal is to do the majority of the work myself rather than throw a lot of money at other people to do the leg work for me.
First, what the heck IS a marketing plan? It's a list of all the things you're going to do to publicize your book and convince potential readers to buy it. Not too tricky in theory, right?
But why bother? Because it gives you focus. A discrete list of things to do. Efficient use of your non-writing time. You can set deadlines for yourself based on your plan, if that floats your boat.
Too often, writers approach publicity in a random fashion without any real direction. Or they time their marketing efforts poorly--either stretching them over too long a period of time, or not concentrating them immediately after the book's release. My usual crime is to focus hard on publicity for a little while, then get involved with my writing for several weeks and ignore marketing entirely in the mean time in too stop-and-go a fashion. A marketing plan can help you remedy these issues.
It doesn't have to be fancy. But it does have to have a list of all the things you can realistically task yourself with doing to publicize your book. If you have a budget for marketing, now's the time to figure out where and how you're going to spend it.
I sort my marketing plan into types of activity and then make To-Do lists under each heading. That's pretty much it. This is actually what I show my publisher when it's time to have marketing meetings for my print books, too. For this marketing plan, my main areas are: Street Team, Author Social Media Campaign, Publisher Social Media Campaign, Paid Promotion, Interactive Website, Original Written material, Personal Appearances, and Miscellaneous.
If you don't know what to put into your marketing plan, look at the marketing other authors are doing for their books. Choose the stuff that won't make you crazy to do and emulate that. There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of books available on marketing self-published books, and there are thousands of websites, blogs, and articles devoted to it. This is the part where you do your homework and decide what fits you and your book best and what is most likely to reach the target audience for your book. (You do know who your target audience is, of course.)
Once your plan is drafted, pick a release date if you're self publishing, or use the release date your publisher gave you and work your way backward, setting dates by which you need to have all the pieces of your plan in place. You'll likely notice a horrible log jam of deadlines when your book comes out and perhaps two weeks before it comes out. I always seem to hit a wad of deadlines about 4 weeks and 8 weeks out, too.
At any rate, look at the stuff in those crazy overloaded times and pick the ones you can front load. Slide those deadlines earlier. These are projects like pre-writing blogs for blog tours, per-loading Tweets into my Tweet Deck for that time period, maybe getting books ready to send out to reviewers (either packing and addressing envelopes for print copies or getting PDF files properly formatted and ready to go out for ecopies).
There will always be more marketing you can do, so beware of losing yourself and your writing time in trying to chase down every lead and every idea you run across. Remember, if you're not writing more great books, you'll soon have nothing to market at all. Many authors I know spend around four hours per day writing and four hours per day doing business and marketing. Me, I prefer to write about twice as much as I work on marketing stuff each day...maybe 4 and 2 or 6 and 3. Or on a bad day, 8 and 4.
However, when it comes down to a hard choice between writing or marketing where you can't do both...WRITE.
Up next, I'll write about researching reviewers, finding readers, and building lists. And I'm hoping you guys will help me with that one...
FIND YOUR PEOPLE!
One of the most time consuming parts of marketing is finding readers and writers who will connect with your stories. It's not enough to just know who they are. You also have to make a personal connection with them. It takes time and it takes effort. Hence, it's one of the first projects to embark upon as you launch your marketing plan.
First, how to find your people? Surf the Internet. Use social media sites to find groups of readers and writers in your genre. Goodreads and Library Thing both have thousands of genre specific reader groups. Follow writers who write in genre and get involved in their fan communities. Join a professional writer's organization like the Romance Writers of America, the Mystery Writers of America, etc.
Some of these professional organizations require you to have published novels in the field and/or have made a minimum amount of money before you can join. However, many of them have some sort of associate membership, or at least an informational website with tons of information for unpublished authors.
Okay, so you've found a bunch of reader/writer/fan groups. It's not enough to join up and lurk. The idea is to build your name recognition. To create real, personal connections with people who would be willing to give your book a try. Yes, you have to actually talk with people...or at least have typed conversations via the Internet. Often. And sincerely.
And yes, this is freakishly time consuming. Hence, my next piece of advice to set a schedule for yourself. Divide your working time between writing and marketing/social media, and make yourself stick to your allotted social time.
Because of the tendency of this phase of marketing to suck up both your time and your soul, I recommend you start this early and try to do a little of it every day. Better that than spending weeks or months around the clock trying to play catch up right before your book comes out.
Not only will this destroy your writing time, but it also comes across as FAKE when you suddenly get all friendly and chatty with total strangers moments before asking them to buy your book.
You have to build legitimate relationships, first. Then, and only then, can you solicit people to read your books.
I hear some of you introverts out there crawling under your rocks in horror at the notion of making hundreds or thousands of online friends.
If you really, truly, can't abide being social with your fellow man, you need to consider pursuing other kinds of marketing. Don't do social networking if you can't do it cheerfully and honestly.
Which is to say, be yourself and be genuine on your social media. And give it time. I didn't build my FB page overnight, nor did I build my substantial Twitter following overnight. I've spent the past year-and-a-half feeding both monsters daily content and actually interacting with thousands of people.
Follow the 90/10 rule. Give your followers and friends 90 percent content of interest to them and no more than 10 percent marketing of your books.
And remember, it's better to have a few hundred genuine, legitimate fans and tens of thousands of followers who neither know you nor like you and who have no vested interest whatsoever in trying one of your books. Of course the best scenario is to have thousands of legitimate fans!
That rabid fan club starts with one person. And it builds one person at a time. Start now, work on it often for a little of time, and think of it as a long-term investment in your success.
Don't miss any of my articles on marketing...visit my website and sign up for notification any time I post a new one...
www.cindydees.com
First, how to find your people? Surf the Internet. Use social media sites to find groups of readers and writers in your genre. Goodreads and Library Thing both have thousands of genre specific reader groups. Follow writers who write in genre and get involved in their fan communities. Join a professional writer's organization like the Romance Writers of America, the Mystery Writers of America, etc.
Some of these professional organizations require you to have published novels in the field and/or have made a minimum amount of money before you can join. However, many of them have some sort of associate membership, or at least an informational website with tons of information for unpublished authors.
Okay, so you've found a bunch of reader/writer/fan groups. It's not enough to join up and lurk. The idea is to build your name recognition. To create real, personal connections with people who would be willing to give your book a try. Yes, you have to actually talk with people...or at least have typed conversations via the Internet. Often. And sincerely.
And yes, this is freakishly time consuming. Hence, my next piece of advice to set a schedule for yourself. Divide your working time between writing and marketing/social media, and make yourself stick to your allotted social time.
Because of the tendency of this phase of marketing to suck up both your time and your soul, I recommend you start this early and try to do a little of it every day. Better that than spending weeks or months around the clock trying to play catch up right before your book comes out.
Not only will this destroy your writing time, but it also comes across as FAKE when you suddenly get all friendly and chatty with total strangers moments before asking them to buy your book.
You have to build legitimate relationships, first. Then, and only then, can you solicit people to read your books.
I hear some of you introverts out there crawling under your rocks in horror at the notion of making hundreds or thousands of online friends.
If you really, truly, can't abide being social with your fellow man, you need to consider pursuing other kinds of marketing. Don't do social networking if you can't do it cheerfully and honestly.
Which is to say, be yourself and be genuine on your social media. And give it time. I didn't build my FB page overnight, nor did I build my substantial Twitter following overnight. I've spent the past year-and-a-half feeding both monsters daily content and actually interacting with thousands of people.
Follow the 90/10 rule. Give your followers and friends 90 percent content of interest to them and no more than 10 percent marketing of your books.
And remember, it's better to have a few hundred genuine, legitimate fans and tens of thousands of followers who neither know you nor like you and who have no vested interest whatsoever in trying one of your books. Of course the best scenario is to have thousands of legitimate fans!
That rabid fan club starts with one person. And it builds one person at a time. Start now, work on it often for a little of time, and think of it as a long-term investment in your success.
Don't miss any of my articles on marketing...visit my website and sign up for notification any time I post a new one...
www.cindydees.com
THE MARKET GLUT AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOU
I published a link to a Publisher's Weekly article earlier today on my Facebook author page (www.facebook.com/cindydeesauthor) that said 450,000+ self-published e-books and 300,000+ self-published print books were released this year.
Whoa. That's a LOT of new books. And to think: many, many self-published e-books are being released without ISBN numbers generated by Bowker, who came up with these statistics.
I don't know about you, but these numbers and across the boards sales declines for self-published authors (being blamed at the moment on the launch of the Kindle Unlimited program) give me pause.
What does it mean for self-publishing in the near future?
My best guess is that it will be more important than ever to write a high-quality book and that it's going to be harder than ever for readers to find it. This leaves you two choices: 1) market more aggressively and/or 2) be more patient in the pursuit of success. (Which is a nice way of saying that you should it expect it to take longer to achieve success and that your sales numbers will likely build more slowly than authors have been reporting over the past few years.)
It's going to start mattering more than ever that authors have a backlist of titles. Why, you ask?
Readers are going to be looking for clues of who the "real" writers are and who the pretenders are. If you don't have other writing credentials to your name--print published books with major publishers, bestseller status, or hundreds upon hundreds of reviews--one of the clues readers will have that you're the real deal will be a decent backlist. It'll show readers that you're not a one-book wonder or an amateur hobbyist who thought to himself or herself, "How hard can it be to write a book?"
Good reviews will continue to matter, as will word of mouth from your fans to their reader friends. It's going to be all about getting the word out that you are a legitimate author who delivers great reads in whatever genre you have branded yourself in.
The sad truth is, though, that just because you write a great book or several great books, you have no guarantee of selling a lot of books. More than ever, it's going to take perseverance and determination to survive and thrive as an author.
Funny, but when I first broke into print publishing a twelve years ago, the norm was to write for around a decade before making a first sale. Now, although an author can publish right away, significant sales may take upwards of that decade to unfold. The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?
At the end of the day, it takes three things to succeed as an author in the commercial fiction market:
1) good books
2) good timing
3) good luck
And apparently, that hasn't changed one bit with the advent of the self-publishing revolution.
Whoa. That's a LOT of new books. And to think: many, many self-published e-books are being released without ISBN numbers generated by Bowker, who came up with these statistics.
I don't know about you, but these numbers and across the boards sales declines for self-published authors (being blamed at the moment on the launch of the Kindle Unlimited program) give me pause.
What does it mean for self-publishing in the near future?
My best guess is that it will be more important than ever to write a high-quality book and that it's going to be harder than ever for readers to find it. This leaves you two choices: 1) market more aggressively and/or 2) be more patient in the pursuit of success. (Which is a nice way of saying that you should it expect it to take longer to achieve success and that your sales numbers will likely build more slowly than authors have been reporting over the past few years.)
It's going to start mattering more than ever that authors have a backlist of titles. Why, you ask?
Readers are going to be looking for clues of who the "real" writers are and who the pretenders are. If you don't have other writing credentials to your name--print published books with major publishers, bestseller status, or hundreds upon hundreds of reviews--one of the clues readers will have that you're the real deal will be a decent backlist. It'll show readers that you're not a one-book wonder or an amateur hobbyist who thought to himself or herself, "How hard can it be to write a book?"
Good reviews will continue to matter, as will word of mouth from your fans to their reader friends. It's going to be all about getting the word out that you are a legitimate author who delivers great reads in whatever genre you have branded yourself in.
The sad truth is, though, that just because you write a great book or several great books, you have no guarantee of selling a lot of books. More than ever, it's going to take perseverance and determination to survive and thrive as an author.
Funny, but when I first broke into print publishing a twelve years ago, the norm was to write for around a decade before making a first sale. Now, although an author can publish right away, significant sales may take upwards of that decade to unfold. The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?
At the end of the day, it takes three things to succeed as an author in the commercial fiction market:
1) good books
2) good timing
3) good luck
And apparently, that hasn't changed one bit with the advent of the self-publishing revolution.
