Rafael's Blog, page 5
August 27, 2016
eBook Marketing with FB Ads
One way of categorizing independent writers is between those who love to write and those who love people to read what they write. Both perspectives are legitimate but the latter group cannot escape the need to market.
Last week, for no better reason than the enormity of its user base, I discussed the cost of marketing on Facebook . This week I'll discuss creating the ads needed to drive your FB marketing campaign. In fact, the points I'll raise are relevant to whatever venue you decide to market within.
Like Hansel and Gretel's breadcrumb trail, modern internet marketers, such as Russ Henneberry at Digital Marketers, describe a term known as 'Ad Scent'. When an ad's visual content attracts a targeted FB member, it creates a scent trail leading to a landing page that must confirm what the ad hinted at.
Online searchers are acutely aware of bait and switch tactics as well as methods intended solely to make a sale and not provide quality. They are suspicious beings from the outset. If a marketer, however subtly, breaks the scent trail between an ad and its landing page, the user will click right off. Here's an example of a broken scent trail.
The logo used in the ad appears nowhere on the landing page. The ad's banner reads 'Handheld Meetings', the landing page says 'Communicate Better'. Despite the somewhat coordinated color schemes, the scent is broken, the user is gone.
An ad and its landing page become an integrated, coordinated whole when these following points are kept in mind. Each point should be explicitly expressed in both images in order to maintain a strong scent trail.
scheme
layout
imagery
font selection/size/color
Here's an example of how it's done.
With a finalized ad design, you are now in a position to take advantage of FB's member database known as Open Graph, which provides 15 data points on which to base your marketing campaign.
Country
State
City
Zip Code
Age
Gender
Interests
Categories: pre-made audiences
Connections: specific page 'likes'
Friends of Connections
Interested in
Relationship status
Language
Education
Workplace
With everything in place, one final decision remains: how much to budget for the ad. FB permits $1/day but that is not a serious amount. Most experts and examples cite $5/day but that is SPG advice (see my 7/16 posting).
I would recommend $20(£15)/month. Divide that total into weekly amounts. At the end of the first week, record the results, change the campaign's target parameters, and resubmit for the next week. Repeat for all four weeks.
For the next month, change the ad's design for each week. At month's end compare which design did best with which market parameters. Combine the two best and run for the entire third month. If necessary, continue to tweak and refine as you learn, gain insights, and increase your confidence. What your financial investment will be at this point is up to you. Good luck !!
I provide this information for those already integrated into the FB environment. The jump to its marketing capabilities will be an intuitive one. I myself am not on FB and my decision not to be is a practical one.
The number of monthly active FB users is 1 billion. The number of monthly unique Google searchers is
1.17 billion. Effectively equal, but since my marketing budget will not accommodate both venues (and the two have analogous marketing structures), I opted for Google since it does not bombard me every ten minutes with updates.
And so next week I'll take a look at marketing with the other gorilla in the room. Enough business. Let's go to the creative side.
Christopher Vogler is a successful Hollywood Development Executive who wrote 'The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. Though he works primarily in the film industry his observations are readily adaptable by novelists who create films of the mind.
I do not present them as a basis for story outlines. As I indicated in my 8/6 posting, 'eBook Marketing and Your Website', I have a more freewheeling approach to storytelling. However, I think Mr. Vogler has valuable insights into organizing thoughts during pre-production.
1. The Ordinary World - the hero is seen in his/her everyday life
2. The Call to Adventure - the initiating incident of the story
3. Refusal of the Call - the hero experiences some hesitation to answer the call
4. Meeting with the Mentor - the hero gains the supplies, knowledge, and confidence needed to commence the adventure
5. Crossing the First Threshold - the hero commits wholeheartedly to the adventure
6. Tests, Allies and Enemies - the hero explores the special world, faces trial, and makes friends and enemies
7. Approach to the Innermost Cave - the hero nears the center of the story and the special world
8. The Ordeal - the hero faces the greatest challenge yet and experiences death and rebirth
9. Reward - the hero experiences the consequences of surviving death
10. The Road Back - the hero returns to the ordinary world or continues to an ultimate destination
11. The Resurrection - the hero experiences a final moment of death and rebirth so they are pure when they reenter the ordinary world
12. Return with the Elixir - the hero returns with something to improve the ordinary world
As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome.
Last week, for no better reason than the enormity of its user base, I discussed the cost of marketing on Facebook . This week I'll discuss creating the ads needed to drive your FB marketing campaign. In fact, the points I'll raise are relevant to whatever venue you decide to market within.
Like Hansel and Gretel's breadcrumb trail, modern internet marketers, such as Russ Henneberry at Digital Marketers, describe a term known as 'Ad Scent'. When an ad's visual content attracts a targeted FB member, it creates a scent trail leading to a landing page that must confirm what the ad hinted at.
Online searchers are acutely aware of bait and switch tactics as well as methods intended solely to make a sale and not provide quality. They are suspicious beings from the outset. If a marketer, however subtly, breaks the scent trail between an ad and its landing page, the user will click right off. Here's an example of a broken scent trail.
The logo used in the ad appears nowhere on the landing page. The ad's banner reads 'Handheld Meetings', the landing page says 'Communicate Better'. Despite the somewhat coordinated color schemes, the scent is broken, the user is gone.
An ad and its landing page become an integrated, coordinated whole when these following points are kept in mind. Each point should be explicitly expressed in both images in order to maintain a strong scent trail.
scheme
layout
imagery
font selection/size/color
Here's an example of how it's done.
With a finalized ad design, you are now in a position to take advantage of FB's member database known as Open Graph, which provides 15 data points on which to base your marketing campaign.
Country
State
City
Zip Code
Age
Gender
Interests
Categories: pre-made audiences
Connections: specific page 'likes'
Friends of Connections
Interested in
Relationship status
Language
Education
Workplace
With everything in place, one final decision remains: how much to budget for the ad. FB permits $1/day but that is not a serious amount. Most experts and examples cite $5/day but that is SPG advice (see my 7/16 posting).
I would recommend $20(£15)/month. Divide that total into weekly amounts. At the end of the first week, record the results, change the campaign's target parameters, and resubmit for the next week. Repeat for all four weeks.
For the next month, change the ad's design for each week. At month's end compare which design did best with which market parameters. Combine the two best and run for the entire third month. If necessary, continue to tweak and refine as you learn, gain insights, and increase your confidence. What your financial investment will be at this point is up to you. Good luck !!
I provide this information for those already integrated into the FB environment. The jump to its marketing capabilities will be an intuitive one. I myself am not on FB and my decision not to be is a practical one.
The number of monthly active FB users is 1 billion. The number of monthly unique Google searchers is
1.17 billion. Effectively equal, but since my marketing budget will not accommodate both venues (and the two have analogous marketing structures), I opted for Google since it does not bombard me every ten minutes with updates.
And so next week I'll take a look at marketing with the other gorilla in the room. Enough business. Let's go to the creative side.
Christopher Vogler is a successful Hollywood Development Executive who wrote 'The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. Though he works primarily in the film industry his observations are readily adaptable by novelists who create films of the mind.
I do not present them as a basis for story outlines. As I indicated in my 8/6 posting, 'eBook Marketing and Your Website', I have a more freewheeling approach to storytelling. However, I think Mr. Vogler has valuable insights into organizing thoughts during pre-production.
1. The Ordinary World - the hero is seen in his/her everyday life
2. The Call to Adventure - the initiating incident of the story
3. Refusal of the Call - the hero experiences some hesitation to answer the call
4. Meeting with the Mentor - the hero gains the supplies, knowledge, and confidence needed to commence the adventure
5. Crossing the First Threshold - the hero commits wholeheartedly to the adventure
6. Tests, Allies and Enemies - the hero explores the special world, faces trial, and makes friends and enemies
7. Approach to the Innermost Cave - the hero nears the center of the story and the special world
8. The Ordeal - the hero faces the greatest challenge yet and experiences death and rebirth
9. Reward - the hero experiences the consequences of surviving death
10. The Road Back - the hero returns to the ordinary world or continues to an ultimate destination
11. The Resurrection - the hero experiences a final moment of death and rebirth so they are pure when they reenter the ordinary world
12. Return with the Elixir - the hero returns with something to improve the ordinary world
As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome.
August 20, 2016
eBook Marketing & FaceBook
Previously, I've discussed making a website your most cost effective book marketing tool. Can Facebook leverage those efforts? The answer is a not very satisfying, yes.
If you are a member of this billion plus community, you have a foot in the door but let's reduce this universe to a more manageable number. If, for example, you think it a reasonable goal to have your eBook sales add an additional $20k in income (£15.3k for my British friends, go Brexit!) and assuming a $2.99 (£2.3) price, your FB marketing efforts will need to identify less than 7,000 of that 1 billion universe. Easy peasy, right?
If at present, you're adding 10 FB friends a month, you'll need 56 years to achieve financial nirvana. If you become beloved by 100 FB friends per month you can knock that number down to a little less than six years to afford a down payment on your dreamed of Italian summer villa.
Does FB have some mechanism to help shorten the time to economic bliss? Why, yes, it does. You can place a bid to access FB's marketing prowess.
Exactly as the verb 'bid' implies, the price FB charges for placing an ad depends on how many other people/businesses want access to the potential buyers you do. Below, I've placed a chart indicating your cost per click to place a FB ad. This is real data from FB's own files.
Cost per click (CPC) means the number of times FB can get one of its members to click on your website or FB page. If you would like to advertise your eBook to those wild and crazy Americans the CPC would be .34 cents which is pretty close to the .31 cents average.
Now let's say you budget $5/day. That will buy you 15 clicks/day. Assuming each click becomes a friend, by month's end you'll have added 450 friends and need just over a year to reach your $20k goal, making the $1,800 marketing cost an excellent investment.
Did you note the huge assumption? Not every click will become a friend. Not every friend will buy a book. Most importantly, it may take far more than a month for 15 people to click on your ad. And if you want FB to target not just clickers but buyers (what internet marketers refer to as 'conversions') the CPC will rise dramatically. Still, $1,800 to make $20,000. I've got $5,000 in savings. Do I believe in myself? Hmmm.
Let me bring into focus my previous postings. When the clicks start coming, is your eBook credible? Have you fixed the flaws identified by early reviewers? Have you buffed and polished the opening chapters? Do you now have a good number of solid reviews? Is your website/FB page attractive, compelling? If a click happens to be an agent, publisher, or agency staffer, is your wardrobe ready? Can you speak in front of groups? What about your ad? Is it well designed? Did you research what makes a good ad?
Facebook is just one entry point in the world of internet marketing, albeit to be sure, an important one. Next week I'll take a closer look at ad design and also better strategies for leveraging that $5.
Enough business. Let's turn to the creative side where I'll cheat a little bit and repost/edit an answer I gave to the GR question, 'How do you deal with writer's block?'
If you don't know what to write next, STOP !! Get up and fix the bed, sweep the floor, wash the dishes, inflate your tires, change the oil. Do anything that doesn't require a lot of thought or any activity you've reduced to mindless habit. The walk/drive/bus/train to work. The elevator going up. That infernally boring meeting. And all the while, ask yourself, "What happens next?" Not the next paragraph or the next chapter (taking that road intensifies writer's block) but what happens immediately following the last written sentence.
If an answer doesn't come, keep working. Before you finish the task, an idea will arise. When it does, don't stop working though. Mentally edit the sentence. Rework it. Revise it. Improve it. Often a better sentence will arise. But if not, keep working. One will.
And if it takes a day, or two, or three, remember this: you are writing!!! Writing is not just you in front of a computer screen making words appear on it. Whatever the life routine you're engaged in, keep the question in the back of your mind. What happens next? All the time you're mentally analyzing, considering, discarding, editing, revising, you are writing. When the answer does come, stop what you're doing, return to the computer, and add it in. Very often you'll find whole paragraphs and pages will flow.
And consider this. If you write one page per day. Just one. At the end of ten months you will have a full-length novel.
Anyway, If you ask 'what happens next" consistently two benefits will result: one later, one now. Ultimately, you will arrive at The End, and your novel will be a tightly integrated, sequentially coherent whole.
The immediate benefit, however, your chores will be done!!
P.S. As I near the end of my current project, Seraphim, tying up the loose ends has forced me to go back and rethink a major plot point. A crocodile I'm wrestling mightily with. It's still blocking me. Grrrr.
As always, I welcome your comments and thoughts.
If you are a member of this billion plus community, you have a foot in the door but let's reduce this universe to a more manageable number. If, for example, you think it a reasonable goal to have your eBook sales add an additional $20k in income (£15.3k for my British friends, go Brexit!) and assuming a $2.99 (£2.3) price, your FB marketing efforts will need to identify less than 7,000 of that 1 billion universe. Easy peasy, right?
If at present, you're adding 10 FB friends a month, you'll need 56 years to achieve financial nirvana. If you become beloved by 100 FB friends per month you can knock that number down to a little less than six years to afford a down payment on your dreamed of Italian summer villa.
Does FB have some mechanism to help shorten the time to economic bliss? Why, yes, it does. You can place a bid to access FB's marketing prowess.
Exactly as the verb 'bid' implies, the price FB charges for placing an ad depends on how many other people/businesses want access to the potential buyers you do. Below, I've placed a chart indicating your cost per click to place a FB ad. This is real data from FB's own files.
Cost per click (CPC) means the number of times FB can get one of its members to click on your website or FB page. If you would like to advertise your eBook to those wild and crazy Americans the CPC would be .34 cents which is pretty close to the .31 cents average.
Now let's say you budget $5/day. That will buy you 15 clicks/day. Assuming each click becomes a friend, by month's end you'll have added 450 friends and need just over a year to reach your $20k goal, making the $1,800 marketing cost an excellent investment.
Did you note the huge assumption? Not every click will become a friend. Not every friend will buy a book. Most importantly, it may take far more than a month for 15 people to click on your ad. And if you want FB to target not just clickers but buyers (what internet marketers refer to as 'conversions') the CPC will rise dramatically. Still, $1,800 to make $20,000. I've got $5,000 in savings. Do I believe in myself? Hmmm.
Let me bring into focus my previous postings. When the clicks start coming, is your eBook credible? Have you fixed the flaws identified by early reviewers? Have you buffed and polished the opening chapters? Do you now have a good number of solid reviews? Is your website/FB page attractive, compelling? If a click happens to be an agent, publisher, or agency staffer, is your wardrobe ready? Can you speak in front of groups? What about your ad? Is it well designed? Did you research what makes a good ad?
Facebook is just one entry point in the world of internet marketing, albeit to be sure, an important one. Next week I'll take a closer look at ad design and also better strategies for leveraging that $5.
Enough business. Let's turn to the creative side where I'll cheat a little bit and repost/edit an answer I gave to the GR question, 'How do you deal with writer's block?'
If you don't know what to write next, STOP !! Get up and fix the bed, sweep the floor, wash the dishes, inflate your tires, change the oil. Do anything that doesn't require a lot of thought or any activity you've reduced to mindless habit. The walk/drive/bus/train to work. The elevator going up. That infernally boring meeting. And all the while, ask yourself, "What happens next?" Not the next paragraph or the next chapter (taking that road intensifies writer's block) but what happens immediately following the last written sentence.
If an answer doesn't come, keep working. Before you finish the task, an idea will arise. When it does, don't stop working though. Mentally edit the sentence. Rework it. Revise it. Improve it. Often a better sentence will arise. But if not, keep working. One will.
And if it takes a day, or two, or three, remember this: you are writing!!! Writing is not just you in front of a computer screen making words appear on it. Whatever the life routine you're engaged in, keep the question in the back of your mind. What happens next? All the time you're mentally analyzing, considering, discarding, editing, revising, you are writing. When the answer does come, stop what you're doing, return to the computer, and add it in. Very often you'll find whole paragraphs and pages will flow.
And consider this. If you write one page per day. Just one. At the end of ten months you will have a full-length novel.
Anyway, If you ask 'what happens next" consistently two benefits will result: one later, one now. Ultimately, you will arrive at The End, and your novel will be a tightly integrated, sequentially coherent whole.
The immediate benefit, however, your chores will be done!!
P.S. As I near the end of my current project, Seraphim, tying up the loose ends has forced me to go back and rethink a major plot point. A crocodile I'm wrestling mightily with. It's still blocking me. Grrrr.
As always, I welcome your comments and thoughts.
August 13, 2016
eBook Marketing & Subdomains
My blog post of August 6, which discussed making your website an important marketing ally, generated a number of questions I thought might be useful to a broader audience.
To begin with, many authors use their blogs as websites or have created one from the templates offered by their blog hosts, e.g. Blogspot or WordPress. While a hybrid is not ideal, I am in total sympathy with those who have no inclination or technical background to build a website themselves. A colorful American Defense Secretary once observed, "You go to war with the army you have not the one you wish you had."
Be aware, however, that the URL for blog hosted websites takes the form of 'somename.wordpress.com'. This is known as a subdomain and the two most important internet data gatherers, Google and Alexa, treat subdomains as second-class citizens. In the case of Alexa, it doesn't even recognize them. This is also true of website hosts like GoDaddy or Web.com who will give you a subdomain URL if you don't want to buy your own. Google and Alexa do provide domain level traffic data to these hosts but you'll have to contact them and ask what traffic analysis data and help they provide. Ignoring the hassle is of course an option. Amanda Hocking did !!
A subset of the less technically motivated have one-page websites. Or at most three pages, where the second and third are a bio and contact page. While this is a more efficient design for the visitor (everything interesting is on the landing page), it is not at all useful as a marketing tool.
Referring again to the August 6th posting, it will be very difficult to discern any important distinction between 'unique visitors' and 'visitors'. Your best option here is to break out your book, blurb, and sample chapter information onto their own page. In fact, going one step further and placing sample chapters on their own page in turn, will provide a strong indication how effective the blurb is. Detecting increased traffic on your sample chapter pages means your blurbs are doing their jobs. If, in turn, you see an uptick in book sales, your sample chapters work. Otherwise, you can have no better insight the opening chapters need rewrites and polishing.
By the way. This is information Amazon should be providing. It would be a tremendous help if we knew how often browsers land on our books and from there the frequency of how often they 'look inside'.
Anyway, this redesign means that your landing page must provide a visitor immediate orientation as to where they should click next. Make the link to your books from the landing page, readily apparent.
Lastly, before expanding the pages on your one-page website, take some time to study the relationship between 'unique visitors' and sales. Those one-page-interactors may simply be clicking on your Amazon link. If this phenomenon occurs during a book promotion period, the explanation is obvious. At any other time, forget expanding your total pages. Get your awStats report and find out where those 'unique visitors' are coming from !!
Enough business. Let's turn to the creative side. Well, kind of. And only if you use Microsoft Word.
Every book we write will have names, things, and places Word's dictionary will flag as unknown. One option is to right-click the item and add it to the dictionary. Over time, the dictionary will become bloated and begin to impinge on performance and load times. Not conducive to the creative process.
Another solution is to create a custom dictionary and give it the name of your book's title. The main dictionary will still be accessed, but now whenever you add a word it will be placed in the custom dictionary tailored to each of your manuscripts.
Since Word has many versions, I won't give any specific instructions how to do it beyond saying the process is child's play and takes about half a minute. Simply click on 'Help' for your version and enter 'custom dictionary' as the search criteria.
For the Word gurus among you, once you observe the steps, you can then create two macros and place them on the Tool Bar. One to select a custom dictionary, the other to restore the main one.
As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments.
To begin with, many authors use their blogs as websites or have created one from the templates offered by their blog hosts, e.g. Blogspot or WordPress. While a hybrid is not ideal, I am in total sympathy with those who have no inclination or technical background to build a website themselves. A colorful American Defense Secretary once observed, "You go to war with the army you have not the one you wish you had."
Be aware, however, that the URL for blog hosted websites takes the form of 'somename.wordpress.com'. This is known as a subdomain and the two most important internet data gatherers, Google and Alexa, treat subdomains as second-class citizens. In the case of Alexa, it doesn't even recognize them. This is also true of website hosts like GoDaddy or Web.com who will give you a subdomain URL if you don't want to buy your own. Google and Alexa do provide domain level traffic data to these hosts but you'll have to contact them and ask what traffic analysis data and help they provide. Ignoring the hassle is of course an option. Amanda Hocking did !!
A subset of the less technically motivated have one-page websites. Or at most three pages, where the second and third are a bio and contact page. While this is a more efficient design for the visitor (everything interesting is on the landing page), it is not at all useful as a marketing tool.
Referring again to the August 6th posting, it will be very difficult to discern any important distinction between 'unique visitors' and 'visitors'. Your best option here is to break out your book, blurb, and sample chapter information onto their own page. In fact, going one step further and placing sample chapters on their own page in turn, will provide a strong indication how effective the blurb is. Detecting increased traffic on your sample chapter pages means your blurbs are doing their jobs. If, in turn, you see an uptick in book sales, your sample chapters work. Otherwise, you can have no better insight the opening chapters need rewrites and polishing.
By the way. This is information Amazon should be providing. It would be a tremendous help if we knew how often browsers land on our books and from there the frequency of how often they 'look inside'.
Anyway, this redesign means that your landing page must provide a visitor immediate orientation as to where they should click next. Make the link to your books from the landing page, readily apparent.
Lastly, before expanding the pages on your one-page website, take some time to study the relationship between 'unique visitors' and sales. Those one-page-interactors may simply be clicking on your Amazon link. If this phenomenon occurs during a book promotion period, the explanation is obvious. At any other time, forget expanding your total pages. Get your awStats report and find out where those 'unique visitors' are coming from !!
Enough business. Let's turn to the creative side. Well, kind of. And only if you use Microsoft Word.
Every book we write will have names, things, and places Word's dictionary will flag as unknown. One option is to right-click the item and add it to the dictionary. Over time, the dictionary will become bloated and begin to impinge on performance and load times. Not conducive to the creative process.
Another solution is to create a custom dictionary and give it the name of your book's title. The main dictionary will still be accessed, but now whenever you add a word it will be placed in the custom dictionary tailored to each of your manuscripts.
Since Word has many versions, I won't give any specific instructions how to do it beyond saying the process is child's play and takes about half a minute. Simply click on 'Help' for your version and enter 'custom dictionary' as the search criteria.
For the Word gurus among you, once you observe the steps, you can then create two macros and place them on the Tool Bar. One to select a custom dictionary, the other to restore the main one.
As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments.
August 6, 2016
eBook Marketing & Your Website
In my blog post of July 16, I took the position that once an independent author establishes his or her book's credibility with a base level of reviews, any further effort to garner reviews is time taken from a far more important goal: garnering readers. And that is known as marketing.
For the majority of us who heed the advice, a website often becomes just a checked box establishing our identity as independent authors. But once the internet baby is born and dressed with our books, blurbs, and bios, the site becomes a neglected step-child, shunted to the background, updated only when the next book is written.
A website is the most important (and most cost effective) tool an independent author can have in gauging and analyzing one's marketing efforts.
Modern, reputable site hosts provide a treasure trove of reports on your URL's performance. One report goes by the unenlightening name of 'awStats'. I have no idea what the 'aw' is for, but the statistics this report provides on your website's traffic is invaluable. Here, I'll focus on two categories: 'visitors' and 'unique visitors'.
Do not make my mistake and think their meaning is self-evident. In the world of internet marketing, these two categories are redefined. 'Unique visitors' means the number of people who visited a website, and interacted with one page. 'Visitors' means the number of people who visited a website, and interacted with multiple pages. With these definitions in mind, we are now in a position to measure how effective our website's marketing reach is but both numbers have to be analyzed in tandem.
If month-to-month, 'unique visitors' is increasing (however slowly), a website's key words are reaching more internet searchers. If 'visitors' is also increasing, a subset of the 'uniques' are returning for more active engagement with the site. This is the optimal condition.
If 'unique visitors' is increasing and 'visitors' is flat or decreasing, searchers are finding the site but not engaging with it. The site's content needs refreshing or a redesign. The awStats report will help greatly as it details how and which pages visitors are interacting with.
If 'unique visitors' is flat or decreasing, the site's key words need review. They're not working. For purposes of brevity, I'll leave the other possible scenarios and interactions for easy inference but don't hesitate to comment or PM me for specific questions.
Use Google's free Keyword Tool to see how different key words rank in search effectiveness. Use the Keyword Tool even if both categories are increasing. A site should have between 6 and 11 key words/phrases. Swap one or two out to see what their effect is over the period.
Once you have both numbers rising in tandem, I'll leave it to the more ambitious to ferret out two other categories from the awStats report that will enhance the ability to tweak website reach and visitor awareness: bounce rate and 'hits on favicon.ico'.
This is not a quick fix process. Since the most effective (and the default) reporting period is one month, it will require many combined with a consistent effort (1, at most 2 hours per month) to see results. But this is exactly the process SEO companies charge money for. When implemented, a site begins to climb Google's rankings which in turn exposes the site to more searchers. Patience and stick-to-itiveness will result in 'overnight' success.
If you can't find the industry standard awStats report, your host may have another name for it. Send them a note asking what report monitors a site's traffic patterns. If they don't have one, or worse, charge for it, their service is substandard. Change host providers. There are dozens and dozens who will charge between $6 and $9 per month and include all the reports you will ever need.
Lastly, if you have another interest/hobby besides writing, put it on your site. If you're a chess devotee, knitting enthusiast, father, mother, friend, tell the world why you are and share your insights, skills, and techniques. Couple them to appropriate key words. Guaranteed, a subset of your site's increased traffic, will be readers.
Enough business, let's turn to the creative side.
I don't plan or outline my novels. I begin with a concept/premise, decide on a protagonist, start time, and place, and begin writing. As the plot unfolds, I let it tell me what other characters, twists, and turns it wants.
However, I recently came across Nigel Watts' 'Eight-point Story Arc' which could have brought a little better structure to the process. I'll summarize 'Write a Novel And Get It Published' below since the Kindle version costs $8.99. Used paperbacks, however, are available for pennies.
1. Stasis - the environment, city, town, forest, jungle within which the story occurs. The what and where research of these milieus will feed the creative process and provide the real world tidbits that enhance a novel's realism.
2. Trigger - the event the protagonist did not know of or could have predicted. It's occurrence changes everything, including the protagonist's life path the narrator may have been detailing.
3. The Quest - what results from the Trigger and the wellspring for #4.
4. Surprise - the organic twists and turns the Quest produces. Here is where novelists earn their keep. Through the narrator, I keep nothing from the reader. When they have all the facts (red-herrings are never, ever permissible), they won't resist predicting outcomes. Now the author/reader game is afoot.
5. Critical Choice - the book's blurb must mention what dire consequence will flow if the protagonist chooses 'A'. What dire consequence will ensue if the protagonist doesn't. Here is where the author details, over perhaps multiple chapters, the struggle to decide. Season with organic twists and turns that make the choice more unpalatable.
6. Climax - the protagonist's decision now has consequences. It can be either victorious or catastrophic. Either way, unhyped drama must drape everything.
7. Reversal - how the critical choice and climax changed the protagonist, what many refer to as character-arc. Is he or she a better person, or worse?
8. Resolution - the point at which many stories fail. The reader cannot be left with unfulfilled resolution or lingering questions. A return to Stasis can be used to create new questions or plot directions if a series is intended but all major issues of the current plot must be resolved. It is the definition of a good story, one that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments.
For the majority of us who heed the advice, a website often becomes just a checked box establishing our identity as independent authors. But once the internet baby is born and dressed with our books, blurbs, and bios, the site becomes a neglected step-child, shunted to the background, updated only when the next book is written.
A website is the most important (and most cost effective) tool an independent author can have in gauging and analyzing one's marketing efforts.
Modern, reputable site hosts provide a treasure trove of reports on your URL's performance. One report goes by the unenlightening name of 'awStats'. I have no idea what the 'aw' is for, but the statistics this report provides on your website's traffic is invaluable. Here, I'll focus on two categories: 'visitors' and 'unique visitors'.
Do not make my mistake and think their meaning is self-evident. In the world of internet marketing, these two categories are redefined. 'Unique visitors' means the number of people who visited a website, and interacted with one page. 'Visitors' means the number of people who visited a website, and interacted with multiple pages. With these definitions in mind, we are now in a position to measure how effective our website's marketing reach is but both numbers have to be analyzed in tandem.
If month-to-month, 'unique visitors' is increasing (however slowly), a website's key words are reaching more internet searchers. If 'visitors' is also increasing, a subset of the 'uniques' are returning for more active engagement with the site. This is the optimal condition.
If 'unique visitors' is increasing and 'visitors' is flat or decreasing, searchers are finding the site but not engaging with it. The site's content needs refreshing or a redesign. The awStats report will help greatly as it details how and which pages visitors are interacting with.
If 'unique visitors' is flat or decreasing, the site's key words need review. They're not working. For purposes of brevity, I'll leave the other possible scenarios and interactions for easy inference but don't hesitate to comment or PM me for specific questions.
Use Google's free Keyword Tool to see how different key words rank in search effectiveness. Use the Keyword Tool even if both categories are increasing. A site should have between 6 and 11 key words/phrases. Swap one or two out to see what their effect is over the period.
Once you have both numbers rising in tandem, I'll leave it to the more ambitious to ferret out two other categories from the awStats report that will enhance the ability to tweak website reach and visitor awareness: bounce rate and 'hits on favicon.ico'.
This is not a quick fix process. Since the most effective (and the default) reporting period is one month, it will require many combined with a consistent effort (1, at most 2 hours per month) to see results. But this is exactly the process SEO companies charge money for. When implemented, a site begins to climb Google's rankings which in turn exposes the site to more searchers. Patience and stick-to-itiveness will result in 'overnight' success.
If you can't find the industry standard awStats report, your host may have another name for it. Send them a note asking what report monitors a site's traffic patterns. If they don't have one, or worse, charge for it, their service is substandard. Change host providers. There are dozens and dozens who will charge between $6 and $9 per month and include all the reports you will ever need.
Lastly, if you have another interest/hobby besides writing, put it on your site. If you're a chess devotee, knitting enthusiast, father, mother, friend, tell the world why you are and share your insights, skills, and techniques. Couple them to appropriate key words. Guaranteed, a subset of your site's increased traffic, will be readers.
Enough business, let's turn to the creative side.
I don't plan or outline my novels. I begin with a concept/premise, decide on a protagonist, start time, and place, and begin writing. As the plot unfolds, I let it tell me what other characters, twists, and turns it wants.
However, I recently came across Nigel Watts' 'Eight-point Story Arc' which could have brought a little better structure to the process. I'll summarize 'Write a Novel And Get It Published' below since the Kindle version costs $8.99. Used paperbacks, however, are available for pennies.
1. Stasis - the environment, city, town, forest, jungle within which the story occurs. The what and where research of these milieus will feed the creative process and provide the real world tidbits that enhance a novel's realism.
2. Trigger - the event the protagonist did not know of or could have predicted. It's occurrence changes everything, including the protagonist's life path the narrator may have been detailing.
3. The Quest - what results from the Trigger and the wellspring for #4.
4. Surprise - the organic twists and turns the Quest produces. Here is where novelists earn their keep. Through the narrator, I keep nothing from the reader. When they have all the facts (red-herrings are never, ever permissible), they won't resist predicting outcomes. Now the author/reader game is afoot.
5. Critical Choice - the book's blurb must mention what dire consequence will flow if the protagonist chooses 'A'. What dire consequence will ensue if the protagonist doesn't. Here is where the author details, over perhaps multiple chapters, the struggle to decide. Season with organic twists and turns that make the choice more unpalatable.
6. Climax - the protagonist's decision now has consequences. It can be either victorious or catastrophic. Either way, unhyped drama must drape everything.
7. Reversal - how the critical choice and climax changed the protagonist, what many refer to as character-arc. Is he or she a better person, or worse?
8. Resolution - the point at which many stories fail. The reader cannot be left with unfulfilled resolution or lingering questions. A return to Stasis can be used to create new questions or plot directions if a series is intended but all major issues of the current plot must be resolved. It is the definition of a good story, one that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments.
July 30, 2016
Query Letters & the Indie Author
Today's blog post will center on the subject of Query Letters so if you're committed to being an independent writer you might want to skip down to the writing section where I discuss the concept of 'filtering'. However, if you agree an excellent way to sell ebooks is to have a literary agent do it, read on.
Long after I sent 100's of Query Letters to prospective agents (why none to date have accepted will be fodder for coming posts), I came across Janet Reid, a New York City literary agent specializing in crime fiction. She hosts a blog called Queryshark in which authors send in Query Letters which she proceeds to brutally, and often hilariously, critique. Here is her Query Letter framework that my research confirmed many agents, with slight variations, adhere to.
1. What does the protagonist want?
2. What's stopping her obtaining it?
3. What decision must she make?
4. What dire consequence ensues if she chooses A?
5. What dire consequence ensues if she doesn't?
The genius of this outline is that it also shapes a plot's narrative arc. Drama is at the heart of a good story and conflict makes drama possible. Points 1 & 2 define plot (external) conflict, points 4 & 5 character (internal) conflict. Although my stories contain both, I love placing my protagonist in the delicious quandary of having to choose between very bad, if not impossible, options. Drama flows from how the character goes about deciding.
I've placed two links below in which literary agents discuss the do's and don'ts of Query Letters. The first, titled Pub Rants, is by Kristen Nelson, owner of Nelson Literary Agency in Denver, Colorado. Note to Romance authors: she likes them. I urge those interested to also explore the links she places to related or archived material. They make for fascinating and useful reading.
Nelson Literary Agency
The next link details examples of successful Query Letters collected by Chuck Sambuchino at Writer's Digest. I chose this one because it lists over 60 (something for everyone) that are accompanied by the insightful comments of the literary agents who selected them. Any who match your genre you can then Google their names to obtain contact and submission requirements.
Successful Queries
Enough business. Let's turn to the creative side.
As I close on writing 'The End' to my current project Seraphim, I have been making progress on the mind-numbingly tedious task of edit and re-write. One of my favorite bloggers is Emma Darwin who posts to 'This Itch of Writing'. I believe she's British but only because she spells 'favorite' with a 'u'. She recently posted a discussion on' filtering' that now has me contemplating literary hari-kari because I have to start the editing all over.
Filtering is the process of removing the author/narrator's interdictions placed between the story and the reader. Such as? He looked, she saw, they noticed, I remembered that, she wondered if, they decided that, we considered whether, he thought about, he thought back to when, to her it seemed as if.
Emma quotes Janet Burroway, author of Writing Fiction, "...cutting away filters is an easy means to more vivid writing."
I paraphrase Emma's lengthy and at times obtuse posting. Don't tell us he looked, give us the sight. Don't tell us she wondered, give us the thought. Doing so makes the prose crisper, quicker to read. And since the reader is now more mentally engaged, the writing has impact. Emma continues with this unfiltered example.
"Tony walked over to the sofa by the wall and sat crossly on it. He looked through the door and there, in the hall, he saw Jane's roller skates, lying yet again at the foot of the stairs. It seemed to him, though, that something was wrong with them. He noticed that one was standing straight but the other was at an odd angle, and then he saw that it was missing both its back wheels."
Emma's filter produces this.
"Tony walked over to the sofa by the wall and sat crossly on it. Through the door, in the hall, Jane's roller skates were lying yet again at the foot of the stairs. But something was wrong with them. One was standing straight but the other was at an odd angle, missing both its back wheels."
Now filtered, I would add another edit.
"Furious, Tony plunked down on the sofa. Through the door, Jane's roller skates again lay in the hallway at the foot of the stairs. Something was wrong. One stood straight the other at an odd angle, both rear wheels missing."
A final point. Emma's filtering provides a more sophisticated approach when dealing with flashbacks. Again, she uses a Burroway example.
"Cherry thought back to the days when she and Tony went skating together, though that was on ice."
I took the liberty of rewriting her edit for clarity.
"She and Tony often skated together, though in those days, on ice."
Here's the link to the full discussion.
Filtering
Is filtering relevant to Query Letters? Yes. If your well-crafted Query succeeds, you'll be asked for sample chapters. Literary agents know about filtering. And the Iceberg Theory.
As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments.
Long after I sent 100's of Query Letters to prospective agents (why none to date have accepted will be fodder for coming posts), I came across Janet Reid, a New York City literary agent specializing in crime fiction. She hosts a blog called Queryshark in which authors send in Query Letters which she proceeds to brutally, and often hilariously, critique. Here is her Query Letter framework that my research confirmed many agents, with slight variations, adhere to.
1. What does the protagonist want?
2. What's stopping her obtaining it?
3. What decision must she make?
4. What dire consequence ensues if she chooses A?
5. What dire consequence ensues if she doesn't?
The genius of this outline is that it also shapes a plot's narrative arc. Drama is at the heart of a good story and conflict makes drama possible. Points 1 & 2 define plot (external) conflict, points 4 & 5 character (internal) conflict. Although my stories contain both, I love placing my protagonist in the delicious quandary of having to choose between very bad, if not impossible, options. Drama flows from how the character goes about deciding.
I've placed two links below in which literary agents discuss the do's and don'ts of Query Letters. The first, titled Pub Rants, is by Kristen Nelson, owner of Nelson Literary Agency in Denver, Colorado. Note to Romance authors: she likes them. I urge those interested to also explore the links she places to related or archived material. They make for fascinating and useful reading.
Nelson Literary Agency
The next link details examples of successful Query Letters collected by Chuck Sambuchino at Writer's Digest. I chose this one because it lists over 60 (something for everyone) that are accompanied by the insightful comments of the literary agents who selected them. Any who match your genre you can then Google their names to obtain contact and submission requirements.
Successful Queries
Enough business. Let's turn to the creative side.
As I close on writing 'The End' to my current project Seraphim, I have been making progress on the mind-numbingly tedious task of edit and re-write. One of my favorite bloggers is Emma Darwin who posts to 'This Itch of Writing'. I believe she's British but only because she spells 'favorite' with a 'u'. She recently posted a discussion on' filtering' that now has me contemplating literary hari-kari because I have to start the editing all over.
Filtering is the process of removing the author/narrator's interdictions placed between the story and the reader. Such as? He looked, she saw, they noticed, I remembered that, she wondered if, they decided that, we considered whether, he thought about, he thought back to when, to her it seemed as if.
Emma quotes Janet Burroway, author of Writing Fiction, "...cutting away filters is an easy means to more vivid writing."
I paraphrase Emma's lengthy and at times obtuse posting. Don't tell us he looked, give us the sight. Don't tell us she wondered, give us the thought. Doing so makes the prose crisper, quicker to read. And since the reader is now more mentally engaged, the writing has impact. Emma continues with this unfiltered example.
"Tony walked over to the sofa by the wall and sat crossly on it. He looked through the door and there, in the hall, he saw Jane's roller skates, lying yet again at the foot of the stairs. It seemed to him, though, that something was wrong with them. He noticed that one was standing straight but the other was at an odd angle, and then he saw that it was missing both its back wheels."
Emma's filter produces this.
"Tony walked over to the sofa by the wall and sat crossly on it. Through the door, in the hall, Jane's roller skates were lying yet again at the foot of the stairs. But something was wrong with them. One was standing straight but the other was at an odd angle, missing both its back wheels."
Now filtered, I would add another edit.
"Furious, Tony plunked down on the sofa. Through the door, Jane's roller skates again lay in the hallway at the foot of the stairs. Something was wrong. One stood straight the other at an odd angle, both rear wheels missing."
A final point. Emma's filtering provides a more sophisticated approach when dealing with flashbacks. Again, she uses a Burroway example.
"Cherry thought back to the days when she and Tony went skating together, though that was on ice."
I took the liberty of rewriting her edit for clarity.
"She and Tony often skated together, though in those days, on ice."
Here's the link to the full discussion.
Filtering
Is filtering relevant to Query Letters? Yes. If your well-crafted Query succeeds, you'll be asked for sample chapters. Literary agents know about filtering. And the Iceberg Theory.
As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments.
July 23, 2016
When "The Call' Comes, Be Ready
If I described a woman wearing “a shapeless sweater, an A-line brown skirt, and utilitarian boots”, would you know whom I'm referring to? Would you consider the description complimentary?
As my journey to better eBook sales continues, I thought we might detour to take in some important points not seen from the main road. The ensuing comments can be placed under the heading, 'Be Careful What You Ask For'.
In the back of our minds we all hope our books will become successful sellers that permit us to leave our day jobs and better focus our passion to write. For E.L. James, author of Fifty Shades of Grey, her dream came true to the tune of $58 million. And that dress description was just the opening salvo of the vicious twitter barrage and critical panning headed her way.
If 'The Call' comes one hour from now, are you ready? After ten minutes of jumping around like a crazy person, agents and publicists want to meet you this afternoon. What would you wear? What would you wear tomorrow and the day after? Is your wardrobe ready for its closeup?
Guys, do you have a suit? I don't mean something off the rack or from a catalogue. Do you have, a suit? Does it fit? Are you confident enough of your fashion sense you can dispense with formal shirt and tie, combine it with something casual, and walk in suave and debonair. Are your shoes faded and dull with the heels half-eroded? Do you need a woman's assistance? Who? I can spot a man dressed by a woman a mile away but most men can't and female interviewers will appreciate your good taste. And again, what about tomorrow and the day after?
Is your haircut/style a decade old? The same one you had as a teenager or undergrad? Can your stylist take an emergency appointment?
Sure, $58 million will solve all these problems but you're still a year from cashing that check. Can your budget handle a sudden surge in cash outlays? Do you have a rainy day fund? It's pouring.
And here's perhaps the most important question. Can you speak? Heard or seen E. L. James lately? I'm not talking about the kind used among family and friends. Can you speak without inarticulate thought-fillers: um, er, uh, like, you know?
Can you speak in front of strangers and dazzle them with the self-confident, self-possessed, urbane, worldly sophisticate we all know you are? Are you capable of getting in-the-moment, speaking off the cuff, and have an obscenity slip out?
I'm not going to give adults budgeting and saving advice. I'm sure people smarter and better positioned than I have already done so. In fact I'm sure, ahem, many of you already have these things.
But for those who speak like American sophomores, or seniors for that matter, I do have a suggestion. Purchase a voice recorder. Unless you're one of those budgeters and savers, it doesn't have to be anything fancy.
Then, when you rise to pace about and puzzle through that plot point, twist, turn, character trait or response, turn it on and think out loud. Do so with persistence and perseverance (is that redundant?). I know there's a myth people who talk to themselves are crazy but crazy people are mumbling within their own universe. Modern psychologists hold talking to oneself as an analytical process is a signpost of high intelligence and as a group, writers have an abundance of high intelligence.
Once you've solidified your spoken thoughts into the computer pause to play back the recorder. For some, it may come as a shock.
The human brain handles speech and word retrieval as separate processes. Hence, the thought-fillers. The brain must hear in order to correctly sound the phonemes of a particular language but it is not listening. You can hear what you are saying, but while speaking, you are not listening. Playing back the recorder begins the process of coordinating your thought formulation, word retrieval, and speech into a flowing, coordinated unity.
It can be done. Listen to any TV or radio broadcast. And it won't take long. A month maybe two at most. You'll still be able to sound hip and cool amongst friends and family but when needed you'll be able to slip out of it. Effortlessly.
Now, you won't need any of this if you're tuned into the cosmos and know the Amanda Hocking/E. L. James probability lightning will strike you. Nonetheless, you may get 'The Call' albeit under less dramatic circumstances. If so, you can bet the publisher's representatives will be gauging your ability to publicly market your book. Be ready.
What will I do when 'The Call' comes? I'm ready. My closet has three expensive, tailored suits but those are the accoutrements of a prior life. Folded on a shelf above, I have a pair of washed, cuffed, tough-guy jeans worn with leather hiking boots and a black t-shirt. Emblazoned across the chest is 'Deal With It'. I'll walk in holding a jeans jacket jauntily over one shoulder, give off a ton of edgy, artistic attitude, smile, then, despite being a native New Yorker, blow them away with my articulate erudition. lol
Okay, that's enough business. Next week we'll take a closer look at Query Letters and examine the insights of two literary agents. Query Letters and eBooks? The purpose of Kindle by the Sell is to sell eBooks. A good way to sell eBooks is to have a Literary Agent do it for you. For that you'll need a solid Query Letter. Let's turn to the creative side.
I'd like to place a final coda on last week's discussion of Hemingway's Iceberg Theory, that what a writer leaves out is as important as what he or she leaves in.
Contrary to what my friends might believe, I don't have it in for adverbs. Indeed, I look for opportunities to include them. Thinking being, the rarity of their presence will serve to enhance their power. While editing my current project, Seraphim, I came across this sentence that when first drafted, I thought needed the adverb. The protagonist is in Rome looking through a boutique's window.
Oddly, though Gandolini represented a one-stop shop for the gentleman aspiring to Italian couture, no one browsed within.
Despite 'though' being able to function as both conjunction and adverb, it would be difficult to imagine a scenario in creative fiction that would justify two successive adverbs. That alone warrants removing 'oddly'.
But as I looked at this, I thought I heard Ernest clearing his throat and indeed it's an excellent example of the Omission Theory.
Though Gandolini represented a one-stop shop for the gentleman aspiring to Italian couture, no one browsed within.
The presence, the 'tell' of 'oddly', permits the reader passive interaction with the sentence. Its removal now lets 'though' alert the reader to a paradox, then force its consideration with the sentence's final clause. Having removed one word from the observable iceberg, the reader must now interact with the story on a more sublime, dynamic basis with the bulk hidden beneath the surface.
In one fell swoop, we have paid homage to the great Ernest Hemingway and hurled another adverb onto the literary garbage heap.
As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments.
As my journey to better eBook sales continues, I thought we might detour to take in some important points not seen from the main road. The ensuing comments can be placed under the heading, 'Be Careful What You Ask For'.
In the back of our minds we all hope our books will become successful sellers that permit us to leave our day jobs and better focus our passion to write. For E.L. James, author of Fifty Shades of Grey, her dream came true to the tune of $58 million. And that dress description was just the opening salvo of the vicious twitter barrage and critical panning headed her way.
If 'The Call' comes one hour from now, are you ready? After ten minutes of jumping around like a crazy person, agents and publicists want to meet you this afternoon. What would you wear? What would you wear tomorrow and the day after? Is your wardrobe ready for its closeup?
Guys, do you have a suit? I don't mean something off the rack or from a catalogue. Do you have, a suit? Does it fit? Are you confident enough of your fashion sense you can dispense with formal shirt and tie, combine it with something casual, and walk in suave and debonair. Are your shoes faded and dull with the heels half-eroded? Do you need a woman's assistance? Who? I can spot a man dressed by a woman a mile away but most men can't and female interviewers will appreciate your good taste. And again, what about tomorrow and the day after?
Is your haircut/style a decade old? The same one you had as a teenager or undergrad? Can your stylist take an emergency appointment?
Sure, $58 million will solve all these problems but you're still a year from cashing that check. Can your budget handle a sudden surge in cash outlays? Do you have a rainy day fund? It's pouring.
And here's perhaps the most important question. Can you speak? Heard or seen E. L. James lately? I'm not talking about the kind used among family and friends. Can you speak without inarticulate thought-fillers: um, er, uh, like, you know?
Can you speak in front of strangers and dazzle them with the self-confident, self-possessed, urbane, worldly sophisticate we all know you are? Are you capable of getting in-the-moment, speaking off the cuff, and have an obscenity slip out?
I'm not going to give adults budgeting and saving advice. I'm sure people smarter and better positioned than I have already done so. In fact I'm sure, ahem, many of you already have these things.
But for those who speak like American sophomores, or seniors for that matter, I do have a suggestion. Purchase a voice recorder. Unless you're one of those budgeters and savers, it doesn't have to be anything fancy.
Then, when you rise to pace about and puzzle through that plot point, twist, turn, character trait or response, turn it on and think out loud. Do so with persistence and perseverance (is that redundant?). I know there's a myth people who talk to themselves are crazy but crazy people are mumbling within their own universe. Modern psychologists hold talking to oneself as an analytical process is a signpost of high intelligence and as a group, writers have an abundance of high intelligence.
Once you've solidified your spoken thoughts into the computer pause to play back the recorder. For some, it may come as a shock.
The human brain handles speech and word retrieval as separate processes. Hence, the thought-fillers. The brain must hear in order to correctly sound the phonemes of a particular language but it is not listening. You can hear what you are saying, but while speaking, you are not listening. Playing back the recorder begins the process of coordinating your thought formulation, word retrieval, and speech into a flowing, coordinated unity.
It can be done. Listen to any TV or radio broadcast. And it won't take long. A month maybe two at most. You'll still be able to sound hip and cool amongst friends and family but when needed you'll be able to slip out of it. Effortlessly.
Now, you won't need any of this if you're tuned into the cosmos and know the Amanda Hocking/E. L. James probability lightning will strike you. Nonetheless, you may get 'The Call' albeit under less dramatic circumstances. If so, you can bet the publisher's representatives will be gauging your ability to publicly market your book. Be ready.
What will I do when 'The Call' comes? I'm ready. My closet has three expensive, tailored suits but those are the accoutrements of a prior life. Folded on a shelf above, I have a pair of washed, cuffed, tough-guy jeans worn with leather hiking boots and a black t-shirt. Emblazoned across the chest is 'Deal With It'. I'll walk in holding a jeans jacket jauntily over one shoulder, give off a ton of edgy, artistic attitude, smile, then, despite being a native New Yorker, blow them away with my articulate erudition. lol
Okay, that's enough business. Next week we'll take a closer look at Query Letters and examine the insights of two literary agents. Query Letters and eBooks? The purpose of Kindle by the Sell is to sell eBooks. A good way to sell eBooks is to have a Literary Agent do it for you. For that you'll need a solid Query Letter. Let's turn to the creative side.
I'd like to place a final coda on last week's discussion of Hemingway's Iceberg Theory, that what a writer leaves out is as important as what he or she leaves in.
Contrary to what my friends might believe, I don't have it in for adverbs. Indeed, I look for opportunities to include them. Thinking being, the rarity of their presence will serve to enhance their power. While editing my current project, Seraphim, I came across this sentence that when first drafted, I thought needed the adverb. The protagonist is in Rome looking through a boutique's window.
Oddly, though Gandolini represented a one-stop shop for the gentleman aspiring to Italian couture, no one browsed within.
Despite 'though' being able to function as both conjunction and adverb, it would be difficult to imagine a scenario in creative fiction that would justify two successive adverbs. That alone warrants removing 'oddly'.
But as I looked at this, I thought I heard Ernest clearing his throat and indeed it's an excellent example of the Omission Theory.
Though Gandolini represented a one-stop shop for the gentleman aspiring to Italian couture, no one browsed within.
The presence, the 'tell' of 'oddly', permits the reader passive interaction with the sentence. Its removal now lets 'though' alert the reader to a paradox, then force its consideration with the sentence's final clause. Having removed one word from the observable iceberg, the reader must now interact with the story on a more sublime, dynamic basis with the bulk hidden beneath the surface.
In one fell swoop, we have paid homage to the great Ernest Hemingway and hurled another adverb onto the literary garbage heap.
As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments.
July 16, 2016
Book Reviews: A Discussion
My last post, which in a nod to quantum physics is simultaneously my first, began a journey of discovery to uncover the secrets of eBook selling. Today, that road brings us to reviews. This will not be comprehensive since the subject's complexity and scope will require a few more stops. Instead, overture and preamble will serve to provide what I've not found elsewhere: context.
An independent author with even a modicum of online presence is likely swamped with all manner of websites, marketers, eBook promoters, SEO specialists, and experts promising to write your blurb, pitch, query, synopsis, or polish your tome to a more professional shine.
I equate them with online carnival barkers and lump them under the heading SPG's (self-publishing gurus). All cost money and some quite a bit but none will answer what seems to me would be a decisive marketing edge. What are your results? What is your success rate? Indeed, all want to help you sell more books but are quite brazen in admitting they offer no guarantees except to cash your check. Which is why their common refrain, "Reviews are essential.", has made me a bit circumspect.
When I decided to go independent, I spent months studying SPG advice before first testing the book promotion waters by including only the websites that charged nothing for listing a book promotion. I also engaged in blog interviews for the exposure to their readers.
I include the link below for those who would like the names, requirements, and URL's of the sites I used. Of course, anyone downloading the spreadsheet should click the included site links to verify the information is the latest available. For those who might not have Excel, PM me so we can see if I can put it in a more convenient format for you.
Book Promotion Sites
Above is a table displaying the book promotion's aftermath. Needless to say, I was pleased with the results. That's for my British friends. For my American friends, I whooped and hollered. The SPG's were right! It worked, I thought.
I settled down to perform six successive halvings. Half would hate the book. Half would not write a review. Half might write a review but wouldn't in this case. Life circumstances would prevent another half from writing a review. Half would not write a review for reasons I could not imagine. And I halved it again, just because.
I had every reason to expect my paltry to-date review total would jump by at least 35. I whooped and hollered some more then sat down to plan my next promotion. I would not only expand the number of free sites and blogs but this time I would budget $200 to buy ad space and spread it out among the sites that charged. If I could get my review total to 100, surely I'd be on my way. Wouldn't word of mouth begin to factor in?
Three months later, my review total had not budged. Not even one review. When the number zero sank in, I made the only conclusion possible. I had to be the worst writer on Earth.
I came to the GR Review Group with the express purpose of learning what specific areas I had to work on. My fellow authors were kind enough to restore my shattered confidence with excellent reviews and thus force me to re-think this whole review process. Let's circle back to the statement, 'Reviews are essential'.
That's an SPG's sales pitch and a worthless one intended to sell their service, not your book. Sue Charman-Anderson, Business Contributor to Forbes' online edition, observed the following.
"Half of Amazon book sales are planned purchases (interjection mine: think about that for a moment). 10 percent of Amazon book choices are made because of its ‘bought this/also bought’ recommendation engine. Bestseller and top 100 lists influence 17% of book choices, with 12% down to promotions, deals, or low prices (bold italics mine). Only 3% came through browsing categories. Planned searches by author or topic, however, make up a whopping 48% of all book choices.
"Amazon is a destination for purchase...not a discovery mechanism in and of itself. People are simply not browsing for books based on Amazon’s recommendations, not in any significant numbers.
"Self-published authors have limited resources for promotion and these figures show that you should focus not on trying to woo Amazon’s algorithm, but on building awareness outside of Amazon. Rather than hoping to gain traction within that 10 percent of people who pay attention to Amazon’s recommendations, or trying to crowbar your title into bestseller or top 100 lists, you should be focusing on building an independent fan base. No one can search for your books if they don’t know you exist."
So the statement, 'Reviews are essential.', should be a question. How many reviews are essential?
Every day, books come across my email inbox with 15,000, 7,000, 600 reviews. Even if a reader thinks reviews are important in making a purchase, no one is going to read that many reviews. And as we saw above, only a tiny percentage are going to browse on the basis of reviews.
I'm going to suggest an independent author should not spend any more effort than needed to acquire about 45 reviews, with the sweet spot being between 15 and 30. I believe a minimum of 10 establishes a book's credibility, especially if they're good ones. Five or below and the competition will swamp it. And 10 is the maximum number someone will read. Most will select the two most negative, two most positive, and a few others.
Once you've established your book's credibility, any further effort to garner reviews is wasted. Why? Because the Law of Diminishing Returns must set in. There is a reason why it's a law and though I'll accept arguments for a higher number, I suspect once you've reached 45, its descent to zero is rapid.
And as we have seen, almost half of Amazon's book purchasers already know what they want, reviews be damned. Conclusion? Reviews don't sell books. Interested readers buy them. A subtle but crucial distinction.
One more point for debut authors. GR' Review Group is an invaluable resource. Unless you're a literary genius or Amanda Hocking, you should not see reviews as selling tools. For you, the sole purpose of a review is to identify your book's strengths and weaknesses. One, two, or three-star reviews should be cause for celebration. They spotlight faults and flaws.
On re-write, eliminate the legitimate criticisms, implement the suggestions that suit your style, edit and polish, then submit the same book to the next review group of fresh readers that forms. You will not only be building your book's credibility, you'll see your writing strengthen.
What's more important than reviews? In my opinion, concept originality, the plot's description (blurb), and the opening chapters. These will be the subjects of coming posts. Enough business. Let's turn to the creative side.
First, a quick detour. 84% of Romance readers are lady persons. The remaining 16% are not males but definitive proof extraterrestrials are already here. I fell upon a random nook among the Internet's infinite crannies. The link below is to Sonal Panse, a writer/artist in India, who posted a review titled 'Five Romance Heroes to Avoid'. She is a compelling writer.
Sonal's Review
Nobel Prize winning author, Ernest Hemingway, who must shake his head at my attempts to incorporate his insights, had a concept of writing he called "The Iceberg Theory". Snooty literary critics who probably sniffed at such a pedestrian title, refer to it as the 'Theory of Omission'.
Hemingway believed a story's deeper context and meaning should not occupy the foreground but exist within implied shadow.That like an iceberg whose surface masks the massive bulk beneath, what one leaves out of a story is as important as what one puts in.
But with great respect to Mr. Hemingway, stripping a sentence down to its essential components is not a modern construct. The word 'laconic' comes to us, meaning intact, from the ancient Athenians.
In their time, Laconia represented a region in southern Greece that had Sparta as its capital. Then, the city was known as Lacedaemon and its residents as Lakons. That is why their battle shields bore an 'L' (lambda) which to us looks like an upside down 'V'. History is replete with stories of the feared lambda appearing on the battlefield and enemies fleeing in terror.
The Spartans inculcated into their culture a style of speaking and writing renowned for its terse succinctness. They never used two words when one sufficed. Their communication patterns were so minimalist, the Athenians invented a word for it, 'laconikos', which of course comes down to us as laconic. How laconic were the Spartans?
In 348BC, King Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander you-know-who, became enraged the Spartans, enamored of their independence, refused to join his League of Corinth, formed to end the strife between the warring city-states. Philip sent an emissary to Sparta.
"If you force me to enter Laconia under arms, I will raze Sparta to the ground."
The emissary, fortunate he had not been asked to demand earth and water, returned to Athens with the Spartans' reply. Philip opened it to read, "If."
Note how what the Spartans left out did not eliminate its consideration, or dilute the power of what they left in. Your re-writes and edits should reach across the millennia to bond with Leonidas and Gorgo.
As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome.
An independent author with even a modicum of online presence is likely swamped with all manner of websites, marketers, eBook promoters, SEO specialists, and experts promising to write your blurb, pitch, query, synopsis, or polish your tome to a more professional shine.
I equate them with online carnival barkers and lump them under the heading SPG's (self-publishing gurus). All cost money and some quite a bit but none will answer what seems to me would be a decisive marketing edge. What are your results? What is your success rate? Indeed, all want to help you sell more books but are quite brazen in admitting they offer no guarantees except to cash your check. Which is why their common refrain, "Reviews are essential.", has made me a bit circumspect.
When I decided to go independent, I spent months studying SPG advice before first testing the book promotion waters by including only the websites that charged nothing for listing a book promotion. I also engaged in blog interviews for the exposure to their readers.
I include the link below for those who would like the names, requirements, and URL's of the sites I used. Of course, anyone downloading the spreadsheet should click the included site links to verify the information is the latest available. For those who might not have Excel, PM me so we can see if I can put it in a more convenient format for you.
Book Promotion Sites
Above is a table displaying the book promotion's aftermath. Needless to say, I was pleased with the results. That's for my British friends. For my American friends, I whooped and hollered. The SPG's were right! It worked, I thought.
I settled down to perform six successive halvings. Half would hate the book. Half would not write a review. Half might write a review but wouldn't in this case. Life circumstances would prevent another half from writing a review. Half would not write a review for reasons I could not imagine. And I halved it again, just because.
I had every reason to expect my paltry to-date review total would jump by at least 35. I whooped and hollered some more then sat down to plan my next promotion. I would not only expand the number of free sites and blogs but this time I would budget $200 to buy ad space and spread it out among the sites that charged. If I could get my review total to 100, surely I'd be on my way. Wouldn't word of mouth begin to factor in?
Three months later, my review total had not budged. Not even one review. When the number zero sank in, I made the only conclusion possible. I had to be the worst writer on Earth.
I came to the GR Review Group with the express purpose of learning what specific areas I had to work on. My fellow authors were kind enough to restore my shattered confidence with excellent reviews and thus force me to re-think this whole review process. Let's circle back to the statement, 'Reviews are essential'.
That's an SPG's sales pitch and a worthless one intended to sell their service, not your book. Sue Charman-Anderson, Business Contributor to Forbes' online edition, observed the following.
"Half of Amazon book sales are planned purchases (interjection mine: think about that for a moment). 10 percent of Amazon book choices are made because of its ‘bought this/also bought’ recommendation engine. Bestseller and top 100 lists influence 17% of book choices, with 12% down to promotions, deals, or low prices (bold italics mine). Only 3% came through browsing categories. Planned searches by author or topic, however, make up a whopping 48% of all book choices.
"Amazon is a destination for purchase...not a discovery mechanism in and of itself. People are simply not browsing for books based on Amazon’s recommendations, not in any significant numbers.
"Self-published authors have limited resources for promotion and these figures show that you should focus not on trying to woo Amazon’s algorithm, but on building awareness outside of Amazon. Rather than hoping to gain traction within that 10 percent of people who pay attention to Amazon’s recommendations, or trying to crowbar your title into bestseller or top 100 lists, you should be focusing on building an independent fan base. No one can search for your books if they don’t know you exist."
So the statement, 'Reviews are essential.', should be a question. How many reviews are essential?
Every day, books come across my email inbox with 15,000, 7,000, 600 reviews. Even if a reader thinks reviews are important in making a purchase, no one is going to read that many reviews. And as we saw above, only a tiny percentage are going to browse on the basis of reviews.
I'm going to suggest an independent author should not spend any more effort than needed to acquire about 45 reviews, with the sweet spot being between 15 and 30. I believe a minimum of 10 establishes a book's credibility, especially if they're good ones. Five or below and the competition will swamp it. And 10 is the maximum number someone will read. Most will select the two most negative, two most positive, and a few others.
Once you've established your book's credibility, any further effort to garner reviews is wasted. Why? Because the Law of Diminishing Returns must set in. There is a reason why it's a law and though I'll accept arguments for a higher number, I suspect once you've reached 45, its descent to zero is rapid.
And as we have seen, almost half of Amazon's book purchasers already know what they want, reviews be damned. Conclusion? Reviews don't sell books. Interested readers buy them. A subtle but crucial distinction.
One more point for debut authors. GR' Review Group is an invaluable resource. Unless you're a literary genius or Amanda Hocking, you should not see reviews as selling tools. For you, the sole purpose of a review is to identify your book's strengths and weaknesses. One, two, or three-star reviews should be cause for celebration. They spotlight faults and flaws.
On re-write, eliminate the legitimate criticisms, implement the suggestions that suit your style, edit and polish, then submit the same book to the next review group of fresh readers that forms. You will not only be building your book's credibility, you'll see your writing strengthen.
What's more important than reviews? In my opinion, concept originality, the plot's description (blurb), and the opening chapters. These will be the subjects of coming posts. Enough business. Let's turn to the creative side.
First, a quick detour. 84% of Romance readers are lady persons. The remaining 16% are not males but definitive proof extraterrestrials are already here. I fell upon a random nook among the Internet's infinite crannies. The link below is to Sonal Panse, a writer/artist in India, who posted a review titled 'Five Romance Heroes to Avoid'. She is a compelling writer.
Sonal's Review
Nobel Prize winning author, Ernest Hemingway, who must shake his head at my attempts to incorporate his insights, had a concept of writing he called "The Iceberg Theory". Snooty literary critics who probably sniffed at such a pedestrian title, refer to it as the 'Theory of Omission'.
Hemingway believed a story's deeper context and meaning should not occupy the foreground but exist within implied shadow.That like an iceberg whose surface masks the massive bulk beneath, what one leaves out of a story is as important as what one puts in.
But with great respect to Mr. Hemingway, stripping a sentence down to its essential components is not a modern construct. The word 'laconic' comes to us, meaning intact, from the ancient Athenians.
In their time, Laconia represented a region in southern Greece that had Sparta as its capital. Then, the city was known as Lacedaemon and its residents as Lakons. That is why their battle shields bore an 'L' (lambda) which to us looks like an upside down 'V'. History is replete with stories of the feared lambda appearing on the battlefield and enemies fleeing in terror.
The Spartans inculcated into their culture a style of speaking and writing renowned for its terse succinctness. They never used two words when one sufficed. Their communication patterns were so minimalist, the Athenians invented a word for it, 'laconikos', which of course comes down to us as laconic. How laconic were the Spartans?
In 348BC, King Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander you-know-who, became enraged the Spartans, enamored of their independence, refused to join his League of Corinth, formed to end the strife between the warring city-states. Philip sent an emissary to Sparta.
"If you force me to enter Laconia under arms, I will raze Sparta to the ground."
The emissary, fortunate he had not been asked to demand earth and water, returned to Athens with the Spartans' reply. Philip opened it to read, "If."
Note how what the Spartans left out did not eliminate its consideration, or dilute the power of what they left in. Your re-writes and edits should reach across the millennia to bond with Leonidas and Gorgo.
As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome.
July 9, 2016
eBook Marketing: A Reality Check
Welcome everyone to my first anytime, anywhere blog posting. Generally, I'll enforce no rules here. The more freewheeling, provocative, passionate it can be the better it will serve everyone. However, since the antithesis of honest, open debate is political correctness, anyone injecting it will be sent to the end of the line. Tact and courtesy will obtain, but not procrastination. In keeping with this blog's personality, let's get right to it.
To begin with, 'going viral' is nothing new. In 1848, the man on whose land a carpenter found a gold nugget, became the poster child for failed news censorship. Within months, men with gold dollar signs dancing before their eyes, overran his property. By 1850, and without Twitter or Facebook, the population influx, including from China, Germany, Chile, Mexico, Ireland, Turkey, and France had become so great, it forced the United States to incorporate California into the Union.
It even made possible our ubiquitous modern wear when a young German tailor, seeing the miners needed more durable, rugged pants, invented Levi Strauss' denim jeans.
Skip ahead, skip ahead, and we now have advanced computers rediscovering an old phenomenon. Writers, their eyes wild with dollar (and just in case Emma reads this, pound sterling *wink*) signs dancing before them, are swamping the internet in the self-publishing gold rush.
We even have our own poster child: Amanda Hocking. Morose and disenchanted at having failed for years to attract an agent who would sell her 17 unpublished paranormal books, she was desperate to see Jim Henson's Muppet show coming to Chicago. But she couldn't afford the gasoline needed to drive the eight hours from her home in Austin, Minnesota. What was a poor, destitute, diehard Muppets fan to do with six months counting down to the show? She didn't need much. A few hundred dollars at most. Why, join the gold rush, of course!
She selected one of her titles, studied proper Kindle formatting, threw it up on Amazon, and in six months sold 150,000 copies and pocketed $20,000. Amanda made it to the show and could even afford the popcorn she hadn't counted on. To date, she's sold 1.5 million books and banked a nifty $2.5 million. Our gold rush princess lives happily ever after.
What are we, toiling in our electronic denims, to make of this? Two similar phenomenons separated by time but not substance and character.
Kindle by the Sell will chronicle my adventures and misadventures as I embark on a quest to learn exactly how one goes about increasing eBook sales. What works, and as importantly, what doesn't.
Also, since it will underpin (or compromise) all marketing efforts, I will incorporate articles, thoughts, and essays on the craft of creative writing. I suspect the respective mix will be about 70%-30% but we'll see how it goes since I hope much of the agenda will be driven by your questions, responses, and contributions.
In any event, Amanda Hocking will not be the model to emulate. How did she do it? The truth is she didn't. Mathematical certainty and cold, precise logic will be the tools employed here. In any given population, the Law of Probability dictates that an Amanda Hocking must occur. Like a random plot point, she entered a curved slope at a precise moment that could not have been foreseen or predicted. With no social media presence, reviews, or marketing budget, she caught a Probability wave and it carried her to fame and fortune.
Speaking of which, I am very dubious social media does anything beyond letting people socialize, i.e., communicate more efficiently. Claims that membership within Facebook, Twitter, et al, are prerequisites to publishing success, reverse the Law of Cause and Effect and are made merely to validate choices made by those who bought in.
Consider this. Does anyone see ads paid for by social media companies parading the millionaires their systems created? Do they exist? Sure. But again, not beyond what the Law of Probability would dictate.
So, should we just sit around and wait to hit the writing Lotto? No. My point is our time, energy, and budgets should be directed toward activities that have concrete, measurable results. I intend to move away from the notion of selling more ebooks and concentrate on how to attract more readers. Goodreads has 20 million. One tenth of a percent, anyone?
And I just can't imagine the effort being made without some expenditure of money. We capitalists like to throw around our own cliches like, 'you have to spend money to make money'. How much, for what, and to whom? Here's another cliche. What gets the most bang for the buck?
I'll be covering these issues in extensive detail but that's enough on the business end. Let's turn to the creative side.
I would like to first introduce everyone to LOP, rhymes with dope. He is the Lord of the Plume. Yeah, I know, but LOTP is hard to pronounce. He is the god of ideas, concepts, twists, turns, and inspiration. Ever had a plot take an unexpected, unimagined turn? Ever have a character jump out of nowhere, personality whole and intact? Yup. That was LOP. Never had these experiences? Now you know why. Hint. He's partial to avocado incense.
And yes. He is a he. Any lady persons troubled by this just think of him as a son. He'll be a frequent visitor to this blog so please make him feel welcome and at home.
An example of him at work is my insight into 'deep writing'. I'm going to cheat a little and re-post an answer I gave to those dork GR questions on our author pages. It's an interesting concept, I think, so I look forward to what reactions it might engender. The question was, what advice I would give an aspiring writer.
"At the risk of being obvious, a writer must write. You must write until you have achieved an intuitive understanding of what I refer to as 'deep writing'. What is 'deep writing'? I present three examples.
"1. Like religion, the faceless officials demanded obedience.
"On its face, nothing jumps out from this sentence as 'wrong'. Even if it had a grammatical error, and it doesn't, grammatical perfection can sometimes be sacrificed for stylistic purposes. Almost always, it can be sacrificed in dialogue but never, in either case, if clarity is compromised.
"In this sentence, however, the adjective 'faceless' provides the clue. These are vague, nebulous, unknown officials. The definite article 'the' dilutes the adjective, indeed, contradicts it. Ambiguousness cannot be specific.
"Like religion, faceless officials demanded obedience.
"'Seeing' that this sentence now conveys a shadowy sentiment more powerfully is 'deep writing'.
"Moreover, on re-write and edit, include occurrences of 'the'. You'll be astonished how often you can remove it and thereby 'deepen' your writing.
"2. Ann motioned in the air, as if with an eraser on an old-fashioned chalkboard.
"Prepositional phrases, an essential component of the English language, are anathema to sentence rhythm and musicality. Rhythm and musicality permit a reader to forget he or she is reading and enter a state where the story flows directly into the mind's eye. Prepositional phrases interrupt sentence rhythm. On re-write and edit, look for every opportunity to reduce or eliminate them altogether.
"Ann motioned eraser-like, as if on an old-fashioned chalkboard.
"Sentence rhythm and musicality are highly, highly subjective and include aspects of voice and style. Taken together, these elements are antecedent to 'deep writing'. Nonetheless, the revised sentence has much better 'flow'.
"3. The beast leaped in the air. (For those who like puzzles, take a moment to consider what this sentence's problem might be.)
"Verbs are essential to writing. Strong verbs are essential to strong writing. Resist diluting them. In addition to being a prepositional phrase, 'in the air' is redundant.
"Two points on strong verbs. On re-write and edit, be merciless in removing 'was' from your writing. I read one editor who referred to it as 'wasitis'. 'Was' is a lazy substitute for an appropriate or strong verb. Yes, it will require work and effort. The result will be 'deep writing'.
"Secondly, the admonition against adverbs is correct. They too, are lazy substitutes for strong verbs. Though sometimes unavoidable (they are a legitimate component of the English language), watch for them. Lazy writing makes for lazy stories."
Before I close, I will hopefully be including images, links, and attachments to enhance future posts. Right now, I'm researching exactly how to do that on GR. Anyone who knows, I would welcome your shortcutting the process.
I am also nearing the point where I can write 'The End' to my current project, Seraphim. I will soon begin the process of going over my extensive and detailed roster of American (and one British, if I remember correctly) literary agents, checking for staff changes. It includes URL's, preferences, specialties, and specific submission requirements. When I do, I'll make it available through the blog but you'll have to PM me since I won't post it publicly.
So, the journey of a 1,000 miles is begun. I welcome your questions, responses, reactions, and critiques.
To begin with, 'going viral' is nothing new. In 1848, the man on whose land a carpenter found a gold nugget, became the poster child for failed news censorship. Within months, men with gold dollar signs dancing before their eyes, overran his property. By 1850, and without Twitter or Facebook, the population influx, including from China, Germany, Chile, Mexico, Ireland, Turkey, and France had become so great, it forced the United States to incorporate California into the Union.
It even made possible our ubiquitous modern wear when a young German tailor, seeing the miners needed more durable, rugged pants, invented Levi Strauss' denim jeans.
Skip ahead, skip ahead, and we now have advanced computers rediscovering an old phenomenon. Writers, their eyes wild with dollar (and just in case Emma reads this, pound sterling *wink*) signs dancing before them, are swamping the internet in the self-publishing gold rush.
We even have our own poster child: Amanda Hocking. Morose and disenchanted at having failed for years to attract an agent who would sell her 17 unpublished paranormal books, she was desperate to see Jim Henson's Muppet show coming to Chicago. But she couldn't afford the gasoline needed to drive the eight hours from her home in Austin, Minnesota. What was a poor, destitute, diehard Muppets fan to do with six months counting down to the show? She didn't need much. A few hundred dollars at most. Why, join the gold rush, of course!
She selected one of her titles, studied proper Kindle formatting, threw it up on Amazon, and in six months sold 150,000 copies and pocketed $20,000. Amanda made it to the show and could even afford the popcorn she hadn't counted on. To date, she's sold 1.5 million books and banked a nifty $2.5 million. Our gold rush princess lives happily ever after.
What are we, toiling in our electronic denims, to make of this? Two similar phenomenons separated by time but not substance and character.
Kindle by the Sell will chronicle my adventures and misadventures as I embark on a quest to learn exactly how one goes about increasing eBook sales. What works, and as importantly, what doesn't.
Also, since it will underpin (or compromise) all marketing efforts, I will incorporate articles, thoughts, and essays on the craft of creative writing. I suspect the respective mix will be about 70%-30% but we'll see how it goes since I hope much of the agenda will be driven by your questions, responses, and contributions.
In any event, Amanda Hocking will not be the model to emulate. How did she do it? The truth is she didn't. Mathematical certainty and cold, precise logic will be the tools employed here. In any given population, the Law of Probability dictates that an Amanda Hocking must occur. Like a random plot point, she entered a curved slope at a precise moment that could not have been foreseen or predicted. With no social media presence, reviews, or marketing budget, she caught a Probability wave and it carried her to fame and fortune.
Speaking of which, I am very dubious social media does anything beyond letting people socialize, i.e., communicate more efficiently. Claims that membership within Facebook, Twitter, et al, are prerequisites to publishing success, reverse the Law of Cause and Effect and are made merely to validate choices made by those who bought in.
Consider this. Does anyone see ads paid for by social media companies parading the millionaires their systems created? Do they exist? Sure. But again, not beyond what the Law of Probability would dictate.
So, should we just sit around and wait to hit the writing Lotto? No. My point is our time, energy, and budgets should be directed toward activities that have concrete, measurable results. I intend to move away from the notion of selling more ebooks and concentrate on how to attract more readers. Goodreads has 20 million. One tenth of a percent, anyone?
And I just can't imagine the effort being made without some expenditure of money. We capitalists like to throw around our own cliches like, 'you have to spend money to make money'. How much, for what, and to whom? Here's another cliche. What gets the most bang for the buck?
I'll be covering these issues in extensive detail but that's enough on the business end. Let's turn to the creative side.
I would like to first introduce everyone to LOP, rhymes with dope. He is the Lord of the Plume. Yeah, I know, but LOTP is hard to pronounce. He is the god of ideas, concepts, twists, turns, and inspiration. Ever had a plot take an unexpected, unimagined turn? Ever have a character jump out of nowhere, personality whole and intact? Yup. That was LOP. Never had these experiences? Now you know why. Hint. He's partial to avocado incense.
And yes. He is a he. Any lady persons troubled by this just think of him as a son. He'll be a frequent visitor to this blog so please make him feel welcome and at home.
An example of him at work is my insight into 'deep writing'. I'm going to cheat a little and re-post an answer I gave to those dork GR questions on our author pages. It's an interesting concept, I think, so I look forward to what reactions it might engender. The question was, what advice I would give an aspiring writer.
"At the risk of being obvious, a writer must write. You must write until you have achieved an intuitive understanding of what I refer to as 'deep writing'. What is 'deep writing'? I present three examples.
"1. Like religion, the faceless officials demanded obedience.
"On its face, nothing jumps out from this sentence as 'wrong'. Even if it had a grammatical error, and it doesn't, grammatical perfection can sometimes be sacrificed for stylistic purposes. Almost always, it can be sacrificed in dialogue but never, in either case, if clarity is compromised.
"In this sentence, however, the adjective 'faceless' provides the clue. These are vague, nebulous, unknown officials. The definite article 'the' dilutes the adjective, indeed, contradicts it. Ambiguousness cannot be specific.
"Like religion, faceless officials demanded obedience.
"'Seeing' that this sentence now conveys a shadowy sentiment more powerfully is 'deep writing'.
"Moreover, on re-write and edit, include occurrences of 'the'. You'll be astonished how often you can remove it and thereby 'deepen' your writing.
"2. Ann motioned in the air, as if with an eraser on an old-fashioned chalkboard.
"Prepositional phrases, an essential component of the English language, are anathema to sentence rhythm and musicality. Rhythm and musicality permit a reader to forget he or she is reading and enter a state where the story flows directly into the mind's eye. Prepositional phrases interrupt sentence rhythm. On re-write and edit, look for every opportunity to reduce or eliminate them altogether.
"Ann motioned eraser-like, as if on an old-fashioned chalkboard.
"Sentence rhythm and musicality are highly, highly subjective and include aspects of voice and style. Taken together, these elements are antecedent to 'deep writing'. Nonetheless, the revised sentence has much better 'flow'.
"3. The beast leaped in the air. (For those who like puzzles, take a moment to consider what this sentence's problem might be.)
"Verbs are essential to writing. Strong verbs are essential to strong writing. Resist diluting them. In addition to being a prepositional phrase, 'in the air' is redundant.
"Two points on strong verbs. On re-write and edit, be merciless in removing 'was' from your writing. I read one editor who referred to it as 'wasitis'. 'Was' is a lazy substitute for an appropriate or strong verb. Yes, it will require work and effort. The result will be 'deep writing'.
"Secondly, the admonition against adverbs is correct. They too, are lazy substitutes for strong verbs. Though sometimes unavoidable (they are a legitimate component of the English language), watch for them. Lazy writing makes for lazy stories."
Before I close, I will hopefully be including images, links, and attachments to enhance future posts. Right now, I'm researching exactly how to do that on GR. Anyone who knows, I would welcome your shortcutting the process.
I am also nearing the point where I can write 'The End' to my current project, Seraphim. I will soon begin the process of going over my extensive and detailed roster of American (and one British, if I remember correctly) literary agents, checking for staff changes. It includes URL's, preferences, specialties, and specific submission requirements. When I do, I'll make it available through the blog but you'll have to PM me since I won't post it publicly.
So, the journey of a 1,000 miles is begun. I welcome your questions, responses, reactions, and critiques.
