Mary Sisson's Blog, page 112

Interesting bit about audience building

Passive Voice linked to an extremely dumb article about how self-publishing is hard. I mean, of course self-publishing is hard, publishing is hard, but the implication is that if you publish traditionally you just lie around eating chocolates all day while hard-working publishing professionals carry you around on a divan and fan you with palm fronds, plus there are some flat-out lies about things you can't do if you self-publish. (Like sell movie and foreign rights. Tell that to Hugh Howey.)

Of course the comments are mostly about how painfully stupid and ignorant the article is, but then (as it often does) it goes off on an interesting segue, as two authors discuss how instead of writing a novel and then trying to find an audience (like meeee!), they instead found an audience (via writing fan fiction and political blogging) and then wrote novels that appealed to that niche. Neither author, it should be noted, actually planned to do this; it's just how things worked out.

But it's something to keep in mind if you are already writing a lot on a particular topic. You can't stray too far (like I doooo!), but there are plenty of, say, historians who also enjoy writing historical fiction out there.

Progress report

Today wound up being kind of a random day with household stuff taking up most of my time. Plus my stomach was killing me last night, so I got no sleep. Let's put it this way: Changing links on the Web site was pretty much all I was good for, and it was oddly entertaining until I got tired.

Chatting and giving stuff away on Library Thing

So, the author chat is live on Library Thing until June 8th. Feel free to go there and ask me questions about pretty much anything--it can be about self-publishing or what I thought of The Avengers, I don't care.

Also, the Library Thing Trang giveaway is up, if for some reason you'd rather do that than use the Smashwords coupon. It goes until June 18th.

And I just want to say that Jeremy of Library Thing rocks my socks. There were some technical problems with the giveaway (which meant that there was--gasp!--a slight delay between me thinking, "Hmm, maybe I should do a giveaway" and actually having one up), and the cover is wrong, but you know, the attitude is right. Jeremy is like, "There's a problem with the cover, I'm sorry--we'll fix that ASAP," he's not like, "We won't let you use your cover, because we're claiming that it is impossible for us to swap out a JPG file." Very little drama, no rules that aren't actually real, and when things go wrong, people acknowledge that they have gone wrong and should be set right. Really, that's all I ask....

Progress report

Yes, progress marches ever on. I made the small changes to the cover of the paperback (next time I'm just going to do it all in one file so that the layer information doesn't get lost) and did a little work on the large-print edition. I also am starting some serious grunt work on this blog, changing interior links so that they all have the marysisson.com address. That's pretty much the ultimate beta job, no?

I'll probably start up on Trials again later in the week.

Interesting, if not exactly shocking

So, I'm doing a Smashwords coupon for a free copy of Trang (go here, the code is MC96E, expires July 1st). I Tweeted it and whatnot, but I wasn't expecting much of a response that way because I've done free Smashwords coupons before, so my feeling is, if you were interested in getting yourself a copy of Trang, you already did.

But I did do something new, which was to post about it on Kindleboards.

And there's been basically zero response. To a free book.

I'm not shocked, because when Derek Canyon bought an ad on Kindleboards, he sold only one book. Guess what he writes? Science fiction!

This is just another reminder to myself that the key here is targeted marketing. With science fiction especially, you have to find people who are willing to read it. Marketing to a broad audience just isn't going to cut it.

Speaking of finding people and free books, I think I'm going to do another Trang giveaway on Library Thing--it's been six months, the book has good reviews there now, and I'm trying to make sure that the people there who liked Trang know that Trust is out.

Decompressing.....

OK, enough of all that. Boy, it's a lot of work getting a book out!

I suppose in theory I should now run around and promote, promote, promote, but I think we all know that's not going to happen.

I will be doing an author chat Monday on LibraryThing--mainly to let the LibraryThing people know that there's a sequel out. And I posted a thing on Kindle Boards, which I'll bump when I'm allowed to bump it. So, you know, if you do either of those things and feel like saying Hi over there, please do.

Mainly, I'm taking a deep breath. And I'm going to see The Avengers tonight! It looks like Cabin in the Woods is still around, too....

There's still stuff I need to do for Trust--there's two very minor art changes I want to make to the paperback cover. We're talking, stuff that's not big at all, but because I now have fancier cover art, it's going to require some attention to fix it properly. Plus of course I have to finish the large-print edition, and make those same changes to its cover.

Buuuut I'm not going to chain myself to the computer for all this. It's more a mind-set thing than anything else. I need some balance back in my home life.

Trust is out!

Whoo-hoo! DONE!

The e-book is at Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords--$2.99 until July 1, when I raise the price to $4.99.

If you haven't read Trang yet, I'm giving it away on Smashwords until July 1--go here and use the coupon code MC96E.

(And, yeah, I'll be giving Trang away a lot, and eventually making it free. Trust is going to be holding pretty steady on price, if only because I am lazy, so....)

The paperback? It's supposed to be on Amazon fairly soon (and everywhere else eventually--I paid the $25 and put it on expanded distribution), but right now it's only on CreateSpace's site. My understanding is that they charge an arm and a leg for shipping, so I would wait if I were you. (Yes, I get a bigger chunk of the money that way, but remember how I'm in the Illuminati? Don't worry about it.)

So many details!

OK, the e-books are really, really finished now. I wanted to have good back matter, but you can't do things like link to where people bought the book with a suggestion that they leave a review if you don't have a Web address for it--the book has to be up before it can really go up. And then I had to upload new versions of Trang that have links to where you can buy Trust, as well as the sample chapters.

And then the Smashwords tech help people had to figure out why Trust wouldn't convert--the short answer is, Word Sucks, the long answer is, Word stuck a bunch of invisible crap in there (in other words, Word Sucks). So I pulled all the crap out of the Smashwords version, and then I took another look at the Amazon and B&N versions, and sure enough, the invisible crap is not so invisible in an e-book format. (I hate you, Word.) So I had to replace those things one more time.

But it's all good now--by tomorrow, which is the official release date (you didn't know that, did you? That's what I told the reviewers, anyway), the aboslute final versions should be the ones you actually get when you pony up for them.

I don't know when the paper book will be up. The Amazon international e-book editions are up already--better go link to them on my home page. Whee!

Trust is uploaded! Mostly!

I formatted the Trust e-books and uploaded them to Barnes & Noble and Amazon...but not Smashwords. For some reason, Smashwords won't take my Word file. At first I thought it was because I tried making my own clickable table of contents (if everything is labeled "Chapter 1," "Chapter 2," etc, Smashwords will automatically generate one, but I have one labeled "Epilogue"). So I trashed that (changing "Epilogue" to "Chapter 28: Epilogue"), but it still wouldn't take it. It's giving me no information whatsoever for why the conversion won't work, and I've done things like clip and paste into a new Word file (which usually helps on the many, many occasions that a Word file goes wonkus) to no avail. So I'm wondering if that's a problem on their end--maybe waiting a couple of days will help there.

And the Amazon file looks a little weird because Amazon took the "Normal" text (which isn't indented in Word) and indented it more than the indented text. It's fine as far as readability is concerned, but I've got a tweaked file ready to go. Also I forgot to include the word count (113,000, if you care) and the language advisory (whoops! Well, hopefully people will see that on the first book) in the descriptions, so I'll have to tweak that, too.

FYI I am indeed running that Early Bird Special--Trust will be $2.99 until July 1, when I will raise the price to $4.99. I also am doing a giveaway of Trang on Smashwords until July 1, despite the fact that they won't let me upload Trust--the coupon code is MC96E, and the book is all by itself over here.

You can be too even-handed

So I'm all jet-lagged and kid-weary and my nose keeps bleeding, but I'm going to post here anyway because when I came back I caught up on all my blog reading, and a couple of things stood out to me.

The first was a post by Dean Wesley Smith where he suddenly gets all agnostic and says that traditional publishing isn't so bad after all. (I guess that's true provided you can find a publisher willing to give you a decent contract--the only problem is that Smith can't.) This was written to agree with a post by Nathan Bransford, who seems to have decided that this is a good thing to harp on.

The other is a post by Robert Bidinotto (via PV) on the many, many advantages of self-publishing.

Compare and contrast! What bothers me about this whole, "Hey, guys, let's not harsh on traditional publishing; it's a big world and there's room for all kinds of people in it" thing is that it implies that the many, many advantages of self-publishing don't exist. Everything's groovy, everyone's special, everyone's children are above average.

Bullshit. There are serious issues with traditional publishers, not the least of which is that many of the industry leaders are being sued by the federal government and several state governments. Which happened because they looked at the future and couldn't see themselves in it. That is A Bad Sign.

One of the reasons why I liked Amanda Hocking's thought process about accepting a traditional-publishing contract was that she was very aware of what she was risking by doing so. She wrote (emphasis added):

[L]et's be honest - if I self-published the Watersong series on my own, I could probably make $2 million within a year or two. Five years tops. I am fully aware that I stand a chance of losing money on this deal compared to what I could make self-publishing.

She also noted that she probably wouldn't have taken the deal if she didn't have the safety net of several self-published books. She's not deluding herself that it's all going to be puppies and ice cream and unicorns: She's got enough income from self-publishing and her advance was large enough that everything could go to hell with her publisher and she'd still be fine.

Does that describe you? Does it describe most writers?

What troubles me about talking about traditional publishing vs. self-publishing like it's six of one and half-a-dozen of the other is that the people who will actually believe that are the new writers who know nothing about the industry. And new, non-celebrity writers are the most likely to not get anywhere: They are inherently undesirable to agents and publishers because they have no track record, and they're not the ones who will be getting the decent contracts.

I was a "new" writer when I started. I spent some six years trying to get something published traditionally. And I had absolutely nothing to show for it in the end--not a single thing. It was a complete waste of my time and money (and yes, it does cost money). And I've been writing professionally since 1992.

I decided to self-publish in Christmas of 2010. By January 2011, I had a book up. It was kind of a mess, and I had to fix a bunch of stuff, but fix it I did, and it now looks pretty good.

It's a year-and-a-half after I put up my first book, and I'll have another book up in a couple of days. So: Two books down in a quarter of the time it took me to get absolutely nothing done in the traditional model. Yeah, I haven't had big sales (nor did I expect them), but I have had some, which is better than having absolutely nothing.

And I have a book out. That's not just good for the old ego--since I have that book out, I can leverage it to sell my second book. Trang is a tool in my toolbox that I didn't have before. I'm in a better position now than when I released Trang a year-and-a-half ago, and my position will only improve as I release Trials and then Tribulations.

Hopefully that won't take six friggin' years, but even if it does, it will be six years that produce four books, not six years with absolutely nothing to show for them.

The thing is, as a new writer, even if you have your sights set on being traditionally published, you should skip the damned agents and self-publish! Again, look at Hocking--hell, look at the example Bransford cites as proof that it's all One Love in the world of publishing. The traditional process did absolutely nothing for these people. They got their contracts by self-publishing.

Self-publishing is productive. When you self-publish, you produce books. These books have value in the market--maybe not a lot of value, but still a lot more value than a fistful of complimentary and conflicted rejection letters. These books will sell your other books. These books will get you a contract, if that's what you want.

The rejection letters where people talk about how much they're looking forward to reading your book when it comes out? Amusing or irritating, depending on your mood, but totally worthless.