Meredith Allard's Blog, page 33

The Business of Being an Author: Taking the Advice That Feels Right to Me

In Leo Babauta’s post about how he conducts his business, he talks about the mistakes he’s made as he’s built his business. I’ve made more than my fair share of mistakes as well. I learned that I need to stop worrying so much about what others say or do, and I learned that I had to take the advice that feels right and forget the rest.

There are a lot of proclamations out there about the right way to be an indie author. Do this! Don’t do that! Your book will die a slow and violent death if you even consider the other thing over there! Like other authors, I’ve read voraciously about publishing and marketing, and when I began my journey as an indie author in 2011, I tried to do everything I read about, which only made me hyperventilate with the sheer abundance of all the information.

There are so many rules to follow when you’re an author. I had to have an author platform. I had to be discoverable. I had to find where my readers hang out online and comment on blogs where I wanted to be noticed, though I had to be careful how I commented so I wouldn’t offend anybody. I had to blog 3-4 times a week, or two times a week, or once a week, depending on whose advice I was reading. I had to have a static landing page on my website and not the most recent blog post (oops!). I had to understand Amazon’s algorithms. I had to understand Google search engines and keyword searches and SEO (which, to be honest, I still don’t understand). I had to follow the ten steps to a perfect book launch. I had to succeed (whatever that means) at social media, and I had to conduct my social media accounts just so. I had to become an expert in something. I had to market to readers, not writers. I read that one way to gain readers is to create classes and booklets and freebies to give away, so I wracked my brain trying to think of something I could create or sell that hasn’t been done to death and came up empty-handed and frustrated. I read about ads and affiliate marketing. Don’t get me started on book pricing. First I read an article that said 99 cents is the right price for indie books so I changed the prices to 99 cents. Then a few days later I read something that said $2.99 was the correct price point so I changed the price to $2.99. Then I read an article that said something else all together and I changed the prices again. And again.

After making myself crazy for months, maybe even a year, I realized I couldn’t do everything I read about because, first, a lot of the so-called rules are contradictory, and, second, some of it simply didn’t feel right to me (Leo’s rule #12: Do what feels right). I stopped reading everything about being an indie publisher in favor of sticking with the blogs I trust (see my #1). I gave up on the platform idea a long time ago. I don’t imagine I’ll be seen as an expert in anything any time soon. From time to time I pretend to know a thing or two about writing, though I’m merely sharing what’s worked for me in hopes that it will be helpful to others. I post, pin, and tweet what I want. I now set my e-book prices based on my own trial and error, not because someone else proclaimed the correct price. I’ve learned to do what feels right for my books, and for me, and I no longer allow proclamations to rule my decisions. I’m no longer looking to others for the answer to how to be an indie author. I’m making those decisions for myself, which, after all, is one of the joys of being indie.

Filed under: Publishing, Writing Tagged: Indie Authors, indie publishing, publishing, writing

How I Conduct My Business as an Author Part 3

That You Are Here is going on tour in July and August.

5. I write what I want to write because I want to write it

One of the many Commandments I’ve seen about how Thou Shalt Be an Indie Author is the one about how, in order to build an audience, you need to pick a genre and stick to it. If you write romance, then you must write romances. If you write mysteries, thrillers, science fiction, whatever it is, it becomes part of your author platform, part of your public persona, and if you write something else you’re flirting with disaster while you watch your readers evaporate into cyberspace.

Now here I am, having some success with the Loving Husband Trilogy, a paranormal/historical love story. All three books have been best sellers with great reviews and devoted readers from all over the world. To follow the accepted wisdom of indie publishing, I knew I should stick with paranormal/historical stories because that’s what my readers expect of me now. So what did I write next? A contemporary gay love story. Why? Because that’s the way I roll.

I could hear the indie author gods fall in a thud to the ground when I published That You Are Here as my next book after the Loving Husband Trilogy. I’m not being difficult on purpose. Truly. It just so happens I was visiting my cousin in Portland, Oregon when the Supreme Court decision overturning DOMA was announced. The idea for That You Are Here came to me shortly afterwards in some random daydream, and I saw the two romantic leads, Andrew Whittaker and Mark Bryce, so clearly. I saw their deep love for each other, and I saw the obstacles they had to overcome. I decided to write the book because that was the story that was in my heart to write. I knew it wasn’t the “right” thing to do, and I knew that fans of my Loving Husband Trilogy wouldn’t necessarily be interested in reading That You Are Here. But you know what? It’s all good. It’s true, I have to find a new audience for That You Are Here—not an entirely new audience because some of my Loving Husband fans have open minds and they’ve read and liked That You Are Here. The truth is, I don’t mind the extra work. I’d rather write what I want to write and work to find new readers than write something I’m not excited about because that’s what’s expected of me.

I wasn’t always willing to listen to my heart about what to write. This was yet another lesson I had to learn the hard way. For a while, I was so obsessed with sales ranking and copies sold that I seriously considered writing books in a genre–romance–that might sell more than the books I had already written, which, let’s face it, are primarily literary fiction within their appropriate subgenres. I decided to write romances when I remembered a classmate of mine when I was in grad school, a romance novelist who had been published by Harlequin many times. She was a very nice lady and I enjoyed talking to her, but looking at her she was the last person in the world you’d expect to write sexy-time romances. She was in her early 50s, wore her gray-streaked blond hair in a short ponytail, and she wore lumberjack shirts, mom jeans, and black Doc Martin boots. Her face was well-lined, and she had the husky voice  of a chain smoker. If you couldn’t tell she was a smoker by her deep voice, then you could tell by the sour stench of nicotine that followed her everywhere, like the dust cloud around Pig-Pen from the Peanuts cartoons. She told me then that I should write romances. They’re easy to write, she said, and they sell well. All these years later, and after seeing the success of so many indie romance authors, I decided that maybe I should write romances after all.

To get ready,  I read books about writing romances, I read a few romances, and I had a basic plot outline for the first book. I even had a pen name picked out.  But when it came down to writing it, I realized that I just didn’t want to do it. It felt fake to me, and writing fiction is the only time I feel real. There are many writers, like my friend from college, for whom writing is a business and they write books geared toward a specific market so it will sell a lot of copies. I envy them. I wish I could approach writing fiction in such a business-like manner. I tried, I swear I did, but I couldn’t do it. Writing is my creative expression. It’s how I make sense of this crazy world of ours. For me, the right decision was to write what I want to write because I want to write it, because that’s the story that keeps tugging at my heart strings until I write it down and set it free.

So then, following my logic, what’s my next book? You guessed it…an historical love story set in Victorian England inspired by Downton Abbey and the early life of Charles Dickens. After that…who knows? Maybe a space western featuring Billy the Kid and Darth Vader.

Filed under: Publishing, Writing Tagged: Indie Authors, indie publishing, writing

How I Conduct My Business as an Author Part 2

4. I Use Social Media My Own Way

I’m on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linkedin, Goodreads, and Pinterest. I have this handy-dandy blog. I know there are other social media sites out there, but there are only so many hours in the day, you know?

If you’re an author, I do believe it’s important to get yourself out there however you can, and these days the name of the game is social media. Engagement on the different social media channels is important because you want people to know there’s a human being at the other end of the profile. I try to respond to every private message I receive, I’m generous in pinning and tweeting posts and articles from others that I’ve found interesting, and I’m always looking to like someone else’s posts.

I do far more promotion of others than I do of my own work. Joanna Penn and others refer to it as the 80/20 rule—post 80% about others and 20% about yourself—and I’ve done this for years. I feel good that I’m helping to spread content I’ve found useful, and I don’t feel like I’m shouting too loudly about myself. I want to get word out about my own stuff, of course, but I don’t want to be so obnoxious about it that it becomes noise.

Here’s another lesson I learned the hard way:  I had to do social media my own way, not the way experts proclaim from the mountaintop. Whenever I read about social media for authors, staying on message is always the key phrase. If you’re a nonfiction author then tweet your topic. If you’re a fiction author, find the niche audience for your book and mold your posts for them. Don’t go off message because you’ll scare readers away! I tried to stay on message for months, honest I did, but over time I discovered I wasn’t that interested in checking my Facebook page or my Twitter feed. I ran out of ideas for posts for this blog. I couldn’t care less about any of it, and I realized I was bored. By limiting myself to what I could post about, my interest waned.

Suddenly, in a burst of inspiration, I began acting on the radical idea of posting whatever I wanted to post, pinning whatever I wanted to pin, and tweeting whatever I wanted to tweet. I tweet about publishing, writing, books, and authors. I tweet about spirituality, creativity, and inspiration. I tweet about social media. I tweet about blogging. I tweet about history. I tweet about London because it’s my spiritual home and I’ll be there in July so I’m getting ready. I tweet about Downton Abbey because I love Downton Abbey. Do I need another reason?

Here’s the funny thing…what the social media experts would have predicted is exactly what happened–I have followers who are fans of my books, and I have followers who are interested in publishing, books, writing, creativity, inspiration, social media, blogging, history, London, and Downton Abbey. Accepted wisdom says to have different social media accounts, one for yourself as an author and one for other interests. If there were 40 hours in a day I might be tempted, but as it is, on a 24 hour schedule, there isn’t unlimited time for social media. I need time to do this other thing called writing. The result is I have varied followers, but I don’t mind; in fact, I think it’s kind of cool. As for the prevailing wisdom about focusing on readers not writers, I don’t agree. First of all, readers can come from anywhere–even London. Second of all, most people have varied interests. Just because they follow me for the inspirational tweets doesn’t mean they’re not also interested in Downton Abbey and/or blogging and/or publishing and/or whatever else I tweet about. Finally, there are no more voracious readers in the world than writers and writers need recommendations for new books as much as anyone else. Besides, I think social media is for making connections, not necessarily for making sales.

I’m not sure how many sales I’ve made because of social media. I can’t trace a single book sale to Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, Goodreads, or Google+. That doesn’t mean such sales haven’t happened, but I have no way of knowing. My best guess is that it isn’t any one thing I’m doing that sells books—it’s a little bit of everything. As a result, I no longer worry if I’m doing social media “wrong.” I can do it my own way, and whatever new readers I find along the way are welcome.

Here’s another thought (proof that I can have more than one at a time): I find that readers choose to follow an author on social media after they become fans. In other words, first they read your book, then they decide they’d like to hear more from you, then they follow you. I’ve never received a message from a reader saying, “I saw you on Facebook so I decided to read your book.” I have, however, received many messages from readers who read my books and (thankfully) liked them enough to decide to follow me on social media (hello, out there!). I write novels, true, but I’m also a human being with varied interests, and my experience has shown me that fans like getting to know the lady behind the curtain, so to speak. I post and pin about topics that are interesting to a wide range of people, and I post and pin about my own work as well, so I’m covering all the angles while keeping my readers and myself from keeling over in boredom. I mean, how many times can you tweet about the Salem Witch Trials even if it is a fascinating topic?

Have I cost myself followers because of my decisions? I haven’t a clue. Maybe. Like with book sales, I’ve learned that numbers aren’t the end-all-be-all of my work. I have to enjoy what I’m doing or else there’s no point to it. Following the accepted wisdom with social media wasn’t working for me. Now I have fun with my social media accounts where before they were an unwelcome chore. And I’ve met so many wonderful people along the way (yes, I’m talking about you).

Filed under: Publishing, Writing Tagged: Indie Authors, indie publishing, social media for authors, writing

How I Conduct My Business as an Author Part 1

Here’s a cute cat picture because apparently blog posts should always have pictures. This is Charles Dickens Allard, but you can call him Chuck. I’m still waiting for him to grow a beard.

About two weeks ago I posted Leo Babauta’s inspiring article about how he conducts his business, and you can see what Leo has to say here. In honor of Leo, I decided to write something similar. Here’s part 1 of How I Conduct My Business as an Author.

1. I learned from those who came before me

When I joined the indie author revolution in 2011, I knew absolutely nothing about independent publishing. Nothing as in zip, zero, nada. I began searching the web for information, and I was lucky enough to stumble on a few websites that have been valuable beyond mention. The websites I turn to again and again for information, ideas, and plain old inspiration are (in no particular order) are David Gaughran’s Let’s Get Digital and Joanna Penn’s The Creative Penn. The truth is, pretty much everything I know about indie publishing and book marketing I learned from these nice people. What I like about them is that David and Joanna don’t make pronouncements about what’s right and what’s wrong for indie authors. Their attitude seems to be (to me) “Indie publishing is a grand experiment and we’re all in this together. I’m sharing what I’ve learned so far in hopes that this will be helpful to you.” And their posts have been helpful to me. I’ve had the success I’ve had because of what I’ve learned from them.

2. Forget about stats

Leo talks about this in his post (#10), and I agree. This is a lesson I learned the hard way. I’m not saying I never check stats. I checked my stats frequently last week because I was curious to see how the free promotion for That You Are Here was going. I’m trying to determine if the 90 day exclusivity of KDP Select is worth it, so I wanted to see how many copies were downloaded, if there were any new reviews, and if sales went up after the free days ended. If you have a promotion, then checking stats can be fine, especially if it’s a promotion you paid for since you’ll want to see if the promotion is worth it.

Otherwise, I’ve learned to leave the stats to themselves. Like Leo, I was obsessed with stats. I checked Amazon, BN, and Smashwords several times a day, as though things would be that different between 3 and 5 p.m. I made myself crazy wondering why I sold 20 copies of one book on Monday and 3 copies on Tuesday and 9 copies on Wednesday. Why aren’t the books selling as well on Tuesday and Wednesday as they did on Monday? Is there something I can do to change that? Then I realized I had lost focus on what was important. Instead of wasting time checking stats, I should have been writing.

The truth is, I can’t control book sales. I can do everything I can to make my books discoverable. I can write the best books I possibly can. I can hire a great cover artist who designs eye-catching, professional looking covers. I can tweet about my books, Facebook and Google+ them, post about them on this blog. I can do giveaways and blog tours. I can pay for ads on Facebook and Goodreads. But someone either chooses to buy my book or not. I love Joe Konrath’s no-nonsense approach to publishing, and I read his blog A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing at least once a week. In this article Joe talks about the role luck plays in generating publishing success. One author can do A, B, and C and have a mega hit, and the next author can do the same A, B, and C and not have the same success. Why? Because the first author had luck on her side when the second author didn’t.

I don’t find this disheartening. In fact, I find it liberating. That doesn’t mean I don’t do all of the above to get my books discovered because I do. It means there’s an element to book sales I can’t control, and that’s okay. I’ll keep writing more books, keep trying new ways to get my books noticed, and then I can let it go. Letting go of stats feels much better than being obsessed with them, trust me.

3. The power of free

Between Amazon, BN, Smashwords, and other online book retailers I’ve given away over 150,000 books for free—more than twice as many as I’ve sold (around 70,000 now). A lot of people will cringe at those numbers, but I’m thrilled to bits. I had great fun last week when That You Are Here was free on Amazon. I loved watching the novel hit #208 free overall and it stayed #1 in its two genre charts for four days, slipping to #2 on both charts on the last day. Thousands of copies were downloaded for free, and I loved every minute of it.

You see, as an independent author, I don’t have unlimited funds to spend on marketing and advertising. Right now, for me, the name of the game is to get my books downloaded onto as many e-readers as possible, and I find free to be a great way to do that. Free costs the readers and me nothing, but as an author the return is priceless.

I know that not everyone who downloads a free copy of my book is going to read it. I’ve downloaded books for free I haven’t gotten to yet because, like other readers, I tend to read the books I’ve paid for first. But if my books are free at least I have a chance to get my books downloaded onto e-readers with a chance of being read whereas readers might not have known about the books if they had stayed in limbo on the paid charts. I believe the power of free is why the Loving Husband Trilogy has sold so well. The first book in the series, Her Dear & Loving Husband, has been semi perma-free since it was released in 2011. I say semi perma-free because I’ve played around with the price, but for the most part it has been free for three years. Her Dear & Loving Husband has had a lot of word of mouth going for it, largely because the book was free and people read it and told others about it. Never underestimate the power of word of mouth advertising. That, too, is free, and perhaps the most valuable kind of advertising because word of mouth comes from friends and family whose recommendations people trust. I’ve had so many e-mails from people who said, “I told my whole family about it!” or “I told my best friend about it. She loves paranormal romance,” or “My sister told me about it. She loved it and raved about it!” All the money in the world can’t pay for advertising like that. Seriously.

Shortly after Her Dear & Loving Husband was released in 2011, I was interviewed for a local Las Vegas magazine about the novel and about my work on The Copperfield Review. I mentioned to the reporter that Her Dear & Loving Husband was free on Amazon, and he said a former editor told him never to give his work away for free because you teach people what you’re worth. I thought about that a lot, but I came to the conclusion that I don’t agree. Free has become my favorite way to get my books onto e-readers, and hopefully from there, read, reviewed, and talked about. I do believe my book is valuable. In fact, I believe so much in the value of Her Dear & Loving Husband that I set the price as free with the belief that those who like it will buy the next two in the series.

Are there negatives to free? Sure, but not enough to make me stop giving books away. People who download free books may download books that aren’t the genre they enjoy reading, and readers aren’t afraid to say so in their reviews. So, yes, you do open yourself up to more negative reviews, but so what? I’ve learned not to fear negative reviews. Whether your book is paid or free, it’s not realistic to expect everyone who reads your book will like it. As long as you have more good reviews than bad reviews, it’s all good.

The biggest downside to free for a lot of authors is, well, the book is free, and if the book is free that means the author isn’t making any money. Even I with my limited math skills (that’s maths skills for my British friends) can figure that out. But I maintain that more people have read my books than there would have been without the free downloads. Not all the people who downloaded my books for free have gone on to pay for my other books, maybe not even half of them, but it’s still thousands of people who pay for my books after they’ve read one for free. For my vision for myself as an author, it’s a more than fair trade. I’m in this for the long haul, and I’m willing to sacrifice the money I might have made up front in hopes that I’ll find new readers for my other books.

Next time, part 2.

Filed under: Publishing, Writing Tagged: author entrepreneur, Let's Get Digital, publishing, The Creative Penn, writing

That You Are Here is Free 6/2-6/6

Just a quick note to let everyone know that my latest novel, That You Are Here, is free on Amazon and Amazon UK now through Friday, 6/6.

The novel has been free since this morning. Already it’s on the best seller list at #686 overall and #2 in Fiction>Romance>Gay. I’ve also noticed a lot of new visitors to this site today. Thank you!

For any new friends who might be visiting for the first time, here’s a previous post about That You Are Here.

 

Filed under: News, That You Are Here Tagged: Amazon, Free, kindle, That You Are Here

Can You Feel It? Writing Scene Sequels

Originally known as The Vampire’s Wife. I’m glad I went with Her Dear & Loving Husband.

This post is in honor of Laurin Wittig, the nice lady with a keen eye for critique who helped me get Her Dear & Loving Husband on track back in 2010.

When I began writing Her Dear & Loving Husband in 2009, I saw the internal and external conflicts for James and Sarah so clearly in my mind, but I was having trouble articulating it on paper. It was the first time I had ever used two points of view in the same story, and it was also the first time I had a nonlinear plot since Her Dear & Loving Husband moves back and forth between the Salem Witch Trials in 1692 and present day Salem. For some reason, the narrative flow didn’t come easily for me as I plodded through draft after draft. I was lucky enough to find Laurin through an Internet search, and when she critiqued the book she shared the scene sequel with me as a way to slow down and allow the character, and the reader, to think through what is happening. The scene sequel takes place in four steps.

Step 1: Emotion

This is where the character is reacting to what has happened. In that moment when something happens, we feel it first. Before rationality, before logic, there is emotion.

Step 2: Thought

When the emotion of the moment fades away we begin to think about what has happened. Sometimes logically. Sometimes not. But the intention is to make sense of whatever is going on. What does this really mean? What is the right thing to do? For me, the thought stage is where the character questions what has happened, what should have happened, what might happen. If I do A, will B, C, or Z result?

Step 3: Decision

After the thinking is done, what will you do? Will Sarah run screaming from James when she discovers his secret? Will James tell Sarah what the secret is? This is the moment when the character forms a judgment based on his or her thoughts, making a decision one way or another.

Step 4: Action

This is the result of the decision. Once the decision is made, then the character has to do something about it. As Laurin said, sometimes the decision is to deal with it later. But there should be some kind of culmination to the thinking and the decision.

I have become a huge fan of the scene sequel. Laurin told me she kept the formula on a sticky note on her computer for years, and now I do the same. The sequel is relatively simple, just four steps, yet it allows us to understand the characters on a deeper level. I think part of the reason the formula works so well is because it mimics our real-life process of dealing with whatever it is we have to deal with. First we react in an emotional way, then we think about it, then we decide what to do, and then we do it (or we decide to do nothing, which, as Laurin pointed out, is also a decision).

A scene sequel isn’t the kind of thing you want to use at every little event. But whenever something important is happening, it’s helpful to slow down and allow your characters to feel, think, decide, and do. This will create a richer, fuller story for both your characters and your readers.

Laurin not only turns out a handy-dandy critique–she’s also an award-winning historical romance novelist. If you’d like to check out her books, you can do so here.

Filed under: Her Dear & Loving Husband, Writing Tagged: Her Dear & Loving Husband, Massachusetts, Salem, Salem Witch Trials, scene sequels, writing

How I Conduct My Business by Leo Babauta

Feeling zen in the Japanese Garden in Portland, OR

I’ve been a fan of Leo Babauta’s Zen Habits for a few years now and I check his website at least once a week. I love his spirituality-based messages about finding inner peace and being true to yourself. I love that he isn’t didactic in his posts. He’s not trying to sermonize or preachify or testify. He’s simply sharing what he’s learned as he struggles (like the rest of us) to be as centered as he can in this crazy world of ours.

I wanted to share this post that Leo published on February 17, 2014. While I love all of Leo’s articles, this one really hit home for me and I find myself still thinking about it months later. As an independent author, I’ve had some choices to make regarding how I conduct the business end of my enterprise. The creative side of it, the writing stories part of it, is a no brainer for me. I write fiction. It’s who I am. But I had to learn the business aspect of publishing from the ground up, and it’s been an eye-opening experience. I’ve sold over 70,000 books now and given away nearly 150,000 books (thank you, Loving Husband Trilogy fans), and even with this success there was a time when I wasn’t happy about it. I should be selling even more, I thought. I should be doing more. At least that’s what all the book marketing articles said. Then one day I realized that I’m doing all right. I really am. Reading this post from Leo helped me come to the conclusion I had already started to form on my own…that it’s okay for me to pursue my publishing business on my own terms. I don’t follow Leo’s ways completely (I do, for example, run sales on my books, and I think social media share buttons can be useful), but when he talks about don’t focus on stats, focus on helping people, or about doing what feels right, he’s speaking my language.

Just so you know, Leo won’t mind that I’ve published his post here. Leo’s work is uncopyrighted (see #6 below), and he’s fine with others sharing his work.

Enjoy.

How I Conduct My Business
By Leo Babauta

I started my own business at a late age — by the time I made Zen Habits into a business in 2007, I was in my mid-30s and had toiled through various jobs for 17 years.

So when I started out, I didn’t know what I was doing (and still don’t, but less so now). I tried everything to make money, to make my site more popular (which I thought was important). Some of it worked, some didn’t. Some made me feel bad about myself. Some things readers reacted badly to, and others they loved.

Through this trial and error, I learned some principles that work for me. I don’t share them here to show that I’m superior to anyone, but to show an example of what might work for you. To show that doing things that feel right can make a business succeed.

Here’s how I conduct my business.

Readers first. This is my No. 1 rule, and it has served me extremely well. When I have a question (“should I promote X or not?”) the answer is always, “What would my readers want? What would help them most?” When the choice is between making some extra money or my readers’ interest, the choice is obvious. There is no choice. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve passed up being part of a mega-sale or affiliate marketing campaign that would have earned me $50K (and sometimes much more) in a day or two if I’d decided to participate. I’ve walked away from at least $1M because it would have put profits before my readers. And I think my readers trust me more because of this (see next item).
Trust is everything. The most valuable assets I have are my readers’ trust and attention. And the attention will go really fast if they stop trusting me. Everything else in this list is based around these first two principles. When you start doing affiliate marketing, even if you think it would help the reader, if it would make them question your motives (is he trying to help me or make some money here?), it erodes their trust, a little at a time. That’s not worth the money.
Make money by helping. I put out products and courses that I think will really help people, and that’s how I make money. This works really well for me. People are happy because their lives are better, and I’m happy because the revenue I make is entirely coming from making people’s lives better. We both win, our lives are all enriched. This is not the case from advertising (see next item).
No ads, affiliate marketing. These are both the same, really. When you market someone else’s product as an affiliate, it’s just a hidden form of advertising. I should note that I had ads and did affiliate marketing for a couple years before giving it up. Why’d I give it up? Well, I realized (through experimentation) that the return on this kind of business model is very bad. You get very little revenue, and erode trust. That’s a bad formula for making money. When you sell an ad, what you’re really selling is your readers’ attention and trust — they trust you to put something important in front of their attention, and you capitalize on that. Of course, most readers learn not to trust the ads, and try to skip them, and put up with them because they want the good content (or service) you’re giving them. So they no longer trust you as much, but put up with your revenue tactics. This sucks. Who wants their customers to put up with anything? Why not delight them with how you make money? Why not enrich them? Now, can everyone do this? Possibly not, but I wouldn’t reject the idea without giving it a genuine shot.
Just the text – no social media buttons, popups, dropdowns, or anything else that annoys or distracts. This goes back to trust — people come to my site to read something that will add value to their lives. Not to be pushed to share something on social media, or like something, or subscribe to my email newsletter. Yes, I have a thing at the bottom to subscribe, but it’s not pushy, and I don’t promise any gimmicky downloads. When your site has a popup or dropdown that asks people to subscribe, it’s annoying. I’m sorry to be blunt but I’m speaking as a reader now — I will never go back to a site that does that. Which means I don’t read a lot of my friends’ sites because they do this. Give the readers what they want, and nothing else, and you won’t have to ask them to subscribe or share. They’ll do it on their own, and this is the kind of share and subscriber you want.
Uncopyright. My site has been uncopryrighted since January 2008 (there weren’t any other sites doing this at the time), and in the last 5+ years, uncopyright has not only not hurt my business, I strongly believe it’s helped tremendously. Why? Because it helps people share and spread my work much more easily. If someone wants to use an article of mine, they don’t have to go through the hassle of trying to contact me and ask permission — they just use it. This has caused people to use my work in books, magazines, blogs, newsletters, classroom materials, art, conferences and more. This is amazing. In addition, uncopyright promotes the idea of sharing, and when you share with people, they tend to trust you more. Sharing builds trust.
No sales. I’ve seen many people do three-day sales of their products (or something similar), but I’ve never done one of these (that I can recall). Why not? Because it makes no sense to the reader (remember, readers first). Tell me the reader: why are you lowering the price of your product for three days? Why only those three days? If you can lower the price for those days, why not the other days? Is it to make more money from me (manipulate me into buying the book)? Is the price too high on the other days? What if I already bought the book at the higher price — was I ripped off? These are questions the reader has no answers to, and no matter how much you try to justify the reasons of the sale, it doesn’t make sense. Either set the price at the higher price point (because you think it’s worth it), or set it at the lower price point (because you want to get it into the hands of more people).
Admit mistakes. It might sound like I’m pretending to be perfect at what I do, but the truth is I’m winging it. I’m making it up as a I go along, in hopes that I won’t screw it up, and constant fear that I am badly messing up. I have more trust in this process (and in my readers) now that I’ve been doing it for seven years and nothing has fallen apart, but I have made many mistakes along the way. I’ve been overly promotional, I’ve done affiliate marketing (just a couple of times), I had advertising, I asked people to share my work, I asked for votes. Those were mistakes, but I learned from them and try my best not to repeat them. Recently, in my Sea Change Program, I removed old habit modules from 2013 (I felt they were outdated), and my members were upset. I fixed the mistake and put the modules back. People don’t expect you to be perfect — they do expect you to try your best to fix mistakes when you make them. I admit my mistakes, and try to rectify them and do better. People trust me more because of it, I think.
Don’t front. I don’t pretend I’m more than I am. I think there’s a tendency in the online world to overrepresent yourself — put yourself off as an expert or the world’s leading whateverthehell. But I’m not the world’s leading anything. I am just a guy who has a wife and six kids, who has changed his life by making small habit changes, one at a time. A guy who has simplified his life and focused on being mindful. I’ve learned a lot from these experiences, and share them as much as I can here on Zen Habits. That’s all I am, and I don’t try to be more. When you only try to be yourself, you can’t fail.
Forget about stats, focus on helping. In the early days, I was obsessed about site statistics. I would check my stats counter several times a day, look at where all the traffic was coming from, try to get my numbers up. Here’s the thing: you can’t do anything with those stats. If you’re getting traffic from Reddit or Twitter, you can’t do anything about that. All you can do, once you’ve seen the stats, is try to create great content. Try to help people. Try to add value. That’s what you’d do even if you had zero stats. The stats don’t change what you should do — though they might motivate you to do things you shouldn’t do to get the stats up, things that aren’t trustworthy. The stats just make you obsessive. About three years ago, I removed all stats trackers from my site, and now am freed from that worry. Now I focus on what really matters: helping people as best I can.
Do what feels right. This is vague and isn’t very helpful at first, because in the beginning, you’re never really sure what’s “right”. There are lots of choices to make and it always seems smart to just do what other people are doing, what the experts tell you to do. Unfortunately, that’s often wrong. Everyone else does what everyone else does because that seems safer, and so they act out of fear of doing the wrong thing. In fact, safer is not the right thing. Doing the right thing is going to be against the mainstream. For example, when I gave up copyright, or let go of ads or social media buttons or affiliate marketing, or comments, those were all very scary things for me. It was against what everyone else at the time was doing. But in the end, I knew they were the right thing, because it was what was best for my readers. And it made me feel good about what I was doing. This is the compass you need to develop, to build trust with your readers, and with yourself. Feel good about what you’re doing, don’t act out of fear.

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You can follow Leo on Twitter, and don’t forget his fabulous website.

 

Filed under: Publishing, Spirituality, Writing Tagged: How I Conduct My Business, Leo Babauta, spirituality, Zen Habits

Janet Fitch and Avoiding Clichés “Like the Plague”

“April showers bring May flowers.” “Busy as a bee.” What other Spring inspired cliches can you think of? Good! Once you think of them, never use them! Or, at least use them sparingly.

I love that old saying by Dorothy Parker, “I hate writing. I love having written.” Has it become a cliché? Probably. But I love it anyway because as a writer myself I know it’s all too true.

My “I hate writing” moments happen when I’m drudging through a first draft. You can see my posts with tips for writing a first draft here. After I finish my first draft, that’s when I’m on the journey toward my “love having written” stage. That’s when I sit down at the computer no longer wanting to pop my eyes out with spoons or pluck my hairs one by one. Finally, in the second draft stage, I’m able to find the poetry in the prose. When I find the flow, that’s when the fun of writing begins for me. How do I find the flow? It’s a challenge, one that started 15 years ago.

In 1999, Oprah Winfrey interviewed Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander, for the Oprah Book Club. Fitch talked about how a writing instructor told her that a “cliché is anything you’ve ever heard before—so never use a description anyone has heard.” As I remember it (it was 1999), Fitch spoke about a time she challenged herself to describe a tree with her own unique phrases. I was already well into fiction writing at that time, and her words struck me as truth. I learned that writers should reach to find their own descriptions, and they should never be lazy and allow others to do the work for them.

In a 2006 interview for O Magazine, Fitch explained that when she began writing fiction she had to work on word choices and the music of language. That was what I wanted too. I wanted to work on word choices and the music of language. I wanted to avoid clichés “like the plague” and create images “as sweet as pie.”

It’s a lesson I still hold close to my heart. When I’m molding sentences, I stretch, hands out, fingers pointing there, there where that inchoate image waits, sometimes patiently, sometimes not, for me to probe my vocabulary for the exactly right string of words to illuminate what I see the way I see it. If I’m describing a storm, a small town, a person, an emotion, I need to do it my own way. In their 2006 interview, Oprah mentions to Fitch that such a stretch “seems as if it would be quite difficult.” Fitch responds, “It is. But it means that everything you give the reader is absolutely fresh. We read so that we can be moved by a new way of looking at things.”

I learned a lot from Fitch in 1999, again in 2006, and I continue to learn from her whenever I read one of her novels. Reaching for phrases I’ve never heard before becomes harder with everything I write, but that’s the part of writing I thrive on—creating poetry in prose. And when I do finally find the right words, that is when I love having written.

If you’d like to lose yourself in the poetry of Janet Fitch’s prose, check out her novels or the short pieces on her blog. The 2006 interview for O Magazine can be found here.

Filed under: Writing Tagged: cliches, Janet Fitch, O Magazine, Oprah, White Oleander, writing, writing tips

Writing a First Draft Part 6

Tip 6: For all the Excuses in the world, there is no way around writing every day.

Every writer I know has a list of well-refined Excuses. But if you are compelled to write your story, then you must write it. You must sit at your computer, or with your notebook and pen, and physically write out the words. It sounds obvious because it is obvious, but after teaching writing for over ten years I find this to be the part people have the most trouble with.

Many writers I know love to talk about writing. They love to get together with their writing buddies or critique groups and talk–about what they’re writing, what’s going well, what frustrations they’re facing. I have my own writing buddy, and she’s an intelligent, thoughtful sounding board, someone I can bounce ideas off of as I revise my various novels. And I know, having both taken and taught them, that writers love to take classes about writing. Writers also love to read books about writing. As I stated in the first post in this series, there have been a few books that have been Bible-like in the way they’ve helped me through every stage of the writing process. The writing buddies, critique groups, writing classes–these are necessary to the writer’s soul. Writing is such a solitary activity, and bonding with others of our kind is crucial, both for our success and our sanity. Reading about others who have experienced what we are experiencing is also important. But, after we’re home from our critique groups and our classes, after we’ve put down the writing books, we must sit ourselves down and write.

So how do you write every day? Like everything else, the solution is individual to each writer. Some writers I know create a schedule, a designated block of time each day when they get their writing done. Anne Lamott refers to it as training your brain to kick in creatively at a certain time each day. Some write whenever they get around to it. Others have busy lives and steal time when they can. Only you can decide when it’s time to write, but when it’s time, you must do it. As many Excuses as we have carefully cultivated, ultimately we must put them away. You have to make the decision: will you spend your time talking, reading, or dreaming about writing, or will you write?

As difficult as first drafts can be, at some point, around the time that “shitty first draft” is finished, it stops being work and becomes exciting. Fun. As if there’s nowhere else in the world I’d rather be than sitting in front of the computer making this crazy world I see in my head come to life. Instead of forcing myself to sit for twenty minutes to punch out three pages, now I sit at the computer at one in the afternoon and before I know it it’s ten o’clock at night. I’m so immersed in my story I haven’t even noticed as the day slipped away. The first draft is crucial because once I have my blueprint, I can begin fleshing out the colors, the sounds, the tastes, the smells. I understand my characters better, their motivations, their cadences when they speak. Then, at some point, I realize that the story I have before me is what I meant to write all along. That is a glorious feeling when it happens. Despite the difficulty of the first draft, no matter how frustrated I have become at times, I managed to stick with it, and in the process I have created a world that only could have come from me. And that is why we write after all.

Filed under: Writing Tagged: writing, writing a first draft, writing fiction

Writing a First Draft Part 5

Tip 5: Keep the creator and the editor separate.

This is an old writers’ adage heard by everyone who has ever taken Creative Writing 101. The funny thing about this adage: it’s true. If you try to edit as you write, or if you’re too critical as you write, you’re going to stifle yourself, and your creativity along with it. In Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg explains this far better than I ever could. Most of what I’m saying here I’m paraphrasing from her.

Don’t worry about anything when you’re writing your first draft except getting the words out of your head and onto paper. Place one word after another after another for however many days it takes to get that first draft done. When I’m teaching writing classes I call it a sloppy copy. If you know up front it’s going to be sloppy then you won’t waste time trying to make it right. If I have a question about what I’m writing, I type the question right into my draft (usually highlighted in bold to differentiate it from the text). If I’m not sure about the spelling of a word, or if I want a different word but can’t think of it without a thesaurus, I put the word in parenthesis like (this) and keep going. Keep going, that’s the mantra of the first draft.

I’m saying “Keep going” to myself as much as anyone else. It’s so easy to put everything else in front of writing a first draft. Today I’m going through new submissions for Copperfield, and that takes time because I want to give each submission the attention it deserves. I’m pulling together the new interviews and reviews and formatting them for the web, which isn’t difficult as much as tedious. I also have to pull together paperwork for UNLV, where this fall I’ll be starting in the Ph.D. program in Curriculum and Instruction/Teacher Education. And I’m researching the historical period for my new story since my next book is right back to historical fiction. If I’m still researching, then there’s no reason to work on the first draft, right? Right?  I was, I admit, relieved, if not a little giddy, at the thought.

But then, when I’m being logical, I know there’s no reason I can’t continue punching out my three pages a day for the first draft. My first draft is my way of allowing my mind to wander unimpeded through the story, nudging it here, tweaking it there. As I work through my first draft, I’m gaining a clearer idea how and where I want to fit my research into the story. After that I can move into my favorite part of writing–revising and rewriting–because the hardest part–the first draft–will be over. At least that’s what I tell myself while I’m typing out my three pages every night. In other words, despite everything else I have to do, I haven’t allowed myself to slack off from writing the first draft. I’m busy, just like everyone is busy, but I have to write my three pages every day or else I’m not happy with myself.

What did I start out talking about again? That’s right–keep the editor and the creator separate. Don’t stifle your creativity in your first draft. Let yourself soar. Sometimes it’s the craziest ideas that end up being the ones worth keeping.

And keep going.

Filed under: Writing Tagged: Natalie Goldberg, writing, writing a first draft, Writing Down the Bones