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Book Marketing Resources for Authors: The Best of 2016

Every year, I share hundreds (even thousands) of articles and reports through my blog/website, conference presentations, social media, and email newsletters. Here, I look back on the best of the marketing information I shared during 2016 and have organized it by category. Enjoy!

Amazon


For a very clear and no-nonsense explanation of the Amazon sales rank number: the ALLi blog explains what factors change your sales rank, revealing that steady sales win the game.


An author has recommended using only “clean” Amazon links to your book, especially for marketing and promotion purposes. While you might argue with some of the points made, it never hurts to practice good link hygiene. Learn how to clean up your Amazon links.


Here’s a solid overview for writing and updating your Amazon book description. Veteran publicist Penny Sansevieri offers clear and organized advice. Read it at the Huffington Post.


Facebook


Struggling with your reach on Facebook? By decreasing the organic (non-paid) reach of business pages, Facebook continues to put a lot of pressure on everyone to advertise. This means you have to be smart and strategic about posting content to reach your fans; thankfully, it is possible to improve your reach quickly if you understand how Facebook’s algorithm works. Check out Hootsuite’s guide to Facebook organic reach.


Want to increase your effectiveness on Facebook? One of the leading digital media marketing companies has studied more than 1 billion posts made by Facebook pages and released a report on how to increase engagement on Facebook.


Use Facebook groups to build book buzz. If you’re frustrated with the performance of your Facebook business page, some authors are having better engagement by creating and nurturing Facebook groups. BookBub offers tips.


A very insightful case study on how Facebook ads can spur book sales by author David Penny, featured at The Creative Penn. Suitable for beginners.

More on Facebook advertising: one of the experts in this area is Mark Dawson, who was interviewed at The Creative Penn in 2016. You can listen to the podcast or read the transcript.

For authors who advertise (or want to) on Facebook: Learn how to make a Facebook funnel that converts. Visit the Moz blog.

Social media


How to find trending topics on social media. With social media, timing can be everything—and being able to tap into trending topics can help you get your messages in front of the right audience at the right time. Here are 11 ways to find out what’s trending across a range of social media sites.


Want to get better at Instagram? More than 400 million people use Instagram, and in terms of social media engagement, it’s second only to Facebook. But how should authors use it? BookBub has put together an inspiring round up of authors successfully using Instagram for book marketing.


A comprehensive guide to Instagram hashtags. As you may know, one of the keys to growing an Instagram following is using the right hashtags, but knowing which ones to use, and how, may feel like a bit of a mystery. The sharp people at Hootsuite have put together an extensive guide to using hashtags on Instagram.


Why to reconsider using Google Plus for marketing. No, it’s not dead yet! There are still some benefits to spending a few minutes here and there on Google Plus. Read more at Buffer.


Trying to gain momentum on YouTube? The folks at Hootsuite have written a straightforward post with five ways to get more views on YouTube.


Copywriting


The smart people at Moz have presented a detailed list of instructions for how to write and build a product page that has a better chance of resulting in a sale. The strategy is helpful whether you’re selling books, digital products, online courses, or services. Take a look.


A definitive guide to copywriting: Try Quick Sprout’s free guide. It’s not focused specifically on books, but it does offer many best practices for writing marketing copy.

Blogging


This is for serious bloggers only: Many authors want to increase traffic to their website, but don’t know how. Blogging is one of the key ways, but a content strategy is required if you want to see that blogging pay off. This free guide on how to increase your website traffic steps you through the detailed process for identifying what kind of content to write and how to generate traffic to that content. You can read the whole guide online, or it’s available as a free 28-page PDF. Make no mistake: this is hard work. But the payoff is real.

Learn how to write better, customized headlines. If you’re a blogger or frequently producing online writing, then having distinct headlines—customized by social media channel—dramatically affects the number of clicks on and shares of your work. Buffer has put together an excellent guide on what principles to follow based on where you’re sharing the article.

Giveaways, reviews & discounts


Want to easily run an ebook giveaway? instaFreebie is a service for self-published authors that helps streamline the ebook giveaway process. It offers several tiers of service, including a free tier. Features include an email list opt-in, the ability to set an expiration date, and the ability to set a specific number of giveaway copies.

An indie author offers a very detailed history of her Goodreads book giveaways and concludes that it’s best to only give away one or two books at a time, since it’s cheaper that way but offers the same visibility. Read J.M. Ney-Grimm’s post.


Want to create advance review copies of your book? It’s possible through IngramSpark. David Wogahn tells you how. He’s also written an installment on creating ARCs via CreateSpace.

How do you get nearly 100 reader reviews on your book within a few days of release? Author Anna Hackett shares her process at the Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Podcast.


Is NetGalley worthwhile for independent authors? Here’s a case study that says “it depends.” If you’re doing an aggressive pre-publication push (marketing more than six months prior to launch), the expense may be justified. Read more at the Book Designer.


You probably know about BookBub, but how do other ebook discount services rank in comparison? ALLi offers an in-depth analysis and overview.


Online education


This is one of the most helpful guides I’ve seen on planning, launching, and running your first webinar. You’ll find lots of useful tool recommendations; no guessing required.

SEO


How to learn SEO: The folks at HubSpot have rounded up the best free and paid educational resources for learning about search engine optimization. If you have a website or blog, this is a list worth saving. Read it here. (My favorite resource is Moz, which is at the top of the list!)

How much does SEO affect novelists? Over at The Hot Sheet, we offered in-depth expertise from Pete McCarthy.


Also, take a look at expert digital marketer Pete McCarthy’s presentations on marketing. He’s shared one of his slide packs, which will teach you about many different tools for researching your audience online.


Learn from successful authors


An author who consistently makes a six-figure income from book sales shares his marketing strategies. Note that he has more than 100 books, mostly nonfiction, on the market. Find out more at Written Word Media.


Bestselling author Colleen Gleason discusses how to relaunch and remarket a book after getting the rights back from the publisher. Read the full interview at BookBub.

Romance author J.A. Huss discusses in depth what’s working (or not) for book marketing. She’s stepped away from Facebook ads, but invests heavily—although very carefully—in giveaways. Read the interview transcript at the Creative Penn.


Marketing ideas and roundups


Here’s a 98-item list for planning a book launch or even re-marketing your book . It’s by the marketing team at BookBub. They’ve divided it into useful categories, such as “Create Box Sets and Bundles,” “Run Price Promotions,” and “Participate in Live Events.” It’s nearly guaranteed you’ll come away with at least one new action step.

Interactive and free how-to guides to launch your book, product, or business: It’s called “Startup Toolkit,” but writers of all kinds will find these free tutorials useful for book and product launches. Each tutorial includes an article, a step-by-step workflow, and a ready-to-use project template. Topics covered: get press coverage, launch a Kickstarter, earn traffic from online communities, and much more. Check them out.


Marketing tools and resources


Customizable and comprehensive book marketing checklist. If you’re not familiar with Tim Grahl’s work, you should be! He produces some of the best informational resources for authors I’ve seen, often focused on book marketing. His latest resource is a definitive checklist for book marketing that is customizable and easily printed.


Trying to guess someone’s email address? Use this tool very wisely—that is, not in a way that will encourage you getting blacklisted: Email Hunter. (It even works for my website!)

How authors can market books online to children under the age of 13: Author Karen Inglis discusses the tools and communities that can help. Read at ALLi.


Tools and templates for authorship and book marketing: Author Jenny Blake has shared all the tips and materials she used to help her write and market her book Pivot. It’s an impressive collection of resources that is sure to inspire your next project. Take a look. (Also, in this excellent case study, learn about Jenny Blake’s podcast-focused launch plan for her second book, Pivot.)

The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) offers formal service ratings of author services. Over time, ALLi has been offering more and more watchdog-type content at their website, and they now offer a formal area devoted to ratings of specific publishing companies. Take a look.


Here at my site in 2016 (in case you missed)

Should You Pay for a Publicist?
How to Find and Work with a Book Publicist Successfully
Getting Ready to Launch a Book? Start with These 5 Questions
How to Find and Reach Influencers to Promote Your Book
How to Be Active on Social Media Without Losing Your Mind
The Pros and Cons of Using a Facebook Profile But Not an Official Page
How to Grow Your Email List
How to Start Blogging: A Definitive Guide for Authors
Are Paid Book Reviews Worth It?

Building a Platform to Land a Book Deal: Why It Often Fails

Photo credit: Chris Devers via VisualHunt / CC BY-NC-ND

If you’re preparing to pitch your nonfiction work to agents or publishers, you’ve probably heard about the necessity of having a platform.

Platform, in a nutshell, is your ability to sell books based on your visibility to the intended readership. If you’re a total unknown, then you may be turned down for lack of a platform to support your book’s publication.

For this post, I don’t want to discuss how the publishing industry reached this point—or the perceived unfairness of it all. I comment a bit further on this dynamic in my definition of platform, but suffice it to say, once you’ve understood the publishing environment we’re all operating in, a proactive or optimistic reaction may be: OK, I’ll develop a platform! Er, how do I do that?

The dream-crushing cynic in me is tempted to say: Don’t force it, because it won’t work. You’re reverse engineering a process that—in the majority of cases—is destined to fail. Here’s why.

1. You focus on superficial indicators of platform.

By far the most common question I’m asked by platform-building authors is: How big do my numbers have to be? What’s the minimum number of Facebook likes? Website visits? Email subscribers? And so on.

It’s true that the easiest way for someone to quickly size up your platform is to look at your numbers, but it’s a shortcut. An author platform is organic, complex, and unique—and impossible to meaningfully express through numbers alone. The number is only a signifier that can indicate something interesting is going on.

The strength of an author platform encompasses many factors, including your relationships, your influence in a community, and other signs of social proof. However, agents and editors who seek authors with a platform do sometimes say quite pointedly, and even arbitrarily, “Well, we need to see at least 10,000 Facebook likes and 100,000 blog visits every month, or it’s not worth us considering.”

My gut says these statements are made more to discourage and get people to throw in the towel, rather than offer a realistic or meaningful goal to achieve. The surface numbers ultimately mean very little; after all, you can buy as many likes or followers as you want. (But please don’t.)

What matters more than these numbers is engagement and trust with your intended audience, and how word spreads about what you do. Once someone scratches beneath the surface of your numbers, they’ll be able to tell if your platform has been manufactured for appearances.

2. You focus on social media growth.

Social media is just one facet of an author’s platform, but since it’s among the most quantifiable, it can be overly emphasized. Sadly, nothing will make you chase your tail faster than focusing on building a social media following.

Think about this question, just briefly: Why would someone want to follow you on social media? Why do you follow someone?

It’s usually because you read, listened to, or watched something that person did. You laughed, were inspired, or touched by some story or insight they offered, whether online or through traditional media.

Building a social media following requires that you do something, publish something, or share your work or your ideas with the world.

Or: you build a social media following because you’re producing work that people enjoy. To try and build a following for something you will do at some point in the future? Extremely difficult.

Anyone with a really significant following is, 99% of the time, producing work that people enjoy in the here and now. This work might include social media activity itself (Twitter interview series, Facebook videos, Instagram poems), but that activity is still creative activity. It is sharing work now that gathers an audience.

I see authors try to build a social media following to demonstrate platform, while at the same time fearful that if they put too much of their ideas or work into public circulation, they will exhaust themselves or “waste” their best stuff. So what do such people post about? Usually nothing meaningful—and so they flounder.

3. You put everything on a timeline that’s too rushed.

If you’ve already written a book proposal—or pitched your work and been told to go develop your platform—then you’re probably thinking in terms of, “How quickly can I build this thing so I can go back to Ms. Agent with the numbers she wants?”

You now have the most challenging mindset in which to develop a meaningful and long-lasting platform.

As I wrote earlier, each platform is organic and complex. Think of it as a fingerprint, a unique signature of each author that spirals out in a very particular way. You can certainly steal ideas on how to build a platform from other authors, or follow certain strategic steps to increase your marketing muscle, but platform building is a career-long process, not an overnight process. It is built on the foundation of your work that’s available, your professional experience and credibility, your visibility or standing within a particular community, and the people you know who can help lift you up. Some of it is relationship work, which is difficult to speed up.

While it’s possible to take online courses and work with marketing consultants to make progress—especially to gain clarity on your target audience, your messaging, and your branding (and such work will help you avoid mistakes and perhaps shorten your path to your goals)—for most authors, this is slow, intensive work, which involves difficult questions, such as:

What are the topics or themes you want to become known for?
Where do readers currently go to feed their interest in these topics?
What could you create to appeal to these readers on your topic—using a creative process or tools you would enjoy over a period of years?

Building a platform in a strategic and focused way, in order to meet a goal such as securing a book deal, requires a significant investment of your time, energy, and resource. It ultimately requires business planning and is going to take time away from your creative writing. For some authors, they’re out of their element in trying to tackle this challenge unless they’ve had prior business experience, or have a coach who can mentor them through the steps necessary to have focus and clarity in their approach.

I’m not sure all authors are cut out for building platform on a business schedule. Some authors luck into their platform by creating and sharing their work without regard for results—they gather a large audience almost by happy accident or through years of creative persistence. Other authors have strengths or assets they can draw upon to get things rolling (an MFA from a prestigious university, a friend in a high place).

So if you’re told you lack a platform, what do you do?

If you have the money, time, and energy, hire someone to help you get started down the right path. Dan Blank at We Grow Media is one consultant who works in this area.
Look for a different publisher. It’s usually the Big Five who demand platforms. Smaller presses often don’t care—they’re focused on the quality of the work and how well it aligns with their mission and values.
Put your book project aside. Producing new work and more work (in non-book form) is a meaningful and assured way of building your platform.
Consider self-publishing.

Also, a word of warning: Too often authors are rejected for “lack of platform” when the real reason is that the quality of their work or their ideas is subpar. But it’s an easier reason to give than criticizing the quality of someone’s work. Unfortunately, this does far more harm in the long run. Authors can become totally obsessed with the wrong plan of action, and it sets back their progress by years. Never assume that platform is your problem even if it’s stated as such. Despite a substantive reason for rejection, it’s also become a catch-all, easy-way-out rejection.

Parting advice

Platform building doesn’t stop if you do land a book deal. Your journey has just begun. The good news is that authors can build a platform by engaging in activities that are most enjoyable to them—because if they’re not enjoyable, you won’t continue doing them for the time required to see any kind of pay off. If you build platform only as a means to an end, it generally fails, and that’s why I tend to get cynical when authors try to do it only in service of securing a book deal. It doesn’t reflect an understanding of the much bigger picture: the tremendous value of being visible to your audience.

The Best Literary Fiction Blogs & Websites

I’m often asked for a list of the best blogs and websites focused on literary fiction and culture. This list was first curated in 2011; after five years, I continue to update it as sites fold or launch.

If I’ve missed any sites that deserve consideration, please let me know your favorites in the comments. Note: I have deliberately excluded well-known traditional media or social media, e.g., Publishers Weekly, New York Times, Goodreads, etc.

LitHub

The newest arrival to the literary blogging scene—and one of the most successful on this list—LitHub was launched in 2015 as as collaboration among publisher Grove Atlantic, Electric Literature, and many other literary publishers and magazines. You’ll find diverse voices and conversations about both contemporary and classic literature, with a HuffPo marketing twist. Twitter: @lithub

BookRiot

The perfect place for writers and readers of both literary and commercial literature. In other words, it’s more friendly and enjoys pop culture. It claims to be the biggest independent book editorial site in the US. Twitter: @bookriot.

Electric Literature

Kind of a cousin to LitHub, since they share founders. You’ll find many facets to Electric Lit, but the most consistent thing they publish and are known for is Recommended Reading, a weekly fiction magazine. They also do a range of articles about literary culture and the publishing industry. Twitter: @ElectricLit

The Rumpus

An online literary magazine about culture, rather than pop culture. Mission: “To introduce readers to things they might not have heard of yet.” It was founded and continues to be run by author Stephen Elliott (since 2008), and has a sizable editorial staff. This is where Cheryl Strayed wrote “Dear Sugar.” Twitter: @The_Rumpus.

The Millions

An online magazine that’s been published since 2003, offering coverage on books, arts, and culture. They run a very popular end-of-year series, A Year in Reading. Twitter: @The_Millions.

The Paris Review blog

Most people know The Paris Review and it needs no introduction. The print edition releases only quarterly, and their blog offers a place for more informal posting and literary culture discussion. It’s probably the most followed literary blog by a print literary journal. (The others on this list are online-only publications.) Twitter: @parisreview

3 a.m. Magazine

An online, international literary magazine that’s been around for more than 15 years. (That is a tremendous accomplishment for an online mag!) They accept essays, fiction, and poetry. I think of them fondly, as I published my first online piece here in 2003. Twitter: @3ammagazine

The Nervous Breakdown

Not as prolific as most sites on this list, but worth a look; it’s run by Brad Listi, who produces the well-respected literary interview podcast, Otherppl. Twitter: @TNBtweets.

Catapult

A relative newcomer to the online literary magazine scene. It’s an extension of a book publisher and its aspirations are to nurture a community of writers. Twitter: @CatapultStory

Vol. 1 Brooklyn

Founded in 2009; despite the name, it offers wide-ranging coverage of literary culture. Twitter: @vol1brooklyn

Bonuses

My longtime favorite aggregation site for broad arts & culture news: Arts & Letters Daily

If you love literary culture AND mass media: The Awl

Using Amazon KDP Ads to Sell Your Ebook on Amazon

Today’s guest post is by author Robert Kroese (@robkroese).

Amazon offers several ways to help authors promote and advertise their Kindle ebooks on Amazon itself. In this post, I’ll cover two types of ads Amazon offers through its Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) site for self-publishing authors. Note that you no longer have to be exclusive to Amazon in order to advertise on Amazon.

To get to the advertising interface, go to your Bookshelf in KDP and then click on the Promote and Advertise button next to the book you want to advertise. Next, click on the Create an ad campaign button.

You’ll see a screen asking you if you want to create a Sponsored Product ad or a Product Display ad.

Product Display ads have been around for a while, whereas Sponsored Product ads were introduced in 2015.

Sponsored Product ads appear below Amazon search results and below the fold on product (book) pages. Sponsored Product ads can be targeted by keyword or can use auto-targeting.

Product Display ads appear on related product detail pages and can appear on the Kindle reader screensaver and home screen. Product Display ads can be targeted by book genre or relevant products.

Visit Amazon to learn more about the differences between the two types of ads.

Product Display campaigns have a minimum budget of $100, are more difficult to set up, and have less granular reporting than Sponsored Product ads. Because of these drawbacks, I don’t believe Product Display ads are worthwhile for most self-published authors. The key to successful book advertising is to fail often—that is, you need to find out what doesn’t work quickly and move on to a more profitable strategy. With the way Product Display ads are set up, that’s difficult to do.

That said, some authors have reported having success with Product Display ads, so I’ll discuss how to set up both.

Product Display ads

For a Product Display ad, you have to decide whether you want to target your audience by product or by interest. I’ll go through both, starting with targeting by product.

The search feature for finding products to target is hilariously awful. No matter how specific you are with your keywords, it seems to return a randomly ordered lists of vaguely related products (including non-book items) that may or may not contain the product you’re actually looking for. For example, look what happens when I type “aurora kim stanley robinson kindle”:

Somehow their search feature thinks “KONGYII Babe Aurora All My Demons Casual T-Shirt” is worthy of displaying above the fold, whereas Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel Aurora is not.

I suggest opening another Amazon tab in your browser, searching for the product you are looking for, and copying the Amazon Standard Identification Number to your clipboard. The ASIN is the string of characters between /dp/ and the next slash in the Amazon product page URL.

You can also find it under the Product Details:

Paste the ASIN into the text box, click Search and voila! The desired product appears. Click the Add button next to the product to add it to your targeting.

If you try Product Display Ads, I suggest targeting a lot of books. This increases the amount of places your ad can be shown and also increases impressions. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad, not when they view it, so it generally doesn’t hurt to target very widely. (I say “generally” because if your clickthrough rate is extremely low, Amazon may discontinue your ad.)

Alternately, you can target your ad by interest (category) rather than by product. This is a much simpler process. Simply select “By interest” and then click the categories you want to target. Note that most of these categories are quite broad. Generally, unless your book fits squarely into a particular category, you’re going to be better off targeting by product.

When you’ve finished your targeting, you need to specify a few general settings.

You will see a checkbox labeled “Automatically extend your reach to include related products, such as those frequently bought with your book (recommended).” Unless you just want to experiment with this feature to see for yourself how well it works, I recommend un-checking the related products option. The advantage of selecting this option is that it will broaden the targeting of your ad, resulting in more impressions. The disadvantage is that it makes it more difficult to determine which keywords are working. The reports for Product Display ads only show you how effective the campaign is overall, so unless you create a separate campaign for each targeted product, it’s hard to know which keywords are working and which are not. Choosing to extend the reach of your ads only exacerbates that problem. Additionally, there’s no telling what Amazon considers “related products.” If they use the same algorithm as the product targeting keyword search, your book will probably show up next to T-shirts and power tools.

Next you need to specify a name for your campaign. Amazon pre-fills the text box with a very unhelpful name that you should definitely not use. I suggest using this format:

Product Title – Type of Ad – Targeting Type – YYYY/MM/DD

For example:

City of Sand – Product Display – Related Products – 2016/01/01

If you use a standard naming convention, it will be much easier to tell which campaign is which after you’ve got 20 or 30 of them going.

Next, enter your cost-per-click (CPC) bid. This is the most you will pay per click. The interface will suggest a range based on how competitive your targeted product selection is. Finally, enter an overall budget for your campaign. The minimum budget you can specify is $100.

Choose how long your campaign will run and whether you want your budget used up as quickly as possible or spread evenly throughout the duration of your campaign. Your campaign will end when either the end date is reached or your budget is used up, whichever comes first.

Next, create your ad. For your headline, use something that catches the viewer’s attention and makes them want to click the ad. Select your dimensions, check the details of your campaign summary, and then submit your campaign for review. Amazon will generally approve your ad within 72 hours.

Once your ad is approved and starts running, you’ll want to regularly check your metrics to see how your campaign is doing. If you’re getting not getting many clicks, you may need to tweak your ad’s headline. If you’re getting clicks but no purchases, something on your product detail page is preventing you from sealing the deal. That could mean you need more reviews (positive reviews, ideally), a better cover, or a more enticing description.

Sponsored Product ads

For most self-publishers, Sponsored Product Ads are a much better bet for generating positive return without forking over hundreds of dollars up front.

To start, go to your Bookshelf in KDP and then click on the Promote and Advertise button next to the book you want to advertise. Next, click on the Create an ad campaign button. You’ll see a screen asking you if you want to create a Sponsored Product ad or a Product Display ad. Click Sponsored Products.

Enter a name for the campaign. I suggest using a standard naming convention like that I specified earlier.

Next, enter a daily budget. $5 to $10 is probably sufficient. Then specify whether you want to run the campaign continuously or for a certain date range.

Then you will need to specify whether you want Amazon to target automatically or manually, based on keywords you enter. I have gotten a positive return on investment using both types of targeting, although I find the automatically targeted ads are so narrowly targeted that they are hardly worth the trouble. If you’re just starting out, I suggest creating one ad of each type for each book you want to advertise.

If you select Manual Targeting, the Sponsored Products ad interface will suggest a few keywords based on your book’s title, description and categories, but generally these are too broad to be of much use.

If any keywords appear that seem relevant and not overly broad, select them by clicking the Add button. Then click on the Add your own keywords tab to manually add keywords.

I suggest using mainly titles of similar books and other authors in your genre as keywords. Go through the bestseller lists in your genre and pick out any books that seem like they would appeal to the same audience as your book. Avoid one-word titles and authors who write in multiple genres, as well as mega-bestsellers. Once your book has been listed on Amazon for a few weeks, it’s also helpful to look at the “Also Boughts” that show up on the book’s product page and on your author page.

You will need to specify a cost-per-click bid for each keyword. I generally just leave it at the default $0.25. More than that, and you’re going to have a hard time breaking even on the ad. Most keywords seem to come in under that value anyway.

You will probably need at least 100 keywords for the ads to generate a significant return. 200 is even better. The more keywords you have, the more impressions you will get and the more data you’ll have about which keywords work and which ones don’t.

Evaluating your ad effectiveness

It will probably take a day or two for your Sponsored Product ad to be approved. You can see all your ad campaigns by clicking Reports on the KDP home page and then clicking Ad campaigns.

Click on the name of the campaign to see how each of your keywords is performing.

Once approved, it can take a few days for sales data to appear. (You may see a spike in sales in your KDP sales reports, but those reports won’t tell you where the sales came from). Don’t panic if you’re seeing a lot of clicks but no sales, but do keep an eye out for keywords that are costing you a lot ($.20 or more) per click. Unless a significant proportion of those clicks turn into purchases, you’re going to end up spending more than you’re making.

After a week or so, you’ll start to get an idea which keywords are working and which aren’t. Since you are paying for clicks, not impressions, using keywords that generate a lot of impressions and few sales doesn’t necessarily hurt you. Only get rid of keywords that are clearly a detriment to your ROI. If your average cost of sale (ACoS) is more than your royalty percentage, you’re losing money on that keyword.

On the other side of the equation, identify any keywords that are generating a lot of sales and/or that have a positive ROI. Browse the Also Boughts for those titles and authors for more keywords. Continue to expand and refine your keywords by going through this process once a month or so.

If you’re getting impressions but no clicks, the problem could be with your ad—or it could be that your book just isn’t a very good match for that keyword. As with Product Display ads, if you are getting clicks but no sales, something on your book’s product page is preventing you from closing the deal. You may need more reviews, a more eye-catching cover, or a more enticing description.

Keeping it fresh

The effectiveness of keywords changes over time, but the reports don’t break the clicks down by date. If you have a “stale” campaign that’s been using the same keywords for several months, you may be paying a lot of money for keywords that are no longer working. For any effective campaign, I recommend downloading the keywords and recreating the campaign once a month so that you know which keywords are still working. This is also a good time to add new keywords similar to ones that have performed well recently.

Parting advice

Amazon’s advertising tools aren’t a secret weapon to turn your sleeper novel into a bestseller, but by using them wisely you can increase your visibility and sales while turning a profit. Sponsored Product ads in particular are an easy, inexpensive way to experiment with advertising to increase your book’s sales.

Note from Jane: If you found this post useful, I highly recommend taking a look at the upcoming book from Rob on how to self-publish.

Looking Back at 2016: Important Publishing Developments Authors Should Know

photo by Annick Press

The following post is a round-up of 2016 news and trends covered by The Hot Sheet, an email newsletter about the publishing industry written specifically for an audience of authors. I publish this newsletter in partnership with journalist Porter Anderson. Check it out and get a free trial today.

The market for adult fiction is primarily a digital one

It’s commonly said that in the United States, overall trade book sales are divided about 70-30 print-digital, and that ebook sales at traditional publishing houses are flat to declining. (You’ve probably heard the celebratory and misleading claims that “print is back!”)

But the latest analysis from Author Earnings shows that when you factor in “nontraditional” publishing sales, the digital share of overall US consumer book purchases changes significantly:

45% of all books purchased in the US in 2016 were digital
In adult fiction, sales in the US are roughly 70% digital
30% of all US adult fiction purchases are books by self-published authors

“Nontraditional” sales include self-published work, Amazon’s own imprints, and other sources outside of big trade publishing.

If you’re not familiar with Author Earnings, it’s a collaboration between an analyst known only as “Data Guy” and indie author Hugh Howey. They publish quarterly reports based on data scraped from Amazon sales pages. Data Guy’s recent white paper for Digital Book World outlines the points above and also offers more information on his approach.

Note: Data Guy will be speaking at the Digital Book World industry conference on Jan. 17 and 18 and at DBW Indie Author, the conference that The Hot Sheet is programming for DBW, on Jan. 19.

Amazon’s market share is growing—across all formats

Industry consultants such as Mike Shatzkin observe that Amazon now has at least 50% of the overall book retail market across print and digital formats. When you study industry reports of print’s buoyancy, and look closely at where the sales are happening, it’s fairly clear that Amazon is stealing away print market share from bricks-and-mortar retailers like Barnes & Noble. And of course Amazon continues to dominate ebook retail, especially as Nook ebook sales continue their decline.

Furthermore, Amazon owns Audible/ACX—the No. 1 audiobook retailer in the US—and has been putting more investment behind the marketing of audiobooks and original audio programming. Over the last couple years, audiobooks have been the top growing format for trade publishers, with about 20-30% growth year on year. Amazon is primed to take advantage of this growth, whether the content comes from traditional publishers or self-publishers.

Finally, there’s Amazon Publishing. Amazon now has 13 active imprints and is the largest publisher of works in translation. In 2016 alone, it’s believed Amazon Publishing will release more than 2,000 titles. (Remember: This isn’t their self-publishing operation—it’s their traditional publishing operation.)

A data point that is unlikely to surprise anyone with knowledge of Amazon: eight of the top 20 Kindle sellers in 2016 were from Amazon’s own publishing imprints. This statistic was recently pointed out by Michael Cader of Publishers Lunch (subscription required). Cader writes, “Amazon’s share of its own top market has more than doubled” when comparing December 2015 to December 2016. “It makes you wonder what these numbers will look like a year from now.”

Amazon is cracking down harder on suspicious and scammy activity of all kinds (or at least trying)

Amazon updated its customer review policy in 2016 to be more restrictive than ever and has sued sites that help facilitate paid reader reviews. While it remains acceptable for readers to review a book after receiving it for free or at a discount—as part of a giveaway, promotion, or pre-publication marketing campaign—reviewers must disclose in the review that they received the book free.

It is not okay to leave an Amazon review because you expect to receive something in exchange afterward—such as a free book, a coupon or discount, a gift card, etc. This also means it is not okay to “trade” reviews with other authors.

Most notably and most discussed among authors: It is not okay to post a reader review if you are, according to Amazon, “a relative, close friend, business associate, or employee” of the author. Interpretation of this policy, as you can imagine, drives considerable debate.

Finally, to post a review, customers need to have spent at least $50 on Amazon. Yes, this is official Amazon policy. This helps prevent fake reviews from people who never shop at Amazon and may receive payment to leave reviews.

The other challenge Amazon faced in 2016 was eliminating scammy activity by authors enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, its ebook subscription service. KU pays self-published authors for reads of their books from a pool of money that fluctuates monthly. Prior to July 2015, authors were paid a fixed amount for each book borrowed and read; now authors are paid for each page read. In February 2016, Amazon moved to a new standard of counting pages to be more accurate and fair. Still, authors have been finding ways to game the system and rack up page reads dishonestly. This ends up hurting all authors since there’s a fixed amount of money to go around each month for page reads.

To make matters worse, during the fall, authors had to deal with incorrect reporting of pages read through KU, so distrust of the system—in addition to gaming of the system—may affect indie authors’ desire to remain exclusive to Amazon in 2017.

There wasn’t a new blockbuster for publishing in 2016

If you look at the overall bestsellers from last year, many of them weren’t even published in 2016, such as The Girl on the Train. The dry spell was noticed as far back in July, by Publishers Weekly, who pointed out that no new novel had cracked the top twenty print bestsellers in the first half of 2016. Industry observers speculate that current events (the election cycle, terrorist attacks) may have squeezed out book coverage, but also that the division of sales between print and digital formats may be a factor.

But what about the new Harry Potter book, you might ask?

The release of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child lifted sales for its US publisher, Scholastic, as expected. While the power of Potter is real enough and undeniably impressive, what makes this less than boffo news for publishing is that, as Michael Cader writes, “the Potter gain was more of a movement of inventory dollars from new adult books rather than any kind of overall boost to the trade.”

Self-publishing activity is still growing—with a fascinating shift

Back in 2012, there were many headlines about the tremendous growth in self-publishing output as demonstrated by the increase in ISBNs used by indie authors.

Since then, Bowker—the agency that issues ISBNs in the United States—has continued to release annual stats that still show growth in the sector, but these numbers always come with important caveats, including:

Bowker’s figures don’t reflect all of the self-publishing activity out there. They can’t count books that don’t have ISBNs, and a considerable volume of self-pub titles are published and distributed without ISBNs.

Bowker’s counts are for ISBNs, not book titles. A single book title may use several ISBNs (e.g., one for the print edition, another for the ebook edition, and so on).

According to Bowker, ISBNs for self-published titles in 2015 reached 727,125, up from 599,721 in 2014, representing a 21% increase in one year. The increase since 2010 is 375%.

But I think more important is where the growth occurred. Bowker’s numbers indicate more authors are using Amazon’s CreateSpace, which is free to use; older, fee-based self-publishing services are falling out of favor. Here’s a selected glimpse (again, remember these are ISBN counts coming out of each service per year):

CreateSpace titles in 2010: 35,693
CreateSpace titles in 2015: 423,718 (+1,087%)
Author Solutions titles in 2010: 41,304
Author Solutions titles in 2015: 23,930 (-42%)

The only area of Author Solutions’ business that saw an ISBN increase in 2015 is WestBow, the Christian self-publishing imprint marketed through Thomas Nelson. Note that Penguin Random House, which used to own AuthorSolutions, sold it off in January 2016, unloading what was probably seen as an albatross.

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Writing Retreats: Bringing the Goodness Back Home With You

Playa, Summer Lake, Oregon

Today’s guest post is by author and editor Melanie Bishop (@melbishopwriter). Be sure to read her previous posts on the value of writing retreats and how to make the most of one.

It was mid-September of 2012, and I was driving home after a three-week residency at Playa in south-central Oregon. Only an hour or so into the 11-hour drive, I stopped at a one-man fruit stand, just outside Lakeview. He was set up in the shade of a big tree, just off the main road; he was selling only one thing—Donut Peaches, also known as the Saturn Peach—small and squat, donut-like, the pit where the hole would be. Without even tasting one, I bought a dozen of this man’s September bounty.

Back in the car, I used my water bottle to rinse one of them, and took a bite. What? This was the best-tasting peach in the world. My pleasure was audible as I consumed it, bite by bite. I washed another one off and began eating it, as I pulled back onto the road. “These are fantastic!” I called to the farmer. He gave me one firm nod.

Soon I wasn’t even bothering to wash these fuzzy delights; each one was maybe only four good-sized bites. They went quickly and deliciously, and before I’d driven half an hour, I’d collected half-a-dozen pits in the drink holder cubby. I don’t know that I’d ever enjoyed fruit more than in those moments, in that car, just south of Lakeview, Oregon, on Highway 395.

I know it sounds like I was high on something—I was—high on the effects of a three-week retreat at Playa, Summer Lake. My perception was altered by the experience I’d had. A combination of the beauty, the quiet, the vastness, the newness, the generosity, the utter expanse of the playa itself, had left me feeling anything was possible. Had left me so drenched in my own ideas that I couldn’t write them down quickly enough. As I drove on that next hour, I kept having to pull over to photograph something—something that felt like a miracle, but was really a dilapidated barn. The barn, in its demise, was exquisite, and I took about three dozen photos to capture how rare it was.

Soon, the Playa high began to wear off, just enough to notice something was changing. How to keep it from parting ways with me completely? How could I prevent the real world of my regular life and work, from flooding in on me, and flushing all the goodness I’d cultivated—the peace and direction, the discipline and the naps, the solitude and the camaraderie. The farther I got from Playa’s dry lake bed, those layers of mud and cracked dirt, the more I felt the glow fading. I spent a good bit of the remainder of the drive home identifying just what it was that had made the time there so transformative, and how I might bring some element of that feeling into my life on my return.

This is the first step: naming the specifics of the goodness. It can vary person to person, what is most unique or most valued. One person may feel it’s the landscape, its wildness, the birds. For another writer, it may be the “room of one’s own”—that freedom to spread out, be messy, not have anyone else in the creative space. And for another, it may be the luxury of that many days off in a row, to focus exclusively on a project and make great strides.

Once you’ve identified what made your time productive, unique, and to be cherished, you can ponder ways to replicate aspects of those features in your home life. Even though you’re not likely to have three weeks of 24-hour days to work on your writing again anytime soon, you can decide on some amount of writing that is workable in your daily life. Maybe it’s one hour every morning before going to work. Or maybe it’s only one hour per week, Saturday mornings from 5 a.m. to 6 a.m., getting up while everyone else in the house is still asleep.

On the last day of your retreat or on your way back home, pose this question to yourself and take it seriously: How can I take the way I’m feeling home with me? What does this feeling consist of? What contributed to it? How can I replicate even a smidgen of it in my post-retreat life? Come up with a concrete plan and commit to it. One writer may decide to invest in the rental of office space, to have a quiet place to go that becomes the writing studio. Another person may request a different schedule at work, to accommodate a few hours of writing time per week. Some may commit to a weekly visit to the closest place where the natural world is protected and celebrated—a bit of wildness akin to that at Playa. Or in the absence of proximity to such places, some might adopt a meditation practice geared at recalling and invoking the mood, tone and atmosphere of the last place they had a successful retreat.

It can help to bring home souvenirs. Often there will be something you see on your walks—plant matter or a certain kind of rock, bird feathers or strips of bark. You can decide this thing—this rock, this feather—represents the peace you attained at Playa, the belief in your writer-self. By attributing the rock with this meaning, you turn it into a symbol of your experience. Put the rock or feather or long strip of bark on the desk or table where you write. Believe in it. Use it as a physical way to tap into what was most meaningful about your stay in this place.

The windowsill above my desk is filled with these pieces of various retreat settings. Some of them, I honestly don’t remember anymore where exactly they came from—which retreat in which year? Was that long soft bark from Norton Island, Maine? Was this the feather I brought from Hawk Valley, Montana, a friend’s cabin where I wrote most of a young adult novel? I may forget as decades pass, and I experience more and more of these places, which talisman came from where, but I never throw any of them away. I know all these souvenirs are important—attempts to bring the lusciousness of particular landscapes and experiences home with me. And to help me, once the retreat is over, to access that landscape within the self where the writing feels possible.

Note from Jane: Melanie’s upcoming memoir retreat in Carmel-by-the-Sea is available in solo or group options, starting this January. Find out more.

Writing Retreats: How to Make the Most of One

Frank Foreman, 1983

Today’s guest post is by author and editor Melanie Bishop (@melbishopwriter). Be sure to also read her post on The Value of Writing Retreats.

One of the ways that retreats help us to write is by greatly reducing our usual distractions. Away from home, spouse, family, friends, pets, jobs, laundry, stacks of work and unopened mail, we experience the freshness of arriving somewhere new. This new place has no expectations of us, no clutter, no history. We’ve brought along only what we need and this separation from all our other stuff is liberating, making the working landscape feel unfettered. We imagine ourselves more productive in this new space.

At first, some of us tend to be overly ambitious, thinking we will just work day and night, bringing home hundreds of new pages. Given how difficult it can be to carve out time away from our jobs and lives, to make a retreat happen, we can feel overly pressured to get productive immediately. And we feel guilty if we’re not making every minute count.

Whoa, I would say. Slow down.

No one can shift gears so quickly.
Finding the right pace is key, and it’s not a frenzied one.
We miss out on much of the wonder of a retreat if we don’t allow ourselves to get to know this new place.

I’ve done writing retreats as short as two days and as long a month, and what I’ve found is this: about a third of the overall time should be free of any expectation of productivity. Or I could distill that down to: a third of the time should be FREE. Period. Productivity is certainly one goal of a retreat. But there are other desired outcomes, such as returning home rested, relaxed, and energized by the time away. The goal is not to return home as though you’ve just pulled a week of all-nighters in a row.

The more generalized retreats I lead in Carmel are called Write & Play in Carmel-by-the-Sea for a reason. I tell clients, on arrival, that we place equal emphasis on “play.” Playing in this new place enlivens the senses and gives us new sensory triggers and contexts. Without even thinking about it, these new sensory experiences are applied to our writing selves and woven into our stories.

But the other reason I emphasize “play” is that when we’ve slept well, eaten well, relaxed and played well, we are much more likely to feel ready to work, and the work is likely to be of higher quality, and achieved with greater efficiency. In this scenario, we don’t feel the work is robbing us of time we’d rather be doing something else. On a retreat, it’s possible to do all the things we want to do.

One helpful activity, early on, is to write down your intentions. I recommend doing this on paper with a pen, not on the computer. I give clients a small notebook and pen and suggest that they use the notebook and pen for exercises, plans, lists and goals. People have a different relationship with pen and paper than they have with the keyboard and the laptop screen. I do all my first drafts handwritten in a certain kind of notebook with a certain kind of pen; I can compose more easily away from advanced technology. I ask people to try this and see if it changes something for them. Many clients report feeling freed up with pen in hand.

So, in your notebook, brainstorm a list of how you’d like to spend your time. Include everything that comes to mind. Here’s an example. (Obviously not all retreats happen near an ocean, and some retreat settings are intentionally remote, without access to cafes or stores. My examples come from Carmel-based retreats.)

indulge in naps
read in clawfoot tub
see the ocean every day
exercise daily
stay off the internet
write for 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours after dinner
check out two galleries
browse the bookstore and other shops
call loved ones

Next, consider the fact that there are 24 hours in each day. Maybe in retreat mode, you are sleeping nine hours a night. That leaves 15 waking hours. Allot a certain amount of time to each activity, and see just how abundant 15 hours can be. Let’s say you will spend one hour napping and two hours reading. That leaves 12 waking hours. Four of those you intend to be writing, and three of those you will allow for consumption of breakfast, lunch and dinner. There are still five whole hours to spend as you wish—maybe two hours down at the ocean, an hour exercising, an hour to talk on the phone, and an hour at a shop or gallery. Or maybe with that last hour, you decide to let yourself check email. Or not. There are more hours than you think in a day if you stay off the internet; and, if you go online in the morning, many hours will be eaten up before you even realize the day’s half gone. Some people decide to unplug for the whole of their retreat.

Once you’ve figured out how many hours for each activity, then go ahead and create an itinerary. Don’t worry. Nothing’s set in stone. Example:

11 pm to 8 am: Sleep
8 to 9 am: Breakfast
9 to 11 am: Write
11 to 12 pm: Exercise
12 to 3 pm: Take a picnic lunch to the ocean
3 to 4 pm: Nap
4 to 5 pm:  Read
5 to 7 pm: Write
7 to 8 pm: Out to dinner
8 to 9 pm: Shops or galleries
9 to 10 pm: Phone calls
10 to 11 pm: Read in clawfoot tub
11 pm: To bed

Take into consideration your own preferences and biorhythms. If you work better in the morning, schedule your writing time then. If you are someone who stays up till 4 am and sleeps till noon, then maybe your best writing time is in the wee hours, when everyone else is asleep. I happen to work best early in the morning, with my first cup of coffee; if I can watch the sun come up, all the better. Use what you know about yourself and your work habits and be kind when plotting your daily schedule. You want it to feel good.

Once that’s done, know that you can alter it as needed whenever you want. Know that if you want, you can toss the whole schedule thing out the window. But having made an itinerary, thoughtfully, you’ve set your intentions for what you want to do and you prove to yourself that it’s indeed doable. One client was fairly amazed when she wrote down all the waking hours in her every day, realizing that on most days, she loses huge amounts of time to being online. Seeing the hours plotted out on a sheet of paper made the potential of those previously lost hours real to her, something she wanted to reclaim.

And finally, recognize that opportunities may come up or you may be struck by an idea, or you will meet someone or be invited to go somewhere. Allow for the possibility of the unplanned thing.

When I was on a month-long residency at Djerassi Resident Artists Program last spring, a favorite among all the art installations on their property was an old Yield sign, that an artist had changed to read “Yield to Whim.” This was posted on the long, winding entrance to the 580 acres of Djerassi, and it was posted like any other traffic sign, as if to say “Take this as seriously as you would a red light or a stop sign.” YIELD to WHIM. I took it seriously, and I referred back to it many times that month. If during a time I had planned to be writing, I had a sudden urge to walk in the forest, or to bake brownies, or to stay up late with other residents, drinking hot chocolate and telling stories, I would tell myself, Yield to Whim. Whim’s okay. Whim is good.

So if all this sounds contradictory, well it is. Make an itinerary, and then allow yourself some flexibility in following it. Have goals, but don’t be overly strict about them. Get work done, but also get outside. Play. Run. Walk. Laugh. Being intentional and aware of how you spend your time is important. As is finding your own blend of discipline and whimsy for a productive, restorative retreat.

Note from Jane: Melanie’s upcoming memoir retreat in Carmel-by-the-Sea is available in solo or group options, starting this January. Find out more.

How to Avoid Sabotaging Your Creative Process

Photo credit: Georgie Sharp via VisualHunt / CC BY-NC

Today’s guest post is by creative coach, writer, and editor A M Carley (@amcarley). Her company, Chenille Books, is offering an email course for writers, 30 Days to Becoming Unstuck, in January 2017.

Hey, this could be big!

Do you say and think that about your project? When you do, does it feel exhilarating? Depressing? Why is it that sometimes everything seems possible, and other times, we’re stuck and see nothing but obstacles? Is it that the stuckness comes from our inborn needs to connect with others—and to distrust them too?

Do you write for yourself, or with a carefully defined target reader in mind? Whatever your situation, it’s likely that part of your writing energy derives from an urge to connect. Yet none of us can avoid the self-protective suspicion that eventually got humans to our position at the top of the food chain.

We surge toward the joy of making something new and fine to enrich the lives of others – and we also scramble instinctively for the back of the cave, as far away as possible from sharing, trusting, or seeking an audience. Day by day, each of us navigates a continuum of need, between mistrustful isolation and immersive connection.

But it’s not always easy to negotiate a middle way, when we’re in the grip of these powerful—opposed—impulses! Inevitable tensions accompany the paradox of connectedness. Aware of them or not, we must live with those tensions.

Here are four tensions you may have experienced that have the potential to undermine your creative work and leave you feeling stuck.

1. Are you competing?

Are you looking over your shoulder when you’d be better off taking in the view ahead? In other words, is it possible your sense of stuckness is a product of comparing yourself with others, even competing with them?

This can derive from your own unexamined beliefs, or from actual toxic people.

First, take a close look at your unspoken assumptions and let yourself rethink. Consider these ideas:

Nothing you do will harm other writers.
Your good work doesn’t hurt them.
Your popularity doesn’t hurt them.
Your financial success doesn’t hurt them.

Now turn that around. Nothing other writers do will harm you either.

For instance, if a writer sells a book, do all other writers suffer? Only if we’re in a zero-sum book-buying universe. And, like me, you probably know too many readers who’d rather buy books than new clothes (or dessert!) to believe that. If you focus on writing an excellent book, you’re doing all you need to do. Other writers will do the same.

Second, if you actually know writers in your circle who are behaving selfishly, or worse, spreading negative comments about your work, it’s essential that you disengage. Be better than that, and keep your eye on what’s important. Do what you can to separate from contact with these people, especially if they assume the upper hand and pose as the cool kids. Protect yourself and your work.

Instead of looking over your shoulder and feeling miserably inferior to the cool kids, reconnect with the timeless clan of writers and storytellers. Let their camaraderie support you. Forget any frenemies who’ve been bedeviling you.

If you need companionship, find some non-toxic friends or acquaintances for a day trip or a night out. Do everything possible to free yourself from the meanness and negativity of writers who have lost their way, believing in a zero-sum world. You don’t need them. Stop looking over your shoulder and move on, no longer bogged down in competition.

2. What moves you to anger?

Note what irritates you about other writers who work in or near your topic or subgenre. This can be useful intel for several reasons. Ask yourself why you’re angry. Then ask yourself, what would need to change for you not to be angry? Your anger is probably sending you a message. So follow the trail and find out.

What is happening for you? Can you discover what this is about?

Is this about envy?
Is this about your deep competitive streak?
Is this about the superiority of your work compared to theirs?
Is this about some kid in third grade who looked a little bit like this other writer?

Your own thoughtful responses can become a treasure map, guiding you toward your own destination, your own story, told in your own voice, with your own experience and research supporting the work.

Consider, for instance, your gut response when you learn of other writers’ good fortune. Part of you may be happy for them, while another part may wish that their good fortune only be moderate—no more than you can handle comfortably. Who said feelings were supposed to be rational, right?

If you find yourself struggling with envy as to other writers in your community, or in the world at large, you may benefit from some focused attention on these feelings.

To keep writing, to keep forging ahead with your own work, you’ll need to come to terms with your anger. Why not flip the dynamic and decide to learn from your anger? Notice the next time you clench your jaw or mutter a swear word in response to another writer. What is it that got to you? Find out its meaning to you.

3. Are you complaining?

Complaining is a sinkhole that can swallow up a lot of good writing mojo. Instead of progressing with your writing, do you find yourself listing the reasons why things aren’t going as smoothly as you wanted?

I don’t have time!
The phone keeps ringing!
You should see my email inbox!
All those meetings!
Too many doctor appointments!
My spouse / partner / BFF doesn’t understand!
This weather won’t quit!
My boss / client / customer is impossible!

Do you find yourself suggesting that other people have contributed more than their fair share of grief to your life lately? Are you placing blame on others for your disappointments?

When you think about it, complaining requires a passive stance. We’re saying that life is out of our hands, and the responsibility for it lies with others. Remember, it’s your life. It doesn’t belong to the others. Consider shifting away from complaining and blame, and toward locating one next step. One practical and doable single task. Don’t give the overwhelm the upper hand.

Decide to be active. Over time, you will accumulate accomplishments the way you used to list complaints.

Identify a safe place or two to vent. Journals are terrific for this. Therapists also. Then locate one doable next step and move along.

By the way, it’s important to note what’s not complaining, and yet can sometimes be confused for it. If you use your voice to talk about what you are learning from your struggle, that’s not complaining. Your struggle doesn’t cancel out your brilliance. It is generous and helpful to look back at your experience and share what you’ve come to understand.

In other words, sometimes telling a story about a problem you had and the lesson it taught can be useful. That is not complaining.

4. Do you use sales as a measuring stick?

Resiliency pop quiz: Can you reply calmly to the relative who asks, “So, you sold a million books yet? When are you going to give up this writer thing? Can’t you see the writing on the wall (heh, heh, heh)?”

This is a tough one for so many people. Maybe your writing won’t pay very much. Maybe it will, after a while. Maybe it’s our First-World Western outlook that makes this so tricky for so many of us. It’s not worth doing unless we get recognition and a bunch of cash, right? If we’re not making a splash, why are we doing it?

Enough with the judgmental attitude, already! It’s more important, and more subtle, than that.

For me, Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, helps illuminate a path for the tentative artist with this short dialogue:

“But do you know how old I will be by the time I learn to really play the piano / act / paint / write a decent play?”

“Yes . . . the same age you will be if you don’t.”

Another famous and successful writer—Stephen King—explained the creative person’s priorities this way: “Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.”

Do you remember the first time you found yourself on the receiving end of a writer’s offering that was perfect in the moment? The experience linked you together, whether you were face to face, or centuries and continents apart.

Then, one day, as a writer you express yourself well, offering your work as an invitation. A reader accepts and appreciates it. How wonderfully, even cosmically, connected is that?

Note from Jane: Anne’s email course 30 Days to Becoming Unstuck is free this January with the purchase of the paperback edition of FLOAT • Becoming Unstuck for Writers. Register here.

A Self-Published Poet’s Path to Her First Book Deal

Photo by Lady Happiness

If you hadn’t noticed, it’s the time of year when every publication, website, blog, and well-known book critic releases a “best of the year” book list. At Goodreads—the largest social media site for book readers—the strategy is unique: they have site members decide on the best books during three rounds of voting.

This year, in the poetry category, the award went to Amanda Lovelace’s The Princess Saves Herself in This One, self-published in April. Goodreads has written a case study charting how the book gained momentum within the community, but I was curious about how Amanda was able to achieve visibility for her book—which led to landing a book deal with publisher Andrews McMeel.

I first reported on this story for The Hot Sheet, the industry newsletter for authors that I publish with Porter Anderson. What follows is the extended version of my Q&A exchange with Amanda. My thanks to her for providing such detailed insights.

You tweeted that people should take book bloggers more seriously—that they made your book happen. Could you elaborate further how book bloggers became aware of your work?

I’m a years-long Tumblr user who established a reputation as a feminism/book blogger near the time Tumblr really started taking off as the place to be (even now, Tumblr is still the blogging website that’s the most accessible and easy-to-use). Back when I was trying to help form a more cohesive online book community with other avid readers on Tumblr, I helped unite us by coining the community label “booklr”, following in the footsteps of Tumblr communities such as “fitblr.”

I made myself known in the booklr community for being an open and honest book blogger, and later, as a cautiously hopeful writer. Thus, when I announced the existence of my poetry collection, I didn’t have to proactively contact any book bloggers to promote it—booklr was ready to support me from the get-go.

From what I’ve observed, when writers try to “invade” the booklr space to use the members as simple marketing tools and nothing else, it doesn’t work out for them too well. The booklr community wants to get to know you first and see what you’re all about before deciding to commit: What are your reading habits? Are you feminist? Do you support diverse reading? Do you support #ownvoices? What’s your opinion on Harry Potter? What’s your cat’s name?

You have to become involved in communities without the plan to exploit them. Don’t even let it enter your mind. When the time is ready, your community with be happy to support you in your endeavors. After all, that’s what community is all about.

When I first self-published my book, I took the advice of my previously self-published critique partner, Danika Stone, and enrolled my book in the Kindle Unlimited program. The thing with booklr is, we are a diverse and closely-knit bunch, so we know what the economic realities are within the community—not everyone can drop $2.99 on an ebook any time they feel like, so many of them join the Kindle Unlimited program so they can read as much as they want for a low monthly fee. This was always in the forefront of my mind.

And it’s not just that I wanted people to easily access my book to “hype” it up; I genuinely wanted to help people—especially young girls—through my story. Making the ebook edition more accessible than it would have been otherwise certainly boosted the appeal and therefore my chance to connect with others who had shared experiences.

Additionally, you made the ebook free to anyone with a Kindle app when it was chosen as an Ace Book club pick. (Note: Ace Book Club is a Goodreads book club.)

[That] made it incredibly more accessible, and by that time bloggers had established so much buzz about my book that the community-wide plunge was only natural. From there, booklr’s passion for spreading a love of books and reading carried my book across all social media outlets—Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc. All I did was post a simple announcement on my Tumblr blog. The other book bloggers were the ones who got their hands on it, genuinely loved it, and did everything within their power to make my book “happen.” And they did.

You see this so many times, over and over. For example, authors like Rupi Kaur and Sarah J. Maas—they’re such incredibly talented writers whose online communities helped to establish them enough to gain them the recognition they felt they deserved. To my knowledge, for Kaur, it was Instagram and Tumblr. For Maas, it was Wattpad. Online community also helped to boost successes like r.h. Sin, Anna Todd, and countless others. The communities we become integral parts of genuinely want to see us succeed. In that way, community is much more powerful than any paid ad you can ever run.

Do you spend an equal amount of time on Twitter, FB, and Instagram—or is Tumblr your preferred place?

The first social media platform I used to promo my book was Tumblr. In my opinion, Tumblr is extremely underutilized by the publishing world. It’s taken much less seriously than sites like Instagram and YouTube, which is mind boggling. I don’t think the publishing world realizes that the book community on Tumblr is massive. Because Tumblr offers so many different posting options (text, photo, video, quote, etc), it exists as a mixed bag where there’s always something for everyone’s different tastes.

In the booklr community, you get to choose from book review blogs, book photography blogs, book quote blogs, book playlist blogs, book edit blogs, etc. Most book blogs are a mix of every book-related thing imaginable. There are just SO MANY different ways to spread the love for books on Tumblr, unlike sites like Instagram, where you’re pretty much stuck with a single photo and a description most people won’t read since it’s stuck behind a “read more,” and users only want to scroll through for a quick minute or two.

From Tumblr, I moved on to Twitter, where a nice portion of my Tumblr followers already followed me, as well as Instagram. Twitter is extremely useful in promo because retweets are a Thing (much like the reblogging option on Tumblr), so the word spreads fast if you have enough followers to gain traction. I’ve always used Instagram for promo here and there, but I feel like it’s been far less impactful than Tumblr and Twitter put together—again, probably because of the lack of posting options. Too repetitive and samey-samey.

Do you know how the Ace Book Club at Goodreads became aware of your book and made it a selection?

The Ace Book Club is actually a subgroup of F*** Yeah Asexual on Tumblr. Since I’m on the asexual spectrum, I followed their blog and frequently reacted to their posts. After a while, this caught the attention of the creator of F*** Yeah Asexual, Tiffany Rose, a fellow ace bookworm. When she announced that she was starting Ace Book Club back up and wanted ace spectrum authors to fill out an application to have their book considered for July’s read, I took the chance! If there’s any advice in this, it’s making yourself known in all of your communities, because they’re almost always happy to support you and boost your voice. Your success is their success, and not just in terms of monetary value. The very fact that I’m a successful asexual author raises awareness for the asexual community as a whole.

How did Andrews McMeel find out about your work?

My editor, Patty Rice, noticed that the princess saves herself in this one kept popping up in various places online, so she decided to order it. Lucky for me, she read it and loved it enough to contact me, and then pitched it to the rest of her Andrews McMeel team, who agreed with her praise!

To learn more:

Visit Amanda Lovelace’s website
Visit Amanda Lovelace’s Tumblr
Visit Amanda Lovelace on Goodreads

How to Make Readers Deeply Connect to Your Characters

Photo credit: Pak Gwei via VisualHunt / CC BY-NC-SA

Today’s guest post is an excerpt from Hack Your Reader’s Brain by novelist Jeff Gerke (@JeffGerke).

There is one secret ingredient to crafting a novel that readers will read from beginning to end. All the other elements are important and necessary, but they play supporting roles to this one.

That secret is to connect your reader to your protagonist. Ever heard yourself (or others) say the following about a great novel?

“I couldn’t stop thinking about the characters, even when I wasn’t reading the book.”

“I had to find out if she ever reconciled with her father.”

“I kept forgetting she wasn’t real. I even caught myself praying for her once.”

These are all ways of saying one thing: I was there. I was so connected to the character that the line was blurred between what was happening in the story and what was happening to me. We’re talking about a psychological phenomenon called transportation.

Transportation Excitation

Imagine a group of cavemen sitting around the fire one evening, eating roast mammoth. Zog says, “You know, it was a night just like this, at just about this time, that my brother stood up from this very fire and walked into the jungle alone and unarmed. A saber-toothed tiger ate him.”

The other people nod sagely and then, when they’re done eating, stand up and walk into the jungle alone and in different directions.

You guessed it: Some of them weren’t in attendance at the next night’s fireside dinner.

That’s what happens when transportation doesn’t occur. When we’re not able to get out of our own heads and place ourselves into someone else’s, we fail to learn the lessons that could save our lives. We also fail to experience the joys of others and the sorrows of others. We miss the entire opportunity to grow through the experiences of others.

Happily, the Zog clan’s lack of transportation ability has not survived to modern times. If you’re reading this book, the odds are very good that you can indeed identify with what other people are going through. I’m willing to bet you can also feel what other people are feeling—even fictional people.

Which explains why you got misty-eyed at the end of that movie. Transportation explains why you squeezed your partner’s arm off during that horror film. And it certainly explains why, when the hero was hanging from the cliff while the villain stomped on his fingers, your palms were sweating.

We get into our stories, don’t we? This is very, very good news for those of us who are storytellers.

The question, of course, is how to cause readers to make that jump. We’ve all read stories that left us cold and did not get us to feel any kinship or concern for the characters. Worse, we may’ve even read stories in which we came to hope that misfortune would come to the characters.

How can we cause transportation to happen, and how can we be certain it will happen? We hack the reader’s brain, of course!

Emotional Engagement

When we show characters who have something in common with our readers, mainly in good and admirable ways, our readers will like them. They will begin to connect, to bond, to be transported.

Can you think of a way to show that your hero is friendly? Your reader will like him if you do. Can you show your hero being brave and standing up against injustice or bullies? Your reader will admire him if you do. Can you show your hero being generous or forgiving or responsible? What about scrupulously honest—returning a man’s dropped wallet untouched even though your hero needs a dollar to eat—unashamedly loyal, or earnest and hard-working?

Show your hero as the kind of person your reader would like if she met, and transportation will begin. Show your hero as the kind of person your reader aspires to be like, and transportation will accelerate.

When you cause your reader to feel that your hero is like her, or is what she’d like to become, she will become emotionally engaged.

Now I’d like to bring in some help from a surprising and marble-carved source.

A Single Soul Dwelling in Two Bodies

The Greek philosopher Aristotle said the definition of a friend is a single soul dwelling in two bodies. When it comes to fiction, we’re shooting for that sort of relationship between the reader and the hero.

Aristotle’s book Rhetoric reveals the findings of his studies in how to get people to feel what he wanted them to feel. In the context of a legal case, Aristotle wanted to give speakers the ability to cause judges and listeners to become predisposed to rule in the speakers’ favor. He wanted to manipulate—er, persuade—people to like who he wanted them to like and dislike who he wanted them to dislike.

Aristotle’s secret is to demonstrate that the person in question (i.e., your hero) possesses qualities the listeners (your readers) admire or will resonate with. He recommends showing the person as being worthy of emulation. If you show the hero as someone we would admire or even revere in real life, your reader will connect with him. Even showing the hero doing the actual admiring is powerful, as when you might show him going out of his way to help a veteran. If you make your reader surge with pride and admiration for the hero, she will like him. She will become emotionally engaged.

It’s a Rock—It Doesn’t Have Any Vulnerable Spots!

Tim Allen’s character in Galaxy Quest had trouble getting away from an alien rock monster, despite his crew mate’s “helpful” advice to attack its vulnerable spots. While rocks don’t have any vulnerable spots, your protagonist does. And when you reveal these vulnerabilities in the story, your reader will not be capable of disliking him.

When we witness someone in pain, in fear, in need—when we see someone vulnerable—we can’t help but want to rise up and do something. And if we’re not there in person but are only reading about the situation, we’re pulling for him. We place the force of our good wishes beneath his name. We adopt him into our hearts. Now he’s not just some random person on the page; now he’s our guy.

Wherever our guy goes for the rest of the story, we’re not only behind him, we have in some sense become him. We’ve identified with his cause and his pain so completely that his pain is our pain, his loss is our loss, and his victory is, at last, our victory.

All through a little trick called vulnerability.

Show your hero hurting and vulnerable—not because he’s a loser or a whiner-baby, but because he does right and yet is left in pain—and your reader will connect. She literally (and I do mean literally) cannot help herself.

Vise and Glue

I like to think of this process as someone gluing two pieces of wood together. There’s a period when the glue hasn’t set and won’t hold the pieces the way you want. So you have to hold the pieces in place until the glue hardens and sets.

The ideal solution is to use one or more vise grips. These are squeeze- or twist-tightened clamps that hold things in position. So the glue goes on, the pieces go together, the vise grips get attached…and then you wait.

The thing to notice is that the technique holding the pieces together at first is not the technique that will hold the pieces together permanently. But the long-term fixative takes awhile to take effect, so you use a short-term solution until it does.

So it is with fiction. Your long-term solution to connecting your reader to your protagonist is the “glue” of empathy. You’ll be using multiple moments and situations and approaches to create that tight bond that will last until the end of the novel and beyond. But those things take awhile to develop, so you need something to hold the reader to the story while they can. You need something keeping her reading until the empathy glue can set. That’s what the attention-grabbing material is doing.

Engage her attention with danger, tension, or surprise. But engage her emotions—the longer fix—by connecting her to your hero.

What could you use in your novel to catch your reader’s attention? And then what could you do, while that temporary bond is holding, to begin showing how likable, admirable, and vulnerable your hero is?

There’s nothing that says you can’t be doing both of these at the same time. Catch her attention with something dangerous that shows your hero being treated unjustly, maybe. Show her doing something fascinating while comforting a frightened child.

You’ll be doing these things throughout your novel, not just at the beginning. There’s never a bad time to re-engage your reader’s attention, admiration, or compassion for your protagonist.

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out Hack Your Reader’s Brain by Jeff Gerke.