Jane Friedman's Blog: Jane Friedman, page 129

Do You Lock Your Best Ideas in a Vault?

Photo credit: Thomas Hawk via Visual hunt / CC BY-NC

I recently read incredibly wise advice from artist Jessica Abel on “idea debt.” In a nutshell, it means spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about your dream project rather than making that project—a process that becomes crippling over time.

Similarly, Benjamin Percy recently wrote at Glimmer Train about how writers can be like “misers with their money” when it comes to ideas—and how ultimately that behavior can prevent you from producing great work. Once he was willing to go “all in” and not hold back (for fear of emptying the well), he produced a great piece of work that made him stop any form of rationing:

The writer is always a careful observer, but if you are constantly evacuating your imagination, your eyes and ears grow even sharper, and you lean forward with hunger for every experience, knowing that it will offer up a card to add to your hand.

Read Percy’s full essay.

Also this month at Glimmer Train:

Mozart Had a Mother-in-Law by Taiyaba Husain

Scraps by Trevor Crown

On Editing by Karen Outen

Show Me a List by Aaron Gwyn

5 Common Mistakes That Even Longtime Bloggers Make

Photo credit: Thomas Hawk via Visual Hunt / CC BY-NC

Note: On Thursday, July 7, I’m teaching a 2-hour class ($89) on how to be a more effective blogger. Find out more.

Several times per month, I consult with authors looking for an evaluation of their online presence and often that includes their blog content. Sometimes they’re wondering why they don’t have more traffic, or they ask if they should continue the effort at all.

Given the time and energy that’s involved in meaningful blogging, it’s an important question. Here are five things that I often discover when I evaluate authors’ blogging efforts.

1. Blog post headlines are too vague or general.

Writers, being creative and imaginative people, can be tempted to get clever, poetic, or metaphorical with their blog post headlines. Unfortunately, this is exactly the wrong tendency. Post headlines need to be dead literal and specific, for several reasons:

Google and other search engines don’t understand metaphorical or clever headlines, so vague headlines can hurt the potential for your content in search.
If you or others share the article on social media, people may only see the headline and little else. Will readers have enough of a reason to click based on the headline alone?
People reading and discovering content online are typically speeding through lists and articles. They’re unlikely to slow down and pay close attention to your content unless your headline is compelling or your name carries significance.

It may seem boring to be direct and literal with your headline, but I guarantee better headlines will result in more traffic and more engagement. To be sure, I’m not advocating clickbait (a headline that is sensational and doesn’t really deliver), but an accurate headline that “tells and sells.”

2. The blog post includes no images.

Every blog post should have an image included, even if it doesn’t appear to directly relate to the content. Having an image will increase the perceived value with readers as well as engagement. But there’s another reason beyond this to ensure you’ve got an image: social media shares.

Every time your article is linked to on social media, a “card” will automatically be generated that includes the article headline, the key image for that article, and sometimes a 1-2 line summary of the article. If you don’t include an image in your post, your “card” may also be without an image, and it won’t attract as much attention when shared on social media—where visuals rule.

Read Kirsten Oliphant’s post to learn more about creating images for your blog.

3. The overall blog lacks any cornerstone content strategy.

Cornerstone content includes the content that consistently attracts traffic and attention through search or other types of sharing. For example, one of my cornerstone posts is How to Get Your Book Published. I also have a cornerstone post on how to get started blogging.

Your job as a blogger becomes immensely easier when you have a few of these posts consistently bringing in a fresh readership who may be interested in all of your new posts going forward. To develop cornerstone content, think through what problems or challenges your readers have that they might use Google to search for. Or, think about the most popular topics, events, or issues that your work centers around. You can also consider building resource lists, interview series, or link round-ups on a regular basis that get shared or talked about in your community.

4. The blogger doesn’t thoughtfully share their posts on social media.

Some bloggers set up their posts to share automatically on the social media accounts where they’re active. But this is a huge mistake and missed opportunity to share your content along with a personal message, question, or other means of engaging people on each social media network.

If you value your blog content, then value how you present it and introduce it to people. Don’t just dump the link and walk away, and expect people to care about it. Share with them why it’s important to you, or why it might be important to them.

5. The blogger doesn’t identify who will help spread the word in advance of writing their posts.

Social media sharing is important for new blog posts, but if you want to expand your audience beyond those you already reach, you need to go a step further. Before you dump a ton of effort and energy into any blog post, consider: Who will help share it and spread the word the content exists? Come up with specific, individual names, then respectfully contact them via email or social media with a personal and brief note. Explain the value of the post, why you think their audience will be interested, and make a specific suggestion: “If you think this post would of value to your readers, I’d love a tweet” (or whatever is appropriate given their platform). You’ll have more luck with this strategy if you’ve already been sharing their content.

Final note: Authors who are disappointed with the results of their blogging usually haven’t given much strategic thought to the content they’re producing, or even why they’re producing it. Take a look at my beginner’s guide to help redevelop your strategy if needed.

Note: On Thursday, July 7, I’m teaching a 2-hour class ($89) on how to be a more effective blogger. Find out more.

Before You Start a Podcast: 4 Tips for Authors

Photo via Visual hunt

Today’s guest post is from Devon Fredericksen, producer of the podcast From the Margins and a production editor at Girl Friday Productions.

In a crowded publishing environment, author-hosted podcasts are a unique and potentially effective marketing tool. But producing a podcast is challenging, and it requires a skill set distinct from writing. At Girl Friday, we just launched our own podcast, From the Margins, which explores behind-the-scenes stories in publishing; we’d like to share our hard-earned podcast production knowledge with these four tips on starting your own author podcast.

1. Understand Your Edge

The obvious goal for any author marketing endeavor is, ultimately, to increase your book sales. But how you do that has everything to do with bringing content of value to your community.

Think first and foremost and always about what your audience will want to hear. What do they struggle with, wonder about, want to know, desire access to? What are they motivated by? Make two word clouds—the first is what your audience wants and needs, the second is what only you can say. The area where they overlap is your content sweet spot.

2. Understand Your Listeners’ Behavior

In the same way that you plan your book marketing efforts—when you think about where your reader goes and how they discover books—it’s wise to map out a day in the life of your podcast listener.

What gender is your ideal listener? How old is he/she? What does he/she read? What does your listener like to read online?

As you produce podcast content, continue to gut-check its value: Will this be interesting to my ideal listener? Will this be valuable? This provides a necessary compass as you consider the content options for each episode.

When it comes time to upload your podcast and get the word out there, you’ll know exactly where to promote your content to ensure that you’re showing up where your listeners are already hanging out.

3. Don’t Bite Off More Than You Can Chew

There are many different podcast formats—they run the spectrum from simple to extremely time-consuming. Two of the most popular formats are:

Q&A-style podcasts: the host interviews a variety of guests, such as WTF with Marc Maron

Edited narrative podcasts: shows such as  Radiolab  employ a more journalistic style

You’ll also find advice podcasts, such as Dear Sugar; live storytelling podcasts, such as The Moth; comedy podcasts, such as 2 Dope Queens, and many more.

The higher the production value and the more people involved (if it’s narrative, edited, and/or with several guests), the more time it will take to produce. Narrative formats often employ more sophisticated editing software and sound design. You may want to emulate a style you like to listen to, but be smart about choosing a format that you have the time and resources to pull off week after week.

4. Line Up Your Ducks

Many beginning podcasters use a pretty basic recording and editing setup that might already exist on their computer. But don’t underestimate good sound quality—better sound quality directly impacts the size of your listenership. Choosing the right equipment, both in terms of cost and quality, can be dizzying, so skip straight to these two good resources for beginners:

The Absolute Beginners Guide to Podcasting: Equipment at OSTraining

The Podcast Equipment Guide at the Podcast Method

Learn how to use your equipment and do some test runs before interviewing any actual guests. Draft a production schedule that gives you enough time to research, draft, record, and edit each episode.

Here’s a checklist of other things you need to do:

Before podcast launch, have several episodes in the queue, to avoid scrambling to create subsequent episodes on schedule.
Use a spreadsheet to keep track of things like which potential guests you’ve reached out to, which interviewed guests have signed voice release forms, and what content you’ve recorded.
Find a quiet place to record—small carpeted rooms with curtains are ideal.
If an interview can’t be conducted in person, Skype has decent sound quality for remote recordings.
If using music, explore stock music sites that offer access to royalty-free songs. (Here’s a resource list of sites to help you start the search.)
Design your podcast cover art—this logo will be used as a branding tool for your podcast, so take time to consider how you want to visually represent your brand.

Be sure to check out Girl Friday’s new podcast, From the Margins—a podcast that explores the story behind the story.

5 On: Rosalie Morales Kearns

In this 5 On interview, author, editor, and publisher Rosalie Morales Kearns discusses why she started a feminist press (and what it takes to run it), favorite writing exercises, the deeply held interests that fuel her own writing, and more.

Rosalie Morales Kearns (@ShadeMountainPr), a writer of Puerto Rican and Pennsylvania Dutch descent, is the founder of Shade Mountain Press, author of the magic-realist story collection Virgins & Tricksters, and editor of the short story anthology The Female Complaint: Tales of Unruly Women. She has an MFA from the University of Illinois and has stories, poems, essays, and book reviews published in Witness, Drunken Boat, Fiction Writers Review, the Nervous Breakdown, and other journals.

5 on Writing

CHRIS JANE: What technique, style element, or device, if there is one you can choose, did you observe as a creative writing instructor that novice writers (or even non-novice, possibly) usually benefited the most from learning or being introduced to?

ROSALIE MORALES KEARNS: The writing exercise called “The Exquisite Corpse” was a big favorite. The variant I used goes like this: students in one half of the room each write down three noun phrases (“a thief around the next corner”; “the sobbing clown”). Those sitting on the other side of the room each write down three verb phrases (“did the calculus homework”; “knows the secrets of the universe”; “ran wind sprints in the basement”). Then we read our phrases aloud: one noun phrase, one verb phrase together. You can choose any of the resulting sentences, your own or someone else’s, to use as the basis for a short story. The sentences have their own weird logic (“The sobbing clown knows the secrets of the universe”), and it seems to make people feel free to write imaginatively, leaving behind cause-and-effect reasoning and ignoring their inner editor.

A great reading assignment is an essay by Francine Prose entitled “Learning from Chekhov,” in her book Reading Like a Writer. The basic point is that there are all these “rules” that seem to be floating around the writing workshop, and we tend to hit people over the head with them, but all of them can be broken and have been broken to brilliant effect by Chekhov. My students found it extremely freeing to learn that.


What is your strongest childhood memory of your parents’ efforts to raise you as a Catholic, and in what ways (if at all) did that overall facet of your childhood help inform your novel seeking publication, Kingdom of Women?

We should add the word “unsuccessful” to the description of my parents’ very well-meaning efforts at a Catholic upbringing for their children. They just had the wrong children—me in particular. But here I am with a novel whose protagonist is a female Roman Catholic priest (this is, obviously, a slightly alternate near-future scenario). I think the important thing is that I was steeped in Catholicism—Catholic school (kindergarten through high school), compulsory Sunday mass, priests invited to dinners and family events, and so forth. Also I’ve always been interested in religion, the bewildering variety of beliefs, the bloodshed it inspires, the way organized religion can and has played such a huge role in supporting the privileged and oppressing the have-nots. And then as a feminist I always found it enraging that the Catholic Church won’t allow women into the priesthood. But you have to wonder, why should I have cared? It’s like I was resenting my exclusion from a club I had no wish to join.

That said, I really enjoyed inhabiting the mindset of a character for whom Catholicism is the very air she breathes, even as she’s aware of the institution’s flaws, the misogyny, the inflexibility of the hierarchy. I remember reading in a biography of Galileo that he angrily resisted pressure by his inquisitors to describe himself as a bad Catholic. He was a devout Catholic, he asserted; it was the leaders of the Church who were evil.

What have you noticed as a copy editor are issues many writers seem to have (realistic / character-specific dialogue? Confusing sentences? Tense shifts?), and how would you characterize the level or type of attention writers devote to the technical aspects of writing now as compared to when you started twenty years ago?

My experience as a copy editor has mostly been with scholarly book-length manuscripts, as opposed to creative writing. Writers with PhDs can be shockingly careless with their noun-verb agreement and also with dangling modifiers. I come across dangling modifiers everywhere: in the New York Times, in PBS documentaries. But I don’t know whether it’s worse now than twenty years ago. It seems to be a constant.

Now as a publisher who reads a lot of fiction submissions, I can say that a big problem I see in the work I reject is when an author frontloads too much backstory; for example, a character wakes up, and then thinks to herself all kinds of information about what’s been happening in her life for the last week, or months, or even years, and all through this she’s merely staring at the ceiling or perhaps sitting up and getting dressed.

Who are your favorite contemporary authors, and what is it about their writing that grips you?

I would say Toni Morrison is my all-time favorite, and I love to re-read her novels. She raises questions without answering them in any pat or easy fashion—large questions about patriarchy, racism, justice, love, mercy, retribution, the burden of history. A couple of first novels in the last few years have really blown me away. One is Rene Denfeld’s book The Enchanted. You would never guess that a novel about prisoners on death row would be so poetic and timeless, almost fable-like. Another recent debut I loved is The Turner House by Angela Flournoy, about an African-American family in Detroit, which basically has everything I love in a novel: there are a lot of characters, who are interestingly flawed and relatable; it spans decades; it has a touch of weirdness and unresolved mystery. I’ve recently discovered the Russian author Lyudmila Ulitskaya and the British author Kate Atkinson and now want to read everything they’ve written.

I’d like to bring one other Nobel laureate into this conversation, although he’s dead so he doesn’t qualify as contemporary. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a huge influence on me. As I recently re-read Cancer Ward I was reminded of why: here was a person who was almost crushed by huge forces beyond his control, and in his fictional world he makes a great effort to truly understand the mindset of those who participated in those larger social forces that brought him such misery. He has that large-heartedness in common with Toni Morrison.

In a world where every short-story writer is allowed to save only one of their own from eternal destruction, which of yours do you save (and why)?

What kind of deranged world is that?! I would say “Devil Take the Hindmost,” in my collection Virgins & Tricksters and online in its original form at Terrain.org. It takes place in one of my favorite places on earth: a section of virgin forest in the Bald Eagle State Forest in Snyder County, Pennsylvania. At least four generations of my family have loved that place; we picnic there, we hike there. The story’s plot might seem grim, having to do with exclusion and fear and death, but then it becomes a tale of joy and solidarity and transformation.

5 on Publishing

You said in an interview at Entropy that as a writer seeking publication you would often come across small presses started by a single person, and one day, you thought, “Wait a minute, maybe I could do that too.” Why did you want to?

By this I mean that I understand you wanted to give underrepresented women a place to share their writing, but was there something in particular—some story in the media, something you saw or heard about—that solidified the desire and created that resolve to move forward with Shade Mountain Press?

Lots of things were coming together in the years just before I started the press. First of all, VIDA was starting to release its famous counts showing that women were published significantly less, and their books were reviewed significantly less, which I had noticed and been appalled by for decades, but it didn’t seem to be something that anyone was talking about. And since then, other authors and organizations have done work to analyze which novels get published, who gets literary awards, who finds employment in the publishing industry, etc.

It’s difficult for an individual writer to know for sure whether she’s being marginalized. Most editors don’t come right out and say, “Sorry, but your work just isn’t as important as the work of these men we’ve accepted,” or, “We already have one woman in this issue,” or, “We only like work featuring Latinas when they’re acting in stereotypical ways—utterly abject, or oversexualized, or criminal, or abusing drugs.” So you don’t know for sure. But when you see statistics about the review coverage or awards or simple publication rates of women versus men or of writers of color versus white writers, the larger picture of marginalization becomes clear.

Another factor in my decision to start my press was that I had finished the revisions of my novel and was ready to send it out, and it seemed like a good time to start a new project. Also, I’ve always loved themed anthologies, and I knew that being a publisher would give me the chance to do one—which ended up being one of last year’s titles: The Female Complaint: Tales of Unruly Women.

One of the nice surprises in my work with Shade Mountain Press has been the willingness of total strangers to help out. Established writers have put in the time and effort it takes to read an entire book manuscript and give a blurb, because they like and support our mission. Rene Denfeld is an example. And last year I contacted the artist Elsa Muñoz to ask how much she would charge to let us use a detail from her brilliant painting Copper Vessel for the cover of our short story anthology. She wrote back giving us permission to use it for free, explaining that other people had helped her in the past, and she wanted to be able to do the same. Again, I was a total stranger to Elsa, but she responded with such graciousness and generosity.

Shade Mountain Press operates with the help of donations—the majority, you said in Foreword Reviews interview, coming from people who know you or the authors and support the company’s mission. You’re publishing only one book this year, Not a Self-Help Book: The Misadventures of Marty Wu by Yi Shun Lai (an author who was previously interviewed for 5 On), so you can “retool and prepare for 2017’s titles, and also work to get nonprofit status for the press and then pursue grants.” What does it cost to professionally publish a single title, and how close are you to achieving your goal of earning enough each year to cover the cost of publishing the next year’s title(s)?

In the Entropy interview I hazarded an estimate of $10,000 per title, but that depends to a certain extent on choices about print run, length of the book, how much to invest in advance review copies, ads, award submissions, etc. I’ve been able to save money by handling a huge amount of the editorial and publicity work myself, and I’ve been extremely lucky to have a really talented graphic designer who volunteers her services for our covers and layout. The titles aren’t yet self-sustaining, but I don’t think that’s too unusual for brand-new, very small presses.

The downside is, I wasn’t fully prepared for how much of my time it would take, much of it invisible to authors. I had to learn about taxes, HTML coding, metadata, distribution, ebook conversion; then there was all the time and research involved in getting media coverage for books, as well as the more obvious work on design (both interior and cover) and editing. My background was in editing, and I did have a certain amount of preparation in typesetting principles, so that aspect of the work was less daunting, but still hugely time-consuming. I’ve needed to scale down the number of titles I work on—at least until I get more funding.

Since starting Shade Mountain Press in 2013, what changes, if any, are you seeing in overall (industry, reader, reviewer) reception to the kind of work you’re publishing, which you say on the Shade Mountain Press website is “precisely the kind of work that the mainstream publishing establishment tends to reject”?

Not as recently as 2013, but in general the expansion of social media has been a great benefit to small presses and writers from marginalized groups. We can seek out like-minded journalists, book bloggers, organizations, and journals that espouse progressive, inclusive values and are more likely to take small-press titles seriously, and have found an audience online without the usual “connections” and financial backing it takes to start a conventional journal.

How many submissions do you receive in a year, on average, and how do you decide what to publish?

The numbers vary a lot because I have specific submission calls rather than being always open for submissions. Right now, our call is for novel manuscripts by African-American women. The description is on our Contact page, along with details about what I’m looking for.

The decision on what to publish is so subjective. Which was something I heard constantly, over the years, from journal editors, from literary agents, from small presses, but it really is true. I’ve seen plenty of stories and novels that are perfectly well-written but just don’t grab me—and this applies to work that’s published elsewhere and work submitted to my press. The works that I’ve published are stories that made me want to keep going, to find out what happens, to figure out the characters. In general I love novels with complex female characters, novels that raise important questions but don’t settle for pat answers.

Humor is always wonderful. One of the things I appreciate about our most recent title, Yi Shun Lai’s novel Not a Self-Help Book: The Misadventures of Marty Wu, is that it made me laugh even after I’d read it multiple times in different rounds of editing/proofreading/checking printer’s proofs/checking the ebook conversion. I remember a phone conversation with the author where I would read out the phrase or sentence that I had a question about, and chortle all over again just from the fun of saying them out loud. For example, the narrator compares her boss (and ex-boyfriend) to a silverback gorilla who “gets up on his hind legs and bangs on his chest right before he rips the jugular out of a younger, presumably errant gorilla.” The “presumably errant” part just kills me.

In the Foreword Reviews interview mentioned above, you named Louisiana by Erna Brodber as one of the most overlooked titles by women. This is how you described Louisiana:

To truly appreciate this novel, it helps to have recently read Zora Neale Hurston’s ethnographic works on the Caribbean (Tell My Horse, Mules and Men) and to have at least a passing familiarity with Afro-Caribbean spiritual practices. Even at that, the narrative is difficult to understand and has to be read carefully. But it is one of the most brilliant novels I’ve ever read. A true masterpiece.

There’s believing a work should be in the world, and then there’s pragmatic business. If you in your current role as an independent publisher were to receive Louisiana as an unpublished manuscript today, would you publish it?

My gut reaction is: I would publish it and would thank the fates that brought it my way.

I don’t want to sound glib. Obviously a publisher needs to think about sales, even Shade Mountain’s modest goal of making enough from a title to help fund the next title. But consider the case of Louisiana: it was published by the University Press of Mississippi, which may well have had a funding source in its university, but even if not, those editors back in 1994 had to make a similar decision. Obviously they kept the book in print and it is certainly taken seriously (I discovered it because it was on the syllabus of a graduate school English class on literature of the Americas ten years after its publication).

And the thing is, you don’t know for sure how well or badly a book will sell, even a book by a celebrity. With a masterpiece that is, admittedly, not “accessible,” all I could do is start with a very modest press run; work hard to find reviewers who seem like the right readers for the book; submit it for the relevant awards; over time, work to bring it to the attention of academics who might assign it in a literature course; and hope for the best.

Thank you, Rosalie.

What Should You Put in Your Email Newsletter?

by Christmas w/a K | via Flickr

The following post is an excerpt from Email Lists Made Easy by Kirsten Oliphant (@kikimojo). This is the third post in a series about email. You can also read about why you should start an email list and how to customize your forms.

If you struggle with what to write in an email, you’re not alone. You may be publishing two to three books a year, or writing blog posts three to five times a week, but email seems to build a crazy mental roadblock to creativity. The self-doubt and negativity shifts into overdrive.

Writers often get paralyzed by email the way elephants are scared of mice. (And yes, Mythbusters sufficiently proved this to be plausible.) We wonder things like:

What if no one reads?
What if they don’t open?
What if they unsubscribe?
What if I bore them?
What could I possibly have to say in an email that I haven’t said on my blog?

Calm down. Deep breaths. Consider email simply as another piece of content for your readers. You can create content, right? I thought so. Then you can write an email without freaking out. I promise.

Most of the time, we overthink it. If you’re producing content elsewhere but struggling with email, reframe it. Get rid of the pressure and whatever weird, heavy expectations you have placed on email.

Stop thinking of it as email, if it helps. Write your emails in another program instead of your email service provider’s draft area. The worst thing you can do is take a nosedive into some melodramatic self-shaming spiral. Email is not some impossible task.

Yes, email is important. But it’s email. We read and send it every day. You can do this. I’ll say it again: calm down.

Let’s make this a little more simple and accessible. After spending more than a year being a total nerd and studying email, I found that usually they fall into five categories.

Chances are that you will utilize more than one, but if you are sending out something on a regular basis, you’ll want to choose your main style. Consistency, after all, is key. Let’s dive a little deeper into the pros and cons of each style and you can see which one would be the best match for you.

Category 1: RSS Feeds

An RSS feed is an automatic feed that hooks your blog content to your email service provider. You can make choices like how often to send (with every post or as a roundup each week) and whether to include full posts or a shortened (or truncated) post where people have to click to read more on your actual blog.

Pros: Easy setup and little work on your part. Can get people reading your blog.

Cons: Removes the personal aspect from email.

Can I be frank with you? If I sign up for your email and you start sending me RSS, I will typically unsubscribe. Especially if it’s a truncated feed where I have to click to read more. I feel pretty strongly that RSS feeds are wasting some of the best features of email, namely the personal aspect.

Some people choose a truncated RSS because their main revenue stream is ads and they want to drive traffic to their blog. If this is you, check your click-through rates. If they are significant and you are getting real traffic from RSS, then keep doing what works. Amazon affiliate links are also a big no-no in emails (according to Amazon’s policy) so if you utilize a lot of Amazon affiliate links in your posts, you may consider truncating.

Unless RSS is super effective for you (with a stellar open rate and click-through rate), I am going to take the potentially polarizing stance that RSS should be a last resort.

That being said, I am subscribed to a very few RSS emails that I open every single time. I subscribe to the RSS for Jane’s blog, for example, but she also has the Electric Speed email, which comes out a few times a month. (You can see her preferences for her email here.)

Some people know they want to read a blog regularly, but may not think about it unless they get an email to remind them. But more often than not, inboxes are crowded enough without an automated stream of blog posts.

Category 2: Teaser to a Blog Post

This is an email that lets readers know a new blog post (or content elsewhere) has been published. If you want to drive traffic to your blog and have readers read there, this might be a more effective option than an RSS feed.

Pros: Can drive traffic to your blog. Keeps the personal aspect. Typically not a long email.

Cons: More work than RSS. Can take some good copy to get people clicking. Not a practical option if you write more than two posts a week on your blog.

If you really want to use email for blog traffic, this can be a much better option than RSS. The main reason is that it allows you to still be personal and develop the relationship and trust with your readers. It does require more work than RSS because it isn’t simple automation, but if you are prioritizing email as a part of your overall strategy, writing a good teaser email is worth your time.

An effective teaser email lets the readers know what the post will be about, using intrigue and curiosity to urge people to click through and read. Many bloggers say that they see a spike in traffic directly related to when they send an email.

If you are not seeing great results with this type of email, learn from some of the best. Ramsay Taplin from Blog Tyrant sends teasers (after an initial autoresponder series) and so does Kim Garst. Study their email copy.

Category 3: Sales and Promotion

These emails are exactly what they sound like and probably make up the majority of the junk email in our inbox: they are emails trying to get you to buy something.

Pros: Can result in income.

Cons: Can alienate your readers or promote unsubscribes. Are hard to do well.

Chances are that you will send at least some sales emails if you write books or sell any kind of digital products. If you are an affiliate for products as well, you may send this kind of email. But you shouldn’t only send this kind of email. If you do, chances are people will lose trust and unsubscribe or simply stop opening.

You don’t want your emails skipped. It’s like the boy who cries wolf—send too many of these sales emails, and people stop opening. They don’t believe it’s a really good deal, because they know you’ll send another promo next week. You are training them not to open your emails because they expect you to sell every time.

A warning about disclosure: Though your inbox is pretty hidden, disclosure still matters. When you are using an affiliate link (reminder: don’t use Amazon affiliate links in email!) or any link that may result in you making money, you must disclose before the outbound link.

Even if the FTC hasn’t cracked down on this (yet), you will be breaking the trust of your readers by not disclosing. I discovered that a lot of free summits and webinars people promote are actually affiliate links. The event is free, but if you buy anything after clicking through, that person gets a commission. That really made me lose trust in the people promoting. I might have been happy to purchase something that would support my favorite people—but not if they seem to be hiding it. Follow the law. Disclose. Don’t be smarmy when you sell. (For more on disclosure, read this post on common mistakes.)

Category 4: Personal

This is the most common kind of email that bloggers and writers send. Like an email from a  friend, it typically contains updates or a more personal message.

Pros: Takes advantage of the personal connection. Unique content that feels exclusive.

Cons: Can take time to write. If not compelling or well written, people aren’t compelled to read.

This is one of the most common styles, especially for bloggers, but if not done well, most hit the trash pretty quickly. (Speaking of trash—can we trash the term newsletter? Let’s refer to this type of email as personal style.) I think sometimes the reason so many people choose this style is because they think this is what email is supposed to be.

Because this personal style is so common, writers often get stuck in a box and don’t produce fresh content. Without something unique (whether that’s writing style or content or format), people lose interest. They have seen a million emails like this. In my experience, open rates tend to be lower for this style compared to the value/educational emails.

So why write a personal-style email?

When done well, these are some of my favorite emails to receive. They read like exclusive letters and make me feel special for being on the list. They evoke emotion and resonate somewhere below the surface. I feel close to the writer. I feel like I’m a part of something by being in his or her community.

Think of the emails that are in this personal style in your inbox. Which ones are compelling to you? Can you pinpoint why? Sometimes, if you already have a big audience, people may not care so much what you write because they just want to hear from you. (Think: celebrities or people who already have a rabid fanbase.)

If you’re going to choose this style, try to think outside the box. Create your own style and infuse your writing voice. Consider a theme for these emails. Think about how you can infuse the elements of great storytelling. Great stories have a beginning, middle, and end. They draw the reader in from a strong opening hook. Why not consider how you might use these kinds of elements in your emails?

This can be an effective style of email to send, but you have to find what makes your email stand out in an inbox that may already be flooded with [shudder] newsletters.

Category 5: Educational

These emails typically contain tutorials, case studies, or a collection of links to other valuable content. They teach or help solve a problem.

Pros: Higher open rates. Meets a felt need. Can establish your authority in a space.

Cons: Can take a lot of work. Require you to collect resources or provide your own.

One of my favorite examples of this type of email in blogger circles is The Useletter from Amy Lynn Andrews. She packs a ton of helpful content into a tiny email. She uses intrigue with her links, which always makes me want to click. She still infuses them with her personality, so it establishes a connection with her audience. People look forward to The Useletter. I know this because I constantly hear people talk about it.

If someone’s talking about your weekly email, you’re doing something right.

As with the personal style, you can’t just send your own version of The Useletter and expect it to work. You need to consider what is the right content for your audience and how to package that in the right way for them.

If you plan to send this kind of email, keeping track of links or resources or ideas in something like Evernote is going to save you a lot of time. You can’t just wing it. This email may take some time to craft, but can really have great benefits with your audience. My weekly value-driven email, the Quick Fix, has an average 40 percent open rate.

Find content that will solve the problems of your audience. Start collecting ideas, links, and tutorials. Then consider how you can structure the emails in a way that’s unique to you.

How to Choose Your Ideal Content

Now that we’ve walked through the five types of content, how do you decide on your content strategy? Circle back to why you are using email. Are you trying to drive traffic? Make sales? Establish a long-term relationship with readers? Typically it will be a combination of a few reasons.

your why + your audience’s needs = the ideal style of email for you

Whatever you decide to send, keep it consistent for a few months before making any major tweaks. But realize that, at some point, you may need a shift or rebrand. Give a survey once a year (or more) just to those subscribers, asking what they like and don’t like. Use analytics from your email service provider to see what has the highest open and click rates. Take note of which emails garner the most response. Learn what you can about them from the send time to the content inside to the subject line. What made those emails work? How can you repeat that?

What about Frequency?

Frequency is a Goldilocks problem. You don’t want to send too much, or people will think you are spammy and unsubscribe. You don’t want to send too little, or people will forget who you are and unsubscribe. You need to find the just right kind of frequency for your people.

Some of this depends on the type of email. If you’re sending teasers to blog posts, you’ll send these when you write a blog post. And you don’t want to send too often, which is why I would recommend doing teaser emails only if you post around two times a week.

your why + your type of email content = the perfect frequency

If you get any of these things wrong, don’t sweat. You can always rebrand or pivot. Let your readers know that you’re switching directions. Not everyone will be on board, but if you’re intentional in trying to reach your ideal audience, this can have a great impact and also weed out any readers who may not be your ideal.

A Common Writer’s Problem

One thing that writers often do is create content based around writing itself, with tips and tools and links to resources. Rather than reaching an audience of readers, this cultivates an audience of writers. There will be overlap, as writers are often avid readers, but there is a distinct difference between creating an audience for your fiction works, for example, and your nonfiction works about writing.

This can help you build a big list, as lists tend to grow more quickly when they meet a need or solve a problem. But this kind of audience is not necessarily the same as the audience who might read your fiction. In an interview I did with Joanna Penn, she told me that the crossover between her fiction and her non-fiction (about writing) is only 10 percent. While fiction readers may love to get a glimpse at your real life or writing process, don’t accidentally build the wrong kind of audience; make audience-building part of your overall strategy.

If You Still Aren’t Sure

If you’ve read through this post and still aren’t sure what you want to send your readers, do some research. Sign up for your favorite writers’ email lists. See what they send. Consider how this matches up with what you hoped they would send.

I can tell you that I have been very disappointed with many writer email lists. For the most part, I’ll sign up and get nothing until a book launches. Nothing makes you feel less like a person and more like a number than emails only when that person needs something (like money) from you.

What do you wish your favorite writer would share with you in a weekly or monthly email?

What writers are really killing it with the emails they send?

What content on your blog or Facebook page or other social platform gets the most engagement? What emails have you previously sent that had the highest open rate?

If you can find answers to these questions, it may help you hone your content. Remember that in the end, you are simply sending an email. You should be intentional about your content, but don’t let email become something so huge in your mind that you never actually send anything.

What kind of content have you tried? What has been effective for you?

For more insight into sending meaningful email, check out Email Lists Made Easy.

Book Cover Redesign as Marketing Tool

Today’s guest post is from graphic designer Alexander von Ness (@AlexandervonNes), founder of Nessgraphica and Bookcoverpedia.

Authors may spend a fortune on book editing, but leave very little for the cover design—thus forgetting that the cover is the reader’s first impression of the book.

If you are a well-known author, your books may sell themselves because readers trust the story or the content, but if you are new, then you need to make a statement with the first thing a reader sees: the book cover design. And if your existing book cover design isn’t currently making a good impression, you may want to consider a professional redesign.

Last year, I had almost the same amount of work with redesigns of already-published books as with new books. Even a simple redesign of a book cover can create miracles marketing-wise. Some authors have even requested redesigns of over ten books after seeing how much a book cover redesign can increase sales. A professional book cover design isn’t just a sign of good content but appreciation of your own hard work.

In the next few examples of real book cover redesigns, I offer a short explanation of the challenges and goals I had in redesigning each cover.

Book Cover Redesign 1

In this redesign, the main task was to emphasize the fear element, to attract readers interested in the unreal. Although the original design, in my opinion, is very morbid, one quickly realizes that the image is mannequins (especially after noticing the railings in the background and patterns on the wall).

In the original cover design, we can see one mistake that occurs very often in amateur book covers: the color of the title is very similar to the color of the background. There is not enough contrast that we need for easy reading. In the redesign, we can see better contrast between title and background that enhances readability.

I’ve added two hands in the bottom part of the cover because I wanted to give the impression that something was trapped in the book, and by doing that, I strengthened the fear element. I tried to stay neutral with the colors and not to go to the dark side because in this book there are no elements of violence. In the redesign, I chose typography that tells us that the story is about something paranormal, unreal, and secret. I’ve increased the title font size because it increases legibility when the cover is shrunk down to thumbnail size. Personally, I like the title, and it has a very strong message, so I tried to emphasize that as much as I could.

Book Cover Redesign 2

The original design is completely neutral and doesn’t illustrate anything about the book; the cover becomes lost and inconspicuous in the ocean of other thumbnails on Amazon. In the book, the author explains that all of us have one of five characteristics, and wanted to very discreetly and subtly present these five different types of human traits. I tried to find a way to connect the five persons into one while ensuring that the cover did not look bombastic but decent and serious. Given that the author of this book has a very intellectual approach to every single human trait, I used classic typography that would not be pretentious and shout Buy me! (A lot of times, as in this case, the Buy me! look is something that will turn away a serious reader.)

Book Cover Redesign 3

Here, the original cover doesn’t have much to say; we have the problem of an undefined genre, which automatically implies undefined target audience—one of the biggest mistakes in book cover design. We decided to add a windmill in the background and, as a main and central motif, I added the female figure, which automatically and undoubtedly turned this book cover into a story about a girl instead of a story about a small church in the prairie. I’ve completely changed the tone and warmth of the cover to give it a vintage look, given that the story takes place through a few generations. I created the title lettering myself because I wanted the cover to have a handmade quality.

Book Cover Redesign 4

This original cover is a classic example of one that misses the mark for its genre. It reminds us of a Stephen King thriller instead of a detective story set in the urban environment of Denver. I played a lot with the typography on this, given that this book is part of a series, and I wanted all the books in the series to be recognized by its style—which is most recognizable in the title. See below for an image of how the book looks in the context of the entire series.

Book Cover Redesign 5

For this cover the author had a vision of what he wanted. For example, he wanted specific elements on the cover: a smoking gun, an ashtray with two cigars, and a half-filled shot glass. We added a subtitle—“What would you do for 5 million dollars?”—which helps explain about what the book is about. My task was to add a criminal look to the design. As soon as I saw the original cover and read the synopsis, I knew the typography would be 90 percent of the work—it must clearly indicate that the book is a dark crime novel. My goal was to illustrate the underground criminal side and indicate a serious and complicated crime story. Today, when I look at this cover from a distance, I see how my favorite movie, Godfather, had a strong subconscious influence.

Book Cover Redesign 6

In this redesign, the challenge was to achieve harmony and balance in the cover. The author wanted the central element to be a flower, and to show the power and purity of water. In the original design we can see how the cover is cut in half with the title, so that the flower is in the background instead of the foreground. The power and the strength of the water, which the author wanted to emphasize as an important element, did not reflect in the original cover, given that it’s a plain, static background. The name of the author was unnoticeable, and at thumbnail size was completely invisible. To put a flower in the foreground (the main wish of the author), I isolated the flower and cut it from the background, tripled its size, and placed it on the center of the cover. I stressed it additionally by adding a discreet ray of sunshine. Here I also used a classic font because I didn’t want the cover to look too pretentious—the author emphasized that this book is a manual and she wanted the cover to have a serious look.

A good cover design doesn’t have to cost a fortune

Repairing damage always costs more than doing something right the first time, which is why you should invest in choosing the right cover for your book and in choosing the right book cover designer.

If your budget is very limited and you simply can’t spend a lot on cover design, then you can try a pre-made book cover design site such as Bookcoverpedia (which is one of my services) and choose a good-looking and appealing cover for much less than a professional would charge for a custom job.

Don’t despair if you are one of the many who has a horrible-looking cover that hides a great book. Having your cover redesigned is the best thing you can do. Many worry that this might badly influence the brand recognition of the author and the book itself; however, keeping a bad-looking cover is worse than reintroducing your work. Don’t worry that established readers won’t be able to find you anymore, because those who know that you’re a great writer will know where to look.

All of the redesigns I have done have multiplied the sales of the book. A good book cover design opens doors, so don’t hesitate to search for a good designer who will help you.

Note from Jane: Alexander is offering book cover redesigns for $295 to readers of this blog—a $200 discount. Contact him through his website and mention this post.

When Less Is More on Social Media

Photo via Visual hunt

Today’s guest post is from social media expert Chris Syme (@cksyme). Learn about her June master class.

Social media boasts some pretty staggering numbers: nearly two-thirds of American adults use social media. And 70 percent of those users ages thirteen and up are on Facebook, according to the Pew Research Center.

Authors feel the steady pressure to be on social media channels promoting themselves, promoting their books, and searching for those ever-elusive readers. Some marketers tout it like it’s a magic pill, encouraging authors to be in every possible corner of the social media universe. After all, you don’t want to miss anybody, right?

The trouble with this advice is that it is antithetical to the present marketing culture. Marketing in this day and age is not about casting a wide net to get all the fish. It’s about knowing who your audience is, understanding where the best spots to find them are, and going narrow with the best channels for optimum results. If you want maximum results from your social media channels, less is more.

Fewer Channels Means More Engagement

I have long been an advocate of being on fewer social media channels to maximize engagement. There are several reasons for that, but I’ll give you the main three:

Finding where your audience members spend the most time makes it easier to target them.
Spending time on channels that grab less than 25 percent of the users online is a waste unless it is a niche channel specific to your audience.
Every channel is not conducive to selling. Choose channels where you can engage and sell.

When you take the time to really focus on who your audience members are, what their engagement patterns are, where they engage, and where they are buying, you get a pretty good idea of where you should be.

Because people are inundated with information on social media—much of it the same on all channels—they are looking for places where a culture of connection and sharing has been established. They do not want to wade through endless posts that sell books or products.

Amy Porterfield, a Facebook marketing expert, analyzed over a million high-engaging Facebook posts and found these six content types were most engaging:

Posts that give: offers, deals, and contests that everyone can benefit from
Posts that advise: tips, especially about problems everyone encounters
Posts that warn: dangers that everyone faces (scams and the like)
Posts that amuse: funny or entertaining pictures or quotes
Posts that inspire: quotes, videos, and images that make people feel good and valued for who they are
Posts that amaze: pictures, stories, and videos of amazing people and events

According to Porterfield’s research, people want to feel one of four things when they engage with social media: happy, informed, inspired, or supported.

If the majority of your social media content hits on all those cylinders, you don’t need to worry about being everywhere or asking people to buy your book.  As Mark Schaefer teaches in his book The Content Code, the law of internet marketing reciprocity will earn you the right to sell your products if you offer enough value to your fans.

The bottom line: social media is not about getting everybody’s attention everywhere. It’s about engaging potential and current fans in one or two spots where they are consistently present and interacting. Those are your primary social media channels. All the rest are secondary channels and only require an outpost strategy that aims people to the channels where the action is.

What Is an Outpost Channel?

An outpost channel has some of the following characteristics:

It is populated by people you are already effectively reaching on another channel.
It does not foster a commerce culture, or does not offer tools such as ads and apps that help you sell books or capture emails.
Less than 25 percent of the adult population uses the channel (see Pew Internet for latest numbers).
It is a channel where you post or interact less than the prescribed amount for ideal engagement.

There are some exceptions to these guidelines. Two major ones:

Genre-specific guidelines: LinkedIn can be a must for nonfiction writers selling courses or trying to establish an expertise. It is an unnecessary channel for fiction writers.

Demographic exceptions: If you are a YA or New Adult writer, you should consider the top channels in that demographic (such as Tumblr or Instagram) when you are looking to establish primary channels.

What Is a Primary Channel?

To identify your one or two primary channels to engage, consider:

audience demographics that match your books
the channel’s ability to sell
your skill set to implement the content that spells success on that channel.

For example, even though YouTube has the potential to sell books, if you don’t know how to produce good videos, use YouTube to establish sales channels, or have a detailed plan for gaining subscribers (YouTube’s magic formula), you will fail there.

You should identify one or two channels and work to establish a community—that means a community that you interact with as people, not as sales figures. Once you’ve identified your primary channels, you can set up a plan for maximum engagement. Use an 80-20 content formula for giving value (80 percent) to selling (20 percent). Yes, you still want to sell, but because you have loyal fans, you don’t need a constant parade of sales messages. Also, if you are engaging on a channel such as Facebook, you can rely somewhat on the presence of commerce tools to present an “opportunity” for fans to buy when they are ready.

Note from Jane: Chris Syme is offering a June master class that teaches you how to set up an outpost strategy. Find out more.

Should You Self-Publish or Traditionally Publish?

Photo credit: Moyan_Brenn via VisualHunt.com / CC BY

Note from Jane: Next week, I’m teaching a 90-minute class on how to self-publish, in partnership with Digital Book World. Find out more.

Are you wondering if you should self-publish or traditionally publish? You’re not alone. The same question is on the minds of many writers I meet, regardless of their career path or how established they are.

When I began working in the publishing industry in the mid-1990s, a stigma surrounded both self-published books and self-published authors. I recall speaking at the Chicago chapter of the Romance Writers of America in the mid-2000s, and running a workshop on how to self-publish. About three people showed up and two of them were already self-published; it was by far the worst-attended session I’ve ever run at a major writing event. At the time, self-publishing was not a well-regarded path to success, and it indicated some kind of author failing or eccentricity.

Times have (dramatically) changed, and now some self-published authors accuse traditionally published authors of being misguided or short-sighted in their allegiance to a “legacy” system.

But there is no single right answer to this question because it’s context dependent. That means the right answer can change—even for the same author—from book to book, and from year to year.

This post outlines what I think are the biggest factors that play into the decision.

1. Do you expect or want to see your book stocked in bookstores across the country?

It next to impossible for a self-published author with a single title to achieve wide-scale distribution for their book at bricks-and-mortar stores. You may be able to get your book stocked locally or regionally, especially if you have the right connections or are a well-known person in your community. But for the most part, a self-published authors’ books will sell primarily through online retail, whether as a print book or an e-book. That’s not the drawback it used to be, given that more than half of all books sold in the United States sell through Amazon (regardless of format).

2. Do you want to hit the New York Times bestseller list or get major media attention?

If your goal is a spot on the New York Times bestseller list, you’ll probably need a traditional publisher’s muscle behind you. It’s also very challenging to get any major media to pay attention to you as a self-pub author. (Traditionally published authors struggle as well—just not as terrifically hard.)

That said, self-published authors are not uncommon on the New York Times ebook bestseller list, as well as Amazon bestseller lists. And if your book appeals to a niche audience, the media outlets that serve that niche audience are probably open to covering your work.

It’s very difficult to score traditional book reviews, traditional media coverage, or even hire a traditional publicist when you’re a self-published author. New indie authors find it exceptionally frustrating at how much they’re ignored by traditional media. Traditional publishers have a much easier time getting those doors to open.

3. Does your book appeal to a specific audience that you can (or already) reach on your own?

It makes little sense to partner with a traditional publisher when the book’s audience is one that you already reach easily and comprehensively on your own—whether that’s through your own business, website/blog, speaking engagements, or anything else that brings you in touch with your readership or fanbase.

This is one of the reasons I self-published Publishing 101; I don’t need a publisher’s help to reach an audience of writers. I can do that myself, and even if I lose sales as a result of not being in bookstores, the shortfall is more than likely made up through an increase in profits from each sale.

However, if you’re looking for a book to increase your readership in some way—or to help you pivot—then a publisher can be useful in setting the stage, helping secure traditional media, or extending distribution in a way that supports those goals. As an example, indie author CJ Lyons partnered with Sourcebooks when she started a new YA series, since it was a departure from her previous work that focused on adults.

4. What are the qualities of the audience or the market you are targeting?

Some genres or categories of work are ideal for self-publishing efforts because the audience or market is already primed to consume things digitally and to discover their next read through online channels. Romance and erotica are prime examples.

But then there are other markets where you’ll find it very difficult to gain traction because they either haven’t moved predominantly to digital consumption, or the traditional publishers still perform a valued gatekeeping role—providing needed or wanted validation and curation. Literary work is one such market: you’ll find it hard to gain acceptance within a certain community unless your work has been editorially selected, plus the literary audience still prefers print.

Children’s books—especially for young readers—is another area where it can be challenging to gain acceptance without a traditional publisher. Educators, librarians, and others who are in a position to introduce books to children are using trade publications, reviews, and other traditional methods to guide their selections. Self-published authors need to have a very high level of proficiency in the publishing business to get attention—or a lot of luck.

To use another example from my own career, I’m working with a traditional publisher (University of Chicago Press) to release The Business of Being a Writer because it’s intended for the university classroom. Professors rarely adopt self-published textbooks; they are more likely to trust a book released by a university press with a peer review process in place.

5. How much of an entrepreneur are you?

Becoming a self-published author means you are fully responsible for your book’s success. If you’re a first-time author, you have may have little or no knowledge of what a professionally published book looks like. You may not understand the editing or design process, or how sales and distribution work, etc.

You’ll need an entrepreneurial mindset to undertake a serious self-publishing career, and a willingness to learn the business of publishing. Some authors are not eager to learn and would rather outsource as much of the work as possible. That’s not necessarily a bad thing—as a self-published author you can hire whomever you want to assist you—but some authors’ personalities are a really poor fit for the demands of a professional self-publishing operation.

If you would rather work with a team of people, or feel like you have a business partner, you may be better suited to traditional publishing. Alternatively, there are self-publishing service companies that can perform this role, but some authors do not have the funds to pay for quality help, and don’t even know what quality help looks like.

Also, a successful self-publisher must have some level of proficiency and comfort with being active online. Because most of your sales will happen through online retail, you need to show up and be familiar with how books get marketed and promoted in online environments. You’ll need a professional author website, some level of activity on social media, and a willingness to experiment with online sales and marketing tactics.

6. Do you want the validation, guidance, and support of a publisher?

Some authors have always dreamed of working with a traditional publisher, and nothing will satisfy them until they get that experience. This isn’t something to be ashamed of; in fact, if you can figure this out sooner rather than later, you might save yourself a lot of wasted time and effort self-publishing because you think that’s the “right” or “better” thing to do.

The Catch-22, however, is that once you experience what traditional publishing has to offer, you may end up disappointed by it. Or maybe not. Authors’ experiences vary so widely (even within the same publishing house) that it is very difficult to generalize.

Don’t use self-publishing as a way to land a traditional deal

I think one of the worst possible reasons to self-publish is to use it as a way to score a traditional publishing deal. Such efforts fail 99% of the time. Even though there is no longer a stigma associated with being a self-published author (at least for most genres), once you self-publish a book, it will be exceedingly difficult to garner interest for that book from an agent or traditional publisher. But you may be successful in selling them your next project.

This is why you should not start to self-publish a series unless you’re committed to self-publishing the ENTIRE series. If a traditional publisher is not interested in book one, they almost never pick up book two in a series when the first one is self-published.

Obviously you can find exceptions to all of the above. For example, The Martian was self-published and then picked up by a traditional publisher. But these are outlying unicorns, and not typical of the average author experience.

On writers’ lack of patience

I see some writers self-publish mainly because they lack patience with the querying and submissions process of traditional publishing. Or they want the instant gratification of getting their work on the market. But again, this is one of the worst reasons to self-publish. I find many authors on my doorstep because they thought “Why not self-publish now and shop it around later to agents/editors?” — and ended up disappointed with the results. If you have any interest whatsoever in traditional publishing, exhaust all your agent/publisher options first. Get thoroughly rejected (as much as that may hurt), and then self-publish. It’s very, very hard to go in the other direction successfully.

On the issue of earnings

Perhaps the biggest argument offered in support of self-publishing—at least within the self-publishing community itself—is that you will earn a lot more money than you would with a traditional publisher. That may be true. It’s possible to sell far fewer copies as a self-published author and yet earn more than a traditional deal would pay you; it’s also possible to sell more copies as a self-published author but not earn as much as a publisher’s advance and royalties. It all depends on the book and the type of deal or contract you’re offered.

The success rate for self-publishing is really not that different from traditional. A few authors end up as bestselling superstars. Some authors do very well. And the majority do not make a living from it. Self-published authors may find that marketing and promoting their book is much tougher than they imagined. Self-publishing careers typically take years—and four or five books—to gain traction and produce earnings that are meaningful. Are you committed to producing more work, and marketing that work, month after month and year after year?

As I stated before: each author is different, and each book is different. If you know your target market, and have a clear set of goals for your book, you should be able to figure out the right publishing strategy for you.

Note from Jane: Next week, I’m teaching a 90-minute class on how to self-publish, in partnership with Digital Book World. Find out more.

How to Create an Internal Mindset Conducive to Writing

by Luke G. | via Flickr

Today’s guest post is an excerpt from The Writer’s Process by Anne Janzer (@AnneJanzer).

As a product of the human brain, writing is particularly influenced by emotions, moods, and worldviews. This post is about creating an internal environment conducive to writing.

The term mindset refers to a set of acting assumptions and attitudes that affect behavior; more broadly, a mindset is a filter through which we view the world.

Culture, surroundings, and upbringing each influence our perspectives significantly. Yet we can alter or adjust our mindset, as a photographer changes the filter on a lens.

There are two mental settings that are particularly relevant for writers:

Fixed or growth mindset
Abundance or scarcity mindset

These binary, A/B choices oversimplify reality. Mindsets are fleeting, changeable states. Neither setting is inherently right or wrong. We might approach a financial negotiation in one way and family relationships in another. Each decision could be appropriate for the context.

Fixed vs. Growth Mindset

How do you respond when asked to do a task that you haven’t tried before, such as creating a full-length book or a script for a video? Would you attempt it? If the result needs major reworking, how would you feel about the effort as a whole?

Your response to challenges and setbacks depends, in part, on your sense of yourself when considering the work, and whether you inhabit a fixed or growth mindset.

Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, describes these alternatives in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Put in basic terms, people with a fixed mindset tend to consider their talents or abilities as set, inherent parts of their beings. Those with a growth mindset believe that they can develop abilities through learning and work.

While it sounds simple, mindset can be subtler than it seems. Of course, you understand that you can learn and improve. But when faced with a challenge, you may suddenly hear the voice of the fixed mindset whispering that you are not “good at” the task and are likely to fail. Listening to this belief limits your willingness to take on challenges.

Without faith in your ability to grow, you become risk-averse. For people caught in a fixed mindset, failure damages the sense of self.

A fixed mindset is particularly dangerous when writing, as it inhibits your ability to learn from constructive feedback. You bristle at corrections or suggestions; criticism feels personal.

With a growth mindset, setbacks and criticism become learning opportunities—painful, perhaps, but necessary. You’re more likely to have a healthy relationship with editors, remaining open to feedback without seeing it as a sign of weakness.

Mindset also affects creativity. The fixed mindset shuts down exploration and discovery. You won’t want to start an outline until you have all the answers at hand; for some people, that means that the work never gets done. The risks inherent in creative leaps become too great if they endanger your sense of self.

A growth mindset leaves room for creativity. For many fiction authors, the details of a plot only develop as the story appears on paper. Stephen King describes his general approach in his excellent memoir On Writing: “I have never demanded of a set of characters that they do things my way. On the contrary, I want them to do things their way.” He discovers where the characters take the plot.

Authors with a growth mindset start researching and outlining without planning everything in advance. They learn as they proceed. They take risks, and are resilient when their efforts don’t pan out. Nonfiction authors consider the act of writing as a path to learning, deepening their understanding of a subject rather than simply reporting what they already know.

In her essay “Why I Write,” Joan Didion confesses, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.” She clearly approaches her art with a growth mindset.

When you engage with the subject before you have all the answers, you may find unsuspected connections, uncover different facets of the topic, and even change the direction or structure of the piece. Although these diversions may consume more time, the resulting work is often better, and the process of writing more fulfilling.

A growth mindset transforms writing into a journey of discovery.

As a reader, I can often sense if an author is exploring the topic or simply reporting what they know. When I feel that the author’s understanding has deepened in the course of writing, I enjoy reading even more, no matter what the subject. Traveling the path together is more interesting for everyone.

Here’s the good news: while you might have a natural inclination to adopt a fixed mindset, you can change it. It isn’t hard-wired.

Abundance vs. Scarcity

The preschoolers in Walter Mischel’s study on self-control inhabited a world of marshmallow scarcity. They could not access an unlimited number of sweets, and made decisions based on the concept that the treats were a finite and precious resource. They operated with a scarcity mindset in this situation.

As adults, we can buy as many marshmallows as we can afford, subject only to limitations of money and sugar tolerance.

Basic economic theory is built on the premise of fixed resources. Businesses compete for a limited set of customers; products vie for our money or attention.

This approach can spill over into other parts of our lives, often with problematic effects. Researchers have found that merely thinking about money changes our behavior in subtle ways, making us less likely to spend time helping others, even with simple tasks.

One study in particular hit home for me: after looking at a picture of money, research subjects tended to spend less time savoring a piece of chocolate. Chocolate! This is serious, people.

Certain aspects of our lives obey the rules of a zero-sum game that can only have one winner. There are only twenty- four hours in a day, or eight pieces of pizza on that plate. But many things we value do not abide by the rules of scarcity. Love and laughter multiply when shared or given away. Ideas, likewise, tend to proliferate when exchanged.

Good ideas multiply when shared.

When we confuse products of abundance with scarce resources, everyone ends up with less. Empathy shrinks with the scarcity mindset.

Social media evangelist and author Guy Kawasaki sums up this dichotomy nicely: “There are two kinds of people: eaters and bakers. Eaters think the world is a zero-sum game: what someone else eats, they cannot eat. Bakers do not believe that the world is a zero-sum game because they can bake more and bigger pies. Everyone can eat more. People trust bakers and not eaters.”

Few of us are entirely one or the other; you may be a baker in one part of your life and an eater in another.

How can you recognize whether you’re an eater or a baker when it comes to writing? The scarcity mindset appears in limiting beliefs about your ideas, such as:

All of the good concepts have already been written about.
Someone might steal my ideas unless I keep them under wraps.
I need to wait for the perfect time to write.

The more you write, the more you have to write. The process of working with ideas activates the inner Muse, and triggers abundance.

Tuning Your Mindset

You can learn to adjust mindset through practice. If you find yourself experiencing limiting thoughts about your own abilities (the fixed mindset) or your ideas (the scarcity mindset), use the following practices to train your brain to see the world differently.

Let your actions shift your mindset. The most powerful way to counter both the scarcity and fixed mindsets is to simply write, contradicting your belief with behavior. You’ve heard of the “fake it ’til you make it” strategy? The person you need to convince is yourself.

Don’t have any good ideas, or doubt your capabilities? Write anyway.

If you believe that you have a fixed number of good ideas and want to save the best ones for a later ideal time, ask yourself: Will this idea still have the same shimmer in the future? Will my brain be primed to work on it, and will I be as excited about it as I am now? The future is uncertain, but the present is at hand, so write.

Recognize your unique perspective. Yes, someone has probably already written about your subject. That doesn’t mean that the idea is “used up” and not worth pursuing. Shakespeare repurposed all kinds of earlier works for his plays, yet the results were unique and the world is grateful for them.

There are few original ideas left in the world. In the realm of fiction, most stories can be plotted onto a finite set of standard story lines. What matters is how you tell the story.

In nonfiction, the way that you share ideas matters as much as the concepts themselves.

Given the enormous complexity of the human brain, the universe of potential things to write about is abundant. If you wait for a perfect and original idea, you may never discover your unique contribution.

Resolve to learn. Whenever you encounter the fixed mindset, counter it with an active determination to learn. Read widely to fuel your brain’s connections.

Work with thoughtful editors and challenge yourself to draw broader lessons from their comments. Rather than simply fixing the issues an editor points out, look for larger trends. For example, if you repeat phrases or sentence patterns, challenge yourself to look for repetition in future drafts and explore different sentence structures, finding fresh approaches to the subject.

Do something uncomfortable. Try working outside your usual areas of expertise and see how that affects your perception of yourself.

After publishing my first book on subscription marketing, I was invited to speak at events, moderate panel discussions, conduct webinars, and do podcast interviews. For someone who had spent her life ghostwriting and working as part of a larger brand voice, this shift was daunting. Yet in each of these activities, I had a blast and met wonderful people. If I had succumbed to a fixed mindset, telling myself that I wasn’t a speaker, I would have missed out on those experiences. Growth comes through discomfort.

Challenge yourself to do something different. Pen a poem or craft a short story. Even if it never sees the light of day, the work stretches your abilities and defies the fixed mindset.

Share freely. When under the spell of a scarcity mindset, you may worry about people stealing your ideas. For most of us, obscurity is a larger threat than plagiarism. The best way to counteract the scarcity mindset is to witness the power of sharing and collaboration.

Ideas operate by the rules of abundance and tend to improve as you collaborate with others and broaden your perspective. Countless people have made this book better through discussions and shared insights.

As author Steven Johnson says in Where Good Ideas Come From, “We are often better served by connecting ideas than we are by protecting them.” Instead of spending mental energy guarding your thoughts, invest it in developing ideas.

If you’re creating something wonderful, go ahead and tell the world. Publish blog posts and start conversations. The risks of sharing are low and the potential benefits high.

For more from Anne Janzer, check out The Writer’s Process.

My Latest Advice on Book Publishing and Marketing

This week, I’m a guest on the Smarty Pants Book Marketing podcast, where I discuss traditional publishing, self-publishing, and marketing with Chris Syme, including:

Advice on how to make the jump from indie author to traditional publishing—or if you should
The pros and cons of book pricing
Tips on building your platform
How to tackle writing with a business approach

Click here to listen to the show.

Also, I just wrapped up my fourth office hours session over at Facebook, where I run a wide-ranging Q&A with writers. The videos are time-stamped so you can jump straight to the question you’re interested in. Here are links to each recording:

March 14
April 11
May 9
June 13

My Facebook office hours are going on vacation over the summer, but I’ll be back in the fall.