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How Long Should You Keep Trying to Get Published?

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Note: I wrote the following article for Writer’s Digest magazine last year (July/August 2011) about how to get published; I’ve lightly updated it for distribution here. If you’re interested in more advice about how to get traditionally published, consider my online class with Writer’s Digest on Jan. 3, or read my comprehensive post on the topic.

Don’t you wish someone could tell you how close you are to getting traditionally published? Don’t you wish someone could say, “If you just keep at it for three more years, you’re certain to make it!”

Or, even if it would be heartbreaking, wouldn’t it be nice to be told that you’re wasting your time, so that you can move on, try another tack (like self-publishing), or perhaps even change course entirely to produce some other creative work?

I’ve counseled thousands of writers over the years, and even if it’s not possible for me to read their work, I can usually say something definitive about what their next steps should be. I often see when they’re wasting their time. No matter where you are in your own publishing path, you should periodically take stock of where you’re headed, and revise as necessary.

Recognizing Steps That Don’t Help You Get Published

Let’s start with four common time-wasting behaviors. You may be guilty of one or more. Most writers have been guilty of the first.

1. Submitting manuscripts that aren’t your best work

Let’s be honest. We all secretly hope that some editor or agent will read our work, drop everything, and call us to say: This is a work of genius! YOU are a genius!

Few writers give up on this dream entirely, but to increase the chances of this happening, you have to give each manuscript everything you’ve got, with nothing held back. Too many writers save their best effort for some future work, as if they were going to run out of good material.

You can’t operate like that.

Every single piece of greatness must go into your current project. Be confident that your well is going to be refilled. Make your book better than you ever thought possible—that’s what it needs to compete. It can’t be good.

“Good” gets rejected. Your work has to be the best. How do you know when it’s ready, when it’s your best? I like how Writer’s Digest editor and author Chuck Sambuchino answers this question at writing conferences: “If you think the story has a problem, it does—and any story with a problem is not ready.”

It’s common for a new writer who doesn’t know any better to send off his manuscript without realizing how much work is left to do. But experienced writers are usually most guilty of sending out work that is not ready. Stop wasting your time.

2. Self-publishing when no one is listening

There are many reasons writers choose to self-publish, but the most common one is the inability to land an agent or a traditional publisher.

Fortunately, it’s more viable than ever for a writer to be successful without a traditional publisher or agent. However, when writers chase self-publishing as an alternative to traditional publishing, they often have a nasty surprise in store:

No one is listening. They don’t have an audience.

Bowker reports that in 2011, more than 148,000 new print books were self-published, and more than 87,000 e-books were self-published. (See more about the report here.) Since Bowker only counts books that have ISBNs, that means thousands more titles go uncounted, since Amazon doesn’t require an ISBN for authors to publish through the Kindle Direct Publishing program.

If your goal is to bring your work successfully to the marketplace, it’s a waste of time to self-publish that work, regardless of format, if you haven’t yet cultivated an audience for it, or can’t market and promote it effectively through your network. Doing so will not likely harm your career in the long run, but it won’t move it forward, either.

3. Looking for major publication of regional or niche work

The cookbook memoir that your local church ladies produced this year is probably not appropriate for one of the major New York publishers.

That may seem obvious when stated, but every year agents receive thousands of submissions for work that does not have national appeal, and does not deserve shelf space at every chain bookstore in the country. (And that’s typically why you get an agent: to sell your work to the big publishers, who specialize in national bookstore distribution and mass-media marketing.)

Now, if those church ladies were notorious for producing the award-winning Betty Crocker recipe 20 years in a row, we’d be onto something with a national market. But few regional works have that kind of broader angle.

As a writer, one of the most difficult tasks you face is having sufficient distance from your work to understand how a publishing professional would view the market for it, or to determine if there’s a commercial angle to be exploited. You have to view your work not as something precious to you, but as a product to be positioned and sold. That means pitching your work only to the most appropriate publishing houses, even if they’re in your own backyard rather than New York City.

4. Focusing on publishing when you should be writing

Some new writers are far too concerned with queries, agents, marketing or conference-going, instead of first producing the best work possible.

Don’t get me wrong—for some types of nonfiction, it’s essential to have a platform in place before you write the book. The fact that nonfiction authors don’t typically write the full manuscript until after acceptance of their proposal (with the exception of memoir and creative nonfiction) is indicative of how much platform means to their publication.

But for everyone else—those of us who are not selling a book based solely on the proposal—don’t get consumed with finding an agent until you’re a writer ready for publication. While I’m not advocating reclusive behavior—writers need to socialize and start developing relationships with other writers and authors—I see too many writers developing anxiety about the publishing process before they’ve even demonstrated to themselves that they can commit to writing and revising thousands and thousands of words—before they put in the amount of work that creates a publication-ready manuscript.

And now we come to that tricky matter again. How do you know when you’ve written and revised enough? How do you know when the work is ready?

Evaluating Your Place on the Publication Path

Whenever I sit down for a critique session with a writer, I ask three questions early on:

How long have you been working on this manuscript, and who has seen it?
Is this the first manuscript you’ve ever completed?
How long have you been actively writing?

These questions help me evaluate where the writer might be on the publication path. Here are a few generalizations I can often make.

Many first manuscript attempts are not publishable, even after revision, yet they are necessary and vital for a writer’s growth. A writer who’s just finished her first manuscript probably doesn’t realize this, and will likely take the rejection process very hard. Some writers can’t move past this rejection. You’ve probably heard experts advise that you should always start working on the next manuscript, rather than waiting to publish the first. That’s because you need to move on, and not get stuck on publishing your first attempt.
A writer who has been working on the same manuscript for years and years—and has written nothing else—might be tragically stuck. There isn’t usually much valuable learning going on when someone tinkers with the same pages over a decade.
Writers who have been actively writing for many years, have produced multiple full-length manuscripts, have one or two trusted critique partners (or mentors), and have attended a couple major writing conferences are often well positioned for publication. They probably know their strengths and weaknesses, and have a structured revision process. Many such people require only luck to meet preparedness.
Writers who have extensive experience in one medium, then attempt to tackle another (e.g., journalists tackling the novel) may overestimate their abilities to produce a publishable manuscript on the first try. That doesn’t mean their effort won’t be good, but it might not be good enough. Fortunately, any writer with professional experience will probably approach the process with more of a business mindset, a good network of contacts to help him understand next steps, and a range of tools to overcome the challenges.

Notice I have not mentioned talent. I have not mentioned creative writing classes or degrees. I have not mentioned online presence. These factors are usually less relevant in determining how close you are to publishing a book-length work.

The two things that are relevant:

How much time you’ve put into writing. I agree with Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule in Outliers: The key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours.
Whether you’re reading enough to understand where you lie on the spectrum of quality. In his series on storytelling (available on YouTube), Ira Glass says:

The first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambitions, but it’s not that good. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer. Your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. You can tell that it’s still sort of crappy. A lot of people never get past that phase. A lot of people at that point quit. … Most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste [and] they could tell that what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be.

If you can’t perceive the gap—or if you haven’t gone through the “phase”—you probably aren’t reading enough. How do you develop good taste? You read. How do you understand what quality work is? You read. What’s the best way to improve your skills aside from writing more? You read. You write, and you read, and you begin to close the gap between the quality you want to achieve, and the quality you can achieve. In short: You’ve got to produce a lot of crap before you can produce something publishable by traditional Big Six standards.

Signs You’re Getting Closer to Publication

You start receiving personalized, “encouraging” rejections.
Agents or editors reject the manuscript you submitted, but ask you to send your next work. (They can see that you’re on the verge of producing something great.)
Your mentor (or published author friend) tells you to contact his agent, without you asking for a referral.
An agent or editor proactively contacts you because she spotted your quality writing somewhere online or in print.
Looking back, you understand why your work was rejected, and see that it deserved rejection. You probably even feel embarrassed by earlier work.

Knowing When It’s Time to Change Course

I used to believe that great work would eventually get noticed—you know, that old theory that quality bubbles to the top?

I don’t believe that any more.

Great work is overlooked every day, for a million reasons. Business concerns outweigh artistic concerns. Some people are just perpetually unlucky.

To avoid beating your head against the wall, here are some questions that can help you understand when and how to change course.

1. Is your work commercially viable?

Indicators will eventually surface if your work isn’t suited for commercial publication. You’ll hear things like: “Your work is too quirky or eccentric.” “It has narrow appeal.” “It’s experimental.” “It doesn’t fit the model.” Possibly: “It’s too intellectual, too demanding.” These are signs that you may need to consider self-publishing—which will also require you to find the niche audience you appeal to.

2. Are readers responding to something you didn’t expect?

I see this happen all the time: A writer is working on a manuscript that no one seems interested in, but has fabulous success on some side project. Perhaps you really want to push your memoir, but it’s a humorous tip series on your blog that everyone loves. Sometimes it’s better to pursue what’s working, and what people express interest in, especially if you take enjoyment in it. Use it as a steppingstone to other things if necessary.

3. Are you getting bitter?

You can’t play poor, victimized writer and expect to get published. As it is in romantic relationships, pursuing an agent or editor with an air of desperation, or with an Eeyore complex, will not endear you to them. Embittered writers carry a huge sign with them that screams, “I’m unhappy, and I’m going to make you unhappy, too.”

If you find yourself demonizing people in the publishing industry, taking rejections very personally, feeling as if you’re owed something, and/or complaining whenever you get together with other writers, it’s time to find the refresh button. Return to what made you feel joy and excitement about writing in the first place. Perhaps you’ve been focusing too much on getting published, and you’ve forgotten to cherish the other aspects. Which brings me to the overall theory of how you should, at various stages of your career, revisit and revise your publication strategy.

Revising Your Publishing Plan

No matter how the publishing world changes, consider these three timeless factors as you make decisions about your next steps forward:

1. What makes you happy

This is the reason you got into writing in the first place. Even if you put this on the back burner in order to advance other aspects of your writing and publishing career, don’t leave it out of the equation for very long. Otherwise your efforts can come off as mechanistic or uninspired, and you’ll eventually burn out.

2. What earns you money

Not everyone cares about earning money from writing—and I believe that anyone in it for the coin should find some other field—but as you gain experience, the choices you make in this regard become more important. The more professional you become, the more you have to pay attention to what brings the most return on your investment of time and energy. As you succeed, you don’t have time to pursue every opportunity. You have to STOP doing some things.

3. What reaches readers or grows your audience

Growing readership is just as valuable as earning money. It’s like putting a bit of money in the bank and making an investment that pays off as time passes. Sometimes you’ll want to make trade-offs that involve earning less money in order to grow readership, because it invests in your future. (E.g., for a time you might focus on building a blog or a site, rather than writing for print publication, to grow a more direct line to your fans.)

It is rare that every piece of writing you do, or every opportunity presented, can involve all three elements at once. Commonly you can get two of the three. Sometimes you’ll pursue certain projects with only one of these factors in play. You get to decide based on your priorities at any given point in time.

At the very beginning of this post, I suggested that it might be nice if someone could tell us if we’re wasting our time trying to get traditionally published.

Here’s a little piece of hope: If your immediate thought was, I couldn’t stop writing even if someone told me to give up, then you’re much closer to publication than someone who is easily discouraged. The battle is far more psychological than you might think. Those who can’t be dissuaded are more likely to reach their goals, regardless of the path they ultimately choose.

Note: Next week, I’m teaching an online class on how to get published. Everyone who registers has an opportunity to ask questions—and no question goes unanswered. Click here for more information.

The post How Long Should You Keep Trying to Get Published? appeared first on Jane Friedman.

Getting a Traditional Book Deal After Self-Publishing

Today’s guest post is by Judy L. Mandel, author of the Replacement Child , forthcoming from Seal Press in March 2013. I asked her to tell the story of self-publishing her memoir, which ultimately led to a traditional book deal from Seal.

Most authors don’t give any credence to luck, but they lie. Luck has so much to do with everything. It was luck that I decided to put my book up on Barnes & Noble’s PubIt website in the summer of 2011. It was luck that I had met my incredible agent Rita Rosenkranz at a conference four years earlier. It was luck that I had knowledgeable colleagues to confer with to help me navigate my next steps.

But it was not luck that I attended many writers conferences prior to self-publishing, to figure out my best course of action. Those conferences offered valuable information about sending out queries, writing proposals, and approaching agents. I knew I wanted an agent and a traditional publisher, but I also knew that as an unknown memoirist, it would be a tough road. I gave myself a year to query, send out chapters when requested, and do my best to procure an agent for my book. I wasn’t getting any younger.

When that year was over, I had requests for partials and the entire manuscript from 50 agents. My query was working. About half of them showed interest in the book, but were wary of taking it on in the market at the time in 2008. Not a great year for any beginning endeavor. At that point I started looking at self-publishing and decided to form my own imprint to publish my book. I had been in marketing for twenty years and knew how to manage any creative project—although, looking back, I didn’t know exactly all of what I was taking on. I hired an editor, a designer and an online marketer to start.

I did a great deal of marketing for Replacement Child in 2009 and 2010 when I first self-published the book. I went on a nationwide book tour at my own expense, visiting bookstores that would have me in towns where I had friends or family to put me up. It was a great adventure and a chance to see people I normally don’t get to visit. Some of the stops were great, where I was able to get some advance publicity. And some were terrible where only one person showed up for a reading. C’est la vie.

The online blogging community was very receptive, and I am very grateful to them for their support with reviews and guest blogs. Review copies were sent out to blog reviewers before the book was released, to bloggers that had reviewed memoirs in the past.

Local media was receptive, and I had articles in my local papers in my town in Connecticut, and did readings at local libraries. I had several radio interviews, both for blog radio and traditional stations. I joined organizations and took advantage of opportunities to speak and do readings whenever possible. Replacement Child also garnered several awards for self-published books, including a National Indie Excellence Award and a Writer’s Digest award.

By the summer of 2011, I had sold about 2,000 print books and a few hundred e-books on Amazon. It’s very hard to say which marketing tactic worked best, but all combined produced this modest success. I decided to list the e-book on the Barnes & Noble site in July and was encouraged to see that they had picked it for a featured book of the month. I credit that pick for bringing more awareness to the book.

Just after I listed the e-book for that last shot, I wound up in the hospital. My book was the furthest thing from my mind that fall, knowing I had to go back for surgery in a few months. It was Christmas when I noticed some weird deposits in my bank account online. Again, I absolutely forgot that I had arranged direct deposit for the e-book sales. It turned out I was selling around 4,000 e-books a month.

That’s when I contacted Rita Rosenkranz and we talked about whether it made sense to approach a publisher. I was grateful for her wise counsel that helped me think through the decision. In the end, I believed there was still a measure of credibility in having a traditional publisher. Reviews come more easily and you are taken more seriously. That is changing, but I believe it is still widely the case. After considering the pros and cons, I told her I would like to try. She sold it very quickly to Seal Press.

It’s been quite a ride so far, and I am excited for the book to be released in March. You can find more information about Replacement Child at replacementchild.com.

The post Getting a Traditional Book Deal After Self-Publishing appeared first on Jane Friedman.

Find Me on Tumblr

If you’re a Tumblr user, just a quick announcement you can now find me active there.

While I’ve had a Tumblr account for a couple years now (and have used it in various capacities—at VQR and University of Cincinnati), I’m now using it as a way to talk about everything not pertaining to writing advice.

Some people have asked me if Tumblr is a replacement for WordPress or a main website. As of today, my answer is no. But I look forward to sharing insight and advice on Tumblr for writers, after I spend more time using it. (Feel free to ask questions about Tumblr in the comments, though.)

Click here to view my Tumblr.

The post Find Me on Tumblr appeared first on Jane Friedman.

How to Write Characters Who Evoke Reader Compassion

How do you write fiction with characters who are mysteriously human, who evoke empathy and compassion from the reader? Is it by making them understandable?

No. Geoff Wyss explains:

The better we understand someone, the more fully we should be able to respond to him. But we don’t understand people in real life, not in the sense of comprehending them and holding their keys, not even our friends, not even our husbands and wives, not even close; real people continue to hoard as you pick through them, do so exactly so you can’t pick through them; so it’s simply a question of whether we’re willing to let our characters be real people. This ought to be the point of literary fiction, the thing that makes it different from epigram or essay or encomium: to ask questions about people, not to answer them.

Read more of Wyss’s essay in the latest Glimmer Train bulletin.

And check out these other columns on fiction writing:

Eating the Thousand-Year Egg by Doug Lawson: about moments you try to capture as a writer
A Fatalist’s Manifesto by Micah Nathan: writing gets harder as you get better, not easier

The post How to Write Characters Who Evoke Reader Compassion appeared first on Jane Friedman.

Best Business Advice for Writers: November 2012

For a couple years, I curated a weekly round-up of links called Best Tweets for Writers. I had fun doing it, but ultimately abandoned it in 2011 when I could no longer sustain the time commitment.

Nowadays, there’s no shortage of link round-ups for writers, of varying quality. While I hesitate to add another one to the mix, I’m going to enter the fray again, but on a monthly basis, strictly focusing on the business of being a writer. No craft & technique, no inspirational stuff. Just the absolute best advice I’ve found, online, about being smarter about your career—and why I think it’s the best.

I hope you find it helpful. If you have link suggestions for this monthly round-up, don’t hesitate to contact me.

How an Enterprising Author Sold a Million Self-Published Books

This is a profile of best-selling novelist C.J. Lyons (@cjlyonswriter) by Mark McGuinness (@MarkMcGuinness). I’ve met C.J. at writing conferences, and I find her to be the most honest, reasonable, and experienced author who has success playing on both sides of the publishing field—traditional and self-pub. While the title of this article may put off some people (it did me at first), the content and advice is top rate. From the profile:

CJ has an artist’s dedication to the craft of writing, which is a necessary condition of her success. In an ideal world, it would be nice to think that just writing great books would also be sufficient to achieve what she has done.

But the reality is that, over and above the effort CJ puts into her writing, she has also approached her work as a creative entrepreneur, applying her creativity to the process of moving her business forward as well as her story lines.

After you finish reading the Copyblogger profile, I urge to check out her website, blog, and other offerings where she openly shares what she’s learned.

How Readers Discovered a Debut Novel: A Case Study

The people at Goodreads (a twelve-million member social network for reading) try to answer an age-old question with hard data from a book launch by an unknown, self-publishing author. From the article:

Online sales currently represent about 39% of all sales (Bowker), and the adoption of ebooks is fueling this shift. Online discovery, however, at least in an ecommerce setting, has yet to equal the serendipitous experience of wandering the aisles of a bookstore and happening upon a new book.

Then they proceed to show how a book gained momentum, racked up sales, and attracted the attention of a New York publisher, who signed the author to a traditional book deal.

Facebook: Best Practices for Profiles, Pages, Groups, and Posts

By Darcy Pattison (@FictionNotes), this is an excellent round-up of advice from authors who have hands-on experience with Facebook. If you’re new to using Facebook as part of your career, this is a great primer. From the post:

Susanna Reich, author of Minette’s Feast: The Delicious Story of Julia Child and Her Cat, used only her Facebook profile to promote this picture book. Starting a few months before the publication, she posted news, reviews, interviews, event announcements, event photos, and Julia Child quotes. She cautions, “I’ve found that over time I’m getting fewer ‘Likes’ and comments. I suspect that a constant diet of Julia Child can become boring, and I’d have more success if I mixed in posts on other topics.”

Also, if you’d like more insight on Facebook, check my post here.

Mustering the Courage to Turn Down a Publishing Contract

Over at Writer Beware—a site you ought to subscribe to if you haven’t already—Author Kfir Luzatto (@KfirLuzzatto) offers 10 tips to mull over when looking at your next contract. Even better, blog host Victoria Strauss offers a round-up of invaluable links and resources for contract assessment. Bookmark it—you’ll thank yourself later.

Top 5 Goals for Your Book or E-Book Cover

This short and sweet piece by Joel Friedlander (@JFBookman), who hosts probably the best site for self-publishing authors, is mandatory reading for those about to pull the publishing trigger on a new e-book. He presents insight and knowledge that’s long been internalized by traditional publishing folks, but that unpublished authors don’t know.

Publishers Brace for Authors to Reclaim Book Rights in 2013

I’ll just give you the nutshell summary from the article:

A copyright law that lets authors break contracts after 35 years will start taking effect in January. The law, which is meant to give authors like Stephen King and Judy Blume a “second bite at the apple,” could provide yet another disruption for traditional publishers.

Go read the full write-up by Jeff John Roberts (@JeffJohnRoberts) at PaidContent.

A New (Free) Way to Sell Books From Your Sidebar

Claire Ryan (@rayntweets), who heads up an independent author services company, has created a free WordPress plug-in that makes it easy to sell your books on your website, while pointing to all the different retailers and devices on which your book might be available. For authors using WordPress.com (not self-hosted), she even provides a work-around for you, too!

Who Pays Writers (@WhoPaysWriters)

This is a brand-spanking new Tumblr site that is simply trying to collect information about who pays and who doesn’t. Right now, it seems to focus on online opportunities. If you have knowledge to share, or just want to educate yourself, this is a site to bookmark and refer to. Fingers crossed that it becomes a full-fledged resource site over time.

BookBaby Partners with Bound Book Scanning to Convert Print Books into eBooks

This is probably the first and only time you’ll find me linking to a press release, but it’s such a needed service that I want to share the news. BookBaby, one of the e-book distributors I often recommend, is solving a problem I frequently hear about: An author wants to digitize their book, but all they have is the print edition. If this describes you, then check out BookBaby’s latest service offering, which presents a convenient, all-in-one solution.

That’s it for the first installment. Did I miss a terrific article from November? Let me know in the comments.

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10 Ways to Build Long-Lasting Traffic to Your Author Website or Blog

Note: This Thursday, I’m teaching an online class with Writer’s Digest on improving and growing your WordPress-based website. Read more, and register, at the Writer’s Digest site.

First things first: Your website, whether it gets a lot of traffic or not, is an essential part of a strong author platform. It serves as your hub—or command central—for all online activity, and should give your readers, as well as the media, a way to engage with you. It should be there if people want to find it, and you can safely assume that traffic will grow as your career grows, whether you try to make that happen or not.

While nonfiction authors might be rightly concerned with traffic to their site (as a part of their platform—overall visibility and reach), novelists, poets, and other creative writers should probably treat their site as a critical tool underpinning career-long marketing and promotion efforts, but not necessarily as an end in itself—unless you’re generating content, blogging, or doing something to attract attention, which we’re about to discuss.

Here are some of the tried-and-true methods of getting traffic to your website.

1. Make sure your social media profiles always link to your website.

Twitter, Facebook, and other social media networks always offer—as part of your static profile—an opportunity to link to your homepage. Be sure to do so.

An advanced version of this strategy: Send people to a customized landing page on your website. E.g., you may want to create a special introduction or offer for people who visit your website from your Twitter profile, Facebook fan page, GoodReads page, etc.

If you blog: Be sure to link to new blog posts on each social media network where you’re active. But don’t just post a link. Offer an intriguing question, lead in, excerpt, or explanation of why the post might be interesting to people on that specific social network. While it may be possible to automate postings across your social networks whenever a new blog post goes live, it’s often more effective to give each post a personal touch based on what you know appeals to that particular community.

2. Include your website address on all offline materials.

Whether it’s business cards, print books, handouts, flyers, bookmarks, or postcards—any print collateral—don’t forget to put your website address on it. It’s helpful if you briefly explain what’s at your site, e.g., “Visit my website to sign up for my free e-newsletter” or “Visit my website to download free first chapters from all my books.”

3. Learn SEO 101 and its quirks for your content management system.

SEO is search engine optimization. You want search engines such as Google to pull up your site whenever people search for terms relevant to you, your books, or your content. For most authors, the two most important SEO questions usually are:

Can people easily find my site if they search for my name?
Can people easily find my site if they search for my book titles?

Beyond these two questions, most authors don’t need to worry much about SEO. (It becomes more important if you’re trying to make money online or otherwise build a career based off your online content.) However, you should have a basic knowledge of how SEO works, and whether your site is meeting basic requirements. The good news is that if you’re using the very popular content management system WordPress, you’re set up to have good SEO from the start.

Here are some excellent resources for learning about SEO.

6 Simple SEO Tips for Authors by Joel Friedlander
Simple SEO for Authors, Part 1 by Joel Friedlander
SEO for Authors, a round-up of posts by Caleb J. Ross
For more advanced skills, especially for nonfiction writers: SEO Copywriting Made Simple by Copyblogger

4. Install Google Analytics and study how people find your site and use it.

If your site is self-hosted, then you should have Google Analytics installed. If not, get started today—it’s a free service and easy to set up. (Instructions here.)

After Google Analytics has collected at least 1 month of data, take a look at the following:

How do people find your site? Through search? Through your social media presence? Through other websites that link to you?
What search words bring people to your site?
What pages or posts are most popular on your site?

By knowing the answers to these questions, you can better decide which social media networks are worth your investment of time and energy, who else on the web might be a good partner for you (who is sending you traffic and why?), and what content on your site is worth your time to continue developing (what content will bring you visitors over the long run?).

For more analytics tools, check out my Nov. 18 e-newsletter.

Speaking of e-newsletters …

5. Create a free e-mail newsletter.

Whether you send it once a year or once a week, it’s time to start a free e-mail newsletter so you can stay in touch with visitors to your site who specifically express interest in your updates. MailChimp is an e-mail newsletter service (free up to 2,000 names) that has a beautiful user interface and makes the process fun and easy.

Your e-mail newsletter, aside from having useful news or content, should link to your website. Your newsletter can point out (1) popular site or blog content & conversations that readers may have missed (2) free information or downloads you’ve recently offered and (3) anything else that’s changed on your site that might have been overlooked.

6. Create free resource guides on popular topics.

If you’re a nonfiction writer, then this probably comes naturally: Put together a 101 guide, FAQ, or tutorial related to your topic or expertise—something people often ask you about. (My most visited resource on this site is Start Here: How to Get Your Book Published.)

If you’re a novelist, this strategy may take some creative thinking. Good thing you have an imagination, right? Consider the following:

If your book is strongly regional, create an insider’s guide or travel guide to that particular region. Or think about other themes in your work that could inspire something fun: a collection of recipes; a character’s favorite books, movies, or music; or what research and resources were essential for completing your work.
If you’re an avid reader, create a list of favorite reads by genre/category, by mood, or by occasion.
If you have a strong avocational pursuit (or past profession) that influences your novels, create FAQs or guides for the curious.
If you’re an established author, offer a list of your favorite writing and publishing resources that you recommend for new writers.
Also, see suggestions below.

7. Create lists or round-ups on a regular basis.

A very popular way to make people aware of your website is to link to others’ websites. If you can do this in a helpful way, it’s a win for you, for your readers, and for the sites you send traffic to.

In the writing and publishing community, weekly link round-ups are very common. (See Joel Friedlander, Elizabeth Craig, and Writing on the Ether at this site.)

But you can create such lists or round-ups on any theme or category that interests you enough to remain dedicated, enthusiastic, and consistent for the long haul—at least 6 months to 1 year, if you want to see a tangible benefit.

8. Do something interesting on your favorite social media site.

Especially if you’re not blogging, you may want to consider what creative project you might undertake on a community-oriented site. Consider:

Daily themed notes on Facebook. (See this guy.)
Photographs or visuals on Instagram or Pinterest. (Here’s some advice from MediaBistro on this front.)
Twitter chats or hashtag themed tweets. (Jeanne Bowerman’s ScriptChat is a fabulous model to follow.)
YouTube videos. (These guys are the masters.)
Create reading highlights and snippets through Amazon highlights, Goodreads, or Findings (then distribute via Twitter, Facebook, etc). Check out my Findings or highlights.

9. Run regular interviews with people who fascinate you.

Believe it or not, it’s rare to come across an informed, thoughtful, and careful interviewer and interview series (or—not just someone looking to fill a slot or post generic content based on pre-fab questions).

Think about themes, hooks, or angles for an interview series on your site, and run them on a regular basis—but only as frequently as you have time to invest in a well-researched and quality interview. Such series also offer you an excellent way to build your network and community relationships, which has a way of paying off in the long run.

Check these interview series for an idea of what’s possible:

Other People with Brad Listi
Interviews at The Rumpus
The Creative Penn podcast interview series

 10. Be a guest blogger or interviewee on other sites.

Whenever you guest or appear on other websites, that’s an opportunity to have multiple links back to your own site and social network accounts.

A meaningful guest post means pitching sites that have a bigger audience than you, but they should also have a readership that’s a good match for your work. If you need a strong introduction to guest posting how-to, visit this excellent Copyblogger post.

If you’re not the type to write guest posts, then consider proactively offering yourself up to be interviewed as part of other bloggers’ interview series.

A note of caution: Don’t focus on guest post or interview opportunities strictly tied to the writing and publishing community (unless that is your true audience). You may need to research websites and blogs that feature authors or books similar to you in order to break out of the publishing industry echo chamber and find people who aren’t writers, but readers. An easy way to start this research is to Google similar authors or book titles—ones with the same target readership—and see what sites feature interviews, guest posts, or essays.

Whenever you make an appearance on another site, always promote the interview on your own social networks and create a permanent link to it from your own website.

While these are some of the most popular ways to build traffic to your site, there are many other ways. What has been successful for you? Share your experience in the comments.

Or, for more in-depth instruction on this topic:

The Holy Trinity of Abundant Blog Traffic by Joel Friedlander
5 Ways to Get More Traffic With Content Marketing (CopyBlogger)
7 Traffic Techniques for Bloggers—and Metrics to Measure Them (ProBlogger)
How I Increased My Search Traffic by 200% in 6 Months (ProBlogger)

Note: This Thursday, I’m teaching an online class with Writer’s Digest on improving and growing your WordPress-based website. Read more, and register, at the Writer’s Digest site.

Quality Writing Projects Require Safe Places—And Here Are Five

Today’s guest post is by Ed Cyzewski (@EdCyzewski). You may remember him from a previous guest post at this site, Why Self-Publishing Is a Tragic Term. Ed’s latest e-book is available as a free download on Tuesday & Wednesday of this week—visit Amazon to download Creating Space: The Case for Everyday Creativity.

After years of doubting that I was writer, I finally gave myself permission to write when we moved to a small town in the country. I did so begrudgingly. Since I wasn’t a lumberjack or a waiter, my only hope for a career became my writing.

There was one problem: I was rushing out unfinished ideas.

I queried book proposals, articles, and guest posts—cranking out one failure after another.
I faithfully wrote daily blog posts—a brain dump of sorts that few people read.

I struggled mightily. I put pressure on myself to come up with something good NOW.

While permission got me started with writing, I needed a safe space to create my posts, articles, and proposals and develop them. It was one thing to take myself seriously as a writer, but I didn’t start taking my writing itself seriously until I starting writing in a safe space before hitting publish.

Creating in a safe space takes away the pressure of criticism and failure, while also giving yourself the time you need to polish your final draft. A safe space lets you experiment, revamp, and tweak your work.

Here are some safe spaces where you can develop your next writing project.

1. Capture Ideas in a Journal

Every Sunday morning I open my journal, and I look for something very specific: writing ideas. If there’s nothing more than a half page of notes from the past week, as is the case sometimes, then I haven’t carved out enough journaling time to capture ideas where I’m free from pressure or distractions.

Whether I’m sketching a blog post idea, a new chapter idea, or a promotion for my latest book, my journal is the safest place to experiment and to let first drafts percolate.

2. Plan Blog Series Weeks in Advance

By giving myself time to plan my blog series in advance, I can let ideas develop and evaluate them with greater clarity. A blog series is a great way to keep your writing focused and to dig deeper into important ideas while also removing the daily anxiety of, “What will I write about?”

From daring posts on controversial issues to posts about personal struggles that are hard to put into words, planning a series in advance lets me push the envelope without pushing away readers.

3. Draft Blog Posts Ahead of Time

My most popular blog posts usually take a week to develop. At the very least, I always set up my blog posts a day ahead of time in order to refine them. Even if you write a rough draft the week before you write the actual post, your writing will be sharper and clearer.

4. Print Book Drafts for Editing

Maybe this is my personal quirk, but there is something incredibly intimidating about editing a book chapter on my computer. I have a hard time deleting, moving, or rewriting parts that clearly don’t work because the “delete” key feels so final.

There’s something about editing on a printed page that feels safe. I’m free to experiment, annotate, and delete without watching the words disappear into the white void of Word. If a major rewrite doesn’t click, I always have the first version to fall back on.

5. Wait a Week for Major Edits

It has taken years to teach myself the patience required for editing an article for publication or a final draft of a book chapter. The defining moment happened when I reviewed some failed articles in an old folder one day. I was horrified that my “best work” was so rejectable.

My introductions flopped, ideas were sprinkled about haphazardly with meager organization, and transitions led from one idea wreck to another. When it’s time to edit an article or book chapter, one to two weeks are critical to give myself enough space to honestly evaluate what I’ve written before shipping it to an editor.

My best ideas and best writing need space and time to develop. While you can sometimes wing it on a tight deadline and produce something incredible, I need to give myself some space offline—and extra time—to shape ideas and make edits that bump my writing to the next level.

Now it’s your turn. What strategies do you use to give your writing the space it needs to develop?

Editor’s note: Ed’s latest e-book is available as a free download on Tuesday & Wednesday of this week—visit Amazon to download Creating Space: The Case for Everyday Creativity.

EXTRA ETHER: Tim Ferriss’ 4-Hour Banning

Tim Ferriss’ 4-Hour Banning

A BitTorrent blog post proudly proclaims: “It’s poised to be the most banned book in U.S. history. The 4-Hour Chef is one of the first titles underneath Amazon’s new publishing imprint; boycotted by U.S. booksellers, including Barnes & Noble.”

[image error]

Laura Hazard Owen

Laura Hazard Owen says that a real book banning is more than a 4-Hour affair.

In Hey, Tim Ferriss: Book banning isn’t a marketing gimmick at GigaOM’s paidContent, she writes:

So is Barnes & Noble banning The Four-Hour Chef because of its controversial content? Not so much. Ferriss’s book is simply one of several that Barnes & Noble will not stock in its stores because it is published by Amazon.

Timothy Ferriss

But Ferriss is talking right back to her:

I view things through a different lens. I think the implications of this boycott or ban — choose the word you prefer — are larger than people realize.

What we’re looking at is an interesting question. Yes, this corporate combat is playing out on the scarred battlefield of the digital dynamic: Barnes and Noble, like most booksellers, is struggling for its footing as Amazon’s digital supremacy and customer-service battering ram punch bigger and bigger holes in the fortress walls of old publishing.

Tim Ferriss’s marketing plan for THE 4-HOUR CHEF is distasteful. @ explains why. http://t.co/avs4yPtt
[image error]November 16, 2012 4:49 pm via Seesmic twhirlReplyRetweetFavorite


Sarah Weinman

 

But even if we all stood atop a clover-covered hill of peace at the moment, gazing down on a more cordial, pastoral colloquy between Owen and Ferriss, the issue would resonate with worthwhile urgency in our business-dominated era.

What, actually, constitutes a “book banning?”
If a bookstore refuses to sell on the grounds of a business dispute, as is the case here, is a “ban” in place?
Indeed, what is being “banned” here is not Ferriss, not “Timothy,” as he’s known on his book covers, nor his writings or sometimes controversial lifestyle recommendations, nor his eagerly photographed 4-Hour Body, nor his assertion that one can be successful with a mere 4-Hour Workweek.

That’s the problem. There is no Girolamo Savonarola in the room. The Friar of 15th-century Florence might have burned Ferriss at a 4-Hour Stake at the first baring of those pecs and external obliques. But this “banning” is not ideological.

And Owen is questioning the use of the term by the wunderkind bestseller.

This is the ad image BitTorrent is using to promote its “4-Hour Project” bundling deal with Tim Ferriss on Tuesday, launch day for The 4-Hour Chef.

If anybody can rally BitTorrent’s 160-million-strong “people-powered network,” it’s the articulate Ferriss. At 35, he’s a guy’s guy whose eloquence doesn’t always jibe with his game-the-system shtick.

Thank-you to my friends at Hastings who will have The 4-Hour Chef piled high! http://t.co/wfBCaAiZ
[image error]about 4 hours ago via webReplyRetweetFavorite


Tim Ferriss

 

He writes to Owen, in answer to her article (she has included his response), first with a vision of more trouble in Digital City:

If this book fails due to a retail stonewall, I can tell you for a fact that more than a dozen A-list authors I know will hit pause on plans for publishing innovation for the next few years.

Next he follows with respect for our icons mentioned by Owen in her piece:

Is The 4-Hour Chef the same as Huckleberry Finn?  Of course not, and I never implied that it was.

Then he declines to stand down:

But do I view stifling innovation and free speech (through distribution or otherwise) as a malevolent thing? Yes. Regardless of the motive (moral, economic, etc.), the outcome is the same: regress instead of progress. And regress snowballs quickly. At the end of the day, I want people to think about boycotting and banning, both historically and moving forward. The fact that you (Owen) wrote a piece about precisely that — raising awareness and stimulating conversation — is a great thing.That public discourse is one of my goals.

Told you he’s good. I like this debate and I like Ferriss’ ready wit as much as I like Owen’s robust concern.

It’s good, really, to find a self-marketer of his magnitude waiting when someone as adroit as Owen comes looking for him.

She’s way too smart to leave home without her own rationale. Here’s her quick recitation of what normally rises (or falls) to the level of recognized “banning”:

Huckleberry Finn, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, To Kill a Mockingbird: Those are among the titles that schools and libraries have most commonly banned over the years. An Illinois school district banned a book this year because it included a reference to gay families. And Bibles and Korans are still burned by religious groups around the world.

Not a lot of folks would run at a phalanx of unassailable examples like that. But Ferriss does.

Someone should tell Tim Ferriss that his book isn’t actually “banned”
[image error]November 16, 2012 4:48 pm via Tweetbot for iOSReplyRetweetFavorite


Dan Krokos

 

And Owen isn’t toying with her target here. She has perfect pitch for what sounds to her like a sales-gimmicky misappropriation of the term “banned.”

At the same time, you don’t have to agree with Ferriss to realize that for a guy launching a book on Tuesday subtitled “The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life,” this huckster brings a sweet intelligence to his own defense.

They’re a good match, these two, and we can thank them for the chance to think this out.

If you sign w/ Amazon Publishing, don’t expect to see booksellers embrace your books. How did Ferriss not see this? http://t.co/shCDN1oa
[image error]November 16, 2012 5:17 pm via Twitter for MacReplyRetweetFavorite


Evil Wylie

@ Because he’s Tim Ferriss & thinks he can get around anything.
[image error]November 16, 2012 5:18 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite


Jen Zeman

 | | |

Let’s look at how the Owen-Ferriss standoff developed Friday (the 16th of November), four days prior to the launch of Ferriss’ bookstore-”banned” book.

Ingrid Lunden

In her coverage of the promotion at TechCrunch, Ingrid Lunden (a former paidContent colleague of Owen’s) wrote:

Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, and a stalemate between Amazon and big retailers, including Barnes & Noble, over the sale of books from the online giant’s publishing imprint is giving a fillip to BitTorrent — once a hotbed of piracy, and now a straight-laced and legal content distribution network — as a platform for marketing books.

Lunden’s write-up, With Amazon Publishing Stonewalled By Retailers, Tim Ferriss Taps BitTorrent To Market His New Book, not only reminds us all that BitTorrent is no longer a pirate ship, but also that it characterizes its user-to-user network as comprising “more users than Hulu, Netflix and Spotify combined.”

If that doesn’t have you sitting up yet, try it this way: Lunden reports that BitTorrent claims to drive “between 20% and 40% of all Internet traffic.” Ferriss doesn’t play for pennies.

What’s a Tim Ferriss?
[image error]November 16, 2012 5:51 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite


Don Linn

 

And BitTorrent, she points out:

…has been building up a marketing business it calls Bundles, in which it offers users content related to a recent launch of an entertainment or media brand. It looks like Bundles have mainly been used for music launches for groups like Counting Crows, Pretty Lights and Death Grips.

This time instead of music, it’s Bundling Ferriss. Lunden writes:

According to a BitTorrent blog post announcing the news, to coincide with the book being launched on November 20, BitTorrent users, “will get exclusive access to media from Tim: content from the book, as well as unpublished material. We’ll be distributing the writer’s process: the photos, drafts, videos and recipes that shaped Tim’s journey. And we’ll be asking users to support Tim and the Amazon imprint.”

Do you tumbl regularly on latest book news? Do you for instance, want to do a GIF type thing re: Tim Ferriss “banned” book? #followreader
[image error]November 16, 2012 4:17 pm via TweetChatReplyRetweetFavorite


Kat Meyer

 

In an important clarification for the many Amazon-bashers of our realm, Lunden writes:

A BitTorrent spokesperson says that this deal is directly with Ferriss himself, not Amazon, so it’s not clear whether there will be more Amazon books coming through this particular marketing channel.

So, no, this isn’t Seattle’s work. Nevertheless, if we go back one quote, we can hear that call-of-the-charities language that has triggered Owen’s alarm: “Support Tim and the Amazon imprint.”

It has that “come on out” tone we’re going to hear soon from Toys for Tots, right? It’s really another way of saying “buy my book.”

And that’s what has Owen donning her flak jacket.

Interesting response to retailers’ boycott of Amazon Publishing. Tim Ferriss turns to BitTorrent http://t.co/qz4llNXP
[image error]November 16, 2012 2:20 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite


Victoria Strauss

| | |

In her write at paidContent, she goes back to the original announcement from B&N of its intention to keep books from Amazon’s fledgling New Harvest imprint off its shelves. As she reported in February, in Barnes & Noble: We Will Not Carry Amazon Publishing Titles in Our Stores, the big bookstore chain stated:

“Our decision is based on Amazon’s continued push for exclusivity with publishers, agents and the authors they represent. These exclusives have prohibited us from offering certain ebooks to our customers. Their actions have undermined the industry as a whole and have prevented millions of customers from having access to content.”

What’s more, Owen writes:

Readers can still order Amazon titles from Barnes & Noble’s website and most independent bookstores will order them if readers ask.

@ My desire to buy multiple copies of your book goes up with each book store that bans it.
[image error]November 11, 2012 11:18 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite


Ben Nesvig

 

To Owen, Ferriss’ BitTorrent “project” is a wrongful use of censorship’s image for the purpose of getting people talking.

Ferriss doesn’t dodge her point. He turns it around and marches it right back to her:

I’d be remiss not to point out: booksellers use banned books as a marketing gimmick every year as a matter of course. Yes, I’m using the media to highlight what I view as a serious fork in the road for content creators.

And that’s a worthy point, too. How does a bookseller — Barnes and Noble or another outfit — account for the fact that refusing to carry certain books in a business protest actually hurts the authors through lost sales? We may not need to cry for Ferriss, who’s more than able to take care of himself. But what of other less successful authors caught in the crossfire of the B&N-Amazon skirmish?

Bookstores, you are insane to ban Amazon-published books. http://t.co/bf4luMRe
[image error]November 11, 2012 7:45 pm via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite


Dan Gillmor

 

And what of readers? Of customer service? Owen’s right that you can order the Ferriss book online from B&N but what of consumers who head down to the local store to pick it up, only to hear “Oh, we’re not carrying that book?”

Do the staffers on the floor at a B&N tell customers why it’s not in the store? If so, how do they characterize it? Do they explain that the author is not the problem — another retailer is?

.@ says “My new book (4-hour chef amazon’s first major book) is now banned by more than 1,100 bookstores nationwide! Fun!”
[image error]November 11, 2012 7:41 pm via Tweetbot for iOSReplyRetweetFavorite


Om Malik

@ @ there are still 1100 bookstores?
[image error]November 11, 2012 11:11 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite


Rhett Garber

 

In closing her sally, Owen raises the fearful image of Bebelplatz in Berlin. It’s the site of the May 1933 burning by Hitler’s SS of what is said to have been some 20,000 books, something many of us can’t imagine without thinking of Fahrenheit 451.

Owen cites the text chosen to memorialize the Nazis’ fiery stupidity. It takes its line from Heinrich Heine. As Fra Savonarola could have told them:

“Where books are burned, in the end people will burn.”

And Owen then takes one last look at the Ferriss-BitTorrent effort. She sees no comparison:

The disruptors who do speak out for Ferriss won’t be risking personal harm. They won’t be standing up against free speech. Ferriss approached Amazon for a book deal and in four days, it will be published. That’s not exactly censorship.

@ @ but will still be bought by a million or more. My pre-order placed for a hard copy in protest.
[image error]November 12, 2012 8:18 am via Tweetbot for iOSReplyRetweetFavorite


Shahid Kamal Ahmad

 

Ferriss hasn’t run out of stones to throw, either, however:

If anyone is guilty of using “banned books” as a gimmick, it’s booksellers themselves.

Author says B&N not carrying book stifles innovation & = regress. Hmm, like libraries not being allowed to buy ebooks. http://t.co/VmAjNiIR
[image error]about 7 hours ago via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite


Carlie Hoffman

| | |

A quick look at comments on Owen’s post shows what a joyless, even bitter environment surrounds this debate.

“Nothing is more irritating than faux victim-hood,” writes one.

“I would think the best response to a stupid marketing gimmick would be to ignore it,” writes another commenter, publishing blogger Nate Hoffelder. “Any post on this topic is a win by default for Ferriss.”

Owen responds: “It’s not really my job as a journalist to either help or hinder Ferriss’ sales. I’m sure this post could lead to some people buying his book and some people not wanting to (and I doubt it’d change a lot of minds on either side). Regardless, it’s worth writing about because it exposes a major rift in the publishing industry right now, and it’s my job to report on that. So I did.”

Another reader widens still further the term “ban”: “Amazon ‘bans’ books all the time. When publishers don’t agree to their burdensome terms they remove the buy buttons.”

And so now, Ethernaut, we turn to you.

Maybe in a society so fixated on economic issues, a retail move against a given product can be called a banning. Or maybe to call it that is simply trading one sales ploy for another and trampling a more important concept in the process.

What do you think? Can a corporate-competitive move like Barnes and Noble’s refusal to carry Amazon New Harvest print editions be called a form of book banning, as Tim Ferriss asserts? Or is Laura Hazard Owen right that the term’s association with censorship in culture and history is too important for it to be applied to a commercial shakedown?

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Click to comment

Les écrits gazeuses: Ether for Authors

Join us for craft-focused information and industry commentary specifically selected for authors with an international viewpoint. Here’s our first edition: Introducing Porter Anderson’s Ether for Authors: Sans Frontières.

Each Tuesday at Publishing Perspectives, it’s Ether for Authors, an all new brother-column to Writing on the Ether, which appears each Thursday, here at JaneFriedman.com.

Main image by Porter Anderson / Cortona

Ether for Authors image iStockphoto / Loops7

Sell More Fiction by Activating the Power of Book Clubs

Today’s guest post is by Rob Eagar, author of Sell Your Book Like Wildfire.

Book clubs and discussion groups—where millions of readers congregate both in-person and online to discuss their favorite books—offer a powerful marketing opportunity for novelists. Some of the most popular social networks devoted to book readers include GoodReads (12 million members strong), LibraryThing, Red Room, and BookShout. Promoting your book to both physical and digital book clubs can help boost sales by increasing the number of volume orders placed. Below are three ways to get started.

1. Provide spicy discussion questions

Encourage groups to dive into your novels by streamlining the process to get them talking. First, create a list of interesting questions and add them to the back of your book, your author website, your publisher’s book page, etc. Make it easy for people to find and download these questions.

Second, don’t put a book club to sleep by giving them boring questions. Simple “yes” or “no” answers fail to generate curiosity. Likewise, don’t create dull questions, such as “Did the main character seem scared in Chapter 3?” Instead, push your audience to shake things up with deeper questions, such as:

If you were in the main character’s position at this point, how would you respond?
Do you feel as if this book changed your views on the primary subject of the story? Why?
The main character’s adherence to social customs can seem controversial to us today. Pick a scene where you would have acted differently. Why?
If you could change something about this book, what would it be and why?

2. Turn your book into an event

Provide a context for groups to interact with your book; offer ideas for your book to be used as the basis for a mystery dinner, field trip, supper club, Bible study, service project, etc.

For example, you could provide a list of recipes that pertain to the characters, locations, or events in your novel. Or you could build a playlist of songs that evoke the novel’s themes or offer insight into the characters. If your book deals with difficult social subjects, such as soldiers fighting overseas, children at risk, or abandoned animals, you could invite the group to send letters and care packages to forgotten servicemen, volunteer at an after-school program, or volunteer at an animal shelter.

Look for ways to make book clubs view your novel as an experience they can share, rather than just a book to read. Position your book as the catalyst for a meaningful activity. This is a great way to generate excitement and boost word of mouth.

3. Offer a virtual discussion with the author

Book clubs thrive on debating how a novelist creates and masterfully tells a story. Allow book clubs to meet you privately by scheduling phone calls or online discussions to answer some of their biggest questions. Just hearing your voice can be a major thrill for fans. Consider using services such as Skype, Facebook chat, or Google Hangouts to make virtual appearances with readers around the world. Plus there’s an added benefit of avoiding bookstore signing events where nobody shows up!

Several of my author clients offer free 30-minute phone calls to book clubs, because they like getting to know their readers without having to leave home. These phone calls allow authors to build stronger relationships with fans and understand why readers appreciate their books.

Never underestimate the desire readers have to meet their favorite authors. Promote such opportunities on your website and social media pages. Plus, notify your publisher, literary agent, and publicist about your availability so that they can help spread the word.

To learn more about book marketing strategy, check out Eagar’s new release, Sell Your Book Like Wildfire.

Start Here: How to Write a Book Proposal

This post is a companion to Start Here: How to Get Your Book Published. My expertise on this topic comes from more than a decade of acquisitions experience at a traditional publisher, where I reviewed thousands of proposals.

What exactly is a book proposal?

A book proposal argues why your book (idea) is a salable, marketable product. It is essentially a business case or a business plan for your book.

Book proposals aren’t something you dash off in a day or two. They can take weeks or months to write if properly developed and researched. A proposal can easily reach 50 pages, even 100 for complex projects.

When is a book proposal needed?

Book proposals are used to sell nonfiction book ideas.

Instead of writing the entire book—then trying to find a publisher or agent (which is how it works with novels)—you write the proposal first, which convinces the editor or agent to contract you to write the book.

New writers might find it easier to simply write the book first, then prepare a proposal—which isn’t such a bad idea, since many editors and agents want assurance that an unknown writer can produce an entire book before they commit. (But having the manuscript complete does not negate the need for the proposal.)

That said, drafting a proposal first (even sketching it) can give you a better idea of what your book needs to include to make it stand apart from competing titles.

When is a proposal NOT needed?

The easiest answer is: When the agent or editor doesn’t require it in their submission guidelines. This can be the case with memoir, where the quality of the writing or manuscript holds more weight than the business case.

Generally speaking: When your book is more about information or a compelling idea, then you’re selling it based on the marketability of your expertise, your platform, and your concept—and you need a proposal.

If your book will succeed based on its literary merit (its ability to entertain or tell a story), then it becomes more important to have a completed manuscript that proves your strength as a writer.

What about “novel proposals”?

You may occasionally hear someone refer to novel proposals, which includes a query or cover letter, a synopsis and/or outline, and a partial or complete manuscript—along with any other information the editor or agent requests. This bears little to no relation to a typical nonfiction book proposal. Go here to read more about novel synopses.

Do I have to be an expert to write my nonfiction book?

Usually some level of expertise is necessary to produce a successful nonfiction book, especially for fields such as health, self-help, or parenting, where no one will trust your advice without recognized credentials. Your background must convey authority and instill confidence in the reader. (Would you, as a reader, trust a health book by an author with no experience or degrees?)

Some types of nonfiction, especially narrative nonfiction and memoir, can be written by anyone with proven journalistic or storytelling skills.

How do I know if my memoir is salable or marketable?

It’s probably safe to assume that your memoir is not salable unless you’re confident of several things.

Your writing must be outstanding. If your memoir is your very first book or very first writing attempt, then it may not be good enough to pass muster with an editor or agent.
You must have a compelling and unusual story to tell. If you’re writing about situations that affect thousands (or millions) of people, that’s not necessarily in your favor. Alzheimer’s memoirs or cancer memoirs, for example, are very common, and will put you on the road to rejection unless you’re able to prove how yours is unique or outstanding in the field.
You need a platform. If you have a way to reach readers, without a publisher’s help, then you’re more likely to get a book deal.

Do I need an agent to sell my nonfiction book?

It depends. Consider these factors:

Are you writing a book that has significant commercial value?
Do you want to publish with a New York house?
Do you need the expertise and knowledge of an agent to get your proposal into the right hands?

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then you should probably look for an agent. Projects that don’t necessarily require agents include scholarly works for university presses; regional works likely to be published by regional or independent presses; and works with little commercial value.

How do I submit a book proposal?

Check submission guidelines of the agent or publisher. Sometimes you have to query before sending the proposal; often you can send the book proposal on first contact. The submission guidelines will also indicate any mandatory information that must be included in the proposal. Wondering how to find an agent or publisher to submit to? Check this post.

What does a book proposal consist of?

For better or worse, there is no “right way” to prepare a book proposal, just as there is no right way to write a book. Proposals very in length, content, approach, and presentation. Each book requires a unique argument for its existence (or a business case), and thus requires a unique proposal. For example, a coffee table book on dogs would be pitched very differently than a scholarly tome on presidents, or an expose on a celebrity.

However, here’s what an agent or publisher is essentially looking for.

Always answer these three questions

While these questions are not explicitly addressed in the proposal (e.g., with specific sections), these questions will be running through the mind of every publishing professional who considers your project. Make sure, as a whole, your proposal effectively answers them.

So what? This is the reason for the book’s existence, the unique selling proposition that sets it apart from others in the market.
Who cares? This is your target readership. A unique book is not enough—you must show evidence of need in the marketplace for your work.
Who are you? You must have sufficient authority or credentials to write the book, as well as an appropriate marketing platform for the subject matter or target audience.

Basic book proposal elements

Before I detail the most common elements of a proposal, I want to emphasize the following. Editors care about one thing only: A viable idea with a clear market, paired with a writer who has credibility and marketing savvy. Knowing your audience or market—and having direct, tangible reach to them (online or off)—gives you a much better chance of success. Pitch only the book you know has a firm spot in the marketplace. Do not pitch a book expecting that the publisher will bring the audience to you. It’s the other way around. You bring your audience and platform to the publisher.

1. Cover page and the proposal’s table of contents

Long proposals should have a table of contents.

2. Overview

A two-page summary of your entire proposal. Write it last—it needs to sing and present a water-tight business case. Think of it as the executive summary.

3. Target market

Who will buy this book? Why will it sell? Avoid generic statements like these:

A Google search result on [topic] turns up more than 10 million hits.
A U.S. Census shows more than 20 million people in this demographic.
An Amazon search turns up more than 10,000 books with “dog” in the title

These are meaningless statistics. The following statements show better market insight:

Three major sites focus on my topic at [URLs], and none of them have been updated since 2009. When I posted current information about this topic on my site, it became the leading referral of traffic for me, with more than 100 people visiting each day as a result.
Media surveys indicate that at least 50% of people in [demographic] plan to spend about $1,000 on their hobby this year, and 60% indicated they buy books on [topic].
The 5 most highly ranked titles on Amazon on this topic are now all at least 5 years out of date. Recent reviewers complain the books are not keeping up with new information and trends.

4. Competitive analysis

This section analyzes competing book titles and why yours is different or better. (Resist trashing the competition; it will come back to bite you.) Don’t skimp here—editors can tell when you haven’t done your homework. Also, researching and fully understanding the competition and its strengths/weaknesses should help you write a better proposal.

Whatever you do, don’t claim there are NO competitors to your book. If there are truly no competitors, then your book might be so weird and specialized that it won’t sell.

Most importantly, don’t limit yourself to print book titles when analyzing the competition. Today, your greatest competition is probably a website, online community, or well-known blogger. Your proposal should evaluate not just competing print books, but also websites, digital content, and online experts serving the same audience. Google your topic and the problem it solves. What terms would people search for if they wanted information or a solution? What turns up? Is it easy to get needed and authoritative information? Is it free or behind a pay wall?

Where do online experts and authorities send people for more information? Do they frequently reference books? Ask your local librarian where they would look for information on the topic you’re writing about.

For more help on this, see my post: How to Identify Top Websites and Blogs in Your Category

In many nonfiction topics and categories, the availability of online information can immediately kill the potential for a print book unless:

You have a very compelling platform and means of reaching your target audience, and they prefer books.
You already reach an online market and they are clamoring for a book.
You are writing something that isn’t best served through an online experience.

Many book ideas I see pitched should really start out as a site or community—even if only to test-market the idea, to learn more about the target audience, and to ultimately produce a print product that has significant value and appeal in its offline presentation.

5. Author bio and platform

Explain why you’re perfect to write and promote the book. More on this below.

6. Marketing and promotion plan

What can you specifically do to market and promote the book? Never discuss what you hope to do, only what you can and will do (without publisher assistance), given your current resources.

Many people write their marketing plan in extremely tentative fashion, talking about things they are “willing” to do if asked. This is deadly language. Avoid it. Instead, you need to be confident, firm, and direct about everything that’s going to happen with or without the publisher’s help. Make it concrete, realistic, and attach numbers to everything.

Weak

I plan to register a domain and start a blog for my book.

Strong

Within 6 months of launch, my blog on [book topic] already attracts 5,000 unique visits per month.

Weak

I plan to contact bloggers for guest blogging opportunities.

Strong

I have also guest blogged every month for the past year to reach another 250,000 visitors, at sites such as [include 2-3 examples of most well-known blogs]. I have invitations to return on each site, plus I’ve made contact with 10 other bloggers for future guest posts.

Weak

I plan to contact conferences and speak on [book topic].

Strong

I am in contact with organizers at XYZ conferences, and have spoken at 3 events within the past year reaching 5,000 people in my target audience.

The secret of a marketing plan isn’t the number of ideas you have for marketing, or how many things you are willing to do, but how many solid connections you have—the ones that are already working for you—and how many readers you NOW reach through today’s efforts. You need to show that your ideas are not just pie in the sky, but real action steps that will lead to concrete results and a connection to an existing readership.

7. Chapter outline or table of contents

Briefly describe each chapter, if appropriate.

8. Sample chapters

Include at least one—the strongest, meatiest chapter. Don’t try to get off easy by using the introduction.

What are common problems with book proposals?

They’ve been submitted to an inappropriate agent/editor/publisher.
No clearly defined market or need—or a market/audience that’s too niche for a commercial publisher to pursue.
Concept is too general/broad, or has no unique angle.
The writer wants to do a book based on his or her own amateur experience of overcoming a problem or investigating a complex issue. (No expertise or credentials.)
The writer concentrates only on the content of the book or his/her own experience—instead of the book’s hook and benefit and appeal to the marketplace.
The proposed idea is like a million others; nothing compelling sets the book apart

What if I’m told the market is too small for my project?

Maybe you approached too big of a publisher. Is there a smaller publisher that would be interested because they have a lower threshold of sales to meet? Big houses may want to sell as many as 20,000 copies in the first year to justify publication; smaller presses may be fine with a few thousand copies.

Is it possible to make your subject/topic/book more marketable by employing a sexier hook? Many times, writers aren’t looking at their work with a marketer’s eye. Think about how you might interest a perfect stranger in your topic. Have you really tapped into current trends and interests when it comes to your book project, and are you framing it in an exciting way for a publisher (or agent)? Just because you’re fascinated by your subject doesn’t mean other people will get it. You have to know how to sell it.

How big does my platform have to be before a publisher will be interested?

It depends on how big of a publisher you’re pitching, and the overall nature of that publisher. Let’s assume you want the best possible deal from a commercial, New York house. They will want to know:

The stats and analytics behind your online following, including all websites, blogs, social media accounts, e-mail newsletters, regular online writing gigs, podcasts, videos, etc.
Your offline following—speaking engagements, events, classes/teaching, city/regional presence, professional organization leadership roles and memberships, etc.
Your presence in traditional media (regular gigs, features, any coverage you’ve received, etc)
Sales of past books or self-published works

You typically need tens of thousands of engaged followers, and verifiable influence with those followers, to interest a major publisher. Make sure that every number you mention is offered with context. Avoid statements like these: I have 3,000 friends on Facebook or I have 5,000 followers on Twitter. These numbers are fairly meaningless as far as engagement. You have to tell the story behind the numbers. For instance:

Better: More than 30 percent of my Twitter followers have retweeted me, and my links get clicked an average of 50 times.

Better: I run regular giveaway events on Facebook, and during the last event, more than 500 people sent their favorite quote on [topic] to be considered for the giveaway—and to also be considered for the book.

Show that you know your market in a meaningful way, show specifically how and where the market is engaged and growing, and show the engaged role you have.

For more about platform, see these other posts:

A Definition of Author Platform
Draft Your Platform Action Plan: 5 Worksheets
3 Numbers That Matter to Your Platform

Does my book need or deserve to be in print?

Some nonfiction topics actually work better when presented on blogs, websites, or communities/forums—where interactivity and an ability to freshen up the content at a moment’s notice has more appeal to your audience.

Traditional houses are pickier than ever; producing anything in print is a significant investment and risk. They need to know there’s an audience waiting to buy. And, given the significant change in the industry, authors shouldn’t consider a print book their first goal or the end goal, but merely one channel, and usually not the best channel.

The most comprehensive guide to writing book proposals

Check out Michael Larsen’s How to Write a Book Proposal, the most definitive guide on the topic since the 1980s. It will step you through every single page of your book proposal.

Questions?

This post is nearly 3,000 words, and I could go for another 50,000 words if I covered everything! Rather than me doing that, pose your specific questions in the comments.