More on Marketing

I'm going to talk about some of the plans I have. I'm not sure how much I am actually going to do.

The main problem I have is actually getting the work done and out. I procrastinate a lot, and I am a perfectionist. This is the main problem, and one I can solve by myself. Write! Finish! Get the stories out!

The next step (obviously) is publication. I have enough short stories for five collections. The big New York houses publish almost no short story collections. So the first step is to go independent presses. There are a number of these: Night Shade, Tachyon, Golden Griffin, Aqueduct... I have an ongoing relationship with Aqueduct, so I will go there first. However, I have a contract with Aqueduct for the sequel to Ring of Swords, and I need to finish it, before I go to Aqueduct about any other books.

The backup plan is to self publish the collections as e-books and market them via nook and Kindle. Naomi Kritzer over at Wyrdsmiths has done this and can talk about what's involved.

There is also the question of my out of print novels. There are four of these, and e-books sound like the right solution. Aqueduct has expressed some interest in doing an e-book reprint of Ring of Swords. The others I will probably have to do myself. I don't know HTML. But there are people who will turn a book into an e-book for not too much money. Again, Naomi knows more about this than I do.

Once I have books available, I can think about marketing. What I'm doing now is watching what other people do.

I said I don't think things like bookmarks and post cards and refrigerator magnets don't help much. However, they don't cost a lot, and they are fun. I have one of Kelly McCullough's's magnets up on my refrigerator, and I am always happy to get bookmarks. I'm using one of Lyda Morehouses's right now.

The key thing, I think, is to pay attention to how much marketing is costing you in money and time. As a fun sideline, it's okay. But if it sucks resources better put into writing, pull back.

The late Joel Rosenberg gave me wonderful advice once. He said, "Most of what happens in publishing is outside our control. We need to focus on what we can control, which is getting the writing done and out."