The wheels of traditional publishing grind exceeding slow!

In early February I signed a contract with Skyhorse Publishing for my second novel, Fog of Dead Souls. Since the odds of getting a traditional publisher these days are about a thousand to one, I felt very lucky. And I'm very glad I did as this is the easiest way to widespread sales although there is no guarantee that that will happen.

But I'm learning how slow this old process is. It's been two and a half months and the advance check has just finally arrived at my agent's. It now has to clear the bank and then they send me the money minus 15%.

My book is scheduled to be published in February 2014, basically a year from signing. Of course it is fiction and not a time-sensitive subject so there is no hurry, but when I finished my Sober Play book in late December, I had it proofread, designed, uploaded, and copies in my hand in less than 3 weeks. I am mindful though that I had only one book to get done and they have a rotating list of quite a few happening. I'm just one of the authors they publish for. But it is a curious and interesting process.

Another treadmill writing episode: 43:28

As I've mentioned in some earlier posts, this new novel I'm working on is posing many different kinds of problems than the ones before it where I seemed to automatically know what each next episode was going to be. This process is much more one of fits and starts. I show up every morning to write, but I often have to wait a while to know what to write and some days I don't get very far.

This morning was one of those days. I reread yesterday's drafting as always and tweaked a couple of words and added a little description. I had two other chapters started (a couple of sentences in each) but I couldn't figure out where to go with either one. Finally one of the characters told me she wanted to go to a Chinese restaurant so we ended up there but I couldn't figure out why and then my time was up.

I went to the gym after that. I needed to go early as I had a memorial service to attend later in the morning and I was conscious of the time so I decided on 40 minutes on the treadmill. As I got to the end of that 40 minutes though, something in me said "do another 10." But I had decided on 40 and I was already cutting it close to get ready to leave for the service.However, the little voice just wouldn't let go.

And so I stayed, listening to Foreigner and thinking about the book, and suddenly at 43:28 on the treadmill, I knew a big piece of what happens. It just came into my mind--all laid out. And it was so cool!

And yes, I walked the full 50 in gratitude and yes, I made the memorial service in plenty of time!

Book marketing #3

When I published my first book and the whole marketing challenge settled in on me, I felt overwhelmed and baffled. Even though I knew a fair amount about marketing (I had written press releases for clients, knew how to put together a press kit, knew how to get information), I felt pre-discouraged by all the bad talk I'd heard about how impossible it was to get your book out into the world on your own.

I'm a chronic list-maker and so that's what I set out to do. Make a list of all the feasible, practical, and possible things that I could do to market my book and an equal number of crazy, impossible, and impractical (i.e., too expensive) things I could do. But I didn't get very far until I asked myself two questions, which, are, I think, at the heart of marketing.

1. Where do I buy books/art objects?
2.  How do I learn about new books/art objects?

Here are some of the answers I came up with:

Question 1:
a. from catalogs
b. from amazon
c. through online searches and the retailers that show up
d. small retailers, including independent bookstores and gift shops (museum and otherwise)
e. Fred Meyer's
f. at workshops and classes I take

Question 2:
a. friends
b. chance encounter (see it in a shop)
c. looking for something similar to what I already like

So I began to target my marketing efforts in those directions. What would be your answers to these questions?

Book marketing #2 Why bookstores may not be your best bet

While there are many possible venues and routes for selling self-published books, traditional brick-and-mortar bookstores are probably not your best bet. Here's why:

1. Most small, independent bookstores carry only 1-2 copies of any particular book unless it is guaranteed to be a big seller (usually a new book by a well-known author).
2. It is up to the distributor (that's you) to check to see if they have sold the 1 or 2 copies of your book and need another 1-2 copies.
3. They expect a 40% discount from the list price. Depending on what your book costs you, you may make only pennies on the sale, not enough to cover your gas in visiting the store and checking to see if they sold that one copy.
4. They will expect you to take the book back if they don't sell it.

So you end up with a lot of effort for the sale of 1-2 copies of your book. There are better ways to go.

Marketing your books #1

Last December at my annual open house, one of my clients was talking about his poor book sales. He was very disappointed that nothing much had happened. He asked me how my memoir was doing and I told him I was doing well. He looked frustrated and perplexed, and I asked him a few basic questions about how he was marketing his book.

You probably know what's coming. He wasn't marketing his book. After a very small initial flurry of activity, he'd stopped doing anything. He had no plan, no list of tasks. Even the most obvious, getting his book on Kindle, hadn't happened. He'd thought about it but never taken action.

Fast forward to yesterday and lunch with two friends. We were all in a marketing group for freelancers together, a wonderfully facilitated and structured program to help us get more clients and more income. After I self-published my memoir, Donna dusted off a book project very dear to her heart and finished it and self-published it. We were both finalists for the Oregon Book Award in successive years. Yet after that first flurry of activity, she too had stopped marketing her book. She talked of some of her ideas but she hadn't found time to take action on them.

You can certainly self-publish a book and not market it. You may only want the sense of completion that publishing brings or to give your book as a gift to friends and family. Some people never want their stories or efforts to be public, just to be published. And there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, as a creative, I applaud it. Many of us do creative things--write, paint, quilt, garden--for our own pleasure and that of those close to us.

But if you want your work to get out into the world, and if you want a chance at recognition or money, you have to do the marketing.

Why it's good to belong to a writing group

Both of the writing groups I lead met this week and I was struck both evenings by the high level of comments and compassion from the participants. Some of these writers are very good and some are are still developing basic skills. Some have been coming a long time to the group; others are relative newcomers. But their encouragement of each other and their careful listening is really inspiring.

Note that these writers belong to a writing support group and not a writing critique group. My own experiences with critique groups were so painful, I soon stopped going. I tried three and in each case, the groups seemed to run on fear and scarcity. Fear that they weren't any good and fear that there weren't publishing opportunities for everyone, and so they needed to make others feel less adequate in some way. I will admit that those experiences happened over 10 years ago and publishing has changed so much that perhaps critique groups are now less competitive. But back then, I needed support, not critique, so I arranged my own groups, where seldom is heard a discouraging word and we believe in everybody's right to write.

Here's some of what I see writing support groups offering. The opportunity to:

1. Read out loud before an appreciative audience.
2. Be heard by the same audience over time so they note your progress.
3. Ask questions about the writing process from others who are in that process. No question is too elementary to be entertained.
4. Receive encouragement no matter what your skill level is.
5. Listen to the same writers over time and note their progress.
6. Celebrate small and large writing successes with people who care about your creative expression.
7. Receive compassion and understanding when the writing isn't going well.
8. Feel safe as a creative.

Tip #1 for a better self-published book

 More and more of my editing clients are self-publishing. Yet for all of its time and money advantages, self-publishing presents additional challenges to the writer, challenges that would have otherwise been handled by the publishing house with its many resources. The next few posts are going to cover some ways to handle these challenges.  

Tip #1: Use a professional cover. 

Although most self-published books don't end up in brick-and-mortar bookstores where potential readers will pick them up off a crowded table, you still need a great cover. People look at the cover first thing on your amazon site and then read on. People consider the cover first if you are selling your book at a book fair or event. Readers are visual people and like all visuals, they are attracted to color and patterns. Many people buy books just because they like the cover.

In self-publishing, there are three ways to create a cover: 

1. Pay a graphic designer or book cover designer to do it. Costs for this vary but $250-500 is a reasonable investment. I suggest getting a firm price from the designer that includes the initial front and back design, at least one design re-do if you don't like it, and up to two text changes. The designer should be willing to supply the cover to you in both pdf and jpg formats. Cost may increase if you do not supply ideas or the cover art. If you're short on funds, consider whether you have something you can trade the designer for their services: massage, yoga, editing, writing, home-cooked meals, etc. 

2. Pay the self-publishing venue to design it for you. All self-publishing companies sell additional services in design, editing, marketing. If you're buying other services from them, it may prove more cost-efficient to have them design the cover. 

3. Do it yourself. There are cover templates available and companies like amazon's CreateSpace make it very easy to do, even offering you a variety of cover images. Unless you have design experience, however, I don't recommend going this route. You'll most likely end up with an okay cover but not a great one. 

If you can afford it, get a piece of original artwork for your cover. 

There are thousands of artists out there with beautiful, original work. If you spend some time looking on line at art websites, you are apt to find several perfect things for your book cover. Contact the artist and find out about buying the piece or about buying the right to put the piece on your cover (with appropriate back-cover credit, of course). Many artists will be thrilled at the chance to get their work in front of a larger audience and may well be interested in a trade or a good deal. 

Choose an image that intrigues the reader to enter the story.

Two of my clients wrote a very interesting book about their move from urban to rural living in the wine country of Northern California. They chose a lovely picture of themselves with their dog in a vineyard to put on the front. For those of us who know them, it's a great cover. But for someone who doesn't know them, it doesn't work well. The authors aren't celebrities and the cover doesn't invite readers to imagine themselves in the stories, in that vineyard. One option would have been to show themselves from the back with their dog. That kind of anonymity might have created a romance and mystery that would beckon the reader in. Even better would have been a painting of a landscape that invited the reader in.

Bottom line: A beautiful and intriguing cover may make all the difference between sales and no sales.