C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

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01/14/2011 • 7:52 AM 0

Writers: The Power of Small (and why press releases don’t work)

A picture of author Carolyn See

Image via Wikipedia

When I worked in a city newsroom, one of my jobs was to go through press releases to find gems. There weren’t many of those clichéd diamonds in the rough. Reporters see so many press releases, they begin to look upon them with suspicion and even resentment.

What’s an author to do? You want an interview. You want your book reviewed. How do you make it happen? The traditional approach was to send out lots of press releases and books. It wasn’t very effective. In fact, sending out a lot of review copies is expensive.

There’s an alternative:

Go small. Go low-tech. Write a note.

This isn’t a practical approach for in-house publicists working for major publishers (but they usually work in short bursts for particular authors, anyway.) The low-tech, patient strategy is for indie authors looking for ways into the media. Unfortunately, publishers focus on very small windows of opportunity. They are looking to move a lot of books quickly (before the book stores send them all back for credit.) Marketing in book publishing has been long periods of silence interspersed with short frenzies. As an indie author selling e-books, you’re opting out of big, expensive and short-term strategies. This isn’t so much for Wiley (publishers since 1807!) authors. This is especially for wily indie authors.

As an independent author and publisher, you can play the long game instead. You can write a note or two a day. One author/guru Carolyn See made it her practice to write a “charming note” every day to an editor or publisher or agent.* Why not to reporters, too?

But there’s a trick to making it effective. You know how I’m always saying that if you want to hit up an agent, don’t look for the big, established names? Agents fresh from the factory who are up and coming in established agencies are better bets. They are still hungry and not as jaded. They don’t hate all queries yet. They still have hope and the scales have not yet developed over their eyes.

The same is true for reporters. The book editor of a large magazine already has lots of books lined up. The independent author has lots of indie-spirit, but most book editors still look down on them. So screw them.

Work on getting into smaller newspapers. Send a charming note to a general reporter who would love to do a cushy author interview instead of chasing some city council member who doesn’t want to speak to them. I’d rather talk to an author than cover a house fire any day.

You know why it will work?

It will work because you will be charming (“Loved that piece you wrote on the local scaled railroad hobbyists so I thought…”)

It will work because general reporters think entertainment reporters have a cushier job (and they’re right.)

It will work because all journalists also want to write a book some day.

And while we’re talking small, send off a friendly email to book bloggers. That counts as a charming note, too.

Ask to guest blog. Bloggers love a break and crave hits, connection, track backs, links and love.

Ask for an author profile. I profile an author on Chazz Writes almost every week. It’s not the New York Times Review of Books, but since they aren’t calling, how about alerting like-minded people to your creations? If you can’t go huge, you can still be ubiquitous.

Instead of just showing up at a bookstore and asking to see the manager, send a charming note ahead of you to break the ice and soften her up for a reading. Better, be even more charming and offer to organize readings for your local bookstore. (Later this year I’ll profile an author who did just that. Not only did he help many other authors, his own career got a boost from building community among colleagues.) 

Your book needs attention. I’m sure you’re already working on developing and maintaining your audience. Don’t forget that etching away at it a day at a time over the long haul can reap big rewards. With patience, you can build your empire. Don’t underestimate the power of a low-tech, targeted, personal and charming note.

These days, the mail is mostly for bills. This approach is more powerful than it ever was because you hate what’s in your mail box. But when you get a letter, you’re excited. It will work because it has worked.

*Read Carolyn See’s Making a Literary Life for details. Or, don’t fool around and head straight to Amazon to buy her book.

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Filed under: Author profiles, authors, book reviews, Books, DIY, getting it done, links, Publicity & Promotion, publishing, self-publishing, writing tips, , , , , , , ,

01/12/2011 • 7:45 AM 10

Writers: Five editing tricks and tips (plus editing marks)

 

1. Editing onscreen is more difficult and less accurate than printing out your manuscript and attacking it with a pencil. Unless you’re well-practiced at editing pixels, print it out.

2. As you read your manuscript, read aloud. You will pick up more problems that way and if you run out of breath, it’s probably a run-on sentence.

3. Some experts tell you to read your manuscript backwards, one word at a time, to catch more typos. Though it is true this technique works, you must have a form of OCD to act on it. This is advice editors give, but never do themselves. If you don’t believe me, try it with any book-sized manuscript. (Wait! First make sure there are no sharp objects or firearms nearby!)

4. As you edit, read slowly. Your brain is wired to skip over mistakes when you read quickly.

5. Farm it out. You need someone else’s fresh eyes on your manuscript to see the thing you are missing. Hire editors. (Here’s one!)

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Filed under: authors, Books, Editing, Editors, getting it done, publishing, rules of writing, Writers, writing tips, , , , , , , , , , , ,

01/07/2011 • 3:19 PM 0

Lynda Barry tells What It Is

This is a book about writing like you’ve never seen:

What_It_Is

If you know Lynda Barry‘s work, you  know hers is an inimitable style. But I grok her. I had some reservations as I plucked the book from the shelf, but when somebody bares their soul in their art, you either look away embarrassed and confused or you look deeper, identify and get swallowed up, too.

Her ideas on writing prompts could get you going. Letting go to get going appeals to me. Most of all? I understand what she means by escaping into writing and getting “that floaty feeling.” If you write, you know what she means, too. If you don’t, buy What It Is, do the exercises and find your way into The Float. 

The immediate rewards of writing (slipping through “the escape hatch” as Stephen King puts it) are right now. Even as I write this, I feel a tickle in my brain. Some happy dopamine is spreading somewhere through my skull as I type this. I’m a junkie.

You may or not get published, but there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?

Some people don’t get that, so I ask them this: “Did you ever play tennis or run or swim? Did you keep doing it even though you knew you weren’t going to end up at Wimbledon, the Boston Marathon or the Olympics?”

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Filed under: authors, book reviews, Books, publishing, Writers, Writing exercise, writing tips, , , , , ,

01/06/2011 • 2:01 PM 0

Writers: About the success of Sarah Palin’s books

A crowd gathers around a temporary stage at Pi...

Image via Wikipedia

This morning I touched on Sarah Palin‘s books. (See that post below)

Three more things about Sarah Palin’s books:

1. The latest one sold less than expected so even that franchise is on the way down. Not only does nobody know anything in publishing or Hollywood, you can’t depend on anything either.

2. It will still sell better than most anything else so it’s not dead yet.

3. Some people begrudge Sarah Palin (read: her ghostwriters) her success in selling her books, but those books make enough money to finance the rest of the list. She supports the arts. Despite herself.

I can’t stand her, but lots of people do and that translates to book sales.

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Filed under: Books, Media, publishing, , ,

01/06/2011 • 8:01 AM 2

Writers: The Secret to Writing a Bestseller

bestseller_logo

Image via Wikipedia

The only thing you can do to ensure

you come at all close to writing a bestseller is:

Write your book!

After that? I hate to disappoint you, but there is no secret.

There is information you should consider, however, like acting on the things you can affect (factors) and refraining from making yourself crazy trying to change things that have a negative effect on you (variables.) 

Don’t focus on variables.

Focus on factors you can control:

1. Write the best book you can.

2. Build your audience (Teach, review, tweet, blog, network, learn, connect etc.,…)

3. Get your book to market (trad or indie publishing—that’s a different post.)

4. Do it again.

You’re going to want to come back to and act on 1 – 4 again and again.

The rest is explication.

I can already hear howls of protest about the title of this post. However, if you get an email from someone claiming they have insider secrets to making your book an instant bestseller, you can safely move on. There are some wacky claims out there, so let’s unpack and debunk.

First off, there are far too many variables that are out of your hands for any one person to direct you to bestsellerdom. In the publishing process there are a lot of variables. All of them have to fall into place for your book to be sold, but even if that were to happen, there are no guarantees your book will climb the charts…even if it’s good.

There are a lot of good books. Sadly, that doesn’t mean we’ve heard of them.

Consider Chuck Palahniuk‘s Fight Club and Choke. They both became movies, but just before it was announced Brad Pitt was going to do the Fight Club movie, I saw it in the remainder bin. They got whipped out of there when his book got the movie deal and the newest hire had to peel off all those stickers that read: Marked Down. The author wrote a great book in Fight Club, but he was headed back to anonymity before the lucky break. (He’s proved his worth since over and over, too; he’s prolific and, weirdly, I even saw a major review that didn’t even mention Fight Club.)

His case is a perfect example of something falling into place that was totally out of the author’s control. If Antonio Sabato Junior had played the role instead of Tyler Durden and Lindsay Lohan had played Marla instead of Helena Bonham-Carter, you would never have heard of Palahniuk’s books (because that’s a lot of stink to overcome.) Antonio was good in the few minutes he was in The Big Hit, but generally, if you see a movie poster with Lindsay and Antonio, you don’t think,  “Ooh, gotta see that!”

The most important reason you can’t just follow set rules and write a bestseller is that what William Goldman said about Hollywood also applies to publishing. “Nobody knows anything.”

That’s why there are sleeper hits. I wandered into Fargo and Highlander, didn’t know what to expect, and was blown away. Margaret Atwood snuck up and surprised me with The Year of the Flood—okay, maybe other people expected great things from Atwood every time, but that’s the book that turned me around on that author. (Can’t wait for the third in the series!)

When manuscripts go up for auction to big publishing houses, acquiring editors bid because they want a hit. Even when books go for big money, that’s no guarantee of great success. In fact, if the author doesn’t earn out that big advance, it’s a very public failure. That blemish on their record hurts authors when they try to sell their next book.

It’s a subjective business. If agents and acquiring editors really knew much beyond their own taste, then every book they bought would sell very well. Look at the bestseller lists. There are only so many spots in the top ten lists. Then look at the book store shelves packed with midlist titles. That’s a lot of books, and those are just the books the stores stock. There are many more books published than ever make it to bookshelves, yet somebody thought each book would earn out its advance.

Nobody’s betting on losers on purpose. The bestsellers are the frontlist. The books that aren’t expected to do as well are the midlist. Midlist authors are still generally expected to earn out their advance, however. Remember: it’s business, not charity.

Hm. Somebody’s going to object that there are exceptions (and, of course, there always are. Can we say much at all without some generalizing?) So I must admit I did know a publisher who bet on losers pretty much exclusively. Maybe he was noble and doing it only for the art (and government grants) or maybe his judgement was just galactically poor. He’s out of business now so no more art. (Last parenthetical, I promise: And if you publish poetry, nothing is frontlist or midlist because no one pubishes poetry expecting to make money.)

Back to the book store: See all those dogs in the remainder bin? Somewhere, someone bet a lot that each one of those books would sell really well.

Some books aren’t a surprise when they do well, but for those books, that’s not the game anymore. When a publisher buys a Sarah Palin book, they aren’t so concerned whether it will sell. Their concern with a book like that is, how much and how fast will it meet higher expectations and sell more? When a book succeeds, the publisher has to time the next printing right and gauge how much promotional money should go into the publicity campaign to push it as far as it can profitably burn.

Publishers concentrate their limited resources on the few books they think will have a shot at bestsellerdom because they will take a loss on most of their catalogue. Some don’t believe it and authors lament it, but publishing is a business. And it’s a business with very small margins.  

Even when publishers get books on the shelf, it’s not even over then. The sell-through is what’s important. Unlike any other business, publishing’s tradition—blame Simon & Schuster—is that books that don’t sell may be returned for credit. It’s a tradition that may eventually be dropped, especially when there are fewer book stores around.

I’m dying here! Give me some good news, Chazz!

Okay. The good news is that when you get rejected, you can take comfort in the knowledge that nobody knows anything. Maybe the guy who rejected you also rejected JK Rowling, so what do they really know anyway? Maybe you are destined to be a sleeper hit.

Do better than that, Chazz! I said I’m dying!

Sorry. How about this? Contests, bestseller lists, critics and reviews might help an unknown author, but it’s really word of mouth that makes a book popular. (Or a big movie deal.) The antidote to your angst is to keep writing and pitching. Find your audience and put yourself out there to be found.

How?

Go back to Factors 1 -4 at the top of this post.

Better? Now go write.

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Filed under: authors, Books, Editors, getting it done, links, Poetry, publishing, Rant, Rejection, rules of writing, Writers, writing tips, , , , ,

01/04/2011 • 8:02 AM 0

Writers: The trick to keeping your resolution

Goal

Image via Wikipedia

We make resolutions to diet when we are full. I resolved to diet many times before I got into the right mindset to lose 40 pounds. We depend on excitement, instant gratification and short-term thinking, which is why we got fat in the first place. Much the same is true with that resolution of yours to write your book this year.

You don’t need short-term thinking, but you do need short-term focus. You need long-term planning and short-term action. Each day you work toward your goal is a little course correction. Just as you drive and make tiny movements of the steering wheel along the way, each time you don’t get distracted and write another 500 words instead is a step toward finishing your book.

Sure, we can make big announcements. “This, I swear by all that is holy, is the year I will…” But it’s the little things you do, the day-to-day commitments to your goal, to yourself, that will make the difference. 

Why did your past resolutions fail? Think about it. What happened? Was your goal clear? Did you write your goal down? Did you tell somebody you trust to help you remain accountable? Did you track your progress? Did you make a game of it? Did you set up small rewards along the way? Did you set up a bet or a competition with a colleague to spur you on? Are you feeding your goals with information that helps you? Are you cautious to protect your time from short-term rewards that are really sabotaging you? (And if so, spend some time working out why you’re okay with settling for less.)

These are all useful strategies, but it comes back to the reaching your goal one day at a time, sometimes one minute at a time. Keep your resolution. Resolution means focus.

Too often we suffer from JOM Syndrome. JOM means Just One More.

Just one more cupcake. Just one more day off the diet. Just one more day without writing. Just one more day before I really start. I deserve a break. I deserve something less than my ultimate goal.

Translation:

I deserve to earn the reward without putting in the work.

Real-life answer:

No, you don’t.

Forget your grand pronouncements while your energy is high and your belly’s full. Instead, do what you can today to reach your goal (whatever it is.) Forget your entitlements. Do the work and no whining is allowed. If whining worked, you’d be done by now.

That sounds tough, but it will get better. You know why? Because the toughest part about writing is simply to begin. After you get started, you’ll be okay. You just have to keep on starting. Again and again and again, every day.

When you fail, begin again.

When you give up, begin again.

People will criticize your writing. So what? Don’t let them say you don’t write. Writers write. If you weren’t a writer, you wouldn’t have come to the end of this post.

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Filed under: Books, getting it done, publishing, Rant, Writers, writing tips, , , , , , , ,

01/02/2011 • 12:56 AM 3

Writers’ Resolutions: Want to see the reason I live?

This is my blessing.

This is my curse.

This is my manuscript!

This is my resolution.

(This didn’t post correctly, so this is the secret link for a glimpse behind the curtain.)

Filed under: Books, What about Chazz?, Writers, , , ,

12/31/2010 • 4:21 PM 1

Writers: Top 10 of the 2010 Top 10 Chazz Writes posts

Top10

Early last year I considered going back to school to become a librarian. (I dumped that idea before I saw this graphic, but it does make me feel better about my choice.)

After some career counselling, I decided to refocus my efforts on my writing and editing. I needed (and need!) to bring art to the front burner. I began this blog as part of reorganizing my life to that end. Since last May I’ve posted 402 times and gained lots of readers, friends and even some clients (hurrah!) Things progress.

 For lucky #403, this is a look back through the Top 10 lists of 2010:

1. Authors! Part II: Top Ten Lessons from the Networking Master

2. Top 10 Ways Writers Waste Time

3. Writers & Editors: Top 10 Editorial Considerations

4. (Top 10 Things +1) Writers Love

5. Top 10 Reasons We Write Sci-fi

6. Top 10 (plus one) Publishing Conference Lessons

7. Top 10 Things Writers Fear

8. Top 10 Reasons We Write Horror

9. Top 10 Reasons We Write Romance

10. Writers Top Ten: Why blogging about publishing is important

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Filed under: authors, Books, ebooks, Editing, Editors, getting it done, Horror, Publicity & Promotion, publishing, Rant, Top Ten, Useful writing links, Writers, writing tips, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

12/31/2010 • 8:08 AM 0

Amy Tan – Finding Meaning through Writing

 

Writing is therapy.

However, until you’re on a stage or in front of a microphone, don’t tell your agent, editor or publisher that.

It’s considered bad form and amateurish until you launch the book and start your publicity blitz.

Filed under: authors, Books, publishing, ,

12/30/2010 • 11:31 AM 2

Douglas Adams VIDEO on The Hitchhiker’s Guide

Douglas Adams said the best, most exciting time was when he was penniless and sleeping on couches. His success was a total surprise to him.

Filed under: author Q&A, authors, Books, movies, Science Fiction, Writers, , ,

Bestseller with over 1,000 reviews!
Winner of the North Street Book Prize, Reader's Favorite, the
Literary Titan Award, the Hollywood Book Festival, and the
New York Book Festival.

http://mybook.to/OurZombieHours
A NEW ZOMBIE ANTHOLOGY

Winner of Writer's Digest's 2014 Honorable Mention in Self-published Ebook Awards in Genre

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More lessons to help you survive Armageddon

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An autistic boy versus our world in free fall

Suspense to melt your face and play with your brain.

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Jesus: Sexier and even more addicted to love.

You can pick this ebook up for free today at this link: http://bit.ly/TheNightMan

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