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

Check out Jason Kong’s rationale for free book promotion on The Book Designer at the link below.

Regular readers of this blog know I’ve gone back and forth on this issue and I still get conflicting reports that make me shake my head. However, I made up my mind to get back on Amazon’s KDP Select train recently. This Plague of Days is exclusively on Amazon, at least for the next three months and I plan to use free promotions in a very limited and strategic way. (Also, my approach won’t be for everyone because a serial gives me new options I didn’t have previously. More on that after I conduct the experiment.)

What solidified my resolve was finding out precisely how the Amazon algorithms work. I read David Gaughran’s Let’s Get Visible. I found his take reassuring so I can still use free properly and feel good about it. If you haven’t read David’s book yet, you know the drill.

BEYOND THE ISSUE OF FREE: LOUSY COMPETITION

The other thing that made me sure of KDP was the abysmal state of Amazon’s competitors: unfriendly user experience and lousy search capability that works against indie authors. David explains in his book why that persists. The short answer is the other platforms are still trying to play the short game to profitability. Amazon is customer focussed and so they’re crushing. (I knew Stupid had to have a rationale, even if it’s not working and hurts them in the long game! Seriously, read Let’s Get Visible for details.)

I have some books on other platforms and they aren’t moving significantly. I’m not saying I’ll stick everything on Amazon forever, but I need the other platforms to show me something different and better before I migrate all my work to those platforms.

This Plague of Days is a lot of grim fun and an immense undertaking. I will not put it on a platform that goes out of its way to hide my books from customers. Amazon’s not perfect, but my work has a chance there.

The other night I ran into a guy on Vine who is obviously a reader. They are out there and they are among the most interesting people you could ever meet. Here’s the thing: when you read the Buzzfeed article at the link below, if you’re so predisposed, you may feel a stress headache and depression settling over you like a shroud. The news for books does not look good in many ways. The economy still sucks, millions of distractions pull at our time and eyeballs. The world of entertainment is a fractured mosaic.

Resist that depressive impulse. Facts are facts and they are interesting facts delivered in an entertaining way on Buzzfeed (with pictures because who reads anymore?). If nothing else, the next time somebody hits you with the Big Five’s awesome power to curate important books and direct our culture from Central Command, you can smack them right back with Snooki and Justin Beiber. But there’s more to the resistance than schadenfreude and a debate point.

The readers that are out there? They are a dedicated cult. They love good books. They love discovering new authors. They appreciate a rainy Sunday afternoon so they can pull a book over their heads and be transported. They turn off the TV. They read beside forgotten cups of cold coffee. Deep readers get comfortable on the couch as they settle into another world. As they read, they forget this disapoointing reality and invest themselves in fiction. They know books are time machines that can slow the Earth’s spin with a well chosen phrase or even make their doctor’s office wait or subway commute whiz by. The characters may not be real, but they feel real and books make people feel emotions like no other medium. Good readers know the regretful joy of immersing themselves in a great story and purposely slowing down so they don’t finish the book too quickly.

Authors are in the brain tickling business. We don’t need everyone on Earth to feel this same rapture over books. Sure, it would be great if they did, but what I’m looking for is a cult. A small army would be fine. I’m looking for a group of people who dig my take on existence. People who like my books are interested in questions that don’t necessarily have answers. My readership doesn’t have to be "5 Billion served". A dedicated following is all any author needs.

The readers are out there. I’m sure of it. Believe. I’m one of them, too.

Oh, and the guy I met on Vine the other night? He’s interested in This Plague of Days. He spread the word to his followers so more people would  give my books a chance. He could be one of the Chute Book Cult priests. Or a captain in Chazz Army. Or a new friend. 

"We are strong. 

We are coming. 

You deserve us. 

The chaos in every day you have left will be so scintillating.

We make history and a new future."

 ~ from This Plague of Days by Robert Chazz Chute

Here’s a strange and maybe a wonderful opportunity for authors. Do you even remember The Dark Crystal? The movie’s from 1982, but maybe there are some Dark Crystal fans out there (or new fans waiting to be born with new blood and new life in the franchise.) Even if you don’t know the movie, they’ll provide you with what you need to know to bring life to the vision and recreate their world.

1982: I got together with my first serious girlfriend and travelled far from home for a summer for the first time. Rocky III and Asia’s "Heat of the Moment" was playing constantly…on my tape recorder. Remember those? I was young and free and nobody carded me at bars even though they definitely should have. 1982 was one of the best summers ever in the history of the world.

Ancient history, and yet, the Gelflings are gathering again. Deadline for entry in this contest is Dec. 31st. Check out the details at the link below to Galleycat. (Article by Jason Boog.)

On this week’s edition of the Cool People Podcast, I talk to author Jessica McHugh about many aspects of writing: Readers’ expectations about sex versus violence, marketing and more. It was a really fun interview. Check it out at the link and enjoy! (Also on video at the YouTube link at CoolPeoplePodcast.com.)

Libbie Hawker rants at traditional publishing at the link. Even if you aren’t open to being convinced, you’ll probably be entertained. Enjoy.

I’ve opted out of this debate and haven’t posted about respecting indies for some time. The SP versus trad thing often gets silly and repetitive. I’m not sure anyone convinces anyone of anything, either. Minds are hard things to change. However, propaganda requires a reply that uses facts. In the anti-SP camp, The Guardian and Salon have, with few exceptions, declared their allegiance with traditional publishing’s party line. That’s why I decided to link to this article today.

There’s a lot to consider here, like how much help the writer recruits in the editorial process. How much help is needed? Are most self-published books crap because the majority of everything is crap? Since Libbie Hawker’s piece is as lengthy as it is thought-provoking, I’ll hold back on that topic today and let you ponder those issues at the link.

~ Chazz

Jonathan Gunson talks about what makes a great book cover at the link below to Bestseller Labs. Learn at the link!

Book covers are much on my mind today as my graphic designer (Kit at KitFosterDesign.com) and I make the final tweaks to Episodes 1 – 5 and the Season 1 covers for This Plague of Days. There will be a different cover for the print version, as well. (Still super secret and amazingly ambitious, but if anyone can pull it off, Kit can.)

Some graphic deisgners welcome less back and forth on covers. Kit isn’t happy until I am, so the covers always arrive at a good place. I don’t know how Kit does what he does. His art is amazing and he’s a multiple award-winner. I trust his skills and sensibility to guide me toward creating covers that grab eyeballs.

I know what I look for in a good cover:
 

1. It has to pop at thumbnail size as well as full-screen.

2. Contrast. Too many covers out there are tough to read.

3. Author branding. The author’s name goes big because there are many titles but the author brand remains as an identifiable anchor to all the books. Ultimately, I want readers to be searching for my name rather than titles. That way, the fans of what I do buy all my stuff.

4. Clean typography that reflects the nature of the work. (If you’ve just written the great American novel, you probably don’t want Comic Sans for a font on your cover.)

5. I want my covers to convey something about the book without trying to tell the whole story on the cover.

For the Hit Man Series, for instance, the covers have the look of the James Bond cover makeovers from the eighties with a saucy tagline that tells you it’s going to be serious fun. My Cuban assassin, Jesus Diaz, is no James Bond, but he falls in love too easily and my heroines are worhth the long drop into doom. (Adding taglines from the 10 commandments was Kit’s brilliant idea. Great tweak!) At a glance, readers have an idea what they’re in for and with titles like Bigger Than Jesus and Higher Than Jesus, I had to give them a heavy clue they’re crime novels.

Jonathan Gunson touches on this issue in the link, too, and it’s crucial. Readers judge books by their covers and the covers for This Plague of Days convey isolation, desolation and civilization’s collapse. This serial is  a serious story about an autistic boy and his family fighting for survival in the face of plagues of zombies that’s taking over the world. When I reveal the covers (soon!) you’ll get instantly that there’s plenty of trouble and a journey ahead. The title elements, blurb, tagline, art, typography and color all say something about what This Plague of Days is about. (There’s even a hint at a big secret that isn’t divulged until a long way down the road.)

The mood, colour and look of the cover for the first episode actually reminds me of a Neil Gaiman book. That’s what we all crave: unique, eye-catching images that evoke the happy familiar and draw readers of similiar books in the genre. Kit’s working on finalizing the covers as I write these words and I can’t wait to see what he comes up with.

Big stories and great covers build exciting times! 

~ Chazz

After promoting books everywhere you can think to do so, it’s especially fun for an author when something nice comes along that you didn’t expect. Book promotion can be a cheerful exercise or it can be a frustrating chore, depending on what you’re doing. Not to get all unicorns and bubble, bubble, toil and trouble on you, but when help arises organically, it feels kind of magical and makes my heart grow three sizes. 

The first time it happened, I stumbled across a conversation about one of my books through Google Alerts. Two readers I didn’t know were talking about a book of mine in a favorable way. When that happens, it’s almost like I don’t need cocaine. It’s such a happy thing, the world has a caramel coating and the spinal columns of my enemies hang decoratively from sentient trees singing Bohemian Rhapsody.

Then yesterday I noticed my Twitter stream blew up with Cover Wars from over at the Masquerade Crew. A couple of my covers from the Hit Man Series were doing battle to the death in a poll over which was the better cover. Cue the Kirk versus Spock combat music and click the link below to cast your vote.

Both were created by Kit Foster of KitFosterDesign.com, so no matter which one comes out on top in the poll, he wins. The Hit Man covers are an ode to James Bond paperbacks from the ’80s and I love them both. (A later version of Bigger Than Jesus added the tagline: "Thou shalt not steal" and I got a nice cover blurb from Claude Bouchard, author of Vigilante.) 

Many thanks to the Masquerade Crew for this pleasant surprise and promotional bump. I love it when things like this come out of the blue…and when singing, sentient trees rip out the spinal columns of my many enemies. I’m so happy, the pine tree by front step just burst forth with a medley of Queen’s songs from Highlander. It’s an awesome feeling. Later I’ll go shovel what’s left of my rude mail carrier into a mailbox.

Follow the Masquerade Crew, go to KitFosterDesign.com and have a happy and surreal day!

~ Chazz

Randy Susan Meyers imparts great advice about doing a reading at Huffpo at the link below. Enjoy!

I must point out that if I wasn’t in love with myself, I couldn’t do a reading at all. (I do alternate between raging narcissism and self-loathing, so it balances out.)

A couple of persnickety podcasters who shall go unnamed once complained that they don’t like it when an author looks like he’s enjoying himself too much at the podium. If a writer got too much into acting out the reading, they shuddered with too-cool-for-schoolness.

This is blatant hipster posing. If the author acted miserable, said podcasters surely would have said the reading was too flat. They were a couple of poos who shouldn’t go to readings if they’re just there to bag on people to make themselves feel better.

I say a reading is a performance. People expect to be entertained. If you can’t act, be funny. If you can’t be funny, read something really good poorly or get someone else to read it for you and just answer questions afterward.

I agree with Ms. Meyers about this: Your audience doesn’t care about your stagefright (unless you can make that funny, of course.)

Most people go to readings to meet the author, get a signed book, enjoy themselves and drink red wine in an atmosphere where no one calls you on your raging alcoholism.

Now get out there withyour book and kick ass.

Thanks to cool author (and soon-to-be-guest on the Cool People Podcast) Jessica McHugh for the tip on this link.

~ Chazz

This post by India Drummond at The Writer’s Guide to E-publishing is funny and sad.

I sent the link to my graphic designer immediately. He’ll enjoy it, I think, but I told him that if I was guilty of any of the above, I didn’t want to know. 

Learn what not to do at the link.

~ Chazz