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

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05/15/2010 • 4:13 PM 0

Your Book, Publishing Platforms and Cross-pollination

Brainstormed some ideas for a friend last night. He makes films. He’s not an author yet, but he’s in an excellent position to get published and build a media empire. I have every confidence he will be a published author soon after he decides to do it. Here’s why:
1. His films provide excellent material.
2. Book launch + world film premiere = mucho moolaaaah because one medium cross-pollinates the other!
3. He has a background in writing.
4. He’s not shy about going on the road for screenings, signings and presentations.
5. I think he could bring a distinct voice to the material.
6. He has the equipment and know-how to launch websites and a podcast to build his audience.
7. The film tie-in is very attractive to grant institutions, agents and publishers.

I went on and on about my enthusiasm for his publishing potential but it boils down to these seven points plus this:

BONUS

If you want to write a novel, you are better off writing non-fiction first. Non-fiction is more profitable (generally) and is easier to sell. If you’re selling fiction, you need the full manuscript. Do not go to an agent or editor with an idea for a book if you’re a first-time author. They need to see you have the full, complete and polished manuscript. No exceptions.

With non-fiction, you can put together a killer book proposal and synopsis and swing a deal before you officially type “Chapter 1” and begin pulling your hair out. Non-fiction is a different skill set in many ways, but after you’ve got an audience, agents, editors and publishers are much more receptive to the fiction you want to write.

I’m not saying never write fiction first. I’m saying that, in this person’s case, the road to publication will be wider and smoothly paved compared to the goat path most writers find themselves on at the beginning.

DOUBLE BONUS:

Have you got an advantage in a particular niche either through specialized knowledge or unique access? Who is your audience? Can you reach them through networking, association connections, websites, blogs, speaking engagements? Do you have expertise and the credentials to back it up? Are you comfortable speaking in front of an audience?

The potential abounds in many people I know. For instance, I know a professional woman who has a special interest and experience with bullying in the workplace. She’s connected to a community of like-minded people. She’s a non-fiction book proposal away from making her book happen.

More examples: I know an opinionated teacher who uses imaginative approaches to reach his students. Another friend is a SWAT expert who could write an antiterrorism manual (or a terrorism manual, come to think of it.) I know a couple of cops whose fascinating career experiences would make great memoirs. I’m editing a memoir for a lady now who catalogues all the tragedies, events and family foibles into a loving memoir that sees the pain through humor. A great friend of mine travels the world constantly. He’s a font of hilarious travel stories, each tale the length of a Blackberry entry. I know an expert in strategies to deal with mental illness and I’m married to an expert in learning disabilities. Another friend was a casualty of Multiple Sclerosis, overcame it and became an expert on MS and alternative health treatments. My God! There are potential books everywhere!

If you’ve got a special interest, (and who doesn’t?) start working on your platform now. Publishers expect it as part of the business plan for your book.

Filed under: Books, Publicity & Promotion, publishing, book proposals, platforms, publishing

05/14/2010 • 10:32 PM 0

More on self-publishing (courtesy of the NY Times)

Through agent Nathan Bransford’s weekly wrap-up (recommended reading every Friday) I was tipped to The New York Times story on self-publishing. The author kind of glosses over problems with distribution. Also missed: the general lack of editing self-published books suffer and their snake-belly low chance of being a hit. However, due to economic changes across the publishing industry, many books suffer from too light editing and proofreading–I’m looking at you Writer’s Digest Books (among others.)

Also, nobody really knows what will be a hit. JK Rowling was famously rejected twelve times before the thirteenth publisher said yes. The editors who rejected Harry Potter and The Most Profitable Franchise of All Time now work in animal husbandry. In the Sudan. Beaten by Oompa-Loompas. In heat. Uphill. Both ways. (Rim shot!)

As the most underrated novelist of our time, William Goldman, said of Hollywood, “Nobody knows anything.”

Filed under: agents, publishing, self-publishing

05/14/2010 • 8:36 PM 0

Pricing ebooks

Prices will vary. It depends on the material, but when you’re figuring out what to charge for an ebook, you can’t price it the same way as a 1990s hold in your hand book made from trees.

I put together an ebook for a client of mine. When I spoke to him the other day he was concerned the book wasnt selling much.

“What’s the price point?” I asked.

“Around $25,” he said.

And there’s the problem. He was used to charging hundreds of dollars for his manuals, so when he wrote a business book he thought he was making a huge concession to price his e-book at $25. Actually, that’s getting into hardcover territory. It’s not the appropriate pricing for that ebook because it’s essentially a marketing device for a much higher-priced service.

He’s selling the book as part of a strategy to market his seminar business, so he needs to take the risk out of the equation for his clients. I suggested he come down to $4.99 and make it up in volume. Another alternative would be to use the e-book as a loss leader and give it away as a promotion (it’s relatively short) as added bait to his excellent seminars.

Taking risk out of the equation is why all those 1.99 and .99 apps sell so much. When you can instantly download something and the risk is the change in your couch cushions, you’re going to buy a ton of it.

Evaluate your ebook and price it objectively.

Filed under: ebooks, publishing, pricing ebooks

05/14/2010 • 8:19 PM 0

This Week’s Missions Accomplished

Four stories = four submissions to two writing contests:

1. In Migraine Train, a boy with an alcoholic mother and four loser dads goes into therapy to deal with his migraine headaches only to be hit on by his Psycho Therapist.

2. In The Sum of Me, the father of two young boys faces his failures and a massive credit card debt. When his own father offers to pay the bill for him, he finds out the heavy the payback may be unbearable.

3. In The Fortuneteller, a young man takes a first date to a carnival and finds himself in the fortuneteller’s tent. When the old crone tells the truth, she may succeed in saving the woman from a dangerous man but doom herself in the process.

4. Cuthian’s Wake is a dark and comic story about a 30ish Irish fellow in Toronto who weaves gorgeous lies to seduce young women. When his lie’s punchline turns real, he loses his beloved mother, his magic sex story and finally figures out he’s just a boy who looks like a man.

The Sum of Me has already earned an honorable mention with the Writer’s Digest Annual Short Story Contest. I edited it again (REDUCE!) and changed a bit to make it a stronger contender with a different contest. (REUSE!) Migraine Train is actually the first chapter of my novel adapted for a short story contest submission. (RECYCLE!)

Are you submitting your stories? You have to play to get paid. Keep your stuff circulating. Eventually, someone may love it.

Filed under: This Week's Missions, writing contests, submissions, writing contests

05/14/2010 • 1:28 PM 0

Writing Tips

You’re a writer? You want tips? Here’s a whole whack at Writer’s Digest.
Enjoy.

Filed under: rules of writing, Writers, writing rules, writing tips

05/14/2010 • 12:37 PM 0

Self-publishing pros and cons

Self-publishing is easier than ever and it’s only becoming easier. The problem is, what to do with it once the printer delivers all those boxes to your garage?

1. Most self-published books look self-published. Between bad printing, poor design and an absence of proofing and editing, they often don’t look impressive.
2. Many bookstores won’t carry them. Publishers have access to a distribution network self-published authors do not.
3. Self-publishing still wafts the stink of stigma.

And yet, self-publishing can be successful. When it is successful, it’s because the author has a business plan to combat 1,2, and 3. The author hires an editor, isn’t shy about promotion, gets a website and/or podcast going and builds a platform to call a congregation.

The Wealthy Barber was an early winner in self-publishing. Publishers have offered to publish that book. The author turned them down since he likes to sell his own book, retain all the rights and keep the profits. Now he’s publishing a very successful line of cookbooks for other authors as well.

A few weeks ago I chatted with an author at her book signing. Lorina Stephens has 30 years experience in publishing and decided to publish her own books. They looked great. Now she’s become a publisher, as well. Next year her company, Five Rivers, will publish a bunch of authors.

It can be done well. The problem is that the vast majority are not done well.

Filed under: publishing, publishing, self-publishing

05/13/2010 • 10:52 PM 0

Querying Agents, Blagents and Checking Out Their Blogs

Email has made querying is easier than it used to be (and the same with rejection.) There are still a few ancient agents still murdering trees but generally we’re firing off our missives in pixels and saving stamps. Presumably the agents and editors who insist on snail mail ride to work on horseback. As for the rest, there are numerous agent blogs so you can take their temperatures and read between the snarkiness to divine where they fall on the bonehead/human being/transcendent genius maven index.

They all have two things in common: they complain about getting lousy manuscripts to evaluate (as if we all don’t have aspects of our jobs that suck) and they are all looking for a book to fall in love with. (Maybe yours! Well, not yours, but somebody’s!)

I’m working on an agent query now. It’s a mammoth exercise in second-guessing that goes beyond editing. It’s more like looking for the tiniest excuse for the query letter to be laughed at, denigrated or misconstrued. And then blogged about. (I’m also naked in the paranoid fantasy that ensues and it’s really, really cold.)

We were all happier before the Internet and the wave of agent blogs. We did much the same submission for everybody back then and didn’t see the sausage getting rejected and thrown on the slaughterhouse floor. Now the agent blogs are there for us all to see the sausage not getting made in ugly detail.

BONUS:

Don’t believe me. Go to their blogs and form your own opinions. Best thing? They all have their individual quirks and guidelines laid out somewhere in their blogs. Look it up before submitting. They’re looking for any excuse to say no. Don’t give it to them.

*About the term blagent. It means a blogging agent and no, I cannot recall who coined the term first.

Filed under: agents, publishing, agents, querying, writing

05/13/2010 • 4:48 PM 0

Johnny Carson, ebooks and Promotion

Everybody watched Johnny on late night, largely because there wasn’t much else to watch. Yes, he was a talented entertainer, but there weren’t nearly as many channels then. Johnny had market share. Now all information and entertainment markets are fragmented. There’s lots to do. I listened to a Joe Rogan podcast while I browsed for books today (and bought a Writer’s Digest and got meta with a book of clever Twitter quotes.) I wrote 2,000 words so far today (while listening to a brainwave app to stim my creative juices.) I updated my website while listening to Defcon Radio and Stephanie Miller. Later I’ll have lunch while watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I’ll get to reading two books I’m into now, but with all the options, I can’t really say I’m concentrating on those books, can I? I’ll read fewer books this year because I have more options and demands on my time.

Ebooks and the rampant development of self-publishing is democratizing publishing, destroying publishing or reinvigorating publishing, depending on who you listened to last. All that choice. All that stimulation. We are living in an age of wonders…if getting everything for free doesn’t screw it all up. We’re seeing it most clearly with newspapers and magazines. How will we monetize to sustain the publishing industry?

The publishing industry is on the brink of the chasm the music industry fell into. Unfortunately, it’s clear an awful lot of publishers haven’t learned a darn thing from the mistakes made by others. Part of the reason is that the lessons are not transferable. Unless you’re David Sedaris, you aren’t going out on a whirlwind concert tour to read to the masses. Musicians are earning less than before from CDs (what’s a CD again?) so they tour and sell merchandise. ZZ Top made millions from selling key chains at their concerts. Musicians have made more from selling their songs as ringtones than from selling them as songs!

Some publishers are resisting guerrilla marketing tactics, like serializing books on the web. Authors are twittering more and Facebooking, using social media themselves because some pub’s publicists aren’t helpful in regard to new technology. Many publicists are doing what they always did (and as a former publicist, I can tell you press releases and review copies are not hard. Still, many authors are neglected or bumph goes out late to the media.) Increasingly, authors are expected to have their own platform first. There’s a lot more DIY involved than ever before and publishers expect you, the author, to do it all. Fine.

It’s the author’s business and they should be more involved in promotion and publicity. No writer can afford to hope publicists who work for publishers (and all their books, not just you) are going to be much help. With all your social media options, authors have to take responsibility to make sure that gets done. Yes, it will be at your expense.

Don’t think your advance on your first book is going to pay for a new dryer. Buy a clothesline and put the rest of the advance back into promotion. And DIY! At least you’ll know the publicity chores get done.

BONUS:

Hire your own publicist, one who works just for you. The publisher’s in-house publicist can coordinate with your publicist (not the other way around.)

MORE ON EBOOKS and SELF-PUBLISHING TOMORROW

Filed under: publishing, ebooks, monetizing publishing

05/13/2010 • 2:04 AM 0

This is refreshing

Read Rick Sheehy’s Weblog for his take on how ebooks could be a good thing.

Filed under: publishing, ebooks, publishing

05/12/2010 • 2:34 PM 0

Here’s one of my favorite websites on publishing

We focus on the upside of the writing business for the same reason we focus on lottery winners. Literary Rejections on Display reflects the nitty-gritty kick in the teeth that is publishing.