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

See all my books at AllThatChazz.com.

07/29/2013 • 12:23 AM 11

Authors and Publishers: Six things to do immediately to get more readers and keep them

We are in a battle for attention. Here are three things to consider today to get readers’ attention and keep it:

1. List posts, like this one, are popular because they are easier for readers to scan. (They’re also pretty quick to write.)

2. There’s a good chance your blog posts are too long. Mine often have been. I changed that once I realized how few people give blogs a deep reading. You probably aren’t reading this. You’re scanning this for what you can use.

3. I put the font for this blog in bold after a few readers complained the font was thin. Some readers, either because of their devices or their eyesight, still had problems reading the font. I bumped it up again.

4. When you write a blog post, you often have the option of adding links outside your blog. Click the underlined word and blog readers get whisked away for more on “kerning” and its history. I used to do that within blog posts but not now. Those links are excuses for readers to put their attention elsewhere. If they need something explained, explain it for them. I still provide related articles at the bottom of most posts for added value. New readers often find me through those links.

5. Go to your author profile on whatever sales platforms you use. Shorten it. I wrote a hilarious profile for Amazon. It was funny and informative, but it wasn’t doing its job because it was too long. People want to know enough to have confidence you could write an informative or entertaining book. Leave some mystery and make it an invitation instead of forcing the full bodacious on them all at once. If they want to know more about me, they can visit my author site or (gasp!) purchase my books. We want browsers to read our books, but they’re merely scanning our author profiles, if that.

6. Add video. Your blog is a charging at us too hard on the first date and it’s intimidating.

You’ll notice a new feature at the top of this blog on the main page. A spokesperson tells you about some of my websites and the free ebook promotional offer. I added the text to the video for added punch. Since adding the video a couple of nights ago, traffic to my author site has risen 66 percent.

New visitors will stay if you use video to welcome them and get them acclimated to what you’re about. Regular visitors will discover something about you they didn’t know. We’re visual creatures and people are used to taking in information that way. Too much text all at once puts them off. Text is for books. (I use a spokesperson for the Cool People Podcast page, too. “What? You have two podcasts, Chazz?” See, somebody found out something new already. Notice, I’m tickling their ears with yet another medium: podcast.) For my author site, I’ll soon add a personal message from me instead of using a spokesperson.

To win eyeballs, hearts and minds, heavy text isn’t the answer. That’s for book readin’!

More white space and YouTube helps readers discover how awesome you are.

Robert Chazz Chute

~ Add an author profile, pic or note (like this one) at the end of your blog posts, too, if you want. Glad you found me!

I’m a former journalist and columnist who has worked in all aspects of book and magazine publishing. Have you checked out all the cool videos and excerpts from my book about an autistic boy facing the end of the world? Go to ThisPlagueOfDays.com to learn more about my serial. Looking to lose weight and be healthier? Check out another of my blogs, DescisionToChange.com.

How Weird Al, Kevin Smith, Hugh Howey and Scott Sigler Succeed (chazzwrites.com)
Uncomfortable answers to questions about blogging (chazzwrites.com)
Why your interviews don’t work and how to fix the problem (chazzwrites.com)
Blogging: 34 Things You’re Doing Wrong (socialmediatoday.com)
The Blogger’s Guide to Creating Catchy Blog Post Titles (blogelina.com)
How Do I Get More People to Read my Blog? (bloglocal.net)

Filed under: author platform, blogs & blogging, book marketing, publishing, added value, Amazon, Amazon Kindle, Author, author profile, author profiles, Blog, book marketing, Cool People Podcast, E-book, Podcast, Robert Chazz Chute, This Plague of Days, video, YouTube

07/25/2013 • 11:10 AM 1

Part 2: The next tech tool authors and publishers need

The Author Marketing Club has a new tool you’re going to want. Actually, they have a bunch of tools you’ll want, but today I’ll tell you about the latest one:

The Book Widget Creator Tool

On your author site, you have your books displayed in the sidebar. You’ve used image widgets and text widgets and tried to make your list look attractive for readers. The Author Marketing Club just came up with a tool for premium members that makes it easy and uniform. Here’s a sample of what it looks like on my author site. (Scroll down the right sidebar. You can’t miss it.)

Before you reject premium membership, I hasten to add that the Author Marketing Club offers a lot of cool tools to make your writing life easier and your image professional.

The tool pulls from Amazon, so it updates star ratings automatically. It’s a set it and forget it situation. At some point, you’ll be able to link to other sites besides Amazon. Within the tool, there’s an option to input your Amazon affiliate code so you’ll get credit for those clicks.

To use it, all you have to do is choose a widget width and plug in AISN numbers from your books on Amazon. Premium membership costs $105. Over the next few posts, I’ll tell you why I joined and why that fee is entirely justified.

Stand by for more AMC advantages.

Easy tech tools for authors and publishers Part 1 (chazzwrites.com)
Kindle select: is it worth it? (leonhughesblog.wordpress.com)
5 Cool Tools for Archiving Social Media Posts (maximizesocialbusiness.com)
In the digital age, what will become of author signings? (teleread.com)
5 Cool Tools for Archiving Social Media Posts (living-business.co)
How My Team Uses Pinterest and The Pinterest Tool (digitalhighrise.com)

Filed under: book marketing, Publicity & Promotion, publishing, Amazon, Amazon Kindle, Author, author marketing club, book marketing, book promotion, book widget creator tool, Cool Tools, ebooks, publishing, Tools, widget

07/25/2013 • 8:00 AM 2

Easy tech tools for authors and publishers Part 1

Time to tell you about BannerSnack. With this app, you can easily construct banners and ads for your author site. You’re going to love it.

This is a free tech tool I picked up at the Chrome Store. I just started playing with it, but I’m already very impressed. Not being comfortable with HTML often holds us back from doing more with our websites. There are several ways to work around that problem without learning programming language. BannerSnack makes it easy (even if you just go for the free options with watermarks). If you’re going to use it a lot, premium options aren’t unreasonably priced.

Here’s an ad I created for a book promotion on my author site, AllThatChazz.com:

You can start from scratch or choose to start from a wide variety of templates and sizes to get your unique message out.

If you want to make your website more spiffy, I suggest you play with BannerSnack. The interface is intuitive so you’ll have a banner, ad or button up and running quickly.

In Part II, I’ll show you an even cooler and easier tool to make presentation of your books,

and your author site, beautiful and inviting.

Why your interviews don’t work and how to fix the problem (chazzwrites.com)
How to Increase your site’s Adsense Income (itmashable.com)

Filed under: publishing, advertising, Author, author websites, BannerSnack, books, creating websites, ebooks, HTML, making buttons, Programming language, publishers, publishing, selling books, Web banner, website

07/12/2013 • 7:08 AM 0

Just a quick heads up: Hugh Howey Interview

I’m interviewing author Hugh Howey today. This will be for the Cool People Podcast and will air on Monday.

If you have any questions you’d like answered from the super successful author of Wool, please leave them in the comments.

The Cool People Podcast is an organic conversation so I can’t promise I’ll get to your questions. However, I will try.

I’m really looking forward to speaking with him.

Podcast: Get Shorty (allthatchazz.com)
How Weird Al, Kevin Smith, Hugh Howey and Scott Sigler Succeed (chazzwrites.com)
You must read Hugh Howey’s novel, Wool (writeontheworld.wordpress.com)
Writer Quirks (and Advice!) from Hugh Howey (janetboyer.typepad.com)
Book Review: WOOL by Hugh Howey (grandefalcone.wordpress.com)
Hugh Howey Wool – Just read it ,the best post apocalyptic / dystopic book for years (pipbookview.wordpress.com)
conversation over at Hugh Howey: people stealing your ideas (morlockpublishing.com)
Hugh Howey on why he favors self-publishing (boingboing.net)

Filed under: Author profiles, authors, Books, Author, books, Cool People Podcast, entertainment, Hugh Howey, Podcast, publishing, Wool

07/08/2013 • 6:08 AM 3

How I’ll sell more books by studying my author ranking

Before you read this article about author rankings, a quick heads up: I’m inviting you to something fun that could help you in your writing endeavours. The link at the bottom of this article will take you to ThisPlagueOfDays.com for a post you’ll like about the advantages of serialization. At the bottom of that post, click on The Link for the Curious to get a secret (not a spoiler!) about This Plague of Days.

Episode 4 releases today!

Go to Author Central and have a look at your author rank. This shows you how you’re doing compared to other authors on Amazon. That’s not very useful information, but there is something to be gleaned from these charts.

Author rank on Amazon is interesting or depressing, depending on your score. However, the public never sees your author rank unless you’re in the top 100. As you click through and look at charts, the blue points are your highest rank on any given day (not your average for the day). The orange point is your placement right now.

These rankings are based on sales figures of digital, paper and audio. (So, as I’ve mentioned in this space, if you aren’t exploring your audio options yet, get on that.)

It’s good to own a genre if you can

If you’re really smart, you picked a genre and tried to dominate it. All or most of your books will be in one category and you won’t have many charts to click through. I’m not all that smart. I think focussing all your energy in one genre is probably a good idea. It is good advice I couldn’t take. I bubble over with ideas for books in various genres. Many of us are cursed that way.

For instance, I came up with an insta-book on doing business with the Vine app simply because (a) I was so enthused about the new app, and (b) I was working on the gargantuan This Plague of Days and felt like it had been too long since I’d published anything new. Not wanting to be forgotten, I wrote and published Six Seconds in one week. (Publishing gave my other books a bit of a boost, too, so there’s that.)

Gleaning what’s good to know from Amazon’s author rank

I have three books in non-fiction (business and publishing).

For the Hit Man Series, I ranked higher in mystery than I did in thrillers, though I ranked consistently higher in action/adventure and science fiction and fantasy.

I don’t consider myself a sci-fantasy writer. However, This Plague of Days fits neatly in the sci-fi subcategory of apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic.

According to my author ranks, I rank best as a horror writer. I have several books of short stories on Amazon, but since they’re under the too vague “literature and contemporary fiction” categories, my rank there is weaker. Too general doesn’t help. I could and should put Murders Among Dead Trees under the horror category, too. It fits the tone for that collection.

Beware, however, of drilling too deep into a stagnant subcategory. The Hit Man Series sells better when categorized as action adventure and mystery. Hardboiled is a stagnant subcategory Bigger Than Jesus and Higher Than Jesus languished in too long. They were ignored because I messed up my category choice.

The mind virus is created. Spread the infection. Each of five episodes is only 99 cents each. Get the whole Season for the discount at $3.99. (And if you already have read it, please review it.) Thanks! ~ Chazz

Bonus hint

How can you tell if a subcategory is too small or dead? Check out a few forums on the genre. If the board has few members or the most recent posts aren’t in the current calendar year, uh-oh!)

Don’t major in your minor

People major in their minor all the time. They’re lousy at formatting but they spend days on a task they should farm out to someone else. They should be writing but since they don’t want to delegate, they’re doing something other than writing and revising. The author ranking by genre shows us what we do best by identifying what books people want more.

Author ranking gives us clues how we should categorize our books on Amazon for greater discoverability and tells us what our major is. You could look at bare book sales, but with author rankings by genre, Amazon does that for you in a clearer way that doesn’t allow you to fool yourself with short-term variables. Look for trends across categories for clues to optimize your books’ chances.

What the clues from author rankings told me

1. As I studied my rankings, I was reassured that I made a good choice to pursue the horror category.

2. I have two more books in the Hit Man Series in the chamber, but I won’t pull the trigger on those until things slow down with my plague serial. This Plague of Days, Season Two hits in September, so Jesus Diaz fans will have to wait just a bit longer while I major in my major.

3. As I write the next book about my loveable but luckless Cuban hit man, I’ll amp up the mystery so it fits more comfortably in that category.

4. For the books that perform less powerfully, I have some ideas that will breathe life into old titles as I create new ones.

5. The work that stands alone doesn’t perform as well. I knew this, of course, but I can see it in the charts. This is bad news because I have another huge book that was to be a one-off. Then it occurred to me. This is good news. It’s so huge, I could serialize it as I’m doing with This Plague of Days.

For more on the beauties of serialization, click here.

(That’s also where you’ll find the link to my defiant secret.)

~ Robert Chazz Chute is the author of Self-help for Stoners, Murders Among Dead Trees, Crack the Indie Author Code, Six Seconds, Write Your Book: Aspire to Inspire, Bigger Than Jesus, Higher Than Jesus and the zombie apocalypse serial, This Plague of Days. Read, love, review and please spread the word.

Beyond ‘Game of Thrones’: Exploring diversity in speculative fiction (herocomplex.latimes.com)
Amazon’s New SciFi, Fantasy, and Romance Subcategories (chazzwrites.com)
Amazon Author Central – possible improvements (marklord.info)
The New Face Of Publishing (arrowgatepublishing.com)
Is AuthorRank The Death Knell for Content Mills? (nexcess.net)
How to Choose the Right Genre for Your Book (savvybookwriters.wordpress.com)
Outside of Your Comfort Zone: Different Genres (english.answers.com)
The ‘Billboard’ That Can Make Or Break Your Book’s Success | Bestseller Labs (chazzwrites.com)

Filed under: Amazon, Amazon, Amazon.com, Author, author central, author ranking on Amazon, author ranks, autism, blogger, blogging, book, book marketing, books, Bookselling, ebooks, Hit Man Series, Horror fiction, Jesus Diaz, Plague of Days, writer, writing, Zombie, zombies

06/22/2013 • 8:09 AM 18

Why your interviews don’t work and how to fix the problem

See on Scoop.it – Writing and reading fiction

A fun yet uncomfortable author interview: The Questions with Robert Chazz Chute: Writer on dSavannah Rambles

Robert Chazz Chute‘s insight:

Most author interviews don’t get read. If they are read, they are lightly scanned. Too often, the same questions are asked and worse, the same answers squeak out to an audience that does not care. There are people who care about where you get your ideas or how you started writing. Those people are your mom (maybe) and the fans who are already into your books. No conversions for you!

Regular Interviews Don’t Create New Readers

Regular interviews bore old readers. They convert no one. Some author interviews make me wish they’d preserved the mystery and shut up. Mostly, I just delete, ignore and move on to see if the Internet has any playful cat videos (like you). Author interviews as they are generally practiced are lousy promotional tools. If you’re going to bother with an arduoous guest blog tour for your book, break the old paradigm.

The Solution is Umbilical Lint

Writers should avoid cliches, so enough about (slurp) how much coffee we drink. Tell us about the Hunter S Thompson acid trip you took in Juarez at spring break. Tell us about your hilarious colonoscopy (I did on the All That Chazz podcast). Share news. News is new. Be entertaining and don’t go for the standard questions and useless answers.

This week, in my post “Author Armand Rosamilia Hates Canada” we got a lot of hits, retweets and comments. People had a good time with Armand’s fun answers to my silly questions about his secret life as a belly button lint sculptor. We made people laugh and intrigued them. Getting read, whether it’s in your books or for your book tour, starts with getting people interested. Don’t lead with “How long have you been writing?” Who cares? Those sorts of questions are for authors who are already on the NYT bestseller list. (And even them, yech.)

Don’t be Afraid to be Bizarre…or Honest

In my latest interview with dSavannah (at the link below) I give honest answers and some of them are funny but uncomfortable. Some answers involve time travel to save my childhood and career. I give an honest answer that involves my mother’s death. (I didn’t kill her. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.) Be honest, informative, helpful, make jokes and use more imagination. You do that when you’re writing your books. Do that when you talk about your work, too. Just don’t be so earnest! To sell art, be more artful.

If You Want Nice Fans with a Sense of Humor, Be One of Them

Another example? Listen in to my giggly interview with cool Jessica McHugh at CoolPeoplePodcast.com. You might hate me but you’ll fall in love with her and you’ll want to check out her books. Our books are extensions of our personalities. Have one. That gives a reader hope they’ll like your books.

Read Armand Rosmilia’s audacious Fatty Arbuckle reference in his post here. Armand looks like a death metal biker dude, acts like a teddy bear and is a fun guy. We got such great feedback on “Author Armand Rosamilia Hates Canada”, he told me that in his next interview he plans to bomb Alaska. I think that’s something we can all get behind.

Entertainment is the first step to engagement. Are you not entertained?

If not, the author interview failed.

See on dsavannah.com

Author Armand Rosamilia hates Canada (chazzwrites.com)
Cool People Podcast – We Are the Droids You’re Looking for (chazzwrites.com)
Self-publishing: The stuff that isn’t the core work is still important (chazzwrites.com)
Why isn’t my new book selling? (chazzwrites.com)

Filed under: author platform, author Q&A, authors, My fiction, publishing, Author, author interviews, book, interview, Jessica McHugh, Robert Chazz Chute, writing

06/09/2013 • 10:47 AM 0

Writing and Podcasting: Blog Highlights from The Week That Was

A cross-genre flurry about society’s collapse under the crush of the Sutr Virus combined with a boy’s love for odd words, Latin dictionaries and his father.

The book I lost a job for…and why zombies? at ThisPlagueofDays.com

This post is as much about writing, characterization and process as it is about my horror serial. You’ll want to check this out.

Cool LeRon Barton Writes Straight Dope at CoolPeoplePodcast.com

I sat down with LeRon Barton to discuss drug culture in America for the Cool People Podcast. LeRon interviewed a host of people in the drug trade and looked at it from all angles, from meth users to legal marijuana growers. Then he wrote a book, Straight Dope, about those candid interviews. It was a great conversation you’ll want to hear listen to and ponder. We dare to ask the question, “Why does Lindsay Lohan get so many breaks?” The answer we come up with is surprising.

The One That Gets Sexy on the All That Chazz podcast

Each week I read from Higher Than Jesus, my crime novel. In this episode, Jesus Diaz (my loveable Cuban assassin) deals with fallout from a life of violence as he gets busy for the first time with Willow Clemont AKA the future Mrs. Diaz. The childhood trauma that shapes Jesus’ life is the core of the book, but it’s the erotic unveiling that will keep you riveted as this chapter gets sexy. (Yes, I use my sexy voice.)

They versus We: From Slave to Immortal in One Manifesto

This is an artist’s cry of defiance. We need to be defiant. We must be unique to survive. There are dark forces united against us in a system that does not care about us. Consider this manifesto our rallying cry in the war of Art.

This Plague of Days: The Pitch

If you’re looking to see how a pitch is constructed, here it is. I’m not sending this off to agents, but if I were, this would be what the TPOD pitch would look like.

First it was kale shakes. Buttered bulletproof coffee is next!

Behold! The awesome power of the kale shake!

Time Management for Weight Loss and Everything Else

DecisionToChange.com is my fastest growing blog. You’ll find all sorts of interesting tidbits about health, food diaries and more here. Don’t forget to like, subscribe and spread the word as I work on my weight loss journey. You may even want to join me.

Uncomfortable answers to questions about blogging

This was my most popular post by far this week. If you missed it, you’ll probably want to have a look for ideas about when to post, how to improve the look of your blog and how much to post. Plenty of issues tackled here, including the most troubling answer to a question rarely asked: Why blog at all?

What new on Vine?

Click it to grab it.

Have you updated your author site’s links and pages recently? I updated several pages on my author website this week. Perhaps most important this week, I added an update page to supplement my guide to the Vine App, Six Seconds. This book, about marketing using this very cool app came out not long ago, but each month the developers have tweaked it somewhat. I’ve added notes about those improvements on a timeline as the upgrades come in. Note to all: Vine had 13 million users last week, but it’s on Android now, too! That’s a lot of eyeballs and a free way to spread your word on video Twitter.

I appear on the Inverse Delirium podcast

I love podcasting. I love comedy, stand up and otherwise. I love it so much, sometimes I appear on other podcasts. I did a comedy sketch for Inverse Delirium, a podcast from Baltimore. I play Professor E. Coli. I’ll be in another Inverse Delirium later this summer, sort of playing myself.

(This week, I was briefly mentioned on The School of Podcasting and The 40-Year-Old Boy podcast, too! Love those guys! Checkout their podcasts and subscribe to them, too.)

Three Dreams (allthatchazz.com)
Armor of God (allthatchazz.com)
Self-publishing: The stuff that isn’t the core work is still important (chazzwrites.com)
Ugly side effects of healthy eating (decisiontochange.com)
One of my many projects: Cool People (allthatchazz.com)
The Podcaster’s Roundtable: That’s me, mixin’ with the swells! (allthatchazz.com)
Podcast of the week: Quit Binge Eating (decisiontochange.com)

Filed under: All That Chazz, blogs & blogging, book marketing, Books, getting it done, podcasts, Publicity & Promotion, publishing, readers, about blogging, All That Chazz, appearances, Author, Blog, blog posts, blogging, crime fiction, Health, highlights, Lindsay Lohan, Podcast, podcaster, podcasting, publicity, Robert Chazz Chute, Straight Dope, This Plague of Days, Time management, Weight loss, write, writing

06/03/2013 • 11:59 AM 4

The Writers’ Union of Canada Votes to Admit Self-Published Authors | The Writers’ Union of Canada

See on Scoop.it – Writing and reading fiction

Robert Chazz Chute‘s insight:

I doubted this would move forward (and it still has to pass by a two-thirds majority of the membership.) However, things are looking up for recognition of self-published work and indie authors. Their caveats seem reasonable to me.

This is particularly important since I was just listening to the Book Fight podcast (BookFightPod.com) in which one host revealed that universities are very much behind the times. He was told that publication online (where many more people might actually discover and read his work) would count for little or nothing to his credit. It’s still publish or perish, but they would prefer you hide your light under that cliched bushel of paper, thanks very much.

Largely, it seems academia still prefers publication in prestigious literary journals. To put that in perspective, a middling blog has a much larger subscriber base and readership than most any literary journal you could name. Chasing journals kind of sounds ridiculous. You could be using that time and energy building a readership, a mailing list and relevance.

As technology and reality drag neo-Luddites into the 21st century, it’s exciting to see TWUC leading the way and acknowledging that the publishing industry, and the profession of writer, has changed drastically. (Not will change or is changing. Has changed.) By admitting indies, they expand their revenue, their power in numbers and maintain their relevance.

Good luck, TWUC! I’ll definitely consider joining.

See the press release for details at the link below.

See on www.writersunion.ca

Writers’ Union of Canada reconsiders policy on self-published authors (chazzwrites.com)
Should Self-Published Authors Be Allowed into the Writers’ Union of Canada? (lynseymorandin.wordpress.com)

Filed under: publishing, Art, Author, authors, indie publishing, indies, Literary magazine, publishing, self-publishing, TWUC, Writers Resources, Writers' Union of Canada

05/29/2013 • 11:59 AM 2

Set Your Internet to Ignore (Psst! The fun is in the parentheticals)

Comment threads and reviews are interesting windows to the human heart. Well, maybe not always the heart. Sometimes the comments come straight from the toe jam.

If you want to be disillusioned with the future of the human race, read YouTube comments. You won’t have to read much before you actually welcome the massive meteor that will destroy Earth this Friday afternoon around 2 pm EST. (Wear a sweater.)

Recently some fool seemed said anyone who criticized a single Amazon policy was against capitalism. No point worrying about people who conflate one thing with a different thing. (“Brainless communists are behind every rock and tree!” is so ’50s.)

In another thread that was very anti-indie, a snarky commenter replied to an indie’s post by correcting a minor typo. The indie made great points about the industry, but the message from the traditional author was clear: A single typo invalidates your argument. (I almost commented, “Bitch move, traddy.”)

**But then it occurred to me, I am not a lone genius. If I see it, everyone sees it.**

When you read an illiterate one-star review or when someone slips into a screed about unrelated topics, everyone sees it for what it is. That’s a good feeling isn’t it? I’m even starting to regret that meteor strike burning up all the planet’s oxygen before the next Game of Thrones. (Perhaps I should cancel the order. Hm.)

This week a person of my acquaintance was criticized because, at the end of his post…wait for it…he dared to point out that he sold stuff for a living. As if that’s a bad thing. (Wait! Maybe Communism is coming back, after all.)

Stop worrying

These comments don’t hurt you as an author or blogger. They hurt the snarker. I’ve gone out of my way to block people who are mean to others. I report abusive reviews that libel the author instead of talk about the book. I know who’s naughty and nice. If the offenders are authors, they are banished and I never buy their books. I’ve gone out of my way to purchase books because of egregious reviews.

Here’s the math:

Idiot reviewer hates book + nastiness + condescension (+ possible libel) – a kind thought = it’s probably not a book nasty, condescending idiots enjoy < I’d like to think I’m not an idiot, therefore, I give that book a try. (Was that condescending?)

Don’t act like a knob

No, you don’t have to be sunshine and sweet cakes all the time, but if you’re going to be mean, you better be twice as smart and savvy with facts. (For instance, Scalzi, Konrath and Wendig can be cutting, but they’re always smarter than they are savage.)

Act like a knob and you’ll be treated like a knob should be treated:

I won’t give you more thought.

I won’t think you’re clever.

I’ll set the Internet to Ignore.

~ I am Robert Chazz Chute and I sell stuff.

How To Not Write a Shit Blog (indifferentignorance.com)
How To Say It Sucks (gettingsomethenovel.wordpress.com)
The End of the Bestseller List? (onehandedwriters.com)
Win friends and influence people online (stuff.co.nz)
8 Tips on how to help out an Indie Author (vincentstrangecraft.wordpress.com)
5 Effective Ways to Minimize Typo Errors on Blog Post (webnite.wordpress.com)
Does the retail price of your Ebook matter? (aliisaacstoryteller.com)
Indie Authors You Should Know (followthepull.com)
How smartly to recover social media typo (socialnomics.net)

Filed under: author platform, authors, book reviews, ebooks, publishing, Writers, Amazon, Arts, Author, blogger, blogging, Criticism, dealing with reviews, E-book, Humor, internet, Literature, minor typo, review, Shopping, snark, traditional author, writer, writing, YouTube

04/30/2013 • 9:26 PM 7

My Indie Author Mistake

If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t call my first writing guide Crack the Indie Author Code. It’s on my sales page and proclaims to everyone I’m indie. Don’t get me wrong. I’m proud to be indie! I make lots of friends here who are indie authors or are aspiring indie authors. I buy inde books and feature indie authors. I’ve learned and gained so much from being part of the indie community.

**However, we shouldn’t look indie.**

When someone picks up our books, it should not occur to them that it doesn’t come from a traditional (read: huge) publishing house.

A bookstore clerk looked at my books and loved them, adding that they obviously weren’t from CreateSpace. The logo on the spines for my publishing company is Ex Parte Press, but yes, the print copies are done by CreateSpace. His perception of where it came from affected his expectations.

To a lot of people, indie means amateurish. I know, it sucks and indie musicians and filmmakers don’t have this stigma. Lots of traditionally published books suck yadda yadda. We know. I’m not happy about unfair comparisons, either.

However, let’s help prejudiced people overcome those prejudices by fooling them. Make sure your cover is awesome, your writing is sharp and standards are high. Once they turn from readers to fans, let your indie freak flag fly.

Crack the Indie Author Code will be disappearing from my sales pages soon. It will still be for sale, but it will be pushed down the page by my This Plague of Days serial. It’s eight books plus the print version plus secret variations to come. That will take up a lot of real estate on my Amazon page.

Go here for sneak peaks of This Plague of Days. It’s horror, with twists from Latin dictionaries.

And GO INDIE! (Sh…Stealth indie.)