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

See all my books at AllThatChazz.com.

07/09/2012 • 6:28 PM 1

Ultimate Blog Challenge: I was on CBC Radio’s Cross Country Checkup yesterday

Yesterday I spoke on national radio in Canada. The show is Cross Country Checkup on CBC Radio. I reference the show in my

English: Lion's mane jellyfish Español: Medusa...

English: Lion’s mane jellyfish Español: Medusa melena de león ártica (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

book Self-help for Stoners (it’s the last story, called Context.) I did get to plug my latest book, but I didn’t mention Context on the show, though. It wasn’t the same host. The topic was basically, Social Media: Good or Bad?

They tried to finesse it, but that was the basic, kind of clunky, out-of-date, black and white question. Thing is, I think I was in the minority in extolling the virtues of social media! I was a bit shocked about how many people called in to say how terrible social media was for the children, the zombified masses and the fate of our doomed society. After I hung up I realized that, though they did have a few social media experts to balance things out, the demographic of listeners to CBC Radio on a Sunday afternoon aren’t exactly social media mavens.

For all the hand wringing, most of the objections people raised about social media seem to come down to poor time management and either/or thinking. They couldn’t say no to their kids. They couldn’t turn it off or they were nostalgic for a time that never was.

Here’s what I said on the show (and a couple of points I didn’t get a chance to add):

1. Social media allows me to have the business I do. (Yes, here’s where the plug for Bigger Than Jesus came in.)

2. I like what social media does to my brain. More neural input leads to more complex neural output.

3. Social media allows me to meet people I never would. And I wasn’t at all social in person before. I pretend to be an extrovert here. In real life, I’m one long beard and a pack of chewing tobacco away from being a recluse.

4. My neighbours are fine people, but our relationships are infrequent and accidents of proximity. Social media gives me the tribe, followers and conversationalists I choose.

5. Get used to it. Social media is spatial displacement. I don’t have to be there to be there. Physical presence is not required. This should be obvious since I was speaking on a national phone-in show that’s broadcast around the world.

6. We are social animals. (If we weren’t, we’d be extinct.) Social media is the new place to be social. Wring your hands all you want. We aren’t going backwards. Is it just for narcissists? I’d say we are all so subjective, we are all narcissists. However, the guy who extolled the virtues of cutting himself off from the noise of social media so he could explore only what his brain could come up with? That jerk sounded like the King of the Narcissists.

7. With Twitter and Facebook, I get information pushed at me that I wouldn’t think to search for. The other day I saw a Lion’s Mane Jellyfish for the first time. (See the picture above? That’s one.) It’s amazing. It predates the dinosaurs and they are still floating around in the Arctic Ocean. Oh, yeah. Did I mention they are about the size of a huge cube van? They’re a-MAZ-ing! I ended up using a reference to the Lion’s Mane Jellyfish in my new crime thriller. (I know that sounds crazy, but you’ll get the metaphor when you read Higher Than Jesus this fall.)

8. People worry social media takes too much time. The founding fathers of the United States wrote reams and reams of letters in their lifetimes that must have taken hours out of every day. They still got a few things done, don’t you think? (You could argue that the founding fathers had slaves. True, though I read somewhere that all our modern conveniences which automate our lives so much actually replace the work of fifty slaves, so everything evens out except for the awful horror of slavery.)

9. Someone argued that social media reduces us to selling ourselves all the time. How is that different from always except we now have a more efficient way to do it? We sell ourselves, our time, our personalities to get a job, get a mate, keep a job, keep a mate and to avoid being disowned by our parents and children. Tools change quickly. We evolve slowly.

10. Social media has a tremendous power for good and just because the critics can’t handle it doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t love it and use it responsibly. Through social media I sell my books. Without social media I wouldn’t know all the cool people I know. Were it not for social media, I would not have been privileged to participate in a campaign to help a young man suffering leukaemia with his medical bills. (I wouldn’t even have known about his struggle in the first place.)

I probably irritated some CBC listeners because

Get Bigger Than Jesus

I was one of the few who weren’t worried about the damage social media can do.

It will make them feel better to know that my appearance didn’t help me sell a single book.

So much for moving that needle.

(UBC #13 of 31)

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07/08/2012 • 9:14 AM 3

Ultimate Blog Challenge: How to avoid signal fade on your blog and in your books

Authors, podcasters, bloggers, bloviators and cultural icons of all kinds: Everyone is subject to signal fade.

Encoding the MP3 after the Memorial Day podcast

Encoding the MP3 after the Memorial Day podcast (Photo credit: rbieber)

Signal fade equals audience entropy. Most people stop reading and listening over time because there are so many new things that demand our attention. Most of the fans and followers you have now will not be your fans and followers in the future. You might make one wrong move on Twitter and insult irradiated Japanese disaster victims like Gilbert Gottfried did. Maybe your fans will jump ship to the new simply because we’re programmed to seek out fresh experiences. They’ll get bored of your schtick. If you’re Jay Leno or Dennis Miller, it’s over, but for the rest of us, there’s still hope. What to do?

1. Don’t fall into schtick. Keep your writing and your words fresh. The person the masses will listen to the longest and with the most interest will be the one who says the unexpected. When I write a Facebook post or have some fun on Twitter, there’s probably a joke coming. Ah. But how will I arrive at that twisted coda? “Expect the unexpected.” That’s what my wife says when I tickle her. I didn’t take the threat seriously until I woke up in the middle of the night with her braining me with a frying pan. (See? Twisted coda sneak attack!) A better example is Chuck Palahniuk. He didn’t write Fight Club and then keep writing the same book again and again (as many authors do). He dipped into experimental fiction and several of his books are a jazz fiction fusion. It’s not all the same. You don’t have to change your unique voice, but be flexible how you use it.

2. Grow your base. This is tricky, because you don’t want to waste energy chasing down people who won’t dig you. Director Kevin Smith, for instance, was flummoxed to learn that one of his movies was advertised at great expense in The Ladies Home Journal. There’s not a chance that advertising paid for itself. That magazine’s readers probably couldn’t abide his penchant for profanity and Star Wars-obsessed dialogue. Instead, be you but in more places, so people can find you. Do guest blogs, grow your twitter following, appear on podcasts or whatever other book promotion you do. Most important on this to-do list, and the only one that is critical, is write more books. Be prolific. If your bookshelf and your base isn’t growing, it’s shrinking and dying faster than grandma.

3. Add to the mix. Host guest posts on your blog. Do interviews to get out of your head and into someone else’s. Link to a variety of blogs using Scoopit! to give your readers a smorgasbord. Bring more minds into your mix. Co-author a book. Have a guest on your podcast or play off your stooge of a brother. Try joining a writing group. Try a writing partner. Add a new voice to your old formula.

4. Set your mind free. This step is one way to accomplish #1. Too many people have the same thoughts because they’re talking to the same people all the time. Check out a book, a topic, a podcast or a blog you wouldn’t ordinarily read to get some fresh input to fuel your output. Go to court and watch arraignments for a couple of mornings this week. Get a tour of a morgue. Read this for a change of worldview instead of watching regular news. Take a language class and hang out with your fellow students. Learn the piano. Buy a homeless guy a coffee and talk to him. Go to a different church or hang out at a gay bar. Do something different from what you’ve done.

5. Step away from the keyboard. If it were up to me, I’d never go anywhere and never take a vacation. However, She Who Must Be Obeyed insists on vacations once a year at least. I hate leaving my writing bunker. I’m always here! Why try to alter my agoraphobic tendencies? However, every time I come back, I have fresh insights, more energy and new, aired-out ideas. You need a reboot, too.

Small-town terrors and psychological mayhem in Maine.

6. Write in more than one genre. If you’re into different types of fiction or want to branch out into non-fiction, do that. Cross-pollination will feed both grafted branches on your tree. More new people will have another way to discover The Magic That is You. Aside from my crime novels, I’ll publish a book on writing and I just published another fiction collection of suspense recently. Don’t just sit there. Juggling is energizing.

7. Or narrow your focus. The alternative is to own a topic so much, to be so unique, that anyone interested in a particular topic will have to read you. Certain names spring to mind for this rarified stratum of writer: Malcolm Gladwell, Seth Godin, and Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone. Of course, these guys take on big topics like economics and entrepreneurship and how to achieve success, but maybe you’re the master storm drain coupler of the Midwest. If you can drill down deep and achieve mastery of a subject to the degree that it makes you a specialist, your audience will have to read you to know what’s up. Whatever you do, own your category or aspire to own it.

8. Expand your outlets. You write, say, books of horror. What about podcasting about it as well as writing it? What about audiobooks? What about t-shirt sales on Cafe Press or Zazzle.com? How about graphic novels of your existing work? What about serious speaking engagements or stand-up comedy? How else can you not just monetize, but be different? Different and more is good. Different boosts your signal to a wider audience. More is more. Some people say less is more, but those people flunked math.

9. Change your process. So you’ve always outlined and plotted your books in great OCD detail? Instead, start pulling it out of your butt and see what surprises you’ve got stuffed up there. Or vice versa. Do you write one book a year or one book every three years? Resolve to write your next book in one month and then hold yourself to that promise. Do you write longhand in a library? Go to the coffee shop opposite the men’s mission and get a window seat and write there. Surprise yourself not just in what you write, but how you write it.

10. Change your support system. For my crime novel, Bigger Than Jesus, I added an ex-military buddy to my beta read team. I didn’t know he’d be interested in the book, but on a whim, I asked because of his military expertise. He read it in a day and was very enthusiastic. When he came over with the marked up manuscript, we talked for three hours. Not only did he give me helpful ideas for the current book, I got great ideas for future books in the series. For my next book, I’m hiring a new editor to add fresh insight and plan to mix and match my beta read team.

Your signal won’t fade so fast if you vary its energy, amplitude and range. New people will tune in to replace the fans who wandered away. As for the fans that stay with you through all your books, podcasts and creative incarnations? They’re the ones on your mailing list you should pay particular attention to. Encourage conversation with them. They may even hang in long enough to warn you when you are getting stale, selling out or losing your freaking mind.

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07/07/2012 • 11:55 AM 7

Ultimate Blog Challenge: Top 10 things I wish I didn’t know about readers

Small-town terrors and psychological mayhem in Maine.

1. They get bored too easily. We used to have writers who were flavours of the month. With Amazon rankings, you can be the flavour of the hour and then disappear into obscurity unless you fight the death spiral and/or get lucky.

2. Readers are too busy. With the proliferation of “free” we all have huge To Be Read piles. Sadly, as with to-do lists, many of us never get to the bottom of those piles.

3. Many people prefer a genre I don’t write. Romance is much more popular. I used to read romances professionally when I worked for Harlequin. My books have a key romantic element, but they are not romances, so de facto, I am not on the radar of a large group of very dedicated readers.

4. The readers who love me might get sick of me trying to reach the readers who don’t know me. I’m very careful on Twitter to promote others, not just me. Still, I need to kick back and tweet a little joke here and there and say hello. It’s difficult to find the balance.

Paranormal persuasion and scary stories.

5. I’m not reaching some readers because I made some choices in titles that were challenging. (I almost wrote “unfortunate”, but that would put the onus on me and I’m not ready to own that yet.) The thing is, Sex, Death & Mind Control is one of the best things I’ve written but it has the lowest sales. It’s not sexy enough for those searching for erotica. It’s paranormal suspense (with award winners!), but when you see that always-interesting “What Else Customers Viewed” list, it’s almost all erotica on the Sex, Death & Mind Control sales page. “End of the Line” is probably the best short story I’ve ever written, but it  remains a hidden treasure because I turned readers off with a title I thought would get more attention, not less.

6. Ditto Self-help for Stoners. It was a clue for me when one of the reviewers who loved it added, “Don’t let the title scare you off.” It’s a weird mix of War of Art self-help and suspense. Strange, I know, but not really all that transgressive. (Should have called it Self-help for Surrealists to pull in readers who are also painters!) My strategy going in was to have an identifiable group to market to instead of saying it was for anybody who loved suspenseful fiction. To some extent that worked, but not as well as I’d hoped. (It still outsells Sex, Death & Mind Control four to one. I can’t say the Self-help for Stoners strategy was a failure, just that it could do better.)

You don’t have to be high to enjoy it. Sure, it would make you a better audience but…

7. Readers have less patience now. I changed my plotting and pacing with Bigger Than Jesus to cater to that lack of patience. I see it in myself. Maybe the Internet did it to our brains, I don’t know. That’s not even be a bad thing per se, but expect more Blake Crouch pacing and less Annie Proulx meandering. There used to be more room for both approaches.

8. There are still prejudices against anything labeled “experimental”. I wrote Bigger than Jesus in present tense, second-person. That alone is reason enough for some readers to run screaming. I can tell them all day that it worked. Won’t matter. That’s okay, but it’s still a prejudice.

I wanted to do something that some people thought couldn’t or shouldn’t be done and I wanted to do it so well they’d either quickly forget their prejudice or give me more credit for doing it so well. Blanket pronouncements of “You can’t do that!” are one of the reasons I did it. I don’t like being told what I can’t do. In fact, it makes me want to do it all the more. (I admit this attitude is not something that serves me well all the time. Having a job in the regular world, for instance, is uh…a problem.)

9. Readers look for ties to your real life. This is a byproduct of increased author/reader interaction. However, the Internet isn’t to blame for this one. This was very much the rage in English departments across the world years ago. Students were taught they couldn’t understand the fullness of the fiction without making judgments about the author, his or his gender, origin and life experience. They shouldn’t have done that. No one truly knows the inside of someone else’s skull. (I’ve even opened it up and had a look. Trust me, nobody really knows.) Besides, it’s fiction. Take it on its own merit. Please don’t make assumptions about the author from what you read in a book of fiction. Don’t make me kill again. (See what I mean?)

10. Readers fade. Even if they love your work, they move on. They get hungry for something new and different unless you keep feeding them. I don’t think anyone should race to publication if they aren’t up to the schedule and you do have to build in editorial time to make the book better. However, they are hungry and it is a race. People will tell you it isn’t. They’re wrong. It is. It’s a race against time. We don’t live forever and we have books in us and a readership to find and a readership we hope finds us. William Styron came out with a nice juicy thick book every ten years, but he was William Styron and that was before ebooks and our shiny,  new demand-per-click culture.

I love readers. People who don’t read creep me out. I can say that because how would they know I’ve insulted them? What do non-readers have to contribute? Those dummies!

Ha! Wait. You aren’t reading this aloud to someone are you?

~ Like my flavor? Listen to the first chapter of my crime thriller, Bigger Than Jesus. I’m podcasting the book through the summer. Enjoy! (Or be a hero and just click the cover to grab it. Thanks for reading!)

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07/05/2012 • 2:34 PM 5

Ultimate Blog Challenge: The Dumb Reviewer’s False Standard Failure

There’s a certain sort of critic who really bugs me. As much as I enjoy the Slate Culture Gabfestpodcast, there’s an issue

English: Salvador Dali with ocelot and cane.

English: Salvador Dali with ocelot and cane. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

that crops up from time to time which itches like pink insulation on a sweaty naked body in a summer attic. It’s a response that tries to intellectualize the visceral and make a good thing into a bad thing. Here’s the quote that gives me headaches:

“We liked it, but should we like it?”

So much waste of tuition money is revealed in that reaction. It’s a response to art that tries to detour around the heart and isolate the brain. It’s a dishonest afterthought. It’s snooty and, in trying to sound intelligent, is stupid.

I enjoy the movie Roadhouse, for instance. By some people’s standards, I suppose I shouldn’t. However, turn it on and try not to get sucked in. It’s not in the “So bad, it’s good” category, though some movies overshoot the runway and actually manage that. Roadhouse is fun and ridiculous and has a lot of funny lines, mostly intended. It’s just so watchable. It’s a visceral reaction. Can’t I enjoy it without the self-appointed cultural elite’s disapproval?

Art that achieves what it set out to do and entertains its audience is good art.

So says me, anyway. I could list dozens of silly movies and books that demanded little of me that I still enjoyed. The latest victim of this critical chaos appears to be Abe Lincoln, Vampire Hunter.  I just read fellow blogger Jordanna East’s takedown of a bad review here. She’s not the only one to point out misguided reviewers complaining about historical inaccuracy in the movie. Good critics go to action movies with the expectation that it’s not meant to be a historical document. If it’s not a French movie in an art cinema, do not review it as if all movies are French movies in art cinemas!

That said, I’m all for elevating material. It’s a treat to run across sparkling dialogue that mocks expectations. (See the movie The Guard with Don Cheadle, for the best of that phenomenon in movies.) In my book, Bigger Than Jesus, I set out to challenge expectations, too, and not just in terms of plotting and surprises and reversals. I’m talking about getting at real emotion. There are consequences spread amongst all those jokes. The heroine’s fascination with the life of Salvador Dali means something to her, to the story and ultimately to the reader. I set out to make my roller coaster travel through unexpected places without slowing the pace. Elevating material can be done. It doesn’t have to happen all the time for everything, though.

Dalton’s reply to the big bad bouncer in Roadhouse serves equally well for bad reviewers. The bad guy turns up his nose and says, “I thought you’d be taller. You don’t look like much t’me.”

Patrick Swayze, as Dalton, smiles wide and says, “Opinions vary!”

Then bop ’em in the nose if you want to.

~ Like my flavor? Listen to the first chapter of my crime thriller, Bigger Than Jesus. I’m podcasting the book through the summer. Enjoy! (Or be a hero and just click the cover to grab it. Thanks for reading!)

Get Bigger Than Jesus
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07/04/2012 • 7:36 PM 11

Ultimate Blog Challenge: Top 10 What I’ll soon do differently with my book promotion

1. Last November I started up my podcast to reach out to new readers. I called the podcast Self-help for Stoners

English: Third generation Amazon Kindle

English: Third generation Amazon Kindle (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

after my book of the same name. The podcast was a good idea, but tying the title to one book when I have dozens in me was a tactical error and I’ll change that soon.

2. This, my main blog, focuses on information, both original and curated, for anyone interested in publishing books.  The blog is not geared to readers. That’s what the author site is for. In the future, I think I’ll post to the author site more often than I do, especially as I have more reviews and events to talk about. I don’t regret writing about writing, though. Some people think authors are stupid for doing that, but I went with my passion. If I had tackled something I was less interested in, I wouldn’t be approaching 1,000 blog posts now and I wouldn’t be able to make two books out of it.

3. My two latest books, Bigger Than Jesus and The Dangerous Kind & Other Stories, are both on Amazon and exclusive to KDP Select so they do not appear in retail outlets. That’s fine for now, but eventually I will migrate them to other ebook platforms. Amazon was great at promotion, but with their new algorithms, they aren’t so great for me anymore. (I hope they rectify this and we, collectively, get through the current summer sales slump to see a more energetic autumn.)

4. In the future, I’ll raise the price of my books. They’re all at couch change for $2.99 now. This is the introductory price and will change, which will also make more sense with Amazon’s new price-based (rather than quantity sold) algorithms.

5. I have several books in revisions that reach beyond 120,000 words. If they were shorter they’d be done and available by now. If it makes editorial sense, I may break the longest books up into trilogies.

6. I will write shorter books. As I wrote Bigger Than Jesus, I discovered that I love to write a book with a high momentum. A fast write (and read) energizes me. The paperback will still clock in at 249 pages, so no one will feel I’m shortchanging them.

7. I will write no stand-alones. Bigger than Jesus is the first of The Hit Man Series. The Poeticule Bay Series is in development. The books are meant to stretch out into long series following certain characters. Stand alone novels are a heavy investment of my time that do not develop a following to the same numbers as a series can. To make more art, I have to make that business decision. What will be fun is when I have crossovers, where many of my characters from different books meet.

8. I will write faster. I wrote Bigger Than Jesus in a month. To perfect it, the editorial pipeline was longer than that, but I find I can write effectively and well at speed. My editor and beta team made that possible and, maybe it’s the journalistic training talking, deadlines are my friend.

9. I will have print versions available for all my books going forward. Currently I just have Self-help for Stoners available as a paperback. The other short story collections didn’t have quite the length needed to make for a paperback with heft. Everything I do from now on makes for a great mass market paperback. I just finished all the book design and print formatting on Bigger Than Jesus today so I’ll have the paperbacks on hand pretty soon. (I’m in love with Georgia. She’s a beautiful font.)

10. I will be less shy about contacting other authors for blurbs and book blogger for reviews. This is more of an affirmation than a plan since I have yet to compose those emails. I’ve sent out a few copies for review, but it’s an issue about which I am still an introvert. (I’m only pretending to be an extrovert here so someone will read my books.)

~ Like my flavor? Listen to the first chapter of my crime thriller, Bigger Than Jesus. I’m

Get Bigger Than Jesus

podcasting the book through the summer. Enjoy! (Or be a hero and just click the cover to grab it. Thanks for reading!)

Like this? Then please check out some other options for articles from ChazzWrites and AllThatChazz from the last month:

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07/03/2012 • 8:07 PM 6

Ultimate Blog Challenge: Indies Versus Committees

The Senate Committee on Budget (ca.1997-2001).

The Senate Committee on Budget (ca.1997-2001). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The common wisdom is that all of us together are smarter than any one of us. Combine a group’s brains and their solutions will overcome that of a genius. That’s not my experience. Here’s why one head is often better than several:

1. The smartest person in a group is not the one who gets to talk in a committee. The loudest person does all the talking and steers the ship, often into the rocks. Stupid people are always the most confident and the less a person knows about a subject, the more certain they are of their opinions. That’s called leadership.

2. Take any group and there’s always one wacko*. Said wacko will espouse insane ideas. The rest of the group will then compromise with the wacko, thus arriving at terrible ideas that only seem more sane within the room in which the committee meets. Half wacko is still wacko.

3. People vote for the lesser of two evils, so they still vote for evil.

4. Committees search for reasons to justify their existence. They don’t complete a task and disband. They say, what can we do next? How can we extend our power, budget and egos? I call this committee creep. It’s for creeps.

5. A committee is a team. It becomes an expression of our genetic gravitation to tribalism. Committees become Us Versus Those Peons over there. (For the Latin derivation of the word “peon”, break it down into syllables.)

6. A committee is a way to spread responsibility around. If an individual says, “I made this decision,” he or she will have to live with it. Put it on a group label and everybody’s hiding behind the responsibility diffusion.

7. When I make a decision about my publishing company, a book cover, a sales platform or an editorial choice, it happens immediately. I may consult my friends with expertise or bat ideas around with my graphic designer, but the decisions come fast. I’ve waited long enough. I’m not waiting anymore and I’m certainly not asking for permission. I can screw up on my own easily without help.

8. I mentioned that, without a committee, the fault gets assigned to me for bad, independent decisions. The rewards come straight back to me, too. Then I dance with naked abandon, so it’s good I’m alone at the time.

9. Without a committee, I am in control of my destiny as much as any human is. Sure, there are a lot of whims and variables beyond my control. One of those variables isn’t a pinhead named Mort from Middle Management who’s telling me what to do. Screw Mort.

10. Committees are cooperative ventures that require a lot of socializing, neckties and appropriate office behaviour. I do not share toys. I do not play well with others. I’m writing this in my underwear. There might even be a naked abandon dance party later.

I  AM INDIE AND PROUD

*If your group has no wacko, the wacko is you.

And yes, I am qualified to diagnose under the It Takes One to Know One Rule.

Get Bigger Than Jesus

~ Like my flavor? Listen to the first chapter of my crime thriller, Bigger Than Jesus. I’m podcasting the book through the summer. Enjoy!

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07/02/2012 • 8:17 AM 13

Ultimate Blog Challenge: Can you blog a book? Sure you can.

A special welcome to new readers from the Ultimate Blog Challenge! Today, since there are so many new readers pouring in, I should give a little introduction and make an announcement, just to spice things up.

Ancient History:  My first blog, way back when, was mostly about politics. My second blog was devoted to writing (back when I thought I wanted someone else to publish my fiction.) I dumped that blog because someone else was managing it poorly and I needed to get my own sites: ChazzWrites.com and AllThatChazz.com. That was two and a half years ago. Now I blog about writing and self-publishing daily here and keep the political rants confined to my podcast when the spirit (and rage) move me.

Modern History: As I researched self-publishing, I found I had a lot to think about. Since I discover what I think about something by writing about it, my blog grew. I curated a bunch of useful information and that’s still an important part of what I do here: helping fellow authors and writers. My posts grew, matured and got tall as I deepened my involvement, made allies and learned and shared more.

The Current Era: Last November I quit my day job and published a strange book of self-help and inspiration expressed through suspense fiction. I know! Crazy! I wish that I had called it Self-help for Surrealists. As it is, every day for the rest of my life I will say to someone, somewhere, “No, you don’t have to be a stoner to love Self-help for Stoners.” I published two short story collections and a bunch of short stories and marketed them like mad, but the best marketing is to put up another book for sale. Last month, after a long trip through the editorial pipe, I published two more.

The Future’s So Bright, I Had to Cut it in Two: As a result of all this blogging, I realized just this weekend (this is the announcement part) that I have not just one book for new indie authors, but two. As the word count climbed toward 100,000 words on my non-fiction book (Crack the Indie Author Code: Aspire to Inspire) I discovered that it would make more sense, and be less overwhelming, to break up the information into two books.

Alternative Futures: Can you blog a book? Absolutely. There are programs devoted to that very thing, though I suggest caution. Go as slow as you dare. You have to go back in and revise carefully. Omit links and images, for instance. Stuff that works for a blog doesn’t necessarily read well as a book. I’m editing it now and it’s coming soon, promise. It’s a tragic time management issue since I’m also working on the follow-up to my first crime novel Bigger Than Jesus. But that’s a separate blog post and different announcement for another day. Happy blogging!

COMING SOON: 

CRACK THE INDIE AUTHOR CODE: ASPIRE TO INSPIRE (YEAR ONE)

BY ROBERT CHAZZ CHUTE

*2

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07/01/2012 • 4:29 PM 6

Top 5 reasons to join the Ultimate Blog Challenge

Last month I completed the Author Blog Challenge. I blog anyway, so why another blog challenge? 

1. Daily writing prompts help me keep posting. I don’t always follow them, but when you’re stuck, it makes blogging easy, or at least easier.

2. A commitment to blogging every day helps Search Engine Optimization so the blog readership grows.

3. Community. I look forward to discovering new bloggers and I’m hoping more new bloggers (and readers) will discover me.

4. Networking. The Ultimate Blog Challenge encourages tweeting links so profiles are raised.

5. Momentum. I just completed a blog a day for all of June written by The Magic That is Me. Why not take a break? Some people take being tired as a reason to ease off. But it’s precisely because I am tired that I should do this challenge. It’s energizing (and commitment is so sexy.) When you blog every day, you get on a streak and it makes you want to continue. As long as the quality stays high, I’m okay with the quantity of the output. I write all the time. Deadlines are my friend.

Most important, I have a writing career and a readership to build.

Now is not the time to rest.

This is just the beginning. This is number 1.

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06/30/2012 • 7:50 PM 2

Social media: Twitter Etiquette & Maybe Myths

 

Get Bigger Than Jesus

We’re told content is king, one-to-one engagement is paramount and direct messages on Twitter are rude. Maybe not. Before you swallow somebody else’s rules, we need to be careful we aren’t hiding our lights under bushels again. As the resident introvert pretending to be an extrovert, I’m not suggesting “rules” here. I’m suggesting not all rules are for everybody all the time. Question the rules and let’s rethink what’s rude when you’re on Twitter. Let’s examine the self-appointed arbiters’ assumptions about marketing manners with some Maybe Myths. I may not change your mind with this contrarian post, but I’ll be happy you made up your own mind.

Maybe Myth 1: Content is king.

Sin: Last week I promoted more authors than ever through Twitter. In return, they promoted my new books, Bigger Than Jesus and The Dangerous Kind & Other Stories. The Tweet Teams at World Literary Cafe and me friends at Triberr helped sell books. It’s a tricky balance, figuring out how much to tweet, how much to retweet and how much to engage. I thought I was risking my follower count by tweeting a drumbeat of, “Buy my book! Buy these books!” I promoted others more than myself, but it was still a big stack of book flogging. It was, you might well argue, what many people object to when they think of desperate authors trying to get attention and yell past the ambient sound.

Redemption: Or, if you think of it differently, it’s helping out and giving more people more opportunities to discover cheap entertainment they might otherwise have missed. Silence or too much self-conscious inhibition would not have connected with people or moved any books. Besides, my numbers of Twitter followers increased with this promotional campaign. No, don’t harangue anyone, but don’t be so shy, either. Be proud. Assert. Declare. Let yourself be known.

Maybe Myth 2: Engagement is queen. 

Sin: You can’t get more followers, and you don’t deserve more followers, unless you engage with people. “Twitter is a conversation,” the gurus say. I think that’s often right, but what I did last week wasn’t much of a conversation. The signal went out, not back and forth.

Redemption: I want to be clear: I remember my pleases and my thank yous. I do engage with people on Twitter a few times a day. I’ll respond to a question or a comment here and there. However, I follow 2,000 interesting people on just one of three Twitter accounts. How much real engagement is logistically or reasonably possible to expect?

Before you answer, “So follow fewer people”, nope! I follow a lot of people for all that great neural input. Information and joke tweets stimulate my brain and I want to keep my brain stimulated. I value their tweets and all that fresh data.

3. Maybe Myth 3: Everyone’s a delicate little princess.

Sin: Some people object to auto-tweets welcoming new followers because they think direct messages to strangers are rude and bot tweets suck. (Who handed down that law to begin with, anyway?)

Redemption: I’d argue that if you follow somebody, it indicates a good faith act that you don’t want to be just strangers. You might not have them over for a barbecue yet, but the condemnation of a friendly, welcoming auto-tweet with a little more about me, my website and my book babies seems a wild overreaction. Please  don’t go to Defcon 1 and condemn one auto-tweet with the same vehemence as world hunger or skinning live puppies.

Some people complain welcoming auto-tweets are annoying. I think that’s a very vocal minority, probably the same subset of people who insist on validating Twitter accounts. I don’t do that, either. I tried it and it was cumbersome and if somebody’s that stiff and vituperative about a simple follow, they probably aren’t my crowd. I’ve had followers thankme for letting them know I have books (of Doom!) and podcasts (of Doom!) that they may want to check out. One person’s spam is another person’s tasty meat product in a can.

Small-town terrors and psychological mayhem in Maine.

More about the auto-tweet debate: Consider the case of Claude Bouchard, a brilliant author, who uses Twitter very effectively. I know this because his following is closing in on 273,000 people. Um. Wow. In a recent post, How I Really Got a 1/4 million Twitter Followers, he explained that he takes a few minutes each day to unfollow the people who don’t climb aboard his party boat to make room for people who get him. Click that blog post link for more information on his strategy and thinking. I would not presume to summarize it here. (You could also set TweetAdder to take care of unfollows and other tasks automatically, though Mr. Bouchard doesn’t trust such bots and does it manually.)

I read someone condemn the welcoming tweet idea as useless. My answer: Do you have half as many Twitter followers? Have you sold as many books? Then maybe Mr. Bouchard has something to teach, not learn. I’m glad I ran across his post.

Think you’ve heard it all? I’ve watched a couple of people on Twitter castigate someone who dared to hit “reply” to one of their tweets. These dicks, a couple of celebs so minor as to be nearly microscopic, took the minimalist  approach to Twitter engagement and made up a new rule: How dare you speak to someone you don’t even know? (Answer: um, so we might get to know each other?) For these guys, Twitter is a place for everyone to sit quietly while they talked. I think applause was allowed, as long as it was quiet golf green applause. You can monologue on podcasts, but when people declare that Twitter is only for people who already know each other? Really? Isn’t that what email is for? Unfollowed.

To the vocal minority: I make free podcasts, free blog posts (that are usually wittier, far less cranky and more fun than this one), cheap but pretty damn awesome books and give friendly-but-not-needy engagement to my Twitter friends. That ought to suffice, shouldn’t it? Sorry if I annoyed you last week, but if it did annoy you, apparently you were a small group and, respectfully, I hope you unfollowed so I won’t bother you further. I don’t want to bother anyone. Let’s just keep things in perspective. Twitter is free and you don’t have to listen to anyone you don’t want to listen to. I wouldn’t have it any other way. You no like? Unfollow. Don’t tell me you’re unfollowing. Just do it, no hard feelings. Not everybody likes mocha coffee. Crazy, but true.

What some people call spam, others thank you for. I fractured the royal rules and made them into Maybe Myths, gained more Twitter followers, helped a bunch of readers and writers connect, and sold some books. And not just my books, either. Maybe the Internet scolds need to reconsider the accepted dogma. I’m going to continue to let people know about my books as they keep coming. Lots of people seem to appreciate that. Those who do board my party boat and go for a fun fiction cruise with me have no idea how grateful I am for their enthusiasm and support.

Truly. Thank you.

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06/28/2012 • 5:05 PM 9

AB Challenge 28: Top 10 How to keep the blog ball rolling, George Clooney!

GET BIGGER THAN JESUS FREE ON AMAZON TODAY JUNE 28

What can bloggers do to keep their blog fresh and moving forward? Everyone experiences blog fade at some point. You have lots of other stuff to do or run out of ideas or just don’t feel like blogging all the time. You can still keep your blog traffic motoring on. Here’s how:

1. Guest blogs. New people fresh energy. Interact. Engage. Find allies in the struggle. Kill their enemies to make more solid  friends.

2. Interviews. Interacting with new people on your blog equals even more energy. Your blog is about you. Too much about you becomes boring and pathological. And by you, I mean me.

3. Scoopit! I monitor a bunch of choice feeds and when I see something I think is helpful, entertaining, educational or strange about publishing, I use the Scoopit tool to point my readers to the useful link. It’s a great curation tool that makes your blog a hub of whatever niche topic you want to research.

4. Read other blogs. This is where many bloggers fall down. They don’t read enough input to enhance their output. Reading and commenting on blogs is another way to feed #1 and #2, as well.

5. Watch forums for current topics to discover what issues already interest your target readers. If I ever get stuck for a writing prompt, I can always go over to a publishing forum and within a minute, I’ll read something that irks, spurs or inspires me to write about the topic in question. (Today I looked and it was disrespect for indies on a Kindle forum. Filed for later use.) Whatever your topic, there’s a forum for that.

6. Step away from it. Don’t blog just for the sake of blogging. If you aren’t interested in a topic, don’t force it. Better to rest, wait and recharge. Yes, more posts lead to increased traffic, but don’t sacrifice quality for quantity.

7. Blog your experience. Whatever you do, there’s something about it that someone needs to learn about. Any post that begins with “How to” will be read. Evergreen topics, like How to format with Scrivener, for instance, will be an anchor for traffic to your blog for a long time. Think small. Go into step-by-step details to help your readers if you have the tech and teaching skills. Every time I run into an obstacle with book production — and there’s always something — as frustrating as it is, I also think Hey, this is material.

8. Revisit old blog posts and update them from a fresh angle. The SEO spiders will notice changes to your blog and that helps your SEO. Your readers will appreciate the update, too. My feelings have changed about using CreateSpace, for instance. I’m more in favour of CreateSpace than I used to be and I’ve cooled on Lightning Source.

9. Think big, as in sprawling, iconic examples and topics. One of my most popular posts that gets traffic forever is  Create More Interesting Characters (Superman vs. Batman). Lots of people are probably discovering the blog simply because they’re searching for the superheroes and need them to save their city. That’s okay. Lots of comic book nerds are interested in issues of character development using familiar examples. (I say this as a comic book nerd.) All that helpful editorial advice will distract them as the Joker and Lex Luthor team up to watch their cities burn.

10. Write top ten lists of something (easy ones, like this!) They’re easy to write and people love them. Well, not this one, but usually. Pick a film genre, book genre, blogs, celebrities, roles, whatever. Relate it to a trending topic on Twitter (or George Clooney at any time) and watch your readership climb higher. Make George Clooney relevant, though, not some tenuous, lame joke to illustrate your point like I just tried.

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