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

See all my books at AllThatChazz.com.

12/06/2012 • 9:32 PM 3

Book promotion: Don’t trust the ferryman Part 1

Tips and inspiration for the indie author’s journey to publication.

The Bigger Than Jesus Finale is up on the All That Chazz podcast. It’s the last two chapters of Bigger Than Jesus in which Jesus does battle with Salvador Dali and the FBI.

Advice doesn’t last. Yesterday someone said how sick he was of Rafflecopter giveaways. It seems it wasn’t so long ago that Rafflecopter was a new promotional tool. Many reading this are asking, “What’s Rafflecopter?” It’s still new to many, but for this expert, it’s over. At least, he thinks so.

You can argue that many giveaways aren’t big enough to bother with or you can argue that a giveaway doesn’t make anyone read a book. However, I do think proclaiming a popular promotional tool dead is premature. Everything does go away, though: It looks like free isn’t so effective anymore and may hurt paid books this season. Remember when MySpace and Friendster were, briefly, the new thing? Remember when 99 cents was a huge deal? Nothing lasts. What conclusions can we draw about book promotion from this knowledge? Let’s mull:

1. Not everything works forever, so keep your eyes open for the next new thing. Yesterday’s post mulled the question of adapting books to your audience. I’m also trying a reward program where I give more free books to the people who read my books and free advertising on my podcast for signing up for a free newsletter. Free may be out, but generosity and interaction haven’t given up their place among vital promotional tools yet.

2. Not everything works. Some authors are sure Pinterest is an excellent promotional tool. I think it’s been big for crafters and it’s certainly fun, but most people are just there for fun, not shopping for books. Personally, I’m doubtful of Pinterest’s power to help me that way. (Still love it.)

3. Not everything works right away. A fellow did an Amazon KDP Select giveaway for a few days. He didn’t really give away that many books. He failed to promote the promotion. In my opinion, he’s declaring KDP Select free days dead for the wrong reason. He took one sample and he didn’t let enough people know he was doing it. He wasted his free days because he expected the free days to do all the work on their own. A one-prong attack is betting big on one roll of the dice. Bad strategy in Vegas and a bad bounce for authors.

More tips and tricks to steer your authorship.

4. One promotional approach doesn’t work for everyone. One of my points in Crack the Indie Author Code is that no one really knows The Answer to selling gigabytes of books. There is no one answer and, if there is, it never lasts long. There are many ways up the mountain, but you can’t necessarily take the same route twice. What worked for one author won’t necessarily work for you now. For instance, many of the authors who do very well now were traditionally published first. Their cult followed them into self-publishing. They didn’t start from scratch and you can’t duplicate their career highs. Learn, yes. Copy, no.

5. Promotional strategies change fast. Last year at this time, before the change to Amazon’s algorithm, if you managed to do big giveaways of books, you were rewarded handsomely. Less than twelve months and it’s a new game with few rules.

~ In tomorrow’s post, I’ll lay out #6 to #13 on more book promotion options. In the meantime, please check out the samples from Crack the Indie Author Code and Write Your Book: Aspire to Inspire. The first three reviews are in on the former and they’re happy. (I wonder if, despite my protests that there is no one way, people are still looking for a book promotion panacea. Tomorrow I’ll tell you why I’m so suspicious of panaceas.)

Related articles

#Promotip: Use Rafflecopter to Manage Promotional Giveaways (chazzwrites.com)

Filed under: publishing, Amazon, Aspire to Insire, Author, book, book promotion, books, Crack the Indie Author Code, E-book, promotion, publicity, Robert Chazz Chute, selling books, Write Your Book

11/27/2012 • 12:53 AM 14

#NaNoWriMo: And what if you don’t?

Free to you Nov. 26 – 30, 2012. If you love it, please review it. Thanks!

What happens if you aren’t a “winner” at National Novel Writing Month? The Mayan Apocalypse was set aside for you. The end is near and it’s going to be like that John Cusack movie, 2012, only longer, with burnt popcorn and more uncomfortable seats.

Well, no, actually. NaNoWriMo isn’t another of those insipid chain letters that will kill you with a falling baby grand piano if you don’t complete it within the specified time. Fifty-thousand words and one month is an arbitrary deadline. It’s a fun and, I think, worthwhile challenge, but just because you didn’t make the quota — and there’s still time left, by the way — doesn’t mean you aren’t a writer. Mom still loves you, though she still prefers your brother Ted. Dad doesn’t think you’re any less unemployable (or more employable) than you were last month at about this time. You dog does not judge you…harshly. You still don’t take him out for enough walks, though. The status quo is preserved.

You’re certainly no farther behind than all those people who did make it to 50,000 words but will never look at their manuscript again. Their art is stillborn. Sadly, plenty of people who enter NaNoWriMo have something worthy of publishing but will never know. The challenge, to them, was just a challenge, like how long can you go just eating pineapple and refried beans? Years from now they will sit in a dingy bar packed to the rafters with Rue and say, “Yeah, I wrote a novel once.” Before taking another long pull on a long neck, they’ll finish with a whisper, “…sort of.”

So what are you feeling so bad about? If you’re not going to make it to 50,000 words but you’re still reading this post, I bet you’re more serious than Mr. Sort Of. You’ve made it this far, looking for commiseration and a shoulder to cry on and all that. You don’t need a shoulder to cry on (and cleavage is better for that activity.) What you need is more time.

Many people don’t finish NaNoWriMo for great reasons. Stuff happens. Cats sit on your keyboard. Your sister called too many times at midnight to complain about her husband and how his new boyfriend leaves the toilet seat up. People get sick. Maybe you got tied up with work that actually pays. That’s important. Maybe you got sucked into a marathon of Hillybilly Hand Fish— okay, even my cheerleading efforts have limits. Shoot yourself.

I’m a cheerleader for anyone who writes to a daily word count, whether they are in NaNoWriMo or slogging through and constantly sweating a book out. Today I wrote a mere 1,900 words. I usually write close to three thousand a day. What’s galactically unjust is an author friend of mine reported that she just wrote over 4,000 words yesterday. (Pavarti! Dang it! That should have been me!) You see, my NaNoWriMo challenge is 365/24/7. You know books aren’t written in a month and you know this challenge is just a start. If you wrote enough so you have a good start on a novel, good for you. It can still be brilliant. Arbitrary is just so damned arbitrary, don’t you find?

Maybe you’re simply one of those tortured artists who take a little longer to write a masterpiece. If you’re a Canadian author, for instance, the government’s Royal Department of Vaunted Canlit requires that each book must take several years to write, with extra points awarded if you write about hard Arctic winters, houses made of sod and relentless, howling blizzards. To qualify, each revision must be completed in a birch bark canoe. If CBC Television scrapes any conflict out of your book and makes it into a movie (entirely in sepia tones with lots of bonnets or at least Labrador outports), you’re a serious Canlit contender. Congrats, you poor bastard. When Jian Ghomeshi interviews you on CBC Radio, answer in murmured Zen koans and only allow a small, smug smile, like you’re holding in a fart worthy of Margaret Atwood. There’s no money in being part of the Canadian literary establishment, so instead you get a trace of mystique among U of T English majors — wear a big hat and a long coat to readings — and the vague recognition that occasionally accompanies that ghostly, elusive thing that is “Canadian celebrity”.

Even if you aren’t Canadian, there are still great hurdles to overcome before you write your book and earn the respect of the literary establishment. First, you must never mention any connection between your Great American Novel and NaNoWriMo. Next, leather elbow patches are a must and always refer to the story as “the Text”. (Make sure they hear the capital T.) To really rock the foundations of letters and get Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegut to step aside for a new, greater entry into The Great Works of Literature Hall of Fame (and Gas Bar), give that manuscript of yours another couple of weeks.

BONUS TIP: If you’re going to take a day off from writing anyway, avoid misery and decide that at the beginning of the day. If it flogs you all day and at bedtime you decide today’s not a day to write, you’ve paid a needless stress debt. There’s enough stress in the world without adding to it.

A quick-moving plot with lots of surprises and a clear-eyed examination of addiction.

~ In addition to writing about publishing in Crack the Indie Author Code and Write Your book: Aspire to Inspire, Robert Chazz Chute plots murder constantly, often in relation to fiction. His latest is a delightfully violent and occasionally sexy romp called Higher Than Jesus. He begs that you buy it and read it and review it because he has no shame anymore. Pride is a luxury bought with money. Sure, that last bit sounds like Jane Eyre, but those are his words! (This is also a good time to admit that I, Chazz, am currently writing these words about myself in the third person. I’ve rarely loathed myself more deeply.) For more on books of suspense and nonsense by Chazz or to hear the free All That Chazz podcast, slum in his grimy little author site just off the Jersey turnpike in back of a dark bar with lipstick on the glasses, AllThatChazz.com. The glasses are all dirty mason jars and the bartender is a study in jailhouse tattoos.

#NaNoWriMo:The mission is simple. We are not. (chazzwrites.com)
#NaNoWriMo: 50,000 words isn’t the end. Learn from my mistake. (chazzwrites.com)

Filed under: publishing, All That Chazz, book, Canlit, CBC Radio, CBC Television, Crack the Indie Author Code, ebook, entertainment, higher than jesus, Jian Ghomeshi, John Cusack, Literature, NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, Robert Chazz Chute, Word count, writer, Writer Resources, writing

11/26/2012 • 2:14 PM 2

#NaNoWriMo: You can’t murder Miss Marple

Free to you Nov. 26 – 30, 2012

There’s an essential difference between a book that stands alone and a book in a series. In a one-off, anything can happen. In particular, you can kill off your protagonist. You’d be very unhappy with an Agatha Christie novel that ended with the gory strangulation of that sweet Miss Marple using piano wire. (What is it about piano wire that we always associate with strangulation? Was there a sale? Home Depot has lots of wire, but none in the category of “Piano”. Barbed wire would be meaner and razor wire would be more efficient. Yes, I spend too much time thinking about these issues.)

Though Sherlock Holmes went over the falls because Conan Doyle was sick of writing his “mere entertainments”, Sherlock survived in the end. It’s generally bad form to take a reader in hand and walk them through an intriguing story only to kill off the protagonist. It often makes the reader feel they’ve invested a lot of time and energy into a hero or heroine for naught. Kill off the intrepid heroine and, unless you follow her into an amazing Afterlife, readers will feel cheated of the victory they expected. Exceptions exist, but downer endings without some larger goal achieved easily go sour. Be careful about killing off the good guy.

When you write a series, character is even more important than usual because no matter what pressure cookers you throw your protagonist into, the reader is pretty sure he or she will come out reasonably okay in the end and uncooked. Character is key. Sacrifices are demanded. Red shirts are required. Captain Kirk was responsible for the deaths of many of the Enterprise Crew. Everybody would be much safer if they stayed home on Earth, but, whether we’re writers, appreciative readers or just out of Starfleet Academy and beaming down to the planet in Come-Eat-My-Face Red, “Risk is our business.”

Click the image to get Higher Than Jesus

The trick is to get the reader invested in your protagonist’s goals, make them real and ensure they are sympathetic. For example, my hit man, Jesus Diaz, is an orphan with a history of childhood abuse. That’s explored in the first book in the series, Bigger Than Jesus. In Higher Than Jesus, he’s dealing with moral issues around what he does for a living while battling Vicodin addiction and some bad guys who are much worse than he. He’s also in love again and out to save the future Mrs. Diaz. Despite everything against him, Jesus is also a funny guy and the deeper the trouble, the funnier he is. That’s his key to multiple books.

Somebody asked me if my inspiration for that quirk was Spider-Man. I used to collect comics and yes, Spider-man is, as they used to say in the Silver Age of comics, “a real cut-up”. However, I first discovered the power of the funny in myself when I encountered a guy with a knife intent on slicing me up. My fear fuelled something in me and I was never as hilarious as when I was sure I was about to die. It was under the controlled conditions of an Operating Room, but still…

Click for suspense and hilarious frivolity in Self-help for Stoners.

~Robert Chazz Chute is the author of crime novels, two books about writing and publishing and several books of suspense, including Self-help for Stoners. He has hugged the man who inspired the book, director Kevin Smith of Silent Bob fame, but it was a man-hug. Self-help for Stoners is in Kevin Smith’s bathroom for reading when the whim strikes. Hear the podcast and consume the muted glory that is his author site at AllThatChazz.com.

Filed under: publishing, Agatha Christie, book, Crack the Indie Author Code, ebook, funny, Jesus Diaz, Kevin Smith, Miss Marple, Protagonist, publishing, Robert Chazz Chute, self-publishing, Sherlock Holmes, Spider-Man, Starfleet Academy, writer, writing, writing a series

11/25/2012 • 5:26 PM 6

#NaNoWriMo: 50,000 words isn’t the end. Learn from my mistake.

Free to you Nov. 26 – 30, 2012

Crack the Indie Author Code is free to you as an ebook, Monday to Friday, Nov. 26 – Nov 30 at midnight. As National Novel Writing Month draws to a close this week, please consider picking up the book and its follow-up, Write Your Book: Aspire to Inspire. Both books are packed with information and inspiration for what lies ahead, no matter where you are in your writing and publishing journey. That’s the ad, but there’s more you need to know. Learn from my mistake: Don’t stop there.

Some say there are too many books. I’m a huge fan of choice, so I say there are too many books still in drawers and forgotten on thumb drives after NaNoWriMo is complete. Sure, let it sit in a drawer so you can be realistic when you get back to it. (Have a rest and relearn your children’s names.) However, please don’t let your trip to publication end at 50,000 words.

I believe many of the books that languish after NaNoWriMo can be salvaged with revisions and editing. Okay, maybe not all of them, but many. NaNoWriMo is a fun challenge to begin the process, like a hard swim in the ocean. In braving the waves and heading straight out to sea, you complete 50,000 words or more. That’s certainly an achievement, but it’s not the finish line. You have to swim back and make it to shore. Otherwise, all your hard work is written on water.

An incomplete manuscript niggles, doesn’t it? I know. I have several manuscripts waiting for me. I wrote for years before I began writing full-time, so I built a bank of manuscripts to return to. It’s easier to keep your head in the game when you see one manuscript through to completion. Those big books I’ve written are awfully intimidating when I go back to them to tinker. I’m afraid to lose the thread. It helps my process to be in media res, not just for the characters but for me as I write and rewrite. I will get to those books, of course. I’ll immerse myself again and get back into it, but at first it sure feels like trying to do the butterfly stroke after a long absence from swim practice. I’m always most excited about the newest project, so those books, as worthy as they will be, get pushed farther back in the drawer.

In stopping and starting, I’ve lost energy, time and money. Please learn from my mistake and see NaNoWriMo through to its logical conclusion. Keep swimming.

UPDATES

When I wrote Crack the Indie Author Code, there was a Big Six. Now, with the merger of Penguin and Random House, it’s the Big Five. As

Find tons of tips and inspiration here.

I wrote Write Your Book: Aspire to Inspire, Kindlegraph was the tool to autograph ebooks. Now authors can write inscriptions across publishing platforms using the update, Authorgraph. I mention these two updates not just because I want you to know the latest. I mention it because I published those two books on writing and publishing very recently. Publishing’s landscape is changing so fast, even ebooks updating before anyone can click the “Publish” button. Bookmark ChazzWrites, hit follow and keep coming back for the latest.

Speaking of the latest on changes in the publishing industry, you will certainly want to hear: the latest episode of the podcast, On The Media, from NPR. It’s called Adapt or Die. It’s an excellent summation about the year in publishing. Topics include: The myth of piracy, Amazon versus everyone, getting around Amazon, knockoff books, the bookstore battle over the Tim Ferris’s The 4-Hour Chef and the future of the industry.

~ Robert Chazz Chute was a martial artist when his life was still ruled by macho BS. He writes about writing and publishing, suspense and escape while making jokes to distract readers from the existential abyss that will consume us all. He likes puppies. See his author page and listen to his podcast at AllThatChazz.com.

#NaNoWriMo:The mission is simple. We are not. (chazzwrites.com)
NaNoWriMo: My crucial mistake (chazzwrites.com)

Filed under: publishing, Aspire to inspire, Big 5, Big 6, book, Crack the Indie Author Code, E-book, how publishing is changing, incomplete manuscript, Literature, merger, NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, NPR, On the Media, Penguin, publishing, Random House, Robert Chazz Chute, self-publishing, Write Your Book, Writer Resources, writers, writing, writing guides

11/21/2012 • 8:53 AM 1

#NaNoWriMo: You’re tired. Dream some more.

Crack the Indie Author Code and Write Your Book: Aspire to Inspire both have bonus offers of free ebooks.

Writers are a tribe bound together in loose nomadic groups travelling in the same direction along parallel lines. We are slathered in poverty and fear and unrealistic hopes. But we are also sharers and people pleasers. We are the dreamers.

If you are a writer, someone in your life is trying to wake you from your dream: You are a child lost and frantic in a busy marketplace and that chasing frenzy will pull you from sleep’s safety. Readers are beautiful objects of desire but your love is unrequited. You have disappointed yourself and fallen into the gap between the great vision you saw from far away and the lesser book you crafted with your hands. Everyone falls short, but nomads keep moving. Writers continue to stretch and reach. Sometimes you will curse your blessing and you will wake, startled and disoriented and blocked. Go back to sleep.

Stay asleep and dream. Burrow down under the blankets. Pull the quilt over your head. Some people — busy but still somehow accomplishing little or nothing — can’t bear to see someone warm and comfortable. Busy people in busyness are blind to your mind. They can’t see that you are happily occupied in Creation, elsewhere and elsewhen. We are Zen masters, actively doing nothing for a larger cause that awaits us in paper and pixels. New futures demand that you be different.

Write and, when you run out of space in your dreams, read to make more room for the next night’s escape. You have the creative virus. Those who would wake you from your dreams can’t understand the compulsion your disease insists upon.

Write and make worlds. Your dreams are important. Never doubt that. Your night work is important because we are the creators of escapes from the waking world and busyness.

Writing, above all, is a kind thing to do.

Filed under: publishing, Art, book, Crack the Indie Author Code, create, creative, Dream, ebook, Literature, NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, read, Robert Chazz Chute, write, Writers Resources, writing

11/14/2012 • 10:24 PM 0

Tucker Max’s strategy to triple his royalties

Check out this link on Huffington Post Books in which Tucker Max, the author of I Hope They Serve Bell in Hell (et al), details his strategy to make much more money than the ordinary bear, or author. Instead of going for a book deal, he explains how he entered an arrangement where the publisher could do the one thing he couldn’t do on his own (and what they do best): Distribute his books to bookstores.

You’ll notice he insists that he’s definitely not self-publishing and doesn’t want that stinky stigma touching him. (Please note: He’s definitely self-publishing.) What’s different is getting the contract for distribution, rather than publication. The publisher is printing his next book, but he’ll absorb all front end costs with freelancers.)

Tucker Max is a clever guy who knows how to seize an opportunity. As he notes, this deal isn’t for small fish. However, I suspect this may be the future for many authors and the fate of many publishers. Learn at the link and see what you think. ~ Chazz

(I changed the title from how HuffPo had it. That headline reeked of so much late night infomercial cheese that I’m sure some passed over the article, which has some good and interesting points.)

Filed under: publishing, book, book distribution, Business, distribution, I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, publishing, Publishing and Printing, self-publishing, Tucker Max

11/03/2012 • 11:05 PM 8

#NaNoWriMo: The key tip to write a much better book

When we plunge into writing a book, there’s lots of enthusiasm on the front end of the challenge. But how will we fill all those pages, especially in that saggy middle where we really don’t know exactly what’s going to happen? How will we give our story verisimilitude? How will we make readers care about our characters and give the book depth? Where will all the conflict come from? How will we sustain our enthusiasm all the way to the end of NaNoWriMo?

There is a solution that many writers shy away from to their detriment. They want their protagonists to be likeable so they make them Christlike figures. This saps a lot of juice from your book. Here’s why you must make your characters more flawed:

1. With flawed characters, there’s much more to write about. A former writer on Seinfeld said recently that stories that focussed on Jerry were always the hardest to write because he had the fewest flaws. George and Kramer and Elaine had plenty of neuroses and quirks, so that allowed the writers plenty of material with which to play. Give your detective an obsession or a hobby that doesn’t help him. Nero Wolfe had the orchids upstairs. Monk has OCD. Everybody has a blind spot or maybe even a fatal flaw that your plot can turn on.

2. Flawed characters have an interesting past that has a bearing on the present and future. My hit man in Bigger Than Jesus and Higher Then Jesus was abducted and abused as a child. Those scars interfere with his love life now. He wears very expensive suits and can’t stand to have sex without his clothes on because he has emotional scars. He also doesn’t want a lover to see the physical scars across his chest. His psychological quirks go deep, dealing with PTSD, addiction and his relationships with women. He falls in love too quickly always searching for a woman he can idolize and worship. Or is he really looking for mom?One of my favorite chapters in Higher Than Jesus is the one in which my hit man goes to group therapy (and fails miserably at it.)

You don’t want to stop your narrative cold with flashbacks too often, but if you can weave those flashbacks into the story well — and if those flashbacks are compelling enough — you’ve got a tool to give your readers a much richer story.

3. Flawed characters create tension. Your plot should spring from character. For instance, Jesus Diaz is prideful. If there’s a problem, he feels he has to handle it. Other circumstances conspire to make him feel he can’t simply call the police to handle his issues, but his resolve is key to that plot point. Higher Than Jesus would be at least a third shorter if Jesus solved problems the same way normal people solve problems.

4. Flawed characters have more conflict with their world. Jesus has a hard time relating to anyone else as a “boss”, for instance. He’s not a guy who is meant for the 9 – 5 world, especially with his limited skill sets in finding people, his inability to work in law enforcement because of his shady history and the creative uses he finds for super glue. Tension and heat increase from friction so be mean to your protagonist and make at least some of his problems his own damn fault.

Crack the Indie Author Code and Write Your Book: Aspire to Inspire both have bonus offers of free ebooks. Buy two books and you get four!

5. Readers relate to flawed characters. A novice writer asked me to read a chapter from her paranormal romance. The hero was very heroic — blandly so — and had an impossibly heroic name. The heroine was everything you’d expect from a heroine and more. They’d never done anything wrong and never would. They were always right, always predictable and always relatively safe because they were amazingly capable. Meanwhile, most readers think they should get to the gym today and most of us won’t make it. When you write your hero as if he’s Superman, he’s boring and you have a book the length of a comic book with just as much believability. Go Batman. In the ’60s comics, he was written as The World’s Greatest Detective, kind of Sherlock Holmes in a cowl with a cool car. The character’s real surge came when writer Frank Miller tuned into the underlying subtext of Batman’s vibe: He’s a billionaire with Daddy issues who trains himself to become a psychotic badass vigilante who won’t kill, but he’s no boy scout, either. That’s much more interesting than relentless virtue.

My hit man is obsessed with movies (just like me). Movies are our society’s touchstone, so Jesus has seen the same movies you’ve seen and sees the world through that Hollywood prism. He not only wants the Happily Ever After ending; he thinks he deserves it. Through movies, I make readers share a common interest and knowledge base with a hit man.

Consider Elmore Leonard’s characters: They’re often a bunch of criminals doing crazy things you’d never do, but some of their traits remind you of your crazy, racist Uncle Larry or that nutty girl you shared a room with in second semester before she dropped out to go to Art School. Flawed characters are people we know and believe because we’re surrounded by people who are flawed.

Resist the urge to make your characters better than human. In fact, we’ll like and believe them more if they aren’t perfect.

For more tips, inspiration and motivation for National Novel Writing Month, check out Crack the Indie Author Code and Write Your Book: Aspire to Inspire, on sale now.

~ Robert Chazz Chute is the author of Crack the Indie Author Code, Write Your Book: Aspire to Inspire, Self-help for Stoners, The Dangerous Kind & Other Stories, Bigger Than Jesus, Higher Than Jesus and Sex, Death & Mind Control (for fun and profit).

BONUS:

A fresh podcast is up at AllThatChazz.com which explains how you can get free ebooks.

Filed under: publishing, All That Chazz, Aspire to inspire, Batman, Bigger than Jesus, book, Character, Crack the Indie Author Code, Creative writing, crime novel, ebook, Elmore Leonard, flawed characters, Frank Miller, higher than jesus, how-to, Jesus Diaz, NaNoWriMo, NaNoWriMo tips, National Novel Writing Month, Nero Wolfe, plot, Podcast, Seinfeld, Sherlock Holmes, story, storytelling, Write Your Book, writers, writing, writing advice

10/10/2012 • 5:45 AM 3

One happy line can get you in my books

Aspiring writers and published authors interested in self-publishing read ChazzWrites.com. If you are a regular reader of this blog and find it helpful, I’m going to ask a favour. I need a happy quote from you about this blog, please. Those quotes I use will be in two books about writing I’ll release this fall. One happy line and your name is all I need. If you’re already an author, then please add the title of your latest book to your recommendation.

I’m boiling down the blog to the best of my posts from over 1,000 articles on ChazzWrites, revising and adding new material. It was originally going to be one book, but that changed at 5 a.m. today (and that story is a different blog post.) Happy and snappy quotes from regular blog readers will go into the front matter. Something along the lines of “ChazzWrites.com helped me with…” or “I read ChazzWrites because…” or “I like…” Something like that. Drooling in ecstasy is optional but appreciated.

Whether you’re just published (trad or indie), aspiring to write a book one day or have published dozens of books, I’d love to hear from you.

Please email your reviews to expartepress@gmail.com

(within the next seven days).

Help me out with this and not only will you be in the front of the books, I’ll also mention you (and your book) on the AllThatChazz podcast.

Thanks very much for your help.

Space Vegans vs. Stephen Hawking (allthatchazz.com)
Branding: The change I made (chazzwrites.com)
Innovative ways graphic design can help sell books (and not just with hot book covers) (chazzwrites.com)
The Future (allthatchazz.com)
We’re Indie. We don’t lie down. (chazzwrites.com)
Author reading: The Bugman of Surfside Beach (allthatchazz.com)
Eight Facts About Writing That Surprise Prospective Novelists (chazzwrites.com)

Filed under: publishing, aspiring writers, authors, blog reviews, book, book promotion, chazzwrites.com, E-book, Marketing, novelists, One happy line can get you in my books, Podcast, publishing, quotes, Robert Chazz Chute, writers, Writers Resources, writing

10/09/2012 • 4:32 PM 3

Branding: The change I made

“You will laugh your ass off!” ~ Author of Cybrgrrl, Maxwell Cynn

Milestones aren’t just for celebration. They are also reminders to reevaluate. Since last November, I’ve been podcasting comedy, author readings and a wee bit of ranting at the world. In that time, more people have gone from “What’s podcasting?” to “Ooh, computer radio! How do I do that, too?” Listenership is growing and I just broadcast my 50th show (a conversation with writer and friend Mark Young.)

When I began the podcast, I was very focussed on selling my first book, Self-help for Stoners, a fun book for creatives who love suspense. Those readers make great podcast listeners. They are interested in the creative process, want a little encouragement in the creation of their art and wonder what’s it all about (among all the jokes, murders and whimsy.) I didn’t put enough thought into my long-term branding then. Instead, eager to get both products up on their feet and out the door, I named the podcast after my first book. Since I’ll soon have eight books available, I needed to start thinking long-term. The podcast is now called All That Chazz. Since my author site is AllThatChazz.com, it fits. (Oh, my Thor! Such blinding narcissism!)

Across all my sites, the same image appears to help set up one image in the minds of potential readers. I’m not giving up on Self-help for Stoners. I’m just expanding the line of books with which I’m identified. I should have thought of that at first, but I was too anxious to finally get the podcast up and running to worry about changes a year down the road. It’s now almost a year down the road and change is in the ether, zeroing in fast.

Dance fast in the short-term. Plan long-term. Adapt. Innovate. Overcome. Rock harder.

Space Vegans vs. Stephen Hawking (allthatchazz.com)
A Double Shot of Suspense (allthatchazz.com)
Author reading: The Bugman of Surfside Beach (allthatchazz.com)
Eight Facts About Writing That Surprise Prospective Novelists (chazzwrites.com)
Tools of the Trade: Things go awry (allthatchazz.com)

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09/30/2012 • 10:27 PM 2

My Kindlegraph adventures: a little more tech helps

Last week I posted about using the kindlegraph, a neato tool for autographing ebooks. Soon after I blogged about it, I made my books available on kindlegraph. (Simple. All they need is the ASIN for each of your books and you’re set.) Soon after that, the nice man at kindlegraph informed me that I had received my first request for an autographed ebook. When someone asks for an autograph in person, I feel weird about it. Dealing with people over the Internet, though? That’s inside my comfort zone, along with the hot almond milk, the crackling fire in the wood stove, my blankey and teddy. I mean I’m wearing a very comfortable teddy.

Small-town terrors and psychological mayhem in Maine.
These are the foundation stories of the coming Poeticule Bay Series of suspense novels.

You can type in a message or choose a font and enter that for your signature. That felt like kind of a cheat to me. A reader had requested my signature on their copy of The Dangerous Kind & Other Stories. It didn’t seem right just to type my name and say, “See ya!”

I tried writing my signature with the mouse. It looked like I’d written my signature drunk, with my eyes closed, in kindergarten. (That brought back some memories of Scotch breath and reciting my ABCs, I can tell you.) At one point I actually did close my eyes to try to get a closer approximation of my signature through pure muscle memory. My penmanship approaches Level: Wicked Awesome, but no matter what I did, the scrawl looked just as bad. Unconvinced by my writing, my new loyal reader was sure to think I was a clumsy idiot. I simply can’t write with a mouse.

Fortunately, every time you screw up your signature, you have the option of clearing the field and beginning again. It’s very frustrating to get two-thirds through your signature, almost make it and then screw it up hideously. I felt like Batman attempting to climb out of Bane’s prison, only I had the good sense to give up.

Then I got out my Bamboo tablet and plugged it in. I should have gone with that from the start. The Bamboo comes with a pen so you can write your name like a human. Without the tablet and pen, I felt like a dull rhesus monkey with a full bladder and hives, wearing an extra thick Hazmat suit while trying to figure out the safety catch on a machine gun and balancing on a spiked ball while testy penguins are thrown at him by taunting, white-coated, angry grandmas. Uh…that was a tad hyperbolic.

Anyway, Kindlegraph is cool and I’m always ridiculously pleased to sign my books (with the burnt end of a stick if necessary.) Any of my books. In fact, I’ll sign other authors’ books, tag a subway car and sign somebody’s tits if asked nicely.

Not you, sir. Let’s just stick with the kindlegraph for you.