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

See all my books at AllThatChazz.com.

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 (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.

Author Blog Challenge 10: How to make me want to spread your word (chazzwrites.com)
Author Blog Challenge (plus a sneak peek podcast*): Outlining, pantsing, spilling & sprinting (chazzwrites.com)
PODCAST: The Letters Edition (allthatchazz.com)
Get heard: Podcast Your Book (chazzwrites.com)
Ultimate Blog Challenge: Top 10 What I’ll soon do differently with my book promotion (chazzwrites.com)
Ultimate Blog Challenge: Top 10 things I wish I didn’t know about readers (chazzwrites.com)
Ultimate Blog Challenge: Can you blog a book? Sure you can. (chazzwrites.com)

Filed under: publishing, Bigger than Jesus, blogger, blogging, book promotion, chuck palahniuk, getting listened to, getting read, Marketing, Podcast, Robert Chazz Chute, seth godin, Twitter, writer, writing

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.

Twitter Etiquette: Eh? (0x41.cc)
Twitter marketers: why almost everything you know from Facebook is wrong (venturebeat.com)
Unfollow-another poem. (raemegoneinsane.wordpress.com)
6 Reasons Why You Should Unfollow Someone On Twitter (thoughtcatalog.com)
Twitter Study: For Higher Engagement, Tweet on the Weekends (sproutsocial.com)
Rethink Your Stories (bengunty.wordpress.com)

Filed under: publishing, blogging, book promotion, Engagement, Facebook, Marketing, marketing strategy, social media, Social network, Twitter, Twitter etiquette

06/23/2012 • 5:00 PM 3

Author Blog Challenge 23: Free sex and the value of an ebook

GET BIGGER THAN JESUS

Why should he pay for the cow when he can get the milk for free? If you’re unfamiliar with this distasteful euphemism, it’s meant to control and shame women so they defy their biological needs and get married too young to the first doofus* who comes along so they won’t risk being called sluts by a repressed and repressive patriarchy and said patriarchy’s agents. It’s the same misogyny behind, “For birth control, hold an aspirin between your knees,” and “Good cowgirls keep their calves together!” It’s kind of funny the first time you hear it. Then you realize it’s a power grab meant to squelch the joys of life and your humanness. (I do love a breakdown of social constructs so the deviant subtext in revealed.) What, you ask, does that have to do with ebooks? Everything.

Yesterday began a little after 5 a.m. It continued until 3 a.m. I hasten to add there were distractions. I did stop to shower and eat. There’s a shower hose over my desk chair by the IV pole. The IV bags are full of double espresso. The desk chair is a toilet. It’s like the helpful chairs in WALL-e, before that evil little robot screwed everything up for everybody and made them get up and move around outside. Mostly, I formatted my new book. For all the work, I wonder if people will buy it when they can have it for free?

Crack the Indie Author Code: Aspire to Inspire (by Robert Chazz Chute, coming in early July!) is a book based on the best of this blog. I’m creeping up on 1,000 posts and I thought it was time I made something more concrete of it. It’ll be my favorite posts in one convenient, pithy, humorous, inspirational package. I’m editing again and updating as I go, of course. At over 90,000 words, it will be my comprehensive take on what the newbie needs to know and what the self-publishing veterans’ choir likes to sing. I wrote a note in the front matter about who the book is for. I made sure to say: Hey, if you want the milk for free, feel free to sift through the blog. ChazzWrites is free. All the podcasts at AllThatChazz are free, too. Everything I sell is so close to free in price, you’d tip the pizza guy what you’d pay for my books. Enjoy! I give freely, without remorse or hesitation or hard feelings. Surprising, because, as a cheap writer who can pinch a Canadian quarter until the moose screams (that’s “eagle screams” if you’re in the United States), I’m actually a terrible tipper.

There is a lot of information that’s free on the Internet so I try to keep ChazzWrites.com fresh and a little different — even contrarian. I think I convey that information with a certain flair, but my hairdresser thinks he’s funny, too. Meanwhile, I just wish he’d never learned to speak english. I’m not going deep into ever-changing information, either. Crack the Indie Author Code isn’t about the latest marketing theory for self-publishing. It’s evergreen stuff — old-fashioned from a new angle — about writing craft as seen through my lens and as told to any writer who is more eager for cozy inspiration than ebook marketing advice. (With the changes at Amazon, a lot of marketing theory is still up in the air, but if you want a solid marketing book that’s user-friendly, buy my friend Jeff Bennington’s book, The Indie Author’s Guide to the Universe and check his site for updates.)

Since my new book is hidden right here within nigh 1,000 posts, why buy it to put it on your e-reader? What’s the unique selling point? What’s the value to the customer? I’d say: ease of use; improved readability; improved searchability; updates; new content; improved content; my moral support and your grasping consumerism. I make better jokes as I make another pass at the content, too.

As I go through Crack the Indie Author Code, I can see how some of my ideas have changed over time. When I started this blog, I talked a lot more about craft and writing mechanics. Self-publishing needed more cheerleaders then. Now we need more leaders. Early on there was more, “Rah! Rah! Rah! Those guys in trad pub don’t get it and don’t see what’s coming!” I omitted some of those posts even though I was right. They were appropriate at the time, but it’s time to mature (the jokes are still less than mature.) Self-publishing’s next step is simply to call it publishing. We need to get past hang-ups about trad versus indie. Yes, of course, there’s still value in traditional publishing. It’s not going away. It’s just changing radically. The new paradigm is not necessarily either/or. Depending on business cases, multiple variables and your temperament, you may choose to do both and only the terminally crank y will fault you. Meanwhile, successful revolutions establish regimes.

But, will anyone bother to buy another writing book? Don’t we have enough? The broad answer is, can you get enough of whatever your passion is? More particular to my writing book, those who like my flavor will buy it. Those who won’t, won’t. That’s all beside the point, anyway. I know it’s a business, but I don’t write for you because I can’t anticipate all your variables and idiosyncrasies. I can only write to my taste. I write for your adulation, sure, but first, I write to entertain myself. I’m hoping you’ll say, “Oh, Chazz, how clever you are! I’ll buy umpteen copies for all my friends!” But before you ever get a chance to evaluate, that’s me sitting at my keyboard enjoying the dopamine trickling and tickling my neo-cortex. That’s me saying, “Oh, Chazz, how clever you are!” We write for ourselves first, not the reader. The act of writing is primary, sometimes even primal. The point is to form the thoughts, think through your typing fingers and transcend the blank page until you’re high on the creative rush.

Will Free beat out $3.99 in the cost-benefit analysis? No. You’ll buy my cow for convenience or for other variables, not least of which is, to have and to hold. And, to answer the ugly metaphor that began this piece? Most people enjoy free premarital sex and yet most people still marry (some to dark and very costly ends.) At $3.99, the risk is microscopic compared to marrying someone.

To win your $3.99, I just have to create something I’ll love.

If you’re of the same mind, I have a sale.

Back to the espresso drip. I’m off to make that dopamine gush!

* Generalizations aren’t fair. Sometimes the first doofus is the right doofus, but most people these days test out several to many doofuses before selecting the one doofus they can love (and be most angry at without opting for murder) for the length of their marriage and possibly the rest of their lives.

Maxwell Cynn: Review: Self-Help for Stoners by Chazz Chute (chazzwrites.com)
Free Tools for the Frugal Writer (chazzwrites.com)
Author Blog Challenge 17: How to talk with your graphic designer about your book cover (chazzwrites.com)
Author Blog Challenge 19: Choose how to grow your author platform (chazzwrites.com)
Author Blog Challenge: The Writing Mistake You Might be Making (chazzwrites.com)
Author Blog Challenge 13: The meek will not inherit the earth or a book deal (chazzwrites.com)
Author Blog Challenge 10: How to make me want to spread your word (chazzwrites.com)
PODCAST: The Letters Edition (allthatchazz.com)
PODCAST: The Batman Forgives Edition (allthatchazz.com)

Filed under: publishing, Amazon, Amazon Kindle, Aspire to inspire, Bigger than Jesus, Chazz, Crack the Indie Author Code, Crack the Indie Author Code: Aspire to Inspire, Dopamine, ebooks, free, free ebooks, indie author, Jeff Bennington, Kindle, Marketing, Publish, Robert Chazz Chute, self-help for stoners, self-publishing, writers, Writers Resources, writing

02/29/2012 • 9:29 PM 1

Why Amazon’s KDP Select Is God’s Gift to Authors

Via Scoop.it – Writing and reading fiction

In this guest post on The Creative Penn, my buddy Jeff Bennington lays out how KDP Select worked for him, with numbers! ~ Chazz
Via www.thecreativepenn.com

What moves books? And what is ‘Parketing’ anyway? (chazzwrites.com)
Author Marketing: Is Content Really The King of 2012? (turndog-millionaire.com)
The Pros and the Cons: Which Path is Best for You? Traditional vs. Self-Publishing (wdlady.wordpress.com)
Using Scrivener can be a ‘life-changing experience’ (teleread.com)

Filed under: ebooks, Publicity & Promotion, publishing, self-publishing, Useful writing links, Writers, Amazon, Amazon ranking, Author, book promotion, book publicity, Creative Penn, Jeff Bennington, KDP Select, Marketing, publishing

02/27/2012 • 11:43 AM 0

Using Twitter Effectively: The Magic of Tweet Adder

Via Scoop.it – Writing and reading fiction

(Great breakdown of a powerful tool. Mike has a lot of great stuff to enjoy and think about on his site. Click the link and consider Tweet Adder. ~ Chazz)
Via authormichaelhicks.com

The manual supervision of Tweet Adder (foodstaycation.com)
Automate Twitter Promotion & Marketing by TweetAdder (techmadly.com)

Filed under: Publicity & Promotion, publishing, self-publishing, Useful writing links, Writers, writing tips, book marketing, Marketing, Michael Hicks, Tweet Adder, Twitter, Writers Resources

02/26/2012 • 3:38 PM 5

What moves books? And what is ‘Parketing’ anyway?

Successful book marketing campaigns often do a lot of things at once, especially at first, before awareness of your book grows. Author Jeff Bennington, for instance, has noticed that online marketing of his books takes an hour out of each day or sales begin to dip. (More on getting you and your books’ global fame in a minute, but first let’s talk attitudes, parketing and my terrible personal deficiencies as a book marketer.)

Someone’s already saying, “An hour a day? Who has that kind of time? When will I have time to write?” You’re an artist, but you’re an artist in business. Businesses need to advertise. You’d make time to send out invoices, so make time to make people aware of your books unless you’re content writing for yourself and your kids. (Fortunately, lots of online marketing is cheap, free and fun, so there’s that.) Down the road, once you reach critical mass, maybe you’ll be able to get away with doing less marketing, but I doubt it. Coke still advertises. Manage your time and make it work.

Here’s one cheap way to promote local awareness of your books: I first heard of parketing (though it wasn’t called that then) at a writers’ conference three years ago. The marketing guru fired lots of ideas at us: blogging, tweeting, podcasts…the usual, though it was all newer, scarier stuff then. Then the guru asked, “How many of you have a car magnet advertising the cover of your book?” Not a single hand was raised, of course. The marketing guru snarked, “Yeah, why would you want to let anyone know you have a book for sale?” Park your car where lots of people will see it with your lovely book cover on it and voilà! That’s parketing.

It’s a digital world, so old-school attempts to market a book are often overlooked, often with justification. However, you may want to consider parketing in certain circumstances. This is one of those advertising strategies that has “short term” written all over it. It could work for the short term because no one is doing it. No one is doing it because your first reaction is that it sounds silly or maybe even naive or worse, beneath your dignity. If you habitually park your car in a high-visibility area (say, outside a bookstore at the mall) it sounds a little less silly. When you consider the number of businesses that do advertise this way, successfully, it sounds even less nuts. If your pockets are shallow, you can still do this. I got my car magnet from Vistaprint for less than $20.

Parketing works much better if you’re prepared to ask a bunch of friends to put car magnets on their vehicles, too. If your pockets are very deep, you could even go for the full paint job. Do that and you’ve got a marketing campaign started in your city and the basis for a press release to local newspapers and magazines. Sure, we market our ebooks globally, but we shouldn’t turn up our noses at getting noticed locally. That’s one way to get critical mass going. People in your own city, especially media, are more interested in local authors because they have a sense of ownership and familiarity with local authors. There’s a business in my city that seems to be everywhere because each employee gets a free paint job on their vehicle advertising the business. Everywhere they drive, they are advertising. It’s not that large a company (or even a particularly good one), but their ad-plastered cars seem ubiquitous, reminding everyone daily, “Here we are!”

The ad on my van gets attention because it’s just so damn weird. There is surely not another author advertising his or her book with a car magnet for hundreds of miles, so people slow down to read it. I’ve watched them slow down to look. Has it translated to sales? I don’t know. It’s just one car magnet for one book, but I do know people are reading the ad. For me, this little strategy is really just about promoting awareness so I get my name familiar. For what I spent, I’m okay with that. We gravitate toward the familiar, buying name brands instead of the unknown product (which could be just as good or better but you don’t recognize the label.) When I shop the local Asian food market, I’m actually physically uncomfortable with the cans of unknown weird stuff even though I know it’s not weird. It’s merely different. (I’m weird.)

It’s all the other stuff I do that will make the difference in the long term. There is no one way to move books. Online marketing is going to do much more because it’s everywhere. For instance, I’ve been on the air, or talked about, on six different podcasts recently (besides my own weekly podcast). That will go a lot further toward gaining some vague familiarity with my name as an author than a car magnet will for one book. Plus, I love podcasting, so I’ll always have that.

Have you guessed this post is not really about putting a magnet on your car? It’s about using multiple strategies to get attention to your books. Marketing campaigns that are single-pronged attacks do not move books. Try a lot of things, even the weird ideas if they make sense to you. Experiment and have fun with it if you can. Try to get your name out there, arriving from several places, preferably at once. We must reach outside of our circles of family and friends to move books.

I’m often reluctant to try new book marketing strategies until I see them tested by others. That’s why I missed out on the benefit of KDP Select while some others made whacko cash last December. I haven’t jumped on Pinterest because I read one blog about their scary terms of service. These are my deficiencies. I’m often too timid about doing things that are good for me. Everything new feels weird at first. Unfamiliar doesn’t mean wrong. Unfamiliar simply means unfamiliar. In our marketing efforts, should we proceed with caution? Sure. Don’t get taken, but do proceed and make progress.

What are the book marketing basics? Write a good book. Get it edited. Get a great cover design. Price it right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know all that.

What then? Then go buy my buddy Jeff Bennington’s new book, The Indie Author’s Guide to the Universe. I’m reading it right now and I especially like the things you can do to sell your books that are free. Let him show you the way forward. The best marketing strategies are not static. They come and go and rise and fall so we have to stay current and open to experimentation with new opportunities as they arise.

That’s what I’m trying to do, anyway, and that’s what this blog is about.

~ Robert Chazz Chute is the author of a bunch of great ebooks of suspense with titles he now realizes generally repel you. He podcasts a comedy/narrative show, Self-help for Stoners, every Thursday night. To learn more, go to AllThatChazz.com.

Does Promotion Work for Small Press Authors? (bookbrowsing.wordpress.com)
Self-pub Highlights: The Best and Worst of the First and How to Succeed by Failing (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)
The My Bloody Throat Edition (allthatchazz.com)
PODCAST: The Forays in Self-consciousness Edition (allthatchazz.com)
Scott Nicholson: Generosity marketing is not marketing (chazzwrites.com)
Is Give to Get wrong? (chazzwrites.com)

Filed under: ebooks, Media, My fiction, podcasts, Publicity & Promotion, publishing, Useful writing links, web reviews, What about Chazz?, What about you?, writing tips, advertising, advertising strategies, Author, book, Book cover, Business, Indie Author's Guide to the Universe, Jeff Bennington, KDP Select, Magnet, Marketing, marketing campaigns, parketing, Pinterest, selfpublish, successful book marketing, Vistaprint

02/13/2012 • 11:35 AM 1

How to Create Your Writer’s Brand Online

Via Scoop.it – Writing and reading fiction

Gail Kavanagh gives you something to think about: what keywords are associated with your brand? What keywords are you allowing to define you? Click the link to read her post.
Via www.writing-world.com

Filed under: Publicity & Promotion, publishing, self-publishing, Author, book promotion, brand, key words, Marketing, publicity, writer

11/24/2011 • 2:40 PM 0

Why Your Publishing Dreams Don’t Matter: Jabs & Counterpunches

A comedian once said, “You know who cares about your problems more than you do? Nobody.”

I’ve opened and closed two alternative medicine practices. The first time I shut it down because I moved far away. The second time was November 1, to write and publish full-time (and here we are!) With each experience I learned this: It is stupefying how unimportant I am. When a business is over, it’s over. People with whom I’d developed long relationships moved on, disappeared and, for them, I no longer exist. They came for a service and they have no interest in checking out what I’m doing now. For most, you have one role that fulfills their needs and just because you’re interested in something new means nothing. I’m not bitter. (Really!) But I was…inexplicably…surprised. On my last day of work, there were no fireworks. Just a little second-guessing: What have I done?! And rum. I toasted my wall certificates and twenty years of service now behind me.

I had a similar surprise with the birth of our first child. I thought the universe should stop, leave us alone and just send in the checks, thank you very much. And shouldn’t every child born in a hospital receive a plaque that stays up forever? (True story: as I stood by She Who Must Be Obeyed while she was in scary labour, a client walked into my office and complained to my secretary that I wasn’t available. And she was really angry about it. As an accomplished massage therapist, even I couldn’t pull said client’s head out of an ass that deep.)

Diagnosis?

Silly Narcissism and Advanced Entitlement Syndrome.

The disease is a pandemic, a silent killer of your hopes and dreams of literary legacy.

And so we come to your dreams in publishing. I have dreams, too. And they don’t matter, either. No one owes us a chance. The only way to develop an audience is to give people a reason to pay for your book with your unique voice, your twisted plot, your different take, your soaring prose, your quirky charm and wit. Or at least have a sexy cover and write a book blurb that makes them suspect you might be capable of these talents. People pay for books because they read your amazing blurb or someone they trust recommended it or you got a good review or a great intro from a celebrity or won a major contest or they received a free excerpt and (this is critical) you entranced and engaged them.

Jab:

Your friends and family? They’re already tired of you going on about your book.

(Don’t feel bad. It happens to everyone. I’ve already exhausted my friends, too. And I have so few.)

Counterpunch:

Extend your reach somehow.

Get into Goodreads, do a podcast, hold a contest, do a give away, do press, make an event.

In short, do something that engages strangers with your work. That’s right. Scary strangers who may hate you. Your mom can only buy so many copies.

There’s a parallel in stand up comedy. It’s really hard to get a start in stand up. First, you have to be funny and you need to write a lot. The hard part is the on the job training where you get onstage at open mics and start impressing people or humiliating yourself horribly in ways you never really forget and hardly ever live down without therapy.

Some comedians start out with “Bringers.” A Bringer is where a club manager will let you on his stage to do your act as long as you bring a bunch of friends to fill seats and pay for the two-drink minimum on a Monday night at 11:30 PM. It’s scuzzy. You perform (a bad act) for free, the club gets paid on an otherwise off night and, you hope, your friends laugh. They’re your buddies so they probably will laugh. And that’s the problem. It’s safe and you won’t know what’s really working and worse? You probably paid for half their drinks and their tickets. Instead, perform in front of dangerous strangers.

Artists must write and paint and dance and sculpt and perform for strangers. It’s not really working unless people—who could hate your work—love your work.* Your publishing dream is a nightmare until people you don’t know start a buzz about your books.

This is not to say that friends can’t help you in your publishing journey. I am saying friends can’t carry you all the way around the track. You must somehow figure out how to expand your network beyond the people you know and the immediate few contacts of the people you know. We must all write for strangers. After they decide they like what you write, maybe you could be Facebook friends.

Don’t give up on your dreams. Do wake up to make them happen.

Yes, that sounds like the platitude pasted under a sunset in one of those inspirational posters people routinely ignore.

*”It’s not really working unless people—who could hate your work—love your work.” Please note: Many of your critics make no distinction between you and your work and you certainly won’t, either. I was being coy. Art, especially now, is a business of personality. This business couldn’t be more personal. Those strangers who hate your work will actually hate you and they all want to cut you with rusty spoons.**

**This point is only mildly overstated for full effect. Have a nice, productive day.

Self-publishers: Why I went multimedia (and why you should, too) (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)
Hurray! I have an author profile on Goodreads! (allthatchazz.com)
Marketing Tip for Self-Publishers (thedarkglobe.wordpress.com)
Do it Yourself: Self-Published Authors Take Matters Into Their Own Hands (themillions.com)

Filed under: ebooks, getting it done, Publicity & Promotion, self-publishing, writing tips, Blurb, books, buy books, ebooks, entitlement, Goodreads, Marketing, Narcissism, obscurity, promotion, publicity, publishing

12/31/2010 • 4:21 PM 1

Writers: Top 10 of the 2010 Top 10 Chazz Writes posts

Early last year I considered going back to school to become a librarian. (I dumped that idea before I saw this graphic, but it does make me feel better about my choice.)

After some career counselling, I decided to refocus my efforts on my writing and editing. I needed (and need!) to bring art to the front burner. I began this blog as part of reorganizing my life to that end. Since last May I’ve posted 402 times and gained lots of readers, friends and even some clients (hurrah!) Things progress.

For lucky #403, this is a look back through the Top 10 lists of 2010:

1. Authors! Part II: Top Ten Lessons from the Networking Master

2. Top 10 Ways Writers Waste Time

3. Writers & Editors: Top 10 Editorial Considerations

4. (Top 10 Things +1) Writers Love

5. Top 10 Reasons We Write Sci-fi

6. Top 10 (plus one) Publishing Conference Lessons

7. Top 10 Things Writers Fear

8. Top 10 Reasons We Write Horror

9. Top 10 Reasons We Write Romance

10. Writers Top Ten: Why blogging about publishing is important

Top 10 (actually 12) of 2010 (organizeyourstuffnow.com)
My favorite “Best of 2010″ lists (westernthm.wordpress.com)
Top 10 things you shouldn’t say to your clients (apublicdefender.com)
Top 10 Luxury Adventures of the Year (luxist.com)
Top 10 Films of 2010 (collider.com)

Filed under: authors, Books, ebooks, Editing, Editors, getting it done, Horror, Publicity & Promotion, publishing, Rant, Top Ten, Useful writing links, Writers, writing tips, agents, Art, books, editors, fiction, Marketing, Publish, publishers, publishing, Top 10 lists, writer, writers, Writers Resources

12/30/2010 • 12:06 PM 2

Book Marketing: What I learned from Joe Rogan

Image by Jordan Larrigan via Flickr

Joe Rogan has one of the most interesting podcasts on the net. You might know him as the Fear Factor Guy, or the ultimate fighting commentator or as Joe Guerrelli, the electrician on News Radio who made his own duct tape. (News Radio is still one of the best sitcoms ever, by the way.) There’s a lot more to him than that, though. He’s a walking, talking brain-stimulant. Plus, he makes me laugh my ass off.

I caught his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, in which he was talking about the challenges of marketing. It was kind of a throw-away comment about the crazy world of stand-up comedy, but I got a lot out of it that applies to books and writers, too.

As a young comic, Joe left the marketing to someone else. He didn’t see his marketing as his job. He was doing stand-up. He didn’t feel he should have to be hysterically funny, crass and thought-provoking and sell the tickets, too.

When he saw how badly people were selling him—or that no one was selling him at all—he took up that responsibility. Now he tweets his shows and promotes himself through podcasting, YouTube, web presence and appearances on radio, other podcasts, etc.,… Rogan’s got a cult. Rogan has staked out his land. He has followers and fans. Joe Rogan is not melting into the background of the culture’s collage.

Many writers still hope someone else will take care of marketing their books. The truth is, unless you were already huge, in most cases your publisher didn’t do a great job marketing your book. They didn’t send out that many review copies. They didn’t publicize you enough. They probably didn’t have the budget for it and if they did have a budget for your book, it was built on short-term thinking. If your book didn’t take off right away, they were off to some other author quickly to try to capitalize on short-term heat and newness. That kind of thinking is going out the window with technology.

Be fair. Publishers have many authors on their list. You’re just one and so their efforts must be scattered. Who can focus on your book the most? You can. Who can spend money on a book launch? You. (That’s what that piddling advance you got is really for.) Writers have long memories and enjoy nostalgia, so some of us are still in love with the idea of writing our books in isolation and never having to interact with a fan, a hater, or the indifferent. It’s time for all of us to get past that ideal and put on our big-boy underwear and big-girl panties. Whether you’re going indie or are with a traditional publisher, the self-promotion side of the business really has been an indie-spirit proposition for a very long time. Don’t feel bad about it, it’s a common misconception. Instead, embrace the energy of the challenge.

Who is thinking about each book on a long-term sales basis? That would be you because publisher’s talk about “their” list, but that book isn’t theirs. It’s yours. Your name is on it so you care about it more than anyone, right? That means you have to take the responsibility it promote it and help your audience find your story amid a sea of books. Daunting yes, but that’s what building your platform is all about.