Balancing Act

Writers enjoy, or at least can tolerate, hours of being alone with their thoughts. I’ve met many people who talk about writing a book but never do it. I can predict the ones who won’t ever “find the time”. They’re outgoing and always have full social calendars. In other words, people who need people - a lot. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve found writing and a full social calendar to be mutually exclusive. My friends who are way more outgoing than I would be miserable sitting in  a room alone for hours and hours writing. And hours. More hours. I can hear their agonized screams.
Which brings me back to the subject of career writers making social media and promotion work for us. Frequent discussions among writers about jumping into social media, mingling at conferences, and self promotion have familiar subtexts. They are:

• “Oh God. Do I have to?”
• “No, no. Don’t make me!”
• “If I have to, I will.”
• “Is there another way?”
• “Okay. Fine. I’ll do something.”< insert long sigh>

Those who shudder at the “get out there” advice are just being normal writers. Translation - hermits. There are two schools of thought.

1. Yes, you have to promote yourself and your books. No one will buy your book if they don’t know about it. Blog! Do blog tours! You don’t have a Facebook page! Are you insane? Get one! Like yesterday!
2. Write book. Release book. Repeat. Yes, put up a nice looking website that lists your books. But do it and get back to writing. Fast.The best promotion of your writing is to write more books and stories.

Yes, I know you’ll get advice to promote. For all the writers whose sales spike, an equal number who don’t see a big change. But here are some tips based on my l-o-o-oong experience:

• A static website with updates really is a standard these days. If your site includes a blog and people get on your nerves, turn off comments.  :-)  Blog about subjects related to your books such as historical facts, info about the setting of book or series, etc. You know; stuff that interests you. People who read your books will also be interested.
• If you can, take your time and find SOMETHING to enjoy about Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, blogging, etc. No rush. Pick one. Sometimes you just have to give it a chance. Took me a good two years to “like” Facebook.
• Promotion and marketing does work - trouble is nobody can predict when or if it will work for you. Manage your expectations. I’ve found that one ad or effort rarely leads to blockbuster results. That’s like winning the lottery. It happens, but... A cumulative effect is the reality for most authors. I’ve been doing various things since 1995. Yeah, that long.
• Spend most of your time writing.

Here is my super simple Facebook page. No bells, no whistles.
www.facebook.com/lynn.emery.author Tip: I have a different personal profile (different e-mail addy) . When I blundered into Facebook two years ago I made the mistake of just putting up a page. Soon I had writing related “friends” I hardly knew mixed in with family. My brother, nephew, cousins, old buddies shared pics and information really on suitable for my personal circle. Some of my peeps fell into the TMI trap. Thanks to a VA (virtual assistant), my first personal profile was switched to a “page”. I set up a new profile and re-invited family and “almost family” friends to “friend” me again. Much better.
Now your turn. Share promo tips and what has worked for you so we can help each other.
Lynn Emery

Guest author Jeffrey Rasley: 3 Requirements for Meaningful Memoir Writing

Jeff Rasley

I began keeping a journal when I hitchhiked from Indiana to Florida and then to New Orleans for Mardi Gras at age 18. For a small town Hoosier kid, some of the characters I met on the road amazed and moved me. There was the back woods Tennessean couple who lived off shooting squirrels and rabbits. They drove me as far as I was willing to pay for gas.  The town constable of Pleasureville, Kentucky put me up for a night, fed me, and staked me in a match with the local table tennis champion.  I lost.  Four guys from Chicago loaned me their Ford Maverick to drive from Miami back to Chicago while they went to Jamaica to become drug dealers.  They were kicked out of Jamaica and had to retrieve the car in New Orleans where I left it with a burned out clutch.

My travel adventures over the years have taken me to many places far more exotic than Pleasureville, KY, and led to encounters with characters more interesting than incompetent Chicago drug dealers.  But that first great adventure inspired a habit of keeping a travel journal.  As I developed an interest in writing and began to practice the craft by submitting feature articles, my journal served as a primary source.

Of course, a publishable article requires more than a mere recording of events.  The serious memoir writer must interpret meaning from one's  experiences, but meaning beyond the immediacy of the moment.  I would record in my journal the facts of a travel experience and my reaction to it.  To turn the journal writing into a worthy article or book there had to be an insight, lesson or wisdom which I could offer to others.

The personal essays I have been inspired to write are mostly about extreme experiences such as Himalayan mountain climbing or solo sea-kayaking.  I have learned important lessons about life from these adventures.  For example, I was inspired to write about the strength and beauty of the human spirit and the willingness to be self-sacrificial after witnessing a Nepalese guide and porter risk their lives to save and care for others who had been trapped by an avalanche.  I wrote about the need to respect other species and their habitat after an encounter with a mother humpback whale and calf.  The mother allowed me to caress her calf because I approached them with respect.

After twenty years of article writing I had accumulated enough material and confidence to risk a book.  I was lucky.  I sent it unsolicited without representation to Conari Press, and they published Bringing Progress to Paradise.

Essential to making a memoir interesting and worthy of publication is to have a central theme that carries the narrative forward.  Without a thematic narrative, we are back to mere observation or a random collection of insights without a guiding light.  The narrative must include factual details to make it interesting.  Without interesting, quirky or astonishing factual details, a personal essay is boring.  A point made in the abstract is likely to be forgotten as soon as the reading device is turned off.

Finally, the memoirist should have a fine tuned sense of personal ethics.  The last point I cover when teaching a class about memoir writing is to consider carefully whether to identify or to change the identity of individuals, organizations or companies referred to in the piece.  Friendships can be damaged and libel/defamation suits can be filed.  It is easy enough to disguise an identity with a fake name and to attribute some intentionally misleading characteristics to protect the privacy or reputation of a person or organization.  Consider the consequences and choose wisely.

In Bringing Progress to Paradise a character named Bill represents the quintessential "ugly American" tourist.  I included accurate descriptions of Bill's culturally insensitive behaviors in the book.  I decided it was important to the narrative theme to show the negative of one of the truths I wanted to convey, which was how to engage productively with local people in alien cultures.  The name "Bill" was a pseudonym and aspects of him were changed so as to disguise his identity.  Still, I lost a friendship as a result of the book.  I'm still ambivalent about whether it was worth it.

Jeff is giving away a copy of Bringing Progress to Paradise to one lucky commenter on this post. Good luck!

***

Jeff Rasley is author of Monsters of the Midway, Light in the Mountains—A Hoosier Quaker Finds Communal Enlightenment in Nepal, Islands in My Dreams, Nepal Himalayas in the Moment, False Prophet and Bringing Progress to Paradise.  He has published numerous articles and photos in academic and mainstream periodicals, including Newsweek, Chicago Magazine, ABA Journal, Family Law Review, Pacific Magazine, Indy’s Child, The Journal of Communal Societies, The Chrysalis Reader, Faith & Fitness Magazine, Friends Journal and Real Travel Adventures International Magazine.  

An avid outdoorsman and recreational athlete, Rasley leads trekking-mountaineering expeditions in Nepal and has solo-kayaked around several Pacific island groups. He is currently partner in Knowledge Capture Publishing and Editing, president of the Basa Village Foundation USA Inc. and U.S. liaison for the Nepal-based Himalayan expedition company, Adventure GeoTreks, Ltd.  He teaches classes for IUPUI Continuing Ed. Program and Indiana Writers Center.

Jeff Rasley's website: http://www.jeffreyrasley.com
His author page on Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/jeffrasleypage

Do you know where your stories are?

This post is very late, please accept my apologies. I had everything typed up and ready to go and then I left my laptop on a plane somewhere between St. Kitts and Washington DC. It could have been devastating. Of course, there was one absolutely brilliant short story that I had written that I have now lost (I dare you to prove otherwise), but other than that, everything was backed up, so my loss was the hardware, which is significant but thankfully replaceable.

So this post is on the mundane issue of backing up. We can write the most articulate and mind-blowing stories, however, if we don't back up, we are basically playing the lottery with our work.You don't even have to be as careless (I prefer 'temporarily confused') as I was to lose your data. A power surge (ok, maybe that only happened in Ghana), a random hard drive crash or a virus (a whole other topic) can cause you to lose all of your data.

You can use CDs, DVDs or flash drives but my personal opinion is that it is never a good idea to keep anything sacred on media that is so easy to misplace or to sustain damage. External hard drives are also a good option, although you need to keep them somewhere separate from the rest of your hardware so that if there is a physical problem - power surge or fire, it will not affect your originals and your backups.

Cloud backups (backups to online servers) are becoming very popular now and are a good option. Some are free, but most are inexpensive. This is a good option once you go with a reliable provider.

What do you use for backing up your work? How often do you backup? Share your experiences with us.

How-To ...

Hard-pressed to find a short story idea? Look no further than the How-To genre.  Offering simple directions for accomplishing specific tasks, How-To articles provide an ideal starting point for your next short story.  They begin with a problem and end with a solution – the perfect short story arc. 

A cursory review of How-To articles currently floating around the internet turned up the following:

1) How-To Find Love on Twitter

2) How-To Train Your Cat to Use the Toilet

3) How-To Lose 200 lbs. in 200 Days

Each one of these is a prompt for a story waiting to be told.  The trick to crafting a good How-To story is to select the right article, one that meets the following three criteria:

1) the topic must be interesting

2) the topic must be doable

3) the topic must be somewhat complex

Consider the following ideas:

1) How-To Carve a Potato – this fails the first criterion.  Nobody cares.  Anybody who wants to do this already knows how.

2) How to Make Kittens – this fails the second criterion.  It is not doable, unless you’re a cat, so there’s no point in writing it.  Cats are poor readers.

3) How to Make Orange Soda by Combining Orange Juice and Club Soda - this fails the third criterion.  There is no complexity to it.

So what works?  The following titles are up for grabs.  If you like one or more of them, go for it.  Just remember me come holiday time.

1)    How-To Make Toothpaste from a Mango

2)    How-To Erase Wrinkles Using Just a Crock Pot and a Garage Door Opener

3)    How-To Protect Your Pet from Identity Theft

Here’s an example of a successful How-To piece that meets all three criteria.  It’s interesting, doable, and complex enough in these tough economic times.  It was a story waiting to be told.

How to Buy Vodka in a Recession

“I don’t have a lot of money,” I told the liquor store clerk.  He knows me; we go way back.  “But that doesn’t mean I’m willing to sacrifice on quality.”

“How much do you have?”

I held up a handful of coins.  “$2.34”

He reached for a miniature bottle of Smirnoff.  “This is the best I can do.” 

           

“No.”  I shook my head.  “It’s really too small.  What else do you have?”

           

“Nothing, nothing at all, except … no.”

           

“What?”

           

He sighed and pulled a liter bottle from under the counter.  The label was Russian.  “I don’t know if you’re ready.  It’s made from turnips.”

           

“What’s it like?”

           

“It’s a low-born vodka, sullen with a harrowing finish.  It’s the kind of tipple you’d want along on a cold November morning if you were stripping wallpaper in Minsk.”

           

“How much?”

           

“$1.17.”

           

I did the math.  “I’ll take two.”

Social Media Strategies...HELP!!!

Sunny Frazier’s Novel Spaces blogpost, “Why you got that rejection letter” was an eye opener for me. You see, when I first wrote my books, my aim was anonymity to some extent. At least I wanted to keep my personal and professional life distinct from my writing life. It came immediately apparent that that was not to be. Liane invited me to participate in this blog. I had never blogged before, and I wasn’t even sure I knew what a blog was. But I accepted the invitation and it opened up a whole new world to me. Then I got a Facebook page, mainly for contact with readers, and LinkedIn profile.

The problem is I still don’t know how to effectively utilize the social media. Yes I have the Facebook page, but I find it unappealing to log on and read “friends” posts of what they had for dinner last night or their high scores on internet games, or see a million and one invitations for Farmville or Cityville or offers of alien cookies. I got sick of people I know personally airing their dirty laundry about their relationships and venting about how life screwed them. I hear people talk of spending hours on Facebook just hanging out and not writing. I have the opposite problem. I have to make an appointment with myself to log on, and I have a hard time posting updates. It’s even worst with LinkedIn and I would not know what to post on Twitter if I had an account.

So here is where you come in. I would like tips on how to best utilize social media to market yourself even if you don’t have a published book or one ready to hit the market.

How can we make Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, Twitter work for us in getting our names out there?

What is your personal strategy?

What blogs are the most effective in accomplishing high profile name recognition?

Whether you are a published author, aspiring author, Indie author, agent, publisher, publicist or reader please let me know in your comments what social media strategies are most effective for promotion and name recognition.

Can't Authors and Reviewers Just Get Along?

It’s quite possible that you’ve missed the entire brouhaha ricocheting through the internet these past couple of weeks among blogger/reviewers and authors.  If so, good for you but, since I’m going to add my little two cents, you might want to get a taste of what has been going on here and here.  Don’t forget to come back once you’ve scrolled through as much as you can take.

Okay, now you’re more or less up to speed on the opinions and perspectives of the various parties, you’ll have realized that the discussion has become a bit heated.  Creatives and critics have always had differences.  (Read about a famous one here).  It comes with the territory.  A writer, painter, composer, whatever, comes up with a marvelous idea and works hard to make it real.  They think their creation is the greatest thing since sliced bread but, when they put it before the public, somebody begs to differ.  That was okay back in the day when expressing an opinion required sitting down and writing a letter to the editor.  Only the very passionate would bother.

Nowadays, though, we have the internet where opinions on either side can flame through the online community in just hours, pulling hundreds of partisans into the fray.  Given all that, and given the fact that I’ve just released a book and have learned a few things about the experience of being reviewed I’d thought I’d share how things went with me and even offer some advice about how you might want to approach reviewers if a release is in your near future.

While Jessamine was still in the editing stage I started going through the Net looking for blogs that reviewed books with plots similar to Jessamine.  Jessamine is set on a Caribbean island and is told from the point of view of two very different women from two very different eras.  I considered it literary women’s historical fiction so I looked for reviewers who liked books in any one of those genres.  I avoided bloggers/reviewers who concentrated solely on YA, urban fiction, science fiction, etc.  Basically I Googled ‘women fiction reviews’ and also reviews of books I thought were similar to mine.  I came up with a list of about fifty or so reviewers.

Every time I found a reviewer who looked likely I spent time on their blog.  Most reviewers have a Review Policy tab at the top of their page (some put it under their Contact information) and I made sure to read what they’d written carefully.  If they were closed to submissions or if they didn’t review indie authors, they didn’t go on my list (unless I was really, really impressed by the blog and found the reviewer’s opinion on books very similar to mine and hoped against hope they’d take a chance on Jessamine).  If some reviewers have a form on their site they like authors to use or require the inclusion of very specific information, I made a note on my list.

Reviewers, like agents and editors, appreciate knowing that the people contacting them took the time to find out their name so, if that was available on their About Me page or in their profile, I wrote it down.

Then I drafted a short email, very similar in tone and content to the kind of query I’d have sent to an agent or editor.  The email gave a brief summary of the plot, the page count, information on where and when the book would be published and a few details about my own publishing history.  What I didn’t do was attach the manuscript.  Instead, I asked them to contact me if they would be interested in receiving a PDF copy of the manuscript to review.

About half never replied at all.

Of the half that got back to me, a handful responded to say that they were backed up and wouldn’t be able to get to Jessamine by my publication date.  Fair enough.  The rest said they’d be delighted and would I please send the manuscript.  To date, of the ones who said they’d do a review, only slightly more than half have followed through and actually done reviews on their blogs and/or at Goodreads or Amazon.  Why did those bloggers/reviewers ask for a copy of the manuscript and not do the promised review?  I haven’t a clue but I don’t suspect malice – maybe they’ve had a medical or other emergency, maybe they wanted to do it but just haven’t found the time, maybe they started reading it and found it wasn’t quite their cup of tea.  There are probably as many reasons as there are reviewers and I’m not going to lose sleep over it.  Since I sent the manuscript electronically, it’s not as if I lost out on the postage or am out of pocket in any way and, who knows, maybe they’ll do it at some point in the future. 

So what would I advise?  A few things.

1.  Choose bloggers/reviewers wisely.  Research them so you’re not sending historical fiction to someone who mostly reads urban fiction or a thriller to someone who doesn’t often read outside the romance genre.

2.  Take the time to learn the blogger’s name and try to personalize your email, insofar as you can.  Treat a review request as professionally as you would an agent query.

3.  Cast as wide a net as possible.  Most writers send out dozens of queries before they land an agent and you should expect to do the same for reviewers.  Remember, it’s unlikely that everyone you send a review request to will do one, so the more people you ask, the better.

4.  Don’t hound them.  I have not contacted any of those who received a copy of Jessamine but never posted a review.  Maybe they’ll get to it, maybe they won’t but, right now, I’m concentrating on finishing up the edits to my next novel.

5.  Thank the reviewers who followed-through, even when they didn’t love your book or gave you less stars than you think you deserve.  If you’ve got a back-list, consider rewarding reviewers of your latest book with a copy of a past release.  If you’re offering a novel or novella free for a short time, make sure to send an email about it to everybody who has ever reviewed you.  It’s a nice way of saying thanks and maybe you’ll get another review out of it.

6.  Never, ever get into a debate on the merits of your work with a reviewer.  If someone didn’t like your book, never mind, move on.  Even if their review was scathingly over the top, even if you felt personally attacked, move on.  Readers may not notice when you take the high road, but they will certainly notice when you don’t.  Pour all your bile and vitriol into the characterization of the villain in your next book, see if there’s anything at all you can learn from the negative review, and MOVE ON.

The Dorchester debacle: A happy ending?

Amazon.com, in its quest to cement its position as a major publisher, has started buying the backlists of troubled companies. It recently acquired Avalon Books, and next in line is Dorchester Publishing whose author list includes Louis L’Amour, Zane Grey, Connie Mason, Nalini Singh—and several Novel Spaces members and former members including Jewel Amethyst, Farrah Rochon, Phyllis Bourne and yours truly, Liane Spicer. 

There’s an old Chinese curse that goes ‘May you live in interesting times’. I’m not sure whether I’ve been blessed or cursed to have entered the mainstream publishing arena at a time when things got ‘interesting’. The influence of the Internet and social media, the advent of e-books and digital readers, free reading apps for devices, independent publishing opportunities with Amazon and Barnes and Noble—all of these began to snowball around the time my agent sold my first novel. The industry has been in turmoil since, with Dorchester becoming one of the early casualties.

Dorch has been embattled for years, selling the backlist of its historically top-selling authors to Avon Publications (now an imprint of Harper Collins) about two years ago in an attempt to become financially viable. It also discontinued production of mass market paperbacks and moved to digital and trade size, then to digital only. None of these manoeuvres saved the company, however. Debts to warehouses, distributors and authors went unpaid: it is estimated that the company owes several million dollars in back royalties alone.

The authors gritted their teeth and prepared for drawn-out bankruptcy proceedings that would tie up their rights for years and pay them pennies on the dollar, or nothing at all.

In a move that left the industry slack-jawed, Dorchester’s owner foreclosed on the company earlier this year to recover a 3.4 million dollar loan. In March, the Dorchester Media magazine division was sold, with the expectation that the book publishing division would be next. The publisher’s representatives began dropping hints that a deal with a ‘major publisher’ was in the works. Three weeks ago the speculation ended. The ‘major publisher’ was Amazon Publishing—just as industry insiders had suspected.

What does this mean for the Dorchester authors who will have the option to sign on with Amazon if all goes as planned?

My take is that it means different things for authors at different stages of their careers. One author who has been a bestseller for many years now publishes her backlist herself and makes royalties of 65 to 80 percent on those indie titles. She plans to turn down Amazon’s offer. Others with sizeable backlists whose rights were reverted before the meltdown have done likewise and are making more money now than they ever did with Dorchester. The rest of us are neither in the position of the NYT bestsellers nor the ones with a pile of reverted titles: we don’t have sizeable backlists; we have not been in the business for decades; we do not have a readership built up over many years. Amazon is offering us a viable option to build our audience with the backing of a major publisher. Many of us did not get that chance because Dorchester sank before our careers got going.

My first novel, Café au Lait, garnered stellar reviews. The second, Give Me the Night, was optioned to Dorchester but they never even got a chance to look at it before they tanked. Phyllis's Operation Prince Charming was released the same month the publisher virtually went out of business, and even the great reviews could not save it. A number of authors waited in vain for their debut titles to hit the shelves. The last couple of years have been disastrous for all of us with titles tied to Dorchester; many authors have been battling the company to recover royalties and to have the rights to titles reverted, and the Amazon buyout could mark the end of a gruelling road. According to Publisher’s Weekly:

Moving forward, Dorchester authors will, Amazon said, be offered the choice about how they want their titles published. An Amazon spokesperson explained: “We want all authors to be happy being a part of the Amazon Publishing family going forward and we have structured our bid so that we will only take on authors who want to join us. As part of this philosophy, if we win the bid, Dorchester has committed to revert all titles that are not assigned to us.

So, would I take up the option to become a part of the Amazon Publishing family? Very likely. Amazon Publishing is in a growth phase, unlike the decline being experienced by the other players in the industry. It has the immense clout of Amazon’s marketing machinery behind it. It appears to be the future of publishing (at least in the short term) with its emphasis on innovation, and on giving customers what they want in terms of both product and service. It offers competitive royalty rates and does not try to hold on to authors’ rights for five to ten years as was the norm.

None of the authors I know who have already signed on with Amazon are complaining. I don't expect to either.

—Liane Spicer