Using Your Also-Boughts to Find Natural Marketing Connections for Your Books

One critical element to the ongoing steady sales of your books is the pairings Amazon makes between your title and other books in the online store.

Whether you are just interested in what books are bought alongside with yours, or if you are trying to evaluate whether or not your own books are paired well with your other titles, Yasiv.Com is a nifty tool for reviewing your also-bought chain, if you know how to use it.

The also-boughts are the list of books on your product page on Amazon. For my novel Baby Dust, they look like this:

If your book is new, it may not yet have any also-boughts. If it sells slowly at first, it may have also-VIEWS instead. One of my books for kids alternates between also-boughts and also-views.

Over at Yasiv.Com, you can type your book into their tool and see the initial chain of books that are connected to yours.

 

It shows 53 connections to Baby Dust. The arrows give you an idea of what books point to each other, but you'll notice no arrows are pointing to Baby Dust. It would appear at first glance that nothing sends you to my book.

 

I know this isn't true, because sales are steady, and I know Amazon is keeping that humming via also-boughts. So I typed in another one of the books that I could see on my chart. It took a few tries, but I finally found one that showed my book, and this chart gave me a better picture of the also-boughts leading to and away from my book. Remember that you can click and drag on the chart to move around and see books that have fallen off the page.

 

 

Once you see the also-bought connections, you can explore further to see how those other books are doing in the rankings, and strengthen the connections by cross promoting.

 

One of my favorite ways (cheap, easy, effective and FUN) to promote books is to contact authors whose books are already being connected to mine based on buying patterns and have us promote to each other's readerships.

 

We can't possibly write enough books to satisfy our readers (I'm doing one per year that ties into this readership) and so it makes sense to find authors whose books are a natural fit and sell to each other's audience when we can. Using our mailing lists (try MailChimp for a free way to get started), give aways (share a Rafflecopter), and social media, we can spread the word about each other's books and feel confident that their readers are also our readers.

 

______________________________

 

Deanna Roy is the author of numerous fiction and nonfiction on issues of finding love and building a family.

 

Evaluating the ROI on paid book promotions

Many times when I ask how a fellow author has done on a recent book promotion, I hear, "I got to #500 on Amazon!" Or maybe, "I sold 300 copies!"

Both of those things are squee-worthy, but the excitement of zooming up the charts does wear off during the plummet back down, especially when you take a look at what the financial numbers bear out.

Last weekend, I did a promo with the KBoards. Now, I mainly did this promo to support Harvey, who created an excellent forum that has gained me many amazing author friends and priceless advice. So even bombing out on this promo would have been fine by me. Supporting a site you love is still a valid reason to pony up cash.

But it provided a great opportunity to objectively view a common type of promotion--an ad sent out via an email and social media blast by a web site with large lists of followers and fans.

Baby Dust has been through many promos, so I have a good idea how it does compared to other books like it. A Pixel of Ink promo in June 2012 (which you can't buy, POI chooses you randomly), netted 311 sales in two days. And an Ereader News Today promo last September got me 427 sales in two days for a cost of $30. But those are the heavy hitters, and getting booked with them is partly eligibility requirements and partly luck.

Lots of us will try the more usual outlets, and the Kboards are pretty typical in their numbers of subscribers and social media following.

Since most promos want to promote a sale, I dropped the price of Baby Dust to $2.99, half price, for three days to give all the late viewers time to click through, plus to build on any bonus exposure on Amazon. Three days is what I have found to be a typical longevity of a paid promo.

Normally in three days for Baby Dust on Amazon, I would sell 12 copies at $5.99 and make $50.

• For the three days starting with the spotlight ad, I sold 27 copies at $2.99.
• This made an income of $54.
• Subtract the cost of the ad ($50) and I made $4.
• I hit a high rank of #900 during the promo.

Breaking even on an ad is nice, but I did actually lose $46 by doing this promotion when the full ROI is evaluated, including how much I would have made without it.

• Now, there are other benefits to doing ads. If you have a series, you could sell through to other books.
• You can gain longer exposure due to a bump, although this particular promo didn't create a bump that helped with sales. I was back to 4 sales on day 3.
• If you are getting nowhere at all, and you don't have money coming in, or if it's a new title, then doing a promotion like this is a good idea as it is break-even on its own.

Certainly squee when the squeeing is good, but for long-term sales of a steady book, always evaluate the big picture. What does this promo really do for my book? Will I be better off after the promo effects have died down? And even if the promo breaks even, did I actually end up in a good financial place afterward?

One thing I've learned after two years of self-publishing, when you have a slow steady seller that provides a base income, let it be. Clearly your also-boughts and listings are balanced.

For new books or failing books, an ad like the Kboards is one way to try and launch you into that steady place of regular sales with a low outlay of investment. You can take a look at what their spotlight ads look like (here was mine) and the various types of other ads they offer.
_________________

Deanna Roy is the author of numerous fiction and nonfiction titles under four pen names.

Book Launch Infrastructure: Amazon Reviews

A few months back Deanna wrote an excellent post on the timeline for a book launch. I'm going to tackle one small but crucial aspect of a successful indie book launch: getting a critical mass of reviews on Amazon. Laying aside the various issues with Amazon reviews for the moment (mentioned here and here), let me lay on you one method for getting reviews up there when you need them. You may have done some of these steps already.

Step One: Create the email infrastructure

Sign up for an account with Mail Chimp or some other free email service. Put a link to the signup form on your web page. (You do have a web page, don't you?) Put it on your blog, if you have one. Integrate it with your Facebook account and add a tab with the signup form.

Of all the ways to promote a book launch, by far the most effective is a targeted email list. (In a future post I'll relate a very graphic example of how true this is.) Right now I have under 200 people on my email list, but they're solid addresses of folks who love my books. My last email got a 50% open rate, which is double the expected rate in the industry for a targeted list. I'll talk more about how solid this list is in Step Four.

Step Two: Build a tribe

If you don't know your tribe, or the concept of the tribe, stop right now and do some research.

• Watch this Seth Godin video from four years ago. Don't worry about the "change the world" language. Everything he says also applies to us humble folk who have no pretensions to such grandeur but just want to tell compelling stories. (Seth kinda reminds me of the cover of Steely Dan's Countdown to Ecstasy.)
• Read this Kevin Kelly article on 1,000 true fans. 

OK, now that you're back, realize that you can't build a tribe overnight. It takes years of building relationships, online and offline, and, most importantly, gathering email addresses of people who want to know when your next book comes out.

Some people balk at this, feeling like it's shameless self-promotion. That's baloney. If you think that, you didn't watch the video. Don't you have a favorite author or two? Don't you want to know when the next release is available? All you're doing is providing a service to the people who enjoy your work. If they sign up, it's because they want to know. Get over it and put yourself out there.

Note: Your tribe does not consist of other authors. You have to connect with readers who love what you write, not other writers who are desperate to market their latest release.

Step Three: Build an ARC and a sneak peek

The mainstay of the book review promotion is the advance reader copy, known in the industry as the ARC. The ARC gets sent out to reviewers. For a highfalutin traditionally published A-lister, these go to Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, the New York Times, and other notable venues for book reviews. Good work if you can get it.

For us indies, ARCs go to a subgroup of the tribe. More on that in Step Four.

When I first went indie, I planned on ebook-only releases. For the somewhat technically competent, it's easy enough to create an ebook, and inexpensive enough for the technophobes to hire it out. But then I discovered through my precious email list that most of my tribe did not have an ereader. So I also produced a print book via POD and CreateSpace. Now, when I build an ARC, I build it in three formats: print, epub, and mobi.

The sneak peek is a 30-50 page sample of your upcoming release. You can do it in PDF only if you like, but I do it in the same three formats as I do the ARC. It doesn't take that much more time and it shows your tribe that you value them and their reading preferences. Anything I can do to value my tribe, from writing the best dang book I can to giving it to them in the way they like to read it, is important to me.

Step Four: The call to action

A month before your book release, send out an email to the tribe with at least two elements.

1. Info on how to get the sneak peek, which you will post on your website, preferably in a section that is quarantined from spider bots with the robots.txt file. (Here's an example sneak peek page for my latest work, Endless Vacation. If you're serious about tracking and managing your bidness, you'll create Google Analytics tags to see how many downloads you get.)
2. A call to action for what I call the Book Buzz Team (BBT).

The BBT is the inner circle of the tribe, those who are willing to post an Amazon review in exchange for an ARC. When I place my call to action, I don't put any qualifiers on the kind of review to post. I don't ask for five star reviews. I don't ask for only positive reviews. I just ask that whoever requests a free copy commits to writing a review stating what they really think about the book. Since this is my core tribe, if I have written a book that targets the tribe, they will like it. If not, then I deserve what I get. ;-) (I'm still wondering what kind of response I'll get with my release next month. Oh well.)

I tell my tribe I'll send a free book in the format of their choice (even mailing print copies at my expense) to the first ten people who commit to the BBT. In reality, I fudge and send an ARC to people who aren't in the first ten. The wording creates a sense of urgency to respond, but if someone in my tribe is willing to commit to writing an Amazon review, I will embrace them with open arms and a free book.

To illustrate how solid my list is, when I put out the call-to-action  for Muffin Man last year, I got over 20 responses, which was close to 20 percent of my very small list at that time. By my launch date, I had over 20 reviews on Amazon. And that gave me the credibility to get picked up by two of the top sites for publicizing Amazon freebies, which translated to 55,000 downloads and a gratifying amount of follow-through sales. But more on that in a future post.

Step Five: Followup

Keep track of who you sent ARCs to and who has posted. No need to berate the laggards who don't come through, but also no need to send them an ARC for the next release if they ask for one. I include this line in my call to action: "Please don’t reply unless you’re certain you can meet the deadline. If I play Santa Claus, I can also make a list and check it twice."

Conclusions and next steps

All of the above positions you to launch a KDP Select freebie promotion. But the details of how to make that successful will have to wait for a later post.

---

Brad Whittington is the author of the Fred trilogy, What Would Jesus Drink? and Muffin Man.

In legacy publishing your book is a high-risk stock

When you ask a legacy publisher why you should look for a contract with the Big Six, now the Big Five, soon to be the Big Four, you will get a predictable list of questionable responses. Most of them involve day-rate services that they provide (copy editing, cover, formatting for pbook and ebook) for which they want to take a percentage in perpetuity. The one legitimate point they can offer is the advance, the publisher serving as an investment banker, fronting $50K to $100K or so (their inflated costs as a dinosaur) to make it all happen and get your book on the shelf for 30-60 days.

One of the more amusing, and debatable, justifications is that they will finance marketing your book to generate exposure.

MY EXPERIENCE WITH LEGACY MARKETING FOR A FIRST-TIME AUTHOR

I got a legacy publishing contract in 2001, long before the era of the Kindle, and was happy to do so. When Welcome to Fred was released, and also the subsequent books in the trilogy, I was dissatisfied with the publisher's marketing efforts. I'm afraid I became a pain and was ungracious in expressing my displeasure.

The fact was that I was unlearned in the ways of the industry. Now I see things differently. The publisher did everything they said they would do to make my book successful and in retrospect I appreciate what they did. But whatever they did, it was not enough to push my novels past the tipping point into financial success. And in my mind I (wrongfully) blamed the publisher.

At the time my day job involved marketing for an international telecommunications testing manufacturer. My company spent millions of dollars to develop a product and then marketed the beans out of it to generate the required revenue to turn a profit and pay the bills. I couldn't understand why my publisher wasn't doing the same thing with my novels. It seemed that the A-list, king-of-the-mountain authors got all the marketing dollars when they didn't really need it and up-and-coming authors such as myself were virtually ignored. It made no sense to me and I wasn't reticent on the subject.

Then one day I stumbled upon an analogy that explained how legacy publishing allocates their marketing dollars between competing books in their catalog. At a mixer at a recent Writer's League of Texas Agents and Editors Conference, I posited this theory to a veteran agent in the industry and he said, "I just learned something about the publishing industry." I was a little surprised. After all, this was his day job and had been for a few decades. He should have been teaching me.

The paradigm comes down to managing risk.

THE BALANCED BOOK PORTFOLIO

A legacy publisher's catalog is very similar to a stock portfolio for a risk-averse investor. Put most of your money behind blue-chip stocks, proven earners, but dedicate a limited amount of your portfolio to unproven, high-risk stocks in the hopes that one of them will take off and become the next Apple or Google or Facebook.

In book terms, that means that Stephen King and James Patterson, et. al., will get the lion's share of the marketing dollars, even if it seems they don't need it. Does anyone think that the next Patterson novel will fail due to lack of advertising? Don't you think fans will buy it when it comes out, even if they don't see an ad?

But for the first-time author very little marketing is done, and it continues to decrease as budgets tighten. Most of the budget for the book was spent in production and getting it on the shelf. The publisher won't be placing ads or financing book tours or slots on the morning news shows. They may get review copies out to their usual media outlets, perhaps finance a blog tour, do things that costs hundreds of dollars rather than tens of thousands. And then they will wait for one of their high-risk speculations to take off. If one does, they will follow it with money to see if they can ride the wave. But the publisher will never create the wave for a first time author.

THAT PESKY WORD OF MOUTH THING

Back in 2001 I met my editor for the first time in Atlanta. He drove down from Nashville. I was at the premier telecom industry trade show, exhausted from a day on the show floor and a month of travelling North America and Europe marketing test gear. I wanted two things desperately: to go home to Honolulu to collapse for a week, and for my not-yet-written novel to break out and rescue me from this rat race.

I spent a break from the grueling trade show floor wondering what would make thousands of total strangers buy my novel and grant me financial independence. I put the question to the editor after dinner. He described the things the publishing house would do for my novel. I told him that, with all due respect, that sounded like a lone guy pissing into the ocean. He said I had just described self-publishing, that an established publisher taking on a book granted it a significant level of credibility. I conceded the point and modified it to say it sounded like a fire department directing a fire hose into the ocean. Perhaps the stream was hundreds times the strength of the lone guy, but it was still the ocean.

He answered with the truth as I now understand it. A daunting truth.

"You have to write a novel so good that when someone finishes it, they immediately call their friends and say, 'You have to read this book!'"

I said, "Then we're screwed. I can't write that book."

He smiled and said he thought I could do it or he wouldn't have signed me.

Obviously his faith was misplaced. As good as I thought Welcome to Fred was, despite the fact that it won awards and garnered favorable reviews from Publisher's Weekly and many fans, it didn't cause thousands of people to demand that their friends and family read it immediately.

It comes down to my post on How to sell lots of books. Write a good book.

So, if you go looking for a legacy publisher, remember one detail. That marketing thing, they're going to treat your book like a high-risk stock, whereas if you believe in it and publish it yourself, you'll probably treat it more like a blue-chip stock.

Now maybe we can convince Tosh to do a post on paying people royalties to do day-rate work.

---

Brad Whittington is the author of the Fred trilogy, What Would Jesus Drink? and Muffin Man.

Texas Book Festival - Second Half

With another day at the festival under my belt, for a total of 13 hours in the booth, I can report that except for what John Candy in the movie "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" called "barking dogs" in referring to his sore feet, the experience was positive and enjoyable. One unexpected benefit turned out to be multiple opportunities for practicing my spiel when someone asks me what the story is about.

Writers are advised to have ready at a moment's notice what is called a "30-second elevator pitch," a term derived from the following scenario at a writers' conference, and which assumes that the writer's goal is to get an offer of representation from a literary agent:

You didn't get a one-on-one consultation with your dream agent, so you've studied a photograph well enough to recognize him or her no matter how out of date the glamour shot happens to be. Throughout the conference, you've been on the stalk, watching, waiting for an opportunity that never seems to come.

You've seen the agent from afar a few times, surrounded by concentric circles of pushy writers all clamoring for the agent's attention. The conference ends in a few hours, and you've all but given up. One last panel discussion you'd like to attend meets on the fourth floor in five minutes, and you're rushing to get there.

The elevator door opens, you step inside without making eye contact with the only other occupant, stab the button labeled "4" and glance at the person beside you to offer a casual greeting and holy Toledo! It's your dream agent come true.

Panic seizes your tongue, sweat instantly covers your brow, and all you can do is stare at the elevator door even though you know that this is it, the one and only time you'll probably have to pitch your novel to the agent you are convinced will love it. And without that pitch ready, forget about it.

Standing in the booth at the festival, however, visitors are coming to you and you have an opportunity to give it your best shot at generating in a complete stranger sufficient interest in your book to result in a sale. By the end of the festival, I had it down pretty well and felt comfortable with how it was being received.

Practice means little, however, when dealing with some folks. Here are some comments:

• "So, this is a novel?"
• "Have you read ----- by -----? It has a lot about airplane accident investigation in it."
• "A friend of mine runs a salvage company specializing in aircraft wreckage. He knows all about aviation accident investigation. I'm sure he'd be glad to help you out, and I'll give you his contact information if you'd like to talk with him."
• "I read this book that said there are always five pilot mistakes leading up to any accident."
• "Well, you know, once a pilot gets over about 350 hours of flight time, he usually has enough experience to avoid making mistakes."

Spare me, please. But I didn't say that, of course. I smiled, nodded, played like the little dog in the rear window of a car with my head bobbing in agreement.

Cynthia J. Stone and Lara Reznik of Violet Crown Publishers, Beth Fowler and I talked a lot about the booth layout and came up with a number of ideas for the future. With limited space and four authors hovering about, what the visitors can see to attract their attention and how they approach the booth, enter if they need to, and exit, all have to be carefully considered.

And although we're convinced we can do better, we received evaluations from others noting that the poster display on the free-standing grids at the rear of the booth was extremely effective, and we appeared to have more visitors hanging around and talking than many of the other booths. I have no idea if that's true or not, because as reported in my Texas Book Festival halftime report, I never left the booth to see what other writers/publishers had done. My objective was to promote my books, and I couldn't do that while absent from the scene.

All in all, the festival experience was well worth the time and effort, and we're talking about not waiting for October, 2013 to attend our next one.

Tosh is the author of the aviation mystery/thriller Pilot Error, the second-in-series Red Line (coming soon), and two non-fiction series: Book One of Wings On My Words, tales from the writer's desk, and Book One of Words On My Wings, tales from the cockpit. Visit him online at toshmcintosh.com.

Texas Book Festival - Halftime Report

It's Sunday morning, October 28, 2012, and sitting at my computer with my first cup of coffee, I couldn't resist the temptation to document a few personal observations from my experience in the Violet Crown Publishers booth at the halfway point of the Texas Book Festival weekend.

This being my first time attending in any capacity, I had little advance notion of what to expect. Cynthia Stone, her good friend and fellow author Beth Fowler, and yours truly had spent the previous afternoon and last-minute preparation time that morning hauling all the books, poster display grids, posters, chairs, two tables, and small giveaway promotional materials from my truck into the exhibition tent and trying to make everything fit in a limited space. Lara Reznik, jetlagged and coughing, skillfully avoided the set-up chaos by just having returned from a vacation in Europe with her husband Rudy. I'm joking, of course, and luckily she recovered sufficiently after a night's rest at home to join us before the festival began.

I'm no good at the visualization of how the booth should look, so my role became that of a helper. Which is a good thing, because my compulsion to straighten everything up would have been completely incompatible with the carefully designed look of clutter on the big eight-foot table supplied by the festival. Books, books, and more books. Not like Penguin, USA in the booth close by, of course. They filled about three booths on our side of the tent and one or two across the aisle. But for an itty-bitty indie operation, especially with the poster display designed by Cynthia, we had no reason to hang our heads.

Truth be told, I expected to spend seven hours in the booth twiddling my thumbs while shoppers bought all the other books on the table. My three would be sitting in lonely stacks, forlorn and pitifully indicative of no one's interest. I didn't know where to stand. The booths are small, with narrow spaces on both sides of the display table, and no matter where I decided to park, I didn't want shoppers to feel as if they stepped inside, I'd be on them like a used-car salesman who doesn't understand "Just looking" and becomes a shadow.

At one point early in the first hour, a shopper stops and picks up Lara's The Girl From Long Guyland. Beth makes eye contact with Lara and mouths something like (and I paraphrase with embellishment), Pounce on him and sell your book! Lara and I talked a little about this tactic and agreed that we weren't comfortable doing that.

A little while later someone stops and picks up Pilot Error. My heart climbs into my throat as I get ready for the first of what I expect to be many rejections during the day. But this time, Beth uses a different tactic. Rather than wasting her efforts on me, she steps up to the guy and says, "If you'd like to meet the author, he's standing right here."

That's my cue! I shake hands, we talk a bit, and in a drop-my-jaw move, he asks me how much.

"I have a special for you today, sir. You can purchase the novel and receive my two small non-fiction books on flying and writing in a bundle for only ten bucks. Now that's a deal, don't you think?"

Lo and behold, wonder of wonders, he agrees.

Enter the tag-team approach to greeting visitors to the booth. Here's how it worked:

Someone stops and picks up one of the four novels at the head of the table from a stack of a few lying flat with a copy front cover out on an easel, bookmarks casually lying between each book.

Secret eye-signals pass between the authors. An author who didn't write the book engages the visitor in casual conversation, always with the message that the author who did is close by.

Nine times out of ten, the visitor made eye contact, accepted a handshake, and engaged with us.

I've got one day of the book festival behind me and have no business making any observations of import, but a little knowledge has never stopped me before.

I'm an unknown author with unheard of books, and although visitors can be attracted to a cover, flip the book over and read the back-cover description, open the book and read a little of the first chapter, they still have to get past the natural reticence of never having heard of Tosh McIntosh.

Seven hours of standing in that booth has convinced me that personal contact, beginning with a question or two directed at the visitor rather than an immediate sales spiel, opens the door. I often asked the visitor if he or she might be a pilot and/or a writer, and in every case, the conversation shifted easily to what the book was about. And in retrospect, I believe that the author's passion for the book is the key to generating enough interest for the visitor to take a chance with their money.

My bundling tactic has to be considered as well. I sold three books together for an amount that barely covers my cost to pay for the copies and the shipping. But it's not about the money, and never will be for the vast majority of indie or legacy authors.

A book festival is about promotion. Most if not all of my writer friends might read this and think (or more likely say), "Are you just now figuring this out, Tosh?"

Well, yeah. I'm a slow learner, I guess. But in the final analysis, whether or not any of the buyers recommend my books to their friends and assist with promoting it, this has been (and will be today) an amazing experience.

Tosh is the author of the aviation mystery/thriller Pilot Error, the second-in-series Red Line (Fall 2012), and two non-fiction series: Book One of Wings On My Words, tales from the writer's desk, and Book One of Words On My Wings, tales from the cockpit. Visit him online at toshmcintosh.com.

On crossing 5000 sales

I want to laugh when people ask how I sold my books, because I'm always asking my friends who sell 5000 or more books a MONTH, how do YOU do it? All our paths will be different, but the biggest thing is studying books that are like yours and determining what paths they took to get where they are. It isn't difficult to start Googling a title and see where it was featured and how it got buzz. You may not be able to replicate its success, but you can learn where the big pushes came from.

For me, joining the Kindle Boards was a critical element. There I learned which ads were useless and which ones actually helped. I figured out that blog tours were about reviews, not sales, and that Tweeting to the same 500 followers just made them ignore you.

I found that there is power in numbers, and that group promotions were wonderful, as long as the group was small enough to keep each book visible but large enough to control the costs. (Ideal size is five to ten books.)

I also discovered it was critical to stay ahead of the mob. Once eReader News Today was discovered to have magic in their Book of the Day, they got booked a year in advance. Other sites, realizing they could raise prices due to overwhelming demand, priced themselves right out of author benefit, or put up so many ad opportunities that the exposure quit working.

You figure out that blogs and web sites have little pull, but big Facebook followings and enormous email subscriber lists are definitely effective.

But most of all, you learn how to balance writing and marketing, as you can't get so wrapped up in one that you forget the other.

While I'm pleased and grateful for my 5000 sales this year, I look forward to an escalation of visibility. I have a marketing plan that goes out nine months now, and I never let any book fall into obscurity if I can help it. I'm in this for the long haul.

_______________________________

Deanna Roy is the author of Baby Dust and Stella & Dane, interrelated novels on the difficulties on finding love and family.

Lake Travis Fiction Writers

Please note that the new contact person for the Lake Travis Fiction Writers is:  Gulick@flash.net. 

I enjoy participating in writers' groups because any opportunity to explore the craft and share with other writers the details of an individual writer's journey is worth whatever time it takes. I joined my first group over ten years ago and now belong to Novel-In-Progress (NIP) and two NIP spinoffs called Little Group (El Gee), and, of course, Austin Indie Writers.

I don't know how many writers' groups there are in the Austin area, and one reason is that they tend to lead a quiet existence. Kind of like many writers, strangely enough, wrapped in creative cocoons, toiling away in the isolation of the fictive dream.

It is therefore my pleasure to help announce the impending birth of a new group in town. Well . . . not in town, exactly, unless you live in Bee Cave, but close enough.

Here is the official announcement that appeared in the Lake Travis View, Impact News, Bee Cave Messenger, Steiner Ranch, River Place, and Lakeway Voice, City of Lakeway, two area e-blasts, and on the Facebook page for the Writers' League of Texas.

LAKE TRAVIS FICTION WRITERS TO MEET OCT. 16

If you are writing a novel, want to write a novel, or if you are a published novelist and want the support and camaraderie of other Lake Travis-area fiction writers, come to an organizational meeting of the Lake Travis Fiction Writers, Tuesday, Oct. 16, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at The Old Bee Cave School House in Bee Cave.

Pat Evans of Lakeway is organizing the group, which is sponsored by the Bee Cave Public Library.

"There are a number of writers' groups in Austin and many are outgrowths of the huge Writers League of Texas. But I wanted a group in my neighborhood to help fiction writers share ideas, gain support and receive input from other writers. I was thrilled when Bee Cave Public Library Director Barbara Hathaway enthusiastically offered to sponsor this group," Evans said.

Plans are for the group to meet monthly on the third Tuesday, but there is an option to meet at the library Saturday afternoons.

"The Lake Travis Fiction Writers sounded like a wonderful group for our library's interests. I initially offered our beautiful Bee Cave Library as a venue, but we have limited evening hours. Should the group decide to meet Saturday afternoons, perhaps alternating with Tuesday evenings, the library will provide a venue as a courtesy," Hathaway said.

Hathaway will be the group's first speaker and will review the library's varied services, including computers and research technology.

"We'll also do a roundtable discussion with attendees and find out about their experiences and novels. My role is to organize, publicize and lead the sessions, but this group will be about fiction writers, whether 'wannabes' like myself or published novelists," Evans said.

At some meetings, members will submit works in advance for critique or bring works for short 'read and critique' sessions. At other meetings authors or service providers such as freelance editors or micro-publishers will speak. For the November meeting a panel of independent authors will present, 'How to Publish Your Own Novel.'"

Self-publishing is a hot topic, Evans says. She just returned from a writers conference in California where many workshops focused on self-publishing.

"The message from this conference, as well as the Writers League of Texas conference this past summer, is that fiction writers need editors, both developmental and line editors. Otherwise, their self-published fiction will not stand a chance in the highly competitive market. There is a lot of junk being put online, and buyers are becoming wary. If writers puts novels 'out there' that are not well-crafted and edited, they run the risk of ruining their brands at launch."

The Old Bee Cave School House is an updated facility with lighted parking, located in the southeast corner of the Shops at the Galleria (near Specs), between the Bee Cave police and fire stations at 13333 Texas 71.

Contact Pat Evans at AustinWriterGirl@yahoo.com if you plan to attend this meeting.

Tosh is the author of the aviation mystery/thriller Pilot Error, the second-in-series Red Line (Fall 2012), and two non-fiction series: Book One of Wings On My Words, tales from the writer's desk, and Book One of Words On My Wings, tales from the cockpit. Visit him online at toshmcintosh.com.

Sales that go bump in the night

In indie writer circles, a "bump" is anything that causes a temporary spike in sales.

On the major retailer sites, bumps are important. A book that is coasting along with a sale or two per day will eventually get pushed down by more popular books, and sales will dwindle. Bumps ensure that the infamous algos, the algorithms used to calculate ranking and popularity, will be kind and keep your book popping up as options in searches and as "also bots," that row of book covers that appears on every product page that connects purchases and inspires impulse buys.

Only now, a little over a year into my life as an ebook indie, have I started to really master the bumps. After watching sales of two of my works fizzle almost completely out, I knew doing this was essential. Bumps were what kept you in the game, waiting and hoping for that big break that pushes you into the ranks of indie writers like these, a list that now has grown so extensive that it takes 3000 book sales per month just to make the top 100.

My first bump came by random luck. Pixel of Ink contacted me asking if I were willing to put Baby Dust on sale so that they could promote it for a day. This bump was pretty incredible, causing a sales run of 350 books in 48 hours, and launching my book to #557 in the Amazon store. But this isn't a replicable event. Even I couldn't do it again. But it made for a very nice payout in June.

July's bump was an opportunity born of my involvement in forums with other writers. An organized and marketing-savvy writer put a call out for others who would be interested in making their books free on the same day. I got in with them, and through her promotional efforts, I gave away 14,000 copies of that title. With a free book counting about 1/10th of a sale for the popularity rankings, my book leaped into the algos and when the book returned to paid status, it started selling at a significant rate before coasting down a month later. Suddenly I had a nice payout for July.

For August, I launched a new title, hoping to replicate my success in Select. While I did give away 14,000 free copies again, Amazon was fickle, the algos shifted, and after only a week, the sales began to drop. So I bumped it up again with a single free day a few days ago, and with those efforts, August is shaping up to be a nice check again.

For September I found a promotion through Ereader News Today where if you are willing to drop your price for 99 cents for a couple days, they will promote you and only charge you a small percentage of what you sell. So instead of risking a big chunk of up-front money, you give them a commission. I'm looking forward to the bump. While the decreased money that day will likely mean my single-day payout won't be large, hopefully the algorithm blessings will continue the sales after the book returns to its normal price.

I'm still solidifying my plans for October. But I'm having a good time with the indie marketing now that I've stopped trying to do it through means that didn't really work. None of these tactics take much time, and now I have time to focus on writing the next work, because the way to certainly increase your earnings is always to write another book.

_________________________________

Deanna Roy is the author of Baby Dust and Stella & Dane, interrelated books on the difficulties in finding love and starting a family.

Social Media is not a Bullhorn

You see it all the time. A writer hunkers in a bunker for months or years cranking out a novel, publishes it, sees the dismal sales numbers, and panics.

She hears that she needs a platform, that she needs to market the book and herself. Desperate to boost sales, she signs up for Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Blogger, Pinterest, Instagram, and who knows what else, and then begins spamming those outlets with a blatant, pushy, hard-sell. She gets on mailing lists for writers and spams them. She comments on blogs, pushing her novel.

In short, she assaults other people using methods that she herself never responds to when she’s on the receiving end. That's not marketing. That's just annoying.

I recently heard one such writer say, "If it's NOT okay to do this much, why do we call social networking an essential promotion tool?"

Which I liken to the question, "If it's not okay to use pliers on brass, why do we call it an essential handyman's tool?"

Knowing how, when, and where to use a tool is as important as having the tool.

Think for a second: How many acts of blatant self promotion do you see in a day? How many of them do you personally act on? How many times a day do you buy something based on a blatant act of self promotion? How many of such posts from complete strangers do you pass on to your friends?

As I’ve said before, writing may be art, but publishing is a business. When you decide to publish, you have to think like a publisher, and that includes taking on marketing, which is not the same as spamming people.

Marketing is not easy. It's about discovering the true felt needs of the customer and then satisfying those felt needs. Few people have a felt need to be assaulted by a stranger with nonstop requests to buy something, now! Or even felt the need to get that treatment from a friend.

Social networking is about being social, not about turning into a non-stop infomercial. It's about building a tribe, not a stack of sales. Think of what being social means in a physical environment:

• Listen more than you talk
• Ask questions about others instead of talking about yourself
• Be genuinely interested in the other person
• Build relationships
• Add value to draw people back to your blog, Twitter feed, Facebook page, etc.

These same things are the reason social networking emerged, not as a soapbox for a person with a bullhorn hawking goods.

Anyone who is going to market on the internet needs to learn what marketing really is and the techniques that are effective with the various tools at hand. There are dozens of books and websites on the subject. It's not hard to learn the basics.

Here's a good starting point: How to use Twitter for Marketing and PR.

Smorgasbords, Radio Interviews, and KDP Select

One of the most interesting aspects of active involvement with other writers is being immersed in diversity. It's like enjoying a smorgasbord of ideas, interests, and talents.

I participate in three groups. Membership overlaps, but the collective dynamics differ enough that each experience has its own unique attraction.

Austin Indie Writers, for example, provided me with the opportunity to take part in a radio interview with two other AIW members. I've never been interviewed on the air before, and undoubtedly never will again, so it's worth noting as a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

My assigned AIW post day is the 26th of the month. I'm writing this post in advance of the interview scheduled for July 25th, 2012, to have it ready. This is a "pre-action" report, if you will.

The program at KOOP 91.7FM Community Radio is called Writing on the Air (WOTA) and is described as follows:

The Writing on the Air Collective produces Writing on the Air in order to promote the art of writing and creativity, and to provide information to Austin's community of readers, writers and creatives. The show has featured interviews and readings with award-winning, as well as up-and-coming, novelists, journalists, biographers, poets, essayists, folklorists, songwriters, freelancers, cookbook authors, historians, illustrators, screenwriters, playwrights, humorists, philosophers, and creative spirits who can help us summons our muse. In the past year, the format of the show has expanded to include radio plays and coverage of book-related events in the Austin community.

About Us

We are a group of volunteers who produce a weekly radio show about writing--as it is broadly defined. We broadcast on 91.7 FM KOOP in Austin, Texas on Wednesdays from 6:00 to 7:00 PM. We have podcasts of our previous show on our webpage, www.writingontheair.com

Fellow AIW member Brad Whittington arranged the interview, which also included Deanna Roy. Together we developed an outline for how we as indie writers would structure the interview as if we were running it, which we weren't, of course. That's the job of our host, but we figured he'd appreciate suggestions.

Brad provided a great beginning concept with the suggestion that each of us represented a different approach to going indie: legacy to indie (Brad), small publisher (Deanna), and straight to indie (me).

I provided the opening planning salvo with the following draft:

General

• Introductions: Provide individual bios that our host can read.
• Industry background: Don't assume that listeners will be well-informed about the current state of the publishing industry. First questions could address specific information to provide a snapshot of the difference between legacy and indie and why we are even using those terms.
• Individual writer backstory: Questions to highlight the legacy-to-indie, small-publisher, and direct-to-indie distinctions.
• Individual writer immediate future: A "What are you working on now?" kind of question. 
• The crystal ball question: "How would you describe the industry in ___ years?"

Some sample questions

• When did you first begin writing and why?
• Has your writing effort always been with publication in mind, or did that goal develop over time?
• Is your professional life reflected heavily in your writing, and if so, how? 
• Describe the most important factor in your decision to go indie. 
• Describe the most difficult aspect of your decision to go indie.
• How would you describe the most significant difference between your indie-publishing experience and that of your fellow writers here today? 
• Tell us about one of your books.

Some specific topics our questions could address

• Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select.
• The reality that the average indie-published author sells less than $500 in books.
• Compare that with the average legacy author's sales.
• The fallacy of the importance of a social networking connection in promoting the books of a relatively unknown author beyond a small circle of friends and family.
• The concept of critical mass in indie publishing: why a writer needs multiple points of connection to take advantage of synergism: a stable of good books with a definable market and an established tribe of fans.
• The proverbial "Catch-22": You can't sell books if readers don't know it's there and they won't know it's there unless you sell a lot of books.
• All publicity and marketing effort is a gamble with the best odds far below the worst in Las Vegas. None of the strategies that any author has used to succeed can be reliably applied to any other author because each piece of the success story is like a link in a chain. If you fail to forge even one in the same way, the entire paradigm is altered and you are plowing virgin ground.
• The importance of careful editing.
• Covers do matter.
• The individual steps required to turn a heavily revised manuscript into one that will convert to an eBook without formatting problems.

Brad and Deanna then added their inputs, and Brad consolidated them into an outline. He did a great job:

General

• First we had indie musicians, now we have indie writers. Isn’t that just a fancy way of saying self-published? (Let’s get some controversy and tension going!)
• Back to the beginning of the printing press people have always self-published. How is it any different now? (State of the industry)
• What is indie publishing? (Levels of indie, from small press to DIY)
• What about the stigma of self-publishing? (May as well take this head on)
• What about all the things a traditional publisher does for you? (Can address valid production-level considerations while debunking the marketing/exposure/discoverability myth)
• Do you think all authors should abandon legacy publishing and go indie?
• What advice would you give an unpublished author aspiring to get a book on the bookstore shelves.
• Where do you see publishing going in the next ten years?

Tosh (straight to indie)

• What was the most important factor in your decision to go indie?
• What was the most difficult aspect of your decision to go indie?
• How would you describe the most significant difference between your indie-publishing experience and that of your fellow writers here today?
• Did you try the traditional path to getting published first?
•  If you got an offer from a traditional publisher tomorrow for your next book, would you sign?

Deanna (small publisher)

• What made you decide to start your own publishing company?
• What was the hardest part of getting the operation going?
• What hurdles did you not anticipate?
• What has been the advantage of having your own company versus going pure indie.
• How do you decide which of your own works to put through the company name?
• What are your plans to expand, and do you ever expect to grow into a bigger press?
• With so many authors going indie, do you see small presses continuing to be a viable option in the future of publishing.
• What does a small press offer that distinguishes it from the Big Six or indie?

Brad (legacy to indie)

• Your first four novels were released with a traditional publisher. Was that a good experience or disappointing?
• Why did you decide to go indie with your fifth novel?
• Will you continue to indie publish or will you try the traditional route again?
• Now that you’re an indie author, what do you miss about legacy publishing?
• What do you like better about indie publishing?

As I write this post in advance of the interview, I have no idea what the experience will be like. That said, I'll return now to the point made at the beginning of this post about diversity of ideas, interests, and talents represented in writers' groups, and connect that dot with two listed in the section of my interview draft under the title of specific topics: KDP Select and the publicity and marketing gamble using the chain analogy.

Of the three writers participating in the interview, one of the most salient differences is that I'm the least successful in the marketing part of indie publishing. There are a number of reasons for that.

Without an existing fan base or established social network built on something more substantial than having some friends on facebook, or tweeting, or being linked in, you can't promote your books to anyone who cares. It's simply unrealistic to expect these methods to reach out to strangers and introduce yourself as an author.

Absent the rare free promotional opportunity, publicity requires capital investment in advance of knowing how effective it will be. Buy a couple of blog tours or online publicity packages, and you have to sell a lot of books to break even, much less make a profit. There may be a secret decoder ring out there to help make the decision about where to spend your promotional dollars, but I've never heard of it. It's a gamble in which you pay your money and take your chances. That's not to say you can't make informed choices, but simply to acknowledge the odds.

Indie authors with success stories love to share them and that's great. Who wouldn't want to do that? But the application of any given example of a favorable outcome is of little benefit to another author because no one can duplicate the process used to achieve it.

Both Brad and Deanna have used Amazon's KDP Select program to very positive benefit. I have not, and one of the reasons is timing.

I had just published my debut novel and offered it for sale on five outlets when the Select program was announced. To enroll, I would have had to remove the novel from all but Amazon. Select had no track record at the time, of course, but that wasn't the reason I decided against it. I'd simply invested too much work to toss it away before I had the opportunity to see what sort of sales multiple outlets might produce.

In the intervening months, Select has produced phenomenal results for a number of authors. It has also gone through an aging process at both ends of the program. Authors have learned what it takes to maximize their outcomes, and Amazon has adjusted the algorithms used to manipulate how the program works.

Select's prospects for success depend on a specific, time-sequenced list of chain-link actions. If I were to enroll my first novel in Select, the potential for positive benefit would be even more unpredictable than for enrolling the next novel at the time of publication because the first crucial links are unavailable to previously published work.

But even for a new novel, it's impossible for me to duplicate the event chain of any successful Select author. There are simply too many variables in the forging process.

None of this is to suggest that I think Select isn't worth the effort, quite the contrary. It's one of the most important reasons that Deanna and Brad have been so much more successful than I with their promotional efforts.

Their experiences, as a matter of fact, will serve as a well-defined roadmap that may lead to success for two of our fellow AIW members who will be using Select to launch their debut novels in the near future. It will be fun to watch, and I'll be cheering for them from the sidelines.

I haven't yet listened to the interview. I should, in spite of the fact that I expect to sound like a rusty door hinge. I didn't earn the nickname "Squeaky" among my fellow fighter pilots due to having a rumbling baritone voice.

Addendum to original post

It's 6:00 a.m. on July 26, 2012, and this post is scheduled to go live in about  two hours. Before that happens, I feel the need to insert an after-action comment, a confession, of sorts, because yours truly made a boo-boo.

Brad had forewarned us that there were three things we could not do on the air:

1. Mention bodily functions. That sounded a bit strange when I first heard it, because why on earth would I want to? But the point is that if I felt the need to use profanity, some words could be acceptable, some would not. Okay then. I'll avoid any problems by eliminating them all from my on-air vocabulary.
2. Issue calls-to-action like, "Buy my book!"
3. Mention any prices. The prime example of this prohibited behavior was, "You can buy my book on Amazon for $4.99, or wait until Monday when it will be free." And yes, even if I eliminated the $4.99, "free" is still a price. Don't say it.

I was aware of these cautions when I walked in the door, and they were drummed into my head yet again prior to beginning the interview. That should be the end of it. But no, leave it to me to commit the only act of on-air treason.

Now this may seem like whining to some, and I admit that's a valid point, but no one said that if we happened to be chatting about topics other than writing, for example, I couldn't say something like, "I paid $3.59 for gas the other day." If I owned a gas station and wanted to let it slip that you could pay less there, I can see the point. But since that has nothing to do with the subject of the interview, it wasn't intuitively obvious (at least to me, the only interview virgin in the room, I might add), that the prohibition against mentioning a price applied to the price of anything.

Imagine my consternation, therefore, when the topic turned to the problem faced by indie writers when the time comes to think like a publisher and deal with the business end of publishing. Things like content/developmental, copy, and line editing, cover design, interior layout, and publicity. 

Brad and Deanna had been talking about the importance of paying attention to these details, and our host joined in with the opinion that it was best to hire professional assistance rather than for an author to attempt them. I felt the need to at the very least express an alternate view, because you can easily spend $3,000-5,000 before you sell your first book. 

You should have been there, folks! You would have thought that in one sentence I used every word I knew referring to bodily functions. They probably beeped me completely out of the interview for that egregious violation of protocol.

I'm having a bit of fun at my own expense here, so let me make it clear that this is leading up to an apology to KOOP, our gracious host, and my fellow interviewees for having the dubious distinction of being the only one during the hour who failed to obey one of three simple rules.

And in closing, I'll refer to common replies around fighter squadrons during my 20 years in the Air Force when someone would ask how a new guy had done on his first sortie with an instructor pilot.

"He can always serve as a bad example." Or my personal favorite . . .

"He's depriving some village of an idiot."

Tosh is the author of the aviation mystery/thriller Pilot Error, the second-in-series Red Line (Fall 2012), and two non-fiction series: Book One of Wings On My Words, tales from the writer's desk, and Book One of Words On My Wings, tales from the cockpit. Visit him online at toshmcintosh.com.  

 

The Indie Book Release Day Checklist

Since I've just gone through the process of releasing the seventh book through my small press, I thought it might be fun to share the deadlines and check points that lead up to a release of a new title. For authors who are going through this process for the first time, it can be a surprise that there is so much involved.

6 months to release date

• Finish a solid draft of the book.
• Send to early beta readers and ask for it back within a month.

While beta readers have the book

• Write initial blurb copy (summary sales copy for the retailer sites).
• Search stock art sites for possible cover photographs or find an illustrator.
• Decide if you are doing a print-on-demand version with the release or just digital ebook.
• Determine if you will join the Amazon Select program and be exclusive to the Kindle or if you will release to all the major retailers at once.

5 months to release

• Give yourself a month to consider feedback and do revisions. If they are substantial, push back your release date.
• If you are looking close, get on a copy editor's schedule. Most need a month or two notice.
• Get on the schedule for the cover artist, if s/he's a popular one (mine requires three month's notice.)

4 months to release

• Send your draft to a copy editor. (The price ranges between $150 to $900.)
• Schedule a blog tour by tracking down blogs yourself or hiring a tour guide. (Mine requires two months' notice.)
• Ask an author or two to write endorsement blurbs for your book.
• Forward art ideas to your cover designer, or start tinkering yourself (I highly recommend you hire someone if you are not a graphic artist. The price ranges from $50 to $800--most are about $100.)
• If you are having someone design your POD interior, get on their schedule. (Price ranges from $75 to $1200--most are around $150.)
• If you are having someone format your ebook, get on their schedule. (Price ranges from $25 to $100.)
• Note: Some designers offer full packages of cover, POD wraparound, interior, and ebook. (This is most often $300 or so.)

3 months to release

• Get your copy-edited draft back and review changes.
• Send the file to authors who agreed to write endorsements.
• Finalize your sales summary paragraph and try it out on readers, friends, and people sitting next to you in restaurants.
• Set up accounts at Amazon, CreateSpace, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Apple, or wherever you've decided to distribute, if this your first book.
• Determine if you will use retailer ISBNs or buy your own block from Bowker. Buy ISBNs if needed.
• Once you have an ISBN, apply for a Precontrol Number through the Library of Congress. They won't do a CIP data block for an indie with one book, but they will let you participate in the PCN program so that if libraries do end up with your book, you can get a data block later. This is optional, but I always do it. About thirty libraries carry my books now and I will be eligible for straight-to-CIP soon.
• Decide on your price for ebook and POD. (Usually $2.99 to $8.99 ebook and $9.95 to $18.95 POD.)
• Begin posting about your release and tour. Offer the ebook file to reviewers.

2 months until release

• Finalize your cover.
• Send cover and copy-edited book to the ebook formatter.
• Gather your author endorsements and send this to cover designer for back cover if doing POD.
• Send the POD interior to the designer.

1 month until release

• Send book out to reviewers as soon as you get it back.
• Write guest posts for your blog tour, if you are doing one. Otherwise blog yourself.
• Upload final POD to CreateSpace (or Lightning Source, if you've gone that route) so you can get proof in and approved.
• Join Goodreads and set up a give away of your book if you have done a POD. The book will need to be listed on Amazon to do this, but if you've approved your POD through CreateSpace, it should be there. Lightning Source will take another week after proof approval.
• If you are using Smashwords, go ahead and get it in the system. It will go live early at Smashwords.com, but you still have a month or more before it will go to all the other sites. (They have taken as long as three months this year to distribute to iTunes, BN, Kobo, Sony.)

2 weeks until release

• Order a few copies of your final POD for give aways on blogs and Goodreads.
• Remind reviewers that you will forward links where to post reviews when book is released. (Indies don't get to pre-release like the traditional houses do. It's for sale when it goes up.)
• If you are using iTunes Direct for the first time, go ahead and send your ebook. It may take them a week or more to approve your first book.
• Post teasers to your blog and prepare release day posts to be published once you have live links.

2 days until release

• Upload your book to BN.com and Amazon.com. Your book will go live within a day on these sites.
• Blog and use social media for your release as soon as you have links.
• Send live links to the earlier reviewers for them to post reviews.

Within a week of release

• Mail off your copy to Library of Congress and to the Copyright Office.
• If you are doing Amazon Select, schedule your first free run and begin notifying web sites of the promotion. I do recommend waiting until you have at least five reader reviews.
• Set up your Amazon Author Central account and claim your book. Add an author photo, write a pithy author bio, and link to your blog or Twitter accounts.

Don't get complacent! Books do not move on their own. The best marketing is one you already enjoy doing (Social Media, blogging, going to festivals, writing articles).

______________________________

Deanna Roy is the author of Baby Dust and Stella & Dane, interrelated books on the hardships of finding love and building a family.

Deciding to do a blog tour for your book

Most indie authors are publishing on a shoestring. So it makes sense to pay close attention to anything that costs money and might not earn back out. One of the less expensive marketing plans includes a blog tour.

When Baby Dust came out, I had a clear marketing plan for it. I knew I wasn't going to focus on traditional book review blogs, but blogs that resonated with women who had lost a baby. No book tour company could really help me with what I needed, so I spent about a week searching for blogs with enough traffic to be worth approaching, tracking down and emailing the blog owners (sometimes this is much harder than you think), and setting up dates.

While this was extraordinarily work intensive, I was very pleased with that tour. I gave away books at each stop (this is NOT a good idea, I learned later, see below), and many of the hosts posted two or three times about my book--an author interview, a review, and a contest for the give away. Each blog stop netted me between 10-30 sales. Since the only cost invloved some paperbacks and shipping, this was an excellent return.

But when I looked at a tour for my next book, I knew it would be much harder. This was a novel for 9 to 12 year olds, and so the blogs had to have an audience of parents, teachers, or librarians. A few feeble searches got me nothing useful, so this time I hired a blog tour company.

Lots of these companies exist. Some are very inexpensive, and primarily cater to small to mid-traffic blogs run by avid readers who like to get free books and to be part of the publishing culture. Tours at these companies tend to run less than $100.

Others are large companies. They might have some bigger sites on their roll sheet, but you aren't guaranteed any more traffic than the smaller tour companies. Typically their packages will start at $300 and will include banners and other perks.

Most tour companies specialize in specific genres, and you want to make sure yours is a good fit. The more narrow the focus of the blog, the more likely you will see results. But remember success of a tour isn't measured only in sales.

Less tangible but important gains from a tour is:

• Exposure to new readers
• New reviews
• Permanent "homes" for information about your book that can be picked up by Google
• A network of wonderful blog hosts you can call upon later outside of a tour

Some guidelines for your tour, whether self-directed or through a hosting company:

• Don't give away the book on tour. People won't buy it if they think they can win.
• Give away something related to the book, or a backlist book.
• Do give copies to your host. You want the reviews!
• Vary the type of posts. Some hosts give excellent ideas for topics. If not, you must!
• Promote each stop yourself to drive traffic to the host.
• Stop by and add your comments to the conversation about your book.
• THANK your host publicly on the blog.
• Promptly send out give away items to the winners.

Ideas for blog tour topics:

• Q/A with a writerly focus
• Q/A with a personal focus
• Q/A with a humor focus
• Five things no one knows about you
• Inspiration for your book
• Book Excerpt
• Book Outtake
• Poignant moment on the writing journey
• The first story you ever wrote
• Your first rejection letter
• Why you write

Here are some excellent inexpensive small tour guides:

http://www.goddessfish.com/tours.htm
http://www.bewitchingbooktours.blogspot.com
http://www.clpblogtours.com/
http://www.shadowblogtours.com/
http://parajunkee.com/
http://www.virtualbooktourcafe.com
http://cblspromotions.blogspot.com/
http://www.supagurlbooks.blogspot.com/p/supagurl-tours-info.html


Bigger companies:

http://www.pumpupyourbook.com/
http://tlcbooktours.com/ (for traditionally published authors)

June 18 starts my two-week, ten-stop book tour with Goddess Fish. I am curious to see how it goes. If you want to follow the stops, check the schedule!

____________________________

Deanna Roy is the author of Baby Dust, Jinnie Wishmaker, and several other novels for women and children.

Jell-O, Nails, and Miracles

In this age of the Internet, writers have created a communications network that delivers their words to other writers at the speed of light. And since most writers think of themselves as having something worthwhile to say, they are in no way hesitant to do so.

We are in the midst of a transformation in the publishing industry that is changing at that same speed. Keeping up with it can easily consume a writer's every waking moment and leave little time for doing what we are supposed to be doing. But why should we expect anything different?

I think most writers would agree that to finish a first novel and polish it for prime time are more difficult and time-consuming tasks than they ever imagined. For some, it may get easier the second and subsequent times around, but for others it seems as if each novel is like a Pandora's Box. Figuratively opening the lid with the first word on the first page frees the demon to haunt your life once again.

In the world of indie publishing, successfully writing the novel places before you another Pandora's Box with the potential to make the writing of it seem like child's play. To transform that manuscript on your computer into a product and position it for sale demand attention to details that most writers I know simply don't want to deal with, and for good reason.

The best and most productive use of a writer's time is writing. Every hour spent dealing with publishing the novel is an hour that can't be invested in the next one. That said, someone has to do it. If not the writer, then someone hired by the writer, which adds the commitment of venture capital to the hours of equity already invested.

Brad Whittington recently called to our attention an article in The Guardian that documents what we already know. More than half of indie-published authors make less than $500. If you hire anyone to do much of anything to produce your book in any format, you'll spend way more than that. In effect, most of us are paying for the privilege of publishing our novels.

Of all the tasks awaiting the indie author when accepting the role of publisher, dealing with the problem of discoverability is without doubt the most uncertain and mysterious endeavor. And if you pay for publicity in any form, you are gambling with worse odds than you will find anywhere in Las Vegas.

But you don't have to spend anything to hit the jackpot, right? All you need to do it enroll in KDP Select, accept the conditions imposed by Amazon, and entrust the first 90 days of having your book on the market to what many authors embrace as a sure thing.

Well, it's time to shake hands with reality again. Another bit of information shared by Brad offered the observation that Amazon's basement has filled to the point of overflowing with a flood of indie-published junk enrolled in Select. And further, that this repository of trash has become the new slush pile. Here's the quote from the source:

"These are the people who create slush piles for agents if they go the trad-publishing route. But in the self-pubbing world, these kind of people create a slush pile on Amazon, which deals with them efficiently by never showing them on a bestseller list or in the list of "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought." I suspect that Amazon's method of dealing with slush is more efficient than the average agent's method."

Interesting thought, although it's comparing apples and oranges.

Any submission to an agent that ends up in the slush pile has failed to meet the agent's standards. Ignoring for the moment the question of whether those standards are valid, at least they were applied.

Other than complying with Amazon's contractual provisions for Select, there is no selection going on. Anyone can enroll anything in Select, so they did. By the thousands. Jump on that rocket ship and ride it to the stars of indie success.

In the months since Select first arrived on the scene, authors have engaged in lively e-conversation about every conceivable facet of the game, and let's acknowledge that fact up front. The time-sequenced series of Select benchmarks plays the numbers game that all begins with a single element of Amazon's algorithms for determining how a book is treated: counting free downloads as sales. From that point all things magic flowed.

The problem that created the Select slush pile is no different at its core than the reason an agent's slush pile reaches the ceiling. The majority of people who think they can write a book worthy of a reader's money and time are very much delusional.

But in the case of Select, the gate has no keeper. Who wouldn't expect a massive rush to publish?

Our own Brad Whittington did everything right with Muffin Man and achieved phenomenal success with Select. We had an insider's viewpoint as he planned and implemented the series of actions required.

But before any of us take away lessons he taught us and use them for our own benefit, we have to acknowledge yet another reality that trumps every other consideration. I hate to keep quoting the guy, because it swells his head (not really!), but here it is:

Write a good book.  

Which he most certainly did.

The final point of this post is this: residence in Amazon's basement does not automatically plaster the slush label on the cover of a book whether or not it's enrolled in Select.

Analogous to the fact that a novel sitting in slush piles on the desks of 99 agents can hit the jackpot on the desk of agent number 100, good novels, worthy of a reader's time and money, do lie undiscovered in the darkness.

Which brings me full circle to the final final point: Creating discoverability is like trying to nail Jell-O to the ceiling. If you can "git 'er dun," as the redneck comedian says, you have performed a feat worthy of being called a miracle.

And they do happen, right?

Tosh is the author of the aviation mystery/thriller Pilot Error, the second-in-series Red Line (Fall, 2012), and two non-fiction series: Book One of Wings On My Words, tales from the writer's desk is available now, and Book One of Words On My Wings, tales from the cockpit is coming soon. Visit him online at toshmcintosh.com. 

The best way to sell lots of books

You've written a book and got it published, whether indie or traditional. Now how do you sell it? For over a decade there has been a big push for authors to build an online platform as a basis to boost sales.

In a recent Romance Writers of America poll, I noted a section called "Activities That Do or Do Not Interest the Romance Buyer" and the interaction of readers with authors on social media. Here are a few of the percentages.

Percentage of readers who DO NOT AND WILL NOT:

• Follow authors on Twitter: 83%


• Follow authors on Goodreads: 75%


• Follow an author group blog: 72%


• Follow authors on Facebook: 70%


• Participate in online author events: 69%


• Read an author's blog: 62%

For those who do follow authors on Facebook, 76% said being friended does not influence their purchase decisions. And 67% said that reviews in blogs do not influence their purchases.

The top purchase influence is enjoying an author's previous books.
So what can you do to sell books?

Write a good book.

I'll leave it to Tosh to discuss the practical side of marketing for an indie author and harp on this one point.

Write a good book. I can't emphasize it enough. Study the craft. Learn the craft. Find a critique group with authors of substance. Learn to take criticism. (Probably the hardest thing in the list.)

Read voraciously, mainly the good stuff, but also a little of the bad stuff to see how it reflects the things you're doing wrong in your own work and how bad it looks out in the wild.

Write incessantly. Put in your 10,000 Gladwell hours. Be profligate with your words. Try the same story from different angles, different points of view, different protagonists. Experiment and don't hesitate to throw out 10,000 or 20,000 or 50,000 words if it's not working.

To give a personal example, last week after four drafts and 80,000+ words, I threw away everything I've done on my next novel and started over with a blank screen. And I'm not a newbie. I have four traditionally published books and two indie books. I say that not to brag but to illustrate that you have to be brutally honest with yourself about your work, take criticism from sources you trust, be willing to wipe the slate clean, and start over, regardless of what you have invested.

Write a good book.

That's table stakes. Because otherwise all the marketing tricks in the world are nothing more than putting lipstick on a pig, which is just a waste of lipstick and it annoys the pig.

---

Brad Whittington is the author of the Fred trilogy, What Would Jesus Drink? and Muffin Man.