On all that chummy smiley obligatory writing advice...
Somewhere along the way, maybe around the time I joined the North of 40 Club, I became a bit of a curmudgeon. The time has come for a cantankerous moment. If I see another one of these blog posts made up mainly of recycled platitudes about writing, I’ll reach through the Internet and carve an Oxford comma into the offending party’s cranium. Here’s a link to the post that broke the camel’s back:
http://www.selfpublishingreview.com/blog/2013/06/what-sells-a-book/
The author, who is probably a delightful person and whose books probably sell a thousand times as many copies as all of mine multiplied by each other, lists the following as ways to make a self-published book sell:
1. The cover
2. Buzz
3. Website or blog
4. The cover… or not?
Hasn’t this particular bit of intelligence been floating around since roughly the time that the Earth cooled?
Yes, a good cover will help sell a book and an ugly one is likely to make a reader not want to touch it. We hold these truths to be self-evident. We’ve all seen books with embarrassing hand-drawn covers and cheesy fonts. But there’s another way to look at this issue, and the writer of this piece seems to have skipped right over it: today, book covers need to balance looking good as thumbnails on your computer, smartphone, or tablet screen as they do on display tables in bookstores. Even though bookstores remain (perhaps the most) important places where readers meet books, the Internet has caught up fast. Details that make books gorgeous in real life are imperceptible online. This means that cover-image designers have to approach the task differently. As a publisher, my rule of thumb is that the design needs to look good at 200 x 300 pixels. The title and author’s name have to be legible, and something about the cover has to draw the eye. So yes, it’s a very good idea-even essential-for a self-publishing author to review the covers of the bestselling books to get an idea what the reading public considers attractive these days. But don’t forget that tastes change fast and the publishing industry moves slowly. Think realistically about how long it’ll take for your book to be finished and published. By then, the trends may have shifted. Just as you want to think ahead when you’re planning to have plastic surgery, you will want to make similar preparations for your book. You want it to age well, and-ideally-to keep selling. Just as it’s a good idea to have a beta reader for your book, it’s also a good idea to solicit second opinions on your potential book covers.
On to buzz. This is the recommendation (to use the term loosely) I have the most trouble with. What is buzz and how does an author generate it? I think buzz is one of those words we all understand but have trouble defining. It encompasses reviews and word of mouth. It implies enthusiasm and momentum. Fine, we get that, but doesn’t that also mean it’s not exactly an evolutionary leap beyond the more old-fashioned notion of just getting your book reviewed? This verges on being beyond an author’s control. The author and/or publisher (and/or, for the lucky among us, the publicist) should work together to market the book. However, as a publisher I can assure you that a lot more potential reviewers accept books than actually review them. (I keep track of this and stop contacting the ones who take multiple books from Signal 8 Press without ever writing a review. Other publishers may not be this organized, but we are.) Quite a lot of potential reviewers don’t even deign to respond to emails. I get it: they’re overwhelmed. Which is why we also make a practice of following up a month or so after our initial inquiries.
To actually generate buzz for a book, I believe you have to invest quite a lot of time in researching potential reviewers: bloggers, journalists, and even readers whose reviews on Goodreads and Amazon predispose you to think that they might like your work. One of the better pieces of advice I’ve seen is to befriend these people in order to predispose them to (a) reading your book and (b) saying nice things about it (or saying nothing at all in case they read it and hate it). At the same time, this piece of advice makes me uneasy. It smacks of insincerity. If you feel a genuine affinity for someone, by all means reach out to them and let them know you appreciate what they are doing. People tend to respond well to this kind of thing. But if you just want a review, isn’t it enough to send a polite, professionally written inquiry?
Then there’s social media. I spend a lot more time tweeting than I used to, and one thing that puzzles me is when writers do nothing but tweet about their own books. To the extent that Twitter etiquette exists, I tend to see this as a breach of it. Frankly, if all you do is broadcast the same Thrilling Six-Word Synopsis of your book along with a truncated buy link, I’ll unfollow you. Facebook is a fickle forum as well. I have almost 1300 friends on Facebook and the overwhelming majority of them are content to click Like when I have a new book out. They don’t actually buy them. Because I’m also the publisher, I have access to the sales data; I know exactly how many copies have sold and roughly where they went. (Mysteriously, my books sell better in the UK than in my native USA.) So you can’t assume that having a certain number of friends or followers is enough to make people want to read your work. Trust me: it’s not. If anything, self-made buzz is to me about dogged persistence over a long period of time and planned far in advance-with one caveat, which is to avoid being a nuisance.
Having a website and/or a blog… well, yeah, duh. If you’re a writer, there’s no excuse for not having at least a blog with links to your books. There’s no single magic formula for this apart from staying current with it. (Disclaimer: my own website is about to be overhauled, which is why it’s a little out of date.) But do you have to fill it up with chummy, smiley writing advice? My humble request would be to do anything but that, at least until you have the chops to offer something other than reheated received wisdom and retweeted how-to lists. No, you don’t have to write every day to have a career. Yes, there are other times of day than first thing in the morning when your creativity may be at its sharpest. Yes, your cat feels neglected when you’re writing instead of playing with him (or trying to, despite his indifference). No, having a couple of drinks to get your creative juices flowing will not necessarily send your work into alcoholic perdition unless there’s some specific reason why you should abstain. My point is that writing is an intensely personal act. You have to figure out what works for you. Your blog and your website can and will make a big difference, and you should absolutely set them up, but don’t make the mistake of recycling the advice that’s already been given in every issue of Writer’s Digest since it began publication however many ice ages ago.
To bring this full circle, you can have a stunning cover and you can work your butt off to get your book reviewed. And you should absolutely do both of these things. It ought to go without saying that you need a decent website or at least a blog. But is it absolutely necessary to cultivate a secondary writing career as a dispenser of writing advice? I think your time would be better spent simply writing. Try to become a regular columnist or contributor to a publication with a decent readership. Focus on regularly getting short fiction and/or essays published. Write about what interests you instead of merely regurgitating the latest writing-related Internet meme. This is what is known as building your author platform, and although author platform is not a term I’m particularly fond of (it suggests pigeonholing authors and permitting them to write about only one thing), there’s some sense in it. Even if you’re ticking all the boxes that writers are supposed to tick, there’s no guarantee you can make the magic happen. Which is why writing requires dogged persistence. It’s something you do over decades. It’s not just about one book, it’s about an entire body of work developed over a lifetime. If you’re not capable of taking the long view, of playing a long game, then you should ask yourself whether you’ve really got what it takes. No matter how pretty your words are, there’s more to it than that. You’ve got to stay in the race. And that, Gentle Reader, is the point you should take away from this if you only remember one thing.
http://www.selfpublishingreview.com/blog/2013/06/what-sells-a-book/
The author, who is probably a delightful person and whose books probably sell a thousand times as many copies as all of mine multiplied by each other, lists the following as ways to make a self-published book sell:
1. The cover
2. Buzz
3. Website or blog
4. The cover… or not?
Hasn’t this particular bit of intelligence been floating around since roughly the time that the Earth cooled?
Yes, a good cover will help sell a book and an ugly one is likely to make a reader not want to touch it. We hold these truths to be self-evident. We’ve all seen books with embarrassing hand-drawn covers and cheesy fonts. But there’s another way to look at this issue, and the writer of this piece seems to have skipped right over it: today, book covers need to balance looking good as thumbnails on your computer, smartphone, or tablet screen as they do on display tables in bookstores. Even though bookstores remain (perhaps the most) important places where readers meet books, the Internet has caught up fast. Details that make books gorgeous in real life are imperceptible online. This means that cover-image designers have to approach the task differently. As a publisher, my rule of thumb is that the design needs to look good at 200 x 300 pixels. The title and author’s name have to be legible, and something about the cover has to draw the eye. So yes, it’s a very good idea-even essential-for a self-publishing author to review the covers of the bestselling books to get an idea what the reading public considers attractive these days. But don’t forget that tastes change fast and the publishing industry moves slowly. Think realistically about how long it’ll take for your book to be finished and published. By then, the trends may have shifted. Just as you want to think ahead when you’re planning to have plastic surgery, you will want to make similar preparations for your book. You want it to age well, and-ideally-to keep selling. Just as it’s a good idea to have a beta reader for your book, it’s also a good idea to solicit second opinions on your potential book covers.
On to buzz. This is the recommendation (to use the term loosely) I have the most trouble with. What is buzz and how does an author generate it? I think buzz is one of those words we all understand but have trouble defining. It encompasses reviews and word of mouth. It implies enthusiasm and momentum. Fine, we get that, but doesn’t that also mean it’s not exactly an evolutionary leap beyond the more old-fashioned notion of just getting your book reviewed? This verges on being beyond an author’s control. The author and/or publisher (and/or, for the lucky among us, the publicist) should work together to market the book. However, as a publisher I can assure you that a lot more potential reviewers accept books than actually review them. (I keep track of this and stop contacting the ones who take multiple books from Signal 8 Press without ever writing a review. Other publishers may not be this organized, but we are.) Quite a lot of potential reviewers don’t even deign to respond to emails. I get it: they’re overwhelmed. Which is why we also make a practice of following up a month or so after our initial inquiries.
To actually generate buzz for a book, I believe you have to invest quite a lot of time in researching potential reviewers: bloggers, journalists, and even readers whose reviews on Goodreads and Amazon predispose you to think that they might like your work. One of the better pieces of advice I’ve seen is to befriend these people in order to predispose them to (a) reading your book and (b) saying nice things about it (or saying nothing at all in case they read it and hate it). At the same time, this piece of advice makes me uneasy. It smacks of insincerity. If you feel a genuine affinity for someone, by all means reach out to them and let them know you appreciate what they are doing. People tend to respond well to this kind of thing. But if you just want a review, isn’t it enough to send a polite, professionally written inquiry?
Then there’s social media. I spend a lot more time tweeting than I used to, and one thing that puzzles me is when writers do nothing but tweet about their own books. To the extent that Twitter etiquette exists, I tend to see this as a breach of it. Frankly, if all you do is broadcast the same Thrilling Six-Word Synopsis of your book along with a truncated buy link, I’ll unfollow you. Facebook is a fickle forum as well. I have almost 1300 friends on Facebook and the overwhelming majority of them are content to click Like when I have a new book out. They don’t actually buy them. Because I’m also the publisher, I have access to the sales data; I know exactly how many copies have sold and roughly where they went. (Mysteriously, my books sell better in the UK than in my native USA.) So you can’t assume that having a certain number of friends or followers is enough to make people want to read your work. Trust me: it’s not. If anything, self-made buzz is to me about dogged persistence over a long period of time and planned far in advance-with one caveat, which is to avoid being a nuisance.
Having a website and/or a blog… well, yeah, duh. If you’re a writer, there’s no excuse for not having at least a blog with links to your books. There’s no single magic formula for this apart from staying current with it. (Disclaimer: my own website is about to be overhauled, which is why it’s a little out of date.) But do you have to fill it up with chummy, smiley writing advice? My humble request would be to do anything but that, at least until you have the chops to offer something other than reheated received wisdom and retweeted how-to lists. No, you don’t have to write every day to have a career. Yes, there are other times of day than first thing in the morning when your creativity may be at its sharpest. Yes, your cat feels neglected when you’re writing instead of playing with him (or trying to, despite his indifference). No, having a couple of drinks to get your creative juices flowing will not necessarily send your work into alcoholic perdition unless there’s some specific reason why you should abstain. My point is that writing is an intensely personal act. You have to figure out what works for you. Your blog and your website can and will make a big difference, and you should absolutely set them up, but don’t make the mistake of recycling the advice that’s already been given in every issue of Writer’s Digest since it began publication however many ice ages ago.
To bring this full circle, you can have a stunning cover and you can work your butt off to get your book reviewed. And you should absolutely do both of these things. It ought to go without saying that you need a decent website or at least a blog. But is it absolutely necessary to cultivate a secondary writing career as a dispenser of writing advice? I think your time would be better spent simply writing. Try to become a regular columnist or contributor to a publication with a decent readership. Focus on regularly getting short fiction and/or essays published. Write about what interests you instead of merely regurgitating the latest writing-related Internet meme. This is what is known as building your author platform, and although author platform is not a term I’m particularly fond of (it suggests pigeonholing authors and permitting them to write about only one thing), there’s some sense in it. Even if you’re ticking all the boxes that writers are supposed to tick, there’s no guarantee you can make the magic happen. Which is why writing requires dogged persistence. It’s something you do over decades. It’s not just about one book, it’s about an entire body of work developed over a lifetime. If you’re not capable of taking the long view, of playing a long game, then you should ask yourself whether you’ve really got what it takes. No matter how pretty your words are, there’s more to it than that. You’ve got to stay in the race. And that, Gentle Reader, is the point you should take away from this if you only remember one thing.
