Strictly Internet Marketing for Fiction

Publishing more books is just one tool you can and should use in ‘getting your name out there’ or in book marketing parlance, ‘creating and using a platform.’ Once you have some books, submit them to any legitimate contest you can find that offers an award, even if the award is not monetary. Writer’s Digest (April ’08 issue) just published the list of their contest winners and runners-up for self-published books. From that contest alone, ten writers now have the right to append “award winning author” to their name.

Be careful of contests, there are a lot of scam artists around. Good places to check the latest frauds, schemes and pitfalls are Writer Beware and Preditors & Editors. Some contests collect reading fees and often a large portion of these fees goes toward prizes. I recommend extreme caution when the reading fees are exorbitant, say more than ten or twenty bucks.

And don’t think just hardcopy books either when you go looking for contests to enter. E-books and podcast books have many contests you can enter as well.

Labels: book awards, contests

# posted by Gene Curtis @ 3:21 PM 0 Comments

Non-Fiction as a Marketing Tool for Fiction

Last week I talked about publishing a non-fiction book to help promote your fiction. There are many routes to do that, so the question becomes what to write. Everyone has passions, things they really enjoy. These topics are great places to start, and figuring out the angle to approach it from isn’t that hard. Just use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool or the iWebtools Keyword Lookup Tool. Enter your topic in the form, click the button and up will pop a list of key words and phrases being searched on the internet along with the popularity for the phrase. (You’ll want to use these tools for other things too, so it might be a good idea to bookmark this page. If you don’t, you’ll likely forget the web addresses and have to go looking for them, a time consuming process.)

The book doesn’t have to be great; it just has to be good. It should be helpful, easy to understand and fill a niche or have a unique take on solving a problem. I could write about growing tomatoes, but that niche is pretty well filled. (I know about tomatoes since there’s nothing better than a nice mutton, lettuce & tomato sandwich for lunch and the best tomatoes are home grown.) To find a niche that matches your interests, use the web-tools above and find out what people are searching for.

Another way to get ideas on what to write about is to identify a “crying need.” Have you ever looked for information on how to do something and couldn’t find much about it or tried to do something only to find yourself saying something like, “I wish I had…” or “There has to be a better way?” These are “crying needs” and a perfect catalyst to inspire a subject for you to write about.

It shouldn’t take you more that 2 or 3 months to write a how-to book on something you love, but don’t publish your book until it has been edited by someone else. Preferably, your editor should be someone that takes great delight in telling you you’re wrong, someone that thoroughly enjoys pointing out your mistakes. (If you don’t know anyone like that, you need teenaged children.) This is the person you want, someone that will take great pains to find your mistakes and point them out so you can fix them before the whole world sees them. What you don’t need is someone reluctant to point something out for fear of hurting your feelings. Get a proofer that can be truly eviscerating, (figuratively speaking of course.)

Once your book is finished, get blurbs for the cover and your webpage about the book from fellow authors and advance readers and reviewers. Blurbs build trust, and to quote Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail and Editor-and-Chief of WIRED magazine, "Money was the currency of the old economy; Trust is the currency of the new, global economy."

I also recommend two websites and three additional books for the indie non-fiction author:

www.FonerBooks.com provides a wealth of information about self publishing. The site's owner, Morris Rosenthal makes a living selling his self published books. If you don’t know about it already, I think you’ll find his chart on Amazon sales rank rather interesting and informative. His book, Print-on-Demand Book Publishing: A New Approach To Printing And Marketing Books For Publishers And Self-Publishing Authors is a great primer on using LSI as your printer, which has the benefit of making Ingram your distributor.

Aaron Shepard is another indie author that makes a living selling self published books. His website has a ton of information the indie author needs to know. I recommend his books, Perfect Pages: Self Publishing with Microsoft Word, or How to Avoid High-Priced Page Layout Programs or Book Design Fees and Produce Fine Books in MS Word for Desktop Publishing and Print on Demand for designing your book-block, the pages between the covers and Aiming at Amazon: The NEW Business of Self Publishing, or How to Publish Books for Less, Sell Without Hassle, and Double Your Profit (or More) With Print on Demand and Book Marketing on Amazon.com.

Amazon is important for several reasons. It is the by far the largest online bookstore, so much so that brick and mortar bookstores often complain about the competition. (Amazon has more than an estimated 20% market share for books sold.) It is difficult even for large publishers to get shelf space for a book in physical bookstores and virtually impossible for small publishers and indie authors. It would take more than 50 miles of shelf space for a bookstore to carry one copy of every title in print, and that doesn’t include school textbooks. Another reason is Amazon has an amazing array of tools publishers and authors can use to promote their works. The biggest reason Amazon is important is the fact that most people use Amazon to make book buying decisions, regardless of where they buy. The top things that are looked at the most for making a buying decision are, in order: price, star rating & reviews, sales rank and sales copy (publisher description and professional reviews.)

Labels: fiction marketing, novel marketing

# posted by Gene Curtis @ 8:10 AM 0 Comments

Become an ‘Indie Author’ as a Marketing Tool

If you haven’t already, get a book published. If you already have, get another one published. Having a published book builds creditability: it makes people pleased they know you, it means you’re accomplished, a person of note, an expert, someone others want to meet. Marketing fiction is all about becoming someone others want to meet.

Be careful about what you publish because having a published book goes a long way toward branding you as such-and-such an author. Publish something in the field you enjoy writing or something that you’re passionate about. A farfetched example might be if you’re a ‘political thriller’ author that also loves gardening, you could write a how-to book on raising earthworms and its benefits. You don’t have to limit yourself to fiction and actually nonfiction is easier to write, easier to sell and easier to use in name building.

You’re probably thinking right now something like, “Oh sure, publish a book! Like I can just push a button and wham; I’m published!” Well, actually it can be that easy. If you’re already a published author you owe it to your agent and publisher to tell them what you’re doing. Some of them may even have a ‘first dibbs’ clause in your contract. Your agent and publisher might even want to publish your new book to help promote your current book(s). If you haven’t been published yet, then you can take the reins and do it yourself. “Now you’re telling me to become a vanity author. I’ll be ostracized! I’ll be a pariah!”

Let me say a few words about being self-published making you an outcast: Eragon, The South Beach Diet, Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, The One-Minute Manager, What Color is Your Parachute, Legally Blonde and the list goes on, and on and on… If you want to see a more extensive list, check out the Self-Publishing Hall of Fame. Piers Anthony and Random House actually own Xlibris, one of the larger self-publishing houses. Piers Anthony, one of the biggest names in SF and Fantasy, has more than a dozen self-published books.

The point; the more books you have, the more people are going to want to meet you and marketing fiction is all about becoming a person large numbers of people want to meet. If you have been trying to get published or read a good deal about it, then you’ve probably come to the same conclusion most authors have: famous people and established authors have the best chance to have their manuscripts accepted, first time authors don’t stand much of a chance. That’s because publishers are business people. They want a product they know they can sell. The conclusion you need to draw from this is that you need to become famous, by any means that works.

Another benefit of having some of your works self-published is in the fact that publishers and agents are increasingly monitoring the sales ranks of self-published books. I’ve seen several authors go from being an ‘indie’ to being picked up by large and small publishers alike as well as mainstream, big name literary agents. Self-publishing is fast becoming the new submission process. Keep self-publishing on the top of your to-do list for getting your name out there, but go the traditional route with the fiction you wrote with that intention in mind.

Now, who to use for self-publishing? Clea Saal maintains a wide-ranging list of self-publishing companies on her, “An Incomplete Guide to Print On Demand Publishers” page. She hasn’t updated it to include Amazon’s Create Space, but it’s a good list of what is available.

My recommendations for self-publishing companies are:

Lulu.com and

Create Space

It would be rare for you to make a fair amount of money with any self-publishing company, but some have. Typically they are non-fiction books that fetch a high dollar, but making money with self-publishing isn’t the reason a fiction author uses self-publishing. The reason is to get your name out there as much as possible as a prolific author. More books equals more fame. Knowing you’re not likely to make any money from self-publishing, go in knowing you’re going to set you’re price as low as you can possibly stomach.

Lulu.com basic (no ISBN) is free to use where you only pay for the book when you order it. You can purchase a single ISBN that lists your imprint as the publisher in Books in Print for about a hundred bucks (US), or one that lists Lulu.com as the publisher, which makes it available in more countries. The Lulu.com forums provide a wealth of information on self-publishing. If you go thru the Lulu.com process and read enough of the forum posts, you could get the equivalent of a college education in self-publishing.

Create Space is Amazon’s free self-publishing arm, but you can’t get an ISBN assigned to the book for listing in Books in Print. Their “ISBN” assignment is an actual ISBN number that they use as their ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number). Amazon owns the number, but the number is not assigned to your book as an ISBN. That means Amazon is the only place your book can be ordered. Amazon.com is the most important place to have your books listed on the Internet, so going with Create Space is a viable option. I’ve used both and I’m satisfied with the quality of both.

If you can’t get your head around going the ‘indie’ route, there is a good list of small to large publishers at Preditors & Editors, along with links and recommendations.

Labels: Get Published

# posted by Gene Curtis @ 11:21 AM 0 Comments

Marketing non-fiction focuses on showing that the book solves a problem and does it faster, better, cheaper. Marketing fiction depends on making the author someone others admire, respect and think of as larger than life: someone they want to meet. The following familiar quote is untrue:

“If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap, than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Examples:

• · Mac vs. PC
• · Beta Max vs. VHS

Edison was correct when he said:

“The best-promoted technology will often beat the best technology.” ~ Thomas Alva Edison

"Success is a finished book, a stack of pages each of which is filled with words. If you reach that point, you have won a victory over yourself no less impressive than sailing single-handed around the world." ~Tom Clancy

If you agree with Clancy that success is just a finished book and you have written a book, you don’t need to be reading this. While writing a book is every bit as impressive as he says, by his analogy making it to a best seller list would be akin to building your own rocket ship, flying to the moon and back all by yourself. It’s not quite that hard. But as fiction writers will tell you, marketing fiction is tough because marketing fiction is all about the author becoming someone that others want to meet—a lot of others.

That’s why I was excited about Guerrilla Networking: A Proven Battle Plan to Attract the Very People You Want to Meet. It’s actually more about becoming the person others want to meet. The measure used to determine success in this book is when you no longer need a business card for people to know who you are. Monroe Mann and Jay Levinson outline specific techniques and strategies to accomplish that. I’ll be explaining some of those techniques in the context of how I’m using them to promote myself and therefore my fiction, primarily The Seventh Mountain: Chronicles of a Magi. You’ll be able to monitor my success or failure based on the Amazon sales rank, which is around 1.5 million today.

I’ll also be using techniques from POD People: Beating the Print-on-Demand Stigma by Jeremy Robinson. Jeremy is a successful author that started as an indie whom I admire; he is kind of a hero in my mind. It has been said that there about 200 fiction authors in the entire world that make a living selling fiction and Jeremy has just about crossed into that rank.

The third book I’ll be using is Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors, Book Publicity through Social Networking by Steve Weber. Steve’s book is geared more toward non-fiction, but many of his techniques compliment Guerrilla Networking: A Proven Battle Plan to Attract the Very People You Want to Meet and POD People: Beating the Print-on-Demand Stigma.

# posted by Gene Curtis @ 6:12 PM 2 Comments