Novelists are learning to be marketers. We Twitter, and blog, and send out e-newsletters. But branding is a little elusive. It goes hand in hand with platform, a concept that’s also a little squishy for novelists. Still, the branding basics can be tweaked and put to use for book promotion. Here are the fundamentals, which I made note of long ago.
My second standalone thriller is now on Kindle and I’m celebrating by giving away some e-books. THE BABY THIEF is a unique and complex story in which fertility science collides with an isolated cult when two different women decide to have a child.
Enter to win one of five free copies by e-mailing me with
I’m finally retiring the weekly giveaway of a print version of THE SEX CLUB—after two years and lots of money spent at the post office. I sent copies as far as Portugal! Instead, I’m starting a weekly e-book giveaway of my new standalone thriller, THE SUICIDE EFFECT. You can enter today by simply e-mailing me with the words Win: The Suicide Effect in the subject line.
I finally took the plunge! Many traditionally published authors have self-published their backlist titles and/or unsold manuscripts as e-books, and now I’ve joined them in this exciting venture. Why not?
Before I started writing the Detective Jackson series, I wrote several standalone thrillers,
The highs and lows of book selling can give you whiplash. One minute a reader says, “Your series looks terrific, I’ll take all three” and your heart swells with happiness. An hour later, it’s pouring rain, you haven’t sold a book in an hour, and you start to wonder if it’s worth. And by it, I mean the whole novel writing experience. Because novel writing and selling books are intrinsically linked.
For readers looking for reviews or new-book news, or writers seeking bloggers who might want a review copy, here’s some serious book bloggers who attended the first Book Blogger Convention in New York last month:
One-star protest. The Kindle reader practice of giving a book a one-star Amazon review to protest the price is bullshit. It’s like stiffing a waiter or complaining about the service because you’re pissed about the cost of your meal or the restaurant’s policies. It punishes the wrong people. If you don’t like the price, don’t buy the book. Stop hurling tomatoes at the author.
Tips for Busy Writers: What better way to start every Monday than by learning a great tip for managing a busy life?
I use the monthly calendar function in my Entourage e-mail program to track my personal schedule, and I print out a few months at a time and carry the pages with me. This neat trick serves two functions:
Just have to say that lately I’m having a blast. Much of it has to do with my newspaper job. In the last few months, I’ve interviewed cartoonist Jan Eliot, a professor of film studies who discussed great women movie characters (blog coming soon!), a 77-year-old woman doing standup with a very naughty routine, and a female weightlifting champion, to name a few. As a novelist, I’ve been privileged to interview a SWAT team
Characters everywhere! You can run into the most interesting people just cruising around, but as newspaper writer, I get sent to interview them. It’s wonderful! One day last week, for example, I interviewed Omer and Dave Orian, red-afro-sporting Israeli brothers who operate Off the Waffle out of their home (and a cart near the UO). “Obsessed with waffles” is how Dave describes them and their business, which has a very loyal following. (You have to click through for the photos!)
In the New York Times Sunday book review, Paul Greenburg wrote (humorously) about bailing out writers. His introduction refers to writers as losers, who, instead of selling books, are selling their home furnishings to stay afloat.
What is interesting is that the concept he proposed is not a bailout at all. Greenburg believes that the problem with the writing industry is that there are too many writers now and not enough money to support them all. He mentions the 185,000 listed by the National Endowment for the Arts who support themselves through artistic endeavors. This, of course, does not include the thousands and thousands who write in their spare time and support themselves by some other endeavor.
His hypothetical proposal: “About 275,000 new titles and editions are published in the United States each year. Let’s say we want to eliminate half of them. Assuming it takes about two years to write your average book, we would offer book writers two years of salary at the writers’ average annual income of $38,000 a year.”
The catch? Those who take the money would have to stop writing. This is a buyout, not a bailout. When companies have more workers than they need, they offer cash incentives to employees leave their job voluntarily… forever.
It’s an interesting premise. If someone offered you $76,000 to never write again, would you take the money? If not, what is your price? What if you only had to stop writing for two years, would you do it for that price?
This question is like the “Would you sleep with an ugly stranger for a million dollars?” scenario—only with a lot less money and a much harder decision. If nothing else, it will make you think about how important writing is to you and what you would sacrifice for it.
I had been thinking about unions lately and wondering if they have become counterproductive. Then yesterday I heard that autoworkers at General Motors make around $71 an hour when you include benefits. Holy shit! No wonder the company is going broke. This is clearly not a sustainable business model.
And then there are the teachers’ unions, which many people believe keep bad teachers in their jobs and contribute to the decline in education. Before you get all riled up, I support teachers and think they should be better paid. (I wouldn’t teach middle school for any amount of money.) But I also think teachers should be held accountable for the job they do, and those that don’t cut it should be fired—like anyone else.
So what does this have to do with writers or books? Not much. But independent writers have no market protections and no real benefits (which is the case with most low-wage workers). Of course, there is a Writers’ Guild, but it’s mostly for scriptwriters who are already making good money and can afford the $2500 joining fee. Some writers are represented by agents, but an agent can’t guarantee anything. Health benefits? Hah! Paid holidays? Dream on. Livable hourly wage? If I ever did the math on my novels, it would make me cry.
I don’t begrudge anyone else these benefits just because I currently don’t have them. But as a taxpayer (who pays teachers’ and government workers’ salaries), I expect my money to be invested wisely. So if we the people bail out GM, its employees should have to live in the real world with the rest of us where there are no unions, no guarantees, and no one is fighting for you—but you. That’s life.
