engagement

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Sharing Resources

March 19, 2010 in Activities | 8 comments

 

Perhaps you’ve noticed I’ve been posting less in the last few days. It wasn’t from choice – just that my workload suddenly increased, and there are only so many things you can do in 24 hours. But we’ve been talking about engaging readers. And one of the key rules of engagement – at least as far as blogging is concerned – is that there needs to be a reason for people to come back and check in regularly. A quick look at the Google Analytics figures for A Real Writer shows what happens when I don’t show up. Readers immediately stop arriving too. Visits for yesterday were only half those for the same day last week. And it’ll take a while to build the momentum again.

Realistically, I’m not going to have time for a new post every day. I can, though, modify the links in the sidebar. In Just In I’ll try to post something new every day And, from today onwards, any new link in the sidebar will be labelled ..er .. NEW for the first couple of days. (Don’t miss today’s addition: Greta’s interesting take on how to write an interactive book – Going South – where we readers make decisions and on the basis of those, Greta writes the next chapter.)

But just giving you links isn’t enough. A decent blog needs new original content, every day if possible. How to do this without a 36-hour day? The simple answer is to stop trying to do everything myself – to make A Real Writer a team effort.

Before I explain how, let’s look at the structure of WordPress. There are three key elements in all WordPress sites. Posts – you’re reading one now; Links – like those in the right-hand toolbar; and Pages – like those listed in the header, where I’ve put The Lebanese Troubles and my short stories. Posts are like diary entries: they slowly slide down out of sight (although of course there’s an archive). Links take you out of the site and to other interesting content. But Pages are designed for static content – information that rarely changes, and which readers might like to reference frequently.

Root Index

One of the most important features of WordPress Pages is that you can nest one page within another, and then nest another inside the first. Without limit, says WordPress. Allowing you to build a root index – just like the one shown left. The most important reason why I chose WordPress over Blogger was because of this feature. (I notice that Blogger is trialling something rather similar now, but at present the maximum number of pages is apparently 10.)

So today I’ve added a new Page heading, Resources. There’s not much content on these pages yet, but you’ll see how it’s going to work if you scroll back to the top of the page, click on Resources, and then follow the links through to Book Design and then to Graphic viewers – picture editing.

How are we going to fill in the spaces and build up a repository of knowledge? Together. If you’ve got something to add – a great resource you’ve discovered, something you’ve found useful – just add it as a Comment, and I’ll add it permanently to the list. If you’re prolific (and I hope you will be), then I’ll add you as an author here – allowing you to add new items directly.

The objective is to create a complete, up-to-date resource for any author who wants to know more about taking a book from manuscript to market. Because that’s why we’re all here, isn’t it?

By doing this, we’ll be addressing one of the worries that David Hunter raised in a comment – worries we probably all have.

So now we need to be graphic designers and artists as well as ad men, marketers and writers? … I just see more people earning lower incomes from writing and flash and glitter being just as important online as it is in the bookshop… it’s just the author will have to do it all, or hire it done, rather than have such services provided. Or companies will start to publish ebooks professionally in return for a share in profits, which means back to square one.

In our community, most people are writers but they also have other jobs. And some, I know, have skills and knowledge that would help others. If you do, please tell us. Yes, we may need to manage more than ever before, but frankly, if I’m able to make the final decision about who’s going to edit the manuscript, how the jacket design looks, which publishing formats I’m going to use, who’s going to handle the legal work … that’s what I’d prefer. Traditional publishers won’t always give so much freedom of choice – and whether we like it or not, we authors always end up paying for everything, not upfront perhaps but by agreeing to accept a royalty of around 10% of income from the sales of our own books.

And that, I guess, is an introduction to where we’re going next with this blog – a series of posts about the role of the publisher and the agent in a rapidly changing market. Stand by for controversy – and a few more left-field ideas.

 

Earlier post: Google Analytics to measure engagement

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What Scribd taught me about book design

March 16, 2010 in Research | 5 comments

I’ve been testing out Scribd today – another social publishing site. Scribd (pronounced like ad-libbed) claims to be the ‘largest social publishing company in the world, the Website where tens of millions of people each month publish and discover original writings and documents.’ Plenty of competition for reader attention then – although not all the documents are creative writing, not by any means.

My short story, Waiting For Orders, has done pretty well. Look – here’s a display of most of the short stories posted today.

New short stories on Scribd

So what do you notice? Well, my short story has far and away the most ‘reads’. But what else do you notice? Yes, it’s the only one with a significant picture – and one that’s likely to excite curiosity, I’d say. It’s one of only two where the title stands out.

Now when readers decide to click on a book or document to read it, they first select a category, and they might select to see a list of the most popular (= most often opened) books, or the new ones, or those which are rising fast, have received the best reviews, or are featured on the site. They select from a set of thumbnails, just like those above. Let’s assume that the reader likes the category, or he wouldn’t be on this page. So it’s the jacket illustration and the title which are the key factors in generating reader interest, probably in that order. The number of pages is probably less significant, as long as the short story is not too long.

With a click readers are taken to a second introductory page, showing a snapshot of the author, category tags attached to the file, the first page again, and an introductory sentence. I had to cut away at my sentence until I got it down to the right length for the whole message to appear. I ended up with:

An apocalyptic satire – on science, religion, consumerism and … Wordsworth.

I’m pretty sure that’s entertaining enough to have dragged in a few more readers too.

Did readers like ‘Waiting For Orders‘ when they started reading? That I don’t know. I’m waiting for my first comments and reviews – but have received none yet. Perhaps that’s a sign nobody likes the story. All the number of ‘reads’ tells me is how many people actually opened the book, not how many of them finished it. Perhaps they only scanned a page or two. So I’m certainly not going to call this test a big success yet. I need evidence of reader engagement first.

But this certainly illustrates just how important first impressions are to draw the reader in. (Perhaps too that’s why it’s important to begin the story with a bang – we only get one chance to get the reader’s attention – and if our book fails to make an impact, there are plenty of others that will.)

Go check it out for yourself. Can you see the correlation between a strong vibrant front-cover design and the number of readers? Find another recent posting with a strong early readership, and take a look at the design. Why does it succeed? Which types of cover work best? How important is the title? And the one-sentence description?

Who would have thought that book design and the jacket were so important in an ebook – and with a short story?

And how far would you want to take this? Is there a case perhaps for including more illustrations in our novels and short stories – like the wonderful work of Tenniel for Lewis Carroll or Phiz for Charles Dickens in Victorian times. Perhaps the idea of multimedia novels is not so very new after all.

If you’d like to see how Scribd works, take a new look at Waiting for Orders here. Click on the ‘Short Stories’ tab at the top of the page and follow the link to the story. What you’re seeing is exactly how it feels to be a reader using Scribd. Try the full-screen version too, and presentation in book format rather than scroll format.

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Short Stories To Build Readership

March 12, 2010 in planning | 3 comments

I made a big decision a few days ago. I’d entered a short story, Waiting For Orders, for a competition. I was really pleased with the story, and the competition results were due to be announced any day. The top 10-15 stories would be published in an anthology, and I knew there were fewer than 100 entries. Reviewers were pretty positive. I had a reasonable chance.

But I pulled the story out of the competition. Why? Because with my evolving marketing plan, it just didn’t make sense to keep it there.

Of course, I might not have won through. When we enter our writing for any competition, it’s always a gamble. What if you just don’t connect with the judges? But let’s suppose my story had been selected. What would I have gained?

  1. Publication. A GOOD THING because:
    • I’ll like it. It proves that someone else thinks I can write. And it gives me something to brag about to agents and publishers later.
    • My friends will like it. They’ll tell me that now I’m featured in a proper book, I’m a proper writer.
    • My mother will like it – once she’s recovered from the shock of the swear-words, the heresy, and the unwarranted, unkind attack on poets in the story.
  2. Money. The winners will be paid $50 on acceptance, and there’s a chance there might be more later if the book does well. But I’d be surprised if any of the contributors ended up making more than $200.

I’m sorry. It’s not really a very convincing list. But I can think of lots of convincing disadvantages.

  1. If accepted, I would have to give up my rights to the story for 5 years – the length of the contract. I would have no right to publish anywhere else – whether in print or electronically. But I need this story in my portfolio.
  2. I would have no control over the publication date. I want to use the story now – but in the hands of a publisher, it’ll probably take at least another six months before it appears in print.
  3. I’d lose control over pricing. If I want to distribute the story free of charge in order to build my readership, I won’t be able to do so.
  4. I’d like to experiment with different publishing formats – including audio-shorts for the IPod. This story, with its distinctive ‘voice’, is a good candidate for audio treatment, but if accepted, this might have been difficult to negotiate.

My decision has allowed me to start using Waiting for Orders to build my readership right now – today. You’ll notice that I’ve added a new page for Short Stories to the blog, and if you open the page, you’ll see that I’m encouraging you – if you like the story – to share it with friends and to promote it by posting it to social-sharing services like Stumble Upon, where you can also review it.

If you have a blog and short stories ready to show the world, why don’t you join me to help to build your market too? It doesn’t matter whether you’re following the traditional agent/publisher route or, like me, are planning to publish electronically. In either case this should help us to build our readership. And if we let each other know what we’re releasing, then we can all indulge in some beneficial cross marketing.

There’s an important quality control rule though: none of us should recommend a story unless we believe it’s of the highest standard, and that our friends would be bound to enjoy it. If we don’t keep our standards high, our friends will think we’re spamming them when we share.

And if we notice that our stories aren’t being shared, that’s probably a sign that they are not making sufficient impact.

Note that my intention is not to sell stories at this stage. The time for that will come when people are consistently reading what I publish. As ever, I’m going to set a measurable objective. I aim to release a new short story at least once a month. Once I see that these releases are consistently being read by at least 100 people, then I’ll introduce a small charge for new stories … and we’ll then be able to study the impact of different pricing levels.

I’ve also posted a short Twitter message this evening: ‘An environment-unfriendly short story for your reading pleasure – http://www.arealwriter.com/short-stories/waiting-for-orders/’. Will this result in any new readers? I don’t know, but I need to test it – at present I have around 70 Twitter ‘followers’. Will this boost their numbers? Will it bring new people to the blog? I’ll be monitoring the results in Google Analytics very closely, watching to see the source of new readers. And then in coming days, I’ll also test-publish the story on various other writer sites, and check the response. I’ll take just one different site each day to make it easy to measure the results. If you’ve previously worked with any sites which e-publish short stories, I’d be interested to hear your experiences.

Finally, I’m aware that some of you still have entries in the competition I’ve opted out of. To all of you, the very best of luck. The decision I’ve made is right for me, but may be completely wrong for others. I read a lot of high quality submissions, and I’m sure the anthology will be great – I’ll certainly be reviewing and promoting it here when it’s published.

 

Related reading: Two time winner of the Faulkner Award for Fiction, John Edgar Wideman explains why he has decided to self-publish from now on: ‘I like the idea of being in charge. I have more control over what happens to my book. And I have more control over whom I reach.’

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Google Analytics to measure engagement

March 7, 2010 in planning, Results | 3 comments

 

In the next three posts I’ll be looking at reader engagement. This time I’ll look at how to measure engagement, and propose short-term targets in an Engagement Scoresheet. Next time, the topic will be how to build engagement. And in the third post, I’ll explain how I plan to convert engagement into sales.

To make a start, let’s see what Google Analytics can do for us in this 5-screen display.

 

Download (PDF, 77.45KB)

This display created with Google Docs and the WordPress plugin, Google Doc Embedder.
Another WordPress plugin, WP Google Analytics, helped me to connect the blog to Analytics in just a couple of minutes.



There’s much more that Google Analytics can do for you. For example you can find out which links have been clicked (although I can’t get this to play with WordPress at the moment); you can see how many times people have revisited; you can see which outbound links are the most popular. But which are the most important measurements for me?

Once again I need to go back to my objective. $18,000 net income per year is my target. Let’s suppose that my receipts are 50% of total sales revenues (and if I can improve on that percentage, that’ll be good). So I need to aim at $36,000 in sales revenue. That means I’ll have to find around 3000 engaged readers who are prepared to spend at least $12 a year on my creative output.

How do we define the number of engaged readers? I’m going to be measuring the number of people returning at least three times a week. I’ll be tracking also the number of visits per week where more than 3 pages were accessed, and where the time spent on site was more than 3 minutes.

I also want to measure how many people are actually reading the creative writing elements – at the moment how many people are reading the sample chapters of The Lebanese Troubles. And when they’ve started, do they continue? This after all, is the point of the whole marketing exercise. The key measurable here will be how many people have read at least 50% of the creative writing samples on the site – we’ll be aiming at 3000 by March 2011.

Am I expecting to get 3000 engaged readers for this site – A Real Writer? Absolutely not. I hope that fellow-writers will enjoy my experiments in literature, but I’ve identified other niche audiences for my work too – which I’ll talk about next time. I’ll be aiming for engagement with them too, but they’re unlikely to follow me here. There will be other sites, a Facebook fan page, Twitter – I’ll expand more on this as we go on. But for now, let’s look at a possible Engagement Scoresheet, laying down some fairly modest targets for the next 30 days.



Engagement Scoresheet

A monthly update, showing the results achieved to date and the targets for the next 30 days. (This display created with the Wordpress plugin, WP-Target Reloaded)
1st MarchTarget
31st March		Notes
BLOG Visits0600Fairly low expectations for Month 1 - Seeking min 150% increase per month for each of these targets.
Unique visitors050
People > 12 visits this month040
Visits > 3 minutes0200
Visits > 3 pages0200
Feed subscribers020As recorded by Feedburner
FACEBOOK friends3050Novel fan page planned for April.
TWITTER fans3360Tracking writer communities this month.
TWITTER mentions + questions020
No of Sales00First sales expected May
Net income- $60- $60Cost of website for 12 months

 


Nothing too ambitious for month 1, but if I want to achieve the targets, I’ll need to register month-of-month increases of at least 150%. How? That’s for next time.

Now tell me which other key measurements I’ve missed.


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A Writer’s Objectives

March 5, 2010 in planning | 12 comments

 

In my first post I mentioned that my objective was not simply to see my name in print. What I want is:

To be a full-time creative writer engaging enough readers and generating enough income to support myself and my family.

In business, that would be called a mission statement.

I’ve chosen the words carefully. ‘A creative writer‘. That rules out taking on writing and research assignments for others. Plenty of writers do supplement their income like this, but it’s not for me: I know I’d lose focus and there wouldn’t be enough hours in the day for my creative work. That’s always been the problem – finding enough time to do the writing that really matters to me.

‘Engaging readers‘ is different from ‘winning fans’. We saw in the previous post that Josh Woodward has used the web to attract huge numbers of fans, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he has huge sales. In the age of viral marketing, all of us are signing up, subscribing, following – it’s a fad. How many times this year have you signed up for a site? How many do you continue to follow? How often have you parted with money?

Engagement is converting brand recognition into brand loyalty. More important than the number of fans is the number of people who come back and read again, the amount of time they spend reading. And ultimately whether they’re willing to put their hand in their pocket for the work I sell. As Gary Stein explains in a recent post, the most effective interactive marketers are ‘forcefully evolving their engagement strategies away from a simple number of who-has-the-most-fans to something that actually has some value: what-do-my-fans-get-me?’

There’s much more to say about engagement; in my next post I’ll explain how I propose to build it, and how I’m going to measure it. But now I need to expand on my mission statement. It’s still too vague. The stated objective is to generate income to support my family. How much income – and in what timeframe? Without real numbers, there’s no way to evaluate success or, later, to judge whether the strategy needs adjustment.

What I’m doing here is to apply to myself the same rules I’ve been using in my professional career for the past few years. As a business consultant, I’ve helped businesses and individuals to define their objectives and then manage achievement. The golden rule is always to set up measurable targets. When individuals say they want a career-change, I ask them to write their resumé – as they want it to look in three years time. Then together we work out a route-map to get there, with clear milestones.

I’m not giving myself the luxury of a three-year plan. I know myself too well. When I dive into a project, I find it very difficult to focus on anything else – I’m not a multi-tasker. So if I’m going to get serious about writing, I need writing to support me within one year. Support – what does that mean in real money? Well let’s not get over-ambitious or write in too many luxuries. In fact, let’s depersonalize it, by setting as a target the equivalent of the UK minimum wage for a 40-hour week. That’s around $18,000 per year. Of course I’m not going to start earning right away. But by March 2011, I need to be earning a net income from writing averaging at least $1,500 per month.

If I was stacking shelves in a supermarket it would be a breeze. For a writer it’s not so easy. But by setting my objectives, I’m already sensing the shape of the plan.

  1. At this stage in my career I won’t be looking for an agent or a publisher. Even if by some stroke of good fortune I was signed up quickly, it would take months before a book appeared on the shelves. Any advance for an unknown first-time novelist would be relatively small – certainly lower than $18,000. Assuming I earned a 10% royalty on a $14.99 book, I’d have to be selling 1500 books a month to meet my target. That very rarely happens – not at the beginning of a career.

  2. E-publishing looks a better bet than self-publishing or print-on-demand. It’s faster – and I need to get started as soon as possible – less expensive, less risky, easier to distribute, and while a novel would be priced lower (typically around the $4.99 mark – anyone like to research this?), the royalty would be 70% or greater. This would leave me with only around 425 books to sell per month to reach my target.

  3. But even this sales target is high. There will need to be other sources of creative-writing income. So what might they be?

(Now it’s time for you to put your thinking caps on: let’s have some left-field thinking – can we learn anything from musicians, artists, business, politicians … did you hear today that Tony Blair is getting a £4.5 million advance from Harper Collins for his forthcoming autobiography?)

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