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Being Alain Miles

May 11, 2011 in Marketing | 5 comments

Cowardly Lion

Read your horoscope today? Nor me. That stuff we read in the papers is all a load of nonsense, isn’t it? But sun signs? Believing that our personalities are shaped by astrological forces? That’s another matter entirely. I’m a believer.

In my early years I had no idea I was a Leo. Timid, introverted, lacking self-confidence, cautious, I was a disgrace to my sign. Not that I’m blaming myself. Astrology wasn’t the sort of thing we talked about in our house. It wasn’t till my mid-teens that I first got my hands on Old Moore’s Almanack. I remember slipping it between the pages of Playboy so my mother wouldn’t find it.

The pleasure I had in those secret moments with old Moore. Again and again I thumbed his pages, shivering with excitement as I re-read my destiny. I was King of the Beasts, a born leader, a creator, a giver and receiver of love and affection, a pleasure-seeker. And I liked the mane. Other boys my age wanted to be an astronaut, a pop star, an accountant. Not me. I wanted to be a Leo.

It took me a lifetime of dedication to get there. At first I was a Cowardly Lion, but when everyone was out of the house I shut myself in the cupboard under the stairs and practised roaring. Soon I began to overcome my fear and doubt; I learnt to lead and I was never wrong. I fought the status quo unceasingly, intolerantly. And now I feel I’m a true Leo. I’m not perfect of course: still today I wonder whether I’m sufficiently regal and pompous. But whenever anyone asks to see my profile, I just refer them to Traditional Leo Traits.

As with Leo, so with Alain. I wasn’t always a proper Alain – in fact, I wasn’t an Alain at all. For years I floated quite happily through life, perfectly content with the Alan Miles brand. Until I came to publish my first novel. And then, to my horror, Google told me that I wasn’t Alan Miles at all. Or if I was, then I already had several books in print, and I had a face that wasn’t at all the one I remembered. I checked the mirror. No, I was right: I wasn’t blond and my nose was more … aquiline. So then I called my mother. Had she been keeping a terrible secret from me?

- Oh that’s good. So you don’t have to write books any more then? And you can go back to your proper job?

Thanks Mum.

I did some more checking and it got worse. There was another A Miles writing too. Writing diet books. Now, it’s true that I have been thinking about writing ‘Cooking For Me And My Dog’ – recipes we both enjoy. But a diet book!? It hardly sounds like me. Lions don’t diet.

So what to do? I suppose pistols at dawn could have been a possibility. But remembering my positive experiences as a born-again Leo, I decided that the best thing was to be a born-again Alan. Now if you’ve ever been born or reborn, you’ll probably remember that one of the highlights is getting a new name. And that’s exactly what happened. I was a born-again Alain.

Why Alain? Well, many people think it’s French. Just the other day, a reviewer was discussing my dialog style – my refusal to use quotation marks – and concluded it was some kind of “French thing”. Actually it’s because after years of faithful service in my garden office, my computer has a few dead insects trapped under the screen, so when I have scenes full of dialog, it can get very difficult to read: is that punctuation or an insect? Since I can’t get rid of the insects, I decided to get rid of the speech marks. But if thinking of me as French makes readers happy, adds a little je ne sais quoi to the writing, then it’s a myth I’m happy to build on.

But the truth is that Al Ain is a city in the United Arab Emirates, a country that has happy associations for me. I considered other cities there too: Dubai, Abu Dhabi, even Ras Al Khaimah Miles, but none of them had quite the ring I wanted. And besides, I think I might have some kind of metaphorical affinity with Al Ain too: an oasis city, stuck in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by desert.

So Alain it was. A new life as a writer, and with my new nom de plume, a new identity. Following in the footsteps of the greats: George Eliot, George Orwell, Mark Twain and Pimbo. But even for a Leo – strong-willed, positive, independent, self-confident, with no such a word as doubt in my vocabulary, this hasn’t been easy. To become the new person, I need to eradicate all traces of the old: just try telling Facebook and LinkedIn that you’ve become someone else. Or your mother. Or your spouse. (This wasn’t so bad: she said she was pleased.)

I spent the whole day yesterday being Alain and leaving Alan behind. I launched the Alain Miles author page on Facebook, rebranded myself in LinkedIn, retitled the blog, created an alainmiles.com domain. There’s just one problem: I might be a fraud. Facebook is certainly suspicious. Before they’ll allow me to ‘claim’ my page, 25 people have to ‘Like’ it. Not see it, not read it, but actually Like it. What if it never happens? I could be left in limbo for the rest of my natural days, neither the Alan I’ve renounced, nor the Alain I intend to be, just a figment of my own imagination ….

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If you’d like to help me out of author purgatory, please Like the Alain Facebook page.

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A Wedding, a Politican, and the Pursuit of Happiness

April 25, 2011 in The TwitFace Project | 1 comment



I’m beginning to wonder whether this week’s Royal Wedding in the UK is one of the most audacious feats of political skulduggery ever.

My suspicions were alerted when I saw a headline in the Daily Telegraph this morning.

Archbishop of Canterbury hails plan to measure national happiness

It wasn’t the normal Easter address from the head of the Anglican Church, calling on Christians to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ. Instead Dr Williams used the occasion to praise Prime Minister David Cameron’s proposal to replace GDP with GWB (= General Well-Being) as the primary indicator of the nation’s progress.

And then he called on us to celebrate the union between our future Defender of the Faith and his Kate, proclaiming ‘Let a thousand street parties blossom!’

Is it only your TwitFace correspondent who has noticed that hard on the heels of The Wedding – just a week later, when we’ll probably still be trying to find our shoes before we stagger home from the party – comes one of the defining moments in our political history? What defining moment? You’d forgotten? May 5th is the date set for our referendum on AV, the Alternative Vote, possibly changing the way we elect our politicians.

Every time I turn on the TV, I hear people talking about street parties. And what parties they’ll be! Starting on Friday, running all weekend, and continuing on Monday, MayDay. How do I read the timing of The Wedding and this incessant call for partying? Surely it must be an elaborate collusion between Church, State, Monarchy and Media to ensure that not a single person votes in the referendum? ‘Politics – blah! Pass me the Alka-Seltzer.’

A conspiracy? But of course. After all, AV goes against everything our Big Society stands for. The current system is monogamous: a voter chooses a single politician and pledges loyalty. But AV – ranking the candidates on a list – is designed to encourage open relationships with multiple partners. Some would call it a loosening of our moral standards. Some would say that at best it’s a ‘least worst’ electoral system.

Ever since he was hustled into his shotgun marriage with Nick Clegg, it’s been clear that Mr Cameron has regretted his vow to put AV to the public vote. And now I see that the Royal Wedding is simply a plan to scupper the referendum.

Some would call this plan devious – evil even – but not me. I’m full of admiration. It’s been brilliantly conceived, carefully concealed, and skilfully executed. And I’m sure that our Prime Minister will take no pleasure in the thought of those millions of people waking up with a headache after a week of partying, far away from their polling-station, and trying to remember why May 5th was important. I’m confident that his motives are exemplary because he’s a forward-thinker and a democrat. How else could you interpret his quest for General Well-Being?

I’m convinced that, like me, the PM realizes none of the current proposals for electoral reform address the fundamental flaws in our democracy. Which isn’t democratic. He’s done his sums, I’m sure. He’ll know that even when a candidate secures a 50% majority, the voting turnout is rarely more than 70%. What does that tell us? That there will always be a majority of people who either actively oppose the winning candidate – or could care less. Surely there must be a better way.

And of course, there is.

Tell me how many people in your household voted in the last national election? How many in the last local election?

Now tell me how many people in your household use one of the social networks – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, for a start? And how many of them have registered a vote for something they’ve Liked in the last 24 hours?

No contest, is it? You may have exercised your chance to vote in an election once every few years. But here on the web we do it several times a day. The beauty of it is that we don’t even have to read more than a few words. As soon as we see a smart headline or a face we recognize, all we need to do is click on the ‘Like’ button. Surely that’s how democracy was always supposed to work!

It’s only unfortunate that having reached this conclusion, Mr Cameron then commissioned a quango – the Office for National Statistics – to carry out a £2 million, 9-month research project to give him the answers he already knew. I know! I know! Old habits die hard.

But with respect, Prime Minister, may I suggest that the time for action is now – or at the latest May 6th – the day after nobody has voted in the referendum. Close down the Office for National Statistics immediately, demonstrating your firm yet even-handed control of the nation’s purse-strings, and implement these reforms. The country will thank you.

1. Abolish elections

Let the people’s representatives be those who garner the best support in the social media. Those who are most followed, most Liked. Or perhaps you could use The Independent‘s clever algorithm, which ranks Twitter users by Authority, Audience and Activity.

With your 1 million plus Twitter followers, you need have no fear for your own seat, but abolition would result in the de-selection of almost all sitting MPs. At a stroke, you’d remove the lingering public suspicion of expense-mongering. And instead of Vince Cable, Ed Balls, Theresa May for company, you’d have Stephen Fry, Russell Brand, Rio Ferdinand … luminaries whose voices and opinions the people really trust.

Think of the change as a move away from end-of-year exams and toward continual assessment.

2. Abolish campaign funding

Approximately £67 million was spent on campaign funding in the UK during the 2010 election year, money that could be usefully diverted to other urgent social causes (such as my upcoming sequel to “The Social Network” – “Birdman of Folsom Street“).

Not one of The Independent’s influencers owes their position to external funding. Surely this must also increase public confidence in the integrity of our representatives.

3. Abolish parliament

My proposal is actually that we should restrict political statements to sentences of not more than 140 characters. Twitter has shown how completely unnecessary longer utterances are, and it provides the perfect platform for debate. I had a concern that replacing parliament with Twitter might lead to a devaluation of content, but research from Pear Analytics shows that in fact, the two forums are virtually indistinguishable. Analyzing Twitter content over a 2-week period in 2009, Pear organized tweets into 6 categories:

  • Pointless babble – 40%
  • Conversational – 38%
  • Pass-along value – 9%
  • Self-promotion – 6%
  • Spam – 4%
  • News – 4%


4. Sell off the Houses of Parliament

Since our representatives will communicate in cyberspace, there’s no further requirement for a property which occupies a prime development site in the heart of London on the bank of the Thames. No longer will Members need to maintain a second home in London (no more expenses scandals!), and the money raised from the sale could also be used to support my film.

5. Re-brand democracy.

The public is tired of hearing the same call to action for over 150 years – ‘One man, one vote’. That’s why turnout is often so low in elections: people expect different these days, people expect more. My suggestion is ‘One man, 104,000 Likes’.

The number has been carefully calculated. In a single week, each person would be allowed a maximum of 2000 Likes, in my view perfectly sufficient to express a point of view. More than that, and there’s a danger that campaign farms could be set up by candidates eager to wield influence, persuading followers to Like them day and night.

I’m not quite comfortable with ‘One man’. It cleverly builds on the original campaign, but perhaps we should make it clear that women have the Like too. Your suggestions would be welcome.

I’m quite certain that Mr Cameron’s thinking will be far in advance of mine. That’s what you’d expect from a man who has stated that the National Well-Being scheme should ‘lead to government policy that is more focused not just on the bottom line, but on all those things that make life worthwhile’. That he wants Britain to be ‘in the vanguard’ of efforts around the world to change the accepted measures of national progress ‘rather than following meekly behind’.

But he needs our support. So if you believe this plan could reawaken the public’s interest in tired old politics and politicians, then please click on the Like button below. Remember that in Egypt, it took only a month for social media activists to transform the political landscape. With your help, Mr Cameron could do the same.

Recent posts in The TwitFace Project:

Entertrainment
14 Ways To Make Friends With Americans

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7 Way To Engage Readers

April 24, 2011 in Reflections | 1 comment

Here’s a post from a year back on reader engagement. It’s a little dated – who remembers Tony Blair and Brangelina now? – but the advice still holds. Maybe I should re-read it too.

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Fame Costs - Book cover

This is the book I’ve been reading lately. Bet you didn’t think I was into that kind of thing. To be honest, nor did I, when Lena set it down next to the computer a couple of weeks back.

- It was only 20p at the stall in the market.

- Was it?

- Thought it might give you a few ideas.

Uh-oh. Been spending too much time on the damned book recently and not paying enough attention. So she buys me a Mills & Boon. Why didn’t she just say something?

- Look here – under the smiley man. ‘A true story of the author’s struggle to break into print.’ Useful?

- Um, yeah. Maybe.

Humour her.

 

Fame Costs is the true story of F.T.Unwin – or Pimbo, as he liked to call himself. He was from these parts, a Cambridge man, and it was Cambridge he wrote about. Not the university town. Not the tourist town. His books were full of stories of the people who have always lived here, and probably always will. Sentimental, nostalgic stuff. ‘He was, undoubtedly, an awful writer – which is all part of his naive charm’, that’s how he was remembered recently. Not much to appeal to today’s reader.

Unless that reader happened to be me.

Pimbo had a life-long ambition to be a writer, paid for writing courses, submitted to magazines, and after 30 years of rejections decided to go it alone with his first novel, using a vanity publisher. He managed to place a few copies in local shops, did some signings, and sold less than 100 books. So what to do with his stock?

Here’s what. He gets on the bus with a bagful of books, heads for one of the outlying villages, and starts selling door-to-door. Sets himself a small target every day and doesn’t take the journey home till he’s hit the target. Writes in the morning, gets the bus in the afternoon. He’s around 60 years old.

The first year was hard, but he began to attract attention, with a little press and radio coverage. Then it was local TV. Pimbo did it his own way. He was a character.

And the next year, when he took his new book on the same routes, people remembered. They invited him in, told him their own stories – which of course were then featured in his next novel. Pimbo’s readers began to have a personal stake in his books.

By 1987, with around 20 titles to his credit (nobody seems to know exactly how many), he had sold 80,000 books. Did his readers love them? Well, just about every review I can find includes the word ‘awful’, but as one commentator puts it:

Fred Unwin probably had a larger readership amongst local people than any better known author, and certainly amongst those who might not normally read books … He built up a list of regulars, brought great pleasure with his visits, and when he had made enough money from selling one book he would write another. He commands huge respect for that.

 

So what am I recommending? Write slush? Get out there selling door-to-door? Neither. But the lessons of reader engagement in Pimbo’s story still hold true today just as they did then, 30 years ago. Just one thing has changed. We don’t have to wait for the bus any more. Because we’re on the magic bus – the web – and we all have a free pass. This bus is especially magic because although you still need to start by going out to find your readers, you can soon get them coming over to your place – it takes just a second – if they enjoy spending time with you.

This is what I’ve learned from old Pimbo:

  1. Know who your readers are. For him, it wasn’t people who went into bookshops, or the city’s temporary residents, but the people who had lived in Cambridge all their lives.

    2.  

  2. Go find those readers. We shouldn’t expect people to buy our books just because they’re in the bookshop. Once we’ve identified our typical readers, we need to find where on the web they hang out, and spend some quality time with them. Not selling all the time: people hate that. But chatting, discussing, commenting, sharing, becoming one of the gang. And then when it’s time, inviting them back to our place – or places. (Different places for different types of reader.)

    3.  

  3. Make the visits frequent. Pimbo’s visits were once a year. Everyone would know when he was due back in the neighbourhood. Times have changed, and now our visits are two-way. When your friends drop in to visit you on your blog or website, there needs to be something new every day. Maybe not a major new post like this. But latest updates, new links, anything to keep the content fresh. And you need to be going out visiting every day, too, or people will quickly forget you. Of course, there’s not time to visit all those great sites you’ve bookmarked and leave comments. Only the key ones. But you can remind friends of your presence by posting regularly to Twitter or Facebook, at least a couple of times a day, maybe three or four.

    4.  

  4. Make every visit pleasurable. Sounds obvious, doesn’t it, if you want people to come back to your place again? But how? There are some great ideas from Misty Belardo in The 8 Types Of Posts That Get Maximum Comments. She suggests how-tos, competitions, personal experiences, showcasing your work, resource lists, thought provokers, creative work, humor. I’ll add only two things – there should be a place for most of these in your website or blog – and that the content needs to change quickly enough to keep it feeling fresh. Nothing turns people off faster than a static site.

    5.  

  5. Keep it personal. Pimbo met people face-to-face. We’re not actually going to meet most of our readers, but we can still engage with them personally, by encouraging questions and comments and reactions. I don’t think it’s necessary to respond to every comment individually – not if you’re busy – but we should be acknowledging the feedback we get, and we should aim always to answer questions. Within 24 hours. You might want to encourage readers to post their questions via Twitter – because all interactions will be less than 140 characters long. Nobody will expect long email answers.

    6.  

  6. Make the experience interactive. For Pimbo, this meant gathering stories from those he visited. In A Real Writer, I want to encourage everyone to assist with the research – by helping me, everyone helps themselves. And if readers do get involved, they’ll feel they have a stake in my success.

    7.  

  7. Remember that you’re part of the story. Pimbo’s novels were pretty awful, remember. And yet he sold 80,000 books. Let’s face it, my writing friends, a book very rarely stands or falls on its quality alone. Pimbo sold because he was a character. Then there’s this Tony Blair fellow – the one who’s book has won him a £4.6 million advance because, as his US publisher says, he’s ‘such an exceptional writer’. Would anyone have given him £1000 for a book in 1982, when he stood for Parliament in a by-election, won only 10% of the vote and lost his deposit? Unlikely.

    For your book to succeed, it really helps if you have a compelling story for yourself. I’m not suggesting that you necessarily need to start a war or two. And please don’t start telling your readers what you had for breakfast this morning, unless your name is Brangelina. But what is it that makes you stand out from the crowd? Start preparing that story too.


Have you found any new ways to engage with potential readers recently? Did you actually engage with any new readers today? How?

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Read it. Love it. Forget it.

April 19, 2011 in Reflections | 7 comments

“My impression of kindle … is that most readers have a very fast cycle of Read it. Love it (hopefully). Forget it.

The one-click buying is very instant gratification. Unless you’re a prolific writer of formulaic genre books, turning out 2 or 3 a year, I don’t see much opportunity for building up a readership. Unless you are constantly on the forums you will quickly be forgotten.”

So said fellow lit fic author, Ali Cooper, on a Facebook thread a couple of days back, sparking a stream of comments from other writers. Many of them saw this as the fatal flaw in digital publishing. The ebook is a fad. Most serious readers will turn back to print for their serious reads.

People probably said the same when the motor car was invented. Just think of the inconvenience. Someone walking in front of you waving a red flag. And besides, our roads aren’t wide enough for them. Noisy smelly things too. It won’t be long before everyone goes back to the horse.

Like it or not, digital is here to stay. It doesn’t mean the death of the print book. People will always love them, just as they love horses. But while we may still stroke real books and allow them to nuzzle up to us, I suspect most of us won’t actually own one.

The truth is that we always adapt to new media – and quickly. New roads are constructed, pot-holes covered over, speed-limits put in place, pedestrian crossings and traffic-lights invented.

And our lifestyle evolves too. Car ownership made society more mobile. We moved away from friends and family, and started commuting to our jobs, miles away. Homes became a commodity and a housing market emerged, as the pace of our vehicle-driven job-hopping increased. Suppliers became national instead of local. Even our towns and cities shifted, as malls clustered around available parking space for the delivery trucks and shoppers.

Is life better? Debatable. Are our behaviors different? Undeniably. Was change inevitable? Irresistibly.

I’m pretty much in agreement with Ali. Yes, Kindle readers – and all digital readers – do tend to read, love, forget. And there’s a reason. Our reading behaviors are changing in response to the new media. Mine are anyway.

Let me borrow an image from Seth Godin: the purple cow. Godin says that if you’re in a herd of cows, people won’t remember you unless you’re different. Purple. But let’s develop his analogy. Imagine you’re in a herd of a million cows – and there’s a green cow too, and a blue cow, and a polka-dot pink cow, and several varieties of stripy red. The other cows don’t say Moo! – they say Me! – and they’re all trying to push to the front.

Here’s how it is for readers. I remember seeing a funny cow last time I came this way … purple, I think it was. Can’t see it now though. Maybe over there. Ah, there’s a pink one. Look, that one’s cute …. OK, kids, time to get moving.

That’s how we read, most of us, much of the time. Scan. Stop. Sample. Maybe Like. Move on. It’s how we use Twitter and Facebook. It’s how we read blogs. It’s not hard to find the evidence. As I write, one of my posts, One of our Tweeps is Missing, has attracted 143 visits today, largely as a result of a Facebook link from Ommwriter, which was featured in the post. On the face of it, a success. Until I look more closely. Google Analytics reveals that only 10 visitors spent more than a minute on the page, and 80% of them flashed past in less than 10 seconds.

But what about the readers who do engage, the ones who take the time to read and absorb and then open other pages? Or in Ali’s case, the dozens of people who cared enough about her excellent first novel, The Girl On The Swing, to write reviews. Now that she’s just published her second, Cave, where are they? They’ve probably not forgotten her: it’s just that right now they’re all tied up with the stripy cows.

So, what does the forward-thinking, market-oriented, technically-adept purple cow do? Figures out the media. Fits herself with a GPS tag, and hands out scanners to fans.

Or something like that.

Again I think Ali gets it right: it’s all about being prolific. She suggests that writing two or three books a year or pounding the Kindle boards will keep you in the public view enough to build up a following. Like Barbara Cartland, who published 723 books … averaging 20 books a year from the age of 77 to 97 … and sold over a billion books! Probably having a few royal connections didn’t do her any harm either. (Most of us prefer to keep that sort of thing quiet.)

Now I couldn’t possibly hammer out a novel a fortnight, but I can still learn something from Ms Cartland. I’ve been blogging for the last 20 days, putting on a live creative writing gig most days. It’s keeping me in front of my readers, and showing them how I write. I’m not sure I’ll have the energy to keep it up too much longer: I’m not a spontaneous writer, and coming up with the story-line and writing with as much care as I’d take in a novel often expands out into an all-day job. But I could, relatively easily, write a 20-30 minute short story every couple of weeks.

How would the short story help? Well, I have good evidence that in our changed reader market, the demand for short stories is strong. A year ago, as a trial, I published three free shorts on Smashwords under my Rapscallion imprint – two from Suki Michelle and one from me. Without any effort at all, we’ve had 2500 downloads. You might argue that the majority of our readers have been greaders – they took the stories and never read them – and you’d probably be right. But it only takes one or two reviews like the wonderful, thoughtful piece from eCapris yesterday to start showing the discriminating reader that we mean business. That we’re trying to raise the bar.

In our mobile world, and with the reading tools we have in our pockets, the 30-minute read is likely to become ever more important. Commuting. The lunch-break. Between classes. In the waiting-room. The moments we snatch in our busy day. The free short story and smart essay fit perfectly into this window. And if the reader learns to love a writer at lunchtime, she may end up with his novel in bed that night.

Of course other social marketing tools will continue to be important, not least the Kindle message-boards. But while my comments there may show people who I am as a person, my short stories show who I am as a writer. That seems important.

And there’s one more thing. Remember the cow’s GPS tag? Here’s my version. When readers sign up as members for my blog, my (still-to-be-launched-but-coming-soon) Associate scheme will allow them an email notification option every time a new short story is released. This purple writer means to stay found.

Am I right about changes to our reading behavior? Has the way you read changed in the digital age?

Related posts – both written a year ago:

12 Reasons Why Printed Books Will Survive
With A Little Help From My Friends
Seth Godin’s now saying that purple cows need to be in reinventable fields. Me, I’ll stick with the GPS tag.

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13 considerations when setting up an email subscription service

April 17, 2011 in planning | No comments


There’s no way for me to subscribe!

Time to restructure my blog.

A few days back I described plans to offer a sign-up option for those who wanted to register as one of my Author Associates. As an Associate, you’re entitled to:

  • purchase my published ebooks at discounted prices
  • get special offers for your friends or reading-groups
  • make sure you never lose the copy you’ve purchased when you change your computer or reading device
  • participate as a reader/reviewer as I release early chapters of my next novel.

All well and good. Except there’s nowhere really for you to sign up. Or that’s what one of my readers told me the other day. In fact, that’s not quite true: you can subscribe to an RSS feed of the blog by clicking on the folded newspaper at the top right of the screen. Huh? RSS? There’s the problem. Many readers aren’t familiar with RSS. And even if they are, maybe they won’t spot my subtle signal. And then, even if they do, will they actually read my posts?

Let me be honest. I’ve subscribed to several blogs via RSS – I request a download to my Google Reader … and then I hardly ever read them. It’s another example of ‘greading‘, acquiring more reading matter than I could ever hope to read in a lifetime, let alone a single day. It’s not that I mean not to read these blogs – I set out with the best of intentions. But there’s just never enough time.

What do subscribers want?

What I do read every day is my email. Email’s important. It includes messages that I probably need to respond to, and which I can’t afford to miss. For that reason, I’m much more selective when I subscribe to a blog via email. Before I sign up, I ask myself these questions:

  1. Is it content that really matters to me – or could I afford to live without it?
  2. Is there any tangible benefit I get as an email subscriber?
  3. Is a digest offered, so that I can scan the main topics and see what I need to read?
  4. Do I have the option to receive new mails at the pace I choose? Is there a weekly as well as a daily option?
  5. Am I likely to be spammed with offers or content that I don’t want – and am I sure that my email details won’t be passed on to others who may send spam?
  6. Is there an easy option to stop subscribing if things don’t work out?

If I’m going to offer my readers the option to subscribe via email, I need to be sure I’m treating their inbox with the same respect that I expect others to show mine.

What does the blogger want?

But now let’s turn things round and look at my requirements as the provider of the service. For a couple of years I’ve been using Google’s Feedburner to allow readers to subscribe to the blog. It’s been a useful basic tool for promoting the blog, but it only really shows me how many subscribers have looked at a post. There’s no kind of interaction with them.

I also need to distinguish between different types of subscriber. My blog serves three purposes. It’s a place where, most days (but not today), I indulge my love of fiction – I try to put on a live writing show. Second, the blog allows me to interact with supporters of my ‘permanent’ writing, the published work. And third, I intend it to be a resource center for those who like me, are hunting down emerging writers who excite and inspire. (More about this in the next post.) So this is what I need to ask:

  1. Can readers specify the type of content they want to see? For example, if they’re interested in emerging writers but not in signing up as an Associate, can they do so?
  2. Can I then group members by their interests, so that they only receive notifications about the content they’ve requested?
  3. Whenever new subscribers sign up, can I be sure that they’ll receive all the necessary instructions to make the best use of the blog, depending on the content they’ve requested? For example, if they sign up as Associate, will they receive posts describing how to apply for discounts or gift-vouchers on my ebooks?
  4. Does the subscription list allow me to maintain my own database, making it easy for me to contact individual members or for them to contact me, when, for example, they apply for special offers?
  5. Will all this integrate seamlessly with my WordPress blog – so that once the system is set up I never need to worry about email notifications again?
  6. Does my email marketing service give me statistical analysis, so that I can easily see the impact of a post on readers – whether it’s moved them to take action or not?
  7. Can I afford the email marketing service I choose?

The last question is critical. When you live by your writing, you very quickly learn the importance of running a tight ship. As I’ve researched, I’ve already found powerful email management systems – costing hundreds of dollars a month. A great idea – for insanity publishing! It may be necessary to sacrifice some of the bells and whistles I’d like for something that fits my budget right now.

As ever there’s lots of guidance on the web: I’ve started with the Email Marketing Services Review from TopTenReviews, and I’ll be checking out each of the providers there in the coming hours – I’d like to have the system up and running by tomorrow.

But perhaps you’ve already been through this process and can point me in the right direction. Or maybe I’ve missed something important. Either way, I’d like to hear from you.

References:
Danielle McGaw, also running the Ultimate Blog Challenge marathon, has been showing us how to minimize expenses if you want to live without a salary. A recommended series for hungry writers.

Here’s the earlier post I refer to at the beginning of the article: Introducing the Author Associates Scheme

Or if you’re new to my blog, and you want something a little lighter for the weekend, try this: 14 ways to make friends with Americans (If you are an American, this post is for you too!)

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How To Hypnotize Readers

April 13, 2011 in The TwitFace Project | No comments

Hypnosis

My Monday Morning Message from Cathy Stucker this week was: “Everything can always be done better than it is being done.” And she issued this challenge: “This week, instead of accepting what is, look for how you can make things better for yourself and others.” Well, Cathy, I think I can. I’m going to show writers and bloggers how they can immediately get the undivided attention of their readers.

By hynotizing them.

That’s right. I’m going to share with you a secret that will get you lots more followers and fans. Can you imagine the excitement of putting your blog to bed at night, then waking up in the morning to find dozens … or maybe hundreds .. maybe THOUSANDS of new readers? Better still, anyone can learn the technique in just a few minutes, it’ll cost you nothing, and it’s actually good for your health. Instead of spending the whole day chasing new followers on your social networks, you’ll be able to sit back and relax, confident that readers will come flocking to you.

The idea first came to me when I noticed that my Twitter friend, Barbara Ford-Hammond (@barbfh), described herself as an ‘author, hynoptist, muse‘. What a brilliant combination! I needed to find out more, and asked Barbara how she hypnotized her readers. The answer came back: “Books do. Entice to suspend reality, be at ‘one’ with the words and use imagination“.

Well, that wasn’t quite what I had in mind. Yes, I believe in the magic of words too, but I wanted more than a metaphor. How could I really use the power of suggestion to influence readers, so that they would enthusiastically respond to whatever I wrote?

As I researched, I started to become aware of the ethical dangers of hypnosis – and perhaps that worries you too. Might there not be a danger that like the Pied Piper of Hamelin I could play a merry tune for my readers and lead them off into the darkness, never to be seen again? Fortunately, that’s not the way it works. Hypnosis will only take people where they are willing to go – according to James Randi it is “a mutual agreement of the operator and the subject that the subject will cooperate in following suggestions“. It follows therefore that my readers will only be grateful: since they want to read my writing anyway, hypnosis will only facilitate their journey. Think of it as a kind of therapy.

And besides, there are very respectable precedents. Like Agatha Christie, the best-selling author of all time. According to the BBC, “Christie used literary techniques mirroring those employed by hypnotherapists and psychologists, which have a mesmeric effect on readers.” Scientists loaded her 80+ novels onto a computer and analysed her words, sentences and phrases.

“The team found that common phrases used by Christie acted as a trigger to raise levels of serotonin and endorphins, the chemical messengers in the brain that induce pleasure and satisfaction.”

But that’s not the approach that I’m recommending. There’s no computer research. No chemicals. You don’t need to use any special words or phrases. It’s not about sentence structure or incantation. There are no tricks.

So what exactly is my secret method? How can you use hypnosis to make that connection with new readers, and turn them into fans? If enough of you are interested, then I’ll reveal all in my next post. If I see at least 10 clicks on the Like or Tweet buttons below, I’ll know you want to hear more. If not, I’ll move on to another topic … and my lips will be sealed forever. (Don’t do that to me!)

Ah … I hear them calling downstairs. Sounds like my daughter’s laid another egg, and they want me to snap her out of it.

References

Cathy Stucker a.k.a The Idea Lady – and that’s exactly what she is. A blog simply bursting with ideas. Highly recommended.

James Randi – acclaimed stage magician and scientific sceptic. Known for exposing charlatans. Uh-oh. The quote is from ‘An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural‘

Here’s the BBC article on Agatha Christie’s use of hypnosis.

Thank you, Barbara Ford-Hammond, for being a good sport, and allowing me to quote you. For more from a proper hypnotherapist (and muse!), visit Barbara’s site.

A few other TwitFace posts:

The Twitface Plan
7 Health & Safety Tips for Bloggers
14 Ways to Make Friends with Americans
Shiny Happy People

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Introducing The Author Associates Scheme

April 11, 2011 in planning | 6 comments

On a more serious note today, I’m going to introduce a new scheme – Author Associates, intended as a model to strengthen the relationship between writers and enthusiastic readers. I want to look again at Andy Woodworth’s eBook Reader’s Bill of Rights, and suggest how we could give our readers real ownership of the eBooks they buy (which Amazon denies at the moment). And I want to show why Smashwords is one of the indie writer’s most important tools.

Expensive Tastes

First, let’s recap. In my last post, I explained (well, narrated really) why I’m increasing the price of my e-novel – to $5.95 in the US and £3.75 in the UK (plus all the various delivery charges and taxes that eBooks so unfairly attract). The reason was to change reader expectations. At $0.99, the expectation is probably low, and I may be damaging my book’s prospects in two ways: first by not attracting the right kind of reader; and second, by attracting the wrong kind of reader.

‘Right’ and ‘wrong’ is not a value judgement – it’s not the same as saying ‘good’ and ‘bad’. In the book market, there’s plenty of room for both fast-food and fine-dining. Both have their place. But you’d better be sure that if your customers are expecting McDonalds, you don’t offer soft candlelight, an expensive wine-list, discreet table-side service. Or vice versa. You’ll just get them confused – and probably unhappy.

What sort of customers do I want? I’m looking for discriminating readers – people who’ll come to the table with high expectations. They want a good yarn told with craftsmanship, artistry, polish. By increasing the recommended retail price, I hope I’ll be able to find them.

The Value of Sharing

Yet in earlier posts, I’ve often promoted the importance of sharing and the value of free. Not long ago, I wrote:

‘If I look at the books and the authors I love best, almost without exception I started reading because of the recommendation of a teacher or reviewer I respected, or a friend or a family member. In many cases, I was a borrower, then a convert, then a purchaser.’

Look at the copyright notice on The Lebanese Troubles and you’ll see that I’ve encouraged readers to share the book with friends and family, instead of insisting (as most eBooks do) that each reader must purchase a separate copy. It’s not because I don’t need the money: like most writers, I need to make enough to support my habit. But I’m taking the long-term view.

Will readers really recommend? If my work’s good enough, I believe they will. Our libraries and music collections define us: they show our friends who we really are. That’s why Goodreads is so popular. And if we spot a new talent, so much the better: we can claim credit for being one of the first to notice. Yes, people do talk when they find a writer or a musician they really enjoy.

So What’s The Pitch?

Here goes our schizophrenic writer again, raising the price on the one hand while advocating sharing on the other. How can this make sense?

Like this.

The recommended retail price sends my value signal to the market – and that’s where the price will settle in the long run. But at this point in my writing career, volume sales are far less important than winning the support of key ‘influencers’ – people who care enough about my writing project to become participants themselves. I need readers to post thoughtful reviews on the key reader sites – Amazon (US and UK), Smashwords, Nook, Goodreads. I need them to recommend my work to friends. And not least, I need direct feedback.

Where am I going to find these people? Right here, on this blog, if I use it properly. By investing the same amount of creative energy and care into the blog as I would into a novel, it becomes an interactive showcase for my writing. I hear some writers complaining that blogging takes time away from their real writing. For me, this is real writing, and it’s the place where I can interact best with my readers – putting on a series of live gigs. If you enjoy the gig enough, chances are that you may start buying the published material … and hopefully you’ll tell your friends too, so they can catch up with the next performance.

The Author Associates Scheme

It’s because this core group of influencers is critical to my success that I’m launching my new scheme. This is how Author Associates works.

If you enjoy the blog, or already have a copy of ‘The Lebanese Troubles’, you are invited to register. Then, as an associate, you may:

1. Purchase your own copy of ‘The Lebanese Troubles’ for just $1.99, via a discount coupon that will allow the eBook to be read in any format. This offer will expire after 200 coupons have been issued.

2. Apply for a batch of 5 gift coupons, allowing friends and family to get the eBook free of charge on your recommendation.

3. Apply for up to 20 discount coupons, allowing members of your reading-group to purchase the eBook at half-price.

4. Register your TLT purchase. Then, if you have purchased for one e-reader, you will be able to view the eBook in any format. You will also be entitled to a free replacement copy, should your original copy become inaccessible, for whatever reason.

5. View and comment on draft chapters of my next novel, scheduled from August 2011 onwards.


Reader Rights and Redundancy Marketing

Before we look at implementation, let’s just pause for a moment on clause 4 – being able to view the book in any e-reader format, and getting a free replacement copy if your original copy is lost or broken. My thinking here has been greatly influenced (again!) by Andy Woodworth’s e-Book Reader’s Bill of Rights. Here’s his complaint.

‘Digital Rights Management (DRM), like a tariff, acts as a mechanism to inhibit this free exchange of ideas, literature, and information. Likewise, the current licensing arrangements mean that readers never possess ultimate control over their own personal reading material. These are not acceptable conditions for eBooks.’


I wholeheartedly agree with Andy’s stand. In the digital age, equipment manufacturers and content providers have profited enormously from built-in redundancy. If you’re old enough, you’ll remember the Betamax/VHS divide in the early days of VTR. When VHS finally won out, my whole investment in Betamax videos was wasted: if I loved a film, I had to buy my Betamax version all over again to watch it on my new VHS machine. And then again when DVD swept in to replace video. And then again when I moved back from the Mid-East to the UK, only to find that my DVD player wouldn’t work with European disks, and that my new European player read my existing collection as a series of question-marks. It happens with printers as well. I’ve been using my trusty printer for years, but now they’ve stopped issuing the ink cartridges for that model. And how many times does Microsoft want me to buy their operating system? It’s just an operating system, for goodness sake! I don’t care!

We’re going the same way with eBooks, unfortunately. Yes, there’s apparently an industry-standard – ePub – and the ePub version is fine for the iPad and the Nook. But not on the Kindle. And if I publish via Amazon, using the .mobi standard, that’s fine for the Kindle, but not anything else. I worry about closed systems. I worry even more when I see, in the small print, that the purchase I thought I’d just made is only a license: the eBook doesn’t really belong to me, as a printed book does. If the only concern is to maximize sales and profitability – to sell the same product again and again as hardware is updated or replaced – then all this makes perfect sense. But for anyone who feels that the customer’s interests should come first, redundancy marketing is repugnant.

The good news is that – because I’ve taken the indie path to publishing – I can take a stand and offer my readers a much better deal. With a little help from Smashwords.

Smashwords To The Rescue

Smashwords is a very popular digital publishing platform, but I hear the occasional criticism from authors who say they never actually sell anything there; readers flock to Smashwords looking for free books, but when they want to buy, they go to Amazon. That may be true at present, but it’s a misunderstanding of the Smashwords mission. The site has been built by a writer for writers, and it’s a place where the writer’s interests always come first, where we can truly exercise our freedom to publish, price and market in the way we choose.

When I publish there, my eBook is automatically converted into 10 different formats. So no matter which e-reading device the reader prefers – Kindle, iPad, Nook, the Sony Reader, the PC or laptop, a mobile phone – one of the Smashwords versions is going to do the job (- not necessarily perfectly, but we’ll come to that another time).

The second huge Smashwords benefit is that it gives me complete control and authority over any discounts that I choose to offer. It gives me the flexibility to offer gift vouchers and discount coupons via Author Associates; better still, it has a reporting system that allows me to relate a coupon number to an individual associate, so that I can track coupons already used, and monitor the effectiveness of my scheme.

Getting Started As An Associate

There’s still work to be done to perfect the new scheme. Smashwords doesn’t tell me who’s purchased my books. Nor should they. I personally wouldn’t want to be pursued by every writer whose book I’d downloaded just to take a look-see. It’s important that Author Associates should be an opt-in scheme for readers who are genuinely enthusiastic, and that no-one should feel pressurized to participate. But that means I’ll need to build a special sign-up tool here on the blog. (Don’t be surprised if you see scaffolding here in the next few days.) I’m going to need a good database too, to keep on top of the interactions with associates. Luckily in another life, I’m a web/database designer – so I’ll be able to cope. No doubt there’ll be other teething problems…

But to get started, there’s nothing like starting. So if you’re interested in joining me as an Associate, and taking advantage of any or all the benefits of the scheme, just let me know right now in a brief comment, and I’ll get back to you by email with more details.

Related posts

Triple Filtrée – No Smooth Outcome. Positioning the novel – as a large potato, or a large beer?
Whose eBook – Yours, Mine or Amazon’s? Am I buying the eBook or just licensing it?
Go On! Lend My Book! – My original post on book-sharing – including a sample ‘sharing’ copyright notice.

Other References

The eBook Reader’s Bill of Rights: Andy Woodworth
Smashwords: sign-up page
Smashwords: my novel page

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Triple Filtrée – No Smooth Outcome.

April 9, 2011 in Marketing | 5 comments

I’ve got to hand it to Marketing. They’re smart. Even if they screw up sometimes.

A few weeks back, they suggested a new campaign for the novel, all based on price. People will buy anything if you price it cheap enough, they told me, passing across the latest best-selling fiction figures. I scanned the list -- John Locke, Amanda Hocking, Heather Killough Walden -- each of them notching up thousands of $0.99 Kindle sales a week.

That could be you, Alain. Look, readers don’t even like the books much.

They had a point:

‘messy and predictable’
‘I would recommend this book for some mindless poolside reading’
‘a book that contains less than two dozen truly dirty words’
‘Too bad you can’t pick zero stars for the rating.’

If they’re selling thousands, you could be selling millions. All you need to do is come up with the right pitch.

And that’s how my Potato Campaign was born. “Buy my book because it costs less than a large potato.”

But my advisers were wrong. I didn’t sell millions. Or thousands. Or hundreds. Not even tens. It was time for a re-think. So last night, I called a team meeting. Marketing, Editing, the Publisher -- they were all there. It wasn’t going to be easy. Marketing was already looking defensive.

- Guys, the Potato Campaign isn’t working.

- Says who?

- Says me. Here, look at the figures.

The Publisher took off his glasses, polished them carefully, put them back on, and read again. Editing sat low on their chairs, wishing they weren’t there. But Marketing came right back at me, bristling. They weren’t going to take this sort of thing from an author.

- It wasn’t exactly a campaign, was it?

- What do you mean? I did a blog post, didn’t I? “Why I won’t be selling my novel for $495“.

- I don’t hear you saying potato.

- Not in the title, no. But I certainly mentioned potato in the post.

- How many times do we have to tell you? It’s all about keywords. People don’t read posts. They read headlines. You gotta have your keywords in the headline.

- But people don’t care about potatoes.

- They might not care about them, but they eat them, right? Millions of potatoes a day. A potato doesn’t need love. It just needs to be affordable. It needs to be nutritious. And it needs to be there, right there in front of you, every time you step into the food-mart. So where was the potato in your food-mart, Alain?

- I’m sorry?

- How many times did you even mention potato in your blog?

- What, after the first time?

- After the first time.

- I didn’t.

- Well there you are. How do you expect us to help you?

He snapped a pencil in two between his fingers and slammed the pieces onto the desk. No-one breathed. But he wasn’t finished with me yet.

- The problem with you, Alain, is that you give us nothing to work with. We need something that people care about, something they think is important.

- What, like a potato, you mean?

- Forget the friggin’ potato. Like I said, that was just a pitch. No, what we need is less of that Look-at me-I’m-an-author-This-is-literary-fiction bullshit. We need believable characters -- American preferably -- a detective, a hero, a love interest. And maybe you should think about a rewrite for the YA market.

Someone in Editing was trying to catch my eye. There was an almost imperceptible shake of the head. So at least I had their support. I rallied.

- There is a love interest.

- And how does that turn out?

- Bad.

He didn’t even bother to reply. But then a thought came to me.

- Listen, I’ve been reading …

- Oh you’ve been reading again, have you? Sweet.

- Yes. Seth Godin.

With those two magical words, the initiative swung back to me. Show me a marketer in the world who can resist Seth Godin. They snapped to attention, leaned forward across the table, waiting.

- Seth said …

- Yes?

- Seth said: ‘It’s probably true that a low price increases the negative feedback. That’s because a low price exposes the work to individuals that might not be raving fans.’

- And?

- ‘Price is often a signalling mechanism, and perhaps nowhere more than in the area of content.’

We paused to absorb the impact of the words.

- So that means ..?

- That means that if we sell the book at the price of a large potato, readers may come to associate it with a large potato. That’s how we’re signalling it. Useful, convenient, but not an object of desire.

Still Marketing wasn’t convinced.

- But I thought the aim was to maximize the sales of your book. Who said anything about desire? You’re not trying to tell me you want people to read the thing as well, are you?

- That’s exactly what I’m saying. Seth says: ‘Mass shouldn’t always be the goal. Impact may matter more.’

That was the turning-point. Mistakes were forgotten, hostilities put on ice, and we were back working as a team.

- So we need to use price to trigger a different expectation. Not a potato, but …

- Two potatoes?

By this time, we’d clearly left the Publisher lagging some way behind, but our minds were racing.

- An object of desire with a price proposition to match, something our reader wants, longs for at the end of a busy day. Who is this reader, Alain?

- An adult. Gotta be an adult, male or female, probably mid-twenties upward.

- And this adult gets from your book? Remind me, Alain. What do they get? Gimme the words.

- Well … mystery, adventure … a hint of the exotic … humor … excitement … sex … danger … retro …

- I see it! I see it! I think I’ve got it. You know that ad they’re running on TV for the beer … you know the one -- Triple Filtrée … a Smooth Outcome.

- Yeah, I see where you’re coming from. Sixties setting -- the beautiful bored wife -- the suave debonair hero sweeping her away from her husband -- the sexy French overdub. That’s brilliant.

- But guys. My hero’s not suave and debonair.

- No matter. This is advertising. Nothing has to be true. D’you think when you drink the stuff you’re gonna turn into the guy in the ad? Or the girl? It’s not about truth. It’s about aspiration.

- Where are we going with this?

- It’s the price-point, don’t you see? Not a large potato. We sell it for the price of a large beer. And -- God, this is amazing -- that’s our campaign too.

- Go on.

- Triple filtrée. You ever seen a book promoted like that before?

- No, never. Er … maybe, I’m slow but I’m not getting it.

- Triple filtrée. So you say the book’s been edited three times. Not once, not twice, but three times … and now it has less than 3 really dirty words. We might even make it into the YA market, who knows?

This was getting exciting. Next we had to work out how to handle the Smooth Outcome, and we were all busy swapping ideas -- when my wife suddenly popped her head round the door.

- Have you any idea what time it is?

- I’m sorry … were we too loud?

- Oh, is there someone with you?

- Yes. Have you met …

But as I swung back round to the table, they were gone. Every last one of them. Only the broken pencil remained on the table.

- Er, no. It’s just me.

- I worry about you. Don’t you think you should be coming to bed? It’s 2:30.

By daybreak, the new pricing was set, the campaign was in place, and we were ready to go.

That’s the thing about being an indie writer. You can make decisions quickly, change your mind if you’re getting the strategy wrong, implement immediately, call meetings any time of the day or night.

But if you’re doing it at night, just try to keep the noise down.

# # #

The Lebanese Troubles is now available for the price of a large beer. ‘Triple Filtrée … No Smooth Outcome.’

If you’re thinking about buying the book, DON’T. Marketing came up with a few other ideas, which we’ll be announcing here tomorrow. If you can’t wait to get started though, you can now download the first 50% of the novel free at Smashwords. Works on any e-reader or your laptop/PC.

If you can’t wait to get started with Seth Godin, the article is Compared to perfect: the price/value mismatch in content.

And if the story’s just made you thirsty … here’s the next best thing -- for just the price of an e-novel:



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We’re Lendle-ing again – but maybe not in Japan

March 25, 2011 in News | 10 comments

Lendle-ing again

Well two-and-a-half cheers! eBook-sharing is back on the agenda again.

One day after stopping Lendle in its tracks, Amazon relented and they’re back in business again, with just a teensy bit of sync-ing goodness (‘useful but non-essential’ say Lendle triumphantly) removed. If only we could deal with all the world’s great crises so amicably!

And for indie publishers and writers, it’s an important victory too, because it leaves us the right to choose whether we want to share our books or not. If Lendle is to survive, so will Booklending.com, and both figure in my long-term marketing plan.


… With Reservations

But the news doesn’t quite get the full three cheers.

First there was a thumbs down from Shiori, the Japanese student who’s been living with us for several months now. I used ‘Lendle’ for a few harmless pronunciation exercises. Sadly, she now hates the word, and says the thing would never catch on in Japan anyway, with a name like that.

Not that she needs to worry, not yet anyway. Because when I started the sign-up process with Lendle, this was the Welcome I got:

Please note that Lendle is currently only available in the United States. We expect Amazon to allow book lending elsewhere soon.

Well, I’m a Brit, and the news wasn’t entirely a surprise. You know what we’re like, we’d be awful at returning books on time – though perhaps not as bad as your George Washington who, I hear, had a book out on loan from 1789 until last year – and then got off without paying the $300,000 late fee.

But the Japanese, the Germans, the Swedes … surely you could have trusted them!?

My guess is that Amazon will want to install a GPS book-sniffing device inside each eBook before introducing sharing outside the US, so that recalcitrant foreign libracriminals can be hunted down. Whether the expiry of the Patriot Act at the end of May will have any impact is hard to say.

But at least the principle seems now to have been accepted – that writers should have the choice whether to offer their books for sharing or not.


With big reservations

Of course, there will still be writers who think that Amazon’s change-of-heart will open the door to unspeakable evils, and this view has been eloquently expressed by Steven Lewis on the Kindle Writers blog. In an open letter to Jeff Croft, co-founder of Lendle, he writes:

Maybe I don’t have Mr Croft’s vision thing. Have I even understood your business correctly? (It is a business, right?) After all, as a publisher, I have what Mr Croft calls an old school business model, that’s the one where I expect to be paid for my work.

Perhaps you agree with Steven. That’s fine. If so then you don’t need to offer up your books for sharing. Everyone should have the right to opt out too. But before you come to a decision about it, take a look at the comments following Steven’s post. As well as a response from Croft, you’ll find other writers making a cogent case for participating in a book-sharing scheme – because they’re convinced it will increase both readers AND income.


Getting started with sharing

We’ll let the argument rage over there. Assuming you have made the decision to be a book-sharer, where do you go from there?

The starting-point is your copyright notice – and I was delighted today to get a ringing endorsement for the wording I’ve proposed from none other than Andy Woodworth, the co-sponsor of the eBook User’s Bill of Rights. So you could share this too.

Treat this ebook as you would a printed book. If you enjoy it and want to share it with friends and family – as we hope you will – then please do so. The best support you can give is by helping to spread the word about a (publisher’s) author or book. All we ask is that you respect the author’s right to make a living from his art: so please do not re-distribute this book in any format for commercial purposes, or modify the content in any way.

But that’s only the start. Just because I allow people to share my book, it doesn’t follow that anyone will want to do so. There are 130 million other books published (according to Google, whose plans to scan all of them came to a crashing halt yesterday at the end of a long-running law-suit). Over 18 million WordPress blogs – and probably as many more that are not WordPress). 200 million Twitter users sending 1 billion tweets a week, as Twitter celebrates its 5th birthday today. How has your book got a chance unless it’s either extraordinarily good – and even then maybe not – or extraordinarily bad?

That’s where we’ll start next time – with a look at how to create passionate early adopters, those who will help to launch your book out into the world.


Sources

References::

Related posts – Writers without Borders:


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Adding value or just creating noise?

March 24, 2011 in Reflections | No comments

So last night I opened an email from an Australian web-acquaintance, Syd Harbour, who runs a writer support network. Syd was venting off at a writer called Wally, who had sent out a mass mail along these lines:

Hi folks – I’m an award-winning photographer who’s just branched out into writing, and my first novel is “Teenage Vampire Ninja”. It’s the story of an 18-year old on the trail of a pack of vampires who destroyed his family. My Amazon link is ….

From someone unknown, uninvited. No indication that Wally even knew who Syd was. Spam.

Syd tracked Wally down and read him the riot act. How could Wally even think of behaving like that? “I was just following advice”, said Wally. “I spoke to J.K.Fowling – you know, that guy who’s selling all those ebooks, and he told me this was the way to do it.”

Syd then goes on to give us the usual netiquette homily – find out who you’re talking to (Syd doesn’t review fiction), no unsolicited messages, no mass mailings … and then proceeds to give us a link to Wally’s book page! And his website! And how to message him! And to cap it all, he tells us that Wally’s Amazon author page needs revamping and invites us to go visit it and send our comments!

There were repercussions too. Fowling had written in to deny any contact with Wally. I wondered how far it was going to go. Did we have another Rebecca Black on our hands? I checked Wally’s Amazon listing position this morning. Good, lower than mine: that’s OK then.

If I’d never seen Syd’s other output (and if Wally had shot to the top of the listings), I might have thought this was the smartest piece of viral marketing I’ve seen for a while. I don’t think it was that, but it raises important issues about who we associate with, and how we writers promote ourselves and others.

In a comment here the other day, Jamaican author Joy Campbell said: “I feel like I’m pimping my work every time I make reference to it.” I guess we all feel like that to some extent as we try to get someone – anyone – to please just take a look at our book.

Sometimes we hunt in packs: for example, members of the Independent Authors Network help each other out by retweeting other members. I’ve met good people there, and I’m happy to support writers who are doing good work, but there are dangers in working blind and supporting indiscriminately – IAN is growing fast and sadly just this week, a member was suspended when it was noted the author page was racking up 1000 hits an hour – a group of Facebook dwarfs apparently clicking away all day long. Credit to IAN founder William Potter for dealing with the problem quickly.

Noise - thanks Nevit Dilmen

Noise
thanks Nivet Dilmen

We do the indie writing community no favors at all if we come across as loud-mouthed web-hogs or promote work of dubious quality. I’ve done it – probably most of us have. But we constantly need to ask ourselves: Am I adding value to the community and supporting people and ideas that need to be heard? Or am I just creating noise? Is my viral marketing pleasing, or just sneezing?

Oh, that story about Syd and Wally. All true, every word of it. But the names and book title and context have been changed to prevent further viral infection.




References:
The Independent Author Network. And here’s my author page there … just to show you how it works, you understand, not to promote my work in any way!

Rebecca Black – 29 million hits for ‘the worst song ever’ – no, you find her – I’m not going to promote her.


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