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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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Fighting scary hairy monsters

March 20, 2011 in Weekly reviews | No comments

The worst of my week on the web -- and the best
Politics, poetry, and a call for compassion

Imagine. You’re a perfectly harmless despot who’s ruled the ‘island of happy smiles’ for several years. You’ve been generous to a fault. Just a month ago you gave $3000 to every family in the land .. and who can forget that you allowed your poor old uncle to purchase the prime commercial development site in the capital for just $3? There was economic freedom: no taxation! You let businesses hire cheap labor from anywhere in the world. And when the people asked for a voice, you gave them a parliament. You exercised your wisdom of course, to ensure that this did not mean the rule of the rabble. Your chosen advisers, wise and trusted friends and family members, continued to choose the right path for the country.

Pearl Roundabout, as was

And yet, no matter what you gave, your ungrateful people wanted more. More freedom. More power. Jobs. The ouster of your uncle as prime minister after his 40 years of unselfish service in the job.

For weeks, they gathered around the Pearl Roundabout in their tens of thousands, chanting their demands and disrupting traffic, stopping those who had jobs from going to work. There were mistakes of course, but you were the first to admit them. For example, when someone gave the unfortunate command to fire on the demonstrators, killing three of them, you immediately faced the nation, expressed your condolences and promised a full investigation.

But still the demonstrators massed around the Pearl, calling now, unthinkably, for your removal. And finally, this week, your patience was exhausted. It was time to put an end to this madness. So you ordered the army to disperse the protesters with whatever force was required, accepted the kind offer of military support from your nervous fellow-rulers in the Gulf, arrested the ring-leaders, and put the country under curfew. No more Mr Nice Guy!

Pearl Roundabout, smashed
Source: The Guardian

And then you decide to fix the problem once and for all. What was the cause of all this turmoil? What was the focal point? What else could it be but the 300-foot high monument, the Pearl itself? So you order it smashed.

When lives are lost and a nation’s iconic landmarks are destroyed in a wanton act of violence, the empty space left behind becomes the focus for rage. Ask New Yorkers. I fear this is not the end of the story. The Pearl lies vanquished and scattered on the ground like the Hydra, and my guess is that two heads will grow for each one cut off.



Why should I care? I’m not Bahraini and though I lived there for ten years, I don’t any longer. It’s none of my business.

And yet it is my business. Why do I write? Because I love wordcraft. Because I love to tell stories. Because one of life’s great pleasures is the stimulation that comes from sharing ideas and experiences with readers and other writers. But also because I want my stories to make an impact. I write about the dangers of closed minds and sectarianism and the futility of war.

As events have unfolded in Bahrain, I’ve been reliving my experiences in Beirut some 35 years ago when civil war was brewing. Protests by a majority underclass against a minority ruling-class: it always seems to start with jobs and money. Marches, a few deaths, clashes, protests intensify. The expats certain that everything will be back to normal by the weekend. They’re right: there’s a lull. But then it starts again, heavier weapons are mysteriously provided and Religion sweeps onto the scene. She’s disguised as Justice, blind, but carrying a book instead of scales, and her sword is not there to defend but to attack. Barricades are erected, check-points are set up. The cry goes up: ‘If you don’t kill them, they’ll kill you and everything you treasure.’ Trying to restore control, the government sends in the army, calls for military assistance from its neighbour. History retells itself.

And I started blogging and tweeting for all I was worth, to anyone who would listen. Read my story, I pleaded -- and I directed them to this extract from The Lebanese Troubles. Do you really want Bahrain to be another Lebanon, with endless civil war? And guess what. Nobody listened. Or if they did, they sent messages like this:

Tweets from Bahrain

I should have listened to Yeats:

I think it better that in times like these
A poet keep his mouth shut, for in truth
We have no gift to set a statesman right.
On Being Asked For A War Poem



Doubt

It was poetry -- via Twitter -- that lifted my gloom. Angela Scott, tweeting as @whimsywriting, had posted the single word ‘Doubt’, with a link. Well Doubt was certainly what I was feeling -- so I could only take a look. And this little gem was waiting for me, bringing a big smile back to my face:


Doubt’s Big Hairy Behind
Angela Scott
03/17/2011

Doubt tiptoes its way inside.
Subtle.
Sneaky.
Before I know it,
Doubt blindsides me,
Takes me down,
Pins me to the ground
And flops its big hairy behind
On top of my chest.
I can’t move. I can’t breathe.
I spit in Doubt’s eye—my only defense—
But Doubt only grins through its pock-marked face,
And green-tinged smile, and swipes the spittle away.
He’s experienced worse.
Doubt’s got me
And he knows it too.
My gnat-like strength is waning.
My belief is gone.
I shift a little,
Make adjustments to carry Doubt’s weight.
He’s not going anywhere.
That’s perfectly clear.
So I may as well get comfortable.


What a brilliant image! Showing me that writing really can make a difference -- at least if the reader’s in the mood for listening. If this inspires you to find out more about Angela, there’s a link to her blog at the end of the post.



And then another wonderful discovery, this time thanks to Sheri Brissenden (@SHBRISSENDEN) who’d ‘followed’ me on Twitter after I’d vented about the hatred coming out of Bahrain. There’s a huge amount of guck on Twitter, but when someone follows, I always make a point of checking out their last few posts to find out who they are. I could see immediately that Sheri was my kind of Tweeter. One of her messages immediately caught my attention: “The wonderful Karen Armstrong discusses the Charter for Compassion.” I’d never heard of Karen Armstrong. But I was up for compassion.

20 minutes later, I’d thrown Doubt off and was up for the struggle again, inspired by words like these:

The Golden Rule: Do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you.

Any interpretation of scripture which leads to hatred or disdain is illegitimate.

We’re living in a world where Religion has been hi-jacked.

We have a talent as a human species for messing up wonderful things.

The cause of all our present woes is political, but religion is a fault-line.

A lot of religious people prefer to be right rather than compassionate.

It’s time that we moved beyond toleration to appreciation of one another.

I leave you with Karen Armstrong herself. Here’s to a better next week.



References:
Angela Scott’s blog -- Whimsy, Writing and Reading



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Revolution and the masses

March 9, 2011 in Reflections | 3 comments

“A revolution is brewing”, proclaimed Smashwords’ Mark Coker last week over at Huffington Post, “that will topple Big Publishing as we know it.”

And he went on to enumerate all the reasons why we indie authors are, or should be, Egyptian. Brilliantly. Autocratic, self-serving, money-grabbing traditional publishers forcing writers out of their garrets. Publishing last year’s books the year after next. Making us do all the hard work while they suck up the profits. Why do we need them, if, like Amanda Hocking, we can sell 93 trillion books in a weekend? “Great books plus low prices plus enthusiastic fans plus an author directly engaged with her fans equals viral readership”, Mark enthuses (he’s that kind of guy – don’t you love it!).

Shame really that a couple of days later, Amanda turned out wearing the other team’s colors:

I just don’t understand writers animosity against publishers. So much of what I’ve been reading lately has made me out to be Dorothy taking down the Wicked Witch.

Publishers have done really great things for a really long time. They aren’t some big bad evil entity trying to kill literature or writers. They are companies, trying to make money in a bad economy with a lot of top-heavy business practices.

Oops. Not quite Joan of Arc then.

But a lot of indie authors, I know, will be cheering on Mark as he rides off on his white charger. I’m one of them. Like the Egyptians, we have the web. Like the Egyptians, we’re beginning to get organized. This week for example, via Twitter, I came across the Independent Author Network, where writers (and readers) are encouraged to come together and promote one another’s work. I’m a member now, and the deal is that we all agree to tweet our #IAN member page every day, and to retweet posts from other members. Kudos to William Potter for putting this important tool together.

But there’s still a problem. Revolutions don’t usually succeed without popular support. In our revolution there are plenty of activist writers. I suspect we may have a way to go before we win the hearts and minds of committed readers.

Take last week’s initiative in the UK – International Book Night. A million books were given away. All of them printed books from traditional publishers. Three hours of TV time was devoted to books and reading, culminating in the selection of Britain’s 12 most promising new writers. How many of them were indies? None. How many references were there to the growth of the ebook market in the whole BBC2 broadcast? One. A nudge and a wink – and then move swiftly on.

Ah, we could say, they’re out of touch. But they’re the influencers. And so are all the column inches of book reviews appearing in the press each week. How many reviews of self-published or indie books have you ever seen in your favorite newspaper?

So here’s my concern. Are we writers fooling ourselves by selling mainly to each other? Are we impressing fellow-activists with the number and volume of our tweets (yes, I’m guilty too!) but turning off Joe Reader. Guesting on Jane Friedman’s ever-excellent blog There Are No Rules today, Meg Waite Clayton put it like this:

If you post jumbo-sized copies of your book jacket in places that rightfully belong to others—their walls on chat sites, their Facebook pages, their blogs —folks will recognize your cover in stores. But they will also think “that’s the obnoxious author who is spamming my space,” even if it isn’t on MySpace.

So just how do we win over gentle readers and make them willing and eager participants in our movement? Let’s go back to Amanda Hocking – remember her? She describes herself as an ‘obsessive tweeter’. But see how she begins her blog entry for March 7th:

I feel like I should update my blog, but I don’t want to talk about me. I’ve talked about me a lot and everybody else has talked about me and it’s just enough of me.

That, I think, is a clue. We need to interest people by being interesting. By doing more than blasting out another promotion. To talk to other writers, sure, and offer mutual support, but to spend quality time walking with readers too. Obsessively.

Are there any non-writers in the house? How do you see it?

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The Most Unusual Book Promotion Ever

May 12, 2010 in Activities | 4 comments

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Postbox

Laggan Cottage, Arran
The setting for Dreamwords

‘Stormbound and trapped in a desolate cottage with a beautiful stranger, an amnesiac boy discovers that he has been there before and that the ghosts haunting the place are there for him.’

That’s the trailer for Paul Story’s book, Dreamwords. And the cottage is real. Nestled beneath a 1000-foot hillside on the craggy Isle of Arran, off the west coast of Scotland, facing the mainland across an expanse of sea. Remote. A couple of miles from the nearest road, four miles from the nearest village. No electricity, no services, a lonely landmark for the island’s walkers.

We’ve talked before about innovation on this blog. How it’s the fiercely independent writers who are most likely to exploit the potential of new media and find new routes to market. And you may remember how in an early post, I described how Cambridge author, Pimbo, sold 80,000 books door-to-door a couple of decades back. Well, here’s an approach to book marketing that turns Pimbo’s story on its head. Instead of taking books to the readers, Paul Story takes his books to a place where readers come to him. Where? Not a bookshop. Not an airport. Not even Amazon -- well not the print version anyway. Where better than the cottage on the north-east coast of Arran where the novel takes place? Laggan Cottage -- one of the most desolate places in the British Isles.

Paul has pitched a tent alongside the cottage, lays out his books every morning, carefully protecting them from the elements, and that’s where he intends to stay for the next two months, till early July. So who will his readers be? Walkers, hikers -- because Laggan happens to be on one of the favourite trails for those exploring the island on foot. People who are likely to be enchanted by the rugged beauty of the island, already captivated by its legends. Dreamwords adds another legend. And on the trail, how can they not be fascinated to find a real live author living out in the wild, and stop to spend a few minutes talking?

But innovation doesn’t stop there. A hiker stops, talks to the writer, gets interested in the book, wants to take one. What then? Chances are the walker’s not carrying cash. A credit card transaction then? Laggan’s hardly the place. There’s a different way. Paul calls it the ‘Honesty Edition’. If someone wants to take a book, they don’t pay now but later, through the Dreamwords website. No sales record is kept. Paul relies entirely on the honesty of the customer. In today’s world that’s astonishingly, refreshingly different.

The writer has no illusions: ‘Of course there will be some who don’t pay, others who forget. But on the whole, I think most people will remember the experience of meeting me at Laggan. They’ll think of me not as some remote unapproachable novelist, but as a living, breathing, working (and sometimes shivering) writer. I hope most will actually read my book, and that some will love it. I’ve printed 10,000 books. If I stay in the minds and thoughts of 1,000 readers, and they’re looking out for the next book in the Dreamwords series, then I can count this adventure a success.’

Crazy? Some will think so. But I don’t. What Paul Story has realized is that when tens of thousands of other writers, now freed from the shackles of traditional publishing, are competing for reader attention, it’s not enough just to have a good book. You need a good story (- and a good surname doesn’t hurt either!) What he’s done, in classic marketing terms, is to identify his niche -- he knows who will love to read his book, and he’s thought very hard about how to reach them. More than that, he’s found a way to engage -- not with a 20-second encounter at a book-signing, but by creating an event where readers can interact with the writer one by one and in their own time.

It’s early in the walking season, and as I write, Britain has just had its coldest May night in fifteen years. Yesterday a conversation with interested walkers was interrupted by hail. It’s not going to be easy for Paul, but it’s an extraordinary example of commitment to writing and left-field marketing. Follow along with Paul on his Facebook page, join up, and cheer him along.

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And now for something completely different -- and to put you in a Scottish mood -- here’s the story of Ewan McTeagle, a poet who took a more commercial approach to writing.

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How To Publish God

April 6, 2010 in Publishing | 7 comments

Ancient of Days

‘Ancient of Days’ – 1794.
Slightly mad self-published poet and painter William Blake prophesies electronic publishing

It all started, as it usually does, with God.

It wasn’t a novel – well, the genre hadn’t been invented yet – but God had content that He needed to get out to people. Not just the immediate circle of friends, but everyone. So what God needed was … a publisher.

Here, the records are murky. Did God self-publish, or did he leave it up to Moses? That, we don’t know. But whichever it was, the job was well done. The Ten Commandments was an instant hit, and still today it’s right at the top of the reading-list.

Now if it had been today, I’m pretty sure God would have used Twitter. The Commandments would have slotted right in there beside:

But these were early days. Before e-publishing, before the printing press, before paper, before papyrus. And anyway, if the Commandments were going to make a lasting impression, then best to use something permanent. Like two tablets of stone. Or three, if we can trust Mel Brooks’ account.

So that’s how publishing started. Three elements. A creator, or in this case, a Creator, a medium for the message, and a publisher – and that was Moses.

Now wait a minute. Didn’t we say there was some doubt about whether God self-published or not? Who created the tablets – God or Moses? Let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, it was God. I’d still say that Moses was the publisher. Why? Because it was Moses’ job to broadcast the Commandments. No good just to blast the message on the tablets and leave them under a rock. No, Moses had to let everyone know they existed. He had to convince people they were worth a read.

So let’s look again at the process. Three elements. Creation, actualization – giving the words some tangible form – and publishing. From the Latin root ‘publico’ – to make something public, to show or tell to the people. In 21st-century-speak, marketing.

We know who created, and who published. What we don’t know is who actualized.

History also doesn’t record the discussion between God and His publisher. Would Moses have given advice? ‘People these days aren’t reading Commandments. You need more showing and less telling. No, I’m sorry, I love your work, but I don’t think we could do it justice.’ Somehow doesn’t seem appropriate, does it? Not when you’re dealing with God.

Centuries have passed. And for a long time now, it’s all been rather different. For Moses it was all about the message. For the modern-day publisher, it’s all about money. Which is absolutely understandable. Because, let’s face it, in publishing there’s a lot to gain, and a lot more to lose. Actualizing a book, ever since the printing press, has been an expensive proposition. There’s editing, set-up, binding, the cost of paper, card and ink. To recover your costs, you need a decent run of several hundred books. Then, there are advances to pay to greedy authors, booksellers who insist on returning unsold books, staff to employ, publishing events to attend, pensions … And this is before we even begin to think about marketing.

Hardly surprising then that publishers are reluctant to take on a book, unless it’s going to be a sure-fire success. Unless it’s written by someone famous, or is particularly topical, or fits neatly into a top-selling genre. Even for God, it might have been difficult to get started today. For small gods, like us, who create little imaginary worlds of fiction, virtually impossible.

But publishers, I bring you good news. You see, there’s a new tablet, an electronic tablet, no longer made of stone. In fact there are several: you might know them as the iPad, or the Kindle, or Adobe Digital Editions for the PC. For all of these I can actualize my own work for free – and it doesn’t cost you a cent. So you don’t need to worry about it any more. All you need to decide is whether you’d like to publish my novel – remember ‘publico’ – to show or tell the people. If that’s a role that interests you – a service to the author – then good. If not, well, gods work in mysterious ways.

The Lebanese Troubles

Stay in touch for more posts in the series ‘The Right Steamroller’ – ruminations on the future of publishing.

And to sample or buy my actualized novel, check out The Lebanese Troubles at Smashwords. Just click on the cover design here.

And don’t forget, I’m looking for reader contributions to build our index of Resources for independent writers. Got anything to add?

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The Most Important Day In 570 Years

April 4, 2010 in Publishing | 2 comments

Printing Press

I’ve been wondering what Marshall McLuhan would have said about the iPad, if he’d still been around for the launch yesterday.

McLuhan – one of the high-priests of 1960s pop culture – with his catchphrases that are now part of the language – ‘The medium is the message’ (well actually ‘massage’ – McLuhan loved his puns), and ‘the global village’. It’s almost 50 years now since his groundbreaking study of mass media, The Gutenberg Galaxy.

The importance of the printing press, McLuhan argued, wasn’t just a matter of speed – that a Bible a monk had lovingly hand-written and illustrated for a year could now be produced in a day or two. It certainly wasn’t a matter of aesthetics – on that count the monk won hands down. But printing transformed the way we lived. Not just read. Lived.

For a start, books and learning were no longer in the hands of a privileged few – the Church. Almost immediately there was a demand for the unthinkable – for the Bible to be published not in Latin, but in modern European languages. This was dissent – it was dangerous. Rome tried to ban books (just as states try to deny access to the internet today); printers were burned at the stake for their heretical ideas. The democratization of learning was a bad thing – how could you control the quality of the message if anyone could publish (sound familiar?), and if the whole population could read?

But media are unstoppable. They won’t be denied. Whether directly or indirectly, Gutenberg’s invention gave rise to the reformation of the Church and the growth of secularism, the spread of universal education, the belief in individualism and self-expression … the novel. Not everyone agreed these were good changes – certainly not those whose authority was threatened. But that’s another thing about the media, says McLuhan. They don’t have feelings. They don’t regret, or necessarily respect the past.

His thinking went deeper. Before printing, most people didn’t read. Passing information involved an oral / aural transfer. When stories were told, the teller and the listener needed to be together – in a room, in a village, round a fire. And all the senses came into the act.

But after printing, how quickly everything changed. The eye became the primary sense. Information transfer could happen over a distance of time or space – we no longer depended on the village. And we learned to be linear, organized. With the printed word, thought was best expressed in structured sentences and paragraphs. So, McLuhan explained, the printing press spawned business organizations, mass production … schizophrenia (well, his thinking was always quirky – you try to explain that one!)

All this was history. But what really excited this media prophet was the future. For 500 years from 1440, nothing much had changed. Print continued to exert its influence over every aspect of our lives. And then suddenly there was a technological revolution – with the invention of radio, TV, the cinema, the phone. Years before the first personal computer was even thought of, McLuhan knew that we were on the threshold of a new age – an electric age.

The new media realigned the senses, moved back away from linearity. Sure, TV and the cinema are visual media, but not in the same way as printing and the book. Once more we’re watching story-tellers, but this time they’re not around the campfire. They’re in Karachi, Johannesburg, Washington. And they work for the BBC or CNN. It’s a different kind of village – a global village.

Apple's iPad

So what would McLuhan have thought on April 3rd as our friends from Cupertino rolled out their all-singing, all-dancing, finger-clicking new machine? With a full-color e-reader, ibooks with pages that flip to try to pretend this is a real book you’re reading, a free sample of Winnie the Pooh just to get you started? Like me, he might have shaken his head and muttered something about this year’s wannabe becoming next year’s has-been. Because we should know by now, machines are temporary .. but technology is permanent.

And if he’d been sitting next to me, he’d have smiled as we tried to post my ebook to the Apple ibooks store the other morning and discovered that even before breakfast, mine was the 107th electronic book that had been posted by one smallish publisher THAT DAY. He’d have pointed at the Twitter messages fluttering across the top of my Tweetdeck screen from friends in writing and publishing. ‘Don’t try to read them all’, he’d have said. ‘That’s not what they’re there for. They’re just environment, background, to give you a sense of the mood of the day, what the tribe are talking about. Don’t try to read the messages like a book.’

What was my tribe talking about? E-publishing. Every single one of them. Ebooks, just a small – though rapidly growing – fraction of the market a few months ago are suddenly big business. That’s what we’ll remember April 3rd 2010 for. It was the day when e-publishing came of age … the iPad just happens to be – perhaps for only a few days, or weeks, or months – the standard-bearer.

And suddenly, in a few hours, the publishing world has turned upside down. Publishers fear for their books and their profits – they’re trying to drive prices up when inevitably they must come down. Distributors are flexing new muscles and forcing publishers into a corner. New e-providers have suddenly emerged, looking for an opportunity, offering dubious services and terms for e-publishing that writers would be fools to accept. Writers can foggily see new opportunities but don’t know which way to turn. Readers are jumping on bandwagons, loving this and hating that.

And McLuhan says – or it might have been a tweet: ‘Once a new technology starts to roll, if you’re not in the steamroller, you’re on the road.’ He looks me up and down, appraising me. ‘Just make sure it’s the right steamroller.’

 

This is the first post in a series on the changing publishing landscape, explaining the guiding principles behind Rapscallion – our own new imprint.

If you’re an iPad user, please check out The Lebanese Troubles in ibooks and tell me how it looks.

And if, like me you’re living in a country where the iPad is off-limits, then here’s a look at what you’re missing.

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Finding Readers At Smashwords

March 13, 2010 in Activities | 2 comments

Smashwords Header

The day didn’t start too well. I’ve been working hard on building my web presence, and for the last couple of days I’ve started to feel junked out. As soon as people begin to notice that you’re a serious web-dude, they all want to sell you something.

I’ve been following writers, agents, web experts on Twitter, and posting sensible, well-directed entries – just as all the experts advise – 3 or 4 times a day. But what do I get? Invitations to join Donald Trump selling Viagra to all my friends – any takers? (It might not be Viagra – but it’s some kind of health care thingy and I couldn’t be bothered to hang around and watch for details.) I know what several literary agents had for breakfast and how much fun they’re having with ‘the 4yo’ – I think that must be a brand-name for the latest model of child. I came close to signing up for Wealth for Teens but when I tried to enter my year of birth, it wasn’t in the drop-down list.

What I was really looking for from Twitter was some evidence that someone might have noticed my tweets on the short story I’ve published here on the blog, and had then come to join us here. There wasn’t one – not one.

I now have around 75 Twitter followers, more than my target for the month, but it’s certainly not an effective tool for me at the moment. There have been occasional gems, and far too much dross. But I’ll keep working on it, starting with eliminating the dross.

But hang in there. Today, just after noon I posted Waiting for Orders to Smashwords, probably the leading e-publishing site for independents. And the results have been FAR better than I expected. After 8 hours, just look at how many readers have downloaded the story – here’s my Smashwords dashboard around 8 hours after the original posting:

Smashwords Dashboard

45 new readers in 8 hours – that’s a lot. And since I haven’t mentioned Smashwords here until now, I assume that most of these will be new readers, not my blog-friends

Now to be fair, I’ve cheated. I’m giving away my short story for free. I’m sure the numbers would have been much lower if I’d set a price – which I’m at liberty to do with Smashwords. And I was particularly pleased with the cover design I managed to put together, and the introductory blurb. These first impressions are so important to just pull in your ‘customers’ in the first place. What do you think of the photo and the blurb in the left-hand panel? Would they have drawn you in.

Smashwords is extremely important to my strategy. I want to devote the whole next post to explaining why and how.

But in the meantime, if you like my story and you’d like to give me a little support, then here’s how. Head over to the Smashwords home page, and sign up – it’s free. Then Search for Alain Miles and you’ll see the title page for Waiting For Orders. If you download, you’ll be adding to the buzz. Better still, add the story to your library. And best of all write a couple of sentences as a Smashwords review – nothing extensive – and please don’t give too much away about the actual story.

Next you could start posting a few of your short stories on Smashwords too, to build your readership. We’ll talk about how to do that next time.

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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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Building An Audience

March 4, 2010 in planning | 6 comments

Josh Woodward

I’d like to introduce you to someone I’ve never met, never spoken to, communicated with only once. Josh Woodward. That’s him on the left. Josh writes dark, sensitive songs which I love. Listen to Josephine and I hope you’ll see why.

How did I come across Josh’s work? Well there’s a website called Garageband, where unpublished musicians post their work, which is then reviewed anonymously by reviewers. I was keeping my writing skills sharp a couple of years back, writing music reviews, and that’s when I first heard Josh.

I liked what I heard, and wanted to find out more. I checked his profile page. What I found there was an enormous catalog of material – 150 songs, 7 CDs. Today many of Josh’s songs are flying high at the top of the Garageband acoustic charts. And there’s something else. If you want to download any of the songs, you can. For free! Alternatively, Josh offers the physical CDs and charges a flat $4 for shipping costs, but leaves it up to his fans to decide what they want to pay – there’s a minimum charge of $2 to cover the material costs.

Is this a good business model? I don’t know. I’ll see if I can persuade Josh to tell us whether his music is supporting him, or whether he does something else to earn his daily bread.

But one thing’s for sure. He’s certainly built up a large fan-base. Josh is all over the web. As well as his website, he has a presence on MySpace (40,000 plays), ILike (8400 fans), Facebook (1300 fans), YouTube (top songs have over 10,000 plays). Not forgetting Twitter, where he engages one-on-one with fans.

All this without a publisher. Which has other advantages. Josh retains control over what he records, when he releases it, and the price he charges for it. So, when the Haiti earthquake struck, Josh recorded and released a song ‘Motionless Land’, the same day, inviting listeners to send donations to Doctors Without Frontiers. OK, as he says himself, it was a rough cut, but on this occasion he wanted to respond immediately.

So what can we writers learn from this web pioneer? Well, most obviously, that it’s possible to build a career and a fan-base without an agent and a publisher (or in his case a manager and a record-label). Provided there is:

Commitment: The fan base didn’t grow overnight – I know that Josh has been working on this since at least 2005.

Continuity: Josh has been releasing new songs every few weeks, so that his fans never forget who he is. Now I’m planning to publish The Lebanese Troubles fairly soon, but I’m not likely to finish another novel for another year or so. So if my aim, like Josh’s, is to steadily build my audience and help readers to remember me, then why not publish a few short stories as well … and release them as he has, on the web? Perhaps in audio format too, for the IPod. I wonder if there’s a market?

Control: At this stage in my career I, like Josh, want to retain control of the entire publishing and pricing process. I want to be able to write a story and get it to my audience next week, not wait six months for it to appear. I want to be sure that pricing is set to encourage the maximum number of purchases. (Incidentally there’s a good deal of evidence to show that ebook sales are not necessarily stronger when the price is set very low – but that’s a discussion for another day.)

Coverage: Readers need to be able to find our work easily and see our names regularly. We need to be on all the main social networking sites, and be clear about what we are trying to achieve on each one (- again a topic for another post).

Communication: I’m incredibly impressed that with all these fans, Josh still manages to communicate with them personally. People who talk to him will feel they have a stake in his success. Twitter is a good choice as a communication channel. As the fan network grows, it keeps messages short – or we could find this overwhelming.

Creative Commons Licensing: We need to learn when it’s best to allow readers to copy, download and share our work. In publishing, there’s huge discussion at present about DRM – Digital Rights Management. Essentially this is all about publishers defending their traditional territory – ensuring that work cannot be copied and current pricing-levels are maintained. In the process of building my market, I want to be DRM-free.

Put it like this. If Josh Woodward hadn’t made his work shareable, I wouldn’t have been able to write this post – and he may not have been able to pick up a few more fans today.

 

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