Tips for eAuthors

Which Ducks? The Author’s Promotional Toolbox: Part II

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(This blog post is the second in a two-part series. Read Part I here!)

In the first part of this post, I discussed the important of having blurbs or varying lengths for your book and a set of cover images ready for any occasion. You might also find the following handy to have around when you’re neck deep in promoting your newest title.

You
Almost every online opportunity to display a book also includes a chance to show off the author. Don’t miss this chance to sell yourself!

  • Short bio
    I haven’t seen any particular requirements here, but think of it like your book: having a one-sentence description of yourself as a writer can never hurt. If you come up against a “describe yourself in twenty words or less” request on a site, you’ll be ready. Bits like this can be useful for Tweets and Facebook posts, as well.
  • A medium bio
    This is handy for the Amazon “About the Author” section. Mine is 99 words long, is chunked into two paragraphs for easy reading, and mentions two of my novels (though both are currently unpublished. I would recommend having a “generic” bio that doesn’t assume your book title(s) are nearby, as mine are in my Amazon bio). You’ll find you’ll need this description for author bio sections on Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, Librarything, ScribD, and many more sites.
  • A long bio
    Your medium bio will probably be your workhorse. However, I’ve seen interesting one-two punches on authors’ personal sites where they have both a short and long form. The more interesting the author, the more likely–and useful–a long bio might be. Use your best judgment: if you write spy novels and have twenty years of experience as a CIA operative, you can get away with 400 words on yourself. But probably not if you write cookbooks.
  • Awards and  testimonials
    Have your testimonials and award nominations ready. Check spelling, dates, and facts. If you are lucky enough to have multiple awards or testimonials, arrange them according to impact or length; you may not have the luxury of using them all.

Your Records
This is a little nerdy, but I have a .txt file of all the URLs that matter to my career or to my books. There are many occasions when you may want to include in an email or blog post not just the URLs where readers can buy your books but also your Goodreads profile, a positive reader review, or a place readers can review/rate your book directly.

Here’s an excerpt:

AMAZON/KINDLE
[Author page]        http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00642SZQO
[Three Shorts]       http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0062OM416
[Hard Way]           http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0062OMHD6
[Match]              http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0062OMGBY
[Kind]               http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0062OMW9A

The primary objectives here are convenience and accuracy: you don’t want to have to Google your own Amazon page or try to type these things from memory with the chance that you’ll screw it up and send valuable readers to a “404 Not Found”.

(Again, I use a text file to avoid unnecessary errors; since you’ll often be using this text file to copy and paste links into websites, don’t take a chance that hidden word processor formatting will mess up your links.)

(Also, make sure you keep the “http://” in the URL.: many sites do not add it for you, with the result that if you copy and paste just the “www.” part of the URL into an input box, for instance, it will error.)

Your Sites
As a former IT professional, I can tell you that this next piece of advice is normally a security no-no: keeping your usernames and passwords written out. But let’s face it: you’re going to have a half-dozen or more (maybe many more) accounts related to your writing career and its promotion that have nothing to do with your “regular” online life.

I didn’t have any of these accounts before I started epublishing:

  • WordPress
  • Web host and (separate) email address
  • Amazon KDP/Author Central/Amazon Affiliate
  • Smashwords
  • B&N
  • Wattpad
  • Scribd
  • Goodreads
  • Librarything
  • Twitter (separate from personal)
  • MeetUp
  • Bit.ly
  • Bing Webmaster Tools
  • Kindleboards
  • MailChimp/Constant Contact/TinyLetter (mail programs)
  • A half-dozen writer-centric accounts that existed before the epublishing jazz began (Sisters In Crime, Mystery Writers of America, Virginia Writers Club, etc.)

Many of them can use the same user/password combo, but others have different requirements. With this kind of madness, I ignore my inner IT Manager and keep accounts listed in a document* on a secure site with one strongpassword (a capital letter, a number, a symbol, and a minimum of eight characters,). As a backup, the passwords in the document are also just strong hints for myself, not fully written out.

This saves me immense time when I’m trying to do promotion: I don’t want to waste time and energy trying to find or remember my Twitter, Facebook, and website password to promote a simple blog post.

 *I treat sites that deal with my financials [Amazon KDP, where you have payment info] differently. I do not list these in the master document I describe above.

Your Results
This section is entirely up to you, but I find it handy to have a spreadsheet of any part of the promotion process that is iterative. For instance, I have a spreadsheet of all the book bloggers/reviewers I’ve discovered and keep running tabs on: Name, Date Contacted, Date Submitted, Queue (i.e., wait time), email, blog URL, Affiliations (do they blog for a group or just themselves), and Notes.

For my blog posts, I keep a running tally of the Title, Date Posted, and whether it was a Guest Blogpost or not. You get the picture. Anything you might likely lose track of is often best kept in a worksheet.

Summary
With promotion being a large chunk (some might say the larger chunk) of an epublished author’s job, keeping well-written, carefully constructed information about yourself and your books accurate, up-to-date, and accessible saves time…time better spent writing the next book.

Which Ducks? The Author’s Promotional Toolbox: Part I

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If there’s one truth I’ve found in the new world of electronic publishing, it’s that the primary task once the book or collection is written is promotion. And a corollary to that rule–one I’ve learned the hard way–is that it’s of immense value to have as much descriptive information about your project written, saved, and accessible as possible. To do pain-free promotion (or mostly so) you need to have all of your ducks in a row. The question is: which ducks?

Even modest self-promotion efforts require synopses (long and short), descriptions (long and short), author bios, and cover images (of many sizes). What might be less obvious are the record-keeping tricks that will help you down the line: a list of username and passwords for your social media accounts, the URLs to your book or books on all of the major sellers’ sites, URLs to your books on review sites, and so on.

This list is far from complete, but it’s one I’ve built up from actually slogging through the process; it’s battle-tested. If you can add to it, please give me your 2 cents in the Comments section!

Your Work
I would recommend having the following blurbs/synopses/book descriptions ready and waiting in a Word document (better yet, keep them in a .txt file so you don’t get any strange formatting errors when you paste into an HTML input box).

Also, I should stress that you should work on these and have them ready before you need them. It can be depressing and enervating to have to write some of this stuff while a book blogger’s website sits there, waiting for you to fill in the required information. It’s very satisfying to simply open up the doc, copy the relevant part, and paste it in about three seconds.

  • A very short description of your book
    One sentence, preferably under thirty words. This is your “elevator pitch” in trad pub terms. It’s a catchy summary of your book that you can use in anything from email signatures to blog posts to Tweets.
  • A short description
    400 characters or so. This is the Smashwords maximum for their “Short Description” field and is probably a good length for other sites as well where length is critical.This short description was also useful for fleshing out my book description in a Librarything giveaway, where I ws competing against 75 other titles to attract readers’ attention.
  • A long description
    This might be called “long”, but I would still recommend keeping it under 200 words. You can use this for your Amazon description and in introducing bloggers and book reviewers to your work.

Your Cover
Your cover may well sell your book and the majority of online book stores and bloggers will give you the option of adding it to your book’s description. It’s critical that you catch a would-be reader’s eye with it. Thoughts:

  • Understand the requirements of image resolution (72dpi for the web, 200dpi+ for print) and format (.jpg, .gif, .png for the web; for print there are many others, but usually .tif).Be sensitive to file sizes. Some sites may automatically “downsample” large files, but individual bloggers will not be happy if you send them a 12mb, 300 dpi image of your cover art which they will then have to either alter themselves or (more likely) demand you do it, anyway.
  • Have multiple versions handy. I have 8 versions of my short story anthology’s cover: one thumbnail (60px tall), one small version (144px), four of varying sizes for others’ websites (200px, 210px, 216px, and 423px), the ebook cover itself (823px), and a 300 dpi version for possible posters and brochures.This is overkill, but you see where having at least a thumbnail, small, medium, and large versions might help. If you have hired someone else to do them, make sure you ask for a stable of varying sizes (and note that resizing them yourself without proper image-editing software can often result in a poor quality image).

Part II will cover what information you should have ready about the author (that’s you!) and a suggestion on a tip sheet that you might not have thought of before. Read it here.

Librarything Giveaway, Take Two

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My second Librarything Giveaway is now about three weeks old and, like my first in early December ’11, I’m happy with the results.

(Addendum: For authors interested in the Librarything Giveaway, check out my previous post for tips or go straight to LT’s Giveaway page. Thanks for pointing that out, Adan!)

I sponsored a two-week Giveaway of my second short-story collection, Three the Hard Way, a set of three crime fiction stories. I emailed the list of takers from the first Giveaway (about 55 people) and announced in certain other channels (I didn’t want to email blast friends, family, and acquaintances who may have already supported me by buying the collection).

The Numbers

Here are the numbers:

  • Although the Giveaway period was shorter than the first by almost two weeks, I had 79 takers, an improvement of 24.
  • Of the 79, 55 responded within 7 days. At the time of this writing, 15 haven’t responded at all. With Christmas and New Years in there, I’m happy that the delay wasn’t even greater. I was also curious to see what effect new Kindles and Nooks might have on the Giveaway, but I can’t tell if the (modest) surge was from better exposure or new e-readers.
  • The breakdown of requested formats (which might surprise you) to date are:
    • 19 Amazon Kindle gifts
    • 12 PDF files
    • 23 Smashwords coupons
    • 10 .epub files
  • At the time of this writing, I’ve had
    • 6 Amazon reviews
    • 8 Goodreads reviews
    • 13 Librarything reviews
    • 3 Smashwords reviews
    • 2 blogger comments

Notes

  • I offered 450 copies of my book; the reason for the high number is listed here.
  • I worked on the description of the book and edited it several times. Basic HTML (bold, italics, links, etc.) is allowed and you can use it to your advantage. A short but powerful description is a must. Some writers in the Giveaway are really missing the boat on this one.
  • I made LT and Goodreads “friends” through both Giveaways and I think this is a key to future success.
  • It’s not much, but I use the respondent’s first name in the salutation of my letter back to the readers. If the respondent mentions something personal in their reply, I try to make a comment on mine (for instance, one woman was undergoing shoulder surgery the next week and had participated in the Giveaway to get reading material for the recovery, so I wished her well, then sent her a coupon for a free copy of one bad twelve, my master collection of shorts).
  • I plan to send out reminders at the one month mark for the “no replies” to encourage them to get their copy.

Thoughts

  • I’m still surprised at the number of people, as in my first Giveaway, that signed up for a copy but didn’t respond to me when I emailed asking what format they’d like. I’m not offended by the no response, but it takes some effort to read through my LT description and click “Yes, give me one of those.” Why wouldn’t you send me a one word reply to get a free book?
  • I love the Librarything Giveaway opportunity, but their execution of it could be better. The list of winners is simply posted as an HTML table on a webpage. To make use of it, you have to copy and paste into an Excel sheet and massage to get a workable database.Also, if you’ve done more than one giveaway, the most recent group is listed at the end, which leads you to believe they’ve overwritten your new contact data with old. Wouldn’t take much to simply post it above the old.

That’s about it. I may plan a giveaway in the ramp-up towards publishing my first novel, A Reason to Live, this Spring. I’ll post numbers from that and any other Giveaways I take part in. If you’ve had success (or failure) with an LT Giveaway, I’d love to hear about it!

Agents: Needle, meet haystack. Haystack, needle. Part Two

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(This is Part Two of a blog post about the basics of finding an agent. Read Part One here.)

Casting the Net
If you want to start gathering agent names for that magical day when you start your submissions, I would suggest reading every page of www.agentquery.com and subscribing to Publisher’s Marketplace (http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/) to learn the etiquette, understand the markets, and find lists of active agents. Bear in mind that you only want to query agents in your genre; blitzing agents in all fields is seen as poor form and word does get around.

While querying is the traditional method for finding an agent, I found that meeting agents and getting requests for my manuscript was much easier by attending conferences. Agents are there to scout for talent and can get a feel for your work just through conversation.

Be aware that these agents might (I stress might) be young, inexperienced, or on a loosing streak. Super-successful agents are busy making deals, you might assume, not attending conferences. But this certainly isn’t always the case…do your homework on the sites mentioned above, find the agents that sound right for you, and go to the conferences they do. There are plenty of agents that simply like discovering new talent and you might be the next one (though see my suggestions for conduct, #3, below).

Acting the Part

  1. You need to be exacting, courteous, and above all, professional in your contact with agents. You will read agent horror stories of opening submissions with glitter in them, or written in blood (for a horror novel) or with pages turned upside down to see if the return rejection was read. Trawl through agents websites for their submission requirements. Understand that their wish is your command, down to type face, font size, margin width, email and attachment style. You do not have a say in the matter. You are, let’s face it, a supplicant at this stage. You’ll have to act like one.

  2. You must work on your query letter like you worked on the first chapter of your novel. There are whole books out there dedicated to the query letter. While you don’t have to drive yourself nuts over it, due diligence is required. Borrow those books from the library and study.

  3. If you meet an agent in person at a conference or otherwise in a setting conducive to writing (and I’m not talking about stalking the agent of your dreams and waylaying them at the gas station), do everything in your power to be normal. Real difficult, huh? Well, spend some time at writers’ conferences and you’ll see just how hard this is for a lot of people.

    It can’t be stressed enough that meeting an agent face to face benefits both of you immensely (you don’t want to work with a jerk, they don’t want to represent a lunatic), but only if you are courteous, professional, and amenable. Don’t shove your credentials in their face, don’t mention the title of your manuscript every second breath, don’t laugh at everything they say. If you’re at a conference or seminar, understand that they aren’t there by accident, they’re there because they are looking for talent. If you interest them–even marginally–as a person, they are incredibly likely to ask you for your manuscript. Three hours spent at the bar at Bouchercon is worth 100 unsolicited submissions.

    But it will only happen if you don’t act like an idiot or a used-car salesman.

Red flags
There are a ton of scammers out there. Protect yourself from the get-go by educating yourself and being aware of what an agent does, how they make their money, and what they owe you in return. Supplicant you might be, but you become a client once that contract is signed.

There are good sites out there to help the author just starting out:

When speaking with a prospective agent, beware of:

  1. Agents asking for a reading fee – no reputable agent charges to read work
  2. Referrals – don’t listen to anyone who thinks your work is great but thinks it could benefit from a “book doctor” or editor whose name, number, and email address they just happen to have handy.
  3. Fees or payment that are higher (or radically different) than the generally universal 15% of royalty
  4. Wants to represent anything other than your domestic print rights (unless they have demonstrable experience in film, TV, overseas rights)
  5. Not always bad, but no wins or sales in the last year (or ever). If they’re young and are just starting out, they won’t have a track record and that’s understandable (even desirable, as they’ll be hungry), but they should be honest and forthcoming about that. If they’ve been in the business for 12 years and haven’t sold anything for a while, not good.

And that sums up my aggregate knowledge on finding an agent. If there’s one message here, it’s that this knowledge was gained over time by looking for it. It might be incomplete, wrong, or not for you. Continue the hunt yourself, be educated, draw your own conclusions, and share with the community.

Agents: Needle, meet haystack. Haystack, needle. Part One

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I belong to a small chapter of statewide writing club that includes published and unpublished writers. We connect via a monthly meeting and an online newsgroup, sharing tips, tricks, and sucesses.

There was a flurry of newsgroup posts recently about agents from writers who were (or thought they were) ready to seek representation. I tried to respond as well as I could, sharing my experiences–not from being agented, which I’m not, nor being traditionally published, which I also am not–but from five or six hard years of learning the writing business from research, conversations with published authors, and attending talks, seminars, and conferences.

Like a lot of knowledge that coalesces over time, you tend to forget that this isn’t general knowledge that’s imparted to every dewy-eyed would-be novelist that cracks open a copy of Publisher’s Marketplace. I found myself writing to some of my fellow club members with my eyebrows near my hairline, as I found so much of what I was writing to be, well, common knowledge. Or so I thought.

So, here’s a little capsule of what I learned. I freely admit this is all available elsewhere…it’s how I learned, after all. But if my shortcuts help the next newbie that can’t quite find the right resources, then I’ve done some good.

The Basics – Ground Zero
No matter how gifted you are as a writer, you need to educate yourself about the industry and the marketplace. This has never been more true than right now, with digital publishing having turned traditional publishing on its head in just a few short years.

This is not a waste of time. You are not stealing anything from your writing time; think of it as an enhancement. You may well be the next Michael Chabon and have your manuscript sent to a New York agent without your knowledge, but the overwhelming chances are that, to succeed as a writer, you will have to sell yourself a little or a lot and you don’t want to go cheap.

More to the point, you have to do this at some point. Don’t waste valuable time with amateurish moves and wasted gestures. Do your homework and get it right before you start.

Resources:

Baby Steps
(These are tips that you will pick up if you do your homework, above, but are worth reiterating here.)

If you wish to be traditionally published by a Big Six publisher (who put out the kinds of books you see in airports, libraries, and those thingies that sell books…right, book stores), you must have an agent. No one publishes directly to the large publishers any more and hasn’t for a long time. This is called “over the transom” submission because it humorously refers to authors that would chuck their manuscript through the transom of the publishers’ offices (assumedly, it wouldn’t fit in the mail slot). Since the word transom itself is archaic, you can guess just how outmoded this method is.

Agents now serve as publishers’ first readers, sifting the wheat from the chaff, and trying to sell the wheat. Sometime they hit, much more often they miss. But either way, there is a 99.9% chance you won’t get a response if you send your manuscript directly to a publisher.

Some authors preach going direct to the publisher anyway. It couldn’t hurt, I suppose, and you probably won’t be blackballed by the industry, but your chances of being found are slim. If you don’t believe me, check out this picture of unsolicited slush (manuscripts) that were sent to a publisher. The pile is what the intern is sitting on.

Small Publishers
If you are looking at a small publishing house, much of the above does not apply simply because many small publishers don’t require an agent. But you might. Paying an agent 15% of your royalties might be worth it to have someone representing you and looking out for your best interests. There are plenty of horror stories of small publishing houses holding authors to unfair contractual agreements, subjecting them to litigation, and generally making the Big Six look like Boy Scouts.

This does not describe the majority of small publishers, but unless you are a lawyer during the day, an agent may still be a smart move. Remember, signing with a publisher–of any kind–means you are signing over your rights to some part of your work (often future work, as well, and sometimes even your name as a brand). Be smart.

Your Work

  1. Short poetry and short stories do not need representation. And you will not get it. Short, single items do not make publishers money (they can’t charge enough for a public that wants value), so agents will not represent it.Your best bet for short works are journals and magazines. With enough success in that industry, you may be able to publish a collection, but even then–without a longer work to your credit–you are fighting an uphill battle.If you wonder why, ask yourself when the last time you bought a short story collection was.
  2. If you have a novel or other long work, it must be finished. “Finished” does not mean you reached 75,000 words, saved the Word doc, and printed it. It means rewritten, edited, critiqued, re-re-written, and polished. You almost certainly have one shot to impress an agent. If you haven’t crafted the best product possible–let alone finished it–you will almost certainly not get past a form rejection letter.

This is a lot of information to absorb. Check out the second of two installments in this post (Agents: Needle, meet haystack. Haystack, needle. Part Two.) to find out what else I think I know about literary agents. Share your stories and experiences!