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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words long, is chunked into two paragraphs for easy reading, and mentions two of my novels (though both are currently unpublished.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.

Get in your saddle and ride…now

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My journey to digital self-publication is far from original but it almost didn’t occur due to an almost fatal (to my career) ability to procrastinate.

I’d wanted to “be a writer” for almost as long as I can remember, but the proof is in the pudding (to daisy-chain two clichés together). For years, I managed to write a paltry short story or two a year. I’d toss them in the mail with little market research or editorial diligence, then wallow in self-pity when the rejection slips came back. The wallowing was made worse by my firm belief that I, indeed, had “it” and just needed to be “discovered” by a Big Six editor (before I knew what that was) while pausing at a rest-stop on I-95 or by chatting up a NYT best-selling author as I stood in the lunch line at Subway.

And I didn’t bother bolstering whatever natural talent I had with a scrap of education or self-edification. I figured I could always get my MFA (ha!), but why bother? Hemingway hadn’t gone to school for writing, Melville barely left his farm after returning from the sea, Bukowski was a postman for Christ’s sake. I’d eventually get around to the act of writing…and when I did, watch the hell out world, because life would never be the same. They’d make Hallmark calendars centered around the day I published my novel. Animals would come up to me in the forest to sit on my lap and eat out of my hand. Weather patterns would form around my house as the creative power of my brain caused a micro-climate to form in my neighborhood.

Needless to say, actually sitting down and writing something didn’t figure into this equation. Since it was understood that you had to write to be a writer, I glossed over that small fact and thought a lot more about hypothetical acceptance speeches and book signings than I ever did about creating anything. Writers call this irony.

By the time I woke up (mmm…around 30?) I realized I not only had to start writing, I had to start writing–and learning–now. I had serious ground to make up. There were writers my age who had finished two or three novels in college…and considered them “drawer novels”, not fit for anything except propping up a table. And writing had to begin with learning and re-learning all those things I’d ignored or given short shrift to for years: plot, character, pacing, theme, rhythm, voice, point-of-view, continuity.

Long story short, for the past ten or twelve years I’ve been applying myself as much to learning the craft as working towards publication (of any sort). It’s been frustrating watching others catch success along the way while I’m re-reading Elements of Style, but I’m not going to write anything I can’t stand behind and that’s going to take patience and a dedication to the craft.

There are only two important rules in this game: are you writing? And, is what you’ve written the best it could possibly be? The second rule implies immersing yourself in the creative art of writing. But the first requires the act itself.

If you’re not actually writing, you’re not a writer. Please don’t make my mistake. Get in your saddle and ride…now.

Coincidences, Vacuums, and MacGuffins

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Sue Grafton once said, “Coincidence can get you into a plot, but it can’t get you out.” I’m going to paraphrase her by adding, “And you can even have coincidence, but you can’t have a vacuum.”

Let me explain. A good thriller writer I enjoy is known for his action scenes, humor, and the complete implausibility of most of his novels’ key premises. His ability to push the reader forward and keep the suspense high is so masterful that most readers shrug at the no-way-in-hell inventions and proceed to the next shootout.

I’m one of those readers. I’m okay with colossal coincidences if the rest is working. What I can’t abide, however, is the middle dropping out of a story.

By that I don’t mean the literal middle of the book—the plotting, the dialogue, the consistency of voice, though all those things are important—I mean the central premise that got us going in the first place. When I get to the end, and there’s no meat, no substance, not even a coincidence, just a vacuum, then I start waving the red flag.

It’s a little tough to explain without actually revealing the plot, the title, or the author, but to summarize, the entire premise of one of his novels is built around discovering a MacGuffin* that, should it be found and exposed, will reveal horrific and damning truths about the several Very Important People connected to it. The world holds its breath as the protagonist races to find the MacGuffin and discover the secrets about the VIPs. Bad guys are mowed down by the dozen, allies are maimed, buildings explode. Finally, the villains are defeated and the MacGuffin falls into the trembling hands of our hero…

…who doesn’t have a clue what’s what it means. Nor does anyone involved, including the Very Important People who are Very High Up in the government that are mentioned in connection to the MacGuffin. And that’s it. Our hero gets tired of thinking about it and moves on. The book ends.

This is a profound disservice to the reader. It can’t have been that hard to think up some reason—any reason, even a bad reason —why dozens of minor characters were willing to sacrifice their lives over this object.

And for anyone who would defend this by saying, in effect, life is messy and sometimes things don’t make sense, let me introduce you to an aphorism that most fiction writers learn in Creative Writing 101: Truth is stranger than fiction.

This bon mot isn’t meant as a guide, it’s a warning: the essence for writers isn’t that they should look at our crazy, mixed-up world and use it as justification for their poorly plotted novels, it’s that no one cares about random events. We all know life has its oddball moments; we turn to tabloid newspapers and internet chain letters to keep us abreast of them. What we want from our fiction writers is to construct things that make sense, not for more of the same crap we see on the news and experience in our daily lives.

It’s not enough when a main premise is just a vehicle for us to experience the shooting, the chases, the love scenes. There has to be some there there. I’ll hang with you and your crazy reasons for getting me to read in the first place. But don’t leave me hanging.  As we all know, when the center doesn’t hold, things fall apart.

* A MacGuffin was Alfred Hitchcock’s phrase for the interchangeable “thing”–Maltese Falcon, diamond ring, voodoo doll, etc.–that drives the plot forward.

Librarything.com giveaway: A great promotional tool

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My first Librarything.com giveaway is just a few days over and I’m happy with the results. For those not in the know, Librarything is a great resource for both readers and writers by bringing a librarian’s sensibility to a book fan site. LT allows for reviews, ratings, personal libraries, also reads, and much more.

For the indie author, however, it offers one of the most amazing promotional tools: the Member Giveaway. After becoming an official Librarything author (not a difficult process if you have published or epublished), you can go directly to the Giveaway page at http://www.librarything.com/er/giveaway/list and, in a few minutes, offer free copies of your latest book to all the readers who happen by, and request those same readers review the book on all the major review sites (Amazon, Goodreads, Librarything, Smashwords, etc.). If you do ebooks, this is an especially great deal, with very little cost or overhead to get substantial exposure.

Out of 550 offered copies, I had 67 takers in about 3 weeks. The reason I offered so many and had so (relatively) few takers is outlined below. Generally speaking, however, I’ve been thrilled with the result. Just three days after the giveaway ended, 40 of the 67 had requested their copies. I received 3 Amazon reviews, 3 Smashwords reviews, and 3 Goodreads reviews, 2 “library links” on Smashwords, 1 link on Goodreads, and a blog post…all within the first 24 hours. One of the reviewers became a Facebook fan and a Goodreads review follower, and another reader became a follower on Twitter. Fully half agreed to a followup email in case I had another giveaway or new release.

For those interested in using the LT Giveaway for their own promotional purposes, I learned a few things along the way:

  1. My copies were all ebooks, so it’s certainly much easier than sending physical hard- or paper-backs. It seems to me that publishers and authors giving away physical copies are limiting their Giveaways to no more than 25 or 30 copies, tops, for the obvious reasons of cost, shipping, and effort.
  2. If you are offering ebooks, make sure you have every major format: Amazon Kindle, Smashwords, .pdf, .mobi, and .epub. I’ve been asked for all of these formats. You could specify only Kindle if you want (as it’s the easiest) but why limit your exposure? Understand that you foot the cost for a Kindle Gift version (though you’ll obviously get your royalty back).
  3. Several colleagues have skipped publishing to Smashwords because it takes quite a while to get approved, but it’s absolutely worth the wait, because it’s the only retailer/distributor that will allow you to generate your own “coupons” which can be for any amount, up to and including FREE. When you can offer your Librarything readers a Smashwords coupon, they can use it to get any ebook format they need at their discretion (including all the other formats you might offer, which is redundant, but you’re trying to reach the most people, so why not give them all possible options?).
  4. Another reason to make sure you have a Smashwords copy: what some authors don’t know is that readers can’t review your book on Smashwords unless they received it via Smashwords (unlike, say Amazon, where you could review a book if you got it out of the library, then went online to review it). Since Smash reaches iTunes/iBooks, Barnes and Noble, Sony, and a bunch of other retailers, this is worth it.

    Edit: Smashwords reviews do not convey to their retailers, but are certainly visible on the Smashwords site. Sorry for the confusion!

  5. If you want to do a giveaway, make sure you allow some time to become approved as a Librarything author before you plan the giveaway. It takes a few days at least to get approval. Check http://www.librarything.com/about/authors to find out how.
  6. When you set up your giveaway, pay attention to your cover image; mine was not uploaded at first and I had to do so manually. A good picture makes all the difference, so double check your Giveaway entry to make sure it’s there.
  7. Sneaky trick: the Giveaway page is ordered strangely: by default, it’s by “copies remaining”. In practical terms, what this means is that someone who offers 550 copies (like I did), will always be listed near the top of the page (and certainly be seen before those giving away 30). This has apparently gone to ridiculous extremes with people “out bidding” each other (you can change your copies offered at any time) up to 6-digit figures. There’s nothing you can do about whackos who do this, but if you pick a fairly high number, like over 500, you will probably be at the top of the page and, in reality, only 100 or so people will actually ask for your ebook. Even if the unthinkable happens and 500 people ask for it, it’s a good problem to have, right?
  8. Don’t be shy about asking for reviews in return for the giveaway. Most people seem happy to do so, although remember they aren’t obligated to do so.
  9. Unlikely to happen, but…for some reason, my giveaway entry was listed for 2 weeks as “not available in the US”. I didn’t see this until very late when a kind reader emailed me and pointed it out. I could not edit the entry to change this and had to wait a nerve-wracking day while I heard back from Librarything support. When they fixed it (and pretty fast, too), I went from a paltry 6 requests to 68 in a week. Double check your entry and make sure this doesn’t happen to you.

If you decide to try the LT Giveaway for your own promotions, best of luck and share your findings! This is obviously a powerful tool and becomes more so as your reach as an author increases.