This Crazy Writing Life: Amazon Ads Part Three–Don't Forget to Press the Clutch...

By Steven Womack

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So you’re the type that wants to be in charge, right? The thought of targeting your Amazon Ads to a bunch of folks you may or not want the ad to go to is a real problem. Maybe you don’t trust the Amazon algorithm. Maybe you’re the kind of person who would rather drive a manual transmission than an automatic.

Okay, there’s room for all types. So how do you get started?

In last month’s installment of This Crazy Writing Life, we pondered Amazon’s automatic targeting and how the Amazon algorithm based its decisions on your metadata. Metadata is a term you see tossed around a lot these days. I kinda sorta think I understand what metadata is and how it works, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen an actual definition of the word.

So I did what people do these days: I Googled it.

Metadata, according to that internet bastion of absolute truth (Wikipedia), means “data that provides information about other data, but not the content of the data itself.”

Say what? Data about data?

Continuing on with Wikipedia, metadata is data that gives you insights into other data. There are numerous kinds of metadata: descriptive, structural, administrative, reference, statistical, legal… A lot to take in, more than we actually need.

Before we get too deep into the weeds on this, let’s narrow our focus to the question of what is metadata for indie publishers and what does it do?

Now we’ve bitten off a bite-sized chunk. Metadata for indie publishers is the information (data) that will help lead a customer to your book. This information primarily falls under two main classifications: keywords and categories. If you’re going to attempt to manually target your promotions efforts on Amazon (or anywhere else), you’re going to have to get your head around these two dynamics.

Keywords are words or phrases that, when a potential customer types them into the search bar, takes them—hopefully—to your book. If you’ve written a book called Pole Vaulting for Dummies, then when someone types “pole vaulting” into the search bar, your book is going to be in the pool of books that Amazon pulls up.

But there’s more to it. Not only do good keywords make your book show up in search results, but if you’re running a Sponsored Products campaign (see the last two month’s columns on Amazon advertising), then your ad gets featured in pages for other books that pop up as a result of the search. If you include the keyword phrase “Mark Twain” in your metadata, then your book will not only show up in search results for Mark Twain, but as a Sponsored Product ad on every other book page that’s pulled up.

So you’re beginning to see how important this is, right? The right keywords will make your book pop up all over the Amazon place. But the wrong, or ineffective, keywords will consign you to obscurity.

It’s not just the keywords, though. You can also control how closely the customer’s search results match your keywords. There are three broad match types in the Amazon ad platform.

Exact matches are just what the name implies. You know exactly what search query you want to target. Exact matches include close variations like plural or singular versions of the phrase, but you need to be as specific as possible and you need to enter the words in the exact order you want them to appear in the search. If your keyword phrase is “private eye noir novels,” then “noir private eye books” isn’t going to give you a hit.

If you choose the phrase match option, that means you have a precise idea of what you’re trying to target, but you’re willing to be a little looser on the interpretation, like if your keyword phrase is part of a longer phrase. In other words, if your keyword phrase is “private eye noir novels” and someone types in “private eye noir novels set in New Orleans,” you’ll get a hit.

The third option is the broad match. This is the match type that will give you the largest number of hits, but you run a real risk that the some of the hits may be so far off base that they won’t give you any results. Ricardo Fayet in Amazon Ads For Authors goes so far as to recommend that you not choose broad match as an option in Sponsored Product ads.

So let’s look at Category targeting. What are categories on the Amazon platform?

Imagine that Amazon.com was a brick-and-mortar bookstore. If you were looking for a romance novel, you’d either go to the store directory and see which shelves housed romances or you’d just wander around until you found the right shelf. Same with mysteries, suspense/thrillers, or books on car repair or stock trading…

It’s vital that your book be assigned to the right categories. In a brick-and-mortar bookstore, when a book’s put in the wrong category, it’s misshelved. If someone looks long enough and hard enough, they may find it. In the vast online bookstore known as Amazon, though, when your book’s in the wrong category, it’s lost.

But it’s not just a matter of readers being able to find your book. Each category within Amazon (with the exception of some categories that we’ll touch on in a second) has its own best-seller list. The competition within each category varies tremendously. In some niche categories, you might need to sell only a dozen books to be an Amazon number one best-seller.

So what are the exceptions I mentioned? In a recent article on Amazon categories, Kindlepreneur guru Dave Chesson writes that 27% of the categories you can pick on the KDP dashboard are what he calls “ghost categories.” These are categories that don’t have a name, don’t have a category path on the Best Sellers page, and if you select it, your sales don’t count toward a bestseller tag. You almost always want to avoid putting your book in one of these.

It’s also important to understand that over half the categories on Amazon are duplicate categories. Which means if you select three of these categories (and three is all you’re allowed), then you’re really only picking one.

Here’s the other challenge when you’re determining which categories to place your book in: there are over 19,000 categories!

Yep, Amazon’s a dang big bookstore.

And Amazon’s constantly changing the rules. As I mentioned a few lines earlier, you can request that your book be placed in three categories. You used to be allowed ten, but the rules changed. Even then, there’s no guarantee your book will wind up in the categories you want. Amazon can deny you the ones you want or stick your book in other categories without even telling you. It’s important to understand how this complicated system works to get the best results. Embed keywords for a specific category in your book description, your book’s content, or even the title. That’ll help.

Do you have a sense now of how big a task this is? As I’ve mentioned in previous columns, if you’re going to embark on an indie pubbing journey, you’ve got to constantly be studying, learning, observing. This is bidness, folks, and ya’ gotta take it seriously.

How do we manage to get our heads around all this without spending forty hours a week studying how all this works. After all, most of us have lives of some kind and other demands on our time.

The best tool I’ve found, by far, is another offering from our friends at Kindlepreneur. Dave Chesson’s made a career out of mastering the indie publishing space and Kindlepreneur’s PublisherRocket is one of their best tools for mastering the keyword and category challenge (let me just jump in here, as I have before, and say with complete transparency that I’m not an affiliate with Kindlepreneur or anyone else; I’m not making a buck off this if you buy it; I’m just happy to share something that really works).

PublisherRocket enables you to discover categories and keywords, analyze your competition, and develop Amazon Ads—all in the same place. Let’s do a quick case study here, based on my earlier reference to the author who writes a book called Pole Vaulting For Dummies. You’re the author and you’ve written the book, copy-edited it, put together a great cover, and you’re ready to pull the trigger on KDP.

Fire up PublisherRocket and type in the “keyword search” bar the words pole vaulting.

Turns out there are a slew of books published on Amazon about pole vaulting (didn’t know it was such a hot area). Let’s click on the first one, Alexis Monroe Kiefer’s The Pole Vault Coaching Handbook.

PublisherRocket tells us that Ms. Kiefer’s book on pole vaulting was published 1647 days ago, its Amazon Best Seller Rank is 975,271—not great but I’ve seen worse—and it’s 78 pages long. This book does not have targeted keywords in its title, and it costs $20.00. PublisherRocket estimates its daily sales as $3.00 and its monthly sales at $20.00.

Okay, it’s not likely the author’s making a living off this book but, hey, she’s slinging a few copies here and there.

Then you hit the “See The Categories” button and the good stuff happens.

This book is only listed in two categories:

Books>Reference

Books>Sports & Outdoors>Other Team Sports>Track & Field

For each category, there’s a button to get Insights on that category (Sales to #1, Sales to #10, Average Publishers Price, and the Monthly Sales of Category’s Top 30 Bestsellers). Then there’s another button that gives you all the Keywords for that category.

Are you beginning to get a sense of how valuable that data is? I read an article about how date is the new oil—those that have got it control the market and a lot more. I believe that’s true.

Let’s wrap this one up. The last three installments of This Crazy Writing Life have been designed to just barely break the ice on Amazon advertising. I just wanted to give you a start, but if you really want to do a deep dive into making this all work, then you’re going to have to spend more time than we’ve had here. Ricardo Fayet’s Amazon Ads For Authors is the best and most complete resource out there. I recommend starting with that.

Once again, thanks for playing along.

This Crazy Writing Life: Dipping Our Toes In The Amazon Part Two — On Swimming Upstream...

By Steven Womack

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It’s hard to believe that this is installment number twelve of This Crazy Writing Life. How did a whole year go by so fast?

Maybe it’s just me. Time does seem to go by in a blur these days. Add to that the information overload and analysis paralysis we all seem to be afflicted with these days and it’s easy to see how time and life can both just go streaming by like another dreary Netflix movie.

If you’re a newcomer to this little adventure, thanks for joining us. If you’re a regular, thanks for hanging with me. I hope you’re getting something out of it.

So let’s get to work…

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We left off last month with the basics of Amazon ads and, by extension, some fundamentals of digital advertising in general. CPC versus CPM ads, Sponsored Product ads, Sponsored Brands, and Lockscreen ads were all explored. If you need to catch up on some of this stuff, then pull up last month’s column. It’s all there.

Now let’s go a bit deeper, into the underlying architecture of a digital ad campaign. By architecture, I mean how ads are built on Amazon. There’s a hierarchical system at work here that looks something like a pyramid. It’s important to have a basic understanding of how the system works because this is how you organize your advertising efforts. If you’re only advertising one book with one ad at a time, there’s not much to keep track of. But if you’ve got a dozen books out there (or as some indie authors have, dozens or even hundreds of books), then keeping all this stuff straight is a completely different challenge. And as Ricardo Fayet observed in the best book I’ve ever found on learning this platform—Amazon Ads For Authors—the best performing ad campaigns are almost always the best organized.

At the top of the pyramid is the Campaign. Amazon gives you two options here: Custom text campaigns and Standard ad campaigns. There are a couple of key differences between the two.

As the name implies, Custom text campaigns allow you to write your own distinctive ad copy (up to 150 characters) that you can use to try and convince a potential reader to buy your book. The downside here is that you can only advertise one book at a time.

An Amazon Standard ad campaign, though, will allow you to advertise as many books as you want within the same campaign. Say you’ve got ten books in a cozy mystery series. With a Standard ad campaign, you can get all ten books into an “ad group” and Amazon’s algorithm will decide with books will pop up in an ad. The downside here is that the only information the prospective customer will get is the title, the series title, the author’s name and a few other elements of metadata. No creativity allowed…

So the real issue here is twofold: 1) how many books are you trying to wedge into your campaign; and 2) how important is it to be able to write some custom ad copy. If you’re promoting a single, standalone suspense/thriller, then maybe those 150 characters of sparkling creative ad copy are important to you. On the other hand, if you’re campaign is plugging a private eye series with 25 installments, then the Standard ad campaign may give you the most bang per buck.

One big, albeit fairly advanced, component of Custom Ad campaigns is that you can run what’s called A/B testing. You write one set of copy for Ad #1, then a second set for Ad #2. You launch both campaigns at the same time with the same parameters, then measure the success of each one, which is usually done by comparing click-through-rates (CTR) and actual sales. But again, as always with Amazon, this can be a bit complicated. For one thing, you have to create two separate campaigns. You can’t run two ads with different copy in one Custom ad campaign. And you have to launch both campaigns at the same time, with the same product, same budgets, and same targeting.

Lastly, you have to let each campaign run long enough to get a true assessment of how each one’s doing. The longer, the better.

Patience: that one thing we all have so much of…

In last month’s column, we examined the three basic kinds of Amazon ads and examined how the Sponsored Products ad was the one most commonly deployed by indie authors. One of the many things you have to consider when you’re creating a campaign is the bidding strategy you’re going to deploy. As we explored last month, Amazon ads are based on a bidding system. You don’t just buy an ad on Amazon and it suddenly appears; you bid for space on the platform.

Amazon ads, as we also explored last month, are CPC—or Cost Per Click—only. You don’t get a choice on the type of bid, but you can choose the strategy to take when you create the campaign.

You can choose to go with dynamic bids. Dynamic bids change depending on certain parameters—the search terms the customer used, for example. Dynamic bids can be down only, which means Amazon, in its great wisdom, will lower your bid for clicks that are less likely to convert to a sale. This can help preserve your ad spend budget.

The other alternative dynamic bid strategy is called up and down. With this strategy, they’ll raise your bid by as much as 100% for placements, for example, at the top of the first page of search results—prime real estate on Amazon—or when a search query is especially well-matched to your book. Since they raise your bid in these cases, you are more likely to see a better conversion rate and higher sales.

Conversely, in cases where the search query is not such a good match or your ad’s going to be relegated to a less juicy spot, then the algorithm can lower your bid by as much as 50%.

If you don’t want to employ dynamic bidding and want more control, then you can check the box that triggers the Fixed Bid strategy. In this case, Amazon will only bid the amount you choose, but like everything Amazon, there’s a trade-off here. With the Fixed Bid strategy, you may get more impressions, but fewer conversions. Depending on the goal of your campaign, that may be okay.

Finally, you can use a kind of hybrid strategy, where you don’t give up total control to Amazon but you create a set of rules that will take the guesswork out of moving your bids up or down to achieve a goal. This gets into concepts like Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), which leads us into some pretty advanced stuff in the world of digital advertising.

So we’ve tackled two important first considerations: the type of ad campaign and the bidding strategy we’re going to employ. Now we tackle the issue of targeting. The beauty and genius of digital advertising is it’s not like broadcasting a commercial on TV, where your target audience is every bozo who owns a television and happens to have it on when your ad runs. Digital platforms—especially Amazon—devote an enormous amount of time and energy to tracking and analyzing what their customers search for and buy. With decades of experience and billions of dollars expended, Amazon’s pretty good at it.

For many authors, your best bet is to choose Automatic Targeting. This is the easiest to set up and you’re basically, to coin a phrase from the old Greyhound Bus commercials of my youth, leaving the driving to them.

But how does Amazon do this? As Ricardo points out so eloquently in his book, like many things Amazon, that’s a bit of a mystery. Amazon guards its algorithms and proprietary information very closely. But they look for matches in their automatic targeting: close matches to search queries, loose matches, substitutes, and things that complement the search query. Amazon decides in each case if the search query is anywhere near relevant to your product and to what degree. How does it do this?

Through your metadata…

This might mean the title, subtitle or series title of your book. The categories you chose when you uploaded the book (and, oh boy, that’s a whole ball of wax) and your keywords and product description. All of this data goes into the Amazon machine, goes ‘round and ‘round, and then comes out here.

One caveat here is that for novelists or mystery writers like most of us, this is a much more inexact science. Novels, in general, are much harder to fit into a niche or category than nonfiction books. A nonfiction book on organic farming is pretty easy to target; a dystopic LGBTQ, YA, coming-of-age standalone is a bit more of a challenge.

One of the great benefits of Automatic Targeting is that Amazon will tell you what keywords and products your ad targeted. It’s a bit of a process with a couple of ways to get there, but that’s valuable information. Once you know the most successful search terms and keywords, you can go in and adjust your ads to increase their performance.

You can also use this data to find out which keywords are misleading or inaccurate and plug those into your campaign as negative keywords. What are negative keywords? These are search terms that if a prospective buyer types those into the search bar, your book will deliberately not show up in the results. How is this useful?

You write cozy mysteries. So you enter gore, erotica, horror as negative keywords and it guarantees someone searching for those terms will never see your book. That can be mighty useful.

Next month, we’ll move onto Manual Targeting and keep going. As you might have guessed, tackling Amazon ads is a multi-installment rodeo on This Crazy Writing Life. And even then, this is all designed as a beginner’s primer on Amazon and other forms of digital advertising. What you’re willing to learn and take on is up to you. If you’re really into this, you can go back to college and get a graduate degree in this stuff.

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One of the reasons the last couple of columns for Killer Nashville Magazine have run a little late is that I’m up to my nether regions in indie pubbing a book right now. This was a novel I published first in hardcover a long time ago with Severn House in England and later with Harper Collins in mass-market paperback. The novel, By Blood Written, was a standalone serial killer novel and it was by far the most graphically violent and cutting-edge book I’ve written. I had great hopes for this as a breakout book, but in both cases, it was so badly published it went nowhere. Even the Harper Collins paperback sank without a trace when the editor, who was really pumped about the book, took another job a few months before pub date (which is called being orphaned in the book biz).

For years I tried to get the rights reverted to me. Harper Collins is notorious for not reverting rights to authors, but after several years and many attempts, I finally got a rights reversion letter. I’ve retitled the book, which will now be called Blood Plot, and commissioned what I think is a fabulous cover that serves as an homage to the great pulp fiction paperbacks of the Forties and Fifties. Here’s a look:

I’m just completed formatting the eBook with Atticus (which I’ve written about before) and am going to tackle the learning curve to use Atticus for typesetting the hardcover and trade paperback editions.

I only mention this because the column is all about the freedom and options of indie pubbing (as well as the enormous amount of sweat equity that’s involved). This can be a case study for what we’re all talking about.

Thanks again for playing along. I’d love to hear what you think of the cover or anything else that I bring up in This Crazy Writing Life. Feel free to drop me a line any time at: WomackWriter@yahoo.com.

This Crazy Writing Life: Dipping Our Toes In The Amazon Part One — Beware The Piranhas!

By Steven Womack

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It’s borderline too late to say this, but Happy 2025! As at the beginning of every year, I have high hopes and cautious optimism. We’ll see how long that lasts.

With this installment of This Crazy Writing Life, we’re going to start digging into the real down-in-the-weeds details of marketing our books in the indie-pubbing space. And one of the reasons this column is a little late this month is that I decided to begin this exploration by tackling the ads on the platform that we’re all going to use the most: Amazon.

And that’s the problem.

As I alluded in previous columns, anything having anything to do with Amazon is by its very definition and at its very core hard to understand and navigate. Much of the inner workings of Amazon are unpredictable and so far behind-the-scenes as to be almost invisible. Even the experts—and believe me, I’m not one but I’ve read many—agree that sometimes things just seem to happen without any rhyme or reason. Navigating the Amazon advertising platform can be overwhelming, especially if you’re a newbie in the digital marketing arena. After all, Amazon has been the fastest-growing digital ad platform in the world for the past few years and is on its way to passing Google and Meta (or as we old timers call it, Facebook), and you don’t get to that point by being simple and low maintenance. 

While I’m not a beginner in digital marketing, it has taken me longer than usual find my focus and to figure out where to begin.

So where is that starting place?

Let’s begin by looking at a few basics of digital advertising. First, much digital advertising is based on a bidding system. On a lot, if not most, platforms, you don’t just buy an ad and it magically appears on somebody’s screen. You create your ad account, create the ad, and then you figure out how much you’re willing to spend to get your ad out there and you compete to beat out all the other guys who are trying to get their ads out there.

There are some advertising platforms where you can just buy an ad and it appears (FreeBooksy, EReader news, Robinreads, etc.). But on Amazon, you gotta jump into the scrum and fight. And it’s not just the size of your bid that determines whether you get picked, but we’ll get to that later.

There are basically two kinds of ads to bid on: CPC and CPM. You’re only charged for CPC (Cost Per Click) ads when somebody actually clicks on your ad and goes to the link embedded in the ad. If your ad is served up to a gazillion people and nobody clicks on it, you aren’t charged (but believe me, that’s not what you want).

CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions) ads are ones where you’re charged—as the name implies—every time your ad appears on a thousand screens.

So what’s the real difference here? If you’re trying to sell one specific product in a highly targeted fashion, then CPC is the way to go. CPC ads focus on user engagement (click here to see how Sudzo Dishwashing Detergent can give new meaning to your life!). The goal is to make a sale, or if not a sale, then some other kind of conversion (another term we’ll get to later).

A CPM ad, on the other hand, saturates screens everywhere and brings broader visibility to your brand or product. When you want your product to become a household name, then go with CPM.

Fortunately, you don’t have to agonize over the choice. Unlike Facebook or BookBub, Amazon is solely a pay per click advertising platform. You’re only charged when somebody clicks on your ad. What this means is that if there’s something wrong or off on your ad (keywords, targeting, relevancy, etc.), then neither your nor Amazon is going to make a penny off it. It’s in Amazon’s best interest and yours to get the right ad to the right people. So make sure you have a compelling, engaging cover. Your book’s title should reach out and grab readers. Your Amazon book description should absolutely sparkle. And you have to do the research and hard work to make sure you’re targeting the right audience.

And before I come off as somebody who’s constantly going medieval on Amazon (and I’m not; almost all of the money I make as an indie pubber comes from Amazon, so I’m a fan), let me point out one great benefit of Amazon ads: they’re easy to create. You don’t have to be a Mad Men caliber ad copywriter, and you don’t have to be a brilliant graphic designer. Just go with the Amazon model and you’ll be okay.

So what determines an ads success? I’ve already mentioned your book title and the cover. What else comes into play?

Reviews are critical. Before your ad even has a chance, you’ve got to have the best reviews possible—an average of between four and five stars is best—and as many of them as possible. This can be a challenge, since one of your primary goals for advertising in the first place is to get more reviews.

Price is a big one as well. One of the reasons the indie pub space has grown so much in the last couple of decades is that indie pubbers are willing to make their price points incredibly competitive. When I see an eBook edition of a book by a famous author published by one of the Big 5 New York Publishers (or are we down to 4? 3?) and its price is nearly that of the trade paperback edition, I head to the library to check it out for free. Also keep in mind that Amazon ads are going to primarily target people who probably don’t know you as an author. If you’re an unknown author and your eBook costs more than a lunch combo at Steak ‘n Shake, that’s a big hill to get over.

So how are those ads served up to potential customers? For indie authors, there are three types of campaigns available on Amazon.

The first type of campaign is Sponsored Products. Sponsored Product ads are the most popular and effective way to get started, especially if you’re advertising a single title. Sponsored Product ads are the ones that pop when you type something into the search bar. You get the search results, but there are also books that are in a box and have the word Sponsored somewhere around the book in little bitty type. There’s a little grey circle with an “i” it right next to the word. Then there are the “Also Boughts,” where the Amazon algorithm served up somebody’s paid ad to you based on what other customers have purchased.

By far, Sponsored Product ads are what most indie authors deploy. For one thing, Sponsored Product ads give you the most data and analytics on your ad’s performance. You’ll get data on the number of impressions, clicks, orders, sales volume, and if you’re enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, then you get reports on KENP (Kindle Edition Normalized Pages) and the estimated KENP royalties for every single target in the campaign (if that acronym is new to you, just remember that authors who enroll a book in the Kindle Unlimited program are paid by the number of pages that a subscriber reads when they download your book).

The second type of campaign is Sponsored Brands. Underneath that broad umbrella, there are a couple of options: product collection ads and video ads. For authors with more than three books in a series, the titles are displayed on a “carousel,” along with a headline, a picture or your smiling mug, and some other image.

For the video ads in a Sponsored Brand campaign, you’re advertising one specific book and, obviously, a video is your chief marketing tool. Think book trailer…

So how are Sponsored Brand ads served up to a potential customer? If you’re using a Product Collection ad, these show up on prime Amazon real estate—the top of the search pages. You have the option of your author photo being there, or a logo for your imprint, along with a headline and an optional image, and then your three books.

Video ads, on the other hand, are usually shown on the product page, much like a Sponsored Product ad.

I say usually because Amazon likes to experiment around and try these ads in different places, delivered in different ways. As always, Amazon is fluctuating in a kind of work-in-progress fashion.

The last type of Amazon ad campaign is Lockscreen Ads. Lockscreen ads are those ads that fill up your screen when you turn on your Kindle or when your screen saver comes on. These are big and bold, but they also show up when your potential customer is not really searching for something new to read. Sponsored Product and Sponsored Brand ads show up when someone is actually looking for something to buy; Lockscreen ads show up when they’ve gone to get another beer…

But the main drawback of Lockscreen ads is that they’re impossible to precisely target. With the other types of ad campaigns, you can specify who the ads go to all the way down to sub-sub-subcategories in Amazon. The reporting’s not as detailed either, so it’s harder to assess the effectiveness of a Lockscreen ads.

Okay, have you had enough for one session? I know this stuff is overwhelming and it’s best to take it in small chunks. Next time, This Crazy Writing Life will continue on with this exploration of Amazon until we’ve got a foundation to work with. But keep in mind, there are entire books written about Amazon ads. It’s way more than we can cover in a monthly column in Killer Nashville Magazine.

But we can get started. Thanks again for playing along.

Audiobooks

By Dale T Phillips

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Since audiobooks are currently in the fastest growing book format right now, getting your novel out for sale as an audiobook is vital for success. If your book isn’t, you’re losing a lot, and leaving money on the table, as the expression goes. My audiobooks have sold hundreds and hundreds, and I love the continual income stream. Sadly, many writers from traditional publishers don’t have their backlists up as audios, so they’re missing out.

Reasons why you should have audio as part of your overall writing business strategy:

• Discoverability: Get a bigger audience and make it easier to find your work. Many potential fans like audio for a number of reasons, some just enjoying a good listen while walking, driving, running, or biking. You want all the fans you can get! These days, people have less time for reading print books, so audiobooks can be a saving grace. While To Be Read (TBR) piles are so big, chances are many readers won’t get to your print book for a long, long time, if ever, but if you’re on audio, they have a better chance of finding your work. If they like that one, they’ll come back for more. Having your book listed in audio format also gets more hits in internet searches, and is listed in more places, increasing your internet presence and the chances of someone finding your work. With over ten million books in print and electronic format, your book is a drop in the ocean. There are far fewer audiobooks: smaller ocean, bigger chance to make a splash! And it’ll get you into some extra markets. I was speaking with a person from a State Library about my books, and the first question was “Any of your books out on audio? Because we’re investing in those right now.” 

• Sales: As well as finding new fans and watching your sales numbers increase, you can make money. Once the book is produced, all you have to do is promote it whenever you want. But each title is another product in your writer store, and even little trickles of money add up to an income stream. It’s nice to have hundreds of sales in another venue.

• Reviews: While many print book reviewers are overwhelmed, there are many sites doing audio that can still accommodate a review. You have more chances of getting good notice for your work. It all adds up. Listeners can also post reviews and ratings, which help.

• It’ll make you a better writer: When someone else reads your words, it makes the clunky ones stand out, and the good ones sound better. Your ear will develop, especially for dialog.

• Freebies: With some audiobook production, you get free giveaway codes. You can gift these to reviewers, as contest prizes, or simply as rewards to readers. When someone buys a print book in person from me, I’ll offer them the free audiobook as a nice extra.

Audiobook Options

Historically, audiobooks were done by professional companies and were expensive to produce, costing thousands of dollars. So only better-selling books made it. Now there are options.

• Someone ELSE does all the work- (and takes most of the money). While it’s nice to have someone do all the work for you, as with traditional publishing, there’s a danger. They might stick you with a hideous cover, a bad version, a product priced wrong for the market, or take a long time to get it out- or never, while they hold the rights captive. In any case, it may not sell, and you’re stuck. And when someone does the work, they also take most of the profit. 

While you assume that a big publisher would do a professional version, there may be other factors. I got one from a BIG audiobook producer, but the narrator couldn’t pronounce ANY place name in Maine correctly- even easy ones like Bangor and Augusta! Letting someone else do it all means the quality control may not be there, and there’s little you can do about it. And you might tick off some fans. (I know I was!)

And that’s assuming you can get a publisher to produce it. Professional narrators run upwards of $100 an hour, and it takes hours to produce a book. Plus other production costs, and packaging, and distributing, they’re investing a few thousand dollars, at least. Since they expect a good return, they have to estimate the sales will exceed the output. So if you’re a typical mid-lister, with less than ten thousand print/ebook sales per book, they may not even do your book for audio. But they’ll likely still retain the rights, in case you hit it big. Then they can always do one later. But what happens is that you can go for years (or forever) without an audio version. 

So- check your contract to see what provisions there are for audio. Even if you signed them away, and they’re not doing anything with them, maybe you can re-negotiate. They may not give the rights back for free, but maybe you can offer them something for it that will make it worthwhile. 

• Do it all yourself, keep all the money. 

Two factors- Production and Distribution

It’s true you don’t need a studio anymore, so it’s become cost-effective. You can produce high-quality audio files in different formats with free software and inexpensive equipment. I recommend Audacity software for recording, because it’s free and simple to learn and use. 

Are you a professional narrator? If you’re charging money for the book, you want quality. Unless you’re famous, the listeners may not be forgiving of less-than-awesome narrating. Before you start this path, do some voice work (maybe some podcasts), and get comfortable with a microphone and sound editing.

Drawbacks- while this can be done, the main cost is time to record and edit. Most of us don’t have enough hours in a day now. And it may take hours of editing to get the sound to a professional level.

Distribution. Even if you do it yourself, how are you going to package, list, and sell the finished product? Tough to arrange this on your own. 

• Work with a Service, and split the money

While there are other services, my current favorite production option right now is ACX.com, which feeds into Audible.com, an Amazon company. They make it easy and profitable for independents to get their books produced, listed, and sold. Better yet, the finished product is on the Audible site, AND on your Amazon book listing, right beside the print and kindle versions. Huge showcase! And they can tie it into Whispersync, which lets you switch between devices and formats.

How to Produce Audiobooks

For ACX, you’ll need an account on the site (includes telling them where to send the money!). 

1. Check your publishing contract first, and beware of issues with anthologies, or other writers listed on your book as authors. 

2. READ YOUR CONTRACT TERMS! Audible gets an exclusive right for years, so make sure you’re comfortable with the terms.

3. Log in to ACX and search for your book, then claim it as yours, with the right to produce an audio.

Various ways to produce your book:

• Do all the narration yourself. ACX distributes the book for you, and you make 40% of the list price. 

• Pay a narrator up front for doing your book. Narrators are expensive. While you can still retain your 40%, consider the cost, and how long it might take to recoup that. You post your project with the offer to pay, and get bids. Decide on who you want. 

• Offer a royalty split, for no up-front money- This is my favorite way. You are hoping that narrators will do all the work on spec, in hopes of making money when the audio sells. You each get 20% of the sale price in this part. They’re putting in time, which to them equals hundreds, or even thousands of dollars, and you have no risk! But of course, you wrote the book, so your time is already invested. 

When you’ve claimed your book, and decided if you want a narrator, you post it up as a project, with a description and notes on what the ideal narrator should sound like- male or female, age, accents, humorous, serious, scary, etc. You post an audition piece, a short segment that will give a good indication if the narrator is right for the work (dialogue with different voices is a good indicator). Add any helpful hints on what the passage should sound like.

This posts the project up for people to audition for, and you wait for replies. You can also search on available narrators, and sample their voices to see if any fit, then send them a message to see if they’re interested in your project.

When auditions come in, listen if they’re right for your work. When you’ve found someone who has the right voice for the job, you then set a schedule and make an official Offer. There’s a date for a 15-minute milestone, which is a guide to see if they’re on the right track, and a date for the project completion. You may need some back-and-forth on pronunciation and tone, and you send messages via ACX. When they’re ready, they send ACX the files, and you give a listen. You can request changes if there’s something amiss, so you have complete quality control. 

When it’s done properly, you Approve the work, which then goes through ACX for their approval, and then gets posted to Audible for sale. You’ll need a cover image modified to their specs, a squared-off version of your book cover. Then it goes up on Amazon as well, linked with your print and Kindle versions. They will set the price of the finished book, based on length.

But there’s more! ACX sends you codes for free downloads of the work. You can use these for reviewers, friends, giveaways, and rewards for your fans- it’s an awesome way of promoting your work- for free! You send instructions and a download code, and someone gets the audio for free.

And the bonus program- if your work is the first someone selects when signing up for Audible, you get a bonus payment- it’s split with your narrator, but is a nice addition.

Crafting Killer Back Cover Copy

By Lois Winston

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How do most readers buy books when they’re not searching for a specific title or author? They either scroll through an e-tailer site or stroll around the aisles of a bookstore. Either way, the first thing that will catch their attention is a book’s cover. In a bookstore, the reader picks up a book, flip it over, and reads the back cover copy. On an Internet site, the reader scrolls to the book’s description. 

The primary goal of back cover copy is to act as a tease. If the tease works, the reader flips to the first page or clicks on the sample to read a few paragraphs or pages. If she likes what she’s read, she’ll buy the book. If those first few paragraphs or pages don’t grab her, she continues to scroll or stroll. The back cover copy is the first step in whether a reader decides to buy a book. That’s why back cover copy is so important. It’s meant to whet the reader’s appetite and hook a potential customer. 

Back cover copy should consist of one or more short paragraphs that describe the main plot and main protagonist(s) in a book. If you’ve ever queried an agent or editor, it’s like the section of the query letter that describes your book. Sometimes, an editor may even use the author’s query blurb—with or without a few tweaks—for the back cover copy.

So, what should go into back cover copy, and what should you omit? First, you want to include enough information to pique the reader’s curiosity about the book. That means giving an indication of the overall story arc and the main character(s). Who are these people you’ve written about, and what is it about them that will make a reader want to care about them, their world, their relationships, and their problems?

That sounds like an overwhelming task to accomplish in a few short paragraphs, but it’s quite easy if you rely on GMC—goal, motivation, and conflict. GMC is not just for plotting a good story and creating compelling characters. Nailing down characters’ GMC, provides an author with a toolbox for creating every other aspect of the book—from the query to the synopsis to the novel to the back cover copy.

Step 1: Define Your Main Character

Use a few adjectives and a noun to define your main character. Be specific. These few words will tell exactly who your character is. This gives you a framework from which to work.

For example, in Love, Lies and a Double Shot of Deception the heroine is described as a “poor little rich girl.” The book is a heart-wrenching romantic suspense. Therefore, the back cover copy is crafted to evoke an emotional response in the reader.

In my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series, my protagonist is a “reluctant amateur sleuth.” Since mysteries are plot driven, I created back cover copy that speaks to the cataclysmic upheaval in Anastasia’s life which propels her into solving each mystery.

Step 2: Define Your Main Character’s Internal and External Goals, Motivations, and Conflicts

Every book must have a balance of plot and characterization. External GMC speaks to plot. Internal GMC speaks to characterization.

For each of your main characters, answer the following questions: 

1.  What does your character want?
2.  Why does he/she want it?
3.  What’s keeping him/her from getting it?

Do this for both the external (the plot) and the internal (the characterization) GMC. Keep each answer to one sentence. When you’re finished, you’ll have six sentences, three that speak to plot and three that speak to characterization.

Avoid unnecessary description. No one buys a book because the heroine is a redhead. Include setting, occupation, and other specifics only if they’re pertinent to the plot and main characters. 

For example, in Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series, the back cover copy doesn’t mention that the book takes place in New Jersey because it doesn’t matter. However, it does mentions that Anastasia is a magazine crafts editor. Why? Because Anastasia discovers the murder victim sitting in her cubicle—glue gunned to her chair. If I didn’t mention Anastasia’s occupation, the circumstances of the victim’s death wouldn’t make any sense.

In Love, Lies and a Double Shot of Deception, I don’t mention Emma’s occupation in the blurb because it’s not relevant. I do mention that the story takes place in Philadelphia because the city plays an important role in the story.

Step 3: Define Other Essential Characters

Back cover copy will often, but not always, mention two or three characters because they’re essential to giving the reader an indication of what the story is about. This will vary depending on the genre and plot. Sometimes only one character is mentioned. If other characters play essential roles in your story, repeat Steps 1 and 2 to define their GMC. You probably won’t use all the information on these characters in crafting the blurb, but writing the information out will help you decide what’s important to include and what you can omit in crafting your back cover copy.

Step 4: Voice

The final component of your back cover copy is voice. Describe your book in a voice that matches the voice of your novel. Look at the examples at the end of this article. Love, Lies and a Double Shot of Deception is an emotionally driven romantic suspense, A Crafty Collage of Crime is a humorous mystery. The voice used in each is different. If you haven’t incorporated the voice from your book in your answers to the GMC questions, go back and tweak the sentences. 

It’s important for the reader to be able to determine whether your book is a romantic comedy versus a romantic suspense or a cozy mystery versus a police procedural. You want to meet reader expectation from the very beginning. Readers usually like surprise plot twists, but they don’t want to be tricked into buying a book that purports to be one genre, only to find it’s a completely different genre.

As a side note, cover art should also convey the tone of your book. The cover art and back cover copy should complement each other.

Step 5: Put it All Together

Look at the sentences you’ve created. Depending on the genre, you may or may not use all the sentences you’ve written to develop your back cover copy. Some back cover copy works well as one short paragraph. Most require two, three, or four paragraphs. Choose the sentences that best convey your story. String them together to create your back cover copy, fleshing the paragraphs out with any other pertinent information you believe is essential to hook the reader. Your paragraphs should be tight, concise, and free of unimportant details. Your goal is to make the reader want to flip to the first page of your book to read the opening paragraphs, then head to the cash register or click the Buy Link.

Samples of Back Cover Copy

Humorous cozy mystery:

A Crafty Collage of Crime

Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award for Best Comedy

Wherever crafts editor and reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack goes, murder and mayhem follow. Her honeymoon is no exception. She and new husband, photojournalist (and possible spy) Zachary Barnes, are enjoying a walk in the Tennessee woods when they stumble upon a body on the side of a creek. The dead man is the husband of one of the three sisters who own the winery and guest cottages where Anastasia and Zack are vacationing.

When the local sheriff sets his sights on the widow as the prime suspect, her sisters close ranks around her. The three siblings are true-crime junkies, and thanks to a podcaster who has produced an unauthorized series about her, Anastasia’s reputation for solving murders has preceded her to the bucolic hamlet. The sisters plead for her help in finding the real killer. As Anastasia learns more about the women and their business, a host of suspects emerge, including several relatives, a relentless land developer, and even the sisters themselves.

Meanwhile, Anastasia becomes obsessed with discovering the podcaster’s identity. Along with knowing about Anastasia’s life as a reluctant amateur sleuth, the podcaster has divulged details of Anastasia’s personal life. Someone has betrayed Anastasia’s trust, and she’s out to discover the identity of the culprit.

Emotionally driven romantic suspense:

Love, Lies and a Double Shot of Deception 

Life has delivered one sucker punch after another to Emma Wadsworth. As a matter of fact, you could say the poor little rich girl is the ultimate poster child for Money Can’t Buy Happiness—even if she is no longer a child.

Billionaire real estate stud Logan Crawford is as famous for his less-than-platinum reputation as he is his business empire. In thirty-eight years, he’s never fallen in love, and that’s just fine with him—until he meets Emma.

But Emma’s not buying into Logan’s seductive ways. Well, maybe just a little, but she’s definitely going into the affair with her eyes wide open. She’s no fool. At least not anymore. Her deceased husband saw to that. Besides, she knows Logan will catch the first jet out of Philadelphia once he learns her secrets.

Except things don’t go exactly as Emma has predicted, and when Philadelphia’s most beloved citizen becomes the city’s most notorious criminal, she needs to do a lot more than clear her name if she wants to save her budding romance with the billionaire hunk someone is willing to kill for.

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USA Today and Amazon bestselling and award-winning author Lois Winston writes mystery, romance, romantic suspense, chick lit, women’s fiction, children’s chapter books, and nonfiction. Kirkus Reviews dubbed her critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” In addition, Lois is a former literary agent and an award-winning craft and needlework designer who often draws much of her source material for both her characters and plots from her experiences in the crafts industry. Her most recent release is Sorry, Knot Sorry, the thirteenth book in her Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series. Learn more about Lois and her books at www.loiswinston.com where you can also sign up for her newsletter and follow her on various social media sites.

Pricing

By Dale T Phillips

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As an Indie, you get to set your own prices for your books. Do some further research on this, as there are articles and book chapters you’ll want to refer to. There’s a lot of info on sweet spots for pricing. Just look online, for example, and see what prices are for book similar to yours. Ebooks sell the most at $3-5, printed novels between $10-16. I don’t price higher than that, because fewer people will pay more for an untried product, but at that level, they’ll give it a try. Some charts show that ebooks sell the most if they’re not over 4.99, so I’m running a sale on the pricier ones to see if there’s any movement. We Indies always get to experiment! 

Traditional publishers jack up the prices on their books, both in print and ebook, because they have to pay larger staffs. For print, I’m certainly not going to shell out $30 or more for a hardcover, and for an ebook, many readers don’t want to pay $15 for one ebook (myself included), when they can get three or more quality ones for that price. For myself, I prefer to keep prices low, so I can sell more, but still make a profit. At a live show, I can even cut a deal if they buy more than one book. The series novels are all priced the same, and at a level so I can give a bookstore their 40% or more and still make a profit. If I hand-sell one at full price, I make about $10 net, so if anyone starts to balk on purchasing, I can give them a discount. People love a bargain, especially if you drop the price right then. 

Print costs you money, but ebooks cost you little to nothing. If someone buys a print copy from me, I’ll often offer the ebook for free as an extra bonus that’s usually appreciated. 

I aim for a price appropriate to what I’m selling, as follows:

• A short story collection (five tales): print, 4.99 (net about a dollar), ebook 2.99 (net almost $2). For perspective, I tell them they can have a book for the price of a coffee. 

• Longer collections: ten tales- print 7.99, ebook 3.99, 30 tales- print 11.99, ebook 7.99

• Standalone short novels: print 9.99, ebook 3.99 

• Series novels: print 15.99, ebook 4.99. Except the first series book, at 2.99. I want to get them hooked on the series, so I offer the first at a low bargain price.

This Crazy Writing Life: On Defining a Book By Its Cover

By Steven Womack

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We left off last month’s column with an exploration of the technical aspects (and challenges) of formatting the interior of print books. This month, let’s talk about the exterior of the book—the cover.

Before we get started, though, one quick sidebar. In late September, I drove back from St. Petersburg Beach, Florida (just about 48 hours ahead of Hurricane Helene) after attending the annual conference of Novelists, Inc. Novelists, Inc. may not be as well known as some of the other major writers professional associations like the Mystery Writers of America, Romance Writers of America, or SFWA—Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America—but since it was started in late 1980s by a group of disgruntled romance writers, it’s emerged as one of the most powerful trade associations out there. It’s the only writers’ organization I know of outside of the Writers Guild of America that requires you to actually be a professional writer to join. To gain admittance to NINC, you have to have published at least two novels in popular genres like romance or mystery, and you have to have earned a minimum amount of money from those two books (the exact requirements are outlined on the website at www.ninc.com).

Readers and fans, editors and agents are not eligible to join NINC. The founders of the organization decided that NINC would never offer prizes or awards (like the MWA and RWA) because this fostered a sense of competition that was contrary to the organization’s purpose of encouraging and lifting up all writers in the struggle to survive in this crazy business. And business is the focus of the conference as well as the organization; you’ll rarely see a NINC panel on how to write sparkling dialogue. But you will see panels on understanding the intricacies of subrights licenses and contracts or the technical aspects of independent audiobook production.

Sponsors pay big bucks to have a presence at the NINC conference (in the spirit of complete transparency, I’m a former president of the organization and a current Board member). The reason I bring this up is that as a result, some of the most cutting-edge aspects of indie publishing show up at this conference. Every time I go, I learn something new. Last year, the big topic of discussion was the use of A.I. generated voices in audiobook narration. This year, there seems to be a big movement toward indie authors selling books directly from their websites. The One Big Thing I learned is that taking a simple, static author website and turning it into a true e-commerce platform is something I’m just not quite ready for.

In future columns, I’ll share some of the things I’ve learned from these conferences. As independent publishing continues to grow from an isolated few stubborn writers trying to survive into a cultural and business movement that has totally remade publishing, dozens of other companies have sprouted up as well to serve this market.

As I’ve said more than once lately, it’s a whole new world out there.

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I was curious as to where the phrase/cliché Don’t judge a book by its cover came from, so I Googled it. Turns out George Eliot first coined that turn-of-phrase in her 1860 novel, The Mill on the Floss.

Gotta confess, I missed that one.

But I’ve heard the adage all my life, which is a metaphorical phrase telling us that outward appearances can be deceiving, that we should never judge anyone or anything by its external looks.

Sounds good on the surface; only problem is it’s hogwash. 

We judge everything by its external appearance. A car may be the most dependable, rugged, efficient vehicle ever made, but if it makes you look like a complete yutz driving it, you’re not going to buy one (are you listening, Walter White, cruising along in your Pontiac Aztec?)

You may meet someone at a party who would be the kindest, most loving, passionate and dependable life partner you could ever wish for, but if their hair is greasy and dirty, they smell bad, snot’s running out of their nose, and they have huge pit stains, you’re probably gonna take a pass.

It’s the same with book covers. The indie pubbing world is full of stories of books that didn’t sell for squat, so the authors yanked the books down, changed the cover, put the book back up without changing a word and now it sells like crazy. You may have written a classic, a prize-winner, a book that will last through the ages, but if your cover turns everyone off, then the book’s going to be a loser.

I’m speaking for myself now, but I’ll bet a lot of you are in the same boat. I’m not a graphic artist, and when it comes to good cover design, I wouldn’t know it if it ran up behind me and bit me on the butt. Truth is, I’m not even qualified to write about book covers from an artist’s point-of-view. I have absolutely no talent as a graphic designer. So, I’m writing this from the perspective of an indie-pubber who has to deal with the fact that he’s not even capable of telling good design from bad.

Maybe I’m being a little hard on myself here. Truth is, I’ve been around book covers my whole life, and while I have no talent as a designer, I am a sophisticated and experienced consumer of books. I know when a book cover design doesn’t work for me. And when I run across a brilliant book cover, it moves me on a visceral level.

I’m not overstating here: your book cover is the first and one of the most important marketing tools you have.

So how do you deploy this tool to make your book as marketable as possible?

First, it’s got to convey a certain amount of information. The title of the book—and subtitle, if it’s got one—and the author’s name should be prominent, along with any other information that will help sell the book (as in “New York Times Bestselling Author”). I have actually seen book covers where the author’s name was hard to read. When that happens, someone needs an intervention.

Second, the design/artwork should stand out visually. Whether on a jam-packed bookstore shelf or a crowded Amazon web page, there should be something that grabs your eye as you scan from Point A to Point B. I realize that’s a nebulous, unfocused notion. If I could actually define in solid terms what “stand out visually” means, then I’d be a famous well-paid cover artist and not the word-shoveling literary coal miner that I am. The best I can do is echo Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, who—in attempting to define obscenity in Jacobellis v. Ohio—famously wrote I know it when I see it.

Third, your cover design must reflect and communicate the book’s genre and tone. If you’ve written a light-hearted cozy mystery where the protagonist’s cute but feisty cat solves the murder based on a plot point that’s a recipe for cream cheese blintzes, then a dark, brooding, heavily shadowed cover with a pair of threatening, glowing eyes coming out of the mist is not going to help you. Conversely, you’re not going to sell a graphic, disturbing serial killer suspense novel with a bright, cheery cover of pinks and blues, cartoon characters and fonts with extra curlicues and other cutesy elements.

This requires you to learn and study the conventions of your genre, to research what works and what doesn’t work, and to learn the expectations of your audience.

Stuff you should already be doing anyway…

One of the best examples of dynamite book covers out there today are the books published by Hard Case Crime. Hard Case Crime publishes crime fiction that echoes back to the paperback pulp fiction era of the 1940s through the late 1060s, when writers like Mickey Spillane, Cornell Woolrich, and Robert Bloch were flourishing. They’re bringing back and revitalizing the old hard-boiled school with contemporary writers like Stephen King, Lawrence Block, and Max Allan Collins, as well as republishing long-dead writers like Donald Westlake and Woolrich. And their books all feature covers that are homages to those great mass-market paperback pulp fiction covers.

While I admittedly am not a designer myself, I do find that there are certain things I react positively to and others that turn me off. I subscribe to a lot of book promotions websites: BookBub, Free Booksy, Robinreads, etc. So I get way too many push emails every day, and most of them are for indie-pubbed books. I’ve noticed in the last couple of years that more and more book covers depend on stock photos for their visuals, especially in genres like romance. I get that original art costs a fortune, but there’s something about a generic stock photo on a book cover that screams self-published, and I find that a turn-off. You can start with stock photography if you want, but with programs like Canva and Book Brush out there, in my view one should at least put a little effort into manipulating and adapting the image to make it more unique.

The bottom line for most writers—myself included—is that the best way to land that beautiful book cover is to find a cover artist you trust and whose work you admire. Only problem is, they can be hard to find and kind of expensive. It’s a challenge to find that sweet spot between “I love your stuff” and “oh, I can afford that.” I worked with a designer for several years when I repubbed the out-of-print novels in my Music City Murders series. Dawn Charles did a fabulous job for me, was great to work with, with very reasonable fees. Unfortunately, she passed away a few years ago. But go to my Amazon page and you’ll see what I’m talking about; it’s an object lesson in how to create a brand.

And I mentioned earlier, companies are popping up everywhere to help indie pubbers get the help they need. One that’s been around over a decade is Reedsy, which is a company that’s an online employment agency for publishing freelancers of all types; editors, designers, formatters, etc. They’re great to work with and a good place to start.

We’ll continue this discussion next month. Thanks again for hanging with This Crazy Writing Life.

Keywords, Descriptions, Jacket Copy

By Dale T Phillips

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This topic is critical to success, and there are whole books on these particular subjects with different schools of thought about the best ways to include everything. Browse the Resources Appendix for further information. 

You’re going to have to be very aware of where your book fits in the publishing world (category), because you’ll need to add keywords (descriptive book tags) when you publish it. Each distributor allows you a certain number of keywords to include for your book, and of course you’ll want the best ones. These keywords are critical for helping readers find your books, because that’s what the big search engines use to locate the type of book you’re selling. The more your book comes up in a search on certain keywords, the more chances you have of someone checking it out. To sell more copies, learn what you need to keep your book search-term relevant. Search engines work on optimization, or SEO, which is why it’s so important your book show up under a search on that keyword. One great tool that you’ll want to look into for finding these in depth is (KDP) Publisher Rocket. Some say you should use all the characters allowed, and fill every category. 

Descriptions and Jacket Copy are important as well, and they’re used to quickly tell a browser if it’s the type of book they’ll be interested in. More detail than the tagline, they are included as part of the book listing online, and for a print book, on the back cover (jacket) at the top. Some distributors use two descriptions: a short one, about three sentences long, and a slightly longer one.

Here’s the elements you should include:

• Hook the readers right away with a compelling first two lines. 

• Make it easy and exciting to read. Readers won’t spend much time; they’ll skim quickly to see if it’s what they want.

• Establish what’s at stake and make it important.

• Only a character or two, no more. 

• Don’t reveal everything. Leave them wanting to know what happens.

To determine whether your descriptions are good, look for book descriptions of successful books that make you want to check out the book. What picture do they paint in just a few words that make it sound compelling? You’ll want descriptions for your books that sound similar. Get help from your team, Beta readers, writing friends, etc. on what does well.

A disadvantage of Smashwords as a distributor is that the keywords and descriptions are the same for all distribution channels. Not a deal breaker, but important to realize.  And in Amazon, the title, subtitle, and description are all searchable.

Set to Sell: How to Effectively Market Your Finished Manuscript to Agents and Publishers

By Aimee Hardy

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So, you’ve written your story. You’ve gotten feedback and edited draft after draft. Finally, your manuscript shines. You’ve been sending it out to agents and publishers (and may have gotten a few requests), but you still haven’t found success. You start to wonder if your story is any good or if your writing isn’t good enough, but all of your feedback has told you that your story works. What could be happening? 

As an editor, the majority of manuscripts I receive are well-written and interesting, but their pitches often don’t do their stories justice. To move your work from the slush pile to the must-read pile, there are a few small things you can do in your pitch that will pay off exponentially. 

Important Details

When you pitch your work to agents, be sure to give them important details about your novel, including genre, word count, and comp titles. Acceptable word counts vary by genre, but a common sweet spot is between 80,000 and 100,000 words for general fiction. Look up specifics for your genre to make sure your manuscript fits with the standard conventions. 

Comp titles are also helpful for the publisher or agent to clearly understand the concept of your work. You can use popular books, movies, or even TV series, just make sure your comps are current and reflect today’s reader. For example, if you’ve written a dark coming of age thriller set after the apocalypse, you could describe your work as the Gillian Flynn version of The Last of Us meets Stranger Things. The agent or publisher will understand common themes (such as coming of age, power, friendship, and courage) but can expect a darker twist. 

Give or take a little more 

Once you’ve finished your manuscript, you’ll want to create a 1–2 sentence logline for your pitch. Your logline gives all the information needed for your book so the agent or publisher can identify the main character, the conflict, and the stakes. Who is your character, what is their big problem or conflict, and what happens if they don’t succeed? 

Some writers fear that they will give away too much plot or that the agent or publisher won’t read it if they know all the details at once, but the reality is, you need to have a clear understanding of your work to be able to sell it later (more on that in the next point). Here are some quick examples of short but effective taglines: 

• A young FBI cadet must confide in a manipulative convicted killer to receive his help on catching another serial killer who skins his victims. (Silence of the Lambs)

• A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where a sinister presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from both past and future. (The Shining)

Try writing a few for your work and see which one works the best. 

Place it on the shelf

Along with knowing comp titles, understanding the market for your genre is often one of the best ways to sell your work. Agents and publishers want to know that you understand the market, the conventions of your specific genre, and the clear vision you have for your work. 

Not only does it show that you’ve done your homework, it shows that you can sell your work within the current market, which is a much-needed skill when it comes to publication. Although writing a novel is hard, a lot more work goes into book promotion. Once a book is accepted for publication, it will typically have a release date that’s 1–2 years away. Publishers need time to plan marketing, distribution, awards, etc. that might work best for your book, so comp titles and market knowledge are essential for planning a successful launch. If you already have a vision for your work, publishers are often able to use similar campaigns or networking strategies to your comp titles. 

Pinpoint your readers 

Another effective way to sell your story is to have a good understanding of your readers. You should know why your story is important and why readers would buy your book. Look at the demographics of your comp titles, including age, sex, occupation, interests/hobbies, etc. If you have a strong selling point with an eager audience, it helps agents and publishers see the incentive of releasing your book. 

Identifying your audience also helps publishers see how they can effectively market your book. They might consider partnerships or nonprofit campaigns that will connect you with your ideal reader. The more concise you are about your audience and how to reach them, the more likely a publisher will be to release your work. 

Leverage your communities

We’ve all heard that it takes a village, but networking is essential to your book’s success. You might need to include the organizations and networks that you’re a part of so you can leverage existing relationships. This also gives your publisher to see any connections that you may have missed when it comes to marketing your book. 

Although writers often don’t want to consider social media as important to their work, it can be an important part of getting your work to a wider audience. Focus on genuine connections with friends and followers and don’t be afraid to partner up with other writers and creatives to make meaningful relationships in the larger community. 

Do your research

You may also consider doing a bit of research. Watch interviews and read wish lists for agents and publishers. Reference their preferences to let them know that they are really important to you and aren’t just on an endless list of contacts you’re mindlessly submitting to. Personal connections let the agent or publisher know that you’re a real person who truly cares about your work and the place you're submitting it. 

You may also research market trends, including current events, changes in genre trends, and new reader data. Understanding the market shows that you’re invested in the success of your novel and that you can see an opportunity for your work in the future. This creates a sense of urgency for the agent or publisher and increases the likelihood of getting new eyes on your work. 

Invest in YOU! 

The most important part of pitching your book is the time and effort you give to the success of your book. You’ve worked so hard on your novel that you don’t want to sell yourself short or waste your time with strategies that don’t work. Remember, you are the only one who can write your story, but you are also the only one who can have the vision and the drive to make it a success. 

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Aimee Hardy is a writer in Birmingham, Alabama. Aimee is the author of Pocket Full of Teeth (2024) and has various short stories published with Running Wild Press, Stonecoast Review, and other literary collections. She received a Pushcart nomination in 2019 for her short story "Paper" and is dedicated to telling stories in unique ways. Aimee is married with two kids and loves to get lost in nature or disappear into a good book with a warm cup of tea.

The Indie Pubbing Journey Continues—Part Four: Navigating The Distribution Maze

By Steven Womack

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So you’ve written your book, rewritten your book (any number of times), and like the good little professional you aspire to be, you’ve paid an outside copyeditor to get the book in the best shape it can possibly be. You’ve studied the market, maybe queried a few agents (most of whom never even responded), done your due diligence, and decided that in today’s publishing environment, your best bet is to go the indie route.

You’ve done a deep dive into the freelance market that’s sprung up in the last decade to serve the needs of indie pubbers, and you’ve found a cover designer you absolutely love. You’ve either chosen an app to format your book or you’ve decided to spend the bucks to outsource the technical stuff.

Little by little, piece by piece, your dream is coming together. You can see the finish line—pub date—and you get a shaky, excited feeling deep in our gut that this is finally becoming…

Real.

Hundreds of hours of work, planning, following months or even years of writing your book. You’re excited, but at the same time, exhausted emotionally and maybe even physically. But you’re nearing the end, right? The finish line’s in sight.

Hold your horses, cowpokes. The reality is, you’re just getting started.

You think writing that book was hard? Try getting the book out there, grasshoppah…

This month’s installment of This Crazy Writing Life is going to—as the head of IT at the film school where I used to teach often said—start to start the process of getting your book out there. There are two main avenues by which you’re going to get your book into the hands of readers: eBooks and print books.

We’re going to start by tackling the question of eBooks, since as we established in an earlier edition of this column, that’s how you’re going to reach the largest number of readers and bring in the largest number of bucks. And in the world of eBook distribution, there is only one question to answer which will determine your eBook distribution strategy.

Are you going to go wide or are you not going to go wide?

What does that even mean, in English?

Okay, time for another [brief] history lesson. As the eBook revolution ramped up in earnest in the first decade of the 21st Century, there was a certain wild west feel to it. There was the Kindle e-reader from Amazon, then Sony came out with the Sony Reader in 2006, and Barnes & Noble came out with the Nook in 2009. So there were three different mainstream e-readers out there, each with different specs and technical requirements.

Then a whole slew of eBook distributors came online. There was Amazon (of course), and then Apple got in the game, followed by Rokuten Kobo, which is a Canadian eBook retailer owned by a Japanese company, known primarily as Kobo. Over the years, scads of other companies emerged as eBook retailers, distributors, or publishers—Tolino, Barnes & Noble, Overdrive, Books-A-Million, Hoopla, etc. etc. etc.

It was a complicated landscape. The administrative load alone to distribute through all these channels was overwhelming.

So in 2008, a book marketing guru, publicist and novelist by the name of Mark Coker rolled out a company called Smashwords, which was the first eBook aggregator. Coker’s groundbreaking and innovative approach brought all these varied distribution outlets into one place. Now indie pubbers could sign up with Smashwords, pick the outlets they wanted to distribute to, and then upload one file to one place, rather than one file to fifteen places. Coker also wrote a number of reference guides on formatting eBooks to meet all the technical needs of the various distributors and did all the accounting and setup. They created tools and guides to help indie publishers navigate this complicated landscape. Smashwords uploaded to the outlets you picked, tracked incoming payments, even did tax reporting and bookkeeping, and distributed payments out to the individual authors and independent publishing companies, all for what was actually a reasonable and fair cut of the earnings.

Coker’s idea—and Smashwords—was wildly successful. Within a few years, they were distributing hundreds of thousands of eBooks.

In 2012, three young entrepreneurs—Kris Austin, Aaron Pogue, and Toby Nance—decided it was time for Smashwords to have a little competition. So they opened Draft2Digital (often shortened to D2D), headquartered in Oklahoma City. D2D took a similar approach as Smashwords, but streamlined some of the processes and offered up a competitive set of user-friendly tools to help indie author publish their books with enough time and energy left over to write more of them.

Ten years later, in 2022, Draft2Digital acquired Smashwords in a friendly deal that kept Coker on board as part of the team. Today, D2D is the 800-pound aggregating gorilla in the indie pub space.

So that, in a nutshell, is going wide. Get your book out there in as many different channels as possible and just wait for the tsunami of bucks headed your way.

What’s the alternative? And why would anyone want to consider it?

Enter Amazon, the exciting, attractive, funny, smart, creative person you’ve always wanted to date but found incredibly high-maintenance. In July 2014, Amazon rolled out Kindle Unlimited, a subscription service that for $9.99 a month gave you unlimited access (with a few restrictions) to Amazon’s entire library of books and audiobooks—as long as those books were enrolled in Kindle Select (in typical Amazon fashion, nothing’s ever easy or simple; if you’re an author you have to enroll your books in Kindle Select in order to get them into Kindle Unlimited). Think of it as Netflix or Spotify, only for books.

There isn’t time or space here to go into the convoluted history of the Kindle Unlimited program. If you’d like to do a deeper dive into that, here’s a link to an excellent article:

https://www.hiddengemsbooks.com/history-kindle-unlimited/

The important thing to remember is that the way KU paid authors has evolved over time. The first payment method was rife for scamming and bad behavior. Amazon tackled that and went into a second generation of KU and now they’re in the third. But basically, in laymen’s terms, when you check out a book in KU, there’s a little widget or something inside the file that enables Amazon to count the number of pages you’ve read (well, hello there Big Brother) and authors are paid a fraction of a fraction of a cent for each page.

Five or so years ago, when I decided to dip my toes into indie pubbing, I chose what I thought was the obvious best route. I created a D2D account and listed all my books on every channel possible. Then, not knowing any better, I started buying Amazon ads and BookBub ads (more on that in future installments) and promoting them on social media and my meager newsletter subscriber lists and doing everything I thought would move books.

The result? Bupkis…

Oh, occasionally I’d sell a book here and a book there, but it’s the understatement of the day to say I was disappointed.

A couple of years or this and I was really burning out. So I reached out to an acquaintance, a fellow Edgar winner who, like me, wrote books set in New Orleans. Julie Smith and I both came into print about the same time, were publishing at about the same level, and encountering the same career struggles. Where our paths diverged was when Julie fully embraced the indie publishing movement in the early days of the eBook revolution and turned her career around.

She began publishing under her own imprint—booksBnimble—and brought back her backlist and later new work. Then she branched out and started publishing other writers. A few years later, she opened up a book marketing division to help indie pubbed authors. I reached out to Julie and after careful thought, signed on with her company.

Julie’s got a marketing plan that won’t work for everyone. Standalone books are a tough sell, as are literary books, nonfiction, and memoirs. But if you’re writing genre novels—romances, mysteries—and you have a series with at least three books, then they’ve got a plan for you.

When she takes you on as a client, you’ve got to get with their program. And the first step is to pull your books down from every distribution channel and enroll them in Kindle Select. This sounds counterintuitive, but truthfully, within a couple of months, I was grossing four figures a month.

I’m running out of space here, but the moral of the story is, don’t discount Kindle Select/Unlimited just because you don’t like Amazon or think you’ll get better results with a shotgun approach. In next month’s issue of This Crazy Writing Life, we’ll take a deeper look into how you make all this work. Thanks again for playing along.

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Decades ago, when I lived in New Orleans and was a newspaper reporter during the first term of the wonderful Edwin Edwards, I learned a great local term: lagniappe. Lagniappe means “just a little something extra; a bonus.”

So here’s your lagniappe for this month’s column. I just read a fantastic book called Love In The Time of Self-Publishing: How Romance Writers Changed The Rules of Writing & Success by Christine M. Larson. It’s simultaneously a history and analysis of how publishing has changed since the 1980s and how romance writers were the first ones to understand these changes, adopt them, and beat the big publishers at their own game. Dr. Larsen is a professor of Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder’s College of Media, Communication and Information, but don’t hold that against her. The book’s a bit academic at times, but it reads like a well-written story, one we’re all still right in the middle of. It’s well worth the time to read.

Covers

By Dale T. Phillips

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“You can’t judge a book by its cover.” 

—Old saying that’s misleading, because many readers do

Your cover is vital to the success of your book, because readers scan quickly, and take more time to check out books with covers they like. Your tiny thumbnail image will be up on the Internet against thousands of others, so make it eye-catching. A lousy cover usually indicates inferior inside material, and many readers won’t bother. A great cover is a promise of better content inside. Many, many authors fail in this category, and their sales suffer as a result. The cover is the first indication of whether you’re a professional or not, and may be the only chance you get of someone taking a look. To understand what good covers look like, check out the top best-sellers in a genre, and see what they have in common. Some websites show examples of bad covers, so check those out and  you’ll know what to avoid.

Traditional publishers boast of their packaging superiority because Indie books have lousy covers, and for many, that’s true— as it is with many of the traditional publishing covers. Or they’ll just use stock images over and over. One traditional writer asked a fellow writer if she liked his latest cover— and it was almost exactly the one that had been on her previous book- from the same publisher! Barry Eisler, a best-selling top-notch writer, was stuck with the most unexciting, dumb-looking, green garage door for his thriller (an absolute sales-killer), and when he protested, the publisher would do nothing to remedy the situation. He soon left that publisher, costing them millions for a bad decision. 

Trade-copy paperbacks are inexpensive to publish, but hardcovers may not be worth it for most Indie writers. They’re expensive to produce, so unless you want a special edition, have legions of fans, or have a lot of extra money to burn, you may not want to bother. Few people will pay a lot for a pricey book by someone who’s not famous or pushed by a big traditional publisher. Full color print books are also expensive, and harder to create, but if you’ve got a pet project that requires it, you’ll want to spend some time planning it out.

If you cannot learn do the cover yourself (most writers cannot, as we work with words, not images) you may have to hire someone. This can get expensive, so you’ll need to carefully spend time researching costs and quality. Yes, you can get the cheap designers, but you’ll want to make sure to get something that works. Many writers who spent far too much on their covers (some thousands of dollars), got bad covers that still could have been done at a tenth of the cost. Now there are cover templates which can be had for bargain rates, and there are sites to inexpensively pay for cover art you can license to use commercially.

Some authors run A/B testing on prospective covers to see what people prefer, via their blog, website, or social media. If a number of people are strongly in favor one cover over another, the more popular is usually the one chosen by the author as a final. 

First and foremost, the cover should reflect the genre and match your target audience, so that at a glance, people can guess what the book represents: horror book covers show darkness and spooky things, romance often shows two embracing people (usually with rumpled clothes), high fantasy shows someone in armor with a bladed weapon (and often a monster), Westerns show someone in a cowboy hat on a horse. You get the idea. So know the conventions of your genre, and do something that represents your content. If you don’t know, look at several dozen top-selling books in the genre you wrote in.  

Second, the title and the author name should be in easily readable fonts, with the proper size and color. Many get this wrong. If you look at a thumbnail (or a full-size cover from ten feet away) and cannot discern the title or author name clearly, it doesn’t work. It may be the spacing, placement, size, background color, or font that are off, or a combination of those. Some use fonts that are just wrong, either unreadable as is or wrong for the genre. Again, examine other covers that work to see how they do it, and do something similar. 

For full print covers, the spine and back cover need to be done properly. The title and author name should again be easy to read on the spine, and placed and spaced well. For the back, it takes some time to figure out the design and where things should go. You’ll want some of the following:

• Description/Tagline: a few exciting lines about the story inside that make a reader want to check it out.

• Blurb (optional): a recommendation from some other writer (or reader) that praises your work.

• Another work (optional): Sometimes you’ll have an image and short description of another one of your other books here (especially for another volume in the series).

• Short Bio (optional): Some writers put these on the cover, though I prefer them in the book interior, at the back of the book. Unless you’ve got something so spectacular, like you were a spy or astronaut, that will help sell the work on that information alone.

• Price, ISBN, and barcode: Whoever prints your book will likely request you to set aside an area to include a barcode, unless you have it set it up already. Again, compare your design with that of other successful book cover backs, and do what they do. Do you want to print your price on the cover? What about the ISBN, or will you have that just in the interior?

Once you’ve set your book up for print, you’ll want a proof copy to look over before authorizing it to be published. If you publish through a site such as Amazon, you can request a single physical copy that you should carefully go through. Verify that the cover is eye-catching and professional, and the interior is done properly. Then have another careful set of eyes look it over. 

The key is that your book should at a glance look like other quality books, because readers don’t prefer ugly or amateur. At one book signing, my friend was launching his latest novel. Another writer asked about Indie versus Traditional. I said “let’s compare,” and put one of mine next to the one that was launching via a publisher. Same size, good covers, all was as it should be (and similar), the price was identical, and the interiors looked properly done. He said he couldn’t see a difference, and that’s the secret— except my friend would make a dollar for each one he sold, and my similar book would make ten dollars profit for each one I’d sold. 

Advantage, Indie!

For a series, the branding should match on the covers. Go with a theme that makes them look like they belong together, for quick identification. Check out other author series to see what they have done.

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Dale T. Phillips has published novels, story collections, non-fiction, and over 80 short stories. Stephen King was Dale's college writing teacher, and since then, Dale has found time to appear on stage, television, radio, in an independent feature film, and compete on Jeopardy (losing in a spectacular fashion). He's a member of the Mystery Writers of America and the Sisters in Crime. He's traveled to all 50 states, Mexico, Canada, and through Europe.

Getting Started In Indie Pubbing (or Good God, what have I gotten myself into?)

By Steven Womack

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Maybe you’ve written your first novel (or second or tenth, whatever) and you’ve taken three years to query every agent on the planet and haven’t gotten even a nibble.

Or maybe you’ve been in this business a couple of decades and published two dozen novels, all of them with modest midlist advances and now out-of-print and not making you a penny. And you’re getting older, and all those years writing novels were years you weren’t piling money into a 401(k) or a company pension, and now you’re scared as hell you’re going to be eating cat food in your dotage.

Or maybe you’ve had some success, made some pretty good money from time to time, but you feel like you’ve been thoroughly abused and taken advantage of by publishers (don’t laugh; it happens). And you’re tired of arguing with editors and having covers you hate shoved down your throat, not to mention the complete lack of marketing, promotion and support (unless you’re a best-seller, in which case you don’t need it).

 So you listen to a few podcasts and read a few blogs and there all these stories of writers taking control of their careers, writing what they want, with covers they love, and succeeding beyond their wildest dreams. You’ve heard of this guy Mark Dawson, who sells a huge, sprawling extensive bunch of courses under his “Self Publishing Formula” brand. And you’ve heard about that fellow in northern Wisconsin who blogged that he made a hundred grand in three weeks selling his self-pubbed titles on Kindle.

And you hit the “Yeah, I’ll take your cookies” button on a few websites you visited and now your Inbox is flooded with emails every day offering to sell you courses on how to be a successful self-publisher or even offering to do it all for you—for a price.

It’s too much. Overload, fuses blown…

Time to take a deep breath and relax.

Like everything in life that’s overwhelming (and the older you get, the more of life that encompasses), sometimes it works to stop staring slack-jawed at the big picture and just break off a little chunk of it and see if you can handle that.

So if you’re trying to build a career as a writer, what’s the best chunk to start with?

The first step goes without saying: you’ve got to write a good book. I won’t spend much time discussing that, but remember—without a story that works, characters that are compelling, writing that leaves you wanting to turn to the next page even if it’s past your bedtime, everything else in the process is for naught.

So given that you’ve done everything you can to meet that first requirement, what next?

You also have to realized that writing, editing, marketing, book design, cover design—all the components of the process—are completely separate skill sets. Just because you’ve written a book doesn’t mean you can edit it or design a good cover for it. Indie pubbing your own work means, first of all, making a series of choices as to which skill sets you’re willing to learn and which ones your going to pay someone else to do.

So one consideration becomes: how much money do I have to put into this?

If money’s not an issue (is that even possible???), then you can write your book and pay somebody else to complete the process. There are perfectly legitimate companies out there who will do a good job for you (BookBaby being one of the more prominent), but plenty of others who are just blatant rip-offs. Do your due diligence.

Say, though, you don’t have unlimited resources and your biggest asset is the sweat equity you’re willing to put into this. Each person’s professional and life experience is different. For instance, I spent a decade working in publishing art departments, mainly as a typesetter and running an in-house art department. I’ve either actually typeset or supervised the typesetting of hundreds of books, so I’m pretty comfortable with interior book design and formatting.

Would I touch a book cover, though? Not a chance. I wouldn’t know good graphic design if it ran up behind me and bit me on the keister. A good cover designer is worth every penny you pay them, and more.

Editing? In my life, I’ve written literally millions of words. Do I trust myself to edit them? Hell, no. In the last Music City Murders novel I published, my biggest single expense was paying an editor to make sure the manuscript was in the best shape possible. I’m even glad someone’s going to be looking over this column before you see it.

That’s enough for now. I hope this has given you something to think about as you ponder your own indie pubbing journey. Next month, we’ll do a deeper dive into the steps of this process. Stay tuned…

Why Book Signings Aren’t What They Used To Be

By Steven Womack

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Buckle up, Buttercup: it’s story time!

Today, I’m putting on my Professor Peabody hat and inviting you to join me in The Wayback Machine, where we’ll journey back thirty years or so, to a time when being a working novelist was a whole different gig that it is now.

I started my first novel when I was eighteen, which was entirely too young for anyone to think they had anything to say about anything. Still, the combination of youth and arrogance knows no bounds, so I pressed on, determined to be the great writer I knew I was somewhere inside. Now if I could only convince the rest of the world…

Then life took over. And in one of the great ironies of my life (and the older I get, the more convinced I am that irony is one of life’s more primordial forces), after starting my first novel at the age of eighteen, it would take me precisely eighteen more years to sell one.

Even after the sale, it took a couple of years to get the book out. Then, as now, the wheels of traditional publishing grind very slowly.

So in 1990, I became a published novelist. Not only that, my first novel was a hardback published by one of the great publishing houses of New York, St. Martin’s Press. And like all newly published novelists, my first concern was when can I start doing book signings!

I loved going to book signings, loved meeting authors who’d written real books. Bookstores were my happy place and now my dream of getting to go to my happy place from the other side of the signing table was coming true. My hometown, Nashville, was a wonderful book town then. There were lots of independent bookstores around, as well as the big chains like Borders and Barnes & Noble.

One of the local independent chains was Mills Bookstores (chain? well, there were three of them), so I reached out to them, and they very kindly offered me a signing at their flagship store in Hillsboro Village. I met a fellow there—Michael Sims—who had moved to Nashville a few years earlier and would later go on to a spectacular writing career himself. He and I have been friends ever since.

Even then, publishers didn’t put a whole lot of marketing or promotion into most debut novels. So I took it upon myself to publicize and promote my first book signing. I worked up a database of a couple hundred of my closest friends and family, then merged the database with a Word document and sent out personalized letters inviting them to my very first book signing, which took place on a warm Sunday afternoon.

And it was astonishingly successful. In an incredible leap of faith, Mills had ordered around 130 copies of a book no one had ever heard of, by a writer no one had ever heard of. The store was packed, the event went on for—if memory serves me—at least three hours. I spoke for a bit, read an excerpt from the book, then signed literally every copy in the store. By the end of the afternoon, Michael was pulling display copies out of the front window to sell.

At the end of the day, I thought I got this…

Now, over thirty years later, I still haven’t had a book signing that successful. Most of my book signings have been like one I did with Sharyn McCrumb at a Little Professor Bookstore in Birmingham, where someone walked up to our signing table (and right up to it, since there was no line) and asked if I knew what the lunch special was today.

Book signings were events back then. They still are for some writers, if you’re a star. Stephen King can draw a crowd wherever he goes. If you’re a genre writer and have developed a huge following in your field, then you’re good to go. Celebrity book signings still work, and locally famous true crime books or other spectacle-type gigs still work.

But if you’re just a working stiff writer, on a self-financed book tour in a town where nobody knows you (yep, I’ve done plenty of those), book signings aren’t worth what they used to be. There aren’t as many bookstores today, so your options are more limited. The two great independent chains that were in Nashville back in the day—Mills Bookstores and Davis-Kidd Booksellers—are long gone. As a result, writers sometimes have to compete for limited signing slots at the few bookstores left. One bookstore I know has an application on their website you fill out if you want to sign at their store, and I know a number of writers they’ve turned down. And some independent bookstores, when they schedule a signing for a well-known author, actually charge admission to people who want to go hear their favorite writer drone on.

If you’re an indie-pubbed writer, then it’s even more disheartening. Bookstores, like everyone else, still have some old-school, ingrained prejudices against “self-published” writers (see last months column).

Even David Gaughran, an Irish writer who’s been a pioneer and an expert in the indie pubbing movement, wrote in his latest blog that getting out there to press the flesh—book readings and book fairs—are “F Tier” marketing strategies for authors today.

“F Tier” means a waste of money and time.

The days when books were primarily hand-sold, person-to-person in brick-and-mortar bookstores are long gone. You might sell a few books here and there, but it’s not going to move the needle on your actual numbers or your Amazon Sales Rank—and sad to say, that’s what counts these days.

So if you want to do a book signing, then do it for the right reasons: you want to hang with friends, family, fans and fellow book lovers for a pleasant afternoon or evening. Have a good time, boost your ego, have a glass of wine.

Then get up the next morning and go back to work. That paper’s not gonna sling itself.

The Writer’s Playbook: Michael Jordan, Me, and a Poster

By Steven Harms

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To all aspiring authors, this one’s for you.

I’m fortunate to have two published books with a third taking shape on my computer, but aspiring I am. To be sure, my journey has had its share of bumps and bruises. For new and aspiring authors, the headwinds of the publishing industry are not only real but magnified. One big hurdle is securing a literary agent if you’re inclined to go the traditional route. That’s followed by the excruciating rollercoaster ride of landing a publisher, which comes with a healthy dose of rejection. Or, you can go self-published, but then you must manage the entire process and the burden that presents with perhaps a steeper climb to the top. There’s no right or wrong method. The point here is the odds of becoming a best-selling author are not favorable.

For as many authors that have “broken through” and reached a level of success, there are immeasurable others that haven’t, despite pulling all the right levers. With two books out, I’m decidedly in the second camp.

The reality is that there’s an ocean of books out there, and it can be daunting to wade into those waters. Establishing your brand, marketing your book, growing your sales, getting exposure, building a following, and then, ultimately, hopefully, expectantly, and with a measure of luck or timing or both, you catch a wave and ride it to the bestseller list.

I have an amazing agent and a supportive publisher, and I’m grateful for her. Killer Nashville Magazine also taking me on as a contributing writer has been a fantastic blessing as well. Yet, like so many others, I’m still in the trenches looking up and trying to break through.

In most any endeavor, realizing one’s dream includes a dose of luck and timing. They are uncontrollable variables, and they are real. Ask any athlete, actor, model, artist, singer, or musician. If you reach the elite echelon of one’s chosen pursuit, there was some degree of those two elements somewhere in the process.

With all that as the backdrop, my career in the sports business affords me an interesting take on the journey to author success. The parallels are weirdly similar.

At this juncture, you may be asking, where does Michael Jordan come into the conversation? Well, I had a unique experience that sort of captures my points here. Let’s jump back to February 7, 1988, inside the old Chicago Stadium, former home of the Chicago Bulls, and to the NBA Slam Dunk contest going on as part of the NBA All-Star Weekend. Specifically, let’s move ourselves down onto the court. And to the Slam Dunk staging area courtside by the Gatorade table near mid-court. That’s where I was stationed.

I was there at the request of the NBA to help manage the event. At that time, I was with the Milwaukee Bucks as head of ticket sales and the NBA had gotten to know me. They pulled in three team executives they knew they could rely on to help. Besides me, Don Johnson from the Denver Nuggets and Brad Ewing from the Houston Rockets were part of the team. We became a three-headed event manager, taking lead from the NBA’s VP, Paula Hanson. Thus, the headsets. We were to ensure that the participating players were seated in line as instructed on the team bench, and that we had the next player to compete informed and sent to that mid-court table to wait their turn for the competition. That’s where I was stationed, while Don and Brad were on the sideline managing the media and player positioning. I was there to keep the player in place and tell him when he should go.

I relay all this for a reason. 

That Slam Dunk contest is now part of the annals of NBA lore. It was, to some extent, Michael Jordan’s coming out party that cemented his reign over the NBA for years to come. He beat out Dominique Wilkins to win the slam dunk title, and in the process, executed a dunk where he sped the full length of the court and leaped at the free throw line to slam home the basketball. In mid-air, he looked like he was flying with his left arm slightly back, his legs like wings, the ball held high, and his elevation almost inhuman. A photographer captured that moment, and the photo went on to be a best-selling poster every fan wanted. Smart phones and personal devices with cameras weren’t around back then. Images of celebrities were monetized through posters sold at retail locations (no internet either!).

Look up that moment online and you’ll see two well-dressed guys on headsets squatting on the sideline, each sporting a mustache. That’s Don and Brad. On the poster. Forever. To the right, the Gatorade table where yours truly was squatting is cropped out. Forever. 

The three of us were equals. We each were young executives doing the same job for our respective teams, having got to that point because of our talent and capabilities. The NBA noticed us. We did all the right things to achieve our position. We worked hard, put in the hours, learned our craft, and improved ourselves by networking and just being in the business. But at that moment, on the floor of the Chicago Stadium, something unexpected happened to my two colleagues. They caught a break in that they’re visually and permanently part of a historic moment. And for the record, I have zero consternation that I was cropped out. I’m genuinely elated for them both. 

I tell this story because it speaks to our ambitions of finding success. As aspiring authors, we’re all the same in many ways. We have talent. We can write compelling stories. We network and learn and improve. We pour ourselves into our dream and spend countless hours writing, editing, rewriting, marketing, and sweating over the details. But sometimes, it simply comes down to luck and timing. 

And maybe I should’ve added Thomas Jefferson to the title of this article, because he said something that should give all aspiring writers some solace we’re doing all the right things to succeed. Jefferson is quoted as saying, “I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." The newer version of that is “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”

So, keep writing and keep working hard. A dose of luck is an element to success in most any field. Stay the course and know that the road we’re on isn’t necessarily paved, rather that it’s a bumpy ride with potholes and hills to climb. But keep driving. Luck and timing seem to find their way to those that persevere.

Productivity

By Dale T Phillips

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“Writing a novel is like driving at night with your headlights on- you can only see a little of the road ahead, but you can make the whole journey that way.”

—E.L. Doctorow

You write a novel the way you’d eat an elephant—one small bite at a time.

Writing even one novel is a lot of damned hard work. Continuing to write them is little short of obsessive. But to be successful, you’ll have to keep doing it over and over. Unlike singers, however, you get to do different ones each time, not the same thing over and over. 

Every writer has a different way of doing the work. Two major types of writers are (with many of us doing one or the other, or both):

• Plotters, who carefully detail everything before writing, doing the outline, and setting the scene first.

• Pantsers, who write “by the seat of their pants,” just jumping in without a complete structure in advance. Dean Wesley Smith uses this method, which he calls “Writing into the Dark.” He has an advantage, though, in having done it several hundred times!

It’s good to keep files of ideas, titles, character sketches, and turn of phrases. When you need a new idea, scan these files for things that spark your imagination. I’ve got hundreds of potential titles in one file and ideas for new stories in another. I’ll never run out of things to write.

The best way to be productive is to write every day if you can. It builds the habit. Don’t wait for inspiration. If you can do that, it’s a wonderful way to be productive. On the other hand, I do it the “wrong” way (even though fellow writers compliment me on my productivity, which I find amusing). I have to be inspired by the ancient Greek concept of “The Muse,” which many say is not effective, because you won’t write as much. Lucky for me, I take The Muse seriously, and She often drops by to tell me what to write next. It sometimes messes me up because I shift projects at a moment’s notice. 

For too long, I was working on three different novels and not completing any of them. One was 75 percent done, another was 50 percent done, and the third was 25 percent done. Which all adds up to zero percent finished. There were some publishing strategy changes and various issues in the narratives which bogged me down. 

Then I finished one novel, but before I got to the other two, another novel sprang into being. I wrote most of that, and got stuck again when illness, depression, and Covid-19 hit in rapid succession. I was down and out for too long before I decided that writing would give me back my life. Indeed, it did, and I burst forth with a completed and published novel, a new story, and a finished draft of another novel. 

Write whenever you want or can: early morning, late at night, on lunch breaks, whenever. Find the time that works best for you. Short stretches or long marathon sessions, it doesn’t matter. Keep a notebook handy for ideas that come to you when you’re doing other things like driving, showering, or taking a walk (when many ideas turn up). 

If you have trouble, try the “Pomodoro Method” of sprints and movement. http://graemeshimmin.com/the-pomodoro-technique-for-writers/

NaNoWriMo is a fun method to put out a lot of work in just a few weeks. If you’re having trouble getting words down, think about giving it a try to kickstart your brain into fevered word production.

One good habit is to set aside your writing time as the primary task for the day. Writers procrastinate better than anyone else, and it’s so easy to get sidetracked that writing time can easily slip away. Write first, do all else later. Don’t do research in your writing time because it’s easy (and lots of fun) to fall down the rabbit hole. If you come to a passage that needs to be researched, just mark it as such and move on.

Doing the Math 

If you’re just starting out, you may produce at a slower rate. That’s okay, it will just take you longer. If you’re going to be a successful indie writer, you’ll need a fair amount of good work. Do you know how long on average it takes you do finish, edit, and publish each book? If not, start with an estimation of writing one book a year, 50-100,000 words. When you get more experienced, you’ll definitely want to increase this output, but it’s a good place to begin. At that pace, it will take you roughly five years to write five good books, which will (simply by that output) put you in the top 20% of all published writers. 

Have you got at least five good books in you, just as a start?

So, your first novel. Say 75,000 words, and you want it done in a year. That’s only 1500 words a week (a few hundred a day) and around 5 pages. Fifty weeks later, you’ve got 250-plus pages, and those 75,000 words. Congratulations! You’ve done more than many who set out to do this. It may not be the best yet, but you got it done.

Celebrate!

Then get to work on the second novel. You’ve practiced for a year, so maybe this one will go faster. Up your word count to 2500 words a week. Still quite doable. This means you’ll get this one done in just over six months. How about that? Almost half the time. You learned a lot more, and it’s probably better than book one.

Celebrate! 

Write the third book, slightly better pace. Finish. 

Celebrate! 

Two years total, three books under your belt.

Starting to get the hang of it? Hopefully. Rinse and repeat. 

If you need a million words to get really good, how many can you write in a year? A book a year is a decent pace, better than most, but for more success, you might want to step it up some. If you can put out 5,000 words a week, you can have 250,000 in a year, and a million words in only four years. 

One book a year might net you a few hundred dollars in income (or a few thousand), but you want more, you want volume. The more you write and publish, the more you’ll make. If you want to make 48,000 dollars a year, you’ll need 4,000 dollars a month, or roughly two thousand total sales at two dollars profit each, or 500 sales a week. One book will sell x number of copies, ten books will sell much more. So you want to get to ten good books published, as quickly as possible. That takes discipline and dedication. 

Figure out how much you make per hour, and scale up. If you make a penny per word, an hour of good writing at one thousand words nets you roughly ten dollars. That’s your scale. If you want to make $48,000 a year, you have to either write faster or get paid more. Daunting, yes. 

After six to ten books, you should be selling more of everything. Each new book adds to the total. The “Halo effect” means that other books of yours are bought because people discovered a first book, then went on to others. Especially if you have a series or connected books. 

In the old way of publishing, some authors could get by with one book a year. Today, you’ll likely have to be far more productive to make a decent income. It’s up to you to determine your level of success.

Dean Wesley Smith calls his copyright and production output The Magic Bakery.

Imagine that you have a storefront with all your items for sale within. If you have one book in one format, you have one product. Have you ever walked into a store and bought a single product? You likely won’t stay long. As a successful author, you want variety and choice, different price points, and for shoppers to come back again and again to buy more. A series can bring them back for more. Put your work out as an e-book, in print, as audio, and other formats, such as graphic novels. The other aspect of The Magic Bakery is that as an indie author, you can keep licensing pieces of each product, while keeping the original. Traditional publishers buy the whole product, which you cannot resell. Dean made thousands of dollars from one story, by licensing different pieces of it. Make your work into a virtual storefront, and fill it with tempting merchandise. 

It’s amusing to me that when I set up my display at book events (24 books currently, plus anthologies with others), people look at the output, and think I’m prolific, when I feel like a slacker who doesn’t do enough. I smile and say, “If you want it badly enough, you’ll work for it.” I sell more than most writers at these events, because of my sheer variety, and the different price points (with prices shown for each book, so browsers don’t have to ask). A few secrets of my success. I point out that someone can grab a book of short stories for little more than a cup of coffee or get a good novel for half the price of a hardcover in a bookstore. And because people love a bargain, I’ll give them a price break if they want to buy more than one book. By having so much available, with ebooks and audio of everything, I’ll offer them other free versions of the work when they purchase print (which costs me nothing). People will remember and come back in subsequent years to buy more. And every year they come back, there’s more to sell. 

Advantage, productivity.

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Dale T. Phillips has published novels, story collections, non-fiction, and over 80 short stories. Stephen King was Dale's college writing teacher, and since then, Dale has found time to appear on stage, television, radio, in an independent feature film, and compete on Jeopardy (losing in a spectacular fashion). He's a member of the Mystery Writers of America and the Sisters in Crime. 

Timing is Your Time’s Best Friend: Calendar Management for the Soon-To-Be-Published Author

By Roger Johns and Kim Conrey

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If you’ve been through the book publication process, you know the demands of publication and promotion can be ferocious time eaters. If you’re a soon-to-be-published author, about to go through this process for the first time, the magnitude of these time demands can be difficult to anticipate. So, it’s important to know what this process will look like, ahead of time, so you can manage your time and your calendar more effectively. The last thing you want is for the joyous occasion of your book’s upcoming emergence into the world to be plagued by stress and anxiety because you’ve gotten stuck in the mire of constantly playing catchup, or because things aren’t happening at the pace you expected them to.

An important set of tactics to keep this from happening is to make it a priority to acquire advance knowledge of: (1) the demands the book production process will place upon you, (2) the opportunities publication will make available to you, (3) how to properly plan for what’s coming so you can stay ahead of the game, and (4) when you should begin the various tasks that contribute to your book’s success.

As with all complex endeavors that are not completely under your control, the schedules and demands of others will have to be considered and, to some extent, catered to. This means you will need to know who and what you will encounter on the road ahead, what their role is, and how they view your role in the process. Experience tells us that what you do, and when you do it—especially during the busy months preceding launch—can have an outsized impact on the success of your promotional efforts in the critical months immediately following publication. So, it pays to understand the timeframes during which certain undertakings need to be started, because when you begin can be as or more important than what you begin. In this context, timing is your time’s best friend.

Demands of the Book Production Process

If you have just signed your first contract to become a traditionally published author, you should expect your manuscript to undergo a fairly rigorous, multi-part editing process—a process in which you will play a significant part. Depending on your publisher, the condition of your manuscript, and your editor’s inclinations, this can include story edits, copy edits, and proofing edits. All of these must be done with care, and completed and returned on time. So, ask your publishing house editor what’s coming and how much time you’ll have to complete and return your responses. If your editor wants a lot of story edits, this can take quite a while to do properly because changes to one part of a manuscript often require changes to other parts. And, obviously, the longer your book, the longer all phases of the editing process can take. Knowing, ahead of time, what’s expected of you, will allow you to plan these tasks into your personal and professional life.

In addition to the editing process, you will need to provide input on cover images, gather blurbs from other authors, produce some of what’s known as front matter and back matter (i.e., dedication and acknowledgements), and provide an adequate headshot, and you may be asked to weigh in on (or craft entirely) the jacket/flap copy. All of these tasks can be loads of fun, but they all take time, and they all come with deadlines, so they need to be planned for. Missing an editing or production deadline is not a recipe for success in the publishing world. And starting late in the process of soliciting blurbs from other authors can leave you with less than you had hoped for, in terms of quality and quantity. Authors who agree to furnish a blurb will need a copy early enough to do a good job for you. This is especially true if you are self-publishing your book. Publishing houses have established timelines for prompting authors to solicit blurbs. If you’re self-publishing, you’ll need to initiate this process yourself.

If you have just made the decision to self-publish, you’ll need to plan other activities even further ahead, as well. The fantastic editor you’ve hired who took only weeks to get edits back before, may be playing catch up when your manuscript hits their inbox, and the same goes for your cover designer. A mantra for any author, especially the self-published author, is, everything takes longer than you think it will. If this is your first attempt at self-publishing, you may be shocked to find that it can take Ingram Book Company, the largest book wholesale distributor in the world, several weeks to load your book’s meta data onto Amazon and other retailers. So, if your goal was to get as many print preorders as possible, you’ll need to have your book ready to go months before your official publication date. Take it from droves of authors who’ve checked book retailer websites every morning for weeks looking for their book’s cover only to find the dreaded “No Image Available” icon. This can be heartbreaking for an author who was planning a huge preorder push, and there will be nothing you can do but wait for the data to load. No amount of begging customer service will help. You are one of thousands of authors waiting on the same thing. If eBook sales are your only goal, you will have more time, but if you do not have your eBook loaded in time for preorders to be delivered, Amazon can suspend you from selling an eBook on their site for a solid year. It is crucial to plan for the unexpected. Whatever you think your timeline is, double it at the very least.

And…while all this is going on—whichever way you choose to publish—you’ll need to do your part in the increasingly challenging process of book promotion. It’s tempting to think that, if you’ve signed with a traditional publisher, especially a big one, that all of that “promo stuff” will be taken care of by the sales and marketing and publicity folks at your publishing house. Sorry, unless you’re one of the biggest of the bigtime authors, things are unlikely to work out that way. Regardless of whether you’re about to be traditionally- or self-published, you’re going to have to do your part. And, unless you’re a celebrity author, with high brand recognition, “doing your part” means building demand for your book before it becomes available for purchase, by: (1) establishing a social media presence, (2) lining up appearances at bookstores, local author-oriented events, conferences, conventions, book clubs, and other venues, (3) developing or joining a blog or a podcast, (4) creating posts for blogs hosted by others, and (5) becoming involved in professional organizations dedicated to the type of book you’ve written. 

And…while all this is going on, you’ll need to be writing your next book.

Opportunities Publication Will Make Available to You

Being a published author is a big deal. It’s true that millions of books are published in this country every year, but it’s also true that hundreds of millions of people live here. By publishing a book you have accomplished an amazingly rare feat. And a fascinating one, as well. The reading public shows a strong interest in knowing about the writers of the books they read. Because of this, there are dozens of regularly scheduled (and undoubtedly thousands of individually arranged) events around the country, every year, at which authors and their readers gather for the purposes of getting to know each other and finding new authors to read. This means published authors will have opportunities to get in front of the reading public in ways that are generally unavailable to others—including appearances at conventions, conferences, bookstores, local author events, blogs, podcasts, libraries, and book clubs.

Availing yourself of these opportunities takes time, research, and determination and can require special knowledge. For instance, if you’re interested in lining up bookstore or local author event appearances on, or shortly after, your launch date, you’ll need to know how far in advance their schedule is booked, and approach them early enough to be considered for a spot. The most desirable venues often have crowded event calendars that are fully booked long into the future, so you’ll need to give them plenty of lead time. The same goes for blogs and podcasts hosted by others. And conferences, conventions, and book and literary fairs and festivals have specified registration periods that must be adhered to. And because not all venues will be receptive to your pitch, it’s possible you’ll need to over-develop your list of target opportunities, and make contact with enough of them early on to have a useful understanding of what’s going to work out and what’s not.

If you intend to create your own blog or podcast, you will need to start long before launch day, so you can establish your presence and build a readership or listenership. These activities can be difficult and time-consuming, and the more tech-challenged you are, the more difficult and time-consuming they become. However, there are lots of good books and web resources that can advise you on how to set these projects in motion.

Planning (to Stay Ahead of the Game), and Knowing When to Begin

It bears repeating that all of these tasks take time—sometimes lots of it. Many of them will need to be in process or fully in place well before launch day, so that a steady stream of promotional efforts is bearing fruit in the critical weeks and months immediately following publication. To make this work, it’s helpful to view your publication day as the midpoint on a timeline that begins the day you either sign your publication contract or decide to self-publish and continues for several months after your book becomes available.

The critical take-away is to develop a list of the obligations you will need to fulfill and the dates by which you will need to fulfill them, as well as a list of the opportunities you wish to pursue, along with the dates you’d like to avail yourself of them, and then place all of these on a timeline so you can literally see what the future will look like.

So you can have a clear understanding of when to begin each of the obligations and opportunities on your timeline, think of them in terms of lead time—the period between when you begin a process and when its purpose is achieved, and mark the start dates on your timeline as well. Then develop checklists for the specific tasks associated with each item on your calendar, indicating what needs to be done, by when, and by whom. This will allow you to measure your progress and to avoid getting blindsided by matters you should have or could have known about. In other words, give your book and your writing career every chance for success by creating a detailed map of the road ahead, so you can handle things like a pro.

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ROGER JOHNS is the author of Dark River Rising and River of Secrets, from St. Martin’s Press, as well as numerous short stories published by, among others, Saturday Evening Post, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Mystery Weekly Magazine, and Black Beacon Books. He is the 2018 Georgia Author of the Year for mystery, and a two-time finalist for the Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award. Since 2016, Roger has made over 140 live appearances across the country, at conferences, conventions, bookstores, libraries, book clubs, corporate events, writing clubs, continuing education classes and other writing-oriented venues, as well as on podcasts, web radio, and broadcast radio. He has also made, and continues to make, frequent invited presentations on writing and career management for new authors, and his articles and essays on these topics have appeared in, among other publications, Southern Writers Magazine, Career Authors, and Southern Literary Review. 

KIM CONREY is the Georgia Author of the Year recipient in the romance category for Stealing Ares, traditionally published by Black Rose Writing and Losing Ares, the follow up. Her urban fantasy Nicholas Eternal was published in June 2023, and her memoir You’re Not a Murderer: You Just Have Harm OCD, which she co-wrote with her adult child, was released in October of 2023. Her work has also been published by numerous magazines and literary journals and received awards. She serves as VP of Operations for the Atlanta Writers Club and podcasts about writing with the Wild Women Who Write. She gives book marketing talks and speaks on various topics relating to writing at local and regional writing conferences and literary festivals.

TOGETHER, Kim and Roger co-author “If You Only Have An Hour: Time-Saving Tips & Tricks For Managing Your Writing Career” the quarterly advice column in "Page Turner", the magazine of the Georgia Writers Museum and the Atlanta Writers Club.

Punctuation is Power - Part 5: Are you in business or in hobby?

By Angela K Durden

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Across the board in creative endeavors something interesting is happening. Folks are getting to be about 55 or so, thinking of or are retiring, and getting back into the thing they loved before the kids came along and the bills piled up and their time was not their own in that thing we call Life. 

Whether it is music, writing, sculpture, painting, pottery, dance, and more, you will find many “of an age” mingling with young folks just getting into that creative endeavor. For some, writing a book or two is just a hobby. They don’t really intend to make it a business. Thinking about the bygone golden years of publishing when authors became stars. They dream of their book being:

• rep’d by an agent, 

• sold to one of the Big 4, 

• making the best seller lists, 

• selling like crazy domestically, 

• translated into multiple languages and selling internationally to wild acclaim, 

• made into a movie or two or three. 

Bring on the mailbox money! From your mouth to God’s ears, right?

Well, firstly, the business was never exactly like that. As we learned from the recent Hemingway documentary, his lavish lifestyle was mostly due to having a series of rich wives. Secondly, the old saying “make hay while the sun is shining” applies in this business. Much marketing of personalities went into the making of the myths. Hemingway used his marketing myth to get money for product endorsements. Nothing much has changed there.  

Still, much hard work by many people went into the writing, editing, printing, marketing, distribution, tracking of inventory, and sales of most books. Starting in the late 1980s, though, the book business began to change. Tired of being shut out and stolen from, the age of the Indie Author and Indie Publisher began and has not abated. Technology has made the publishing of a work easy; distribution via print-on-demand methods has made it within the affordable reach of millions. (Marketing of a book is a whole other subject. It is a bugaboo, a thorn in our paws, a never-ending challenge.)

Unfortunately, too many authors, having written a work, tire out and don’t do the necessary boring work of thorough and multiple edits and rewrites. Not only that, they are also unwilling to pay for it, too. Many will not take any advice when it comes to punctuation, sentence structure, flow of the material, etcetera. They see any question as an assault on their baby. 

I want to scream when I hear “Well, I [or my spouse, significant other, best friend, or sibling] have a degree in English and have already edited the book.” Or “My wife edited my book. She has a degree in English. She’ll get her feelings hurt if I let anybody else edit it.” 

Then these authors are not in business. They are in hobby. True, there are some creative outputs that are simply for making the creator happy. Enjoy the process! It is wonderful to have a hobby one enjoys. 

The business of book publishing, though, requires another mindset. Sorry to say, but one may still not see a profit from all that hard work. All business endeavors are a crapshoot. 

I have always had an allegiance to words in whatever form they take. I hate advertising language that reeks of the weasel. Since it has always been a moving target, I detest rigid rules of punctuation for rules’ sake. [See Part 1 of this series]. 

As a writer in many categories (business, children, non-fiction, memoir, humor, and fiction), my goal is to teach and/or entertain but always challenge the reader and tell it well.

As an editor my goal is to make a book the best it can be. One that, when a grandchild finds it on a shelf and reads Grandma’s or Grandpa’s book they will be proud of how good it is, not embarrassed about it. 

As a small publisher it is to bring to life high-quality books the Big 4 will not touch. Blue Room Books has published history, music business memoir, fiction, and more, some not easily categorized. We may or may not make a profit on these, but damn it all, when they go into the world they will be equal to or better than offerings from the big houses. 

So, as asked in Part 4, I ask again: 

Why do you write? 

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Author, editor, publisher, and more: learn about Angela K. Durden here and here and here.