Tag: marketing

Choosing Your Billing

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

How people bill themselves and their products fascinates me.

You know what I mean, right? The “best,” “tallest,” “newest,” “most.” Advertisers have been after this method for years, trying to convince consumers that this particular thing is special, unique, superlative and Must Be Purchased. Of course, there are laws that require Truth in Advertising.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is the main federal agency that enforces advertising laws and regulations. Under the Federal Trade Commission Act:

  • Advertising must be truthful and non-deceptive

  • Advertisers must have evidence to back up their claims

  • Advertisements cannot be unfair

However, it’s fairly easy to get around this sort of thing. “Truthful” is a relative thing. My “healthy” granola bars might be low-fat and through the roof on sugar and sodium. Depends on the definition.

Writers, of course, are faced with selling themselves to the world. Yes, yes – I know we’re really selling our stories, but the almighty BRAND is the author herself. Do you want to read a book by Crappy Author or Bestselling Author? Knowing nothing else, you’ll probably pick Bestselling, because at least that means a bunch of other readers liked the author’s work enough to buy it.

Theoretically.

See, it’s really great for an author to have a book make it to the New York Times Bestseller list. Or the USA Today Bestseller list. And now the Amazon Bestseller list. The best part is, a writer gets one book on one of those lists – even in the very bottom spot – and ever after you get to pimp yourself as Bestselling Author. Fair enough, really. However, now that there are so many digital presses and online bookstores, there are ever so many more lists to be on. And I see authors glomming onto the “Bestseller” title if they’ve made it on any list anywhere.

For example, when Sapphire came out, it was number one on the Carina bestsellers list for about a week. Now, I’m not saying I didn’t love this. I may have clicked on the link and looked at it approximately every ten minutes. I might have even made little gleeful noises while I looked. Okay, I have screenshots saved. And someone said to me “Now you can call yourself a #1 Bestseller.”

Erm.

Obviously, I haven’t done that. It just feels wrong. I know a bunch of you will snicker at this, but I’m a fairly modest person. Not that I don’t have a very healthy ego and strong self-confidence. But I really don’t like talking myself up. I run into this at the day job, too. Those people in the company who make sure everyone knows how wonderful they are? I’m not one of them. I’m wary. Wary of jealous gods and obese egos. 

So today I noticed a writer described as “World Renowned Author” and I tripped over it. What the hell does that mean? I recognized the author’s name, even read one of his books, but I would never have described him as world-famous. And then I thought, well, hell – Carien who often comments here, lives in The Netherlands and she likes my books. And @arzai lives in Malaysia and she likes my books. I figure, this makes ME world-renowned, right?

I’m low-fat, all-natural and healthy, too.

Being Practical about Writing in Multiple Genres

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

Don’t worry – the snow is all gone now and we’re back to spring sunshine. I just thought it looked really neat, the way the snowy tree made a cave with treasures beneath.

So, Rachelle Gardner, literary agent, posted on her blog today a whole bunch of really good reasons for debut authors, in particular, to stick one genre. Yeah, we’ve all heard this advice multiple times. Stick to one genre. Build an audience. Develop your brand so readers know what they’ll get when they pick up your books.

It’s undoubtedly good advice. Angela James, who you all know I think is a smart cookie, gives the same counsel. I appreciate that agents and editors take the time to explain these things. It’s helpful for writers to get the business perspective.

But that’s exactly what it is: the business view of things.

Of course that’s how editors and agents see the world of writing. That’s their job. Books are more clear from their side of the desk. They like the genre to be clearly defined, from manuscript to where it will sit on the bookstore shelf. They know about building readership and how that best works. Thus it’s easy and simple for her to give advice such as:

If you’re writing in several genres and you’re not published yet, be aware that the first book you sell and publish will determine the genre you’ll be working in for quite a while. Choose carefully!

To me, this is akin to the advice to pick your top three dream agents and direct all your efforts to winning their representation. Again, I’m sure this seems very clear from the other side of the desk, but for a writer who’s trying to wedge her stories into a difficult market, this is far from an easily defined effort.

For example, let’s talk about me. (My favorite topic!) I started out writing nonfiction – personal essays, creative nonfiction, narrative nonfiction. I did fine. But not well enough to make a living at it. Then I got the Burn to write this fantasy, full of sex and romance and science. All you writers know what I mean by the Burn, right? It’s when that story idea is smoldering away, like money burning a hole in your pocket, dying to be spent. The Burn is what makes the story come to life for me. And when it’s not there, it seems the story just stays this wooden construct, a corpse on the slab.

Unfortunately, my wonderful fantasy was not a clear genre. I couldn’t sell it. (Though I have now – that’s Rogue’s Pawn which comes out July 16!) So I wrote the next book. And in between there, I did what Rachelle says not to do. Rather than focusing on one genre, I wrote a BDSM erotica, Petals and Thorns. I sold that nearly immediately.

See, the thing is, agents and editors make these things sound like they’re under our control. From their perspective, I’m sure it seems that way. Choose carefully! But very often what sells first is dictated by the market, not by what we decide.

Rachelle says: I don’t hear Stephen King bemoaning that no one wants to read an Amish romance from him.

This is actually a really bad example because, as many writers know, Stephen King really wanted to write more literary, contemporary fiction. He has written some of it. And I’ve read interviews where he talks about how, by selling Carrie first, that set his path. He didn’t choose it. He was poor, eking out writing time and trying lots of different stories. That’s the one the market fastened on.

Rachelle says we need to focus on our main goal: to sell books. Now, while all authors love to sell books, I feel it necessary that it’s really the agent’s main goal to sell books. As it should be. Selling books is a wonderful thing because it means people read what we write and it brings in the monies, which enables us to write more books. Because, really and truly, for most writers, our main goal is to write. If my main goal was to sell books, I’d be an agent or a publisher or a bookseller.

I’m not those things because I’m a writer. Writing stories is the most important thing to me.

So, while I think it’s good for us to consider the marketing perspective, in some ways I think this kind of advice is fundamentally unhelpful. It’s how the agents and editors would like us to think and we can try to harmonize with that. But I also think that writers are dancing to a different melody. We’re following the Burn.

There’s rarely anything practical about that.

Making Marketing Decisions

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

An oft-lamented part of being a writer is the promotions end.

Some writers are good at it, but for the most part, the majority of us are writers because we don’t like to sell stuff. Otherwise we’d have fabulous careers doing that. But we know that’s part of the gig. Even the big, traditionally published authors have to self-promote. And there’s this huge array of options for doing it.

Too huge, really.

Part of the problem is, there are a lot of scavengers out there wanting a bite of the writer’s kill. They see us as having this lovely, juicy carcass and they want some. This is part of being a primary producer – we have something to sell, so lots of secondary processors are willing to step up and get their percentage by helping us sell it. That sounds kind of bad and I don’t mean it that way – though it is the syndrome that’s driving more authors to self-publishing, to eliminate at least some of those middlemen and women.

Knowing that writers must invest in self-promotion, there are many venues out there offering to help. Now, not all are making money off of it. Chapters that host conferences are happy to take promotional materials for the goody bags or baskets of goodies for auctions. Blogs love to have guest posters, book bloggers like to do interviews and book giveaways. Then there’s the ads in magazines or on websites. The conferences and appearances.

I get these offers in my email, often sent by wonderful friends – here’s an opportunity for you! I look at it and try to decide if it’s worth the investment of my time and money.

Making decisions is an interesting thing. The “cide” in decide means to cut. As in incisive and excise and incisor. So when we make a decision, we cut away the other possibilities. And each decision alters our life path. Maybe in a minute way, but because I decided to do this, I am not doing that. So, each decision takes a commitment of energy. A bit of oomph behind the direction to create a vector.

Sometimes, I feel like I just don’t have the energy to decide just then.

So, I save these opportunity emails. And they pile up in my In-Box, a logjam of indecision. Like all log-jams, it’s much worse then, to deal with that huge, roiling mass of decisions than if I’d just handled them one by one.

Alas.

I’m happy to report my In-Box is empty now. All decisions made.

My criteria? I went back to Choosing the Happy. If it sounded fun and happy-making, I said yes. If for any reason it didn’t, I said no.

Hey – at least the river is running clear now!