blurbs – Mystery, fantasy and romance at the dangerous ends of the earth

The Miscellaneous File: What else you can do to get your books to market?

By Karen Abrahamson | August 6, 2011

To recap this series to date, I’ve talked about blogs and a little about reviews. We’ve heard about using social media with the caution that none of these should take time away from your writing, and we’ve also discussed books and branding and getting ready for the market. Sounds like we we’ve covered a lot, but there are still a few other things that an indie publisher can do to help get their books to market. That’s what this blog is about.

First of all, I’m going to say that although e-books seem the major way authors/indie publishers are going to get their books to readers, they should not forget the opportunity to create print publications. I refer you to my blog HERE, for options about Print on Demand (POD), and just to recap, it is not that difficult to create a print book if you are prepared to learn the software to do it.

So first let’s talk about some of the other no-cost/low-cost things you can do to encourage people to buy your e-books:

1. Write good books. I know this seems self-evident, but writing good books and writing lots of them is a critical way to become known. Think about it as in terms of the laws of chance. If you have one book up online there is far less chance that people will discover you, than if you have ten or fifteen. So focusing on writing good books for your market (under one name—for each pseudonym you need to do the same) is a critical piece of your marketing.

MUTABLE THINGS -a — This cover of a soon-to-be-released urban fantasy features the fantastic photography of an up-and-coming young photographer.

2. Create good covers. This means studying the covers of best sellers in your genre and picking out the things that you think will sell your book. It means finding strong images for your covers because these are the first things that prospective readers see.

3. Write good blurbs/back cover copy. This is the second thing that readers see about your book. Is it interesting? Is it active? Does it raise a question a potential reader might want answered?

4. Within your e-book whether short story or novel, include links to other writing you have for sale. This can be as simple as listing other stories/novels available for sale. It would be better if you included links in the story that will take the reader directly to the other story/novel, so that the reader has the fewest number of clicks necessary to purchase your other material.

5. Include excerpts. This is something I am just starting to do. This means including the first chapter or two of another, similar novel/story, so that the reader can sample it. Hopefully you have good openings and the reader will come to the end of the sample and want to read on. There’s where you insert the link(s) to where the reader can purchase the other book.

6. Loss leaders. If you have short stories that either include the characters in your novel , or are in a similar vein to your novel (e.g. same world, or genre), you can try putting the short story up for free with the free excerpt to the novel attached. A number of friends are finding good success with this. Similarly, if you are writing a series and have the second or third (or fourth etc.) novel coming out, you can sell the first novel in the series at a cheaper price for a limited time.

7. Free Fiction on your website. You can also put short stories like loss leaders up on your website to encourage people to come and read, and then purchase other writing through links on your website.

8. Book cards. (okay, this involves some upfront money, but I still thought I’d include it.) This is a relatively new idea that hasn’t been put in place too much yet, but it involves having gift cards printed for your book and packaged in such a way that they can be sold in book stores. A Canadian company is experimenting with this as are a couple of professional writers I know. These cards can also serve as loss leaders that could be sent to book bloggers or reviewers, or they could be given for free at conferences, or they could be marketed in books stores.

So those are some of the things you can do to market e-books. For POD there are another few options, but these options generally require you to have more than a few books available.

1. Create advertisements for books. If any of you have been at Science Fiction conventions, you’ll recall how there are tables with fliers about upcoming or available books. You can do this too, by emulating book advertisements in magazines or publisher’s catalogues. If you have mastered the process of creating a book for POD, you can certainly create a book flier. These can be distributed at conferences or other book fair events you attend.

Brochure — An example of a brochure for the novel Afterburn

2. Use your local libraries. Often libraries like to support local writers. Approach them about ordering your books. Alternatively offer to donate some.

3. Take advantage of opportunities at conferences etc. to sell your books and promote yourself. If there are opportunities to sell your books then make copies available for sale. Have fliers of your soon-to-be-available books to pique people’s interest. Get on speaker’s lists to talk about your books or related topics and be gracious and interesting when you talk.

4. Approach local bookstores to determine their interest in local authors. I know of at least one local chain that has a policy of supporting local writers and carrying their books. Make sure they know about your work. Take them samples. Which brings to me the biggy:

5. Create a publisher’s catalogue of work available. This includes all the books available from your indie publishing company. Usually this should be at least ten different novels and anthologies. (Remember, you can create anthologies from your short stories, including the freebies.) This means that you create a full color booklet that can be distributed to bookstores locally or even farther afield either through hand delivery or mail out. The big thing here, like with covers, is to ensure your catalogue is professional looking and clearly spells out how and where to find your in-print books.

So those are some options for indie publishers to market their books, whether e-books or print. I haven’t tried them all, but I’m working on it. So what other strategies have you tried and how have they worked for you?

Prepping for the Market

By Karen Abrahamson | June 5, 2011

This post is on preparing your novel/story for the e-market. I’m not talking about the formatting required to put a novel on Amazon or Smashwords, I’m talking about what you need to do after you complete the manuscript, but before you begin the Smashwords or Amazon process. To make this of the most value to the most people, I encourage readers to please share what you’ve found worked for you.

Editing –

Of course you edit. We all learned to do this before we sent a manuscript to the traditional publishing world, but the stakes are a little different in the indie-e-publishing world. In the traditional publishing model, writers sent the best manuscript they could manage to an editor and it was that editor’s task to make sure that the book was the best it could be before it went out into the world for readers to see.

In this new world of indie publishing, the writer is selling directly to the reader, and thus ensuring the book is ‘the best it can be’ is now the writer’s job. Sure, we all say our manuscripts are the best they can be, but if you talk to writers who have been through traditional publishing they will tell you things like ‘the editor didn’t just pick up on things I’d missed, they saw the possibilities I had failed to explore’.

Editors are the ones who suggest to writers that their manuscript would be better if they shifted points of view. Editors are the ones who point out, for a second book in a series, that you’ve changed from writing a romantic thriller to just writing a mystery. Why is this important? Because the readers who loved the first book in a series are going to be expecting the thriller in the second book.

So editors are our friend and we writers becoming indie publishers need to find a way to overcome the lack of an editor. This means that writers have to develop new skills and resources.

Not only must the writer complete their usual editing process, but they must also go one step further to ensure their book is ready for the reader. This means that the writer must cultivate first and second readers for their books. These readers need to have the skills to not only read for proofing, they need to read for things like (and this isn’t a complete list):

Opening hook,
logic,
plot,
character arc and consistency,
consistency (e.g. character with blue eyes on page one, must have blue eyes on page 300), and
whether the book fulfills its promise and the promise of the series.

Sometimes this can be accomplished through a critique group, but in my experience most critique groups are not at a level to critique a book in this way unless they are professional writers. If you do have access to a reader like this, whether they be a librarian/spouse, or a writer friend, cultivate them and listen to them like they’re gold and treat them very well. If it’s another writer, trade reading/editing with them. We can all use a friend with those skills.

If this option isn’t available, then an alternative is to pay an editor. No, I don’t mean going to one of the author service agencies I mentioned here, because they often expect to sell you a package of other services along with the editing. Nor am I talking about the services of a book doctor who might keep you revising your manuscript for years.

But there are other services out there. For example, Lucky Bat Books offers complete editorial and other services based on what the writer is looking for. Or check within your local writing community for writers who also provide editing services on a fee-for-service basis. Fee for Service means that you agree on the task and a price before the ‘editor’ provides the services and they DO NOT receive any royalties from your work. This is important as it could be a nightmare for the indie publisher to have to provide royalty payments and statements to an editor.

While this service will cost you, it pays in the long run. You’ll provide a professionally edited product to your readers, rather than alienating them due to numerous errors in the manuscript. Finally, even though your editor will provide you with a proofed copy and editorial comment, this doesn’t mean that you don’t still have to provide the manuscript one more read-through to make sure the manuscript is clean. Even after having one of my manuscripts well-edited, I found a continuity error no one else had picked up on.

Covers –

Lady of Ashuelot — Lady of Aushuelot (2010) Twisted Root Publishing

The bane of my existence and very important, because covers are (unless you are a known author) one of the most important ways to draw potential readers’ attention. I’ll discuss what makes a good cover in a future blog, but here I wanted to mention the importance of this and that you need to take the time to put a cover together. For e-publications, the easiest program for this is PowerPoint. You can change the slide size to 6-9 and then create a cover using photographs found on line and graphics provided by the program.

PowerPoint created all of my existing e-book covers using photographs either I had taken or that were available royalty free or free on the internet. If you are going to create your cover yourself, consider what you’ve written and what are strong images contained in your book. Go to bookstores or on line and check out the covers of the books that are in your genre. Often there are style conventions (some might say clichés) for the covers. For instance, Urban Fantasy often has the main female character in black leather standing before something indicative of the story setting. When you are designing covers, start well before you want to publish so that you can try different cover possibilities and get friend’s reactions. I had a cover designed for me and was pleased with it, but when a friend’s daughter saw it (and she was my target demographic) she just shrugged and said it ‘looked like a photo’. Back to the drawing board.

The alternative to creating covers yourself is seeking a cover artist. To find such a beast you can look at covers you admire and try contacting the artist, but this can cost many hundreds (or thousands) of dollars. The alternative is to look for graphic artists who are just starting out. This can be through your local art school or college and can give you the opportunity to work closely with the artist to sort out your vision. Like with editorial services, you want to conduct business on a fee for service basis so that the artist isn’t expecting ongoing royalties for the cover. Definitely set this out in writing.

If you are going with a graphic designer, make sure you give yourself enough lead time before your planned publication. Often preparing a cover can take an artist at least a few weeks, so while you’re doing your editorial reviews, get busy with the cover, too..

So like I said, creating a cover isn’t something you should do last minute. You spent a long time writing a book. You want it to sell. Spend the time to make sure your cover helps.

Blurb –

The blurb is what, in traditional publishing, you would find on the back of the book. In e-publishing, this is the description you’ll read on Amazon or Smashwords or Barnes and Noble that tells you what the book is about.

Let me emphasize that: It tells you what the book is about.

It should be short. It should be snappy and it should catch readers attention and make them go: “I’ve GOT to read this.”

It should not give you a detailed look at the plot or the back story. I’ll talk more about blurbs in a future post, but suffice it to say that if you are starting to think about Indie publishing, start seriously reading the backs of books now. Start to get a sense of how blurbs hook you and try out those techniques for your book.

So what do you do to get ready to publish? How do you make sure your book is edited properly and what have you learned about producing a book cover or blurb, that might help the rest of us?