I often quote a particular line from a movie (I think it was Rich and Famous, so if you know the source and I’m wrong, please enlighten me!) that has stuck with me through my decades of novel writing: “If your writing doesn’t keep you up nights, it won’t keep anyone else up either.” I think the highest compliments a writer can get (and the ones I love the most regarding my own novels) are when readers remark that they stayed up all night reading the writer’s novel, unable to put it down.

That’s not implying your writing should be keeping you up because you just can’t make it work or you are stuck or it’s just plain terrible. What I feel that line means is the writer is so passionate about the story he is telling that he can’t stop thinking about it, and he can’t sleep because he just has to put on the page all the wondrous words that are aching to get out. Or something like that.

Can we write like that every moment we sit down at the computer and dig into our story? Not likely. I think you’d have to be some kind of manic maniac to be able to rev up with that kind of enthusiasm every time. But I do imagine there are some writers who come close. Is that something we should aim for? I’m going to say no, because I think the emotional and energetic side, to put it one way, doesn’t always serve us best. There are times when we have to get quiet and think. Or not think. Times we have to problem-solve and talk to ourselves, untangle tight knots in our plot (or back).

So maybe passion doesn’t look like excitement all the time. Passion can also look like dedication, persistence, patience, meditation. To me, it has many faces. But the result  . . . that’s the key.

So What Does Passion Look Like?

So what does passion look like in writing? These are some of the things I notice in books that scream passion:

• A delight in the language. Maybe it’s just me, because I love words and playing with language. I love a beautiful turn of phrase. I can tell when a writer really loves words, and delights in crafting sentences that are perfect. Amateur writers and writers lacking passion tend to lean more toward the cookie-cutter or formula-type way of structuring sentences and scenes (and plots). The writing may be functional, sufficient, well-crafted, but it all lies on the surface, like a sheen. There is no depth. I know—a lot of best sellers are like this, and a lot of readers want those kinds of books. They’re not looking for passion. To me it’s kind of like the difference between fast food that fills you up momentarily and a classy meal that really satisfies (and the memory of that meal lingers).
• A delight in rich characters. As writers, I feel, we should be fascinated by people. Humans are complex, contradictory, confusing, erratic, surprising, hilarious, vicious—and the list goes on. Writers should capture the human condition in all its weirdness. So, passionate writing loathes stereotyped characters. If you are passionate about your characters, they will come alive and pop off the page. They’ll do and say odd or crazy things that might even surprise you. You will delight in delving into both their good and dark sides, and you’ll feel compassion for even your most evil antagonist. I might venture to say that I can tell when a novelist really loves her characters and has infused her passion for them, which manifests in the things they do and say, and transcends the nuts and bolts of the plot.
• A delight in storytelling. I mentioned this in my last posts. When you read a riveting story, you can sense the writer is enthralled in the story herself. She’s not just plunking down the words she thinks will fit nicely, they way you might work a jigsaw puzzle. She’s enamored with the process of telling the story, perhaps in the way humans have told stories from the dawn of time, the simple intent of connecting to a reader or listener and getting them just as excited about the story. Passion, to me, is having a story to tell and the pressing desire to share that story so others can be moved by it.

Passion may not be why you write. Writers write for various reasons, and many of those reasons are valid and not to be judged. I have friends who pump out novels using formulaic structure, and they are not a bit passionate. They are making a decent living by what they do, they support their families, and they are perfectly happy doing this. I think that’s terrific . . . for them. And it may be terrific for you as well. Writing, like many other vocations, can be just a skill or a job, and perhaps this type of writer is just as happy and fulfilled as the “passionate” writer. There is a need in many marketplaces for skilled, nonpassionate writing, and someone has to do it. (Think of all those computer tech manuals!)

But someone also needs to write those passionate stories for the readers waiting for such novels. And maybe you are one of those writers. If you want to be one, you need to stir up your passion for words, for your characters, and for storytelling itself. You need to push away all those encroaching voices within and without that pull you away from your passionate core.

Next week I’ll explore some practical ways we can successfully do just that, and I hope you will share your ideas on the topic!

What do I mean by that? Well, those things I mentioned that can trip us up—the need for success, validation, an audience—create roadblocks to passionate writing. On one shoulder, glaring at us as we write, is that infernal internal critic. And on the other shoulder is the needy, worrying, insecure author thinking she’s just fooling herself and everyone else by assuming she can write well. We need to get out the duct tape and put a strip over each of those two annoying hecklers’ mouths. Really.

All That Tedious Stuff Can Kill Our Passion

Needless to say, a writer needs to hone her craft and become good at writing. That’s an entirely different topic and crucial, of course. But let’s just focus on the passion. I believe many writers drift away from that first love of writing. Maybe you notice how some authors, with a killer first novel, seem to write worse and worse, or you could say less and less passionately, in their subsequent novels (for whatever reasons).

Oftentimes getting swallowed up in the maze and malaise of marketing and promotion takes all the spunk and fire out of an author’s writing. Writing a novel in itself is hard work and often exhausting, so when we add the huge pressure of marketing to the equation, the result can weigh hard on our spirits. And affect our passion.

But I don’t think that’s the main reason writers drift away from their passion. I imagine some highly successful authors are pressured to write more and more novels faster and faster, and few writers can write passionate stories under those constraints. That can be one of the pitfalls to being traditional published and having unreasonable deadlines that make us force our creativity.

But let’s say we either don’t have that problem or, if we do, we can push all that aside and really focus on the story we are going to write. This novel, right now. How can we drum up passion for our words and ideas? How can that show in what we write? Again, as I mentioned last week, just being excited about our plot or concept is not going to translate into passion. You may feel you have an exciting story, but when you give it to test readers, they aren’t impressed. You wonder, why didn’t they get as excited about this as I do?

No Magic Formula

That’s not to say there’s some magic formula that will ensure everyone who reads our novel is going to be wowed. However, great novels attract a lot of praise and readers, and books that ooze passion (and are well written!) will get readers passionate about the story. I like what Donald Maass talks about in his book The Fire in Fiction. He says, “Masterpiece novels look like singular events. . . . We may imagine that this corker was born from a one-time lightning flash of inspiration. I don’t buy that. . . . A masterpiece novel may be singularly inspired . . . but even so, it is not magic.” He goes on to say what’s wrong with looking at inspiration (read: idea) that way is that magic is unpredictable and mysterious and can’t be deliberately repeated. He believes passion “is available to every author, every time she sits down to write.” And I agree.

Return to Your First Love

Instead of worrying over why we write or analyzing to death our writing, goals, story ideas, and market possibilities for our novels (that we may not have even written yet), I suggest we return back to that first love of storytelling. That’s why you started writing anyway, isn’t it? We have to not only shut up the critic and other inner hecklers that get in our way, we also have to journey back to a simpler place, one that rediscovers the joy of creativity every time we sit down to write. Sure, if we have a contractual deadline dangling over our heads like the Sword of Damocles hanging by a single horse’s hair, it can be a bit tricky to stop glancing up. But if we want to get to that place of passion, we have to.

I’ll go into this more in future posts, but share some thoughts you have on how you get to that place where you’re passionate about storytelling. What do you think helps writers bring out the passion in their stories? Let’s kick some thoughts around in the comments.

No Shortage of Great Ideas

I’m not going to talk about ways to find great story ideas; they are all around us. All you have to do is read the daily news and you’ll come up with amazing stories you can borrow and adapt. Rather, I want to focus on the word great in the title of this post. Great ideas. Ideas that can move into rich concepts and themes.

What I’ve been hearing in discussions with literary agents and editors is they are seeing way too many stories that are a string of scenarios and not many true “stories.” As I critique manuscript after manuscript, I find myself faced with plot and not heart. Last year on this blog I did an online course (for the entire year) called Writing the Heart of Your Story (soon, I hope, to be published in book form). Writing stories with heart is a passionate issue to me, and I will venture to say that’s what literary agents are really hoping to come across as they read through one lacking manuscript after another.

Just what is lacking? Ideas? Good plot? Probably not. I’ve read some terrific plots in the novels I’ve critiqued over the years, but not a whole lot have ever gotten me excited or “rocked my world.” But isn’t it plot that really makes a book exciting? Yes and no. You need a terrific, fresh plot. Or a fresh and intriguing twist on a standard plot. The Hunger Games is a twist on Shirley Jackson’s famous short story “The Lottery.” Harry Potter is essentially Star Wars revisited, which is derivative of many stories that came before it. But even with a great plot idea, a novel can fall flat. And that’s where passion comes in.

Merge Passion with Idea

Maybe you’ve heard people (editors, agents, writing instructors, novelists) talk about passion. But what or whose passion are they referring to? You can be passionate about your story idea, which is really enthusiasm. Don’t confuse the two. I’ve heard clients talk (or write in an e-mail) quite excitedly about their plot, and it might actually be a great idea. But when I dig into the writing looking for the heart of the story, I’m not finding passion.

So, what do I mean by passion? I’m talking about a strong feeling, conviction, belief that comes from within. A belief that this is an important story to tell, an important theme to explore. Or it may have nothing to do with importance. There may be absolutely no theme or point to your story, but it can still radiate passion.

Ooze with Passion

Have you ever read a book that oozes with a passion of storytelling? One of my favorite authors is Walter Moers, who writes insanely crazy stories with the most bizarre plots and characters. Maybe underneath all the madness there are some themes floating around, some “point” he is trying to get across. If so, I think I may have missed those—too busy laughing my head off or turning pages so fast in excitement I didn’t notice. I picture Moers at his computer or drawing on (?) blank paper those wild cartoons that pepper his books. Or typing madly away at his keyboard, his fingers flying fast over the keys as laughter bellows out his mouth in the delight of his story.

Do you ever sense that? That utter joy in storytelling? I was just critiquing a client’s intro to his second novel last week. I loved his first one, and although his profession suggests (highly) he would lack a sense of humor (okay, guess away, but I won’t spill), his wry humor won me over immediately. But it was more than that. Sure, his writing is good, better than many, craft-wise. But I see a lot of good writing that bores me.

As I went through this intro to his second novel, a completely different story than the first, it struck me why I thought he stood out among so many of my clients. It is clear he loves to tell a story. I’m sure somewhere in there, as I go through the book, I will find great plot and themes, maybe even some deep take-home message underlying the book. But that didn’t concern me as I read through the opening pages. I knew, just by being wooed into this story, I would love the book. And if it needs some work, some tightening, revising, restructuring (don’t most novels?), in the end it will be another terrific novel by this budding author.

Which brings us around to the question as to why we write. I wrote a number of posts last year about our concepts of success, and about our feelings of self-worth being tied in to our writing. Our need for validation, our need for an audience. There are many reasons for writing, and many of them are valid. But, for whatever reason we write, we should, I feel, find a way to tap into the passion for writing and bring that out in our stories.

What are your thoughts on this topic? What makes you passionate about your story? And what is it in someone else’s story that excites you and makes their story stand above the rest?

Nothing like a book contract to make you aware of what everyone else is doing. And you want to know what works best, right? The problem is, we’re looking for one formula in an industry that’s basically at the whim and whimsy of personal preference and word of mouth.

When I started writing seriously in 2004, my focus lay completely in fiction. I’d written devotionals and snippets of life pieces in the past, but they served my own need for expression, then resided silently in a folder on my computer. Fiction was my passion.

Then something unexpected happened. In 2006 I was given the opportunity to write as part of a team on a blog on a topic that hit home for me. I jumped in because I wanted to help other women avoid some of the heartache I’d experienced to reach a place of thriving in my faith and my marriage.

Readership for our blog grew, which led to a book (Winning Him without Words: 10 Keys to Thriving in Your Spiritually Mismatched Marriage) about how to thrive in a spiritually challenging marriage, and a booming Facebook presence. We suddenly found ourselves reaching readers in ways we hadn’t thought possible at the beginning. Our main site (www.SpirituallyUnequalMarriage.com) even started showing up as a resource on other ministry and church websites.

So when my novel The Soul Saver was finally picked up by a publisher, I began studying what had worked so well for our nonfiction book and looked for ways to apply it to marketing my novel. What I discovered has now lead to a concept I and my writing partner call Rooted Marketing.

Plant Those Seeds Early

Like it sounds, rooted marketing is like planting seeds in your stories to be sown right before, during, and after as marketing tools. As you’re writing your story, you are literally building in settings, hobbies, causes, interests, and anything unique that you can use to promote your book.

From these ideas you can write nonfiction articles for submission to magazines, blog,s and other sources looking for special interest pieces.

1. Identify need and niche seeds. As authors, we pretty much get the message today that we have to do more than just market our book. People want more. Common trends have set a pattern of having take away value. So, identify a need or niche you can fill.

For example, a budding author I know recently shared with me that she loved writing home and hearth stories because this had been a big area of enjoyment in her own life. Suddenly we realized she had unlimited opportunities to write into her stories traditions and celebrations that had meant so much to her and her family and would give her readers step-by-step planning instructions to do that same kind of events and traditions in their own homes. She had not only pulled a theme from the stories she felt so passionate about, she’d created a brand she wanted to continue throughout her books.

2. Grow and Harvest Resources. Experience has a way of opening doors to serve a specific market with the goal of being a resource. That was always our purpose—how did we assist others in finding the help they needed in a difficult marriage? What could people take away and apply to their lives and marriages?

We not only used our book but also created a dozen free downloads with tips and suggestions from everything to praying for your unbelieving spouse to putting romance back into your marriage, along with short teaching videos and a relevant monthly newsletter.

I recently read about an author who turned the historical research she used for her novel into a series of articles for her local newspaper. Another author I know built in a common theme of a quilt pattern through her book series and included the pattern (one she designed herself) at the back of each book. The potential here is only as limited as your thinking, so think big and have fun!

3. Be an Intentional and Current Farmer. It’s unrealistic to think we can “do it all,” and planning ahead goes a long way in fighting off the overwhelming menu of media and marketing choices. Once you identify and figure out what potential marketing seeds you can plant in your work-in-progress, imagine ways you can market and interconnect them between your website and favorite social media sites so you can reap an effective harvest. Even consider speaking to local groups in your area if your subject matter is applicable to library or other groups.

If your resources are time-critical, be sure to update or change them out periodically. Offer new ones to your readers and if you have a newsletter, offer a special download available only to sign-ups. You can even do that with your blog these days with each new subscription. Find a tech-savvy person to help you set up an automatic mailing, and you won’t have to think about it again until you’re ready to offer a new resource.

There are so many different ways to market today that we have to be intentional about what we choose. Thinking ahead is like preparing the soil for those seeds so when your book comes out, you’re ready to reap a harvest.

 Start Thinking before You Start Writing

Rooted Marketing isn’t necessarily “new.” Authors are pulling aspects from their novels all the time to reach more readers and sell more books through online promotions and even speaking. But why not start thinking it through before you even start writing your next story?

What can you build into that budding novel that can be a handy marketing tool? Can you even produce articles or downloads while you’re writing it? Imagine finishing your next contracted novel and already having several marketing tools harvested from your marketing garden, ready to use to promote that book when it releases.

Dineen Miller has won several prestigious awards for her fiction, and is the author of The Soul Saver and the novella, A Love Meant To Be, part of the Central Park Rendezvous Collection. She is the coauthor of Winning Him without Words: 10 Keys to Thriving in Your Spiritually Mismatched Marriage, which received the award for Nonfiction Book of 2011 from the San Diego Christian Writers Guild. Check out Dineen’s blog here, and you can connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.

I published my first nonfiction book back in August 2010. My book was written for a very specific niche. Here are four things I learned about niche marketing.

1) It’s easier than selling to everyone

Like most nonfiction writers. I wrote my book to change the world. My wisdom is so amazing that the world would simply be a better place if everyone just followed my advice. The problem is that nobody knows me. Sure, I have friends who treat me like their personal encyclopedia, asking me for advice on everything from what bunnies and eggs have to do with Easter to how to reconcile their relationship with their estranged adult children living in another country.

But having a small group of folks who recognize and exploit my brilliance doesn’t help me to sell books. And every book I don’t sell means another person is suffering through life without my wisdom and assistance.

So, what is an aspiring guru to do? It turns out that focusing my marketing efforts in my niche was the best decision I ever made. My niche is rather specialized. I teach humanist life skills. Most of you have no idea what those are, that’s why what I do is considered a niche.

When I was writing my book, several people discouraged me from making humanism a centerpiece of my writing. Their thinking was that focusing my work so narrowly might discourage people who could actually benefit from my work. And, to a certain extent, they are right.

However, by focusing on humanism, I was able to focus my marketing efforts on humanist groups. There is a whole niche subculture on the blogosphere and podcast worlds that are explicitly humanist, Free thought, skeptic, atheist, or nonreligious. By focusing on them, I was able to sell my first thousand books fairly easily.

2) Be willing to switch your niche

About nine months into the release of my book I was at a coffee shop meeting someone who was considering hiring me to teach a six-week live class on the material in my book. In addition to getting the job, I also was approached by four women. One was behind me in line and was curious about the cover of my book. However, three were mothers of teens who had overheard me talking about what I teach and were so desperate for this material to share with their daughters that they interrupted us to get my card so that they could purchase my book.

A lightbulb went off above my head. Here was an entirely new market I hadn’t even considered. The first lesson I learned was always have business cards on you to share with people you meet who are interested in your work.

The second thing is that it is okay if the niche you thought you were writing for turns out not to be your real niche. My real niche, as it turns out, is moms of tweens and teens. Transferring my marketing to this new niche was easy. It was the same process I had used for my first niche. My book was originally written to help youth educators discuss the importance of ethics, decision making and responsibility with tweens and teens. It turns out it also helps parents discuss everything from drinking, drugs, dating, finances, healthy habits, and more with their children. Because of my previous work introducing my book to my initial niche, my book had been endorsed by youth educators all over the globe thus making me an instant expert in my new niche.

Since transferring to this niche, my book has been on the Kindle Best Seller list for parenting/teens/morals and responsibility for over a year now.

3) It’s okay to create your own niche

The interesting thing about this journey of marketing and discovery is that I basically created my own niche. Most of what is published in the field of philosophy is academic in nature. I had written a book about a specific philosophy for the lay person, explaining how this philosophic approach translates into better thinking, more ethical behavior, improved relationships and a more fulfilling life. I’m told by fans that it is like a handbook for life.

The problem was, no one in my niche was writing this sort of material. Focusing on the practical day to day self-help aspect of this philosophy just wasn’t on anyone’s radar. It was on mine though because of how many people were contacting me asking me for this sort of practical advice. So, I wrote my book.

I self-published it because none of the publishers in my market were able to grasp what it was I was trying to do with the book. And for a while, I was the only person writing and publishing in my niche of applied Humanism where the focus is on how combining critical thinking skills with a vibrant compassion based ethic helps people solve their problems more effectively.

Two years later and the market has changed dramatically. There are now several people writing and publishing material similar to mine. It’s very exciting to see that I wasn’t alone in thinking that this approach was not only important, it is vital to the health of humanity.

When I started, I couldn’t get the national organizations interested in my book. Now, they call me. When one of the international groups wants to do a course on a humanist topic I’m the person they call.

The lesson is that if you are convinced what you are doing is important don’t let others stop you. Go ahead and blaze a new trail and create a new niche for yourself. You can still market to sister niches and if what you are doing has value, people will find you and embrace you and encourage others to do the same.

4) Don’t market to your niche

This might sound weird, but a huge amount of my status within my niche is that my niche isn’t really my niche. Yes, I write about humanism. But I don’t write these books for humanists. Humanists already know this stuff. My books are for non-humanists who are looking for ways to improve their lives.

The people who hire me to talk and who pay me to do presentations and who buy my books, by and large, aren’t movement humanists. They are unaffiliated with the formal niche. I am their bridge, which makes me rather valuable to my niche.

This non-niche marketing also helped me to create a whole new niche that I like even more than my first niche. In addition to creating materials that help mothers help their kids with everything from ethics to bullies to sex and driving, I am also creating materials for a niche that can best be described as people who want to approach life humanistically. And who better to teach humanism to the humanistic than a real live humanist who is considered the go-to person in her niche, which brings me full circle back to my original niche. And I got there, by not marketing to my niche.

Niche Matters!

The big lesson I think publishers of nonfiction should take away from my story is this: your niche matters. It enables you to effectively focus your marketing efforts. However, don’t be so married to your niche that you miss marketing opportunities outside of it. Don’t feel like you have to water down or hide your true colors to reach out beyond your niche. If your ideas are good, people will want to hear about it and you owe it to them to do whatever marketing is required to help them find you so that you can help them.

Final lesson: Own your niche. Embrace it. Help other people learn about and embrace it too.

Jennifer Hancock is one of the top writers and speakers in the humanist world today. Her primary focus is humanistic parenting and leadership topics. She has four books out including The Humanist Approach to Happiness, Jen Hancock’s Handy Humanism Handbook, The Bully Vaccine, and Why Bullies Bully and What Can Be Done About It. She is currently working on two new books, one on grief and another which is a humanistic business management primer. She also offers two online courses: The Bully Vaccine Toolkit and Living Made Simpler a Humanist Life Skills course. You can find her online at her website here.

The publishing industry is going through an incredible amount of chaos and transformation. Some of this change is good, such as new technology, lower prices, and easier ways for people to get access to information. In contrast, some changes are bad, such as Borders Bookstores filing for bankruptcy, publishers working with lower budgets and less staff, and authors finding it harder than ever to land new publishing contracts.

In the midst of this change, the rules for becoming a best seller are also getting rewritten. For example, if you asked most publishers ten years ago to explain their marketing strategy for creating a best seller, they would probably emphasize the following five activities:

1.  Secure numerous national-level TV and radio interviews.
2. Urge the author buy 5,000-10,000 of his own book directly from various retailers.
3. Schedule a whirlwind speaking tour in major cities across America.
4. Place expensive advertisements in major magazines and newspapers.
5. Set up as many bookstore signings as possible.

They Don’t Work Any Longer

These ideas no longer hold sway. Gone are the days of boring bookstore signings and pricey print ads. In addition, national media has lost much of its power as more programs cater to specific niche audiences. In contrast, we now live in an era where the author has more power than ever before.

For example, I helped a client hit the New York Times best-seller list twice without doing any of the five old rules listed above. Instead, she succeeded by breaking the rules, building her own platform, and making personal connections with thousands of readers. Here are the results of the marketing strategy we conducted:

1. Created a free resource that was featured for 21 days on more than 350 radio stations.
2. Hosted a 6-week online webcast that garnered more than 20,000 views per week.
3. Captured exciting success stories and promoted them both online and offline.
4. Utilized the power of viral video to create a catchy book trailer and helpful author videos that received over 25,000 views in 30 days.
5. Attracted more than 100,000 unique visitors to the author’s website.

By utilizing a modern marketing strategy, the author sold more than 100,000 copies and hit the New York Times and USA Today best-seller lists. Even better, all of this success cost a lot less than a publisher’s typical marketing budget.

What are you doing to build your reader base? Are you relying on antiquated methods that are outdated and ineffective? Add at least one new marketing activity this week that relies on distributing free value via the Internet. For example, you could develop a free resource, start an e-newsletter, create behind-the-scenes videos, capture customer testimonials, produce a webcast, etc. If you have legitimate value to provide people, the old barriers that hindered distribution no longer exist. Take advantage of the new opportunities that are available and break the rules to become a best seller.

Rob Eagar is the founder of WildFire Marketing, a consulting practice that helps authors, businesses, and non-profit organizations spread their message like wildfire. He has consulted with numerous publishing houses, non-profits, and trained over 400 authors, including several New York Times bestsellers. Rob is the author of “Sell Your Book Like Wildfire,” which is considered the bible of book marketing. Follow Rob on Twitter here.

A book release is both exciting and terrifying. When my coauthor Becca Puglisi and I launched The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide To Character Expression, we seesawed between euphoria and dread. Two writers, unpublished and unproven, launching a self published “how-to” book about writing? How could we possibly compete with books like Donald Maass’ Writing the Breakout Novel, Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style, or an arsenal of popular writing books from Writer’s Digest?

Back in May 2012, a lot of friction between the traditional industry and self-publishing existed, so Becca and I had barriers to work past. And, to break into a market dominated by heavy hitters, we needed a BIG book launch. We ended up surviving on coffee, trail mix dinners and too little sleep, but when the dust settled, our launch brought over 10,000 visitors to our blog and gave our book exposure beyond imagining. And we did all this by mentioning our book’s release on our blog only ONCE.

Yes, you read that right. One time. Read on to find out how!

Marry Your BRAND To Your Book Launch

Becca and I had no idea how to launch our book at first. It wasn’t fiction, so the usual gamut of teasers and trivia and swag-like giveaways wouldn’t work for us. Worse, Becca and I are TERRIBLE when it comes to pointing attention at ourselves. Some people are naturally confident and can rouse excitement about book purchasing . . . yeah, not us. Direct “buy my book” promotion made us feel like we were selling timeshares.

Promotion had us stumped until we began thinking about how our brand could work with our book launch. Becca and I have worked hard to try and bring good content to the writing community through our blog The Bookshelf Muse. We are known as “Writers Helping Writers,” and so we decided to launch our book authentically, we needed to stay true to that.

Create An IDEA That Stands Alone

All of us have seen a million book launches, haven’t we? People utilize social media and create Facebook & Goodreads events to coordinate cover reveals and Twitter blasts and blog tours and giveaways. Some create a theme around their tour that ties into the genre—hosting a “First Kiss” blog hop for a YA romance for example. Others go with the “Book Cover & Blurb” exposure on as many blogs as possible on the same day.

The thing is, everyone is doing this. And with so many books being released into the wild each day, launches start to blur together. To make your book launch command attention, start with a unique idea that fits your brand and offers something NEW to your potential readers and network connections. Make them want to pay attention!

Becca and I believe kindness makes the world go round, so we decided to build a launch that embraced this and fit our brand. Random Acts of Kindness for Writers was born! However, to make this event truly altruistic we made the choice to sideline our book and focus instead on celebrating writers. It was a risk, but we love the writing community and so promoting it rather than a book gave us something to get excited about. By making our “book launch” be about embracing the concept of gratitude for our fellow writers, we managed to stand out!

We went a step further and found sponsors within the publishing community, and asked if they would donate RAOK prizes that writers could win on our blog. All we did was contact writer-focused companies like Scrivener, Writer’s Digest, Auto Crit, and Query Tracker and explained our idea of using the excitement for our book release to celebrate writers. So many people loved this concept that we ended up with over $1500 in prizes! It was amazing to see how generous the publishing industry could be, and how they too wanted to show their appreciation for writers.

Build An ARMY

Our goal was to create a RAOK initiative that would move forward on its own momentum and last a week. To light the “spark,” we put out a call on our blog, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and to newsletter subscribers, telling them Becca and I had a secret idea and needed help. We asked people to sign up by form if they wanted to hear more. It was a big risk to ask people to commit to something without knowing what it was, but we wanted RAOK to “blitz” the writing community, and that meant keeping things quiet. Those who signed up got an email outlining the project of singling out a writer and performing a RAOK for them–maybe giving them a small gift, or featuring them on their blog to raise their profile, or perhaps to offer to beta read or critique their work. People who were interested stayed on our email list, leaving us with about 100 participants. On release day they blogged (or Facebook-blitzed) a writer with a RAOK, and the whole community was flooded with goodwill as news spread.

We didn’t just want people to notice our event—we wanted to inspire them to act! Becca and I wanted to prove that kindness was contagious and sure enough, as the week wore on, more and more people were joining in and performing a RAOK to someone they knew. We have a Pinterest board with some of the people who joined up, and hundreds of writers were given RAOK that week.

Think EXPOSURE, not Sales

So, our RAOK Blitz was a great success . . . but if we sidelined our book, then how did it help us? Simple: exposure. Becca and I have a blog filled with unique writing content and a book that is unlike anything else out there. So by focusing on drawing people to our blog where our book is featured, we allowed discoverability to happen. We trusted that our audience would find content that they needed, and stick around. This is exactly what happened.

Offer VALUE To Readers

To further allow for exposure, Becca and I crafted a free booklet called Emotion Amplifiers that is similar to The ET book. While The Emotion Thesaurus covers how to show character emotion through body language, thoughts and visceral sensations, this booklet covers conditions that “amplify” a character’s emotional state (Pain, Stress, Hunger, Illness, Inebriation, Attraction, etc.) In this free PDF, we included links to The Emotion Thesaurus and encouraged everyone who visited to take a copy if they felt it might be useful to them.

The “power of free” is a contentious topic these days as Kindle Select becomes less effective. But if you create something that is specific to your audience’s likes and needs, the discoverability factor is powerful indeed.

So, how did it all pan out? Did it provide a strong kick-start or simply create a bump in sales that soon went flat?

I’m happy to report that we’ve now sold over 25,000 books since May 2012 (without free promotions through Kindle Select). We have sold in every country Amazon, Kobo and B & N can reach, and two months after our book launched, the University of Illinois made the ET required reading for their Creative Writing Program. Yes, the ET went to university!

The Emotion Thesaurus has over 200 reviews on Amazon and has topped several best-seller lists as well as the Most Wished For and Highest Rated Lists. It has been an amazing experience to see how this tool has helped writers, and Becca and I are so glad we decided to turn our idea into a book.

Angela Ackerman is one half of The Bookshelf Muse blogging duo, and coauthor of The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression. Listing the body language, visceral reactions and thoughts associated with seventy-five different emotions, this brainstorming guide is a valuable tool for showing, not telling, emotion. Follow Angela on Twitter!

Today’s guest post is from Alison Ripley Cubitt:

Between us, Sean and I have been writing for years and have over ten published books, numerous articles, as well as two screenplay credits, but chose to go down the indie route, as this was the first time we’d cowritten fiction. Although we got good feedback from agents and publishers, we felt that there was a danger our thriller would dated if we didn’t go ahead and self-publish.  With my background in film and television production, I figured that indie publishing was very similar to indie filmmaking. All the filmmakers I know have been working this way for decades, so I embraced this method of getting our novel out there. Here are the five most important things we learned in 2012:

1. Don’t compare yourself with other writers in your genre. It’s only natural to compare your success with other writers in the same genre but as I’ve found out these past few months, that’s something you have to get over. Your book is your unique vision and no-one can take that away from you. You might to envy the writer who has sold 40,000 copies of their book, but I bet they are probably wishing they had the success of the writer who achieved 100,000 sales. Sure, we’d all like to make the top 100 Amazon bestseller lists, but this is a small and exclusive club and by a simple law of mathematics, we can’t all make that list. If your first book didn’t achieve the list, there’s always the second or the once after that. Because one things for sure, you have to be in for the long haul.

The same principle applies with Amazon KDP Select free downloads. When we first published Revolution Earth in June 2012, there were many indie published authors who were publishing blog posts about how well they had done back in February/March 2012 on their free days on Amazon KDP Select.

But by the time we went free at the end of August, Amazon had changed the algorithm and the free downloads no longer counted towards the paid sales ranking. We did see a modest spike in sales after our free downloads, and I don’t regret for one moment going free. If we hadn’t gone free we would always have wondered whether or not it was going to help push sales. And I’m a firm believer in the adage that it’s worth trying something at least once. Added to that, it felt that we were in control of our destiny.

As other writers have told me, going free is very useful when you have a new book to promote and I shall be using this facility when we are ready to publish the second novel, if Amazon continues to offer the free book promotion as part of the KDP Select program.

2. Most reviewers are so swamped with review requests that they may never get around to your book. We sent out review requests in July and out of the 100 requests we had around 10 positive responses. So far, our strike rate has been 1%. While a good review from an influential blogger can lift sales, so too can a 5* review from a reader. I had hoped that as a result of going free on KDP Select that as a thank you for getting a free book, those readers who enjoyed it, might write a review.

Again, how naïve was I? Once I found out that on any one day, that the number of free books on Amazon KDP Select number in their thousands, that made me realize that readers have come to expect books for nothing and that the market for free books is probably saturated. Even those readers with the best intentions probably have so many books on their ereaders that they may never get around to reading all of them. Did this bother me? No—it just made me grateful for the reviews we have had from genuine readers, who have been kind enough to write reviews on Amazon and Goodreads.

3. Feedback from readers is the most rewarding aspect of writing a novel. Unless you are complacent, no novel, in the eyes of the writer is going to be perfect and nowhere is this more apparent than with a first novel. This is something you have to take on the chin and learn from the experience. And vow to address any of the issues in the next one. But when you do get feedback from readers you can either store this up for the next novel or you can do as we did and incorporate any minor edits in your current ebook.

4. Updating an e-book is simple, even when you have published. Before we published I thought that you couldn’t make any changes and once it was published, that was it. And then I read a blog post by fellow indie author Rachel Abbott, who told her readers that she’d revised and edited her book, Only the Innocent, and how easy the process was. I had some half-baked idea that the book would be taken down from Amazon and potential readers wouldn’t be able to find it while it was being updated. My fears were completely unfounded as that didn’t happen at all and the old version was available for readers to buy while the updates were being processed. After we wanted to incorporate the feedback on our book we’d received from a leading literary agent, we wanted to do the same. How easy was it? Simple . . .

5. Being indie published can have positive benefits if you are still chasing a traditional publishing deal. We have been taken far more seriously by agents since we’ve published than we ever were when we were unknowns, sending out three chapters and a synopsis on spec. This year we received encouragement and great feedback from two of the United Kingdom’s leading literary agents. One was thanks to our membership of ALLi (Alliance of Independent Authors), which launched at around the same time we indie published. The other was due to an enlightened agency, deciding to ditch the “slush pile” and meet emerging authors directly at an open day. Although we didn’t get the book deal we were hoping for, (we are still only first time novelists after all) we received such great encouragement that both agents have offered to read the second once it’s complete.

And you can’t say fairer than that. And all this has happened in seven months! So if you are considering going indie and are unsure how that might affect your chances with agents, all it can do is enhance your chances! If you do manage to make good sales agents will admire your initiative and you will then be in the driving seat if and when they offer you a deal. Good luck!

Lambert Nagle is the pen name of coauthors Alison Ripley Cubitt and Sean Cubitt. They are Kiwi/Brit/Irish cowriters of international thrillers, are cyclists and Labrador fans. Revolution Earth is the first in a series of three featuring Detective Stephen Conner.

Sean’s day job is as professor of film and television, goldsmiths, University of London. He has been published by leading academic publishers. Alison started out in worthy TV documentaries but somehow ended up working on The Big Breakfast, followed by a stint at Walt Disney then at the BBC in Manchester.

She had a column on screenwriting for Writing Magazine, has had two lifestyle and travel titles published and wrote the screenplay for Waves, a short film drama and winner, Special Jury Prize, Remi and WorldFest, Houston. Serial expats, Lambert Nagle have lived in Malaysia, Canada, NZ, Australia and are now based in the UK in leafy Hampshire. You can follow Alison and Sean on Twitter here.

Today’s guest post is from Jade Kerrion:

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, but began self-publishing in June 2012. Since then, I’ve learned a great deal, but if I had to pick the top five lessons learned in 2012, it would be these:

1. Investing in yourself is the best investment you’ll ever make. It is said that it takes 10,000 hours (that’s 5 years of full-time work) to become an expert in your field, whether you’re a plumber, electrician, musician, or author, and it’s not just about putting in the time. It’s about doing the right things during those 10,000 hours. It means learning the art and craft of writing, and practicing it. It could mean classes; it could mean reading books on writing; it could mean working with well-trained editors or critique groups.

Over the past year, I worked closely with an excellent editor, and she was instrumental in helping me clean up my writing style. She was more than an editor; she was a writing coach. She sent back paper edits with extensive notes (40+ single-spaced pages) on all the mistakes I made, and I incorporated those changes into my manuscript, learning along the way. I spent over $5,000 with her on three manuscripts, and you have only to compare the first and third edited manuscripts to realize how much progress I made over twelve months of working with her. I wasn’t just investing in my novel, I was investing in myself, and it was the best investment I’ve made so far with the most immediate and tangible returns.

2. Learn what it takes to do it yourself before deciding whether to outsource the work. There are many elements to publishing and marketing: how to format an e-book, how to format a paperback, how to design a cover, how to market, where to market, how to organize a virtual book tour, etc. There are companies out there that will do these things do you, but how do you know if they’re charging a fair price if you don’t have a sense of how much time it takes to do it? You don’t have to become an expert in everything (no one has time enough for that), but you should know enough to know if you’re paying a fair price for the work someone else is doing for you, and if they’re doing good work.

As for me, I learned that formatting the basic e-book is easy, and that there was no reason to pay someone else $60+ to do it unless it involved tons of images and tables. I learned that designing a cover required more skill, talent, and time than I had, and paying someone $60+ to do it was a fantastic investment. Same dollar amount, but the time saved on one far exceeds the time saved on the other.

3. The first time will take more time than you think, but then it gets easier and quicker. I spent 8+ hours formatting my first paperback for print. I couldn’t get it quite right. The page numbers screwed up on me, and then I decided to change the size of the paperback; that was another 8+ hours. It was a truly wretched experience, and the joy of holding my actual book only partially made up for that nightmare. Today, it takes me a half hour to format my paperback for print.

The same is true of my ebooks. The first time I formatted my e-book for distribution on Smashwords (which is much less forgiving than Kindle), I spent hours fixing the format of the word document. Today, it’s no time at all. I have a template that works consistently with Smashwords and KDP, and I just type my novel directly in the template. When it’s time to upload it, I insert the copyright statement, and off it goes. Half a minute, literally.

The experience curve is a proven fact. You will get better. You’ll learn the shortcuts, you’ll develop templates. You just need to get past the first time, and be prepared to do it again, and again, until you get better.

4. Stop comparing! No two books are alike. Two science fiction books could involve aliens and Area 51 and still be completely different. You could execute the exact same marketing plan as another author, but your books are different and therefore, the payback will be different. In other words, you will never be able to explain why one book sells by the thousands and another doesn’t. For a rational data freak like me who’s always looking to get to the bottom of the great mystery of how to create a bestseller, it’s galling to admit that I’ll never be able to understand it. There are lots of ingredients that go into a fantastic breakout novel, but it’s hard, if not impossible, to account for the mood swings of readers. So, learn from what others do in marketing, but give yourself a break and stop comparing your sales to other authors’ sales. It’ll always be comparing apples to oranges, anyway, so why even start?

5. Give yourself time to succeed, and don’t give up your day job yet. Remember why you’re doing this . . . I bet you could name several indie authors who have gone really big. We know their names, but the debut author who strikes it big is more rare than you think. They are really just a tiny fraction of one percent of indie authors. Most authors (whether self- or traditionally-published) don’t make it that big, but they have a solid following of fans. Most of them succeed over several years, and many of them hold other jobs that pay the bills. It is hard even for traditionally published authors to make a living off writing; many of them don’t earn out their advance. As self-published authors, we have the advantage of being able to sell our books indefinitely and to keep writing even as we do other things that pay the bills.

I don’t intend to quit my day job. I happen to like what I do for a living, and besides, it would take a ton of book sales to replace my income. I’m a businessperson at heart–I blame it on my MBA. Sometimes, in frustration over the lack of an obvious financial return on my writing, I’ll grumble to my husband, but he always responds with, “What else were you planning to do anyway?”

He’s right. I write because I love writing. I was writing long before I self-published, and self-publishing has allowed me to get my work into the hands of readers without waiting for the wheels of traditional publishing to slowly turn. I may not be selling my books by the thousands, but I’ve had fan mail from around the world, including Egypt. I’m doing what I love, and that’s why I’ll be sticking at this writing and self-publishing business for a long while yet. I hope you do too!

Jade Kerrion unites cutting-edge science and bioethics with fast-paced action in her award-winning Double Helix series. Drawing rave reviews for its originality and vision, and described as “a breakout piece of science fiction,” Perfection Unleashed, and its sequels, Perfect Betrayal, Perfect Weapon, and When the Silence Ends, are available in print and ebook through Amazon and other major retailers. Connect with Jade on Facebook and Twitter, and check out her blog here.

Today’s guest post is from Debbie Young.

I’m a writer and blogger, I published my first book in 2012, and I also create customised WordPress websites for authors, so I’ve spent an enormous amount of time this year exploring the fast-evolving world of self-publishing. No doubt what I’ve learned will equip me to tackle with more confidence my ambitious self-publishing plans for the New Year: at least one book of short stories (“Tuning In,” inspired by listening to the radio) and an anthology of posts from my personal blog, www.youngbyname.me. I hope that by sharing what I’ve learned, at the kind invitation of Susanne Lakin, I will also help you achieve your self-publishing ambitions for 2013, whatever they may be.

1) The generosity of the self-publishing community. Susanne’s invitation is a prime example of one of the most significant things that I’ve learned this year: the genuine desire of indie authors all over the world to help each other succeed. I’ve never come across such a supportive community in any other industry, and it’s been such a pleasant surprise. I’ve found many new author friends through blogs and websites, Google searches, social networks, and, toward the end of the year, the Alliance of Independent Authors, whose joining fee proved worthwhile within the very first month of membership. Throughout the indie community, the more support you offer, the more you receive: you definitely reap what you sow here.

2) The value of Twitter in the self-publishing sector. I joined Twitter a few years ago on a whim, when it was first in vogue, because I’ve always loved the challenge of a précis! But until this year I’d been making the mistake of treating it like Facebook’s more compact cousin. I followed only people that I either knew in person or public figures whom I admired. Eventually I hit a wall, unable to see the point of it, and stopped using it.

But this year my attitude to Twitter was transformed, fittingly enough by a self-published guide, “Tweet Right” by Nicola Morgan. Having digested her advice, I realized that it was actually far more valuable if I followed people who I did NOT know in person. I immediately changed my approach. I unfollowed my friends and relations (sorry, folks!) and focused instead only on those relevant to my writing ambitions: other indie writers, writing and self-publishing coaches, self-publishing service providers, blogging experts, and book promoters. By clicking on Tweets with links to useful blog posts and online guides, I’ve picked up hugely helpful advice—and it’s all been free of charge. I cannot recommend Twitter highly enough to the aspiring self-published writer.

3) What we’ve seen so far is only the tip of the iceberg in self-publishing. Since I published my book promotion handbook for indie authors, “Sell Your Books!” in October, I’ve been astonished to find just how many people have self-publishing ambitions. I had expected to have to explain the concept of self-publishing to friends and neighbors before they would understand the point of my book, but this hasn’t been the case. Acquaintances have stopped me in the street to tell me of their own plans to self-publish—or their mother-in-law’s/husband’s/grandchildren’s. This awareness will continue to grow as more people embrace e-readers, and so discover the growing number of self-published e-books online. Self-publishing is going mainstream! That’s exciting—but it’s also challenging, because there will be more competition out there for the average indie author!

4) The modesty of self-published authors. Earlier this year I started reviewing self-published authors’ books on my book promotion blog (www.otsbp.com), because I wanted to do my bit to promote the excellence of the indie sector. When I post a new review, and I let the author know, I’ve often been met with self-deprecation, as if their books don’t merit my praise. One really first-rate writer told me that my review came at the right time because she was going through such a period of self-doubt that she was considering giving up writing. I was completely taken aback by her low self-esteem, which is not atypical of the writers I’ve reviewed.

I guess the lack of endorsement by a traditional publishing company makes the self-published writer more prone to self-doubt. I’m worried that such insecurity may inhibit them from promoting their work, so of course I do my best to encourage them. This is another reason why it’s good for authors to take advantage of the camaraderie of the indie community: it will keep you going if you’re having doubts.

5) The growing ease of self-publishing does not make it any easier to write a book! None of the year’s technological advances in self-publishing have made it any easier or faster to actually write a book. When I saw the first physical copy of my new book, I felt slightly deflated that it wasn’t as thick as an encyclopedia, so much time and effort had I put into researching, writing and editing it!

But of course, it’s just the home strait of turning your typescript into a print book or e-book that is so much simpler and speedier with self-publishing. I’m just thankful that we live in the digital age, when I can type everything onto my laptop and edit with ease. How anyone ever lived long enough to write and hone even the shortest book longhand, with pen and ink, is beyond me. Tolstoy, I take my hat off to you!

Thank you, very much, Susanne, for allowing me to share on your excellent website my experience of self-publishing in 2012. To all your readers, whatever your self-publishing ambitions for 2013, I wish you the very best of luck!

Debbie Young is an English writer, blogger and book promoter who also produces customised WordPress websites for indie authors. Her publishing-related website, which includes a blog of book promotion tips and reviews of indie books, is at www.otsbp.com (short for the name of her consultancy, Off The Shelf Book Promotions). Check out her personal blog  here. It includes details and sample stories from her personal publishing projects for 2013. She also works part-time for the children’s reading charity, Readathon, encouraging young people to read for pleasure (and so also helping to raise a future generation of readers for us all!)

Her book promotion handbook for indie and self-published authors, “Sell Your Books!”, was published by SilverWood Books in October 2012 and is available worldwide as an e-book and a paperback, from Amazon and all good bookstores.

Debbie is a member of the Alliance of Independent Authors, she belongs to GoodReads and is on Twitter as @DebbieYoungBN (the BN is short for “By Name” as her personal blog is called YoungByName).