Time to Write

The all-important first sentences of your novel

It's probably not fair that people judge whether or not to buy a novel based on the cover, the back cover, and the first sentence, but that's how it works much of the time. Now that more people are buying books online, the back cover doesn't matter as much, but the cover image and the first sentence or two (as reached by the "look inside" feature) still carry most of the weight.

That's why the first sentence is so important. I belong to Bookbub.com, which offers ebooks free or at a reduced price, and I find a lot of times I don't opt to take even the free books if the first few lines don't grab my attention. I thought it might be interesting to take a closer look at a few openings. Let me hasten to say that these books may be excellent, I'm just sharing my personal response to their first lines.

The stocky man pumped his flannel-covered arms around the steering wheel as the white box truck he called Bessie rounded the corner.

The first problem I have is with the word "pumped." The motion I associate with pumping (as in working the handle of a pump) is up and down, which is not easy to link with a steering wheel. If I stop and think about it I can imagine the turning motion as pumping, but ideally a first sentence doesn't make you stop to figure out an image. Next we have his flannel-covered arms. I assume he's wearing a flannel shirt, but again the image makes me stop for a split-second to figure that out (rather than imagining it's only his arms that are flannel-covered). Then we have the information that he calls his box truck Bessie, which doesn't pull me into the story nor is it essential information at this point.

If the job of the first sentence is to effortlessly carry you on to the second sentence, that example isn't great. Let's look at another one.

Years ago, Once Upon a Time was Right Now.

OK, that's an interesting enough variation of the classic fairy tale opening to keep me reading. It goes on:

And eventually, Right Now will become Once Upon a Time. In fact, it just did. Time is funny like that. In most stories time is very important. Not in this one. The story may have horses and not cars, but really it could happen now like it did then. Then Being Once Upon a Time, years and years ago.

I'm starting to lose interest but let's see give it a few more lines.

The story is one of passion, and last time I checked, passion was still around. It exists in love, hate, obsession. For instance, I have a passion for pickled herring. I can't live without it...

Nothing is happening and I have no idea who the "I" is who checked whether or not passion is still around and loves pickled herring. Next!

My daddy once called me a cockroach, because when I was a kid I dug in the trash for food scraps and drank from the dog's water to survive. He said he meant it as a compliment.

We have a winner! Why is this one better? Because it raises a question. It makes us curious why the character dug in the trash and drank from the dog's water to survive, and what kind of father would consider calling a child a cockroach a compliment.

Contrast that to the first example, which doesn't make me wonder anything about the man driving the truck, and the second, which doesn't make us wonder about much of anything until it gets to pickled herring. By then, following a consideration of the nature of time and passion, pickled herring feels a bit of a let-down.

I don't know if you feel the same way about these particular examples, but looking at these has sent me back for a closer look at the first lines of the projects I'm working on; maybe it'll prompt you to look at yours as well.

(Want friendly guidance on writing your novel? You'll find it in Your Writing Coach, published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

 

Promote your book with selfies

Whether you self-publish your book or get published traditionally, one of the hardest challenges you will face is getting your work to the attention of potential customers. The "selfies' phenomenon--people taking their own pictures and posting them everywhere online--has been much in the news lately. Here's a way you can take advantage of it.

WHAT’S THE IDEA? 

People’s desire to take selfies isn’t going away any time soon. Invite your followers to take a picture of themselves with your book and email it to you. 

Award prizes for most unusual facial expression, most unusual location, best selfie with pet and book. The more categories you come up with, the more winners. The more winners the better!

Make the prizes downloadable so it doesn’t cost you anything to send them. For instance, each person could get a pdf of a certificate of their win, plus wallpaper for their computer, a mini-poster for them to print out, or an exclusive short-short story featuring some of the characters in your book (maybe a couple of the minor characters). 

Of course cash always motivates people, so consider also having money awards for the top three. It doesn’t have to be a lot—£10, £25 and £50 or $25, $50 and $75 would be sufficient to drive entries.

WHY IT WORKS

The thing people find most interesting is…themselves. This contest capitalizes on that.

WHERE TO PUBLICIZE IT:

Publicize your contests on your web site and blog, social media, your YouTube channel and via free press releases. Also send information to websites that cater to amateur photographers.

BONUS IDEA 

Get a local coffee shop to let you put all the winners on a wall for a few days and get your local newspaper to write about it.

For inspiration on how else to market your book cheaply and creatively, get a copy of my book, Do Something Different, published by Virgin Books and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.

The danger of misteaks, and the question you don't want readers to ask

Will little mistakes in your book turn people off? Is proofreading really that important?

I hesitated to write this post because I know there are typos in my blog posts. I do proofread them but I post just about every day, sometimes under time pressure, and things slip through. For that reason, when I read blogs I cut them some slack regarding typos and little errors. 

When I’m reading books, not so much. I’m sure many readers feel the same.

This came to mind earlier today when I was reading the “look inside” preview of a book about research into psychic phenomena. It said that many famous people followed this research, including "Rod Sterling".

The late Rod Serling happens to be one of my heroes. I grew up loving the Twilight Zone series and later read a number of his plays. When I was a teen-ager I wrote him a letter and he was kind enough to reply. I guess that’s why seeing his name misspelled bothered me. More importantly, though, it provoked this question: 

“If the author got that wrong, what else did she get wrong?”

That’s the question you don’t want your readers to ask. It undermines their confidence in you and it may even make them put the book aside (or not buy it if they spot the error while browsing).

Here are some tips for proofreading a manuscript:

* Get at least one other person to proofread it

* Use a ruler or piece of paper and move it down one line at a time. That stops your eyes from moving ahead too far. Even better: in a piece of paper or light cardboard cut a horizontal slot the length of your lines, so anything above and below the line you are looking at is covered.

* Read backward. That makes you isolate each word and you’ll notice misspellings much more easily.

PS: I bought the book anyway…but I’ll be on the lookout for any other mistakes.

-----For friendly help with writing your book, get a copy of Your Writing Coach, published by Nicholas Brealey and avaialable from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.

How to get free and discounted ebooks

If you’re interested in getting free and discounted ebooks, you can sign up for a daily email offering those, at http://www.bookbub.com.

I signed up a month or so ago. A lot of the books are not in a genre I like, but I’ve downloaded three free ones so far.

There’s no catch—some authors feel that giving away their ebook is a good strategy because if you like the writing you’ll see what else they’ve written and pay for their other books. 

Is your book unique? Oh oh!

Is your book unique? That may not be such a great thing.

If we stick to the strict definition of unique, a book can't be "somewhat unique" or "very unique". Unique means one of a kind. 

Of course there are very few things that are unique. Most are variations of what already exists. However, from time to time I meet an author who says their book or screenplay really is unique--nothing like it has ever been done. 

If that's true of what you are writing, prepare for an uphill battle. 

One of the first things a publisher asks is "what are some comparable books?"

It may surprise you that if you say there aren't any, that's a negative as far as the publisher goes. They know that something really new will require too much work to explain to an audience. They prefer saying "This is just like (name of best-seller) but even better."

If you want to attract a publisher, put some comparables in your query letter or proposal and explain why yours is similar and also how it's (a bit) different. Naturally, choose books that have sold well. 

If you self-publish you'll have to make the same thing clear to readers.

If you do have something unique, congratulations. The odds are  it will be a huge success...or a huge flop. It's possilbe that there hasn't been anything like it because nobody actually wants anything like it...or because they didn't know they wanted something like it but now that it exists they can't wait.    

(Want to be even more creative? Get a copy of the colorful, fun to read, and highly useful book, CREATIVITY NOW, published by Pearson and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

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Why some people shouldn't self-publish

I really liked what Guy Kawasaki said recently about good reasons and not-so-good reasons to self-publish a book. He pointed to the trend for people to write non-fiction books as a means to an end—typically to get more speaking engagements, more consulting clients, etc…rather than because you have something to say.

I’m on a lot of mailing lists (note to self: cut down!) and lately there has been a glut of people offering courses in “how to write a best-seller in a weekend” and similar topics.

They don’t dedicate much attention to whether or not you’re going to add anything valuable to the discussion.

If you’ve been wondering what their secret method is, I can save you a lot of money:

1. Pick a topic.
2. Look at the tables of content of similar books to get your chapter headings.
3. Reword what you’ve read, add a dash of Wikipedia, mix at high speed.
4. Bang out your rehash.
5. Get somebody at Fiverr.com to make you a cover for five dollars.
6. Create the e-book and list it on Amazon.
7. Get as many people as possible to all order it on the same day. You may have to bribe them with something they get when they send you the Amazon receipt as proof they bought it on the right day.
8. If enough people have done number 7, achieve number one ranking in your niche or sub-niche for several hours
9. Tell everybody you’re the author of a “number one best-seller”

The more people that do that, the more cluttered things get and the harder it is to find the books that do actually have something new to say or at the very least a fresher approach to what’s been said before.

(If you do want to write a book, you'll find friendly guidance from my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite books seller.)

 

A phrase I often use in my writing workshops is, “Write what only you can write.” This trend is based on “Write what anybody could write if they have a free weekend.” I hope more people will adopt the former.

 

By the way, this kind of thing isn’t so typical in fiction, but recently I encountered a clever internet marketer who is coming up with plots for horror books and outsourcing the writing. He’s even using Fiverr, paying people five dollars to write a chapter. I’m not optimistic that this is a great way to get a well-written book, and I can’t imagine that it brings any creative satisfaction. I could be wrong…but I doubt it.

The best writer's success strategy

Below is an item from a list written by an online marketer who calls himself Johnny B Truant.

The best moneymaking and success strategy is to be awesome. It’s amazing how many people fret about perfecting their marketing strategy when what they have to offer is total shit. Sure, marketing and SEO and positioning matter… but only once you are producing awesome stuff. No matter how many times we talk about marketing funnels or KDP Select promotion strategy on the podcast, the bottom-line advice always boils down to, “Keep writing awesome books that people love.” That philosophy applies to everything.

 This resonates with me especially because I was approached recently to work on a book series that has a lot of promotional angles to it, but when I read the description of the actual content, it was terrible, so I declined.

It's easy to get so hung up on marketing--which certainly is important--that sometimes core quality gets lost. We have to  remind ourselves that while hooks and gimmicks can help sell things, we have to be careful not to let the marketing dictate the content, or at least not to the point where it hurts the quality. This can be very hard when we are working for someone else so we owe it to ourselves even more to to do it when we do our own work.

(Want to learn how to focus and overcome procrastination? Get my book, "Focus: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done." It's published by Pearson and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

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E-books: what's selling, for how much, and which writers will win?

There are now a lot of ebooks selling for $2.99 (or £2.99) and even less. Are they the ones in the top 25? Only a couple.

On the most recent chart from Digital Book World, the top ten range in price from $7.59 (Life of Pi, at number 8) to $14.99 (The Last Man, number 2, Merry Christmas, Alex Cross, number 4, and The Forgotten, number 5. Number one is Notorious Nineteen: A Stephanie Plumm novel, for $13.99.

The low-price exceptions are The Cowboy Takes a Bride at number 12 for 99 cents, Damaged: The Heartbreaking True Story of a Forgotten Child, number 15, also 99 cents, and Only Time Will Tell, $2.99.

Sometimes publishers will offer a very low price as a promotional ploy, to get the book noticed, and then the price will change to a much higher one.

Digital Book World also runs a list of the best-selling books in the $0 to $2.99 category. How different are these from the overall top-selling books? Here are the top ten:

1. The Cowboy Takes a Bride, Lori Wilde – 99 cents
2. Damaged: The Heartbreaking True Story of a Forgotten Child, Cathy Glass – 99 cents
3. Only Time Will Tell (The Clifton Chronicles), Jeffrey Archer - $2.99
4. The Safe Man: A Ghost Story, Michael Connelly - $1.99
5. My Kind of Christmas (Virgin River Series 19), Robyn Carr - $1.99
6. Forced to Kill (The Nathan McBride Series), Andrew Peterson - $1.99
7. Stop the Wedding (A romantic comedy), Stephanie Bond – 99 cents
8. Berin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 – William L. Shirer - $1.99
9. First to Kill (The Nathan McBride Series), Andrew Peterson - $2.99
10. Checkmate (A Neighbor from Hell),  R. L. Mathewson - $2.99

What stands out is how many of the books are part of a series. A strategy that has been successful is to offer one book at a very low price in order to hook readers, and then up the price of the next one. Maybe that’s what accounts for the dollar difference in the price of the two books in the Nathan McBride series.

This underlines what a publishing consultant told me at the Alaska Writers Guild Conference earlier this year:

The future belongs to the prolific writers who are good at marketing and who don’t mind sticking to the genre that brought them success.

That’s why I always suggest to writers that they write the kind of thing they can imaging continuing to write for a long time. When something is a success, your readers will want more of the same.

(For friendly guidance in writing your ebook or other writing project, get my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

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Marketing Your Writing: persevere--with what works (10 of 10)

Marketing Your Writing: pay attention to the marketplace (9 of 10)

Ebooks - why everybody is getting into the act and what it means for writers

Digital Book World reports that lots of companies are jumping onto the ebook bandwagon:

“AskMen [one of the top men-focused lifestyle sites on the web] is part of a growing list of non-book-publishers that are entering the ebook publishing business.

Most recently, Newsweek/Daily Beast entered into a partnership with Vook to publish ebooks. 

Playboy launched a series of shorts for the Kindle, the Washington Post announced an e-book program, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, a trade publication focused on the higher education field, launched an e-book business.

Other notable companies to jump into the space are magazine publishers Conde Nast and Hearst and NBC News, a division of NBC Universal.

And the Wall Street Journal has recently rejuvenated its e-book program."

It makes sense. AskMen has 20 million unique visitors per month, why not sell them ebooks on popular topics?

For writers it offers the chance to get your book published by companies that have powerful marketing platforms. Although many things have changed, one that hasn't is that it's difficult to make people aware of your book. If you can team up with a company that already has access to a large number of readers who might be interested in your work, why not do it?

One tip: Don't wait for these companies to come to you. If you have ideas that fit their target audience, take action. Find out who is handling their ebooks division and reach out to those people. 

(Another thing that hasn't changed is that what you write has to be good. For friendly guidance from idea through to publicaiton, see my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

 

 

 

 

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Marketing Your Writing: pay attention to the marketplace (9 of 10)

What is an "Enhanced" eBook?

What kinds of books will readers want in 2013?

People sometimes ask me what kinds of stories I think are going to be popular in the next year or two. I wish I knew! I certainly didn't see the "50 Shades" craze coming, and if somebody had pitched me the idea of "Hunger Games" as a teen or Young Adult book, I would have guessed that no publisher would touch a book in which kids kill other kids. Given that track record, you may not want to pay any attention whatsoever to my guess, but I'll make it anyway.

It was prompted by a quote in the LA Times by animator and writer/artist Louis Del Carmen:

"I also gravitate to the underdog, “one person against the (blank)” stories, where the individual is dwarfed by the oppression of the forces of antagonism."

I think those kinds of stories will resonate more and more because the problems we face these days--whether global warming, the rise of the police state, or the threat of terrorism--all seem so large that everybody in one way or another is an underdog.

The antagonists in the story can be metaphors for these kinds of potentially crushing forces, and I think if they also hint at the idea that maybe we will somehow triumph over them they could be very successful.

(For friendly guidance in writing your book, get a copy of "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or you other favourite bookseller.)

The 17-year-old-author with 17 million readers

I wrote here not long ago about Wattpad.com, a site where authors can post their books chapter by chapter. The Bookseller reported recently on one success story involving that site:

 “Abigail Gibbs, 17, began publishing her novel The Dark Heroine: Dinner with a Vampire when she was 15 on the online writer’s platform, Wattpad.

Now HarperFiction commissioning editor Amy McCulloch and Erika Tsang from HarperCollins in the US have pre-empted world English language rights for the novel and its sequel. The rights were acquired for a significant six-figure sum from Scott Mendel at Mendel Media Group LLC.

 On Wattpad, the novel has been read more than 17 million times, as readers follow the story of 18-year-old Londoner Violet Lee, who is kidnapped by the charismatic heir to the vampire throne, Kaspar Varn.

It was released as an e-book on September 13^th (2012), followed by a paperback edition on October 25th.”

Seventeen million is quite a number, but if you go to Wattpad you’ll find plenty of books that have been accessed several million times. The books tend to focus on romance and many of them have a teen audience in mind, but other categories are represented as well. If you want to try out your fiction to see whether it gathers followers (and comments), Wattpad is a good, free way to do so.

(Do you want more tips on writing and marketing what you write? Get my book, Your Writing Coach, published by Nichoals Brealey and available from Amazon and other booksellers.)

Why your ebook title's length matters

Here is a screen shot of an ebook that is being featured on the Kindle site today:

If you go by the title, all you see is "How I Raised Over $35"...not that impressive an amount, is it?

If you go by the part of the cover that's readable in this small image, you will see either "Publisher Needed," or "No Publisher Needed" if you can make out the white "No" against the light green background. 

The actual title of the book is "How I Raised Over $35K in 30 Days to Write My Book (Crowdfunding Tips and Tricks)." To figure out from the shortened title and the tiny cover image what it's really about probably would take more time and effort than most browsers would give it. 

The moral of the story: if possible, create a title that will make sense even when shortened to 21 spaces. In this case, maybe something like "Crowdfund Your Book!" and then make the "How I Raised..." part the subtitle.

Also, make your title and image as easily readable as possible when they are shrunken down to postage stamp size.

If your book is featured, you want people to see instantly what it's about.

(for friendly guidance from idea through to publication, see my book, YOUR WRITING COACH, published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

Marketing Your Writing: Why, How, and the First of Ten Things You Must Do

If people are not aware of what you are offering they can’t buy it. That’s why most writers these days also have to be marketers.

Want to get an agent? You have to sell them on yourself and your work. 

Want to get a publisher (or producer, if you're writing screenplays)? Same challenge.

Planning to self-publish? You have to make people aware of your ebook and convince them it's the right book or ebook for them to buy right now.

Marketing doesn’t necessarily come easily to us and it may not be our favorite activity, but it’s necessary. That’s why over the next ten Tuesdays (or more if the response is good) I want to share with you some of the best strategies and tips that I have discovered and employed.

1: Don’t reinvent the wheel

Two questions can lead you to a much faster and more effective marketing approach. The first one is: What are your successful competitors doing that you can adopt or adapt?

There's a good chance that your most successful competitors have spent a lot of time and money coming up with the methods that are working for them. These are not hidden, they're right out there for you to see in action,analyze, and adapt. 

I'm not suggesting plagiarism. Generally these are methods that are not protected by copyright and you're not doing anything illegal or immoral by figuring out how to use them to promote your product or service.

For instance, let's say you're a coach in the field of nutrition and fitness. You notice that the your successful competitor uses contests to motivate people to sign up for their sales newsletters. There's nothing wrong with coming up with your own contests--don't use exactly the same contest name and don't give away exactly the same thing, but otherwise feel free to copy them.

The second question:

What are successful people or companies in other fields doing that you can adopt or adapt?

In this case you're not looking at competitors but at what's successful in other fields. Sometimes you can copy, other times you might parody. For instance, a while back one of the most talked-about and most successful campaigns was conducted by a company that sells blenders. Their gimmick was to make videos showing their blender destroying a variety of items. These videos got millions of views.

At that time, as a coach you might have garnered attention by using a blender to destroy the foods that people who are trying to get fit or lose weight should avoid--candy bars, potato chips, etc. You would have acknowledged that you were following in the footsteps of the blender campaign.

For example, you might have said something like, "I don't know why those other guys are destroying iPods and wristwatches and all that other stuff--what you really need to destroy if you want more energy, better health, and to be more fit and slim is THIS STUFF! Here we go, candy bar, 543 calories!" And in goes the candy bar. 

That could have made an amusing lead in to your main message that you have a system that will help people to make the right food choices.

One warning: In both instances, be sure you are copying or adapting things that work now. Things are moving so fast that what worked a year ago or even 90 days ago may no longer be as effective. Keep track of what's successful and constantly ask yourself how you can take advantage of it. The video parody I described above would have been great at the time; now, not so much. 

APPLYING THIS TO YOUR WRITING

Who is most successful at marketing the kind of writing you do? What's working for them? This could be a publisher or an individual author. Are they using videos? Contests? Tieing in to events? Giving out free sample chapters?

Who is most successful at marketing other products that appeal to the same target audience as yours? For instance, distributors of independent movies have a lot in common with self-published authors. Or take a look at the most successful people on Kickstarter.com, the crowdfunding site. Don't look only at the successful authors using that site, but also designers, film-makers, artists, etc. What makes their videos stand out? What kinds of incentives do they offer? What kind of sales pitch?

Returning to the timeliness issues, while it's still useful to be aware of the marketing methods used by two of the most successful Kindle authors, John Locke and Amanda Hocking, keep in mind that when they first had success there were not as many Kindle titles available. Now there are hundreds of thousands more, and many of the authors are using the same methods that were a novelty when Locke and Hocking used them. Be sure you are also looking at the methods being used by newer writers whose books are high on the Kindle (and other ebook) charts now. 

(Come back next Tuesday for then next essential marketing strategy. Also find loads of useful information in the chapters on traditional and guerrilla marketing in my book, "Your Writing Coach." You can get it from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller and it's also available as an ebook.)

 

 

 

 

 

Quite Write: next time he'll ask YOU to go in

  The source of this cartoon is Jurgen Wolff's writing blog:                                                                            http://www.TimeToWrite.blogs.com

How much should an ebook cost?

An article by Declan Burke in the Irish Times has an interesting discussion of the price of ebooks. Should they be cheaper than traditional books? Certainly, due to the reduced costs to publishers. But how low should they go? The article says:

“I’ve noticed people tagging the US Kindle edition of Stolen Souls with ‘$9.99 boycott’ and similar at Amazon.com,” says Stuart Neville, the bestselling author of The Twelve, about reader-led demands for lower prices. “I’m amazed that people are that cheap. Do they think a year of my life is worth less than $9.99? Do they really believe that 10 to 12 hours of entertainment isn’t worth the equivalent cost of two or three coffees, or less than two beers? “I think it’s the sense of entitlement that bothers me,” he adds. “It’s particularly common with those who believe they have some sort of right to download music and movies for free.”

“I think they are entitled to expect a lower price,” says Eoin Purcell, commissioning editor with New Island. “For one thing there’s no printing cost, no delivery cost and, in some cases, a much lower retailer discount. On the other hand, design costs still exist, and marketing costs may be higher. In Europe, VAT is an issue and the authors demand a higher royalty. If a publisher is to retain the same margin they have come to expect, then a modest discount is to be expected. Something in the region of 30 to 40 per cent discount on print seems reasonable.”

Many authors think the way to build a following is the offer their first book for something like 99 cents, in hopes that readers who like it will then be willing to pay more for the authors' other books. That worked well when there were not too many titles competing for the readers' attention but not everybody agrees on how effective it is these days. 

Publisher John Mooney of Maverick Press told the Irish Times, “Ebooks written by authors who are not so popular or well known can be discounted to boost sales, but it’s my experience that such discounting doesn’t generate a spike in sales.”

He added, “Maverick House does offer some ebooks at low prices if we feel the author needs support, but this does not guarantee sales. We have digitised our backlist, and the books that sell in large quantities on Kindle and in other digital formats are those offered at full price. People will not purchase books which they do not wish to read just because they are cheap."

Alan Guthrie, co-owner of ebook-only publishing company Blasted Heath, is more sanguine: “The outcry against cheap books has been around for a long time. Ebooks are just the latest to be targeted. If you look back to the 1950s, for instance, the advent of the mass market paperback original caused panic and outrage in the rest of the publishing world. They believed it wasn’t possible to make any money from cheap paperback originals as the profit margins were too slim. And yet, somehow, here we all are.”

There's no clear answer and, as usual, the marketplace will decide. But if you are contemplating writing an ebook my advice is to consider from the start what is going to make it stand out in a crowded marketplace in which many of your competitors will be pricing their offering low.