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.)
Many writers make resolutions or set goals for themselves at the start of the year. Very few are still working on them even one month later.
Often it’s not that they have consciously decided to stop; usually they just sort of forget about the goals because too many other urgent things come up.
That’s why I decided to remind you to remember your goals at the start of every month (which is also a good way of reminding myself of mine, of course). I hope it’ll help both of us stay on track so that at the start of the next year we’re not back to square one.
This post appears on March 1, two months after most people set their resolutions or goals for the year. Of course you may be reading it on some other date. That’s fine—it’s always a good time to check whether you’re moving toward your goals and to take corrective action if you’re not.
If you haven’t set any goals for your writing (for instance, writing a novel, getting an agent, or self-publishing your book) or other parts of your life, you might find it useful to take a look at the posts below in order; even if you have worked through them already, it’s useful to go back to them for a quick review.
If you did set goals for yourself, take a few minutes to answer these questions now:
In the past month, have you been moving toward your most important goals?
If not, what has stopped you or slowed you down? You might find it useful to take a look at thistrouble-shooting guide.
What can you do to get yourself back on track? Don't just do the same things that didn't work last time. Come up with alternatives and keep going until you find what works for you. (If you have trouble brainstorming ideas, see my book, ‘Creativity Now,” published by Pearson and available from Amazon).
What’s the first step you can take today or tomorrow? Commit to it now.
As soon as you have taken the first step select the next step and keep going until you’re making progress.
Once in a while you may find that a goal you thought was important doesn’t turn out to be as meaningful after all. If you’re sure the goal isn’t going to give you what you thought it would, let it go and set a different one. However, the road to every goal is full of challenges, so don’t give up one goal just because you think maybe another one might be easier to accomplish.
If you subscribe to this blog today, in 30 days I’ll be reminding you again. If you have any questions, let me know at jurgenwolff (at) gmail.com. You may also find it useful to read my book, “Focus: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done,” published by Pearson and available from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.
Storify.com offers a different way to tell and find stories. Their site describes it this way:
"Storify users tell stories by collecting updates from social networks, amplifying the voices that matter to create a new story format that is interactive, dynamic and social. Discover meaningful social media from the best storytellers online, including journalists, bloggers, editors and people like you, too.
Our front page displays the best images, videos, links, updates and other media collected by Storify users. You can click on the story associated with each media element to get the context of why it’s interesting. Any element can be re-used for your own stories, or also commented on, liked or shared."
As well as pulling together elements from a variety of sources, you can create a headline, write an introduction, and insert text anywhere in the story to create a flow.
When you're done, you can get an embed code and put the story or a link to it on your own website or blog. You can also notify the people whose work you incorporated. If they notify their followers, it could mean your story gets greater attention.
Here is the first one I've done, on how to be more creative:
Would Storify stories be useful in marketing your work? I haven't used it enought to figure that out, but my hunch is that it could be a tool that isn't yet being overused. I'll keep you posted, and if you've had any experience with it, good or bad, I'd love to hear about them, either in a comment on this post or via email to [email protected]
Many writers make resolutions or set goals for themselves at
the start of the year. Very few are still working on them even one month later.
Often it’s not that they have consciously decided to stop; usually they just sort
of forget about the goals because too many other urgent things come up.
That’s why I
decided to remind you to remember your goals at the start of every month (which is
also a good way of reminding myself of mine, of course). I hope it’ll help both
of us stay on track so that at the start of the next year we’re not back to
square one.
This post appears on February 1, one month after most people
set their resolutions or goals for the year. Of course you may be reading it on some other date. That’s fine—it’s always a good time to check whether
you’re moving toward your goals and to take corrective action if you’re not.
If you haven’t set any goals for your writing (for instance,
writing a novel, getting an agent, or self-publishing your book) or other parts
of your life, you might find it useful to take a look at the posts below in
order; even if you have worked through them already, it’s useful to go back to them for a
quick review.
If you did set goals for yourself, take a few minutes to answer
these questions now:
In the past month, have you been moving toward your most
important goals?
If not, what has stopped you or slowed you down? You might find it useful to take a look at this trouble-shooting guide.
What can you do to get yourself back on
track? Don't just do the same things that didn't work last time. Come up with alternatives and keep going until you find what works for you. (If you have trouble brainstorming ideas, see my book, ‘Creativity Now,”
published by Pearson and available from Amazon).
What’s the first step you can take today or tomorrow? Commit
to it now.
As soon as you have taken the first step select the next
step and keep going until you’re making progress.
Once in a while you may find that a goal you thought was
important doesn’t turn out to be as meaningful after all. If you’re sure the
goal isn’t going to give you what you thought it would, let it go and set a
different one. However, the road to every goal is full of challenges, so don’t
give up one goal just because you think maybe another one might be easier to
accomplish.
If you subscribe to this blog today, in 30 days I’ll be
reminding you again. If you have any questions, let me know at
jurgenwolff (at) gmail.com. You may also find it useful to read my book,
“Focus: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done,” published by
Pearson and available from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.
Today I wanted to share three quotes about writing and about life.
"I read and I walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me." -- Anna Quindlen
That one hits home for me; I used to wander around the Stanford campus late at night when I was a student there, sometimes feeling like I was in a movie but not knowing whether it was a comedy or a tragedy. Come on, those are the years when it's easy to imagine yourself as some kind of doomed hero because you don't yet have a mortgage to think about and you doubt you'll ever make it to old age (40) anyway. I think it did occur to me that the person who had to step out of the darkness could be me, or even that it had to be me, I just didn't know how--but it always seemed to involve writing.
"You fail only if you stop writing" -- Ray Bradbury
Bradbury never did stop writing, not until he stopped breathing. He gave you the feeling they were pretty much the same thing.
After the 99th rejection or a few particularly frustrating incidents it can be tempting to stop, but one thing I've found helpful is to switch to a different genre or even a totally different type of writing for a while.
I've spent a lot of my career writing scripts but when I got fed up with some of the more aggravating aspects of that, I switched to writing non-fiction books.
At the moment I'm back to writing a script, but also trying out something totally new for me, a young adult novel.
Yes, it's good to focus your efforts because breaking in to any type of writing is a challenge and you don't want to spread yourself too thin. However, sometimes it's healthy. As the saying goes, sometimes a change is as good as a rest.
"Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with completely different people." - Roald Dahl
Being in a different place with completely different people is what made me love reading, and makes me love writing.
With a few exceptions, I've avoided writing (or reading, or seeing films) about serial killers, child molesters, and murderers, mostly because these are not people I want to spend time with.
If you do enjoy vicariously confronting horrible people, perhaps making sure they get their comeuppance more often than is the case with their real-life counterparts, that's great, too.
Either way, I hope you're taking advantage of our unique ability as writers to create worlds and people to live within and to share with thousands or even millions of our fellow escapees.
(For writing advice from the finest writers, including Dickens, Jane Austen, Robert Louis Stevenson, as well as modern masters like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, get a copy of my book, "Your Creative Writing Masterclass," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)
In the previous posts I introduced you to the zero-based planning approach to helping you decide what changes you might want to make in your life, whether that's writing a novel, getting healthier, improving a relationship or anything else. Then we looked at the seven steps to reaching your writing or other goal and, in yesterday's post, a specific example (getting organized).
When you buy a product usually there is a section at the back of the users manual suggesting some things you can do in case it doesn’t work correctly. This section is the equivalent of that for the goal setting and achievement process. These are the most typical issues that come up and how to deal with them:
“I’m halfway to achieving my first goal but I’m wondering whether I should switch to another one that now seems more important.”
Review my post on the roller coaster ride. If your doubts are similar to the ones described there, keep going.
Once in a while it does happen that events justify switching goals in mid-stream. For instance, if you decided to work on a career goal but then your doctor tells you that your check-up shows that your blood pressure is dangerously high, it makes sense to switch to a goal relating to improving your fitness and having a better diet.
Most of the time, though, these doubts are generated when things get a bit more challenging and you should keep going.
“I’m frustrated by how slowly I’m progressing on the steps I’m working on.”
Break the process down into smaller steps. For some things it may require steps that may seem ridiculously small, but that’s OK. For instance, if you are resisting making a difficult phone call, step one might be just writing down the number. Step two is jotting down the key points you need to make. Step 3 is dialing the number...
“I’m making changes but I’m not getting support from my family or my friends. In fact, some of them seem to be actively discouraging me.”
Some people feel threatened when others make changes in their lives. For example, if they’re out of shape and see that you’re losing weight and becoming more fit they may unconsciously see it as a criticism of them. If you’re not spending as much time with them as you used to they may interpret that as some kind of rejection.
If you help them understand how important this is to you and actively ask for their support, it should reassure them.
However, if you can’t find the support you need from them you may need to find some like-minded people in a group (check out MeetUp.com to see if there is a relevant group in your vicinity) or online.
“The things I’m doing don’t seem to be working. Where do I find alternatives to try?”
The best source of advice and inspiration comes from people who have already done what you are trying to do. There are books and blogs for just about anything you can think of, and those are a good starting point.
Don’t be afraid of approaching people for help. You can contact them via email or Facebook. Some may be too busy to answer but many are willing to point you in the right direction.
“There are some people in my current life that are not part of my ideal life, but I’ll hurt their feelings if I don’t continue my relationships with them.”
Most people find it necessary to make compromises in getting closer to the ideal life they imagine for themselves.
One person I spoke to about this said, “I love my children, but to be honest if I had it to do over again I don’t think I’d have kids.” That doesn’t mean he should put them up for adoption, but we looked at the things about having children that bothered him and he was able to change some of those.
Having energetic and noisy kids around all the time made him feel he didn’t have time to reflect and be alone. His solution was to go for a brisk walk for 30 minutes every day, which also supported his fitness goals.
Sometimes, however, it is necessary to phase some people out of your life. If you have a drinking problem, for instance, and your hard-drinking buddy constantly encourages you to drink even though you’ve explained the situation to him, it’s probably time to end that relationship (or to get together with him only for breakfast or other situations where drinking isn’t a likely option).
“I’ve achieved one of my main goals but it didn’t make me as happy as I thought it would.”
This is a common situation with goals that are about money or possessions. An interesting study done some years ago revealed that people at all income levels said they’d be happy if they earned 10% more than their current level. In other words, people who made 50,000 said an extra 5,000 would make them happy, and people who made 300,000 said another 30,000 would do it.
A more recent study revealed that once people have enough money to pay for the basics--a decent place to live, food, clothing, and a bit for recreation, earning more doesn’t make any difference to their level of happiness.
There’s nothing wrong with working toward material things, but it is useful to ask yourself at the start what you think these will bring you. Often there is a more direct route to what it is we really want.
The person who wants an expensive sports car in order to feel good about himself would be better off spending the money on some counseling, or spending time helping other people. One therapist pointed out that the best way to feel good about yourself is to do something worth feeling good about.
The person who wants a bigger house in a better neighborhood in order to show off his status will find that in the new neighborhood there’ll be somebody who has a yet bigger house, and decide he needs an even bigger one.
It’s fascinating but a bit sad that people who find that the next higher level of stuff doesn’t make them happy conclude that the problem is that they actually need even more stuff.
Also, it may be that you don’t need to own the thing in question or to spend money for it. A free-lance writer friend who needed a quiet place to do his writing thought he'd have to rent an office. Instead, he was able to arrange to use a friend’s house while the friend was at work, in exchange for feeding the friend's cat.
I hope these suggestions are useful. If you run into a different problem, email me at jurgenwolff (at) gmail.com and I'll try to come up with a solution. Also, you'll find lots of friendly guidance on how to be more productive in my book, "FOCUS: Use the power of targeted thinking to get more done." It's published by Pearson and you can get it from Amazon or your other favorite book seller.
In the previous post, I shared the seven steps writers and others can take in order to reach their goals, whether that is writing a novel, improving your health, making more money, or just about anything. In this post I'm giving a specific example of each step--in this case the goal is getting my office organized.
1: Choose the one area of your life in which changes would improve your life the most.
Organizing my office and my files, including financial records.
2: Compare how things are now to how you’d like things to be.
How things are now: The office is cluttered and has gone from controlled chaos to uncontrolled chaos. It is difficult to find things and the financial and other records are in disarray. There is a large backlog of paperwork.
My zero-based outcome: My office is uncluttered, the files are in order, all of the office equipment works well, there is a simple system for dealing with financial records, there is a stand-up desk as well as the regular desk, the walls feature artwork that is easy to change periodically, things that are not needed frequently are out of sight but easy to find.
3: Work out the first few steps you can take now in order to bring about at least some parts of the outcomes you want.
First step: go through all the paperwork in “triage” mode--that is, separate anything that requires immediate or short-term attention from the rest. Discard anything that is not needed at all. Put financial documents in separate pile.
Second step: act immediately on anything that has financial consequences--pay any bills that are due, invoice for payment due, cancel standing orders that no longer apply, cancel any services no longer needed.
Third step: deal with the rest of the “triage” paperwork.
Fourth step: set up new system for dealing with financial records and filing, to including scanning important documents and saving them using Dropbox, calendar reminder system, etc.
4: Work out exactly how you will implement the first step. This includes any resources you will need (including time) and how you’ll get them. For instance, if you decide that your first step in a larger fitness plan is to be able to walk a mile in ten minutes, decide not only when and where you’ll do your walking practice but also what you will stop doing in order to free up that time.
Plan for first step: clear desktop to give room for the sorting, get marker pen and sticky notes to label documents, folders, stapler. Use two weekend days that normally would have been days off.
5: Commit to your first step and the effort it requires. You can find an online “goals buddy” or put this on your Facebook page, or ask your spouse or partner. Tell them your plan and report to them daily on your progress. You may also find it useful to use Stickk.com for the same purpose.
Set this up using Stickk.com.
6: Adjust as necessary. If something isn’t working, don’t give up, just come up with a different strategy. If you think of a way to do it faster or better as you go along, use it.
For instance, if motivation flags during boring sorting, put on energizing music. Improvement idea: during the sorting, label folders with the most important categories to have those ready for next step.
7: Celebrate the achievement of your first step.
Celebrate by taking a walk and browsing in a book store for 30 minutes.
8:When you’ve reached the first goal, do step two using the same process.
Use pile of financial-related documents and continue with plan.
I hope that helps you to come up with a similar plan for whichever goal is most important to you right now. However, it's not uncommon to run into some challenges along the way, so the next and final post in this series about how writers and others can reach their goals will give some tips for troubleshooting.
(for more friendly guidance on managing your time and using right-brain methods to reach your goals, get a copy of my book, "FOCUS: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done." It's published by Pearson and you can get it it from Amazon or your other favourite bookseller.)
In the previous posts we've looked at some big questions to ask youself about your future as a writer and as a person, and how to use the zero-based planning approach to help you come up with a powerful picture of how you want each of the parts of your life to be--regardless of how they are right now.
If you haven't yet written a dramatic and motivating description of how you'd like each part of your life to be, go back to the previous post and do that now. I suggested you THINK BIG and gave you some tips on how to do that. If that's still difficult for you, this true story may help:
Six years ago some young guys set out on a two-week road trip on which they wanted to achieve as many items as possible of the 100 on their "bucket list." It turned into a way of life for them, and they pledged that for each one they managed to do they would help someone else attain a goal important to that person.
Among the things they've done is being on the Oprah show, playing ball with President Obama, streaking a stadium, and making a $300,000 donation to charity. Their adventures are recounted in a book called "What Do You Want to Do Before You Die?"
One of the guys, Ben Nemtin, points out that most people aim for a realistic goal. They're afraid of failure, so they don't reach too far. The number of people aiming for the "unrealistic" goals are fewer. "Therefore," he writes, "not only do you statistically have a better chance of achieving what may seem like an unrealistic goal, doing so fuels you. Once you feel the first high of accomplishing something major and seemingly unattainable, you want to go bigger and badder, and you force yourself to fulfill the need all the more. Even better, the technically smaller goals suddenly seem less daunting."
Of course setting the goal is only the first step and wishing won't make it so. You have to take action, and the action also has to be big. A few suggestions:
* Study the behaviour of the people how have actually done whatever it is you want to do, not the people who just write about it. There are loads of self-help books by people telling you how to lose weight, get rich, have better relationships, etc. who haven't actually done it themselves.
* Dare to ask. Most people never even try to get advice or help from those who are successful in their field. They assume those people are too busy or wouldn't be interested in helping someone else. Often that's not the case.
* Be willing to allocate the resources necessary. Sometimes that's money, but often it's commitment to many hours of effort and not giving up when things get tough. This is why it's important to be sure that you want that goal enough. Some of these resources have a high price, not necessarily financially but in other ways. For instance, how deeply will this cut into the amount of time you have free to spend with family and friends? Will you still have time to exercise and get enough sleep?
* Understand that you can have it all, but not all at the same time. Sometimes people set three goals, any one of which would take total dedication. They will cancel each other out because you have only so much time and energy. Pick the one that is the most important to you. Sometimes achieving that one makes it easier to achieve your number two and number three goals.
* Treat failure" as a setback , not a reason to quit. If you think something is going to work and it doesn't, what's the lesson you can learn from it? Did it tell you something about what might work better? Give yourself a day or two to feel disappointed, then get moving on the next thing you'll try.
* Develop a thick skin. There's never any shortage of people who are happy to advise you (whether asked or not) that you're aiming too high, you'll never do it, you're wasting your time, etc. etc. If you're feeling gracious, say "Thank you, I'll keep that in mind." Then, unless there's something constructive in their comments, forget about them.
All of these are easier said than done. One big goal I felt strongly eough about to do all of these steps, was creating a career as a writer. There have also been big goals I've set and failed to reach (although in some cases I came close). The problem was never that they really were unattainable, it was that I didn't want them badly enough to make all the sacrifices required. There's nothing wrong with that, the only thing I regret is that sometimes it took me too long to come to that conclusion.
If you're ready to consider some Big Hairy Audacious changes for the better, congratulations! In the next post we'll see how to choose one goal and get moving on turning it into a reality.
(If your big goal is writing a book or screenplay, you'll find friendly guidance in my books, "Your Writing Coach" and "Your Creative Writing Masterclass," both published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)
Most people would say obviously a more modest goal is also more realistic.
Wrong! says writer Tim Ferris ("The 4-Hour Work Week"), but his answer isn't based on positive thinking or The Law of Attraction, but on facts.
He cites an experiment he did with two university classes. He said he would give a round-trip ticket to anywhere in the world to any student who could contact three seemingly impossible-to-reach people (Bill Clinton, Warren Buffet, anybody who fit into that category) and get at least one to respond.
Twenty heard the challenge. How many do you think completed it? Zero. Most didn't even try. They had various excuses, but Ferris said they boiled down to one: 'It's hard and one of the others is sure to do it better than me.'
The next year he told this story to a similar class. Knowing how the first class had failed gave this group the courage to try it. Of the 17 who took part, six got their answers within 48 hours.
Ferris writes, "99% of the world is convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre middle ground. The level of competition is thus fiercest for 'realistic' goals, paradoxically making them the most time- and energy-consuming. It is easier to raise $10million than it is $1million. It is easier to pick up the one perfect 10 in the bar than the five 8s."
He also points out that having a big goal motivates you more: "If the potential payoff is mediocre or average, so is your effort."
It's something to keep in mind as you set your writing or other creative goals for the coming year (and if it's a big goal, don't wait for January 1st to get started, the best time is right now!).
(One thing you need if you want to reach a big goal is focus. That also is the name and subject of my book: "Focus: use the power of targeted thinking to get more done." It's published by Pearson and you can get it from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)
In the previous post I quoted successful young songwriter Benny Blanco about writing songs from a female perspective. In the same Huffington Post interview he made a point about song writing that I think also applies to screenwriters and novelists:
"Most of the time when people work with an artist, they don't give them what they need for the future, they give them what their last album sounded like. So it's like, "oh, One Republic needs a song, why don't we send them 10 that sound like 'Apologize?' Or, "Oh, Rihanna needs a song, why don't do 'We Found Love'?" But what you really want to give someone is something they don't know and have them realize they need it."
Too often, screenwriters and novelists do something similar--they look at what's hot these days (vampires, superheroes, etc.) and write something similar, when in fact breakthrough scripts are almost always something different that the studios or producers or publishers didn't know they want until they see them.
I think the best way to come up with those kinds of ideas is to listen to your gut. Shut out the inner critic who tells you "this will never sell," or "this is too eccentric," or "this has never been done before."
Who, other than Charlie Kaufman, thought, "I wish somebody would write a movie about a puppeteer who discovers a portal that takes him into John Malkovich's head"?
Who, other than Alfred Hitchcock, thought "Let's follow this woman as our lead character and then we'll kill her off and have three other people take over as our viewpoint characters"? (I know that "Psycho" was based on a novel by Robert Bloch and adapted by Joseph Stefano, but the book starts with Norman and his mother, not with the Janet Leigh character).
The same is true for novelists. If somebody had told you a couple of years ago, "I'm working on this Young Adult novel in which these kids all have to kill each other until there's only one left!" would you have said, "Wow, that's a sure-fire hit!"? I wouldn't--I would have wondered whether any publisher would touch it, and I would have been wrong, as "The Hunger Games" proved.
The moral of the story is come up with your unique story, don't try to recreate some else's.
(If you'd like some fresh ways to be more creative, get my book, "Creativity Now." It's published by Pearson and available from Amazon or your other favorite book seller. It also makes a great present.)
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.
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.)
Marketing your writing isn't a sprint, it's a marathon. If you're writing articles or scripts, you have to sell only once, to a publisher or producer. If you're writing books, you have to sell twice: to a publisher and then to your target readers (or directly to the latter if you're self-publishing). Marketing to readers isn't a one-time thing, you have to keep at it in order to keep your book selling.
Persistence is important, but only if you're persisting with things that work. Here are some tips on what to do:
1. Keep an open mind. Certainly be aware of what has worked for others, but don't assume it will work the same way for you. Be willing to try anything legal and ethical.
2. Whenever possible, measure the results of each thing you do. For instance, you can easily monitor how many people are visiting your web site, how much time they spend on it, and what they look at while they're there.
Don't forget, though, the one key metric is how many books you are selling.
If ten thousand people download your free sample chapter, but only ten of those order the book, that's not a success. If only 1000 people visit your website that's not a failure, either--if half of them order your book.
3. Do more of what works. If we have two methods, one of which works well and one of which doesn't, our impulse is to spend more time trying to improve the one that doesn't. This isn't the best use of your time. Instead, find ways to do more of the thing that's working, and drop the one that isn't. Add another method and see how well that works in comparison to the one that's giving you the best results currently. If it does better, make that your new number one priority.
4. Don't get bored with what works. Have you noticed that some ad campaigns run for year after year without any changes? That means they're still working. Because you're a creative person you may find yourself getting bored with the look of your website or the wording of your sales page. Your impulse will be to change them just for the sake of change. However, while you should always be testing new methods, don't replace anything that's working until you find something else that works better. Just because you are bored with your materials, that doesn't mean your target audience is.
5. Listen to your customers. Most of them won't bother to communicate with you, but pay attention to the ones that do, whether their feedback is positive or negative.
If it's negative, what can you do to make them happy? There's nothing worse than an unhappy customers going around trashing your brand or your products, so try hard to satisfy them. Are some of them unreasonable? Certainly. Should you have to cater to their whims or unreasonable demands? There's no "should", there's only reality. Unless they demand something totally out of the question, it is better to go the extra mile to satisfy them. Then consider whether their complaint contains any useful information for what you might change or add or subtract from your product or service.
If the feedback is positive, brainstorm how you can build on whatever features they like best, and how to make other potential customers aware of these positive points. Be sure to thank people who compliment you or your product. Ask them whether they are OK with you using their feedback as a testimonial, or ask them to write a review on Amazon or other sites.
This completes my series of ten "must-do" marketing tips for writers, but I'll be returning to this topic frequently. To be sure not to miss any of the posts, please subscribe to this blog. You may also want to get my book, Marketing for Entrepreneurs. It's published by Pearson and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.
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.)
Publishers and agents will tell you not to try to write to
fit a trend. Usually by the time you’d have something ready, the trend would be
over. However, there is one way that I think writers can benefit from looking
at trends.
The specifics of a trend are transitory, but underlying
every trend is some kind of human desire that can be used as the basis of a
powerful story. For example, I looked at the Google Trends page recently. It tells you what the hot searches are that people are conducting on
Google (in this case, in the U.S.). The top two were:
Amanda Todd – the 15 year old hanged herself
after being cyber bullied (over 1 million searches). She had posted a video on
YouTube in which she held up signs that chronicled the abuse she’d endured
after a man she’d been talking to on the net pressured her to send him a
picture of herself, topless. He then circulated that picture. Todd also wrote
of self-harming and previous suicide attempts.
In the UK the biggest trend was, and still is, the unfolding story of the late Jimmy Saville, who abused young
girls for many years with impunity, using his celebrity and philanthropic
activities as a shield. The girls who came forward at the time were
ignored or even punished.
I’m not suggesting that you write a thinly-disguised
fictional version of these sad stories, just they help remind us that it’s
strong emotions, the plight of the underdog and the victimized, and the desire
for acceptance that make us feel something for a real person and also for a
fictional one.
Of course it's not only negative events that work this way; another huge story recently was the man who jumped to earth from the edge of space--someone having the guts to take on a challenge like that thrills and inspires us.
Sometimes fiction has the ability to open people's eyes to the real things that are happening around them or awakens something positive in themselves. Don't underestimate the power of what you write.
It's a cliche to say that even if what you do helps one person that makes it worthwhile, but it's true. The other week, after a talk I gave at the London Screenwriting Festival, someone came up to me and said, "I read your book a few years ago and it changed my life." The book was "Your Writing Coach," and I'm assuking he meant it changed his life for the better. He went off to a talk without giving any further details, but I can tell you that getting a comment like that once in a while makes up for a lot of hours spent working on a book or sometimes getting a disappointing royalty statement.
The market for books and scripts is changing like never before and at a dizzying pace. The biggest change,of course, is the move to digital, by both self-publishers and traditional publishers. Whenever you discern such a shift, it's important to pay attention.
For instance, what does digital do better?
That’s a question authors and publishers are wrestling with
at the moment and one answer may be that it makes it easy to publish books
quickly in response to social developments, in a format that’s longer than a
magazine article but shorter than a book.
One example is “Discordia,” from Random House UK. It’s about
24,000 words and 35 sketches, and priced at £2 ($3)—low enough for an impulse
buy. It was written by journlist Laurie Penny, illustrated in black and white
(so that it would work for ereaders) by Molly Crabapple. They both went to
Greece to see the response to the financial crisis and witnessed the protests
and riots. They went in June, the ebook was released in early October.
This could be a genre brought back to life (it’s been
dormant since the great era of political pamphleteering) and I could imagine it
also would work for any skilful writer who has a niche market in his or her
sights. For instance, if you were a big fan of a particular band, would you pay
£2 for a well-written lengthy insider account of their tour, available a couple
of weeks after the tour finishes? I’m guessing yes.
In the film world, the big development is that the major Hollywood studios are betting everything on a small number of blockbuster films each year. The studio mid-budget picture is rare these days. However, you'll find them on HBO, Showtime, and the like, meaning you may need to learn how the TV market works. There are also still independent producers making those pictures, and the low or micro-budget output is growing all the time thanks to digital distribution.
Whether or not these examples resonate with you, the point is that you must constantly be thinking how you can align your interests and skills with the new realities of the marketplace. The majority of writers (and publishers, and film-makers) will fight them for as long as possible. If instead you embrace them early you will be ahead of the pack.
(One way to stay ahead is to apply your creativity to marketing your work, not only to creating it. For that I have written two books that will help you: Creativity Now, which is full of methods for coming up with fresh ideas, and Marketing for Entrepreneurs, which will guide you through getting your work out into the marketplace. Both are published by Pearson, and both are available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)
