Marketing for Introverts

It's very hard to be both a writer and promoter, the two don't generally sit comfortably together. Writing is an insular activity suited to introverts, and promotion is more suited to extroverts. So what do you do when you need to switch roles? One way is to create promotional material that focuses on the book (or creative work) rather than yourself.  In other words, you tell a story about the story. To promote my novel The Mune on social media, I achieved this by using stop motion films.

Below are some stills taken from the first short film I created using draft pages from my manuscript The Mune, my iPhone (an old SE), a small tripod and an App called Stop Motion Studio.  The tripod was an addition I found necessary after discovering how difficult it was to keep the camera still when moving pieces of paper for each shot - the egg box just didn't cut it. Even though it took hours to complete, I enjoyed the process much more than standing in front of a camera

Using an App like Stop Motion Studio made the whole process easier and, as I mentioned, you don't need the latest phone to achieve good results, just a willingness to make mistakes. You also need a lot of Blu Tack! My whole spend was under £10 because I used objects I already had, such as a shoebox painted black for the staging. 

If this feels too difficult, you could consider creating a reel. You could choose photographs related to your work and record yourself speaking. Most social media platforms have this function but if, like me, you want more control, you could use PowerPoint slides and insert the audio (then export it into a MP3 file) to achieve good results.

Even in our current Celebrity Culture there are options. Story-based marketing works well to grab scrollers attention and also prepares you for interviews - highlighting key aspects of your novel .

Going round in circles

Are you a writer? Is there any particular way in which you like to kick-start your novels (or short stories)? I'm not sure if I always start the same way. Sometimes it's with an incident that then grows into a longer story. Sometimes it's with the victim, and sometimes I start by thinking of the perpetrator first. Certainly that's what I'm doing in my second novel, Washed in the Blood.

But I asked established crime writer, Margot Kinberg, to talk to us about her methods. Here's what she said.

Will it Go Round in Circles?*

Thanks so much for inviting me to guest-post – I’m honoured. One of the challenges writers face is taking all of those creative ideas that always seem to pop up at either 2 am, or in the middle of a traffic jam, and putting them into some kind of coherent story.  Every writer handles this differently, so I can only share the way I go about it. But here’s how the process works for me.

I write crime fiction, so in my stories, there’s invariably at least one murder, and at least one murder victim. And that’s where I always start. Who’s the victim? What is that person like?  I’ve gotten inspiration from many places for the kind of person who would make a good victim. There really is no set pattern there, at least for me. But once I decide on who the victim is, then I get to work on setting up the story.

One way to look at the way I do things is a set of circles. First, of course, there’s the smallest circle around the victim. What is her or his personality? What is that person’s background?  What about that person might drive someone to murder?  Once I know the victim a little, it’s time for the next circle: the victim’s close friends, family and so on.

In that second circle is where you often find the suspects in a murder mystery, so that’s where I start adding in people who may have something to gain by killing the victim. In one of my stories, for instance, my victim has something valuable that one suspect wants. Another suspect feels threatened by something the victim knows. Another is obsessed with the victim. Well, you get the idea. This is also the place where one can add in another circle for the people the victim comes into occasional contact with – sort of an ‘outer circle’ of people. Those are people who can give an interesting perspective on the victim and certainly could be suspects.

Then I add another circle, separate from the victim’s – the sleuth’s circle. After all, it’s hard to do a crime novel if nobody tries to solve the crime. My sleuth is Joel Williams, a former cop, now a university professor of criminal justice. He has his own circle, including his wife, his contacts at the police department, his university colleagues, his students, and so on. Those circles are important (at least to me) because my sleuth is not a cop or PI. So he doesn’t have any official reason to be investigating anything. And nobody is required to tell him anything. That means that one of his circles has to overlap with one of the victim’s circles.

Let me give an example. In one of my stories, my sleuth is working on a research project with two colleagues. In the process of that research they uncover a ‘cold case’ that leads to a not-so-cold murder. In this case, that research circle overlaps with one of the first victim’s circles. That step, as I say, is perhaps less of a critical issue for police procedurals or PI novels, where the sleuth is supposed to investigate. That’s what cops and PIs are paid to do.

Once I have my circles set up, I outline the action in the story. I add in things such as where things happen, how exactly Joel Williams gets involved, and who has critical information for the case. With that rough structure in place, it’s time for the details.

One thing I like about this approach is that it allows for flexibility. It lets the writer put in as many or as few characters as needed. The story can take place at any time, in any place, and feature just about any kind of victim. So there’s a lot of ‘wiggle room.’

I also like the way the circles encourage me to add character development and sub-plots. As I look at each circle I see opportunities to sketch in things such as people’s home lives, minor characters and the other details that make a story (hopefully!) more interesting.

Circles don’t work for everyone of course. More than anything else I believe that each writer has to find her or his own way to frame ideas and get those ideas written. But as for me? Yeah, I go around in circles. ;-)

Many thanks again for hosting me!! Please feel free to get in contact with me (margotkinberg(at)gmail(dot)com) if you want to connect.

*NOTE: The title of this post is the title of a Billy Preston song, co-written with Bruce Fisher.

Margot Kinberg is the author of the Joel Williams mystery series. She blogs at http://margotkinberg.wordpress.com

Thinking of self publishing?

So you've decided to go it alone. The next question is, print book or e-book? Well, Philippa has talked about her experiences of using print-on-demand services. And this may well be the way you want to go (there's no reason why you can't do both). But I chose to take the route of self-publishing on line.

The first thing you will need is a cover. It's important that this cover is one that will still look good reduced to a thumbprint, one that will stand out and mark your novel as professional. And I'm afraid that, for that, you will have to pay. The company I used was called 2h Design Consultancy www.nedof2h.net and the guy I dealt with was Ned Hoste. It was pricey, but the service was excellent. It didn't take more than a few days before six options were winging their way to me. The one I chose wasn't exactly one of the ones he sent, but had elements from several incorporated into the final result. I recommend them.

           
Now I'm no technophobe, and I guess I thought I would find the next part easy. I'd spent quite a bit of time on-line, investigating sites which gave you information on how to do it yourself, sites which offered to do it for you (for a fee) and sites which promoted themselves as e-publishers, and had gathered a considerable amount of information. Well it wasn't as easy as I thought it was going to be. For a start I was a bit bewildered by the information on the type of formatting that was required. It seemed that different e-book sellers required different formats, and so just reading the instructions put out by Amazon for Kindle would only go so far. And I didn't want to limit my market to just one seller. So in the end I chose the company that seemed to have the strongest reputation, which was Bookbaby.

Were they helpful? Well, yes and no. They claim that you can just send them a Word document and they will do the rest. So I sent them a Word document, along with the fee (which isn't extortionate). Not so fast. Apparently, I discovered, although this was indeed a Word doc., it had the wrong formatting. Well, I had thought (and to be honest, I still do think) that putting in the correct formatting was what I was paying them to do. Now I was lost. It wasn't that I couldn't understand what was needed. It was that I couldn't work out how to take out all the formatting I'd put in.

So, and I totally advise this to anyone who is struggling with technology, I went to a geek forum, and I asked the question. As it happened I'd been chatting on this forum for a while, ever since I developed my own website, and so I wasn't just a newbie asking for favours. That can get right up people's noses. And there I found a Good Samaritan who DID IT FOR ME! She even reformatted the book correctly and said it only took her about twenty minutes.(Of course I now needed to learn to do it myself, and when I've mastered it I'll post the details).

Once it was in the correct format, the new, smart cover attached, I re-sent it to Bookbaby and soon it was on all the e-book retailers' lists.

Wow! Now everybody's flocking to buy it, yes? Well, er, no, actually. Because here's the rub. Whether you choose to self-publish through print on demand, or through e-sellers, the marketing and publicity is all down to you. It can feel really heady initially, when friends and acquaintances are reading it, they're recommending it to their friends, you're getting some fab reviews on Amazon. Philippa even got her book taken up by a reading group. But once that's over, you need to be thinking of how to get your book out there, and noticed (and bought and read, obviously). So how?

Well, the standard response is: Social Media. Of which there are many forms. I'll have a look at them, and what's worked for me, in the next post, but let me tell you this much: it's a long, slow haul.

Guest Spot: What an editor can offer, by E.V. Seymour

Congratulations! You’ve written your novel. In the process you’ve expended blood, sweat and tears and enough energy to power the Grid for a month. Your other half has read it and so have your friends. They all declare it a brilliant creation, so much so that you think you should simply send it out to a few chosen agents, sit back and wait for the phone to ring. What could possibly go wrong? Answer: quite a lot.

The problem is one of objectivity. Naturally, those who care about you and want you to succeed are going to pull their punches. (They’ve seen you sweat for the past year or so, remember.) For example, are they honestly going to point out that your main character is a weed; your story has the pace of a sick snail; your police procedure/research is, ahem, ‘unresearched,’ or your climactic scene lacks conflict and tension? Of course not! The more discerning of your mates may say something like: ‘I really loved that scene in the nightclub/in the empty house/in the burning building.’ They might even be bold enough to say: ‘I’m not sure I got why X did Y.’ Even if they pinpoint a problem, they are unlikely to be able to help you fix it. This is where people like me come in.

It’s extremely rare for a novel to tick all the boxes without a little intervention. The mundane truth is that editors encounter the same flaws time and time again. Simply put, my job involves identifying weak areas, flagging these up and offering suggestions for improvement. Weak areas can range from poor spelling and grammar, and repetition of the same word in a paragraph – I’ve twice suggested literacy courses – poor plot structure where the narrative is skimmed and scenes aren’t fully dramatised – a series of company meetings doesn’t constitute a story – to main protagonists who couldn’t cross the road without help, let alone sort out a bad guy. My pet hate is split point of view. I once encountered four different viewpoints in a single paragraph. It was the literary equivalent of watching a doubles match of ping-pong.

My skills don’t simply lie in picking up on these little idiosyncrasies. Somehow, I have to get the message across in the kindest manner possible. I find humour helps and I really endeavour to tailor the report to the individual. Psychology plays an important role. I want to inspire not crush and it’s sometimes hard to tell a writer, who has rightly set such store by his or her work, that certain elements are not working as well as they might. Occasionally, I’ll receive a piece of work and quickly realise that crime fiction isn’t really the genre that best showcases a writer’s talent. Suggesting to a wannabe crime author that their strengths lie in writing historical fiction can be a delicate business. I’ve noticed recently that constructive criticism is especially difficult to get across to clients who have had sparkling careers in other fields. Once or twice, I’ve been on the business end of a writer’s wrath, which is unpleasant for me, but a disaster for him or her. Believe it or not, and in common with a good agent, editors are batting for the writer. As a published writer myself, I know only too well what it’s like to receive rejection. I understand how damaging it can be to one’s self-esteem, how it eats away, if you let it. With this in mind, how can I not be on your side?

Crime fiction is one of the most competitive genres. With the seismic changes in the publishing industry over the past ten years, it’s harder than ever to break in. Cutting to the chase, it can cost in terms of time, mental stamina, occasionally relationships, and money. And here’s the rub.

In times of recession it may seem madness to spend your hard earned cash on professional advice. The alternative is to risk rejection from a dozen or more agents and have your confidence shattered; or self-publish, receive poor sales and rubbish reviews from armchair critics and, erm… have your confidence shattered! Too often writers seek help after the proverbial horse has careered out onto the road and hit a bus. Why put yourself through the misery when, with a little tweaking, rewriting and polishing, you can produce a piece of work of which you can be justly proud?

One final point: there are a lot of rookie outfits offering ‘professional expertise’. It pays to check these out and discover exactly what you are going to get for your money. Find out whether an editorial consultancy has a close relationship with agents. Will that editorial consultancy scout and recommend? In the past two years, I’ve seen three of my ‘babies’ obtain representation. As someone who once used the services of an editorial consultancy a decade ago, I can say, hand on heart, that it was the best decision I ever made. Soon afterwards, I obtained an agent.

E.V. Seymour is the author of five published novels. Under a closely guarded pseudonym, her sixth novel is published in August 2013 with Cutting Edge Press.
Find her novels at:
E.V. Seymour

The Middle bit by Philippa

Writing the book was fun and the book launch exciting, but the middle bit was hard and knowing what to do with the 67,000 or so words I’d written was tricky. I knew I wanted family and friends to read them at the very least and had a sense I wanted to see and feel a physical book. I scoured the Writer’s Handbook 2011 for ideas on publishers and agents not really knowing what I needed, when along came the Good Housekeeping Novel Competition. My novel seemed to fit their criteria so I bravely sent off the first 5,000 words, full synopsis, 100 word mini biography and entry form. Even doing that felt an achievement but needless to say I didn’t win. The exercise was useful and made me polish up format and presentation and gave me a deadline.

     After just a pang of disappointment when results were announced I sent off similar packs to half a dozen publishers and agents with little or no response. I decided I had to use the ‘who you know’ system and sent off a pack to a publisher who used a friend’s printing company for all their work. They were kind in their reply but it wasn’t their genre of inspirational, self help and health writing. I did try to say my story was inspirational and had a fair bit of medical stuff in it but they didn’t buy that. I’d already realised I had to make an individualised pitch to each publisher or agent to have any hope at all.

     One particular agent gave me a reply that was so negative I couldn’t even talk about it for weeks. He thought the story had been a good exercise but was full of beginner’s mistakes and needed to be consigned to a drawer. Eventually I took it out of that drawer and decided to fight back, replying to each criticism and defending my characters – by this stage I loved and knew them well. Sometime later I received a letter saying he’d had the manuscript read by an agent’s reader and a copy of their report was included. It pointed out mistakes and errors which I accepted – too much ‘telling’ and not enough ‘showing’ (that old chestnut), too easy resolution of conflict, not enough conflict in the second half etc. but the negative comments were nicely balanced by a few positive ones, just as a good teacher would do, and I found a little hope returned to my soul.

     That letter made me brave enough to approach Wivenbooks, the publishing arm of Wivenhoe Bookshop which publishes one or two choice authors, but also supports a print-on-demand facility for a few others willing to pay. Things really got moving and Catherine Dodds designed my lovely front cover and Ginny Waters got me an ISBN number and registered the details with Nielsens data for books. Wivenbooks suggested  names of possible editors and Jane Olorenshaw did a copy-edit for a further fee. Copy-editing was surprisingly good fun with e-mails bouncing back and forth – at my request the main aim was SPAG and continuity rather than content and that kept the fee down. Once we were happy Catherine sent the document off to Lightening Source and I was delighted with the proof print of the book. We pressed the button and ordered 100 copies. I have now done 4 print runs (the 5 day delivery time is excellent) and I’m exploring e-publishing.

     Novel number 2 is in it’s infancy and having learned a lot from novel number 1 I feel just a little better prepared.

Tips:-

Consider options – competitions, publisher, agent, self publishing, e-publishing.

Assess costs and keep an account.

Talk to everyone and anyone with contacts or experience.

Be patient.

Get an editor – copy-edit at the very least.

Be prepared for knock backs but stay positive.

Ready for publication? Part 2. The Feedback

In the last post we were waiting for my debut novel to come back from my editor. Was I going to be dancing round the house, reading bits of the report out to anyone who'd listen? Or was I going to be completely crushed?

Well neither, as it happens, but it wasn't altogether comfortable reading. There were twenty-eight pages of where I'd gone wrong. And the thing was, I could see that the editor was right. I recognised what she was saying. She wasn't telling me the book was terrible. In fact quite a bit of what she said was complimentary. But she certainly didn't pull any punches in the places where she felt I needed to tighten up the dialogue, places where the plot was falling flat, additional scenes I really ought to write, scenes I didn't need. And that, basically, my main character was a wimp!

The novel needed a lot of work. But was I downhearted? Well, yes, if you want to know the truth. But I'm a bit of a sticker, and besides, I was starting to see where I could make improvements. And the editor was very helpful: I sent a couple of revised scenes to her for comments and she made more observations and suggestions. Then having rewritten it almost from scratch, two of my writers' group members had a go at it. This didn't result in a re-write, but it certainly pointed out some careless mistakes and some more tightening up of dialogue and action.

And then guess what, I bit the cash bullet again. I paid for another critique. There was a 20% discount for a second read, but as the novel was now fifteen thousand words longer, it didn't really work out much cheaper. I chose to go with the same editor as before, because I felt we had developed an understanding of where my novel was going. And this time I got about twenty pages of notes. But at least now the changes were minor, and there were more positive comments. One excellent suggestion she made was to re-write a particular scene from the point of view of a different character. So I tried this, and she was right, it worked really well.

Of course, I didn't do absolutely everything my editor suggested. I'm not a sheep, after all, and in the end it's my novel. But her advice and recommendations were invaluable, and enabled me to create a much stronger story and with a much more credible main character.

Another good suggestion she made was to read it aloud to myself, all the way through. So a packet of Strepsils later I could now see how often my characters began dialogue with 'Well' (even though I'd known this and thought I'd eradicated it already) and the fact that the police discussed a partial thumbprint five times. Five times. Please!

So if you're reading this and you're in a similar position, don't try and go it alone. Don't be abashed at asking for help. Read the acknowledgements bit in a lot of novels and you might wonder how much the author actually contributed. Get the best advice you can, and that probably means paying for it some way or another. It might mean you undertake a serious creative writing course, such as a degree or an MA, like Sue. Or get yourself onto an Apprenticeship scheme like Clare. Or, like me, work with a professional editor you feel is on your wavelength. And if you can, find a group of writers with some experience to help you stay on the straight and narrow. If there isn't anything near you, join an on-line critique group such as Word Cloud or Authonomy. If you like crime you could join my Google+ group Creative Crime Writers. Post your stories or reviews on there and join the community.Creative Crime Writers



The other thing you need to do is read, read, read, especially, but not exclusively, in your chosen genre. It's only by studying others that you learn what works and what doesn't.

Altogether my book went through at least seven re-writes, probably more. It was at this stage I began the wearisome process of submitting to agents. And you know the rest. That's where we came in.



Next time I'll talk about getting your book ready for e-publishing.

Where to start, by Philippa

It has to start somewhere –  in the middle, at the end, or sometimes at the beginning – a dilemma for any writer planning his or her plot, but also a difficult question to address as I think about how my own recently published book/story/novel (call it what you like) came about.

    To start at the end ‘There’s No Sea in Salford’, my debut novel, was published in March this year by Wivenbooks, on a print-on-demand basis. On 26 April I had a wonderful book launch evening in Wivenhoe and sales of the 225 page paperback have been ticking away nicely since from Wivenhoe Bookshop and also Red Lion Books in Colchester. My main aim in publishing in this way was to allow family and friends to read my book without breaking the bank and not necessarily to make money out of the project – I am just about breaking even on the print costs.

    So that’s the end, but as for the beginning it’s hard to say when that was. I’d worked in Sri Lanka for 3 months in 1978 so I guess that’s when it really started but the actual story was inspired by the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami which so badly affected that country. Retirement in 2010 from a busy life as a GP gave me time to practise writing and a short course with the Open University called ‘Start Writing Fiction’ gave me a little confidence. I played with various story lines and created characters to take part. Each main character was given a filing card with personal details and dates logged to help me keep track, and I drew an extended flow chart to link their interactions. I read more about Sri Lanka and the politics of  recent times. ‘Woolf in Ceylon’ by Christopher Ondaatje and Leonard Woolf’s ‘The Village in the Jungle’ were fascinating and ‘Sri Lanka in the Modern Age, a history of contested identities’ by Nira Wickramasinge was helpful for reference while ‘Brixton Beach’ and ‘The Swimmer’ by Roma Tearne were just fun to read.

    Procrastination followed – I could never find the right time to actually get on with the writing until I read about National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo (are you tough enough?) in Writing Magazine. I logged on, signed up and truly got started on 1st November 2011. I did just what they said and wrote without stopping to edit or correct grammar, pouring out 50,000 words in the month of November. At the end I got a certificate and the satisfaction of being able to say I’d written the skeleton of a novel, to either leave in a drawer somewhere or to rework into something more polished.

    I enjoyed fiddling around with it, adding bits, subtracting bits, changing words, changing names, but with hind-sight I was far too attached to my first 50,000 draft to change the structure and that could have been a mistake ( Stephen King in ‘On Writing’ does advise ‘kill your darlings’). By now I had 67,000 words and it felt more like a novel.