Once upon a time, there were authors and publishers. Then things changed, and authors had to be both – ideally at the same time. No problem, right? Well…
I tried for quite a while – more than a year, to be precise – to do both write and promote, and I found it to be a brutal assignment (especially when the demands of having a job and a family are added to the dance card). One result was that my progress on my second book slowed to a crawl, and often a standstill for months at a time. Clearly, there’s something wrong when promoting your writing gets in the way of your writing.
Which is why it’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything here. The reason hasn’t been neglecting my writing, but exercising discrimination regarding where and on what to write about – on social media to stay in touch with readers and potential readers, or on wrapping up my second book so that those readers and potential readers will have something that I hope they will conclude is more worth their while to read.
Happily, I’ve now put that second book through its fourth revision, and its time to reverse polarity, and go back into the production and promotion mode. Further to that effort, I hope to be return to putting in a regular appearance here. As in the past, where I think that I’ve learned anything useful along the way, I’ll pass that along. For starters, here are a few of the questions I’ll be looking into again after spending 3 1/2 years in the self-publishing trenches:
1. Amazon makes it incredibly easy to put out a book, using CreateSpace and their other tools. Just load up your cover and book, and if you’ve done a good job following the formatting directions, you’re off to the races. Or, you can spend far more effort and money and have someone adapt your files and load them to Barnes & Noble, iTunes, GooglePlay and Kobo for eBook distribution, and LightningSource, for general paperback distribution. Is it worth it to do the latter, or are sales of genre books now so concentrated to Amazon that it’s a waste of time and money?
2. Is Twitter a complete waste of time? I’ll spare my thoughts for later, but will tip my personal belief that it’s 99% Emperor’s new clothes when it comes to self-publishing. And I’ll give lots of examples why.
3. What are the three most important promotional activities that self-published authors can employ? I wish I knew the answer to this, and don’t. My observation to date is that there is very little reliable information on what actually works. An interesting question is why?
So there you go. I’ll look forward to resuming the dialogue with those prior readers that have been patient and may continue to look in here from time to time to see what there is to see.
Hello again, Andrew. It’s very nice to hear from you again. I too have been away for a while but, unlike you, I’m just about to disappear once more as my second book is a long way behind yours. Thanks for another interesting post and I look forward to reading your thoughts on your questions. I’m guessing you’ve pretty well answered them already, with the exception of course of your final point. The lack of evidence is something that has always intrigued me and I’m eagerly awaiting your comments. Best wishes from the UK.
Thanks, Marcus. If the information is something you’re sharing at this point, will the new book be based on all-new characters or ones from your last book?
Some old and some new, Andrew. By the way, the ebook now has an updated file and physical book to keep it company. Good luck with everything.
Congratulations on making the physical copy available. It’s nice to be able to hold your work in your own hands rather than just see it on a screen. And if you are, ahem, of a certain age, it’s still hard to think of it as a real “book” until you do that. I know I am.
I put out my first novel in January, and yes – I haven’t written much since. As far as promotion goes, there are so many options it’s overwhelming. I see some progress but it’s a real time consuming slog.
Not only overwhelming, but often of minimal impact. Regrettably, this is easiest to tell when a book isn’t moving at all, and since you can see sales rank for every book at Amazon, it’s not only possible to see how your own efforts are working, but how those of other authors are doing, as well. I’ve often been shocked to check a book by an author that’s letting loose a veritable storm of social media, blogging, and everything else – and see that they haven’t sold a copy of their book(s) in weeks. Truly a slog – and often, seemingly, a slog to nowhere.
Looking forward to reading your thoughts on those three points. And great to read that you’re on track with your latest novel.
Thanks, Julia. Loosely on track, anyway. Which is why my next blog entry may be on knowing when to quit revising. The problem is, I think I’m still improving it every time I give it another pass, which makes not giving it that one more pass seem irresponsible.
I know your pain 😀 I never know when to stop revising. I wonder how many revisions it takes to have written a completely different novel? …
Julia, I’m afraid to try to figure that out, since I may have already done that. Worse yet, it wouldn’t be with new sentences. It would mostly be as a result of tinkering with the ones that were in the first draft. Yikes!
I’ve had much the same experience the last few months re posting on my site, Andy.
Being in the middle of a full time temp job for the last month, and probably the next few, tends to work out that way. And as you point out, add in family etc, well choices have to be made. I’ve so far picked fitness and family and food as my priorities before and after work.
I did crush time at both ends for a few weeks finishing another short for Joe Konrath and Ann Voss Peterson’s newest Kindle World, Chandler. It goes live early May I think. So besides a little reading here and there for a review group, and warily considering the next phase on my second thriller, it’s onward one day at a time.
Glad to hear your own second work in your series is getting closer now too 🙂
Adan,
I’ve still got your very intriguingly titled blog entries about the Konrath series on my “to be read” list. I’m looking forward to learning more about what you’re up to there, but have been too behind to get to them yet. Good luck!
No hurry, they’ll still be there 🙂
I wanted to do a story with Joe’s main character Jack Daniels inside the Chandler world, which Joe and Ann co-write, but it would have had to been as a secondary character, so I’ve continued an idea from the first Kindle Worlds short, with Jack Daniels, and just submitted the followup story (carrying forward an idea in the first story) for the opening of the Chandler world early May.
I think the main thing I’ve found, and haven’t really wrote about this yet on my blog, is what being allowed to write, with my own character, another author’s fully developed character did to my sense of what I can actually write. Don’t know if that makes sense.
But I found I could write a type of scene I didn’t think I was capable of, because I used a character that, from reading that character in several books, I had internalized and could easily imagine that character in action – with my character. And that kinda blew me away.
I don’t want to take away from my own sense of what I’m learning to do, ie, I “probably” would have eventually, a dozen books down the line, have realized this. But…having legal permission to write that character, in my story, interacting with my character – I don’t know – it was like being in play on stage with Al Pacino or Meryl Streep. One absorbs an impact.
At least it’s felt that way to me 🙂
That sounds fascinating, Adan. I’ll look forward to reading it.
There’s info on Joe Konrath’s site about both Kindle Worlds at http://www.jakonrath.com/kindle-worlds.php
He’s really good about answering questions etc, his email’s at the bottom of the page.
And my first short, 5000 words, in the Jack Daniels World is up at : http://www.amazon.com/Jack-Daniels-Associates-Unforeseen-Conventional-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B00U7TQYN6/
The one I just submitted to the Codename: Chandler world is about 11,000 words.
Lots of action, but because I have my own character, Sam (Samantha Lacroix) in it, issues important to her get woven in.
It’s very much like what you said in your very kind review of my first thriller with Sam, One Night in the Hill Country, these kinds of stories are almost only possible in today’s open self-publishing environment.
Needless to say, I’m very much looking forward to your followup to the Alexandria Project 🙂
Thanks, Andy!
This is fascinating – what a great idea. Sort of facilitated fan fiction with a degree of promotion thrown in. I don’t see a World there for me right now, maybe I’ll find one on a closer look and with a more satirical cast to my eye next time. Could be fun.
And thanks for the kind words on Book II. Hopefully by summer.