Write Good or Die (9 page)

J.A. Konrath—http://www.jakonrath.com

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33. KILLING THE SACRED COWS OF PUBLISHING:
SELF-PROMOTION

By Dean Wesley Smith

http://www.deadwesleysmith.com

The myth simply is: “All self promotion for a
writer is good.” Nope. Completely false. The truth is sometimes
self promotion of your own book can hurt you, sometimes it can help
you. The key is not falling for the myth that all self promotion is
good.

Right now, in late 2009, the publishing
industry is changing so fast that it is often hard to keep up for a
writer with his head buried in writing the next book. Things are
changing month to month, and the major publishers in New York and
around the world are struggling to even stay a year or two behind.
Where exactly is all this change happening? In the distribution
system, which in turn is causing changes throughout the rest of the
system.

For a very easy way to understand publishing,
write at the top of a piece of paper the word WRITER. Then draw a
line down the center of the page a few inches and write the word
PUBLISHER, then continue the line a few more inches and write
DISTRIBUTION, and then continue the line to the bottom of the page
and write the word READER.

WRITER

PUBLISHER

DISTRIBUTION

READER

Everything flows from the top to the bottom.
For hundreds of years, that was, and still is, the basic structure
of the publishing business. The writer supplies product to a
publisher, who then creates the book product, promotes, and gets
the books into distribution (which includes bookstores), finally
ending up in readers’ hands.

On your slip of paper, draw a line across the
page between the writer and the publisher. That’s the contract
between a writer and a publisher, the paper that defines the terms
between the supplier of product and the producer of the product.
For a long time, the common knowledge was that a writer never
crossed that contract line unless a publisher asked for their help
on a tour. And, of course, the publisher always paid all the
writer’s expenses for such help. It still works that way with major
book tours for writers.

Then in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a few
romance writers decided they could help their sales by talking to
the truckers, handing out treats early in the morning to truck
drivers, creating bookmarks, and so on, including paying for their
own book tour. It worked for a few early on, then every writer
seemed to jump on the bandwagon and in short order the bookstores
didn’t want to see a writer come though their doors with more crap.
Mail boxes were full of junk produced by writers and mailed to
everyone they could think of. That sort of self promotion of a book
basically became worthless. And very expensive for a writer to
do.

And thus, the myth of self promotion was
born. Writers coming in since the early 1990’s have heard over and
over that you have to self promote your own book or fail.

Hogwash. Let me simply say that what sells a
book, both to an editor and to a reader, is a well-told story
written well and presented well. The better the book, the better it
will sell. If your books are not selling, learn how to write better
books and learn how to write better proposals, and then mail it all
to editors. It really is that simple.

Now, that said, here we are in late 2009 and
the world has shifted once again. Kindles, Nooks, ebooks, POD, and
a dozen other ways of getting a book from a publisher to a reader
has arrived. Finally.

Why do I say “finally”? This change has been
thought about and talked about for almost two decades. It was just
slow arriving, but when it did finally arrive, it hit the system
with an impact.

No one, including me, is sure how or where
all these changes are leading. All we can do is follow the news and
keep learning. But does it change the fact that a good story, well
written and well presented will sell? Nope.

Do the changes in the industry change the
self-promotion thinking? Yes, some.

So, at this point, in late 2009, what can an
author do to help a book get better sales for their publisher?

Before I get to a few ideas on that question,
let’s talk about how return for self promotion is measured for a
writer. It’s a simple formula, actually.

Time Spent + Money Spent = Total cost.

Compare Money Returned in Sales to Total
Cost.

Remember that every moment you are spending
self promoting an old book is a moment you are not writing a new
book. So just as with any business, figure time lost and put an
actual dollar figure on that time. (Say it took you three months to
write the last book and your advance was $6,000. If you spend one
month self promoting the old book, it cost you $2,000 in time
lost.)

An example of silly thinking: An author
manages to set up his own book tour, spending two weeks traveling,
hitting bookstores, doing some signings and such, promoting his new
paperback release from Bantam Books. The author will spend upwards
of three weeks total time on planning and traveling, three weeks
not spent on writing the next book. The actual out-of-pocket
expenses will total $5,000 at least not counting the time lost
costs.

What will the author get in return? With luck
and being very personable, the author manages to sell an extra 500
copies of the book (that’s a lot). The author gets an 8 percent
royalty rate on the $6.00 book, so 48 cents per book. The author
will return about $250 bucks. Okay, that’s just silly. Spend $5,000
and three weeks to make $250. A great way to quickly go out of
business for any business.

Here’s the worst part. Remember, publishing
is bottom-line focused. Let’s assume that’s the author’s first book
for Bantam and he doesn’t do the exact same thing for book number
two. What would happen? The second book sales will decline from
book number one. The sales trend will be DOWN on the accounting
sheets. Not a good thing in publishing and he won’t sell book
number three. His promotion tour cost him not only money and
writing time, but his book series with Bantam. (I have watched this
happen with a good dozen writer friends in the last twenty years.
Some changed names and kept going, others are still wondering what
went wrong.)

So, why do publishers with major bestsellers
push their authors on intense tours? Simply to increase the
velocity of sales. Bestseller lists are measured by the sales per
week. If a publisher can push up the numbers in certain areas over
a short period of time and shove the author onto a bestseller list,
then sales pick up overall. In other words, publishers know what
they are doing, authors don’t. That simple.

An author’s job is to write a good book. A
publisher’s job is to create the book and promote it and sell it.
And all that is detailed out in the contracts between the two
parties.

So, back to the point of what is good self
promotion these days? Following are a few suggestions.

1) A web site. An active one, where you post
a few times a week and have photo and buying information for your
books. Key to the web site is make it a name that people can find.
Notice, my name is this web site. Easy to find. My pen names have
web sites as well. It’s simple and takes very little time and
allows readers to find your work and your different work.

Also, this helps for sales to editors. An
editor with a manuscript in front of them they like will pull up
your web site and look at it. If you are badmouthing New York
editors or are a real pain on your web site, they will see that and
decide life is too short. But if you have a professional web site
that promotes your work, then they will look at that as a good
thing. It still takes a good book, well written and presented well
that fits their line to sell to them, but it never hurts to look
professional on your web site. And they are easy to do these days,
even for an old fart like me.

2) Facebook and Twitter accounts. I seldom
post at the moment on either, but will change that starting this
month, now that I have everything moved and the master class is
finished. Again, be professional and not too personal. No one
really cares what you had for lunch unless you had that lunch with
Dean Koontz.

3) Do a signing for your local independent
bookstore. That won’t make you enough sales to hurt your numbers,
but it is good support of a bookstore that I assume you go into
regularly. It will make the stores a few bucks and let your family
and friends celebrate your book with you. In other words, it’s fun.
But just do one per book. One is enough.

Anything more? Maybe. If you sold your book
to a smaller or regional or University press, they might ask you to
help some with promotion, because a few extra sales can make a huge
difference to a small press. In that case, work smart. Understand
what you are good at, what you are poor at, and where you can help
sell a few more copies without hurting your writing time. Keep it
in balance.

If you are the publisher of your own book,
that’s another matter. You are responsible in that case for all
promotion, and even the smallest amount can help. Again, the key is
to keep it in balance and write the next book.

General Rule of Thumb on Self Promotion: If
you are spending more money than a tiny fraction of your advance on
self promotion and more time than it took to write the book on self
promotion, you are doing it very, very wrong.

Second General Rule of Thumb on Self
Promotion Make your next book a better book. That’s the best thing
you can do to promote your career and your writing.

Remember that self promotion is in the
distribution area of publishing. That is part of the publisher’s
job to handle. If you self-publish your own book, then it’s your
job, but if you are selling books to New York publishers, keep your
focus on the next book.

Dean Wesley
Smith—http://www.deanwesleysmith.com

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AFTERWORD:

There you go. Now you, too, can be an
award-winning, best-selling writer, preferably one who doesn’t end
up like Hemingway. The only conventional wisdom I’d add is to take
the advice that works and leave the rest. You decide which is
which.

Thanks for reading and good luck with your
writing. Please visit http://writegoodordie.blogspot.com and share
your writing advice and interact with other writers and readers.
This volume will be continually updated as we come to realize
everything we knew was wrong, or if smarter writers come along, or
if for some reason we don’t survive.

While this book is free wherever possible,
any proceeds generated will be donated to Literacy Inc.
(http://www.literacyinc.com), a non-profit organization that
promotes reading for teenagers. All works are the property and
copyright 2010 of the respective authors, but may be freely shared,
reprinted, or published, as long as the writer’s byline and web
address are included.

Scott Nicholson

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CONTRIBUTOR
BIOGRAPHIES:

Adrienne Jones
is an award-winning humor writer and author of
three published novels,
Brine, Gypsies
Stole my Tequila
, and
The Hoax
. While her work has often
been described as “defying genre,” her tastes lean toward off-beat
science fiction and
dark
fantasy
. She's also completely defiled her
journalism degree by writing a series of unreality based essays and
articles for various horror, science fiction, and humor magazines,
and has little interest in sliding back into reality any time soon.
Her latest humor/sci-fi novel,
Blender
Children
, has been picked up by
Diforio
Literary Agency
, and she's currently working on a new novel and co-writing a
black comedy screenplay. Jones’ Web site is
http://www.adriennejones.net.

Alexandra Sokoloff
is a screenwriter who has sold original suspense
and thriller scripts and adapted novels for numerous Hollywood
studios, for producers such as
Michael
Bay
,
Laura
Ziskin
,
David
Heyman
, and Neal Moritz. Her adaptation of
Sabine Deitmer's
psychological
thriller
COLD KISSES was filmed in
Germany.

Alex
's debut
ghost
story
, THE HARROWING, was nominated for
an
Anthony Award
and a
Bram Stoker Award for Best
First Novel
. Her
supernatural thrillers
THE PRICE and
THE UNSEEN are also now out from St. Martin’s Press, with BOOK OF
SHADOWS and a paranormal suspense for Silhouette Nocturne,
SHIFTERS, coming in 2010. Alex recently won the
International Thriller Writers
Thriller Award for Best Short Fiction of the year for her
short story, “The
Edge of
Seventeen
”, in THE DARKER MASK. She is also
the author of SCREENWRITING TRICKS FOR AUTHORS (AND
SCREENWRITERS!), a workbook based on her internationally acclaimed
blog and workshops.

Alex has served on the
Board of Directors of the WGAw, the screenwriters' union, and the
board of
Mystery Writers of
America
, and is the founder of
Writeraction.com, an online community and resource center of 2000+
professional screenwriters. In her spare time, she sings as a
Killerette in the ITW's Killer Thriller Band and performs with
Heather Graham's
Slush Pile
Players.

Visit her website at
http://alexandrasokoloff.com and her blog on Screenwriting Tricks
for Authors at http://screenwritingtricks.com.