Visibility is Everything

I’ve always heard that the most important way to sell books is to write a great story. When it’s done, write another great story. And so on, and so forth. But there are other factors that affect book sales. Today, I’d like to talk about one of them: Visibility.

Recently, I browsed titles on the Champagne website, looking for something new to read, and went looking for more information on a few author’s websites. I was surprised when I couldn’t find websites for some authors. As well, on other sites, there were no links to buy the books.

So here’s my question: How visible are you? For a quick check, go out and google your author name.  How many of the hits on the first page are yours? My personal gauge, especially if the author name is unusual, is that 75-90% of the hits on that first page should be you. If they’re not, you’re not easy to find. And if I go searching for an author and don’t find a website link on the first page of hits, I don’t look further, to be quite honest.

Visibility is everything in this business. If you aren’t seen, you aren’t selling books. Social media is a good way to be visible, but it’s also easy to get lost in all the tweets and Facebook invites.

One of the best ways to make certain you are visible is to have a website. Do you have one? If so, I applaud you. Every author should have a professional looking website. Let me say that again. EVERY author should have one. And every website should have information about your stories and LINKS to the major markets where your books can be purchased. The first rule of marketing is to make it easy for the buyer to buy. So make certain you’ve made it as easy as possible for readers to find and buy your books.

A website is also a great way to put a stamp on your brand, as Graeme recently discussed on this blog. If you know your brand, showcase it here. Let the world know who you are. Your website should have a place for news (hopefully front and center), a short biography about you, a books page (with LINKS), and links to your social media and email. That’s a minimum. Beyond that, I say have fun. Devote a page to the world you’ve created for your stories, or to a hobby you love. Or to your dog or cat.

That being said, not everyone can afford a professionally designed website. It’s not cheap. But there are options. Wordpress.com, for instance. You can design a free website there, with multiple pages. You can do the same thing on Blogger. And I’m sure there are other free venues out there. You don’t have to be a website designer to do this, but you do need to have a vision (your brand).  And if you need ideas, google your genre of writing, like “author, science fiction.” Start looking at other websites to figure out what you like. 

I’m not going to go in depth into domain names here, but as an author, I do suggest you purchase your domain name as soon as possible and tie it to your website so people can find you. Here’s where I strongly suggest you chat with other authors or entrepreneurs to determine where they bought their domain names. And if you can’t get the name you want, play around with it a bit. Add something like “author” or “books” to the end of it. Graeme’s website is graemebrownart.com. That’s a great way to individualize it, and if I search for “Graeme Brown”, it shows up on the first page.

A website isn’t the only thing needed to be “visible” on the web, but it’s where every author needs to start. I’ll try to talk about more things you can do to increase your visibility in future blogs.

Laurie Temple is an editor at Champagne Books

Branding

Today I am going to talk about the "B" word.

B is for branding. In this industry, if you want to have a successful career as an author, it is very important you discover how to do it.

What is branding? Let's start with a few examples.

1. Myrtle Ball, the "Scribe of Bren"

You're going through a convention and you spot a table. On this table are all sorts of medieval books and statues of wizards, and the author of the books, Myrtle Ball, sits behind a glossy map of her world (cleverly mounted to the table). On the left are short stories about small significant events that occur in her world, on the right are novellas that explore larger events like quests, and the author tells you she's in the process of writing a novel about the Kingdom of Bren's first civil war. She tells you about her plans to write more, and how every story she writes opens up the doors to others (and adds more to her gigantic world map, which will soon be broken up into a detailed book of maps next year). Myrtle calls herself the "Scribe of Bren" and refers to each of her books as an act of unearthing more about this previously undiscovered realm.

I don't know about you, but I'd stop at this table and feel I have entered the unique world of the books. The products I see build one thing and offer you more to come. It's exciting. It comes to life. I think I'd buy one of Myrtle's Books.

This is branding.

2. Mary and Marvin McKay, science fiction near and far

You wander a little further down and find another table with two science fiction authors, Mary and Marvin McKay (husband and wife) whose series of space-war sagas line up along their table. The husband deals with the Colonizer series, set 1000 years after the Foundation series (which the wife writes). The wife's books, on her side of the table, are arranged in trios based on the various trilogies they belong to, while the husband is writing an open-ended series that relates to events that occurred before the Foundation series. Every time Mary (the wife) adds more to her series, she tells her husband and he gets ideas for his thousand-years-later line. They sound passionate and excited as they talk about how the saga has unfolded, and where they're going with it. "This is the future of our technology as we see it," Marvin says, while Mary adds, "We like to write about how our world changes over time, especially the people who are at the heart of it."

I don't know about you, but I'd stop and be quite intrigued. Suddenly, this isn't just about books they've written. It's about what those books are. Even though this husband-wife team write two separate series', they have branded themselves and made these books into a collective whole. The collections promise more and, most importantly, promise me, the reader, that if I start reading, I'm in for an adventure.

This is branding.

3. James Jenkins, a man of many mysteries

I reach the far end of the aisles and here is yet another author. James Jenkins writes stand-alone mystery novellas. None of them are the same and each of them borrow from different sub-genres. The Blood in the Alley is a thriller-suspense mystery, The Source of A Scream is a horror mystery, while Who Killed Mrs. Molly is a romantic-comedy mystery. It goes on and on—classic mystery, fantasy mystery, even erotic romance mystery—everywhere I look I have something different. I might think James is all over the place, except James has given me one important clue: all of his works involve mystery and a puzzle to be solved (he's made sure this is clear by picking a tablecloth with question marks in the fabric). James' opening line, as he smiles and watches me scan the shelves, is, "What kind of mystery is your favorite?"

James, too, has branded himself.


What do these three examples have in common? All three authors have embraced not just a book to promote themselves with. They have instead embraced a brand and are at their tables promoting that brand.

So how do you brand yourself? More importantly, how do you brand what you write?

STEP 1. Discover what you want to write, and stick to it

The first way to discover your brand is to discover what it is you really want to write. Maybe you write detective stories and horror stories. Maybe you hate both but really want to write romantic comedy. After all, your friends said you should be a comedian before you decided to become a writer. So, what are you waiting for?

Perhaps you write women's fiction and horror. You do well at both, but deep down you've always enjoyed giving people a scare. Maybe your mind races with ideas for terrifying stories and you have a box full of ideas waiting to be turned into stories, but you're working your way through it slowly because you're busy turning our those women's fiction manuscripts as well. Maybe you're selling those women's fiction manuscripts like hot cakes, but you hate the detour (in fact, you're even thinking of turning them into horror stories).

This is the point where you have to ask yourself how long you can keep it up. Or, a deeper question: money aside, are you satisfied as a writer?

Passion is a key ingredient to branding yourself. Why? Because you're going to put the core of your energy into this one product and you're going to bring it to life. If it's not something you feel passionate about, you're going to burn yourself out, and, worse, your readers are going to see behind the facade. Your brand might not be your current bestseller, but take a risk and put all your energy into doing what you love, and you might be pleasantly surprised at the results.

STEP 2. Find a common ingredient

Branding is difficult if your "one thing" isn't easy to categorize. Often, a writer's first instinct with branding is to take everything he or she writes and try to lump it all together (see STEP 1 above - sometimes branding means closing some doors so others can open).

Branding yourself takes thought and time, and is more of a process than an instant change. As a personal example, I write epic fantasy. I am also a digital artist and web designer and a musician. (I'll leave out the math student-editor-computer programmer bit.) My website used to be a grab-bag portfolio of everything I'm good at doing. However, in the process of branding myself and realizing that my true passion lies in the art of storytelling and its application to the epic tales I bring to life every day at the keyboard, I've started making radical refinements. The digital mandala art I make will soon become a representative art form from the early ages of my world. My background in web design has allowed me to conceptualize a website that will be a central hub of free material for fans—to essentially create an environment where the world of the epic lives and grows while I take my time to craft each successive tale. The music, the math, and the computer programming are part of my personal life, and thus do not belong on my website at all. Granted, I'm still no Myrtle Ball, but at least readers who come to my site see a brand in development, not a labyrinth that promises to confuse.

Whatever it is you do when you brand yourself, you want it to have the effect of feeling like, "ONE". One thing, one entity, and you, the author, represent that entity. It's not a log-line, nor a catch phrase that you recite, nor a way of organizing your books. Rather, it's a way of putting them all together based on what they have in common, and your job, when you brand yourself, is to discover that and make it real.

STEP 3. It's a work in progress

Branding is a work in progress. It's not easy. You won't necessarily get it right immediately.

Take the first example above of our "Scribe of Bren". Maybe she wrote a short story and didn't know what to do with it. Maybe she tried a horror and it flopped. Readers wanted another story, so she wrote another one. That was when she drew the map. Things took off from there. (And, of course, she's been at it for seven years now.)

Or take the husband-and-wife team. Maybe they originally wrote unrelated science fiction works but wanted to promote one another. Maybe story number three for hubby related to something in his wife's world, then she started setting up her trilogies to relate to his. One night after a brief argument (he was wrong, by the way), they decided to name their series' and stick to the rule that the two were related.

Finally, look at our mystery man James Jenkins. In the beginning, he wrote in all sorts of genres. His rule of thumb was to never write the same thing. He wanted to change, "Like a snake shedding its skin," as he put it in one of his early interviews. One day his editor rejected his horror-comedy because they had no idea if it would sell. His editor talked to him about branding and after about a month, our author presented a horror-comedy mystery novel, invented the pseudonym James Jenkins, and presented a business plan to write more of these genre-benders, all with mystery as their common thread.

The need for branding

In this market, where millions of books are turned out per year, readers are easily distracted. As an author, you need to present them a magnet stronger than the other ones around you. A book by an unknown author is not going to do it, no matter how catchy the cover is. Nor will several books turned out every few months grab their attention.

You need something stronger. You need a brand.

Whatever that brand is, make it your goal to discover it, the same way you discover the stories that bring it to life.


Graeme Brown is a junior editor with Champagne Books. To find out more about Graeme visit his website: http://www.graemebrownart.com

Talking Heads (or, When Life Hands You Dialogue, Throw in Some Action )

We’ve all seen it:

“Hello, Cindy.”

“Hi, Jane.”

“How are you?”
“Fine, thanks. You?”
“Fine. Got any plans for after work?”

“Maybe go out for a drink.”

“Mm. I was gonna go for groceries.”

“Well, that, too, but I’d rather get a drink.”

Boooooooring. And how many of you had to count the lines to remember who’s talking? Or how about those passages where one person provides exposition of the plot or background, then another person presents an opposing opinion, then a third tosses in an idea that negates everything the first two said, and it starts all over. 

Booooooring.

Talking heads are boring on TV and they’re boring at a party and they’re boring in a book. (I’m not talking about the Talking Heads you still hear on FM radio. Though some people find them boring, too.) Humans are visual creatures and we like action. It’s up to you, the writer, to give your readers action.

Take a tip from director Ken Burns, for instance, in his great series on the Civil War. As in so many of his films, he has actors read from letters written during that tragic conflict. Gifted though the actors are, the readings could be a snooze. But Burns also gives us action, in the form of photos. Not static photos--he zooms in on a heartbreakingly real face, pans across fields of broken bodies, or highlights a telling detail. The spoken word blends with the pictures to create an indelible image.

So how do you emulate Ken Burns? By adding action to your dialogue. For example:

Jane stopped by her friend’s desk late on a Friday afternoon. “Hey, Cindy, whatcha doin’ after work?”

Cindy rubbed her eyes and gestured at the stack of paperwork beside her computer. “All this, then I need to get groceries.”

“Hmmph. Me, too. Wanna go for a drink?”

“Sweet Goddess, yes,” Cindy said with a laugh. Her shoulders lost some of their tension.

See the difference? Instead of just reporting what each person says, you’ve now given your characters a setting, indicated how hard they work, and shown something of their personalities. You’ve engaged your reader in the passage.

As for those long expositions, report in dialogue only what is necessary to the plot. Summarized the rest from your character’s POV or break it up into shorter bits that can be inserted into scenes where they do the most good. Show the listeners’ reactions by indicating their body movements or interior dialogue. Maybe a word from the speaker triggers memories or makes a connection:

Jason’s mind wandered while the boss droned on. He caught the phrase “binomial equation” and drifted back to his high school algebra class. He’d been far more interested in that pretty girl Vanessa What’s-her-name than in… Now the boss was sketching on the white board, a complex pattern of cross-hatching and curved lines. Jason raised his hand. “Maybe we should get Professor Martin in on this,” he suggested.

If you must include long speeches, remember Ken Burns, any televised political debate, or a good science documentary. Include visuals like the audience reaction or appropriate clips of related action.

In short, do whatever you must to engage your readers’ visual cortex. Remember, we humans are visual creatures, and we like action.

Nikki Andrews is an editor at Champagne Books and a writer of mysteries and scifi. Visit her blog here for more grammar fun.

Mastering Structural Revision

Linear revision kills

Many writers jump into revision like a swimmer into shark waters. They wade through their draft again and again, focusing on different elements, and slowly they drift out deeper and deeper, moving in circles, making deeper changes without a proper reference. Then the sharks show up and guess who's on the menu?

Whether those sharks are the editors or agents who send out polite rejection letters, or the Gollum in your head that tells you the task is hopeless, linear revision is bound to kill you sooner or later.

It's madness, but there's method in it

Not all is lost! Time to stand up straight and learn how to master revision. The first stop is the posture clinic, aka the post-draft outline.

What is this, exactly? (Or, if you're a "pantser", the dreaded O-word might make you cringe.)

For me (an outliner) it is an outline, but if you prefer to avoid outlines altogether, consider this an exercise. 

Go through your manuscript and try to identify distinct chunks of your story. These are not necessarily scenes or chapters. They are segments, anywhere from 200 to 2000 words or so, where your story takes on a unique cadence and shape. For example, if your scene is a dialogue between conspirators overheard by your POV character, followed by your POV character's introspection while she rushes down a dark alley to warn her father about the plan to kill him, these events would stand alone. 

Develop a numbering system -- I use decimals to show divisions. For example, if I'm in chapter 1, the segments will be 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and so on.

Go through from beginning to end. If one of the sections is particularly long, don't worry, but do see if there is an inflection that breaks it up. For example, if you have a long conversation in one passage, have a look. If it starts out with an exchange on the history of the world, then someone interrupts with a recent event that changes the topic, then this inflection divides the action to make the two parts unique segments.

Going over your whole story and dividing it up will allow you to appreciate where certain segments wander. Imagine each segment as a plunge under water. If you keep pulling your reader into the depths without giving them a breath, they're going to politely swim away to another tour guide. Similarly, if you pull them under for a long time once in a while (which you should!) then it had better be worth the view.

Once you have your manuscript divided up, go over and ask what each segment does -- how it helps the story as a whole. Cut, develop, re-write. Be honest. Be brutal. Be thorough. 

Most important, watch out for the sharks!

Graeme Brown is a junior editor with Champagne Books. This post is based on Step 10 of his Storybuilder Inc. series, which he adds to every Tuesday at Worlds of the Imagination. To find out more about Graeme visit his website: http://www.graemebrownart.com

ANOTHER EPISODE OF ... ‘BEFORE YOU PUSH THE SEND BUTTON’

I know we sound like a broken record regarding submissions, but there are many things to consider before you press that all important send button.

After you’ve read your manuscript one last time to catch any little niggling mistakes, THEN run thorough spelling and grammar program check. You’ll be stunned and chagrined at what you find. I’ve experienced many a head-to-desk moment when I thought I’d fixed everything. Please spell check.  Please.

As you work through your manuscript, see if you have any long and complex sentences. She was taken at once by the beautiful and vast spread of the desert before her with small dips and hollows, and was grateful she had taken some time studying about the plants and animals that had lived in this area and thrived regardless of the harsh weather conditions.  How many times did you have to read this to figure out where it was going? You don’t want to lose your reader in a quagmire of unnecessary words.

Instead – maybe... She marveled at the vast and beautiful desert spread before her. After learning about the plants and animals that lived here, it still amazed her how they thrived in these harsh conditions. This brings the sentences into a pleasing cadence and simplifies it at the same time.

One trick to help detect these long, stumbling-block sentences is to read your work aloud. I know you’ve heard this before, and it can be embarrassing if you’re discovered reading to the family pet, but it really works. If you can’t read it aloud without tripping over the words, your reader will probably trip over them, too.

In your read-through, you may notice words you’ve used way too many times – pet words. Be aware of those as well. The Search and Replace tool is awesome for this job.

A necessary search-and-replace task will include eradicating ‘felt’ ‘began to’ ‘about to’ and ‘started to’.  As an example, ‘he felt like he was about to hurl’ could simply read ‘he nearly hurled’. More punchy? Yep. ‘Felt’ isn’t a very strong word – and there are so many replacements available. Try variations of these words instead: sense, experience, suffer, undergo, think, believe, consider, deem, suspect. There are many others as well.          

How about ‘he began to walk to the store’? It’s stronger as ‘he walked to the store’. Or ‘it began to pour buckets’ is better as ‘it poured buckets’.

Another search-and-replace task should include ‘was’ ‘that’ and ‘had’. Most incidences of ‘that’ can go away completely, as long as the sentence still makes sense. The words ‘was’ and ‘had’ may be part of a Passive Voice sentence, which we discussed a few weeks ago, and leads to weaker sentences and descriptions.

Sigh.

Yes, preparing a manuscript for submission is a TON of hard work. Almost as hard as writing it. However, if you want your readers captured by your story and eager for your next one, you have to take care of the structure that supports it. And the hard work will be so worthwhile. 

Monica Britt, editor
http://www.facebook.com/authormjbritt

Twitter @mons1954

Bring It Here, Take It There

Cranky Old Grammar Lady threw the newspaper across the room yesterday. The offending photo caption read (paraphrased to protect the guilty), “The car crashed into this convenience store and the victim was brought to Central Northern General Medical Center and Wallet Removal Service Inc.” (Disclaimer: no such hospital exists in this state.)

What’s wrong with it? The misuse of the verb bring. Or in this case its past form, brought. COGL has noticed a marked uptick recently in the confusion between bring and take, and will now clarify the difference. Pay attention, you there in the back row.

Ahem. To cite Merriam-Webster, bring means “to convey, lead, carry or cause to come along with one toward the place from which the action is being regarded.” Take means “to lead, carry, or cause to go along with one to another place.”

In other words, one can bring something here, or take something there.

Example:

Incorrect: “Did you bring the outgoing mail to the post office?” he asked, as we sat at home.

Correct: “No, dumkopf, I took it to the post office. But here, I brought home a letter from your mother.”

Mnemonic--If the person or item is going there, use take. If the person or item is coming here, use bring.

Getting back to the newspaper. The victim is “carried to another place” from the convenience store in the picture. In other words, the victim “went there.” If the photo showed the ER at Central Northern etc., then the caption could correctly say the victim was brought to it--“conveyed to the place from which the action is being regarded.”

So far, so good. This being English, there is an exception, which accounts for COGL’s chronic crankiness. Actually, if you pay attention to the definitions, it’s not so much an exception as a nuance. Suppose COGL contacts her son and invites herself for a visit. In return, she offers some genuine New Hampshire maple syrup, which the poor boy can’t get in Pennsylvania. “Would you like me to bring you some? I’ll bring a gallon for you,” she says. Huh? The syrup is going there. Why is bring the correct verb and not take?

Because “the place from which the action is being regarded” is the son’s house. If that confuses you, think of it this way--because COGL has called/written/emailed/contacted the son, she has in effect put herself beside him and is regarding her own action from his location. It’s a courtesy, if you like; putting oneself in another’s shoes.

Of course, if COGL were speaking with her husband, Cranky Old Car Guy, she would say, “I’m going to take a gallon of maple syrup to our son’s house.” To which COCG would say, “You’re gonna spoil that kid.”

Cranky Old Grammar Lady, aka Nikki Andrews, is an editor at Champagne Books and a writer of mysteries and scifi. Visit her blog here for more grammar fun.

True or false: write what you know

I’m an editor mostly now but I started as an author. I’d like to share with you something I still hear, taken literally, that I think means something else entirely.

Always, authors are told to “write what you know.”  I did some research on who first said this and while this is most frequently attributed to Mark Twain, there is a general consensus that no one really knows who first said it. Surprisingly, the general consensus is also that the saying should be banned. Or at least an author’s reliance on it.

So, what does “write what you know” mean, really?

Well, some believe it should be taken literally— writers should not write about things we have not personally experienced. This is actually the definition I heard many years ago. Now, I find it very amusing and my reaction to it can be summed up by a quote from Robert Duncan—“If I write what you know, I bore you; if I write what I know, I bore myself, therefore I write what I don’t know.”

Isn’t that great?

Here’s another by Howard Nemerov that made me laugh—“Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.”

So true. Now, I don’t consider myself uninformed. I’m smart. I know stuff. But I don’t know enough about places and things to infuse my stories with the atmosphere readers want. Because while we read about characters, we also read for places and things. If I were to write only about what I know, I’d be writing short, flat stories.

I write paranormal stories. I have yet to meet a fallen angel, demon or a shape-shifting rock (Relic Defender: Key of Solomon). I have yet to experience life in a futuristic Earth (Hit Me With Your Best Shot) or travel to another planet. I have yet to visit Egypt and see the pyramids at Giza (Children of Egypt: Blood on the Moon). I have yet to explore the Mayan ruins in South America. Yet, these are all places I have visited in my research and in my imagination.

I’d like to leave you with another great quote on author’s writing what they know. This is from Valerie Sherwood: “Don’t write what you know—what you know may bore you, and thus bore your readers. Write about what interests you—and interests you deeply—and your readers will catch fire at your words.”

Would my writing be any better if I experienced some of these things? Maybe. I don’t know. I think what makes it great is that I haven’t been there so I can infuse my stories with the passion of discovering something new. And that’s what I try to do.

If you read my books, I hope you agree.

Cassiel Knight

http://cassielknight.net/