J.A. Konrath finally said in a very clear fashion what I have been saying over and over and over. Forget publicity on your books, forget being an “author” and work on writing better books and more of them.
Don’t believe me. Go read Joe’s new blog on this topic.
http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2012/01/value-of-publicity.html
Bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith published traditionally more than one hundred popular novels and well over two hundred short stories. His novels include the science fiction novel Laying the Music to Rest and the thriller The Hunted as D.W. Smith. With Kristine Kathryn Rusch, he co-wrote The Tenth Planet trilogy and The 10th Kingdom. He writes under many pen names and ghosts for a number of top bestselling writers.
Dean wrote books and comics for all three major comic book companies, Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse, and wrote scripts for Hollywood. One movie actually saw film.
Dean also worked as an editor and publisher, first at Pulphouse Publishing, then for VB Tech Journal, then for Pocket Books. He now plays a role as an executive editor for Fiction River.
WMG Publishing Inc. is now my major publisher of all my coming novels, collections, and short stories.
$6.99 electronic and $15.99 trade paper editions of Fiction River: Unnatural Worlds are available at your favorite bookseller..
Or subscribe to future issues now.
$2.99 electronic and $4.99 trade paper editions available.
Just click on the image for more information and links.
--------------------------------------
$3.99 electronic and $4.99 trade paper editions available.
Just click on the image for more information and links.
--------------------------------------
$2.99 electronic and $4.99 trade paper editions available.
Just click on the image for more information and links.
--------------------------------------
$2.99 electronic and $4.99 trade paper editions available.
Just click on the image for more information and links.
Great post, Dean, thanks for pointing it out…was interesting to me in the comments section how many seemed to take his words to mean “only publish with Amazon,” however. Such a strange meme, that one. But I’ve been yelled at 2x the past week for cautioning writers on putting all of their titles up on KDP Select, so maybe I’m just noticing it more right now
JC, yup, the myths, they are strong, and when a bunch of writers in a fishbowl of feedback loops get going on something like Kindle Select, all rational business thinking just goes out the window. I’ve watched it happen over and over on so many things in publishing over the years. It’s head-shaking and I try to tilt at the windmill of the silliness.
“I write fun books with good covers and sell them cheap, I have a lot of virtual shelf space, and readers like my writing.”
You’re right, Dean. I like this quote from Konrath because it summarizes the whole process. Thanks to Konrath and you, I was able to write my second novel in a fraction of the time as my first and am looking forward to writing my third, which I’ve just begun, even faster.
Thank you for introducing me to a new way of thinking and it’s great that you’re successful at it. Writers are different from readers, and readers want fun books!
Let me tell you: His (and your) advice about promotion v. output is exactly what I needed to hear. I wasn’t sure if I should spend more time social networking and doing other self-promo stuff, but now I’m convinced. More books –> more exposure –> more readers –> more word of mouth –> more exposure –> mo’ money.
Thanks,
Dan
Dan said, “More books –> more exposure –> more readers –> more word of mouth –> more exposure –> mo’ money.”
Perfect way to look at that. You got it in one, Dan.
I kept laughing as I read this, thinking “Wait until Dean sees this!”
However, the myths are strong, and while I’d like to think that this post may help some, most will just ignore it. Or they’re still listening too hard to the other myths for this to help them. Thanks again for that series BTW — I am more grateful than I can ever say.
I happened to work in publicity for some time – got quite “good” at it – but quit when I finally realized that it doesn’t convert to the bottom line, which is why I got into publicity in the first place!
There are some things where publicity matters: large scale (non-niche) tech products, for example. Also, sales phenomenon stories: if you’ve got something that is selling at an ungodly, spectacular rate, the publicity generated can amplify interest.
But books? Writers? Konrath is absolutely right. Unless he’s got a gimmick story – i.e. He writes an entire novel without using the letter “a” or something (even that probably wouldn’t work – it’s been done, and I don’t remember Alphabetical Africa ever flying off the shelves) – publicity gains him notoriety, but it doesn’t generate interest in his stories.
Even in that rare case where your work of fiction has a public relations “hook” – (for instance, if on Monday, you released a novel about an arrogant sea captain who wrecks a cruise liner and then abandons ship) – the publicity “bump” may not be worth the time taken away from making more product, esp. since it is short lived.
From my perspective, publicity is something that you must deal with professionally on those unfortunate occasions when it finds you. Done right, maybe some of the minor short-term gains can offset the time suck.
But don’t count on it.
Dean, was your previous post about publishing with only one online outlet aimed at Konrath? I noticed most of his more recent e-books are exclusive to Amazon and the Kindle.
G.M., actually, no, not aimed at Joe. He publishes all over the place, actually, and in trade paper format as well on most things. He has decided to go with Amazon on a few books directly. His choice and he is clear on his reasons, which in his situation, I mostly agree with. He’s very smart about this stuff. What started my post was an e-mail from a writer with only a couple books who had decided that all the other sites around the world were not worth his time. I still haven’t answered him directly. Not sure how to do it nicely, actually. (grin)
I read that a day or two ago and thought about how I wish I had found you and Kris and Joe six years ago when I published my first book and became an author, marketing and not writing at all. “Get the book in as many hands as possible, then write the next one.” I still can’t believe that is what I was trying to do. And I STILL didn’t sell many copies!
Ah, hindsight.
Thanks for shining a light on this post. I don’t know why I’m not following Konrath’s blog yet….
He’s absolutely right. Between him and you I really don’t “have” to listen to anyone else if I don’t want to
Write, publish (to all outlets), repeat. No spamming facebook friends with invites to book “launch” fan pages, no auto-loading generic “thanks for the follow back!” responses on twitter, no hours dedicated to studying how to strategically discount in order to capture “page rank.” No five blogs (one for each pen name) and no blog tours, and — god knows — no book trailers. Sounds good to me.
You beat Joe to the “forget publicity” punch, but reassurance/reinforcement is always nice.
That’s probably how the whole rat race got started in the first place, of course: people looking for some comforting specifics that matched their own ideas. I’m not going to worry about that today.
Well, sometimes we are forced to climb out of the “rat-race.” I am very relieved that we don’t have to climb back on to sell books. I am crossing my fingers behind my back and jumping into the deep end.
Cyn
NOTE: I may be confusing publicity and promotion in the following reply. If so, Dean, please correct me.
The enormous amount of time and energy and money some independent writers are dumping into self-promotion and “signal boost” is one of the things about independent publishing that I find most daunting. I have a hard enough time carving minutes out of my day for writing itself, and what little time I spent in 2011 actually trying to promote my few e-pub wares, didn’t net me any more sales than I’d have probably gotten if I’d just posted the novelettes, maybe spent half an hour (at most) on a quick Facebook and blog announcement, then devoted the rest of my time to new stories and/or chapters.
I’m also put off by the somewhat incestuous flavor of certain independent promotion and publicity channels, and their methods. Because too often it seems like it’s all just writers trying to sell to themselves — a closed bubble through which actual readers seldom penetrate.
I don’t want to sell just to other writers — though it’s nice when I do, and it’s nice to get mail from other writers who say they’ve liked something I’ve written — that’s quite a kick in the pants, actually. But I don’t want to think that the bulk of my sales might only be to other writers, such that everyone is contributing to a kind of economic ouroboros.
I want to score with the actual consumer. And the best way to do that seems to be to a) write the product and get it out into the world, and b) let word of mouth to the heavy lifting. And word of mouth is something over which I have zero control anyway. Either a story generates good word of mouth, or it does not. I can only move on to the next piece, and not worry too much about what may or may not have happened with the last.
To reach for Kevin J. Anderson’s “popcorn” theory, we can focus all our efforts on just a few kernels — the proverbial eggs in the lone basket — or we can just dump as many of the kernels into the pan as we can, and sooner or later some of them will pop. As long as the heat’s on and there’s enough oil.
If I failed at anything in 2011 — my best year yet! — it was in not adhering to the “popcorn” model nearly enough. Kris would flail me with her dinner napkin for my sloth. (g)
Publicity does seem like the answer when staring at one’s first story that doesn’t have a single sale despite modest promotion attempts: I tried a few things including posting it entirely for free on my webpage for a week or so before redacting most of the chapters. And I tried some tweet related things. Nada. Nothing. A big zero.
So, despite being disappointed after a few months of nothing, I decided to not worry about publicity until I have a nice stable of books for sale and then I can try to get that first sale that might lead to others. Until then, my novelette simply has to be lost.
Jodi
Jodi, I’m afraid that’s the nature of one item. It won’t really matter how good your cover or your blurb or your writing or topic. It’s just one item. I’ve said this before, but imagine going into a B&N store and looking around. Somewhere in there, but you are not sure where, is one book, tucked on a low shelf somewhere, between two larger books, hidden behind a large person with bad body odor who is sprawled on a chair reading. That book just won’t get found I’m afraid, even with a ton of publicity on the front sidewalk of the store.
The best way to get that one book found is write more and get more books sitting with it, until an employee notices it’s a bunch of titles and the entire shelf of your stuff gets moved up and closer to the front, and people start sampling your work over time and talking with friends and coming back and buying more of your work because there is more. That takes time and work and unlike what most new writers want, there is not magic shortcut. It means you have to keep making your work the best story you can write and that kind of practice and building a section of your work is going to take years, but it can be done.
It really is that simple and that hard. But a lot of us have done it. Some of us a couple of times.
Thanks, Dean, that’s a relief to know. I’ll work on adding to my one book, writing and publishing a stable of books, and then maybe I’ll see a difference.
Thanks for the link, Dean.
As you have been saying for years always write the next book, never worry about the last one. None of this is new, but it’s nice to See Konrath say it as well since the publicity myth runs so deep.
Personally I do very little because I’d rather right the next manuscript.
This week I saw an ad in RWR (an in-house RWA member mag, meaning all writers) paid for by an author. She has done this more than once and wonders why she ins’t making a living. I just shake my head and say nothing. The only bright spot for her is she’s finally started indie pubbing. When the money starts rolling in down the road maybe she’ll the light, but I doubt it.
RWA as an organization really hypes the publicity stuff as a way to create a brand. Of course the way to create a brand is write a great book that readers love. If 1000 loyal readers love your book you now have a brand, and they will buy anything you publish, and you will make a living.
It seems all so simple does’t it?