Authors don't exist in the digital age

I started this journey in the naive belief that the only vertical learning curve I was going to have to climb was the writing one.

It appears that once I've mastered that nursery slope -- Mount Marketing awaits.

Hi,

I disagree sadly. Maybe it's simply because I can't be bothered marketing. But for me get the big three right - the story (fully beta read and edited), the blurb, and the cover. If you have those bases covered, marketing is secondary to them. And personally I'd rather let the book go to the world then and start the next one. It seems to work for me.

Cheers, Greg.

I think one of the major problems facing any artist who wants to make a living from their trade these days is the 'race to the bottom' culture.
A few years ago pricing your ebook at $0.99 was seen as a great way to get noticed and gain some market share, but now you have to pretty much give your book away to get any exposure at all. It's the same with musicians who now put their content for free on youtube hoping that eventually someone will pay for it, or pay to go and see it.
There is the mantra that you should never give anything for free, as it's perceived as then having no value and the consumer soon expects it to be free. Thing is, when everyone else is doing it I'd imagine that new artists can often feel they don't have a choice if they want to get noticed. It's a bit like being a piece of plankton in an ocean when your audience is on a whale-watching trip.

Of course, the flip-side is that before the internet they might have never found an audience at all and the barrier was agents and publishers, so it's all swings and roundabouts in the end

One piece of advice I read was 'the best way to sell your book is write more of them', which is probably fairly spot on; to use the first as a loss-leader to build an audience for the next and hope they'll buy it this time. That's still pretty depressing though, especially when it takes a couple of years to write one part time...

Ed

Firstly, free books - standalones - don't work (except for series, where giving the first free is still a good marketing tool). You get downloads, yes, but the conversion to read throughs is woeful. Like most writers, I have a stack of free books on my kindle app - I'll read two of them because they're from writers I want to support. So the analgram of free being the way to do this doesn't stack up.

A couple of weeks ago, I put Inish Carraig down to 99p/99c for two weeks from its normal $3.99/£2.25 (or thereabouts.) My theory was I'd get higher rankings and more KU readthroughs - which net me more than a sale, anyhow. Because this meant I was on the 25% instead of 75% royalty rate, I was getting about 28p a book as opposed to my normal £1.70.

I did get a quick spike, but then sales fell off. So, too, did readthroughs. I put the book back up and it's selling away nicely and readthroughs have come back up.

I honestly think writing the next book is important, but so too is write a good book. Don't rush it and miss out adding depth and polish, which, for me, only time gives. Don't skip editorial.

This morning, I - or rather, Inish Carraig - was nominated by someone (who I don't know, but who had left a good rating on Goodreads a few weeks ago) for the Hugo awards*. One of the things they put in their review was that it had clearly been proofread (Inish Carraig is self published, where my other books are trad) and that that had made a difference. (They said other nice things, too.) That nomination, even assuming it gets no further as I expect, is a mark of quality that I carry into my other books - someone thought it was good enough to mention.

On another, related note, I've also been included as eligible for the Campbell award** (yesterday, as it happened, this has been an astounding weekend). To get this I either had to be published by a SFWA eligible publisher (I'm not, there are very, very few publishers who are eligible) or have a short story published which paid both .03c per word and had a minimum advance of $50 to a market with a set-minimum readership. That's quite hard to achieve for a new writer - and this is a debut writers award - as that's a pro rate.

I won't get many sales from all this. I do get exposure. (That old chestnut...) On multiple platforms. But, more importantly, I get people realising I might be able to write. When I go a-agent-hunting again, all this will be important in the writing cv.

So, how to be an author in the digital age? Write as much as you can, across various platforms. Write it as well as you can, remembering that you don't know what a small piece of writing (in my case a 2000 word commissioned short) can lead to. Price it for the market. And then hope for that little piece of luck you need. The marketing is secondary to all this - because your early marketing is mostly you saying "Read me, I'm great!" and that sells nothing.

*Cake is planned
**And fizzy wine.

Jo, read somewhere about making pots (bear with me). A class was divided in two. One half was told to make the best possible pots it could, and the other to just make lots.

At the end of the class (perhaps a few weeks) those making as perfect a pot as possible had relatively few. And they were inferior to those that the quantity over quality half ended up making by the end. Just writing, and writing, and writing helps more than trying to craft a masterpiece.

I agree with you on the shorts, and the like. They can act as adverts for larger work, and can also be good for sharpening up the ability to be concise and cut the waffle. I've also found the 5k or so length short has made me reassess the beginning-middle-end cliche as something that can actually be quite useful.

thaddeus6th said:

Jo, read somewhere about making pots (bear with me). A class was divided in two. One half was told to make the best possible pots it could, and the other to just make lots.

At the end of the class (perhaps a few weeks) those making as perfect a pot as possible had relatively few. And they were inferior to those that the quantity over quality half ended up making by the end. Just writing, and writing, and writing helps more than trying to craft a masterpiece.

I agree with you on the shorts, and the like. They can act as adverts for larger work, and can also be good for sharpening up the ability to be concise and cut the waffle. I've also found the 5k or so length short has made me reassess the beginning-middle-end cliche as something that can actually be quite useful.

Click to expand...

I agree with this. I know some fabulous writers, who make me weep with their prose. But they don't get stuff out because they fix what they have and tidy and sort out commas. I did it on AH for ages. Writing something new definitely adds knowledge to your skills, and different knowledge. From Abendau I learned characterisation, from Inish pace, from Waters descriptive depth, from Galaxy never, ever to attempt a frame story again ( ). But I think, when something is brought out, it at least fulfills the reader's expectation for basic quality. The pots with holes in them don't sell, if that makes sense.

Jo Zebedee said:

This morning, I - or rather, Inish Carraig - was nominated by someone (who I don't know, but who had left a good rating on Goodreads a few weeks ago) for the Hugo awards*. One of the things they put in their review was that it had clearly been proofread (Inish Carraig is self published, where my other books are trad) and that that had made a difference. (They said other nice things, too.) That nomination, even assuming it gets no further as I expect, is a mark of quality that I carry into my other books - someone thought it was good enough to mention.

On another, related note, I've also been included as eligible for the Campbell award** (yesterday, as it happened, this has been an astounding weekend). To get this I either had to be published by a SFWA eligible publisher (I'm not, there are very, very few publishers who are eligible) or have a short story published which paid both .03c per word and had a minimum advance of $50 to a market with a set-minimum readership. That's quite hard to achieve for a new writer - and this is a debut writers award - as that's a pro rate.

Click to expand...

That's amazing news Jo. Congrats

thaddeus6th said:

Jo, read somewhere about making pots (bear with me). A class was divided in two. One half was told to make the best possible pots it could, and the other to just make lots.

At the end of the class (perhaps a few weeks) those making as perfect a pot as possible had relatively few. And they were inferior to those that the quantity over quality half ended up making by the end. Just writing, and writing, and writing helps more than trying to craft a masterpiece.

Click to expand...

We were told about this experiment in our MA last term and I think it's the biggest thing I'll take away from my course! And I suppose (just to keep this post on topic) that it could be related to marketing too - the more you do it, the better you become. (Although that goes for anything really!)

psychotick said:

Maybe it's simply because I can't be bothered marketing. But for me get the big three right - the story (fully beta read and edited), the blurb, and the cover. If you have those bases covered, marketing is secondary to them.

Click to expand...

Yes.Those are the first three things to worry about with marketing, because if the cover and/or title doesn't entice a reader to look at the blurb, and the blurb doesn't entice them to read the opening, anything else is really irrelevant. You can pay to market a bad cover or bad blurb all over the web, but few readers will want to buy the book as a result.

I certainly haven't come close to mastering them yet, but, in the past, I've seen huge differences in sales of the same book just by changing the cover and/or blurb. And I know when I browse online book stores, a good cover and/or title will immediately get me to click on it to see what the book is about. A bad blurb will then get me to click onto the next book...

Jo Zebedee said:

I agree with this. I know some fabulous writers, who make me weep with their prose. But they don't get stuff out because they fix what they have and tidy and sort out commas. I did it on AH for ages. Writing something new definitely adds knowledge to your skills, and different knowledge. From Abendau I learned characterisation, from Inish pace, from Waters descriptive depth, from Galaxy never, ever to attempt a frame story again ( ). But I think, when something is brought out, it at least fulfills the reader's expectation for basic quality. The pots with holes in them don't sell, if that makes sense.

Click to expand...

Very interesting. You've got me thinking.

The problem is everlyone can try to be a author int h e digiatal age .but not everlyone can be a author.