The Author's Journey

2 February 2010

I have lucked out. The shell of my blog has been created with a program called WordPress, by an entity – I’m not sure it’s a company – that seems to be an offshoot of the open source community. This means that the software is free, but it also means that the documentation is likely to be oriented towards techies and impenetrable to anybody else. Luckily, Sarah McHarry has written an online manual, also free, that is a masterpiece. So I was able to get my blog up and running in less than three hours. In fact, in retrospect, I think that, had I read McHarry’s tutorial, the blog part of my marketing efforts could have been a do-it-yourself project.

You can run your blog through WordPress, but there are a lot of advantages to having your own domain name, which I have obtained with Linda’s help. McHarry tells you how to do that by yourself in her second manual, which costs seven dollars. I think that’s an incredible bargain.

In any case, the first phase of my online marketing is in place. Visitors can get to my blog from my web site, and to my web site from my blog, but as I wanted, the two appear as two separate entities to the outside world.

The next phase is social networking (in the limited, online sense). I don’t exactly understand all the mechanics yet. The components include a “fan page” on Facebook, links from other blogs, and “tweets” – the 140-character-long messages produced by Twitter. In theory, there’s a way to automate your blog, or Twitter, or Facebook in such a way that a blog excerpt automatically gets tweeted out to all your followers. You get followers in the first place by adding a hyperlink at the bottom of your blog that allows people to start following you with only a couple of clicks. I looked today, and at the moment I have 17 followers.

But that’s not the point. The goal of tweeting is to generate a so-called viral effect. Because – and this is the key to Twitter as a marketing tool – your followers can retweet your message. There are equations for calculating potential results, based on populating modeling or simple exponential growth.

You can reach a lot of people this way. But, I ask myself once again, is this the proper focus for a novelist?

To be continued…

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/magicmichael (Magicmichael is my twitter name.)

Read the first chapter of Fortuna right now at www.fortunathebook.com

 Note: I’m using the blog format here to post a journal I have been keeping for some time. We will catch up to the present in a couple of weeks.

27 January, 2010

The realities of selling a book shine a spotlight on the importance of having a single line to encapsulate what the book is about. As I mentioned in an earlier post, mine is, “It’s a thriller about a college student who gets addicted to one of those online role-playing games.” It’s designed for clarity, not sizzle. But clarity, I’ve found, is important for Fortuna, because if the phrasing isn’t right, people think it’s science fiction, which crosses out a lot of potential readers. That’s why it’s important to say it’s a thriller. The word “addicted” is also important, because it implies that there is a juicy social issue. The part about online role-playing games works two ways. I can be seen as exotic and interesting, or “only for kids.” I’m trying to teach my team to follow the original line with two other points.

The first is the fact that there are over 15 million online gamers, and half of them are married! In other words, there is an adult audience for Fortuna. The second point is that the game is set in Renaissance Florence, which adds a whole historical dimension to the book.

I designed the cover to get these points across as well. The photo is an actual historical coin, which says “Renaissance, historical,” combined with a computer screen cursor, which says “high tech.”

I always sent the Fortuna manuscript out with a mock cover (similar to the final) on the front page, because sometimes an image can communicate multiple messages simultaneously in a way word’s can’t. The working cover for my new manuscript is below. The keys: gothic script (“historical”), flag (“thriller/espionage”) and the old symbol for atomic energy.

To be continued…

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/magicmichael (Magicmichael is my twitter name.)

Read the first chapter of Fortuna right now at www.fortunathebook.com

 Note: I’m using the blog format here to post a journal I have been keeping for some time. We will catch up to the present in a couple of weeks.

December 5, 2009

Oceanview has hired a new person to handle book signings with the chains. I give her a welcome call and, “since we’re talking” she suggests that it’s as good a time as any for her to collect information about me and my book. It’s one of about twenty books she will be working on in the next few months.

It’s a discouraging conversation. She reminds me – and I know I’ve said this about others – of a real estate agent or perhaps a printing company rep. Of course, her job is ultimately selling books, and she probably should have that superficial perky brightness that so many women in sales cultivate. However, I must say she doesn’t strike me as particularly knowledgeable. And our conversation about book signings revolves entirely around local independents, and by local I mean the San Francisco Bay Area. She asks me if there are any bookstores that would be good locations for signings. She asks me. I say in so many words, “I write books. I don’t make lists.”

I do learn from the conversation that there is rather intense competition for the privilege of setting up a card table in a book store and sitting behind it, hoping somebody will come by and buy one of your books. (These are called “meet-and-greet” signings, in contrast to readings.) You have to work at it even to get the opportunity.

There’s a term in sales: low-hanging fruit. These are the sales opportunities you go after first, the easy ones. I don’t fit into that category. Given my “platform,” or lack thereof, I’ll be lucky if I get any help from her at all.

I realize that if I’m going to get any results from the Oceanview marketing organization, I need to sell the wonderfulness of Fortuna much more effectively. I think the key is getting them to understand the significance of the trend towards online gaming as an alternative to watching TV. It’s huge. Millions do it. And it’s a phenomenon that hasn’t been well covered in the media.

I think what I have to do is launch the book in Second Life. That will attract some interest.

December 4, 2009

Friday afternoon, just as I’m locking up my home office to run an errand the phone rings, and it’s Charles Stillwagon, the Director of Events for The Tattered Cover, which I have now learned is a legendary bookstore in Denver. It is a coup that he even returned my call, but I’m not too surprised, as I managed to hit just the right note when I left a voice mail message for him the other day: “I’m a first-time novelist, my publicist tells me it would be impossible to do even a meet-and-greet at your store, but I thought I ought to confirm that and maybe just get a little advice.”

He’s a nice guy and we immediately hit it off. I learn a ton of valuable information in about ten minutes. If you want to do a signing at Tattered Cover, you have to have already sold some books to the store. Also, you have to pay an advertising fee. That gets you a listing in their Sunday Denver Post ad in the book section. (We laugh about the fact that the Post still even has a book section.)

I get the name of the buyer that Oceanview has to hit on to make a sale, and heartily thank him for his help. Then I send off an e-mail summarizing the conversation to the saleswoman at Oceanview, with a copy to the president. I include the key names, as names are important to people in sales, and I specify that she can mention my conversation with Charles, but can’t say or imply he said okay to a signing.

This morning, it occurs to me what we can do to take the next step: Get a review in The Denver Post. It’s not impossible. I have already figured out a way to hit on those book reviewers who are still left and make an impression, basically using a direct marketing approach. I know I can get them to read the first page. There is a question of whether or not the Post will even review a thriller, but there are ancillary issues that make it more relevant, such as the addition angle for online gaming.

There are three Borders outlets in Denver, and three Barnes & Nobels as well. This could be a perfect secondary market. As I type these words, I find myself wondering how much radio costs in the Denver market….

To be continued…

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/magicmichael (Magicmichael is my twitter name.)

Read the first chapter of Fortuna right now at www.fortunathebook.com

 Note: I’m using the blog format here to post a journal I have been keeping for some time. We will catch up to the present in a few weeks.

April 23, 2009

Today I am to meet with Linda Lee, a web designer  Nina Amir recommended when we met to discuss online publicity. I choose Ultimate Grounds café, which has unbelievably good food (croissants, muffins, slightly exotic sandwiches on baguette), strong coffee, and an atmosphere that I somehow associate with the kind of places where Jack Kerouac hung out before he hit the road. There are French posters on the walls and the whole place has a ‘fifties flavor.

She bustles in exactly at ten o’clock clutching a sketch pad and we order our drinks – a macchiato for me, a mocha for her.

The barista asks, “One shot or two?”

“One,” she says, and then turns to me. “Don’t want to get too hyper!”

She proves to be a good listener. At her request, I have directed her to some sites I like (www.outgrade.com, www.do-not-zzz.com and http://www.veer.com/ideas/typecity/land.aspx) and she queries me about exactly what  it is about them that I like. The navigation? The graphics? For Outgrabe, it’s the graphics. For veer it’s the navigation. I remark that I can’t imagine how they did it.

“Oh, it’s just window boxes,” she replies.

“Never heard of them.”

“They’re out there.”

I think: She can talk the talk. I show her my sketches for the flash animation that will precede the display of the home page. (Flash is the name of an animation technology used in web sites.) It turns out the “user” – that’s how we talk – will have to click in order to get to the home page, even though that page is an exactly duplicate of the last flash frame. I complain. Why can’t that happen without user intervention? It just can’t. “Even on that Zen site [do-not-zzz] you have to click,” she points out.

Just talking to her helps me nail down some important details about the site – like the number of navigation tabs, which of course is dependent on the number of content areas. After I’ve explained it all, she quotes a price on the spot. Based on my years of experience as a creative director, I raise it slightly. It’s better for people to get a little bit more than they expect. They will work harder, go the extra mile for you.

We start talking about timing. I feel that we shouldn’t launch until about three months before publication. I am worried about holding the interest of my readers for much longer than that. She thinks we should start sooner. I suspect that she is in part motivated by the wish to get the job booked as soon as possible. But she has a good point. I’m guilty of  “linear thinking.” The web doesn’t work that way. My blog isn’t like a serial in a newspaper. It will persist. So there will be new readers starting out all the time. They’ll probably read a post in the middle of the stream first, and then, if they like it, go back to the beginning and read through the archived posts.

Linda is an inveterate saleswoman. I have given her every imaginable signal that she’s The One. In hindsight, I probably should have told her explicitly that I wasn’t going to talk to anyone else. But I didn’t, and perhaps that’s why she trots out several other reasons to demonstrate she’s a terrific choice, all having to do with traffic. I confess, I’m impressed.

The last item on the agenda is the domain name. Have I acquired one yet? No, I haven’t. But I’m going to go for FortunaTheBook. I seriously doubt that it’s taken. She agrees. Would I like her to buy it for me? It’s only $9.95.

I agree, and I imagine that she relaxes slightly. She has made a sale. And I feel lucky.

“I’m already trying to figure out how I’m going to do that flash,” she says as we shake hands, and I believe her. What luck! Enthusiasm, knowledgeability and a great price!