About Books

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    More (promotion) games people play …

    So earlier this week, I talked about some of the promotional things that I do for my books. Today, I thought that I’d share some things that haven’t worked so well for me:

    1. Print ads: When I was first starting out, I bought several print ads in various magazines, like Romantic Times and Romance Writers Report because that’s what all the info that I found online said to do — and I quickly had my eyes opened about how expensive these sorts of ads are. Even small, black and white ads can cost you a pretty penny depending on the publication.

    I’m not saying that it’s bad or wrong to buy print ads in these or other magazines, but I just didn’t get the return on my money that I thought that I would. These days, I usually only buy online ads, because with one click, a reader can go to my Excerpts page or to Amazon to buy the book — something they can’t do with a print ad. And let’s face it — as a society, we’re all about the instant gratification. That’s why e-books are becoming more and more popular. With one click, you can start reading right then and there.

    2. Book signings: Also when I was a newbie author, I went around and set up book signings at all the major book chains in my area. Some of them went okay, some of them did not. I once sat in a Books-A-Million for two hours on a Saturday and only had one person come over and ask about my books — and that was only because she was my old high school Spanish teacher and I recognized her and called out to her.

    In general, if you’re sitting there by yourself, more people are likely to ask you where the bathroom is than about your books. Seriously. These days, the only place that I do local signings is at my local comic book store because I know that I will sell several books there. Not a whole lot, but enough to make it worth my time. Besides, the owner has been great to me, and I have a lot of fun talking to the folks who come into the store, since they are mostly fantasy fans like me. I have always had a good experience at the comic book store. The chain stores have definitely been more hit or miss for me.

    3. Personalized stationary and business cards: I know, this seems a little weird. But in the beginning, I spent way too much money getting personalized stationary and business cards printed up, because again, that’s what I thought you were supposed to do. I did use the stationary to write to booksellers, and I did pass out the business cards at various places.

    But really, I think the bookmarks and flyers that I design myself are just as good, if not better than stationary and business cards. Certainly, I seem to get more use out of bookmarks/flyers — I just hand them out or stuff them in envelopes knowing that they have the most important info about my books and how to contact me on them. And I don’t have to worry about putting a bookseller’s address on them or addressing them all individually when I’m doing one of my massive mailings.

    So there you have it. Some promotional things that haven’t worked out so well for me. Got questions? Ask away in the comments.

    Coming up on Friday: Some final thoughts and tips about promotion.

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    The (promotion) games people play …

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    A couple of weeks ago, epic fantasy author Lisa Shearin wrote a couple of good posts about book promotion and what has and hasn’t worked for her. The posts really resonated with me, since I was in the middle of stuffing envelopes full of Venom bookmarks at the time. LOL. So today, I thought that I’d talk a little bit about what I do as far as promotion goes, since this always seems to be a popular topic among authors and readers.

    No matter which publisher you sell your book to, a lot of the promotion will fall on your shoulders as the author. Sure, the publisher will send your book out to major reviewers like Publishers Weekly or Romantic Times, and the publisher might buy an ad or two (if you’re lucky). But beyond that? Well, unless you got a huge advance, are a best-selling author already, or your book gets picked as a lead title, you will have to do a lot of the promotion yourself. In other words, the more the publisher spends on your book, the more they will push it so they can make their money back. The less money they spend, the less they will promote you — unless your sales numbers come back and your book looks like it is about to break out.

    Like most mid-list authors, I would say that I do the lion’s share of any promotion that gets done for my books. Here’s some of what I do:

    1. Bookmarks and flyers: Every time I have a new book coming out, I design bookmarks and promotional flyers for it. One, because I just like doing that kind of graphic/design work. Two, because I can use these things in several different ways, and it’s all about getting the most bang for my buck.

    For example, I can give the bookmarks/flyers to everyone from readers to librarians to booksellers. The bookmarks/flyers have my latest book cover on them, a catchy line or two from the book,the book’s  IBSN numbers, some info about the Elemental Assassin series, and my website, among other things. Plus, it’s just cool having bookmarks for my books. 😉

    I’m not going to kid you, though. These things can get expensive — up to several hundred dollars, even if you have your own color printer. I save a little money by doing the designs myself, but there’s no getting around the printing/ink/paper costs. And I order a lot of bookmarks — usually about 15,000 per title. It all adds up pretty quick.

    2. Mailings, mailings, mailings: I do a lot of mailings. Tons and tons of them. In fact, I’d say that one of my biggest expenses as an author is postage. The people at all the local post offices know me well. In fact, some of them visibly shudder when they see me coming through the front door with a sack full of envelopes to mail. LOL.

    Who do I mail? Lots of folks. I subscribe to Pat Rouse’s list of romance-friendly bookstores/reading groups. Every time I have a new book coming out, I pull out that list and send every single bookstore that is interested in urban fantasy and/or paranormal romance a packet that contains bookmarks for the folks in the reading group, a flyer with all my book info on it for the bookseller, and a signed cover flat or two if I have them.

    I also do the flyer and bookmark mailings through Romantic Times’ Bookstores that Care program. Basically, you mail 500 flyers and 500 packets of bookmarks to RT, and they distribute them to stores in the program. This is actually pretty reasonable to do — between $110 and $125 for each program depending how much stuff you send in — although it is time-consuming and tiring to individually wrap up 500 packets of bookmarks. But it needs to be done, so I suck it up and do it.

    Also, I do lots of book contests/giveaway, which means more mailings and more trips to the post office.

    3. Guest blogs and giveaways: I do tons of guest blogs (most with a book giveaway), especially around my release dates. I would estimate that I’ve done at least 50 so far this year and have several more already lined up for Venom in late September/early October. I know some authors hate it, but I really like guest blogging. It lets me interact with different folks and answer reader questions. Plus, I usually get some book recommendations from other folks out of it too. And I am always on the lookout for new authors to try. 😉

    And, of course, the great thing about this is that it’s free. All it costs me is a little time to do the post and a couple of bucks at the post office to mail the winner’s book out after the fact. I really do think that guest blogging is one of the cheapest and most effective things you can do as an author.

    And yes, I am always open to guest blogging. If you want me to come guest blog on your site, all you have to do is send me an e-mail and ask.

    4. E-ARCs: I send out e-ARCs to tons of review sites — basically, everyone who’s in my e-mail list who’s ever reviewed one of my books. And I’m always on the lookout for new reviewers and new places that I can guest blog. Do I expect everyone to love my books? Of course not. But again, this is something that I can do for free through e-mail — and free is always good.

    If you want an e-ARC, send me an e-mail. Note: I only send these to legitimate book reviewers — people with dedicated book review sites and blogs. Don’t e-mail me if you just want to read the book for free. That is not how this works.

    5. Online ads: I buy a few online ads, mostly at places like Smart Bitches, Trashy Books where I know the audience is into urban fantasy and paranormal romance. Yes, these can be expensive too, but on the bright side, they are almost always cheaper than print ads, and I think they are far more effective. With one click, someone can find my Excerpts page and read samples of my work — something that they just can’t do with a magazine ad.

    6. Social media: I’ve been a bit of a late bloomer with this. But this year, I’ve started a personal Facebook page, a Facebook fan page, got on Twitter, and started posting book reviews on Goodreads. All put together, I’d say I have a combined network of about 750 or so people.  That’s not much compared to some other authors, but I get a few new folks every week, so it’s slowly growing. I try to post a mix of book news, reviews, and just fun stuff on all of my social media sites. I also use these sites to direct traffic over here to the blog whenever I have a new post up.

    I also do an e-newsletter every month with my latest news, reading recommendations, a recipe, and a contest for subscribers. Right now, I’ve got more than 800 subscribers, and I’m hoping to hit 1,000 by the end of the year. If you want to subscribe, fill out the form on my home page.

    7. The personal touch: One thing that I think some authors overlook is adding that personal touch to things. For example, every time I mail a contest book out, I take a few minutes to personalize the book, obviously. But I also include several bookmarks for the winner and personalize those, as well as including my latest book flyer in with everything else.

    Why? Well, I think it’s the polite thing to do. If I was a reader, I’d want a signed bookmark to go along with my signed book. But more than that, I think it makes me a little more memorable to readers — that I took the time to go the extra mile. At least, I hope that it does — and that they remember me on their next trip to the bookstore.

    So there you have it. Some of the many promotional things that I do. Got questions? Ask away in the comments.

    Coming up on Wednesday: More on promotion.

  • Map, map, my kingdom for a map …

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    Pet peeve time: What is up with epic fantasy books not having maps in them anymore? It seems like the last four or five epic fantasy books that I’ve read have not had a map in them — and it is driving me insane.

    In the past few months, I’ve read Burn Me Deadly by Alex Bledsoe and Melusine by Sarah Monette. These are both epic fantasies — and neither one of them had a map in it. This is especially troublesome in the Monette book, since she talks about so many different cultures/people and her characters travel from one side of the world to the other — supposedly this huge, huge distance. Bledsoe’s book is focused on a smaller geographic area so it didn’t bother me quite as much that there wasn’t a map in that one.

    The lack of a map seems to be a new, disappointing trend to me. Back when I first started reading epic fantasy, it seemed like every book I picked up — especially those by the likes of Terry Brooks, David Eddings, and Terry Goodkind — had a map of the respective world in it. Now? It doesn’t seem like anybody has a map in their book.

    Am I the only one that this bothers?

    I like seeing the maps and tracking the characters from one city to the other. I like knowing where the various races/creatures live. I like seeing the topography of the rivers and mountains and whatnot — it makes the characters’ journey seem that much more, well, epic to me. I just expect a map in an epic fantasy book since its scope is usually so big and sprawling.

    I wonder if maybe the publishers are trying to save money/paper by not including maps anymore — if maybe they are using those artist dollars and two pages for something else. Or maybe the author just doesn’t want a map in his/her book. Maybe she doesn’t want to limit herself that way. There could be any number of reasons for this trend.

    Now, I do think that it’s a little different situation when it comes to urban fantasy. I don’t really expect a map in an urban fantasy book since so many of those take place in cities. It’s just easier for me to visualize things on a city scale than on a worldwide scale. But if the characters are traveling hundreds or even thousands of miles over mountain ranges and across seas like they do in epic fantasy books, then, yeah, I expect a map — or two.

    Personally, I’ve thought about doing a map of Ashland, but I can’t draw to save my life, and I think my dollars would be better spent on promoting my books rather than hiring someone to do a map for me. Plus, there are probably some rights/usage issues that I would have to talk to my publisher about first.

    Also, I try to add at least one new location in every one of the Elemental Assassin books, so the map would be out of date by the time the next book came out. And I don’t want to box myself in too much by saying that this goes here and that goes there, when I might come up with a cool idea in the future and need to rearrange things. Besides, my city is pretty simple — the rich part of town, the poor part of town, and the suburbs. All readers really need to know is what part of town a business or house is located in. I think the descriptions/characters take care of the rest.

    I don’t know — maybe I should just chalk it all up to The Mystery of the Missing Map. That would make a great case for Nancy Drew or Veronica Mars to work on, wouldn’t it? 😉

    What about you guys? Are you missing maps in epic fantasy books? Are there any books that you think need a map? Share in the comments.

  • Reader Appreciation Weekend …

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    Today, I thought that I would mention the last big conference that I’m going to in 2010 — Lora Leigh’s Reader Appreciation Weekend.

    The event will be held in Huntington, W.Va. on Sept. 9-12 and will feature several authors, including Jim and Shannon Butcher, both of whom I am really excited to meet. I’ve been to RAW once before, and I had a blast. It’s just a really cool, laid back, reader-focused event.

    In addition to several Q&A panels featuring authors who write in a variety of genres, there’s also a private book signing on Saturday for conference goers and then one on Sunday that is open to the public, if you’re in that neck of the woods. Also, here’s a video to check out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0DB_A5gOxI.

    I’m not 100 percent certain if it will happen or not, but I know the RAW organizers are trying to get some early copies of Venom to sell during the event, since it takes place two weeks before the release date on Sept. 28. We shall see. Regardless of that, some of the proceeds from the event will go to various charities, which is always a good thing.

    If you want more info, click on the link at the top of this post. Hope to see you there! 😉

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    First person versus third person …

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    As those of you who’ve read my books know, I write in what is called first person. Basicaly, it means that the story is told from one character’s point of view. In first person books, the lines are usually something like this: I went to the store. I drove home. I cooked steaks.

    On the other hand, third person books are (or can be) written from the view of several different characters: Jill went to the store. Jill drove home. Jack was glad that she bought steaks.

    There’s been tons of debate over the years about which is better, first person books or those written in third person. Some people love first person books, but they are others that won’t touch them with a ten-foot pole.

    Frankly, I just don’t get what the big deal is. When I read, I’m looking for two things — interesting characters and a great story. I don’t care whether the book is written in first person or third person. I don’t care whether the author is a man, woman, or an alien from another planet. I want to be entertained — that’s it. That’s my only requirement. Make me smile, make me laugh, make me cheer for your hero, and curse your villain. That’s all that I want.

    So why do I write in first person if it’s so unpopular with some folks? Well, because that’s the point of view that speaks to me. That’s the one that lets me get inside a character’s head and really find her voice. That’s the one that just works for me. I always think that my books and characters feel flat when I try to write them in third person.

    I have to write in the voice that speaks to me, and for now at least, that voice is first person. I hope my books, my characters, my stories entertain folks. That’s all that I want as a writer. Well, okay, fame and fortune would be nice too, but I’m not holding my breath about those things.

    As for those who won’t read books simply because they’re written in first person, you guys really don’t know that you’re missing — great characters and great stories. I hope you change your mind and give first person a try. You’ll be glad that you did.

    What about you guys? Which do you prefer, first person or third? Share in the comments.