advice

There’s So Much Stuff Out There

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

We live in a time of soul-crushing opportunity.

In this age, we can create so many works. We can publish books physical and electronic. We can make podcasts that fly across the internet. As I’ve heard it put, so many ways, “there’s just so much stuff out there.”

This then begs the question, “why create?” From giant conglomerates to people like ourselves, there’s so many people making things to read, watch, and so on. The chance of our works finding purchase in the world seems slim indeed, even if we pour heart and soul into marketing.

If we do work mightily to market, it takes time and luck and money and effort that could be used for writing. Even if success seems likely, how much of a drain is it on the time of a writer or artist?

It’s easy to get tired and discouraged. Worse, the idea of the “angry and discouraged artist” in our culture is an archetype, an image of despair we may too easily latch on to. There’s a blueprint for self-loathing and defeat readily provided when we get frustrated with all this stuff.

I get this too. I can do things beyond my wildest dreams with my writing and my works, and it takes me into a dizzying world of potential and despair. I’ve thought about it, and at times wonder, despite some twenty-plus books, “why?”

Then the answers come to me – and it’s always the same.

I write because I like to write, its what I do. If I wasn’t doing books I’d be writing something else. So it might as well be books, and I like writing books. If you like to create, then create.

I write because I do have thinks to say. I do believe in worldbuilding. I believe in improving creativity. I like to make fiction. If you have something to say then find a way to say it with your creativity.

I write because in this age I enjoy the challenge. I’m tired of the overload of things, of the onslaught of a thousand titles. I might as well try to stand out. Maybe if nothing else promote your works out of sheer bloody-minded determination.

I write because I want to find ways to crack the marketing of books. Because my works are worth seeing. Because if I learn something I can share it. So learn to market – your way – so you can beat the system and help others.

I don’t know what the future brings. Technology changes are driven by algorithmic takes on our own biases. The climate cracks under ill-conceived policies. Politics is a dumpster fire. But I am a writer, a creator, and this is what I do.

It’s what you do too. So do it, take your place among the legions of stuff coming out there, make your stand. It’s better than giving in. Better to make our place in this changing world and the overwhlemingness of the times.

Steven Savage

Self-Publishing: Where To Start

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

This question has come up among my friends and my writing groups – when you want to self-publish where do you start. It’s overwhelming – not because there’s not advice, there’s too much.

There’s advice on what to do. When to publish. What format to use. How to market. Everyone has advice, and there’s so much of it, for many people it’s overwhelming.

So I’d like to talk how to start with self-publishing. I’ll probably improve this over time and re-publish it.

The Split

So first of all, there’s really two sides to writing. First there’s creating the book and all that entails, then there’s marketing it. One of the biggest problems is how this all gets so overwhelming – because marketing is way different than writing the book.

So my first advice? Get to writing. You can’t market without a product, without something to sell. You want to be able to get something done, after all – otherwise there’s no reason to do all the marketing and such.

For a first timer, I would get your work to a first draft (or even a zeroth draft) if it’s a book. If you want to do smaller works like serial fiction, get 2-3 smaller pieces done.

Remember it’s not done. it’s ready for edit. It’s proof you can get something to sell.

Plus you can focus.

While You Write

While you write, take time to do research on marketing – websites, ads, etc. Don’t do anything with it. Just record ideas, get them into your head.

To make it easy on you, set aside a timeframe. Read one article a week. Finish one book a month. Make it paced, relaxed, and with no other goal than knowledge – not things to do, ideas of what you can do.

Also remember a lot of the advice is survivorship bias, repetition, 101 stuff, and so on. That’s fine, we’ll sort it out later.

Editing – And Formatting

So next up is editing your book. This is probably less pressure than writing the damn thing. Set yourself a timeframe for editing to get it done and get it off to an editor. Yes, you want an editor.

At this time, focus about 70% of your time on the first edit or two and the other 30% on learning how you’ll do your cover and how to use publishing tools like Jutoh. Learn enough that you can make a temporary eBook copy in your chosen formats.

By the way if you plan to hire someone else to format, great, less stress for you.

Also figure out how you’ll get a cover. I strongly recommend you hire someone or go with premade covers like you find at GoOnWrite. If you want to do your own, then make sure you can. I do a lot of my own, or do them partially, but I learned some hard lessons.

You don’t have to have it ready, just know how you’ll do it.

Why do this? Again, by the time you got through an edit and are sure you can publish, you’ll know there’s something ready. Then you can focus on marketing.

Off To Edit – Off To Market (ing)

Somewhere when you’re sure a book is about to get published, when you’re ready to do it, it’s time to market.

For your first book (or books if you have smaller stories), when you send things to final pre-readers or editors (depending how confident you feel), start working on actual marketing plans. I recommend planning marketing during the editing phase of a large book, and the prereader phase of small works.

So what do you do? Take inventory.

  • Write down all the different distinct things you want to do in marketing.
  • Next, rank them in order of importance as far as you know.
  • Now rerank them by how able you are to do them and how well you can handle them. It’s OK if that violates whats important or what people tell you – you have to evaluate what you’re capable of.
  • Decide the minimum you have to do out of these.
  • Figure out the minimum you need to do for each.

How are you going to use this list? Simple. Start at the top while you wait for feedback, and do one after the other. If that’s setting up a Twitter account, fine. If that’s getting a website, well that may be a little longer. Either way focus on one item at a time.

By the way, it’s fine to outsource or ask for help. In fact if you can do that and have the friends, money, etc. do it. Again, reduce stress.

What Do I Recommend?

So what’s my minimal recommendation for self-promotion? Here you go, in “least stressful order.”

  • Register a domain for yourself. If it’s a one attached to your real name, just point it at your Twitter or LinkedIn Profile.
  • Set up an author twitter if you don’t have one already. If you’re using a pen name, now’s the time to direct your new domain at it. Figure out a Tweeting plan.
  • Set up a website if needed. You can use something like Wix if you’re in a hurry, but I do recommend a blog, so you can go with wordpress.com or a good host like Dreamhost. Start with one page.
  • Look at how to use Amazon ads and Google ads to see if they’ll help (if you want to blow the money, they can be low-stress).
  • Consider a newsletter like MailChimp. This may not be something to start, but you will want one anyway.
  • Consider promotional sites like Prolific Works for giveaways.

There’s a good starting point. You can do all the other stuff you need later. Heck, three of these are maybes.

Back At It

So at some point you get the book back from pre-readers/editors and are getting it into shape ready to go. At this point, you probably need to start engaging your audience.

This could be as complex as setting up a Twitter feed and starting to post on a blog and blog tour. This could just be setting aside money for online ads.

But at the same time don’t you have to edit and prepare for publishing? Yes. So you may need to split your time.

I do this by setting aside goals and blocks of time. So maybe you edit for X hours a week and once a week take an hour to blog. If anything gets too stressful, re-adjust.

One important thing – do not announce any dates until you’re quite sure. At best, do general announcements.

Publishing

When you publish, if its your first time, my advice is to focus as much on the publishing as you can. If you have some regular newsletter, website updates, etc. be sure not to take on anything you can’t handle.

I usually line everything up then just spend all my time on publishing- which even at my best is still probably 5-15 hours of work on ensuring files work, getting things published, putting it on my website, etc.

Now, once that’s done and the book (or first of your smaller pieces) is out . . .

Market It

Now that you have a work out, you can tear into marketing. Set aside time in your post-publishing schedule to do the marketing, set up ads, whatever. It may be you got such a good schedule and a good plan that it’ll be surprisingly unstressful.

A note if you’re putting out smaller works, you may interlace their release with publishing. That’s fine. In this case alternate – spend time to publish, then market. Break things up.

Develop Your Rythm

Finally, with works out, with you doing the marketing that you can handle, find a rhythm for the future. Do you put out regular tweets? Blog once a week? Write three times a week and market one?

Find what works for you. And it’ll take time. Experiment. Learn.

In Conclusion

Everyone is going to tell you the right way to self publish. The right way to market. The right way to do all of this.

But you need to find your way. And the first thing you do when you start is to find a way that won’t drive you crazy.

Your way.

Steven Savage

Steve’s Marketing Advice June 2019

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

It’s the latest update of my Marketing Tips!  As always, I keep updating these every few months.

The Core Principle: The Web Of Connections

To promote yourself your various activities, giveaways, social media, and so on need to connect and reinforce each other.  If a new book comes out, promote it on your website and give away a few copies in your newsletter.  If you’re speaking on art, give out bookmarks with links to your website.  Everything ties together.

This does make finding what works a bit challenging, so I take these steps:

  • Do what is easy, like cross-posting sales and stuff among my social media.  Hey, it’s easy.  Then I monitor what seems to work.
  • Do what seems rational and looks like it’ll pay off.  Don’t try everything, try what will probably work.
  • Do what seems fun.  Why not enjoy this?
  • Advance marketing with incremental steps.  Usually that takes a month or two to show, so I tend to do my experiments every month or every other month.
  • Record what I find from above.  What do you think this post is?

Over time you’ll find what works for you, what doesn’t, and how elements interact.  It might help to keep a list like this!

Have A Website

Have a website, period. A website is a place you can send people to that acts as a “hub” for your marketing efforts. It doesn’t have to be complex (I’ve got some tips below), it has to be a place that acts as a hub for finding out more about you. The goal of a website is to have a one-stop-show for people to come to for information, and leave from to go to your various portfolios, books, social media, etc.

Follow these steps:

  1. Get a domain name (networksolutions.com, tierra.net are recommended). Make sure the name is unique, fits you, and can be re-purposed if your plans change (FrankDoesArt.com is a bit specific, but FrankGetsCreative.com is more general).
  2. Set up a website. Most people I know use www.dreamhost.com or www.wix.com. Just start with one page to make it easy – I’ve seen successful authors whose page is a blurb and a list of books.
  3. A fast way to do it is buy a domain and redirect it to one of your social media accounts or a portfolio setup (like Twitter or LinkedIn).  You can build the site later.
  4. Link to all your books, art, portfolio, and social media from here.
  5. This website should be mentioned in your books, social media, etc. so people get prompted to visit.
  6. Link to all your social media from the website – LinkedIn, Goodreads, whatever.  Well, whatever is appropriate, like maybe no one wants your photo collection of antique pots on that photo sharing site.

Other things to add:

  • A schedule of speaking engagement.
  • Reviews of your books.
  • Testimonials.
  • Helpful downloads – like character sheets, guides, etc.
  • Fun things not necessarily related to your writing like a cookbook or a link to pet pictures.

Have Appropriate Social Media

Social media is a troublesome subject. Yes, it can let you market – or be annoying. Yes it can let you meet people – or it can waste time.  It also changes in value over time.  However, done right it’s a great way to connect with people.

Your social media should always link back to your website and in many cases, your other social media. This helps create a “web” of connections, so people are able to go to one social media source, find your others, and of course buy your stuff.

My takes on social media in rough order are:

Twitter: Twitter, for it’s many flaws, has a lot of use, its simple, and with lists and filtering (and learning when to ignore it) you can meet authors, promote yourself, and be found. I’d determine what approach you want to use (from marketing to just goofing off) and do it.

LinkedIn: You should have a LinkedIn profile anyway, but how much of your “creative” life you want to share or link to depends on your goals and personal image.  If you do list your creative works, don’t forget the options like “publications.”  Also remember there are communities there you can join.

Instagram and other photo-sharing sites: Some people use this to promote their work, others use it as a sort of photoblog. I’m mixed on it myself.

Facebook: Facebook keeps having issues, but it helps to have a presence. I’d keep an author page on it at the very least and see how you engage.

Amazon Author Site: Set up your Amazon Author Site at Author Central.  This also can be a place to point your web domain.

Books2Read Author Site: I learned about this as Draft2Digital.com sets you up there if you use them.  Not sure it’s useful as I’ve just set one up, but its pretty nice.

By the way, a good way to manage social media in one go is www.Hootsuite.com.

Have A Newsletter

A newsletter is the way to engage with readers and keep people informed, as well as give them cool reviews, interesting updates, and more. In some ways it’s like a mailed blog, but I separate them as a newsletter is more focused and like an update, whereas blogs can be more freeform. If you don’t do a blog, do a newsletter, and if you only have time for one do the newsletter.

The ruler of newsletters is www.mailchimp.com, which has an amazing free service and reasonable paid services.

Make sure that your newsletter subscription form(s) are linked to from as much social media as possible and, of course, your website.

Some newsletter tips:

  • Don’t overdo it or underdo it – I do it every two weeks.
  • Find a “feel” for your newsletter – a roundup, personal, chatty, serious, etc. Judge what works.
  • Include any vital updates about your work. Link to your blog, new books, cool things.
  • Give away “Lead Magnets” – basically free stuff like samples, an occasional free book copy, downloadable cool stuff, etc.
  • Use it to promote other cool things – help folks out.
  • Remember that most newsletter software gives you all sorts of statistics and data – you can use this to improve reaching people!

Have A Blog

Blogs are ways to post thoughts, essays, and more, turning your web presence into a kind of personal magazine/announcement/discussion board. Most authors use them, though at various rates of usage, from constant posts to “occasional speaking updates.”

A blog is usually part of your author website, and thus is another reason to come there – and to go and check out your work and your other media. Most blog setups can act as your author page as well (which is what I do).

I use blogs to:

  • Give weekly updates on myself.
  • Post various essays and thoughts.
  • Review or promote interesting things.
  • In a few cases, blog posts then became other books, or I round them up to publish free “compendiums.”

You can set up blogs at the following sites, with various advantages and limits. Some allow you to use your own domain name, some don’t.

A few techniques:

  • You can get a domain and just point it at your blog or a similar site (like your Tumblr) and save time.
  • Some authors and artists do blog tours where they post across each other’s blogs.
  • If you have related social media accounts (LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) consider posting your blog entries to all of them when appropriate. Just make sure they redirect to your site.
  • Set up an RSS feed (or find it’s address in a standard setup) and put a link on your blog. I also recommend www.feedburner.com despite it being sort of static by now.
  • Mailchimp.com and some other mail software programs let people subscribe to a blog feed so they get email updates. You can also load those with helpful extras and information.

An important caveat – if you’re a prolific writer, you have to find the blogging/writing balance. It’s not an easy call because a few long blog posts can take as much time to set up as a small fiction piece. In some cases small books may be like blog posts so you have to ask “write a book or write a set of blog posts.”  I cover that more later.

Physical Media

Many authors and artists give away cards, bookmarks, etc.  I find these different giveaways vary in effectiveness, so I’m not sure how well they work for me or you.  However, it doesn’t stop me from doing them as they’re easy, and sometimes expected.  I also figure saturating the world with references to my work helps.

The one challenge is that this costs money, and you may not want to spend money on business cards, bookmarks, etc.  So you want to balance your choices.

Here’s what I try and what I find works:

Business Cards – These are a must if you’re serious, and the only physical media I can truly say that about.  Business Cards are cheap to get, easy to give out, and even expected.  Most print shops and office supply stores have quick options.

Bookmarks – This is popular among the book crowd for obvious reasons.  I’m not sure how well they work, but they do make it easy to set out information, give them away in panels, leave at interested shops, etc.  They can be a bit pricey depending on the deal you swing,

Mini-pictures – I’ve seen artists give away small cards with their art and contact information, sort of a sample/bookmark/business card fusion.  This may be worth trying.

For printed bookmarks and the like I recommend www.clubflyers.com.

I always have business cards with me, keep some bookmarks in my car, and take bookmarks to any events I speak at.

Giveaways And Promotionals (Mostly Authors)

A great way to get people’s attention is to give out stuff like free books, extras, samples, and more. With these properly done (and linked back to other works), its a great way to get attention, meet people, and of course get sales.

There’s two services I recommend for authors.  For artists you may have to look for other methods.

Prolificworks.com – having both free and subscription modes, it lets you give away work and join (or create) promotions. The paid version lets you tie giveaways into your mailing list as well. It does get a bit pricey beyond the Free level ($20 to $50 a month), so I recommend paid tiers for serious authors nly.

www.bookfunnel.com – Is a cheap ($20 a year to start) way to do book giveaways in a variety of formats, and higher tiers include features like Prolificworks.com. I’m fond of the starter tier as its a great way to make book giveaways easier (and if you don’t want to host your giveaways).

To make these work you have to obviously be dedicated to it and work out strategies. I use them to:

  • Give away free stuff and samples to my newsletter subscribers.
  • Give away a few copies of new books via Prolificworks.com
  • Have promotional giveaways (often samples) that people can sign up to my newsletter to get.
  • I join groups on Prolificworks.com to do team giveaways.
  • I use both – Instafreebie lets me set up easy giveaways, and Prolificworks gives me all sorts of options.

If you use KDP, there’s a KDP Exclusive you can use for eBooks. In exchange for making your work exclusive with Amazon, you get some tools to set up sales and giveaways.  It’s easy for starting authors.

Have A Portfolio

If you’re a visual artist of any kind, have a portfolio. Put it on your website, use a social media site like Deviantart.com, whatever. People want to see your work and maybe buy it, so make it easy to do. If you take commissions, it’s pretty much a way to market yourself.

Non-visual artists like authors may want a portfolio as well. This would contain:

  • Cover art.
  • Sample works.
  • Free giveaways.
  • Summaries of your work (with links to purchase it). For instance, I have a press website a lot like this.

Do Series

If you’re doing fiction, you probably already have a series in mind. If your books are non-fiction, you may want to group them into series, because various bookselling sites will remind people that “X book is part of Y” series.  If you’re an artist, this may help as well.

The advantage of the series are:

  • A series promotes the books within it.  When people seem a book is in a series, they may check out another.
  • A series creates cross-promotion as it sells.  When one book gets another book to sell, the various websites that sell them may refer books to other readers.
  • A series shows commitment.  When you’re doing a series it shows that you care and plan to stick around – or did stick around.

It takes time for a series to “take off.”  Once it starts getting attention and people buy other books, then they get more recommendations, more attention, etc.  On Amazon and other book distribution services, this results in more promotion over time.

A series can even act as a kind of low-profit loss-leader or self-promotional.  If someone buys small books in a series, or you write a series to focus on a popular subject, then it gets attention to your other works.

Do Multiple Formats

One of the challenges of selling media is that people want to consume it in different formats.  Unless you’re very sure that your target audience wants a certain format, try out different ways to sell things. 

If you write books, then consider ebooks, different ebook formats, and print.

If you do art, maybe your art can be in several sizes and formats.

For instance, I’ve found some of my physical books sell well around the holidays as people use them as gifts.  Others are the kind of thing people want in print for easy review or taking notes.  So over time I’ve branched out in my book formats.

Remember every sale helps – though some formats (like print) are hard and costly to set up, so evaluate their worth.

Calculated Distribution (Authors)

This part is pretty much only for authors – and for book distribution.

For print books, your usual choices are Amazon and IngramSpark (or IngramSpark via Lulu).  Amazon doesn’t charge, the other services do, but bookstores don’t always like to stock Amazon books as it’s a competitor.

For ebooks, your choices are:

  • Go with Amazon’s KDP Select, where you only go through Amazon but get marketing tools like sales.  Amazon is the majority of the market, so if you go Amazon its easier.
  • Distribute incredibly widely.  This takes time, and you don’t get Amazon’s marketing tools, but you get the chance to make more sales.  Some authors I know find they sell more books outside of Amazon, but I haven’t figured out any rules or principles to this.

If you go broad here’s my take

  • Draft2Digital is the easiest way to go broad, but only does eBooks.  I also recommend managing your Amazon account separately.  Draft2Digital doesn’t have the broadest range, but it’s free (taking a cut of your sales) and very, very well done.
  • Smashwords is also free, but takes a larger cut and doesn’t have the extras of Draft2Digital.  It does get into a few unusual areas of distribution.
  • Lulu.com will do full service, but partners with Ingrahm, and there are charges.
  • Ingrahm is full service as well, and charges.  It’s probably a better choice than Lulu these days.

Publish Lots Of Stuff

Like it or not your goal as a creator is to be noticed so people get ahold of your work and benefit from it.  This means that you may need to create lots of works to get attention – or use work that you aren’t making public to do the same.

For instance, I realized that a lot of my blog ideas were better off as books – or could be turned into books.  There was far more benefit to turning certain ideas into small books (or expanding existing work into books) than letting things sit.  Some things just work better as a book anyway, and I have more works that people can get their hands on.

(Plus, the polishing that goes into a book made them, honestly, higher quality.)

If you’re an artist it’s probably the same thing, depending on your market.  If you have lots of different things to sell and buy and do you increase your chance to get more sold. 

Remember that this ties into having series as well.  Don’t just publish lots of stuff, tie it together as series.

Advertising (Mostly for Authors)

I’ve used both Google ads and Amazon for books, though it’s been awhile since I’ve done Google (and I may want to try again).  I have done a lot with AMS, or Amazon Marketing Services.

AMS lets you set up promotional ads to appear during searches or on pages of specific projects, and you can set up keywords, targets, and even decide what to pay for a clickthrough.  It’s a pretty advanced tool, and though it obviously only targets Amazon, that’s a pretty big market!  The challenge is that you have to figure out the right words, monitor progress (to avoid overspending or waste), and tweak marketing for each book.

I’ve found it effective, but it takes a lot of work.  What I do is update AMS every month or so with new terms, shut off ones that aren’t working, and try to get an idea of what works.  You can download data from each ad you set up, and then make a new ad with just the data that worked.  You honestly need to start with 100-200 search terms to get it working.

Done right, I find AMS yields roughly $2 in sales or more for each $1 spent – as long as you tweak the advertising, cancel bad projects, and keep learning.

More To Come

That’s my latest!  I hope it helps you out!

Steven Savage