Tag: in your corner

Book Marketing, elizabeth speaks, in your corner, Marketing Your Self-Published Book, Uncategorized

In Your Corner: Know Thyself (& Thy Genre)

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve spent some time looking a few of the many choices authors have to make during the self-publication and marketing processes, starting with the Big Whopper (“Choosing a Self-Publishing Company“) and then moving into choices regarding the text itself (“Choosing a Trim Size for Your Book“).  This Thursday, however, I’m writing less about making a choice than I am about detecting past choices you may not have been aware you were making … and then totally exploiting them for marketing purposes.

Let me explain.

You Don’t Choose A Genre So Much As Discover It:

It Probably Only Matters for Marketing Anyway

Thinking back over the history of publishing, I can’t begin to count the number of times a book has been rejected as “too weird” or “too out-there” when really, the issue at hand was the fact that the book in question didn’t fit neatly into one of the prescribed genres (Fiction, Non-Fiction, Fantasy/Science Fiction, Western, Biography, etc).  And the marketing folks at a traditional publisher know: it’s hard to market something that doesn’t fit neatly into a category, because doing so requires flexibility and out-of-the-box thinking.  Hybrid thinking.  Opinions are changing, slowly, but not fast enough within the Big Five traditional publishing houses.

Self-publishing gives you a third way. You don’t have to pick a genre while writing, but you can take advantage of a book’s genre or genres plural by approaching genre as a diagnosis after the fact, and an expedition in search of what the Atlantic’s Noah Berlatsky calls “a ‘web of resemblances’ created by intertexual references” that are “constituted basically by social and cultural agreement,” quoting John Rieder and Jason Mittel.  It’s a hunt for markers that point you toward certain resemblances … resemblances you can capitalize on for their social currency.

genre

The diagnosis process is simple:

  1. What books have you read that influenced your work in a measurable way?
  2. What books on the shelves in bookstores now bear resemblance to yours in style and content?

Once you sketch out a couple of lists to answer this question, it’s time to hit the bookstore and your library.  Libraries tend to scale the number of genre sections they stock according to how much shelf space they have, so bigger libraries will have finer distinctions between genres, while bookstores tend to pick the genres they’re going to stock according to what’s popular.  If you survey both your local Barnes & Noble, Tattered Cover, or (*gasp*) actual real-life physical Amazon Bookstore as well as your local public library, you’ll pick up on some of the more common genres out there, including:

  • Action/Adventure
  • Biography
  • Fantasy/Sci-Fi
  • Horror
  • “Literary” Fiction
  • Mystery
  • Thriller/Suspense
  • Romance
  • Self-Help
  • Westerns
  • Women’s fiction

But the list could be a lot, lot longer.  I haven’t, for instance, mentioned more obscure genres like Steampunk and Grimoire.

Once you’ve found the shelf or shelves on which you could picture your book sitting in a bookstore or library, you’re ready to start integrating genre into your publishing and marketing processes.  Now, your book may have “resemblances” to any number of genres, but for simplicity’s sake it’s a good idea to pick just one or two that have left very clear thumbprints on your text.  You can take a quick poll of your early readers, or consult the professionals, for what they find most striking about the style and tone and voice of your book if you end up stuck for answers.  And before committing to your genre or genres, you’ll want to consider your readership.  What are they likely to connect to the most in terms of language?

Genre safely discovered and stowed away for future use, it’s time to start putting it to work.  The language of genre is rich with possibility in terms of “buzzwords” for marketing purposes, so sow them liberally amongst your back-cover blurbs, your press releases, your Amazon and Goodreads listings, your website and blog posts, as well as your social media interactions.  (Genres like #biopunk and #horrorlit make for great hashtags, don’t you think?)

There are lots of ways to use genre once your book is already written and ready to meet the world…but remember, it’s all a matter of timing.  You don’t need to write your entire book to meet a genre’s proscriptive requirements…just your promotional materials.  Genre can be confining, so it’s best to bring it into play only after the creative work is already done.  In my opinion.

You are not alone. ♣︎

Elizabeth

ABOUT ELIZABETH JAVOR: With over 18 years of experience in sales and management, Elizabeth Javor works as the Manager of Author Services for Outskirts Press. The Author Services Department is composed of knowledgeable publishing consultants, pre-production specialists, customer service reps and book marketing specialists; together, they all focus on educating authors on the self-publishing process to help them publish the book of their dreams. Whether you are a professional looking to take your career to the next level with platform-driven non-fiction or a novelist seeking fame, fortune, and/or personal fulfillment, Elizabeth Javor can put you on the right path.
Book Design, elizabeth speaks, Uncategorized

In Your Corner: Choosing a Trim Size for Your Book

Decisions, Decisions

(where would we be without decisions?)

When it comes to choosing the form in which your book will be sent forth into the world–hardcover, paperback, small, or large–it’s the rare author who has considered the book’s actual trim size.  Those other elements?  They’re easy to visualize in your head, to picture your book as taking one such form.  Trim size is not so easy, in part because many authors don’t even know what the term means.

trim size definition

Thanks to Dictionary.com, we can safely interpret trim size to mean the page area left after final production is completed–which is not the same thing as the page area throughout the printing process.  While a book is being printed, the pages are slightly larger than their final size.  Once your content has been printed, the pages are cut down to their final size–their trim size.

Depending on which self-publishing company you choose, you ought to have a choice of trim sizes to select from.  Print on Demand (POD) options will often constrain your choices simply because each size uses its own machinery, so the more sizes on offer = the more expensive the machinery is to purchase and maintain for the operator, and ultimately, the end user–you.

There are so many sizes to choose from, it almost boggles the mind.The most common trade paperback sizes, for example, run from 6″ by 9″ to 5.5″ by 8.5″, but you’ll also see 5.25″ by 8″ and 5″ by 8″ in some POD services. It’s not unheard of to choose even larger sizes–6″ by 9″, 7″ by 10″, 8.25″ by 8.25, or even 8″ by 10″–especially if you’re working within the children’s picture book or technical manual markets.

trim size
[ a pleasant-looking trim size ]
Sometimes the decision might be self-explanatory.  If you’re a photographer, for example, it makes sense to go with a larger trim size to allow your images to be shown off to greatest effect.  But why does size–or even deciding between hardcover and paperback– matter at all to everyone else?  The answer boils down to reader perception, and reader perception can be greatly affected by the minutiae.  A nice balance between text and white space, for example, is a subconscious clue that the author took great pains to be professional while designing their book.  A crowded page, while maximizing the text-to-page ratio and lowering the total page count (and therefore cost) of a book, looks clunky and dense, making it difficult to read.  Similarly, a hardcover book is a sign that, on a fundamental level, the author cares about creating a durable, treasured possession–while a paperback enables portability and a voracious consumption of words.

Think about how your book will be used, and by whom, and what the typical expectations are within a genre.  Fiction titles typically run in smaller trim sizes, since readers typically read them for pleasure–whether on the train to work in the morning, or while sitting on the back porch.  Nonfiction titles, including memoirs and the ever-growing Creative Non-Fiction (CNF) field typically run in the middle of the pack–unless they’ve been penned by someone famous, like a film or a football star.  Those are often oversized, just like the personalities they describe.  Technical manuals, cookbooks, photography tabletop books, and children’s picture books are always the largest books on the shelf–and often, they are used while lying flat on a table or the floor.

I guess my recommendation is rather simple: take a ruler with you to the bookstore and library.  Measure the books that fall within the “if you like my book, you might also like X book” category, whether you’re thinking of similarities in genre or thematic content.  Weigh it in your hand.  Are you more likely to pick up the hardcover or the paperback of that book?  And don’t just measure the outside cover.  Look inside–at the trim size, the the margins.  It may not be an easily quantifiable thing, but readers are most likely to buy books that strike them as visually balanced and attractive–and the trim size of a book contributes to this a great deal!

You are not alone. ♣︎

*  And when Thomas himself took the poem seriously and made some rather intense life choices–for example, going off to WWI–Frost was devastated.  He was even more devastated when Thomas died in Arras.  The moral of this story being, it would seem, to make major life decisions upon thorough research and consideration, not the (misread) interpretation of a poem.

Elizabeth

ABOUT ELIZABETH JAVOR: With over 18 years of experience in sales and management, Elizabeth Javor works as the Manager of Author Services for Outskirts Press. The Author Services Department is composed of knowledgeable publishing consultants, pre-production specialists, customer service reps and book marketing specialists; together, they all focus on educating authors on the self-publishing process to help them publish the book of their dreams. Whether you are a professional looking to take your career to the next level with platform-driven non-fiction or a novelist seeking fame, fortune, and/or personal fulfillment, Elizabeth Javor can put you on the right path.
Advocacy in Self-Publishing, elizabeth speaks, in your corner, Self-Publishing, Uncategorized

In Your Corner: Choosing a Self-Publishing Company

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
//
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
//
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
//
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
X
– Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken” (1916)
***

You may very well be asking what Robert Frost has to do with self-publishing.  After all, he’s rather more a titanic figure in the world of literature (read: traditionally-published literature) than an icon of the D.I.Y. generation.  But here’s the thing: Robert Frost wrote about choices.  A lot.  And while the poem means as lot things to a lot of different people–a lot of things and a lot of people–Frost himself was taken aback to discover how seriously his readers took it.  He’d written it, quite literally, about his friend and walking buddy Edward Thomas, who had rather a lot of trouble making up his mind where to go while they were walking together.*

choices

If Frost had a point, it was that indecision can lead to rather long walks–and maybe damp hair, if there’s a fog or a rain cloud about.  And as you can no doubt verify, the same principle is at work when it comes to choosing a self-publishing company: indecision leads to long waits, and long waits have more consequences for books than just damp hair.  Timeliness is an important part of a book’s appeal, and when we delay publication for whatever reason, that timeliness is undercut.  But making a rash decision can be equally if not more problematic, can’t it?  Finding yourself trapped into a contract which privileges the company and not the author is always a bad thing.  And so we come to it; if I have any advice in choosing a self-publishing company from my years working with self-publishing authors, I could boil it down to these three pointers.

How to Choose a Self-Publishing Company:

1. Choose the people, not the platform.

A lot of self-publishing companies keep costs down by sacrificing customer support and real humans on the other end of certain processes.  But believe me when I say these companies have lost something vital and important; publishing, even or perhaps even especially self-publishing, is about connection.  Connecting the dots between manuscript and book, between author and readers, and yes!  Between the author and the process of publication itself.  If there’s no one on the other end of the line, the final result will suffer.

A good self-publishing company, on the other hand, hires professionals who really and actually care about producing beautiful books that their authors are proud of.  A good self-publishing company hooks you up with partners, with people who care as much about bringing your vision to life as you are.  Choose the company who makes you feel like a priority, who makes you feel like you actually matter.

2. Post-publication assistance matters.  A lot.

Publishing your book is just the start; there’s a lot that comes after.  Don’t just look for a company that offers pre-publication assistance (like copyediting and custom book cover designs) but one that also offers post-publication assistance.  A good self-publishing company will offer marketing assistance, maybe some merchandising options, social media insight, and distribution not just to online retailers like the Apple iStore or Barnes ?& Noble’s Nook Store, but also to physical retailers like Ingram and to reviewers, award committees, and book fairs.  It doesn’t matter if one or two of the offerings don’t strike you as must-haves … but it does matter that you choose a company with diverse options available (which proves they have a lot of muscle, and a lot of influence) and that you choose a company which can still be useful to you after your book hits Amazon.  A company you can turn to if, for some reason, your book sales stall six months on.

3. Don’t give up what made you decide to self-publish in the first place.

Look, I get it: most of us choose to self-publish because of money.  Or because of intellectual freedom.  There’s usually a bank balance or an ideology at work, and I would caution you against thinking of this as a bad thing.  Something pulled us towards self-publishing, even if it’s just plain old simple curiosity, and that something is both valid and worth hanging on to.  Stick with your guns.  Don’t give up on your instincts–because ultimately, your instincts are the most trustworthy and valuable thing you have when it comes to choosing a self-publishing company.

choices

You are not alone. ♣︎

*  And when Thomas himself took the poem seriously and made some rather intense life choices–for example, going off to WWI–Frost was devastated.  He was even more devastated when Thomas died in Arras.  The moral of this story being, it would seem, to make major life decisions upon thorough research and consideration, not the (misread) interpretation of a poem.

Elizabeth

ABOUT ELIZABETH JAVOR: With over 18 years of experience in sales and management, Elizabeth Javor works as the Manager of Author Services for Outskirts Press. The Author Services Department is composed of knowledgeable publishing consultants, pre-production specialists, customer service reps and book marketing specialists; together, they all focus on educating authors on the self-publishing process to help them publish the book of their dreams. Whether you are a professional looking to take your career to the next level with platform-driven non-fiction or a novelist seeking fame, fortune, and/or personal fulfillment, Elizabeth Javor can put you on the right path.
in your corner, Uncategorized

In Your Corner: Help. It’s Not What You Think.

When we talk about seeking help in the world of self-publishing, we come up against a struggle almost right away—a struggle almost as old as the indie publishing world itself: that inner debate between going it alone and creating the best possible book, a goal which in reality sometimes requires us to go very much not alone. A reality which requires us to seek assistance. And when you face up to that question, what you’re really asking is something else entirely. Something even more important:

What can having an expert in your corner do for you?

There’s great value in seeking personal help when it’s called for, just as there’s great value in considering all of your options and pursuing only those which benefit you more than they cost you. And really, when you think about it, pretty much every option costs you something, even if we’re talking about intangibles like time and energy and creativity instead of tangibles like hard cash. (But even hard cash is largely symbolic, isn’t it? That’s another story for another blog, though.) Often, the costs are ones we don’t think about, beyond the surface-level acquiescence of I guess I have to do this thing or this other thing, so here goes. I’ve spent many an evening on the floor of my living room snipping out shapes from craft paper only to sit back after hours of sweat (and the occasional tear, if I’m honest) with the lightning-strike realization that I could have just ordered these shapes online or something. But for one reason or another, I had already sunk a great deal of labor into the craft while assuming that I had no other option.

Many people have the same kind of AHA! moment when it comes to self-publishing—only, most of them have it too late, after they’ve already agonized through the various minutiae of picking out a self-publishing package, maybe even designing their own book cover or conscripting vaguely interested friends into copyediting, and even chasing down local distribution options to no avail.

consultation

Here’s the thing, though:

Help, in the world of self-publishing, is abundant. And it’s readily available. If you know where to look, and if you’re willing to look.  There’s definitely a bit of resistance to giving up the solo attempt, stemming partly from the legacy of indie being tied to a flat rejection of the traditional publishing model, with its teams of marketing aides and editors with gatekeeping tendencies. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with questioning the need for help. Question away! Just know that it’s out there, and that true to the indie mindset it is as myriad and adaptable as the self-publishing process itself.

Thinking of my own personal experience in the world of self-publishing, I know for a fact you can find help with:

The true value of personal help in the self-publishing process is in knowing you have an ally. Many allies. All of the time. They might come in the form of a Publishing Consultant or a Personal Marketing Assistant, or something else entirely. They’re out there on message boards, email, and of course you can catch them over the phone. They’re even out there lurking in live chats.

You are not alone. ♣︎

Elizabeth

ABOUT ELIZABETH JAVOR: With over 18 years of experience in sales and management, Elizabeth Javor works as the Manager of Author Services for Outskirts Press. The Author Services Department is composed of knowledgeable publishing consultants, pre-production specialists, customer service reps and book marketing specialists; together, they all focus on educating authors on the self-publishing process to help them publish the book of their dreams. Whether you are a professional looking to take your career to the next level with platform-driven non-fiction or a novelist seeking fame, fortune, and/or personal fulfillment, Elizabeth Javor can put you on the right path.
Alternative Marketing Methods, Book Marketing, elizabeth speaks, Marketing Your Self-Published Book, Uncategorized

In Your Corner: Partnering With Bloggers

Or, How to Find Others Who Care As Much As You Do

And therein lies the rub.  There will never be another person out there to whom your book will mean the same thing that it means to you, the self-publishing author–but as our current president is wont to say on tour in Australia, “we have faced our share of sticky wickets!” (Don’t worry if you haven’t watched a game of cricket in your life … this is where I end my allusions to that game.)  There will be other people out there–readers and other authors and self-publishing aficionados alike–to whom your book means a great deal.  Just, you know, in different ways.

And some of them will run blogs.

No, wait, that’s a very important detail!  Blogs sell books.  More specifically, blogs have collectively served as the underground advertising board (and yes, market) for self-published books since the dawn of the internet.  It has proven to be a mutually beneficial relationship, borne out of the early years of both blogging as a digital platform; think how LiveJournal and MySpace and, yes, WordPress were all coming into being around the same time as the modern incarnation of the self-published book–and the ebook.  Blogging was a celebration of the freedom of expression of the highest order, and self-publishing was a reaction against excessive control and gatekeeping by the traditional publishing institution.  Many bloggers became self-publishing authors, and vise versa.  They were made for each other.

blogging

The mutually beneficial relationship continues today, as lists like “52 Great Blogs for Self-Publishers” by Joel Friedlander of The Book Designer illustrate.  “Book bloggers love to read books and to recommend them to their own followers,” writes Alan Rinzler, a consulting editor with former entanglements at Harvard and The New York Times.  He takes an in-depth look at the story of self-publishing megastar Amanda Hocking, whose books sold in the millions, reminding his followers–in, yes, a blog post–that they “collectively build markets that can reach millions of potential readers and can turn books into bestsellers. As serious and discerning critics and social networkers, these book lovers have formed regional and national organizations and established huge databases, including this searchable list of more than 1,400 bloggers.”  It’s not ironic that Rinzler uses his own blog to discuss this; really, it’s incredibly easy to find bloggers who care about self-publishing enough to use their personal blogs to discuss it.

What’s hard is finding the right blog to help you sell your books.  And by “sell,” I mean the word in both a transactive and a persuasive sense.  You want someone who believes in your book–not just a passing mention or two.  To find your blogsoulmate, I recommend following a few simple steps.

  1. Dig a little.  If you’ve found us here at Self-Publishing Advisor, I’m going to go out on a limb and venture a guess that you’ve done your research.  At the very least, you’re handy with Google and WordPress.  That’s all you need to get started.  Dig around a bit and increase your exposure to the types of blogs out there.  We feature reviews of self-published books once a week, but we do a lot of other things, too, and many of our bloggers have close ties to one specific self-publishing company.  Other blogs might feature only one blogger with no ties to the industry itself, but who maybe posts multiple reviews a week.  Write yourself up a list of blog names that catch your interest, either in tone or reach.
  2. Take part in the conversation.  Every blog has a comments section, unless someone ran wild and posted something offensive in the past and thereby forced the blogrunner to disable this feature.  Whether the blog is on WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, or somewhere else, the whole point of its existance is to engender conversation.  Sign yourself up for a profile if you need to, or use the handy “Google Sign-In” or “Facebook Sign-In” options to comment.  As a blogger, I can tell you that replies are always awesome, and they are indicators of where real interest lies.  I guarantee a blogger will take note if you interact with their posts on a regular basis, unless they have something on the order of a trillion commenters already.  But that, too, is useful information.  You want to engage withy communities where you’ll be noticed–so if you feel overwhelmed or lost, that might be a sign to pick a different blog with a slightly more manageable following.
  3. Ask for things.  You know, once you’ve established a toe-hold in the community, don’t be afraid to ask for those things you really want–book reviews, interviews, the blog equivalent of a public service announcement.  Everything helps.  Don’t be afraid of rejection; the worst that can happen is the blogger says “no,” and there are plenty of bloggers out there, so it’s not the end of the road.  In fact, since you’re looking for a believer and not just any blogger, nos are simply the most efficient way to whittle down your options to the best ones.  Once you’ve got a couple of blogs interested in your work, step it up and ask for a blog tour.
  4. Don’t be afraid of the money question.  Sometimes, you might really need the boost that a paid service provides.  It’s a question of weighing the benefits against the expenditure, and determining whether A) you can afford it, and B) it fills a need.  In my personal experience, most indie authors don’t like to consider this option until they’ve run out of other options–and understandably.  I get it, I really do.  Self-publishing is one high-wire act after another, and money is always tight.  But I’ve seen a lot of authors who really could or even would have benefited from a promotional campaign like the one my company and many other companies offer–all of which come with promotion on the company’s official blog, with an extensive reach indeed–but who waited until they’d exhausted all other options.  Like a lot of other components to your marketing campaign, paid promotion should be on the table early and woven organically into the rest of your strategies.

That’s it!  Four steps!  Each of them relies on you to take initiative, which may or may not prove exhausting, but I hope you know one simple thing:

You are not alone. ♣︎

Elizabeth

ABOUT ELIZABETH JAVOR: With over 18 years of experience in sales and management, Elizabeth Javor works as the Manager of Author Services for Outskirts Press. The Author Services Department is composed of knowledgeable publishing consultants, pre-production specialists, customer service reps and book marketing specialists; together, they all focus on educating authors on the self-publishing process to help them publish the book of their dreams. Whether you are a professional looking to take your career to the next level with platform-driven non-fiction or a novelist seeking fame, fortune, and/or personal fulfillment, Elizabeth Javor can put you on the right path.