down the writer's path

Shoulder to shoulder with David McCullough

Okay, I think we're up and running once again. Sorry for not being around but I've had a hard time getting online at all, let alone for any length of time to finish a post.

My unemployment days have ended. I am once again at the same local Borders Books where I worked for four years as the events and promotions coordinator. Now I handle corporate and educational sales and will have some work in promotions.

Last night we handled the book sale for the Pultizer prize-winning author, David McCullough. His latest book, 1776, is another well-written bestseller. I've seen McCullough on CSPAN and always enjoyed listening to him. I have to say he's as nice and gracious in person as he appears on TV. He quickly pre-signed about 150 books before his talk, then returned to sign books for those who wanted to stand in line and have a brief face-to-face moment with him. He's on a long tour and should be in Tampa, Florida today, then Washington D.C. and on to Martha's Vineyard. While I helped sell the many books sold before the event, I had the honor of standing next to to the author and assisting with his signing at the end of the evening.

McCullough won the Pulitzer for his biography of John Adams, and he appears to have set the modern-day standard for biographies. If you enjoy history and good writing, and you haven't read David McCullough's work you might want to give him a try.

How a successful promotion turns into a new book project: DIVIDED LOYALTIES leads to TEENS TAKE ACTION

Imagine my surprise when I stopped to pick up of one of the smaller local papers and found the article on my book DIVIDED LOYALTIES and my new website/blog www.TeensTakeAction.com on the front page, below the fold. Now this is good placement for any article but for one that features an author it's great. I wish I could provide an Internet link but so far the article has not been posted online.

For me, the article had everything I hoped it would. I say that because even though the various components were discussed during the interview process, the final outcome and shaping is left to the reporter and then the editor. What I might want highlighted might be omitted due to the reporter's particular slant or emphasis; or the editor may not have as much space as expected and the piece might be slashed to a mere mention. In this case, the reporter discussed how my young adult novel became the inspiration for the Teens Take Action website and contest. Full information on the website and contest appeared in the article. Finally, even this blog on writing was mentioned which made it well-rounded with all the bases covered.

My only major complaint was that the Fast Fact Box had the ages for the contest incorrect. The contest is for all t'weens and teens ages 9 through 19 (not 9-12).

One of the reasons articles are so important is that they then become part of an author's press kit. I have already made copies and these will be included in all information going out to the media, bookstores, etc. in the near future. The TeensTakeAction promotion is an ongoing one with an annual contest. With the release of my second young adult, VIDEO MAGIC, at the end of summer, I'll be including promotional material about the Teens Take Action 2005 and 2006 contests.

As so often happens with writers, the promotional concept has now led to a new book. I'm collecting stories about teens who have made a difference in their communities either individually or in groups for a new book. So if you know of any stories or hear of some in the future, please drop me a line. The website and contest, and this book, are not limited to my local area. It's open to stories of real teens making a difference anywhere in the real world. The stories can be of small neighborhood efforts or ideas that took hold and turned into something that caught the imagination of the state, the nation, and/or the world.

So, spread the word.

(BTW: I am still having fits with my computer and the mouse and all, so it's a struggle to get online to post. I hope to have this resolved this weekend.)

When potential book promotions appear

Sometimes ideas for book promotions come directly from the readers. During the last five to six weeks my coauthor and I have had three booksignings for the new Exploring Texas History: Weekend Adventures. During the second signing we started hearing customers stop by and pick the book up and then say the book would make a great Father’s Day gift. Frankly, we hadn’t thought of that but we immediately began adding that as a tag when talking to other potential bookstore customers and made sure the bookstore managers were aware of the customer’s response. We know this accounted for an average of 5-6 more books sold during each signing. While we were only able to take a small advantage of this slant, next year we’ll certainly work to promote the book for Father’s Day. So when your book is released, don’t limit your thinking when it comes to potential sales.

If you have a book coming out or even if you’re in the process or writing one, it’s never too early to think about potential marketing and promotion ideas. Many writers make it a point to learn all they can about their local booksellers and bookstores long before they even sign their first contract. The savvy ones begin to develop mailing lists with contact information. They develop lists of potential word-of-mouth contacts. They take the time to get to know the bookstore people and learn what they can about the distribution and retail process—essentially they want to find out how their book will be delivered into the system and how it will be treated upon arrival at the store. If you do this in advance, then you have a good start on getting a decent campaign underway when your book is finally released.

Promotion, promotion, promotion

Writers like to think that if only they could get their book published, life would become smooth-sailing. It's a nice thought. The truth is more work and upheavel set in. While writing, you keep your eye on the final goal: publication. With the release of the book, you have a brief nanosecond to reflect and then the reality of this new phase sets in. You really don't just want your book published: you want readers. More than that, you want readers who have bought the book. You want your book to sell.

Oh how writers hate that four letter word: s-e-l-l. Its mere mention evokes visions of retired used car dealers selling their memoirs out of the trunk of their car in Walmart parking lots. With publication, the protective bubble surrounding the writer is broken and the assault of marketing opportunities and sales duties invade the poor scribe's waking moments and cause torment into the night.

I mention this because I am once again under siege. I have a booksigning on Saturday, an online opportunity to review and respond to overnight, a website and blog to complete, and a 4th of July out-of-town weekend book event to consider. I've been working non-stop on the website and blog since Friday because I wanted to get a website operating before an article appeared in yesterday's local paper.

Today's writers are realizing they must develop some kind of promotional opportunity for their book(s). M.J. Rose and Doug Clegg are two writers who have been successful in their marketing efforts. (If you still think marketing is for e-pub or self-pub authors, read this chronicle of Clegg's publishing and marketing history.) Rose, with Clegg, conduct a marketing course, The BUZZ Your Book Online Marketing Class, available through WritersWeekly.com. The course is expensive and limited. Writer's need to examine their goals, their expectations, and their desire for sales in the context of today's real world of publishing and decide if they need to hone their marketing and sales developmental skills. This course is one way writers can get the needed help to develop a book's marketing plan.

If you think all you have to do is concentrate on the writing and land a big contract to avoid having to engage in the marketing and sales of your book, you might want to read Rose's eye-opening article Reality Checks on Publisher's Dismal Publishing Efforts and then the further elaborations she offers on the reported incident. This kind of conversation is happening the world over. Even, as Rose reports, Poets & Writers has devoted white space to The Hype Debate.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting at my computer in Houston and trying to figure out why anyone would want to choose my YA books over the hundreds and thousands of other books available, and how I can help my books gain media attention and reader recognition. There are direct sales and marketing methods and there are the more indirect ways. I decided to mine the research I did for Divided Loyalties and set up a website with a blog called TeensTakeAction.com. Although still in development, the site has gone public. If you have a moment, take a look, wander around, and let me know what you think. Over the next few posts, I'll discuss how I came up with the idea and why.

Meanwhile, my coauthor and I will be at the Barnes and Noble Bookstore in Baybrook Mall this Saturday from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm selling our proverbial authorial wares.

 

Book revenues to rise 18.5 % and religious books will increase by 50%

Trends. Budding writers, published authors, booksellers, editors, agents, and pretty much anyone else in the publishing industry wants to know about the industry trends. For writers the question usually surfaces at conferences during Q&As with editors when the writer will ask a tired, overworked editor what kind of book or what genre will be the next big seller. Sometimes the question comes out as a negative: "Will you still take secret-baby plots?" the budding romance writer asks. "How about serial killers, are they still selling?" queries a mystery writer. If we can somehow decipher the next trend, we think we'll stumble upon the writer's Holy Grail. But we all know that those singular events in publishing such as the first Harry Potter book or the amazing ride of the Da Vince Code can seldom be divined.

Trends remain a constant curiosity. BSIG (Book Standard Industry Group) has published a new report, Book Industry Trends 2005, that writers may find interesting. Despite our dire predictions and constant moaning about the state of the industry, overall sales are expected to increase by 18.3 percent. While most know the religious book sector's sales have had strong, continued growth for the past five years, BSIG expects the religious books to increase by another 50 percent. Sales have reached 1.9 billion dollars. The increased growth of religious book sales in mass retailing is a major factor in the religious book sector's rise in sales. Other areas such as mass market paperbacks, trade books, and professional books are also considered to be trending upward.

Even more important than knowing the actual trends in publishing, the writer needs to learn how to respond to this type of information. Does it mean that they drop the big crime novel they've been writing for the last five years and begin a historical novel set in Old Jerusalem? No. Trend information is helpful after you've finished a book or before you begin a new project. If you're a Christian writer who has finished a historical novel set during the early Christian era then knowing the religious market is making huge advances in sales in both the Christian book market and the secular retail book market may influence your submission plan. The list of potential publishers for your novel may have widened. The marketing opportunities for your book, when it comes out, has certainly grown. Media coverage may be more than you first expected.

If you are a writer with a natural proclivity to incorporate spiritual themes in your work, then perhaps a deepening of those themes might be something to look at when you begin a project because it's clear the reading public is interested in issues of faith. However, if you don't have a feel for that type of writing, don't do it. Your lack of passion and interest will show. There are many ways to use the information found in the new report and one is to simply to become informed about your chosen industry.   

BSIG busts another publishing myth

Since 1975 the Book Industry Standard Group (BISG) has been at the forefront producing quality research about the publishing industry. Since many consider the business model of the industry to be antiquated and inadequate, this is not an easy job to accomplish. However, they have had a number of successes in moving this gnarly behemoth from the 18th and 19th centuries toward the 20th with perhaps a glimpse of the 21st in its future. In addition to studying expected subjects such as consumer book-buying habits and independent publishers, BSIG has had an immediate impact on e-books and on the publishing-wide ISBN anticipated move from ten digits to thirteen. With the increase in book publishing, the industry must move to the ISBN-13 program to be sure each and every book published has its own unique number. Just the simple necessity of having to increase all database fields throughout the retail, wholesale, and manufacturing communities is a huge endeavor. For authors who will publish books after the ten digit numbering system has fulfilled its mandate, the ISBN-13 is a necessity if their books are to make it into the data inventory systems of bookstores throughout the world.   

In "Under the Radar," a recent BSIG study detailing books published "under the radar" via small publishing companies, often referred to as regional and "niche" publishers, is a myth-buster and should be of interest to many authors. Conventional wisdom decreed that these regional and niche publishers had limited sales and their efforts only accounted for a small piece of the publishing pie. Not so, says BSIG. The 63,000 small press publishers who report annual revenues of less than 50 million dollars generate $14.2 billion in aggregate sales. Within those sales, a small population of 3,600 publishers account for 11.5 billion of the total reported. In contrast the "big" traditional publishers tend to report between $23.7 billion and $28.5 billion in sales--depending on sources.

Here's a couple more things from the BSIG report to mull over:

• small and midsize publishers have been multiplying, and often prospering, while the largest publishing companies have been consolidating.
• small and midsize publishers have been using routes to readers beyond the bookstore world, and often selling more books outside trade channels than within them, while the largest booksellers have been claiming more of the traditional bookstore market. More specifically, the study findings indicate that small and midsize publishers do more than 50% of their business outside book-trade channels and inside sales channels designed mainly to serve other industries that the book industry has not monitored.

However you frame the size of the pie, the report makes it clear that these so-called "niche" publishers have moved into the billion-dollar arena and are clearly worth considering when an author begins to consider the many roads to publishing that exist within and without the industry.

The everyday problems of writers

Sorry for the lack of posting but I'm having major computer problems and trouble getting online. Hope to get it resolved quickly. Naturally it comes when I'm trying to get publicity photos to a reporter for an article she's doing. Hope to be back online shortly.

Update 6/05/05: Think I'm up and running again so I'll have a post that will appear early tomorrow morning. Sorry for any inconvenience. In the meantime, why not check out Georganna Hancock's The Writer's Edge for a quick writing fix. By the way, DWP's poll is showing that the majority of voters like the mix offered here at Down the Writer's Path. Next is the talk on craft, followed by the essays on writing. (If you haven't voted, please do so. The poll is located on the upper right column.)