How to Market a Book, by Joanna Penn, Reviewed.

The third in a package of books on writing in the digital age, this one deals with the nuts and bolts of getting your books to market. That may sound daunting or technical or simply distasteful to many writers. It did to me. We are, after all, artists. We have souls and care about the words we share, the stories we tell, the characters we invent. Surely selling is a dirty world full of shysters, slimy creeps and people bent on separating the gullible from their money for personal gain, isn’t it? Well, it turns out that isn’t actually what it’s about.

The author, a writer of both nonfiction and fiction, explains in great detail, and to great effect, the reality behind the art of selling your books. You are a writer. Writing is communication and entertainment, as well as many other positive things. You have talent, you have imagination, you have knowledge. Are you writing to keep these things to yourself? I hope not. I certainly aren’t. We write to pass on our gifts, knowledge, imagination. But hiding your work in a cupboard or drawer is hardly going to get those words out there, is it?

In reality, marketing a book is passing information to people, readers, who are actively seeking your words. You are providing a service to the very people you wish to reach. They want to know about your books. They want to read your stories. They want to be able to find and buy your output. Are you going to prevent them by being all precious and mistakenly coy about the act of actually selling those works?

If you want to remain in obscurity, keep your efforts hidden from public gaze, hide away from the possibility of having readers actually read your books, then don’t read this book. It will educate and convert you. It will place you on the path to reaching readers. It may even make you see selling your wares as an honourable and desirable part of your craft that you could enjoy!

The book has multiple sections, all of them giving practical advice and some attempting to put right the ill-informed attitude that I and others may possess regarding the marketing of our books. I was one of those who considered himself an artist and unsuited to the world of sales. Mind you, I have a brief and troubled background in that world that undoubtedly tainted my opinion. But that was a different world, a commercially predatory place where the customer was seen as a target for the unscrupulous to cheat and legally rob. Marketing and selling your book does not have to be like that at all. In this field, potential buyers are actively seeking your books. And this book has left me feeling positive, enthusiastic and ‘clean’ about marketing and promoting my own work.

So, if you’re a writer just starting out, uncertainly stepping into the world of words, or a veteran with many titles under your belt, all unsold and under-promoted, this is definitely the book for you. Read it. Act on the advice. And sell your books to people who want to read them. Thoroughly recommended.

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Write. Publish. Repeat, by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant, Reviewed.

I downloaded this book as part of a package of 3, offered for a very silly price, by which I mean, cheap, very cheap!

It’s the best few pence I’ve ever spent. I’d have happily paid a hundred times more. This is the first book in the package and it speaks to me. Oh, how it speaks to me. All the way through, as I read, I was saying (sometimes aloud, to the annoyance of my patient and wonderful wife) ‘Yes! Of course!’.

These two guys are on my wavelength. They understand what it’s like to be a pantster who refuses to be bound by genre. But they also understand that writers need to be disciplined and to have a business head to deal with writing in the modern world. I have long struggled with the concept and act of marketing and promotion. It is foreign to my nature. I am suspicious of salesmen and marketers, considering them a bunch of exploitation merchants with morals that would make a sewer rat look like a saint. What these authors do in this book is to debunk our preconceived ideas of marketing and promotion. They explain, in a friendly, chatty and frank style, the reality of writing and getting your words before the reading public.

They understand that the story choses the genre; a phrase I’ve used for years. They get that writers who see themselves as artists are okay to do that. But they also understand that we, the writers, the creators of stories, need to earn some income in order to continue with our craft. Starving in the garret is not necessary. Hiding your light under a bush is not helpful to your readers.

What these guys do, in an entertaining, informed, educational and inspiring way, is enable you, as an artist, to separate your creative self from your business self and start to actually sell you books, and to do so without compromising your ethics or your idea of yourself as a writer.

I do have a complaint about the book. It is this. It should have been written twenty years ago, when I first started writing seriously. It’s no good trying to excuse the lack or delay by complaining that self-publishing was all but non-existent then, or that digital publishing was no more than a scifi dream. If this book had been around then, I’d be a wealthy writer by now, with a string of bestsellers to my name. Give me time, and, armed with the advice in this book, I’ll become that writer.

So, I have to just say, ‘Thank You’ to Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant for their insight, their openness, their extraordinary candour and their simple ability to express these vital lessons in words that sing to me. If you’re a writer who has struggled to get your name and work noticed, this is the book for you. If you have ever self-published and thought maybe your books could do better, this book is for you. If you’ve ever thought maybe you could write a book and publish it yourself, this book is for you. Buy it. You’ve missed out on the initial insanely cheap introductory offer, but if I were you, I’d pay ten times the current price. Read it. Follow the advice. I certainly will. I heartily recommend it to all struggling writers.

A Writer’s Nightmare Transformed into a Dream of Delight.

Regular readers will know that I have real difficulty with marketing and promotion. Well, recent experiences have taught me it needn’t be so. 

Rather than bore you with repetition here, let me direct you to my guest post on that popular writing blog, Writers’ Village, where you’ll find a short tale of  my conversion to Marketing Master (that, of course, is a spot of hyperbole, but there is some stuff on there that might help you if you’ve been having the same concerns as me about marketing).

Here’s the link. All you need do is click it.

Making Memes, For Writers

What is a meme? There’s a great explanation on the inimical Wikipedia here. But, in short, for our purposes, it’s a message conveyed via the medium of a picture with words added.

So, what’s it got to do with writers?

Essentially, of course, your book cover constitutes a type of meme. But it’s in the area of promotion that these devices really come into their own. It’s long been the case that visual messages create greater interest and more responses than the written word alone. In the visually biased world we now inhabit, this has become even more the case, and promises to be increasingly so into the foreseeable future.

The idea is that it’s more effective to produce a ‘poster’, with relevant background picture and your words applied, than to simply quote the words in a tweet or short post.

A lot of writers employ cameras to collect information and records for their writing. It’s a fairly simple matter to use the same equipment to collect images suitable for backgrounds for memes. For those who don’t own or use a camera (and don’t forget most mobile phones now contain a camera, as do tablets) there are a large number of sites where you can use images taken by others. On most of these you can make unlimited use of pictures for a small fee and limited use for free. Don’t be fooled by the many claims that all images are free. Almost without exception, such images are either very small or bear a great big watermark. ‘Free’ for this purpose, generally means they are ‘royalty free’; in other words, once purchased, they can be used commercially. Pricing is from around £2.00 a picture, depending on image size. Make sure you read the licencing agreements before you use them. I’ve made use of some of these images for my book covers and they represent a very worthwhile investment. I list some of the sites at the end of this post.

So, how do you apply words to a picture? MS Word allows you to do this in a very basic way. You ‘insert’ a picture in a document and then set the text so that the picture is ‘behind’ the chosen text. However, this is unsatisfactory for a number of reasons; mostly, it’s very limited and not easy to manipulate. Most ‘Painting’ applications will allow the placing of words over or within an image. They also tend to be fairly limited and not particularly straightforward, however.

By far the most effective way of applying text to a picture is to use image manipulation applications,

like Photoshop. However, be aware that you need a degree in computer science, the patience of a saint and the intuitive skills of a genius to make full and efficient use of such programs (My daughter is currently studying Photography at university: they don’t teach Photoshop, even though most of their students use the program. Why don’t they teach it? A lecturer, asked the question, stated it would take a full-time course of around 5 years to do it justice!)

But, don’t despair: you don’t need a complex program to produce your memes. Below are some of the applications offered, free and online, that I’ve tried out for you. In each case, I used my own images, but all these sites have libraries of pictures you can use as part of the application. I used Fotofelexer to produce ‘We Travel this road…’ and ‘Breaking Faith’. Picmonkey was used for ‘If we stop..’ And Ipiccy produced ‘Life is…’

These I found easy to use, but each works in slightly different ways, so you’ll need to give them a try to find out which one suits your particular working methods.

The accompanying posters are memes I produced specifically for this post and each took me only a few minutes. Many of the sites have bells and whistles to allow you to ‘jazz-up’ your creations, should you feel so inclined. My advice is to have a go and see what you can come up with.

And, what to do with these wonders once you’ve produced them? Well, you can Tweet them on Twitter, add them to your blog/website, make them part of your Pinterest collection and stick them in albums on your Facebook and/or Google+ author page (what do you mean, you haven’t got one?). Obviously, make sure there’s a buying link to those that promote your books. As for the words you use to apply to the pictures, you have a choice of your own pithy sayings, excerpts from the text of the book and, of course, those wonderful words of praise from your reviewers (make sure you credit them, of course).

Have fun and scatter memes all over your world. You never know, you might actually attract some readers and maybe even sell some books!

If you’ve found this useful, stimulating, interesting or experienced any other positive outcome, please use the ‘share’ buttons at the foot of the post to let others know about it. It took me a lot of time and effort to produce this post. Thanks. Oh, and by all means comment, but bear in mind I’m no expert, so I may not be able to answer technical questions!

Photo editing sites:  

http://pixlr.com/editor/            Too much like Photoshop

http://fotoflexer.com/app/index.php?integration=upload       Easy to use and comprehensive

http://www134.lunapic.com/editor/   Difficult – can’t copy and paste a block of text

http://www.picmonkey.com/             More variety available if you upgrade at $4.99/month or $33/year

http://ipiccy.com/       Useful and comprehensive.

Sites where you can get pictures:

http://www.dreamstime.com/  21,500,000 images – small charge and some free. I’ve used this for covers.

http://www.shutterstock.com/           30,000,000 images – small charge, some free

http://www.istockphoto.com/            V large selection – small charge, some free

http://www.thinkstockphotos.co.uk/ V large selection – small charge – some free.

http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/      Large selection – small charge, some free.