Change of Scenery
I’m writing this post in the middle of a 12 day visit to England, because it reminded me of a valuable tip to bring perspective to our writing.
Most of us are very busy with day jobs, families, houses and other responsibilities, and we fill every spare hour with writing. It is all too easy to get into the rut of the daily grind, and challenging to clear our heads when we sit down to write. Whether you write at the same desk or comfy armchair, or at Starbucks, in the garden or at the beach, what we all need is a real change of scenery. For this you need to leave town, preferably your State or county, and better still, travel to another country.
Why? Perspective. People are different the further you travel from your home. They speak “oddly”, use colloquialisms and peculiar mannerisms, eat bizarre food, and if you travel far enough, they look or dress differently. The landscape or weather might be unusual compared to home Now look more closely. Houses are not the same everywhere, nor street signs, and you eventually notice trivialities like the traffic lights at intersections might be at the corner, or overhead on gantries. Do they hang vertically, or, like in hurricane-prone states, horizontally. Naturally, hundreds of items spring to mind when you visit another country, even one as similar to the US as England.
What does this teach us? First, that we can return home with a fresh perspective that can spice up our book. What if I made that character English, and they drank tea with milk instead of coffee? A cliched example, but you get the idea. How would that chain-smoking European fare in American cities and bars? What if my protagonist imported Curly Wurlys from England and chewed them when he got nervous. (A long thin candy that tastes like Milk Duds). How unique would it be for our hard-boiled P.I. to drive a right-hand drive Alfa Romeo instead of an American muscle car?
Secondly, while we all know the value of people watching, being ultra observant of how even the tiniest details vary per region is great mental training, and can hone our descriptive skills. Adding unique flair to mundane items brings richness to our books.
Make time to travel and see things in a different light. Take a trip or vacation. Oh, the things we have to endure in the name of research. 
What insights into your writing do you gain when returning home from an extended trip?
Interview with a web site designer
Here is an interview with William Byrd, the all round nice guy that designed this web site, which hopefully everyone agrees is an awesome improvement on my own attempt. Great job, Will! Hopefully, what Will has to say will help someone else considering their first web site, or a revamp.
Tell us a bit about yourself?
My name is William Byrd, I’m 31 and a “military brat” – my father was in the Marines for 14 years. Naturally, we travelled a lot. By age 5, I had lived in the Philippines, Okinawa, Guam, Hawaii, and Virginia. Unlike kids today, I did not grow up with technology. I never had video games, a cell phone, or a computer. Throughout high school, I actually typed every paper on a TYPEWRITER! Only at age 23, after a few years at Palomar College in San Diego, did I get my first computer, and it scared me! Instead, I decided to pursue my love of art and design at Platt College, and try to make a living out of something I truly enjoyed. Somewhere along the line, that evolved into my current career as a computer graphic artist and UI designer.
How long have you been doing UI? What are your skills?
I built my first “real” (professional) website in 2004, after my first year at Platt. The site is still up actually: h2odyssey.com, and I’m currently working on re-designing it! H2O was my employer for many years and is where I got my start in graphic and web design.
I feel my skills lie largely in design and usability. I enjoy coding clean XHTML & CSS, incorporating Javascript and other scripting languages to make a site more dynamic and intriguing for the user. That said, I really love the visual aspect. I don’t care how good the code is, or how great your marketing team, if the product looks like crap – no one is going to want to use it or buy it. I focus on quality rather than quantity. With each site, I try something new, or do something different. I push myself to keep learning, to better my skills so that my work speaks for itself.
What technology do you advise for an author blogging site?
WordPress is the way to go. It’s a robust application, easy for clients to understand and work with, and it has a great API and thousands of modules, many of which can be installed in a few clicks. Drupal is more geared towards developers, and I really don’t see hand coded sites as worth it any more, considering the CMS options out there.
Do you build WordPress themes from scratch or use existing ones?
To learn the “ins & outs” of WordPress, I started by building my own themes, while at the same time learning PHP and understanding how a CMS works. It’s much easier, and cheaper for my clients, for me to modify an existing theme. It helps if a client comes to me with some suggested themes that they like, but I’m happy to make recommendations.
What is the hardest part of building a site?
For me, the design phase – I get very meticulous about different aspects of a design. Over the years, I have gotten much better about letting certain things go, but I still want everything to be “perfect”.
What should a client expect when working with a site designer?
The most important thing to keep in mind is patience. Both sides will bring their vision to the table, but the final site may turn out quite different to what you both imagined. If the client and designer work closely together, good things will come. Be flexible and listen to your designer – that’s what you’re paying them for. If the designer doesn’t have a portfolio, I wouldn’t recommend hiring them.
Be prepared to go through a series of “comps”. Do not hide anything from your designer – be open and clear about what you like and don’t like. It is much easier for the designer to fix a move in the wrong direction at comp stage, than after he/she has built the template or Theme.
How much will a site cost?
When choosing a designer, keep in mind that good work is not inexpensive. If someone says they can do it for cheap, you’ll end up with a cheap looking site. Expect to pay $500 to $5000 or more. Good designers work their tail off, working long hours and late nights to realize your dream site.
Factors that affect price include:
- The scope of the project: Do you want a simple blog with a home page, or a dozen pages to showcase your books or projects, and reviews? What WordPress plugins do you need and do you want the designer to configure them, or will you? Do you need a shopping cart to sell your masterpieces?
- The pedigree/experience of the designer.
- Being too picky or wishy-washy during the comp stages, making your designer redo the design over and over, or asking for variations.
- Scope creep: You keep adding things that were not previously agreed upon.
- Artwork: Do you need custom artwork, or can you get by using photoshopped stock images? Maybe you’re a minimalist and don’t need any graphics at all except for your bio photographs, but remember that images make a site richer and more interesting.
What are your opinions on site design?
Whole blogs have been written about this, but in essence, it boils down to making it interesting but clean and usable. Restrain yourself to two or three fonts, a limited color palette, and background imagery that doesn’t detract from your content. As the cliché says, “content is king”, so make sure that is what your users are drawn to.
I advise simple navigation that is available on all pages, and keep your most important information in a siderail that is accessible from anywhere on the site. The actual flow and placement of components varies from site to site, though it is typical to have your main nav in the header, and a secondary nav (like blog postings) in a left or right rail along with your social media components and links to your most valuable/popular content.
What should clients do before approaching a designer?
I send a questionnaire to my clients, steering them to give me what I’m looking for. It’s always a good idea to provide your designer with examples of sites you admire, and why – maybe you like the navigation, or the color scheme, etc. Even then, many clients have no idea what they are looking for other than “I need a site for myself, my business, etc.” A good designer can take it from there.
Any final tips you want to share?
When starting a blog, make sure that your home page introduces you and your blog, providing users with an incentive to dig deeper into your site. Avoid a cluttered site, or users will become bewildered and leave. Users shouldn’t feel overwhelmed by your content, such as being forced to read screens and screens on one page. Break it apart in logical sections and lead users with clear navigation. Back up your blog regularly (your hoster can usually help with this). Finally, always use WordPress’s preview mode before publishing a post or page – even the best of us can mess it up and lose the original content.
Thanks Will! He can be contacted via will@william-byrd.com.
Here’s a related post I did a while ago: Redesigning your web site.
Dark Fantasy: Our favourite undead
My work-in-progress is a dark fantasy featuring a splattering of undead. (“splattering” seemed an appropriate grouping). I’m not writing a paranormal or urban fantasy, so I shall be avoiding the usual suspects: vampires, werewolves, and zombies. I have nothing against them, and I’m a bit of a zombie fan, but I want to bring some of the rarer creatures of the night to life (or unlife, I guess).
Mythology and legend is full of nasty beasties, and here’s only a few of them. Remember back to the classic movies like Jason and the Argonauts and how cool the animated skeletons were? I’ve got to have them, but they’re pretty mundane compared to what I have in mind. I definitely have a place for ghouls. Love them! I haven’t decided about ghosts and their incorporeal cousins yet.
So here’s where I’d love your help:
- What are your favourite undead?
- What ikky creatures would you love to read about?
- What do you expect from a dark fantasy?
I’d love to read your comments, thanks.
Do readers care about self-publishing?
I’ve read a lot of blog posts and articles recently about why and how readers buy ebooks. Many pundits claim that Amazon is so full of self-published drivel that readers have no clue what to buy. I want to add to this debate by analyzing a couple of my recent Indie ebook purchases.
First, at the risk of losing you, go read this excellent post. Please come back. One of the most interesting points in there is how does a reader know a book is self-published?
They rarely do. As writers, we think like authors and self-publishing business people, which means we analyze Amazon listings objectively. Readers do not, they react emotionally to a name, a title, a cover image or a sentence in the blurb. Often the only pointers are: The book is only available in ebook, the low price, and that it might list Smashwords or similar entity as the publisher.
So let’s look at two of my recent purchases. The books and authors shall remain nameless, but neither are well known.
1. An author happened to follow me on Twitter. I liked their profile so followed them back. Their profile mentioned their major book. I saw them tweet about it a couple of times. (Just a couple.) Fast forward a month to where I saw someone review it on Goodreads. I checked it out on Amazon. Mixed reviews, not a bestseller by any means. Fast forward another month, when I saw someone else tweeting about it. I returned to Amazon, read the blurb more attentively and bought it for $2.99.
What does this tell us? First off, that sales cycles take a long time. Most sales people learn this day one – that it takes 5 touchpoints to sell something. Second, all sightings on social media and the web carry weight. You never know what is going to tip a reader over the edge. This is a long-haul game. Play every card and every angle, and you will gain an audience, one reader at a time.
2. I read a great book on Amazon by an author that I have in paperback. I’ve learned to pay attention to Amazon’s recommendation widget since it has given me good results. It recommended a book whose title grabbed me. I checked it out and bought it for $2.99. It was only much later, after I had enjoyed the book, that I realized that it was self published. So what. His next book is on my to-read list.
I bet most readers are influenced by Amazon, and as the blog post above says, tools like this make it easy to find books. I didn’t know or care that it was self-published. In hindsight I should have guessed from the price, but I firmly believe readers don’t look at it that way. Something attracts them (the cover, the blurb, the title) and THEN they look at the price. Whee, you can’t go wrong at that price, they think.
This is probably typical of how I, a writer, buy ebooks, so why should I think that readers are any more sensitive to self-publishing than I am. Readers only care about a good story. They couldn’t name a publisher on any paperback or hardback that they own. I think authors are projecting their own fears onto readers.
What do you think? What makes you buy an Indie book?
Review of LichGates by S.M. Boyce
4.5 out of 5 stars
This is an epic start to an incredible new fantasy trilogy, and one of the most unique fantasy worlds I have seen for a very long time. I can tell that S.M. Boyce has files and notebooks full of every detail about her world of Ourea. This book oozes with the richness of every nation, race, its history, culture, creatures and magic. As a reader, I totally trust the authenticity and continuity of the world. You can lose yourself in it easily.
We, and the main character Kara, are thrust into this alien world with an initial steep learning curve, but that’s ok, because after that, S.M. Boyce unwinds the culture and backstory with good pacing. We get a lot of it though, and at times it can read like a history text (luckily not a dull one), but she has so much for us to experience.
I don’t know where the “Lich” in Lichgates comes in (considering its classical reference to an undead magician), but it sounds intriguing and the title is very compelling. As is the cover. Others have frowned on its simple, matt brown design, but I really like it, and it’s obviously intended to resemble the actual Grimoire in the story. The 4-circle clover design is an awesome symbol too, and is referred to in the plot at every turn.
No spoilers here, but the story follows Kara and her mystical, royal friend Braeden, and I totally fell in love with these characters. They are believable, complex on numerous layers and not without humour, and a romantic longing. The author has a talent for rich, 3-dimensional, and flawed characters, each with their own agenda and powers. I enjoyed the political overtones in the plot, and they certainly enhanced the drama, and were in no way onerous.
The author has a strong command of story-telling and creative writing, knowing how to bring out the best of every description. Nothing is mundane. The locations are fabulous and so precisely described that I could have been standing there with Kara at every turn. S.M. Boyce did her utmost to avoid the classic fantasy stereotypes, instead giving us gorgeous locations that lend themselves perfectly to a movie.
My only complaint is the ratio of narrative and description to dialogue. The author writes dialogue so well that I wanted much more. In places, I found it a slower read due to the necessity of digesting the description, wonderful as it was. A faster pace would be hard to pull off with the depth of her world, I imagine, but I’m definitely not saying that it’s unbearably slow. Boring it is not!
There is no doubt I shall buy the rest of the trilogy. This is great fantasy from a new author, who obviously has an outstanding career ahead of her. (S.M. Boyce web site)
Mampalo: One of my characters is a tortoise?
Two of my readers named their pet after a character from my “Ocean of Dust” novel. This is a first for me, and flattering. Mampalo is my character’s name, and he obviously made a huge impact on my readers. Take a look at the photo to the left. What a handsome tortoise (turtle?), but not quite what I had in mind for Mampalo. Here’s a description from the book:
His eyes were a dazzling yellow, like nothing she had ever seen, and they seemed to laugh at her. He was clean-shaven, with rich, even brown skin. Four golden hoops pierced each ear, partially obscured by thick, tightly curled black hair that draped his shoulders. Strings of brightly colored beads ran from his earrings up to clips in his hair.
I’m not sure how that inspired them to name the tortoise, but perhaps they just liked the name. Fair enough. A big shout out to Jilliane and Jared. Thanks for reading, and thanks for bringing a huge grin to my face.
Do you have any examples of bizarre characters?
Can publishers and ebooks co-exist?
As more and more authors move away from traditional publishing, to publish themselves (selfpub) on ebook, many have predicted the total collapse of the agent & publisher system, at least for fiction. Selfpub is compelling to authors, allowing them total control over the process, and nearly all of the profit too. So what role is there for publishers and agents?
Many pundits propose that publishers will suffer the same fate as brick-and-mortar bookstores, namely being relegated to a niche role for specialists and purists, in the same way that record stores exist and boutique record labels produce limited supply runs of vinyl albums. People aren’t quite ready to give up on the delight of a physical book in their hands.
The big publishing are staring down the same turmoil that the music companies faced with the might of iTunes and digital downloads. They managed to carve a role for themselves, in that most music today still comes from a music company than an artist “self-pubbing” to iTunes. I’d like to see the stats for independent vs. music company. Maybe book publishers can do a similar thing, and I believe the secret is value-added-services.
The author’s argument goes like this: I dedicate years of my life to a book, and then I have to spend a ton of time querying to find an agent, who then has to spend time attracting a publisher. The author has to do his own marketing and promotion, pay for his own editing, and gets a tiny fraction of the profits when the book hits the shelves 1-2 years later. That used to work in the old days, when publishers did provide editorial services and marketing (some still do, but rarely on midlist or below).
It’s a different world now. Perhaps the publisher should mutate their role toward publicist. Authors like to write. I’m sure most of us don’t really want to spend so much time promoting, arranging book tours, blog tours, merchandising, etc. Those things are fun, but a lot of work. If the publisher did all that, we could write more books, and everyone wins, right? Self-pubbing to ebook gives instant gratification for the author, but it’s becoming a swamped market now that the barriers to publication have fallen. Perhaps publishers could step in and help readers become aware of specific ebook titles. Without physical inventory and sale-or-return publishers could devote more money to providing excellent services for debut authors too. Many so-called boutique publishers are doing this right now.
The question is, having gained control of their destiny, do authors want to hand that back to others? Is avoiding marketing and promotion worth it?
What do you think? Do publishers have a role?
A letter from your antagonist
Dear Author,
According to my nature as the antagonist, the archenemy, the nemesis of your pretty hero, I feel the need to threaten you. My thugs should pay you a visit, my shock troopers and army of darkness should engage your feeble troops in battle, or perhaps I should engage you mano-a-mano in an epic, duel to the death finale.
However, I won’t, because you’ll cheat. Don’t deny it. How is it that my army of darkness always falls to an unforeseen twist of fate, some secret weapon that only the hero has, or a superb stratagem that I failed to identify? Oh look, you lured my troops into a tiny gorge, and I failed to predict that you’d have archers high above to decimate my forces. I’m the Prince of Darkness (to quote Ozzy), which means I excel in devious means and evil deeds, and I’m the one that cheats – mercilessly. How can your farm boy hero and his friends circumvent my demonic excellence so easily?
Then, at the finale, when I finally get to fight your beloved protagonist one on one, the odds are still stacked against me. That’s not fair! I’ve been plotting world domination for decades. I’m a master at it. I’ve gathered the most despicable accomplices, planted spies in your camp, tortured and bribed many of your hero’s, yet somehow your hero gets the better of me. How is he a better swordsman than me, and a superior strategist? Come on, get real. You’re still cheating. The undersold sidekick comes out of nowhere to save the day, mysterious angels of righteousness emerge to weaken me, or your hero just finds the chink in my armor. Lucky sod. Deus ex Machina, I say.
Do you know how tired I am of standing up at the finale and mindlessly regurgitating my plans, explaining how superior I am, how the hero has failed, and delivering an endless soliloquy outlining the reasons why. Have you any idea how stupid that makes me look. I’m a highly educated villain, and that doesn’t necessarily make me egotistical. Your hero – he’s the egomaniac. I’m not going to waste my breath on any more speeches. If you haven’t written your book well enough for the reader to understand what’s at risk should I win, then you messed up. In future, I’m just going to quietly stab your hero. No explanations, no gleeful drama. I’m certainly not going to capture the hero, tie him woefully up and leave him to a slow, elaborate death while I head off for tea, not even watching the fruits of my labor.
Oh, and my fortress is designed to be invincible. I don’t just forget about that open sewer, access trench, or secret sally port. My guards can’t be bribed. They’re handpicked and under threat of death to protect me. You can’t win them over with moral arguments. When I do detect that someone has infiltrated my defenses, I certainly don’t sit in my throne room cum control center and foolishly claim that it must be an animal, or “ignore them, they’ll never get past my elite hounds”, or “it must be a mistake, my castle is invincible”. Would you do that? No, you’d send a large guard contingent to check it out, or you’d put your fortress on red alert, just in case.
Finally, I am the villain, so don’t you dare water down my magnificent evil depravity. There no way I’m going to cave and beg for mercy to your pathetic hero. I stand by my convictions to my destruction. In addition, don’t demean me by explaining to your readers that my childhood made me the way I am, or my stern father, or some horrible family tragedy. Boo hoo. I’m evil, dammit. Don’t take that away from me. If you weaken me, you weaken the hero’s victory, and your whole book, and you wouldn’t want to do that, right?
Therefore, dear author, make me bold, make me larger than life, make me a real villain, and treat me that way until my final, inevitable destruction. All I ask is that you make a similarly strong hero worthy of defeating me. Don’t use cheap tricks or easy get-out’s.
Despicably,
Your antagonist.
What book or world would you love to live in?
If you could choose any book or literary world to live in, what would you choose? Tough decision, huh? So many fascinating and inspirational worlds to tickle your fancy. Pretend you are about to be whisked into that world forever, for good or for bad – no coming back.
As a reader and writer of sci-fi and fantasy, I have an almost infinite selection of amazing and alien places. Here are the ones that made my short list:
- Middle Earth: Who wouldn’t want to battle the evils of Mordor, or fall in love with a gorgeous elf, ride the plains of Rohan, wander the spectacular Misty Mountains and ancient forests.
- Lankhmar: Fritz Leiber’s city oozes cosmopolitan decay and debauchery. The life of a rapier-skilled thief is romantic, and Leiber always makes sure that gorgeous women, loot, beer and adventure are endlessly available.
- Amber: To be a prince of Amber (Zelazny) grants the power to shape and distort reality, create and mold your own worlds. If intrigue and politics are not your thing, simply create a paradise somewhere out in Shadow and live there forever with everything you need at hand.
- Anne Rice’s Lestat: She brought the romance and a sense of glamour into vampires, at least for me. No longer are vampires hideous, Nosferatu-like creatures living in dreary castles in the mountains. Now they roam the streets of wonderful cities like New Orleans and Paris. To live forever is tempting if one can forget the mechanism of that immortality.
- Dumas: Of course. Paris in one of its most enlightened and fabulously decadent periods. Never mind the peasants – imagine living the daring, exciting, womanizing life of a Musketeer! Fortune and glory, wine, women and song. Marvelous.
- Neuromancer: Moving into the future – Gibson’s future – the inevitable pre-singularity destiny of mankind, and the ultimate playground for nerds and geeks like myself. Stir in urban sprawl and decay, guns and space travel, and you have a bubbling soup of drama, danger and excitement. Should I be a decker, a fence, a street samurai?
- Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series: Coming out of school, I nearly embarked in a career in The Royal Navy, and ships and exploration have been close to my heart ever since. Imagine being an officer aboard a magnificent man-o-war, protecting the Crown’s interests on the High Seas, hunting the despicable French (and at times the Americans). The respect of the crew, the wind in your hair, and the sight of land after a week battling a bowel-chundering storm. Beat to quarters!
The world I would pack my bags for, the easy winner of them all, is Anne McCaffrey’s Pern.What a wonderfully rich world of weyrs and holds, with the satisfaction of settling a brand new world, the awe-inspiring sight of a wing of dragons overhead, keeping the world safe from searing Thread. I defy anyone who has read the books not to dream of Impressing their own dragon (a gold or bronze I’m sure), and soaring high above the world, ripping between to distant places.
But, I wouldn’t choose to be dragonrider, despite their high profile and command of the skies. I’d be a harper. Now that’s a simple but rewarding, romantic lifestyle, travelling from hold to weyr to craft to spread news, teach and entertain. Everyone wants to listen to the harper, to kick back by the fire after a long day’s work and hear ballads of the ancients. Yes, that is the life I’d choose, forever wandering but knowing that I always had a home to return to in the Harper Hall. Foolishly, I picture myself as Sebell, one of my favourite characters in all the Pern books, and you bet I would go for Menolly!
So where would you choose, and why? Please comment and let me know, I’d love to hear your fantasies (or at least the PG-rated parts of them )
Yoda gives advice about your first book
Help where I can, I will, but walk the road of an author, only you can. Challenging road, it is.
Indeed it is. While writing my book, my worries centered on my craft. Am I good enough to tell this story? Are my characters believable and interesting? Is my plot too difficult to follow, or too easy? Is my story exciting? Does my writing suck? I feel lucky that my writing group and beta readers were full of excellent criticism and excitement, and genuinely seemed to enjoy my story.
Surround you on your journey, positive force must. Help you it will, yessss.
It’s only natural that if left to our own devices, our negative self-talk will convince us that we aren’t worthy of being an author. These doubts will grow and fester without encouragement and support from others. But at the end of the day-
Believe in yourself, you must. If a writer want to really be, you will. Let anyone take that dream away from you, do not, and take it away from yourself, do not. Heh, heh, heh.
Um… quite. Don’t give up on yourself; I think he’s saying.
Then I reached the next inevitable stage: I’ve finished my third draft and set it aside to age before a final edit. Doom descended when I began to read it with a fresh eye, and you must put your baby aside for several weeks before you can look at it objectively. Every clumsy sentence, cliché and repeater leaped off the page. Ugh, look at all those filler words. Just when I thought I was done, I faced a month or more of combing through every paragraph and every sentence, pruning and polishing.
Now I worried about my future audience. What if I put un-edited drivel out into the market? Clarity and terseness is drilled into us, but what if I went too far and sucked the life force out of my writing.
A professional editor, use you must. Provide the final layer of polish, they can, mmmm. Yet to learn from experience, you have.
That is one of the best pieces of advice I have ever learned. I read many ebooks from new authors, and while the story is always the most important thing for me, I’m upset by a clumsy presentation, or telltale signs that the author didn’t edit enough. Maybe when I have a dozen books under my belt, I can edit successfully, but until then, a pro-editor is a necessary expense.
Your first book may a masterpiece be not, but publish the best book you can, you must. Herh herh herh.
Now I am in the third and final stage of nail-biting panic. Marketing! To misquote Bones McCoy: “I’m a writer, not a salesman, dammit.” I see other authors spend every waking hour posting, tweeting, blog touring, interviewing, making merchandise, public speaking… I already have a day job, and I would like to write my next book, you know.
Time of marketing spend it wisely, balance you must. Your target audience find, and sell, your book will, yesssss. Ram it down everyone’s throats, do not. Hmmmmmm.
This is another good tip I’ve come across. It is tempting to try to sell to your friends, to your Twitter and Facebook friends, but if you’re like me, most of them are fellow authors. While authors read too, and can help spread the word and give you exposure via their blogs, the reader is the final target. Identify who your audience is and seek them out. Be creative. It isn’t as simple as tweeting a hundred times a day about your book. There’s a plethora of good blogs and books about marketing, and I’m finding it’s like drinking from a hosepipe.
Remember that, a writer first, you are, and writers write. Herh herh herh.
Yes, master. At the end of the day, we must accept that our first books may only sell a tiny amount. We are swimming in the wide Amazon now and there are thousands of us. It is unlikely the world will discover and leap upon our one book like piranhas to blood. The secret is volume. As Yoda says, we are writers. Once our initial marketing blitz is over, we must return to what we do best, and write more books. Don’t overreach on that first book.
I recall that the famous John Locke had almost a dozen ebooks with mediocre sales (~60/month) before the masses discovered him, and he sold a million copies in 5 months. When a reader enjoys your book, what are they immediately going to do? Search for the next one, and if they don’t find it, they’ll go away. Clearly, if we have four, eight, a dozen books available, we are going to sell more books and attract a wider audience. People love a series, that’s why there are so many of them.
This is the third great tip I learned, don’t-
Sweat your first book, do not. In this for the long haul, you are. Keep writing and, build a loyal following, you will. Yeesssssss.
Exactly. I think it is logical that after committing years of our life to our first book, we want to make it a resounding success; but don’t overthink it. Few people got famous off one book. Enjoy your first publication, bask in the glory, but move on. Don’t chase the sales numbers critically. Your next book will be better, and the next one. You must move on, you must write.
A final word from our guru:
Enjoy the journey because more important and fulfilling than the destination, it is. About the future, do what you love and worry not. Hmmmmmm.
I would love to hear your experiences, either by commenting here or email. I love talking to others with the same feelings, so that we can bolster each other up and walk the journey together.
Finally, if you enjoyed this post, you’ll like these too:
8 Tips to Keep From Going Batty as You Launch Your Career
What Happens When You Release Your First Book
Target Fixation
Thick Skin
Yoda and Star Wars are copyright and trademarks of George Lucas and Lucasfilm.