Category: Recommendations

Creating A Marketing Plan For Your Book

If you want to get your novel into the hands of readers, you need a marketing plan.

Even if you have a traditional publishing contract, unless you’re Stephen King or Mary Higgins Clark (in which case you’re probably not reading this article), only limited resources–or no resources–will be devoted to your particular book.

When I started self-publishing in 2011, I did an overall business plan. It included some marketing, but all of it quickly became out of date as the publishing industry changed.

Since then, I’ve been a bit haphazard, though I’ve had some success. I’ll share what I’ve done this year and the results on Sunday.

My December goals include creating marketing plans for my new Q.C. Davis Mystery Series (first two novels are in progress now), for The Awakening Series, and for my non-fiction writing books.

I looked at two resources to figure out what ought to go into the marketing plans, both of which I recommend.

Small Business Administration Plan

The first is the Small Business Administration marketing and sales page.

It provides a good overview of what should go into a marketing plan, including figuring out your target market, your competitive advantage, your budget, and more.

A few aspects may not be that relevant to your author business. For example, there’s a discussion of accepting checks, cash, or credit cards.

That might matter for in-person events, but most indie authors sell primarily online, in which case we’re getting paid by direct deposit from Kobo, Amazon, or one of the other ebook platforms. (Some indies are starting to sell direct from their sites now, though, which I plan to research and write about.) If you have a traditional publishing contract, your publisher will be paying you (I hope!).

Marketing Plan Template

I found an extremely helpful article on Forbes.com: Marketing Plan Template: Exactly What To Include. The author, Dave Lavinsky, includes within it a link a to template that’s for sale, but I found the article alone perfect as is.

Lavinsky does exactly what the title promises, explaining 15 steps for your marketing plan.

I found nearly every one well adapted to marketing novels. I used his 15 sections to start making notes for the Q.C. Davis plan yesterday.  (When it’s finished, I’ll provide a link so you can download it for reference.)

Beginning notes on marketing plan for Q.C. Davis mysteries

The article is from 2013.

The only part I thought was somewhat dated was splitting out Section 8, Promotion Strategy, from Section 9, Online Marketing Strategy. Most of my promotion is done online, so at first it seemed to me the two would be duplicative.

As I wrote thoughts on each, though, I realized it might be good to separate these points out. There may be offline marketing and advertising opportunities these days that other authors and businesses are neglecting, which could make it less expensive to use those ways to get a book or series in front of potential readers.

Also, don’t let the fact that there are 15 sections discourage you from sketching out thoughts on each one. I did it in about 45 minutes.

While my notes include a lot of blanks and follow up items, doing that got me started on market research last night that I wouldn’t have otherwise done. (I found readers of two more authors to add to my target list — Tess Gerritsen and Jonathan Kellerman.)

Also, it brought home to me that I really do need to start planning now if I want to release in Spring 2017, as I hope to do.

Looks like it’ll be a busy December!

For quick reference, here again are links to the two marketing plan resources I found helpful:

Until Sunday, when I’ll talk about putting the first book in a series free as a marketing strategy—

L.M. Lilly

 

The Worst Ways To Spend Money On Book Promotion

How do you know what promotional or book marketing services are worth the money?

This is a question I get often, both from people with limited funds and from those who would far rather spend money than time when it comes to marketing.

A lot of the calls and emails I receive from lawyers, doctors, and businesspeople who’ve written and/or published their first novels revolve around this issue. Many of them feel it’s better to spend their hours writing or earning money at their non-writing careers/professions and to pay an expert to handle marketing.

The problem is, marketing or promotion “experts” abound, as do services, but many provide little or no value. 

That’s why this Friday I recommend you check out The Digital Reader article 8 Ways For Authors To Waste Their Money.

Top of the list is hiring a publicist, which can cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. If you or your book are not already well-known, there’s not much a publicist can do but charge you high rates for services you could buy yourself at a fraction of the cost.

Another money pit is a service that promises to get your book on bestseller lists.

All the lists frown on, discourage, and expose attempts to game the system by buying your own book, which is what many of these services basically do. Also, nice as it might be to get that bestseller tag, if you are on your first book, the odds that paying to call it a bestseller will ever generate enough sales to make it worth the price tag are, in my opinion, slim to none.

The only point I disagree with the article about, or at least would qualify, is the dismissal of email blast services.

I agree that there is no value to emailing around a press release about your book. I also agree that paying for tweets or other social media posts rarely results in sales or enough name recognition to be worthwhile.

There are email newsletters, though, to which readers subscribe who are looking for free and discount ebooks. (The Holy Grail of these right now is BookBub, but if you can’t get in there, I’ve found others such as Just Kindle and Book Barbarian (for fantasy) worth buying.)

These e-newsletters can be good ways to reach new readers. It’s most cost-effective to pay for slots when you have at least 3 books so there’s a chance of sales in addition to your discounted (or free) ebook.

Don’t forget to check out the comments on the article, as they contain more useful information.

Until Sunday–

L.M. Lilly

Money, Writing, & Becoming Unshakeable

On the surface, making the most of the money you earn and choosing good investment strategies seems to have little to do with the creative side of writing. But I believe they are connected.

When I was worried about money all the time, I still wrote, but it was like running with a fifty pound weight on my back.

Worrying about money takes a lot of mental energy.

Also, not having enough money means spending more time on pursuits that will earn you money more quickly or more predictably than will selling your writing.

If I were saving for a down payment for a house, for example, I’d be more likely to accept more legal work, as right now it pays me more by the hour than writing does, and it pays more quickly.

In the long run, though, that’s not a good financial strategy.

Once I sell an hour of my time, it’s gone. If I spend many hours writing a novel, I may not get paid anything for it until six months from now, but it could potentially earn money for 70 years after my death.

For these reasons, this Friday I recommend Unshakeable by Tony Robbins.

A couple Sundays ago I mentioned I’m a Tony Robbins fan because of the distinctions he makes about how we motivate ourselves to achieve what we want. In Unshakeable he turns his focus to money and finance.

After interviewing fifty great financial minds, Robbins pulls out the key knowledge and strategies you need to move toward a life of financial freedom.

If you are unfamiliar with the world of finance, this book is a great step-by-step practical guide that walks you through what you need to know and how to go about getting where you want to be.

If you’re already pretty knowledgeable about investments and feel you understand the financial world, it is still well worth reading. While much of what Robbins covered was familiar to me, there were points that I hadn’t understood when I’d read them elsewhere, or that hadn’t applied to me when I first started learning about how to handle money that now hit home.

The book is available in multiple formats.

If you’re short on time or your To-Read list is already too long, try listening to it instead. That’s what I did, and I found it fairly easy to pick up the thread on each topic even if I went a long time between listening.

Until Sunday–

L.M. Lilly

Characters And Emotional Pain

Lately I’ve been struggling with creating brand new characters after having written four books in a single series. One thing that’s always been hard for me is showing the main character’s inner life and feelings.

As I got to know my characters over the four books, it became easier, but now I’m starting from scratch.

The standard Show Don’t Tell advice was so drilled into me during college writing classes that I became afraid to share anything about my characters’ thoughts, past, and emotional baggage.

I often need a separate rewrite completely focused on making sure the characters’ emotions come through. 

It’s especially challenging now because in my new Q. C. Davis mystery series my main character had a significant childhood trauma and in response became a very controlled, driven, and outwardly calm person.

That’s why this Friday I’m recommending an article from The Creative Penn: What Is Emotional Shielding and Why Does it Matter For Your Character? by Becca Puglisi.

The concept is that humans-and so characters-who suffer deep emotional wounds find a way to protect themselves from similar pain in the future.

That way, though, often leads to unhealthy behavior or coping mechanisms that cause other challenges or more pain as they go forward in life.

Even if your characters don’t have a particular single trauma to get past, the points in Puglisi’s article can help walk you through how your characters cope with painful experiences and hard times and how that influences who they become and how they act at the time your story takes place. (How’s that for ending on a run-on sentence?)

Until Sunday-

L. M. Lilly

P. S. For more on developing your characters, feel free to download my Free Character Tip Sheet/Questionnaire.

Rockets, Romance, And Marketing Cross-Genre Books

One reason a lot of writers love publishing their own work is that it need not fit nearly into one box.

My Awakening Series, for example, fits into Horror as that category existed  when I was growing up. Back then it included what I think of as “quiet horror”–like Stephen King’s The Dead Zone (my favorite King novel) or The Omen. (In case you’re trying to figure out how old I am based on that, I’ll tell you–51.)

Yes, The Omen had some scenes considered shocking at the time and a little bit of gore, but it mainly relied on psychological and supernatural suspense.

These days, some publishers wouldn’t consider that to be horror. As an independently-published writer, though, I can choose to write books like it, and I can  market to readers who love what I love regardless what it’s called.

Some writers also are drawn to indie publishing because it allows them to cross genres in the same book.

Indies are free, for example, to include romance in science fiction or add a supernatural element to crime fiction (such as J. F. Penn does in her London psychic/London crime thriller series, which is my favorite of hers).

Traditional publishing tended to frown on these types of books, finding them hard to market.

In some ways, though, things haven’t changed. Indie or traditional, it can be a challenge to market books that don’t fit neatly into a genre category.

That’s why this week I’m recommending an episode of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Podcast that specifically addresses marketing a book that falls in more than one genre.

In A Successful Cross-Genre Launch with Chris Fox, author Chris Fox is interviewed about creating covers that hint at more than one genre but aren’t overbusy, how to use Amazon Ads to test tag lines pre-launch, and reader reactions to cross-genre books, plus many other points to help writers market their work.

In keeping with the theme, I recommend this podcast episode whether you write science fiction and/or fantasy or not because the tips and information are relevant to everyone.

SFFMP 156: Finding Success with a Cross-Genre Book Launch with Chris Fox

 

Until Sunday-

L. M. Lilly

To Revise Or Not To Revise

How often and how much to revise a piece of writing varies from writer to writer.

I’m usually more of a rewriter than a writer. I create a rough outline then write fast, shutting off the editing part of my brain and telling myself whatever it is I’ll fix it later, which I do.

This leads to a pretty fast first draft. I think that’s a plus given how many writers struggle with getting anything on the page.

On the other hand, I just attended a writers conference where a couple presenters made a good case that aiming to write a solid draft the first time around, trusting your creativity and voice, and doing only a clean up rewrite to fix errors and fill in research blanks saves a lot of time and results in more engaging writing. (Though it apparently leads to run on sentences.)

I’m not entirely convinced that method will work for me. But I am going to try to be a little less bare bones in my next first draft and see if that cuts down on some revising time.

Because of these contrasting views on revisions, this Friday I’m recommending 3 different articles:

SPF-088: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Revision Process – with Joan Dempsey

Until Sunday–

L.M. Lilly

Marketing Your Novel: Wide vs. Exclusive

This week I’m at a conference for writers on business and marketing. More on that in coming weeks. (We’ve been asked not to blog about it until the end.)

Because I’ve been so focused on marketing, this Friday I’m recommending A Tale of Two Marketing Systems, one of the best articles I’ve read on the difference between selling your books wide–meaning on multiple platforms such as Kobo, iBooks, Nook, etc.–and selling them exclusively through Amazon.

Being exclusive to Amazon offers benefits, including putting your ebooks into Kindle Unlimited. People then read the books as part of their subscription. The author gets paid per page.

The rate varies, but it can adds an income stream. My non-fiction book Super Simple Story Structure: A Quick Guide to Plotting and Writing Your Novel is in KU. Every month anywhere from one-quarter to one-third of its earnings are from page reads.

Probably more important, in my view, is that the subscription model makes readers more likely to take a chance on a new book or author because it doesn’t cost them any more.

Going wide, though, also has advantages.

Here are just a few:

  • You reach readers who don’t read on Kindle;
  • As I wrote about in Boosting International Sales Of Your Books, you reach more readers in other countries;
  • You have multiple income streams from multiple platforms, so a change to how one of them pays, sells, or markets doesn’t affect you as much.

Also, while a percentage of my income now comes from KU, I don’t know if I’d earn more or less if I instead made those books widely available.

Some authors-in fact, most authors I’ve talked with–are adamant about the pluses or minuses of wide or exclusive. That’s why I like Gaughran’s post so much.

Rather than advocating for one or the other, Gaughran analyzes the different marketing strategies that work best for each. He compares the KU approach to the hare and the wide approach to the tortoise.

My two biggest takeaways were:

  • The way to succeed is completely different depending on whether you are wide or exclusive;
  • Choose one or the other, but don’t try to mix both.

That second point raises some questions for me, as right now I’m mixing both. My Awakening series is wide, and my standalone novel, short story collection, and all my non-fiction books are in KU.

Based on the article, I’m thinking I might make all my fiction wide. If I do, I’ll let you know how it goes.

Until Sunday–

L.M. Lilly

Negotiating Rights And Learning From Old School Publishing

This Friday I’m recommending two blog posts by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, editor, and publisher. I came across both because I’m heading to a conference focused on the business aspects of being an author, and she’s one of the presenters.

Her blog contains a wealth of information for authors.

For example, in Business Musings: Pulphouse, Alternate History, & the Modern Era, Rusch talks about launching a quarterly hardback magazine with her husband in the pre-Internet, pre-ebook days when publishers had to pay for print runs and sell mainly through book sellers.

She covers what worked well–such as creating an Issue Zero with a striking cover and blank pages to send to authors when asking them to submit stories–and the many, many mistakes made.

One mistake involved not having a plan to deal with the 90-120 day lag time between paying for the costs to publish and collecting revenue. Another was underpricing the publication.

While much has changed in the publishing world since then, Rusch shows how the lessons learned apply to authors today.

In Business Musings: My Day in Negotiation, Rusch discusses negotiating rights, including for television deals, and why she prefers to do so herself rather than relying on an agent.

If, like me, you think it’ll be quite a long time, if ever, before you’ll need to deal with offers for movie or television rights, this is the right time to read the advice.

In fact, it’s probably the best time because you can consider it and learn more before you’re in the middle of a discussion. Plus, when there’s an offer on the table, it can be hard to get past your excitement and be objective about the terms of the deal.

Business Musings: My Day in Negotiation

Until Sunday–

L.M. Lilly

Playing More Could Help Your Writing

I finally watched Stranger Things, the Netflix series about frightening forces at work in a small town.

The first episode starts with four boys playing a role-playing game that includes monsters.

A few of my games.

When one boy disappears, the others draw from the rules and the magic of their game to help search for him. As is also true in many Stephen King novels, magic and imagination are key to confronting evil.

Play is key to real life, too, especially for writers.

There’s a reason we often get our best story ideas or solve a plot issue as we drift off to sleep or when we dream. To be creative, our minds need to relax and rest and play.

But it’s not easy to play.

Most of life, especially when you’re juggling multiple responsibilities, is scheduled and goal-oriented. Writing can add to that, as fitting it in often means putting every free half hour (or every fifteen minutes) toward our latest project.

That’s a good way to make progress on a novel, and I’m a big fan of schedules and goals, lists and plans. But doing things that are solely for fun, that have no end goal, is what sparks creativity. It helps avoid writer’s block.

Also, it’s fun.

So what counts as play?

Peter Gray, Ph.D., in a blog on Psychology Today, noted that Play is:

  1. self-directed and self-chosen;
  2. an activity where the means matter more than the ends;
  3. has rules, but they’re created by the player’s minds, not required by physical necessity;
  4. is imaginative, not literal, and is in some way removed from “real life”;
  5. involves an alert and active, but not stressed, state of mind.

Over the last few years as I’ve cut back on my law practice, I’ve added more play. I’ve played air hockey and laser tag. Yesterday night I visited the Jurassic Park exhibit at Chicago’s Field Museum.

I also like board games, and next month I’m meeting with some writer friends at the Galloping Ghost Arcade. You can play arcade games all day for $20, and I’ve heard it has the classics from my childhood. (My favorites were Q-bert, Galaxian, and Ms. Pacman.)

Looking back, much as I’m happy that I wrote a lot even when I was working 55-65 hours a week at law, I’m pretty sure I would have been happier, and possibly also finished my novels more quickly, had I occasionally written a little less and played a little more.

How about you?

If you were going to write less and play more, what would you play?

Until Friday—

L.M. Lilly

Should You Use Beta Readers?

Five or six years ago I’d never heard the term beta reader. Now almost all authors I know use them as part of their revision process, as do I.

Recently, however, I read a post by Dean Wesley Smith that cautions against relying on beta readers.

A beta reader looks at a complete manuscript and gives the writer comments. This person is not a professional editor or an author, but is someone who reads a lot, ideally in the genre in which the author is writing.

Some authors send beta readers a first draft.

I usually send my novel out only when it’s close to finished. My early drafts are very rough, and I do a lot of my writing in the rewriting phase. I don’t want other people’s views to skew my take on my own story.

The main benefit I’ve found from beta readers is that they let me know when they can’t follow or don’t understand a scene or plot twist. Also, if they don’t understand why a character does something or strongly dislike a character I’d thought readers would resonate with, it cues me to double check to see if enough of what I know about that character has actually gotten out of my head and onto the page.

Some authors use dozens of beta readers and try to incorporate all of their comments. For me, that would be overwhelming, so I’ve never tried it.

In Killing The Sacred Cows Of Publishing: Beta Readers Help You Dean Wesley Smith strongly discourages using multiple readers, as it can easily turn into writing by committee.

Also, and contrary to much of the common advice to indie authors, Smith argues against using beta readers at all, stating: “Grow a backbone and believe in your own writing.” He makes good points about the downsides of the process and also about the fears and lack of confidence that may motivate writers to seek out many opinions.

If you’re using or considering using beta readers, I highly recommend checking out his post.

Until Sunday-

L. M. Lilly