Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

Let’s say your relationship with your publisher has gone swimmingly through the editorial process. Your editor got you, and you got your editor. What a team!

Now your manuscript has been polished into a gleaming specimen, and it’s turned over to marketing where…no one seems to even know who you are. What to do, what to do…

First, I would suggest you be sure to bring your agent onto the scene to nose around and try to find what the disconnect might be. Hopefully that will solve the problem, and soon you’re at work with a marketing dream team.

But sometimes the agent can’t figure out why there’s a disconnect either. That means it’s time to begin your own marketing campaign–not to sell your book to readers but to sell you and your book to the marketing team.

Authors seldom seem to think of this as the solution, but if you know how to work at marketing your book and contributing to what the publisher has to offer, let the right folks know that you’re plugging away right along with them.

I took on a new client earlier this year who had published five books. One of my first tasks was to sit down with the editor and the head of marketing to find out what they thought of my client’s marketing skills. They thought she sucked at it.

Oops. So I asked the author what she had done to promote her last book. Wow, it was impressive. From calling on local bookstores and asking them to carry her book to online zany book contests that brought a good response, my client was out there, working every marketing angle I could think of.

“Sandy,” I asked, “how much of what you did was communicated to the marketing team?”

“Well, none I guess,” she responded. “I just thought they’d check my blog or my website and see what I was doing.”

Hello! Since when does a publishing team have time to regularly check what each author is doing to promote his or her book?

I gave my client an assignment: Every week, just drop a friendly email to her editor and the person in marketing who was running her campaign. List (no paragraphs with tons to read, but a list the reader could just scan) everything she had done in the past week to market her book.

What a change has occurred. The publisher is no longer grumbling that Sandy doesn’t contribute to the marketing of her books. Instead, the publisher is stepping up what is being done for Sandy because they realize she’s investing her own time and money.

So what’s the lesson to be learned from my client? You are the most important participant in your marketing. Put together a marketing plan for your next book and tell your publisher what that plan is. Then go for it!

Location: Books & Such Central Valley Office

Weather: 81º and sunny

Last week agent-extraordinaire, Janet Kobobel Grant, tweeted, “If you want anyone in publishing to take you seriously, you need to have a good-looking website that centers on you as a writer.” I agree, and it’s one of the things you can do while you wait.

I asked Janet what prompted her to tweet about websites. She had a publisher anxious to receive a project from a new writer. Janet had been going over the proposal with a fine-tooth comb and called the writer with a few questions. For one, the writer hadn’t listed her website on the proposal. Plus Janet wanted specifics on how many Twitter and Facebook followers the writer had. Janet was surprised to find that her client did not have a website and had only a handful of Twitter and Facebook followers.

You don’t often have a publisher that excited about a debut author’s idea. As Janet explained to her author, when the publishing committee sits down to consider a book, many laptops are open on the table. As a committee member listens to the editor make the presentation, he may be multi-tasking, looking at the author’s website, publishing numbers, reviews and other resources. A website, even for an unpublished author, offers a level of comfort. It introduces the sales and marketing team to the author.

And if you are actively seeking an agent, it’s even more important. Part of our due diligence includes checking out your website. Yes, you can get an agent without a website. (In my example above, Janet’s client did not have a website before signing.) And yes, you can get contracted without a website, but publishers know how important online marketing is these days and how much they count on an author’s skillful online presence. Contracting a technophobe or a Luddite is a big risk for a publisher.

So what is the most important pre-marketing you can do during your wait? Create a professional website. One that will show who you are, will show that you know how to present yourself online and will begin to define your brand. The question unpublished authors usually ask is, “What do I put on a website if I’m not yet published?” Look around. Check out other pre-published authors’ websites. You will want to have a beautiful home page that emphasizes your distinctiveness–your brand. You’ll want to have a bio page. You may want to create a book review page where you promote other authors. (More about that tomorrow.) If you speak, have a page with your speaking topics and quotes about your presentations.

Create something that is distinctly you. Something fun. If you love coffee, you may want to have a recipe page of your three best coffee recipes. If you are a dog person, make sure to have a photo of you with your dog and maybe famous writers with their dogs. Are you a photographer? Add a gallery. Think of what you like to see in a website. Be creative!

And connect your website to your blog, to Twitter, and to your Facebook. Your website should be Brand Central for you–a stopping-off place to get to all your other social networks. Don’t forget that blog numbers (which are available to anyone who wants to verify), the number of Facebook friends or fans and Twitter followers give an agent or publisher an idea how well you can market online. No, it’s not the most important thing, but it is one of the skills that does translate to buzz.

So pre-market while you wait. For some of you, this will seem like a heavy burden. Don’t let it be. See it as a challenge. Have fun with it. Make it uniquely yours. Let this verse from the Bible inspire you:

Live creatively, friends. . .

Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life. Galatians 6:1a, 4-5 [The Message]

What ways have you made a website work for you? Feel free to give us your URLs.

Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

I’ve spouted a number of opinions about how a writer can break out from the pack this week. I could have added so much more, including:

–the importance of knowing what’s happening in publishing. Not just in your genre, but also in the broader industry. Read professional blogs and publications that give industry trends. It helps you to know what the current climate is in publishing, and that will inherently inform your writing.

–pay attention to authors who suddenly break out. Study what they and/or their publisher did that made a difference.

–know who the leading authors are in your genre. Read them. Even if you think their writing isn’t as good as yours, set that aside and ask yourself why they’ve succeeded. Is it some marketing angle? Is it some type of appeal to readers?

–don’t assume that you are the first one to come up with your latest idea. There’s nothing new under the sun. From the get-go, think about how to go deep with your topic, go in a surprise direction with your characters (if you write fiction). And really study places like Amazon to see what’s already published so you can steer in a different direction.

What one thing can you do differently that will help you to break out?

Location: Books & Such Central Valley Office

Weather: 68º and partly sunny

Yesterday I set up a brand new worst case scenario. Here it is: You have an amazing book burning a hole in your life. You have the material, you have the expertise but you have no platform– no built-in audience– where you can help market the book.  What do you do?

I have to say, some of your comments were brilliant. Let’s look at the options I gave.

A. Throw in the towel. It’s hard to sell a book these days even when the author has a well-established platform. If throwing in the towel seems like a good option, I suggest you do just that. It takes real perseverance to make it as a successful author these days. If you can quit at the first roadblock, do it. It will save you a lot of heartache. If not, read on.

B. You find an expert or a celebrity who has a huge platform to co-write with you. While this may seem like a frivolous option, don’t count it out. In yesterday’s comment section Sally gave some real life stories about connecting with celebs for co-authoring. It’s certainly  a longshot, but don’t forget that it doesn’t have to be a celebrity. Sometimes getting a named expert might help get your foot in the door.

C. You self-publish. This is one of those cases where self-publishing probably won’t work as a viable business model. Think about it. If you don’t have enough of a platform to help sell books for a publisher, how will you move books on your own without the publisher’s sales team and marketing? Self publishing is profitable when the author has a huge platform and can move books at his speaking venues and through his organization. But, with that kind of platform traditional publishers are also interested.

D. You begin to build a platform. As Amy said in yesterday’s comments this is the non-instant-gratification answer. I recommend you go back and read Lynn Dean’s wise comment as well– it takes time to build a solid platform. But Michael pointed out that while we are becoming experts on our subject, we are also building our network. Cultivate those connections and be sure to include those in the proposal. I’m just getting ready to shop an exciting book. The author is a philanthropist and has deep connections to many of the most beloved charities. She even donated a cancer wing to a hospital. Don’t you think those charities will all want to promote her book? Those connections are actually part of her platform.

When we think of platform we often think literally– the speaker’s platform– but these days that is only a small part. As Michael pointed out in his comment, social media has leveled the playing field. We all have equal access to millions of potential readers. Jump in and learn to use the medium. Make sure you are connecting with your eventual readers. One of my pet peeves is writers who spend all their time connecting with other writers. Yes, it’s fun when we share the same interests, but you need to find your readers, not other writers. Find ways to build your audience. Collect the names and email addresses. If you come to a publisher with a reader list of say, 7500 names and a vigorous e-newsletter and blog, they’ll sit up and take notice. (Don’t forget that website visitor numbers and e-newsletter numbers can be verified relatively easily. Don’t ever pad numbers.)

It might seems like slow work but it’s just like any business, you grow your “customer base” one person at a time. That’s what your platform is– a potential customer base.

So. . . let’s look at tomorrow’s worst case scenario. Here it is:

You’ve read nothing but edgy Brit-lit* your whole life. When you began to write you were told you had the perfect voice for edgy Brit-lit. You’ve written three complete edgy Brit-lit novels and you are now ready to seek an agent and get published.  As you begin to put out feelers you find that the interest in edgy Brit-lit is right below inspirational techno thrillers.

What do you do?

*apologies in advance if any of you write edgy Brit-lit.

B. You realize that story is the important thing and you test a couple of new genres to see if you can fuse your voice and story-telling style with a more recognizable genre.

C. You put your manuscripts in a drawer , do the research on what is popular and immediately begin to write the genre that has been on the bestseller lists for the last eighteen months.

D. You self-publish all three novels.

E. You wait because you know tastes are cyclical.

Which of these would you do? Please feel free to comment, choose your strategy and tell us why. Again, if you have real world experience with this, please share.

Location: Books &  Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

As regularly occurs at writers conferences, while I was at Mount Hermon, I heard again and again the importance of an author partnering with his/her publisher in marketing. What stood out to me this year is that publishers realize it isn’t enough to be engaged in online social networking but to be smart about it.

Connecting to those who share your passion and interests is an important element of teaming with your publisher. It’s no longer enough to say you have a certain number of social connections; nowadays publisher expect you to use those connections with savvy.

One small way in which you can do that is to comment regularly on blogs. I know that seems like a minor contribution, like a tickle of water into an ocean, but let me recount one story from the conference that might give you a slightly different perspective.

Brian Carroll regularly comments on our blog, and I’d noted that his responses are intelligent and insightful. So I was delighted one evening when he chose to sit at the table Wendy Lawton and I were hosting. I had, as a matter of fact, just approved a blog comment by Brian a few hours before we sat down to eat.

Because of his regular presence on our blog, Brian had an advantage over everyone else at the table. He was already known to us. While we were meeting everyone else for the first time, Brian seemed like an acquaintance even though this was our first face-to-face encounter.

What are you doing to headline yourself in social networking that could set your apart to an agent or an editor?

Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

Whenever I’m on the faculty of the Mount Hermon Writers Conference, I’m always on the lookout for a chance to chat with editors about how their publishing houses are doing. I’m usually surprised by a thing or two in these conversation.

Here’s what I heard at the conference that could be instructive for you. Most of these changes reflect the way the economic downturn has touched publishing. (I might add at this point that the downturn is past tense for publishers; they’ve made their adjustments.)

• Most publishers have lowered the amount of advances they can provide. Sales are down 30% post-economic downturn, and that means advance must be lowered as well.
• Smaller marketing budgets.
• Looking for authors who really understand how to use social networking to sell books and to build brand, not just to report what they ate for dinner.
• Opportunities for books that were unlikely to make money but seemed important to present to readers no longer exist in most publishing houses.
• “Risk averse” pretty much depicts every publisher’s stance.
• Looking for authors who put money and creativity into their marketing ideas.
• Publishing committees use the Internet during the meeting and are fact-checking what proposals state. So when you proclaim you have a certain number of Twitter followers and Facebook friends, those numbers are readily available. So be honest! Also, your web site needs to be in tiptop shape because it’s one of the first places the committee will go online.
• Most editors look at the writing first before they read the proposal–that’s for nonfiction as well as fiction. Yeah! Writing still bears a lot of weight on the decisions publisher’s make.
• Your marketing plan, which you included in your proposal, is considered part of your contract with the publisher; so you better be able to deliver what you promise.
• To be a success in the eyes of your publisher, all you need is an upward trajectory of sales, not a huge climb in sales with each release.
• Editors still love good writing and have a sense of sponsoring in-house each project they take on. They use words such as “It [a project] is my baby,” “I want to fall in love with a manuscript.”

So now, talk back to me. What’s your response to the info you’ve just read? What’s news to you? What’s old hat? What scares you? What challenges you?

Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

I know, I know, some of you have heard about branding so often that your ears flap shut when the word is uttered. But, having just returned from the Mount Hermon Writers Conference, I noted that the topic keeps popping up, even if it isn’t invited into the conversation.

This week I want to discuss with you linchpin topics that sneaked into my exchanges with conferees and editors because we haven’t finished talking about them yet…even if we wish we were done!

Is branding a “bad” word? One that you can’t bring yourself to care about? Or is it a word that can help you to breakout of your current status (be that midlist or trying to break into publishing)? My answer is…it’s both a bad word and a good word.

Here’s a recap of a conversation I had during the writers conference:

I was chatting with a woman who is unpublished but makes her living as a marketer. She clearly was savvy about how to position her pr0jects. But the problem was that she had written a historical romance and a nonfiction book that would appeal to a specific, broad, and easily located readership. Her question to me was: “Am I shooting myself in the foot by presenting to editors two very different types of writing?”

My answer: “I don’t think so.” Here’s my reasoning:

While some people are born “branded” and know who their audience is and how to reach it, most writers enter the world of publishing not sure of the direction they should go. I advise those people to knock on all doors to see which one will open. It’s a simple matter of The Open Door Policy. Once you land a contract, you can think about focusing on branding.

Receiving a contract offer means you have put together a project that the publisher believes will find a ready audience, is tightly focused, and you  have the means to help to publicize. It’s a thumb up on all fronts!

This particular conferee had presented her fiction and nonfiction projects to a variety of editors and had received 100% requests to see the project. Now, here’s the smart action point that she took: She only presented one project to each editor rather than talking about both projects.

Why was that smart? Because, if she had presented both, she would have looked as if she were flailing around to grab publishing’s attention anyway she could. She would have looked unbranded.  Editors and agents don’t like unbranded because that often translates to unfocused.

But that’s not always the case. This writer could, and I believe would, put all of her focus on whichever project ended up with a contract being offered. She had the know-how and the passion to pursue either. That’s the crux of branding; it’s a combo of walking through the door that opens and remaining true to your passion.

Two dangers exist in presenting more than one project at a time:

1. You could find both projects are happily received by different publishing companies. While that sounds great, two giant, golden-egg-laying geese have just landed in your lap. Now you have to write and market two projects, with two different audiences, at two different publishing houses, and figure out how to brand yourself while you’re going in two directions. It’s like starting two businesses simultaneously.
2. You could distract yourself from purposefully branding yourself and becoming known as a certain type of writer to editors. Editors and agents have awfully good memories about what you’ve pitched them in the past. So if you pitch a nonfiction book to an editor one year and a fiction title next year, that editor is likely to remember…and to wonder if you “get” the importance of branding.

I also would advise against having more than two genres you’re working in because it’s very difficult to write middle-grade fiction, adult fiction, and adult nonfiction. Well, it might not be hard to write in several genres, but it’s only the extraordinary person who can effectively market in all of them. Most authors struggle with how to write fast and well and aggressively market their books and develop a significant platform–all of which are requirements in today’s competitive publishing world.

Now, you tell me, do you agree that branding is a good word and a bad word?

Location: Books & Such main office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

Readers often do research before they buy a book, and reviews factor into purchases more and more.

The trend in reviews is changing rapidly with the change of technology. Because magazines and newspapers are losing popularity to the Internet, fewer professional reviews are being circulated. To find a professional review for a book, requires an online search more often than not.

For an example of the decline, check out this article about the Washington Post. According to the article, there is only one remaining stand-alone book review section in the country, and that’s the New York Times Book Review.

Blog tour reviews and reader reviews on sites like amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com far growing in popularity. They are more important each day because of the jump in technology. Amazon and Barnes & Noble have smart phone apps that allow a reader to snap a picture of a book cover and search for it. The search will pull up the book on the web, and the app allows instant access to reviews, descriptions, price, etc. You can read about the Amazon app here. The feature that allows you to snap the picture and search is called Amazon Remembers. Here’s a link to the Barnes & Noble app. I doubt it will be too much longer before the only cell phones available are smart phones. Soon just about everyone will have access to these cool tools.

Kindles and Netbooks also provide quick access to these reviews. Plus buying books online is an upward trend; so more readers are given a chance to check out reviews before a book purchase.

When you buy a book, do you read reviews first? As a reader, how often do you write a book review?

Personally, I find myself looking at the online reader reviews more and more before purchasing a book, but I rarely write a review. Knowing that reader reviews are growing in accessibility and importance, I’m going to start reviewing books more frequently. Reliable readers who write trustworthy reviews should step up to the plate!

For those of you who have published books, how does the growing accessibility of the reader reviews make you feel? Have the reviews had a positive or negative affect for your books?

Location: Books & Such main office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

Researching at a bookstore is fun and you can learn a lot, but you can find out about trends in other places as well.

Spend some time looking at books online (which will give a broader selection than a bookstore) to find out who’s publishing the type of material you’re interested in writing. This can help you to answer the question, is there a market for my work? If a number of books exist in your category, spend some time figuring out what makes your idea unique. For nonfiction, a competition section is an important part of a proposal, so you’ll need to do this anyway. If nothing exists like what you’re writing, you’ve either had a stroke of genius or your idea has been tried and has failed–several times; so publishers are no longer interested in producing books on that topic.

You can also find out a lot about new releases in magazines and publications like Publishers Weekly and Christian Retailing. These often contain articles about book trends and current acquisitions.

Publisher’s Marketplace, (www.publishersmarketplace.com) requires a subscription, but book deals are reported by agents and editors on the site usually the day they’re sold. Since it can take as long as two years for a book to be published, spending time looking at the deals reported that day gives you a peek into the future of those bookshelves.

Another way to stay on top of the market is to subscribe to publishing house e-newsletters. Take advantage of the marketing the publisher is doing and use it to learn of new releases and excitement in the industry.  Catalogs and advertisements from retailers can be insightful as well.

I also encourage you to continue to read! It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the writing and researching that you forget to spend time reading books that have been published. Perhaps you’ll want to pick up the competition to see what made it shine. Not to mention that reading good books will help you to write a better book.

What book market research tips do you have to share?

Location: Barnes & Noble, Santa Rosa, Calif.

While I was in the bookstore, I focused my research on historical romance. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, we’ll start with the pictures of what I saw in the general fiction section:

Biblical fiction in the general market fiction section.

Tudor romances like MY LADY OF CLEVES and THE TUDOR ROSE were very well represented.

Jane Austen knockoffs were abundant.

Tudor romances. Recommended for book clubs.

The majority of the historical romance books in the general market section fell into the Jane Austen or Tudor categories. I was surprised to see those two Biblical fiction books.

All of the faced historical fiction were in the Jane Austen or Tudor categories. The shelf space in the fiction section was used mostly by “evergreen” projects (books that have done well for a long time) and new books by established authors. I was surprised (and somewhat relieved) not to see Pride & Prejudice and Zombies and Sense & Sensibility and Sea Monsters on the shelves, but then was shocked to find them in the teen section. That’s not where I would have shelved them!

In the religious fiction section I was one of two people browsing. The man next to me looked at me funny when I was taking pictures. He was looking at The Shack. The Shack was faced and featured on a bestselling fiction display. The religious fiction shelves were filled almost completely with evergreens and books by bestselling authors. I, of course, was looking for historical romance and I didn’t find much!

Francine Rivers’ books were the most abundant and only three authors had historical romances on the shelves. The other two, Lynn Austin and Julee Klassen, both had one book in the store. I found this very sad! I didn’t pick up and read the back of every book, so I could have missed a couple, but there weren’t many Christian historicals in this large bookstore. Another day I’ll have to check out the local Christian bookstore to take an inventory. I hope my findings will be very different.

So based on my research (done at only one store, so it’s not very trustworthy), if I was going to write a new Christian, historical romance, I’d try writing something about characters from the Tudor or from the Regency period. If I could come up with a unique Jane Austen-type project with Christian content, that would be an ideal choice. I know author Debra White Smith has done books like this in the past (First Impressions, Reason & Romance, Northpointe Chalet), but could there be room in the Christian market for more at this time?

If you’re a historical reader, what time period are you drawn to? Would you pick up a Tudor or Regency book?

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