Category Archives: Writing

KDP Select. My experience so far.

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I’ll be honest. I initially bristled at the whole idea of KDP select:

  • Don’t like the exclusivity clause. Don’t really see how that benefits Amazon, either. Just seems to me it’s their way of throwing their weight around.
  • The $500,000 pot is a joke. What are the odds that some Amazon Prime member will pick my book as the one book he/she borrows that month? Vanishingly small. I’m an unknown, remember? I’ve read that an estimated 27,000 titles were enrolled in KDP Select within the first 24 hours. Explain to me how my book stands out among tens of thousands of other titles? Answer. It won’t.  The writers who are going to collect a more than a few pennies from that pot are the same writers who are making money self-publishing already.

So why enroll?

Because my sole hope, as an indie author, is that my novels are good enough that over time I’ll start generating word of mouth.

And that comes down to a numbers game. Everyone who has read my novels has told me they think they are really good. (Yes, I realize that’s a sample that self-selects — i.e. people who don’t care for it aren’t too likely to let me know.)

But “everyone” so far consists of a really small group of people. Embarrassingly small.

As a side note, there are two categories of indie author who have an easier battle.

First: genre writers, because you have a ready-made audience and all the benefits of the publishing industry’s genre-centric communications apparatus. Your books fit neatly into the categories and tags for example.

Second: the mid-listers — people who have a backlog of titles they can take over and self-pub.

Notice that in almost every indie “success story” you read, the writer fits into at least one of those two categories (and very often both).

Me? I don’t write genre, and worse yet my books incorporate elements of genre but also elements of lit fic. And I’m starting from absolute scratch — I had a couple of non-fic books published traditionally but other than that, nobody knows who I am.

I love the idea of Smashwords, but if there’s a way to leverage it to generate exposure, I haven’t figured it out. For example, I’ve participated in several of the Smashwords Facebook promos (such as Freebie Friday, where you post a coupon code for a free copy of your book). At most it’s gotten me a handful of downloads.

And here’s the thing: with KDP Select, Amazon lets you give away free books.

So I talked it over with one of my best indie author buddies, Peazy Monellon (here’s her debut horror novel, Meany) and enrolled Can Job.

Yesterday I offered a 24-hour promotion.

285 people downloaded my novel.

I don’t know how else to put a free copy of my ebook in the hands of 285 Amazon customers.

Now, how many of those people will actually read my book? Who knows.

But if even a fraction do, and if out of that fraction one or two write reviews, or decide that they want to buy When Libby or something else I publish — well, then I’ll count this experiment a success.

Stay tuned. I’ll let you know how it works out long term . . .

I disagree. Social media is a MUST for writers.

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how important is website traffic to writers?

Fiction writers face peculiar challenges when it comes to generating search engine traffic.

Sabine Reed, in a guest post on published here [UPDATE: link no longer any good], tackles a topic of perennial interest to writers: how much time should we spend on social media?

It’s a good question and her answer is a thoughtful one, but I don’t think it goes far enough.

Sabine makes the following, very valid, points:

1. Google is by far the biggest source of online traffic. She points to this study, which notes that

social media sites do not drive traffic like content sites and search engines do, and it’s not even close. That means that, while all those retweets are nice to see, apparently, few people are clicking the actual link embedded within the tweeted message.

2. Writers need to generate saleable content. The corollary being: if you’re wasting hours a day on Twitter, you’re not writing your novel. And yes, that’s a problem.

But while I agree on both of those points, I don’t think they tell the whole story.

So let’s look at the problem a bit more closely — and tell me if you think I’ve missed anything here!

Yes, Content is King

As Sabine also mentions, the not-so-secret secret about driving Google traffic is to publish good content.

But what is “good content”?

It is text that Google’s bots determine to be

  • Relevant and
  • Authoritative

Relevance = keywords. Authoritative = linked.

This is a relatively straightforward problem if you are operating in the world of non-fiction.

Say I want to promote my dog books. All I have to do is write articles and blog posts about dogs, and dog training, and adopting a companion dog. There’s my keyword-laced content that all relates to dogs.*

I also network with other people publishing articles about dogs, and over time they link to my blog, which gives me authority.

This isn’t difficult to do, especially if you’re working in subject areas that are relatively narrow and don’t have  a lot of competition. I’ve done it lots of times, both on my own blog and for other peoples’ blogs.

But when it comes to fiction, what keywords are you going to use?

If someone hasn’t read my novel Can Job, then it doesn’t matter if I write 500 articles about Borschtchester, New York, or Miles Chacuderie, or the DipTych Digital Division of DipTych Corporation.

Nobody’s going to Google those terms, because they are all made up.

Now if you write genre, you may be able to get around this. It’s arguable that there are sets of keywords specific to certain genres that you could use as Google bait. Publish 500 articles about dragons and wizards and fairies, and you could find your blog generating traffic from people who want to read about dragons and wizards and fairies.

Lucky you.

Me, I’m not so lucky. Even my book about fairies isn’t really a paranormal so much as a romantic comedy with a paranormal twist.

So what about links?

It’s a funny thing, but links without focused content aren’t really useful from a search engine perspective.

Example. The New York Times has published articles about dogs. (“Asymmetric tail-wagging responses by dogs to different emotive stimuli,” anyone?) And The New York Times gets linked by bloggers, at the rate of probably a zillion links per nanosecond.

But type “dogs” into Google and The New York Times does not get top ranking.

Links without focused content aren’t an effective way to generate high visibility via search engine rank.

So although Sabine makes valid points, I think we need to re-frame the issue.

Social media is not about generating website traffic.

For writers . . .

Social Media is About Long-Term Word-Of-Mouth, Not Short-Term Traffic

That statement would give the heebie jeebies to your average SEO professional.

Your average SEO professional focuses on driving website traffic. He/she has to. When your goal is to get people to spend  money, website traffic is critical. It’s a critical link in the process of online lead generation and/or sales.

your readers are waiting

Your audience is out there — and chances are they’ll find you by word-of-mouth.

But as a novelist, I don’t care as much about traffic as about something more nebulous.

I’ve actually been wrestling with what to call it. It has aspects of “visibility” and “brand” and “platform.”

But ultimately what I need to do is generate word-of-mouth referrals.

And the way to do that is to be available when people want to connect — specifically, people who love books.

In fact, this relates to another point Sabine makes in her post:

Writers should write. The more books you have out there, the greater the number of people who will find out about you.

She notes that JA Konrath, among others, reiterate this point all the time.

But why does it work?

Word of mouth.

Write a great novel, and people talk about it. They recommend it. They publish positive reviews about it. And when they do, other people buy copies. And those people recommend it. And so on.

Which is where social media comes in.

Social Media Augments This Process

Social media can act as an amplifier.

Savvy writers know this. Watch them. They’re not tweeting to get people to go to their websites. They’re tweeting to start conversations about their books.

Yes, you need to strike a balance. You have to be conscious that time you spend on social media is time you aren’t spending on generating saleable content — novels or short stories.

But IMO it’s not accurate to say that Amanda Hocking’s success is based on the fact that she wrote a lot of books instead of doing any promotion. To quote Hocking herself: “The amount of time and energy I put into marketing is exhausting.”

So not only has Hocking invested her time in marketing, her success  can be directly attributed to social media — specifically, to word-of-mouth about her writing, which was spread and amplified via social media.

My advice, then?

Writers need blogs. They need Twitter accounts. The need to be on Facebook and probably a bunch of other sites like GoodReads.

And they need to invest time in connecting with people on all of those platforms.

What do you think?

a NaNoWriMo debrief

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So I “finished” my NaNoWriMo project — working title, Dr. Forst — on Sunday. That’s three days early, for anybody who’s paying attention.

Notice I’m not calling it a novel — I’m calling it a project.

Because what I have now on my hard drive is not a novel by any stretch.

I’m very glad I participated. There are a lot of things about writing a novel that are pretty intimidating, of course, but one of the biggies is the sheer volume of words required. Starting a novel feels a bit like standing at the foot of an impossibly high, impossibly steep mountain, and wondering how the hell you’re ever going to get to the top. And of course, the answer is “one step at a time,” but you also know that a lot can go wrong on the way, including spectacular falls from precipitous heights ;-)

Participating in NaNoWriMo forces you to push through that anxiety. And then, 30 or so days later, you’re at the top of the mountain and you realize: hey. It really wasn’t that hard.

That’s the kind of experience that you internalize even if you don’t do anything else.

And I’ve got proof. As I neared the last few thousand words of Dr. Forst, I found myself suddenly thinking of another novel I’ve drafted, Loose Dog. I like the book, but it needs a major edit. And I’ve been putting that off because the job seemed so enormous.

Hey, that doesn’t look too bad from here . . .

Now, all at once, the job doesn’t look so huge. I’m excited. I’m going to start working on it as soon as I catch up on a few other non-NaNo responsibilities.

I have some other thoughts on the benefits of NaNoWriMo which I’ll share at some point (about 4,500 words’ worth! A longish essay :-))

But part of what I also learned is that NaNoing isn’t 100 percent compatible with the way I, personally, need to write fiction.

As a result, the output I’ve generated this month is a bit of a mess.

Now granted, I haven’t gone back and read it over, and yes, I know there is probably some decent writing in there, and probably plenty of salvageable bits.

But pushing to get to 50K in 30 days just didn’t give me the gestation time I needed to solve certain problems that came up as I wrote.

And these are structural problems. This may be the height of folly, but with Dr. Forst I am trying to combine a golf novel (whatever that is) with a loose retelling of Faust (as you may have guessed from the title) (hey, I know lots of golfers who would do a little deal, wink wink nudge nudge, in exchange for a single digit handicap!) with a lightly satirical whodunnit.

I have no idea if I can pull together such a hodgepodge into a cohesive story.

But I do know that I can’t pull it together in a month.

There just wasn’t enough time for the bits of my mind that connect things together to discover and bridge the connections.

So instead of a novel, I have a . . . a kind of jackalope.

Or, say: a jackalope so poorly stitched together that it’s not going to fool anybody.

I also suspect that the voice/tone of the novel changes in the course of the book — which is partly a symptom of the same issue, but is also a result of the NaNo process. Usually, when I am writing a novel, I go back through what I’ve already written from time to time. This helps keep the voice consistent. I couldn’t afford that luxury with Dr. Forst, and I suspect the book suffers for it.

So will I ever do NaNo again?

Maybe.

But what I really hope I do is to retain the feel of constant production that the NaNoWriMo process instills.

I have my eye on a certain other mountain.

I don’t necessarily need to climb it in 30 days.

But I’ve noticed it looks a lot less steep than it did before . . .

Filed Under “Now Why Didn’t I Think of That”?

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I wonder if anyone of the legions of NaNoWriMo writers is writing a novel about . . . NaNoWriMo?

Wow. If only I’d thought of that . . . 17 days ago!

If I had . . .

Day 17.

It’s turned colder, and as I sit at my computer I notice that the last leaves have fallen from the river birch in the front yard.

I can see the neighbor’s house across the street.

With the leaves down, I can see it clearly now for the first time in months.

Nobody appears to be home.

Are they at work? Or perhaps simply hiding somewhere in the house, hiding from the chill damp of this gray November day?

I find myself unable to write. Unable to find inspiration. And I know why. There is nothing prime about Day 17: it’s a day lost in the middle, two days removed from the relief of the midway point but not far enough along to feel like the end — the final relief — is within grasp.

Yes, I still do my best to turn my pretty phrases. I must. I have no choice. If any of this is to be salvageable, I have no choice!

A slight breeze tosses  the leaves in the street.

I’ve moved to a place that is beyond prayer. Almost beyond thought.

Will anyone ever read these words?

Will anyone every read these words?

I sigh and get up to make another cup of coffee.

 

Advice to writers who want to do humorous fiction. 1975 interview with P.G. Wodehouse

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1975 interview with P.G. Wodehouse

I adore Wodehouse.

I appreciate serious novels, of course. I love novels that tackle Big Questions, and when they’re well-written I find them transporting.

But I also adore humorous fiction, and Wodehouse is by far my favorite humorous fiction author. It’s partly the language — I’m a total Anglophile — and perhaps it’s also that we’ve got those Butterfields and Lydiards in the family tree but I so appreciate the English sense of humor as well.

No surprise, then, that I view him as a writer to emulate — so much so that when I was starting my novel Can Job, I spent some time studying the Wodehouse novel Leave It to Psmith to understand how he put novels together.

I did thing like count how many characters he uses, and created an outline of his plot to see how he handled pacing.

Learn from the best, right?

Now I discover this gem: an article online where Wodehouse passes along some tips for writers!

They are fantastic tips as well. Here’s a taste:

[A]lways get to the dialogue as soon as possible. I always feel the thing to go for is speed. Nothing puts the reader off more than a great slab of prose at the start. I think the success of every novel – if it’s a novel of action – depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, “What are my big scenes?” and then get every drop of juice out of them.

He also says this, in answer to a question about what makes a story funny:

I don’t think a man can deliberately sit down to write a funny story unless he has got a sort of slant on life that leads to funny stories. If you take life fairly easily, then you take a humorous view of things.

All in all a delightful little read. Many thanks to Abe Books for putting it online!

NaNoWriMo is here!!!

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Set my alarm for 5 a.m. cuz if I don’t make extra time for this in the morning no way am I going to keep up :-)

Here’s my opening sentence. YES it’s rough — it’s supposed to be! But I don’t care, I’m so excited :-)

Most suppose golf is about life, not death—it is, after all, supremely difficult to manage a golf shot while dead—but death had been very much on the minds of the members of Crumbling Bluffs County Club the past few weeks, ever since Sly Burbank’s body had been found off to the side of the 4th fairway. And it was on their minds that night in particular, because they’d learned, that night, the results from the coroner’s inquest.

NaNo on, dudes!!!!!!!!!!

FridayFlash: Costume

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Costume, a Halloween short story“Jeebus. Again?”

The girl was swaying slightly.

“Hey sexy. Vampire. Give the kiddies their candy won’t you please?”

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzt. Sean could barely hear the doorbell over the music, the ruckus of everyone talking.

Couldn’t they just ignore it?

“There.” She pointed at a candy bowl on the floor next to the door. The skin of her arm where it thrust out of the shiny black of her dress sleeve was painted, silvery white slashed with long drizzles of red — he looked at her again as he grabbed a handful of candy. Her face was painted white, too. But his eyes weren’t on her face. They’d dropped lower, to the black lace gathered in ruffles at her bodice . . .

“Hey sexy yourself,” he said. “What did you say you were supposed to be?”

“I’m Death’s Bridesmaid.” She giggled, swaying.

“I liiiiike.”  He grinned at her, a leering sloppy grin. He was drunk, too. They all were. They’d started early.

The door stuck a little but he yanked it open finally. Trio of kids stood on the step looking up at him expectantly. A pirate. A gremliny-looking thing. A Harry Potter. Lit by the porch light against the odd quiet of the dark night behind them.

“Trick or treat.”

Sean dripped a bit of candy into three orange pumpkin-shaped buckets.

Three “thank you’s,” polite, not quite in chorus. But Sean barely heard them — he was thinking about the girl, he slammed the door clumsily while the kids were still standing there, in a hurry to get to her. Before someone else did.

Metallica playing now. Sean mouthed the words as he weaved through the party, looking for her.

‘Cause we hunt you down without mercy
Hunt you down all nightmare long

Dimly, through the music and the laughing and the screeching he thought he heard the doorbell again but this time he did ignore it.

Stupid kids. Babies. Think Halloween is about candy. Ha.

Someone handed him a bottle of Grey Goose as he pushed by a skeleton and another vampire — not as good a costume as his, not by a long shot — he grinned and tipped the bottle to his mouth.

Where was she where was she?

There! With another girl, store-bought French maid costume. Also hot. Yowsa. How to choose how to choose .  .  . he sidled up to Death’s Bridesmaid, pretended to join their nonesense chitchat, his hunch was right, she was into him. Into him. Booyah. Touching his arm, laughing, sexy sideways looks.

The feeling, he knew that feeling, I’m gonna get me some —

Pause in the music. Album over . . .

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.

Death’s Bridesmaid groaned, lost her balance, fell into Sean. “They’re baaack,” she slurred. “Be a good vampire and go feed the kiddies for me –”

He hesitated. Annoyed. But the music wasn’t back on yet and the doorbell buzzed again.

“Don’t move,” he said to her and wove back through the packed room and yanked the door open.

He started a bit when he saw her. He guessed it was a her. A little girl — had to be, but yowsa that was a good costume, nothing cutesy about that, that black hair was freaky, tangled like that —

“What took you so long?” The little girls eyes were narrowed, fixed on his.

He stared. “Nice, uh, costume.”

He held out a handful of candy.

She didn’t move. “You haven’t been answering the door,” she said.

It was a little girl’s voice. He relaxed a bit. “The music’s kinda loud. Hard to hear.” He moved his hand up and down a bit to remind her to take the candy. Get this over with.

But the little girl didn’t move.

“That’s not the reason.”

Damn it, this wasn’t nice. Not nice at all. “Look. You want your candy or not.”

She just looked at him. Ew. Creepy.

Creepy.

Screw it.

He had better things to do than deal with a six year old’s temper tantrum.

He shut the door, left her there on the step. No candy for you, you little —

Damn. Where was I . . .

Where is that vodka . . . and that girl . . .

He found her, finally, on the floor, behind the bed where they’d all piled their coats. She was half passed out but roused herself when she felt him kissing her, began kissing him back, eager, he stroked her neck then bit it, she moaned, he slid his hand down her neck to the top of her costume —

That was weird. He couldn’t get his hand inside her costume.

“Ow,” she said. “Ow, stop it, you’re hurting me.”

“Sorry.” He pulled at the shoulder of her dress — it wouldn’t —

“OUCH.” She sat up now, her eyes still unfocused, her head lolling slightly. “That HURTS.”

What?

“It’s stuck,” he said. “Your dress is, like — stuck to you.”

She’d begun pulling at it herself.

“OW!” She said. “Ow, it hurts — ow!” She started crying. “OW!”

He stared at her pulling at her dress.

And then he had a horrible thought.

A horrible thought.

And he looked down at his sleeve.

The long satiny sleeve of his shirt, the vampire shirt —

He touched the cuff.

And realized as he touched it that something was very very wrong.

And he cried out, grabbed the edge of the cuff and pulled but it was fused to his skin, it hurt to pull the sharp pain and he cried out again and then heard around him that nobody was laughing any more, they were screaming all screaming, screaming and their screams were joined with his own, the loudest screaming in his ears his own scream

Nanowrimo. What’s a realistic time commitment?

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What’s a realistic time commitment?

To get to 50,000 words in 30 days, you have to produce an average of 1,667 words every day. No question, NaNoWriMo requires a time commitment! The question is, how much?

I know about how fast I write for the day job, but for that I edit as I go — which is a NaNoWriMo No-No.

So I decided to get a quick reality check — I posted a question on the NaNoWriMo forums to ask veterans how much time they typically need to keep pace with that 1,667/day output rate.

Click the link to read peoples’ answers, but here’s my takeaway:

  • Most people should figure to set aside about 2 hours a day writing time. But note the caveats below!
  • There’s a huge variation in word production speed! Some of the fastest can churn out 2,000 words/hour. The slowest do 500/hour or less. It might be a good idea to run a “test” on your own writing speed before Nov. 1 so you know about how fast you can write.
  • People don’t always write at the same speed. Sometimes the words flow quickly. Other times they don’t. Don’t be surprised if your writing speed is slower at times–and you might want to set aside some extra chunks of time to “catch up” afterward if you hit a slow period.

One last thing: writing time is only one piece of the time commitment. You may also need some planning/thinking-about-the-novel time. I know I write much faster when I have a map in my head of where I’m going . . .

Personally, I’m going to get up early the entire month of November in order to make sure I have extra time I’ll need to keep pace. After all, who needs sleep? ;-)