Seth Godin: How To Change Your Luck

Seth Godin writes, "One of the biggest distinctions between old publishing and new is the nature of luck." Giving your book to a traditional publisher was often like spinning a roulette wheel and hoping your book would get lucky and be the next surprise bestseller.

Independent publishing doesn't rely as much on luck, or perhaps relies on a different kind of luck, one more tied to people and to building a culture, a tribe. (For more on this, watch Seth Godin's TED talk, Seth Godin on the tribes we lead.)

Building a tribe is not a matter of a miracle, instead, it’s about converting tiny groups of people at a time, leading them, connecting them, building an audience. When a self-published author does this, she has a new job. Not the author part, the publisher part. She’s not putting a book into the universe and hoping it will be found. She’s not even putting a book in a journalist’s hands and hoping it will be hyped. No, she is engaging in a years-long journey to build a platform. It might take a decade to become an overnight success, but if you keep it up, if you keep building, the odds keep getting better and better.

That’s why it’s silly to compare the two ways of making a book happen. If you can get a great deal from a publisher and you’re into the spin, go spin! If you want to control the building of the platform, get your hands dirty and avoid the whims of fate, then the other path makes a lot more sense, no?

Read the rest of the article here: Are you feeling lucky?

Thanks to Passive Voice Blog for the link.

James Patterson: "Sentences shouldn't get in the way of a good story"

The Independent reports that James Patterson earned 45 million pounds last year, unseating JK Rowling as the highest paid author in the world. Here is an excerpt from the article:

Patterson is a contentious victor. The American is no stranger to criticism and has admitted that he doesn't even write his own books. Although his name is splashed on the covers of the eight titles, which include thrillers and children's and young adults' books, that he churns out each year, he relies on a team of five to help him bash out the plots. Not that this minor detail has dented his popularity. Forbes said one in every 17 books bought in the US is written – or co-written – by Patterson, a former advertising chief executive who outsold even Stephenie Meyer of the teen vampire series sensation, Twilight. Meyer's £26m placed her second in the best-selling literary hall of fame.
....
Patterson himself has something of a contradictory approach to his own work. He defended his short and to-the-point style of writing, saying sentences "shouldn't get in the way of a good story", but once warned fans off one of his books, Season of the Machete, calling it an "absolutely horrifying book" that fans "probably shouldn't read".
....
Patterson has earned his publisher, Hachette, £322m over the past two years, and Meyer, King, Koontz and Steel will face an uphill struggle to knock him off top spot. He signed a 17-book deal with Hachette in September, worth a reported £96.5m, and last year 14 million of his books sold across the world, in 38 languages. Not bad for the man who sold just 10,000 copies of his debut novel in 1976, and who doesn't even own a computer – he writes his ideas down in longhand, before giving them to his assistant to type. "Thousands of people don't like what I do," he told The New York Times in January. "Fortunately, millions do."

My take away:

• Anyone who can say that 1 out of every 17 hardcover novels sold in the US has their name on it knows a thing or two about writing and—perhaps most of all—about selling. Love him or hate him Patterson has tapped a market.
• If you don't already, give writing longhand a shot. I started writing my drafts in longhand and, although it does take longer for me to writing something out than it does to type it, I find that, overall, I get work done. It's strange, but there's something about the process of setting pen to paper, of writing across the page, something almost sensuous, that helps my ideas flow (* knock on wood!*). If you haven't tried keeping a writing journal, give it a whirl. 

Other articles you might like:

The Phenomenon of James Patterson’s Book Sales
How James Patterson Works With His Co-Authors
My Analysis of 16 books: Stephen King is correct, the adverb is not your friend.

Barnes & Nobel Hosts PubIt! Review Day

From Barnes & Noble's Facebook page:

We're trying something new this Friday: a review day. You're invited to pitch your work to a selection of book bloggers who have provided a description of the type of book they enjoy reviewing. Here's how it works:

1. On Friday from 9am EST-8pmEST, stop by the PubIt! Facebook page. We'll post as status updates the blogger's call for submissions.
2. Under each blogger that's a good fit for your work, post 2 sentences describing your book. Be sure to include your genre, length of work, and your pen name if it is different from your Facebook identity.
3. Please note that you can only pitch books already published through PubIt! Please include the link to your product page.
4. Bloggers interested in your work have been asked to reach out to you directly (through a direct message on Facebook) by Tuesday. At that point you can learn what materials they would like to receive for review. Please respect the bloggers’ selection process and don’t be discouraged if you don’t receive a response this time.

Read the rest here: Review Day: Friday, August 5th 2011.

How Often Should I Blog?

The answer, of course, depends on you, on how much time you have available and, most of all, on what you want. I began to blog a few months ago and started off posting about once every two weeks. (Little did I know that I was fostering an addiction, but that's a post for another time!) I had no idea if anyone was reading my posts; it felt as though I was tossing them out into a void. Then I found Google Analytics. It was one of those moments where you feel warm light fall on your shoulders and hear the sound of trumpets.

Now at least I knew whether anyone was coming by my site; at that time, about six people a week, but still! That was okay; heck that was great! I was excited that six people were reading my blog.

My excitement lasted for a few days, until I found out hundreds were visiting the blog of a friend of mine. I wanted that kind of readership (I know! Greedy, aren't I?). But what to do? How could I increase readership? I read and studied and schemed. I tried blogging more frequently (once a week), blogging about different topics, I even tried leaving a reader participation 'hook' at the end of my post to encourage feedback. And you know what? It worked! Traffic on my site began to increase and, slowly, even the rate of increase began to increase.

And then it all came crashing down. I was using Wordpress at the time and loved it, especially all the different styles, and then, mysteriously, the site that was hosting my blog died. All that work! All those posts! Everything was gone.

After a fair amount of hand-wringing I decided to start again from scratch. I decided to use Blogger.com this time, so I wouldn't have to deal with any technical glitches, and because it was easy to customize and was free (love free!). This blog would be about everything and anything to do with writing, with a special focus on topics relevant to people at the beginning of their writing careers.

Today, although I can only dream about Joe Konrath's numbers, I'm happy to be able to write that more than six people read my blog, but I only saw a significant increase in numbers after I began to blog four or so times a week. That said, I think that the number of posts it takes to start to build a platform likely differs for different people and different blogging styles. John Locke, for instance, advises blogging once a month and that strategy certainly has worked for him.

If you are wondering how often you should blog, I sincerely hope you find out what works for you and, most of all, I hope you find the journey enjoyable.

Selling A Book: Getting Noticed

When Walter Ellis told his brother-in-law he was going to publish his book, London Eye, on Amazon, he said: "Make sure you price it at 99p like that fella who sold a million."

Yes, John Locke has definitely raised the bar for what self published writers can accomplish. Walter Ellis, though -- like many of us -- is far from the million book mark. It is comforting to reflect that John Locke too started off with a dribble rather than a bang.

Ellis calls for:

... a proper grown-up site, possibly run by Amazon, in which hot new arrivals, bestsellers and chart climbers are featured as if they mattered, and not as if they were the products of small-time eccentrics who really out to get out more.

Personally I think we need a site for big-time eccentrics, forget all that penny ante stuff.

Thanks to Roy Greenslade over at the Guardian for bringing my attention to Ellis's article.

Common Editorial Rates

This comes from the Editorial Freelancers Association.

Thanks to PG and Maril Hazlett for the link.

Building The Perfect Facebook Page

Tim Ware, owner of HyperArts, recently posted on Techipedia about creating the perfect fan page. I have a fan page, but I took the link off this blog because I wasn't happy with how it looked and, as a result, I was wasn't using it.

I've been searching for a great article on how to build a better fan page and I think this is it. Hope it helps you too!

By the way, if anyone would like to leave a link to their fan page in the comments section, please do!

Lawrence Block's Afterthoughts only 99 cents on the Kindle

Yesterday, after reading a post by Passive Guy in which he discussed a literary gem he found in his spam filter, I raced to check mine to see if it contained similar literary gold.

It did! But not the sort I expected. I found an announcement that Lawrence Block has a new book coming out on the Kindle and for -- drum roll please -- only 99 cents! That is an amazingly good deal.

Here is a description of Afterthoughts:

A collection of afterwords from Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Lawrence Block’s most acclaimed works

In a career spanning more than fifty years, Lawrence Block has produced over one hundred books, ranging in genre from hard-boiled detective stories to pseudonymous erotica. Collected here for the first time are more than forty-five afterwords from the works that made him a master of modern fiction.

Each afterword is an insightful reflection on the experiences that have brought Block’s fiction to life, from the lessons he learned as a reader at a literary agency to the unlikely—and semi-autobiographical—origins of the acclaimed Matthew Scudder series. Witty and inspiring, Afterthoughts is a must-read for Block fans and mystery lovers alike.

This ebook features an illustrated biography of Lawrence Block, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

Afterthoughts is available to pre-order for August 2nd.

It's amazing how fast times have changed. Even a couple of years ago when I wanted to buy Lawrence Block's latest book I would have to pay thirty dollars for a hardback or wait six months and pay ten dollars for the paperback (and his books were well worth the money, but money is often hard to come by). Now I get his latest book the day that it comes out for only 99 cents. Wow! That is incredible, and, even in these times of inexpensive ebooks, an amazingly good deal.

If you want to know why I'm raving about Lawrence Block's writing, read some samples from his other books or go on over to his blog and read his posts.

Grifter's Game
Eight Million Ways to Die
The Sings of the Father's
Telling Lies for Fun and Profit

In Defense of Genre

In A Genre Writer Accepts Himself, Will Lavender writes:

There is a war against popularity in many MFA programs in America, and in my 20s, I was on the front lines. I wrote literary fiction, the only work serious and relevant enough to be worth my time. I cut my blue jeans off at the knees and called everything ironic. I read John Banville's "The Sea" by an actual sea. I wrote the kinds of hard-bitten, muscular novelettes young men are supposed to become famous for writing.
....
In those first thrillers I read, I actually found a common bond to the experimental writers I'd once mimicked; in some of these books -- Abrahams' "Oblivion" is certainly one -- the writer looks to unmoor the very literary style he has invoked. Abrahams' novel is a detective novel, but it is one that slowly becomes unhinged; it is Raymond Chandler held up to a fogged, cracked glass.

If Lavender's books -- Obedience and Dominance -- are as interesting and well written as this article, then I think they would be well worth a read.

Trusted Intellectual Property (IP) Lawyers: A Directory

Thanks to Dean Wesley Smith, I've learnt about a directory of trusted literary lawyers created by Author Laura Resnick. A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of attending a conference where Laura was the keynote speaker. In that one day I learnt more about the business of writing than I had in the last decade.

Laura writes:

I was getting so many requests for referrals via private email, I decided to put a directory of literary lawyers on my website. Just posted. These five lawyers can all be considered personal referrals from me, if anyone’s interested. I will update the list as I get more recommendations from friends who’ve dealt with other literary lawyers.

Here is a link to the Directory of Literary Lawyers.

Dean's comments on Laura's announcement are here.