Category: Promotion & Marketing

My Grand Book Tour

With the recent release of Clean Burn, I embarked on a grand, coast-to-coast book tour. I made numerous stops at Barnes and Noble locations and independent bookstores, autographing stock on hand and meeting and greeting store managers and my adoring fans. Well, maybe fans-to-be. And although I did visit both coasts, I only waved at all those folks in between as I flew over traveling to and from Washington DC.

Here I am at the Roseville CA B&N showing off a newly autographed copy of CLEAN BURN.

My numerous stops on the “Left Coast” were four Barnes and Noble stores in Northern California, plus one indie store, An Almost Perfect Bookstore, which didn’t have copies in yet. I plan to return when they get stock in. On the “Right Coast,” I visited the Bethesda MD Barnes and Noble and the marvelous DC independent, Politics & Prose (pictures below).

What made the DC-area “tour” especially fun was the addition of my grandbaby tagging along. I was on babysitting duty, and so had to bribe the munchkin with books. Of course, I delight in giving my grandbaby new books, so this wasn’t much of a burden.

Both stores had marvelous children’s sections, with much to entertain the youngsters. The B&N had a train table that kept my grandbaby well occupied. Politics & Prose had a pillow-filled nook under the stairs with a box full of well-worn books to thumb through. We ended the day with Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs from B&N and Bark, George from Politics & Prose. Grandbaby adores both.

One thing I’ve got to say, booksellers are the best. Whether they work the children’s section at a chain store at B&N or in mysteries at an indie like Politics & Prose, it’s always so delightful to meet them. Thanks to all the booksellers and community relations managers who helped make my book tour grand.

Autographing CLEAN BURN in the children’s section at the Bethesda MD B&N

Showing off a freshly autographed copy of CLEAN BURN at Politics & Prose in DC.

September 21, 2013
The Magical Formula for a Bestseller (Sorry, there isn’t one)

Some writer friends of mine just got back from the national conference of Romance Writers of America. This is a huge conference, jam-packed with workshops on both the craft and business of writing. When I was a member of RWA, I attended the conference nearly every year.

This year, as I’m sure has been done in previous years, two mega-bestselling authors presented a workshop on writing bestselling novels, this one titled, Secrets of the Bestselling Sisterhood. I’m sure there were many nuggets of great information doled out, and I’ll venture to guess that “write the book of your heart” and “write the best story you can” might have been mentioned once or twice.

With all due respect to those two bestselling authors (who have both worked hard for their success), I have a few thoughts of my own about how one writes a bestselling book. And unlike those folks writing expensive how-to books and pricey workshops that purport to reveal the holy grail of how to craft that next big breakout book, I’m willing to share my opinion for free.

And here it is: There is no recipe. There is no checklist. There is no magical formula to follow that will guarantee a book you’ve written will become a bestseller. We can analyze the heck out of the bestselling novels flying off the shelves of bookstores and selling like hotcakes on Amazon. But none of that analysis will give you a guidebook to follow that will lead to equal success for your book.

The problem with bestsellerdom is that any knowledge gleaned from studying what’s been successful is that it’s hindsight, rear view mirror stuff. You’ll only learn what worked for those particular books. Just putting a boy wizard, a girl crushing on a vampire, or a dystopic future into your story is not a magic wand. There are so many intangibles about bestsellers that are impossible to quantify.

So what’s an author to do? If you want a chance at bestsellerdom (as opposed to 100% certainty), there are some things you can do to improve your odds. These suggestions are along the lines of setting yourself up for success. Like a runner whose goal is to cross the finish line first in their next marathon. A serious runner will train in the months leading up to a race as opposed to being a couch potato right up until race day.

So here are some odds-increasing steps for an author:

1) Write high concept

Write a story you can describe in one succinct sentence. An orphan boy discovers he’s a wizard and is sent off to a wizardry school to learn magic. An annual lottery forces teens to fight each other to the death in a gladiator-style competition. It makes the book easier to market and for the reader to more immediately grasp what the story is about.

2) Write visually

Write scenes you can imagine on a movie screen. Think action, not internal narrative. Make it easy for a producer who happens to pick up your book to envision the movie your book could become. Make it so riveting for your reader she can’t put your book down.

3) Write relatable, likeable characters

Likeable doesn’t mean sweetness and light, namby-pamby nice guys/girls. It means interesting characters, people who are heroic in spite of themselves. Write characters the reader would love to be, to exchange places with. Or, if it’s a harrowing story (like The Hunger Games), write characters so real their plight will grab the reader’s emotional jugular and make them feel as if they’re experiencing what the characters are experiencing.

4) Write fabulous prose

Yes, there are crappily written bestsellers. But yours doesn’t have to be one of them. Particularly if this is your first book, your chances of getting an editor past the first page (or a reader checking out a sample of your indie published book) might hinge on whether said page is riddled with errors.

5) Work denking hard

Write like a maniac. Write lots of books. Most of the big bestselling authors out there didn’t start that way with their first book. It took time and many books to become an overnight sensation.

6) Get lucky

You make a book video, a world-renowned blogger spots it, and it goes viral. You write a blog post about your book and a celebrity stumbles across your blog, picks up and reads the book, and tweets it to her zillions of followers. You end up sitting next to Steven Spielberg’s nephew on a plane and he’s enchanted by your story concept.

Obviously you only have control over items 1-5. And none of the above may help your book become a bestseller. There are plenty of books out there that are high concept, have wonderful, visual scenes, great characters, and beautiful prose, but never became bestsellers. There are books that don’t follow these rules that surprise by becoming big hits.

I admit, too, this isn’t an exhaustive list. I bet you could come up with your own reasons why you enjoyed the last bestseller you read. Or maybe you read a book before it hit big and you just knew it was going to end up on the New York Times and USA Today lists. Tell me what you think are some of the elements of a bestselling novel. #SFWApro

July 22, 2013
Social Media for the Genre-Conflicted, Part 2

In Social Media for the Genre-Conflicted, Part 1, I talked about how I created social media identities for all three of the genres in which I am published–romance, young adult science fiction, and mystery. In part 2, I’ll talk about how I juggle these multiple personalities.

I’m not yet entirely satisfied with how well I’m managing the task of promoting myself in these disparate genres. In some cases, I’m learning as I go, discovering what works, and stumbling over the pitfalls of what doesn’t. But it’s been a relief to accept the reality that my work doesn’t fit neatly into one pigeonhole. And while I can’t really say that I have something for every reader amongst my 20+ books, there’s certainly plenty of variety.

So how do I wrangle the three-headed hydra of my author identity? By promoting myself in a united fashion where I can and splitting my personalities where necessary.

This blog is one area where I let all three genres come out and play, sometimes together (in more generic posts) and sometimes separately (such as in this one). I do my best to put up a new post at least once a week. If you look through my previous posts, you’ll find that the majority of them are writing-related, along the lines of tips and tricks of the trade. There’s some personal stuff woven in there as well, such as this remembrance of my dad and this post about a childhood memory. I also will do a hybrid like this post, interweaving the personal and the writing craft together.

Besides this blog, I utilize numerous social media platforms–Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Triberr, Google+, and Linked in. Most of my efforts are focused on Facebook and Twitter. Facebook, despite its shortcomings, does have one bit of functionality that makes it very easy to manage multiple identities–Pages. By logging into my profile, Karen Sandler, I can access all of the four pages that I administrate. There’s a handy little wheel in the upper right-hand corner that allows me to switch from my profile to my author page, the Tankborn page, the mystery page, and the OnFireFiction page. I don’t have to log out of Facebook to post as those alternate identities.

Twitter, on the other hand, requires a separate login for each identity. It would be pretty crazy-making if I was logging in and logging out of the various Twitter accounts I use. Instead, I’ve installed several browsers (Firefox, Chrome, IE, and Opera), and login to a different identity on each browser.

For me, that means I’m logged in as @karensandlerYA on Firefox (my favorite browser), @karensandler on Chrome, @OnFireFiction on IE, and @tankborn on Opera. I can hop back and forth from one to the other, retweet posts that I think the followers of multiple feeds would find interesting, and keep track of who I’m following and who’s following me.

Why not use a tool like Hootsuite? I do use Hootsuite, but I haven’t figured out a way to tweet as a different identity than the one I’m logged into. In other words, if I’m logged in as @karensandlerYA on Firefox, even if I select the @karensandler tab, my tweets will be identified as having come from @karensandlerYA. If there’s someone out there who knows differently, please tell me in the comments!

As for the other social media sites, Google+, Pinterest, Triberr, and Linked in, I’ve so far had less of a presence there. Triberr automatically feeds through all my blog posts (a fantastic tool for reaching new followers). I will post the link to my blog posts on Google+ manually. I haven’t discovered an automated way to accomplish that. I feel a little freer to post what might be considered controversial opinions on Google+, while I mostly keep politics out of Twitter and Facebook.

I think Pinterest is extremely cool, but I just don’t get on the site much (browsing the wonderful images there is a real time suck). And I don’t think Linked in is as useful to authors as it might be for more business-related professions.

The question I’m continually asking myself as I post and tweet and blog–what works? My goal is to sell more books. To do that, readers have to discover me. So, do regular blog posts, status updates on Facebook and Google+, tweets on Twitter, and Pinterest pins accomplish that? I confess I haven’t yet got all the answers.

Where are you finding success? What do you think produces results? I’d love to hear about your experience.

May 28, 2013
Social Media for the Genre-Conflicted, Part 1

In a previous post, I described how my husband and I designed my new website to encompass all three of the genres I’m published in–science fiction (YA), romance, and mystery. I have a great landing page that directs visitors to each of the three genres so they can further explore the books that interest them.

There’s another aspect to writing in multiple genres that has proven to be a challenge–social media. I’ve taken a varied approach to solving the social media puzzle, in some cases with multiple identities (Twitter) in others, designing my presence similarly to what I’ve done on my website (Facebook).

As I mentioned in the previous post, I’d moved from romances to YA thinking that would be a one-way street. I liked YA and was just as happy sticking with that market. So I did a total redesign of my website, turning it into the other-worldly SF site you see here. I created a new Twitter identity, @karensandlerYA, as well as one for the Tankborn trilogy, @tankborn. I created a Tankborn Facebook page, which my editor and the marketing department at Tu Books also administer. My focus was entirely on YA.

But then the opportunities for indie publishing opened up, giving me the courage to bring my romance backlist back to light. And then I sold two Janelle Watkins mystery novels, further complicating my identity. I had a decent number of followers on Twitter as @karensandlerYA, but it didn’t make sense to promote my non-YA books there.

So I had to create and build a new identity on Twitter, @karensandler, to promote my romances and mysteries. I also created two new Facebook pages, Karen Sandler Author and Janelle Watkins Mysteries. The Janelle Watkins page is still a work in progress, but the author page is set up similarly to my webpage, in that it promotes all three of the genres I write. There are tabs that will take you to pages where you can buy or pre-purchase any of my books.

Within this same time frame, I and ten other authors established an author co-op we’ve named OnFireFiction, which I described in this post. So I’m also participating in the social media related to OFF, on Facebook and Twitter. That makes four Twitter accounts to track, @karensandlerYA, @karensandler, @tankborn, and @onfirefiction. Then there are five Facebook accounts to follow, my Karen Sandler profile, my Karen Sandler Author page, my Janelle Watkins page, my Tankborn Series page, and our co-op page, OnFireFiction.

How in the world do I keep track of all this? That’s complex enough that it’s worthy of a second post. Keep an eye on my blog for part 2.

May 13, 2013