Karen Sandler

Tag: ya

  • Social Media for the Genre-Conflicted, Part 1

    Awakening Final cover-sIn 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.

    KarenSandler_TillTheStarsFade_200px 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.

    Full CoverWithin 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.

  • New Website! A Solution for the Genre-Conflicted

    Home Page Screen ShotSo what do you do to promote yourself when your published work spans three genres (romance, speculative fiction, mystery) and two markets (adult and young adult)? This wasn’t a huge issue when I initially sold my first YA science fiction book, Tankborn, to Lee and Low/Tu Books after publishing adult romances for a dozen years. At that point, I had changed my focus from romance to young adult, and didn’t feel obligated to heavily promo my ten Harlequin books.

    But in addition to those Harlequin books, I had the rights back to seven romances and a middle-grade time travel. I finally decided to dip my toe into indie publishing and put the romances and MG book up on Amazon. At that point, I chose to use a pen name for my romances to keep them separate from my children’s books. It was slow going, but I finally had the middle grade book published under Karen Sandler and six of the seven romances up under the pen name Kayla Russo. The seventh book needed some re-write, so it hasn’t yet been published (although it will be soon).

    Full CoverBut then something somewhat unexpected happened. I had an unsold mystery novel, Clean Burn, tucked away in my figurative drawer. I found out about a new mystery imprint (Exhibit A, a part of Angry Robot Books) and alerted my agents. Long story short, Clean Burn sold to Exhibit A and will be released August 27, 2013. A second Janelle Watkins mystery will greet the world in Summer 2014.

    My predicament clarified in October 2012 during a Novelists, Inc. conference. I had my Karen Sandler Harlequin author identity,my Kayla Russo indie-pubbed romance author identity, I had my Karen Sandler YA author identity, and I was about to have my Karen Sandler mystery author identity. Keeping all those identities juggled, trying to appropriately promote all of them, was madness.

    My first step toward simplification was to drop my Kayla Russo identity. My original rationale for creating the pen name had been to separate my sexy adult romances from my teen-safe YA books. But that was silly because there were still those ten sexy Harlequin books for sale with Karen Sandler squarely on their covers. So I killed Kayla Russo off (so to speak) like the next murder victim in a Janelle Watkins mystery novel.

    With the same name on all my books, I decided that the variety of genres/markets I offered were a feature, not a bug. Instead of keeping the genres separate, I would promote them side-by-side. Instead of seeing my multi-genre approach as a problem, I used it to brand myself. I am now proudly Genre-Conflicted on my blog, two Twitter identities, and Facebook.

    KSA FacebookIn fact Facebook is where I started this process, with a Karen Sandler Author page. The banner for the page prominently displays book covers from each of the three genres, romance, science fiction, and mystery. Book tabs take the reader to pages where they can purchase any and all of my books at the click of a button.

    My webmaster (i.e., husband) and I took the same approach with my website. The landing page features the same three choices–explore my YA SF books, my romances, or my mysteries. The same buy links are available on the book pages for each genre.

    There are still a few tweaks needed on the website, but I really like the solution. It’s still a challenge to promote to three different audiences, but having that one-stop-shop takes some of the load off. So for both the focused genre reader and the more omnivorous book lovers who enjoy a variety of story types, I like to think my work offers something for nearly every taste.

  • RTW — My YA Buddy IRL

    This week’s YA Highway prompt is What IRL people can you talk to about YA? I confess it took some head-scratching to figure out what IRL meant. Yes, I’m an old fogey (hah! how many of you even know the word fogey?) and sometimes I have to look up those Internet acrynyms. For those as fogeyish as me, it means In Real Life.

    After figuring that out, it took a little more cogitation to come up with an answer. My hubby might read YA if I told him it was a fab book. He read my book TANKBORN (and even got annoyed with me when I interrupted him while he was reading it), so why not other recommended YA books? Well, you should see this guy’s TBR pile (hah again! see, I do know some Internet acronyms). He’s got books piled everywhere and he often only has time to read late evenings (when he promptly falls asleep) and weekends (when he sometimes falls asleep). Plus most of my YA books are on my Kindle and he likes reading paper.

    My younger son reads some YA (Neil Gaiman for example), but he’s often the one giving  me recs for books. Also, he’s got his own eclectic tastes and I’m pretty sure the YA books I’ve been swooning over wouldn’t be to his liking.

    Then there’s older son. Since he lives in Osaka, Japan, we bought him a Kindle so he could buy and read new books without having to have them shipped at great expense. I have lent him nearly every lending enabled YA Kindle book I own and have strongly recommended he buy others if I’m not able to lend. I lent him The Hunger Games after I read it, and when I didn’t get around to buying the other two books, he told me he would if I didn’t. So I got him somewhat hooked on YA.

    So I guess he’s my YA buddy IRL. I look forward to sharing many more books with him in the future.

  • #ArmchairBEA Intro

    I’m a latecomer to ArmchairBEA, so I have some catching up to do. I would have loved to attend BEA this year because I love NYC. Yes, very corny and cliche, but for me ’tis true.

    I was lucky enough to attend one BEA when it was in Los Angeles. It’s a short flight for me from Northern California and since my mom-in-law lives in L.A., I got to stay with her. The convention floor was pretty overwhelming, even though I only attended one day. I did get to sign one of my romance novels, which was fun. It’s always great to meet readers.

    Now I’m writing YA rather than romance (TANKBORN, my dystopian YA, is due out in Sept. 2011). Since I’m so into reading YA now, it would have been fabulous to check out all the new books and scoop up some freebies from the convention floor. To meet the authors and check out all the publishers. But since I can’t be there at BEA NYC this year, ArmchairBEA is the next best thing.