3... 2... 1... Contacts

Let's talk about networking and schmoozing.

There's a difference. Networking involves staying in touch with your peers, knowing who is doing what, trading industry buzz and leads and ideas.

Conferences and email are the preferred places to network. Gabbing online, or grabbing a beer and talking shop, will help you learn about the business vicariously---their experience becomes your experience. Writing is a solitary profession, and you should embrace every opportunity to compare notes.

Then, if a peer is putting together a conference, or editing an anthology, or gathering a line-up of authors at the local library, they'll (hopefully) keep you in mind, and you'll do the same.

Schmoozing is slightly different. Agents, editors, booksellers, sales reps, the media, and authors higher up on the food chain are prime targets for schmoozing. The reason is simple: They can do something for you.

Unlike networking, which is based on camaraderie, schmoozing is based on business relationships. The point is to present yourself as likeable, easy to work with, and professional. It isn't necessary to impress your peers. But impressing an editor, or your publisher's sales force, or a chain bookstore buyer, is something that can help you immeasurably.

Hopefully, most of us have reached adulthood with a sense of how to interact with others. But I'm still surprised by how many authors don't have social skills to match their talents. Sometimes it's shyness. Sometimes it's pomposity. Sometimes it's being oblivious. So let's do a quick Personal Interaction 101 refresher.

• Handshake should be firm and quick.
• Maintain eye contact.
• Smile.
• Listening has more power than talking.
• Posture shows interest.
• Compliments, flattery, and flirting in moderation.
• Asking questions gets more people to like you than stating opinions.
• Being funny is a plus.
• Decent clothes, fresh breath, good grooming.
• Remembering names and faces is important.
• Be confident, not cocky.
• Don't monopolize the conversation.
• No one knows you're shy, so it's easy to fake confidence.
• Pay attention to people's reactions.
• Be genuine, be enthusiastic, be nice, and don't overstay your welcome.

I'm sure we all already know that stuff, and probably do most of it already. But it doesn't hurt to keep it in mind when you're networking, and especially when you're schmoozing.

Does this work? Absolutely. I've lost track of the number of opportunities that have fallen into my lap simply because I met so-and-so at such-and-such. I've landed events, publicity, media ops, anthologies, interviews, sales, appearances, blurbs, and so on, simply because I met someone somewhere and didn't piss them off.

I've pissed off a few as well, and while I don't recommend that as an ideal business model, I can honestly say that having detractors is a great way to get people curious about you, and if you're pleasing 100% of the people 100% of the time, you're probably amazingly boring.

On a semi-related note, if anyone is interested in arguing with me, or asking me any questions live, I'm the headliner in the next Writing to Publish chat, happening Monday, May 1, at 10pm Eastern time. You'll need AOL or AIM to join the chat (they are free to download.)

Here's the link: http://www.cuebon.com/ewriters/index.html

Hope to see some of you there!

Excuses, Excuses

That JA Konrath guy is out of his mind. Doesn't he understand that his attitude is all wrong? How can he expect writers to devote as much time to self-promotion as he is? Doesn't Joe know that:

• I have a full time job other than writing.
• I have a family/kids/a husband/pets/plants that need my attention.
• I'm painfully shy and can't speak in public.
• I'm not good at sales---that's why I became a writer.
• It's the publisher's job to sell books.
• I don't like self-promoting.
• All I need to do is write a good book, and people will automatically buy it.
• It wasn't like this years ago.
• If he keeps spouting this crap, publishers will begin to expect it from me.
• The only thing that matters in this business is luck.
• The only thing that matters in this business is talent.
• I have no power: publishers make bestsellers through huge promotion campaigns.
• It's terrible that I should even have to consider any of this stuff.
• Self-promotion doesn't really help anyway.
• The only reason he says this garbage is to get attention.
• My agent/editor/fortune teller/pet rock/God told me I didn't have to self-promote.
• He's setting the bar waaaaaay too high.
• I can succeed without doing any of this.
• I can succeed only doing a tiny bit of this.
• I'm smarter and I know better.
• My publisher is my employer, not my business partner.
• He's a jerk, and jerks never give good advice.
• I need my advance money to pay my bills.
• This business isn't nearly as hard as he makes it out to be.
• (INSERT NAME HERE) is a bestseller, and he/she doesn't do any self-promotion.
• If his books were better, he wouldn't have to self-promote.
• If his publisher was behind him, he wouldn't have to self-promote.
• It's funny how clueless he really is.
• All I want to do is write, and that should be enough.

Did you read Joe's latest blog entry? What crap! He wants me to ask myself the following questions:

1. What do I think will happen if my book has a poor sell-through?
2. How long will my publisher keep buying my books if they aren't making money?
3. Is it easier to sell the first book, or the fourth?
4. Why am I midlist, and can I do something about it?
5. Why do so many good books go out of print?
6. Why do so many good authors get dropped by their publishers?
7. Am I the captain of my own ship?
8. Why do I think I'll still have a writing career in ten years? Five years? Next year?
9. Do I need to think about marketing before I write the book?
10. What if I can't sell my next book? What should I do then?

I'm never reading Joe's blog again. And I'm not buying any of his books either: Whiskey Sour, Bloody Mary (in paperback June 1) or Rusty Nail (in hardcover and on audio June 30.)

And I'm really not going to buy Thriller - Stories to Keep You Up All Night edited by James Patterson, because he's got a story in that anthology.

And I certainly won't buy him a drink if I see him at Thrillerfest or Bouchercon.

And I'm really going to stop reading his blog because it drives me nuts. Really. I am. I promise.

But first I have to respond to that last asinine entry...

Holy Sense of Entitlement, Batman!

Why do artists in general, and writers in particular, think the world will bow down and kiss their asses simply because they wrote a book?

Writers want to write. We do it because we love it.

How many people have careers that they truly love? How many people have the opportunity to turn their words into money, their passion in a career?

I love being able to write for a living. But I'm not so shortsighted that I believe writing alone will be enough to guarantee success. I don't consider that writing a "good book" is where my responsibilty ends. That's where it begins.

I don't understand anyone who indulges in creative pursuits and then doesn't expect to have to do anything else in order to support their endeavors. That sense of entitlement is outdated and dangerous.

If you want to become a lawyer, there's a lot you have to do that you won't like. There is also a lot that will be expected of you. The same goes for any profession.

If writing is your profession, how can you honestly expect the rules to change? That simply writing a good book will guarantee all of your ducks will line up?

Once you try to sell something, you become a salesperson. There is NO OTHER WAY TO LOOK AT IT.

You don't want to sell your book? Keep it in a drawer. Print up copies for your family and friends. Bequeth it to your children. I applaud you for your integrity and lack of compromise.

But if you WANT TO GET PAID, that requires you to sell your book. And you don't simply sell it to your agent. You sell it to your publisher, your publisher's sales reps, your publisher's marketing department, your distributors, your regional buyers, and finally, your customers.

If you want to be a writer, LEARN HOW TO SELL.

You don't have to, of course. You can leave that up to other people. You can take a hands-off approach to your career, and hope it all works out. Many have done so.

Many have also failed. Many more have failed than have succeeded.

But some do succeed. I think about these people a lot.

I think about Jack Canfield, handselling the first Chicken Soup book at mall chain stores, popping balloons to get people's attention.

I think about Janet Evanovich, every year loading up her bus and travelling cross country to meet 1000s of fans.

I think about David Morrell, who manages to tour and attend every major writing conference every year and still be co-president of ITW.

I think about Barry Eisler, who considers his publisher a business partner instead of an employer, and gets treated the same way in return.

I think about David Ellis, who has a great publisher (Putnam) but still sent out over 200 ARCs with handwritten letters in order to get more reviews for his last book---a tactic that paid off.

I think about Mitch Albom, and his relentless radio campaign which started an empire.

I think about Tim Dorsey, who just did his 400th event.

I think about James Patterson, Clive Cussler, Nora Roberts, and Tom Clancy, who release several books a year because they know the more you have out there, the more that will sell.

I think about Julia Spencer-Fleming, who hasn't let winning every major award in the mystery field stop her from relentlessly self-promoting. Julia's books are huge critical successes. But she refuses rest on those laurels.

I think about MJ Rose, who has applied her advertising experience to the book world with tremendous results.

And there are dozens more. None of them ever said, "All I need to do is write a good book, and the rest will be taken care of." What they said was, "Write a great book, then do everything within your power to make sure that people read it."

Of course, there are also stories about those who became huge successes without considering the sales aspect of the business. Those who simply write a book and then wind up on the bestseller list without doing anything else.

It happens. They got lucky.

I also hope to get lucky. But I think that getting lucky is damn hard work.

Self-Promote or Die

Julia Spencer-Fleming sent me a link to a blog written by Tor editor Anna Louise, all about how books do or don't make money:

http://alg.livejournal.com/tag/demystifying+publishing

The Reader's Digest Condensed Version: Publishing books costs a lot of money, and it isn't easy to make a profit.

JA's Interpretation: Better get cracking on that self-promotion, or risk never working in this town again.

I know I sound like a broken record, but I really don't understand why some authors think that simply writing a good book is all a writer needs to do, and the rest will be taken care of by the publisher. That's shortsighted at best, suicidal at worst.

But here's an interesting by-product of self-promotion that rarely gets talked about: It goes on in your absence.

I haven't been my usual gung-ho self this past week, have neglected the blog and website, and haven't done any appearances since April 7. But looking at the number of hits my blog and website have been getting, looking at my Amazon rankings fluctuate, and looking at the number of emails I continue to get, you couldn't tell I've been MIA.

People still seem to be dropping by, still seek me out, and still buy my books, even without me playing the cheerleader. I even had some spikes in sales and website hits while being incommunicado.

While I'm sure this would eventually drop off, it's reassuring to think that I can take occassional breaks and not worry about losing everything I've tried to build up. This may sound obvious, but I haven't been on vacation in several years because I'm so paranoid about missing opportunities to promote myself.

Maybe I'll take a vacation this year---after my 500 bookstore tour...

Writing Full Time: The Good and the Bad

Good: You get to write for a living.

Bad: Writing is a small part of being a writer, and many other things actually take up most of your time.

Good: You can work when you want to.

Bad: It's hard to force yourself to work when you're in your own house with all your cool stuff, like the Internet and DVDs and books and video games.

Good: You don't need to dress for work.

Bad: Three days without bathing and even the dogs will avoid you.

Good: You get to see your name in print. (Check out the June 2006 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine featuring my short story SUFFER, featuring Jack's buddy Phineas Troutt in a nasty snuff film tale, currently available in bookstores and newsstands everywhere.)

Bad: Your name is sometimes followed by "predictable, hackneyed, cliched, and formulaic."

Good: You have fans.

Bad: You have detractors. And for some reason, they usually have bigger mouths than your fans.

Good: You have a megaphone to share your self-promotion tips with people, at cool places like New Works Review.

Bad: Shouldn't you be out self-promoting instead of writing about it?

Good: You get to do cool online interviews for places like CHICAGO WRITES.

Bad: You don't get as many as you'd like. And why hasn't Entertainment Weekly called yet?

Good: You receive a lot of email.

Bad: You spend a lot of time answering email.

Good: People are already ordering your next book.

Bad: But not many.

Good: You're living your dream.

Bad: Ain't nothing bad about that!

Property Values and Writing

Publishing is really all about real estate.

Your in-house publicist works with sales (the reps who sell to 5 main buyers--libraries, chains, indies, department stores, convenience stores/airports) and marketing (advertising, event planning, appearances, touring, media, coop) to coordinate the amount of money spent to promote your book. A publicist usually doesn't have any power--sales and marketing do--and major decisions are made above her head.

The amount of money a book receives for publicity depends on many things, such as print run, competing titles in the catalog, previous sales, and in-house enthusiasm. I've been told that each book released in a quarter receives a pro rata share of the promo money, depending on how big the print run is.

Print runs are determined by orders. I've heard that a publisher takes orders, then doubles the figure, and that's the print run. That doesn't make much sense, but it would explain why 50% is considered an acceptable sell-through.

Writing a book in and of itself isn't going to generate any media. The author, much like the book, needs a hook.

I've done many alcohol-related events, to tie in to my book titles. I'm visiting 500 bookstores this summer, which will help generate some buzz.

My publisher has done many things for me. Lots of ARCs, big pushes at BEA, tours, awards dinners, library and bookselling conventions, point of sales stuff (free whiskey sour mix shipped witht he first ARC). They did a booklaunch party for me that went very well. They've done several ads in NYTBR, Bookpage, PW, and some mystery publications. Most importantly, they've always kept me in the loop, and have encouraged my participation in coming up with ideas.

For my part, I've gotten over forty interviews, sold over thirty short stories (which is the best advertising), visited a few dozen conventions, signed at several hundred bookstores, and tried to get my name out in cyberspace through my website, blog, and generally being a loudmouth.

My sales are decent, but not spectacular. This summer, I'll have about 170k books in print with three titles, HB and PB.

I've gotten some big reviews (PW, Kirkus, Booklist, LJ), but no huge ones (ET, People, NYT) and very few smaller (towns of less than 1 mil) reviews. That's where I'd like to see a bigger push made, because I think that people in the smaller review markets have a greater percentage of readers per capita, and I am pursuing this angle with the new book, sending out ARCs myself.

If the point of this is to sell books, where does real estate come in?

I'll get to that in a moment. First, let's talk about branding.

The word "branding" has been used a lot in publishing. So has "name-recognition." These basically mean that we want "JA Konrath" to be the same as "Coke." People see the bright covers, see the drink title, and automatically know they'll have a few laughs and a few scares reading it.

This happens in three steps.

1. People pick up my books out of curiosity--they've never heard of me before. Or they've heard of my through word-of-mouth or publicity.

2. People pick up my books because they've read me before.

3. My books become an automatic purchase as they are released.

The majority of my sales are still 1 & 2. The secret to 3, I'm convinced, is simply surviving long enough, with a backlist still available, to amass large numbers of books in print. The more books out there, the more chances for people to find them.

Allison Brennan's publisher released three PBOs in three consecutive months, and this strategy was a double-edged sword---along with getting a lot of books in print at once, it also capitalized on the publicity of a trilogy being released so quickly. Win-win. Of course, it could have backfired. if the first book wasn't any good, no amount of publicity would get readers to buy #2. Since the first book was good, each successive book has debuted higher on the NYT list.

Many bestsellers can become self-fulfilling prophesies. A publisher believes it has a big book, so the reps tell the buyers that this one is getting a large print run and a large push. The buyers anticipate demand from the publicity, and order many copies and are told to sell them word of mouth.

This sometimes backfires. I remember seeing huge stacks of Tom Wolfe and Salman Rushdie books in stores, and bookseller friends have told me the copies sold vs. shipped was ridiculously low.

But the primary factor in book sales, and the point of publicity and marketing, is ultimately real estate.

The more space you take up on a bookshelf, the better store position, the more books you have in stores, the more stores you're in, the likelier you are to sell. It's like Monopoly. Prime property, and ultimately the most property, wins the game.

The goal is to reach the point where you aren't only stocked, but restocked. You want to have permanent space on those shelves. You want to be there when someone goes looking for you, or if someone is just browsing. It's like tenure. That's what branding really does for you.

If you don't sell well, your books will go out of print, and your patch of real estate gets smaller. Smaller space=less sales, and the death spiral has begun.

Slow and steady used to win the race, with publishers carrying midlist authors for many books before the broke out and began selling in large numbers.

These days, there's more competition for space. More books are being published, and they're given less time on the shelves.

Which is why, as authors, we must do everything we can to fight for real estate.

The chains tell their stores when to pull books from the shelves and return them. But there's a loophole. The stores aren't run by computers--they're run by people. If people like your books, they'll keep them on the shelf, even when they are told to return them.

Which is why I'm visiting 500 bookstores this summer. To meet the people. To secure the real estate.

Time will tell if I'm right or wrong.

Damning You With Praise

When you're a kid, if your parents were any good, they'd ooh and aah over the construction paper artwork you brought home, and put it on the refrigerator.

As you get older, the praise tapers off. Not only from your parents, but from the world in general. Grades take the place of gold stars on your homework, and the few things that you get praised for require harder and harder work.

Finally, as an adult, praise comes in the form of money. A better job, a raise, a promotion. "Atta boys" are reduced to softball games. Criticism is the primary motivator for self-improvement. Which is fine, because you can't get better unless you know what you're doing wrong.

Writers, and most artists, tend to have gotten stuck in the childhood phase of needing approval.

Art, by definition, requires an audience. So writers are forced to seek approval. Friends and family. A writing group. Agents. Editors. Reviewers. Critics. Fans. Peers.

And if the artist gets lucky, approval arrives in the form of praise, money, or both.

So does criticism. The publishing world isn't a big refrigerator, and many people aren't interested in giving you gold stars. There will be fan letters and awards nominations, but there will also be bad reviews and people who dislike your work.

It doesn't take a psychiatrist to figure out that a career that requires the continuous approval of others isn't the best way to mental health. Which is why many creative types tend to be a little on the wacko side.

If you're a writer, can you ever feel good about yourself and your work? Can you take pride in a book that never got published? Can you see the worth of a novel that got critically panned?

Or do the fans, the awards, and the money make you somehow better than the rest of the world? Does the fact that you have half a million books in print and a six figure contract function the same way as your picture on the fridge?

Both are slippery slopes, and neither leads anywhere worthwhile. The more people you allow to have power over your feelings, the less in control of your feelings you are.

Here are some rules I follow to stay even-keeled.

• Celebrate success. Whether it is signing a book deal or finishing a short story, you're allowed to feel good about yourself and your accomplishments.

  Beware-Feelings of entitlement.

• Let Praise Wash Over You. It's great to have fans, but don't believe your own hype. Having lots of strangers love you doesn't make you a better person.

  Beware-Getting a big head.

• Listen to Criticism. But don't take it personally. Ever. Good critcism is meant to help you improve, not hurt you.

  Beware-Those who have agendas. They're easy to spot. They are either insulting you, or praising you while asking for money. Remember that money flows toward the writer.

• Have Smart Goals. Smart goals are ones you can control. Everything else isn't a goal---it's a wish. Wishes don't lead to happiness.
  

  Beware-Setting unattainable goals.

• Use Your Support Group. We all need an "atta boy" once and a while. Get this from people you're close to, people you care about. No one else matters.

  Beware-Relying on anyone too much.

• Allow yourself to be disappointed. Then get over it. Allowing failure to consume you will ruin your career. Take a day or two to feel crummy, then move on.

  Beware-Licking wounds instead of working.

• Leave Your Name Alone. Checking Amazon ranking, Googling yourself, checkign newsgroups and blogs for mention of you, searching for reviews---this is all external validation by stangers and meaningless.

  Beware-Self-obsession.

• Don't Compare Yourself to Others. Everyone has a different journey, and there is no competition. Coveting the advances, awards, print runs, and movie deals of your peers isn't going to do you or them any good.

  Beware-The green-eyed monster.

• Remember Who You Are. Once you become a public figure, many people will say many things about you. None of them will know you as well as you know yourself. Praise and criticism are external, but true pride comes from within.

Strive to be the kind of person that you admire.

Thanks to Jude, Chidder, Jeri, and J. Carson Black for their suggestions in adding to this blog entry.