Tag: writing

You Wrote a Book… Now Get People to Read It

~ Eli Rainwater

There is a battle going on in my house right now. It is the battle for my office chair, and I want it back. Of course, being the assertive person that I am, I gave in to her need to watch dolphins and went back to balancing a laptop on my knees. That was ten days ago.

Today’s post is all about actually getting your book out there, starting with preorders.

So what exactly is a preorder?

Yes, it’s a copy of your book that can be purchased in advance before it actually comes out, but why do you want to do it? Well, first and foremost, preorders are completed the day the book is officially released. As an author, what that really means for you is that your book has a larger number of sales right off the bat, and when you’re trying to make it onto bestseller lists, that bump can help, especially for any of Amazon’s subgenre lists.

For me, preorders are what I get to look forward to; a little present to myself, if you will. There’s something about the excitement of knowing that at midnight a book I waited eagerly for will show up in my ereader or that a copy with all kinds of goodies will be in my mailbox. A preorder for a new book or series gives readers something new to look forward to. When you write a sequel, the preorder is a reminder to your readers that the next installment is on the way. It keeps them hooked, especially if you’re not in a position to do rapid release for your series. Any chance you have to throw in bonus content or goodies, take it. It’s the perfect way to thank them for their loyalty.

Strategy

In the interest of full disclosure, I personally distrust bestseller lists (this article sums up why perfectly), so my personal strategy is designed to benefit my readers. For my second book, Where the Ogrekin Roam, I’m doing a two month exclusive preorder campaign through my website that will include a short story and swag. The preordered copies will also be sent to their owners in January. The book itself is due to be released on March 1, so I’ll have a regular preorder campaign on Amazon, Apple, and Barnes & Noble from February 12-28. The site exclusive campaign will take out a significant chunk of preorders that would be reported to any bestseller list aggregators, but because my long term strategy is building reader relationships and a dedicated fanbase, I chose to take the route of thanking my loyal readers with an early release and bonus content.

However, if the lists are important to you, take advantage of Kindle, Nook, and Apple Book’s abilities to upload your epub and set it for a preorder. Promote it on social media and in your mailing lists. Also consider discounting the previous book in the series or even making it free for a limited time either leading up to or during the preorder period. If people can get it at a discounted rate and love it, they’re more likely to preorder the sequel. once all of those sales hit on release day, it can really bump you in Amazon’s and Barnes & Nobles rankings, and that will get you on some pretty nice recommendation lists.

Marketing and Getting Yourself Out There

Once the book is out, you can start marketing yourself. Apply to get your book into libraries, see if bookstores have a submission form, and look for ways to do appearances. Don’t be discouraged if you have low turnouts or pushback! Start locally and build out from there. If you self-publish using IngramSpark or any distribution company that builds off of them, make sure to let bookstores and libraries know that’s where they can find your book. Let them know if your books are available through print on demand or bulk (it costs more to print, but for now, I’m sticking with POD). If you have an ebook, most libraries use Overdrive. Draft2Digital and IngramSpark submit ebooks to it, or you can do it yourself.

Think outside the box too. My sister-in-law suggested that I submit my book to local nursing homes and hospital reading rooms, which I thought was a great idea. Look for book clubs taking submissions, and see if there are meet-up groups that might let you do a reading or talk about your book, your writing process, publishing, etc. Don’t discount local business organizations either– I had a lot of fun speaking at a local Rotary club this past Halloween, and I was asked to come back in the spring.

Look for local weekend and art markets, apply for tables at cons and shows, and really think about where your book might appeal to the most people. Make little postcard flyers with a coupon code and a QR code that links to your site or mailing list and put them up on community bulletin boards. If you live in an area with little library boxes on corners (I love those), leave a copy of your book for someone to find. Are there any local publications, bloggers, or podcasts who do reviews or interviews? Submit yourself to those. You can talk about your books, your writing process, your journey, inspirations, anything you want.

You can also do collaborations with local artists and artisans based on elements of your works or your characters. In February, I will have a line of candles from a local candlemaker that represent each of the four witching elements, and a local artist is drawing LaSalle, Rupert, and Jessie for stickers and prints.

You don’t have to limit yourself to Amazon ads (although they’re a great idea) or social media. There are a lot of ways you can get out there if you look around your community. Have fun with it, and keep writing!

Welcome to the Jungle

~ Eli Rainwater

I watched Thor: Love and Thunder this weekend. Spoiler alert: so much G’n’R!

Today I want to keep going in my “lessons Eli learned the hard way” self-publishing series. I will admit this one wasn’t a hard-earned lesson because I already knew about the importance of reading fine print with contracts (anyone else remember when GameStation got 7500 people to literally agree to sell their souls?).

Why You Always Read Your Contracts

Whenever you work with a third party, chances are a contract will be involved. In fact, it’s definitely in your best interest to have a contract involved. This is also true for freelancers who need to protect their interests as much as you do yours. Freelancers can include cover artists, book designers, editors, and reviewers.

If you work with any agency that sends you a contract that’s difficult to read, make them clarify everything that you don’t understand. A huge red flag for me is anything super convoluted that’s explained away as “don’t worry about that, it’s standard.” Another red flag is when my point of contact tries to gaslight me by making me feel stupid for asking questions or implying that I’m hung up on small details. That usually means they’re trying to sneak something by you.

If you plan to outsource a lot of the publishing responsibilities and don’t have experience reading and understanding contracts, consult with an attorney. The Authors Guild, your state’s guild or organization, and ALLi members all get access to excellent legal advice and resources.

There are a lot of great resources online for contract templates that you can modify to suit your needs (I use Rocket Lawyer for mine). But why is this really important?

Creating Accountability

One word: accountability. Okay, two words. “Expectations” is important too. Your contract not only sets expectations for when you need and expect the finished results at each stage of the process, but it holds you accountable for making sure that you give your contractor everything they need when they need it. It guarantees payment for services rendered, and it offers legal recourse if the terms are not meant or if either of you needs to end the relationship before the contract is fulfilled. In other words, it covers everyone’s asses.

This is an important part of standing up for yourself as an author. You are a business entity, and as such, you have as much right to protect your interests as a tradesman, retailer, or service provider. Do not ever let anyone convince you otherwise.

Now go make magnificent works of art!

The Dreaded Curse of Imposter Syndrome

~ Eli Rainwater

Ace has zero shame. Most of us could learn from him.

Imposter syndrome: that crippling fear that you’re not really that good, that you don’t deserve your success, that the world will realize that you’re not the real deal and run you out of town.

Growing up as a woman in the South in the 70’s and 80’s, I was taught that it wasn’t ladylike to discuss my accomplishments being good at something. It was boasting, and I didn’t deserve my success unless its recognition came from other people. I still can’t talk about my books without feeling like I should apologize and then go hide under a rock.

On top of that is an underlying stigma about being a self-published author. There are still schools of thought that believe that being self-published means you’re not good enough for a traditional publisher, but that’s not true. There are some really incredible self-published authors out there. The reality, especially now, is that the traditional publishing world is incredibly hard to break into, whether you believe it comes from publisher and agent burnout or too many authors and not enough agents or publishers (I’ve seen arguments for both sides of that particular coin). No, not every self-published book is gold, especially without the assistance of a professional editing and proofreading team, but you can find those services if you do your research.

Are my books perfect? Absolutely not. But enough people who are honest with me have given me constructive feedback followed with “I really liked it” to let me know that I have a good product and could actually go somewhere with this. I wish I could make the gut-wrenching anxiety stop so I could enjoy my journey, but it’s hard. So what can I do to help myself? Well, I can keep working on the journey– social media, newsletters, plugging my product, working on the sequel, trying to get reviews (holy cow that is ridiculously hard to do without paying a fortune!), and writing every day. I also started writing positive affirmations. This is huge to keep my mindset where it needs to be.

But most of all, I need to remember one very important fact. If my audience believes in me, then they can’t all be wrong, right? I need to have faith in the faith that they have in me, and I need to realize that I am doing exactly what I love. And you know what? I’m pretty damn good at it, and I will be a successful writer.

So take that, mind!

My Self Publishing Journey

~ Eli Rainwater

First of all, let me just say that this was a huge and terrifying undertaking for me. I didn’t have the financial resources to take advantage of most publishing packages, so I had a lot of trial and error and mistakes. Writing was actually the easy part. That and cooing over Sunny, the toasted marshmallow fluff squish of a cat.

This is the third time I started to write this book. I don’t know what was different now, but it just came out so much more easily than when I tried before. I definitely had an amazing support team– my best friend Brenda (who Jessie is modeled after), my housemate Alicia who made me do silly things like “eating” and “sleeping”, my friends Dave and Erin who doubled as my proofreaders and ARC readers, and my bosses and coworkers at my pub who encouraged me to stick with it and helped spread the word when it was finished.

This is the first in a blog post series about self publishing to try to help other new authors circumnavigate the publishing world and hopefully avoid the same mistakes I made. The first thing I want to say is DO YOUR RESEARCH!!! Never– and I mean never— commit to anything financially without doing background research. Publishing is a lot more expensive than most people think, and you can run yourself into the ground very quickly unless you’re in a position to burn through a lot of cash. One of the best resources I found is the Alliance of Independent Authors’ Best Self Publishing Services (and the worst). Another great resource is this self-publishing checklist from Jane Friedman.

She also has a great post about query letters if you decide you want to go the traditional publishing route. I tried. It was astounding to me that I could turn out an 83,000 word novel in seven months and then spectacularly choke on a three paragraph query letter. A five year old would have written a better one.

I’ll go into the steps I took and resources I found in this series, but the most important thing I can say is don’t rush it. We all want to get our work out there, but if you want people to enjoy your work and take you seriously as an author, invest in a proofreader, editor, and advanced readers. Trust me when I say it’s invaluable! You can pay for those services, or you can find them among people you know.