Online Marketing for Authors: it's about Joy and Luck

I just read The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan and what an amazing book it is. I am quite overcome. It's not just the magical writing - it's the story of my life!

Near the end one the characters talks about being born in the Year of the Tiger. I paid close attention because I was born in the Year of the Tiger. As was my mother. And my daughter.

...Then she told me why a tiger is gold and black. It has two ways. The gold side leaps with its fierce heart. The black side stands still with cunning, hiding its gold between trees, seeing and not being seen, waiting patiently for things to come.

It is five months till the publication of Tall Story and my gold side is leaping.

So little time, so much marketing to do. Not to mention another novel to write.

At the same time, my black side is cringing in the shadows. Is it too soon to begin trumpeting my book? Isn't it too crushingly embarrassing to tell people yes, it's really good? What if I set up a Facebook page and nobody becomes a fan? What if I come across as vain and annoying? Whatifwhatifwhatifwhatif?

Chatting about the business of networking with my nephew, who is an aspiring conductor,  - he told me something that really brought home what an enormous task I have ahead. I paraphrase:

Our instinct is to be self deprecating. We don't want to shout about how good we are because we don't want people to dislike us. But there comes a point when this becomes a real problem. We actually have to get better at telling people that we are good at what we do.

Get over yourself, I tell myself sternly. Just get on with it.

So in the mornings, I write a few hundred words towards my new novel. And in the afternoons I work on a list of Things to Do to promote my book.

• This includes building a Facebook page - and if you're an author still wondering how to do it, here's a good how to , and what you can do to add a little extra something to it. 
• I've tarted up the profile I use to review books on Amazon.co.uk - it now has 'Author of Tall Story' tacked on to it. 
• I've set up my author profile on Amazon Author Central even though the US launch is not until 2011.
• Set up a profile on Author Hotline as well.
• I've reserved some blog domain names for future use.
• and I'm redesigning my website to try to look half as good as Amy Tan's website (which is gorgeous, full of story, and has cute videos of her dogs)

I'm sure I've missed a zillion other things that authors can do to promote their wares on the net. Any of you readers have other items, hints, tips to add to my list? Please feel free to add to the comments.

Lucky for me, I have managed to appear on some lists without having to beg too hard or at all - the Happy Nappy Bookseller (probably the best blog name in the world!) put me on a list of authors of colour

Becky at beautifully designed blog The Bookette put me on her debut authors list

My good buddy photographer/columnist Mandy Navasero (who once taught me how to eat a pineapple with one hand while driving with the other) added me to her new year's defining moments column

Neni Sta Romana Cruz, a fantastic children's writer from the Philippines, wrote a Sunday magazine piece complete with uncombed pictures of me and my kids (haven't seen it yet but my Mom bought hundreds of copies)

Fiona Dunbar, author of the utterly brilliant, smart and hilarious Silk Sisters and Lulu Baker trilogies, who not only introduced me to my agent but in the new year gave me an utterly luscious plug in her blog.

Gillian Philip, whose book Crossing the Line, had me raging and weeping and upset for days (it's a really good read .. but be strong) picked Tall Story for her list of books she's looking forward to in 2010

MC Rogerson of the Life Beyond blog put me on her reading list for 2010

Even my old high school, St Theresa's College put me on their website (oh my, the memories!)

The Noisy Dog Blog (Sue Eves is the author of the whimsical Quiet Woman and the Noisy Dog, now out in paperback) picked my short story as a bedtime read

And WikiPilipinas added me to their list of Ten Pinay Pride of 2009.

Wow. I am quite overcome by the kindness of friends and strangers.

Thank you so much.

Geeked Up for Christmas: TALL STORY has a Facebook Fan Page!

At one of the London Book Fair seminars on marketing this year, one of the facts bandied about was that more people now use Facebook instead of email for online communication.

Not being totally on the ball that day, I can't provide you with the exact source/figures, but trust me, it must be true.

One of the websites I designed this year belonged to someone who didn't have time for social networking. When we reviewed the website's visitor stats however, we discovered that most visitors came from Facebook!

Indeed, Facebook has become such a distracting force in my own life that I have had to leave the house (and the internet) and work in coffee shops to avoid getting caught up in its allure.

A neat little app called 'My Year in Status' collated the best of my FB status updates - revealing how much I enjoyed hanging out on FB:

Click on the image to see it in readable size

If you've been living in the Real World, you might not know what a status update is. Facebookers post short status updates of what they're up to, what they're thinking, what they're doing. Status updates can be very entertaining and addicting especially if, like me, many of your FB friends are fabulously witty.

It's a bit like Twittering or Tweeting, except it's less ephemeral, and you can comment and have conversations with other commenters. (And please don't ask me what Twitter is.)

Last week my author friend Elizabeth Pisani sent me a link on how to build a Facebook Fan Page. To a compulsive geekoholic like me, it was a temptation not to be resisted.

SHAMELESS PROMOTION: Elizabeth's book is pictured right. Please buy it. You know you want to understand sexual health, prostitution and the politics of Aids funding.

Building an FB page for my book TALL STORY was a fascinating exercise. So was thinking through how to promote it and get people to actually become fans of the page (my KEY STRATEGY: uninhibited BEGGING).

I created this landing page for people who happen to search for TALL STORY:

You can read about how to create a landing page here. The page, that is, not the image, which I put together using Photoshop.

And once you become a fan, you get this page:

(The red heart and scrawlings are just me pointing out the fun stuff)

To make the page a bit more exciting, you've got to create an image that will tell people why the hell they would want to sign up as a fan. Graphic skills are very useful. Or a publisher's art department. Or an artistic teenager.

The word fan, of course, is a misnomer because TALL STORY will not exist in the real world until June 2010. I wish FB used the word 'follower' or 'person who thinks they might possibly like...' - but there you go. Fan it's got to be.

Now,  I love adding friends on FB (I'm a bit easy that way). At last count, I had 457 friends. Oops.

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Mini digression: I was writing in the cafe the other day when I overheard two women discussing teen novels. As they were leaving, one of them turned to me and said, 'Candy, is that you?' It was the author Keren David (When I Was Joe), who I had friended on FB. With her was Gaby Halberstam (The Red Dress).

As a result of the meeting, I managed to schmooze an advance copy of When I Was Joe and  got to read The Red Dress ... and OMG lucky me,  these two titles turned out to be terrific! Definitely on my list of STAND-OUT young fiction reads of the year!

Shameless but Sincere Promotion: READ READ READ When I Was Joe and The Red Dress!

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Where was I?

Back to TALL STORY's Facebook Page: I begged classmates, friends and acquaintances to help me not look like a fool and become a fan. And lo and behold, the last time I looked (today) I had 136 fans.

THANK YOU, fan people. YOU ARE AWESOME! If I could pay you for your awesomeness, I would. Instead, I promise to make the page as interesting and relevant to YOU as I can.

And to all the lovely authors hoping to build their own FB fan page, watch this space, once I've managed to digest the tonnage of Christmas junk I've consumed during these holidays, I pledge to post a How To article taking you through the Facebook Page process step by step and in simple, ungeekified English.

It would be a cool way for Notes from the Slushpile to celebrate the new year.

Many happy returns this holiday season!

Me, the husband and kids pose for our annual holiday portrait

... and have a MAGNIFICENT 2010!

Charlie Higson's Zombie Trailer for The Enemy

Just saw this terrific new zombie trailer flagged on the Tall Tales and Short Stories blog.

Mind you, some author trailers manage to achieve Charlie Higson's look without having written a zombie book.

What happens when authors become cool online personalities

Not that YA author John Green (Paper Towns, Looking for Alaska) is a cool online personality only because he's trying to sell his books ... but look at what he got from his social network on his birthday -

And here was John's response:

If you can't be arsed to view the entire video, here's the most important thing John said:

People didn't make those songs or artwork or pictures and video clips in order to become famous or rich. They did it, to quote William Faulkner, "not for glory and least of all for profit but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before."

Mmmm. Human spirit.
He also said:

Every single day I get emails from aspiring writers asking my advice about how to become a writer. And here is the only advice I can give: Don't make stuff because you want to make money; it will never make you enough money. And don't make stuff because you wanna feel famous because you will never feel famous enough. Make GIFTS for people. And work hard on making those gifts so that people will notice the gift and like the gift. Maybe they will notice how hard you worked and maybe they won't. And if they don't, I know it's frustrating. But ultimately that doesn't matter because your responsibility is not to the people who notice but to the gift itself.

Titian: the Last Days by Mark Hudson -- a book trailer made by his daughter (hee hee)

Should we get our kids to help promote our books?

You can also view the video here

Love the part where she says: "I think it's boring but my mum read it and she thought it was really ... interesting."

Late add: This video is testament to the hoops authors have to jump through to sell their books. I just read Nathan Bransford's recent blog post in which he asks:

Can you be "just an author" these days, pecking away at a typewriter in a basement somewhere but otherwise completely eschewing publicity and remaining out of the public eye, Salinger- and Pynchon-style, writing in a bubble-like Platonic ideal of authordom?

His conclusion is that an established author could probably pull off a hermit-profile. But really, what with the economy in dire straits, publishers want bang for their buck ...

And one of the best ways to get bang for the buck is to start with an author who is doing everything they can to help out with publicity, thus multiplying the publisher's efforts

We have to live with the realities of our time and sometimes that means making the most of YouTube.

Wanna sell your book? Just go on Oprah!

If you feel for this guy, spare a thought for all the other authors out there.

If you can't see the video click here
(It's long by YouTube standards but this is your chance
to show you have an attention span longer than 4 minutes!)

Twitter vs Facebook - what's a children's writer to do?

Social Networking is dangerous territory for writers. Perhaps more so for novelists. All the writers I know seem to suffer addictive tendencies - coffee, tea, alcohol, pasta, Facebook ... the compulsion that drives us to write pushes us in other directions as well.

The writing is going slowly. So what do you do? Instead of forcing yourself to work a chapter out, you check your Facebook profile for comments. An hour later, you've watched eight YouTube videos and exchanged pleasantries with an ex-classmate who used to bully you in high school.

We have to do it, we tell ourselves. Times have changed. The author can no longer rest on his or her craft - to sell our work in this big bad techno world, we have to be actors, podcasters, bloggers, marketers, facebookers and now ... twitterers.

Techno-savvy agent Peter Cox, interviewed on the Tall Tales and Short Stories blog, talks about publishers expecting authors to have a "platform" -

Publishers talk about a platform. They say what has the author got as a platform? In other words can you attract publicity can you bring buyers with you? In the non-fiction area it might be diabetics or left-handed people or pilots ... is there a public out there who already recognises you who will buy your book?

That's why every Tom, Dick and JK in the book world has started up a blog (well, not JK - she doesn't have to blog). I know authors who don't blog who have been advised by their publishers to start one.

What fascinates me is that some of the very people who are urging authors to blog do not read blogs, much less blog themselves. They don't understand the care that goes into blogging, the time it takes to write a post, the time and emotional investment in building an audience.

At the recent London Book Fair, there was so much talk of Twitter amongst publishing people that I signed up to find out what it was all about. Here are my findings:

• It's like blogging. Except it's in 43 characters. I like that I can update my blog by embedding my Twitter feed at the top of the page. As a result, I blog less. But I've lost readers because not all my readers are on Twitter.
• It's like blogging. Except your followers are somewhat more anonymous because your micro-blog is in such a big alphabet soup, any comments are quickly drowned in other Tweets.
• People carry on conversations - but it feels a lot like eavesdropping ... and there's already enough noise in my home without eavesdropping on the conversations of strangers.
• It's like blogging because it's addicting.
• It's not like blogging because it's quick and you don't have to say much.
• As in blogging and facebook, the early adopters and more sophisticated Tweeters are based in the US. If you live in the UK, you lose out because of the time differential.

In the Tall Tales interview, Peter Cox also said:

There is a 97% BS factor involved and if all you do is listen to the latest things ... you've got to twitter, you've got to have a blog ... it can drive you mad ... You have to look at these things strategically and work out how is your time best spent.

My decision: I'm going to stay on Twitter and Tweet occasionally - to see where it's going to go. BUT I think it's more important to make the social networking that already works for you work better. That means giving my blog some TLC and creating websites that are forward- thinking and audience building - as in, audiences that I actually am engaged in ... not an anonymous mass.

And of course most important of all: I'm going to concentrate on writing my book and writing it well.

After all, what's the point of having a platform if you've got nothing to show for it?

Nicola Morgan's hilarious DIY video

Yes you can! Make your own promotional video that is - and you don't need a camera or video skills or sound equipment. All you need is a computer, wit and the text-to-movie website Xtranormal ... as Nicola Morgan (Deathwatch
) demonstrates on her blog, Need2bPublished:

If you can't see the video, watch it on YouTube

Further Education: be published, be seen and be sold.

I admit it. I'm becoming increasingly dependent on YouTube videos to keep my blog updated regularly.

But seriously, you guys, I am interested in your FURTHER EDUCATION. Especially you PUBLISHED writer guys, the ones who are no longer on the slushpile, the ones who have a book out, or a book about to come out, the ones who are still asking yourselves everyday, 'should I have a website?' 'should I blog?' 'should I do a video?' 'is it worth the time?'

My answer is ... AAAARGH. Some people don't deserve their success.

Anyway, here is John Green (again!) showing you guys how to keep faith with your young audience:

If you can't see this, view it on YouTube

Moral of the blog post: if you're about to be published, be seen by your audience and your book will be sold. You can't procrastinate over marketing your book (unlike when you're writing it).

Maureen Johnson manages to be funny in a serious book video

MJ is one of the funniest YA bloggers around and here's her new video!

It looks  like the Scholastic had this serious video made and Maureen got hold of it before the release.

If you can't see it, watch it on YouTube.

Google, Google Everywhere

I love that Google is today celebrating the 40th anniversary of Eric Carle's Very Hungry Caterpillar which apparently sells a copy somewhere in the world every 30 seconds.

Today is also the launch of Google's Street View, by which anyone can punch a city post code into Google Maps and see the location in 360 degree photographic views.

The launch of anything that smacks of new technology has of course prompted fear and trembling over issues of privacy, with Google acting quickly to remove objectionable photos. When the service was launched in the US, a new past-time of streetspotting was invented.

The literary possibilities of Google Street View are mind-boggling. Do have a listen to tonight's episode of Front Row (20 March, Friday), the radio arts programme, in which Ian Rankin and Graham Hurley discuss the cons (readers can visit fictional locations and the disconnect between story and reality might might get in the way of the story's believability) and the pros (oooh, the story ideas... Street View as murder alibi ... Street View revealing the future).

And then there's Google Earth. I had a Marketing Big Idea last week - if location is important to your story - like Sarwat Chadda's forthcoming Devil's Kiss which is set in dark and scary corners of London - why not use the new movie-making features of Google Earth and create a tour of your novel's locations? 

If you've written a book that has to do with archaeological digs and ancient civilizations like The Mummy Snatchers of Memphis by my friend Natasha Narayan - Google Earth claims to be able to give you access to the past, "With a simple click, take a look at suburban sprawl, melting icecaps, coastal erosion and more". As well as dive under oceans, etc etc.

There is some muttering that Google's ubiquity, so dangerously Microsoft-like, has pushed the corporation over to the Dark Side ... that Google has betrayed its famous motto, Don't Be Evil.

Are we in danger of being exploited by the Google juggernaut marauding into every corner of our lives?

Perhaps. 

Meanwhile why not exploit everything that Google has to offer first?

Tips for Authors on the Brink of Fame (and even maybe Fortune)

I've just finished building Sarwat Chadda's website in anticipation of the May launch of his "goth-lit" thriller, Devil's Kiss. Check it out on sarwatchadda.com.

I'd always wanted to do a website with a dark, dark theme and Sarwat has now fulfilled that wish, thanks for hiring me Sarwat!

I thought I'd blog about a few ideas that came to me while making the website. Here goes:

TIP FOR AUTHORS WAITING FOR FAME AND GLORY NUMBER ONE: Have your author portrait taken as soon as possible, preferably five or ten years ago, before the crow's feet, thinning hair, wattle chin,  and other signs of aging have totally set in.

The most dangerous part of this project (for Sarwat) was handing over a CD of studio portraits for me to pick and choose from. Woo hoo!  I tried hard not to rub my hands gleefully in front of him. Oh the magic one can do with Photoshop! But then Sarwat of course was wise to my game and threatened me with the kind of violence even his book would blush at if I dared upload anything silly to Facebook. 

Luckily we came to a compromise and I got to make these humorous mash-ups for his 'About Me' page.

Sarwat on holiday in the East.

Sarwat realising he was in competition with Buffy.

Sarwat being told he should write for Bette Midler (hey, I love Bette Midler!)

Sarwat winning a place in the Undiscovered Voices anthology. 

Oh I didn't go ahead with that last one. I couldn't get a satisfactory blend of Sarwat's neck with Miss America's.

TIP FOR AUTHORS WAITING FOR FAME AND GLORY NUMBER TWO:
When you have that pictorial with the professional photographer, make sure while they are shooting off the customary 101 frames, that as well as the formal I am a glamorous author pose, you pose with different expressions. Smiling, looking right, looking left, looking upwards, looking downwards, making silly faces ... this will be useful for future digital compositions by your friendly neighbourhood designer. I suggest this because Sarwat had exactly two expressions on his CD which made it hard to make him look truly ridiculous. Dang.

Part of the job was redecorating Sarwat's blog to match the livery of the website. Sarwat's early blogging has been targetted mainly at fellow writers. With his book out, he will have to change gears, target his readers - without alienating his currrent following. 

Spooky that Nathan Bransford picks this moment to blog about blogs - authors' blogs - citing a piece in the Globe and Mail about how the new intimacy between reader and author has resulted in some extraordinary public blow ups.  

Apparently some authors have had to endure severe lambasting by fans when they're late with the next book or not living up to their duties as Famous Author!

These days, writers invite personal involvement and intensity from their readers. In direct proportion to the way in which they share their personalities (or for-consumption personalities), their everyday lives, their football teams and word counts, their partners and children and cats, it encourages in readers a sense of personal connection and access, and thus an entitlement to comment, complain, recommend cat food, feel betrayed, shriek invective, issue demands: “George, lose weight, dammit!” More

Fans can be deployed to attack critics

The flip-side of course is that authors like Stephenie Meyer (her fans threatened to bombard Stephen King with hate mail for saying he didn't like Twilight) and Patricia Cornwell ("slimed" by several Amazon reviews, she called on her fans to counteract the bad reviews).

...“Release the fans!” seems to be the phrase that applies ... Globe and Mail

Hmm. So what is my Tip Three?

TIP FOR AUTHORS WAITING FOR FAME AND GLORY NUMBER THREE:
Sure, go ahead and blog. Blog because your editor and your agent said you probably ought to. Blog because you've enjoyed keeping a diary since you were five. Blog because that's what they say authors have to do. But remember: it's a two-way relationship. The fans can dish as much as they take.

... And now here's Neil Gaiman

These are the best of times and the worst of times.

Continuing on the bitter theme of how authors have to become stand up comics, film makers, actors, performers, self publicists etc etc.

And yet if times were not like these, would we have wonderful videos like this one just released by Neil Gaiman?

If you can't see the video, watch it here

Think what a writer could do with the help of a friendly artist ... and an animator.
 
 

An Action Movie to Make Your Day and Thinking about Book Trailers

So over on my friend Addy's wonderful fiction blog about Wilf there's an action movie to watch in case there aren't any James Bond replays on at Christmas.

Screenshot from Addy Farmer's Action Movie. Watch it here

Addy's action movie comes as my other writing pal Sarwat Chadda discovers that his publishers have released a book trailer for his forthcoming novel, The Devil's Kiss. Here it is:

Agent Kristin Nelson over at the Pub Rants Blog posted this book trailer for one of her authors which takes the form of a West Side Story themed MTV rap - very interesting, but probably out of the league and budget of DIY book trailer makers like me and some of my friends.

All this adventuring in film-making is interesting and important if you're an author or author to be, as book trailers are now a must-have marketing tool and if your publisher doesn't give you a budget to make one, you might find yourself making one for yourself!

Rather fortuitously, social media consultant Angela Wilson at the AskAngela: Market My Novel blog, posted on the whys and wherefores of book trailers the other day. Her interviewee Sheila Clover English gave these five top tips for producing an effective book trailer:

1. Determine what you want people to know about your book and include that in the trailer.
2. Know what your goal is for the trailer.
3. Create a measurable goal to check how effective the trailer was.
4. Make the first 10 seconds of the video the most gripping or interesting
5. Know your audience and get the trailer to places where you will find that audience Read the whole article
   

As a YouTube dabbler myself may I add my own unprofessional advice:

1. Keep it short and to the point.
2. What IS your point?
   
3. Make it funny (unless of course it's horror - then make it scary)
4. Nobody wants to see ads on YouTube - try to have an angle (I've mentioned this before but Meg Cabot's video for her book Queen of Babble Gets Hitched has hook, arc and punchline and a bubbly, hilarious feel very attractive to her readers.
   
   
   
   
5. And finally: make the book trailer something people will want to forward to all their friends.
   

The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride and Us Too

The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride Youtube book trailer

I was going to focus today. FOCUS!

But when I heard about the Steffi McBride book, all the little bits of blogging material that I've been trying to ignore in the name of writing my novel came rushing to the fore - so important to share this, especially in the current downturn. So I've got to just quickly tell you about Steffi McBride and all the other stuff that might be meaningful to the Rise and Fall of Us as writers.

I heard about Steffi McBride in today's Guardian RSS feed which highlighted Andrew Croft's new novel The Overnight Fame of Steffi Mcbride - or more precisely, how the author is using Web 2.0 to the hilt to promote the novel:

But what, arguably, makes Steffi more interesting than your average airhead celeb is that she's the figment of an author's imagination and these tantalising - or annoying - insights into her star-studded existence come courtesy of her updates on Twitter, the social media "microblogging" site, and her Facebook page. Read the article

The book trailer is appealing (a bit long but quite appealing - makes authors want to rush out to the nearest drama school in search of cheap but capable talent to star in their book trailers). And suddenly all that wasted time in Facebook turns out to be an investment in my future success as a writer ... I'm off to friend Steffi now (for the record, her friend count is only 33 at the moment, will be interesting to check back in a few weeks). It will also be interesting to see what FB does to the page. FB took down the FB page of Vern, Sarah Macintyre's wonderful comic creation for the DFC comics, on the basis that Vern was not human.

The article appears on the heels of a series of guest blogs on book marketing running on the agent Nathan Bransford's blog . Bestselling author Michelle Moran (Nefertiti) blogged in two parts. The first part was about the nitty gritty of the business, the lingo, the marketing department, the publicity department ...

So you’re a few months away from publishing your debut novel. Your publishing house has suggested that you pitch in to help promote your own work, but you don’t have the first clue as to where you should start. Or perhaps you’ve already published your first book without doing any of your own publicity and marketing and now the hard realization has hit that this time around, without a significant change on your part, your career is going to end as quickly as it began. Now you’re willing to try something – anything. But what works? What doesn’t work? What should you be doing? Michelle Moran on Book Marketing Part 1

Michelle's second blog was about blogging, websites, online reviewers ...

... don’t be afraid to try new ways of publicity and marketing, even if you’ve never heard of anyone else doing it before. This is what a great publicist will do for you, and what you want to do for yourself. There are so many ways of promoting a book that aren’t widely used, and many of them are free. Michelle Moran on Book Marketing Part 2

And finally, the guest blogger on Nathan's blog today is M.J. Rose (The Reincarnationist), who shares this lovely kernel:

Not even the most brilliant pr and marketing can sell a book people just do not want to read. M.J. Rose on Book Marketing

Having gotten that off my chest, I can now go back to work. Enjoy, everyone.

Meg Cabot's World Tour

Meg Cabot has left the UK (Chicklish is running a Meg Cabot week featuring interviews they blagged while Meg was here).

I still think it's unfair that nobody told me she was coming.

Moving on, Meg is now in South Africa.

Meg Cabot at Exclusive Books Capetown. Photo by Nicky Schmidt

Lucky for you, Notes from the Slushpile had spies carefully embedded at Exclusive Books in Capetown where Meg made an appearance.

Nicky Schmidt — aka Atyllah (a chicken from outer space ... but that's another loooong story)— packs her report with some cogent thoughts about authors and marketing.

Noting Meg's powerful online presence, Nicky writes:

I’m amazed at how much of the marketing is electronic – almost the whole customer relationship management side of her marketing is done via the internet – aside from the book tours and books signings. But the key marketing focus, it strikes me, aside from having a decent product, is customer relationship management. It’s interesting that in an increasingly competitive market authors are having to focus less on their product and far more on customer relationships in order to up and sustain sales figures. It’s no longer solely about how good the book is, but it’s also about how accessible you are to your market and how you woo them. That gives authors two full time jobs rolled into one – writer/entertainer and marketer.

Read Nicky's full report here - it's mandatory reading for anyone who is working on their strategy to dominate the world ... er, market their books.

Shoo Rayner's Drawing School

Okay, I'm trying to be a good author and ignore all distractions.

However Shoo Rayner is evil and has started a drawing school over on his website. I can't resist watching illustrators draw so now Shoo's new page has seriously set back my plans for world domination.

Here's Shoo teaching us how to draw his archetypal character, the Ginger Ninja.

When Reality Suffers in Translation, Try Fantasy

Sweating profusely in the tube the other day, I reached for a copy of the Metro freesheet to use as a fan. An interview with poet Bernardine Evaristo caught my eye. Her debut prose novel Blonde Roots has only just come out. Bernardine uses reversal similar to that employed by my hero Malorie Blackman in Noughts and Crosses. Says Bernardine:

I wanted people to look at the slave trade differently and the reversal was the vehicle for me to do that ... I wondered whether if I turned the slave/master roles around, people would have a different response to the issues ... Read the interview here

The white heroine is a farm girl taken away to be a slave in 'Aphrika'. The cover is very striking and it would be interesting to see how Evaristo builds her world. The Noughts and Crosses franchise is on its fourth book - Double Cross is out in November.

My fascination is partly out of self-interest - last year I started a novel based around some reporting I'd done on children left behind by the migration phenomenon in the Philippines.

The writing was bogged down by the weight and complexity of the reality I was trying to paint and I found myself turning to fantasy. The result was Ugly City, a 9+ novel about a city where parents have to leave and children stay behind.

If you had asked me a year ago if I would ever write a fantasy, I would have said of course not (I haven't even read Lord of the Rings, shock, horror!). But fantasy lends itself to turning unpalatable truths into roaring drama and with the layers pared away, I gained a lot of insight into the immigration situation I was trying to reflect on.

***

My friend Elizabeth emailed me this Rant-Not-To-Be-Missed by Mark Hurst over at the Good Experience blog. Here are the first two bullet points about "how most - not all - publishers work":

• They're not doing it for the love of books. Publishers want something that sells. Similarly, bookstores want something that sells. Publishers and bookstores want a book that sells early, sells often, and sells for a long, long time. If they don't think your book will sell, they won't pay much attention.

• Conversely, if your book will sell, it doesn't matter what you're writing about. You could write something boring, or irrelevant, or nothing at all - just a blank set of pages with a coffee stain on them will work fine, if the book sells. Do you get the picture? It's not about any high-minded ideals of literature, or craft, or changing the world - publishers and bookstores want something that sells. Drop any illusions about spending time with book lovers; this is business.

Read Secrets of Book Publishing I Wish I'd Known

For the record, I am told that it is not really that bad ... but not far off.

***

Being a rabid member of SCBWI, I'd just like to take this opportunity to point out to members that SCBWI's annual summer conference is now ongoing in Los Angeles. If you want to follow events, Alice Pope, editor of the Children's Writer's and Illustrator's Market, is blogging extensively about it. Thanks, Alice!

***

I met Mark Robson, uber prolific author of YA fantasy series like Imperial Spy and Dragon Orb, when I appeared before the Scattered Authors Society to tell them the Internet doesn't bite.

Mark was one of the authors who didn't really need my advice, since he already had an excellent website, blogged regularly and spent a lot of time meeting readers at bookstore events. He emailed me today to let me know he'd invested in a game on his website and do I know any youngsters who would like to check it out.

Youngsters (and Oldsters if you so feel the need)! Go slay some dragons! Here's the link to Mark's game page, see how you do.

Eoin Colfer's US Tour

Eoin Colfer, everyone's favourite massively successful bestselling children's author with a way on the stage, is on this huge US road trip. This is the virtual Artemis Fowl bus:

He's doing DAILY vlogs (video blogs, you ninnies!) on the snazzy Artemis Fowl websitewhich reveals more budget than the usual happy-hands-at-home author vlog. Check it out by clicking on this picture:

Notes from Slushpile Readers

So Lindsey from Puffin read my post on the DFC people's comic book workshops and said if my nine year old liked comics, she would probably like Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney.

This really interests me - the previous time I blogged about the connect between comic books/graphic novels and traditional children's publishing, I had a spike - from my daily readership of 300-500 a day, almost FOUR THOUSAND people read Comic Books Are Not Just For Klingon Speakers - about the rising interest in comic books for kids in the US! What does that mean? Should UK publishers (notoriously resistant to comics) pay attention?

Here's a sample page from Diary of a Wimpy Kid (blurb: "a novel in cartoons":

Lindsey was right! My nine-year-old devoured it like a bag of sweets! And slushpilers should note that Jeff Kinney himself has had an interesting journey to publishing - working on the book for six years before publishing it in daily instalments at Pearson's educational website FunBrain.com (bite-sized blogs targeted at various ages and differentiated between boys and girls are another interesting feature). Thanks for that, Lindsey!

***

Speaking of Puffin - Puffin is one of the few children's publishers who actually maintain a readable blog (in the UK, in the US they all blog). Visit the Puffin Blog here ... but do try to avoid any stalker, publish-me-now-or-else behaviour.

***

People who've attended one of my talks on authors online may have heard me talk about the potential ofgroup blogs for overworked authors - this way, authors can share the burden, expand their audiences ... you get what I mean. Well, my author pal Fiona Dunbar (Pink Chameleon, The Truth Cookie) kindly forwarded this link over the weekend to the Awfully Big Adventure blog recently started by a group of children's authors.

Do visit, leave comments etc etc. I think it's an awfully terrific thing to do! Way to go!

Fiona also pointed out Sally Nichols' (Ways to Live Forever) post featuring this cartoon from Tales from the Slush Pile over at the Children's Boookshelf at Publisher's Weekly. (Thanks, Fiona).

***

And speaking of Fiona, she's just rather hilariously blogged (on her brand spanking new blog) that some big powerful telly people are thinking of basing a sitcom on her Truth Cookie series!

These things usually take tiiiiiiiiiiime. So let's all cross our legs and fingers and wish upon stars that it will happen. Soon!

John Green's Fictive Versions of Himself on Amazon

John Green (An Abundance of Katherines, Looking for Alaska) is a broadcaster as well as a YA author. Which really helps. You can see how much it helps on his Amazon video. **Yes, authors, this is a good time to reflect on what you'd put on your Amazon video**

I particularly like the way he addresses the readers as Amazonians.

Naturally, Amazon doesn't provide embed information that allows me to put the video on my blog (why should they encourage you to leave the site when the longer you stay, the more likely you are to buy?). So you will have to click on this screen grab to view it. It's really good - so you lazy people who can't be bothered, go on, CLICK.

Illustrator Jimmy Liao in my pocket!

I discovered illustrator Jimmy Liao in the Taiwanese exhibition on my first foray to the Bologna Children's Book Fair (This is his English site, for you non-Taiwanese speakers). His framed illustrations were stacked on the floor by the book display. The image on the right is of a picture book he did with a sightless girl as its narrator - showing the world from her point of view. I was so glad I took the trouble to get on my knees because I have not seen them anywhere else since, nor can I source the picture books. The photos I took using my feeble mobile do not do them justice.

This year at Bologna, the Taiwanese had Jimmy Liao up in lights with a massive hoarding and his work impressively displayed in glass cases.

Yesterday, my Jimmy Liao fandom was rewarded when Martin Gladas, director of leather goods manufacturers Taurus Leather UK, sent me this in the post:

It came in this fab bag:

Martin emailed to tell me he came across the purses at a leather goods exhibition in Hong Kong and is trying to bring them to the UK. He's read all of Jimmy's books and says, "I know they are for children but the illustrations are amazing."

Sadly, my daughter caught me admiring the purse and has cold-bloodedly appropriated it over my violent objections.

Well, if she thinks she can get away with that, she's got another think coming. I shall wait until she's asleep ... tonight ...

Thanks Martin for the kind freebie! Thanks, Jimmy, for your incredible talent! And you folks - go buy the wallets. They're on this page of Martin's site!

Katie Price Furore: Are Pneumatic Models Allowed to Win Book Prizes?

I've always had great sympathy for models. I mean, it's just another job isn't it? Why I even once called on mothers to show more sympathy for Liz Hurley when she revealed a flat tummy mere weeks after having a baby.

So when Katie Price (formerly known as Jordan) produced her own children's book, I was all for it. The Times gave it a not-so-enthusiastic thumbs up but a thumbs-up nonetheless.

This is a world away from the vividly imagined worlds of Michael Morpurgo and Jacqueline Wilson. This is not a literary book in any way. But it isn’t terrible. As a factual book, it is crisp, girly, practical and full of good advice about owning ponies ... Indeed, it is so nuts and bolts it doesn’t matter so much that she didn’t write it all.

But wait a minute, the news is just out that the book has now been shortlisted for WH Smith Children's Book of the Year. (Kids vote from a list put up by publishers)

Naturally, there is a lot of upset from anyone who has spent years in garrets typing up manuscripts as opposed to reclining on magazine covers and centrefolds, displaying their assets.

This from Joanne Harris (Chocolat):

If this is an award for people who write books then it should be open only to people who write books, not to somebody who lends their name to a book, or who would have written a book if they had time but didn’t.

You can read all the arguments in the Times Online article — but I was rather interested that the response of Katie Price's publishers was to point out that Katie Price is a very strong "brand" — indeed, Random House has made Katie Price a bestselling author with not one but three memoirs and her third novel due out in July.

When I give my talks about authors and the internet, I always point out that one of the reasons publishers tend to have such crap websites is they are trying to push not just one brand but as many brands as they have authors.

Look at any publisher's website. They are all effectively lists. Lists and lists and lists of books and authors. Kassia Krozser at the Booksquare blog had a little rant about the crapness of publisher sites the other day:

It is no secret that I hate publisher websites. The vast majority of them can be best described as “suffers from multiple personality disorder”. And I’m not just talking about the fact that publishers can’t figure out who the target audience of their site is. Visiting a publisher site means being subjected to bad design, bad search, and — yes — bad content. Not a single one of these is forgivable.

Which is why websites and online promotion are a no-choice thing for authors.

Authors can't rely on a publisher to do their brand-building for them. Publishers already have their hands full trying to make brands out of the thousands of authors on their list, a task so mind-boggling that it's sometimes easier to buy a proven brand that's already out there.

Like Katie Price.

Desperately Seeking the Active in Interactive

Happy Easter! Have a tree!

England was totally utterly beautiful this past Easter weekend, if skin-peelingly cold. But my inner calm was shattered when I left this tranquil scene to discover that I had three days before I flew to Italy for SCBWI's conference on the eve of the big Bologna Children's Book Fair.

And this year, I am a speaker. Yes, yes, I'm talking about the internet again (can't talk about writing until a publisher takes pity on me and gives me a contract). And at this late stage I have only one thing to tell you about my talk.

AAAAAAARGH!

I haven't designed my own name tag (delegates are supposed to impress each other with their self-designed name tags). I haven't researched the speakers yet, and have nothing intelligent to ask them. I haven't read the manuscripts sent to me for the critique session. And I haven't prepared my talk ...

Luckily, just the other day my brain quietly filed something away about uber YA author Melvin Burgess and the internet. That should be something interesting and fresh and talk-worthy. So I google 'Melvin Burgess' and 'internet'.

Looks like Mel has been posting vlogs (video blogs, keep up guys!) to promote his new book Sara's Face about a girl obsessed by fame.

The Times Online article had one episode of the vlog.

Naturally, I want to embed it right here for your viewing pleasure. So I go to YouTube and search for 'Burgess' 'Sara's Face' 'vlog'. Nothing. I go to Mel's website. But there are no links to the video. Oh, didn't Melvin say it was going to be on Spinebreakers , Penguin's proprietary portal for its YA books? But when I go to the page with the Sara's Face vlogs, there is no embed code (that's like, the thing you cut and paste so the video shows on your blog? Basically, this is what's supposedly VIRAL about the web).

Sigh.

I really really wanted to post that video.

But no worries. I've found Rule Number One for my talk at Bologna about authors and the internet.

It's not about the author. It's about the reader.

Listen up, authors. When your readers look you up online, they want to talk to you, comment about your work, download you, share you - they want to INTERACT. Interactive. Heard that word before?

So make it easy, please.

Having said all that, Spinebreakers is running a cool competition inviting readers aged over 13 to 'vlog' a rant about fame. Go on, Buy the book, Rant the rant!

Looky Looky Lookybook!

Lookybook is a new marketing idea for picture books - I think it's a great way of getting your PBs seen - if, that is, zillions of people subscribe to its email updates and publishers get behind it etc etc!

Meanwhile, you can sign up your picture books on the Lookybook submit page. But at the moment it's only free for the first year ... I wonder what publishers think of it.

(And this PB He Came With the Couch byDavid Slonim is rather fine as well!)

A Brave New World for Publishers (the Key Word is Brave)

Comes the news this week that two publishers have launched distribution initiatives that feature competing visions of the future.

Harper Collins is releasing complete texts online from such web-savvy authors as Neil Gaiman and Paul Coelho.

Random House on the other hand is selling chunks of business books for small fees.

This almost 20 years after the creation of the world wide web. Is it just me or does this sound a bit slow, considering how the web has so far revolutionised music distribution and all sorts of human interaction?

Nicholas Clee, on the Guardian Book Blog, notes:

These announcements suggest we have not moved on from the year 2000 - at least a generation ago, in internet terms.

Clee saves us some research by outlining how authors from Stephen King to Seth Godin have been working the web for years way before the publishers perked up to its possibilities.

One author commenting on Clee’s blog post wrote:

The publishing houses are stuck in old modes of doing things, trying to make money (yes, they have to survive). Finally! they are allowing the public to read their books without trekking to the bookstore? But they are doing this after the books have been out and their window of opportunity is closed. And in whose interests?

When the Media Guardian invited media movers and shakers to predict the future, book publishers were conspicuous in their absence.

For the publishing world, the online universe is a Brave New World. Aldous Huxley describes his novel as set in a “negative utopia” – which pretty much probably reflects how publishing regards the web.

Author and marketing guru Godin sees the Harper announcement as a typical traditional book publishing mentality attempting a new initiative: "They took all the [viral marketing] things that work — that make it spread — and they're turning them off." His idea is that marketing is "trying to start conversations, and if that conversation takes place the ideas spread." - 22nd Century Press Blog

I guess the key word in this Brave New World is Brave. The initiatives announced today are at best tentative and at worst fearful.

Sure, the industry is constantly struggling to stay on the right side of the bottom line.

But publishers should do better.

Brave New World image copyright Tony Hamilton, DreamingAloud.com