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.

---

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!

---

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!

Book Trailer for Mortlock by Jon Mayhew

Now it gives me GREAT pleasure to see someone I met on the internet get some mileage! Here's the trailer for John Mayhew's book, coming soon ... and it's wonderful!

Brrrr!

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.

Performing authors and Fiona's video

My friend Fiona Dunbar's new book Tiger-Lily Gold has just come out and to celebrate she made this video (I helped!)

Meanwhile, Nicola Morgan (Deathwatch) is aiming for a world record in school visits.

Anthony Horowitz (The Power of Five: Necropolis) is appearing in a virtual event targetting nine thousand children in 216 schools.

And big name authors are guaranteed roles at a proliferation of children's book festivals to draw the crowds.

The Book Brunch children's column wonders "how much the life of a children’s author has become about personal contact with children as well as contact through books ..."

 Have we lost anything since the days when we only knew writers and illustrators through their books? When we weren’t necessarily sure what sex E B White, E Nesbitt, P L Travers, and L M Montgomery were, let alone what they looked like? (Though A A Milne and C S Lewis and J R R Tolkien had got famous enough for us to know.) Was there something to be said for imagining an author through his or her work? P L Travers looked liked Mary Poppins in my head.

Is the standard of performance getting too high for authors who are "merely" good at writing? So it is not enough to write a gripping tale: you also have to be Eoin Colfer in front of an audience. Or do these showmen do the whole profession the favour of giving it glamour, and making kids want to be in it, as they want to be other kinds of celebrities? Read more

Should we resist the demands of our ever-more-swiftly spinning world? Should we insist that writers be allowed to do only that, write?

I recently acquired a Flip Mino - one of those easy peasy pocket camcorders.

I figure the Flip would make it easier for me to build up some useful footage for a future marketing campaign.

There is never a better time to surrender to the inevitable than now.

Peter J Murray's inspiring story

Someone mentioned Peter J Murray's website on one of the message boards I follow and I casually followed the links to this video which tells how Murray went from being self published to a three book deal. The most impressive thing in this video is Murray performing during at schools. The man is an inspiration!

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

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.
 
 

My advice to authors in these hard times: don't go wide, GO DEEP

One quick check of my blog reader before I go to Costa Coffee to avoid Facebook and I find this link to a nice piece about how the recession is going to make it even tougher to sell books.

The author Novella Carpenter is in nail-biting mode, awaiting the release of her book Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer in June 2009.

Holiday book sales were abysmal, and most of the major publishing houses have announced job losses in recent months. One publishing behemoth, HarperCollins, lost 75 percent of its operating income during the first six months of 2008. Over all, the publishing industry has struggled as bookstore sales -- and the economy -- have slowed drastically.

My agent told me the other day that things were not as bad as that yet in the UK, but what's going to stop me being miserable anyway?

The point of Carpenter's article is that authors will just have to work that much harder to promote their books (though we can't all be as good at it as John Green). One editor told her:

"The best advice for today, and really in any financial climate, is to be fanatical and motivated to promote your book ... Do as many events as possible. Become a shameless self-promoter."

Note: Carpenter in fact forgot to mention the title of her book in the article. I had to check out her website. And when I checked out her website, her upcoming book wasn't even promoted on the front page. When you clicked on Publications, the book was listed but there was no link to any promotional page or synopsis whatsoever (and the listing on Amazon doesn't tell us anything either). She's obviously a nice person who ain't shameless. I think we should all pre-order her book.

A writer friend asked me yesterday if she should Twitter as well as Facebook to get her name out there.

I found myself giving the same advice I offered to a client for whom I designed a website.

The client wanted to know if they were doing enough to get their site listed by search engines. Someone had told her she should stick a long list of key words into her code to make sure her site could be found.

My advice: when you are trying to market yourself, don't go wide, go deep.

If you are a children's author writing about aliens, you don't want someone searching for "book" to find you. You want someone searching for "children's book about aliens". It's the quality of the traffic that counts, not the number. You don't want to be found by just anyone. You want people who are actually likely to reach into their wallets.

If you are trying to use social networking sites to raise your profile, sure, set up an account with Facebook, Bebo, MySpace and what have you. But it's better to have one social network that really works for you than half a dozen that don't. It's the quality of the network, not the quantity (ie. You don't want to friend 3,000 people who will never buy your book) ...

The caveat is that social networking is not just about marketing. And if you'd like to have a go at Twitter, or blogging, or other kinds of social networking , don't let me stop you. But do it because you want to have some fun not just because you're looking for a database to market to.

And of course, we must not forget, as one bookseller reminded Carpenter in the article: "the most important thing is to write an awesome book. That's the biggest hurdle. Just write an awesome book."

***

Last night I watched Millions again, the story by Frank Cottrell Boyce about a boy who finds a millions of pounds in a holdall by a railway. I had forgotten that it was directed by Danny Boyle, pre-Slumdog. Later, I read this interview of Boyle talking about what sold the script to him —

Basically, page seven where the kid first uses the excuse of his mum's death to gain an advantage - it's a killer moment. You'd think you would examine scripts and weigh them up, but you don't in fact. You read the American ones and they're good and very impressive, but basically when you have a giddy moment like that in a script, that's it.

— it's the scene where the boys tell a shopkeeper, "Me mam's dead" and the shopkeeper immediately hands over some free sweets.

Made me think of rejections. Have you ever received a rejection from an editor or an agent with the words "I liked your book. But I don't love it."

That means your killer moment didn't slay them enough.

Today I resolve to make my killer scene more killer than it is.

Oh how can we measure up to John Green?

So, if you are an author/soon-to-be author worried about the fact that authors now have to be not only writers but speakers, entertainers, web designers, educators, video editors, voice talents, marketers, etc etc etc and etc ... look away now because this is John Green's latest vlog (as in video blog) and it's relevant, funny, intelligent, touching (and he even manages to quote some ee cummings) and oh how are we to measure up?

If you can't see the video, view it here.

Picture Book Author Sue Eves visits the Slushpile

Welcome to the first of an occasional series in which authors who have managed to escape from the Slushpile visit our blog and give us hope! Our very first author is Sue Eves, whose book The Quiet Woman and the Noisy Dog will be out on the 5th of February.

Candy: thank you for visiting us on the slushpile even though you are on the brink of picture book fame and fortune.

Sue: ha! That’s what I thought the last time round! When my first picture book was published, I thought I’d never see the slushpile again. On the contrary, I spend most of my time here. I've spent the last several years writing and submitting and being rejected just like everybody else.
The only reason I've nipped out of it this time is because I happened to bump in to the submissions editor at a children's book event who suggested I submit my work.

Candy: Before you decided on a glittering career of rejection by children’s book agents and publishers, you had a pretty good job as a Tamba, the sweet little dragon in Tikkabilla. What was it like being a dragon?

Sue: Sometimes, a little cold! This is us on a sleigh ride to see Santa in Lapland, for a Christmas Special.

Sue freezing for her art in Lapland

Tamba had a brilliant view - I had to be hidden under a thermal mattress and a blanket.

It was physically demanding and I lost a stone in weight during filming. The whole body is involved in bringing the puppet to life. I had an upholstered trolley (a bit like a mechanic uses to wheel under a car) that I manoeuvred with my legs while lying on my back and held the puppet high over my head while singing and talking at the same time. Yes, a sweet little dragon!

At the time, I said it was my dream job and it was. Now I have to say that writing has taken over. I commissioned Neil Sterenberg, who made Tamba, to build me a dog puppet for author visits so I will still be puppeteering but I won't be hiding this time.

Sue and her dog puppet made by Neil Sterenberg

Candy: My daughter loved your surreal first book which featured a child climbing into bed with a cow. Where did you get that idea?

Sue: I wanted to write a story about food and a young child's significant times of day. We love food in our house and before my daughter started school, we were always cooking. She was the age when breakfast, lunch, tea and bedtimes were a familiar and comforting routine.

The teatime picture book text I submitted was rejected 11 times so I skipped tea and moved on to bedtime and writing about delay tactics - another story, a drink, anything to avoid having to go to sleep. Her first toy was a cow and when we lived in a flat, her bedroom overlooked a row of back gardens. We would sit in a rocking chair, my daughter and her cow, with a book and look out at the moon. The bedtime story became the one about a girl whose cow wouldn't go to bed.

Sue illustrated her first picture book, HIC!

Candy: Ailie Busby drew the lovely pictures for your new book The Quiet Woman and the Noisy Dog. She is an author in her own right. Did the process of working together involve a lot of negotiation?

Sue: We didn't really work together. I had finalised the text with the editor and agreed on AIlie Illustrating the story before signing the contract. I saw her proposed roughs for my text before I realised that she was the author/illustrator of Drat That Fat Cat! Many people will be familiar with her vibrant art. We didn't have any direct contact. We only emailed each other after the book was completed.

Candy: Can you tell those of us who are still stuck in the slush pile what it’s like working with a real editor?

Sue: The most amazing experience for me was working with the editors.

The submissions editor emailed me to start with, passing on revisions that the directorial editor had suggested. I revised extremely fast because the points the editor raised made complete sense. Funny how you can work on a text for years and years and not see a problem until someone else points it out. The editor knew exactly what she wanted out of the story and I think she pushed me until we both knew the story was finished.

Once Ailie was on board, the editor was in the hot seat passing messages between us and forwarding picture samples to me. I didn't need to give many illustration notes but the ones I had written in the margins were ones she used because they were part of telling the story. The text hardly changed at all during the illustration process, so I think the editor did a brilliant job and Ailie's illustrations are absolutely the ones I had in my head - only better!

Candy: What is the single most useful piece of advice you can give picture book writers stil struggling to get published?

Sue: Join SCBWI and participate in your regional events. If you can't get to any - network online. For UK residents - set up a profile on the SCBWI Ning thing!

Candy: And finally, the question that is burning in the hearts of all who inhabit the slushpile: is there hope?

Sue: I think of it as more of a Mosh Pit than a Slushpile.

We take it in turns to hitch a ride on someone’s shoulders to get a better view, unless we’re lucky enough to know someone in the band. I'm having a great time at the moment and anyone can get there who is really passionate about the band!

Candy: When is the official launch date?

Sue: The Quiet Woman and the Noisy Dog
is out on Thursday 5th Feb and you can pre-order it now.

Thanks for inviting me to the Slushpile, Candy.

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.
   

Sherman Alexie on The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian and Why YA is So Cool

I just finished writing my chapter for the day and it's total rubbish but at least I've now hit 22,412 words.

That's good right? At least I've laid the bones down and tomorrow I can go over it again with humour and craft and care. So in anticipation, I try to prime my brain with something inspiring.

I thought, what about reading a few chapters from Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian? Then I thought, Sherman Alexie, what kind of name is that? Is he really Indian? So I thought, surely, there's a video of Sherman Alexie on YouTube. I wanna see if he's really an Indian.

And guess what, he really is. But the other thing he turns out to be is really funny. You've just got to watch him do this HILARIOUS reading of one of the funniest moments in the book. The Q&A afterwards is cool too. About the true stories behind the book, the differences between his adult and Young Adult writing and also his remarks on how supportive the YA reader/writer community is - which makes me smug because that is exactly the world I want to be in.

If you can't see the video click here to view it on YouTube

Book Trailers on My Mind

I've been giving book trailers some thought recently. I've just realised that I have two rather talented brothers in the film-making business (one does animation the other is a corporate film maker) ... I wonder if they would do a skills exchange and make me some videos?

While thinking, I was scanning the web of course and discovered that someone has already put up a book trailer website! BookScreening.com goes by the catchline 'Know what to read next'. Check out this rather fabulous video for Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, voiced by the author:

The Graveyard Book Trailer Narrated by Neil Gaiman from The Graveyard Book Tour on Vimeo.

While you're browsing the site, here's a geeky thing to notice - the videos from the video-sharing site Vimeo are much better quality than YouTube.

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.

What's In a Website?

a quick note: friends, please visit my Volcano Child blog (yes, yes, I know, obsessive compulsive me etc etc) - help me make a good impression with ahem! The Powers That Be ...

There is a bit of a discussion at the British SCBWI message board about author websites.

Do you need one?

Where do you start?

Can you cope?

When I first started trying to get published, I set up my homepage CandyGourlay.com. It was 2001, and I was only just beginning to get to grips with code. Blogs were not yet in flavour nor were connection speeds terribly good and Web 2.0 was a twinkle in someone's eye. So my website was really, just a leaflet about me, an online CV.

I started up this blog in 2004 after emerging from SCBWI's conference in Madrid with piles of notes and nowhere to publish them. At the time, I thought I would use my journalistic skills and dash off feature length reports on the writing events I attended.

Well, the blog evolved and developed a voice of its own, it's funnier now, more personal, more frequently updated. It probably helps that I've also acquired the skills and tools to work faster online.

Then the world started to spin a little bit faster. Publishing was changing before our very eyes. Technology was changing. Children were changing.


I heard Scott Westerfeld (Uglies) give the keynote at the SCBWI conference in Bologna in 2005 and I was struck at how with-it he was about technology, about his fans and visiting his website, I realised that his blog had engendered a kind of connectedness with his readership that other authors would do well to emulate.

I wrote a piece on why competition from the internet meant authors needed to become more web savvy.

Then I decided to take my own advice and began to blog about my manuscript in progress. I saw my blog VolcanoChild.co.uk not as a leaflet about my book but more like a behind the scenes magazine. I wanted it to evolve as my book evolved.

Knowing that I was still some way towards sellling the manuscript, I could take my time, blogging on themes that run through the novel, such as: Children who Work, Mothers who Have to Leave, Real Witches and Living with Calamity. (Pictured right is a child circus performer in Shanghai).

Instead of building a website from scratch, I used Blogger, changed the template using my Photoshop and coding skills, and used Blogger's powerful tagging tool which put posts of a similar theme together on one page.

The ultimate objective of a blog is to create a conversation between the writer and the reader. However, I also saw the website as an easy way to build a website of substance to support my book - if ever and whenever it gets taken on by a publisher ... a bit like the online production diary that director Peter Jackson kept while making King Kong. The website gets noticed now and then, but ultimately, I am building up a strong archive for the IF and WHEN.

I have started another blog on a theme that I intend to explore in a future novel about climate change, I haven't been blogging extensively because I don't want to fill it with off-the-cuff stuff but with pieces that will someday be the beef to my future novel's bone.


Last year, i kept a comic blog on the building of my writing shed.


Blogs are not just diaries - they are conversations with the outside world, extended essays, online magazines on themes that you would never find on a newstand!

We have at our fingertips these powerful tools to support our craft - and they're FREE.

Here are three bits of unsolicited advice to those who still resist the onward march of the internet:

1) Computers don't explode when you get something wrong.

2) Any mistakes can be undone by pressing Control-Z (for PCs) . You can restore the deletion by pressing Control-Y

3) If your blog looks like crap, delete it and try again.

Here's a New Idea: Sell Shares in Your Novel

I had never heard of the author Tao Lin before but he has managed to paste himself onto my radar screen and I might just buy one of his books as a result.

Tao Lin Eeeee Eee Eeeeeis offering shares in his second novel-in-progress.

Investors can pay $2,000 (£1,000) in return for a 10 per cent share of the royalties of Tao Lin’s as-yet-unfinished second novel.

The Freakonomics blog dubbed Tao Lin a "rogue author" but sounded pretty positive about the idea:

Not only will the scheme defray his financial risk if the book does poorly, but Lin hopes that shareholders will promote his book out of self-interest.

In fact, when I checked Tao Lin's blog, there was only one share left and a waiting list!

The header on Tao Lin's blog (interestingly titled 'Reader of Depressing Books') links directly to his Wikipedia entry which informs us that he has been publishing poetry collections and e-books since 2006, several of which have titles all in lower case like this emotion was a little e-book and you are a little bit happier than i am.

Why would you want to buy shares? Tao Lin writes:

People who buy shares will also have more meaning in life if they already like and promote my writing, because they can promote my writing and also be making money for themselves, which can be exchanged for "goods" in concrete reality; therefore existential despair due to "having to do what you normally wouldn't be doing if you had a lot of money" can be relieved to some extent. Also it will be "funny" and "interesting" "for everyone" probably if people buy shares. You can call yourself a "producer" of my second novel if you want to do that. This is like a grant or something except it's like the stock market or something. You will be a stockholder in "Tao Lin's Second Novel's U.S. Royalties Corporation." "As people resell their shares the price of each share will go up or down, you will see this conveyed on MSNBC as a number going by on the bottom of the TV screen."

Tao Lin assures the reader that he can be trusted, citing his ebay rating and promising to buy back shares from anyone who is not satisfied - AND that suicide is unlikely, at least for the next five to ten years so investors should be confident he is serious about making his novel work.

I "can be trusted," look at my eBay rating. I will create contracts and have them notarized. You can have my phone number, address, etc., I promise I will not kill myself within 5-10 years. Really I don't think "trust" is an issue, I feel like people can trust me.

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!