“Author Platform”: If you’re an author, your platform is your ability to reach readers. Authors who can build, maintain and leverage their platforms will have a significant competitive advantage over those who cannot. Think of author platform as a multi-layered infrastructure that allows you to reach both new and existing fans. Elements of this infrastructure include your social media followers on Twitter, Facebook and the RSS feed of their blog (social media tool). It also includes subscribers to your private mailing list. It includes your celebrity, and your ability to leverage social media or traditional media or the love of your fans to get your message out. There are two primary factors that drive sales of any product or brand. The first is awareness. If the consumer is not aware of your product or brand, then they cannot purchase it. Authors must place their product in front of a consumer and gain their attention before the consumer can consider purchasing it. The second is desire. Once a consumer is aware of your product or brand, they must desire it. The author is the brand. Your job as the author is to build awareness of your brand, and to build, earn and deserve positive desire for your brand. Awareness plus desire create demand for your product. This is why platform will become more important than ever in 2014. Your platform helps you get the message out to existing fans, those who already know and desire your brand; and, equally if not more important—your platform helps you reach new fans. The larger your platform, the more it will grow incrementally because a well-maintained platform grows organically.

——– By Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords. Reprinted with permission from the AAA Books Unlimited Literary Agency October 2014 Newsletter.

1. Understand that publishers are very busy people. We are juggling multiple authors and manuscripts, as well as promotions, events, and marketing. We have little time to spare, especially when swamped with hundreds of manuscripts, many of them sent when a publisher is closed for submissions. Showing a publisher that you understand they are busy and submitting during their open submissions time shows you respect their time.

2.Learn everything you can about the publishing company. Learn about the publisher, their authors, and the works they’ve published to ensure that you’d be a good fit. Connect with them on social networks. Share their posts and tweets. Buy some of their titles, especially in the genre in which you write.

3.Read and follow their submission guidelines. Most publishers post their guidelines on their websites. Read them carefully, and pay special attention to whether or not they have a specific time frame for submissions. Follow their guidelines! Give them exactly what they want. Be prepared to answer questions, especially regarding past sales.

4.Hook the publisher in the first sentence of your query. Just like a well-written book, your query should hook them in the first sentence. Read your first sentence, and ask yourself: “Would this make me want to know more if I were a publisher?” Ensure that you follow the Four Firsts for your manuscript.Don’t know what I’m talking about? Learn about the Four Firsts here.

5.Let your personality shine as a positive person. Don’t be afraid to show publishers who you are. Just be sure it’s someone publishers will like. Be humble, appreciative, and a team player. Don’t act like you know it all. You don’t.

6.Be open to learning. With the ever-changing landscape of publishing, successful authors must always be open to change—and to experimenting when new things come along. Show a willingness to learn and to evolve with the industry.

7.Be everywhere online! Recognize the importance of a website, blog, and social networks, and use them frequently. Even if you’re not yet published, you should have a website, a blog, and Facebook and Twitter pages dedicated to your writing. Publishers will look for these.

8.Have an impressive platform in the SAME genre as the one you’re pitching. If you’ve been writing nonfiction and have a huge following there but are pitching a work of fiction, understand that the audience isn’t the same—unless there is a common theme. Example: Nonfiction books on dealing with autistic children have a specific audience of people looking for help with dealing with autistic children. A novel featuring an autistic child as the main character would then appeal to this audience.

9.Don’t rave about how awesome your book is and how it’s going to sell thousands of copies in the first week. Be humble and stick to the facts.

10.Show you understand your audience and that you know who your target audience is. Don’t pitch a book with a ten-year-old main character as a novel for adults. And don’t pitch an unpublished book as “for anyone, any age.” There are few titles that fit that description, but this is established by sales and time.

11.Don’t send the book until the publisher asks for it. Unless the publisher’s guidelines tell you to send it with the query, wait for them to ask for it.

12.Ensure your book is as error free as possible. Run a spell-check and grammar-check before sending it. And have at least one other person edit the entire work, preferably someone with actual editing skills who understands CMOS rules.

13.Know what CMOS is and understand the rules. Have a hard-cover edition on hand or sign up for the online edition. Show your knowledge of CMOS style rules in your manuscript. CMOS is the writer’s Bible.

14.Do not e-mail the publisher to ask if he/she has read your book yet. If the guidelines do not stress a time limit, ask for one when the publisher requests your manuscript.

15.Impress them with your publishing credits. If you have published other works in the same genre or type (fiction or nonfiction) as the book you want to submit, let the publisher know, and point them to your Amazon profile page.

16.Make sure you have an Amazon profile page if you have published works available on Amazon. If you have no profile page, you’ll look like someone who doesn’t know what she’s doing.

17.If you have won a prestigious award, mention it briefly. Ensure you know the difference between a “prestigious” award and one that means very little.

18.If you have published other works in the same genre, briefly summarize what you have done to promote them. Impress publishers with your marketing abilities and creativity.

19.Reviews are vital! Make sure you have a substantial amount of reviews on your published works, especially those in the same genre as the book your are hoping to submit. Don’t query a publisher or agent until you have 10+ reviews on the majority of your works, and an average rating of 3.5 or above stars.

20.Don’t pitch a publisher your manuscript while also pitching your services as a book cover designer, editor, marketing coach, formatter, etc. Query separately. Be professional.

21.Be editable. Your book isn’t perfect. Even if you’ve had it edited by someone else, the publisher will need to know that you’re open to being edited.

22.Don’t ask if you can supply the cover, cover description, or images for the cover. Publishers have their own creative designers.

23.Understand you have competition. Know who your competitors are and who has written works comparable to yours. Watch how they promote their works on social networks. Learn from those who are selling.

24.Make the publisher curious enough to want to ask you questions. Don’t tell them everything in your first e-mail.What you want is for the publisher to engage in conversation with you. You want to give them everything they ask for and hint at anything outside of that. For example, if a publisher doesn’t ask for sales data in their guidelines, you could mention you made a best-sellers list for two weeks in a row. Let them ask for more information. When they do, give them everything you can, including where the best-sellers list was published, what ranking you got, and total sales to date for that title.

25.Express gratitude. Be thankful for the publisher’s time and for any feedback or advice they give you. They don’t have to give you any feedback­—or their time.

Cheryl Tardif is the publisher at Imajin Books, a hybrid publishing company based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She is also known as Cheryl Kaye Tardif, an award-winning, international bestselling author represented by Trident Media Group in New York. She is best known for Children of the Fog, Submerged, and Whale Song. Booklist raves: “Tardif, already a big hit in Canada . . . a name to reckon with south of the border.” Check out Cheryl’s website and Imajin Books website, and connect with her on Twitter (Cheryl and Imajin Books) and Facebook (Cheryl and Imajin Books).

With self-publishing becoming more widely accepted and Amazon waging wars with publishers, more and more I get the sense from aspiring authors that they don’t think landing an agent means as much as it used to.

____________________________________________________________________________

Writers’ Digest Guest post by Bethany Neal, who writes young-adult novels with a little dark side and a lot of kissing from her Ann Arbor, Michigan home. She graduated from Bowling Green State University and is obsessed with (but not limited to): nail polish, ginormous rings, pigs, pickles, and dessert.

“My Last Kiss” is her first novel. You can connect with her online at http://www.bethanyneal.com.
___________________________________________________________________________

They believe “traditional” publishing is going the way of VCRs and none of the old rites of passage apply anymore. That’s fine if you think that, but, in my experience, it simply isn’t true.

I signed on with my agent, Stacey Glick of Dystel & Goderich Literary Management, in September of 2010 for my first (unpublished) young adult, suspense novel and it has solidified some valuable lessons.

Guest post by Bethany Neal, who writes young-adult novels with a little dark side and a lot of kissing from her Ann Arbor, Michigan home. She graduated from Bowling Green State University and is obsessed with (but not limited to): nail polish, ginormous rings, pigs, pickles, and dessert.

My Last Kiss is her first novel. You can connect with her online at http://www.bethanyneal.com.
____________________________________________________________________________

Searching for an Agent

The beginning of this journey started with little more than a polished draft of my manuscript. I started simply by researching agents through Literary Marketplace, which is a massive tome that sits behind the reference counter at most public libraries.

Some of this research was review because I had previously queried a paranormal YA trilogy that ended in 32 rejections.

Having revived my search, I made a shortlist of reputable agencies looking for YA. I browsed their sites and found agents within each agency looking for my specific flavor of YA. I write a little on the dark side—somebody is almost always dead—and I write a lot of kissing. Not everyone wants to represent that, and that’s fine.

I think the most important part in the agent search is reading every agent’s bio and only querying those you feel a connection with and who are interested in not just your genre but also your style. My agent, for instance, at the time was looking for darker YA projects with a strong voice. That’s my writing in a nutshell.

Landing an Agent

I had two full manuscripts and one partial out with various interested agents when I got the email.

The email that said Stacey read my manuscript and wanted to set up a time to discuss it. I’d been rejected by 14 other agents already, so I wasn’t even sure what that meant. Then I got the call.

Thus began a string of very important lessons for my writing career.

1. Look before you leap.

My agent told me what she liked about my writing and the story and answered every single one of my questions.

I was so out of my mind excited that she wanted to represent me. So I told her I didn’t need to wait to hear back from the other two agents interested and I wanted—needed her as my agent.

This is my one regret in my agent search. I should have given myself a day to regain sanity and speak with the other two agents. I don’t regret signing with my agent because she’s been an enormous support throughout the years, but it’s something I know I should’ve done for peace of mind.

Take that day to pause before you jump on the first agent who smiles at your manuscript.

2. Prepare to move.

Almost immediately, my agent was requesting more information.

Stacey asked me to send her an author bio and a synopsis for the other novel I’d written, then emailed me an agency agreement that stated DGLM exclusively had the right to sell my novel for one year.

Right out of the gate there were deadlines. This one at least was a soft deadline, but it stoked a sense of urgency.

We went back and forth on revisions for a few months and ended up pushing back the submittal date so she could feature my novel in DGLM’s Upcoming Projects newsletter to generate interest with editors.

[Understanding Book Contracts: Learn what’s negotiable and what’s not.]

3. Anticipate nice, bad news.

After about a month being out on submittal, she sent me an email chocked full of the most positive, helpful, optimistic rejections I’ve ever gotten in my life. It was the best of a worst-case scenario I could have hope for.

I made revisions based on feedback and we made a round two submittal, but the basic consensus was to move on.

Luckily, I’d been writing away during all this waiting and close to finishing a draft of my new project that editors were eager to read because they remembered liking my first novel. That new project is titled MY LAST KISS and was published by FSG/Macmillan on June 10, 2014.

I didn’t expect to feel encouraged by rejections, but aligning with an agent allowed me to receive bad news in a way that turned out positive.

4. You’ll idolize your agent a bit.

It’s strange waiting with bated breath for someone’s email while also kind of loving and worshipping them even though you’ve never physically met them. I don’t think I could ever do online dating because it was weird. I’ve since met (and loved even more) Stacey in person.

I wasn’t anticipating, though, how many emotions I would wrap up in whether or not I heard from her.

5. You will hurry up and wait.

There is a lot going on, but the process from signing with an agent to publishing is a pretty drawn out experience.

I had no idea how long every step would take. It took us five months to get my first novel revised and ready to get out on submittal. It took another couple months worth of waiting to hear back from editors. And there’s more waiting once you get published. You can make good use of the time spent waiting though. For me it became an opportunity for uninterrupted writing time, which is invaluable.

[Learn important writing lessons from these first-time novelists.]

6. Expectations will drive you mad.

The biggest, dirtiest little secret about getting an agent (and being published) that no one tells you: Expectations, albeit mostly self-imposed, will drive you mad.

You start worrying about what will sell. Don’t. It will lead you down a dark, dark path—like Van Gogh, cut-your-ear-off dark.

Do yourself a favor and don’t go there because it’s extremely difficult to climb out of that pit of author-ly sorrow. You can’t predict the market and what will or won’t sell. The sooner you accept that, the saner you will be.

7. Agents breathe fresh life into your work.

An incredibly positive, unexpected bonus to finding my agent is how insightful and willing she is to collaborate on revisions.

Stacey will send me an email with literally one sentence asking something about my manuscript and it will enlighten me to the exact issue I’d been trying to fix for eight months. Having access to an expert with a keen eye is invaluable.

8. An agent is a partner in your journey.

On the warm and fuzzy side, how much she believes in me and my writing is something I couldn’t have anticipated.

Being an author still feels like this soap bubble that might burst at any moment. Even after having my first novel published, that insecurity hasn’t gone away. If I didn’t have my agent to give me pep talks and reassure me of my talent when the chips are down, I don’t know where I’d be.

Being a writer is hard work. Getting published is even harder work. Having an agent can give you a much needed hand. Just know that there are some surprising twists and turns along the way.

__________________________________________________________________________

Brian A. Klems is the online editor of Writer’s Digest and author of the popular gift book Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl: A Dad’s Survival Guide to Raising Daughters.

By Charles S. Weinblatt

My first book would have been a perfect poster book for self-publishing. It represents every solid reason why an author should self-publish. Forget the years of effort writing books and then devoting months or years attempting to contract with a small, independent publisher. Forget the years of writing, searching, struggling to gradually create an impressive author platform to attract literary agents. Forget depending upon someone you did not hire for editing, graphic design and printing. Forget waiting until a publisher is ready to schedule your book’s publication, and then the added time to distribute, promote, market and sell your book. When you self-publish, you make every decision on your own and on your own schedule.

Why was my first book such a perfect example of when to self-publish? First, it was not fiction. Fiction is harder to sell if it is self-published. It was a textbook on job seeking skills, something that I had honed for six years as a vocational rehabilitation counselor and then continued on my own in my private consulting practice. I taught it so frequently that I might have done it well in my sleep. And I knew that I was good at it. Thus, my textbook, Job Seeking Skills for Students (1986, Kendall-Hunt Publishing Company), would be viable. I could sell almost as many copies as I desired through my consulting practice and as required reading for graduate students in my university (The University of Toledo). Why share the profit if you don’t need to?

Of course, I wrote that book in 1985 and I understood nothing about self-publishing then. Along came Kendall-Hunt Publishing with a nice advance and I required no convincing. They could see that I would have little trouble marketing and maintaining regional sales. All they had to do was replicate it elsewhere. Given my complete lack of understanding that there was another option (self-publishing), I took the advance and gave my book to Kendall-Hunt. However, if I had the same decision to make today, I would self-publish it in a heartbeat.

Of course, with self-publishing comes serious responsibilities. The author must hire a talented editor, a gifted graphic artist with successful experience designing winning book covers and jackets, as well as a solid printer and an excellent publicist. The self-published author must purchase the ISBN, arrange distribution contracts on different continents and make sure that every retailer of value around the English-speaking world has copies to sell. This author must also handle promotion, marketing, sales, returns, stocking and restocking retailers, etc. Not rocket science – but very time consuming.

If it happened today, instead of 1985, I would also need to create the e-book version of Job Seeking Skills for Students and format it for each type of e-reader, tablet, computer and smart phone. Then, I would need to post it for sale at Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s, Diesel, Apple (iTunes), Kobo, Sony, Scrollmotion, Baker & Taylor, etc. But it would have been worth the effort. These are books made for self-publishing. Bypass the annoying, laborious platform creation and go directly to sales, where you, not a publisher, keep most of the profit.

There is a time and a place for everything. And when it comes to self-publishing, there is a difference in the chance for success between fiction and non-fiction. If the author is a celebrity or a highly-recognized subject matter expert, self-publishing makes perfect sense. But if the author is unknown and writes fiction, all such bets are off.

You can count on your digits the number of best-selling self-published fiction authors who were not already made famous by celebrity or by traditional publishers. Today, many famous fiction authors are deciding to carry their readers along into the self-publishing world. In other words, this works in only one direction. You use small independent trade publishers to attract literary agents, who will attract major publishers to your books. After you’re a famous fiction author, you may then decide to self-publish and keep more of the profit.

There are some excellent self-published books. I’ve self-published three books. They’re probably not excellent; but through them I was able to comprehend the process. Here is the single most important factor. There is no talent entrance bar for self-publishing. No one evaluates your writing. No aptitude is necessary. You can literally make your cat a self-published author in a few hours. This fact degrades all self-publishing books in the eyes of readers, agents, publishers, distributors, publicists, reviewers and bookstore owners. Please note that I am not advocating this as a desired condition; only stating it as a fact. It is not good, bad, right or wrong. There is still a stigma attached to self-published books. Thankfully, the stigma is somewhat lower than in prior years. But it remains. Since anyone can become a self-published author, regardless of talent, all such books are stigmatized by those careless, inept, unskilled “authors.”

This lack of industry vetting might mean nothing to a non-fiction author who is already a celebrity or known subject matter expert. But it can mean everything to a novice fiction author. Tread here very carefully. The vast majority of self-published books are not well written. They contain a multitude of errors in spelling, grammar, character development and punctuation. Just sample a few self-published books.

Do not suspect that most readers won’t notice these “little mistakes.” Readers will most definitely notice and they will roast you in reviews because of the mistakes. If you’re not willing to take the time and spend the money to hire a talented and experienced editor, why publish? It will only be embarrassing after it’s been read.

Self-published fiction is almost never reviewed by the most respected, persuasive and compelling review organizations in any genre. I am a long-time reviewer for The New York Journal of Books. Believe me, the best review organizations will reject it. As none of the best reviewers will take on a self-published book (so far), the author is left promoting reviews from readers, family members, neighbors or workplace buddies. Such reviews might appear nice on the surface, but they are unconvincing to the public. You would not buy a car if it was rejected by every major automotive review organization. Why would you not feel the same way about a book?

Self-published fiction books rarely appear on the shelves of bookstores, where more than half of all books are still sold. I’m not arguing for or against this – only stating a fact. Yet, that’s an enormous market to just give up because you want to self-publish rather than go through the trouble to create a winning author platform and attract publishers.

Unlike the trade-published author, who typically receives an advance and pays nothing to be published, the self-published author typically invests several thousand dollars on editing, graphic design, printing, ISBN, distribution, publicist, video trailer designer, marketing, promotion and sales. In most cases, the self-published fiction author will not recoup those expenses, let alone earn a profit. Please understand… I’m not telling you not to self-publish. I’m telling you why your chances for self-published fiction success might be poor and why you most likely will never recoup those expenses.

Although all authors must market, the SP author is completely on her or his own. She must hire her own editor, graphic designer and publicist. Without prior experience, hiring this kind of talent successfully can be hit and miss at best. The author must then hire a talented and experienced video producer to create a quality video book trailer and then it must be distributed in literally dozens of the right places.

Publishers, especially major publishers, promote your books at key international book fairs, conferences and conventions, something that would cost the self-published author thousands of dollars each year. Yet these are the best places to reach film producers and studio executives, screenplay authors, directors, as well as opportunities for translation and foreign rights sales. So add the cost of trips to London, Paris, Jerusalem, Berlin, etc., to your book budget.

And while the self-published author is devoting at least 20-30 hours per week to distribution, promotion, marketing, sales, stocking, etc., the trade-published author has more time to write new books because their publisher handles some of this heavy lifting. Don’t take this too far. All authors must promote and market their books. It’s just somewhat easier and less time-consuming when you have a publisher helping out.

A novice fiction author requires a powerful author platform to attract an agent. Major publishing houses only accept proposals from trusted literary agents; and well-connected agents almost never take chances on their reputation.

When an agent decides to read your query, he or she will also Google your name. When that occurs, you’ll want the agent to read many pages of powerful author platform, including dozens of positive articles and references about your books and your author reputation. Platform also includes influential writing awards, especially with regional or national media recognition. Agents and publishers want to see a gradual increase in sales of prior trade-published books. National or international news articles about you and your books in newspapers, magazines and journals are prominent platform building blocks. Major radio, TV and Internet interviews with powerful agents are useful. Blogging successfully and guest blog appearances with the best and most well-liked blogs help.

All of this takes a lot of time – years – to accomplish. To a novice fiction author, platform means everything. The big advances and publicity are earned one trade-published book at a time.Of course, being trade-published for fiction is not a decision. You need talent, a marketable book, a high quality publishing proposal (see other articles on this site for information about how to fabricate a winning book publishing proposal) and the determination to contact dozens or even hundreds of small independent publishers. During this time, building your author platform is the single most important focus of your task. It’s more important than royalties or sales. Platform means everything to a fiction author, because generates success later. And it can attract one huge piece of the puzzle – a well-connected literary agent. More about that, plus book marketing ideas elsewhere here: http://cweinblatt.wordpress.com.

An agent has offered me representation, but I don’t know how to tell if she’s right for me. What are the most important questions a writer should ask an agent before signing? —Anonymous

There are hundreds of questions you could ask an agent, from the sensible “What attracted you to my book?” to the slightly less sensible “When will you net me my first million?” The key is to choose the ones that will get you the most important information you need to make an informed decision.

Here’s a list of the five most crucial questions you should ask any agent before agreeing to join her client list.

1. Why do you want to represent me and my work?

The agent should be able to answer this easily. Agents generally take on projects that they not only think will sell well, but that they personally admire. This question gives the agent an opportunity to express her interest to you.

[Want to land an agent? Here are 4 things to consider when researching literary agents.]

2. How did you become an agent/get your start in publishing?

You want an agent who has a history in publishing, whether as a junior associate at a well-known agency or perhaps as an editor with a small imprint. You need to be assured that the agent knows the business and has the contacts necessary to give your book its best shot. You might also want to ask if the agent could refer you to one of her clients in your genre as well; getting the perspective of a writer who is in the role you’re about to step into can be invaluable.

3. What editors do you have in mind for my book? Have you sold to them before? Will you continue to market to other editors if you can’t make a deal with your first choices?

This is more of a three-part question, but it’s the overall answer that you want. By asking these questions, you’re checking to see if this agent has connections, and you’re also clarifying her overall game plan. This is key. You want to make sure your expectations are aligned.

[Understanding Book Contracts: Learn what’s negotiable and what’s not.]

4. What books have you sold recently?

This indicates whether the agent has a track record of selling books in your category or genre.

5. Why should I sign with you?

You’re about to enter into a partnership that neither party should take lightly. This is an opportunity for the agent to pitch you, just as you’ve pitched her, and convince you that she’s the right person to represent your work.

You’ll have additional questions more specific to your work, so don’t hesitate to ask them. They’ll simply show the agent that you’re savvy about your book’s target market. Agents are used to these inquiries, so they are unlikely to be surprised by any questions you may have. And if an agent refuses to answer anything on the list above, that should be a red flag that something is amiss.

By Charles S. Weinblatt 

Copyright © 2014

Abstract: Agents and publishers do not accept unsolicited letters, proposals or manuscripts from a novice author. Nor will they open an e-mail attachment from an author unknown to them. A well-connected literary agent is your access to major publishers and major publishers can shower you with a hefty advance and place the efforts of the best editors, graphic artists, printers, marketers and publicists at your doorstep, to make your book a market success. So, how do we, as unknown (or little known) authors, get agents and publishers to deliver contract offers?

This series of articles will help new or unknown authors understand how to create desired proposals and what literary agents and publishers will accept or reject. It offers a structural framework for distributing vast amounts of positive author information (platform) in a safe and protected manner that agents and publishers will feel good about opening without a malevolent result. Using a variety of embedded live Internet links, your author’s platform will be instantly available and with significant depth of data. This includes opportunities to sample different kinds of writing, writing awards, major newspaper, magazine and journal articles, TV, radio and broadcast news about you and reviews for your books from the most compelling and persuasive review organizations. This method will deliver the greatest amount of positive platform data in the most benign and viable manner. 

Would you open an e-mail attachment from someone you’ve never heard of, who lacks any connection with you personally or by way of business? When someone you’ve never known sends you a poorly-worded e-mail informing you of their desire to share $20 million that their poor dead father left in some obscure bank account in Ghana just for you, do you give them your personal information? If a stranger via e-mail offers a free roof on your house if you will only open the attachment, do you open it? Well guess what? Neither will agents or publishers open your attachment. They don’t know you and now that you’ve contacted them in this manner, they never want to know you. 

First, read the submission rules on each and every agent and publisher web site. Some agencies and publishers are closed to submissions or proposals. Sometimes this is only temporary, or for one or two genres. Those that will accept a proposal typically have solid rules for submission. Sometimes they even embed a strange or unusual rule, just to make sure that applicants are obeying. They own the game. Disobey their submission rules at your own risk. But remember, unless you’re a very well-known celebrity, you need them much more than they need you. 

Never send a literary agent or a publisher an e-mail proposal in which the most important information has been added as an ATTACHMENT. This might sound like something everyone should already know, but then you might be surprised with the number of neophyte authors who don’t comprehend or who or won’t obey the rules. A number of small publishers and literary agents have regaled me with stories about how rookie authors ignore both submission rules and common sense. 

In the past, we wrote manuscripts upon metal typewriters or by hand, paid to have it professionally edited and then we mailed the entire manuscript on paper to a literary agent or a SMALL independent publisher. Major publishers rarely opened or responded to unsolicited proposals then, let alone now. 

Today, agents and publishers do NOT want to read your manuscript. Nor do they want your snail mail. If they desire you to hear from you at all, it must be in an e-mail with a brief description of who you are, why you have contacted them and why they should have any interest in your writing. All platform data should be in links, not attachments. If your platform measures up and if the topic is of any remote interest, then they will want to know more about your talent. And they will not open an attachment, period. If you send one anyway, your wonderfully-crafted e-mail and its attachment will be unceremoniously dumped into the e-trash pile. 

Nor does an agent or publisher want to read a ten page electronic document that explains in great detail who you are and why you are making this contact. They desire your platform, but only in an electronic format that allows then to pick and choose which aspects to access in detail, with no attachment to open. Think about how Wikipedia encodes a vast amount of information about a person through a combination of headings, narrative and links. This is what you need to accomplish, but in an even more concise manner, via your e-mail message and embedded links. Your goal in submission should be three or four paragraphs, filled with LINKS and NO attachments. 

That’s a lot about what not to do when contacting an agent or a publisher. So, how does a novice author win this contest? 

First, and most obviously, you must have talent. No dashing protagonist or wondrous topic can make up for a lack of writing talent. Second, you must have a marketable book. James Michener could not have sold a book about how to drink a glass of water, regardless of how eloquent the prose or how deep the characters. Finally, you must be willing to spend a great deal of time marketing, show that you understand how to effectively promote books and demonstrate that you have already done so with other published books. All of this is part of your author platform. You can and must be able to prove that you have done this with other books. If you simply haven’t had the time to write a number of books and have then trade-published, then consider that your best years are ahead. You won’t be making the same mistakes as others. But there is no substitute for the time it takes to write, read, write some more and gradually use the learned aspects for future platform enhancement. The more you read, the more you’ll incorporate the best aspects of those author’s talents into your new books. I’m sorry if this does not coincide with our society’s value for instant success. The best authors spend decades reading the best authors and incorporating their winning attributes into their own books. If you are unwilling or unable to devote years toward learning how to be a great writer, then SP or vanity publish and best of luck to you. 

For the rest of us, the answer lies in creating a relatively short (three to four paragraph) e-mail narrative that contains all of your platform and writing qualifications opened with LINKS, not attachments. While almost no one will open an attachment from a stranger, most of us will open a link. Why? They’re safer. Your computer might be wide open to attack if you expose a dangerous attachment; but chances are your browser will detect a threatening link and stop it before it opens. Add to that the protection derived from your firewall and anti-virus programs. Attachments are DANGEROUS, while links are much more benign. This article is about how to pass along positive aspects and details of your author platform via links that are live and safe, rather than via potentially-dangerous attachments. 

Since your only real shot at an agent or publisher lies in placing all of your critical platform information in links, you will obviously need to put the data on commonly-used formats, such as You Tube, Facebook, Goodreads, book landing pages, major Internet interview sites, publisher sites and retailers, like Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords. I love using two major free frameworks. One is BlogSpot. The other is WordPress. Both platforms are easy to use and are globally recognized. An important criteria in this decision is how well you can understand and use analytics. Analytics provide the reason for the season. They show us who is paying attention, where they discovered us and how much of our message is received.  

Contacting an agent or a publisher is not simple or free of risk. As your author platform constitutes everything positive about you as an author, the way you deliver that platform is absolutely critical. In essence, you have a few sentences to sell yourself. The paragraph below elicits how I might contact an agent or a publisher. 

I was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1952. I am a retired university administrator. I’m also the author of published fiction and non-fiction. My biography appears in Wikipedia,the Marquis Who’s Who in America, and I am a long-time reviewer for The New York Journal of Books. I write novels, short stories and articles. I’ve received many positive reviews for my recently published novel Jacob’s Courage, including by Jewish Book World and The Association of Jewish Libraries, which you can review here.  Additional information is available on LinkedIn, Goodreads and a Facebook fan page for my novel. 

This one paragraph opens almost every aspect of my author platform. The Wikipedia page alone reveals most of my recent writing achievements. But it goes one important step further. It reveals my ability and my desire to heavily market and promote my books. Today, virtually all authors must market - self-published, subsidy-published and trade-published. If agents and authors do not see proof that you are willing and able to market, they are going to be less interested in you. But if they see you working very hard to market, they will give your book and talent a closer look. 

When I decided to find a publisher for my debut novel, I understood nothing of how unknown authors are published or how to acquire a literary agent. As the years passed, I read a great deal more about the process. More recently, I’ve interviewed dozens of writers, agents and publishers. I gradually made fewer mistakes. While I remain a relatively unknown author, I have a decent author platform, my recent books have been trade-published, I have a well-connected literary agent and a major university will be publishing me for fiction later this year. That’s not a career in writing; nor do I desire one. But I’m happy to share what has worked and what industry leaders accept as the bare necessity of acquiring an agent or publisher. 

Technology marches on and the publishing industry continues to adapt. This serves the interest of both sides. Authors can waste far less time on proposal and query generation. Agents and publishers can access multiple layers of information about an unknown or poorly-known writer electronically. The deeper they want to delve, the more links they decide to open. 

NEXT: What to put into your literary agent query and your small publisher proposal.

Almost all authors love to write. Some even enjoy editing. A few like graphic design and web page creation. But, let’s face it, almost all of us hate marketing and promotion. Sadly, all authors must contribute to marketing today, including trade-published authors. So, here is a link to a wonderful post by Caitlin Muir, called, “89 Book Marketing Ideas that will Change Your Life.” I’m not sure it will change your life, but it most certainly should make planning your book marketing tasks much easier. Read the entire article here: http://www.authormedia.com/89-book-marketing-ideas-that-will-change-your-life/.

Virtually all of you reading this want to have a best-selling book with a major global publisher on your resume. I’m also guessing that most, if not all of you, consider your writing talent appropriate for this level of success. Of course, accomplishing this is another story altogether. So this article is about how to go from hell to HarperCollins as a novice author.

As a young or novice author, when should we self-publish? When should we use a trade publisher? And when should we use a subsidy publisher?

Having been self-published and having been trade published several times, I’ve been immersed in the issue of which way to publish for the past eighteen years. Having a literary agent makes an enormous difference. Yet, it can be even more difficult to find an agent as it is for a publisher.

Before I continue, know this… if a person, company or alleged-publisher asks you for money, beware. Be very, very careful. Sometimes this can be a terrific opportunity; or, you’ll become another scam victim. Real publishers never ask an author for money, or attempt to extort money from you, “if you will only be willing to pay to have your writing ability measured,” or any number of other scams that make victims out of novice authors.

I recommend that ALMOST NO ONE subsidy-publish (also called, “vanity” publishing), unless you really don’t care if anyone buys your book. That’s because almost no one will know it exists, much less purchase and read it. Subsidy/Vanity publishers earn a profit from the author, from you. The moment they have your money, they are done helping you. They might post your book on their own web site, along with other books by novice authors left unread and unsold. Why should they lift a finger for you, once they have your money? They earn nothing from sales. Remember, they already have your money. Oh they might post an interview with you, if you ply them with additional cash. Sadly, almost no one will read that interview either, because subsidy publishers don’t care if anyone reads their web site. And while some vanity publishers deliver exactly what they promise, others are scam artists and they propagate fraud upon well-meaning authors who failed to conduct due diligence. These so-called publishers jump from state to state, just ahead of the attorney general. I recommend a subsidy publisher ONLY when the author does not care if anyone will read it.

Recognize a scam (subsidy) publisher by their greed and pitfalls. They charge you for each and every production cost, while they retain all major attributes, including the ISBN and all major sales opportunities and legal rights. They require you to sell a certain number of books or to pay for all unsold copies. They offer no royalty or a very insignificant royalty, and/or demand that you pay for an “evaluation of your writing ability,” or that you hire the company’s staff for a variety of existing or imagined services, including graphic design and printing. Before you sign a contract and pay one of these so-called subsidy publishers, research them carefully. Look for current and past lawsuits litigated by disenfranchised authors. Contact authors who have gone this route and ask them about satisfaction and sales. Order a few of these books and judge the quality. You’ll find that in most cases, you would rather have your finger and toenails pulled out before associating your literary reputation with scammers and authors devoid of talent.

Self-publishing is often a viable option for an unknown author. I’m including POD in this category. You’ll still need to pay for most production and promotional costs. You’ll need to find a way to post your book with the web sites of dozens of major book distributors and retailers. You’ll need to attract newspaper, journal and magazine articles about you and your book. You must obtain Internet interviews with the biggest and most widely-read blogs and web sites. You will need to arrange for book tours, bookstore signings, public speaking events and submissions for major book awards. It will be up to you to pay for a winning book trailer and then to market it with hundreds of the best blogs frequented by readers in your book’s genre. There are dozens of other ways that you must promote and market your self-published book. I’ve elicited many of them here in this blog, including this post: http://cweinblatt.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/book-marketing-101-2/.

The differences between self-publishing and subsidy publishing are very real and very dangerous. With self-publishing, you own the ISBN. You retain the copyright. You own all major privileges. And you are in control over every aspect of pre and post-production events. With self-publishing, the author should retain all major opportunities for screenplay and movie rights, translation rights, cover and interior design, typesetting, printing, marketing, distribution, etc. If a “publisher” retains these rights in a contract, flee.

If you write non-fiction and you are a subject matter expert, self-publishing is a very attractive opportunity. Many years ago, while recovering from spine surgery, I wrote a non-fiction “how to” book about job seeking skills. A major textbook publisher offered a contract with an attractive advance. In the early 1980s no one was discussing self-publishing. But if I had it to do over again, I would have turned down the contract and self-published. Why? Because I could sell almost as many copies as I desired through my consulting practice, with regional companies who were closing or laying off workers; and because I saw to it that my book became required reading for graduate students at my university. Why share the profit if you don’t have to? This is a perfect example of why a novice author should self-publish.

Many of us write fiction, as I do almost exclusively now. In that case, your professional expertise means little and your success is accomplished via reputation and significant book sales. As is the case with most aspects of success, authors earn it one book at a time. With each successful book, we demonstrate incremental improvements in talent, distribution, promotion, sales and marketing. Before you can successfully sign a contract with a well-connected literary agent, you’ll need to demonstrate a string of increasingly successful books and reputational enhancement. This takes a lot of time, research, practice and effort. If you expect to become a best-selling author on your first or second try, dream on. It won’t happen and you’ll just become more frustrated. Be patient, produce one book after another, read voraciously (especially in your preferred genre) and learn from the best authors.

Many small publishers today ask the author to pay some or all of the publishing production costs. At first blush, this seems outrageous. The publisher acquires almost no risks and the author must dig into her or his bank account, often to the tune of several thousand dollars or even more. Plus the author must accept responsibility for marketing and promotion (and associated costs) – but with one major exception.

Almost all publishers attend a variety of global book fairs, conferences and conventions each year. There, they listen, learn and, they promote their books and authors to the entire world. This is one major reason to use a trade-publisher, even if you must front the cost of production. Attendees include large publishers, well-known and admired screenplay artists, movie producers and a variety of additional marketing opportunities. Although you might despise paying several thousand dollars to put your book into print (and an e-book), you would probably spend even more on travel costs to reach all of these global book fairs, conventions and conferences. Consider this investment a loss lead. If you really believe in your book’s quality and marketability, go for it with a small publisher who regularly attends the world’s biggest and best conferences and conventions. It’s a question worth asking before you sign a contract. In fact, you have every reason to add it to the contract before signing it.

When you can acquire a well-connected literary agent, then you have a real chance to become a noted author and attract millions of readers. Of course, agents only take a chance on obvious talent. With that in mind, you may need to produce several moderately-successful books before an agent will have the confidence to acquire you on contract. That seems unfair and very time-consuming. However, put yourself in the agent’s shoes. What would it take to put your reputation on the line with major publishers? Remember, the only way for an agent to be successful is to develop a trusting and mutually rewarding relationship with acquisition editors at the biggest and best publishers in the world. If the agent lets the big publishing house down by promoting a poorly-written book, then you and the agent are in trouble.

I do not consider myself to be a very talented author. At the same time, I believe that I can write interesting books. By the time I had completed my first full-length novel, I had produced two other books in different genres and I was well on my way to completing two more. My agent liked my writing and I trusted the agency to promote my books globally, where it would be cost-prohibitive for me to do it. After I had a few successfully-published books under my belt, that literary agent began to take me seriously. That’s time and effort… before a contract for success. There are very few free rides in acquiring a talented and well-connected agent.

The difference in having an agent was like night and day. Where I had struggled for years to convince small, insignificant publishers to examine my offerings, my agent suddenly had acquisitions editors reading my manuscripts at HarperCollins, Penguin, Prometheus, and many other famous publishing houses. This almost NEVER occurs when authors contact a major publisher on our own.

Here lies our conundrum. Almost all best-selling authors have a wonderful and pervasive author platform and publish through the biggest and best publishing houses. But, before we can attract major publishing houses, we must devote years to creating books that demonstrate our aptitude and insure that the marketability of our efforts is obvious. Only after that can we hope to attract the most well-connected and talented literary agents in our genres. Sometimes, we must pay to have our books published (subsidy or vanity publishing) in order to start this process. More often, we decide to self-publish, in a way that allows us to control all major aspects of the publishing process. Either way, the road to becoming a best-selling author is filled with potholes.

The more we learn about being published, the more reachable will be our success. This is why I blog and how I hope to provide some insight in this blog. For more information about fraud in publishing, as well as the differences between real publishers and scam artists, see Writer Beware (http://www.sfwa.org/) and Predators & Editors ( ). My writing and publishing web site is here: http://cweinblatt.wordpress.com

“I love books. Probably too much for my own good. I’ve written three, edited several others and also had my fair share of success helping turn books into bestsellers (cumulatively, the books I’ve worked on or advised have sold well over five million copies).

I know how hard authors work on their books and how far out of their element many are when it comes to doing the sales and marketing. So when I see someone doing it wrong, and giving bad advice, I do my best to help–even when they’re not my clients.

As authors, we’re all trying to fight against obscurity and outside distractions, but it’s a tough battle. Watching well-meaning authors follow in the footsteps of someone going in the wrong direction breaks my heart.

I’ll give you a specific example: Jose Casanova recently wrote an article on Medium explaining how he “growth hacked” his book (about growth hacking), mainly by drafting off the success of my most recent book (about growth hacking). I don’t fault him for doing this, in theory this is actually a pretty smart technique.

The problem is that he happens to be wrong. Jose Casanova has internalized a lot of bad advice about book writing and book marketing and then attempted to pass it along to others. I thought I’d use this as an opportunity to explain how this happens, and the lessons to take away from it, because authors who take him at his word are going to be led astray. I hope he won’t take offense, but I am going to use his book as example to explain everything I think authors–particularly self-published authors–need to know about marketing a book.

Bear with me because this isn’t a short post, but I think it’s important. As I said, there is a lot of bad advice out there and it takes time to knock it all down. The last thing I am doing is laughing at or criticizing what Jose has accomplished with his book–I’m happy for it. But I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that listening to someone whose self-published book that has 11 reviews on Amazon might be a mistake.

I’m picking Jose because I happen to have written a book about the same topic so I can use that campaign for contrast. Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising has now been the #1 marketing bestseller on Amazon for several weeks in a row. It has already earned back its advance from my publisher, Penguin/Portfolio. It’s been written about or featured in Fast Company, Forbes, Huffington Post, Betabeat, BoingBoing, Mashable, Marketwatch, Shopify, Thought Catalog, and Medium, was the most viewed presentation on Slideshare, and translated in four languages and brought out as an audio book. I still want more for it, but it is doing well enough to learn from.

Now, let’s get into how to market a book and how not to market a book.

Writing IS Marketing

For starters, this quote from the first paragraph of Jose’s article reveals a really dangerous assumption of book publishing. He writes: “Did I do much marketing for it? Not at all.”

The most common error I see authors make is they think of marketing as a separate and distinct animal from writing. They go into a cave for two years and write their book and only begin to think about marketing when they emerge. You have to understand that as an author you’re competing for attention with so much other media, you can’t afford to just sit on your ass and pray. Book marketing is such an essential part of the process Seth Godin–and this might be an extreme view, I understand–says you should start marketing your book THREE YEARS before it comes out.

The most important marketing phase of a book actually comes while you’re writing it. If you don’t realize that now, it’s a big missed opportunity.

Write Something Good

Also, Jose seems to gloss over, well, writing the actual book: “Once the content of the book was completed, so [sic] our next step was design.” Whoa there, buddy. Books take time. The single best marketing decision you will make is to take the time to write an amazing book. Don’t worry about beating someone to market–think about owning the market by creating an indispensable book. Like Paul Graham says, “Make something people want.”

By doing that you create the only marketing that matters: word of mouth. And the great thing about ebooks is you can see if your writing resonates with people very easily by what they highlight on Kindle. People apparently love GHM. Writing in a clear, concise and helpful way–a way that elicits the reaction “Oh, that’s great I need to highlight that so I remember”–is a marketing choice. You can tell just by looking at a book’s Kindle page whether the author accomplished that. Sadly, they often fail.

Writers should write books because they have something they have to say. Ideally, they should be the only person who can say it in their unique voice. Jose admitted that he decided to write his book because “growth hacking” was showing a surge in traffic on Google Trends (That’s almost as bad as people who write about stuff because it’s trending on Twitter, for SEO reasons or because other blogs are writing about it.) Books last because they have a unique voice, solve a common problem, and stand the test of time, not because of something as ephemeral as a trending topic.

By “unique voice” I mean: what is the book that only you are qualified to write? Initially my publisher wanted me to do a complete guide to growth hacking. Midway through my research it struck me that this would not be an honest or authentic thing for me to do. I am not a born “growth hacker”–my background is in traditional marketing. I did some hard thinking and realized that the best and most marketable book I could write would be about the transition from traditional marketing to growth hacking. So I sat down and wrote a book about my journey, rather than pretending to be something I wasn’t.

Write Something New

Do yourself a favor and choose to write a book with a totally new and unexpected hook. This bakes marketing and word of mouth into the content and sets you up for a perennial seller. The first place to start is the thesis or overarching idea of your book. Especially for nonfiction books, your thesis has to be a simple, spreadable, articulable idea to generate word of mouth. If your thesis is confusing or unclear it makes it very difficult to market. An unclear thesis also makes it hard for your readers to talk about it and recommend it to other people, which is the main thing that drives book sales.

For example my first book, Trust Me, I’m Lying, isn’t just another social media or marketing book. Its a part-expose, part-confessional about our current media system and the role I played in it. But the material in the book could have easily been framed differently to make it like any other marketing book. You can even bake marketing into the cover of your book like when Greg Smith used an eerily similar font to Goldman Sachs’ for his expose Why I Left Goldman Sachs. Ask yourself: What’s exciting about what I am saying? What will make people share my insights with their friends? How can I use that to get more attention? When I’m writing I come back to these types of questions over and over because its essential to understanding marketing. Baking marketing into your content helps create word of mouth, the only marketing that matters.

But there are limits to this. Seeing a book pop up on Amazon and quickly writing something just to beat it to market? This kind of short-term thinking dooms many writers who cut corners in essential areas…like you know, writing a good book or not.

Write Something Well

My guess is that Jose didn’t hire a professional to edit his book or even proofread it himself, because it’s riddled with needless grammatical errors. Professional editing is essential for self-published authors because it’s the easiest way to separate the professionals from the amateurs. Take it from the pros: “Without strong editors, writers are like cars with accelerators but no brakes.” The distinction in the publishing industry today isn’t published vs. self-published, it’s professional publishing vs. unprofessional publishing. If your book looks amateur and doesn’t read well, it doesn’t matter how well you “growth hack” your book, it’ll be dead on arrival.

A great example of an author putting in the effort to professionally self-publish a book is James Altucher’s Choose Yourself. In contrast with some of his previous efforts, James hired professionals to edit his book ruthlessly and design it from cover to cover. The results? Choose Yourself debuted on the WSJ bestseller list and sold over 40,000 copies the first month. There is still a stigma around self-publishing because readers think your book wasn’t good enough to get published. Self-published authors have to clear this hurdle and the best way to do it is to make your book look like it was done by a big publisher and get social proof from credible people that the book is worth reading. You might not be able to get the CEO of Twitter to write the foreword to your book, but you have to form relationships with other successful people in your space. (Nils Parker is who I recommend for editing.)

Packaging & Positioning

Every content decision you make as an author has marketing implications. It was encouraging to see Jose understand this in regards to book cover design, “You can’t skimp on design! Why would you spend all this time writing a book, and then get a shitty cover design?” That’s the exact right approach.

So while it seems like Jose understands how important design is, I think the takeaway here is how important execution is. I would not let one of my clients, and certainly not one of my own books, see the light of day with a cover like this. Why? It’s boring, but still busy, which is a major design flaw. Perhaps worst of all, it does not catch your eye as an Amazon thumbnail (the primary point of sale for this book). The problem is that wanting good design, and getting good design, aren’t the same thing.

In addition to a book’s cover, the title is an essential aspect of book marketing. Bestselling authors like Tim Ferriss and Eric Ries relentlessly test the titles and subtitles of their books to ensure that their audience will respond to it once its on the shelves. By contrast, Growth Hacking: A How To Guide On Becoming a Growth Hacker is a less than ideal book title. Perhaps fatally so. A subtitle is supposed to contextualize the main title, telling the reading what the books central promise is. More importantly, it should be active. (No “becoming,” at the very least it is “How to Become”.)

This doesn’t only apply to self-published authors, publishers–like any committee–have a tendency to screw these things up too. (This is my favorite example of a publisher killing an awesome title, and worse still the author doesn’t even realize what a mistake it was.) For the title of my book, I looked to include every marketing keyword I could naturally squeeze in without sacrificing the authenticity of the work. I have “marketing,” “growth hacking,” “advertising,” and “PR”–or every possible reading audience I could want. This has helped with with search traffic in a major way–and better, signaled to many different prospective readers that the book has something it it for them. “Growth hackers” are a small crowd. Marketers are a much bigger audience.

Distribution & Partnerships

Amazon as a distribution platform is pretty great, but most self-published authors like Jose think once their book is on Amazon their work is done. In today’s digital marketplace you have to get your book in multiple channels to generate sales.

Think about the results of the BitTorrent package I put together for the launch of Tim Ferriss’ 4-Hour Chef:

2 million downloads

1,261,152 page visits

880,009 Amazon impressions

327,555 Tim Ferriss website impressions

293,936 book trailer impressions

Using BitTorrent as a distribution platform opened up Tim’s book to a whole new audience and allowed them to share his content, which created viral attention.

Partnering with BitTorrent may seem out of reach, but something as simple as tapping into a friend’s email list can help drive impressive sales for your book. For Choose Yourself, James Altucher partnered with Porter Stansberry’s email newsletter and sold 20,000 copies through it. The point is to partner with other people in your space and give them incentive to work with you. For example, James did a 50/50 profit split with Porter, making it a no brainer for him. For GHM, I sent out an email to my own email list of 10,000 people to announce my book, which I built by just recommending books over the years.

It’s also important that you reach out and incorporate other people’s platforms in your book. I went out of my way–even though I probably could have gotten some of the information elsewhere–to interview every single major growth hacker I could reach. Why? Because they were my potential audience and I wanted to make sure my book was great. But also, I knew that by interviewing them they would be more likely to support and recommend the book to their friends, followers and fans. Indeed they did, I got tweets from basically every major, influential growth hacker in the book which certainly helped sales.

When writing your book look for influencers in your space that have a deep, passionate following. Working with them will drive way more sales than getting a review in the New York Times. Ramit Sethi, author of the bestseller I Will Teach You To Be Rich, agrees: “The Holy Grail is a single-author blog with a large audience that is highly focused, and the author loves your stuff. If you can make friends with them and show them that your stuff is great and relevant to their audience, that can really propel you from one level to the next.” Build relationships as you’re writing your book and provide value to others in your space you can partner with them and their assets when it comes time to launch your book.

Promotion & Marketing

Thinking short term and rushing your book to market also prevents you from coordinating a good launch. Velocity is crucial when your book hits the market, so you have to concentrate your sales push to the first week because this helps you get hit bestsellers lists (not just the New York Times but on Amazon and Goodreads), which drives even more attention. Because of the velocity I was able to generate with my launch GHM was #1 marketing bestseller on Amazon, which at one point put me at #1 on Amazon’s Author Rank in Business and Investing, above authors like Malcolm Gladwell and Sheryl Sandberg. I was then able to put a banner on my book cover with the #1 marketing bestseller designation, giving my book even more social proof.

Being a #1 bestseller is good and all, but using Amazon rankings as your metric for success obscures some of the more valuable goals to work toward when launching a book. In Jose’s article he bragged that his book reached #21 in the marketing category on Amazon. Weeks later, how is that accomplishment helping his brand or business or even book sales? Authors should measure success by the assets they’ve accumulated via the platform they’ve built. This means emails collected, partnerships made with influencers in your space, speaking gigs, evergreen content placements on blogs, etc.

The question you have to ask yourself before starting a book project is: for what purpose am I writing this book? Is to grab some quick book sales with a subpar book, or to build a brand or business around it? I’d choose the latter.

Today, books are used as a tool for first-time authors to build a platform. It’s not enough to just write a book that sells some copies. In GHM, I put a page at the end that gave a bonus to all the readers who made it that far–transcripts of all my interviews with growth hackers, plus the first chapter of my other book. The result? Nearly 1,000 people signed up for my email list in case I ever do a sequel or a physical print version. (I also did a similar version of this in my first book and that list now more than 10,000 people).

Build Your Brand

If you read Jose’s book, he purports to be a “seasoned digital executive, entrepreneur, author, leader, and strategist,” but you’d never know this by looking at his book’s Amazon page because he failed to even write a bio for himself, missing a tremendous opportunity to build his brand. Authors should not make this mistake. Your bio and your Amazon page are like business cards. Brand yourself, reinvent yourself, whatever. Just don’t waste the opportunity. You will be shocked at how often these self-descriptions are borrowed and repeated in the media until they become true.

Perhaps he was busy or perhaps he felt that as a first time author he could not get them but for some reason there aren’t any blurbs about the book on its Amazon page. You’d think blurbs would matter less in 2013 but in fact they matter more. There were 400,000 self-published books released in 2012. So how do you differentiate yourself from the crowd? With social proof. One way to do this is with blurbs from established, respected individuals. Blurbs say: someone who’s time is valuable read this book before you and liked it. This is why I gave up a significant portion of the 2,000 characters Amazon allows to give space to blurbs from Tim Ferriss and even the guy who invented the phrase that my book borrows its title from.

Another big mistake I see plenty of authors make is they leave the job of writing the cover copy (the book description section on Amazon) for their book to their publisher or don’t put in the effort and do a crappy job, but this is critical to the success of your book. Amazon only gives you 2,000 characters to sell ebooks, so you better make sure every one of them count because it’s your sales page. For this I recommend doing the classic copy writing exercise of one page, one paragraph, one sentence to describe your book. Or even better, use Amazon’s “working backwards” approach, where product development people have to write the press release for the product BEFORE Amazon approves the project. This crystallizes your value proposition to the reader and helps you make decisions throughout the book marketing process.

Remember as a first time author, discovery is your big hurdle. An eternity in obscurity is the fate for most authors. Why should people give you their cash? Why should they give you their time? It’s crucial that your pricing makes your book accessible, especially early on. Do not discourage people from taking a chance on you. So while it was smart for Jose to initially make his book free on Amazon, I think it was a huge mistake to price his ebook $9.99 and then have paperback at $12.99. Most ebooks are priced at $2.99 because you get a 70% royalty from Amazon instead of 35%. For Jose to sell his book for more than triple that puts it at a price point that will prevent people from buying his book. And while there’s a lot to be said for pricing based on value, when taken to an extreme you end up hurting sales. Lower prices brings more revenue, more new readers, and a better sales ranking. Since ebooks cost you nothing to distribute, price them lower to encourage discovery. Physical books can be sold at a premium because they people who have to have it will gladly pay.

There is a reason that Growth Hacker Marketing is $3. I learned this lesson with my first book. I asked the publisher why, after my marketing campaign had made the book the most talked about marketing book of the year, sales did not explode (they did well, but they weren’t explosive)? They admitted that they’d probably priced it too high. Jose’s book, as a first-time author, is a $9.99 ebook…and $12.99 paperback. James Altucher’s last book–which was also self-published and debuted on the WSJ bestseller list–picked a better ratio with a $2.99 ebook version and a $9.96 paperback.

PR & Media Stunts

When an author signs with a traditional publisher, they think that their publisher will handle the marketing for them. Bad news: that’s still on you. Even if you hire a publicist, the creative part of the marketing efforts are your responsibility.

But that’s fine because the media is a SELLER’s market. It isn’t hard to get legitimate coverage. Blogs can publish an infinite number of articles and want good stories. In other words, when Business Insider writes about you, you are doing them a favor. You don’t have to orchestrate publicity stunts that I talk about below. But, what you pitch bloggers has to be interesting and provocative, because they are incentivized by pageviews. The “Unknown Author Writes First Book” pitch will never work. So, find out what’s interesting or relevant in your book and pitch it.

But as a starting point, you have to understand how your marketing efforts affect sales. Jose seems to have confused correlation with causation when he writes, “Once we finished the book, we launched it using the KDP program that Kindle offers. This helped rocket the book to #1 of all (free) Kindle books for 3-5 days. This enabled us to get ranked on Hacker News and Reddit /r/ startups.”

First off, getting on Reddit isn’t hard, all it requires is submitting a link to your work. Places like r/startups love great content and if you provide it, they’re happy to have you. But he’s right it is good marketing–I did a Reddit AMA for my launch. However, putting your book up for free on Amazon does not cause you to get attention on Reddit, its the other way around, an important distinction.

Also, book publishing isn’t a zero sum game so I agree with Jose when he writes, “I didn’t see Ryan Holiday’s book as competition but opportunity. Why? The Amazon description showed that Ryan’s book was only about ~60 pages, this gave me the opportunity to provide a longer and more comprehensive book for readers that wanted more.” No author should look at other authors as adversaries–books complement each other rather than compete. In fact, I tell a lot of my clients that they should look for recent books like theirs and pitch them to the media together. To a reporter, one book is an anomaly. Two or three is a trend piece.

Creating controversy–provoking a reaction–is only one way create a discussion around your book, and often its counterproductive. It only works with some books when the material calls for it. In his own way, Jose did this well by writing his Medium post. It motivated me to write a response–so I respect his hustle there. Otherwise I would have had no reason to ever write about him. For GHM, I deliberately positioned my book as an attack on traditional marketing. This helped drive attention to my book and created a media narrative that gave that attention some staying power.

For TMIL I created numerous media stunts for two important reasons. The first is the obvious one: to get attention and media coverage for my book. The second reason was to prove the concept of my book in real time as my book came out. For example, long before my book was to come up I had begun a controversial experiment: signing up for Help A Reporter Out, a service connecting journalists with sources, I was able to get quotes into numerous publications, even the New York Times, about subjects I had not idea about. I proved that the “experts” you see quoted in the news are often not really experts at all. When the story broke on Forbes it became their most popular story that week and I was able to stay in the news cycle for weeks with responses from both sides. (Thanks Peter Shankman, you did me a huge favor.)

In my book I also called out Irin Carmon for the role she played in creating controversy about women employees on The Daily Show, among other things, which generated a response from her in Salon and got even more attention for my book. Or the stunts I’ve done for my clients, like the Planned Parenthood stunt with Tucker Max that dominated the news for a week, or the Twitter stunt I created for the release of his last book. If you want to be in the news sometimes you have to create news yourself.

You may not think can pull off a big media stunt as a self-published author, but you don’t have to. You can what this author did and turn your book release party into a game where fans take sides from characters from your book. Or turn your book into a dress and have an impromptu photo shoot like this author. You can even make waves by demanding that readers not buy your book on Amazon.

Whatever works for you–go for it!

None of Jose’s mistakes are stupid or malicious. In fact, they’re all very common. But make no mistake, they were mistakes and he made a lot of them unnecessarily. I get it, no one–least of all publishers–teaches authors how to market books, and the fact is, almost all the information out there about book marketing is either misleading, ineffective, wrong, or worse, counterproductive. It’s a tough gig and this lack of accurate information forces people to take wild guesses at what works. But we’ve got a lot on the line with our points–our life’s work in some cases–and we want them to succeed.

That’s why I wrote this piece, to try to help tip the scales towards better information. When you’re thinking about writing a book, you have to think about marketing it in tandem. As we have just seen, the content and design decisions you make in the beginning of the process fundamentally shapes what you are able to do with your book down the line. The focus should be on concentrating your forces for the first week to create some velocity–to literally launch your book. Its also important not to make short-sighted decisions when marketing your book. You want to build a platform, not just get ranked on Amazon. Its about building assets that you can use for years to build a legitimate business.

Hopefully I helped shed some light on the aspects of marketing a book people don’t talk about and we won’t make these kinds of mistakes in the future.”

Ryan Holiday is a bestselling author of Trust Me I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator and Growth Hacker Marketing and is an adviser to many brands and bestselling authors. His company is Brass Check Marketing.

CW: Tell us about yourself.

FF: Well, to start with, I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. I’ve done so many things in so many different areas. Mostly, I’ve been an entrepreneur but I always wanted to be a writer. I started writing guest columns for local newspapers then went on to write non-fiction books on Internet marketing, online shopping and starting an online business. I’ve sold over 50,000 copies of those books. But now I’ve turned my attention to writing novels. In a way, my non-fiction taught me how to create a logical progression of ideas.  In the case of fiction, it helped me create an entertaining and logical plot. But though I can write interesting characters and unpredictable plots, I need to have a story polisher ‘beef up’ my prose. I use one for every one of my stories.

My work is very eclectic.  I was told that I’m a lot like Michael Crichton because I write in many genres – techno-thrillers, action/adventures, SyFy, speculative fiction – and now, mainstream fiction with my next novel called MURRAN.

I really wrote my first story in grammar school.  It was called ‘I Made history’ and was about a metal toy truck in the 1940s that ended up being melted down for weapons ending up in the Enola Gay and dropped the first atom bomb on Japan. Nuclear holocaust. Jeez! What a mind for grammar schooler!

I’ve also written many commentaries for local newspapers. One column I wrote was to my son on Christmas Eve.  It was entitled ‘Yes Christopher, There Still Is a Santa Claus’.  It was a play on the famous editorial about Virginia and her belief in Santa. I received calls all Christmas Eve Day from people who said it touched them. I was so surprised at the response and made me see the power an author has with words.

CW: Give us an overview of your books.

FF: As I said, I write in many genres.

My first book, CYBERKILL, was a cyber-thriller. It asked the question – ‘How far will an artificial intelligence go for revenge?’ The answer was ‘pretty far’ even to the extent that it stalked the hero’s little daughter through cyberspace and gain possession of a genetic weapon that could destroy all of humanity.

My next set of books were a trilogy called ‘The Chronicles of Jeremy Nash’ – ‘A Taste of the Apocalypse’, ‘SEED’, and ‘Black Sun’. These are in the action/adventure genre – a combination of Indian Jones meets National Treasure meets the X-files. Nash is a skeptic of any and all conspiracy theories, urban legends and such but is drawn into pursuing one when it threatens his life, reputation or the life of a family member.  The first deals with where the body of Jesus Christ is buried today, the second deals with the Hopi End of Times prediction, and the last deals with Nazi crypto history.

My next book is called THE ORACLE. It’s a love letter to the Golden Age of Science Fiction writers and TV shows. The book follows the same formula as Ray Bradbury’s ILLUSTRATED MAN with a group of short stories within a larger story.  The short stories in THE ORACLE all end with a twist similar to the Twilight Zone episodes.

CW: Who/what was your biggest inspiration?

FF: Many years ago I devoured all the works of the Golden Age of Science Fiction authors like Asimov, Bradbury and Heinlein.  They inspired me to want to write. But what inspired me as to HOW I write – that is the movies. I watch tons and tons of movies. I read few novels. Yes, I know. That breaks a cardinal rule of writing but not I. I write my stories AS movies applying what I have learned as to plot, character and setting by watching them.

CW: What has been your greatest challenge?

FF: The story I am writing now.

Think Herman Wouk’s ‘Winds or War’ – with a twist.  It’s the story of a young American boy coming of age against the backdrop of World War Two Japan. It’s titled GAIJIN and follows the same formula as Wouk’s book – but more complex. There are three detailed plot threads – pre-war and wartime political Japan, the Pacific War itself, and all lived through the experiences of a Japanese family– including the young American teenager who near the end of the book, climbs into a Japanese Zero to join in the kamikaze attacked on the American Fleet off Okinawa.

How’s that for a challenge to write.

CW: What do you most want readers to take from your book(s)?

FF: An entertaining read – and maybe something they never knew before.

CW: Are you actively trying to have your books made into a play or a movie? 

FF: Yes. CYBERKILL has been adapted to a screenplay and is being marketed now. MURRAN, my next book to be published this year, will also be adapted to a screenplay.

CW: What’s next for you as an author?

FF: Marketing MURRAN and making it successful. MURRAN can be the book that makes me a noted author because it’s a great evergreen story and will be very controversial.

CW: Why?

FF: MURRAN offers a very different image of Black America.  Not the one peddled by certain political quarters today. It details the story of young Black teenager attracted to the gang culture in Brooklyn New York in the 1980s. It describes vividly, and without hold back any punches, the street life and gang culture he encounters.  Certain Black characters use the ‘n’ word liberally and obscenity is used appropriately.  This will most certainly offend those who draw the race card on every occasion.

Trey, the Black teenager, is framed for the murder of a rival drug gang leader and he takes advantage of his teacher’s invitation to visit Africa.  His teacher is a Maasai warrior that are called MURRAN. Trey experiences what a true African culture is and the values that the Maasai tribe hold and practice unlike the gang warriors he left in Brooklyn. Over time he embraces those values, goes through the MURRAN initiation and kills his lion. He is then taken under the tutelage of a laibon – a Maasai shaman – and is old to return to America, bring with him the values he has learned from the Maasai to his ‘tribe’ and face the gang leader that framed him.

CW: How did you pick a publisher or decide to self-publish? Do you have an agent?

FF: My publisher, Indigo Ink Publishing, found me through a PR person I was using at the time.

CW: Do you have suggestions to other writers about the writing process and publishing?

FF: Don’t write for money or fame. Write because you enjoy telling a story. If that story is good enough, the money and fame will come. And never quit. A fellow writer, Paul McCarthy, told me to write as many books as possible.  Get those books out into the marketplace.  If they are good, when one hits, readers will go back and read all your others.  Keep producing.  Never stop.

CW: Where can someone buy your books?

FF: You can buy my books on Amazon, B&N and the Apple store.  Go to my author site at www.frankfiore.com and my blog at http://frankfiore.wordpress.com/ for more information.

CW: What would you like your Writer’s Epitaph to say?

FF: That was a great read!

We read every day about one company or another scamming novice authors, stealing their hard-earned money for a vague promise and delivering nothing in return except misery. Often the new author who pays the most to an alleged “publisher’ can least afford to lose that money. Yet, every day, hundreds, if not thousands of novice authors fall for these wolves in publisher clothing, leading to anger, resentment and depression.

Almost everyone has heard of the publisher Penguin. They are a traditional publisher with a lengthy track record of success. Fewer authors understand that Penguin has a self-publishing business, called “Author Solutions.” Chances are, however, that someone reading this right now has been a victim of illegal business practices with Author Solutions. You see, Author Solutions has “dozens of self-publishing brands including iUniverse, AuthorHouse, Xlibris, Trafford and Palibrio as well as media companies FuseFrame, PitchFest, Author Learning Center and BookTango. Author Solutions also operates Archway, a self-publishing imprint that is actually owned by Simon & Schuster. Furthermore, Penguin’s Indian self-publishing brand, Partridge, is another imprint run by Author Solutions.”

Three authors, in cooperation with Publishers Weekly, have started a class action suit worth over $5 million against Author Solutions alleging that Author Solutions misrepresents itself, luring authors in with claims that its books can compete with “traditional publishers,” offering “greater speed, higher royalties, and more control for its authors.” The company then profits from “fraudulent” practices, the complaint alleges, including “delaying publication, publishing manuscripts with errors to generate fees, and selling worthless services, or services that fail to accomplish what they promise.” The suit also alleges that Author Solutions fails to pay its authors the royalties they are due. Their attorneys are asking other writers who have “self-published with Author Solutions or any of its brands and have been the victim of deceptive practices” to come forward.

If this is not enough to give authors pause for thought before plunking down hundreds, or more likely thousands, of dollars, I don’t know what is. While a sucker is born every day, it’s hard to comprehend how someone who has never before won a writing award, who has never before been published for anything, could somehow come to believe that a “publisher” will suddenly bend over backwards to put their name on a book in print. But these sweet-talking fraudulent publishers do it successfully every day. Caveat Emptor! Such bad business practices presume that by flattering an unknown never-before-published author, a signed contract and check will soon be in the mail. And the are right!

By the tens of thousands, new authors are falling over each other to pay on average at least $1,000 to a publisher they have never before heard of, with the expectation that they will soon become the next Tom Clancy or Stephen King. Of course, they do not and they could have used their $1,000 for so many genuine projects and with real, not fraudulent companies.

With so many imprints, Author Solutions has tricked authors into thinking they have dozens of choices. In reality, however, the parent company is just slapping up half a dozen different logos, renaming packages, and selling the same grossly overpriced services to all of their customers no matter which brand ends up on the cover. They are accused of launching supposedly unbiased, purely informational comparison websites to help customers pick the self-publishing company that’s right for them, except all clicks lead back to Author Solutions brands. How many ways can you spell “despicable?”

As more and more of Author Solutions victims discover the class-action suit, there is little doubt that the litigation will rise dramatically in size and scope. Author Solutions claims to have worked with 170,000 authors. It won’t be long before scammed authors take their place in a long winding litigation queue of anger and resentment.

It is uncertain whether or if Penguin’s name as a publisher will be permanently tarnished by the devastation wrought by its subsidiary, Author Solutions. And it seems impossible that Penguin leadership was not aware of this fraud when they purchased Author Solutions. Had they nipped this fraud in the bud immediately, fewer authors would have had their money stolen in the name of “publishing” and that they could have much more easily contained the damage and the size of a likely award to the plaintiffs.

These scammers believe that they can easily get away with suckering people into believing that they can be a “real author.” And, sadly, they can most of the time. Here’s hoping that the Penguin/Author Solutions litigation will garner headlines for many years. Because otherwise how can we put an end to scam artists in the publishing industry? It’s now easy to understand why big business hates government regulation. Regulation and laws are the only way to prevent the wolf from eating the sheep with no fear of monetary loss and bad press. So, if you have been “published” by any of the Author House companies (see paragraph two), please contact the authors’ lawyers, Giskan, Solotaroff, Anderson & Stewart here. And if you are thinking about being published by any of these “self-publishing companies,” please be careful with your investment.

Based upon an article on Forbes Magazine, “Penguin And Author Solutions Sued For Deceptive Practices,” 5/7/13. http://www.forbes.com/sites/suwcharmananderson/2013/05/07/penguin-author-solutions-sued-for-deceptive-practices/.

As resume writing is a path to a successful career, the publishing proposal is a gateway for being published, especially for fiction. Unfortunately, very few neophyte authors are experienced in publishing proposal writing. Novice authors are rarely considered by publishers. Why should a publisher spend several thousand dollars on an unknown, unproven author? Since very few rookie authors have a literary agent, it’s up to the author to design a proposal that not only meets their expectations, but sweeps editors off their feet. Non-fiction authors who are known subject matter experts should still design a proposal. But it is vastly more critical for unfamiliar fiction authors.

Before we go any farther, if you think that this article will enable your book to be published by HarperCollins, Penguin, Random House or any other major publisher – STOP READING. Only trusted, well-connected literary agents deliver author proposals into the hands of major publishers. If you don’t have such a literary agent, or a close friend or relative in the industry, you will NOT have a proposal read by a major publisher – PERIOD.

Many small independent publishers around the world specialize in one or two genres. However, you can have a proposal read by one of the many thousands of small independent publishers around the world; and that’s a good way to start an author platform and propel your nascent writing career.

Publishing proposal writing is a science and an art form. Your proposal must not only explain very succinctly the synopsis of your book, but also how it compares to similar successful books in the same genre. It must contain, at a minimum, one section each on: the author, a concise synopsis, a market analysis, a competitive analysis, promotional and marketing concepts, a chapter outline; and sample chapters. This cannot be thrown together and submitted carte blanche to any and every publisher. It should be re-worked and customized for each publisher. You must explain why you and your manuscript are a good fit with each publisher, based upon the publisher’s past experience, areas of success, author and genre predilections. You accomplish this by analyzing each small publisher and demonstrating why your manuscript will make sense given the publisher’s preferences.

The author is the easiest section to complete. Expand upon all of your accomplishments as a writer or as an author of fiction. This can go back as far as your high school newspaper. Include all writing competition awards, published articles, prior published books, media outlets that have accepted your work, positive reviews from persuasive review organizations, etc. Include all major media interviews via radio, television, cable, Internet and local newspapers, journals and magazines. This section tells the publisher that you have had successful writing responsibilities and that you have been rewarded and recognized for your talent. It explains what makes your writing and literary experience relevant to this topic and to the specific publisher.

The synopsis sounds easier than it is. In about 500 words or less, you must describe your target audience, why your book is exceptional and why it is a worthy expenditure for the publisher. Concisely describe the most compelling and persuasive aspects of your book. Lead with a powerful description. You must grab the editor’s attention immediately. Here is one example that led to a publishing contract for one of my novels about young Jewish lovers during the Holocaust:

“How would you feel if, at age seventeen, the government removed you from school, evicted you from your home, looted your bank account and took all of your family’s possessions, prevented your parents from working and then deported you and your loved ones to a prison camp run by brutal taskmasters? How would you feel if you suddenly lost contact with everyone that you know and love? How would you feel if you were sent to the most frightening place in history and then forced to perform unspeakable acts of horror in order to remain alive?”

If that doesn’t grab your heart, maybe you don’t have a pulse. It makes everything that follows easier from the publisher’s perspective. No, the paragraph above does not constitute the synopsis. It says nothing about the protagonists, the story line, scenery, character development, dialog or the ending. But, it’s a start that may be sufficiently emotional to grab the editor’s attention. Avoid creating a long-winded, detailed synopsis, which is a very common mistake. Your synopsis should be about one page. Keep editing it until it describes everything relevant in your manuscript within a page. You do not need to explain the ending. But you definitely must hook the publisher’s editor.

The market analysis is relevant and essential. It tells the publisher that you comprehend the market for such books and how your manuscript is consistent with market needs. In describing the potential for your book, you must compellingly submit how expansive that market is today and where your book fits into it. Describe which authors are doing well with which similar books within this genre and why. This is where you’ll explain who will purchase and read your book, how many readers enjoy such books, where they are and why they will pay for it. You’ll need to perform enough research to cite specific examples and statistics to back up your claims.

The competitive analysis is perhaps the most critical portion of the publishing proposal. Here you contrast and compare your book with at least three similar books that have achieved prodigious public success. Select these three similar books carefully. They certainly do not need to be contemporary. Feel free to select a book from the Eighteenth Century, if it is relevant. Explain why people by the millions purchased that book, which is very similar to yours. Then explain why your book adds to the success of that genre.

It is not appropriate to suggest that your book is the same or better than the best-selling books in your sample group. Nor is it a place to suggest that your writing is better than that of Edgar Allen Poe (it is not). It’s a place to analyze why those similar books were a best-seller and how your book has the same potential. Heavy use of statistics is appropriate here. When you compare your book with a famous best-seller in the same genre, use research to produce valid positive statistics. For example, what is the best-selling book’s current Amazon sales ranking? How many editions were created? Was it popular globally? How many copies have been sold? How many positive reviews from famous review organizations did it receive? What did some of them say? How many awards did it receive? Was it made into a screenplay? If so, how much did the film gross? What awards did it garner? You’ll need to do this at least three times with the most successful books in your genre.

At the same time, discuss how your book treats similar situations differently and why. NEVER try to convince a publisher that your book is “exactly like…” the famous book. It isn’t and you will be perceived as insincere or not to be trusted. As you compare and contrast your book with the big-time, well-known successful books, cite similarities and differences in plot, location, dialog, protagonists, narrative, descriptive scenery, etc. Your book can belong to the same genre, but it should always be sufficiently different and for good reasons. Compare your book to the best-selling books in its genre by listing the potential for millions of sales, Amazon sales rankings, number of customer reviews, academic credentials, reviews from the most compelling sources, etc. Facts and figures belong here, as well as why that book sold so many millions of copies and how your book has similar potential. Many editors and publishers view this section as the most critical part of the publishing proposal.

Promotional and marketing concepts is an equally critical section. Here you’ll demonstrate two things: 1) that you are willing to carry forward the bulk of responsibility for marketing and promotion, and 2) that you comprehend the various tasks, requirements, efforts and skills required to make promotion successful.

Today, even large well-known publishers require authors with a platform to take on much of the responsibility for marketing. Unless your name is King or Clancy, it will up to you to market your book. The days of an author delivering a manuscript to a publisher and then doing nothing are long gone. No matter who you are as an author, regardless of your platform success, marketing and promotion are YOUR job now. Show that you understand how to do this. If you are not willing to engage in repeated public speaking, bookstore signings and book tours, if you’re not willing to produce media interviews, if you won’t land newspaper, magazine and journal articles about your book, if you will not create and daily add to a Facebook fan page and a web landing page, if you won’t blog, write on others’ blogs and disseminate an excellent book video trailer, then no publisher, other than a subsidy publisher, will have an interest in your manuscript.

The chapter outline is extremely important. Here, the publisher anticipates that you will deliver a description of each chapter in several sentences (not paragraphs). The publisher wants to digest the content of each chapter within a few seconds. If your chapter descriptions are several paragraphs each, the proposal will go into the e-junk pile. I have worked very hard to reduce my chapter outlines and my agent continues to demand even more brevity. This is an exercise in being extremely concise.

The publisher will want to read a few sample chapters. This is often the first three chapters, because that’s where character development is born. But it need not be. If you believe that three later chapters will better sell the book, use them. However, be advised that if you use later chapters, and the publisher has no way to relate to your protagonist, the quality of your manuscript will be lost. If you decide that the first three chapters are too boring to use, consider that those first three chapters may need rewriting to incorporate more anticipation, expectation, character development and conflict.

Finally, when all is written, edited and re-written, create a table of contents and use page numbers to identify each section’s location. All publishers expect this.

You’ll never attract a publisher by suggesting that you’re a talented author. If you are a novice and have yet to win writing awards or obtain positive reviews from compelling review organizations, don’t worry. We all start in the same place. Instead, show that you understand the publishing industry and your marketing and promotion responsibilities. Explain how you are creating an author platform that will be increasingly valuable to that particular small publisher. If the publisher has some interest in your book, they will be more willing to finance its publication. And if the publisher believes that more of those high quality books in the same genre are on the way, they will be more likely to donate several thousand dollars to print your first book.

Charles S. Weinblatt is the author of published fiction and non-fiction, including the popular Holocaust novel, Jacob’s Courage. His recent published books can be observed at http://charlesweinblatt.wix.com/charles-s-weinblatt.

When we are trade-published, our publisher will handle most of the difficult, expensive and time-consuming tasks, including editing, printing, graphic design, distribution, marketing, promotion and stocking retailers. Yes, the trade-published author must still engage in public speaking, book tours, signings and many other events related to selling the book. However, publishers thankfully know what they’re doing. After all, they are betting (spending on average several thousand dollars) on your book’s success. And publishers know exactly what to do. They hire talented staffers to perform each aspect of the process. But what happens when we don’t have a publisher? What must we do with self-published or subsidy-published books?

Hiring a publicist is an important aspect in making your book a financial success. There are all kinds of publicists, good and bad. With literally millions of new SP authors today, a new cottage industry of publicists has arisen. Most of them have stumbled into the book marketing world and decided to earn some extra income on the side. Some of them are authors or former authors who truly understand what must be done to make a book successful. In addition to understanding the fundamentals (obtaining persuasive reviews from compelling sources, arranging for media interviews and articles, getting on the guest blog circuit, advertising, etc.), these people have acquired the technical assets necessary to place your book among the best and brightest retailers. This includes web site design, video book trailer design and creating Facebook fan pages. They know the best and most followed Internet interview talent and media personalities.

All of this comes at a cost. A talented book publicist is in high demand. He or she can afford to take on the best author talent at the highest prices. Yet the millions of new SP authors are often not able to devote five to ten thousand dollars on a publicist. Herein lies the conundrum. If a publicist offers to create a web site for you and your books, plus a Facebook fan page and a video book trailer – all for under $1,000, think twice. Maybe think three times. Is this person still in high school? A good video book trailer alone typically costs about $1,000. The time it takes to place that trailer on the biggest and best web sites is a few hundred dollars. Create a Facebook fan page? That can cost $300 more. Obtain the best reviews from the best organizations in your book’s genre… $500 more. Obtain interviews for you with the most popular sources, $300 more. And the list goes on.  Maybe you would like your publicist to find a top-flight publisher for you. That eliminates the vast majority of part-time publicists. But some of them will persuade you with visions of being best buddies with the top talent at HarperCollins, Random House and Penguin. Proposal creation can easily cost $500. As an unknown author, the proposal is your only chance to play ball with the big guys. Contacting major publishers is simply $100-$200 per publisher. And if your publicist is not as well-connected or talented as a literary agent, so that money will go down the drain.

In the course of several months, you could easily spend $7,000 or more.

Now here is some sobering news. I read a statistic several years ago that quoted this. The average SP author spent several thousand dollars on her or his book. Yet, the average SP book only sold a few dozen copies. That’s no way to make back that $7K investment. The average TP author (who spent nothing and received an advance) only sold a few hundred copies of her or his book. If this is not depressing to you, then you must be the eternal optimist.

In the time it takes to perform all of the duties and tasks that a publicist must accomplish, a talented and motivated author might have completed most of another new book. Ouch!

So, what’s the answer? Is there a right way to do this without spending a fortune on a book that might never break even financially? Is it possible to write new books when you’re spending most of your time promoting and marketing the last one?

If you decide to handle all of your own publicist activities, you’ll likely botch them up because you are not a trained, experienced, talented and well-connected publicist. The technical skills alone are daunting. Even if you manage to learn how to do them successfully, the weeks and months you’ve used up are precious and you’ll never get them back again. You might have written another book during that time! Yet, if you don’t hire a publicist, chances are that no one will ever know that you wrote the first one, or where to purchase it.

Some authors who SP today split the process. They handle their own publicist duties if and when they understand how to do it well. For example, an author with computer skills can create her own web site and Facebook fan page. She can post the book and its trailer on 100 of the best Internet sites and obtain plenty of interviews with top media talent. Elsewhere in this blog, I’ve posted about how to use the Internet to your advantage. By splitting up the tasks, you’ve saved enough money so that you can afford to pay for a terrific video book trailer, created by a talented publicist – a trailer that you will be ever-so-happy to post on every virtual edifice on the Internet (and which you could not have accomplished with your own talent and experience).

As long as you are SP and you are not a famous author, the duties of a publicist will be required. If you are a well-known subject-matter expert or a celebrity, and your book is non-fiction, the job is much, much easier. Your name alone, as a well-known expert, will sell many copies. If you are a subject-matter expert, people will trust you and purchase your book without major marketing effort.

If you are not a celebrity and you write fiction, then your SP book has little chance of success without a very talented publicist and solid industry connections. That costs a lot of money.

The bottom line is this… What are your goals for the book? Are you happy just by having SP something, regardless of its success? Are you thrilled just to have a nice-looking book on your coffee table with your name as the author? Or, as a novice fiction author, is your goal to develop a powerful and influential author platform for many future books? If you wish to make a name for yourself as a fiction author and you have no major successful books in your past, then being successful now will make or break your chances of being that well-known and beloved fiction author that you desire for the future. Here is where a major investment is required. It’s not an easy decision and it will likely carry a cost of several thousand dollars or more. But spending a few thousand dollars on a well-connected and talented publicist might make the difference.

Look for more about making your books and your platform successful in future articles here.

Meanwhile, contact me at [email protected] with questions or concerns.

Happy writing!

Deciding whether to self-publish, trade-publish, subsidy-publish or wait for a literary agent is often not an easy or simple decision for the novice or inexperienced author. Clearly, the only way to be published by a major publishing house is through a trusted literary agent. Without one, even a perfect publishing proposal will never be opened or read. Yet, it can more difficult to find an agent than to be published on your own. 

I tried to do both over a number of years. While I now have a wonderful agent who has cracked wide open those big publishers, it took years to receive an agent contract that I was willing to sign. During that time, I SP three books and I’ve been able to be trade-published twice on my own. It really can be easier to get published on your own with a small publishing company. But which small publisher can you trust? Yes, you can conduct research on your own. Small publishers who have a history of fraud or who fail to fulfill their promises will generate plenty of noise on the Internet with author complaints and lawsuits. But many small publishers are so new that they haven’t had a chance to generate any noise, good or bad. So, how can we ensure that the small publishers we contact are honest, skilled and trustworthy? 

If the book is non-fiction and the author can sell thousands of copies on her or his own via an occupation, as a teacher, professor, as a seminar leader or public speaker, then subsidy publishing can be a great decision. Why share the profit with a publisher if you don’t need to? This form of SP is quick, easy and you’ll turn a nice profit on each book. I enjoyed this with my first book, a non-fiction textbook on job seeking skills. Through my consulting practice, I sold books to hundreds of seminar participants. The textbook was also required reading for graduate students at my university. There was never a more perfect scenario for SP, and in particular subsidy publishing, than a non-fiction author with a captive audience. 

Unknown fiction authors, on the other hand, are in a completely different boat. A novice fiction author will typically live or die by her author platform. Unfortunately, very few unknown SP fiction authors produce a best-seller. Most best-selling fiction authors were already famous and they carried their readers along to a new SP book. You can count on your fingers and toes the number of unknown novice SP fiction authors who have produced a best-selling book. Several years ago, I read in a prominent journal that the average SP book costs the author around $2,000 to develop, yet sold only a few dozen copies. If so, the neophyte SP fiction author almost never breaks even or becomes famous. Their platform suffers. On the other hand, the novice TP fiction author paid nothing and those books sold several hundred copies. Perhaps more importantly, using a real publisher enhances the author’s platform. 

I recently read an interesting blog post by Cathy Clamp about the dangers inherent in signing a publishing contract with a small and/or new publishing company. As I discovered several years ago, there are literally thousands of small publishers around the world. And unlike the big publishers, most of them will take a chance on a novice author with talent and a marketable book. Of course, those two concepts are subjective. But most of us can tell if an author has talent within the first chapter or two. And marketable books are those with a significant likelihood of turning a profit. So while a novice author without an agent is locked out of the major publishers (the ones that will throw ten or twenty thousand dollars on your manuscript and generate compelling reviews from the most persuasive sources), we little guys seem only to have a chance with small publishers. 

Unfortunately, the majority of small publishing companies fail within a year or two. Worse yet, authors could have found a better publisher during the time the failed publisher takes going into bankruptcy. The author hasn’t lost any money, but certainly has wasted a great deal of time and energy. 

Some small publishers fail because they save money by hiring friends as editors and graphic artists, or they hire one person to do the job of both positions. Those friends are not always the most talented professionals. And being an talented editor and a graphic designer simultaneously requires use of vastly differing brain components. In other words, very few people can perform both jobs effectively. 

Some small publishers fail by applying standard business practices to the world of publishing, in which those business practices count for nothing. The intuition and business acumen acquired in another type of business does not serve the owner well in publishing. Communication can be poor or non-existent. The owners, editors and graphic designers can argue about a number of issues, leaving the author to wonder what happened to her book. Eventually, the author litigates. But nothing is accomplished and significant time has passed. 

Small publishers often hire employees who might also be professional editors and authors on their own. What happens when these people prioritize their books, putting yours on the back-burner? The same applies to a publishing owner who hires incompetent friends and lacks the courage to fire them when they fail repeatedly. 

Small publishers also may have little cash to start the business. They depend upon the sale of their initial books to pay for all present and future business expenses, including editors, graphic designers, printers, publicists, office equipment, rent, furnishings, etc. When those initial books don’t sell, the staff isn’t paid, the rent isn’t paid and the owner flees into Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The author sues the publisher, but bankruptcy leaves almost nothing for an author left in the lurch. 

Read the entire article here: http://www.sfwa.org/2012/04/guest-blog-post-why-small-publishers-fail/. And remember to always use the two iconic sources of information about writing, awards, publishing, agents, marketing, publicity, fraud and scams and everything related to the world of publishing here at Writer Beware http://www.sfwa.org/ and Predators & Editors http://pred-ed.com/

Happy Writing!

Book Marketing 101. Everything you need to know about author marketing!

I have been trade-published and self-published several times. I now have a talented literary agent. Although I have self-published three books, I feel more comfortable publishing fiction with a traditional publisher, especially a large, distinguished publisher. I realize that this is not an author decision. Publishers require talent and a marketable book. If you have both, it can still take months or even years to obtain the best publishing offer. You need to know how to construct a winning publishing proposal and agent query; and you might need to submit well over a hundred proposals to obtain the best publishing contract. It’s true that the top level of publishers will only accept a proposal from a trusted agent. HarperCollins, Random House, Penguin, Simon & Shuster, etc. will not open your submission unless it comes from a well-connected literary agent. The good news is that there are now literally thousands of small, independent publishers. Many of them have learned how to be successful within one or two genres. They might be small, but they often have a talented and motivated staff. Plus they can be well-situated to garner reviews from the most compelling and persuasive sources – just like their full-size publishing kin.

A TP author does not need to worry about hiring the best editor, graphic designer, printer and promotion/marketing specialist. The publisher will do it for you, while they proffer a nice advance. Your publisher will also obtain powerful and compelling reviews from the best organizations in your genre, because they already have deep connections with those reviewers. It’s not likely that a novice author could obtain reviews of that caliber. Nor does the TP author need to worry about distribution, sales, stocking and restocking bookstores. We can devoted that time to producing new books.

I have never felt compelled by my publishers to accept editorial changes. I think that’s a myth – an urban legend. In each case, my publisher’s editing changes made perfect sense and enhanced marketing potential. But the decision to accept those changes has always been mine. My publishers have never told me what to write; nor does my agent.

That being said, there will always be a time and place to self-publish, especially when testing a new market, when you write non-fiction as a subject matter expert and when you have a large fan base to shift to your SP books. However, you can count best-selling self-published fiction authors on your fingers and toes. As of 2-3 years ago, the average SP author spent about $2K and sold a few dozen copies (could never recover expenses with sales), while the average TP author spent nothing and sold several hundred copies. Self-published books are almost never reviewed by the most compelling and persuasive review organizations. Maybe it’s not fair, but as a reviewer for two major review organizations, I know this is true. Nor do SP books appear on many retail store shelves. That is a huge sales market to give up, just to SP your book. Many retail and on-line stores are making money hand over fist with print books, including Walmart, Target, Amazon and B&N.

With an even distribution of my TP and SP books, I have a foot in each market. I’ve discovered that at least for fiction, I’m much happier with a major publisher or a small, independent publisher. I’m happy to let their team of professionals handle all aspects of editing, graphic design, printing, distribution, marketing, sales and stocking retailers and buyers. This gives me more time to write which is, of course, the fun part. For that, my publisher can reap most of the profits and my agent can acquire her 15%. Doing their job in a professional manner allows me to write, rather than publish, distribute and market.

Finally, if you’re serious about earning a living as an author, you’ll need an accomplished and impressive author profile. That means you’ll need to produce several books that have either been trade-published or SP with high sales volume. You will need to write published articles and appear on the best Internet interview sites and blogs. You will need newspaper and magazine articles supportive of your books. And when a publisher decides to Google your name, several pages of professional writing accomplishments must appear. Being trade-published is likely the best anchor for your platform, especially for fiction. 

Three Ways to Get Published

This new edition of Writer’s Digest offers a concise, factual and useful article on how to get published.

“The goal for most of us writers is to get our work published. We dream of the day we walk through our local bookstore and see our name on the cover of a book. While getting published isn’t the only way to validate oneself as a writer, it certainly is one of the most gratifying. It’s also one of the most challenging.

Getting published requires the right mix of these essentials elements: A great idea, hard work, ambition, determination and a spot of good luck. It often requires you being at the right place at the right time (or having your manuscript be at the right place at the right time). It also demands that you make a decision about which path you want to take on your road to publication.

You have three main options to get your work published. Here they are and here’s what you should consider before moving forward with each.”

Just click here and you’ll be on your way to a better decision about how to get published.

For everything there is a time and a place.  I have self-published twice and I have been trade-published twice.  I also e-published a book. Here is what I’ve learned.

If you can sell as many books as you desire on your own, then self-publish and keep all of the profit.  This was the case with my first book, a textbook on job search skills.  I sold a copy for each person who attended my seminars (thousands… with no individual sales effort).  I also was able to sell hundreds more as required reading for graduate students at my university.  Why share the profit if it’s not necessary?

All such bets are off if you are a novice writer. You will not improve your author platform with self-publishing or vanity publishing unless the book is a smashing success; and you can count best selling self-published  writers on your fingers, especially for fiction.  In this case, being published by a small independent press will enhance your platform, making it increasingly easier to be trade-published again in the future.  In a few years, when you have a large fan base, you can move them along to self-publishing and keep more of the net profit. Meanwhile, take advantage of the perception of quality associated with having a real (not vanity) publisher.

How can a trade-publisher help you?  Let me count the ways. A trade-publisher (i.e. small independent publishing company) has a team of experts for editing, graphic design, distribution and marketing.  They will represent your book at key international book fairs, conventions and conferences and they will promote your book with e-mail and fax blasts, through catalog distribution and with a web site landing page.  A trade-publisher will distribute your book on each continent, as well as warehouse, stock and restock retailers. Such publishers also have deep inroads with the most compelling review sources in your genre – reviewers that typically refuse a SP author’s request. And THEY CHARGE YOU NOTHING! In fact, they pay a nice royalty for each book sold.

Almost half of all books sold still come from a shelf in a brick and mortar store.  If you think that bookstores have become dinasaurs, think again. Retailers like Target and Wal-Mart can’t stock books fast enough for demand. Even the iconic Barnes & Noble is still in the black. If you self-publish, the chance of having your book sold in one of these stores is between slim and none. You might be able to convince your local neighborhood bookstore owner to sell it, if it’s returnable. But unless you know the Walton family or the owners of Target, don’t even ask to have your self-published book stocked in their stores.  If you self-publish, you are willingly disavowing yourself from that half of the market.  Why hedge your bets by only selling via the Internet or through your home address? Wouldn’t you prefer to have your books sold on the Internet AND in stores?

No, it’s not easy to be trade-published. You need talent, a marketable book, a winning publishing proposal and enough determination to contact hundreds of publishers, if that’s what it takes to be trade-published.

Publishers have a vested interest in making your book successful.  They pay on average several thousand dollars to develop, edit, print, arrange cover design, distribute, market and warehouse your book. The only way such a publisher can earn their investment back and make a profit is to make sure that your book is sold successfully anywhere and everywhere.

I am not against self-publishing.  In fact, I’ve done it twice and I will probably do it again in the future.  But I learned how to create a winning publishing proposal (read more about publishing proposals later in this blog) and I was determined enough to contact about a hundred small independent publishers for my debut novel.  That process generated four solid contract offers, excluding vanity publishers.  My best offer came in last.  Patience is indeed a virtue.

Learn how to promote your book with public speaking, media appearances, bookstore signings and interviews. Use compelling and persuasive reviews to generate sales. Cerate published articles that will deliver readers to your landing page. Generate interest and manage your fan base with blogs, social networking and e-mail marketing.

Use newspaper and magazine articles to generate interest, along with e-mail and fax blasts. Take advantage of important
book fairs, conferences and conventions. Generate a Facebook fan page and use targeted Facebook ads. Connect with readers via LinkedIn and discuss your book in the many varied LinkedIn groups and discussion threads.

Learn how to create a winning web site landing page, with successful tags and key words. Select a web site landing page that offers excellent analytics. Connect it to the world with links to global retailers and instant connection to your video
trailer.

Create an impressive synopsis web site that will generate interest. Use click-through technology for Internet retailers and brick & mortar bookstores.

This book has everything you’ll need to generate interest with effective marketing techniques. Create and manage your fan base and deliver continual sales increases. Promote your author platform with viral marketing.

Click on your choice of retailer: Book Marketing 101 is available for $1.99 at Amazon and at Smashwords.

Until August 7, you can buy my book, “Book Marketing 101″ at Smashwords (http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/2595) for 50% off the regular price ($1.99).  Just click on the link in the sentence above and use the code “ZN68R.”  “Book Marketing 101″ covers everything an author needs to do to sell more books in more markets and with greater efficiency.