Login or Register for free to create your own customized page of blog posts from your favorite blogs. You can also add blogs by clicking the "Add to MyJacketFlap" links next to the blog name in each post.
Blog Posts by Tag
In the past 7 days
Blog Posts by Date
Click days in this calendar to see posts by day or month
Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: publicity, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 26 - 50 of 283
How to use this Page
You are viewing the most recent posts tagged with the words: publicity in the JacketFlap blog reader. What is a tag? Think of a tag as a keyword or category label. Tags can both help you find posts on JacketFlap.com as well as provide an easy way for you to "remember" and classify posts for later recall. Try adding a tag yourself by clicking "Add a tag" below a post's header. Scroll down through the list of Recent Posts in the left column and click on a post title that sounds interesting. You can view all posts from a specific blog by clicking the Blog name in the right column, or you can click a 'More Posts from this Blog' link in any individual post.
Ditto machines in the nineteen-sixties and seventies, offset printing and, in the past two decades, Web-based publishing have made it at least seem easier for each new generation. In 1980, the Pushcart Press—known for its annual Pushcart Prizes—published a seven-hundred-and-fifty-page brick of a book, “The Little Magazine in America,” of memoirs and interviews with editors of small journals. “The Little Magazine in Contemporary America,” a much more manageable collection of interviews and essays that was published in April, looks at the years since then, the years that included—so say the book’s editors, Ian Morris and Joanne Diaz— “the end of the ascendancy of print periodicals,” meaning that the best small litmags have moved online.
The Little Magazine in Americadoes indeed chronicle the history and trajectory of the “little magazine” through the past half-century of American life, from its origins in universities, urban centers and rural fringes, and among self-identified peers. Featuring contributions from the editors of BOMB and n + 1 to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E and the Women’s Review of Books, Morris and Diaz’s collection pays special attention to the fate of these idiosyncratic cultural touchstones in an age fueled by financial crises and the ascendency of digital technology and web-and-device-based reading.
As Burt’s piece concludes:
A new journal needs a reason to exist: a gap that earlier journals failed to fill, a new form of pleasure, a new kind of writing, an alliance with a new or under-chronicled social movement, a constellation of authors for whom the future demand for work exceeds present supply, a program that will actually change some small part of some literary readers’ tastes. None of this has changed with the rise of the Web. Nor has the other big truth about little magazines which emerges from Diaz and Morris’s book, or from a day spent with anybody who runs one: it’s exhausting, albeit exciting, to do it yourself.
To read more about The Little Magazine in Contemporary America, click here.
Rómulo Gallegos is best known for being Venezuela’s first democratically elected president. But in his native land he is equally famous as a writer responsible for one of Venezuela’s literary treasures, the novel Doña Barbara. Published in 1929 and all but forgotten by Anglophone readers, Doña Barbara is one of the first examples of magical realism, laying the groundwork for later authors such as Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa.
Following the epic struggle between two cousins for an estate in Venezuela, Doña Barbara is an examination of the conflict between town and country, violence and intellect, male and female. Doña Barbara is a beautiful and mysterious woman—rumored to be a witch—with a ferocious power over men. When her cousin Santos Luzardo returns to the plains in order to reclaim his land and cattle, he reluctantly faces off against Doña Barbara, and their battle becomes simultaneously one of violence and seduction. All of the action is set against the stunning backdrop of the Venezuelan prairie, described in loving detail. Gallegos’s plains are filled with dangerous ranchers, intrepid cowboys, and damsels in distress, all broadly and vividly drawn. A masterful novel with an important role in the inception of magical realism, Doña Barbara is a suspenseful tale that blends fantasy, adventure, and romance.
Bolder. More global. Risk-taking. The home of future stars.
Not a tagline for a well-placed index fund portfolio (thank G-d), but the crux of a piece by Sam Leith for the Guardian on the “crisis in non-fiction publishing”—ostensibly the result of copycat, smart-thinking, point-taking trade fodder that made Malcolm Gladwell not just a columnist, but a brand. As Leith asserts:
We have a flock of books arguing that the internet is either the answer to all our problems or the cause of them; we have scads of books telling us about the importance of mindfulness, or forgetfulness, or distraction, or stress. We have any number about what one recent press release called the “always topical” debate between science and religion. We have a whole subcategory that concern themselves with “what it means to be human.”
Enter the university presses. Though Leith acknowledges they’re still capable of producing academic jargon dressed-up in always already pantalettes, they are also home to deeper, more complex, and vital trade non-fiction that produces new scholarship and nuanced contributions to the world of ideas, while still targeting their offerings to the general reader. If big-house publishers produce brands, scholarly presses produce the sharp, intelligent, and individualized contributions that later (after, perhaps, some mutation and watering down by the conglomerates) establish their fields. Especially nice to see Yale, Harvard, Oxford, Princeton, Cambridge, and UCP called out for their “high-calibre, serious non-fiction of the quality and variety.”
In natural history and popular science, alone, for instance: Hal Whitehead and Luke Rendell’s amazing book The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins or Brooke Borel’s history of the bedbug, Infested, or Caitlin O’Connell’s book on pachyderm behaviour, Elephant Don, or Christian Sardet’s gorgeous book Plankton? All are published by the University of Chicago. Beth Shapiro’s book on the science of de-extinction, How to Clone a Mammoth? Published by Princeton. In biography, Yale – who gave us Sue Prideaux’s award-winning life of Strindberg a couple of years back – have been quietly churning out the superb Jewish Lives series. Theirs is the new biography of Stalin applauded by one reviewer as “the pinnacle of scholarly knowledge on the subject”, and theirs the much-admired new life of Francis Barber, the freed slave named as Dr Johnson’s heir. Here are chewy, interesting subjects treated by writers of real authority but marketed in a popular way. The university presses are turning towards the public because with the big presses not taking these risks, the stuff’s there for the taking.
You can read more about the University of Chicago Press’s biological sciences list here. And the rest of our titles, organized by subject category, here. Follow the #ReadUP hashtag on Twitter for old and new books straddling the line between accessible scholarship and exciting nonfiction.
Carol Kasper, our very own marketing director, was recently honored by the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) with their 2015 Constituency Award. The Constituency Award is unique, in that it involves an open-call nomination process from one’s peers, and focuses not only on individual achievement, but also on the spirit of cooperation and collaboration that marks the measure of integrity and success within the scholarly publishing community.
From the official press release:
The Constituency Award, established in 1991, honors an individual of a member press who has demonstrated active leadership and service, not only in service to the Association but to the scholarly publishing community as a whole. In addition to a term on the Association’s Board of Directors from 2009 to 2011, Kasper has been a member of numerous committees and panels throughout the years, including the Marketing Committee, the Bias-Free Language Task Force, and Midwest Presses Meeting Committees. . . . In addition to her formal service to the Association, and her leadership in the university press and international scholarly publishing worlds, Kasper has hosted numerous Whiting/AAUP Residents over the years. One of the nominating letters added: “Carol has dedicated all this time and energy to the AAUP in her typically quiet, unassuming fashion.”
From University of Chicago Press director Garrett Kiely’s remarks at the award ceremony:
What makes Carol special and what uniquely qualifies her for this award are the people that Carol has mentored, supported, and trained in her time here in Chicago,” says Garrett Kiely, Director of University of Chicago Press and presenter of the award. “To put it in scholarly journal terms, her ‘impact factor’ has been very high!”
And just to add:
Carol is a phenomenal teacher and mentor—the very best kind, in that the generosity she extends to her colleagues, the fierce integrity with which she makes things happen, the self-determination and cooperation she encourages, and the good humor she doles out all seem effortless, because they are so very much a part ofher. Congrats, CK!
The Dead Ladies Project is part of a long literary tradition of single ladies having adventures. As a genre, it has had to contend with the collective energies of late capitalism (which tries to convert all adventure into tourism), patriarchy (which tries to make all single women into threatening and/or pathetic monsters), and publishing (which tries to repackage and flatten all women who write into “women writers”). It does, on the whole, remarkably well, perhaps because it’s written by insightful people who have resisted, for an entire century, the call to cynicism. It’s easy, these days, to be jaded about human relationships, to believe that they have been fabricated and marketed and focus-grouped into torpor and that no one remains capable of an authentic emotion. Jessa Crispin, like so many writers before her, flatly refuses to believe that. She insists on the fleeting, transcendental passion, the abjection of unrequited longing, the thrill and terror of waking up in an alien city. She insists, further, that a woman can revel in all that tumult.
(I choose this excerpt as the best teaser for the book, yet a part earlier on, a sort of prelude in which Ramachandran relays the mise-en-scène of the spinster’s myth, that consuming-qua-shrill narrative surrounding a woman with “too much plot”—I feel you.)
Congratulations to George Monbiot, author of Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, Human Life, which was just announced as the winner of the 2015 Orion Book Award for nonfiction, which honors “books that deepen the reader’s connection to the natural world, [and] represent excellence in writing.” In Feral, Monbiot, a journalist, columnist for the Guardian, and environmentalist (see his recent TED talk here), argues for a twenty-first-century movement based upon the concept of rewilding, which seeks to free nature from human intervention and allow ecosystems to resume their natural processes.
When’s the last time you walked into the woods, or a park, or your garden, and felt unsure of what—or who—you might see? If the answer is “it’s been a while,” you’re not alone. With his intrepid and imaginative new book, Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life, journalist George Monbiot has invented a term for this twenty-first-century condition that afflicts so many of us in the developed world: “ecological boredom.” He’s come up with a prescription, too, which involves large-scale reintroductions of keystone species to the landscapes that humans have emptied out and made their own. If this sounds reckless and implausible, it’s not: Monbiot has done his research, and builds a case for how well his surprising list of animal recruits would fit into his home landscape of Britain. From moose and lynx to hippopotamuses and black rhinoceroses, Feral invites readers to imagine a wilder, less stifled and more primal world—one in which we humans can come to recognize our animal natures once again.—Scott Gast
George Monbiot’s well-researched book of narrative storytelling, speculation, and bold imagination is a vote in favor of rewilding not just nature but the human spirit. Feral invites readers to envision a wilder, less stifled and more primal world—one in which we humans can come to recognize our animal selves once again.
What Stevie Wonder really meant to sing was “no book launch Saturday within the month of June,” and with that in mind, here are some recent images from those book-related fêtes staged a smidge sooner, during the long green march of spring.
Anthony C. Yu (1938−2015)—scholar, translator, teacher—passed away earlier this month, following a brief illness. As the Carl Darling Buck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Humanities and the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, Yu fused a knowledge of Eastern and Western approaches in his broadranging humanistic inquiries. Perhaps best known for his translation of The Journey to the West, a sixteenth-century Chinese novel about a Tang Dynasty monk who travels to India to obtain sacred texts, which blends folk and institutionalized national religions with comedy, allegory, and the archetypal pilgrim’s tale. Published in four volumes by the University of Chicago Press, Yu’s pathbreaking translation spans more than 100 chapters; an abridged version of the text appeared in 2006 (The Monkey and the Monk), and just recently, in 2012, Yu published a revised edition.
In addition to JttW, Yu’s scholarship explored Chinese, English, and Greek literature, among other fields, as well as the classic texts of comparative religion. He was a member of the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences, the American Council of Learned Societies, and Academia Sinica, and served as a board member of the Modern Language Association, as well as a Guggenheim and Mellon Fellow.
“Professor Anthony C. Yu was an outstanding scholar, whose work was marked by uncommon erudition, range of reference and interpretive sophistication. He embodied the highest virtues of the University of Chicago, his alma mater and his academic home as a professor for 46 years, with an appointment spanning five departments of the University. Tony was also a person of inimitable elegance, dignity, passion and the highest standards for everything he did,” said Margaret M. Mitchell, the Shailer Mathews Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Literature and dean of the Divinity School.
To read more about The Journey to the West, click here.
The Victorian era was the high point of literary tourism. Writers such as Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Sir Walter Scott became celebrities, and readers trekked far and wide for a glimpse of the places where their heroes wrote and thought, walked and talked. Even Shakespeare was roped in, as Victorian entrepreneurs transformed quiet Stratford-upon-Avon into a combination shrine and tourist trap.
Stratford continues to lure the tourists today, as do many other sites of literary pilgrimage throughout Britain. And our modern age could have no better guide to such places than Simon Goldhill. In Freud’s Couch, Scott’s Buttocks, Brontë’s Grave, Goldhill makes a pilgrimage to Sir Walter Scott’s baronial mansion, Wordsworth’s cottage in the Lake District, the Brontë parsonage, Shakespeare’s birthplace, and Freud’s office in Hampstead. Traveling, as much as possible, by methods available to Victorians—and gamely negotiating distractions ranging from broken bicycles to a flock of giggling Japanese schoolgirls—he tries to discern what our forebears were looking for at these sites, as well as what they have to say to the modern mind. What does it matter that Emily Brontë’s hidden passions burned in this specific room? What does it mean, especially now that his fame has faded, that Scott self-consciously built an extravagant castle suitable for Ivanhoe—and star-struck tourists visited it while he was still living there? Or that Freud’s meticulous recreation of his Vienna office is now a meticulously preserved museum of itself? Or that Shakespeare’s birthplace features student actors declaiming snippets of his plays . . . in the garden of a house where he almost certainly never wrote a single line?
Goldhill brings to these inquiries his trademark wry humor and a lifetime’s engagement with literature. The result is a travel book like no other, a reminder that even today, the writing life still has the power to inspire.
Once an author gets published there is so much she needs to learn and do. Besides trying to understand the publishing process and what can be expected from the publisher, she needs to suddenly become a publicist and marketer, in addition to being an author.
Now, even if you have the resources to hire a full-time publicist to do a lot of this work for you, its imperative that you have a basic understanding of what is needed. The more you know, the more successful you'll be.
So while I'm not going to get into every detail here, I am going to give you a short checklist of things to include whenever you have a publicity opportunity and by opportunity I mean blog tour, article, interview, conference workshop, Facebook post, GoodReads account, etc, etc. Remember, anytime you do anything that others will read, see or look into its a publicity opportunity.
Become your pen name. If you write under a pen name make sure that in everything you do that's the name you work under. It's your name tag badge, your introduction, your everything. So choose wisely.
Include a bio. Always let readers know who you are. It doesn't have to be long, but a bio gives some insight into you and, you never know, someone might grab your book simply because they too are from Ohio.
Make it interesting. Have an Instagram account that you're using for publicity? Make the pictures worthwhile and interesting. Use the filters and make them pretty. In other words, whatever you're doing make it something worth sharing, a picture, a Tweet, a quote that others will helpfully pass along to others.
Put in the effort. Take some time to come up with creative answers (not just a cut and paste from your last interview).
Plug your books. Big! Don't just include the title after your name, give a one or two sentence description, include the name of the series (if there is one) and send a copy of the cover of your next (or your last) book. Give them a visual to go with your title. Make yourself unforgettable.
Show them where to find you. If readers like what you have to say they'll want to learn more. Don't just include your website, but give them everything you've got--Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, GoodReads. Go big or go home they say.
Publicity can be a lot of fun. I know I rarely mind doing an interview and I've done a ton. However, if I'm doing the work, and taking the time out of my other work to do it, I really want to make sure that's it's going to have the potential impact I want it to. Just throwing up my name and book title isn't going to necessarily grab the readers like I hope. Providing them with a real peek at who I am and what my books are about will.
--jhf
0 Comments on Making the Most of Publicity as of 1/28/2015 9:55:00 AM
In my experience, no matter how many books an author has published, whether they’re traditionally or independently published, or what their day job is, publicity is the one area that leaves many authors in the dark. Everyone wants to be on Ellen or have a rave review in the New York Times, but how does a publicist pull that off? And if those outlets aren’t attainable (which is the case for 99% of authors), then what else can be done to garner media coverage and increase sales?
Enter the publicist.
If you’re with a traditional publisher, they will assign you an in-house publicist. But if you’re on your own, or want someone to supplement your in-house publicists’ efforts, you’ll need to find an outside publicist. When it comes to in-house publicists, you don’t have much say in the matter, but it’s important to ask plenty of questions and be informed of their plans. For finding an outside publicists, there are hundreds of us, all with different styles, philosophies, and specialties. It’s up to you to find the publicist that is the best for you and your project.
Whether you’re heading into the marketing meeting at your publisher or interviewing someone on the outside, there are several questions you should ask:
Who do you see as the intended audience for the book?
Your publicist’s primary role is to secure media coverage for you and the book, but if that media doesn’t reach your target audience, it’s not going to result in sales. You want to make sure the publicist understands the target audience and how best to reach them.
Some of this is a matter of opinion, so if they say they see your book being read by urban hipsters while you saw it as more of a book club book, hear them out. They may have valid points. And if you’re in-house publicist wants to target the urban hipsters, you can probably find an outside publicist to hit up the book-clubbers.
What is your pitching process? How do you contact and follow up with media outlets?
Some in-house publicists might be cagey about their response to this question. The fact is, most in-house publicists are over-worked and under-paid, and due to time constraints, rely on mass emailing rather than crafting tailored pitches. Sometimes, the mass emails work, but often, they get deleted, un-opened.
Outside publicists vary in their approach. There was a time where we relied on mass pitching because it gave us more bang for our buck, but as the amount of books being published is increasing and the number of outlets covering books is decreasing, we’ve moved away from mass pitching and instead, create tailored pitches for a shorter list of media outlets.
For follow ups, you want a publicist who’s going to get on the phone. Many emails slip through the cracks and many radio producers don’t even check their email. Following up via phone is an important component in ensuring your pitch gets noticed.
What is your timeline for the campaign?
It’s easy to get nervous and insecure when you don’t know when things are happening. Having a loose outline of when certain outlets are going to be pitched, when a blog tour will be launched, when you can expect to see coverage, etc. will help put you at ease.
All publicists should have a timeline for their campaigns and although that timeline may shift based on the news cycle, holidays, and other factors, it should give you an idea of what they’re doing and when.
What is your communication style?
You want to have a good working relationship with your publicist, and agreeing on a communication style is a key part of that. If your in-house publicist says s/he only emails when she gets a hit or prefers to do everything via email, then it’s best to respect that. Also, letting your in-house person know that you’re on email all day or that you’re only available for calls later in the evening, will help set the expectations so both of you can communicate more effectively.
If you’re hiring an outside publicist, you want to find someone who gels with your communication style. If they don’t do phone calls, but you are really more of a phone person, then that publicist isn’t right for you. You also want to make sure they work well with your in-house team.
Publicity is more of an art than a science and there is no formula for a successful publicity campaign. Some authors are booked on big national shows while other books only get a handful of blog reviews. Rather than focusing on what a publicist has been able to accomplish in the past, focus on what he or she sees for your book’s future.
—
Dana Kaye is the owner of Kaye Publicity, a boutique PR company specializing in publishing and entertainment. Known for her innovative ideas and knowledge of current trends, she frequently speaks on the topics of social media, branding, and publishing trends, and her commentary has been featured on websites like The Huffington Post, Little Pink Book, and NBC Chicago. For more info, visit www.KayePublicity.com.
Steve Sunu has come on board at Dark Horse Comics as a publicity coordinator.
In the past, Sunu has worked as a bookseller, a writer, and an editor. Throughout his career, he has held positions at Wizard magazine, Borders, the Harvard Book Store, and Comic Book Resources.
Sunu had this statement in the press release: “Dark Horse has consistently produced some of the most exciting books in the industry. I’m proud to be part of the Marketing team to help increase awareness of the incredible innovation and creativity that take place here every day.”
“Best,” from the Old Englishbetest (adjective), betost, betst (adverb), of Germanic origin; related to Dutch and German best, also “to better.”*
*To better your end-of-the-year book perusing considerations, here’s a list of our titles we were geeked to see on many of the year’s Best of 2014 lists, from non-fiction inner-city ethnographies to the taxonomies of beetle sheaths:
In the wake of the controversy (or welcomed interest, depending on your position) surrounding Patrick Modiano’s recent Nobel Prize in Literature, the AAUP circulated the hashtag #litintranslation, in order to promote those books published by university presses that attempt to overcome the dearth of literature in translation that has long acquiesced to a peculiar hegemony in American letters. In fact, Yale University Press already had plans to publish Modiano’s Suspended Sentences: Three Novellas this fall, as part of their Margellos World Republic of Letters series. A quick review of the tweets circulating under #litintranslation reveals an equally robust list of works brought into the English language by the university press community, including several by the University of Chicago Press. With that in mind, and on the heels of the Frankfurt Book Fair, we’re debuting our sales catalog Translations from Chicago, where among hundreds of storied works spanning the disciplines, you can find:
Americans tend to see negative campaign ads as just that: negative. Pundits, journalists, voters, and scholars frequently complain that such ads undermine elections and even democratic government itself. But John G. Geer here takes the opposite stance, arguing that when political candidates attack each other, raising doubts about each other’s views and qualifications, voters—and the democratic process—benefit.
In Defense of Negativity, Geer’s study of negative advertising in presidential campaigns from 1960 to 2004, asserts that the proliferating attack ads are far more likely than positive ads to focus on salient political issues, rather than politicians’ personal characteristics. Accordingly, the ads enrich the democratic process, providing voters with relevant and substantial information before they head to the polls.
An important and timely contribution to American political discourse, In Defense of Negativity concludes that if we want campaigns to grapple with relevant issues and address real problems, negative ads just might be the solution.
“Geer has set out to challenge the widely held belief that attack ads and negative campaigns are destroying democracy. Quite the opposite, he argues in his provocative new book: Negativity is good for you and for the political system. . . . In Defense of Negativity adds a new argument to the debate about America’s polarized politics, and in doing so it asserts that voters are less bothered by today’s partisan climate than many believe. If there are problems—and there are—Geer says it’s time to stop blaming it all on 30-second spots.”—Washington Post
Download your free copy of In Defense of Negativityhere.
Watch “The Bear,” one of those 30-second spots (less an attack ad, and more a foray into American surrrealism) produced for Ronald Reagan’s 1984 presidential campaign, below:
Wendy Davis is running for office. She also has a book out. We’ve seen this all before. No big deal, right?
No big deal except for the fact that this is Texas and the Democratic gubernatorial candidate’s memoir includes an abortion.
The last time Davis spoke personally about abortion (specifically, the ending of an ectopic pregnancy during an epic 13-hour filibuster over a new state abortion law) she was launched into the national spotlight.
Now, in Forgetting to be Afraid, Davis reveals that she terminated another pregnancy in which the fetus had developed a severe brain abnormality.
Supporters are applauding the revelation. “Having that kind of personal story around what is a divisive issue will help,” said a 35-year-old campaign volunteer to The Associated Press.
Republicans thinks so as well, and are taking steps to curb the promotion of the book: (more…)
I have just had the second book of my second series for children published. It feels like a bit of a milestone.
It's called Dragon Amber, and it's part of a multiple worlds adventure trilogy that started with Deep Amber last March. The cover's lovely, as all of them have been (thanks to David Wyatt), and there's nothing quite like holding the physical copy of your new book in your hands (or even clutching it to yourself as you do a little dance...!!) But it being the second book of the second series made me stop and think. It's my sixth book to be published. While I'm far from being 'established' (whatever that means), it certainly means I'm no longer a total newbie.
Which feels ever so slightly weird, as I still think of myself as a novice, pretending to be an author.
This business of feeling as if you're pretending seems to be something quite a few children's authors suffer from. (It may be related to the fact that very few of us are actually making enough money to feel writing is a 'proper' job, but that's another story...)
Anyway, I thought I'd take this opportunity - as someone who can no longer consider herself a novice - to try and sum up what I have learnt over the last three years of being part of the world of children's publishing.
1. First and foremost: other children's authors - whether well known, just published or still hopeful - are almost all lovely, warm, friendly and modest (and there are not many professions you'd be able to say that of.) Getting together with them, at festivals, conferences, retreats or book launches is a wonderfully affirming thing to do - and helps quite a lot with that feeling of being a bit of a fraud (I AM a children's writer - because I am accepted by all those other lovely children's writers!!)
2. I have almost no control over whether my books do well or not - so I should just relax and maybe cross my fingers occasionally! Being open to opportunities like school visit invites or festivals is fun and part of getting to know the publishing business - tweeting and face booking have been similarly good for getting to know other writer friends. And sometimes opportunities have come from that. But none of it has turned my book into a best-seller, and I don't think there's any magic way of doing so!
3. If I don't want to become mad and bitter, I have to try not to compare my book sales/prize nominations and festival invites with others - and must remember NOT to check the Amazon ranking of my books more than once a week! There is a great deal of luck and randomness in this business and then there are the unfathomable whims of publishers, reviewers and the reading public (Fifty Shades of Grey, anyone?). Generally (but not always: see aforementioned Fifty Shades) it's Very Good Books that get attention and prizes - equally there are thousands of Very Good Books that don't, and which category mine end up in (even if they were to be considered Very Good!) is mostly down to serendipity.
Oh - and marketing spend.
Which brings me to no. 4.
4. Publishers put serious time, energy and money behind only a select few of the books they publish. These books are plastered all over websites, magazines, 'hot new trends' lists, twitter, reviews, front window billing at Waterstones and W.H. Smiths.
In the absence of this push, you are lucky if your book ends up in a select few Waterstones branches, or garners an online review from a kind blogger. This is no reflection on the quality of your book - I've met too many other brilliant people with fabulous books who can't get them noticed to think it's entirely a meritocracy. Publishers are scrabbling to find the next Wimpy Kid or Hunger Games, and even they don't know what will trigger that response. Often it's something they have all roundly rejected as too dire to waste ink on (cough, Fifty Shades...) So they put money behind a few, and publish a hundred others in a kind of scattergun approach, in case any of them builds a following by chance. I've learned to treat having a book out as a bit like having bought a lottery ticket - whether it does well or not is as random as whether I win the jackpot or a £10 prize for three numbers.
5. So, finally, after a few years of trying to find the 'magic key' to making a go of this publishing lark, I've learned to just enjoy the moment: to hold my new book in my hands, and do a little jig at having pulled it off one more time. In the book I'm currently reading (The Blade Itself, by Joe Abercrombie) one of the characters is a Northman, hard, battle-scarred, always getting into more impossible fights. At the end of each one, he repeats, as a kind of mantra: 'Still alive, still alive...' I think I feel a bit like that about writing - 'Still there, still there...'
C.J. Busby writes funny fantasy adventures for ages 7 upwards. Her first book, Frogspell, was a Richard and Judy Children's Book Cub choice for 2012. The series is published in Canada by Scholastic and the UK by Templar and has been translated into German and Turkish. Deep Amber, the first of a new trilogy, was published in March 2014. The second instalment, Dragon Amber, came out on 1st September.
"A rift-hopping romp with great charm, wit and pace" Frances Hardinge.
(Kate Wilson of the wonderful Nosy Crow asked me to write a guest post for her on my experiences of self-publishing as a published author. For your info, she didn't know what those experiences were, so there was no direction or expectation. I have re-posted it here, with permission. Note that this is personal experience, not advice.)
Many writers, previously published or not, talk excitedly about why they enjoy self-publishing. Let me tell you why I don’t.
I’ve self-published (only as ebooks) three of my previously published YA novels and three adult non-fiction titles which hadn’t been published before. From these books I make a welcome income of around £250 a month – a figure that is remarkably constant. So, why have I not enjoyed it and why won’t I do it again?
It’s damned hard to sell fiction! (Over 90% of that £250 is from the non-fiction titles.) Publishers know this. They also know that high sales are not always about “quality”, which is precisely why very good novels can be rejected over and over. Non-fiction is easier because it’s easy to find your readers and for them to find your book. Take my book about writing a synopsis, for example; anyone looking for a book on writing a synopsis will Google “books on writing a synopsis” and, hey presto, Write a Great Synopsis appears. But if someone wants a novel, the chances of finding mine out of the available eleventy million are slim. This despite the fact that they had fab reviews and a few awards from their former lives.
But some novels do sell well. So why don’t mine? Because I do absolutely nothing to sell them. Why not? Well, this is the point. Several points.
First, time. I am too busy with other writing and public-speaking but, even if I weren’t, the necessary marketing takes far too long (for me) and goes on for too long after publication: the very time when I want to be writing another one. This is precisely why publishers tend only to work on publicity for a short while after publication: they have other books to work on. We may moan but it has to be like that – unless a book does phenomenally well at first, you have to keep working at selling it.
Second, I dislike the stuff I’d have to do to sell more books. Now, this is where you start leaping up and down saying, “But published authors have to do that, too!” Yes, and I do, but it’s different. When a publisher has invested money because they believe in your book, you obviously want to help them sell it. But when the only person who has actually committed any money is you, the selling part feels different. It’s a case of “I love my book so much that I published it – now you need to believe in me enough to buy it.” I can’t do it. Maybe I don’t believe in myself enough. Fine. I think books need more than the author believing in them. The author might be right and the book be fabulous, but I tend to be distrustful of strangers telling me they are wonderful so why should I expect others to believe me if I say I am? And I don’t want to spend time on forums just to sell more books.
Third, I love being part of a team. Yes, I’ve had my share of frustrating experiences in the course of 100 or so published books, but I enjoy the teamwork – even though I’m an introvert who loves working alone in a shed; I love the fact that other people put money and time and passion into selling my book. It gives me confidence and support. They won’t make money if they don’t sell my book and I still like and trust that model.
And I especially love that once I’ve written it and done my bit for the publicity machine and done the best I can for my book, I can let it go and write another.
See, I’m a writer, not a publisher. I may love control – the usual reason given for self-publishing – but I mostly want control over my words, not the rest. (That control, by the way, is never lost to a good editor, and I’ve been lucky with genius editors.) So, yes, I am pleased with the money I’ve earned from self-publishing and I love what I’ve learnt about the whole process, but now I’m going back to where I am happy to do battle for real control: my keyboard.
It’s all I want to do.
Nicola Morgan has written about 100 books, with half a dozen "traditional" publishers of various sizes from tiny to huge. She is a former chair of the Society of Authors in Scotland and advises hard-working writers on becoming and staying published, and on the marketing/publicity/events/behaviour that goes along with that. She has also just created BRAIN STICKS™, an original and huuuuuuge set of teaching resources about the brain and mental health.
0 Comments on Why I don't want to self-publish again as of 8/22/2014 2:11:00 AM
I had a message last night from a Facebook friend: 'There is a lovely little article in today's Sheffield Star, with a photo of you'. I couldn't think what it could be. Then she sent me a photo of the paper:
I went to visit High Storrs School a couple of weeks ago. It's only 10 minutes from where I live. I was do writing workshops with various Y7 and Y8 children. At lunchtime, they had an award ceremony for a short story competition and I gave out the prizes.
They asked me to bring something to read out afterwards. I chose the 'packing for the trip' section from Three Men in a Boat, because it always makes me laugh. Also though, it was the very reading that a visitor did for us, when I was in secondary school. He read it out at assembly. Can't remember who he was - that's long since faded away and gone to Memory Heaven - but I do remember giggling.
0 Comments on Spotted in The Sheffield Star... as of 7/25/2014 1:00:00 AM
The Fourth of July will be marked tomorrow, as usual, with barbecues and fireworks and displays of patriotic fervor.
This year, it will also be marked by the publication of a book that honors patriotism–and counts its costs–in a more somber way: Ashley Gilbertson’s Bedrooms of the Fallen. The book presents photographs of the bedrooms of forty soldiers–the number in a platoon–who died while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. The bedrooms, preserved by the families as memorials in honor of their lost loved ones, are a stark, heartbreaking reminder of the real pain and loss that war brings. As NPR’s The Two-Way put it, “Never have empty bedrooms looked so full.”
{Marine Corporal Christopher G. Scherer, 21, was killed by a sniper on July 21, 2007, in Karmah, Iraq. He was from East Northport, New York. His bedroom was photographed in February 2009.}
A moving essay by Gilbertson tells the story of his work on the project, of how he came to it after photographing the Iraq War, and about the experience of working with grieving families, gaining their trust and working to honor it. As Philip Gourevitch writes in his foreword, “The need to see America’s twenty-first-century war dead, and to make them seen–to give their absence presence–has consumed Ashley Gilbertson for much of the past decade.” With Bedrooms of the Fallen, he has made their loss visible, undeniable.
More images from the book are available on Time‘s Lightbox blog, and you can read Gourevitch’s essay on the New Yorker‘s site. Independence Day finds the United States near the end of its decade-plus engagement in Afghanistan, but even as the men and women serving there come home, thousands of others continue to serve all over the world. To quote Abraham Lincoln, “it is altogether fitting and proper” that we take a moment to honor them, and respect their service, on this holiday.
I was in the newly re-opened (and gorgeous) Manchester Central Library recently, doing a storytelling event for local schools. I was too busy to look round properly, but what I saw was impressive. They have managed to pull off a modern, hi-tech look, without losing the warmth and friendliness that you need in order to want to curl up with a book. I liked the way the old and the new are dovetailed too. They are very fortunate to have some fabulous old bits to work with:
The performance space was really quiet and just roomy enough without being cavernous for little people. I had a lovely session with sixty 4 - 5 year olds, then ate a rather yummy lunch with the senior librarian in the library's gleamy new cafe. On the way out, I spotted this:
I had quite forgotten that Manchester were using some of my Baby Goes Baaaaa! illustrations for their publicity. This is a detail from the 'D' page of the book: Baby goes Da-da! - I think it works really well.
0 Comments on Manchester Library Meets Baby Goes Baaaaa! as of 6/24/2014 4:47:00 AM
On Saturday, I'll be in London chairing a debate on authors, branding and publicity at the Society of Authors. It's an issue that bedevils writers now, but wasn't an issue twenty years ago. Brand? Isn't that applicable to soap and sausages rather than authors?
We're all used to the idea of 'brand' in retail. A brand is identified by a logo, it is a recognisable characterisation that manages our expectations. We know what 'Marks and Spencer' stands for, how that brand is different from, say, Aldi or Tesco. Do we want to apply it to authors? Many authors do write the same type of book, and readers know what to expect. Jacqueline Wilson had a 'brand' long before it was a thing. But do we really want to cultivate a brand?
Branding irons - heat them up in a fire, use them to brand your author
I have to say, I'm not 100% comfortable with the term 'branding'. Originally, a brand was a mark of identification and ownership burned into an animal or, more horrifically, a slave. These days, freeze-branding is a near-painless way of marking an animal. But still. Ownership? Cattle? Slaves? *shudder*
Nowadays publishers are keen on authors 'building their brand', preferably through social media, blogging, events, and so on. A cynical view of this would be that it saves the publisher some marketing effort. If the author writes only for one publisher, the two are in league and it's fine. Promoting the brand serves both equally. But what if the author has several or many publishers? The brand is then the author's own, it is not tied to a publisher. The publisher loses enthusiasm for the brand aspect of the author and wants you to build a brand for the series/book. (I'm the ultimate publisher-harlot and some of them don't care for my brand at all.)
Brand, of course, is an artificial construct. It's not the author's real personality, but the bit that's allowed out in public. When it was just created by our books, it didn't really need managing, but now we are on display in other ways, too - from Facebook to TV and radio, from blogs to Pinterest and Instagram - we need to keep a grip on it. It can be hard to imagine how our particular, personal 'brand' is seen from the outside. Building a brand, thoughtfully rather than by default, requires deciding who you are, who you want to be seen to be, and then creating that public image. To do it successfully, you have to do it consciously and deliberately. For many writers, that seems too calculating and perhaps even directly counter to the emotional honesty and openness that good writing demands. Building your brand is to ask Who do you think you are? And Who do you want people to think you are? Answer with caution. "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be," as Kurt Vonnegut said.
While a 'brand' might make your books more immediately recognisable, does it make it harder to step outside the brand and try something new? If as an author you always write (say) upbeat friendship novels for 8-11s but then want to try your hand at a gritty, hard-hitting teen novel, does your brand stand in your way? Is it a way of stifling your freedom to make life easy for the publisher? Or a way of making your life easier, too, by setting boundaries to what you will do and demand of yourself? Is it safe or constraining?
And what does brand mean to the people at the other end of the transaction - the readers, librarians, teachers and parents? If you have come to expect upbeat friendship novels from Fifi Ambergris, what do you think of her writing a gritty teen novel? Is it confusing, misleading, dangerous? Would you rather she changed her name to Amber Fifigris for those books to leave her brand intact with younger readers?
What do you think, as author, reader, librarian, publisher or whatever you are in the publishing-reading transaction?
Anne Rooney aka Stroppy Author Most recent publication: 'The Colours of the Day' in Daughters of Time, edited Mary Hoffman, Templar Publishing, 2014
0 Comments on Who do you think you are? by Anne Rooney as of 5/9/2014 2:46:00 AM
The book industry is like any other in the sense that selling and marketing your product — and, in essence, yourself — can often be the toughest part.
If you’re a unknown author working with a small publishing house (or self-publishing), partnering up with a brand that has a large following could help boost sales and get your name in the press. We got the scoop from several branding experts on how to choose the right partner:
Think outside the box and team up with a brand, retailer or expert who supplements your area of expertise. If you just wrote a book about the benefits of Pilates and the barre method, [Beth Feldman, co-founder of BeyondPR Group] suggests teaming up with Lululemon to do a book signing at their store or build a 10-city tour to appear in their stores and then promote yourself to local media. This begins with concocting a well-crafted strategy to share why you would add value to them via media exposure.
The full version of this article is exclusively available to Mediabistro AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, register now for as little as $55 a year for access to hundreds of articles like this one, discounts on Mediabistro seminars and workshops, and all sorts of other bonuses.
by Teri Terry
School one of ten...!
If you've got a book out soon and the words publicity tour have been mentioned by your publisher, if you're anything like me you were just a little terrified...
I mean, not just a school visit, but a whole week of them? and travelling? and packing? and author-imagining-long-list-of-things-that-could-go-wrong?
I'm just back from the publicity tour for
0 Comments on Top Ten Tips for book publicity tours! as of 3/10/2014 5:46:00 AM
Although some writers may cringe at the idea of having to speak in front of a crowd, it’s one of the most important ways authors can market their book. Public speaking may seem intimidating, but with the right preparation, the process can be painless:
Embrace any opportunities you have to speak to a group. If you write fiction, you may be asked to read excerpts or make speeches at book-signing events. If you’re a nonfiction writer, you may be invited to speak at gatherings pertinent to your topic of expertise. Book authors are required to speak constantly when they’re on tour. Even if the only crowd you ever address is your local writers’ group, knowing what you might face at your first speaking gig can relieve some of the tension you may be feeling.
The first thing you should do is research your audience. Knowing who you’re addressing can help you tailor your presentation. Also, never write out your speech word for word. Limit yourself to an outline as it will make you sound less rehearsed.
The full version of this article is exclusively available to Mediabistro AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, register now for as little as $55 a year for access to hundreds of articles like this one, discounts on Mediabistro seminars and workshops, and all sorts of other bonuses.
.jpg?picon=418)
Steve Sunu has come on board at Dark Horse Comics as a publicity coordinator.
Wendy Davis is running for office. She also has a book out. We’ve seen this all before. No big deal, right?.jpg?picon=1806)
The book industry is like any other in the sense that selling and marketing your product — and, in essence, yourself — can often be the toughest part.
The full version of this article is exclusively available to Mediabistro AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, 
