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As I've mentioned already, I spent much of the summer working on a large writing project, which is now online.  Over at PopMatters, you can read my essay "This is the Next World": The Stealth Futurism of Person of Interest, in which I discuss how an initially inauspicious high-concept procedural transformed, over the course of five seasons, into one of the most explicitly SFnal shows on TV, one

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The second part of my review of this year's Clarke shortlist is now online at Strange Horizons, covering Arcadia by Iain Pears, Europe at Midnight by Dave Hutchinson, and The Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafor.  You can find it here, and in case you haven't already read part 1, that's here.  The actual winner will be announced in London in a few hours, but as I write in the conclusion to the

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The first part of my mega-review of this year's Clarke Award-nominated novels appears today at Strange Horizons.  This is the fourth time that I've reviewed the entire shortlist, a tradition begun by Adam Roberts at Infinity Plus and carried on by Strange Horizons with rotating reviewers.  I'm sad to say that this was by far the least fun I've had reviewing the Clarke shortlist, not so much

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Today at Strange Horizons, I write about Russell T. Davies's adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream for the BBC.  It was a bit of a surprise to me that this film even existed--whatever promotion there was for it seems to have been swallowed up by the media blitz for the second season of The Hollow Crown.  And as I write in the review, this turns out to have been massively unfair,

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Hi All! As many of you know, I just finished a series on the building blocks of a novel, which dove deep into a metaphor comparing a novel to a city. We compared words to bricks, sentences to walls, paragraphs to buildings, scenes to streets, and chapters to neighborhoods.

Today, I want to acknowledge that sometimes a novel is not like a city at all.

I think most regular readers of this blog know that my debut novel, Ivory and Bone, releases tomorrow, June 7. These last few months leading up to the on-sale date have been a very exciting, sometimes terrifying, often exhausting time. Over the past few days—and especially today, on the eve of the launch—I’ve been forced to admit that there is another apt metaphor for a novel. In many ways—at least from my personal perspective—I’d have to admit that a novel is a lot like a child you’re sending out into the world.

We’ve all heard novels referred to as “book babies.” Here are three reasons I have to agree that writers’ books are like their children.

First, like a child, a novel has a mind of its own. If it doesn’t want to conform to your expectations of it, it simply won’t. You may want it to grow up to be a fast-paced thriller, when it might instead become a quiet psychological drama. Some things are within the author’s control, of course, (you can simply start over if things aren’t going well,) but just like with children, you  may find that letting them choose their own path can lead to amazing results. It can be maddening when things don’t go the way we intended them to with a manuscript, but just like kids, books tend to find the path they were meant to be on all along. (The author—like a parent—just needs to keep up!)

Second, when your book baby meets with rejection, it feels a little like someone has insulted your child. Every author receives a certain amount of rejection, but knowing that rejection is unavoidable and generally not personal doesn’t make it any easier to process. It hurts, even when you know it’s a part of publishing. When the book I wrote right before Ivory and Bone failed to find a publisher, I took it very hard. The characters in that book were incredibly real to me after I’d worked on the book for so long, and I felt like I’d let them down. Of course, the opposite holds true, too. Now that Ivory and Bone is almost here, I feel so happy and proud for my characters.

Third, when your book receives praise, it feels (at least to me,) like the praise is for this separate entity, rather than for you yourself. This is another way that a book is like a child. As a mother, I’m always proud and flattered when someone praises my child, and I feel like I can accept the praise graciously because it’s not really directed at me. In the same way, even though a good review of your book feels personal, it still feels separate and distinct from a direct compliment. You may have brought your book baby into the world, but it’s got a life of its own.

I’m extremely excited to be posting this on the eve of my book baby’s birth! Though I’ve said it here before, I can’t say it enough—thank you all so much for your support on my path to publication. I joined PubCrawl in early 2010, when it was still Let the Words Flow. This has been a long pregnancy—book babies take a long time to gestate—but it’s been amazing. Thank you all so much, and please check the acknowledgements at the back of Ivory and Bone for a special shout-out to all the readers of this blog!

What do you think? Are your books and manuscripts like your babies? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

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Even as we reel from yesterday's Hugo nominees and impatiently await tonight's Clarke nominees, Strange Horizons has published my review of Sofia Samatar's second novel The Winged Histories.  I wrote about Samatar's first novel, A Stranger in Olondria, a few years ago, and was blown away by the beauty of its language, the complexity of its worldbuilding, and the nuanced view it took of the epic

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Over at Strange Horizons, I review the second and third books in Ayize Jama-Everett's Liminal People series.  This was one of those cases where a book comes to you just when you need it the most.  As they've slowly taken over popular culture, I've found myself growing increasingly impatient with superhero stories, and with how the ones that show up on our screens choose to handle politics (see,

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There was a time when writers didn’t worry about branding. For book authors, branding was up to their publisher’s marketing department. After all, you were what you wrote: a poet, a children’s author, a nonfiction writer. And it wasn’t a lot different for freelance writers—a handful of articles in an assortment of newspapers and magazines [...]

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I’ve been meaning to write a detailed blog post about how to make a book trailer for years now, since I made one for my first novel, Fair Coin. So that was back in… 2012. Yikes!

This isn’t that post—not quite. Consider this more of an introductory overview of the process, and if people are interested, I will break the process down further in a series of subsequent posts to make a more comprehensive guide on tools and techniques and other resources.

Anatomy of a Book Trailer

So, you want a book trailer. The first question you have to ask yourself is: Do you need one? Opinions are split on whether they actually encourage people to buy books, even among marketing professionals; it’s difficult to measure those outcomes. Then again, it’s hard to say how much film trailers encourage (or discourage) people from heading to the theater. For a while it seemed like every book had a trailer, just because, but you certainly don’t need one to sell books, and you aren’t necessarily at a disadvantage without one. Schools and libraries sometimes show trailers to their teens, or help them make trailers for their favorite books, so there could be some value in making people aware that your book exists. And the very slick, very professional trailer that my current publisher, Adaptive Books, produced for The Silence of Six was shared widely, and many people commented that it made them want the book.

Maybe you just want a trailer because trailers are cool, or you have a neat idea for one, or you have time and money in excess. For me, the thought process was:

1. I know how to make a trailer myself, so why not?
2. I want to do everything I can to make my debut novel a success, so if there’s a chance a trailer can help, I’m gonna have one.
3. I have a fun idea for a trailer, and I really want to make it happen.

But you’ve decided, yes, there will be a book trailer. The next thing you should do is talk to your publicist to see what they might have planned. Some publishers will handle all that for the author, others will cheerfully wish you luck.

If you’re on your own, your next decision is a big one: Do you hire a professional to make your trailer, or do you make it yourself? You can make a trailer yourself even if you have zero video production experience, but if you want something lavish, something cinematic perhaps, you will probably need to get more people involved. A basic trailer could run you several hundred dollars, but if you’re planning to film this from scratch with actors and costumes and special effects, expect to spend much more than that. For now, let’s assume you have practically no budget, because you’re a writer, and you still have to buy swag (which should be a separate blog post). Would you believe you can make a decent trailer for $20 or less?

Here’s the basic stuff you may need in your book trailer, with some examples from the Fair Coin trailer, embedded below:

A concept

Do you want your trailer to have actors or video footage or a slideshow of images set to text or music? Personally, I don’t like trailers that have actors or even narration dramatizing scenes or passages from the book; I prefer getting a sense of the book’s tone and plot, which trailers are excellent at conveying. Fortunately those are much cheaper to produce as well.

Because Fair Coin is about a coin that grants wishes, I wanted to show someone flipping a coin. That should be easy, right?

Assets

To make a video, you need assets: video clips, images, sound clips, music, etc. You can find a lot of this for free, usually through a Creative Commons license or for a licensing fee, or you can of course record your own (which then requires, at minimum, a smartphone and at best, a video camera). Licensing fees can vary from a few dollars to hundreds of dollars. In a future post, I’ll point out some great places to get free or cheap music and stock photos.

It turns out that to capture a coin flip, you really need a high-speed camera, which is expensive — even to rent one for a couple of hours. High quality stock footage runs a few hundred dollars for just a thirty-second clip. But I lucked out: I found a perfect clip on YouTube and wrote to the creators for permission to use it. Since it was something they shot just to test their camera, they were happy to give it to me for free, and sent me high quality source video. I still had to tweak the color to what I wanted, but it cost me nothing! I got permission from Sam Weber, the artist who painted the cover for Fair Coin, to use it in the trailer and bookmarks, and he also sent me a high resolution file to work with, which I also tweaked subtly. (Check out Jenna’s eyes.) I couldn’t get permission for the music I wanted, but I found royalty-free music that I liked and paid $20 to license it. I got the sound effects for free. Total cost for assets: $20.

Editing Software

Even a very simple trailer, like a slideshow, requires editing software. I’ve made trailers in Windows Movie Maker, and there are some things it does very well, like filters, so I’ve returned to it even when I have access to fancier programs. So free software like Movie Maker and iMovie on Macs are very much an option, and you can use Audacity for easy audio mixing. I primarily use Adobe Premiere Elements, which is very affordable and offers a robust set of professional features, but you could also spring for Avid or Final Cut if you have the cash and a computer that can run them. I already had Adobe Premiere, so I’m calling that cost zero as well.

You’ll see a few simple visual effects in my trailer. The one I really wanted — the ripple effect — didn’t come with the version I owned, and it was kind of expensive to buy it so I ran a trial version on the clips that I wanted and saved them separately. Tricky, but free!

Total Cost: $20.

Then What?

To oversimplify things, you use the editing software to put all your assets together, then you output a video and upload it to YouTube or Vimeo or Facebook, or however you want to share it. In reality, even though I wasn’t paying someone to do the work for me, it did cost me around two days of my own time, which is also valuable. If I had been paying myself to work on the video at my usual freelance rates, I couldn’t have afforded it! But basically, I ended up with this:

When the sequel, Quantum Coin, came out, I was pretty sure I didn’t need a trailer, but I made one just on principle, and for the symmetry of it, and the process was very similar.

Let me know in the comments if you’d like to know more about making book trailers, and if you have any questions. Also, please share some of your favorite book trailers! Two of my favorites, which are fairly straightforward, are for A Wrinkle in Time (50th Anniversary) by Madeline L’Engle and Tempest by Julie Cross.

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A question I used to see a lot from aspiring writers when I was still working in publishing was Do I need a website? Do I need to get on Twitter/Facebook/Tumblr/Instagram/[insert social media platform]? What do agents and editors mean when they say “online presence”?

I won’t lie; whenever I received a submission from an agent, the first thing I did was Google that author. I wasn’t necessarily looking to see if the author had an enormous platform or following; I just wanted to get a sense of the person behind the words. For me, it was always the most helpful if the author had a personal website where I could go, read their bios, find their social media links, etc. Not having a professional website isn’t a deal-breaker, but these days, it would strike me as a little odd.

I’ve been coding and designing websites since I was in high school (does anyone else remember Geocities? No? Bueller? Bueller? Okay, I’m just old then.), so I’m pretty comfortable with this sort of thing, but I know this entire process bewilders a lot of people, so I thought I would write a tutorial for our readers (and some of our members!) to help them out.

This is a bit of a long post with a lot of images, so the rest is under the cut!

1. Pick a domain name.

A domain name is your address on the internet, as it were. Ours is publishingcrawl.com, but as an writer, it’s best to have a domain under the name you’re writing under. (For example: Mine is sjaejones.com because I am writing as S. Jae-Jones.) The first thing I would do is check to see if your name is available. The easiest way to do that is simply type yourname.com into your browser and see if anything turns up.

If your name is already taken, then you can add -writer or -books to the end of your name, or else try .net or .biz, although .com is probably best for search purposes.

2. Select a web hosting plan and register your domain.

Most web hosting services will register your first domain for free, and for the sake of simplicity, I would recommend you do it all at once.¹ Select your plan of choice. (For most writers who don’t expect heavy blog traffic, the most basic plans are sufficient. You can always upgrade later.) Register your new domain name with your host provider.

3. Install WordPress.

Okay, now here’s where things get a bit complicated. Think of a website as a piece of property: the host is the land itself and the domain is the address. If you want to live on that piece of land, you need to build a house.

If you know HTML, you could code that house yourself. (I’ve done so; it’s incredibly time-consuming and exhausting.) Or you could download and install a CMS, or Content Management System, like WordPress, Joomla, or similar. We at PubCrawl use WordPress (and I do for my own website as well).

Once you’ve set up your domain, you will prompted to set up a username and password for your host. Once you’ve done that, log in to access your Control Panel (usually called cPanel by most hosting services).

Once you’ve been logged in, at the top navigation bar, you will see cpanel. Clicking on that will lead you to your Control Panel, which will look something like this:

Bluehost and other providers will often provide a 1-step installation for WordPress and other CMS builders. Under Website Builders, click on the WordPress logo and you’ll be brought to a page that looks like this:

Start a brand new install, select your domain name, and Bluehost will do the work for you.² Set up your WordPress login with a username and password.

Once everything’s been installed, in order to access the backend of your website, type www.yourname.com/wp-admin/ and you’ll see this:

Fill in your username and password and that will take you to your Dashboard, which looks like this:

Ta-da! Now your website has been set up. Time to make it look pretty.

4. Select a theme to install on your website.

The default WordPress theme is actually pretty decent, but if you want to put your own personal stamp on your website, I would recommend browsing the WordPress themes gallery. There are a lot of themes you can choose, many of them for free. You can also hire a designer to make your website more personal at this point, but to be honest, a lot of the free themes at WordPress are clean and professional, so there isn’t a huge need to break your bank account.

5. Fill your website with content.

In your WordPress Dashboard, you’ll see an option on the lefthand navigation bar titled Pages. This is where you can create different pages for your website: an about page, information about your books, a blog, a contact page, etc. As an editor, I didn’t need all that much, just a place to contact you. Readers may like a lot more extra content, so include as much information about your book as you please!

That’s all for this post. Hope this was helpful for everyone who’s looking to set up a website and didn’t know where to start. If you have any further questions, leave them in the comments and I’ll try my best to answer, although each case will be different, of course. 

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In part one, we looked at book signings and other programs. But how do you pitch your program to a library?

Showcases: Some state and regional library associations run performer showcases, where local authors and performers who wish to present in libraries can share a brief taste of their programs (usually 10-15 minutes). Participating in a showcase is a great way to put your presentation in front of lots of librarian eyeballs (and sometimes school contacts as well). You will likely be presenting alongside magicians, mad scientists, and naturalists with adorable fuzzy creatures, so share the liveliest parts of your presentation!

No showcases in your area? Consider creating your own! Join forces with other authors, illustrators, or children’s performers and propose a free showcase session for your state or regional library conference. This is a win-win: you get to promote yourself, and the conference gets a free program. And of course, don’t forget to hand out bookmarks, postcards, or brochures with your contact and booking information!

What kind of program?: If you can tie your program into library initiatives, you will make it easier for librarians to say yes to booking you. Some major trends:

The Makerspace Movement: Providing hands-on spaces to create, with everything from 3-D printers and coding software to discarded books turned into art. This type of programming may be geared to children, teens, or adults. Check out this Library Journal article for an overview: http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2012/10/public-services/the-makings-of-maker-spaces-part-1-space-for-creation-not-just-consumption/

STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math): Public libraries are offering more programs with an explicit science focus, but they are also emphasizing the math, science, and technology elements found in traditional storytimes. This School Library Journal article gives a picture of what these programs look like: http://www.slj.com/2013/10/programs/full-steam-ahead-injecting-art-and-creativity-into-stem/#_

Early Literacy: This is not early reading – rather, it is the constellation of skills, such as print awareness, vocabulary knowledge, and the ability to apply real-world knowledge to a text, that prepares children for the tasks of reading and writing. Check out the American Library Association’s page on Early Literacy and Libraries for more information: http://www.ala.org/advocacy/literacy/earlyliteracy

A Word about Meeting Rooms: Library meeting rooms are often available for use by community groups. This can cause some confusion when writing organizations want to hold programs at the library. If you approach the library about “using the meeting room” for a program, you will likely be given the standard community group reservation policies, which often include a ban on selling anything during the program. However, if you approach the library requesting that it sponsor or co-sponsor a program, new doors are opened. When the library sponsors a program, book sales are usually allowed and the event will appear in the library’s publicity.

Partnering with Other Community Organizations: Bring extra value to your program by brainstorming ways to connect with schools, community groups, and local businesses. Erin Hagar, author of Julia Child: An Extraordinary Life in Words and Pictures (Duo Press) had a group of middle school students perform a skit about the famous chef at one of her signings. Find local businesses related to your book’s topic and ask them to help get the word out to their customers about your event, through print or social media. If you are traveling some distance for the event, offer a discount if the librarian helps connect you with local schools willing to host a presentation on the same day. Invite the local independent bookseller to sell books at your program. If you’re not sure where to start in contacting these local groups, ask your librarians – providing those resources is their job, after all!

Swag and Selling Books: The number of books you sell can vary wildly from library to library, and you can’t necessarily judge the effectiveness of the program by the number of books sold. Depending on the location, audience, and timing of your program, the audience may not be in the frame of mind to purchase a book. (Case in point: When my nonfiction book, Little Hands and Big Hands: Children and Adults Signing Together (Huron Street Press) came out, I did a mini-storytime featuring American Sign Language to promote it. In libraries where the program was scheduled in place of the regular weekly storytimes, I sold few books – often the parents would tell me that they hadn’t even brought their wallets, because they were in storytime-attendance mode.)

Make sure you have bookmarks or postcards to hand out to each attendee with information about your book and your website. That way, there is a chance that person may purchase the book later (or at least leave the bookmark on a restroom counter and someone else will see it!)

It’s important to clarify whether books can be sold during the event, and if so, who will be responsible for bringing and selling them. The Friends of the Library may be on hand to sell books, or the library may have a pre-existing relationship with a local independent bookseller.

If the library expects you to handle book sales, bring a friend or family member to handle sales so you can focus on signing, or contact a local bookseller yourself. Don’t forget to account for sales tax, and to report your direct sales as required by your state. The Small Business Association has a handy guide for collecting and reporting sales tax here: https://www.sba.gov/blogs/sales-tax-101-small-business-owners-and-online-retailers

Making the event go smoothly: Communication is key! Confirm the event in writing. If you set up the event with a central coordinator, then call the branch where you will be presenting a day or two before the program and find out who your in-person contact will be. Make sure that person knows when to expect you and has your cell phone number to contact you en route if necessary. This day-before call seems like a small thing, easy to overlook, but it is HUGE for creating rapport with your host and showing your professionalism.

During the event itself, be a good guest. Don’t be a diva, and communicate clearly about what you need for the program to go smoothly. Understand that your host may not be able to stay in the room the entire time because the library is short-staffed, or someone is vomiting in the children’s department, or there is a crisis at the circulation desk. (There’s always an adventure happening in a public library!)

Afterwards, send a thank you note to your host as well as to the contact person. Post pictures from the event on your website and social media and tag the library. (Do not post any photos that show faces of attendees unless you have their written permission!)

Keep a record of the staff you work with at each library, so that, when your next book comes out, you can send a personal note – and perhaps secure another invitation to present!

Other Ways to Connect With Public Libraries

Getting the library to carry your book: Most libraries have centralized Materials Selection specialists who develop the collection based on reviews, the library’s budget, and community needs. Even if your book is published by a major publisher and is reviewed in national journals, it’s a good idea to reach out to your local libraries and let them know that you live in the area.

If your book is published by a smaller press, or if you are self-published, then you may have a tougher time. Libraries rely on review sources such as Booklist, School Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly, and if you don’t have trade reviews to show them, they may not consider purchasing your book. Many libraries have established a process for local authors to submit one or more copies for the materials selectors to review.

Patrons can also request that the library carry certain books, and the more requests the library gets, the more likely it is to purchase the material. Enlist the aid of your supporters to make these requests at their local libraries.

Public libraries can be an author’s best friend! I hope these tips have given you some ideas on how to start connecting with libraries far and near.

Got more tips for working with libraries? Share them in the comments!

KATHY MACMILLAN is a writer, American Sign Language interpreter, librarian, founder of The Sweet Sixteens (www.thesweetsixteens.com) and avowed Hufflepuff. Her debut young adult novel, Sword and Verse, is an epic fantasy that explores questions of power and prejudice. Find her at www.kathymacmillan.com and on Twitter at @kathys_quill.

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By Candy Gourlay

Every year I help organise the highlight of my writing year: the SCBWI Conference for children's writers and illustrators in Winchester.

The irony of course is that I don't actually attend the conference. By being one of the organisers, my experience of the conference is that of sorting out the website, hustling behind the scenes, contributing to the programming, supporting the rest of the team, preparing panels, meeting and greeting on the day. But I get a huge kick out of watching something that was just a bunch of ideas turn into a successful reality.

Here I am emceeing the book launch. Thanks to Teri Terry for the photo. In the background celebrating their new books from left to right: Helen Moss, Tim Collins, Helen Peters, Ruth Fitzgerald, Janet Foxley and parrot.

This year, the title of the conference was: 'New Readers Ahoy! Creating Stories to Treasure' -- but I have to say, whatever name we give the conference, year after year, embedded under whatever we choose for the conference theme, is our true objective: How To Be Discovered.

We are all hoping to be discovered.

The unpublished are hoping to find the inspiration and information that would lead to their first book deal. Even people who have been discovered, already been published, are continuously on the lookout for ways to stand out from all the other books out there. They want to be discovered by new publishers, by people who invite authors to festivals, by journalists, by teachers who might invite them to visit schools. Self-published folk are looking for the same thing but must struggle against bias and access to distribution.

What's the good of creating stories to treasure if nobody can find our work?

Over and over again, we are told: it's no longer enough to just write well (or 'Dance good' as publisher keynote David Fickling put it). We people who make the stories have to help get it out there too. But how?

Here are a few take-aways from the conference on how to be discovered plus some of my own tips:

1. Know the game. Attending a conference will bring home to you the enormity of the journey ahead of you. You will realise that you've got to raise your game. You will meet vast numbers of aspiring authors, just as talented as you, who are also waiting to be discovered. Should you quit or carry on?

2. Discover each other. If you decide not to quit, seize the opportunity to enjoy the company of these like-minded people. No, don't just socialise. Discover each other. The friends I have made at every conference are the ones who have held me up when I've been low and cheered me on whenever I've had a success.

3. Meet gatekeepers face to face. There are many ways to draw attention to yourself on social media. You can participate in hashtags, tag famous people into interacting with you, retweet, link etc. Unfortunately there are a gazillion other people doing the same thing. So there's nothing like meeting someone face to face. Finding opportunities to meet people in real time teaches you how to conduct yourself in a professional way. You also very quickly discover that agents, publishers and editors are human beings. Seeing people as human is always a good strategy.

4. You've probably already got a platform. How do I build a platform? That's what everyone is asking - whether published, unpublished, self-published. You've probably already got one. Take a sheet of paper and make a list. You have a platform in your immediate family and friends. These are guaranteed sales. You probably have other platforms you haven't thought about before. Professional circles, perhaps. Friends around a special interest. The question is: how do you get these friends and acquaintances to not only buy your book but to persuade others to do so?

5. Know your influencers. Should I build a platform from scratch? Don't. You have better things to do with your time -- like, for example, write another book. Rather than knocking on the doors of strangers (this is what it feels like for non-bloggers who are forced to start a blog so that they can 'build a platform'), it is better to focus on influencers -- in children's books, these are librarians, teachers, booksellers. Can you get influencers to love your book? Can you get them to persuade others to read it?

6.You're not a salesman, you're an author. Promoting your book must be a lot more subtle than shouting 'BUY MY BOOK!' on social media. You're an author. You're shinier than a salesman. What a turn off if Meryl Streep turned up at your door saying, 'Watch my movie!' Don't be that kind of self-promoter. You are about STORY so craft your story ... the story you are going to tell in radio interviews, newspaper articles, festivals, school events. Read my piece Being Human is the Best Kind of Marketing.

7. Engage with communities. Communities are groups driven by shared interests. If your book has a theme or focus that drives a community, this can be a chance to engage in with interested people in a meaningful way. The quality of your participation may lead them to your book. Book promoter Tim Grahl advises authors to be "relentlessly helpful".  People respond when they are rewarded with things they want. So. What do people in your communities want?

8. Make a plan. Quoting Grahl again: "Successful  (book) launches are not random events. Authors don’t throw together a few Facebook updates and blog posts the night before, then watch their rankings skyrocket the next day." Think things through. Don't just set up a blog tour without understanding how these things work because your publisher told you to. Ask yourself, why am I doing this? What is my pay off? Can I measure it? How sustainable is this plan?

8. Be findable. It still surprises me to discover authors who haven't set up websites or at least got a presence on social media. Yes, the internet and social media can be all pervasive and time-sucking. But we are LUCKY to live in a world where we have the power to put ourselves into the public eye without depending on the vagaries of fame. Are you findable? Maintaining your own presence on the web means you control your story. If you don't have a website or run your own social media accounts, you are in danger of handing your story to others to tell. And you will have no control over what they say.

9. Be useful. The truth is people are just interested in themselves and in their own needs. They're not particularly interested in you (unless you are famous, and then they want to know everything about you - but that's for their own entertainment not so you can sell more books). People only find you if they need something from you. If you're a children's author, you will have child readers trawling your website if you can help them with their homework. Teachers will be looking for teaching resources. Librarians might be looking for reading lists. If people find you, will they get what they're looking for? Be useful.

10. Be amazing. Ultimately of course, you've got to make something amazing to be discovered. Something people really really want. Nobody was ever discovered that did nothing. So make sure you do that. Write the best book you can. Be the best author you can be. Be amazing.

Candy's books are Shine and Tall Story. It's Christmas soon. Hint. Hint.

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I’ve been lucky to experience public libraries from both sides of the reference desk: as a Children’s Services Supervisor at Carroll County (MD) Public Library (where I still work as a substitute), and also for thirteen years as an American Sign Language storyteller performing in libraries up and down the East Coast. As I gear up to promote my YA debut Sword and Verse (HarperTeen, January 19, 2016), I’m putting everything I’ve learned to good use—and thought maybe other authors could benefit from these tips too.

How Public Libraries are Structured

Public libraries come in all different sizes and shapes. Some are part of a state or local government. Some are independent entities. In my home state of Maryland, most public libraries exist within county systems of central headquarters administering multiple branches. In some places, libraries function as individual units, and multiple independent libraries may serve overlapping geographic areas.

The first step in connecting with libraries is to figure out the structure—that will give you an idea about where collection and programming decisions are made. Front-line librarians may need to direct you to higher-ups for decisions about programming and whether the library will carry your book. Some branch managers or department heads may be able to schedule a program for their branches, but you’d need to connect with a systemwide coordinator to get into the other branches. You can find directories online by searching for your state library or state library association. Or just call the library and ask – most librarians will be happy to help!

Book Signings and Other Programs

While your publisher may set up some appearances, most authors cannot count on this. It’s definitely in your best interest to make contact yourself.

To charge or not to charge: It’s up to you whether you are willing to make appearances for free or charge for them, but one thing is certain: public libraries LOVE free programs. They routinely face budget constraints. Consider the type of program you are offering. Will you be doing a promotional reading/Q&A/signing? A lower cost or free program might be appropriate. If you’re offering something more substantial, like a class or workshop, you should absolutely and unapologetically charge for your time.

Library Friends Groups: Many libraries have Friends groups that provide program funding and volunteers to help out at programs. The programs themselves are usually booked by the library staff. If you have a contact in a library Friends group, ask him or her to suggest you as a presenter!

Publicity Lead Time: Libraries generally have a long lead time—much longer than bookstores or schools—for scheduling events. The deadline is usually about 3 months before the event, and some require publicity information for all summer programs to be submitted by December 31 of the previous year. So contact early and think ahead!

Summer Reading Program: Summer reading is HUGE—it’s the busiest time of year, and most libraries do much more programming in the summer than the rest of the year. That’s because most public libraries run reading incentive programs for preschoolers, school age kids, teens, and adults, with prizes ranging from coupons and local business gift certificates to chances to win iPads and Kindles. Librarians spend many spring days in local schools talking up books and the summer reading program. Most libraries also have larger budgets for summer programming. So if you want to pitch a workshop or other paid program, summer is a good bet.

Many libraries throughout the U.S. participate in the Collaborative Summer Reading Program (http://www.cslpreads.org), a consortium of shared thematic summer reading materials for all ages. The themes for the next two years are available on the site.

Upcoming themes are:

2016: wellness, fitness, and sports

2017: architecture, building, construction

If your book ties in to one of these themes, you’re golden! But if it doesn’t, think about how you can make your presentation relate to the theme. For example, could you talk about the architecture of your plot and give your presentation a catchy title to match? I guarantee that will catch the interest of program schedulers. Tying your presentation to the summer reading theme will also allow you to pitch that program to multiple libraries that follow the collaborative theme.

Public libraries can be an author’s best friend! I hope these tips have given you some ideas on how to start connecting with libraries far and near. I’ll be back on PubCrawl on November 30th to share more advice on things like planning a program and getting the library to carry your book.

Got more tips for working with libraries? Share them in the comments!

 

KATHY MACMILLAN is a writer, American Sign Language interpreter, librarian, founder of The Sweet Sixteens (www.thesweetsixteens.com) and avowed Hufflepuff. Her debut young adult novel, Sword and Verse, is an epic fantasy that explores questions of power and prejudice. Find her at www.kathymacmillan.com and on Twitter at @kathys_quill.

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This week, JJ and Kelly talk to Mallory Hayes, a book publicist! She answers a few questions about publicity and gives some advice. Also, once again, EVERYTHING IS STILL HAMILTON. Stay tuned to the end for bloopers where Mallory and JJ attempt—very poorly—to rap.

Show Notes (TL;DL)

• The difference between marketing and publicity is that marketing is coverage you pay for whereas publicity is coverage you don’t pay for (e.g. ads fall under marketing, pitching for reviews in publication is publicity)
• Publicists have media contacts that an author may or may not have, and can leverage their contacts to get their authors more or better exposure.
• We covered some promotional stuff in last week’s podcast!
• When in doubt, ASK! Publicity can differ from imprint to imprint, house to house, publisher to publisher. You never know until you ask.
• Promotion/publicity generally starts about 6 months before publication with ARCs or galleys going out, ramping up as you get closer and closer to publication. Don’t start too soon, or else people will forget.
• The number one thing you should not do: respond to reviews. Just…don’t do it.

What We’re Reading/Books Discussed

• If Hermione Were the Main Character of Harry Potter (A.K.A. Hermione Granger and the Goddamn Patriarchy)
• A Harry Potter Where Hermione Doesn’t Do Anyone’s Homework for Them at The Toast
• Carry On by Rainbow Rowell
• Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen
• Big Magic, The Signature of All Things, and Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
• Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
• On Writing by Stephen King
• Wonderbook by Jeff Vandermeer (which Sooz recommended on PubCrawl!)
• Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
• Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith (A.K.A. J.K. Rowling)
• The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
• The Little Stranger, Tipping the Velvet, and Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

Creative Endeavors

• Mallory is writing a YA novel!
• Kelly and JJ are gearing up for NaNoWriMo (add us at bookishchick and sjaejones, respectively)

Some more NaNoWriMo tips

• EVERYTHING CAN BE FIXED.
• Fixing is easier than creating from scratch.
• Write and DON’T LOOK BACK, DON’T LOOK BACK.

Off-Menu Recommendations

• Chef
• Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries
• The X-Files
• Amadeus
• YES. HAMILTON. AGAIN.

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This week, Kelly and JJ explain what happens after you get published, including print formats, the life cycle of a book, and publicity and promotion. Plus, a NaNoWriMo pep talk!

Show Notes

• A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing: Remainders by J. A. Konrath
• What Are Remainders? by Rachelle Gardner
• Self-Promo and Marketing Materials That Work by Erin Bowman
• Do You Have to Say “Yes” to Everything? Sherlocks v. Watsons by Stacey Lee and Stephanie Garber
• Making the Most of Social Media Networks as a Writer by Erin Bowman
• Exciting New York Times Bestseller List Changes Mean Your Favorite New YA Books Are About To Get More Attention at Bustle
• The Times it is a-changing, part deus by Michael Bourret

We’ve written quite a few posts on the topics of promotion, self-promotion, and social media here at PubCrawl, so browse at your convenience!

TL;DL Version

• There are different print formats: hardcover, trade paperback, and mass market.
• Books can get remaindered, which means that the publisher is selling off the remaining stock of a title at a loss to make room at their warehouses for new titles. This does not necessarily mean your book is going out of print.
• The best way to promote books is to make personal connections, i.e. DON’T (solely) BE A SHILL FOR YOUR OWN WORK.
• The New York Times bestseller list is…complicated.

Creative Endeavors

Both Kelly and JJ are doing NaNoWriMo this year! Add us as writing buddies and keep us accountable! We are bookishchick and sjaejones, respectively.

Some NaNoWriMo tips

JJ won NaNoWriMo 13, and then went on to sell that novel, so she feels she’s got a leg to stand on. Some tips and links:

• What should you write about? Anything you want, but if you’re stuck for plot, retelling something can help!
• Pick a story with a small element of “wish fulfillment”. No judgement! Writing from a place of subconscious desire really helps you with word count.
• The Big Idea: How to Turn an Idea into a Book (a post I wrote about finding what to write about)
• More posts on Ideas on PubCrawl!

Books Discussed/What We’re Reading

• Girl with the Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
• Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo (on audio)
• The Rose Society by Marie Lu
• Carry On by Rainbow Rowell
• The Weight of Feathers by Anna-Marie McLemore
• The Burning Sky and The Perilous Sea by Sherry Thomas
• The works of Courtney Milan
• The Raider by Jude Deveraux
• For My Lady’s Heart, Shadowheart, and The Shadow and the Star by Laura Kinsale
• Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase
• Again, Georgette Heyer!
• The works of Sarah MacLean (the series JJ keeps calling Fallen Angels but is actually called Rules of Scoundrels)

Off-Menu Recommendations

• Secret Garden, Enchanted Forest, and Lost Ocean by Johanna Basford (grown-up coloring books!)
• Dear Bitches, Smart Authors podcast
• Girls Next Door webcomic by Pika-la-Cynique
• And as per usual, EVERYTHING IS STILL HAMILTON. Both Kelly and JJ are loving “Right Hand Man” at the moment.

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By Nick Cross

Whether you’re traditionally published, self-published or still trying, the pressure to promote yourself has never been greater. We’re exhorted to “get out there and build a platform” via social media and word of mouth. But while some authors manage this transition gracefully, there are others who undergo a Jekyll and Hyde transformation, turning into publicity-hungry monsters.
Read more »

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Over at Strange Horizons, I review Rachel Hartman's Shadow Scale, the sequel to Seraphina, one of my favorite books of 2013.  One of the things that most impressed me about Seraphina was how it managed to juggle so many characters, plotlines, and worldbuilding details without ever seeming overstuffed or rushed.  Shadow Scale doesn't quite manage that trick--it's longer, more episodic, and less

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Today at Strange Horizons, I review Zen Cho's Crawford-winning short story collection Spirits Abroad.  This is something of a milestone for me--the first review I've had published in Strange Horizons since stepping down as a reviews editor.  It's also a welcome return to writing full-length book reviews, and for both of those occasions I couldn't have chosen a better subject with which to mark

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Over at Strange Horizons, I review the Tom Cruise time travel movie Edge of Tomorrow, a film that I thought was just terrible but which seems to be getting good reviews from all other quarters, which I honestly find quite baffling.  It's starting to feel a little like being the only reviewer not blown away by Looper, but where Looper had some genuine strong points (not least, recognizing that

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As I say at the beginning of my review of Korean director Bong Joon-Ho's first English-language film, if you're like me then the first thing you ever heard about Snowpiercer was that it was in danger of being chopped down and dumbed down by its distributors for the sake of English-speaking audiences.  And then you were probably incensed, not only because you're fully capable of watching a

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When I introduced the Short Fiction Snapshot series at Strange Horizons, I noted that it wasn't intended just for positive reviews.  Reviewing short fiction at essay length can mean reviewing it negatively as well, and in today's installment I give the series's first negative--or at least mixed--review to Ted Chiang's "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling," from Subterranean Online.  Chiang is

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Over at Strange Horizons, I review Helene Wecker's debut The Golem and the Jinni, in which the titular magical creatures meet in early 20th century New York.  Though there are aspects of the novel that I enjoyed, it ended up making me question its very choice of genre, and my review discusses the way in which magic as a metaphor for mundane realities can end up being used as a crutch to shore up

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My review of Eleanor Arnason's new collection Big Mama Stories appears today at Strange Horizons.  I've been a fan of Arnason's short fiction for more than a decade, since reading "Knapsack Poems"--still, to my mind, one of the finest short stories in the field--so a chance to review more of her stories seemed too good to pass up.  In Big Mama Stories, Arnason tries to invent a folk figure for

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If you haven't yet discovered the group blog Crooked Timber's book seminars, in which several participants are invited to write essays about a certain book, you're in for a treat.  Previous seminar subjects include Francis Spufford's Red Plenty, China Miéville's Iron Council, and Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.  The latest seminar focuses on Felix Gilman's duology The

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This evening will see the announcement of the winner of the 2013 Clarke Award, after the more than normally contentious response to this year's shortlist.  At Strange Horizons, I take on the traditional task of reviewing the shortlist (in two parts)--for the first time since 2008, which means I've had five years to forget how exhausting a task this is, but also how much fun.  At the Strange

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