Publicity and Privacy - How Much is Too Much?

by Janis Patterson

The hardest thing about blogging regularly is coming up with an idea for a post. After the basic premise is secure, writing the post is a breeze – and usually takes no more than half the time. But coming up with that idea…

I’ve blogged about technique until I feel I should hand the most faithful of my readers a degree of some sort and about my personal life until, being a very private person, I feel half naked. Besides, I really don’t think that people are or even should be interested in the cute things my animals do or the new curtains I’m putting in the guest room, what I’m cooking for supper that night or my political/religious beliefs. While such things affect my writing, they should not affect my books, and my books are the connection with readers – not my supper plans or curtain colors.

I truly do not understand the need some readers feel to know the minutiae of a writer’s personal life. While I admit to a vague curiosity about if my favorites are married, and in what part of the country they live, and the most general of information, none of it is necessary to my enjoyment of their books – or really any of my business. Their books are the connection between us – not the color of their drapes or dinner plans, to continue my rather tired example.

I find, though, that I am in the minority. Far too many readers today feel entitled to know the daily details of a writer’s life, as if they were next door neighbors or long time friends and the only reason they aren’t welcome to come over every morning for coffee is distance. As writers we are encouraged if not demanded to befriend our readers, interact with them, share with them and no one ever seems to realize that the more time we spend befriending and interacting and sharing with them is time we are not spending writing the next book. Ah, but, says the entitled reader, that’s for everyone else – not for them.

So is it the books they like, or being ‘intimate’ with a writer? I’m afraid it’s what we in the talent industry (I used to work in an actors’ agency) the ‘stardust factor’ – the belief that by being close to someone even semi-famous some of their fame and glamour sprinkles down on them. (I can hear all you writers chortling at the concept of writing being glamorous!) Of course, this doesn’t apply to everyone – I have made several dear friends who began as fans, but in every case it is an organic relationship that grew naturally and not something deliberately sought.

Maybe my insistence on a certain level of privacy and distaste of feigning a relationship that doesn’t really exist is why I’m not as popular as I think I should be. Or perhaps it’s just that I was raised with the belief that putting oneself forward constantly saying “look at me look at me” is vulgar. Either way, so be it. If my animals and curtain colors and dinner plans are more important to readers than my books I pity them.

Blurbs, Excerpts and Other Annoyances

by Janis Patterson

I’ve said many times the bane of my life is doing publicity. From the time I was nine years old I grew up working in my parents’ advertising agency where creating ads and placing them internationally was an everyday occurrence. I know how to do publicity. I can write a press release that can sell a thousand widgets. I can do a visual that is pure poetry. I just hate it, especially when one doesn’t have an adequate budget – or even much of a budget at all! Even worse is the fact that I was raised in a very old-fashioned manner, meaning that one does not put oneself forward, that is it vulgar to stand up and say ‘Look at me, look at me!’ My family was not quite so primitive as to believe that a lady’s name appeared in the newspaper only three times in her life – birth, marriage, death – but to blow one’s own horn was both crass and cheap.

Sometimes our earliest lessons are the hardest to unlearn.

Which brings me to blurbs. And their bigger cousin, the excerpt. Lots of places take blurbs and excerpts on certain publicity days. Everyone knows you need an excerpt on your website. What ‘everyone’ does not tell you is how we are supposed to take our complex, multi-character, multi-plot book and boil it down to 250-300 words that have any kind of clarity or appeal. Some of us cannot even say ‘good morning’ in 250-300 words!

And as for excerpts - ! Same problem,  just longer. You’re supposed to have a pithy, intriguing scene that will so enchant someone that they will immediately want to buy the book – all in about 1,000 words or less. Trouble is, in my books at least, intriguing scenes are not perfect little capsules. The action is ongoing and interlaced, not chopped up into precise soundbites. And by action, I mean the story – not car explosions and shootings and fistfights. Though all of those do happen occasionally in some of my books…

For that matter, how can you take a slice out of a book and have someone know what’s going on without any backstory or knowledge of the characters? In the excerpt John and Mary are talking – or fighting – or making love. Who are John and Mary? Friends? Lovers? Foes? What is their relationship? Do they have a backstory? What outside forces are acting on them? To get all that information into an excerpt brings it perilously close to an info dump.

Do you get the idea I don’t like either blurbs or excerpts?

On the other hand, I don’t know of any other way to get any attention for one particular book out of the bazillions that are flying around out there. No one book will please everyone. Some books please more people than others. How to get a reader to pick up and buy my – or your – book when there is such an incredible choice out there is a daunting if not downright impossible task.

And I don’t have any better answers. If I did, I’d be both smart and rich.

Now, if you will please excuse me, I have a blurb to write and some excerpts to choose. Darn it.

I'd Rather Be Writing...

by Janis Patterson

I’ve been happily self-publishing for a while, and love the sense of control it gives me over my books. There are few greater feelings than seeing a book which you have written, gone through multiple editing rounds with, had final say over the cover and worked with your formatter coalesce into a real book that goes out for sale and is the equal of any book published by anyone anywhere.

There are few worse feelings than to realize now you have to publicize the book. Of course, this is not a problem specific to self-published authors. Over the past few decades every publisher has pushed more and more of the publicity chores off onto the authors until, unless one is a mega-best-seller, they do little more than list the books in some catalogues. The more unknown you are, the more likely it is you will disappear, which means as an author you are pretty much responsible for your own publicity.

I hate doing publicity. I would rather write two or three books than do the publicity on one. Unfortunately, I cannot afford a publicist, though I dream of having one. It’s the same with book signings – I love doing them; it’s almost like having a literary salon. But… there is the hassle of setting them up, and there are so few places now who will host them unless you pay them money for the privilege of doing so. Unless, of course, you are one of those mega-best-sellers. Them that has, gets!

So – I know what I must do.

A KILLING AT EL KAB is now on pre-order at Amazon for the bargain price of $2.99. It will go up to the regular price of $4.99 on 20^th March, the official release day. There will be a paperback, but that will be in a little while.

Bet you saw that coming, didn’t you?

Holiday? Huh?

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

By the time you read this, the Labor Day holiday will be over, and I say thank Goodness!

Whoever started the canard that Holidays were for a holiday, a respite from work? I work harder on a designated Holiday than just about any other day. Like this last weekend – THE EGYPTIAN FILE officially released on the 30^th, so there was all the attendant announcement publicity to do.

A digression - WHY does each book/readers site have different rules on publicity? Different days; different things accepted. Some will accept a post any day; some allow them only on certain days or on one specific day. Some will take only a simple announcement; some want everything – blurb, excerpt, links, cover, websites, everything but your blood type. Some take links, some don't. Some take cover shots, some don't. Some want blurbs, some don't. Some want excerpts, some don't. All seem to want something different in the subject line. Why don't they get together and make one set of rules for all that will be easier for writers and readers both?

Back to holidays. As I said, doing the basic release announcements takes a great deal of time and attention. Plus, The Husband is home, which at the least means more cooking. Plus, we're redoing the garage. The actual hammer-and-nails remodeling is done (thank Goodness, and before there was physical violence) but now we must clean out our various storage rooms and decide what to keep and what to give away. Worse yet, it seems that we each regard our own stuff as precious (mine is mostly antiques, by the way) and the other's as simply stuff, or worse, junk.

My head had barely lifted off the pillow on Saturday before The Husband began prattling about Let's Work On The Garage This Weekend. (When he asked me early in the summer what I wanted for my birthday, I told him two whole weeks in which he neither said nor wrote the word 'garage.' Instead I got a trip to Vegas and a huge kunzite ring. Sigh.) Of course, we were to start working right after I fixed breakfast. Normally cooked breakfasts are reserved for Sundays.

It's late summer in Texas, and ten minutes after dawn the sky is on 'Broil.' Needless to say, our garage is not air-conditioned. Neither are the storage rooms, and neither is our ancient but still (barely) running pickup. I keep telling myself I'd be paying money to use a sauna in some health club to be just as hot. It doesn't help.

The Husband doesn't seem to understand that when I am sitting in a reasonably cool room (who can afford to keep a room truly comfortable with today's abominably astronomical electric rates?) typing on a computer that I am truly working. Believe me, I am. I have blogs to write. I have release publicity to do. I have publicity on previous releases to do. I have future releases to get ready for my formatter and cover artist. And sometime – I don't know really when – I have to write on the next book, whose deadline is galloping steadily closer.

Thank Goodness tomorrow is Tuesday and his job will once more devour The Husband for the better part of the day. Don't get me wrong – I love him, he is the most wonderful man I have ever known and I love being with him, but he does have a fixation. Garage, garage, garage... I'm even coming to hate the sound of the word. I do love being with him. I will love it even more once the garage is finished.

We did work most of the weekend and got a fair amount done. At this rate we should have the job completed just when the weather finally gets cool enough to be outside without my becoming a fountain of perspiration. I do, though, have the dreadful premonition that when that day occurs his repetitive vocabulary will evolve from 'Garage' into 'Yard.' Help me...

Holiday? Phooey.

UPDATE

This fortnight's release is THE EGYPTIAN FILE, a contemporary romantic adventure which takes place in my beloved Egypt. Like THE JERUSALEM CONNECTION, my 30 July release, THE EGYPTIAN FILE is a brand new book, not a backlist rerelease.

I got the idea for THE EGYPTIAN FILE during my last visit to Egypt and it would not leave me alone until I wrote it. Luckily I was blessed with the research help of two good friends, Dr. Stephen Harvey (perhaps the world's most acknowledged authority on Ahmose I) and Dr. Dirk Huyge (Director of the Belgian Archaeological Mission to El Kab). They were both most generous with their time and information, and Dr. Huyge even allowed me to add a tomb to the El Kab site – mainly because things go on in that tomb that should never go on in a real one!

THE EGYPTIAN FILE tells the story of Melissa Warrender, who is sent by a telephone call - which may or may not have come from her dead father - to retrieve a mysterious file in Cairo. Others who are willing to kill for it want the file as well, and Melissa's only ally is a handsome Cairo cabby who may not be what he seems. As they flee across Egypt they know they must translate the cryptic message in the file if they are to survive. An unimaginable treasure is at stake if they can live to find it.

The Top 8 Ways of Drawing Traffic!

by Kaye George

I think a LOT of people have blogs. In fact, this site (http://snitchim.com/how-many-blogs-are-there/) has gathered the following facts as of April 2013.

Tumblr, 101.7 million

Wordpress, 63 million

Livejournal, 62.6 million

Weebly, 12 million

Blogster, 582,754

Wow. Just wow. This makes me feel good that anyone at all ever visits this blog, or my solo one.

What makes a person visit a blog? Probably not an announcement of a new book, or even books on sale, unless that person is a big fan. In that case, they probably already know what you have coming out from your newsletter or online posts.

Probably not pictures of kittens or puppies on Facebook. Those get a lot of likes and some shares, but don’t make people think, Gosh, I’ll bet I should visit her blog.

This place lists some ways to get people interested in visiting your blog:

https://medium.com/adventures-in-consumer-technology/a495dfb58367

I’ll admit, I don’t understand #6. But I’m trying #3 today, as a scientific experiment. Here goes!

Publishing and Other Perils - A Rant

             In the greatly lamented and only partially mythic ‘Golden Era’ of publishing printing books was a gentlemen’s game. The publishing houses were primarily large and privately owned by individual gentlemen rather than omnivorous multi-national corporations. These companies were actually interested in books and belles lettres. They read things submitted by writers as well as by agents and when they found a writer they liked, they worked to build his career, finding them editors who understood their voice, dealing with bookstores for good placement and arranging publicity. They took care of all the mechanical necessities and even sometimes – if they really liked the writer’s work – gave him a second chance if the current release didn’t reach their projected sales. Paying an advance was standard practice. In those warmly-thought-of days, a writer’s job was writing.

     Fast forward to today. Ah, how the business has changed. There are still a lot of different publishing line names on the spines of books, but most are controlled by the Big Five publishing houses, which just a short time ago was the Big Six. During the corporate feeding frenzy of the 80s nearly all the mid-sized independent publishing houses were absorbed – willingly or not – into the current monolithic, corporation-controlled houses, most of which go about selling books with the same techniques and artistic sensitivity as they use to sell widgets or shoes or hand tools.

     It is difficult if not impossible to approach any of the large paper publishing houses without an agent. As they are now the ‘first readers’ and arguably the arbiters for what will be seen, too many agents have begun to regard themselves as the center of the industry… and placing their bottom line over the needs of the writer, the publisher and the reading public. In a devil’s bargain with agents, publishers have been making their contracts more and more friendly to their own bottom line and to further this end making them less and less comprehensible. The writer, without whom there would not be an industry at all, always seems to come at the bottom of the pile.

     There are small and electronic publishers who do read unsolicited/unagented manuscripts, but in an alarming twist many of them are refusing even to look at a manuscript unless it is formatted to their own exacting specifications. Presumably this is so if they do contract the book, they can put it straight into production without having to bother with any typesetters or formatters. Since when did formatting become a writer’s responsibility? And most especially as a prerequisite for submission?

     Also many publishing companies ask in their submission requirements “What platform do you have for publicity? What kind of a marketing plan do you intend to implement?” Apparently it’s not enough for the writer to have written the book, and formatted it, now they are expected to handle nearly all the publicity for it. This is a plan that benefits only the publisher, who does not have to spend money for publicity. Let the writer do it! 

     The logic for this is particularly flawed; not only does publicity take precious time that should be spent in writing the next book, but as most writers are not publicists, it also forces the writer to re-invent the wheel. How much more logical it would be for publishers – who take the lion’s share of the money anyway – to have a well-oiled publicity machine with contacts made and slots ready and waiting instead of having each writer individually either contact every outlet or pay big bucks for a publicist of their own.

      There is a truism in publishing that ‘money flows to the author’ but in this current world it is becoming commonplace for an author to pay to have his manuscript edited before submission, where it will then be re-edited by the publishing house (or not!) upon acceptance. I must admit this leaves me speechless. Do writers think that sending in a pre-edited manuscript guarantees acceptance? Or are they such bad writers that they know without a pre-submission professional edit they would have no chance at all? Neither prospect is particularly alluring.

     And all these responsibilities and all these expenses paid by the writer come at a time where advances are shrinking or are non-existent.

     Some houses ask for a writer’s standardized input on the cover artwork, and with that it ends there for most. No matter if the cover is ugly, inaccurate or stupid, it stays that way because the marketing department says so. This, however, is a fading practice, especially with good small and electronic publishers.

     To make things even worse, after the book is sold and the writer has waited out whatever time the publisher decrees proper, he receives a royalty statement of books sold. Most are near indecipherable, and short of an audit (for which the writer pays, of course) the writer must trust the publisher that the figures shown are accurate. May I amend that? If the writer is lucky he receives a royalty statement; there are several publishers who have to be badgered and kept after (which again steals away time which should be spent writing) to send a statement, a process which is not guaranteed to have any success.

     Kind of makes one wonder why anyone would ever want to be part of a profession that depends on one kind of skilled artist to exist at all but treats those artists so badly. Of course, no one house does all of these things, but so many do enough of them that it does give one pause.

     I would sincerely like to hear a publishing house representative give a cogent and logical explanation of why the writer, who creates the product and without whom there would be no publishing industry, is treated like a red-haired stepchild and always comes at the end of the line. And the money trail.

     Perhaps the most astonishing thing is that publishing houses – especially the Big Five – profess amazement that so many writers are now beginning to self publish. If writers had received the kind of treatment – and the share of royalties – that they deserve, I wonder if self-publishing would ever have taken off.

Janis Patterson

Waiting for Publication

WAITING FOR PUBLICATION
By Randy Rawls

Okay, I sold the book. I sold the book a long time ago. I sold the book way back when I was filled with enthusiasm and ready to conquer the world. Now I wait . . . and wait . . . and wait . . . I know I should be working toward the release date, but I can hardly remember what the book is about. Guess I'd better return to those fun-filled pages and re-read them.

I'm sure that each of us faces that lag time between sell and publication in his/her own way. Me, I try to keep writing, hoping that the next book will do even better than the last. At the same time, though, I'm impatient, waiting for release. What should I be doing?

Over the years, I've read several posts by other authors about what to do during the looooooooooooong period between sell and publication—get postcards and bookmarks printed, develop a media package, line up publicity opportunities, etc. However, since I didn't take notes on how to do those things, let me throw it out to the community.

What do you do to get ready for Release Day? Share with me and with the others who read this blog. Give us your helpful pointers. I, for one, will be grateful.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention HOT ROCKS featuring Beth Bowman, South Florida PI, will be out in the Fall.

Randy Rawls