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Does Publicity Sell Books? The Debate Continues

Meghan Ward — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 08:00:18 +0000

Two weeks ago, I wrote a post titled “If Publicity Doesn’t Sell Books, What Does?” in which numerous published authors offered insider tips on how they publicized and marketed theirs books, and numerous writers responded. This week, Paul J. Krupin, a publicist who blogs at Direct Contact PR, offers his perspective on the publicity debate. Paul’s post will make you want to jump out of your chair and join Toastmaster’s. Welcome, Paul!

Response to Publicity Doesn’t Sell Books
By Paul J. Krupin

Quite a number of authors express great frustration and anguish over the fact that the publicity they received didn’t result in lots of book sales.

In fact several of them conclude that publicity doesn’t work.

Their experience with media may be due to a lot of things. But to me what appears to have happened is that whatever the media published certainly didn’t result in them “turning their people on.” I don’t see that as a reason to conclude that “Publicity Doesn’t Work.” I see that a failure to make effective use of any number of golden media opportunities.

In the middle of February, one of my clients, JJ Smith, did one interview on The Steve Harris Morning Show, and sold over 6,000 books and made it to the top of Amazon’s best seller list ahead of The Hunger Games trilogy. Sure, it was only for 24 hours or so, but it was a single talk show interview that did it.

One of my favorite authors, Vince Flynn, did an interview with USA Today on Feb 6. He’s a best selling author of 13 books. He was asked three questions, and he spent one to two minutes more or less, answering each question. I was tickled to see how he handled the last question from the USA Today interviewer, one that he apparently had never been asked before: “What is it about your stories that brings the reader in?” BTW, it worked since I ran to the local bookstore and bought a copy.

For those of you who have worked with me, I challenge you with this very same question: “What do you do that turns people on?” Whenever we seek get media coverage whether it is for a review, a feature story, or an interview.

Think about what happens—just for example, when was the last time you read the newspaper or a magazine or watched TV and grabbed your credit card?

It probably doesn’t happen very often., does it? In today’s world, it may actually happen more often if you read something on a trusted blog or on a friend’s Facebook and they say, “This is cool. You gotta have it.”

Think carefully about the times that it does happen. How did you feel? Weren’t you amazed, galvanized, and stunned? Wasn’t your attention riveted?

Well, if you want publicity or any other marcom (marketing communications) that you create to do that, then you’d better figure out what is happening when it happens to you first. Then you have to learn what you can say and do to make it happen to others.

Realize that if you want to be a successful author, you not only have to write a really good book, but when you get in front of media you need to turn your audience on. You have to learn how to do that or else people won’t respond the way you want them to.

Now I’ll share with you something I’ve learned doing publicity for a few tens of years.

I believe that you can learn to do this anywhere. I call this the miracle of the microcosm because I’ve found from working with real people, from all over the country, that it really doesn’t matter where you are. You can learn what to say that turns people on one person at a time. Yes you can.

You just have to keep talking to people and pay attention to what you said when it happens!

You can ask people at a speaking engagement to tell you. You can have a partner watch the audience and take notes while you are speaking. You can record your talks and track sales or how many people raise their hand or come up to you after your talk. You’ll find hints in your reviewer comments and testimonials where people tell you why they love what you do.

The miracle is that once you learn the magic words that produce the action you want, you can then you can use all the media and other marcom technologies as a force multiplier to repeat the message and keep reproducing the effect.

In a nation with 330 million people, you have very good reason to focus on that message. Even if you are successful in reaching and converting an itsy bitsy tiny percent, you can be phenomenally successful.

Before you think that doing publicity or any other marcom technology is going to help you, you really need to learn what you can say and do that turns your people on. You need to develop a script that produces action.

Can you stand in front of 50 people and talk for three minutes so that half the people come flying out of their chairs and hand you money? That is what you need to be able to do. You need to hit their hot buttons by being the very best you can be. You need to give people a transcendental emotionally engaging experience. Learn how to do this in a small audience and then place that script into your interviews and feature story proposals.

The same is true by the way with social media. The real promise of social media is only achieved when what you’ve done is so good people rave about it to all their friends. If it’s not good enough, it’s just panned.

If you learn how to turn people on, and then use that in your targeted communications so that you help the people you can help the most, you’ll see your success with the media hit maximum levels. This isn’t easy to do. But if you are strategic and test, improve, and prove your communications systematically, it can be done.

Make sure that the content you offer is like candy. Create a recipe that tastes so good that people just can’t get enough of it. and they want the whole bag.

BTW, I’ve created a five minute, self-serve Prezi that describes how to do this process in a highly entertaining and visual way. Here’s the link.

Enjoy.

Paul J. Krupin, Publicist
blog.directcontactpr.com www.directcontactpr.com
Comments welcome. Send them to me anytime paul@directcontactpr.com

If Publicity Doesn’t Sell Books, What Does?

Meghan Ward — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 03:13:10 +0000

UPDATE: The winner of The Edge of Maybe contest is …

KRISTAN!

It was a tough decision for Ericka, so she took her top six choices and randomized them. Kristan, please email me your latest address, so I can forward it to Ericka. And everyone else, if you’re in the Bay Area, don’t miss Ericka’s book launch tonight: A Night On The Edge. I’ll be there!

And now back to our regularly scheduled blog post:

One of the advantages of working out of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto is all the wonderful conversations—about writing, about publishing, and about marketing—that take place over lunch and on our listserv. Last month, a blog post by Joe Konrath titled “The Value of Publicity” and another by Michael Ellsberg, titled “The Tim Ferriss Effect”, sparked an e-mail thread about what sells books. According to Konrath, the publicity he got in the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the LA Times, etc. did nothing to increase his book sales. According to Ellsberg, a spot on prime-time CNN and an editorial he wrote for the New York Times did little to increase his book sales. So, if publicity doesn’t sell books, what does?

According to Konrath, good writing, an extensive backlist and proper positioning on Amazon are the keys to his success: “[M]y fame and my past have little to do with my current success. … The majority of my sales come from Amazon and my ability to use the tools they provide.”

According to Ellsberg, coverage on a popular single-author blog with a wide sphere of influence is what put his book on the map. (By the way, there is a distinction between publicity and marketing. Publicity means spots on radio and television shows, advertising, and articles and book reviews in newspapers and magazines. While publicity is short-lived—the biggest push done within the first month that a book is out—marketing is an ongoing effort that can last months, even years.)

Grotto writers chimed in with their own thoughts about what sells books and, with their permission, I’ve reprinted their comments here:

Zoe Fitzgerald Carter, author of Imperfect Endings: A Daughter’s Tale of Life and Death, agrees with Konrath and Ellsberg: “I certainly found that mentions in The New York Times, excerpts in O magazine, and getting reviewed in People did almost nothing in terms of my sales. And all that endless social media? Not so much …”

Heather Donahue, author of Growgirl: How My Life After the Blair Witch Project Went to Pot emphasizes the importance of “knowing your core audience, knowing that books are a niche business, and having a laser focus on the top 500 individual readers. Finding them. Knowing your tribe and building from there.”

“Having pieces in Slate, The Awl, and The Nervous Breakdown worked every bit as good as being on The View because you want to sell books to people who read them,” Donahue said in an interview. In addition to a Q&A in The Awl/The Hairpin, which The Rumpus cross-posted, and 21 Questions in The Nervous Breakdown, Donahue had an interview in Bust, two pages in Entertainment Weekly, and a healthy response from Facebook, where she has 1286 friends and 549 likes on her professional page. Donahue says that because her book came out quickly, she didn’t have time to build a large following on Twitter, but she thinks the cumulative effect of the marketing she did was every bit as important as the publicity garnered by her publicists—both the in-house publicist her publisher assigned her and the one she hired on her own. Would she still hire a publicist next time? Yes, if she goes with a traditional publisher next time. Donahue spent so much time marketing her book that she would liked to have seen a larger cut of the profits. “I’d rather find a middle ground partner. Someone who could handle some of the design stuff and do more of a 50/50 split on royalties, to share some of the outgoing publication costs but also share on the incoming profits.”

Janis Cooke Newman, author of The Russian Word for Snow: A True Story of Adoption and Mary, a novel about Mary Todd Lincoln, agrees that knowing your tribe is key. “While we like to think that everybody is going to find our books fascinating, the truth is that it is a niche business. One email blast to an online chat group of people interested in adopting from Eastern Europe put my memoir at number 200 on Amazon—at least for a couple of hours—and practically sold out the admittedly meager first printing. And at a recent appearance at a Civil War literary conference, the local bookseller ran out of my novel. National TV is cool, but finding your niche readers and making it easy for them to buy your book—even years after publication—seems to be the best way to keep those royalty checks coming.”

Constance Hale, author of Sin and Syntax and the forthcoming Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch, echoes Donahue and Newman’s sentiments. “Have a really sharp, really defined sense of who your reader is (emphasis on the “read”) and/or who would buy your book and then think really hard about how to get to that person, how to let that person know your book is out there. … Being in The New Yorker is highly cool, but again, does it put your name on the radar or does it sell books? Are New Yorker readers the ones who will BUY your book and READ your book and then TELL their friends to buy your book?”

Hale cautions, however, that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to zeroing in on your audience. “Every book is different. My readers are writers who want to write better, so I have taught anywhere that gets the title of the book on a course catalog (reaching tens of thousands of people), I have led countless workshops at countless writers conferences, I have given workshops in bookstores, I have worked on tags and SEO on my Web site, I’ve built modest but loyal FB and Twitter and mailing-list followings, and I give out teachers lessons plans for free. I put my book title in every bio I write. I accept all offers for any kind of publicity: I get up for drive-time radio, I write articles for free if I know it gets to my readers. I work closely with the publisher’s publicity people and I hire my own publicist to help me strategize. Not strategize how to get famous. Strategize about how to reach my readers/buyers.

“It’s a one-two punch. Publicity gets your name and your book on the radar,
maybe helps you build cred. … Marketing identifies your
market/tribe/reader/buyer and focuses aggressively to let those people know
about the book and to make them want to buy it. Publicity lasts for a month. Sometimes you strike gold right away and get an instant bestseller. Marketing
continues for years and can build slowly.”

Speaking from the perspective of a self-proclaimed “readaholic,” Jason Roberts, author of A Sense of The World, says the problem with some publicity is that it breeds familiarity with a book, not intrigue. You know those movie trailers that make you feel like you’ve already seen the movie? That happens with books, too. “Sometimes, a book has fallen off my To Buy list because of one article, one interview, one TV appearance too many. … If I had my druthers, I’d prefer a PR campaign that focused not so much on the book as a quantum of content, but as an experience. How will it surprise me, enlighten me, draw me in? Will it subvert my expectations, shed light on mysteries, go behind the scenes or between the lines? Is it, simply put, not only a book but a story? … Sell the experience, not just the facts. (And don’t sit around waiting for reviewers to tell you what that experience is; decide for yourself, and market accordingly).”

Gerard Jones, author of Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book, reminds writers that although book sales are nice, they are not the only way for authors to make money. “I’ve gotten a lot of paying gigs talking to colleges and other institutions, and those can keep rolling in long after the shelf-life of the book. … In terms of perceptible Amazon up-ticks, the only broadcast media that ever helped were NPR interviews where I got to talk about the content of the book at some length (Fresh Air helped, but the biggest jump was after Talk of the Nation). Mass-audience radio never did squat, not even Howard Stern in his pre-satellite days, nor did TV. But a speaking agency picked me up and landed me a series of public debates after I appeared on the Today Show, which in turn led to other stuff. I also had a university events programmer tell me he was already interested in bringing me in but didn’t really decide until he saw that I’d been on Bill O’Reilly’s show.  I’ve also picked up quite a few article- and editorial-writing gigs off my books, at least some of which were helped along by publicity. A BBC appearance got me an offer from the Guardian to write something, and I think that may be why the Times of London asked me for something soon after. I think it just looks better in the pitch if you can list a bunch of high-profile appearances too. I’ve found that initial sales usually don’t matter that much; publication is usually the beginning of a long trudge. But the rewards of the trudge can be a lot more rewarding than you think they might be while you’re still processing the realization that you’re not going to soar onto the NYT bestseller list. … And the publicity that seems not to be doing a damned bit of good in the moment can pay off down that road.”

Although there are a number of authors who have launched bestsellers after strategically and methodically (as Hale puts it) building an online presence like Rebecca Skloot , author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, and Ferriss himself, T.J. Stiles, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, cautions that no one really knows what makes a book successful. “When a book DOES succeed, publicity is usually an element,” Stiles says. “What makes a book succeed? If anyone could figure out a formula for that, then publishers wouldn’t lose money (or just break even) on 70% of the books they release. Only about 30% make money. Everyone’s in the dark—not when it comes to what makes a good book, but what makes a commercially successful one. So many great books don’t make money. … as William Goldman said about Hollywood, ‘Nobody knows anything.’”

RIP Google Friend Connect

Meghan Ward — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 07:18:07 +0000

If you have a WordPress blog, you probably know by now that Google will be retiring Google Friend Connect for all non-Blogger blogs on March 1, 2012. I’m thrilled about this because I’ve always hated Google Friend Connect but have never had the cahones to delete it from my blog. I just did, and it felt great. Now, in its place, is a Google+ badge. I have only recently begun using Google+, but I love it and would be thrilled if you added me to one of your circles. Google and Facebook are vying for the most popular social network, and by the end of 2012 we will have a better idea who is going to win that race. For now, I use both, so feel free to follow me on both, and I will do my best to follow you back.

If you have a WordPress blog and use Google Friend Connect, click on the notice on the box in your sidebar for instructions on how to keep in touch with your followers.

Is Self-Publishing the Way to Go?

Meghan Ward — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:27:24 +0000

Today I have a wonderful post from Sarah Baker, a former editor for Viking/Penguin and Simon & Schuster in New York, via Constance Hale over at Sin and Syntax. If you haven’t visited Sin and Syntax yet, go check out the Salon. It’s full of great articles about writing and publishing like Gianmaria Fanchini’s post on sliding book advances, which follows up on my Author Advance Survey Results, and Constance Hale’s post on breaking into the publishing world. And now …

Is Self-Publishing the Way to Go?

With a sidebar on what you need to know to do it yourself.

By Sarah Baker

Go to any panel on book publishing these days, and you’ll hear the hoopla over self-publishing. Easy to do! More control! A bigger cut of the profits! At a time when advances aren’t exactly advancing, editors are often too over-worked, and publicists are spending the house’s dimes on blockbusters, self-publishing sure sounds tempting. Add to this the allure of royalty rates of 70 percent or higher instead of the 15 percent (at most) from traditional publishers, and it’s no wonder all writers aren’t going indie.

But, wait. Self-publishing might be the word on everyone’s lips, but is it right for you?

“You have to decide what your goals are,” said thriller-writer and self-publishing guru Barry Eisler at a lecture in November 2011 at the Park Plaza hotel in Boston. For him, it seemed like a no-brainer. He had already published three books with a traditional, or what he calls “legacy,” publisher. He has a following, developed when he pounded the pavement one summer, visited 500 bookstores, and called on 1,200 bookstores in 40 states. Other things in his favor: His wife is a literary agent, so he has access to publishing professionals.

As if his platform weren’t enough already, the press from his decision to turn down $500,000 from St. Martin’s and go indie practically made him a household name. The mighty-marketing-machine Amazon is his publisher. He likes control. He likes business. He’s clearly very good at it.

But not everyone has built what Eisler has. For first-time authors, like Boston Globe reporter Billy Baker, who is armed with a literary agent and a nonfiction book idea, an advance from a traditional publisher is necessary for him to take time off from work to report and write. “I don’t have 50 grand in the bank,” he said.

Other authors make the point that they want the strong winds of a trusted publisher in their authorial sails. Pagan Kennedy, author of ten books including Spinsters and Black Livingstone, doubts she would ever go indie. “If you can live with 1,000 readers and not making any money, then fine. But, if you want an audience of 20,000 for your book—how do you get that?” she said.

So what should a writer weigh when considering self-publishing?

“Self-publishing had a stigma,” said Eve Bridburg, literary agent and founder of Grub Street, Inc., an independent literary-arts center in Boston. But she points out some critical new factors: increasingly sophisticated self-publishing tools are available; you can distribute via the Internet (and not just via the back of a station wagon); Twitter and Facebook can help to spread the word. Then there is the payoff: higher royalty rates. So many more serious writers are self-publishing, she added, that Grub is now offering workshops not only in the craft of writing but in marketing and publishing, as well.

Many people are taking the plunge. An article by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg in the Wall Street Journal cites an estimate by R. R. Bowker, which tracks the publishing business: the number of self-published titles exploded 160 percent from 2006 to 2010 (that is, from 51,237 to 133,036.)

Some recent success stories—Amanda Hocking and John Locke, in addition to Barry Eisler—have helped fuel the movement. And let’s not forget that some historic bestsellers (What Color is Your Parachute and The Elements of Style, for example) started out as do-it-yourselfers (DIY), the old-school name for the self-published. They were acquired by traditional houses after they were already successful.

Sales figures for self-published books are difficult to track, and hard to interpret, since people choose this route for all sorts of reasons. Many are printing 10 copies of a memoir for the family or 100 for the business. Amazon.com doesn’t share overall sales figures of books, according to Brittany Turner of their public relations department. But, in an email she was willing to say that “John Locke and Amanda Hocking have both sold more than 1 million books using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), 12 KDP authors have sold more than 200,000 books and 30 KDP authors have sold more than 100,000.” Over at Amazon’s self-publishing service site, CreateSpace, she added, former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin self-published his memoir Katrina’s Secrets, which hit the Top 100 Best Sellers in Books on Amazon the week of its release.

(If you’ve seen anyone report on the other end of the spectrum—that is, the number of self-published authors who never surpass their break-even point—please post links in the comments section! The more solid information we all have, the better.)

Even traditional publishers are capitalizing on the popularity. Book Country is Penguin Books new foray into the do-it-yourself world. It’s a place for genre fiction writers to circulate their work, get feedback, and buy self-publishing services. “Self-publishing is a trend that isn’t going away,” said Book Country president Molly Barton to Calvin Reid of Publishers Weekly.

But all of this takes time and ingenuity. Martha McPhee, author of Dear Money and three other novels, said self-publishing would be like pushing a boulder up a mountain, and she wouldn’t know where to begin. Claire Messud, New York Times-bestselling author of The Emperor’s Children, equates self-publishing with home schooling.

Would you consider home schooling?

SIDEBAR: Should you self-publish?

If you want a professional-looking book with a chance of success you’ll need four things: Time, Money, Connections, and Gumption. Traditional publishers have been in the business for a long time and a book contract, despite that many authors accuse them of everything from neglect to abandonment, guarantees a professional process. You’ll have a well-oiled machine behind you so that you can focus on writing and promotion. If you want to replace them you’ll need to:

1. Hire a load of people if you aren’t a jack-of-all-trades: Editor, copyeditor, jacket designer, interior designer, publicist, marketer, rights salesperson (for foreign and first serial), Web site designer, printer, and distributor (for print books). If you’re publishing nonfiction you might need a lawyer to check for libel and an indexer to create an index. But buyer beware—these people work for you, so make sure they tell you what you need to hear and not what you want to hear.

2. Verify your account balance and uncap your pen—you’ll be writing a lot of checks.

3. Buy a Starbucks Card or a Nespresso machine. With the amount of work this will involve, you’ll need your caffeine. Self-publishing is akin to starting your own business.

4. Do the hustle. Work your friends on Facebook, your followers on Twitter, your old colleagues in the media, your local librarian, and your buddies in the bookstores to spread the word and buy the book.

Good luck.

{Formerly a book editor at Viking/Penguin and Simon & Schuster in New York City, Sarah Baker is now a freelance writer and an independent radio producer. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.}

Thanks Sarah and Constance for a great post! What about you? Have you self-published? What has your experience been?

5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Online Presence

Meghan Ward — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:05:46 +0000

1. Get over your fear of self-promotion.
Just do it. Now. Done? Good. I get an email newsletter from professional coach Martha Borst every week. It has her photo at the top and an image of her book cover on the side. I don’t see that and think, “Oh God, there goes Martha promoting herself again.” I think, “Damn. Martha is so good at staying in touch with her audience. I wish I were that organized and professional.”

2. Use your name as your brand.
Did you know you can change your Twitter user name without losing your followers? So if you chose “@hotchica6” and now you have 3000 Twitter followers, it’s not too late to change it to “@HilaryHiggenbottom.” On your Facebook page, once you have 25 likes, you can choose a customized URL (and you can change that URL until you have 100 likes, at which time it’s locked in.) Go out there now and change all your IDs to Hilary Higgenbottom, or whatever your real name is, hotchica6.

3. Post your contact info.
It doesn’t have to be your personal e-mail address, but create SOME way for people to get in touch with you, and post that on your website. (Post it like this to avoid spammers: Hilary (at) Higgenbottom (dot) com.) There’s nothing more irritating than spending half an hour searching someone’s site in vain for a way to contact him. It’s not only frustrating, it makes the author appear aloof and unaccessible. Someone may want to ask you for an interview or compliment you on your latest article in the New York Times, and they may not want to do that in a public forum.

4. Get a professional photo taken of yourself.
You will post your picture everywhere—on your website, on your blog, and on the profiles of all your social media networks, and you don’t want that to be a blurry full-length photo of you and your dog. Wear something simple that isn’t black or white or patterned, put some make-up on, do your hair, and fork out $300 to have a professional photographer take your picture (make sure that includes the digital copies of the photos.) Better yet, have multiple pictures taken of yourself in a variety of settings (at your computer, doing a reading, etc.) Mary Robinette Kowal and Michael Hyatt do this well. Every time you refresh a page on their websites, their photo changes.

5. Interact with your audience.
Whether it’s through a blog, a professional Facebook page (where anyone can “like” you), or a Twitter account, make yourself accessible. Gone are the days of J.D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon. Readers not only want to know about you, they want to talk to you. And they want you to respond. You don’t have to spend all day on social media, but take a couple hours out of every week to connect with your audience. Your efforts will pay off in increased work (Editor Alan Rinzler credits his steady editing work to his blog) and book sales.

If you want to learn more about how you can improve your online presence through blogging, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, I have a Social Media Madness class beginning this Thursday, Feb. 2 at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto, and there’s room for a couple more students. Also check out Lorraine Sanders’ one-day Journalism Basics for Bloggers as well as the full roster of winter classes.

And now what about you? What is one of your favorite social media tips?

25 Ways to Build Your Author Platform Before Your Book is Published

Meghan Ward — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 08:10:11 +0000

If you’re a writer, you’ve had the importance of building your “author platform” drilled into your head like the multiplication tables were in fourth grade. Most people associate building an author platform with Facebook and a blog, but there are many ways to create a following. Here are 25:

1. Blog
Not every writer needs to or should blog, but blogs are a fantastic way to connect with potential readers without spending much money. I recommend paying for hosting, so you can use your own domain name (blog.yourname.com or www.yourname.com/blog).

2. Tumblr
If you don’t have time to write 300-800-word blog posts, but you have photos, links, and insights you want to share, consider setting up a Tumblr account. Tumblr is for microblogging.

3. Twitter
Twitter is a great way to connect with a LOT of people without spending a lot of time online. Granted, those who do spend a lot of time on Twitter have higher Klout scores, but then again, who cares about Klout?

4. Facebook
Wait! I thought the point of this post was that building your author platform did NOT have to involve social media! Facebook is THE social network! Yes, yes. But Facebook DOES matter. Publishers want to know how many Facebook friends and/or likes you have. They want you to customize your Facebook Page. They want it to look awesome. Don’t want until your book launch. Start right now.

5. YouTube
You can build a subscriber base through your YouTube account. Here’s an example: This guy has instructional videos on how to make origami things. I watched this video to learn how to make cranes over the weekend. And more than 2 million other people have watched it, too. Think about what useful information you could impart through videos. Make 20 of them and link to them on your blog, your Facebook account, your Twitter account, and Linked In.

6. LinkedIn
Use it! Some marketing Guru once said to me, “Linked In is my business card; Facebook is my greeting card.” LinkedIn is a valuable resource if you’re looking for a job, looking to hire someone, looking for an expert in a particular field, etc.

7. Google+
For all you writers who rely on Google Friend Connect to advertise how many blog followers you have, I have news for you. Google Friend Connect is going to disappear for all but Blogger bloggers, and the rest of us will be left with Google+. So get on it. Start adding people to your circles and post a Google+ button on your blog.

8. Teaching
I went to a reading by an MFA teacher friend a few years ago, and the bookstore was PACKED with her students. Teaching is a great way to build loyal fans. Just promise them As if they give your book a 5-star review on Amazon. Kidding!

9. Speaking Engagements
Some authors make a living giving speeches and seminars. They get paid a lot of money by corporations to tell people how to get off their “buts” and think outside of the box. At the same time, they’re selling themselves to the audience. If they have a book out, they may sell it at the seminar (this is a great way for self-published authors to find an audience). Or they may simply have “George Trottinet, author of ‘Where’s my Camembert?” written at the bottom of all their handouts. It’s a great way to build your author platform.

10. Mixers
There’s no better way to connect with people than in person. Attend workshops, conferences, conventions, and networking events—and talk to people. Be sure to update your business card before you go, and don’t be shy about handing it out. That way people can reconnect with you after the alcohol has worn off and they’ve forgotten your name.

11. Podcasts
Visit Dane Golden of Hey.com for an example of how to podcast. Dane does live video interviews with his subjects via Skype like a real news anchor. Very cool. Other options are recorded video podcasts or audio podcasts. Dane’s secret? Keep ‘em short.

12. Get Published
I don’t mean get your book published. I mean get book reviews, short stories, and articles published in newspapers, magazines and literary journals—whether in print or online. You’ll build up your resume and get your name out there. Best of all, you’ll give readers a sample of your writing. Be sure to include your website, blog, or Twitter ID at the bottom.

13. Win Awards
When you win a big award, it will be announced in newspapers and on blogs. People will Tweet about it and share it on Facebook: “Congratulations, Susie Q, on winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction!” Even small awards are a fantastic way to build your platform.

14. Get Famous
Celebrities have the biggest platforms of all, so if you have the chance to marry a prince, star in a film, or have octuplets—go for it!

15. Start a newsletter
Some people abhor newsletters, but they are a great way to connect with potential readers. And e-mail marketing can be cool, too.

16. Join a writers’ group
Writers’ groups are a great way to build a support network with other writers. You can all Tweet and blog and share each other’s work, attend each others’ readings, and buy each other’s books. Plus, it’s a great way to make friends!

17. Read Your Work
Every city has monthly or weekly author readings. In San Francisco, we have Porchlight, the Monthly Rumpus, Inside Story Time, Litquake, and many many more. Read! It’s a fantastic way to: 1) Let others hear and fall in love with your work 2) Get experience reading in front of strangers. You’ll be doing plenty of that when your book comes out, and you won’t want it to be your first time.

18. Get Involved
Run for the school board. Volunteer. Get active in a writers’ or journalists’ association. All of these are ways of making your name more public and expanding your network.

19. Sell merchandise
I saw a bumper sticker the other day for Story something-or-other (dot) org. If I’d had a pen I would have written it down. If I’d had an iPhone, I would have typed in the link. The point being, it caught my attention. You can use T-shirts, mugs, bumper stickers, book marks, and more to advertise your brand. (Okay, I’m not going to get T-shirts made that say, “Meghan Ward, author” across the chest, but I may get ones that say “Writerland.com” on the back. Why not?

20. Blimps, skywriting, and billboards
I’m kidding. Kind of. When I lived in LA, there was this woman, Angelyne, on billboards all over the city. She wasn’t famous for anything other than being ON THE BILLBOARDS. She was blond, of course, and had abnormally large breasts. Someone said she was the girlfriend of the owner of the billboards. Whoever she was, all of LA knew her and her pink Corvette. A more realistic equivalent may be posting flyers around your neighborhood or taking out Google and Facebook ads advertising your services (in my case, editing). Eventually, people will recognize your name when they see it, and hopefully that will be on the cover of a book.

21. Website
You need a website! In addition to Twitter and Facebook and your blog, make sure you have a hub where people can contact you, sign up for your newsletter, subscribe to your YouTube channel, read your bio and a list of your writing credits, etc. This is the number one most important step in building your author platform.

22. Guest blog
Don’t just blog on your own site. Land a gig blogging for an established publication, guest blog regularly—or just once in a while—for other bloggers. And have other bloggers guest blog for you. Their readers will visit your blog, and your readers will visit their blog. Everyone wins.

23. Make a viral video
Easier said than done, of course, but it doesn’t hurt to try. The best ones aren’t planned as viral videos, but if you’re clever enough, you can do it. There was one video a friend sent me that was very sweet, frame after frame of mothers holding up signs with suggestions on how to improve the world (or something like that; I forget exactly). But it was all too perfect, the writing on each sign too similar. And then I saw it at the end of the video, the name of a bra brand. It was a VERY clever advertisement. I think it was created by Scott Stratten’s Unmarketing. If you haven’t checked his site out, do. Right now. Then create your own Unmarketing Plan to build your Author UnBrand.

24. SEO
Read Inbound Marketing to learn more about SEO and how to improve yours. You want your blog or website to come up high in Google searches, so when someone does a search for “awesome fiction writers,” your name comes up first. The best way to do this is to have your blog ON your website, and update your blog frequently. But there’s more you can do with tags and metatags and things that are beyond me, so read Inbound Marketing and get some techie person to help you implement their suggestions.

25. Know your local booksellers
What a better way to get people talking about your book than to know them personally? Talk to the booksellers at ALL your local bookstores. Get to know them, so when your book comes out you won’t wish you had.

Can you think of other creative ways to build your author platform?

Are you blogging to the wrong audience?

Meghan Ward — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 08:00:22 +0000

It’s been my intention for some time now to expand this blog to write about other topics, and to post more frequently. I haven’t done that because, frankly, I don’t have the time. Blogging once a week has been perfect for me. It’s manageable, and with two- and three-year-old children, I need something manageable in my life (something more manageable than, “I don’t want a spooooon! I want a forrrrrrrk! I can’t eat eggs with a spoooooon!”) But there are two reasons I want to post more often. One is to expand my readership beyond other writers. Social media queen Kristen Lamb has written some great posts on this topic. One titled Solid Platform, Wrong Audience is my favorite and has links to her previous posts. My memoir, which I completed earlier this week, is about the six years I spent working as a fashion model in Europe and Japan. My current WIP is a collection of humorous parenting essays. And my next project is something different altogether. As much as I love blogging about writing and social media, it’s time for me to expand to also write about parenting and fashion and modeling and all the other topics I’m interested in, like rock climbing and geo-caching and Settlers of Catan. I can’t promise I’ll blog every week. I’m not ready for a two-post-per-week commitment just yet (and I may never be), but I will attempt to post about a topic of my choosing (picture me rubbing my hands together) most Thursdays (and that means Fridays or Saturdays when I’m running late). Meanwhile, Tuesdays will remain writing/publishing/social media days as they have been for some time.

Now, here’s an exercise to determine whether you are blogging to the wrong audience:

Profile your audience. Make a list of the different groups of people you imagine buying your book. Who are they? Are they teen girls? Middle-aged women? Men who like to read thrillers? How old are they? What do they do for a living? How do they spend their free time? What products do they buy? Make lists. Then, once you’ve got that down, think about what topics those people are interested in reading about. What concerns them? What are their thoughts preoccupied with? (Boys? Sex? Making money? Finding God? Decluttering their homes?) Make another list.

And finally, ask yourself: Are you blogging about the topics on that last list? Why or why not?

By the way, there is some value in attracting other bloggers to your blog for the simple reason that they are more likely to blog about you and your work than non-bloggers. But you need both. You need to reach as many potential readers as possible, and there are many ways to do that.

Now, you tell me. Are you blogging to the RIGHT audience? Are you blogging to your potential readers, or are you only blogging to other writers? What’s stopping you from making that leap?

Dear Klout: It’s Not Me, It’s You

Meghan Ward — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 08:00:06 +0000

I was a Klout junkie. The first thing I did when I woke up in the morning was reach for my iPad and check my Klout score to see if it had gone up a point since the previous night (scores apparently change in the middle of the night). I’m a casual gamer (Settlers of Catan, Puerto Rico, Ticket to Ride), and Klout was a game for me. I traded retweets and @replies like I was trading wheat and sheep for brick and wood. I worked my way up to a 54, then took a month off from social media while on vacation over the summer, during which time my score dropped to 42. I’d been hiking and paddle boarding and rafting and camping and swimming—all well worth the social media sacrifice.

I worked it back up to 55, and it held steady for a while. I had come up with a “system” to maximize my ROI without working too hard, and I was happy. Then the sky fell when Klout changed its algorithm on October 26. My score plummeted to 46 overnight. And then, through some bug, it bottomed out at 10 (then popped back up to 46 the following day.) I wasn’t alone. Thousands of Klout users were incensed that their scores had dropped 10 to 20 points in one day (most of those with high scores saw a drop while those with low scores benefited from an increase.) To soothe my bruised ego, @missuku sent me this great xtranormal video about the inanity of Klout. And in response to one commenter’s lament that he had spent months getting his Klout score into the 70s only to see it drop back into the 50s, TechCrunch published an article titled Nobody Gives a Damn About Your Klout Score.

Back in April, when I wrote this blog post about Klout, that was true. When I interviewed agents and editors in the publishing industry, none of them had ever heard of Klout. They definitely weren’t checking writers’ Klout scores before deciding whether to take them on.

But all that has changed. Since April, Klout has expanded to include not only Twitter, but Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, FourSquare, WordPress.com, Blogger, and more (I can’t check their site for the complete list because I refuse to look at my Klout score), and now literary agents and social media gurus are telling us that the size of one’s Klout score DOES matter. In fact, in this blog post, literary agent Rachelle Gardner says you should include your Klout score IN YOUR BOOK PROPOSAL along with your number of Twitter followers and page views on your blog. Kristen Lamb, author of We Are Not Alone, a social media guide for writers, responded in a post titled The Dark Side of Metrics—Writer Friend or Ticket to Crazy Town?. For me, Klout was a ticket to crazy town.

When I first started using it, I watched other Tweeters to see what raised their Klout scores. I noticed that getting any kind of mention helped, so I @replied and retweeted people each night hoping they would @reply and retweet me back. It worked. But it felt like a waste of my extremely valuable time to spend half an hour (sometimes up to an hour) on the Internet each night writing tweets like, “Hey, how are you?” or “I loved that movie, too!” in order to raise my Klout score. There were some aspects I liked about it. I was connecting more with people and we all know social networking is about being social. I worked harder at writing tweets that would get retweeted. I tweeted more frequently and more regularly, instead of 10 times one day and none the next. I was happy with my progress. 55 was a good score, and 60 was on the horizon.

What frustrated me most about Klout’s new algorithm is that I couldn’t figure it out. I no longer knew what to do (get my Twitter followers, get more FB likes, get more retweets) to increase my score. Whereas before, my “True Reach” was a transparent number—my number of Twitter followers plus my Facebook likes, suddenly my True Reach was a mysterious 700 while a friend, who has a fourth my Twitter followers and no Facebook page, had a True Reach of 3000. And another friend, who doesn’t have a Twitter account or a blog or a Facebook page (only a personal Facebook profile), suddenly had a Klout score of 43—just three points behind mine. And she HATES social media. How was this possible? My husband found the answer in this article. According to Annie, and I think she’s right, what matters is the percentage of your followers who are actively engaged with you. In other words, you’re better off with 50 friends who retweet everything you say than 10,000 followers of which only 500 retweet everything you say. The algorithm is clearly flawed. And it’s not the only one.

I’ve been to Grader.com to score my website and my blog. My blog gets penalized for having infrequent posts that are long (the highest scores go to blogs with frequent, short posts) and for not having links to Twitter and Facebook. Uh, sorry Grader.com, but I have not one but TWO links each to both Twitter and Facebook on my blog. In other words, these scoring websites make mistakes. Big mistakes. And there’s nothing we can do about it.

So I’m taking a break. That’s not to say I’ll never check my Klout score again, but for the month of November, while all your Nanowrimo writers are cranking out 1666.66 words a day, I will be assessing my social media influence the old-fashioned way—by instinct. And until Klout reveals what exactly goes into its cockamamy (I always thought it was “cockamany” but Dictionary.com disagrees with me) algorithm, I won’t take my score too seriously. I’d rather spend my late-night hours playing games the old-fashioned way—sitting around my dining room table with friends, producing coffee and tobacco, and laying track between Palermo and Moskva.

What about you? Do you care about your Klout score? How was it affected by the algorithm change? Do you care? And have you found the secret to increasing your “new Klout” score?

Editor Alan Rinzler & Literary Agent Andy Ross On All Things Publishing

Meghan Ward — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:24:07 +0000

First off, we have a winner for a signed copy of A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception and Survival in Jonestown by New York Times bestselling author Julia Scheeres. That winner is:

MOLLY!

Molly, e-mail me your full name and address, and I will pop the book in the mail to you by the end of the week.

Now, I have a special treat for you. If you’re a writer, editor, agent, or publisher, you’re probably familiar with these two legendary figures in publishing: Alan Rinzler, a developmental editor who has edited classics like Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Tom Robbins’ Jitterbug Perfume, and Andy Ross, former owner of Cody’s Books in Berkeley and current owner of the Andy Ross Literary Agency. Today, I give you a video of a conversation between Alan (left) and Andy (right) that runs about 55 minutes. I’ve transcribed the whole thing in case you’d rather read it (but please foregive typos. I did not proofread.) It’s a fabulous conversation that touches on everything from mistakes writers make to blogging and self-publishing. So pop in those earphones and enjoy!

Alan Rinzler & Andy Ross from Meghan Ward on Vimeo.

Alan Rinzler: I want to say that Andy and I disagree about everything, but I defer to him because he’s older than me.

Andy Ross: That is a lie. That is a vile canard.

Alan Rinzler: Fire away.

Meghan Ward: First of all, we have Alan Rinzler, legendary editor extraordinaire and Andy Ross, former owner of Cody’s Books and current owner of Andy Ross Literary Agency. We’re going to talk about publishing, writing, and blogging. First of all, can you guys talk about the changes that have taken place in the publishing industry in the last few years—Borders have closed, author advances have plummeted, new authors have turned to self-publishing, some agents are becoming book packagers for self-published authors …

Andy Ross: All of the above are true. I’ve talked to other agents and they all talk like the sky is falling. They don’t know quite what to do because agents are because agents are classic intermediaries and the world is becoming disintermediated, so there’s a lot of soul-searching going on. Because I’m a new agent, for me it’s all new and great and everything’s an opportunity. So I haven’t quite figured out yet where I belong.

Alan Rinzler: Disintermediated meaning?

Andy Ross: Disintermediated is a term of art used by Internet gurus—it’s not used much anymore because it didn’t pan out—they believed what the Internet would do is disintermediate, that people would buy products directly rather than through a publisher or a department store.

Alan Rinzler: But don’t you think that is happening now? For one thing, readers now can directly access, and authors often want them to, reach them directly. One of the biggest changes, one of the hugest changes I see—I need an editor—one of the major changes I see is that for the first time, authors and readers can have a direct contact. That’s a tremendously huge change. It changes the way books are sold and it often changes the way books are written.

Andy Ross: That’s a classic example of disintermediation, yes, that is happening. And the whole trend toward self-publishing, which is obviously the same principal. The mediator is the publisher—I don’t know if it’s being eliminated, but the writer has become the publisher.

Alan Rinzler: There was a piece in the New York Times that Perseus has started a self-publishing division, joining Bloomsbury and many other companies in offering authors a self-publishing resource where they get 70 percent of the royalties and the author is the publisher—and they provide some services if you pay for them, just like iUniverse or Exlibris or Author Solutions or Lulu or Amazon. There’s a huge industry now of people who are getting big-time authors as self-published clients. Now, the interesting thing about this article is that Perseus announced that they have a deal with Janklow Nesbitt, which is one of the biggest and most powerful agencies in New York. I’ve known Lynn Nesbitt since she was a kid and she’s had many very famous clients that I’ve published, and many that I wish I’d published. And they made a deal to allow their big-time authors to self-publish through Perseus. That’s amazing.

Andy Ross: Well, what’s happening with these big agencies is they represent a huge amount of books and many of them are out of print. There’s no other access to them and getting an e-book up and running is trivial. Essentially, if you have a Word file, you hit a button and an hour later it’s in a number of different formats. And if you don’t have a Word file—I did this the other day—for $60 I sent a book of a friend of mine—and it was not an easy book to format—I sent it to an OCR company. Two weeks later they sent it back as a Word file. It wasn’t completely perfect, but it was really good. The author had to edit it, but after an edit job, it was ready to go. It’s very easy.

Alan Rinzler: In terms of changes in the book business, just to pull back a little, when I started in the business it was kind of a boy’s club. It was a Jewish boy’s club, too. All of those conspiracy theories are true. The book business has always been controlled by Jews. The only non-Jew around was Nelson Doubleday. And he hired a lot of Jews. Alfred Knopf and Bennet Cerf and Richard Simon—and all of those guys. And they were smart, funny guys who were hustlers. They were making a living doing crosswords and cookbooks and golf books—whatever. They were not literary giants. And they were not in it of the art, although they managed to publish some great books and those hearken back to the golden age of the book business. Also there were practically no women in 1962 in any position except for secretaries. First of all, you don’t have to be Jewish anymore, although it helps. And secondly, the women are now many of the top executives. It’s preponderant. If you go to a convention or a conference, most of the people are women. There are a lot of reasons for that, but it’s definitely a big change besides these other changes in technology. We didn’t have computers, obviously, or calculators. You didn’t have copy machines—everything was really different.

Andy Ross: One of the things I’ve thought about is that I’m wondering how much literary fashion has to do with the social make-up of the editorial. Most of the iconic literary writers of the 60s and 50s were Jewish men and that was when most of the editors were men. And now most of the editors are women who are 30-45, they’re not all Jewish, their names are frequently Stacy, Tracy, and Jennifer. They tended to go to Ivy League schools, for some reason, Brown shows up a lot. And the great literary writers now are women. I wonder if that has something to do with it.

Alan Rinzler: It’s true. I think in many ways that’s a good thing, but the pendulum has shifted. I think Oprah Winfrey has a lot to do with that, also. Not to be snarky exactly, but there’s a whole school of memoirs and novels about women as victims and men as insensitive brutes. It really brings out the worst in me personally because I get so tired of that. And then all the sensitive men are gay guys or feminists or something, and it really is annoying.

Andy Ross: Well, I don’t feel so bad about that. When it comes right down to it, I think when it comes right down to it, men are brutes. But one of the things that I think is interesting is that if you think about literary fiction today, it is essentially women’s fiction. They call it upmarket women’s fiction, and that’s what fiction is. Men read, but they tend to read manly books, like thrillers and golf tips. Although women read more mysteries.

Alan Rinzler: The truth is, these are all speculative theories. There’s no hard data, there’s no real research on any of this, but if you look at the bestseller lists, that’s what you’re seeing.

Andy Ross: Well there is research on demographics of readers, and it’s mostly women.

Alan Rinzler: That’s true.

Meghan Ward: And recently Justin Cronin, who had won the PEN/Hemingway and the Whiting awards for his literary novels started writing post-apocalyptic vampire novels. What do you think of that?

Andy Ross: I think that’s where the money is. Although it’s not going to last forever. I think that train is leaving the station. I’ve been working on young adult books, and the only young adult book I’ve gotten published recently is a zombie novel, which, interestingly enough, Hollywood is very interested in.

Alan Rinzler: We disagree slightly. Science fiction has always bee popular. Some serious writers have written science fiction—Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlen and some others, and what’s called now “paranormal/ zombie/post-apocalyptic,” it’s just another term—as far as I’m concerned—for the tradition of science fiction, which has always been popular. I don’t think you can jump on a trend either …

Andy Ross: If you jump on a trend, it’s too late.

Alan Rinzler: … it’s over. But what really counts, and this is what hasn’t changed in the book business, is that a story is a story. If it’s a good story, if it’s well written, if it keeps you turning the pages, it has great characters and you become engaged in it, the mythic science fiction conventions are consistent so it makes sense within the fantasy … it’ll sell. It’s just as hard to do it now as it always was, whether you self-publish or whether you go with a commercial publisher.

Meghan Ward: More and more literary novelists, though, are turning to genre fiction. Have you seen that?

Andy Ross: I disagree with that. I think a lot of literary novelists are writing mysteries, which is one of the genres, but they write it in a literary style, and if I got one of them, and I have gotten them, I would tend to send it to a literary editor, not a genre editor.

Alan Rinzler: We should make a distinction between hack pulp genres, like Harlequin romances and serious romances. Because it’s the same genre, there’s really a difference … Margaret Atwood writes science fiction and so does Doris Lessing. That’s a little different from genre fiction or science fiction.

Andy Ross: I’ve been doing a lot of work with young adult, which is a genre, and they say not to follow trends and I believe that, but I also look at the deals that come down every day on Publisher’s Marketplace and probably two-thirds of the deals in young adult are paranormal. And almost all of the readership in Young Adult is girls. It’s very hard to get a book published about a boy.

Meghan Ward: Science Fiction used to be kind of a boy’s genre.

Andy Ross: What I’m finding out now, and I’ve talked to a lot of young adult editors, is that boys read a lot—and one of the classifications is middle grade, which is usually about 9-14—boys read a lot until they’re about 13 years old, and after that they either go straight to Stephen King or they stop reading entirely and play video games, so that the young adult genre, which is relatively new and extremely robust, about 80 percent of the readers are girls.

Alan Rinzler: Well, I loved Nancy Drew books when I was a kid. Young adult books have been around—Robert Louis Stephenson …

Andy Ross: But they didn’t call them young adult books. As a genre, as a term of art, it’s relatively new.

Meghan Ward: So you don’t think customers’ reading habits are changing?

Alan Rinzler: They’re changing to be e-books. There’s a real shift. People either have an e-book or intend to buy an e-book. It’s really happening.

Meghan Ward: But as far as the types of books people are reading, whether they’re e-books or print, do you think people’s tastes are changing?

Alan Rinzler: I recently did a post on the bestseller lists. Even the New York Times recognizes that now by having 23 or 24 bestseller lists because of that diversity. And they’re all selling vigorously within a certain plateau. The fact is all book sales are down. The first six months of the year, the AAP … APA … what is it?

Andy Ross: The Association for American Publishers.

Alan Rinzler: Yes, announced that trade book sales are down about 6 percent overall. E-book sales are up, and that compensates for something, but generally, book sales have declined. Maybe because of the economy or because people are reading free stuff …

Andy Ross: they haven’t declined that much. There was another survey that went over three years or something and it was about 2 or 3 percent. That surprises me because I think the Internet has killed people’s attention span, and reading a book requires an attention. And I think, Alan can tell you, that there’s a lot of pressure now, for people who are writing novels, there’s a lot of talk about word count. They want shorter novels because of that. I heard somebody who wrote a historical novel, where you can usually get by with bigger word counts … the UK edition of their book was a hundred pages longer than the American edition because of people’s attention spans.

Alan Rinzler: I hate to hear that because a book should be as long as it needs to be, and some books really need to be long. One of the reasons, if you’re doing an actual book, is that paper is so expensive. There are a lot of technical problems in the book business that are really making it a crazy business. Books are returnable—why are they returnable?

Andy Ross: As a bookseller, I can spend an hour or two talking about why they are returnable.

Alan Rinzler: Because no one would take any if they weren’t.

Andy Ross: That is true.

Alan Rinzer: Also, the amount of time that publishers are holding books in a store before returning them is shrinking, and that’s not good because sometimes it takes a while for a book to catch on.

Andy Ross: This is a new subject. There was a survey, which I write about in my blog when I see them—most of them are in Publishers’ Weekly—most books are not bought online. Only about 20 percent of books are bought online. You’d think with all the talk that it’s the opposite, and it is changing for sure. Just last year, Amazon supplanted Barnes & Noble as the largest single venue for books. But one of the things that is interesting, and I know Alan has written about this as well, is that—although we may not agree on this—there was another recent survey that said that only 20 percent of books bought online are impulse buys. Forty percent of books in bookstores are impulse buys, and recently I had a conversation with Chip Gibson, who is president of Random House Children’s Books, the largest publisher of children’s books in the world, and he said that 80 percent of children’s books are impulse buys. And they’re very concerned about the fact that bookstores are disappearing. They have a concept they talk about, discoverability, and it doesn’t work well online. Amazon spent millions of dollars with these books that flash on that say, “If you like this, then you’ll love that,” but it doesn’t work all that well.

Alan Rinzler: Well, you can’t browse. You can’t flip through it.

Andy Ross: Well, they give you five pages, but it doesn’t work.

Alan Rinzler: There’s nothing like going to a bookstore and looking through a book. You just can’t beat that.

Andy Ross: And bookstores are going out o business every day—obviously, Borders.

Alan Rinzler: Well, here’s a trend that you must appreciate. Whereas Borders is closed and Barnes & Nobles is hurting—and they are hurting—independent bookstores are flourishing.

Andy Ross: They’re closing, too.

Alan Rinzler: Some are closing, but those that are smart, that are surviving, are doing really well. I was on a panel last Wednesday at the Northern California Book Publishers Marketing Association. It’s a very lively group, and there’s a panel of independent bookstore people—the Booksmith on Haight Ashbury, Mrs. Dalloway’s, which is right down here on Elmwood, which is a great store, and, of course, Book Passage. They are really hardworking, smart people who have figured out how to make money as independent bookstores. They do events, they cultivate their community, they respond to the local interests, they are able to have an identity and a personality that works for them.

Andy Ross: Well, it is true that the smaller bookstores seems to be more robust than the larger bookstores. Stores like Cody’s had huge overhead. And the book business changed. And in a lot of ways the changes were a perfect storm. They all cut against what bookstores are good at. The smaller stores have low overhead and they ca survive and, in some cases, prosper, but I think the trends in the book business are not favorable toward independent stores … any kinds of bookstores.

Meghan Ward: And now a lot of the independent bookstores have Google e-books. Do you think that’s going to help save the bookstores?

Andy Ross: I’d like to believe that. My wife works at Book Passage, and I use an e-book most of the time just because I figured I should understand how the future works. I recently started reading a regular book. I hadn’t done one in a few months …

Alan Rinzler: It smells better.

Andy Ross: The experience of reading a regular book is much better than an e-book. You have black on white instead of dark gray on light gray, although there are some advantages to e-books as well. Reading a book was like going to Chez Panisse instead of the doggy diner. But you can get books from Google books through independent bookstores, and, for the most part, the prices are the same as they are on Amazon, which is unusual. Amazon has succeeded by cutting prices and being willing to lose money in order to gain market share. But publishers have adopted a new plan—it used to be violation of anti-trust, but it’s not anymore—where they can set the prices. So you’re in a situation where if you buy an e-book from Book Passage, it’s the same price as Amazon, so people should do it. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s having that much of an impact.

Alan Rinzler: But it’s happening. Everything is changing. I don’t think anybody can tell what it’s going to be like a year from now. A year ago, I don’t think anybody would have predicted that Janklow and Nesbitt were going to make a deal to self-publish books of their best authors whose books were out of print or who wanted to make more money on their royalties. It’s really amazing—a year ago …

Andy Ross: Yeah, I’m having a fight with another agent about it/ One of my clients has some out-of-print books and I’d like to just put them up—he wants to put them up—but he foolishly promised another agent that he had the rights to it, and they’re not doing anything.

Alan Rinzler: Well, everything is negotiable. Give them a piece of the action.

Andy Ross: Well, they say they’re going to do something, but they haven’t. Agents are very much involved in that. Smashwords and all of these new companies are setting themselves up so that agents can be a key part of the process.

Alan Rinzler: You know, what’s interesting about the big changes in the book business is that they came from the ground up. Book publishers did not plan to have e-books, to have a direct access between authors and readers so that every author has to have his own website now, and their own blog and their own self-marketing plan. All of that just happened because of the technology and because of the people figuring out. And that’s just really interesting. And publishers have been reluctant, and late, getting on board. For years, I worked for a company that shall remain nameless—actually, it was John Wiley and everyone felt the same way. They would never post anything for free. Are you kidding? A sample chapter? Forget it. And now, of course, you can get more than a sample chapter and everybody does it, including Wiley. So there’s been a lot of dinosaur thinking and fear of technology and wanting to do it the old way for publishers and agents and editors and everybody in the business because they’re not math and science majors—none of them, for the most part—they’re English majors.

Andy Ross: They went to Brown!

Alan Rinzler: They don’t feel comfortable doing stuff like converting to six different formats, even though it’s not that hard to do. Or reading an e-book where you flip with your thumb like that. And the iPad, by the way, has very good black and white delineation.

Andy Ross: I’d love to have an iPad. I have a Sony Reader, by the way.

Alan Rinzler: Aren’t they as sharp?

Andy Ross: Well, they’re like a Kindle, it’s dark gray on light gray.

Alan Rinzler: I love my iPad.

Meghan Ward: So what do you think about the e-book pricing? Because a lot of e-books now that you buy through Amazon or through Google e-books are only a dollar cheaper than the hardcover.

Alan Rinzler: A lot of them are $.99, too.

Meghan Ward: Well, those are the self-published books. But the ones coming through the Big 6 are often almost the same price as the hard cover.

Andy Ross: No, they’re not, actually.

Meghan Ward: Well, the ones that I buy tend to be because the Amazon hardcover price is already so low.

Andy Ross: Well, Amazon can no longer set the prices. That was a big breakthrough. Publishers don’t particularly like Amazon, correct me if I’m wrong.

Alan Rinzler: Oh, they hate it.

Andy Ross: Amazon is too powerful …

Alan Rinzler: They’re also starting to compete with publishers.

Andy Ross: And they’re starting to compete with publishers, and they were trying to drive down the price of books for a number of reasons, but they were driving them down to the point where it devalued the value of books. So they (the publishers) made a side deal with Apple to increase the competition and they came up with a plan where they could control the price of the book. And Amazon resisted it. They wouldn’t sell one publisher for a week, and it terrified everyone. But it also showed the power that Amazon had.

Alan Rinzler: Will you explain that? They can set the actual price? What about the discount?

Andy Ross: No, what they do and it’s legal—and it would never have been legal ten years ago—is that the publisher, instead of using a wholesale model—we sell you a book wholesale and you can price it anyway you want—they have created a system where the retailer, Amazon for instance, is an agent of the publisher. So what they do is the publisher sets a price, and the agent—Amazon—gets a 30 percent commission. The publisher controls the price of that book. And that’s happening with the major publishers. It’s not happening with smaller publishers. But now every one fo the six majors has this agency plan.

Alan Rinzler: For the actual book or the e-book?

Andy Ross: This is for the e-book. The actual book is still this wholesale plan.

Alan Rinzler: So for the e-book only. Therefore, the e-book prices are still kind of up.

Meghan Ward: They’re often $12-, $13-, $14.99. They’re not as cheap as you would think.

Andy Ross: Yeah, but the hardback prices can be $25.

Alan Rinzler: Not if they’re discounted.

Meghan Ward: Well the Amazon hardcovers are usually around $16, $17, so there’s not that big of a difference. And often the e-book is a dollar more than the paperback. You would think they’d be less expensive because they don’t have to print books, but they’re not.

Alan Rinzler: Well, I think this hasn’t been resolved yet. The story’s not over. You’re right, it’s a little bit weird, and what’s going to ultimately influence it is that readers want a cheaper price. Everyone wants the price to be lower, and the self-published e-books, which are very substantial, are $.99, $1.99, $2.99. Why go to $7.99 or $12.99?

Andy Ross: Well, I think you have to decide … first of all, a lot of these e-books are given away. One of the issues is the value of intellectual work. If somebody spends five years writing a novel, it’s probably worth more than $.99, whatever “worth” means. And this brings up another issue—and Alan has written about this, and so have I—of what is the value of the traditional publisher in the new world? What kind of value do they add? I went to New York and I was talking to … because again, there’s this philosophy of disintermediation, where you don’t need publishers anymore, they’re dinosaurs, they don’t really add value, they don’t promote books, what do they do? And I asked a bunch of editors about that, and they didn’t have very good answers about what value they’re adding. Mostly what they said—and there is something true about this—is that they provide a really good editorial experience, that a lot of these small press books are just kind of thrown up there, which is really true. It’s easy to get one of these small press books, but it’s difficult to sort out what’s good from this kind of ocean of mediocrity because, like everything else on the Internet, everyone’ san expert—it’s like Wikipedia.

Alan Rinzler: What do you mean by “a good editorial experience”? How can these New York editors say that when most of them don’t do any editing?

Andy Ross: I used to think that, but I don’t think that’s true. What is true is that they expect the book to be perfect when they get it. It has to be well edited, and that’s why agents do add value. But once it is edited, they will—some of them—will do a lot of work editing it.

Alan Rinzler: You mean edit again?

Andy Ross: Yeah, they will edit it additionally. I think if you look it in aggregate, if you buy a book from Knopf, it’s more likely to be a better book than if you buy a book from Smashwords.

Alan Rinzler: Well, this is a complicated issue because many self-published authors are seeking developmental editors. There’s a whole new freelance profession of developmental editors. You know that [To Meghan Ward], and I know that. You have Zoe Rosenfeld. And that’s a whole business. And there’s a lot of other people I know who used to be acquisition editors and who are now doing developmental editing, and they’re being hired by self-published editors.

Meghan Ward: Has your business increased since the self-publishing has grown?

Alan Rinzler: Yes, it has, substantially. However, I still don’t really believe—and I can’t prove it exactly, but I’m pretty sure—from when I talk to editors and writers, that they’re not getting a lot of developmental editing from publishers because they’re in a hurry. They’re got to fill a quota. They’ve got a window of opportunity. They’ve got a list that has to be satisfied. They don’t want to mess around with something that has to be worked with for another year or two in development. They want to get it right into production. They’re in a hurry. They want a quick turnover of their investment, especially if they pay a lot of money.

Andy Ross: You’re right about that. If the book is flawed, if the concept of the book is flawed, they’re not going to spend a lot of energy before they acquire they book trying to figure out how to make it a good book. They will edit after they get it book, though, and they’ll put some time and energy into it. Some of it’s developmental, but I’m finding I have to do a huge amount of developmental editing as an agent, and I think most of the agents who I respect are doing that—not necessarily the most famous agents, who are mostly interested in flipping contracts.

Meghan Ward: So you’re willing to take on a book that needs some work?

Andy Ross: I spend months. I just took on a novel which was really one of the best novels I ever read by a person who teaches creative writing, and we’ve been spending the last three months working on that book. You know, it’s really interesting, I’m finding that I get kind of intimidated by these people who teach graduate-level writing, but the truth is, anyone who’s been writing a novel for four years has lost all perspective. They seem to have no idea what characteristics are working for the reader or what’s just in their mind. And if you’ve read Anne Lamott’s wonderful Bird by Bird, she talked about Radio KFKD, which is in your ear. One side you’re hearing the siren song of self-aggrandizement, and on the other side, you’re hearing the rap music of self-loathing. You’ve lost all perspective. My role as an agent is to edit and tell them what’s working and what isn’t working.

Alan Rinzler: But you’re very unusual, Andy. I don’t think most agents do much editing, nor should they, because they don’t know what they’re doing.

Andy Ross: I like to believe I added value to that book, and she said I did.

Alan Rinzler: I’m sure you did. And people who teach creative writing aren’t necessarily …

Andy Ross: Oh, I’ve heard horror stories.

Alan Rinzler: It’s interesting, if you read Writer’s Digest or Poets & Writers, there are so many MFA programs. You’d think it was like law school or medical school—although maybe that’s not as job-guaranteeing either—but there are so many writers taking degrees as if this will ensure them of success, and believe me, it doesn’t.

Meghan Ward: So what do you think of MFA programs?

Alan Rinzler: If you need the discipline of having to write, you probably shouldn’t be a writer in the first place. You should have that discipline. I’m very skeptical of MFA programs, frankly.

Andy Ross: I’ve given panels are MFA programs, and I’ve worked with people who teach creative writing, and some of them are good and some of them … aren’t.

Meghan Ward: What are the biggest problems you see in new author’s works?

Alan Rinzler: I think Andy touched on that—a lack of perspective and objectivity on their own work.

Andy Ross: But that’s true of experienced writers as well.

Alan Rinzler: That’s true, but if they’ve never written before … You know, there’s an irony. To be a writer, you have to be a bit of an egomaniac, and you have to be a bit obsessive, in order to sit down and devote yourself and ignore your family and your job or whatever else you’re doing, and just have the discipline to write four or five or six hours a day—or two or three. So you’re a little bit crazy to begin with. But new writers, in particular, are often so swept up in their own work that they don’t see what they’re doing. The biggest problem I see with beginning writers, though, is they don’t make a plan. They think if they close their eyes, the muse will come to them and put the pen on the paper, the fingers on the keyboard. The best writers I have worked with, the very best—Toni Morrison and Tom Robinson, yadda yadda—they all really think about what they’re doing ad try to make a plan and revise . An outline even, or some kind of storyboard or some kind of clear vision of their path—about where they’re going ,why they’re going and where it’s going to wind up—all those kind of structural narrative issues, try to get at least mostly resolved, subject to change, as you go along, but mostly resolve before beginning. I think that’s the biggest problem I see in writing.

Andy Ross: Well, I think all of the writers I talk to, regardless of their experience, have no perspective. I wouldn’t have any perspective after those characters lived in my head for four or five years. What Alan does is very different from what I do, and I refer people to Alan. What I do is I come to the experience with a beginner’s mind. I read the book and try to think about how the reader would relate to that experience, because the reader is king, not the writer. And I try to give them the input as a reader—what was funny, what was boring, where I was getting lost. And it happens all the time from even from the best writers. Right?

Alan Rinzler: Oh yeah. There are a lot of technical problems. One book I edited turned out to be really good, but it started with nothing but dialogue—nothing but dialogue, no breaks, no “he got up and walked across the room,” dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. You didn’t even know who was talking. Or some books have no dialogue. These are all things … too much visual description, not enough visual description, things like that. A lot of digression, a lot of unnecessary tangents, and back story problems. Like how do you tell what happened before the book started? That’s a major problem. Then you get these big information dumps at the beginning of a book.

Andy Ross: Prologues.

Alan Rinzler: Yeah. Heavy prologues. Or that formulaic opening car crash and then the big dump as to how it got to that point and then picking it up again. There are a lot of little structural problems that are very common.

Andy Ross: You know, I thought about that. I was working very closely with a friend of mine, whose book I sent to Alan. Neither she nor I had much experience writing novels, but we together worked through these problems of working through backstories and information dumps. One of the things that’s interesting is that I’ve been influenced by movies and the way they tell stories, and movies always have prologues because a film script is much shorter, and they have to find ways of getting the information out in a much simpler form.

Alan Rinzler: It’s easier, too, though.

Andy Ross: Making a movie? Well, doing a prologue solves a lot of problems.

Alan Rinzler: Yeah, because cinematically is goes much faster, and …

Andy Ross: Dealing with backstory is what I find publishers are very tough on. They just think it’s lazy writing, and they don’t like it.

Alan Rinzler: But somehow it has to get in there, and it’s not easy to feather in people’s personality or history without telling about it in an encyclopedic way—foot notes.

Meghan Ward: So, you’ve been getting a lot of writes who want to self-publish?

Alan Rinzler: I’ve been getting a lot of writers who want to take control of their destiny, who say I’m going to self-publish this book, but I know that it has to be a lot better than it is now, and I’m going to do this, but I want you to be an editor.

Meghan Ward: Do you think the quality is as high as those who want to go through the traditional process?

Alan Rinzler: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely The quality is not as high as a great writer who’s already been published, but the quality is as high as someone who says this is my first book, and I want an agent. And boy is that a frustrating experience for the most part, trying to get one.

Andy Ross: Although Alain sent me some of his clients.

Alan Rinzler: Yeah, and you didn’t take any of them!

Andy Ross: I didn’t take any of them, but you know, that happens.

Alan Rinzler: I make recommendations, but who listens to me?

Andy Ross: Yeah, I get rejected a lot. Everything is hard to get published through traditional publishing. I get a lot of people who have good experiences publishing books that I just fall in love with, and I get a lot of rejections. It’s like my social life in high school. And people who are important historical figures with original information I get rejected. Pulitzer Prize winners.

Meghan Ward: Do you worry that the agent will be obsolete five to ten years from now?

Andy Ross: Well, I was worried about that, but … it used to be they hated literature agents. I think Alfred Knopf said a literary agent is to a publisher as a knife is to a throat. And now it’s the opposite. They consider the literary agents the gatekeepers.

Alan Rinzler: They won’t look at a book unless it comes from an agent.

Andy Ross: And that’s where agents, good agents, add value. We do developmental editing. We work with them closely to write book proposals and in the process of writing the book proposal, which is a business plan, they have to do the developmental editing, at least in their mind, or the book proposals going to stink and I’m not going to be able to sell it.

Alan Rinzler: But here’s a change. I think everybody in traditional publishing now is much more risk-aversive than when I was a kid. They don’t’ want to make a long-term investment in their writer. They want something that’s a big hit now. They don’t want to spend a lot of time editing it. They don’t want to spend a lot of time selling it. Everything has to go faster because you’ve got those quarterly reports for publicly held capitalist companies, and you can’t just say well, this writer is going to be very successful in three years, I think. Therefore, there is a fear of failure, which is justified because most books do lose money, that causes people not to take as many chances. One thing that was true 40 or 50 years ago is that you would invest in a writer like Joe Heller because you thought his next book would be great. Or other great writers.

Andy Ross: Faulkner is the example they use.

Alan Rinzler: Fitzgerald. Hemingway. Their first books were not successful, but you did it because you wanted to get their third or fourth book. You don’t see very much of that anymore.

Andy Ross: Well, the word that comes up a lot—particularly for nonfiction—is “platform.” Everything’s platform. Essentially, what it comes down to is they want people who are famous and who have access to media. Platform for me means two different things. Number one if you’re writing a history, you have an endowed chair at Harvard in history. The other form of platform, which I think is much more persuasive, is that you’re sleeping with Oprah’s hairdresser, that you have access to popular media. As a new agent, I have a much harder job because most of my clients—some of them have pretty good platforms—but most of them—I have to discover new talent. It’s very important, and publishers will tell you that it’s very important, but it’s also very hard to get the publishers to commit themselves to this new talent.

Alan Rinzler: It’s paradoxical.

Meghan Ward: So what advice do you have for new writers on how to develop their platform?

Andy Ross: Well, we’ve argued about that, haven’t we?

Alan Rinzler: No, I think we actually agreed.

Andy Ross: We argued and then agreed.

Alan Rinzler: You can develop a platform if you’re unknown online. That’s one way to develop a platform, by developing a personality, by becoming integrated into a community who have a shared interest—particularly that’s much easier in nonfiction. Although, a lot of fiction women writers and male writers develop a platform online by putting their work out and people reading it and developing people who like it and getting a following, so that by the time you get to a publisher you can say, “Hey, I’ve got 6000 hits a month.” That’s impressive.

Andy Ross: Well, I don’t know how impressive that is because I was just reading a very good blog entry about this, and it is true, publishers expect you to do social media and to develop your own platform, but what I’m finding is there are certain limitations to that, that it’s hard to develop a platform if you don’t already have platform. I think I mentioned that a blog that would impress publishers, that would make the deal, was a blog that was getting 50-100,000 hits a day—and they would agree with that. I think you contacted Daniela Rapp, right?

Meghan Ward: Yeah, but she was talking per month, not per day.

Andy Ross: Still, 50,000 hits a month …

Alan Rinzler: That’s a big number.

Andy Ross: It’s a big number. Most people aren’t going to do that.

Alan Rinzler: No.

Andy Ross: I mean, they will publish other books. They don’t just make the decision based on the number of hits on the blog, but …

Alan Rinzler: Well, there are other ways to do platform. One is to win a literary prize of some kind. Another is to get published in a magazine or a literary journal or to get a really persuasive, incredible endorsement from somebody who’s really read the book and respects the writing. That’s hard to get. You have to be a good writer. But I have this kind of naïve feeling that virtue will triumph and that good writers will always emerge, that somehow, if they keep writing, the work will appear and be seen and be read and it will connect.

Andy Ross: Well, I agree with that. Because I’m a new agent and because I dwell in the world of new talent, the best I can do it find somebody who has talent—particularly in the world of fiction, where almost nothing gets published—literary fiction. And all I can hope to do is try to have them continue writing until something clicks—kismet or an editor falls in love with it. I was meeting with literary editors last time I was in New York and there was one who I respect a lot, and I asked her, “How many manuscripts does she read a year?” and she had a log and she said, “Last year I read about 250 manuscripts.” And I said, “How many of those ended up getting published?” And she said, “Two.” And I said, “How many of those 250 were good enough to get published?” and she said, “Over a hundred.” So that’s the kind of batting average we’re talking about. You’ve got to be good, that’s a given. You have to be good, but once you’re good, it goes into this acquisitions meeting and decisions get made that aren’t necessarily esthetic. The one book I loved, and it made it all the way to the acquisition meeting, got rejected because they said something like, “The subject was a little too dark for reading groups.” It was a marketing decision.

Alan Rinzler: Yeah, if you’ve been to a few acquisition meetings, and I have, it’s really scary how much power … here’s a change in the book business. The change is that the balance of power in the company has shifted from editorial to sales and marketing, so that now the sales and marketing people have a kind of veto. I was executive editor at Wiley, and I could occasionally push through things that were coolly responded to by the sales and marketing people, but I did so at peril because they could kill a book by simply not selling it, by not pushing it into their accounts. They have too much power because they’re bean counters … and they’re very risk aversive. They want a book from an author that the last book sold a lot of copies because there’s something called BookScan. You know what that is? The first thing that happens when a sales department, or an editor—anybody, gets a proposal is they look up the authors in BookScan. And very few authors look that good in BookScan, unless their last book did over 50- 75, 100,000 copies.

Andy Ross: You know, it’s a lot easier to sell a debut novel, where there’s no record on BookScan that to have somebody whose book bombed.

Alan Rinzler: Or just did midlist.

Andy Ross: They take books by the numbers, and I think there’s a reason for that, which is that the Barnes & Noble buyers also look at BookScan, and they do the same thing. I used to do it at Cody’s even.

Alan Rinzler: You know what you sold of the last title. You have your own numbers.

Andy Ross: It’s the tyranny of numbers. I know some agents, if an author’s previous book didn’t do well, they’ll try to sell the book under a nom de plume.

Alan Rinzler: That’s crazy. How can you publicize the book then?

Andy Ross: Well, eventually the truth comes out.

Meghan Ward: So, both of you have blogs. Why do you have blogs?

Alan Rinzler: Well, for me, it gives me an opportunity to be a grouchy old man and vent occasionally. But actually I have to keep that under control, my wife says. For me, it’s primarily a way of stimulating and encouraging people to hire me as a freelance editor.

Meghan Ward: And do you think your blog helps?

Alan Rinzler: Oh, absolutely. I get many many queries every day, most of which are not workable. But maybe one or two are workable, and if we can work it out and if it’s good enough, it’s a tremendous source of clients for me. Its’ my primary source of clients.

Andy Ross: Well, I started my blog because my brother-in-law said as a marketing tool I needed a blog. And it turned out to be different because probably the way I am. Alan and Cheryl actually brought me in and decided to give me avuncular advice about how I was blowing it as a marketing tool. And Alan said, “What do you want to do? Do you want to make money, or do you want to sound off?” And, unfortunately, what I said is I think I want to sound off. And that’s pretty much what my blog has become. Although every once in a while I feel it incumbent upon me to provide the Writer’s Digest “9 Tips on How to Write a Query Letter.” The problem is I’m embarrassed to do it because there are only 20 tips in the world about what you need to know to write a query letter, and they seem to be recycled almost monthly in Writer’s Digest. I can’t spend my life writing tips about query letters, but I do it, and if you read my blog, you can get a lot of good information.

Alan Rinzler: But I think your blog is helpful to authors, and that’s what I try to do. There’s so much going on, there’s so many changes, that there’s stuff to write about for authors besides how to write a query letter. My advice about query letters is don’t write one, period. End of story. I think query letters are a complete waste of time. Nobody reads them.

Andy Ross: Well, I think they do read them, but I think people go around to these writers’ conferences where they charge money for how to write a query letter, and there really is only five things you need to know. They should be short, and they aren’t going to get you published, but … when I look at a query letter, I want to know three things. I want to know what’s the genre of the book, what’s it about, and why am I the right person to write that book. And frankly, why am I the right person to write that book is the first thing I’d look at.

Alan Rinzler: When I started my blog, self-publishing was pretty much still vanity publishing. It was for the lunatic fringe. And that was only three or four years ago. There’s been so much happening that authors need to hear about. I think the blog is not exactly self-serving always, but somehow a public service in some ways, which will show people that they ultimately do need to hire me (laughs.)

Meghan Ward: And do you recommend that writers trying to develop platform blog, or do you think the blogosphere is saturated at this point?

Alan Rinzler: Yes, but you don’t have to write every day. You don’t have to write what you had for breakfast. I think that that sort of Nathan Bransford model has died.

Andy Ross: Nathan Bransford has a lot of fans, actually. But it’s hard. There are a number of agent’s blogs, and they feel they have to post every day, and they run out of material. I do it when I have something to say. It’s not always every day, or even every week.

Meghan Ward: So do you think it’s worth a writer’s time to blog, even if they’re not going to get that 50,000 hits a month?

Andy Ross: I think you blog because you like to blog, because you feel you have something to say.

Alan Rinzler: And you like to write, you’re a writer. It’s writing.

Andy Ross: If you follow the gospel according to Writer’s Digest, they say you have to blog, you have to blog every day, but if you don’t have anything to say, nobody’s going to listen to your blog.

Alan Rinzler: You’re better off doing occasional blogs.

Meghan Ward: But as far as developing a platform, it’s going to make an agent or a publisher …

Andy Ross: Well, publishers expect you to blog.

Alan Rinzler: Oh, yeah. It think you really have to do it.

Andy Ross: Although if I saw something I loved, I wouldn’t make the decision on whether they blogged or not. What I would do is say they’ve got to be on social media, they ought to blog, they need to have a website, but that for me is not the make or break of the decision.

Meghan Ward: Do you take any of those things into consideration, though?

Andy Ross: Well, publishers do, and whenever I do a book proposal, I have a section on how the author is going to market themselves. And I tell them they have to have a Facebook page and they ought to blog, but that’s not going to influence a publisher’s decision. I had an author who had 75,000 hits a month on her blog, and I couldn’t get it published. So …

Alan Rinzler: One of the things that hasn’t changed in the book business is that people who are in the book business would not be happy in the oil business or selling cars or other kinds of work. They love books. You don’t make a huge amount of money unless you own the company. People who are in the book business often make decisions upon irrational passion. I think, ultimately, the decision to represent a book or buy a book for your company, is very personal, very subjective, and is based upon connecting with it on an emotional level that resonates for you.

Andy Ross: Which is why you have to have returns, which is why bookstores need to have returns. If your new line of underwear doesn’t sell for $10, you can usually reduce it to a price where it will sell, whereas if a book was just somebody’s pipe dream, it’s not going to sell for any price. So books are returnable.

Alan Rinzler: Okay, we should finish up. Got any more questions?

Meghan Ward: What’s the last best book you’ve read, or your favorite book that you’ve read in the last six months?

Alan Rinzler: The Finkler Question.

Andy Ross: I threw that down after fifty pages. I couldn’t read that.

Alan Rinzler: I read it twice. See, we don’t agree about everything. And you call yourself a Jew? (laughing)

Meghan Ward: The Finkler Question?

Andy Ross: The Finkler Question. It won the Booker Prize.

Meghan Ward: (To Andy Ross) And you didn’t like it?

Andy Ross: Oh, I got bored very early on.

Alan Rinzler: I want to read it a third time. And all of my friends—except Andy—loved that book.

Andy Ross: Actually, my wife threw it down, too.

Alan Rinzler: It’s by a guy named Harold Jacobson in the 60s. It’s English, and it’s about Jews who don’t agree about anything—Jewish identity, Jewish anti-Semitism, that is, Jews hating Jews

Andy Ross: Hey, I can get all that at home.

Alan Rinzler: It’s very funny, too.

Andy Ross: Actually, the best book I’ve read recently is the novel I got from the slush pile. It’s a historical novel, and I love it. And the second best novel I read was also something I got—no, it wasn’t slush pile, it was recommended by another agent. Neither of them have been published, and I’m up against those numbers of 250 a year, but I like them better than The Finkler Question.

Is blogging a waste of time?

Meghan Ward — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 08:00:45 +0000

The weekend before last, I attended a publishing panel at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto during which literary agent Andy Ross of the Andy Ross Literary Agency said, “Publishers say they expect you to blog and to use social media. I blog and I get about 100 hits a day, and I’m relatively famous, and that’s not enough to impress a publisher.”

So, of course, I wondered, “What IS enough to impress a publisher?” I e-mailed Andy to ask him, and this is what he said:

“It is going to take quite a bit to impress a publisher on how many hits you get on a blog. Probably 100,000 unique views a month is the ball park. But even that isn’t good enough. You are still going to have to convince the publisher that you have a good book in your head, and that it is not just recycled material from the blog that people can get for free. That said, regardless of the size of your blog, if you are trying to sell a book to a publisher, they really expect you to blog and to mine the social media. Even if you only get 100 hits a day (which is more than most people get).”

100,000 hits a month? I don’t know any writer/bloggers who get that many. Are we all wasting our time? I decided to ask Daniela Rapp, editor at St. Martin’s Press, what she thought. Here is what she said: “A hundred hits a day is indeed small potatoes, but I would argue that 100,000 is way more than we generally expect or see. Somewhere in the middle, I think. Twitter followers upwards of 10,000 are impressive. FB fans in the thousands.”

Hmm. Somewhere in the middle. So that means somewhere between 3000 (100/day) and 100,000 hits/month. So let’s say 30,000+. That’s at least a thousand hits a day (I’m talking page views, not unique visitors). I bet every blogger with 1000+ Google Friend Connect followers gets that. That’s achievable. But 10,000+ Twitter followers? Thousands of Facebook Fans? You have to be Nathan Bransford to make those numbers. So are we all wasting our time?

Roni Loren wrote a post last week titled Is Blogging Dead? And she drew her inspiration from a post by Wendy Lawton at Books & Such Literary Agency titled What’s Not Working? in which Wendy lists beginning a blog as one avenue writers should not pursue as a means to market their books. Her rationale is that the market is already so saturated, it will be nearly impossible for a new blogger to make waves in the blogosphere.

Yet there’s a difference between having a platform so tall that you can snag a book deal based on your reputation alone and having a really well written book with a little social media behind it to show agents and publishers that you’re out there making connections and that you’re book-marketing savvy. The key is to make sure the book-writing comes FIRST and the blog, Twitter, and Facebook second. I say this to remind myself more than anyone because there are weeks when I feel like I’m spending more time on social media than I am on my book, which is counterproductive. Because without a great book, what’s there to market?

I don’t think blogging is a waste of time. I think blogging poorly is a waste of time. The key is to find your niche and delve in. Don’t just write about writing. Write about what interests you, what makes you unique. If that’s rock painting and speaking Swahili, then that’s what you should blog about because people with those interests will find you and follow you and read your work. As someone who writes about writing, I don’t practice what I preach, but I think about it every day. I think about the things I would blog about if I were to expand the subject matter of this blog: parenting in Berkeley, my previous life as a fashion model, rock climbing, speaking French, Geocaching, Settlers of Catan. What about you? Do you blog about writing, or do you have a particular niche, something that makes you a little different from all the other writer/bloggers out there? What makes you unique?