Just in time for Hugo nominations, I’m celebrating the arrival of my very first audiobook!
Stars That Make Dark Heaven Light, narrated by the lovely Angela Dawe, is now available from Audible (ACX) as an audiobook. And if you’re new to the joy of audiobooks, you can get two free titles when you give Audible a try.
Here’s the link (click it NOW!) http://amzn.to/1SxOJ4u
Spring is here. Time to clean house. Even writers can benefit from a little spring cleaning.
After launching three titles in three months at the end of last year, I realized that I actually have a pretty good start on a portfolio of novels–6 to be exact, as well as a novella, three short story collections and a couple dozen standalone shorts running around. I’m not a one-book author anymore. I like them all individually, but as a group, they don’t have a very cohesive look.
I decided it’s time to streamline my brand to refocus on the novels, which is what I prefer to spend my time on. Time to give my author platform an upgrade. Go for a more professional look. That means taking down the short stories that were cluttering up my author pages, getting new book covers, updating the look of my blog, writing a new bio, and even setting up a professional/business Facebook page.
Brighten Your Brand with New Covers & BlurbsIf your covers are more than a year or two old, it might be a good time to take another look at them; maybe even update your branding a little. It might take a while to find the right cover artist, but the right cover artist can make a huge difference. I’ve just uploaded new covers for my Hand of Fate series. On the recommendation of a friend, I finally settled on Lou Harper, and was absolutely blown away by the results. I found Lou to be reasonably priced and easy to work with.More than that, I feel almost as proud of the new covers as I did of the books when they launched.
And of course, with new covers, it’s time to take a second look at the old blurbs, too. Analyzing the current bestsellers in your genre can give you some good clues about what sort of cover copy is hot right now. Author Marketing Club and CopyBlogger both have some good tips and training videos.
Expand Your Reach into New MarketsAnd how about expanding your reach? Seems like every day there are new markets for ebooks: 24Symbols, Inktera, Scribd, and Tolino are just a few of the new players. Have you tried Audio yet? After several earlier unsuccessful attempts at producing and audiobook at ACX, the Audiobook Creation Exchange (an Amazon Company), I finally connected with the right narrater, and I’m hoping to launch my first audiobook in the next week or two– Stars That Make Dark Heaven Light is a novella. It’s two-hour recoding time is short enough to be worthwhile, but not quite as big an investment as a novel for a first-time project.
Spring is a good time to re-examine your categories and keywords–the basic tools that help your books get found by readers. David Gaughrans’s latest book, Let’s Get Visible offers a lot of good tips on marketing and explains the concept of popularity and how it works with categories and keywords on Amazon. Since every author and book is different, there is no one piece of advice that can help you choose the best categories and keywords for your book, but by experimenting, you may be able to improve your book’s popularity with some new keywords, and in time, grow your audience.
Joanna Penn’s recent post on The Creative Penn talks about her latest brand iteration and offers some productivity tips, such as dictating first drafts. I do know several successful (and prolific) authors who write this way. Maybe it’s time to give it a try.
And Nick Stephenson has a pretty amazing bunch of free videos that look at marketing and what it takes to be a successful indie author. His perspective is refreshing, and his enthusiasm is contagious. He’s got me thinking about marketing in a different way.
I’ve spent the last six weeks working on the updates, and I’m feeling pretty good about it. To be honest, it was hard work, and will be a while before I see any results, but I’m glad I made the effort.
Time to get back to writing.
Here’s a sneak peek at the new Destiny Blues cover, the first book in my Hand of Fate series. It won’t be available for a while yet, but I think the artist, Lou Harper did an amazing job.
I never thought it would happen to me. After all, I’m not afraid of rejection anymore. Form rejections don’t bother me a bit, and I don’t save even the personals, although last week I thanked an editor for the nicest rejection I’d ever received. I’ve actually come to be pretty smug about it.
But I’ve recently realized that one of the heresies of conquering the fear of rejection is that you stop submitting your work to paying markets at all. I mean, I’ve got some short stories I could submit–and I’ve even got standing invitations from several wonderful editors who like my work and have asked me to submit my next story to to them, but I can’t seem to do it.
Maybe it sounds warped, but while I adore these editors and their wonderful feedback on my stories, I’ve stopped submitting to them. They now represent my ‘good’ editors, and I’m afraid to send them anything less than my ‘best’. I tell myself that my stories all need tweaking, or they’re too short or too long. To my mind, they’re just not not good enough to send–not even to mentors or editors who have repeatedly asked me to send them my next story.
That’s pretty f**ked up.
I’m sitting on five stories that have cumulatively been sent to only three markets, one of which I always submit to because they send rejections in less than three days. Add to that, the list of stories that have already been sold and are now candidates for resale, audio, and international markets, and I’m being ridiculous. These stories should be out working, not lying around in on my hard drive, doing nothing.
So as I battled some serious back spasms this week, which seriously limited my writing time, I decided to implement my new year’s plan to stop self-rejecting. Lucky for me, there are plenty of other folks who have gone through this as well, so I’ll share what I’ve learned.
I updated my submission spreadsheet this week, and now have three stories out on submission in first rights print markets, one out to a reprint market, and two more out to audio markets–and I’m getting ready to send out some stories to overseas markets as well. It feels good.
The key point is to NOT think about whether your story is ‘good enough’. Yoda is right. Just do it.
January and February have always been pretty tough months for me. The novelty of winter has passed. The post-holiday slump and lack of sunshine usually start getting to me by around mid-February. Then, just about the time I hit the bottom of my grump grove, like this week, the daffodils start blooming.
There are places in this world, like in the Ukraine, where wild daffodils (narcissi) still bloom in abundance. Narcissus has been lauded by poets throughout the world; it has been cultivated and improved since ancient times; there are narcissus societies and narcissus feasts (in Austria, for example, and in Switzerland). In Great Britain, the narcissus revered with almost as much fervor as the tulip in Holland — it is a national symbol in Wales. In China, one of the traditional names for the narcissus was “the fairy of the water.” Oriental wisdom says that the narcissus is “bread for the soul.” In medieval times in western Europe, narcissi were used in making love potions–its fragrance was believed to inspire love of beauty and bring peace of heart.
To me, daffodils, in all their colors and variety, are the unmistakable harbinger of spring. In other words, nature’s way of telling me to put on my Chaka Kahn CDs and lighten up.
Tell me something GOOD.
Today begins the celebration of Chinese New Year, a fifteen-day celebration of early spring. Chinese New Year is a traditional time for families, community, and togetherness. Wherever they are, people come home to celebrate the previous year of hard work, have a good rest, and to wish for a lucky and prosperous coming year with their families. This festival has also evolved to celebrate the start of a new business year and wishing for profits and success in various vocations. Chinese people believe that a good start to the year will lead to a lucky year.
A Nian
According to legend, the Chinese New Year celebration began with a mythical beast called the Nian, a beast who lived either under the sea or beneath the mountains. The Nian would eat villagers, especially children. To protect themselves, villagers put food in front of their doors at the beginning of every year. It was believed that after the Nian ate the food, it wouldn’t attack any more people.
One day, a god visited one of the villagers and told him to put red paper and firecrackers on his house. The villagers then understood that the Nian was afraid of the color red. When the New Year was about to come, every villager dressed in red clothes, hung red lanterns, and placed red scrolls on their doors and windows. Firecrackers were set off to frighten away the Nian.
From that day on, the Nian never came to the village again
In case you haven’t heard, this year is the year of the monkey–Fire Monkey, to be exact. “Monkeys” (according to those who take Chinese astrology seriously) are particularly careful about their health, love lives, career, and investments in Monkey years.
As Chinese people believe that the year’s start affects the whole year, and there are many superstitions and taboos for the Spring Festival season. Among the taboos:
I was surprised to learn that wearing red underwear is very popular during the festival. The color red is believed to ward off bad luck and misfortune.
So don’t forget to wear your lucky undies…
The four Sparks, L to R: Me, Kim May, Dayle Dermatis, Leslie Claire Walker
I had a book signing today. I drove town to the Reader’s Guide (an indie bookstore) in Salem for a book signing. The Fiction River anthology, Sparks, edited by the fabulous Rebecca Moesta, won’t be published until March, but fellow authors of the anthology, Kim May, Dayle Dermatis, and Leslie Claire Walker and I all greeted readers, and signed copies of Sparks, as well as another Fiction River anthology, Alchemy & Steam.
Kim, who works has worked at Readers Guide for eighteen years and set the signing up for us did everything right.
And it worked. We sold out of the Sparks anthology, and sold about half of the copies of Alchemy & Steam. Most of the people who made a purchase knew Kim or were frequent customers of the bookstore, and came in specifically for the book signing. And I think it was more than the delicious cookies Dayle and Leslie brought that lured some of our future fans over to our table–we were having so much fun, people came over to investigate and walked away with a signed copy.
Hanging out with readers and other writers makes for a fun day. Many thanks to Reader’s Guide and Kim May for hosting such a fine and memorable book signing.
“…amusingly off-beat…fun…romp.”
- Locus
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Click and buy NOW!
Click and buy NOW!
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"... a lot of fun, with an absorbing mystery that unspools nicely at the heart of the plot. "
- Locus
Click and buy NOW!!
Click and buy NOW!
SFWA BLOG SF&F MARKETING PODCAST SCALZI Walter Jon Williams Muddy Colors JA KONRATH – Newbie’s Guide to Publishing
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"... a lot of fun, with an absorbing mystery that unspools nicely at the heart of the plot. "
- Locus
“…amusingly off-beat…fun…romp.”
- Locus
Click and buy NOW!
Click and buy NOW!
Click and buy NOW!
JA KONRATH – Newbie’s Guide to Publishing CHUCK WENDIG SCALZI Walter Jon Williams SFWA BLOG Lindsay Buroker SF&F MARKETING PODCAST DAVID GAUGHRAN Muddy Colors
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