Twitter Friends vs Fans
by Stella Atrium
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Before iTunes, Smashwords and 99¢ eBooks on Kindle, the rule of thumb for a performer who wanted to attract the attention of industry big wigs was to show that he had 1000 loyal fans. We are in the Wild West stage of selling books just now where anything goes and the lowest bidder wins the most traffic.  But traffic and fans aren't the same creature.

A fan tells friends about his favorite performer (like a review), plays the tunes at parties (like a book chat group), and wears a t-shirt with the band logo (like buying a paperback). A fan RETURNS for more products from the same performer and puts down her money at retail prices.

I don't understand free ebooks on Kindle or Smashwords.  The writer spends all her life writing this book at the sacrifice of so many other activities and time with loved ones. Why devalue the product?

I'm not convinced Twitter traffic translates to sales, either. I see writers promoting each other, or cross-promoting with reviewers and handlers.  The writer is like a candidate surrounded by members of the press and cannot reach past the loud-talking reporters to find a voter willing to shake hands.

Maybe the audience we are seeking aren't even among our followers on Twitter.

Years ago I fooled around in non-profit theater in Chicago where attendance was one-quarter house on a good night and theater groups lived for reviews in The Reader and grants from Thorten Foundation. The truth was that no matter how well produced the performance for acting, directing, or set direction — the audience for live theater was sparse, even at low ticket prices. A producer in this arena could not expect to see returns on her investment.

The plethora of giveaways on sites trying to build loyalty (for the site, not for the writer) is similar to non-profit theater in Chicago. Except for a couple break-out sites that facilitate the reading community like GoodReads and LibraryThing, the audience just isn't there.

How does the self-publisher gain those "1000 loyal fans" for convincing evidence that her writing rises above the pack and is worthy to become a book-of-the-month choice for reading clubs?

Reputation is everything. There are several levels of reputation, though. Listed are 10 types to avoid.

    1.    The Situation — Anyone can show his navel and get others to look.  Be sure there's integrity and a reason the fan should return.
    2.    Always free — If it's free, that means you couldn't get anybody to buy it. Have a little dignity.
    3.    Trading favors — My back doesn't needs scratching. Because you asked, I know you haven't found true fans yet.
    4.    Inflated claims — "If you liked Jurassic Park, you're gonna love my self-published book." I always turn away when the writer claims to be like some other writer.
    5.    Five-star fan reviews on Amazon — Really? Were they posted by your mother?
    6.    Twitter Blanket — the same note every two minutes announcing the launch of your book. Your followers already read the announcement. Nobody else sees it. Who are you talking to?
    7.    Begs for reviews or retweets — Be patient, a quality reviewer will find a quality book soon enough. Building brand loyalty only happens over time.
    8.    Writer blog tour — Sponsored by another writer in a chat room where only writers sign in.
    9.    Salacious claims to increase traffic — Fool me once and "unfollow" is my next gesture.
    10.    Purchasing followers — Get real!

Better Than "Used to Be" for Self-Publishers

by Stella Atrium
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Last week a self-publisher complained to me that the lag-time between a GoodReads giveaway and posted fan reviews on Amazon was three weeks.  I turned away to hide my smirk.  I supposed it's true that we're so spoiled by the internet, we don't remember how it used to be. 

A decade ago I trusted a small publisher to produce a paperback fantasy novel I wrote. Turns out, he was really a printer masquerading as a publisher with no press release plan or distribution plan.  The weight fell on me to get the word out.

I did research and surfed the web for compatible sites and posted articles about writing and even a "glass bead game" that asked readers to buy the book.  This was before FaceBook in the days of listserv — remember listserv?

I attended sci-fi conventions and traveled to bookstores in the Chicagoland area and staged and attended author appearances.

I begged friends to lend support at my author appearance at the local and famous bookstore where the proprietor could boost my contacts inside the industry.  Except it rained cats-and-dogs that night and I felt sorry for the four friends who did make it to the event, late and drenched.

My efforts went nowhere.  It used to be that a self-promoter expended time and treasure and never reached the intended audience. Listed are a few memories that are burned into my mind.

1)    Introvert at Tradeshow — Did you ever see a booth at a trade show inhabited by a painfully shy writer who spoke to three people the whole day?  I have.

2)    Author Appearance with No Fans — Did you ever see an author at Borders seated alone at a table with stacks of her books and a blank expression of defeat? I have.

3)    Retail Marketing to Bookstores — One writer told me he boosted sales by driving up the California coast visiting bookstores for a personal pitch to owners to place 4 books on the shelves of each stop. An E for effort, but the price of gasoline makes this adventure prohibitive — even if the retail stores are still there.  A hit-or-miss method at best.

4)    Book Signings at Conventions — Writers hate this duty and function like turtles out of the shell. I count Kurt Vonnegut and Robert Jordan in this number. Writers often drink to get past the dread, so they function like hungover shell-less turtles at the morning signing, drinking copious amount of water.

5)    Regional Conventions — Did you ever attend a regional convention where you negotiated a giveaway of your book as part of the "fan appreciation" bag, only to discover the 80 attendees preferred stories about zombies and were really there to get laid?  I have.

6)    Listings on Industry Websites — These were accomplished using a form with no personal contact and no acceptance of connected blogs or Amazon listings.  Some of these still hover online, static and aging and misleading.

7)    Fan Websites — These genre lovers accepted articles and shameless self-promotion to boost traffic by adding your fans.  Except your fans and hers together came to five, including your mother.

8)    Getting into the Pipeline — Used to be... All promotion was accomplished with paperbacks, so each event included shipping a case of forty books to the hotel that hosted the convention, and then shipping them home again. 

9)    Managing Remainders — Did you ever work with a printer who wanted to be certain the check cleared before he shipped the books, even at 40% off?  Did this same printer dump remainders on the market so they hung around for three years at $1.89 sold by resellers on Amazon?  I have. 

10)     Tardy Reviews -- Did you ever find a complimentary review of your novel three years later by a respected reviewer on LibraryThing who must have picked up a remainder book?  Guess what...  that happened to me too!

So don't bring your complaints here that GoodReads or Twitter or LibraryThing aren't working for you.  Industry connections today are accomplished without shipping cases of books to neighboring states, and without leaving the house. 

Spoiled, spoiled, spoiled.

In Defense of (Reference) Books

--By Stella Atrium
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I require a handbook for students who are learning to write research papers.  The handbook is in new edition (and the publishers want to make the investment back) so the price is ~$75. Students say to me, "Can't I just find that information online?"

Well, yes and no.

I remember my frustration as a kid when my mother tried to introduce me to the dictionary.  I was instructed to look in the area of how I thought the word was spelled. By running my finger down the page where several words were spelled similarly, I could find the one I needed.  The hard lesson opened a whole new world for me.  Look at all these words!

An online dictionary doesn't show all the words, only the one you know how to request.  Peripheral exploration is excluded.

There are quality websites for guiding academic writing (OWL from Purdue University, for example), and sites for building grammar (visit Grammar Girl).  Navigating to each of these sites requires that the student has formed a question and knows how to ask the question to get an appropriate answer. 

The operator words in today's world are find, submit, link, retweet, ask, learn-more, post. Without a focused question, the student doesn't reach the answer and, in the case of building grammar skills, easily gives up the search.

But our whole lives are online, right?  In my neighborhood a four-story building that occupies a half-block stands empty where a Borders once operated.  Across the street a tiny California-style Apple store sells iPads and Kindles at long tables where nobody gets to sit down, not even the workers.  I guess old people are not their primary customers. Students live in the Apple world and don't miss the community where discourse is more than information.

Here's another example.  I took the new Kindle into the university Geek Squad to load wireless access and the email account.  The resident geek looked about twelve (truly wet behind the ears). Because the kindle is new to this service, he didn't know the protocols for completing the operation and started searching the wiki account that serves as a user's manual. 

Except he didn't know the problem, so he couldn't ask the right question to find the answer.

Therein lies the rub. A reference book compiles all the answers on a topic so searching leads to more than the "bit" that allows the user to go to the next screen.

I encourage students to invest in the handbook, keep it next to the computer, open it occasionally, and learn a whole new world of sentence structure, grammar, word usage, research formats, and online presentations.  These issue are compiled into a single source and students can move easily from one section to the next to devour the discipline and check back for a needed refresher not tied to solving an immediate problem. 

My pitch is that the handbook can be used throughout the college experience and becomes a helpmate for improving how the student presents herself using words.  This is a new concept to them. "Do you mean... look in a book more than once?"

It's not about operator words.  It's about worldview.