Self-Publishers: The Problems with Statistics

by Stella Atrium
6/5/12
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I had a screaming fight one time with my brother about which brought in the most money – Chicago sports franchises or Chicago museums.  My stubborn stance was that museums had long hours and no off-season.  He insisted that one need only look at the stadiums and know sports fans live here.  

Chicago is home to great sport franchises – Chicago Cubs (go Cubs!), White Sox, Chicago Bulls, Chicago Bears, Chicago Blackhawk and more.  Then we have the college teams including DePaul Blue Demons (yeah, Demons!).

Chicago is also home to world-class museums – The Art Institute (of which I am a graduate), The Field Museum, The Shedd Aquarium, The Planetarium, The Museum of Science and Industry – and those are just the ones along Lake Shore Drive. 

So… which brings in the most money? Care to vote?

Of course, I wouldn’t blog about a fight that I lost – dead giveaway.  The museums bring in half again as much money as sports in Chicago.

Statistics can be surprising.  Before computers were ubiquitous enough to compile cross-platform statistics, information was gathered in a more casual manner.  An urban legend holds that for music lists, compilers called their favorite stores along the East Coast and asked the store owner what was selling.  Of course, the music store owner named his favorite artists as best-selling – in rock, funk, classical, rap, or easy listening genres.  When the real statistics were published for the first time in the late 1980s – Garth Brooks outsold them all.

Here’s a caution for self-publishers.

Statistics that include all ebooks for a quick look at what’s selling are impacted by the fact the romance novels outsell all other genres.  The most successful indie ebook writers/marketers are women, because the biggest fan base is women who read romance.

For non-fiction writers, maybe with a story about the struggles of raising a child with cancer, do you really want to follow the methods used to sell romance? Racy cover, short paragraphs, paced story with few surprises, long backlist for branding.

For fantasy writers, do you really want to follow the methods used for selling Hunger Games?  If you have read the hype, but not the story, it’s about teenagers killing each other for sport.

My publisher tried to sell me a module where my new release HeartStone sits on THEIR website in a colorful page with bells and whistles about searching for favorite characters and tweeting friends for which page you’re currently on.  The sales person – selling me – said more than once: “This is how Hunger Games did it.”

Yes, and Nicole Kidman and I have the same color hair.  So why aren’t I married to a country-western star?

Here’s an alternative method of developing a fan base.  Look at what books are successful in your genre.  Non-fiction is especially treacherous for follow-the-leader because books for marketing that reach out to confused self-publishers sell almost as well as romance.

Fantasy writers should look at the successful marketing strategies of Robin Hobb (Farseer Trilogy and more) and Lois MacMaster Bujold (Curse of Chalion and more), for example.  Brandon Sanderson used this method, in part.  He’s from Australia but joins the conversations on Reddit where Hobb and Bujold are certain to appear.  He piggy-backs on their fan base to promote his similar works.

I like Mistborn by Sanderson. I like Theft of Swords by Sullivan.  I watch them for marketing techniques and to puzzle out what might work for me.

I’m not making my hair black, though, to fit into that group.  It’s me and Nicole Kidman all the way on that score…

My Beach is the Best Beach, Bar None


By Stella Atrium
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We had a mild winter here, followed by the earliest spring I can remember.  Wisteria bushes are about to display yellow starburst flowers, and even the honeysuckle is sending out hesitant shoots.  Chicagoans are so conditioned, we just know there’s another arctic blast coming our way, often expressed as “waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

No complaints are allowed on this cloudless March day that’s worthy of June.  So I took a walk to the beach that faces Lake Michigan east of Lake Shore Drive. The water has no salt and no tide.  The temperature will chill your bones into August, but only tourists and children think you visit the beach to go in the water.

My beach is North Avenue, four blocks north of Oak Street Beach.  Navy Pier is six blocks south of there.  NAB will accept a million people on some days, depending on the fireworks schedule at Navy Pier, Wednesday and Saturdays all summer.  There’s kyacking and skip-jacking and wind-surfing and sun-bathing.  Through the season there’s the Cancer Walk and Chicago Marathon and Regalia for drunken people on boats they don’t know how to drive.

People in all walks of life come here – old and young, rich and poor, over-healthy and over-fat. Today I saw people dressed for summer, and some dressed for kick-boxing (go figure).  People dressed for work were stripping down and rolling up to exposed skin to the sun.  There were kite flyers and dog walkers and chatty women pushing baby buggies.  Ipods with earphones and ereaders for Twitter.

For a bike rider, the path is contiguous going south past the Yacht Club, Grant Park and the fountain, the Aquarium and Planetarium, the Field Museum, McCormick Place and all the way south to the Museum of Science and Industry. The Chicago skyline shimmers on your left for the entire ride.  

But today I turned north walking four blocks to Fullerton.  I shuffle past the baseball diamonds and rowing lagoon, past the volleyball nets and Theatre by the Lake building.  I skirt the grounds for Lincoln Park Zoo and the Nature Museum that has a room of live butterflies that settle on your arm and drink your sweat.

I cut across the Drive to walk north four more blocks to Diversey past the empty moorings of the harbor that occupies the four block to Belmont Harbor that spread north to… (you get the picture) all the was to Evanston.  Chicago has the largest Park District of any urban setting in the USA. When winter releases its grip on Chicago, the whole lakefront turns into a garden. Thank you Mayor Daley Sr. & Jr.

I cut inland at Diversey, ogling the statuary at the Elks Museum, past a slew of world-class Irish bars and juice bars and sushi bars and oyster bars, and pick up a bucket of KFC before I take the train home (practically door-to-door) for a two-hour nap.

My beach has no entrance or exit fee.  I paid no parking fee and bought no $4.29 a gallon gas to get there.  Nah, nah, nah.

I'm sure you think your beach is better.  You can make that argument in reply, but please supply a full description with images.