A lot of first time authors approach the task of selling their book only after going through the massive process of writing, editing and publishing. By that time, you have a finished book that people will either love and buy, or find only marginally interesting and sales will struggle. Sadly, the huge majority of books self-published fall into the latter category. Self-published books are notorious for being able to achieve only a few sales to family and friends, then you watch it languish on Amazon and other web pages simply not attracting interest.
I've been through the process, and I've endured periods when my books did not achieve the sales I had anticipated. For me, I always have this nagging regret that maybe I could have put a different slant on the book. Perhaps there was something I could have done to make the book more commercially popular. After all, unless one is totally absorbed in self, the goal is to share your literary work with others.
It is this desire to travel back in time after you've written a book to figure out why it's not climbing the best seller list that I want to address.
So, okay, we can't travel in time. But, right now, before you write the first sentence of the NEXT book, look at your project from two perspectives. First, you obviously need to be able to write a quality book. So, if you can't write a great romance or powerful historical biography, don't bother pondering the sales potential of these books. But if you can write a strong how to book, or whatever genre, great. Then that's where you start.
But don't simply proceed to research, structure and write your book at this point. There is a second thought process that's extremely important. You must strategically identify the niche audience to whom your book will sell. This is not just a process of merely saying, "Well, I'm sure young people will love this kind of book." It's more intense and in-depth.
You need to identify a niche audience that not only wants, but needs to read your book. They will hear about your book and feel compelled to buy it. They will have a desire to read your book that cannot be denied.
Have you ever felt this way about a book? Of course. Countless times. The authors of these books aren't just lucky. They're intelligent masters of marketing, or they have big publishing houses who know the art of marketing. I just want you to realize that it's not rocket science, and it's definitely not the accident of a lucky author stumbling onto that big, popular subject matter.
Finding the niche audience that wants, needs and must read your book is perhaps one of the most essential steps you can take BEFORE writing the book. I apologize for my love of commercial success, but it's a reality. I have been writing for over 30 years. I write both because I love it, and because I make my living from my words. So, for me, since the age of 21, writing has incorporated these two mandatory steps. I've always had to think in terms of whether or not the audience will want to PAY their good, hard earned money for my words.
I want you to start thinking in this way. If you find it difficult, you should contact me or others on our staff at WhitakerSparks.com. We're a publishing house devoted to individuals who are starting out and interested in self-publishing. Indeed, I know several established writers who have left their big publishers and recently moved over to self-publishing. The reason is simple: profit margin. The money you make off a major book publisher's commission is a fraction of the profit you earn when self-publishing. So I can sell one book to every fifty sold by a big publishing house and I'll make more net cash.
Obviously, I lose the resources of the big publisher, but in today's increasingly social media driven world, I don't need the old mechanism's of yesterday's giant publishing houses. They're outdated dinosaurs destined to fade away with every evolution of smart marketing publishing houses like WhitakerSparks. But I'm not here just to trumpet our capabilities. There are a lot of small, independent self-publishing houses who have expertise in marketing similar to our own. (I'd contend few of them have been formally recognized as being among the world's top 5% in creative marketing as we have in past years, but that's my trumpet sounding.)
Suffice to say, I want to encourage you to write your book. But, unless your name is Indiana Jones, don't write about your life story. Unless you've had some experience with covert intelligence or you have the resources to research it thoroughly, don't write a spy novel. You have to write what's within your capability to create, inform, surprise, entertain, and most importantly innovate. Create something new and valuable for the reader.
Secondly, however, within that sphere of things you "can" write, there are inevitably course changes and alterations you can make to your content from day one that will make your work more or less appealing to a niche audience. Don't expect to sell your book to everyone. It's not necessary. Focus on selling your book to a small group with a special interest. If you have a net profit of $8 per book, for instance, then just 30,000 sales produces a handsome return of just under a quarter of a million dollars. 30,000 books is not a large market. It's actually a relatively small niche.But even at this level, you can see that success is impressive.
Simply ask yourself, before you type that first word, "Are there maybe 50 to 100 thousand people out there in the whole world who might be interested in my book?" "Are there 50 to 100 thousand people out there who will find it absolutely essential to read a book on MY topic?"
If the answer is yes, then you have the start of something big.
Keep in mind, as we discuss the blatantly commercial aspects of writing, that WhitakerSparks is a bit unconventional as a book publishing company. Most self-publishing companies try to convince you to write a book, any kind of book, and then they simply want to collect your money for publishing. After you're on the shelf at Amazon, you're on your own. That's the dark side of vanity publishing.
We're not in that category. While we're built for self-publishing authors, and primarily first time authors, we're equally focused on commercial success. So talk with us, free of charge, BEFORE you write that first sentence. We're here to help. We're here to assist you in finding that special niche audience. You can succeed commercially as an author, and there is no greater reward than the knowledge that you've touched a large audience of readers. And, of course, you cashed a few hefty checks along the way.
To those literary purists who will read this post and look down on us, I simply respond in advance that making money is good. If you want to criticize WhitakerSparks for trying to help new authors focus on profitable works...books that sell...then fine. A lot of people write and paint, but their work isn't discovered until decades after they've departed this life. It's not our desire for anyone working with WhitakerSparks to write for posterity and fame after they're six feet under. We write for today. We write to build our loyal audience, but also to build our bank accounts.
Now, if you can convince me that there's something wrong with making money, then YOU are a great writer. Until I meet that author, however, I'm selling the work I write and loving it. Why don't you?
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Friday, May 6, 2011
How to finish that book you started
Everyone has a book of some nature in the back of their mind. Indeed, given today's educated baby boom generation so uniquely rich with life experience, there are perhaps more novels waiting to be written by first time authors than ever before in history. And I mean more legitimately great books that probably should be written.
The problem is that many of us may have the idea that is the rich promise of our book, but that idea rarely gets beyond a few initial pages created on a rainy day. Or the idea may linger for years in the back of your mind haunting you with the potential of perspectives on life and flights of imagination that could and likely should be shared with a bigger public.
Everyone has their own advice on how to complete the novel you have in the back of your mind, but I'd like to share the one thing that worked for me. Oddly enough, it's the same exact advice I got when coming out of college and first exploring opportunities to start a career as an advertising copywriter.
The first creative director I met at an ad agency to discuss possibilities for a job as a copywriter gave me this valuable, honest, obvious advice. He noted that I had walked into his office with resume in hand, but no creative samples of my writing. I had fully expected I might get an assignment or talk my way into a job as a junior copywriter straight out of college. I'd never had a job in advertising, and I had gotten a degree in Political Science. So I was totally unprepared for advertising. I just knew that I wanted to write. Well, the creative director looked at me as if I had totally wasted his time. He leaned back in his squeaky old wooden office chair and said, "Listen, no need for us to go further. If you want to write ads, then write ads. Just write, and come back to me when you can put a book filled with big ideas on my desk. I don't want to talk. I want to read your work."
The thing I heard loudest in that first, brief job interview was "just write". So, I went away and wrote a bunch of speculative ad campaigns. I then returned to his office and he was very complimentary. He told me I should and would work as a copywriter in the ad business. He didn't hire me that day, but I found work just a week later. I ended up working in advertising for 30 years, and enjoyed great success. That fellow remained a friend, even though he had only met me twice when I was 21 years old and clueless about how to get a job. I will never forget him.
So here's my advice to you about writing a book. Just write. Discipline yourself to write just one page of your novel each and every day. Force yourself to make time to write, even if you create just one lousy page of text that day. But write. Write every single day.
As my advertising career progressed, I became a creative director myself and I gave that same advice to the countless aspiring copywriters who would find their way into my office with absolutely no portfolio. I modified my advice just a little, and advised them to write one ad per day for the next full month. And, if they couldn't find five great ads out of the 30 pieces of work created, then maybe they were pursuing the wrong career.
In terms of your book, just write one page of your book each and every day. After 30 to 60 days, you can go back and read what you've created over the past month or two. If you find yourself bored by your own writing, then maybe the book isn't as great as you envisioned. Or perhaps you're not the writer you imagined. But, if you see seeds of greatness in just a few pages -- even one or two pages that put a smile on your face, or touch you to feel something, or cause you to stop and think -- then what you've found is the start of that great novel.
No book is written without being rewritten many times. So just write your first draft of that book of your dreams. Accept that some pages will be great and most of them will fall short. Such is the life of a writer. I promise you one thing. After you have your first draft of that novel, you will not be able to quit. You will rewrite and revise with passion and furious intent. There is something magical about a completed draft of a novel or script. It draws you back to complete the missing parts. It pulls you like gravity to find the rough edges and smooth them with new thinking. It becomes a driving force in your life that demands your attention until it is complete and you sit back in wonder realizing, "My God...it's finished."
That's clearly a long way from the day you write that very first page. But you will never see the finished first draft unless you write at least one page per day. Of course, what really happens when you start out to write one page per day is that you end up increasing the number of pages you write, and you become a professional writer even before you've been paid a dime.
Just remember that Ernest Hemingway once told F. Scott Fitzgerald, "I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket." But Hemingway wrote daily. Being prolific is good. So make that one big decision. Are you going to write your book or not?
If so, then write. Just write. Worry about rewrites when you can proudly tell your friends, "I've finished my novel. I'm just doing some rewrites." That's a whole different place from "I've been thinking about a writing novel." In the next post, we'll discuss some writing techniques used by other authors. I personally prefer to simply write and let structure and characters come alive in my mind. But there are countless techniques and structural devices many advocate strongly. So we'll discuss a few.
But, for now, just write. Just write.
The problem is that many of us may have the idea that is the rich promise of our book, but that idea rarely gets beyond a few initial pages created on a rainy day. Or the idea may linger for years in the back of your mind haunting you with the potential of perspectives on life and flights of imagination that could and likely should be shared with a bigger public.
Everyone has their own advice on how to complete the novel you have in the back of your mind, but I'd like to share the one thing that worked for me. Oddly enough, it's the same exact advice I got when coming out of college and first exploring opportunities to start a career as an advertising copywriter.
The first creative director I met at an ad agency to discuss possibilities for a job as a copywriter gave me this valuable, honest, obvious advice. He noted that I had walked into his office with resume in hand, but no creative samples of my writing. I had fully expected I might get an assignment or talk my way into a job as a junior copywriter straight out of college. I'd never had a job in advertising, and I had gotten a degree in Political Science. So I was totally unprepared for advertising. I just knew that I wanted to write. Well, the creative director looked at me as if I had totally wasted his time. He leaned back in his squeaky old wooden office chair and said, "Listen, no need for us to go further. If you want to write ads, then write ads. Just write, and come back to me when you can put a book filled with big ideas on my desk. I don't want to talk. I want to read your work."
The thing I heard loudest in that first, brief job interview was "just write". So, I went away and wrote a bunch of speculative ad campaigns. I then returned to his office and he was very complimentary. He told me I should and would work as a copywriter in the ad business. He didn't hire me that day, but I found work just a week later. I ended up working in advertising for 30 years, and enjoyed great success. That fellow remained a friend, even though he had only met me twice when I was 21 years old and clueless about how to get a job. I will never forget him.
So here's my advice to you about writing a book. Just write. Discipline yourself to write just one page of your novel each and every day. Force yourself to make time to write, even if you create just one lousy page of text that day. But write. Write every single day.
As my advertising career progressed, I became a creative director myself and I gave that same advice to the countless aspiring copywriters who would find their way into my office with absolutely no portfolio. I modified my advice just a little, and advised them to write one ad per day for the next full month. And, if they couldn't find five great ads out of the 30 pieces of work created, then maybe they were pursuing the wrong career.
In terms of your book, just write one page of your book each and every day. After 30 to 60 days, you can go back and read what you've created over the past month or two. If you find yourself bored by your own writing, then maybe the book isn't as great as you envisioned. Or perhaps you're not the writer you imagined. But, if you see seeds of greatness in just a few pages -- even one or two pages that put a smile on your face, or touch you to feel something, or cause you to stop and think -- then what you've found is the start of that great novel.
No book is written without being rewritten many times. So just write your first draft of that book of your dreams. Accept that some pages will be great and most of them will fall short. Such is the life of a writer. I promise you one thing. After you have your first draft of that novel, you will not be able to quit. You will rewrite and revise with passion and furious intent. There is something magical about a completed draft of a novel or script. It draws you back to complete the missing parts. It pulls you like gravity to find the rough edges and smooth them with new thinking. It becomes a driving force in your life that demands your attention until it is complete and you sit back in wonder realizing, "My God...it's finished."
That's clearly a long way from the day you write that very first page. But you will never see the finished first draft unless you write at least one page per day. Of course, what really happens when you start out to write one page per day is that you end up increasing the number of pages you write, and you become a professional writer even before you've been paid a dime.
Just remember that Ernest Hemingway once told F. Scott Fitzgerald, "I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket." But Hemingway wrote daily. Being prolific is good. So make that one big decision. Are you going to write your book or not?
If so, then write. Just write. Worry about rewrites when you can proudly tell your friends, "I've finished my novel. I'm just doing some rewrites." That's a whole different place from "I've been thinking about a writing novel." In the next post, we'll discuss some writing techniques used by other authors. I personally prefer to simply write and let structure and characters come alive in my mind. But there are countless techniques and structural devices many advocate strongly. So we'll discuss a few.
But, for now, just write. Just write.
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