Advanced Fiction Writing Blog

Author branding is one of the scariest and yet most necessary things an author can do. But how tight should that brand be? Can you have a “broad brand?”

Teddi posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

Randy, in the second half of your interview on StoryFix.com you mentioned branding and reader expectations. You said,

“New writers often fail to understand the importance of branding. When you attach your name to a novel and publish it, that’s an implicit contract you’re making with your reader: ‘I promise to produce more fiction like this in the future.’”

I have a dozen stories in various stages of notes-and-development, and they are spread across several genres. I intend to pursue a certain amount of self-publishing, so the choice of branding is going to be in my hands for many of these projects.

Is author name really the key factor in reader expectations?

For example, one of my favorite authors is Lois McMaster Bujold. She writes fantasy, science fiction and things in between. Although I like some of her books more than others, it didn’t really bother me to discover “the hard way” that I like her sci-fi better than most of her fantasy. I’d read anything she wrote, even in other genres outside SFF, because I like her writing.

Just wondering if that’s atypical. Maybe we need new ways of categorizing things.

Lois Bujold: Science Fiction
Lois Bujold: Medieval Fantasy
Lois Bujold: Fantasy Romance

I’d prefer something like the above rather than having her identity obscured behind a totally different author name. Especially if her aliases weren’t easily and publicly available.

Any thoughts on this? Do you think the publishing world is changing enough that this sort of thing will also change? Or should I simply make up a pen name for each genre and then put them somewhere on a website for folks who want to know “what all Teddi’s written”?

Thanks!
Teddi

Randy sez: Imagine this scenario: You’re in Cairo for the first time and feeling way out of your depth. Egypt is a very different world for you, and you’re starting to feel just a wee bit homesick. Then you see the golden arches of a McDonald’s fast food restaurant. Desperate for a taste of home, you walk in … and find that the only thing on the menu is crocodile pancakes.

Question for you: How do you feel about that?

I suspect you’d feel a bit put out. Nothing against eating crocodile. Nothing against eating pancakes. But you don’t go into a McDonald’s looking for either one of those. You go there because you expect exactly the same menu in Cairo as in California.

When somebody violates your expectations, you don’t blame yourself. You blame them.

In the case of Lois McMaster Bujold, I don’t see a problem. Fantasy and science fiction have long been joined at the hip. Whether she’s writing in one sub-category or another really makes little difference.

I think you’d be a bit upset, however, if you bought one of her books and found it to be cowboy erotica. Or an Amish detective story. Or an Ayn Rand-like economic manifesto on the virtues of capitalism.

Any of those could be a fine, fine book. Or not. The quality of the writing is not the issue. The issue is that when you see Lois McMaster Bujold’s name on the cover of a book, you expect a certain kind of story. If you don’t get anything like what you were expecting, you don’t like it.

Treat your readers the way you want to be treated. (This brilliant piece of advice works in many areas of life. I regret that I didn’t invent it.)

This reminds me that my friend James Scott Bell just published a zombie legal thriller. No kidding, a zombie legal thriller. Jim has been writing legal thrillers for quite a while, but this one is out of his normal zone. So he wrote it under a pseudonym, K. Bennett. This is not a secret, so I’m not spilling any confidences here.

The novel, PAY ME IN FLESH, is hysterically funny. I’m tempted to say the novel is “brilliant,” but that term gets thrown around so much that it’s pretty useless. Let’s just say that I haven’t had so much pure fun reading a novel in a long time.

Any time you start a novel with a female lawyer being sexually harrassed by a lecherous judge, and the lawyer’s immediate reaction is to wonder what the judge’s brains would taste like, you’ve got a weird, wacky start to a hilarious book. I loved it.

I’m not a big fan of horror fiction, by the way, so I’d never have guessed that I’d enjoy a zombie legal thriller. But my friend, Susan Meissner, (whom I interviewed on this blog a few years ago), gave such a glowing review that I had to get the book. Susan is a gentle soul who writes literary women’s fiction, and I figured if she could stomach the zombie stuff, then it wouldn’t bother me either. I figured right.

In my view, Jim did the right thing by using a pseudonym here, even though a “zombie legal thriller” doesn’t seem all that different from a “legal thriller.” The fact is that the zombie element plus the humor element make this quite a bit different from Jim’s usual writing. (Jim can be funny, but he doesn’t usually do slapstick comedy, as he does in this book.)

The fact is that Jim’s new pseudonym, K. Bennett, now effectively owns the entire subcategory of “zombie legal thrillers.” So Jim can go on to break new ground in this wacky genre under this name, and if the category eventually fades out, he can walk away from it. Good move, Jim!

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

What do you do when you’ve got a decent manuscript but the agents just aren’t biting?

Stephannie posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I have a manuscript for which I am seeking representation. I have been told by editors of major publishing houses, during conference critiques, that it is “intriguing, well written, and very good”. I’ve been shopping it around to agents and can’t seem to get anywhere. I get great comments from them but no ‘bites’. How do I determine if the book is unsellable or I haven’t connected with the right agent for it?

Randy sez: Publishing is a subjective business, so there isn’t any infallible way to to know if your book is unsellable.

There is an infallible way to know if your book is sellable, of course. If you sell your book, then it was sellable. But there’s no way to determine that in advance.

However, there are indicators: How many editors have said the manuscript was “intriguing, well written, and very good?” What was their level of enthusiasm? Have you shown the manuscript to agents at conferences? What was their response? Have you studied up on how to write a query letter? How much research on agents did you do before sending them queries? How many agents have you queried? Did you get personalized rejections or were they form-letters? Do you have any friends who are published novelists and who are familiar with your work? If so, what is their opinion of the novel?

It’s not possible for me to trouble-shoot things from here, since I’ve not seen the manuscript and I don’t have the 8 hours it would take to evaluate it. (And I don’t do full manuscript evaluations, ever. There are many people who would do a manuscript evaluation for a lot less money than I would charge, and I see no reason to compete with them when I have so many billions of other tasks on my plate.)

Here are some possible explanations of what’s going on:

Maybe your manuscript really isn’t all that good. Ouch! That’s a painful and frightening possibility, isn’t it? This is why I asked what the level of enthusiasm was of the editors who looked at it. Your answer to that will tell you whether this is a live option.

Maybe there’s something in your pitch to the agents which is a show-stopper. Agents generally won’t tell you this when they reject you, because they’re too busy. They figure that if you can’t be bothered to learn how to pitch your manuscript correctly, they aren’t going to be bothered to teach you. (If you were an agent getting 100 pitches per week, you’d probably feel exactly the same way.) But if you were to pitch your novel to an agent at a conference, you’d have his undivided attention for 15 minutes, and if there was some major show-stopper in your presentation, he’d be very likely to tell you. Maybe nicely, maybe bluntly.

Maybe you aren’t querying the right agents. Agents have different likes and dislikes. If they don’t do your kind of fiction, they aren’t going to want to represent it. I don’t know how well you’ve researched agents before sending them queries, so I have no way to know if you’re trying to sell ice cream to Eskimos. But my agent friends tell me all the time that they get queries for projects that are OBVIOUSLY the wrong sort of project for them, and anyone who had done their homework would know this.

Maybe you just haven’t sent out enough queries. Good agents often have full lists and just aren’t looking for new authors. That’s the bad news. The good news is that there are plenty of agents out there, and if your manuscript is any good, and if your query letter is any good, you’ll eventually hook up with the right agent. But it may take some time to find him. This is one reason I asked about whether you’ve got any published novelist friends who could give you an opinion.

Querying agents is not a full time job, so you should be spending the bulk of your time working on your next manuscript.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

The publishing world has changed radically in the last couple of years, thanks to those pesky e-books. Do the old rules still apply? Does chaos rule? Or are there ways to survive and thrive in the new environment?

Jonathan posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I’ve been reading what you have been posting regarding self e-publishing with a lot of interest lately. It seems like it’s almost creating a “wild west frontier” type aspect in literature, in which a lot of the traditional “rules” are being thrown out because there are simply better ways to do things.

My question regards the writing itself- with this new freedom for authors to publish what they want, how they want, do you see any trends towards fiction that might have been considered “unmarketable” in a more traditional situation? In this new system that seems to be developing, are there any forces besides market that will dictate what fiction is now? For instance, if I want to write something crazy and experimental (but hopefully entertaining) is there a better chance that I will find a market willing to read it in an e-publishing situation where I am taking most of the marketing onus upon myself?

Randy sez: It’s an exciting time to be alive, if you’re an author.

For the last five hundred years or so, the process of publishing a book was a very expensive process. (In today’s world, despite massive improvements in personal productivity for editors and their colleagues, it can still cost more than $50,000 to produce and publish a book, and that’s not counting the advance that must be paid to the author.)

That meant that large corporations needed to underwrite most books. Corporations who had a high priority to not lose money.

Big corporations aren’t bad people. They aren’t people at all, at least not people who bleed when you poke them. They’re organizations. Their goals are different from yours. When you go to a big corporate publisher to get your book published, you have to take their interests into account, or there’s no deal.

Furthermore, even if you do find a publisher to publish your book, typically you sell it rights to publish in a limited geographic area, such as North America. Getting a book with North American rights into the hands of Australian readers means either an expensive mailing of the printed book from North America to Australia, or selling the Australian rights to an Australian publisher, where it may not have the same economies of scale that it does in the larger US market.

E-publishing changes all that. For a few hundred bucks, you can get a graphic artist to make you a decent cover. For a few thousand dollars, you can get a full-service edit by a really good freelance editor. For a few hundred more dollars, you can find somebody to convert the book to the usual e-book formats. Everything else is free in the e-book publication process. Many e-book authors prefer to do it all themselves, so it’s possible to do the entire book at no cost (other than the cost of a computer, which is a one-time expense.)

So now just about anybody can e-publish their novel. But that doesn’t mean that anybody is going to buy it.

Certain of the old rules still apply.

Quality matters, just as it always has. Excellent writing is more likely to sell than crummy writing.

Marketing matters, just as it always has. If nobody knows about your great novel, nobody is going to buy it.

Luck matters, just as it always has. The nice thing now is that there are more ways to get lucky.

In the old days (before last year), getting lucky meant finding the right agent and the right editor at the right publisher at the right time with the right book, the right title, the right cover, and the right marketing.

If you screwed up on any of those, then your luck wasn’t likely to be all that great. And not all of those were under your control. If your publisher screwed up any of the things that it controlled, your luck was just as bad as if you, personally, had screwed up. Authors didn’t control their own destiny.

That road to nirvana is still open, and a few authors are getting lucky all the time. Hooray for them! We should all wish to get lucky that way.

But there’s a new road to nirvana, e-publishing. Now you need the right e-book at the right time with the right title, the right cover, and the right marketing. And all of those are under your control.

You have fewer things that you must get right with e-publishing, and if any of them get screwed up, it’ll be your fault. Which can make you long for the bad old days when you had “Big Corporate” to blame.

It’s interesting to see how many disaffected authors are out there, eager to “stick it to The Man” by doing an end-run on big corporate publishers. I’m not one of those disaffected authors. I have many editor friends who work for big publishers (although it’s been disconcerting to see so many of them lose their jobs in the last couple of years). I don’t hate big publishers. They’ve produced great books over the years. They’re now trying to drive an aircraft carrier through the rapids, and if they’re slow to react, that’s the nature of the beast.

In the old days, big publishers had numerous editors, sales-people, and marketing folks who functioned as “gatekeepers.” Their job was to make sure that a book didn’t lose money. Most of the time, they succeeded, although in most cases, the book in question didn’t actually earn much either. The few big winners paid for the entire party.

That is one of the things now changing with e-publishing. There is no gatekeeper. Not really. (Unless you’re writing something so irredeemably evil that the online publishers refuse your book.) Only market forces determine what will sell.

In the old days, every publisher had its own rules for its gatekeepers. Part of the hassle of getting published was finding a publisher whose gatekeepers would sign off on you.

So yes, Jonathan, if you’ve got something wacky and experimental and you want to try it, go right ahead. The categories are blending. If you want to write an Amish werewolf erotic western with Zen overtones, go right ahead. No gatekeeper will stop you, and the market will tell you if that’s a viable category.

But remember that you still need the Big Three: quality, marketing, and luck. Without those, your books won’t sell.

I teach quality and I teach marketing, but I’ve not yet figured out how to teach luck. So all I can do is wish you well, along with everyone else who sits down to write the next great Amish werewolf erotic western with Zen overtones.

Have fun!

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

As e-books continue to take the world of publishing by storm, it’s natural to wonder how any good books are going to be found by readers in the rising river of e-books. Won’t they be lost in the flood?

Heather posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I have lately been doing lots of reading on the e-pub buzz and thinking about marketing implications as they relate to fiction. I think to aid the ‘average’ ebook reader in making good fiction selections there will be a rise of some type of ‘recommendation medium’ (like blogs or an offshoot of social networking) that judges/reviews fiction ebooks. Do you see something like this currently developing and if so how as an author do you intend to take advantage of this marketing tool?

Randy sez: Yes, this sort of thing has already developed and will continue to grow. The basic idea is known as “crowdsourcing” and you can Google this word or search for it on Amazon to learn all that you want to know about it.

What is crowdsourcing? For the case of selling e-books, there are three fundamental elements: an open market, word-of-mouth, and a “similarity measure.” Let’s look at each of these in turn:

An open market is necessary for crowdsourcing to work. You make a sea of products available to anyone at reasonable prices, without unnecessary constraints. E-books fit this description exactly. There are hundreds of thousands of e-books available on Amazon now, and many more public domain e-books available at places like Project Gutenberg. This is in sharp contrast to the field of traditionally published books, where publishers and their marketing people make decisions about “what will sell.” The market of paper books is only somewhat open, because the economics of book production require that gatekeepers refuse most books for publication. They have to do this. They couldn’t afford to publish them all.

Word-of-mouth is also important to crowdsourcing. People like to talk about the books they read. They don’t talk about the books they don’t like. What happens is that good books get talked about and they tend to get read by more people who also talk about them. Good books get a chain reaction of word-of-mouth. Bad books don’t get talked about and they tend to get read by only a few people. Reader reviews are essentially word-of-mouth on steroids. This is one thing Amazon does very well — it encourages reader reviews. I read the 5-star reviews and the 1-star reviews of any book before I buy it. I also look at how many reviews there are and what fraction of them are 4 and 5 stars. If a book has many 1-star reviews and many 5-star reviews, it tells me that it’s a controversial book, which may well mean that it’s a very good book. If it has many 1-star reviews and few 5-star reviews, then it’s probably not very good. All those reviewers out there generally do a good job of sifting the good from the bad.

“Similarity measure” is one thing Amazon gets stupendously right. For any book on Amazon, you can see a list of several other books with the caption: “Customers who bought this item also bought:” For example, people who bought my book WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES also buy Jim Bell’s book PLOT & STRUCTURE. No surprise there. The two books cater to the same reader. Amazon wisely gives readers a choice to buy them both as a bundle. When an online store tells customers what other people are buying, it’s a terrific way to let people know which books the masses of customers believe are similar.

When you create a completely open market with word-of-mouth in the form of reader reviews and then show customers what the market believes are similar products, the cream rises to the top. Quickly. The junk falls to the bottom. Quickly.

How do you take advantage of this? By writing your best possible book and by getting it out there on the open market in the online stores that do reader reviews and show similar products best. In our current world, Amazon mastered those skills sooner and better than anyone else. Barnes & Noble is making strides to catch up. Competition is good, and we should all hope that several excellent online retailers gain market share by putting these key elements together. Right now, Amazon and B&N are the big players because they deserve to be.

Quality matters, now more than ever. Write a good book. Write a great book. Then get it out there to the online retailers that have mastered crowdsourcing.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

Today, I’m taking a break from answering questions so I can post the Marketing column that I wrote for this month’s Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine. As I’ve said several times this summer, we are in an epochal year. 2010 may be considered by future historians as the biggest change in publishing since the invention of the alphabet in 18th century BC Egypt. Yes, bigger than that Gutenberg guy and his movable type.

Here’s my article, which I hope you’ll find interesting. I think it would be great if one my Loyal Blog Readers became the author of the first Billion-Dollar Book:

The Billion-Dollar Book

I think it’s plausible that in the next five years, some author somewhere will write a book that earns him or her a billion dollars. I call that a “B-book.”

Who will that lucky author be?

Let’s not be silly. Luck will have nothing to do with it. Great writing and great marketing will have everything to do with it.

If I had to hazard a guess on who will be first to publish a B-book, I’d say J.K. Rowling has the best shot. The 7-book Harry Potter series has reputedly earned her a billion dollars, so a B-book is quite possibly in her future.

If not JKR, then James Patterson is my bet for the next likeliest candidate. If not him, possibly one of the other heavy hitters in the publishing world.

Truth to tell, however, I wouldn’t bet even money on any one of these candidates.

In my view, the most likely author of that first B-book will be some unknown author who comes out of nowhere with great writing and an A+ marketing game.

While I can’t guess who will be the first B-book author, I am reasonably confident that the B-book itself will earn most of its revenue in electronic formats.

Prediction #1: The first B-book will be an e-book.

The reason is that you can’t have great sales without great distribution. There are roughly a billion computers on the planet connected to the internet and all of them can read e-books in numerous formats using free software. There are roughly four billion mobile devices, and most of those will soon be able to read e-books.

The sales channel for e-books is growing rapidly and has global reach. That’s why the first B-book will be in e-format.

What about the price of the first B-book? The higher the price, the fewer the number of copies you have to sell to earn a billion dollars, but the fewer the number of people willing to pay the price.

If your royalties are $1 per book, you could earn a billion dollars by selling a billion copies. Or you could get there by earning $10 royalties per book on 100 million copies.

Nobody knows the sweet spot, but my guess is that it’s somewhere between those extremes. If I had to guess, I’d say that a $2 royalty on half a billion copies is the best way to get your B-book. I can’t prove this. It’s a hunch based on incomplete information.

The reason I think this is plausible is because if you price an e-book at $2.99 on Amazon, then you earn a 70% royalty, which translates to $2.09. That means you’d need to sell about 478 million copies.

(Note that Amazon charges you a small amount for delivery costs when it sells your e-book. For a typical novel, this amounts to a few cents per copy, so things aren’t quite as rosy as I’ve painted them, but it’s a close approximation.)

I’d say that a large fraction of the 4 billion people who can afford a mobile device can afford a $2.99 e-book. And the vast majority of the one billion computer owners with internet access can buy that book.

It’s possible that the sweet spot price is $3.99 instead. At a 70% royalty, you’d only have to sell 358 million copies. Great news, eh?

If you try running these numbers with typical royalties paid on hardcover, trade paper, or mass market paperback, you see right away how much harder it is to get your B-book. Most of the money charged for these formats is going to somebody who isn’t you. That means the retail price has to go a lot higher or you have to sell many more copies. And delivery costs are much higher for a physical book than for an e-book.

This leads immediately to my next prediction.

Prediction #2: The first B-book will be self-published.

Self-publishing is the best way to get the royalty rate high enough and the retail price low enough to make the B-book a reality.

The fact is that most publishers aren’t going to price your e-book at $2.99 or $3.99. They’ll want it at $9.99 or $12.99, which is probably too high for the market. And they’ll pay you only 25% royalties on the wholesale price, which is too low. If you want an aggressively priced e-book and a high royalty rate, you’ll almost certainly need to publish it yourself.

Of course it may be that all of the above is just my wishful fantasy, but if you’re with me so far, let’s ask how you’re going to market a few hundred million copies of a self-published e-book.

You can’t do that alone. You need what Seth Godin calls a “tribe.” In the context of book publishing, your tribe is your set of committed fans. They’re the people you lead.

You don’t have the marketing oomph to reach hundreds of millions of people on your own. You do have the marketing oomph to reach thousands or tens of thousands of people. If you can energize them so that they love what you’ve got and if they’re willing to spread the word, then they can reach those hundreds of millions.

Want proof on that? I don’t have absolute proof, but I have three words that ought to be persuasive if you were awake two years ago:

Barack Obama 2008.

President Obama raised an estimated $656 million in individual contributions for his presidential campaign. He raised that by tapping into the social networks. In a word, he built a powerful tribe of committed followers.

Now it’s true that Obama didn’t hit quite a billion dollars, but he came close and he had an end-point for his marketing campaign. Presidential campaigns end with the election. Books stay on the market as long as they’re selling.

Let me sketch out how I foresee the first B-book will happen. I’ll probably be wrong on some details, but the general picture is plausible:

• First write a great book. There is no substitute for excellent writing. I define that to be, “Writing which provides a Powerful Emotional Experience.” Style is less important here than raw emotive force. See any current best-seller list for proof of that.
• Self-publish the book as an e-book and put it up for sale on all the usual sales channels: Amazon, B&N, etc.
• While you’re at it, create your own online store where you can sell your e-book in all the common formats: text, PDF, RTF, Mobi, ePub, etc. Don’t count on this bringing in a billion bucks on its own, but you can’t beat the royalty rate, and there’s just no reason not to do this.
• Post a large fraction of your book on your web site. I’d recommend at least half the book. Enough so that your readers can really get hooked on the story. Include links to your sales channels, along with incentives to buy. (Access to online “Director’s Cut” material would make a nice incentive. Don’t be offended, but a date with you would probably make a bad incentive.)
• Early on, you might jump-start sales with a special low price. Publishers can do “free Kindle” campaigns that seed the market with early fans by setting the price of the e-book to zero for a short time. (Don’t try that with a paper book!) You probably can’t do this if you self-publish your book, but you can set the price to $.99, which is almost free.
• Focus your marketing efforts on your tribe. Who is most likely to love your story? Build your web presence to appeal to them.
• Communicate to your tribe. Treat them as special, because they are. These are the people most like you. These are the folks who read your blog and subscribe to your e-mail list.
• Enable your tribe to communicate to you. They can do that through comments on your blog and by sending you personal e-mails. You can and should automate part of this by using online surveys — this will let you go broad. But don’t forget to go deep too — your tribe deserves personal responses from you. These are your people. Do right by them.
• Empower your tribe to communicate to each other. Your tribe is excited about your great writing. Naturally, they want to talk to like-minded people. Make that easy by giving them an online place to gather and talk — a forum is ideal for this. Join them when you can, but give them the space to be leaders. A large tribe needs many sub-chiefs. Foster those leaders. If you can, give them the ability to add content to your fan site.
• Encourage your tribe to communicate to the world. Give them buttons on your web site to Twitter or Facebook about you to their circles of influence. Collectively, your tribe knows a lot more people than you do. Your tribe can sell your book better than you can.
• Team up with similar authors who have similar tribes. Your fans will love these authors and their fans will love you. If I can switch metaphors here, remember that “the bigger the hive, the bigger the buzz.”
• That’s it. Don’t do things that sap your energy or drain your money or monopolize your time. You are finite. That’s OK.

You may be saying, “But what about book-signings? Speaking engagements? Giving away free copies in drawings on your blogs? Library visits? Yada yada screama?”

What about them? Those may move a few copies or a few dozen or a few hundred. They may be fine things to do once in a while for your tribe. They aren’t going to make a B-book for you.

Think about it. How many book-signings would you have to do to sell a hundred million copies? You will never book-sign your way to a B-book.

There isn’t any magic bean you can eat that will make you a B-book author. You need outstanding writing and a marketing campaign that you can automate as much as possible, so it doesn’t require ten times as much work to get ten times the results. You need strong, loyal fans who brag about your great writing to their friends.

Very few authors will ever write a B-book. It’s a lot easier (but still Xtremely difficult) to write an M-book — earning a million dollars. It’s vastly easier to write a K-book — one that earns a thousand dollars.

Most authors will fall somewhere on that spectrum. Now here’s the good news. No matter where you fall on the range, from B-book to M-book to K-book, the principles above can help you market your work more effectively.

That’s good news for all of us.

A number of my Loyal Blog Readers left comments yesterday in response to Jacob’s question and my answer about how to portray Evil in fiction. I took the liberty of asking my friend, freelance editor Meredith Efken at the Fiction Fixit Shop, to comment on this issue on her own blog. She had some interesting things to say, and her closing comments raised a point I hadn’t thought of — that the really scary thing about evil is its capacity to turn a good person bad, as with Frodo in The Lord of the Rings.

Tim posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:

I have asked many different professionals in writing about how to pitch a series, but never really get a answer. It is always a run around. I heard for the first time novelist publishing companies might want to sign you to a 3 book deal due to the costs, to me this makes more sense to write a series for your first book. Anyway, could you please talk about the best way to pitch a series to an editor or agent and even the benefits or pitfalls of having your first book part of a series. Thanks

Randy sez: You pitch a series almost the exact same way you pitch a one-book deal. If you’re a first-time novelist, you almost always must have a complete polished novel before you can sell it. When you’ve got that in hand, you query agents with your book idea and you can mention that this book is the first in a series, but you really don’t need to say more. If an agent is interested, he’ll ask for either a proposal or the full manuscript or both.

In a proposal, you tell all about the book. And somewhere in your Executive Summary for the book, you add a paragraph explaining that this is the first in a series and then you tell a very little bit about the series. You don’t have to tell much. You’ll sell your book (or fail to sell it) based on the polished manuscript you have.

Many publishers prefer to do a multi-book deal with a new author. The reason is simple. They figure that marketing a new face is expensive, and they’d prefer to spread that cost over several books. If you turn out to be a good selling author, they’d like to have you in their stable for several books.

There are of course some publishers that prefer to do one-book deals. Your agent will know which publishers like the multi-book deals. Some categories are very commonly done as series. Mysteries, for example, often feature the same detective in many, many books. Likewise, fantasies are often multi-book series. Romance novels are most often standalones, for the simple reason that most romances end with a wedding, and that’s generally a non-repeating event for any given pair. However, even if a book is a standalone book, many publishers will still want to do a multi-book deal. In that case, it’s not a series; it’s just a multi-book deal. Yes, even first-time novelists get multi-book deals.

In my view, it makes all kinds of sense for an author to sign a multi-book deal. Then you have some reason to believe that your publisher will work reasonably hard to promote your book, since they’re investing more money. (But even so, never assume that a publisher will promote your book. Bad things happen in publishing and books sometimes just all through the cracks.)

I don’t know of any real pitfalls to a multi-book deal. It’s a good thing to have a pipeline of books you’re working on, with one book just coming out, one book being polished, and another book being concepted. If you can schedule your books at regular intervals (maybe 9 months or a year apart), then you’ve got that pipeline going nicely, and you probably won’t get hammerlocked as you might when working with different publishers, neither of whom cares to compromise with the other.

If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.

In my last blog, I posted an interview with John Olson on the topic of “Writing in the Shadows” — a set of techniques for helping the reader read between the lines. I heard John speak on this topic at a writing conference in September of last year and really got a lot out of it. Part of me was furious at John for thinking of all this cool stuff before I did. Part of me was just glad that I could steal all his good ideas for my next book.

John’s latest book, POWERS, is an excellent example of all his ideas about “Writing in the Shadows.” I just finished reading POWERS today at lunch, and (besides being quite an adrenaline rush of a book) it was fun to see exactly how he used his “shadows” techniques in every chapter.

Currently, John and I are running a “book rush” for POWERS. If you buy POWERS on Amazon (or anywhere else), John will give you a free copy of his lecture on “Writing in the Shadows.” This special offer is good through Saturday night, at midnight PST, December 5, 2009. (After that time, John and I will be selling his lecture here on this site for $33.)

John’s lecture “Writing in the Shadows” is a downloadable product with about 2 hours and 40 minutes of audio. The lecture includes both notes (somewhat like PowerPoint notes) and MP3 audio files. You view them in a web browser, a lot like my Fiction 101 and Fiction 201 courses.

We’re also giving away a couple of other goodies during the “book rush” for POWERS:

• A full-color 24-page comic book of POWERS
• A 50% discount coupon that’s good on any downloadable product in my store on this web site. (Expires Saturday night at midnight.)

Click here for all the details on the “book rush” for POWERS.

I’m continuing to answer questions on writing conferences this week, along with some help from my guest, Meredith Efken.

Sam asked:

My question regarding your conferences is: if you don’t *need* a one-sheet (but maybe bring one as a nice-to-have) what else would you bring to carry around a conference? Would you have your sample chapters in hand or do you wait to send them to an agent/publisher when they ask for it?

Meredith answered this with more detail than I would have:

For Sam, about what you need to bring with you to the conference: I cover this in great detail in the Writers Conference Survival Guide, including a packing list worksheet. But for the pitch session, you do not need to bring sample chapters. Most pitch sessions are only 10-15 minutes long. That’s not long enough for an editor to read much of anything. Plus, editors/agents rarely want to take lots of paper on the plane home. If they want to see any of the actual manuscript, they’ll usually say so in the conference information. Otherwise, assume they don’t.

You may want to have business cards on hand, but don’t give one to the agent/editor unless they ask for it. They are more likely to hand you a card if they want you to send a proposal. But they don’t really have any reason to take your card. Remember, they’re in the power seat in a pitch appointment. You have to do the contacting if they ask for it. They don’t have any reason to contact you. Have a one-sheet, have a business card–but don’t expect or pressure the editor/agent to take either one.

Now, a critique appointment is a totally different thing. We have to remember that at most conferences, a pitch session and critique session are TOTALLY different. A pitch session is for pitching–you don’t go expecting feedback on your work. A critique session is for feedback, not pitching. If you have signed up for a critique, there will usually be detailed information about how much of your manuscript to bring and how to submit it. And if that information is missing, contact the conference coordinator and ask. Sometimes there will be group critique opportunities or other feedback sessions. Again, what to bring for those sort of sessions should be explained on the conference website or brochure. If not, ask ahead of time.

Randy sez: Let me add that a critique session with a published author can be FAR more valuable to you if you are a “freshman” or “sophomore” writer. The reason is that, by definition, a freshman or sophomore writer is not yet ready to get an agent or get published. (Otherwise you’d be a “junior” or a “senior”. It is quite common for “juniors” to get agents these days and for “seniors” to sell a book. Happens all the time.) If you’re a freshman or sophomore, an editor or agent will not be outlandishly interested in your work. But an author can help you see what it is you need MOST right now to advance to that pesky next level.

By the way, it is probably not particularly helpful to tell an editor or agent, “I’m a senior.” If it’s true, they’ll figure it out pretty quickly, and if it’s not true, then you’ll be scraping egg off your face for awhile.

Melissa wrote:

I have to agree with Martha. I’m a complete social retard though, who hasn’t even got up the nerve to approach an editor with my work. So way to go Martha for trying! Anywho, my deal is that I completely lack the confidence. I have no credentials to speak of. So how do you be yourself and pitch your idea with confidence when you just know that every word you say is going to come out sounding stupid and unprofessional?

Randy sez: If you are really a social retard, then it’s going to be pretty easy to be yourself, isn’t it? I should know, because I am about as socially inept as you can get. But, as one of my friends once told me, “That’s part of your charm, Randy.” I personally don’t consider it very charming, but I think I got the point. Which was that me trying to be Joe Cool is never, ever, ever going to work. So I might as well just get used to being my own geeky self and then (here’s the important thing) QUIT WORRYING ABOUT IT.

I will give you my patented, fool-proof, method for getting along with anyone at a writing conference. If you’re talking to a writer, ask them, “What sort of writing do you do?” If you’re talking to an agent, ask, “What sort of writers do you like to represent?” If you’re talking to editor, ask, “What sort of books do you love to edit?” Generally, that will get them talking for a good fifteen minutes, which you can of course help along by asking for more info if they hit a lull.

This is very nice, because for a whole fifteen minutes, you can forget about you and think about someone else. By that time, one of two things will have happened:
a) You two will have hit it off and be gabbing like old friends
b) You two will realize that you really don’t have a lot in common

In case (a), you now have a new friend for life, which is a Good Thing. In case (b), you will both realize that it was fun chatting, but there are many other people at the conference and it is now time to part, which is a Mediocre Thing.

Notice that there is no case (c), in which Something Truly Horrible happens. I can say this as a card-carrying member of the Social Retard Club. If I can have fun at a writing conference, you can too.

Meredith types much faster than I do, and she wrote all this:

Like I said to Andra and Martha, feeling unsure of yourself is normal and nothing to be ashamed of. You would be surprised at how many published authors–even bestselling or award-winning ones–struggle with intense self-doubt. There’s no magic cure that I know of. I know how it feels to sit there listening to myself and thinking “Gosh I sound like an idiot.” It’s a terrible feeling!

At the risk of sounding psycho-babblish, one thing you can do is identify those negative messages you are sending yourself and replace them with positive truths. For example, your comment said “…you just know that every word you say is going to come out sounding stupid and unprofessional.” What you’re doing here is telling yourself “Every word I say is going to sound stupid and unprofessional.” Well, that’s not exactly true. Sure, you may trip up and say some stuff that sounds a bit awkward. But stupid? I doubt it. Unprofessional? That would be something like telling the editor your entire gory medical history, or about the fight you just had with your husband, or mentioning that you now hate your former best friend because she didn’t like the ending of your book. You are not going to say such inappropriate things to an editor. You really aren’t.

So stop telling yourself such nasty things! You can work on creating a more professional image and presentation. You can learn to manage your jitters. But first, you have to start talking to yourself more kindly. If you’ve got kids, you wouldn’t tell your kids they’re stupid or whatever, right? Or if you did in a moment of anger, you’d apologize for it later and try not to do it again. But somehow we think it’s okay to verbally abuse ourselves in ways we’d never dream of doing to anyone else. And then we wonder why we have problems with self-confidence.

There’s a difference between being honest about our own shortcomings and being self-abusive about our faults. When you catch yourself telling yourself something like “You’re stupid” you need to stop and evaluate that statement. Are you indeed, truly mentally incompetent? No, of course not. What is it that you are really trying to say? Maybe it’s that you say awkward things when you are trying to talk about your writing. Okay, THAT is a fair statement. It’s neutral and objective. Follow it up with more truthful, objective statements, such as “I can learn to be less awkward. That’s something I can correct. I don’t have to stay awkward. I can improve.” And then get to work on that.

Additionally, find things to compliment yourself on. Do you like being around people who put you down all the time? Yet that is what we do to ourselves. No wonder we don’t like ourselves very well! So be more complimentary. Be as honest about your strengths as you are about your weaknesses. Say, “I finished my manuscript–way to go! That’s quite an achievement.” Or “There is NOBODY out there with my exact story. It’s a unique reflection of me, and even though I know there are ways to improve it, it’s still an unique work of art to be proud of.” Or find sentences or scenes you particularly enjoy and tell yourself “I really enjoyed writing that and reading it because…(fill in blank). I’m glad I wrote that. I did a good job with it.”

As you make this sort of self-talk more of a habit, you’ll find your confidence improving and you will also find that you have more energy to write. Being verbally abused–even by ourselves–drains us of creative energy. You will become a better writer if you stop beating yourself up.

And don’t worry about your credentials. When it comes to writing fiction, there are no credentials greater than a strong story. Think of the author of ERAGON–he was 15 or 16 when that book was accepted for publication. Homeschool kid. Not much for credentials there. No college degree, no MFA, not even much for life experience. Just a strong story concept that caught the attention of an editor. The thing about fiction is that nobody cares who the author is or what the author has achieved. All that matters is the story. On the flip side, as a fiction writer you will NEVER be considered a real expert in whatever you’ve researched or studied for your books. That stinks–if you want to establish credibility in that field you have to do it outside the context of your fiction writing. But it does take pressure off you to have “credentials.” It just doesn’t matter at all.

So work on that writing craft, as I’m sure you already are doing. If you aren’t confident enough to pitch yet, then I’d recommend going to a conference and signing up for whatever critique opportunities are there. Also, try to find a conference that gives you opportunities to meet with published authors or faculty. Talk with them about your book, get their opinion on whether or not you are ready to pitch to an editor. Chat with them about your concerns about your work. Authors are SO under-utilized at conferences because everyone wants to get to the editors and agents. But authors are there to help you, and they have incredible experience and insight. It would also help you get used to talking about your work in a situation that is low-pressure. The only way you’re going to get more confident about it is to do it. Use those authors as a sounding board–that’s why they’re there.

Randy adds one thing: At one time or another, every writer feels like they’re lousy. A few months ago, I was feeling kind of discouraged about my writing and starting to think that I’m a horrible, wretched excuse for a writer. And after I told Meredith about that, she went through several of the manuscripts she’s edited for me over the years and pasted a number of paragraphs in to a long email, with a few comments about why this or that passage was particularly good. That helped me break up my little pity party. Thanks, Meredith! I owe you for that.

Last week we began discussing “one-sheets”–a sheet of paper with info about your book that you use in pitching to an editor an agent in a one-on-one appointment. I’ve enlisted the help of novelist/freelanced editor Meredith Efken to help answer your questions, since she’s become something of an expert on writing conferences, having authored the e-book Writers Conference Survival Guide.

Today, Meredith and I will tackle more of the backlog of questions that my loyal blog readers have posted here.

Karri wrote:

I don’t have any questions, but just thought I’d say that all this talk of pitching makes me want to pitch myself off a cliff.

Randy sez: We’ve got some great cliffs around here, so be sure and come visit me before you make that pitch. Of course, Alice had a slightly more helpful comment:

LOL, Karri! It’s not as scary as it sounds. Agents want new clients–selling more books is how they pay the rent. So they’re willing to listen–you might be their next multi-seller. The key is to know your hook and your elevator pitch cold.

Randy adds: To be honest, it is very scary the first few times. But it’s true–agents and editors are there because they’re looking for talent. If you have talent, they want to talk to you. Now here is a secret that isn’t commonly known: The editor knows how to dance. What I mean by that is that even if you don’t know how to pitch your novel, the editor knows how to ask the right questions to put you at your ease and find out about your book. With VERY few exceptions, editors and agents are Xtremely nice people.

Meredith had some good comments to add to the issue of what it means to dress and act like a professional, so I’m going to insert them here:

At the conference I attended in April, I saw so many would-be writers shuffle into their pitch sessions in worn-out jeans and scuffed t-shirt and tennis shoes that looked like a dog chewed on them. They sat slumped in their chairs while pitching, and their entire body language and appearance screamed “I don’t believe in myself and you shouldn’t either!” If any of them actually were invited to send a proposal, it’s either because they’re actually so brilliant that their slovenly behavior was overlooked, or the editor merely felt sorry for them.

And I can attest to the fact that even Randy, with his “zany physicist” fashion sense, still looks neat and presentable at conferences. Beyond even his clothing, he is good at relating to editors, agents, and other writers as a confident, competent professional. And that’s what I think most writers need to remember at conferences. You can be yourself, you can be zany, you can be eccentric and wonderfully unique. You don’t have to be a fashion plate or look like the CEO of a company. But you do have to convey that sense that you are, indeed, a professional, career-minded writer.

Randy sez: I can say amen to that. I will never look like a fashion plate, but if there’s one thing I communicate to editors when I talk to them, it’s that I’m interested in them and that I enjoy talking with them. I want to know what kind of books they like to read. I want to know what authors they’re working with that excite them. Occasionally, I’ll find an editor who loves the same books I do. Of course, it may turn out that they don’t much like my kind of writing. But I may very well know a writer who’d be perfect for them.

For the same reason, I spend a lot of time talking with agents at conferences. I don’t need an agent. I have a great one already, and I don’t need another. But I like to know what various agents like, because then I can do a better job connecting up writers with agents. (Please note: I only do this when I decide a writer is ready for an agent, and that is rarely when the writer thinks he or she is ready. And I only do this at writing conferences, which is the only time I have time to play matchmaker.)

Andra wrote a question which seems to be very common for many writers:

Why is selling myself as a writer so darned difficult?

Meredith answered:

Great question. I find it MUCH easier to rave about other people’s work than my own. I think, for me, it’s a matter of perspective. My writing is personal, and it’s hard to distance myself from it. There’s also all that creative angst of “Oh, this is total schlock. Who would want to read it?” I think those insecurities come across when we’re talking about our work. It’s hard to sound as if we believe in ourselves and in our manuscript when we’re so acutely aware of the flaws and shortcomings of it.

What I do to overcome that is give myself permission to be proud of the strengths in my manuscript. It’s so easy to only think about what’s wrong. It seems arrogant or egotistical to be proud of what is right. But the truth is that your manuscript is a product–an artistic product, but still a product to be sold. You need to believe in the value of that product and know how that product will benefit the reader. It’s not ego to confidently assert that your manuscript holds certain reader benefits. It’s not arrogance to acknowledge that your product is unique or different from what is currently available.

As far as yourself–if you have managed to write an entire book and are going to conferences and have the nerve to actually meet with publishing professionals, that puts you in a very elite group of people. Do you know how very many people are out there who would “like to write a book someday”? How many of them actually take the time to study the craft, to put in the time to create this piece of art? How many of them are willing to take the risk of receiving tough feedback about it? How many are willing to handle the rejections, the disappointments, the years it can take just to get that open door to submit their work?

Those of you who are pursuing the study of fiction writing, who are persevering in this incredibly difficult and
competitive field–you guys are HEROES in my opinion! You are worlds ahead of all those wanna-be’s who never quite manage to make the sacrifices necessary to turn that dream into reality. So when you start feeling low on confidence or unsure of yourself, remember that you are attempting what most people don’t have the courage or perseverance to try. You have already accomplished so much just to get to this point. You’ve earned the right to be confident, to believe in yourself.

It’s a tough, tough road and plenty frustrating. Celebrate how far you’ve already come. Never, never look down on yourself or discount who you are. You’ll be surprised how much respect you’ll receive from other publishing professionals when you show that you respect yourself.

Randy sez: Yeah. What she said. I’d never thought of it, but yes, if you go to a conference, you have already done something that 90% of the wannabes have never done and never will. Let me give one last piece of advice for today, and then we’ll continue this discussion tomorrow:

Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER reject yourself. That’s the job of the editor or agent. Don’t do their job for them! Your job is to write your best stuff. Your job is to present that in the most appealing way you can. Your job is to keep on keeping on until you make it. When you write something and then don’t even make an honest effort to sell it, you are rejecting yourself. Don’t do that!

We’ve been talking about pitching your manuscript (as well as yourself) to editors and agents. One commonly used tool for this is the “one-sheet”–a sheet of paper that summarizes the high points about your book and you.

I’ve invited novelist and freelance editor Meredith Efken to answer some of the many questions posed by my loyal blog readers. Meredith is the author of the popular e-book Writers Conference Survival Guide, which tells you how to get the most out of those all-too-expensive writing conferences.

Sally wrote:

I have a hard time finding the right publisher for a narrow niche. Is it time to self-publish? At writers’ conferences, my work has been praised, but not for their market.

I’m thinking about doing some e-books. What are the pros and cons of e-books vs. “real” books?

Randy sez: Self-publishing can be a good idea if you have the skills to carry it off. You need to be able to get your manuscript professionally edited, of course. And most important, you need a marketing platform big enough to make it worth your time. If you are speaking to thousands of people per year (and can sell books at the back of the room) then self-publishing almost always makes sense. If you have a web site or blog with similar exposure, then again it makes sense. If you don’t have that kind of marketing platform, then you need to team up with somebody who does. That “somebody” is a royalty-paying publisher.

E-books can be good, and I think the Amazon Kindle is going to make it (finally) work for fiction. But again, an e-book will only earn you money if you have a marketing platform. If you don’t, then you need to team up with someone who does.

Sylvia asked:

My daughter recently sold her historical novel to a rather new publishing house which is taking a new tack in publishing. Here are some things about the house:
It is a Christian publishing house, fairly new, that encourages first-time authors. The editor seems to be well-respected. They only print on demand and offer no advance, but give 25% of profits to the author instead of the usual 10-15%. They do little PR, leaving a lot of that to the author. They sell only on-line, but sell through the “big” companies: Wallmart, Target, Barnes & Noble, Borders and Amazon.
I recently asked an agent (on his blog) what he thought about this venture. He wasn’t very encouraging. He seemed to regard POD publishers with “vanity” publishers. I realize that agents are by-passed with this type of publisher, so he might not “approve” for his own economic reasons, although this agent is a respected one, and I would hope he would give an honest evaluation.
What is your take on such a publisher?

Randy sez: POD is not the same as a vanity publisher. At present, I have too little information to evaluate this, since I don’t know the details. The question I would be asking first is whether there are upfront fees that the author has to pay. Also, whether a POD publisher can really get a book into Wal*Mart, Target and B&N.

Meredith commented on this question:

The thing with self-publishing is that the distribution is extremely difficult. And e-books are still very limited in sales. You also lose the opportunity to have a traditional publisher pick it up because most of them won’t want something that has already been published in any form. I would advise being patient, keep working on other projects, develop your craft, adjust your sales pitch, and don’t settle for anything less just because it’s taking a long time.

Martha asked:

I have always been able to speak in front of groups with not problem. I taught English and sponsored Student Council groups for years, served as president of a number of groups and minored in public speaking. I even direct a conference here in Houston. Why is it that when I sit across from an editor I am suddenly tongue tied or babble like a child who doesn’t know what he’s saying without or without a one sheet, and with my “one liners” memorized. After years of attending conferences, I have yet to “sell” a manuscript to an editor. And I know several editors personally, but when it comes to getting them interested in what I write…

Meredith’s answer:

I feel your pain, honey! I, too, am comfortable speaking in front of people, but I am acutely uncomfortable pitching or even discussing my own work. I can’t answer your “why is this” question, but I can tell you what helps me. First, do use a one-sheet. Second, take a bottle of water with you into the pitch session. My mouth gets very dry when I’m nervous, so the water is a must. But you can also use it to give yourself a break. If you start to babble, stop and take a drink. Gives you a way to get control again without being too obvious about it.

This past April, I pitched for the first time in quite awhile (having an agent means I don’t really have to pitch, so I’ve avoided it). I, too, tend to babble or get tongue-tied, so what I did was let the editor guide the conversation. We exchanged a few small-talk remarks and then she asked me to tell her about my book. So I gave her my pitch line (use that one-sheet–which I wished I’d had!) and then told her “I don’t want to unload the entire plot line on you–what would you like to hear more about?” She actually wanted to hear more details! And it helped turn it into more of a question and answer session, which was somewhat more comfortable for me than trying to give a big presentation. If I’d had a professional looking one-sheet, I would maybe have handed it to her after giving my pitch line, and then taken a BIG swig from my water bottle while she perused it. She asked for me to send three sample chapters and a synopsis, so I’d say it was a successful pitch. But I was still nervous.

In my Writers Conference Survival Guide, I have some other suggestions for how to handle pre-pitch jitters. But don’t get too down on yourself about being nervous. It’s quite normal, and there is nothing wrong with you. Editors and agents generally understand how nervous writers can get. If you plan out some coping mechanisms in advance, you can learn to get through it. I just accept the jitters as part of the process
and work to keep them under control. Having experience pitching successfully, I now don’t let it bother me because I know I can be successful in spite of it.

Randy sez: I think it simply comes down to practice. You will get better at pitching by pitching. If you don’t feel confident, then going in with the goods is essential. Then you don’t have to talk much. Just show them your work. Listen, if it sings to that particular editor or agent, then you win. If it doesn’t sing to that particular editor or agent, then the best pitch in the world ain’t gonna fly.

OK, enough for today! Tomorrow, I’ll continue working through the backlog of questions that you’ve asked, so be patient. We should be able to get through them all in the next week or so.