Advanced Fiction Writing Blog

A lot of great questions and comments have been stacking up over the last few days. I will get to as many of them as possible in the next week or so. For today, I want to talk about some of the basic issues, because I can see from recent questions that some of my loyal readers need some explanations.

The first basic concept I want to cover is the concept of domains. For some of you, this will be utterly elementary, but let’s get everyone up to speed.

I believe it’s critical for any writer to own a domain name that is as close as possible to the name they write under. What’s a “domain?” Look at the top of your browser. This blog lives at www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com/blog. My domain is “AdvancedFictionWriting.com”. That is the domain for my web site on “how to write fiction.”

By the way, I also have another domain at “Ingermanson.com” which is the web site about my fiction writing. My first two initials are “R.S.” so I used to have a domain at “RSIngermanson.com” but after many radio interviews in which I had to repeat that middle initial (because “S” and “F” sound alike on the radio), I realized that I needed to simplify it as much as possible.

You may ask, “Why not use RandyIngermanson.com or RandallIngermanson.com?” That’s a good question. In fact, I do own those domains. I have things set up so if you try either of those, your browser takes you to Ingermanson.com. I can do this because there are very few Ingermansons in the world, and I am the only Randy. But most people would want to register a first-name/last-name combination, such as “CamyTang.com” or “BrandilynCollins.com” or “ReneGutteridge.com”.

As I said above, I strongly believe that every writer should own a domain that is identical or close to the name they write under. If your real name is “Samuel Clemens” but your pen name is “Mark Twain”, then you should own “MarkTwain.com”. This isn’t always possible. As some of you have noted, sometimes another author has the same name or nearly the same name as you do. I have an author friend who has the same name as a porn star, and unfortunately, Miss Porno grabbed the domain name first. So grab your domain now, if you can!

How do you do that and how much does it cost? You can buy domain names at many “domain registration” web sites, such as GoDaddy. When you “register a domain,” you are paying a small fee (usually less than $10 per year) for the exclusive rights to a given domain for a fixed period of time. Registering a domain is very easy and costs very little, so you should do this, even if you don’t plan to put up a web site right away. It’s best to own your name!

That raises another question, which Joanna asked:

Hi Randy, thanks for all the helpful information (and the quirky humour). And thanks for putting your blog through FeedBlitz because if I don’t get an email notification I don’t remember to check the website. I’m curious about FeedBlitz and other options where blog readers can sign up for notification. I’m also curious about privacy. I haven’t set up a blog yet (still identifying who I’m writing to and why) so I don’t know how much personal information one has to give out. Could you talk a bit about that, and the same for registering web addresses? I’m a happy Canadian, but if I register a .ca name I have to let my name, phone number and address be listed in the host’s “WhoIs” section for all to see. This is changing in a few months, and I’m waiting for that. Do .com addresses have the same issue? I want to set up both. Call me paranoid, but if I’m blogging and anyone in the world can read it, odds are there might be someone out there I might rather not hear from. (And if you do call me paranoid, it’s thanks to your e-zine a few years ago when you pointed out that it’s too late to protect one’s privacy once it’s become necessary.)

Randy sez: When you register your domain, you can also pay another small fee to have it registered “privately”. GoDaddy charges less than $10 per year for this service, and I do this with all my domains.

The reason is simple: When you register a domain, you have to give contact information so that you can be reached. Anyone can get that contact information, which includes your address, email, and phone number. If you value your privacy (and you should–see the article I wrote on this about a year and a half ago on my e-zine) you should guard this information–especially your home address. There are too many weirdos in this world. You don’t want them to knock on your door at 2 AM to invite themselves in for coffee. (Hannibal Lecter might invite himself in for liver and fava beans and a nice Chianti.)

When you pay for “private registration,” you are paying somebody else (a “proxy”) to provide that address, email, and phone number. If somebody needs to reach you, they contact that “proxy” who will then forward the message to you. This is very much safer, and I recommend paying the extra money.

Bottom line: Register your own name as your domain, and do it as soon as possible. Pay for the private registration option. This should not cost you more than $20 per year.

In my next blog, I’ll talk about the next step in the web site development process, which is “hosting a site.” See ya then!

I’ve done a couple of days of tips on blogging, and today I’ll take a short hiatus to discuss some of the comments that have come up.

I noticed that Marcus, over at GoodWordEditing, posted a blog entry today titled “I’m not a Brand, and Neither is My Blog.” Marcus makes some excellent points, and I’ll refer you to his post to read those. Let me be the first to say that not everybody should be using their blog as a commercial venture. Blogs started out life as web diaries. Some of them morphed eventually into businesses, but that doesn’t mean every blogger should be trying to turn a buck. Most people play baseball for fun. A few play it for money. Either choice is OK, so long as you are not fooling yourself that you are doing it for Reason #2 when you are really doing it for Reason #1.

This is a problem I’m seeing with publishing houses these days. They tell their authors to blog in order to market their fiction. But they give them little guidance in how to do that effectively. I don’t know of any novelists right now who are blogging effectively. I’m sure there are some, so you should understand that I’m merely stating my ignorance here. I know of some successful novelists who are blogging, but that is not the same thing. Which came first, the blog or the success? In many cases, it’s the success. My readers will no doubt point me to effective bloggers, and then I won’t be ignorant anymore. (Post a comment here if you know of a successful novelist who is successful BECAUSE of the blogging. I have no doubt that it’s been done.)

Tom had some very good comments on how to get radio interviews. His comments are too long to repost here, but just check the comments for my post from yesterday. Tom is an announcer on a NYC radio show, so he knows what he’s talking about. My own radio interviews have always been lined up by publicists, so I have no direct experience setting them up myself.

Donna posted a comment yesterday that I want to discuss. It’s quite long, but it raises some important issues:

I did want to mention a few downsides of blogging on your own site just so those not used to ‘owning’ your own site will know what to expect. One is about the hosting. I haven’t used a free site in years but from what I remember, free sites are limited on what you can do on them, which could make it impossible to add in applications such as blog and message board programs. The best way is to go with paid hosting. Then you have to pay to register your domain name to point to it. Third is that bringing in a lot of traffic to your site runs up your bandwith, which I’m sure Randy can agree with. Hosting allows a certain amount of bandwidth to be used that is covered in the cost but if you exceed that amount for a month they most often will shut your site down, either until the beginning of the next month or until you pay extra to cover it. And lastly, which is what I really hate, is that the higher you get in the search engines, the more spammers you get hitting your site. Trust me, they love to post their ads, many obscene, on message boards, guest books and blogs. So, this means making sure to have secure scripts running and know how to set preferences to keep their posts from showing until approved. The net is a great place but….

Randy sez: I would agree that if you are going to host a blog on your own web site (which I recommend doing) you should host it on a paid site. It is dirt cheap these days to get a site hosted with mammoth amounts of memory and plenty of bandwidth. A free hosted site is generally going to have ads, and those make you look like a cheapskate. Pay the few bucks per month to host it. GoDaddy charges less than $4 per month for hosting. There are many others that are comparable. I’ve never had problems with using too much bandwidth. GoDaddy’s cheapest hosting offers 250 GB of data transfer per month. Last week, my site transferred 1.9 GB of data. For all of December, I transferred less than 9 GB.

Spam, of course, is an issue. The WordPress blogging software has an excellent spam filtering plugin called Akismet. My policies on this site are fairly tight. All first-time comments are moderated. All comments containing a link are moderated. I use the generic set of “no-no” words that Akismet came with. Posts that contain “no-no” words are considered spam. My spam filter has caught many thousands of spam messages and has never allowed a true spam to get through. It has marked a few legitimate comments as spam, and I have rescued them all.

I allow comments that make personal attacks on me, but no personal attacks on my blog readers are allowed. In one case last year, I removed a series of comments that made personal attacks on me after a few days because I concluded that they were thinly disguised commercials, and I didn’t care to provide free advertising for this person. By the time I removed the comments, my loyal blog readers had made it clear to the offender that they liked me a lot better than him. (Thanks, folks!) I believe in free speech, so attacks on me don’t much bother me. But I have to approve all commercials on this blog.

Heather wrote:

Sidenote: I’ve been on your newsletter list for a while and noticed the other day that I haven’t received one in a few months. I check Spam daily, so it hasn’t gotten caught up in that. Would you suggest signing up again?

Randy sez: My hunch is that your ISP is filtering my e-zines. ISPs can do this without your knowledge or permission. I can see from my delivery reports that certain ISPs have been filtering my e-zines lately, and there’s little I can do about it. I archive all issues on this site in the E-zine section, and I announce each issue on this blog. That’s about all I can do.

Sylvia asked:

Would you advise starting with a website or a blog? I have neither. Will a blog on a free blog site be picked up by a search engine, or only a website? Sorry, but I know NOTHING about the internet — only how to ask a question.

Randy sez: I would get a website with my name as the domain and then put a blog there. You might want to start small by first just reserving your domain. (I’ll talk about this tomorrow, since it clearly needs to be addressed.)

Several other readers asked about how to attract traffic to a blog. This is an Xtremely important question and I’ll have a lot to say on this next week. But first things first. Tomorrow, we’ll back up and talk about some of the annoying administrative things you need to do to get a domain and host your site. See ya then!

Wow, a lot of LONG comments today! I will get to all of them eventually, but not today.

Today, I’d like to talk about branding your blog. This is critical, because people need to know what your blog is “about” or they’ll find a reason to visit one of the other 60 million blogs and skip yours.

This blog has a pretty simple brand. It’s the Advanced Fiction Writing Blog, and it’s about fiction writing. But there are plenty of blogs about fiction writing. What’s different about mine? Several things:

First, it’s well integrated in with my web site, which already had a strong brand as a quirky, high-content site with a sharp focus on “how-to”. The look and feel is almost identical. Gerhi noticed this today and asked the obvious question:

One question for you Randy. Your blog and site match in design. Obviously its not a standard Wordpress theme. Who made up your template for the WordPress side of your site?

Randy sez: I took the default WordPress theme and modified it by going into the PHP code and editing it directly to look as much like my own site as possible. This is easy if you are familiar with the usual suspects: HTML, PHP, and CSS. If you aren’t, you can always pay somebody to do it. It took me about an hour to tweak things the way I wanted them, starting from a cold start with the default WordPress theme. That was because I had already created the template for my web site first. (Gerhi asked if Arteculation Designs did that for me. The answer is no. They created the graphic design and sent me an image file, with color codes for all the colors, and the names of the fonts. Then I turned that into HTML, PHP, and CSS. I like this kind of geek-work.)

Second, near the top of the blog is my “success formula,” (which is on almost every page of my site). This formula is:

Successful Fiction Writing = Organizing + Creating + Marketing

I developed this “success formula” last summer because I realized that those three elements were the main categories that I’ve been teaching in the last year, and they are the main foundation of my own efforts as a writer. Everything I do falls into one of those categories. My e-zine has three major columns per month, each focusing on one of those topics.

Third, I resolutely resist all attempts by people to talk about anything else or get off track on nonfiction or politics or religion or even my own fiction. I get emails from people all the time who want to advertise on my site. I tell them that my policy is not to accept ads. I only recommend products that I have created myself and which I can feel proud of, or products that I use myself, or products that are very similar to ones I use myself.

Fourth, I have a particular style of writing. It’s quirky (even a little crazy at times) and sometimes opinionated. It’s me. I don’t claim it’s the best style. But it’s my style and it’s consistent. If I were ever to hire a ghostwriter to write my blogs (I can’t imagine doing that), it would be obvious to everyone right away, because my goofball style is hard to copy. The important thing is that it’s consistent. You know what you’re going to get. That’s an important part of branding. And it’s authentic. I don’t have to pretend to be anyone else.

Camille asked:

But to be very honest, there are tons of writing blogs that review books and interview authors, and while I’m interested in hearing and learning about them, there is a glut of the same info out there. I don’t want to glut, so I’ll keep marinading until I come up with that special something that will make a must read for someone besides my mother.

I think it is a mistake for a novelist to write a blog about “fiction writing” or “author interviews” if your goal is to promote your novels. You will note that I almost never blog about my fiction. The reason is simple. The purpose of this blog is NOT to promote my fiction. (I will have a different blog for that when the time is right.) The purpose of this blog is to promote myself as a teacher of “how to write fiction.” This makes sense for me because I do a lot of teaching. For several years, I’ve routinely taught at 4, 5, or 6 conferences per year. And for the last three years, I’ve had various teaching products for sale. This blog helps me with that business, because it draws traffic. (The more traffic, the more sales.) And this blog gives me a great chance to interact directly with you, my loyal blog readers. I listen to you, and that tells me what I should be teaching about, what products I should be creating. Finally, this blog gives me a chance to hang out with writers that I may never meet in person, because some of you are a long way off. Writers are fun people.

Andie asked:

What content can an author blog or write about that would really sell potential readers of one’s fiction books?

This problem has consumed my thinking for ~six months.

Not to put Randy on the spot, but I wonder what the conversion rate of readers of Randy’s blog (RORBs) or non-fiction products buy his fiction?

Not that there should be any percentage as Randy’s blog/website are not setup to do this converting but how would one go about getting non-fiction writing to sell one’s fiction books?

Randy sez: I don’t know how many of the readers of this blog buy my fiction. I know that some do, because I sometimes get emails from folks who found this web site and wound up buying my novels. But that was never the purpose of this site, and it would not bother me if the conversion rate were zero.

But the question remains: How can a novelist use a blog to help sell his fiction? The answer is, I believe, that you use a blog the exact same way you use ordinary publicity to sell your fiction. The only difference is that you are in control of your blog, while you are not in control of the usual publicity channels (TV, radio, newspaper feature articles, magazine feature articles). If you’ve ever worked with a publicist, you’ll know that they try very hard to get you on radio interviews. (You can do a radio interview over the phone at home in your pajamas. I did one once where I had been asleep until 90 seconds before the interview–one of those scheduling surprises that you learn to live with.)

And how do you get on radio? You figure out a way to connect your novel to one of the following:
1) Current events
2) Topics of general interest
3) Topics of special interest to certain groups

Then you approach radio station programming directors and pitch them with an idea. A few years ago, I wrote a suspense novel (DOUBLE VISION) in which quantum encryption played a major role. My publicist got me some radio interviews in which the “hook” was identity theft. So I’d go on a radio show, answer some questions on ID theft and what you can do to protect yourself, and then the host would ask about my book.

Publicity is publicity. If your book is “about” something, then you can blog about it, probably indefinitely.

Is your book “about” something? I’ll bet it is. Romance novels are “about” relationships, and dating, and love, the meaning of life, and a zillion other things. Suspense novels are “about” legal issues or politics or big science run amok or military hardware or a zillion other things. Fantasy novels are “about” the endless battle between Good and Evil or the human need to go on a quest or the longing for medieval chivalry or a zillion other things.

Your mission as a publicity-hungry novelist is to FIND A WAY to connect your fiction to the NONFICTION topic that your novel is “about”. Then you can talk about that forever.

A personal note to show you that I “eat my own dog food” on this issue: I am working on a novel now set in ancient Jerusalem during the first century. The series I envision is “about” Jesus in his social/political/economic/religious setting. It is “about” the history of Jewish people in a cataclysmic time. It is “about” archaeology, cultural anthropology, religion, and much more. It is “about” how we in the 21st century can read and understand a set of documents (the New Testament) that was written for people we barely understand, and how that set of documents might be relevant (or irrelevant) to our life today. It’s about a zillion other things. When I launch my blog, it will be “about” all those (nonfiction) topics. Some folks will be interested (they’ll find me via the search engines) and many more people will NOT be interested. All that matters is that my natural audience will find me. Those are the only people that I can effectively market my books to. The purpose of my blog will be to help those people find me long before my next book comes out.

To summarize: Branding is about making a promise of consistent quality. Your blog does that by defining itself sharply and then delivering consistently. You’re a writer! You have something to say! Make that the focus of your blog, and you will draw all the readers that you deserve.

Yesterday, I started a series on blogging for novelists. Judging by the comments, looks like I hit a nerve!

In the coming days, I’ll be giving you one tip per day on blogging. Today’s tip is about hosting your blog. A blog has to live somewhere on the web. You have two choices:
1) Use a free blogging site. (This is dead easy.)
2) Put the blog on your own web site. (This takes work.)

Let’s talk about the pros and cons of those two options.

You can easily set up a blog at blogspot.com or wordpress.com or one of the other free blogging sites. But here’s the problem. If you do that, then everyone who visits your blog will be reading pages on Blogspot’s web site or WordPress’s web site. Which means they won’t be visiting YOUR web site.

“What’s wrong with that?”–you may be asking. That depends on what your goals are.

If you just want a little notoriety or you just want to express yourself, then there’s nothing wrong with that. Use a free blogging service and save yourself the trouble.

But if you want to build traffic to YOUR web site, then it’s far better to host your blog on your own web site. That’s what I’ve done here. Look at the top bar of your browser. It starts out “http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com” which is MY web site. This blog gets about 500 page views per day. That means that this web site gets an extra 500 page views per day that it would not get if my blog were hosted on a free blogging site.

That is an enormous advantage to me. Why? Because higher traffic to my site translates into better rankings for my site on the various search engines. (There are a variety of technical reasons for this.) That translates into more traffic to my site from people who are searching for stuff on writing. And that translates into money. (I won’t tell you how much money, but I will say that it’s worth my time.)

I can give you some hard numbers though on traffic to this site. I launched this blog in mid-April of 2007. In the first 11 days of April, my site was averaging about 687 page views per day. Not bad at all. But not great. In the last 16 days of April, the site averaged 1416 page views per day. So my traffic doubled practically overnight after launching this blog. It has continued to grow and in the first 14 days of 2008, it has averaged 3398 page views per day. Some of that traffic is due to blog readers, but much of it is due to the search engines bringing me more people, because of the increased relevancy of this site, due to all the extra traffic and the increased content here.

Just as a simple example, search for the phrase “fiction writing blog.” This blog currently ranks #4 for that search phrase on Google, #4 on Yahoo, and #1 on MSN. That brings people to my site, where they subscribe to my e-zine and sometimes buy my products. I’ve not spent hundreds of hours or thousands of dollars to make that happen. It happened by itself. All I did was blog on fiction writing and the search engines noticed. There are a number of other search phrases for which they rank me #1, #2, or #3. Part of the reason for those high rankings is this blog.

Your next question may well be, “OK, if I want to blog, I should put it on my web site. How do I do that?”

The answer is that you’ll have to work just a little harder than if you used a free blogging site. But that effort will pay off forever, so it’s well worth it. You’ll need to upload the blogging software to your site and hook it up to a database. This is not particularly hard. Some web sites make this a 5 minute operation. The software I use, which I got on www.WordPress.org, gives you step by step instructions in how to do it. Millions of people have done this, so it’s not a terrible ordeal.

You may be the ultimate non-techie and you may find it too daunting. No problem. Any competent webmaster can set you up with a blog hosted on your site in an hour. That shouldn’t cost you much. If you don’t have a web site, then you can create a new site that is NOTHING BUT your blog. Thiat is an entirely reasonable thing to do. For example, my friend Chip MacGregor has a site that is just a blog. He blogs every few days on the publishing industry, especially as it relates to agents. Chip is a top-notch agent and is well qualified to talk about all that.

That leads us to the next subject, something which a number of you posted comments on today: What will you blog about? That is actually a branding question, so tomorrow we’ll talk about “Branding Your Blog.” I’ll address many of the issues you all raised in today’s comments. See ya then!

I’d like to talk about blogging for the next few days. Blogging is alleged by many to be a great way for a novelist to market himself or herself. It’s also alleged by a shrinking (but still vocal) minority to be a colossal waste of time. It’s just possible that it’s both. I’ll be interested in what you think on the subject.

My friend, Mary DeMuth, who often posts comments on this blog, has launched a new blog, “So You Want To Be Published,” just in the last few days. I had a look just now, and there’s some very good info there for pre-pubbed writers. Mary is giving away three copies of her e-book on how to write a nonfiction proposal to folks who leave comments on her blog. I’ve already got this e-book and it was quite useful to me in writing a fiction proposal — I found some of her formatting ideas to be a step ahead of the format I was using. In general, of course, a fiction proposal has a lot of differences from a nonfiction proposal, so I’m been encouraging Mary since November to write an e-book on fiction proposals too.

I want to wrap up one last question that carried over from last week before we move on to talk about blogging.

Parker asked:

I have a question about a project that’s been (as you put it) composting for several months. In narrative nonfiction, memoir, essay, etc. (Think Gretel Ehrlich’s “The Solace of Open Spaces) how do you deal with stories about people, dead or alive? If, for example, you have a great tale about Joe Schmo that might embarrass or infuriate him (or family members, if he’s dead). Change the name? Seek permission/approval? Write it factual and hope?

Randy sez: First, I am not a lawyer, so nothing I write below should be construed as legal advice. I think I have just covered my hindquarters so now I can tell you my opinion without being sued if I am wrong.

As I understand things, you cannot libel a dead person. And in general, if you tell the truth about a living person, then it’s not libel. In the US, the libel laws are pretty toothless, and writers have great leeway in writing about people. This is NOT true in many other parts of the world, notably Great Britain, where the libel laws are much tougher on writers. If you have any question about whether you are libeling a living person, you should consult a lawyer with experience in libel law.

Libel is not the only issue, of course. Invasion of privacy is also a serious problem. As I understand it, you are not allowed to expose your next door neighbors to public embarrassment, even if what you say is true, and even if they are dead. Private citizens have the right to privacy, and they have a right to NOT have their sins exposed in public. If they have broken the law, call the cops. If it’s a matter of “moral turpitude” (whatever that is) or even something merely embarrassing, you’d better keep your lips zipped. Unless they are public figures.

Politicians, rock stars, athletes, and other Important Folks lose most of their expectation of privacy when they become famous. (This is the hazard of being famous.) And be aware that the more famous you become as a writer, the less expectation you have of privacy. It’s a good idea to not only “be legal” in what you write, but treat other people the way you’d want to be treated.

Back to Parker’s question: If you can get permission, then you are likely to be OK. If you can’t get permission, then change the names and change any other identifying characteristics that might enable readers to guess who it is. If you can’t do that, change the story enough so that the person is unrecognizable. If you can’t do that, drop the story.

Again, I’m not a lawyer, so don’t take my opinions as legal advice. Ask a lawyer with experience on the question. I am sure at least one lawyer reads this blog, so here’s hoping we’ll hear from him/her on the question.

There were some great questions left as comments today, so I’d love to answer those now:

Christophe wrote:

I took a look at Margie Lawson’s site and though the design of the site didn’t immediately appeal to me, I browsed around a bit anyway. (Yeah, I do give in to first impressions occasionally, but not always)
I found the Empowering Characters’ Emotions Lecture, but I didn’t see any option to have a peek at it before buying it, or at least reading a sample lesson/chapter/something.

Did I miss it somehow?

Randy sez: No, there are no samples on her site. And yes, Margie’s site could be much spiffier. She’s got some large pictures that really need to be compressed a lot, and the layout could be cleaner. But I care about content, and her content is fabulous. It’s something I’ve been needing for years, and I didn’t know it.

Thanks to Margie, my writing is currently taking a quantum leap forward, much like when I discovered Dwight Swain years ago. I simply didn’t understand plot until I read Dwight Swain’s book. I’ve always instinctively understood characters, but Margie’s lecture notes (a couple of hundred pages worth) have give me some new analytical tools for thinking about characters. I’ve given her permission to use my glowing praise for her course on her web site because I think she has something terrific there.

Cate asked:

A question came to mind when you mentioned about series synopses. I have a massive scifi work that has distilled itself down to a rambling collection of short novels, novellas and short stories. It’s huge, it’s a mess, it does have a particular order and few of them can stand alone. I know in the science fiction realm there is precedence for this; Heinlein published a “future history” of interconnected short stories, which is my guess as to what my collection would be called. How would I go about proposing something like that?

Also, can a novella be published as a standalone, and how would that be proposed?

Randy sez: I have no idea how you would propose this collection. In principle, a novella can be published as a standalone, although there aren’t that many publishers doing novellas. In both cases, a good agent could help you figure out exactly what to do with this project.

Carrie wrote:

Hey Randy, speaking of conferences and possible ideas, I was able to take a workshop from Donald Maass (Writing the Breakout Novel), and he talked about layers in novels. As I’m struggling with that, do you want to talk about character layers?

Randy sez: Donald Maass is another teacher who is absolutely terrific. I had a chance to take his workshop last summer, but chose to go on an Alaskan cruise instead. Character layers is an important topic, but not one I can address in a single blog entry. We’ll have to defer that to the future. I’m putting it on my list.

Susan asked:

To whom to you submit your proposals? I was under the impression that “The Bigs” in New York would simply trash your submission if you don’t have an agent and it doesn’t seem like your agent would need a formal proposal. Are you submitting these proposals to editors with whom you already have a relationship?

Randy sez: These days a lot of publishers refuse unagented submissions. It’s not just the Big Boys in New York who do this; many mid-size publishers quit accepting submissions from anyone they didn’t know after the anthrax scare. If you meet an editor at a conference, they might request a proposal, and then you can submit it without an agent. But if the editor likes your project, he or she will probably prefer that you line up a good agent, because negotiating a contract with an agent is generally safer than negotiating with a first-time author who has no clue what clauses in a contract are negotiable and which aren’t. A good agent will not screw up a contract. (A bad agent might.)

As for agents, they generally do send proposals to editors. The proposal may be formal or informal, depending on how well-known the author is to the editor. (If you’ve written three books for an editor, you can get away with a slimmed-down proposal. If you’ve written 20 books for that editor, you probably only need to write a paragraph synopsis on a postcard; but if you’ve never written for the editor, they’ll want a professional proposal.)

To answer your question, when I finish polishing my proposal, I’ll give it to my agent, who will then check it over carefully. He might come back to me for more revisions, or he might decide it’s ready to send out. Most of the editors he’ll send it to will know my name. Some of them will be good friends of mine. Some will be people who have never met me. But all of them will be editors my agent knows quite well.

In principle, I could probably sell my proposal myself to one of the editors I know. But my agent will do it quicker and better than I will, with a higher probability of making a sale. I’d rather that he do it. Then he gets to receive all the rejections, some of which will no doubt come from editors who are good friends of mine. That’s the nature of this business. It’s easier for everyone if rejections get buffered through an agent.

We have a few odds and ends to pick up before we move to our next topic (which I’m still mulling in my mind). I’m looking at the comments that my loyal readers left today, and some of them need answering:

Parker wrote:

Thanks again for your tireless work with your blog and your newsletter!

And a special hug (yeah, guys can hug guys and still be straight) for recommending Margie Lawson’s lecture packets. I ordered “Empowering Characters’ Emotions” immediately and although I’ve only read the Welcome so far, I’m hooked, psyched, excited. I’ve known that showing/conveying emotions has been difficult for me and I expect Margie’s insights to be tremendously helpful. As soon as I’ve worked my way through this I’ll order her “EDITS” packet.

As an added bonus, Margie, like yourself, seems to really reach out in her efforts to help. And, in her email says that although she didn’t really meet you, you are her new best friend.

Randy sez: I worked through Margie’s “Empowering Character Emotions” carefully the first time. Now I’m working through it again to pick all the meat off the bones. As I mentioned in my e-zine the other day, I’ve not learned so much from one teacher since I read Dwight Swain’s book, TECHNIQUES OF THE SELLING WRITER, many years ago. Like Parker, I’ll be working through Margie’s EDITS packet next. For those of you who didn’t see my mention of Margie in my e-zine, her web site is at www.MargieLawson.com and she is a psychologist with incredible insights into fictional characters. She teaches how to edit your fiction to make your characters stronger.

Gerhi wrote:

Ok, now I had a chance to read the newsletter and I’m back with a gripe. Ok, maybe not a gripe, let’s say an appeal.

I have to face the fact that until I make megabucks or have saved for a number of years attending one of the type of conferences you mention is just a pipe dream. I love conferences and I would love to go. An if I could drive there I’d sleep in the foyer to make it happen.

But I would need a Visa, a passport, a return plain ticket, a guaranteed amount in my account or my wallet (which is a lotta money taking the exchange rate into account) and that is before I even arrive at the conference and start paying fees there.
So, if a conference is the best thing you can do to market your writing career, while also hobnobbing with other literati and taking workshops on craft, what is the SECOND best thing you can suggest for us poor smucks that can’t get to a conference?

Randy sez: You are absolutely right. The deck is stacked against you, so you’re going to need to find ways to level the playing field. (What a terrible mixed metaphor that was!)

First, remember that nothing sells like excellent writing. If you have excellent writing, then you will probably break in to publishing somehow, some way, eventually. It’ll be harder for you in South Africa and it will take longer, but you CAN do it. So your #1 priority should always be to improve your craft. By the way, I know there are a number of novelists in South Africa. I’ve met a number online over the years, and several hang out on this very blog. As Carrie said, there are publishers in every country. They might not pay the size of advances that a US publisher would pay, but let’s face it, US publishers don’t pay that big of advances either, unless your name is Clancy or King or Brown.

Second, the internet is a great leveler. Look at this blog and some of those who comment frequently. We have ML Eqatin in California; Daan in South Africa; Nessie in New Zealand; Christophe in Belgium; Mary in Texas; and a great many others scattered all over. The web makes it possible for me to reach these people far more easily than most of the neighbors who live within half a mile of my house! You can do an amazing amount to make yourself known by using the internet, and you can do it long before your book is published. We can all think of bloggers who’ve become famous, especially in politics, but also in other realms.

The internet is a powerful way to create a platform for yourself, if you have something unique to say and have the skill to say it well. My favorite resources for learning about internet promotion are (in the order that I first came across their sites): Tom Antion, Alexandria Brown, James Brausch, Perry Marshall, and Mark Joyner, but there are many others. One of my goals in life is to teach novelists how to use the methods that these marketers have created for selling NONFICTION so that we can all do better at selling our FICTION. Novelists have a great advantage in marketing, because a big part of marketing is creating a compelling story. I want to see a better distribution of income for novelists in coming years.

Robert wrote:

You mentioned in your e-zine that you’ve been working on a proposal. One question I have is if your proposal is for a series of books or just a single book? And if it is for a series, how does that kind of proposal differ from one for a single book?

What kind of things would a publisher want to know about the “future” books in order to commit to a series?

Randy sez: The proposal I’m writing is for a series. 99% of the proposal talks about Book 1 in the series. There are a couple of paragraphs describing more books in the series. (By its nature, this series could go on for many books. Note that a series will continue only as long as it is selling well; if it is, publishers will want it to go forever.) Most publishers want to know that an author is more than a one-trick pony. If you can show that you can write a series of books, that’s good. It tells the publisher that they can invest more resources in you because you’ll be around for awhile and your name recognition will have a chance to grow. In general, you really don’t need to give a huge amount of details about succeeding books in the series. The exception would be a tightly bound series like Harry Potter, where it’s really one big story. An example of a loosely bound series would a typical mystery series, where every story stand totally alone, and the detective’s story arc may change very little over a long series of books.

That’s all for today! Tune in again tomorrow when I hope to have decided on the direction we’ll take for the next week or so.

Hi All:

That pesky life is catching up with me and I’ve been overwhelmed with “stuff” the last couple of days. I’ll try to do a blog of substance tomorrow, but for today, I thought I’d answer one question that was asked last week:

Donna asked:

I have a question about publishing rights for the author. Is it a given that the publishers keep the publishing rights indefinitely on the books they publish or is there the ability for the author to keep rights to republish it say ten or twenty years down the line?

Randy sez:

Most all publishing contracts allow the publisher to declare a book “out of print.” This means that:
1) The publisher is not printing more copies because sales are too slow to justify doing so right now.
2) The publisher does not guarantee that it will print more copies, even if its warehouse is totally empty.

It does not mean that the publisher has given up rights to print more copies later, if demand should pick up. So the book might be in limbo, with no copies available and with the publisher unwilling to print more. Most contracts specify that the book won’t remain in limbo indefinitely. The author has a right to request “reversion of rights” when a book has been out of print for a certain length of time.

Note that the publisher will typically want to liquidate its inventory before it reverts rights to the author. If there are only a few dozen copies left, then the author can buy the books back. Even if there are a few hundred left, the author might find it useful to buy them all, because usually you can get them very cheap. It sometimes happens that that there are many thousands of copies left unsold. Few authors can afford to buy all those copies, so it may take a while to liquidate them.

Eventually, the author should get the rights back.

One trend in contracts is to switch the book to Print On Demand when the publisher deems it not cost effective to print a big load of copies. In that case, the book will never technically go out of print (because POD books can be printed and shipped overnight). So this trend means that in the future, books will always be available.

Is that good or bad? I’m not sure. It sounds good to always have your book in print and available. However, you can bet the publishers will write the contract to be as favorable to them as possible. (Whoever writes the contract always does this, so don’t be too harsh on publishers.) It is up to you and your agent to tilt the table back your way by making sure the contract is fair.

In any event, this is a trend to watch.

OK, one last question for Jeff Gerke, whom I’ve been interviewing for several days now. Next October, Jeff will be launching a new small independent publishing house, Marcher Lord Press. We’ve been discussing his plans to market his books and Jeff has spilled most of his secrets.

After today, we’ll be on our way to a new topic next week.

Q: Jeff, I know you have plans to reissue Christian speculative fiction that’s gone out of print. Tell us about that.

A: From the beginning I’ve wanted Marcher Lord Press to become the premier go-to publisher for Christian speculative fiction. Part of that vision has always included reissuing selected Christian speculative novels that have gone out of print.

Fans of this kind of fiction, as I’ve mentioned, are fabulously devoted. They don’t care how long ago something came out, so long as it maxes out their cool meters (coolometers?). A number of fantastic Christian SF and fantasy novels came out before their time and never got a fair chance. They surfaced when no one knew to look for them, and before anyone started looking, they slipped back below the surface. I’d like to give some of these novels a second chance.

I will repackage these resurrected novels with new covers and added content–like “deleted scenes,” new short stories, author’s preferred editions, etc. And because I’ll be using POD technology, it’s no problem to keep these books in print indefinitely.

I’ve talked to numerous Christian speculative novelists, many of whom I’m honored to count among my friends, who tell me of the frustration they face when fans ask for copies of their old books but none are to be found. By bringing back these worthy stories I can provide a service not only for these fans but also for these authors.

Look for my first rez titles to appear in the second or third year of Marcher Lord Press’s operation.

Randy sez: Thanks, Jeff, for all your answers. I know that not all my blog readers are interested in your niche, but they’re ALL interested in some niche. And the marketing methods that work for one niche will work just as well for another.

Tune in on Monday for a new topic, one which scored high in interest in my recent poll of my readers.

I have a few more questions to ask Jeff Gerke. For context on this, read the last few days of posts on this blog. In brief, Jeff is launching a new publishing house, Marcher Lord Press, aimed at marketing the unmarketable — Christian speculative fiction of all types.

Here are two questions I asked Jeff recently, along with his answers:

Q: How do you plan to market the books that MLP publishes?  Of course, there will be a big launch when you release the books.  But what about after that?

A: Marcher Lord Press is an experiment in tiger marketing (a term with which your loyal readers should be familiar, Randy). In traditional marketing, you figure out where your target market is and then you go to that place and wave your arms, shouting, “Hey, come try this new thing we think you’ll like.”

Tiger marketing, in contrast, consists of creating a go-to spot that will attract your target market in large numbers. In other words, if you build it, they will come. You create something of interest and long-term value to your ideal customer. And then, when you have attracted a sufficient number of them, you roll out your product at that go-to location. Instead of waving your arms and chasing people down, they’re already there. They’ve gathered right in front of you. And you’re offering something you know they’ll like because it’s closely related to the thing that drew them to the location in the first place.

My go-to place is my popular Web page, www.WhereTheMapEnds.com. It’s a site dedicated to Christian speculative fiction. It has a massive (400+ title) booklist of Christian science fiction and fantasy, monthly interviews with the greats in the genre (Dekker, Peretti, etc.), and scads of other fun–like a random speculative story creator and tons of information on world-building tools like mapmaking software and world builders. I’ve made the site extremely writer-friendly, too, offering my experience as a former acquisitions editor and a writer’s conference speaker. The Fiction Writing Tip of the Week column is especially popular among writers. If you love Christian speculative fiction as a reader or a writer or both, WhereTheMapEnds is the place for you.

The site has attracted a large group of that very kind of person: people who love Christian SF and fantasy and other weird fiction. They, as it happens, are the ideal readers for Marcher Lord Press novels. And now they’re hearing a lot about Marcher Lord Press, and they’re buzzing with anticipation, I can tell you.

So to answer the question, a large part of the marketing for these books was done before I even announced I was launching a publishing company. It’s a long-term strategy that I’m hoping will work out very well for Marcher Lord Press.

But the specific question was how am I going to market specific MLP novels once they’re released. The answer is…not terribly much beyond occasional promotional messages to my registered subscribers. Here’s a quote from the page on the Marcher Lord Press site in which I explain my publishing model:

“Marcher Lord Press will do very little in terms of marketing the novels we publish. There will be no multi-city book tours or TV appearances or advertisements in Publisher’s Weekly. (Authors may line up some of these independently, however, and MLP will certainly support those efforts.)”

To a large extent I’m relying on word-of-mouth from folks like you. I’ll also be relying on the good relations and alliances I’ve built over the years with the many wonderful Web sites, forums, and blogs dedicated to Christian speculative fiction. It’s a vocal, enthusiastic, and brilliantly loyal audience. If you’re familiar with the fan base surrounding the TV show “Firefly,” then you know the type I’m talking about. I’d rather have these folks on my side than just about any other group I can think of.

Christians who love Firefly. Christians who watch Battlestar Galactica. Christians who would go to ComicCON if given half a chance. Those guys.

For the first season or two of Marcher Lord Press releases, I’ll be operating on a pretty thin budget. I won’t be buying advertising space in magazines or even on Web pages. Now, if this thing takes off like I’m hoping it will, I might have money for that kind of thing in the future. But remember, we’re kind of reinventing publishing here. I’m not going to do things the traditional way.

Randy sez: I followed this question with a second one:

Q: What can you tell us, if anything, about the books you’re already lined up to  publish in October?

A: Top secret, baby. I will say that I had two books and authors in mind before I ever decided to actually launch Marcher Lord Press. I’ve known these authors and their writing for years, and I’m thrilled to be bringing their incredible fiction to an eager audience.

And I have just this week decided on the third novel I’m going to launch with. This one came through the acquisitions form on my site, so take heart all ye aspiring authors out there–I really am reading what you submit through the site. This third novel is every bit as exciting as the first two. You guys are not going to believe the Major Talent I’ve discovered. His novel is going to blow you away–when it isn’t bowling you over laughing.

I’ll be announcing these novels in the weeks and months ahead, but you can take pride in knowing that you are the first people to get even a glimpse into what I’ll be publishing in October 2008. It’s a RandyCON special.

I launched my own publishing company to publish the books *I* wanted to read. I just didn’t know I’d be having so much fun along the way.

Randy sez: Good luck, Jeff! We’ll wrap up tomorrow with some final questions.