jul09

I Know I Left My Long Tail Around Here Somewhere

Posted by Scalzi 10 months ago | Permalink | Comments (12)

Author Walter Jon Williams faces the truth as it applies to mid-list authors in today’s world:

Writers of mid-list fiction – which is pretty much everything but the best-sellers – are more or less obliged in these sub-lunary times to shoulder the burdens of publicity and promotion ourselves. We are expected to have web pages, we are expected to have blogs. It’s not that I don’t enjoy communicating with my readers, or that I don’t have fun on this blog, but I have to wonder how much profit actually accrues from this use of my time.

This is a very interesting question, isn’t it? I think there’s no doubt that blogs and Web pages have been very helpful for certain writers (and I definitely count myself as one of them), but they’re not magical publicity machines, either. One thing that’s very true about the writers with popular blogs is that they tend to do a lot of work keeping their blogs popular; in my particular case I post several entries a day on a personal blog, additional entries on my AOL blog, and usually one or two posts here at Ficlets. It works – people seem to know who I am, and sales have been pleasantly robust – but it’s also work, and only my apparent compulsive hypergraphia makes it possible. I was having lunch not long ago with another writer who is both award-winning and an excellent writer (the two don’t always coincide) and he was thinking about setting up a blog, because he feels as if he should – but he also recognizes that he’s not the world’s fastest writer, and every bit of time he spends on a blog is time he’s not writing a book.

At a certain point you have to make a decision as to when spending time promoting your career isn’t actually helping, and might actually be hurting the career in the long run. It’s a different point for every writer, and sometimes it’s hard to say exactly where that point might be.

Thoughts?

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Comments

  1. SJHundak/S.J.Willing's Buddy IconSJHundak/S.J.Willing

    Posted 10 months ago

    Sometimes trying to keep up the public face of a blog, maillist or any/all of the other general publicity seems to take so much time that writing is a long forgotten memory.

    Yet if you don’t do any of it, and just write, it seems nothing sells…

    It’s pretty hard work, especially if it’s not your only day job.

    S.J.

  2. Amber's Buddy IconAmber

    Posted 10 months ago

    Some of my favorite authors don’t have blogs, but they do have decent websites with information about their books, characters, and settings and are open to the idea of readers setting up forums or fan sites about their work (sometimes with links on their pages to these communities). A really good fan bulletin board, with occasional support and Q&As by the author, can be a great asset, and it’s lower-maintenance than a blog.

  3. Nimble Books LLC's Buddy IconNimble Books LLC

    Posted 10 months ago

    I’ve summarized my thoughts on the most cost-effective forms of online book marketing at the Nimble Books Marketing Checklist. It is indeed a lot of work, and my feeling is that the first few bullets account for 90% of the variance in sales.

  4. Nimble Books LLC's Buddy IconNimble Books LLC

    Posted 10 months ago

    The URL is http://www.nimblebooks.com/wordpress/the-nimble-books-marketing-playbook/

  5. Wil Wheaton's Buddy IconWil Wheaton

    Posted 10 months ago

    This is easy.

    How much profit actually comes from this use of time? For me, the answer is “all of it.”

    I don’t know what it’s been like for other authors, and how it is for you, John, but I learned the hard way that no publisher is going to work as hard as I do to promote and publicize my books. I also learned that the wrong kind of promotion can be worse than no promotion at all.

    We are so lucky to live in this time, when we can use all these tools from our homes that other authors going back decades would have killed for. I mean, think about how awesome it is that we can talk directly with our audience - by the thousands if we’re lucky - straight through our blogs. It’s like direct mail times a bajillion, and more personal.

    With tools like Eventful, we can figure out where our personal appearances (usually self-financed for mis-list authors) are going to draw the best crowds. With free and open source software packages, we can build message boards so readers can interact with each other, and we can help build and nurture communities of excited readers who will help us sell our books. With technology like the long-pen, we can do virtual signings just about anywhere in the world.

    And the list goes on and on.

    I’m about to release my third book, and I’m doing it using online tools and methods that weren’t available as recently as five years ago, and I’m tremendously excited that I have these opportunities.

    If you’re going to be a mid-list author these days, and you’re hoping to reach anyone under . . . I don’t know, 50? I think you’d be missing an enormous opportunity by not having a blog, and not using the communication tools we have at our disposal.

  6. Wil Wheaton's Buddy IconWil Wheaton

    Posted 10 months ago

    Hrm. So this blog doesn’t like dashes. I didn’t mean to strike out the text in my previous entry.

  7. jayman's Buddy Iconjayman

    Posted 10 months ago

    Hey John -

    I can understand your point completely, but here’s another thought for you to consider. I had never heard of you until I came across your blog WHATEVER one afternoon. I liked what I read a lot, and decided to check out one of your books. I bought and read ONE MAN ’S WAR and loved it. I now own every book that you’ve ever published and have the wonderful experience of knowing that I have a few months of great reading before me.

    This all happened within the space of two months.

    Obviously, your blogs (which I greatly enjoy) do promote your writing and your career effectively!

    Best – Jay

  8. User 3009's Buddy IconUser 3009

    Posted 10 months ago

    But what if your Blog garners but 4 hits a day? What if your publicity machine doesn’t get enough attention to promote you?

    In a way, there’s a certain sincerity to Neil Gaiman and John Scalzi’s blogs that gives them their flair: both of them blog for the joy of it, and it’s that constant stream of personality rich material that makes it interesting and pleasurable to read. Can a poor blogger fake it well enough to get consistent attention? Can anything substitute for a unique and interesting blogging voice?

  9. Nimble Books LLC's Buddy IconNimble Books LLC

    Posted 10 months ago

    User 3009 hit the nail on the head. I have reached the conclusion that I am not an especially good blogger, and the reason is that I don’t like to reveal enough of myself to make the personality come across. I tend to prefer posting tidbits I find interesting on a “there it is” basis, but successful blogging (and Internet marketing?) requires the ongoing revelation of a stream of identity.

  10. User 3012's Buddy IconUser 3012

    Posted 10 months ago

    Interestingly enough, this is a very similar problem to what happens in the professional bellydance community (I know, WHAT professional bellydance community?).

    Most professional dancers are “mid-level”—that is, they teach regularly at home, do one or two traveling workshops a year, have a small but sincere fanbase. Some are “bestsellers”: booked years in advance, constant big draw, workshops every weekend, etc.

    In order to get people to know who you are in what is essentially a grassroots movement, you have to spend a LOT of time promoting yourself, and usually the only way anyone can afford to do that is online, particularly on popular message boards and newsgroups (like tribe.net). You post and post and post and people see your name and think, “Hey, she sounds familiar,” and then they hire you or buy your instructional video.

    One thing my friends and I have always complained about though is how many people sit in front of their computers posting opinions online rather than practicing their dancing. But since being a professional bellydancer is only partly dependent on how well you dance, is all this online time well-spent?

    Since this is a tiny world compared to the industry of publishing corporations, I’d say for us, the answer is usually yes. It has to be. We don’t have anyone else supporting us if we fall; and apparently, neither do writers, no matter how good they are.

    There is so much data on what makes something (or someone) famous and no real conclusions. Hollywood has struggled for years to figure out what makes a hit movie, and can’t pinpoint it; otherwise they’d be knocking out a hit every weekend. You could blog wittily and constantly and still maybe no-one would read what you were writing, so all your work would be useless. You could blog once a month and start a new Internet craze, and be immensely popular.

    But there’s no formula to determine what will work and what won’t. The only thing to do is try everything, gauge its effectiveness after a pre-determined time, and either continue with it or stop it and move on to something else.

    Have any writers ever hired marketing directors to work with them, out of curiosity?

  11. theWallflower's Buddy IcontheWallflower

    Posted 10 months ago

    I think there’s a bigger issue here, related to what User 3009 said, and what Jon Williams was trying to get across. You have to be a celebrity before the grass-roots type promotion serves any sort of function. If you’re an unpublished or newly-published author, I can’t see things like constant blogging helping increase your status. That’s time taken away from actually producing material. Unless you already have an established presence (such as the case of John Scalzi, Wil Wheaton, Cory Doctorow, and Neil Gaiman), I don’t believe it’s anything but time better spent elsewhere. You either have to dedicate your time soley to it, or get really lucky.

  12. User 3009's Buddy IconUser 3009

    Posted 10 months ago

    I’m thinking the best way to get noticed is to have a popular author recommend your book on their blog and provide a link to yours. It provides the same benefits of having popular authors write a blurb for your book jacket.

    I think about 4,323,943,234.7 people check the Gaiman/Scalzi/Doctorow/Wheaton/Making Light blogs, and if you got each of them to plug your book, then all of a sudden you’d have a deluge of people popping over to check you out.

    You’d best be ready for them, of course, and have some entertaining stuff written for them to browse and grow enamored of you through.

    I’m thinking of how Neil Gaiman plugged Joe Hill a couple of times in his blog, and how I discovered him as a result. How many others discovered A Heart Shaped Box in the same way?

    If getting a popular author to plug you is key, then people should approach said author with the same level of preparation and tact that they would approach an agent. Write a brief but intriguing letter, ask permission to send them a copy of your book, etc. Actually, when editors solicit authors for blurbs, do said authors automatically plug the book in their blogs as well? It might be productive if they did, or if that was requested.

    Ultimately though, this is like having an excellent opening act for your show. They can set you up, but the rest is up to you.