Category Archives: Professional

career, outward projection of you and your works

Promote Yourself Like a Rockstar

Posted on by

Tammy Brackett is the owner of Moonstruck Promotions, a solo publicist, consultant and writer,  booking agent and former tour manager and performer. Over the past 16 years, she’s crafted a business from the music industry. Tammy is the author Another Nightmare Gig from Hell, Fifty Ways to Tour Without Getting in the Van, Fifty Rules of Rock, Backstage Pass: Organize Your Band, and Backstage Pass: Book Your Band. She’s an expert in practical music matters and writes blog for musicians at http://alunatunes.wordpress.com.  She can be reached at tammy@moonstruckpromotions.com.

The art of marketing, whether your product is a piece of music or a new novel, is essential to increased sales and visibility. Without proper publicity and promotion, your work of art stands a chance of remaining in packing boxes or on store displays growing sad and dusty and terribly alone.

A good publicity plan doesn’t have to include the expense of a professional publicist.  Consider how the music world promotes and publicizes events, adapt their marketing model, add a dash of your own creativity and you’ll be promoting yourself like a rockstar in no time!

A bare-bones publicity plan should include the following:

  • A brief press release. Be sure to include contact name and information. A great press release is short, informative and appropriate for publication. Many publications no longer staff dedicated reviewers. Keep in mind, your press release may be printed verbatim. Keep it short and simple and interesting. Follow up your email press release with a phone call to ask about setting up a review or interview. Be sure to have sample books on hand to send to interested writers and reporters.
  • Flyers, posters, quarter page handbills still remain a staple in getting the word out for bands and musicians. A simple informational poster or flyer works wonders and is inexpensive and easily distributable. A small table tent announcing your new book can be easily placed in coffee shops, restaurants, museums, art galleries and other non-traditional outlets.
  • Explore radio possibilities. Many NPR affiliates have book-related programming. Take time to explore sites and find contacts. Radio is still a viable medium in many markets.
  • Don’t forget wonderful social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. The trick here is to not slam followers and friends with constant information about your new work. Post quotes from your book, interesting tidbits but eschew the desire to continually try to get people to purchase. The Facebook and Twitter communities are invaluable marketing.
  • Collect quotes and reviews and create a one sheet to slip into your new book as it’s mailed out. For you to talk about your book is one thing, but for other people to be talking about it is quite another. Collect your quotes and reviews and make them work for you.

Innovative marketing ideas can also include cross-promotional opportunities. Consider sales outlets outside terrestrial or online bookstores. Many art galleries, museums, natural history sites, and local attractions have gift shops. Put pen to paper and really explore the angles of your new work. An exercise book may have a market outside the fitness community. Maybe it could be marketed to belly dancers or boomers. A new cook book may be attractive to the powerful market of stay at home moms. Learn to explore and develop new markets and new customers outside a target audience.

With a bit of thought, a creative publicity plan is easy to conceive and implement. Have fun finding new customers and fans. Give yourself a round of applause for a job well done. Heck, you deserve a standing ovation!

A Love Letter (to My Writing Group)

Posted on by

Lev AC Rosen is the author of All Men of Genius, a steampunk novel inspired by both Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. The novel follows Violet Adams as she disguises herself as her twin brother to gain entry to Victorian London’s most prestigious scientific academy, and once there, encounters blackmail, mystery, gender confusion, talking rabbits and killer automata.  Rosen received his MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College.  He lives in Manhattan.

Hey Baby,

We’ve been together a long time – over four years.  That’s longer than I’ve been with my fiancé.  And you’re still everything I need to keep up.  Sure, I won’t lie, there were others before you.  I remember one really bad evening spent over bad pasta with a woman who wouldn’t stop talking about the sales figures of her self-help book.  I didn’t know what she was talking about, but apparently, I wasn’t impressed enough, and she got mad.  I left soon after that.  I took another woman who was with us that night with me.  We got a few others together, and we’ve been together since.  Yeah, baby, you’re the best writing group a man could hope for.

XOXOXO

Lev

I love my writing group.  And I think every serious writer who isn’t actively taking classes in writing should have one that they love, too.  I don’t mean readers – people you show your work to when it’s done.  I mean people you meet with regularly, who show you their work in progress and you show them yours, and you all talk.  Why is this important?  Let me bulletpoint it for you:

  • Let’s face it, writers spend a lot of time in their heads, and socialization is important.  Not just for hygene, but because when you’re working on something, you’re so close to it you can’t imagine how others will see it.  Perspective is important
  • It keeps you on schedule.  If you know you’re handing out pages to a group of people on such a date, then you have those pages ready.  Otherwise you’re wasting their time, and if you’re wasting the time of people who want to help you, you should feel ashamed.  So yes, it keeps you on schedule.  With guilt.
  • Critiquing other peoples work helps you keep your own editing-brain fresh.  Knowing what you like and don’t like in another piece of writing – and having to verbalize that like and dislike in front of them (Critique is different from Criticism) makes you realize what you like and dislike in your own writing.  It helps you keep your own perspective fresh
  • Brainstorming.  You know what has to be done in a story, or what you’re trying to do, but for some reason people aren’t getting it.  So tell your writing group.  They’ve read the work, and when they know what you’re aiming for, they can help you understand why it isn’t there yet.
  • The most obvious and important thing, which is really a combination of all the above, is that you get feedback and encouragement.  You get energized to keep writing, you get excited about your work again, and you see what’s working, and what isn’t.

So what makes a good writing group?  Ours has been together longer than most (fingers crossed this article doesn’t jinx it), so I feel okay saying what I think makes it work.  Others in the group might disagree.  I had a professor, David Hollander, who suggested writing groups should assemble the way bands do: you put up a flyer saying “Seeking Writing Group: Likes: Kafka, Voltaire.  Dislikes: Tolstoy” and see who you get.  I’ve never been in a band, so I have no idea how that comes together, but I know my writing group and I have different tastes.  We all work on different things as well; from YA to historical fiction to scifi to literary to memoir.  But I think Hollander has a good idea there – you want people who are going to be open minded to what you’re trying to do, not people who are going to say “why are you writing steampunk?  That stuff sucks.”  So open-mindedness is important in joining any group.  If people in your group say something like “I don’t like mysteries” before even reading, and you’re writing a mystery, then don’t try to win them over.  And if you’re someone who says “I don’t like mysteries” find a writing group that matches your tastes.

That said, I’d compare getting a working writing group together more to dating than forming a band (again with the disclaimer that I have no idea what forming a band is like).  You need chemistry.  You need to click with the people.  Everyone has to bring the same level of commitment and understanding, and everyone has to be there because they want not only to get critiqued, but to help others.  My writing group laughs a lot.  And we socialize outside of group.  If, after a few meetings, you don’t see yourself becoming friends with the people in your group, maybe it’s not the group for you.  Being friendly, and knowing, absolutely positively that everyone there wants only what is best for each other will make writing group so much more fun and useful.

 

 

 

Learn from the Stories You Hate

Posted on by

Monica Valentinelli is an author who lurks in the dark. She has over a dozen short stories out in the wild, two novellas, and more on the way. Recent releases include “Don’t Ignore Your Dead,” which debuted in the anthology Don’t Read This Book and Redwing’s Gambit a science fiction adventure novella.

I don’t like every story I read and I’m guessing you don’t either. In fact, I’m quite certain there are some very popular books that make your blood boil as soon as you hear about them. Maybe it’s a story about a vampire who glitters or a tale where the relationship is based on bondage. Maybe it’s a tome about a teenager hunting down other teens or a zombie apocalypse series.

There are a few well-known stories that have caused me no uncertain amounts of angst over the years. To make my peace with them, I critiqued the work and tried to understand why it was so popular.

For the purposes of this article, the popularity of a book isn’t just about book sales. It’s also about word-of-mouth advertising. Imagine readers who are so blown away by a story they have to share it with someone else in their life. Commenters who hate a book so much they have to talk about it. (Both are forms of publicity, by the way, especially online where the value of publicity is the volume, not the quality, of the chatter.)

So what makes people talk about a story? Well, to understand that, we have to go back to why you or I would get upset about a tale in the first place. The answer is really very simple because it circles back to the books we love. It all boils down to that emotional connection with the reader. Powerful stories invoke strong emotions. The more potent the feeling, the greater the chance we’ll need to express what we think or feel about it.

Knee-jerk reactions occur even if we haven’t read a story – especially in cases where the contents of that book are so bizarre or are outside our personal tastes. I am not a fan of Twilight for many reasons, but I don’t begrudge Meyer her success. (Good for her!) Since I have been embroiled in the vampire genre ever since I can remember, I am hyper-sensitive to changes in the vampire mythos. This simply means I am not the audience for her books.

Being that engrossed in a genre or subject matter isn’t always a good thing, because to reach that general consciousness, to achieve mass market popularity, the story needs to have a broader, less-specific, appeal. To do that, sometimes old techniques like tired genre tropes work really well. Other times, it’s about taking a universally-recognized concept like religion or forbidden love and twisting it in such a way that it touches many readers. Can that be done intentionally? Well, the only real evidence we have originates after-the-fact. If everyone knew how to write a wildly popular book (or which ones to publish) I’m pretty sure we’d all be millionaires.

Regardless, the point here that I’m trying to make is that it doesn’t matter what makes a best-selling book popular. That’s just one example of something I took away from a series I can’t stand. So what does? Well, maybe (just maybe) it is possible that the books we hate are learning tools that can help us craft a better story. I feel that statement applies to every author, regardless of experience, because the more we continue to write, the more our work evolves. I also believe that there is a lot we can get from stretching outside of our natural parameters and reading books we would never write (but a lot of other people love).

It’s easier to think critically of a book (or genre) we normally wouldn’t read because we have some emotional distance from it. Mind you, negative emotions color our perspective significantly, so if you are diving in to a work you don’t appreciate, I’d recommend reading it a few times or discussing it in a book club. Then, ask yourself this question: “What’s so great about this book that so many other readers need to buy it, talk about it, and share it? What am I missing?”

The answer may surprise you.

Why Isn’t Literary Fiction a Genre?

Posted on by
Ian C. Esslemont is a Canadian novelist living in Alaska.  He is the author of the Novels of the Malazan Empire, including The Night of Knives, Return of the Crimson Guard, Stonewielder, and Orb, Sceptre, Throne.
I would like to take this opportunity to talk about genre.  As writers, we know how to maneuver within them – their conventions and rules – when to follow them, ignore them, or break them.  Yet for a moment I will step into literary criticism mode to ask the broader question: why is some writing considered genre, while another, mainly ‘literary’, is not?

A knee-jerk answer would be prose quality.  Yet plenty of bad writing can be found within the vaguely defined non-genre category named literary fiction.   And so the question remains: why can it not be considered a genre itself?

That literary fiction should be the assumed ‘norm’ or standard measurement from which all other categories are regarded as deviations or inferior corruptions, calls to mind the philosopher Michel Foucault’s study of categories themselves.  Any assumed norm in such thinking, in sexuality for example, or race, is always a blind spot, or ‘lacuna’, in such arrays – somehow special and above analysis itself.  After all, it’s just normal (isn’t it?).

However, as we have seen in other disciplines, this is not the case.  Any norm possesses its own set of conventions, boundaries and rules – just like any other category. In writing, one genre that displays this inclusion/exclusion policing in a very clear way is what has come to be called ‘historical fiction.’  Literary fiction valourises the contemporary, or, what one might term, the quality of coevalness.  To write of any other age or time is to plunge into historical fiction.  What is unclear is just where this boundary lies.  Must it be under a year?  Five years?  Perhaps the point of no return is twelve years and three months.  Who knows.

Another convention of literary fiction is that it valourizes interiority over exteriority.  Its character’s mental and/or spiritual travels are held as more valid, or worthy of examination, than their physical travels.  Questions of the interior life is this particular genre’s forté, if not its defining characteristic.

The third convention of literary fiction I will raise in the limited space available here is that obligatory moment of a character’s self-discovery that Joyce named the ‘epiphany’.   It sometimes seems that any work of fiction much contain such a moment even to be considered literary.  Indeed, reading a selection of literary fiction might convince anyone that such a moment is quite commonplace in life, when in fact it is merely one more of the reader’s expectations to be fulfilled.  In literary fiction the main character is supposed to experience an epiphany (of some sort), while we the reader receive our escapist reward of imagining ourselves equally capable of any similar self-revelation.  A capability that is so far out of sync with the real world that literary fiction asserts to document as to be, as I say, frankly escapist.

This brings up yet another convention of literary fiction, the conceit of ‘realism.’  However, this entry is intended more to open a discussion rather than to fully cover every possible permutation and so I will leave this particularly ridiculous rule of genre inclusion/exclusion for future consideration.