Book Promotion

Winners of the Jewish Marxist Werewolves in Bolivia Giveaway

It’s Sunday, January 21, the weather is turning cold, and there’s a full moon out tonight. Maybe not on this planet, but somewhere in the galaxy, I’m confident there is indeed a full moon.

What does this mean? This means that the Jewish Marxist Werewolves of Bolivia are out in force.

Jewish werewolf with yarmulke reading the TorahI received several great entries for this contest to win a signed copy of Infoquake. It was actually quite difficult to choose the winners, since some of you appeared to have really, really gotten into this. I’d like to think you were inspired by zeal for winning a copy of Infoquake, but I’m afraid it probably had more to do with some of you missing required doses of your medications.

But a hearty thanks to all who entered and provided me with some much-needed giggling. And now, the winners:

First Prize Winner: Josh Vogt.

Mr. Vogt actually submitted two prizeworthy entries to the contest, and I’m not entirely sure which one I liked better. I gave the crown to this one, for two reasons: (1) the phony Dune-like epigraph at the beginning is priceless, and (2) the second entry didn’t really mention Bolivia.

And the rabbi was lying on a mountain of ash and stones
with a ravenous mouth and staring pupils,
and in his soul there was silence and darkness and nothing more.
—an excerpt from Der Volf, by H. Leivick

As I adjust my tallit, the wolf yowls within me and peers through my eyes at an infant in its mother’s arms, as she sits in the recesses of the synagogue. A crunchy morsel, juicy on the outside, crunchy on the inside.

I curse the demon to silence. It’s just before sundown on Yom Kippur, and I must recite the Kol Nidre and escape before I slaughter everyone gathered for the evening prayers.

The wolf snarls and paces the cage of my ribs, gnawing them one at a time. Sometimes I wonder if wolves, rather than humans, were made in God’s image. Certainly we’re no better than beasts as we have turned on each other here in La Paz — gorging on the weaker, and then submitting to the stronger as they clamp their jaws around our hairy throats.

I should mention that Josh is a budding science fiction writer with a story recently sold to Shimmer and a novel being shopped around by his agent. Josh’s website: www.jrvogt.com.

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My 30 Seconds of Fame on NPR

This morning, NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday broadcast a piece by Rick Kleffel of The Agony Column on economics in genre fiction. In addition to snippets with authors T.C. Boyle, Jeff VanderMeer, Charles Stross, and Amir Aczel, the piece also features about 30 seconds of Yours Truly talking about how Infoquake is “the dot-com ’90s turned up to 11.” (You can listen to the whole thing in RealAudio or Windows Media on the NPR website.) The … Read more

The Jewish Marxist Werewolves in Bolivia Infoquake Giveaway

In one of my recent posts, I made a few throwaway comments about a fictitious novel concerning Jewish Marxist werewolves in Bolivia. Since I couldn’t think of anything better to post on the blog today, I’ve decided to come up with a little Infoquake giveaway contest.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it (and c’mon, you know you want to): write the opening lines from a bad novel about Jewish Marxist werewolves in Bolivia, and email them to me at dedelman@gmail.com. By “opening lines,” I’d say anywhere from two to six sentences, though I’m willing to be flexible on length. The person with the cheesiest, most ludicrous, most snorted-milk-through-nose-producing passage wins. The winners (and notable runners up) will be published here on the blog.

Jewish werewolf with yarmulke reading the Torah

First prize: one signed, personalized copy of Infoquake. Second prize: also one signed, personalized copy of Infoquake. Contest deadline: Friday, January 19, two weeks from today, at midnight EST or thereabouts. (I mean, if you send me something at 12:02 and it blows all the others away, I’m willing to bend the rules.)

You want a sample to get you started? Fine, take this example that I’ve just cooked up:

The rain lashes my eyes and mats my fur. I can feel the bite of the branches in the forest, tearing into my skin and gnashing my yarmulke to shreds. And I think back to the immortal words of my father, imprisoned these twenty years by the capitalist pigs of Santa Cruz: When will our people be free, damn it? When will we be free? And then the fury overtakes me and I tear into the underbrush in search of wild kosher groundhog once again.

Another one? Fine, here’s one that would probably qualify as the shortest winning entry:

Call me Che “Wolfman” Goldberg.

Don’t test me, people. I could crank these things out all night. You just need to come up with one of them.

The fine print: Enter as many times as you like, but you can only win one book. Everyone who entered my previous Gimmicky Promotional Giveaway Contest is eligible for this one — yes, including the folks who won. (Although I warn you, Izyk Stewart, you’re only one contest entry away from being dragged away to a padded cell by a bunch of dudes in white coats.) I’m going to allow entries from anywhere in the world this time — but be warned that the further you are from the continental U.S., the more the postage is going to cost, and the better your entry has to be to win.

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A Self-Serving Award Nomination Suggestion

Since John Scalzi has already gotten the ball rolling by pointedly mentioning that his novels The Ghost Brigades and The Android’s Dream are eligible for the Hugo Award this year, I’m going to follow suit by pointedly mentioning that I, David Louis Edelman, am eligible for the John W. Campbell Best New Writer Award.

So I hereby declare with all requisite humility that I would like to get nominated for the John W. Campbell Award this year, so I can get my ass handed to me forthwith by Brandon Sanderson, who will probably win.

Campbell Award(My book Infoquake is eligible for the Hugo and the Nebula, too, of course, but I’m not holding my breath. Instead I’m going to go the Peter Jackson route and try to sweep every award in existence when Geosynchron, the last book in the trilogy, comes out. I really think I deserve a Tony Award, don’t you?)

So how do you nominate someone for the John W. Campbell Best New Writer Award? I really have only the foggiest idea. But here’s what the Writertopia site says on its John W. Campbell Eligible Authors page:

To be able to nominate a writer for the 2007 award, you must have either been an attending member of the 2006 Worldcon in Los Angeles or be a supporting or attending member of the 2007 Worldcon in Japan by Jan. 31, 2007.

The nominating deadline will probably be March 2007. We will update the site as more information becomes available.

To be able to vote for the award, you must be a supporting or attending member of the 2007 Worldcon. If you are not a member of the Nippon 2007 Worldcon and wish to vote, you must purchase a supporting membership or an attending membership before January 31.

This should prove to be an interesting year for the awards regardless, given that the only eligible voters are those who are traveling to Japan for Worldcon, or who have purchased a supporting membership. If I were an optimist, I could say this works to my advantage, because theoretically the pool of voters will be somewhat skewed from the normal representation. On the other hand, the fact that Infoquake isn’t available at all in Asia except by mail order does put a dent in that optimism.

If you browse through the list of eligible authors, you’ll see that there’s quite an impressive list of newcomers there as well. The Writertopia folks haven’t updated the page with the final eligible list yet, so I’m unclear who’s still eligible and who’s not. It would kind of be nice to have a succinct list by, say, January 31. But I’m on there myself, so I can’t complain.

This will be Brandon Sanderson‘s second year of eligibility for the award, so I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he won it. I got a brief opportunity to meet Brandon at last year’s Worldcon, and he certainly seemed like a nice guy. Orson Scott Card called his debut novel Elantris “the finest novel of fantasy to be written in many years,” and plenty of other reviewers have followed suit. His follow-up Mistborn has been receiving a ton of accolades as well.

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How Did You Get Your Novel Published? (Part 2)

I’ve gotten a few requests to finish the story of how Infoquake got published, so I’m going to go ahead and finish that tale now.

When last we left our intrepid hero (i.e., me), I had spent several years working on my science fiction manuscript, carefully researched literary agents, and sent out about two dozen packages to all of the major players.

What was my original query letter like? I reproduce it here in its entirety:

Dear [Insert Agent Name Here],

Did a flashy marketing campaign persuade Lando Calrissian to buy the Millennium Falcon? Did the company that built the Star Trek transporters have a branding strategy? Did a military contractor sell arms to the Starship Troopers — and what kind of PowerPoint presentation did he use to sell them?

As a programmer and dot-com executive, I am often frustrated by the short shrift science fiction gives to the business world. Authors who go to great lengths to make their work conform to the laws of physics will completely ignore the laws of economics. This frustration was the impetus for my first novel INFOQUAKE, a literate techno-thriller in the tradition of Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon.

The book’s hero Natch is an entrepreneur in bio/logics, the programming of the human body. He’s a crusader in a war being fought through product demos, press releases and sales pitches. His Holy Grail? The number one spot on the Primo’s bio/logic investment guide.

Now Natch is willing to do anything to get his hands on a radical technology that harnesses the computing power of the mind. But so is the competition in the rough-and-tumble world of bio/logic programming. So is the ruthless Defense and Wellness Council, which sees Natch’s technology as a grave threat to public order. And so is a shadowy organization that wants to bring humanity to its next phase of evolution — ready or not. Eventually Natch must ask himself the eternal question: how far should you go to make a profit?

A little about me: I have trained Members of Congress on computer software, programmed websites for the U.S. Army, and run the marketing departments of biometric and e-commerce companies. My non-fiction has been published in the Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, Chicago Sun-Times, and Publishers Weekly. My fiction has been published in Urban Desires and Zeniada.

I would be happy to send you the complete manuscript (120,000 words) or its opening chapters, along with an outline of two proposed sequels in the INFOQUAKE trilogy. An SASE is enclosed for your convenience.

The world’s greatest cover letter? No. Good enough to get someone to crack open the manuscript? I certainly thought so. I used Andrew Zack’s example from Writer magazine as my model (Adobe Acrobat file, 89K), and I think I followed his example pretty closely. If you’ve read the final marketing copy that’s on the final book cover, you’ll see that a lot of that copy comes from this exact cover letter.

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Tips on Promoting Your Author Blog

Inspired by an e-mail from my friend Matt Jarpe yesterday afternoon, I decided to extend this promotional kick I’ve been on further and discuss author blog promotional tactics. I know there are approximately 2.6 zillion gajillion posts out there on effective blogging, so feel free to transfer that grain of salt you were serving with my recent blog posts about book promotion to this one. This is just what’s worked for me; your mileage may vary.

Website for 'Radio Freefall' by Matt Jarpe(Matt Jarpe, by the way, is the author of the upcoming Radio Freefall, due out this summer from Tor. Matt’s also a very smart guy with a very wry sense of humor, so his blog should make for interesting reading. I’ve gotten a chance to read about half of Radio Freefall, and it’s quite a delectable concoction. I told Matt it reads like something Philip K. Dick might have written if he’d roadied for Metallica, and it’s absolutely true, and I’m going to repeat it as often as possible in hopes that Tor will stick it prominently on the book jacket.)

(I should also disclose that Matt hired me to design and program his Radio Freefall website. Not that I’m lying when I say those good things about the book, but just thought you should know.)

Now on to some blog promotion tips:

1. Write about interesting things that relate to the subject of your book. Seems obvious, doesn’t it? If your novel is about Jewish Marxist werewolves in Bolivia, write about Judaism, Marxism, lycanthropy, and Bolivia. Review other books that relate to yours. That doesn’t mean you need to be straitjacketed by these topics, but make sure that anyone interested in these topics will have some pertinent reading material on your blog.

2. Give your posts straightforward, keyword-heavy titles. A lot of people will discover your blog randomly from Google searches, and you want to help that process. Irony is not your friend here; make your post titles simple, specific, and enticing. Remember that the person wading through search engine results doesn’t know anything about you or your book, and the title is just about the only thing that will lure them in to sample the merchandise. (Some people title all their blog posts with lyrics from pop songs. There’s a special demon waiting in Hell for these people, and he’s got a big, nasty, acid-drenched pitchfork.)

3. Make sure your blogging software is displaying your post titles the most efficient way possible. Some blogging platforms will give you lousy HTML titles by default. WordPress, for instance, will automatically give your pages titles like this: David Louis Edelman’s Very Groovy Blog » Tips on Promoting Your Blog. Which is fine, until you see that Google cuts off your title in search engine results so it looks like this: David Louis Edelman’s Very Groovy Blog » Tips on Promot. Front-load the titles of your blog pieces so the most interesting stuff comes first. Make sure HTML titles still make sense when you bookmark, save, or e-mail the page.

4. Promote your book, but don’t just promote. People understand that you’re trying to sell your book — but if you have nothing to say in your blog except pure promotion, people won’t pay attention. You gotta include the cake with the icing. I also find it useful to give your audience advance warning when you’re about to put on your promotional hat. “Hey, I’m gonna get all used car salesman on you now, so wocka wocka wocka! [does Fozzy Bear dance]”

5. Interact. I try to mix up the posts where I stand on my soapbox and megaphone my opinions to everyone with the posts where I’m soliciting feedback and initiating a discussion. Ask questions of your readers. And when they post comments, get in there and mix it up with ’em. When they post something that really adds to the discussion, thank them.

6. Link to others freely, and use Trackback or Pingback. Several people have asked me now if there’s some kind of etiquette for adding a link to someone else’s blog. I mean, you can’t just link to Bruce Sterling’s blog, can you? Actually, you can. And you want to link to other, more established blogs, for several reasons: a) it’s a helpful service to point your readers to other blogs that might interest them, b) other bloggers may notice that you’re linking to them, and thereby discover who you are, c) it gives your readers a taste for exactly what kind of person you are. As for Trackback/Pingback: it’s polite to notify someone you’re commenting on their blog piece. Oh, and it’s a nifty way to get a link back to your blog.

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Why You Bought That Book

After I posted a blog piece last week asking people Why Did You Buy That Book?, it turned into a nice little mini-meme. In addition to the discussions here and on my MySpace blog, there were also discussions on Jim Hines’ LiveJournal, Alma Alexander’s LiveJournal, John Joseph Adams’ blog and guinwhyte’s LiveJournal.

I know that there are scientists and pollsters vomiting blood when I say this, but based on the 40+ responses spread around these various locations, I’m ready to declare a winner.

Here’s how I kept score. I went through the comments one by one and gave one vote for each influencing factor. Multiple factors were allowed per book. So if a commenter said they purchased Book X because they had heard about it from a friend and liked the cover, I gave “friend recommendation” one vote and “cover/packaging” one vote. A lot of the comments were fairly nebulous, so I simply used my best judgment. (Mwuuah-ha-ha!)

  1. Familiarity with the author’s previous works (50 votes). Based on the evidence, this was the biggest factor by far. Science fiction and fantasy readers tend to be very loyal to the authors they like; or I suppose you could also characterize this as conservative. But once you’ve written a book or short story or even blog that’s knocked someone’s socks off, the bar for inspiring a purchase of your next book lowers considerably. That’s good news for already-published authors, and good news for those who tend to write series. On the other hand, it underscores the difficulty new authors have breaking in to the market.
  2. Recommendation by a friend or acquaintance (35 votes). Validation of the commonly held belief that word-of-mouth is what sells books. Get people to talk about your book, and you’ve got a leg up on the competition. Extra credit goes to MySpace user U is N as I is X who says, “I know a few people (over ten, but below twenty) that have bought your book as well as Mr. [Michael J.] Cavallaro’s book [Cybernetica] based upon me telling them about it and lending them a copy to preview.” Everyone, please whip out your checkbooks and send U is N as I is X twenty bucks immediately.
  3. Liked the cover and/or packaging (16 votes). In most cases, this seemed to be a secondary consideration or a reinforcing factor. Few people claimed to have picked up a book solely because they thought the cover was bitchin’; but many said that a bitchin’ cover helped convince them to buy a book that they already had a good feeling about.

After this, there were nearly identical scores of 7-8 votes each for:

  • read a glowing review of the book
  • impressed by the author’s blog and/or website
  • heard about the book from someone else’s website
  • spoke to the author in person or saw him/her at a public appearance (e.g. a con)
  • Amazon recommendations

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Why Did You Buy That Book?

One of the regular commenters on the DeepGenre blog I belong to, Jellyn Andrews, posted this in response to author Elaine Isaak‘s comment on some of her promotional methods:

Elaine, I wanted to let you know you’re doing something right. My father and I were at Albacon and attended your reading where you did the drawing for prizes. So now I’m on your mailing list and I recognize your name. I think it was your appeal to bloggers on the fliers you posted that initially caught my attention.

And my father also recognizes your name now, because when we were in Borders Express, he took note when he saw your books. You’d been in there and signed them. And one of the staff overheard us talking about it and joined in. I think he said he went to high school with you, so he liked to promote your work whenever he could.

We often hear in the book business that word of mouth is what sells books, and this comment is a prime indicator of that. In fact, this comment shows that a number of Elaine’s promotional efforts came together to help her out here: word of mouth, a convention reading, a mailing list, fliers, a book signing, and encouraging old friends/classmates to act as evangelists. (Of course, I’m unclear from this comment whether Jellyn or her father actually bought a book, but we’ll let that slide.)

Traditional marketers have a variety of tools they use to test the efficacy of their methods. If you’ve ever registered your DVD player with the manufacturer, you’ve given the manufacturer vital information about where you bought it, what influenced you to buy it, and what factors you took into consideration. Booksellers don’t have that option, because the incentive for the customer isn’t there; you’re very, very unlikely to encounter a defective book that needs returning or servicing. (Although remind me to tell you the story about the time I was trapped on a cruise to the Bahamas with a defective copy of Clive Barker’s Weaveworld that was missing 50 pages.)

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How I Promoted My Book, Part 2

Since so many people seem to be interested in my blog entry on How I Promoted My Book, I thought I’d post a few more random thoughts and suggestions about book promotion here. Keep in mind that there’s no one set way of marketing anything, or we’d all be swilling down New Coke. This is especially true with the book publishing business, which certainly must rank as one of the most bizarre businesses in existence. … Read more