Infoquake

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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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

How I Promoted My Book

(Update 12/1: Read How I Promoted My Book, Part 2.)

It’s now been about five months since Pyr published my first novel Infoquake. It seems as good a time as any to sit back and take stock of my promotional efforts. What worked, what didn’t work, what should I have done more of, what should I have done less of?

Infoquakes Cereal BoxWhen I started to make a list of all the promotional efforts I’ve made in the past year, I started to feel — well, a little embarrassed. To an outsider, it must look like I do nothing all day but come up with ways to move copies of Infoquake. The “Infoquakes Cereal” pic here is meant to be a joke, but honestly, sometimes it feels like I’ve tried everything but a sugary cereal for kids.

(Quick aside: Have you ever noticed that when companies say their cereal is “part of this nutritious breakfast,” the cereal box is always sitting next to… a complete nutritious breakfast?)

Here, then, are the promotional efforts I did that I think were well worth doing:

  • Designed and programmed a website for the book and bought several related domain names (infoquake.net, jump225.com, multireal.net, geosynchron.net)
  • Wrote several original background articles on the world of Infoquake exclusively for the website
  • Started a blog about eight months before the release of the book and began consciously trying to write about topics that I hoped would garner me an audience
  • Joined the group blogs DeepGenre (thanks to Kate Elliott and Katharine Kerr) and SFNovelists (thanks to Tobias Buckell)
  • Attended and got on the programming at a number of science fiction conventions (ReaderCon, WorldCon, Capclave, PhilCon, and upcoming Balticon and Penguicon)
  • Hosted a five-book gimmicky giveaway contest on my blog that received a fair bit of attention
  • Posted all nine drafts of the first chapter of Infoquake on my website
  • Encouraged friends and family members to send e-mails to their contact lists recommending that they check out Infoquake
  • Doggedly hunted down every interview opportunity I could find, and ended up getting about seven or eight interviews on sites like Barnes & Noble Explorations, John Scalzi’s By the Way blog, the Agony Column, SFFWorld, and Suite101.com
  • Created a MySpace profile and spent a couple weeks aggressively seeking friends with an interest in science fiction (1,698 friends to date!)
  • Created a mailing list for the book and added just about everyone I knew to it, then sent out once- or twice-a-month mailings on book news and events
  • Made a conscious effort to make friends in the science fiction industry, mostly just because it’s nice to have more friends (although the Machiavellian in me notes that several of these friends have had some very nice things to say about Infoquake on their blogs and such)

I also did a number of promotional efforts that may have had some positive impact, but it’s hard to tell:

  • Designed and printed 1,000 four-color Infoquake business cards through VistaPrint.com and passed them out liberally to anyone and everyone
  • Recorded the first handful of chapters on audio using my laptop, an old microphone, and free Audacity software, then posted these as a podcast on my website
  • Created and gave away approximately 350 promotional Infoquake CDs at cons and readings, including all of the sample chapters and audio files
  • Started an Amazon blog that basically just cross-posts the Infoquake-related blog entries from my main WordPress blog, and spent some time tracking down Amazon Friends
  • Gave away two signed copies of Infoquake to the Save Apex Digest raffle organized by the radiant Mary Robinette Kowal
  • Convinced a friend (Josef K. Foley) to do some original artwork for the Infoquake website
  • Did a handful of readings and signings at chain bookstores, which had rather disappointing turnouts, despite considerable publicity (listing in the Washington Post literary calendar, front-of-the-store displays, emails and invites sent to everyone in creation)
  • Held two book parties for immediate family and friends on what turned out to be two very inconvenient dates for book parties
  • Took a nice, official-looking author photo, only to decide I didn’t like it nearly as much as the spur-of-the-moment photo my wife took outside a club in Boston in 2002
  • Read and made comments on two drafts of an Infoquake screenplay, which has been in front of a few big Hollywood players (though I’m not holding my breath)
  • Made a conscious effort to participate in the blogosphere by commenting on other people’s blogs
  • Managed to get in touch with about a dozen authors and important people to ask for advance praise (“blurbs”), including an Obvious Legendary Hard SF Novelist, two Bestselling High-Tech Journalists, and a Business Legend With a Name So Big That Yes, Your Mother Has Probably Heard of Him — and only got a response from one person, the terrific Kate Elliott, who provided the gracious blurb you see on the praise page

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Quake Up Your Book Group

If your book group wants to read and discuss “Infoquake,” just e-mail me and I’ll join the discussion by phone. If the members of your book group have purchased five or more copies of “Infoquake,” then I’ll throw in a signed sixth copy for free to the member of your choice.

Random Things Not Worth a Full Blog Post

Where have I been the past few weeks and why haven’t I been blogging? Take your pick: Freeboating at a fancy-schmancy LexisNexis conference in Boston with my wife Diligently avoiding sharp objects in an attempt to avoid despair at the still-unfinished state of MultiReal, the sequel to Infoquake Falling increasingly behind on a number of web projects Starting half a dozen rants about this or that topic and coming to the realization that none of … Read more

Gimmicky Promotional Giveaway Contest Winners

Used car salesman holding 'Infoquake' bookI’ve had a lot of fun with this Infoquake Gimmicky Promotional Giveaway thing. (See this entry for a recap of the rules.) I received a lot more limericks than I had anticipated, and a lot fewer science fiction convention sexual experiences than I had anticipated.

So here now, I present the five winners of signed copies of Infoquake. Winners are being notified by e-mail.

1. The poet: Liz Burgess.

There were lots of good limerick entries, and I had a tough time deciding on a winner. But in the end I had to award one copy of the book to Liz (last name pending her e-mail response) Burgess, whose entry made me laugh out loud for its skillful use of Beyond Linux from Scratch:

There once was a young man named Natch
Who read “Beyond Linux from Scratch”
Pushed code to production
Had poor QA function
And jonesed for a nicotine patch.

Honorable Mention goes to Thom Stanley, who certainly wins on tying in the limerick to the plot of the book:

There once was a young man named Natch
Whose program was more than a patch.
It is called MultiReal,
Which allows you to seal
A fate even God cannot match.

Honorable Mention, but Disqualified for Reasons of Nepotism: Cindy Blank-Edelman, who managed to squeeze three glossary terms into her entry:

There once was a young man named Natch
Whose enemies sent him a batch
Of code very black —
Programs Natch couldn’t hack,
Not even with Doc Plugenpatch!

And the “I Like the Way This Guy Thinks/Somebody Please Lock This Guy Up” Honorable Mention Award goes to Izyk Stewart:

There once was a young man named Natch
Who had quite the problem with Flatch-
ulence in his car
He never got far
But he never ran out of gas

2. The detail-oriented reader: Andrew Albert J. Ty.

I received several correct entries (and a few wrong entries) for question #2, which was to name the city that is the seat of centralized government in Infoquake. The answer is Melbourne, which is evident to anyone who’s read through to chapter 5 of the excerpt on the website. I used the Random.org True Random Number Generator to determine a winner among the correct entries.

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