Book Promotion

On Self-Promotion

I’m seeing a lot of people picking on Cory Doctorow for being a self-promotional whore, and it’s irritating the piss out of me. These complainers need to understand that the twentieth century paradigm of advertising and promotion where the content sits on one side of the page, and the advertisements sit on the other side of the page, and there’s a nice clear line separating the two, is dead.

Balticon 42 Wrapup

Chaos and science fiction conventions go together like rum and Coke. Which makes Balticon 42 about 180 proof. But hey, just because Balticon was chaotic and organizationally challenged in places doesn’t mean it wasn’t fun.

Balticon 42 Schedule

Yes, this weekend I’ll be at Balticon 42, Baltimore’s premier science fiction convention. I’ll be on panels and giving a reading from “MultiReal.” Read the article for my schedule, along with the descriptions from the pocket schedule.

How to Help Promote Your Favorite Author

We often latch on to the authors we love. We realize this is a tough business, and we don’t want them to starve. We want them fat and happy, sitting on cushions stuffed with hundred dollar bills. But what’s the best way to help them?

People who aren’t in the writing and publishing business often have skewed ideas of how the business works. I’ve had to educate more than one eager friend or family member who thought the best way to promote Infoquake was to walk into Barnes & Noble and turn the book facing out on the shelf so it covers up David Eddings’ titles next door. I tell them to please stop doing this, because David Eddings sends armed hooligans to ding up my car with cricket bats every time he finds one of my books in front of his.

So now let me educate you, o blog reader, on some ways you can help pimp your favorite author, and some ways you should not pimp your favorite author.

Picketers with 'Infoquake' signs

Do…

…buy the author’s books. That’s the first and most obvious thing you can do. There’s really no need to analyze strategically which venue you should buy an author’s books from. We’re generally not so particular where you pick them up or for what price. Just buy ’em, and read ’em.

…buy the author’s books at their preferred venue, if you have the choice. The foregoing notwithstanding, many authors would be happy to see you buy their books from a specific venue, if it’s all the same to you. What is the author’s preferred venue? It varies. Check the author’s website (assuming they have one) to see if they have something other than the standard Amazon button listed. Lots of authors like to champion independent stores like Clarkesworld, Mysterious Galaxy, and Powell’s. Rob Sawyer politely pushes you to buy autographed copies on his eBay store.

…tell your circle of friends and acquaintances about the author’s work. Duh. Word of mouth is the absolute number one way that most books are sold these days. So aside from buying the book, the most important thing you can do to promote your favorite author is to put your mouth to work for them. Don’t feel like you need to compose a detailed essay or review; don’t be pushy or intimidating. Just spread the word, one person at a time. I’ve had people tell me how they sent emails to a groups of their friends, and then some of those people go off and email a group of their friends. It snowballs.

…use social networking tools like Digg, StumbleUpon, MySpace, and LibraryThing. See all those little funky icons at the bottom of blog posts all over the web? They lead to social networking sites that can seriously boost an author’s web traffic (and consequently, their visibility and sales). I got a surprise jump in traffic from someone who listed my post on The Return of the King on StumbleUpon. (Here’s the StumbleUpon page.) How big a jump? About 14,000 visitors in the space of a few days. That’s 14,000 potential new readers who might not have heard of me before.

…write a positive Amazon review. Don’t worry too much about the other specialty book sites out there; people may buy books from a number of different online venues, but they go to the Amazon reviews to hear the buzz. Keep in mind that generic two-line five-star reviews with no content (“David Lewis Edleman Rulez!!!!!!!”) and reviews that are obviously from friends and family (“Even if David Louis Edelman hadn’t donated a kidney to my sick child, I still would recommend his books!”) don’t help. Thoughtful critiques that don’t just summarize plot or shovel out meaningless platitudes — even critiques that contain negative impressions — are much more persuasive.

…write about the author on your own site(s) and link to the author’s website. Got a blog or a website? It may seem like a no-brainer to write reviews of your author’s favorite works. But linking to the author’s website helps in a number of other, less visible ways: with Technorati ratings, with Google rankings, with Alexa rankings, etc. Not to mention having your favorite author’s name linked on your site is a constant tickler to your web visitors, who may be inclined to purchase something on your recommendation, but who might not always remember the name of the author you recommended.

…join the author’s mailing list. Yes, lots of people get their information from RSS feeds and Tumblelogs and Facebook updates and the like. But believe it or not, email is still far and away the number one driver of Internet traffic. Some authors just send out ticklers with release dates and upcoming events; others really put their heart into it. But mailing lists give authors a simple way to get in touch with their readers all in one pop. Fellow Pyr author Kay Kenyon has a dynamite newsletter wherein she dispenses writing tips and little mini-essays about her fiction, if you’re looking for a good example. (Here’s the signup for my mailing list, if you’re interested. Just sayin’.)

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The Plot to Understand Second Life

Last night I had the privilege of attending a reading and interview of renowned science fiction author Paul Levinson in support of his book The Plot to Save Socrates. I stayed in my bathrobe the whole time, because the event took place on Second Life.

the-plot-to-save-socrates I had an ulterior motive for attending. I’m in the process of evaluating promotional ideas for my upcoming novel MultiReal, and the idea of doing a book launch on Second Life has cropped up in my discussions more than once. I created a Second Life profile many moons ago, just to poke around and see what the fuss was about. After a few days, I quickly grew bored with the whole thing and uninstalled the software from my PC. But yesterday, in the service of book promotion, I resurrected it and went exploring once again.

And after attending Paul’s Second Life event, I can now officially say I don’t get it.

This was no fault of Paul Levinson’s. I’ve shared a couple of panels at cons with him, and he seems like a friendly, intelligent, and interesting fellow. The reading itself was quite lively, and the book The Plot to Save Socrates sounds like that perfect combination of thought-provoking and nerdy cool. The plot in a nutshell: a grad student in the future decides to travel back in time to save the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates from drinking the hemlock. (Go read more about it on Paul’s website.) The interviewer herself asked pertinent, thoughtful questions.

But the Second Life aspect of the event basically went like this: I logged in and teleported to a virtual auditorium. I sat down in a virtual chair along with about 25-30 other spectators. The virtual Paul Levinson and the virtual moderator sat in virtual chairs on the stage, next to a virtual spinning copy of The Plot to Save Socrates. And then we all just sat there for an hour doing nothing while the two of them had a very interesting chat on audio.

So besides the novelty factor, what does Second Life offer to book promotion that you couldn’t get by holding your reading on, say, FreeConferenceCall.com or WebEx?

I’m not saying that Second Life is a bad place to hold a book event. If you’re the author, you get to see who’s attending the reading. You get a direct conduit to your own personal bookstore, along with all the tracking that entails. You get the potential of interacting with people who live in remote places you’re not likely to ever hit on the real-world book tour. Oh, and it’s free.

But as I sat in front of my computer and watched my avatar watch Paul Levinson’s avatar watching the moderator’s avatar, I tried and failed to figure out what potential Second Life has for literature over the next ten years. It’s kinda neat. It’s kinda fun. Is that it?

I tried to extrapolate, to think big. What if my name was Stephen King or Dan Brown, and someone gave me $500,000 and six months to put on a fabulous Second Life book event? What could I possibly do? Hire Second Life actors to put on a clunky little pantomime while I read? Create big virtual sculptures of the creatures in my book to hang over the stage? I have a difficult time imagining what I could do that wouldn’t just look silly. I suppose in 15 or 20 years when you can see 3D Hollywood-quality monsters zooming around while you read, that will be pretty cool. But Second Life is still a long way off. Right now they’re closer to King’s Quest IV circa 1988 than they are to Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings.

The problem is that literature is a very one-directional art form that doesn’t translate well into an immersive environment like Second Life. People are always talking about “updating” the reading experience, and so far it’s pretty much all been marketing hokum. Even if we all ditched paper and ink tomorrow and shifted over to Amazon Kindles or some other gee-whiz e-book reader, the basic reading experience wouldn’t change, only the distribution method. You’re still staring at a narrative of sequential words that you read from start to finish. What’s really changed about the narrative experience since the ancient Sumerians sat around the fire to hear The Epic of Gilgamesh? Only three things that I can think of: (1) writing, (2) paper, and (3) hypertext.

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A Guide to Ethical Self-Promotion

Update 11/18/09: Thanks to Mainer 122’s comment below, I’ve just become aware of a blog post by Stanek containing what appears to be the original of the photo below. Looks like it might be authentic after all — or at least a Photoshopped version of an authentic photo of Stanek with Brian Jacques. In which case I owe Mr. Stanek an apology, at least about the photo. I’ll reserve judgment for now about the fake reviews and web postings. (And for the record, I’ve never questioned Mr. Stanek’s military service.)

I’ve recently become aware of a fantasy author named Robert Stanek. Many of you reading this have probably already heard of him, but I’m a little behind the curve.

Why might you have heard of Robert Stanek? Because he’s an unparalleled master of the fantasy genre? Well, I haven’t read any of Mr. Stanek’s work, so I’ll reserve judgment about his “Keeper Martin” series of novels. Go ahead, check ’em out for yourself. No, this sleazebucket author is known for his tireless deceptive acts of self-promotion. (Update 11/18/09: Okay, so I’ve had a change of heart about calling the guy a sleazebucket. Sue me.) He creates fan sites for his self-published work, writes hundreds of anonymous 5-star reviews for his books on Amazon, and invents online readers who compare his work favorably to that of J.R.R. Tolkien and J.K. Rowling.

Brian Jacques and Photoshopped Robert StanekAnd if all that wasn’t bad enough, Stanek actually Photoshopped himself into a picture with renowned YA fantasy author Brian Jacques. Here it is, on the right. Take a careful look — hell, you don’t even have to take a careful look. Either Mr. Stanek is a contortionist, he’s a vampire from the waist down, or he forgot to Photoshop in a pair of legs underneath the table. Don’t take my word for it; the original is still up on the “#1 Robert Stanek fan site on the web.” Read more about this photo on CrapAuthors.com, including comments (supposedly) from Brian Jacques’ webmaster confirming it’s a fake. (Update 11/18/09: Looks like these links no longer exist.)

(Oh yes, in case you’re wondering, I did in fact post this photo without permission, despite a right-click warning from the site. Why would I do that? Well, I figure that it’s a fairly good bet that Stanek doesn’t have permission to post it either. If Stanek tries to sic a lawyer on me — or a fake lawyer, which he has done before — I could get some pretty good mileage out of posting all the correspondence. Besides, do you think anyone would actually threaten legal action over a doctored photo?)

In Stanek’s defense, I have to say that I understand the desperation that leads to these kinds of self-promotional measures. You walk into Megacorporate Bookstore hoping to find your book on the shelves… and you do! One copy! Meanwhile, there are piles and piles of Crappy Author X’s books in a fancy display at the front of the store, not necessarily because they’re better books, but because Megacorporate Publisher Y paid to put them on a fancy display at the front of the store.

And I say all this as a new author who’s been extremely fortunate to have gotten lots of attention from the SF world online, to have a large independent publisher that’s been gung-ho about the book since the beginning, and to have gotten nominated for a major SF award. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to try to make it in this business without those things.

So lots of us smaller-fish authors will contemplate innovative (read: shady) promotional techniques to get noticed. We remind our friends again and again over e-mail that Amazon is still accepting reader reviews, should the urge strike them. We try to oh-so-innocuously slip a mention of the title of our books in the comments of more established writers’ blogs. We post trackback links to bigger fish in hopes that they’ll notice us. We have friends who will routinely turn our books around on bookstore shelves so the cover faces out instead of the spine.

I think most of us want to play by the rules. But what are the rules? Where’s the line drawn between enthusiastic self-promotion and unethical self-promotion? Sometimes it’s hard to tell, and every author seems to draw that line in a different place.

Here are the guidelines I try to follow myself in my own self-promotional efforts. I’d be curious to know where both readers and writers stand, so feel free to add your two cents in the comments.

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Penguicon 5.0 Wrapup

For me, the defining moment of the Penguicon science-fiction-and-open-source-software convention this past weekend came on Saturday night in the bar. Nick Sagan and I wandered in already fairly blitzed from boozing in another bar, and were quickly joined by Tobias Buckell and his wife Emily. People started streaming in. And at one point, I found myself sitting halfway between a) Charles Stross talking about the socioeconomic policy failures of the John Major administration, and b) John Scalzi and Elizabeth Bear talking about Rob Sawyer in taffeta.

So there’s Penguicon in a nutshell, from my perspective: one part serious business, two parts goofy SFnal fun.

The programming seemed slanted towards the science fiction side of things, with relatively little in the way of crossover. There were panels on Explaining PostgreSQL and panels on Pirates, Ninja, Jedi, and Dwarves, but not a huge amount of mashup between the two. Luckily most of the SF authors on hand were technogeeks themselves (e.g. Charles Stross and Karl Schroeder) or at least pseudo-technogeeks (e.g. me).

Jay Maynard, the Tron GuyBut the folks wandering the halls seemed to lean heavily towards the SF fanboy (and fangirl) sphere. You had the Chubby Guy Who Dresses Like a Character from Tron (pictured to the right), the Chubby Guy Who Dresses Like Zorro, the Chubby Guy Who Filks Like a Zen Master, the Not-at-All-Chubby Guy Who Dresses Like a Jedi, and the Attack of the Thousand Chubby Women Showing Enormous (And Occasionally Inappropriate) Amounts of Cleavage. As for the technogeeks, occasionally you’d see some scrawny, bespectacled soul with a Linux advocacy t-shirt huddled over his laptop in the corner.

Of the half-dozen cons I’ve been to in this past year, Penguicon certainly seemed to be one of the most organized. The ops booth was clearly marked and continuously staffed, and the programming went off pretty much where and when the program book said it would. If there were glitches — and Programming Wrangler Matt Arnold assured me there were some of those — they were largely invisible to me. It definitely helped that the Troy Hilton was very accommodating. Penguicon seems to have taken up pretty much the whole place, and a number of rooms at overflow hotels as well. Which means that just about all of the programming took place in one long, curving hallway, with the room parties and the con suites one quick flight of stairs away. The only obvious snafu I could see was the fact that there were loud anime movies screening right next door to quiet discussions about Technological Singularities, and the panelists would have to speak up to be heard.

Among the folks I got to spend a lot of time with were John Scalzi and his wife Krissy, the former of whom is about to embark on a 492-city tour for his new novel The Last Colony; Tobias Buckell and his wife Emily, the former of whom is on Locus’s shortlist for Best First Novel; and Nick Sagan, screenwriter, SF trilogy novelist, and just fabulously and terrifically nice guy.

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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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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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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.