These conventions also have panels on things like self-promotion for writers, how to use social networking, things like that.

Simple things — and I think this is my next article for my column on StrangeWords.net or on my own website – for marketing on the cheap…

Get on the social networking sites and talk to people – not about your books, unless it’s LEGITIMATELY germane to the topic. You’re a person not a spammer.

If you look there are websites where you can get deals on postcards, bookmarks, business cards for cheap – like on Vista Print. For stickers, StickerJunkie.com

If you have a decent color laser printer, you can make your own promotional materials. Goofy stuff works for me, but I write a lot of humor.

Stuff like that.
.-= rhonda´s last blog ..Firefox What Did you DO???? =-.

My mind is not in fact made up and your words do have influence. I spent about a year trying to work the system before I decided to set that effort aside and concentrate on finishing the entire series. My efforts were not exhaustive, I know that, but they were very frustrating. Producing something of quality isn’t enough if no one with the power to get you into the system will look at it. I have the definite impression that networking – who you know or are able to get to know – is at least as important as writing something good.

In fact you have convinced me that it is worth making another effort to interest an agent. That effort at least is cheap.

I would love to know more about your dirt cheap marketing methods. How can I find out more about things like that?

What’s the point of traditional publishing? Simply – it’s respect. If you have ACE, TOR, BAEN, or any number of smaller presses on your spine that shows other professionals you took the time to learn your craft, impressed someone difficult to impress, and have something worth clawing through the broken system.

I could reiterate a bunch of my points, but if you’ve made up your mind I’m not going to change it. Just know this – if you self-publish without trying to work the system – it’s going to be that much harder down the road.

You won’t be invited as a guest/panelist to fan-run conventions. You might be able to buy a table in the dealer’s room. You might sell some books, but you won’t be on the panels with the other writers/editors/professionals. Why? Because most conventions won’t put writers on panels that are ONLY self-pubbed because of the reputation for bad material that comes out of self-publishing. Fair? No. Deal.

You won’t get in the big chain stores. If you’re lucky, you might get into some local independents. Big publisher put a lot of books in stores? Yes, they do. You can’t do that on your own.

Marketing costs a lot? Well, yeah, it does. There are things you can do to reduce that cost. I do a lot for dirt cheap or free, but you can either SHARE some of that cost with a publisher AND get a kicking cover, or you can spend it all yourself and good luck. That marketing department you may not agree with? That’s all on you now.

To me the help and respect are worth it. The ability to meet more fans? Worth it. But that’s me. You’re not going to change my mind. I’m probably not going to change yours. Good luck.
.-= rhonda´s last blog ..Firefox What Did you DO???? =-.

When something is broken there are three possible responses: repairing it, replacing it, or muddling along/doing without it. What’s going to happen with publishing and the electronic revolution? I don’t know. Since I hear that the publishing conglomerates make most of their money on nonfiction, though, I wonder how much influence fiction writers would ever have on fixing things from the inside.

Moving to things I think I understand a little better, it would be a completely different problem to sell my book to readers than to sell it to agents. Fantasy readers differ from agents in a number of significant respects. First, fantasy readers generally have too little to read, not too much. Also, they are not fixated on there being a clever story concept that can be described in a neat little paragraph: They just want a good read. Length doesn’t bother them. (Longer is better if you’re having fun.) Nor are they averse to reading things by new authors, even the first book in a series by a new author. After all, if they like it, there’s a whole new vein to be mined, and if they don’t like it, they haven’t really wasted very much money.

I’ve written a number of cover blurbs any one of which would probably hook a segment of the fantasy reader audience. I know I’ve got a “good read” because my test readers tell me so. The plot within Book I actually arcs quite well, climaxing and resolving a major incident in the main character’s life; it just leaves enough threads untied that it cries for a sequel. Agents would discover all of this if they would read the manuscript, but it might not make any difference. The agent’s job is not to sell books to readers, after all (I was wrong to suggest that), it’s to sell manuscripts to publishers. So what agents say they are looking for is probably a reflection of what publishers want.

The last big difference between selling to an agent versus selling to the readers is that you only have to hook one agent, but you need to hook a whole lot of readers. It isn’t a problem of convincing someone that you’ve got something “good,” it’s a problem of communicating what you’ve got to a whole lot of people. That requires not salesmanship, but mass-marketing expertise – a different kind of skill. From what I can tell, what traditional big publishers do for you is put your book out on a lot of shelves where it can be seen, but I’ve read that they do little or nothing to promote the books of first-time authors and they are very quick to drop you if your book doesn’t sell a lot and pretty quickly. I would be willing to let sales build slowly as word gets out, but apparently publishers aren’t. So the first time author who gets published has to do self-promotion on a mass scale anyway to try to make sales happen fast. It’s at your own expense and it can cost thousands of dollars. I’m not saying I’d turn down an agent if one approached me, but how attractive do you think this looks, especially when you only get a tiny fraction of each sale through traditional publishers?

You say the system is broken — okay, so how do you fix it if you’re not inside it? Agents and Publishers are out to make money for THEM not for YOU. Authors are cars or staplers for all they’re concerned. If your book doesn’t sell, they’ll trade you in for another one. Does it suck. Yes. BUT, it’s the system we’re stuck with. Agents and Publishers DO DO stuff for the Author, but if the Author can’t sell their own books, then why should someone else do it for them?

As for your series – you’re right. If you can’t make each part of your story somehow stand alone and apart on it’s one, you probably won’t sell it. Comic Book writers call it “A FULL UNIT OF ENTERTAINMENT” – no one wants to read a book where nothing happens, even if it’s set up to another book, and if YOU the creator can’t make the first book sound interesting and original – what is there to make someone pick it and the rest up?

These are questions you’re going to have to answer if you self-publish, too, you know. Many times the query blurbs are what end up on the cover to entice people to read the innards. What do you have to encourage people to pick up your book — whether from you or from a book store shelf?
.-= rhonda´s last blog ..The StrangeWords Article =-.

It ought to be obvious to anyone that not every story can have its vital essence distilled into a page. It ought to be obvious that one can write bad query letters for good manuscripts and good query letters for bad manuscripts. The system is broken – at least as far as new aspiring writers are concerned. It’s time to invent a new system if we want there to be a new generation of authors down the road. That’s why I’m looking at self-publishing. Yes, I know I’m going to have to jump through a lot of hoops of a kind that are not at all natural for me. I just resent it like h— because that’s what agents and publishers are supposed to be for!

There are ways around every obstacle. Get involved in your local fangroups – go to the SF/F conventions in your area – network, meet people. Try writing short fiction to submit places to get published.

As for the marketing/promotion – writers are salesmen. Get used to it. I have a writer friend who, in most cases is painfully shy. When she had to start promoting, she did as one of her book’s characters. That let her be “someone else” doing the promoting, not her.
.-= rhonda´s last blog ..DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME =-.