Becka's Writing Blog

Gabriel Gadfly is a 24 year old Weblit poet and blogger from Alabama who thinks he’s a decent writer and thinks you should too. He writes a little bit of everything, but mostly fantasy fiction and weird love poems about zombies.

He’s provided this excellent post about offline promotion for weblit authors.

Visit Gabriel at his Website or find him on Twitter.

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How Public Readings Can Help Weblit Writers Gain Readers
by Gabriel Gadfly

When most weblit writers think of ways to promote their sites, offline efforts often get overlooked. After all – we write for the Web, we publish our work on the Web, our readers read us on the Web, so it makes sense to focus on promotional efforts that directly involve the Web: ad campaigns, social media, backlinks generated through forum posts, blog comments, and reviews, etc.. That said, I’d like to focus for a bit on one method of offline promotion that can not only help you attract readers, but maybe even generate some sales.

I’m talking about The Reading. It’s an event that’s long been a staple of the literary world: an author publishes a book and travels around a bit, reading an excerpt of their work to a public audience at venues like coffee shops, book stores, universities, and libraries. Depending on the venue’s budget, sometimes refreshments are made available, and there’s usually a bit of time afterward to personally talk with the author, purchase signed copies of their book, or ask questions.

If you think about it, the reading has a lot in common with weblit: the author is delivering their content straight to the audience, the audience has the ability to ask questions or make comments directly to the author, and, on the business side, the audience is able to purchase books direct from the author without the impersonal intermediary of a bookstore or Amazon.com checkout screen.

In an article in this month’s Poets & Writers magazine, author Steve Almond writers “What I’d noticed over the years was that I sold most of my books at readings. For those of us authors in the vast midlist ghetto, this is generally true. It’s not reviews or blurbs or fancy Web sites that generate sales, but the opportunity to read our work for an audience of strangers as often as possible.” (“Self-Publishing Steve,” Poets & Writers, July/August 2010).

Almond brings up a lot of good points in the article, but one in particular mentions the effect an author’s presence has on a reader’s decision to buy a book: because buying a book directly from the author’s hand is so much more of a personal and novel experience than purchasing books the traditional way, it tends to lead to higher sales. In other words, people who wouldn’t normally buy your work are more likely to do so when you’re pitching it directly to them.

Of course, the conundrum is this: how does a (traditionally) unpublished writer get invited to give a reading? Some venues only host readings by invitation – this is especially common in universities – and without some particular notoriety or personal connection with the event coordinator, it can be tough to land that sort of invitation. Other venues, however, are more open to pitches from authors: coffee shops, small libraries, and independent bookstores are often looking for events to draw people in the door. Contact the owner or the person in charge of coordinating events for the venue and tell them you’d like to host a reading at their place. If they’re not familiar with weblit publishing, tell them a bit about it and invite them to check out your work. With a professional, confident demeanor, a thick skin for rejections, and a bit of luck, you might be able to land a few gigs.

Even if you can’t land a traditional reading, look for alternative events where you can put your work in front of an audience: open mic nights are great for poetry or flash fiction, and if your work is notable to a niche group, look for local organizations related to that niche – for example, if you write a steampunk serial, look for local steampunk groups and see if any of them are interested in letting you give a reading at their next meeting. If you write a story about superheroes, a local comic book shop might be worth checking out.

About once a month, the local coffee shop hosts a poetry slam competition, and I’ve participated several times. Every time, I’ve had members of the audience come up to talk to me and ask where they can find more of my work. About half of the new readers I gained this way have become regular readers of my work that return every time I post something new – you won’t find that kind of conversion rate in most forms of online promotion.

You don’t necessarily have to have a dead-tree book to sell at your readings, but it does help if you have something tangible: give out bookmarks with your URL, or have a sign-up list for a newsletter where people can get updates about your new content. If you have any ebooks available, consider giving out discount codes to people who attend the reading. Since I usually have my laptop with me at poetry slams, I’ve been known to pull up the site and let people fill out the Subscribe By Email form right there.

If you’re going to give a reading, be sure to advertise it! Post about it on your site, your Twitter account, on Facebook page. Depending on your budget, it might even be a good idea to print up some flyers advertising the event. Afterwards, post a recap and maybe even some pictures or video. Video of the event lets your reading work double duty: not only do you get the offline promotion, but you’ve got a strong piece of content that you can post on YouTube to maybe generate some online traffic as well, and it’s a good way to people who couldn’t make it to the event to still catch your reading.

What about you? What are your experiences with readings?

This week’s Guest Post is by G.L. Drummond – an Indie Author/Self-Publisher who is active in both the weblit and ebook communities.

She’s been experimenting with the pricing of  her ebooks for  sometime and is sharing the benefit of her experiences with us today.

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How to Price Your Ebooks

If there is a secret formula for pricing your ebooks so that they sell like hotcakes, many of us have yet to discover it.

Some Indies opt for 99 cents or at least under $2, hoping to entice readers in with those super low prices in order to build their brand and author platform. In other words, to get their stories in front of eyeballs belonging to readers who will remember their names.

Others refuse to price that low, either feeling that it proves they devalue their own work, or in fear that readers won’t take a chance due to believing the low price denotes horribly bad writing.

Yet, either option might be the right choice for you.

I’ve done both.  My results? Eighty-five percent of my sales have come from titles priced $3.25 to $5.25, while only fifteen percent have come from titles priced $2.99 or less. When Amazon or whichever site decides to discount my ebooks, my sales usually dry up.

So I’ve decided anything under $3.25 doesn’t work for my ebooks.

Basically, what it comes down to is a willingness to experiment with pricing until you find the right price that your Ebook(s) sell consistently at.

You can start low, with 99 cents, then gradually raise the price. Or start high and gradually lower it. Eventually, you’re going to hit that magical right price that will entice readers to purchase your ebooks.

Don’t change prices daily. Give each a couple of weeks to a month to see how that particular price does. Ebook pricing is a total guessing game!

Offering yours at 99 cents doesn’t guarantee you’ll see sales like J.A. Konrath or Zoe Winters does. In fact, you might not sell a single copy – and then have five sales when you raise the price to $2.99 or more.

Be reasonable about your pricing. If it’s a 7500 word novelette, don’t price it at $12.99 or anything ridiculous like that.

After all, would you prefer 3 sales at $12.99, or 100 sales at $3.25?

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G.L. Drummond is an Indie Author/Self-Publisher who is active in both the weblit and ebook communities.

According to Miladysa on Twitter she’s “gun-toting alien with a fetish for fur and four-legged creatures who writes fiction & tweets.”

Visit her on the web at Feral Intensity or find her on Twitter.  Her ebook releases are available from various outlets including Smashwords and the Amazon Kindle Store.

This Week’s Guest Post is by Weblit Author Sharon T. Rose. She describes  herself as an author, dreamer, and doer of the impossible!

Her current projects include “Space and Time” and “Swords and Sigils“.

Sharon has written a post about being a writer.

Over to  you Sharon.

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So, you want to be a writer, hmm?

You think you have what it takes?  Do ya?

Great!  There’s lots of us who feel the same way, so when I say, “Join the club,” I mean it!  We welcome all comers, no matter your genre, background, or publishing creds.

In fact, there are a lot of us who write simply because we enjoy it, enjoy sharing our stories with people.  Some of us want to be published by the Big Six; some of us are aiming at self-pub or local imprints.  Some of us just do this as a hobby and don’t care if we achieve international acclaim.  You’ll find all types here, from fantasy to modern to horror to sci-fi to comedy to tragedy.  We’re a mixed bag, we modern-day authors.  We write novels and serials and screenplays and comics and just about anything else we can come up with.

When I first began thinking about writing, my thoughts were along the line of, “Yeah, right.”  Writing wasn’t “real” work, wasn’t a real job.  It wasn’t something that serious people did.  It was alright for other people to be writers, but not for me.  I was destined for a white-collar career doing something Important.

Where I got these stupid ideas, I’ve no idea.  Anyone can be a writer!  Writing is “real” work, and more importantly, it’s hard work.  Just as hard as anything you can do in Corporate World.  It takes effort and determination and perspiration.

Frankly, that kind of intimidated me, too.  I read a lot of books, some of which were mind-bendingly awesome.  I thought, “How could I ever hope to do this?  I could never be that good!”

Eventually I realized that those fabulous authors were, at one point in their lives, not that good, either.  Yes, some people are naturally better at crafting stories, using words, shaping phrases, and leaving the audience wanting more.  But every single one of them had to take that talent and shape it into skill.  Remember the old story about the servant who buried his gold instead of investing it?  If you don’t use your talents, you lose them, no matter how good you were to start with.

To that end, I’m going to share with you some tips and tricks I’ve picked up over the years.  Hah; that makes it sound like I’ve been writing forever and am so experienced and stuff and junk.  Pfft.  Odds are that I’m a lot like you: someone who has the desire and carved out a little time here and there, someone who decided to take the chance and make it work.

The first and most important task for any writer is KNOW THE RULES OF GRAMMAR.  I cannot stress this enough.  If you cannot write correctly, then you cannot write well.  Get a basic grammar book, take some extra classes, do whatever it takes to have the rules of grammar firmly burned into your brain.  This is a base-level skill that you should have learned before you got out of elementary school (or its equivalent).  If you didn’t, shame on your educational system and to the bookstore with you.  You shouldn’t have to think twice about where commas go or when to use a participial phrase.

“But you don’t always use grammar the right way!” you cry.  You’re right; I don’t.  My most flagrant disregard is in splitting infinitives with negatives: “to not fall.”  I do it on purpose and with full knowledge of what I’m doing.  You see, I’ve studied grammar and I make sure I know when and why I’m breaking the rules.  That’s what higher-level knowledge enables you to do: bend or break rules when appropriate.  Once you’ve got walking and running down, you can start to combine them and figure out new ways of doing so.

Not everyone will agree with my choice of rule-breaking, and not everyone will agree with yours.  But if you know what you’re doing, you’ll know when you can get away with what.  I’m careful to be consistent with my usage of split infinitives, so it should be obvious that I’m being deliberate.  And I am fully aware that I’ve probably made at least one grammatical error in this essay.  Typos are one thing; we all make them at some point.  What I’m trying to get across is that you have to have the basic skills. Editors are there to help catch the typos.

The second most important thing for any writer is to be a reader.  You cannot be too widely-read.  Read everything you can, from every genre, in every format.  Even if you don’t like it, read at least some of it.  There’s a reason certain books are considered classics.  If you want to know why, you have to read them.  Cliff’s Notes may get you through high school, but they won’t get you published.  This is one area where book-knowledge is the same as real-world knowledge.  READ.

After you’ve read as many different types and styles and authors as you can stand, feel free to pick some favorites and re-read them.  I tend to get lost in the stories, and it’s work to make myself pay attention to what the author is doing to make the book so fabulous.  But after the fifteenth read, I can get a sense of what she or he is doing from the technical aspect.  And then I work to incorporate that technical awesomeness into my own word crafting.

One technical thing that I’ve learned is to vary words and length.  Don’t use the same word or phrase in the same paragraph unless it’s vital.  Whatever scene you’re writing, odds are highly in favor that there are at least three different words to express the major point.  Find them.  Use them.  But don’t abuse them.

Also, I try to make my sentences different lengths.  In days of yore, run-on sentences were the norm and expected of writers.  Today’s audiences, even the most erudite, get lost and bored in long, heavy sentences.  Sometimes, it’s needful to have a long sentence to express a plot point or to finish out a scene, and occasionally extra words are required to fully convey a concept to the audience that you feel they really need to know, but most of the time, you can split the sentence up at the commas, throw in a few extra conjunctions or transitions, and the audience will never realize (or care) that you didn’t use as many words as Dickens at his greatest.

This next suggestion is purely a personal preference of mine and may be taken however you like.  Don’t use passive voice.  I hate the use of passive voice.  Loathe it.  Yes, yes, occasionally passive voice is necessary (and I’ve used it in this post).  However, the vast majority of the time it is not.  It’s the difference between show and tell.  The best writers show the audience, they don’t tell them.  Give your audience the tools to build the scene in their own minds, and they will love you.  Dictate to them, and they will go elsewhere.

For example: “Jack and Jill are walking up the hill.”  Compare that to “Jack and Jill walked up the hill.”  Say it out loud a couple of times and think about it.  Using an active verb gives you a stronger sentence.  Your characters do things, move with a purpose that the reader can readily pick up on.  Unless the story or character requires it, don’t use passive voice.

I don’t know to whom to attribute this quote, but I’m told that there are “nine and twenty ways to write the aboriginal lays.”  That means that every single author has her or his own method of generating output, and the best way is the one that works for you.  I’m going to share a bit of my process, and you are most welcome to use or adapt or ignore it.

I find that I need to live with characters and stories for a while before I can write them.  Usually, I need at least a year to really get to know them and understand what’s going on.  There are exceptions, but those are usually my short stories, which don’t require as much inter-weaving of plot points due to their length.  My novels I need a good long while to figure out.

Once I’ve had a story in my head for long enough, I know what the major scenes are, the big plot points.  Far too often, I wind up replaying those scenes in my head over and over, as though they were the entirety of the story.  Yet once I have those big pieces, I can start connecting them with smaller scenes and developments.

When I plot, I jot down the big scenes first, the ones I’ve imagined over and over; then, I notate the important things that have to happen in those scenes.  Next, I organize them into something resembling sense and base my chapters on that.

I have to allow myself a lot of flexibility when I write; using a strict outline has nearly killed more than one of my stories.  I can only outline so far before I have to sit back and trust my subconscious.  I do have tentative outlines for each chapter, but I’ve had to split some into two, and some I’ve been able to combine.  And, of course, I completely rearrange some sections on the fly.

Another part to being flexible while writing is in letting the story tell itself.  That’s been very hard for me to learn and accept.  Sometimes, the plot goes a completely different direction than you thought it would.  Very often, the characters come up with things you never expected.

Writing is interesting and slightly bizarre because the stories and characters are 100% your own doing, 100% part of you.  You are the one coming up with all of this; it’s your mind creating these twists and turns.  And yet, every writer will tell you that the stories and characters live on their own.  It’s as though there’s a separate part of your mind, a section of your brain, that’s set aside for them.  Writers are occasionally allowed visiting rights, but they don’t live there.

And we have to be ok with that; we have to allow that to happen.  I’ve had characters change as I wrote them, scenes morph into something I honestly didn’t want.  I fought those changes tooth and nail, and all I got was a headache and the desire to throw the laptop across the room.  “Why is this so hard?” I would wail.  It’s hard because I wouldn’t let it do what it needed to do.  It’s a lot like raising kids; eventually, you have to let them go their own way.  Forcing your will on them only creates animosity and separation.

So, there’s a high-level overview of my writing tips and tricks.

One: Know grammar.  If you constantly struggle with this, it’s ok to have a proof-reader or editor.  Please, for the sake of those who would be your readers, get whatever help you need.  We want to read your stuff, and you don’t want to let something so basic keep us away.

Two: Read.  Know what you like and what you don’t like.  Know why.  Then either do or don’t do those things in your own writing.  Three: Mix it up.  Engage not just our imaginations but our minds, as well.  Four: Figure out your technique.  This will change over time as you do; the more you write, the more you’ll refine and reshape your process.  Five: Trust yourself.  Write what needs to be written, not what you think needs to be written.  And remember, you can always go back and fix it later.  In fact, you’d better go back and fix it; the first draft is never worth publishing.  Unless you’re Mozart, but that’s another rant.

The last bit of wisdom (if I may be so vain) to impart to you is: Have fun!  The reason you write is because you enjoy it.  Something about the process or product gives you satisfaction; savor that.  Maybe you enjoy the grind of putting yourself in the chair and cranking out words.  Maybe it’s the comments you get from fans that you crave.  Perhaps all you need is to see your name on the Best Sellers’ List.  Whatever it is that you love about telling stories, don’t lose sight of that.  Wipe the sweat from your brow, stretch out the back, and keep a hot cuppa handy.

You’ve got what it takes to be a writer.  Make the most of it!

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Thanks for that Sharon. You can find Sharon’s weblit fiction at her website Lilyfields Entertainment.