A Self-Publishing Journey: Book Trailer

I finished my first novel, Resist the Devil, two years ago, and since then I've been learning a lot about editing, publishing and promotion. Recently, largely thanks to fellow-writer M Joseph Murphy, I've been introduced to the book trailer concept. So here's the first trailer for my first novel:

Book Tour

Today's post is by Luke Bellmason, and I personally think he's got a splendid idea.

Last week my good friends at The Sucker’s Guild held a meeting and we discussed promotion ideas; which web-sites to sign-up to, what kind of thing blog readers like to read, etc.

The web is a great promotional tool, but after the meeting I started thinking about how I could get out there in the “Real World” to promote my books, to meet real people. My plan has always been to build a ‘following’ of folks who like my books and who will tell others about them. It’s a long slow process, though I am promoting myself on all kinds of web-sites – Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads,Readwave – but I know that one of the most important factors in promotion is ‘word of mouth’.

In one sense, it’s easier to sell your own work. If you’re writing the kind of stuff you enjoy as a reader, like I am (corporate sell-outs stop reading now!) then you should have a fairly strong belief in your product. You know it’s awesome right? So all you have to do is persuade everyone else it’s awesome.

In marketing they have a phrase ‘unique selling point’. This is the one distinguishing feature that your product has which no other product has. It sets your product apart from the rest and makes it stand out. In my case I think the USP for The Canterbury Tales is the ‘tales’ themselves. They are based on the idea of storytelling, of a story teller sitting in front of group of people and speaking. Story telling has fascinated me for a long time because it’s such a basic thing; everybody tells stories.

Go out into a bunch of people in a pub, your local store or cafe and you’ll hear people telling stories. Mostly (but not always)the stories they tell are true, or partly true with some embellishments, exaggerations and omissions. We all learn this skill, some people get very good at it. They learn what part of the ‘story’ works by observing the reactions they get from their audience. They will re-tell that story many times, if it’s a good one, and will change they way it’s told ever so slightly based on these reactions.

Story telling predates even the written word, stories were around long before we had books, but when we did start writing these oral stories into books we had the problem of permanence. Words in a book cannot be changed, sections cannot be left out if the reader shows signs of boredom – sections cannot be added or changed if the reader enjoys what they’re reading. Of course, this may become possible one day with the technology offered to us by eBooks and smart devices.

Each tale in my book is told in first person and they could be read out, I would even say they ‘should’ be read out. All of the story telling events I’ve looked for in my area, however, are related to folk-tales, historical fiction and traditional stories. There doesn’t seem to be sci-fi action/adventure story telling scene; that kind of thing seems to be the preserve of podcasts and youtube. (Ok, so that’s another idea in itself.)

So I am toying with the idea of doing readings from the Canterbury Tales, perhaps in libraries or coffee shops or to local sci-fi groups. The obvious thing to do would be to read the finished ones, but should I consider something even more radical? Should I read the ones I haven’t finished yet, should I even have them written down? Might it be an interesting experiment to come up with a basic outline then attempt to tell the story in character from a synopsis?

Ok, now consider that I am on a sort of pilgrimage myself while I am doing this. This summer I rode from my home by bike out to the Malverns. I took a tent, a sleeping bag and a couple of sets of clothes and I cycled for about a week through tiny villages along back roads. It was such an amazing thing to do and I got fit into the bargain. I’ve done some back of the envelope calculations and worked out that the distance I rode to Malvern and back would have been about the same as from here to Canterbury in the south-east of England.

So, I thought, what about a cycling book tour next summer? By then, I am hoping to have another four stories ready for volume 2 and I would maybe have another couple ready as ‘ideas’ roughly sketched out. I could stay in hostels, which are a lot better for meeting people than hotels or even camp-sites.

I’m sure it would give me a lot of things to write about too. One of the things about this year’s holiday was I didn’t take anything electronic; no iPad, no phone, no laptop. This time I could take some devices with me and live-blog the trip as I go. I actually think the iPad would weigh less than the book and notebook I took with me this year. I think I should also use my time on the road to read Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales as well.

On the way round I might be able to find places to let me do readings. I am certain I will get to hear other people’s stories too, though not necessarily sci-fi ones, and just maybe I will meet people who will become fans and will tell all their friends about the crazy writer guy who cycled to Canterbury.

Interview with Author April M Reign

Here's an interview with the prolific and popular April M Reign by M Joseph Murphy. April commented on this interview afterwards on her blog: "I’m partial to this interview because Joseph took the time to ask me personal questions that relate to ME, MY KIDS, MY WRITING and MY BOOK PROMOTIONS!" (Emphasis is hers.)

April M. Reign is the author of several fan-favorite series (e.g. Dhellia Series, Mancini Saga, Disciples of the Damned Series, etc.) I met her on Twitter. However, after following her on Facebook I became a huge fan. Not just of her writing, but of the way she interacts with her fans.

And her fans love her. I wanted to find out how she was so prolific and how she managed her brand. I was fortunate enough to be granted an interview.

1. You are very prolific. From the looks of it, you have 5 series (including HASH, book 1 in the Imprint Trilogy), several standalone books and you’re also branching out into horror. What’s your secret for getting so much work done?

My secret is consistency. Every day, I sit in front of my laptop and I write. I may only write 200 words (on a bad day) or 3000 words (on a good day) but there is never a day that goes by when I don’t write. Consistency combined with my overly active imagination gives me the foundation to create new storylines and constantly provide new books for my readers.

2. With so many projects on the go, is it difficult keeping your stories straight? Have you ever mistakenly put a character into the wrong series?

I don’t usually put a character into the wrong series but I do have a tendency to mix 3rd and 1st person narrative. I’ve written three of my series in 1st person and two in 3rd person. At times, it gets confusing. (smile)

As far as keeping my stories straight, (Laugh) I have to reread each book in a series before I can write the next one, so that I keep the voice of my characters the same. With so many series going at once, I find this is the best way to keep it all straight in the chaos that I call my…creative mind. 

3. You are a very proud mother. What do you think is the greatest lesson you’ve been able to teach your sons? What’s the greatest lesson they have taught you?

Yes, I am a very proud mother of two amazing sons. Although, I’ve taught my boys many lessons in life, I’d have to say one in particular stands out above the rest… Finding and following their dreams.  Hard work, perseverance and determination are important factors in achieving their dreams and making them reality.  I’ve tried to lead them by example. 

They have taught me a thousand different things. But if I had to choose one, I’d say they’ve taught me the importance of being patient.

4. You also have very devoted fans: almost 25,000 on Twitter, over 3,000 on Facebook, and you have comments on all your blog posts. Does that put more pressure on you creatively or does it inspire you to work harder?

Both! I have supportive, amazing readers. They’ve watched me grow as an author. I can honestly say that my readers inspire me to work harder, and create different worlds where they can truly get lost. 

Of course, that also puts creative pressure on me, but I thrive in the midst of pressure.


 

5. “The Dhellia Series Fun Video” is a superb video. Very simple and yet highly polished and professional. Who did the video and what was the process like for you? What do you think makes for good video promotion?

Well, I’m not an expert on video promotion. One day, I was browsing the internet, and I saw this cool thing called a whiteboard video used as advertisement. I searched high and low for someone to create this video, but every company I researched had prices that ranged from $1500.00 to $10,000.00. That was certainly out of my price range for promotional tools. Then I found a person on a discount website that could do the video for me at a reasonable price. 

I love the video and it gives The Dhellia Series a thirty-second opportunity to shine. 

6. Lastly, if you could give fellow writers one piece of advice on how to promote their products, what would it be?

Be consistent with writing. One published story is an accomplishment, but a reader who enjoys your work will want to read more than one story. Are you giving them a selection? Sometimes individuals will wrap themselves up in promoting one story and they will forget to write the next. Your name is your brand, write the next story and your fans/readers will follow you.

Links:

April M. Reign's Website
April M. Reign's Amazon Author Page
April M. Reign's Goodread Page
April M. Reign on Smashwords
April M. Reign on Twitter
April M. Reign on Facebook

How to Keep Your Author Blog a Secret

How often have you heard an author say, "I quit blogging because nobody reads my blog anyway"? I hear it a lot. Maybe I've heard it from you.

This blog gets anywhere from 10 to 40 visits a day when I do my usual routine. It would probably be a lot more than that by now if I hadn't had a family crisis this spring and had to neglect it for a few months, since traffic had been steadily building up to that point.

So if you're dying to be one of those authors who can proudly say, "Nobody reads my blog," I think I can help you. Just follow these simple steps:

1. Don't post blog entries too often. After all, why should you? Nobody reads them anyway. The great thing about this technique is that it's self-fulfilling: if anybody does wander onto your blog, he or she will see there's nothing new there, anyway. Not worth coming back.
2. Don't entertain or educate. Just blog about yourself and your books. After all, news about what other writers are doing belongs on the other writers' blogs, and knowledge is power, so you wouldn't give that away for free. Even if you make the mistake of posting every day, you can still effectively repel readers as long as you don't offer any valuable content. Oh, and it helps to gripe a lot, and make them feel guilty for not buying your books.
3. Do be impersonal. Readers visit blogs (and buy books) because they feel a connection with the author, so your goal should be to look like a know-it-all literary demigod that's probably made of plastic.
4. Do be unprofessional. Use your blog to badmouth your husband or launch cheap personal attacks on famous people. And don't forget to repeat any nasty rumors you see on Facebook. 
5. Do push your blog on Twitter and Facebook. Use a lot of CAPITAL LETTERS AND EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!! and tell all your tweeps how great your blog is, frequently. They'll probably unfollow you, but at any rate you won't have to worry about retweets, shares, listings and, worst of all, hits on your blog.
6. Don't be friendly on social media sites. Don't take an interest in other authors or let people think you are approachable, kind, likable or anything like that. That sort of behavior not only draws people to your blog; if you keep it up you will end up getting enthusiastic fans (if your writing is good). Your traffic will start to snowball, as people you've never even heard of will start promoting you to their friends.

I mentioned I have a routine that helps bring in traffic. Here it is:

1. I post regularly, every day if I can.
2. I try to mix up the content a little: some fiction, some writing tips, some glimpses of what life is like for me as a New Hamsphire fiction writer; plenty of guest posts or spotlights on other writers.
3. I try to be honest. I'm not Stephen King, and since you're not stupid, I would never get away with pretending I am. I'm good at some things and stink at others, so it's only logical that I should give advice where I can and ask for help where I need to.
4. I try to be respectful. There are certain sides of my personal life that you will never see here, including family squabbles (I have a very loving family, but nobody is immune to spats), things people tell me in confidence, etc.
5. I use Hootsuite to schedule hourly tweets, most of which link to blog entries. I try to use hashtags that will help the tweets be found by the people who want to read those posts, I mention any Twitter users involved, and I try to keep the tweets informative instead of sounding like an obnoxious midway vendor.
6. I also use Hootsuite to schedule other tweets that help other authors, and do not link to this blog. I think it's important to be a team player.
7. I use Tweetdeck to organize my Twitter feeds and interact with other people on Twitter. 
8. I post a link to my blog on Facebook only when I think a decent chunk of my Facebook friends would be interested. Otherwise, I shut up, because I don't want them to get in the habit of ignoring me.

Guest Post: Cover Art

This is the final post in the special series of guest posts by Luke Bellmason to celebrate the recent launch of his new science-fiction book, The Canterbury Tales, Volume I. These posts are repeated from Luke's own blog. I wanted to share them with you because they give a nice little glimpse into what it's like for him as a writer. They were written before the book's launch. Here's Luke:

They say you shouldn’t do your own cover art for your book. It’s probably good advice, but I’ve always wanted to do book covers. About six years ago I did a full two year course at my local college in Graphic Design. Not because I wanted or expected to get a career as a graphic designer (though I admit it would have been nice), but simply because I wanted to learn more about how to do logos, cover art and such professionally. I got a HND in Visual Communications out of it, which is like a starter pre-university qualification.

This means I am actually even more qualified to do my book cover than I am to write my book; writing is something for which I have no professional training at all! It also means that I am in a fairly unique position of being able to truly reflect my book and my writing style in my cover art.

This is still the concept cover, but it’s beginning to grow on me. I wanted a cover which was like my writing style; bold, simple, straight-forward and clear. This design hopefully gives some indication of the four characters who’s stories feature in the volume. One of the major problems with having a title like ‘The Canterbury Tales’ is that I didn’t want to mislead people into thinking this was the original book, but really I’m going to have to hope that people read the blurb on the back before buying it so they know it’s not. The other factor I needed to consider was that the other two volumes need to have the same style of artwork, but look different, so I’ll be using different background colours for each one, and each character is going to have their own colour as well. I also wanted something which would stand out on the Amazon Kindle store, where the vast majority of sci-fi titles have starfields, ships, planets and such.

Of course, if I could actually draw I might have gone with all that stuff, but I can’t draw! So I use Adobe Illustrator, which is a piece of software so fiendishly difficult to use that few people get past the first two hours of trying to make it do anything even remotely useful. But I’m a video game player, I’m used to software which is difficult to control, which actively tries to make life difficult for you and which reveals its secrets to you only after you’ve shown it that you’re the boss! Learning to use Illustrator seemed a lot like that.

So, for those who are interested, The Canterbury Tales Vol. 1 nears completion. I have spent the past months editing, proof-reading and finishing off the text. Then came the task of taking the finished files and formatting everything into a word document to get it Kindle compatible. After that, I took almost three days to write the Preface and finally, I got to do the cover art – probably my favourite part of the whole process.

I posted this concept cover on my Twitter feed last night and this morning I woke to find it had been favourited by Ray Dillon! Don’t know who Ray Dillon is? Well he’s a writer and artist who does the artwork for HBO’s Game of Thrones and who has done a massive amount of work on comics, cover art and trading cards. After you’ve finished admiring my lovely cover, head on over to Ray’s page and marvel at his gorgeous images. Needless to say, I am super psyched about my cover getting favourited by such a luminary and wow, what a huge compliment. Thanks Ray!

My book’s going to hit the Kindle store in the next week or so, assuming I can successfully wrangle with MS Word and the upload process. I’ll be sure to post here when it’s finally up, check back soon for more news!

Guest Post: Artwork

Here's another guest post by Luke Bellmason, as part of our series honoring the recent launch of his novel, The Canterbury Tales, Volume I:

As I get closer to the publication of the Canterbury Tales Volume 1 (it’s coming, it’s coming!) I start to bring together all the ideas I’ve been having over the last months about what the cover should look like. I had a few ideas about what I didn’t want the cover to look like; NASA star fields look fantastic, but a lot of sci-fi books all tend to go with that. I wouldn’t mind some starships flying around on the cover, but I can’t draw that well and again, they’re all much of a muchness.

So I went back to another game I had thought up about a year ago. As regular readers may know, The Canterbury Tales is based on a board game I was trying to develop, but it turned into a book instead. It’s quite fitting therefore that the cover and internal artwork for the book comes from another game I was tinkering with – namely a Sabacc card game.

The Sabacc game is from the Star Wars universe and there’s a few sets of rules out on the web which describe the cards and how they work. The major problem with recreating this game in the real world is that the cards in Sabacc are electronic and can change without warning. The cards actually shuffle themselves in your hand and the only way to stop them doing this is to put them in an interference field on the table, which of course reveals them to your opponents.

I found some images of what the cards might look like in one of the Star Wars comics and decided to develop the visual theme into a whole deck. I managed to make a set and print it out, but playing the game was a lot more complicated than most players could handle, so it got added to the growing pile of abandoned projects.

Until a couple of days ago. As I thought more about the artwork for the book I realised the visual style I’d used for the Sabacc game could easily be adapted for the individual characters. My thinking is that the Merchant, Assassin, etc. are cards in a deck that spacers might carry around with them, much like we have decks of cards knocking about all over the house. These cards replace the King, Queen, Jack of a standard deck – and handily there’s 12 such cards in a deck and 12 characters in The Canterbury Tales.

So here’s the first batch. The Assassin, the Knight, the Merchant and the Smuggler. The colours correspond to the theme I’ve got for each character, although in the print edition I’m going to have to go with black since I can’t afford full colour!

So, can you guess which is the Merchant, the Assassin, the Knight and the Smuggler? These are still early versions, but I’m thinking  about the general visual style and how I can use it in promotional material and to create the ‘branding’ for the book. A good, strong visual image is always useful to make a book stand out from the crowd, but I think the images are a bit too ‘bold’ at the moment and need toning down a bit, maybe with some effects or by printing onto something then photographed. I could even go into printing these out as wall art or screen prints, but I’m getting ahead of myself – I need to finish the damn book before I start getting wrapped up in promotion!

Guest Post: Self Publishing Authors Are ‘Suspect’ and ‘Cheats’

Please help me welcome today's guest blogger, indie novelist Derek Haines:

Is paying for advertising, promotion or even reviews cheating? I read this press release and wondered what point it was trying to make. Yes, it of course refers to John Locke buying reviews, which I must admit is becoming very old news now, but it goes on with carefully chosen vocabulary referring to self-published authors being labeled as unethical, suspect, spamming, inferior and cheats if they pay for promotion.

Then Sean Platt, the author of the press release, admits to having bought thousands of Twitter followers. Talk about hypocritical in the extreme.

So it’s OK to buy Twitter followers, but it’s not OK to buy promotion, advertising or book reviews?

But it did start me thinking about this whole issue of paid promotion, and I’m beginning to wonder if this is not a carefully managed attack on self publishing as a whole. It’s no secret that self-published titles are doing very well, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this success has ruffled a few ‘established ‘ feathers.

In my mind the whole issue is boiling down to one basic point. That is, that it’s OK to spend a bucket-load of money on book promotion if you are a major publisher to ‘buy’ an audience, but if you’re an ‘Indie’, you’re expected to do everything on the cheap and free and wait around for your family and friends to buy your book. Then if you admit to spending money on book promotion, you get labeled as a cheat.

What’s wrong with the idea that self publishing is a business like any other and as such there are marketing expenses and without this investment, books struggle to sell? I think it’s up to every individual self-published author to decide how they operate their business, and from my own particular viewpoint, no one is going to tell me how I should run my own business.

And if you’re wondering. No, I have never bought Twitter followers. Yes, I have paid for advertising. Yes, I have paid for book promotion. There are always expenses in any business. Even self publishing.

Derek Haines lives in Switzerland, and is the author of Eyes That Could Kill and several other books.