Category: Marketing

New Frontiers in Marketing

r-avatarAh, what is there to say about marketing? We don’t know any writers who like doing it, even those who are good at it. It’s an essential element of a writing career, though, and a mere glance at the paltry tally of posts in that category here at the Skelleyverse gives you an idea of how we feel about it.

We’ve focused our efforts (“focus” and “effort” being two things our marketing activities do not have much of) on traditional publishing. We send queries out to agents whose profiles and portfolios indicate we might be a good fit. As everyone who’s ever done that knows, it’s a slog. There’s really nothing to say here by way of encouragement, it just sucks.

  • It relies on a different type of writing than the product you’re trying to sell.
  • There’s practically zero feedback to tell you if you’re on track. Miss by an inch or miss by a mile, it usually looks the same from your desk.
  • It’s time consuming, especially if you’re conscientious about researching the agents and sending your query selectively.

Authors today of course have many new options for self-publishing. This is something we’ve been reluctant to embrace, partially due to a sense that traditional routes offer greater validation of the work but mostly because the landscape was in such perpetual flux that it was difficult to know how much faith to put in any of it. Things have matured substantially in recent years, although we do still live in exciting times. The interesting twist is that the new age of technology is actually pushing publishing models back in time. The future will probably look a lot like two centuries ago, before there were such things as publishing houses.

No matter how you go about it, getting published seems to entail taking on a shit-ton of work that’s not the writing you want to do, not the stories inside that are trying to get out. It’s business. It’s different.

But it’s also how a writer connects to readers, so it’s a gotta-do-it, however much it sucks.

2015 – The Year We Take Over

r-avatarAs promised, here is our grand scheme for the year ahead.

This past week we sent out our first round of query letters for the infamous Science Novel. Perhaps we’ll get lucky and it will be our only round. If not, we’ll continue querying.

Meanwhile, we’ve begun brainstorming and outlining for Novel #6, aka Son of Music Novel. This very early stage in a novel’s lifecycle is one of our favorites. Everything is shiny and new, and the world is awash with possibilities. We’ve been able to escape the writing cave for the comfier confines of Writing Cave 2, which is located downstairs and has a fireplace and surround sound.

Once we get this new beast tamed (ie, have a complete outline) we’ll write it. Since it is a sequel to the Music Novel, we’ll look for ways to tie the two strongly together. This might require small changes to the Music Novel, so we’ll take care of those as they come up.

Sometimes we like to let a project rest for a while between steps, so that we can come back to it with fresh eyes. If that’s the case with the new novel, we’ll switch into editing mode on the Music Novel. Our critique group gave us good feedback and there are some changes we’d like to make. If the new novel does not require this refractory period, then Music Novel edits will happen after the first draft of its sequel is done.

And then, if there’s any time left in the year after writing an entire novel and editing another, we’ll turn our attention to plotting out the sequel to the Science Novel, which will by then have been acquired by a major publisher. Fingers crossed.

It Was The Middle One

We’re out of practice with the whole marketing side of things and have been voraciously consuming webinars and agent blogs and all kinds of other resources to bring our knowledge up to date.

The happy news is that there’s so much more information out there now. (Too much, maybe.) We used to be stuck with hard-copy guidebooks, and just had to hope the address was still current for the agent we wanted to query. Now we can cyberstalk potential representatives, and they can do the same to us. The relentless march of progress!

The less-happy news is that we’re relying on advice again, which means we have to be wary. One authority tells us to write the synopsis in objective, straightforward language, while another says infuse it with the voice of our writing. Likewise with just about any aspect of marketing and publishing. Some common threads are apparent, but often we have to read between the lines.

And that’s what it comes down to — reading between the lines. None of these teachers are trying to sabotage anyone. They’re each telling it as they see it, based on their experience. Naturally, they’ve hit upon various approaches that have worked in various circumstances. Then they have to shape that information for our consumption. To second guess them just a little, they’re probably second guessing the students. “If I tell them to make it sound like the book, they won’t be able to construct a cogent and functional synopsis.” “If I tell them to stick to the facts, the result will be flat.”

So, at least as far as the synopsis is concerned, our takeaway was somewhere in between. Of course the style of the synopsis will influence requests. But it has to be an orderly and complete telling of the main arc, or it’s not a valid synopsis.

Not all advice is right for every occasion, or for every author. That doesn’t make it bad per se, but it might be bad for you. Don’t jump at the first tip that sorta makes sense. Seek a couple of takes, and if they contradict each other, think about the subtext. Rather than just looking for a tiebreaker, look for a way to synthesize meaning out of the conflicting ideas.

RuneSkelley.com

We spent a little time this week giving runeskelley.com an overdue facelift. There’s not a whole lot of content, but now it’s visually aligned with the blog here at the Skelleyverse, and it’s ready for updates as soon as we conquer the world of publishing. And that will happen any day now.

The rest of our time has been taken up by holiday baking, and shopping, and cooking, and visiting, and eating. We’re bloated and happy, and ready to market the Science Novel.

Fear us.

Update From The Trenches

r-avatarIt’s time to start marketing. We’re going to do a push for the Science Novel, and we’re actually really excited about it.

Except, ugh. Marketing.

The pitch is crafted, or at least 95% of the way there. Some really helpful material at Writer’s Digest University, and some excellent feedback from our critique-group cronies, and now it needs to simmer for a bit whilst we work on the synopsis.

Double ugh.

At least we do have an existing draft of a synopsis to work from. Two, actually, because after crafting something we liked at about 1200 words, we slashed it down to 500 and still liked it reasonably well.

Fear of rejection is the classic stereotypical reason writers procrastinate about marketing their fiction (e.g., blogging about it when they should be doing it). Maybe for some that’s apt, but not for Jen and Kent. The bigger rub is that the query package entails writing of such a different type than the actual product we’re trying to sell. It’s easy to find contradictory advice about how to construct a synopsis. It’s hard as hell to condense a novel down to one page, which is what most agents seem to want.

At least here in the writing cave there are two of us, so we each get a shoulder to lean on while we trudge onward. Discussing potential edits in real time is especially helpful with the ultra-compact prose needed for a query.

How do you shift into Marketing Gear? What do you consider most annoying about it?