Darned if you do, darned if you don't

Managing an online presence is sometimes difficult, but not having one is fatal for anyone who wants to market products or services these days. So, any number of websites, blogs, and applications are available to help webmasters and others manage an online presence.

Perhaps the most basic way to manage an online presence is to create one. The bare minimum is a website or a blog. Some people confuse the two, but a blog is usually limited by the software and templates made available by the host, but a website can be far more creative. If I could only have one, it would be the website. However, many blogging services are free. This one is, rather obviously, Blogger, which is a Google product. I have another blog (on a totally different subject) with another service, and each one has a different look and feel because the software does differ. I have enjoyed working with both of these, and free is a really good price.

Once something good is published about me, I can put in links or quote the item in my blog or on my website. If something bad is published, usually, I can respond. How one responds to online criticism is actually a hot topic in marketing these days. Just remember the Domino's fiasco, if you want to know why it is necessary to respond to negative online publicity. One of the main tips I have for that is to remember that anything that is written, even online, can be shared. Finding the right balance between entertaining and damaging can be difficult, because bland gets no notice.

I have mentioned using Google Alerts in a previous post, and I do have a number of those set to let me know, via email, when web users access my web information. That service, although quite good, is dependent on Google's search engine, so I have been looking for something else, and I have found one that seems to do the job.

Addictomatic searches various online sources of information. If you are wondering what others are saying about you online, set one up with your online identity as the subject. Or, if you are fond of a type of literature, a band, or a gaming platform, that could be the subject instead. Do try it out. I was impressed with this app.

In good company, but sold out?

Like many authors these days, I have a “google alert.” This is a nifty service which sends me an email when someone does a search for either Pamela J. Dodd or Trinity on Tylos, and lets me know what that person clicked on after doing the search. My latest alert apprised me that Trinity is now available from The Dungeon Bookstore. Okay, I admit, my first thought was, “Say what? There’s not any BDSM in Trinity!” I touched on that in The Gift Horse, but not in Trinity. However, a visit to the site states: Science Fiction, fantasy, horror, and witch craft/magic books are our main categories, we've also begun to add science fiction dvd's and comic graphic novels.

Some of The Dungeon Bookstore’s other offerings are books I like quite a lot, including the series by Elizabeth Vaughan which begins with Warprize. Indeed, they have titles from Tor, Baen, and Eos, which is top notch content, and I am really glad to be included. Another great aspect of this site is that they offer free shipping, without up-pricing the books. The printer, Pawprints, sells it via Amazon, and they raised the price a dollar, which along with Amazon’s standard shipping price of 3.49 yields a purchase price of $18.48. Ouch.

Unfortunately, the product page lists the book as being sold out. I clicked on a couple of my fellow Whiskey Creek Press author’s titles, they were “sold out” as well. I asked over at the WCP author group, and the webmaster replied that this page just links to the WCP site, and customers are supposed to buy there. That's too bad, huh? I guess I'll always be "sold out" in the Dungeon.

ROI

Google Ad Words is an interesting way to advertise online. Signing up is fairly easy, and then short, targeted ads, which the advertiser writes, based on an interactive form, direct internet users to a designated website. Of course, at that point it is up to the site owner to develop a compelling “Let’s buy!” message. Aye, there’s the rub. (My apologies to Mr. Shakespeare.)

After a week, I realized that ten people had clicked on one of my ads and been directed toward my website. Perhaps more interesting, the number of impressions, or ad listings, had zoomed past one thousand. During a roughly two month long campaign, 269 people have “clicked through” and my ads have run more than a million times. I’ve seen several “Google Alerts” as well, so the ad campaign has gotten people checking me out.

Will this increase my sales at all? Neither of my publishers have shown a single sale via their sites, but it can take months for third party sales to show up. My budget for this endeavor was to spend less than a con visit, and having spent the same amount as one night at the Chattanooga Wingate, it is time to cancel the campaign. I rather doubt that I will earn as much as I spent, so this is yet another failure if “Return on Investment” is the only measure of success.

However, being a writer is all about sharing stories, and doing the Google campaign is much like seeking a berth as a sci fi con guest, or like making a speech at a library or a civic club event. Quite simply, I’m trying all reasonable avenues to get my books into the hands of readers, so they can enjoy my stories, and perhaps they’ll recommend one of my tales to other readers as well.

When the new year rolls in, I’ll be exploring one or two other ways to market the two books I have published. Anyone out there seen a “book trailer?”

Frustration....

It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, so I'll save time and post a screen shot.



Book sales tend to spike from October to the end of December, no doubt due to the combination of people giving gifts and taking time off work and wanting some entertainment. Distribution is everything in retail, so I am frustrated right now.

The Author who cried, “Book Signing!”

Almost everyone knows the children’s cautionary tale of the little boy, bored with herding sheep, who cried, “Wolf!” just to get attention. Yes, we all know that after a while, no one would come, because no one believed him. Of course, the little boy ended up as the victim of a wolf, his cries going unheeded, for obvious reasons.

During the summer, I posted the news on my “events” page that I was signing at the Decatur Book Festival on Labor Day weekend, but a few days before the event, my invitation was rescinded by the bookstore, due to problems with the accommodations at the venue. But, not to worry, in September I would be signing at a nearby restaurant, at an event sponsored by the same bookstore. That event was postponed by the bookstore, due to problems with the schedule at the restaurant. But, not to worry, the event would be held in October, at the same restaurant. Since this plan seemed more definite, I posted the event on various community calendars and on my website, and I sent out a notice to members of my Yahoo group. I got an email this week, explaining that this event won’t be happening, again due to problems at the restaurant. However, I now begin an author day, along with a couple of other local writers, for a book signing at the bookstore, in November. It is my job to get my book into the hands of readers, even when that means having to be flexible, and for the most part I do enjoy such promotions.

I’m posting this for anyone curious about the ever changing “upcoming events” page on my website. My greatest fear is that I will finally get my opportunity to reach this audience, but I'll be sitting alone for my hour at the store. Isn’t that what happens to authors who cry, “Book Signing!” and it never happens?

Facts About Publishing

A recent National Endowment for the Arts survey reveals that reading is going the way of the cassette tape. Oh, books will be around for a while longer, but it’s probably not a good time to get into the publishing business. According to the NEA, only 47% of adults read any sort of literature at all. Just under 90 million people in the United States did not read a book— any book— in 2002. As a classroom teacher, I can remember being told that when school was over, so was reading.

Today’s average book buyer is a woman, not a young woman. Younger women are more likely to read a magazine or look at the internet when they want to read. Sixty eight percent of book buyers are women. That average book browser will spend eight seconds looking at the front cover and 15 seconds scanning the back cover. What is absolutely unfathomable to me is that this same so called average bookbuyer gets to page 18 before she quits. Now maybe I’m just cheap, but I don’t buy many books that I don’t read. And 52% of all books are not sold in bookstores. Instead those buyers get their reading via mail order, online, in discount or warehouse stores, through book clubs, or some other venue.

Book publishing is a weird business in many respects. It’s almost like buying and selling produce, because so many of the products are thrown away. Yep, it’s true. Go strolling down the aisles in your local bricks and mortar bookstore looking at the mass market paperbacks. About half of all of those books will be destroyed, their front covers ripped off to send back to the publisher, indicating that the book was never sold. Customers pay $7.99 for a paperback with tiny print on cheap paper because half of all the ones printed are never sold, so they have to charge twice as much to make up for it.

Despite the shrinking market, more than 150,000 titles are published each year. Bigger publishing houses are bringing out fewer books these days, so 78% of all books published are put out by small publishers or self-publishers. Quite a number of small publishers are using POD, or “print on demand” which makes a lot of sense to me. Books printed via this method are quite similar to conventionally printed books. Often the quality of the printing is better, just as the output from your laser printer is better than a newspaper’s printing. This method isn’t quite as cheap as conventional printing, so each book may cost a couple of dollars more.

Most POD books are trade paperbacks, which are a bit larger than those mass market paperbacks, but far fewer of them will be used to line landfills or make recycled newsprint. Both of my books are produced via this method. If lots of people like my books, then several will be printed. If there is no market for my POD books, or anyone else’s, then they just don’t ever have many copies in print. Indeed, the average self-published book sells seventy-five copies, which means The Gift Horse is well above average, so I can take heart in that.

Sources for this article include Tom and Marilyn Ross’ site, which is on my links in the sidebar, and John Kremer’s 1001 Ways to Market Your Book, which is one of the best books on marketing ever written.

The Gift Horse

In the two plus years it has been available, I have had quite a bit of feedback from The Gift Horse, far more than I’ve gotten from Trinity on Tylos, and much of it has been positive, but not all, of course. At the end of each calendar year, I think about canceling my contract with Booklocker. Oh, it isn’t really expensive to keep it up— less than the price of a meal at a good restaurant— but having my “self-published” title still in print sometimes makes me feel like a lesser author. While I believe that there are some really good self-published books out there, the stigma does exist.

However, the business person in me insists that as long as there are people interested in buying it, I should go on another year. A fellow writer suggested that I get the rights back to The Gift Horse and market it in tandem with another suspense story, a Work in Progress, but one fairly close to being finished, to an epublisher. Since it only sold two copies in eBook form (and one of those was to me) that would be a new audience, I suppose.

I’ve been fortunate, in that the owner of a gift shop here in town bought twenty five copies of The Gift Horse early this year, and Living Jackson Magazine chose to review it recently. For whatever reason, this somewhat outlandish but very suspenseful tale continues to be read, enjoyed, and occasionally spark controversy.

More than once, I’ve been asked what these books have in common, since they do reflect differing genres of literature. Both of these books have heroines who are willing to sacrifice something of themselves to be what someone else wants them to be. In our society, people profess to be liberated and self-motivated, but that is a fallacy. If you don’t believe me, go to any place where young people gather and watch them act like the folks they see portrayed in various media. Some will play sluts, some act and dress like rappers and pimps. Oh, the gods of our age come to us via small rectangular boxes— television, computer screens, and the like. But they are perhaps more demanding than those who dwelt on Mount Olympus in the days gone by, who only wanted an occasional sacrifice. Nowadays, bowing to the god of media is a 24/7 duty.

What happened to the Decatur Book Festival?

The Festival is going to happen, and it is going to be big. Alas, I won’t be attending. My invitation was extended by the good folks at Tut’s Books and ever since they invited me, they’ve been waiting for confirmation regarding their booth. Apparently there is a huge amount of interest in this event and all the spots are now taken, unless someone backs out at the last minute. The proprietor at Tut’s has been quite gracious, and I do think she made every effort to get one of those booths on the old courthouse lawn.

Whether or not it matters is an unknown. I have no idea if any of the book festival attendees would have bought copies of my books. Especially when DragonCon, the big science fiction convention, will be taking place at the same time, but at four large hotels in the downtown area. The good news, as I see it, is that I can quit being concerned about traffic in Decatur, and whether or not my order from Booklocker will make it on time. Now, I will just get ready for a signing at Tut’s in mid-September.

After that, I will have to look for other opportunities, For the most part any promotions I do need to be out-of-towners, in that I’ve done all I can do locally to make people aware of my books. The staff of the Jackson Herald and the publishers of Living Jackson have been especially helpful in that regard.

What a great promo idea!

I’ve struggled with getting my books onto shelves— in homes and in stores. But if any of you has a book on the shelves in a bookstore or other retailer, here is a nifty new promo idea: Shelf Talkers.

Most independent book retailers achieve success because they can “hand sell” books to their clients. However, even small stores have moments when the staff is busy, or the shy clerk is holding down the fort. That’s where shelf talkers come into play. These can be as simple as an index card, or booksellers can download fancy ones from Ingram’s marketing blog, ready for printing. Either way, this little sign can direct traffic to a special book— like mine!

Interested? Take a look and follow the links, and soon your book might just be making the move from store shelves to home shelves.

Check out this promo blog, and this article by romance writer Stephanie Bond.

Reviews and Reviewing (Part II ?)

It’s been a while, but I remember writing about being a book reviewer sometime last year, at a time when I was compiling a long list of places to query about reviewing Trinity on Tylos.

That first review has, thus far, been the best one. Indeed, I can’t imagine one being any better. The second review which came in described Trinity on Tylos is “entertaining,” but I found nothing really quotable in it. Two others have come in recently, and one of them was mostly positive, while the other one had a bit too much summary. Most reviewers try to avoid spoilers, but not so with this one, so I really can’t quote much from it.

When I’ve had discussions with readers of The Gift Horse, my debut novel in the suspense genre, it is interesting that folks either love it or hate it. My reader reviews for Trinity on Tylos at Fictionwise reflect the same phenomenon— two readers said “great” and two others said “poor.” Since there are some errors in the Fictionwise version which aren’t in the print book— don’t ask me how that happened, b/c I really have no idea— I decided that those who voted “poor” were annoyed by those. I certainly was.

Rob Preece, the publisher of Books for a Buck, read Trinity on Tylos, and gave it “three stars” which is the same # he gave the latest David Weber. Now if I could just sell as many copies as Weber will!

Harriet Klausner also reviewed Trinity on Tylos, saying one plot device, which is dependent on a character’s decision making, was “inane.” Whatever. The character is loosely based on someone I once worked for, and the decision making reflects what I saw at my job on a regular basis, which is probably saying too much in a public forum. I’ll include the link to that reviewer’s archive review of Trinity for any readers who want to see what she had to say.

Recently, I reviewed a book which had been out for a while and is being rereleased by a different publisher. By following the new publisher’s links and doing a Google search, I counted twelve reviews and one interview on various websites, as well as eighteen reader reviews at Amazon. As I was trying to find something new to say, a task I found rather difficult under the circumstances, I did some real soul searching about my own efforts to get more reviews for Trinity on Tylos. Do reviews really help sell books? Perhaps, but at what point does an author reach the “overkill” mark?

I suspect that better distribution and marketing might be more helpful to increasing sales than multiple reviews, for my book or anyone else’s for that matter. With that in mind, I am off to Sci Fi Summer this weekend to autograph books and pass out flyers. Distribution is a primarily a Whiskey Creek Press matter, but publicity falls to me.

Con- ventions

When I rode motorcycles, which I did from roughly age ten when I got a used minibike, until age thirty-three, when I parked my Honda 650, many people got the wrong idea about my personality. I never owned a leather jacket, have no tattoos, and never smoked anything. I don’t even curse often. However, the bias against my favorite mode of transportation followed me despite a total lack of interest in Hell’s Angels, Harleys and especially choppers. I preferred bikes with more zip, actually.

Hopefully, reading and watching science fiction are not always associated with being terminally weird, either. Oh, some people will always associate sci-fi with nerds. My interest in science fiction began in childhood, as I watched Star Trek along side the early efforts of NASA, but I’m not obsessed with the genre nor as weird as the stereotypical sci-fi fan.

I attended a science-fiction convention once, some years ago, because one in Atlanta was hosting James Doohan and Michael Dorn, and my long term love of Star Trek won out over any concerns I had about Alanta traffic or the attendees. Both of these gentlemen made excellent speeches, and I loved getting their autographs. The con, as these are now called, was quite an experience. The dealer’s room— a huge place filled with vendors hawking overpriced pins, comics, magazines, and 8x10 glossy pics of TV and film stars— was amazing. Even more amazing were the costumes, both in number and variety. As I stood in line behind a woman who was trying to look like Uhura, the communications officer on the original Star Trek, she informed me that her young son had made her costume. I had no trouble believing that. Many of the other costumes were quite professional, however. Being dressed in business casual, which I always deemed appropriate for a weekend trip to Atlanta, somehow felt downright odd.

One of my very best friends has a son who publishes sequential art— that’s comic books in layman’s terms— who says I should try hawking Trinity on Tylos at science fiction conventions. A really up and coming science fiction writer from this area, a guy who has published fourteen books, is speaking at Liberty.con in Chattanooga and at Dragon.con in Atlanta later this year. So, perhaps that is good advice. Maybe I should dress up, too. Not as a Trek character, of course, but I could dress up as a biker, since I never did that when I rode the various motorcycles that I owned during my youth.

BTW, I still have my motorcyclist’s license, but I haven’t ridden anything on the street larger than my daughter’s scooter for a number of years. Motherhood is a great responsibility, not to be taken lightly. But I could get a black tee shirt and a leather jacket with star shaped studs, I suppose, and try the con-vention. What do you think?

Will Write for Food— Not!

I’ve had some interesting comments regarding my new novel, and fortunately, those who have read it seemed to really enjoy the story. One person commented on the ethics and convictions of the characters. Another mentioned the commitment to motherhood.

However, I’ve been a bit disappointed by the number of people who have said they won’t even look at it because they “don’t care for science-fiction.” Marketing people have this comment for such a situation, “There’s no market for it.” Going with that idea, either I switch genres or find something else to do. At this point, I’m tempted to find something else to do.

A “hack writer” is someone who writes for hire, which is the opposite of an artist. Yes, I’d like to get paid for my work, but if there is no market for that writing, and I simply try to write what is salable to the masses, without any creative spark from me, then I will descend into being a hack, sorta like standing on the side of the road with a “will write for food” sign.

Ironically, only about seven percent of books sold are science-fiction, yet five of the top ten movies of all time are science-fiction (Star Wars, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, SpiderMan 2, Star Wars Episode III, Revenge of the Sith, and Star Wars Episode I, The Phantom Menace.) I’m not quite sure why this dichotomy exists. Perhaps science fiction is best in a more visual medium. But there is also this troubling statistic: an estimated 44 million Americans are not literate enough to read a book intended for an adult audience. Maybe I should try movie scripts.

Buy your book at Downtown Interiors

There is a gift shop in my hometown called Downtown Interiors, which is featuring books and CD's created by local residents. Both The Gift Horse and Trinity on Tylos are there, so stop at 100 N. Public Square and see all the nice home furnishings and gifts.

Thanks to those who came by to visit and buy books on Saturday. If you need a copy of either book— to read or as a gift, please stop by Downtown Interiors.

Where do you buy books?

Or do you? As a child, growing up in a family with limited financial means, we didn’t buy many books. I did view the ones I owned as special, and I still have a few of them, battered after about forty years of ownership. For the most part, we read books that we checked out of the local library, or the school library. Even when I was in elementary school, my mom was thrilled when one of my teachers described me as “well read.” That still fits, I suppose, even if the source of my reading material has changed.

I still read quite a bit from libraries as I transitioned from a student to a teacher, but with the heavy burden of reading what was assigned by my college professors and what I was teaching to my students, my reading for pleasure was naturally curtailed. Then came two children, and wow, did that make a difference!

The years kept going by and when I was in my early forties, I suppose I had a bit of a mid-life crisis. Instead of buying a motorcycle— which I had given up at 33, when I learned I was pregnant— I began to read exactly what I wanted to read. Not what was on the best seller list, not what was being touted by my friends or family members, not what I could get at the library, but what I wanted to read. I began collecting obscure works that I’d missed. I now have all of Peter O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise books. I read lots of science fiction, like David Weber, Elizabeth Moon, and Lois McMaster Bujold. Futuristic romance was just getting established, and I read all of them I could find. That search led me to eBooks, and book reviewing, and to a certain extent into writing my own books. I can’t remember who said it, but it is true that you write the books you want to read. The Gift Horse is a contemporary suspense story with dark psychological overtones, and Trinity on Tylos is a futuristic with romantic elements, and I love both of those genres, so if you like what I like, try them. Buy them— please!

Which brings me back to the original question. I seldom read library books anymore, but I buy quite bit from Amazon.com, and I buy eBooks from Fictionwise. I buy my rare books via Alibris, which is also on the internet. Locally, I like Books a Million, and I sometimes shop in Barnes & Noble, even though they refuse to carry my books. Borders will order my books, and I like the atmosphere in their stores, but they are perhaps the most expensive bookseller, so I seldom shop there, unless I need good service.