Branding Yourself as an Author

Tip of the Day: "The Creative Penn" gives a good summary on creating your author platform and branding yourself as a writer.

In my day job, I'm in the midst of doing a rebranding for our library, so I have brands, brands, and more brands on my mind. In terms of the library: branding seems to be a bit easier for me to understand. All your design elements, such as: your logo, website, flyers, etc. need to fit together and emphasis your brand. If you want to be fun, then everything should look fun. We want to be seen as a go-to spot, so we are incorporating that idea into all of our graphics and our general message. Including literally showing dots (or spots) in many of our marketing materials to reiterate our brand. That way people are constantly hit over the head with our library brand. And hopefully they'll remember to stop by and see us. Or at the very least, recognize one of our flyers based on looks alone.

In terms of author branding it's a bit different. Your brand includes not only your website, bookmarks, and design elements, but it also includes the nature and style of writing in your books.

I would imagine if you go to five different fantasy author sites, the design is going to look completely different than going to author websites for literary fiction. The design of everything needs to reflect the style of books you write. Because just like your cover has to reflect your book, so does all your other marketing materials that you might create for yourself.

In the same vein, all of your books should have a similar writing style, to further reiterate your brand. Do you write humorous mysteries? Or deep-thought provoking literary styles? Good! If you write more than one, then people will know where to go when they are looking for that perfect read.

Does this mean you can only write humorous mysteries from now on?

No...but you do still need to stick somewhat in your category and writing style. Otherwise, you'll confuse readers more than you'll bring them in.



Most of us don't have that luxury of being so famous that readers don't expect anything from us but a great story. They find comfort in knowing what type of story we will deliver to them. With twists and turns, of course!

So until we become famous, if we want to try our hand at a different genre or completely different style of book, we'll have to be like all the other authors who write under different names. Or just stick with similar types of books. At least until our readership has been built.  Then when we've become so big, that brands no longer matter, then the publishing house will release anything we write under our names :)

So in my opinion, branding is important for writers. However, I don't think we should be so overwhelmed to let it rule how we write. Since a good story trumps all, and most of branding happens naturally. Because if you write light, fluffy books, I guarantee most of you are also attracted to the color pink (or at least fun looking covers).

Do you agree with that? Or disagree?


--Emily, Miss Querylicious

How Much Cursing?

Tip of the Day: Have you seen Debbie Ridpath Ohi's cartoons on our site? Well, I'M BORED, the picture book she illustrated, released this week!

So check out this picture of a heatmap showing how much Americans swear on Twitter. In Rochester, NY, I apparently live on the corner of F and U.

From The Atlantic:  http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/08/how-america-swears-heres-a-heatmap-tracking-twitter-profanity/261438/

So how much swearing takes place in your manuscript?

I don't like to drop the F-bomb. I don't say it myself and I don't think it fits most of my characters. It would be totally gratuitous. Having said that, it is REALLY hard to write from a teen or adult's perspective and not curse at all.

Not everyone considers the same words to be swear words, though. I use hell and crap, and I consider that cursing, but I know a lot of people don't think those are swear words.

Now I don't mind reading a manuscript that has a lot of cursing. I love Stephen King. I've read one or two published books where it didn't fit--the F bomb was thrown in to make it sound more "authentic teen voice," and it fell flat. But the exceptions to the rules usually stick out, and most of the time, reading curse words flows right and doesn't bother me a bit.

The thing is, when I'm really upset, when I'm feeling at the end of my rope and I can't figure out how to get out of a situation, it's natural for me to cross a blasphemy with a curse. Goddamn. That may be one of my favorite words. I don't say it much (I have kids) but I think it all the time. I differentiate my characters by the ones who curse and the ones who blaspheme. I feel more comfortable taking the Lord's name in vain when I'm emotional. I try to write around that, but sometimes it just fits, you know? My main character really does want to know why God hates her. (Sorry, honey, it's not God, it's just me.)

Are there any words you really want to use but find yourself holding back? Is it because you think editors won't like them? Or because you don't want all your characters to sound the same? Or because you don't want to lean on curse words like a crutch? After all, we're not all from Rochester.

-- Kate, Miss Perfecting the Pages

Authors & Sock Puppet Reviews

Tip of the Day: "Do or do not. There is no try." - Yoda Apply this to everything in your life and you'll discover how to use the force...or at least do your best and succeed. ;)

The big news this week in publishing is sock puppet reviews. John Locke, who sold over a million ebooks did it. Stephen Leather did it. Now RJ Ellory has been caught doing it.

I have used Amazon.com for years. How many? I think they went live when I was in college, so nearly fifteen years now. Those customer reviews are important to me as a reader and consumer. Did I believe every single review out there? Of course not. I'm not gullible. But I'd like to think most of them are real. Now I'm not sure.

Locke paid a service to buy his books and then review them. Reviewers were paid more for 5 star reviews. Leather and Ellory have fake accounts that they use to review their own books highly and then leave horrible reviews on other people's books.

What's even more scary? I know other authors who've done this. Who've outright admitted to me that this is the way to get sales. Any way to game the system to make more money, right? Needless to say, I've worked hard to disassociate myself with these authors.

What have I done for reviews? I have given free copies of my books to bloggers for totally honest reviews. No money involved. No promises of compensation. I've gotten some pretty horrid reviews off of those too...lol. I can't pay for that kind of abuse. ;)

For my latest release, The Sundering, I paid The Bookish Brunette to run my blog tour. She's finding the bloggers who will participate and coordinating what goes on what blog which day. The fee I paid isn't for positive reviews. I'm paying her to be my organizational guru for a few weeks. I've organized my own blog tours in the past. It's a relief to outsource all the work involved (and until you've done one, you have no clue how much time and effort is put into coordinating a tour).

Not all the bloggers on the tour are reviewing my books, but those who are got coupon codes for free downloads on Smashwords. It doesn't even count toward the all-important Amazon sales algorithms. Again, there's no guarantee I'll get a good review. I get what I get and that's okay with me. The point of a blog tour is exposure. Besides, there are plenty of NY Times Bestsellers I've read and hated...not everyone likes everything.

How do you know if a review is real or fake? Sigh...I wish I could tell you there was a reliable litmus test. Some people suggest looking at the reviewer's other reviews. OMG, do you know it could take hours to sort through that? I suggest talking to your friends or you'll end up like the girl in this State Farm commercial who says she believes everything on the internet:



What irks me most about this topic that is publishing has more drama than The Bold and the Beautiful (which I watch religiously). I enjoy soaps on TV because they aren't real. Why people purposely want to inject this kind of drama into their lives and the lives of others is beyond my understanding.

Work hard. Earn your accolades. If you get it honestly, good for you. But guess what? You aren't entitled to 5-star reviews just because you wrote a book. You only deserve them if the reader truly loved your novel and gives them to you.

The ONLY sock puppets I want to see from now on better look like this:



Megg, Miss Enchanted ePubber

On Serial Querying

Tip of the Day: I'm giving away a signed copy of Just Your Average Princess via the I Am a Reader, Not a Writer's Reading Clean Giveaway Hop. Stop by my blog to enter and then visit the other great blogs in the hop.

A link to this post on Serial Querying popped up in my facebook feed this week and since I'd never heard of the term I clicked on it. In the article the author says not to serial query agents. She says if she rejects your book then you need more time to become a better writer. This may be a phase or two or three further down the road. But don't send a query for another book when you're still in that same phrase as a writer. 

On one hand I can see how it would be annoying for an agent to get rapid fire queries from the same author. No one should ever pester someone that much. Agents aren't alone with this being an annoyance. But something about her saying to give it time until you've grown as a writer bothers me. I guess what it says to me is if I send you book A and you reject it, then I'm a weak writer. That we can't assume that Book A is just not right for you, or the current market, but that you're rejecting it solely because I'm a weak writer and need more time to develop my craft. So if I send you Book B, I'm only going to irritate you because I didn't take an additional 6 months to a year to improve my craft. 

Huh? I don't get this. I think every book is different. To me, I would think it would be fine to query various projects. You never know which is going to work. And if it's that you truly are a weak writer and truly need time to develop your craft, well then tell the writer that clearly so that he or she doesn't waste time querying you again. Anyone who has ever queried an agent or publisher knows there is a list of common phrases they use ("This isn't right for my list." "I don't think I could effectively place this in the current market." etc.) that they use over and over again but that don't really give guidance in why you're being rejected (unless you're lucky enough to get a personal rejection).

I've traditionally published three books. In that same time frame I've also had at least 4 additional books submitted to publishers that had been rejected. Should I not have tried other books? Other ideas? Should I have given up at the first rejection and worked on my writing for a year so I could grow? I don't think so. Not every agent/publisher is going to love every idea. I say throw the spaghetti. When I queried for my first agent I queried (not all at once, but in batches of 10-15) 100 agents. I signed with agent number 87. She sold my first book at auction for a two-book deal. I've since had the book translated in 6 different languages and sold film rights. Glad I didn't take a year off of querying to work on my craft.

Kristina, Miss Author in Action

Setting the Table (or Keeping the Business of Books Hospitable)

Tip of the Day: Taking a trip to Burlington, VT? If so, you must stay at this B&B! The Willard Street Inn is the epitome of fabulous location, grounds, staff, breakfast, and cookies. Total hospitality.

After reading Kate's post from Monday, I was inspired to blog about an adult non-fiction book that I am reading (a recommendation from my sister Andrea Lipomi, author of AMERICAN SPASPITALITY):

Danny Meyer is the successful restauranteur of 11 restaurants in NYC, and this book talks about how he got to where he is -- and the secrets to his continued success. Namely, hospitality.

Now I haven't finished reading it yet, but based on the first half and the words of my sister, Danny's thoughts on hospitality can apply to any business or service you offer -- not just food service.

For example, at a public library, the service you expect is checking out the materials you want. But extra hospitality in the library is when the library staff is happy to serve you, sees what you enjoy reading/viewing and recommends additional choices, tells you about other events coming up that you may enjoy, and genuinely wishes you a good day and thanks for their patronage.

If the library cannot give you the materials you seek, the staff focused on hospitality will offer options to get the items in as painful and quick a way as possible.

Now replay this scenario in a bookstore. Hospitality keeps people coming back. Booksellers who handsell midlist authors or other books the customers may not have picked up themselves show personal attention; they don't just point customers to the bestseller tables at the front of the store.

I'm not sure what my total point here is, lol, but I do know this:
1. We need bookstores and booksellers to talk to potential customers about books (ditto for libraries/librarians/patrons);
2. We need e-retailers to sell ebooks for immediate customer satisfaction (ditto for ebooks available through libraries);
3. The combination of (1) and (2) above is probably the best (a bookseller talks up Book A, customer is excited, bookseller sees the hard copies are sold out, customer can still immediately buy a copy for her ereader).

We need everyone who loves books to work together (read Megg's post from Friday for more on this) and keep the book buying/lending businesses/services hospitable to all.

Deena, Miss Subbing for Pubbing

A2A Chat with a Writing Coach (Victoria-Lynn Winning)

We are excited to chat with Victoria-Lynn Winning today on Author2Author. Victoria contacted us awhile ago to let us know she is starting a new venture as a writing coach. Since we were intrigued to learn what exactly a writing coach is, we invited her to chat with us about what she will be doing.

A2A: You are starting a new venture as a writing coach, tell us exactly what you will be helping writers with.

It will vary from writer to writer.  With a writer who has productive writing habits but can't seem to get anywhere with their current WIP, we would look at each aspect ~ characters, setting, plot, etc. ~ to see where the deepest tangles lie.  Say they had a good sense of the characters and liked writing snippets about them but weren't sure how to sustain that for an entire novel. The next steps would involve looking at the fundamentals of plot and pacing, and using a combination of prompts and brainstorming to figure out the underlying motivations of the characters and what's really driving the story.  One writer I've worked with had two POV characters but struggled with how to switch back and forth smoothly, especially as she wanted to stick to a more intimate, first-person viewpoint.  I suggested she look at Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, which starts from one character’s POV, then switches to the other partway through – right as an earthshattering event has occurred.  Everything we see from the second POV completely changes our perspective on what we already saw.  Paradigm shift!  It made for a very powerful story, and the writer I was working with was inspired to take a similar approach to her own novel.

Now, with a writer who knows what they want to write about but can’t bring themselves to sit down and do the work, it’s again a matter of examining different aspects, both of the story and the writer’s habits.  It might be that the story mechanics are sound but, after a long time away from writing, the writer's brain is no longer hard-wired to get the words down: maybe perfectionist tendencies are kicking in, or self-doubt.  Maybe the writing itself is challenging them in some way (using a POV they haven’t used before, or switching genres).  Again, we would combine brainstorming, prompts and discussion to figure out the issues and how to move forward.

Each writer will bring their own individual quirks to the mix, as will each story.  My goal is to work with these quirks and help the writer discover what it is that's holding them back, and give them the skills and tools they need to move forward independently.

A2A: This is an interesting option in the writing field, how did you come up with the idea and what inspired you to want to coach other writers?

I’ve had wonderful experiences coaching young actors and fellow dancers, so I decided to try and combine my love of mentoring/teaching and writing.  That, and I am a bit of an anomaly: writing is a very creative field, but I have always been keen on using the more logical, problem-solving side of my brain just as much as the more free-spirited right side.  I love coming at a challenge from an unusual angle and seeing just how to break it down, and in a way that makes sense for all involved.

A2A: Tell us about some of your experience with working with writers in the past.

Together with another writing friend, I read and critiqued chapters of a friend’s memoir on an ongoing basis.  We looked at both micro and macro issues, and brainstormed with her when she hit a standstill.  I find I get quite attached to projects I work on, even when they’re not my own, and it was so rewarding when she would email or call to say, “I had a good writing day today!” because there was that sense of progress that was so encouraging.  Even when things went into a slump, I thought of it more as a pause than a setback,  because in discussing with her what went wrong and figuring out how to get her moving again, we all learned something, and whatever it was would stay with her as she went forward, making her a stronger writer in the long run.

Another experience that comes to mind is the work I did - and am still doing - with a writer who had been writing snippets and coming up with vivid, fascinating ideas for years, but struggled with turning an idea into a story.  I think we forget sometimes, when we’ve been writing fiction for a while, how overwhelming it can be in the beginning.  In working together, she chose the idea that appealed to her most, and for which she already had a fair amount of notes: the first thing we did was figure out an organizational system to corral everything.  We then looked at how to take her character/plot/setting notes and transform them into a story.  The more time that passes, the more she takes to problem-solving independently, and problems that would have seemed insurmountable at one time now show themselves to be puzzles--puzzles with solutions.  It's so rewarding to see her move forward, now at a more consistent rate than ever.  She loves to write, and that’s really coming across in her work as it becomes stronger and stronger.

A2A: Will you be mentoring authors over all different types of genres or focusing on a few select ones?

The genres which lie deepest in my comfort zone are historical fiction, fantasy (urban, historical and traditional), contemporary fiction, chick-lit and mysteries.  Thrillers, science fiction, memoirs and romance are not quite as familiar to me, but I am learning fast.

A2A: What are some of your favorite books? This might help some of our blog readers that might be interested in a writing coach get to know you better as a writing professional and connect with what you like in your own reading.

I love that you used the phrase “some of”!  It would be so hard to narrow down the list otherwise.  Some of the ones that come to mind right off the bat are:

-          Maggie Stiefvater's Mercy Falls series

-          Audrey Niffenegger's Time Traveler's Wife

-          Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go

-          Louisa Edwards' Just One Taste

-          Molly Wizenberg's A Homemade Life

-          Melissa Anelli's Harry, A History

A2A: What's your favorite piece of advice for new writers? Same question for more experience writers?

For new writers: try not to get overwhelmed by all the different things there are to know and learn about writing.  You’ll drive yourself crazy and it may even make you want to stop writing altogether.  Instead, focus on one thing at a time.  If you’re struggling with pulling a cohesive plot together, read a book specifically on story structure (James Scott Bell’s Plot and Structure is one of my favorites) and look at some of your favorite books – the ones that keep you turning pages long past bedtime – to see how they build and sustain a satisfying plot.  Better yet, pick out something from the children’s section (I like using Joan Bauer's Rules of the Road), even if that’s not what you’re writing.  No matter what age you’re writing for, the essential principles of a good story still apply, and you may be more inclined to read and study the entire book than if you were leafing through an 80 to 100,000 word tome.

For more experienced writers: don't be afraid of change.  The writing routine that’s worked for you for the last two/three/seven years may not work anymore, and that’s okay.  Try something new.  If you've always written in one location, move around: sit on a bench, go to the beach, hike a mountain (and don’t forget to take your notebook with you!).  If you’re used to writing in silence, create a soundtrack for your current project, and listen to it every time you write until just hearing the opening notes makes your fingers itch to get typing.  And, when all else fails, talk to your characters.  They can tell you virtually anything you need to know about the story if you know how to listen.  Not sure exactly what your main character’s parents are fighting about?  Ask both of the parents – individually – what they would never tell the other person, and write the answer in first person, starting with, "I could never tell you …"  A heated confrontation is exactly the place where this kind of thing would come up!  (This is adapted from an exercise from Barbara DeMarco-Barrett's Pen on Fire.)

I'd also like to thank my wonderful hosts at Author2Author for allowing me to take the virtual stage for a day!

*** If you'd like to find out more about Victoria's new venture as a writing coach, she welcomes you to her website.  She is actively seeking new clients and would be delighted to hear from you.  You can also find her on Twitter and Blogspot.

Thanks for stopping by Victoria!

--Emily, Miss Querylicious and the A2A Girls

Brandwashing

Tip of the Day: A huge thank you to everyone who's liked our Author2Author Facebook page!

I've been reading Brandwashed by Martin Lindstrom, all about why we buy what we buy. He has some interesting thoughts. Basically, consumers are overwhelmed by choices. Marketers spend a lot of time narrowing down our choices so we'll buy more. That's the point of a bestseller list. It gives you the illusion that there are really only 20 books you need to worry about choosing from. It's also the point of e-book sites' "Top Staff Picks" (usually the top staff picks are the songs, movies, and books who have PAID to be the top staff picks).

In one experiment, Lindstrom went into a major bookstore chain and asked the employees to get rid of six of the seven display tables up front. Within a week, sales went up by 2%.

People want to buy curated things, things that have been approved, and no amount of corporate money carries the weight of good recommendations. People trust consumer recommendations more than anything else. No wonder we've been hearing about book recommendation scandals.

So what are we supposed to do to market ourselves? We can't fake scarcity in the e-book world; there will always be enough copies. But we can get people talking about us. We can tweet our good reviews and get people to like us on Facebook. (Lindstrom is huge believer in the power of Facebook.)

But I'm very, very curious to know if it's better for an author to have all her books on sale or just one of them. Sometimes B&N offers an author of the month (Nook Spotlight), and all of his or her works go on sale electronically. (Again, B&N is narrowing choices and creating the illusion that everyone will be reading these books.) Sometimes they only offer one of the author's books on sale. Right now their Spotlight author is Lynsay Sands, and it looks like her first book is on sale for 99 cents and her other books are on sale for $4.99. So it looks like B&N is hedging their bets: all her books are on sale but one is really, really on sale.

Also, e-book or ebook? I'm happy either way.

-- Kate, Miss Perfecting the Pages