Dozen Observations (Part 2)

I'm a little late posting the continuation of the original post. But finding time is difficult between working full-time outside of the home during the day, mothering my two children (which includes homework duty), and trying to find time to write. Adding to matters in this interval was the distraction of reading many books of other authors and the posting of reviews for some of them. I'm actually still working on the project as there were many, many books that interested me. However, a break to address my own needs is necessary.

So to continue my dozen observations --

4) The easy part is writing the book, and writing a book is not an easy task. To what am I referring, you may be wondering - unless you are a writer and you know? I'm referring to the challenge of promoting a book.

Unless the author is a household name already, these days publishing a book is like being a small fish in the ocean. This is true whether you are self-published or you have a traditional publisher behind you. But with a traditional publisher, based on what I have read, the author's ocean is the shelving spaces in the bookstore and the decisions on how many copies of the book are printed.

So, either way, the author is a fish (except Stephen King and the like, who are dolphins jumping gracefully out of the water to the oos and aahs of the sea world visitors who have come to see just that). The unknown author fish might have beautiful stripes and a zip in its swim, but except for predators, he or she is mostly lost in the large body of water among numerous other fish. That works well for the little fish that wants to hide in the crevices in the rocks and between the plants. But an author wants readers and you can't get those by hiding.

That being said, in getting "noticed" there are numerous contradictions to manage. The common advice available all over the internet tells you that you must market through social media. Yet you aren't really supposed to market in the traditional sense. If you do, you might annoy people and turn them off from reading your book. At the same time, when you step back and just interact without even mentioning your book, how does anyone actually notice you have a book for sale, or know why they might even be interested in your book.

There are those that say an author needs to build "social capital" before you can post a "buy my book type ad." But how much social capital do you need first and what does that look like? So an author might spend hours searching for or making content that might not be seen by many people anyway, trying desperately to market without marketing. Then maybe the person viewing it might stop and then click on my profile and then from there click on my Amazon and Barnes and Noble link and actually buy the book.

But when I think about how I last picked a book to buy (before I was author and interacting with other authors), I realize that I went to the bookstore and browsed the shelves for something that caught my eye, or I did a search on Amazon or Barnes and Noble for something that jumps out as interesting. But an unknown author will likely not be found in the local bookstore (or at least no easily), and will likely be buried so far down the search results list, that the average reader will never find the author's book. To rank higher, the author needs many sales. But to get sales the book has to be discoverable. So, there you go - the chicken and the egg problem of being an unknown author.

So what do we do when we get frustrated with this problem? We go on the hunt for inspiration memes to post on our Twitter accounts. If you're like me, you do this for at least two reasons.  One is that all of those blogs that tell us that we need to be social on Twitter and other social media places seem to recommend the posting of inspirational memes. The other is that the memes we find uplift us enough that we can jump back into the fight to get noticed. At least they do for me (dream big, never give up, etc.). After all, you can't be successful if you give up when the going gets hard.

Finally, in this item - my last contradiction. Some of us authors find our creativity not by being extroverts and social butterflies, but by being at least somewhat introverted and more comfortable in own creative imaginations than we might be at a party. We might be nerds, or intellectuals with few peers, or the person at the party who would rather be along the walls observing the more amusing, outgoing people - you know, the ones who frequently get told, "You're so quiet. Are you sure you're having fun?" Thus, the contradiction is that we're told we have to be social extroverts on social media in order to sell our books. But although most of us would love to talk about our books with readers and would have no problem socializing for that reason, I get a sense that many of us would rather be writing, rather than conversing over other topics just to market indirectly. But as I said above, we're told that if we talk too much about our books, then we are marketing them directly and that's a bad thing.

All that being said, I love to interact with readers. In fact, I welcome feedback from readers and would be more than happy to answer questions. And, if I get comments to the comments, communications, or other material I put out there, I would love to engage in discussion. What's hard is trying to create the topic that starts the dialogue that's nothing about my book series hoping that it gets the books noticed.

5) Speaking of predators - Remember, I mentioned the little fish and the risk they have from predators. Those of us who put our hearts and souls into writing stories that we hope readers will enjoy (and tell us so), and then we can't get attention to ourselves so that we can find the readers, we are prone to be preyed on.

Who might prey on us you might ask? That would be the many professional and marketing services that need to be vetted for legitimacy.

Among those are marketing services that tell us we shouldn't be so frustrated with marketing our books on our own. We should just give our money to them so that they can market the books for us. It sounds great, and it's so tempting. But it's very difficult to determine which marketing "services" would just pocket the money and do nothing, which services will try in good faith to market the books but are no more effective than the author could already do for him or herself, and those services that are like finding diamond in a pile of boring, old, worthless rocks. I'm fairly certain the diamonds are out there but it's hard to tell who they are. Perhaps, though, I am also just overwhelmed by all of the choices.

The message here is that authors do need help and can't do everything (at least most of us) but we do have to be careful who we give our money to and we need to carefully evaluate whether there is a good chance of a return on investment.

Btw, I wouldn't be surprised if this post doesn't lead to numerous emails from some of those marketing services with bright claims of being the diamond that I just said exists. Then I'll be even more overwhelmed.

Then there are the numerous companies offering professional services for publishers/writers. I have used some, too, as authors do need professional services to success - editing, proofing, cover design, etc. But it is necessary to research carefully to make sure they are worth the money.  Luckily, I have found service providers for all of these services with whose work I am very happy.

I have, however, received letters and emails from "publishers" who claim to have seen my work and have been impressed by it and want to publish my self-published books. But when I've looked them up, I have found evidence that they might not be as they want me to believe. They often turn out to be advertising services they want us to pay for. So, we independent authors have to be very careful to check anyone and everyone who wants to offer us a service to ensure that the service is legitimate and worth the money.

6) Something positive - I have learned that although I love being an attorney - my day job - I have found great fulfillment in the writing of stories. Some day, I suspect that I may want to quit my day job and write full time. And, despite all of the challenges/hurdles along the way that must be faced to be successful, I enjoy the creative work so much that it's all worth it.

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That's enough for now. If you've read this and you've reached the end, please feel free to leave some comments. If they are kind, I shall respond. :)