Gleek Marketing

I was just thinking over the weekend about how my DH and I met. (It's a funny little story which I've shared here before so I won't bore you with it again.) But I'm also on Facebook and always wondering what to put on my wall that might be entertaining. So for a lark I typed:


Met my DH in college chorus. We were Gleeks before it was cool. Where did you meet your sweetie?

In short order I had 15 comments, little vignettes of those super-charged, hormone-rich days of first love.

The immediate and accidental success of those 3 sentences in eliciting a response made me think about marketing.

I never took any marketing classes in college--too busy being a total "gleek"--so when I sold my first book and was told I'd need to promote it, I was adrift. I had no idea where to begin. Still don't. I have no clue when something I fling into cyber-space will get a response or when it will hit the firewalls of readers' psyches with a resounding thud. But I know running around shouting BUY MY BOOK, BUY MY BOOK is annoying and counterproductive.

So I thought back to my days of gleekdom, when the first rule of performance was: Connect with the audience.

When you're singing, this means making eye contact and letting the lyrics show on your face. When I'm in cyberspace, all I have are words, but the goal is the same. Making the connection.

We're human. We're readers. Our life experiences may be wildly different, but we all love, hurt, exult, suffer. Finding common ground isn't that hard.

The second rule of performing was: Be genuine.

It must be real. There is arguably no artistic merit in the "Pants on the Ground" song which has recently gone viral, but the fellow who created and performed it did so with complete conviction. We respond to real.

If you remember Eddie Haskell, you know we all hate phonies. Everyone has unique gifts (hence the premise for my What kind of Genius are YOU? Quiz). Don't try to fake someone else's style. Use yours. If that happens to be a slightly shy, midwestern personality with a sense of humor only the DH gets all the time, so be it.

Turn a weakness into a strength.

I had a really good ear as a kid. My auditory memory was fantastic. At each piano lesson, I'd ask my teacher to play through the piece for me so I could hear how it was supposed to sound. Then I remembered the rhythmic patterns. As a result, my piano teacher never realized that I couldn't read rhythm worth shooting. Once I got to college as a music major, my deficiency was pretty glaring, but I was too embarrassed to admit how bad I was at timing. So I taught myself, painfully and privately, to read rhythm. Now, it's one of my strengths.

When I started blogging, I was terrified by the idea of recording my thoughts online for all time. Then I realized it's not about just my ramblings. If I do it right, I get to hear what my readers think too! I've made friends with people all over the globe through this blog. Blogging with you has become one of the best perks of being published.

And lastly: Leave it all on the stage.

Don't hold back. Don't mark (sing with half a voice). Give the audience everything you've got every single time. Do your best.

All the clever marketing in the world won't save a mediocre book. My goal is to deliver the best story I can with each book I write. It may not be Shakespeare, but it's from my heart. And every time I turn in a manuscript, I want to feel that it's the best thing I've ever written. Ultimately, the writing is the only thing I can control in this business.

So now it's your turn. If you're a reader, what's the most annoying thing an author has ever done to try to catch your attention? (Please share so we can keep from doing it again!) If you're a writer, what's the most effective marketing strategy you ever used?

Or if you like, please share how you and your sweetie met? I'm all ears!

A Peek into the Future . . .

I was reading the Huffington Post this morning and someone was prognosticating about what changes we can expect in publishing for 2010.

Unless they have a crystal ball, I'm not sure anyone can predict what's coming for this volatile business. Just look at the surprises of the past.

Who could have predicted the runaway success of the Twilight series? Who would have guessed that Harlequin would open an unsavory can of worms with their foray into self-publishing? No one forsaw the sad loss of Kate Duffy, an editor of legendary stature in the romance community. Or what fear monger would have warned us of the demise of Andersen--the disaster that left tons of books moldering in storage instead of hitting the shelves on their release dates? 2009 is a year most publishing houses are happy to see gone (with the exception of the one who holds the rights on Twilight!)

But the good folk at Huffington have some predictions for us. Here's the Emily's Digest version of them.

1. Several publishing houses will merge. That seems like a safe prediction. When times get tough, strong companies gobble up their competitors. If it saves editorial jobs, it might not be a bad thing.

2. Fewer titles will be published. This is a double-edged sword for authors. Those who are published should be given more marketing support from the publisher, but it'll be a case of "them that got shall get." Brand name authors will do fine. Newbies may get short shrift. Midlisters may find themselves in limbo.

3. More writers will opt to self-publish. This prediction disturbed me. I don't think it's a good choice for writers and RWA National seems to agree with me, judging from their decisive reaction to the Harlequin vanity press. I know it's frustrating to submit without getting a contract, but we grow as writers with each "no."

4. The YA market will expand. As the populace ages, young readers will take up the slack. New methods of delivering books, like Dorchester's foray into serialized stories for cell phones, will be the wave of the future.

I have no idea what will happen in 2010. All I can control in my career is my own writing. And since author numbers will be more important than ever, I can support my favorite authors by buying their new releases during the first week.

But I do have one prediction I feel confident of--I will read new books that touch my heart this year and I'll bet you will too. Let's agree to share them here regularly!

What do you think will happen in publishing in 2010?

Happy Reading & Writing!

Galley Time

The lifecycle of a novel is a long one. First I submit a proposal to my editor. This usually consists of three chapters and a synopsis. If she likes what she sees, she makes my agent an offer. They haggle a bit and finally everything is agreed upon.And we're off to the races.

I may or may not adhere to my original synopsis and in the case of VEXING THE VISCOUNT, this story didn't even have a title. It was the option book in a 2 book contract, so I had free rein for the story. That's both liberating and terrifying. Even before my editor reads the story, she writes the back cover blurb and gets the art department working on the cover. I have some imput at this point, but no veto power. I'm writing like a demon, fear nipping my heels. I might finish the entire novel and turn it in, only to have my editor hate it. (She didn't, thank heaven! In fact, she loves VEXING more than my PIRATE book)

Once I turn the manuscript in (about 9 months prior to publication) my editor takes a crack at it, suggesting revisions while the manuscript is also shopped out to a copy editor who minds all my P's and Q's. I take a look at the revisions and my editor and I negotiate changes. This part of the process is exciting. The book begins to sparkle like a gem.

Then the revised manuscript is turned over to an editorial assistant who formats it into its final form, called a galley. In a galley, the book is printed two pages to a sheet of paper in the same size font as the book will appear. The galley for VEXING THE VISCOUNT arrived in the mail today. This is my last chance to make changes in the manuscript, but there's a caveat. At this point, the book's already been typeset. Every change costs money so there is no re-writing now. If there's a typo or a mistake that will alter the meaning of the sentence, I can make a change, but I need to be judicious about it. YOu may wonder why some books have errors in them. This is why.

Sometimes, things pop up in galleys that weren't in my original manuscript. Sometimes entire sentences. They stand out to me like a cuckoo's egg. I have no idea who added them--an eager-beaver copy editor? Who knows? There are plenty of cooks working on this soup. I try to have the "not mine's" struck out.

So next week, I'll be re-reading VEXING THE VISCOUNT for the last time before I fling it to the world. Wish me luck!