Archive for the ‘Publishing’ Category
How to Handle Rejection as a Writer: It’s Not You, It’s Me…
Rejection is not always a reflection on you or your work. In fact, there are many good books and articles rejected each day for a variety of reason.
Good books are rejected because of similar books.
You may have a great idea and you may be an incredible writer, but if someone has written a similar book, especially for your publisher, you may be out of luck. In addition, there may be projects in a publisher’s pipeline that you could never know about unless you submitted your proposal.
That isn’t to say that different publishers will back away from your book if there are similar books. You just need to show that it has a unique message or perspective that distinguishes it from its competition.
Good books are rejected because of different focuses at a publisher.
You may have addressed an important topic, and that topic may be within the interests of a publisher, but perhaps you wrote a book that didn’t strike the right angle or genre for that publisher. One publisher may aim for literary books, while others may opt for the academic route.
Good books are rejected because of cuts or changes with editors.
Sometimes publishers may change their focus or even eliminate a line of books. With new editors come new criteria for accepting books. Editorial changes will mean a book that may have been accepted a few months ago will no longer work for a publisher. Timing and luck are huge factors when pitching book and article query letters.
Good books are rejected because editors don’t always know what they want.
While publishers have guidelines and specifications, they don’t always know what book would work best. This is something that some editors themselves have admitted. See editorial veteran Leonard Goss’ endorsement for my new book A Path to Publishing.
That doesn’t mean that all editors are fickle and indecisive, and you should never tell them what they want. Rather, they always aren’t able to know what exactly will work and what will not. There are plenty of stories of best-selling books passing through a series of rejections before finding success. The moral is that editors are human like you and me, and that publishing is not an exact science—as it should be.
Good books are rejected because of publicity concerns.
Even if you’ve written a great book, some publishers may reject your proposals because they fear they’ll be unable to market it to a particular group of people or that you aren’t popular enough to promote it. Those are big problems for writers to deal with, but at least they aren’t necessarily marks of a poorly written book.
In addition, if you are able to write a good book, you can certainly work on raising your profile and reworking your material so that it speaks more directly to an audience of readers. These are big problems, but they don’t spell doom for you as a writer.
How to Handle Rejection as a Writer
I’ve spoken to rooms full of writers and have looked into the eyes of many who fear the very real possibility of receiving a rejection letter for their novels or nonfiction works. Writing is an emotional business in which people invest heavily in very personal and meaningful ideas and characters.
Rejection is just about the worst thing a writer can imagine besides publishing a book that is hated by readers and critics. Both possibilities sound pretty terrible, but rejection is the one thing that every writer who hopes to publish a book or article has to face from the start.
Even well-known authors with a history of successful books have to sometimes face rejection. Legendary Christian writer Frederick Buechner has published shelves worth of fiction and nonfiction, but even his latest book, The Yellow Leaves, was rejected by his life-long publisher. He had to take it elsewhere before landing a book deal.
Rejection is a real issue that every writer has to deal with in one way or another.
I had intended to write this series last week, but a few other projects and a persistent head cold pushed it back to this week. Tune in tomorrow, and I’ll discuss the nature of rejection in the business of writing.
How to Make the Most of Your Writing Time: #1 Categorize Your Tasks
When we talk about ways to make the most of your writing time, I know it’s tempting to begin with talk about setting our priorities straight. However, I don’t think we can discuss priorities until we take the time to categorize our tasks.
This can be a difficult exercise because we’re essentially evaluating the nature and benefits of each task. Does it pay well? Does it build community? Does it drain time without delivering on either of these benefits? Here are a few basic categories you can use, though there surely are others you can add to your own list:
Not Paid for Original Content. Community and Experience Building: Sharing original content on a personal or community blog is an excellent way to build community. None of these things pay the bills, but it’s important to build your experience as a writer and to contribute to your community of colleagues and readers.
Not Paid for Recycled Content. Community and Audience Building: There are blogs, web sites, and online magazines that may not pay, but are too good to pass up if you’re a writer who wants to reach a wider group of readers with your helpful information. You can’t think of original content for every site out there, but many web sites and magazines will accept previously posted/published material that you’ve rewritten from a different perspective. There will be more discussions and hopefully you’ll expand your network of colleagues and friends. By exploring different angles of previous posts and articles you keep your output and community high without facing too many blank pages each day.
Paid, low: Some magazines will pay, and therefore you should take some time to pick a few that you feel best embody the kind of writing you do and the kind of audience you want to reach. Even if the pay doesn’t add up to a respectable hourly wage, there is much value in partnering with a magazine to produce great content for the ideal group of readers. In addition, you can recycle some ideas you’ve already posted on your blog, provided you revise them. You can also make a little money through your web site.
Paid, high: The high-paying projects, whether for books or magazines, carry a high risk of rejection, but the right partnership can pay off in many ways. Be careful about investing all of your time into the high-paying projects, but make sure you have several in the works in order to ensure you’ll have a chance to make enough money to help pay the bills.
The Complete List: Five Great Things That Don’t Sell Lots of Books… And Two Things that Do
Five Great Things That Don’t Sell Lots of Books…
These are all essential and important details that can help you sell books, but they are not the most important factors in selling a book.
Two Things That Sell a Lot of Books…
These are the two most important factors in selling books according to my own experience and to other authors I know.
Two Things That Sell a Lot of Books: #1 A Well-Written Book Targeted to an Audience
There are many factors that determine whether a book sells. After taking my own crack at publishing and reading about the experiences of other writers, I’ve learned about the things I’ve done well and the areas where I need to improve. I’m speaking pretty specifically about my experiences with nonfiction writing, though I’d say that a fiction writer, with a few tweaks here and there, could generally follow the same principles.
While authors can’t control the economy, the trends in popular culture, and even unexpected reader preferences, there are two factors that will disproportionately influence how well their books sell.
Today we’ll cover the first thing that sells a lot of books: A well-written book that is targeted to a specific but wide audience.
Writers can’t simply sell books based on the merit of an idea or the quality of their writing—though these things are very important. They need to write clear sentences, paragraphs, and chapters that guide readers from chapter to chapter and convince them to keep reading and, on a related note, address the needs of a wide but specific audience.
Write Clear Chapters That Engage Readers
After reading what other writers do when composing drafts of their books, I’m often impressed with the number of drafts they complete and the detail of their revisions. They think about word choice, introductions, conclusions, transitions, and edit with a fine-tooth comb several times. The amount of text some delete is astounding.
Good writing isn’t an accident.
My own editor encouraged me to think about why I’m making a particular point, how it relates to the next point, and how each point ties in with the larger argument or concept of my book. As I read bestselling authors I’ve noticed their skill at hooking readers with an problem, a concept, or a mystery. They convince me that I need to keep reading in order to find that information.
Step-by-step, a good book walks readers through a story, an argument, or lesson. The writer can’t abandon the reader part-way through the book. No matter how good the idea or how important the information, if readers feel overwhelmed with information or confused by dots that aren’t connected, they’ll put the book down. Typically, writers will fail in this regard because they have ignored the closely related principle of writing for an audience.
Address the Needs of an Audience
While good writing is important, authors must also adopt a targeted approach to their book’s intended audience. Besides merely addressing a need of potential readers, authors should address that need in a way that is accessible and hopefully remarkable. When many readers find themselves inserting caveats such as “I liked this book, but I found it hard to follow at times…” some wind is taken out of its word-of-mouth appeal.
I have learned how easy it is to get wrapped up in covering my bases or in addressing every possible angle of a topic that I miss readers in the process. Most readers of my book don’t take any issue with my ideas, but some weren’t too happy about the amount of information I included. Though many readers were tracking with me, I’ve found that I sometimes warn new readers, who may be completely new to theology, about two chapters in particular that are a bit… dense. In other words, my desire to be thorough trumped my ability to connect with all of my intended readers.
We can pick up books from the library, look up information online, and hear authors talk about their books on the radio, therefore, if writers want readers to say, “I really need to own that book,” and to take the next step of saying, “All of my friends need to own that book too,” we need to get into the minds of our audience. This is an ongoing struggle to figure out the best way to connect our ideas with the preferences and needs of our readers.
It’s easy enough to think of an idea or concept that may appeal to a wide group of people, but to present that idea in a way that addresses the questions and concerns of a broad group of readers, meets a felt-need, walks readers through step-by-step, and prompts them to tell others is the holy grail of publishing—that is, if you ask me.
The next step…
Our next topic in this series will be the second thing that sells a lot of books: A Trusted Name with an Extensive Platform
Also in this series: Five Great Things That Don’t Sell a Lot of Books
Five Great Things That Don’t Sell Lots of Books: #5 A Web Site
It’s common wisdom today that every author needs a web site. A web site is a lynch pin for any social media strategy, and it is an essential place where authors can build up an audience of readers. Seth Godin tells authors to invest about three years into making a web site successful.
To really make a web site work takes quite a bit of time and effort.
For starters you need to develop a plan for composing posts and learning how to write for a blog. A good place to start includes:
- Writing a series each week on a particular topic.
- Keeping your word count to a lean 200-400 words.
- Focusing on “How to” content to make sure you connect with readers.
Besides this you’ll need to make sure your web site is optimized for search engines, that your posts appear on social media, and that you’re leaving useful comments on the sites of fellow bloggers. Are you feeling a bit dizzy yet? Well, I’m leaving a lot out!
The trouble is that authors can invest a ton of time into their web sites and even draw a nice crowd of readers without necessarily succeeding in selling a lot of books. In addition, a web site can fall on hard times when writing and promoting a book comes into play—especially for writers who have day jobs!
Great content and high numbers of readers are certainly important for any author looking to promote his/her work. Readers need to be able to find you and to learn about your writing based on your site.
However, a web site is not an active marketing tool. Rather, it’s more of a landing and conversion tool. Marketing campaigns need a web site that readers can visit, but having a web outpost does not guarantee readers. Web sites can be designed poorly or marketing can fail to draw in readers.
By all means invest in a web site, but don’t forget there are two other things you can do that may well effectively sell more books in the long run… That’s where we’re going next.
The rest of this series:
A Web Site
Two Thing That Do
A well-written book that is targeted to a specific but wide audience.
A Trusted Name with an Extensive Platform
Five Great Things That Don’t Sell a Lot of Books: #4 Online Social Media
Social media is possibly the hardest topic on this list to write about because there will be exceptions to what I have to say, and cultivated properly, social media can do quite a bit to spread the word about a book. Once something goes viral an author may well have it made.
While there is much to commend about building up a presence on social media, and it can work over time, I’ve spoken with plenty of experienced publishers and marketing experts who caution authors about the danger of giving up on traditional marketing tools in favor of, as one put it, sitting at their computers all day to do online networking.
Don’t get me wrong, it can be incredibly powerful, especially when someone can read something you’ve written or a video you’ve made and click through to a sample of your book and then a sales page.
However, many times social media may only result in more blog views, followers, and interest rather than actual book sales. Online tools may still only make a weak connection with readers.
You can take Seth Godin’s discussion of faux followers vs. viral growth as a great example of this. Someone could spend a lot of time amassing followers on Twitter or friends on Facebook, but how many of these connections will actually become invested in your book, buy it, read it, and tell their friends about it? Godin suggests, “A slightly better idea defeats a much bigger but disconnected user base every time,” but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
In order for book sales and referrals to happen, you certainly need to use social media and to become a contributing member of the community. However, for people to actually buy your book there needs to be a bit more going on than a weak social media connection. While social media is essential, it’s not powerful enough on its own to help authors put books into the hands of readers.
The rest of this series:
Online Social Media
A Web Site
Two Thing That Do
A well-written book that is targeted to a specific but wide audience.
A Trusted Name with an Extensive Platform
Five Great Things That Don’t Sell a Lot of Books: #3 Reviews
We’ve all picked up a movie at the video store with a great blurb on the cover from someone at a major newspaper who said, “Best film of the year!” Little did we know:
a) This person said this on January 2nd.
b) This person doesn’t like the same kinds of movies as yourself.
I’ve found that with friends and family it can be very hard to recommend a book or a movie. At a recent gathering of friends several discussed their take about the Twilight series. To a person they all thought the books were poorly written, but some admitted that the books made for great leisure reading.
Since books can serve a variety of functions, providing an escape or valuable information, it’s hard to discern based on a review and even a friend’s recommendation whether a book will be a good fit. A reviewer may praise an author’s use of description and ability to set a scene, but perhaps the story doesn’t connect. A review may lambast an author for writing a book lacking essential information about a topic, but perhaps you found just enough to make it helpful.
Reviews are a wonderful tool for drawing attention to worthy books. They may play a significant role in convincing some readers, who may have been sitting on the fence, to pick up a book.
However, when it comes to making that personal connection with readers a review is still a very limited marketing tool. Reviews should be part of every author’s publicity plan, but a good review does not automatically translate into book sales. Those who rely on them to do this will only be disappointed.
The rest of this series:
Great Reviews
Online Social Media
A Web Site
Two Thing That Do
A well-written book that is targeted to a specific but wide audience.
A Trusted Name with an Extensive Platform
Five Great Things That Don’t Sell a Lot of Books: #2 A Great Forward
Besides lining up a great group of endorsers, I also asked a very popular author and blogger to write the forward for my book. I reasoned that any kind of positive endorsement from him would lead to instant sales.
However, the more I talked with people about the forward, I realized that many hadn’t even noticed it. Once they read it, they found it a persuasive case for buying my book. However, I began to realize that forwards aren’t quite as powerful a force for book sales than I had imagined.
The forward certainly leant me a little more credibility and I’m very glad that I had it, but it wasn’t the earth-shattering force that I expected it to be.
While a great forward should be the goal of any author, we can make the mistake of trusting things such as endorsements or forwards to do a lot more than they are designed to do. I’m very grateful for my colleague’s kind words, but his forward could only do so much by way of actually selling books.
I didn’t realize that selling lots of books had more to do with my own abilities.
The rest of this series:
A Great Forward
Great reviews
Social Media
A Web Site
Two Thing That Do
A well-written book that is targeted to a specific but wide audience.
A Trusted Name with an Extensive Platform
My Other Web Sites
Special Offers