Thrilled and terrified...

The release of a book is simultaneously thrilling and terrifying. Up till that moment the book has just had potential and promise. Now it is up to people to decide whether it is something they like and want to buy. Now readers will have a read and make up their own minds. As they should. My marketing and promotion strategy has always been kind of organic, and long term. Agent Janet Reid talks about the same sort of thing here and I think this has always been my philosophy. I'm not keen on being actively 'sold to' so I try to avoid doing this to others. And reading the phrase 'the next big thing, or 'by the next (insert famous author's name here)' about a new book hot off the press makes me grumpy. I want to hear what other readers think. Genuine word of mouth is not something you can manufacture.

Yet again there is much debate about the suitability of books for their target audience. In particular the winner of the 2014 Carnegie Medal, The Bunker Diary, by Kevin Brooks. Folk have been outraged that such a bleak book can win a prize. Because now more teens might read it. Nicola Morgan talks very thoughtfully about this fact, and our desire to protect young people, here.  I've talked about my stance on this issue before. I believe children and teens are self limiting and smart readers. There is no magic transformation into adulthood from adolescence. It can't happen in a vacuum. Teenagers must have access to information in order to become responsible, empathetic adults. Better that they read about difficult topics in a book, than have to experience them first hand in order to understand. Letting teens read books like The Bunker Diary might actually be a better form of protection for them.

And I loved this terrific smart response to that annoying article in Slate admonishing adults who choose to read YA books. It made my day. Because:

Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. - CS Lewis

But you should really go and read the whole thing. Or an extended version of CS Lewis's original article here.

When the grit hits the fan...

So t'other day in my post on not being a slave cos of the terrible sandals (there are other downsides too) where I linked to the lovely list of advice that authors should stop giving others here I mentioned I particularly liked anti-advice number 4 (Watch What You Say on the Internet). Honestly folks there are two reasons I can think of why it doesn't matter. One is that no one is listening/reading/watching in the first place (sorry but this does happen - if a tree falls in the forest etc...etc...etc...) and the second is that you don't have to say anything indecent, illicit, objectionable, questionable, or inflammatory for people to decide they dislike you and hurl great steaming gobs of vitriol your way. So whatever you say, they are capable of saying much, much, worse and not being punished or called out for it. I read this post here at an Awfully Big Blog Adventure with increasing horror. I'd already checked out Nicola Morgan's post here on the copyright furore over The Tobermory Cat (which was very interesting and a bit of an education in copyright and trademarking), but I was astounded that such things as hate blogs existed. Bullies are everywhere and I am shocked at the amount of vile, spleen and outright hatred they are full of. Scary, scary (and sad) stuff. Being successful and/or famous seems to be the main reason people become targets (well that'll keep me safe then won't it). Whatever happened to the concept of saying nothing at all if you couldn't think of something nice to say? I guess my point is, there's an extra layer to that bit of advice in number 4. As long as you are being yourself on the internet you will be able to defend, justify or apologize with sincerity for your actions when the grit hits the fan. That's all you can do. People can form crazy batshit opinions about you whether you do or say anything bad or not. You can't protect yourself by being squeaky clean and conservative so best to stick with your own truths and values and know that you can live with yourself no matter what happens.

Sorry, but that's just how it is....

I confess I have been a bit ambivalent in the past about copyright issues, and free-illegal downloads of material whether musical, visual or literary or otherwise. Kim Dotcom chooses to live here in New Zealand and I have looked askance at the way his home was raided and his family's life turned upside down (his wife was pregnant with twins at the time) as the FBI sought through local authorities to deal to Megaupload. I think the political and media agendas swirling around Mr Dotcom have muddied the waters somewhat. Partly I thought it was an insurmountable problem anyway - like a runaway iceberg or inertia. The floodgates have been opened and as we can't go back in time we just have to cope as best we can with the hand technology is dealing us. Partly I thought there could be long term tangible benefits in someone freely downloading my books (I still believe this is possible - Its another route to developing fans from a source we might not otherwise have access to). But this comment in particular from Nicola Morgan changed my mine and clarified the issue for me  - I don’t believe I have a right to earn a living from my writing. What I do believe is that if anyone is going to earn anything from my writing, that person should be me. Not only me, but me foremost, me in control. - you can read the whole post here. Nicola made lots of other terrific points but this one seemed to be the clincher for me. I also recommend following the link in Nicola's point 6. The other links in Nicola's post are probably excellent too I just haven't read them all yet.

I agree the folk who participate in the production or distribution and sale of my books with my consent should be able to share in the benefits of any income. But no affected individual should feel happy, that someone who had no involvement in the creation of the content he is allowing people to download, is making millions at the content providers' expense. Millions. Every year. This writing business is the thing I am good at. I spend my time creating content for books. Selling this content is how I attempt to generate income and if someone is giving it away on my behalf without my permission, or is associated with that process, and they are receiving income in doing so, then I feel LIVID. Stop and think how you might feel if some complete stranger, without your permission, received the income you were owed for the hours you worked (and please no cracks about the IRD here). And everyone around you just said, sorry, there's no point in complaining, everyone is doing it.


It is too, too easy to click a tab and download something illegally in the privacy of your home and the likelihood of being found out and punished is miniscule, and hey everyone does it, and no one will know and lets face it today's technology is just begging to be used this way and musicians and photographers and artists and writers and illustrators and, and, and, and just have to accept that this is how it is now and there are other ways that they can probably make money, I hear Countdown is hiring.........ARGHHHHH! Don't be a part of this problem folks, be part of the solution.

Your title is a grain of sand on the world's beaches...

I have felt sick and overwhelmed by the sheer volume of books available on Amazon and talked about on sites like Goodreads. Every day there are more. New series or their offspring being published at a rate of knots by traditional and not so traditional publishers. Plenty are being given away for free. And what chance do I have in the face of so much competition for the reader's attention.  Jeff Bennington says over at The Writing Bomb your book is just one in a sea of books and I feel like I am drowning in that sea. If no one knows who you are why will they pick up your book instead of someone else's. The only path out of obscurity is by building your platform. As Mr Bennington says, there is no quick answer to growing an audience. And in the early stages it may seem as if we are not achieving any kind of growth at all. You can pop up on every book-fan site and comment on 5 blogs a day as recommended, beg friends to review you on Amazon and still not sell a single copy. And then when growth shows we may have already overstepped the too-much-promotion mark. I think we overcompensate by doing as much as we can possibly do, then end up writing less and annoying the pants off people as Nicola Morgan suggests in a recent post over at an Awfully Big Blog Adventure where she asks 'Do You Do Too Much Promotion'. To avoid book obscurity we flaunt ourselves and our wares in every venue available to us. Nicola wisely points out that too much can be a bad thing and as a citizen of the world I have to concede I am suffering from over-promotional fatigue. I feel inundated by product placement, this is the best-largest-smallest-most efficient-cheapest-most luxuriant messages, and sheer variety of products/experiences/interactions/services from which I must choose as I go about my daily life. I don't want to be one of these people flogging myself, my brand and my product in a loud voice to people suffering information overload.  But if I don't promote and work on growing my audience, is obscurity guaranteed? I cannot keep selling to the same twenty friends and family members. Some promotion would seem essential. How much is too much? Where is the tipping point? And as Nicola says, if we promote and then don't actually follow up our first book with another book we run the risk of having our audience drift off like a school of krill on a heavy swell. Successful writers succeed because they keep supplying their fans with something new to enjoy.

Somewhere is a balance between writing and promoting/building a fan base. I think the balance shifts depending on a variety of factors like dates of publication, number of titles, any unsolicited praise/reviews or awards, experience, other events. I think Nicola is right - you have to keep writing to make any kind of promotion pay long term dividends and too much promotion will make your writing suffer. Bennington has a point too - building an audience is a slow (sometimes glacially so) process that never really stops. My award winning picture book The Were-Nana came out in 2008 but reading it aloud the other day won me some new fans.