Doing Radio Interviews for a Book

You have only fifteen minutes maybe less except for the shows that let you roll thirty minutes. Those are the ones where you can stretch your legs and get into the meat of the book but for  many drive time shows you have less than ten minutes to get your point across and if you blow it there is no do  over because it is live. And so you wait for the phone to ring and set yourself up in a quiet room and tell everyone you are on the radio and please don't open that door or call out my name while I'm on the phone.

So you have your coffee and your notes and you have to be careful not to ramble and not speak too fast but you don't want to squander your time either. Getting a book down to sound bytes that will come across while someone is driving down the expressway is tricky. You have to hit the high points and your book may be three hundred pages but you can only get across a few moments that will stay with the listener  and hopefully get him to buy your book.

So it is one minute now. You have two phones ready in case one fails. The producers usually call right on the minute. And there it is. Hi, Is this William? Yes. Ok. Sixty seconds and you are on. So now you can hear the show. It is buzzing in your ear. A commercial. And then you are on. You will either do this or not. The show sounds distant and then it gets loud, there is a long hiss and now you are live. And we have author William Hazelgrove and his new book Forging A President to tell us about Teddy Roosevelt, William, welcome to the show!

You're on.

The Marc Bernier Show interview on Forging

Order Forging A President

The Funny State of Literature

The vapidity of winter probably is a good metaphor for what has happened to literature in the year 2015. It is cold out. Zero. The wind whips against the windows and nothing really moves. As I read Richard Fords Let Me Be Frank With You it is clear what has happened to serious writing in this early part of the twenty first century. It has gone the way the of the LP and the CD. It is simply not relevant to a large segment of the population.

Harper Lee is bringing out a rejected manuscript. Why would an old woman do that who has a secure place in literary history? But of course content is king and so the more the better. Amazing this modality should nibble at the stalwart of classic lit but there you have it. We don't know if she wanted it out there or someone else but it doesn't really matter. What matters is there has been a watershed and there is no going back.

We are writers brought up on filmic imagery. Our scenes are much more relevant to a Parenthood than a reader of E. M. Foresters A Passage to India. It happened to the music industry. The same juggernaut that has pumped out elevator vocalists from American Idol now pumps it out from Dystopian set pieces like Divergent or randy Army manuals like Fifty Shades of Gray.  It isn't so much that any of this is so bad its just that it is not so good.

Then you read Richard Ford and you remember again that literature was never about that. It was about cracking the existential moment. The wonder of being alive in the year 2015. And it is still there but people would have you believe it is not. There is much more money to be made in pulp than art. But like the winter that howls even now. There is that suspicion we are mortal.  And the great consolation is this.

Literature will live on despite our best intentions.

www.williamhazelgrove.com

The Pitcher...Library Guild Selection

 

Pricing Ebooks in Todays Market

The problem is nobody knows how to price an ebook. The publishers don't and neither do the authors because there is no floor and the market is in flux. Nobody knows where the threshold lies for a book without a physical presence. How do you price something that costs nothing to produce? And whats worse how do you price something that a lot of people are giving away for free?

That is the hell of todays publishing market. There is no way to set a market. In the print book arena there was always production costs so you had to cover that and make a little. This kept everyone from going too low too fast. But in the ebook market the race to the bottom is very quick. In fact some people start out at the bottom and go up from there. The inverse of a print book. The problem is you are trying to find where people will buy and the maximum price point.

It is this intersection that the rubics cube of ebooks can be solved. You cant set your price too high or you will kill the market. You cant set it too low or people will think your book is not worth anything and pass over it. You need to find the middle and this comes from experimenting. What will work with one book and one author will not necessarily work with another.

So really like the internet it is the Wild West. There will be a point where it settles down but don't look for that anytime soon. We are really just getting started.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher

Doing A Great Radio Interview

I just did  an interview on WGN in Chicago  and it occurred to me there are some basic rules to all radio interviews that will allow you to have a great interview.  First. You get there early. You don't want to be late ever. I would say arrive at least an hour early maybe two. Why? So you can calm down. For WGN I arrived two hours early and went to a Starbucks and then I went to Billy Goats tavern and had a burger. You  want to be relaxed and leading by a couple hours will allow you to get yourself orientated.

 My early interviews were very amped up and I talked way too fast.  I just felt I had to get it all in.
Now I just chat with the interviewer and don't worry about getting every bit of information. If the interviewer is good then he will cover you and make sure all the listeners get the vitals.
Chat with the radio host before the interview. This allows you both to get to  know each other and allows the give and take to occur that is so essential to a good interview. Really you are just having a conversation and anything that allows that conversation to come easier is good. So now the red light has just come on and you are on the air.

Don't let the red light freak you out. It happens. Especially at a big station where hundreds of thousands of people are listening. If you think about that then you might freeze. The thing to do is just focus on the host and forget about that big microphone staring you in the face. Just talk and before you know it you will be walking out of the studio with the knowledge that people have just heard a great interview.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
Real Santa

Shelf Space or why Books Fail

Books fail for the same reason they always have. NO ONE SEES THEM. Lets assume your book is good. Lets assume you have the reviews. Your book still fails. Now why is that? Once upon a time there were only the bookstores. The bookstores had shelf space. Limited shelf space. Your book came out and chances are it did not find space on these shelves. Or if your book ended up in the bookstore it was spine out in the stacks and only for a little while.

Bookselling then was based on the concept that someone walking by would see your book and buy it. But most people never saw your book. The book was buried under the Bestsellers and the publishers who paid for shelf space. Your book from the midsized or even large press never had a chance because they only pay for so many books to be there. Even the Independent bookstores have to be careful about their space and pick only the books that hit their radar.

So now lets fast forward to the cyber world. Your book is now in cyber space and the same problems apply. Book shelf space. Except now it is cyber shelves. And your book has to be seen. But now you have a chance. Now you can get it in front of people. You just have to promote it though the many promotion channels. And your book may not be seen by everyone but by working hard you can make sure it is seen by some. And this is better.

The author now has a choice. Work hard and get cyber space or let your book disappear. The choice is really now up to the writer.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher

Just About Everyone is an Indie Authors

I am an Indie Author though I came up the traditional side. I was with Bantam and received the advance commensurate with large publishers and did the big media People, NY Times, Chicago Tribune, NPR and then everything changed. But even when I was with Bantam I was essentially an Indie author. Just about everyone is really.

And how would you define an indie author. Try this one. Thou that cannot get shelf space in the bookstores. That would knock out just about everybody except for the chosen few. And while my books are in the bookstores they do not dominate in any form except for the Indie Bookstores who have actually taken a hand in selling and have read the book and believe in it. After that I am one of the many spine out at best.

But even when I had the two books come out with Bantam they had a short shelf life. They were there and then they were gone. And one of them hit the National Bestseller list but even this was not enough to keep my book in front of the public. The media I received I had to take a hand in and in fact everything good that happened with my books came from me pushing very hard.

So this whole Indie versus traditional is sort of silly. I don't care if you are with Random House or some little three book publisher. Your fight is still the same. It is simply the fight to be seen.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The PItcher

The Best Way to Push a Book

There is no best way. There is every way. As a publisher said to me a long time ago you have to do everything now. And what everything is nobody can say. One thing is for sure you better get creative and always be thinking about the next thing. Online promotion is clearly the best ways authors can affect their sales. Going to bookstores will only get you so far if most of the bookstore don't have your book. In essence you are now the bookstore.

And that does mean social media. And that does mean paid promotions. And it does mean standing outside Kane County Cougar Stadium handing out baseball cards for your book. Something which I have done many times for The Pitcher. And going to every festival you can find and always carrying the card with your book on it because you never know who you might bump into.

And it means trying to network And it means doing libraries and schools and bookstores. It means doing radio and television if you can get it. And it means trying the weird stuff that is just emerging on the net. Who had ever heard of Fiverr six months ago?

So the best way to promote your book? Do everything then do everything else.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher

Publishers and Social Media

I am doing a speech on Selling Books Through Social Media tomorrow and it occurs to me very few publishers really understand Social Media. Take Simon and Schuster who paid a guy six figures for his tweets that were supposed to be the ruminations of a guy on an elevator with the Masters of the Universe. You know Wall Street Guys. Problem. Turned out he lives in Texas and made it all up. But S and S will go ahead with the book of his tweet hits.

So that shows they don't get it. Social Media is ephemeral and not quantifiable. It is an effort to throw a pebble down a mountainside and see if you can get an avalanche going. But there is no certainty a pebble or a boulder will get the landslide going. Think of it as a Sonar Ping going out into the ocean and hoping it will hit something and that ping might then come back with information and maybe something that will lead to sales.

But to take the ping as evidence of a pending sale is wrong. The ping is the ping. And even if you have a million pings that does not mean those people pinging back will plunk down money on a book of tweets. The leap is mighty. But as the saying goes there is a sucker born every minute and that guy in Texas has to be laughing his ass off.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher....sometimes a dream is all you have

Googling into the Abyss or Book Marketing for Infants

In football there is a thing called broken field running. I used to do it in high school. Basically you run to the side of the field while everyone else is running the other way. You cut back against the grain. So on a sweep to the right with everyone flowing over to the right side you turn and go to the left and go against all that momentum. At the end of the year  2013 this to me seems an apt metaphor for how we should treat tech.

Google is a great thing. We in the book marketing world use it all the time as does everyone else. But there is a point of diminishing return where Google turns against us and the best thing to do is run the other way. We see this in someone who wants to find the very best deal and googles until their eyes fall out and misses the deal anyway. Versus the man who calls the friend at the car dealer who scores a better deal than the googler every could.

Why is this? Because the human factor still trumps the Google factor. Authors now pound the Internet looking for readers but in fact they are running where everyone else is going. So the portals they find are already bursting with authors pushing their books. Versus the author who picks up the phone and calls the editor who gets their book covered in a magazine that leads to a book signing that leads to a book club picking up the book. Or the person who visits the Independent bookstore who takes on their book and talks it up.

These things happen because we still live in a world of humans and most people now prefer the Internet as a means of interacting. It is safer  and more convenient and not embarrassing. But that is exactly why you should run against the grain and go to the opposite side of the field. Who knows. You might even score a touchdown.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher...sometimes a dream is all you have
 

The Things Writers Do

Some of the things I have done make me cringe. Take the time I barged into the winner of the National Book Awards home on a cold day in November with a copy of my small press novel to have him give me a blurb. Where did I get that kind of nerve? He came to the door after his wife stared at the guy in cowboy boots and a long coat and I told him I seen him in the Chicago Tribune and that I was a writer and I wondered if he would give me some pointers or comment on my book.

Yeeeesh. I cringe thinking about what he must have thought. But he invited me in and we sat in his study while he told me the plot of his second novel for the next hour. I sat there with a half smile and listened to him talk about literature and about reading the bible and then it was time to go. I left him my book and I think he said he would look at it. I think I even called him back and he said something like good luck with the book and that was that.

Fast  forward three years later after my second book and a good bit of publicity and a three book deal with Random House. I am sitting in the basement of a library at a kids table in a kids chair with my knees up and and there is another man sitting there. He does not recognize me. We both took the hundred dollar stipend for talking to children about our process of writing. After a few moments he picked up my book and stared at the name and then turned to me.

I owe you an apology he said. I shook my head. No you don't. I owe you one for barging in like that. We talked a little and then after the library thing ended he shook my hand. I hope you make a million dollars he said.  And that was that. I saw him one more time on the streets of Chicago outside Columbia University where I was teaching. He walked by and stared at me...but my name had escaped him by then.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher....Sometimes a dream is all you have
 

Shooting a Book Trailer with a Drone

Since Amazon is hyping drones I thought I would tell my drone story. We shot the first book trailer for my novel Rocket Man with a camera mounted on a drone. My friend is a filmmaker and he procured the use of the drone and since the book involves rockets I brought the model rockets to a field in Oak Park Illinois just west of Chicago. The drone we were using was worth thousands and the digital camera was worth more. Ok. Keep that in the back of your mind.

He set up the drone and I set up the rockets. It was cold and our fingers numbed out fast but we got to the point where I was holding the ignition switch and he was holding his laptop for the drone. His drone looks just like the ones we are now seeing in Amazon commericals and news footage. A spider with a bunch of propellers. So he lifted the drone off and got it above the trees and I hit the ignition switch and whoosh. The rocket blasted off.

We watched the footage in his laptop as the drone hovered and followed the rocket until the parachute popped out. We did this over and over. On about the tenth time we decided to put a bigger engine in the rocket and so we took the drone really high. We were staring up when the drone suddenly took off for Chicago. My friend jammed the keys on his laptop but the drone had slipped out of range and was now cruising for the West side.

We jumped into his car and started chasing the drone. It sends out a wifi signal he explained and I grabbed the laptop and started searching for the DRONE2 signal. We drove into residential neighborhoods. The drone had a fail safe where once it lost contact it was supposed to set itself down and send out its signal. That is if it didn't just crash into a tree or lose power and smash into the ground. We drove and drove looking for the thousands of dollars that would be lost if we didn't find the drone and the camera.

We were about to give up when we turned a corner and I picked up the drone signal DRONE2 searching wifi signals with my phone. We pulled over and looked up and down the street. It could be anywhere my friend muttered as we got out of the car. I turned and saw twinkling green diodes on a slanted roof. The drone. One in a million we would find it, but we were able to bring it down with the laptop.

So when Amazon talks about delivering your packages with a drone... know that it might get there or it might just take off and fly over Chicago and go land on someone's roof.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
Rocket Man Book Trailer
 

The Pitcher is on Air Force Two on the way to South Korea

So this is the way it happened. I know someone who knows someone who is part of the press corps going with Joe Biden to South Korea. So the someone who knows someone gave the book to the journalist and he is going to give The Pitcher to the VP. Now it is a long flight to South Korea and Joe is probably looking for a little escapism before confronting the North Koreans. What better than a baseball story right?

I imagine old Joe kicking back on Air Force 2 and maybe taking off his shoes and then plop The Pitcher lands in his lap. My guy says something like..."Mr. Vice President if you are looking for a great story of overcoming adversity and getting your dreams, then this is the book for you." Now Joe is probably pretty bored at about this point and so he opens the book and gets lost for a few hours while he is winging his way to the other side of the world.

By the time he reaches South Korea he has finished the novel and is a changed man. Joe gets off the plane with book in hand and waves to reporters and holds The Pitcher high as a question comes from the press. " Mr Vice President, do you think you can get the North Koreans to change their minds?"' Old Joe lifts The Pitcher high and says, "Hey, if this kid can do it...anybody can do it." And everyone claps as they try and see what book the Veep is holding.

Of course he might not read it at all...but that would be a different story.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher...Sometimes a dream is all you have
 

Finishing One Last Book Before the Year Ends

Writers are driven by deadlines. Most of them self imposed. A big one is the end of the year or the beginning of the holidays. Lets face it is just about game over and time to start tallying up what you accomplished or didn't accomplish in 2013. This is the way writers think. Where am I in comparison to a year ago? And one way to stave off that accounting is to slip in one last book before the New Year rings in.

Some writers just say to hell with it. There is next year and when everything calms down I will begin that next book or finish that next book. But then there are people like me who see the holidays as a natural Finish Line. This is the self imposed deadline critical to getting a first draft finished. Lets face it at a point the holidays just takes over and no work is done.

So it really is the moment. The book has to be finished now or not at all. And the real reckoning with that awful question (did you finish a book in 2013) looms. So the race is on and I figure maybe three weeks left of work. Maybe. Three weeks left to justify a year.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher

Why PR Doesnt Work Anymore For Books

Used to be you did the big hits. USA Today. NY Times. NPR. If you could get them. You did newspapers and local television and radio and went on tour and the PR people booked you into these circuits and everything worked pretty much the way it was supposed to. That was because people all listened to the same sources.  And the PR people could deliver on what they set out to do...now all bets are off.

Social Media has moved in on the vacuum of the collapse of newspapers and mainstream media. I don't mean collapse like they are not there I mean that they are there in a different formats. There are no book sections left really. Go try and get a book covered in a newspaper. Very difficult. All the people who covered my earlier books are gone. Their positions don't even exist. Television and radio is deluged with content now. Books are way down on the totem pole if they are on the pole at all.

And worse than all this PR people don't really get social media. It is too personal. It really has to be done by the author for it to work because it is not big hits but a million small ones. You couldn't pay a PR person enough to pull this off though some may try. The truth is it is an eat what you kill world now and every author must master PR or risk not selling.

On the positive side it is a poor mans game again. You just have to roll up your sleeves.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher

The Author Scoreboard

Used to be you put a book out there and you had no idea what was going one. BA. Before Amazon. Now the world can take a peek and it is the same as having your pants down....do you really want everyone to see your underwear. Only if it looks good and if it looks bad then you want to hide. So the author scoreboard is there every day like a stock fluctuating with the tide. Up or down it sets your mood for the day. Which is not a good thing.

Should you feel better about yourself because someone buys your book.  Sure. But is that why you wrote in the first place? No. You wrote because you were drive to do it and the whole selling thing was secondary. Now there are people w ho will say no no I wrote to sell books.  Pity you. Go make a widget they are easier to sell. Most authors write out of a higher sense of purpose and that is what keeps you going through the hard times.

But being human you watch the scoreboard and when your ranking improves the day is good and when it falls off the day is dark. You tell yourself it doesn't matter but it does. Because you do want to believe people are buying your book. You want to believe that scoreboard represents a faith in you and your story and that what you do is not in vain.

So back to why you started to write in the first place. Yes it starts out of a higher place but you have to eat too. There in lies the rub

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher
 

Does your Website Sell Books?

Alright. Websites. Once upon a time they just laid there and were essentially billboards. An elaborate business card if you will. But now they have to do more and for authors they have to do a lot. I started out like everyone else with a website with my books and some facts about me. That was aabout it. But then I started to realize nothing was happening. The site was doing nothing for  my sales and so I trashed it and started over.

First of all the question is what is driving traffic? Anything? For me it is my blogs and my tweets and my Current News. But there really should be more. The problem is  a lot of web designers are stuck in the old modality of ok here is your site. Here is your books. Here is your bio. Here is your picture. And that is about it. What you need is someone who can figure out what you are selling and the best way to do that.

There are a lot of good web people out there but only a few really get what authors are about. Here is my site. www.williamhazelgrove.com It  isn't perfect but it is on the way and I can make changes to it any time I want which is key for authors because authors like to write...right? And tweaking is the name of the game in websites.

The company that did my site is running a special with free setup right now. Here are the particulars.

 Early "Black Friday" sale exclusively for Authors/Writers
- 1st month free for Deluxe and Standard Website Packages

- Coupon Code for Deluxe Plan: awbps13n
- Coupon Code for Standard Plan: 1wbps13b

- Main company site: http://lyquidagency.com
- Link to Author Page on Lyquid Agency: http://golyquid.com/author

     Good luck!

The Pitcher...Sometimes a dream is all you have

A Good Book Signing

In the age of the Internet book signings have taken it on the chin. Everybody pretty much hangs online and the book signing of old might go away eventually. But right now they are the  independent booksellers best friend and for good reason; they still bring readers and authors together. I had a signing last night in a great store in Oak Park called Magic Tree bookstore. The chairs were set up with a table in front and the books were stacked. Then you wait.

To have a good signing you need people. Ten is a nice number. You settle for five or even four. And if you hit twelve or thirteen you are doing really well. People are busy and going to a bookstore on a Thursday night is not a priority. But there they were.  Fifteen braves souls sitting in the wooden chairs and an author up front. And then it begins and you have all those great questions about writing and how the book came about.

And that magic dynamic happens beyond the Internet and chat rooms and every other disembodied experience that comes from interacting with a screen. It is actually very American to sit in a small town in a small bookstore and have a literary event. It speaks to a healthy culture. And you even sell a few books.

And then it is over and you are left with a great feeling. It's not just the book signing or the selling of books. It is the fact you just bumped up against your readers and had a great time. And that is priceless for any author.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher
 

Starting A New Book In Winter

Some people write in summer. Some write in fall...me...I write in winter. Something about the way the world slows down. At least in the Midwest it does. And the lack of light and the short days and everything dying. Time to grow a beard and sit by a fire and think about where you ended up and where you are going. And that's how books start. Some sort of reassessment of your whole life and hopefully you don't drink yourself to death or shoot yourself in the process.

But then a book starts. Kind of like a lawnmower that sat for a long time. Lots of smoke and cleaning out the pipes. Rough. Fitfully. Then it starts to turn over and you think that its been a long time since you used the thing. And you are amazed it still runs because every time you put it away you think maybe that is it and it wont start again. But it does.

And so the winter goes dark. And the world turns cold. And you figure what the hell. Might as well hide with the rest of the creatures and yeah you didn't get to where you wanted but maybe this time you might get it right. Who knows. So the snow falls and you wait and work and in the spring you will emerge again.

But for now... you're just gone.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher
 

Writers Making Money off of Writers

You see it all the time. The success story and then the pitch. I became a Kindle Bestseller and so can you. So you click. Why not you don't want to miss out. And it is a testimonial and basically breaks it all down to  a system. Becoming a bestseller has nothing to do with the merit of your book but the merit of the marketing. And here is how you do it. Post until you die. Shoot an email to these people. Contextual advertising. Facebook. Twitter. Skype. Radio. YouTube. Here is the secret and for a mere 9.95 or 19.95 or 99.95 you can have my secret.

And sometimes you pull the trigger. Why not?  It is the wild west out there and no one knows what really works and these writers selling these programs know that too. The hungry must be fed and so writers turn to making money off of writers. It is pathetic in a way. Writers have little money. Most writers. And now there is another predator out there. And maybe the system worked for the person. Maybe they lucked out and the marketing or Internet Gods turned in their favor. But probably the only thing that turned in their favor was the idea to con other writers.

And it all assumes that the central idea of writing a good book is secondary. That telling a really good story might be the only way to sell lots of books. This is buried under the pyramid scheme idea that there is some secret nestled deep down in the ground that has more to do with computer algorithms than the merit of your book.

The sad truth is the only thing deep down in the ground is a treasure chest filled with the fools gold of people who think talent can be bought for 19.95. 

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher
 

Hitting the Libraries...SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

It must be that old thing of when you were a kid and the librarian told you to SHHHHHHHH! I still feel that way when I walk into a library and face down the woman in the sweater draped over her shoulders and those low riding winged reading glasses. And where do they get those brogans and the polyester pants? There must be a librarian uniform issued upon employment. And how do those sweaters stay on their shoulders when they type and tell you that the book is down the aisle and sniff sniff it might be checked out anyway.

Lately I have been doing the author tour of libraries. A strange quiet tour of the greatest the Midwest has to offer. The seventies are alive and well I am here to tell you. How many earth tones can you cram into one room? Answer a lot. The brown carpet and beige shelves bring back my youth as I tell the librarian this is my book and it is s Library Guild Selection and was highly reviewed by Library Journal and you would think you would that would carry some weight but all I get is sniff sniff....can I help you?

And some of the librarians are very nice but there is that disapproving stare. And you wonder if that is something that comes from hours and hours of going SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. I remember being shushed in libraries from Baltimore to Chicago and it was always the same. A hissing hush! And that boy is there again as I leave my card and the librarian sends me on my way with a  nod and a whispered. NO TALKING.

You never really grow up do you.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher. Junior Library Guild Selection