Selling A Novel In Todays Market

I was coming out of a Literary Festival the other day and I saw something that made me think we have passed into a new world. There was a car and on this car were the trade reviews and quotes from a novel with a picture of the cover on the side of the card. These were painted onto the car and not just temporary. I began to read the reviews from Library Journal, Rick Kogan, Booklist, Kirkus written on the back and the hood and the sides of the car.

My assumption was this was some self published author who figured why not put his book on his car. But no. This was a press that did this. And so we have passed into the age of anything goes. Some might see this as evidence of clever marketing or some might see it as desperation against the titanic wave of cultural marketing that is now our society. So lets take it as a marketing ploy.

Do people sit in their car and read reviews from Library Journal on the trunk of the car in front of them? No. Would they buy a book they saw on the side of a car? Would they remember a Publishers Weekly quote streaming by on the hood of a car? Who knows. Probably not. But the point is that this publisher has reached the point of trying to advertise their book on the same footing as a real estate agent selling houses.

So again...desperation? Market savvy? Idiocy? Who knows. I did read the reviews and I did stare at the cover. Too bad I can't remember the name of the book. I'll just have to catch that novel as it passes by at sixty miles an hour next time.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
 

Why The Internet Wont Save You

If you have tried to get a job then you already know. Your resume goes out into cyberspace and nothing comes back. Worse you have to fill out three forms just to send your resume to a company and that wont even get you through their firewall. The truth is no one even looks at your resume. The same way no one looks at all those pictures on your hard drive or all those songs in your phone. The internet or digital tech has simply reached its level of  incompetency and is now cancelling itself out.

Lets say you want to publish a book. Boom. Done. You upload your file create a cover with Amazons dummy creator and there you go. Published. You are an author. Or you want to be a rocker. You upload your music and start selling on ITunes. You want to have your own movie. Shoot it and upload to Youtube. Of course the problem is that there a million other people doing exactly the same thing and when you go to tweet blog or facebook about your book song or movie then those people will too.

The internet then cancels itself out. Like the emails you never look at you simply cant get to what is offered nor do you want to. Think of a million hotdog stands along the road. You want one hotdog but which one do you pull into. You pick someone you heard of maybe a long time ago and ignore all those start ups. Or you just randomly pick. But what if someone flagged you down?

Lets say a real  person came out behind all those digital billboards and said come on in and try my hot dog. You would pull your car off the road and eat there. Why because you are human and so are they. You are not silicone and you are not bits and bytes. The truth is we have come full circle. The internet Yulp is now one of noise cancellation.

Better go hit the pavement.

www.williamhazelgrove.com

 

I Sent A Copy of The Pitcher To The President...

And got a letter back. It happened like this. A friend of mine who had been part of a literary benefit for The White House said I should sent a copy of the book to the then social secretary and that she would give it to the President. I forgot all about it after I sent it. You do these things when pushing a book. Crazy shots that have the odds of the lottery against them. Sometimes they work and most of the time there is no way they will ever work.

Anyway I received a letter from the President saying thanks very much for the book. Although he didn't cite the title I figured he was busy. Then I studied his signature. It looked real. I mean would they really have a machine that can duplicate a signature complete with ink imperfections? No way. I was convinced this letter had come from the President and set about getting a frame. I mean you don't get a letter from the President every day.

So I framed it and put it on my dresser and every day there was a  letter from my pal the President. And then my daughter sent off a letter telling the President to basically have a good day. She is nine. And sure enough about three weeks later she got her letter. And I thought wow this guy is amazingly responsive as I opened her letter and read my letter. Huh! ....guess they do have a machine that can duplicate a signature.

 I gave her my frame.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher
 

Why Do Anything?

It comes like that. It numbs out your head and you are paralyzed. A fog really before the world and you sit in your car or in front of your computer or at your desk and the enormity of the task hits you. And it comes just like that. Why do anything? Maybe it is better to go back to bed because it all seems so hard. Writers know what I am talking about. Entrepreneurs  know it. People who have  lost their jobs. It is the knowledge that if you don't do it nobody else will

And that can get you in the strangest times. Take book marketing. A thankless toiling job with little result. And yeah the writing is great but marketing feels like a trudge up a hill with a weight on your back with buckets of mud on each foot. You get the picture. Its a bit like Walt in Breaking Bad. The reason that show was and is so popular is not because of the meth component but because Walt is a middle class guy who goes bad. He hits the f it moment.

And who has not felt that? But of course right behind this is the moment where you try again. You put one foot in front of the other and really what is the alternative? To do nothing. Certainly the odds are against you but isn't that true in life? So it is the action taken that wins out. Really it comes down to just do something. Anything.

You can always deal meth if all else fails.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
 

The Author behind the computer screen

There just isn't enough time in the day. Not if you have a new book out. Used to be you would do a few signings and some radio interviews, maybe a little television. Not exactly a leisure pace, but you felt like marketing a book had some tempo, some sense of progression. Now there is just not enough time in the day. The online beast of publishing has reared it's head and will not go away. And he is never satisfied. Start your day at six AM. Start with your blogs. This takes about two hours and then I have to get twittering. This is sending out bits of information for my twitter followers. Now we are almost four hours in and I had just finished the first wave of writing and twittering.


But it is time to do a podcast of my latest essay. This takes another half hour. Now it it time to return emails. This takes another thirty minutes. Now it is time to consider bloggers who will review my new book. It is noon. The feeling of never being able to get it all done is omnipresent. There are so many ways to go for the modern cyber author that it can just stop you from doing anything. It is a lot like being at the crossroads of a highway with ten different options. You could concentrate on getting reviews from the thousands of book bloggers. This alone could burn up your entire day. How about linking your website with other websites? Another time burner that could easily cost you hours. Of course you could look toward mainstream media and concentrate on sending books to the newspapers or television shows. Or you could get into Search Engine Optimization and spend your day bookmarking your blogs and sites and trying to determine what keywords will bring you the most traffic. Don't even think of going on Facebook or Myspace. There is the potential to get sidetracked into social networking and nothing will get accomplished.

This is something new and no one really knows what the result will be. It is all too new. We all hear of the books that become bestsellers because of bloggers picking a book and it takes off like a rocket. It's a nice thought, but someday I'll have to start writing again.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

The Cyber Author

There just isn't enough time in the day. Not if you have a new book out. Used to be you would do a few signings and some radio interviews, maybe a little television. Not exactly a leisure pace, but you felt like marketing a book had some tempo, some sense of progression. Now there is just not enough time in the day. The online beast of publishing has reared it's head and will not go away. And he is never satisfied. Start your day at six AM. Start with your blog. I am the Editor in Chief for Speak Without Interruption http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/ and I am a National Examiner writer on National Culture http://www.nationalexaminer.com/ and I write my own column http://www.williamhazelgrove.blogspot.com/ called The View From Hemingway's Attic. This takes about two hours and then I have to get twittering. This is sending out bits of information for my twitter followers. Now we are almost four hours in and I had just finished the first wave of writing and twittering.But it is time to do a podcast of my latest essay. This takes another half hour. Now it it time to return emails. This takes another thirty minutes. Now it is time to consider bloggers who will review my new book. It is noon.
The feeling of never being able to get it all done is omnipresent. There are so many ways to go for the modern cyber author that it can just stop you from doing anything. It is a lot like being at the crossroads of a highway with ten different options. You could concentrate on getting reviews from the thousands of book bloggers. This alone could burn up your entire day. How about linking your website with other websites? Another time burner that could easily cost you hours. Of course you could look toward mainstream media and concentrate on sending books to the newspapers or television shows. Or you could get into Search Engine Optimization and spend your day bookmarking your blogs and sites and trying to determine what keywords will bring you the most traffic. Don't even think of going on Facebook or Myspace. There is the potential to get sidetracked into social networking and nothing will get accomplished.
This is something new and no one really knows what the result will be. It is all too new. We all hear of the books that become bestsellers because of bloggers picking a book and it takes off like a rocket. When my novel, Rocket Man came out I envisioned the cyber world getting behind me in exactly this way. It has worked for me, but I didn't figure on the days without end where you could literally be online twenty four seven and still not get it all done. I just hope there will be an end of some sort soon. This has been going on for six months and some day I will have to start writing again.
William Elliott Hazelgrove's new novel, Rocket Man was just published by Pantonne Press and chosen as the Best Book of 2008. http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

http://www.pantonnepress.com/chapter1.pdf

A Pebble Could Start an Avalanche

You never know what could start an avalanche. In book marketing there is a feeling of being completely overwhelmed. You could concentrate on the big sites and press releases and try and get major media hits. This requires time and supreme effort and a lot of times does not pan out. This doesn't mean you shouldn't try for a People Magazine or a USA Today or the New York Times. But books are a funny thing. You never quite know what starts the big slide toward a bestseller and that is because books are still sold the old fashioned way--by word of mouth.

In the internet age we are constantly bombarded with notices. So and so wants to be your friend, so and so wants you to join their group, an email from an old friend who noticed you had published your book. Our email boxes bulge with unanswered queries as we go thundering down the road for Larry King or Good Morning America. But the truth is we just don't know what will be the stick, the rock that will break the precipice. I know lots of authors who have done the big shows and their books still didn't hit. That doesn't mean these shows didn't affect them, just not the way they thought they would. Big publishers put thousands of dollars behind a new author in promotion and the book falls from site. Why? No one really knows.

When I was trying to get my first book published I used to send out six queries a week. Sometimes I would just get out four or five and I would carry the last one around with me unable to find a mailbox or a stamp. Many times, the publisher or agent who would respond would be to that last query! Who knows why, but it happened more than once. It is probably just that last unturned rock, that final exhausted moment where you put the final three chapters in the mail that the Gods line up for you. Who knows, but you really can't afford to not do it.

I had an email the other night from someone I knew in college. They said they heard I published another novel. I was tired and had been traveling all day and almost didn't respond, dangerous because then other emails would flood in and I might never get to it. But just before I went to bed I responded and asked how he was doing and yes I published another book and here is a link to the book on Amazon. Maybe he will buy it maybe he won't. Maybe it didn't matter that I responded. But then again, maybe he is a film producer, a friend of a friend who knows Oprah or who is in a book club or who has a large network of friends he emails regularly. The point we just don't know what pebble might start an avalanche--so we better make sure we give each one a good kick.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com

http://www.pantonnepress.com/chapter1.pdf