The Author Who Squeaks Loudest Gets the Grease

The bookstores are going away. On this we can agree. The book world has gone cyber and for authors the first thought this opened a boundless opportunity. But of course that has changed into the reality of the modern author who has to do everything and really cant. The truth is the conduit has changed and there is the information highway and authors must make as much noise as they can. You may wonder when authors become braggarts? Weren't they supposed to be squirreled away writing to emerge hollowed eyed with cigarettes and coffee on their breath...giving their  vision to the world? Ah...no.

That guy would never see the light of day now. The artist writer is all very well and good and I put myself in that category but if you have to sell you better start yelling from the rooftops how good you are and how good your book is and people should buy what you have to offer. Timidity is not wanted. And if you are timid there is an author who will shout you down so you might as well not open your mouth. You want trench warfare you got it. Go hang around the kindle boards some time and you will see the  marketing that is required now.

And some would say this is a good thing and that authors are empowered. But the truth is authors have just upped their burden to the where they are the bookstore now and they carry that on their back too. Forget writing. Who has time for it with all this marketing? And you never know if all your effort is in vain or not and there are authors who turn their back and say I cannot do this and return to writing. I understand. You could go mad and bloody eyed with thirteen hour days staring at your screen and watching those Amazon numbers.

But that is the way it is now. The author must shout and shout loudly if he or she wants to be heard. There are millions of authors out there I would presume and millions of buyers...but the squeaky wheel gets the grease and authors have to get used to squeaking very loudly indeed.

www.williamhazelgrove.com

 

On Marketing Books: The Powers That Be Part II: By the Boards

The biggest shock comes when you get your first real media hit. You have been a one man band doing everything you can and then finally something breaks. You long ago gave up any idea of a publicist, they are expensive and they aren't that good a lot of times. The really good ones are extremely expensive. So you take it all on. You do the calling and the sending and the searching and you do it every day. And now you aren't even writing anymore. You have become this monk of a marketer who busts ass every day and you make nothing,

But a break. For me it was People Magazine. My book had come out with a press so small it only had one book. But there it was in People. Game over. I remember walking down a beach thinking it had not been such a hard climb after all. Just ten years of blood sweat and tears. But not so fast. That blip of demand is enough to push you onto the Bestseller List for a week. But then just as quickly you fall back down and the demand goes back to a trickle.

So you go back to it. And things are changing again. The bookstores that never even carried your books are dying. The internet is taking over. The ebooks are pushing up. You hear of people who sell a million books without a single review. A girl in Peoria uploads her fantasy novel and wham. A bestseller. She gets a check for a million dollars and buys her parents a home. This makes it almost worse. Could it be that everything you have been doing for publicity and reviews doesn't matter anymore?

Has the brave new world of Eat What You Kill just bypassed traditional publishing in a way that turns selling books into a lottery upload? Should you just be pumping out books the way someone pumps dimes into a slot machine?

Next On Marketing Books: Eat What You Kill Publishing

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