Category: Marketing

4 Ways Introverts Can Get Comfortable with Video

by Maria

instagram stories video for writers

But first, the publishing news worth reading this week:

Pete Wells Has His Knives Out (Ian Parker for The New Yorker): This is a fun and fascinating profile of Pete Wells, “the restaurant critic of the Times, who writes a review every week—and who occasionally writes one that creates a national hubbub about class, money, and soup.” It’s a great inside look at the massive influence traditional media still holds, and it’ll also make you hungry.

Instagram Stories: Your New Favorite Way to Engage With Readers? (Martine Ellis for The Write Life): “If Instagram Stories disappear after 24 hours, what’s the point? Authenticity, engagement, and exposure. Unpolished snapshots of someone’s day are far more interesting than a carefully crafted flat lay featuring scattered rose petals and a strategically placed — albeit irrelevant — pair of vintage scissors.”

How to Be Active on Social Media without Losing Your Mind (Kirsten Oliphant on Jane Friedman.com): “The biggest issue I hear from people struggling with online marketing is TIME. Many writers struggle to balance social media and writing or creative work. Since we don’t have the option to go back before the age of Twitter, we are left with a few options…”

Jennifer Egan on Writing, the Trap of Approval, and the Most Important Discipline for Aspiring Writers (Brain Pickings): “You can only write regularly if you’re willing to write badly… Accept bad writing as a way of priming the pump, a warm-up exercise that allows you to write well.”

4 Ways Introverts Can Get Comfortable with Video (And Happy Pub Day to Damn Delicious!)

Hey everyone!

I’m baaaccckkk. After two magical weeks of being away for our wedding and mini-honeymoon, Jarrett and I are both back at it.

First things first: yes, I will be sharing wedding photos with you all here! I’ve had a few requests for them already, and I can’t wait to see them myself the very second they hit my inbox. With any luck, we’ll all see them by next week.

Read More

The One Piece of Advice I Give Every Single Aspiring Author

by Maria

literary agent advice for writers to get published

But first, the book publishing stories worth reading this week:

Your Biggest Book Marketing or Platform Building Roadblocks – And How to Overcome Them (The Book Designer): This is a wonderfully detailed guide that tackles the 5 biggest obstacles writers face when trying to get their books out into the world. If you’re having trouble reaching your “dream readers,” feel like you don’t have enough time or money for a platform, or are struggling to see engagement on your platform, this is a great place to start.

J.K. Rowling posts letters of rejection on Twitter to help budding authors (The Guardian): “When she pitched under the name Galbraith without revealing her true identity, she faced many more snubs. Since then, Galbraith has published three successful novels but the first was rejected by several publishers, and Rowling was even advised to take a writing course.”

The Art of Influence: Who’s an Influencer, Who’s an Endorser, and How Do I Talk to Them? (Chadwick Cannon): “People don’t trust brands. They rarely trust strangers. But they do trust familiar people.”

The Charming Doodles Charles Darwin’s Children Left All Over the Manuscript of ‘On the Origin of Species’ (Brain Pickings): “In contemplating family, work, and happiness, Charles Darwin proclaimed: ‘Children are one’s greatest happiness, but often & often a still greater misery. A man of science ought to have none.’ And yet he and Emma had ten.”

Relevant (Literary Agent Donald Maass on Writer Unboxed): “Being relevant is not the same as being topical. Nor is it the same as being resonant. Topical stories have the quality of being current, ripped out of the headlines, a take on what is happening right now. Resonant stories are less immediate. They echo in the mind. They cause us to reflect and ponder. ”

The One Piece of Advice I Give Every Single Aspiring Author

The weather is gorgeous here in DC, submissions to publishers are in full swing, and the spring publishing season is chockfull of wonderful books. (Try this gorgeous cookbook, or this personal favorite.)

And today I’m on Kirsten Oliphant’s podcast, Create If Writing, chatting about everything from how the traditional publishing process works to what I look for when signing clients. Kirsten is incredibly savvy and hard-working–she writes books, hosts a podcast, leads online courses, and writes a blog, all while being a mom and wife. I actually think she may be the Beyoncé of our little writing blog community. All signs point to yes.

We were able to get in deep and talk about some of the most important topics that plague aspiring writers today:

  • How to get excited about building a platform (even when you really, really don’t want to)
  • Why you don’t need to be a used car salesman for your book
  • What a typical day in the life of a Literary Agent looks like (spoiler alert: a lot less glamor than you’d think)
  • How to avoid a lie-awake-at-night-in-fear book launch
  • How focusing on your own personal development can also help you in your writing career
  • Why you should buy your name as a domain (and how I failed at this)
  • The one piece of advice I give to every single aspiring author

Click here to listen to the full interview!

Get one free tip for reading more + living better each week!

Read More

How to Build a Platform as a Fiction Writer [Free Workbook!]

by Maria

Author platforms for fiction writers short

But first, the stories worth reading this week:

How to Be More Successful with the Right Content Marketing Tools (Ben Sailer for CoSchedule): This article is especially helpful for writers who already have an author platform in the works, but they’re not quite sure how to drive traffic or followers to those outlets. And be sure to read more below about how to get clarity on who your readers are before you try to market content to them!

4 Lessons for Authors on the Current State of Book Publishing (Jane Friedman): “Industry marketing expert Peter McCarthy and Rand Fishkin both discussed how to find your readers online and reach them directly. McCarthy described it as picking up ‘the lingua franca of the customer’ with a variety of tools and techniques. He demonstrated how he rapidly tests out phrases to learn and access ‘adjacencies’—the key concepts, active people, and communities whose interests are aligned with themes, topics, or points from your work.”

How and When to Catch the Elusive Publicity Department (Lizzy Mason on Pub Crawl): Lizzy Mason is the Director of Publicity at Bloomsbury Children’s Books, and this is a great inside look at the typical timeline in-house publicists stick to when pitching a new release. This is a must-read for any author working with a publicist, or planning on ever working with a publicist.

The Custodian of Forgotten Books (Daniel A. Gross for The New Yorker): “A little over a decade ago, a forgotten book was suddenly remembered. Its second life began when a fiction writer referenced it in a book of her own. A blogger read the new book, then tracked down a copy of the old one, and wrote about all this on his Web site. An archivist read the blog post and e-mailed it to a small publisher. By 2009, Jetta Carleton’s ‘The Moonflower Vine,’ first published in 1962, was back in print.”

Literary-Themed Goodies for Your Kitchen (Kristina Pino on BookRiot): “Rows of bookshelves in your living room and piles of novels on your bedside and coffee tables not enough to properly express your love of books? Time to move into new territory and bookify your kitchen.” WELL, OKAY.

How to Build a Platform as a Fiction Writer (with a free workbook!)

How To Find Your Readers as a Fiction Writer_Page_1

Happy Wednesday, everyone! I’m back this week with the workbook I promised you, which I think will be a great tool for fiction writers to gain clarity on platform-building.

As Kristen and I discussed recently, it’s not easy building a platform as a fiction writer. And it’s not easy learning how to market your novels. But it is essential, and it is incredibly rewarding when done right.

And don’t worry: No one starts out knowing how to do all this stuff. No one starts their career knowing how to tweet, how to blog, how to build a list, how to speak in front of crowds, how to pitch a magazine editor. Just like no one starts out knowing how to write a book.

We all understand that writing is a craft, and that is must be honed with time and experience. But marketing is also a craft, and it takes just as much time and experience to learn how to do it well–that is, authentically, and without sounding like a late-night infomercial.

Read More

Do Fiction Writers Need a Platform?

by Maria

do fiction writers need platforms literary agent blog

But first, the stories worth reading this week:

Hachette Again Reaches Deal with Perseus Books (Alexandra Alter, The New York Times): So, that happened. Again. What does this mean for authors working with either publisher? Nothing at all right now. It seems that PBG will continue to operate as a separate publishing division within Hachette, and as the Times points out, “Adding heft will probably help Hachette in a cutthroat media landscape where publishers are increasingly being squeezed by major retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble.”

Making Time for Writing? 7 Simple but Powerful Productivity Tips (Ali Luke for The Write Life): “Do you ever sit down to write for a couple of hours, only to find yourself with only a paragraph or two to show for it? It’s really easy to get distracted, especially if your work involves online research. One link leads to another and another and … oh look, a cute cat video!”

The Martian Started as a Self-Published Book (All Things Considered, NPR): “Self-published authors often dream of snagging a big contract with a major publishing house. But after Andy Weir’s self-published ‘The Martian’ online, its next stop was not print. Instead, it got picked up by a small Canadian audiobook company. Of course, it was eventually made into a movie and nominated for multiple Oscars.”

A Warning About Writing Novels That Ride the News Cycle (Todd Moss on JaneFriedman.com): “My first book contract was a fluke of good timing. Al-Qaeda, Muammar Gaddafi, and French Special Forces are all, in part, responsible for my writing career. But I’ve since discovered that it’s risky, and probably unwise, for a novelist to chase current events too closely.”

The Revenant Author Michael Punke Has a Day Job (Alexandra Alter, The New York Times): “In addition to being an international trade policy wonk, Mr. Punke is the author of ‘The Revenant,’ a 2002 novel about a 19th-century American fur trapper’s epic struggle for survival in the wilderness, and the inspiration for Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s film. The movie is up for 12 Oscars, including best picture, and has catapulted the novel onto the best-seller lists.”

Do Fiction Writers Need a Platform?

Here it is. The long-awaited post on one of the big questions out there: do fiction writers need platforms?

It’s no secret what I think of this (ha, ha, says the girl who writes a whole nerdy blog on it), so I thought it would be much, much more interesting to hear from a fiction writer herself. Kristen is a fantasy writer and creative writing coach, and she runs the popular site She’s Novel, while also working on edits to Dreamworld and The Dark Between, her fantasy debuts.

She has such an interesting take on what it’s like to be building her platform before her first book is even out, and I think our conversation touches upon many of the concerns I most hear from writers:

  • Do I even need a platform?
  • Is it really worth my time?
  • But don’t agents and editors not care if a fiction writer has a platform?

So before we jump into the conversation with Kristen, let’s clear the air. There are so many conflicting opinions about this out there, and even industry professionals disagree with each other. But here’s what we do agree on:

You don’t need a platform to get a book deal.

You do need a platform and marketing savvy to have long-term success as an author.

Why? Well here are 4 reasons why it’s important to build a platform as a fiction writer:

Read More