Fiction Writers Archives

We’re gearing up for a move in two weeks (just to nearby Alexandria, VA) and so I’m savoring these last few days in our apartment before it becomes a wasteland of boxes and messiness.

Whenever Jarrett rolls his eyes at me for being finicky about keeping the house neat, I have to remind him that it’s my authors that are to blame. (Rule #1 of Marriage: Outsource Blame.) I’ve learned so much from the home design and organizing books I’ve worked on over the years that it just tears me to pieces to have the house in disarray for weeks at a time during a move. I like everything in its place, okay? Order is good. Very, very good. And it keeps me from spending all day mentally editing what’s out of place and how I would revise it. (Occupational hazard…)

How I wished the house always looked:

And I’ll spare you the shot of how it looks mid-move…just imagine boxes to the ceiling and me whimpering under them.

Anyway, as most of you know, I’ve always specialized in nonfiction (except for an early foray into novels at the start of my career!), and so it’s been fascinating to see how rapidly the publishing landscape has evolved.

Early on, having a platform and a direct connection to readers mattered only in the nonfiction world. So us nonfiction folks got an early start on figuring out what the heck an online platform is, how it grows, and how it actually converts into book sales. We’ve been tapping our little hammers at this platform mine for years, and we’ve seen where the gold lies and where it’s just coal.

But now that platform and audience-building is also becoming so important to novelists, I wanted to let you guys know one important thing:

As a novelist, you have a hidden advantage in the online world.

It’s an advantage I try to teach my nonfiction authors, but it’s one that’s already so deeply ingrained in novelists that it’s almost silly how easy it would be to capitalize on it and how much you would benefit from it.

That’s why I wrote a whole post about it at Writer Unboxed, who so generously hosted me in front of their wonderful community of fiction writers.

But nonfiction writers (and anyone looking to build a platform!), this applies to you, too! It’s easily the most common weakness I see in nonfiction authors, yet it’s not hard at all to train yourself to have this same advantage.

And chances are, if we were having a one-on-one coaching call, it’s one of the main things I would tell you to focus on!

Click here to read the full article at Writer Unboxed!

What I’m Reading

The Gone Girl With The Dragon Tattoo On The Train (Emily St. John Mandel for FiveThirtyEight): Why on earth does every book these days seem to have “girl” in the title? Answers lie on the other side of this door. Um, link.

Is “Best” Now the Worst Way to Describe a Recipe? (Sarah Jampel for Food52): It’s 2 p.m. on a Saturday, and you decide to make banana bread. So you Google “best banana bread” (because, of course, you don’t want to make mediocre banana bread, right?). Over 2 million results pop up. Why are there so many results, and which one is really the best? Sarah Jampel investigates (with a great cameo from Stonesong client, Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen!).

How to Automate Your Book Marketing (Tim Grahl): Because the point of all these online tools is to help you sell books, even while you sleep, right? Here’s a fantastic step-by-step method for setting up a hands-off system for getting more email subscribers and selling more books.

Simon & Schuster Latches onto Podcast Trend With Launch of “Paper Donkey” (Ellen Harvey for Book Business Magazine): “The podcast launch is part of a larger movement among book publishers to develop original content about the books they create and the authors who write them. This original content can help publishers build a captive audience that they can then market and sell books to directly.”

New bookstore-cafe from Spike Gjerde, Ivy Bookshop owners to open Nov. 7 in Charles Village (Sarah Meehan for The Baltimore Sun): I’m always thrilled to see chef and bookstore collaborations, especially from one of my favorite Mid-Atlantic chefs. Congrats, Spike!

Thinking about NaNoWriMo? Read these two pieces first:

Have Trouble Getting That Book Done? Try Doing Less. (Ginger Moran on JaneFriedman.com): I know that it’s only week 1 of NaNoWriMo and everyone’s gearing up to do MUCH MORE, rather than less. But it’s worth reflecting on whether pressure and panic really lead to your most productive hours.

How NaNoWriMo Can Backfire (Kristen Kieffer of She’s Novel): Kristen–who chatted with us about why fiction writers should build platforms–shared in her email newsletter this week how she’d run herself so ragged preparing for NaNoWriMo that she’d fully burned out by the time November 1 rolled around. NaNo can be so much fun and a fantastic way to write alongside millions of people, but let’s not forget that we’re still aiming for quality output, and that that can only come from a rested and relaxed mind! (This post is only available to her email list, but I highly recommend signing up here–her newsletters are always a lot of fun!)

What We’re Eating

I’m off to NYC for a few days of meetings this week, so pickin’s are slim:

Monday: My favorite weekday pasta recipe with sausage, white wine, and kale. I’ll share the recipe with you all soon!

Tuesday: The Stonesong crew and I are off to see one of our authors, Doug the Pug, signing books at The Strand. Here’s his adorable Good Morning America appearance, or become one of his 5,000,000 (!) friends on Facebook.

Wednesday: Dinner at my grandma’s house usually means tortilla de patata. Happy sigh.

Thursday: Maybe Peruvian chicken from El Pollo Rico? It’s absolutely the most delicious roast chicken I’ve ever had. No ifs, ands, or buts. But here’s a great recipe for making your own peruvian chicken at home, from my lovely author Jenn of Once Upon a Chef.

Friday: Dinner at Virtue Feed & Grain with friends–happy Friday!

Saturday: I’m thinking of rolling up some fresh pasta dough this weekend and tossing it with a simple pesto. What are you thinking of cooking this weekend?

Cheers!

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!)

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.

Category: Fiction Writers

The Hidden Advantage Novelists Have in the Online World