RHP « Robin Writes

Last week, when I talked about distribution, I briefly mentioned bookstores, festivals, markets, and just plain hauling around boxes of books. Let’s look at those things again, for a moment, and then move on the more creative selling.

Bookstores: you CAN arrange events and have your books stocked in indie stores, even if you have no mainline distribution. But it’s much easier if stores can simply order your books through their main system. And it’s virtually impossible to get into large chain stores without that distribution.

Festivals, markets, schlepping: anyone can do this, all it takes is time.

Now, let’s be creative—and I’m going to use RHP books as examples, since we cover a lot of genres:

Genre Events: Smut by the Sea, across the pond, is a good example of this. Author Charlotte Howard (Seven Dirty Words, Four Letter Words) is going this year, in fact, she’s a featured author. Almost any genre has an organization, or several or many groups, who put on events to bring together readers and writers.

You will, however, run into other authors who have a “buy mine, I’ll buy yours” agenda—keep your wallet in your pocket. Sure, you’ll have sales, but only do this if you DO intend to read the book. Your book should stand on its own, not be a condition of a sale. Writers’ conferences can fall into this category too, although sometimes they offer a store to sell participants’ books.

Science fiction? Look at Archon or ComicCon; the first is local (to me) and the second, in Cali, has spawned dozens of events around the US. Particularly books like author George Sirois’ novel, Excelsior, or Michael Chulsky’s The Descending Darkness, fall into this category and could benefit from the exposure.

Now, you might be thinking these aren’t so creative after all, but how many of you have registered for one of these events? Even better—sell yourself, so you can be featured or part of the program. You wrote a book, for heaven’s sake, surely you have something to talk about, right?

Let’s move on—where is your story set? Who is the main character? Is there an overall message?

The Reduced Series: Girl Scout camp, adult women, survivalism

P.A.W.S: Forest Park (STL), young teens, bullying

Dickinstein: 1800s, Emily Dickinson, science

Spirits of St. Louis: St. Louis area, ghosts, history

Water Under the Bridge: early 1900s, women and girls, religious bullying, women’s rights

Danny’s Grace: early stardom, child abuse, drugs

Caught Between Two Curses: baseball, Cubs, paranormal, mystery, teen girl

What can you come up with as a potential venue for these? Break down your title, your story, and let your imagination loose. The worst that can happen is that you’re told “no.” And it might be just the thing a particular venue needs/is interested in to help THEIR sales and exposure.

I’m not forgetting children’s books here: Tuffy and Debbie, for instance. Guest reader at a school, naturally handing out a card with a book-buying link; library story time; pediatrician offices—ask to leave a complimentary copy. Again, look at the setting, the characters, the story, the message.

Holiday books can pose a particular problem when it comes to marketing and sales year ‘round. However, keep in mind that holiday shopping often starts in the fall, sometimes late summer. Retail stores often begin receiving holiday merchandise in August. Yes, August! Even now, in March, it’s not really too early to start bringing Morgidoo and ELF to someone’s attention!

Non-fiction can work the same way, except it’s more obvious that you are an expert—every author is, of course, an expert on his or her book. INNspiring Breakfasts, with its tie-in to author Kriss Royer’s B&B, could also be featured on cooking shows, grocery stores, specialty shops, and more. What is YOUR book about? What kinds of people would be interested in YOUR book?

Make a list. Brainstorm. Write it down whenever and wherever you think of a venue. Find your hook. Find your audience—make another list of all the characteristics of your ONE READER. Then find that reader, and all the others like him or her. Or find their parents. Or their pets.

You have to look, but you have to know exactly what you’re looking for.

Yep, as a writer—or a human being—we’re all called upon at times to deal with the pettiness of daily life. Sometimes, that can seem ever present, ever constant, and PUBLIC. The truth is that it’s really none of those things.

A couple weeks ago, I received an email from that strange site, Goodreads. The one that is supposed to be about readers sharing their opinions of books but has, sadly, become a huge advertisement. I was pretty excited a couple years ago, when I finally created an account there. But then . . .

First, Goodreads allowed someone who had NOT read my first book, Reduced, to rate and review it. It was pretty obvious that she hadn’t read the book, and so I complained; I was positive this was someone who had been bashing me personally, on and off, for a few weeks before the book was released.

Goodreads removed the review, but not the rating. I complained a second time when someone marked a book as having one star AND as on his or her “to read” shelf. How can you rate a book if you haven’t read it? Again. Goodreads finally got back to me and said that some members “rated” books as to how BADLY they wanted to read them. Um, okay. Whatever.

Once, I had “librarian” status there; then it disappeared. Goodreads never could tell me why, they just kept saying to re-apply; never heard anything else.

And every time I log on, I have at least 25 invites to “events” in which I have zero interest. Online “events.” Ugh.

So, not a fan.

Back to the email, and the point of this whole thing: Goodreads said that I had to “disclose” that I had published some books, according to the FCC, any time I rated or reviewed them. I had not done so. My bad. If anyone wanted to know WHO I was, they could click on my name and go right to my profile. It says there, in plain English, that I own Rocking Horse Publishing. Duh.

[I could also add a comment about how the US Government concerning itself with book reviews is just plain ridiculous, but that’s probably better left for another day and another topic.]

So this morning I have a message from an author about an anonymous blog post talking smack about RHP and the author and me. It was related to this “disclosure” mess, but led back to a review on Goodreads that was POSTED OVER A YEAR AGO.

The reviewer had said there were “errors.” I asked if she could send me a list, so they could be fixed. Truthfully, there were a few, but mostly it was formatting. The problem was that she didn’t SEND me a list, but added her response to the review thread itself. I was astounded, and pointed out, nicely, that I had expected a PM.

Here’s where it gets weird: someone else recently added to that year-old thread and said I shouldn’t have complained. Complained? I was just surprised that the reviewer had posted publicly instead of PMing me. And again, A YEAR AGO. I’d forgotten all about it.

And THEN—someone anonymously blogged about the thread. What? Zip back up to my title: Idiocy.

Here’s the thing: give it all five minutes of your time and move on. Consider the source—in this case, anonymity, a janky website, and something that happened A YEAR AGO. In Internet time, folks, that’s like a decade.

Oh, and Goodreads? If someone wants to know who I am, tell them to click my name. Look me up on Facebook, or Google, or Twitter, or wherever. And anonymous bloggers? Get a grip; you’re really not that important. Especially when you’re “anonymous,” your Goodreads profile is “private,” and you have nothing better to do than troll around, looking for something to cause trouble.

Why, then, am I writing about you? To show everyone how ridiculous you really are. And to laugh at you. Yes, I said that. And I’ll stand by it. We used to have a word for you, but I’m sure it’s no longer PC to use it: shit-disturber.

Writers, there are a lot of these folks hanging out online—I suspect they used to hang out in their mothers’ basements before the Internet came along. Now we have to deal with them. Yay.