What is Real Author Success and Can You Find It?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevint/

Guest post by Deborah Riley-Magnus

Author success can mean different things to each author. Some are thrilled to have penned 50,000 words in a limited amount of time. Many imagine that signing with a literary agent or publisher is author success. And still others feel that holding a book emblazoned with their name is author success. I’m proposing that REAL AUTHOR SUCCESS is something slightly different. Real author success is what happens after the book is out there and gauged by how it’s received … because these days, making your book a sales success is all on your shoulders.

The difficulties and struggles authors face in today’s publishing industry twists and turns can sometimes feel like a crazy hurricane but there’s no need. Real author success is within every author’s reach and far simpler than you think.

Come closer, let me whisper this big secret …

• The answers are all hidden right inside your manuscript
• And the implementation of great marketing, promotion and publicity is as much creative fun as it was to write your book.

See, the common concept of author marketing and promotion falls under the “same-old-same-old” theory. If all the other authors are pricing their ebooks at $0.99, you do it too. If they’re giving away books, so do you. If twitter authors are posting their book videos, you need a book video so you can post it as well. And if facebook has become a place for authors to show off their marketing strategies to each other (and notice … often this showing off is to other authors and seldom to prospective book buyers), you need to hook up with those authors too because of course, you need to do those strategies too.

Please understand, I don’t think any of these things are bad. The only problem is that now everyone is doing the same thing and to me, it starts to sound like a lot of noise

I have a suggestion. If an author looks carefully into their own manuscript and discovers the unique marketing approaches right where they wrote them, no other author can copy them. What a way to stand out. It’s so hush-hush.

All right, it’s not such a big secret, but have you noticed that very few authors actually look for unique ways to market and promote? It’s not difficult at all but it does take a little time to seriously strategize marketing and promotions that are built for powerful impact. It’s easier to do what everyone else is doing.

May I ask a question? Did you write your book like everyone else does? Did you copy their characters, plots or literary voice? Of course not. So why drop the ball at the most important juncture of your career? Why forget to be creative, original and powerful with your marketing? Your book deserves at least that much.

Standing apart isn’t standing alone, it’s all about SHOUTING YOUR UNIQUE MESSAGE and it’s the most basic of all marketing techniques. Everything that makes you and your book special is inside your manuscript. If there are a thousand mystery authors out there doing free giveaways, low pricing and silly contests, and you are announcing not only a different message but to a different – more targeted - audience, it can only result in book sales. For example …

Let’s say your book takes place on the New England coast. The murder occurs in the late 1800s and the story unfolds when a lovely woman discovers the body of a long-missing sea captain in a lighthouse. You can simply shout out the title of your book to every twitter and facebook listener you can reach. You can post your book cover everywhere and make a book video and tell all your friends and followers. It’s what every other author does and yes, you should do that.

BUT … you can go a lot further. Here are a few ideas.

• Hold speaking engagements/book signing events in lighthouses
• Request that lighthouse gift shops all over the east and west coast carry a few copies of your book on their shelves
• Locate historical lighthouse groups online and join … talk lighthouses and make sure your book is prominently displayed on all your emails
• Donate a portion of your sales to lighthouse restoration organizations, and ask if they’ll permit you to post your book cover and purchase link on their website or in their newsletter
• Blog about the things lighthouse lovers might be interested in
• Become an expert on lighthouses and the era so you can blog or speak on the subject to anyone interested in historic mysteries
• And finally, remember, there are LOTS of mystery lovers who aren’t members of the mystery readers book clubs you find online. Take a leap and ask nurses groups, gardening groups, needlepoint groups, even antique lovers groups if they’d be interested in having you come speak about your book at one of their meetings. Trust me, these folks are always looking for interesting subject matter to offer their members.

Okay, so there are no lighthouses or dead bodies in your book. If your book has a major event or most scenes taking place in a coffee shop or Italian restaurant or at a truck shop or on a dude ranch, there’s no reason you can’t dig as deep and find between five and ten new target book buyer groups. It’s the road less traveled and there are LOTS of prospective fans on that road.

All of this can be fun, it’s definitely creative, and above all, not crowded with a million other authors trying to get your book buyer’s attention. And the best part … it’s completely unique to the book you wrote.

How’s that for Real Author Success! To help get you started, I’d like to offer you a FREE 10 Tools for Author Success PDF handbook. Just go to http://theauthorsuccesscoach.com/ and click on the downloadable link.

I’m also offering a free ebook copy of my book, Finding Author Success – the winner will be drawn from those who comment on this blog.

ABOUT THE BOOK
Finding Author Success: Discovering and Uncovering the Marketing Power Within Your Manuscript.  

Even the odds for authors with this one-of-a-kind guide to marketing success! Deborah Riley-Magnus takes tried and true marketing, publicity and promotional strategies and tailors them for the unique needs of today’s author. Every element is outlined and explained for easy implementation. You will learn:

• How to develop a functional and strong book business plan
• The power of developing effective, targeted platforms
• The basics of publicity, marketing and promotion
• How cross marketing works and why it’s magic for an author
• How to personalize it all to your book

Finding Author Success will take away the mystery about gaining sales and increasing exposure for your book and you as a professional author.

A portion of “Finding Author Success” sales is donated to the American Literacy Council. The American Literacy Council’s main purpose is to convey information on new solutions, innovative technologies, and tools for engaging more boldly in the battle for literacy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Deborah Riley-Magnus is an author and an Author Success Coach. She has a twenty-seven year professional background in marketing, advertising and public relations as a writer for print, television and radio. As an Author Success Coach she focuses exclusively on publicity, marketing and promotional solutions for authors.

Deborah produces several pieces weekly for various blogs and websites including her author website and Unruly Guides, and an author industry blog, Deborah Riley-Magnus,Writaholic. She teaches online and live workshops as an Author Success Coach. In January of 2012, she will be launching a new online publication called the Whispers of the Muse Literary Magazine.

A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she has lived on both the east and west coast of the United States and has traveled the country widely.


LINKS
Finding Author Success: Discovering and Uncovering the Marketing Power
Within Your Manuscript

Amazon Kindle
http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Author-Success-Discovering-ebook/dp/B0061NW5BC/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1320173201&sr=1-3
 
Amazon Paper
http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Author-Success-Deborah-Riley-Magnus/dp/1926760662/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1320173201&sr=1-4
 
B&N Paper and ebook
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/finding-author-success-deborah-riley-magnus/1106661344?ean=9781926760667&itm=1&usri=finding%2bauthors%2bsuccess
 
APPLE
http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/finding-author-success/id473774819?mt=11&ign-mpt=uo%3D4
 
SONY
http://ebookstore.sony.com/ebook/deborah-riley-magnus/finding-author-success/_/R-400000000000000525040

DEBORAH RILEY-MAGNUS LINKS
I blog - http://rileymagnus.wordpress.com/
I teach - http://theauthorsuccesscoach.com/
I fiction – http://coldincalifornia.com
I write - http://deborahriley-magnus.com/
I tweet – http://twitter.com/rileymagnus
I facebook - http://www.facebook.com/deborah.rileymagnus
I should be sooo tired!

Note: Sometimes free article writing services can be helpful to spur inspiration when faced with the occasional yet inevitable writer's block.

Publishing a Poetry Collection

The great America poet Emily Dickinson is known as one of the country’s most unique, and prolific poets. A famous recluse, Dickinson spent countless hours outdoors observing and playing in nature and countless hours inside documenting what she observed in the form of poetry. She wrote hundreds such poems.

But, she was never considered a poet, and in fact her work lay collected in a box for many years after her death until it was discovered and published into a book. Today, an anthology of her work can be found in paperback with a spine that is three inches thick.

Most poetry books, of course, are considerably smaller. But the point is that while poems are meant to be read and understood and appreciated as stand-alone “stories,” they can very successfully be published into book form.

How that is accomplished is matter of the writer and editor’s preferences; however, books of poetry are often published around thematic similarities that run through the individual poems. The themes can be actually embedded in the poems themselves. They can, for example, all address the topic of love, or greed, or the autumn or ocean tides. Or they can share a theme that has to do with how or where they were created- for example, in prison, while waking in the woods, at a seaside bungalow.

Arranging poems around a theme is an art form all its own. Ultimately, when done well, the arrangement of the poems tell a separate (though sometimes related) story all their own. For example within a book of poems on the theme of love, the poems could be arranged chronologically and tell a story of love desired, pursued, won, deteriorated, lost, grieved over, and forgotten.

Poems are meant to be unpacked to reveal the nested story or stories within; this is part of the delight they offer. Collecting poems into a book opens up even greater opportunity to extend a poetic metaphor over the course of several poems.

Writing Exercises for Overcoming Writer's Block

The bad news about writing is that it often comes with creativity blocks. The good news is that because writer’s block is such a common and frustrating experience, people have developed no shortage of ways to address and overcome it.

Some simple creative writing exercises include:

Three Famous People and a Baby: Imagine three famous people stuck in a room, or on a plane, or somewhere they cannot leave. Make the people as different as possible, either by virtue of their places in time, their religious affiliations, and their beliefs. And then put an abandoned infant in the room with them, and write about how they react. Do not worry about figuring out all the ways in which something like this could be possible. The idea is to get your mind to start finding the connections between seemingly disparate subjects.

Hidden Gems: Find the smallest thing you can, and write as much as you can about it. The classic example of this exercise is to write as much as you can about a piece of bubblegum found stuck underneath a seat in a movie theatre.

Reduction Method: This exercise is roughly the opposite of the previous one. It involves taking something or someone that looms very large, and trying to capture as much of their essence as possible with just a couple of words that are as contextually unique as possible (in other words, the word “big” would not be a contextually unique way of describing The Sears Tower in Chicago).

The Barbara Walters: Barbara Walters is famous for her interviews of famous people, and infamous for sometimes asking them the “tree” question (If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be). Choose people you know, make them trees and then craft a story about how they react to deforestation, or a wild fire, or encroaching development.

Some of these ideas might sound a little crazy, but then Animal Farm probably sounded a little odd before it was written.

Discovering Your Writing Ability

There are numerous theories on how to prime the mind so that it is ready to write creatively, and many of them are very effective.

The first of these might seem counterintuitive, but it is effective for many people: do anything but write. Writing is not just about putting words on a page, or crafting a story, it is also about inspiration, and inspiration can come from anywhere. You can be inspired, or gain a new insight, by standing next to a woman in grocery store and watching as she touches every lemon in the bin before she finds the right one. You can find inspiration by simply sitting and watching how your cat observes the world around him. You can find inspiration by walking in the woods.

For those times when you want or need to be sitting in front of the page, there are other creative writing prompts. One is to take a very familiar story, say, the Red Riding-Hood story, and playing with it in a new way.

Another of the many creative writing prompts you can consider is to think about a famous person, a politician for example, and writing a brief story about how he behaves when stuck in an airport, away from his staff and family, during a snow storm without a cell phone.

The emphasis with any exercise that aims to get your mind working creatively is simply to get your mind working, thinking, searching for connections, insights, ironies and the other things that surround us in everyday life and serve as the basis of metaphor and storytelling in our writing.

There are not really any ‘wrong’ ways to go about gaining access to the creative corners of your mind, but there are some ways of thinking about that process that are not always helpful. The mind does not typically work like a machine; meaning it does not always behave in a predictable and compliant fashion. But then, unpredictability is at the core of creativity.

Need help with writing, editing, design, or marketing? thepublishingguru (at) gmail.com

How to Get Endorsements for Your Book

Like it or not, we care about what others think about us. And we care about their opinions on other things as well, including the books they read. As someone who is looking to get your work published, it is often very helpful to obtain the endorsements of others. Endorsements have long been a staple of book promotion in the publishing industry.

When getting testimonials for your book, think about the most high profile names you can get who have some relation to the book you have written. For example, former President George W. Bush is pretty high profile, but he’s probably not considered much of an authority on macramé, and if your book is about macramé, his endorsement, while interesting, will not carry as much weight as you might like.

The interesting irony is people are often more willing to help out in this way than you might think. It is worth it to take the time to try. If you have written a novel, make a list of authors who have won major literary awards and write them and ask them to read and comment on your book. You might be surprised. If you have written a non-fiction book, make a list of authors who have been successful in a non-competitive yet related field and do the same.

Once you have some people lined up to read and comment on the book, offer to craft a comment for their approval. While you might be concerned this offer would be misconstrued as attempt to shape their comment, most people will appreciate the effort to save them time. Just make sure you are explicit you understand they are free to say whatever they want about the book.

Also, make sure they are clear you will use their comments in the promotion of your book. Generally, this is understood, but it pays to cover the bases just in case.

Editing - Design - Book Marketing: thepublishingguru (at) gmail.com