Guest Post: Apex Publishing’s Sizemore on Why Authors Need to Market

Today’s guest post is brought to you by Jason Sizemore of the small press publishing house, Apex Book Company. Apex Books has been embracing both traditional publishing methods as well as new technology through their Apex Book Company e-books on DriveThruSciFi.com. In this post, Jason talks about why it’s important for authors to embrace online marketing and promotion from his perspective as the owner of a small press publishing company.

Are you an author who doesn’t believe in doing your fair share of promotion? If so, I don’t want to work with you. And it’s not just me, but most other publishers, as well.

Trust me when I tell you this isn’t because publishers are lazy and don’t want to do the work to make you (and them) a success. On the contrary, a good small press publisher is a smart, aggressive marketer who will spend late nights on the computer and at conventions promoting their titles. The good small press publisher will wheel n’ deal with magazines, blogs, and websites for prime advertising at a cost they can afford. The good small press publisher will curry favors in return for that half-page ad in the latest Rue Morgue or Locus Magazine. We’re ruthless when it comes to hustling for sales and promotion.

Unfortunately, that’s never enough. Marketing is a hungry beast and most small press owners are working with limited resources (we’re talking the big 3 here: time, money, and people). Many of do what we can with what we have, but due to this lack of resources, part of a successful marketing campaign involves the author.

Here’s something that might surprise some of you—not even my most successful work at marketing can surpass that of an enterprising author determined to sell his/her book.

I’ve had a number of discussions with other publishers and authors about why this is so. In the end, I like to call it the ‘cult of personality.’

Readers share something intimate with a writer that goes beyond the average fan/star relationship. When you read somebody’s book, a connection is built mentally, emotionally that is unique in the retail world. If a reader enjoys your story, they will naturally want to think of you as somebody they’d like, as somebody they’d like to interact with even if it’s remotely through a computer or personally at a convention or book signing.

If a reader meets you and hasn’t read your book, you have an opportunity to earn a fan just by being nice and gracious. If they encounter your blog and you provide something of interest, then they might just pick up your book. I’ve had authors sometimes act like doing self-promotion is a real pain. In reality, it’s little more than being civil and giving the readers a small glimpse into your mind.

Connect with the readers and you’ll do well. Highly successful examples of authors doing this include Brian Keene, Cherie Priest, JA Konrath, Sara M. Harvey, and Maurice Broaddus.

The flip side of the equation is that when I sign an author to a book deal, I consider there to be a ‘bi-directional assumption of trust’ in play. From the author’s perspective, the publisher is trusted to edit and produce a quality product. The author has a fair expectation of review copies being sent, press releases being written, and a reasonable marketing plan being enacted (among other things). The publisher has a right to expect that the author will produce quality edits, they will help promote the title, and to a degree, be a cheerleader for their publisher.

In the end, I’ve never understood the author who refuses to do his/her own marketing. It’s a business, after all. We want to make money. You want to make money. The bookstores want to make money. By not self promoting you’re hurting everybody in that chain of trust.

About Jason Sizemore

Jason Sizemore is the owner of Apex Book Company, a small press dedicated to publishing quality horror, fantasy, and science fiction. Also, he’s a past Stoker Award finalist for editing the anthology Aegri Somnia and his first collection of horror (Irredeemable) comes out in 2010 from Shroud Publications.

For more information, visit www.jason-sizemore.com.

July 21, 2009
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Read my Guest Blog Post at Apex Books

The kind people over at Apex Books, a science fiction meets horror small press publishing company, had asked me to write a guest post about book marketing. After narrowing down a few choices, I ended up writing about Why Not Every Book Promotion Will Work For Your Book.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

    Why Not Every Book Promotion Will Work For Your Book

    Marketing a book is not like marketing a carton of milk because books don’t have an expiration date stamped on their cover. A reader may buy your first book when it’s newly published, or they may discover your work after you’ve written your twentieth novel. Additionally, online media has enabled readers to establish a closer connection with the authors they admire. Because of these phenomena, book promotion is fairly complex because it often caters to multiple audiences while promoting both the author and the book at the same time.

    Book Promotion Takes Time

    If you’re considering a dip into the waters of book promotion, the good news is that there is plenty of information out there for you to read. From e-books extolling the “tried and true” methods of marketing your book to free tips offered by book marketers, there is no shortage of friendly advice on the subject. Before you hop online and take advantage of the free tips that many book marketers are offering, I want you to place your book in front of you. Take a good, long look at the cover and think about how many hours it took you to write and edit that work. Then, ask yourself this question: How much time are you willing to spend to promote your book? Read more…

To read the rest of the article, please visit my guest blog post for Apex Book Publishing. Be sure to let me know what you think!

🙂

July 5, 2009
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Guest Blog Post: Brozek on Editing Anthologies

Readers, I asked Jennifer Brozek to offer a guest blog today. Jennifer is an editor, writer and a game designer who has recently done some work through Apex Books and Morrigan Books. This post is about her perspective on editing a fiction anthology. I know that many of you are looking for places to submit your short stories, and anthologies can be a great opportunity for you. Be sure to read Jennifer’s bio if you’re interested in learning more about her, too. Without further ado, I’ll turn this post over now to my esteemed guest…

Monica was curious about how editing an anthology is different than editing a story, a novel or something like marketing copy for Amazon that pays-the-bills for us full-time authors. In essence, editing an anthology is the same as any other editing with one big difference: all of the short stories need to blend with each other to make the overall theme of the anthology flow into a cohesive storyline.

I would liken it to putting together a string of freshwater pearls. Each pearl must be a beauty on its own – just like each story in the anthology must be perfect on its own. The technical writing has to be excellent, the story itself must be interesting and each story must adhere to the theme, genre and word count of the anthology in question.

Once you have all of the pearls for the necklace, you need to string them together in such a way that, when hanging together, all of the pearls become a necklace that is more than the sum of their parts. Just like an anthology becomes more than just the sum of the individual stories. No one pearl can stand out in a way that interrupts the flow of the string. It cannot be too big, the wrong shape or the wrong color. Just like all of the stories must have a sense of an overall cohesion. Each story is telling a part of a bigger story. There is no room for rogues in an anthology.

This is what makes editing an anthology so difficult. All of the stories must play nice together. None of them can introduce a plot point that will throw off any of the other stories. In the GRANTS PASS anthology (Morrigan Books, August 2009), we had to be very strict on how the world was destroyed by nature and where specific bioterrorists plagues were released.

One story could not mention volcanic eruptions in the Hawaiian Islands while the stories set in California neglected to mention ash haze. Neither could one story state that an earthquake split the Americas in half while other stories described people traversing the Americas on foot. All of the stories were in the same shared universe. The details matter.

In other anthologies, like monster anthologies about vampires, werewolves or zombies, there needs to be a cohesive and consistent story background on how the monster is defined. Are they non-brain eating Voodoo zombies, slow moving Romero zombies or fast moving Synder zombies? An anthology editor must consider the overall project and what it is they want from the anthology as a whole.

That is why reading and understanding the submission guidelines for anthologies is so important. You may turn in a beautiful story that would have been perfect if everyone else had the same vision you did. But if your story does not fit well into a collection you will be rejected every time.

About Jennifer Brozek

Jennifer Brozek, the creator and co-editor of the Grants Pass anthology (Aug 2009, Morrigan Books), is a freelance author for many RPG companies including Margaret Weis Productions, Rogue Games and Catalyst Game Labs. Her contributions to RPG sourcebooks include Dragonlance, Castlemourn, Colonial Gothic, Shadowrun and Serenity. She has also co-authored three books including Dragonvarld Adventures with Margaret Weis. She is published in several anthologies, is the creator and editor of the semi-prozine, The Edge of Propinquity, and is a submissions editor for the Apex Book Company. When she is not writing her heart out, she is gallivanting around the Pacific Northwest in its wonderfully mercurial weather. You can learn more about her by visiting her blog at http://jennifer-brozek.livejournal.com.

June 16, 2009
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The Death of Copyright by Guest Blogger Chris Clark

Today my readers I’d like to feature a guest post by a hobby games veteran. Chris Clark from Inner City Games Designs gives us his thoughts on copyright. His thoughts were spawned by a very intense discussion regarding the Google class action settlement with the Author’s Guild. If you’re not aware of the lawsuit and subsequent settlement, you’ll want to read The Author’s Guild Google Settlement Resources and how it might affect you.

I’m an industry dinosaur. Inner City Games Designs (ICGD) is approaching its 30th year in business (est.1982, first pubbed product actually in 1981 – it was a smaller, kinder industry then). I frankly have 107 published IPs that could be in serious jeopardy if the courts allow this to happen. I’m working on two books and four games for the next quarter as well.

I do a LOT of things to earn a living, and always have.

I can build a car from scratch.

I can build a house from scratch.

I can build furniture from scratch.

I was a restaurant chef for 7 years.

I was a logistics (import/export) guru for 16 years (although I am now sadly out of date).

WHY do I write stories and games to make my living? Because, if I do that job well, that particular body of work should outlive me. The effect that said work will have on its intended audience will extend beyond the brief span of years with which I have been gifted. In short… those ideas, those IPs, are my legacy (not Google’s legacy, not some programmer’s legacy).
Read More…

January 8, 2009
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The Myths And Realities Of Writing For The Screen and Stage

Today’s guest blog post is brought to you by Joe Filippone–an experienced playwright and screenwriter. Joe has a unique perspective on writing for the screen and stage, and helps dispel some of the myths surrounding this lucrative form of writing. I’m happy to feature this fact-filled guest post about the forms of playwriting and screenwriting and what you can do to see your play or movie come to life.

Playwriting vs. Screenwriting

Everyone seems to think two of the easiest ways to break into the writing world are playwriting and screenwriting. After all, those are the two easiest realms of the writing world to break into. All you need to write is dialog and a few meager stage directions or camera angles that no one cares about anyway right? You don’t need to worry about character development, writing what the character is thinking or filling the page with vivid descriptions of the environment because the audience will see it right? And you don’t need to worry about making it novel length. A play is maybe eighty pages at the most. One can easily get it written over a weekend, mail it to some theatres and just rake in the royalties. Right? Wrong. Writing for actors is one of the hardest, difficult aspects to break into. Here’s why.
Read More…

August 1, 2008
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