Book marketing 101: Why not to sell to other authors.

I'm a member of a bunch of indie author groups on Facebook, so I see this a lot: An author puts their book on sale and, with dreams of shooting up Amazon's bestseller list dancing in their head, immediately posts about the sale to every author group on Facebook to which they belong.

But a lot of these groups don't allow marketing posts at all. Or they limit the posts to certain days in threads specifically set aside for that purpose. Groups always, always post their rules -- either in a pinned post at the top of the discussion section, or in the About section, or (ideally) both. And still it happens.

I had to spike a buy-my-book post this weekend in a group where I'm an admin. I was in a good mood, so I tagged the author in a new post and explained what had happened to hers. Her reply was along the lines of: "But it's a free book! We can't post those in here, either?"

Well, no. You're still asking people to buy your book. It just so happens that the current price is $0.

Then it occurred to me that maybe folks don't understand why so many author groups ban buy-my-book posts. I'm sure a lot of folks think it's because the ads would clutter up the discussion, so that eventually, actual discussions would be lost. And yes, that's part of it. But the other part is that marketing to your fellow authors is not going to do your career much good.

What every author dreams of is a huge, dedicated fan base, made up of readers who will buy their newest book as soon as it comes out. Right? Well, the way to find these superfans is not to hit up a group of authors. Yes, authors are all readers (or we should be, which is a topic for another day) -- but we read, and write, in all sorts of genres. My books are mostly urban fantasy. Laurie Boris writes mostly literary fiction. Chris James writes sci-fi thrillers. K.S. Brooks writes both thrillers and children's books. Shawn Inmon writes speculative fiction and memoir. Leland Dirks writes contemporary fiction, often co-writing with his dog Angelo. J.D. Mader writes gritty urban thrillers. All of these folks are kickass writers, by the way, and if you haven't read their stuff, you should. But we'd have a tough go of it if, for example, we traded newsletter mailing lists to try to drum up more readers for our own work. Our fandoms might overlap, but not by a lot.

Even if you do make fans out of a bunch of fellow authors, it won't help you much at Amazon beyond that initial sale. Most indie authors are leery of writing a review for another author because the Zon has a habit of deleting such reviews -- especially if they can figure out the authors know one another. (You can still post a review of a pal's book at Goodreads, as far as I know, but getting involved at Goodreads opens another can of worms. I think a lot of authors are still steering clear of it, lest they say something that enrages somebody and cause their books to be showered with one-star reviews.)

And yes, putting your book on sale for free is still selling your book.

All that said, there are Facebook groups for readers looking for their next good book. Those groups would love to have you post there. There are also a host of websites and newsletters dedicated to book marketing; many of them cost money to advertise on, and some don't work as well as they might. The best way to find out what's working right now is to check out indie author groups on Facebook like 20 Books to 50K. Just don't post a buy-your-book ad there.

And as always, I recommend indiesunlimited.com as the best website for indie authors.

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These moments of bloggy advertising advice have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

My own Fool's Journey (writing edition).

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been talking about various aspects of my new book, Seasons of the Fool. And in an aside a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that at one point, I embarked on my own Fool's Journey via a series of meditations with the Major Arcana of the Tarot, and that's what convinced me to start writing seriously.

I remembered that comment earlier this week, when my IU pal Laurie Boris talked about her own journey as a writer on her blog. Her post was sparked by a couple of questions Kim Emerson posted in the MasterKoda group on Facebook: Where were you as a writer ten years ago? How about five years ago?

Those questions had made me think, as well. (They made me do math, too -- darn it, Kim!) And I realized how far I've come in the past ten years. So let's set the Wayback Machine to 2004, Sherman....

Ten years ago, I was a single mom with two kids in high school. I had the same day job I have right now -- legal secretary at a big law firm in Washington, DC -- and way more education than anyone should ever need: a journalism degree, a creative writing degree, and a paralegal certificate. And I wasn't using any of it. I'd bailed on broadcast journalism five or six years before. The business had changed a lot since I'd started in it, to the point where there was less of an emphasis on news that mattered and more on news that would boost the ratings. And neither the crazy work hours nor the every-two-years-like-clockwork layoffs were conducive to raising kids.

I wasn't writing any fiction in 2004, either. Right after grad school, I'd tried marketing some of my short stories to various magazines and literary journals, but I didn't get any takers. In hindsight, I can see that the business was in transition (and still is, come to that); mass-market magazines had pretty much stopped publishing fiction, many smaller journals were succumbing to financial pressures, and e-zines weren't a thing yet. It had gotten to the point where your best option for getting published was to show up at writing seminars and schmooze with editors and agents, so they'd recognize your name when you sent them your work. And I had neither the budget nor the time for that sort of thing (see "single mom," above).

But by 2009, things were very different. I'd had two short stories published by Calderwood Press and was putting the finishing touches on The Maidens' War, which Calderwood published later that year. What had happened in the interim?

For one thing, my kids were both away at college, which freed up a lot of my time. For another, we published the Kevinswatch anthologies in 2006-07; for the first time in years, I was writing fiction again -- and I was writing fantasy, instead of trying to shoehorn my style into realistic fiction. I met Joy Calderwood at the Watch. E-publishing was becoming a thing. And I did my first NaNoWriMo in 2008.

I was beginning to think maybe I ought to do more writing. But it wasn't until I did the Fool's Journey exercise that I committed to it. You see, I'd always been under the impression that you couldn't make a living as a fiction writer. I kept thinking I needed something else to pay the bills. And too, I wanted to "pay it forward" -- to provide some way to help others write, too. So I thought maybe I'd start a writer's retreat B&B, or some kind of office-space-with-daycare facility, or something.

But when I posed the question to the Universe, the answer that came back was that I was supposed to be writing. The Universe wanted me to be a writer. All this other stuff was just a distraction.

So I began to concentrate on writing. Now I've got ten novels published, and another one in the slot. And as for paying it forward, I'm doing that by writing for Indies Unlimited. Funny how things work out, isn't it?

Where do I see myself five years from now, in 2019? If the Universe is kind to me, I'll be making a living from my books; I'll have another 15 novels published then, at my current pace. And in any event, I'll be eligible for early retirement at the end of that year. So one way or another, I'll be on the verge of writing full-time. No fooling.

Where were you ten years ago? And where do you see yourself in five years?

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This week, I'll be putting the finishing touches on a Land, Sea, Sky omnibus. And come to think of it, it's probably time for another newsletter. Stay tuned....

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These moments of bloggy reflection have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Writing Process Blog Tour.

I've been tagged by Yvonne Hertzberger to be one of the next stops on the Writing Process Blog Tour. Thanks for the opportunity, Yvonne. And a hearty hearth/myth welcome to any newbies who have found their way here from her site.

By the way, Yvonne writes some pretty awesome epic fantasy; click on the Rursday Reads tab above and look for my reviews of her "Earth's Pendulum" series. She's also a fellow staffer at Indies Unlimited.

Now then, to the main event -- which is for me to answer the following four questions:

1. What are you working on?

Alert readers of hearth/myth already know that Scorched Earth will be the third and final book in my Land, Sea, Sky trilogy. What they don't know (because I just signed up yesterday) is that I've made this book my Camp NaNoWriMo project for next month. My outline is already done; I still need to fill in the pertinent dates on my dry-erase calendar, which I will do before I go to sleep tonight, and then I will be ready to kick this thing into overdrive on Tuesday.

2. How does your work differ from others of its genre?

This question assumes I've settled on a genre. The Pipe Woman Chronicles were easier -- Native American mythology + handsome shapeshifters = urban fantasy/paranormal romance. Land, Sea, Sky has some Native American mythology, but none of the sexy Plains tribes are involved; instead, Darrell is a Potawatomi Indian, a tribe which almost nobody has heard of, and his sponsoring deity (if you will) is the Ojibwe culture hero Nanabush. I've also got the Morrigan, who's the Celtic goddess of war and who is allied with Tess (to Tess's dismay); and Gaia, who is more or less a Wiccan Earth goddess, and whose human avatar is Sue. The plots of all these books involve a fair amount of intrigue and political maneuvering. So I'm calling the series contemporary fantasy.

If pressed, I'd compare Land, Sea, Sky to Neil Gaiman's American Gods, or to some of Charles de Lint's books. But my books are not enough like those to make a fair comparison. I don't really think anyone else is doing what I'm doing.

3. Why do you write what you do?

Because it interests me. I began studying various Pagan pantheons as part of my own spiritual journey several years ago, and I'd been reading up on Native American spirituality for many years before that. As a news reporter and editor, I spent a couple of decades covering politics (along with a whole bunch of other stuff). I've lived in all the places where the books in both of my series have been set (so far...).  And I read a lot of fantasy.

4. How does your writing process work?

I have discovered that I work best on deadline -- a holdover from my years in journalism. So the NaNoWriMo template seems to work best for me: I churn out a first draft of 50,000 words or so in three or four weeks. It's an intensive process, obviously. I don't have much of a life during the weeks when I'm writing the first draft; I typically spend several hours each night and all day on the weekends at the keyboard.

I do work from an outline, although it's a general, beat-style outline rather than a really detailed one. I write that, and I put the big events of the narrative on a dry-erase calendar that hangs above my desk, before I start writing the first draft. I also collect my research notes in a OneNote notebook. But that's pretty much it for my "writing process." Other than that, I just write.

Tag -- you're It!
The next thing I get to do is tag three authors to be the next stops on the Writing Process Blog Tour. They have all agreed to post their stuff by April 7th. Do stop by and visit them!

1. Laurie Boris

Laurie is a freelance writer, editor, proofreader, and former graphic designer. She has been writing fiction for over twenty-five years and is the award-winning author of four novels: The Joke's on Me, Drawing Breath, Don't Tell Anyone, and Sliding Past Vertical. When not playing with the universe of imaginary people in her head, she enjoys baseball, cooking, reading, and helping aspiring novelists as a contributing writer and editor for IndiesUnlimited.com. She lives in New York's lovely Hudson Valley.

2. John R. Phythyon, Jr.

John wishes he were a superhero or a magician, but since he has not yet been bitten by a radioactive spider or gotten his letter from Hogwarts, he writes adventure stories instead. He is the author of the Wolf Dasher series of fantasy-thriller mashup novels, as well as several short stories, a two-act comedy, and numerous game manuals. He won awards for the latter and hopes to make millions with the former.

In the meantime, he lives in Lawrence, Kansas with his wife, their children, a dog, and a cat. His current projects include the next novel in the Wolf Dasher series, world peace, and desperately wishing for the Cincinnati Bengals to win a Super Bowl before he dies.

3. Alesha Cary

Alesha Cary grew up reading mysteries and she still loves a good who-dunnit. But she's also a romantic at heart and believes we all deserve our own happily-ever-after -- we just have to find the right person. She writes her books with a bit of romance and a bit of mystery ~ and sometimes a splash of paranormal.

The mixture is different for each book, but you can expect to find some of each in every story.

Just like her characters, Alesha lives on the Pacific Northwest Coast with her husband and two cats. Their neighbors are deer, raccoons, skunks, foxes, mountain lions and bear, and far too many birds to list. From her window she gets to watch the whales playing as they migrate.

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These moments of bloggy process -- or maybe it's processed blogginess? Anyway, here they are, brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Guest Post - Zoe Brooks

Alert readers of hearth/myth know that I don't turn this space over to just anybody, and today is no exception. I'm very pleased to welcome Zoe Brooks to the blog. She's an author of several magic realism books (which I aspire to be when I grow up) and she has her own personal writer's retreat in the Czech Republic. I asked her to tell us how she came to have a place that many of us scribblers would kill for. Here's her reply.
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My Czech writing home

It was Easter 1990 when I first stepped off the train in Prague. I didn't know it at the time but it was the beginning of a love affair with the Czech Republic. A love affair which is still as strong, indeed stronger, a love affair which is the reason I am today sitting at a desk in the living room of an old Bohemian farmhouse. I have just got back from England. Tomorrow I will start to write my latest book, but tonight I am writing this post.

The Prague I discovered twenty-four years ago was just waking. The nightmare of the communist years and before that Nazi oppression was over. There was a palpable excitement in the air. People were walking around with grins on their faces and yet at the same time they were at last able to express the grief they felt for the victims of the tyrants. As I walked the streets I would pass small shrines of candles and flowers in memory of the fallen. It was as if the air was full of angels, both rejoicing and grieving.

The Czechs believe in angels. They may be the most atheist nation in Europe but they believe in angels, devils and fairies, or at least they seem to talk about them a lot. This is a magic realist country. It is my sort of place. I sometimes wonder whether I was already partly Czech and just didn't know it, until I arrived on that cold spring evening. I grew up loving those tv fairytale series that the BBC imported from the Eastern bloc in the 1960s. I read illustrated children's books, which unbeknownst to me were translated from the Czech and brought over by Paul Hamlyn.

And then there was Hannah Kodicek. We had met when I borrowed some puppets of hers for an exhibition of television puppets. We immediately became friends. It was Hannah who was waiting for me on the platform at Prague station. As she renewed acquaintances and researched an article for the Sunday Times about a Czech emigree returning to the city she had fled in 1968, I wandered the streets in a state of euphoria induced by the atmosphere and too many cups of black Czech coffee. When we got back, I found myself writing a long poem for voices inspired by the experience, and Hannah, inspired in turn by the poem, produced an amazing sequence of four-coloured prints. The poem Fool's Paradise won the award for best poetry book in the EPIC awards last year.

Horice na Sumave, from the hill above the farmhouse

After a few years Hannah bought a flat in Prague and left Britain. I was busy following a career in community regeneration. I used to fly over two or three times a year and we would talk and walk. I had stopped writing by this point. Nothing was flowing but I told myself I didn't mind. I had a career, I had other things of value to do. I told Hannah that too, but she didn't believe me. She worried that I was suppressing the creative side of my nature. Nearly nine years ago I decided she might be right and to address my writer's block I would buy a house here. Or rather, I decided I would buy a little hut in the woods: nothing too expensive, nothing that needed work on it, somewhere I would come for a few weeks each summer. My lovely husband was persuaded by this, especially as he believed and still believes that I was born to be a writer. But fate intervened. Hannah's carpenter (known to us all as Frantisek Jesus, because he played the lead in the local passion play) heard of a place which was coming up for sale. It was large five-bedroomed farmhouse in so bad a way that only a crazy Brit would consider buying it – the Czechs knew better.

For the first few years nothing creative happened. I was too busy supervising builders and Czech builders certainly need supervising. Again I told myself I didn't mind. Then I had what was probably a breakdown. I gave up my career and came here for six weeks. I wrote the first draft of my first book, which will remain along with the finished draft forever in the bottom of a drawer somewhere. But the log jam had broken, the words had begun to flow. At the third attempt I wrote a book that I and Hannah thought good enough to publish. Three more books have followed.

So does my Czech homeland feature in my books, do I hear you ask? Yes, not entirely by any means, but yes. In my Healer's Shadow Trilogy, the heroine, the traditional healer Judith, is attracted to the Forester. She visits it twice and marries a Forester, but fights against settling there. In the final book, The Company of Shadows, she is forced by circumstances to go. The reason for her fear is that there is in the Forest a great healer and Judith is afraid that in meeting the healer she will have to realize what is inside herself, Now who does that remind me of?

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When Zoe was a little girl, her inventor father taught her to "look at things another way", while her mother taught her to see dragons in the shapes of natural things. Zoe is still putting into practice what she was taught.

In 2012 Zoe published her first novel, Girl in the Glass (the first book in The Healer’s Shadow trilogy). Four books have followed, including the rest of the trilogy and the award-winning poetry book Fool’s Paradise.

Zoe aims to write popular books that have complex characters and themes that get under the reader's skin. She finds her experience of working with people on the edge of society an inspiration for her fiction.

Zoe uses magic realism in her writing and has a magic realism blog, where she reviews a magic realism book a week: http://magic-realism-books.blogspot.com. She also administers the Magic Realism Books Facebook group.

Find her here:

http://amazon.com/author/zoebrooks 
http://zoebrooks.blogspot.com 
http://twitter.com/ZoeBrooks2

http://www.facebook.com/ZoeBrooksAuthor

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Two bits of personal business before I go:

1. Crosswind is officially entered in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards this year. If you're on the fence about reading it, you can click here for a preview of my ABNA entry. (And thanks to Charles Ray and Laurie Boris for the swell preview idea.)
2. The Goodreads giveaway is ongoing through Saturday. Click in the box to the left if you'd like to enter to win a signed copy. Good luck!
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These moments of bloggy magic have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.