Reducing Twitnoise: A modest proposal.

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I hope I don't get myself drummed out of the indie author corps for this post.

I dislike Twitter. There, I said it. And yet, it ought to be a natural for me, because broadcast news requires short sentences of 10 or 20 words, in subject-verb-object order. I'm used to conveying ideas in quick bites that are easily understood by a distracted listener.

Moreover, a reasonably-sized slice of my broadcasting career was devoted to writing "bumpers" -- one-line promos about the next story or stories that are designed to pique your interest so that you stick around through the commercials.

So I should be gravitating to Twitter. But I hate it. Why? Because I feel like every time I'm there, somewhere around 87% of my tweet stream consists of people trying to sell me something. Oh, it's not all blatant "buy my book" tweets; often it's people retweeting other people's "buy my book" tweets.  To make matters worse (for me), there are a number of apps that will not only filter out the dreck from your own feed, but will allow you to schedule your "buy my book" tweets, as well as "buy this other guy's book" tweets, as often as you want, all day long, for weeks into the future.

If you, too, are an indie author, you probably already know this. And you've probably been petitioned, cajoled, and/or coerced into either sending your own advertising tweets or retweeting somebody else's. Right?

Here's what bothers me. See, I'm not a public relations professional: I'm not paid specifically to sell other people's stuff for them. Mind you, P.R. is an honorable profession -- it's just not what I get paid to do. I'm an author. And as an author, I believe (maybe wrongly!) that I have a reputation to uphold. I want readers and other indies to associate my name with a certain level of quality. And so if I'm recommending that someone click on a link I've posted on Facebook or tweeted on Twitter, I want them to know that I've vetted the material at the link, and I think it will be worth my followers' time to check out.

So when somebody hands me a list of tweets from people I met five minutes ago and says, "Here, tweet these, and then we'll all tweet one for you," I resist. I haven't read any books by any of these people; I don't know whether I can recommend them or not.

I had someone tell me this week, "It's just a retweet. People will know you haven't read the book."  Really? I'm sending out a tweet under my name, with my picture on it, and people won't think it's a personal recommendation?

Do we have any figures on whether "buy my/his/her book" tweets actually sell books? Any proof that this tactic does anything other than annoy people with Twitnoise (a word I just coined -- do you like it?)? If so, please let me know and I will reconsider my prejudice against the practice.

But if it annoys people *and* it doesn't sell any books, why do we keep doing it?

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Speaking of self-promotion (and yes, I get the irony): Coming out this week will be the second of the "Land, Sea, Sky" prologue stories. In "Where Were You When?" last month, I introduced you to Tess Showalter, who's on the verge of becoming a journalist ("Gee, Murgatroyd, I wonder where Lynne got that idea from?"); this month, in "Change of Plans," our main character is Darrell Warren, a nice guy whose life is about to do a 180-degree turn courtesy of a certain rabbit-eared god. I hope you'll check out both of them on Amazon.

Also, I'm making good progress on Crosswind, the first LSS novel. The first draft passed 40,000 words early this morning -- whoo hoo! I'm hoping to finish it by this time next weekend, but that's probably too optimistic. We'll see, though.

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This moment of cranky Twitter blogginess is brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

GoodZon, and promoting e-books.

First, let's wrap up some old business.  Congrats to the winners of autographed sets of the first three Pipe Woman Chronicles books: on Goodreads, Ebonique Knighton; and on LibraryThing, Kristy Choi.  Thanks for entering, ladies!  Here's hoping you like the series.

Also, many, many thanks to those of you who have already purchased Gravid!  It does my heart good to know that you like the Pipe Woman Chronicles well enough to get the fourth book the minute it came out.  However, I was dismayed to learn that some folks didn't know Gravid was out until this weekend.  I've been resisting the setup of an e-mail list because I know how I feel about marketing e-mails -- i.e., most of them go straight to my spam folder, where I never see them and never miss them.  But I'm learning that I just can't rely on posts on my Facebook page.  So I think this week, I'm going to succumb, if only so y'all will know when Annealed is released.  I'll post signup details, uh, multiple places, including here.

The big news in the world of indie publishing this week was the purchase of Goodreads by Amazon.  There was a lot of doom-and-gloom speculation about how this will ruin Goodreads, how this will ruin indie authors' hopes of success, etc., etc.  I was less inclined to believe it will hurt us after I learned that Amazon also owns 40 percent of LibraryThing -- as well as IMDb.  As far as I can tell, the Zon hasn't really changed anything about the day-to-day operations of either of those websites, and so I doubt that much will change at Goodreads, either.  In both of those acquisitions, as well as in the acquisition of Shelfari, what Amazon was after was the sites' databases of ratings and reviews.  I suspect that's what Amazon really wants out of Goodreads, too.

David Gaughran opined about the deal in a blog post about the purchase earlier this week.  He thinks the acquisition will help indies in the long run, mainly by giving us more opportunities to advertise on Goodreads (color me skeptical about that) and by boosting the visibility of Amazon links (which definitely will help).  I think as long as Goodreads doesn't implement the same draconian review policies as Amazon -- and Goodreads's CEO has said that won't happen -- then I'm cautiously optimistic that indies will be okay.  But time will tell.  In any case, I'm going to take Gaughran's advice in the meantime:  Keep writing.

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There's always a moment in any live event -- interview, public speaking engagement, whatever -- when I feel like I've lost the plot. So, of course, I had one during my talk on e-publishing in Indianapolis last weekend.  Toward the end of the discussion, someone in the audience asked me whether I ever did any book signings or talked to book clubs, or did any other promotional events.  And I confessed that I do almost none of that stuff, and that in fact I kind of suck at self-promotion in general.  So the kindly people in the audience then began giving me tips about finding venues and so on.

It didn't occur to me until I was on my way home (awake and sitting up in coach in the middle of the night, which is another story entirely) why I don't bother with it:  I'm selling e-books.

I thought about Cheryl Tardif (whose latest book you read about here a couple of weeks ago).  In her book touting her KDP Select success, she talks about how she spent years doing exactly what these kindly souls suggest -- running from personal appearance to personal appearance, more than 40 per year, and endlessly flogging her books. But after she put her books up on Amazon, she made more money than she ever had by making all those personal appearances.
I do make paperback editions available for all my books, as a convenience for people who don't have an e-reader.  But I sell far more e-books than I do paperbacks, and I earn more from each e-book than I do from each paperback.  So tell me again why I should make myself crazy by running hither and yon to sell dead-tree books.  I can reach more potential readers with a Facebook ad, or even a blog post, than I can with a personal appearance.  And I don't have to sit up all night in coach.

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Oh, there is one more thing.  Camp NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow (no fooling!), so I'll be pretty busy working on Annealed in my spare time for the next few weeks.  I don't plan to miss any posts here, but just...well...fair warning.

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These moments of lame, promotion-free blogginess are brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Big news! and: pity the poor introverted writer.

First, as always, the news.  I am excited to announce that I'm now a contributing author at Indies Unlimited.  I've been following this website over the past few months and have been quite impressed by the depth of knowledge about writing and indie publishing, as well as the world-class snark, the contributors there display.  So I was very grateful when the Evil Overlord himself extended me an invitation to join them.  I understand I will be receiving payment in spoonfuls of gruel, which is more than one typically receives for online contributions, so I'm pretty pumped!  But seriously, I've agreed to contribute a blog post each month.  I don't know yet when my debut staff post will hit teh intarwebz, so watch this space.

In addition, I'm continuing as a monthly contributor to the Indie Exchange through December.  It shouldn't be a problem, as it appears I'm hardly ever at a loss to come up with 500 or so words on something-or-other on the spur of the moment (to which those of you who have been following this blog can attest, for good or ill).

All this stuff about guest blogging actually segues nicely into this week's post, which is about promotion.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch, who has been traditionally published for years and is now going indie for her backlist books, wrote a provocative post on her own blog recently about the difference between indies and trad publishing.  Within it was this piece of advice:

Publicity doesn’t work for books. It really doesn’t. All it does is get your name in front of a reader who might then glance at your book....So indie writers who promote their book instead of writing the next book are wasting their time. The more books you’ve written, the more books you’ll sell.

As you might expect, a lot of indie authors beg to differ -- including me.  While Rusch's strategy has worked for her, I think new indie authors have to spend some time promoting themselves.  Rusch is coming into indie publishing with a successful traditional career behind her; her name is already known, and her readers will likely be ecstatic to discover that a whole lot of her out-of-print titles are available again.

But before your readers can find you, they have to know what they're looking for.  That means that concurrently with the publication of a first novel (and the next one, and probably the next several after that), an indie author is going to have to drum up interest by getting his or her name out there.  The marketing phrase for this is "building your brand."  It means writing blog posts and doing giveaways and maybe even doing personal appearances.  At the very least, it means talking to people.

This is tough for many writers.  I'm speculating here, but I think it would be fair to say that those of us who gravitate to a career that locks us in a lonely writer's garret for hours at a time are probably introverts.  Interacting with other people tends to exhaust us.  We recharge our batteries by spending time alone.  So this whole idea of having to interact with people, to meet them and smile and flog our books without seeming to, is daunting, to say the least.  Rusch's advice sounds like just the ticket!

Not so fast.  I wouldn't trust the notion that an author -- any author -- can simply sit back and wait, and do no promotion at all.  Keep in mind that Rusch herself has a blog.  She's making sure you know her name, isn't she?

Rusch is right about one thing -- the more books you've written, the more you'll sell.  JA Konrath has talked about this numerous times on his blog: someone who reads and enjoys one of your books is likely to buy more of them.  Some readers (I'm raising my hand) will even search out every book ever written by an author they particularly like.  So the longer your backlist is, the better the chances that you'll sell more and more books as time goes on, and as more and more readers discover your work.

So I'm sorry to tell you that there's no magic formula and there's no promotion-free pass.  Keep writing, for sure, and keep turning out professional-level work.  But you can't quit building your brand.

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I'm Lynne Cantwell, and I approve this blog post.