I had some success writing about my book in less than 25 words. (Though you may well disagree.) And I managed to come up with some straplines too.
So, in no particular order (I think!), here are the straplines followed by the 25-word descriptions of The World According to Boring John. (This is in response to this one-sentence book description post I made a while back.)
Straplines
Lad-lit without the bombs and boobs
"It's a novel Jim, but not as we know it!"
Move over Clarkson, there's a new moaner in town!
Life, the universe and everything (except Jeremy Clarkson!)
A monologue about 'life', when all he really wanted was a roll with a James Bond girl.
25-Word Descriptions
Monologue on 'life, the universe, everything' by a character who'd much rather be in a James Bond novel. So he starts changing his lines...
How I wrote my first novel, as narrated by a character who'd much rather have starred in a James Bond novel.
Journeyman character doesn't think much to his monologue routine. So he decides to hijack his first starring role by changing his lines, slowly at first...
His monologue awaits; but he'd rather star in a James Bond novel. So Boring John tries to get his writer to quit - gently, at first...
Contractually committed to the project, Boring John doubts his writer is up to the job. So he decides to change his lines - slowly, at first...
Haunted by one too many blank pages, the main character decides to end things the only way contractually allowed - by getting his writer to quit.
Fearful of the demands of the word-count, Boring John decides to end things the only way contractually allowed - by getting his writer to quit.
Disillusioned with how his first starring role is shaping up, Boring John decides to hijack the project and get his writer to quit.
His first ever leading role, but he disagrees with the book's premise. So the protagonist attempts to use it to get his writer to quit.
Ignoring nearly all the rules of writing, a writer sets out to prove his premise. Boring John disagrees and tries to stop him
Unhappy with his 'life, the universe and everything' monologue, Boring John decides to moan about his writer instead - to try to get him to quit.
"And that's how two characters should dance together in life" is fine. The battle is on between writer and protagonist for what *else* gets said.
Determined to exorcise the demons of the blank page, a first-time writer struggles to boost the word-count in this monologue about life, the universe, everything.
The world's first 'how I wrote this novel' as voiced by a reluctant, increasingly petulant main character who'd much rather be in a James Bond book.
Nothing more than a monologue on life, the universe, everything - without Clarkson - by a character who'd much rather be in a James Bond novel instead?
---
Note: you can read the synopsis I just sent to Capel and Land here (watch out for Boring John, though!).
Showing posts with label marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marketing. Show all posts
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Thursday, June 26, 2008
One-sentence Book Description
I subscribe to various writing newsletters, and - more out of procrastination than anything else - I decided to go through the months and months of backlogs to see if I could find anything that would help me with my current publishing quest, namely how to find the right publisher that might want to publish my book.
Anyway, I did not get much joy and I think I will use Amazon as my research tool and rely on my own brain for a while (sure it will be good for me), but I did read something very interesting written by Randy Ingermanson, a published author.
Basically, he wanted to know if I could describe my book in one sentence. And the thing is, I can't - I really can't.
And that's bad news for me getting my book published, as you'll see below in Randy's piece (published with permission, naturally) called, The World's Scariest Question.
The good news is that it's a great writing opportunity for me - this writing a one-sentence description. It should help me get my book published, too. And if it allows me to answer the world's scariest question, even better!
Over to Randy (a North American)...
The World's Scariest Question
by published, award-winning author Randy Ingermanson ("the Snowflake guy")
Someday you'll be signing autographs for your novel at
a Wal-Mart. A woman will wander past hauling three
desperate-looking kids. She'll ask you where the
bathroom is.
You won't have any idea, but you'll helpfully point in
a random direction.
She'll hurry off with the brats in tow. Ten minutes
later, she'll be back, having solved the immediate
problem. She'll thank you for being helpful. Then
she'll ask The World's Scariest Question:
"So," she'll say as she picks up your novel. "What's
your book about?"
If you're a novelist, you can expect to answer this
question about 500 times for each book you write.
You must have an answer to this question, because it's
the difference between a sale and a pair of glazed eyes.
First, let me give you the wrong answer: "Well, see,
there's this guy. And he works for the government and
he's got a girlfriend. The girlfriend is mad at him for
leaving Cheezits in his socks. Oh yeah, and his boss
is, like, really mean. And one of his co-workers is
doing pretty bad stuff, and he's just about to figure
out what it is, when his girlfriend kicks him
out--because of the Cheezits--and then, um, where was
I?"
The correct answer is one like this: "My novel is about
a Pentagon worker who blows the whistle on his boss for
taking kickbacks from the President's cousin."
Or whatever your novel is about.
You must, you must, you MUST have an answer to this
question. Your answer must be one sentence with as few
words as possible. It must capture the flavor of your
book. And you must memorize it.
Why all those "musts?" Because this "One-Sentence
Summary" is the selling tool you will use for the
entire life-cycle of your book, from the first gleam in
the editor's eye until the last pitiful signing in
Wal-Mart.
Remember that your book has to be sold about 7 times in
order to be a commercial success:
* You sell the idea to your editor.
* Your editor sells the idea to the in-house committee
* Your editor sells the idea to the sales force
* The sales force sells the idea to bookstore buyers
* The buyers sell the idea to bookstore sales staff
* The sales staff sell the book to readers
* Your readers sell the idea to their friends
If any of those links in the chain fail, then your book
will either never make it to market or it won't sell
well.
Let's be clear here: The selling tool that greases the
skids on EACH link in the selling chain is your
One-Sentence Summary.
You'll use your One-Sentence Summary when you (or your
agent) pitches the idea to your editor.
Your editor will use it when she presents your book to
the publishing committee (if the editor doesn't have
the authority to buy a book).
Your editor will use your One-Sentence Summary again
when the sales conference rolls around and she needs to
get the sales team excited about your novel.
The sales team has maybe 30 seconds per book when they
present books to buyers for the bookstores. That's
enough time for your One-Sentence Summary plus a bit
more.
And on and on it goes, with your One-Sentence Summary
the tasty first bite all the way down the selling
food-chain.
The last step in the selling chain is the most critical
-- when your readers love your book and want to get
their friends to buy it too. Everyone knows that
word-of-mouth is the most powerful force in the
universe for selling books. A One-Sentence Summary is a
tool that your readers can use to tell their friends
about you. But they can only do that if they HAVE a
good One-Sentence Summary.
Who's going to give it to them? Trust me, your readers
don't have a degree in marketing. They won't spend
hours figuring out your One-Sentence Summary. They need
for you to give it to them. You do that by giving it to
your editor, who will make sure that it gets into the
marketing copy.
What if you don't bother? Isn't it your marketing
team's job to figure out how to sell your book?
Yes, of course it's their job. But nobody loves your
baby like you do. Your marketing team may have 10 or
100 other babies to deal with. You only have the one.
And you know your baby.
The simple fact is that if you don't come up with a
compelling One-Sentence Summary, then somebody
somewhere will come up with one anyway. But it most
likely won't be the one you want. And once the
marketing team comes up with a concept they like, they
don't appreciate you horning in to do their job.
So if you want to do their job, you need to do it
BEFORE they get their hands on it. You need to give
them something so powerful that they wouldn't dream of
changing it.
We've been discussing the One-Sentence Summary on my
blog recently and I challenged my loyal blog readers to
post their best shot. Around 60 of them did, and I've
been critiquing them one by one.
I've asked one of my blog readers for permission to
show his One-Sentence Summary here, along with my
critique and my attempt to improve it, along with his
final version.
Thanks to Livinus Nosike for giving permission. He has
requested, of course, that nobody should steal his
idea. I'll discuss in a minute why this is unlikely.
Here's what Livinus posted:
"African most endearing young researcher steals a
secret manuscript, dating the time of the Algerian
revolution against French occupation, to track down the
leader of a weird anti-western civilisation movement
and win the $120m reward the US is offering, little
knowing who was behind the offer of his research grant
and why."
Livinus noted in his post that he knew this was too
long, but he wanted me to tighten it up so we can all
learn from it.
Here's my critique of his One-Sentence Summary:
Randy sez: Yes, this is way long. There are some nice
points to it, but I count 53 words and 5 distinct plot
ideas. That is about 40 words and 4 plot ideas too
many.
What's good here? Lots. For starters, we have a fairly
unique character (at least to US readers), a "young
African researcher." I'd be interested to know what
kind of researcher. Livinus knows, but I don't, so I'm
going to supply a possible specific example out of
many. I'm going to make him a political scientist, for
no good reason, just because.
So now we've got a lead character: "A young African
political scientist".
Good, what's next? Well, we've got way too many plot
threads here, so let's trim. What's the most important
thing going on here? This researcher is pursuing
Somebody Bad. Let's trim up the description of that
Somebody. There are a lot of choices, but I'm going to
use "shadowy anti-Western militant". That has some good
hypey words in it, familiar to everybody who reads this
genre, which is "spooky conspiracy suspense novel".
OK, so we've got a Good Guy and a Bad Guy. Now let's
add a verb and a motive.
The verb is easy: "tracks". The other possible
alternative is "pursues". Both of them are good, strong
verbs. Both are overused, but in this genre, we aren't
LOOKING for new verbs. We're looking for explosions,
car chases, and secrets. Livinus will deliver those, we
hope.
The motive is also easy: "$120 million." Yeah, that
gets most people's attention. There was a study once
that showed that the average person would be willing to
kill a stranger for less than $10 million. So $120 Big
Boys will motivate our researcher Good Guy.
Let's put all this together and see what we've got so
far:
"A young African political scientist tracks a shadowy
anti-Western militant for a $120 million reward."
We've now got 16 words, 2 characters, 1 plot, and we're
almost there. I'd say to make "African" more specific.
This is up to Livinus, who actually knows the story.
What kind of African do we have here? Nigerian?
Ghanaian? Zimbabwean? South African? Being specific
says that you have done your research. It tells people
that you know something about one particular culture
within Africa. It says that you know something about
political science (or whatever the specialty of your
researcher).
When you use vague words, it sounds like you're just
pulling stuff out of your ear. For that matter, it
might be nice to get a little more specific about that
Bad Guy. Islamic Bad Guys have been overdone lately, so
what do we have left? I'm not sure, but I'll bet
Livinus knows. Let's see a 2 or 3 word description of a
Bad Guy who hasn't been done. That would get any
editor's attention.
After reading this, Livinus sharpened it up to:
"A young Nigerian environmental scientist tracks a
shadowy anti-Western militant for a $120 million
reward."
This is more compelling because (as I discovered by
tracking back Livinus on my blog) he is a Nigerian
geoscientist. So he is writing what he knows.
Writing what you know, by the way, is your best defense
against people who want to "steal your idea." Suppose I
decided to steal this idea from Livinus and run with
it. Could I do that?
Maybe, but not very well. I know almost nothing about
Nigeria, so I'd need to do a boatload of research. But
no matter how much research I did, I'd know in my gut
that I'm still way behind Livinus. And I already have a
ton of book ideas of my own. I'd be crazy to steal his
idea. So would you. So would anyone except someone very
much like Livinus.
Final comments: I would still like to see that
"anti-Western militant" sharpened up a bit also. At
that point, Livinus would have himself a very decent
pitch. A One-Sentence Summary will get him to first
base with editors who like this kind of novel. Whether
Livinus can advance to second base will depend on how
well he writes.
That's the point of a One-Sentence Summary: It gets you
to first base. After that, you still need to score, and
you do that with excellent writing. But you'll never
score at all if you don't make it to first base.
-------------------
Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the
Snowflake Guy," publishes the Advanced Fiction Writing
E-zine, with more than 11,000 readers, every month. If
you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction,
AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND
have FUN doing it, visit
http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com .
Download your free Special Report on Tiger Marketing
and get a free 5-Day Course in How To Publish a Novel.
Anyway, I did not get much joy and I think I will use Amazon as my research tool and rely on my own brain for a while (sure it will be good for me), but I did read something very interesting written by Randy Ingermanson, a published author.
Basically, he wanted to know if I could describe my book in one sentence. And the thing is, I can't - I really can't.
And that's bad news for me getting my book published, as you'll see below in Randy's piece (published with permission, naturally) called, The World's Scariest Question.
The good news is that it's a great writing opportunity for me - this writing a one-sentence description. It should help me get my book published, too. And if it allows me to answer the world's scariest question, even better!
Over to Randy (a North American)...
The World's Scariest Question
by published, award-winning author Randy Ingermanson ("the Snowflake guy")
Someday you'll be signing autographs for your novel at
a Wal-Mart. A woman will wander past hauling three
desperate-looking kids. She'll ask you where the
bathroom is.
You won't have any idea, but you'll helpfully point in
a random direction.
She'll hurry off with the brats in tow. Ten minutes
later, she'll be back, having solved the immediate
problem. She'll thank you for being helpful. Then
she'll ask The World's Scariest Question:
"So," she'll say as she picks up your novel. "What's
your book about?"
If you're a novelist, you can expect to answer this
question about 500 times for each book you write.
You must have an answer to this question, because it's
the difference between a sale and a pair of glazed eyes.
First, let me give you the wrong answer: "Well, see,
there's this guy. And he works for the government and
he's got a girlfriend. The girlfriend is mad at him for
leaving Cheezits in his socks. Oh yeah, and his boss
is, like, really mean. And one of his co-workers is
doing pretty bad stuff, and he's just about to figure
out what it is, when his girlfriend kicks him
out--because of the Cheezits--and then, um, where was
I?"
The correct answer is one like this: "My novel is about
a Pentagon worker who blows the whistle on his boss for
taking kickbacks from the President's cousin."
Or whatever your novel is about.
You must, you must, you MUST have an answer to this
question. Your answer must be one sentence with as few
words as possible. It must capture the flavor of your
book. And you must memorize it.
Why all those "musts?" Because this "One-Sentence
Summary" is the selling tool you will use for the
entire life-cycle of your book, from the first gleam in
the editor's eye until the last pitiful signing in
Wal-Mart.
Remember that your book has to be sold about 7 times in
order to be a commercial success:
* You sell the idea to your editor.
* Your editor sells the idea to the in-house committee
* Your editor sells the idea to the sales force
* The sales force sells the idea to bookstore buyers
* The buyers sell the idea to bookstore sales staff
* The sales staff sell the book to readers
* Your readers sell the idea to their friends
If any of those links in the chain fail, then your book
will either never make it to market or it won't sell
well.
Let's be clear here: The selling tool that greases the
skids on EACH link in the selling chain is your
One-Sentence Summary.
You'll use your One-Sentence Summary when you (or your
agent) pitches the idea to your editor.
Your editor will use it when she presents your book to
the publishing committee (if the editor doesn't have
the authority to buy a book).
Your editor will use your One-Sentence Summary again
when the sales conference rolls around and she needs to
get the sales team excited about your novel.
The sales team has maybe 30 seconds per book when they
present books to buyers for the bookstores. That's
enough time for your One-Sentence Summary plus a bit
more.
And on and on it goes, with your One-Sentence Summary
the tasty first bite all the way down the selling
food-chain.
The last step in the selling chain is the most critical
-- when your readers love your book and want to get
their friends to buy it too. Everyone knows that
word-of-mouth is the most powerful force in the
universe for selling books. A One-Sentence Summary is a
tool that your readers can use to tell their friends
about you. But they can only do that if they HAVE a
good One-Sentence Summary.
Who's going to give it to them? Trust me, your readers
don't have a degree in marketing. They won't spend
hours figuring out your One-Sentence Summary. They need
for you to give it to them. You do that by giving it to
your editor, who will make sure that it gets into the
marketing copy.
What if you don't bother? Isn't it your marketing
team's job to figure out how to sell your book?
Yes, of course it's their job. But nobody loves your
baby like you do. Your marketing team may have 10 or
100 other babies to deal with. You only have the one.
And you know your baby.
The simple fact is that if you don't come up with a
compelling One-Sentence Summary, then somebody
somewhere will come up with one anyway. But it most
likely won't be the one you want. And once the
marketing team comes up with a concept they like, they
don't appreciate you horning in to do their job.
So if you want to do their job, you need to do it
BEFORE they get their hands on it. You need to give
them something so powerful that they wouldn't dream of
changing it.
We've been discussing the One-Sentence Summary on my
blog recently and I challenged my loyal blog readers to
post their best shot. Around 60 of them did, and I've
been critiquing them one by one.
I've asked one of my blog readers for permission to
show his One-Sentence Summary here, along with my
critique and my attempt to improve it, along with his
final version.
Thanks to Livinus Nosike for giving permission. He has
requested, of course, that nobody should steal his
idea. I'll discuss in a minute why this is unlikely.
Here's what Livinus posted:
"African most endearing young researcher steals a
secret manuscript, dating the time of the Algerian
revolution against French occupation, to track down the
leader of a weird anti-western civilisation movement
and win the $120m reward the US is offering, little
knowing who was behind the offer of his research grant
and why."
Livinus noted in his post that he knew this was too
long, but he wanted me to tighten it up so we can all
learn from it.
Here's my critique of his One-Sentence Summary:
Randy sez: Yes, this is way long. There are some nice
points to it, but I count 53 words and 5 distinct plot
ideas. That is about 40 words and 4 plot ideas too
many.
What's good here? Lots. For starters, we have a fairly
unique character (at least to US readers), a "young
African researcher." I'd be interested to know what
kind of researcher. Livinus knows, but I don't, so I'm
going to supply a possible specific example out of
many. I'm going to make him a political scientist, for
no good reason, just because.
So now we've got a lead character: "A young African
political scientist".
Good, what's next? Well, we've got way too many plot
threads here, so let's trim. What's the most important
thing going on here? This researcher is pursuing
Somebody Bad. Let's trim up the description of that
Somebody. There are a lot of choices, but I'm going to
use "shadowy anti-Western militant". That has some good
hypey words in it, familiar to everybody who reads this
genre, which is "spooky conspiracy suspense novel".
OK, so we've got a Good Guy and a Bad Guy. Now let's
add a verb and a motive.
The verb is easy: "tracks". The other possible
alternative is "pursues". Both of them are good, strong
verbs. Both are overused, but in this genre, we aren't
LOOKING for new verbs. We're looking for explosions,
car chases, and secrets. Livinus will deliver those, we
hope.
The motive is also easy: "$120 million." Yeah, that
gets most people's attention. There was a study once
that showed that the average person would be willing to
kill a stranger for less than $10 million. So $120 Big
Boys will motivate our researcher Good Guy.
Let's put all this together and see what we've got so
far:
"A young African political scientist tracks a shadowy
anti-Western militant for a $120 million reward."
We've now got 16 words, 2 characters, 1 plot, and we're
almost there. I'd say to make "African" more specific.
This is up to Livinus, who actually knows the story.
What kind of African do we have here? Nigerian?
Ghanaian? Zimbabwean? South African? Being specific
says that you have done your research. It tells people
that you know something about one particular culture
within Africa. It says that you know something about
political science (or whatever the specialty of your
researcher).
When you use vague words, it sounds like you're just
pulling stuff out of your ear. For that matter, it
might be nice to get a little more specific about that
Bad Guy. Islamic Bad Guys have been overdone lately, so
what do we have left? I'm not sure, but I'll bet
Livinus knows. Let's see a 2 or 3 word description of a
Bad Guy who hasn't been done. That would get any
editor's attention.
After reading this, Livinus sharpened it up to:
"A young Nigerian environmental scientist tracks a
shadowy anti-Western militant for a $120 million
reward."
This is more compelling because (as I discovered by
tracking back Livinus on my blog) he is a Nigerian
geoscientist. So he is writing what he knows.
Writing what you know, by the way, is your best defense
against people who want to "steal your idea." Suppose I
decided to steal this idea from Livinus and run with
it. Could I do that?
Maybe, but not very well. I know almost nothing about
Nigeria, so I'd need to do a boatload of research. But
no matter how much research I did, I'd know in my gut
that I'm still way behind Livinus. And I already have a
ton of book ideas of my own. I'd be crazy to steal his
idea. So would you. So would anyone except someone very
much like Livinus.
Final comments: I would still like to see that
"anti-Western militant" sharpened up a bit also. At
that point, Livinus would have himself a very decent
pitch. A One-Sentence Summary will get him to first
base with editors who like this kind of novel. Whether
Livinus can advance to second base will depend on how
well he writes.
That's the point of a One-Sentence Summary: It gets you
to first base. After that, you still need to score, and
you do that with excellent writing. But you'll never
score at all if you don't make it to first base.
-------------------
Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the
Snowflake Guy," publishes the Advanced Fiction Writing
E-zine, with more than 11,000 readers, every month. If
you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction,
AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND
have FUN doing it, visit
http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com .
Download your free Special Report on Tiger Marketing
and get a free 5-Day Course in How To Publish a Novel.
Monday, January 14, 2008
WRITER'S LOG: Jan 14th, 2008
"Just finished writing (and proofing) The World According to Boring John "EXTRAS" - a kind of DVD Extras edition of my main 'novel'. And it's a fabulous feeling to finally finish some part of the book that I originally started to write in January 2007.
"Admittedly, I never envisaged creating an "Extras" version of my novel in the first place - I never envisaged writing anything but a normal novel, for that matter - but that's where the creative process took me, I guess.
"I'm hoping that the "Extras" ebook (not even sure how I should refer to it) will work as both extras and sampler - the ebook really does give a flavour of the book. I'm hoping that people will download the free ebook, read it, make comments, and then be interested in reading the main book, when (if) it gets published.
"That's what I'm hoping, anyway.
"Maybe it might even help get my main book published - who knows?
"I do like the idea of a DVD Extras for books. And, in this electronic age that we live in, I really think 'book extras' will take off. (They could contain alternate endings, examples of prose before it was reworked fifty times, material that didn't make the cut, etc., And they'd always be available for free, online, to download. (Note: this is exactly how the Boring John EXTRAS 'work', by the way, both in content and how that content is delivered.) )
"I Wonder what name 'book extras' will be given, if any. Hmm, maybe The Extras Edition of [book name goes here]. We shall see."
END
Note: This is the first entry of the Writer's Log to appear in this Write a First Novel blog. Previous journal entries detailing my progress in writing my first book (now called The World According to Boring John) were first written on paper (all entries prior to this one, now appear in the "Extras" ebook talked about above.
The Writer's Log that I started in early 2007, some of which appears in The World According to Boring John, is the main reason why this blog has had few entries in 2007. It was just easier to write about what was happening as regards the writing of my first book with pen and paper.
The Writer's Log will probably now just blend into this blog. Maybe. Just look for items labelled Writer's Log to find out, I guess.
"Admittedly, I never envisaged creating an "Extras" version of my novel in the first place - I never envisaged writing anything but a normal novel, for that matter - but that's where the creative process took me, I guess.
"I'm hoping that the "Extras" ebook (not even sure how I should refer to it) will work as both extras and sampler - the ebook really does give a flavour of the book. I'm hoping that people will download the free ebook, read it, make comments, and then be interested in reading the main book, when (if) it gets published.
"That's what I'm hoping, anyway.
"Maybe it might even help get my main book published - who knows?
"I do like the idea of a DVD Extras for books. And, in this electronic age that we live in, I really think 'book extras' will take off. (They could contain alternate endings, examples of prose before it was reworked fifty times, material that didn't make the cut, etc., And they'd always be available for free, online, to download. (Note: this is exactly how the Boring John EXTRAS 'work', by the way, both in content and how that content is delivered.) )
"I Wonder what name 'book extras' will be given, if any. Hmm, maybe The Extras Edition of [book name goes here]. We shall see."
END
Note: This is the first entry of the Writer's Log to appear in this Write a First Novel blog. Previous journal entries detailing my progress in writing my first book (now called The World According to Boring John) were first written on paper (all entries prior to this one, now appear in the "Extras" ebook talked about above.
The Writer's Log that I started in early 2007, some of which appears in The World According to Boring John, is the main reason why this blog has had few entries in 2007. It was just easier to write about what was happening as regards the writing of my first book with pen and paper.
The Writer's Log will probably now just blend into this blog. Maybe. Just look for items labelled Writer's Log to find out, I guess.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Third Draft Finished
Finished the latest draft of my book, complete with some efforts at typesetting etc. on Nov 23rd.
Since then I've been reading Rachael Stock's excellent and informative The Insider's Guide to Getting Your Book Published. And, I've just bought The Writer's and Artist's Yearbook (2008).
So, I have absolutely no excuses to not:
It's essentially a research and writing exercise. An an exercise in patience. As well as a test of self-belief.
Still, it doesn't matter (really!) if the book I've started doesn't get published, as the main benefit of writing has given me the impetus (and confidence) to start another one in July 2008.
Since then I've been reading Rachael Stock's excellent and informative The Insider's Guide to Getting Your Book Published. And, I've just bought The Writer's and Artist's Yearbook (2008).
So, I have absolutely no excuses to not:
- Finding a publisher, or agent
- Finding more - creating a shortlist
- Writing a proposal
- Sending that proposal to my favoured publisher or agent
- Repeating step 4. until someone says, metaphorically of course, "Mr Delmonte - He say yes!"
It's essentially a research and writing exercise. An an exercise in patience. As well as a test of self-belief.
Still, it doesn't matter (really!) if the book I've started doesn't get published, as the main benefit of writing has given me the impetus (and confidence) to start another one in July 2008.
Friday, June 30, 2006
Not about writing per se...
This tip is not actually about writing, or 'how to write a novel' or my attempts to write a novel, but it will help *if* you can see the benefits of having a blog to write about / promote your novel (like I do).
Okay, I don't know that much about blogging and that's why I recently subscribed to Copyblogger: to learn how to get the most from my blog.
And Brian of CopyBlogger did not disappoint with his excellent Do You Make These Mistakes With Your Blog posting today, which led me to read the also useful Four Simple Steps To Get More Subscribers
What's this got to do with writing?
Well, everything, if you want people to read what you've written!
Blogging is a form of marketing (see my post Writing and Internet Marketing ); a form of cheap marketing that you can do yourself; a form of marketing that can bring you in direct contact with your readers (or potential readers).
But if that argument doesn't penetrate, it's also writing.
Okay, I don't know that much about blogging and that's why I recently subscribed to Copyblogger: to learn how to get the most from my blog.
And Brian of CopyBlogger did not disappoint with his excellent Do You Make These Mistakes With Your Blog posting today, which led me to read the also useful Four Simple Steps To Get More Subscribers
What's this got to do with writing?
Well, everything, if you want people to read what you've written!
Blogging is a form of marketing (see my post Writing and Internet Marketing ); a form of cheap marketing that you can do yourself; a form of marketing that can bring you in direct contact with your readers (or potential readers).
But if that argument doesn't penetrate, it's also writing.
Friday, June 16, 2006
Writing and Internet Marketing
My recent background is internet marketing; i.e. my business revolves around building promoting and profiting from websites. (So much so I built a website all about building, promoting and profiting from your website!)
This means that I have a good understanding of what a website should look like to sell, whether it's selling to site visitors or it's selling to search engines like Google.
But I'm new to book-writing. (I'm definitely not an author; I don't even write that often.) It is still clear to me that writing is not being sold very well via the medium of the internet. I don't see sample chapters, I don't see mailings lists, I don't see compelling websites that let you get to know your favourite author.
I see amateur websites, produced by professional writers!
I see opportunity.
As with all opportunities, some have recognised it already.
And that's the purpose of this posting to highlight a particular mailing list that looks like it covers writing and marketing. It's written by Randy Ingermanson of Advanced Fiction Writing
I say 'looks like' as I've only just read my first issue, but I can already tell that Randy "gets the web".
Don't worry, Randy "gets writing" even more.
If you take a look at Randy's website, you will also learn a lot about creating a professional-looking website that is easy to use, and has a few set objectives (I think he might want you to subscribe to his mailing list, for example. Why would that be, do you think?).
The site avoids making many amateur mistakes. It's a site I'd be proud to have created, actually, and I don't say that too often especially regarding writers' websites.
I have emailed Randy about this post, and hopefully -- hint, hint, Randy! -- he might make a comment if I've misrepresented what Advanced Fiction Writing is all about.
This means that I have a good understanding of what a website should look like to sell, whether it's selling to site visitors or it's selling to search engines like Google.
But I'm new to book-writing. (I'm definitely not an author; I don't even write that often.) It is still clear to me that writing is not being sold very well via the medium of the internet. I don't see sample chapters, I don't see mailings lists, I don't see compelling websites that let you get to know your favourite author.
I see amateur websites, produced by professional writers!
I see opportunity.
As with all opportunities, some have recognised it already.
And that's the purpose of this posting to highlight a particular mailing list that looks like it covers writing and marketing. It's written by Randy Ingermanson of Advanced Fiction Writing
I say 'looks like' as I've only just read my first issue, but I can already tell that Randy "gets the web".
Don't worry, Randy "gets writing" even more.
If you take a look at Randy's website, you will also learn a lot about creating a professional-looking website that is easy to use, and has a few set objectives (I think he might want you to subscribe to his mailing list, for example. Why would that be, do you think?).
The site avoids making many amateur mistakes. It's a site I'd be proud to have created, actually, and I don't say that too often especially regarding writers' websites.
I have emailed Randy about this post, and hopefully -- hint, hint, Randy! -- he might make a comment if I've misrepresented what Advanced Fiction Writing is all about.
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