Author level up!

I’m trying to, anyway.

I keep hearing how the important thing in this authoring game is to just keep working on getting better and better, at whatever pace you can, with whatever resources you have. I hope that’s true, because I’m doing my best, and my best gets better year after year, but it’s taking me a lot longer to get my butt moving than some other folks in this line of work.

I’m not sure that having a regular blog is actually worthwhile, but I kind of enjoy it, so I’ll stay on top of it.

So here’s what I’ve done to keep leveling up my act:

#1 Book covers.

I started out with a book cover that my (now former) brother-in-law designed for me. He was pretty darn good at Photoshop and graphics, maybe even a decent graphic designer, but he’d never done a book cover before. Neither had I. What he came up with was cool, but not on-genre, and not really a very good book cover. I loved it.

Then I realized I probably needed something more professional looking. I put out a call on Kboards asking for help with a book cover, and a very nice person offered to make me one for free. What she came up with was better, but from today’s standards, still had a home-made, slapped together look to it. I used that one for years, and had her make 2 more for me.

After that I had a friend who’s a graphic designer make new ones. Again, he’s a good designer, but maybe not a great book cover designer. What he came up with was cool, but after that, I joined a cover design group on Facebook. Then another, and another. I had him re-do the covers with a few new principals in mind, like not over-crowding the cover, looking decent at thumbnail size, and trying for a color scheme and font that conveyed tone and genre. It was better, but still not amazing. He worked within my price-range, though, so I figured that was probably what I had to work with.

Then randomly, I posted for help in a book cover group I had joined. About 15 people responded with offers to work within my shit budget, so I took a look at several websites and picked the one I liked the best and hired her. She just got done re-doing my first book’s cover, and is working on re-doing the others. I’m in love. She’s great! I’m very excited to see them all finished and to send her an order for the next one. She does amazing work, and well under my original budget.

Winning!

#2 Book descriptions

Another pain in my butt.

“It’s just writing, you’re a writer!” Right?

No. Let me explain.

There are lots of different kinds of writing, and lots of different types of writers, and each kind of writing requires different skills. I have spent years honing my dialogue, scene description, pacing, character development, plot structure — all things related to fiction.

Writing the book description is writing sales copy. This is the thing you use to sell the book — it involves hooks, hyperbole (which is a huge no-no in fiction), short, punchy sentences, and knowing when to shut up and let something hang. Very different from fiction writing. There’s some crossover, however, and once I got the hang of what I was doing, I re-wrote my books descriptions.

And re-wrote them again.

And again.

I think — I think I am on the right track. The trouble is, as I said, fiction and sales copy are totally different beasties, and all of my writer friends are very invested in their fiction — none of them are working on their back-of-the-book copy at all. So I’m on my own as far as telling if it sucks or not. I tried posting the new descriptions in a couple Facebook critique groups, but what I heard back was “This is great!” from 3 people and “This is AWFUL” from one person. Not helpful. Still, I’m trying.

I like what I have right now for 5 of the 6 books. That last one might be a bitch, but I’m gonna give it a whirl. I’ll probably re-write them again as I get more of a feel for what I’m doing, but right now, I like the direction I’m going.

#3 Running promos

This is slow going. I’m running $0.99 promos on the first book in the series every 3 months. I don’t think I have that figured out yet — every time I run a promo, I get a few more sales. I’m thinking a new book description and a new cover will improve my returns on my promos, but actually doing it will really tell. I sell a few books every time I run a promo, but there’s not a lot of read-through — that is, people who pick up the first book don’t follow through and read the second or third books. However, Amazon JUST made me an honest-to-goodness series page, and I haven’t done a lot of pushing of the second book, so that’s probably partly my fault. More things to work on.

#4 Building an email list

This is going slow, too, but probably not as slow as it could be, and like the promos, I’m pretty sure that a better cover and more enticing description will improve my odds.

What I’m doing is joining promo swaps through a couple different services. Authors who write similar books get together and all offer a book for free in exchange for an email address, then they all send the list of books to their own email lists. People get a free book, authors get new fans and new people on their lists, and if the fit isn’t good, folks can always unsubscribe off the list they landed on.

My email list more than doubled after two such swaps, and I’m thinking of doing more of them until my list is a respectable size. I don’t want to go nuts with it, so that I have nothing but a list of people who are only waiting for more free books, but if I can find folks who like me and want to hang around, it’s worth doing a few more to reach them. I’m still working on how to ENGAGE the list, but here we are. More learning. More leveling up.

I know this is boring business stuff, but it’s what we indie authors have to do — not only do we have to do it, but we have to figure out how to be good at it. There are some things I think I’ll never be good at, like releasing a book every month or even three months, but I have other skills I can use. I’m friendly, I like talking to people, especially about books and writing. And new covers, new descriptions, new ways to reach people — I think these will all help me. And if it helps me, that means I can write more books faster!

I will arise, more powerful than ever before!