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authors have to learn how to do is to become entrepreneurs and not just through sitting at a computer and typing to their hearts’ content. Marketing a book requires a great deal of effort on the part of the author. Very few publishing companies invest their own finances or time in promoting their author’s work. It sounds strange since the book becomes a financial risk for the publisher as soon as it is accepted for publication yet that is the way it works. Either the author becomes involved in marketing or the book doesn’t see a bookstore shelf or likely make many sales.
If author success is measured by sales then I’m not writing this from the perspective of a successful author, merely a published author. I have recently had my second MS accepted for publication by the same publisher who produced my first book. Lovely. I was excited to hear the news. Thinking back on the abysmal sales of my first book I decided the same fate would befall this novel as well but I shrugged and figured “at least I’m published”. However things have changed in the past week or so.
I’ve decided I’m not content merely to allow my print on demand novel to float about in a major bookstore’s cyber-inventory yet never see it on the actual shelf. My book is good. This I know since nearly every publisher I queried about it wanted to see it and some outright offered to publish it. I’ve probably got a good story here then but I still know it won’t do me or my publisher any good if I don’t market, market, market my brains out so that is what I’ve decided to do. Hopefully through my efforts I will achieve a modicum of success at least. Certainly I can’t do any worse than with the first book my publisher released! To that end I’ve compiled a list of the steps I am taking to market my book. Hopefully you will find something helpful in here too.
Create a website. They are absolutely free nowadays yet they are still beautiful and very professional-looking. I sat down two nights ago and tentatively began building a site using a software company’s pre-formatted templates and a whole lot of patience. Bingo! I have a beautiful site that advertises me, my writing history and my two books with my current publisher. I must say it looks terrific. If you intend to create a site make sure you include your email and links to your blogs and any social media where you are a member.
Of course having mentioned social media you are already a member of the more well known commercial sites right? If not get enrolled and start marketing your book! Don’t use a “hard sell” however. People hate that. Just mention on your profile that you are published or are in the process of getting published and you hope people will check out your book.
Learn the art of social media. There are lots of free sites that have advice about how to message people and what to post. Offer links to other aspiring or published writers that include publishing sites, author sites, online literary journals, etc.
Keep an eye on your local authors’ community. Attend book readings and signings. Join book readings and bring copies of your book to sell and autograph.
Unless you are quite affluent you probably don’t have the money to go on actual book tours (of course you should go on them if you do). Set up a virtual book tour through your website or through an author’s club. They’re cheap. You schedule the time and date that you will be online so people can virtually “attend” your readings and you can also do virtual signings.
Virtual signings are cool. Most people do them through their own website. You need a webcam, a shopping cart embedded into your website for readers to purchase your book, a stack of your books and a pen. That’s it. Advertise on your site when you will be doing a virtual signing. People can communicate with you via chat. They will tell you who’s name to write the book to and then can you sign it and hold it up at the camera for the reader to see.
Do actual book signings and readings at local bookstores. If you are lucky enough to get picked up by a commercial publisher that distributes your books to a particular bookstore then that’s where you will do your signings. If you are a self-published author you have a bigger challenge in front of you. First you must convince the owner/manager of a bookstore to set up a signing for you. Then you have to convince them to keep your extra copies on their shelves when your signing is over. Not easy to do but if you are polite and persistent it can be done.
Ask local newspapers to print a review of your book at least 3 – 4 weeks before it is released. However you should contact the newspapers and tell them you are seeking a book review at least a couple of months before the book comes off the press to give them time to assign the book to one of their reviewers.
Blog, blog, blog about your book or yourself every day on your site or your separate blog. Also blog about your experiences marketing your book and anything else that is relevant.
Use your own word of mouth and do so unabashedly! Tell everyone you know about your upcoming book. If you have complimentary copies give them out only to one or two family members. Send the rest to the newspapers and online entertainment sites that have offered to review your book.
Best of luck!
Categories: Writing And Speaking Tags: Aspiring Writers, Audience, Brains, Fate, Financial Risk, Hearts Content, New Authors, Publish Book, Publishing Companies, Strange
A Report to an Academy – Reflections on a Short Story by Franz Kafka
‘A Report to an Academy’ is a short story by Franz Kafka told from the point of view of an ape. The ape, ‘Red Peter’, so-called for the red mark on his cheek, the only sign thought to distinguish him from his predecessor ‘Peter’, addresses an esteemed audience of academics on the topic of his life. Much of what he ‘remembers’ has been told to him. He doesn’t remember, for instance, the moment of his capture. That evening he came down to the shore to take a drink as usual. When the shots rang out all the apes in his troop scattered. He was the only one shot. He doesn’t remember the pain of the two wounds- one on his cheek, a ‘slight wound’, and one below the hip, the cause of his limp five years later. This part of his story was told to him long after the event.
His own memories, though it’s impossible to be sure, began when he ‘came to’ between the decks of the steamer that ferried him away from the jungle. His new home was three-sided cage nailed to a locker: “The whole construction was too low for me to stand up in and too narrow to sit down in. So I had to squat with my knees bent and trembling all the time, and also, since probably for a time I wished to see no one, and to stay in the dark, my face was turned toward the locker while the bars of the cage cut into my flesh behind.” Those first days were hellish. He was alone, uncomfortable, hungry, taunted by the crew; a beast in a cage.
He realised he had to find a way out. But as far as Hagenbeck, his captor, was concerned the place for apes was inside a cage. To get out of the cage he had to stop being an ape. “A fine, clear train of thought, which I must have constructed somehow with my belly, since apes think with their bellies.”
He didn’t know at the time how to affect this change, only that a vague seed had implanted itself in his head. He began to observe the men around him. They themselves held no great attraction to him, not as they went about with such ‘heavy faces’. But the more he watched them the more he came to understand. “It was only the mass weight of my observations that impelled me in the right direction”: he imagined that by becoming more like them he might be relieved of the condition he found himself in. Having watched the world around him he had built the (im)possibility of a way out.
It was easy to imitate the men. They appreciated it too, letting out a roar of appreciation when he performed such minor acts as pressing his thumb into the bowl of the pipe. The hardest lesson was the drinking (Red Peter realised that such a trick was vital to his evolution). “The smell of it revolted me; I forced myself to it as best I could; but it took weeks for me to master my repulsion.” One man among the crew took it upon himself to see to it that Red Peter mastered the bottle. It is worth quoting at length the beauty of this pedagogic relationship, the awe of student and the compassion of teacher. “He would slowly uncork the bottle and then look at me to see if I had followed him; I admit that I always watched him with wildly eager, too eager attention; such a student of humankind no human teacher ever found on earth. After the bottle was uncorked he lifted it to his mouth; I followed it with my eyes right up to his jaws; he would nod, pleased with me, and set the bottle to his lips; I, enchanted with my gradual enlightenment, squealed and scratched myself comprehensively wherever scratching was called for; he rejoiced, tilted the bottle, and took a drink; I, impatient and desperate to emulate him, befouled myself in my cage, which again gave him great satisfaction; and then, holding the bottle at arm’s length and bringing it up with a swing, he would empty it at one draught, leaning back at an exaggerated angle for my better instruction. I, exhausted by too much effort, could follow him no farther and hung limply to the bars, while he ended his theoretical exposition by rubbing his belly and grinning.” While his teacher was repeatedly disappointed, and Red Peter disappointed by this disappointment, they both took solace in the knowledge that they were fighting on the same side, fighting against the nature of apes in the name of humanity.
Red Peter persevered. At every moment he was stretched, physically and mentally, as he forced himself into a new way of experiencing the world, a new way of moving his arms, his eyes, his mouth. It was as people say of new born babies: that they learn quickly and develop their habits, behaviours and movements. Now Red Peter was undergoing the same process, but not, as it were, from scratch. The exhaustion he accepted as part of his ‘destiny’, as the necessary and only way out.
His transition came in a series of breakthroughs. The greatest came one night when there was a party below deck. Most of the crowd were pleased with themselves, not paying Red Peter any attention. One of them, perhaps already in a state of inebriation, placed a bottle near his cage. Red Peter, eager to please, took the bottle and ‘uncorked it expertly’. The group began to turn in ones and twos, their attention and interest slowly mounting. Red Peter, keen to his audience, set it to his lips and “with no grimace, like a professional drinker, with rolling eyes and full throat, actually and truly drank it empty; then threw the bottle away, not this time in despair but as an artistic performer; forgot, indeed, to rub my belly; but instead of that, because I could not help it, because my senses were reeling, called a brief and unmistakable “Hallo!” breaking into human speech, and with this outburst broke into the human community, and felt its echo: “Listen, he’s talking!” like a cares over the whole of my sweat drenched body.”
From this moment Red Peter’s progress and future were determined. He knew that he was no ordinary ape, no ‘zoo ape’. The point now was to take it further, to see how far this ape could travel towards humanity. So Red Peter under went tests: Food is placed on a high ledge beyond his reach. Red Peter is hungry. He knows that screaming or turning his back will not get him any more food, nor bring any more praise- and praise, he understands, is what keeps him alive. So, dutifully, he moves over to the corner and drags the
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