Daniella Brodsky

Author of The Patrons

pulitzer prize

Uncategorized, books, fiction, writing, pulitzer prize, ebooks, reading, publishing, self-publishing, writing inspiration, Blog ·

365 Days of Actionable Book Marketing: Days 7-10

I’m still behind on posting these updates. At this rate, my 365 days will take four years . . . So my 99cent Bookbub application was rejected, which was a bit depressing, but not wholly unexpected. Need to work out what to use in my next application and get it in soon. Everyone who’s successful in this space chalks it up to consistency. Also, will keep trying to get more reviews.

FB Update
Tinkered with lookalike audience ad: added more movies, countries and ages. Removed the additional behaviors to make my audience broader. I noticed that w/o my ads going (I must have exhausted audience), my sales have stopped. So, better to have a small something than nothing. However, I am convinced that giving away a free book for mailing list signup, rather than ‘buy this book’ ads, truly are the way to go if you’re looking for strong numbers. I’m working on this.

99 Cents Promos
Before I raised the price of my latest release, On Fire, to it’s regular $4.99, I scheduled features on both Digital Book Today and Bargainbooksy; neither garnered more than 10 sales. DBT returned my ad payment, which I thought was fair. It looks like Bookbub really is the only way to go for paid promos for 99 cent runs at the moment. For Bargainbooksy, you’re asked to describe your book in 250 characters or less. This is a good thing to have ready, so it doesn’t take forever when you’re looking to apply for a promo. I do think it’s a bit obnoxious for sites to require this kind of extra hurdle for writers who already get paid nothing for most of their time spent working, but if it’s a requirement, you’re not going to get your promo without doing it, so you might as well create a brief description while you’re in the mindset of working on your original blurb.

Here’s my shortie for On Fire:
Some people are destined for glory. Others have to be dragged kicking and screaming out of clinical anxiety, fall in love with a charming, self-absorbed investor, and light a fire under a lifetime of inertia in order to get a crack at it. Anna—and her roommate Ray—thinks she has what it takes to be a writer, if only she would write something; instead she’s hunkered down in a magazine’s publicity department for a difficult-to-like boss, promising herself she’ll do something to get noticed in editorial one day. When she accidentally humiliates said boss in a very public way, Anna’s convinced her career is finito. Instead, she’s suspiciously given a New York City nightlife column for which Anna’s dinner at the local, bed by nine, fashion-schmashion M.O. is an obscenely poor fit. Life is never all gravity or levity; and here its mix is at its messiest, hairiest, and somehow, its most hopeful yet.

Marketing to Your List
Even though my list is comparatively small, I made more in profit from updating this group than any of the other tactics. Let’s all try to remember this.

Leadpages
For some reason, I’m terrified to tinker with my website (I might break it!). Therefore, the attempt to setup my landing pages to giveaway ebooks in the various formats is really taking me forever and a day. I watched some tutorials on Leadpages and it seems pretty simple. I can’t imagine paying $25 a month wouldn’t be more cost effective than paying my web designer each time I want a change. Leadpages also seems to have a lot of flexibility. I guess it’s a matter of how proficient I get in this space. Need to sort this out asap.

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365 Days of Actionable Book Marketing: Days 4-6

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Apologies for the delay in posting my activities! March has so far been a month of expanding my knowledge base, which means a slowdown in results as I take new skills onboard and skim off tactics that haven’t proved cost-effective. It’s frustrating, but just as with my writing practice, I do notice that these periods of expanded ability often do take a while to gain some forward momentum as all the new pieces are worked into your existing practice. I’m remaining hopeful and still going for a three-day action plan on more doable projects concurrent to these ongoing, more long-term items. I spent a lot of time creating lookalike audiences from people who like my page, but none of it worked the way I entered the info into FB’s ads manager.

Facebook Ads Update
I am planning to sign up for Mark Dawson’s paid FB ads course, as the FB ads platform is very unfriendly and seems to suck my time like a Dyson. Needless to say, I was determined to get some results without wasting a lot of money, so I kept tinkering and using whichever interests and demo targeting I could. I managed to get my relevance up to a 3, but that was a poorly performing ad over all. Not so sure the relevancy score works with lower-performing ads, so all signs point to more knowledge before tackling this big hurdle. In the meanwhile, movie lookalike audience pages (“Movies liked by Women who like Daniella Brodsky, Novelist) were probably too small to net a result, and didn’t garner any clicks. Again, there is no magic bullet. Final result to date: slow, incremental exposure leads to a trickle of extra sales, which does improve ranking, and therefore visibility, but need to find the right recipe, which is going to take time, and I believe, a free book giveaway for my ads. I realize it can be a book that is otherwise charged for (if you don’t find it via my ads or subscriber page), so that you aren’t actually “losing” money on a permafree, but using it as an incentive for targeted subscribers, who will go onto read your other books, while selling it to everyone else on your regular platforms. This is not new info, but the sort of info that translates differently once you try these things out for yourself. Hopefully I’ve wasted time enough so you won’t have to (at least not in the same way!). Don’t be as hesitant as myself to start with the giveaway for your ads/subscriber list; everyone’s doing it because it works. Results on this soon!

Bookbub
I wanted to score another bookbub. I’ve heard that in preparation for promo applications successful authors update their descriptions, tweak things to get a leg up, so I’m giving it a shot. Can’t hurt to improve my description anyway (and counts as an actionable!). The only books of mine eligible for a bookbub right now are DIARY OF A WORKING GIRL and PRINCESS OF PARK AVENUE (priced correctly, hasn’t been available for a cheaper price than I’m planning to advertise during the last 90 days, hasn’t recently been run on bookbub). Now, I want to make some changes to DIARY as it’s currently published (more on this to come), and so I’m going with PRINCESS. I have a feeling the chick lit category is difficult to break into in bookbub as it’s new and smaller, but we’ll have a go. If it’s rejected, it won’t be the first time. I do feel my first bookbub acceptance was partially a successful application because it was free, so I’m not sure how this will go as a 0.99cent promo, and I’d like to give myself the best shot. I feel that this is the best way to make money from a bookbub now. While free runs will raise your visibility, they are an expensive way to do so, and therefore, I’m not comfortable doing this frequently. So, to get my paid promo accepted, ideally I’d change the font on the cover, but that isn’t happening presently…So, here’s what I did to change Princess of Park Avenue description:

Spruce Up Your Book Description
I moved my NYPOST quote to the top and added some bold intros with simple HTML tags. If I can do it, you can do it; here’s amazon’s help page: amazon. You simply place the opening and closing tags around your text and voila! You’ve got bold, or italic, or whatever you HTML’d.

What I wanted to do with the rewrite is to show this book is satire, so I went a bit more cheeky and sarcastic in the description. Also, I needed to change out reiew quotes because though those featured are glowing, the sources are obscure.

ORIGINAL:
How far would you go to forget Mr. Wrong?

Anyone can see Lorraine Machuchi is no ordinary Brooklyn girl.  Anyone except for Lorraine, that is.  She’s been too busy obsessing over Tommy Lupo to notice. Living day to day on his confusing midnight phone calls and big-haired memories of their relationship in the early nineties, she’s given up any opportunity of leaving Brooklyn.  And though she never saw the home she loves as a failure, there are lots of folks she’s pissed off by staying put—her mother, her dead grandmother’s ghost, not to mention the old Italian ladies who shake their heads at her in the pork store.  And what’s worse, the very guy she tossed everything away for just told her he’ll never wind up with her—a girl who’s not going anywhere.

…Okay, so you might disapprove of her motive—changing for a guy.  But then you probably haven’t seen Tommy with three shirt buttons undone.  Besides, when Lorraine crosses the bridge to Manhattan she begins to realize she’s got a lot to offer.  She starts coloring hair at a swank salon where they actually appreciate a little talent, even if you have to bend some rules to use it.  She gets a fabulous Park Avenue sublet, even if it does involve chasing around a dog/horse named Pooh-Pooh.  She meets a guy who’s actually…perfect, even if she might be too hung up on Mr. Wrong to notice.  She’s asked to become the newest member of the Princesses, an elite group of Park Avenue’s most powerful socialites, even if the reasoning behind it might be a little fishy.  Sure, their $400 cashmere sweaters, charity balls for poor girls with small boobs, and ‘sexy’ yoga are a bit over-the-top, but a Brooklyn girl can learn a lot by discovering her own inner princess…

“Princess of Park Avenue is a delicious self-indulgent treat right up there with a leisurely soak in an aromatherapy infused bubble bath with scented candles…It would be cliché to say that Princess is a ‘good read’ but truth be told, it’s not only good, it’s fabulously fantastic.”

— Karen Marie Shelton, HairBoutique.com

“Daniella Brodsky…charms us with her second novel…Princess of Park Avenue is an entertaining and amusing book that will remind any of us who have found ourselves lost in a relationship with a man that the real ‘us’ still exists and we only have to look in order to find her.”

— Amie Taylor, Bookreporter.com

“OMG!!! I LOVED IT!!! I think I read it in 3 nights, and drove with it in my purse, reading it at red lights. I have not had a book like that in some time.”

—rosie-brown-eyes.blogspot.com

Read the new version here.

Some Quick Marketing Actionables
I tinkered more with five-year age spreads for my FB adsets, which didn’t seem to make much difference. And true to what I always hear, my own mailing list inspired the best sales results. An email campaign entitled, “Book Launching at $0.99 For a Limited Time,” netted 8 sales and a spike in KU pages read (check out mailchimp’s subject line researcher, which helped me choose this language). Now, more than ever,it’s clear I need to get my landing page and giveaway sorted ASAP, so I can grow this group and therefore the power of the responses.

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365 Days of Actionable Book Marketing

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My First Facebook Ad Attempt

To catch you up if you haven’t been following, I decided 2016 would be my make or break year for my book career. I’ve been pouring effort into traditional publishing for fifteen years and ten books. Last year I made the decision to self-publish for the first time. My strategy was spotty, all over the place, and yielded unveven results. But I was researching, I was paying attention. What I learned was there is a marketing component to self-publishing that has to be understood and planned for with a regular production schedule. Being “busy” doesn’t necessarily accomplish anything, and with today’s plethora of options, it’s easy to be busy and accomplish absolutely zero. Welcome to my world.

I decided that for the first month of January 2016, I was going to throw myself into this by blogging about 30 Days of Actionable Marketing Initiaves. It was a ton of work, and most days I just didn’t feel like it, but wow. It was worth it. The result: a a 1000% increase in book sales, a Bookbub that produced over 26K downloads, 30+ reviews, #1 spots in all my free kindle categories, an average KENP of about 1000 pages read per day, a pretty consistent jump in most of my rankings—though not high enough to be rich (booksales jumped from basically bupkiss to 60 books per month), nor is my 250Kish rank across titles as visible as you want to be (Top 100 is the sweet spot; close to is going to mean great sales numbers), I’m convinced that these increases are incremental after big pushes like Bookbub or a successful FB campaign, and that I’m on my way: Hence the 365 day approach. We. Shall. See.

These initial gains are small, but they are consistent. And enough evidence that a properly targeted effort is worth it. But who has the time and money to waste these days? This is why I’m putting this research together into a blog, and later, a book, so that self-publishers like myself can pick up this quick reference guide and see what’s worked, in what manner, and with what tips, tricks, and preparation, so they can learn from my mistakes, and hopefully get to the reward radically quicker for it.

In the beginning, the venture was exhausting; I have two kids under four, a far-off husband, and had just moved house and city. But if I knew anything about myself, it’s that I need a schedule with a deadline. I loved the idea of only “actionable” marketing initiatives counting for my daily quota. But, to do things right, sometimes more than a day is necessary. All the time in the world, however, will get you lazy and slow, and so, for an entire year of this challenge, I decided to make it a 3-day actionable deadline. This means I’ll be starting one new initiative each day, and juggling more than one actionable at a time so I’m crossing as many items off my DONE! list as possible each week, while putting in the legwork it takes to get some more complicated items done right.

The good news is, once you get into a routine, get all your login credentials organized, your blurbs all worked out, and learn your way around the technology of the different platforms: Facebook Power Editor (not the most intuitive), Draft2Digital, KDP backend, WordPress, etc, and get plugged into regular industry newsfeeds (podcasts!), you get on a roll and your time is much more efficiently spent. By the end of the first month, I could accomplish most tasks in under a half hour a day.

So. Expect a weekly post here to keep you updated on the progress of my three day actionables and latest must-try marketing recommendations. I will be honest and open with my results—because whether favourable or poor, that information is worth its weight in gold if it saves you time or money.

MARCH

DAYS ONE-THREE:
Read up on Facebook advertising. Mark Dawson at Self Publishing Formula seems to be the guru in this space, so I have a lot of time for his advice. I highly recommend his free three-session FB Ads webinar, which when I get around to taking it, takes a lot of the mystery out of the platform. Make sure you sign up for the FB group he offers, too. The insight from my fellow authors using the platform has been gold. Too bad I wasted time trying it on my own first!

Signing up for a course and even taking it is one thing, but it isn’t actionable. So, what did I do? I tried my hand at some ads based on some initial takeaways. MD really recommends using landing pages to give away a free book, or chapter, or other bonus materials to readers who sign up for your mailing list. I am going to do this, but it is going to take a while to learn this new platform and work out what to give to readers and how. So, in the meanwhile, I tried my hand at some direct sales ads, using the examples of successful ads he gives with his course, and promoted my new book, ON FIRE, at its sneak-preview, limited time price of $0.99. See my first go here:

 

Results:

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As you can see, it’s got a crap relevance score (10 is the best), but the cost is relatively low per click at .36 cents. I had very little idea what I was doing here, and because I’m not yet using pixels (something I’ll need my lead pages to do), I can really only judge efficacy through sales numbers. So far it’s consistently slightly elevated from prior months. Not enough to pay for, so I’m keeping investment low ($5 per day, which I often haven’t reached) until I get the right formula. You can cancel at any time, it just takes a click to do so, so don’t freak when you see $100 spending limits.

What I mostly did was learn the interface, play with my ad copy, and get my initial look at how to target audiences with interests. You need to play around, but here’s my first time saver, which I later discovered: you can conduct a facebook search for fans of your pages by typing in something to the effect of: Pages liked by Women who Like Daniella Brodsky, Novelist. There are all kinds of permutations to this, and each one will point you to pages that are liked by your fans. Aha! This is my next test focus. Here’s a great article by Jon Loomis that breaks it down. I’ve read that the best way to target is to create a custom audience based on your mailing list; so far my sample is too small to do this, so I went with the interests. But here’s another gem I unearthed: you can create a custom audience based on your facebook fans! You can exclude people who probably aren’t really fans, but maybe more like friends, or family by using the “exclude” option and choosing locations (say most of your friends live in your small town), or other identifying demographics (your school, work).

Some takeaway tips from both MD and my various readings (see links below):

  • Choose “Clicks to Website” as your objective
  • Use desktop only display for ads
  • Use tightly targeted age groups to test (5 years)
  • Remember that your audiences are defined and edited only at the ad set level, so if you are going to be tinkering with audiences, you’ll have to keep typing your ad. I haven’t found a way around this (if you have please comment here!), so keep all the details handy so you can fill out the ad creation fields quickly (have gotten it down to a minute or two).
  • The interests fields are tricky. Build in some time to understand how to search them. I’m still wrapping my head around the possibilities.
  • Use Power Editor, rather than the “ads manager” function to make ads. I find this by typing “power editor” into my Google search bar.
  • Ads Manager is good for looking at your results.
  • You may think you intuitively know who your audience is, but a look at the pages your fans like may surprise you. Be open to the data. That’s the beauty of this platform. If you learn how to use it, it’s meant to remove the guesswork.
  • If your ad keeps being rejected because of your budget, play around with tinkering with your spending limits on all levels (campaign, ad set, ad), because as far as I can work out, there are multiple places you have to fill out the same information. Argh.

With my latest backlist release, ON FIRE, I decided to test “going wide,” which means using all the available distributor platforms, rather than selling to amazon exclusively. To date, I have been unsuccessful in editing my converted file to be up to the standards of my amazon version. I’ve wasted a lot of time changing margins, centering chapter headings, and learning how to convert scene breaks (two returns AFTER your initial return). Can’t see why it’s so difficult; but once I learn the quirks so I avoid them the next time (probably will just have my conversion person do these epub conversions, too), this should all be pretty smooth. This is certainly not an actionable item yet . . . Today I also sent out ON FIRE to Beta Readers. Got some annoying items off my todo list: Having website updated and getting access to my mailchimp email list so I can get this thing going this year.

Here are some of the interests I’ve been playing with for this particular book:
Interests: Chick lit, Sophie Kinsella, Helen Fielding, Marian Keyes, Jenny Colgan, Jane Green (author), Chicklit Club, Chick Lit Plus, Novelicious, Shopaholic (novels), Sophie Kinsella Novels, Fiona Walker, Liane Moriarty, Lauren Weisberger, Can You Keep a Secret Sophie Kinsella, Adele Parks, Ps I Love You Cecelia Ahern, Jill Mansell, Jojo Moyes, romcom, Lesley Pearse, Lucy Diamond, Meg Cabot

Be back soon with more to report.

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Action One New Marketing Initiative Per Day for 30 Days Part 4; The Finale

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Thursday 21 January 2016
I cannot believe I am typing these words: MY BOOKBUB PROMO WAS ACCEPTED! Absolute insanity. Wow; I’m going to try not to get ahead of myself here. This is big. I need to calm down and make the most of it. So—need to update back matter for The Patrons so it’s link to my other books and to my signup list, get my iBooks page up for On Fire (which means I need to get my ISBN going), and try to finish transcribing On Fire as quickly as humanly possible. Trying to get the rights back to my most obvious next read after THE PATRONS, which is VIVIAN RISING, so I can link it in the back matter. I’ve been putting this off for ages, so I feel sense of accomplishment at getting this request in. Daughter accidentally smashed phone last night; hour on the line with apple, but managed to save over $100 to get a replacement. After that, washing machine flood. Two steps forward . . .

Friday 22 January 2016
Woke up at 5 to beat the kiddies out of bed and get a head start on all the prep work for getting the most out of this bookbub. As expected, it’s a lot of searching for old files and since I haven’t looked at them in a while and have a new computer, it’s difficult to find what I’m looking for—the MOST up-to-date versions of the manuscripts. Need a better org system for this, which is difficult, since at the last minute you wind up making lots of small changes and wind up with lots of “final” files. Will do better with ON FIRE. In the meanwhile . . .

I eventually locate the files, start reading up on sample text to insert in the back matter and link advice.

Later at the café I put in some time transcribing ON FIRE, and then create my listing for it on draft2digital. I also hear back from my conversion contact who says she should be able to add my pages next week. So far, so good. Now, I just need to create them.

Saturday 23 January 2016
After putting in some serious overtime transcribing ON FIRE, today I woke to pleasantly find I’d had another book sale from the KDP ads. These are still small numbers, but there’s a steady uptick this month with no promos running. This is good news and means action-oriented marketing time, in the right areas, will increase sales. I need to put in a query to KDP today, just to make sure that changes to the manuscript of THE PATRONS won’t affect my eligibility for my promo (update: it doesn’t), then finish the 99Designs contest, giving the finalized blurb to the winning designer.

Sunday 24 January – Wednesday 26 January
The main thrust of these four days is finishing the transcription of ON FIRE. I’ve worked out that having this new release ready to buy for downloaders of THE PATRONS who want more is the best marketing action I can complete before my bookbub. I’ve woken up obnoxiously early, stayed up ridiculously late, and typed until my fingers ached. I plan to finish tomorrow so I can have the proofing done and get it published. Additionally, after listening to a discussion about KDP ads on The Sell More Books Show, I decided to add more products to my ad listing, which has only resulted in two sales to date. So far, no difference in results.

Thursday 27 January
Will finish the last 40ish pages of transcription of ON FIRE today, no matter what it takes, but first I have to complete the links in the backmatter of THE PATRONS, so I can get that to the conversion contact. Sitting down to actually accomplish the link creation brings my attention to a few issues: can I use my affiliate link in the amazon version (update: turns out, no, you can’t)? Should I create a new listing for ON FIRE even though it isn’t ready and this will probably ruin my ranking, just so I can have a listing to link of wait a few days until it’s all done? What about all the backlist books I don’t have converted yet? Just leave those out since they won’t have links, or let people check them out so they get excited and say, new version coming soon? Hmmm. I decide to post my link questions on kboards, Finish ON FIRE, and revisit tonight. Finishing ON FIRE will take care of most of these issues, so here goes. . .

Right, one hour in, get a sick kid home from school. Oh, well, will have to continue this later.

Friday 29 January
Today isn’t much better; a second sick kid, up all night, etc. But I finish transcribing ON FIRE. With the lead-up to the bookbub, I also decided to decrease the timeline of my KDP ad, so that more impressions would occur now. Kboards was again a great help in answering my queries; I post another query about conversion contacts, and most advise doing conversion yourself these days—especially with backmatter needing updating constantly these days. I’m putting it on my to-do list.

Saturday 30 January
Contact some proofreaders to see if I can get a quick turnaround for ON FIRE, in order to get this new book up in time for my PATRONS bookbub. Also decide to post ON FIRE on KDP for pre-order, so that I’ll have the link to put in THE PATRONS new backmatter. Do some research on the pros and cons of the pre-order listing, and for these purposes, and for such a short duration (set the date for Feb 6), it seems this is the right way to go. So far, update to KDP ad doesn’t seem to have made any change in sales. I find a proofreader on Fiverr to do the job quickly for $75 (Update: she is amazing; not only does she do an excellent, skilled, careful job)—on time, but she also provides both an edited file with the track changes, so I can go through, and a complete “final” file with all the changes accepted, so I can go and post that in a rush. I’m impressed.

Sunday 31 January
KDP ads yielded another sale overnight for DIARY OF A WORKING GIRL. My investment is still small ($27 – $10 made back in sales so far, way less than most promo listings, and the sales, however small, keep my ranking in a decent place; remains to be seen whether this will turn into profit at some point).

So, that’s my month done. Gearing up for the bookbub promo as I post this, added a freebooksy listing to get the most out of the opportunity. Will certainly update on how the bookbub goes in a future post. In the meanwhile, this 30 day resolution has been amazing in 1. Motivation, 2. Education, 3. Increased reach, and 4. Organization. I feel like I know what I need to do, rather than floundering around, trying this and that. I’m going to keep it up, in some format and frequency, which has yet to be decided (really want to maintain the same pace and turn the project into a book for all to benefit, but is this too ambitious?) . .

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Action One New Marketing Initiative Per Day for 30 Days Part 3

Thursday 14 Jan 11:30

Despite my rational brain, I still keep waking up with giddy nerves when I check my amazon sales, as if things are going to change overnight. If I’m addicted, I figure you might like to hear if there’re any spikes, too. I had one extra book sale on Tuesday, and this morning I woke to find 500 pgs were read on KU. Not likely to get me on any bestseller lists, but it’s a spike, and for right now, as long as things keep ticking up, I’ll take it. Still getting my mind across the cost-per-click (CPC) significance and other indicators of my amazon ad’s performance. Right now the CPC is at 0.45 and I think that’s pretty good; still it says the sales it’s generated are at 0. . . You’re meant to run test ads, so next week we’ll add another to compare. Didn’t get the bookbub, but DID get an email back, saying I could resubmit for free promo. Done! Next, I submit my cover details to 99Designs (discount via Self-Publishing Podcast here) for ON FIRE, the re-launch of my backlist romantic comedy title, THE VELVET ROPE DIARIES, which had the worst cover known to man—even my agent laughed after she saw it, and before she said, “But we can’t change it.” Trad pubs!

Friday 15 Jan
So, today I posted the best design from my 99Designs contest for ON FIRE on pinterest, alerting FB and Twitter followers to check it out.

Sat 16 January
Though this has been the week of technology meltdown in my house, I persisted, not wanting to be caught out making up for weekend work on Monday. The theme for today and the coming days is ON FIRE cover art. 99 Designs is great for a number of reasons: 1. You get a lot of choice for the same price most decent artists charge 2. It forces you to stay on a timeline, which is helpful for people like me, who hate to make decisions, and 3. It makes social media sharing and involving your mailing list in the process simple by offering to create polls for readers, friends, watchers, etc, to vote on which cover designs they like best—and because of the timeline, you can’t put any of this off. I did this today. I keep hearing how readers want to be involved today, so this is the most involved I’ve ever had them, and over 40 people voted in my poll! By the time they hear about the book release, they’ll already have a connection to it. 4. This is good validation for my instincts; responses seemed to prefer the same designs as I did.

Sun 17 January
Mulled over the poll results, suggested edits to designers, viewed some new designs and adjustments, and sent out another poll to some contemporaries, who I believe would enjoy my books and spread the word. Also shared some interesting social media links for my self-pub followers.

Monday 18 January
Got to the final round for the 99 Designs cover art contest. Sent out a constant contact email to my readers and close circle contacts to ask for their opinions. Updated the style of my emails from the old lazy template I was using last year, which made a huge difference in the clean look of it.

Tuesday 19 January
Today was all about engaging with the overwhelming number of responses I received in response to my poll (which I added to my fb and twitter feed), most of which liked the same cover that I did (see image up top here). Cool.

I had listened to a podcast episode of The Smarter Artist earlier, and one of the pieces of takeaway was to think about the social media outlets where you naturally engage and excel at doing so. For me, this is pinterest, mainly because I use it all the time—to find fashion items, to look at room designs, party ideas, and lots of other random searches, but also because I like the visual format of having all of my internet favorites organized and in one place. I find it easy to use and visually stimulating. So, funny enough, when I went to post this latest cover poll favorite to Pinterest, I took a look at my visitor numbers. I regularly get more visitors on Pinterest than I do on any other social media outlet, so why aren’t I doing more there? Probably because it isn’t as easy to post to Pinterest on my mobile as it often is with other outlets, so I adjusted some settings to make it easier to “forward” pages to Pinterest on my iPhone, and that was probably my biggest hurdle. Hopefully we’ll get even more engagement here in future.

In other news, my amazon ad finally attracted a sale—yes, ONE sale! That’s $2.99 sale after a $7.72 spend, and over 10K of impressions. Doesn’t sound great, but if that keeps up and my ranking significantly increases, it might snowball. I’m not holding my breath just yet.

Wednesday 20 January
Today, in addition to signing up for tumblr, where I’ve heard long format posts are appreciated, I want to post and share this next installment of the 30 days of marketing actions blog, so I’m having a moment of reflection, now there are only 10 days to go. I think the truth is that marketing is never going to be my favorite thing to do, but this accountability really did work for me, and I think I’m going to try to keep it up even after the 30 days because you’re in there, and it doesn’t therefore seem like some enormous, insurmountable task; it’s often just a few minute thing if you know just what to do and have all the passwords and prep in place to get it done quickly (how to find and format photos, etc.)—which is what you’ve got if you’ve been checking in regularly. I looked on amazon, and it’s pretty pathetic the scale of my numbers, but we’ve tripled last month’s book sales, and last month was Christmas. So . . . ten days left to see how we go with this experiment.

ebooks, reading, Uncategorized, books, publishing, fiction, self-publishing, writing, writing inspiration, pulitzer prize, Blog ·

Action One New Marketing Initiative Per Day for 30 Days

DeathtoStock_mobileXandXtabletIt’s 2016; I’ve talked enough about how I’m going to boost my book sales income this year and the time has come to see if I can make this a reality. If I don’t, I’m going to get a proper full-timer in 2017. So, a lot riding on this; need to jump right in. Thought I would start off with a bang. So, I set myself on a mission to execute one marketing strategy per day for 30 days. Sure, I dabble, research, listen to insightful podcasts, but how much action do I actually take in my marketing efforts? It’s a new year, I’ve moved house, and it’s time to start some new routines that finally shift my self-publishing efforts into the next gear. I know I’m not alone here in wishing I could do more and feeling like all my busyness should be accomplishing something. But it’s time to face facts: what am I actually accomplishing? Completing? Putting out there? Not as much as I could with a quota plan built on sheer numbers. I made it simple:  Action One New Marketing Strategy Per Day for 30 Days. In writing it down and sharing it with my peers I hope to both make myself accountable and inspire you to get moving, and share some concrete results on my efforts. Along the way, maybe we’ll all see what it takes to really get this self-publishing thing into income-generating territory. So, I’ll be blogging here throughout the month to report on my daily marketing actionables. Here’s to starting the year off growing my publishing income . . .

Jan 2, 12:30 pm
Today I hatched and committed to this plan, and though I’m already feeling my own hesitation, I’m standing firm: just because I’m on the last day of my holiday is no excuse for someone talking this big. So here goes: as every day this month I’m going to action one marketing strategy, I had to start somewhere. I have my Kindle with me, so last night I finished reading a marketing book that’s been sitting in my library for months and one thing that stuck out to me was this: It’s commonly cited in varying, but always staggering statistics that websites with blogs bring in more traffic than those that don’t. So why have I been so lax with mine?

My web designer took pity on me last year and upgraded my site so its nearly fully self updateable and the blog is easy to use, and looks great. So there’s no excuse. I’ve had a half-finished entry sitting on my computer since mid October, so I decided I would complete it tonight for my first actionable.

I was on a roll, finished the draft, but decided it needed sleeping on before a read-through and posting—which meant my very first shot at actioning one marketing effort each day was inauspicious. Still, as I went to sleep reading my Kindle, I appeased myself that I’d done more than I would have without the vow, and this overarching blog about the vow was another marketing initiative, wasn’t it? But despite this logic and all the excuses about kids and packing and car trips, the incomplete didn’t lay comfortably with me because here I was in the same place—lots of ideas but no completed initiatives that could increase sales now. I’d do TWO marketing projects tomorrow.

Sunday, Jan 3, 8 am
Long car ride, kids in back, lots of “I’m hungry” and “I want another book,” and rummaging around for tossed dummies and milk cups. Still, I finish that blog post. Check! Only problem? As soon as I post it, I realize I have to promote it, and it’s been so long (Sept was my last post), that I need to find all the places I did that, not only that but I have a new computer (not complaining, it rocks), which means I need to re-enter all my usernames and passwords, and who knows where the heck I’ve got any of that . . . Still, no excuses! Here goes…

The first site I revisit is viralcontentbuzz; I had experienced some good shares with that when I first used it back in September, but this time I’m disappointed to find that the only stories I can share (which is the way you get credits required to post your stories for others to share) are stories promoting the site viralcontentbuzz itself. I’m turned off by that. Where are all the cool stories by peers that I saw the first time around? Do I upgrade to a paid membership? Is it worth it? I remembered the guys from The Sell More Books Show always saying people who try something and then say, “It’s too hard,” and give up when they hit a glitch will never get anywhere. Here I was—glitched and wanting to give up and take a nice nap . . . but I hit the Google instead, and came up with this resource: http://www.bloggertipstricks.com/drive-referral-traffic-to-blog.html. Wasn’t too much takeaway, but I did hit these two suggestions: post links on relevant Facebook Groups and BlogEngage and BizSugar; BizSugar was free, so I gave that one a crack, though feel skeptical about the setup of these content sharing sites. Results from this to come . . .

I also made a note to hit these on an upcoming day: Scoop.it and Storify. Exhausted and blurry now, so doing that nap thing…

Monday, Jan 4
Well, that didn’t happen, but had a good night’s sleep, got back on the road, loaded up the kids with fruit and cheese and here I am. Realized last night that mostly, my tasks took so much time yesterday because I didn’t have passwords, didn’t have great internet access; working on these will certainly help my efficiency. With my actionable attitude, I download one of those password apps and started sticking my passwords in there. And though I’d really like to do something new for today’s action, I feel I should expand on the reach of yesterday’s blog post while it’s new. So, here I go once more. I read up on Scoop.it but it doesn’t seem like the right fit for me. Though I can’t find what I need there—a platform for sharing my articles with interested parties—I do send an email query to see if this is possible. Still, no action from my efforts. Now I’ve wasted an hour. Grrr. I guess I’ll have to try Facebook groups next.

Aha! Something I can actually do! Create a call to action button! Done. So easy. Finally, a break, so I’m chuffed I go on to do something else: Post a notice for beta-readers on my Diary of a Working Girl page. I have a backlist chick lit title, THE VELVET ROPE DIARIES, coming out soon, under a new title, ON FIRE, so I will need to get reviews for that. Two marketing actions complete! I even have my FB group registration approved in moments, and so I posted a link to yesterday’s blog.

Now, I get that some actionable tactics are going to take a while—reading, research, prep work. But for this month, while I can have these types of projects ongoing, they aren’t going to count for my one a day . . . until they’re complete.

Tuesday, 5:18 am
Home at last. Thing is, it’s a new home for us and nothing we have is settled in its place. Had an energy burst yesterday arvo when we got in, so did a whole bunch of organizing. But for now, might have to live in my organized kitchen, as everything else is still partially disastrous. Glad I’m up early, as this will likely be the only time I have to get anything done until the little one’s asleep. This one should be pretty easy—it’s about price changing. I’ve heard recently, from a bunch of sources, but most recently, Joanna Penn’s podcast, that prices that end in .99 sell better; I also heard that there are different price points that work best in the UK, India, Australia, and the US, so I wanted to make some adjustments on my KDP listings there. Thing is, I don’t remember which prices to use, so let’s see if I can find them (note here about better organization of my notes! Would make this task so much quicker if I knew right where to find the information). Started with PRINCESS OF PARK AVENUE to test it out. To stay at the 70% royalty rate, I went to £1.99 in UK from £3.33 (which was the automatic conversion price), and changed the US price from $5.03 to $4.99; in India to 237INR from 330INR; and in AUS $6.89 to $6.99. There’s my one action. Done. Bub’s up; back later?

STILL Tues 7:22 p.m.
Oy. Work is the last thing I feel like doing; long day at kids’ new school, two-hour drive in new city, big shop, dinners, drop-in guests, now dinner on with the cricket and yet, I research and join a free image site, deathtostockphoto, because I learned in my research that images score blogs more traffic.

Wed 2 a.m.
Yes, that’s a.m. I couldn’t sleep and so decided to knock some items off the list. Finished the proofing of the first bit of this 30-day blog post and found a decent free image to accompany it. Actionable? Done!

publishing, fiction, self-publishing, writing, writing inspiration, pulitzer prize, Blog, ebooks, reading, Uncategorized, books ·

Complete KDP Select Free Days Book Launch Strategy for Self-Publishers

If you’re going to launch your self-published book with Kindle KDP Select, make the most of it by running a promo with the kindle KDP Select free days you’re given each enrolment cycle. The self-pub community (including yours truly), is starting to think you might be better off not giving amazon exclusive digital publishing for a 90 day period (the requirement to use these promotion tools by entering into KDP Select—if not right now, then certainly in the near future—going “wide” with your release, across Barnes and Noble, iTunes, and Google Play (more on this in future post). But if you’re going exclusive to Kindle, which let’s face it, many of us still are, your initial release is your chance to get extra visibility by hitting the “Hot New Releases,” which you’ll get to stay in for 30 days, until those launch sales numbers cycle out of your ranking. This means more views, which means the opportunity for more sales.

janX16XpatronsXhotXnewXreleaseXimageXcopy

KDP Select Free Days Results in Great Ranking on “Hot New Releases.”

I kept a log of my every move for the launch of my first non-traditionally published novel, THE PATRONS, which I launched in the US and UK in June, and in Australia (where I live), which I have posted and considered below. But first, some additional strategies based on my experience.

  1. Launch Globally. Don’t make the mistake I made in splitting launch areas. First I thought this would be a good way to spread the love in terms of sales and regular growth, rather than one quick spike (which all the current knowledge says amazon’s algorithm prefers), but this was a mistake. My Australia launch was after the US/UK one, and people here wanted to buy it when they saw all my facebook posts and tweets. I was missing out on sales opportunities. When my friend suggested this to me, I immediately saw the error of my ways and softly, quietly made the book available for a lower price to Australians in the know, so they could buy early and spread the word. Next time I’ll do a global launch, and I’m already thinking of fun ways I can connect different international readers in the excitement.
  2. Rack up reviews. Get a street team to beta-read your book early, for free, in exchange for honest reviews. Do not ask your friends or family to do this; you want genuine reviews from the right kind of readers, who will be excited and spread the word—amazon’s been rejecting reviews from your personal friends and family lately anyway. I was pretty lucky in that I’ve had a lot of organic reviews from my past books (although nothing like the hundreds that seem to be required now), and this seemed to allow me to get the new book posted on some of the marketing sites that have requirements on review numbers, allowing me to bend the rules a bit in the face of clear experience. So don’t be afraid to email these people directly with your questions; we all have unique situations, and you just never know. Star ratings requirements (some have four star requirements) are pretty popular on the more powerful book mover marketing sites, and I can tell you from a recent free promo for my book, Princess of Park Avenue, I think these four star or higher ratings are becoming more important than ever, especially if you want to score a bookbub…Try running a giveaway to your list on instafreebie, where they also give the option of promoting on social media and on their own pages–apparently matching your efforts. Also give bookrazor a try–they’ll email you lists of contacts who are a good match to review your book with email addresses; they comb through amazon reviews to find good candidates based on similar book titles you provide. Another option is Book Review 22, which I heard about on the Sell More Books Show (which is my personal favorite industry podcast), and intend to try and report on.
  3. Make your offline review online. Here’s a major error I made: I ordered a bunch of my print books through createspace so I could sell them at a discount via preorder to my launch party guests, for signature on the night (more about that party here and here). While this raised a decent amount of money to help with party expenses, it cost me a major number of reviews because lots of people at the launch party would have posted reviews but amazon wouldn’t let them (I’ve been hearing mixed reasons of why this may be, i.e., possibly because they are overseas in Australia, rather than in the US, or because they may have never purchased from amazon before; if it was the latter, which seems most likely, the problem would solve itself). This would probably also have raised my ranking and made even more of my “Hot New Releases” status. While the real world cache of paper books, the local media coverage, and the idea of the books not ‘only being available on amazon’ (purely an ego issue) were motivators for me, I see now I should have worked around this. I welcome any feedback on experience here.
  4. Place links to mailing list sign-up and other books at the back of your book. I heard on Joanna Penn’s Podcast that Draft2Digital has a service that can update these pages on all of your books at once, which sounds like a dream to me; I may look into it for my next release. I had my other books listed at the back and even a website homepage link, but after hearing how much repeat business writers get this way, and most importantly, after using a Kindle myself, I realize how powerful these specific sign-up landing page and amazon book page links are. Best practice these days is to let readers know at the front of your book that they’ll be a chance to sign up for a free book at the back of the book, place a link so they can click right there to sign up for your mailing list. If you want to know how to promote your book, this is the best place to start, because your mailing list is your strongest book marketing tool. Hear more about this from Mark Dawson on his Self Publishing Formula.
  5. Segment and properly target your audience. THE PATRONS was quite different than my other books; while it probably would have been the right choice to target readers of my women’s fiction title, VIVIAN RISING, the true chick lit fans from DIARY OF A WORKING GIRL and PRINCESS OF PARK AVENUE would be the wrong audience for such a racy, literary title as THE PATRONS. And a negative review from a chick lit reviewer fan proved that.

In the short term, the effort paid off: After my kdp select free days, The Patrons did make “Hot New Releases,” which gave it optimum exposure for 30 days, and it hit bestseller status in all its categories. But the fizzle in sales and ranking after that was pretty quick. How to make the most of hitting those lists the next time around? I’m certainly determined to find out.

In the meanwhile, here’s how the promo went:

RESULTS OF KDP SELECT FREE DAYS PATRONS 26 JUN (USA DATES)

5pm #5,904 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

10:30pm #6,282 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

27 JUNE 12:20 am #5,895 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

4pm #3,837 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

5pm WOW! #919 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

8pm HOLY MOLY! #317 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

Later-ish pm OMG!!!!!! #160 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

Mon 28 12pm #133 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

AND THE VERY LAST BEFORE I PULLED IT OFF: #75 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)

 

Anyone would agree that my kdp select free days scored a pretty good result. Next time I’m going to work out how to make that “stickier.” My guess is I lost a pretty good opportunity to have some regular revenue from that title. Should I have gone with an FB ad there? Not sure what would have done the trick; will certainly be putting that out there for some expert insight…But as it stands, here’s how it went after THE PATRONS returned to kindle paid listings:

 

BACK ONTO KINDLE PAID LISTING 2:30am

FRIGHTENING, BUT LATER REBOUNDED #14,272 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

#3,103 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

29 at 3 #2,516 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

5:45 #2,339 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

8pm #2,131 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

4am #2,495 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

And down it went from there. Today I’m at

#645,985 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

…there are ups and downs up to 120K-ish, but my best month was that first one, with about $600USD take from that title; nowhere near there since. Hmmmm. Thoughts? Can’t help but think I was soooooo close with that start…Hence, my ongoing blog for this month: Action One New Marketing Strategy Per Day for 30 Days. Want to read more about KDP Select promotions? Click here for my 99cent promo days in kindle kdp select promoted on bookbub.

 

 

publishing, fiction, self-publishing, writing, writing inspiration, pulitzer prize, Blog, ebooks, reading, Uncategorized, books ·

Diary of a Book Launch Party: 9 Necessary Steps to Success

With the launch of my first self-published novel, THE PATRONS, I knew I wanted to do something pretty special for a kickoff. It began online (more on this component to come); but locally, I wanted to get everyone excited and give them a chance to enjoy the moment in an insider-y way. I know how you writers are, because I’m the same, you think, oh, I don’t want to make a fuss about myself, but you’d be thinking about it all wrong. People want to take part in a book launch party. It isn’t something that happens everyday, though us authors feel like it is because we are so inundated with market and peer research. Friends, readers, and the general public want to share your big day with you . . . and everyone they know (!); I worked this out when I saw the amazing social media sharing of the book and bash; I never would have assumed. Here are some pictures to prove it:DSC_5937 DSC_5933

meandprulaunch

 

 

 

 

 

Convinced you’re not just annoying people yet? Okay, so let’s move on to how it was done. The planning started back in June. I have two kids under three, so not a lot happened right away. But eventually things got underway. Here were the key to-do list items:

  • Order physical copies of The Patrons through CreateSpace. I shopped around and did all the difficult math (or maths if your Aussie). In my experience, Amazon’s CreateSpace really can offer the best deal for printing—especially if you are shipping to a far-flung place like QLD, Australia. The other consideration was that if you were printing on demand somewhere other than amazon, you had to pay the shipping for orders through amazon, too. I know people have reservations about giving amazon a monopoly on book sales, but authors have a difficult enough time making a living. Don’t cut off your main income stream. Instead, show some big investors that we can make money for them and that’s how viable competitors will come to market; that’s my view. Sure, digitally, one day I’ll work out how to get my price matching in order so I can see if I really can sell competitively across all platforms, but that requires time I don’t yet have.
  • Get a professional invite printed. This one cost me $15 to have designed. Always provide visual examples of images/styles you like, with notes on exactly what it is you like about the look, for your graphic design projects. This will cut down on the number of drafts. I used Yocla Designs.photoX88X
  • Make it easy for people to pre-order the book, or buy it at the launch. Make sure you have change for cash purchases! Offer an incentive discount for pre-orders.
  • Alert the media. A fun, glamorous night gets PR mileage by inviting media folk and gives them an excuse to cover you. Here’s some of my coverage: Townsville Bulletin, Northern Services Courrier, DUO.
  • Make the evening glamorous and something to look forward to. My launch called for cocktail attire in black and white color theme. I knew my crowd loved an excuse to dress up and feel like a million bucks. It was perfect. DSC_5937
  • Make the event feel professional. Hire (or ask a friend to act as) a bartender, door person, wait staff. Everyone you know is excellent at something; for example, one of my friends volunteered her services as DJ—her iTunes mix made the night, setting the whole tone. You’d be surprised how cheap and easy it is to hire a few hi-top tables; we even hired a red carpet and velvet rope! photoX85X
  • Organize, organize, organize! I know this doesn’t come natural to most of us creative folk; but you want to give the impression that you are the guest of honor, not someone ducking into the kitchen to check on the canapés, so this means a lot of time prepping, and running through a schedule, to make sure everything runs smoothly. It’s a lot of work, but worth it. For instance, to cut costs, I made my own food (there are a ton of awesome canapé ideas on my Pinterest board), and so I had to write out step-by-step directions beforehand for the cater-waiters on how to plate and present each item. Don’t get me wrong, it was a giant pain in the butt, but it was worth it. I didn’t step foot in the kitchen the whole night once guests started to arrive. If you’re looking for advice on how much liquor and food to serve, a great resource is Women’s Weekly Party Food + Drink.
  • Make a speech/do a reading. I prefer speeches to readings, as I always felt readings had a strange, artificial quality to them as I performed. In my experience, people are dazzled to hear about the behind-the-scenes making of the book. Here’s a YouTube clip of my speech.
  • Have a book-signing table. It’s a great way to get a chance to chat with everyone at the party and personalize their books.

Good luck with your launch! Please share any launch party tips here.

 

books, fiction, writing, pulitzer prize, Blog, ebooks, reading, Uncategorized ·

On…Ummm…Articulation

Many of us have a word that often escapes our memories. Funny enough, the word I used to forget the most was “articulate.” People would laugh when I told them that, but it was so difficult to yank that word out of my brain that I wrote it down on the inside flap of a little notebook I used to carry around all the time. When I think back to that now, it seems symbolic of a larger issue.

Though it was the one that bothered me most, that wasn’t the only word often omitted from my communication. In fact, though I’d always loved reading and writing, I never noticed how disrespectful of communication I was; more times than not, I was asking for “thingies” or “the thingy on the thingy,” or telling a story about “that guy in the movie with Uma Thurman, married to what’s her name with the long, red hair.”

But everyone I knew seemed to know what I was talking about. And most of them spoke the same way. We met at “that place near the subway,” and we ordered “that chicken dish with the peanuts.”

And then I moved out of America. And I started to notice that people ordered from menus with the exact name of the dish: “the Seriously Yummy Chicken” or the “Dynamite Vietnamese Spring Rolls.” At first I found this charmingly obedient, but then I realized these were not charmingly obedient people. These were independent thinkers, but they were articulate communicators. They might use the same language as Americans, but they wielded it better. While we do it right, Australians do it “properly.” While we ask “what,” they beg “pardon?” The subtleties become less subtle the more you think it over. So while this might mean a word for word recitation of a silly menu item name, it also means less crossed wires, and more nuanced and thoughtful debates. And when I started to think about this, I realized how lazy the language usage of my peers and I had become. We all spoke the same way, so it wasn’t an issue I’d been confronted with, but when I left my comfort zone, there it was—obvious and not a good look.

A few years into this realization, I saw how sweeping the effects of lazy language were—I’d always assumed my writing was spared: I knew the tools of craft and could create vivid scenes with spare language. But even there, improvements in clarity were remarkable; it no longer became merely about striking the right feeling, but making sure I was saying exactly what I meant to, and that others would receive it as intended—a major improvement at a stage when improvements come slowly and are hard-earned. I also thought more about the different ways in which individual characters articulate, which led to better development. In the arena of overstatement, vagaries are perhaps one of the most dangerous: “you never do the dishes,” will do more harm in argument than the more factual “you haven’t done the dishes in two weeks.” And if you notice the difference in how you communicate these complaints, you may also notice the difference in how you process them—I’ve found I can emotionally charge the truth so it feels worse than it really is. Put it straight in your mind and suddenly you seem to have gotten more riled up than necessary.

I am amazed and proud when my two-year old sites a “kookaburra” instead of a “birdie,” when she tells me what she ate for “morning tea” rather than for the vague “snack,” which could have been eaten at any time of the day. Will we ever perfect communication to the point where everyone understands exactly what we mean? Probably not, but articulation is certainly a useful, helpful tool—and goes a long way with a bit of effort.

Some books on the topic on my reading list:

It’s the Way You Say It: Becoming Articulate, Well-spoken, and Clear

Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, and Race in the U.S.

The Articulate Mammal: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics

An Old Favorite:

The Synonym Finder

An Author Who Owns Articulation:

Like Life by Lorrie Moore

And Another:

Lionel Shriver

Uncategorized, books, fiction, writing, pulitzer prize ·

Should a Pulitzer Prize Winner be Boring?

Is there some esoteric symbolism here you're just not getting?

As a novelist, the reader’s experience is foremost in my mind.  I certainly admit it took a few goes to truly understand what that meant and how to go about muscling up my offerings, but now I’ve got a firm grasp, I do my best to make sure I never let go.  How do I keep Joe Reader involved?  In suspense?  Emotionally heightened?  Turning the page?  Empathizing with the characters? And so, when the other day, my father-in-law picked up a gold-medallioned novel I’d purchased for our holiday, and said, “I’m always wary of Pulitzer Prize winners,” his disappointment stuck with me.  Why should he be let down by a book granted such high honors?  If a book’s at the top of the list, shouldn’t it above all else be a good read?

With that question in mind, and the hopes that yes, this reader expectation should be satisfied, that in fact the novel format doesn’t work without this basic premise, I forced myself through a novel that covered the same ground—grief—that I am consistently compelled to explore in fiction.  By its very essence, the topic, by God even the word itself, is charged enough to evoke a reader reaction through the lens of personal experience alone.  And so, for a Pulitzer Prize winner to tackle death the result should be a book that rocks the very core of what you thought you knew or felt about the end of life.

But.

By the second page I was struggling to maintain interest, conjuring up all the accolades the book had come recommended with when my mind turned to dinner menus and mounting paperwork. I tried to reign myself back in, reminding myself how I hadn’t enjoyed Harry Potter, or Twilight, and that perhaps, there was something gravely broken about my tastes not only with commercial fiction, but with ‘literary’ (God am I starting to hate this word) fiction as well. The writing was articulate, the images crisp, I told myself…perhaps that should be satisfaction enough.  And so I trudged on.  For a slim volume, it certainly seemed to go on!  Not once did I feel any emotional attachment, or personal heartstring tugged at the recollections of a father, and then a son’s admittedly harsh existence, which seemed to blossom with the creation of a new generation of family we for some reason couldn’t care less about, and their new way of doing things, albeit, sprinkled with some of the niggling, disinterested hangings-on of the past, which seem rather ugly through these last living days of the son—now father and grandfather, brother and husband.

And so, finished and more disappointed than if I’d left the book halfway with the hopes the best part was to come, I try to work things out.  Is it the staid language that just doesn’t do it for me?  No.  No it couldn’t be.  I’m a big fan of spare language, and believe that much pain and empathy—infinitely more, in fact—can be conveyed through economically showing rather than splashily telling.  Case in point:  The Road (a 2007 winner), For Whom the Bell Tolls, and anything by Lorrie Moore. With risk of sounding crazy, I’ll admit to my overarching suspicion:  Sometimes the right balance of obscurity and symbolic use of an esoteric specialty skillfully articulated, can disguise the fact that a story doesn’t really do its job.  The narrator sounds really smart, and the author must know what he’s talking about,as he’s highly regarded, and so, we’re duped into thinking it’s this fantastic tome that it actually isn’t.  Go ahead.  Throw tomatoes at me.  Call me bitter.  But if we’re being honest, I’m just curious.  A writer deconstructs fiction as he reads, he thinks about the bones, the strategy, the language, the effectiveness of the conceit.  And so I’m doing a bit of research here.

According to the Pulitzer’s website the online criteria for the Pulitzer winner is that the juries and board determine exactly what makes a work “distinguished.”  Could this be the problem?  Distinguished can mean many things to many people, and it certainly isn’t the same thing as engrossing, is it?

Which begs the question, so who is this board interpreting the distinguished from the undistinguished?  Scanning the members of the last three years I didn’t find one novelist on the board.  What I see are academics and newspaper editors, CEOs—intellectual, accomplished, and distinguished, I’m sure, but a bizarre choice for a Pulitzer board, no?  To my mind, more representative of the kinds of people who take my fiction writing course at the ANU—they love to read, and even know how to write for the most part, but not fiction.  So what makes this type more qualified than any other reader to judge a good book?  This question smacks very much of the one I began with regarding my own qualifications for judging this tome.  And if I’m forced to provide an answer, I’d have to say that to my thinking, if anyone knows whether a book has done something outstanding, something transcendent, it is a person who spends his life in the pursuit of trying to do exactly that.

From there, I turned to the decades-long list of winners itself.  If I’m being honest and not answering a university application question, about a fifth of them are books I love, while the rest are books about important topics that I wished I’d loved but couldn’t quite bring myself to.  I’d be pressed to recall the name of a character, or even the sketch of the character herself.  The funny thing about this is that it always brings me back to the question of what must be lacking in me, what I must be missing in the text, or perhaps whether I just don’t have enough passion for the world’s really important topics.  But I’m too old too get that far along either of those paths these days.  In fact, I remember my initial suspicions when I was first informed about this book from a library program coordinator who’s programmed more first-rate fiction and authors than most people could dream to read in a lifetime.  She said, “I had to read it twice, because I missed so much the first time.”  Hmmm. I was circumspect of this comment then, and I still am.  Rather than insinuate that she enjoyed it so much she wanted to go back and drain every last morsel from the language, it smacks very much of my own tendency to doubt my dislike of an award-winning industry favorite, and turn back to see if I wouldn’t be more pleased with a second go.

Now, before I get bombarded with arguments about taste being a personal thing, and who am I to say what’s good and what isn’t, let me say I agree with you—tastes are a personal thing, and the writer needs to be aware of this at all times to mitigate the possible fallout.  But one thing I can be sure about is whether I am personally engaged by a book, and another is whether an author, from a professional storytelling standpoint, has done his job in the pageturnability arena—which no matter how many times I look at it, strikes me as the most important arena there is in storytelling, because let’s face it, if the reader doesn’t read the story, nobody’s going anywhere and your important message isn’t being delivered.  So what does this all amount to?  If a boring book wins an award, does this necessarily indicate some sort of deficiency in those of us who can’t find the enjoyment in it?  Or should some “good” books be boring, be thought of as a lesson rather than a pleasure?  Try as I might, I cannot subscribe to this idea; there are so many engrossing ways to tell a story—even an ugly or painful one, maybe especially those, that choosing one that puts off readers seems like a dumb move.  Besides, would you buy a painting you found unattractive?  Would you wear a dress you felt looked hideous on you simply because it was stylish?  Perhaps you would.  And perhaps there are readers out there so stuck in what they should be finding worthy in a novel that they forget that it was actually not there for them to find.  And perhaps these people feel it’s best to leave the selection and critique of art to those in charge, but if that’s the case, I beg you to think about why, and what the book market might look like if more people refused to go with the common opinion rather than an authentic—albeit unpopular—one.  I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic.

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