I like that terribleminds has kind of become an inadvertent writerly community. People gathering around the campfire, burning their old trunk novels, weeping into cans of beans about this rejection or that bad review. As such, this seems like an opportune time to once more check in with you ink-fingered key-slingers and see:

How are you doing?

How’s the writing going?

Tell us some good news.

Trouble us with your problems.

Let’s talk about it. Let’s talk to each other about it.

Got a grievance? Air it.

Got good news? Celebrate it.

Progress reports: starting now.

Last week’s challenge: Charlie And The Whoa What Now?

Colors.

COLORS ARE PRETTY.

*paws the sky*

*touches a tree*

*drops acid, dances around in a whirlwind of colors that do not exist*

Ahem.

Anyway.

This one is pretty easy.

I want you to write a story using a title that incorporates a color into it.

I don’t care which color, but if you require a RANDOM COLOR TABLE:

1. Pink
2. Feldspar
3. Olive
4. Azure
5. Auburn
6. Fuchsia
7. Coral
8. Ochre
9. Vermilion
10. Cobalt

So, your title could be THE COBALT KNIGHT or AUBURN JONES AND THE REAPER’S URN or whatever. Only requirement is the incorporation of a color into the title. Otherwise? It’s rules as usual: 1000 words, due by Friday, 8/22, noon EST. Post at your online space. Link back here in the comments. Game over.

Water’s warm, so: jump in.

I love editors. Editors are the unsung heroes of the Book World. They’re the ones with their arms plunged into the meaty stink of various drafts, reaching into the pink slurry in order to stitch up ruptures and rearrange vital organs and make the whole monster work. Without editors, all writers would probably descend into a pit of writing pamphlets consisting only of profane emojis.

Freelance editors are an awesome variant of the editor — though, tricky, because a lot of folks out there call themselves editors and will gladly take your money and then just-as-gladly either do nothing for you or instead take the cash in order to tell you what you want to hear. So, it’s nice to hear from recent Angry Robot editor Bryon Quertermous, who has once again returned to the Wide World of Freelance Editing. Here he is with ‘five things you can learn from a freelance editor.’

* * *

When Chuck initially offered me this space after the publisher I was an acquiring editor for closed my imprint, I submitted a whiny, altogether off-putting piece that Chuck kindly pushed back and suggested I rethink. [Hey, I just want the best for ol’ Bryon. Or Byron. Wait, what the hell is his name again? Quartermouse? Qwertymace? Whatever. — cw] After some time to clear my head and figure out what I was looking forward to in this next phase of my career I realized how happy I was to be back to editing on a freelance basis rather than in a corporate environment. That joy has nothing to do with bad corporate experiences, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every job I’ve had working for publishers big and small, but in all of those instances my main loyalty was to the company, not to the writer. As a hired gun, paid for by the writer and serving at the writer’s mercy, I exist for one purpose: to bring the manuscript as close to the writer’s perfect vision of it as humanly possible and that’s a freeing feeling.

So in the spirit of freedom and independence, I present today, five things you can learn from a freelance editor (or as it’s known in my document file: five reasons my fee is really worth it).

1. WHAT YOUR STORY IS REALLY ABOUT

If I had to pick one common element from all of my editorial letters, this would be it. Whether it’s elevating a minor character to a starring role, suggesting a single novel is actually a trilogy (or vice-versa), or suggesting that maybe your contemporary romance is actually a perfectly structured romantic suspense novel, authors aren’t always the best judge of what type of book they’re writing. They almost always know what they want to say and what they want the reader to feel and why they’re writing the book, but the delivery of those key goals is usually not as defined.

If you have the luxury of putting your manuscript away for months to clear your head and take a fresh view, that’s great. But most writers don’t have that luxury (or that much discipline) so bringing in someone who thinks like an author and respects the vision like an author, but has the fresh eyes and training of an editor is the next best thing.

2. GETTING PERSONAL IN WRITING IS GREAT; GETTING TOO PERSONAL ISN’T

One of the big problems I had with the original version of this piece was finding the balance between making it personal and keeping within the bounds of common decency. For a book to really work well, part of the author’s soul has to be on the page. Even authors like Chuck who write multiple books a year across multiple formats and multiple worlds find a way to put a piece of themselves in even the silliest or outrageous projects. But finding that balance isn’t easy.

The best fiction, like the best dialogue, presents a hyper-stylized version of reality that keeps all of the good parts and excises the repetitive and boring parts. A good editor will dig deeper with a string of questions to the author to help find the interesting core of personal anecdotes or find ways to combine multiple boring real elements into one fabulous fictional element. They’ll also point out the points where the personal elements you’re incorporating go against the vision you have for the piece. Going back again to this piece, Chuck knew my main goal for writing this was to show off my editing experience and skills and get more work out of it. He pointed out several places where good personal writing was damaging the mission of my piece. He also pointed out places where I was flat out wrong.

Which brings me to…

3. YOU’RE GOING TO GET SOMETHING WRONG

Authors are also a really smart lot by and large, but they tend to be specialists and tend to be hyper-focused on individual projects. Editors are able to see the bigger picture because they haven’t spent months or years researching the topic or novel like the author has. They’re coming to it as your readers will, with the same questions and desire to be entertained AND informed, but with the added skill of being able to help you fix the spots where you goof up.

As with personal details, including enough research in a novel to keep the reader informed and educated as well as entertained without bogging them down in footnotes and graduate thesis-level description is a tough balance. Again, a good editor will do this tactfully through a series of questions (do we really need four pages to describe how to turn on the Demon Laser Sword?) to help the author realize the overload on their own. This also includes spelling and grammar. Editors are vigilant with the dictionary, the Chicago Manual of Style, and other resources at hand to make sure that the prose comes across clear and easy to read without being hampered by silly grammar or spelling errors.

4. THE BEST OPTION FOR PUBLISHING MAY NOT BE THE ONE YOU THINK

Most of the freelance editors I know, myself included, have worked with Big Five publishing houses, smaller publishers, and everything in between and still follow what’s going on in the industry. A good portion of my editorial business is publishing consulting and helping authors find the right publishing fit for their story.

Once you have a great novel polished to a sparkly sheen, a freelance editor with great knowledge of the current publishing scene can help you figure out the best path for your individual story within your publishing life plan. If your goal is only to find an agent and be published by a traditional publisher, an editor will help you find ways to make your unique vision fit within the boundaries of the commercial fiction marketplace. But traditional publishing isn’t the best path for every author or for every book. An experienced and skillful editor can offer suggestions for alternatives to traditional publishing whether that be self-publishing, POD publishing, or dropping the project completely and moving on to something new.

5. NOW YOU KNOW SOMEONE IN THE BUSINESS

For those looking to be traditionally published, contacts and networking can be immensely helpful in cutting through the red tape. Hiring an editor with a wealth of contacts in the industry can help elevate great manuscripts in the slush piles and offer a stamp of validation when competing against the thousands of other unsolicited manuscripts agents and editors receive every day. While no ethical editor will ever guarantee that hiring them and working with them will guarantee representation or publication (one of the best novels I’ve ever worked on in my career still hasn’t sold and it crushes me daily), there’s no denying that a well-placed email or note can help a great manuscript get the best opportunity for success possible.

Even those who want to bypass traditional publishing can still benefit from a freelance editor with great contacts. One of the biggest complaints indie writers have is how hard it is to get their books noticed. In addition to contacts with editors and agents, most top freelance editors have contacts with bloggers, book reviewers, and influential readers who can help spread the word of a book.

So when considering whether to hire a freelance editor and how much you’re willing to pay for the service, think about what you’re looking for. Do you just want someone to make sure the commas are in the correct place and you haven’t used their, they’re, or there wrong, or do you want a skilled and well-connected partner who can help you fully realize the vision of your project  and provide access to reach the largest audience possible for that project?

Bryon Quertermous has over a decade of publishing experience that includes work with traditional stalwarts, such as Random House, as well as more cutting-edge operations like Harlequin’s digital-first imprint Carina Press. His most recent position was as the commissioning editor for Angry Robot’s crime fiction imprint Exhibit A Books. He’s worked as a freelance editor for New York Times bestselling authors and published the award-winning crime zine Demolition for four years. His first novel, Murder Boy, will be published in 2015 by Polis Books. Rates, testimonials, and recent editing projects can be found at his website, right here.

An e-book is nothing. It’s 1s and 0s. It’s wizard farts and cyber-dreams.

An e-book is everything. It’s a container for pure story. Like the traps they use in Ghostbusters, except instead of catching specters it catches characters, narratives, ideas, lies that tell truths.

An e-book is a book, which is to say, it’s not a book at all. A book is a physical thing.

An e-book is ether. An e-book is frequency.

You might own an e-book. You might not. Maybe you’re just leasing it, like a jet-ski during the summer. Maybe you’ll read it. Maybe you’re just collecting them. Could be it goes in the pile. Guiltless and invisible. All of us, gluttonous e-book hoarders.

An e-book costs nothing to make. But it costs everything to write — a story, after all, always costs yourself, or part of yourself. And an e-book costs a lot to edit. And design. And market. And of course the story must be procured and the author secured and all of these cost dollars and cents, or bitcoins, or dogecoins, or e-chits, or book-ducats. But of course, e-books cost nothing to make.

Some e-books are big. Some are small.

Some are good. Some are great.

Some are transcendent.

Some are total dogpants.

Some are good stories formatted well. Others are formatted impeccably, but suck with great gusto.

Some are written by authors you love.

Some are by authors you hate.

Many — most, even — are by authors you don’t even know.

It may take you two hours to read an e-book. Or two days. Or two weeks.

Maybe you pick at it for two months, two years, two lifetimes, two nevers, two forevers.

Maybe you re-read it again and again. Maybe you can’t get through it the first time.

Going to the movies costs $10. Maybe $20. Or more.

Buying a movie costs about the same.

Renting a movie is half that.

My wife will tell me a story for free.

Broadcast TV is free, too, though of course I pay for cable. Quite a lot of money per month. And then there’s Netflix, too — eight dollars a month for everything I could every want to watch, as long as everything I want to watch is about 5% of everything I really want to watch.

A video game is sixty bucks except when it’s an app then it’s three.

Or a buck.

Or free (but with a hundred-thousand-dollars for all the in-app purchases).

This blog is free.

A coffee is a buck, or two, or five-plus if it’s fancy.

I bought a pint of ice cream the other day that was over ten dollars.

It probably won’t take me an hour to eat it.

(Realtalk: I could hoover that fucker into my body before the lady at the store gives me change.)

A whole pizza is ten bucks, too. Maybe fifteen. Maybe the pizza should be more expensive. Or perhaps the ice cream should be cheaper? Lobster weighs less than a pizza but costs more.

The Internet costs me quite a lot of money every month but weighs nothing. No trucks have to deliver it. Nobody has to turn a crank or clear the line of debris.

My Hyundai costs less than a BMW which costs less than a Lamborghini but they’re all just metal and rubber and zoom-zoom juice. For the price that I paid for my Hyundai I could probably buy a bunch of bicycles. Like, a shitload of bicycles.

I don’t know what e-books should cost.

Everyone wants to tell you what they should cost by comparing them to everything else even though nothing else really compares.

They want you to price them based on their cost to produce, as long as “cost to produce” doesn’t figure in all the actual costs to produce them.

Maybe an e-book should be five bucks. Or ten. Or fifteen.

Or whatever the author wants. Or the publisher. Or the retailer.

I seriously don’t know what e-books should cost.

If nine-ninety-nine is the sweet spot, then one might suspect that the bell-curve neatly allows for $4.99 at the edge same as it would allow for $14.99, but of course, I’m a writer, not a mather.

Picasso, if the legend is true, once drew a hasty sketch on a napkin at the behest of a cafe patron and was then asked to sign it and then he told the patron before handing the sketch over that it would cost said patron $25,000. The patron complained, saying, “But that only took you two minutes to draw!” Picasso replies with, “No, it took me my whole life.”

But what do I know? I’m no Picasso. I’m not even Robert Picardo.

Robert Picardo is pretty cool. I don’t know what he costs.

An iPhone costs me over $600, but only about $200 to build.

My son cost nothing to make, but boy, the lifetime contract is pretty expensive. If he’s ever gonna go to college, I better start farming all those book-ducats and e-chits right the hell now.

I really, truly, totally don’t know what e-books should cost.

But I hope we figure it out soon, so we can shut the fuck up about it.

Maybe we can just let the market decide.

Or maybe someone else will decide for us and the market will decide anyway because the market does what the market does. Because the market hungers, like if H.P Lovecraft and Adam Smith had a squirming squid baby that smells like ATM receipts.

Maybe the question really isn’t “what’s an e-book worth?”

Maybe instead we should ask:

What is a story worth?

Maybe that’s the question that matters most of all.

I don’t know that answer, either.

I suspect nobody does.

And now, a guest post by a really amazing author: Tom Pollock. Tom wanted to talk about how he maintains both a writing career and a day job at the same time, and that felt like a very useful perspective, indeed. I don’t necessarily agree with everything here — if I’d taken some of this advice to heart, I suspect I’d not have the career I have at present, but I’m also, er, fortunate enough to have never liked any of my day jobs all that much. The only day job I ever wanted was to be a full-time author — but some of what Tom is putting out there is vital for those who want to keep their current work while writing on the side.

So, with that all said —

Everyone say “Hi, Tom!”

* * *

Maybe this is a place to mention this, but I’ve always felt a little weird about giving writing advice.

This isn’t just because, as Patrick Ness so rightly puts it, ‘no-one can tell you how to write, they can only tell you how they write’ it’s also because I can’t even tell myself how I’m going to write the next book. Every time I start a novel it feels like the first time.  I’m sitting down to write my fourth one right now, and it still makes me feel like a nervous virgin who’s just realised he forgot to take off his socks before his trousers.

I know one way I’m not going to write it though: full time.  I’ve written three novels in three years around a day job that I really like, and I’ll do the same with this one. People sometimes ask me for practical tips on how I fit it all in, so here’s how:

(Disclaimer: your mileage may vary and your domestic circumstances may differ from mine. In particular, I am aware I have no kids. Still, I hope some of this is useful to you.)

Plan your time.

This is the biggie, if you take nothing else away from this post take this. If you’re effectively trying to do two jobs at once, then time is likely to be your scarcest resource, and like any scarce resource, you’ll need to budget. Plan your week ahead, know when you’re writing.  Have a routine. Compartmentalize like a fiend.

For example: I write on Monday nights, Wednesday nights and during the day on Sundays. The rest of the time I see family and friends, eat cereal, rage against the dying of the light, answer email, eat more cereal, make terrible puns on twitter and watch Netflix.

I find it helps (though it’s not essential and I understand this can be tricky) to have a general idea of how fast you write, so you can know how much time you’ll need. I turn out about five hundred words an hour when I’m first-drafting. That’s roughly two-hundred hours to a first draft. Writing eight hours a week, which is more or less what I do (two hours each in the weekday evenings and four on the weekend) gets me to a 100k first draft in six months, another six for revision and that’s a finished novel in a year.

Yes, a lot of people write every day. You can if you want to. You don’t have to. I don’t.  A lot of people (like my gracious host, Chuck) write more than one book a year. You can if you want to. You don’t have to. I don’t. (Spoiler: this will be a running theme.)

Stick to your plan.

Once you’ve got it planned out, do it.

If your buddy Alex asks you if you want to go see Guardians of the Galaxy on Wednesday? Sorry matey, I’m writing. I find getting out of the house to write helps here. Work has its own place, writing has its own place too, and when I’m at home I’m at home: off duty. This keeps me from being tempted to pretend I’m writing while I’ve got an Elementary marathon on in the background.

It’s not just your writing time that’s sacred, either. The point of compartmentalisation isn’t just to keep writing safe from the rest of your life, but to keep the rest of your life safe from your writing time, this helps with…

Don’t let writing turn you into an asshole.

If you’re anything like me then about three months into the book, a nasty, Gollum-like voice will whispering inside your head. It’ll suck its breath in through its broken teeth like it’s reluctant to give you bad news and then it’ll say something like:

‘I hate to tell you this Tom, but there are only so many hours in the day, and you’re already spending so many of them at the day job. You keep seeing on Twitter how everyone else is writing every spare second of every day (I mean, even Stephen frickin’ King says you need to write every day, and he’s Stephen frickin’ King).  What if everyone else is getting ahead because you’re not focussed on your game? Everyone’s talking about how tough the market is right now. Maybe it’s time to make the writing the priority, even ahead of some of the people in your life. They’ll understand right? This is your dream. Everyone has a right to follow their dreams. Hell, if they don’t understand, maybe they don’t deserve you.’

Do not listen to this voice. This voice is a massive dick, formed out of your own paranoia at falling behind some imagined curve and cloaked in just enough statement-of-the-obvious to make itself look reasonable. Yes, there may be times when you need to prioritize, and you know what? Prioritize the people. They’re more important.

For one thing, you can afford to — you’ve got a day job covering the income. For another, you won’t actually get any more done if you’re worrying about how you’ve fucked up all the human connections in your life. The fact that writing is not the a1 priority in your life does not mean you won’t get it done. So stop panicking and bake a goddam cake for the real love of your life.

Enjoy it.

Internet legend Ze Frank put it best: ‘life isn’t just a sequence of waiting for things to be done’. You are entitled to expect to have fun. Not that every minute at the keyboard will be as 100% pleasurable and frustration free as an orgasm on MDMA. It won’t, but on average, overall you ought to enjoy it, and find it satisfying. And if you don’t? If for some reason you’re labouring away at a pastime you hate because you’re invested in the idea of being a writer, but detest the activity? It’s okay, you can stop. You kept your day job, remember?

Frankly, everybody who writes, day job or not, ought to be having fun with it, otherwise why bother? But this is one of those areas where keeping the civilian occupation can be a positive boon. If you aren’t looking for this book to pay your gas bill, it frees you up to write whatever the hell turns you on. It pulls some of the teeth out of the ‘is this commercial enough?’ vampire.

Aaaaaaand that’s all I got. I assume a lot of you guys are writing around day jobs, what helps you cram it in?

* * *

Inventor of monsters, hugger of bears: Tom Pollock is a long time fan of science fiction and fantasy who steadfastly refuses to grow out of his obsession with things that don’t exist. His Skyscraper Throne Trilogy (The City’s Son, The Glass Republic, Our Lady of The Streets) has been shortlisted for the Kitschies Golden Tentacle and British Fantasy Awards. The Skyscraper Throne is probably the most urban fantasy you’ll ever read. The first volume The City’s Son, is about a teenage graffiti artist sucked into a world of runaway train ghosts, glass-skinned streetlamp spirits, wolves made of scaffolding, and demolition gods with cranes for fingers. Things get weirder from there.

In my experience, most authors dislike self-promotion.

Some downright despise it.

And they detest it for good reason: becoming a marketing or advertising avatar for your own work feels shameless. It feels adjacent to the work — like it’s something you didn’t sign on for.

I JUST WANT TO WRITE BOOKS, you scream into the mirror around pages of your manuscript, the pages moistened with saliva and tears. I DON’T WANT TO BECOME A HUMAN SPAM-BOT, you cry as your teeth clatter into the sink, as your ear plops off, as your nose drops away. In all the gaps, a faint glimpse of whirring machinery, gears turning and conveyor belts churning, all of your mechanisms pink with the slurry of Spam…

Thing is, you’re probably gonna have to do it anyway.

Reasons?

First, publishers expect it, to some degree.

Second, if you’re an author-publisher, it becomes wholly more necessary.

Third, readers expect it, too. That one sounds a bit strange, but trust me — I follow a number of writers and their social media channels is exactly how I find out about their new books. I want to have a little promotion thrown my way because, fuck it, I’m a reader — or in some cases a full-blown fan — and I wanna know when New Books By Awesome Authors exist.

I know. I know.

It burns you.

It burns me, too.

But, you’re gonna have to take a rock to your shame sensors. You’re gonna have to hit them until they malfunction. Until you can comfortably get on social media and talk about your books without fritzing out and hemorrhaging various fluids.

Trust me: you can do this in a way that doesn’t feel spammy.

Let’s talk how.

Be The Best Version Of Yourself

Rule Zero? Exactly what that header says: be the best version of yourself. In all things social media-flavored, you should strive to be the awesomest iteration of your own person. Bring out the good stuff. Kick the shitty parts under the fridge. Don’t be someone new. Don’t be someone different. Be you. Be you, but with all the great parts on display.

Stop Thinking Of Self-Promotion As Self-Promotion

The first rule of Self-Promotion Club is, you have to talk about yourself.

Talking about yourself doesn’t mean shilling your book, or a service, or a blog post, or any of that.

Self-promo can often be as simple as what I said above: be the best version of yourself.

Try to be funny. Or say compelling things. Share ideas. Or tell stories — not stories you’re selling for ninety-nine cents on the Kindle Marketplace, but things that happened in your day. Have conversations. Get into meaningful (translation: not jerky) debates. Post funny animated GIFs like that one where the manatee is driving the Jeep through Wal-Mart, or that other one from the infomercial where the guy steps on a rake and it beheads him.

(I might just be making those up. I hallucinate a lot, so — no promises any of this is even real.)

This works at the simplest level: you, the author, are the standard-bearer for your own work. You’re not a brand — you’re a motherfucking human being and human beings connect well to other human beings. My LEGO bits don’t fit into companies, or platforms, or products. My LEGO bits fit into your LEGO bits. (Er, I mean, metaphorically. I’m not suggesting we, ahem, join our LEGO bits together. Trust me, my LEGO bits are way too filthy.) If people think you’re a bit of all right, they might eventually think your work is a bit of all right, too.

Slow And Steady

Self-promotion is a marathon, not a sprint. It is a long con, not a short game. It is a romance, not a one-night stand. It’s tantric lovemaking, not premature ejac —

Okay, yeah, no, you’re right. I should ease off the metaphor lever. Good call.

Point is:

It’s not one-and-done. It’s not, BOOM, THERE, I TWATTED ABOUT MY BOOK, NOW IT’S TIME TO RETIRE ON THE ROYALTIES. Self-promotion is slow-and-steady wins the race.

You are turtle. You are not rabbit.

The Ratio

A good ratio for your self-promotional efforts? Less than 25% of your daily output.

(Honestly, probably closer to 10-15% is even better.)

Short, sharp shock.

Sniper bullet, not a clumsy spray of machine gun bullets.

Anything more than that… well…

And You Just Got Noisy

You are not a skunk spraying your acrid musk. That’s not how you communicate interest in your book. You’re not like, HERE, I HAVE AEROSOLIZED ALL OF MY ADVERTISING INTO THIS PUNGENT, BLISTERING SPRAY WHICH I WILL NOW FIRE FROM MY NETHERS INTO YOUR EYES AND MOUTH. NOW GO BUY MY BOOK OR I’LL DO IT AGAIN.

Put Down Your Bullhorn

We know you’re going to have to talk about your book. You are a BOOK HUMAN. Books come out of you. You birth story-babies into the world. That doesn’t mean you need to scream about them all the time. Your self-promotional efforts are best when it’s not you yelling at people — but rather, you communicating with people. Self-promotion can be part of a conversation. It doesn’t just have to be an inert advertisement — it can be the beginning of a discussion.

Though, Don’t Get Pushy

Don’t misread that as meaning every conversation is an opportunity for you to not-so-sneakily shiv your discussion partners with a sharpened toothbrush inked with the name of your book. “I like cheesecake.” “I too like cheesecake.” “I think it’s best with a graham cracker crust.” “I think it’s best if you eat it WHILE READING MY BOOK WHICH IS ABOUT SPACE WITCHES VERSUS THE OTTER HEGEMONY and if you like cheesecake I bet you’ll like my book because my book contains all the letters in the word ‘cheesecake,’ so hey why dontcha read it it’s $2.99.”

Every interaction needn’t be an insinuation of spam-juice.

Still: Get Excited!

I am likely to care if you care. Like, if you have a new book out, I expect you to shout about it. I demand you to shout about it. Once in a while, get shouty. Throw confetti. It’s exciting stuff. Be honest, earnest, share your mirth-engorged presence with all of us. It doesn’t feel artificial when you talk about your book. (Again: talk about it. Not yell an advertisement in my face.)

Be Authentic

What do I mean by this? I mean, I can smell an advertisement like cigarette smoke in old clothes. It’s like cat piss in a house — it clings to the carpets, the trim, the old dead lady by the radiator. It’s why I think talk of brands and platform and products and content is highly misleading and threatens to be damaging to an author. We don’t earn an audience and engage with readers through artifice. We do it by putting ourselves out there. Talking about your book should come from you. It should come from your heart. Say it differently every time. Talk about your books in the same voice you used to write the books. Authenticity is about being a human being trying to share your work with other human beings. Once more: two LEGO bricks clicking together.

I am just an author standing in front of a reader, asking her to read me.

(And not Taser me. I am harmless. See? I have a cuddly beard and no pants and elbow patches on my tweed jacket — okay, yeah, you know, I can see now how the “no pants” thing is probably not a good starting point. I will put on pants. For you. That’s how much I respect you.)

Promoting Others

Promote others as much as — or, even more than — you promote yourself.

This isn’t an I SCREAM ABOUT YOUR BOOK, YOU SCREAM ABOUT MINE deal. I don’t mean this as some kind of quid pro quo deal. (It’s shady, for one thing. I’ve had people talk about my books then hit me on the backchannel to get mad because I didn’t promote theirs. The one I didn’t read. Or know about until that second. Uh. That’s not how this works.)

Promoting other people’s work promotes overall reading culture.

It doesn’t reward you directly.

But it can, passively.

And it can actively reward those authors you love.

Sometimes, this whole thing we do is about sharing love.

Sweet, sweet book-love.

Pay To Promo?

Should you pay for promotion? That’s on you. Author-publishers may have to, but it’s also vital to recognize that you have a lot of free avenues available to you, including the Magic and Mysteries of Social Media. If you’re published, then it’s worth talking to your publisher and… well, making them do their jobs. (Publishers: we license our work to you and give you the lion’s share of the money because we expect you to do this for us. If you don’t, we’ll find someone who will. Your reach is far greater than ours. Ours is more intimate, yes, but where we have a lightsaber, you have the cyclopean laser that fires from the Death Star. Kay? Kay.)

Mouthfeel

Book discovery is the name of the game, and in the programmatic sense, it’s terrible. Seriously, book discovery at online stores like Amazon or B&N feel like a bunch of old blind oracles passing around one eyeball. “I THINK YOU’LL LIKE THIS BOOK.” “THAT’S NOT A BOOK, THAT’S AN IMMERSION BLENDER.” “WELL WHATEVER I THINK YOU’LL LIKE IT.”

Word of mouth is the best thing you have. You can’t engineer it, but you can help it along by writing a great book and putting your best foot forward when promoting it.

Measure It

Try new things. And when you do? Measure them.

Social media affords us many ways to see if we’re reaching people — so, check it. It’s not a perfect metric — and it’s vital to not get caught up in sheer numbers, too, because one retweet from a new, true-blue fan is a helluva lot more meaningful than 100 retweets from a bunch of people who don’t give that much of a shit about you. But we can test things. And you can even ask your audience: are you reaching them? Are they checking out your books? Hell, you can even ask: am I becoming too spammy? DO YOU FEEL FACE-PUNCHED WITH SELF-PROMO?

I tend to like to hit promo a few times a day, scattered throughout the day to hit various time-zones and pockets of wakefulness. I know what times work for me to reach people, usually.

Because I watch.

I’M WATCHING YOU RIGHT NOW.

*knocks on the inside of your monitor*

*waves*

When In Doubt: Hire A Publicist

They do good work. Some of them have gotten writers on here. (Though, to be clear, I’ll also note that the writers could’ve gotten here on their own, too — it’s not like I only speak to publicists.) Authors are not Made Of Infinite Time or Concocted Of Perfect Skill — it is totally okay to let other people do the work for you. Er, just, y’know… pay them.

Basically?

Basically, be cool, don’t be a jerk, don’t overdo it, don’t avoid it entirely.

I want to love your book as much as you do.

But you can’t come across as desperate.

Nor do I want you to neg me like you’re some kinda pickup artist.

Your confidence is valuable.

Your cockiness is not.

You’re not selling used cars.

Don’t even think of it as selling.

You’re trying to tell a story.

And you really want people to listen.

Now please endure my skunk mist.

*lifts tail*

* * *

500 Ways To Write Harder aims to deliver a volley of micro-burst idea bombs and advisory missiles straight to your frontal penmonkey cortex. Want to learn more about writing, storytelling, publishing, and living the creative life? This book contains a high-voltage dose of information about outlining, plot twists, writer’s block, antagonists, writing conferences, self-publishing, and more.

All this, straight from the sticky blog pages of terribleminds.com, one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers (as named by Writer’s Digest).

Buy ($2.99) at:

Amazon

B&N

Direct from terribleminds

Or: Part of a $20 e-book bundle!