Write Well Me

Guest Post: Thoughts for the Rejected Writer

by Angela Dion

Sorry, but if you can’t handle rejection writing probably isn’t the business (or even hobby) for you. In freelance writing, you will experience the pain of rejection. A lot. You can either concentrate on the rejection or you can learn from it.

You’ve heard of John Grisham’s numerous rejections before finding a small publisher for The Firm. Emily Dickinson only had seven of her 1800 poems published in her lifetime. My first book, Dear Son, was rejected 19 times and Let’s Talk about Race stayed with a publisher for almost a year before they rejected it to work with another author on a “similar” project. I’ve also gotten as many as four magazine rejections in one day.

Rejection sucks. It does. You want to quit, wonder if it’s all worth it, question whether you’re any good. And yes, after over a decade of writing I still get rejections and I still question my writing. But then I’ll get what I call a kiss from God.

An e-mail from a mom grateful for my article on talking to teens about drugs, a card from Kentucky – she just finished Let’s Talk and wants to use it as a teaching aid in her church, a Facebook message from a stranger saying she placed a child for adoption and reading Dear Son changed her life. I once got a message from an editor – a gentleman read one of my articles and wanted to know if I was single! These affirmations make all of the rejection worth it.

The truth is the more you write, experience rejection, and revise, the better writer you become. The better your writing, the fewer negative and more affirmative responses you experience.

Are you feeling an onslaught of rejection lately? Trying to find a place for your poetry, articles or books? Or are you afraid to send something out for fear of rejection? You’re in the company of many great writers, trust me. Rejection, as much as writing and editing, is an ingredient of the trade. Move past it. Keep revising. Keep submitting.

The road to success is paved with setbacks. Yet, in the end, it is our persistence despite rejection that will make us the writers we were meant to be.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes for the rejected writer.

Opportunity…often it comes in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat. –Napoleon Hill

Experience is what you get when don’t get what you want. -Dan Stanford

If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more. –Erica Jong

A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit. –Richard Bach

The fear of rejection is worse than rejection itself. -Nora Profit

If you’re a singer, you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he’s good, the older he gets, the better he writes. -Mickey Spillane

Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing. -LM Montgomery

You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance. -Ray Bradbury

Happy writing!

Angela Dion is the owner of Dion Communications, LLC. To subscribe to her free e-magazine Write Words and get the free 9 page booklet, Write Killer Queries, go to http://www.dioncommunications.com./newsletter/?p=subscribe.

Guest Post: The Truth Behind Bestseller Books & The Systems Behind New York Times and Amazon Bestsellers

By Tanya Hall

To very loosely paraphrase the Bard, what's in a bestseller?

That which we call a New York Times bestseller by any other name (such as "underground bestseller," or "Amazon bestseller") would smell as sweet-well, maybe not.

As the number of books published each year continues to skyrocket upwards, we face an onslaught of "bestseller" claims. We see the word on marketing materials and press releases, on book covers and websites, and, at Greenleaf Book Group, on many submission forms each week. If this bestseller crown has not been awarded by one of the major publications, such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, or USA Today, what kind of bestseller is it? The publisher may be partaking in sensationalist marketing-or just a stretch of the truth.

Whether the claim will benefit them or not depends on whom the publisher is targeting with this information. If the publisher intends to woo the consumer with bestseller claims on the book cover, yes, there's some chance it could help-although once your happy customer discovers the "bestseller" isn't as well-known as she thought, there may be repercussions. However, and this is a HUGE "however," a trumped-up claim of bestseller status could seriously hurt that publisher's reputation in the eyes of wholesalers, distributors, agents, and other parties in the tight-knit publishing industry, and that harm could result in books not getting on shelves. Note to all small publishers making larger-than-life bestseller claims: you're not pulling the wool over the industry's eyes.

Industry types have access to such fabulous tools as Nielsen's BookScan to research your sales history, and they will certainly consult them (amongst other resources) to corroborate your claims before making a decision to support your title. BookScan is a point-of-sale reporting service thought to reflect sales from approximately 70 percent of booksellers nationally. BookScan uses weekly data from over 6,500 retail, mass-merchant, and non-traditional outlets in combination with a statistical weighting methodology to present the most accurate information on sell-through available to the publishing industry. Certain notable accounts are missing, including Wal-mart, Sam's Club, airport bookstores, and Christian book retailers. Still, BookScan is a great gauge of sell-through, and as such, it is becoming increasingly influential in how sales are measured and bestseller lists are compiled.

While BookScan offers great insights into overall sales numbers and trends, it is not used exclusively (or sometimes at all) in building the prestigious bestseller lists. The holy grail of bestseller lists is the one published by the New York Times. The methodology behind how this list is built is kept rather hush-hush.

But most reports on the subject agree that the New York Times sends out a list of preselected trade titles (meaning titles you would find in a bookstore, not the boring academic titles like medical and law books that generally outsell them) to a selected group of close to five thousand retailers and wholesalers for them to record the books' weekly sales numbers. There are allegedly blank lines for the recipients of this survey to write in titles not included on the form. That's a quaint thought, but from what I know about inventory managers, highly unlikely to come into practice often.

With any bestseller list, it's important to note that it's a measurement of velocity of sales, not life of sales. A book that moves five thousand copies in one week is likely to make some list in some capacity when that week's numbers are run; however, a book that sells five hundred copies a week for ten weeks straight probably won't make any list at all. Lists also differ in how they categorize titles. For instance, the New York Times sorts by category (fiction, nonfiction, children's) and format (hardcover, trade paper). On the other hand, USA Today's list lumps them all together, from 1-150 by sales numbers, period. This means that a book listed at number one on the New York Times hardcover fiction list could be ranking in the triple digits on the USA Today list. Amazon.com's ranking system is a whole separate article in itself.

Differences in list-building aside, the notable bestseller lists are meant as a barometer of American culture. No list is 100 percent accurate, and none purport to be. Still, bestseller status on a major list is highly coveted, highly profitable, and highly protected specifically so that the word "bestseller" does not become meaningless. Use your sales history to support your efforts to expand your publishing endeavors, but be wary of making unsubstantiated bestseller claims lest you earn the wrath of industry types. Star-crossed lovers or not, that kind of behavior can bring a plague on all your houses.

Tanya Hall is Business Development Manager at Greenleaf Book Group, LLC: http://www.greenleafbookgroup.com. Tanya drives Greenleaf’s business development efforts, working with authors to develop their publishing programs and developing strategic partnerships to grow Greenleaf’s reputation as a leading independent publisher. Prior to her current role, she built Greenleaf's distribution organization, working directly with retailers and wholesalers to develop one of the fastest growing distribution businesses in the industry.

Guest Post: Book Tours that Kick Butt

Let’s be clear about one thing: the first butt your book tour will kick will be yours. Book tours are hard work. It takes planning and effort to pull a tour together, and nowadays, it’s the author’s responsibility to orchestrate their book tour, signings or online events. Publishers just don’t have the time, money or staff to promote every book in the way it needs to be promoted to stand out from the crowd.

With the total number of new book releases topping about 400,000 titles a year in the U.S. (including traditional publishers, print-on-demand and self publishing), your book has a lot of competition. A great book tour can help you and your book gain essential visibility to boost sales, increase speaking engagements and help you sell the next book!

What a book tour is:

A book tour is a great reason to send out press releases about your book. It’s a reason to contact media in every city where you visit book stores. It’s also a wonderful way to connect with readers and to introduce your book to new people. A book tour also increases your visibility as an expert.

Book tours are also great ways to get to know bookstore managers and staff, librarians, readers and book reviewers. When a store schedules a book signing, it has a reason to order multiple copies of your book. Even if you don’t sell every copy at the signing, you can sign the copies that are left behind and the store has an incentive to hang onto those autographed copies.

Book tours scheduled for the crucial weeks right when your book first comes out can encourage early sales. Rankings on bestseller lists usually measure the volume of sales in a book’s first few weeks. Events backed by lots of PR and invitations to family, friends and clients/prior readers can boost those early numbers and help you land on the sales charts, which is at least good for bragging rights!

What a book tour isn’t:

Unless you’re already a celebrity or a big-name author, most book tours are not paid for by the publisher. Your publisher may help out by posting the tour schedule you put together on their web site, posting a guest blog entry on their web site or sending you some free review copies to send to reviewers, but most publishers just don’t have the funds to do more. If you’re really lucky, your publisher may negotiate front-of-the-store placement with the big bookstore chains (they have to pay for it) or send you a graphic of your book cover that you or the stores can make into posters. That’s about it.

Book tours, alas, also aren’t major media events for the big-time TV and radio stations unless you are already well-known. However, they CAN be a big deal for your hometown media, the local media in smaller cities and even your alumni publications from college or graduate school. So while it’s unlikely that your tour will make The New York Times or The Washington Post, your hometown may run a nice interview or your local paper may feature your book. You can also parlay a book tour into a reason to contact traditional and internet radio stations with a fresh new topic related to your book.

Book tours also aren’t a guarantee of big sales. Unless you already have an established series (and even then, not always), a very successful signing in a bookstore for most authors runs between five and twenty book sales. If you are selling your book in the back of the room after you give a presentation, sales can be higher than that. Remember that the real payoff of a book tour isn’t necessarily in the sales, it’s in the exposure that leads to higher overall sales.

You’re also likely to find that your book tour doesn’t draw a big crowd. Most of the sales you make in a bookstore will be to people who didn’t come just to meet you and have never heard of your book. That’s OK. You’ve now gained a brand new reader who has not only discovered your book, but they can also tell everyone that they met the author!

Likewise, a book tour won’t make you famous. However, it can raise your visibility, give you a great reason to get media coverage, be a fresh topic on your blog and web site, and add life to your platform.

View your book tour as a reason to create publicity, make personal connections and get to know bookstore staff and hear their feedback. When you realize that the tour isn’t really just about selling books, you can relax and enjoy your moment in the spotlight!

Gail Z. Martin

Gail’s brand-new book is The Thrifty Author’s Guide to Launching Your Book Without Losing Your Mind. Gail is the author of The Summoner, The Blood King and Dark Haven fantasy adventure novels in the bestselling Chronicles of the Necromancer series. Find her online at www.GailMartinMarketing.com and on Twitter at GailMartinPR and GailZMartin.

Guest Post: Submit and Get Noticed--Two Tips for Publishing Your Book

Tip #1: Tweak Cover Design Conventions—But Don’t Discard Them Entirely

Business books don’t look like self-help books don’t look like fiction. This may seem obvious to some, but it is a common problem I see when we’re evaluating new books for publication or distribution. When consumers want to buy a business book, for example, they expect certain imagery, fonts, colors, and layout styles, whether they realize it or not. The best-selling business books often use large, simple fonts and bright colors to keep the focus on the title.

If your book cover or layout doesn’t make sense for its genre, it could hurt your sales. That means that it might be a better idea not to make the cover of a book about investing neon pink with pictures of your dog, no matter what your artistic sensibilities are. Now that’s not to discourage innovation—there is always a new and better way to do things. The mold can be broken, but for new authors this can pose a risk (although sometimes ugly covers work). Whatever the case, choosing a genre-appropriate cover will signal credibility and familiarity to customers, which can translate into more sales.

A quick way to get some ideas is to go to Amazon or your local bookstore to check out titles similar to yours that are selling well. Notice the styling of other books, what imagery they use, and what that conveys to you as the reader. If you like what you see, figure out a way to adapt those principles to your cause. A book can stand out to buyers by employing creative cover art and a well-thought-out interior while staying within the bounds of the genre.

Tip #2: Get the price right.

Oh, the headache of self-publishing. You want to realize your dream and publish your book, but you have The Industry to contend with, you have the cost of production, and you have to worry about wholesalers and distributors, and Amazon . . . and the list goes on. After all that time, energy, and money, it seems only natural that you’d want to earn back your costs through the price of your book. $22.95 sounds like a fair price for your paperback fiction after all you’ve put into this book, right?

Sorry, but wrong. If your ultimate goal is national distribution and book sales, you have to consider the price point as a standardized range that every author and publisher must work within. National buyers will have a hard time considering your book if, as a new author, you are charging $5 or $6 more for your book than the big names are charging for comparable titles. Also, a higher-than-average price point can drastically affect your sales. While you can charge whatever price you deem worthy, paperbacks are usually priced below $19.95 and hardbacks are usually below $24.95. There are all kinds of exceptions to this rule of thumb, based on genre, the size of the book, and the inclusion of photos and illustrations, but those numbers are a rough estimate for fiction and non-fiction like self-help, health, business, finance, and religious titles. Visiting a local bookstore, Amazon.com, or Indiebound.com for reference is an unbeatable way to see how similar titles are priced and keep yourself competitive. Remember: raising your price doesn’t necessarily raise your bottom line.

Katie Steigman reviews Greenleaf’s submissions for market viability and helps determine what books to take on as projects at GBG. She reads everything—the good, the bad, the ugly, and all genres from personal finance to cookbooks. To get the rest of the Submit and Get Noticed Tips and other book industry insight, become a regular visitor to the Big Bad Book Blog.