Six years ago, when I’d finished my novel and went through what I’d resolved as the best way to publish (for me…), I was pretty freely telling everyone to write and publish—immediately, if not sooner…
Those six years have seen me do a massive amount of research into the reading, writing, and publishing Scenes—all so I could write this blog…
Before I share four articles that should make most writers think in some new ways, I’ll share just a bit of what I said back in May of 2013 from what I consider the Most Important Post on This Blog:
“An extremely small percentage of writers sell more than 500 copies of a book…”
“Yet, writers can find tons of posts and articles and web sites that are based on the mistaken conception that Any book can sell like hotcakes if the author will do X, Y, Z, and, if possible, D, U, and P…”
And, a quote from someone I quoted in that post, bearing on why I call it the most important post here:
“…in business school there’s this point made that if you interview rich people who have won the lottery, you might come to believe that playing the lottery is the only way to become rich. I thought that was interesting. One of the things I’m constantly trying to point out is that we’re not doing nearly enough to highlight both median and failure modes, because that’s where the real lessons lie. As for myself, I find message boards where new writers struggle to sell more than a few copies interesting, and where I harvest data about the low end.”
There’s much more of critical interest to all writers in that post; but, while I hope you’ll go there now and read it and take notes, I’ll finishing writing this post so you have more to consider when you return :-)
So, from the running-around-shouting attitude I had about the book world six years ago , I’m a bit more mature; mostly from having so many assumptions shattered on the rocks of the Truth about writing and publishing and promoting books…
I suppose I could say these next four articles are what I wish I’d read six years and one month ago :-)
First, I’ll share an article called, The Art of Receiving Criticism.
After relating her Before and After experiences of criticism (and, how she now Carefully selects who should give their opinions on her work), the author says:
“Oscar Wilde once commented that to critique a work of art means creating a new work of one’s own. Critique, in itself, is a form of artwork. We wouldn’t demean another person’s writing like we do their critique of our own work. Why should we receive it with any less openness than we would a Van Gogh painting?”
The next article I’ll share is called, Warning: Discoverability Dependency is Hazardous to Your Fiction Marketing.
Discoverability is the buzz-word for doing things to help folks find your book; and, some “experts” will hit you over the head with the idea—I can only suppose they want to scare you so you’ll believe it’s the Only thing you need to do…
A core idea from the article:
“…don’t use discoverability as an excuse to avoid human interaction or to be passive in your marketing. Seek out the right people, don’t just wait.”
The next article could cause quite a bit of resistance from some writers…
It’s called, The Myth Of Reviews, and details some compelling ideas about reviews Not being a magic pill for sales.
Here are two excerpts:
“Here’s the thing: If you want more reviews, sell more books. Only people who read the book will review it. If you’re seeing more reviews, it means more people are buying your book.”
“My opinion is that reviews only matter in the edge cases – those situations where the potential reader is either on the fence or is looking for confirmation for the decision they’ve already made. If you haven’t hooked them with both the cover and blurb, the reviews aren’t likely to convince somebody to overlook that pair of sins and take a sample.”
The next recommended article is from a site called, Publishing … and Other Forms of Insanity.
No excerpts for, Mega-List of Free Promotional Sites for Self-Published Books, since that title says it all…
And, if you want to give yourself some Bonus Credit, check out this post about what Jane Friedman has to say about Publishing (plus a few other important things…)…
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Did you know the image up there is an “ancient” printing press?
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