If you’re a writer who’s self
published and can’t get more than a small group of people to read your novels,
it’s probably driving you crazy, right?
You’re doing all the social media
things. You’re on Facebook and Twitter and Linked-in. You’ve gone the KDP route
with at least one of your books with Amazon Kindle. (Results: 2000 downloads,
no sales, 8 reviews, and 2 of them are from people whose reviews say something
like: I started to read it and it seemed
pretty good but then I kinda got side tracked and didn’t read any more of it
but what I did read, I liked!
You know it’s a damn good book
(at least you and your friends and relatives think so) and if people just gave
it a chance they’d probably like it very much.
But they won’t give it a chance!
So, what do you do?
Well, this is the time to stop
writing and start focusing on why your amazing novel is floundering. “But, I’m
a writer, not an editor or a salesman,” you say. “My job is to write, an
editor’s job is to edit and a salesman’s job is to sell.”
If you agree with the above
sentence; THAT is one of the reasons why your book isn’t selling.
Welcome to the 21st
century, my friend. If you chose to become a writer because you liked the idea
of living in some artist community, like NYC’s Greenwich Village, San
Francisco’s Haight Ashbury or Taos, New Mexico, whilst waxing philosophical,
cavorting with other free spirits and pondering what your literary masterpiece
will be about as you squander your book advance…
Spoiler Alert!
Those days are long gone. The
writing life that Hemingway, Virginia Wolff, F. Scott Fitzgerald and other
literary notables of that era enjoyed has sailed off to Moonlight Bay.
What replaced it has been lured
into the shallows and is being eaten by cannibals.
True, the printed book is holding
its own against the e-book. But the product is changing. If you write fiction,
your shelf space in book stores is dwindling. Non-Fiction is the new King and its
heir is the celebrity novelist.
Have a great children’s book? A
guaranteed best seller?
And it may be just that. It’s so
good it lands you an agent, who gets you a meeting with a publisher. Looks like
everything is finally going your way… But then…
Uh-oh!
Both Madonna and Jamie Lee Curtis
have submitted manuscripts and the publishers are falling over each other to
sign them for huge advances.
But you’ve read their children’s
books and yours are SO MUCH BETTER!
You’d think that would make a
difference, wouldn’t you?
Alas! It does not! Besides, what
makes you think you’re qualified to write a children’s book? Have you pranced
around naked in movies, magazines and books like they have?
No? Well then, get to the back of
the line.
But there could be other reasons.
One of them is that the book is terrible and you don’t know it. Sure your
friends and family will tell you it’s great but they love you and don’t want to
hurt you…
Book critics don’t and they do
want to hurt you for wasting their time. Seriously, just because you can write
doesn’t mean you’re a writer. It literally takes years of writing utter crap
before you develop a unique voice and the skills necessary to be taken
seriously as an author. So join a writers group and submit your work for
critique. If it’s returned with massive grammatical corrections, pointed out
plot holes, timeline inaccuracies and location errors, that only means you’re
still at the bottom of the learning curve and have a way to go to perfect your
craft.
So…
If you want to save yourself a
lot of time and rejection letters? Go to http://www.aripublishing.com/how_to_get_your_book_published
and watch
the free tutorials. If the
free ones teach you a lot of things you didn’t know, then buy the set.
You
going to need to know that stuff eventually so don’t put it off, just buy it
now while it’s still affordable.
Next, it could be the product
itself. If you’ve gone the vanity press route, odds are your book looks just
like the other thousands of cookie cutter template book covers.
Go to an Indie
Book Fair and you’ll see hundreds of books that all look the same. And that, my
friend, screams amateur!
And if it’s an e-book uploaded to
Kindle, was it formatted properly? If not, you may not be aware that from 23%
to 34% there is only one sentence per page.
And that’s only the tip of the
iceberg!
To learn more go to:
Part 2 of ‘Why Your Books Aren’t
Selling’ which continues this post, can be viewed on my marketing blog. Here’s
the link: http://www.empowernetwork.com/writingguy/
