To Authors: Five Hundred Blogs Later

My post today is dedicated to other authors out in Etherland who are struggling to accomplish marketing tasks that seem insurmountable.
You have to organize your tasks. I smile as I write this, because I have said this tens of thousands of times to my composition students, many of whom would have preferred to dash something off and turn it in, expecting that I would see the genius of the idea and award it an A. Those who flailed around with the job, rather than plan, wrote poorly with no plan of attack. Now I took my own advice. During my marathon review of book blogs, I worked from notes I'd made about my book, and I looked at them often as I accessed and reviewed the blogs. Sometimes the blogs called my attention to some aspect of the book I hadn't seen myself.
Because many of the review bloggers are so specific in the kinds of books they're interested in,  the notes centered on the question, What kind of a book have I written? The answers came from my having written two novels and having listened carefully  to what folks have said in conversations about both novels. I was able to analyze the new novel from a broader perspective, realizing that many of the characteristics of differing types of books can overlap in a novel, thus giving the author more blogs to match up with and contact. Here is an example of how the process worked, in considering the genre of the book.

• Usually I classify my novel as a mystery. Is it more than that? In the literary world, the definitions of "mystery" and "suspense" sometimes overlap. I could put my novel forward as a mystery with excruciating elements of suspense. That opens two categories in bloggers' pages.
• Could I find bloggers who like to read "serious" mysteries? This is a sub-category into which my book fits neatly. There is no silly woman tripping around on high heels while her cat solves the mystery and she worries about her hair and makeup and the new man. Connie Holt is involved in saving a horse's life, serious stuff all right, and there is a strong presumption that maybe people will be injured or killed as well.
• What other designation could the book have? It is for adults, but young adults of late teen-age can read and understand it. In fact, there is a heroic young girl in the book who is present at and participating in the climax. I could offer my book as YA. Now we have a serious mystery with excruciating suspense for adults and young adults. What else?
• Could it be considered as a romance? Yes. There are several romances in the plot. An acute reader, as a matter of fact, can compare and contrast those relationships. So yes, to romance. But serious, not silly romance.
• Another question is does the novel "say" anything? That is, does it pose questions which are universal in scope, and appeal to all human beings everywhere? Well, yes. To all those who hate what is done to horses in racing all over the world. For people who want a novel to make a point, here is their meat. Many critics think that mysteries shouldn't have a meaning behind it, a theme. It isn't appropriate; only mainstream literature  says something important. But that is a sour, narrow viewpoint from poor thinkers. So yes, my novel can be placed foursquare into stories that say something important. Another viewpoint to look for in the blogs.
• Finally, can the reader learn anything from reading He Trots the Air? That is, apart from my preceding point? Yes. The reader can find out about how a painting is proved authentic; what some types of Virginia architecture look like; how a horse is trained. Together with details of Virginia life and manners. This will appeal to many bloggers who like to learn as they read.

You will have to explain to the bloggers why your book has many of the characteristics of literature they like. Perhaps it is about a crime, but there is so much more there. Even though this is a tough marketing project, you can do it by being organized, coming up with a way to work through the many book blogs on the Internet. Good luck!

What I Found Out about Book Blogs

Like Heracles, I had to perform a task that seemed almost impossible to fulfill: access and read about 500 book blogs. By the time I finished this marketing job, I was pretty punch-drunk. It took untold hours, and if at the end I had been able to bury my computer in the ground, like Heracles with the Hydra's head, I would have done it.
What did I discover?

• I was impressed by the genuine love of reading expressed in the blogs. Whether they are carefully prepared or more informal, the writers want to tell the world about reading.
• The bloggers are often students in high school or at a higher educational level. Older bloggers can be librarians, housewives who have children and are starved for reading, and professional people who work for tech companies or teach or do other demanding work.
• Bloggers are busy people and it's not unusual to find them saying, "I want to apologize for not having blogged for the last four months but I had too much going on in my life."
• The bloggers are very definite about what kinds of books they will read for review purposes, whether it is YA (young adult), middle grades (fifth grade and up), fantasy, historical fiction, romance, science fiction, memoir, mystery, suspense, erotica, non-fiction, horror, women's lit, or any other type. Many have also broken down these types so we understand more clearly: it is to be a "serious" romance rather than a "silly" one, it has to be science fiction dealing with psychology rather than technology, and so on. Some bloggers won't read self-published works; others are more broad-minded. 
• The tone of reviewing blogs can be cheerful,  positive, and willing to read an author's book: "I usually get the book reviewed in a couple of months." At the other end of the spectrum, those who review can be cranky and threatening. "Better get this straight, I will not read anything that isn't in the list I've given you of types, and don't expect to get the book back and don't expect me to tell you if I'm going to review it or  not." 
• The graphic design of the blogs swings from wild and crazy and lots of clashing colors and everything super-size, including the fonts, to tasteful, with flowers and images of nineteenth century ladies reading and neatly placed text in a neat font. For some reason, there are many images of cats in these blogs, often the blogger's own animal. (Cats, for that matter, are often associated with bookstores. You used to see them sitting in many a sunny window before so many independent bookstores closed.) At any rate, I got very tired of seeing backgrounds filled with huge shelves of books; I suspect there's a Google picture somewhere of that same image because people seemed to like it.  
• The bad news for authors is that many of the blogs are not offering reviews. They want to tell what they're reading right now,  how many books they read last year, or how they're reacting to a local weather phenomenon, or what movies they saw or their opinion of a book that came from the syllabus of their freshman English classes.

          

Heracles, the Hydra, and Me

One of the most terrifying stories about Heracles was his battle against the Hydra, a thing of horror with the body of a serpent and many heads. (The number of the heads varies, according to which myth you read.) As soon as a head was cut off, the beast grew another two. Heracles and his friend thought that if they cauterized each stump, no new heads could erupt. But one head proved to be immortal, so the strong man cut it off and buried it.Today I feel like Heracles, except that the heads on my Hydra, the tasks of marketing my book, never die. Most folks, I expect, don't know much about this part of the author's life.  Many have been surprised when I tell them that I have to perform jobs that seem to them unnecessary. "But the publisher does all that," they exclaim. Like Heracles, I fought an epic battle recently. The Hydra head task was reading about 500 blogs and then finding among those,  a few bloggers who might want to read my book and review it. Like Heracles, I learned a lot from the quest. Tomorrow I'll tell you more.

HarperCollins vs. Open Road

In The January 11, 2012 issue of The Wall Street Journal, Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg tells us about HarperCollins and its upcoming battle with the e-publishing company, Open Road Integrated Media. At stake is a crucial question for all publishers: "...whether book contracts written before the digital age granted publishers digital rights, or whether those rights were retained by the author and could be sold to an e-publisher." He says that as long ago as the mid-nineties, publishers were taking pains to add specific clauses that guarded their right to publish an author's books as e-books. But what if they didn't, and took it for granted that the contract automatically covered e-books? Authors who find themselves in this predicament are fighting for their right to some of the lucrative profits from the Great E-Book Revolution by trying to buy back the rights from their old publishers so that they can either self-publish online or sell their newly-acquired rights to an e-book publisher like Open Road. To read more background and details, go to http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203436904577153142705735660.html.

Clarence Day: Truthteller

The publishing world has been in an uproar for the last few years over the supposed triumph of e-books over the printed books with which we are all familiar. Amongst the clamor of people who claim e-books are the future, and the competing chorus of voices that argue passionately that they love the feel of books and won't change to the new device, we should all remember what Clarence Day said about books. He was speaking the truth when he wrote that "The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall, nations perish, civilizations grow old and die out; and, after an era of darkness, new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again, and yet live on, still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men's hearts of the hearts of men centuries dead." The important point, I think, is that men and women recognize and cherish the truth, in whatever form it makes its appearance. 

Has Anyone Read Clarence Day?

Searching through my bookshelves for something cheerful to read, I found an old book I picked up someplace in my travels entitled The Best of Clarence Day. I don't suppose many students or their parents read Day's work today, seeing that he lived from 1874 to 1935. All his life he struggled with rheumatoid arthritis; that constant pain is reflected in his picture above. Despite R.A., he wrote beautiful, sweet, humorous essays, his best about growing up with his family in New York City. (Movie buffs may have seen the film made from his work, "Life with Father.") Every day, I read only one essay, to make them last longer. This morning it was "Father on Horseback," in which Day's intractable father meets a horse named Rob Roy who is equally as stubborn. I'll let you guess who wins. Although the essays make me laugh out loud, I'm also appreciating his word pictures of old New York. This morning, his description of what the eighteen-hundreds Elevated looked like held me at the breakfast table: "Soon a stubby little steam engine, with its open coal car piled full of anthracite, and its three or four passenger cars swinging along behind, appeared round the curve. White smoke poured from the smokestack. The engineer leaned out from his window." While Day's essays put me into a good mood for writing, they also make me a better writer, a fact which all authors know about reading other's works.