It’s no secret that I am really interested in self publication, and since I’m a writer, it’s no stretch to imagine it’s because I want to write and self publish a book someday. And that is the case. In fact, I’ve written a book. It’s not a cool, sexy book about my life or vampires or anything really interesting like that. Instead it’s a book for people who run businesses, but hate to market, and just sort of fumble along, doing a little here and a little there to market their businesses. (People who are very much like me.)

The book is set up so that you get a tip each week, that should only take an hour or two to put into place. The idea is that if you just spend one to three hours a week marketing, you will eventually develop a solid plan that generates good results for your business. It doesn’t have to be painful, and it doesn’t have to exhaust you.

There are lots of tips that involve testing things, because not every marketing strategy will work for every business, or every personality, or every audience. You might be delighted to find that in-person networking is not a good strategy for you, or if you hate writing, you might be happy to see that blogging generates little in the way of results for what you do. The tips guide you through figuring out what works and what doesn’t.

It’s funny that I’ve written a book detailing exactly how to do something I am not very good at doing for myself. It was almost like writing a marketing plan for Smiling Tree Writing, or like writing down everything I have learned in steps that wouldn’t be hard for someone even as lazy as me to take.

Now that the time to publish and market the book is getting so very close, I should probably start implementing the tips to sell the book. Isn’t that an odd notion? I will use the tips that are for sale in order to sell those tips. It’s like some kind of weird brain teaser.

Of course, the fact that I’ve written a book is exciting for me, but why should YOU care? Well, I came up with a few extra tips, and I’m going to be sharing them with folks who are interested in free marketing advice. If you’d like to get the freebies, just sign up for my newsletter. I promise not to spam you, or sell your email address, or send you an email a day. I’m lazy, remember? Hopefully you will smile a little and possibly learn a little, and if you find that is not the case, you can unsubscribe at any time.

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It’s been a couple of weeks since the last installment in the Independent Writing category, but now you get the pleasure of meeting Evelyn, aka the Keyboard Hussy. Evelyn was gracious enough to answer a few questions about

her work, and her choice to self-publish. You should check out her site, find her on Goodreads, and although she only pops in once in awhile, she is entertaining to follow on Twitter.

Evelyn’s first book, The Vampire Relationship Guide: Meeting and Mating, has 37 reviews on Amazon, and the one word that seems to be in most of them is “fun.” Who doesn’t enjoy a fun book? Here’s an excerpt from the description:

Josie is your average girl who just wants one simple thing to make her feel complete–sex with a vampire. When she receives an invitation to a party thrown by one of the world’s richest vamps, she doesn’t stop to question her luck; she jumps into her favorite stilettos and heads out to the event of a lifetime, secretly hoping that she’ll come home with a sexy party favor.

And with that, here are Evelyn’s thoughtful answers to my not-so-original questions:

 

Do you now have 10 books available for purchase? That’s a big number!

I have 12 books available, 7 of them are short, 30-page installments from the Pack Mistress serial.

 

Was self-publication more of a business decision or a creative freedom decision – or something else completely – for you?

It was a little bit of both. I’ve been a business owner since 2008 and self-employed since 2009 and I’m pretty strong-willed about the way that I run both my business and creative endeavors. Self-publishing not only allows me more control over my books and stories but, for me, makes more sense from a business standpoint.

 

Do you work with other independent professionals for things like editing or cover design? 

I work with my husband on book covers but I do hire an editor/proofreader.

 

Would you talk a little about book promotion, and particularly about your (fabulous) book trailers?

I don’t really do much in terms of book promotion. I tried many things in the beginning and made many mistakes. I’ve now happily settled into a laid-back method of promotion that works well for me. As for my book trailers, I enjoy the creative process of developing them. I think that book trailers can be immensely helpful in marketing and promoting a book but I don’t really use them that way. I just enjoy creating them and almost see them as complementary products of entertainment rather than promotional tools.

 

Do you have plans beyond your Pack Mistress Series? 

Pack Mistress is a serialized novel that’s heading toward its final installment. At that point, I’ll bundle all of the installments for those who want to buy it as a novel. I also have the Vampire Relationship Guide series which

has one book left and the Dating during the Zombie Apocalypse series which has a few more books coming. My next new series release will probably be the first in an episodic serial called The Recruiter which mixes the erotic romance, urban fantasy, and zombie/dystopian genres into some kind of unclassifiable, but fun, mishmash. The first 60-page installment of The Recruiter should be toward the end of October.

 

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I read a lot, and always have. Mostly I read lightweight stuff. Not just fiction, but entertaining fiction. Science fiction, fantasy, detective stories, thrillers, mysteries, even a little romance now and then. I also like more literary fiction, but since most of my books come off the free Kindle list, they are generally the kind of stuff you think of reading on vacation.

The way that publishing is changing fascinates me. The more I learn, the more interested I become. We are witnessing a monumental change in the way an entire industry operates. Revolutionary is a word that gets tossed around too much, but really, it applies to what is happening to the publishing industry. We are watching revolutionary changes.

When I can’t find a freebie to read, I look at the books priced under $5. Since I’m so cheap, I end up reading a ton of independently published work because authors almost always sell their books at a lower price than publishers do. (Lots of people share my purchasing habits when it comes to books, and it’s causing huge debate. Check out the comments on this article about it in TechDirt.) Over the last year, the quality of the books I read has changed pretty drastically. It could be that I’m better at choosing now, but it could also be that writers are stepping up the quality, or that readers are pushing higher quality books up on to the lists I see.

Independent authors occupy an really interesting space when it comes to business. One of the reasons that many writers still choose to work with publishing companies is that they can focus more on writing and less on business. Publishers get books edited, proofread, and offer some help when it comes to marketing. Independent authors must hire editors, find beta readers, hire artists to create their covers, and find ways to get their books in the eyes of the public. It’s a huge job, and all of that is part of what fascinates me about the way books are being created and distributed.

I’m active on Goodreads, and review just about every new book I read there. Most of my reviews are for myself, so that if someone asks if I’ve read a certain book or heard of an particular author, I can look at my book list and see, and also see what I thought. Since I read so many indie books, though, an interesting thing has happened: some authors get in touch when I write a review. The first time this happened, I was really startled, and maybe even a little embarrassed, which was odd. It may have been because the review wasn’t especially good. The author actually agreed with my review, and said something like, “Everything you said about my book is 100% correct.” I felt kind of bad.

Others have sent me emails just thanking me for taking the time to write a review, and some just “like” my review, I guess to show me they’ve seen it. Regardless of how or why they contact me, it’s something that never, ever happened with books before this disruption to the publishing industry began. Now, the act of writing and the act of reading can serve as a way to open the lines of communication. That is really amazing.

The blog portion of Smiling Tree Writing addresses the ups and downs of running a small business, marketing as it applies to small businesses, and various writing-related topics. Who better to address all of those areas than independent authors? I am adding a new category called Independent Writing. It will feature guest posts and interviews by independent authors, and possibly other experts in the field of self-publishing.

Are there writers you would like to hear from? Or questions you would like to ask an author who has chosen to self publish?

 

 

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This morning, as my oatmeal cooked, I decided what the topic of this post would be. Then I ate my oatmeal, checked my RSS feed, left comments on 5 or 10 blogs, considered setting up a new folder for local blogs I’ve started following, fed my birds, had a cup of coffee, stared at the screen a minute, recorded the oatmeal in my daily nutrition tracker…

I’ve written about procrastination before. Clearly, it is something that I deal with regularly. Sometimes, it’s okay – even helpful – to put things off. Other times, we do it out of fear, or laziness, or simply because we dread doing whatever the task is.  In the case of writing this post, I was probably putting it off because the idea wasn’t a very good one, or at least it wasn’t a full idea. It was something that should go into the idea file.

Procrastination, though, is a topic I could write about for days on end due to my long experience with it. Right now, for instance, I am not only putting off writing this post, but something else as well:

Several years ago, I had a job as a telemarketer. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds – we were only calling licensed insurance agents, and we weren’t actually selling anything. We told them about products or job offers, and set up times for someone else to call and give them more details. But I made hundreds of calls a day – 300 calls a day wasn’t unusual. And mostly, people didn’t answer. Very few people returned calls when we left messages, so we rarely left them. It was mostly dialing and listening to ringing. Somedays it was a struggle to stay awake.

For a few months, I shared an office with just one other person. She tended toward depression, so sometimes I would tell her stories to distract her from sad thoughts, while we listened to the phones ring. Eventually I was moved into a room with 8 or 10 other people in it, and without the entertainment of telling stories, I had to work to stay awake again. So I started writing a story. I wrote on scraps of paper that I kept under my keyboard, in tiny handwriting. I decided I kind of liked the story, and dug all those scraps out of my bag took them home, and typed them up.

Then I got fired from the telemarketer job. (It was a crazy place. LOTS of people got fired from there.) And I stopped working on the story.

I kept thinking that I “should” work on it some more. It liked it more than any other fiction I’d ever written. I let a couple of kids read it (it is a kids’ story) and they liked it. One of them even occasionally asks me if I’ve written anymore of it yet. But it just sat there, in a file on my desktop. After a year or two, it seemed to be taunting me, so I moved it off of the desktop, where I couldn’t  see it anymore. But it still crossed my mind regularly.

A few months ago, I decided to read it and see if I still liked it. I did. It’s fairly unusual for me to read something I wrote a few years earlier and still like it. So, I put the dang thing back where I see it. I even printed it out and put it in my backpack so that I can work on it when I find myself in a waiting room or at lunch alone.

Almost immediately, within a week of re-reading it, I had about 12 new ideas for other stories I wanted to write.

(My organizer friend is going to tell me I should have written them down, filed them away and come back to them when I finished the kids’ story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what I should do.)

I did write them all down, and file them all away. Then I started writing one of them. Now, I have two unfinished projects that I really love chattering in my head, bugging me to work on them. “Write us!” they say every night while I’m trying to raise my high score on Bejeweled Blitz. So far, I have successfully ignored them.

In this case, I don’t think I can say that either of these stories just needs time to “ferment” in my head. One of them has been doing that for about five years now, and the other o

ne just pours out when I work  on it. The words don’t get to the page fast enough to suit my brain. So, yeah, the need to let my unconsciousness work its creative magic cannot be my excuse.

Because I firmly believe that we all have plenty of time to do the things we want to do, I cannot say that I’m too busy to work on these projects. Because I (and you!) can find time to work on the things we love. Bejeweled Blitz, anyone? My high score is over 300,000 in one minute…

That leaves fear. What will I do with these things once I feel they are “finished”? What if they are not particularly good? What if I take all the risks to my ego and send them to agents, or publishers, orwhoever (I really don’t even know who I would send them to) and get – gasp! – rejected? Would that make me feel sad? I don’t like to feel sad. Maybe I should just go ahead and delete those stories and forget about writing them. It’s too scary.

All of those questions, all of that fear is bullshit. It’s ridiculous and silly and unworthy. If a friend told me they felt that way, I’d tell them to quit being stupid and write the stories, stop borrowing tomorrow’s troubles, and figure out what to do with them when they are finished. Start spending an afternoon a week working on them. Or a half hour a day. Whatever, just write, and stop worrying.

Why is it so hard to take your own advice?

Do you have a project you love so much you are afraid to work on it? Do you just buckle down and get it done, or do you give yourself mind-candy to numb your brain and silence your creativity?

 

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Lately, my family has been doing quite a bit of traveling by car.We have pretty much covered the southeast from Florida to Kentucky. Since I hate to drive and my husband loves it, all this travel has given me lots of time to read. My kids got me an iPad for Christmas (yes, they are fabulous, wonderful children) and I’ve been doing almost all of my reading on it. 

 

I devour books, at a rate of about 2 a week. If I were downloading the NY Times Bestseller List, I would be spending a ridiculous amount of money. As my budget does not have an unlimited amount set aside for books, I try to stick with the less expensive, or most often, free books that are available through iBooks or Amazon’s Kindle Store. Reading all these freebies has some pros, and of course, some cons.

 

The Pros

Did I mention that there are FREE books available? Lots of them. The writers give them away for all kinds of different reasons. Elizabeth Mock, one of my earliest “finds” is writing a trilogy, so at some point made the first book free. I downloaded it, loved it and will certainly be purchasing the second volume when it is finished. So, marketing is one big reason.

 

I also recently read a couple of books by A. Sparrow, who says that his/her (the writer does not indicate gender) books are free so that they can be shared. From A. Sparrow’s Goodreads profile: “I write because I must. I have no commercial ambitions.” So, simply sharing stories is another reason writers choose to give away their work. Pedagogy, bringing attention to older works and all sorts of other reasons give writers motivation to share their work freely.

 

Writing reviews helps aspiring and struggling writers. If, as in the cases of DW St. John, Carlos Aleman, Justin Kemppainen, I really enjoy a story and can write a raving review, then I am helping these writers let the world know about their work. I may not have a huge reach, but I’m active on Goodreads and I have lots of friends who like to read so maybe a couple of people will read their work because of my good reviews. That’s a nice feeling.

 

One thing that writers struggle with is marketing. Many of them have other jobs besides writing and limited time to spend promoting their work. Also, marketing can be expensive, so a good review is both a nice ego booster and an inexpensive, powerful marketing tool. It’s the least I can do – if the story is any good.

 

When books are free I read all sorts of things I might not otherwise read. I like stories. All kinds of stories. Gory horror is not appealing, and moralistic tales annoy me, but otherwise it would be tough to name a genre I don’t like. From mysteries to science fiction to kid lit, I like just about any kind of fiction if it’s well written.

 

Even with an openness to reading all kinds of stuff, I’m finding things that I wouldn’t otherwise find. It’s fun to choose something because it’s vaguely interesting then realize you love it. It’s even more fun to have so much variety in your library that you can read a mafia story one day, a romance the next and an urban fantasy after that.

 

Reading a free ebook feels almost like a writers’ workshop. Or, at least it does in my head. When I’m reading a free book, my expectations are almost automatically lowered. I know that the writer probably didn’t hire a professional editor or proofreader if they are giving their work away, so I expect mistakes, typos and even ragged plot lines. I notice those things and make all sorts of suggestions and notes in my mind as I am reading. Because I have always like writers’ workshops and peer reviews reading work that feels a little unfinished is appealing to me.

 

The Cons

 

Reading a free ebook feels almost like a writers’ workshop. Yeah, I know it was just a pro, but it’s a con, too. Sometimes I just want to read for fun and if my brain is busy noticing problems or mistakes I can’t relax and really enjoy the story. If the story is really bad, I find myself tense and angry after reading for a little while – quite the opposite of what I’m going for when I open a book.

 

It is especially aggravating to read a book that is almost really good. It drives me crazy if I think someone just sent their first draft to Smashwords and I’m left to try and figure out what they are attempting to do with a story. Please, just give it to a few friends (and maybe even a respected enemy or two) before you send it out into the world as a finished product. Being just the teensiest bit compulsive, it’s almost impossible for me to NOT finish a book once I’ve started it. My family gets very annoyed when I complain incessantly about how bad a story is but continue reading it anyway.

 

“Good” becomes relative. If you read a whole lot of bad writing, then come across something that is slightly better than average, it might seem like it is GREAT. Just like if you haven’t eaten all day and suddenly realize you are ravenously hungry at 8 pm, a Saltine cracker might taste like the finest gourmet food available.

 

If I say a book is worthy of reading, I’d like to think that it’s not because the book I read just before should not have ever existed. Hopefully, if I say a book is worth reading, it’s because the story is intriguing, original or informative. It bugs me to think that my opinions are being formed by reading the stuff that, during another time, might have been on the bottom of the sludge pile.

 

My expectations are automatically lower. If a book is free, I figure there’s something wrong with it. This figuring happens at a subconscious level, but it’s there. I don’t expect the book to be edited or proofread. Is that what authors really want? For readers to think that the work is sub par before ever even reading a word?

 

Maybe the idea that nothing is ever really free comes into play. The price one pays for a free book is the aggravation of reading something that is not quite ready. For writers who give away carefully polished, edited and proofread books, the idea that there is a hidden “cost” might be unfair. So far, though, those have been few and far between.

 

Do you read free books? Does it bother you when they contain typos and errors? Would you rather pay a few dollars and expect an edited story or read what amounts to a rough draft for free? 

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