Talent and genius are not all that is required to succeed in writing.  Sure, they’ll take you places a lot of the time.  But there’s a problem that doesn’t have anything to do with how good you are.

There are a lot of other talented people out there doing work just as good, if not better.  And they’re all vying for the attention of the same people you are.  Sure, you can segment the market a bit, and narrow your niche, but ultimately, we’re all looking for readers, and there are only so many (and apparently growing fewer by the year).  Forget the national deficit, we’re running one hell of an attention deficit these days.   Luckily, there’s no shortage of appetite for good stories.  Human being are voracious consumers of the stuff.  But each person is presented with a veritable buffet of choices, and until they try a dish, they have no idea if it will be any good.  It’s  such a big buffet that they might not even know your dish is down there, next to the green bean casserole and the candied yams.  They may fill up on bread.

Okay, I’ve stretched that metaphor as far as it will go.

Writers don’t want to be salespeople.  If we wanted to be salespeople, we wouldn’t be writing. There are no shortage of jobs for salespeople.  Maybe you’ll win the publisher jackpot and get a great marketing deal with your three book contract.  Or maybe your publisher’s internal process will hiccup and the book sellers won’t really know what your book is about, and will have a hard time pushing it to the chains and you’re dead on arrival.   Or, maybe you’ll publish in high quality, but somewhat obscure markets that not nearly as many people read as you might wish.

A lot of the time, the work falls to the writer to market themselves and their work.  You’ll have help along the way, from the editors and publishers who buy your work, but not always.  Then you need to step in, and market yourself.

It’s a bad word though, isn’t it?  I feel slimy just for even saying it.  I’ve had to come to terms with the notion that what I do isn’t really information technology any more so much as it is a form of marketing.  I have the negative stigma attached the idea as well.   But I’ve come to know some excellent and effortless self-marketers in the writing world, and it’s convinced me of the overall value.   They had the talent first, but even talent can use some help.

I’ve talked at length about how to use your website/blog to market yourself.  I’d like to discuss some alternative methods, or at least tangential ones.  So without further wind-up, here are a few more off-the-wall marketing ideas for writers and aspiring writers.  Use at your own risk.

1. Get Em Young

   Volunteer as a speaker for your local school system.  This will probably go over best when you’ve got some credits to your name that you can show to teachers and administration.  Offer your services, explain that you would love to talk to kids about writing.  Bring along age-appropriate free samples (ARCs, magazine issues, and so on), and give it away to the kids.    Hey, if you’re a genre writer, you’re not only doing yourself a bit of a favor, and helping kids, you’re also increasing the exposure of the genre as a whole.   So it’s good marketing and it’s just good karma too.

2. Twitter Away

   You already know about Twitter, right?  I’ve blathered on about it enough.  Here’s the thing… Twitter is infected with self-marketeers, marketing gurus, and all manner of social snake-oil salesfolk.  The Twitterati can smell a marketer from a million miles away.  I can tell from a glance at someone’s stream whether or not they’ve basically created a Twitter account to blare about their work, or product, or whatever.  They’re not subtle.  You need to be subtle, and you do this by not being an asshole. Twitter’s for socializing.  This means you talk to other people, you listen, you participate.  You don’t use it as a broadcast medium.   It’s cool if you plug things now and then, really.  But retweet stuff too.  Answer replies.  Tell people how cool they are.  Be a genuine human being. And stay the hell away from anyone telling you that they have the sure-fire method of gaining you 16,000 followers in 24 hours.  That stuff has to be bogus.

3. Become an Expert (or share your existing expertise)

   This goes back to something I wrote about yesterday, which is that I believe writers should have passions outside of writing itself.  Few of us make a living at this, and I hope some of us have day jobs that we kind of like.  So, make yourself an expert on your passion, and share it with others through online media.  An audience member is an audience member, and no, I don’t have any hard figures to support the notion that a blog reader turns into a book buyer, but a blog reader is one less person who has never heard of you.

   Call it becoming an expert, or establishing authority.  Either way,  you do so by offering something of usefulness to other people.  Like I have been so desperately attempting to do with this blog for the past several weeks.  You can do this by a blog, but you can also do this via find-an-expert sites.  Join a community around the subject and be helpful to others.  Project good energy out and it comes back to you, I have found.

4. Manufacture a Controversy

   Tension sells in fiction and it sells in real life too.   And I’ll be damned if this doesn’t actually work sometimes.  Now, whether or not you do this depends on whether or not you think any publicity is good publicity.  Manufacturing a controversy, even if your outrage is true and heartfelt, can backfire.  Controversies inherently bring emotions to the table, and discussions can turn into flame wars in a second when emotions are at the table.    I’ll be honest.  I wrote some of the things I wrote in yesterday’s post because I knew some people would take exception to them, to the degree that they would be compelled to write a reaction.  That’s not to say I lied, because I believed what I wrote at the time.  But I knew that the “hook” of what I was writing was that some people would disagree with me.

   In the end, I feel bad about it though, and I won’t be using it as a blogging technique again unless I’ve put a lot of thought into my position.  Nick took me down yesterday in about fifteen minutes, and gave me trouble, rightfully so, for not researching before I wrote.    So if you want to manufacture a controversy, keep that in mind.  Do your research and make sure you feel strongly about your subject.

5. Forget Everything I Just Said

   Sometimes, the best marketing a writer can hope for is to be a nice, helpful, genuinely interesting person.  Someone who gives as much as they receive, and who loves meeting and talking things over with new people.  Those people do well because they earn it.

   I’m trying to be that kind of person, but I’m also twittering, sharing my expertise (what little there is), and sometimes, not necessarily by accident, manufacturing a controversy or two.  To the point where I don’t get nearly enough writing done outside of the blog.

   I honestly write these posts out of a desire to be helpful, and to feel like I am engaging in the community around me.  If I’m trying to market anything, it’s my services as a freelancer.  I don’t have a book and my short stories are rare lately.  Maybe the best policy for a writer regarding marketing is honesty and authenticity.

In this day an age, a domain costs almost nothing, and hosting, not much more. I charge $15 a year for a domain and $20 a year for hosting for my clients, and there might be cheaper (but less feature-rich) hosting available out there. Sff.net might have been cool a decade ago, but it’s not now. It just looks unprofessional. Buy a domain, and if you can, make it your full publishing name. If you can’t, don’t get too clever, by which I mean don’t pick something you’re going to hate 10 years from now. Domain names can be changed, but you should really try to avoid it, to preserve your ratings in the search engines.

2. A biography and bibliography with lots and lots of links.

If someone is coming to your website, it is likely that they want to know who you are, and what else you’ve done. Don’t be stingy here. Don’t publicize anything you’re embarrassed of, such as that mpreg slash fic that you wrote late one night while drunk, but definitely include your bibliography, and if your story is available online, for free in a webzine or for sale in some form, link to it. If you don’t, you’re missing a chance for a sale to a potential fan.

3. A News Blog with an RSS feed. Or a newsletter. Or both.

Note that I said a News Blog. Writer blogs are great entertainment, but they are notoriously cluttered with nonsense quizzes, word counts, whining, and so much other crap that finding out when an author you like has a story coming out can be harder than it should. Maintain a clean weblog that is simply for announcing your sales, appearances, and other professional items of interest. Don’t use it to post pictures of your cats. I’m an RSS feed man myself, and I think they are the future, but perhaps you should do an email mailing list as well. Post the same content to both, but make sure it’s clear that they are the same information, so your fans don’t sign up for both and get irritated for receiving duplicate information.

4. A professional design

This isn’t cheap, but if you are a professional author, you owe it to yourself to hire a designer who can build you something nice and maintainable. Tony Geer does great work. Tobias Buckell’s website is a model example of this list. We work fairly affordably ourselves. But seriously, your nephew who has a copy of Front Page 2000 isn’t going to be good enough. Spend a little money on it, and you’re going to have better results. People buy books based on covers, and they’re going to judge you by how professional and fresh your design is as well.

5. Full stories and/or novels. Possibly excerpts.

Free samples have been used in marketing since the invention of capitalism. Writers and other intellectual property creators are often terrified of this, and admittedly, there’s a risk that all your stuff will be stolen and you will be left penniless. If you’re lucky! Someone who comes to your website may not have read anything you have written. Post a story from a year or two. If you’re brave, put it in the Creative Commons as soon as you can. That might limit resale rights, but chalk it up as a marketing expense. I’m not going to go into the Creative Commons too much here, as Cory Doctorow does it better than anyone else. Let me just say that I agree with him, but I understand those who don’t, and I don’t think this will make or break you. But try it out, and see what happens. It worked for Peter Watts!

6. A way to buy your work.

Post links to Amazon, Fictionwise, whatever. Make them prominent. If you have work in print for sale, it should be easy for me to buy it. Somebody really has to make this as easy as iTunes. But that’s a topic for another issue. Link, link, and link again.

7. A way to contact you.

Boo, spam! Nobody likes spam, but if you don’t have a way for fans or potential publishers to contact you, you’re missing out on fan mail, hate mail, and possible sales. There are javascript tricks you can use, or you can set up a specific email address that you check on a regular basis. You really should have this email address be at your domain above, too. Even if it forwards to your gmail account. It’s a matter of perception. If you own a domain, and you should, use it for your email.

8. A Press Kit

I was running out of ideas, so I stole this one from Tobias Buckell’s page. Short story authors probably don’t need press kits, but novelists might. Photos, book covers, and anything else that makes a reporter’s job easier when he wants to report on your work is a very good thing.

9. A Goodies Section

I have serious doubts about people loving books so much that they want desktop wallpaper, icons, and such, but hey, if it doesn’t cost you anything to make them or have them made by a designer, why not? Little rewards like this don’t cost much, but they might be just the edge you need to start a buzz about your latest work.Think outside the box here. I’m hesitant to give this idea away, but if your readership is young and nerdy, consider publishing D&D gaming stats for your characters and creations. Make it easy and allowable for your fans to play in your world. They’re not going to make any money off of it, so don’t worry. It stopped being yours when you published it.

10. Something nobody else has tried.

See the idea about about D&D stats. Do something like that. Do something wild and new. It’s a tough world out there for writers. There are a lot of us, and I wish I could say that the best writers win. But marketing money has a direct effect on sales. If you’re reading this and giving it serious consideration, then there’s a good chance that your publisher doesn’t have any marketing bucks for you. That means you need to take matters into your own hands.

5 Things I don’t recommend doing:

1. Featuring your photo prominently in the design.
2. Posting your daily word counts and/or in-depth analysis of your daily work. This is interesting to other writers. Probably not so much to fans, unless they want to be a writer too. Keep a separate blog for this.
3. Your rejections. I’ve ranted about this before. Posting about your rejections is something you should stop doing. I can understand why you might do it, but keep it private. You might say something you regret. Editors read websites too.
4. Excerpts of unpublished work. Sorry, nobody cares unless you’re super-established and semi-famous.  That’s not to say you shouldn’t release the whole thing online if you want.
5. Bad reviews. I’ve not read books because of the bad reviews their own authors have publicized. If you don’t link them, I won’t hear about them. This is contentious, but I just don’t recommend it personally.

Flash fiction, or stories under 500 words, has seen a boom online, with electronic magazines such as Brain Harvest specializing in them exclusively.   Personally, I don’t find such short stories very satisfying very often, despite my involvement with the Daily Cabal, (which you should check out if you do like flash fiction).  I don’t think I’ve ever written a really successful flash fiction story.   I would argue that flash fiction is even less popular than regular short fiction, which is pretty unpopular in the first place.

You might think that the internet would lend itself to shorter stories, on the assumption that the internet has shortened our attention spans.  I don’t really believe that. I think we have mostly the same attention spans we did before the web began to dominate our entertainment time, but we’re a lot better about evaluating content quickly to determine if it’s worth our attention.  Scanning is the new reading of the 21st Century.

Early on in the web days, there was a lot more experimentation with the idea of hypertext fiction, which in my experience is basically a glorified “Choose Your Own Adventure” (CYOA) made with links rather than “turn to page X” instructions.   I’d argue that for “choose your own adventure” stories, the web is a better format than print, but– choose your own adventure stories were just a relatively crude form of interactive storytelling, and video games are a more evolved form of the same thing.  CYOA  books are not printed in nearly the same quantities as they were when I was a kid in the 80s.  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the rise of video games has corresponded with the fall of CYOA books. Wikipedia’s article on CYOA references a company called Chooseco that purchased the rights to the original CYOA books, but when I tried to visit the site for said company, all I found was a GoDaddy redirect. I think it’s fairly safe to say that the Choose Your Own Adventure format is effectively played out.

Stories told in an e-mail-like format are really no different from the epistolary format, which has been around since the letter itself.   Wikipedia puts the first epistolary novel appearing in 1485 or so.   Over 500 years old.  So the e-mail format nothing much new, just a slightly different take.  The language might be a bit different, but that same back-and-forth exists, generally written in alternating or single-thread first person present or past-tense.

Some have experimented with Twitter and its 140 character limit.  “Twitter zines” like Thaumatrope publish these stories regularly.  I wrote a serialized story in the twitter format, using the nature of Twitter itself as an aspect of the story, called #futurejer, to what I think was probably varying degrees of success.  Ultimately was the form of story changed by this?  Not very much, I suspect.  It’s just an extremely serialized tale, probably.

I suspect that the ideal format for telling stories online may be the online comic strip.  It is:

• easily scanned, generally read very quickly
• serialized in bite-sized chunks
• visual-rich multimedia, using images to convey ideas faster than words alone can.

Except in maybe a few rare instances, however, it doesn’t take advantage of the hypertextual nature of the web to tell stories, however, so perhaps there has really yet to be a story told that truly utilizes all the strengths of a web format.

I played around with writing comedic comic strips in college, and while my strips generally weren’t great, I learned a lot about rhythm and comedic timing, especially in the 3 panel format.  (I also learned that rarely do two people have the same sense of humor. )  But the comic format as it’s used today mostly gives words over to pictures entirely.  Dialogue, maybe some very basic exposition text, but otherwise, the story rests in the artwork.

What about alternate reality games (ARGs)?  Are they a new form of storytelling?  Or are they simply more interactive fiction or gaming, rather than stories?  As much as I have read about them, I have yet to be fully engrossed in one as it played out, so I can’t really describe the experience.  Have any of you?  Where do you think they fit into things?

In a sense, my Dr. Roundbottom project (currently shamefully fallow)  is a bit of an ARG, leaning more towards an illustrated storytelling style.  Where it differs in an interesting way is that it’s open to audience involvement.  I encourage the readers to adopt characters and personas, to communicate with the characters of the story via the website, and the story changes and adapts to their suggestions, incorporating them into the more traditional narrative aspects.

I don’t know what the ideal format in which to tell a story online is, and this post hasn’t gotten me any closer, but I am nearly certain that it’s not the same format as the print short story.  We read the web differently than we read magazines or text on paper.  Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, I leave as an exercise for the reader.  But there are definite differences, and I think we should be considering, as writers, how to better utilize the format to share our tales.

Then again, maybe stories have been honed into the format that they are in because it’s the most “fit” format.  Natural selection has discarded everything else and left us with the ideal specimen?  What do you think?  Have I left out any attempts to use the web to tell stories differently?  I’d love to hear about them.